Writers' Dictionary

In this post, I have compiled a few things that are helpful to writers during their work, or to non-writers trying to understand their writer friends.

How to Bug a Friend

In high school, I was sitting in the classroom one day when my friend entered, in a mischievous mood. She took a book I had lying on the table and ran off with it. I considered running after her to retrieve the book, but thought better of it. I would just be racing around outside for a long time, her dodging and me getting frustrated. So I remained seated and continued what I was doing. I figured she would eventually get bored and give the book back to me.

A while later, my friend returned. "I waited behind a tree for twenty minutes, and you never came!" she said indignantly. She was rather annoyed that she had spent all the time hiding from me, and I never even moved. I found it funny, but she didn't. Her reaction just made me laugh more.

Oh, and I got my book back, as I predicted.

Apartment Elevator

Some close friends of ours were living in an apartment complex. It was a rule there that children weren't allowed to ride the elevators alone, so the girls, children at the time, had to take the stairways. Their apartment was on the seventh floor. One of the girls, when she reached the apartment, would be panting and seem exhausted.

One day, one of the neighbors told her father that she had been taking the elevator to the sixth floor, then walking up the stairs to the seventh floor so it would look like she walked all the way up.
The next time she went out, her father sat on the steps to the sixth floor and waited for her. Eventually, the elevator opened, and there was his daughter. Upon seeing her father on the steps, she frantically pressed the buttons of the elevator to flee from him. The elevator doors didn't close quickly enough, and her father reached in and pulled her out.

"And I whooped her butt all the way up the stairs." her father recalled.

Finding the Car

A couple we know went to Wal-Mart. The husband parked the vehicle in front of the building so his wife could easily find it.
They finished their shopping and left Wal-Mart. The wife looked around in confusion. "Where's our car?"
The car was in plain sight. "Where do you think the car is?" her husband asked.
She continued looking around. "I don't know. I think we parked over there." She gestured at some distant parking spaces.
"Do you know what our car looks like?" her husband continued.
"Of course I know what it looks like!" his wife said in exasperation.
"Then where is it?" he said.

His wife has a terrible sense of direction. They have a blue car, and he said that if he parked next to a bunch of white cars, his wife still wouldn't find it. He joked, "There could be a neon sign with flashing lights saying, 'This is your car', and she still wouldn't find it. It could have her name on it, and she would say, 'Oh look, someone has my name!'"