01_My Grandmother's Porch Taught Me Everything I Know About Storytelling
Before I knew what storytelling was, I learned how to watch the world from my grandmother's porch.
From my grandmother’s porch, I can hear the ice cream truck blaring down the street. Neighborhood kids chase after it, yelling for the driver to slow down, while the grownups call after them, “Do you have ice cream money?”
The kids playing double dutch and basketball in the street. The boosters selling DVDs and CDs. The Jehovah’s Witnesses proselytizing. The have-nots and the have-less—because we were all poor, just different levels of poor.
I sat on those front steps taking it all in.
My grandmother’s porch taught me how to be an observer of life. I learned to simply witness people as they are. The more people I watched, the more I realized how much we all have in common.
The porch also taught me to keep a good one-liner ready. Everybody thought they were comedians. If somebody came for you, you had about three seconds to respond before the crowd decided who won. You needed a punchline with rhythm, timing, and a little sting.
Most importantly, the porch taught me that storytelling isn’t just about what you say but also how you say it. A flat delivery might work for comedy or sarcasm, but the storytellers I grew up around knew how to keep people engaged with pauses, hand gestures, and the inflections.
Funny enough, for all the storytelling I absorbed on that porch, I never thought to ask about the woman who made it possible, Grandma Laura.
My grandmother was from the south. She was petite and had a gold cap on her front left tooth. She was dedicated to the church and lived simply. As a child, I never thought to ask who she was before she became Grandma.
Part of the reason I’m creating this space is to find my way back to Laura and 8278 Greenlawn Street—to see what more they still have to teach me. To reconnect with my creative and curious side. To become not only an observer of life, but a teller of it.
Maybe you’re searching for a way to feel connected to something larger than yourself. Maybe you have a porch, a kitchen table, a barber shop, a church basement, or a corner store that taught you how to see the world.
This space is for those stories.
This space is for you.
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