“Tell me facts, and I’ll learn. Tell me truth, and I’ll believe you. But tell me a story and it will live in my heart forever.” — Native American Proverb”
I met a new gaspump neighbor one afternoon a few days ago.
You know, these are the people we encounter while watching numbers on the gas pump climb higher than an August afternoon heat index. We’re the strangers exchanging smiles at the pump while we’re trying to remember where we needed to be 10 minutes ago, before remembering we forgot to gas up last night.
That’s what we do because we were raised to be kind, to be friendly.
“Don’t be stuck up,” Mom instructed. So I often give a greeting, and when my friendliness I return to watching pump numbers escalate. This time my new gas-pump neighbor engaged me.
“I enjoy your stories in the paper,” he said.
I did the next thing we were raised to do: Be polite.
“Hey,” I said, buying time. “How’s it going?
And thank you. I appreciate you reading my weekly ramblings.”
“You have more stories than a book has pages,” he said, laughing. “I love ‘em. Are all of those stories real?”
“Sure,” I scoffed.
“You can’t make up stuff like that. Mostly memories. Things that happened growing up.
Something I remember from a few years ago; a few days ago.”
“Well, I enjoy reading them,” he said again with a smile.
“Keep it up.”
“Thank you,” I repeated. “We all share many of the same basic memories. Only the people and the places change. All stories just waiting to be told. I’ll bet you have a story.”
He chuckled, and we parted ways. The exchange was another reminder of the importance of memories and the value of capturing them.
That’s something that didn’t dawn on me until a long time after I had been getting paid to write them.
I probably owe the credit for that to one of my journalism students at Stephen F. Austin State University, a generation of young writers ago.
Charged with imparting writing skills, tools and techniques to aspiring journalists, I enjoyed challenging young minds to find and write their first story.
“Everybody has a story,” I offered one day to end a lecture period. “They may not know they do, but that is your first challenge.
Strike up a conversation and just listen.”
“That’s easy for you to do,” countered one student. “You have age and experience, and you know a lot of people. It’s not that easy for someone our age.”
“Listening and understanding have no age requirements,” I replied. “Ask questions about what they remember about growing up, about their proudest moments so far, what they hope to achieve in the years to come. Talk about hopes and dreams. Then, be quiet and listen with appreciation. You’ll hear more stories than you can write.”
Longtime newspaper mentor and friend Jim Chionsini exercised the storytelling technique in many ways to a fine art. For instance, when asked for suggestions on the best way to tackle a tough situation at work, he commonly replied with a story rather than an explanation.
“Well, let me tell you how Les Daughtry down at the (Galveston County Daily News) handled issues like that,” Chionsini would say about the former publisher.
It was also Jim who distinguished between memories that made good stories for publication from the few that are often better left unpublished.
“Just because something we did was a bad idea doesn’t mean it isn’t a good memory,” he would say with a smile. “Just keep those among friends.”
Our stories, published or simply shared with friends and family, need to be told. And that’s where the value of memories takes root. Everyone has a story. I write so that memories remain, to leave memories for family and friends after I’m no longer able to write them.
We all have stories, even my new gas-pump neighbor. I’m writing that one, too.
Contact Leon Aldridge at leonaldridge@ gmail.com.
Aldridge columns are archived at leonaldridge.
