A true writer can’t help but see new storylines and characters developing with every innocent event in life. My students at Yeshiva at IDT in Newark where I teach English composition journalism and public speaking are accustomed to me entering the classroom with a new writing assignment that came to me from something I saw or experienced only hours earlier. Case in point a few days a week I exercise at a health club in the morning then drive to my teaching job. One day while at the health club I overheard a college student answer her cell phone yell the words “Not now Mom leave me alone!” before she slammed her cell phone shut fury written all over her face.

I brought this moment to my students — what is the back story? What was happening in the relationship between the student and the mother before this phone call? What transpires between mother and daughter after the student leaves the health club? The young men in my class creative imaginations unleashed dreamed up everything from suicide to homicide to complex family dramas years in the making. Now I have to hold myself back from approaching this young woman at the club and asking her “So how’s things with your mom?” She became so real to me she was a character in my story — the story I was writing about her life.

A couple of nights ago I was invited to speak to a group of women in Lakewood about one of my favorite speaking topics — preparing early for Shabbos by chatzos. The gathering was a big success and I was feeling good as I walked to my car. Until I saw the note pinned to my windshield.

“I’m sorry I hit your car. Back rear damage. Here’s my phone number.”

Sure enough the back of my car had been rammed. With shaking hands I called the number and a young contrite yungerman showed up in a few moments. He apologized explaining that he had backed out of a driveway not seen my car and crunch …

It was late at night and very cold. We exchanged information and he asked me to keep the accident out of police reports and insurance. He would pay for the damages he said. He asked me to have rachmanus on him. I should get an estimate and call him with the report.

As I drove the hour’s distance home my writer’s mind was immediately revving up. What story is unfolding? The character Azriela Jaffe needed to be delayed so that she wouldn’t be on the road at a certain time so character Mr. X bops her car and keeps her from leaving for forty-five extra minutes. Mr. X — who is he really? What did he do earlier that day that warranted a potch from Hashem with this expense? What was going on in his life that distracted him from seeing my car? Where was he rushing off to and why? Soon this event is no longer just an annoying traffic incident. It’s a fictional tale still being created.

Mr. X and I exchange dozens of phone calls and texts over the next few days. The auto body shop I trust in Edison NJ came in with an estimate of close to 800 dollars. I learn that Mr. X has a wife who is expecting her first baby in only a few days. He’s full-time kollel. He has “a guy” who will do the job in Lakewood for several hundred dollars less. This “guy” runs the operation out of his backyard. I am within my rights to do this my way — to get the car fixed around the corner from my house with a reputable place I trust. Mr. X knows that and still he hopes I will be kind enough to save him a few hundred dollars at a time he can’t spare a dollar.

As we exchange all of these calls I’m feeling rachmanus for this fellow Jew. I’m starting to care about his wife and unborn baby and I move from being the victim to being the character in the story who wants to help the guy in trouble.

And so it is that I agree to do something entirely unreasonable — to leave my home at 7 a.m. on Sunday to travel the hour’s drive to Lakewood so that “his guy” can fix the car for hundreds of dollars less while I wait. It is my gift to him and it feels good because he’s not a stranger to me anymore. He’s a fellow Jew and I want to help him.

I am creating my own “Life Takes” as I go entering into the story steering the outcome and viewing the entire experience with writer’s eyes. I wonder why Hashem the true Author of every life story has suddenly woven a stranger’s path into mine and because I am a Mishpacha writer I experience what I know every Mishpacha writer must feel. In my imagination I am telling my readers all about this story before it is even over without an assignment from Mishpacha to write about it. My entire life sometimes feels like a Mishpacha article in the making. It’s just that I only get to print a few of them.