Women's Stories

Standing in line for the bathroom at a tapas bar on dueling pianos night I found myself in a conversation about telling children the facts of life. I don't remember how it got started (there may have been some drinks...) but one woman was talking about her daughter, who had an older brother, asking when her penis would grow in.

As I was left with just the woman behind me in line, I confessed that my four-year-old daughter knows more about being a woman than most of the fifth grade students I teach (who are getting "the talk" at school about now). She asked me if I was from the northeast.

I said, "No, but my parents are."

"Northeastern kids are very savvy." She said.

Initially, I was left wondering if the fact that I am so candid with my daughter is a holdover of my New York roots or is, as I have thought, because I am a crazy liberal librarian and believe that more information is the answer to every problem.

It isn't just that, though. Storytelling has been teaching me some interesting things about women. We have got to be honest with each other. And we must share our feminine wisdom between generations.

I have become infamous in the Atlanta storytelling scene for my "naughty" stories. It all started with Carapace's "Taboo" show, in which, with much trepidation, I shared a story about buying a menstrual cup. (Yes, I wrote about this before. This post is a little different.)

I was embraced by the very warm Carapace community and gained the courage to not only share this story with other audiences, but to propose an entire fringe performance based on "naughty" stories.

With a little luck, I was chosen for the National Storytelling Conference fringe, where some of this really started to sink in.

As storytellers go, I am young. I walk in both the traditional storytelling world and the "reality" storytelling world. At Carapace there are many more people my age, but plenty who are older as well. In the traditional storytelling world, I'm an outlier.

My old anxiety about talking openly about menstrual cups and vaginal depth came back as I looked out at my fringe audience. I advertised that it was naughty stories, so they knew what to expect, right? RIGHT?

Not only was my show well received, but many of those who chose to tell me they enjoyed it were older women. I think now that women know, in our hearts, we have to share these stories, at least with each other. Being a woman is hard. Not every woman has a story about ill-fitting menstrual cups, but they have stories about other menstruating misadventures and when we share these stories, no one has to feel alone.

I continue to work to promote "naughty" stories because I have started to realize that they aren't just entertaining. They are important. And if we don't tell our stories, we run the risk of letting someone else tell them for us.

I will take a moment here to say that I do realize calling them "naughty" stories may not be the most productive thing. It is kind of perpetuating the idea that these are not things we are supposed to talk about. But also, those are exactly the stories I mean: the ones we think we are not supposed to talk about.

Back to women, and folklore, and stories. In many cultures, women of multiple generations used to work together for several hours at a stretch with no men around. Adult conversation often turned to true stories and folk tales and jokes, about being a woman. The girls would hear. There were no surprises about growing up or growing old. The female wisdom was available to all ages. No woman thought she was going though some very normal female thing alone.

I'm not saying we need to go back to the "good old days" of women doing only distaff duties. It's just that we have to make more of an effort to talk to each other. If that's on stage at a bar, I'll see you there. I'm listening.

Modern Oral Tradition in Action

This is a story from when I was working in the Children's Area of the Athens-Clarke County Library:

There were two sisters who befriended me and my coworker and who came to the library to see us once or twice a week. They were 9 and 11 years old. One day, when only the older girl was there. The three of us started telling silly jokes. I told them the joke about the duck that walks into a bar:

One day, a duck walked into a bar and asked the bar tender "Do you have any duck food?"
The bar tender said "No."
The next day, the duck walked into the bar and asked the bar tender "Do you have any duck food?"
The bar tender said "No."
The next day, the duck walked into the bar again and asked the bar tender "Do you have any duck food?"
The bar tender said, "No, I don't have any duck food, and if you ask me again, I'm going to nail your little webbed feet to the bar."
The next day, the duck walked into the bar and asked the bar tender "Do you have any nails?"
The bar tender said "No."
"Good," said the duck, "Do you have any duck food."

My coworker and our friend both thought the joke was pretty funny. A few days later, both the girl and her younger sister were visiting us. The older girl decided to tell this joke to her sister. This is how she told it:

One day, a duck walked into a barn and asked the farmer "Do you have any duck food?"
The farmer said "No."
The next day, the duck walked into the barn and asked the farmer "Do you have any duck food?"
The farmer said "No."
The next day, the duck walked into the barn again and asked the farmer "Do you have any duck food?"
The farmer said, "No, I don't have any duck food, and if you ask me again, I'm going to nail your little webbed feet to the barn floor."
The next day, the duck walked into the barn and asked the farmer "Do you have any nails?"
The farmer said "No."
"Good," said the duck, "Do you have any duck food."

This reveals something of how our minds remember stories and jokes we hear. She remembered the heart of the joke, what made it funny, and filled in the rest with what made the most sense to her. An adult hears this joke and is immediately reminded of other "bar jokes":

Bacon and eggs walked into a bar and the bar tender said, "We don't serve breakfast."

A rope walked into a bar and the bar tender said, "We don't serve your kind."

The rope walked back outside, tangled himself up, ruffled his ends, and then walked back in.

The bar tender said, "You're not a rope, are you?"

"Nope, I'm a frayed knot."

(My new favorite from my sister, who is a piano teacher.)

C, E flat, and G walked into a bar. The bar tender said, "We don't serve minors."

So, E flat left and C and G shared a fifth.

No, what a child thinks of when she hears the joke is something more along the lines of, "Old MacDonald had a farm..."

So that's how she tells it, as a farm joke, not as a bar joke.

The best part is, it's still funny.

Who is Listening?

In the flurry of personal life I have been a little lax about my blogging. But at least one of my personal distractions may have something to teach us about sound and sense.

I am pregnant!

Obviously I am filled with all kinds of feelings about being a mother and my identity in general. And I strive to fully comprehend what my body and my baby are going through by paying close attention to everything I can sense. My pregnancy calendar tells me that my baby can sense me, too! About midway through pregnancy the baby can hear the mother's heart, stomach, and her voice.

I have become very aware of how I use my voice and what my tone conveys. When I yell at my cats (sometimes they deserve it) I feel a little bad. But when I sing while I am doing chores, I imagine that I am bonding with my baby. I am telling it something about myself.

Sometimes it's not about what you are saying, it's about how you say it. And sometimes the only way to say something is out loud.