LIVING A BETTER STORY

I'm liking this book, especially the story from chapter 9, "How Jason Saved His Family". It's kind of long, so I will share parts over the next couple of days.

"When I got back from Los Angeles, I got together with my friend Jason who has a 13 year old daughter. He was feeling down because he and his wife had found pot hidden in their daughters closet. She was dating a guy, too, a kid who smelled like smoke and only answered questions with single words: "Yeah", "No," "Whatever" and "Why?". And "why?" was the answer Jason hated most. Have her home by ten, Jason would say. "Why?", the guy would ask. Jason figured this guy was the reason his daughter was experimenting with drugs.

"You think about grounding her"? I asked. "Not allowing her to date him?"

"We tried that. But it's gotten worse." Jason shook his head and fidgited his fingers on the table.

Then I said something that caught his attention. I said his daughter was living a terrible story. 

"What do you mean", he asked.

To be honest I didnt know exactly what I meant. I probably wouldn't have said it if I hadn't just returned from the McKee seminar. But I told him about the stuff I learned, that the elements of a story involve a character who wants something and overcomes conflict to get it. Even as I said this, I wasn't sure how it applied to his daughter.

"Go on," my friend said.

"I don't know exactly, but she's not living a very good story. She's caught up in a bad one." I said lots of other things and he kept asking questions. We must have talked for an hour or more, just about story, about how novels work and why some movies are meaningful and others simply aren't. I didn't think much of it. I just figured he was curious about movies.

A couple of months later ran into Jason and asked about his daughter. "She's better," he said to me, smiling. And when I asked why, he told me his family was living a better story.

*     *     *

Check back tomorrow for "the rest of the story".