The Storytelling Argument
By Gail Louise Siegel
The argument starts this way: “Can’t you just tell me what happened?”
I think I am telling him what happened. “I ran into Kate while she was crossing Dodge at the light. I almost didn’t recognize her, bundled up and hunched over. Her hair was flapping around in the wind. She was limping, using a cane—a metal cane with four prongs, with black rubber caps on the feet.”
I raise my voice to maximum enthusiasm level. Kate said, How is Harvey? I haven’t seen him for sooooo looooong. I drag out the vowels and let my jaw drop, raise my eyes to heaven. My head bobs left and right.
“No, you’re not telling me what happened. You’re imitating her. Can’t you lose the drama and tell me what she said?”
He’s wearing his black referee uniform, and it seems I’ve gotten a red card. I wait for him to untie his cleats and try again. “I saw Kate today and she said, How is Harvey? I haven’t seen him for sooooo loooong.”
He frowns. “Why do you have to mimic her?”
“I’m not mimicking. I’m telling you what she said.” I sit across from him and take a swig from his commemorative World Cup water bottle. It tastes metallic, like loose change.
“Everybody in your family.” He shakes his head in frustration. “You can’t say what happened. You make faces or put on accents. You have to use an odd voice. You’ve got to walk how she walks. You give stage directions. I didn’t ask you to re-enact it. It’s not a Civil War battle.” He unscrews the bottle top and shakes the last drops into his mouth.
“So?” I’m baffled. “Isn’t that how everyone explains things? I mean, you asked me, right?”
“Nope.” He lifts the whistle on its leather cord over his head. It’s a gift from me, an Inuit carving with a weak sound. I’m guessing it’s only for show—for my benefit. I suspect he uses a shrill plastic one on the field. “Absolutely not. That is not how everyone explains things. People use their own voices. They summarize. They go from a to b. You take the long way, the digression, the aside. Every stop at the cleaners isn’t an epic poem waiting to be recited.”
“Demonstrate,” I say. “I’m only saying what happened.”
“Okay. I’ll show you.” He smiles and his eyes are sapphires set in crow’s feet. “I saw Kate yesterday and she asked about you.”
I look at him in wonder. Is that how people recount their days? Is that what parents want when they ask about class? I went, I passed a quiz, I walked home. Is that how Julius Caesar described the schoolyard? Veni, vidi, vici.
I think about sportscasters who break down every goal into a high-stakes tale of passes, fakes, and footwork. And the baseball announcers who analyze double-plays in more detail than complex surgery.
But I’m not angry. I’m amused, and search his handsome, aging face for clues to where our minds intersect. He keeps explaining me to me. He’s saying life isn’t prelude to a story.
Oh, love, I think. That’s your story.
And I nearly protest that telling stories is life. That’s how my dad tells his. A trip to the store where cereal boxes fall and burst? A vignette. A chance meeting with an old friend on the train? A dialogue. A hailstorm driving to Milwaukee? A travel feature. A disastrous staff meeting? A hilarious short story. A vacation in a haunted wood? A chilling novel.
They’re literature, the epic poems we all love best—the ones we write daily about ourselves, about our lives.
Exactly like this argument.
Gail Louise Siegel‘s prose has appeared in dozens of journals including Brevity, Ascent, Post Road, Salamander, StoryQuarterly, Wigleaf, New World Writing, FRiGG and Elm Leaves. She has an MFA from Bennington College and lives a hair’s breadth north of Chicago.
