A First...

Christmas of 1999 "Remember the Titans" came out in theaters and after our traditional dinner with my aunt, uncle and their children my mom decided we would go to the movies. I, actually, was surprised the theater was open. In my 12 (I turned 13 5 days later) year old mind, everything shut down on Christmas.

As we sat in the lobby waiting on the movie to start, I saw a large family come into the theater as well. There were easily 8 - 10 people in this group and they were all talking. I was enthralled by the thought of what their Christmas dinner had been like. This entire story began taking shape in my mind -- how had they decided to come to the movies? And how had they decided what movie to see?

When I got home, I sat down at our home PC and tapped out a 12 page short story called "The Best is Yet to Come." The narrator is loosely based on me and she recounts the story of her Christmas with her grandmother (loosely based on my mom), several of her cousins (of course, loosely based on my own cousins). That short story was the first short story I ever wrote and, to this day, is one of the only short story I've finished. The other finished short stories are posted on this blog.

Sometime during my freshman year in high school (the next year) I gave it to my English teacher to read. He had really nice things to say about it and made me feel good about my accomplishment.

I lost the digital copy of the story eons ago, but I have many hard copies. At one point I was intending to re-type it so I would always have it... I need to get back to that and make some edits to it that my 12 year old self wouldn't have seen the need to make.

Anyway, that first short story set off a chain of short stories. Like that one, I mostly base my characters and the stories around what's happening. I've explored what might have been in a couple of short stories and even what I wish would be. On the whole, I've started and deleted a number of them, but I've not been proud of any like I was proud of that one.