I broke my pinky toe this week. What I stubbed it on should have been obvious. I mean, a plastic tub of legos, taking up half the hallway? That my three year-old left there, during his righteous fit? What's more obvious? That's why I don't have a good story to tell you, which is annoying. Pay Attention--starting with the obvious! But my attention was elsewhere. It was past 9PM, and I was on my own righteous mission: to get my older kids to clean up after themselves in the kitchen while the baby meowed from the bedroom. (The three year old harumph-ed along beside me to chide his big brothers.) The minute I felt my toe make contact, I knew I had broken it. Your brain gains a momentary crater where it used to sense a comfortably in-tact body part. In my intero-ception, the damage was obvious. WHAT HAPPENED?, the three year old alarmist said, when he heard my expletives reserved for those choice toe moments. I BROKE MY TOE ON YOUR LEGOS! I half-yelled, because the obvious works better in ALL CAPS. The thing is, when you stub or break your toe, it's almost always on something that's right in front of your face, and could have been avoided. It's not like the walls switch around their location to mess with you and bait your appendages (except in Alice in Wonderland. Or when you're chronically exhausted). Look at the story you're telling yourself... From the site of injury, I started building a story-- sound familiar? "Tomorrow is going to suck...so is the next day...Why did I not put that away?" I also thought: dang, this would be a lot more acceptable if I had a good story to tell. Then I realized, a good story can start with the obvious, it just can't stop there. Moving beyond what's obvious What if I looked more closely at why we don't do what we know we should? Or examined the structure of the foot, the function of toes? What if I wrote about the evolution of emotion, studied my three-year old? The fits he has over things the Continue Reading …
Story
Tell Us the Truth, Obviously
Tell Us The Truth What are you really supposed to tell us in your college essay? About that perfect cup of bitter coffee you made your mom, every morning, so she could have the energy to go to her job at the factory? Certainly not the obvious? Those everyday truths you live by and with? How you whisper a wish to each spoonful of sugar you put in her second, evening coffee, a wish that her life could get just a tad sweeter, and you can get just a little more sleep? Actually, yes, exactly that. Did you think the obvious was just too obvious? Sometimes the obvious is amazing. But no one puts it into words. "It takes all kinds to make a world," an old, old farmer once told me (yes, I know farmers). This after we watched a woman climb out of a Jaguar convertible at his vegetable stand, and then haggle him down from the 50 cents he was asking for his cucumbers. It's imperfect, she insisted, her perfect red-red lips somehow never coming unpursed. That's what happens when food is organic, he told her gently, shrugging. She offered a quarter. He took it. It takes all kinds to make a world. Duh? The Obvious has resonance. When you (finally) put it into words, everyone feels ownership over that observation. Like it's theirs. The obvious is said in a particular voice (yours) from a particular vantage point (yours). But it carries universal resonance (ours). Another example: My petite 11-month old son is just learning to cruise on this atrocious orange walker we found on our block. Yesterday, a man large in frame and big in bone passed him, looked down fondly and noted: They are little when they are little! The baby probably measured halfway up this neighbor's shin, and that's with bed hair, and was about the size of the man's calf. But here the baby is, all 17 pounds of him, steamrolling down the sidewalk, eye to eye with puppy dogs. They are little when they are little. Well, duh? And then there is the comedian's prerogative: Or Continue Reading …