I Used To Tell Stories
My parents started sending me to summer camp at age 8. This seems young to me, but I think they were eager because their own families had never had the money to send them. I’m sure it was my mom who picked the first one: Circus camp. Trapeze, stilts, tightrope and everything.
But I didn’t care for that camp, and so the next summer I went to a different one.
And a different one the next summer.
And the next.
It was tough to find a fit, I guess. I was, I admit, a reluctant participant. I fainted off the saddle (semi-on purpose?) in horseback riding camp; tried to fake amnesia to get out of soccer camp. And I was embarrassingly far beyond age 8 at the time of that little stunt.
All told, I dipped my summer toe into circus camp, golf camp, soccer camp, marine biology camp, choir camp, horse camp. Never finding a home, until … writing camp.
Eight weeks practicing creative nonfiction. Memoir; ‘true’ stories.
I think those were the only two institutional summers where I didn’t care a whit about the food we ate. I was immersed. Hours melted away as I tap-tapped my six typing fingertips (still haven’t fully recruited the pinkies and rings) in a sterile, airless, white-walled computer lab at the University of Virgina. I might as well have been on top of Mount Everest. It was joyful one-pointedness, a feeling familiar, seven or eight years later, during my first deep formal meditations. This was the summer I turned 13, and back again at 14.
This memory came back to me today, and I realized: I used to tell stories.
Then I learned to argue.
Beautiful post. The last two lines are excellent.
Thanks Roger. :) You are always so encouraging, and I appreciate it!
Lovely. Now: the story telling that helps the argument resonate.
<3