HerBlueprintHQ 🌸

Stories 🖋 , Human Behavior & The things we rarely say.
Sometimes fiction. Sometimes observation. Always something worth feeling.
Welcome to my canvas.

[HerBlueprintHQ 🌸 @_HerBluePrint_]

@hynw34343 Thank you. I'm glad you do.

[HerBlueprintHQ 🌸 @_HerBluePrint_]

THE CRATER OF EMBARRASMENT.

Leo had spent the whole van ride rehearsing how he would look at the rim of the volcano. Wind in his hair, camera raised, the kind of boy who belonged in a nature documentary.

Instead he stood on the black gravel with a stomachache and a hat that refused to stay on.

The tour group shuffled towards the overlook. Steam rose in lazy white columns. the ground felt warm through his sneakers.

A girl from another family called Maya, has the same camera strap as his, and kept glancing at the crater like she was memorizing it.

Leo decided this was the moment. He stepped closer to the rope, "Pretty wild, huh? You can actually feel the heat." His voice cracked on "Heat".

Maya smiled politely, while someone coughed behind them. Leo lifted his phone for a panoramic shot and took one more step backward without looking.

His heel caught a loose chunk of a lava rock, he windmilled, grabbed the nearest solid thing and discovered it was Maya's backpack, both of them lurched.

His phone slipped, bounced once on the gravel, and landed screen down three feet from the drop.

A ranger shouted "Nobody move!", Leo froze in a half crouch, one hand still hooked on Maya's backpack, the other hovering over the phone as if he could levitate it back.

The group had gone silent, except for the hiss of steam. His stomach, which had been complaining since the chili at lunch, chose that exact second to gurgle out loud, wet, and unmistakably.

Maya's eyes widened, then she snorted and she laughed so hard she had to sit down on the path.

Leo's face burned hotter than the ground, he retrieved the phone (the case was scuffed, the photo was of his own shoe) then he mumbled, “Sorry. Gravity’s different up here.” The ranger let them stay a few more minutes.

Maya wiped her eyes and said, "You almost became a tourist attraction", they both smiled and helped each other up.

On their walk back. Leo's hat finally blew off and tumbled towards a steam vent, this time he didn't chase it, he just watched it go and said, “That one’s for the volcano.” Maya smiled and high fived him.

The story would follow him home, of course, but on the van ride back down the mountain, he decided that wasn't the worst thing that could happen on a volcano.

At least no one had to be rescued. and the photo of his shoe, if you cropped it right, almost looked Artistic.

[HerBlueprintHQ 🌸 @_HerBluePrint_]

@astikbizbunlari Yes, you're right. truly it's a good thing it wasn't more than that and everyone got home safely.

[🥷 @_iamhabeeb]

i hate how traumatized everyone is from dating, it's very sad

[Liyao-tian @MarrietShaw25]

If you're talking about the lack of belief in God, the proper term is "atheism" though there are different positions:

Atheism: not believing that God or gods exist.

Agnosticism: believing that we cannot know for certain whether God exists.

Deism: believing in a creator or higher power but not necessarily in organized religion or revelation.

Religious doubt: believing in God but struggling with faith or certainty.

Know where you belong and stop castigating other's beliefs

[NOBUNAGA🇯🇵🏯_夏樹蒼依 @japan_nobunaga]

In under a minute a man holding a knife promoted me three times and then claimed me as his own property, and I have never been happier.

I went in for a sandwich. I want that on the record. A sandwich.

Behind the counter stood a man with an apron and the settled confidence of someone who has fed thousands and remembers none of them.

"What can I get you, boss?"

Boss. I had been inside the building for nine seconds and I already outranked the staff. I did not request this honor. But a title freely given cannot be refused without insulting the giver, so I accepted it with grace and ordered the way a boss orders, calmly, from slightly lower in the chest.

"You want everything on it, chief?"

Chief. A promotion, delivered in the time it takes to select a bread. Clearly I had impressed him. My bearing, perhaps. I straightened, as a chief must.

"That'll be nine fifty, champ."

Champ. He had now declared me the victor of something. I had done nothing but stand still and want lunch. I began quietly wondering what I had won and against whom. I did not ask. A champion does not audit his own titles in public.

I paid. He handed me the bag, looked me directly in the eye, and closed the ceremony.

"Have a good one, my man."

My man.

I stopped walking. He had taken a stranger, raised him through three ranks in fifty seconds, and then claimed him. I now belonged to him. He belonged to me. I had entered that building alone and was leaving with a brother.

I turned at the door. I wanted to say something equal to the journey we had taken together.

"You are my man also."

He had already turned away.

"What can I get you, boss?"

And there it was. He does this to everyone. He crowns every stranger who walks through that door and sends them out lighter than they came in, and he does not know he is doing it, which is the only reason it works.

His name is Marcus. Marcus has no idea what he is.

I go back every day this week. Same sandwich. Same seat.

Boss, chief, champ, my man. There is one rank above that and I am going to get it.

[🥷 @_iamhabeeb]

I rebuke every bad thing spoken over my life… even if it’s said as a joke

[XCosmos @XCosmosOfficial]

Is intelligence the ability to answer questions or to ask better ones?

