The Best of Coming of Age Stories #2

Summary

Podcast Summary: RISK! – The Best of Coming of Age Stories #2

Release Date: March 5, 2026
Host: Kevin Allison

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Episode Overview

This RISK! "Best Of" episode features two standout personal narratives under the theme of "coming of age." It opens with Byron Bowers recounting a raw, humorous, and painful memory of discovering his father’s drug addiction and the spiral of consequences that followed ("My Father's Son"). Next, Amy Salloway delivers a bittersweet and wry meditation on sibling rivalry and family dysfunction, through the lens of growing up in the shadow of her younger, seemingly perfect half-sister ("Sister Act").

The episode explores themes of parental inadequacy, abandonment, the struggle for self-worth, and the longing to escape difficult family dynamics—with each story merging humor and heartbreak, capturing what it means to grow up under peculiar and painful circumstances.

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Segment 1: Byron Bowers – "My Father’s Son"

[02:39 - 22:50]

Key Discussion Points & Insights

• The Fateful Visit:
  Byron sets the scene in 1994 Atlanta, recalling the rare excitement of visiting his father (recently out of a mental institution). After hyping up the day and being gifted $30, Byron is unexpectedly drawn into his father’s world.

• Entering ‘the Projects’:
  A detour to what he immediately recognizes as the projects leads to his first exposure to his father's crack use—delivered with wry humor (“It smelled like how aluminum foil tastes”). Byron escapes the apartment to play basketball, but feels a heavy sense of unease and isolation.

• Betrayal and Abandonment:
  The narrative crescendos as Byron’s father takes back the very money given to Byron, first $20, then comes back for the last $10. Left alone as his father drives away, Byron is struck by abandonment and a realization:

  “That’s when my loneliness kicked in, abandonment, and I had to deal. I faced some shit then.” — Byron Bowers [19:35]

• Internalizing Survival:
  Young Byron resolves not to become a victim—“it’s up to you now”—and muses about paths out of his troubled circumstances (“Don’t do any crime unless nothing else work out … then you can go to killing and doing crime. And then the military after crime don’t work.”).

• Full Circle – The Crack Game:
  Years later in college, Byron finds himself selling crack—ironically addicted to the power and money of dealing:

  “If you sell it, you get addicted to it too … you get power over people.” — Byron Bowers [21:03]

• Haunting Memory:
  The segment ends with a poignant scene: Byron, during a crack deal, receives oral sex from an addict in exchange for drugs. Across the street he sees a father and son bonding on a basketball court and is overwhelmed by grief for the childhood and connection he lost.

  “I couldn't [orgasm] because I was emotional. I was trying not to cry the whole time because 50ft from us, it’s a park ... a kid and his dad playing basketball and bonding. ... I’m looking at a life that I could have had.” — Byron Bowers [20:58]

Notable Quotes & Moments

• On the Project’s Dangers:
  “You don’t walk in nobody projects without a reason ... your chakras gonna say, ‘nigga, this is the projects.’” [07:23]
• Comic Relief Amid Trauma:
  “Crackheads ... they won’t smoke cigarettes in front of kids ... but they’ll do crack in front of everything. Ain’t no label on crack, you know what I mean?” [10:06]
• Confronting the Family Cycle:
  “I saw what you've done to members of my family. But you'll never get me. I was wrong.” [21:05]

Key Timestamps

• [02:39] – Story begins
• [04:30] – Description of grandmother’s street and family dynamic
• [07:15] – Arrival at the projects
• [09:40] – Realization of father’s addiction
• [15:35] – Father asks for money, then abandons Byron
• [19:10] – Emotional consequences, internal dialogue about survival
• [20:27] – College, selling drugs, mirrored family cycles
• [21:05] – Haunting juxtaposition with the father-son at the park

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Segment 2: Amy Salloway – "Sister Act"

[24:07 - 47:07]

Key Discussion Points & Insights

• Feeling ‘Mis-Placed’ in the Family: Amy describes growing up feeling misaligned with her mother—believing herself a “distribution error” who ended up with the wrong family and never receiving the love supposed to come with the mother-child relationship.

  “I might as well have been a seahorse or a ham sandwich.” — Amy Salloway [24:53]

• Arrival of a Perfect Sibling: Amy’s mother risks a dangerous pregnancy to have another child, implicitly reinforcing Amy’s sense of inadequacy. Her half-sister Abby arrives—gorgeous, talented, and beloved.

• Intense Sibling Rivalry: Amy’s attempts to hate her sister are met with Abby’s relentless, Little Women-esque affection:

  “Every time, she would throw her arms around my neck... ‘Oh, Amy, you mustn’t hate me. I don’t hate you. I love you.’” [27:32]

• Unrelenting Comparison and Parental Favouritism:

  • Abby becomes a child star (commercials, ad campaigns), while Amy is discouraged from singing, denied headshots, and made to feel like an “aberration.”
  • Their mother’s favoritism is palpable; Amy notes, “I was an aberration. My mom started asking me to please don’t sing in the house because it took up airspace from Abby's ... rehearsals.” [32:15]

• Linda the Psychic Cleaning Lady: At 15, Amy meets Linda, their house cleaner, who claims psychic abilities and tells Amy’s mother that Abby is the reincarnation of Anne Frank, fueling family eccentricity.

