It was a satisfying Friday evening for the volunteers, as signified by the celebratory presence of pizza and s’mores. In less than two hours, we’d succeeded in spreading nearly an entire truckload of ground cover around the barn, which was home to 13 miniature therapy horses and 3 donkeys. At the picnic table, I bit into my slice of pizza and contemplated how the evening would progress. Just days before, I’d begun crafting a story to tell my fellow volunteers. I knew it wasn’t ready yet but really wanted the chance to practice and demonstrate my storytelling skills. Hopefully, with an attentive audience, I could make off with a success. So as marshmallows roasted over the fire, I waited for the perfect timing.
Finally, folks began putting down their skewers. I took a seat on the cooler and leaned forward, “Once upon a time in a kingdom called Minlandia, there was a horse king…” Inspired by elements of real folktales, my hero story used the barn’s miniature horses as main characters, and Sunny the donkey got to be the hero. In real life, Sunny was bigger than all the others. Because of his size, he didn’t get to go to libraries or nursing homes to cheer people up like the miniature horses did. But in the story, Sunny saved a man in trouble, rescued his sisters from drowning, and even helped prevent a famine. The theme: that you can be a hero even when you don’t look like everyone else. At the end of the story, people clapped, and the lady in charge told me I’d done a good job using the horses’ real personalities. It was a fairly good experience, given the short time I’d had to prepare. Great.
But within seconds of uttering my final words, I was surprised to find my myself being deposed from my seat on the cooler by an eager young girl. She was now ready to tell a story about riding a horse. I sat down on the ground and listened. After she finished, a boy came and sat down, telling a short yet rousing western tale. Yet another girl sat down after him. What was going on? I had expected to be the storyteller for the evening, but, as my mom pointed out, my telling had inspired them. The cooler had become the iconic “storyteller’s seat”—one which, to the kids, seemed delightfully accessible. Perhaps the acuity of my story didn’t matter after all. I had only to toss my stone into a ripple-ready pond, and the listeners took it from there.
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