Skip to main content

Posts

Showing posts with the label storytelling

Takes a Lickin'

I want to tell you a story, but I am going to show you the result first. You can see on my largely shorn and large cranium in the picture toward the back left is an indentation. That little dark line that's about an inch long. The story is from a late 70's winter in Northwestern Pennsylvania where I spent my grade school years. One winter, as the kids in the neighborhood did, I went out to play across the field to play next door in the snow. It was typically cold and snowy as you would expect. Like feet deep. Not the wimpy precipitation of eastern North Carolina (which is exactly why I live here and not there). My mother bundled me like that little kid in "A Christmas Story." I had the snowsuit on. Multiple layers of socks. Gloves, a toboggan. I began to step out into the cold from our back porch where there was an old screen storm door. As I opened the door and stepped out, a GIGANTIC icicle came down and landed smack on my head. Now I was pulled int...

Storytelling or Listening?

Image via Wikipedia I was struck today when I overheard a conversation. There was a great story being told and my gut wanted so desperately for me to interject at some point about a personal story that compared and related to the story I heard. People probably do this to you many times a day: you tell a personal story about something that happened to you recently or even from 20 years ago. Quickly, even if the person was enraptured by your tale, they quickly tell you one about how it happened to them. And even moreso, how their tale is worse, better or just generally MORE than yours. Why did this strike me? Because I stopped myself for that second when I realized it was just my gut telling me to horn in. I might have missed more, made myself appear a certain way, or even ruined someone's impression of me because of that gut-instinct. There probably isn't anything really wrong with it, but just as important as it is to tell stories well. It's probably just as important to li...