Friday, May 1, 2026
Welcome, all. The Pumpkin Hat Girls are back to kickoff my contributions to Dan Antion‘s 2026 Thursday Doors Writing Challenge (TDWC). There’s a new member in the group.
If you want to join the fun challenge, then pick one of the doors (blue link above) that were submitted at Dan’s blog as inspiration for the challenge — and write. It doesn’t have to be a story. Write anything your chosen door image inspires in you.
The inspiration door I chose for today’s story was submitted by Denny at Thoughts of an E’ville Woman. However, showing the photo right away would be a spoiler for the story. You’ll find her photo at the end. Anyhow, this story is a quick read, it’s only about 1700 words. Buckle up — the girls are in the car and headed into who knows what.
The Pumpkin Hat Girls:
The New Boyfriend-1
“Hey, Chickie-Bird!” Maudie exclaimed as she flopped into my passenger seat and promptly put a glow-in-the-dark green shoed foot on my dashboard. “You like? I just got them at the ‘Daybreak Grand Opening’ of the Comfy Shoe Store. Check out the little pink poodles on the shoelaces.”
“Maudie,” I complained with a roll of my eyes. “How many times do I have to tell you not to call me that. Actually, it would be a good idea if you didn’t call anybody Chickie-Bird. And you missed a sticker on your left shoe… 25% off. No, on the side.”
To my best friend Maudie, shoe sales were an Olympic sport where she was a gold medal level athlete. Maudie loved a good sale as much as I loved a rainy day spent with a mystery novel. She went on about the new store for five minutes.
By then we were at the end of the block, where I stopped to pick up Penny, who had a knack for keeping our unlikely collection of ladies together. Penny had dubbed the group of us “The Pumpkin Hat Girls.” Whenever we got together for a planned daytrip, all of us wore pumpkin-orange hats. The hats were Penny’s idea, but Maudie and Ursula (our eldest girl) embraced it wholeheartedly.
When Penny asserted that we would keep taking new members until we had ladies whose first initials spelled out the word “pumpkin,” it seemed like a fun idea to me. We had Penny, Ursula, Maudie, and Pepper (that’s me). Then 90-year-old Ursula urged us to take on her “exercise coach” meaning her parttime nurse, Kelly, as an honorary girl. The honorary part was because regardless of the way he sometimes acted, Kelly was not a girl.
As Kelly was a man, and a good bit younger than the rest of us, Penny was reluctant at first. However, I figured that it couldn’t hurt to have somebody with a medical background around, considering Ursula’s age. Besides, Kelly was a lot of fun… except for the time he and Maudie showed up wearing identical shirts… Maudie didn’t appreciate having a fashion twin.
“Still driving the car from Hertz’s, I see,” Penny remarked in the slightly nasal voice that gave away her Milwaukee origins. “When are they gonna be done with your car? Bein’ without your own car is a pain, ain’a? Oh, never mind. What’s this all about? Why all the cloak n’ dagger urgency?”
Penny got into the backseat. In answer, I grunted something unintelligible. Maudie uttered an exclamation of pain when she tried to hold her foot up too high, to show Penny her new neon green shoes.
“Oh my stars…” Penny muttered. “Pepper, I can tell by your grunt that you haven’t even had your mornin’ coffee. So, it must be bad. That’s okay. I expect we’re going to Ursula’s next, and maybe by then you can tell me.”
Penny was right — on all counts. I hooked a quick right turn into the empty parking lot of the Central Hills Mall, which wasn’t generally open that early. I sped through it as a shortcut. Maudie remarked that my driving was getting like Penny’s and that it was no wonder my car was in the shop.
“Haha! Hey, I’m the one with the lead foot. Pepper, don’t make me jealous,” Penny said.
In no time we met Ursula, knitting bag hanging from her arm. She and Kelly were just coming out of her front door. Kelly was wearing neon green shoes. They stood out plain as a pig on a piano — there was no way that Maudie wouldn’t notice.
Happily, Kelly’s intensely green shoes were a completely different style from Maudie’s. The two spend several minutes standing on one foot and holding up the other foot to wriggle it around and show off the details and logos, and finally lost their balance and fell over each other. I eased Ursula out of the way just in time.
“Ah ha!” Ursula cried, the accent of her homeland still in her voice even after fifty years in the United States. “Pepper, I expected nobody would remember their hats, so I brought the new berets Kelly and I have been knitting,” she added as Kelly helped her into the car.
Ursula passed hats to Penny and me. I dutifully pulled on the beret and got the car back on the road. Kelly made as if to put one on Maudie’s fluffy bleached-blonde hair. She took it from him with a warning glare and carefully placed it herself.
“Don’t mess with my hair, boyfriend,” she chided him, but then she grinned as she grabbed his beret and pulled it down over his eyes and ears.
I slowed my car as we entered a well-manicured but generally ordinary subdivision. Kelly twisted to look back at a street sign and made a silent “Oh” with his mouth.
“Pepper, this is where your new boyfriend lives, isn’t it,” he made it a statement, not a question. “Don’t give me that look. If I’m an honorary Pumpkin Hat Girl, then I have to look after all of you. Yes, I did a Kelly-check on your wannabe sweetie, because it’s so obvious that you have doubts about him.”
