I’m laughing or crying

Author: Helena Javurkova
National Project Coordinator
Location: Stories Exchange Project Workshop #4
EastWest Institute
Prague
I spend a lot of time in the office here, calling people, receiving e-mails, calling the Mayor’s office in Brno asking when would be a good time to put the computer in and what type of cable we should use, and I feel like an office mouse by now.
For two months nothing really changed and then last week I called back, and they said, "Well, come in, and we’ll just put it here, you know, there’s no problem – so finally, finally we are allowed to come on Wednesday with the computer, and that’s a really good piece of news.
And when I started thinking last week, “well, I’m not receiving enough stories,” I was swamped with stories and I was sitting in this office looking across the room at all my colleagues and there were stories and papers all over my desk and there was a story that David sent me and I read it and I began to weep a little bit and then started crying because it’s a very strong story.
So my colleagues said, “What’s happened to you?”
Well, how to explain? So I said, “Look, I’m working here, and I’m reading these stories, and – ” But it was really hard to tell them, so I said, “I’m going to send you some stories by e-mail so you can read them yourselves.”
Then a little later I got a good story from Eva and it was a really funny story. You know, these stories are like that: some of them make you really sad and others make you laugh, and you sit there and the other people are looking at their paper work and what happens with me? You know: I’m laughing or crying.
So now when I come to work, my colleagues say, “Send us some stories, give us some stories,” because they want to share in the fun or in the sadness. So that’s really great. It makes me happy.

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