Woman who fell from the sky

Letter from Ms. C, teacher at Prospect Elementary School:

Aries,
You were the hit of the day! As you could tell from their behavior, my students were enthralled, and your creation story fit perfectly with our studies.

Thank you so much,
C


On Friday, Liz and I went down to two fourth grade classes and told Native American creation myths, to finish up one of their social studies units. I came a tad early and saw them in reading lab. Watching twelve children reading novels made all my sappy places get a bit more gooey.

Once class started, I told the "Woman Who Fell From the Sky," an Iroquois story about how the earth was built off of a Turtle's back. The kids really liked it: the boss fight with Mosquito, any form of domestic violence, happy cows being butchered.... I forgot how amazingly morbid children are. Liz and I had worried about the distracted nature of children and the fairly static form of tale-telling (one person, talking, go). But they seemed to get into it, to understand the brother's fight and the mother's frustration. At the end, they asked for another ("Encore! Encore means more!" one of them shouted), so I told them the Ash Lad story. It was nice to always have something ready, off-the-cuff. It makes me feel all... professional.

Storytelling has been the pillar of my college experience. I took the Storytelling ExCo my first semester, and it opened me up. I told things to my peers- not strangers, but not friends (at least, not yet) - that I didn't tell anyone else. Club was outer performance and inner therapy; it was comedy and tragedy. In a tiny room in Wilder, always too warm, we told scary, cultural and personal stories.

When Liz and I taught the Exco, it made us into very close friends. We were only aquaintances at the start- Liz was the girl who baked amazing brownies and laughed like a giant. We had had possibly one real conversation, tops. Then, we saw each other at our best- doing the thing we cared about most. I know I'd be missing something if I hadn't taught with her.

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For Sunday's Storytelling Club, Liz gathered information about professional storytellers. Apparently, you can live on it. I would love that. I would so, so love that. The national conference is this weekend, so no go for now, but maybe next year. This is a perfomance style I really adore, that works in all of the things I focus on: stories! theatre! public speaking! improv! fancy word play! rhetoric! And it gives me a community; it makes me real friends -- Liz, Amanda, Adam, Mog, Jenny, Brett, Andrew...

I transmuted part of my budding novella into story, which worked pretty well. It furthered my plan of not doing a Senior Reading, but a Senior Recital- an hour of stories.

Probably love stories.


"You're gonna be damn tired at the end," Liz said, who loved long-form epics. "But it'll be great."