I can't belive they're not characters!

[Zoombie]

So, we've all met real character's in our lives, but I had one land in my lap earlier today during math class in the form of a substitute teacher that I've always wanted:


He was short, hunched, wide faced, big nosed, and spoke like he had smoked all his life. First thing he said was he turned to my freind, Jeff, who was reading a news paper.

"Put the damn paper away, you jackass!"

Jeff put the paper away. Then a guy named Michel came in, gave his girlfreind her backpack, and walked out.

"That jackass your boyfreind!?" THe sub asked the girl, his voice like gravel getting smashed by a sledgehammer.

"N...no," She said, meek as a mouse.

"You can do better than him! Him and his stupid hat. Jackass."

Jeff poked me, "Come on, ask him if he's a World War II veteran."

"Yeah I was," The sub rasped. "Fought at Guadalcanal. Now shut the hell up and do your damn test."

I kid you not. He was totally. Flipping. Real. I'm not even exaggerating *slightly*.


So...share your characters who are totally real.

[Seif]

Well if you're talking about crazy real life characters:

I have a gay Muslim friend who is in denial (but I have seen gay porn in his room - accidentally of course, tut, tut) and you should see him blush when he is in mosque and all theguys in front bend over in prayer.


I don't mean to be rude as I am a Muslim, but he is so camp that it is unbelievably funny. Though it is wrong to laugh at others - but I am laughing with him!

And he says the silliest of things for a guy so tall and round and camp.

I always tell him to write an autobiography because when you hear how his dad caught him with another guy you will scream your pants off.

Hilarious stuff!

[Use Her Name]

I've gotten many of my characters from real people. Finding things that really do not quite fit the classical standard are perfect for some characters. I have just been fired from my job of 10 years. My manager is the apogee of villains-- He is handsome, perfectly mannered, and totally soulless. Being in the room with him turns my blood cold.

[Seif]

I've gotten many of my characters from real people. Finding things that really do not quite fit the classical standard are perfect for some characters. I have just been fired from my job of 10 years. My manager is the apogee of villains-- He is handsome, perfectly mannered, and totally soulless. Being in the room with him turns my blood cold.

Oh that's a shame, we are talking real life aren't we?, anyway more time to focus on your writing!

[Maryn]

My abandoned novel (curse the TV show with the same concept!) contained a lovely character based on a friend of our son's. The kid had no idea his tutor existed only in his mind. (He's since gotten help and is back in touch with reality.)

Maryn, who regretted losing that little story

[JustJess]

One of my mother's closest friends...she's hasn't left her house in 15yrs. She lives in ankle-length nightgowns with full make up (we're talking bright red apple cheeks and lipstick that extends beyond her lips) Two rooms of her home are packed from floor to ceiling with unopened merchandise from The Home Shopping Network. She is also an artist, a very talented oil painter. Last year she ended up with some odd circulatory condition and both hands turned BLACK (she almost lost them but has since recovered)

She relies on her ex husband for most things. She keeps her garbage in her freezer (to cut down on smell) until someone can come and take it to the curb. You cannot see the basement floor for all the empty vodka bottles (lined in rows). Her cat died and it was 5 days before someone came to take it away.

I could go on-I hate that her phobias have so severly limited her but she is a warm, funny, clever and creative person.

I know several other people who are equally Dickens-esque.

[Feathers]

I wanted to post something cute and witty but then I realized, I don't know anyone who fits that description. Except once I saw a bald cop buying a doughnut, and I cracked up. Does that count?

-Feathers

[Michael Davis]

I can't believe any person would survive like your sub teacher without being rounded up by the PC police or the ACLU and locked away forever. Come to think of it, he sounds just like me, except for the short, ugly, pouch part of course

[Straka]

I met the best characters when I used to work at walmart during college. ex-Marines telling about their exploits in battle, crazy ladies telling me the world was going to end when I was selling them a water bottle, and a racist old guy asking to by 2 machetes and 9mm hallow points. He said he needed the machetes because "Those basketball players have a long reach." And "They're not going to make me move again."

