There's not enough years underneath this belt for me to admit the way that I felt...
It wasn't until I was older that I began to appreciate garage sales. There's a kind of magic in buying used junk from random strangers. Everything has a story, even if the story is "I bought these for my kids but then they never used them". It was on one of these treasure hunting excursions that I found a "well loved" IBM Selectric typewriter. The urge to write had been stronger than ever that week, but I hadn't been able to put my pen to paper. I couldn't get home fast enough to clear a spot for it on my desk and start pounding away at it. Pages and pages of random ideas poured out, bits and pieces of stories that I figured I'd piece together into something coherent once my brain slowed down. That was the first day.
The second day was spent staring blankly at the keys.
As was the third and the fourth and the fifth. Ghosts of ideas floated around in my brain like dust motes. Every time I'd reach out to grab one, it'd suddenly dance out of reach. These days the typewriter just sits on my desk, a relic waiting for me to use it and abuse it. Occasionally I plink at the keys like a child at a piano, but still nothing comes out of me.
