Boring sentences are boring.
Let’s spice those babies up by pumping them full of JUICE!
During the last stream, a subscriber requested that we unpack some boring sentences with “thought verbs” in them.
We looked at “thought verbs” before and why popular author Chuck Palahniuk hates them.
This time, chat came up with some sentences that used thought verbs, voted on their favorites, and then we expanded them.
The goal in expanding them was to, rather than “tell” the reader the boring information, instead to “show” them the details that would allow them to extrapolate that information for themselves.
The first one chat voted for was this: (“thought verbs” underlined) “I desperately clung on to what I knew had to be true, even when it defied my lived reality.”
And here’s what we wrote:
Me: Santa Claus had to be real. My parents wouldn’t lie to me like that. I believed them about so many other things, like those nasty vegetables being worth eating or that going to school wasn’t a waste of time. If Santa wasn’t real, then neither were those things either. No, the other kids were wrong. Magic was real, and I was going to prove it.
Joe: I’m short at 5’7. My beer-belly protrudes under my t-shirt. I’m balding and below average in the look department. This can’t be happening. It can’t be true. Girls, these groups of girls kept looking at me giggling as I shopped at Safeway. They were laughing at me. Like usual. No one gets thirsty over a short man like me. Now way. But they kept smiling at me.
bobicus_: I desperately clung to the idea that ghosts weren’t real. I did this despite the apparitions I saw at night, despite the voices that rang in my head, strange, as if they were my own. After all, everyone knew ghosts weren’t real. Even people who woke up each night with strange dreams and stranger marks all over their body.
Next was this one: “It wasn’t until I was in my 20’s when I realized my dad never wanted a daughter.”
Me: During my teens it was a relief that my dad always seemed to be welcoming of my boyfriends. I was just happy that he didn’t pull out the shotgun or anything. In fact, far from it, he’d beam at them, shake their hand, and invite them out the garage to help tune up his 1955 Chevrolet Bel-Air — the make and model I’d heard more than enough to memorize. And I’d be left all alone with Mom in the kitchen, standing around as she whistled and made macaroni salad for dinner, wondering who was dating who. When I brought Benny home from college, and Dad did the same thing, not even saying a word to me but laughing with Benny and chatting him up all night, the truth finally hit me.
Joe_G89: In the front yard during the picnic, my dad was drunk and insisted on playing catch with the football. I said fine so he would shut up about it. I gripped my fingers around the laces, trying not to get my nails caught, and tossed it without spilling my Long Island Iced Tea. It twirled sideways, dropped a few feet in front of me. My dad yelled, “Come on, throw like a goddamn man for once in your life.”
bobicus_: Maybe it was the pixie haircuts when I was 14, maybe it was all the sports and video games he tried to get me to play. Dad always treated me as though I could be his son. That never bothered me, until I brought Rick home and I saw the look of pure disgust on my dad’s face. Well, maybe he’d take the news that I liked Katie, too, a little better.
AlyxVixen: “I grew up in the shadows of my elder brothers, the paragons in my father’s eye. He never treated me differently from them but there was always a distance between us. This distance grew and matured as I did until late into college when at a family meal during a holiday, he got drunk and blurted out ‘Honey, why couldn’t you be like your brothers… you know, a boy?’ ”
It disappointed me to be sent to college with the same old computer I had in high school, but then again, it still worked alright. Waste not, want not, or something. And, hey, fixing it up over the years had built up my passion for electronics that got me into college to begin with. I’d use that knowledge to get a 4.0 in my first semester, and surely, my parents would be proud and get me something nice.
I could show them I was good enough. That I was worth it too. “But then again,” whispered a dark part of your mind, “Could you *ever* be as good as a son?”
Next was this one: “I think my teacher likes me more than the other students.”
Me: Ms. Jennings always treated me better than the other kids. She’d write little notes at the top of my spelling quizzes when I got all of them right, like “Super nice work!” or “You’re on a roll!” The one time I forgot my math homework at home, and I went up to her desk to tell her before class, she just winked at me and said as long as I brought it in tomorrow it could be “our little secret.” Honestly, I think she’s in love with me. And today, I brought a Ring Pop to ask her to marry me.
bobicus_: It’s not fun being singled out to not be punished. I pay attention in class, I’m in the front row seat every day, but only because I get so tired of seeing Mrs. Hannaman yell herself hoarse everyday at the uncaring class. When she gives the whole class detention, except for me? Everyone hates me already. Does she want them to hate me like they hate her?
