Storyworthy. Matthew Dicks

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       CHAPTER TWO

       What Is a Story? (and What Is the Dinner Test?)

      A couple years ago, a woman asked Elysha why she first fell in love with me. Fortunately I was standing right beside her when the question was asked.

      I waited for Elysha to say something about my rugged good looks, quick wit, or enchanting eyes. “I thought it was this situation,” I said, motioning up and down my body.

      “It’s never been this situation,” Elysha informed me.

      Instead she told the woman that it was storytelling that first made her fall for me. She told the story of the night when she and I went to Chili’s for dinner — our first meal alone — before our school’s talent show.

      Just so we’re clear: This was not a date. Maybe I wanted it to be a date, but at that time, I thought Elysha was out of my league. I still think this today. Please don’t tell her.

      Elysha and I were fellow teachers and slowly becoming friends, but we were both involved with other people at the time. We were technically unavailable. Also Chili’s was one of the closest restaurants to our school.

      My point: I didn’t take Elysha on a first date to Chili’s. I’m not that guy.

      Okay?

      Elysha explained to the woman that over the course of our dinner, she had asked me some questions about myself. We’d known each other for a couple years by then, but we didn’t know much about each other personally. When I’m asked a question, I tell a story, so I told some stories that night. I was still more than seven years away from taking a stage and telling my first official story, but even back then, I was always ready and willing to share my life with others, warts and all.

      Elysha told the woman, “That was the night I started falling for Matt. Listening to his stories, I realized that he wasn’t like anyone I had ever met before, and I knew I wanted to hear more. I liked the way he told a story.”

      Beautiful, right? I found the perfect spouse through storytelling.

      Right after the beauty of the moment washed over me, I quickly shifted to annoyance. By then I had been performing onstage and teaching storytelling for a few years. I had made a name for myself in the storytelling world. I’d attracted interest from businesses, universities, nonprofits, and performers. Knowing all this, why had she waited until now to inform me that my storytelling had been the key to her heart?

      I told her that the story about falling in love with me through storytelling fit perfectly into my personal narrative and explained how useful it could have been to me for the past couple years of teaching and performing. “You’re telling me that I found the perfect wife through storytelling! That’s like a baseball player hitting a home run into the right-field bleachers that’s caught by the woman he eventually marries. It’s amazing! How could you keep this from me?”

      “I’m not in the business of helping you construct your personal narrative,” she said.

      She’s lucky I love her. But you see my point, right? Even before I was telling stories onstage and thinking of myself as a storyteller, the ability to tell a good story was helping me immensely.

      Let’s also be clear that when I talk about storytelling, I am speaking about personal narrative. True stories told by the people who lived them. This is very different than the traditional fable or folktale that many people associate with the word storytelling. While folktales and fables are entertaining and can teach us about universal truths and important life lessons, there is power in personal storytelling that folktales and fables will never possess.

      A folktale or a fable would never have convinced Elysha that I was the love of her life. My friends would not routinely invite me to play golf if I promised them a well-told folktale between swings. I would not be hired for a job by answering questions with folktales. Nonprofits, corporations, universities, and school districts would not be able to improve their image and messaging through fables. You can’t become the life of the party by telling a good folktale.

      Most importantly, folktales and fables do not create the same level of connection between storyteller and audience as a personal story. I have never listened to someone tell a folktale and felt more deeply connected to the storyteller as a result. I may have loved the story and admired the storyteller’s skill and expertise, and I might have been highly entertained, but I have never felt that I knew the storyteller any better at the end of their story. The storyteller who tells folktales and fables is a highly developed, highly skilled delivery mechanism, often more СКАЧАТЬ