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- [00:02]
Kevin Allison
On this episode of Risk, you'll hear,
- [00:04]
Pam Stepanski
I need you to change my maxi pad.
- [00:07]
Kevin Allison
And you'll hear, we would turn and look at each other simultaneously and say, off bus. Off bus. And that is me, Kevin Allison, on the show, where people tell true stories they never thought they'd dare to.
- [00:32]
Pam Stepanski
Mom, can you tell me a story? Sure. Once upon a time, a mom needed a new car. Was she brave? She was tired, mostly. But she went to Carvana.com and found a great car at a great price. No secret treasure map required. Did you have to fight a dragon? Nope. She bought it 100% online from her bed, actually. Was it scary? Honey, it was as unscary as car buying could be. Did the car have a sunroof? It did, actually. Okay, good story. Car buying. You'll want to tell stories about. Buy your car today on Carvana. Delivery fees may apply.
- [01:02]
Kevin Allison
I'm Richard Sarrett. Join me on Strange Planet for in depth conversations with the world's top paranormal investigators, alien abductees, Bigfoot trackers, monster hunters, time travelers, and more. The handler one day told her this whole thing about how they've been terraforming on Mars and they're building a colony and they're recruiting specific people of specific bloodlines and specific talents and skill sets to go onto the planet. On Richard Cerrit's Strange Planet, we're redefining reality. Listen now, wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, folks, this is Shushu behind me now, and we're calling this episode Bad Medicine. In a little bit, we'll hear something from me, but before that, we're going to hear a story by Pam Stepanski that she shared at a collaboratively produced live show in New York City last December. It was Risk collaborating with the story Collider. So after Pam's story, you'll hear Brad Lawrence of Risk and Aaron Barker of the Story Collider chatting about Pam's story a little bit on stage after she shares it. And all of that is to say what you about to hear is Pam Stepanski with a story we call the Laxative Standoff.
- [03:04]
Pam Stepanski
The day after my Last drink was December 27, 2013. I awoke in the midday at a friend's apartment, very groggy and disgusted with myself. The night before was hazy at best, but I didn't need concrete memories to know that I wasn't returning to that world. I could never, would never drink again. A few days later, I went to my dad. I broke down in tears, and I told him I couldn't stop drinking. He gave me a really big hug and took me out for pasta. And he promised that we'd get through it together. By the next morning, he already had a counselor lined up to help me. At this point, I'd already been living with him for about a year. After I broke up with my boyfriend, lost my jobs plural, and got kicked out of my apartment, my dad was there to cushion my fall, which is kind of his forever mo. So I lived with him for the year leading up to my last drink and for the next two years as I pursued recovery. Aside from sleeping on the couch every night, I liked living with my dad. I mean, we had lived together from the time I was 12 until the time I was 19, just the two of us. And we'd always been close. I mean, he's the person who bought me my first box of tampons. Still, I was a 27 year old woman, so I wanted to get back out into the world on my own. For the first time in my life, I contemplated starting a career. I kicked around some ideas, and I thought being a massage therapist would be a cool way to help people. I never dreamed of being a massage therapist as a kid. I always thought I'd end up a creative, like an author or maybe an actor. I was born with this writer's spirit, like as a child, before I could even read or write or even say the Alphabet. My favorite toys were my grandpa's old fashioned dip ink pens and his old typewriter. But in recovery, people push this idea of being of service to the world. So to prove that I was serious about my sobriety, I enrolled in massage school at night, got a new day job, and moved back out to Brooklyn, which is where, after some time, I developed sciatic pain. The pain was intense. It was electric and wiry. It ran from my right butt cheek all the way down through my right foot. And I just muscled through it as long as I could. But eventually I had to see a doctor, so I met with an orthopedic surgeon. He sent me to physical therapy. And you know, it's not what you do at physical therapy that matters so much as what you do the other 23 hours of the day. Recovery had also inspired me to exercise. I was on my way to a spin class, even though the moment I left my apartment, I knew it was a bad idea. My back was really acting up, but I'd already paid for the class, and I wanted to be the kind of person who shows