Restored Hope by Brenda Youngerman

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Tracie Walker's Word Game
A good friend of mine replied to Tracie Walker's article, "The Word Game - A Great Way to Meet Talented Authors!" where you can send her a comment on her original article and she will send you 5 random words and you can play along. It is rather interesting to see what different words mean to people.

I really had no intention of getting involved, but Ruthi put the challenge out there, and not to be dared and unresponsive, I really felt that I had no choice but to ask for 5 words of my own.

Literature: When I hear that word the first thing that comes to my mind is American Literature and all the great works that I have read over the years - Gone With the Wind being my absolute favorite. But who could ever forget Huckleberry Finn or the Adventures of Tom Sawyer. Then as I write this my mind immediately jumps to Dickens, with all of those classics and Dumas and Robert Louis Stevenson. I could go on and on, but I have 4 other words to write about.

Camp: This word has so many different connotations. The first thing that popped into my mind was the very first time I was sent away to camp was at a place above the HOLLYWOOD sign in Griffith Park. I think it has now been discovered that is where there were bodies buried. I was sent there with my cousins. I absolutely hated it there! The next year I went to a camp with my bluebird troop and again I hated it - there is even a picture of me crying! But for some ridiculous reason when I was 18 years old I became a camp counselor for an entire summer (go figure!) and it was the best summer I have ever had! None of my children ever had the chance to experience camp and I think that's something every kid should be able to do - at least once.

Conversation: Being an author I spend a great deal of time listening. Conversations are the vines that thread through life holding all the pieces together. Sometimes conversations are non-verbal, it's the things that aren't said that mean the most! In the old days, before the days of instant messaging and cell phones with text messages we used to write letters - with papers and pens. Then we would have one-sided conversations and wait by the mail box hoping that we would get a letter back. Conversations in this technical age have changed so much. You can never really tell what the other side of the email really means - if the person is using all caps - does it really mean they are mad? Or are they just trying to make a point, or are they going blind and they cannot see? What happened to good old fashioned phone calls?

Victory: This word, if you were a man, would mean winning! This word for a competitor would mean coming in first. This word for me means all the little things in life that go right every single day. To me a victory is as simple as letting a person in front of me on the freeway, or smile at a person who is having a bad day. I have never been a competitive person and winning has never been that important to me. It is much more about the journey, than the destination.

Random: The first thing that jumped into my head when I saw this word was a random pattern. That is rare and hard to find. Something like the stripes on a tiger. The mother can tell her cub, but they all look the same to an outsider. The other thing that crosses my mind is a random act of kindness. If this world were to be filled with more of that it would be such a brighter place to be. But, most people do not act randomly - they act systematically - that is the way we are taught.

So, those were my 5 words. - Definitely 5 random words - Tracie....I hope I did you proud!