Lately I’m intrigued by those stories that people are asked to retell. I make the distinction here between those stories that storytellers are asked, by others familiar with the stories, to retell and those stories that storytellers retell without being requested to do so. A storyteller’s age appears to correlate with the frequency of the latter retellings, suggesting that age-related mental infirmity, obstinacy, and/or entitlement to be heard is a sufficient provocation.
The intrigue of those oft-requested stories notwithstanding, I share here a story that I’m never asked, not even by those familiar with the story, to retell.
A TRAIN STORY
On a train trip from Montreal to Toronto, I was joined by a friend at the station stop in Belleville, Ontario. This meeting at Belleville had been planned. I don’t recall whether my traveling companion and I had agreed that he would board the coach bearing lunch for both of us, but he did so. For this I was grateful.
As he and I were unwrapping our sandwiches, a woman in the seat directly in front of mine stood so that she could look back into the seats where my traveling companion and I were sitting.
“Are those sandwiches?” she asked, her tone more frantic than the content of such a question would typically merit.
“Yes,” I said.
“What kind? They’re not fish, are they?”
I looked down at my sandwich. It wasn’t a fish sandwich; I don’t recall what kind of sandwich it was, but I’m certain, as the remaining portion of this story will indicate, that it wasn’t fish.
“No,” I said, “not fish.”
“Whew,” the woman exclaimed. “I’m horribly allergic to fish. Even the smell of fish triggers my allergies.”
“Wow,” I said, “that’s pretty severe.”
“Well, you’re safe,” my traveling companion added. “These aren’t fish.”
After exchanging a few more pleasantries with the woman, my traveling companion, perhaps sensing himself in the company of a fellow Canadian traveler (I’m not Canadian), asked her where she’s from.
“Halifax,” she said.
As the Buddha said, To conquer oneself is a greater task than conquering others.
This woman was lucky that we weren’t unwrapping fish sandwiches because, by that point in the journey, I was quite hungry.
