So, in the end, here’s what happened to me. I went from a little boy telling stories to entertain himself as he wandered through the woods to a shy kid making a transition from an upstater to a New Yorker to a bestselling writer with enough confidence, or maybe hubris, to speak in front of crowds as large as sixty thousand or smaller crowds paying as much as $5,000 a plate for a rubber-chicken dinner and me.

I just kept telling stories.

Like this one. So simple. But a favorite of mine.

Joyce Hall, founder of Hallmark greeting cards, was a leader, a good employer, and beloved in the Kansas City area, where Hallmark has its headquarters.

When Joyce Hall died in his sleep at age ninety-one, the Kansas City Star ran a front-page banner headline: “Dear God, We Cared Enough to Send You Our Very Best.”

There’s a good story—in an epitaph. I’ve noticed that a lot of people wear their philosophies, their life stories, on their T-shirts, their fishing hats, their license plates, their biceps. One that I’ve seen in Florida goes LIFE BEGINS WHEN THE CHILDREN LEAVE HOME AND THE DOG DIES.

A couple of months before the virus hit New York, I saw a Wall Street messenger wearing a T-shirt that read THERE’S ALWAYS ROOM FOR IMPROVEMENT AND THEN YOU DIE.

Good one, bike guy.

Stories can even elect presidents.

During the 1992 primary, Bill Clinton’s story was seen by detractors this way: a slick, Southern yuppie, educated in silver-spoon schools like Yale and Oxford, a draft dodger who had smoked pot and cheated. Not a good story.

An opinion-research program called the Manhattan Project uncovered a story that changed a lot of minds. The story was this: Bill Clinton was a son of a single mother, a middle-class guy who worked his way up to the Arkansas governorship, where he made remarkable progress in his poor state, focusing on job creation and education.

Now, that’s a good story. It helped elect a president.

Here’s one of my favorite $1,000-a-plate-dinner stories.

A classically trained pianist and violinist named Emily Zamourka had been homeless for two years or so in Los Angeles after the street performer’s $10,000 violin was stolen. One evening, she took the wrong train. Emily got off at the almost empty Wilshire/Normandie LA Metro station. She cursed herself a little, then plopped down on a bench.

As she waited for another train, she thought, Oh, I’m gonna sing a little bit, maybe that’ll make me feel better.

Emily started to sing a Puccini aria. She was loving it, really belting it out. Then she noticed a police officer walking her way.

She got nervous. Was she creating a disturbance? Would she get a fine that she couldn’t afford to pay?

But the LAPD officer just asked whether he could film her on his phone while she sang.

That night he posted the video along with this note: “Four million people call LA home. Four million stories. Four million voices…sometimes you just have to stop and listen to one, to hear something beautiful.”

I couldn’t agree more.

A few years back, my sister Mary Ellen lured me over to her side of Florida to give a speech for a local charity.

She decided to introduce me herself. She was wearing a big grin as she stood at the microphone. Mary Ellen is such an evil little witch. “Here’s all you have to know to put Jim in proper perspective—my brother is a jerk!”

Well, Mary Ellen brought the house down with that one. She was a hard act to follow. Just like when we were kids.