16. First One Man Show--on the Side of the Road
The school bus dropped my friend and I at the end of the laneway to my farmhouse--every day, just about 3:45pm. We left the bus, parted company and he headed off down the hill to his house. I headed up the lane to mine, and to do 'the chores'--feed the cats and the dog and the sheep. This happened every day, unless we stayed on the bus to the bottom of the hill, the next stop, where we'd go into the general store (yes, there was a 'general store') for a bag of chips and a pop. But that's another story--
One day my friend was particularly eager to tell me something when we left the bus. He had seen something on television, and it had clearly excited him, and he couldn't leave without telling me about it. So we stood on the grass-covered hill at the side of the road, with cars occasionally racing past us noisily, the two of us next to a fence, safe but entirely in view of anyone passing by. And he told me a story--
It was quite a tale, with an involved plot and a lot of detail, about a man who was accidentally exposed to some kind of cloud or gas, who then discovered that he was becoming just a little smaller every day. My friend, I remember, moved excitedly while he told me how this man kept shrinking, at first to the size of a child, then a doll in a dollhouse, and finally, how he fell into the basement of his own suburban home, where he had to fight for survival, for stale cheese, against a spider that had become a giant to him. He fought, and killed the spider, and he won his life. And then, in the strangest of endings, he felt himself shrinking again, until he was too small to see. He shrank into nothingness....
This may seem like a small episode to write about here. My friend had seen a 1950s B-movie on afternoon television, called, I later discovered, The Incredible Shrinking Man. It had clearly impressed him, and he wanted to share it with someone who knew about television. And I was a friend who knew about television. So he told me the story, from beginning to end.
What I can't quite get past in remembering this moment, is the intensity of it. This was a time in our lives when we generally indulged in short jokes, bad puns, witty sayings (or so we liked to think). We told stories, certainly, but these were, as I remember, all a part of physical play, creating imaginary spaces outside, hiding, attacking, defending, building, dismantling, saving, destroying, all somehow related to one comic superhero or another. Narrative was all tied up in physical play. Our use of words was more staccato, a line or two at most.
I believe that I remember this so well because it was both unusual, and unusually intense. We didn't indulge in the telling of stories of any length, or in the expression of emotion. And here was this good friend, well-known for his quick wit and cool custom, positively out of control in his eagerness to act out an entire tale for me, the moment he could, out in the open, blow by detailed blow, the words pouring out as he waved his arms and danced around for effect. I remember, because I'm quite certain I hadn't seen this before.
What I was seeing was a performance of narrative story-telling that was just then, in my life, seldom seen 'live.' Children's television certainly had entertainers who told stories, though usually coolly done, while holding a book. Stories were acted out for us all the time, on television, on records, on the radio. People read aloud. But this was something different.
The way I remember it, it seemed like something...older, a way for this individual to share an experience using every means at his disposal. He could have told me the story in a few seconds. He could have told me to look for it next time it was re-run on television. He could have told the story in the way we usually did--with a winking nod and a joke, because it was, after all, impossible, and in many ways laughable. But a choice was made--or a need was filled.
That choice--that he must tell this story while standing, moving, and he must tell it all, every scene, every gut-wrenching turn of the plot. He must tell it with fire and fury.
Only later did I see this film on television. It remains one of my favourite films. It's a good film, in fact, by most measures, and I recommend it.
But better--see me first, and I'll tell you the story. Every turn....
We'll need a country setting.
