Super Dad

17 February 2017

My dad was the best storyteller . . . probably already mentioned that . . . I think he could have been a professional storyteller though.

They have those you know . . . professional storytellers! I've been to a couple of events where these people have been . . . listened to stories. Jonesborough . . . right here in East Tennessee hosts one of the largest storytelling festivals in the world . . . at the International Storytelling Center in October of every year.

I'm sad to say that as of today, I've never been . . . at least not to the one in Jonesborough. Maybe that will be on "our" bucket list . . . you and I could go!

Storytelling is actually very essential to our world . . . for it is through storytelling that we have come to know history. The written word was not invented until just a couple thousand years ago . . . before that early man told oral stories . . . drew pictures . . . symbols represented words! The first real alphabet was created by the Greeks . . . where letters actually became sounds . . . around the 8th century BC! You probably learned about them in school! Even today Greek letters are used in our language: fraternities and sororities use them to name their houses, they're used in math, science and engineering . . . in HTML.

But my dad . . . nearly every night when he was home he'd either read to us or tell us a story. In almost all of his tales, my sister and I were characters . . . typically threatened by some sort of monster . . . always saved by "Super Dad!" . . . who was generally accompanied by "Super Charlie!"

Super Dad . . . per my dad's description . . . wore red and blue tights; I always imagined that he looked very similar to Superman. And like Superman, Super Dad had his own theme music . . . which he'd whistle (and we'd hum along) whenever he was ready to make an entrance into the story to save us.

No, I have no idea how we always got ourselves into these binds where we had to be saved.

Now Super Charlie . . . on the other hand was a brandy-swilling hero . . . dressed in bizarre yellow and purple tights . . . who first emptied the brandy bottle then broke it across the monster's head. His character was actually patterned after a friend of Dad's from the Navy. I always found Super Charlie's entrance hysterical . . . picturing someone swooping in like some dodgy fly . . . waving an empty brandy bottle all around.

I LIVED for these stories . . . in my eyes, my dad WAS a super hero!

I wish that I had been gifted with that talent . . . to just come up with a cool story on the spot right out of the blue. I tried some of those tales on my girls when they were little, but I usually wound up reading from a book . . . which suited them just fine . . . I think.

“People are hungry for stories. It's part of our very being. Storytelling is a form of history, of immortality too. It goes from one generation to another.” -Studs Terkel