ABSTRACT
Once upon a time, members of a family, as is typical of families, were surprised by a loud crash in the family room. The older members of the family rushed into the room to see what had happened. They discovered the youngest member of the family standing in the midst of shattered glass, spilled water, and a broken flower arrangement. The routine family narrative had given way to a crisis narrative. (Or is the breaking of vases a typical family narrative?) The parents asked in unison, “What happened?” The child enacted a crisis response narrative by saying—one of the following, “I don’t know how that happened, it just fell over”; “A ghost must have knocked the vase over”; “The dog jumped after a fly and knocked it over”; or “I broke it and I am sorry.” As is so often the case, as narratives change from the routine to the different, some person must come forward in the midst of what might be or actually is a crisis and tell a story that in the judgment of key publics puts that event right.
