• What we’re all about

Fresh Ground Stories

Fresh Ground Stories

Monthly Archives: May 2016

Thank you!

31 Tuesday May 2016

Posted by Paul Currington - Fresh Ground Stories in Uncategorized

≈ Leave a comment

Thanks to everyone who came out last Thursday to listen to some great stories at Roy Street! I know you could have been getting ready for the big campout or cookout on Memorial Day weekend and it means a lot that a bunch of you decided to spend a couple hours with me and some wonderful storytellers.

Every show I’m reminded of something that I should already know but for some reason I refuse to remember. This month I was reminded that our mothers actually do love us. Stephanie, one of our first-timers, told us about her mother holding her in a “ferocious and devastatingly intense hug” that tempered the guilt of driving home with a wrecked car. Each of us has so many stories of how we disappointed our parents at various times and it was great to hear Stephanie remind us that no matter what we do they still probably love us.

Timothy, our guest storyteller, told a story about cleaning out his mother’s apartment after she died. It was a story I heard him tell on The Moth and it was as powerful onstage at Roy Street as it was on the radio. When I first discovered him online I didn’t know who he was but a few minutes into his story I knew we had the same story inside us. The details are different but the story is the same. It’s why I asked him to come tell it at our show. I wanted to see him tell it in person. I guess I wanted to make sure he was real.

I never thought I would want to look back at certain people in my life and change how I felt about them. But after listening to Tim’s story I decided that maybe I did need to do that. So I started writing to people in my past and asking questions. I don’t know how this is all going to turn out but I’m willing to take it as far as I can. Thanks Tim.

Tim asked if I could let you guys know about some organizations he cares a lot about. I told him I’d be happy to.

The International Foster Care Alliance http://ifcaseattle.org/
FosterClub https://www.fosterclub.com/
Foster Care Alumni of America http://www.fostercarealumni.org/washington-chapter/

Super colossal thanks to everyone who told a story that night: Mike, Bill, Ginger, Terra Lea, Carin, Elliot, Scot, Timothy, and especially our first-timers, Deborah, Joe and Stephanie. (I hope I haven’t forgotten anyone! I don’t have all the slips from the show.)

Next month’s show is June 23 and the theme is “Saying Yes.” I’ll write up the invite as soon as I have time.

A few quick plugs for some of our regulars.

KPLU’s Sound Effects just aired Jenny’s story about trying to navigate the mental health system for her husband. She told this story for the first time in public last year at our show. I was three feet away watching her struggle to get through it. Now she’s trying to change things by sharing her story with a bigger audience.

http://www.kplu.org/post/fatal-consequences-broken-mental-health-system-and-woman-s-mission-change-it

Next week they’ll be airing another of our regulars. His name is Tim. He’s told stories at our show that I’ve never heard anywhere else. Like Jenny’s story it will probably be heartbreaking. That’s why you should listen next Saturday at 10am.

Lastly, Bill Bernat is reprising his “Becoming More Less Crazy” show. You’ve seen bits of it at FGS and now it’s time to see the whole thing in all its glory:

https://thepocket.vbotickets.com/event/Becoming_More_Less_Crazy_Storytelling/12789

The recording came out ok so send me an email if you want the audio of your story. (I only give out the audio to the people who told a story. Most of them don’t want their stories online so that’s why I only share them with the person who told them.)

See you on the 23rd!

Paul

freshgroundstories@gmail.com

Advertisement

Great news, plust he show is this Thursday!

24 Tuesday May 2016

Posted by Paul Currington - Fresh Ground Stories in Uncategorized

≈ Leave a comment

Hi Everyone!

I hope you can make it to the show this Thursday at Roy Street Coffee. The theme is “Mistakes: Stories of Getting it Wrong.” Here’s the official invite if you want to get more info:

Fresh Ground Stories: Mistakes – Stories of getting it wrong

Thursday, May 26, 2016, 7:00 PM

Roy Street Coffee & Tea
700 Broadway East – Seattle, WA

52 Story Fans Attending

This is a story about my biological mother. I’m lucky to have had three moms in my life. Last month I told you about mom #3 needing to get a pacemaker. Mom #3 is awesome. She’s been in my life for 27 years. She was my dad’s third wife and the one everyone likes. This story is about mom #1. She’s the one I grew up with.My mother was a tremendous s…

Check out this Meetup →

Rules for telling a story: https://freshgroundstories.wordpress.com/2013/01/22/storytelling-rules-and-guidelines/

I’m crossing my fingers that we’ll have a special guest teller that night. I heard his story on The Moth earlier this year and begged him to come tell it at FGS some time. If the stars line up, this Thursday will be that time.

