What To Write About When You Don’t Have Any Exciting Stories

Let me tell you a story.

I went to visit my grandma the other week. She pulled out some old photos, and we started looking through them. 

As we flipped through the stack, she pointed out a particular photo to me. It was a picture of herself and other people her age standing together in someone’s living room (she’s 97 now, but the photo was 5 or 10 years old). It was a reunion of some sort, perhaps high-school. 

I wasn’t sure why she wanted me to look at this photo. I didn’t know any people besides her, and it wasn’t likely that I would ever meet any of them. In fact, she told me that they are all dead already.

I was sitting there, going through this stack of photos with her, and waiting to see which ones she wanted to talk about. This photo seemed quite boring to me, but she kept holding it, so I waited. 

Then, she pointed to the man standing next to her, and said, “He’s a louse.” Not knowing exactly what to say, since of course, I never met the man, I didn’t say anything. She continued, “That man is a louse. She should never have stayed with him,” as she pointed to another woman in the photo. 

At this point, I had no idea what she was talking about.

She’s never shown me this photo, or mentioned these people, or this friend of hers who was a “louse”. So I said, “huh,” and she kept going. 

“She never should have gotten together with him. He was a not a good man. A louse.” At this point, I wasn’t sure if she just didn’t like the guy, or if something actually happened.

Then, as casually as if she was commenting on the color of his shirt, she said, “She was doing the dishes in the kitchen when he walked up behind her and shot her in the head. Then her son and grandchildren came over to visit. Can you imagine?”

This was not what I was expecting to come out of her mouth, to say the least.

“Why on earth are you telling me this,” was running through my head, but instead I said, “Wow.” I had no idea what else to say.

“He’s a louse,” she repeated. She didn’t say he’s a murderer, or that she shouldn’t have been with him because he was psycho. Nope. He was a louse, and that is why she shouldn’t have been with him.

My grandma created a very memorable story by combining an unusual term with an unexpected outcome. My brain tried to make sense of it, and sometimes it still does, as I’m even writing an article about it. It’s so funny, that every story has a number of elements, that when combined, can actually force you to try to make sense of it. 

If it wouldn’t have been my grandma telling that story, I might well have been less impressed. Of course, I know my grandma, and when I tell that story, I have in mind the energy of her delivery when she’s telling me a story. When she used the term “louse”, she caught my attention. Mostly because it’s a term that I don’t often hear people say, and I wouldn’t expect her to say that about an old guy in a photo she’s kept.

When she talked about how he shot his wife, it was nearly a shock to me. I hadn’t expected that to be the reason why she called him a louse. Only after she talked about how he had murdered his wife, she mentioned his sleaziness and how he would brag to my grandma about the women he had slept with when she went to parties at him and his wife’s house. Which, I found much less surprising. That is what I would have expected from someone who she called a louse. 

Looking back, I can ask myself,
“How did this story become memorable?”. 

Sure, that was a very unexpected element in it. You rarely hear about a guy shooting his wife in the back of her head in his 80s or 90s. 

But then, it was also her distinct usage of the term “louse” that I will probably never forget. In fact, for whatever reason, when I think of that story, the energy of the term “louse” is takes up the majority of my relocation’s bandwidth.

And finally, the situation in which it happened was so incredibly normal. Nobody would have expected something that unexpected to come up in a situation that normal—sitting down with one’s grandma, looking at photos. You’d assume that by now, I’d have heard all her stories many times and that nothing could surprise me.

So, why did I tell you that story?

It looks like this story is about my grandma, or maybe about those people in the photo. But in fact, it showed you something about me. It showed you something about my relationship with my grandma. It told you something about my emotional reaction in that specific situation. Your reaction might have been similar, or different. But likely, you were about to relate, at least a little bit, and I’m strongly assuming the fact that I was confused helped you with your own confusion about why in the world I am telling you this story. But still, you kept reading. Because when we start to read a story, and there are certain unexpected elements in it, we want to know how it ends.

And eventually, after reading the whole story, that story has done something with us, if we realize it or not. It has created some kind of connection. 

Even if it wasn’t the most exciting story in the world, if it contained at least a few unexpected elements, embedded in normality, it makes us relate.

And, relating is what marketing is all about.