“Aww, look at those two.”

I’m outside at a bar when my wife points out a couple sitting across from us. 

They both look fairly old, late 70s at least. She’s got a walker. They have half-drunk beers and tapas on their table. 

“So cute. I hope we still go out for a drink when we’re their age…”

My first thought is, “Ok, she’s not thinking of leaving me,” which maybe surprises me more than it should. Maybe I’m not doing such a bad job as a husband…

But, right after, I notice there’s some really terrible music coming from the direction of their table. 

“Are they playing that music?” I ask her. 

(I get really annoyed when people play their music loudly in public places–especially because it’s always crap music, it’s never Pearl Jam or something remotely decent.) 

“That can’t be them, it makes no sense,” she says. And she’s right, the music is some sort of reggaeton, which I’m sure some people think is good, but they don’t seem the type at all. 

But the old guy has a phone sticking out of his shirt pocket, and the music is clearly coming from there. 

“Should we say something?” I ask Patricia. “It’s really annoying, we can’t even talk properly.”

“I don’t know, I still can’t believe it’s them…”

I consider asking them to lower the volume, but then I think: if he’s gotten to that age and still haven’t learned how to behave in public, there’s a good chance he’ll react badly to being asked. Not sure I want the grief… 

We end up saying something to the waiter, and we watch as he walks over. The waiter says something to the old guy, and we see him looking really confused. Then he reaches for his phone, looks completely surprised there’s music blasting out of it, and starts laughing: 

“Hah, I did think someone was playing really terrible music nearby!”

The waiter laughs and we laugh with him. 

Patricia looks at me and somehow resists saying “I told you so.” But I can see she wants to. 

Right then, the two of us staying together until our late 70s is looking a little less likely again 😅

Be that guy 

There are few things more annoying than people who only want to talk about themselves. You might have a friend who only gets in touch when they have news they want to share, or another one who’ll talk your ear off while never asking about your life. I’m embarrassed to say that I’ve often been that guy, but I’m also here to tell you that proper social etiquette is turned upside down when it comes to writing stories: 

You have to make them about yourself. 

This means two things: 

Make it personal 

Telling personal stories doesn’t mean they’re always about you driving the action. You can be witnessing it and reacting to it (like in the story above), you can be remembering something, you can be relating something that happened to someone else, but you’re always in it somehow. At the very least you want to connect how you learned a 3rd-person story to you, something along the lines of “I just couldn’t figure out what was going on there, so I started looking into it, and that’s when I heard about Destin Sandlin and the backwards bike experiment.” 

Make the meaning about you 

The most important question to ask when you decide to tell a story is “How did that change me?”: what do you think, feel, or do now that you didn’t before that happened? 

If you’re still exactly the same person, then it might be a fun, exciting or even moving anecdote, but it will not be a particularly powerful story: the main reason you tell most stories is to get an idea across to the audience without having to preach at them. You become the relatable stand-in, going through problems they understand, and being changed as a result. If you’ve been changed, maybe they can change too. 

And this doesn’t have to be huge: sometimes a small habit we pick up, or a tiny shift in perspective we go through, can work as a foot in the door for a more meaningful change (or at least hint at that). In my story above, there’s a deeper concern I could explore about how much my wife is so much quicker than me to assume the good in people, how I am too quick to criticise, and how I worry that might one day become a wedge between us. I could have made that more explicit here, but I’m a few days out from a less-than-pleasant surgery, so I couldn’t be bothered 😅

In real life, demonstrating an interest in someone else is how you show empathy and connect with people. 

In storytelling, talking about yourself is how you generate that human connection. 

So when it comes to your stories… be that annoying guy. Make it about you, and your audience will thank you.

Because that’s really the only way to make it about them 🤘

-Francisco 

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