January’s theme is “Fed Up – Stories from the end of your rope.” I don’t know if anyone else has had a rough year but 2018 was a tough one for me. Death, heartache, existential crises, physical injuries, ghosts from my past rising from the grave. All of that was nicely packed into the thing we call, appropriately, The Year of the Dog.

You know what I think would make a great start to 2019? A show where a bunch of us tell stories about how we got to the end of our rope and managed to crawl back up. I know at least a few of us managed to do that because we’re still here. We’re still rolling out of bed, getting out of the house, and showing up at Roy Street once a month.

I was going to use this invite to tell you a story about the time my dad saved my life by giving me a used recliner. Right now, though, I can’t figure out a way to make it funny. And I want to make it funny. Or at least more lighthearted than it feels. I have to figure out a way to explain my responsibility in the story without sounding bitter. That’s a big part of personal storytelling for me. If I’m still blaming other people for something that happened it means I’m not really over it. It means I haven’t let go of my anger yet and found the good thing that came out of the pain.

This is one of the reasons FGS is so special to me. We have a little show here where we get to see people who have lived through some crazy, painful stuff and come out the other side with a new perspective and maybe even a bit of gratitude.

So I’m going to keep the story I’m thinking about to myself for a while. When I finally tell it I want it to be something my dad would be proud of.

I hope a few of you do have a story that you’d like to tell about how you got to the end of your rope and somehow climbed back up. We’ve all gotten fed up, wrung out, and beat down. How are you still here? What was the moment when you looked up from the ground and decided to work your way to your feet and keep going? I bet a lot of people in the room that night need to hear that story.

Remember to keep your story clean and under 8 minutes. Here are the rules and guidelines for telling at FGS. I update them a few times a year so even if you’ve read them before it’s always good to take a look now and then to see if there are any changes.

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

If you want to workshop your story before the show, this is a great place to do it:
https://www.meetup.com/Fresh-Ground-Stories-Storytelling-Workshop/

I hope everyone is having a safe and happy holiday.

See you on the 17th

Paul
freshgroundstories@gmail.com

Thank you all for such a sweet night of storytelling yesterday. I wasn’t sure anyone would show up because of the power outages and falling branches but a bunch of you walked in at the last minute and we had a full show. It warms my heart to know that FGS members will risk getting run over by flying garbage cans to get to Roy Street 🙂

We had a lot of funny and touching moments and I’m grateful the folks who practiced their stories had an audience to tell them to. Dave K told a beautiful story about a life spent living out of hotel rooms, He brought me back to all the years I spent on the road doing comedy. No one believes me when I say comedy was the loneliest job I ever had. But Dave knows. He wasn’t a comic but he knows the toll it takes on your family and your soul to be living out of a suitcase. If you ever open the mail one day and find that you’re a lifetime member of the Marriott Platinum Guest Club you might want to rethink your career path.

Susan told a great story about what it’s like to ride the bus in Seattle. It reminded me of how wonderful it is when someone tells a story about the little things in life. You don’t have to sail the seven seas or pull a nun from a burning building to have a great story. If you’re willing to slow down and notice all the things going on around you, you can get a great story just from missing the bus one day. Thank you, Susan, for showing us that stories are everywhere.

Robert’s story of going through all his savings to make sure three people he loved got medical care was a wonderful example of how sharing your story can be more powerful than sharing your opinion. MIke’s story of visiting Disneyland with his daughter during a rough time in his marriage probably made my son wish I had taken him to Wild Waves every time one of my relationships was floundering.

Ginger reminded us of how special grandparents can be and also how important it is to never drink tap water in Taiwan. Zoe told us about life lessons she learned from a summer internship in a NYC theater where she got to see some of the greatest actors in America audition for roles. Chris told us how she finally got a house of her own and then her parents moved in. I love how we’ve gotten to know Chris’s parents through the stories she’s told at FGS over the years. If you come to our shows for a while you slowly get to know our regular tellers through the stories they share. It’s a kind of relationship I’ve never experienced anywhere else. Sometimes I run into people from the audience around town and they always ask about some teller they remember from the show. They want to know how they’re doing and if I know them. If you’ve ever told a story at FGS and wonder if anyone remembers, I want you to know that people do.

