There’s No Such Thing As An Ordinary Life

Editor's note: Each month, the CCW blog features one of our members. This month, Kathleen Caron talks about how what we think is average really isn’t.

“There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal.” C.S. Lewis

Is your life fairly ordinary? Maybe not so ordinary as you think.

Every night when we sit down to dinner, our family shares stories from the day. The funny little occurences in our humdrum routine become epic in the voice of a good storyteller. We tease out the humor, pathos and drama of the tiniest tales, which then become fodder for family lore.

Perhaps because of his French-Canadian heritage, my husband Doric is a consummate storyteller who can spin the thinnest little yarn into a tale that has us all in stitches. He has passed on his keen observation skills to his children, who can hold their own as storytellers and mimics.

“Did anything interesting happen today?” someone will ask. Sometimes, it takes us a while to come up with something, but we always remember an amusing anecdote or an encounter with a flamboyant character that stimulates a great conversation.

Maybe there was a food fight at Joe’s high school, which lends itself to a discussion about world hunger. Or perhaps Marie, who is a nursing student, worked in geriatrics that day, opening an opportunity to talk about how we treat the elderly.

Sometimes the best stories are the smallest. Recently, Doric told about a visit to a home where he unintentionally caused a big stir. Just as he arrived for an estimate (he owns a home improvement company), the impatient husband was hustling the kids into the car. The littlest boy, buckled in his car seat, wailed inconsolably, “I WANT TO SEE THE MAN IN THE HOUSE! I WANT TO SEE THE MAN IN THE HOUSE!” The wife sheepishly asked Doric if he would mind saying hello to the boy. Of course, Doric did, and the little boy was happy because he had seen “the man in the house.”

Telling the story, Doric became the impatient husband, the flustered wife and the sobbing little boy to hilarious effect, and we laughed till we cried. “I want to see the man in the house” instantly became a new catch phrase and an inside joke for our family.

If you’re thinking you don’t have any stories of your own, think about where we live in and near our nation’s capital. At the nonprofit where I work, my coworkers are from Ghana, Peru, Colombia, Mexico, Afghanistan and El Salvador, among other places. All of them have colorful, sometimes tragic, stories to tell about what brought them to America and what they left behind. I could never have an ordinary day, surrounded by such remarkable people.

You don’t have to be an an international diplomat or a world explorer to have an interesting story to tell. You really just have to be paying attention. Your life is far more interesting than you think.

Do you tell stories at the dinner table?

Kathleen Caron lives in Chantilly with her husband, three children and two rescue dogs. She blogs abo{full of life} soul food and is collaborating on a book about pursuing your dreams.

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