Words for Wednesday January 8 & IWSG

The Word for Wednesday challenge started a long time ago. Now it has turned into a movable feast with Elephant's Child as our coordinator; and the Words are provided by a number of people.
The prompts for January are provided by Elephant's Child and can be found @ Elephant's Child.

The general idea of this challenge is to make us write. Poems, stories, subtitles, tales, jokes, haiku, crosswords, puns, ... you're the boss.
Use all Words, some Words, one Word, or even none of them if that makes your creative juices flow. Anything goes, only please nothing rude or vulgar.

 It is also a challenge, where the old saying "The more the merrier" holds true.

So Please, remember to follow the links, go back and read other peoples' stories. And please leave a comment after reading. Challenges like this one thrives on interaction, feedback and encouragement. And we ALL need encouragement.

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This week's prompts are:
- the elephant in the room
- as busy as a bee
- as happy as a dog with two tails.
- chicken hearted
- a wolf in sheep's clothing
- cat got your tongue
- having a whale of a time
- ants in your pants

I'm in a poemy mood right now, probably set off by The Man in the Moon Stayed up too Late from Tolkien's birthday and the Lay of the Three Holy Kings from Poetry Monday. What ever the reason the sayings came together in a crazy rhyme inside my brain very early this morning when the roaring winds woke me up. I repeated the verses to imprint them in memory, but only the first stanza stayed with me till the alarm sounded. Maybe the rest will re-surface - or I'll invent some more - but until then, this crazy rhyme.

The elephant inside the room
is sweeping with my brand new broom.
The family, busy as a bee,
are all pretending not to see
the big and sturdy elephant
who - agile, yes and elegant -
hangs in a trapeze.

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The monthly Question from the Insecure Writers' Support Group was luckily only due today, January 8th, which is the second Monday of January. I am thankful as this have given me time to gather my flying feathers and thoughts.

January 8 question - Describe someone you admired when you were a child. Did your opinion of that person change when you grew up?

My answer - As a young child I was fascinated, awed and inspired by people doing "superhuman" things, ballet dancers, acrobats, inventors and mountaineers. The one I admired most was not one, but a pair.
In 2019, I wrote a verse about them, and since I'm in a poetic mood, I re-publish it here. The verse is not good, but it expresses what I want to say. Tuesday was library day in my childhood.

My childhood heroes lived inside a book
They were brave, they were fearless, they had what it took.
They climbed up a mountain so terribly tall
and then wrote a book on their brush with the wall.
I read of their merits, and all through the night
I dreamed of oxygen bottles, snow blindness, and fright.
My mother who came in to hear what I said
Heard me talking of 3000 feet and aid
She forbade me to read,
but I never agreed.
So I secretly read
of the dangers they met.
Every Tuesday I sought out a new book
About Hilary and Tenzing and the route that they took.


I have not read of them since, only from afar followed their decorations and deaths, so my opinion is still the same as that made by six-year old me: They were great!
And to forestall eventual comments on the disparity of those two: To my young eyes those two were best mates and inseparable co-heroes. I never got that one was supposed to be inferior. The unfamiliarity with either language made both names equally exotic to me ;) Norgay Tenzing was just as foreign and unusual to a 6 year old Dane as Edmund Hilary. People in my world had names like Hans Jensen, Kirsten Pedersen, Jens Westergaard, Peter Bang, Gerd Hansen,  Bente Nielsen, ... those names probably sound strange to you - just try guessing which are men and which are women.