Tell Us a Story, Karen

Why wouldn't I want to hear strangers tell me details from their lives?

Exactly. So once again I was at Balliceaux for Secretly Y'All: Tell Me a Story and another round of themed storytelling.

With one terrific twist. I knew half of the storytellers tonight.

Walking in to the place, I kept running into people I knew who were on tonight's Found-themed roster.

As much as I like hearing great stories from strangers, even better to hear them from friends.

And like every Secretly Y'All event, the stories ran the gamut despite the shared motif.

The romantic in me loved the story of how a friend found a fax which led to meeting a tall redhead on the opposite coast with whom he's now been for fifteen years.

Best part: watching his wife, kneeling on the floor behind the chairs, reacting to his words.

The heathen in me cheered at another friend's story of leaving the seminary after fellow students tried to pray the devil out of him.

Best part: his call and response to get the audience to shout "Amen" at the end of his story.

I got my tragedy fix when a girl told a story about her Dad going to rescue her younger sister in the river they were tubing, leaving her, the older sister, to fend for herself by saying, "Sorry, Anna," as he swam away.

Best part: the girl's determination not to lose her tube (unless she died) because her Dad had put down a $100 deposit on it.

I got my comedy fix with the story of a girl whose mother sprayed her hair with the daughter's urine (you had to be there) and later told Dick Cheney abut it at a party.

Best part: the line, "So my Mom went and bought some drug-testing kits from Sharper Image."

And the best part of the story about going to get the four-pound dog boots for a winter in Buffalo?

That's right. Leaving the fake note ("Every time I see you bending over the copier, I want to bury my face in your...) in the mall food court for Taco Bell employees to find and read to great hilarity.

And speaking of bending over, you should have heard the one about a guy hired to break up, ahem, "funny business" in the men's showers at a downtown gym.

Who wouldn't want to be in the audience for such fine storytelling?

Always a listener, never a storyteller; that's my motto.