At my mother-in-law Vina's 90th birthday party, an old family friend recalled that a little over two decades earlier he and his wife returned to the states for a furlough from teaching in a mission school, and Vina and husband, Art, traveled to Pakistan to fill in for them.
"We swapped houses," the family friend said. "We got a lovely three bedroom-two bath house in Northeast Portland, and they got a bungalow with a spitting cobra under the bed."
Who got the better deal? Show of hands, who would prefer to hear about a nice relaxing year in a middle-class home in Portland?
Fiction writers know that the story doesn't begin until something goes wrong: The new lovable puppy nearly destroys the house, mommy and daddy accidentally leave their 10-year-old behind while they go on vacation, a teenage girl discovers that her boyfriend is a vampire and the hunky guy who has a crush on her turns out to be a werewolf sworn to kill vampires (what are the odds?).
People who play it safe and have stable, uneventful lives may be happy, but I've generally found that they don't have a lot of great stories to tell. A great story has conflict, emotion and often physical danger. People listen instinctively because it teaches survival skills.
I've been lucky enough to have some gloriously bad experiences in my life. I can tell stories about being tear-gassed at a political convention, being dragged out of the Miss Missouri pageant by a hairy-knuckled thug, and - even worse - having Dick Cheney's wife go ballistic at a reception when I referred to President Reagan as "Ron."
During 25 years in TV news, I produced dozens of political debates. Would you rather hear about some of the ones that went off without a hitch or the one that was such a disaster that, when the lights finally went down, I walked out of the control room and collapsed on the restroom floor, praying for the energy to vomit?
My wife and daughter and I had a lovely cross-country car trip a few years ago - lots of wonderful times. So which of the following stories does my daughter tell more often? 1) How we stood in wonder and watched Old Faithful erupt right on schedule or 2) About the time when I was driving through a late-night rainstorm and she asked if I would like to hear more Sting, or perhaps a Beck CD and I shouted back over a thunderclap, "A little silence would be good!"
Last week, I attended a dinner party with a fellow who had recently returned from a trip to Vietnam and Cambodia. He traveled first class, stayed at four-star hotels and could not say enough about the quality of the service provided by the waiters, valets, bell hops and concierges in that part of the world: "Top drawer! First rate!"
Coincidentally, another guest at that party has a daughter who is a young attorney also recently returned from Cambodia. She lived for several months on a meager stipend, stayed in a stifling, insect-friendly apartment, and often had to be accompanied by a body guard while she assisted in the genocide prosecution of members of the Khmer Rouge. Even told second-hand, her stories are riveting. The four-star travelogue? It was a little short on drama.
For those of you who would like to hear more about the stories based on events that were more pleasant at the time, I hope you will have the courtesy to sit at another table at our next dinner party.
As we Boomers start to face up to our mortality, I'm hearing a lot of convoluted ideas about what constitutes a successful life. My idea is simple: The person who goes to the grave with the best material, wins.
I'd like to think that when my time comes, my granddaughter will be sitting by my death bed, begging me to please tell just one more story.
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