A Story Teller Comes In All Shapes

 My friend was telling me about his experience at a conference about 45 years ago. He was a young man and he admired this Indian gentleman who was a local celebrity. The gentleman was an older Indian guy; handsome, dark hair with braids, cowboy hat, jeans, turquoise jewelry, a full beaded buckskin jacket, and Indian charisma just oozing out of his pores. After the man gave his talk, a smattering of fans, well-wishers and people who just wanted to feed off the man's aura gathered round. My friend had the chance to say to him, in front of the group, "your talk was awesome, I really appreciated it." The man saw my friend's exuberance, naivety and star-struck view. The man says to my friend, "You like my jacket? Here you go." It is interesting to note a number of years ago, in the Indian community if you liked something someone had, they would give it to you (in reason of course, no one was giving away cars, that I know of). So the man started to put the jacket on my friend and low and behold the jacket was too small. It was obvious the jacket wouldn't fit as my friend is rather tall. The celebrity man, says "Oh that's too bad, it doesn't fit." The celebrity took the jacket back. As you can expect my friend was a bit chocked over the gift being snatched away from his grasp. I laughed out loud and could just see the rejection, the hurt, the disappointment which happened to my friend. Because we both know the gesture from the celebrity was a show. Putting himself in a good light to his adoring fans. 

A story can do that, it can bring you in to the scene, feel the experience and create a reaction. Telling a story doesn't mean it has to be a good story. There are good story tellers and not so good story tellers. Doesn't mean folks should stop telling stories. Everybody has a story, has a voice. You have to admire the story teller. The professional ones who can develop stories; make them into books, poems, songs, movies and even sustain a modern living with their stories. Can you imagine being able to live a life through telling stories? Now that is a privilege not afforded to everyone. Usually those people who can live through their story telling, give us good stories. 

Then there are people who give use stories with no good intentions. They use their voice to spread lies, cause disruption, make themselves into heroes, into victims and cause pain. Well, f**k those people. Let's just listen to those with stories which are meant not to harm, but to cause fun, cause amusement, to teach, to maybe warn you, to just pass the time, or just to visit with you. Not those arseholes who's intent is to cause pain. And f**k those people 

Conversation with my cousin.

Cuz - "You can tell you don't use Indian medicine."

Me - "How can you tell?"

Cuz - "Cause your kids are good looking. People who use bad medicine, when their kids get older, they get ghastly beastly ugly."

Me - "Hey I know some of those ugly kids. So that's what happened to them."

Cuz - "The parents don't change, look the same but it's their kids."

I bet some of you can tell who uses bad medicine eh?

Just look at their big kids.

Well now, I was in line at Costco, just cooling it, with my empty cart waiting to go in. At the entrance a woman stands there ready to wipe down your cart with disinfectant to kill all the germs, anyways, she was looking at me, I was looking at her, and it seemed like we connected right there in the cart line. Admittedly she was way too young for me but I thought it was cute, the situation, nonetheless. So when it came my turn to get my cart cleansed, I says, (you know just to be friendly, because I am, after all, a married man and a grandpa...) "you were looking at me and I was looking at you..."

She says "your fly is open."

“…storytelling is a collaborative non-hierarchical process that involves the learners as active agents in the learning process rather than as passive receivers.” 

…R.L Lawrence and D.S. Paige What Our Ancestors Knew: Teaching and Learning Through Storytelling