The History Teller

We have all run into that old woman in the grocery store. "When I was young," launches a thousand words, strung together about days of yore. But not your days of yore. Nor the person next to you. And after the story ceases there is kind of no place to go. Yeah, you can ask them more about that history but because it's a personal history the dynamic is question (you) answer (them.) It is not an actual conversation. And you realize that pretty quickly and are eaten by awkwardness. That awkwardness illuminates the trouble with this trait: it isolates the teller. They feel they are *sharing* something with you but really they are removing themselves from you even if just a little.

Half of my family is story tellers. The other half is 100% not. If you're not careful, paternal family reunions can be one Homer-esque telling of the same stories you heard the last time you got together. As kids I remember LOVING these stories. As an adult I cringe. They leave nothing to actually converse about. It's like attending a lecture of one. On one side Dad at the podium. At the other side you in a soft folding chair watching the wall clock.

I sometimes wonder if I should take Dad aside and talk to him about this. We have a family business where we welcome strangers into our home on a regular basis. Dad's eye light up at a new opportunity to tell about that time he rode a motorcycle across Europe or let a skunk loose in church. He had a childhood full of fiction-quality experiences and he literally bounces at the idea of getting to share them.

But we've heard them all. A thousand times we've heard them all. So even in a room where four people have heard this thing a thousand times, he tells it to the one person who hasn't. And it's even stranger when you can tell the guest doesn't really care because the story isn't actually quite in line with anything we were discussing. Just now at dinner our guest said something and my Dad responded, "That reminds me of a story," and then launched into a story that really wasn't quite on. Our guest speaks a bit more and Dad says again, "That reminds me of another story." And you can tell on some level that even he realizes he's acting outside of some guide but something inside him almost physical wants to push this memory out.

But this is the problem with stories, they are history. They are our stagnant unchanging past. And they pin us down in that past. Yes, at times it is refreshing (and important) to go back into the halls of our history and dwell, even bring visitors in with us, but I think it's equally important to not visit too often, nor drag hostages. History squatters remove themselves unnecessarily from the life that is happening around them now. I think the older we get the more we want to visit our youth. That potential. That hope. That fire. Share it with others. But if we become someone who shares it out of habit and not out of circumstance, it means we limit the connections we can make with those that are not ghosts. Because after all, it's conversation that connects us to people, not narration or monologue.