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- [00:00]
Indeed Representative
When it comes to hiring, don't search for great talent. Match with them thanks to Indeed. Indeed is your matching and hiring platform with over 350 million global monthly visitors, according to Indeed data, and a matching engine that helps you find qualified candidates fast. And Indeed doesn't just help you hire faster. 93% of employers agree Indeed delivers the highest quality matches compared to other job sites, according to a recent Indeed survey, leveraging over 140 million qualifications and preferences every day. Indeed's matching engine is constantly learning from your preferences, so the more you use Indeed, the better it gets. Join more than 3.5 million businesses worldwide that use Indeed to hire great talent fast. Just go to indeed.com listen right now and listeners of this show will get a $75 sponsored job credit. To get your jobs more visibility, go to indeed.com listen and tell them you heard about them from this podcast. Terms and conditions apply.
- [01:01]
Nourish Representative
I've been working with a nurse dietitian for the last six months and it's been life changing. I've lost weight, healed my relationship with food, and have way more energy. Working with a dietitian online to create a personalized nutrition plan was so easy thanks to Nourish. The best part? I pay $0 out of pocket. Because Nourish accepts hundreds of insurance plans, 94% of patients pay $0 out of pocket. Find your dietitian@usenourish.com that's usenourish.com when you.
- [01:31]
Zycam Representative
Feel a cold coming, shorten it with Zycam, the number one cold shortening brand.
- [01:36]
Kevin Allison
Oh no, not before the holidays.
- [01:39]
Zycam Representative
Your cold is coming. Your cold is coming. Thanks Revere.
- [01:42]
Steve Spatucci
I really should keep Zycam in the house.
- [01:44]
Zycam Representative
Getting a cold is on no one's wish list.
- [01:47]
Kevin Allison
Take it from America's most revered messenger.
- [01:51]
Zycam Representative
Shorten your cold at the first sign.
- [01:52]
Steve Spatucci
With cold shortening products from xycam, the number one cold shortening brand available in stores or see where to buy@xycam.com.
- [02:06]
Risk Host
Risk.
- [02:08]
Kevin Allison
Hey folks, this is Risk, the show where people tell true stories they never thought they'd dare to share. I'm Kevin Allison and every Thursday we release these special episodes where we look back content from our earlier years. This week, just in time for the holidays. It's an episode that premiered in December of 2012. It was our second ever holiday stories episode and it's called, appropriately enough, holiday stories 2.
- [02:53]
Risk Host
Wham. Risk.
- [03:38]
Kevin Allison
Hello kids, this is Risk, the show where people tell true stories they never thought they'd dare to share. I'm Kevin Allison. This is Ramsey Lewis trio behind me now. And this is the first of this year's two holiday stories episodes. It's always a loaded time of year to be collecting stories. People have the big things on their minds. Faith. Faith is a big one this time for adults and kids. Adults have this man they call the Son of God, God to have to wrestle with. A lot of people this time of year are like, how do I feel about that, dude? And just to keep things a little painful, along with all the pleasure, we give the kids, this figure Santa to be all, you know, bewildered and suspicious about. And of course, there's family stories. And the stories that come to mind when you bring up family and Christmas with people are the times that things kind of, you know, went skidding into the guardrails. No one brings drama into your life with quite the depth and zest that your family members do. And one of the things I love about this year's the collection on this and the next episode is that we have several stories from you guys, from Risk fans who wrote into us. And there's a truly extraordinary one coming up. A Risk fan named Christine. She's getting her Ph.D. at Columbia University. She wrote in with this story that kind of knocked me out on paper, and I thought, let's give her a chance to do that on stage in New York. And that was a good idea. We're going to hear Christine's story in just a bit. But first, another Risk fan. His name is Steve Spatucci. He wrote in with this story. And I realized we were born right around the same time when he was telling this story, because every toy he mentions I played with quite a lot when I was a kid. So let's roll it Back to 1976, my friends, with Mr. Steve Patucci, and a story we call Taking it to the.
