Tell me a story
I’m sure some cliché somewhere states that we all have a novel in us. Most of those don’t necessarily see the light. Probably a good thing, considering how many truly awful novels are floating out there already… Like the series of B-grade Mills & Boon-style vampire novels I’m currently reading. As addictive as a train smash.
But some people are really good at telling stories: verbally, that is. Their own, as well as other people’s. Sometimes, I think that they should actually perpetrate novels with all the little tales and snippets that fill their lives. There’s a special kind of magic to people who can take you right back to a time and place, making you experience what they did. People who are good at telling jokes, embroidering events, tickling a laugh out of the most mundane situations. Tall tales indeed.
My parents could fill a hefty volume with short stories of their lives as a young, newlywed couple. When visiting them we always end up listening to them spin together quirky, hilarious, and sometimes poignant yarns. It’s something both of them are good at.
My dad was a small-town magistrate, my mom, well, a new mom. The things they could tell you and the experiences they’ve had…
My mom recalls sobbing her eyes out, sitting in an empty bathtub with a brand-new me in a little house in the middle of sugarcane fields in KwaZulu-Natal somewhere, hiding from the buck tossing the trashcans around and remembering the seven-foot mamba that was sunning itself on the doorstep earlier in the day. And telling my dad to get them the hell out of there, because why would the state post a young married couple to the middle of hellandgone? No electricity, no hot water – she had to go to the local hotel to wash her hair and get her kid a hot bath. Luckily somebody listened, and my dad was transferred to a new town after six weeks.
Then there was the time my dad was presiding over a court case and the defendant went into labour. My dad chased all the other women out of the room (those were the days…) and proceeded to catch the baby and tie the umbilical cord with the pink fabric tape used for filing in the magistrate’s office. And off mom and kiddie went, straight to hospital in the back of a police van.
Or my mom’s “illegal” activities: while my dad was away on extended study leave, she planted a vegetable garden behind the magistrate’s office building and sold the green beans and onions… Until my dad came back and found out about it accidentally, gave my mom a real talking to and paid all the proceeds into the state’s accounts. My mom didn’t speak to him for a week.
And stories of the people they met, the things they saw and experienced. Really poor people, really weird people (like the cross-dressing mechanic who used to fix cars dressed in heels), really desperate and sad people. The lady who pranked my dad by baking paper into pancakes… And bursting into tears when my dad told her he gave it to his kids (us!) to eat. The court scribe who drew a funny caricature of my dad in full telling-the-prosecutor-off mode… And the day the courtroom came to a complete standstill when my dad’s bad habit of tilting his chair finally led to him overbalancing and hitting the floor. They had to take a break to get the laughing under control.
We’ve all got these stories locked somewhere inside, but not all of us have the talent to make them live on, be it in verbal or written form. That takes a bit of creative skill. I’m guessing that it takes practice, too, and some creative truth-wrangling…
A good storyteller weaves a bit of magic into the world. So I suppose even those pesky vampire books actually have some merit: at least they keep you entertained!
This was originally published in July 2010, on my now defunct blog dustbunniesproject.com
