Tell-um Story

One of my favorite movies of the last year is Australia, I thought the kid that narrated stole the show. In the beginning he started by telling how his grandfather took him on "Walk about" and told him the most important thing is to "Tell-um Story" Later in the movie the Drover told Mrs Boss that all worldly possession can be taken away and in the end all you have is your story and he was just trying to live a good one.

This month I am attending a managers training and one of the important concepts taught is the importance of using stories to train people or to get a point across. I like this because I always use stories to make a point or teach and train. While in the class I decided that I am going to post a story of the week on this blog. I don't know that they will be in chronological order but they will be true stories as I remember them.



The first story is one of my earliest memories. I remember probably because it has been told so many times by my parents and by my brother and me.

When I was about 5 and Ken was 4 we were playing at our friends Barry and Neil Jones house across the street. Their mother happened to be on the phone talking to our mom. One of the things they talked about was "what am I going to fix for dinner" they seemed quite concerned about this so the four of us set out to see what we could do to help our mothers out.

We ventured a couple of streets away which in it's self would get us in a lot of trouble. Be went into the back yard of a house that had a chicken coop. Young and innocent as we were we felt we had the answer to our mothers dilemma. There was no lock on the door to the coop so we went right in and started chasing chickens. They were not easy to catch but we finally did get a hold of one. We took it out of the coop and found in the yard a pick-ax. One of us held the chicken while another hacked at it's neck. The head never did come off but after a few wackes it seemed quite dead, so one of us slung it over his shoulder and off we went to show our mothers how much we had helped them.

Much to our surprise and dismay our mothers were not the least bit happy with what we had done, in fact they were quite upset. After getting a good talking to and maybe a spanking (really don't remember) they took the chicken and made us show them where we got it. We all walked up to the back door and they knocked several times but no one ever answered. I think all of us including our moms were a bit relieved that no one was home.

Then a miracle happened. The chicken that they had laid on the lawn came to and started getting up and walking around. They quickly grabbed it put it back in the chicken coop and the six of us set out quickly for home.

It's funny how after so many years something that was very upsetting for our moms and for us because we got in trouble, this story has been repeated hundreds of times and always as a humorous story. time does make things a lot different.