Exercise #10 - Inside a waiting room

Write a piece that takes place in a waiting room.

I wonder if life is not really a waiting room. Some waiting to see what they will appear as in a next life, a cockroach or a rich man. Some waiting for their planet with 21 virgins. Others waiting for their planet with their blond wives and myriad of children. Others waiting to see if they were good enough or holy enough to get to heaven. Others waiting to see if they were actually waiting for anything, or if they were supposed to be doing something other than waiting. Some, deciding that there is nothing to wait for, but pushing the waiting away and doing other things while they are here. Some, righteously waiting to enter the pearly gates and to see who doesn't make it. Others sacrificing their lives to give one more person the option of choosing salvation. Some waiting to get to see their lost relatives or famous historical people. Others waiting to ask God some important questions. Some waiting for butterflies, others for golf games. Others waiting to see if whatever is coming was worth the wait.

Exercise #9 - A House and a Scent

Back to the No Experience Necessary Writer's Course exercises.

Write a piece that contains a house and a scent.

I was a Realtor for about 2 years back in 2003-2004. It was an interesting change from being a teacher. I would sit at my desk and listen to the silence, appreciative that the bathroom was only a few steps away and available whenever I wished. Things now went according to my own schedule, I could come into the office if I wanted to, or not. I could go to the Realtor's house tour on Tuesdays if I wanted, or not.
All of this "or not" business helped out a lot when I was recovering from chemo, but I actually did not like all of the freedom. I was used to having to be at the school at a certain time with a room full of kids fully dependent on my being present and prepared. I was also used to starting at a specific time and ending at a specific time.
Not so as a realtor. I could start each day whenever, but if I wanted to make any money, I had to be very available. If I had a buyer interested in looking at homes, I had to be able to meet him during lunch to show the house, or during a weekend day or evening to show newly listed homes. If I did not make myself available, the house could sell and my buyer could miss out on that particular opportunity. If I had a house listed and another realtor brought a prospective buyer through and wanted to present an offer, I had to be available at the fax machine to get the offer, take it to my sellers and get a response, maybe within a day. What if I was about to eat dinner with the family, or go to an evening movie? If I got a call, whatever it was might have to be dropped.
Older, more experienced realtors have assistants or partners to help them manage their time and requirements, but a new realtor does not. I hated being at others' beck and call. I would hear my cell phone ring and have no idea what would await. Would a buyer have a question for me about a problem during an inspection? Wonder what would happen if the house were to burn down before they were contractual owners? Would it be a seller wondering why it was taking so long to sell her house? What type of advertising I was doing to move things along? When I would be planning an open house?
Open Houses in Columbus Ohio usually happened on Sunday from 2-4. So that I would not be alone at the open house, I had heard stories of realtors being lured into basements or upstairs rooms and being assaulted, I would usually bring my husband or mother along to keep me company.
After church my dear husband and I would stop at Chipotle or Baja Fresh or Skyline Chili and get a quick bite to eat on the way to the house. I would feel bad because his favorite time of the week was to have family dinner at his parent's house on Sunday afternoons and this week it would have to be forgone again. Then we would stop at some strategic corners near the house and place up the Open House signs. His idea was to put up some balloons on the signs, purchased from the dollar store.
We would open the house and I would stick a pie tin with a cinnamon stick and a little water, in the oven, and turn it to warm. As the cinnamon began to overpower the scent of either the inhabitants of the home or its musty emptyness, we would wait.

Exercise #8 - Details

I have waited so long to get back to the "No Experience Necessary Writer's Course Book" because I thought this assignment would take too long, but I must be over that.

The best way I can do it is to split it up to about 5 minutes on each sense.

First:

Sights, Sounds, Smells and Tastes that Move me (the beginning of the assignment is to come up with some of these and to list them for about 20 minutes)

Starting with smells:

Fallen leaves in the fall on the Ohio State Campus.

California on a walk.

Fresh cut grass.

Baking chocolate chip cookies.

A crackling fire.

Old library books.

Icy nose-hair freezing, chin numbing winter days.

Fred's face.

My parent's house.

