Writing Resources from Fifteen Minutes of Fiction

The Day that Time Stood Still

As a young lad, I worked in a toy store after school and on weekends. One day, I was standing on a ten-foot ladder leaning against some built- in shelving. Down below me was my fellow stock-boy and friend Harold; he was tossing me boxes of toys to be stored on the shelving. His aim was off on one box and as I leaned out to catch it, the ladder and I began to fall away from the shelves. I felt myself falling, and in a moment of panic, I remember looking down to see where I would fall and there was Harold looking up to me.

After all these years, I still distinctly remember my thought process as I was falling backwards toward certain injury or maybe worse. My first thought was, 'oh my gosh, I'm falling, I know I'm going to get hurt. My next thought was, 'oh, there is Harold standing there he'll catch me and I'll be OK.' This thought was followed by, 'Harold doesn't even weigh a hundred pounds, if I fall on him I might kill us both.' After all these thoughts, I realized I'd need to save myself and I reached out grabbing the shelf support to stop my fall. If all my thinking had even taken three seconds, I would have been too far away from the shelving to be able to save myself. It was if time stood still while my thoughts and I had a conversation on how to find a way to safety.

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