| Subject: Re: Brainstorming nutty stuff |
Author:
Deadly Ernest
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Date Posted: 22:22:08 03/18/10 Thu
In reply to:
Wes
's message, "Brainstorming nutty stuff" on 19:44:56 03/18/10 Thu
>OK, group, I need some help on this one.
>
>I'm writing about a sixty year old woman who has a
>reputation for doing "nutty" stuff on a regular or
>occasional basis. As an example, she does cosplay at
>an anime convention dressed as a Japanese schoolgirl,
>complete with short uniform skirt and falling down
>socks. (Or maybe as Lum, in a tiger stripe body suit
>and purple bikini.) I suppose that's all right if
>you're, oh, in your twenties, but at age 60+?
>
>What kind of non-sex related things would you consider
>to be off the wall like that? That would make the
>neighbors think she's a nut -- a harmless nut, but a
>nut . . .
>
>I have some ideas but I need more. Thanks!
G'day,
OK, I'm assuming that you want her interacting with the local community in a non threatening manner.
Let's have her living in the house she's lived in her whole life. No living family members close by or visiting, but several dead in the cemetery. The house is on the edge of town, and used to be a farm until her husband sold off most of the land shortly before his death. There's still a fair bit of land attached to the house, as it's the large vegetable garden and orchard that's served as the house food for generations - so both are quite extensive. They grow a lot more than she can use.
A few odd activities that can be molded as you wish.
1. Each day she visits the graves of her parents, older siblings, and a couple of children - all in the town cemetery, and talks to them as she keeps them all up to date with the town gossip, as she sees it.
This gives you an opportunity to have her misunderstand what's happening in town and people passing by can hear her odd stories about what's happening, smiling as they see the errors.
2. She tends the large vegetable garden, and keeps it that size as it's always been that size, ditto with the orchard. She harvests much more than she can eat. So, each day, when she goes to visit her family at the cemetery, she takes a different path through town to the cemetery and drops care packages of fruit and vegetables on the front porches of different people in town. She delivers them whether they need them or not; and, in some cases, she's dropping them of at houses where people really needed them, but that was the previous residents a decade or so ago.
3. She can still dress in the fashions of her twenties and thirties, and makes all her own clothes.
4. She's a product of the era of close fiscal concerns of the depression, WW2, and soon there after - much of it ingrained in her childhood by her parents. This has resulted in her distrust of banks and a tendency to buy everything by bartering her excess food. The local shopkeepers cater to her whims as she doesn't get much.
A side effect of this is she does have an old bank account, but doesn't go near it, even though it's got a lot of money in it from when her husband was alive and still gets some government payments etc today. Her husband set up a system to have the bank automatically pay rates and utilities before he died, so that's all handled for her by the bank staff, and she's totally ignorant of this service or the bills. This leaves an opportunity to include something where the bank has to talk to her about the money or a change to the bills etc.
5. She walks everywhere, or rides a push bike.
..............
The final result is you have this woman who looks and lives like a relic of an earlier period that was already disappearing when she was a child.
Hope this helps you,
Ernest
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