  “Your daughter Abby, she’s the reincarnation of Anne Frank.” — Linda (via Amy Salloway) [37:03]

• Amy’s Destiny (as per Linda): Linda quickly dashes Amy’s hopes for theatrical stardom by claiming she is “never going to succeed in theater” and was “supposed to have a career as an emergency room nurse.”

  “Amy’s not the reincarnation of anyone. But I can tell you that she’s never going to succeed in theater...” — Linda (via Amy Salloway) [39:28]

• Searching for Escape and Reincarnation: The narrative closes with everyone in Amy’s family escaping in their way—her mother through fantasy, Linda fleeing with her boyfriend, Abby basking in attention, and Amy dreaming of someday tying together bedsheets, escaping her own “house of pain,” and finding her own “hard-won reincarnation.”

Notable Quotes & Moments

• Mother’s Ironic Support:
  “If you want headshots, you pay for them yourself. That way, they’ll be more meaningful.” [34:54]
• Eerie Parental Endorsement:
  “Thus commences an escalation in the baseline level of crazy in my family.” [39:33]
• On Escape:
  “Someday, if I could just hang on, I would get my tied together bedsheets floating out that window to take me somewhere else.” [46:20]

Key Timestamps

• [24:07] – Story begins
• [25:50] – Amy’s “distribution error” theory
• [26:59] – Pregnancy, sibling resentment, arrival of Abby
• [28:45] – List of sibling rivalries and failed efforts to outshine Abby
• [32:15] – Showbiz aspirations, mother’s bias
• [35:15] – Introduction to Linda, the psychic cleaning lady
• [37:03] – "Abby is the reincarnation of Anne Frank"
• [39:28] – Amy’s psychic career diagnosis
• [46:00] – Meditations on escape and self-reinvention

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Memorable Moments

• Byron Bowers’ dark humor about the projects and the idiosyncrasies of crack culture, making painful memories accessible without self-pity.
• Amy Salloway’s incredulous, sardonic retelling of her family dynamics, particularly her mother’s reaction to the notion that her sister was Anne Frank reborn.

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Conclusion & Takeaways

This episode of RISK! poignantly balances humor and heartbreak as both Byron and Amy confront the challenges and traumas that defined their coming of age. Byron’s tale is one of hard-won self-preservation amid family decay, while Amy’s is a quest for recognition and escape from a family governed by impossible mythology and favoritism. Both stories are delivered with the signature RISK! blend of uncensored candor and captivating storytelling.

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For more from these storytellers:

• Follow Byron Bowers on Instagram
• Find Amy Salloway’s storytelling workshops in the Twin Cities or online (Story Fest at storyartsmn.org).

Missed the episode? This summary captures the essence, but the full performances convey the humor, timing, and emotion that make RISK! stories unforgettable.

Transcript

[Byron Bowers]

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[Byron Bowers]

See full [e-mail] I'm Brian, I work at UnitedHealthcare.

[Amy Salloway]

So Brian, why do you care?

[Byron Bowers]

I care because I don't want to leave anybody behind. I oversee one of the biggest resource center in UnitedHealthcare. I see people walking in my office every day just like my parents. They have no idea about the healthcare. I feel like they are my uncles, aunties. I treated people like family. I'm Brian and I'm committed to care.

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[Amy Salloway]

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[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 look back at content from our earlier years. This week it's the best of coming of age stories. No number two. In a little bit we're gonna hear from Amy Salloway, a Risk favorite. But first, a story from the hilarious Byron Bowers. Although this is a pretty hefty story that first appeared on Risk in November of 2015. It's a story we call My Father's Son.

[Byron Bowers]

