In a piece you’d like to include in your portfolio, pick two characters who interest you and brainstorm how they meet. Under what circumstances? How would they feel about each other? What do they want from each other? Is there a story in this confrontation?

Bob is riding a motorized cart in a grocery store.  It is mid morning on a crisp and sunny October Wednesday.  He is hunched over in his red and blue plaid flannel shirt, his windbreaker unzipped, his hands trembling as they rest on the handles of the cart. Under his watchcap, his face has no expression at all, appearing as if frozen, his eyes wide.  His hands stop trembling as he pushes the forward button on the cart, turns the corner too quickly and almost runs into a young mother pushing a stroller with a big plastic car in the front, in which are sitting a red headed toddler girl and what appears to be her identical twin brother.  They are each holding a box of animal crackers, and are in the process of comparing their tiger and elephant cookies when they almost crash into the old man’s cart.  They look up in surprise, their eyes as wide as his.  The woman is dressed in white sweatpants and a turquoise sweatshirt with clean tennis shoes and turquoise socks.  Her baseball cap is white and a brown pony tail tumbles out from the hole in the back of the hat.  Her lips clamp together, then she takes a deep breath as if to scold the old man, until she sees his masked face and hands, which are trembling again now that the cart has stopped. Parkinson’s.  She knows the signs.  Her father looked just like this.  His eyes reflect fear and apology, he looks at her as if he will cry.  “So sorry” he whispers quietly, his lips not moving.  The woman sees him look at her children, who are still staring at this gnome of a man in wonderment, and notices the very slightest dimple appear on his left cheek.  Without moving his face, his eyes begin to sparkle as he looks at the twins.  He widens his eyes even further and their faces awaken from their staring contest with the old man, and they smile.  The woman’s shoulders soften and her irritation lifts, and she laughs as she says “you need a new driver’s license!”  He looks away from the children who are now getting antsy to get the car moving again – they beep the little horn and they grasp their fingers firmly and move the steering wheel back and forth to make the car “go.”   “Cute – how old?” he mumbles. The woman leans down a little closer to him and with a kind smile tells him they just had their third birthday.  “Have a great grandson who’s three” he offers through lips that barely move.  “But he lives in New York, don’t see him.”  The woman feels her eyes aching, her shoulders fall even lower, as she thinks of her children’s grandfather, dead just six months ago.  He was their only grandfather, and she cannot bear the thought of her little ones growing up without knowing him.  She blinks quickly, swallows the urge to cry.  She asks the man if she and her little ones can help him shop, as she is happy to do if he will be a little more careful of his driving, and suggests he can learn a few tips from watching them.  As he looks back at the children he is able to show some teeth when he smiles and his shoulders move up and down ever so slightly with laughter.  He turns the cart around and they head down the cereal aisle together.