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The Moth
Beyond the Stage with Tonya Scott Williams
00:32:05
A few months ago, we put out a call to listeners to host their own episode of The Moth podcast for its 10th anniversary. Today we're thrilled to pass the mic over to listener Tonya Scott Williams. In this episode, Tonya chooses three of her favorite stories to share.
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- [00:00]
Tanya Scott Williams
As we approach the end of the year, I'm thinking about the next. Next year is the year I finally make my Spanish better than my 9 year old's. Rosetta Stone is the most trusted language learning program available on desktop or as an app, and it truly immerses you in the language that you want to learn. I can't wait to use Rosetta Stone and finally speak better than my 9 year old who's been learning Spanish in his own way. Rosetta Stone is the trusted expert for 30 years. With millions of users and 25 languages offered speaking Spanish, French, Italian, German, Korean, I could go on fast language acquisition. Rosetta Stone immerses you in many ways. There are no English translations, so you can really learn to speak, listen and think in that language. Start the new year off with a resolution you can reach today. The Moth listeners can take advantage of this Rosetta Stones lifetime membership for 50% off, visit rosettastone.com moth that's 50% off. Unlimited access to 25 language courses for the rest of your Life. Redeem your 50% off@RosettaStone.com moth today. Hi everyone. We've been celebrating a lot of milestones around here, and a few months ago, to mark the 10 year anniversary of the Moth podcast, we put out a call for a listener to host their very own episode. Pitches came in from all around the country and here are clips from two we loved. Here's Larnell Cross.
- [01:27]
Larnell Cross
One of the stories that come to mind is from Aliza Kazmi, and she talks about finding her identity and her brownness and standing up for it. People can feel marginalized for certain things because in my mind I'm marginalized because I was a black guy being autistic and it was something different. And with her story, it just really brought to mind of being proud of who you are no matter what and really just coming to that place of feeling that, you know, I don't care what other people think, I'm gonna be me.
- [02:01]
Tanya Scott Williams
And here's Brennan Beckwith.
- [02:03]
Brennan Beckwith
My love for the Moth started in middle school. That's when my dad would drive me home and it was just enough time to listen to the Moth radio hour. I love my dad, but let's face it, he couldn't be more different from me. He's a geeky, uptight straight man that worked in law enforcement for 25 years and I'm an outlandish, genderqueer, free spirit with pink hair. Needless to say, connecting with him was hard. Even in my closeted middle school days. We were passing ships, but not on Friday nights. When we listened to the Moth on the drive home over the summer, we got a chance to go to a story slam for the first time ever. My dad got out of work early to get to the show. When I came out, I had him listen to a story about a genderqueer person from the Moth. The Moth not only helped me connect my dad, it helped me connect myself and most importantly, to the world beyond my point of view.
- [02:57]
Tanya Scott Williams
There were so many of you who pitched us and thank you. We chose longtime listener Tanya Scott Williams, who lives in Montgomery, Alabama to host the podcast today.
- [03:07]
Alvin Hall
What I like about the Moth is that these are regular people. These are regular folks just like me who are stepping up to the mic and they're putting themselves on the line and they have no idea how it's going to go over, but they do it anyway. The Moth gives them a platform and it gives me a front row seat to be part of it. And I've encouraged friends over the years to listen to it, so it would be wonderful if I have a chance to host it. And then those friends are listening and they hear my voice. So I'm going to go ahead and say yes and thank you for giving me this opportunity.
- [03:40]
Tanya Scott Williams
And so, without further ado, here's Tanya.
- [03:45]
Alvin Hall
Welcome to the Moth Podcast. I'm Tonya Scott Williams. We're celebrating the 10 year anniversary of the Moth Podcast. I've been listening to the Moth for years. In the mornings, the evenings, or while I'm driving down the highway in Montgomery, Alabama, I hear stories so moving that I have to share them with friends. I bring them up in conversation as something we can connect with and see ourselves through. Today, I've picked three stories that I want to share with you. Hosting the Moth is an opportunity that arrived at a moment in my life when I decided to start dreaming again, which seems to be a big part of this first story, which is one of my favorites from the archives. Alvin hall shared his story at a Moth main stage with the theme Sense and Sensibility. Here's Alvin hall live in New York.
