Pat begged me to come to her party. I had to accept or she would be hurt. I arrived early so there would be fewer people there: fewer opportunities to schmooze. Schmoozing ain’t my thing.
After I exhausted myself making small talk with two women, I slipped into the back yard. I sat on the porch steps, breathing in the quiet, building up to go back inside.
An old Mustang, maybe a ’68, drove slowly down the side street. I could see two people inside. The passenger slid his body out the window, sat on the door and pointed a gun over the roof of the car at Pat’s house. He started shooting. I launched myself toward the ground and began crawling toward a tree amid the gunshots and shattering glass. Terrified screams. . .
Please leave a comment with your first 50 words on the topic “schmooze.”
First 50 Words - Prompts for Writing Practice 
‘Hey, Sheri has this fantastic idea. Tell Harlan what you told me, Sheri .”
Clients. you gotta love ’em. We put the biggest buyers in their business into a cocktail party for them, and the CFO spends it impressing his legal secretary. Go on, Sheri . Tell me how to do PR.
Hi flashstory, thanks for writing and welcome to First 50 Words!
Schmooze
Stu Goldman, publisher of Fun Magazine Entertainment Weekly of Seattle, circa 1986. Never met a movie or an intern he didn’t like. Meet Jerry McCool, intern extraordinaire, serving the popcorn. Free screenings in small theatres of third string movies that might move up the food chain. Served with Chablis and cheese.
from Mike:
Schmooze me slap on the back. I can’t break through, though, if your toast points are soaked up with too much ooze. Every time a banker dies, the group just tightens like a sphincter. You can only shake so many hands before your heart pops out like a half-fried chickadee shrieking and shrieking and revealing the holes in your underwear.
Thanks for contributing to First 50 Words, mothergoose. Y’all go on over to mothergoose’s place for some good tales, ’cause they don’t leave you hanging, they go all the way to the end!
from Barb:
Andrea’s mother left her with the babysitter, running late to some event, where she’d grab hors d’oeuvres. Andrea was eight and didn’t know schmooze. It was funny sounding. At first, she assumed it meant sliding, like ice skating, but that didn’t make sense. Eating mashed potatoes. Sinking into an overstuff armchair after a long day? Sneeze? Chew? Glide along hardwood floors in a slo-mo interpretive dance. Andrea wondered.
Hey Virginia, Mike, Barb and I (from Ken’s writing group) are meeting at my house and decided to use your blog for writing activities.
Thanks for the good ideas!
mothergoose (aka Teresa) from
http://mothergoose.wordpress.com/
From Mike:
My rite of passage with other boys consisted of many sessions of getting gross without flinching. I remember most distinctly the pendulum of loogie hanging over my face like the sword of Damocles. Then there was talking about sex with diseased crusty body parts. The remind me that I once qualified. Now grossness to me reveals the divine. I want to sing about an albino roach pumping out hundreds of babies as a hymn to God. God of tender mercies among the ugly.
From Barb:
So much of life was gross. Snot that occasionally shot out of her nose during a violent sneeze, menstrual blood creeping around the folds of her maxi pad and staining her underwear, sometimes a clot, half smeared on her inner thigh. It was hard to feel desirable when one felt so irredeemably fluid and function.
from Teresa
The goal of the Getting Gross Club (pronounced geck) was to offend without going over the line. Spit ball, yes, but it had to be anonymous. Loogie, sure, but needed to be timed so classmates heard it but teacher did not. The world famous tread mark wedgie . . . I don’t want to talk about it. Better ask my brothers.
Go to the Zoo – Mike
Capture your apeness for a few hours as you lock eyes and pheramonal gestures with your cousin cats, and sister simians, and grandpa gazelle.
Scratch an itch and flinch as a fly buzzes your ear and catch the eye of that koala
As he does the same
Then turn with resolute abandon and set your course for home
Ignoring your family’s captivity in favor of a carefree fiction.
Ah, the mystery of the multiple mothergeese is solved. Have fun! Write!
Go to the Zoo — from Barb
Monique spent all afternoon in the reptile house. She loved the lizards, the tiny legs poking out of the sides of their bodies, waggling perpendicular to the ground and their webbed toes, flexing and paddling air. But she was studying the snakes. She looked and looked and still couldn’t understand how they moved. They were like life, sliding by without indicating how.