Anecdotage

This is a picture of my dad riding around in his old pickup truck and a Kroth and Assoc. magnetic sign attached. This was the early days of car phones, and he would carry a classic handset (see here if you are too young too remember these) with a cord hanging down that wasn’t connected to anything. That was vintage humor from Dad.

“…there must be millions of aging males, now slipping into their anecdotage…”

~E.B. White¹

There are a number of reasons I am fortunate to have a brother. Here are just two: 1) He remembers things that I have forgotten or never knew about our family, friends, growing up, and growing older; 2) He has an extremely creative, I’d say unique and generative, perspective that my own worldview doesn’t naturally explore. So my conversations with David range from sports to religion to the arts to western paperback novels to divas to movie dance routines to curious questions about how we were raised to…well, you get the idea. And that was just our last conversation.

I laugh out loud a lot when we talk, which is too-rare – both our talks and just laughing out loud - and I find myself considering provocative ideas I hadn’t even thought about before.

Just the other day we started talking about our dad. The conversation turned to a term I’d just read in an E.B. White essay, “Anecdotage.” Words can enthrall me, and this was one of them. White wrote, “…there must be millions of aging males, now slipping into their anecdotage…”¹

E.B. White, author of both the no-nonsense The Elements of Style and the beloved Charlotte’s Web², was also one of our most renowned essayists. To be such requires the skills of both a wise observer of the human condition and a writer with the ability to express those observations deeply, succinctly, and often cleverly. There is nothing I enjoy reading more than an essay about a pig³, say, in the hands of a master essayist.



My dad was a genial fellow. He would corner just about anyone and have a long conversation. Likewise, he was easily sidetracked by others. I can’t count how many times my mom or any of us would find ourselves waiting in the car while he was waylaid, or more likely self-marooned, talking with someone. He might have known the person for a while. He was a long-time professor, so many, many students had spent time in his classes, or it could be the elementary school janitor or secretary. He always said that school janitors and secretaries were the most important people to know in any school, because they could open any door (real or metaphorically) in the place and always knew everything that was going on.

Or the person he buttonholed might be a bank teller or the owner of his favorite Mexican restaurant or a crossing guard or a bookstore employee or…well, you get the idea. And the only way that really worked was not because my dad was such a marvelous storyteller, but because he was such an excellent listener. I think he was beloved by so many because he did both – tell meaningful, funny, memorable stories AND listen to others deeply. Many people can do one or the other, but seldom can do both.

His chats with others were often long-winded while we, waiting in the car, were resignedly and knowingly long-suffering.

But I can’t claim that Dad settled into anecdotage as he aged. Storytelling – often humorous examples of points he was making – was an essential part of the presentations he made all around the country throughout his career. Anecdotage, for him, was more like a later-life continuation of what I am guessing – I don’t have irrefutable evidence of it –was anecdolescence, anecdomidlifecrisiscence, anecdomesticence, anecdoyarnspinnerscence (see Navy and Merchant Marine tales from sailing around the world), and anecdospousecence. Many of the stories he shared in speeches were about his family – that was us – and were always told to emphasize a point he was making.

My brother and I haven’t fallen too far from that tree, we opined.

My old man could spin a story and weave it into a speech from the whole cloth of experience.

And that’s not anecdotal, my friends, that’s the truth.

Sources/Resources

¹ White, E. B. (1954). Afternoon of an American Boy. In The second tree from the corner (1st ed., pp. 17-23). Harper. p. 23

²White, E. B. (1952). Charlotte's Web (G. Williams, Illus.). Harper & Brothers. Strunk, W., Jr., & White, E. B. (1999). The elements of style (4th ed.). Longman.

³ White, E. B. (1948, January). Death of a pig. The Atlantic Monthly, 181(1), 28–33. https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1948/01/death-pig/309203/ or White, E. B. (1954). Death of a pig. In The second tree from the corner. Harper & Brothers. pp. 243-253.