Storytelling with Impact

Mike Sella goes skydiving with his daughter – at The Moth in San Francisco

October 23, 2025/in Family, Humor, Life Lessons, The Moth/by Mark Lovett

Have you ever found yourself in a situation that forced you to face your fears? And there was really no way out? Most likely you have, and such life events can become the basis for personal stories that others can connect to. Even if those hearing your story haven’t had the same experience as you, they can relate to the common emotions that such situations evoke.

Delivered at The Moth in San Francisco, Mike Sella shares a story about the time went skydiving for his daughter’s birthday, despite his fear of heights. From the setup to exiting the plane, we’re with him for the journey, and it’s a fun ride.

And this is where I really start to flip out.
I mean, there was a leg dangling.

Let’s take a look at how Mike structured his story to connect with the audience, create tension, and deliver a comedic punchline that beautifully brings us full circle.

Rather than starting with the terrifying prospect of jumping out of a plane, he takes us to a familiar, low-stakes setting: Disneyland. In doing so, he establishes three critical elements. First, he’s a loving, fun dad. Second, he has a signature shtick — faking a bored yawn for the on-ride roller coaster camera. And third, his daughter Parker wants to go skydiving, a prospect that clashes with his self-professed “big fear of heights.”

His exaggerated yawn, which is basically an inside joke with his daughter, seems like a minor act, but it’s something that we subconsciously file away. Eventually we see that it’s the key to the entire story, but in the beginning, he’s planting a narrative seed. It’s a classic use of foreshadowing that enriches the overall story.

And as I’m masterminding my escape, Stefan says, “It’s go time!”

Describing himself as the “luggage of someone who is skydiving” is a perfect visual metaphor, as it highlights his complete lack of agency. Something we all fear. The anxiety goes up a notch with his comments about the “casually dangling” leg of another skydiver, as well as the plane taking off without the door closed. We feel his sense of panic, but the tone is still humorous, and we’re enjoying the journey.

When his daughter disappears from the plane, Mike realizes it’s a point of no return, and his motivation shifts from fear of jumping to the primal fear of losing his child, which gives him the push he needs.

As he’s plummeting to Earth, and the audience is plummeting with him, the instructor gestures for him to smile for the camera. But instead of smiling, Mike executes his signature move: the exaggerated yawn.

I spent 20 years trying to convince her not to run with scissors. And now she has literally tumbled out of an airplane in front of me.

The seed planted in the story’s opening minutes blooms into a moment of sublime comedic triumph. This callback elevates the story from a simple anecdote to a perfectly crafted piece of storytelling.

And it’s not just a funny scene; it’s also a character-defining moment. In the face of intense fear, Mike holds on to a key piece of his identity — the funny, shtick-loving dad.

Listen to his story a second time while reading the transcript. Notice how he creates scenes we can easily see ourselves in, and how his vulnerability serves both the tension and the humor. The callback is classic and really ties a bow on the story. Think about your own experiences that were challenging, yet provided an opportunity for growth. We’ve all had them, and in most cases, funny moments were a part of the journey.

Transcript

A few years ago, my daughter was home for the summer from college, and we decided to go to Disneyland for a few days where we did a few things that really brought me joy. One, a bunch of the roller coasters there have cameras that take a picture at the scariest moment.

And my shtick that I’ve done for years is that I like to do a big exaggerated yawn right when they take the picture. So you see them and everyone looks really scared, and there I am in the middle just aggressively bored. And Parker did it with me, which really pleased me very much.

And I learned about her. I learned that one of the things on her bucket list is that she wants to go skydiving one day. And I thought, wow, that makes one of us, weirdo. Because I have a big fear of heights. I’m uncomfortable on a ladder, let alone walking off of an airplane voluntarily. But I took this thought and I stored it away.

And a few days later, I’m chatting with my wife, and somehow the words that came out of my mouth were, “We should all go skydiving for Parker’s birthday,” when what I was thinking was, “I will get out of this somehow.” But her birthday was months away, and I thought this is a problem for Future Mike. And I pushed all my fear down into my bowels.

A few months later, Future Mike wakes up and it’s skydiving day. And I’m Future Mike. And my bowels are very unhappy. But I drive us to the Watsonville Airport and we check in for our skydiving appointment. And there’s a bunch of forms to fill out that very specifically list all the different types of death and dismemberment that you promise not to sue them for.

