ELDER
STORIES, TELLING TO AND ABOUT - also ALZHEIMER'S INFO
(excerpts
from posts)
(To retell any of the stories listed below, obtain permission from the copyright holder if the material
is not in the public domain)
1)
There's a story called: The Burning of the
Rice Fields. - a grandfather wakes his grandson and tells
him to hurry - they have to burn the rice fields. And grandfather
races to do just that. Grandson has never disobeyed and does not
this time. The village folk come roaring up the hills ready to
beat the grandfather. Just as the reach the crest of the hill,
a tidal wave comes in a sweeps away the village below.
Here is one version:
JAPAN
The Burning Fields
Full Text:
From immemorial time the shores of Japan have been swept, at irregular intervals of centuries, by enormous tidal waves,--tidal waves caused by earthquakes or by submarine volcanic action. These awful sudden risings of the sea are called by the Japanesetsunami. The last one occurred on the evening of June 17, 1896, when a wave nearly two hundred miles long struck the northeastern provinces of Miyagi, Iwaté, and Aomori, wrecking scores of towns and villages, ruining whole districts, and destroying nearly thirty thousand human lives. The story of Hamaguchi Gohei is the story of a like calamity which happened long before the era of Meiji, on another part of the Japanese coast.
He was an old man at the time of the occurrence that made him famous. He was the most influential resident of the village to which he belonged: he had been for many years its muraosa, or headman; and he was not less liked than respected. The people usually called him Ojiisan, which means Grandfather; but, being the richest member of the community, he was sometimes officially referred to as the Chôja. He used to advise the smaller farmers about their interests, to arbitrate their disputes, to advance them money at need, and to dispose of their rice for them on the best terms possible.
Hamaguchi's big thatched farmhouse stood at the verge of a small plateau overlooking a bay. The plateau, mostly devoted to rice culture, was hemmed in on three sides by thickly wooded summits. From its outer verge the land sloped down in a huge green concavity, as if scooped out, to the edge of the water; and the whole of this slope, some three quarters of a mile long, was so terraced as to look, when viewed from the open sea, like an enormous flight of green steps, divided in the centre by a narrow white zigzag--a streak of mountain road. Ninety thatched dwellings and a Shintô temple, composing the village proper, stood along the curve of the bay; and other houses climbed straggling up the slope for some distance on either side of the narrow road leading to the Chôja's home.
One autumn evening Hamaguchi Gohei was looking down from the balcony of his house at some preparations for a merry-making in the village below. There had been a very fine rice-crop, and the peasants were going to celebrate their harvest by a dance in the court of the ujigami.[1] The old man could see the festival banners (nobori) fluttering above the roofs of the solitary street, the strings of paper lanterns festooned between bamboo poles, the decorations of the shrine, and the brightly colored gathering of the young people. He had nobody with him that evening but his little grandson, a lad of ten; the rest of the household having gone early to the village. He would have accompanied them had he not been feeling less strong than usual.
The day had been oppressive; and in spite of a rising breeze there was still in the air that sort of heavy heat which, according to the experience of the Japanese peasant, at certain seasons precedes an earthquake. And presently an earthquake came. It was not strong enough to frighten anybody; but Hamaguchi, who had felt hundreds of shocks in his time, thought it was queer,--a long, slow, spongy motion. Probably it was but the after-tremor of some immense seismic action very far away. The house crackled and rocked gently several times; then all became still again.
As the quaking ceased Hamaguchi's keen old eyes were anxiously turned toward the village. It often happens that the attention of a person gazing fixedly at a particular spot or object is suddenly diverted by the sense of something not knowingly seen at all,--by a mere vague feeling of the unfamiliar in that dim outer circle of unconscious perception which lies beyond the field of clear vision. Thus it chanced that Hamaguchi became aware of something unusual in the offing. He rose to his feet, and looked at the sea. It had darkened quite suddenly, and it was acting strangely. It seemed to be moving against the wind. It was running away from the land.
Within a very little time the whole village had noticed the phenomenon. Apparently no one had felt the previous motion of the ground, but all were evidently astounded by the movement of the water. They were running to the beach, and even beyond the beach, to watch it.
No such ebb had been witnessed on that coast within the memory of living man. Things never seen before were making apparition; unfamiliar spaces of ribbed sand and reaches of weed-hung rock were left bare even as Hamaguchi gazed. And none of the people below appeared to guess what that monstrous ebb signified.
