The Storyteller

Having an obvious proclivity for story-telling, the old man leaned forward in his chair, eager to impress the grey-haired men gathered around him while he continued with the saga of his most peculiar life. With each slight nuance of his speech and with every twist in the plot of his tale, he was able to hold them all spell-bound! I can attest to this, for I watched him as he cleverly mesmerized the group of men for a little over an hour! There seemed to be no aperature through which any one man could slip into inattentiveness, for that old storyteller would gesture wildly in one moment and then – in the next- - he would pause for dramatic effect, and then he was immediately back to his fascinating narration. I wondered as I listened to him - how did this wizened centenarian still show the marrow to continue at such a pace? At last, I could tell that he was winding down. His nursing home peers, hanging onto his every word, leaned forward in their seats as he, at the same time, leaned into them – his adoring audience - and delivered the climax! I myself was inwardly chuckling, knowing that the story he told was not his own! He had ripped off the plot of the most engaging movie which I had seen recently at a local theater. But how were the other old men to know that? In this barren place, they never got out to see movies. The storyteller was the new kid on the block! I marveled to think this man now 100 years old had recently seen a contemporary movie still in the theaters! For sure, nobody else in that group had seen movies inside an actual movie house for at least the past decade! I had to hand it to the guy; his temerity was epic. He was -after all - one to tell stories! Nov. 16, 2018 for John Hamilton's 'Eight word challenge-9' Poetry Contest