And you’re calling me a lady?

A lady is hairspray and perfume shuffling down the Campbell soup aisle of the local King Soopers.

Do I look like a lady to you?

A lady eats salad with the proper fork and never all of it because she can’t imagine what cucumbers might do to her girlish figure.

Have you seen me eat?

A lady speaks softly. “Excuse me,” is her constant refrain.

If you call me “lady” again, I’ll demonstrate the proper way to say “Excuuuuse me.”

—————–

That was a free-writing exercise that I did at a Lighthouse Writers event in Denver, Colorado. The assignment was to drop all pretense of politeness and say what we really think. Earlier that day, a  waiter called me “lady.” Makes me angry every time. Why? Because “lady” comes with a set of expectations. Most of us would agree that a lady doesn’t have multiple piercings, for example, or pack a semi-automatic.

This blog is about how family stories need to be examined because they come with expectations. “In our family everyone goes to college,” is a phrase that can make a failure out of a gifted plumber. Likewise “lady” can be used to require submissive behavior. “Act like a lady!”

Bottom line: I hadn’t realized how much I hated that word until I was asked to stop being polite (stop acting like a lady) and just say it.

Bottom-bottom line: Try dropping all pretense of politeness and write what you really think about your family stories. Will be revealing–guaranteed!

A story told in two sentences is worth noting.

Actually there are many stories of hoop snakes. It’s a legendary creature in American folklore often associated with Pecos Bill stories, but it’s origins might be older. A similar snake in Greek mythology, the ouroboros, was a symbol of eternal return. In Japanese mythology, the tsuchinoko can roll like a wheel and also speak but usually not at the same time. More important, it can’t be trusted because of its propensity for lying.

However, you might want to look at it. I like the hoop snake’s attitude. Here’s my thought: wishing someone a nice day is nice. How about wishing them a Hoop Snake Day.

Have a Hoop Snake Day: Hiss at fools

Have a Hoop Snake Day: Don’t Even Think About Crawling.

Have a Hoop Snake Day: Roll uphill. No one will expect that!!

Have a Hoop Snake Day: Scare the !%#$ out of someone.

Have a Hoop Snake Day: Act like a big wheel.

Have a Hoop Snake Day: Bite yourself. Might help build Immunity to your own stupidity.

You get the idea. And I would love to hear additions. Put on you best hoop snake attitude and write a comment . . .

Rumpenstünzchen was a spinning tale, part of a large number of spinning tales that European women shared while spinning and weaving flax into cloth, an arduous task that was usually done in the evening after all the other tasks were completed (children cared for, meals fixed, animals fed, eggs sold, laundry washed—you get the idea). By the time most women got to the spinning, they were already tired, and so in the company of other women in the household or neighbors, they would sing and tell tales to keep themselves awake. No surprise these spinning stories reflected women’s values.

The brothers Grimm took that older spinning tale and turn it into Rumpelstiltskin. They came from a middle class family who, by the 1800s, were no longer spinning their own cloth, so they likely didn’t understand and seemingly didn’t appreciate spinning culture. Nevertheless, the result was deadly.

In Rumpenstünzchen, a young, fatherless woman spins gold. No matter how hard she tries, everything she spins comes out as gold. This is serious. In a woman’s world, gold is useless for clothes, bed linens, lace, rope or any of the other useful items her household needs. What’s more, a woman who can’t spin properly is not considered marriageable. The idea that this particular young woman spun gold was probably a joke, but the idea that cloth was more useful in a woman’s world than gold, reflected common culture, especially spinning culture.

Enter Wilhelm Grimm who begins his version with a father who brags that his daughter can spin straw into gold and a king who demands that she perform that feat or die. In a man’s world, gold is more valuable than linen. However, from the beginning, Wilhelm Grimm’s version no longer reflects its origins as a woman’s spinning tale.

There’s more. In the older version, the young woman agrees to the bargain with the dwarf. In Rumpelstiltskin she is forced to take the bargain. In the older version, she sends a woman servant to find the dwarf’s name. In Rumpelstiltskin she begs a manservant to help her. Wilhelm Grimm shows her unable to make a decision or solve a problem. She is controlled by men and needs a man, first the dwarf and then the servant, to help her.

The overall effect is to undermine the value of spinning and the autonomy of the women who spun. It leaves women and young girls with less and less heritage—stories that satisfactorily encompass their experiences. The result? Without satisfactory models to build on, we hardly know where to start when we try to tell our own or our mother’s stories. Is that serious enough to charge the brothers Grimm with murder? I think so. Manslaughter at the least.

We share our lives by telling about our adventures, our struggles, and our hopes. We shape all those things into story. The Irish know that. The Irish pride themselves in telling good stories. That’s why I love this poster because it’s true.

I’m counting on a good laugh tonight. I have no idea what will tickle my funny bone, but I’m sure I won’t be disappointed. Then, when I come home, I’ll let the dogs out for their evening constitutional and settle in for the sleep that follows a good evening. It’s just dinner with friends, but it doesn’t get better than that. The Irish know. Storytellers know.

Life’s simple pleasures.

