what's another story?
[Alt text: A pair of oversized red and orange sunglasses frames I spotted in a store window in Barcelona.]
When kids are around 4, I think, they like to ask "why?" It doesn't even matter what you say. "The food is on the table." "Why?" "Because it's time for dinner." "Why?" "Because you need to eat so you will keep growing." "Why?" And so on and so on until you reach the point where you're like "BECAUSE I SAID SO" or you wave a white flag, like "I don't know."
It's not that kids really want to know "why." They just want you to keep talking to them, and they've figured out that asking "why?" is the easiest way to do that.
My niece (I'm gonna call her "N.") is 7. She occasionally still asks why, but more often she wants me to tell her stories about when her father (my brother) and I were kids.
This started a month or so ago, when N. had horrible stomach pain after school, so bad that my brother considered taking her to the hospital. Turns out, she had eaten very little that day. (And once she had some pasta, she was fine.) I arrived an hour or so later, and told her a story: When I was about her age, my family went to San Francisco. One night, it was time to leave the hotel room to go to dinner. My stomach hurt really bad. I was in so much pain, and I was crying, just like N. had been. My parents dismissed my pain, as if I was having a tantrum, and left me alone in the hotel room because they had to go to the restaurant. A few minutes after they left, I found a small piece of chocolate in the room. I ate it — and immediately felt better. And realized my stomach had hurt because I had been really hungry.
N. listened very closely to this story, with the kind of rapt attention usually reserved for cartoons and Disney movies.
Since then, every time I drive her somewhere, she wants to hear more stories. The request is always the same: "What's another story?"
So far I've told her about how when we were kids, we'd go to Kings Dominion (amusement park) every summer and the Dodge Dart would overheat on I-95, but Grandma Maureen packed a picnic because she knew that would happen, so we'd sit on the side of the highway eating sandwiches while Grandpa Bob yelled and said bad words to the car's engine.
I've told her about how we used to go to Cape Cod in the summer, and every year our dog would get sprayed by a skunk, and the smell was so bad, and back then they didn't have fancy de-skunking shampoo, so we had to use tomato juice, and then the dog just smelled like skunk and tomato juice for at least a month until it faded away.
I've told her about the time, also at Cape Cod, when Grandpa Bob and her dad were in the yard playing with a baseball and baseball bat, and there was a loud noise, and then the sound of my brother screaming, because Grandpa Bob had mistakenly hit a line drive directly into his 8-year-old son's face, and given him a black eye, and Grandma Maureen assumed the crying was MY fault, even though I was half a block away when it happened. Interestingly, neither N.'s father nor grandfather remember this happening. Last night they almost accused me of making it up.
I've told her about the time we took a family road trip to Baltimore, when Harborplace had just opened, and a seagull pooped on my brother's head, and I thought that was the funniest thing in the world and I laughed and laughed and laughed. N. says that was mean of me. She's right. (But I still think it's funny.)
I've told her how I used to go to school in a house that is diagonally across the street from the school she goes to now. It is no longer a school. There was a garage, with no doors or windows, that was our playhouse. One time I fell out of the window and broke my arm and Grandma Maureen thought I was faking it until later that night a doctor neighbor said "you better get her to the emergency room."
I told her how I was the flower girl in my aunt's wedding the next week and I had my arm in a cast, and my aunt fainted at her own wedding, and people had to pause the ceremony until she woke up, and then I insisted on sitting in between the bride and the groom in the "getaway" car after the ceremony, and I was mad when someone else caught the bouquet.
It doesn't matter how many stories I tell her, or how many details I include. As soon as I'm done with one story, she says, "What's another story?"
I'm starting to worry I will run out of stories. Maybe when the kids are out begging strangers for Halloween candy on Monday, I can dig through old family photo albums and take notes.
But at some point, I'm gonna turn the tables on her, and insist she tell ME a story.
Links
I wish I'd known about Leslie Jordan during the early stages of the pandemic; he would have helped my mental health so much. RIP to someone who seemed like such a genuinely sweet and good person. (Twitter)
Why so many girls are starting puberty so young. (New Yorker)
An essay that uses sociologist Erving Goffman's The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life as a way to explain social media and the cult of productivity. (Catapult)
In case you want to take an online hearing test. (Soundly)
A thread with some useful Big Questions. Especially this one: "What is it that I can think of, read, watch, listen and talk about for hours on end without tiring of it?" (Twitter)
An app that searches all the eBays/Etsys/etc. in one place. (Gem)
Someone's sharing all the rejected California vanity license plates. I don't know why I love stuff like this so much. (Boing Boing)
OMFG: “Because of an infection, (Harvey Weinstein's) testicles were actually taken from his scrotum and put into his inner thighs.” (Jezebel)
Baby elephants apparently can't control their trunks. (Twitter)
Your self-worth shouldn’t come from a career, it should come from social media. (Hard Times)