“Let me tell you a story.”

Words cast, like verbal bait, reel in listeners in disparate times and circumstances.

Be it the co-worker who gathers an audience round the proverbial water cooler. Or a public speaker that deviates from the intended trajectory, as was the case at a recent talk where renowned naturalist and painter Robert Bateman, related an encounter with Margaret Atwood.

It went something like this.

“I probably shouldn’t be telling you this story,” he said, and the audience went for the hook. “Years ago in an Ontario forest,” Bateman continued, “ I was with my group of birders when we encountered another birding group led by Pierre Berton. I noticed a woman among them off to one side, who resembled Margaret Atwood. So I strolled over and asked her if she was Margaret Atwood. She replied, ‘I am not Margaret Atwood today.’ And as she walked away, she called over her shoulder, ‘I’ll be her on Monday—maybe.’” Bateman’s audience laughed, and with the bait taken, he reeled them in with the rest of his talk.

In junior high I had this one Health class teacher. I don’t remember much of what Mr. Harrison actually taught us, but I do remember the stories. Like the time he brought in some teen magazine (Was his lesson plan devised somewhere between the school library and our class?). He proceeded to enlighten us on manipulation in advertising, and he illustrated his point with an ad for Cover Girl cosmetics. Cheryl Tiegs, then a little known 20 year-old, graced the magazine’s cover. Her blonde hair, neatly parted in the middle, cascaded down a flawless face. Mr. Harrison argued her hairstyle purposely covered crow’s feet. Hmm? Crow’s feet on someone who would age another ten years and then be catapulted into supermodel status with the likes of Vogue, Elle, and Sports Illustrated. That’s some manipulation.

And there are those scary campfire stories, like the ones my counsellor told the first night out at Camp Cadicasu. Securely tucked into our bunks, he told the tale of a bad traffic accident down the road.

“All that remained,” he said, at the end, “were the guy’s eyeballs.” In the darkness he passed around soggy grapes.

How corny is that?

But after he whipped out his hatchet man hiding in the attic story, I spent the rest of the week sleeping with an eye out our bunkhouse window. And for months at home, I never once entered the bathroom without first peering upwards to ensure a closed attic.

It is funny how natural storytellers captivate their audience without the written word. (National treasure Richard Wagamese excels in both the oral and written forms.) With apologies to so many great writers, a good story needn’t involve countless drafts of soul-depleting-bled-on-paper desperation. The raconteur may start with the other kind of ‘draft’; the beer-fuelled yarn that regales buddies round the tavern table, the telling of which is embellished on successive occasions; it reaches classic status when people declare, “You have to tell the one about…”

Two stories with such potential came my way recently.

In the first one, over coffee one morning a smiling Laurie revealed she spends summers at her cottage on Lac Mecham.

“Where’s that?” I asked.

“It’s an hour or two outside Ottawa,” she said. “I swim there every day—love it.” Her smile lessens, and then transforms into a look of consternation before she continues. “But this one time I noticed something in the water following me.”

I thought of Jaws. “What did you see?”

“A fish,” she said. “And it followed me wherever I swam. It looked bug-eyed.” Laurie laughed. “Its lip curled like this.” She yanked one corner of her mouth downward and added, “I suppose it was like a harelip. I named it Romeo.” I thought she should have called it Bogart. But hey, it was her story.

Laurie spoke of the fish with the fondness and pride one speaks of offspring.

Each time she swam out into the lake, the fish greeted her like the family dog, and it followed her back to the dock. So that started me thinking about the behaviour of fish. I didn’t think they interact with people much. They always scurry away. Not Romeo. He didn’t take the food she offered, and yet he remained her loyal follower. (A simple crush?) And what of Laurie’s husband? Did he have any idea? The husband is always the last know. But alas, the lake season drew to a close, and with it, the summer romance.

“Will you see him this year?” I asked.

Laurie grew silent, musing, and then said, “A neighbour approached me the day I left, said she’d caught a fish earlier.” Laurie grimaced. “I hope it wasn’t Romeo.”

I’ll see Laurie in the fall, and I’ll ask her about Romeo. No sense asking Tyrrel because…well…the husband is the last to know.

The second story destined for classic designation also came my way the very same day.

As I waited for fitness class to begin, another participant approached.

Marilyn is a wiry blond dynamo, and in the gym displays impossible ragdoll-like flexibility. Before I knew her, the first time I laid eyes on her, petite Marilyn raced up and down our street in a wheelchair, determined not to let recent foot surgery diminish her spirit. A former runner, Marilyn remains a rabid fitness freak. But before class that day, she told me of the harrowing experience that tested her mettle.

She began in classic hook fashion (Apologies to Romeo). “Let me tell you what not to do if you find yourself lost in the mountains.” She expelled an exasperated breath and explained that she’d been up to Mount Washington the day before. The summit is an easy 30-minute drive for the snowshoeing crowd of the Comox Valley (Locals love to brag how they play golf in the morning and ski in the afternoon), so they think nothing of going up for and hour or two. Marilyn is no exception. On a whim she had decided to go in the early afternoon.

“I did all those things they say that you shouldn’t. I didn’t tell anyone where I was going, left too late in the day, packed no food, matches, flashlight, carried nothing—NOTHING.”

“Did you bring extra clothes?” I asked.

“Are you kidding?” she said, with a self-deprecating laugh. “At the top there’s a crisscross of snowshoe trails delineated by colour-coded poles.” She waved off my slack jawed wonder. “No, no map either.”

Marylyn chose one of the seemingly benign routes and trudged onward in the sunlit snow.

“In the quiet of the meadow, I stopped to take a picture of a whiskey jack,” she explained, “but my cell phone had died. So I kept walking. With the daylight fading, I took off my sunglasses. I tried to return to the trailhead, but I must have taken the wrong turn because I found myself going in circles.”

“Was there anyone else around?”

“No. I never saw anyone.” Her eyes widened. “My breathing became rapid and I began to sweat profusely, not from the exertion, but from fear.”

“So, what did you do?”

“I kept to the open meadow, away from the surrounding forest, thinking what an overnight stay might bring. Eventually a snowmobile came my way—someone probably checking to see who was left on the trails. He blew past me, so I went in the direction he’d come from, and in the dark I found my way back with three cars remaining, including my own, in the parking lot.”

In her novel ‘A Tale for the Time Being’, Ruth Ozeki’s character Jiko, a 104-year-old great-grandmother and Buddhist nun says; “Life is full of stories. Or, maybe life is only stories.” And so it is that everyone loves to hear them. They serve many purposes: to teach First Nations culture; to pass the time; to carry us away; maintain interest in a topic; send a chill through the spine; to savour a delicious morsel of gossip. No one responds to the offer of a story with, “Not now, I need to finish these dishes,” or “Can we get back to those equations?” And if you do, someone pipes up and says, “Let them tell the story.” And as a child at bedtime, you begged for one. And when that story was done, you’d holler for another, and another one after that. There is no greater thrill than to enter that world. Which reminds me, did I ever tell you the story of how I almost set the house on fire…?