- [04:35]
Eric Kahl
Good evening. Get this up here. We only went to town once a month when I was a little boy. We had a farm. We grew, raised, or hunted, everything that we had. When we went to town, my mother and grandmother would give us a nickel or a dime to buy whatever we wanted as a treat. I so looked forward to that. While my brothers and sisters would go off and buy toys and candy, I would go to the back of the five and dime store to this one area where they had these little bitty discs with bits of film in them. And I would buy a viewmaster slide. I would go through the row and look for places like Rome, London, Paris, and a town called Constantinople. I would then come back home in the truck, go into the backyard, pull out my viewmaster slide and point it at the sky. And I would sit there in reverie for hours. I would cross the Bosphorus, I would go up the Eiffel Tower. I would create these travelogues, a word I didn't know at that time in my mind until my mother called me to do a chore in the house. I was raised in a very WASPy black family. We did not talk. My parents spoke in syllables. If they really liked what you did, they would go, mmm, mm. If they thought what you did was. Was adequate but expected, mm, mm, mm. If they thought what you did was horrible, it was, hmm. And the lower the register of that hm, the more judgment was imparted by that. When I was nine years old, my mother. I recall my mother making this statement all the time. She. She kept saying, I raised you to leave my house. When you get to be 18 years old, all of you, I raised you to leave my house. My brothers and sisters and I would look at each other and Wonder. At age 9, I decided to tell her, I'm going to leave this place. My mother looked at me, she said, what did you say? I said, one of these days, I'm going to leave this place. She went, hmm. Integration occurred in 1968, and I went from an all black school named Shadeville, very Faulknerian, to the county school. And there I had probably my second fight of my entire high school career. This guy called me something and we got into a fight and I fought to win at the school. People became aware of me and so they recommended me to a program, a Lyndon Baines Johnson program called Project Upward Bound at Florida Agricultural and Mechanical University. What a destiny I had. Nonetheless, I got into the program and there was a lady who ran the program, the most glamorous black woman I had ever met, a lady named Ms. Freddie Grooms. She had a medium sized afro that was perfectly coiffed. Every day. She wore clothes that were in blocks of colors. I can see them to this day. And at this program, she really took an interest in me. In my classes, however, I was the eager kid. I was constantly putting up my hand every answer. I knew the answer to everything. And I was really, really on. And the teacher said to me, how do you know, so much. And I said, I read the World Book Encyclopedia when we had no money. At night, my mother, who subscribed to the World Book Encyclopedia, would say to us, don, my middle name. Pick out the letter Q, boy, and read something to us. Pick out the letter B, boy, and read something to us. Well, little did we know that I was learning all that stuff. So in class, I was really eager. This does not make me popular with the other people in the program. Eventually, I got into a little scuffle. I was put on parole. But Mrs. Grooms took interest in me and recommended me to her friend, Dr. Joel Fleischman, who had started a program at Yale University called Yale Summer High School. And I applied to that program. The day I got there, that letter, I sat in the kitchen of the house, and I knew with everything in me that I was going. I was going to go if it took everything to make it happen. And I think my parents suspected that. So on the day I got ready to go, I wasn't afraid of anything, not a single thing. Because in my mind, I'd already traveled to Paris and London and Constantinople. So going up to New Haven, Connecticut, I got on that plane, got to New Haven, Connecticut, and for the first time in my life, I felt like I was home. There was John Wall, John Laemmle, Alba, Clyde. All the tutors and counselors made me feel so at home. I loved it. At the end of the summer, I had to come back home. I got off the plane, came home, and my grandmother walked up to me, put her hands on my face on both sides, looked into my eyes, and then held me close to her and said, you are never coming home again. You are never coming home again. I then applied to college, went off to school in Maine, had a wonderful