Tied for 1st place: The Leap by Ken Wolfe
Trying to reconcile with people from your past can be dangerous, take it from me.
See, I grew up in a small town. Not much to do but make the lives of the nerds in my school more miserable than mine.
I tormented Louis all through gym class. I made Martin dread coming to school. And this one kid named Clark was a favorite target of mine. We called him “Clark the Narc,” such a goody-goody. He was a nobody in our school, nothing special, and yet he stuck out like a sore thumb. Smart enough, I guess. He was always dreaming out loud about moving to the city and making it big in business. We mocked him for it. No one got out of our dinky little town in the corn fields and we wanted to make sure he didn’t get the idea of being the first. I guess I was jealous of his ambition and potential cause I made his life pretty awful. I was a real jerk to him. Made fun of his farm clothes. Ripped ‘em more than once. Threw him up against lockers, gave him “swirlies” in the toilet, shot him hard with those rubber-banded “paper wasps” in class. Humiliated him every chance I could when girls were present. Poor guy.
Yeah, it’s bothered me ever since, my stupid abusive teenage self coming down so hard on Clark. When Facebook came around, my guilt made me look him up. Sure enough, I found him. And, sure enough, he was in the big city, rising in the ranks of the big-time media. I guess, anyway. He was doing better than I was, me trying to sell tires from the gas station I worked at as a teenager.
So, I bit the bullet and I messaged him. Gave him my cell number and, DUDE, he called me.
I was shocked that he responded and was actually friendly to me. He said that he definitely remembered me. I figured he’d verbally give me the bird and tell me to “kiss off” or “get bent,” but he was actually really nice. We talked for a while. At the end, he said I should text him when I was in town, down his way and we’d get a beer. Couldn’t believe it. It was like none of it had happened.
So, a few weeks later, I’m in the city on a delivery from my shop, and I figure, ‘Why not look him up?” I texted and we arranged to meet in a place across from his work for a burger and a beer.
I didn’t wait long. I hadn’t seen him since high school and I didn’t recognize him hardly. He’d gotten big. Like, really solid. I thought maybe that my torture might have motivated him to go work out. Looked like he knew how to handle himself, for sure, though I never knew him to fight. I was impressed and I told him so, and then I apologized. He took it well, and nodded his forgiveness, and we sat and ate and chewed the fat for an hour or so. The longer I spent with him, the worse I felt for how I’d treated him, and the more I couldn’t believe that he was willing to let bygones be bygones.
We started talking about his job, and he mentioned how much he’d learned about the city and its architecture. It was interesting enough. And then he said that the building he worked in was special, in fact, and had this one crazy quirk. He said that it was designed aerodynamically by aerospace engineers and situated on the street in a particular way. He said that on a windy day the gusts came down the canyon of buildings on that street and roared up against his building, channeling wind to the very top. The story was, he said, the building was intended as a mooring place for zeppelins back in the day, and the rush would support those huge things. But then the war happened and, duh, no zeppelins ever arrived.
Still, that windy rush, he said, was so powerful that if you opened a window on the 14th floor and jumped out, the wind would scoop you back up to a balcony on the 16th floor where he worked. People have done it, he said. In 1929, that very thing saved some stockbrokers’ lives, he said. “Bunch of guys and I did it drunk last New Year’s,” he said. “It really works!”
“That’s a lie,” I said. “There’s no way.”
“It’s not a lie. It’s a fact,” he protested.
“Yah? Prove it!” I challenged him.
“I’ll show you myself,” he said. He got up and hustled us out of the deli and to his building across the street.
We took the elevator to the 14th floor and he strode right through this accounting firm, me trying to keep up with him. As we passed, people were getting up and following, asking each other if someone was gonna try The Leap. The Leap, they called it.
So, he opened the window wide and he stepped up into the casement and he waited.
“You have to time it just right,” he said. We all stood there, watching his hands grip the sides of the glass and not believing he’d actually jump. The wind rose, alright. A huge gust! Clark said, “Yup. Now.” And he was gone. The ladies yelped.
I rushed to the window and looked out and, sure enough, he was falling. I couldn’t believe I was going to watch him die. But he slowed, and tumbled in mid-air, and he seemed to catch his balance somehow, couched in a net of wind. To our amazement, he rose lightly past the window and kept going up, up, up! I craned my neck out the window and couldn’t believe my eyes. Two flights up, he had landed on his feet on the balcony on the 16th floor, hair a little messed up, but he’d kept his glasses on. He waved to me and the cheering accountants and shrugged. “See?” he yelled down to me. “Whaddaya think?”
“I can’t believe it!” I called back. “It happens every time?”
“Nah, the timing has to be right,” he called, serious now. “You wanna go? I’ll tell you when. You gotta go EXACTLY when I say, though. Climb up!”
The crowd behind me urged me on, spurred me up into the window, I figured if it worked for
him, big as he was, it HAD to work for me. And before I knew it I was teetering there halfway out a window fourteen floors up, white-knuckled, waiting for the signal to jump.
