Show, Don't Tell

We’re more than halfway through this year of weekly Neighborhood Storyteller missives, and I wanted to revisit my typewriter message mailbox at home, mentioned several times in past months,  to assure you that it is alive and well.

Ah, I feel better now—do you?

Over the past several months, I’ve received some questions from readers about storytelling; where do my ideas come from, how do they come together, what’s my method for arranging the details? Someone even asked what I think matters most when telling a story. 

All of these questions are excellent, and I want to address them in some way this week; but I worry that I can’t wrap answers up in tidy packages. It’s a little like asking a cook who never measures any ingredients and never cooks anything the same way twice for a recipe. 

But I do want to investigate, if you will, the elements of storytelling this week, especially in terms of the question of what matters most to me when telling a story. But take ease, reader: I’d never drag you through a pedantic dissertation. I believe in maxim, “show, don’t tell,” and I know just what I want to show you today. So hang on, we’re going for a ride in the Wayback Machine.

In the winter of 1996, laid off from my seasonal job on a trail crew in the Grand Canyon, I bought a cheap plane ticket to Mexico City, a copy of the Lonely Planet Guide to Mexico, and one of those money belts I later found out the hard way are best worn under your clothes.

Shortly after the plane landed in Mexico City, I’d found my way onto an overnight bus to Chiapas, since the guidebook described Chiapas as mountainous, and a good place for unconventional travelers on a tight budget who sought adventure. Check, check, check.

On the bus I watched samurai movies dubbed in Spanish played at maximum volume and talked to a British couple whose children were, astonishingly, snoozing away the entire time. “Sleeping tablets,” the mother told me unabashedly, filing her nails, while the father sipped a cup of coffee and chuckled softly, not taking his eyes off the movie.

Right now you’re probably questioning the credibility of my memory, wondering how I can remember details in such sharp focus from 25 years ago. I’d wonder, too. The answer is that I have kept elaborately detailed journals for most of my life for that exact reason: I never trusted myself to remember details accurately. And by some small miracle, my journals haven’t been lost, stolen, or destroyed in a flood or fire after all these years.

A bustling street in San Cristóbal, Mexico. (Source: Flickr.)

I arrived at the hostel in San Cristóbal as the guests were eating breakfast, and took a seat at a table with an eclectic group of people drinking tepid instant coffee and eating dry bread rolls smeared with something that looked and tasted like yellow Crisco. 

If you’ve ever stayed in a hostel, you’ll understand what I mean when I say that what they lack in amenities is made up for in spades by the interesting cast of characters you meet.

At the table, two young women from New Zealand with perfect hair and makeup held court, recounting highlights of their travels to a rapt, if slightly dazed, middle-aged man from Hong Kong, and a gray-haired woman who glanced up occasionally from her Spanish phrase book. There was also an efficient-looking German couple wearing matching glasses who got up just as I was sitting down. I didn’t take it personally; they looked like they were on a mission.

 I quietly gnawed on a roll at one end of the table as the glamorous Kiwis rattled off their conquests on the three different continents and twenty-seven countries they’d visited thus far, an impressive list of mountain peaks, jungle rivers, desert treks, and ocean voyages. Besides all of that, they’d found time to work with a sea turtle research group, learn Spanish, and somehow were chosen to be extras in a movie filmed on some tropical beach. 

It was like watching a reality TV show, before reality TV was a thing, about two adventurous supermodels. 

As they continued with details of their travels, I was simultaneously spellbound and bored, and felt a little cramped. There wasn’t room for anyone else inside their escapades, not even a breath of opening to feel anything except envy, and perhaps annoyance. 

“We even got arrested once,” the one with curly hair said. “In Tasmania, of all places!” the one with glossy lips finished the sentence. They giggled in unison, and high-fived. 

Here’s where I want to step in as the authority and tell you that sometimes the best way of describing a good way of doing something is by first showing how not to do it.

After the high five, the glossy-lipped Kiwi turned to the unassuming woman studying the Spanish phrase book and asked, “So, what about you?” 

The woman looked up, and waved off the question like it was a pesky fly. “Me? Oh, I’m just a retired school teacher from Canada.” Then she added, “Saskatchewan,” and went back to her book.

But when the man from Hong Kong asked where else in the world she had traveled, she cleared her throat and dabbed the corners of her mouth with a paper napkin, which I understood to be an invitation to listen closely.

“I was 55 years old before I ever left Saskatchewan,” she said, “and my very first trip was to Russia.”

The Canadian woman went on to describe how several years earlier, shattered from an unexpected divorce, she booked a trip on the Trans Siberian Railroad from Moscow across all of Russia, through Mongolia, to Beijing.

“I read about it in a magazine at my dentist’s office,” she explained, her voice finding its stride as she greased up one of the Styrofoam rolls, “and it seemed like the one thing that would feel more dramatic than my marriage ending after thirty-two years.” 

She took a bite of the roll and shrugged. 

She confessed that, beginning with boarding a plane for the first time ever, she had no idea what she was doing. “The money was a mystery,” she said, describing the strange bills and thick coins she’d get piles of at the currency exchanges.

“Each time the train stopped in a city or town, I would find what looked like a clean, cheap hotel. I spoke no Russian, no Chinese, and the hotel clerks spoke no English, so I’d just walk up to the front desk and lay out the amount of money I thought I could afford for a room on the counter,” she said. 

She said that the clerks would look either surprised, frustrated, or both. Sometimes they took the money and slid her some change across the counter. Other times they’d peel a few bills of the pile she set down, pluck out a couple of coins, and leave the rest, smiling and nodding.

Sometimes, however, the exchange met a stalemate: both parties staring down at the money, no one making a move.

“What would you do then?” I asked

“I’d just look them in the eyes and smile,” she said plainly.

“And then they’d give you the room?” asked the curly-headed Kiwi, now captivated.

“Usually,” she said.

 “And if not?” the man from Hong Kong chimed in.

“I’d start crying,” she said, shrugging.

“And then they’d give you a room?” I asked, breathless.

 “Always,” she smiled, her eyes shining with tears, “every single time.”

If this were a document from the IRS, here is where I would insert a page that says, “This page intentionally left blank,” just so you could have a minute to yourself to absorb one of my first, and best, lessons in storytelling.

The Canadian woman’s story wasn’t a litany of events, achievements, details, or descriptions that lined up into a beginning, middle, and end. It was not about Russia, Mongolia, China, or even divorce, but rather a snapshot that brought vulnerability, courage, and the kindness of strangers into sharp focus.

Her story was about other things, too, but she left those things undefined in the open spaces where we, the listener, were allowed to feel our way in and decide for ourselves.

And with that, dear reader, I hope that each time you read one of my stories, you can find your way into the open spaces. I promise that I have left them there for you.

Read more of our weekly Neighborhood Storyteller columns here!

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