I Once Knew A Man

Some of the greatest opening lines:

1.Whether I shall turn out to be the hero of my own life, or whether that station will be held by anybody else, these pages must show. - Charles Dickens, David Copperfioeld (1850)
2.The human race, to which so many of my readers belong, has been playing at children's games from the beginning, and will probably do it till the end, which is a nuisance for the few people who grow up. - C.K.Chesterton, The Napoleon of Notting Hill (1904)
3. It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife. - Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice (1813)
 If you are working on your opening lines, don't let them linger too long in your head, for
I once knew a man
Who could figure and plan
The stories he intended to write.
For hours he'd sit
Planning characters to fit
With never an end in sight.
He'd dream and envision,
Redo his revision,
And imagine the query he'd send.
But when the bell tolled
If the truth be told
The pages in his lap were blank!

Good Storytelling

Almost a century ago, a young English boy on a visit to a rural community in Scotland set out to enjoy a swim in a small lake. Some distance from shore cramps seized him. A young farm boy working in a nearby field heard his cries for help.
  The country lad plunged into the lake, towed the drowning swimmer to the shore and admisistered first aid. In a short time the victim recovered, able to return to his home in London.
  Years passed before the two boys met again. This time the city boy came to the rural community to ask the farm boy what his future plans were. His family wanted to place at the young farmer's disposal money needed for his education.
   More years passed and the farm boy graduated from college with high honors and embarked upon a career of scientific research. In 1928 he made a discovery that would save uncounted millions of lives when he found germs could not exist in certain vegetable molds.
   But what about the London youth? Well, one winter while on an epochal journey to the Near East,  to meet Franklin Delano Roosevelt of Washington, D.C., and Joseph Stalin of Moscow, USSR, for a series of conferences, he came down with pneumonia.
  The statesman's condition becme alarming. Back in England the drug invented by the one-time farm boy was readied, then sped by plane to the sick man's bedside. Within a few hours the miracle-producing penicillin had performed its mission.  For the second time Alexander Fleming had saved the Londoner's life.
   Yes, Winston Churchill was the boy who went swimming in that small rustic lake a century ago.

*your assignment, dear reader, is to rewrite this story or write a good story of your own so as to catch an editor's attention this week!)