Bedtime stories
My next-door neighbor, Harry B, and I are not close friends, but we have a cozy relationship. Our wives don’t. We share a huge snow blower, some power tools and once in a while a drink at the neighborhood pub rather than in each other’s home. We are each forever dieting and coming up with new schemes for losing weight. Harry is a thinker and curious about lots of things especially how our world has been taken over by misinformation in all sorts of forms. He gave me his short essay on story telling. “Do you think this is worth sending to a newspaper”. Do you think they would publish it on the opinion page of the Sunday edition. What do you think?
I read it and thought, why not. Seems timely. Makes the point clearly. That point may be obvious but maybe not to many newspaper readers.”
“Look at all the stories that are out there as a substitute for reality. Television ads, political press releases and speeches (vote for me and not that other guy who is a traitor), sales people who come in every flavor and sell just about anything, people applying for a job….I could go on. No doubt you know all that. The most telling stories are the one we tell ourselves. We make sure that we are the hero and when we screw up we can make up all sorts of tales why we were not responsible.”
Harry B smiled and said, “sure, all the examples you have come up with are ‘make up a story and tell it with some emotion”.
Made me think of an idea that might be an appendix to your story on stories. How about making up a story that can be believable but when considered seriously and with some thought turns out to be nothing more than absurdity.”
Harry asked me what do you have in mind.
I told him how about vaccines that cause autism. Or a training program that makes you a master programmer in 3 months. How about a story that you make up to seduce your girlfriend….a kind of personal fraud story. Thought of another one that is a common story about an alcoholic telling himself he can stop drinking at any time and would do it easily especially since that alcoholic thinks of himself, or herself as special. You can’t go wrong. We are surrounded by stories that hide reality. You could have some fun with that as an attachment to your essay. Oh, by the way I think the stories that kids tell tend to be more honest.
Harry’s essay on story telling
In my limited view I see us in a world filled with stories, stories we make up about ourselves, about others and the world around us. These stories vary in the extent to which they capture reality mixed with our own made up scenarios. The stories we live by are the vehicles that often drives us. It is the filter of our experiences.
Stories are the basis of what is used to sell us something, like ads on television. They are also used to sell ourselves to others, friends, collaborators and partners, loved by people close to us. Stories are almost invariably a combination of what we know or think is true and our well-established fiction.
“”Harry, I love it and so many opportunities to write about the absurdities that drive people’s lives. It is hilarious if it weren’t pathetic. One more important point we are no different from others who suffer from story mania. We could have some fun with stories that give us a chance to laugh at ourselves.”
This story is fiction. Harry doesn’t exist. The Stories essay is real but was never intended to be sent as an opinion piece to a newspaper. It is a prop in this story. I’m not real except in the stories I tell others about who I am. Is my wife Alice real? She is real but I made up stories about who and what she is. What part of that story about my wife is real? Not sure. I think my innocent wife Alice is sleeping with her boss. Innocent. Innocent? Did I make that up? I bet Alice’s boss has a different picture of who she is. How could it be otherwise. I think to myself, ‘Would the real Alice please stand up.
According to my friends my two sons are terrific. That is what I want to hear and so I agree with their assessment. I tell others how wonderful they are and make sure it believable.
We are all story tellers. We have collected a huge scrapbook of our stories. As needed we keep adding new material to our story book. Sometimes we get a chance to go back and edit some of our stories. I wonder what it would like to trade our stories with others the way we did with comic books when we were kids.