“My husband and I have been in an open marriage for five (plus) years. At the beginning we were really excited about it and took it really slow. We didn’t anticipate doing more than casually dating other people and just having fun. A couple of years ago, we met another polyamorous couple at a party.…
“So, 16-year-old me. For whatever reason, I remember very distinctly that I was wearing one of my dad’s old sweater vests this day. And a maroon ribbon in my hair because that’s how I rolled in high school. I was dating this guy. We had dated before, in junior high, and we’d broken up. Then we…
“I played trombone in the 6th grade. My parents had got me a trombone and all through 6th grade I played. Over the summer I had been practicing pretty much every day andI was really excited about going into 7th grade and being in band, excited to play the trombone. It was about three weeks before the…
“It was one of my worst summer jobs, when I was driving the Anchorage Trolley Tours. My friend was driving another trolley. There was a day she had to take another trolley group down to Seward, which is about three hours away from Anchorage. She calls me and says that she’s just gotten engaged. This…
“9th grade science class. My science teacher and my peers all thought of me as a good student, and I was doing well…in everything in my life at that point, pretty much. And then we had the project to create a machine using levers and pulleys and all those physics things. I don’t have that…
“So my Auntie Beryl was kind of like my grandma because she lived right across the street from my grandma. She helped raise my mom and my aunt when their daddy died and my grandma had to go back to get her beautician’s license. We spent a lot of time at my aunt and uncle’s house.…
“My first girlfriend was an older woman. She was in second grade and I was in first grade. I was friends with her and her friends and we decided we should be boyfriend and girlfriend. There are a few things I remember that we did at recess in elementary school. Trading stickers was definitely one of…
“I will preface by saying this has some basis in fact. My family spends some time every summer in a small town in northern Minnesota. We’ve been going my entire life. My grandparents started renting a cabin up in this town, like 50 years ago? 40 years ago? Ages ago. So my mom has been…
“The story definitely starts with our dog, Mabel. Her passing away was just one small part of her life, but it is an important part of this story. She passed away very suddenly and it was so hard on both my husband and me. Our grief was fresh and raw and we both sincerely felt…
“I knew that they had all of the American students who were doing this particular study abroad program do one weekend of homestay, and I was not very excited about it. I just sort of had this gut feeling that everybody else would get put with these lovely little British families with cute children and mine would…
“My parents divorced when I was three, so I have no real concrete memories of them being together. They had 50/50 custody my whole childhood. My dad married my stepmom when I was five (I was the flower girl). I remember in the beginning of their relationship, I really liked my stepmom. She was young,…
“We were in this tiny little college town of about 10,000 people, which included about 8,000 college students. My last year in college, there was a girl that I knew that lived upstairs in the house I lived in, which used to be an old dentist’s office. The main floor was full of examining rooms, so all…
“This story is about how parents learn from their kids, as opposed to the other way around. Because we often think of all the stuff we teach our kids, and I think it’s important that parents learn from their kids. I’d like to talk about my challenging, life-long feelings about my Judaism and my cultural…
“This story would be the moment where my life went in a new direction. If I could pinpoint a moment, this would be when that happened. 2006 is when I started my bachelors degree and the first time I ever met her was in our Social Work 120 class. She came in the first day…
“I used to love going to this new works series at this arts center while I was in college. It was great, so provocative. I wanted to be an artist and I would go it it all the time. I haven’t been to it in years. I have a Friday night off and my boyfriend…
“I don’t where it comes from, but I have this deep-rooted anxiety about selling or giving away my things. Back in the day when you could go in and sell your used CDs, I used to tremble and then I would chicken out. I would make my husband do it, have somebody else do it…
“I was in London a few years back and I was seeing a show, ‘As You Like It.’ It was a wonderful outdoor production – we saw it and it was one of the most magical and amazing productions I’ve seen in my entire life. You see it, and you know you’ll never forget it.…
“I was going to talk about my best friend, from ages three to eight. We lived out in the country. We had cornfields on two sides, next door was a church, past the church was a cattle field, across the street were our neighbors (who were retired by the time we knew them), catty-corner was…
“2004. I was hired to do a production of ‘Gypsy’ for this group of theaters that has locations in Pennsylvania, Arizona, and Florida. It was kind of like a tour – we’d be at each theater for two and a half months. I was playing Mazeppa and covering Rose. I was 24 years old, covering Rose in ‘Gypsy,’…
