{"id":4680,"date":"2019-04-22T14:25:43","date_gmt":"2019-04-22T12:25:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/?p=4680"},"modified":"2019-06-17T07:33:17","modified_gmt":"2019-06-17T05:33:17","slug":"story-time-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/?p=4680","title":{"rendered":"Story Time"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

On the Saturday before Easter I was determined to get my\nflat into order. We have been living here for about two months and there are\nstill boxes and bags laying about. Burke went off to Dresden, and I rolled up\nmy sleeves for a day of work. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

And that\u2019s what I did. I hoisted things organized, found cubby\nholes inside of cubby holes, and slid boxes and backpacks in a not-so-haphazard\nmanner into them. I became friends with our storage unit in the basement,\nfreaked out a little because of its direct resemblance to the setting in a Stephen\nKing story, screamed and did a spider dance when a piece of yarn touched my wrist.\nDespite these setbacks, I got things done, stacked boxes, brought up a lamp, which\nI got a bulb for later. I cleaned and rearranged. At the end of the day I read\non the bouch in the content pleasure of hard work that is also productive. My felt\nmy more of a flat now than it had been before. I fell asleep with a book on my\nface at 10:30 on a Saturday night.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

And I have been telling everyone within earshot since then.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

I\u2019m a repeater. Some of my students are in both my English\nclass and my writing class and sometimes I have to beware not to repeat my\nstories in both classes. Or at the very least I have to put a disclaimer on the\nstory (\u201csome of my English lesson people have heard this one\u201d) or sometimes I just\nchange enough of the details so that it comes off as a similar story that has\nhappened to two very similar men. With cats. Who live in my flat. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is a family condition. My dad starts every joke with \u201cDid\nI tell you this one?\u201d Which wouldn\u2019t be odd, but when he says that he hasn\u2019t given\nme any information other than he\u2019s about to tell me a joke. My answer is typically\n\u201cI have no f***ing idea, just get on with it!\u201d and then I\u2019ll proceed to hear a\njoke for thirtieth time. Just like our quasi-unibrow and our overdeveloped\ncalves, it\u2019s a family trait. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s not the trait I\u2019m terribly concerned about. I\u2019m a\nrepeater, so what? I\u2019m a storyteller and telling stories to different groups is\nhow I develop and practice a narrative, make it funnier, build up tension. Sometimes\nI skip the people entirely and just tell the story aloud while running, walking\nor eating with no internet. In any event, it\u2019s practice for being an old man.\nJust add a porch, a rocking chair, and ludicrously little worry about holding\nback bodily functions in public. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

When I was a young guy the stories were funny because of the\ntension involved. There was usually an intensely stupid plan put into motion\nand the humor was in that and in people\u2019s harsh reaction to that plan. You should have seen these folks get so bent\nout of shape over one naked guy trying to get a piece of cake at a wedding\nreception.<\/em> Later on the stories were essentially the same template, but I\nwas one of the people reacting harshly. I\nshit you not, this idiot comes into the reception with a sock over his dick and\na cake plate. What the hell\u2019s wrong with these people? <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nowadays, life is different. I can\u2019t drink enough to warrant\npublic nudity anymore. And when I see naked people in public there are roughly\n203,490 phone cameras around to catch the action, so there\u2019s no need to tell\nthe story anyhow. And whenever encountering true assholism in daily life I am\nusually too demoralized by the behavior to make myself repeat the story.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

No, what surprised me is what events hold genuine excitement\nfor me these days. Cleaning the flat and having a quiet evening is not the remarkable\naspect of the story as much as the amount of pleasure I acquired from it. At the\nend of a production day of cleaning I felt that I had accomplished something. This\nis what I wanted to convey, even though it lacks the obvious  temporal structure of a traditional narrative \u2013\nconflict, climax, resolution, bridge. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I have grumbled to people in the past about the abilities to\ntell stories. My mother tells a narrative whose plot, goal, and resolution are\nthe study fodder for students of the Avant Garde. People with babies are notorious\nfor droning on about their offspring\u2019s precocious development in the field of\nblock stacking, number recognition, and name verbalization. And perhaps I have\nbeen too hard on these people in the past. I suppose we\u2019re all excited about something.\nTonight I\u2019ll get into bed around 10 and think about it. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On the Saturday before Easter I was determined to get my flat into order. We have been living here for about two months and there are still boxes and bags laying about. Burke went off to Dresden, and I rolled up my sleeves for a day of work. And that\u2019s what I did. I hoisted […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4681,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4680","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/damiengaleone.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/04\/story.jpg?fit=1587%2C945&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1EvEu-1du","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4680","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4680"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4680\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4682,"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4680\/revisions\/4682"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/4681"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4680"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4680"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4680"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}