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3/9/2003 07:48:26 PM
Stories
I wonder how much storytelling matters in our lives... how much it forms the mesh of our daily experience. We tell so many stories about the past, present and future.
"I had the weirdest day..."
"When I grow up, I wanna be..."
"I miss the way that you..."
"Did you hear what she said about her?"
Children are especially captivated by storytelling.
Recently I was watching a master storyteller perform for a group of elementary school children. The kids sat on the floor of this tiny room, a room that adults had to walk through often in order to get to the rest of the building. But she never faltered as the adults tiptoed their way through, and the children sitting cross-legged on the wooden floor never stopped listening, their upturned faces enraptured by the story of some lion and some bird and some fruit tree.
At a conference of parents and teachers that I helped organize last weekend, teachers talked about the power of stories, and how children are drawn to them instinctively, sensorially. When children sit to hear a teacher read to them, they will often pull at her stockings or stick their little fingers into her shoes. One teacher, Ms. Solomons, who is from South Africa, described the stories her grandfather used to tell. She says she can still remember the smell of his cigars and new books.
Storytelling seems to make sensory experiences indelible. Maybe the story fits the pattern of the human mind, the way we learn, and when someone's telling a story our minds can take it in much more easily, so we're awash in synapses firing perfectly, burning permanent pictures.