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The Moth – Live from New York – Give me Five – Stories of the Senses

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Every episode of The Moth Radio Hour contains storytelling gold, and this one recorded in New York — Give me Five – Stories of the Senses — was a perfect example of diversity in storytelling. Give it a listen, and think about how each story was constructed, and how each scene was portrayed.

The Moth Storytellers:

  • Peter Aguero’s life takes an unexpected turn in a pottery class.
  • Tighisti Amahazion finds creature comfort during an escape with her family.
  • Julian Goldhagen gets trapped in a walk-in closet.
  • Bryan Kett gets a chance to see in color for the first time.

While I encourage you to hear them all, this article focuses on Peter Aguero.

Peter Aguero is quite the storyteller, with his rapid fire delivery that jumps from scene to scene, keeping the narrative, as well as audience interest, going along. Peter’s a masterful writer that offers up a combination of personal insights and humor. Check out this description of the woman he meets at the pottery studio. If there’s an unusual character in your story, think of how you can describe the essence of their appearance, both visually and metaphorically.

This woman comes up to me and she’s wearing mismatched six shades of pink somehow. And two different colored socks and sandals. It’s October. She looks like she’s been happily cutting her own hair for the last 50 years.

It’s one thing to describe how you feel, but in this exchange with his pottery teacher: “And the second rule is today we’re just going to have fun. And I tell him, I’m not so sure I remember how that even feels.” We’re left to consider Peter’s frame of mind, that he has forgotten what fun feels like. Sometimes meaning only requires a few words, and the audience empathizes with you.

So, what I realize then is now I can make anything. I can make anything for who I am today. I can make things to honor who I had been. I can make things for what is. And all I have to do is joyfully, mindfully, with intent and with compassion for myself, is to sit still and take a breath and make a move and the shape changes. And I take a breath and I make a move and the shape changes. And I take a breath and I make a move and the shape changes.

You’ll understand this ending once you hear his story, and you’ll see how he took the lesson he learned when working with the clay and applied it to his life. That’s the gift he’s handing to the audience. To take a breath, make a move, and watch the world change. But let’s take a step back for context.

I’m crying and it just feels terrible. The weight of the entire world feels like it’s on top of my shoulders, on top of my body, pressing me into this carpet.

In just this one sentence you can feel Peter’s pain. He’s not in a good place. And although he obviously wants relief, he doesn’t have a path to make that happen. And then comes a simple suggestion from his wife.

Sarah says to me, Peter, you need to take a pottery class.

This is the pivot point. The one sentence that opens up an entirely new world to Peter. A world where he finds himself and creates a path forward: take a breath, make a move, and watch the world change.

Whenever someone says, “I don’t have a story to tell.“, I begin to probe, ask a few questions, dig a little deeper into their life experiences. And sure enough, there comes a moment in the conversation when they tell me about a pivot in their life. A change that started with one sentence, thought, idea, etc. It could have come from a friend or a family member. Someone at work or school or church. Hell, it can come from watching the television or reading a book.

The point is, this happens to everyone, but too often we overlook the impact that such event have on our life. Think about your own life journey, and see whether something similar arises. An event, and a lesson learned that others could benefit from hearing. And if you already have your story idea in hand, while considering the events you plan to include in your narrative, try to be aware of any pivot points that are worth sharing.

Transcript (edited for readability)

So I’m sitting, laying face down on my living room floor, and the carpet is rough against my cheeks and all I want to do is just burrow underneath the carpet. I want to hide. I want to dig in a hole. I want to get my body, my soul, my everything underneath, to hide, to get away from everything. There’s bees in my head. It’s anxiety. My heart is beating. I’m crying and it just feels terrible. The weight of the entire world feels like it’s on top of my shoulders, on top of my body, pressing me into this carpet.

I am trying to write a new show. I had been working for 20 years hustling as an artist and what I’ve been working on lately is what I’ve been calling, autobiographical, first-person narrative, which is just a fancy way of saying, telling a story. And anytime you have a fancy way of doing something, it gets all messed up. So my wife, Sarah, is brushing my hair and she’s reading my tarot cards and she’s holding me like the Pieta, and I’m just trying to get through this moment.