Yeah, I want to talk about the first day, the day, one of the days that changed my life. Like we all got days that you Know, we remember. Like, she just told her one of my days, just one is the day I found out my dad smoked crack. It was like 94. It was 1994. The world still was hopeful then. I was still short. I was very superstitious. I was a Christian, fully into it. I ain't even curse during that time, you know what I mean? I would think it, but I never said it. I just talk real slow, you know, It'll be a blank. Like, yeah, man, let's go to the stove. You know what I mean? But I ain't say, motherfucker, you know? It was during that time, like, I had visitation, right? I had the chance to go see my dad, you know, which I was very excited about because he lived in Athens. I was in Atlanta, Georgia. And I haven't seen him that much since he got out of a mental institution. So I talked to him, and it sounded like he was getting his life back together. So I was like, oh, shit, about to go see my dad. You know what I mean? This is going to be dope. You know, he was telling me he had this Thunderbird. He just got like a late 80s Thunderbird. I had a chance to get in a Thunderbird. And it was a coupe of blue, you know, nice plush interior, had that real, like, smell. Like a old car smell used, you know, like somebody just fucked into it and was like, we should sell it. And then they gave him a deal on it. Cause they was like, you ain't gonna be able to get them stains out right there. So we just gonna knock a couple hundred dollars off. And then that was the call. He took his son in, you know what I mean? Which I ain't mad about that. It was a happy day. And we had stuff planned for that day. Oh, he playing stuff. But not like the way a woman would plan out a day, just full of shit, but the way, like a dude playing some stuff, like, yo, we gonna get something to eat and we'll go see Adam. Family values. Then, you know, maybe I find a chick that's gonna give me some pussy. You know, you gotta whisper it that low, because that's when all the good shit happens. As an adult, you talking to a kid, you'd be like, yeah, man, I think I'm about to go do some. You know, when you do that shit you whisper, the better it is, you know, that mean you was really waiting on it, you know? And then he took out $30. He gave me $30. And I never. To me, that's a lot of money to have cash, you know what I mean? To this day, I barely carry around $30. That's a lot of money to have as a kid, you know what I mean? He was like, look, this is your money, this is your money. We gonna go to the movies and we gonna go get something to eat, and I'll cover that. And I was like, oh, shit, this guy's doing it, you know what I mean? He's turning his life around, you know what I mean? So we pull up to my grandmother's house. Now, my grandmother lived on the street, Rose street, which is a beautiful name for elderly people to live at. And on this side is a church. It's an all white church, you know what I mean? I remember this church. It's a flat church. My grandmother never went to this church. She went to a brown brick church up the street, which is weird to me because it has stairs and she was older, you know what I mean? So logically, I'm like, why don't you go to the flat church that's flat on the ground, you know, landscape versus spending all that time going on the stairs, which will hurt your knees, which would put you in more aches and pains, which would make you want to prayer more, which will make you go to church more, you know what I mean? You can cut your church time by 15%. Just go to this flat church right here. And then on Crossfair, you know, she had hedges, you know what I mean? Beautiful hedges that was well trimmed because my grandfather kept them trimmed. But black and white house that he built, you know, farmland, you know what I mean? It's a beautiful place. We got out the car and when we got out the car, somebody called his name, like, hey, Don. And I looked up and it was like this weird, like, dude, like this real slim, sleepy, dingy looking dude, you know what I mean? Just shuffling up the street, like, old. Like he was older. Like all these people older than me, but it was a shuffle. Like he still had the pimp step, but it wasn't like all the way together. Like, you know, he fell on hard times with it, you know what I mean? He was like a zombie, you know, he had like a zombie that was a fresh zombie, not like a zombie that's been a zombie for a long time. But, like, he just turned. Like he only missed a couple of baths and he was just shuffling up the street. What up, doc? What's going on, man? You know, he had that shady, like, look in his eye. And my dad was like, nah, man, I'm Chilling with my son, man. Meet my son. And he was like, yeah, like, basically like, fuck all that, you know, like, what you doing? Like, run me up the street. He just said, run me up the street. My dad was like, nah, man, you know, I gotta take my son to the movies. You know, we gonna go kick it, get something to eat, man. I'm probably gonna get some pussy later on, you know. And he was like, man, you know, he whispering in his ear, like, yo, man, da da, da, da, da da. You know what I mean? Which, in my mind, something popped off, you know, when two adults talking, like. Then he was like, all right, I run you up the street. He's like, son, get in the car. You know what I mean? Got in the car. Boom. I got in the backseat, you know. Never even made it to see my grandma house, you know what I mean? Got in the backseat, went around the block, couple blocks. And I noticed we pulled up to these projects. And I don't know if y' all know what projects look like. Well, government housing and shit. But you would know if you ran up on them. Cause your instinct would be like, nigga, that's the projects. You know what I mean? I don't care what race you are. That's what your guts feelin gonna tell you. That's what your chakra gonna say. Like, nigga, this is the projects. Your third eye. You know what I mean? Now, I'm not a stranger to. I don't like projects. I'm not a stranger to them because I got family. Various family members lived in projects in Athens, you know what I mean? You got broad acres, you got uptown. These were Rock Springs projects. I remember this Rock Springs because I had a young cousin die there when he was 4 from drowning in the pool. And that's right, some of the projects in Georgia have swimming pools. It's not all that bad, but when you think about it, I think it was just a ploy to kill niggas