From generation to generation, stories are passed down, each teaching the next how to craft a good tale. We all know good storytellers – they reel you closer by lowering their voice at a suspenseful point in the story, they paint vivid pictures using details, and each story’s great ending will leave you laughing or crying – or both. Some storytellers are concerned with accuracy; they want to make you feel like you were there and the details rarely change between tellings. Others throw out “tall tales” that grow and grow until they become larger than life.
I appreciate stories of all forms, but it’s rare that I am the subject of a fish tale. That’s exactly what happened on one of many trips to visit my husband’s extended family in North-central Kansas.
On a sunny Saturday afternoon at Terry’s grandparents’ house, he and I decided that we would cook an evening meal for 17 of his relatives. The only two recipes we had memorized were Sloppy Joes and Tortilla Cheese Soup. We added Caesar salad to the menu, figuring people could pick and choose what they wanted to eat.
We became the culinary masters of an unfamiliar kitchen stadium, starring in our own reality version of “Iron Chef.” The hamburger sizzled, the soup ingredients married together to form a spicy aroma and plates clinked as we set the table.
From the living room rang several “Oooo, that smells good,” and a “Can’t wait to try it!”
The family gathered around the long dining room table with its crisp white tablecloth. In the middle of the meal, I looked to the opposite end of the table and saw Terry’s great-aunt Cecelia enjoying a Sloppy Joe. A bracelet dangled from her thin wrist and rings dazzled from her fingers. Even seated you can tell that her build is tall and slender.
She caught my gaze and offered up a big Aunt C smile while she slipped another Sloppy Joe onto her plate. She polished that off along with her Tortilla Cheese Soup and her Caesar Salad. I don’t know where she put all of the food.
Later in the evening when we cleaned up the table Aunt C said it was time for her to go home. She briefly became dizzy and she sat down on the couch to recover.
I heard her telling the person next to her how wonderful the meal was and how much she enjoyed that Terry and I made it.
The next day Aunt C explained why she didn’t feel well after dinner: she is supposed to avoid bread products. Then she giggled and said, “Those Sloppy Joes were just so good – I ate three of them!”
Three?!
Later I walked by and heard her telling someone else about the Sloppy Joe dinner, “It was just so good that I kept eating – but I really think it made me sick.”
As the day went on, Aunt C’s story grew and grew. I walked in the living room as she was telling the final version of the night to a new audience.
In a terrific storytelling tone with emphasis on all the right syllables, I heard her say, “…and those two…well, they tried to kill me with those Sloppy Joes.”
I can only imagine the legends we’ve become in Kansas since we left.