Read Between the Lines

There's a finer line between fact and fiction than first meets the eye. My English class is exploring this distinction with the book _The Things They Carried_ by Tim O'Brien, and it really tickles the imagination. The unconscious blending of memories, facts, interpretations, misunderstandings, and so on results in an interesting question: Is there a such thing as nonfiction or fiction at all? Where do we draw the line? So here is your task: Take a memory and retell it here, using any manner of sources. Call upon friends and relatives for their side of the story, dredge up your own sensory details, borrow from other stories, exaggerate, eliminate, and fill in the blanks. Tell your version of the story, with one goal in mind: make the reader feel how you felt at the time.

From the Ficly archive