Hamaguchi Gohei himself had never seen such a thing before; but he remembered things told him in his childhood by his father's father, and he knew all the traditions of the coast. He understood what the sea was going to do. Perhaps he thought of the time needed to send a message to the village, or to get the priests of the Buddhist temple on the hill to sound their big bell. . . . But it would take very much longer to tell what he might have thought than it took him to think. He simply called to his grandson:--
"Tada!--quick,--very quick! . . . Light me a torch."
Taimatsu, or pine-torches, are kept in many coast dwellings for use on stormy nights, and also for use at certain Shintô festivals. The child kindled a torch at once; and the old man hurried with it to the fields, where hundreds of rice-stacks, representing most of his invested capital, stood awaiting transportation. Approaching those nearest the verge of the slope, he began to apply the torch to them,--hurrying from one to another as quickly as his aged limbs could carry him. The sun-dried stalks caught like tinder; the strengthening sea, breeze blew the blaze landward; and presently, rank behind rank, the stacks burst into flame, sending skyward columns of smoke that met and mingled into one enormous cloudy whirl. Tada, astonished and terrified, ran after his grandfather, crying,--
"Ojiisan! why? Ojiisan! why?--why?"
But Hamaguchi did not answer: he had no time to explain; he was thinking only of the four hundred lives in peril. For a while the child stared wildly at the blazing rice; then burst into tears, and ran back to thehouse, feeling sure that his grandfather had gone mad. Hamaguchi went on firing stack after stack, till he had reached the limit of his field; then he threw down his torch, and waited. The acolyte of the hill-temple, observing the blaze, set the big bell booming; and the people responded to the double appeal. Hamaguchi watched them hurrying in from the sands and over the beach and up from the village, like a swarming of ants, and, to his anxious eyes, scarcely faster; for the moments seemed terribly long to him. The sun was going down; the wrinkled bed of the bay, and a vast sallow speckled expanse beyond it, lay naked to the last orange glow; and still the sea was fleeing toward the horizon.
Really, however, Hamaguchi did not have very long to wait before the first party of succor arrived,--a score of agile young peasants, who wanted to attack the fire at once. But the Chôja, holding out both arms, stopped them.
"Let it burn, lads!" he commanded, "let it be! I want the whole mura here. There is a great danger,--taihen da!"
The whole village was coming; and Hamaguchi counted. All the young men and boys were soon on the spot, and not a few of the more active women and girls; then came most of the older folk, and mothers with babies at their backs, and even children,--for children could help to pass water; and the elders too feeble to keep up with the first rush could be seen well on their way up the steep ascent. The growing multitude, still knowing nothing, looked alternately, in sorrowful wonder, at the flaming fields and at the impassive face of their Chôja. And the sun went down.
"Grandfather is mad--I am afraid of him!" sobbed Tada, in answer to a number of questions. "He is mad. He set fire to the rice on purpose: I saw him do it!"
"As for the rice," cried Hamaguchi, "the child tells the truth. I set fire to the rice. . . . Are all the people here?"
The Kumi-chô and the heads of families looked about them, and down the hill, and made reply: "All are here, or very soon will be. . . . We cannot understand this thing."
"Kita!" shouted the old man at the top of his voice, pointing to the open. "Say now if I be mad!"
Through the twilight eastward all looked, and saw at the edge of the dusky horizon a long, lean, dim line like the shadowing of a coast where no coast ever was,--a line that thickened as they gazed, that broadened as a coast-line broadens to the eyes of one approaching it, yet incomparably more quickly. For that long darkness was the returning sea, towering like a cliff, and coursing more swiftly than the kite flies.
"Tsunami!" shrieked the people; and then all shrieks and all sounds and all power to hear sounds were annihilated by a nameless shock heavier than any thunder, as the colossal swell smote the shore with a weight that sent a shudder through the hills, and with a foam-burst like a blaze of sheet-lightning. Then for an instant nothing was visible but a storm of spray rushing up the slope like a cloud; and the people scattered back in panic from the mere menace of it. When they looked again, they saw a white horror of sea raving over the place of their homes. It drew back roaring, and tearing out the bowels of the land as it went. Twice, thrice, five times the sea struck and ebbed, but each time with lesser surges: then it returned to its ancient bed and stayed,--still raging, as after a typhoon.
