I’m a highly anecdotal person. If a story I’m telling gets big laughs from the listeners, I will tell it again with each new person who walks into the room. This means some people hear the story over and over and it stops being funny or even interesting. Sometimes the captives are busy working at their desks, so they can’t just get up and walk away. I note their irritation, yet on I talk. I acknowledge it’s a personality flaw, but cannot bring myself to correct it.

Dave Isay likes stories too, but he lets other people do the talking, and the result can be heard every Friday morning on NPR through KERA (90.1 FM). His project, StoryCorps, records people all over the United States talking about a specific moment in their lives, the moment that changed everything for them. I wake up Fridays either crying or laughing or both, and I always feel just a little more in love with the human race.

Dave will be in Plano next week, celebrating the paperback release of his book, Listening Is an Act of Love: A Celebration of American Life from the StoryCorps Project.

For this, I promise to be quiet.