up when she says she's going to show up, which is another Tenet of recovery. I got to the studio and I just called my dad quick before I went in. And I was like, hey, my back is acting up, but I have this workout class, what do I do? He told me to just go in and take it easy. If it started to hurt, back off. Easy peasy. So I went into the class, and a few minutes in, the instructor guided us out of the saddle. As soon as I stood up on that bike, I felt it. Something in my spine unhinged. But I didn't back off. I kept going. Endorphins carried me through the whole class and back to Brooklyn, which is where the excruciating pain really set in. I couldn't move without screaming. I didn't know what to do. So I, like, barrel rolled off my bed and army crawled to my phone to call, of course, my dad. I was like, dad, there is something so wrong. I can't move. You gotta come get me. So he did. He brought me back to his apartment on Long island, where I laid in bed as still as humanly possible. I wondered if this pain could maybe be worse than childbirth. Which is when I remembered the worst thing I could remember in that moment. I had my period. And it was not a light day. I called my dad over to the bedside and I said, dad, I have my period. He said, okay, what does that mean? And I said, I think I need your help. So we hobbled over to the bathroom together and I said, go get my purse. I need you to change my maxi pad. This is not a directive I ever thought I'd be giving my father. But I knew I couldn't bend over. I could not perform the task. I was defeated. He came back, rummaging through my purse, and he pulled out this orange square and said, is this what you need? I nodded and I closed my eyes, mortified. I set my pants and underwear down, revealing a blood soaked pad and of course, my vagina. My dad knelt down. His head was just inches from my pubic area and I heard the sticky release of the used pad. I peeked down with one eye open to see him very gently opening the new one, like a delicate presentation. He held it up and said, this way. I nodded. He stuck it on and pronounced that he was done. I swallowed, looking down and said, you have to do the wings. He cocked his head to the side and I explained that you had to peel the tab off and then wrap the wings around the sides of the underwear. And his eyes just lit up in understanding. My mouth curled downward in a frown. He finished the task and helped me pull my pants back up. We got back over to the bed, and that is where my screaming continued relentlessly due to the ongoing pain. Around 2am My dad called 911 after a neighbor came by to see if someone was being murdered. The EMTs came and they kept trying to shove me in a wheelchair even though I told them my body wouldn't bend that way. We got into the ambulance. They gave me a shot of morphine and delivered me to the er, where a nurse came by to give me a second shot of morphine. I told her, no, thank you. I'm a person in recovery from drug and alcohol addiction. I want the least amount of narcotics possible. She told me I couldn't refuse medication, shot me up, installed a catheter, and admitted me to a room. The hospital was ready to move forward with the spinal surgery, but I didn't want them to do my spinal surgery. It's a terrible hospital, and it's not where my surgeon was affiliated. But I got stuck there for five days. They had graduated me from morphine to Dilaudid, which is basically one medical step below heroin. And it just felt like I was living underwater. Like, had no one heard me when I said I didn't want more narcotics and that I wanted to be transferred to my hospital of choice? Recovery had taught me to be like water, to go with the flow. But in me, a tsunami was rising. Five days of watching these hospitals point fingers at each other while I was drowning in these unwanted narcotics and becoming irate. For the first few years of my recovery, I was a very meek and damaged version of myself. I didn't have a lot of strength to find my voice and to advocate for my needs. But there in that hospital, too much was at stake. I started yelling at the hospital administrators to get me out of there. I also had been requesting a laxative for days on account of all the opiates and had been refused time and again. So by the fourth night, I had had enough. I mustered the strength to get out of the bed, and standing on my own two feet with my catheter dangling, I wrapped my hand around the cannula and yelled at the nurse in front of me, I will rip this fucking IV out of my arm if you don't get me a laxative. She never got me the laxative, but the next day I was delivered to the correct hospital. It was like night and day. The OR was bright and clean. My surgeon was peppy and listening to 80s synth pop. I told him that I was going to go to Peter Luger's as soon as he was finished. I