time, did well in school. Life was good. It was pretty good. I got a good job. I traveled a lot. I would write my parents postcards. In tiny little writing, I'd write these entire narratives, and I would say to my parents, did you ever receive my postcards? My parents would go, mm, mm, mm. Nothing more was said about the postcards. Curious, I said to myself, well, eventually I got a job in New York City, a job that I really loved on Wall Street. And things were going really well for me, and I started to travel. I still wrote my parents cards. When I told my parents that I was moving to New York City, my grandmother said, mm, you know, that Richard Pryor man lived in New York. Wall street was really good to me. And I had. I found a Place where I could work. I enjoyed the creativity of being in training on Wall Street. But in one of the recessions, I got laid off. And I knew that the layoff was coming. And I got so mad about the layoff in anticipation of it that I decided I was going to fight. I was going to fight when they laid me off. So on the day they laid me off, I said basically to myself, you're going to have to pay me to get rid of me. You're going to have to pay me. And I fought that day, one of the hardest fights I've ever fought in my life, to get a great severance package. When I walked out of that office, I had a severance package that was beyond my dreams. I walked out of the office, got into a taxi and said, take me to Tiffany's. I took the taxi from downtown to Tiffany's. I told the taxi to wait. I had wanted these green celadon bowls for three and a half years. I would go to Tiffany's and I would just lust after them. And today I was going to give them to myself as a present for that package I negotiated. I had them wrap them in the blue and white box, put them in a bag, and I came down in that side elevator at Tiffany's, got into the taxes and said, take me to the D'Agostinos. I went to the D'Agostinos, bought a half gallon of milk and a box of Cheerios and then said, take me home. I went home, opened the box, washed the bowls and poured the Cheerios and the milk in the bowl. And I thought, if I have to be unemployed every day I eat from these bowls, I'll be happy. And I sat there and I ate my Cheerios blissfully. And as I was eating those Cheerios, I said to myself, it's time to go to Paris. I had avoided going to Paris. I don't know why, but it was time to go to Paris. So I called and booked a ticket, called a friend of mine and said, I'm going to come to Paris. Can I stay with you? He said, sure. I got on that plane to Paris. It was so exciting. Got off at Charles de Gaulle, took the Erra heir in, and uncharacteristically, I missed my stop. I travel a lot. I never miss a stop. I miss my stop. So I got off at the next stop, came out of the metro, walking down the street and turned a corner, and it was like everything went out of me. I was in exactly the same spot where that picture was taken that I used to sit and look at through that viewmaster slide. I was in my own dream. I had made it real. I sat there for a moment and then I burst into tears. And I just thought, I can't believe I'm here. I can't believe I'm here. And for the next five days, I went all over Paris and I saw every place that was in those View Master slides. I did not miss a single one. That first night in Paris, my friend who lived in the 1st arrondissement had a rooftop terrace. And so when I arrived late, he said, oh, I have some champagne and caviar upstairs. So we went up to the rooftop. As the sun was setting over Paris, I watched as all of the lights came up on the monuments one by one. And as I stood there, I heard my mother and my grandmother say, mmm, this year is a significant birthday for me. And I've decided that it's time for me to see that city once call Constantinople. Thank you.
- [16:00]
Alvin Hall
That was Alvin Hall. Alvin is an author, teacher, television and radio broadcaster. A few days after hearing Alvin's story, I stopped at a local department store with my daughter. And while she ran off to look for iPhone gadgets, I wandered over to the home section. And there, between pillows with birds on them and wind chimes, I found a View Master. It's been years since I've seen a View Master and kind of made me think about my childhood. I remembered images of national parks and places in other countries, and it connected me to Alvin's story. I haven't made it to Paris yet, but there's still time. Next up is a story from Eric Kahl. He told this at an open mic story slam and the theme was aftermath. Here's Eric live at the moth in Louisville, Kentucky.