And then we meet our skydiving partners because when you go skydiving for the first time, you don’t do that by yourself. You don’t even get a parachute. Your skydiving instructor puts a parachute on their back, and they strap you to their front like a big Baby Bjorn. So it’s not like you’re really skydiving, you’re just the luggage of someone who is skydiving.

And we meet our instructors and they’re very chill dudes. Mine is named Stefan. He’s like one part snowboarding instructor, one part Top Gun, and like two parts sunglasses. And we go through the training, which is just like explaining how to be good, polite luggage.

And then they take us out to the runway to see the group in front of us, and a small plane pulls up and two instructors and two skydivers get in the back. And the plane starts to taxi away, and they don’t even bother closing the door. One dude’s leg is just casually dangling out the door.

And this is where I really start to flip out. I mean, there was a leg dangling. I’ve been in airplanes, and normally when my airplanes taxi, I’m not even allowed to have my tray table down, let alone part of me hanging out of the airplane. So I turned to Parker and my wife and I say, “Hey, how are you guys feeling?” And they’re fine. They’re happy, they’re excited, like psychopaths.

And so our plane pulls up next and two instructors get in, and then Parker and I get in, sort of, you know, with our backs to them. We scoop between their legs, like we’re the little spoons. And the plane starts to taxi and it takes off, and I realize that I’m not strapped to Stefan yet. And I ask him in my calmest and most high-pitched voice, I say, “Hey, hey Stefan, don’t you think you should just strap us together?” And Stefan is chill. He says not to worry. I am not chill. I am very worried.

And I’m going through in my head how I’m going to get out of this. I signed a lot of forms. Maybe I gave up the right to do this. I don’t know, maybe luggage doesn’t even have rights. If I don’t do this, will my daughter be disappointed in me? Or am I just going to let peer pressure make me jump out of an airplane?

And as I’m masterminding my escape, Stefan says, “It’s go time!” because that’s how he talks. And Parker’s due to go first. So I see her and her instructor inch towards the door, and it’s surreal. And the door opens, and they’re gone. My daughter, my only child has fallen out of an airplane. I spent 20 years trying to convince her not to run with scissors. And now she has literally tumbled out of an airplane in front of me. And suddenly I am very motivated to skydive.

And so Stefan and I, he sort of scooches and I sort of Samsonite my way over to the door. And then my leg is dangling out that open door. And Stefan pushes us out. And we are tumbling and it is windy and it is noisy and it is terrifying. And we are free-falling for like 30 seconds or a week or something.

And Stefan pulls the parachute ripcord. And he’s also doing his other job which is to video record the whole thing. Like I’m ever going to watch this worst day of my life again. And he gestures to me to smile for the camera, and I look up at the camera and I go… [mimes a huge yawn].

Am I proud of myself for facing my fears and supporting my daughter and skydiving with her? Yeah, sure, whatever, a little bit. But am I really pleased with myself for making that stupid gag while plummeting to earth? Oh my God, yes, so much. That is my favorite. But the next few years for Parker’s birthday, we just sheltered in place and that was way better.

Thank you.

◆

Learn more about the coaching process or
contact me to discuss your storytelling goals!

◆

Subscribe to the newsletter for the latest updates!

What grief and soy sauce taught me about life after loss – Charlene Lam at TEDxLisboa

August 31, 2025/in Family, Grief, Life Lessons, Relationships, TEDx, Trauma/by Mark Lovett

I’m constantly reminded of the simple fact that each of us lives a unique life — as no two life journeys are identical — and yet our experiences share common threads and themes. So it is with loss, as it’s a constant throughout life. We lose loved ones, or move on from one job to the next. During a natural disaster we may lose physical objects, possibly our entire home.

When loss happens, grief soon follows, and quite often we’re not sure how to react. Dealing with grief is not something we learn in school. At best, we learn from watching how others handle it. In her talk at TEDxLisboa, Charlene Lam shares her experience dealing with grief after her mother died unexpectedly from a stroke.

Charlene also brings the wisdom she’s gained over the years as the founder of The Grief Gallery , and author of Curating Grief. You might say Charlene is no stranger to grief.

Loss is a fundamental part of being human. Grief is universal. We will all experience it.

Charlene begins her talk with a simple, relatable image: a bottle of soy sauce in her mother’s kitchen. Growing up, this soy sauce evoked pleasant memories of home cooking and family dim sum. But after her mother passed, that everyday object took on a new, heavier meaning.

It symbolized the arduous task of clearing out her mother’s home, of letting go of personal possessions imbued with heartfelt memory and connection. This opening anecdote perfectly illustrates how tangible items become vessels of immense emotional weight after loss.

