Example

Base Story

It is 3 o’clock in the morning and Kate, who has been a friend for as long as I can remember, and I are at the pork chop sandwich place on Maxwell Street in Chicago after having gone out to dinner and to a bar.  To finish off the evening we have decided to go for a sandwich on my vintage motorcycle. 

The Pork-Chop-Place is a mobile restaurant which is a fixture of the Maxwell Street Flea Market which is celebrated every weekend come rain or snow.  They are open 24 hours and the only thing that they sell are pork chop sandwiches, with or without sauerkraut, polish sausage, hotdogs, hamburgers and soda pop, but that is more than enough, because they everything is delicious.

I asked Kate out at my mother’s behest – she and Kate’s mother are best friends.  Kate has just returned to town, after years of living in Europe and had few friends.   I don’t think that either of us know if we are out on a date or if we are just renewing a childhood friendship.  The night has been fun, but who knows how it was going to end.  My feelings are a bit muddled.

“Watch out for the bone,” I tell her as she grabs her sandwich.

“Ok”, she responds, taking a bite.  When she finishes, she surprises me by standing on her tiptoes, and wrapping her arms around by neck.   

Past

“Watch out for the bun”, I said as Kate bit into her first pork chop sandwich.   It was 3 o’clock in the morning and we were at the pork chop sandwich place on Maxwell Street in Chicago.  Kate and I had gone to dinner and a bar and to finish off the evening and our first date we drove on my vintage motorcycle, for a sandwich. 

The pork chop place was a mobile restaurant which was a fixture of the Maxwell Street Flea Market which was celebrated every weekend come rain or snow.  They were open 24 hours and only thing that they sold were pork chop sandwiches with or without sauerkraut, polish sausages, hotdogs, hamburgers and soda pop, but that was enough.   During the week, they lived off people who worked the night shift and on weekends off people at the flea market and after hours drinkers who were hungry: Kate’s and my situation. 

I had known Kate for as long as I could remember.  Our families were intimate and I had asked her out at my mother’s behest.  Kate had been living out of the country for years and now, back in town, had few friends.   I don’t think that either of us knew if we were out on a date or if we were just renewing a childhood friendship.  We were having a fun night out but I did not know how it would end.  Maybe it would end with a sisterly kiss, or maybe it would be the passionate beginning of something more serious. 

“Ok”, she responded taking a bite out of her sandwich.  When she finished, she surprised me by standing on her tiptoes, and wrapping her arms around me.     

Class Base

I was very excited about the dance that I was going to go to that evening, but I was worried about my hair.  I was 11 years old and had been at Hastings overnight summer camp for a month by then.  The camp was throwing the dance to celebrate the last evening that we are going be there that summer.  A few days before I had finally worked up the courage to ask Kate to go to the dance with me.  But didn’t think that Kate or any other girl was going to want to dance with me because of my hair.

It had grown so long that summer that it was difficult to keep out of my face making me look like a shaggy dog.  But there was nothing to be done. I couldn’t go to the barber shop, like my mother had suggested before coming to camp, and it would have been too embarrassing to ask any of my fellow campers for hairspray.  That and I doubted that any of them had any.   

But then I had an idea.  Maybe I could take my soft-brill hairbrush to the dance with me.  That way, I could brush my hair back into place when necessary.  But where could I carry my hairbrush?  The answer came immediately: in my front pants pocket. 

Please start the story with the main character standing in the bathroom in front of a mirror before the dance starts

For example you could start with: I was standing in front of a mirror in my cabin at Hastings summer camp. I was staring at my hair wondering what to do with it.

TT 830 Ana

A GHOST STORY

In 2004, I started a period of seven years working as a teacher in Quesada which is a small village near Cazorla in the Spanish province of Jaén.

When I arrived, I rented a flat to live in during the school year. The owner, Catalina, was an administrator who worked in the same secondary school as me. She was very friendly and we got on well.

 The school where we worked was in two different buildings separated by a huge exterior staircase. And when I started my new friend told me that, surprisingly, the new construction was built on top of the old cemetery and a lot of coffins had not been claimed so the builders left them there under the building.  She later added - a little embarrassed - that sometimes, strange sounds were heard on the second floor.

 One afternoon several years later, I was alone in the technology workshop where I taught. It was late June, my students had just started holidays and the building was empty. While I was working, the silence was broken by the sound of a rusty metal door slowly opening and closing with a strong bang.  I heard the sound quite clearly and stopped what I was doing to listen for it again.

 Suddenly, I remembered, as I knew the building very well, that there were no metal doors on the second floor.  I was sure of it.  In fact, only metal doors the exit doors on the first floor.  What is more, the other doors, which were wooden, were locked.

 I decide to leave.  Unfortunately, the only way out was in the direction of where the sound had come from.  Gathering up all my courage and I started walking.  Just as I was passing the spot where the noise had come from I heard it again! This time I felt panic and I ran down the stairs to the exit door.  But, just in case anyone was looking, I stopped before opening the door and when I stepped outside, I tried to look relaxed.

 From that moment on, I tried not to be alone there again.

TT 830 Marichi

Base Story

TT 830 Fabiola

Base Story

It was a sunny and windy day some years ago, and I was on vacation in Terçeira, Portugal with my family.    

That day, my parents had planned a field trip, to Pico, which is an island that is very close to the one that we were staying on.  I thought that the trip was going to be lovely because we weren’t just going to visit the island and learn about its history, we were going to make the one hour crossing on a boat so that we would have the opportunity to see dolphins.   

