This was an entry to Ursuline College's writing contest called “Ohio Writes for Tomorrow.” The prompt was to write an essay loosely based on your experiences in Ohio.

Ohio Tries to Write for Tomorrow

We sat on a golden humpbacked hill overlooking I-77. It was the middle of October and our gloveless fingers were white from the chill in the air, but we had been so warm in the summer that impending frostbite didn’t faze us. Frostbite seemed a surreal, abstract concept.

“Ohio writes for tomorrow…” I mumbled, picking at a piece of string coming out of my scarf. “I can’t even write for today. How am I supposed to write for tomorrow?”

As usual, he didn’t answer right away, but gave the distant ribbon of road a long look.

“Don’t you have some sort of meaningful experience you can write about?” he drawled. “Just write about that one time you did that one thing.”

I sighed. “I’ve never done anything.”

“That can’t be true. You have to have done something.”

“No,” I moaned. “Seriously. I’ve hardly been to anywhere in Ohio. I went to Six Flags a few times, and I’ve visited a university or two, but doesn’t every state have amusement parks and universities?”

He grew thoughtful again. We watched the potato bug cars slide across the I-77 as it stretched southward through the hills like a pavement Mississippi.

“Okay, write about the Rock n Roll Hall of Fame. Everybody loves that place.”

“I haven’t been there.”

He finally turned and looked at me, his lip curling a little, making one of his nostrils seem bigger than the other. “You’re right. You don’t get out much.”

I fell back and stared at the endless blue sky, it’s autumn color so deep it looked dyed. A leaf fell on my face and I looked up at the tree we were sitting under. There was a buckeye by my hand and I picked it up, rubbing it between my palms.

“You could write about nature,” he said, watching me play with the buckeye.

“Who cares about nature?” I retorted. “Besides, what am I going to do, discuss the medicinal properties of horse chestnuts?”

“They’re good for vein diseases in the legs,” he said, “And hemorrhoids.”

“Yeah, that one’ll get me a Nobel Peace Prize.”

“Okay…what about Amish people?”

“Amish people?”

“Yeah. Aren’t they indigenous to Ohio?”

I threw the chestnut down the hill and rubbed my frozen hand over my face. “I really don’t know anything about Amish people.”

“You don’t know anything about anything.”

“Hah. Ain’t that the truth.”

I sat up, hunching over my legs and yawning. We were quiet again, watching as the wind picked up and the pale grass jerk back as if in protest, and then mellow out to swell like a wave.

He sniffed wetly, scrunching up his cold red nose. “Maybe you could do something about your everyday life.”

“Honey, my everyday life could put an insomniac to sleep.”

“It can’t be that bad.”

I shot him an incredulous look. “I get up at six everyday, get to school by seven-thirty, then go home, do my homework, play some video games and go to sleep. Oh, and I work, sometimes.” I made jazz hands.

“Well, you’re sarcastic today,” he muttered.

“…Sorry.” Another pause. We were beginning to feel the cold. I sneezed.

“I’m out of ideas,” he admitted, finally. “Maybe you should go read a book on Ohio, or something.”

Sighing, I stood up, unlocking my frozen knees and stuffing my hands into my coat pockets.

“Yeah, I guess. Didn’t Huckleberry Finn take place in Ohio?”

We walked back towards the house together, anticipating food and television. The clouds filtered the heatless rays of the sun on the hills behind us, making their color shift from pale yellow to goldenrod and back again.

“No, I think that was more like Missouri or something.”

Soon, the noise of the highway disappeared.