An old friend's choice of bath and body liquid hand soap.

Moving on to Sights:

Bright yellow and red leaves on fall tress.

A sunset on the ocean.

Photos of the landscape of Greece.

A perfect rose inviting my nose.

Lights intertwining the eaves of a gazebo.

Smiles on little children.

My old teddy bear.

Perfectly sharpened new pencils.

My old bedroom.

Now tastes:

Nestle Toll House Chocolate Chip Cookies.

Thanksgiving dinner, perfect bites.

Apple pie.

Chocolate Mousse Cheesecake.

Mom's Meat Loaf and mashed potatoes.

Hot Apple Cider.

Watermelon or Red Raspberry Bubble Yum.

Hot Chocolate with melting marshmellows.

A perfect diner cup of coffee.

A warmed cake donut from the school cafeteria.

Finally Sounds:

The chattering clattering background in a busy restaurant.

Talking all around me at a large family dinner.

Cricket and frog night sounds.

Keys mistaken for jangling dog tags.

The hum of the wings of a hummingbird in an instant of silence.

The lull in conversation.

The complete silence of the sleep of a strange room.

The spin of a washing machine.

Snoring.

Myself talking when I stop to listen.

Second:

Next part of the assignment is to take about 15 minutes just to let the mind wander and to write anything that moves me, whatever it is.

The danger of the empty mind being the devil's playground.

Feeling my stomach whine and being inexplicably angry that I have to think about diets, even though I'm not hungry or really denying myself.

How nice it is to take a little while to relax all of my facial muscles and to think of nothing.

The thought that it would be nice to take a nap and a bath at the same time and wondering if that would cause me to drown.

The uncertainty of whether or not I could be a good writer and how much struggle and time that would take.

The dynamics of leadership in our christian small group meeting.

Wishing I could be my small cat, how simple her life is, her biggest decision where to nap and who to sit on.

How torturous it is to try to let my mind wander for 15 minutes.

Third:

To use one of the above in whatever way, in a piece of writing.

An old friend's choice of bath and body liquid hand soap.

Fred and I had some friends a while back with whom we coordinated for our Friday night small group college meetings. These included the two of our families creating some sort of dinner and then creating an atmosphere, at either our apartment or their house, where college students felt welcome and we could have some kind of spiritual discussion, singing, bible reading or whatever. It was at the same time relaxed, as we were dealing with college students, who many times were at most interested in some free home cooking and time away from campus, and focused, as we were interested in helping them along in their spiritual lives whatever that would mean.

My friend and I would talk on the phone sometime early in the week and coordinate dinner. She had some specialties that we loved, her monkey bread, sausage bowtie pasta, milky way cake, homemade chicken and noodles, and overall delicious stick of butter type of foods. I usually would cling to an easier spaghetti, bread and salad standard. As we coordinated we would also confide in each other how our lives were going and sympathize and generally were friends. Although sometimes I wondered whether or not it was just proximity that created a friendship. Would we be friends if we didn't coordinate dinner and have our Friday nights together? If not, was there something superficial about the whole thing? Caring for each other by assignment?

When we had the meeting times at her house, she always had Bath and Body Works Cucumber Melon handsoap in her guest half bath on the lower level. I would use it and then take a deep breath as I smelled my hands, appreciating her lack of frugality in her soap choices.

A few years passed, our church went through a split among the members and her family stopped meeting with us. I got breast cancer and she called to let me know that she was thinking about me and as I tried to go a little deeper in the conversation she quickly small talked her way to ending the call. A few more years passed and it turns out that she has left her husband and family and pursued some of her other dreams, and I have no details other than what I've been told.

Exercise #7 - Emptying a bucket

Write a piece in which a man or a woman empties a bucket.