But when we got into the boat and set out, everything started to go wrong.  A storm was approaching and it arrived earlier than the ship captain thought that it would.  The waves quickly became amazingly big, rocking the boat and making progress slow.  At the same time, it was raining cats and dogs.  We all sat inside to weather the storm, but still almost everybody onboard became dizzy and some people got sick.  Finally, as we arrived at Pico three hours later – two later than planned – and we all happily got off the boat, relieved to be on firm ground again.   Some of the passengers were so affected by the journey that they decided to spend the night on the tiny island and leave the next day by plane.

As the day went on, the weather improved and we actually had fun and enjoyed the visit.  Luckily, my family decided to return to Terçeira the same day and, during the return crossing, we had good weather and were able to relax.  Luckily we also had the opportunity to see plenty of dolphins.     

TT 830 Maria Luisa

Base Story

It was 1972, I was fourteen and in my second year at a religious school.  My teacher, who was a nun, had organized an excursion for our class to go to a country house in a nearby village.   The house was owned by one of my classmate’s father who was quite a rich man being that he was the owner of a newspaper in Seville. 

Convincing my father to let me go was very hard work for me, but in the end he agreed.  I was really happy because it was going to be my first trip without my parents and my first on a bus in fact it would be a trip filled with new “firsts”.

When we arrived the nun organized everything including the sleeping arrangements for that night.  There were many beds in the house, but there were more of us girls.  Unluckily for me, I was chosen not to sleep in a bed, but instead was assigned to the floor.  This was another first for me. 

At dinner time that evening we quickly discovered that no one knew how to cook even a Spanish Omelet.  But I was used to helping with the cooking at home and as a result had the opportunity of helping the nun with dinner and got to be the last one to eat.  This was another first for me. 

 That morning when I had gotten on the bus I had been very happy filled with expectation for a new adventure, a feeling that was in stark contrast to how I felt that evening as I lay down on the floor to sleep.  I had never felt as sad and lonely as I did that day.  Another first.  

The trip made me lose my respect for the nun and my classmates and I never went on a trip with my school again.

TT 830 Manuel

Base Story

It was Halloween night, at around 8pm, and my friends and I were celebrating the way most of us do here in Jaén by wandering around the Bulevar – a newly build neighborhood -, as we talked and looked at the other people who were doing the same thing.  None of us were even dressed up except for me though my costume wasn’t much.  My friend Busqui, had given me a fake beard he had lying around in his house, when I saw it I had thought that combined with the long black coat that I was wearing, it would make me look kind of biblical. I decided to put it on and act as if I were a prophet of sorts.

A group of young “canis” approached me with their usual “eh amigo” rhetoric to which I –sticking to my character - responded to with a lecture on the filling and merciful love of God. Everything was going well, until one of them burst out from the back of the group and crushed an egg on my head. I laughed it off, trying not to make the situation any more tense, and left.

However, my friend Javi suggested that we should take our revenge by throwing a firecracker at them, and I, in what later proved to be a quite regrettable choice, agreed. They immediately started running after us, yelling furiously, and as soon as they reached us they threatened to beat us up. They looked a bit pathetic to be honest, but at that moment I was pretty scared, as they looked like the kind of people who wouldn’t mind getting their older friends or family to stab us. To make matters worse, some of my friends were starting to yelling back at them and the situation was escalating quickly. Luckily, I was able to calm them down and we walked away with just some more egg on our shoes - because they're aim was not much better than their taste in clothes.

TT 830 Pablo

A few weeks ago Alberto, my Little brother and I were reunited after being separated for the whole summer.  I did not hear him arrive the night before and was surprised in the morning when he walked out onto the terrace to have a cup of coffee with me.  I could tell that he was excited about something but waited patiently for him to let the cat out of the bag. 

Finally he said, “Pablo, I have something really cool that I want to show you.” 

I was interested and leaned forward as he started to roll up his sleeve to reveal a tiny tattoo that he had paid for that summer.  It was of two swallows, one of which was perched on a clothes line and the other which was just starting to fly. 

I looked up and caught his eye.  We both smiled and started laughing.  This was a symbol of our childhood.  We used to regularly listen to the swallows while lying in bed on homey sunny summer mornings after our mother had come into wake us up.  We would then have a fun breakfast before our grandparents, who lived upstairs, and listen to their old stories.  Finally we would end the morning competing to be the best PlayStation player.  They were magic mornings which always began with the swallows’ song.   

 That morning siting with Alberto, we shared a memory of our past but one which also tells us that we will have to leave home because life continues and we must move on, but we should always remember the good times.    

TT 830 Joan

Base Story

It was the end of summer and I was at the local university, in Jaén, Spain, to do the last part of my college access exam.  I had just finished and felt really happy and excited at the same time.  I was excited because it was then end of my high school years and the beginning of a new adventure at university, even though I didn’t have the exam results yet.   I was also excited because that day I was going to meet a guy who I had known through internet and who was going to start Chemistry just as I wanted to do.   His name was, and still is, Natxo and he is from a town near to Jaén, called La Carolina. 

When I arrived at the meeting point, he was not alone.  Instead he was accompanied with a guy and a girl, Estefania, who had been my friend years before.  Natxo introduced himself and we started talking as if we had known each other for years.  It was a really special moment for both of us.  At some point during the conversation the other guy decided to introduce himself, his name was Pablo (the nephew of Javier). 

This is the first memory that I have of the university and I think that it is because that was the day that I met two of the best friend that I have today, especially Pablo who has helped me with all my problems since then and has shared in all of my joys.