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the idea of there being only 24 stories to be told is an interesting one. last semester, i was in a creative non fiction class at bryn mawr. the class had about 15 people in it and every week, a group of 5 people shared a piece of writing with the class - the prompts for these assignments was loose ('personal' 'walking' 'food' 'music' etc) and we were given the freedom to decide whether or not we wanted to follow them at all. the thing that i found most interesting in the class was the fact that every week, five students writing the 'same story' (eg music) had five extremely different, personal, vibrant essays to share.

movies, genres of books, cartoons, tv shows and blogs, all of these seem to do the same. we could say (taking us back to professor grobestiens original point) that the manner in which we structure our lives, either on a day to day basis or looking back on it, is one story. a story comprised of littler stories.

i think it brings us back to the idea of perception - someone famous once said that there were as many universes as there were minds and i agree with them - we all may have the same recipe for a story, the same basic structure, but it is not  a blueprint for the manner in which things turn out - what we choose to do with it is up to us entirely.