Carlos Kotkin (3:26)

Hello. When I was a kid, I was about 9 or 10, I used to go with my dad to the dog pound to look at dogs. Just go check them out. Sometimes we would take them for a walk and just look at him. We're going to the Zoom and one time we were at the dog pound and we're looking and we see this dog and it's awful, awful looking dog. It was a ratty, small. It was a poodle and it was making a weird sound. It was a little older. It was just like as we're looking at it, a woman who worked at the pound walked up to us and she said, do you guys like that dog? And we were being polite. We said, it's interesting. And she said, hopefully you like her enough to take her home because she's about to be killed in 10 minutes. And somehow we ended up with this dog in my lap on our way home. Her name was Coco. And we get home and let Coco into the house and Coco runs as fast as she can to my mother is sitting on the couch and just jumps, jumps on her. So like her soulmate. And my mom looks at the dog and her immediate reaction is, oh, no. That was the appropriate reaction. And she told us, take this dog back. We said, no, we can't, because it was about to be killed. And this sweet little lady begged and pleaded with us and all she needs is a little love. And we gave her the same cell that the woman gave us. And my mom said, take it back. And. And we said, how about this? Why don't we keep it for a month and see if Coco grows on us. And if she doesn't, then we'll find a new home for her. So my mom agreed to those terms and two weeks later we took an ad out in the Penny Saver advertising this free dog because she was very strange. She didn't want to go outside, but she had to go outside to go to the bathroom. But she wouldn't leave the concrete patio. Go on the Grass. She would only pee and go to the bathroom in the cracks, the cement. And she always had to be under something, under the table or under a desk. And she never made a sound except for this really strange heavy breathing every now and then. She was a very odd dog. So we lasted two weeks. We took a Nat out in the Penny Saver and we got a reply. And this family came over the house to look at this dog. And we saw immediately when they looked at her, like, oh, that's not quite what we were imagining. And we said, she's a great dog. She's a little. She's got her idiosyncrasies, but she just needs love. And it's just we've developed allergies and we can't. But take the dog. You'll love her, I promise. So they. They took the dog and they were holding her and they had smiles, like when people smile when they get a gift that they don't like and they don't know what to say. And they just drove away with Coco and goodbye, Cocoa. And two days later, we got a call from the dog pound, said, we have your dog. Coco's. We said, that's not our dog. We gave it away two days. Well, she's still got your information and you're the only contact people your Coco is here. And I don't know why, but my dad and I, we thought, well, let's just go visit her. We'll go say hi to Coco. So we went to the pound and there she was, and she was so happy to see us. And she's wagging her tail. Hi, Coco. It is you. And after a few minutes, we left. We started to walk away and it was the first time I ever heard Coco bark and bark and bark and bark. And I'm not a dog whisperer, but I'm pretty sure she was saying, where are you going? Take me with you. What are you doing? And we felt really bad, but we kept walking and we. And we got in the car and we sat in the car and we got out of the car and we went back and got Coco, brought her back to the house. And she was like a college roommate that you get a sign that you can't do anything about. She was just. And people would come over to the house and say, what's that? We'd say, that's Coco. She lives here. And she lived with us for a whole other year. And then she got. She was old. And we put her down humanely, for real. It was her time to go. But she had a good year, and that year that she lived was a whole year. She would not have lived were it not for a great deal of persuasion. Thank you.

Dan Kennedy (8:06)

Carlos Cotton was born in Mexico City and raised in Southern California. Besides Coco, he once had five pet chickens and considers himself a chicken whisperer. His comic memoir, please God, Let It Be Herpes, A Heartfelt Quest for Love and Companionship, has been published by Penguin's New American Library. Okay, we're gonna stay in Los Angeles for this next story by Judith Benesra. It was told live at our LA Grand Slam, and the theme of the night was Point of no Return.