Ah Walmart.

[DWSTXS]

OMG. These are some great characters.
The gay muslim sounds like a riot.
The scary neighbor with the vodka bottles sounds too nutty to believe, but still, make her a character!
The sub teacher sounds like a car salesman I worked with once. I walked over to introduce myself to him on my first day at work. He looked up from the paper he was reading while I introduced myself to him, and he demanded, in a mean voice
"What do you think gives YOU the right to come over here and FORCE conversation upon ME? huh?"

He would walk out on the car lot and approach black customers, and he would pull out a little bible he kept in his pocket, and hold it out to them "Put your hand on that bible and swear on it that you're gonna buy a car from me today and NOT waste my time! I know all about you and your TRIBE, bunch of f****ng monkeys! Now swear on it!"

and they would. He sold more cars than anyone at that dealership! After swearing on that Bible, if they tried to back out, he'd call them on it, tell them they were going straight to hell if they didn't buy.

Nowadays, of course, he could never get away with that crap. But this was at a large chevrolet dealership in Dallas in the 80's.

[DWSTXS]

two other 'characters' that I worked with, in the early 90's.
At a large camera store in Dallas.

This guy was a slob looking kind of guy, and he always had a S***-eating grin on his face. Acted like a jerk, always making people think he was a dumbass.
Truth was, he was a high-IQ guy, had an engineering degree and could calculate all sorts of numbers in his head without a calculator. He was genius.
The problem was, he'd just gotten out of prison. He did 2 & 1/2 years for conspiracy to distribute marijuana. He tried to sell 120 lbs of pot...to a DEA agent.

His idea of fun was to wait until you were waiting on a customer, this was a retail store, and he'd walk over to you and your customer, grin crazily at you (or the customer) and then turn around, lift a leg, and rip off the loudest blusteriest fart you'd ever heard. Then he'd walk away laughing.

You'd be standing there red in the face, and your customer would have this big question mark over their head.

The same guy was making coffee in the employee coffee machine one morning. I'm watching him. He pours in 4 packets of coffee, then grabs a jar of instant coffee, and pours about half a cup of that into the basket too.
I asked him where the hell he learned to make coffee!
He replied, "That's the way I made it in the commisary in prison"
I told him, "No wonder they're rioting and killing each other in there!"

[HeronW]

Sweetest little old lady would come into the print shop for a copy or two 2-3x a month. I was nice to her and once she dropped by with 2 slices of white bread and a tiny chicken wing inside--for me...and um, gawd I hope that wasn't what she ate all the time. There wasn't enough meat there for a pup let alone a full grown me.

[DWSTXS]

Sweetest little old lady would come into the print shop for a copy or two 2-3x a month. I was nice to her and once she dropped by with 2 slices of white bread and a tiny chicken wing inside--for me...and um, gawd I hope that wasn't what she ate all the time. There wasn't enough meat there for a pup let alone a full grown me.

Now that's funny!

[wayndom]

Uh, sorry Zoombie, but I don't believe you.

My father lied about his age to join the US Army and thus escape the Great Depression, so he was one of the younger pilots who flew bombing missions against the Japanese in the Pacific. He's now 85.

I'm not aware of any school that hires substitute teachers in their 80's...

[Danger Jane]

Uh, sorry Zoombie, but I don't believe you.

My father lied about his age to join the US Army and thus escape the Great Depression, so he was one of the younger pilots who flew bombing missions against the Japanese in the Pacific. He's now 85.

I'm not aware of any school that hires substitute teachers in their 80's...

I'm pretty sure mine does...

[Matera the Mad]

Somebody told me once that I was a character. Suggested I charge tourists to talk to me.

Seriously.

I don't.

