Stories beget stories

I have spent two of the past four weekends at storytelling festivals. First, was the Cave Run Storytelling Festival, then came the Hoosier Storytelling Festival. Describing a storytelling festival, for some reason, is every bit as difficult to describe as getting someone to understand what I do for a living (my friends say, "... so you sit around and draw pictures all day?" My reply is, "close enough.") But, I'll do my best.

A storytelling festival — think big tent revival. There's a big tent plus a revival of our almost lost oral tradition.

In most cases, skilled speakers and writers tell tales, some tall, some true, some mostly true, some folksy, some familial, some historical, all to an audience ready to listen and imagine. But, my favorite thing about a storytelling festival is that it almost always blows the dust off of stories of my own that I have nearly forgotten.

A couple weeks back, at Cave Run,  Bil Lepp was telling tales. Lepp, a teller of tall tales, explained that male fascination with how far he can pee is the real reason for hunting from a tree stand. If you put your tree stand 80 feet in the air, guess what — you can pee 80 feet! Well, I have no interest in hunting, but Bil's point prompted me to check eBay for the cheapest tree stand that could still support my 210 pounds plus a gallon jug of drinking water or two.

I've long thought that urination is a competitive sport waiting to happen (so has my friend Art, who made this great TV spot).

As a kindergartner, I remember lining up with my friends Stephen and Darryl Mangus at the urinal and carefully backing away as far as we could until our stream began to weaken; then we'd just as carefully, but more urgently, move back toward the urinal. We tried really hard not to make a complete mess. As you might have guessed the boy who peed furthest won bragging rights until the next Piss Off.

Our game wasn't called a Piss Off at the time, my mom wouldn't let me say "piss off", although that's exactly what our game did to the janitor.*

*I'd like to use this footnote to apologize to the janitor at King's Academy, Oklahoma City, 1981.