A Memory in Only Six Words

I've been doing a lot of work recently with Twitter, a service for friends, family, and co–workers to communicate and stay connected through the exchange of quick, frequent answers to one simple question: What are you doing? Twitter message postings--called "tweets" in the jargon of the site--are limited to 140 characters.

As a former English major, of course, it hasn't taken me long to draw a comparison between "tweets" and haiku, a poetic form from Japanese culture. Haiku requires an author to "paint" a mental image in the reader's mind with only seventeen (17) syllables over just three (3) lines of poetry.

Shortly after I posted my observation on Facebook, my friend Morf Morford directed me to another venue for those of us who, inexplicably perhaps, long to test ourselves in the verbal arts: six-word memoirs. Hailed by some as "American haiku," six-word memoirs sprung from efforts of SMITH Magazine, which began asking readers for their short life stories in 2006.

I'm taking the challenge, and my results will be posted on Facebook. As we left this morning to visit some estate sales with my middle daughter and her husband, I posted: "Antiques, knick knacks, bargains--Estate Sale"!