I’m walking on the beach this morning and a couple walks by me in the other direction.  I remember a writing assignment that Bea Gates gave us  – listen in on someone else’s conversation and then write about it.  Thank you, Bea.

“I sure wish I loved Jesus as much as my wife does.  Hell,” the thin man said, pulling a drag off his cigarette, “I wish I loved anything as much as my wife does.”

I think the woman with him was his sister – she was thin like him and she seemed open to his confession.  Her look was one of complicity – like they were cut from the same cloth, the loving genes having been overruled  – recessive in the face of practicality. Her hair was fuzzy and mostly tucked underneath a baseball hat – a brown bushy ponytail coming out the hole above the adjustable strap in the back.  She was putting on chapstick, licking her lips and then putting on more chapstick.

He was balding with strips of dark hair stuck down onto his head and he wore a blue jacket, the shiny kind that rustle when you move your arms.  Hairy man wrists dangled from the elastic cuff; hands too large for the wrists, wrists too small for the jacket, jacket too short for the body, body too thin for the feet.  Like two piles of parts got mixed up and maybe somewhere else there’s another guy – a short chubby one with teeny hands and feet  – he’s walking around singing “What A Friend We Have in Jesus” and his wife is walking in the other direction saying please stop singing that goddam song.  And maybe that is so.

But here’s Lenny, that’s the name on his jacket right underneath Logan Paint and Hardware, and I can’t tell if he really means it, if he really wants to grow his heart to match his wife or whether he’s just saying that as a way to be close to Esther – that’s what I think his sister’s name might be.  She looks at him like she’s sad for him and like she understands how this happened – this hard heartedness – and like if they just keep walking down the beach and talking about it that maybe they won’t feel so lonely when they’re done.

I miss the rest of the conversation, not having actually stopped to listen, but I think she says to him, “Lenny, I think you’re fine the way you are.  Hell, anyone can love Jesus.”

I really like this couple.  In fact, I’m trying to finish writing this blog post with Lenny and Esther chat chat chatting in my ear about the coffee at the diner where they stop for breakfast (how is it that I always get the last cup of the pot, Lenny asks and Esther says, they see you coming from the shine off your head and she snickers).

You gotta love writing prompts, if for no other reason than people say the darnedest things when you give them a half a chance.

So I have this idea.  I’d like to gather up a collection of people’s favorite writing prompts and the stories that came from them.  Feel free to post them in Comments or email them to dulcie@minervarising.com.

p.s.  I’ve included a picture as a prompt if you like.