I Could Never Sell

“This wouldn’t work for me,” said my daughter solemnly, watching my face.

She’s eight, and was running a finger along the blade of the folding knife we had gotten the night before. The inner half of the blade was serrated (sawlike). “This is too much like a saw for me. Right here, this part.”

For me. There’s the story.

I nodded a little sadly. Too bad. “I was hoping this would work for you, because it closes so much easier than your other one.”

I bought her a folding knife her counselors recommended when she started summer camp this year, a wilderness camp. But the release was hard to press, even for me. She had to force the release by pressing the back of the knife with two hands against a rail or table edge. But that put her hands in harms way. We agreed that the counselors would close it for her each time, and they did. She wasn’t ashamed to ask, though, because they taught her other rituals of knife safety too. The Blood Circle, for example. Before you opened your knife or used it, you held it as far from you as you could reach and turned slowly in a circle. That was your Blood Circle. You warned everyone away from your Blood Circle before you opened your knife.

She explained such things to me each night after camp. You see the kind of person I am learning to be, her stories said. The kind of person you admire. She would watch my face to be sure, as she told her stories of the day. She talked of crayfish, and jewel weed, and fire, and owl feathers, but underneath all that she was telling me about herself and what she was becoming. The story line she had laid out for herself, and was following.

When we found a folding knife that closed easily, I asked if she might like it better. No, she said. It’s a good knife, but not for me. Too much like a saw, along here.

I was a little sorry I had said so much about straight and serrated blades when we first looked at knives. Now she was eager to show me that she remembered.

We bought it anyway. We’ll try it out, I said, and then tell me what you think. I’ll keep it if you don’t want it.

We tried it again at home the next day. Same answer from her, in the same words. No, she said. It’s a good knife, but not for me. Too much like a saw, along here.

I’m a person who decides with care, she was telling me. Not wishy-washy. How could the right answer last night be the wrong answer this morning? I don’t jump at each new choice that comes along. I take my time choosing, and choose for good reasons, and then I remember my reasons.

There’s our buyer telling her story in her buying.

For that, it hardly matters which knife she chose or what reason she gave. But she must make the same choice for the same reason later.

Her story line must first be a line.  As in Hansel and Gretel, her breadcrumbs must make a line you can follow in either direction, and predict (“You know me”). They can’t blow here and there like fallen leaves in a wind. Her story must hold a course.

Cognitive Dissonance, psychologists would mention at this point. But to a novelist, a story needs a character you can identify from one appearance to the next, remember a history for, and form expectations about. Of course, you say? Visit a local fiction workshop and see…

So here’s the first story any buyer tells about herself: See, I add up to a character with a story.

As now my girl tells her first story to her Blood Circle, holding out her first knife.