What a sweet evening we had last Thursday. Some shows are big, raucous carnivals, and some are filled with quieter moments where we’re all leaning forward, nodding along with each story. I never have any idea which one we’re going to get, but whatever happens always seems to be just what we need.

Usually, I spend these thank you letters talking about how each story affected me and what they brought up on the way home. This month, I’m just going to talk about one story from the show that sent me off on a tangent for the last few days.

Our only first-time teller that night was Mary, who told a wonderful story about ordering a live chameleon from the back of her brother’s Boy Scout magazine. I don’t think I was 30 seconds into Mary’s story when she sent me right back to elementary school and all the stuff I tried to get my mom to order me from the back of various comic books. Plastic Revolutionary War soldiers, plastic WWII soldiers, X-ray glasses, all kinds of magic tricks, and, of course, Sea Monkeys.

No matter where you lived in those days, if you wanted a toy, you were stuck with whatever the local toy store carried. You might occasionally get something out of the Sears-Roebuck catalog, but for the most part, you got whatever Woolworth’s, K-Mart, or the neighborhood drug store had on the shelves.

If you wanted something different, you had to flip to the back of a comic book and order cheap little things the regular stores wouldn’t carry. And then you had to do something we never do anymore. You had to wait.

Yes, before the internet we waited for stuff. Three to four weeks was common, but sometimes we had to wait months for something to come in the mail. Months! Can you imagine waiting that long for a pair of slippers to show up from Amazon? There would be riots.

That is the place Mary took me in her story, and I absolutely loved it. I loved that I was listening to someone who did the same stuff I did as a kid. And I loved that she told her story so well that it only took her a few seconds to send me back 50 years.

The day after the show, I was telling my girlfriend about the story and reminiscing about having to wait for stuff. Was having to wait better for us as a culture? I have no idea. I love getting stuff the next day with a guarantee I can return it for any reason. But I also know that getting stuff the day after I order it has made me more impatient in general. My expectation span™ for everything has shrunk to 24 hours. 

Would I be a little less anxious if I had to wait two weeks for a letter instead of an hour for an email? What if I had to wait a week for the next episode of a show instead of watching the entire series over a weekend? Would I have a better perspective on the world in general if I didn’t feel entitled to getting whatever I wanted almost immediately?

This is what storytelling does. We’re entertained in the moment, feel connected to the person while they’re sharing, and afterward we get to think about their story more deeply. We can examine the things that led the teller through that time in her life. We can relate to the subject matter from our own perspective and wonder if we would have acted the same way. If we’re lucky, the story leads us to reflect on ourselves or the world in a more personal way than an essay or speech ever could. 

Every story I heard at the show that night made me laugh or think or wonder about something in my own life. That’s why I quoted Patti Digh toward the end of the show when I said, the shortest distance between two people is a story. 

One of my goals with FGS is to shrink the distance between us. All of us. Once you learn how to tell a story, you can go out in the world and do that too. A story well told never pushes people away. Not if it’s told honestly and with humility. 

That’s all for now. Thanks to all the tellers that night: Melissa, Mary, Tracey, Debbie, Deborah, Craig, Keith, Sean, Ed, Carmen, Andres, and Auntmama

Special thanks to whoever put the fake names in Mr. Coffee. I loved that! That night we had Groucho Marx and Wendell Wilkie in the carafe. Thank you for the unexpected laugh. You are free to add any goofy names you want in the future.

Next month’s show is on August 20. The theme is “Who do you think you are?” I’ll get the invite out as soon as I can.

Hope to see you in a few weeks.

Paul

freshgroundstories@gmail.com