Judith Benesra (8:42)

Why couldn't have My mom just made me a goddamn cheese sandwich for lunch. Put in a mini bag of ruffles, maybe a tropical blast Capri sun. But no. Every day in the sixth grade, my mom made me the exact same lunch. It was a pita bread sandwich. And first of all, pita bread. Not a standard lunch bread at the time. Growing up in White Bread, Orange county, pita bread filled with cream cheese and then stuffed with sardines. Yeah, I got a sardine sandwich for lunch every day with the unsatisfactory inclusion of the worst of the granola bars, cinnamon and then 50 cents to buy milk. Turns out kids don't want to sit next to you when you show up with a sardine sandwich at the table. And no matter how much I respectfully asked my mom to please give me just something else, she would not pander to lunchroom politics. She said, if kids don't want to sit next to you because of what I send you to eat, well then those kids are just not worth sitting sitting next to. And yeah, she was right. But I was 11 and I was tired of being taunted by my peers and even worse, ignored. Now, the sardine sandwiches were actually the least of my social challenges. First off, I had a droopy eyelid. When I was 3, I had cancer. I had a tumor in my chest cavity that had to be removed and when they took it out, they accidentally severed all the nerve endings to the right side of my body and face, leaving me with a severely droopy eyelid. Or as my mom liked to call them, my bedroom eyes, even though it was just the one eye. Fourth grade, I started developing had to wear a bra. Fifth grade, I got my period. Sixth grade, we watched Diagnosis Scoliosis and it was determined that I had an S shaped spine and had to start wearing a back brace to school. By the time I started the sixth grade, I stood 5ft 8 inches tall. And like all the boys going through puberty, my mustache, too, had filled in quite nicely. And I was the kid schlepping a sardine sandwich. And, you know, it wasn't out of intended cruelty with my mom. It wasn't. It was. She was ahead of her time. She knew about the benefits of Omega 3 and said I would appreciate it when I grew older because I'd have full, soft hair and long, strong nails and beautiful long eyelashes, which, admittedly, I do have. I would sometimes share my lunchtime woes with my one friend, Cornelius. Cornelius was an adorable, tubby Haitian girl with a bowl haircut. And we'd sit together at the lunch ball courts against the wall. And we'd watch the other girls, the Julies and the Jennies and the Chrissys, sitting there dangerously close to all the boys and laughing coquettishly and sitting so smug with all their lunchtime loot. And I resented those girls. I resented that they took for granted what just came to them so. Their feathered blonde hair, their symmetrical eyelids, their tight polo shirts with no metal protruding through the back, and those goyim sandwiches. I couldn't alter the way I looked. But what could change was my lunch. So one day I took a stand. I went up to my mom and I begged her, mom, mom, please, I just want a Wonder Bread sandwich with Miracle Whip and American cheese. Because I actually thought that if I had a sandwich that had the words Wonder, Miracle and American in them, I'd fit in. And my mom looked me square in the eye, the good one, and she said, absolutely not. You and I will not conform to snotty suburban kid standards of suitable lunchtime eating, and then send something about starving children in Africa. It was the first time and only time I told my mom that I hated her and that I wished I had a different mom. And the next year was junior high, and my mom started getting tired and was not feeling well. And there was no lunchtime preparation, and I'd get $2 to buy whatever I wanted. And so, in my newfound freedom, I would just buy all the same junk that everybody else did. Because now food had become my only friend and comfort and an enemy. And yet I would still find myself sitting alone at lunch. And so sometimes I'd sit with a book in my hand, and sometimes I'd sit with daydreams in my head of one day where I would fit in, and I would feel accepted and I would feel beautiful. And I can never take back breaking my mom's heart that day. But she knows how much that I love her and I love the lessons that I reluctantly learned from her. I love the lessons that I readily learned from her. I love that every day she made me feel extraordinary. And I love that my mom never made me a goddamn cheese sandwich for lunch. Thank you.

Dan Kennedy (15:15)

Judith Benesra is a writer, actress and comedian in Los Angeles. She's a brick house with a baby voice and a poised klutz. Her heroes include David Sedaris, Mae west and Golda Meyer. The Moth is a non profit organization, so consider supporting our free podcast by going to our podcast contribution page or by becoming a Moth member and you can do that@themost.org our podcast host Dan.

Sponsor Announcer (15:43)

Kennedy is the author of the book Rock on An Office Power Ballad. Learn more@rockonthebook.com thanks to all of you.

Dan Kennedy (15:50)

For listening and we hope you have a story worthy week. Podcast Audio production by Paul Ruest at the Argo Studios in New York Podcast hosting by PRX Public Radio Exchange helping make public radio more public@prx.org.