"Tell Me a Story"

“Ok kids, it’s time for bed,” I call out. Off they run to get their pajama’s on and go to the bathroom. They wash their hands and brush their teeth. They dash to their bedrooms and make sure all of their toys are picked up. They immediately climb into bed without any hesitation or complaining. And then I remember that I had just drifted off into that zone of twilight between being awake and being asleep where my world exists as I wish and not as it really is. But we do have a bedtime routine established with our kids and yes, on most nights, they try to stall as much as they can. Our routine consists of saying prayers and singing songs. But there is one part of the bedtime routine that they love the best and it’s the part where they say, “Daddy, can you read me a story?” Every night they desperately want their daddy to either read or tell them a story. I have often wondered where this desire comes from. Why do they enjoy stories so much? I wonder why they don’t simply say, “Daddy, can you tell me a quotable quote?” or “Daddy, can you give me a point to ponder?” One thing I never hear from my kids is, “Daddy, can you just give me a good piece of advice? I don’t need all the other characters and suspense stuff.” I never hear that from my kids. In fact, they want to hear about the characters and what happens to them. They want to visualize the events of the story and get caught up in another time and place. Why is this I often wonder?

I also wonder when they will outgrow this stage. When will they stop asking Daddy for a bedtime story? I will be sad when that day comes. But something has dawned on me recently. I have realized something about myself and other adults. We don’t ever really outgrow stories. Sure we don’t have someone read us a bedtime story anymore, but we still like stories. We still like hearing stories and telling them. In fact, as adults, whether we realize it or not, stories are how we best communicate our life experiences. It’s also how we best process what we learn about what works in life and what doesn’t.

Let’s say a good friend of yours calls you on the phone and says, with an excited voice, “You’ll never guess what happened to me tonight in our last game of the softball tournament!” How would you respond to that? Would you say, “Just get to the point and tell me. Did you win or not? I don’t want to hear all the details.” Of course you wouldn’t respond that way. What you really want to know is what happened in the game. Why is your friend so excited? What happened to him? Your mind is racing to try and guess why he could be so excited. What you want to hear is a story. You want to hear your friend tell you how the game was tied going into the last inning and there were two outs when he came to bat. After two pitches that were strikes, questionable of course, he hit a towering fly ball to straight away center field. The outfielder ran back all the way to the fence. It was going to be close as to whether the ball would make it over the fence or be caught. As the ball started coming down, the fielder prepared to jump up and grab it as it went over the fence. He jumps with his glove stretched out and the ball hits his glove and bounces out. The fielder reaches to grab it with his other hand and it is just out of his reach. The ball goes over the fence and your friend has hit a home run and won the game! Now that’s what you wanted to hear from your friend. You wanted to hear the story of how the game was won. It would not be enough for your friend to simply say: “We won. That’s it. That’s all I called to say. Bye.” No, you want to hear the details of the game. Why is he so excited about this particular victory? You want to know about which inning it was, what the score was, and how many strikes he had. You want to experience the game happening even though you weren’t there. And it took a story to help you do that.

As adults, we haven’t changed much since we were kids. We still like stories. We communicate our experiences in life by telling stories. We understand other people’s experiences by listening to them tell us stories about what they did. We don’t communicate in the form of one-liners. We don’t just get to the point and leave it at that. We include the details. We include the suspense. We include them because they make for a great story and we all still love a good story.