Storyteller Shelley Fraser Mickle Talks About Polio, NPR, Humor, and the Love of a Dog

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"So the light went off in my five-year-old head, and I said there must be something in stories that we need. Stories are like air or water. So, I decided right then and there that I wanted to be a storyteller, a writer." _______ Shelley Fraser Mickle

While her route was circuitous, as most journeys are, Shelley became an award-winning author and the storyteller incarnate for six years on NPR's "Morning Edition." The story she didn't tell often, though, was how, at age six, she was diagnosed with polio and taken to a hospital for infectious children, where she spent three months in isolation. Even more horrifying was that two of the children in her ward died right alongside her. There was an iron lung next to Shelley, poised to make her even more of a prisoner, but she bravely survived and rendered the iron lung unnecessary.

After such a horrifying trauma, how do you come around to humor? Well, Shelley explained, her mother was straight out of "I Love Lucy," a real hoot. She suffered from depression, and laughter was an elixir. Shelley came home with at least one funny story daily to entertain her mother.

Shelley had dreamed of becoming a cowgirl just like Dale Evans. (I hope that reference rings a bell.) She loved animals and, with her husband, bought a farm stocked full of all kinds of beloved creatures. And then along came Buddy, a neighbor's dog much more interested in spending time with Shelley than her owner.

Buddy became Shelley's beloved companion for ten years and saw so many things about her that she didn't see in herself. Theirs was a love affair.

"I'm 81 years old in this long life. I've had a lot of weird boyfriends, but I've never had the obsessive adoration that Buddy was offering me."

That special connection between a human and a dog is the overarching theme of Shelley's latest book, Itching To Love: The Story of a Dog.

Listen to NPR's "Morning Edition" emeritus and award-winning author as she tells her story of physical challenge, a career as a humorist, a dream realized to be a cowgirl, and the touching relationship with her dog, Buddy.

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