If there is one thing that I can say about myself is that I am an observer.  I am always watching, listening, observing everything around me.  I tend to notice things that other people don’t.  Over the years, I have always delighted in picking up snippets of conversation of people that I pass by and wondering where the conversation was going or where it started.  Am I alone in doing this?

Occasionally, these little moments of conversation will spur on an idea or catch me in such  a way that I need to jot them down.  Who knows when you might find the perfect reason to use them?  I’ve started keeping a list of pieces of dialogue, ideas, characters, etc. with a hope that I can someday use some of them.

Over the past couple of weeks, I’ve had three specific snippets of conversation that have stuck with me.  The first was by a 4-5 year old kid who said to another child “ça va faire mal à la butt-crack, Nicholas!”  It struck me as so funny at in the moment.  While I know what the context of the dialogue was, I’d rather leave it unspecified here and let you make up your own scenario.

The second was a day or two ago, walking through our building while at work.  “Just let me touch your butt.”  That was it. And they were gone.

The most recent happened today, again at work when I overheard someone utter the phrase “It never fails – every time someone gets up to ask you a question, you’re picking your nose.”

I don’t know that I’ll ever really need or have the opportunity to use these pieces of dialogue in anything I write, but I like to think that by sharing them with you all, you’ll at least imagine a scenario where these bits and bobs were being used.

Happy imagining!