Everyone has stories to tell.
In fact, if you're a writer (or you're simply interested), you should go up to people at random and listen to the stories they tell at random. You never know what they might say.
I have had the very good fortune to encounter lots of people with stories to tell.
Take my high school friends, for instance: while I was running around, making a goof out of myself and being hyper twenty-four seven, some of my guy friends were running around, getting drunk, and starting bar fights.
And some just preferred to sit back and watch, but they did participate only by means of making said bar fights worse.
Then there's another friend of mine who literally left not just the state, but the whole damned country some years ago in a mysterious bid to get away because, as he puts he, he had to.
This friend, I'll simply designate as M, well he's a gentle mystery to me. A very beautiful, gentle mystery to be honest.
No, I don't mean I want him to bed me. I mean there's real pain hiding in that old soul of his that, though long since forgiven, still calls out in pain yet very few seem to truly hear it.
That pain can be best heard in his music, though. He was in Alaska for several months, needed something to do, and taught himself how to both tune and play a guitar without use of various instruments or manuals.
I greatly envy him for that.
M has stories to tell. Lots of them. I know they're there, because it's almost like they're about to burst for through for all to hear and know yet some supernatural force of will just barely holds them in.
Another friend of mine (namely the one who helped to aggravate barroom brawls) told me of a local supernatural hot spot he encountered our senior year in high school, and that a bet came along with it. He took up the challenge simply because he was bored and wasn't the least bit scared. In fact, he's not going to shy away from things like that, supernatural or not.
He's a braver man than I.
Then there's the stories my dad and a friend's dad have told me about: running moonshine in Oklahoma, shooting up churches in the middle of Sunday service, and so on. I should state that no one was hurt by the church altercation, it was for fun.
Yes, they had that kind of fun here in the wilds of Arkansas back in the '60s.
I seem to have a lot of angry, restless souls around me.
Maybe I should correct that: "angry" isn't the word. I think "restless" and "reckless" best apply. Think of the old Bob Seger song and how it goes "we were angry, restless and bored, living by the sword."
That's what life for them must've for them back in their days, my friends included.
I never had the good fortune to be, as my aunt put it, a hoodlum. I had a major operation when I was 4, I'm far from being in any truly strong physical condition at all, and I spent a lot of my youth in the hospital. Those visits weren't because I broke an arm or fell out of a tree, it was from being ravaged by various illnesses and exhaustion.
I have stories to tell as well, and since I lacked the proper means of having an active life to make a few good memories, I had to make up my own. I feel I've done pretty well with the stories I've created.
And, I'm proud to say, there are no broken bones, cop cars, mountain lions, bar fights, discharged rounds of ammunition, nude beaches, or spooky dares in my past (although that doesn't mean they haven't found their way into a few of my projects).
If I tried to live that kind of life, it'd probably kill me.
So I'll just have to be content to sit back and watch, and listen to stories other tell me.
