January 4 - 10, 2018 Up Front News Opinion
I
t’s about old friends,” Meg Ryan’s Sally tells Billy Crystal’s Harry in the 1989 classic When Harry Met Sally. It’s New Year’s Eve, they’ve just confessed their love for each other and shared their first deep kiss as the clock wound down. And in the awkward silence that follows Harry wonders aloud about the meaning of the song, the one that’s trotted out every New Year’s Eve and then tucked away again for next year. It’s actually an old Scottish folk song, a 1788 poem by Robert Burns set to music. And the words literally mean “long ago.” Somewhere along the line, the modern version became a New Year’s Eve standard and the broad theme of an unassuming story slam on Dec. 29. Triad Storytellers Exchange gathered on the cold winter’s night, a couple days before the turning of the calendar, for their monthly storytelling contest in the back room of Scuppernong Books. Amidst bricks walls and shelves of used books, seven people told 5-minute stories about old friends and New Year’s memories to a dozen listeners. Some stories focused on ordinary challenges that, when solved, bring the kind of deep relief that sticks in a mother’s memory decades later. Charlotte Hamlin asked what others in the audience typically do the first day of the new year, demonstrating the conversational ease of a professional storyteller
Puzzles
Shot in the Triad
Culture
CULTURE Tales, and those who tell them, at Scuppernong story slam
by Lauren Barber
12
Jeanne VanBuren shares her Auld Land Syne story.
LAUREN BARBER
of more than 15 years. Hamlin gave birth to a son on Jan. 1, 1970, and on the first day of 1978 she found herself entertain-
Charlotte Hamlin shares a story at Scuppernong Books on Dec. 29.
LAUREN BARBER
ing eight 8-year-old boys with more energy than she could Jeanne VanBuren’s chauvinistic brother couldn’t love other muster. When the birthday games ended far too early, her people less and has a nasty habit of proving so on Facebook. husband’s light went off: a screaming contest. One-by-one in A few weeks ago, VanBuren wrote a sarcastic post about her their basement, he and the boys yelled as loud as they possibly flooded basement. It didn’t take long for Art to ruin the fun could, exhausting themselves. with a misogynistic comment. “Who would’ve thought it would be one of the best New “I wasn’t going to air my dirty laundry on Facebook,” VanBuYear’s Eve presents I’ve ever had?” Hamlin said. ren said. “So, I did the next best thing: I private messaged my Laksmi Devi delivered something of an elegy for her high ex-sister-in-law… I was like, ‘You know what? You deserve a school friend George Lehman, a brilliant and popular man. trophy for bein’ married to him for as many years as you were.” “Our chemistry teacher geared the test for George,” she Art’s ex-wife, who works at Home Depot, joked about not said. “There were 153 points on a given chemistry test and killing him because she knows orange doesn’t suit her. I’d get them back with about 23. I’m thinking, Oh, Lord. But “I decided I had to find a trophy for her for Christmas,” George would say, ‘23? Well, that’s a C!’” VanBuren said. Devi drew an arc in the air with a She couldn’t find any trophies in giggle as she described how she came thrift stores but she did find a silver ice to understand the concept of grading bucket, similar to the one her mother Join the Triad Storytellers Exon the curve. willed to her in honor of their chamchange at their next slam on “My brother was a doctorate in pagne-drinking memories. VanBuren Jan. 27 at Scuppernong Books chemistry and I thought, Surely some filled the ice bucket with knickknacks of this has rubbed off, but it must alluding to Art’s “episodes” on Face(GSO). have been on my shoe because it book, like hand sanitizer for the time he certainly wasn’t in my pen or my mistook personal lubricant for an offthoughts,” Devi said. “My Auld Lang brand Purell and “some chalk for when Syne? I’m remembering George.” she does kill him.” Stories were built with quips and turns of phrases, with VanBuren received before-and-after photos of a now-polrough ideas of where to begin and where to end. The rules of ished ice bucket a few days before the slam, along with a story the slam prohibit rehearsals, notes or props. from one of her mother’s visits to Art and his then-wife. The magic lies in the remembering. “My mom’s comment to her was, ‘You get to have silver so In the days before dear George died, he crafted a crossword you have something to do when you don’t want to talk to anypuzzle where the first letter of each word spelled out a birthbody,’” Van Buren said. “Now on New Year’s we can both have day message from his hospital bed. our champagne bucket and say cheers to each other.” “Never lorded over anyone,” Devi said. “He just really loved people, and felt that each of us was such a gift in his life.