I thought I was writing a comedy about myself. Turns out it was a psychological horror story, and it didn’t feel good. I had made the choice, the medium I was going to work in my life was generally going to be pain.

I found it to be true early on, that whenever I would talk about a time in my life where there was some kind of change or some growth, it never happened in a victory or out of joy. It was always in heartbreak or pain or misery or failure is where I would grow. And so, that’s how I would present my medium. That was what I was working, in the pain of my past and I was tired of it. I didn’t want to do it anymore. I just didn’t care. I didn’t care about myself or telling any more stories or doing anything and I’m just crying and it’s just about over and Sarah says to me, Peter, you need to take a pottery class.

And I’m 40 years old. I had never taken a pottery class. I had played with Play-Doh when I was a kid, probably. I went to Catholic school. We didn’t have the money for pottery classes. It was, okay babe, I kind of dismissed it. Thank you so much, but, you know, how’s that going to help anything? And then I spend the rest of the night trying to go to bed to end that day to get to the next one, which is the way it goes when you feel that way.

And at the end of the next day, Sarah says to me, have you registered for a pottery class yet? And I said, no, I haven’t. She says, I’m going to take a shower and by the time I get out of the shower, I want you registered for a pottery class. And I get on the computer and I start to look for a pottery studio near where we live in Queens and I’m looking around and I find this place called Brick House in Long Island City.

I’m like, I like the Commodores. So I register for a private lesson. And she comes out and she says, did you register? I said, yes, I did. I have a lesson in five days. I said, why can I ask you? Why a pottery class? She just looked at me. She said, I think it would be gentle and I think it might feel like a hug.

So five days later I’m in Long Island City and I walk into the ceramic studio, a place I’d never been in my life and I don’t understand what is going on. There are walls packed with shelves and things. There are tennis balls next to WD40 next to cornstarch next to yard sticks next to bundles of sticks, random buttons, all kinds of weird, just strange things.

The floor feels like it had been wet and dried and wet and dried and wet and dried to the point that now it feels like stale waffles underneath my feet. I’m looking around and feeling the clay dust. I can feel it gritting in my teeth. I can smell the earth in the air. I look around and everyone in the place is working with these balls of this brown clay.

This woman comes up to me and she’s wearing mismatched six shades of pink somehow. And two different colored socks and sandals. It’s October. She looks like she’s been happily cutting her own hair for the last 50 years. She says to me, are you here for Peter? I say, I am Peter, and this confuses her, and she says, my name is Liberty Valance. I said, what? And now I’m confused.

And then this guy, who looks if the Queensboro bridge had a troll, it would be this guy. And he’s got a red beard and he’s chuckling in the corner and I’m looking around like, oh, I get it, this is where the weirdos are. Okay.

So then Peter comes out. He’s the teacher and he looks like me-in-30-years. He’s a robust older gentleman with a halo of hair loosely tied in a ponytail, a big long gray beard that reaches the center of his chest. And he comes over to me with kindness in his eyes. He says, I’m Peter. I say, I’m Peter. And it doesn’t register any confusion with him.

And the kindness in his eyes runs deep and his hands look strong and he says, have you ever done this before? I said, no. He said, good. Here’s what we’re going to do. I’m going to just teach you. There’s no grades. I’m not your first grade teacher. Don’t worry about it. And the second rule is today we’re just going to have fun. And I tell him, I’m not so sure I remember how that even feels.

And he just nods his head and says, come this way. So he walks me over to the pottery wheels and we sit down and he takes a ball of clay and he places it in my hand, and it’s both wet and somehow dry at the same time. It’s cold to the touch in my hand. It is about the size of a grapefruit. It’s heavy.

You know when they tell you when you go to the produce section to get produce that is a little heavier than it looks and you never understand what that means. This is what clay feels like in my hand and it’s earth. It’s the earth. And it’s in my hands, touching my skin. And Peter says, okay, the first thing we’re going to do is we’re going to center.

