Miles called me with the news that he’s beaten hell out of his whopping courseload at GT. I know how much he worked for it, and he deserves the night of boozin’ and gamin’ at Casey’s little soirée. But as I was chatting with him on the phone, the smoke started pouring forth from our kitchen. As per usual when things in the apartment catch on fire, I had to drop the conversation and go put out the blaze.
The oven was belching black smoke into the living room. We found out that it was leftover sugar filling from last night’s sugar pies, all collected at the bottom and caramelizing. So, yeah… that was a pain. I still have bread rising in pans, and I don’t really want to get to cleaning out the disgusting mess.
Anyway, last night while I was drifting off to sleep, I thought of an idea for a story I’ve been writing. And then, immediately after, I remembered when I was about sixteen, I slept on the bottom level of a bunkbed in my parents’ house. Back in those days, when I got an idea, I would flip on my bedside lamp and scrawl out the blurb on the underside of the top bunk. My parents still have those beds, I think, and I’d love to see what it is I wrote there.
After calling forth that particular teenaged memory, I thought about how many tiny stories we all have to share, and how most people go through their lives without even considering that they’d be worth telling. On the average night, as I lay in bed pursuing sleep, I’ll come up with between five and twenty pieces of storytelling grit. In the period between sleep and waking, I’ll forget half of them, but the rest work their way into my head and collect other ideas, and pretty soon they’re like little pearls of narrative splendor rattling around in my head.
No wonder I can’t remember my friends’ birthdays.
Leave a Reply