Stock Characters

I can't remember what I had planned for tonight's blog entry; I am utterly distracted by a person I just saw.

Scene: I'm having my weekly glorious night out alone.  (If this sounds pathetic to you, recall that I have small children.)  It's Sunday night, I live in the Bible-Belt Blue-Law 'Burbs, and I'm a Book Nerd, so my idea of glorious is spending two or three hours at the nearest bookstore that stays open until 11 on Sunday.  (As a bonus it's one of the really huge ones that carries stuff others don't.  There's an endcap display for Gravity's Rainbow, for Pete's sake.)

So there's this guy here.  He's an employee.  I swear he looks so much like a dude I once almost sort of had a thing with that I'm afraid to look directly at him, lest I catch his eye and blush.  I should explain that this old friend he looks like was a very attractive young man, but had a little self-control problem at the time; he set my hair on fire.  Just a tiny bit with a magnifying glass, but things actually got weirder from there.  In fact, Pyro-Boy himself looked spookily similar to another guy I once almost sort of had a thing with, which got even weirder when it turned out they were connected - but that's a story for another post.

The fact is, this shit happens all the damn time, and it never fails to freak me out.  When I first met my husband (on a blind date), he looked so much like an old friend that it was almost love at first sight.  A coworker of mine looks and sounds like another close friend from college.  Recently, the stars aligned such that all three of us were in the same room at the same time, and I felt the floor shift beneath my feet (and said something really awkward).   Also, I once had a boss who was a dead-ringer for the guy I lost my virginity with.  Let me tell you, THAT was distracting.

What I have actually been doing here tonight is mentally preparing for NaNoWriMo.  Characterization is not a strong point of mine and I had been wondering if I would go to Writers' Hell for starting with stock characters and building from there.  I've now decided it's OK.