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The Moth
The Moth Radio Hour: Boy Soldier, Quarterback, Pick Up Lines, and Peaches
00:55:30
A high school quarterback leaves Montana as a promising son and returns years later to reveal a shocking secret; a boy from Sierra Leone describes his transformation from innocent child to cold-hearted soldier; a teenage girl discovers how to control h...
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- [00:00]
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- [02:15]
Dan Kennedy
Welcome to the Moth Podcast and welcome to 2016. I'm Dan Kennedy. Start of the year, clean slate. We don't really have any new announcements yet. It's only the fifth, but we will. We'll have tons of new shows this year, tons of live shows. Hope to see you out there. As for today, we went to the archives for another classic episode of the Moth Radio Hour. Here is A full hour of stories for you right here on the Moth podcast.
- [02:56]
Jennifer Hickson
From prx. This is the Moth Radio Hour. I'm Jennifer Hickson, senior producer at the Moth, and I'll be your host this time. The Moth is true stories told without notes in front of a live audience. We have four stories this hour, two from our main stage. One about a high school quarterback who leaves Montana and returns many years later with a huge secret. And another from Ismail Bia, who tells how war turned a sensitive young boy into a killer. And then two winners from our open mic story slams, one with a story about a parrot and another about a prison sentence. First up is Kimberly Reed. She told this story for a show called Between Worlds. Here's Kimberly Reid live at the Moth.
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Kimberly Reed
So I get a phone call from my mom and she tells me that my father is about to get on an emergency life flight from our home in Montana to go to Denver to get an emergency liver transplant. My mom is kind of perennially optimistic and she's telling me, don't worry, it's going to be okay. We're going to pull through this. It's going to be all right. But I know something is really wrong. So I get the next flight I can to go from where I'm living here in New York, hoping that I get there before my father dies. And I'm really glad I got that flight as fast as I did because I was able to spend a couple hours with my father before he passed away. And before I know it, I'm at the side of his hospital bed with my mom and were sobbing because he's passed. My dad was a, he was a strong, silent type. He was, he was a grew up on a farm and he was the town, one of one of two town eye doctors. So he could fix anything, you know, he could fix tractors or eyes. He can, you know, no matter what. And he was always doing it, like behind the scenes, you know, he never wanted to take credit for it. It was apparent that my mom and I and my two brothers were going to have to be fixing things ourselves this time around. And the first thing my mom did was, was to call my two brothers. One's a year older, one is a year younger. And it was going to be really comforting to see my younger brother. We were really close. It was going to, he was really going to support me. It was going to be much more complicated seeing my older brother. We'd always had a really complicated relationship and there was something really big about me that he did not know and that's that the last time he saw me, years and years before I was male, he was not aware that I had transitioned from being male to being female. And, you know, I always wanted to tell him I was trying to find the right time, the right place, trying to, you know, get up the nerve. I was worried about his reaction, maybe that, you know, he was a bit conservative, he had a temper. I didn't know how he was going to happen, and I just kept putting it off and never found the right time. And here we are at the time where I have to deal with all this stuff. Mark wasn't the only one who didn't know my story. My whole hometown didn't know about me either. And I was trying to find a way to tell Mark. I just kind of figured with my hometown, I just would never go back there again. My mom calls my brother and in one phone call, tells him that he lost his father and that he now has a sister. And I have to say, I mean, Mark was. He was really great. He got off the plane. We met him at the airport. He gave me a hug. But it was awkward, as you can imagine. And, you know, I think we did what a lot of families do at times like that. You just kind of fall back on tradition. And we wanted to do something that my mom and dad had always done every year. Because, you see, it was my father's birthday. He had passed away 20 minutes before, before his 65th birthday. So we all went to Applebee's, and we got a slice of sizzling apple pie, put a candle in it. And my brother Mark, who really worshiped my father, got the honor of blowing out the candle. And when he was blowing out the candle, I still remember the expression on his face. He was, you know, trying to process my father's passing. He was figuring out why it had been so long that the two of us hadn't talked. Something that really frustrated him. And it was just all kind of coming together. I took a business card out of my purse. It was for this job that Mark didn't even know I had. I had my new name on it, and I wrote my cell phone number on it, and I gave it to Mark. I said, look, you know, we haven't talked for so long, but here, anytime, any place, no barriers. Call me anywhere. You know, we can talk anytime you want. And my mom started crying because her, you know, her children were reuniting. And also because, you know, for years, she had been running interference between the two of us and using every excuse in the book. To explain why I wasn't getting back to him or why, you know, packages to me were being returned because they had the wrong name on them. And, you know, her job running interference was over. So Mark was in shock. We were all in shock. I was in shock because I was thinking about the fact that nobody in my hometown knew. And I'm wondering if