There was no lack of passion from the Republicans and/or the Democrats. Speaker after speaker argued that their point of view was the one all Americans (if they’re really Americans) ought to embrace.

All that passion aside, a week later, the only thing I remember are the stories. The mother whose baby needed another heart operation but who’d hit her insurance company’s lifetime limit until Obamacare made lifetime limits illegal. Ann Romney eating off an ironing board during her college days. Clint Eastwood’s empty chair and later how John Stewart reprised the chair with his own brand of humor. Julian Castro’s grandmother holding a mop (working hard her whole life) so that her grandson could hold a microphone.

I’ve said it before on this blog, but t’s worth repeating: Story is how we make sense; everything else is just data.

What do I mean?

If you want me to believe that Obamacare will ruin America, you’re going to have to have a more moving story than that mother whose baby needs another operation. Even Governor Romney is now claiming that he would keep some of the provision of Obamacare. I’m assuming that’s because he doesn’t have a better story.

There’s nothing unique about Julian Castro’s grandmother. I have grandparents who immigrated to this country and worked long, hard hours to make sure I got an education and a better life. It’s because his story echoes my own, that it suddenly makes it harder to define him as “foreign” or “other” or “ought to be sent back.”

Ok, I’m beginning to sound biased in favor of the Democrats. I am. But they made better use of story. Comment if you disagree.

The enduring/endearing power of folk tales is the subject of a chapter in my forthcoming book. When you look for family stories, you almost always find stories of the little people, wisdom tales from the old country, and origin myths related to wherever the family happens to be living. We might tell ourselves that these are fluffy little bits of nonsense fit only for children, but it is the adults, often the adults old enough to be considered wise, who tend to preserve and pass on these stories. That was true in India in the 3rd Century BCE and it’s still true in Indian and virtually every other part of the world.

Every culture has stories of talking animals and magical beings. Something that universal must be important. With that in mind, I found a tale from the Panchatantra to share.

Enjoy.

Next day, he took me aside. ”What’s wrong with the word ‘lady?’ My mother would have slapped me up-side my head if I didn’t show a woman proper respect.”

I tried to explain that to be a lady a woman is expected to conduct her life in a ladylike manner, following rules she didn’t necessarily make. There was a judgment implied. Who’s to say which women were ladies and which weren’t. Who’s to say what rules women should follow. He didn’t get it.

“Are you offended when I call you a lady?”

I shrugged. “I don’t mind, as much, when older men use the word.”

Then he was offended.

This is tricky stuff, but it matters. Which is why knowing when to apologize is not a bad skill. Works when everything else fails.

I was at a writers retreat in Washington State. Each writer had her own cabin, but in the evening we walked down the hill and had dinner together at the main house. It was late fall and so that walk was often done in the dark. The writer in the cabin next to me was a poet from San Francisco. First day, she asked if I’d stop by her cabin and walk with her. That also meant that I had to wait for her to undo the locks and push a chair away from the door. I didn’t mind, but I thought it was a little strange. I didn’t even bother to lock my door. One day I tried to kid her about her fear of the dark. She stopped, turned, and pointed. “They (meaning the FBI) killed a white supremacist six miles down that road three years ago.” Did I mention she was a black poet from San Francisco?

I am amazed at how much of the human experience is the same. Except for the details, my family’s stories are almost interchangeable with most other families and their stories. But then . .  but then . .  there are those moments when I discover I don’t live in the same world as the person across the table from me.

Basho, the Japanese poet of the late 1600s, distilled his experience into the shortest of traditional Japanese poetry forms–haiku. On his travels he met locals who begged him to stay awhile and teach them to write better poetry. They were anxious to learn how to express their lives in words with appropriate form and character. According to his translator, Basho believed it was important to keep one’s mind focused on the true understandings that mainly came from the “world of our daily experience.” It was daily experience that held the truth of beauty.

Saying, “Shishi, shishi”

My wife encourages the baby

To pass water, and I hear

The noise of a morning shower.

Likewise, his travel writings are not heroic. They center the simple things he saw.

Lighter than paper,

Plum blossoms are sent flying

In the holy compound

On a spring day.

Unwilling it seems, to fall behind,

Crows and bush warblers fly about.

Nevertheless, Basho went on extraordinary journeys for his day because he felt travel broadened his experience and gave him material to write about. That seems to be the common theme in all the travel writings we covered. Experience. Embracing new experiences. Struggling to express new experiences.

Here’s the thing to remember:

1. the stories need to be written down

2. the stories don’t have to be heroic to matter

3. living life to the fullest is embracing new experiences

The answer is California Institute of the Arts, and he was lucky. He caught the leading edge of computer generated animation. Now working at Disney Toons, he’s been getting up at 3:30 a.m. to crew with a team of co-workers racing their canoes through Disneyland’s theme park. And his team qualified!

Unless you know him, you’ll never pick him out of this video, but it’s fun to watch anyway. Moral of the story? Well, if this story needs a moral, (I’m not sure any story does)  I’m glad we didn’t say, “Cartoons! That’s no way to making a living!” It’s made him a good living and added some fun to all our lives!

Paddle on!!!!!!