People Watching

I carry a small notebook in my purse with me at all times. I love to people watch everywhere I go. When I see someone interesting, I jot down notes about them and use them for future characters. Especially secondary characters can be hard to picture sometimes and this really helps me.

I love to watch someone and wonder who they are. It's fun to make up stories about them. My husband and I do that just for fun.

I once noticed a man at Burger King. He was probably in his seventies. He sat in a booth with an old pocket watch propped up so that he could see it. He had a digital clock on the other side of the table (a small battery operated one) and he was writing in a notebook. I kept wondering what he wrote. The trashcan was behind him, so when I got up to throw my daughter's stuff away I took a peek over his shoulder. He had line after line of scribbles. No words. No doodles. No punctuation. Just scribbles. Lines and lines of it.

I still wonder why he had pages of scribbles in straight lines. Did he have a stroke and he was trying to learn to write again? Was he mentally ill? I guess I'll never know, but I'm saving him in my little notebook. I'm sure he'll fit in somewhere in a story....