The easiest stories to tell are the ones you've lived. Or, at the very least, the ones you've lived through a thousand tellings. I mentioned in my previous post that my mom told me hundreds of stories about her family while I was growing up; so many and so often that I could probably tell them by heart if someone asked.
I have my own stories like that. Stories that I lived and have told for so long that I don't even have to think about the actual telling. My favorites include the five years I spent running into our sliding glass door every single day, that time I stepped on a nail while practicing my balance beam routine on our privacy fence, and the Thanksgiving I bit my tongue off when I was two. That one is more of a second-hand story as I don't remember it at all, but there's still a lot of credibility in the telling just because it happened to me.
But more than I tell the stories I lived, I like to tell fairytales. Some of the fairytales I tell are ones that everybody knows: Cinderella, The Little Mermaid, Little Red Riding Hood, etc. But I like to take it a step further and adapt those time-tested stories to the real-world stories my listener is currently living. For instance, I've been considering how to tell an updated Little Red Riding Hood story to Abby for a few weeks now. Updated because I want her to be aware of what, exactly, wolves are looking for and how she can protect herself from them. It's both sad and disgusting that this is a story I even have to think about telling to a six-year-old, but that's the world we currently live in. I won't go into any graphic details, but just by planting the seeds through story, she'll be more aware and prepared if something (God forbid) were to ever happen.
Not all stories have to be updated in such a depressing way, however. Sometimes, stories are best used as connectors. I remember one time when my youngest brother Ethan was about ten or eleven. He was having a hard time but didn't want to talk to anyone about it because he wanted to "soldier on," so I told him the story of the Little Tin Soldier, but I changed the ending. Not because the ending was depressing (which it kind of is) but because that ending didn't serve my purpose. Instead, I had the Tin Soldier and his Paper Ballerina reunite, and the Soldier was able to tell her everything he endured and how he learned and grew from the experience.
Ethan didn't say anything to me after I finished the story, or in the days or weeks that followed. But almost a year later, long after I'd forgotten about telling this story at all, he came to me and asked if I would be his Ballerina. He then told me everything he'd Soldiered through over the last year, and I was able to be a support and cheerleader for him as he learned and grew from the experience.
No matter what story you tell - lived or otherwise - there is a certain level of vulnerability and intimacy that goes into the telling. You're revealing a part of yourself that your listener would never otherwise know. There's a lot of trust that goes into that, but the trust goes both ways. If you open up to someone by telling a story, odds are, they'll open up by telling you a story right back.
So don't hesitate to share the stories you collect because the magic of stories comes from the telling and, through the telling, the living.
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