When I was a kid, I took weekly lessons in horseback riding. I started out in Western and then had to switch over to English before the lessons had to stop altogether (Long story short, I apparently make a good fertility charm for women who teach horseback riding). But back when I was learning Western, we somehow got on the subject of donkeys during one of our long trail rides, and my instructor told me this story about a donkey that got its foot caught in some loose barbed wire fencing. According to her, it stood there calmly and brayed until someone came to free it.
“A horse would have panicked,” she said afterward. From her extensive experience, a horse would have freaked out and struggled to break free, no doubt injuring itself and those around it more than it already had in the process.
At the time, the story meant nothing more to me than a fun and interesting example of the intelligence of donkeys; a little something to help fill the silence as we walked our horses along the dusty trail.
And then, about a year or two later, I was in a pretty gnarly bike accident.
Another long story short, I was an idiot who didn’t listen to their mother when it came to basic safety equipment. I walked out of the house in sandals, short-shorts, and no helmet. I was just going to be riding back and forth in the alley behind my house—what could possibly go wrong?
Well, my non-tennis-shoed foot happened to slip perfectly between the spokes of my front wheel as I was going full-speed down the alley. The bike jolted to a stop and I flipped over the handlebars, slamming face-first onto the asphalt.
I didn’t understand what happened initially. I didn’t even feel anything for the first few seconds, and to this day I consider it a miracle I managed to keep my face and head more or less safe from the impact. As I lay there, I simply thought, Wow, what a weird thing, just as I became aware of the fact that my bike was flipped almost upright over my head, and my leg was bent behind me. Instinctively, it seems, I straightened my leg: the bike moved with it.
When I finally managed to roll myself over and sit upright, I saw the damage. My thigh had a huge oval of bright red blood just above my knee, and the front wheel of my bike was chomping down around my foot like some kind of many-fanged monster.
The horror at the discovery and astonishment over such an improbability was swift after that. The pain came in; the stinging along both arms where they hit the pavement (thankfully) in lieu of my face; the flare of the large gash in my leg, and the crushing pressure of the bike spokes around my ankle.
My heartrate elevated; my body tensed. Every possible emotion for such a moment rushed to the surface in a giant wave of panic, and I moved to start tugging desperately at my leg because I was trapped, I was injured, and I was alone and there was nothing I could do and no one around to help me.
And then, from out of nowhere, I remembered the story about the donkey. And a voice, my own voice, suddenly rose from beneath the fog of my panic: Be the donkey. Be the donkey. Be the donkey.
The world’s strangest mantra, I know.
But it did the trick.
I swallowed the lump in my throat, and the panic ebbed from my conscious mind, and I could think again. I took in a steadying breath.
“Help,” I called out. Not even a full scream; just a calm, but urgent plea. “Help…”
Another long story short, a neighbor working in her yard heard me, retrieved my family, and my dad cut through the spokes around my foot and they pulled me free.
The kicker? Sprained ankle. Not even broken. Just a nasty sprain, which at that point in my very active youth felt like something my ankles were always doing. I hobbled along with crutches for a few weeks, and complained frequently about the gash on my leg, which constantly re-opened as I moved. But I was pretty lucky all the same. It could have been much worse in so many ways.
But I don’t think I ever told anyone about being the donkey. At least, not at first. I think it just seemed kind of stupid to my adolescent brain at the time, and even more embarrassing than admitting to getting my own foot caught in my bike spokes and flipping head-first over the handlebars. But looking back on that experience as an adult has made me realize just how powerful—even on a subconscious level, even the shortest and most unimportant-seeming—stories can be. That simple story about a donkey stuck in barbed wire stopped me from making a horrible situation even worse. And it makes me wonder how many times throughout our lives we have done the same thing, even unknowingly: trusted the lesson of a story heard long ago to get us through.
Humans have been telling stories since the dawn of our existence. We told them to connect with each other; we told them to explain what, at the time, was inexplicable; and we also told them to pass on lessons and wisdom.
A story helped me when I was alone and scared. A story probably helped you too, somewhere down the line. Which tells me we need them, now more than ever. Maybe that cute little story your grandma used to tell you has no bearing on the rest of your life. Or, maybe, someday it might save it. We can never know for sure. All we can do is keep telling stories. Keep connecting. Keep reaching out through time and space, helping each other.
Night Owls, did a story ever help you through a difficult situation? What was the story, and how did it make the situation better / easier?
