What’s the adventure that could happen in a grocery store? Depends on the writer. But I wanted a prompt that would get us thinking about adventures in very ordinary settings.
Like an Alfred Hitchcock movie. North By Northwest begins when typical business man Roger Thornhill waves over a waiter who is calling out for Mr. George Kaplan. Enemy agents think Thornhill attracted the water’s attention because he is Kaplan and the movie kicks off. … And Then She Was Gone, a TV-movie my dad enjoyed years ago, stars Robert Urich as another typical business man riding a subway. He notices a preschool girl on the train. After she gets off, he sees a missing child poster and realizes the child pictured is the preschooler he saw.
So what’s the adventure for this photo? Here’s mine.
“Mom, do you want Cheerios?” I held out the cereal box to her.
Mom was staring down the aisle of the grocery store like she’d just seen a snake slither into it. “That’s-that’s ….”
I followed her gaze. A heavily bearded man was putting Raisin Bran in his shopping cart.
“It can’t be.” Mom whispered.
“What?”
Mom pushed our cart. “That man. He looks exactly like the father of a boy who committed suicide my senior year in high school.”
“That’s weird. Your hometown is a thousand miles from here. But you could run into his brother. It’s weird but not scary.”
Mom picked up the pace. “He was an only child.”
“Maybe it is the father.”
“And he hasn’t aged in thirty years? I’m pretty sure Rob’s father died shortly after Rob did. If Rob did die.”
I grabbed hold of the cart. “You said he committed suicide.”
“They found his car in the river, and he left a note in his bedroom. His body was never found. His girlfriend died under suspicious circumstances, and he was a suspect.” Mom’s stunned eyes locked onto mine.
I glanced around. “Which way did he go?”
