Story telling

As I was driving to work, I was listening to an interesting program on National Public Radio (NPR). It was about a story telling contest and this program had the winner of the contest come and tell his winning story. I'm not big on listening to stories, but I really had nothing better to listen to and the lethargy of finding another channel conspired to keep me from switching away.

The winner came and he had a very intersting style of narration. It was a very slow and child like way of talking that initially had me disinterested. The story started 2 days after 9/11, he spoke about waking up feeling shattered and he was telling about the general mood of disbelief at that time in NYC. This particular morning, he was walking along Battery Park (I think) and he was sharing about how the skyline of NYC looked to him with the missing buildings. In a very slow and determined way - he didn't skimp any details as he shared his sorrow and the pain of the people surrounding him. Their need to comprehend what was happening.

I was by now completely engrossed and was holding the wheel rather tightly as I navigated through the dense 880N traffic. The narrator by now had seated himself and he continued telling all that he had been through the last two days. Suddenly he sees a garbage truck in the distance and for some reason this draws his attention. As he continues to observe the truck- he realises what was happening. The truck was cleaning up the flowers, candles and photographs of the missing people. He continues without increasing his narration speed, but in a higher pitch, that he was immediately filled with rage. How could this be happening? Wasn't it too early to continue as if nothing happened. Didn't he deserve a few more days of mourning- didn't the people of NYC deserve that? Why were the cleaning up the candles so soon? Not knowing exactly what he was going to do, but knowing that he had to do something- he rushed towards the garbage truck.

By now, I had completely lost track of where I was in the traffic. For some strange reason, I was there with him in the park and I could feel the rage that he was feeling and I could feel the tears that were welling up in his eyes.

As he neared the truck, he said that he realised what was really happening, as the garbage truck moved along, the workers were carefully unwrapping the candles from plastic bags and placing it in the pavements. He narrated on as he tried to makes sense of what they were doing, it had apparently rained heavily the previous night and the city workers had taken the photographs, the candle and the flowers and wrapped them individually to prevent them from washing away. Now this morning they were putting it back in its original place. When he first saw the garbage truck he had mistakenly assumed the clean pavement as something the garbage truck was clearing away- when in fact that the direction the truck was moving towards filling it back with last nights content.

He described how he couldn't control his joy and how he cried shamelessly. By now I had reached work and my car with engine running was patiently waiting for me to finish the program and switch it off. My eyes were now completely moist (inadvertently) and hearing that the truck was actually putting back the candles, I couldn't help but give the best sheepish grin I could muster as I looked around and stepped out.

I could understand now why he won the competition. His was not a story that had a moral or a point... it was just his ability to tell a story and for that short time I lived it. I saw what he say and I felt what he felt.