Daily Story Slam and the Wistful Anecdote

Last Friday, the Michigan Daily hosted a ‘Story Slam.’ Students, both Daily writers and non-Daily students, submitted their poems, stories, and essays beforehand, and a dozen were able to share their pieces in front of a newsroom full of people. It was the first ever Daily Story Slam, but it was a definite success.

I’ve always loved hearing the random stories of people I barely know. There’s something fascinating about hearing a brief anecdote from a stranger that you’ll probably never really become friends with. It’s the same kind of fascination I get from reading the short ‘Humans of New York’ posts. Every stranger has a rich life of their own that I’ll never know about, but sometimes hearing just a little can make them feel real.

Most of my favorite stories at the Story Slam had a similar tone: wistful and light, with some laughs along the way, but with a strong emotional center. Sam, a guy I remembered from middle school, shared his story about not being traditionally masculine and sucking at sports, but it ended on a note of simple joy as his friend taught him to throw a football. Michael, a very short guy from the Daily, read an essay about how he’d never minded being short despite society’s insistence that it was a shameful thing. And Will shared a story about his late grandfather, who he’d always felt bad about never being close with. He eventually came to realize, though, that since he was close with his own father, he had more than enough paternal love in his life.

Also surprisingly heartwarming was the story of a girl who found out that her frequent friend with benefits, Alex, was gay. She’d brought Alex to the Story Slam, and as she read about him, it was hilarious to see him laughing and blushing. At the story’s conclusion, she walked back to their spot and hugged him tightly. It was so sweet.

There were serious stories. One girl, an editor of the Daily’s great Michigan in Color, shared some of the societal disadvantages being a black woman, and one guy shared a poem about the young black male’s fear of the police. These were strong, too, and in many ways, they’re the stories that are most important for society to hear. In fact, the story that won the prize at the end of the night was about a girl whose friend was killed in a car accident right after high school graduation.

My friend Matt leaned over to me and commented that it’d been his least favorite story of the night, and I agreed. There was something pretentious about how she began; she prefaced her story with a long intro explaining that it wasn’t going to make us laugh or teach us anything. It was real, and it happened to her, and it sucked, and she would never get over it. It was like the girl wanted to convey this image of herself as the blunt, honest girl who took no shit and didn’t try to milk simplistic lessons out of her own experiences. But really, as personal as the story was, what made it inherently ‘more honest’ than Derek’s rambling tale of accidentally being stabbed with an EpiPen?

I think that I might’ve still liked the story the least even if it hadn’t contained those off-putting elements, though. For me personally, no racially charged tirade, no tragic story of loss (as important as it may be) will carry the same simple power as the wistful anecdote, the story that lures you in with self-deprecating jokes and surprises you with its emotional candor. That’s what I came to Story Slam for, and I left more than satisfied.