Growing a Story :-D

I'm staring at a blank page so you won't have to. Although we've never met, I feel this need to entertain you, to make you laugh. Also, I committed to writing a guest blog post, but who's to say which is the chicken and which is the egg? I wouldn't have committed to the guest post if I didn't want to share a story with you, right?

Authors often don't know where inspiration comes from but, in this case, I do know. One fine day I went for a walk with my friend Julie, who lives a few blocks away.  Julie is one of the nicest people around yet somehow she had made an enemy of her next-door neighbor. Entirely his fault since he was a major jerk with a sense of entitlement like you wouldn't believe. It seems Julie had had the audacity to landscape her yard and put a giant boulder on the swale (her swale) where jerky guy (let's call him Guy) liked to park. How dare she! As we returned from our walk, we saw construction workers across the street from Julie's house carting away her very expensive boulder. When confronted, they said (jerky) Guy had paid them a hundred dollars to take the boulder, which they had assumed was his. Sheepish, they returned the rock to her yard. Julie made a police report against Guy.

The next day, Julie found her rock covered with trash. Guy's back-up plan was to trick the bulk trash truck into carting it away. When that didn't work, Guy reported Julie for a zoning violation. This went on for months and escalated into court hearings and fines. It was no longer about the rock but a battle of the wills.

On our walks, Julie and I concocted imaginary plans for revenge against Guy; it was fun for me and helped her to vent her frustration. Around this same time, my dog brought a dead squirrel into the house. Since it resembled one of her toys it took me a full minute to totally freak out. After I convinced her to drop the squirrel I squeamishly pushed it outside with my shoe. A plot suddenly occurred to me--what if that had been a dead skunk? And what if my neighbor had thrown it over the fence for spite because we were feuding? What if I were the jerky guy hell-bent on revenge? What would I do to get back at my neighbor? How far would I go? What if my obsession for revenge pushed me over the edge to my doom? What if it turned out it really wasn't my neighbor who had left the skunk in my yard but someone who knew I would stop at nothing to get even? What if I was in a custody battle with my ex-wife over our son and I was winning? What if she realized she could regain custody simply by tossing a dead skunk in my yard and biding her time?

That is how I came to write a short story titled A Dish Best Served Cold. I confess it was cathartic. When the jerky guy got what was coming to him I did a little dance. It felt like I had avenged Julie and zinged everyone who had ever done me wrong. Take that!

And how did Julie's story end? At the end of her rope she inquired about planting a tree on the swale. The zoning clerk informed her she would need a permit and it would be costly. Taking pity on her the clerk offered to place a little free library on her swale at no cost. Julie was thrilled. Which proves nice guys don't always finish last. And that revenge is a dish best served cold.