Grab Me a Coke and a Character

“Grab me a Coke,” my husband said over the phone, as I was driving home from work. He drinks a Coca-Cola at least once a day and skipping it feels like withdrawal, so I stopped at the Navarro store a few blocks from home.

When I put my things on the register, the cashier leaned toward me and said, “Can you imagine this lady is eighty-one?” She was referring to a woman standing next to me, putting her change away in her purse.

Because I was prompted to judge this woman based on what a typical eighty-year-old might be like, I gave her a second look, a closer look. The woman looked really good for her age. She had great skin, a flawless complexion, not a wrinkle on her face. She wore a long fake brown ponytail and had perfectly painted-on eyebrows, not what I would expect from an eighty-year-old with shaky hands. Perfect arch. Filled in. On point.

“Wow, you look great,” I said in Spanish.

She laughed and went on to brag about her many boyfriends (younger ones at that) and about women who accused her of looking at their husbands. She boldly replied, “That’s how I like my men… married.” It was a lot of information to dump on a stranger at the register and definitely unexpected from an elderly woman. She shrugged and said she had several boyfriends, and why not? Men have two, three girls, and no one says anything to them. She clearly didn’t like the double standard. At her age, she knew who she was and felt confident sharing it.

If it were me, I would have written her as a little old lady quietly counting her change in her coin purse and walking home to watch telenovelas until she fell asleep, not the main character of one. Who would have guessed she still had a libido, an appetite for younger men… married men, and was unapologetic about it?

If I hadn’t been asked to take a second look, I would have cast her as an extra in the grocery store scene: (Abuela putting coins into her pouch). I had unconsciously boxed her into a role before she ever spoke.

The Danger of Catholic Writing

As a Catholic writer, I struggle to write characters who behave badly. I want to write moral characters. I don’t want readers to think I’m condoning bad behavior, and when I do write about characters behaving badly, I often box them into the villain role. But why can’t they be the protagonist?

In the Gospels, we encounter many flawed characters, and the narrator doesn’t pause to explain or moralize. There are no footnotes saying, “Don’t do what this person did.” We’re simply told who they are: a tax collector, an adulteress, a denier, a betrayer for thirty denarii.

Some become saints. One becomes a traitor we pity. What makes these stories powerful is that these characters are human, complex, contradictory, not flat and predictable.

Even great writers who write about the authentic human experience receive backlash. Zora Neale Hurston, both a writer and anthropologist, wrote people as they were, not as archetypes, not as political statements, not as moral lessons. Some criticized her use of dialect and portrayal of Black life in the South, but she didn’t care. She wanted to write people, not politics.

As writers, we can fall into creating characters to serve agendas, for preaching, teaching, or moral messaging. The bad guy has a foul mouth, a scar through his eyebrow, tattoos, a raspy voice. But what if the good guy did?

What I Learned from the Diva Eighty-Year-Old at the Register

I learned to accept her, not judge her, to accept that there are eighty-year-old women who still feel sexy and live life on their own terms. I’m not condoning her behavior, but I value her confidence and her refusal to fall into society’s idea of a well-behaved woman, or grandmother.

People are interesting, and so should our characters. God does not reduce us to stereotypes. He sees us truthfully, beautifully, and with dignity, in all our complexity and contradiction. As writers, we’re called to see people the same way.

Ask yourself:

Has my character fallen into a stereotype?
How can I write flawed characters, even antagonists, with dignity?
How can I write surprisingly flawed protagonists?
Where is the contradiction in this person?

Reflection

When I first saw the eighty-one-year-old woman, I saw a hunched-over elderly woman counting her change. But when I was stopped and asked to give her a second look, I was the one dealing with change. A revelation was made to me: people are wild cards, and so should be our characters. Her anecdotes replayed in my mind as I walked away with a Coke and a smile.