Security to Sporting Goods

Occasionally, I meet a student who says, “I don’t have anything to write about,” so I prompt them with a question.

“What did you do this weekend?”

Sometimes, that will solve the problem. They’ll exclaim, “Oh, I went over to So-and-so’s house and we built a fort out of all the pillows in the basement.” And they’ll scamper back to their desks with their head full of images and memories and begin to write.

Other times, they say, “nothing.” Of course, that’s not true. What they mean is, nothing of consequence. Same old, same old. No trips to the water park, no pony rides at the fair…just a regular weekend with a few video games and a trip to Target with Mom.

“There,” I say, “You can write about shopping.”

You can write about your mom, how excited she was when she realized she had a coupon for the toothpaste that was also on sale. I mean, who gets excited about toothpaste? Moms do. You can write about how she started with a list, but then lingered in the dollar section looking at the spring chicks and painted eggs on display in February, and how she trusted you not to get into trouble or get lost when you wandered off to the electronic section to look at the games.

Toothpaste at Target, that could be a story.

“Writing doesn’t need to be about a big adventure,” I tell my students. It doesn’t always need a story arc. Great “slice-of-life” stories can stretch out the small, mundane moments with specific details, personality, and feeling.

Maybe you write about the first time you went to H Mart. How you were intrigued and slightly nauseated in the seafood area, looking at the piles of baby squid, pallid and rubbery, eyes staring up at you. You were looking for pickled ginger and they only had industrial size bags, so you ended up with enough pickled ginger to last a lifetime.

Baby squid at H Mart could be a story.

Thinking about shopping, it sparks a memory from way back, when you got lost under the round dressing racks of clothes of Marshall’s. You grabbed onto your mother’s leg and looked up only to realize it wasn’t your mother’s leg, but the panty hose of another stranger’s calf. You were horrified. You distinctly remember your mom carrying the extra circles of fabric leftover from hemming your dad’s suit pants. She let you hold one of the pieces as she draped the other across a rack of ties and stood back, squinting. You placed your fabric circle on your head like a crown, and secretly wondered if people would think you were a princess. Instead, the cashier thought it was a bandage from some kind of brain operation and you felt disappointed.

Fabric crowns at Marshall’s could be a story.

Or you could write about the time your mom let you pick out your own Christmas presents at The Limited. You fell in love with the sweater with purple and lime green stripes and couldn’t wait to wear it. Later, you snuck into your mother’s closet and carefully, oh, so carefully, unstuck the scotch tape and slid the box out of the wrapping to remove the sweater and wear it to school. After school, you snuck back to repeat the steps in reverse, replacing the sweater and resealing the tape. You wonder, to this day, if your mom ever knew.

A sweater from The Limited could be a story.

The more you think about shopping, the more memories arise. There’s the time you went to Loehmann’s with your mom as a teenager and were mystified and mortified at the common changing area, seeing the old ladies’ bodies in their flesh-colored bras and underwear, trying not to stare at their varicose veins and cellulite thighs. Or the time you and your friends were playing Sardines at Walmart, hiding behind the camouflaged hunting coveralls until you heard an announcement on the loudspeaker, “Security to sporting goods,” and you all tumbled out in a tangle and retreated to the parking lot, laughing hysterically.

Security to Sporting Goods. That’s a great title for a story. Doesn’t it hook the reader? Make them want to know more?

Once, I went to the dermatologist and she biopsied a few spots on my back. I stuffed my bra inside my coat pocket to avoid clasping it over the antibiotic ointment and tender areas. On my way home, I stopped at the grocery store and later, when I reached into my coat pocket, the bra was gone. It wasn’t even one of the old, shapeless ones, but a more recent purchase, with underwire and a touch of lace. I wondered if it fell out of my pocket at Giant and I laughed to myself, imagining the look on someone’s face when they found a bra lying in the produce aisle.

My missing bra could be a story.

Or, not.

I don’t mean to say that this is all easy. If anything, “slice-of-life” stories can be more challenging, because if there’s not a fast-paced plot or conflict, you have to use other narrative structures to engage your reader. You have to share more of your character’s observations and internal dialogue. Through the characters’ reactions, we learn more about their personality. That can feel more vulnerable, because you put yourself in a position to show the reader what you are really like.

If I choose to share personal stories with my class, I change the details to be more school-friendly. A lacey bra at Giant becomes a stinky sock, for instance. Kids love stinky socks. I skip the descriptions of half-naked bodies at Loehmann’s and leave off the unruly teenagers disrupting the local Walmart. But while I may embellish the truth of the story, I do stay true to the feelings I experienced: the anxiety and discomfort at the doctor and the embarrassment of losing a personal item at the store. I do share how writing and reflecting on a story helps me to reframe the situation with humor.

Writing about shopping, maybe we find more than just the items in our cart. We might also discover a little more about ourselves.