The Reality of Bottle Caps

As a bartender “Bottle Caps” took me straight to work. I encounter a plethora of random bottle caps which we save for the boss's son. He’s in his forty’s. As I read through this narrative, I found myself envisioning the face of my bosses son as the older brother. I remembered his and I encounters when he would find his beloved bottle caps in the trash. Needless to say they were not pleasant, just as the older bother was fuming mad when he caught his little one stealing. My bosses son is an artist, and was collecting the caps for a mosaic.


I could distinctly see how my boss's son’s face would illuminate when new shipments of caps came in similar to the author's description of the sheer elation that the older brother found in the variety of caps found. The son would also knock out the dents and kinks in the caps with such precision and care, especially the rare ones, just as the older brother did.

I read through the last few paragraphs with eagerness to see what the brother was going to do with the caps. As I reached the end I thought of all the places that the bottle caps were hidden in plain sight around the back room of the bar. As I reached the end, and the little brother speaks, I was instantly snapped out of my daydream about my boss's son and work, and found myself chuckling at his innocent response of, “I’ve been using them as tombstones,” he said, “in my insect graveyard”

This piece reminded me that even in my own writing it is possible for my own fantasy story to be reminiscent of someone else's reality.