Gabe Tells Me a Story

Because I am a bit of a storyteller I enjoy a good yarn. But because I'm only a mediocre storyteller, I decided that I was going to do everything in my power to encourage my kids, from a very early age, to tell stories. My thinking is that, with years of practice, they'll be great at it by the time they are adults. I think this, naturally, because I wasn't much of a storyteller growing up--and really didn't decide that I wanted it to be "my thing" until after I finished my masters degree and decided that academics was kind of lame. I mean, come on. Who cares if Shakespeare was gay? His stories and characters were wonderful creations whose enjoyment is in no way, shape, or form affected by his sexual orientation. Sure it might be fun to try to get to know people who have been dead for years, since, obviously, we can't actually get to know them, but come on.

Or something like that. I actually credit my shift in interests to Frank Norris' book "McTeague." I was about halfway through my masters and decided that, because I went to a hillbilly high school where I wasn't exposed to any of the "classics" of literature, I needed to spend some time catching up. I began by reading through the small library of books that Libby had to read in high school where a severe nun that nobody liked made them read, non-stop, from the canon of classics. Over the first half a year or so, I made pretty good progress, reading through "The Pearl" and "To Kill a Mockingbird" and "The Crucible"--all pretty good books (well, maybe not so much The Pearl) that deserved reading. I followed it up with others, though I don't recall what, specifically. Then, after I'd made it through the ones whose names I recognized, I grabbed the first one that I didn't: McTeague.

McTeague is an insufferably boring slog of a book whose paper would make suitable butt wipe should we ever have a crisis that made the manufacturing of toilet paper impossible. It's the story of a dentist in early 2oth century San Francisco. Sounds exciting so far, right? Over the course of the first half of the book, I can remember McTeague discussing various aspects of dentistry, taking a long, hard look at some of the people who lived in his neighborhood (all terribly boring), and going on a picnic where he hoped to woo some woman. Half a book! It was simply put, more boring than staring at my own asshole in a mirror for three hours, but it DID manage to change my outlook on literature completely.

As I found myself sitting there, reading this book, I thought to myself, "Why am I reading this steaming pile of crap? No, it's not even crap. Crap is too vivid and alive compared to this. This is a steaming pile of warmed up, soggy cardboard." And the only answer I could come up with was, "Because I'm a book snob, and I want the bragging rights that I HAD read it." This was, after all, the only justification I had for spending nearly four years of my life (off and on, obviously) trudging through the unabridged version of Dostoyevsky's The Brothers Karamazov. That book was at least pretty decent, if FAR too windy, because its characters were interesting. But, really, I could have picked that much up from the version with 800 fewer pages.

Faced with this hard fact, I relented and changed my ways. I decided that reading something terrible just so I could say that I had read it was a waste of my precious reading time and, moreover, it was turning me off to the pleasures of reading. So I immediately went out and bought an Anne Rice book at the bookstore in the mall and read it just to spite my former self (though I also found this book terribly unenjoyable, so my spite actually ended up spitting right back in my face).

How does this relate to what I was saying before about storytelling?

Crap. I don't remember. But I'm sure it does!

Oh, yeah, now I remember. From that point on, I reveled in the storytelling itself and not in what any critics or intellectuals had to say about a book. I was going to read things that made me laugh or caught me up in imaginative ways and screw the academics (this, obviously, led to me more or less blowing off the last few semesters of my grad work--not REALLY blowing it off, I still got mostly A's with a few B's, but B's are a pretty serious blow-off to my way of thinking--which I found tedious, unfulfilling, and mostly a ridiculous waste of everyone's time). Then, from that point, I decided that I wanted to WRITE those kinds of stories instead.

How's that going for me? Well, I've got a blog, don't I? Hurray for the big dream!

Yeah.

It's a well-known fact that parents always project their failed dreams on their kids, so that's exactly what I plan to do as well. Sadly, I won't get a reality show out of the deal like those poor sacks who force their kids into beauty pageants at six years old, but I guess I can live with that. Instead, I'm going to encourage (but not force, because storytelling has to be enjoyed by the teller or the whole thing is a wash) my kids to tell stories. Where will it lead? Probably nowhere good as I know what the publishing field is like NOW, and I can't imagine it will get any better twenty years from now. But what can you do? Maybe they'll defiantly reject my art in favor of a lucrative career of some sort, maybe in accounting. That would sure teach me. And hopefully put me up in a swank retirement home, too.

I've been encouraging Gabe for almost a year now. As long as he has been able to talk I've asked him on occasion to "tell me a story." Or to tell Norah a story. Or, when I put him to bed with his book, to tell Amy Horsie, Two Hours Piggy (have I mentioned that new character that he named yet? Might have to get on that), and Soupie a story from that book before he goes to sleep. Before today, he never complied.

Then, out of the blue, he started flying a little helicopter around and schpealing off a narrative about where this helicopter was flying--even delving slightly into its motivation (it wanted to go home). Then he started throwing the helicopter into the air to simulate flying (which, I think, was the entire point of the considerable lead up of his story, to give him the impetus, and perhaps permission, to throw a toy, something I am pretty strict about him not doing most of the time). And it worked! Because he told me a story first, I didn't mind when he tossed the helicopter up in the air. I like where this is going. Stories to get out of trouble? Good idea!

Then, I got the camera and asked him to tell the story again. As with most sequels, much of the magic was lost, but I think he did an OK job, with my egging him on, of getting his story across (and he even added an element--the part about living in "winter time").