“Talk Story” or Fuggetaboutit
The first thing my husband, a New Yorker by birth, noticed about island travel was the time difference. I’m not talking about the Pacific time zone, the number of hours you deduct from your watch when you step off the plane. I’m referring to the different way that the concept of time is regarded by people so far from the rush-rush of the Big Apple and her hurried mainland sister cities.
When we went to the outfitter in Hanalei to rent kayaks, the store owner was chatting up a young couple at the window–about nothing in particular. Certainly not about kayaks. We waited our turn, and fifteen minutes later, my husband was shuffling his feet and loudly clearing his throat. We were burning daylight; the water was getting choppy. Who knew what was happening out on the bay? We were stuck at the window of the kayak operator, who had no obvious plans to help us instead of the the young couple. The young couple, by the way, had no plans of renting a kayak or any other equipment that day.
Was the store owner being rude to us? No, actually, he was just engaging in a practice called “talk story,” an informal conversation in which two or more participants listen, collaborate, and cooperate in a discussion that may or may not have a purpose, direction, or time constraint. It’s just what it sounds like: a personal story told with the simple intention of enjoying the pastime of storytelling.
Can it be maddening to the person who’s got a schedule, a duty to perform, or is disinterested in such distractions? You betcha.
But to talk story–or at least to tolerate it–is to participate in an important part of Hawaiian culture, and gives us an opportunity to reflect on how we feel about time, and how we use it. Who you are, and how you use your time are the kinds of meditations and considerations we make whenever we travel–whether we know it or not.
In fact, the talk story tradition is so important that there’s even a Talk Story Festival, wherein storytellers from Talk Story Radio feature their own stories, and where you can get ideas for starting some of your own.
And had we been willing to jump in and try our hand at it, we may have been able to talk our story into the shop owner’s, and gotten our kayak the old fashioned way: By blending in a little.
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