don't remember anything else until I woke up in the recovery room hours later in a whole new type of pain, which was a surprise to me. I had never had surgery before and I naively believed that cutting my spine open wouldn't hurt after. So my steakhouse dream quickly became my hospital French toast reality and I was back at my dad's house for the next six months. Except this time it was my dad on the couch and me in the bed so I could recover. At this point I was five years sober. My dad was doling out my Percocet as prescribed and he would stay with me in the night when the pain was the worst. We'd be up together around three in the morning talking about the Beatles or something he heard on Stern that day. Living with my dad in early recovery, he was a sense of comfort, protection and safety. And now he was still all those things. But in the glow of the late night television, I realized he had also become one of my closest friends. I could only handle so much movement each day, so a lot of my time was spent staring at the ceiling wondering what the hell I was going to do with my life. I could not go back to a four floor walk up in Brooklyn and I could not go back to massage school. In my condition, I wasn't permitted to twist my spine for an entire year. It was time to figure out who I was and who I wanted to be in the world. So I took a long hard look in the mirror. I felt really powerful in the hospital, using my voice to demand what was right. And that's when it came to me. I was a writer. I've always been a writer. And it was time to learn how to write and use my voice for my livelihood and beyond. I moved into my mom's vacant studio apartment on Long island and sought out a part time job just to keep the lights on. And I interviewed at a pelvic floor physical therapy office. When I was asked why I wanted the position, I explained that I knew a lot about being in physical therapy and I also only wanted a part time job because I was building a career as a writer. The therapist said, oh, I hate to write. You can write for me. So writing blogs about pelvic floor physical therapy is how I got my start as a professional writer. And I've been a professional writer ever since. My dad and his underutilized journalism degree couldn't be prouder and I am still amazed that people pay me to put words on the page. But in some ways, it's not a surprise at all. After derailing my life with drugs and alcohol and then putting it back together in recovery, my mission became very clear. And it was always to stay rooted and connected to that little girl inside me. The one who likes playing with typewriters and dip pens. It just took one crazy spinal surgery to find my way back to her. Thank you,
- [15:38]
Brad Lawrence
Pam Stepanski, everybody. That was amazing. Thank you so much. I recently. I don't actually seek medical attention, just
- [15:52]
Pam Stepanski
as a general rule.
- [15:53]
Brad Lawrence
As a general rule. But I have over these. I've ended up going with my wife because she takes care of herself. And also she has, like, genetic conditions that have been monitored, that kind of stuff. And so I've gone to her a lot of doctor's appointments with her, and part of the reason she has been bringing me to these things for years is because she's like, I need you to see how they talk to me. And it is very, very true. I have never seen so much condescension and diminishment in my entire life. And she has learned over the years to, like, go head to head with them and to not put up with it and to use her voice and to be a very, like, thorough self advocate. And I've watched her do it, and I learned nothing because about the middle of October, I ended up in the hospital. Okay, you want to skip the ER line? I'll tell you how. You walk in there and you go, hey, I gained 25 pounds in five days and my chest hurts. No waiting, no waiting, no blinking. Just go right through. And then I'm in the hospital, and my wife was actually visiting her sister when this happened, so she was out of town, and I'm just in there by myself. I'd walk myself to the emergency room, and by the time she gets there the next day, when I am in a situation where I know I'm, like, the least knowledgeable person, I just default to, like, charm offensive. And so I'm, like, telling jokes and telling stories and doing all this. And by the time she gets there, doctors and nurses are coming by my room to hang out and hear me do bits. And we're all having a great time. And then she comes in and she sees us and she's like, wait a minute. Because she has this voice that she has developed over the years for, like, cutting through the medical bullshit. And she's like, wait a minute. We have questions. And, like, everybody in the room kind
- [17:36]
Kevin Allison
of went, oh, oh, right.
- [17:38]
Pam Stepanski
We're supposed to be at work.
