My dear, sweet, precious mother longs to be a storyteller. I guess technically she already is. She has taught school for over 30 years and in those years, has told thousands of stories.

As a band teacher, she told stories to go along with the music pieces the band was playing. She helped her students understand the music by painting a picture of what the music represents. As a teacher, she is always telling a story. Actually, she is always telling a story no matter what the setting.

When she stumbled upon a website several years ago about professional storytellers, she decided to look into that as a possible career. She began looking at storytelling workshops and festivals. At these events “professional” storytellers perform, teach, and give advice to those seeking information about this art. When my mother found a storytelling festival here in St. Louis, needless to say she was siked; this meant I could join her for this fun filled event. I reluctantly accompanied her, not wanting her to have to go alone, and thus began one of the oddest days of my life.

One after another, I watched people tell random stories about random things using instruments, sounds, and random body parts to help them “tell the story.” These people were odd to say the least and most of their stories were bizarre and weird, but I stuck by my mom who seemed to be enjoying herself. I couldn’t believe these people called themselves “professionals.” Some of them probably failed their high school drama class.

It wasn’t until a woman by the name of Loretta Washington stepped in front of us, that things really got interesting. In our brochure, it listed Ms. Washington’s story as being about “growing up in the bootheel of Missouri,” which is where we are from. We anxiously waiting for her program to begin, but were terribly disappointed by what came out of her mouth.

She never once mentioned specifically being in the bootheel of Missouri, but did ramble on about growing up in the country. She told us about being at her grandmother’s house one afternoon when she was a child. She and her sister were playing and noticed some beets and red onions on the kitchen table. When her grandmother stepped out of the house briefly, she and her sister started eating the beets and red onions. They ate so many that they threw up. That was the story. But it got weird, when she got very specific in her story about the red vomit from the beets and red onions she and her sister had eaten. She went on for what felt like hours about the fact that she and her sister had vomited after eating these disgusting vegetables.

My mother and I could hardly look at each other during this tirade for fear of bursting into laughter. I didn’t know if I should laugh or throw up myself. The story was making me queasy. It was not only a boring story, it was nauseating.

When the story finally ended we got up and dusted ourselves off, trying to forget this horrible “story.” Later in the day we decided to give Ms. Washington another chance. We located another one of her performances and decided to go. This would turn out to be a bad decision. As we found our seats and Ms. Washington introduced herself, we were horrified to hear her say, “This story is called ‘Beets and Red Onions’.” My mother and I looked at each other horror-struck. Because my mother likes to sit up front and close to the action, we then had to sit and listen to a second helping of “beets and red onions,” this time not being able to control our laughter. I could not figure out how in the hell we ended up having to listen to this disgusting story twice.

That was my last storytelling event. I hope my mother’s storytelling career takes off. I know she will have entertaining stories to tell. Nothing could be as bad as a vomit story.