So there I was

My mother once dated a guy who always began phone conversations with the second half of a sentence.

(phone ringing)

My mother: "Hello?"

Hopelessly geeky middle-aged man: "And then..."

My mother: "Um, hello?"

With a comb-over and bad breath: "...I had to re-carpet the whole basement!"

My mother: [Is dying alone really so bad?]

What I didn't appreciate at the time was that this is actually a brilliant way to get people interested in a story without wasting time setting the stage. I'm not saying he did it well, but I do think he was onto something.

For example, when recounting my travels through Africa, I could begin by saying: "And thus I found myself low on water, hitch-hiking on my own across the border from Namibia into Botswana in a car with a man I think might be part jackal and a woman who is almost definitely smuggling putrid flesh, possibly human, when the car sputtered to an unpromising halt in the middle of the Kalahari just before dark...."

[It's a good story. Ask me some time to tell you the rest.]

If I were beginning a story today, I might start with the following:

So there I was: jobless, newly certified as an Ashtanga yoga teacher, shacking up with a guy I've been dating for about 5 minutes in a sublet we can't afford next to AT&T Park in San Francisco, and I've just decided to move from Washington DC where I've lived for three years to see what sort of life I can make for myself in San Francisco....

Sure, it's a run-on sentence, but it does make you wonder what is going to happen next!