The Power of Stories

... a quick selfie in front of Killer Whale before we leave our room ..

I am still thinking about the power of stories – in the lives of adults.

Adults listen to complicated stories – mostly told to us with our electrical devices -- which are a modern day gift.

I am wondering if there is a place in adult lives for old-fashioned story telling, the kind that originated our fires when the sky got dark and people were gathered and talking to one another in the deep of the night sky.

Rebecca has been telling the story of Cannibal Boy lately to all who stop to listen.

She practised at the lake and Michael Hunter Johnson was often listening to the story. When Coyote first steals Cannibal Boy from his community and takes him home, the boy is on Coyote’s shoulders and he begins to pick away at a boil that is there.

Rebecca uses her hands to pick at something on the back of her own neck, her face grimacing when she does. Then Cannibal Boy sucks some of the puss out of the boil and Rebecca uses slurping sounds so that her listeners will know that what is there may be disgusting to them, but it is delicious to Cannibal Boy.  Rebecca's tongue reaches far out of her mouth to get every last delicious taste of the puss and the slurping sound reaches far to the back of the room, although she is not micked up.

To jump to the end of what I want to say about this story, one day Michael finally asked Rebecca to stop telling it. He was tired of the story and didn’t want to hear it any more. She agreed to do that, but in doing so, she just wondered if he could perhaps tell the story on his own. She was just curious, she said, to know if he remembered it.  And off he went … almost word for word, gesture for gesture, and slurp for slurp to the end of the story.

I am not tired of the story yet although she has stopped telling it to him.

 I noticed that when I put on a favourite fleecy yesterday, that the label at the back of my neck was scratching the skin there. I have tolerated that scratching for years. I wondered why it is I just haven’t taken the time to clip the threads that hold the label there, and give myself a better day – no more scratching there – just get Cannibal Boy off of my neck.

So I did.

Slurp, slurp.

Arta