Congrats, jack! 
:Round of applause:
Care to share any gems of wisdom with us on how you managed to come up with such a kick-ass story in a short time frame? 
Hah, thanks! I’m not sure how much anyone really wants to know about my process. If you have a specific query I’ll be happy to answer it. But I guess there are a few things I can think of:
The image had me stumped (har har) for awhile until I googled it. Once I found out it was a wishing tree, that opened up all sorts of possibilities.
Most of the various story elements were stolen from my real life. I’m constantly mulling over things that happen to me that are minimally interesting and imagining how they might spin off into a what if situation.
The changing tshirt is an extrapolation of a tshirt I own with velcro letters you can use to change what the shirt says, as well as some high tech tshirts on a geeky product website, one with an LED, one with sound effects, and one with a audio levels meter. I also design and read blogs about tshirts so graphic tees are never far from my mind. The Green Lantern kid is based on a real encounter I had recently, and isn’t the only strange encounter I’ve had due to tshirts. So the link from wishing tree to magic tshirt was a very easy premise.
The Tobie name conversation is close to one I had with an ex girlfriend. The “antonym of doom” is another conversation I had with a friend. I saw the phrase “the beginning is near” somewhere recently and it reminded me of that. The bamboo clearing was a real place on my University campus. CJ’s is similar to a healthy cafe called Tiger Lily near my house. “Perspire” inspired the woods chase, but “bizarre” and “album” fit into the story as it already was.
Technically speaking, I tend to write down any idea I have on separate lines, then I put them in order, and then I flesh them out.
This story had a few similar elements to my last two, so I’m glad I finally got the mixture right!
Congratulations jack, excellent, enjoyable story. And thank you **Le Ministre **for your effort in making this possible. I look forward with great anxiety to participating in future events like this 
Wow I haven’t been on here in ages - thanks for the comments, both good and constructive. It’s actually quite refreshing to have comments that ARE constructive and not just glowing or hating.
Glad some of you seemed to enjoy the story - I’ll admit to being a tiny bit drunk when writing and posting it, and when my sober self came to realize I’d actually posted it - it was a bit of a shock!!