Tell Me Something Good

The Evolution of Personal Stories by David Brake

 

 

 

 

 

 

I spent Thanksgiving in Omaha, Nebraska. While gathered at the feast, my only sibling and my father asked me “so what’s new with you?”

There are scores of things I could have told them, but I chose to tell them about my Personal Storytelling class. Perhaps I was secretly hoping--or anticipating--that they would ask me to share one of the stories I told in class. Well, they took the bait, and the next thing you know I’m launching into a 10-minute story I had told in class about my first entrepreneurial venture, selling naked lady playing cards the summer following the 6th Grade.

For the 12 or so people at the table who had never heard this story, their reactions were similar to when I told it in class. Some laughter, a little tension as they wondered if the story was going to have a “politically correct” ending, and a general feeling of having been entertained by a good story when the conclusion affirmed a respect for women and an important lesson about not starting a business you would be ashamed to explain to your mother or your wife.

Upon finishing the story, my father, a man who still chooses his words quite carefully, looked at me and said “that’s an interesting take on that particular episode.”

I like how he referred to my story as an episode, as though my life had been a television sitcom or drama that played for several seasons in the 70s.

My brother remembered the “episode” vaguely but was surprised to learn all these years later how successful I had been in this short-lived business venture.

“If dad hadn’t shut it down,” he said, “who knows where you’d be today? You might be some kind of porno king living the life in Malibu.”

“Well thank God your father shut that little operation down,” my brother’s wife noted.

This gave me the opportunity to ask my dad if he thought the story I told was “authentic.” Did it accurately capture the facts and feelings of that moment in time?

My dad paused for a moment to reflect.

“Yeah, I think you’ve got the basic facts right,” he said. “But I would have told the story differently.”

Everyone at the table was eager to hear his version of the story. So with a little prompting, he told his version of my story about the naked lady playing cards.

I won’t recount his version of the story here, but I would like to note that hearing him tell his version underscored, once again, the nature of personal stories. His version included most of the same basic facts as mine, but there were peripheral things that I was not aware of, things that were personal to him – his truths.

His version of the story also reflected the worldview of a concerned father and police detective, not that of a misdirected 6th Grade entrepreneur. I thought his story was excellent. It was funny at times, poignant at others. I think people gathered at the feast enjoyed his story as much as mine, maybe more.

That Thanksgiving table once again showed me that people who witness the same event and live through the same experiences will have different stories to tell. I’ve also been thinking about how those stories can change over time, how an oral tradition can continue to convey a meaning and message, but how the facts can change.

I wonder how the story I told, and my dad’s version, might sound different 20 years from now, told by somebody who heard about these stories from someone at that 2018 Thanksgiving dinner. Or told by someone who heard from someone about those naked lady playing card stories. It’s entirely possible that 20 years from now those stories will be told by family members and others who are four or five degrees of separation from the stories themselves.

And this makes me realize the importance of capturing those stories now. Won’t it be better to hear a podcast of me telling the story to my Personal Storytelling class?

Then again, even if the next generation doesn’t listen to the podcast, how wonderful to think that the stories will still be told, that the basic meaning and message will survive, even if some of the details are lost or transformed by other people telling the story.

(The image at the top is of a deck of "naked lady" playing cards from the 1950s)

International Revelations by Pamela Bosch

I’ve been educating graduate students in physical therapy for over 20 years now, but I am still keen to improve my own teaching skills. My husband, Paul, had been talking up the storytelling curriculum at South Mountain Community College for so long, that I thought it was great for him when he announced he planned to take one of the classes, Personal Storytelling, this fall. What surprised me was what popped out of my mouth: “Why don’t I take it with you?” I had intended to take a dance class, but it just wasn’t working out, and I had this sudden epiphany that perhaps storytelling could actually benefit me as a teacher. It could, and in this short time it already has, and I am sure it will continue to benefit me in ways as yet unseen. I’ve been exposed to something really meaningful and positive and fun in this class; and I am grateful to Liz Warren and all of our classmates for contributing to this.

Since we have been thinking about personal experiences that can be the foundation for stories, I’ve been reflecting on different life events, mainly from my early childhood. However, my interest in storytelling as a way to enhance my teaching skills has also led me to reflect on my career as a teacher. I actually had a one-year foray into teaching before I ever intended to pursue an academic path. I was a licensed physical therapist and loved my work with adults and children with stroke, traumatic or congenital brain injury. Teaching was not in my career plan. But the love that Paul and I both have for travel led us to sign on for a year teaching English at Zheijang University in Hangzhou, The People’s Republic of China.

Teaching was not going to be too stressful for Paul – after all, he had a Master’s Degree in Education and a couple of years of teaching inner-city high school students under his belt. But I felt like I was in way over my head.  However, once we were a bit settled into our life in China and learned what our classes would be, I began to relax and get excited for teaching. I was going to be teaching a current events class, which entailed reading English language newspapers and magazines with the students to help them improve their vocabulary and reading comprehension. Another class assigned to me was conversational English – I could definitely do that! 

But the one class that had me worried was a very basic English class for students I could only describe as the Chinese version of Dumb Jocks.  Yes, there were athletes on scholarship at the university. Despite having learned English from the time they started primary school, these students had clearly not learned much beyond shouting embarrassingly loud “Hellos” every time they saw me. The administrators had apparently decided that I would be the best one to teach this class since they had construed “physical therapist” to mean that I somehow worked with athletes. Well, these students did not disappoint in the stereotyping department – they did not understand a word I said, no matter how slowly (or loudly!) I spoke. I had to seriously re-adjust my expectations and draw on all of my theater skills, which had fortunately included pantomime.