And I don’t know what that means. He turns on the wheel and the wheel starts going around and says, and he puts the clay in the center of the wheel and he says, you can’t center a little bit. You’re either centered or you’re not. And that’s blowing my mind and he shows me how to use my body, how to brace my arm up against my ribs and to make my hands into the shape of a tool and I would hold my hands over the clay and not let the clay…

He says, don’t let the clay, he’s got this voice, it sounds like if you drizzled honey over some soft summer thunder. And he’s telling me, okay, so you’re going to adjust, it’ll just be, and then it’ll be centered. He says, you’re going to learn how to do this, you’re going to forget it, and then it’s okay because I’m here and I’m not going anywhere.

So I breathe out and I brace my arm and the clay wobbles and wobbles and wobbles and wobbles and all of a sudden it doesn’t. It’s still and it’s spinning. I raise my hands and it’s spinning so fast but it’s not moving at all. It looks like it’s completely still and he says, there you go, you’re centered.

And then he tells me, okay, you’re gonna wet your hands and then you’re gonna drop your first hole, and you take your fingers and you put it in the center of the dome of clay and you drop your hole and you open the clay. And it opens so quickly. I take to it like a duck to water. It feels so satisfying, like when you’re cutting wrapping paper and the scissors just slide up the wrapping paper. It feels like that.

And he tells me okay, now he shows me how to lift, and he shows me what to do, and all of a sudden this lump of clay went from being nothing to a cup that turns into a bowl, that turns into an object that exists in the whole world. And all of the art I’ve been making has been ephemeral, just performance and it disappears.

And this is now a thing that actually exists. And he cuts it off and he puts it to the side and he puts another ball of clay and I center it again and he tells me that all I got to do now is just make sure that I breathe. He says that’s the most important thing. He says, you’re going to touch the clay gently, you’re going to take your hands off the clay gently and in between every move you’re going to breathe. And then that piece starts to wobble a little bit and all I have to do is cut it off and get another piece of clay. I can just start over. There’s no stakes. It just feels good.

As Peter is telling me and we go through about four, four different balls of clay. He tells me, uh, all these things again, these steps over and over because I learn them and I forget them, but he’s there. But what I hear is the subtext of what he’s actually saying to me, which is, you take a breath, you make a move, and the shape changes.

The hour goes by like that and I stand up and I tell him, I say Peter, thank you so much. I’ve been depleted. I needed that so bad. My battery has been empty and I just have not been feeling good. And he gives me a hug, because me-in-30-years is a good hugger. And then, as he hugs me, he tells me he’s proud of me.

So I start to cry. And, me-in-30-years, is a great crier too, and we’re just holding each other and crying and the bridge troll and the pink lady are just laughing. Everybody’s having a wonderful time and I leave the studio, I wave goodbye to the island of broken toys and I go home and I get back to my apartment and I sit on the couch and, Sarah says, how was it? And she tells me later that in this very small voice from my very big body, I just gently say, I loved it. I can’t believe somebody lets me do this. And she nodded her head and she said, okay, I want you to go sign up for a weekly class. So I did.

About two weeks later I show up for my Thursday 10:00 AM weekly class. I go in there and I walk directly to the wheels and on the wheel that’s supposed to be mine is a pile of brand new tools, some wooden carving sticks, a wooden knife, a wire, a sponge.

There’s also this blue bowl, rudimentary, kind of thick walled blue bowl. And I pick it up and on the underside of it, it’s carved Peter underneath. Teacher Peter had fired it, glazed it and fired it for me and left it on my wheel. And I pick it up and the glaze is cool in my hand and it’s very smooth like glass and it feels perfect in my hands because my hands were the things that made this and the grooves are the grooves of my fingers in the surface of the clay. And this object is now part of the world and I made it. It was the earth and I shaped it and inside the way the glaze melted is the universe.

