Entertaiment

 I’m speaking at a conference here, and I think I was about to throw my arms wide in a moment of enthusiasm. Either that, or I needed an affirmation hug.

One night when I was a kid, my family braved a blizzard to pick up my dad from the airport. On the way home, visibility was terrible on the highway, and before we could stop we ran over something large and white that was lying in the middle of the road. It was so big it knocked the station wagon into neutral and we skidded into a snow bank.

Dad got out to take a look at what we’d driven over, and came back to tell us that it was a dead sheep. Well, goodness, no wonder we couldn’t see it, what with the snow and the dark and everything. It was too big to move, so after determining that the car was drivable, and hoping that no one else hit the sheep before whoever was in charge of such things arrived, we went home.

That’s a great story, right? Animals, snow, station wagons-this one has it all. I shared that story at parties, meetings, and any other social event I happened to attend for twenty years.

Then one Thanksgiving, I reminded my family about the crazy night when we ran over the sheep. “Remember? Coming home from the airport?”

All five of my siblings and both parents just stared.

“The sheep! In the road! And we slid into the snow?”

Blink. Blink.

“You know…lying there…?”

No one remembered the sheep. In fact, my parents exchanged looks that said, “She’s mixing her medications again.”

And slowly, it dawned on me that I had dreamed the whole thing. Dreamed up every bit of it, and then believed it. For decades.

That, my friends, is the power of a good story.

Over the last several years, I’ve made the art and science of storytelling something of a personal study. It seems to me that, while life is often made up of routines and lists and hours of doing things no one really wants to hear about, we still-likely as not-define a life by the stories that come out of it. Attend any good funeral, and sure enough, the best part will be the stories that pull together and quantify otherwise ambiguous descriptors like selfless’ or kind,’ or in the case of one particularly entertaining funeral, an ornery old goat who no one could stand until he got sick.’ Gotta tell you, the stories that followed that intro have kept me laughing for 15 years.

My brother never would have lived to see his 19^th birthday if he hadn’t had the gift of gab. Oh, the tales that boy could weave, even when the sheriff’s deputy was standing on the porch beside him. It seemed he had a sixth sense about what superfluity of naughtiness’ offered the best chance of survival, and it usually had some great story attached to it. When asked why he felt inspired to-for instance-throw eggs at a police car, we knew we were in for a whopper, especially when the explanation started with, “Wull, me and Steve were just…”

Just what? With those two, the sky really was the limit.

“Just driving…”

“Just reading the scriptures…”

“Just rescuing orphans from a burning building…”

And at some point the narrative would become yet another chapter in The Woes and Trials of a Misunderstood Teen.

Brilliant.

How much better do we understand someone once we’ve heard a few of their stories? A couple of Sundays after we moved back to Utah, a sweet lady in our Relief Society presidency stood to give the lesson. I had really enjoyed our brief chats in weeks past, and I was pretty sure I had her pegged. Pretty, blonde, pleasant; the ward was full of sisters like her.

Then she told about the time she was kidnapped and held in an attic for five years. Showed pictures of the place and everything.

And she mentioned that she taught herself to read when she was twenty-two and expecting her second child.

And that was remarkable, given that English wasn’t even her first language.

And what started out as my shameful attempts to pigeon-hole someone turned into jaw-dropping admiration for a woman who had endured and endured and then written an entirely new story for herself.

A friend once said, “We take names and dates to the temple. But we fall in love with the stories.”

I get to do a lot of speaking at conferences on this subject, and the best part of the day is when someone catches me later and shares their story with me. Often, they start with, “I’ve never told anyone this before…” and then I become the first to hear something powerful and astonishing, a story that, once told, will change both the reader and the teller forever.

On March 21-23, a very special conference will be held in Salt Lake City. The Power of Story @ Home’ has joined the RootsTech family history event at the Salt Palace, and I get to be a part of it all. Three days of all things story-from professional story telling (keeping oral tradition alive), to writing, to the marvels of 21^st century technology-it promises to be an entertaining, exciting, and educational weekend.

I sure would love to meet you, especially if you have an awesome story to tell. And if you have to fly in, please watch for livestock on the drive into town. One night, my family picked up my dad from the airport, and there was this sheep…

(For more information on the RootsTech / Story @ Home conference, please click here. When registering, use the coupon code URSTRY13 to receive $10 off your ticket.)