I never wanted to take a job after I moved back downstate from upstate. I was doing fine. I had enough money to last for a while. I suppose it would’ve run out by this point, but if I had followed my original plan, at least I’d still have my sanity.
How did you get my number? I asked.
Does it even matter? A friend of a friend gave it to me. Listen man, you gotta help us. It seems that we have a bunch of hicks in this town who have absolutely no idea what they are doing. Hicks man, straight up hicks.
I’m not doing anything – and even if I did, how much you gonna pay me? You’re the one who’s rolling in it, not me.
Can’t you just do something from the goodness of your heart? You’d really be helping a lot of people, you know.
You’re much more stupid than I thought. Where in the world did you get the idea I give a damn about anyone besides this guy? Number one.
He kept rambling on about how he and a few other guys needed to get some sort of a system programmed. Everyone they talked to either had too much or not enough experience. Somehow, I fell right in the middle and unbeknownst to me, that’s what they wanted. But they were cheap and I hate cheap people. I actually hated him and I didn’t even know him.
As he stood there incessantly talking, I gave him a once over. I almost walked away. His button down shirt was so tight the bulging almost caused the buttons to pop. He had a nice coating of sweat on the back of his fat neck and his wet collar showcased a few hairs carefully distanced between the flakes of skin. His face was pocked and he shaved far too closely, giving him pimples and a rash not even a mother can love. And I’m pretty sure she gave up on him a long time ago.
The funny thing is, as he was talking, all I could think about was what I ate for breakfast that morning. You know, adding ketchup to eggs really does change the whole dynamic of things. It brings the flavor out like nothing else I know. Remarkable.
And that girl from the mall. The girl who worked in the pet shop. The one they call the “fish girl.” Man, what I would do to…
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Do you need a resume to tell stories? Seriously, because I tell stories all day long. True, most of them have really happened to me and most of them end up with me being unable to finish them because I’m laughing too hard. But I can tell stories.
I have a really funny one about something that happened to me at Dunkin’ Donuts a few weeks ago. I had everyone in my Jiu Jitsu class on the ground from that one. I also have a story from college. Well, I have a lot of stories from college, but this one is something you would write in a letter and send to a friend. It’s that good. I mean, this is something you would print out and hang on a wall.
I thought it might be fun to tell stories on this blog. True stories. I have enough of them to keep myself occupied for at least a year. With some of them, I even have pictures.
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I’m going to have to break in here because I just made a marvelous discovery. I stopped typing for just a bit because I wanted to do a quick search for “Storytelling Blogs.” I did the same search yesterday and found some decent results. I wanted to tell you all about it. But now, I’m not going to do that, because I’ve found something better.
I guess I should have kept reading down the page…I should have at least made it to the fifth result. That just goes to show how I assess the world. If you can’t give it to me in four lines, show’s over.
I found a blog called, “Time Goes By” and it’s out of this world. It has some of the best writing I’ve ever seen and everything is written by what they call old people.
You really have to visit this blog and just read a few stories from the first page. Go and read it now. You can also read a description of the blog here. I think I may have found my blog soul mate. Wow. This truly is what I have been looking for, for more reasons than one.
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A long time ago, I was learning how to speak in public. I was taking a class at a community college and “Public Speaking” was part of the syllabus. It’s one of those dreaded classes that just about everyone saved for the very last semester. I elected to take it the semester before last because I simply couldn’t stand thinking about it anymore. Every time I would take out that crumpled old piece of yellow paper with my list of remaining courses on it, I cringed from the sight of this one.
My professor was a very strange woman. She wore these huge thick glasses that made her eyes look as large as half dollars. She would peer down at us and yell, “You need to RISE to the occasion. RISE to the occasion…” and then she would call one of us up to the front of the room to do just that. It was pitiful. When the chosen one got up there, all they did was speak softly and accentuate their slumped shoulders. The rest of us would keep looking at the ground in an attempt to avoid locking the gaze of those big eyes of hers.
I mention this class because our professor taught us a technique that I have found very useful over the years. True, I don’t do any public speaking anymore, but I happen to write a lot. And writing is really a lot like public speaking. The nice part of writing though is not having to see all those empty stares back at you – those stares that totally freak you out.
The technique she taught us was to tell a story during our talk or speech to help the audience understand the point we’re trying to get across. In case you haven’t noticed, I’m doing it right now. You can see this in almost every political speech as well as in business, church, or even classes that you take. Well, the good classes anyway. We all remember the good classes and if you think back, you might remember why you thought they were good.
I used to go to church with my mother on Saturday evenings and right afterwards – almost every time – she would look at me and say, “Wasn’t that the best story honey? Wasn’t that just the best?” What’s funny is that I oftentimes did enjoy the narrative sermons. They were nothing more than a gentle story – a story that tried to tie something that isn’t easily understood together with something that anyone can grasp. Apparently, my mother liked the stories just as much as I did.
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I have been debating something in my mind for the past few days. I have been asking myself if I would like to keep things the way they are or would I rather lean more towards some sort of fiction writing. I did come up with an answer and that is to leave things exactly the way they are. I’m having way too much fun and the freedom that this blog offers me to change whenever I want is perfect. I can sprinkle things in here and there, but I think that being able to roll out of bed, to stub my toe, and then to write about it is working out just fine.
Now, what’s the moral of this story? I think it’s that you should go read that blog.
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