Story Time

I love stories; epic battles, glorious adventures, hilarious antics, heartwarming tales of love...

I think a story can shape our minds, shape our thoughts, remember people, places, things...

I am reading Doniger's Other People's Myths and she describes the ways and reasons people tell mythological tales and classics. She specifically speaks to children's literature and classics like Shakespeare and Homer. Reading has been, and continues to be, a vital aspect of my life, but something I love more is listening to stories. I am one of those crazy people who loves audiobooks. I have listened to the Harry Potter books read by Jim Dale three times
(each)...

This love of listening brought me back to my childhood...my favorite memories of ones where my parents told me tales of adventure, romance, and humor with familiar characters. Yes, I love princesses and dragons and knights in shining armor, but what I love more are stories of my own family and friends and the insights it gave me into my own heritage and humanity...

These stories filled my world with characters I knew; I could imagine my grandmother opening krazy-glue with her teeth and actually gluing her lips together. I could imagine my toddler father discussing with his toddler twin the gorilla they saw in the window. I could imagine my Aunt Michele painting the toilet seat with ketchup and mustard.

As I grew older, I still loved to hear those stories, but I no longer asked mom and dad to "tell me a story," I now requested "the falling out of bed" story, or the "book at the nose" story. Stories became a way to re-live the past for my parents while giving me a chance to "live" it for the first, second (sometimes third) time...

My weakness is a good story...doesn't even have to be good, or real, it just has to be told. People always ask me "what are you going to do with a degree in Religion"

Here's what I want to do: tell stories, listen to stories, understand stories...
That is all we are given, that is all we can grasp...truth may or may not exist, but the concept of stories is forever...

Here is one way I want to do this:

StoryCorps is "an independent nonprofit project whose mission is to honor and celebrate one another’s lives through listening"
I want to volunteer/work for them someday...

I listen to these stories on NPR and I feel this sense of connection.
I find myself crying on the drive home or laughing aloud to no one...
I am in a new place, with new friends and co-workers, but stories stay the same...
I may not know all the characters yet, but this is just the beginning...