- [06:15]
Steve Spatucci
Back in the mid-70s. I was 6 years old, and I started to come to the conclusion that Santa Claus might not exist. And I think part of the reason that that might have happened was because I have siblings that are almost two decades older than me. They were married at that point, and they were at the age where I was practically a child to them. So I had heard. I had heard them say some things. And specifically I remembered my sister on Christmas came into our house and said, oh, I think I just saw Santa. He was riding his sleigh. And that's when I first noticed that, like that intonation adults get when they're making something up. I went on and started to analyze the way adults talked about Santa, and I Just realized, you know, just. It kind of broke the seal. And I realized this is not true. So I told my parents about it, and they were angry. And I think they were mostly angry because. Not because they thought I had lost any kind of chance to have that, like Santa, the mythical figure, but I think they just didn't want to lose the fact that they could blackmail me with the whole Santa myth. So I think this is probably in the month before Christmas, I was going to be making an appearance at a department store in North Jersey. My father had told me that he made special plans for me to see Santa Claus. And he was a department manager, so he had some pull there. I had already overheard my parents saying that they were going to use Santa in this instance to convince me that he was real. But to my face, what they told me was, oh, Stevie, you know, you gotta go. You gotta go see Santa. He's gonna get you up there and he really wants to meet you and he really wants to talk to you about the way you've been this year and how you've been a good boy. And I was pissed because, you know, that only reinforced the feelings that I had already that he wasn't a real figure. So I came up with a plan. And it was kind of an evil plan, but I knew the layout of the store. So before I went to see Santa, I went down the toy aisle. And because my father was a department manager, I kind of had free reign there. So I went down the toy aisle and I found a bunch of action figures. Rock Em Sock Em Robots, which was the classic robotic boxing game. The Six Million Dollar man was everywhere. You could peel up his arm and look at his circuitry. Inside there was the Evel Knievel collection, including the stunt bike, which I already had plenty of Hot Wheels, air hockey and other 70s toys. And I walked down and took it all in and took my pick of what I believe were just a series of no name action figures. And through my head I was just running through, like, I know I can pick these heads off like cherries. And I went down, ripped open the blister packs and took about three or four heads right off and put them into my jacket pocket. My plan was to have a little blackmail information for Santa. So because my father had so many employees, there was a kind of a big special moment. I think they were all in on it. And they knew that when I went up to see Santa that they knew what was going on behind the scenes. And I saw my parents watching me and I saw the Employees watching me. The way this Santa setup was positioned, it was in the front of the store and it was on a platform, so there was a really harsh sunlight coming through. And it was a typical Santa, probably a 50 year old man who just happened to have a white beard and didn't do much throughout the year. And I do think there was a point where he was so sincere that I actually regretted what I was going to do. But I muscled through it. I got up in his lap and he asked me, oh, what do you want this year? And I threw in the name of whatever toy I didn't expect to get. And I said, santa, do you know everything about me? And he said, oh, sure, I know everything. And I said, well, have I been a good boy or a bad boy? And he said, oh, Stevie, you've been a good little boy. And then I reached in my pocket, pulled out the action figure heads and said, then why do I have these? And there was a moment of silence. I remember a few women who worked for my father who had lined up along the side of the platform just silently turned and walked away. My mother looked disgusted, sickened, nauseated, and my father was just embarrassed. My mother grabbed my hand. We walked silently toward the car. And I don't remember ever having heard any discussion of whether or not Santa was real again.
- [11:39]
Risk Host
Santa, here it comes. Santa. Everybody's trying to be like Santa Claus. Giving lots of presents to all the girls and boys Landing on the rooftops, flying through the air. Doesn't work in one night, has no time to spend. You can best believe that he's just like St. Nick. How's he going to do it, man? It's quite a dream trick. Hey, hey, hey, hey, hey. Santa Sant Santa Claus. I want to be like Santa, Santa Claus. Everybody wants to be like Santa.
