Tag / story time

by Nathan Coumbe

He called me a “f@#*ing idiot”

I went to get my oil changed the other day at one of those quick-stop places that litter every metropolitan area.

As I pulled up, the gentleman at the computer started talking to me through my window to get my information. 

The man below my car (the one who would be doing the oil change), yelled up…

“Tell the idiot turn his car off!”

Okay… So I did. 

Then I was asked to pop the hood. I pulled the tab, saw the front of my car move a bit and heard a pop. I assumed that I’d popped the hood, and so did the person who’d just collected my information. 

We sat for a few seconds trying to figure out why he couldn’t open it—much too long for the gentleman waiting below. 

He stormed up the stairs, cussing at the top of his lungs, and started banging on my hood. 

That’s when I realized that I might have popped the trunk instead (all the buttons are right next to each other and my trunk doesn’t move when you pop the lock). 

So I hit the correct button. And I was greeted with the longest awkward silence of my life. 

The man looked at me, and through gritted teeth snarled, “You pressed the wrong damn button, didn’t you?”

Well, obviously I had. And he wasn’t happy—and things quickly got out of hand.

That man RAGED AND STORMED all over the garage yelling at the top of his lungs for employees and customers alike to hear.

“I’m so tired of dealing with F@#*ING IDIOTS like this!!!”

“I need these F@#*CKING IDIOTS to learn how to use their damn cars!”

“What the hell is the matter with these a@#holes today?”

He screamed, he kicked tools and tires, he sounded on the verge of murder…

After his tantrum, he stormed back down the stairs, cussing up a storm all the way. 

Now, I’ll admit—I was both angrier than I’d ever been and mortified beyond belief. 

I didn’t tip him (as I always do), but I paid my bill after the service was performed and drove away, fuming and on the verge of starting my own tantrum.

But after I’d been driving for a couple of minutes, a different thought entered my mind:

How bad had his day been to trigger a reaction like that?

What did he have going on in his life that made him HURT like that?

Because I realized (from plenty of past experience) that the only times people act that way are when they’re feeling some unbearable pain inside. 

I realized very quickly that it had absolutely NOTHING to do with me (or at least very little).

As Zig Ziglar would say, “Someone had been kicking his cat. All. Day. Long.”

I think that’s the lesson of this story:

It’s not about you.

Something else (possibly lots of things) happened before I ever showed up. There might have been trouble at home. He might have had an angry boss. Or a jerk for a customer that treated him the same way just a few minutes before I got there. 

When people act out like that, they’re hurting, insecure, scared… And emotional. 

Aren’t we all?

by Nathan Coumbe

We Are All Liars

I was flipping through books in a bookstore the other day on an Artist Date. While there, I came across one by my favorite marketing teacher Seth Godin.

Seth boldly claims that all marketers are liars because their jobs are to tell stories. As I thought about it, I realized we’re all liars.

Stories are how humans make sense of the world. It’s been that way since we were sitting around campfires, boasting about the Mastodon we brought down on the plains.

Our stories are never accurate. Our memories are fleeting, piecemeal images we try to put together into coherent statements. It’s why you can ask multiple eyewitnesses what happened at the scene of an accident and get four versions of the same crash

This does not mean there are no true stories, no facts. It just means the stories we tell ourselves and others are never the whole truth.

Fish Stories

How many times have you heard the same fish story from a relative? Did the fish get bigger with every telling?

I remember as a child sitting in the living room with my older brothers, sides splitting from tales of their recent exploits and the ridiculous shenanigans they got up to.

And I remember feeling a sense of jealousy afterwards. “Why couldn’t I tell stories like that?” Stories that were as humorous, grandiose, and absolutely ridiculous.

One reason was I had not mastered telling stories (read: changing details ever so slightly to make the stories better). Another reason was I had not lived long enough to collect interesting stories.

Of course, as I got older and my contact with other strange characters in this world increased, I collected my own fair share of comedies. And now, each time I retell one, I find myself questioning the details.

Did that really happen? Did I add that tiny detail to make the story more cohesive? More enjoyable? Am I remembering it the way it really happened?

The answer, of course, is no. We never do.

We humans like stories, but the stories we tell ourselves change. They’re imprints of what actually happened, not what actually happened.

I guess that makes us all liars.

But it also makes story time much funnier.

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