anyway. Cause niggas don't really swim like that, you know what I mean? And if you drown, it ain't nobody gonna jump in and save you. Like, motherfuckers had curls in their hair. And it's like, you know, it's five hours in a chair. You fucked up, it's your fault you in the water, you know what I mean? I done spent all this time getting my shit processed. I ain't finna fuck it up just for you. It's motherfucking Friday, you know. I'm trying to go out and get some Pussy later on or whatever reason they let him drown, you know what I mean? I remember these projects, but we didn't go into projects. We went into this house. It was like tan. The molding was like brown. I'll never forget that color. And we went inside the house and it was an emptiness inside of the house. It was dark, but only like little bit of sunlight came. Like the sunlight was like, nigga, don't go inside too. Like, you know what I mean? So I remember it wasn't that dirty. It was a clean table. And it's like they was preparing something, you know what I mean? Like food was being prepared, but it wasn't cornbread. It smelled like how aluminum foil tastes, you know what I mean? If you ever put aluminum foil in your mouth, like when you pretending like you making like a grill, like you can't afford a gold platinum grill. So you put aluminum foil in there. And it got that taste to it, you know, that's the smell like burning plastic, you know what I mean? And it was an auntie figure there. And she was preparing things. Lady, you know. And she brought out, she presented the rocks that looked like little Rice Krispie treats. At the time, I meant little rice pieces of Rice Krispies. That's all I could think of. Cause that's what I ate as a kid, you know. And she was like, is he eating? She didn't know who I was, you know, Everywhere I go, he's like, hey, this is my son. He was like, he's joining us. That's what she was. Cause you know, crackheads, they don't give a fuck. Crackheads are smoke in front of kids. They won't smoke cigarettes in front of kids. Because that's a label saying don't smoke cigarettes in front of kids. Ain't no label on crack, you know what I mean? Do crack in front of everything, you know. But he was like, nope, no, that's my son. He's not gonna smoke. He's just gonna sit here with us. And off instinct, I don't know what made me do this. I just looked outside. I gotta get the fuck outta here. Cause I seen New Jack City before. I knew it was about to go down, and I looked and outside was a scre. The screen door opened right here and there was a basketball. Just the sun. Just the sun just shined on the basketball. Just like Arthur's stone. Remember the sword Arthur had in the stone? There'd always be a light shining on the stone. And it'd be like iron in stone. But this Was like a basketball. It was rubber inside of rubble, you know what I mean? And I went out there, I was like, hey, can I play basketball? And he was like, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, go do that. Like, I just had the brightest idea in the world, you know what I mean? Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's what we gonna do. We gonna let him go outside and play basketball. We smoke these fucking rocks. I went outside, grabbed a basketball, Boom. I met the court. I go to the projects and the court like, oh, now you don't walk in. Nobody projects without a reason to go there. That's a violation. You get your ass beat or you can get killed. You know what I mean? And I already knew somebody got murdered in these projects. So in my mind, I'm like, oh, I could be like number two, you know what I mean? Out of the family. But I started playing basketball and it started to set in like, oh, shit, this is some fucked up shit. This is very eerie. And I'm out there for a long time facing the fact that this is some fucked up shit going on. On top of the fact that I'm shooting air balls and missing layups. Cause I wasn't good at basketball, you know what I mean? I was just cut from trying out for some shit. So I felt like a double. A failure, you know what I mean? It's true. And I was out there what seemed like an eternity. It probably was like 30 minutes or a little bit more than that. And then my dad come outside, you know, all excited, like, oh, you playing basketball. He grabbed the ball, dribbled that shit and shot a br. Which he didn't really give a fuck about that anyway. He was just like, hey, man, you got that $20? You got $20 on you that I could get from you? And I was like, just staring at him like something inside was like, man, don't get this motherfucker $20. You know what I mean? But, you know, he gave it to me and I was like, I guess I give it to him. But that shit was deep in my pockets. Cause I ain't used to having money, you know what I mean? I mean, that shit was deep in my pocket, and it was folded like that little last square, used toilet paper that you had. You know, when you shit, you be folding that shit in the mini micro, like, whatever. That deep that shit was in my pocket. So I pulled it out, gave him the 20, and he was like, all right, you know what I mean? He's like, I'll be right back. He's like, we still go to the movies, you know, all that shit parents be hyping you up for and shit. And then he left. And I remember saying to myself, if he come back and ask for that 10, don't give it to him. I had to prep, taught myself that shit. If he come back and ask for that 10, don't give it to him. And he came back and he was like, hey, man, you still got that 10 on you? And I'm like, this motherfucker know I had the $10 on me. Fuck wrong with crackheads, you know what I mean? But I didn't know he was a crackhead at the time. I just knew he was high as shit, you know what I mean? I was like, nah, man, I ain't got it. You know all that. I ain't got it. You know? I'm sorry. You know what I mean? And he's just like, damn, all right, all right. You want to be like that then? All right. He's like, I'll be back. And he went in the house. And I was like, oh, shit. You know what I mean? Like, damn, man, we got a problem. We got a motherf cking problem right now, you know? But I was, like, thinking positive still, like, man, maybe we can go to the movies now, you know? Ain't no more paper left. We're gonna go to the movies. I just sped this thing up. But then I saw the tail lights from the Thunderbird drive off. And I was like, oh, shit. Oh, shit. That's when my loneliness kicked in abandonment and I had to deal. I faced some shit then. Cause I was like, maybe, you know, maybe he gonna stop and be