And I put it to the side and I get another ball of clay and I sit down and I start to center. And I look all around me and I can see all the people working everywhere and and and everyone here is taking these, uh, balls of clay or slabs of clay or or pieces of clay and they’re turning into something and it’s coming from a place inside their soul that is supported and beautiful and joyful.

So, what I realize then is now I can make anything. I can make anything for who I am today. I can make things to honor who I had been. I can make things for what is. And all I have to do is joyfully, mindfully, with intent and with compassion for myself, is to sit still and take a breath and make a move and the shape changes. And I take a breath and I make a move and the shape changes. And I take a breath and I make a move and the shape changes.

Thank you.

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Molly Kendall at The Moth NYC StorySLAM

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Personal stories come in a variety of flavors, from happy to sad, and clueless to insightful, but some fall into a category that I call wild/crazy/funny. For example, we’ve all heard stories that evoked the response, “And what were you thinking?” For me, the tale that Molly Kendall shared at The Moth NYC StorySLAM back in 2016 was one such story.

It’s just six and a half minutes, yet it brought out a number of universal themes that all of us can relate to. Give it a watch, then think about the many facets of being human that were highlighted. Then consider how those themes relate to some of your experiences, and whether they can be woven into your story.

Here were some insights that I came away with. The point is that when crafting a personal story, you should put yourself in the shoes of the audience as a way to feel how they might react to the story. So even when an experience is unique to you, the underlying themes should be universal so that the audience can reflect upon their own journey.

The Themes That Resonated With Me

  1. Impulsivity vs. Consequence: Stemming from  impulsive and seemingly bold decision, the result was a cascade of awkward, unforeseen consequences.

  2. Vulnerability (Literal and Figurative): Molly is literally vulnerable under the coat — a physical representation — and that reality translates into emotional vulnerability and embarrassment as the story unfolds.

  3. Loss of Nerve/Confidence: The initial “blast of courage” quickly dissipates, replaced by panic, regret, and an inability to act or explain herself. She puts herself into an impossible situation.

  4. Social Awkwardness and Embarrassment: The humor stems from the excruciatingly awkward situations — the bus ride, the scene at the restaurant, the inability to take off the coat. We feel for her and wonder what we would do in that situation.

  5. Finding Connection Despite Chaos: Despite the bizarre and mortifying date, their relationship survived and flourished, which suggests that connections can happen even amidst absurdity. There is hope, even in the worst of situations.

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Transcript

About 12 years ago, I moved to New York City, and to this day, I do not know why I did that. But it was an adventure, and to support my adventure, I had to work two, three, however many jobs, running here to there, trying to find my feet on this pulsing, frenetic city.

Um, within the beginning of the time that I was here, I met this man named John. And being a product of someone who was born and raised here, he had a very calm spirit within this craziness that I felt. Um, so he and I started to see each other.

One winter night, he invited me over. Of course, I’m going to go. And so I opened my closet of really tired, old-looking clothes, and I think with this like blast of courage and insanity… Screw it. I’m not going to wear any of these. I’m just going to wear my snow boots – it’s the middle of winter – my snow boots, and I grabbed my old Navy all-weather, camel-colored trench coat. And I threw that on. And I’m like, “Yes! Every man’s dream!”

And I jumped on the M14D bus. And it was empty. And I realized, looking at this empty bus full of empty seats, I cannot sit down. The coat isn’t long enough. And… I’m just going to hold this pole and hope that like this trip goes really quickly.

So I get to his house, and he buzzes me up, and I go up. And I’m thinking, like on the bus, I had lost like all of my courage. And I thought, like, what am I doing? What am I doing? I am not this kind of person. Whatever that means. I’m not. This is not who I am.

And I get to his apartment, and I open his door, and he’s fully clothed, winter jacket on, and he’s lacing up his boots. And he’s like, “You know what? I’m so hungry. Let’s go out to dinner.” And I said, “No, I’m not hungry.” And he said, “Okay, just like, just pizza.” And I was like, “I hate pizza. No.” And he said, “Sushi.” And I was like, “No, I don’t…” And I just couldn’t tell him, like, I just couldn’t tell him what I had done because I was not… I didn’t know what I had done!