- [17:39]
Brad Lawrence
Yes. And they did. And I'm not dead. I am actually not in the hospital anymore, which it took four days to do that. But that, I realized is why women live longer than men and that is why married men live longer than single men.
- [17:54]
Pam Stepanski
That is almost certainly true. I have to go with my husband also. He also asked no questions, but comes back with charming anecdotes about how he had the same shoes as somebody. I don't know what's wrong with you. What's wrong with men is the sub theme of this show. We're gonna figure it out by the end of the night.
- [18:15]
Brad Lawrence
Absolutely.
- [18:31]
Kevin Allison
This is Risk. This is Rafter behind me now. And we just heard an anecdote that Brad Lawrence shared on the stage at that Story Collider show in December. He was following Pam Stepanski. Brad is @BradLaw77 on Instagram and TikTok. And Pam is a writer, stand up and writing retreat leader who you can find at my Puerto Rico writing retreat dot com. Folks, we have not talked about this publicly yet, but last year it was really starting to look like we really might have to finally shut the show down due to financial hardships. I can't tell you how much stress and anxiety and upset and worry there has been with our whole staff. While working ourselves silly for peanuts, we decided to take a Hail Mary pass and do something drastic. So we have switched the network we're on. Our new network is called Glassbox and we're really teaming up to bring new listeners to the show. We really need to be reaching more people here. And one of the reasons we really need to be reaching new people here is that we desperately need more support on Patreon. We just need a bigger audience so that people who really love and care about the show can be helping us out. And listen, if you've been listening to Risk for months or years, whether you listen on a weekly basis or, you know, you just binge a bunch of episodes a few times a year, you've already gotten hundreds of dollars of value out of this show. And you know, you would buy a friend a meal here or there. And if it feels like we are friends and you know, this really is bringing value to your life like it is ours for sure, please consider joining our patreon@patreon.com risk or increase your donation if you're already there and you'd be so kind. Now, soon we're going to start making single stories available over there for anyone who prefers not to hear any of the rest of the show, but wants just the stories that are released each week on the show. So we're continuing to think of new perks to add over there. And remember, if you want to make a one time donation, that's at PayPal me riskshow. Another way you can help us is giving us great reviews on Apple Podcast or Spotify or podchaser and we are so, so grateful for your support. We are still as determined as ever to keep this going. I can't tell you how much fun I've been having though and how moving and inspiring it has been to be so into teaching storytelling workshops again. And my next online ones that you can take no matter where in the world you are start on April 22, 2026. That's eight Wednesdays at 8:30pm Eastern time. And my next Sunday mornings one will start on May 31. That'll be 10am Each Sunday morning for eight weeks in a row. There's over seven hours of video content and many opportunities to share three to five minute stories, 12 to 15 minute stories, improvised ones, carefully written ones, revisions coming back with new versions and all you gotta do is email me at kevinrisk-show.com for more information. Now next up, a story from yours truly. This was recorded in San Francisco the last time we brought the show there. It's a story about the first time I was in San Francisco. And it's a story we call Of Mice and Men. In 1993, my best friend Matt and I decided we were gonna make our very first trip ever to San Francisco. We lived in New York and we felt like this was the other super gay city to get to right now. We were both in our early 20s. A lot of people thought we were brothers. A lot of people thought we were straight. A very good friend of ours once said, said to us, yeah, you both dress like lesbian truck drivers. But the truth is we were actually, I think way back then we were just quote unquote, daddies who had yet to grow out of our twink bodies, you know, we had to grow into the flannel, you know. But when we got to San Francisco in the summer of 1993, a friend of mine from high school, a very gay seeming fella named Keith, said, oh, we could stay at his place now. Keith said to us, now, I know you're not boyfriends, but would you mind sharing the futon mattress in this empty room? He had just gotten this apartment, right? So there was this unfurnished room and just this futon mattress was the only thing