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Life, actually…

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SOMEDAY UPON A TIME I SHALL WRITE MY STORY 

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The laughing storyteller hovers over me in the bookshop, making it hard to ignore him while I go about daily duties of book commerce and customer relations.

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“That’s a funny story. Are you writing all these stories down?” I ask.

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“No, everybody says I should, but I haven’t gotten around to it,” he replies.

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Trying to be helpful, I throw in a few unsolicited suggestions, hoping one of them will find traction with this serial teller of tales.

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“Do you keep a diary or a journal?”

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“You know, I should. But that reminds me of the time I got stuck on Hurricane Creek with a rattlesnake…” He starts another story, wrapped up in the excitement of re-experiencing long-ago life.

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He brushes off suggestions like no-see-ums.

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“You know, one thing that works sometimes is just jotting down notes during the day as you recall these anecdotes…so you’ll have some reminders to guide you once you start writing.”

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He is distracted by a Lewis Grizzard book and sort of hears me.

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“Yes, I sure have some stories to tell…like the time my buddy and I got caught stealing watermelons in the middle of the night…”

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He goes on. He deflects any ideas about how to record these stories for future generations. They really are good, but I can see after a while that they will evaporate as soon as he does, leaving no record of a born minstrel’s life adventures.

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I love old books and old stories. I live in constant fear that both books and stories will one day simply not be there for you and me to access. I worry that all we will have as proof of life once lived is a plethora of streamed manufactured imaginings, recorded and monetized and available by subscription only.

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And they won’t even be true and actual stories—just some formulaic regurgitated plotline gibberish designed to pretend reality.

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Will we even know the difference? Will we be aware of what is missing?

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Am I a worrier, or what

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© 2022 A.D. Jim Reed

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