On the plateau for a time there was no word spoken. All stared speechlessly at the desolation beneath,--the ghastliness of hurled rock and naked riven cliff, the bewilderment of scooped-up deep-sea wrack and shingle shot over the empty site of dwelling and temple. The village was not; the greater part of the fields were not; even the terraces had ceased to exist; and of all the homes that had been about the bay there remained nothing recognizable except two straw roofs tossing madly in the offing. The after-terror of the death escaped and the stupefaction of the general loss kept all lips dumb, until the voice of Hamaguchi was heard again, observing gently,--
"That was why I set fire to the rice."
He, their Chôja, now stood among them almost as poor as the poorest; for his wealth was gone--but he had saved four hundred lives by the sacrifice. Little Tada ran to him, and caught his hand, and asked forgiveness for having said naughty things. Whereupon the people woke up to the knowledge of why they were alive, and began to wonder at the simple, unselfish foresight that had saved them; and the headmen prostrated themselves in the dust before Hamaguchi Gohei, and the people after them.
Then the old man wept a little, partly because he was happy, and partly because he was aged and weak and had been sorely tried.
"My house remains," he said, as soon as he could find words, automatically caressing Tada's brown cheeks; "and there is room for many. Also the temple on the hill stands; and there is shelter there for the others."
Then he led the way to his house; and the people cried and shouted.
The period of distress was long, because in those days there were no means of quick communication between district and district, and the help needed had to be sent from far away. But when better times came, the people did not forget their debt to Hamaguchi Gohei. They could not make him rich; nor would he have suffered them to do so, even had it been possible. Moreover, gifts could never have sufficed as an expression of their reverential feeling towards him; for they believed that the ghost within him was divine. So they declared him a god, and thereafter called him Hamaguchi DAIMYÔJIN, thinking they could give him no greater honor;--and truly no greater honor in any country could be given to mortal man. And when they rebuilt the village, they built a temple to the spirit of him, and fixed above the front of it a tablet bearing his name in Chinese text of gold; and they worshiped him there, with prayer and with offerings. How he felt about it I cannot say;--I know only that he continued to live in his old thatched home upon the hill, with his children and his children's children, just as humanly and simply as before, while his soul was being worshiped in the shrine below. A hundred years and more he has been dead; but his temple, they tell me, still stands, and the people still pray to the ghost of the good old farmer to help them in time of fear or trouble.
I asked a Japanese philosopher and friend to explain to me how the peasants could rationally imagine the spirit of Hamaguchi in one place while his living body was in another. Also I inquired whether it was only one of his souls which they had worshiped during his life, and whether they imagined that particular soul to have detached itself from the rest to receive homage.
"The peasants," my friend answered, think of the mind or spirit of a person as something which, even during life, can be in many places at the same instant. . . . Such an idea is, of course, quite different from Western ideas about the soul."
"Any more rational?" I mischievously asked.
"Well," he responded, with a Buddhist smile, "if we accept the doctrine of the unity of all mind, the idea of the Japanese peasant would appear to contain at least some adumbration of truth. I could not say so much for your Western notions about the soul."The Wave
•••••
[1. Shintô parish temple.]
By Lafcadio Hearne from his Gleanings in Buddha Fields
http://www.sacred-texts.com/bud/gbf/gbf02.htm
Contributed by Margaret Read MacDonald
http://www.margaretreadmacdonald.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=who.contact_me
NOTE from MRM: Pearl Buck's The Big Wave
is also an interesting story, but longer and a bit curious. There are also picture books, but maybe not in every library. Sarah Cone Bryant, The burning rice fields (A young owl book)
. Illus. by Mamoru Funai (Holt, Rinehart, Winston, 1963) is my favorite. The Wave by Margaret Hodges, illus. Blair Lent (Houghton Mifflin, 1964) won awards and might still be in print.
Or at
http://www.suhsd.k12.ca.us/mvm/netlinks/1shortstory/ricefields.html
it is called Japanese.
Neither site mentions sources.
2) How about the story of The Gifts of Wali Dad: A Tale of India and Pakistan?
Several versions are out there. It's in one of the Lang color
series, in one of Allan Chinen books– In the Ever After: Fairy Tales and the Second Half of Life
, I think, and there is a picture book called
The Grasscutter's Gift. Also The
Wooden Sword from Schwartz' Elijah's Violin and Other Jewish Fairy Tales
. And the story about the Tailor who makes many things
from his worn-out coat. The shirt of the happy man =: La camicia dell' uomo felice (Folktale series)
is another possibility.
