Disclaimer: I am writing these entries from this point on around a month or later after the events actually happened at this point because I have had waaaaaaay too many notes to type up for these entries.

I had an overloaded night of storytelling this night, as I had my class in Sacramento and then had to drive to Fremont for the conference starting the next morning. Hoo boy.

In class, we listened to the Tig Notaro/Taylor Dayne story.

Notes from this:
* Chills = your brain was set up to expect something, you get it...but on a delay.
* If something happens three times, it’s a pattern and we like patterns. It’s funny on the third time.
* Foreshadow your ideas in, don’t drop something new at the end.

I did tell the unmentioned story and got the best comments on it, which I won’t repeat here but it was liked. “I didn’t zone out at all,” the teacher said, which is awesome. I later asked the teacher if I could do a later show since the one coming up now is booked, and she said yes. I think I will do something else though...

Other folks told stories about giving birth (one lady in the class was the one doing it, but her husband, also in the class, is the one who actually remembers it...). There was a story about a 4 year old on the bus that kind of made me zone out because it boiled down to “my kid is strong and independent.”

I really liked the story from a lady who’d had an abusive ex. She started out with “Fuck you, I hate you,” and noting that if the guy can wash tomatoes gently, why can’t he do that with her? Ouuuuuch. She said she’d had a psychic intuition that the guy wasn’t for her and she didn’t act on it--he hounded her into dating him, she eventually gave in....eek. Other notes I have on this one were “most of us enjoy stories that are vulnerable” and “he’s just repeating to me what I say about myself.”

Another lady in class said she’d debated leaving her husband for two years and what decided it was her chucking her wedding ring across the room.

One lady WANTED to tell a story about euthanasia....then decided not to. So she told a story about befriending an old lady alcoholic who was all, “oh, that’s my ex-husband’s ashes” that she hadn’t disposed of. I gather the guy was terrible. So the lady said, “He was such an asshole I didn’t want to do anything nice with his....” So she got the idea while in the bathroom of the Department of Justice: “this is the perfect place.” She notes that “you can do anything and go anywhere if you act like you know what you’re doing” (so true), and ended up disposing of them in a trash can. “Did you wash your hands?” “No.”

There is going to be a listserv for people in the two storytelling classes (this one and the other one) that we can sign up for. (Note: I’m writing this up weeks later and that mailing list has been driving me nuts. They want to have meetings at 4:30 p.m. which is making me think this is gonna be a retiree club, sigh.)

After the class got out, I drove directly to the conference and got there around 11:30, where I discovered that the ice machine didn’t work, the Internet didn’t work, and the toilet flushes itself poltergeist style. Grrrrr, argggggggggh. So much for fancy hotels?

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