[steveg144]

The main character of my first novel. Raconteur, man about town, lover, the kind of smooth talker who could gamble away his entire paycheck in one evening of playing craps with his buddies and somehow manage to talk his pregnant young wife out of being furious at him. When he got very, very drunk you got the sense that there was a big hole there where the "person" was supposed to be, the sense that you were dealing with some cleverly-designed construct that merely emulated a human being. This man's "Rosebud" moment happened when he was 8 years old. His beloved father, a young man of 28, died slowly of blood poisoning from an abscessed tooth (pre-antibiotics era). The last words he heard from his father (delirious from infection and mostly likely insane from pain and fear) were words his father screamed at him: "Who are you? WHO ARE YOU???" He grew up and spent the rest of his life trying not to answer that question. At the age of 77, he made the calm, rational decision to starve himself to death as penance for his sins.

He was my Dad.

[Madison]

This guy in my neighborhood who mows his lawn wearing a gas mask and goggles and gloves and lots and lots of clothes. That's the only time we ever see him. Is he allergic to...air?

[a_sharp]

There was the West Indies street man who talked to himself, gave people a beautiful smile, wore a different hat each week, with a flair, and walked at a brisk pace like he had someplace to go. He carried two matching cardboard valises all over town. I don't know what was in them or where he got the valises or the hats. He was always respectably clean.

On occasion he would stop on a street corner, set his bags down, and start preaching nonsense to an imaginary audience, carrying on in that wonderful Jamaican lilt. I actually wrote a 600-word piece about him to capture my impressions, but he wasn't around long enough to build a story around him. I missed him for years afterward.

[HeronW]

This guy in my neighborhood who mows his lawn wearing a gas mask and goggles and gloves and lots and lots of clothes. That's the only time we ever see him. Is he allergic to...air?

Actually sounds like he's extremely allergic to grass, pollen, etc. Even when I used a riding mower I'd get a 'grass rash' on my lower legs. This fellow sounds determined to take care of his lawn, despite the hazards to his health. If he's taking certain meds--they can also cause nasty blisters on the skin if you walk in sunlight.

[ccarver30]

You lost me when you put an apostrophe in "characters". :|

[Jason P]

Once in Iraq, I met two of the most tradgic figures I've ever know-- both in the same day, although diffrent houses.
In one house I found an animalistic man wearing an iron collar, chained to the wall. The man didn't speak like a normal person. I learned from his family that before the invasion, he was a collage professor; he'd been intelligent, educated, and quite fluent in English. He had, however, voiced anti-Sadam views. Sadam's men tortured him to the point of insanity because of it. Now days his family has to care for him, keeping him restrained so he doesn't hurt himself or others.
The second was an infant in her crib. She'd been born with a birth defect (probably caused by some sort of chemical pollution). The only bones we could see in her body were her skull, spine, and rib cage. Her appendages were nothing more than fleshy snakes. So sad.

[Zoombie]

Uh, sorry Zoombie, but I don't believe you.

My father lied about his age to join the US Army and thus escape the Great Depression, so he was one of the younger pilots who flew bombing missions against the Japanese in the Pacific. He's now 85.

I'm not aware of any school that hires substitute teachers in their 80's...

Well, that's what he said. He might have been lying...but he definitely looked old enough.

[Straka]

Once in Iraq...

Stuff of nightmares. I bud who served too saw some pretty messed up things.

[Straka]

Once in Iraq...

Stuff of nightmares. I bud who served over there saw some pretty messed up things.

[The_Grand_Duchess]

I didn't think I was going to have anything for this thread but then I thought of this lady at my job. She is a whole lot of karazee. She comes on sweet as pie. Two beautiful smart little girls. Lovely.

Then one of their coats was dropped on the steps as she came to pick up. Before the teacher could get back to get it, the mom went off. This woman is. . . large. . . and she cannot control her temper. AT. ALL.

She also stopped one of the teachers as she dropped of her daughters and told the lady she "Better not lay a hand on her daughter". For no apparent reason. It was nuts.