3) The Old Jar by Lawrence Yep can
be found in his book called The Rainbow People
.
The old woman goes to town to buy a new jar to keep her rice in.
She comes home with an old cracked jar that comes to symbolize
herself. One woman wants to buy it and use it for a stool. A man
wants to buy it to break up and use for cobblestones. She refuses
to sell because, "there's still use in this old jar"
just as she still has value. She rolls the jar home with a little
chant, "Keep the mice from the rice, mice from the rice." Villagers laugh at her. She puts rice in the jar and discovers
that she never runs out of rice. Villagers discover she has a
magic jar. They all want to buy it or go into partnership with
her. She refuses them all because magic is not to be laughed at.
4) Half a Blanket or The Wooden Bowl
- story about family that does not honor their elderly parent
and then changes when the child is going to carve a wooden bowl
or save half a blanket for when they are old.
5) The Golden Vase found in James
Riordan's Tales from Tartary, Russian Tales, Book Two
. Briefly:
because they are running out of food and grazing, the khan tells
his people they are to move to a new territory, but the old people
cannot come along since there is very little food. One man secretly
brings his elderly father. Every time the group runs into a problem
along the way, the father tells his son how to solve the problem,
and son pretends that he has invented the solution. The khan ultimately
forces the son to reveal that his father is the one who has solved
all the problems, and the khan realizes that elders are an important
part of the community and commands that the old man now ride along
side him.
6) The
Good Mother--the one where the tyrant threatens a village
where old people are banned. If they cannot solve 3 riddles, he
will destroy the village and the old mother solves them. It's
an Asian story. It
then became a question of what the "riddles" were. I
wrote them down, but not sure of the sources. For the elderly
father, he suggests the son go up the hill to get the golden vase
out of the water. (The vase is really in a tree, but only by going
up the hill can he see it there instead of the reflection the
others were diving for.) Riddle
two was finding water - the son lets a goat or sheep go -the animal
finds the water. Riddle or task three was carrying burning coals
to replenish fire - father suggested bringing them in covered
pot. For the elderly woman the three "tasks" rather
than riddles were to make 1)a self beating drum (putting a bee
in a paper box,) 2) make rope out of ashes ( soaking rope in salt
water and then it would burn and ash would hold shape 3) Not sure
- might be threading a crooked, hole-filled log(?) by sending
an ant on a string through to the end where sugar was placed???
A simpler version was suggested. An alternate was to have the
relocated families so hungry that they eat all the seed grains.
The hidden grandmother was the only one to remember that the thatch
they used for the roofs would contain enough barley seed to plant.
Some suggested that a group called Tales Beyond the Border told
this tale as well as Tu'up, an African who told quite a bit in
the UK.
Added Comment: The
version I heard didn't specify a country of origin, but I got
the feeling it was Asian. Anyway, the young man doesn't abandon
his father, but carries him in a big woven basket. the three riddles
the king/emporer/ruler put to him is a set of three identical
statues. the man has to identify what the difference is between
them, and who they are. old man tells him to do the following
(or is put before the ruler and must answer them to save his life).
He takes a piece of straw and puts it in the ear of the first
statue. It goes in one ear and out the other. The old man says
that this is a fool. he hears wisdom and it leaves him. Takes
the straw, sticks it in the ear of the second figure—it gets
stuck. this is a wise man. He hears wisdom and remembers it. takes
the straw, sticks it into the ear of the third statue. It comes
out of the mouth. ah, this is a storyteller-- he hears wisdom,
and shares it with others.
7) There is also a story from Sardinia . there the father should
have been killed , but the son hid him in a cave in the mountains
. there is a famine, the father finds the way to feed everybody
the king stops the elder's killing.
8) I've heard David Novak tell this story, using the opening situation
that the emperor has decried that all old people must be killed
during a famine, because it is a waste of food to feed people
who are too old to work. One man hides his father instead of killing
him. When the famine continues, the emperor sets three riddles
to determine who his new adviser will be. The old man helps his
son solve the riddles. Unfortunately, I don't remember the first
two riddles, but the last was the difference between the three
statues - the fool, the wise man, the storyteller. The first two
riddles sounded traditional, but I wondered whether this final
riddle was original to Novak.
