I smile and attempt to look harmlessly benign in public, lips sealed. However, I conduct constant inner commentary, which people’s antics often invite. The obviously odd thought patterns revealed in their remarks 😉
I’m often quite shocked, even non-plussed for them. I could turn the commentary off, like my husband does with the shrill and often inaccurate TV sports commentators, but it augments my people-watching, morphing it from aghast! to amusement 😉
It’s secret ammunition for stories, 2nd to none.
Storytellers don’t have to ‘make this stuff up.’
When I learned that my fav author, Fannie Flagg, mined her habit of silent survey of those outside interacting deplorably (“to my way of thinking”, as she professed) for her mega-award-winning novels, I knew I was in the right ball park. 😉 I love this photo of us, with me on my knee as acolyte, bowed to her brilliance and aplomb. Proximity fosters learning, and learning I gained.
I inherited my penchant for story-telling from my dad, who used incidents from his boyhood to help put us kids to sleep. I think it was a necessity because my family couldn’t afford children’s books and we lived in a very small, library less town. I adored his intermittent bedside tales, some self-confessional, cautionary memories, most with a a tale-twister at the end.
My first memories of fictions in our home, were the ones that my tattle-tale little sis stomped to our mother to convict me and assert blame, complete with finger-point at the end. Mother said that she could seldom understand my sister’s gibberished account, though my name was clearly-articulated. Deed of damage done.
My fiction-inventing skills were incited by Mother on lengthy car trips to visit grandparents, again with a finger-point prompt, “I wonder about the people in the car that’s passing by. Where are they going and why?” This is how she engaged me while the little ones napped, pouted, or squalled. Before the iPad era, when cars didn’t come with video screens installed.
Today I do create at stop lights – which explains why I’m skilled at story starts – I can whip off 250-400 words on any topic, at any time, any place with my laptop. But after the beginning, that muddy middle bogs me down. I’m good at tying up the tale with a twist back to the start or a ‘bookend’ remark. A pun-loving tail-twister, just like my dad. I honor both my parents as I hone and employ my inheritance. BTW: Constant Comment was my mother’s favorite tea. 
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