In our bible study this morning, the leader mentioned that God keeps our tears in a jar, remembering our sorrows. I think mine is more of a bucket. Not that my sorrows are so extreme, compared to many other people, but I've certainly cried a lot of tears.
In the prayer request time, I was crying like a baby because I am so uncertain about what is going on with the lump in my breast that my oncologist found, but looked like nothing in the mammogram and ultra sound. I am trying out a new doctor to see if I can get something more conclusive and that will be tomorrow. I also got a suggestion from another young cancer survivor for another doctor and surgeon to try.
There is a verse somewhere that says something like, our sorrows and frustrations are for the building up of other christians. That we suffer for them, so that they may be encouraged in the encouragement that we have received in the Lord.
As I was thinking about a bucket and what it was for and thinking that even though these writing exercises seem to be getting simpler, they are actually getting more thought provoking and challenging, I thought of the Lord.
He has my bucket of tears, from when I woke up with a bad dream as a child and prayed for him to end my fears, to when I broke up with a boyfriend in high school, to when I was diagnosed with Cancer, to now as I think of having children, and hope hope hope that my cancer has not come back, all of my tears are there in that bucket.
All of my experiences both when I have come to seek God for help and when I have choosen not to and tried to figure out things on my own, or even actively turned away from Him because I would not like his decisions, all of the tears from my experiences are stored by him in this bucket.
He can empty the bucket on whomever he wants, watering a dry and thirsty and suffering heart, and that is okay.

Exercise #6 - Hoopies

Write a piece about Hoopies or zazen, or one in which either hoopies or zazen appear. You must of course decide what you want hoopies or zazan to be.

I was teaching fourth grade in a small private Catholic school in Pittsburgh PA. Not the type of Catholic school you might picture in your mind, blond wealthy students in uniform plaid skirts or suit jackets, but a Catholic school in a poor neighborhood, at one time close to being shut down for lack of enrollment, that is now funded privately and allows parents to pay less than 1,000 a year for their children to attend, with siblings at a significant discount and additional scholarship funding available.
My students mostly bought their outfits at Wal-mart or Target, their navy or black pants or skirts and white, navy or black polo shirts and 95 percent of them were on the free/reduced lunch program.
I had a class of 23 wiggly, enthusiastic kids, who I had decided to give a 20 minute afternoon recess to at all costs. The result of my summer of research into behavior and classroom management and the advice of my kindergarten assistant from years before. My school did not give recess other than about 10 minutes attached onto the lunch period that my kids were mostly too full or too excited to take advantage of.
I sat outside on the picnic bench in the sun watching all of my efforts paying off. My kids loving their daily recess and my satisfaction with the sunshine and the few kids who liked to periodically sit next to me and have a chat.
Some of our daily equipment included hula hoops and some girls were flipping them over themselves and the jumping over them sort of like jump ropes. They called this doing hoopies. I was of course too tall to do a hoopie myself. They would count who could do the most the fastest and we had a reigning champion.

Exercise #5 - Something that goes too far

Write a piece in which someone or something goes too far.

We have gone through a lot of phases in our television viewing history. Our first phase was "Friends" every week with a fellow teacher after a spaghetti dinner. Then the "Crocodile Hunter" reruns, "CSI" every week, "Lost" with friends after a spaghetti dinner (I make good spaghetti and for some reason see it as a no work dinner and make it in great quantities for friends.), now reality shows, "So You Think you Can Dance", "Dancing with the Stars", "Project Runway", "America's Next Top Model". For a while we loved "Trading Spaces".
A friend and I would watch it together, or apart and with much phone discussion, every week. We liked most of the designers, but feared Hildy. She usually went a little too far. One episode she was making over a very large master bathroom and staple gunned fake flower heads to all of the walls, as a type of 3-d wall paper.
What we thought was the most crazy was a living room for a lesbian couple with two small children. Hildy painted the walls a maroon color and then slathered them with a gloppy glue and put pieces of hay all over the walls. When asked what would happen when the little toddlers would try to pull the hay off the wall and eat it, she said, "tell them not to", making me think that she had never had children, or spent any time with them at all.
We sat aghast as the room took on the look of a messy barn floor and repeated that, nope if we were ever on the show, we wouldn't want Hildy to be our designer.
She just went too far.

