Sledgehammer Writing Contest

What a great night! We had a bout a dozen writers come out for the first Mini Sledgehammer of the year. Congratulations to Jeremy Da Rosa!

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Character: SIRI
Action: Exercising
Setting: January, 1915
Prop: Salt

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Milk Starring Sean Penn

by Jeremy Da Rosa

It was the largest glass of milk I had ever seen. I’m no stranger to milk (I’ve got most varieties memorized), but this was the biggest glass I’d seen. 32oz at least. Next to it the sugar shaker on the table made the sugar shaker look like a salt shaker.

The waitress brought me a straw, which was kind but unnecessary.
“I’m pretty good with milk,” I said.

“Siri,” I asked, “What is the Guinness World Record for largest quantity of milk drank in one sitting?”

Siri didn’t know. I stood up in the brown diner. There was a belt of square windows strung around its waist and a fence of bushes between the windows and the street. A marathon was breathing heavily by, and I was convicted about my lack of exercise. I returned to my milk.

A search through the bowels of the internet revealed the milk drinking record was two cows past a full herd: a man named Samuel Scott Walker held the record with 2.5 gallons of whole milk drank in one sitting. The asterisk next to the stat showed a sitting was considered 45 minutes.

This was beyond me–no matter how much I loved the thick, natural soy-based alternatives. I needed to train, and to train, I needed to talk to the best.

Samuel Scott Walker, according to classmates.com, was born on Jan. 30, 1915, in Tillamook, Oregon, which made sense–where else would the world’s best milk drinker be born other than the producer of the nation’s best dairy products?
But 1915, that’s one hundred years ago! The odds that this proud man still walked among us were thinner that a glass of nonfat.

© 2015 Jeremy Da Rosa

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Jeremy Da Rosa is a writer and educator who lives in Portland. He was born in Salinas, California, where lettuce comes from.

Filed under: Mini Sledgehammers | Tagged: Blackbird Wine, Jeremy Da Rosa, short story, Sledgehammer, writing contest |