And he’s like, “All right, you know what? Bruno…” this, this bartender at the steakhouse where we often went to. He’s like, “Bruno’s at the bar at Strip House. We’re just going to go there. Don’t worry about it. We’re going to have lamb chops.” He knew, like, the secret to my heart was lamb chops. And he said, “Let’s go there.” And I thought, “Oh my god, every time I say no, it gets like worse! Like, pizza to sushi to steak! Like, now it’s going to be forever, and I’m naked!” And… “Okay, let’s go. Let’s just, let’s just go.”

And so we go to Strip House and like, it’s the middle of winter, so the beautiful, lovely, sweet coat check lady is like, “Oh, can I take your coat?” And I was like, “No.” Oh, okay. So we go… Bruno sees us at the bar, and he’s like, “Oh, John, Molly, hey, come on, sit down here, I have your places for you. Molly, take off that stupid coat! It looks like you’re ready to run away!”

And I was like, “Oh my god, if you only knew!” And I thought, “Before, before I sit down, like, this is my chance, this is my chance, I’m just gonna tell him and we’re gonna go. Like, I have to get this over with!” But I couldn’t because I was just too embarrassed. Like, what have I done?

And so we sat down. And Bruno said, “What would you like to drink?” And I was like, “What would get me drunk the fastest so I have the courage to tell him?” And I said, “A martini.” Boom, he makes the martini. It’s down. Gone. And then he’s like, “Wow, okay, would you like something else?” “Yeah, just another martini, another martini. Like, I need to think, I need to think.”

And he makes the martini, and in like the haze of somewhere else, I hear John ordering like three or four courses of something or something. And there’s like a seafood tower involved, and like lamb chops, and truffled creamed spinach, and like amazingness. But I was just trying to think, like, how do I get out of this? How do I tell him? And I just, I can’t get my courage back. The courage that told me like, “Just go naked!” Like, that courage was gone.

And so Bruno’s like, “No, seriously, like, take off your jacket.” And I was like, “You know what? I caught a chill outside. Like, it’s cool, like, I’m fine.” And then, like, to help me, Bruno decided to like turn up the heat in the bar. Oh my god! No, seriously! Okay. So he turned up the heat of the bar. I’m sitting at the bar, there’s like sweat dripping down my face, down into my like old Navy camel-colored all-weather trench coat.

And I just didn’t know what to do. And the lamb chops come out, and I want the lamb chops! And I still don’t have the courage to say it. And finally, John’s like, “Do you want to start with steak or lamb?” And I was like, “You’re talking about steak, and I’m naked! I’m naked! The polyester is now sticking to my body!” And… “We just, we just have to get out of here because I’m naked!”

And he looked at me, and he’s like, “We gotta wrap it up.”

And okay, I know I’m over time, but I have to tell you guys that that was like 11, 12 years ago, whatever. Present day, we now have a three-and-a-half-year-old daughter. And I look at her, and she’s like this demon, like from the moment that she was born, she’s this like tornado in a tiny little thing.

And I look at her, and I think, like, “How do I help mold you into the person you’re supposed to be?” And I realized that when I was saying, like, “I am not this person,” that we don’t have control over who we are and what we’re supposed to be. And least of all, we don’t have control over our kids. But we can be more than we ever imagined.

Thank you.

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A Perfect Life Uprooted – Salima Saxton at The Moth in London

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The Moth has been hosting storytelling events for 20+ years, and the thousands of storytellers who have graced their stages are proof that every story is unique, and that the best stories come from our personal experiences.

In this story told at The Moth London Mainstage on September 28, 2023, Salima Saxton talks about how her (nearly) perfect life was uprooted when her husband had a nervous breakdown, and the changes they entire family made in order to build an even better life.

