#18 of 365: Miss Murphy (5th grade)
Gah, I loathed you. You overcompensated for your youthful inexperience by being a humorless bitch, and you tried (unsuccessfully) to kick me off the track team for sneaking a rest during laps. Hope you mellowed out.

#17 of 365: Mrs. Kemnitzer (4th grade)
A pint-sized legend among elementary teachers. My parents still use the pig cutting-board your husband cut and we sanded. Your vivid Swiss vacation stories rocked our small-town worldviews. You excelled at encouraging imagination and celebrating creativity.

#16 of 365: Mrs. Allen (3rd grade)
You reminded me of a dark-haired Carol Brady - always upbeat, but nothing got past you. The year after I was in your class, you gave me a teacher's aide gig, coming in early to staple worksheets.

#15 of 365: Mrs. Smith (2nd grade)
Curly-headed and pretty. Pregnant with twin girls, you took maternity leave before year end. One baby, named Stacy, passed away. Our classroom's Stacy was so upset at the news that she vomited in the lunch line.

OK, by overwhelming demand, I'm going to start with grade school teachers. Those scandalous Other Women will just have to cool their heels for now.

#14 of 365: Mrs. Womer (1st Grade)
Silvery mushroom hair, distinctive perfume, and a kind voice. You helped me learn to count using beans, and you didn't get mad when I sobbingly confessed to jamming the sharpener by sticking my pencil in eraser-first.

#13 of 365: Jamie M.
You had the best Halloween birthday parties. We lost our platinum-haired ringleader when you moved to Spokane, but visiting your family's Idaho cabin was idyllic. We named your dad "Mr. George". You're a preacher's wife now.

#12 of 365: Justin S.
Junior year you manifested, taking KU by storm. You were unprecedented - honors student and metalhead party-god. My friends had crushes on you, but I didn't... They were outraged when I made out with you. Sorry, ladies!

#11 of 365: Professor Huelshoff
My favorite Poli Sci professor. Dry-witted, good lecturer. You sorta reminded me of Richard Dreyfuss. You loved your Labrador and loathed Bavarians. I had one very inappropriate dream about you; going to class afterward was mortifying.

#10 of 365: Mr. Snyder
Gravel-voiced company founder and recreational tyrant. Smoking constantly, you'd lurch around finding excuses to bitch. People abused lunch breaks; business-card vendors switched cardstocks without permission (they hadn't; like yourself, your sample card was discolored with age).

#9 of 365: Marijo D.
My dorm buddy. Your distinctive drawl made everyone assume you were Southern, not native Oregonian. Superstar athlete, curly-topped, impossibly pretty, studious, level-headed, hilarious - you had perfect everything (until basketball wrecked your knee). I liked you anyway.

#7 of 365: Odette N.
You introduced me to the Philippines when we became penpals. I liked you. Then we turned 15; you began asking whether I knew any single men interested in writing a pretty Filipina. I stopped writing back.

I figure that since I've already committed to the x365 thing, I may as well take a stab at doing NaBloPoMo as well. There are prizes!

#6 of 365: Tommy T.
I hated that others teased you. You lived near me, and although you had anger problems at school, we got along fine. You moved after 4th grade; I hope the next school was happier for you.

#5 of 365: Chris H.
We were in so many of the same classes in college, and got along so well, that it's odd we never became better friends. That constant booger in your nose did kind of bug me, though.

#4 of 365: Gary Riley
Shaggy and funny, you frequented our Pier 1 for candles and incense. Flirtatious Amy recognized you from "Summer School"; you'd filmed "Stand By Me" in Oregon and returned, escaping struggling-actor-land. Wikipedia says you died this June.

#2 of 365: James Y.
I crushed hard on you in grade school. I thought you looked like Superman. Your rich parents would fly a flag on days we neighbor kids could use your pool, but you never joined us. Snob.

Oh, you all (both of you) know what a sucker I am for Internet memes.

The latest is x365 - where you write about 365 people you've met, using only a certain pre-defined format, such as the same # of words as your current age (the guy who started it did so as a way to mark his 40th birthday). So, following that format, I get 36 words per person. That's a hardship for a long-winded writer like me. I think it's going to be a good lesson in brevity.

I'm going to try to keep my list, for now, to people whom I've only met once or a couple of times, or whom I only knew casually but who've stayed in my memory for some reason. I may not always know their names, but that's OK too. So, I'm just going to start with the very first random person who springs to mind:

#1 of 365: Aggie
A kind elderly lady; I used to visit you on neighborhood walkabouts at age 5. One day, your husband Craig stopped coming home. Because you were lonely without him, I looked for him everywhere I went.