like, yo, come on, man. Got the car warmed up. Let's get the fuck out of here and go to the movies. But no, I saw them tail lights disappear around the corner. And I was like, damn, this nigga just left me in the projects. In the project where my cousin died. And I don't know nobody in this motherfucker. I don't know where to run if some shit pop off. I don't know where to go. I ain't even from here. And then, like, the loneliness kicked in, right? I remember thinking like, damn. Now everything else kicked in. Like, fuck. It was a time previous to this that my mom had to leave me because the state said she wasn't fit to be a good mother. So she was gone. Boom. And then I had to deal with the fact that he just left. Boom. And then, like, this voice, just like, old voice that was in my head was just like it's up to you now, you know what I mean? Like, your mom ain't gonna make it, your dad ain't gonna make it. It's up to you. Whatever you gotta do to get out of this situation, you gotta do it. But don't do any crime unless nothing else work out. That's what I told myself. Unless nothing else. If all else fail, then you can go to killing and doing crime. And then the military after crime don't work. With all this time shooting ball, boom. And I'm thinking this boom. And the ball felt heavy. Then the motherfucker life just kicked in, you know what I mean? I had to deal with the fact that he was in the mental home. I had to deal with this shit with my mom. And I think my great grandmother just died. So it was just a bunch of shit. Boom. As a teenager, you know, that you gotta go through, or some people don't, apparently don't go through. But that shit hit me at once. I'm like, damn. I wonder if all my other friends are going through this shit right now. Which they wasn't, you know what I mean? They was middle class, you know. So he came back, picked me up, you know, apologized like, we might not be able to go to the movies today. And then we went to my grandmother house and I saw my grandmother and they was like, hey, how was everything? How was the dinner? How was the movie? And I was like, we ain't make it. I just went to Rock Springs and shot basketball. And grandma was like, what the hell you doing in Rock Springs? Ain't nothing good in Rock Springs. And then like, she shot my dad a glance and I couldn't even focus on that shit. I just stayed quiet and kept everything inside. Cause I was just wondering what the fuck I was gonna tell my mama, you know what I mean? Cause she was the. My mom was like a brute, you know. Like my dad is the sensitive, like, lovey dovey guy. But I live with my mom, who is like king of the shit, you know, she ain't go. So I was like, damn, what I'm gonna tell my mama so my mom don't get in my ass for even trying to hang with my dad. And that pretty much ended, you know what I mean, that night. But my life changed since then. And I remember, like, my dad went on to do drugs 10 years after that. That $20 was the only thing I gave him. I never gave him no other money. 10 years or since then, you know what I mean? I recently bought him a card For Father's Day, but that was about it. I held my own, you know, I stayed to that, you know what I mean? So fast forward, I think, four years later, right? I'm in the game. I'm in the crack game myself, you know what I mean? I'm in college. Partial basketball scholarship to this private school and we hustling. Cause by this time, life ain't fair, you know what I mean? I'm in college with no books. I don't know what the fuck going on. I'm just dropped off. I just got dropped off at this school because I was educated enough to go to college. So I'm in college. People are getting money from scholarships and shit like that. But I'm just there and an opportunity presented itself to make a little money, you know what I mean? Some good Wolf of Wall street money, you know? So I took it, man, and I liked it. Because I remember looking at this crack and saying, like, I wonder how powerful you are. I saw what you've done to members of my family. But you will never get me. I was wrong. Because if you sell it, you get addicted to it too. Because a lot come with drugs, you know what I mean? As a seller, you get money, you get power, you get pussy, you get power over people. I could make a dude run in the store and grab some shit and just be like, give me all that shit and he'll do it and risk going to jail all. Cause he want to get high. And I was like, this shit crazy. And it's good. It's good to have power when you was a bullied nerd, you know what I mean? When you get that type of power, you be like, yeah, I can make motherfuckers pay now, you know what I mean? So I get a call one day. Cause this lady wants this client that we know, wants to buy some rocks, but she ain't got no money. So my homeboy was like, just take her. Get your dicks up, you know what I mean? Give her a rock. So this is how it all ties in. She drive. I had to sneak out. Cause it's a private college and they watch everything you do, right? So I go outside, get in the car, we go to this behind this grocery store, right? And like, she's serving me, you know what I mean? She's sucking my dick and she's like, yeah, I'm really like bisexual, so next time maybe I can get my girlfriend and I to fuck you instead. Because I don't really like sucking dick. I don't even Suck my husband dick. And in my mind I'm like, nah, I want them $20. Maybe you could ask your kid for that $20. Just like my dad asked me for the 20, you know what I mean? Cause it's all payback by this time to me. And it was bad for her cause I couldn't come, you know what I mean? I was taking a long time. I couldn't because I was emotional. I was trying not to cry the whole time because 50ft from us, it's a park, right? And it's a basketball court at this park and at this park it's a kid and his dad playing basketball and they bonding. And I'm trying not to cry and hold in these tears while I get my dick suck at the same time. Cause I'm thinking I'm looking at a life that I could have had. And as a result of me not having that life, I ended up here in some bullshit ass American car getting my dick sucked. And it was tough. It was tough for both of us, me and the lesbian that was sucking my dick. And I felt more sorry for her, you know what I mean? Cause her addiction brought her to this point, you know what I mean? My decision wasn't that bad, you know, but we both made it through. We both made it through. I came and she got her rock, you know what I mean? I hope it was worth it. And that's it.