I wasn’t quite sure how Kelly did it, but he could find out the most astonishing personal details about nearly anybody. Ursula made a noise of indignation, though I wasn’t sure which of us was the object.
“Pepper, you described this Simon as charming,” Ursula exclaimed. “You tell me this and all the while you have mistrust of him?”
“And you told me Simon’s kind of adorable in an oddball sort of way,” Maudie chastised, her carefully plucked eyebrows lifting to crinkle her forehead. “That boy’s hiding a ripped bod under that boring shirt, Pepper — I can tell. And he looks pretty good walking away too. If you don’t want him, send him my way,” she added playfully.
As sure as God made little green apples, Maudie had been in on it when our new friend did his “Kelly-check” on Simon. Her remark wasn’t going to distract me. I cut my eyes over at Kelly with a look that I had been told more than once might actually kill.
“What? It was all online. Pics too. It’s not like we were stalking you,” Kelly defended.
I blew air through my lips, making a raspberry noise. I glanced at Maudie, and then at the others in the rearview mirror. I tried to explain.
“Oh, for heaven’s sake. Alright,” I gave in. “I think I’d like the guy a lot. If I let myself. But Simon and I don’t really like any of the same things. And I told him so — how could we have much of anything together when we don’t like doing the same things or eating the same food, or… Well, you get it. So, Simon had the idea that we could try things that are new to both of us,” I said to murmurs both positive and negative from the girls, and then I took a gulp of air before continuing.
“Then, last night he called, telling me that he had gotten something for both of us… and he wants us to go away for a long weekend together.”
My revelation was met with a chorus that included giggles, skepticism, encouragement, advice, and warnings. However, I wasn’t finished.
“But then,” I pressed onward. “As he was hanging up the phone, he called me his Motorcycle Mama.”
The car was filled with silence. All the girls looked at each other. Abruptly, they burst out laughing.
“As in ‘and we’ll see the world from my Harley?’ Pepper, I can see me doin’ that, but not you!” Penny guffawed.
I felt slightly insulted. The idea of me riding a big bad-ass motorcycle wasn’t that funny. I could be as cool and as adventurous as anybody— Well, okay… I could see her point. I couldn’t really see me doing that either.
Admittedly, I imagined it going extremely wrong, whether I managed to ride one of the things, or sat on the back, or bumped along in a sidecar. I kept thinking of a road-trip with Simon and me stopping at a diner or bar with lots of similar bikes parked outside… and of the thousand things that could go sideways between charmingly geeky Simon and a bunch of real bikers.
“Regardless,” Kelly interrupted my thought by clearing his throat to quiet the others and adding reasonably. “A weekend away together is a big relationship step… Especially if you’re this uncertain about whether you want to take things to the next level. And… speaking from a male point of view, he’s starting to sound a little pushy to me.”
“Yeah…” Penny agreed, eyes narrowing. “You did say he was pressin’ for too much time together too fast. What’s happened? Are you tryin’ to make sure he’s not married or somethin’ before you let yourself like him too much? I remember the guy who lied to you about being divorced. Actually, I remember all three of the men who lied about being divorced. You know, Pepper, you really attract the wrong men…”
“Penny, I admit that you’ve got a point. But it’s not about that — at least not right this minute. What’s freaking me out right now is the money. I got the impression that he means to buy a motorcycle for me. And it’s not just that I definitely don’t want one — it’s the expensive gift. Until I feel secure in the idea that Simon has all the integrity that he seems to have, I don’t want the pressure of high-dollar dates, or pricey gifts,” I explained.
Pulling the car alongside the curb, I stopped under a tree that had low, concealing branches. We all turned to look at the house that was a short distance up the street. It was neat and tidy with a blue door. Just outside the garage were parked twin Vespa scooters.
For a quiet moment, everyone stretched and craned their necks to look at the house — and the “motorcycles.” Gales of laughter broke out from the Pumpkin Hat Girls. Kelly had quickly pulled up a video of the 1970s song “Motorcycle Mama,” and they all started singing it to me.
The blue front door of Simon’s house started to ease open…
***
The end?
***
And for a finishing touch, here’s a fun video for the song by Sailcat, Motorcycle Mama.
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Friendly comments are welcome. Stay tuned to the 2026 TDWC homepage for links to stories and other creative efforts from all the participants. Thanks for opening this door. Hugs!
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Naturally, the obligatory shameless self-promotion must be included.
Brother Love – a Crossroad
Strange things abound in 1950s Parliament, Mississippi. Jinx the magpie can fill you in on the details.
Universal Purchase Links
Kindle: relinks.me/B07V25SXFR
Paperback: relinks.me/107952309X
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This post is part of Dan Antion 6th Annual Thursday Doors Writing Challenge (TDWC). Click the blue link for more information about the challenge and how to showcase your stories.) Fortunately for me, Dan’s rules for the writing challenge are wonderfully flexible and include any sort of creativity.
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Copyright © 2026 by Teagan Ríordáin Geneviene
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