Telling stories
My dad is good at it. He can entertain people for hours with his various adventures and misadventures. He was a soldier, a policeman, and a fed among other things. His tales keep kids and adults alike laughing at his wit and amazed at some of the things he’s seen and done. Me and the wife were talking about this last night. We think we’re gonna have him over, put a couple of bourbons in him, and set up a video camera. Assuming he’ll go for it.
The other thing is it made me think about the stories I’ll tell to my grand kids. They’re not exciting at all. My dad talks about his encounter with the five foot tall Mexican with a four foot long knife, how a grease gun almost got him killed, or the day he had to stack 400 bodies. What I’m I gonna say? And then that one time I calculated the effective interest rate on a $100M credit facility with a 35% make-whole premium over two years. That will keep ’em entertained.
April 26th, 2012 at 11:37 am
Yeah, but did he ever have to fight City Hall over a used Tire?
April 26th, 2012 at 11:41 am
Just pretend your sister’s stories about you are true!
BTW that’s one of the few good things about my time as a Government Marine Biologist. I have a lifetime of stories.
April 26th, 2012 at 11:51 am
Sounds like it’s time for you to take a road trip!
April 26th, 2012 at 11:53 am
I had the same thought at the NRA convention listening to the stories from LawDog, AD, Matthew Allen, and Matt G.
All I can think of was, “Yeah? Well I had this quarterly report for Q1 sales that was off by $500 and I found the error!”…
April 26th, 2012 at 12:01 pm
Your Dad sounds like a neat guy. Get that video rolling!
Btw, if you want to read about the M3 Grease Gun, click on my name for my article about it where a Korean War vet also talks about using it in combat.
April 26th, 2012 at 12:07 pm
Claim to have great stories but they’re still classified.
April 26th, 2012 at 12:32 pm
It’s a sad day when a DGU requires a PR team to get your story out and counter the accusations of the assailant’s family.
April 26th, 2012 at 12:46 pm
Tell them you can do math in your head. By the time you’re a Grandpa, that will be a thing of the past.
April 26th, 2012 at 12:48 pm
My brother did this with my dad, audio only. Now I can hear him sing HBTY every year to me. It’s on my iPod…
April 26th, 2012 at 12:55 pm
I’d watch that.
April 26th, 2012 at 12:55 pm
I wish I had done that with my Granddad. He was over a POW camp in Paris after WWII. Awesome stories.
Me? Well there was that epic battle with a patio shelf. Left a gnarly scar and everything. Or how about taming that out of control AR GL?
Waitress stories? Banking stories?
April 26th, 2012 at 1:16 pm
My dad was a Merchant Marine in and after WWII, went from NC to Vladivostock to Singapore to Marseilles and back. And other than a few tidbits never talked about it.
One he did mention was that he learned when jumping off a ship, to check the wind direction so the burning fuel was on the opposite side of the ship from you. No other details.
April 26th, 2012 at 1:17 pm
Dad was never a talker until very recently.
April 26th, 2012 at 1:22 pm
Do that video thing while he’s still a talker.
Also take out the old pictures and let him tell you who’s in them and the stories behind them, while he still remembers.
April 26th, 2012 at 1:37 pm
Hey, you’re not dead yet. There’s always time to do more interesting things with your life, and go more interesting places.
Besides, some of the things others find fascinating are just the sort of things that were everyday at the time – sometimes it’s all in the presentation. And if you truly think you’re boring – then go do things with the kids instead of telling them stories. Dad rarely mentioned a thing during my childhood, but we did road trips across the country, and hiking, and welding… and I have lots of stories of time with dad, even if they’re not stories from dad.
April 26th, 2012 at 1:42 pm
Don’t forget the one time that you thought 84 minus 14 is 60. 😉
Seriously though, it’s not much better when you have had a very unusual life, and very little storytelling skill to go with it.
April 26th, 2012 at 2:00 pm
LOL. should know better than to do math without a spreadsheet. I never have to do it in my head.
April 26th, 2012 at 6:09 pm
I so relate to this. You should definitely record his stories.
As a young man, in the late 50’s, my dad was a “cold warrior” in the USAF. Most of the really interesting stuff he didn’t talk about until some 40 years later. He told me once that he had travelled all over Europe and some in Central America, but that it was mostly only for a couple of hours at an airport in the middle of the night, dropping of brief cases, checking luggage lockers, etc. He often had to change uniform, rank, and service branch 2 or 3 times in one trip. It was exhausting work, he said. He also told me that if he had re-upped instead of getting out when he did, that I would have been born in Turkey instead of Texas. My mom wasn’t too keen on that at the time, evidently. Other interesting stuff.
And, no, I haven’t done anything nearly as cool as that.
April 26th, 2012 at 7:07 pm
Peace and prosperity are boring as hell. Your dad had to study politics and war, that you might have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy. Somewhere down that regression you get to statuary, tapestry, and porcelain. ‘Twas ever thus, since ‘Omer smote his bloomin’ lyre.
SHTF, and you’ll have more interesting stories. Ready?
April 26th, 2012 at 8:39 pm
The best storytellers of my youth were my grandparents. All four, but especially Popaw and Grandaddy. One was a soldier, the other CCC. Also moonshiner, and Hobo. Plus the fact that they lived next-door to each other. I was a ten year old kid in Heaven on a fishing trip, or squirrel hunt. Back to you, UNC, when your Dad is in a good moment, try to keep that. Any way you can, for you and yours. Talk with him. It doesn’t have to be about anything, just talk. You want to remember your parents.
April 27th, 2012 at 9:04 am
I always said I had three reasons for joining the Infantry, and one was that I didn’t want to have shitty stories when I got old. Lads, be careful what you wish for!
April 27th, 2012 at 6:23 pm
I’ve considered moving to a small town and becoming a police officer just for the stories.
I have a few good stories from my travels while in college and high school, but not near enough. My plan with my kids is to spend a lot of time traveling and find some wild animals. wild animals always cause great stories.