- [12:41]
Storyteller
So I can say without hyperbole that my childhood was like something out of a Road Dahl novel. I, for whatever reason, latched onto reading and learning at a super young age. But I am from working class people, Republican, really not educated, very passionate about their uneducated views. And so a typical Monday night in my household would be me in the hallway, devouring a bookshelf filled with a motley collection of whatever the church library was done with. And my family, my parents and my two brothers in the living room with their TV dinners, yelling at the tv, like at the grown men roughly fondling each other on the National Football League. This was a typical Monday night. I am the only person in my family to go to college. I'm the only Person on either side of my family, as far as you want to look, ever to go to grad school, ever. So my family, let me start here. This is hard, I'm sorry. Whenever anyone meets my parents and one of the first things they ask naturally is about their children. And my parents always start with this. We have two boys, U.S. marines. And then people present like, oh, thank you for their service. And then they go, oh yeah. And then we have a daughter, she's in New York, she's doing this doctor thing. We don't know. Not a medical doctor, some other kind of doctor we don't understand. My parents, they drove 11 plus hours to both of my brother's boot camp graduations at Parris island, but would not drive seven hours from my Harvard graduation. Now, to be clear, we love each other very much, my family and I. We love each other like we would lay down on train tracks in a second if you asked, right? But we just don't understand each other at all. And so after the, I'll call it the infamous breakfast table incident of aught 5, when my two brothers were throwing around the word fag with disturbing ease and frequency, and I finally flipped out on them and went off on a lecture about how ignorant and offensive they were. And my dad interrupts this diatribe and that booming voice of my childhood. And I was like, oh, whoa, little Miss Harvard, you gonna come down here and tell us how to talk? Don't you correct my boys at my table. I was like, oh, okay, well, I guess I won't be eating at your table either. So I got up and after that incident, we just decided there are certain things that we will not talk about as a family in order to maintain some kind of civility. But despite all of this, all of these differences, there are really only two times that I have viscerally felt just how profoundly my path has diverged from my family's. And one of them was two Christmases ago when my dad's friend Walt brings over a gift from my dad. And it was a mint condition World War II rifle and a marine issue knife. And of course my brothers, they're immediately drooling over this. They come over, they're like fondling the wood on the rifle and running their fingers down the blade of the knife. And I'm in the corner reading my New Yorker, ignoring them, until one of the brothers says he has an idea. Matt. He's like, oh, hey mom, go get the camera. And I lift my eyes like, what's going on? And I see my Youngest brother kind of disappear into the hallway. And the middle one, Matt, his shirt, he had taken it off. And he was adjusting the strap of that rifle around his chest. And then Derek, the baby, he comes back into the living room and I see what he's been doing in the bathroom. And my stomach has only dropped like that one other time. And it was the first time Derek came home after boot camp and he wanted to show me something on his laptop. And we sat down on the couch and he opened it up. And there as his background image on his laptop was a picture of a dead man splayed on his back, rifle in his hand, and just a mess of bone and flesh where a head should be. And I said, what the fuck is that? And he said, oh, as if he didn't even notice it anymore, double clicking on the file he wanted. That's a dead Iraqi. And so when Derek comes back into the room, that crisp stay. And I see that he's taken two towels from the bathroom and he's wrapped one around his head and the other around his face. And he took a rifle from my dad's back room. And he announces to the room it's time for some role play. And everybody starts laughing and I'm the only one who's not. And they start posing for the camera, taking pictures of feigning fear, feigning death, feigning victory. And this is such a great time for everyone except for me. And I'm having difficulty breathing. And Matt extends the bayonet on the rifle and sends my mom into the kitchen for some ketchup. Eight months later, my baby brother Derek comes back from Afghanistan a totally different person. His brand new marriage is on the rocks. He is clearly racked by ptsd, but refuses to get any help for it. Because in the Marines, if you get diagnosed with ptsd, it follows you around and you're not able to do certain things. So he refuses to go to therapy at all in order to avoid that. About a week after he got back, my parents threw a huge party for him. I went down for it. And long after everyone was drunk and passed out in bed, it was just him and me. And we were on my parents porch in the house in rural Maryland where there's a Marine banner in the window, there are Marine bumper stickers on the car, My dad has a Marine hat, my mom has a Marine sweatshirt. And he tells me, he tells me about his buddy, his closest friend from Afghanistan, who came out to him after he already considered him a brother, and how that changed everything. About what he thought about gay people. And he told me about everything that he had seen and everything he had done. Really horrible things that he hadn't even told his wife and that I won't tell you to protect him. And the levity, the levity of that night with the ketchup. It stood so starkly against the weight of his actual experience that there was none. None of our differences mattered in that moment. And so I just cradled his head against my stomach and let him cry against my T shirt. And we just felt everything that will always connect us, no matter what. Thank you.
