Our Worst Days Become Our Best Stories

A couple months back, within the span of a few weeks, two bad things happened to me: I rode my bike into a nearly invisible, taut, kite string that lay across my path, lacerating both of my forearms. Not long after, I was awakened in the middle of the night by a nefarious knucklehead trying to steal things from my patio who I chased off by wielding a baseball bat.

I had just read Charan Ranganath's book Why We Remember, and it inspired me to be as conscious as possible about how I stored those traumatic memories. And specifically, I tried to store them as stories that made me feel good about myself, while also entertaining others.

Comedian Jimmy Carr asserts that our worst days become our best stories. My goal was to be aware of how these stories lived within me.

I live in a very tight-knit neighborhood, and both stories have spread amongst my neighbors, told second and third hand at this point, circling back to me in fascinating and inaccurate ways. 

The way I tell my kite string story, it's as the purest of accidents. I'm proud of the fact that although I yelled at the guy whose downed kite caused my pain, I forgave him on the spot. Every time I notice my rather ghastly scars, I'm reminded of that man, Tony, who I pity more than myself. Even as I was still bleeding, I urged him to not stop flying his kites, although the last I communicated with him, he'd taken a break from his wholesome hobby.

When the story comes back to me through the grapevine, however, it appears there are some who aren't ready to forgive him on my behalf. If it had happened to them, I'm told, they would have sued, or at least threatened to sue. They find my story incomplete. When I correct their version with my own, they shake their heads in disagreement. They want, by proxy, their pound of flesh.

But the stories that have round-robined back to me about the baseball bat incident are even more fascinating. In some versions I'm portrayed as a kind of everyman hero. One of my neighbors even immediately purchased her own baseball bat. Another close neighbor demanded, almost gleefully, that if it happens again, I should phone him before confronting the "baddie." He promised to arrive with a "steel bar" and that he would be "fierce."

My wife Jennifer likes to take the lead in telling the baseball bat story. In her version, I "leapt" onto the patio, indeed, she says I cleared it entirely, landing with both feet on the lawn. She says I shouted ferociously, like a character in a Tarantino movie. She never fails to mention that I was shirtless. As you can imagine, I love that this is the way she's stored the memory/story, even if it's not quite how I remember it. It makes me sound like a superhero.

On the other hand, many versions of the story have come back with me as a chest-thumping idiot who could have been badly hurt or even killed. 

As a friend said to me, "Both things can be true." Although, to be honest, I really can't embrace the second version. I never really felt endangered, even in hindsight.

Looking back, I've had quite a bit of experience with people who others view as nefarious. I've rousted unhoused sleepers from the school playground on more than one occasion. I've even had to coax them from inside the building. 

A man who I know to struggle with addiction and mental illness was lurking about in the darkened room across the hall. When I confronted him, he insisted that no one could see him. When I said that I could see him, he replied, "Except you."

Another time, I chased down a guy who had tried to steal my bike in order to say, "You tried to steal my bike. Come on, man, get with the times!"

I've also spent weeks hunting in the various local encampments for one of these fellows whose family (we sometimes forget they have families) said he had a public episode shortly after I hustled him off, then disappeared. I knew that the man I'd caught in the shadows had a family who sent him his medications every month in care of our landlord Pastor Gay; the same pastor who considered it part of her job to care for the people sleeping rough in our neighborhood, who we all knew engaged in petty crimes and other anti-social activities to get by.

I knew they weren't so much dangerous villains as they were knuckleheads. Forgive me the name calling, but it's a label that allows me to understand them best; to pity them. I've been a knucklehead more often than I care to admit. 

In other words, maybe I wasn't brave when I confronted our intruder, despite my wife's story, so much as experienced. Experience has taught me that the scruffy man in the shadows is not necessarily the villain my frightened imagination can so easily create. He might be dangerous. I can't know. But he is also a human being. And, quite possibly, a knucklehead.

I've not yet succeeded in storing the bat story in the way I'd hoped, at least not entirely. While I love hearing Jennifer's version and I like knowing that I am still capable of protecting myself if necessary, I'm far more proud of the times that I disarmed myself and faced the person in front of me as another human being — fallible and, quite possibly, a knucklehead.

******

Books, like Sand Talk, have a way of transforming us unlike any other media out there. Be it fiction or non-fiction, a books has the power to fully immerse us into a world in ways that makes us come out the other side a changed -- and better -- person. I've put together this list of 16 books that have done that for me. They are intentionally not early childhood books, although each one has, in one way or another, profoundly transformed my work with young children. Maybe you'll find a few new ones here that will do the same for you. To download the list, click here.

I put a lot of time and effort into this blog. If you'd like to support me please consider a small contribution to the cause. Thank you!