The meme is to:
1. Go into your archive
2. Find your 23rd post.
3. Find the fifth sentence (or closest to).
4. Post the text of the sentence in your blog along with these instructions.
5. Tag five other people to do the same.
My 23rd post was called, "A Peaceful Day in Gotham City" (1/18/03) and contained the sentence:
Then together with kid sister E., all bundled up and looking like the little brother on "A Christmas Story".
I'm not going to tag anyone, but instead offer this challenge: Follow the meme, then use the sentence you find in an interesting but totally unrelated short little story.
My name is Palmer. Dirk Palmer, and I've worked the private eye biz on this side of town for 10 years now. Chicago's no better now than it was then, but the class of bums seems to be worse. 5 years of Depression'll do that to a city, but even then people still lose stuff. Wives, husbands, hundred-dollar-bills. You name it, they lose it, I'll find it.
It was only a couple nights ago that she walked into my life - tall, leggy, wearing a tan overcoat that suggested there wasn't much to imagine underneath.
"Mr. Palmer?" she said, breathlessly. I could tell she was hiding something behind her back, but it was too big to be a heater. I looked up from my desk in the mangy hole I call an office and glanced her over.
"Yeah, I'm the guy on the door...what can I do for ya?" I stood up to take a closer look. The look got better the higher I stood...
"Mr. Palmer, I need your help to find something. Something I've...something I've lost. You see...I have two children, and one of them is missing."
Well, I'm all for finding little kids that's lost, but I said, "Why don't you go to the police, Mrs...?"
"Henderlight," she purred, "Sylvia Henderlight. But you see, Mr. Palmer, I can't quite go to the police... my children - well, my children..." She stepped to the side to reveal a small bundle of clothes standing behind her. A little duck about 3 feet high and sucking a lollypop. "My children are in the country illegaly - their father brought them in from Lithuania for a visit, but he died while he was here, and now I can't find my son....Pavlov."
She said this strangely, as if she were making up the name on the spot.
"I last saw him playing in the street outside my townhouse on the East Side. Then together with kid sister E., all bundled up and looking like the little brother on 'A Christmas Story' they both disappeared."
E? I thought to myself. What kind of a name is "E" for a little girl? No stranger than Pavlov, I supposed, and what the heck was "A Christmas Story?" It wasn't even September yet. But she was continuing...
"I found her looking into a sewer grate on 16th and Grand, but Tom--, er, Pavlov was nowhere to be seen. If I go to the police once he's found, they'll be deported back to Romania--"
"Lithuania," I corrected.
"--Lithuania," she continued, not missing a beat, "where they'll be forced to live with their grandparents the Duke and Duchess of Fordingham for the rest of their lives, working in the barley fields...."
She paused, milking the moment. For some reason there was something about her story that didn't ring true...
Update: Ok, guess nobody wants to be creative...
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