I also have some really cool NPR news to share with you. Two of our storytellers were interviewed for broadcast on KPLU’s Sound Effect. I just got the confirmation that Jenny’s interview will air this coming Saturday at 10am and Tim’s interview will air next Saturday at the same time.

If you’ve seen either of them on stage at FGS you’ll know how hard it was for them to get up in public and tell those stories. They’ve been responsible for some of the most touching moments we’ve ever had at Roy Street. I’m so proud of them for finding the courage to now share those same stories on the radio. The producer said both stories were “heartbreaking and wonderful.” That’s how I feel about them too.

Here’s the show’s website if you can’t catch it live:

http://www.kplu.org/programs/sound-effect

That’s all for now. Email me if you have any questions. I hope to see a bunch of you this Thursday and that some of you bring stories 🙂

Paul

freshgroundstories@gmail.com

Fresh Ground Stories: Mistakes – Stories of getting it wrong

10 Tuesday May 2016

Posted by Paul Currington - Fresh Ground Stories in Uncategorized

≈ Leave a comment

This is a story about my biological mother. I’m lucky to have had three moms in my life. Last month I told you guys about mom #3 needing to get a pacemaker. Mom #3 is awesome. She’s been in my life for 27 years. She was my dad’s third wife and the one everyone likes. This story is about mom #1. She’s the one I grew up with.

My mother was a tremendous smoker. It was something she excelled at in the same way other people excel at throwing a baseball or dancing the rhumba. Sometimes she used a cigarette holder and looked very elegant. Other times she’d go a cappella and use the cigarette as a prop to tell stories about growing up in the Bronx.

Wherever she went a pack of Viceroys went with her. They were part of her life and she carried them with her the same way a magician always has a deck of cards on him. The downside was that her two-and-a-half-pack-a-day habit ensured our house was constantly full of smoke. The air quality in our house was so poor you’d swear the television was powered by coal. We could have run an iron smelter in the living room and the visibility would have been the same.

Even worse was that anyone who came over to see us ended up going home smelling like the bartender at the VFW. I’d go to a birthday party and when one of my little 10-year-old friends unwrapped the present from us the smell of a thousand cigarettes would burst forth and all the parents would suddenly find something for the kids to do outside.

Strangely, my mother’s smoking was the only thing I was brave enough to stand up to her about. She had a wicked temper and it was never safe to argue with her. If she was the Baryshnikov of smoking she was the Mike Tyson of parenting. Tyson had a left hook that came out of nowhere and mom had a temper that came out two or three times a day that could floor you in a second. She was an actress and had a voice that hit you like a cannonball. It was a formidable weapon I had no defense against.

For some reason, though, I would occasionally find the courage to bring up her smoking. I could tell my own breathing was affected and it was embarrassing to have to go to school smelling like a pool hall. Sometimes I would ask her to stop and she’d try for a week and then start up again. If it had been a while since she last tried to quit I would come to dinner table wearing a bandana over my nose and mouth and tell her about all the wonderful statistics I’d learned about in health class.

“What if you get sick?” I’d ask over the mashed potatoes.

“We’re not talking about this,” she’d say, stubbing out her 47th butt of the day.

“You’re killing yourself,” I would mumble between bites.

“What did you say?” she’d yell from across the table.

“Nothing.”

I considered smoking a long drawn out act of suicide and was upset that she was rolling the dice with our lives.

Looking back I’m embarrassed by how little I understood what it must have taken for a single woman to raise a kid by herself in a place she didn’t belong. Alaska is a long way from New York City and when your only job skills are acting and raconteuring life is going to be hard. But in my child’s mind I always felt she was choosing smoking over me. Or at least that she was choosing to smoke over making sure she was around long enough to see me grow up. I would always try to frame my pleas as compassion but even then I knew it was more self-preservation. If she died what would happen to me?

Then one day I woke up on a Saturday and mom couldn’t speak right. Nothing she said made sense. She asked for the phone but could only say, “The thing…downstairs. The black thing with the…” and she pantomimed a long, curled cord. She wanted me to find her address book but all she could do was make an opening and closing movement with her hands.

I spent the rest of the day trying to figure out what was wrong. Every time she tried to speak she sounded like someone trying to remember the name of a song that’s on the tip of her tongue. Except it wasn’t a song, it was the word for milk or bread or Paul.

We didn’t own a car so it took me two days to get her to the hospital. The next day I found out she had cancer of the brain and everything else. I don’t think there was an organ in her body that didn’t have some kind of tumor in it. The diagnosis was terminal. Some adult friends checked her into the hospital while I tried to figure out what to do next.

