Obi-Wan: “You’re using her as bait.”
Anakin: ”It was her idea. Don’t worry, no harm will come to her. I can sense everything that’s going on in that room. Trust me.”
Star Wars II: Attack of the Clones
Fodder
You, my friend, are fodder. That’s right fodder. Your writer friend, for all her devotion to you, will spend remarkable amounts of effort actively recording your every peculiarity, your most embarrassing moments and your most painful memories. These will eventually be filed on 3×5 cards and cross-referenced by peculiarity, any essential details and the setting (if interesting). Initially, however, these little tidbits are jotted onto the backs of envelopes during long-distance telephone calls, scribbled around a wet ring on a bar napkin and squirreled away in diaries away from others’ prying eyes. Your friend is likely only pretending to “quick a minute” write a check to the dog sitter while you’re having lunch. What she’s really doing is recording the way you cut up your banana so that you don’t have to touch it.
Are you an efficient packer, rolling socks and putting them into your shoes to save space in your carry on? It’s been noticed and may very likely make an appearance the next time a travel scene is written. Do you get into your pajamas the minute you get home because they’re the most comfy thing you own? Be warned, you not like what’s on the main character’s jammies when she gets home. Do you read 700 page history tomes for fun? Congratulations, you’ve just made the book!
Not all fodder is extreme though. Any of the thousands of little things that make you, your spouse, your kids or your pets into who they are is fair game. Do you always seem to have cherry cough lozenges in the bottom of your purse? Did you ever wash your newborn in the kitchen sink because it was easier on your sore back? Does your husband throw those individually wrapped mints to people in the back seat instead of handing them back? It’s all fodder and, if you’re lucky, you’ll find a little piece of yourself in the pages of her book one day.
Are you the Fodd-er or the Fodd-ie in this post? Hmmm? Inquiring minds want to know.
OMK – I am SO the Fodder.
Ok, so why didn’t I ever think of putting the socks INSIDE the shoes?? It’s so damn simple!!!!
Hahahaha….busted. I hope I scramble the characteristics enough so one can only have a hearty chuckle and not remember that THEY were the inspiration for the “post cataract surgery glasses” or the breath that could “chase a buzzard off a garbage truck.” Or the “brow beaten hubby with the cross eyed wife,” etc…
My favorite place to observe humanity however is at the coffee shop where I know sit. Little do these people know…..(evil laugh)
Ah, I know that feeling. The writer’s objectivity. It watches all.
Ohmygosh – I watch people like that all the time! Wonder if I was meant to have been a writer? If I was meant to be a writer? If I should have become a writer? Oh, nevermind. Back to drawing things for a living.