“This is stupid, this is stupid, this is stupid...” I was saying when Clark yelled down, “Now! Go! Go! GO!”
So I leapt.
I fell. And I kept falling. The only wind I felt was the breeze I was slicing through. No great gust caught me and held me up. The ground was coming up fast! I could see people watching me come down. Some lady screamed. This was it. I was gonna die. I closed my eyes.
With a jolt that wrenched my eyes open again, a stiff trampoline of an awning over the sidewalk bodega below kinda broke my fall as I broke through it. I came down to street level hard, pile-driving into wooden shelves of fresh fruit on display. I wrecked it all and myself.
No gusty zephyr buoyed me to the 16th floor. I guess I jumped late. Timing was off. And so no zeppelin wind stopped me from shattering both my legs, fracturing my skull, splintering my pelvis, and spending eighteen months in hospital and rehab. And, besides all that, now I can’t STAND fresh fruit.
Y’know, I’m glad that Clark forgave me for being cruel to him and said he didn’t hold a grudge against me at all, but I’ll tell you something: despite what he says he knows all about the architecture of the Daily Bugle building, Clark Kent, mild-mannered reporter, can NOT read the wind like he says he can.
Now that I think about it, maybe he didn’t forgive me after all.
He didn’t even send flowers.
You ask, “How did I find my way into storytelling and MO-TELL?” And my first thought was, “that’s a good question” especially for someone who spent twenty-one years in the military. But as I thought about it, there were lots of moments and events that brought smiles or laughter to my military experience. In some cases, they were the seeds for a MO-TELL “Liars Contest Story.” I remember the day I reported to my basic training camp, the young airman, who came to escort the four new cadets to the camp was the spitting image of Barney Fife from the Andy Griffin TV sitcom, or Beetle Bailey from the comic strips. He was this skinny little guy who had this look of fear in his eyes, like any moment he was going to burst into tears. And he had about 4 or 5 little pieces of white tape all over his face, covering his shaving cuts. I could hear myself quietly screaming inside my head, “OH MY GOD, WHAT HAVE I GOTTEN MY SELF INTO!” But I made it, and I stayed in until I could retire.
My twenty-one years in the military went by relatively quickly and since I was in the National Guard, I was able to have a civilian job at the same time. I started teaching at Eugene Field School, an elementary school, located in the Central West. It was while I was at Field that I enrolled in a workshop entitled, Storytelling Across the Curriculum, which was held at the Learning Center. The workshop instructor was non other than Janet (January) Kiefer. She was an outstanding instructor and storyteller. I fell in love with storytelling and the different ways I could use storytelling in my classroom to enhance my teaching. January also introduced the class to resources in the community, such as St. Louis Gateway Storytellers, who met for dinner at the Salad Bowl (Good food) along with a group of talented storytellers that would become mentors & lifelong friends. There was the National Storytelling Network (NSN), Missouri Storytelling, Inc. (MO-TELL) with Tellabration!, and the St. Louis Storytelling Festival. There were monthly storytelling events and state park storytelling opportunities.
Although I have not been a member of MO-TELL for a very long time, I’ve attended a number of their functions and I have volunteered with several activities. In July of 2019, I was excited and thrilled to submit an entry into the Liars Contest and even more thrilled to have come in 2nd place with my written story “Mr. Cheetah and the Chicken.” The Liars Contest was held in Columbia, MO on July 13, 2019. I was invited to read my lie to the story listeners and other liars, so I traveled to Columbia. My story was well received, and I was delighted. Maybe next year will be my turn to get 1st place in the Liars Contest, with a story about a very young and frighten airman who makes a career in the military and retires as a General after a long career in service to his country.
God Bless Our Country!
WRITING THROUGH STORYTELLING
by
The Joy of Storytelling - Diann Joy Bank
A storyteller is one who tells stories. The best was to learn to tell or write a story is to JUST DO IT! Remember, you are as unique as your own thumbprint.
STORYTELLER TIPS:
Choose a story you really like
Visualize your story
Setting - where? smells? sounds?
Characters - age? appearance? voice?
Crisis -sequence of major events
Resolution - solve the conflict (invent different endings to the story)
Use your eye contact with your listeners
Have your audience be CO-TELLERS through participation
Use sounds (squeaking doors, howling wind, animals)
Use movements (clapping, flying, sneeing)
Use chants and repetitive phrases (walking, walking, walking through the woods; Do you see wha tI see?)
EXAGGERATE your voice and movements
RELAX - ENJOY - DON'T WORRY (If you forget a part of the story, just add it on and say, "and don"t forget about..." or "I almost forgot to tell you...")
WRITING TIPS
Re-write the story from another point of view
Take one of the characters and create a new story for him/her
Change one of hte characters and see how the story plays out
What happened before the story began? Explain in writing
Create a new ending or extend the storyline
Create new dialogue
Write an up-to-date version of the story
Write a letter to one of the characters, praising them, criticizing them, giving them advice, etc...
Go to the library and research informatino onthe people, customs, and history of the country your story comes from