“Let Me Tell You a Story”
A Collection of Ninety-Six Stories and Some Poems
Cliff Williams
PDF file of the whole collection
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Introduction, 6–7
I don’t know how many hundreds of times I have said, “Let me tell you a story.” But I do know that when I utter those magic words, everyone listens with rapt attention.
Several times when I have been telling someone a story or two, they have said, “You should write a book.” This collection of stories is that book.
I wrote about a third of these stories during the past couple of decades, and the other two-thirds I wrote expressly for this collection. They are not in chronological order and can be read in any random order.
There are, I am sure, more stories I could have included. But either I have forgotten the events or activities they would describe or I have not been able to figure out how to make good stories about those events.
The poems were written between 2006 and 2008 when I went through a poem-writing stage. A couple of them have been published, but the rest have remained in my computer until now.
These ninety-six stories are not a full-fledged autobiography, which would require a connected narrative and themes. At the same time, the stories people tell often reveal what they are like—their character traits, priorities, maybe even their deepest desires. Perhaps, then, these stories are something of an indirect autobiography.
Although I have put a copyright notice on this collection, readers are welcome to send it to others.
In case this file goes to someone who does not know me, here is some basic information. I graduated from Wheaton College in Illinois in 1964, married Linda Wallace in 1965, earned a Ph.D. in philosophy from Indiana University, and taught philosophy for fifty years, the last five at Wheaton College in Illinois, the previous thirty-one at Trinity College in Deerfield, Illinois, and the first fourteen at St. John Fisher College in Rochester, New York. Linda and I had one child, Laura Williams, who lives in Colorado. I am now eighty, in 2024.
Thank you to Kay for prompting me to do much more with this file than simply plopping in a few haphazardly arranged stories. And thank you to Liz for reading the whole manuscript and giving wonderfully encouraging feedback plus some suggestions for changes. Thanks, too, to all those who suggested specific stories to tell.
© 2024 by Cliff Williams