Seven-year-old Isabella Thompson pressed her hands into the cool, moist dirt of her grandfather's garden. She peeled away the surface like an old scab. Beneath, a reddish-brown earthworm squirmed – ... [+]
Dave Bachmann is a retired teacher who taught language arts to special needs students in Arizona for 39 years. He now resides in California, writing poems and short stories for children and grown-ups. "Dandy Lions" is in Short Circuit #14, Short Édition's quarterly review.
It was 1962, Wichita, Kansas. My Dad surveyed the front yard—a very big front yard, a grim look on his face.
"Weeds," he pronounced sullenly, as if our front yard had become the equivalent of a D-Day for an invasive species.
Only nine years old, I did not appreciate the profundity of my father's observation.
"I like the pretty yellow flowers," I quietly voiced.
"They are weeds," my father scolded, ignoring my obvious naivete, "dandelions, to be more precise."
"What?"
"Dandelions. They are pernicious things," he added, using a word I did not yet know but assumed to mean somethin