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[Amy Salloway]

Experian.

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[Byron Bowers]

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[Kevin Allison]

This is Risk. This is Ziv Moran behind me now. And we just heard from the man who you can find on Instagram. Folks, my next online storytelling workshop starts on April 8th, and you can email me at kevinrisk-show.com to learn all about it. And did you know one way you can really help us out, help us reach more people and shout down the haters is writing us reviews and giving us five star ratings on Apple Podcasts or Spotify or podchaser. But those reviews really do help raise the profile of a podcast. So help us out here. We'd really appreciate it. Now our next story comes to us from a close friend of the show who we've collaborated with in all sorts of ways over the years. She's a phenomenal storytelling teacher too. This is Amy Salloway with a story we call Sister Act.

[Amy Salloway]

I don't know for sure why my mother didn't like me, but I spent a lot of my childhood trying to figure it out. So even from the age of like 2 and 3, I could see see examples of what mother child relationships were supposed to look like. You know, like I had seen the bond between Bambi's mother and Bambi and Dumbo's mother and Dumbo. And I had read the book are you my mother? Where the little baby bird falls out of the nest and it talks to the dog and the fire hydrant and the cement mixer and then it finds itself mom again. And none of those examples were anything like the crying, screaming, fighting relationship that I had with my mother, where we would have these fights that started usually with some vaguely tangible seed like, Amy, why are you crumpling up all these sheets of paper? Amy, you can draw on the back, use the back, but would quickly escalate into psychological warfare. What is wrong with you? This behavior is not normal. And it kind of called into question the entire concept of unconditional love. So by the time I was four, I had developed a dominant theory, which was that I was not ever supposed to be my mother's child. I was a distribution error. So, yeah, so when God or God's administrative assistant was like dropping down zygotes into pregnancy desirous women all over the world, my mother's matching Zygote was accidentally given to someone else and with it all the maternal love and comfort and affection that she and that baby would have felt. And instead she was implanted with me, basically a foreign object with which she had no connection. I might as well have been a seahorse or a ham sandwich. And so that logical resentment was why she exploded at me so much and yelled so much, and why I yelled back. And why then, no matter how hard I tried to change and reconnoitre myself, I couldn't turn myself into the daughter she really would have wanted. When I was six, I was eating Cheerios at the kitchen table and my mother came in in her pink nightgown and told me that she was pregnant. The doctor says it's very, very dangerous for me to have this baby because I'm so old, I'm 31, I could die. So, I mean, I started of course like crying and clutching at her and saying, mommy, please then don't have this baby. I don't want you to die. And she slapped my hands away and told me that it was not my decision to make. True. And that I could increase her chances of survival by being better behaved for her and my stepfather Sid, and by helping out more around the house. But already I was just shaken. Why would my mother risk death for a baby that didn't even exist yet? Like, hello, I existed. Hello, Amy. Right here in progress. I knew that I was not perfect by any means, but wasn't I enough to stay alive for? I immediately preemptively loathed this baby that was so fucking amazing it was worth possible death. I post emptively loathed the baby. Also. It was a girl. My half sister Abby. And I will tell you, it was so strenuous hating her because she was irrationally lovable. She was beautiful in a way that I will never be, with like shiny, shiny brown hair and these huge brown anime eyes. And she had this generosity of spirit that is antithetical to toddlers. Everyone, yes, everyone noticed it. So, like we would go visit my grandparents in of Front Florida and the elderly lap swimmers at the pool would take her little hands, her little sausage arms in theirs and say, oi, such a Shayna Maidel. This one is inside and out. No. And my mother would beam like a flashlight and then all of their heads would swivel in unison to look at me, glued with sweat to the patio chair, one hand like trying to shove my body back into my bathing suit that it was escaping from and the other hand shoving Pepperidge Farm Pirouette cookies into my mouth, and my mother would say that one. Oy gewalt. I had a lot of methods, though, for trying to hate my sister. Like, when my parents made me babysit for her, I would always make us play with her little Fisher Price doctor Kit. And I would diagnose her with terminal cancer every time and give her two weeks to live. Or I would have us play Legos, and I would grab a handful and spell out across the carpet, I hate you, Abby. I'm not proud. But every time, she would throw her arms around my neck and hug me and say in this way, she had. Where? To this day, everything she utters sounds like it's out of Little Women. Oh, Amy, you mustn't hate me. I don't hate you. I love you. And I would pry her off of me and see. Don't love. Oh, but I do. It was horrific. And it gets worse. Okay. The worst part is, I know these are song lyrics. Everything I could do, Abby could do better. Every talent I had, Abby had more of. Like, you would think that two siblings who are not even completely related would be genetically programmed to have different interests. Like, one likes baseball and the other likes Croatian leather tooling. I don't know. But no. No. All I had