Tonight in the Pumpkin Patch,  I told stories.  My friend Holly read the book, The Pumpkin Patch Parable. Then I told my favorite folk tale, The Gunny Wolf.

[caption id="attachment_126" align="alignright" width="260" caption="Pumpkin Patch at Trinity United Methodist, Rome, GA, 2009"]<a href="http://motherhoodstress.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/Trinity_pumpkins1.jpg"><img class="size-medium wp-image-126" title="Trinity_pumpkins" src="http://motherhoodstress.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/Trinity_pumpkins1-300x208.jpg" alt="" width="260" height="181" /></a>[/caption]

Then the children asked for real stories. . . stories most of them have heard me tell before.  But they always want to hear them again. The tale of The Day I Got Left at the Gas Station.  And the Day I Jumped Out the Window of My Bedroom.  Both stories of things that happened to me in my childhood.

I enjoy reading books to children and I really enjoy October, when I tell the Gunny Wolf to several hundred children.  But the best stories to tell are the real ones.
Children don’t hear real stories often enough.  Stories about people they know - their moms or dads or aunts or uncles, or even someone they know from church, like me, Mrs. Debi to most of them.  Real people doing the real things that children sometimes do, misbehaving - jumping out a window, being told to never do that again, then heading right back in and jumping out the window again.

[caption id="attachment_274" align="aligncenter" width="300" caption="My family in front of the home, where I jumped out the window. The window on the far end of the house was the same height as the one I jumped from."]<a href="http://motherhoodstress.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/EllijayFamily.jpg"><img class="size-medium wp-image-274" title="EllijayFamily" src="http://motherhoodstress.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/EllijayFamily-300x146.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="146" /></a>[/caption]
<p style="text-align: left;"> Or real scary things that can happen to children.  Like having your Mom and Dad, who love you so very much, but still, being fallible humans, leave you at the gas station for 10 minutes or so.  (I had dashed back into the restroom to retrieve my hair barrettes, without telling anyone.)</p>
<p style="text-align: left;">I survived the ordeal.  And my parents lived through it.  Although the episode was traumatic enough that 50 years later, as I tell the story, I can still see the gas station owner, who put me in his truck as we chased my parents down.</p>


[caption id="attachment_278" align="alignright" width="300" caption="My family in 1952: Joan, Debi sitting on Mama&#39;s lap, Carol sitting on Daddy&#39;s lap, Terry on Janice&#39;s lap. I was a much-loved child, even though 6 or 7 years after this was taken, I got left at a gas station for 10 very long minutes."]<a href="http://motherhoodstress.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/Shaws1952.jpg"><img class="size-medium wp-image-278" title="Shaws1952" src="http://motherhoodstress.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/Shaws1952-300x214.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="214" /></a>[/caption]
<p style="text-align: left;">And my mother tells the story.  And my brother Terry tells that story, too.  Each of us has a slightly different version, told from our own perspective. But it was a scary event for all of us.</p>
Tonight, as I told the Jumping Out the Window story, I started with, “The story I’m going to tell you happened when I was 7 or 8 years old.  And while I am not sure how old I was, I am sure of one thing.  I was old enough to know better.”
“Have you ever done that?” I asked. “Done something you knew, just KNEW, you shouldn’t do?”
Zach, an 8 year old boy who rarely sits still, nodded his head vigorously, making eye contact with me. “All the time!” he assured me. “ALL the time!”
And from there to the end of my tale, Zach and I had a bond.  He knew what I was talking about.  And he sat as still, listening, as I’ve ever seen him sit.

[caption id="attachment_275" align="alignright" width="300" caption="Debi, Carol, Beth and Terry. In this photo, I was 7 or 8 years old."]<a href="http://motherhoodstress.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/EllijayPorch4kids.jpg"><img class="size-medium wp-image-275" title="EllijayPorch4kids" src="http://motherhoodstress.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/EllijayPorch4kids-300x244.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="244" /></a>[/caption]

I got to the point in the story, where I had jumped and my father had scolded me and told me to never do that again.  I turned to my listeners and asked them, “What do you think I did then?”
“You jumped again!” Zach answered, shaking his head.
“You’re right!” I told him. “You must be just like me!”
And, when I got to the part of the story where I had jumped the second time, and saw my father walking toward me, I said, “And then, I made the worst decision I could possibly have made. What do you think I decided to do?”
“You ran,” Zach sighed. “I bet you ran.”  Which is, of course, just what I did, back when I was 7 or 8 years old.
Zach and I made eye contact again. And I saw a child who, for all his high energy, is no more mischevious than I was at his age. And Zach saw a grown-up who, as a child, disobeyed her father, but lived to tell about it and is now someone his parents treat with respect.

Such is the value to telling real stories.  Fun for the teller, it even relieves stress.  Stories help people connect, across generations.  Reminding the grown-up what it is like to be a child.  Teaching the child that grown-ups were once children, sometimes naughty, sometimes frightened. Much like them.