Yet in spite of our limited ability to communicate, friendships came quickly and easily. I soon realized that each of these students had a unique personality: some had a great sense of humor, others were so sweet, and many were amazingly creative. These students started to show up at our apartment on Saturday mornings, ready to take us on a day of exploring in nature or in the city. They also wanted me to understand the sport they excelled at and I soon found myself excited to watch them do what they were so talented at. They turned out to be an unexpectedly delightful group – they made me laugh at them and with them.

The joy of sharing cultures and languages, and in particular teaching that class was one of many surprises that year. One disturbing and sad surprise was the sudden political turn in the spring of 1989, when the Tiananmen Square incident occurred and promptly altered our carefree and open life in communist China to one where students were afraid to be seen with us, and everyone seemed to be watching everyone else. But a joyful and more personal surprise came at the end of that spring semester, when I (the only non-teacher among the foreign language teachers) was awarded “Foreign Teacher of the Year” at our institution. Perhaps being tasked with teaching the Dumb Jocks and somehow making a success of it figured in to that decision. (Or maybe the administration just felt real guilty saddling me with those students and wanted to make up for it!) However, what they probably never knew was that what I had dreaded the most became the greatest joy in my inaugural year as a teacher.

(The image at the top shows Pam with her students. Below is Pam and her husband, Paul Bosch)

Come on People Now by Vanessa Thomas-Wilson

If you hear the song I sing

You will understand, listen!

You hold the key to love and fear all in your trembling hand.

Just one key unlocks them both

It’s there at your command.

Come on people now

Smile on your brother

Everybody get together

Try to love one another Right Now.

-Chester Powers

I was raised in the sixties and the sixties still live within me. In these days of political, social and racial strife I am reeling from the disappointment that is the world of today. I entered adulthood believing we were on the verge of living in a world dictated by the sentiments that filled the songs that permeated my adolescence– Ride on the Peace Train; Ooh-oo Child, things are gonna get easier, Ooh-oo child things’ll get brighter; Imagine all the people sharing all the world.

We have seen so many technological advancements and so much social deterioration- simultaneously bringing the world closer together, yet farther apart. Society, intellect and Mother Earth are all endangered. I find it difficult to maintain optimism. When I travel internationally I watch the news about the United States of America from outside perspectives and things look even more disturbing – the cold detached reality for the entire world to see.

I love America; at least I want to love America as a mother loves her wayward child. She experiences tests of her patience and the occasional exasperation. Sometimes resignation is the best she can muster. But hope for a brighter future springs eternally.

I have many like-minded friends and from this pool of characters I fashion a conscious world that reflects my values and the values of all the other hippies out there regardless of age. Part of this pool consists of Storytellers who magically create worlds that reflect that reality in contrast to the one we hear on the news each evening. In this community I see the potential for that world I believed in.

A better world is coming and I bet Story will be one means of transportation – a Lift to a brighter destination.

Come on people now, share the stories you hold in your trembling hand, everybody come together in understanding. Right now.

The Sacred Ceremony by Kaden Sheffield

             

            Last week I attended a performance of Leonard Bernstein’s Mass. In two hours of vocal, choral and instrumental music in multiple styles Bernstein tells the story of our modern crisis of faith. In it, the central character, called the Celebrant, begins searching for meaning in his life by trying to search for God. He first tries religion and prayer, shutting out the singing, dancing crowds that represent modern secular life. As the Mass proceeds, however, the Celebrant finds that prayers and rituals alone leave him empty. He realizes that he cannot find God or the sacred by shutting out life in the world, but when he tries to incorporate the outer world into his view of the sacred, the contradictions between his absolutes and the infinite shades and conditions of human life drive him into a breakdown.

            Meanwhile, the lack of meaning in the modern world has led to chaos and destruction. In the final scene, as the Celebrant wanders gibbering through a wasteland of spiritually dead bodies he is approached by a young boy, singing a simple song of praise. As the boy embraces him, both the Celebrant and the world are healed, as all realize that God and the sacred are to be found not in another world, but in this one, not by seeking a distant God, but in seeking the God in each other.

             As I watched Mass, I realized that this piece is a story about story. The Celebrant is Everyone—each one of us, as well as Us collectively. His dilemma is our dilemma, his solution our solution. We’re all searching for meaning in our lives, for meaning in life itself. Another way to say that is to say that we’re all searching for the story or stories that work for us.

             And what makes a story work for us? That’s an answer that keeps shifting as our needs, questions, and understanding shift. But we know it when we encounter it. Our ears perk up, our heartbeat quickens as we sense that we are entering a part of the sacred world we need to explore. Such stories lodge in our hearts, changing us subtly, so that we are ever ready for new stories.

             And each new story that we hear moves us along the path of our own story. We feel chills as our own ideas arise, coming to us from we don’t know where.  So progresses our spiritual search, weaving our story together with those of others into the Grand Story.

             So we discover, as the Celebrant discovered, that the end of our search comes in joining the human community: precisely what we find in sharing stories. Stories, like that young boy, come to embrace us and resurrect our humanity. And through sharing stories, we glimpse the God in each other.

(Image at the top: "Leonard Bernstein hugs members of the cast of his "Mass" during certain call last night on the Opera House stage at the opening of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, Sept. 9, 1971.)