Bill and Chad both told heartbreaking stories of how they managed to navigate difficult relationships with their mothers. Talking about parents can be hard because the audience will always wonder what the other side of the story is. Bill and Chad put a lot of thought into their stories and both of their stories felt fair and honest. Not only did it take a lot of vulnerability and courage to share those stories it also took a lot of restraint to tell them in a way that allowed us to feel some of what their moms must have been going through in those years.

Kevin let us in on his feelings about commitment and then at the end introduced us to his fiance. Congratulations Kevin! David T told a difficult story about the near-death of his son and how they both had to go through their own individual recoveries. Lance, one of our new regulars, told a sweet story of how his marriage of 40 years began with the question, “So, what’s your zip code?”

To close out the night, I asked our special guest storyteller, Maryanne Moorman, to tell a story I heard her tell a week earlier with the folk band The Go Janes. Maryanne is one of the best tellers I know. She has a warm southern accent and a way of describing each scene that makes me wish I’d been taking notes. I can’t do justice to her story here but I can say it involved a hot Miami Christmas, a young boy’s surprising wish, and her Appalachian family putting on tin hats and singing Feliz Navidad. Trust me, you are so sad you missed that story.

Thanks to everyone who came out to the show last night and supported all the tellers. Whether you ever decide to get up and tell a story or not, I appreciate everyone who gets off their couch, drives to Roy Street and helps me create a place where we can share all the things we’ve lived through.

I’ll be at Maryanne’s open mic next Thursday if any of you would like to join me. I won’t be telling a story. I’m going because there’s a fellow who weaves storytelling and magic together and I can’t wait to see how he does it. Click the link below for more information:

https://www.maryannemoorman.com/upcoming-live-events

If any of you would like to tell a story but want to take a workshop or just get some feedback first, I highly recommend going to the workshop on the other side of this link:

https://www.meetup.com/Fresh-Ground-Stories-Storytelling-Workshop/

It’s run by one of our regular tellers and is always the first place I think of when I’m working on a story of my own.

I also just discovered a new story open mic in North Seattle that I want everyone to know about. I told a story at their first show last week and had a great time. The show runs on the 2nd Thursday of each month so it’s a great place to practice a story you want to tell the following week at FGS.

https://www.meetup.com/North-Seattle-Storytelling-Meetup/events/257291067/

That’s all for now. I hope everyone has a great holiday. Our next show is Jan 17. The theme is “Fed Up – Stories from the end of your rope.” I’ll get the invite out as soon as I can.

The recording of Thursday’s show came out fine so let me know if you want a copy of the story you told. Some tellers already emailed me and I’ll be getting the audio out to them as soon as I can. I only give audio to the people who told stories and it’s only of the story they told. Most of the stories we hear at FGS are very personal so I never give the audio to anyone but the teller.

See you next month!

Paul
freshgroundstories@gmail.com

Hi Everyone,

If you’re looking for a good place to practice your story for FGS, The Moth, or any other show there’s a new storytelling open mic that just opened up at a cool little bookstore in Greenwood. Their first show is this Thursday.  I’ll be there telling a story I told this summer at FGS. I’d love to share the stage with a bunch of you!

https://www.meetup.com/North-Seattle-Storytelling-Meetup/events/skqvlqyxqbrb/

If you live closer to Tacoma, you can tell a story at one of my favorite shows at Alma Mater Coffee in The Honey Room. You know you’ve always wanted to tell a story in a place called The Honey Room, right? There’s no theme on this night so bring any story you want. (This is the place I found John and Taryn, two tellers who shared stories at last month’s FGS.)

https://www.meetup.com/Something-To-Tell/events/256152551/

Even if you can’t make it to the shows, it’s worth it to join the meetups so you get their invites each month.

I hope you’re all doing well. Don’t forget, the next FGS show is coming up on the 20th!

Paul

This month’s theme is “Aha-Stories of revelations, epiphanies.” Bring a true 8-minute or less story about a time when you realized something about yourself of your life. This is as close to an open theme as we’ll ever get at FGS 🙂

The biggest revelation I’ve had this year is a few months ago when my babysitter from 1969 wrote me out of the blue to ask if I wanted to know why my mother had always been so angry. Googling my mom had led her to a story I wrote about how I’d always wondered what had been the source of her temper. My mother died when I was 17 so I never got to talk to her as an adult. I never got to ask her the question that shaped my life for as long as I can remember. Why was I such a burden to her? What was I doing that made her so upset?

