Category: Uncategorized
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Competition
So you won. Or you almost won. Or you lost. Or you got killed. Tell a story about competition, who-when-where-why-and-how. And the outcome. I won. Something that happened rarely. I was six years old, two feet tall, and pretty much afraid of my own shadow. It was Halloween. Across the street from our house, Pat’s…
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Violence
Witnessed by you. Visited upon you. Enacted by you. What did you see? Where and when? What happened? What affect did it have on you? I punched a kid in the face once. This was high school. Guys made a thing about being aggressive. They balled up their fists, they lifted their chins and said,…
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Religion
“As it was in the beginning / is now and ever shall be / world without end / Amen.” I can still remember the way my throat felt when I sang those lines in the Freeland Methodist Church. The muscles contracting, vocal cords constricting, it wasn’t a choking sensation exactly. Just generalized discomfort; a throat…
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Failure
“Well, that didn’t work.” You think you know what you’re doing. But maybe you don’t. Recall a time when things didn’t work. You tried something and came up short. You planned something and things went awry. Where and when? What happened? Example:One day I pulled in the driveway and saw, hanging from our apple tree,…
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Music
What was the background music when you were growing up? When and where did you hear it? Maybe you had musical instruction and learned to play. If so, you might recall a performance. Or maybe you were a listener, a fan. Recall an experience in which music was important.* Young adult nightclubs were a thing…
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Work
Recall one of your first jobs. Where was it? What did you do? Were there co-workers? What did you learn? I was a paperboy for the Midland Daily News. My brother Tom had delivered those papers for a while. Then he passed the job down to me. MDN ran papers six days a week. I…
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Vacation
Recall a family vacation. A funny one. A disastrous one. An unhappy one. Where did you go? What did you do? Why is it memorable? When I was in the third grade our family went on a week-long vacation. We drove from our hometown, Freeland, up to Michigan’s upper peninsula. We drove through Marquette, on…
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Car
My first car was a 1949 Chevy. It was a two-door sedan with a stick shift on the column. You pushed a button on the dash to start the engine. That was cool. The AM radio didn’t work. That was not cool. The car had wide front quarter panels and a sloping roof that gave…
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Sickness
Recall a specific incident involving sickness. You were sick, or a friend or a family member was sick. This episode sticks in your memory for some reason. Write it down. Example:I threw up on June Fritz’s couch. I was in kindergarten. My mother taught school, my dad worked. I was in the half-day program at…
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NaMemWriMo
We have national novel writing month, NaNoWriMo. Why not national memoir writing month? NaMemWriMo. The idea here is to write a short memoir in a month, thirty days of gentle writing. Write twice a day for 10 minutes. Morning, evening. Or morning, then after lunch; whatever works for you. If possible, same time every day.…
A Legacy Project 