Grief taught me how to hold lightly. I invite you to hold lightly and to live fully in full color.

Her initial reaction was to “hold on tight” to every single item her mother owned, fearing that letting go of these objects meant letting go of her mother’s memory. This is contrasted with her husband’s suggestion to “just throw it away,” which represents detachment.

These extremes bring in a sense of tension into Charlene’s narrative, and at the same time, serves as a reminder that society often presents us with such binary messages. That it’s all or nothing. At this point, I’m sure many in the audience are reflecting on their own experiences with loss and grief. Reviewing how they may have reacted.

At this point Charlene proposes a different approach: “holding lightly.” Holding lightly, she explains, is about appreciating the beauty and joy of life while also acknowledging the reality of impermanence.

What I find brilliant in how Charlene tells this story is how the narrative weaves in her personal experience with grief, explores the topic more deeply in order to shift the focus away from her and engage the audience. In this way, she’s able to illustrate the fact that grief is a natural part of life that everyone must deal with at some point. What’s unique is also universal.

In the end, we’re invited to examine our own perspective on the matter, and to consider a new way to approach the issue, by holding lightly, and living life fully.

Transcript

When I say soy sauce, what do you think of?

Maybe you think of eating dumplings, soy sauce with sushi. When I think of soy sauce, I think of my mother.

In particular, I think of the bottle of soy sauce in my mother’s kitchen. And how that bottle of soy sauce took on a whole new meaning after she died.

Before my mother died suddenly in 2013, soy sauce reminded me of good food, home cooking, eating dim sum with my family in New York City.

After she died, soy sauce represented my connection to my mother, and it represented the terrible task that I had of trying to clear out her house and trying to let go of the thousands of objects in her home.

Have you experienced something similar? Can you think of a simple object that takes on a whole new meaning for you? Maybe it seems insignificant to other people. And maybe you’ve experienced the exact phenomenon that I did, where an object suddenly becomes precious after a loved one dies.

For you, it might be your grandmother’s ring, your father’s watch, or a family photo. These are the things that are precious to us. These are the things that we hold close to our hearts. These are the things that we would save in a fire. And it hurts when we lose them.

Loss is a fundamental part of being human. Grief is universal. We will all experience it. For some of us, loss will come in the form of a natural disaster: fire, flood, earthquake. Or an unnatural disaster: war breaks out in our country.

[Or a personal disaster. My mother dies of a stroke. Your marriage ends. You lose the job you love. You get a medical diagnosis that changes your life.

In Portuguese, we have this beautiful word, Saudade. I am still learning the depth of the meaning of this untranslatable word. But my understanding is that Saudade means longing for, missing something that we’ve lost, or that we may lose. We know that loss will come.

I talk about and I exhibit soy sauce a lot in my creative work. It represents my connection to my mother, but it also represents this key challenge that we have as humans. Intellectually, we know that we will die. We know that everything we love will someday die. How do we still live full, joyful, beautiful lives, knowing this will happen?

How do we love and feel attached to people, places, pets, and things, knowing that someday we may need to say goodbye?

There are several ways to approach this. When my mother died, I wanted to keep everything. I wanted to hold on to all her clothes, all the furniture, even the ugly furniture.

I wanted to hold on tight because it felt like I needed them to survive. Not everyone understands this. My husband, he said, “It’s just stuff. Just throw it away.”

Yes, I considered divorce. He did not understand that throwing away my mother’s belongings felt like throwing her memory away. It felt like throwing her away.

That’s the thing about grief. We can all have a wide variety of reactions to loss. I’m thinking of a father who threw away all of his wife’s clothing after she died immediately because it was too painful for him to see her dresses, her shoes, her jewelry. His daughters did not understand.

[These are all natural reactions. I wanted to keep everything, and someone else might say, “If it hurts so much to lose, if loss is going to come, I don’t want to hold on to anything.” That’s an option too, for all of us. We could give away our belongings, we could move to a distant land, we can say goodbye to our family and friends, and we can all live like monks.

It’s an option. It feels a little black or white. Hold on to everything or hold on to nothing.

When we’re grieving, it can feel like we only have those two options because of a major misunderstanding about grief. When we’re grieving, we get messages like, “You need to move on. You need to let go. You need to live your own life.” The implication is that if you hold on, you are staying stuck in the past. Black or white.

Move on, let go, or stay stuck.

What if it doesn’t have to be black or white? What if I want to hold on to a connection with my mother without having to hold on to a half-empty bottle of soy sauce forever? And I want to live my own beautiful life. What if we want to have full, joyous lives, knowing that loss will come? My suggestion is to hold lightly.

