Thank you everyone for coming out on a beautiful fall day and spending it inside listening to stories together. I always get worried when the sun comes out that people will run out of their homes with their arms upraised and completely forget about the show that night. Thank you for showing me how wrong I can be!

It was nice to have a bunch of first-timers in the show again and I hope they all come back. We had too many stories to me to mention individually but one of my favorite memories of the night is the image of first-timer Ana trying to explain to her mom the “scale of sexual fluidity.” I assusme it’s not quite as complicated as explaining how email works to my grandma but it’s gotta be close. Congratulations on making it through that one Ana.

Kenji told us about his first kiss and how it received an ovation from a room full of strangers. Lauren told a beautiful story about how dangerous and also heartbreaking it is to be a teacher. And Jake, one of our old-timers, came up with my new favorite line to describe the perfect relationship, “I just wanted someone to roll eyes together with.” I have to admit, even between two strangers, rolling your eyes together at the same thing is a pretty tight bond.

Thanks to all the tellers who got onstage last night: Ana, Stephanie, Brenna, Bill, Kristi, Dave, Carl, Jake, Chris S, Tracey, Manasa, Chris M, Lauren, Gus, Barb, Kenji, Paul D, Lynn, David, and Kat.

This show has surpassed every expectation I’ve ever had for it and I am incredibly grateful to everyone who has supported us over the last six years. As long as people keep wanting to share stories I’ll keep showing up with a couple of speakers and microphone.

I do need to change things around a bit because we’re getting so many people throwing their name in Mr. Coffee. The show is only supposed to be 90 minutes long and the last couple of months I’ve been letting it go well over two hours in order to give everyone a chance to tell. Unfortunately, I can’t do that anymore. Two-to-two-and-a-half hours is just too long for a show like this and it’s not fair to ask a teller to get up there when the audience is that tired. There’s a big energy dip around the 90-100 minute mark so I’m going to have to keep the show to that length from now on.

The problem, of course, is what to do when 20 people throw their name in Mr. Coffee and we only have time for 10-12. It’s going to take me a while to figure out the best way to do this but for now I’m going to try to focus on giving preference to two specific groups of tellers: first-timers and regulars who have spent a lot of time crafting and practicing their stories.

I’ve always gone out of my way to make sure first-timers get a chance to tell because I know how hard it is to build up the courage to walk up there for the very first time. I don’t want to turn them away because of time constraints when I know they’ve been nervously preparing all month.

I decided to give the tellers who have been really working hard on their stories preference as well. Obviously I’m not in contact with everyone and can’t tell for sure how seriously they’re working on their story but I do get lots of calls and emails from people asking me questions about a story they’re working on or letting me know in some way that they’re practicing on friends, co-workers, family members, etc. I want to respect the work those guys are putting into their craft so if I know you’re really bearing down and working on a story you care about I’m going to do what I can to get you a spot in the show.

I know this isn’t a perfect solution and I’m sure it’ll change over time as I try to balance the open-mikey-ness of the show with my desire to give time to the people who need a place to work on their craft. If anyone has ideas on how I can semi-curate the show while still welcoming people who have never spoken in public before send me an email. You know how hard it is for me to bump people when we run out of time but I have to figure out something so stay with me until I find a good solution.

In the meantime, I want to let you know that there is another free storytelling open mic and it’s run by some really sweet people. The Seattle Storytellers Guild always has an open mic after their regular monthly show and they would love for people from FGS to come tell some stories. Before the open mic is a featured teller who usually does 30-45 minutes of various kinds of stories. I love performing at SSG and you guys will too. Last year they let me do an hour of personal stories and a few months after that they asked three of our regulars to each do a 20 minute story. They’ve been really good to us and I would love for all of you to check them out. It’s a great place to tell your story if I can’t get you on at our show that month.

http://seattlestorytellers.org/ssg/home.html

Another great place to tell is A Guide To Visitors. It’s not an open mic (you have to email them a quick summary of the story you want to tell) but it’s always a fun show. They were the first people I ever told a story for and I’ve been performing there ever since. They use a lot of FGS tellers in their show and it’s one of the few places in town where you can tell stories in the 10-20 minute range.