Exercise #4 - Painful Experience

I have been writing the exercises from a book "Writer's Course" as I become a more experienced writer. I am up to Exercise #4. It is:
Think of some of the incidents, events, and experiences in your past that were painful to you, either physically, emotionally or both. Pick one, write it up from beginning to end, be as truthful and accurate as you can not reporting how you felt. Just the incident, step by step, as it happened to you. Prose.

It was the beginning of 2004, the year in which I was to turn 29. My husband and I had moved from Orlando back to Columbus Ohio. He had just finished at a school there for animation and special effects as I had been teaching middle school math. It had been about a year since I had seen a doctor. Nothing was ever wrong with me so I went for long periods of time sometimes, not seeing a doctor. I decided I should have a physical as well as a woman's exam. I called to make an appointment with my husband's family doctor. Everything was routine. He did the pap smear and the breast exam. He said he felt a lump on my right breast and that he wanted me to come in a week after my period was to finish to see if it was still there as things change in the breast in relation to your period.
I drove back a few weeks later and he said he still felt it and gave me a script for a mammogram and an ultra-sound. At only 28 years old, mammograms usually don't show much except dense breast tissue, hence the ultra-sound.
I went to Riverside Hospital and during the ultra sound, a radiologist was called in because the person doing the ultra-sound was confused about something. He came in and had his fingers on the area with the lump and was pressing as his other hand held the paddle looking for the lump on the screen. Everything looked different shades of grey to me. He said "I am feeling it, but I can't see it" a couple times. That it all blended in together.
The surgeon said it was probably nothing, but it would be good to remove it so I wouldn't worry about whether or not it was growing or be anxious over it. I went in for an excisional biopsy. My husband told me that the surgeon had brought out a lump of tissues and showed it to him and my mother-in-law (a cancer nurse) in the waiting room and told them that this was it and it was most likely nothing, but they would have it checked out and that I was fine.
I went home that night with a huge ace bandage wrapped around my chest, but not much pain or discomfort. I slept that night sitting half way up. The next morning (Saturday) we got a call from the Surgeon who said that it was cancer and that I needed to come back in to the hospital.
Things began to move in fast forward for the next 3 weeks or so. I needed a CAT Scan, PET Scan, MRI, Ultra-Sound guided biopsies in three locations to make sure everything else suspicious looking was okay. I went to a second opinion clinic where an all new doctor, surgeon and radiologist looked at all of my charts and information and gave me their opinions.
It was an option for me to get either a mastectomy or a lumpectomy. I got the impression that they thought that the lumpectomy was good enough so I went with that.
I went in for real surgery this time. They inserted dye into the breast so that it would hopefully go to the sentinel lymph node (where they think cancer would go first if it decided to spread to another part of the body. They can remove only that node if they can find it and avoid removing the other ones.) and then put me under and removed the area around where the lump had been as well as took 11 lymph nodes under my right arm.
As soon as I recovered from the surgery, I was to begin chemotherapy. My mother-in-law talked to the doctor about getting me a port (thing they put inside you in the upper chest area that they can insert a needle into and put the chemotherapy as well as take your blood from so that they can avoid using the veins in the arm. After having the lymph nodes removed from the right side, that arm should not be stuck with needles anymore as the lymph fluid is now somewhat restrained.) which they put in, another small surgery. The chemo was to take place once a month for four months. It would happen near a Monday and then I would have 4 weeks to recover until the next injections. I got pretty sick and ended up coming in every day for the week following the injection to get fluids intraveinously. I could hold almost no food or drink down for the week after the chemo.
After the second or third round of chemo my hair began to fall out. I followed some advice and had my hair cut short, from shoulder length to what I call mom length. A short layered cut. A few weeks later I could pull a thatch of my hair right out with no effort and it was time for me to follow some more advice. I went to a friend and she buzzed my head.
A few weeks earlier I had gone to a wig store to get a color match for a wig. It was to be a bob with bangs, similar to my hair before cancer. It was 250 dollars, which was a little expensive for us. My husband's brother and sister-in-law bought the wig for me and I had a very realistic wig.
After the chemo ended, I began radiation. I needed to drive to the hospital every weekday for 6 weeks. It was a quick appointment, taking about 10 minutes start to finish and there was a small car parking area right next to the door, so I did not need to use the big parking lot at the hospital.
One day I left my keys in the unlocked car with the car still running as I went in for my appointment. Afterwards as I wondered where my keys were, I realized that they were still in the car. One time I had a long discussion with my husband about a trip I wanted to take with my chorus and the next day completely forgot and began to have the same conversation all over again until he reminded me that we had already talked about it. Someone told me it was called "Chemo brain" when you become absent minded that way.
From that time, I have had yearly or 6 monthly appointments with cancer doctors, a new one every time we move. I have had MRI's because the tissue is still dense and ultra-sounds are somewhat inconclusive as well as another biopsy.
It has been 5 years. I have finished taking tamoxifen (a drug for cancer patients who have had estrogen positive cancer that reduces your chances of getting it again, but causes birth defects) and have waited almost 3 months to try to begin getting pregnant.
The last time I visited my doctor, she felt a lump, not sure if it was scar tissue, since it is in the same place as the cancer was, and requested a mammogram and ultra-sound. These were done and they say, come back in 6 months and we'll check again. Since then I have also brought all of my films from my initial cancer diagnosis for them to compare the new films to and they say see us again in 1 year.
I am switching doctors to a new one, this Friday. Maybe he can tell me something slightly more conclusive than see me again in a year. If the first cancer couldn't be seen on the ultra-sound, why would this one have to show up? Should I have had a mastectomy?

