Hello world!

jwadmin — Wed, 18 Jan 2012 21:34:52 +0000

When I was a kid, my family used to drive to Birmingham, Alabama every summer to see my grandparents. Every year, without fail, in late August, the last two weeks of deep summer, two of us in the way back, two of us in the middle, Mom and Dad in front, we’d make the 15 hour drive from Kent, Ohio to Birmingham. We always stopped in Bowling Green, Kentucky on the way down and stayed at the Holiday Inn there. What I remember, and the reason I’m writing this post, is because when we got to the hotel and checked into our room, my mother would always throw open the curtains, open the window and shout, “Hello world!” It made me feel happy and hopeful and like the big world was mine.

I wasn’t planning on keeping a blog because what in the world would I blog about and everybody and her sister has a blog about her Big New Thought for the day and I don’t really have that many Big New Thoughts and who would read it anyway except maybe my mom and dad and maybe my best friend and maaaaybe the guy who found me on match.com and googled me to find out more before meeting me in person. (Yikes. Wait. OK. I better be careful what I say.) But WordPress named this page “Hello World!” which made me think of my mother, and I started writing this post just sort of as a test to see what it would look like, and tada, here I am! Still writing it! So as I write, I’m reminded of a day not too long ago when I spent an evening with Anna and Hunter, my six-year-old niece and nephew who live close by in Denver. I told them a story about their mom when she was little. They asked for another story, and another, and another. “Tell us another story, Jojo! Tell us another story!” So I did. “Now tell a rescue story! Tell a story about a time you got in trouble! Tell a story about a time you were scared!” And I told story after story. For three hours (no kidding) I told stories. They didn’t run out of interest. I didn’t run out of stories.

So. Although I’m not big on Big New Thoughts, I am a story teller, and wouldn’t it be fun to have a blog where I just tell a story from time to time? They could be old stories or new stories or made up stories or true stories. And maybe someone would read one, and be reminded of another story, and tell it to someone else. I know stories are best told in person, with face and body and voice and breath and the weight of the air and the elasticity of time. And a longer than expected…

pause sprinkled in here and there.

But I’ll give it a shot here in the land of virtual time and space. If you read this and you want a story, make a request. Jojo! Tell us a story! Tell us a story about…

Johanna Walker

Hello world!