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This is a Chancla for those of you, like me, who had no idea
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“If you want your children to be intelligent,
read them fairy tales. If you want them to be more intelligent, read them more
fairy tales.”
― Albert Einstein
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| Antonio Sacre |
My 4-year-old son will not leave the
playground. Nothing works. My calm voice, my “happiest child on the block
voice”, the “1-2-3 magic” counting trick. Cajoling. Pleading. Appealing to
reason. Threats. I’m watching all the other parents on the playground watch me,
compassionate, smug, and fearful that their own turn for the public shaming of
being “The Worst Parent on the Playground” is fast approaching.
How did my mom get us off the playground? Oh
wait, I was raised in the 1970s, my mom was nowhere to be found. We came home
when we were hungry and the street lights lit up the suburban sky.
How did my Cuban grandmother do it? She should
throw her chancla, her slipper, out of the window, and like some magic
boomerang, it would travel through little Havana in Miami to the playground,
hit me and my two brothers on the head, and return to her hand in one second
flat. She’d put it back on her foot and continue cooking, and we would sulk
home through the Miami humidity.
I think, can I just leave my son and tell him
to come home when he’s tired? It’s only three blocks through our neighborhood
in Los Angeles that is patrolled nightly by helicopters and frequently tagged
with graffiti. He’ll be fine.
Can I hit him with a chancla? I beg, I threaten,
I chase, and I’m at my wit’s end.
And then, like my abuela reaching from beyond
the grave with a spectral chancla, an idea hits me. Tell him a story. I am so
rattled and embarrassed that I can’t believe I didn’t think of it until now.
Yes, I am a professional storyteller, and have
been for 20 years, but in this moment, I’m a frustrated dad, looking for a
life-line, and before another parenting technique I’ve learned from some
well-meaning and well-written parenting books escapes my lips, I get as close
as I can to the whirling, sweaty mass of humanity that my son has become and I
speak the magic words.
“Once upon a time…”
My son slows for a second and his eyes lock in
on mine. A tiny window opens, precariously, hovering, expectant.
I have 50 stories in my repertoire that I can
pull out at any time for any audience. I can tell stories for 12 hours and
never repeat a story. I know folk tales, myths, legends, histories, jokes,
riddles, dichos, tall tales, personal stories, magical stories.
And it this moment, it’s all gone. I can’t
think of a story or a character or an archetype to save my life. Three little
pigs? Gone. Hansel and Gretel? Juan Bobo? Lazy Jack?
All gone.
His eyes flicker, he’s looking at the slide and
the swings and the tree and his friends and the sand box, and it’s way, way
past bath and dinner time, and now his bed time is in jeopardy.
My grandmother hits me with another chancla,
and I remember the lesson I just taught to 4th graders a few hours before, when
my life was good and calm and I was competent and sane.
“Most stories have four elements: people
(character), place (setting), a problem (conflict) and a solution
(resolution).” I even wrote it on the board.
And I say to my son, before he can escape,
“Once upon a time, there was a 4-year old boy, at the park, who didn’t want to
leave. And then, something amazing happened.”
If someone were to give me a million dollars in
that moment for the next sentence in that story, I would not have been able to
answer them.
But my son says to me in Spanish, “Daddy, what
happened?”
And I say, “Mi’jo, I’ll tell you what happened
on the walk back home.”
He eyes me for a long, long three seconds.
And then, like magic, he grabs my hand, tugs me
in the direction toward home, and in a sweet, angelic voice, like nothing at
all has transpired on the playground, he says, “Daddy, what happened?”
In the few seconds it takes for all of this to
transpire, all of my story memory floods back, and I take one strand from one
story, one character from another, and the story gets us through a quick bath,
dinner, and on to bedtime books, only an hour past his normal bedtime.
Antonio’s story recipe:
1.
Character: choose two of your favorite family
members, living or passed. Have them talk with a voice you miss or one that you
love, even if they didn’t sound that way.
2.
Setting: put them in your favorite place to be
when you were the age that your child is now.
3.
Problem: have them want something your child
wants: one more minute on the playground, another scoop of ice-cream, whatever
it is you are dealing with, but adjusted for the time period. For example, they
don’t want to play on their iPad, they want to play kick the can again.
4.
Have them not get that thing, but get something
surprising or silly or wonderful instead.
Does it always work? Of course not. That’s what
chanclas are for. But when it does work, it’s magical.
Antonio can be found in many places. Here is a fabulous video series he did about storytelling.