- [16:52]
Larnell Cross
August 31, 1996. UK football suffers a rather humiliating defeat to the UofL Cardinals on opening night by a score of 38 to 14. There's absolutely no earthly reason why I should remember that I was born and raised in Norwell, Massachusetts, and could care less about Kentucky football. When I was growing up, sports was simple. The Patriots and the Red Sox disappointed you always. The Celtics always won, and the Bruins ended up getting in fights all the time. And they were fun to watch. But in 1990, I moved to Louisville and I married my college sweetheart. And Ellen was born and raised in Louisville. And at the time, she was a rabid UK fan. And on that particular night in August, she was also seven months pregnant with our daughter. And she was also supposed to be on bed rest because she had developed during her pregnancy, preeclampsia, which is high blood pressure. And our doctor informed us that this was potentially preventing the baby from getting all the nutrition that it needed. And so there's bed rest and then there's UK football and the game had to be watched. And I was not going to argue because it's really quite amusing to watch a pregnant lunatic screaming at Bill Curry through the tv. And it worked because he got fired, apparently. So really, Ellen was on her best behavior. And right after the game we went right to sleep. And at about 3 o'clock the next morning, she gets up to go to the bathroom, not an unusual occurrence. A couple minutes later she comes back and she says, I'm going to call the doctor. Which honestly was also not an unusual occurrence because it was a first pregnancy and Ellen's sister is an OB gyn and Ellen's doctor was in the same practice as Ellen's sister. And so needless to say, we had 24 hour access to hot and cold running doctors opinions and we made good use of it. But what was unusual, she comes back about 10 minutes later from the phone call and she says in a rather serious and insistent voice, you need to take me to the hospital now. So I'm not going to argue with that. We get in the car, I get dressed first, get in the car, and we start the short drive to Baptist Hospital. And Ellen has her feet up on the dashboard and she's obviously in pain and she thinks that she's in labor. And again, I'm not going to argue with her. But as I'm approaching the one traffic light between us and Baptist, I start to slow down because it's red. And this unearthly, ungodly voice emanates from deep inside my wife and she says, are you fucking kidding me? So I proceed with all haste through the red light and I pull up to the emergency room and I look up and I'm surprised to see that there's a small army of people waiting for us at the emergency room at 4:00 on a Sunday morning. And this is when I really start to get scared. And the next couple hours are really a blur. Within an hour, all six doctors from the practice are in the room with us and they're barking out orders. And Ellen wants drugs because she's in pain, but they don't want to give her drugs because they're trying to stop the labor. And in the midst of all this insanity, this little very confident voice says, people, we are going to have this baby now. And everyone snaps into shape. And like the X's and O's on a play chart, everyone knows exactly what to do. And the bright lights come on and the doctor's masks go on. And I think to myself, shouldn't I be scrubbing? But no, there's no time for that. And before we knew it, all too soon and all too early, our daughter Virginia was born. And they take her to weigh her. And she. I hear 3 pounds, 5 ounces. And I catch a glimpse of her as they're hurrying her out the door. And she's all arms and legs, just skinny and long, Skinny and long. But she's screaming as they take her out the door. And I think, this is a good sign. I'm clearly qualified to make these kind of decisions. This is a good sign. She's screaming. And after she leaves and goes to the nicu, Ellen and I are sort of left there in the silence to look at each other and say, so now what? And the best I could come up with at that point was, I think I left the car running at the curb. I'll be right back. And I was. I came right back. But shortly thereafter, someone comes in and informs us that Virginia needs to leave Baptist and go to University Hospital. And I know that this is not a good sign. And the nurse who had been with us the whole morning, just sweet, wonderful person, she tries to fill that awkward silence. And she says, so, did you see the game? It was great, wasn't it? So I think that you'll forgive me if I say to you tonight that six years, 16 years later, I still just couldn't give a crap who wins that football game every year. And I hope you will forgive me when I tell you that I still get a little sad 16 years later when I think about how God awful expensive it's going to be to send that beautiful, healthy kid to Harvard. Thank you.
- [23:17]
Alvin Hall
That was Eric Call. Eric is a marketing director in the healthcare industry, and he's been a regular Moth storyteller in Louisville since 2011 when the Slam started. He's even won a grand slam. Eric is an amateur woodcarver, an avid cyclist, and the father of two amazing daughters, Virginia and Sophie, who are both off to college this fall. Julie Baker is our final storyteller. In this week's episode, she told this at a Boston story slam all about romance. And her story is a perfect fit for that theme. Here's Julie Baker live at the Moth.
- [23:53]
Larnell Cross
Here we go.
- [23:54]
Eric Kahl
Hi. Get right into the microphone.
