I’ve been listening to a radio program lately called The Moth. It’s an hour long program of storytellers, some comedians or other stage professionals, some just random people off the street, but everyone has to tell a true story about their life. Basically, the premise is that a good storyteller draws listeners like moths to a porch light. It’s actually very interesting. There are stories that run the entire emotional gamut. Some are hilarious, some inspiring, some sad. One story is from a journalist who is an ex-cocaine addict. His story is about how he took his twin girls, when they were infants, to a drug house in the middle of winter, and because it wasn’t cool to bring babies with him to buy his drugs; he left them in the car while he went in. He, of course, gets high inside and loses track of time. The story revolves around his walk back to the car, realizing how long his girls have been out there in the cold, and the likelihood that he’s allowed them to freeze to death. Fortunately, the story has a happy ending. If I hadn’t been sitting at my desk at work when I listened to this one, I may have teared up. Other stories include a somnambulist (someone who walks in his sleep) who actually jumped out of a second story hotel window (which was closed) in his sleep, and an undercover cop with a hilarious arrest story with too many coincidences involved to try to describe here. The point is, everyone has a story to tell. Everyone has something to say that is worth listening to.
A couple of weeks ago, I finished my biographical information for our adoption home study. Danielle included one of the questions (out of 15) from this in a previous post. If you read that, you can understand how in depth this biography was. Writing my biography was kind of tough. It’s hard to know what to put in there. This isn’t like writing a story for The Moth. There’s no point, really, in talking about my bachelor party, where a group of us went backpacking, and spent a large portion of our time trying to ward off a bull moose that was unhappy with the fact that we were camping in his territory. There isn’t a place in this biography to tell stories about me and my friends in high school discovering why it is a bad idea to poke a dead, bloated skunk with a sharp stick, sneaking into the woods on the campus of the mental hospital to track mule deer, or the time a late night game of tag ended with a police chase (it’s a long story, but let me just say, we didn’t do anything wrong). It’s weird to see your life summarized and distilled down to a couple of pages. If I didn’t know any better, it would make me think I’d had a boring life. But, I do know better. I’ve had a great life, and I’ve enjoyed it immensely. It’s these little stories that make life so great.