Another way to get your story out is to attend Bill Bernat’s free monthly story workshop. It’s hands-down the best way to work on your story and also get a chance to tell it. (I’m not affiliated with the workshop but I’ve been to it and have seen the difference it makes for everyone who goes.)

One last thing before I send you off to your weekend. I just found out that another of our regulars will be on KNKX’s Sound Effect show. Her name is Margaret and she has an amazing story. I kept trying to get her to tell it at FGS but NPR beat me to it. She’ll be on tomorrow at 10am. If you miss it live you can catch the podcast here:

http://knkx.org/programs/sound-effect

That’s all you’ll hear from me until the invite from the next show goes out sometime next week. Our next show will be Thursday, October 27. The theme is “Called to Action: Stories of being compelled to do something”. Hopefully, I’ll have catchier title by the time I send out the invitation.

Take care until then.

Paul

freshgroundstories@gmail.com

Every year I do my best to forget about my birthday. I really couldn’t care less about that day but there are a few people in my life that refuse to ignore it. Every year I tell them the same thing. Don’t buy me a gift, just tell me you love me. If you want to make a card and say it that’s fine but all I really want is to know that I’m loved.

Inevitably, someone will get me something and then I have to do all those weird calculations to figure out how long I have to keep it until I can throw it away. Trust me, a card saying “Thank you for being my friend – you’re a big part of my life” means more to me than anything you could ever put on a credit card. Connection is the only currency I accept and that goes double on holidays.

There has only been one time where someone knew me so well and loved me so much that even now, 17 years later, I still treasure what she gave me.

Angie and I had been dating for about a year when my birthday came around and I was doing my best to change the subject whenever it came up. I thought I had managed to avoid it entirely when the day arrived and she hadn’t mentioned anything about it. That night we went out to dinner and as we drove up to her house and parked Angie leaned over from the passenger seat and whispered, “I have a present for you.”

My heart sank. Angie was the first woman I had ever fallen fell head-over-sneakers for. For the first year of our relationship we were like a pair of parentheses. Everything we did became “our thing.” New books, new music, new food, it was all part of some magical world we created that no one else could see. I’m sure we made some people sick the way we walked through the world playing with each other. We were that couple who had a special phrase for everything and laughed at things no one else understood. Blech, right? Well, not when it’s you. It’s pretty damn great when it’s you.

But all that didn’t keep from worrying about this birthday gift. I couldn’t bear to think of Angie giving me something that wasn’t perfect.

I turned the engine and looked at her. “You really got me something?”

“Yes!” she whispered, “But I have to tell you how I found it first.”

She took my hand and told me this story.

“The other day I was an estate sale and this little old German lady came up and started talking to me. I said I was looking for a present for my boyfriend and I told her all about you. She had this really thick accent, like she just got off the boat, but I was able to understand everything she said.

“She told me her husband had been killed in the war fighting with the resistance. The men in her husband’s underground unit smuggled her out of Germany and into France where she hid out in a safehouse until just before D-Day. Then she snuck across the channel to England where she was brought to this place called Bletchley Park where she met a young man named Alan Turing who-”

“Bletchley Park?!” I screamed. “She was at Bletchley Park? Where they broke the German code in WWII??”

“Yes!” Angie yelled back, as excited as I was.

“And she met Alan Turing? THE Alan Turing?!?! The mathematician and cryptography genius from WWII? Are you kidding me?”

“She totally met Alan Turing!” Angie said. “He’s the one who debriefed her. She told him everything she knew about the Nazi codes.”

I could not believe what I was hearing. Angie knew I loved reading WWII histories but she also knew that I loved codes. I used to make them up when I was a kid. Meeting a German war refugee who escaped from the Nazi’s and worked at Bletchley Park was just about the most amazing thing I had ever heard. But Angie wasn’t done.

“So she’s telling me all about the war and secret codes and her midnight run across enemy lines when she says, ‘Young lady, I’d like to show you something.’ She takes me upstairs to her bedroom and over to a large trunk that was sitting in the corner of her room. She opens up the trunk and says, ‘There’s something here I’d like you to have. I believe it’s time for me to pass it on and I’d like you and your boyfriend to be ones who keep it.’