What do I mean by hold lightly? Earlier I mentioned how I wanted to hold on to everything that my mother owned. Hold on tight as if my life depended on it. Using your hand, can you show me what it might look like to hold tight? What does it look like to hold on tight to something?

Yes, as if you need it to survive. Yes. Some of you are making a fist, right? Some of you have a claw kind of shape. There is tension in your hand, there’s effort and energy in your arm. There might even be tension in your face. Now, what might it look like to hold lightly?

Yes. Some of you used both hands, forming like a cup or a bowl. Your hand is open. Some of you used one hand, palm up, fingers relaxed. This is how we hold lightly. We hold lightly and we can have things. We can hold them close to our hearts, knowing. Knowing that that bird might fly away.

Knowing that beauty will fade, knowing that life will change. Now, why is it important to hold lightly? I believe that when we hold lightly, we give ourselves the opportunity to live life in full color.

Not just black or white, but to live experiencing the full range of colors, all the shades, all the hues. To live with all the textures, all the flavors, tasting the bitter and the sweet. Maybe Saudade, like soy sauce, makes life more delicious.

Maybe grief can make life more beautiful. I find that when I hold lightly, I experience the world and I move through life in a different way. I look into my husband’s eyes and I fall in love with all the little details, trying to memorize them, knowing that someday I may lose him.

When you step out into the world today, no matter where you are, see if the idea of holding lightly helps you to experience the world differently. Maybe we admire a sunset, knowing that those colors will fade. Maybe we enjoy the smell of freshly baked Pastel de Nata, knowing that that fragrance will disappear.

Maybe we hear a song or experience music differently, delighting in that moment. Maybe we even experience soy sauce differently. Maybe now soy sauce tastes like the love of a mother, or soy sauce tastes like a love of life and living.

Grief taught me how to hold lightly. I invite you to hold lightly and to live fully in full color.

Thank you.

Back to you…

As Charlene notes, loss is inevitable, as is the grief we experience afterwards. How have you dealt with grief in your life? Did you embrace the all-or-nothing approach? The idea of holding lightly is one way that we can savor what we’ve lost, to remember the past while fully living in the present.

Even if your story involves a completely different topic, examine how Charlene structured her narrative in a way that engaged the audience, made the subject relatable, and presented her lessons learned as an option for dealing with the issue. It’s a universal structure that’s worth considering.

◆

Learn more about the coaching process or
contact me to discuss your storytelling goals!

◆

Subscribe to the newsletter for the latest updates!

Are We Still Human If Robots Help Raise Our Babies? – Sarah Blaffer Hrdy at TED2025

July 5, 2025/in AI, Artificial Intelligence, Family, Humanity, TED Talk/by Mark Lovett

We were all babies at one point in time, and as we couldn’t care for ourselves, that responsibility fell to one or more adults. Typically our parents, but in some cases other relatives. In any event, our upbringing was a matter of human-to-human contact. But what about in the future? With AI and robotics advancing rapidly, will non-humans begin playing a role in raising future generations?

In her brief talk at TED2025, Sarah Blaffer Hrdy reminds us of the process that’s been in place for many thousands of years, and poses this exact question. As an anthropologist and primatologist, as well as a Professor Emerita, Department of Anthropology at the University of California, Davis, Sarah has unique insights on this issue.

Artificial intelligence is going to change the nature of human work. But will it change human nature?

An interesting point that Sarah brings up is that neuroscientists have detected activity in brain regions associated with social understanding in young babies when interacting with people, demonstrating early social wiring in their brains. Which had me wondering whether that would still be true with a robot.

Soon, robots will be programmed to provide a wider range of services, ranging from bottle-feeding to keeping babies safe, warm, cleaned, and even educated.

To be honest, this is one talk that I feel should have been five minutes longer. It felt as if the question was posed, some background offered, but little attention paid to the answer. For me, this highlighted the fallacy of “less is more”. In this case, less was definitely less, to the point that the message fell short.

Transcript

I guess you’ve already figured out, like it or not, artificial intelligence is going to change the nature of human work. But will it change human nature? That’s going to depend on what we do with it.

Right away, the mother and the grandmother in me wants to know, “Ooh, hey, can we program robots to help us care for our sleep-depriving, time-consuming babies?” That’s before the evolutionary anthropologist in me cautions, “Whoa. Shouldn’t we first ask why such costly, costly, slow-maturing babies evolved in the first place?”