I can go back for the funeral, if I should go back, if my mom and my brothers really want me to, really deep down. And I'm thinking that I never even thought I was going to go back to my hometown. And now I'm being pulled back right into it. As contradictory as it may seem, as soon as there was a reason to go back, I had this really deep, strong yearning to go back. I mean, I had gone to school in New York, in San Francisco, and traveled all over the world. And this place that I thought of as home, that I think I really repressed, knowing that I couldn't go back there, right? I don't need to go back there. But as soon as there was a reason for me to go back there, a very strong reason, I really, really wanted to go. I wanted to see the house, the only house I had ever known growing up. I wanted to go back to my hometown and these people that comprise this community that I thought of as home. My mom reassured me that she wanted me to be there, that she, in fact, needed me there for support, my brothers, too. And my mom had a plan to get us there. You know, our family had been separated for a long time, so she had the idea for all of us to rent a car and drive the 20 hours from Denver back to Montana. So before you know it, there we are in the car. You know, my brother hasn't seen me for years, especially not as female. And here we are. And we had so much to do. We were planning. We were planning his service, my father's funeral service. We were writing his obituary. My mom wanted to figure out. And I did, too. Wanted to figure out how we could introduce the information about me while still keeping the focus on my father. So she had me driving across Wyoming 70 miles an hour. She had me take dictation of her friends, and she wanted to invite them over for tea. So she had this really strategic list. It's like, you invite Judy, and she's going to tell all the people in the arts community that my mom was involved in, and you're going to tell Judy, and June is going to tell all the people at dad's office, and we'll find Somebody else. And she's going to tell everybody at the church. And the next night, there they were, 18 of my mom's best friends and the minister from the church where the service was going to be performed, they're drinking tea. My mom says, you all know very well by now that I've lost my husband. And I know a lot of you have wondered what happened to my middle son who seemed to disappear. And she said, I want you to know tonight that I have a daughter, and her name is Kim, and this is my child, and I love my child, and I hope you do, too. And we can focus on this tonight. We can talk about this tonight. You all are my ambassadors. If someone has questions at the funeral and I'm caught up in things, I'm going to point them to you and let you tell this story because you can talk about it in a sensitive way. And she, you know, took a couple questions from the people there, and the whole tea party ended slightly different than the tea party we hear about in the news. The whole thing ended with everybody raising their teacups and saying, hip, hip, hooray for Kim. Hip, hip, hooray for Kim. There were a couple amens and some applause, and then everybody went home. And I swear there was a brown out from all the simultaneous phone calls that were being made, dispensing the information, right? So then the next night, there was a viewing of my father's body at the. At the funeral home. And I had elected not to go because, you know, I didn't want the focus to be on me. I was going to keep it on everybody and keep it on my father. But my best friend Tim from high school was at the viewing, and he calls me up. He had only known the new me for a couple days. I hadn't even told him, but he knew me really well, and he knew I was chickening out. And he called me from the funeral parlor, and he said, hey, I got a lot of people here that really want to see you. I should probably tell you that the people he's talking about are the football team, because I used to be on the football team. And so applause for that. And so Tim says, where are you? I got a lot of people want to see you. I'm like, yeah, I don't want to go. And, you know, I want to keep the focus on my dad. I don't want to be there. He's like, yeah, yeah, whatever. Either you come down here or we're going to come up there. What's it going to be? I said, come up here. I guess so. Before I know it, the football team is at my front door and a couple of them have cases of beer under their arm. One case gets tossed in the snow bank to keep it cold. It's just like high school. And all of a sudden they're in my living room and it's this wake instantly and this show of support for me and for the memory of my father, right? And they're in my living room, this living room I never even thought I would see again. And people were either laughing or crying, mostly laughing. And I remember looking around the room and there's Kevin, he was one of the co captains of the football team with me. And I look over there and there's my brothers, Mark and Todd. And they were, you know, we were all very close in age, so we had friends in common. And they're telling stories about my dad. And there's. I look over on the couch and there's Frank. Probably should have also told you that not only was I on the football team, but I was a quarterback. And so I look over on the couch and there's Frank. He's an offensive lineman. It's the job of an offensive lineman to protect the quarterback. And Frank is protecting me once again, 20 years later, under very different circumstances. And he's got his arm around my girlfriend. They're laughing and knocking back cans of cheap beer. And that was the moment that I knew things were going to be okay somehow. And there was one more person there that night and that was my mom. And she told me something that we ended up repeating quite a bit that weekend through the services. She came up and she said, you know, dad was always fixing things and it looks like he fixed this too. She said, you know, even though your father has died, you've been reborn. Thank you very much.
