You know, story telling can be an effective tool in persuasion, well, some of the time if not all the times. I love stories, especially the short, inspiring ones, and I’m always amazed at my ability to recall them even after years of reading them. But there was this one instance where my story-telling ability backfired, sort of.
When my niece Janet was a senior in her junior high school, she didn’t seem ready to hit the books and prepare for the ‘D-day’ waiting for her and other teens her age in less than a year, which is the high school entrance examination. But, in my eyes, Janet was hell of a smart girl, smarter than her sister Grace, who had been a top student throughout her junior high years, worked hard on the exam but unexpectedly settled only for the ‘white jersey’ girl high, instead of her dream ‘green jersey’ school. Life’s full of the unexpected, and Grace got the first taste of it.
Seeing the test result, my sister Cathy and my bro-in-law quickly concluded in their minds that if their best performed kid didn’t even get in the top senior high school they didn’t hold high hope of their younger daughter Janet, whose performance was kind of average in her class, getting any chance of wearing the green jerseys either. Still, they wanted Janet to launch an all-out effort to give her best shot. There was plenty of time to catch up, so they told Janet, but she wasn’t as high as her parents over the idea.
One day, me and my parents went visit my sis and her family. After dinner, my parents and my sis and her hubby were talking, laughing and drinking when I went upstairs to check what the girls were doing. The girls had their own rooms. Grace was on the phone talking while Janet was sitting at her desk, doing nothing. I greeted Janet, went in and sat down on the edge of her bed, and tried to have a chit chat. Then I asked her if she had sensed the pressure from her mom on the study. She nodded her head. “Do you want to wear the green jerseys a year from now?” I teased her. She said ‘yes’ without a slight hesitation. Some kid, I thought. “You know it takes a lot of work, hard work mostly, to get there,” I continued. She said, “I know,” and looked at me. I sensed the time had come for my little story and there was just a right one popping up in my head:
There was this little girl named Angela, about your age, I began the story. She came down with a disease that had something to do with her nerves. She couldn’t walk and her other movements were restricted too. The doctors didn’t think she could ever stand up and walk normal again. “That’s bad, isn’t it, for a young girl whose future’s yet to be open right before her eyes?” I asked, and Janet nodded thoughtfully. But Angela wasn’t defeated when the docs announced the bad news to her. She told the medical staff around her that she was going to walk again and they were impressed by her fighting spirit and determination. Then Angela was transferred to a special treatment facility in San Francisco. The therapists introduced to her the therapy lessons and exercises set up for her treatment. Also, they taught her how to visualize the way she walks in her mind, since she would spend long waking moments lying in bed. Angela followed the treatment cooperatively, and she did her best trying to picture herself walking in her mind as well.
One day, Angela’s bed began to move. This was because of a big earthquake that hit San Francisco, but she wanted to walk so bad and exercised her mind so hard she actually thought her legs were moving the bed. She cried out loud and happily, while everyone else was screaming too, not out of joy but out of fear of their lives, and looking for places to hide, because the ground was shaking like crazy. At this, Janet cracked up a big smile and laughed hard. She promoted me to continue the story. I paused, looking at Janet, and said, “You know what?” Believe it or not, few years later Angela beat all the odds, got back on her own feet and walked to school, without any supporting devices. And I left Janet with a question, “What do you think that makes Angela walk again"? thinking it should send a clear message to her about not giving up herself on the exam.
A year later, Janet put on the green jerseys, knocking every one of us off our chairs. Cathy and my bro-in-law were thrilled, so were my parents. I was happy for Janet too, thinking my little story had done its trick. But, later I found out what really drove Janet to get her goal. Her classmates often talked about how some of the top students before them failed the big exam, and Grace was among the most cited examples in their conversations. Getting to a point, Janet was sick and tired of their talks and decided to shut them up once and for all, and she figured the best way to do it was to put on the green jerseys herself. That’s how she pulled it off, not because of my little charming story. But as you have read this blog, isn't Janet's achievement something of an inspiring story itself? An underdog achieving its goal.
