“What do you think the next line is?” My husband asked as the image on the screen faded away.
“What?” I asked. I had been distracted by my phone and hadn’t been paying attention.
“The next line,” he continued, “what do you think he’s going to say next?”
I looked at my husband in confusion. He rolled his eyes.
“The trailer,” he explained. “That was just on.”
I shrugged. I hadn’t seen it.
“The guy pretended to point a gun at someone and said ‘bang’,” he explained with more patience than I probably deserved. “What do you think he’s going to say next?”
“Uh…you’re dead?”
My husband shook his head like I was clueless.
“What?” I was clueless. What did he think the guy would say?
“He’ll say @#$%.”
“I don’t think so,” I said. Those words never, and I mean never, pop into my head. Why would-
“Watch this,” he said. He yelled for my grown daughter, who was in the other room.
When my daughter arrived, he pretended to point a gun and said, “‘bang’, what’s the next line?”
To make a long story slightly shorter, both of them had the same, exact ‘next line’ pop into their heads.
That’s when I realized I shouldn’t write those gritty, shoot ’em up type of stories. The kind where every third word makes me blush. I don’t have the vocabulary for it.
It only took a split second to realize I’m fine with that. I actually like my vocabulary as it is.
Besides, I’m at home in the four-quadrant, family-friendly market. It’s where I belong.
Crisis averted.