- [17:19]
Jennifer Hickson
That was Kimberly Reed. About two years after her father's funeral, Kim went back to Montana to attend her high school reunion. She brought her camera and her award winning film, Prodigal Sons documents that trip. Visit our website to get a link to the film's trailer. That's themoth.org in a moment we'll hear from Ismail Biya, the author of the best selling book A Long Way Memoirs of a Boy Soldier.
- [18:07]
Dan Kennedy
The Moth Radio Hour is produced by Atlantic Public Media in Woods Hole, Massachusetts and presented by the Public Radio Exchange.
- [18:15]
Sponsor
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- [18:45]
Jennifer Hickson
This is the Moth Radio hour from prx. I'm Jennifer Hickson. Our next storyteller is Ishmael Bia. Ishmael wrote the best selling autobiography A Long Way Memoirs of a Boy Soldier. When the main branch of the New York public library turned 100, the moth helped celebrate with a night of stories. Ishmael told a story that night about growing up in a village where books were scarce. So people relied on a different kind of library. Here is Ismail Biya live at the Moth at the New York Public Library.
- [19:26]
Ishmael Biya
The evening always began with several commotions. One of them was the arrival of people from their various places of work, from their farms, from whatever form of employment they had. And they all came, greeted each other and went into their houses. The second commotion was by children, boys and girls being sent to knock on the doors of these very people who had just arrived to invite them to dinner to have this grand meal of the day. And during this meal, all the young boys and men ate from the same plate. And all the girls and the women ate from the same plate as well. When the eating started, which I was part of, the eldest or the oldest person at that gathering of the male particularly the one that I ate with, would stop eating first and then the second oldest would stop. And as it went down the line, then the boy and the youngest person would be left at the plate with enough food for them to eat. And this was how the evening began in my small village in the south of Sierra Leone, West Africa, where I'm from. After we finished eating, the fire had already been set with firewood and the darkness had come in very quickly that the only source of light were the flames of the fire that leapt into the air. And we sat around and waited for stories to be told to us. This is how we learned how to understand our history, the history of our families, of ourselves, our roles in the community, how we would function as children, but also as adults. These stories also this oral tradition, started many, many years ago, before I was born. And this was a way that brought to us a way of listening actively so that we can hear not only with our ears, but also with our heart, with our eyes, and we can hear beyond the words that were being told to us at one of these gatherings. I must have been about 9 years old. My grandmother sat next to me and she whispered into my ears. She said, I want to let you know that each person's mind is their own personal library. And as life breathes its moment through you, those moments become memories, and those memories become narratives, and those narratives become chapters and books that you put on that shelf of your personal library. And this is the only library that you have access to. Whenever you like, you can open and close it. Whenever you like, you can decide to nourish it. You can decide to use the information properly or improperly as it suits you. After my grandmother told me this, I began on a quest to decide. Well, if I'm in charge of this personal library of mine, I want to make sure that I stack on those shelves in my mind the best possible images, sounds of my background, of my upbringing, of this place that I grew up. Where I grew up was so remote that most of the things that reminded me of what time of the day was were the sounds of nature. I could tell what time of the day it was by the position of my shadow. And I didn't have a watch or any of these kinds of things. So the next morning, after my grandmother told me this, on my way to school, my school was about 30 minutes walk, but I would get up very early to go to school because going to school was very unpredictable. You left about an hour and a half to two hours because you didn't know what you encountered on the way. As a young boy, in the place where I grew up, every adult was responsible for you. Every adult was your aunt, uncle, or could even be your mother and father. And so on the way to school, you greeted people elaborately. Not the New York greeting, hello, goodbye. It was more of you ask, how are you? How is your family? How is school? And you went on and on. And it was rude to just say, I have to be in school, I'm going to be late and I will be flogged. Because of that, you had to participate in the greeting fully. In addition to this greeting, an older person would randomly ask you to perform a task, which could be, could you fetch firewood for me? Could you go to the river and bring water for me? So young people had to get up very, very early to make sure that they can actually, you know, for this, 30 minutes, right? They could think about two hours, and sometimes it took that much. On my way to school, I had a plastic bag that had the 1x notebook that I had in it. And also my shoes were wrapped in this bag so that it wouldn't be coated by the dust. So it was very dusty. So