love, love, love this. a blog devoted to one sentence stories. oh, and they have to be true stories (for this site, that is). it takes a bit of thinking to develop a story in one sentence, something with a bit of teeth, with character(s), with an arch (or the tease of an arch).
here are a handful of my favorite examples from the site:
I learned to believe a person when they say, “Trust me, that’s flammable.”
If there was ever a good time to stop drinking, it was this morning when I woke up next to a woman in a giraffe costume.
If I had known I was going to accidentally turn my head to face yours at just the right moment, I would have chosen a much more romantic setting than a Walgreen’s parking lot.
As the man sitting next to me on the plane bragged about how he had died three times, I crossed my fingers and quietly prayed for us to land before number four.
oh, this one is great — so rarely can so few words tell so much:
My spare tire was also flat.
and, here are a few of my own – true stories from my own life!
It was an unfortunate moment to realize i was losing my grip on the flagpole rope, as i looked up at the sleeping bag containing my friend.
Standing in front of a classroom containing the girl i was wooing, in a school that was not my own, i knew there was no backing out once i sang the first note.
When the smell from the battery was too much to bear, we pulled a stick of deoderant from a duffel bag and swiped it across the skin just under our noses.
come on — let’s make this a contest! add your own as a comment, and i’ll award a “ys book of your choice” award to the best one! i’ll close the contest and announce a winner wednesday night.
(ht to neatorama)
and the winner is…
this was really hard! there were so many fantastic ones – 7 of us are on a ys leadership team retreat, and i kept reading them to everyone as they came in as blog-generated emails to my blackberry.
so, tough call, but i’m going to give it to kristi, for:
As an 8th grade girl walked in from the yard with her teeth in her hands, I realized that 8 people jumping on one trampoline was not the brightest idea.
let me know what book you want, kristi.
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Even his tombstone was shaped like a motorcycle.
Looking down at his own funeral, he was more struck by those who hadn’t made it than by those who had.
Looking down at the knife sticking out of my stomach, I realized that hitting a junkie with my car was not necessarily the worst thing to happen that week.
(true story!)
Casually saying goodbye I didn’t realize it would be our last.
Falling down three flights of stairs was my grand entrance to community college.
Three months provided the courage to tell her i liked her, but not the brains to spell her name right.
no wonder 8th grade sucked
(my mom used this one on us when we were kids and were whining)
“I once cried because I had no shoes until I met a man who had no feet.”
gordon, chris and steve – true stories? one sentence true stories.
Surely she could have told me about ‘Dave the Boyfriend’ sometime over the past week, and not right after I asked her out.
or
Having avoided the fire safety meeting wasn’t a big deal until the toast gets a out of control and your main concern is not the safety of the young people but instead not disturbing the fire safety meeting with flames and smoke.
or
In retrospect it wasn’t that suprising that the Moderator of the Church of Scotland didn’t find the ‘erect banana’ gag as funny as we did.
In hindsight, letting a dozen middle school boys eat $100 worth of Taco Bell bean burritos half way through spending the night might have been a mistake.
or
Unfortunately, I discovered as I tried to clean it out of my hair and body that I had gotten the recipe for five gallons of green slime wrong.
Confident after my interview with the senior pastor for a youth pastor position, I found a restroom where I observed, with surprise, that I was side-peeing the person in the adjacent urinal who had suddenly materialized out of nowhere and who bore an uncanny resemblance to the senior pastor I’d just interviewed with.
All the sudden I realized, “Oh, you’re not a boy at all.”
As I fell to the floor in utter agony, I realized I had just dislocated my knee playing shuffleboard.
Don’t laugh, it really is a true story!
The last thing I remember is the floor spinning beneath me as I slipped into a dream that seemed more real than reality itself.
as we rode away in the ambulance, i pondered just how my wife busted her knee & passed out playing scrabble.
Birthday emotions can quickly go from cheerful to gloomy when a bride-to-be breaks her nose surfing eleven days before the wedding.
Two scraped knees later Marko realized that reaching for a fallen IPOD, on a moving treadmill, is not a good idea.
Does it count if it’s someone else’s story?
As I lay on the ground bleeding, peices of plaster from the ceiling falling all around me, I realized that the “No horse-play in the church building” rule may be a good idea after all.
