During our second conversation, over coffee, it came out that what Dan wanted most at 36 was to grow up. He had been addicted to marijuana for so long he had missed out on maturing as a man.
I thought we were going to talk about his public speaking club. I hadn’t thought that topic was particularly interesting. But I knew there would be something better, and here it was.
I developed this instinct over many years. But I learned about it from an old TV show. Do you remember the Lou Grant show? It was among the most realistic depictions of a newspaper ever put on the screen.
When the show aired, I was the baby-fuzziest of cub reporters, not yet in college. Ed Asner played Lou Grant, a grizzled old editor who deals with ethical dilemmas and gives his young reporters good advice.
A hot young reporter named Rossi can’t find anything to write about. Lou tells him to walk up to anyone in the street and start a conversation. Everyone has a good story. Rossi doesn’t believe it, but agrees to try it on a bet.
You can guess what the rest of the episode is about—a great story from a stranger.
Lou was right. I haven’t found anyone without a good story, if I looked hard enough.
There’s usually a little crack in the shell that gives you a clue, and when you pry it back, there’s the story. For Dan, the crack was obvious. Why was a 36-year-old hanging out at the senior center learning to give speeches?
Dan dealt with some scary stuff growing up in a redneck corner of Alaska. As a teen he started smoking a lot of pot and partying at a gravel pit. The weed became a habit because it helped with his anxiety. Pretty soon he was smoking it every day and he panicked when he thought he might not be able to get stoned.
After more than a decade, he realized how much of his life he’d missed. But the most interesting part of his story was how diligently he set about remaking it, with his disarming sincerity about his own flaws and his carefully thought-out plan to be a better, more developed person.
The plan took him around east Asia, giving speeches in Taiwan, Japan, and the Philippines, where he attended three-hour formal dinners to practice his talks.
His story was charming and inspiring. Here’s what I did with it.
I used to write three columns like that every week. It was amazing practice for getting to know strangers and figuring out what stories they had to tell.
Some people don’t know they have a story. Some people hide it. Some think they know their story, but the real story is something else. Some people just don’t know how to tell it.
My fascinating job these days is to help would-be authors discover their stories and tell them in a way that really matters, for themselves and their readers.
As I learned from Lou Grant, everyone is my potential client.