For that, we need to go back, oh, six million years, to when humans last shared a common ancestor with other apes. Babies back then, like this common chimpanzee baby today, would have to be held in skin-to-skin contact, never out of touch, not for a minute of the day or night for months after birth, nursed for years.

It just seemed natural to assume that among the bipedal apes in the line leading to the genus Homo, babies could similarly expect single-mindedly dedicated maternal care.

Until, that is, anthropologists figured out how hard it would have been for bipedal apes with only stone-age tools to survive and escape extinction in the face of climate change and other Pleistocene perils.

To stay fed and manage to still rear their helpless, helpless, slow-maturing babies, mothers needed help. Unless male and female group members other than the mother, allomothers, had helped to care for and provision babies, there is no way we humans could have evolved.

Fortunately for us, as brains were getting bigger and distinctively human prefrontal cortices were taking shape, our ancestors were increasingly sharing food and sharing care of children. Neural circuits crucial for mutual understanding co-evolved right along with shared care.

Fast forward to the ever-faster changing modern world. Mothers still labor to help support their families, as mothers always have. But many no longer live in mutually supportive communities, with kin far away and even with dads helping more, allomothers were in short supply.

Good daycare, even if available, unaffordable. No wonder parents everywhere use devices to keep their babies monitored and entertained. Already, 40% of US two-year-olds have their own tablets. Soon, robots will be programmed to provide a wider range of services, ranging from bottle-feeding to keeping babies safe, warm, cleaned, and even educated.

But given the role of engagement with others in the emergence of mutual understanding, is this a good idea? Think back to our hunter-gatherer ancestors. Still living and rearing children as people in this iconic photograph, taken about half a century ago among African foragers. Babies then, to stay safe, still needed to be held by somebody.

But that somebody did not have to be their mother. Right after birth, others might reach for the baby. This mother who has just given birth allows others to gather around. She’s passed her baby to her own mother to massage its scalp. If one of these allomothers happens to be nursing, the baby’s first sweet taste of milk will come from her.

Soon, babies will be monitoring nearby others, deciding who responds, figuring out how best to engage and appeal to them. By six months, the sharp little milk teeth are peeking through their gums, their appeals might be rewarded with kiss-fed treats, maybe honey-sweetened saliva or premasticated meat.

And babies soon are learning to reciprocate, starting to share. Babies everywhere will just spontaneously offer food to somebody else, anybody, really. Active agents in their own survival, babies are flexible about who or what they attach or consider as family.

Something to keep in mind if robots are programmed to respond even more rapidly and reliably than preoccupied parents do. And as they get older, they will spontaneously point to things, or hold something out, as if saying, “What do you think of this? What should I think of this?”

Eager to engage with other minds and learn what they’re thinking. They care. They care very much who notices them do something nice, like a toddler rushing to pick up something someone has dropped and hand it back. They care not just with what others think, but with what others think about them, their reputations.

As developmental psychologists were learning just how “other-regarding” human babies are, neuroscientists using new baby-friendly technologies made a surprising discovery. With a soft, wired cap slipped on the baby’s head, neural activity was detected in the medial prefrontal cortex, long before most neuroscientists even assumed it was active yet. As babies process eye gaze, actions, deciding who to trust, emulate, and love.

Little humans process their physical world in much the same way other apes do. Nothing much different there. It’s in these social realms where they really differ. Inter-subjective sensibilities starting to emerge early in life, right along with targeted social smiles.

Brain circuitry that evolved to help babies elicit care and survive, prepared our ancestors to mature into adults able to communicate and cooperate in new ways, whether constructing shelters or processing and sharing food, or eventually, one day, collaborating with widely dispersed others in order to send robots to Mars.

Tens of thousands of years from now, assuming Homo sapiens aiensis is still around, whether on this planet or some other, I have no doubt that they will be bipedal, symbol-generating apes, technologically proficient in ways we can’t even dream of yet.

But will they still be human in the way we think of humans today? Interested in the thoughts and emotions of others, eligible for mutual understanding? That’s going to depend on how, by whom, or what they are reared.

Thank you.

◆

Learn more about the coaching process or
contact me to discuss your storytelling goals!

◆

Subscribe to the newsletter for the latest updates!

Chris Bell protects his family from a possible intruder – Live at The Moth

July 2, 2025/in Family, Humor, Personal Stories, The Moth/by Mark Lovett

Sometimes our personal stories fall into the “life is full of unexpected surprises” category, and this is a perfect example. Chris Bell believes someone is breaking into his apartment, which poses a threat to his family, but in reality, it’s not the intruder he assumed it would be — it was the police.

