Being new to a group

June asserted that being a part of one group could make you more confident about becoming part of another group:

And I think that also transfers

so that

if you feel comfortable

before a group of people

and you go into something that you’re not

part of,

you know how to make friends!

And you feel comfortable in that group,

and are able to speak

even if you

have not participated in it.

It builds,

like we said a while ago,

your confidence.

And being able to

communicate with

somebody.

‘Cause I find myself, a lot of times,

going into a group,

and I don’t know a soul,

but I will make a friend

in that group

before I leave.

Just by going up and saying,

“Hi! My name is

June.

This is my first time here.

What am I supposed to do?

I’m scared!”

And people are,

I think most people are generally

welcoming

and kind

to you.

However, June told me she did feel that it was difficult to be a new person at Carapace:

People were carrying on

their own conversations

and not

reaching out

to others.

There seemed to be,

the environment was,

I felt kind of foreign

to the environment.

And I really didn’t care to go back

after we had gone because

I didn’t know a single person when I left.

Nobody’s name.

No one reached out to Frank and June, but it doesn’t sound like they introduced themselves either, as June described doing earlier in the interview, in other situations.

I think there were a few factors that made Frank and June feel like this might not be a group they could be a part of, and possibly prevented them from trying to make friends.

The first one would be that they didn’t care for a lot of the stories that were being told:

I had some pictures in my mind [from the stories]

that were not necessarily

what I would have wanted to walk away with.

And it

seemed to me like

a competition,

a competition of

who could make me feel the worst. (June)

They didn’t know what to do when they walked in:

Well, we didn’t know anything,

and no one was there to,

you know, explain anything to us, and

we kind of

had to hem haw around

to find out what you’re supposed to do. (June)

Shannon Turner mentioned that she misses having Randy and Joyce near the entrance where people pass by them and talk to them:

when we came back here,

there are a couple of things about

the way this room is set up that I think

do not serve us as well.

One,

Joyce and Randy

not sitting

at the entrance

where people have to come --

you know, it's almost like

when you leave church and you have to shake hands with the preacher.

It's very like that.

I miss their presence

at the place where people come and go,

That was also a visible place to go to get some instructions.

Frank thought that their stories would not be very interesting to the Carapace audience:

Yeah, that’s another thing, I think, is

you want to

tell a story where you can

communicate with the audience,

and

probably they would not have identified with our stories.

June attributed the mismatch in interests to age:

We were older,

and the majority of them were

young people,

which you would like to communicate with them,

and

we have had,

occasionally had some come to

the group here [Stories on the Square, Gwinnett].

And they’ve been welcomed,

you know.

They may have felt uncomfortable.

Age may be

a divider.

As a “young” storyteller I can confirm that walking into a group of people who are all 55 and up is intimidating. I don’t think age has to be a barrier, but I recognize how that feels.