Assignment 1:5 – I have a great story to tell you…

I have a great story to tell you. This is a story about stories. It is a story about how evil entered our world. It was a child. Not a malevolent child. Not an angry child, not even a sad child. A curious child.

The children came to the same park every day, to climb the trees and to play in the snow. One day, because it was the dead of winter, night visited earlier than expected, and the children, not yet ready to return home for the evening, instead sat together around a small fire under their favourite tree. They sat in a circle and the oldest proposed a contest. A contest to see who could come up with the scariest thing. Some children made faces, contorting themselves into expressions of absolute agony and the most heinous of hideousness. Some of them screamed, shrill shrieks that echoed over the dusk laden land. Some of them left, feigning tiredness, but doubled back to pounce on the others.

It must have been exciting to watch.

Until finally, there was only one child who hadn’t yet taken their turn. The child was smaller than the others; scarf wrapped tightly, oversized hat slouching low so that none of the children could tell who this child was, or if the child was a boy or a girl. And all the child had was a story.

Unfortunately, the story this child told was full of new words, words previously unbeknownst to the group of children. The child talked of murder, bloodshed, and betrayal, sadness so gutwrenching it brought tears to the children’s eyes, hatred so unadulterated that the children could do little more than gape noiselessly, words lost. When the telling was done, the other children nodded, still wordless, in consensus. This child had won the prize.

“Okay, you win,” they said. “[B]ut what you said just now – it wasn’t so funny. It didn’t sound so good. We were doing okay without it. We can get along without that kind of thing. Take it back. Call that story back.”

But, of course, it was too late. For once a story is told, it cannot be called back. Once told, it is loose in the world.

 

I found this assignment really tough. I don’t consider myself a storyteller or a writer, and words often fail me when I’m forced to speak about something I’m not entirely confident with, so this was a new exercise for me. I found it easier to memorize a story when I broke it down and made the sentences simple. Most of my writing is academic, where the placement of a semi-colon can continue a sentence for lines and lines and lines, but I knew that that wouldn’t work for this exercise. Instead, I attempted to keep my sentences simple and to use alliteration (because it’s rhythm helps me to remember things) to my advantage. I stumbled a bunch while sharing this story, even in front of those people I’m most comfortable with. Sharing my own work is something I seldom do. Usually, my writing is shared only with the professor marking it, and so this entire course with it’s blogging and commentary, is new territory for me. I’m enjoying it though; it’s an encouraging way to ease into the sharing of one’s work. I’d run out of the room if I was asked to read this story in front of our whole class in a lecture hall, but there’s a comfort in being able to share and learn from others while still maintaining a degree of anonymity.

I also found it difficult to decide how to change the story. I thought about using animals as characters, but that felt like some vague form of appropriation because I’ve read so many indigenous stories about animals and their parts in creation stories. I settled on children because the dialogue in Silko’s story “‘Okay, you win,’ they said. ‘[B]ut what you said just now – it isn’t so funny. It doesn’t sound so good. We are doing okay without it. We can get along without that kind of thing. Take it back’” (King 10) reminded me of some of the conversations I overhear in the classroom, so I took that and ran with it.

 

Works Cited

King, Thomas. The Truth About Stories: A Native Narrative. Peterbough:Anansi Press. 2003. Print.