Our storytelling group

Last night our local story­telling group held their monthly meeting at the Powell River public library. I missed the 1st 2 meetings this year because I was down in Vancou­ver teach­ing, so it was nice to catch up with the group once again. Our group formed a few years ago after Ivan Coyote came to town to do some readings and workshops. A group of folks realized how much they enjoyed getting together and sharing stories. For well over a year we met in various peoples homes until the group grew so large that a larger space was needed. One of the key members, a librar­ian, volun­teered space at the library once a month for us to meet. At times there been close to 30 people in the group, but last night the group was down to about 15 or so, includ­ing a couple of new faces.

Last night’s gather­ing was typical: most people brought homemade or store-bought snacks for breaks: cookies, herb bread, crack­ers with cream cheese and chili sauce, homemade salsa, hummus, ranger cookies, choco­late squares. The library provided hot water and tea and a circle of chairs. We began with intro­duc­tions, and a quick recap of the “rules of the road” — anyone who wants to can read or present a story, those who wish just to listen are welcome to, every­one gets a chance to read once before repeats, no comments or criti­cism should be offered unless the presen­ter requests them, and a reminder that this is a story exchange, not therapy. More and more story­tellers seem to be prepar­ing mater­ial in advance, and often read from written pages, but many still tell from memory or in the spot.

The 1st story­teller told us about his latest trip shopping for “weird jazz records” in Nanaimo on Vancou­ver Island; about how he forgot his wallet full of credit cards at the counter in the store, and how his wife later came to store looking for him. The clerk, realiz­ing who she was, handed her the missing wallet and the pair later met up for coffee. The next story was a humor­ous tale about a barfing dog in the car, followed by a short tale about a Sunday school adventure.

I read a piece about the two years I spent avoid­ing a grocery store across the street after having been caught steal­ing a choco­late bar, and how one evening, after a drive with my parents, I was forced to confront the cashier who’d caught me. We then listened to stories about a group of people who sought out a ghost on a golf course in Victo­ria late at night, and a group of appren­tice shipbuilders in Liver­pool who fashioned kerosene torches from cloth and pipe and set out to explore an abandoned train tunnel near a grave­yard, only to run out scream­ing after hearing the unmis­take­able chugging of a ghostly steam train bearing down upon them.

The next story­teller told about her adven­tures travel­ing in Pakistan and having to deal with the unwanted advances of 2 male acquain­tances, followed by a new member of the group of Finnish descent who sprained his ankle skiing on Grouse mountain in Vancou­ver on his 39th birth­day, then later hiked up the mountain and discov­ered an old cabin, which he later spent some time renovat­ing, and lived in.

More stories followed: a cat addicted to chlorine who wants to curl into a turban of her owner’s head every time she returns from swimming, the death of an old man on his ninety-fifth birth­day, a woman who made par on the hole where her friend wants her ashes to be spread when she passes on, a man who wandered the streets of New Westmin­ster, Surrey and Vancou­ver after being given a dead-man’s pants, a cab driver in Whistler named Alison who spend her 29th birth­day on Decem­ber 29th working, and picked up a drunk woman also named Alison who, too, was celebrat­ing her 29th birth­day that evening. One of our final stories was about a little boy who went into a closet, got fright­ened, and was joined first by his cat, then his mother and later his father.

The wonder­ful thing about our little story­telling group, is not simply the diver­sity of our tellers, but the recog­ni­tion that nearly all of these tales are not fictions, but stories that come from real lives lived by all of us who gather once a month to share them.