Such stories remind us that what we think may be going on, may not always be correct. But at the same time, even stories that involve a mistake at one level, can hold deeper meaning below the surface and say something new about us.

What I appreciated about Chris Bell’s story, is the blend of humor and tension in his narrative. A bit of self-deprecating humor with the chunky peanut butter, the confusion about what was making the sound in his kitchen, the tense moments of confronting a potential intruder, followed by relief that it was only the police.

What about you? What stories do you have to tell that, on the one hand are a bit embarrassing, yet on the other hand, revealed something about your character?

Transcript

It’s 3 AM and I can’t sleep. Because I’m up wondering what I would do if my wife and two young kids were ever attacked by a grizzly bear.

I mean, would I have the courage to stand up to this beast and just do whatever I can do to protect them? Or would fear hijack my decisions and cause me to freeze or even worse, run away?

I don’t know. And that’s why this scenario has bothered me, haunted me, ever since the moment I first became a father.

Fortunately, there aren’t any grizzly bears in our neighborhood. But there have been several break-ins and robberies. Our landlord worked the night shift, so he installed this big fancy security system in his luxury apartment upstairs. But downstairs, in our barely basic two bedroom, I’m left to be my family’s security system.

So when my wife tells me she saw a mouse skurry across the kitchen floor, I see it as an opportunity to prove myself. The next day I immediately go to the store and pick up one jar of premium organic peanut butter. That’s just like me, a little chunky.

And after everyone goes to sleep, I put a little bit of that peanut butter on a mousetrap and strategically place it in our kitchen. Now, this night we’re experiencing waves of heavy rain and wind. It looks like someone’s throwing buckets of water against the window. And when the wind hits the house, you can hear the walls creak and groan. Around 11:00, I’m just watching the news and pop, the electricity just goes out.

Sometime in the middle of the night, I wake up to a bang. And I remember, ah, my mousetrap. So I get up, out of bed, wearing nothing but my boxers, flick the light switch and realize the power’s still out. Then I hear it again. Bang, bang.

So now I’m thinking, the mouse must have got its tail caught in the trap and it’s running around the kitchen, slapping it on the walls and cabinets. So now I’m rushing down the hall in my boxers, in the dark, trying to get to this mouse before it tears up our kitchen.

And right as I’m about to turn the corner, bang, bang, bang! And I stop. Because that doesn’t sound like a mouse. That sounds like a rat. And a big one.

So I go to the pantry and grab a broom and hold it like a spear from Wakanda. Cuz I know I got one shot to stab this thing before it tries to bite me.

So I carefully creep around the corner and leap into the kitchen. Only to see my trap right where I left it, untouched. Now I’m standing there wondering, what’s making that noise?

And from the kitchen door by my son’s bedroom, bang, bang, bang! Startled, I turn around to look through the window to see the figure of a dark shape pounding on the door. That’s when I realized, it wasn’t a mouse, it wasn’t a rat, that’s the sound of someone trying to break into our apartment.

And just then my son comes out of his bedroom in his Batman pajamas. And behind me, I hear the footsteps of my wife and daughter coming down the hall. So out of pure reflex, I turn the broom sideways and slam all my weight up against the door, trying to keep whoever wanted in out.

But now I’m close enough to see that there’re actually three figures pressing to get in. And they’re all bigger than I am. And when they see me, they erupt into shouting. And this causes my daughter to scream and my son to burst into tears. And at this point, my heart is beating like thunder because I’m I’m just gonna be real, I was scared.

This wasn’t some imaginary grizzly bear. This was real. And I knew if I couldn’t keep this door shut, they would get in and possibly hurt my family. And that thought terrified me. But it was the feeling of fear that told my body, you need to do something.

So I closed my eyes and pressed my nose up against the window so they could see my face clearly. And I did the one thing that I felt would turn these intruders away. I gripped my teeth and I growled.

But I growled like I was delivering a contract written in my own blood that said if they dared cross this threshold, I will show them exactly how ferocious a protective parent can be. And when I opened my eyes, the figures were now completely still. And the sound of their shouting was replaced by the soft sound of rain.

But now the figure up front revealed that he had his arms fully extended, revealing that there was only a thin pane of glass in between my chest and his gun. And when I saw this, I just felt like I was frozen.

And that’s when I heard, “Sir, drop the stick.” Followed by my wife, “Babe, I think it’s the police.”