I walked barefoot and I allowed my mind to partake in the beautiful sounds that welcomed the morning. First, there was a call for prayer that was very loud, a zan that went deep into your heart. And then, in addition to that, there were various birds singing. The vigorous ones were the sparrows and the doves. And my grandmother also told me that they sang vigorously because they wanted to wave goodbye to the night and welcome the day. And they did that every morning, very vigorously as I walked on. There were also sounds of brooms as people swept their yards. So the sound of the brooms meeting the dried leaves filled the air as well. There are also the sounds of buckets that clattered in the arms of children as they went to the river to fetch water. There are older people sitting outside clearing their throat to remind young people who were still sleeping that it was time to wake up. There were people who were sharpening their cutlasses and stones. And that sound actually made your teeth sour as you walked by. And there was the sound of bells being rung. These were iron bells hung in the arms of mango trees. They were being rung as a call for school. When I got closer to my school, which was near a stream, I would wash my feet and then I'll put on my shoes so that I would ride looking very clean. We stood in line. There were cleanliness checkup, check your hair. If it was combed, I wouldn't survive at this point. And then, you know, we went into the classroom, which was the very one building that we had. It was a mud brick house with no roof. And we would take out a few benches, and some of us would sit outside under the mango tree, and there was a blackboard, and the teacher would start teaching. Now, we didn't have very many books, so if we had one book, it was only the teachers. So, for example, when we read Shakespeare on many occasions, the teacher would come and he or she would recite to us, we are reading today. So so and so play, you know, Julius Caesar, for example. And the teacher would read, friends, Roman countrymen. And we would repeat, all the children, friends, Roman countrymen, lend me your ears have come to bere Caesar. Lend me your ears have come to bere Caesar. This is how we learned. You made notes. And in order to gain access to these books, you became friends with the teacher. So after school, you could go to the teacher's house so that you'd be able to read the Book. Now, based on how you behaved in the community, how you took care of the book, the teacher will slowly trust you to allow you more time to read, but also lend you the book to take away and bring back. Now, if the book was dirty, then you lost that privilege. So we became very close to our teachers. The teachers also were part of the community where they would actually come to your house in the evening to make sure that everyone was doing their homework. I didn't like this very much when I was a kid, but in retrospect, it helped me. So in order to gain access to this book, you had to become part, part of the life of this teacher. I remember when we read Treasure island by Robert Louis Stevenson, the teacher made a good deal of making us react the story in the classroom. And every young boy wanted to be Jim Hawkins. So we walked around our community pretending that we were Jim Hawkins of our very small village. Now all of this sound and all of this nurture and this knowledge began to change few years later, when I was 11 years old, when people began to come through my town. These are people who had been affected by the war that I started in my country. And they spoke about what had happened to them, how their houses have been burnt, their families have been killed, how they have been walking for days, weeks, months. There was a gloomy feeling that came about. And later on, when I was 12 years old, the war reached my part of the country. The sounds that I heard in the morning that woke me changed and they were replaced by gunshots. I was separated from my family during the first attack. I started running from this war and I didn't know where they were. The belief that they could be alive was what kept me moving. And I was with a group of boys, seven of us. We constantly started walking in the countryside, trying to look for our family. The sounds were no longer the same. The very sounds that woke me up as a boy, the birds singing, the call for prayer, people going to the river to fetch water, we are no longer there. Nature itself was afraid of what had come about. The only sounds that greeted night or day or the wind that sailed was the sounds of guns or grenades exploding in the distance. And this was what filled my life completely. And I began to slowly forget and distance myself from the very sounds that I'd heard as a kid. Now I began running from this world for about close to a year. I was constantly running. Everything had changed tremendously. And I came across somebody who told me that my family was in a small village that would be able to Find them. So we started running to this place, and we began to hear the sounds of the village. And these were sounds that were familiar from when things were peaceful. There were women singing as they pounded rice in mortar. We could hear that, and we began to rush. We could hear sounds that promised that life was possible somewhere. When we got closer to the village, under the bushes in a banana farm, we heard somebody chopping up the bananas. And it was a man that I knew as a boy named Gassimo. And he came from under