I’ve encountered a lot of people whose lives were interrupted by an unforeseen event. In this situation it was a mental health issue, but for others it could be a physical health crisis, death in the family, or one of many other scenarios. And quite often these people don’t feel that their story is anything exceptional, not worth sharing on a stage. But I can assure you that there are people out there who will benefit from such stories, so spend a bit of time watching Salima’s talk and thinking about she constructed it. Here are a few of my own observations.

Salima begins her story by taking us to a specific point in time, and it happens to be a day, Valentine’s Day, that we assume would be a happy day. But such is not the case, as the mood turns dark when her husband, Carl, comes into the room. Over the next minute it becomes apparent that Carl is struggling, although we still don’t know any of the details, or the reason why. She has our attention.

Rather than tell us what’s happening, Salima takes a step back in time to share the moment when she first met her husband, and in doing so, we return to a romantic story line, one which culminates in their marriage.

We get a sense of their domesticated life in a shishi neighborhood where their kids attended private school, where they didn’t learn much, which gets a laugh, and thus keeps the tone of her story uplifting at this juncture.

The tone shifts again with her comment about their lives lacking joy, and that brings us back to the opening of the story, to Valentine’s Day, nearing the half way point of the story. Think about how much has been said in 5 1/2 minutes.

In short order their lives are turned upside down in an effort to take care of her husband, and we get a clear sense of Salima’s self-determination to do whatever it takes. We also hear a change in attitude as she “couldn’t give a fuck actually”.

When hearing a well-told story you sometimes hear a brilliant line that defines the topic. In this case, “when your life explodes and it morphs into something far better, the fear evaporates, disappears, distills, just goes into the atmosphere”

With calm returning to their lives, she beautifully brings the story to an end. An impactful personal story connects the audience to the storyteller, while at the same time inspiring us to reflect on our own lives, and what’s really important.

Valentine’s Day. It reminded me that most success is a wiggly line on a grubby piece of graph paper. I used to think of success as tick, tick, tick, ambition, ambition, ambition. Now? Now I think of it as… Finding the people, finding the places that make you feel safe and bring you home.

Transcript

00:00 So, it was Valentine’s Day. My husband Carl came into the sitting room and he closed the door. He was wearing a big thick winter coat even though it was quite mild outside, and he was shivering, he was trembling. I didn’t recognize him.

Something terrible has happened, he said.

00:22 My husband Carl is a coper. He is a man with a plan. If you want someone on your team, pick Carl. He’s an oak tree.

Then he said, I just can’t do this anymore. Whatever I do, it is never enough. He had a business. He has a business. He’d been navigating it through COVID, through Brexit, through all of it.

And I’m embarrassed to admit right now that I just kind of got used to him being stressed all the time. I barely saw it anymore.

And then he added, do you love me? Can you still love me? Because sometimes I just think it would be better if I wasn’t here anymore.

01:11 I met Carl when I was 22 in the waiting room of an audition room for a Bollywood film. Neither of us got the part. I asked him for the time, as a really spurious reason to talk to him, because he was simply the most handsome man I’d ever seen in my life.

On our first date, I asked him if he wanted children over the starter. I cried over the main course. I am a crier. And over dessert, I very optimistically asked him for a second date. Miraculously, he agreed, and six weeks later, he asked me to marry him.

01:56 The following summer, we were married in a London registry office. Me in a red vintage dress, him in an ill-fitting suit. He still looked really handsome. We cobbled together a reception at a pub down the road. A chef friend of ours and made a big chocolate cake, and we bought tons of boxed wine from a cash and carry.

So on my side, my family. There was my dad, very angry because I’d walked myself down the aisle. There were my extended family, the Buddhists, the Amnesty International members, the Liberals, the very earnest guests. On the other side was Carl’s family. They were different.

There was a man called Mickey Four Fingers, whose name really explains the man. There was a group of ex-cons whose gold jewellery competed for attention with their gold teeth. And then there was his dear dementia-ridden mum, Pat. She’d actually been a getaway driver for her naughty brothers in the 80s. She was an amazing woman, but now she just called everybody darling, very, very charmingly, but mainly because she didn’t really know where she was or who any of them were.

