{"id":5055,"date":"2020-08-31T21:24:21","date_gmt":"2020-08-31T19:24:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/?p=5055"},"modified":"2022-11-01T06:31:12","modified_gmt":"2022-11-01T05:31:12","slug":"story-thief","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/?p=5055","title":{"rendered":"Story Thief"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Every storyteller is a complete, unabashed thief. They nab a character description here, a quip there, a lunatic aunt over there.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I steal all the time. I\u2019ve nabbed lines, pets, locations. I don\u2019t care. If they are better than something I\u2019ve got, I grab it and implant the hell out of it. Why not? It\u2019s all in the pursuit of a better story.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s been happening since I was a kid. I come from a family of storytellers and I have always considered myself lucky. In my family, we spent hours around the table telling stories and interrupting each other harshly. It was an education.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

My mother has spent a lifetime putting herself into stories. She talks to random people in the mall or while finding the right sized shirt for an old man in a JC Penny. On one of our mall jaunts I found her in front of a dressing room.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cHey, what\u2014\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And that\u2019s when a woman came out of the dressing room. \u201cSo, what do you think?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI like the pink one more,\u201d said my mother.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cKnew it, Mrs. G,\u201d she said. \u201cThank you.\u201d The girl twirled.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cGood luck and have fun at the prom.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThanks, Mrs. G.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWho is that?\u201d I asked.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI don\u2019t know. Let\u2019s go to TJ Maxx. I hate those shoes.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s a minor point to say that her stories are usually devoid of plot. They will always be descriptions of either completely enhancing or ruining a total stranger\u2019s day.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

My sister Amanda has a peculiar talent in the storytelling realm in which she openly admits that she is the villain. The bitch. The bad guy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cHey, so I\u2019m on the way home today,\u201d she said to me last December 22nd<\/sup>. I was visiting for Christmas. She hoisted a quadruple espresso in a tall coffee. Her belly is round. \u201cAnd I give this lady the finger,\u201d she laughed.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cOh yeah?\u201d I asked.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cYeah, so I get a message a few minutes later from Charlie.\u201d She drank a sip and kicks a little. She took her time; I was on the edge of my seat, proving her natural storytelling talents are vaster than she credits. \u201cAnd it turns out I know her.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe lady?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cYeah.\u201d She let out a long string of laughs. \u201cI don\u2019t give a shit. I\u2019m a bitch.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

My sister\u2019s skill in telling a story so unabashedly honest is something I have always envied. She is the grand antihero juiced up by multiple thousands of milligrams of caffeine. What\u2019s more, her stories are short and sweet. She knows where each of her stories are going and so why fuck around.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In a former life, on the other hand, my brother sang epic sagas to a king\u2019s court in a former life until they beat him to death for not getting to the point on Beowulf.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cDid I tell you that my boss got fired?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cNo,\u201d I said, rearranged my boxers, stretched my legs, ordered another beer, and got comfortable.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWell my old boss Bob McCandry\u2026he was a marine, you know, a big dude. He was a badass. He wasn\u2019t the kind of guy to, well, this one time\u2026you know how I used to work at night in the Trevose plant, right? Oh that changed. I have a different job, now\u2026I mean, the problem wasn\u2019t that it was at night. Did I tell you we\u2019re learning to drive doon buggies? Oh man\u2026.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Each story begets a new story that begets a new story that begets a new story. It\u2019s like Shogun, but instead of taking place in the year 1600, it details every experience from 1600 until the moment I put the period on this sentence. Still, while an epic saga about a guy who got his finger ripped off in a makeup factory conveyer belt might sound awful, it\u2019s not. And that\u2019s because my brother happens to be the funniest human being on Earth.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

My sister Julia has the market cornered on conflict. Each time she begins a story, there\u2019s going to be a throwdown that makes me wince and cringe. She has reserved almost all of her stories for such interactions. I wish I could be more comfortable with this, but I\u2019m not ad it\u2019s almost certainly why I had to go into fiction where I could simply create conflict by having one guy fuck another guy\u2019s jar of peanut butter. In real life, I have no stomach for it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What drives me insane is her mindboggling ability to drop universal truths like it\u2019s nothing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWell, so anyway, I think we all hate qualities in people that we see in ourselves. Hey, I gotta run.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cOK, cool! Chat later.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cBye!\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cBye.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

90 seconds later: \u201cWhat the fuck!\u201d    <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I grew up listening to my dad tells stories; mixture of funny, witty, and completely fictional. It took me a few years to realize that he appropriated stories from elsewhere mostly because he knew he was better at telling them than the original character in the story. I have often felt that the less story-oriented should give over their stories to the more story-oriented. I would gladly trade over something I\u2019m not good at for the pleasure of telling your stories for you. I\u2019d gladly trade my ability to keep plants alive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At dinnertime, stories were told. If you faltered, your story time was understood to be over and someone else took up the reins. In any event it was a learning experience. And in my house it was a well-rounded learning experience. Segue, plot, villainy, humor, background, foreshadowing, conflict, the art of being a dick, and the universal truth.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What did you learn at dinner time?           <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Every storyteller is a complete, unabashed thief. They nab a character description here, a quip there, a lunatic aunt over there. I steal all the time. I\u2019ve nabbed lines, pets, locations. I don\u2019t care. If they are better than something I\u2019ve got, I grab it and implant the hell out of it. Why not? It\u2019s […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4806,"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-5055","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\/09\/masterclass.jpg?fit=1000%2C672&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1EvEu-1jx","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5055","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=5055"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5055\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5056,"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5055\/revisions\/5056"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/4806"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5055"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5055"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5055"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}