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I was walking through a street festival recently when I saw a sign outside a restaurant that made me do a quick double-take.

I couldn’t believe it.

All you can eat crab legs.

Immediately, I got excited. I reflected on the last time I even had crab legs(it’s been too long).

I wholeheartedly identify as a foodie. And the thing about food is it carries a lotttt of different roles.

Food can be joy. Culture. Connection. Memory. Celebration. Even protest.

That “Oh, I’m sooo down” feeling quickly deflated as I had another thought…

“Damn. That would have been fun to do with my wife.”

My wife is a vegetarian and has been the entire time I’ve known her.

That shapes a lot of our food life together, namely, what we cook at home and which restaurants make sense for both of us.

We somehow got chatting about seafood. I think the classic “lobster is such a high status item, but they just classy roaches food chain and ecosystem-wise” situation came up.

I was like, "Isn't that so wild? People love talking about lobster as a premium thing, but look, crab legs any day. Seafood boil any day over a lobster tail OR roll."

To where I learned, pre-vegetarian, she would tear some crab legs upppp.

And something clicked when I heard her say that…

I started imagining a version of us I had never really pictured before.

We're ordering a seafood boil, cracking jokes, and crab legs.

Feeling guilty about how many napkins we use because the “one napkin per meal” conservation strategy was drilled into our brains.

Then the reality set in.

That version of us is not really available.

Because the conditions for that particular shared experience do not exist in our lives as they are now.

And that is where the story is.

The crab legs were never just crab legs.

They represented a memory I didn’t get to make.

A tiiiny alternate timeline where one part of who I am, a foodie, could have met a part of her I never got to experience.

Sometimes, what people react to is not the thing itself.

It is what the thing represents.

That is the storytelling lesson.

One person might see all-you-can-eat crab legs and think, “Cool.”

Or even “gross, not into it.”

I saw it and thought, “Damn. That would have been fun to do with my wife.”

That is the part worth paying attention to. The representation.

A delayed appointment is not always just a scheduling issue.

For someone who has already had to fight to be taken seriously, it can feel like one more reminder that their time, pain, or concern is “less important.”

A closed pool is not always just a closed pool.

For a neighborhood, it can mean kids losing a supervised place to gather or families losing an affordable way to cool off.

Description tells us the event.

Interpretation tells us why the event mattered.

And for people doing change work, that distinction is critical in storytelling.

🛠️ The PHacilitator’s Corner:

This week, practice noticing a potential story beneath a moment.

Think of something small that recently made you react.

Then ask yourself:

What was this really about?

Use these prompts to dig one layer deeper:

• What did this moment make me realize I wanted?

• What memory, value, or expectation did it touch?

• What version of life did it make me imagine?

• What reality made that version harder, smaller, or unavailable?

Build your interpretation muscle.

The more you practice noticing meaning in your own life, the sharper you become at seeing meaning in your work.

Storytelling improved when we practice how we pay attention.

How’d I do?