Blog Ideas

More than a couple of readers have asked, “Where do you get ideas for your blog?”  The latest person to ask was my wife.

“Ideas are all around,” I explained.  “All you have to do is keep your eyes and ears open.”  Saturday night we were on the way to dinner, in celebration of our tenth anniversary.

We were in an area where she used to live.  As we pass a new shopping center, she says, “Good.  It’s about time they put Steinmart here.”

“Sweetie, you don’t live here anymore.  It does not matter,” I said.

“Yeah, you’re right,” she agreed.  “Besides, they didn’t include a Steinmart here.  They should have – I have been saying for years this area needs one.”

I reply with a non-committal, “Humpf.”  We drive another mile and find yet more construction – another shopping plaza.  With a Steinmart prominently placed in the middle of all the stores.

“’Bout time they listened to me,” she said. 

“That’s a blog,” I said.

“What?” she asked.

“That’s a blog,” I repeated.

“You mean I’m going to have to watch everything I say around you from now on?  Or it might end up in your blog?”

“Anything is possible,” I say, smiling.  I keep driving and we keep thinking about which restaurant to go to for dinner.

Then she starts reminiscing about her days in college at the University of Florida.  I was there at the same time, and as it turned out, we were nearby during the same events – like the streaking. 

In the mid-1970s, kids decided they could get away with streaking (running very, very fast) through a classroom, preferably just before a final exam.  Naked. 

We reminisced about how it turned into a mass-streaking event with about 2000 to 3000 participants.  We observed with that number of streakers, they didn’t have to run so fast.  The university police along with the Gainesville Police decided there were way too many kids to try to arrest.  So the students switched from being streakers, to well, ah, being “lollers.”

As we finish the conversation about the streakers, we drive by a familiar building where she and her girlfriends listened to a particular local band when the place used to be a neighborhood bar.  After talking about UF in the 1970s, my wife switches to talking about the Celtic band she and her girlfriends liked to listen to when the band played gigs at the bar.  She and her friends went to listen once, maybe twice.  Probably drank a beer or two, also.  One of the singers, she says, wore a kilt.  All these years later, she still wonders what he wore under the kilt.

She has already forgotten that what is said could be used in a blog.  And it was only a couple of minutes ago we that we had that discussion.

We decide on a restaurant and as we walk in to enjoy a wonderful meal and time together, I think about all the blog topics she may supply me with in the future.  This is going to be good, I think.  I will have material to write about for a very long time.

Then I think, I can’t believe ten years has already flown by.  Thank you, Sweetie, for a wonderful decade.

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© 2010 J. Clark

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