- [20:54]
Podcast Announcer
We'll be right back.
- [20:56]
Nourish Representative
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- [22:07]
Midi Health Representative
Today's podcast is sponsored by Midi Health. At any given time, 61% of adult women say they want to lose weight, but for many, that's easier said than done. If you've had trouble losing weight, don't lose hope. Midi Health uses a deep understanding of women's hormones and a combination of weight loss medications to create a custom plan for each user. Midi Health can help you achieve more effective and sustainable weight loss by addressing hormone imbalances. MIDI can also prescribe proven weight loss medications that help you experience reduced appetite and increased feelings of fullness. When paired with hormone optimization, you're not just managing your weight, you're also supporting your body's natural processes, which means you can overcome those weight loss plateaus that in the past have been so difficult to move beyond. So if you're ready to combine the power of hormones with the power of weight loss medications, visit joinmitty.com today. Discover how this innovative approach can lead you to lasting Success. That's join midi.com Where'd you get those shoes?
- [23:12]
Zycam Representative
Easy. They're from DSW.
- [23:14]
Storyteller
Because DSW has the exact right shoes for whatever you're into right now. You know, like the sneakers that make office hours feel like happy hour, the boots that turn grocery aisles into runways, and all the styles that show off the many sides of you, from daydreamer to multitasker, and everything in between. Because you do it all in really great shoes. Find a shoe for every you at your DSW store or dsw.com when you.
- [23:41]
Shopify Representative
Think about businesses that are selling through the roof, like Aloe Allbirds or Skims. Sure you think about a great product, a cool brand and brilliant marketing. But an often overlooked secret is actually the businesses behind the business making, selling and for shoppers, buying Simple. For millions of businesses, that business is Shopify. Nobody does selling better than Shopify, home of the number one checkout on the planet. And the not so secret secret with shop pay that boosts conversions up to 50%, meaning way less carts going abandoned and way more sales going. So if you're into growing your business, your commerce platform better be ready to sell whenever your customers are scrolling or strolling on the web, in your store, in their feed and everywhere in between. Upgrade your business and get the same checkout experience as business powerhouses like Aloe, Allbirds and Skims. Sign up for your $1 per month trial period@shopify.com OdysseyPodcast all lowercase go to shopify.com OdysseyPodcast to upgrade your selling today. Shopify.com OdysseyPodcast we're back.
- [25:23]
Risk Host
While all the feral is gone I clean out the mess and then I sit myself down, have another glass and wonder where it went wrong. How did it get so far? For a while it was fun and at least it's what I think it'll last very long. I have another drink I'm passing out on the floor how did I get so far? And when the morning comes it feels like my head explodes and the world is spinning way too fast. I have a background.
- [26:22]
Kevin Allison
This is Risk song is called Hungover Boxing Day by the Gasoline Brothers and wasn't Christine's story just beautiful and brave? I think that one will be worth revisiting for many holiday seasons to come. Now, in just a bit, we're going to hear from one of our dear friends, Michelle Carlo, who we recently had on on a Halloween episode as well. But before that, we're going to revisit a story that we featured last year. This is our friend Elna Baker at the Risk live show in New York City with a story we call for the Lover Nubbins.
