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In response to Professor Grobstein's post with the quote:
"Man is, above all, a storyteller. He lives surrounded by his stories and by those of others. He sees everything that happens to him through these stories; and he tries to live his life as if he were recounting it."

I think this is 100% true. Almost everything in our life is based upon our ability to tell stories, to communicate. This is furthered when going out into the "real world" where companies have interviews and applications programs and schools have essays to determine whether or not you are a successful communicator. Maybe this process is in and of itself natural selection. Communication does not make you as a candidate, but it certainly doesn't hurt. You could be a great story teller and write a superb essay or have a superb interview but if you all other qualities you won't be chosen. Story telling ability, however, could break you. You could look fabulous on paper and sit down for an interview and all that could come out of your mouth (or writing, or other way of communicating; I don't want to rule out people with disabilities as good communicators) is the word banana. You probably won't get the job. So maybe nature is selecting for story telling, at least in humans by favoring it so much. People in power must be able to tell stories.

For a while, people have thought the ability to speak was purely a human characteristic. Now we have learned that we can teach words to other primates. However, it has been shown time and time again that they cannot form understandable sentences. They cannot create syntax and tell a story. So that is just it. Our story telling ability is what makes us human!

Dennett shares this point of view saying in his chapter about the amazingness of language, "But even if chimpanzees are, like us, innately equiped as natural psychologists, they nevertheless lack a crucial feature shared by all human natural psychologists, folk and professional varieties: they never get to compare notes."