"That got me thinking…"

Fellow blogger Lucinda Seacrest McDowell recently published a post entitled “My Life in Six Words.”  In it, she asks the reader to think about writing a story in six words. Ernest Hemingway once did:

“For sale: Baby shoes, never worn.”

Then she mentions a contest which began in 2006 and is still ongoing: write your own life story in six words. She did it, and it’s worth a read to see the process of her reflection. It was also the topic of conversation on a recent weekend getaway; my husband and I spent the better part of a three hour dinner, coming up with various six word stories. We started with serious introspection about our own lives and then, well we just got silly.

Here are a few possibilities for my life:

Good girl. Married. Kids. Am happy.

Looking backward and forward, trusting God.

But then my husband said, in the nicest possible way, that those were generic and could be about anyone.

So then I came up with:

Fast reader. Slow walker. Marathon napper.

I came up with the following for him: 

Latin lover. Not the Spanish kind.

He came up with the following for himself: 

Fat guy jogging. Not there yet. (Click here to read his post about running).

Then we started thinking about stories in general: 

Step one, snuggle up. Happy pappy.

Brain working hard. Not much there.

Four Drummonds. Hot outside. Movie time.

Mosquito mindlessly meandering. THWACK. Got him.

Bottled water or tap? Wallet? Tap.

Don’t fill up on bread, dear.

Good dinner. Bring the dessert menu.

Diet progressing? Back off, I’m starving.

He said, she said. Got divorced.

What a dumbass. Bless her heart.

What about you? I challenge you to think about your own life in six words. If that level of introspection is too hard, think of other kinds of stories and share them. It’s a fun exercise, even if your brain does begin to hurt after 3 hours. I’ll leave you with the one that we kept coming back to for both our lives:

Six words is too hard.