Since Peter T. has headed south, I thought I would take a stab at this for today.

In one place I lived, there was a shabbily dressed man whom I always saw with his fingers in his ears. I was never able to figure out why he did it. So I invented a story by which I made sense of him. This was one of the first stories I have invented for myself about people I often see but have never met.

There was a woman I used to see on the beach in Rio de Janeiro. She was blond and beautiful. She wore a leopard-skin patterned bikini and arrived at the beach at the same time every day. She would plant her umbrella in the sand, lay out her towel and then spend a few hours just reading a book as she lay there. I was fourteen. It was like the opening scenes of the movie, "Summer of '42". Years later, when "The Girl from Ipanema" was released, I decided that it just HAD to be about her. Yes, the name of the beach was "Ipanema". The story line of the song was my story.

Then there was a guy in West Virginia that everyone knew as "Bang-bang Thompson". Nobody knew exactly where he lived. But at least once a week he would appear in town and would be carrying a cardboard box upon which he would drum (or as a friend of mine used to call it: "thubber") - thus the name, "Bang-bang". He would go to various businesses in town and the shopkeepers would usually slip things into his box: a pair of socks, a banana, a comic book and other small items. Nobody knew much about him. So I made up a little story about him for myself so that I could make sense of him.

"There was never yet an uninteresting life. Such a thing is an impossibility. Inside of the dullest exterior there is a drama, a comedy, and a tragedy." - Mark Twain