Writing Prompt #7

I got a request to make a custom scarf wrap for a woman who wanted to give it to her husband for his birthday. It was short notice but I was all like "Wahoo!! Custom Order". On the third day of knitting my arms hurt and this was a little facebook exchange with my aunt:

Sara: doesnt wanna knit anymore!!! *whine*
Anne: not even with "amazing" automatically striping yarn?!?!?! i'm sure your hands are toast, though.
Sara: don't speak to me of yarn! the bane of this weekend. i have to be done knitting today cuz tomorrow i gotta make a wind chime. so i need to only have to do the border and the buttons....
Anne: "the border and the buttons" you speak in short story and book titles, you, who has trouble naming her writing! your next prompt should be to write something entitled "the border and the buttons."

So, this writing prompt is a story, about the thneed called The Border and The Buttons. It stars the woman who purchased it, the husband who will be recieving it and children who were so very excited and requested status updates daily when they were told about it.

I know nothing about the family beyond those facts, not even how many kids there are or if they are boys or girls. The characters I wrote were created soley due to the fact that it cracked me up that the real kids were so excited to have a real live thneed (i know i would have loved one when i was a kid. i loved the lorax). I could see them finding uses for the Thneed when dad wasn't around and mom borrowing it when she could get away with it.

here is the authors den link where the full story appears: http://www.authorsden.com/visit/viewshortstory.asp?id=47493

and here is an excerpt.

When the Thneed arrived for him, straight out of one of my childhood’s favorite books it seemed as if it should have been in his closet all along. Mom whispered the secret of Daddy’s birthday present to my sister and me a week before. We thought she must be lying. She found an actual Thneed? “A fine something that all people need?” Mama promised that it was Truffula free and that made me happy. I wanted to be in no way responsible for the devastation of yet another Truffula forest.

I believe my father was first impressed by the color, his favorite; red. Always there was some hint of red on him, in the stripe of his dress shirt with the stuck-out collar, a red tie under a green vest, or simply the flash of crimson when the cuffs of his pants rose to reveal his socks. His new Thneed warmed from a shiny bright red into a deeper, warm maroon and back again along the length of fuzzy looking fabric.

He did not understand what it was at first, and I too was skeptical upon first sight. My little sister was only 3 at the time and more interested in the cake waiting in the kitchen. Mom was excited, she was the only one who’d seen it, touched it, and wrapped it in pretty paper for Dad. I watched the length of two-toned red unroll and caught the glint of a silver button, of a red one, a maroon one, a black one. Eventually we would all have a favorite of the 16 or so buttons, but I was only beginning to see the possibility hinted at by these mismatched discs.