The Story of Life as we Know It

We write the story of our life one thought, one daydream, one word at a time. I'm on my 50th draft of a story called "Barry" and it's very much a work in progress - red pens and Post-it notes everywhere. The older I get, the more I enjoy the revision process, asking "What if?" and "Why not?"



Thursday, June 9, 2016

Midgets in the Mist

At an Internet marketing seminar, I bumped into an old friend (literally), someone I worked with thirty years ago. Our conversation included a fond memory from the fall of 1987 when we made a trip from Birmingham, Alabama, to Marin County just north of San Francisco, to learn how to draw on what was one of the most sophisticated computer graphics systems in the world at that time. Exciting work.

On our first morning, the hotel fire alarm went off around 6 a.m. I staggered about, hopping into jeans and pulling on a tee-shirt and then made my way out into the hall barefoot where a dozen midgets were blazing a trail to the exit door. I blinked and rubbed my eyes. In the parking lot - where there were at least another dozen midgets milling about - I looked around for my friend, who should have been pretty easy to spot in this crowd. When I found her, she was standing next to Ron Howard, a.k.a. Opie Taylor and Richie Cunningham (or as Eddie Murphy might say, Opie Cunningham).

I rubbed my eyes again. I blinked. After making his acquaintance, I learned Mr. Howard was directing a film called "Willow" that was shooting in nearby Muir Woods. Before 6:05 a.m. on my first day in California, I stood in an asphalt jungle with midgets in the mist, experiencing a California film-world fantasy. It was a wonderful, spontaneous prologue for a day of high-speed training on high-tech computer graphics. Now, it's a memory I laugh about with my kids, a memory I almost filed too far back in the file drawer.

Do you have a funny memory you can share with someone today?

1 comment:

  1. This was so funny! I laughed until I cried. Thanks for sharing such a humorous episode from life. Lee Ann

    ReplyDelete

Thanks for reading my blog and taking time to comment.