B.O.W.L.

I love telling stories. You could ask any of my friends and they would tell you how true that is. I have a lot of tales from when I was in high school, and a few more good ones from college and beyond. In fact, back when I was in college I had a friend that lived at the same apartment that I did. This apartment had a shuttle that went to the school and back and since parking on campus was always a hassle we’d both ride it to class. One semester we had a class right at the same time and we were both always at the apartment beforehand (as opposed to already being on campus) so we would meet at the bus stop. We hung out all the time, so we very rarely had anything new to say to each other, but it was one of the few times that we got to talk with just the two of us. This became known as ‘story time’.

It started out naturally, we’d be making conversation and something would remind me of an event from my past and I’d tell her about it. This happened often enough that it became regular and expected, so much so that I would know in advance what story I was going to tell her and we no longer started with a normal conversation, just jumped strait into a story when we met. One day I asked her if she’d like to tell a story instead, but she insisted that she didn’t have any stories. I probed further, assuring her that she must have at least one good anecdote from her past, but she still refused.

How could someone have lived for twenty-one years not have even one good story to tell? In the next few weeks I started asking all my friends that I hadn’t already been friends with in high school to tell me a story, and was shocked at how many had similar responses, telling me that they didn’t have any good stories. I honestly don’t know what I’d do if that were true for me. Telling tales from my younger years is really one of my favorite things to do. Even this comic started out as a series of one page stories about events at my bowling league.

Now however, the comic has actually steered away from real life in favor of telling a story with an actual plot, and ironically has because much harder to create because of that. Whereas before I could just think of a particularly amusing night of bowling/drinking and set the events into panels, now I actually have to think about how each page advances the plot while also including a punch line at the end. More and more I’m finding out that this isn’t an easy thing to do. Having a punch line is really the hardest part. If I were just telling a story about bowling it would be easy, and likely also very boring. But it’s more than that. I’m telling a story about bowling through a series of amusing events and circumstances, and I’m not really good at it yet. The ‘yet’ is important in that previous sentence, because I feel like I’m getting better. I’ve been sorting through the archives of two people that I perceive to be masters of this style, Tim Buckley and Tarol Hunt in an attempt to glean wisdom from their works, but I think this is something that will take practice.

Now, to answer my earlier question, ‘how could someone have lived….and not have even one good story…’ They can’t. All my friends that said they had no good stories later told me some pretty exceptional tales. When I asked them why they didn’t tell me these stories when I had asked them for one they said that they didn’t think they’re stories were very entertaining, and that’s why they never told them. I guess the real point of this post is to tell people that their stories are interesting. That thing that happened after school that one day might seem ordinary to you, but for someone that wasn’t there it’s extraordinary and exciting. Now go tell someone about the time you threw up in your backpack or the love letter that you put in the wrong locker. People will listen.

If you know me personally, and I suspect that many of my readers do, then you may know that I’m not completely satisfied with my job. I work for a retail consumer electronics company, and on this website I’ve always been secretive about what company that may be, partly because I fear that my management would panic if they saw the website contents with the company name listed below, and partly because I ultimately don’t want this blog associated with the company I work for. Recently things have turned for the worse in my work-life. The current management and I have different ideas about what makes a retail store successful. In my own words, what makes me different from the other employees where I work is that they are better at keeping their mouths shut than I am. Recently, during a meeting we were having about financing, I wrote a letter to my management airing my grievances with their policies and letting them know that several of my coworkers (who will never be named) and I felt the same, and that we are seeking other employment. They did not take my criticism well.

While I thought that I was fair and diplomatic in my letter to the management, they felt that it was threatening, and full of bad intentions. I have been accused of attempting to lead a “mutiny” against the company, they have threatened my job and assured me that if I don’t follow their specific plan of action that I will find myself either demoted or all together terminated. They feel that I have positioned myself as a self-appointed voice for, “the downtrodden worker” and even suggested some sort of conspiracy between myself and my coworkers. The ironic thing is that this isn’t the first time I’ve been suspected to be some sort of charismatic leader.

Let me take you back to the year 2003. I was a junior attending Chipley High School. Chipley is a small town about an hour north of Panama City, Florida. At the time I was very active in a small Catholic Church in that city. I was a member of the church choir that had about 4 other members and I was easily the most active member of the church youth group. I was set to receive Confirmation that year, but first had to go through a class (which I can’t remember the name for) to prepare me for Confirmation. As I was taught in the class, Confirmation was a time when one stood in front of the church and announced that one would be a Catholic for life and that you chose this of one’s own free will. I had one issue with this: I was always taught that people would know you are Christian from your love. I brought this up in class once insisting that I didn’t need to tell the world that I was Christian because they would know by my actions. The teacher didn’t like my attitude, and sent me out of the class to “think about things”. It was then that I decided I wasn’t going to be confirmed. I told my mom (who was devastated, but supportive) and she informed the priest of my decision. After briefly mulling it over the priest came to my mom and told her that he was probably going to kick me out of the choir because he was afraid that I would lead other kids away from Confirmation; and honestly I probably could have, but even then I knew that it was a personal decision that I had made for myself, and chose not to encourage others down the same path. My mom, knowing her son very well, told the priest that if he kicked me out of choir, then he would have a real problem on his hands. That at that moment people were looking up to me, and the only thing he would be accomplishing by kicking me out would be to make a martyr out of me.

Back to the present. I’m every bit the fiery personality that I was then. I’ve joked in the past about organizing some sort of walk-out, but it was always just jokes. For now I plan to follow their action plan, but I’m definitely still looking for another job.

UPDATE: Since I wrote this I’ve had another chat with management, but now they’ve changed their story. They say that there was nothing wrong with what I wrote, because I was just expressing my opinion. They say that the problem was that I didn’t pay attention during the meeting. To me this just illustrates the difference between what makes them mad and what they can write you up for.