I Am A Man Who Listens.

 Written by Ken Oguss

Professional Storyteller/Public Speaking Coach/Screenwriter
Documentary Film Maker/ Author of Flash Fiction and Short Stories
KenOguss@gmail.com

As the audio engineer for the project I listen for short, short stories within the longer recordings that I can edit and post to the Life Stories Project website, www.lifestoriesproject.net. I listen for stories that can stand alone, stories that will give people an idea of the richness of the collective oral history that we have in this city.

Each story contains little treasures of human experience. Let me entice you with clues to some of the stories on the website. See if you can figure out whose stories these are:

1. Who deliberately moved to a newly integrated neighborhood to learn about the realities of inner city life?

2. Who was born a few days before a terrible fire and then spend most of her life searching for the full details of the story?

3. Whose mother showed him why a pound cake is called a pound cake and taught him how to “measure by eye.”

4. Whose teacher helped him overcome one of life’s greatest fears by encouraging him to join the high school debating team?

5. Whose father’s life may have been saved when her brother had to go to the hospital for a tonsillectomy?

6. Who saved milk tops to go to Riverside Park and then vowed to never go back there again?

7. Who traveled far abroad to visit holy sites and in the process learned about the origins of the potato?

8. Who describes a time in America when the nights were pitch black, families could not travel, and many houses displayed simple flags with stars on them?

9. Whose life would be changed by a woman he met by going to the wrong laundry mat?

10. Who found success in her vision of an interactive learning experience despite theater experts telling her it would not work?

11. What act of violence would turn a future librarian and a future minister into civil rights activists?

Here are a few things I’ve learned listening to these stories. You can’t really tell from a person’s photograph or voice what kind of childhood they had or how many years they attended school. You can’t tell how brave people have been or how hard they have worked or how creative they have been from first glance. But when you sit down and listen to them tell stories that matter from their lives you begin to appreciate who they really are and collectively, who we are. So join us. Come to the website, www.lifestoriesproject.net, listen to the short stories, sign up to tell yours. I’ll be listening!

(Originally published on the Storytelling Arts of Indiana Blog, August 11, 2013  https://storytellingarts.org/2013/08/i-am-a-man-who-listens/ )