Grandpa Buddy collected junk. I would take these walks around the neighborhood with him in San Luis Obispo, and Buddy would silently pick up random items — a rusty screwdriver, a comb, a bent nail — from the street or the sidewalk and deposit them into his pocket.
When we got back to his house on the corner of Del Mar Court, he would set whatever he had found on the ledge of the windowsill next to the front door. I would return, months or a year later, to find the items still there — untouched and unused. They would remain resting on the windowsill until grandpa Buddy died, many years later.
Why did grandpa pick up all that junk? What was the point?
He seemed inspired by finding things that others had lost. The rejected or misplaced items looked like they sparked Buddy's curiosity and lead him toward asking many questions.
Where did this screwdriver come from? What did it help to create or fix? Who is the person attached to the hands that have held it?
He imagined answers to his own strange questions. This is how his stories were formed.
Storytelling is an art. Grandpa Buddy was an expert. Making up wonderful stories and telling them to us, his many grandchildren, was always a slightly mystical delight. We never knew if the stories were true.
Create a potentially true story of your own, on paper, or just in your imagination.
Some examples of lost objects you could find, and craft a story about:
A pen
An empty box of matches
A penny
A napkin
A glove
Note: If you do write a story or two, send them to us at the Journal. Just send them to Judy Sullivan with the subject line "Shana Stories." We'll share them with Shana's readers.
