Wedding on 5th. Incomplete without you.
My parents moved to the Western world from East Africa as refugees in the 1970s. They were at a wedding in England when they heard about the political strife back home. They naively assumed it would blow over in a few days. (In their defence, they were young and presumably on a wedding cake sugar high.)
An aunty recently told me that my father wasn’t even supposed to be at this particular wedding, but her sister sent him a telegram pleading something to the effect of, “Wedding on the 5th. Incomplete without you. Please come.”
I might not be here writing these 6-word stories had he not acquiesced.
Perhaps telegrams are the great-grandparents of the 6-word memoir :) People were charged both by the number of words and distance. Sending a message across continents could cost more than many could afford to spend (but still less than what my parents used to call a “trunk call” (an old British term for a long-distance call)). How times have changed.
