After posting several AOKs with my handy iPhone app, I realized that these AOKs, these brief glimpses into each other’s daily lives, serve the same function as some of the best fiction: they show us how similar we are, how our day-to-day is full of opportunities to put a smile on someone’s face, and help us to remember that, as Oprah preached for the last time on Wednesday, not a’one of us is ever alone. Sappy, yes. But gosh, AOKs are great, and so sometimes I must wax poetic. Oprah’s great, too. But alas, all good things…In keeping with the brevity of most AOK acts and observations such as, “Gave my last onion to my flatmate who needed it for his recipe,” and “Invited a stranger to join me for lunch,” you can imagine my delight when I happened upon a little book called Hint Fiction: An Anthology of Stories in 25 Words or Fewer. Edited by Robert Swartwood, this exercise in brevity was undertaken by literary luminaries and their aspiring counterparts. The story I opened to that made me want to own this little gem? Written by Jess Row, entitled “A Quiet American:”
He realized, taking a long swig from his beer, that no one had told
him whether swallowing the octopus was guaranteed to kill it.
Awesome. And an instant reminder that I may still have watermelon seeds growing in my stomach from swallowing them 15 years ago. Yikes. Even more awesome? That AOK about inviting a stranger to lunch told a whole tale in just 8 words, and it’s not even fiction.
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