When I was a little girl and couldn’t sleep at night, I’d
make up stories. Unfortunately, they were sad and depressing, and sometimes I’d
make myself cry. (No wonder I had nightmares.) At any rate, I’ve always been a
storyteller. When I sit at an airport, I make up lives for all the waiting
people based on the clues I see on them or their luggage. For example, a sighing
sixty-year old woman with an iPhone covered in stickers—she got it from her
daughter (not daughter-in-law because a d.i.l. wouldn’t usually presume to let
her kids cover the phone in stickers), son-in-law, and grandkids. And grandma
is still trying to figure out how to use it.
I make up stories about houses I drive by, especially those
I pass frequently. There was the house with the lovely front garden that fell
into disrepair. At first, it was because the woman gardener had a baby and she
was too tired with the midnight and 2am feeding to keep up with the weeds.
Then, as the situation got worse, eventually so bad that thistles grew up among
the paving stones, I decided that the woman had cancer and died. And her
husband was grieving so much he couldn’t even bear spraying Roundup. For weeks,
I teared up when I drove past.
And I even make up stories about vanity license plates.
Yesterday, we saw a plate that read PBJ 3930. I would have thought it was arbitrary
but this state had only 6 character normal plates. So as we drove my husband
and I made up stories. The license plate was a Christmas gift when the husband
ate his 3930th Peanut Butter
and Jelly sandwich. Or the guy played the lottery and he hit the Power Ball Jackpot
on his 3930th lottery ticket purchase. (It wasn’t that nice of a
car, so maybe the jackpot didn’t cover the cost of all the tickets.) Our last
thought was that the wife was a Professional Baseball Junkie and had watched
her 3930th baseball game (she watches the Japanese and Dutch league
as well as MLB). Of course, there is the possibility that Georgia has now added
a seventh character to their license plates. But that’s not as much fun.
What about you? Do you make up stories to pass the time? Do
you have a guess as to what the PBJ 3930 represented?