The first assignment from the creative writing class I'm taking at Stanford, "Experiments in Writing and Revision", is to "seek out an unusual place and write a description using as much sensory detail as possible".

Finding a truly unusual place seemed like it'd be an easy task. The more I considered it, though, the less I could identify any place that would be both unusual enough to provide lots of "sensory details" to describe, yet also lend itself to my hanging out there long enough to take in the details I needed to convey.

In the end, deadline looming, I decided on a Mexican restaurant near our house. Housed in what seems to be a small former warehouse that was probably used for processing harvested fruit from one of the orchards that used to dominate this part of the Bay, it is one of the more unique places we've visited since moving here - although the more I (over)think about it, the more trite a subject it seems. As Eric so astutely commented, "What it needs is someone at the bar lighting every match in an oversized pack and letting each one burn down to his big fingers." Yeah.

Anyway, whatever, here's what I wrote. Bearing in mind that this was an exercise in description, not plot or character... I tried not only to use as much "sensory detail" as I could, but also to imply rather than state certain details, such as the fact it's a restaurant, what time of day it is, and the role of the lady at the bar. Meta meta meta! I'll shut up now.

***
Three reinterpretations of Frida Kahlo self-portraits dominated the wall over the arch-framed bar in Cabrito's. The whimsical composition of the portraits varied - in one, the artist wore a hat resembling a basket woven of pink snakes, in another a parrot rested on her shoulder, and in the last she clutched an armful of calla lilies - but her stern expression was the same in all. Placing an order under her surveillance seemed something to be approached with careful consideration, as if the wrong choice of appetizer might provoke some Montezuma-style retribution from her irascible spirit.

The Fridas' gimlet-eyed stares aside, however, the vibrancy of the portraits complemented and informed the overall d�cor of Cabrito's. The flowers in Frida #3 were replicated everywhere. Fresh lilies gleamed in wide-mouthed ceramic vases, molded plaster lilies climbed up support beams like sugar ants, and painted lilies bloomed in a garden of frames. The walls of the former fruit-packing warehouse were startlingly vivid � turquoise, orange, violet, green. The dining table chairs were semi-circular, woven with wooden switches and upholstered in rough, rust-colored pigskins. The sides of the chairs were so high that only the tallest guests could use them for armrests without feeling awkward, elbows half-elevated like a startled hen, and the seat just narrow enough to make everyone try anyway. On the tables were paper placemats offering lessons in rudimentary Spanish. Bway-nos DEE-ahs! Kee-see-AIR-ah. En-chee-LA-da. GRAH-see-as.

At one end of the room was an elevated, polished oak floor, which featured live flamenco or mariachi bands every Friday evening, and karaoke every Wednesday and Saturday. Overhead were enlargements of old black-and-white photos featuring former luminaries of the scene, musicians and dancers, most of them men wearing traditional embroidered shirts and caballero hats. One slouching, pencil-mustached suavecito, however, sported a creamy 1940's zoot suit � wide-brimmed hat, oversized jacket with fat lapels and padded shoulders, skinny belt and wingtip shoes. His hands were jammed into his pockets and one foot jutted out toward the camera.

Latin music drifted out into the dining area from the kitchen along with the tang of sauteeing onions and chiles, sizzling smoky carnitas, and the sweet aroma of fresh corn tortillas. One of the line cooks was singing along to the radio, a ballad which sounded like a brassy Tejano version of �Killing Me Softly�. He was pouring his heart into the song, belting out the long, soulful tones of the chorus as if he were standing not over a sweltering cooktop, but rather below his lover's window, trying to convince her to throw him a rope.

At the end of the bar, the bartender was leaning against the sink chatting with the occupant of the farthest stool, a buxom woman with toffee skin and a bottle-blond hairdo that had apparently survived the past thirty years without any major overhauls. She nodded and smiled at the bartender's gossipy tone while her manicured nails tick-ticked on the pads of a 10-key sitting next to a small stack of papers and a half-finished margarita (�Only hand-squeezed lime juice in our Margarita's always!� read the sign painted across the bar window). She ripped a printout off the calculator, folded it and handed it across the bar. As the bartender placed the paper in the register, his gaze shifted to a young waitress striding out to refill water glasses at the single occupied table. When the girl turned back toward the wait station, he suddenly found great interest in a rack of clean shot glasses on the counter, glinting in the slanted light from the front window. As he grabbed one, however, he jerked his fingers back and sucked in his breath, shaking his hand. The blond lady laughed. The Fridas glared.

***

Eh, you know. Not exactly Hemingway, or even Sheryl Crow, for that matter; but it's a start.