What’s a steak?
It's a legit question.
We are still in story mode in my classroom. We’ve moved from pitching ideas to attempting some form of a narrative arc. I will be honest with you. It is not going well. It’s hilarious. But it is definitely not going well. I am clearly not getting through at all.
Me: “What’s at stake?”
Student: (blank, if not baleful, stare) ?
Me: “You know, like—”
Student (interrupts): “What’s a steak?”
Me: ?
Student: “You mean like, meat…?”
Me: “Kind of.”
Student: ?
So I have to pivot before I lean into the madness and start making references to the fact that the story needs meat on the bone, so to speak. I turn, grab my marker, and write up on the board:
What is at stake? (The kid in question smiles, nods their head, and says, “Vampires”.)
And then I write:
The cat sat on the mat.
The cat sat on the dog’s mat.
John le Carré will forgive me, I am sure, if this is not entirely accurate; he was one for bending the truth just enough. I am desperately hoping at this point that we can stop talking about steaks. And, well, after much prompting and some questionable drawing, this young mind and I can agree that:
The cat sat on the mat is not a story, but
The cat sat on the dog’s mat is, and the thing that is at stake is the cat’s life (or at least one of them).
That’s it. That is all I’ve got, but I do have some new converts to the spy thriller genre.
You should watch The Pigeon Tunnel, though. Errol Morris’s film about John le Carré is a layered conversation about truth and invention, about the stories we tell, and the ones we hide behind. And, well, there is the cat…