This woman has NO idea that I am obsessed with her. She is a legend among my friends

Standing in the dark on the edge of the forest, I peer down at the piece of paper in my hands, lit by the flashlight attached to my head. As I read what it says, I screw up my face.

“AGAIN????????”

Three of my friends, on camp chairs in front of me, were laughing. We mostly hadn’t stopped laughing for the last hour.

Every Summer, a group of four of us go canoe camping for five days and we have a tradition on the last night: we play a game that some people call “Celebrity” but that, when I learned it back in Edinburgh in the early 2000s, we (inexplicably) called it Sp*nkyface. You’ve probably played it before:

Everyone writes down ten names on small bits of paper. The names have to be someone that everyone in the game could conceivably have heard of — a celebrity, a friend, a fictional character. Then, you put all the names in a hat and put everyone into teams. Each turn, one team member has to describe the person on the paper without saying their name, so the rest of the team guess it — as many as you can in one minute. Once all the names are done, you go through them again, but this time you just have one word. In round three, it’s just actions.

It is my favourite game to play, because it’s frantic and silly and usually really funny. But I love it on the last night of camping for a different reason:

Because we’ve all just spent four days together, inside jokes have inevitably developed. I was looking at one right now. And I was both amused and embarrassed.

The month before we’d come camping, I’d had an interaction that made me feel weird. It was with a woman I briefly used to work with — let’s call her Emily Stevenson. Nothing especially wild; she and I had hung out at an event where we’d bumped into each other, and then messaged back and forth a couple of times in the weeks afterwards. I was hoping we’d become friends, and it became quickly clear that she wasn’t interested in hanging out again. Which is fine! I get it! It happens to me sometimes too! But…

My ego was wounded. And so, during these camping days, I’d spent quite a lot of the trip talking it out with the others (“But WHYYYYYYYY doesn’t she want to be friends with me??? I’m DELIGHTFUL!!!! Am I??????”), until they each gently pointed out that I was getting a bit obsessed with this person who really was irrelevant in my life, and shouldn’t I try to let it go?

Back in the game, the piece of paper I’ve just pulled out of the hat says EMILY STEVENSON.

It’s the third time her name has come up in this round. I roll my eyes, turned to my teammate Megan, and say,

“Woman who doesn’t want to be friends with me.”

Everyone bursts out laughing and Megan shouts, “Emily Stevenson!!!”

Here’s the thing: we have NO IDEA whose lives we’ve become major characters in.

I’m sure Emily Stevenson barely ever thinks of me. I’m certain she’d be shocked to find out that she had become a clue in my favourite game — three times, no less!

And there are so many more of these. A man who was once on the same 3am London nightbus as me and my schoolmates, who was sitting near us talking loudly, and kept saying to his friends, “Top o’ the range! Top o’ the range!”. Now, me and those friends will periodically say to each other, “Top o’ the range”. We never even *met that man, and his legend lives on.

Any time anyone of my brother’s or my friends encounter even a mention of menthol cigarettes, one of us will say [adopt South East London accent], “Nah, it’s awrigh’, a go’ MEMFOL”, after a girl my brother met at a party, THIRTY FOUR YEARS AGO.

One time in our early twenties, I was sitting on a bench outside Bristol train station with my brother’s friend Ben, who has VERY red hair. As we were waiting there, a little boy of maybe five, who also had red hair, came careening around the corner. He ran up to Ben, looked him in the eye, said in a gravelly voice,

“Alright, best mate!”

Then ran off.

As we laughed, Ben turned to me, nodded and said, “It’s a Ginger thing.”

That child is now an adult in his mid-thirties. With no idea that, across the world, a group of people all STILL periodically greet each other, “Alright, best mate!”

If you ever worry that you’re irrelevant, that you haven’t made a dent in the world or in anyone’s life, stop. You have no idea the legend you could be.

STORYTELLING LESSON

Start right in the action. When we tell stories to friends, we usually start in context, but context is inherently voiceover and montage, and therefore less interesting for our brains. That means, when you’re speaking one-to-many (on stage, in newsletters) you need to START in an action scene, then pull out and give the context, then come back into action.

So go on then, what’s your equivalent of this phenom?

Who did you once briefly meet that still pops up in your mind or your conversations? Let me know in the comments below!

You rule!

xx (Yes Yes) Marsha

PPS ““Nah, it’s awrigh’, a go’ MEMFOL” = “No, it’s alright. I’ve got menthol.”;
“Alright, best mate!” = “hello, best friend”.

PPS if you have a keynote or presentation you want to write or improve — or you work somewhere that you’d like me to come and run a workshop — let’s chat. Here:

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