Write Part of My Memoir in November, Day 11: Beware Those Family Stories

Welcome to Day 11 of my memoir writing challenge, which explores how your family’s stories can really screw you up.  

By family stories, I don’t mean the ones that they tell you about the old country, about people and places in the past. I mean the ones they devise about you. The stories that get reduced to an adjective: The cute one, the smart one, the one who’s terrible with money, the ditz.

Me, I was the family klutz. My sister was the one with the coordination skills and athletic prowess in the family, so the story goes.

I’m not going to claim that I don’t sometimes trip over my feet. Also true: Tripping and clumsiness are funny. The notion that I am both clumsy and directionally challenged has been a recurrent joke in my memoir.

Naturally, the reality is more complex. I never tried out for athletics because I’ve always been bookish. And I often trip because I’m thinking of other things and not paying attention to where I’m walking.

But I internalized the simpler story, that I’m a klutz.

I realized this today when I got home from Zumba. I had avoided taking the class at my health club for years because I was certain I would embarrass myself. So many people told me how much fun it was, I finally decided to go for it.

In the beginning, I was skittish. It took me a while to learn the steps. Eventually, however, I realized it took me no longer to learn than it took most other people. After that, it was a slippery slope, in a good way — not one that I tripped on. As soon as I got over my fear, I began to enjoy the class. Then, wonder of wonders, I discovered I was really good at it. New people in the class would come up to me and say, “You look like you’re having a great time, and that’s probably because you do it so well.” I was gobsmacked the first time; I thought I was being mocked. Since then, I’ve heard it often enough that I believe it.

That’s the thing with family stories. You hear them often enough and you believe them. But they’re not always true.

I’ll keep my klutz stories in my memoir; they serve a comic purpose. In my life, it’s time to chuck them.

Tags: clumsiness, family stories, Zumba