- [27:30]
Zycam Representative
So I moved to New York to do acting and I never, I auditioned. I never, I've actually still, I've never been cast once in anything. But the first acting job I actually was able to get was as a toy demonstrator at FAO Schwartz. And it's an acting job. You work retail, but basically you have to audition. You read a monologue by Princess Pretty. And then for two weeks you have to rotate from toy to toy so they have confidence that you can do this. And there's like the fun toys. Like, I like being on jewelry because I would just make earrings for myself all day. And you're supposed to give them to the kids. I never did. But then there were like sucky toys, like band in the box where it's like maracas, a tambourine and clapper. And you do that for eight hours. Worst band ever. Or there was a toy veterinarian kit where you have like a stuffed animal dog and you'd have to interrupt families as they go through the store and you're like, spot is sick. Can you help me figure out what's wrong with Spot? Which is like, you know, basically like you and your family want to be left alone. But I'm an actor. Mortifying. But after two weeks, I got assigned to the most high profile of the toys. It was the Lee Middleton doll collection. And I don't know if any of you have seen these dolls, but basically they're weighted in the head and the bottom so that they flop like newborn babies. And it's so creepy. And I worked on the second floor in the adoption center, which was this cottage that they built. And there were all these incubators and incubators of the babies. And there was a white picket fence around it and two rocking chairs. And a typical day of work would go as follows. You know, parents and their children would look at these dolls and then if they were serious about adoption, we would open the white picket fence and escort the prospective parent, usually like a seven year old girl, into one of the rocking chairs. And we had to conduct an adoption interview. And again, I'm in like a nurse's uniform with a whole, you know, everything. And it would begin. Do you promise to Love and care for this baby. Will you read to the baby? Will you change the baby's diaper? And the little girls would always answer, you know, yes. And then you would get to the last question. What would you like to name the baby? And it was always like, you know, Princess Tiffany of Fairy Flowerland. And you would write that on a birth certificate and hand it to the parent and then say, now all you have to do is pay the adoption fee, wink, wink. Which was like $120. And, you know, we were instructed not to. You couldn't say purchase or cost or buy because that would break the illusion of the world. And the other thing that typically when it gets slow at work, you can talk with your co workers. I worked with three other nurses. But that would also break the illusion of the world. So if we weren't working with a customer, we had to always be holding, rocking, or bouncing. The display baby doll. The display baby doll was on display. Display for a reason. Something horrible happened in the factory. On the day of its conception, its head weighed five pounds more than all the other babies heads. So you would pick it up and its head would just flop back violently. And its hands had been molded together so it looked like it had flippers. So you pick it up, the head would flop back, and the flippers would fly up, and it looked like a tabloid monster, which is how it earned its nickname. We called it Nubbins. And because Nubbins wasn't up for adoption, he didn't even have an incubator. He was kept in a cupboard, which was, like, so disturbing because he looked realistically dead. You just open the cupboard and like, downward dog dead baby. You'd have to scoop him up and pretend that you cared for him. So these dolls were really expensive. So for most of September, October, we weren't really selling them, which meant that we spent a lot of time holding, rocking, and bouncing baby Nubbins. So much time that, like, you kind of start to resent. I would complain of lower back pain. I was like, so us nurses, we invented a game. And the object of the game was to try to get another girl to break character by doing something horrible to baby Nubbins. So, like, you know, I would open all the drawers and rock Nubbins head into the jagged edges while, like, humming a lullaby. Or the best would be, like, there'd be a whole group of people there, and you really have to. You scoop up the baby, you know, you really make it look like it's real, you know, burp it. And then at Just the right moment, you drop the baby. Everyone knows it's not real, but they still are, like, gasp. So, I mean, we would just spend all day doing horrible things to Nubbins. And then one day, it was right after Thanksgiving, everything changed. Do you guys know there's that show Rich Girls? It was like, the first stupid reality show about rich children. Tommy Hilfiger's daughter was in it. But they came to FAO Schwartz, and they adopted a baby. And the day after it aired, suddenly these were, like, the hot items to get for Christmas. And every mother on the Upper east side had to have one for her child. And there was a line outside on the street of people waiting to adopt, and, you know, no more horse play, no more pranks. It was like, you know, adoptions left and right. And within one week, we sold out of all of the white babies. And it was three weeks until Christmas. The babies were already on backorder. So there was no way to get any more white babies. All we had left were incubator upon incubator of minority babies. So every day, the same scenario would repeat itself. These mothers, you know, eager to get the hot toy of the year, would rush up to the adoption center, and you just watch. They would stop dead in their tracks, and their heads go from incubator to incubator. They'd, like, pause briefly at the Asian baby, like, oh, never mind. To incubator. And then they would look at us, you know, trying their best to be politically correct. They would be like, I'm sorry, do