A good story starts at a specific place and ends at an equally specific place. There might be other stories about these characters, and those of you who know my ongoing love affair with Allan Quatermain have no doubt about my approval of that if it’s done well, but each story begins and ends on its own.
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Life isn’t like that. Life is a mess. While I can tell you the day I first kissed my current boyfriend, I can also tell you that I never would have met him if my computer at work hadn’t crashed repeatedly ten years prior. Without that, I wouldn’t have known the mutual friend, who wouldn’t have stayed with me for a while, who maybe wouldn’t have lived in his neighborhood if not for that brief respite on my couch. I wouldn’t have been working for the company with the shoddy computers if one of my college friends hadn’t dated a guy who eventually became my roommate. I might not have had that college friend if the boys I gamed with in middle school and high school had not taken to hanging out in a particular coffee shop.
So in some weird way, I wouldn’t be dating my current snuggle-bunny* if I hadn’t started gaming with those boys twenty-five years ago. Every piece of that puzzle is required for me to be here. And that’s just me.
But if I were to tell you that story, I’d likely skip over some of those parts. My friend who dated my roommate-to-be doesn’t appear anywhere else in this particular story, despite her starring role in other stories, equally valid.
Tell Me A Story has a story too. In some ways, I still wouldn’t have been here if not for those boys twenty-five years ago and certainly if not for my dad deciding more than thirty years ago that I wasn’t really too young for D&D. But it has a beginning, and it appears to have an ending.
But it’s also part of life and that’s messy. I’m still going to be out there, hoping that someone will find something that delights them and chooses to tell me a story that makes their heart sing. Don’t worry about the messy bits, the parts that don’t quite fit. Stories are a part of life, too, and sometimes they get a little messy. Just tell the stories that need to be told and I will try to listen.
*denotes carefully considered addition by RA’s editor
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