the bushes and he said to us, oh, can you boys help me carry the trunks of banana into the village? And of course, even though we were in a rush then, we could not refuse to do this. So we helped Gassimu to take the bananas to the village. As we were going with the banana, he told me, oh, your parents are going to be very happy to see you. Your brother is there, everyone is there, and everyone has been waiting to see you. They've been worried that you may not be alive. So I was very excited. We started hurriedly going down into the village. We began to hear gunshots. We began to see smoke and fire coming from the village. We began to hear men screaming at the top of their lungs, their screeches covering the sounds of women and babies that were crying. And there would be gunshots and bullets flying in the air. So we ran from the hillside and tried to lay in the bushes so that we wouldn't be struck by stray bullets. After everything died down, we arrived into this village and we realized that everybody who had been in this village had been killed. People had been put down, face down, and shot in the back of their heads. And their blood was the only thing coming out of their bodies, was the only thing connecting them. As we walked around the village trying to hope that somebody would have been alive in this village, we heard in one of the buildings that were consumed with fire, nails popping, tin roofs flying into that roofs and creating more fire. We heard this noise coming from this building and people were banging on the doors and the fire was consuming the house. And when the door broke open, the two people that came running was a woman and a little boy. Everything happened so fast that we became rooted where we were standing. We couldn't move at all. They ran back and forth. They would hit a tree and they would run the other way again, and they would hit another building or another tree and they would run the other way. Finally, the woman stopped moving, and the boy sat on the mango tree and put his head down and stopped moving. As we Walked around. We began to see other bodies as well. People in different postures of pain. Some holding their head as life departed them in that particular position. And we saw different kinds of things. Ashes of people, burnt remains. As we were seeing these kinds of things, that became quite angry because I blamed Gassimo for making it possible for me not to see my family again. And I attacked him. I wanted to hurt him tremendously, because at this point, the pain of knowing what had happened was so great that I wished I had seen my family one last time before this happened. I didn't understand that he had actually saved my life. So I actually wanted to kill him. My friends removed me from him. And between ourselves, we started fighting. Because we blame each other for maybe somebody was walking slow, so and so forth. As we were fighting amongst ourselves, we heard a noise of people coming to the village. So we ran and hid into the nearby bushes. And we saw young people coming to the village. Two of them, particularly were about my age at this point. I was 12 years old. And they wore military outfits and guns. One had a gallon of. Of petrol or kerosene with matches. The other had weapons. And they were laughing about how they got this village really good, how they were able to get everyone and kill them, and nobody escaped. As we lay in this bush under the shrubs without being seen looking at these young people, I did not realize that a year later I would be one of these same people, one of the same young men that I was seeing that would be one of those people going around and stacking a different kind of narrative in the library of my own mind. But not only that. I grew up in a place where I also believed that when an older person dies, a library destroyed or burns. And now we were going around destroying the very same knowledge, the source of knowledge that could add to our own narratives. And we didn't know what kind of library we were creating. And worst of all, we are destroying the source of knowledge that perhaps could help us understand how our narratives would actually pan out. Thank you.
- [34:29]
Jennifer Hickson
That was Ishmael Biya live at the New York Public Library. Ishmael's memoir about being a boy soldier is in thousands of libraries now. It's sold more than a million copies and has been translated into 40 languages. Next up on the Moth Radio Hour, two stories from our Slam series. One about a pet allergy in a prom picture, and another about, quote, the greatest pickup line of all time.
- [35:12]
Dan Kennedy
The Moth Radio Hour is produced by Atlantic Public Media in Woods Hole, Massachusetts, and presented by the public radio exchange.
- [35:20]
Sponsor
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- [35:55]
Jennifer Hickson
I'm Jennifer Hickson, senior producer at the Moth. Our last two stories are from Moths to which are the love child of our main stage series. Like all of our shows, there's a theme, but unlike the main stage where we carefully coach each teller at the story slam, 10 names are picked from a hat and their stories are an absolute surprise every time. Judges, picked at random from the audience, score the stories to determine a winner. This next story was a winner from a Slam in Los Angeles. The storyteller, Laura Revnes, is a third grade public school teacher. As she says, I spend long days with short people. This was her first time on stage. Here's Laura live at the mall.