you have any other shades of babies? Well, the toy manager had, like, prepped us with a response. He taped a memo in the women's locker room that said, if the mothers express a disinterest with the babies due to their ethnicity, kindly inform them that while this is all the selection we have available, there's a wider selection available online. They can order online. Well, this isn't what these women wanted to hear. They would go on and on. They'd be like, oh, don't you have something like my little Susan here? Just something that looks like Susan. And so this happened so much that we, you know, we invented another game. And the game was this. Like, if the little girl didn't care, but it was clear the mother did, we would put the mother on the spot by, you know, we'd scoop up a baby and be like, oh, little Maria. His is really taken to you and handed to them. You would make an excellent mommy for Maria. And you just see these mothers in the background, like, why are you doing this to me? What did I ever do to you? And the second game we invented involved Brad's memo. Instead of saying wider selection, we'd have to say whiter selection without getting caught or breaking character. But, like, those are the things you do just to survive a job. Because literally every day, these things I didn't expect would happen. And I remember once in particular, this woman, I tried to sell her a Hispanic baby, and she put her hand on mine and was like, we don't want a dark child. You know what I mean? No, I don't. But also, unbeknownst to her, I'm actually half Mexican, and I just look white. And my brother, there's five kids. Three are dark, two of us are white. So I don't know what she means, but also, I don't know what she means. Does she honestly think that if someone saw her carrying a Hispanic baby, they would be like, oh, Juan the gardener knocked that kid up? But this is only half the story, because while we had sold out of all the white babies, we still had Nubbins, who was white with red hair and these green eyes. So if we weren't working with a customer, we still had to be holding, rocking, and bouncing Nubbins. So almost every day, some woman would rush up to the adoption center, see Nubbins in our arms, and think in their mind, they were like, that's the last white baby. So they would say, can I see that baby? All you ever had to do was turn Nubbins around, and his head would, like, flop back in. The flippers would flip up, and they would just say, never mind. And this happened so often that us nurses, we decided to make a bet. And the bet was, who do you think is going to sell first, the minority babies or Nubbins? And I was like, oh, the minority babies, for sure. Who would buy Nubbins? And then. So, okay, to be honest, there are two ways to end this story. There's the politically correct way, or there's the. Do you guys want to hear the real. What really happened? All right. It's so depressing. What really happened is this. We did start to sell out of the minority babies. We sold. First, we sold out of all the Asian babies, Then we sold out of all the Hispanic babies, and then all we had left were incubator upon incubator of black baby dolls and Nubbins. So inadvertently, the bet had become, who will go first, the black babies or Nubbins? Well, I stood by my initial bet. I was like, we're never gonna Sell Nubbins. But then Christmas Eve, this woman rushes into the store, and she's one of those people dressed head to toe in designer, and she's, like, toting along this solemn child. She gets up to the adoption center. I'm holding Nubbins, and she's like, can I see that baby? So I turn Nubbins around slowly for full effect, and his head flops back, the flippers flip up. And she just says, we'll take it. I'm like, nubbins, I don't even know if you can sell Nubbins. But I was like, okay. So I open the white picket fence, I sit this little girl down, and I begin the adoption interview and say, do you promise to love and care for this baby? And this child looks up at me, and she says, no. And I think. I mean, I had been doing hundreds of adoptions. No one, technically, she had failed the adoption interview. So I'm like, move on. I'm like, will you read to the baby? And she just looked. She's like, no. So I skipped to the last question. I say. I'm like, well, what would you like to name the baby? Stupid. I'm like, I'm not Nubbins best friend. I'm not gonna call him stupid. So I'm like, well, let's think of other names. And the mother impatiently interrupts. She's like, just name the baby Veronica. It's like, they're not anatomically correct, but he's clearly a boy. So I write Veronica on the birth certificate. And I'm like, now all you have to do is pay the adoption fee. And the mother looks at me, and she's like, cute, and takes the birth certificate, and they walk away. And I. You know, I scoop up Nubbins, and I put them in a pink blanket instead of a blue one. And as I'm wrapping him up, that's when it hits me. I'm like, wait. Nubbins has just been adopted? Like, I love Nubbins. Like, I can't let him go to this horrible family. And there's this, like, montage, you know, like, we one time put his head underneath the rocking chair. Or like, we used to make out with him, see if people would turn the corner and then be like, oh, like, all these memories. And I was like, I can't let him go to this family. And I was like, but, I mean, I don't have 120spare dollars, you know? And so then I'm like, oh, I'll call my dad, and I'll just Be like, dad, there was this baby, and he was gonna go to a bad family. And I think I could be a good family for him. And as. As I'm saying this, you know, and I think, honestly, it was also just like, I didn't want to lose the bet. Like, I didn't want that to be the way the world was. So, as I'm going through this, they return. And then, you know, I do what I have to do. I hand them little baby Nubbins and I say, I'm sure baby Veronica will have a wonderful home. And then I watch him, his head bouncing on the little girl's shoulder outside the store until I can't see them anymore. Thank you.
