RemembeRED: The Story of my Life

Prompt: Congratulations! Your best selling memoir has just been optioned by a major motion picture studio, and the producers want you advising on the script. Write the opening scene for the movie. Would you begin with a visual montage? Voice-over? Flashback or forward? A conversation? The trick here is to look through a lens. The camera needs to tell the story through visuals, action, dialogue. Yeah, I'm not really very secure about this, but I'm trying it anyway. Fake it 'til you make it, right?

Flash Forward: The scene begins at a nursing home situated on a hill. Two little old ladies are sitting hunched closely together in their wheelchairs on the porch. One of the ladies, Laura, is watching the cars passing by at the bottom of the hill very intently; the other woman, Tina, has dozed off, her head slumped so that her chin rests on her chest. She snores a little, and there may be sleep drool. Laura notices that her friend is asleep. She smiles, then leans over to adjust the blanket that covers the legs of her friend, then pats her hand. She then returns to her car watching.

A red Volkswagon Beetle speeds by. Laura suddenly sits up straighter in her wheelchair, and her eyes light up with what might be described as fiendish glee. She leans toward her friend Tina and punches her in the arm as hard as she can, yelling "Slugbug!" Laura cackles loudly, and does a turn on her wheelchair, as if celebrating a victory. A very startled Tina jumps upright in the middle of a snort, her blanket flying. She puts her hand on her chest and takes a deep breath. Tina turns to Laura, rubbing her bruised arm.

"What the hell you doing, Laura?" Tina angrily asks. "Why did you hit me? "

"Slugbug!" was all Laura could say, because she is still giggly/cackly, and it's making her start to cough a bit and probably tinkle in her diaper a bit. Tina then recalled that her friend had been waiting for several weeks for VW Beetle to pass by. Just so Laura could yell "Slugbug!" and punch someone in the arm. It was on Laura's bucket list.

Tina sighs heavily, shakes her head and smiles. Flashback; The camera transitions to the front of a college dorm, with Tina and Laura staring down a hill watching traffic go by. A VW Beetle goes by slowly. Laura leans over and punches Tina in the arm, yelling "Slugbug!" Tina rubs her arm where the punch landed, smiles.

The action proceeds from there.