Storyworthy. Matthew Dicks
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because once she’s done, she turns and starts walking down the street. I’m still only wearing my boxers, but I think, “This will be fine. I live on a little street with almost no traffic. It’s two in the morning. No one will ever see me. And even if they do, I’m wearing boxers. Practically gym shorts.”
So I walk with my dog under the yellow glow of streetlights. The air is cool. The sky is starless. Kaleigh has an unusual bounce in her step. Her tail is wagging. She’s happy. When we reach the end of my street, where she typically turns back for home, she pauses. Looks back at me. Then she turns right.
Great. She wants to walk around the block. And it’s a busy block once we’re off my street. One more right turn, and we’ll find ourselves on Main Street. Still, it’s the middle of the night. How many people are driving around at 2:00 AM? And Kaleigh looks so damn happy.
Fine, I decide. We’ll go around the block.
I start walking. It’s a nice walk. If you’ve ever been outside in the middle of the night, you know that the birds are louder when the sun is down than any other time of the day. They sing their hearts out at 2:00 AM. On this night, they are especially loud. Riotous. So here I am, walking my dog around the block, listening to the birds sing, wearing nothing but boxer shorts. It’s a little crazy, but it’s fine. Nice, even. Unnerving but nice.
We turn right again onto Main Street, the farthest point on the block from my home and one of the busiest streets in town, when something unexpected happens. It’s one of those moments when it wasn’t raining, and then one second later, it’s a downpour. Noah’s Ark–level precipitation. I am instantly soaked.
Now I know why the sky was starless. Storm clouds were overhead.
Now I know why the birds were so riotous. They knew what was coming.
So here I am, with my dog and my boxers and the birds and the rain, and I still have two sides of this block to walk before we’re home. And now I’m on Main Street. It’s the middle of the night, but still, it’s called Main Street for precisely what’s happening right now. Cars and trucks are passing me by.
Years ago, I would have been angry at this turn of events. Angry with myself for blundering into this mess, and angry with Kaleigh for dragging me to this point. I would have seen nothing in this moment other than a forgettable series of terrible decisions, extreme irritation, and likely embarrassment. I probably would have picked up Kaleigh and marched her home, swearing most of the way.
Fortunately, on that day I had my storytelling lens intact. By then, my lens was well developed. So I stopped on that corner despite the rain and the location and my scanty boxers, and I looked down at Kaleigh. She looked up at me. Her tail was still wagging. Her tongue was hanging out in a doggy smile.
This occurs to me: Kaleigh is fourteen years old. She is my best friend. I’ve lived with her longer than I’ve lived with my wife, but I know that she’s not going to be around for much longer. She’s old. She’s been hobbling a bit. She’s already survived a ruptured disk and back surgery. She’s reached the end of her expected life span. This might be the last time that we walk in the rain together.
So I stand on that corner in the pouring rain and soak in the moment in all its glory. It is beautiful. Crazy and absurd but beautiful.
What would have been just annoying and forgettable five years ago is now something that I’ve captured and will have for the rest of my life. Just from reflecting, absorbing, and recording that moment, it will never be lost to me. I don’t know what else happened on that day, but when I see those words:
Walked Kaleigh. 2:00 AM. Underwear. Birds. Rain. Beauty.
I am right back on that corner with the birds and the rain and my best friend. And when I’m lying on my deathbed centuries from now, I’ll be able to look back on that spreadsheet, see that handful of words, and return to that time and place as if I’m a time traveler. At that point, my best friend will have been dead and buried for years, but in my mind’s eye, I will see her as clear as day.
I never expected any of this to happen. In searching for stories, I discovered that my life is filled with them. Filled with precious moments that once seemed decidedly less than precious. Filled with moments that are more storyworthy than I’d ever imagined. I’d just been failing to notice them. Or discounting them. Or ignoring them. In some instances, I tried to forget them completely.
Now I can see them. I can’t help but see them. They are everywhere. I collect them. Record them. Craft them. I tell them onstage. I share them on the golf course and to dinner companions. But most important, I hold them close to my heart. They are my most treasured possessions.
But that’s not all. Other amazing things began to happen as well. As that storytelling lens became more refined and I started seeing stories in my everyday life, stories began welling up from my childhood that I’d long since forgotten. It was like digging into the earth and suddenly striking a geyser.
It happened that night in the rain with Kaleigh. I’m standing on that corner in the rain, staring down at Kaleigh, who is still smiling up at me, when a new memory fills my mind. One of those unexpected geysers. It’s the image of Measleman, a beagle mutt that my family owned when I was a boy.
Measleman, the first dog that I loved with all my heart, who was named after the doctor who gave my father his vasectomy. Measleman, who followed my father wherever he went. Measleman, whom my father thought of as a third son and I thought of as a four-legged brother. Kaleigh has momentarily disappeared. Main Street and the birds and my boxers have disappeared. Measleman is suddenly filling my mind’s eye.
Standing on that corner in the rain, I can see Measleman as if he were standing beside me, smiling at me the same way Kaleigh was smiling at me a moment ago. Long tongue hanging out of his mouth. Panting. Sitting tall on his haunches. The combination of a memory of a dog long since dead with my aging dog of today somehow sparks a thought in my mind, and I realize — for the first time in my life — that not only did my father lose his wife, children, home, horse farm, and horses when my mother left him for another man, but he also lost his dog, Measleman.
My father moved into a room behind a liquor store and was forced to leave his Measleman behind. Not only did my father lose the dog he loved so much, but Measleman became the property of the man who’d stolen his wife and usurped his family.
As I stand in that warm rain, it somehow feels like the worst loss of all, and suddenly the shame that my father must have felt in losing his home and family to another man is my own. For the first time in my life, I look upon my father’s losses through the eyes of a man instead of the eyes of a boy, and I realize how complicated, painful, and terrible it all must have been for him.
Another story. A much more difficult story to tell, but one I will tell someday.
Just as quickly, that memory is replaced by another. Now I’m a teenager, having sex with a girl named Jennifer on the eighteenth green of a local golf course when the sprinklers fire off at midnight, producing more water than I ever thought possible, drenching us as the rain is drenching me right now. The combination of the downpour and my half nakedness have returned this memory to me.
What a memory. I have never laughed so much while naked with a girl. We were as riotous as the birds are now on that night, but until this moment on this corner, that memory had been lost to me.
Two more storyworthy moments, both probably suitable for the stage if crafted properly, but also moments that I am grateful to have unexpectedly recovered. The memories come back so quickly and in such force that there are times when I need to brush them away.
All of this happens because I sit down every evening and ask myself: What is my story from today? What is the thing about today that has made it different from any previous day? Then I write my answer down.
That’s it. That’s all I do. If you do it, before long you will have more stories than you could ever imagine.
I know many professional storytellers, including some of my favorites, who only have a handful of stories to share. I ask them to