Storytelling Assignment

I tape recorded a story told by my brother, Peyton, about working as a Border Patrol agent in Laredo, Texas. The story was about his first day on the job after he had completed all of his training hours. He and some other agents were tracking a large group of what they thought were people trying to get across the border from Mexico. After spending a couple of hours monitoring, they finally discovered that what they had been tracking was actually a herd of cattle.

We sat across from each other and were the only ones in the room. I noticed that as Peyton was telling the story, he and I made eye contact most of the time. I felt the need to nod my head periodically to let him know I was listening and interested in the story. There were a couple of times that I said “uh-huh” and laughed at the funny parts. I also noticed that I did not interrupt his story to seek clarification or to interject with my own story. I think this is due to the fact that his story was clear and so I did not need clarification. Also, I was careful not to interrupt his story due to the nature of the assignment.

As Peyton was talking I noticed that he used words which were conversational but would probably not have been used if I had asked him to write the story down. These were words like “okay…” and “so...” He kept the story flowing and did not use any filler words such as “umm.” He told the story in a sequential manner but first set up the story by providing background information about what it looks like to track people at night.

Peyton used his hands as he talked. He mostly made non-meaningful gestures but there were a couple of times when his hand movement mimicked the story. An example of this is when he was describing leg movement and he created the same movement with his hands. Peyton also used his eyebrows to show emphasis on parts of the story.

Because the final part of the story was comical, the way Peyton told it reminded me of how someone tells a joke—by spending time setting up the story and then coming out with the punch line. When Peyton revealed the ending of the story, he laughed about it and then showed that the story was over by turning of the tape recorder. This was a visual signal to me that the story was over. After he did this, I made a few comments about the story, but they did not get recorded.