Raconteur

A raconteur is someone who can spin a tale. One who is skillful in telling anecdotes.  A storyteller. 

I believe my 7-year-old son is a raconteur.  

Today, I got a phone call from the school nurse.  This was what she told me:

Nurse: "I couldn't stop thinking about your family last night after the story Stone told me.  Did this actually happen?  Stone told me that a man broke into your house the night before last and your husband shot him in the stomach."

Me: "What?  Oh my gosh - NO!  That didn't happen!"

Nurse:  "Oh. (laughs) I didn't think so, but his story was so elaborate I thought I'd check.  He told me that a man who was being chased by the police drove up to your house in a black car.  He got out and...do you have a play room with a door?"

Me:  "Yes, our upstairs playroom has a door to the deck."

Nurse:  (laughs) "Ok, he said that the man jumped out of the black car and ran to the door and busted out the window to come in.  He said he and his little brother were in there playing XBox and he (Stone) grabbed his little brother and ran through the house yelling.  Then he said that his dad grabbed a gun and shot the man in the stomach."

Me: "Uhh..."

Nurse: (laughs) "Then he told me that they called 911 and the police and an ambulance came to get the man who wasn't dead."

Me: "..."

Nurse: "I decided to ask his teacher - actually his substitute - about it and he told her the exact same story down to the details..."

Me:  "Wow.  I'm not sure what to say." (we are both laughing now)

Nurse: "I just needed to make sure that it didn't happen because if it really did, I'd need to report it to the counselor.  That would traumatize a kid!"

If this were the only story that Stone had recently told, I wouldn't call him a raconteur.  Last month, he had a school project that we completed together.  It was a diorama of an opossum habitat.  I went outside and brought a small pile of leaves from the ground and we glued them all over the outside and inside of a shoebox. 

He came home the afternoon he turned it in and told us that a big brown spider had crawled out of the leaves on his project and one of the kids in his class screamed out "SPIDER!"  His teacher then grabbed a flyswatter and killed the spider by swatting it several times on top of the shoebox.  He told me she vanquished the spider.  Vanquished.  His word - not mine. 

I sent the teacher an email because I was mortified that I'd taken a project up to school with a big spider in it.  She emailed back - "There was a spider in it?  I didn't know!"  So I recounted the story to her and she replied that it was just that - a story.  It hadn't happened.  When I asked him that afternoon whether he'd told me a story; he grinned.

Raconteur.