Life stories
When I was in college, I wanted to be a journalist. I didn't actually care about the stuff journalists are supposed to care about, mind you. I didn't want to afflict the comfortable and comfort the afflicted. I didn't have a burning desire to play a huge role in maintaining an informed electorate. I didn't have an ambition to root out and expose corruption at the highest levels. I just wanted to have stories to tell. I wanted a job that would make every day interesting.
The longer I studied journalism, the more I realized how much I wanted to do something else, anything else. I value the free American press. It is one of the pillars propping up our society. But I believe that anyone who would be a successful, influential journalist must also be demonstrably unbalanced, to put it mildly. That point hit me hard when, during my senior year, the editor-in-chief of The Dallas Morning News delivered a guest lecture to my advanced reporting class. He said, "One of my best photographers just got back from Bosnia. The shots he brought home were some of the most heart-wrenching images of war-torn misery, death, and destruction I've ever seen. What other profession could offer you that kind of opportunity?" He was genuinely excited. Even at the time I thought he asked the wrong question. The question on my mind was, "Who else but a morbidly insane writer or photographer would crave that kind of opportunity?"
So I graduated with a degree in journalism, and I have yet to write a single word for a newspaper or magazine. I took my career in a different direction. While my current job pays a little more than a newspaper would, it offers nothing in the way of interesting conversation. Say what you will about the insane Bosnia photographer, but he has some great stories to tell his grandchildren.
Since my job doesn't provide me with any stories to tell, my stories have to come from regular life. The catch is that the best stories from regular life are the ones from difficult times. Some day when I sit down with my grandkids, I probably won't tell them about the two or three nice, uneventful days Mrs. Happy and I spent vacationing in Colorado. I'll tell them about the day when
for some reason your grandmother thought it would be fun to visit a casino, so we hopped on this van that was taking people to a gambling district 100 miles away from our hotel. Unfortunately, she has never liked to carry a purse and has never made a habit of engaging in any sort of vice, so it didn't occur to her that she would need her driver's license to prove she was old enough to gamble. No single business in the entire town would let her through the front door, until we managed to sneak past one casino's security, and….
Mrs. Happy, on the other hand, will probably tell them how it came about on another day during that trip that their grandfather swore off horseback riding forever.
I probably won't tell them about that one New Year's Eve when we didn't go out, but just sat at home watching Dick Clark on TV. I'll tell them about the Thanksgiving when
we decided we'd go camping and eat roasted hot dogs and marshmallows instead of turkey and dressing. We forgot that the end of November is probably the coldest time of year in Texas, especially in the Hill Country, so when we woke up at 4:00 a.m. on the verge of hypothermia, we tried to start a fire. Let me tell you, nothing wants to burn when it's 22 degrees*, so….
I probably won't tell them about a week when we were both perfectly healthy and nothing disturbed the routine of our lives. I will, however tell them about the week that began with
this incredible football game. I was spectacular. Your grandfather was so fast that the quarterback couldn't throw the ball fast enough to keep up with him. But I was also out of shape, so every muscle and bone in my body ached when I got home. I was looking forward to letting your grandmother take care of me, but she was suddenly terribly sick with a cough and fever. I tried nursing her through, but I couldn't heal her myself, so I prayed for the first time in two years. That one incident completely revitalized my spiritual life. Then when Grandmother started getting better, I started coughing uncontrollably, running a fever, sneezing, aching, you name it. We had tickets to see Simon & Garfunkel at Madison Square Garden, but I was too sick to go. She managed to find a friend of a friend who could go with her, and that started a chain of events we could never have foreseen….
Difficulties overcome make the fondest memories. If I have a non-spiritual motto, this is it: Fun times are fun while they last, but hard times make the best stories for the rest of your life.
*That's -6 degrees for my international friends.
