Welcome to the first Five Minute Friday link-up of September 2024! Each week we meet around a single word prompt and set a timer to freewrite for five minutes flat. No overthinking, no editing . . . just write. Let the words flow.

If you’re new to the FMF community, you can learn more about the link-up and how it works here.

This week’s FMF writing prompt is: YOUTH

Setting my timer for five minutes, and . . . GO. 

The other day, we hired a photographer friend to take professional photos of my youngest son to commemorate the beginning of his last year of high school (yes, I’m that old).

We had a great time visiting different locations, joking and laughing to make sure he gave a genuine smile instead of his fake one.

I marveled at the reality that my last kid is in his last year of school.

After the photo shoot I drove to the grocery store and saw an elderly man shuffling from the store across the pedestrian crosswalk toward his car parked in the handicap parking spot.

The contrast between the photos we had just captured of my son in his youth and this gentleman with a hunched back and bald head struck me as I watched him slowly make his way to his vehicle.

I imagine if I had asked the gentleman about his final year of high school he would have said it didn’t feel like very long ago.

And yet the days and years pass by, and time marches on, and even the youths grow old and weary.

STOP.

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Join the link-up with your own five-minute freewrite on the prompt, YOUTH, below, then visit your link-up neighbor to read their post and leave an encouraging comment: