CogDog tagged me with a meme, which I almost never respond to. But since it’s Alan, and I’m happy for any diversion on a Monday, and my randomly selected sentence turned out to be worth quoting, and it broke some grammatical “rules” to get there, here’s mine:

We had never owned a boat, but here we were, drifting at night, and my father said, ‘It’s easy, really,” and I asked, “What is?” and he said, “This, just this,” and he motioned to the fields flooded with moonlight and to the moon itself and the stars which were very bright and then to the two of us, and he yawned because the days had already grown shorter, and all he was doing now was pointing out the obvious landscape of our lives, how we traveled from here to there, growing older, even during those few seconds it took us to cross Black Creek, which meant we were only a few minutes from home. And only one week until school started again, and maybe two months until the heavy snow, and I knew if my mother hadn’t come by then, I wouldn’t see her until spring. Or never, depending on what the court decided.

I’ll be very surprised if anyone can ID this one. I will say it’s from a collection of contemporary short fiction…

So, I’m tagging the following victims, almost none of whom are likely to follow-up, but tht’s OK:

  • Link, because I know the word meme (meme-meme-me-meme-meme) makes him want to claw peoples’ throats out to get at their vocal cords
  • Jared, who will probably do something smart with it
  • Brian, because I saw all the cool books on his shelves and didn’t totally kill the room buzz with book talk
  • Iconolith. You better be reading something!
  • Gardner, who is likely reading something completely killer right now and I might get to find out what it is

The rules, which can (and probably should) be warped to fit one’s warped mind:

  1. Pick up the nearest book (of at least 123 pages).
  2. Open the book to page 123.
  3. Find the fifth sentence.
  4. Post the next three sentences (sentences 6-9).
  5. Tag five people.