Sometimes in the workshops, we return to characters we’ve written about before. 
I sometimes write in the voice of a character named Sheila. Sheila is 15 years old, and was adopted by her uncle and his partner, whom she considers her two dads.
The prompt this time was the Five Word Free Write. For a detailed explanation of this prompt, see an earlier post here.
The five words were: 1. Wild Geese (I know that’s two words) 2. Pomegranates 3. Red 4. Rain 5. Longing
What I wrote is below.
_____________________________
So my dads were like, “It’s not a choice, Sheila. You’re coming. You’re only 15; staying home alone is not an option.” And I was like, WTF? I’m practically a grown woman now. And they were like, “No way. You’re coming to the showcase with us.”
Whatever.
It’s times like these that I want to pull the adoption card and say something mean, like, You’re not even my real parents, but I don’t, because they like, legally adopted me a few years ago and Uncle Bob is my blood relative, and my real parents suck, so like, I would never say that. But sometimes I want to. I swear I do.
So I tried the intellectual approach.
“I’m almost 16 now,” I said, “I’m supposed to be individuating.” (I totally learned that term in my Psych class with Ms. Frasier, who’s like, the coolest lipstick lesbian EVER!). “It’s a right of passage,” I said, borrowing Papa Jimmy’s term. He just gave me that look and said, “Bring a sweater.”
Whatever. It wasn’t even cold outside. What am I? Like five years old? God.
So anyways, off we went to their stupid Alma Mater where they met like 500 years ago, that hippie-dippie college in Amherst to see the f-ing showcase of like, all one womyn shows (that’s womyn a “y” you know), and all I can think is Capital B: Boring.
But you know, some of it was sorta good. Most of the performers had like, good projection and all. And one girl—er, womyn—was like, a total freak, with like a rainbow pixie haircut and purple lipstick. Her whole piece was about the vagina, like, vagina pride, and I was like, okay. This is interesting. She got my attention, I guess.
She spread her legs, and THANK GOD, she was wearing tights under her skirt, and then she like magically produced a pomegranate from like, nowhere, and she ripped it open with her bare hands, and juice went everywhere. And she had this, I don’t know, instructional speech about the fruit of her womynhood and the beauty of menstrual blood, and, GROSS, right? But I kind of admired her, really, for like, going there. I was like, having a moment of girl power bonding right there in the audience remembering how like, embarrassed both of my dads were when I started my period, and how embarrassed I felt too.
That sucked.
And it’s like, totally natural, you know?
Anyway, Ms. Rainbow Head was pretty cool. All Uncle Bob had to say afterward was, “She really made a mess on that stage.”
God, I swear, sometimes men are so clueless. Totally. They really, really are.
The Catalyst 