Using words creatively 7

The Crowd Goes Wild

1. The captivated audience members were like statues. The air in the room was heavy—there wasn’t a single exhale. Eyes were fixed on the female figure—no one blinked, afraid to miss the action. She was the top billing of the show, and people from near and far had spent a week’s worth of groceries to see her. The woman stood to the left of the stage. She wore a long-sleeved buttoned shirt and matching skirt with fringe. A cowboy hat hung back, exposing bangs brown like burnt butter. Her knee-high boots were planted on the wooden structure.
2. Facing the audience on the right end of the stage was a male performer. Smoke danced from the cigarette perched between his slightly upturned lips. There was a twinkle in his eye. Just then, a gunshot rang out and the cigarette fell to the ground. A single gasp, multiple whoops, and a chorus of clapping ensued—the audience lost it. Annie Oakley had shot the end of the cigarette out of the man’s mouth (who happened to also be her husband Frank) in, yes, the blink of an eye. The remainder of the show was a wild ride. Annie performed a variety of tricks: she pierced the thin edge of a playing card with a bullet from 30 paces away, and then she shot at different targets while looking into a mirror backward. All of this was performed effortlessly, and the audience was pleased as punch to witness the famous markswoman in action. But how did Annie come to be on stage?

Annie’s Backstory

3. Annie was no stranger to guns. Growing up, she would ignore the pleas of her sisters to play with dolls and instead go hunting with her father. She took her first shot when she was just eight years old. As she grew older, she continued to improve her aim by hunting and providing food for her family. She sold meat to the local store and was able to pay off her family’s mortgage. In 1875, when she was 15, a local hotelkeeper arranged a shooting contest between her and a traveling professional sharpshooter named Frank. She beat him hands down, and eventually married him. They signed up to perform for Buffalo Bill’s Wild West show together, but Annie was really the star of the show. She spent the rest of her life encouraging women to take up sport shooting, advocating participation of women in the military, and promoting the concept of equal pay for equal work.