Deborah Prum

About Deborah Prum

Welcome to First Kiss and Other Cautionary Tales, a podcast where you can listen to observations on the quirkiness of life, hear short fiction read by a short person, and listen to book and movie reviews.

Publisher

DEBORAH PRUM

Category

arts · fiction · tv & film

Language

en

Explicit

No

First episode

28 Nov 2012

Latest episode

18 Mar 2024

Latest episodes

29 episodes in the feed.

1. 

   18 Mar 2024

   PODCAST-THE DAY THE VIRGIN MARY APPEARED ON MY CAFETERIA WALL

   PODCAST-THE DAY THE VIRGIN MARY APPEARED ON MY CAFETERIA WALL Photo Courtesy of Gaetano Cessati 0:00 / 0:00 The Day the Virgin Mary Appeared on My Cafeteria Wall The Day the Virgin Mary Appeared on My Cafeteria Wall was first published in the Blue Ridge Anthology:  Poetry and Prose of Central Virginia Writers, 2010. THE DAY THE VIRGIN MARY APPEARED ON MY CAFETERIA WALL The Year of Our Lord 1964             So, there were these two kids--twins--Donnie and Donna Donnatto.  Can you believe that?  Actually, he was called Little Donnie because his father was known as Big Donnie.  Somebody told me their mother was named LaDonna, but I don't know that for sure.            Anyway, one day me and Donna and Little Donnie are sitting in our assigned seats at a green Formica table in our junior high cafeteria.  The song "It's A Small World After All....." is playing over the P.A. system for the second time in twenty minutes.  Mostly, the teachers pick different kinds of music to torture us with, but every once in a while, some student sneaks into the office and slips his own record onto the player.  This, of course, is a federal offence, punishable by washing off lunch tables for a week.            Donna, who is a pee-pure Catholic, says to me, "You wanna see a miracle?"            The brother Donnie chimes in.  "Don't show her for free.  Make her pay sumfin.  You hadda pay."            While Donna talks, I'm sitting there picking apart my warm bologna sandwich, trying to separate the wilted lettuce from the soggy bread.  I get meat in my lunch once a week, on Fridays.  Of course, Catholics aren’t supposed to eat meat on Fridays.  Sending bologna in on Fridays is Ma's way of thumbing her nose at the Catholic Church.  She still moans about them nuns cracking rulers on her knuckles.  My mother, I'll have to admit, she is not all sweetness and light, especially when it comes to the Church.  This week the bologna looks green and smells like wet boots.            "I'll trade you this here sandwich."  I offer.  Better Donna should get ptomaine poisoning than me.            Donna says "No way.  It ain’t a natural bologna color.  Besides, it’s Friday.  I’m not gonna risk hell for nasty sangwidge meat."              But Donnie, who could eat three times his weight in a day and doesn’t care a bit about the torments of hell because he ain’t capable of thinking that far ahead, he says, "Yeah.  I'll take it.  Show her the miracle."            Well, Donna pulls out her ratty old alligator purse, a hand-me-down from her ratty old grandmother in St. Petersburg, Florida.  She unsnaps the latch, the latch being a real baby alligator's head with one glass green eye missing.  Dramatically, she pulls out a beige card with lots of blue splotches on it.            "That is the miracle?  Gimme my sandwich back."  I reach across the table to Donnie.Of course, by this time Little Donnie has already eaten most of the sandwich using his revolting method which I have to look at every school day of my miserable life.            Donnie, he folds his sandwich in two, squishes it hard, so's it's flattened.  Then, he chomps off one whole half and shoves it into his mouth with the pinkie of his sandwich-holding hand.  Next, he swallows, swallows hard.            You can watch the blob go down his long hairy throat like a fat mouse sliding through the belly of a skinny snake.  Then, the creep finishes off the second half in one slow gulp.            Donnie says to me, "You serious?  You want your sangwidge back?"  He opens his mouth and sticks his finger down as far as it will go.            I tell Donna, "Okay. Okay. Show me your crummy miracle.  Make it quick.  We got five minutes before fourth period."            Too cool to be rushed, Donna tells me a big story about how she bought this card off a foreign priest for twenty-five cents.  She says, "He was from Guantannamero or some place down there whe...

2. 