9) The story called The Three Dolls
can be found in Ready-To-Tell Tales (American Storytelling)
by Holt and Mooney. I find that it is a terrific story to end
a program.
10) There is a version of the hidden elder story, The
Wise Old Woman, in Sharon Creeden's In Full Bloom: Tales of Women in Their Prime. It's really
a wonderful book, stories alternating with short biographies on
similar topics. I'm about halfway through because I read just
a little part before bed . . . a positive ending to a day!
11) As some of you know, my best jokes come from my 84 year old
stepmother. Got the one below this morning: A little girl runs
out to the backyard where her father is working, and asks him: "Daddy, what's Sex?". "OK!" He thinks this
day was bound to come, and I am not going to let my little princess
learn about Sex from the streets. So, he sits her down, and tells
her all about the birds and the bees. He tells her about conception,
sexual intercourse, sperms and eggs. Then she asks: "Daddy,
what is a couple?" And he carries on: a couple are the two
people involved in the sex and gave her complete details. He tells
her how male and female are attracted to each other and how they
make love. The father finally asks: "So why did you want
to know about 'a couple' and 'Sex'" ? "Oh, Mummy said
lunch would be ready in a couple of secs..."
12) Granddaughter's Sled, in Thirty-Three Multicultural Tales to Tell (American Storytelling)
by Pleasant DeSpain. The grandfather
is taken out to the forest to die, the granddaughter mentions
that they will need the sled he is tied to for the father when
his turn comes, the father changes his mind and takes gr.dad home,
gr.dad subsequently saves the village from famine by suggesting
that they thresh the rye on the thatched roofs to get grain. The
notes say that another version is in More Tale Of Faraway Folk by Babetter Deutsch and Avraham Yarmolinsky
(1963).
13) Keep the stories relatively simple, not like children but
just simple plot. Short term memory is their main problem so they
may not remember a critical plot item in the beginning when you
refer to it later. If needed you may restate rather that relying
on them remembering. Stories that refer old time things may strike
a chord with them. Don't underestimate them! Be prepared for strange
behavior and just adapt. Their responses may not be what you expect
so don't let that bother you. Treat them with respect. Be careful
about talking about them when they can hear. You don't really
know what is going on in their minds.
14) I had never told to Alzheimer's patients before and decided
I would do a children's program since the long term memory is
the best. I did The Gingerbread Man, and I could here the little
voices coming back "run, run, run, as fast as you can . .
." I couldn't believe it! They were sitting there with their
heads up and LISTENING! I did the three pigs and they were with
me. I decided I was already ahead of the game, so I did the REAL
story of the 3 pigs, and they LAUGHED! I was already over the
edge, so I went up to a little man who was being really vocal
and asked "Do you remember the Privies?" (I knew that
the area just got indoor plumbing in the 50's) and his answer
was of course "Sure I remember the privies!" I asked
"Did you have a one holer or a two holer?" I almost
was on the floor when he replied "We was rich! We had a three
Holer!" We spent time on Privie stories with the snakes,
spiders and wasps, as well as a continuing discussion on the merits
of Sears-Robuck vs. corn cobs. I spent the most delightful hours
and twenty minutes I have had with this Alzheimer's ward.
15) All the patients seem to respond to stories in person, but
the care workers specifically told me just recently they saw the
greatest response to the story CDs ....drawing upon my speech
pathology background....the brain responds to consistency and
music, the volume of the CD can be increased and the CD can be
played over and over, the music taps another part of the brain,
which helps them hang on to some of the cognitive material. I
think having tellers in person and the CDs are great in the nursing
homes...good lighting and intense volume are very important too!
Hope this helps.
16) In Florida I have told to seniors in assisted living and bedridden
groups but never an all Alzheimer's group. Our program, presented
by 2 or 3 tellers, was the usual mix of stories with an emphasis
on humor , upbeat stories and use of props including music. 2
patients frequently made vocal sounds and random arm movements,
one who may have had Alzheimer's would bust out swearing and walking
around the group. She was taken out of the room. One man answered
all rhetorical questions asked by a teller and added his phrases
and commentary as a story progressed and caught his interest.
Other times he and several others slept.