in it. And we were like, okay, all right. You know, I mean, what the hell? We were like 22 years old. And then at one point, Keith said, oh, you know what? Also, I'm, you know, I'm kind of new here. I think there might be a mouse around here in the apartment. Now, I had grown up with mice as pets, so didn't mean a thing to me. But Matt said, oh, I find that rather worrisome. And I laughed out loud. I was like, well, listen, if you meet your mouse and that's the worst that happens to us this weekend, you're just fine. And he said, well, maybe you'll meet your mouse and you won't be laughing anymore. And I don't think either of us knew what he meant by that. Well, our first few days in the city, we just ran around town chasing after pretty boys and getting our hearts broken. But the thing of it was, I had another goal. For the first time, I visited San Francisco. And that was to do lsd. For the very first time in my mind, in my imagination, San Francisco was a town for licking balls and trippin ball balls. But the whole time we're running around chasing fellas, no one seemed to have any acid. So on the final day, Matt said, hey, Kev, let's go down to this place they call Haight Ashbury. I understand there's a park somewhere around there. And they say that people say sell drugs there. Now, this is just like the ancient sages used to tell us. You know, if you want high quality and very safe drugs, just go loiter around some grassy knoll somewhere and talk to strangers. So that's exactly what we do. We ran on down there, and when we got there, we spied a knoll. And indeed, lo, it was grassy. And the first person we saw there, he looked like one of those ancient sages. He looked like Jesus, or at least, you know, the Caucasian Jesus from the indoctrination of our childhoods. And Jesus was playing with a hacky sack to indicate to the whole world that it was 1993. He was kind of like the. You know that song Send Me On My Way by Rusted Root, if that song was a guy. So we made a beeline right to him and we asked him if he could sell us some acid. And he was like, dudes, of course I can. Monkeys in a barrel. And we went, yay. We had no idea what the fuck that meant. But he then clarified. He said, these are much stronger than your average dose. Dudes, just ask that guy and he pointed over to some guy who appeared to be copulating with a tree. We were like, okay, yeah, sign us up. So we each got one tab of this acid, and when we looked at it, sure enough, printed on it was the image of monkeys on a barrel, like the little kids game. So that made sense of that. So we put the tabs on our tongue, and then we lay on the side of a hill, and we just waited for the magic to happen. And about 45 minutes later, we felt nothing. We began to suspect that Jesus may have been a false prophet. So we came to Jesus and we said, hey, dude, those monkeys appear to be duds. And he was like, oh, no, no, no, they certainly are not. But listen, if you think you can handle it, I'll sell you another. So we bought ourselves a second dose of Monkeys in a Barrel, put it on our tongues, and lay on the ground. We waited about 30 minutes this time, and we felt nothing. So we came to Jesus, and we were pretty pissed off now, and we said, dude, come on, be straight with us. He was like, I am not lying to you. This shit is ultra strong. But also, I'm all sold out. Now, listen, I did sell a huge batch of it to that lady over there. He pointed to this lady who looked like Janis Joplin, but also she looked like she might think she was being attacked by a swarm of rabid bats. She was just flailing around. He said, maybe you can buy some. Some of hers. So we went up to her, this Tasmanian devil of a lady, and she did sober up, just enough for a moment to sell us our third dose of Monkeys in a Barrel. Now, I am sure you can guess what happened next. What happened next was that about five minutes after putting that third dose in on our tongues, the first dose very much started to kick in. So now we were two guys who had never tried acid, and we had just done just about enough for the entire original Broadway cast of hair. Now, also keep in mind, we also knew nothing about what was what or where was where in this city. So we're laying on this grassy knoll, and, you know, the sunlight starts shimmering and the grass starts breathing, and, you know, our skulls start to fill with this electric glowing sensation. And all of a sudden, a bus, a public bus, pulls up right there by the grassy knoll. And Matt and just pointed like he was seeing clouds parting. And he said, on bus. On bus. Now, I have severe ADHD and money. Money issues give me panic attacks when I'm completely sober. But now the very concept of money like the definition of money was rather beyond me. Right. How money might procure a ride