Hit the Road Jack #flashfiction

37 Replies

This week at the Carrot Ranch, Charli Mills challenged writers to In 99 words (no more, no less), write a story using the phrase, “hit the road, Jack.” You can interpret the phrase any way you like — road trip, goodbye, or story. Go where the prompt leads!

I’ve written a nonsense story loosely based on young children as much as on characters from nursery rhymes. Anyone who has tried to get to the truth of a ‘situation’ with young children will recognise the complexities and difficulties involved and realise how quickly it can all be resolved with a distraction. I’ve used an interpretation of the phrase rather than the phrase itself. I hope you enjoy it.

Nursery Rhyme Nursery School

“What’s upsetting you, Jack?”

“Mary won’t let me play.”

“Why are you contrary, Mary? Didn’t Jack build this house?”

“He broke it too!”

“Don’t blame me,” said Jack. “The alligator smashed it.”

“What alligator?”

“The doctor’s. He trampled everything.”

“Don’t blame me,” said the doctor. “Polly said come quick.”

“Because … ?”

“My dolly got burnt from the kettle.”

“Who put the kettle on?”

“I did. But don’t blame me. Jack bumped me.”

“You were hogging pies.”

“You were sticking your fingers in them.”

“Look, everyone! Humpty’s cracked!”

“Who pushed him?”

“Jack?!”

Jack was gone. He’d fled the scene.

Thank you blog post

Thank you for reading. I appreciate your feedback. Please share your thoughts.

37 thoughts on “Hit the Road Jack #flashfiction”

  1. Jules

    Nice infusion of all the rhymes. When you had doctor – I thought of the wonderful book Dr. DeSoto… but the patient that that mouse dentist outsmarted was a large fox!

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply ↓
        1. Norah Post author

          Thank you, Hugh. I didn’t count them as I wrote them, so it’s good to know.
          I added alligator thinking the rhyme featured a doctor with an alligator bag. However, when I looked it up, it went ‘In came the doctor, in came the nurse, in came the lady with the alligator purse.’ I decided to let the doctor have the alligator bag. My grandfather used to have one. He wasn’t a doctor, but back when I was a child, some doctors carried alligator bags when making house visits. Are you old enough to remember doctors making house visits? (You don’t have to answer that.) They seem such a thing of the past.

          Liked by 1 person

          Reply ↓
            1. Norah Post author

              When I was about three, I got caught in the jaws of my grandfather’s bag when I was trying to sneak some licorice allsorts I was sure he had. The name is appropriate. 🤣

              Liked by 1 person

              Reply ↓

  4. Pingback: Hit the Road Jack « Carrot Ranch Literary Community

    1. Norah Post author

      Thanks so much, Anne.
      I’m sorry your comments keep going to spam. I pulled one out just a few minutes ago. I’ve realised I can block spammers now. Before I was just deleting all the comments. The numbers are decreasing but there’s still a lot getting through. I don’t know why your comments join them. I can’t see anywhere to always accept a commenter. Frustrating.

      Liked by 1 person

      Reply ↓

I appreciate your feedback. Please share your thoughts.

Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in:

Gravatar
WordPress.com Logo

You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. ( Log Out /  Change )

Facebook photo

You are commenting using your Facebook account. ( Log Out /  Change )

Cancel

Connecting to %s

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.