The introductory course in college physics has been criticized as fragmented and lacking in a theme or "story" to tie together the disparate chapters. As physicists, we see it as highly organized and hierarchical, developing from the great principles of Newton, Maxwell, etc. But to the student, it's just the chapter on lost hikers, the chapter on cars crashing and sticking together, etc. The purpose of this paper is to consider a certain subset of introductory course subjects, one that seems, if anything, more fragmented than the rest, and then to suggest a way of presenting these subjects that constitutes a story.