All I could think to do was to go back to school. I was 17 and just starting my senior year. I had always been good in school and it was full of adults who praised me. I didn’t know what to do about cancer but I knew how to go to English class and talk about The Great Gatsby. So that’s what I did. I went to my classes, did my homework, and told no one what was happening at home.

Over the next few days my self-control began to crack. My own anger inched closer to the surface. I started talking to myself out loud as I walked home from school.

“I told you this would happen!”

“I hid in my room all those years like Anne Frank just for this??”

“If you die I’ll have to call dad!”

My father lived 400 miles north in Fairbanks which is about 200 miles south of the Arctic Circle. I saw him maybe once a year and had no desire to leave all my friends and move in with a guy I barely knew.

A few days later a friend came up to me at my locker between classes and said he had seen my mom wandering the halls. I told him that couldn’t be true. It had to be someone else. Then another friend said he’d seen her. And another friend after that. Finally, just as physics class let out, I saw her slowly shuffling down the hall, buffeted by teenagers on either side of her.

I ran up and asked her what happened at the hospital. She looked at me confused.

“Did someone drive you here?” I asked.

She shook her head. That meant she must have taken the #31 bus from the hospital.

“Why are you here?” I asked.

She shook her head again.

“Do you want to go home?”

She nodded her head.

I called the mother of one of my friends who came by and took her home. It turned out mom didn’t realize she had health insurance. She left the hospital because she didn’t want to die and leave me penniless. I knew it was too late for that but I took care of her as long as I could until she agreed to go back. A month later she was dead.

The funeral was rough. Luckily, someone else planned it. All I had to do was show up and sit in the front row. I wanted to be anywhere but there. I didn’t want to hear people talk about how charming and funny my mother was. I didn’t want to hear about what an inspiring woman she was. I wanted someone to get up there and say, “She was an angry woman who smoked a lot. I wish she had taken better care of herself.”

My dad did his best to support me from afar. He paid someone to let me stay at their house until I finished school. He said he was sorry about what happened and bought me a watch. He was upset when I dropped out of college after two months and suggested I join the navy.

Years later when I had my own son I promised myself that I would do whatever it took to be there for him. Over the years I forgave my mom for everything but the thing that killed her. It still bothered me that she smoked herself into the grave. That weakness was unforgivable

Then one night, after years of depression and crippling loneliness, I found myself writing a suicide note to my son. I’d made it 46 years on sheer grit and willpower and now that well of inner strength was empty. I had raised my son to adulthood and he was out of the house. I had proved to myself that I was stronger than my mother.

After rocking back and forth on the floor of my darkened living room for two hours clutching a straight razor something inside me finally broke. I crawled to the phone and for the first time in my life called a crisis line. I talked for an hour and then passed out from exhaustion. The next day I fought the urge to pick up the razor and called a psychiatrist.

In the years since that night on the floor of my apartment, I’ve come to believe that there are some things we cannot do alone. There are situations and circumstances that are greater than us and we have to ask for help if we’re going to survive them. My mother never asked for help and it was that more than anything else that killed her. She could have gotten help for smoking. She could have found someone to talk to about her rage and depression instead of bottling it up until she exploded. I used to think that a person could survive anything with enough willpower. I was wrong. You only need enough willpower to ask for help.

This month’s theme is “Mistakes – Stories of getting it wrong.” Tell us a story about a time when you realized you were wrong about something. What was it? How did you deal with it? What did you learn from it?

Don’t worry. You don’t have to bring a story about your mom dying. You can talk about cupcakes if you want. Of course you’ll have to talk about how you were wrong about those cupcakes so they better be pretty amazing cupcakes.

Remember to keep it clean, practice out loud on friends or pets, and make sure it’s under 8 minutes. Here are the updated Rules & Guidelines for telling a story at the show:

https://freshgroundstories.wordpress.com/2013/01/22/storytelling-rules-and-guidelines/

I hope to see you at the next FGS, Thursday, May 26, 7:00pm at the Roy St Cafe.

Paul
freshgroundstories@gmail.com

Thank you!

01 Sunday May 2016

Posted by Paul Currington - Fresh Ground Stories in Uncategorized

≈ Leave a comment

Thanks to everyone who came out to the show last Thursday. There were some amazing stories told that night. As always, we learned a lot.

