Dear friends: below is a 97.1% true story, yet with your clever ad­di­tions, it will ul­ti­mately be a 71.3% true story. Fill in the gaps with the re­quested word choice di­rectly on top of the grey text. It is meant to be light enough to write over. How­ever, if you choose to use this story mul­ti­ple times, it is sug­gested that you use a sep­a­rate sheet of paper on which to write your words. The au­thor un­der­stands that at least two read­ers are re­quired to enjoy this in­ter­ac­tive essay; there­fore it has been sub­di­vided into six parts so each reader can trade off and enjoy both roles of au­thor and scribe (just don’t let your eyes wan­der be­yond the sec­tion at hand!).

It was a adj and cold evening, and fe­male friend and I put on our win­tery su­perla­tive adj at­tire. She im­me­di­ately no­ticed my mis-matched gloves, scoff­ing at the frayed fin­gers and worn holes. They did look kind of like swiss plural noun, but the blown out fin­ger­tips proved use­ful for ac­tions like but­ton­ing sweaters, zip­ping plural noun, and scratch­ing plural noun, so it didn’t bother me. Even be­fore we reached the exit off the in­ter­state, cars were backed up all the way to the mall en­trance, cre­at­ing a large noun of red brake lights ahead of us. At this hour on Christ­mas Eve, this was the su­perla­tive adj party in town.

The first stop was Barnes and Noble… but in order to go in­side, we had to verb. Find­ing a park­ing spot was adj, and as lengthy as the ac­tual shop­ping. The anx­i­ety from the other shop­pers cir­cling like plural an­i­mal for a space to park was palat­able. For a good 30 min­utes we verb (past tense) around the labyrinth, our goal al­ways within sight, but just out of reach. Same fe­male friend said, “uh, … is that a spot?” I said, “I think you should just go for it”. It was clearly il­le­gal, but I wanted to get the hell out of the ve­hi­cle. Even­tu­ally we found a place light years from the store, grabbed our plural noun, but for­got our reusable shop­ping bags. I guess we could just buy an­other one, right?

We form of move­ment (past tense) into Barnes and Noble and I made a bee line for the music sec­tion, find­ing CDs to sam­ple with their mu­sic-lis­ten­ing plural noun. I found Susan Boyle’s Christ­mas album, put the plural noun on, briefly thought about the germs on them, then lis­tened away. Sur­pris­ingly, she had cov­ered Lou Reed’s Per­fect Day, so I skipped to that song, but un­for­tu­nately the clip ended be­fore it got to my fa­vorite part. I shifted focus. Up­stairs was a whole other won­der­land of books and plural noun, so I de­cided to as­cend. Ran­domly, I ran into a friend from way back. In fact, this guy, Chris, was the first boy I ever kissed. Yep, we grew up to­gether in Hot plural noun Na­tional Park, Arkansas. Ran­dom. He was shop­ping for a cook­book, and I told him I was look­ing for my friend. It is amaz­ing to think how some things never verb, like los­ing peo­ple in malls. That shit’s been hap­pen­ing since I first stepped a body part from lower half in­side a mall, ex­cept it was much scarier when I was 5. He wasn’t with­out his shop­ping buddy, who was hov­er­ing num­ber feet away. Am I the only one who con­stantly verb end­ing in — s peo­ple in malls? Even­tu­ally I found same fe­male friend, and she found her books, in­clud­ing one for her dad en­ti­tled “Body part in Space: A Guide to As­tral Travel from the Com­forts of Your type of room.” It was a suc­cess­ful stop.

Next? Straight to the in­ter­nal organ of the mall: the trendy-teen-al­ter­na­tive-adj-made-in-coun­try store. I ri­fled through the scarves and key chains and thought about all the times I vis­ited the mall when I was in level of ed­u­ca­tion … want­ing to own all the sparkly plural noun on dis­play, think­ing how it must be so cool to have a job there. I helped same fe­male friend find a t-shirt and de­cide on the per­fect item of cloth­ing for her friend. While check­ing out, I no­ticed the oblig­a­tory but­tons for sale with adj phrases such as “The voices in my body part may not be real, but they have some adj ideas!” An­other suc­cess, then off to the gift wrap store. We walked in and I was feel­ing silly and wanted to find wrap­ping paper to match my mood. I asked the job title for the sil­li­est wrap­ping paper s/he had. S/he seemed puz­zled and pointed me in the di­rec­tion of the birth­day-themed paper. But I had no use for birth­day wrap­ping paper (Jesus’ birth­day hap­pened years ago, duh — we’ve moved on to plural noun and Santa Claus). By the end of the wrap­ping paper fi­asco, I lost same fe­male friend yet again. I guess she had changed her in­ter­nal organ about the gift wrap… or else had snuck away to buy me a gift while I was pre­oc­cu­pied (se­cretly wished my num­ber -year old kid-at-heart).

I hes­i­tantly walked out of the store, nearly being verb (past tense) up in the one-way river of shop­pers. Tak­ing a cou­ple steps di­rec­tion, I care­fully plot­ted my move. I chan­neled my video game skills that have ac­cu­mu­lated over the years and, like frog­ger, hopped per­pen­dic­u­lar to the traf­fic dur­ing a break, paused for num­ber sec­ond(s), then dashed for the mid­dle “safety zone” where other shop­pers had bro­ken from the river to eddy amongst the plural land form of knick-knacks. Re­vert­ing back to mem­o­ries of get­ting lost in the mall when I was a stage of human life, I found a safe spot to idle and keep a body part on the lo­ca­tion where we to­gether last. That safe spot just hap­pened to be right next to the cal­en­dars of sleep­ing pup­pies and kit­tens. I flipped through the pages and gig­gled to my­self, think­ing how strange it would be if cats had cal­en­dars of verb end­ing in — ing peo­ple nes­tled in blan­kets or sprawled on the couch… and then thought I should make a cal­en­dar of furry, burly, sleep­ing men, and sell it right next to the furry, adj, sleep­ing kit­ten cal­en­dar. I looked up to check for same fe­male friend — no sign. A wo/man si­dled up to me, no doubt the job title for the cal­en­dars, and said, “You know, if you laugh that means you have to buy it.” I told her/him the one I re­ally wanted wasn’t for sale.

I looked up again and spot­ted same fe­male friend on the other side of the shop­per river. We were stuck. She ad­verb nav­i­gated her way to me, bump­ing into a cou­ple mall plural an­i­mal on the way. Even­tu­ally re­united, we plowed against the cur­rent and veered off to find an exit. After ad­verb bundling up and step­ping out into the cold night air, a strange se­quence of events hap­pened while out­side by the street fea­ture. Ac­tu­ally, it wasn’t a se­quence. It was a bom­bard­ment. At the same in­stant and all within num­ber feet of us, a woman screamed, a car honked its noun, and a dis­traught man asked us for spare change for the bus. None of these things were re­lated to each other. Same fe­male friend handed him a sin­gle form of cur­rency while I me­an­dered ad­verb to­ward the car, still dis­com­bob­u­lated from the adj syn­chronic­ity of the events and gen­er­ally over stim­u­lated from the mall ex­pe­ri­ence.

The park­ing lot was still packed like sar­dines. We drove away feel­ing a lit­tle less adj and a lit­tle more ADD than be­fore. Moral of the story: Dare to Dream a Dream like Susan Boyle and wit­ness the en­su­ing adj suc­cess.