Storyworthy. Matthew Dicks

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СКАЧАТЬ or a YouTube video, but never revealing, vulnerable, or authentic.

      Folktales and fables don’t require vulnerability. They do not demand honesty and transparency from the storyteller. They can never be self-deprecating or revealing, because the story is not about the storyteller. They are entertaining, possibly educational, and often insightful, but they do not bring people closer together.

      We tell stories to express our hardest, best, most authentic truths. This is what brings thousands of people to hear stories at theaters and bars every night in cities all over the world.

      They want the real deal. They want the kind of stories that just might make them fall in love with the storyteller.

      As we prepare to embark on this journey together, keep in mind that there are a few requirements to ensuring that you are telling a personal story:

      Change

      Your story must reflect change over time. A story cannot simply be a series of remarkable events. You must start out as one version of yourself and end as something new. The change can be infinitesimal. It need not reflect an improvement in yourself or your character, but change must happen. Even the worst movies in the world reflect some change in a character over time.

      So must your story. Stories that fail to reflect change over time are known as anecdotes. Romps. Drinking stories. Vacation stories. They recount humorous, harrowing, and even heartfelt moments from our lives that burned brightly but left no lasting mark on our souls.

      There is nothing wrong with telling these stories, but don’t expect to make someone fall in love with you in a Chili’s restaurant by telling one of these stories. Don’t expect people to change their opinions on an important matter or feel more connected to you through these stories. These are the roller-coasters and cotton candy of the storytelling world. Supremely fun and delicious, but ultimately forgettable.

      Matt’s Five Rules of Drinking Stories

       1. No one will ever care about your drinking stories as much as you.

       2. Drinking stories never impress the type of people who one wants to impress.

       3. If you have more than three excellent drinking stories from your entire life, you are incorrect in your estimation of an excellent drinking story.

       4. Even the best drinking stories are seriously compromised if told during the daytime and/or at the workplace.

       5. A drinking story about a moment when you were over the age of forty is often sad, pathetic, and even tragic except under the following circumstances:

       • It is absolutely your best drinking story of all time.

       • The storyteller is over seventy. Drinking stories about the elderly are acceptable in any form, because they are rare and oftentimes hilarious.

      Matt’s Three Rules of Vacation Stories

       1. No one wants to hear about your vacation.

       2. If someone asks to hear about your vacation, they are being polite. See rule #1.

       3. If you had a moment that was actually storyworthy while you were on vacation, that is a story that should be told. But it should not include the quality of the local cuisine or anything related to the beauty or charm of the destination.

      Your Story Only

      You must tell your own story and not the stories of others. People would rather hear the story about what happened to you last night than about what happened to your friend Pete last night, even if Pete’s story is better than your own. There is immediacy and grit and inherent vulnerability in hearing the story of someone standing before you. It is visceral and real. It takes no courage to tell Pete’s story. It requires no hard truth or authentic self.

      This doesn’t mean that you can’t tell someone else’s story. It simply means you must make the story about yourself. You must tell your side of the story.

      Back in 1991, I was living with my best friend, Bengi, in an apartment in Attleboro, Massachusetts, that we called the Heavy Metal Playhouse. It was thanks to Bengi that I had a roof over my head. He was attending Bryant University but decided to live off campus during his sophomore year. I was graduating from high school at the time, and my parents expected me to move out and begin taking care of myself. But I had nowhere to go. I worried that I might become homeless.

      While my classmates were counting down the remaining days of high school with great anticipation, I spent much of my senior year worried about where I would be living after the school year ended. Then salvation. On a warm spring evening, while Bengi and I were sitting in the cab of an idle bulldozer on the site of a future grocery store, he asked me if I wanted to live with him. I couldn’t believe it. I was ecstatic.

      There was only one problem: I knew that living with Bengi would be hard, because unlike anyone I had ever met, Bengi was a person who held on to grudges. Cross him in any way, and he did not forget. I suspect that it was the result of being an only child and not facing the constant adversity that comes with sibling rivalry. Growing up as the oldest of five, I was awful to my siblings. I made their lives miserable. I tricked my brother Jeremy into believing that the yellow bits in the Kibbles ’n Bits dog food were real cheese and convinced him to eat them fairly regularly. I constantly short-sheeted his bed. Sold his Star Wars action figures to raise cash. Locked him out of the house every other day. Jeremy had every reason to despise me.

      To his credit, Jeremy occasionally enacted his own revenge. When it came time to vote on a new patrol leader in our Boy Scout troop, Jeremy orchestrated a coup that placed himself in the leadership position that I had once held and left me powerless to stop him. For a time, I despised him for making me look like a fool.

      But when you grow up with siblings, you learn to forgive and forget. You have no other choice. As an only child, Bengi lacked that ability. Instead of forgiving, he would rank his friends on lists according to how he was feeling about them that day, which made things difficult given that we shared many of the same friends. His inability to forgive made it difficult to be around him at times. Sometimes impossible.

      Then salvation. One night we were sitting in the living room of the Heavy Metal Playhouse with friends, waiting for The Simpsons to come on, when things finally came to a head. Voices were raised. Heated words were spoken. In a fit of anger, Bengi stormed out of the house and into a downpour. He told us he was going for a run.

      Bengi was not a runner at the time, and he suffered from a paralyzing fear of water. He couldn’t swim, and he wouldn’t even consider going out in the rain without a hat to keep the water from his eyes.

      Yet he was off, hatless and frantic. He left me sitting along with our friends in the living room, contemplating what might happen when he returned. I wondered if Bengi and I might stop being best friends. He was ideal in so many ways, but I worried that his insistence on holding grudges might be the wedge that would eventually drive us apart. It saddened me. I sat on that couch and resigned myself to the idea that this might be the beginning of the end for us. Eventually my friends and I returned to watching television as we awaited his return.

      Less than an hour later, the door burst open, and a dripping, panting, red-faced Bengi entered the house. He looked different. Waterlogged clothing and plastered hair, but he was also smiling. Really smiling. He looked relaxed. He looked happy. Then he walked over to me, bent down, and kissed me on the lips.

      It was gross. СКАЧАТЬ