Five minutes later, three very wet police officers are standing in the center of our kitchen. Turns out the wind from the storm shook the house so bad that it triggered one of the motion detectors from my landlord’s security system upstairs. This sent a silent alarm to the police station. So when they responded, started pounding on doors and looking through windows, they saw me standing in the kitchen, in my boxers, holding a broom as a weapon.

They thought they stumbled across a domestic situation.

Eventually, I got to explain my side of the story. And after I did, the officer who pulled his service weapon stepped up and said, “So so you mean to tell me I almost shot you because you was trying to catch a mouse? With a broom?”

My wife is not gonna believe this.

Fifteen years later, my young kids are now college students. And uh, believe it or not, we have never been attacked by a grizzly bear.

But if you were to ask me the same question, what would I do? I’ll still be real and say, I don’t know. But after the night I tried to protect my family from a mouse, I am a little bit more certain that I wouldn’t just run away. Thank you.

◆

Learn more about the coaching process or
contact me to discuss your storytelling goals!

◆

Subscribe to the newsletter for the latest updates!

Ryan Roe at The Moth in Philadelphia

June 4, 2025/in Family, Humor, Life Lessons, Music, The Moth/by Mark Lovett

All too often I will hear people say their personal stories aren’t good enough to share. Nothing dramatic happened. Nothing very shocking. Nothing that other people would care much about. But some of the best stories are those with a simple narrative, but that also contain great meaning.

Such are the stories that recall childhood memories — those special times spent with family members. In this case, Ryan Roe’s story at The Moth takes us back to the time when he was learning to play the trombone. The story which unfolds is, at first, one of discomfort, but it turns into a father-son bonding experience that Ryan holds onto throughout life.

It’s heartfelt, as you’ll come to find out when you watch Ryan on stage, but it’s also filled with many funny moments. Listen to how he uses the technique of self-deprecating humor that also serves to enhance the visual experience.

You can still smell the remnants of Taco Tuesday. And if you look close enough at the floor, you can see the remnants of Taco Tuesday.

Without that humor his story would still be meaningful, but it wouldn’t have connected to the audience in the same way. It involves an effort to be near someone we like (we’ve all done that) and also being put into a potentially embarrassing situation (who hasn’t been there), so we’re rooting for Ryan.

Transcript

When I was in fourth grade, that’s when we as students could pick an instrument to take lessons in and play in the school band. And I chose the trombone for two reasons.

The first one was that there’s this cute girl named Jessica who told me that she was going to play the saxophone. And I had heard that the saxophone players and the trombone players took lessons together. Now, the reason I didn’t just also play the saxophone was that the buttons scared me.

And the second reason I chose trombone was that my dad is a phenomenal trombone player. For many years, he played in the Marine Corps Band, and he traveled around the country playing with them. He was based in New Orleans, and he played in a lot of the jazz clubs there. And then after that, he became an instrument repairman.

So, a lot of my memories as a child were of hearing him test the instruments in our house, playing his favorite songs. And I just loved the sound of the trombone. So I felt like if I played trombone, that would make him proud.

Now, the only other trombone player in the school was a fifth grader named Gina. And for months, Gina and I took lessons with our music teacher, and after all this time spent practicing, I just sounded terrible. The noise that came out of my trombone sounded like a hive of angry bees, yet somehow more alarming.

And, you know, it’s a really hard instrument to play for a fourth grader because you have these little fourth-grade arms, and you can’t even reach far enough to hit a C note. And what’s more embarrassing is that when you have an instrument that has a lot of valves and reeds and keys, if it sounds bad, you can sort of blame it on the instrument.

But when it’s just one long horn, if it sounds bad, it’s 100% your fault. I even came to my dad at one point and I was like, “This thing’s busted.” And he’s like, “Here’s the thing, no, it’s not.”

But the only consolation I had in all this was that Gina was also terrible. So as long as she was embarrassing herself, I felt fine embarrassing myself. Until two weeks before our first concert, Gina decides to quit. Up and leaving me as the only trombone player in the whole school, and my music teacher is worried.

But that week, my dad came in for a parent-teacher conference and he met with my music teacher and mentioned to her that he played trombone, and she goes, “Wait. Would you like to play in the winter concert with the fourth graders?” And he’s like, “I don’t know, this is their thing. I don’t want to take anything away from it.” And she’s like, “Please. Will you play in the winter concert?”

So he accepts and when he comes home and he tells me about it, he actually seems really excited about it. And I had to be like, “That’s awesome, Dad. I’m excited too.”