on a bus, for example. Well, Matt, he wasn't hit as hard at the very beginning of this trip, so he was totally taking care of me. He was even holding on to me at one point. So he took care of all the bus stuff. And that entire afternoon is kind of like, you know, when the film gets loose in the projector and then every now and then it catches again and you can see, oh, well, here's what's going on. That's how my memory of that afternoon is. You know, we did have one thing. We did have a well understood system that we had never planned or talked about. And that was whenever we felt overwhelmed and a little freaked out about being on that planet bus, we would turn and look at each other simultaneously and say, off bus, off bus. And then out in the outdoor reality, wherever we had landed, whenever that seemed to get a little overwhelming to us, we would turn without having agreed to anything and say, on bus, on bus. So everywhere we ended up up was just kind of by total happenstance, right? I remember us for some reason, hiding in the bushes in someone's lawn. I remember us at one point being in a forest where gay men were cruising, which ordinarily I would be right at home. But in this condition, every time someone poked their head out from. From a tree or whatever, it was like, they look like the Mad Hatter or Tweedledum and Tweedledee. I remember seeing a body of water at one point and saying, oh, my God, it's Cape Cod. You're not going to believe it, but it was not Cape Cod. But the climax of the afternoon was when we were riding the bus. We came, we got overwhelmed. We looked at each other at the same time and said, off bus, off bus, off bus. We walked out of that bus and we were at the Golden Gate Bridge with a beautiful sunset happening. It was just epic and magic. It was so moving. In fact, I just got goosebumps just talking about it. We lay on a hill watching the sun go down and then watching a full moon rise. And at one point I said, wow, that is a mad old monk of a moon. And Matt laughed so hard he was crying. And to this day, every time I see him, he quotes that back at me. And he still laughs, loves that I said those words. Well, then it was nighttime and we were a little too overwhelmed to keep getting on buses. So we called my friend Keith to come rescue us down there. He said, all right, I'll take You guys out. We'll go to some gay bars and I'll be your chaperone for the night. We were so thrilled. And I remember we were kind of bar hopping. There was a lot more of the film being loose in the projector. But at one point, we were walking down the street and San Francisco seemed black and white that night. And I remember I was looking at the pavement in front of me as we were walking, when suddenly the most amazing hallucination I have ever had happened to me. I'm walking down the street, looking at the kind of black and white texture of the concrete, when suddenly a figure peeled himself out of the concrete, peeled himself up. At first he was in two dimensions and then three. And he started to kind of this bouncy walk toward me, right? And he was smiling and he was waving right at me and passing right by me. When he said, hello there, my friends, it was Mickey Mouse. It was the Steamboat Willie version of Mickey Mouse. The black and white Mickey Mouse that just went into the public domain. Like last week. He had thought enough of me to peel himself out of the pavement and give me me that friendly greeting. And I'll tell you, I collapsed right there in the middle of the sidewalk. I fell to the ground laughing so hard. I was crying. Keith was mortified because people were walking around like, what is wrong with this person? But, you know, I'd seen Mickey Mouse in the flesh. It was so important to me. And of course, all that had really been there was sidewalk. But Matt did say to me, he said, I have to admit, you met your mouse. Well, we finally got home at about 3am that night. And remember I said that at first the trip was hitting me a lot harder than him. Well, we're about 16 hours into this trip now, right? And that's when it started hitting Matt really, really hard. While it was really tapering off for me, I was getting back to that blissful normal. And he started seriously feeling like he was losing his mind. So we're on that little futon mattress in this empty room in the dark. Keith is, like, locked away on the other end of the apartment. And Matt really started to have true terror in his voice. At one point, he said, kev, Kev, Kev, will you hold me? He said, I feel like I'm on a cliff and I'm about to fall off, and the cliff is my sanity. He really believed that he made might not come back from this. And for well over an hour, he was just like, kind of hyperventilating and groaning and shaking at some points, he would just yell