Story, Short-Circuited
By Katie Liesener Originally published May 28, 2015
I’m a live storyteller. One of those people popping up all over America right now who stands on a stage telling true stories from their lives. In the four years I’ve been performing, I’ve told the juiciest bits from my life—first kisses, sibling battles, car break-downs, embarrassing moments, broken bones. The standard fare of a life imperfectly lived.
Lately, though, I’ve been approaching the point every storyteller dreads: the day the well runs dry. I’ve told my best ones. If I’m to get new material, something, frankly, must go wrong. Barring a stint with the Foreign Legion, I must keep a sharp lookout for life’s little conflicts.
Fortunately, this summer, a friend of a friend asked me to drive her car from Boston to San Francisco for her. A solo cross-country road trip: an odyssey! The possibilities for adventure were as vast as the continent I would traverse.
I waffled over whether to get a better map-enabled phone for the trip, but too much the ch…
