Gran’s Army

How grandmothers and storytelling can change the world

My gran, years before she told me any stories.

My grandmother used to come up with stories on the spot. I can’t remember having ever asked her to do so instead of reading or telling me the classics, but I do remember loving her stories so much that I would have never accepted anything else.

My gran’s stories could involve talking tomatoes venturing along the countertop, jumping off it and escaping from the kitchen in search of a lost onion, or they could be more plausible stories with more human characters. I remember she’d dread the moment I’d ask her to repeat a past story in particular, and then promptly correct her when she got a detail wrong.

Aside from any literary quality they may have had, my gran’s stories accomplished something bigger, much bigger, something that hardly any education system today can claim to achieve: it planted the seed of curiosity in a five-year-old, the seed of creativity, the seed of possibility.

Curious people tend to be more open, less dogmatic, and creative people make the impossible possible every day.

Therefore, we need an army of grandmothers who tell their grandchildren stories they make up on the spot, an army that relentlessly advances against the mediocrity of routine, the narrowing of minds and the hardening of hearts.