- [36:41]
Laura Revnis
This is the story of why everyone is confused when they see my 12th grade prom photo. And they're not confused about this horrible pink poofy dress because that was what was available at the time. Think Dynasty. And they're not confused by my little pimply skinny boyfriend. Also an availability issue. What they're really confused about is the fact that I seem to be wearing a very, very large rubber toucan beak. Now my date looks confused, but the really confusing thing about the photo is I don't. I seem proud and secure. So this is the true story again of why I came to have that beaky prom photo. When I was a little girl, I was allergic to everything. If it was cute and cuddly and sweet and soft, it made me sick. So my parents bought me goldfish and my best friend got a kitty. And then my neighbor got a puppy and I got a snake which ate my goldfish. And this kind of damaging events continued for some time, till my 16th birthday when finally my father got me a parrot. It was soft and fluffy. Its name was Pumpkin. It was a sun conure. It was beautiful. And he opened the cage and Pumpkin crawled out, I swear on the floor and walked over to me just like he knew that he was going to be my pet finally. And I had been waiting all these Years for him. And Pumpkin walked over to me. He was so cute. All beak, no room for a brain. The beak's important. Later. And took a bite out of my ankle that drew blood. My present. Then went over to my sister, crawled up on her lap and started cooing and went to sleep. Sleep. I hadn't really started dating yet, so it was my first big rejection. It didn't feel particularly good. It felt worse the next day when I realized that was only the beginning. Because, you see, Pumpkin loved my sister. Apparently, this kind of bird bonds instantly. And the parrot's other job, besides loving her constantly, was to defend her. Yes. Yes, Pumpkin. Pumpkin launched aerial attacks at me. There were more land attacks. Now, you would think, wouldn't you, that my parents would get rid of this bird? It's like having a rabid dog, right? No, no, no, no. This bird, he was wiley. He would sit on my dad's shoulder. We had just girls in the family. And he became. My dad would call him the son. And they would sit and watch sports together. And the bird would comment and my dad would comment. He'd cook with my mom. He'd sleep with my sister. Yeah, it hurt. I start. The pecking order in my family totally changed. No pun intended. I was at the bottom. I started to spend a lot of time away from home, wandering around stores. And one day after Halloween, I spotted a box of rubber masks. Now, these were nose masks. There was an elephant one, and there was a pig one, and there was a huge rubber. I knew what I wanted. I guess I had developed some kind of beak complex or beak envy. I bought the beak. I go home. I call for myself, sister, who comes running. Of course, there's the drone ahead of the whir of, like, Air Force Seven coming to strike. And I snap it on to show her. And the most amazing thing happened. Something that's never happened in this whole year. The War Fates. Pumpkin has made a U turn and has left the area. I can't believe it. I haven't seen my sister for months. We stare at each other, getting reacquainted. And finally it's true. Finally, I tiptoe into the kitchen, and I see Pumpkin's cage. And Pumpkin is in the cage at the bottom. And I lean down to take a closer look. The rubber of my beak is pressing against the cage. And Pumpkin looks up. And I look down. And Pumpkin. Pumpkin looks up, and I look down and I see something. I see something in Pumpkin's eyes that I have longed for. I have longed to see this in Pumpkin's eyes. And I've despaired. I know you think it's love, don't you? No, it's not love. It's better than love. It's fear. It's terrible, terrible fear. Because in that instance, Pumpkin knows that my beak is bigger than his. Yes, from that moment on, I'm not without my beak. At home. My dad is very handy. Puts a little hook by the door. By the coat closet. Yes. And whenever I come in, I snap it on. I get used to its rubber smell. Man, you're better than my third graders. I'm a teacher. I. I get there.
- [42:10]
Kimberly Reed
I.
- [42:10]
Laura Revnis
Tell me a story. From your mouth, Ms. Revnus. So I get used to its rubber smell. And in fact, my self esteem starts to actually go up because I do not have the smallest nose in the world. But when I take off that beak, I feel positively dainty. Well, time goes on. I'm accustomed to the beak. My family's used to seeing me in it. Pumpkin continues to avoid me. All is well, and it's time for my 12th grade point prom. And I stand there in my pink dress, ready to go out the door with my date. And my dad says, I need a picture, honey. So I stand there beakless, and there is a drone above my head. And Pumpkin comes in for the kill. I fall to the ground. He lands on my neck, takes a chunk out of my neck. I'm bleeding on the floor. My hair, which has finally been straightened and curled, is ruined. And I'm crouching there and I reach blindly up, like if your plane is crashing, you'd reach for the oxygen mask, you know? And I get the beak and I hold it aloft. And Pumpkin circles and leaves. My date is looking beyond confused. He's actually looking for frightened. My family, however, is used for it. My dad says, put on the beak. We'll try again.
