When I was
six or so, my family was sitting around the breakfast table telling stories of
the dreams we’d had. This wasn’t an irregular occurrence, but something
different happened this time: my dad had a dream to share. Normally he only
commented on how he didn’t dream, so when he commented that last night, he had a dream, he had our rapt
attention.
It was an extraordinary
and hilarious tale about his encounter with an aggressive pink rhino, which he
had eventually befriended. To this day I don’t know for sure if he made it up
on the spot and wrote it down later, or if he’d prepared it in advance. It
doesn’t really matter – what matters is that it was the start of something
wonderful.
I honestly
don’t know how it happened, but it led to my dad coming into the grades 1-3 my
brother and I both were in to tell the story of the Pink Rhino again, and the
story was loved by the whole class – so much so that it became a regular thing.
My dad began producing more Robert Munch-esque stories and telling them for my
class. It wasn’t just the incredible stories themselves – it was the way he
told them, which I would love to describe to you, but in truth it’s something
you’d have to experience.
Some of the stories involved
members of the class, like Pictures, a story about a talented artist in the
class named Mallory whose pictures came to life when put on the refrigerator
(causing no end of problems), or The Scratch – a story about the fight I had
with Rotten Rosco, the most fearsome pirate to sail the Canadian highways, that
he wrote over the weekend as an explanation for a huge scratch I’d gotten on my
face from running into a tree. Others grew into massive class projects, like
the Ordinary Story, a rhyming story about a boy and a girl who wander into the
woods and befriend a troll – after this story, our class worked together to
create an enchanted forest from plasticine.
Looking
back on that time, I find it incredible how many engaging and humorous stories
he wrote, memorized, and told over the short three years I was in that
classroom. It led to him joining the local storytellers’ guild and telling stories
at a number of other venues as well – including an event for my wife’s
homeschool group, before I even met her.
Looking
back on that, it’s no wonder that, with that in my background, I grew up with a
passion for telling stories. However, there’s one conversation I had with my
dad several years ago that has stuck with me ever since – it was the day he
told me how impressed he was that I could write full length books. I looked at
him in astonishment and told him that he could easily write a novel as well. I,
myself, was (and am) still impressed with all his shorter stories. I’ve only written
a few short stories in my time, and almost all of them leave an opening for
more to happen – making them more like first chapters than short stories.
Writing something novel-length is far easier to me.
I think
that was the first day I came to appreciate a key element of human nature: our tendency
to be blind to that which makes us extraordinary because it comes easily to us.
We think that, because we find it easy, everyone must find it easy, and that
the things we find hard and that other people find easy means that those people
are more extraordinary than us.
We teach
kids that everyone is unique and special, but we don’t go on to tell them what
that actually means. It means that everyone has their own skills and talents,
and those are what make them extraordinary. If something comes easily to you,
that’s probably one of the things that makes you special. And those things you
wish you could do that other people seem so good at, but that they seem to
think it’s no big deal that they can do it? That’s what makes them special, and
they just might admire you for the things you find to be easy.
Sure, I’ll
never be able to sit at the front of a room and captivate an audience with the
way I tell a story – at least, not like my dad can – but I have my own ways of
telling stories that are just as good. Not to mention, requiring far less
energy to present. And quieter. Much quieter.
Check out my YouTube channel where I tell the stories of my D&D campaigns.
Also, make sure you check out my wife's blog and her website.
If there's any subject you'd like to see me ramble on about, feel free to leave a comment asking me to do so.
