Cast of Characters

   

My father is a writer.  He primarily writes novels and short stories.  As a teenager, my mom and I would proofread his chapters and give our opinions.  Those chapters were written on actual paper that came out of the typewriter and, later, the printer.  We would sit in his study on the shabby loveseat and make notes with a pencil. Fast forward a few years and I no longer get the first look at his writing, but I still influence his stories.  I'm his character scout.

    

I'm not sure how it started.  Did he ask me or did I just mention something once?  Either way, for years I have been telling my dad about interesting people I meet.  We all know of odd people or fabulous people with an unbelievable past.  For some reason, they strike me as memorable and worthy of mention in a story.

  

For example, let's say you are working at a bead store and have a regular customer, Shirley.  You think Shirley is just a nice, older lady with a penchant for malachite.  But, your boss tells you Shirley's story.  Shirley was a nun for 15 years who chose to serve the Lord by writing to inmates.  As you would expect when a sex-less woman writes to a sex-starved man, Duane fell for her and she for him.  I guess the lure of an overweight virgin nun for a 38-year old armed robber is just irresistible.  After he was paroled, Shirley quit the nun-hood and she and Duane bought an 18-wheeler and drove across the country together.  Yep, right into the sunset.  There is no way a writer could resist that.

  

Then, there are the twins.  During my marriage to Ryan, we lived in a small town in Illinois.  It's one of those towns where everyone knows everyone and the oddballs are just sort of ignored, yet accepted.  As a newcomer to this town, I was fascinated by the twins.  They would walk around town together as youngsters and later, as adults, they would walk alone. They were clearly a bit slow, but I found out they and all the males in the family had the same developmental delays caused by a genetic defect.  Their father could also be seen shuffling around town and bidding on shit nobody else wanted at local auctions.  I heard there was sister but she moved away and presumably lead a normal life.

    

The thing that struck me about the twins was what they would wear.  They would walk side-by-side, not talking, but wearing clothes appropriate for opposite weather conditions.  For example, it would be 65 degrees and one twin would be wearing shorts and a sleeveless shirt while the other would be wearing a winter coat.  In Illinois, this meant that at most times of the year only one of the twins would be dressed appropriately for the conditions.  Naturally, I began to call them Hot Twin/Cold Twin.

    

My dad would see the twins first-hand on his visits.  We looked forward to the first twin siting of every trip.  We loved to talk about whether Hot Twin was the one that always dressed too hot for the conditions, or if Hot Twin was the one who dressed as if HE was hot.  The debate remains to this day. 

    

I've left out another tidbit about one of the twins, the one that wears the winter coat.  For as long as I've "known" him, he periodically starts running.  I'm not talking about taking up the sport for exercise from time to time.  I mean when he's walking around town he will occasionally start jogging.  He's not trying to cross a street and no one appears to be chasing him.  Something deep down has provided an irresistible urge to jog.  It doesn't last long, maybe just a few seconds.  Did he remember something he needed to do and then promptly forgot?  Did he suddenly feel cold and need to warm up?  It remains unclear.  But, his story lives on in my dad's writing.

    

Of course, I would be remiss if I didn't tell you about the guy from my Ph.D program.  He was a gay, Muslim librarian named Dylan.  As if that wasn't enough, his partner was an astrophysicist.  That's right, a rocket scientist.  It's hard to decide which part of this was the most intriguing.  For me, it was the fact that his name was Dylan.  Not a lot of Muslims named Dylan, I'm guessing.

    

Whether you are a high school football player who insists on wearing the same clothes to lift weights as you wear when you work cattle or maybe you just have a vaguely ethnic name like Twinkle Patel, I will tell my dad about you.  You very well might see your story in print.  Consider yourself warned.