Trick title. The true one being when did I start to tell stories.
The answer? Like most of us, when I started to babble to my parents as a baby. Come on, I’m serious. How many times have we spoken to an infant and told them that’s quite a story they’re telling us. Let alone watch them play as they move around their blocks, cars, stuff toys.
Kindergarten teachers constantly asked what was happening in our paintings and then writing it down so others would know. Maybe before we could change – edit – our tale.
I’ve been creating and recreating stories since my first memories of play. Since wondering if maybe there was something under my bed – thanks to my cousins’ game of ankle grab as we jumped screaming from twin bed to twin bed. Sure my cousins were long gone to their home, but that didn’t mean something else was now under the bed waiting to play.
Oh, the answer to the parental question – what are you thinking/doing – isn’t nothing. We never knew how to explain we were trying to see the ghost hiding in the corner of our eye without being told some grown up boring explanation.
We weren’t being silly colouring the grass blue and the sky green. That’s how it was in our upside down world. Spelling? You mean the language of backward world.
See, me and my friends have been telling stories all our lives, we’ve just started to write them out for you.
Hmmm, did I already write something like this before? Oh well, there’s more than one way to tell anything.