Backing up on the Dan O’Ryan in Chicago is never a good idea but even worse in a 15 passenger van with 13 screaming Middle Schoolers.
We all survived but Ed never drove again.
While commenting on blog Christopher realized he must have “Irish” on the brain because he said the Dan O’Ryan and not the Dan Ryan.
As I stood with my arms around my girlfriend of two months, sweat beads formed on my brow as I realised I couldn’t remember her name, and it was then I decided the writing was on the wall for this relationship.
I had to stifle a laugh as my son told the technician putting the cast on his arm that he had forgotten he didn’t know how to stop on his skateboard.
14 years and 4 kids later, and they’re finally convinced I could marry my best friend a week and a half after high school.
she paused, and standing on her tiptoes, reached over and lifted the lid, and found what she was looking for.
Skateboarding down the driveway on my knees, I felt my teeth explode as my friend’s skateboard, that he had been riding normally, was kicked into my mouth.
and then after having my braces off…
Sprinting after the airborne frisbee in the Mervyn’s parking lot, I was suddenly assaulted by a light pole that decided my fixed teeth needed a second round.
We were just about there, but at my last attempt to pull myself completely up and in, the garbage can slipped, and I was left suspended in mid air by my neck from the bathroom window.
I wish I would have checked the expiration date before taking a drink.
I should have saw the right hook coming in my awkward fight with the one armed man.
I should have seen, perhaps!!
As the plane door swung opened at 14,000 feet I realized a cool DNOW video wasn’t worth this.
As I said before officer (at disney world), I am dressed like a creepy Pirate talking to small children for a summer camp video.
who could have imagined that one conversation at a youth workers conference would open so many doors, generate so many dreams, and fulfill so many longings.
It’s amazing how quickly 8th graders’ directions can change from “Keep going you’ve got lots of room,” to “Stop! You’re scratching the van!”
or
As I watched flames begin to consume my cheese-bread, I realized not everyone looks at a rotary toaster oven in that situation and wonders how big the fire will get.
Being a junior in high school, I should have realized that the mime routine that I had chosen for the school talent show was not as cool as I thought.
The sixth-grader’s zeal to help float the candle boats in the dark for worship was admirable until he walked into the pond and exclaimed, “shit!”
It was when i was playing a youth game with raw eggs that I discovered that if you make a 7th grade boy throw up while playing a game…it’s a great game!
It was only after he uttered the words, “anyone with 2 arms and legs could do it,” that we saw the prosthesis protruding from her cuff.
The innocent question of “what happened there?” to the girl with the cast turned into a horrifying moment when she responded with “I was born without an arm” – so THAT is what a prosthetic arm looks like!
Asking the 5 year old girl to demonstrate riding the monkey bike in front of the entire camp was a great idea…until I was informed afterwards that it was a 14 year old midget.
(The joys of being in charge of activities at summer camps!)
About 8 awkward minutes into the cell conversation Jeff frantically wondered what else he had revealed about himself to the wrong Brian from his speed dial.
…and…
I didn’t know your wife was pregnant?!?
Mike: “I have an idea, let’s write down all these ideas, staple them together and try selling them at the Christian Education Conference”
If you drop a $4500 video projector from a 10 foot ladder it will bounce before it shatters into a thousand pieces.
The nurse said, “Drink this first cuz we’re going to shove a 3 foot optical house up your butt and have a look around.”
His ’55 chevy overhaul was done, the engine roared, his tires spun, the gas pedal stuck, and then he slammed straight into a concrete wall.
oops… optical hose not optical house. HAAA! Sorry to add a typo to the land of one sentence comments. You’d think I could get that right when limited to one line.
within moments of daring the student to throw the football at one of the girls, i found myself with a bruising reminder that some teenagers are willing to do anything.
Hey Ya’ll Watch This!
I am from Georgia….most of the time thes are famous last words of a Redneck!
As an 8th grade girl walked in from the yard with her teeth in her hands, I realized that 8 people jumping on one trampoline was not the brightest idea.
we were disappointed that the frozen underpants thawed so quickly on the flagpole.
it wasn’t until he was randomly selected for additional screening that he realized he wasn’t wearing underwear
…and he started his testimony with, “Well…I always wanted to be a fireman when I grew up…”.
He suddenly realized the only person harder to understand than a Scotsman is a stuttering Scotsman.
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