I am a story teller. I was born into a family with colorful stories to tell, and tell them we did. I work in a field (wine importer) that sells on stories. I travel in a world that is full of color and character and intrigue and curiosities. I am one of the youngest of my generation, and so feel a moral obligation to pass on the stories recounted to me by our elders. In business, I have become a veteran in my workplace, 30 years with the same firm and several different positions around the world, and so feel a moral obligation to recount a past so my colleagues can see how much things have changed, but especially how much they have not. So, if you indulge me, I’ll indulge you.
So the story goes like this:
- this guy gets sent to prison, and is locked up in a block full of ‘lifers.’ He settles into his cell, trying to absorb his surroundings, when suddenly he hears a shout in the dark.
- “Two hundred and sixty four,” a sarcastic voice breaks the silence.
- The cell block erupts with raucous laughter, side-holding hysterical laughter, tear flowing laughter, bed-banging, bar rattling laughter. Then things calm down again, until another voice is heard. “One eighty three,” come a mimicking cry. Again, the laughter ensues.
- On this goes a few more times until our jailbird turns to the gent in the next cell to ask what’s going on.
- “We’ve all been here so long that we know all the jokes, but we still love them,” he says. “So rather than taking the time to recite them, we just numbered them and shout out the appropriate numbers when we need a good laugh. Here, take a look at the list, there are about 600 of them so far.”
- Our jailbird looks over the list and sees a classic that he has always enjoyed, so stands up, clears his throat, and pronounces loudly, “Three hundred and twenty five.”
- The silence is deafening. You could hear a pin drop.
- Wanting to quickly recover, our jailbird skims the list again and finds another old favorite. “Two fifty three,” he exclaims. Again, silence. “”One twenty three!” Nothing. “Forty five,” he says desperately.
- “What’s wrong? Why isn’t anybody laughing when I call out a number?” he asked his new friend in the next cell.
- “Well,” said his incarcerated neighbor, “some guys just can’t tell a joke.”
Everybody in our family has stories to tell, but my Uncle Fiore was the master story teller, and apropos of that old joke, we used to tease him that they were numbered. The really old stories had double digits they were so old. Some of them — many of them — will appear in this blog from time to time.
I will categorize stories by their sources: family, wine, food, travel, and so forth. For the family stories, I’ve started with a few backgrounders on the cast of characters that have made me who I am today, and who are the subject of many a story.
So The Story Goes Like This... 