[NOBUNAGA🇯🇵🏯_夏樹蒼依 @japan_nobunaga]

There is a man on my street who cannot be stopped by weather, and I need you to understand what he did.

The forecast promised a storm. Dale responded by carrying his grill toward it.

I watched from the window at first. Rain starting. Wind coming up. And there was Dale in a rain jacket the color of a traffic cone, positioning the grill under the single dry rectangle of his garage overhang with the unhurried movements of a man executing a plan he has run before.

I went out with an umbrella and a question.

"Dale. The storm."

"Yep."

I asked why he was not cooking indoors, where the indoors is.

He looked at me through the rain with the tongs already in his hand and said the sentence I will be repeating until I die.

"I already told everybody it's burgers."

I already told everybody it's burgers.

The menu had been announced. Word had gone out to the families. And no storm, no mere weather, was going to turn Dale into a man whose word does not hold. The sky may do as it likes. The burgers were promised.

My language has a word for honoring an obligation regardless of conditions. It takes a paragraph to translate and there are three centuries of philosophy stacked behind it.

Dale has it in six words while holding tongs.

I stayed. You do not abandon a man holding a position.

I held the umbrella over the left flank of the grill, where the overhang surrendered to the wind. Dale worked the tongs. Lightning lit the whole street white.

"Coals are fine."

He said it without looking up, to reassure me, which I had not asked for and desperately needed.

He turned each patty at its appointed time and spoke calmly of football throughout. I understood none of it. I nodded at what appeared to be the correct moments.

"You know ball?"

"I am learning."

"You'll get there."

We ate in the garage on folding chairs while the thunder applauded. His wife brought paper plates and said nothing about any of it, because in that house it is Saturday, and Saturday is burgers.

Every street in this country has a Dale.

Go find yours and hold his umbrella.

[HerBlueprintHQ 🌸 @_HerBluePrint_]

@japan_nobunaga Honestly, every neighborhood needs a Dale. The man said burgers, come rain or shine, burgers were happening. I love people who keep their word like this.

[☆ ★ @imfynerthanfyne]

went on a date with a man last night and i just opened instagram… he posted a picture of me AND tagged me

[Tim Cook @tim_cook]

Sending lots of love to the Apple community on my last day as CEO. My title changes tomorrow, but the love I have for the Apple community never will. Thank you for being a constant source of inspiration. My gratitude is endless, and I’m excited for the next chapter!

[🥷 @_iamhabeeb]

if the algorithm shows you this, you’re touching a lot of money in September.

[PRESIDENT👑 @YURPRESIDENT]

Make i chop this one money, make i chop this one money
Naso Ashawo take start oo..

[ily @luhyoumf]

sometimes you are the only thing stopping yourself from having a good day

[HerBlueprintHQ 🌸 @_HerBluePrint_]

@_iamhabeeb The more people understand this, the better off they’ll be.

[🥷 @_iamhabeeb]

I’ve realized that at every stage of life, there will always be something to worry about. Just try to be happy and content wherever you are

[HerBlueprintHQ 🌸 @_HerBluePrint_]

@japan_nobunaga There’s something beautiful about kindness that doesn’t ask to be noticed. Wendell made helping people feel so normal that nobody has to feel ashamed for accepting it. We need more people like him.

[NOBUNAGA🇯🇵🏯_夏樹蒼依 @japan_nobunaga]

In Ohio, on Tuesdays, other people's children eat for free, and nobody in that building thinks this is worth mentioning.

There is a sign by the door. It is the size of a menu. It is next to a picture of a fish.

I read it three times. I read it a fourth time slowly, in case my eyes had betrayed my heart, and then I went and found the man at the front, who owns the place and whose name is Wendell.

"These children. They are your kin."

"Nope."

"Then whose."

"Anybody's. Tuesday nights, any kid eats free with a grownup."

Any kid. Any child, brought by any tired adult, fed at that table, no coin asked, no name taken.

I sat down. I told them it was the long drive. It was not the long drive.

Across the room a mother was counting bills for her own plate while her two small ones destroyed chicken tenders they had not paid for. She looked exhausted. She also looked, for about one second, like a person who had been caught mid fall by something she did not have to ask for.

This is the oldest mercy there is. Wendell has it on the wall next to the fish.

In my time, to feed another man's child bound two houses for a generation. There would be a ceremony. There would be an exchange of something with weight. Here it is a Tuesday, and they do not even make it solemn, and that is the entire trick. They made it so easy that a worn out parent can accept it without ever once feeling the weight of being helped.

"You got any kids with you tonight?"

"I do not. But I will guard this door."

Wendell clapped my shoulder.

"That's the spirit."

"No child who comes hungry leaves hungry while I am sitting here."

"We don't turn 'em away anyway, bud."

I stayed an extra hour and bought nothing. I only wanted to witness it. Child after child, fed, no questions, no ledger, no record anywhere except inside a man named Wendell who does not consider it worth recording.

I go back Tuesdays now. I bring no child of my own. I pay for one family's grownups, quietly, and I leave before anyone works out which table it was.

Wendell taught me the method. He does not know he taught me anything.

Do not tell him.

[Ydk me @YdkSeijin]

On twitter everyone is either Su*ci*d*l or horny, or political.