How The Kings Became Friends

A beautiful moment in my very short story-coaching history, as I share an impromptu, very adapted, embellished, little story about friends and war at the prompting of my six year old.

By Natalie Ashdown.

I had a beautiful moment with story telling and found some amazing lessons that all of a sudden brought all of my learnings thus far to fruition.

My little boy Nathan walked into the bathroom just yesterday morning and said to me, “Mum can you tell me story about how people become friends”.

“Oh sure”, I said to him.  And then he said, “After a war! How they become friends after war.”

Nathan is six now and I have shared with him about how I am learning about story telling and how we can start a story or make up a story by saying “click, clack, click, clack, once upon a time….”

Lisa Bloom did this at a conference I attended and the whole audience responded to “clack” when she said “click”.

So before I knew it, he said, “Good mum, click…” and waited for me to say “clack”.

So I sat down on the toilet seat and with him just leaning in the doorway and I told him the story. 

“Click”, “clack”, “click”, “clack”

(p.s you can keep this going with a six year old as a way of buying time to come up with your story!!!)

The story I told, is a bit of a variation on the one that Lisa told us about the snakes on the island.  Now I mixed up the story a bit, and for those that know the story, you’ll see the difficulty that I got myself into calling the island – “Snake Island” and also distinguishing between “Ireland” and “island”, which sound similar in my Australian accent! And also mixing up “land” and “island”.  Anyway, I’m learning!

So once upon a time there where two kings - one king from Scotland and one king from Ireland. And they were fighting over a piece of land in the middle of the two countries - fighting over who owned the island. The island was called Snake Island.

“What world war was it mum?” interrupted Nathan, “World War 1?”

“Um I think so,” I said.

“No mum sounds like World War 2. Yes, it was World War 2 Mum.”

And I said, “Yes matey, in fact you’re right!”

So the kings sent all their troops down the mountain to battle over the island, and who would own the island.  And many, many people where getting hurt because that’s what happens in war.

Then one of the kings, the king from Scotland yelled out, “Stop! Too many people are getting hurt in this battle.  We have to settle this once and for all. I will make you a deal.  Let’s come down from our cliffs and look around the island and if there are snakes on the island that will make our decision.”

Now everyone knows that there are no snakes on Ireland, I continued to explain.  So if there are no snakes on Snake Island, then the land belongs to the King from Ireland.  If there are snakes on the island, then the land belongs to the Scottish king.

“I agree”, yelled back the king from Ireland. 

So they came down from their cliff tops and met in the middle of the field.  They shook hands, and it was one of those hand shakes where each man was trying to show his strength and they gripped each others hands tightly and the muscles bulged out of their arms and the veins in their necks started to stick out and their faces went red. 

(p.s This was the best bit of the story, because I was pretending to be one of the kings and the more I used imagery, the more Nathan lit up and got excited and he was holding his breath!!)

Eventually they let go and started searching around the island for snakes.

They climbed over rocky climbs, and climbed over the mountains and across the tops of the stony ground where the rocks were really sharp under their feet and after hours and hours and hours of searching, they didn’t find any snakes.

So the Irish king, true to his word, declared, “There are no snakes on Snake Island.  That means that the land must belong to Scotland, because there are no snakes in Scotland.  But we can’t call it Snake Island any more that doesn’t make sense, we will call it Scotland island.”

And both kings agreed.

Now for me, that was the end of the story.

But Nathan had a burning question – the story was incomplete for him.

He said, “But mum, how did they become friends?”

“Oh that’s right,” I said, quickly recovering from my unsatisfactory finish to the story.

Well what happened, was…

Because they where on top of the cliffs, when they where coming down, the Irish king slipped, and he hit his knee on one of the sharp rocks and blood started gushing out ….

(p.s. 6 year old boys love stories that involve a bit of blood, guts, poo, wee and snot – basically anything coming out of your body!!)

The Scottish king lent down and put out his hand (again I was being the king) and he said, “Here, let me help you”.

“Why would you help me?” said the Irish king. “You’ve taken the land, it is now called Scottish island, why would you help me? You have defeated me.”

And the Scottish king said…

(I lowered my voice here to make it sound wise and gentle)…

“Because you are the King of Ireland and you are a man of great honour. And you have made a promise and kept the deal that we made about the island.  You are a great man because of this and you are now my friend.”

And with that the King of Scotland helped the King of Ireland up from the ground, and they became great friends forever.

Nathan smiled, he was very happy with the ending.

He had a couple of technical questions about the story, because I had mixed up the Snake Island and Ireland and who had snakes and who didn’t.

So we did a quick run down: They where fighting over an island – you know a piece of land; Ireland had no snakes; there were no snakes on snake island and that’s why they knew that the land must belong to Scotland; that’s why it didn’t make sense to call it Snake Island, you know when there’s no snakes, so they called it Scotland Island and that’s why the king of Scotland got the land!

I didn’t need to explain the bit about how they became friends – the purpose of the story.  He got that clearly.

Then in flash he said, “Thanks mum, great story”, and he was off.

Now the funny thing is that I don’t know why Nathan all of a sudden appeared in the bathroom (it was 7:00am) wanting to hear a story.

I don’t know what he needed to hear about friends, and why war was important.

But I told him the story, and he got what he needed from it.

He checked a few technical mistakes I had made.

He made sure he got what he wanted, saying “but how did they become friends” and then he was off.

He came into the bathroom for a purpose – he wanted a story, and to put me in the right head-space he did the click, clack.  That’s the way I knew that he wanted was important. That’s why I sat down and took the moment and the time to really engage in the story.

It was a beautiful moment, because as soon as he appeared he was gone.

It reminds me so beautifully of Lisa’s coaching us around being in the moment; recalling a story in the moment that makes sense for the person; of being in the story; make the story your own and most importantly, people will take from the story what they need.

As the story teller, I didn’t need to know what he needed, or why he wanted a story, I just had to do my “job” and tell a good story.

It was such a beautiful moment and a gift of learning. 

But also a beautiful gift that I shared with Nathan.

I can imagine he might go to school and in a special moment, when kids are at war and fighting over something, he might re-tell the story that his mum told him. Or maybe in the future when he is much older.

For me, I realised also that this created a moment, quite possibility where a story is told by one story teller (Lisa), adapted by the next story teller (Natalie) to fit the purpose and then passed to the “next generation” of story tellers (Nathan) – who no doubt will adapt it and make it his own.

Maybe he will, who knows, but in that moment he had what he needed - that’s the power of stories.

What story have you passed to the next generation?