Friday Fictioneers – The Baker

~ Neil MacDonald
PHOTO PROMPT © Ted Strutz

“Cooking,” he says, arranging utensils and ingredients on the counter, “is pretty much applied chemistry.”

Should I correct him? Things rarely go well when I do. Not that he’s violent, you understand. No, no, I’m not saying that, but he gets crotchety, and then other things unravel. Besides, is he so wrong? True, he’s forgotten how much of it is heart and discovery and flair. And also, a fair amount is physics, come to that. But, if his belief provides an illusion of mastery in a world of chaos and chance, he’ll approach the task with more confidence.

“Yes, dear.”

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Friday fictioneers is a weekly challenge set by Rochelle Wisoff Fields to write a 100-word story in response to a photo prompt. You can find other stories here

33 thoughts on “Friday Fictioneers – The Baker”

  4. In College, I had a professor, and Ex-NASA engineer, who taught us Algebra in a new way. He didn’t just hand out equations. He passed out problems. Ex: How do we get this soda can to other side of the quad… without it touching the ground. That may seem simple, but there’s a lot of math involved. And for a learner like me, it flipped a switch in my brain that said “Wow! So that’s what that equation;s for!” He was my second fave prof. as he taught me to see math in a new light that I’d never seen before and in a way that I could understand. I could do the math, sure. It was simple. Calculus was a breeze, advanced physics a whiz-bang… but, this new application set me to running. This story reminds me of him. Oh, and about the 20+ notebooks full of equations I’ve got going in secret… LOL!

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  10. Ha
    Great last line after all that introspection. They might both be right about the best way to cook. They don’t seem to communicate all that well though. Perhaps it is a bit of both. Not a fab relationship if one partner is scared to make suggestions for fear of what they’ll do. Beautifully done, Neil.

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  12. This one hit me on two levels. The first was humorous with a wife who knows her pompous husband very well. The second was sadness because of this line: “True, he’s forgotten how much…” and I thought of a husband with some struggles and a wife who knows not to upset those struggles by correcting him.

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