Kat showed us how people of all cultures and backgrounds can come together as one in their frustration in trying to park in Seattle. Tracey let us know why it’s important to occasionally make sure your boyfriend has all his toes. And Mike taught us that what you think is on your pants isn’t always what you think is on your pants. I’m pretty sure everyone who was there that night will never forget this piece of advice 🙂

Thanks to all the folks who walked up to the microphone and shared a story: Tina, Tracey, Wudan, John, Chris S, Mike, Abil, Chris M, Cavan, Ginger, Bengt, Kat, Julie, Jenny, Connie and David.

One person I want to give special thanks to is my friend Bengt. I’ve been trying to get Bengt to tell a certain story for almost 19 years and he finally told that story Thursday at Roy Street. The story was about the moment he decided to leave the Mormon church. It was funny and powerful and touching and inspiring and just beautiful to hear. It was the first time I ever saw him nervous on stage but as he told me afterward it was worth it.

I’m trying to convince him to let me put the recording on our Facebook page but he’s worried about some of the people he named in his story. Maybe he’ll let me bleep them out or maybe I’ll just have to accept that the only ones who will ever hear that story were the ones who were there that night.

The recording from last week’s show sounds like it came out fine so I can give each of the storytellers a copy of their performance if they want it. I only give them to the people who told a story and it’s only the audio of their own story. Most performers don’t want their personal stories online so that’s why I only give copies to the people who told them.

I hope to see a bunch of you at our next show on Thursday, May 26. I’ll write up the official invite as soon as I can. The theme is stories of being wrong about something.

See you on the 26th!

Paul
freshgroundstories@gmail.com

Follow Us on Meetup

  • Meetup

Fresh Ground Stories

Fresh Ground Stories

Rules and General Info

  • What we’re all about
Follow Fresh Ground Stories on WordPress.com

Recent Posts

  • FGS: Starting Over – Stories of moving forward
  • Thank you!
  • See you tomorrow!
  • Good news!
  • December’s show is cancelled due to storyworthy 24 hours

Archives

  • January 2023
  • December 2022
  • November 2022
  • October 2022
  • September 2022
  • August 2022
  • July 2022
  • June 2022
  • May 2022
  • April 2022
  • March 2022
  • February 2022
  • January 2022
  • December 2021
  • November 2021
  • October 2021
  • September 2021
  • August 2021
  • July 2021
  • June 2021
  • May 2021
  • April 2021
  • March 2021
  • February 2021
  • January 2021
  • December 2020
  • November 2020
  • October 2020
  • September 2020
  • August 2020
  • July 2020
  • June 2020
  • May 2020
  • April 2020
  • March 2020
  • February 2020
  • January 2020
  • December 2019
  • November 2019
  • October 2019
  • September 2019
  • August 2019
  • July 2019
  • June 2019
  • May 2019
  • April 2019
  • March 2019
  • February 2019
  • January 2019
  • December 2018
  • November 2018
  • October 2018
  • September 2018
  • August 2018
  • July 2018
  • June 2018
  • May 2018
  • April 2018
  • March 2018
  • February 2018
  • January 2018
  • December 2017
  • November 2017
  • October 2017
  • September 2017
  • August 2017
  • July 2017
  • June 2017
  • May 2017
  • April 2017
  • March 2017
  • February 2017
  • January 2017
  • December 2016
  • November 2016
  • October 2016
  • September 2016
  • August 2016
  • July 2016
  • June 2016
  • May 2016
  • April 2016
  • March 2016
  • February 2016
  • January 2016
  • December 2015
  • November 2015
  • October 2015
  • September 2015
  • August 2015
  • July 2015
  • June 2015
  • May 2015
  • April 2015
  • March 2015
  • February 2015
  • January 2015
  • December 2014
  • November 2014
  • October 2014
  • September 2014
  • August 2014
  • July 2014
  • June 2014
  • May 2014
  • April 2014
  • March 2014
  • January 2014
  • October 2013
  • June 2013
  • January 2013
  • November 2012
  • October 2012
  • September 2012
  • August 2012
stats for wordpress

Recent Comments

FGS: Strangers… on Storytelling Rules and Gu…
FGS: Cravings… on Storytelling Rules and Gu…

Blog at WordPress.com.

Privacy & Cookies: This site uses cookies. By continuing to use this website, you agree to their use.
To find out more, including how to control cookies, see here: Cookie Policy
  • Follow Following
    • Fresh Ground Stories
    • Join 47 other followers
    • Already have a WordPress.com account? Log in now.
    • Fresh Ground Stories
    • Customize
    • Follow Following
    • Sign up
    • Log in
    • Report this content
    • View site in Reader
    • Manage subscriptions
    • Collapse this bar