9:30 am, September 14, 2009
Bus stop at 3rd & Pine
Downtown Seattle

“You look like you could write screenplays!” he says, his long, uneven dreads swaying in the breeze. He smiles broadly, white teeth gleaming against dark skin, and stands just a little too close.
“You write screenplays?”
I grin. “Nope.”
“Could you write a screenplay?”
“I don’t know, I’ve never tried.”
“Then what do you write? Musicals?”
I’m delighted to have been pegged a writer, so I tell him. “Short stories.”
“What’s your theme?”
I think, then settle on a common one. “Music.”
He grins, delighted, and pronounces, “Musicals!”
I shake my head, “No, just stories about music.”
His brow furrows and he gestures. “But no actors and actresses singing?”
“Not scripts, just stories in a book,” I explain, holding my hands together in the international sign for book.
“How many pages, then?”
“I don’t know, I haven’t printed them yet.”
He laughs at this, then continues the interview.
“What instruments do your characters play? Piano? Flute? Guitar? Banjo?”
I tell him one of my stories has a mandolin player and a fiddle player. He lights up at this and asks, “Are you Irish or Scottish?”
I tell him the majority. “I’m Norwegian.”
He looks incredulous. “Then where’d you get that red hair?”
“From a box.”
He reels and laughs at this. “A box! Well you know, maybe some Irish could have slipped up into Norway and left some red hair and some freckles.”
I nod thoughtfully. “Maybe, but mine is still from a box.”