In This Instance, Content Defeats Style

I'm always chastising my wife for beginning her stories with expository topic sentences:

the funniest thing happened!

you won't believe how annoying!

as these kinds of statements not only destroy the drama of the narrative, but they also set up the audience to be in a contradictory position-- we'll see just how funny this thing is . . . so when the boys and I walked in yesterday and she said, "I saw the craziest thing!" I was not only skeptical, but also annoyed at her anecdotal style, but for once the story actually lived up to the opening; the rain finally let up and so Catherine took the dog for a walk in the park, along the river, and she saw a giant tree floating downstream-- the Raritan is tidal by our house, so sometimes-- when the tide is coming in-- the current runs upstream towards New Brunswick, but most of the time it runs downstream towards Perth Amboy and the Raritan Bay, which leads into the Atlantic Ocean; when she took a good look at this giant floating tree, she noticed a seal perched upon the trunk, a seal which apparently got swept up in the storm current and ended up far from the ocean and was now wisely hitching a ride on a makeshift deciduous raft back to its home, unfortunately she did not have her phone and so there's no proof of this bizarre happening, but I believe her because it's too weird a thing to invent.

5 comments:

  1. i just read zman's foaming pipe snake story to my family (see previous comments). a crowd pleaser.

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  2. Did you preface it with "zman left the funniest scatological story ever in my blog!"?

    I hope Catherine reads today's sentence and never tells you any more stories.

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  3. you must be clairvoyant. i totally screwed up in the intro and said "you guys won't believe zman's story!" and then my wife and children jumped down my throat and called me a hypocrite and worse. they wanted me to append it to the sentence but i refused, claiming it was tangential (also ironic). at least they are learning . . .

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  4. Well I'm glad the story was well-received and that you got some flak for it. I tried not to paint too vivid a picture of my sphincter spasms and the bulk of the Pipe Snake in the off chance that anyone's kids read the comment. I will give you all the gory details at OBFT.

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  5. hopefully at tortuga's, in earshot of a vacationing family.

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