Hey!

Every day I hear several stories. When I say hi to a friend, one of us tells the other some sort of story. Whether it is what happened in class earlier that day, or something that happened months ago, some sort of story is related before we part. Since I hear so many stories every single day, I have developed methods for interpreting each one of them. For example, one of my friends likes to exaggerate every story he tells me. Therefore, if I am to truly understand anything he is telling me, I have to maintain a respectful and ambiguous distance. I have to accept the fact that his reality is quite different from my own.

As extreme an example as this friend of mine is, every acquaintance of mine is different from me in some way. This means that I have to develop a different mindset for every one that I listen to. For example, I used to work at an Elementary School and, as a consequence, I heard hundreds of ridiculous stories every day. Many of them were flat out lies. I had to really listen to what the kids were telling me. It becomes easy to tell whether children have problems at home or with their classmates based on the realities that they create within their stories. An example of this method is used very well in “The Sixth Sense”, when Haley Joel Osment tells his mom about how his day went. According to him, everybody was super nice to him and he was picked first in kickball. His story, of course, was not true, but a lot can be understood by the way a story is delivered by a child. I use the example of children as an example of media that provides me joy.

I would, of course, not use this same method of deriving meaning from a friend of mine that I see here at school. Everybody does this to some extent, although they may not know it. I have given extreme examples, but reading into peoples stories is something I think we all do. More can be learned about a person by watching them tell a story, or reading into their story, than just hearing the story alone.