Today was day one of my narrative theory and inquiry class, and it looks like it’s going to be a banger. One of the in-class activities had us writing a brief narrative about a stranger we’d encountered. I wrote the following:
Traveling to Chicago last weekend, I had to make a stop at a drive-up ATM in Merrillville, Indiana, which abuts Interstate 65 in the Northwest corner of the state. The clouds from an approaching thunderstorm hung low in the sky, and, just as I pulled away from the ATM, my eye caught the shape of a human figure. It wore a loose grey sweatshirt, which surprised me given the heat. One weathered hand gripped a length of wood atop a sign: Puppy sale. The Pet Store. The Pet Store is exactly what it sounds like, and it’s located in the strip mall adjacent to the bank. Their free hand was frozen in the air, but as I rolled by I noticed its sublte movement. They were waving. <Waving to who?> I observed: worn jeans with a few tears in the front and frayed near the bottom. A red baseball cap relaxing on their head, not shielding their face from the soon-to-disappear-behind-the-clouds sun. Pulling into the street, I saw a wrinkled brow. Perpetually furrowed by many suns, maybe. <How many times has he stood by the road holding signs and waving? What does he think about standing by the road? And who does he stand there for?> Driving toward the highway, having just put money in my wallet, I tried to see his eyes. I’m not sure why. I couldn’t see them, though, because he wasn’t looking up.
After the exercise, we read the narrative to a neighbor, dug a little deeper, and considered what the narrative reveals about the author. We had to introduce ourselves as these strangers. These stranger doppelgängers. So, for the above story, I had to think about what it reveals about me.
- Why did I write about this person?
- Why did I remember (and include) the details that I did?
- Why did I omit others?
- What of myself did I see in him?
- What of not-myself did I see?
- How did I relate to him?
- How did I distance myself?
These are provocative questions, especially considering I thought the exercise was going to culminate in a class-wide sharing of stories to open a discussion about the variety of perspectives and approaches we all adopt and take. What a great way to illustrate natural proclivities for storytelling. Even without having shared with everyone in the room, I know we all wrote something down, and I know everything everyone wrote down would have been recognizable as a story.