Thank you everyone who came out to the show last Thursday. We had so many first-time tellers! My favorite part of each show is when someone who has never spoken in public gets up and learns how good it feels to share a story. Of course we couldn’t do it without such a patient and supportive audience so special thanks to them as well. You guys always bring the love to the storytellers and that’s why we’re able to keep doing this.

Every month at FGS we learn a little more about the world and this month was no different. This time we learned that pick-up artists are now calling themselves life coaches. We also learned that they like to hang out at The Gap. Most importantly, we learned that Kath will do almost anything for a story. Kath was one our first-timers and even though I never encourage people to do something crazy just for a story I’m secretly hoping something weird happens to her in the next couple of weeks so we can hear about.

We also learned that Nadia did her part to end the Cold War by disguising herself as a punk with a neon blue mohawk and sneaking up to the Czech border to share a smoke with a friendly Soviet border guard. We can only imagine how different the world would be today if Madeline Albright had walked into some of those peace talks wearing safety pin jeans and a Dead Kennedys t-shirt. Nadia was another first-timer and I’m still kicking myself that I didn’t hunt her down after the show and tell her how much I liked her story. Nadia, if you’re reading this, we’d love to have you back.

I also wish I could have told Hannah how jealous I am of her relationship with her mom. Hannah was home-schooled until college which means for the first 12 years of school she had to spend every hour of every class with her own mother. Can you imagine? I’m an only child and I know if my mom had home-schooled me she would have reminded me every year that once again I graduated at the bottom of my class. Hannah, whatever your mom did she did it right. You may think your story is about the time you met Obama but I think of it as the time Obama met you.

There were lots of other great stories that night but I gotta wrap this up so I can get ready to hop on a plane tomorrow morning. The recording turned out fine but since I’ll be in Canada for a week I won’t be able to get anyone’s recording to them until next weekend. Only the people who told a story can get a copy of it. Most people don’t want their personal stuff out there on the internet so I only give out recordings of single stories and only to the people who told them.

Next month’s theme is Journeys. Journeys, of course, can be physical, emotional, spiritual, almost anything. It can last a day or a decade. If you’ve ever been on a journey that changed your life somehow we’d love to hear it. Our next show will be July 28 at 7pm at Roy Street Coffee. I’ll write up the official invite when I get back in town but you can start thinking about it now. Rules for telling a story are below:

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

Thanks again to all our storytellers: Bill, Hannah, Elliot, David, Gaylin, Barb, Deborah, Jake, and first-timers Nadia, Arden, Kath, Ingrid, Katy.

See you on July 28!

Paul
freshgroundstories@gmail.com