Welcome to another Monday Art/Journal prompt. How have you all been doing playing along with these? Are you creating fun journal pages? Are you finding a rhythm? Is meaning sneaking in?
Today’s prompt is to tell a story. You can tell a story you know, a story from your own life, a made-up story, a story about somebody you know, etc. Use photos or drawings or images to convey your meaning. Or use your words to tell your story. Or a combination of things.
What kind of story will you tell and how will you tell it? Do you want it to be understood by anyone? Then you can just say what you mean! Or is it a more personal or secretive story? Then you may want to hide the meaning somehow – use images or colors instead of words, cover up your words, use a code of some type – you get the idea.
Go tell a story now. And remember to have fun!
Here’s a story . . .
“My father was always very frugal–and for good reason. He was a Pastor and never earned more than $12,000 a year his entire Ministry. So in later years, when he and my mother would go on holiday, he would (as usual) always be exceedingly careful about where he chose to fill up the car.
On one particular journey, they were driving from New York to Illinois and at some point along the way my mother had him stop so she could get into the back seat to have a nap. But not that long afterwards, seeing the tank getting to the empty stage, my father pulled off to survey his choices of gas stations in a small Ohio town.
As was his routine, he’d pull into the station and then get out of the car to go up to the pump and eyeball the price. If he wasn’t happy with it, he got back in and drove to the next station. And he did this on this particular day, getting out, raising his eyebrows at the price, then getting back in and driving to the next one.
On his second reading of the gas menu, my mother momentarily woke up and saw he was at the gas staion and decided to use the powder room. He, of course, didn’t like the price of the gas at the second station and got back in the car and drove to a third. And finally, at a Texaco, he found nirvana and filled the tank, got back in the car and drove to the Interstate.
THREE HOURS LATER an Indiana State Trooper pulled him over and asked him where his wife was.
My mother loved telling this story at the drop of a hat and at any occasion: wedding receptions; birthday parties; graduation banquets; funeral luncheons; baby showers—and most enthusiastically if there were other Clergy present–smiling sweetly while he stiffled a groan and wanted to die. It was her way of never letting him forget it.
And she’d always finish her telling of it by saying, ‘And you know, if I hadn’t phoned those Troopers, I probably STILL be sitting in that Texaco. I suppose I might as well have been a sack of potatoes in that back seat . . . ‘”
That is a great story!
It is one of those that would get told and retold. Every family has one of those stories! Thanks for sharing it.