Now suddenly, I was going to find out. The woman who took care of me between the ages of 3-5 and interacted with my mom on a daily basis was probably the only person still alive who had the answer.

I wrote her back immediately. “Yes. I need to now. Please tell me.” Even though there was a part of me that didn’t want to know, there was a bigger part of me that had to know.

“She hated children,” she wrote back. “She hated children, hated your father, and hated being married. She loved the idea of you but was tired of playing the role of your mother.”

And there it was. It all made sense. I was the burden I always suspected I was. It wasn’t anything I did that made her upset, it was my existence that she resented. I would have made a better nephew. Maybe even a great stepson who moved on when his dad left. But I was hers and my father didn’t want to raise me either so we were stuck with each other. It’s a shame I didn’t get to experience her as a crazy aunt, a role she was more naturally attuned to. If she had been the loud New Yorker who lived across the street I probably would have been the kid she took under her wing and told stories to. Instead, I was her son and needed more than a quick joke and a lesson in the old soft shoe.

In the end, I know she did her best. When cancer finally took her, she went down swinging. When she knew she wasn’t going to survive, she snuck out of the hospital because she knew I’d need every cent she had in the bank to find a place to live and make it through high school. She wanted to die at home because it was cheaper.

When she got home I called a cab and took her back to the hospital. The cancer had already eaten away so much of her brain that she couldn’t speak. If there was anything she wanted to say to me it was too late. It was too late for both of us. All I knew was that she couldn’t say anything to hurt me anymore and I wanted to keep it that way. So I took her back to the hospital where she could die in peace.

Taking care of her in her final days would have taken a selfless love that I didn’t have back then. I didn’t learn about that kind of love until seven years later when my own son was born. I couldn’t give him much in the years I spent raising him in tiny apartments on minimum wage, but I made sure he always had one thing. He knew he wasn’t a burden.

And that’s the type of story we’re looking for. Come tell a story where you learned something about yourself. How did you figure it out? Did it make you happy? Sad? Relieved? Did it change how you saw yourself in general after you found out? Did it explain something you’d been wondering about?

Remember to practice out loud and time yourself to keep it under 8 minutes. If you have trouble getting it under 8 minutes send me an email and we can talk about how to cut it down. I swear it doesn’t bother me. I’d rather help you cut a couple minutes off your story than have to bump someone on the night of the show because we’re running long.

Here are the rules and guidelines for telling:

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

Take care. I hope to see a bunch of you on the 20th, 7pm at Roy Street Coffee and Tea. 🙂

Paul
freshgroundstories@gmail.com

Thank you all for coming out last Thursday and making it such a great show. We had some tellers really dig deep this month. Four stories were from things that happened 50 years ago. When I hear stories like that I always feel like I just stepped into an old curiosity shop and the owner is taking me into the back room to show me something he’s never shown anyone else before. Every time I host FGS I feel like I’ve been given a handful of little gifts to take home. Thursday night, some of those gifts were dustier than others because they’d been hidden away for so long.

Connie told us about finding an old report card from first grade that made her rethink some of the things she’s believed about herself her entire life. How is it that a first-grade teacher could have a better take on your needs and personality than your parents do? When Connie read the notes her teacher wrote on that report card I thought, “Well, of course. That’s exactly who Connie is.” But that’s not what everyone else had been telling her. I’m glad Connie found that report card. From what I understand, I think she’s going to make a trip to Goodwill soon and get rid of a bunch of self-help books. It turns out she’s actually pretty ok.

John C told a story about witnessing a horrific accident at Boy Scout camp that included a zip line, an Ewok tree village, some bone breaking, and cursing at a priest. Sure, that might sound like a perfect camp-out but it turned out to be a pivotal moment in John’s life. Sometimes terror and helplessness can teach you things you can’t learn any other way.

Chris told a story about her first one-night-stand and why it was also her last one-night-stand. Listening to her story made me feel a lot better about my own failures at navigating those momentary intimate relationships. I’m usually ok with having a porous heart that keeps me from being a real swinger on the dating scene. Sometimes, though, I wish my heart was a little tougher. Sometimes I wish it didn’t take so much energy to keep my feelings separate from the person I’m with. Oh, well. Wait. Did I just say I wish I was a real swinger? Who am I, Dean Martin??

