Do you have a favorite sport that you play often?
- Do your friends say you personify the sport?
- How does playing it make you feel?
- What is your history of involvement with the game?
- What special moments do you associate with your sport?
Any of these topics offer opportunities for entertaining and illuminating p + s. People want to know these things about you. Details about you add so much to a scrapbook or a photo album and draw people to it--they enjoy learning exclusive tidbits about you. Combining a picture or pictures with a story is one of the most compact ways to leak a little bit of your uniqueness. You can succinctly tell your pictures with appropriate emotion.
Captions and narratives are traditional, but rhymes, haiku, limericks, repetition, and acrostics are a few alternative writing forms that can connect seemingly unrelated photos with modest or gutsy, earth-shattering or lightweight, self-exposure.
THE (SEEMINGLY UNRELATED) PICTURES
With apologies to Fleetwood Mac (Hear their song Monday Morning)
MONDAY (TENNIS) MORNING (or what tennis can lead to)
Monday morning you sure look fine.
All weekend I've had tennis on my mind
7:30, Craig and I are on Court 3
He's slowly pacing practice balls to me.
When Gib gets there, I'm on my own.
The ball machine is looming like a throne.
Forehands/ backhands/missed volleys/ steady feed.
My strokes are crap!
whoa... they're just crap...damn! I’ll drill
every day if you want me to, skip
exercise I could choose to do,
Got to get some skill in my game.
9:30, you sure look fine.
It seems to me Court 7 can be mine.
My percentage of decent serves is good.
I’d keep this up in Flights if I could.
When Craig joins me to hit some more
We volley, ‘cause my skill with them is poor.
Hits me forehands, and I hit them down the line--
I feel alive! Yeah...
10:45! (so soon) So I
hit with Craig just 5 minutes more,
I'm "practiced-out"; been all over this floor
Gotta get my butt to that side.
Women’s Flights, just my second time;
Everyone’s polite when I miss mine.
I make new friends, even though I rarely score
At Noon I’m really ready for the door.
All this tennis in just one day
Has wrecked my feet in such a painful way.
Need a rubdown, and those hot towels ‘round my legs
A pedicure! Oh, man!
10 dollars more --for hands, so….
Feet get soaked in soapy pails,
Tennis leads to painted nails!
Got to treat myself this way, more!
THE PICTALE
These pictures, cropped and positioned with lined and decorative paper backgrounds, make a fun spread accompanied by the song lyrics, across two pages of an 8.5 x 11.5 Heritage Makers book.
Does it seem like a funny topic to put into a book? The detail is what makes it entertaining! A story like this tells us how the subject spends leisure time, and how she feels about it. This spread will give her grandkids more insight into her background and personality than just a statement that, "Craig and I loved to play tennis." Could you answer these questions?
- Is she a skilled tennis player?
- Does she play outdoors? Indoors? At a tennis club?
- How long does she play on Monday mornings?
- Why does she stop playing with her husband? (2 different times)
- Is she happy with the way she plays? What is her best stroke?
- Does she have endless stamina?
- What's her favorite remedy for pain?
DO SHARE!
What's one interesting fact or story you would want others to know (or would let others find out) about your involvement with sports? If you send your story in an email with a picture to donna@sharefamilystories.com, I'll put it in a future blog post. Otherwise, we can be content with a posted comment--I think you have to click on the word "comment" at the end of this post.
P + S IS BEST! ~Donna
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