79 Word Stories

One of the things they like to do for these camps, is to take advantage of the various public/cultural amenities -- the zoo, museums, parks, graffiti-covered alleyways (no, really--sadly, we ran out of time in my camp before we got to that one), etc.

Early on, we "got" to go the Boise Art Museum, which is nice enough, I guess -- just not my kind of place. The last time I liked an exhibit there, was back in '88 for a Superman 50^th Anniversary commemoration. We were to wander around and get inspiration for three short pieces.

How short, you ask? 79 words long. Why 79? Our instructor was drawing inspiration from Esquire's 2012 Short Fiction Contest, the samples are worth your time to check out (esp. Winslow's, I thought).

I had a hard time not making them all into jokes (my instructor noted the same thing) and eventually I think I succeeded.