I said “It’s like a puzzle.  When you first look at it, there’s no way to start.  All the pieces are confusing and colorful, or drab and identical.  There’s no way in hell there’ll ever be a picture to come of this.

“Then you put down a piece and wait. Then you see a piece that you can press into the one you’ve got. Then you see two edge pieces that go together. And slowly, so slowly that you don’t even know it, a picture starts to form. And it’s exciting. And you want to keep on until you can see the whole picture.

“Like the time I wrote about the lady who had Wonder Woman grips on her .45 and she founded a group called Second Amendment Sisters and taught a lot of women to Take Back The Night With a Gun and when that guy tried to hurt her, she took him out with a double-tap and made the news. That was your mom. Although I made a lot of it up.”

“So you lie, then,” he said.

“Sometimes.  I have a very bad memory.  Barely recall anything that happened to me before the age of 24.  So if I want to say anything about that time, I have to think of things that make sense to me as I am now and take away all the experience and wear and skills and find some longing, some reason for me to have done something that your dad told me I did or your uncle has a picture of me doing.  I need to start somewhere with something to get anywhere worth going to.”

“Why do you sometimes use a computer and sometimes a pen or a pencil and sometimes your iPhone and sometimes just cut and paste Facebook entries?” he asked.

“I use what suits. And I have to write 50 words a day no matter what. I have to write something even if I’ve broken both hands. Sometimes I’m just going to grab an I-think-it’s-witty comment from a message and build something around that.

“Last night I talked about lying on the couch reading a true crime book while there was beauty all around me on the island, and someone joked about us being in a prime defensible spot for when the zombie outbreak arrives, and then it came to how Nate and I had to supply our own arsenal because his sisters think that’s just crazy talk, and there, I’d gotten to 5,000 words and a saleable piece of writing.”

“Saleable?  How much?” he asked.

“$0.99 for every download.”

“And how many downloads?” he asked.

“3,000.”

He thought for a few minutes. “So you made  $3,000 for putting together a puzzle?  For lying?”

“Well, not quite; but yes.”

And that’s how Oscar became a writer, just like his aunt Annie; though it took me to the age of fifty and him to the age of fifteen, the little imp. I’d better get 5,000 words out of this encounter.