Stories of My Father and Brother and Brother and . . .

My dad is a talker. That is an understatement. Any one who has ever met my father has heard a story from him. He has never met a stranger, he has never not had something to say. The reality is my brothers are all the same. We all have something to say and we usually say it. I am the quiet one, although my friends at work would tell you different.

I'm writing this entry as my father and oldest brother are telling stories about everything. Yosemite, traveling, books, wine, you name it it will be talked about. There are mini-arguments on the way, "it went was on the way to . . .", "if you say so, I'm not going to get in an argument on this", it is part of the segue of the conversation. It allows them to move from topic to topic without having to depend on the events of the day or news or gossip. The conversations have been said before but allow each person an opportunity to relive that memory one more time.

We have currently moved from traveling in the south to two sets of books that were in this house for ever. The American Heritage and Great Books of the World, or something like that. It is the walk of nostalgia that I think is much more important then having the nostalgia itself. This is the importance of the living memory. It is the exchange of the information, it is the exchange of the laughter, the nuance, the remembering of the details.

We have moved from the books into what we should put on the floor. It was a quick segue, abrupt, it caused a rift. We are working back towards the story that we have been working on, what to do with my parents and the amount of stuff in the house and what should stay or go. This is the constant story that has been going on over the last few weeks (or years). We are working on this story on a regular basis. It isn't as enjoyable as the stories of the past.

My brothers are all in sales, of one type or another so it is in their nature to tell stories. It is important to be able to tell the story in order to keep the sale on the line. We all have the ability to tell the story that are client want to hear. We read people and find out about them in order to come up with what we really need to hit them with in order to make sure that the story is about them. In fact the story is more important then the sale. The sale puts money in your pocket, but the right story puts even more money in your pocket. It is the ability have people find the common ground, to make them feel as though you are just another part of the family.

The reality is we all tell stories. The stories are incredibly important to who we are as people, it identifies our qualities as people and allows us to relate to one another on a much different level. It does not matter if you hear or tell the story over again, the story is important because it is the connection that binds us together as a society. It is the details from the stories that makes us remember why we did something, or why we went somewhere, or why we trust a certain brand of a certain whatever. It really is about the story.

We are finally back to the story. We have come around full circle again. The story is more important to us because we don't lose the story we just tell it over and over again.