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Valerie Kaufman

Author on Reedsy Prompts since Feb, 2020

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13 Stories

192 karma pts

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"The Jumperoo"

Weekly Contest #366

CW: Contains themes and/or references to child abuse and neglect Therapists have therapists—in case you don’t know or never thought about it. After listening to people’s problems all day, you can get to feeling that life is a sewer and that people are just sewer rats living in an environment that’s not good for them. Let me tell you, talking over your clients’ problems with another therapist—even laughing at clients— can feel like a badly needed vacation.I had known the family for fifteen years, during which time they lived in my building. I...

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"RIvalry"

Weekly Contest #365

I only messaged Susan to find out what happened to Stan. It had been twenty years since we knew each other in college. Susan had been Stan’s girlfriend. She had married Stan after college. I had never married. How I hated her! In college, she was not pretty, but her voice smacked of confidence. She stood barely five feet tall and sauntered with the laziness of a cat. Her face wore a permanent grin. Stan was so smitten, she led him around by the nose. There’s no accounting for taste in men when you’re nineteen. Susan and I had not been frien...

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"The Accusation"

Weekly Contest #364

“It’s so good to see you!” said Andy, embracing a former high school friend just outside the coffee shop where they agreed to meet. “I can’t believe fifty years have passed!” The friend studied Andy’s face. “My God, it IS Andy! They’re Andy’s eyes!” Andy laughed. “You always had a good sense of humor!” “Really?” she said, looking puzzled. “I don’t remember being funny.” “Well, anyway, let’s go inside,” said Andy. “I want to hear everything!” He held the door open for her, then followed her to a booth near a window through which sunlight str...

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"Something Other Than Cat"

Weekly Contest #327

She threw me out of the car.Holly Golightly, that is.She could not see how throwing me from the car hurt me deeply. She could not see how she affected anyone—from men she met in bars, desperate to go to bed with her; to Mr. Yunioshi, her neighbor, who wished her to tone down her wild parties; to Doc, who wanted her to be his wife again; or to Paul, the writer who found a reason for living in this “lovely, frightened girl,” as he described her in his new story.Me, I had been sent to help Holly.It wasn't easy.Holly had refused to name me after...

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Jonah's Hoards

Weekly Contest #185

Jonah didn’t know what to do with his hoards of negative emotions. He was considering moving them into boxes and taking them to the local shredding center near his cave on the Upper West Side.      He looked around the cave where he had spent most of his adult life. It looked like many other dragons’ caves, except that it was piled high with stacks of papers he could not seem to get rid of.  In his many writings, he had explored his negative emotions, especially his self-doubt.      &nbs...

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Always Late

She was five feet tall, sixty-years-old, and weighed less than a hundred pounds. She wasn’t pretty but her face beamed with happiness. She wore her red hair long, occasionally piling it on top of her head. Her favorite attire was sweatpants with an elastic waistband and a loose T-shirt. Comfort was important to her. So was doing exactly as she pleased.            She was a new friend of mine, and she always arrived late to get-togethers.       &nbs...

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Romeo and Juliet for Adults

Weekly Contest #53

“My high school students love Romeo and Juliet,” she told the library check-out person a week before the library closed. “What do they love about it?” asked a stranger standing next to her. She noticed the liveliness in his eyes, did a quick survey of his handsome face, then paused briefly at his lips. His eyes made the same trip, from her eyes, across her face, to her lips. She felt surprised, delighted, nervous — all at the same time. “What do my students like about the play?” she asked, thinking out loud. “They like that Romeo and Juliet ...

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Family Portrait

Weekly Contest #51

A blue-eyed, elderly gentleman, with a yarmulke neatly pinned to the crown of his head, stands on a New York City subway platform. His eyes emit a dim light, partially illuminating a small area of the poorly lit, subterranean station where he stands with his granddaughter. Nearby, a few commuters stand listlessly, their eyes glued to the tracks, their necks craning for the sight of an approaching train. The man’s gaze falls on the subway platform, with its dark stains from a million shoes and coffee cup spills. He thinks of his clean, tidy ...

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Stage Fright

Weekly Contest #50

I look good for my age, which is 50. The same age as my stand-up comedy teacher, Peter. But Peter, who I’m crazy about—says his 30-ish student Clarissa, who he’s crazy about—looks like she’ll never be my age. Peter texted me that he thought Clarissa was “pretty” in the beginning, but then she became “hugely, fantastically pretty!” Which is men’s language for really liking a woman. So I joke, “Your high forehead suggests intelligence, but first impressions can be wrong.”  Peter and I have not outgrown the childish practice of making f...

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A Writing Affair

Weekly Contest #46

I am anxious as I enter my Saturday morning writing class, the last to arrive in the brightly decorated middle school classroom. I have written a story that barely disguises the crush I have on my teacher, John. I have changed his looks and made him older, but the narrator is me. Surely everyone will know.Maybe they know already. Maybe I want John to. As I read aloud my story, my voice cracks now and then, billboarding my nervousness. “Write what you know,” John told us the first day. “You cannot, until you have written for a ...

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Unafraid

Weekly Contest #43

I scary people easy. Got skin as dark as a bedroom when the nightmares come. Eyes that look blank.  I also talk to God all the time. Don’t do it out loud, like some crazy person. Just always got a second conversation going. Like right now, a sweet-faced, young thing sit down next to me on the plane. I look at her, say, “How ya doing?” Joe once say, “Look at someone when you talking.” So I raise my eyes to the Lord. Say, “Lord, let her keep that smile!” Eyes up, eyes down. Keep talking to God, while I talk to other people. Right now, old...

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The End of the Tease

Weekly Contest #42

                                 Inside the dance hall, a tall, unsmiling stranger took my hand inside his much larger one and gently pulled me through the couples waiting for the music to start. When the blast of Duke Ellington’s trumpets announced a swing dance, we swung to the left, then the right. Then he raised his left arm for me to pass beneath, and his double-breasted jac...

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At Sixteen

Weekly Contest #29

He was six-foot-tall and broad-shouldered, but I was blind to his charms. His doeful brown eyes stared dreamily at me in class behind studious-looking glasses, but his oversized nose seemed to push me away. The fact that he liked me made him foolish, since I wasn’t worthy of anybody’s attention. But he was smart in school, and well-mannered, so I told him yes, I’d go with him to see the musical playing that weekend at the open-air theatre of a nearby beach park.            I had dre...

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