Because at this age, my biggest fear was being the center of attention. I just wanted to blend into the background. I did not want to be sitting in the front row with Jessica on my left and an adult man on my right.

But the concert comes around and we’re holding it in our dimly lit elementary school cafeteria. It was one of those cafeterias that weirdly has a full stage and curtains as if they’re trying to make the students think, “Will there be dinner and a show?” Who knows.

And the families are all there in their metal folding chairs. Suburban moms have their 30-pound camcorders armed and ready. You can still smell the remnants of Taco Tuesday. And if you look close enough at the floor, you can see the remnants of Taco Tuesday. And the drummers, they were lucky. They got to sit all the way in the back, along with this kid named Evan who had a triangle because he wasn’t really to be trusted.

And every family that walked into the room instantly looked in my direction and had a confused look because it was exactly as I had predicted. Me in the front row, Jessica on my left, and my adult father on my right.

And we begin playing the first song and immediately my dad and I are in a competition to see who can play the quietest. I’m playing quietly because I don’t want people to hear the noises coming out of my trombone. My dad is playing quietly because he doesn’t want to upstage a bunch of nine-year-olds. We’re both playing so quietly that the music teacher is waving her baton at us and mouthing, “Get louder! Now!”

But we get through the Blue Danube. The Carnival of the Animals goes a little better. And by the time we get to the Funeral March, I can finally relax. But the last song that we played was What a Wonderful World by Louis Armstrong. And you guys know it, it’s a very soft and slow song. It’s a bit easier to play on an instrument.

And as I’m playing, I start to listen to my dad playing next to me. And I’m hearing him hit every note perfectly and smoothly transition to the next. And then I look out into the crowd and I can see everyone else’s dad sitting there. And then I look over at my dad, and he’s smiling because he’s having the time of his life playing the instrument that he loves with his son that he loves.

And I felt really lucky to be playing next to my dad. I finally felt like this is a really special thing, I should cherish it.

And he ended up playing in every concert we did for the next five years. We had zero new trombone players every year for five years. So we just kept inviting him back. And it was awesome. I loved it. Every single time. I was never embarrassed about it, I always looked forward to it, and it was always a special moment.

So much so that when I got to high school and there were some upperclassmen that played trombone, I was no longer the only trombone player, so he didn’t need to play with us anymore. And I only ended up playing one more semester before I decided to quit because it just wasn’t as fun anymore. Something felt missing. So I moved on.

Fast forward to just a few years ago, I was taking a road trip through the South and I stopped for a day in New Orleans. And I was really excited because my dad had told me so many things about New Orleans and the whole experience just felt magical walking around the city because I kept thinking to myself, “This was my dad’s home when he was my age.”

And I ended the day by going to a jazz club called Preservation Hall. And it’s a really small club with these guys that play Dixieland jazz. And they sat me right next to the trombone player. And I’m having a great time listening to these guys, they’re so talented.

And then right before they ended the show, a guy came up from the back of the room and handed the lead man a five-dollar bill and asked him to play What a Wonderful World by Louis Armstrong.

And as I’m listening to the trombone player hit every note perfectly and smoothly transition to the next, I become overwhelmed with emotion because I was being transformed back into being fourth-grade Ryan. And I felt so lucky that I got to have those special moments with my dad.

And so when I got back home, I went to my parents’ house and I told my dad all about it and I thanked him for what he had done all those years ago. And then I went up to the attic and we had kept my trombone this whole time. So every now and then, my dad and I will still get that musical itch and we’ll go up to the attic and we’ll break out our trombones.

And I open up the case and I smell that sweet brass smell. And I put the horn and the slide together and you just hear all the familiar sounds. And when I begin playing, I’m immediately reminded of how terrible I am. But he hits every note perfectly, and that’s the fun part for me.

Thank you.

Now back to you…

Take a moment to think about similar experiences from your youth — from your childhood, to adolescence, to your teenage years. Is there some event (or series of events) that defined your relationship to one or both of your parents? Music, sports, nature, travel, food, etc.

Consider the sweet aspects, the humorous ones, as well as the meaningful ones. What memories have you carried with you throughout your life? As you recall an event, try to go deeper. What did it feel like, sound like, look like? As adults, we’ll too often push those memories into a corner, when the truth is, they are often well worth revisiting and sharing.

◆

If you enjoyed this article…

◆

Learn more about the coaching process or
contact me to discuss your storytelling goals!

◆

Subscribe to the newsletter for the latest updates!