Learning Through Story
I’ve always understood everything better through story. In high school, I hated history. Dates, battles, it all seemed stupid to me and I couldn’t figure out why anybody cared. Then, at community college, I had a professor who taught with stories. History, it seemed, was about people. Who knew? I was hooked. My family—like yours, I’m sure—tells certain stories over and over again. Not all of them are traditional stories with a plot and resolution. They have other story elements—character, setting, theme. They’re snippets of memory that make us laugh or make us cry. Here are a few that come to mind. Daddy never worked on Christmas. That was just a fact. Even though Christmas paid double-time-and-a-half at the mill and we sorely needed the money, he was always home on Christmas morning. Daddy was like a kid himself, excited as we were to watch his six children open their stockings to find the orange and apple, the candy and peanuts. There would be a pair of pajamas under the tree, and always, always there was the toy he had snuck out and bought us on payday before he gave Mummy the money for the bills.
The corner store on our block sold Lucky Cakes. Four-inch-round, one-inch-high gobs of devils food with a white cream center. They cost twelve cents. Occasionally, for a treat, Mummy would send us to the store for one. The tiny cake was cut in six equal chunks and each of us carefully chose a slice. All our friends played at our house. My best friend, Franny, had an actual doll collection. My sister’s friend Maureen had her very own playroom, with a kid-sized kitchen and everything. Though we could never understand it, most days you could find them all in our living room, where Mummy would let us build tents with blankets from our beds, play store with the canned goods from her kitchen cupboards, or jump on a makeshift trampoline we made from the couch cushions. I used to think these stories were repeated over and over again with the purpose of reminding the younger generation of how poor we were, and how lucky they are to have the things they have. But now I know that’s not their purpose. Now I know why these stories endure. The Christmas story says family comes first. Being together is more important than anything you might find under the tree. The Lucky Cake story is about the importance of sharing, no matter how little you have. The story about playing with our friends has a simple, profound message—your children are more important than your things. Telling these stories passes along these lessons. It makes them memorable and easy to understand. And, over the years, these stories have taught me to look at my childhood in a new way. I used to think we grew up poor. Now I know we were rich. We just didn’t have any money. Anita’s story “Accounts Receivable” appears in Dammit, I Learned a Lot from That Son-of-a-Gun. Click here to learn more about Anita. |
