The book title "A Telling Experience" has a double meaning: 1) something curious that you were part of, and 2) the sharing of your particular story. An experience becomes even more meaningful by being told. The thing may be familiar, or it may be as strange as The Twilight Zone (but true). The idea of this book is that everybody's life is somehow a Tall Tale. This book is my Tall Tale; my ordinary, strange, telling experience: A bewildered youth, a bumbling smitten young adult, a middle-age striver, finally a would-be philosopher. It's a wild ride. You'll laugh your head off and cry your eyes out, I promise! It's a bizarre collection, every chapter a story of its own, and every story a very Tall Tale! Each story is somehow like your own story, and like everybody else's too. We're all in the same boat, all on the same train. That's a comforting thought. Misery loves company, and so does joy.

Richard M. Trask, Ph.D., University of Illinois (Old and Middle English), is author of "The Complete Writer's Guide: Questions of Language," and "Beowulf and Judith: Two Heroes." He taught courses in writing, History of the English Language, and Chaucer for thirty years in the University System of Maryland, then took up coastal living in Southport, North Carolina. Fuller details at https: //richardmtrask.com