On a recent school visit to share my stories, a teacher timidly approached me. “As soon as I saw you,” she said, “I knew you were the one. When I was a kid, a storyteller came to our school; I didn’t remember her name. I’ve always remembered the story she told about The Stingy Greedy Man in the Moon. Last week, I told the story to my son and he loved it, too. That storyteller was you, but you had long hair back then.”

Yes, and I was twenty years younger, too! She was kind enough not to mention the wrinkles I have acquired. I was speechless, which isn’t good for a storyteller. I didn’t care that she didn’t remember my name; people rarely do. “Famous storyteller” is an oxymoron (just like “jumbo shrimp” and “military intelligence”). There is no such thing. However, it pleased me that she remembered the story. It reminded me again of the magic and the power of the spoken word.

I’ve talked to y’all about storytelling before, but I haven’t expounded on it much. Since ancient times, people of all cultures have used storytelling as a teaching tool. Many of the old stories entertained, but also contained morals which showed the boundaries of good behavior within the culture. In the old Trickster tales (you might be familiar with Br’er Rabbit), the “bad guy” always got his comeuppance. Stories also held the history of a people (think of the “begat”s in the Bible) and explained “why” things happened.

All of you are aware that it’s important to read to your children. If we read aloud to children, we can instill in them the love of reading. To me, it’s important that we tell stories to our children. The simple act of making eye contact as one tells seems to actively engage the listener in the story.

Telling stories to children helps them learn to understand the sequencing of events, to predict outcomes of situations, to develop memory skills, and to enhance problem solving ability. When children are told stories, they develop language skills and can learn new vocabulary. Hearing stories, children develop a greater attention span and learn to use their imaginations. Children can learn about other cultures, other times in history, and other people as they hear stories. By listening to stories, children can learn to appreciate the beauty of the spoken word.

Many long years ago, before I was a storyteller, I read stories to my two boys. There was one book that they liked in particular. It was called But No Elephants. I don’t recall the author, or even the plot anymore. We had to read it night after night, and they had it memorized word for word. They couldn’t read yet, but they darn sure knew when to turn the page. One night, my eyes were tired, so I just started telling the story from memory. My oldest said, “Mommy, that’s not how it goes!” I said, “Son, I’m telling the story tonight, and since I’m the storyteller, it can go anyway I want it to go!”

After that night, we decided to start making up stories at bedtime. We had an elaborate set of stories that we “wrote” together about Grandpa Wog and Grandma Mog who had two young “caveboys.” They lived back when the dinosaurs roamed [forget about "history" folks, they were into T-Rex back then]. Those caveboys were named after my own little fellas, and they had adventures in a time machine. We brought them into the future and told about how they were amazed as they encountered cars and televisions and such. The boys did most of the telling of the stories. It was amazing how their imaginations developed after that. Unfortunately, we didn’t write the stories down, so we have only the memory of telling them together. Not long after that I decided to become a storyteller, and we wrote a lot of stories together.

Do y’all tell stories to your children and grandchildren? You don’t have to be a “professional” storyteller to be effective and engaging. If you’d like to try, but are feeling timid, come back Saturday and I’ll have some tips for you about telling stories. In the meantime, find a story you think you would like to tell (make it short and simple for the first time). We can have you feeling comfortable about sharing stories in no time flat. You might be surprised to find that you enjoy it.

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