What’s Your Story?

My father told the story this way:

He and my mother had been in Las Vegas during the years the Rat Pack flourished and when live bands were popular in even the smallest of clubs.

They looked up a relative, checking in to see how she was doing playing in her husband’s small jazz band, and she met them after a set. They talked about this and that in a haze of cigarette smoke, with booze bottles clicking in the background the rattle of ice in glasses.

“What’s it like living in Las Vegas?” My dad asked.

Her platinum blond hair shone in the light and she drawled slowly, “everyone in Vegas has a story.”

Everyone has a story.

I don’t know how old I was when my father recounted that incident, but I remembered that line. It resonated somewhere deep inside m, where it took root and flourished into avid curiosity which could only be contained when I had an answer to the simple question: “What’s your story?”

We all know how powerful story can be. I’ve grown up asking, begging, “tell me a story.”

But where do the best stories come from?

From the people who lived them.

Some people are born story tellers–my father was one. Others have an ability to ask questions that prompt people to “spill the beans.”

My father was like that, too.

As a traveling salesman, he spent a lot of time on the road trying to make friends with buyers. He spent a lot of time in bars chatting with patrons.

Dad also spent a lot of time listening. So much so, he’d often begin a recounting of events by saying, “I put on my chaplain’s collar and they told me everything.”

Even if he didn’t want to listen. Something about him brought out the urge to talk in other people.

Embellishing or merely entertaining?

Fortunately, he enjoyed a good story. He also enjoyed embellishing a good story. It can be a good business trait.

It can also be very entertaining.

My family loves the Tim Burton movie Big Fish. Edward Bloom has a penchant for telling “whoppers,” as he recounts the events of his life to his family. Bloom was a traveling salesman also–perhaps all those hours driving on the road enable a man to shape their tales into something entertaining.

But in the movie, Edward Bloom’s journalist son Will is frustrated at not being able to get to the facts about what really happened in his father’s life. He was angry with his father’s embellishment–how the stories were bigger and more extraordinary every time.

Edward Bloom’s version of Will’s birth always had a bigger-than-life aspect to it, which the young man found irritating.

But the family doctor, a long-time friend finally told Will the true, boring story of the day he was born: “Your mother came in about three in the afternoon. Her neighbor drove her, on account of your father was on business in Wichita. You were born a week early, but there were no complications. It was a perfect delivery.”

Nothing like Edward Bloom’s version at all.

The doctor patted Will’s hand and ended with, “I suppose if I had to choose between the true version and an elaborate one involving a fish and a wedding ring, I might choose the fancy version. But that’s just me.”

Obviously, telling the truth is important, but do the facts always tell the whole story? Even in football, the commentators include a “color” commentator–someone who can fill out the basic football game story with amusing asides or interesting points.

I like to see myself as a “color” commentator on life.

And I’m not above turning the story slighty, to make it more interesting. But I try to stay true to the real meaning of whatever tale I’m telling.

When we finished watching Big Fish for the first time, I felt energized and excited. I turned to my family and exclaimed, “Who does the big fish remind you of?”

I expected them to say my father.

Instead, they all pointed at me.

Hmmm.

They may have had a point. 🙂

After all, I sort of agree with Edward Bloom. What’s the point of telling a story if you can’t make it interested?

What’s your story? Do you agree with Edward Bloom–about the need to make a story more interesting than the bare facts?

Tweetables:

Does everyone really have a story? Click to Tweet

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