- [41:09]
Podcast Announcer
It was just a typical Tuesday, a couple of weeks before. Before Christmas. And I came home from school and went right into my bedroom and instead of doing my homework, opened up the window and went out to the fire escape, lit a cigarette, took out my boombox, tried to, you know, make a mixtape. Wrapped up some tinfoil on the antenna, pointing it towards the Whitestone bridge so I can get some reception. So in between making the tape and smoking the cigarette, and now it's starting to snow and trying to keep the snow off the boombox, I didn't hear my mom come in the room and say that she needed me to stop whatever I was doing and go to the store for her right now. And I was like, oh, man. Because the last thing I wanted to do was, you know, stop making a mixtape and stop smoking my cigarette and go to the store for my mom. And then when she told me what she wanted me to get for her, that was the last thing that I wanted to get. Oh, my God. She wanted me to get Kotex. Not just any box of Kotex, but the super box of Kotex. The big super box of Kotex that was bright purple with yellow letters and was so tall, it stuck out of any bag it was put in. So when you were carrying it down the street, everybody who looked at that bag looked at you and knew that you were the one that was bleeding a lot. And when you're 15, the last thing you want to know is that somebody else is looking at you and knows that you are bleeding a lot. So I'm just, like. I'm, like, growling to myself, and I'm so pissed off, and I'm stomping down the street to the drugstore, swearing that if I ever have a daughter, I'm never going to make her go out and buy my menstrual Supplies. And I get to the drugstore and I put the box on the counter and the pimple faced, four eyed cashier looks at me and I'm thinking to myself and I stomp out of the store and I'm starting to walk home and then all of a sudden I hear this whoosh. And two boys run past me and they grab the bag out of my hand and they just keep running down the block. And I'm just like, oh my God, these weren't just any two boys. These were Dennis and Louis from the Overing Boys crew. They were like the two coolest boys in the neighborhood. Every boy in the neighborhood wanted to be them and every girl in the neighborhood wanted to make out with them. I had the biggest hormonal, raging first ever crush I ever had on Dennis. And I knew that it would never be reciprocated. So therefore, in my love, I had the kind of hate that only a teenager can understand. So I'm running after them and I try to catch up with them, but then they start playing saludi with me. That's kind of like New York version of Monkey in the middle. So I run up to Louis and he throws the bag to Dennis. And I run up to Dennis and he throws the bag at Louie. And meanwhile, I'm just like terrified that one of them is actually going to look inside this bag and see what's in it. Because you know, that's it if they see Kotex. And I could just picture that my name is going to be Kotex Head for the rest of my life. So my shame made me run faster than they could. And I yelled out, fuck. And I just tackled Louis and the box of Kotex squirted out of the bag onto Westchester Avenue where a number four bus ran it over and I started bawling. And Louie's back is to the street. He doesn't see the maxi pads fluttering down Worcestershire Avenue in the slush. And he's just like, shell, it's only a box of cookies. And I was just like, cookies. And then Dennis comes over and he says, shut up, Louie. And he looked at me and I knew that he knew what was in the street, what was in the box. But for some reason he wasn't going to tell. So he helps me up and he says, come on, Shell, we'll walk you home. So we start walking back towards my house and snow was really coming down now. I mean, there was at least a foot of it on the ground. And we're walking, you know, in my Neighborhood past the houses of people with small budgets and large imaginations. And somewhere between the talking Rudolphs and the dancing Jesuses and competing sounds of Donna Summer Christmas album and Andy Williams Christmas album, we start playing. I remember twirling around trying to catch those big fat, wet snowflakes on my tongue. And then Dennis scoops up some snow from a car and throws it at Louie. And Louie throws the snow at me. And then we start, like, climbing onto the cars. And you could do that. There's no car alarms back then. So we just, like, pulling all the snow and throwing at each other. And then we start pushing each other down. And then we start running. And then we decide that we're gonna just start rolling. One of us fell. I don't know who started it. But then we'd like this giant teenage snowball. And we're just, like, rolling in the street until all of us, like, we just hit this light post. And it's like a spell was shattered