So it was a joyous, it was a sad, it was an awkward, it was a stressful occasion. And it made both of us yearn for elders that could be there to hold our hands in such big life events.

03:30 We both wanted to rocket away from our upbringings. Carl, partly for physical safety. Both of us, no, really for physical safety. Both of us for emotional safety. And together we did that. I also had ideas of success from 90s rom-coms and TV series.

You remember, The Party of Five, the O.C.. I had an idea that if I had a kitchen island,  freshly cut flowers, linen napkins and a gardener, like just a weekend one, then somehow the perfect TV family would just walk in.

04:09 So together, Carl and I did actually do some of that. We lived in the shishi neighborhood. I had a tiny dog that I carried under my arm, Raymond, because he couldn’t really walk very far. And our three kids, they went to a progressive private school where they called the teachers by their first name, didn’t wear uniform, and didn’t learn so much. But they were happy in their early years, at least.

I hadn’t had this kind of education, by the way. I’d been to a state school. I’d ended up at Cambridge. I’d really been like a happy geek at school. And sometimes Carl and I wondered what we were doing, kind of pushing ourselves to such an extent to make sure that our kids went to that kind of school. I think it was another idea of ours to be safe, to be successful.

But there wasn’t much joy in all of this, you know. We were just busy, frantically scrabbling up this hill all the time. Yeah, we had the kitchen island, we did have linen napkins, but they were grubby and they were mainly kept in the back of the kitchen cupboard.

So that Valentine’s evening, when Carl said to me he couldn’t live like this anymore, it cut through all of it. He kept saying to me, do you love me? Can you still love me? Do you love me?

And I kept saying, you are loved. Oh my God, you’re so loved. I felt angry. I felt angry at him. I felt angry at me. How could we have got this so wrong that the boy in the ill-fitting suit was asking me whether I still loved him?

I phoned our family doctor who said that she thought Carl was having a breakdown and that he needed medication and respite immediately. I phoned a friend whose husband had had a breakdown a few years earlier. And I remember standing on the front lawn in my pajamas. It was dark. I was freezing cold. And I was kind of whispering into the phone so my kids wouldn’t hear, so the neighbors wouldn’t hear. I mean, who cares?

So I realized that things had to change really quickly. This life of ours that we had created was a weight around us, and Carl in particular was gasping at the surface for air. I had to change things immediately. I knew it. So I told Carl that.

I said that we were going to move to my childhood home, that we were going to take the kids out of the school and we were going to do things very differently, and look after him. He’d always looked after us.

So I did that. It was a bit like triage, I suppose. I gave notice to the school. I started to pack up the house. And then I would drive out of London with my car filled to the brim to set up my kids’ bedrooms in advance of us moving. I would do that at that end. I would go to the tip, visit schools, and then drive home to London sobbing.

07:30 I felt like I’d… I’d just taken a shrinking pill. I felt like everyone in London with their game faces was saying, who did you think you were trying to live this big life? I felt ashamed. I felt ashamed for feeling ashamed. I remember saying to people, oh, please don’t tell them because I think it would make really good gossip. But then there are the people, and there are the moments that stand out for me.

There was the friend that flew across the ocean with squish mellows for my children and words for me saying, we have got this. We have got this. There were the class mums who organized my son’s birthday party. There was the woman in the playground who squeezed my hands because she could see I was feeling really wobbly.

All those signs of kindness had actually always been there, but I’d been too busy looking for other things. So for about 13 weeks, I lived on coffee, sausage rolls, and adrenaline, and by that April my kids were in their new school, Carl was beginning to resurface, and I could kind of exhale again.

That February 14th took the sheen off everything. I couldn’t give a fuck. Can I swear? I don’t know. I couldn’t care less about… I couldn’t give a fuck actually. About appearances suddenly. I just couldn’t. I felt like I’d woken up.