I found participation stories work well. I tone them down from
my kids' versions. Some groups will sing-a-long and the center
could tell you what songs they know. The old memories are more
vivid. They love the use of puppets. Harmonica and pop bottle
music is popular. Clogging dolls/puppets are enjoyed. Before a
performance, you should greet individuals, often shaking hands
or touching shoulders. They know him from several years of leading
the nursing home tellers' performances. It makes the telling more
of a family event. Individuals like to talk one-on-one to the
tellers after the performance. Touching is important.
17) Since the first of the year, I have been telling infrequent
tales to the folks in Mom's nursing home. Some of them have Alzheimer's.
I do find that short tales are best. I did Rapunzel once, just
as a change of pace, and the non-dementia patients hung on every
word, loving it from beginning to end. The dementia/Alzheimer's
patients (including my mother) got lost due to the length, but
enjoyed the enthusiasm of the others. The article that someone
sent recently - about encouraging Alzheimer's patients to create
stories from black and white pictures - (and writing out the tales
for positive feedback) captured my attention. I copied the article
and gave it to Mom's psychiatrist, urging him to consider this
treatment with his patients, and volunteering my services to help
if he thought if might work. I'd like to think that creativity
is not something that only healthy folks can be involved in. Like
the article said: art, music, crafts are all used to promote thought
processes in these patients, but verbal creativity is discouraged
for fear of taking them further from reality. Sometimes good ole
reality is highly overrated, especially for many of these who
are lonely and afraid. Give me a creative person any day - sensical
or not - and I will give you a healthier person - well, that's
my 2 cents worth, anyway.
18)
I've
done some performances for mixed populations like that --one thing
that helps is a strong visual component, lots of color and motion
(I wear a tie-dyed outfit and juggle multicolored hula hoops,
you mght come up with something different) -- that way those who
aren't following teh narrative thread have something to pay attention
to...
19) A story that I often told in old age homes was the tale of
Hina and the Moon, a version on Laura Simm's tape with Yellow
Moon Press called Moon on Fire: Calling Forth the Power of the Feminine. It
is funny, profound, and always sparked a lot of conversation.
I also just told stories about my own life and grandparents.
20) When I tell to a Nursing Home audience with mixed levels of
cognition, my first story is aimed at the higher level listener.
This will get and keep their attention. It could be any light,
fairly short, funny adult story. Because it is the beginning of
the show, you will also keep the attention of the less cognitive.
As the program progress and I gain the confidence of the higher
level listeners, I go into interactive and, yes, children's stories.
I ask if any one has grandchildren or nieces, nephews. I say that
if they learn the stories, they can share them when the children
come to visit. I have never had a problem with the entire audience
joining in and having fun. You probably already have fun stories
in your repertoire that will work. As with a young audience, I
would accentuate facial expressions, use more movement, character
voices, song and sound effects. This will keep the attention of
all.
21) Read Connecting Across The Years: Storytelling
in Assisted Living Centers by Kathy Murphy on the 2002
HSA Journal - Diving in the Moon: Honoring Story, Facilitating
Healing.
Also - read Letitia Pizzino's article and story in The Healing Heart for Communities: Storytelling for Strong and Healthy Communities (Families)
- you can see the rest of the
articles and stories in the Elder Tales chapter listed on the
web page: http://www.dancingleaves.com/allison/books/toc_community.html
22) I would like to second the recommendation of Storymaking and Creative Groupwork With Elderly People
, from British
publisher, Jessica Kingsley. This book may be difficult to track
down in the States. If so, I suggest contacting the American distributor
directly, Taylor and Francis, in Philadlepbhia-- 215 785 5800.
23) The Three Wishes is also a good
one; and Shut the Bar or Bar the Door.
24)
I've just finished reading a wonderful book with storytelling
as a major thread, an intergenerational project between some school
children and elders, and how this affects a boy's growing up.
It is absolutely fabulous. just finished it and finished crying
and had to share it with you. It's called Feather Boy
, by a British author, Nicky Singer. It's her first
novel for children, tho she's written others for adults. I really
think you'll like it - especially if you've done intergenerational
work, if you remember dealing with bullies, if you like the story
of the Firebird.... and for other reasons too.
25) Have you told them The Three Wishes? I make it an old woman and old man. I change it around for whatever event it is. If it's the woman's birthday, he could be going out to get her the perfect wildflower. But, it's too early for flowers and walks on until he sees one. After that he hears the wood fairy callling for help, etc. At the end, they go out on the porch and see the first star of the evening and wish that they remain as happy as they have been to this day...and that wish came true. I have fun with the story and put a lot male/female attitudes in it. It always draws a laugh.
