Three Item Short Story
with a nod to Hemingway
Legend has it that Ernest Hemingway won a bet by writing a six-word short story: “For sale: baby shoes; never worn.” That story packs a punch, huh?
Today I saw a visual short-story lying on a busy sidewalk in Midtown Manhattan:
People, seemingly not noticing, navigated around this assemblage of somebody’s personal effects: a Petrossian caviar cooler, three (!?) feathery mules, a couple of breast push-up pads, deodorant, and some sort of pills.
A friend of mine often says, “There’s a story there.”
The story I’d write is: Plans gone awry; hope they’re okay.
She wept; it was over.
I hope they're okay, too. What an image.
At this year's AWP conference, one panel invited us to introduce ourselves with a six-word memoir. In a nod to Hemingway, mine was:
Baby shoes worn; outgrown too fast.