I went camping with my son recently, which was an opportunity to sit by the fire and indulge in that great outdoor tradition.
Not s’mores. Campfire stories.
I rifled through the file cabinet in my brain and pulled out every ghost story I remembered from Girl Scouts, from the girl with the green ribbon to … something about an alien who is standing on a toilet with a booger on his finger chanting, “I got you where I want you, and now I’m gonna eat you!”
No, I don’t know why it was an alien.
One interesting and occasionally brutal thing about my son, though, is that he tells me exactly how a story resonates within him. Like, within his body.
“That was so funny, mom, I felt it all the way up here,” he’ll say, drawing an imaginary line from his toes to his mouth.
“You scared me to here,” he’ll say, motioning to his hip. Then he’ll put his hand next to his chin. “Next time see if you can scare me to here.”
A couple of my tall tales were so bad, they didn’t even rank. “That story fell on the ground. I didn’t even feel it,” he said. “It didn’t touch me.”
It’s strange to be edited in real time by my own 6-year-old child, yes. But his feedback made me fiercer in my telling. I went bolder and weirder and wilder, all for the sake of garnering a reaction.
The body is more than 60% water, which is why music, chanting, and sound therapies have such an impact on how we feel. They change the vibration within us. (Think: That glass of water in Jurassic Park when the T. rex approaches the car, only you’re the cup of water.)
But I also like to believe on some level we’re made up of stories — at least 60%, if not more. So I can’t help but thrill at how my child receives a narrative and considers it a full-body experience. The stories are in his heart, up to his neck, even pooling on the ground around him.
When is the last time you felt a story?