- [23:58]
Julie Baker
It was the summer of 2014. I decided to celebrate my 50th birthday by taking a train ride across Europe. It was inspired by the movie Before Sunrise. While I didn't meet Ethan Hawke, I did find a beautiful, very expensive purple pocketbook that I couldn't afford in Florence. I came home and every time I looked at the purple pocketbook, I remembered my fabulous European train ride and I really believed that someday true love would find me. Several nights later, I still had jet lag and I did what we do when we're up in the middle of the night and I stalked old friends on Facebook. I visited the page of my friend Nancy. I met Nancy three weeks shy of my 19th birthday in 1983. We were both patients at an alcohol and drug rehab center. I was a teenage alcoholic and while there I accepted the fact that if I didn't learn how to stop doing drugs and alcohol, I probably wouldn't live to see 20. So when I came home, Nancy and I became part of a crowd of teenage recovering alcoholics and drug addicts and we learned how to live clean and sober. There were some slightly older young adults in the crowd. One of them was Bobby Gave. Bobby G was a short little Greek guy from the Bronx and because he was super nice to me, he had no chance with me romantically. I pretended not to know that he had a crush on me because I didn't want the adoration to end. Eventually we lost touch until I see his thumbnail on Nancy's page. I click on it and I say hi. And over the next couple of days we use Facebook messenger to catch up on the last 25 years. I told him how I had been divorced for 10 years from a guy who treated me like crap but who made really pretty babies. I had become a prolific online dater after having my heart broken. I was checking things off my sexual bucket list. I was still sober and was very, very single. He had married a woman from Denmark, moved there, had a whole bunch of kids, and had been living abroad for 20 years. He had recently divorced and was trying to figure out how to be a single guy in his early 60s. Using Skype and Messenger and lots of long distance minutes, we reconnected and rekindled our very platonic friendship. We shared and reminisced about how he taught me how to drive a stick on his Volkswagen Scirocco and how we stayed up into the wee hours singing squeeze songs and talking about self esteem at AA Young People's conferences. I shared with him how amused I was when men on Match thought it was sexy to post Shirtless selfies taken in the bathroom mirror. He shared with me how confused he was by Tinder. Along comes the Alsace ice Bucket challenge. He asked me if he should do it shirtless, which I thought was hilarious until I pressed play on his video. I don't know if it was his commitment to the joke or if it was the sort of raw, Beautiful vulnerability of 62 year old Bobby G. Standing in a parking lot wearing gym shorts and flip flops and nothing else. But when I saw the video, I wanted him. When I told him of my desire, he was thrilled. Our conversation shifted from conversations about children and work and different cultures to sexting and romance and whether or not this passion would exist in real life. When I visited Europe in a few months, I shared with my best friend my fear that I was just inventing an international romance in my head. She suggested that I get on a plane and go to Denmark now. I said, what kind of person goes to Europe for a first date? She said, I think you do. She offered to take my children for the weekend. I flew to Denmark. I got off the plane and there was Bobby G. A foot shorter than the rest of the Danes, standing at international arrivals holding a bouquet of purple flowers. When he called my name, I literally felt weak in the knees. We got in the car and said, somewhere on the way to his house, he put his hand on my thigh. I put my hand on his hand and our fingers intertwined and it was as if we had been holding hands for 30 years instead of just a few minutes. That was a year and a half ago. He still lives there, I still live here. We try to see each other every couple months. We have seven children between us. There's a six, six hour time difference. We bicker on Skype. I'm not quite sure what the future holds for me and Bobby, but I do know that I have never regretted buying the purple pocketbook. And I have never regretted getting on a plane and going to Denmark for a first date.
- [30:16]
Alvin Hall
That's Julie Baker. When I heard this story, I was reminded of one of my favorite motivational speakers, Lisa Nichols, who often says, we get a thousand second chances and when you get to 999, press the reset button. And Julie did just that. Julie Baker is a single mom of two teenagers, a rider, a dog walker and a barista. When she's not riding to her K9 clients on her bike with purple handlebar streamers, she's practicing getting the purple perfect foam on a latte. She wrote to tell us that her romantic relationship with Bobby didn't survive, but they're still great friends on Facebook. That's all my time here on the Moth Podcast this week. Over the years I've heard a lot of moth stories, some inspiring, some romantic, provocative, bizarre or funny. And sometimes I think about the storytellers and how long after the podcast ends, their words still with me. Hearing them makes me feel like I'm part of something special, like I'm up close and personal with their experiences beyond the stage. Thanks for listening.
- [31:21]
Tanya Scott Williams
Tanya Scott Williams is a business owner, soon to be published author, and mother to a rising high school senior who gives her so many reasons to smile. She also co hosts a parenting podcast on Blog Talk radio and is a host of Biz Talk MGM on WVAS Radio. She volunteers with advocacy and arts organizations and lives in Montgomery, Alabama with her family. Podcast production by Timothy Lou Lee the Moth Podcast is presented by prx, the Public Radio Exchange, helping make public radio more public@prx.org.