A Story to Tell

I love telling stories. Mostly because I love to make people laugh. Sometimes it’s at my own expense, but that seems like a fair price to pay in exchange for a hearty belly laugh. Or for a sneak-attack, crack-up that explodes out of you almost like a sneeze, with little to no warning. I really love those ones. It’s particularly satisfying when you break the ice with a stone face acquaintance; you see the smile creep onto their face, that typical ice princess or RBF, transforming their eyes and their cheeks into something more relatable, personable, human. Humanity. That’s what I like most of all about telling stories. The relatability and the reminder of just how HUMAN we all are. Some stories I tell over and over again. I’ve learned to tee them up pretty well. I scan my audience: a small dinner party of couple-friends, a mom or two waiting together for practice to end, a group of ladies a few drinks in at a Girls Night Out. What story can I share that sews a thread of amity between these people? My stories are usually pretty light hearted: mom fails, marriage woes, kid anecdotes. Sometimes, though, there’s a juicy one. A story that stems from a more formative moment in my life. A story that reveals a bit of MY story; who I am, how I got to where I am today. Deep inside of me, or maybe just below the surface, there’s a strong belief that telling our story brings purpose to our life. I believe not that what I’ve experienced is particularly unique, but that what I have experienced happened because I’m not alone. Someone else can benefit from my story too. I experienced or endured these things in part as a reminder that the world is so much bigger than just me. So I’ll tell my stories here. Maybe you’ll laugh. Maybe you’ll relate. I hope to not make anyone cry. But I hope my stories unite. And I’d love to hear what you think.