wanted from the time I emerged from the womb was to be in theater, was to be an actor, singer, dancer. And my vision was that there was going to come a day when I was roller skating on our Milwaukee driveway. So. Singing. We're gonna zoom zoom zoom a zoom we're gonna zoom a zooma zoom a zoom and, oh, my gosh. A car would drive by containing a talent agent, and he would catapult me onto zoom because there was a cast member leaving right at that moment, and then that would lead to a role in a Broadway musical. You're nodding. Yes. Same dream. I think it was archetypal for a lot of us. And then from there, maybe, like, starring role in a Disney movie. And from there, who knows what. But no, it was Abby who stopped traffic every time we were in the grocery store or the mall with people cooing and screaming and thrusting business cards, and my mother with the scribbled names of talent managers and modeling agencies because Milwaukee is such a hotbed of international fashion. Right us, all those cheeseheads. And by the time my sister was six, she had been in a baby shampoo commercial, an ad for an ear infection remedy. She was one of those kids that you see pointing to something very exciting up in the sky in the Sears bacteria School. Catalog. And every time she belted out It's a Hard Knock Life for Us with the Sunshine Kids Touring International Children's Performance Company, I knew how irrelevant I had become, especially in my mother's eyes. Actually, beyond irrelevant. I was an aberration. My mom started asking me to please don't sing in the house because it took up airspace from Abby's, you know, voice lessons and rehearsals for Annie get yout Gun. And also, my sister was getting headshots, like, every five minutes. And I was always in the car going to them. And I would say, look, you know what? You don't even have to make a special trip. I am right here. Can I please get headshots? You know what? I bet you could even work out a two for one deal appealing to my mother's love of a bargain. But she would say, no, no, if you want headshots, you pay for them yourself. That way, they'll be more meaningful. So around this time, our family got a cleaning lady named Linda. So I was about 15 by now, and I was very opposed to the fact that we were getting a cleaning lady because I had just hit my, like, larval women's rights phase. And I yelled at my mom. I said, we are Jewish. Our ancestors were slaves over and over throughout the centuries, and now you want to enslave someone else. My mother told me that if I really wanted to free Linda from her shackles, or perhaps I could clean our house every Saturday. And I decided that Linda didn't actually seem all that oppressed. Linda was fascinating. She had a story that I got to hear because she told it to my mom while she cleaned on Saturdays. And Saturdays was my scheduled day for moping and seething around the house. So I eavesdropped. So Linda had a boyfriend who was a radical activist. I don't know what he was radically active about, but he had gotten arrested by the cops and was in prison. And Linda said it was totally unfair and that someday she was going to break him out and they were gonna ditch all their worldly possessions and get on his motorcycle and ride across the border to Mexico and live incognito. So that night, up in my room, I got out my World Atlas and flipped to the Mexico page to see where Cognito was. I couldn't find it, but Linda wore a bandana, so I believed her. And then she told my mother that she was psychic. She. Linda was psychic, not my mom. So she was dusting at the time. I remember she was dusting objects on the dining room side table. Lifting them up and putting them back down. And she told my mom that she got feelings from people as soon as she met them, and then even more so when she handled their possessions, the energy of theirs stored in a soap dish or a dirty sock, and she could tell where they had been and where they were going. Dust, dust, dust, dust, dust, dust. So, sidebar. You may be skeptical. You may be thinking to yourself, if Linda was so psychic, why did she not see that her boyfriend was going to be thrown in prison? Why didn't she perhaps take some action to circumvent that fate? These are excellent questions. So one day, Linda was dusting a photo of Abby. It was the one that was taken from her Jiffy Pop shoot, where she's, like, exploding jubilantly through a gigantic carton of popcorn. And I was sitting in the family room, which sort of segues into the living room, and I heard Linda say to my mother, this is your daughter Abby, isn't it? And my mother said, yes, yes, that's Abby. And Linda looked down at the photo and looked at my mother and said, she was Anne Frank in a past life. My mother says, what? And Linda says, your daughter Abby, she's the reincarnation of Anne Frank. Thank you, you guys. And my mother has a conniption. Oh, my God. Oh, my God. Linda. Linda, this explains so much. It explains. Explains everything. The resemblance and the brown haya and the browned eyes and the. And Linda, she keeps a journal. I want to say here that this is a woman who has never believed in a psychic art or anything extrasensory in her entire life. This is a woman who lives with such tangibility that when I was nine years old, she did not believe I had broken my wrist because she couldn't see it. It's a wrist. It looks fine. It's a wrist. It's fine. And now she is, like, flailing in this dance of I don't even know what through the living room, family room, living room, family room, kitchen screen, screaming sentence fragments I knew fits all my Goy Gewalt nachos. Linda, did you know we're Jewish? Yes. Linda says, yes, I had an idea of that. And then my mother stops flailing and puts one hand on her hip and says, so what about Amy? And I just think, no. Oh, my God, no. Do not wrap me up in this. I want to, like, catapult myself over to where they are and barricade the knickknacks so