I just found The Experience Project online.  It tells you to Be Yourself, Be Real and to anonymously connect with people just like you.  They claim to have had 3,253,248 stories shared.  The stories are divided into catagories:  experiences, confessions, challenges, dreams or advice.

You can search the site by groups i.e. “I Live in a Sexless Marriage” (7388 members) , “I Like to Read” (8674 members), or “I am a New Member at Experience Project” (8658 members).  I guess it’s reassuring to know that more members read than don’t have sex with their partners.

OK, I confess, I went to the confessions.  It told me I was not alone, and that secrets are best shared with friends.  When I join the network I will have millions of friends.  Some of the categories I perused were love, family, venting, funny and other.   Here’s an example of an other confession:

Vegetarian pain: oh my goodness … I SO want to eat some chicken. It’s not just that I’m hungry right now; I want chicken. I’m not a full-blown vegetarian or vegan so it’s OK if I have it but I’m striving to be as vegetarian & vegan as I possibly can. If I fight this craving, it’s a victory all around.

And a funny story that I didn’t think was so funny:

I made my dog fall on her face:  I have a wiener dog named Pebbles. Well, she was sitting on my lap today and started barking at my german shepherd. So in an attempt to keep Pebbles from getting in a fight with the shepherd, I lifted my leg so she couldn’t jump over it. But instead of preventing her from jumping it made her lose her balance and she fell on her face. She even lost a tooth. I felt so bad that I’m letting her sleep with me tonight.

I Googled anonymous stories and came up with a bunch of other online resources:

A Story to Share collects and shares true stories of heartache and love from all over the world

Stop Our Silence are anonymous testimonies of survivors of sexual violence

America Anonymous is a site for sharing addiction and recovery stories

Stories Told is a place people with eating disorders can share

You can read Coming Out Stories on the All Things Queer Gay and Lesbian Issues website

And the mother of all confessionals, Post Secret, which started with postcards and is now a fancy website with their own song.

It seems that there are ample opportunities to tell stories but I must confess that I’m still most interested in seeing the face of the person telling.

How about you?  Is anonymous better than facing up?

The next few days are are packed full of story and spoken word happenings for people of all ages and sensibilities.

1. Author Nick Belardes has devoted his life to poking around the peculiar and perplexing.  He’ll be sharing strange stories, random obsessions and bizarre trivia at the Random Obsessions Book Tour on Wednesday, September 23 from 4:30 to 6 p.m. at the UA Student Union Bookstore, 1209 E. University Blvd., Call 621-2814 for more information.

2. Refugees’ amazing stories of hardship, courage and hope come to life using music, song, dance and live performance via the talents of the Stories that Soar! professional acting troupe on Saturday, September 26, from 6 to 8 p.m. at Catalina High School Auditorium, 3645 E. Pima.

This free community event hosted by Chairman Richard Elias is open to the public.  The stories start at 6 p.m. and a public forum to discuss issues and share ideas  follows at 7. Food provided by the refugee community will be offered during the intermission.

3. Poetry Joeys, a Saturday morning reading and activity group for children ages four through ten will meet this Saturday, September 26 at 10 a.m. at the University of Arizona Poetry Center, 1508 East Helen Street (At Vine Avenue).

Two experienced teaching artists divide children into age-appropriate groups and inspire them to develop their flexibility with language. Participants in each session read and write poems and enjoy creative movement activities that spark the imagination. Poetry Joeys meets in the Children’s Corner of the library.

4.  Edge 17: a Reading Series of Emerging and Younger Writers, curated by Melissa Buckheit will be featuring three poets on Thursday, September 24 at 7:30 p.m. at Casa Libre en la Solana, 228 N. 4th Avenue.  There’s a suggested donation of $5.

Stephanie Balzer is executive director of VOICES Community Stories Past and Present, Inc., a Tucson nonprofit that mentors youth in the documentary arts and publishes their work.

Rafael Otto writes fiction (long, short and flash), poetry, spoken word, and lyrics.

Orlando White is originally from Tólikan, Arizona. He holds a BFA in creative writing from the Institute of American Indian Arts and an MFA from Brown University.

According to the Casa Libre website, you can join White for a workshop, Let Err Poetry, focusing on “reexamining and rewriting the English alphabet from an imaginative perspective of one’s own ethnic and/or social sensibilities”.  The workshop is on Saturday, September 26 from 10 to 1 and costs $50.  Contact Casa Libre to register.

I was visiting my daughter and her family in a Chicago suburb last week.  Tuesday morning, after the long holiday weekend, was a school day and after the hectic rush to get everyone’s lunch into the right backpack and all the shoes were found, the leash was snapped on the dog’s collar and we all took a walk to the school bus stop.

We only had about a block to walk and we joined the other mothers and their children waiting on the corner.  It was early and the kids goofed around throwing rocks and the dog got tangled up in everyone’s feet.  There was plenty of time to hear the news – Mary went to the hospital last night at 7 and by 5 a.m. her baby girl was born.  A very detailed account of the birth followed, I won’t share that info here.

In the middle of the telling, Mary’s mother, the proud new grandmother, came out of her house a half a block away with the new baby’s sister who got to stay home from school for the occasion.  We heard the story again, but this time from insiders.

The bus stop women were excited to meet me because my daughter had told them I was coming to visit.  They were too polite to ask but I know they wanted to hear my reaction to staying with my 6 grandchildren (they’re great).

After the bus took the kids away, we had to leave to take the two little ones to kindergarten and when we drove past the corner about ten minutes later, the women were still on the corner. I was puzzled about why they were still there and then the significance of this morning ritual of sharing stories hit me.

The school bus stop is the suburban equivalent of the town square.  A gathering place, a community resource, a source of information and a place for connections.  Any place that people meet on a regular basis and get to know each other is fertile ground for storytelling.  It’s an essential element in creating and preserving community.

Who are your community of storytellers?