{"id":21,"date":"2016-09-22T20:00:04","date_gmt":"2016-09-23T03:00:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/sarkeleng470\/?p=21"},"modified":"2016-09-26T21:25:27","modified_gmt":"2016-09-27T04:25:27","slug":"21","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/sarkeleng470\/2016\/09\/22\/21\/","title":{"rendered":"The Story That Ruined A Man And His World"},"content":{"rendered":"

It was a chilly fall afternoon that a large white luxThe Story That Ruined A Man And His Worldury yacht glided into North Bay. Four couples of snowbirds disembarked from the boat and began their stay at the local bed and breakfast, which was really no more than a four room cabin with a small kitchen, propane stove and fridge. No one wanted to go outside because the paths on Ruxton Island<\/a> were muddy and the steep rocky shores were covered in slippery seaweed. Even so it was a perfectly tranquil environment with little brown birds chirping in trees and river otters playing at the point of the bay. Nothing could go wrong in a place so natural.<\/p>\n

\"image1-1\"After a few hours, the owner of the property arrived at the cabin and welcomed the travelers to his retreat. The snowbirds unpacked their bags and got cozy as night fell. Let us say that the names of the couples were Fred and Abby, Josh and Lucy, Garth and Gail, and Louis and Daphne. The owner of the property was called Mickey<\/a>.<\/p>\n

When everyone was settled, Mickey started a fire in the wood stove, because it gets cold at Ruxton in the fall. It would also make the retreat much more romantic.<\/p>\n

Unfortunately, even with the ambiance that the fire created, Garth was bored. He was not exactly accustomed to retirement yet, and was even less accustomed to a cabin setting. Before retirement \u00a0he was an accountant and had become a workaholic, and workaholics don\u2019t get out much.<\/p>\n

To make himself less bored he asked his wife to tell everyone a story. She was a published author \u2013 she had to know how to tell a good tale. Hopefully it would be something funny.<\/p>\n

Gail shrugged and looked at the fire dance on the arbutus logs in the wood stove. She began her story with:<\/p>\n

\u201cThere was once an old man who lived on this island. He was the sole survivor of a terrible car crash that killed his family, so he had terrible trouble sleeping at night. The only thing that helped his insomnia was to sleep in other people\u2019s beds. Once he even slept in this cabin.<\/p>\n

As the story goes, if he ever found anyone else in their cabin, he would kill them. His name was-\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cSTOP\u201d shouted Mickey, whose face had turned the colour of the light grey linens on the cabin\u2019s beds. \u201cYou need to take it back! I don\u2019t kill people. I just don\u2019t sleep right.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWell, we all heard it now,\u201d said Garth “\u2013 and I think that I\u2019m going to sleep in the yacht tonight.”<\/p>\n

\u201cMe too,\u201d said Lucy, and the others nodded in agreement.<\/p>\n

Mickey\u2019s bed and breakfast business failed soon after. In his sorrow he burned down his cabin, which set the whole of Ruxton Island on fire.\u00a0If it hadn\u2019t been for Gail\u2019s story and the negativity that went with it, he would have preceded as normal, sleeping in other people’s beds when their inhabitants were away, and no one would have been the wiser.<\/p>\n

Let it be known that stories can be entertaining, but they can also be harmful. It is stories like Gail\u2019s that brought evil into the world.<\/p>\n

Once you have told a story, you can never take it back. So, be careful of the stories you tell, AND the stories you listen to.<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Here is the conversation that I had with my fiance after I finished telling him the story. I would have told it to a bigger audience but we are currently on a secluded island:<\/strong><\/p>\n

Ljay: “I like that you used true stories from the island that we know and people whom we know as the characters.”<\/p>\n

Me: “They’re just the first things that popped into my head. What did you think of the story?”<\/p>\n

Ljay: “I’m wondering why the story of the man who slept in other people’s beds became a negative story when he really ended up with a new family in a different place.”<\/p>\n

Me: “Oh. I needed to have a negative story for my assignment.”<\/p>\n

Ljay: “Fair enough.\u00a0Why would Gail tell a negative story at a retreat though. I thought you said that Mickey tried to create romantic ambiance and that other guy wanted to hear a funny story.<\/p>\n

Me: “Because scary stories go well with the light from wood stoves at night. You know that.” (Personal Interview, 22 September 2016.)<\/p>\n

Other Commentary:<\/strong><\/p>\n

Unfortunately Ljay did not comment at all about the theme of the story like I expected him to. He reads quite a bit and listens to stories on the radio constantly when he is at Ruxton. Perhaps I should not have told him my story after he spent a day of listening to other, more polished stories.<\/p>\n

I tweaked the definition of ‘world’ slightly and used Mickey’s world – his livelihood on Ruxton Island where he has made his home his entire adult life, as the ‘world’ that gets ruined by the evil contained in a story. Ruxton island gets burned in the story as a way to show the consequences of the evil that can inhabit stories. A life and a place get ruined together.<\/p>\n

I told Mickey that I was making a story with him in it, but he has not heard it yet. In reality, he is not the man portrayed in my story, though he does run a bed and breakfast from Ruxton Island.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Works cited:<\/p>\n

Keller, Sarah.\u00a0The Shaw Family Wood Stove. P<\/i>hoto, Ruxton Island, BC, Canada.<\/p>\n

“Ruxton Island, BC.” Map. Google Maps<\/i>. Google, 22 September. 2016. Web. 22 Sep. 2016.<\/p>\n

“Ruxton Rental Retreat & Sailing Tours.” Salt Spring Exchange<\/i>. N.p., 15 July 2016. Web. 22 Sept. 2016.<\/p>\n

Shaw, Ljay. Personal interview. 22 September 2016<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It was a chilly fall afternoon that a large white luxThe Story That Ruined A Man And His Worldury yacht glided into North Bay. Four couples of snowbirds disembarked from the boat and began their stay at the local bed … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8854,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-21","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/sarkeleng470\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/sarkeleng470\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/sarkeleng470\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/sarkeleng470\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8854"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/sarkeleng470\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/sarkeleng470\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":26,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/sarkeleng470\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21\/revisions\/26"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/sarkeleng470\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/sarkeleng470\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/sarkeleng470\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}