Transcript
Rosetta Stone Representative (0:00)
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Dan Kennedy (1:09)
Welcome to the Moth Podcast. I'm Dan Kennedy. This podcast is brought to you by Audible.com, the Internet's leading provider of audiobooks with more than 75,000 downloadable titles across all types of literature. For the Moth listeners, Audible is offering a free audiobook to give you a chance to try out their service. One audiobook to consider is American the 10th Anniversary Edition by the award winning author Neil Gaiman. Listen to a cast of narrators perform this masterpiece of mystery, satire, sex, horror and poetic prose. That's American Gods, the 10th anniversary edition available from Audible. To try Audible Free today and get a free audiobook of your choice, go to audible.comthemoth that's audible.comthemoth this week we've got a great show for you. These are always my favorites. Two stories from our Story Slam events. As you know, those are our open mic competitive storytelling events and the first story you're about to hear by Kevin McAuliffe was recorded live at the Moth Story Slam in New York City on St. Patrick's Day this year. The theme of the night was luck.
Kevin McAuliffe (2:31)
So I've always considered myself very blessed. Good family, good health, educated. And I never thought about how lucky I was day to day until I studied abroad in France and I met my friend Mark and his lack of luck just kind of highlighted my abundance of it. My host family had this apartment in the center of town and a block away from school near all the hot spots. And his family lived about an hour and a half away by, like, a commuter train. The college hosted one day skiing for us. And at lunch on the mountain, I met this beautiful girl. And he got food poisoning from the beef bourguignon. And then he slipped and he got really badly injured on the ice and almost missed the bus on the way home. But things changed a little bit when we started taking classes. For some reason, Mark and I decided to sign up for a class that was all about this obscure French poet. So. So it was already hard enough to take classes in French, let alone like French poetic language. So I'm not really sure what our thinking was. But this little professor kind of conducted class the same way every day. He'd read an excerpt from the poem from homework the night before, he'd give his analysis, and then he would go to his class roster and just kind of look up and down and he would choose a name and he'd call that name. And then for the next 30 minutes, you had to be the one to have a conversation with him, and that was half your grade. So Mark and I would sit terrified during the 15 seconds while he scanned the list and both of our names ended in M. So when he would pause around the middle, that was especially scary. But it was always a good day when he would kind of look up and down and then be like, ah, Julie or Gustave, because that means it was going to be a French student. And we could kind of sit back and exhale and we weren't going to understand any of the conversation anyway. So we got through about half the semester until my day came. And he looked up and down his list and he was like, hallo, Kevin. So I was like, we like, hoping maybe he had a different question for me, but he didn't. And so I mumbled my way through like 30 minutes of nothing. I threw in a couple of like and Donk, because I heard that that's what French people do, I think, when they're supposed to be thinking about stuff. And then, like, there was still time to kill. So I just started reading passages from the poetry. I was like, I don't know, but at least this is, like, coherent. And by the time it was over, some of the French students kind of nodded at me sympathetically on the way out. And yet somehow Mark, in all his bad luck, made it all the way through almost without ever having his name called. There were only 20 of us in the class. Some of the French kids had already been called twice. You had to be prepared and Yet Mark made it all the way. He couldn't believe it until the final class. And he and I are sitting there. I'm thinking, I'm good, because there's only one name that hasn't been called yet. And the professor looks up and down his list, and it was almost like a shock to him. And he's, ah, Mark. Silence. And I'm sitting next to Mark, and I'm like, I didn't want to elbow him. I didn't want to draw attention, but he just sat there. Marc Mancini nothing. It was incredible. It was heroic. I couldn't believe it. He just pretended he wasn't there. He was gonna defy this life of just bad luck. And he was, screw it. I'm just gonna stare straight ahead. I couldn't believe it. And finally the professor called the name just one more time. And then he was like, okay, that girl went back to his list. And he was like, Kevin.