Storytelling does not have the same meaning in our culture today as it did in cultures existing before the technological age. As we talked about in class, storytelling today usually revolves around family or friend get-togethers. My family is not really big on storytelling, but I have a number of friendships that have grown closer based on times spent hanging out and telling stories.

When I studied abroad, our group of American students became really close through telling stories (usually about embarassing moments or hilarious situations) to each other. I remember this one story my friend told to a group of us about getting his foot stuck in an escalator back in middle school when he went with his friend to a toy store. He started screaming and everyone looked at him as the escalator stopped and the mechanical display of toys jammed because it ran off the escalator's power. He was also wearing his infamous stinky purple windbreaker and bowl-cut hair-do.

Obviously writing about this story on this blog does not nearly have the same impact as it did hearing the story first-hand. The inside joke of the stinky purple windbreaker does not translate to an outside audience, and there is no way I can adequately describe in writing the imitation my friend did of the mechanical toys stopping and the escalator becoming jammed. I feel like storytelling is no longer an artform. It does exist today but I feel that if our society was more of a storytelling one I might have better succeeded at relaying the above story. Of course I am only speculating and may just be trying to blame my poor storytelling ability on an outside source.

If we lived in a storytelling culture, I might feel inclined to pass my friend's story off as my own. I might substitute myself for my friend's character and no one would really care. I always feel like a failure whenever I try to repeat a funny story that someone else told and no one really thinks its funny. It's kind of like telling a joke and then forgetting the punch line. It just doesn't work as well unless it personally happened to you.