or something. And I remember standing up, and somehow the three of us were holding hands. And this really freaked me out. So I just, like, dropped the hands and I'm just standing there. And I remember the sun was setting, and the sky was just this blazing purple red. And in the halo of the street light, there was this snowflake that was on one of Dennis eyelashes. I remember thinking that was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen in my life. And I knew that I had to stop looking at it, but I couldn't stop looking at it. And Dennis just kept looking at me. And he said, shell, are you home? And I just nodded because I couldn't speak. And then Dennis bent down and kissed me full on the lips. And then Louie kissed me on the cheek. And then they ran up the block saying, merry Christmas, Shel. And meanwhile, I was just, like, floating on this cloud. Because I had never really been kissed on the lips by a boy before. So I'm just like, oh, my God, I've been kissed. I felt like. And Rudolph the Red nosed Reindeer, when he. Remember when he has the crush on Clarice? And she kisses him and he goes, I'm cute. I'm cute. So I float up the five flights of stairs to the apartment. And when my mother says, where's my box? I told her to bus ran it over, and she made me pay her back out of my allowance. And when my father came home from work, he had to go out and buy my mother's box in two feet of snow. And he wasn't very happy about it. Either. Not long after Christmas, Dennis and Louie were walking to McDonald's when a car drove around and yelled something at them. And then Louie threw a can of beer at them. And then the car came around again, and someone in the backseat shot at them. Dennis and Louie were murdered. And I don't know if you've ever been to a teenager's funeral, but it's not like when your grandfather dies because he had a cough or smoking for 75 years. It's. It's a lot different. And I remember Dennis funeral. Everybody from the neighborhood was there. Boys, girls, parents. And I remember kneeling in front of the casket, crossing myself, and the casket was closed because they both died from massive head wounds. And I'm just there shaking and crying, and somebody kneels on the bench next to me, and it's. That's Dennis mother. And I look at her, and she was just the grayest, saddest thing I had ever seen in my life. And she asked me if I had known Dennis well. And I didn't know what to say. I just said, yeah, kind of. And she looked at me for a minute, and then she went off to talk to somebody else. But now I realize that she, Dennis mother, was there alone in that huge room of people because I didn't remember seeing any brothers or sisters, no father, no grandparents, no aunts, uncles, or cousins. It was just her. And she was probably about the same age then as I am now. And because now I have an adult mind, I realize what a gift it would have been for me to tell her what a gentleman her son was. That he didn't betray my secret. That he played in the snow with me and that his kiss was my first. And a lot of Christmases have come and gone since that day. But I'll never, ever forget what the wind and the snow and the colored lights gave to me and Dennis and Louie on the last pure night of our childhood. Sa.
- [51:18]
Kevin Allison
A deafening sigh whence rained on her.
- [51:26]
Steve Spatucci
No hope was found, no hymn was heard.
- [51:33]
Kevin Allison
The broken hearted cut, not sing who will break down the soundless lingering. That's it for this episode of holiday stories from us here at Risk. Next week, we will bring you more. This is a song by a band called how to Throw a Christmas Party. Large group of people in Holland who gather each year to do what their name says. And we just heard from Michelle Carlo that same story appears in a slightly different version in her memoir, Fish out of Agua. Wonderful book. And it's a story she calls the Gift. Well, listen, do you know someone who might enjoy taking a workshop at the Story studio or maybe doing some one on one skyping with me for storytelling coaching. It's a great holiday gift to give to someone you love. Go to thestorystudio.org plenty of options there for gift certificates to give the gift of storytelling training to the people you love. In the meantime, Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays. And folks, today's the day. Take a risk.
- [53:22]
Steve Spatucci
So look around.
- [53:26]
Risk Host
And see his eyes.
- [53:29]
Steve Spatucci
And meet the stranger who has saved your life.
- [53:57]
Kevin Allison
This ends the recording of Christmas 1983. Please note that the word raspberry has never been used in this tape so far. Hey folks, there's so much more of Risk in the holiday season. Risk is always publishing new episodes and new stories as well as holiday favorites. This holiday season, don't forget, click on Risk.