Today was a twisted day in the life of Maya–and not in the way I generally prefer. On the way home, our car gets a flat tire and we’re (me and my lovable parent) broken down on the side of the road on a very busy intersection (the car really didn’t want to move after this). Of course, me being the idiot that I am, I’m digging through the trunk, pulling things out to get to the spare tire.

I’m still dragging crap out when my lovable parent (the mom) yells at me to get out of the way, thus making me jump about three feet in the air. I look behind me but I see nothing close, so I yell something like, “Don’t scare me like that!” cause you know getting screamed at to move made my heart pound.

Well, as it turns out, a car that was speeding very much over the speed limit, came within a foot of hitting me. She didn’t tell me this until an hour later and says the car didn’t even try to slow down, not even after it passed us. Nice, eh? Florida driver’s, I love you, but seriously, do. not. hit. me. An accident like that probably would have meant my death in a very messy way. And it would have pissed me off. Like, I’ll-come-back-and-haunt-your-ass pissed off. This isn’t something you want.

Which leads me to the reason reason behind my post. I’d thought I’d share with you just how twisted a writer’s mind (okay, my mind–I won’t speak for us all) can be in situations such as this: Does it give me chills just thinking about what could have happened today? Damn skippy, and I’m not afraid to admit it. Did my mind automatically jump to “Well, that could make a cool story!”? Yup. Bet your butt it did. It seems I narrowly avoided a serious smooshing but I got an idea out of it.

So, how about you guys? Do you ever take real life scenarios and find them turning into story ideas? And, if you’re not a writer, do you ever think certain events of your life would make a good story idea?