I've just started a new MOOC due to my evolving interest into this education form.
This one is all about storytelling so I was immediately HOOKED. I have homework to do!
Creative Task of the Week - Chapter 1
Please think about which story you have read, seen, listened to, played or experienced has impressed you most in your life. … Which story can you still very well remember? Write down both, the summary of this story (what you remember of the story, not what Wikipedia says.. :) and – on the other hand: – what made it so special to you that you can still remember it.
My re-telling of The Rabbit Trap:
A world of scarcity
I cannot imagine
A world of my
father
Many tales
interwoven and interspersed with his lessons on life
But the rabbit
trap, always the rabbit trap
Is the one that I
remember.
His father, Louis
Napoleon – such a grand name for an impoverished and despicable soul;
A drunk, a wife
beater, a broken man,
Who lived his later
years under his plaid blanket, bellowing orders to his wife and children;
His leg and mind
not allowing him to contribute effectively to their lives;
Only there to abuse.
So my father, age
11, wanted to help his poor mother
He was meant to be
at school, but he found the rabbit trap and put it to use
On his way to
school, a long way from his home, he would detour
To Parliament House
– not for a love or democracy or debate – but for a meal for his mum
If he could steal
away early enough he would set the trap before school
On the lawns of
Parliament House
He would then sit
in the rooms of learning, dreaming only of escape and rabbit stew
Would his family eat
tonight?
Sometimes they did
and til his death
He remembers the
taste of rabbit and his mother’s smile.
What fascinated me most about this story was that it was real and my
father could certainly tell a story! His voice rumbled with emotion and he could
build suspense nd drama so well that I could see it unfolding before my eyes.
My father told me many stories, but this one was my favourite and I heard it
many times. I’m not sure why it was my favourite. Maybe it was because we still
had the rabbit trap and I could hold it while he told the story. Or maybe it
was because my father always changed the tale slightly, making it a new
adventure every time. Or was it because he only told the story when he was
trying to impart some wisdom like: always
be kind to your mother, they have to
bear a lot (his mother certainly did). He even told this story to my
husband the day he asked my father could we get married. My father wanted my
husband to know that his mother had been mistreated by his father and that my
husband was not to mistreat me. I guess this makes his stories moralistic, but
they never felt that way. They were always an adventure into a mysterious and
dangerous past. He hooked me every time he started with “Did I ever tell you
about the time…”
My father was the first great storyteller I knew.