- [43:41]
Jennifer Hickson
That was third grade teacher and first time mock story slammer, Laura Revnis. Our final story is from Bobby Stoddard. He hails from Vermont and trekked all the way to New York City to put his name in the hat. The trip takes five hours, and then he has to turn around to drive home. And remember, we only picked 10 names from the hat. He took a big chance coming all that way on this trip. It paid off. The theme that night was romance, and the crowd was intrigued with Bobby's interpretation. Here's Bobby Stoddard's winning story live at the Moth Story center.
- [44:35]
Bobby Stoddard
So in 1997, I met what I thought was the girl of my dreams. And she was at an art opening. And we had one of those moments. We didn't talk a lot, but we looked at some art next to each other. But it was real. It was there. And when she left, outside the plate glass window, I watched her walk, and she watched me, too. So it was real. And actually, then I left the country two days later, and I was gone for seven months. I came back and went over to my friend's house to visit, and she walked into his living room. She was the new roommate. And we acknowledged that we had had this meeting. And we took a minute to, like, acknowledge that it was like. It was. You know, she felt it, too. And so we decided to go on a date. The next day, we had this beautiful, magical day up in Vermont and had a picnic by the lake. She has two dogs. I. Two dogs. And then when I went to bring her home, you know, she's getting her stuff, and I lean over in my truck from Vermont, the truck. And I lean over and surprise her with a kiss. And it was. Well, I thought of how I should describe it, but I wish Alex would come up and describe it, because it was like that. It was one of those. Just everything around us melted. And we had this kiss, and it was only for about 10 seconds. And then when she turned to get out of my car, she didn't open the door, and she smashed into the window. And then when she did open the door, she sort of tumbled out, and I was all woozy, too. And I was kind of like, I'm glad I don't have to try and get out of a car right now. Drove away. And so I know you're supposed to wait. So I wait, like, the requisite, like, two or three hours before I call her, and I give her a call. And I'm like, let's get together. And she's like, yes, come over. So we're, like, acknowledging how really real this is. And so we decide, like, we're. Now we're making out and everything. And we're like, let's wait. So we decided to wait to have sex. And we wait, like, two days to. That's counting that day. So we waited, like, a whole nother day to have the sex. And we went into the honeymoon phase, and it was great for, like, three months. And then she comes to me and she's like, I have to tell you something. I've been doing this thing. And I'm like, oh, honeymoon is over. What is this? And she doesn't quite tell me for a few days. And Turns out that she's a drug runner or had been running cocaine from LA to Chicago. And I was like, well, you're not doing that anymore, right? And she's like, no, no, it's behind me. I don't. I don't. I did it the last time, like, just before we met. And so I'm not doing that. And I'm like, all right, good. Honeymoon is back on and for two more weeks. And then she showed up at my house, ashen, and she says, oh, my God, Eric's been arrested. Eric's been. And Eric was the guy that she was doing this job for. And so she ended up turning herself in and going to prison. So. And just before she goes to prison, she says, I don't want to talk about this. I'm only going to say it once, but I don't ever want to know about your sex life during the time I'm in prison, because it's a year. I'm not going to go a year, so. And she knows that, and she knows that. So. So she goes to jail. And she says, about two weeks after she goes to jail, I'm at a party down in Boston, and I run into this girl that I went to high school with that I hadn't seen since high school. And we're talking a little bit, and she's like, what's new in your life? And I'm like, nothing, really. She's like, no, what's significant is happening. I'm like, my girlfriend went to prison. She looks at me and she says, I always had a crush on you in high school. And 10 minutes later, we were outside making out. And that was like. That was the birth of the greatest pickup line ever. My girlfriend is in prison. Is like. It has everything. Like, I'm instantly a bad boy, but I'm not so dangerous that I'm in prison. And my. I don't really know why, but women like it when you're not totally available. Cause I have a girlfriend. But I am kind of available because my girlfriend's in prison. And I'm also sort of noble because I'm like, carrying this torch. You know, it's a flickering torch, but I'm carrying it. And it's also like, what a conversation opener. I mean, you're just like, you're rolling. So I used this line for. I had a year, and it was like, what a gift. And I had, like, permission to use it. And so, I mean, the year went on. It was really a great year. And my. About two weeks before my girlfriend was to get out of prison. I moved into this farmhouse in Vermont and there was like this hippie chick living there. She was pretty sexy and she'll tell you that the line had no effect on her. But we've been married for 10 years and two kids and I couldn't be happier.