Jake, one of our regulars, told us what it’s like teaching a class of 1,200 students at UW and how one particular student ending up standing out. If you think 1,200 students seems a little much for any class you aren’t alone. There was a collective gasp in the audience when Jake let us in on what it’s like to take biology 101 at a major university.

There were three stories we heard that night that I’m still thinking about. David K told us about the moment his dad went a step too far with him. It was a story I know many of us have but it’s rare to see someone have the courage to relive that moment in public. There were moments when David was no longer standing in Roy Street Coffee. He was back there in his hometown, running from his father, wondering if he would ever go home again. It took a lot for Dave to share that story. It makes me feel good to know he had a place to share it.

In addition to being a wonderful storyteller, David also runs a story workshop which I highly recommend. You can join his group here: https://www.meetup.com/Fresh-Ground-Stories-Storytelling-Workshop/

Taryn, our guest teller, told a fantastic story about trying to fix a meal with a counter full of random, nearly-expired food. It was only two months after her son was born and she was tired, hungry, and frustrated. Her husband has a thing about wasting food so she was trying desperately to figure out how to combine tofu, water chestnuts, and tandoori sauce into something edible. It was a funny, touching story that I’m hoping she’ll let me post online. It was her first time at FGS and only the second story she’s ever told live in front of an audience. She did a great job. I hope she comes back.

Lance, one of our new regulars, told a story that I almost don’t want to relate here. It was one of the most painful stories I’ve ever heard. It wasn’t a frightening or dangerous story. It was a story of broken trust and the awful things families can do to each other. It’s a story that Lance couldn’t tell until the people responsible had passed away. I don’t know Lance very well but I wish he didn’t have that story in him. I wish he hadn’t had to carry it around inside him for the last 50 years. The only thing I’m glad about is that everyone in the audience that night was there for him. Lance gave me permission to post it online. You can listen to it here: https://soundcloud.com/paul-currington-45306251/fgs-no-regrets-lance-11-15-2018

I know you’re all either making plans for Thanksgiving vacation or quietly freaking out over the idea of 20 people coming to stay at your house this weekend, so I’ll wrap this up with a big thanks to all our tellers: John C, David K, John W, Chris S, Moreah, David S, Bruce, Carl, Jake, Connie, Lance, and Taryn.

Below are links to some great shows coming up and a podcast I was just on.

Two of our tellers were just featured on the KNKX podcast, Sound Effect. I love it when I hear you guys on the radio! http://www.knkx.org/post/how-do-you-treat-cancer-patient-who-has-not-even-been-born-yet http://www.knkx.org/post/sharing-your-diagnosis-everyone-only-find-out-its-wrong

One of our members just started a new open mic at a sweet little bookstore in north Seattle. I’ll be there for the first show. I hope a bunch of you can join me. https://www.meetup.com/North-Seattle-Storytelling-Meetup/

A Necessary Sadness. This is a very special show. I love the idea and also the woman who produces it. I was honored she once asked me to tell a story there. https://www.facebook.com/events/333798684092813/

Music and stories with The Go Janes and FGS regular Mary Anne Moorman.  Music and Mary Anne – Two things I love! Go see this show 🙂 https://www.facebook.com/events/376679213068970/

Are you ever in Tacoma? Three of our tellers last Thursday came up from this open mic. I often work on my own stories here. It’s once a month at a cool little coffee shop. https://www.meetup.com/Something-To-Tell/

Lastly, I was asked to be on a new podcast last month and I had a great time hanging out with the host, Kevin Lin. We talked about how I found storytelling, and also a little bit about my personal history. Some of it you may have heard me hint at a few of those things between stories at FGS. Some stuff I’ve never said anywhere in public. You can catch our conversation here: http://folkstories.org/9

Kevin has told two stories at FGS. When he’s not telling his own stories he interviews people. He just left his job in the tech industry to start his own business. I hope part of that business is podcasting. You can read more of his writing at kevinslin.com.

Our next show is December 20. The theme is “Aha! – Stories of revelations, epiphanies.” I’ll get the invite out as soon as I can.

Have a great Thanksgiving everyone. I’m grateful for all of you.

Paul
freshgroundstories@gmail.com