16 February 2026, Freewriters Community Daily Writing Prompt Day 3016: always decisive

“See, Amanda is going to be a problem for some man someday that he is going to love to have, although his wallet might not,” eight-year-old Gracie Trent said to eleven-year-old Eleanor Ludlow about Eleanor's baby sister Amanda.

“Yep, that was smooth as all that chocolate Papa didn't even mean to buy,” Eleanor said.

Capt. R.E. Ludlow did not spend much on candy for his eight grandchildren, but he did take in the catalog of local candymakers in Lofton County, and was figuring out what he was going to buy when seven-year-old Amanda came in, looked at the catalog, looked at him, and then climbed up onto his lap and kissed his cheek.

“Don't stress, Papa,” she said. “You make a lot of great decisions, and this is hard. You are always decisive, but you can have a break too. Just buy all of it.”

“You have to be decisive when you are not wealthy yet, Amanda,” Capt. Ludlow said, “but I actually could buy the sample size on all of these for just a little more ... .”

And so Amanda Ludlow got her level-headed grandfather to buy a page of candy, just like that.

“The thing about Mandie is, she doesn't even know she has it like that,” Eleanor said. “Mandie just wants to keep people from suffering, so, she sees Papa having a hard time with a decision, she knows he's going to buy candy, and she doesn't know about a limited budget, so she goes to the easiest solution – and because her approach eased Papa's human difficulty of knowing we all like different stuff and he can't get our favorites all the time, he was able to find a way that he could actually get that done. We just won't have as much of each, but it's still plenty.”

“Amanda just believes in you, and then gets you to believe what she believes,” Gracie said. “That's some Big Mama Velma level moves right there.”

“Well, Grandma over here is smooth too,” Eleanor said. “We don't even know how she does it, but Papa is always bringing her stuff she likes and we don't even see her asking – but when Papa and Grandma are sitting down for a little while together during the day, she is usually snugglecouraging him a little bit.”

“Everybody's human, and adult life seems to be really hard,” Gracie said. “I mean, kid life is hard, too – y'all have been through it – but Grandma Jubilee says there's levels to this.”

“Yeah, there are,” Eleanor said, “because Grayson told me what Grandma Jubilee was saying about adults playing pretend. We know we're not God. We're not even adults yet. But Grayson said to me that we have to be careful as we get there because we don't want to be showing up at a ten-Lego build with five Legos.”

“Grayson is only six,” Gracie said, “but he has a lot of sense. Pop-Pop was saying that he's talking to people telling him that lightning doesn't strike in the same place twice so they don't need to do all these things for Hurricane Mneme. But the thing is, it's not lightning. It's a hurricane.”

“They are about to show up at a hurricane fight without enough sand bags,” Eleanor said, “thinking a lightning rod is enough.”

“Yep,” Gracie said. “We gotta learn from this because we can't be out here not knowing the difference between lightning and a hurricane as adults.”

“It's not that they don't know,” Eleanor said. “They want it to be the same, and for reality to agree.”

“Yeah, but like Vertran says,” Gracie said, “that's not how any of this works. Since when are any of us going into the jet stream and telling a whole hurricane to strip down to a bolt of lightning because we want it?”

“That must be the hardest thing about being an adult,” Eleanor said. “I want a pony, but right now Papa and Grandma are taking care of us humans so that's not a priority. I'm going to eat my favorite candy and be happy. I can't even imagine being an adult being disappointed, with nobody to help me, when the hurricane says 'no' and goes on doing what hurricanes do.”

Gracie considered this.

“This is what I wonder about, Ellie: can we get some choices that don't lead to us going to Heaven or Hell?”

“But if it was lightning they could go to Heaven or Hell knowing they were right,” Eleanor said. “I mean, think about it: if you go to Heaven disappointed, well, you are in Heaven and there's no disappointment there so you'll get over it. But imagine going to Hell disappointed on a hurricane after you just found out you were wrong.”

Gracie considered this, and then put her hands on her hips and started shaking her head, which caused her mother, Mrs. Melissa Trent, to fall out laughing because that was Melissa's mother, Mrs. Velma Stepforth, coming right out of her:

“See, this is why you gotta believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and then live right, because Hell is just one eternal disappointment – and who needs the drama?”