Exercise #3 - Haunted Toll Booth

Write a piece that takes place in one of the following locations:
A parked car
A phone booth
A closet
A walk-in refrigerator or freezer

It was Halloween night and I was 15 years old. A few friends from school wanted me to go with them to a haunted house. My family didn't really celebrate Halloween, but as practically an adult, I believed this was a decision I could make on my own.
"Going out with some friends" I yelled on my way out.
"Make sure you are home by your curfew" my mom called back from the kitchen. "And don't get into any trouble" she added, remembering what day it was.
My friend Molly at 16 had her parent's old light blue Civic and was already honking outside of our house. I jumped into the back seat and said hi to Barb and Molly's boyfriend Jack.
None of us were dressed in costumes. Barb's party had been the previous weekend and we had all worn costumes for that. We were just doing this for the thrill.
As we drove down the gravelly, grassy, twisted dirt drive towards the mansion I began to shiver already. Molly had done some online research and found that there was a haunted house near the river. She read that there was supposed to be a family of ghosts there who had died when a tree had gone through the roof in a storm and fallen onto the couch in the living room, where they were all sitting listening to the radio. Unfortunately, they were not found, not having many friend in the area, until a few weeks later. Their bodies were removed and buried and the house had remained empty for the next 70 years. People had thought about buying the land and the house, but when they visited to see it, they felt the air chill in the rooms, and heard unexplainable movements on the floor above them and in the basement. It had been empty for so many years now that it had fallen into much disrepair. Molly had read of kids visiting it during Halloween and refusing to talk of their experience afterwords, even to each other.
We stopped the car near the front door and all got out as Molly pocketed the keys.
The porch steps were damp and rotten but they held our weight. We pushed the door and it creaked open. The locks had been removed. The inside was about what you would expect, spider webby, dusty, damp, and falling apart. The furniture was between ornate and comfortable, black with mold. We heard some scampering as we entered and figured there were mice and saw evidence of mouse droppings on the floor. We tiptoed across the foyer and into the living room where the tree still lay near the crushed couch and a giant hole was ripped through the floor above, we could see outside,through the fallen boards of the roof, the full moon shining brightly and naked branches of autumn trees barely moving in the breeze.
None of us were talking, we were close together, looking at everything, a little spooked. We decided to split up, just like in scary movies, when the characters split up and the one cop is facing the bad guy in the dark of night and you wonder who will win and why the cop didn't wait for back up. It was really an unspoken decision, Molly and her boyfriend wandered towards the kitchen and Barb was looking closely at something in the dining room. I decided to go upstairs. I creaked up the stairs, barely touching the splintery banister. The first room I saw at the top looked like a child's room. There was a small bed in the corner and a dresser. The closet door was open a crack and had a little light coming out of it. I thought that was strange and decided to investigate. I opened the door and saw an old phone booth. Did they even have phone booths 90 years ago I wondered. It was an old booth, very dusty and the glass smudged and dirty. The phone was in the corner of the booth and dim light was shining from an old light bulb hanging from the small ceiling.
I saw a phone book (I don't think they had those 100 years ago either) and decided to look up my family's name. My parents and grand parents had all grown up in the area. It might help me to figure out what time this booth was from. I looked up my last name Morrison. My great grandfather's name, Morrison, Alvin, was there with a phone number. I felt compelled to try to call that number. I put a penny into the slot (It said 1 cent above the slot) and heard it clink down and dialed the number.
"Hello" a young man's voice said.
"Hi, I am Laura Morrison, who is this?" I asked.
"It's Alvin Morrison" he responded, "do I know you?"
