The Way of Paths

The Way of Paths

“This never happened before.”

Ted heard Angela say it through the doorway. Curious, he walked in. “What?”

“What?” Angela asked, frowning.

“What never happened before?”

“Is that a general question concerning earth, or are you going to give me a clue?”

“You said it first!” Ted said.

“I didn’t...” she suddenly remembered, “Oh, yes, I did... sorry.”

“So what never happened before?”

“I don’t know... it’s my story prompt for creative writing. Mr. Banks makes us do one a day. He never gives us clues or anything! Just a story that has ‘This never happened before,’ in it.”

“Oh,” Ted said, losing interest.”

“It’s not that easy!” Angela snarled.

“Yes easy! Just think of something that never happened before!”

“Like?”

“Like... ah...”

“Exactly, because it never happened before.”

“What if you used it like a goof up, ‘This NEVER happened before.’ Like you did it a million times and it never happened that way. OR, ‘This never HAPPENED” before.’ Like the whole thing went wrong for the first time ever!” OR, a good thing! “THIS never happened before!’ like finally it’s going in the right direction!”

“That’s great, but what is the ‘this’ in all these scenarios?”

“Hey, it’s your homework,” he left.

Angela wrote a story about her dog wetting on the back hall floor. She thought that was pretty good since they didn’t actually have a dog.

Ted spent the afternoon thinking up dozens of ideas. Finally feeling like he was going crazy, he started jotting them down. Over the next year, he wrote a story about every idea he’d had that day, and many other stories too.

Ted eventually became very successful as a writer. Angela on the other hand, barely passed Creative Writing class that year, so she went in another direction. She became a teacher.