out, kev, are you there? And I was holding him. But by far and away, the worst part was the mouse. Remember earlier he had said that he found it a little worrisome that there might be a mouse in this house. Well, now he found it fucking terrifying. Every now and then he would just say, fuck. Fuck, fuck. Is that the mouse? There's a fucking mouse. The fuck? I just kept having to say to him over and over, matt, no, no, we're okay. You're okay. There is no mouse. There is no mouse. Until finally I was so exhausted that I just passed out. When I woke up in the morning, he had already gone. He had a much earlier plane than I had to go back to New York. And he was on his plane. And later that day, he let me know he was still fucking tripping on that plane. He said it was about as pleasant a plane plane ride as that one in the Twilight Zone. You know the one? So I'll tell you, I personally became a huge fan of psychedelics. In fact, I took a second microdose today just in honor of the fact that I was telling this story here tonight. But Matt has not touched psychology psychedelics since that day. And I've also become a huge fan of San Francisco. I've visited the city dozens of times since then. But I don't feel like I've ever been back to the magical wonderland, San Francisco, of that day, you know? And a lot has been written about the weird synchronicity of psychedelics. How if two or more people have doses from the same batch of a drug, they'll often just experience these weird coincidences, you know, like having the feeling at the same time and looking at each other, knowing it's time to get off the bus. And then having that timed perfectly to be somewhere absolutely glorious and beautiful. Or when someone says, well, maybe you'll meet your mouse and you won't be laughing anymore. And you do meet your mouse, but you laugh so hard that you hit the pavement. And I think it's so kooky that there's two mice for two men in this story. I mean, both of these were just in our heads. Mickey Mouse revealed himself and was just pure joy. And meanwhile, the mouse in the apartment, if it ever existed, existed in the first place, never stirred, but created very, very real terror. Neither of us seemed to have any control over those situations. So the mind can be a minefield or a field of dreams. And I'll tell you, Matt has found things about me in the years since where he's like, you're worrying about something that's only in your head, that's not at all a worry to him, right? So I don't know what to say about it all, but I do know this. It's very important when you do have those moments of wonder, to take in the good. You know, to savor those moments, even if they're memories, to go back and savor them again. That's why sometimes I'm kind of drifting off to sleep and I treat myself. I go back to that amazing memory with his bouncing stride and his happy, jolly face and he says, hello there. Ha ha. The sound of a Mickey Mouse just for me. Thank you. Yeah. Are you as fake as me? My name? Everything's great. We'll make Yosemite tourist fake. Water that comes up from la. Are you real? Go away yeah. Or are we west? This is risk. This is Johnny Fletcher behind me now. And we just heard from me. I have not run into Mickey Mouse again anytime recently. But I will say that on May 1, I'm a part of the next Bangkok Story show at the Garage Burger and Grill in Thong, London, right next to the BTS station there. If you're in Bangkok and you want to be kept in the loop about storytelling, workshops, shows, social events, just email me at kevinrisk-show.com for more information. And don't forget, wherever you are in the world. My next online storytelling workshops start soon. One starts on April 22. That's eight Wednesday evenings at 8:30pm Eastern time and another starts on May 31. That's eight Sunday mornings at 10am Eastern time. These workshops let me just read some things students have written about it. One student wrote, I was so scared to try, I thought I'm not good enough. All of that disappeared on day one. Another said, I've taken other creative writing and public speaking workshops before. This has been the most helpful by far. You provide ways to improve without losing one's unique individual voice. Incredibly valuable. And a third wrote, it's a great opportunity to learn about yourself, grow your storytelling and social skills, and connect with other smart and kind people across the world. So email me at kevinrisk-show.com to get on in my next online storytelling workshops and spread the word about this podcast. Share it, Share it. Share it. Share it with friends and family. We need we need some more listeners this year and I think we are well worth more listeners this year.
- [46:23]
Brad Lawrence
Folks.
- [46:24]
Kevin Allison
Today's the day. Take a risk. Sam.