I began to shake, my great grandfather had been dead for about 30 years at least. He spent his last years in a retirement community, my father had said.
"I think I am your great granddaughter" I said slowly.
"I don't even have children yet, is this a prank call?" He asked starting to sound angry.
"Sorry" I said, hanging up.
My palms were wet, my voice was quivering.
I turned to leave the phone booth in the closet, feeling very strange. I seemed to be shrinking, my chest felt very heavy, as if someone was sitting on it. The bedroom was now well lit, the furniture and floors clean, the bed made in fresh linens.
"Sarah" a woman called from downstairs.
I looked down and was now dressed in a gingham nightgown. I saw brown braids reaching over my shoulders. What was going on?
I opened my mouth to say, "Molly" but out came "Coming Ma" in a different voice, higher pitched and younger.
As the months passed me by and I waited for the tree to fall on our house and hopefully pop me back into the future, I had moments of almost forgetting. Was I really Sarah? Did I really live here? I looked back in the closet over and over for the phone booth, but it was gone. I had nothing to prove that I was not Sarah other than my memories. Sometimes I thought those were dreams and Sarah was the real one.
What would happen if I made sure that we were never all sitting on the couch during a storm, would I grow up here and live my life out in this past era? Would I just die with the family? Would I become the ghost of the little girl if we did die?
A year and a half later, I was listening to the radio after helping ma set the table for dinner. A storm was forecast for later that evening. I made sure we were all on that couch as I did not want to remain Sarah forever and thought even an unforseeable future would be better. We were listening to the radio and I heard a crack of thunder and heard a crashing sound.
Molly called from downstairs to see where I was. I breathed a huge sigh of relief, realizing that I had caught up with the future and become myself again. I looked into the empty child's closet and ran downstairs to catch up with my friends.
For years I have looked for that phone booth. Searches online, research and visits to multiple haunted houses, all have resulted in nothing, but this is the first time I've told my story.

Exercise #2 - Photos of Family

Imagine that you are browsing through an old family album, looking at photographs, clippings, and other memorabilia. Suddenly you spot something that surprises you.

I was staying at my parent's house for a while as an adult and noticed that there were no pictures on the wall. They had many framed pictures of the family, but they had not gotten around to hanging them since they had moved into the new townhouse a year or so back. I remembered seeing, usually on television shows, how people hang a bunch of framed pictures on the wall leading up the stairs and thought it might be fun to surprise them with that. I found a hammer and nails and sporadically began to arrange the pictures onto the wall. It looked really nice. There were pictures taken at Sears with coupons, and my sister's senior picture, and a picture of me from high school and my baby sister before her prom. But one picture caught my eye.
My dad and mom and younger sister and I were all sitting on a piano bench in front of a small piano at my grandmother's house. My grandmother lived in Grangeville Idaho and we lived in Milwaukee Wisconsin. We never had money to fly so we drove out to see her and my great grandmother a time or two (I honestly don't remember if it was one time or two) during my childhood years. This was when I was about 9 and my sister around 4. My youngest sister had yet to be born.
I stopped and looked at that picture for a while. My parents must have been about 30 years old at the time and I was now 32 years old. A young cancer survivor with no children yet and no prospects for one for a few more years as I finished taking Tamoxifen for the prescribed 5 years. How strange the passing of years, the changing of society's expectations. Myself, feeling so old, yet really so young. How must my parents' life have been, so young with two small children. I feel barely old enough now (34) to think of being a mature parent, with so many years of living and teaching under my belt.
They looked so young and pretty and happy. How old will I be when I have a 9 year old? I am thinking about 44 at the youngest. I know this is normal, but will I be full enough of energy to participate in my kid's life as much as I want. Will the child keep me young?

