Date: May 3rd, 2010
I love words. Words are amazing. I love them so much I use them unnecessarily at every possible occasion. When I was younger, my parents used to postulate that I just loved the sound of my own voice. Its true. Objectively, I have a voice for newspaper, but that's neither here nor there. The point out, not being verbose is somewhat of a challenge for me. Especially in the middle of law school finals. For those who haven't taken one - some are about well-reasoned arguments and others are typing tests. To the highest WPM go the spoils. It may or may not be the right habit to be in for actual lawyering. That remains to be seen.
I stark contrast to my no-word-limit lifestyle, I found a site that challenges people to share true stories about their lives in a single sentence. I have a ton of stories, but very few of them can be done justice in a single sentence. Especially since that site as asinine rules like 'no using semi-colons to turn a paragraph into a single sentence'. Whatever. You're not the boss of me.
I settled on three stories that could be boiled down to a single sentence and wrote them out for submission. Turns out, I discovered that they only post about 10% of the submissions they receive. The volume to the site is high enough that they screen both for stories that follow instructions and those that are of a certain... quality. I started to think that maybe my stories wouldn't get posted, but I figured it was worth a shot and learning not to run-on with my nonsensical ramblings was a good enough experience that I should do my best.
The three stories I picked are all true. Each one happened in my life and each one really requires a significantly higher level of detail to be fully appreciated. That being said, I was able to make a single sentence out of each one. I got an e-mail about six hours later letting me know that one of my stories was chosen to run on the site. Because I'm awesome. That's why.
I was pretty darn proud of getting my story posted. Especially because summarizing the various delights of my young life was incredibly difficult. That being said, it was good to take a moment to focus on boiling interesting stories down to a single sentence. I learned how to do it with academic writings when my professors decided to impose draconian words limits on my genius. That's right. I just compared collegiate word limits to a code of laws so brutal it was said to be "not written in ink, but with blood." Seriously. They killed you for idleness. These are some serious dudes.
In the meantime, without further adieu, here are the stories that I submitted. The one that got chosen was the little ditty about my puppy, Sparky, when I was younger. And yes. I promise they all actually happened. I'll totes elaborate if you don't believe me.
1: Faith is knowing God forgave you for pretending to speak in tongues; in church.
2: I made up a speech I was supposed to have memorized on the spot and made it to the semi-final round of the tournament where I immediately made a fool of myself.
3: One Halloween when I was little, before I knew any dirty words, my family dressed my puppy up in a skeleton costume so I called him a "boner".
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