TDTL Day 7: A Stranger

Here’s my latest fail: day SIX was supposed to be a letter to a stranger and TODAY was supposed to be a letter to the ex-boyfriend/love/crush. I read a line down yesterday when I was getting ready to write yesterday’s letter and, thus, skipping a day ahead in the prompts. So today I’m playing time machine and taking it back to what I was supposed to write about yesterday.

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Dear Stranger,

I’ve passed you on the street or in an aisle at Walmart or in the office cafeteria. I may have seen you at the coffee shop or the bookstore or the library. I may even have honked at you if you were dawdling at an intersection (sorry about that, by the way, but my tolerance isn’t always very high regarding my fellow drivers).

Regardless of who you are or where our paths crossed, I inevitably noticed you in some way. You may have been saying something I thought would make clever dialogue. Maybe your behaviors inspired me to create a new character. Perhaps you were just doing something really weird like wearing a pair of fairy wings and/or a tutu in a coffee shop that made me wonder why someone would actually go out in public on a day nowhere near Halloween wearing fairy wings and/or a tutu. My brain takes in your habits and your words and all those other bits you might think no passer-by would care to notice and stores it to break out in a moment’s notice for a character or a scene or a whole story. I don’t do this on purpose. Just don’t be surprised if we have an encounter for all of thirty seconds and down the road you recognize a bit of yourself in one of my novels.