“Cross Lake was a resort up by Brainerd where we rented a cabin every year for two weeks in a row. My dad would take two solid weeks off and it was our vacation. I think we started going there when I was a baby, because we went there for at least 20 years. We kind of…
“I was twelve years old? Maybe a little younger, but I think I was twelve. My family would do these epic vacations during the summer. This was the year we went to the Great Smoky Mountains in Kentucky and Tennessee. We drove from Kansas City. I think we spent the first night in Paducah, Kentucky…
“I was in 5th grade, and it was spring…I want to say it was March or April? I had been eleven years old at the time and would have been turning twelve that fall. I don’t know how cognizant of this I was at the time, but I was kind of nearing puberty. I had started learning about…
“I’ll tell you a story about the couch that I’m sitting on. Because I think I just broke it. This couch came into existence in our family…oh, gosh, when? A really long time ago. When we first moved out here in ’96 or ’97, I think we got this couch. It’s ginormous, a giant sectional.…
“It’s four of us, the first night in Santorini, and we decide to go out. So we walk from our hotel down to sort of the main drag and it’s Greece, so everything looks a little antiquated and it’s all very cozy and it’s all very rustic. But they had a place called Murphy’s Irish…
“So, I’m not sure if this is a story or not? But it’s what comes to mind, so I’ll try it and see what happens. When I was in high school and middle school (a little bit) I had pretty disordered eating. But mostly it was about restricting, and then in high school I actually…
“So basically…I hadn’t planned on going to college. I was going to take a year off to just work, lose weight, figure out what I was doing, build a portfolio and then go to school to be an animator. But I also thought, ‘Maybe I want to go to theater school,’ My dad said, ‘Bullshit.…
“Where is the beginning? All right. So…I have a tendency to sort of go from one long-term relationship to the next. I always have. I had just gotten out of a five year relationship and I didn’t really know how to be single. I did the things that other people do, go out to the bars.…
“When I was a freshman in college my mom got diagnosed with cancer, what they thought was ovarian cancer. So she had a full hysterectomy and went through surgery and stuff and was sick with chemo and got really thin and it was pretty awful. Then they said, ‘We got it! It’s all better!’ And…
“I was challenged with cars when I was growing up. The first car that my folks really let ever me drive was a ’61 black Ford Falcon station wagon. The Falcon was this idea that Ford had come up with to make an inexpensive economy car, and this little black station wagon was a two-door…
“One of my girlfriends pays for my plane ticket to get from Paris to Milan, and then one of my other girlfriends is going to pay for my train ticket from Milan back to Rome. Then I’ve already paid for the hostel room. We’re only there for like a night or two. It’s going to…
“This is in the fall of 2005 and there was a lot of Shakira and Madonna happening in my life because they had both just come out with a new album, and both of those women since that time have played a pretty immense role in my life (that’s not important to the story, but…
“I was probably three. My extended family lived in Milwaukee (a lot of them still do), and we had just moved to Minnesota, my parents and I, from Texas. So we were there visiting, and my cousin was a year older than me. This was probably the start of me thinking that she was so…
“All right. So, how I got on Jeopardy, and how it did not change my life at all. I think I blame/thank my parents for an obsession with trivia, because when I was a kid they had these Brain Game flashcards, and I grew up on these long skinny decks of cards. Then when I…
“Where do I think the beginning is? I moved to a new state and I was in grad school for my Counseling Masters, which means a lot of things. But a big part of that is being very reflective about who you are. And being very opened to this idea of ‘You’re going to have…
“So, last summer there was a big storm and the power went out. The apartment that I was living in was a big, old house and it was a cool apartment – I really loved that apartment. It did have some…issues. For instance during this storm, water was coming through the ceiling. Mainly the water…
“Where to begin exactly? I guess the earliest time I really remember that I was in a different situation than a lot of the people I was around and growing up with was in school. My family was on reduced price lunches, and at the school they had different ticket colors if you were on…
“So…weddings make people crazy. And I mean, it’s a cliche, but it’s a cliche for a reason. When you have that on top of the fact that so many people already are crazy, it’s a really bad combination. My fiance proposed to me in May, and it was kind of a crazy night anyway, because…
“I think I’m going to tell you about when I went to Honduras for Heifer International. It was with an educator’s study tour where educators from across the country went to see how that program worked. It was my first time out of the country; I’d been in Mexico, but that’s about it. I had…
“Every summer where we lived, and I think in the surrounding suburb areas, this kid’s theater company would come to town that would put on a play. And it was really just kind of a camp for kids to get out of their parent’s hair for a week, I think, but they would come and…
5 Minute Story Project 