Give a Dog a Biscuit!
May 1, 2021 21:12:12 #
I blame my storytelling on my father. He was forever spinning yarns, and amazing to me it seemed to be such that everyone liked to hear them. Even so much so, that on the way back from being our regular Saturday trip into town for the afternoon, he would stop by Old Mr. Williamson’s place and spin a half hour or more telling and hearing yarns with the old man.
This was not the only instance, not by a mile. In the late 1930’s, 40’s and even early 50’s old men in our neighborhood did not go to the hospital to die. They stayed home. Other men would go and sit up with them and tell them stories, and my father was one of those storytellers; he would relate fishing stories, hunting trips, other miscues and funny events that they all remembered and could relate to and remember. It seemed to be a convenient method for men to die without morphine or hard liquor to shoot through.
Now, in this and in many other situations, stories make sense. It gives the hearers an opportunity to either remember or to relate similar events in their lives. So, I compare it to giving necessary medication to your favorite hunting dog, or at least this is how we did it. We never just grabbed our best hunting dog and force him to take some bad tasting medicine or swallow a pill. We would get a biscuit and hid the pill or capsule in the biscuit. That way our dog, even when he knew what we were doing, accepted the medicine and seemed to be understood it was necessary and that we were trying to make it as palatable as possible for him.
In my many years as a salesman and sales manager, I have often found the best way to deliver bad news, or even complicated good news is to wrap it in a story. That way it is easier for those hearers to remember it.
Once, after a particularly long and complicated presentation to a client couple, I had wrapped the details in a story to make it both easy to remember and more palatable, my partner said, “Bob, you are always telling stories.” To which I replied, but at least they have a better chance of remembering it! Just Sayin…RJS
This was not the only instance, not by a mile. In the late 1930’s, 40’s and even early 50’s old men in our neighborhood did not go to the hospital to die. They stayed home. Other men would go and sit up with them and tell them stories, and my father was one of those storytellers; he would relate fishing stories, hunting trips, other miscues and funny events that they all remembered and could relate to and remember. It seemed to be a convenient method for men to die without morphine or hard liquor to shoot through.
Now, in this and in many other situations, stories make sense. It gives the hearers an opportunity to either remember or to relate similar events in their lives. So, I compare it to giving necessary medication to your favorite hunting dog, or at least this is how we did it. We never just grabbed our best hunting dog and force him to take some bad tasting medicine or swallow a pill. We would get a biscuit and hid the pill or capsule in the biscuit. That way our dog, even when he knew what we were doing, accepted the medicine and seemed to be understood it was necessary and that we were trying to make it as palatable as possible for him.
In my many years as a salesman and sales manager, I have often found the best way to deliver bad news, or even complicated good news is to wrap it in a story. That way it is easier for those hearers to remember it.
Once, after a particularly long and complicated presentation to a client couple, I had wrapped the details in a story to make it both easy to remember and more palatable, my partner said, “Bob, you are always telling stories.” To which I replied, but at least they have a better chance of remembering it! Just Sayin…RJS
May 2, 2021 01:21:00 #
Robert J Samples wrote:
I blame my storytelling on my father. He was fore... (show quote)
When I was a young boy I used to dread going to my Grampa’s house. Oh how I suffered through him telling me his “boring” stories for hours it seemed. He’d repeat them like they happened yesterday and most were decades old. He was in his late 70s at the time and lived to be 94. I was sad when he passed but I thought “well at least I won’t have to sit on the metal stool in his kitchen and listen to all those stories I had no interest in while the rest of the family visited in the comfortable living room on soft chairs and couches”. I’d just pray for the time my Dad would say “well we’d better get going”. Even after that my Grampa would keep me there for another 10/15 minutes. My whole body ached from sitting there like a statue for hours. My Grampa died in 1974 and I’ve missed those stories ever since. What I would give now to be sitting on that hard cold metal stool. ☹️😏
May 2, 2021 09:56:34 #
Catfish hunter do you realize you may have become your g father? Just Sayin...RJS
May 2, 2021 12:17:39 #
Robert J Samples wrote:
Catfish hunter do you realize you may have become your g father? Just Sayin...RJS
I’ve thought about that. I, kinda, get a reminder once in a while. I’ve had people tell me they love to listen to my stories. I guess it can only come with time. I landed a really nice, part time, “retirement” gig here in Idaho working on an elk ranch 50 hours a week. Lol. I’m working on 66 and my boss is 69. We break things all the time and just blame it on each other. Never a dull moment and we spend the whole day laughing about what we didn’t get done or made worse than it was. Everybody else that works there (4 others younger than us) just roll their eyes when they see us having fun breaking things all the time. I ask my boss why he keeps me around when I don’t get much done. He says it keeps people from thinking he did it. He just says “I just blame it on you all the time”. I’m like “🤔 that’s what I tell them about you”. We, actually, get a lot done productively but we don’t tell it that way. When they ask us what we broke today we just tell them 6, 900 pound bales for 400 head of elk, 32 buffalo and 52 horses and mules and a record. They’re like🙄. My boss broke the leaf springs on his pickup a while back. When he got to the shop it was leaning really bad on the passenger side. I pointed it out to him and he, immediately, said “I need to stop letting you drive my pickup” I hadn’t touched it. 😂. Makes a long day seem pretty short.
May 2, 2021 21:57:31 #
My Grandad told my Brother and I about a camping trip that he took once, in Nort' Dakota. It was late in the fall, and the weather was getting changeable. He had a big old pot of water on the campfire, heating it up to wash the dishes after supper. suddenly, the wind came up and the temperature began to drop. It got so cold that the water in the pot froze so quickly that the ice was still hot!
...I really miss his stories!
...I really miss his stories!
May 2, 2021 23:12:33 #
Barnacles wrote:
My Grandad told my Brother and I about a camping trip that he took once, in Nort' Dakota. It was late in the fall, and the weather was getting changeable. He had a big old pot of water on the campfire, heating it up to wash the dishes after supper. suddenly, the wind came up and the temperature began to drop. It got so cold that the water in the pot froze so quickly that the ice was still hot!
...I really miss his stories!
...I really miss his stories!
😂😂. Now that’s cold. Or maybe hot air? Lol.
May 3, 2021 00:36:48 #
Yep! I know what you mean. There are times when Northers come sweeping down from Canada and if someone left the fence gate down north of Amarillo, it would freeze everything all the way to Mexico! Just Sayin...RJS
May 3, 2021 10:34:18 #
May 3, 2021 13:21:56 #
Yes, I believe it was, and we were not prepared! Just Sayin....RJS
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