30 June 2026, Freewriters Community Daily Writing Prompt Day 3150: I’m going to push the button
“Yes, you heard right, there are ten of us, and I actually love my wife, so, no, kitchen duties do not belong just to her and the girls, the older of which are eleven and ten, and the younger of which are not old enough to be anything but in the way without supervision. We all eat here, so we all prepare food here.”
Capt. R.E. Ludlow had emerged from his kitchen duties with all nine other Ludlows for a moment, but also so with all the goings-on in there the eight little Ludlows would not hear the hardening of his voice.
“Listen, Max, yes, we grew up together, and we were trained in the same folly, but I already did all that – got a woman who would play along, and she took it out of me in every way unimaginable. Entitlement sets you up for failure. Aren't you divorced twice already?”
The voice on the other end of the phone went into a tirade that Capt. Ludlow, with his far deeper and more powerful voice, just cut off when he was ready.
“You can't marry your grandmother, you're too soft for 1935, and you can't afford the help you would need in today's money, because all Black people have to be paid fairly, too,” the captain said, and the tirade got even louder … whereupon the captain looked at the battery life on his phone, put it down, made a note to block Max's number when he recharged his phone battery, smiled, and returned to his kitchen, where he and Mrs. Ludlow were teaching health, science, math, music, and of course, food prep and cooking, all at the same time.
“But that is kind of deep, though,” ten-year-old Glendella was saying to her big sister eleven-year-old Eleanor while they were carefully filling and packing cups of brown sugar. “Music has scales to measure how far you go, and so do ingredients – like, four cups of sugar can be divided into eight half-cups, like you can divide an octave into eight notes.
“Or, cut a pie, like a whole note, into halves, quarters, and eighths … this stuff just comes up everywhere,” ten-year-old Andrew said as he came to get the packed cups and put their contents carefully into the two mixers Mrs. Ludlow had going while eight-year-old Edwina was getting the spices together.
“So there are sweet spices and savory spices, and we gotta keep them separated, because nobody thinks putting chili powder and cayenne were the cinnamon goes is not it,” she explained to her grandfather as he returned to put the savory spices to the side for the chili he was about to start making.
Meanwhile, seven-year-old Amanda and six-year-old Grayson and five-year-old Lil' Robert were all working on putting berries in for cake filling, with Amanda and Lil' Robert putting strawberries, raspberries, and blackberries in, and Grayson making sure the proportions were roughly right.
“I'mma need you to eat a couple more of those,” he said, looking at Lil' Robert's double handful of raspberries, whereupon Lil' Robert smiled and kept two berries back to put in his reward bowl to the side.
Meanwhile, nine-year-old George was patiently awaiting his moment when Grayson came with the full bowl of mixed berries. George helped his little brother load them into the blender, and then when the blender bowl was full, he grinned and loudly announced, “I'm going to push the button!”
“Push it good, boy,” Capt. Ludlow said.
“Oh, he pushed the mess out of that thing,” Glendella said later.
“Yeah, and our jelly filling was so smooth – George did a great job!” Eleanor said.
“And the smoothies tomorrow are going to be so good, too!” Glendella said.