“She opened up the trunk and took out this beautiful black machine. It had buttons and dials and a little roller where it looked like paper was supposed to go. She said, ‘Angela, this is the Enigma Machine. Do you know what it is?'”

I screamed from the driver’s seat. “No way! The Enigma Machine?!?! That’s the machine they built that broke the Nazi code. It saved the Allies and won the war! Are you telling me she smuggled it out from England? And you saw it? You have it??”

Angie smiled and leaned over until her lips were just touching my ear. “Would you like to see it?”

I couldn’t even speak. I just nodded. Yes, I would like to see the Enigma Machine. The thing that broke the code and saved the free world? I most definitely wanted to see it.

“Good,” Angie whispered. “Because it’s your birthday present.”

It was dark by this time as she led me up the steps to her house. But instead of going inside she led me around the outside of the house to the back yard which had a small stand of trees in it. The moon was out and there was just enough light for her to guide me to one tree where she sat me down on the ground in front of what was probably the last Enigma Machine left in the world.

I pulled off the gray plastic fabric that was covering it and saw the greatest gift I’ve ever received. It was a 1951 Underwood typewriter. Eight of the keys had a little piece of paper stuck to them with a different letter written on each one. Angie handed me a small card she had made. Inside was a message written in code eight letters long. I typed out the message using those eight keys on the typewriter. The message spelled out, “I love you.”

Well of course I just started crying. I’d been waiting all my life for someone to know me like this but I never expected to find her. And here on this night, under this tree, I had found the person I wanted to spend my life with. She was the Enigma Machine that was built just for me.

As I sat there crying there another feeling began to surface. Underneath all the love was a great fear were rising up. I knew I wanted nothing more than to be with Angie, but 150 miles away there was someone else I was already with and could not abandon.

Angie lived in Bellingham but my son and I lived in Olympia, two-and-a-half hours away. He was eight years old and outside of Angie my life was devoted to him. He saw his mother every other weekend but spent the rest of the week with me. We were inseparable. We played, we sang, we drew comics together. We took funny pictures of each other in goofing around in Goodwill and followed stray cats around the neighborhood. I never saw myself as a parent but once Taran was born I was happy to be his dad.

Angie was living in Olympia when we started dating but her home was Bellingham and she eventually moved back. I couldn’t blame her. You know when you’re in the car and you hear the first few notes of your favorite song come on and you start bouncing up and down waiting to start singing along? That’s what Bellingham was to Angie. Every time we would visit, she would start dancing in her seat as we drove over the last hill and she could see Bellingham ahead of us. It was her favorite place in the world and she longed to return to it. It’s the windiest town in Washington and she was like a kite I could barely hold onto.

So in that perfect moment under the tree reading “I love you” from the woman I adored I knew it was all going to slip away. As much as I think I can always pull another trick out of my hat I knew I couldn’t tear my son away from his mom and I couldn’t live with the guilt of abandoning him to live far away with someone else.

Angie, I know now, understood that. We tried to keep it together, visiting each other when we could afford it. But it couldn’t last. We broke up a few months later when she realized I couldn’t be there enough for the kind of relationship we both wanted.

I still have the Enigma Machine and I think about it often. It’s the most beautiful thing anyone has ever given me. The gift I wanted more than anything, though, was for Angie to stay in Olympia.

Now, years later, I can say that I’m lucky I never got that gift. I wouldn’t be the dad I am now and have the same relationship with my son if I had left Taran in Olympia or taken him with me to Bellingham. It would have been tragic for him to move away from his friends and his mother and that would have made it tragic for me. Sometimes the thing you want most is the thing you should never get.

And that’s the kind of story we’re looking for this month. The theme is “You can’t always get what you want.” Tell us a story about a time when you wanted something but didn’t get it. How did it affect you? Did it change how you felt about the thing you wanted? Are you glad things worked out the way they did or do you still wish things had been different?

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, Sept 22, 7:00pm at the Roy St Cafe.

Paul

freshgroundstories@gmail.com