- [49:54]
Jennifer Hickson
That was Bobby Stoddard. Bobby's a builder who specializes in repurposing antique barns and building wheelchair accessible tree houses. Bobby's story and all the stories you've heard this hour are available at the iTunes store. Just search for the Best of the Moth to learn more about our Slams and all of our programs, go to themoth.org where you can also check out our free weekly podcast or pitch a story of your own. The best story idea will be brought to the Moth stage. Here's a recent pitch we liked so.
- [50:38]
H
About three years ago, I went to an ATM at night after work and a man attacked me and took me into my car at knifepoint and forced me to drive him around. Unfortunately for him, I was overdrawn at the time and what he really wanted was money. I'm such a people pleaser though. As soon as we got in the car, I started apologizing and telling him, you know, how I'm really bad with my money and how I already bounced a few checks this month and that I've been irresponsible with credit cards and I might look like I have money. That's because I overspent and can't stay within my budget. And after that I thought maybe he was going to rape me. And so I started yelling, you know, please don't rape me. I don't want to have to go to therapy. I don't even think it works. I'm a pretty well adjusted person at this point. I grew up in Orange County. My parents are still together. Oh God, this is going to totally screw me up. I don't want to carry this into all my future relationships. He cuts me off and yells, shut up. Shut up. And he told me to pull over and he jumped out and he got out of the car and as I'm driving away, I think, wow, I remember what some of my, you know, I'm so overjoyed to be out of the car. But I realized what some of my boyfriends, my ex boyfriends have said about me talking too much and I thought, wow, this guy didn't want to rape me. Then when the police came over later that night, they also thought that this was some sort of tactic that I had used to get out of it. And they thought it was amazing how I humanized myself by talking so much, like I had it all planned out or something. What ended up happening is they caught the guy and I went to court to testify and when they brought the guy out, I wasn't sure if it was him, but he looked into the crowded courtroom and they hadn't identified me yet. He looked right at me and rolled his eyes like he was annoyed to see me again. But then I knew it was him and he's actually now serving 25 years to life.
- [52:44]
Jennifer Hickson
You can pitch us your story@themoth.org Record it right on our site or call 877-799-MOTH. That's 877-799-6684. That's it for the Moth Radio Hour. We hope you'll join us next time.
- [53:15]
Dan Kennedy
Your host this hour was Jennifer Hickson, senior producer for the Moth. Jennifer also directed the stories in this show. The rest of the Moth's directorial staff includes Kathryn Burns, Sarah Haberman, Sarah Austin, Janess and Meg Bowles. Production support from Jenna Weiss Berman and Brandon Echter. Moth stories are true as remembered and affirmed by the storytellers. Moth events are recorded by Argo Studios in New York City, supervised by Paul RU West. Our theme music is by the Drift. Other music in this hour from Dick Oates and Soren Moeller, Blue Cranes and Little Bang. The Moth is produced for radio by ME J. Allison at Atlantic Public Media in Woods Hole, Massachusetts, with help from Vicki Merrick. This hour was produced with funds from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the John D. And Catherine T. MacArthur foundation, committed to building a more just, verdant and peaceful world. The Moth Radio Hour is presented by the Public Radio Exchange pr. For more about our podcast, for information on pitching your own story and everything else, you can go to our website themoth.org that's the moth Radio Hour right here on the Moth Podcast and we'll be back next week with more for you. In the meantime, you can find us on Facebook and on Twitter hemoth. We're also on Instagram mothstories. Thanks for listening. We hope you have a great new year and a story worthy week.
- [54:53]
Sponsor
Dan Kennedy is the author of the books Loser Goes First. Rock On An American Spirit. He's also a regular host and performer with the Moth.
- [55:02]
Dan Kennedy
The Moth Podcast is produced by Whitney Jones. Moth events are recorded by Argo Studios in New York City, supervised by Paul Ruest. The Moth Podcast and the Moth Radio Hour are presented by PRX the Public Radio Exchange, helping make public radio more public@prx.org.