that this cannot go on any farther. But I'm not even supposed to Be overhearing. No one even knows that I'm there. So I have to just sit there frozen. Linda goes over to the table and picks up this clay jar that I had made in art class in our pottery unit. It's a girl's head, and her hair and ponytail are the lid. So you grasp the ponytail. Did you make one, too? Oh, my gosh. Oh, my gosh. And it could be like a match set. And you lift the lid off, put it back on. So Linda hold. I was very proud of it, by the way. Linda holds the jar, she takes the lid off, puts it back on, takes it off, puts it on. I wouldn't have shouted her, leave my head alone. But I can't. And she says to my mother, amy wants to be an actress, doesn't she? Yes, says my mom. Yes, she does. Just like her sister Linda says, Amy's not the reincarnation of anyone, But I can tell you that she's never going to succeed in theater. And in fact, she's never going to feel fulfilled or happy until she comes to terms with the career that she is supposed to have as an emergency room nurse. Emergency room. Emergency room nurse. Thus commences an escalation in the baseline level of crazy in my family. And I just want to say here that, like, this happened a long time ago. Like, I am old. This is distant past. So I will admit that, like, my emotional memory of this is more powerful than the actual, you know, like, chronological memory. And I'm not utterly positive that this is all completely correct. And I'm also not positive. And we'll never know if my mother truly believed that my sister was the reincarnation of Anne Frank, or if it was just this very exciting roller coaster to be honored. I mean, and I haven't explored it in therapy because I have more emergent things to deal with, but I. But I will say that at that point, my sister Abby was taken to auditions for every production of the Diary of Anne Frank in the Tri State area. She was interviewed for the community paper. She rode on the head fourth of July float. When her little friends came over, they would go up to her room and play Anne Frank in the annex. You be the Nazi. I was the Nazi last time. Or sometimes they would all just sit on her bed in a circle and look at her adoringly. And she would read chapters, excerpts to them from the diary of her. And they would say, abby, do you remember writing that? Do you remember writing that people are truly good at heart? And she would say, yeah, I think I do. And they would hug and cry and hug and cry, and sometimes she would sign autographs. I came home from school one day and my mother had left a stack of pamphlets for nursing programs on my bed. And I grabbed them and took them to her and shook them like this sheaf of malice going, how? What? Why are you doing this to me? And my mother just looked at me and said, excuse me for wanting you to feel fulfilled and happy. I'm sorry. I wanted you to be happy. And I thought about Linda as I was lying in bed, trying to fall asleep. Like, what was her deal if she. If she got readings from the objects that people owned? Why wasn't the first thing that she felt how dysfunctional our family was? Why didn't she pick up anything we had sitting around the house, the blender, and say, oh, I should use my powers for good, not evil? I dreamed about faded bedsheets tied together knot by knot into a rope, cascading out from a prison window, between the bars, down the cement wall and off, farther, farther, farther into the distance until it hit the horizon and I couldn't see it. And I dreamt sometimes about my sister, my mom's perfect missing zygote. So one Saturday, Linda didn't show up to clean. And my mom called the agency that she was from, and I heard her end of the conversation. Oh, oh, oh, I see. Thank you. And she hung up the phone. And Linda had done it. She had broken her boyfriend out of prison. They had skipped town, disappeared, and no one knew where they were. And something about that just shifted something in my head, imperceptibly so. Anne Frank, at least for a while, escaped the Nazis into an attic and ostensibly escaped the time space continuum into my 20th century century sister. My mother escaped all the problems of our family into this amazing story. Linda's boyfriend escaped prison. Linda escaped the drudgery of her job with the 409 and the lemon Pledge and the Pine Sol. And she didn't owe anyone anything. She just went. She was no one's slave, and I was miserable as hell, but I was not going to live in this house of pain forever. Someday, if I could just hang on, I would get my tied together bed sheets floating out that window to take me somewhere else. I would get my hard won reincarnation. And who knows who I'd be then. Thank you.

[Kevin Allison]

This is risk. This is just for kicks behind me now. And we just heard from Amy Salloway, who's teaching and coaching all kinds of personal storytelling in the Twin Cities, and her year round classes through Minneapolis Community Education can be taken from anywhere in the world because they're online. She also has a separate class coming up at Story Fest in the Twin Cities that you can [e-mail] StoryFest 2026 and you can find Amy on Instagram at Amy salloway. Don't forget, March 17 is the next Risk live show in New York City. Tickets are at risk-show.com live and this episode of Risk was produced by our own John La Sala. Folks, today's the day. Take a risk.

[Amy Salloway]

Sam.

[Byron Bowers]

Hey Sal. Hank, what's going on? We haven't worked a case in years. I just bought my car at Carvana and it was so easy. Too easy.

[Amy Salloway]

Think something's up?

[Byron Bowers]

You tell me. They got thousands of options, found a

[Kevin Allison]

great car at a great price.

[Byron Bowers]

Uh huh. And it got delivered the next day. It sounds like Carvana just makes it easy to buy your car, Hank. Yeah, you're right. Case closed.

[Commercial Announcer]

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