š» #11: Teaching my kids the art of storytelling
A story about my 6th grade Speech Team. And Don the Nacho Eating Ghost
Iām not really one for giving out much parenting advice. Parenting is like trying to master multi variable calculus when you only know basic arithmetic. This baby suddenly appears and youāre like āuh, what do I do with this?ā. Every parent has their own style, their own way of doing things. Every kid has their own things theyāre receptive to, their own way of learning and behaving. I say all this b/c this weekās newsletter I offer a story about something we do with our kids thatās kinda fun. Maybe itās advice, maybe itās not. Ā
In other parenting news, I would like you all to know that at ages 3 and 5 kids are self aware enough to close the door when they take a dump. For this I am grateful.Ā
Before I had kids, I would reminisce on some of the lessons I learned in my youth and how they affected me as an adult. I would think about the time I tried to steal some golf balls and ended up in county jail for 36 hours. I learned that stealing golf balls is super dumb especially when shitty golfers spray them all over public golf courses for me to pick up like I was at an Easter egg hunt.
Or the time I flunked out of college because I spent an entire semester drinking frozen strawberry daiquiris and southern comfort (not together; that would be uncivilized). I think Iām still learning this lesson.
But when you have kids, a whole new set of memories emerge. Theyāre the sort of memories that are designed to elicit some kind of lesson, some kind of blueprint for the kinds of things you want your kids to learn. For me, the memory that has most recently emerged is that in 6th grade, I had become a damn good Extemporaneous speaker. We called it Extemp for short because we were fuckin cool.
When I showed up for 6th grade at Teague Middle School in Houston TX, I got to pick a few electives to supplement the usual workload of āsocial studiesā and āscienceā and āmathā. I chose Spanish because when youāre a 12 year old in Houston TX you learn some basic Spanish because itās basically wired right into your DNA. I also chose Theater Arts becauseā¦..I have no idea why. I had never been in a play or had an inkling to do anything in the dramatic arts. But I was always a kid with a broad interest in things. I never really mastered any one thing. I got decent at a lot of things. When I wandered into Theater Arts, I had no idea what to expect. We did the usual theater kid stuff. We did really small plays, sang songs, pantomimed (I am a TALENT at pantomime), and we did speech. Speech was comprised of a few different specialties: debate, oration, humorous impromptu (watch out Second City), and last but not least, extemp.Ā
Extemp was a weird one. You showed up at a speech tournament, they gave you a subject (āshould we go back to space after the Challenger accidentā was a depressing as hell subject at one tournament), and you would disappear for 30 minutes to write your speech. We would bring with us cartons full of magazines, dictionaries, and newspapers (remember those pre internet days yāall??). Weād scour these for resources to include in our speeches. For some reason I absolutely loved it. I learned the fundamentals of story telling. Of conveying an argument. And of thinking quickly on my feet. I was super active on the speech team in 6th and 7th grade in Houston until we moved to Atlanta before my 8th grade year. As soon as I got there I asked about the speech team and they looked at me like I was from Mars. āWe haveā¦a basketball team?ā I was bummed for about 30 seconds until I met my future best friends Jason and Josh and started whipping their ass in homerun derby in their front yard. My memories for extemp faded pretty fast.
Until about a year ago. Lil was right around 4 and reaching a point where you could have the basics of a conversation with her. In our daily school commute we would sometimes play a game called ātell a storyā. One person (sometimes her, sometimes me) would come up with a subject and the other person would have to tell a story based on that subject. It goes without saying that a 4 year oldās story telling skills are basic at best. āOnce upon a time there was a girl named Lily who went to the parkā was pretty common to come from her. But we continued to play the game as her skills slowly grew. About 3 weeks ago a light switch was flipped and she became much more engaged in the game, telling longer, more complex stories. This is when Don the Nacho Eating Ghost emerged.
In fairness, I invented the character of Don. The girls and I were on our way to the Oddmall: Emporium of the Weird a craft fair where people sell weird shit. Naturally I was going to take my kids there because what else are you going to do on a Saturday morning? Go to soccer? Pffft. Weād gotten to the craft fair a little early so we had some time to kill. Lily had said that we should play the story game. She started the game with the theme of ghosts. I was stumped so came up with Don, the nacho loving ghost b/c national nacho day had recently passed and it felt right and I have a well established affinity for a tasty mountain of nachos.
Instead of the usual 3 or 4 word sentence that I would get from Lil in this game, she really latched on to Don. We would go back and forth sharing different Don related exploits. Sometimes he would terrorize little kids by swooping into skating rinks and eating their nachos (my story). Or he would be invited to a campout and was in charge of bringing the nachos but when Don forgot his nacho platter everyone cried (Lilās story). These stories carried over to the last few bike rides home from school. Lil would invent new little parts and ask for new themes that she could play against.Ā
These games weād play brought back all these memories of getting a theme and then inventing the narrative around that theme. And it feels like such a fun and interactive way to spend time with my kids.Ā I mean donāt get me wrong, Iāll drop an iPad in that damn lap faster than dropping a hot potato. But imprinting on my kids the love of inventing stories out of thin air is so much fun. And watching her energy and enthusiasm around it brings me back to this really fun and influential part of my junior high experience.Ā
Like this story? Would you tell a friend about it? Your mom? Your mamaās mama? Thanks!