Ray watches Heartbeat. I know it has a reputation for being a bit naff, but he enjoys his weekly opportunity to live in the past. Sometimes I sit with him while he watches it. Tonight, between toasting us some bagels and getting us ready for the week ahead, I saw tough Sergeant Miller reminding the cocky new cop Joe why they were policemen – to preserve the public’s confidence and sense of security. He told him, ‘Let me tell you a story about two ladies. One had her handbag snatched. We investigated, found the culprit, and convicted him. The second complained that every night someone was ringing her doorbell, but when she opened the door, there was never anyone there. She’s crazy, right? We should ignore her? It turns out that moths that were mating on the lit up doorbell every night, and ringing the bell. But her distress was every bit as real as the first ladies’. And it’s just as much our job to find the moths that are upsetting our public, as it is to catch the criminals. We restore the peace. That’s what we’re here to do.’
If Miller had just told Joe ‘The little things are your job as well, get on with it,’ then he wouldn’t have given him anything to think about. He wouldn’t have got and held his interest along the way. but instead, by using story, he got him thinking—and he got the result he wanted, which was to get Joe back out doing work he’d thought was beneath him.
But what I really liked was that he called this ‘a’ story – just one. Two completely unrelated cases that may have been separated by miles or years, but they were tied together by the one purpose they held in the telling. The lesson drawn out of their pairing created a new story—and for me, without such a lesson they probably wouldn’t have qualified as stories at all. It’s when anecdotes are applied to life, when we learn from them, that they become powerful. Until then they’re just interesting bits that fill up our lives.
