The Storyteller

    As the child of diplomats, I have led what most would consider an interesting life.  As a young child I traveled the world, from Africa to Europe to Asia.  A sucker for attention, this provided me with a treasure trove of stories to recount to my fellow students.  Alas, you can only tell the story of the time you saw a guy slip in elephant crap so many times before people start getting bored.  And only so many more times after that before they start wondering if you might be mentally retarded.  An element was missing from my collection of stories. It wasn’t humor, that’s for sure. I mean come on, what’s funnier than a guy slipping in elephant crap?

    The answer was trauma.  Nobody wants to know about how loving and supportive your parents are. Or about how you not only have all four of your grandparents alive and healthy, but also your great grandmother.  I was cursed with good fortune, and let’s face it; good fortune doesn’t make for good story telling. 

    A fairly creative, but lazy kid, I found an easy way around this glitch in my life. I would twist the truth, highlighting, exaggerating, and just generally stretching it as far as it would go.  Some people call this lying, but that’s not it.  It is just sacrificing the real thing to the Gods of storytelling in exchange for something with a little more bang, a little more panache.  Because which is more interesting: saying your dad helped you learn how to play softball, or saying your dad helped you learn how to play softball, and that’s impressive because your dad is a blind midget?

    I started by only sharing these new and improved stories with other children.  Convinced of my superior intelligence, I was sure they would never catch the flourishes.  And mostly they didn’t.  I did learn my limits though, and discovered that people generally begin questioning the authenticity of what you’re saying when aliens with anal probes enter the story.

    Confident with the success my narratives had with children, I began testing the waters with adults.  Surely teachers would go a little easier on me if they knew what a hard life I had. 
“Poor Madeleine,” I imagined them saying, “Abandoned by her real parents at 5, forced to deal drugs until she was found by a bearded woman and a clown with one arm.  Quick, let’s give her preferential treatment.”
   
    I started off a bit easier, not recounting the story of my Siamese twin, alcoholic uncles just yet.  My first adult audience was my third grade teacher. 
“You know,” I began as we walked back to class from recess, “I have a little brother.”
“Oh,” she smiled, “I thought you were an only child”
“Nope.  He’s two years younger than me.  My parents couldn’t keep him, so they sent him away to Africa to live with people.”
At this my teacher stopped and turned to me.
“Why couldn’t they keep him?” she asked with a look of genuine concern.  This was going well.
“He had this- problem.” Not able to come up with a specific problem on the spot, I opted instead for the waterworks.  I rubbed my eyes and bit my lip until I mustered a satisfactory amount of tears.
“I – I miss him sometimes.” I said before bursting into fake, but I believe well performed sobs.  The teacher gasped and held me in her arms, and for the rest of the day would smile encouragingly at me whenever our eyes met.

    To be fair I wasn’t lying completely.  My parent’s best friends from college lived in Africa, and the husband was my god father.  That would therefore make his son my god brother.  So, I did have a sort of brother in Africa, and he was two years younger than me, and I was sure he had his fair share of problems. 

    As I got older I recognized that people would eventually realize that my father is in fact, at 6’3, far from being a midget, and has perfectly good vision, and that the other exaggerations would soon be discovered as well.  This taught me to keep my statements much vaguer.
“Maddie,” someone would ask, “Why do you have to be such a bitch?”
“Look,” I would scream, bursting into violent sobs, “You don’t know me ok? You don’t know what I’ve been through, or all the horrible things I’ve seen!”
    When asked what these horrible things were I would majestically raise my head, valiantly fighting back the tears and inform the person that I did not want to burden their souls with such knowledge.

    These days, I still frequently indulge in flourishes and exaggerations.  When wanting to appear more jaded, I tell the stories of my friends who, unlike me, do have pasts and issues.  This allows me not only to recount painful stories to others, but to paint myself as a selfless hero, always there to help a friend in need.  Because I’m sure if I were there I would throw my friend out of the path of the speeding car, or carry them in my arms in the rain five miles to the hospital after they were beaten.

    After I recount the stories of incredible pain and suffering, (interspersed with the story about the guy who slipped in elephant crap), I make my way home to my warm house.  There I am greeted by my loving parents who want to know how my day went, and then we all sit down to have dinner, and talk and laugh together. 

    Somewhere, a third grade teacher sits at her desk, remembering an old student.  She wonders if the girl’s parents have sent her to Africa yet, to join her little brother in a house of strangers.