Short Stories 短篇故事

Well we attended a fundraiser 籌款餐會 for our church to raise money for producing video clips of short stories on DVD, the web and television. Nothing like a good story, everyone loves them. Story telling 講故事, being a bard is certainly one of the oldest professions in the world and the only way the happenings of a peoples were transmitted before most people were literate. Traditionally, the best teachers are also good story tellers, as we Christians know from Jesus teaching his disciples.

These 15 minute videos 十五分鐘的剪片, they vary in quality but some are really very good, give the extraordinary stories about ordinary people. If you click here, you can see some 請聽我說, My Story. You probably don’t know them personally, but they can tell you the story (sometimes complete with video visuals) of how their lives and the lives of people around them were touched. Some have gone to remote areas of the world, some have had a close brush with danger and death, yet others have had really unusual experiences in their careers that they would like to share. But the nice thing is that they are all verified and true 都是真正發生的故事.

Before the meeting, I met an old friend I knew as a single guy 單身的時候, the only white boy in a Chinese-language choral group. It was a difficult time in my life, but they really made me feel welcome. We practiced hard, arrived late, left late and traveled around together quite a bit in those days. With his sense of humor and his no-nonsense attitude, this guy was especially fun to be around. I later moved on, got married. When I returned years later most of the people I had known at that time, including him, were gone.

By now I had almost forgotten him. At the line for food a guy came up to me 排隊拿菜的時候 and said “do you remember me?’ I said yes hesitantly and smiled, because I remembered the face, just not where I knew him. By the time the right neural pathway had fired and I remembered fully who he was, he was gone. Well, I can’t live in the past, but it’s nice to have a reminder every once in a while.