Last night was cold and dark; fitting for the end of December. Outside, the wind was howling—streaking across the windows and whooshing past the edge of the house. In front of me, my tea had gotten cold.
I sat with my phone in my hands, elbows propped against each leg like my camp counselor Billy used to do when I was nine. Earlier in the day I'd been reading Save The Cat!, a book by Blake Snyder on the structure of screenwriting. Sitting on the couch watching David Fincher's movie, Se7en, I was stuck.
Billy had always sat like that after consoling a kid who'd just got in trouble for something. There were only two times where that was me, but it made enough of an impact that I'd started doing it when I became a counselor myself. Billy liked hockey. I think he played defense in "real life" but at camp he sort of played a made up position where he could join whichever team he wanted, whenever he felt like it. He was strong more than he was quick, but not much got past him. We all liked him. I think I even started wearing my hat backwards because of him. Cutoff shirts, too.
Billy was goofy—laughter was a huge part of how he ran things. That's what made sitting across from him, with his elbows on his knees, so damn gut-wrenching. He was fun, but could also be firm. More than anything he was fair, though.
I'll never forget this one time, Billy asked me calmly what'd happened between me and Kyle, another kid in our group. He'd sat on the top part of a picnic table so he could put his feet on the bench and his elbows on his knees in front of him. I was sitting next to him. He wasn't smiling but he wasn't frowning either. He was looking straight at me and he was listening.
Whoa.
So I gave him the play-by-play. When I'd finished, he'd asked if there was anything else—but not as a trap, not like how my dad would ask. Billy called it out directly, basically saying that he could tell I was nervous. He'd even pointed out that we never had to have those types of conversations together. Then he modeled something else I'd end up stealing from him: he said "ok, what I'm hearing is" and then stated back to me what I'd shared, frame by frame.
It completely blew my mind.
In my family the unspoken rule was to never show your cards, and in that moment, Billy showed all of his and asked me to do the same. Then he told me what Kyle had shared with him, metaphorically showing me Kyle's cards, too. It was then that I'd exhaled. I'd thought about the chunks of story each of us had shared. I remember looking up at Billy and deciding to take a chance by filling in the missing pieces. Doing that at home would've terrified me, but something about the way Billy was piecing the story together made me want to help him get it right.
So, while sitting in my living room watching Se7en, I had my elbows on my knees. Trying to sort out the plot structure, I found myself thinking of my encounter with Billy from when I was nine. It dawned on me, once again, that the story we tell ourselves depends on only two things: the information, and how you arrange it.
My biggest struggle has always been with figuring out what's missing. Like Billy always did, I find myself jumping in on either side to level the playing field where needed. I like helping other people reframe their stories, but I'm very much still working on seeing my own fully.
Before hitting play on the movie again, I found myself smiling. I've been working hard at piecing my own story together for years, wanting to get it right. Now when I read books or watch movies, my own big-picture patterns become visible.
Frame by frame.
When's the last time you looked at the story you tell yourself about yourself?
onward.
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