Fred thought that I needed more of an interesting ending to Exercise #1. Hmmmmm. Maybe I just peter out as I get to the end and then have no idea what to write. It happens when I write e-mails as well.

Exercise #1 - Mystery Bag

I am reading a book called "The No Experience Necessary Writer's Course". It has some nice short chapters and includes 24 exercises to help me become a writer.

The first is as follows:
Imagine that you are downtown in a major city during rush hour. Suddenly a woman walks toward you, holding a bag. She meets your eyes, smiles, hands you the bag, and says, "Here you go." Before you can say or do anything, she turns and walks off.

My husband and I were visiting Manhattan for the first time. We were staying at a small hotel very close to times square and taking long walks every day. I was impressed by so much, the deli's all over the place, the lights, the sheer volume of people on the sidewalks, the street vendors, artists, mimes, taxis. It was a little overwhelming and exciting. I thought about all of the movies and television shows I had seen that had been filmed in this very city, or in Central Park.
We had just visited a little deli and shared a pastrami sandwich and were walking on the sidewalk when I saw a woman coming towards us. On sidewalks so filled with people, I wouldn't have noticed her especially except that she was making eye contact with me and smiling. Of course, not normal for the big city. I had lived in Chicago, I knew not to make eye contact with strangers.
She transferred her purse from her shoulder to her hand and held it out towards me as she smiled. I wondered what she was thinking. It was a pink patent leather slouchy purse, quite big and bulky, not bad looking actually. She stopped and I made a confused face, and she handed me the bag, saying "Here you go." Before I could ask her what was going on, she disappeared into the crowd.
The situation, being in the middle of the day, did not seem to be dangerous and the lady did not look suspicious, but I had no idea what to do with the bag. Should I open it? Should I toss it into the garbage can as I passed by? Was it meant to be for me personally? She could have given it to anyone, so why me?
My husband thought I should immediately drop it to the ground and leave it there. Why would a stranger give me a bag? Definitely a strange situation.
I thought I should look inside. What if it had treasures inside? Diamonds and gold, or unmarked bills to be spent on whatever I wanted?
The bag was not as heavy as you might think for its size. I put the purse to my ear to make sure it was not ticking (I do watch the news.) and it was not. It was also not moving or making any noise, nothing living inside, no cat or small dog. I shook it a little, not a puzzle either.
I saw a small piece of an envelope sticking out of one of the side pockets. I pulled it out. It was addressed "To whomever is now carrying this purse". I opened it and pulled out a plain sheet of lined paper. It read: "You are the lucky receiver of this pink purse. You are being filmed for a television show from hidden cameras. The contents of this purse are yours to keep as long as you tell us what you plan on doing with them." I looked around and the lady reappeared. She walked up to us with outstretched hand and said "Hi, I am Julie from the Style Network's, What's in the Purse. Because you did not drop the purse or throw it away but seemed to wonder what was inside it, you now get to keep the contents."
"Okay" I said smiling. I had given a meaningful look at my husband when she mentioned throwing the purse away. I slowly opened the purse and saw cash surrounded with a little band with 10,000 dollars written on it, some jewelry boxes, a gift card to Nobu restaurant (I love Sushi), an invitation to spend 3 complementary nights at the Ritz Carlton at Central Park, a gift card to some clothing stores and a beautiful digital camera. Julie told me that the only stipulation was that I must use everything in the bag before returning home.
We called our friends who were watching our cat and asked them to watch her for a few more days. My husband e-mailed work to let them know that he needed a few extra days off. It was a wonderful vacation. It is also surprisingly easier than you would think to spend 10,000 dollars.