   14 Mar 2024

   DAMSEL-MOVIE REVIEW

   DAMSEL-MOVIE REVIEW 0:00 / 0:00 Damsel Movie Review Damsel is a girl-power fairy tale that will make you think twice about ever entering into an arranged marriage. The movie opens as Elodie (played by Milly Bobby Brown from Stranger Things) is promised to Prince Henry by her father, Lord Bayford. The arrangement is purely financial. Prince Henry’s kingdom is flourishing. Lord Bayford rules over a poor village that is on the verge of extinction.Robin Wright plays Queen Isabelle, mother of Prince Henry. She is the wicked ruler of that affluent kingdom. Robin Wright is an actress who has not aged a nanosecond. She does a great job of portraying the worst mother-in-law in the history of Hollywood. She forces Lord Bayard into an appalling agreement: in order obtain the resources to save his village, he must hand over Elodie in marriage, which wouldn’t have been so bad if the royal mother-in-law’s post-wedding plans didn’t happen to be horrific.After hearing the terms of the deal, Lord Bayford becomes distraught, but not distraught enough to return the money. Elodie’s nice stepmother, Lady Bayford (played by Angela Bassett) recognizes bad mischief is afoot. She begs Lord Bayford to spare Elodie and break the agreement, but he refuses.            Spoiler alert: if you enjoy being surprised by a film, don’t watch the movie trailer. Weirdly, the trailer reveals and thereby greatly reduces the shock factor of the grim event that occurs at the beginning of the film. Without revealing too much, I’ll just say that Milly Bobby Brown spends a good chunk of the movie in a cave, alternately being chased by a fire-breathing dragon and then later, chasing the fire-breathing dragon. By the end of the movie, it’s clear that Elodie’s motto is “Vengeance is mine.”            In theory, this is an action movie. However, the action did not move quickly enough for me. The film lingers too long on scenes of Elodie scaling great heights in the cave and scenes of her dodging the dastardly dragon. Even though the shots of the cave are beautiful, especially the close ups of the crystals and magic glowworms, I’d have preferred that the film move at a quicker pace.            I enjoyed the acting, especially Robin Wright, Angela Bassett, and Milly Bobby Brown. The dialogue was clever and fun, especially the scenes with Elodie’s family and also the scenes with Elodie and Prince Henry. The dragon moved well and created havoc in a convincing way.  The dragon also spoke but she delivered her lines in a hushed and flat tone. Maybe the director was going for creepy, but I needed a little more verve in the voice to be as scared as I wanted to be.            This movie might be too frightening for young children, unless you want to use it to discourage the kiddos from playing with fire. The fire scenes are graphic. Many humans and small creatures burn to a crisp.I think older children and middle school kids would be entertained by the girl-power aspect of the movie. After she discovers that her little sister is in danger, Elodie transforms into Avenger mode. Bad stuff goes down for everyone who has crossed her including the dragon and those pesky in-laws. Even though I wished for pacing that moved more briskly, I found the movie entertaining and probably a good pick for a family movie night with the middle school crowd. (Photo by Jen Fariello)Deborah Prum's fiction has appeared in The Virginia Quarterly Review, Across the Margin, Streetlight and other outlets. Her essays air on NPR member stations and have appeared in The Washington Post, Ladies Home Journal and Southern Living, as well as many other places. Check out her WEBSITE. Check out her DEVELOPMENTAL EDITING SERVICES. Check out her PAINTINGS. APPLE PODCAST SPOTIFY PODCAST

3. 

   7 Mar 2024

   PODCAST MY BRIEF LIFE OF CRIME

   PODCAST MY BRIEF LIFE OF CRIME Photo Courtesy of Drew Taylor 0:00 / 0:00 My Brief Life in Crime Jean De La Bruyere says, “If poverty is the mother of all crimes, lack of intelligence is their father.” This was true in my case.My first brush with crime happened when I was eight years old. At the time, we lived across from my school, Smalley Elementary. Weekdays, as my classmates passed by our apartment building, they littered with abandon, dropping candy wrappers, chewed up gum and school papers. Each Saturday, my father paid me a nickel to pick up the mess.After school one day, a boy named Sammy and I were commiserating about our lack of funds to buy candy. I had very little money and he had none. We cooked up a plan to remedy the situation. Back then, you’d get a nickel for every empty soda bottle you returned to the store. We knew that people stored their return bottles in wooden crates by their porch door. We figured we’d steal the bottles and redeem them ourselves.One afternoon, Sammy and I ran from porch to porch, grabbing empty bottles from tenements on our block. In no time, we collected about twenty. As we loaded them into Sammy’s wagon, visions of Squirrel Nut Zippers and Hot Tamales danced in our heads.We hauled the loot to the corner grocery store, a tiny place run by an Armenian couple named Joseph and Mary. They immediately became suspicious. These grocers knew their customers would never willingly hand over valuable bottles to a pair of ragamuffins.Neither Mary nor Joseph spoke English well. However, on a phone call to my mother, they managed to convey the gist of our nefarious deed. My parents made us return the bottles to their rightful owners, which we did, although without much accuracy.Later, my mother tried to scare me into good behavior by reading me the Adam and Eve story. However, I did not grasp the relevance of that Bible story to Sammy and me. Our get-rich-quick scheme involved no apple, no serpent, and no tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Plus, unlike Adam and Eve, Sammy and I remained fully clothed at all times.One year later, my second brush with crime involved a direct encounter with a law enforcement officer. Our family was vacationing in upstate New York. We visited the Catskill Game Farm, Fort Ticonderoga, and a shoe factory.Midway through our shoe factory tour, the overwhelming smell of dye nauseated me. I lost my breakfast in a humiliatingly public way. As our family rushed out, the tour guide handed me a consolation prize, a tall spool of heavy string.`           Back in the car, to cheer myself up, I tied the string to my white stocking. Then I sailed my sock out the car window, kite-style, as we cruised down the highway. I felt exhilarated.From the front seat, my parents didn’t notice my attempt at self-entertainment. But later, my parents did notice the flashing red light and the blaring siren coming from a police car behind us.“License and registration,” the cop said.My father knew he hadn’t been speeding. “What’s the problem?”“Littering.” The cop scribbled out a ticket.When I realized what had happened, I yelled, “No. Not littering. See? I still have my sock.”  I managed to persuade the policeman that we technically didn’t litter because the sock had never landed. We did not get a ticket. Tragically, I did not get to keep the string.Sophocles says, “All people make mistakes, but a good person yields when she knows her course is wrong.” At nine, I pivoted. I shunned my life of crime. No more recycling scams and no more faux littering. However, these days when life gets rough and I need to cheer myself, I’m tempted to fly a sock-kite out my car window to see if I can experience that youthful exhilaration once again. (Photo by Jen Fariello)Deborah Prum's fiction has appeared in The Virginia Quarterly Review, Across the Margin, Streetlight and other outlets.

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