i haven't started reading the book, but from what i've absorbed online, the alternate history presented in the novel goes a bit like this: ww2 lasted until 1947, and germany and japan won the war. it's a great what if, and i find myself interested to know the answer.
it led me to
here's one.
i ordered
so. what if.
what if i asked the owner/driver if i could take a photo of the car, and he would say of course, and i would introduce myself as a neighbor. and because i was genuinely interested in the car, he would invite me to have a look inside.
(a friend and i have already poked our noses inside once when the car was parked out on the street and we were passing by and the windows were down and no one was around.)
then he would do more - he would get out from the driver's side and invite me to get behind the wheel to drive the car the rest of the way home. and then i would say i haven't driven a car in ten years, to which he would say it's only for a few meters. and then i would agree, and somehow not crash the car. and then i would be able to say i drove an impala.
in that what-if scenario, the owner's name is fred and he is in his mid-40s.
seems far-fetched, yes, i don't think anyone would trust me and be all nice just like that, just like that. this what-if tale makes me sound like a naive chit, but then again, i'm sure there are nice folks like the guy in the scenario. you read about them all the time - about the niceness of strangers and such. could be dangerous to think of as true all the time irl, but sometimes you get the feeling that something or someone is good, or at least won't do you harm. it's sad when the world thinks the default is that people are inherently evil and being good comes as a surprise. anyway, i digress -
but i guess that's how my brain works sometimes.
i think about these what ifs during quiet moments, and it's good creative exercise for the brain that uses the logical side most of the time. thinking of these what ifs may give some people either hope or a reason to be depressed, but most of the time i just have a fuzzy feeling about it being a story.
it may be why i'm drawn to fiction, why i can relate with amelie and her unfounded fears about the reason why nino hadn't shown up yet, why i think there's more to a story than what's written on a page or acted out in a scene. it may be why i like to be quiet and simply watch people sometimes. i don't think i fantasize too much - i'm still pretty sane (haha yeah) and know when the stuff in my mind really happened and when they're just the products of a very active (and creative, if i may say so) imagination.
what if i hadn't gone out this afternoon? i wouldn't have seen the impala, i wouldn't have come up with that scenario. i would probably have thought of something else.
i missed this kind of writing, the not-thinking-too-much kind. should do this more often to loosen up before/during/after copy editing. doesn't make much sense as i should be strict with following rules, but if it works for me, it works for me.