Marilyn K.
26) Here are a few quick jokes for this spry crowd:
•••••
Three elderly couples all died and showed up at the Pearly Gates at the same time.
The first couple was Catholic. St. Peter looked at them and said, “You were good during your life, but you loved money too much. [Turning to the wife:] Your name is Penny and [turning to the husband] and you married a woman named Penny. I can’t let you in.”
So whoosh down the slide to Hell they went.
The second couple was Methodist. St. Peter looked at them and said, “You were good during your life, you refrained from dancing and alcohol, but you loved food too much. [Turning to the wife:] Your name is Candy and [turning to the husband] and you married a woman named Candy. I can’t let you in.”
So whoosh down the slide to Hell they went.
The third couple was Southern Baptist. As they walked to the head of the line, the husband turned to the wife and said, “Fanny, things aren’t looking good for us.”
•••••
A man and wife were celebrating their 40th anniversary AND both of their 60th birthdays on the very same day. This is very rare, so the Good Fairy showed up and granted each a wish.
The wife said, “Oh, we’ve always wanted to go on a trip around the world together and see all the wonders.”
Poof – suddenly there was a portfolio filled with tickets for the best accommodations and flights and cruises for a 6 month trip.
The husband looked at the wife and said, “I’m sorry, dear. I’m at the time in my life when I want to be married to a woman 20 years younger than me.”
Poof – suddenly the husband was 80.
•••••
The rector announced in church one Sunday, “We need to raise extra money this week. To encourage you to donate, whoever donates the most money this week will get to pick three hymns next week.”
Old Mrs. Jones thought, “That’s just what I’ve always wanted!” So she wrote a very large check.
And indeed, the next week, the rector announced that Mrs. Jones had made the largest donation. He asked her to pick out the three hymns. So she stood up, and using her walker, started walking very slowly to the altar.
“No, no, Mrs. Jones, you can make your selections right where you are.”
“I want to do that from the altar.”
Eventually she got to the altar, climbed the steps and turned around. Then pointing with her finger, she said,
“I want him and him and him.”
•••••
Mary wasn’t feeling well, so her husband Sean told her to go to the doctor’s. When he came home that night, there she was, stark naked, posing this way and that in front of the mirror.
Sean said, “What in God’s name are you doing, Mary?”
“The doctor told me that for a woman my age, I have a lovely figure.”
“Well, what did he say about your fat ass?”
“Sean, your name didn’t come up in the conversation!”
Kate D. 6/13/05
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27) This May my friend got big laughts with the story of the woman who, after reassurance from God that she would live for many more years, invested in major cosmetic reconstruction and was then hit by a bus. She questioned God about the promised 20 more years, and he said "I didn't recognize you." Somewhere I have a more fleshed out version -- but she played it up even beyond the printed version, and it was sassy good fun.
You reminded me of another -- the couple shown the wonders of heaven -- beautiful home, golf course, lovely meals in the club house -- all free and without diet restrictions. Husband angry with wife -- "You and those d----d bran muffins. We could have been her ten years ago!!!"
Mary G. 6/13/05
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27) Query: As you may recall I moved to a senior residence which was supposed to be for independent living but people have aged and lots are very non-functional. I think I should get those people together on a regular basis for very simple storytelling, say every 2 weeks. Comments and suggestions welcome.
Dvora S. Israel 10/1/06
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Response: Although I'm not in a seniors' residence, my mother is and I have taken my storytelling to seniors' residences. Let me tell you of three incidents.
1. -- telling in a residence -- I apologized for telling "children's stories". One man, from his wheelchair looked at me and said, "Son, you keep right on telling them. They make us feel 40 years younger."
2 -- telling in a part -- A lady holding the hand of a young girl stopped and stayed for the rest of the session. Afterwards she spoke to me to tell me that the story I had been telling when she arrived was one that her grandfather had told to her on the boat from England and now I had told it to her granddaughter. That particular story instantly spanned five generations.
3 -- telling in my mother's seniors' residence is now a monthly activity. On some days, it's very difficult to talk to my mother because of the increased dementia. However, on the days I tell, she sits attentively and then proudly announces that the storyteller is her son.
It couldn't be better.
Dale P. 10/1/06
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(This
web page updated 12/3/05; 10/4/06; 9/3/08)