Joe: During our college English exam, Ms. Bernard slowly paced back and forth where I was sitting, front row center. Her black heels click-clacked softer when she got closer to my desk. She knelt down in front of me, smiling, and said “my test results came back, so you’re gonna have to stay after class.” Then she licked her lips, got up, and walked away.
*RIIIING* Class was over. I wasn’t finished, but I couldn’t finish anyway. So I gave Ms. Klein the paper and ran away. It would be bad, and I didn’t want to see it anymore.
But to my surprise, Mrs. Klein handed it back the next day with an A. My fingers would be alright. It was clear I didn’t do the assignment right, so I guess Ms. Klein just likes me more than the other students.
Next was this one: “I knew what they wanted, but I refused to let them realize their paltry dreams.”
Me: I watched the sickeningly adorable high school couple get into the ferris wheel car, their elbows locked as they both licked the same ice cream cone. Made me want to vomit all over my console. I knew what those two wanted. A trip straight to the top, where they could look over the whole carnival at night, then with a twinkle in their eyes, lean in for a dainty kiss over their shared cone of milky saliva. Well, it wasn’t gonna happen. Not on my watch. As they went into the car, and the door closed, I pressed the green ON button to get the wheel moving, but also flicked open something else. The plastic cover over the BREAK-DOWN button — the one that we always love to press when we’re sick of customers. My sweaty finger hovered over it, ready to plunge it down as soon as they reached the top.
AlyxVixen: “Being the leader of the Enlightened Scions of the Void was hard, all my followers telling me their desires and dreams of idyllic lives they sought for themselves by joining the cult… er, the group. Unfortunately, their desires and dreams do not mesh or integrate into the beliefs and desires of the Enlightened Scions of the Void so I was forced with a heavy heart to crush them.”
Joe_G89: At the Nintendo convention, I dressed up as Sexy Mario. A couple of guys, skinny guys, kept following me around as I took photos. Finally, I turned around and asked why are you following me. All three of them went down on one knee, as if they were about to be knighted, but they held their cupped hands up with some money. They stayed like that. I wasn’t into financial domination. So I just walked away from them, from 40 dollars and three musty dudes chanting “take my money, Momma Mario.”
And finally, of course: “I realized just how much I loved touching feet.”
Me: It was at a sixth grade sleepover birthday party. Everyone else was already long passed out, crashing after a night of nonstop pizza, Skittles, and Super Smash Bros. But me, I lay there in my sleeping bag on Jason’s living room floor, eyes wide open. All thanks to the smell. It was so thick I could taste it. None of the other boys were under their bags, it being a humid August night, and their feet were fully exposed. Shining in the pale light from the moon through the windows. Sizzling their sweet aromas into the air. Each toe had its own unique odor profile: pinkies like little bubbles of sweet corn, big toes like dignified bowls of croutons. They were little skin balloons, just like the ones Jason had had tied to his chair at the birthday table. So round, so smooth. I didn’t even notice that my fingers had crawled out from underneath my sleeping bag until they were touching the electric tips of Jason’s little pink pebbles.
AlyxVixen: It was at the school’s job fair when I discovered my love of touching feet, a chiropodist had shown up to tell us all about his occupation and had a mock-up of the human foot. The shape, surprising softness of the model and the tactile sense of pleasure when I held it spoke deeply to my soul. On that day, my future had been secured… I would become a chiropodist so I could touch and hold feet all day.
Joe_G89: My fetish sparked before my 7th birthday. Sitting in my room alone, on my galaxy rug, I would tug a damp sock off and just admire my little feet. The wrinkles that barely formed as I curled my toesie woesies. Not long after, I was running a thumb up and down the soles of my feet, hot and sticky from running around all day. This turned into hours. My thumb, it was the same thumb I used for thumb-sucking. But that’s another fetish of mine.
bobicus_: I’d never felt the touch of a man–not in that way, all the way into medical school. When they gave us the corpse to study–I admit I stayed a little later than the other students. What a specimen he was. Especially his cold, dry skin. I could touch him wherever I wanted, whenever I wanted.
I was too embarrassed to touch him there, but I rubbed his hands, caressed his feet. I played “this little piggy” with all of his toes, massaged and pampered him. He was always so relaxed, knots of muscle all completely undone. It was only my first year, but I knew. I was a born podiatrist.
It’s unfair you know? That she had to lose her connection to the earth. Everyone else asks so much of the world, but all she ever wanted was to experience it fully. I love all of her, completely, but god, it wasn’t until they were amputated that I realized how much I loved to hold her tiny feet.
If you want to join us and help write a story by trolling in chat, or share your own writing for feedback, then we’d love to have you join us on Twitch.
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Hope to see you next time, friend!
Featured image: Pakutaso