We lost the Deliveroo. We lost complicated cupcake flavors. We lost hotel people bar watching, which I love. We lost the perfect butter chicken tully. Oh, and we lost 24-hour access to buttons, chocolate buttons and Pringles. We lost the people for whom a postcode matters. Most surprisingly of all, we lost the fear.

Because, you know, when your life explodes and it morphs into something far better, the fear evaporates, disappears, distills, just goes into the atmosphere. I’m not scared anymore. There’s just like a little firefly of fear. And that’s to do with the health of the people that I love.

10:16 There was an afternoon last summer. I was sitting in the garden in the farmhouse that we now live in. And it was sunny. And I was watching my husband and my son tear up the lawn on the ride-on mower. There were my two girls, and they were leading their friend’s horse, Stan, to get a bowl of water just inside the front door.

And there was our cat, Tigger, failing to catch a mouse in the hedgerow. Tigger was an indoor cat, actually, in London. But now, well, gone is this skittish creature whose mood you could never predict. Instead, we have a creature that leaps up trees, parties all night, purrs by the fire. She knows exactly who she is. I think much like all of us.

11:10 Valentine’s Day. It reminded me that most success is a wiggly line on a grubby piece of graph paper. I used to think of success as tick, tick, tick, ambition, ambition, ambition. Now? Now I think of it as… Finding the people, finding the places that make you feel safe and bring you home.

Thanks.

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David Litt on The Moth Mainstage at Royce Hall

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The Moth has been hosting storytelling events for 20+ years, and the thousands of storytellers who have graced their stages are proof that every story is unique, and that the best stories come from our personal experiences.

In this story, as told by David Litt, we hear a humorous tale about what it’s like to work in the White House, and to finally meet the President of the United States.

The details of the experience, both the settings and the conversations, give us a sense of what it must have felt like to work in the White House. But in a normal context that we can all relate to, it is also about wanting to excel in your career, while also dealing with imposter syndrome. We’ve all made blunders in our life, and looking back they can be much funnier than they were in the moment. You may have a story about an event that didn’t work as planned, but in hindsight, makes you laugh.

Transcript

In 2008 I was one of those young people who became obsessed with Barack Obama. I was a senior in college at the time, and after I graduated I drove out to Ohio, and I worked on his campaign, and after the campaign I drove to Washington because – hope and change.

And two years later, the White House actually hired me. They hired me to write speeches. And people would hear about my new job and they would say, ‘wow, you must be really good’, and I’d say, ‘I don’t know, I hope so’. And they thought I was pretending to be humble but I was entirely sincere.

It’s not that I didn’t think I had any talent whatsoever, it’s just that I knew there are 300 million people in America, and some of them are babies, but a lot of them are adults, and it just seemed unlikely that I was the best ‘we the people’ could do. So everyday I walked through the gates of the White House absolutely sure somebody had made a mistake.

And while this was going on my friends and family were equally sure they now had direct access to the President of the United States. Like I’m sitting in my White House office, and I get a text from my sister Rebecca, and it says ‘how come the Department of Homeland Security doesn’t have a mailing address?’

Now even in the best of circumstances this is a disturbing question to get from a family member, but if you work in the White House you want to know the answer to this kind of stuff, and I have no idea, and it’s like this with everything.

I mean suddenly everyone has a law that only I can get through Congress. Everybody has something wrong with Obamacare that I need to know about. Mostly, everybody has the same question. They all want to know – have you met him yet, have you met Obama yet – and I say no, I haven’t met him yet, and I get this look, and it’s a look I soon learn means, you may be 24 years old and working at the White House, but you’re still a disappointment to your family and friends. And I have to say I totally get it.

I mean everybody thinks that the White House is either like the TV show The West Wing where everyone’s hanging out with the President, or it’s like the TV show Scandal, where everyone’s having sex with the President. But if you’re looking for a Hollywood analogy, the White House is like the Death Star. What I mean by that is just that there’s thousands of people, they run around the hallways, they’re all just trying to make sure their little bit of their job works well.

And just because Darth Vader is the public face of the organization it doesn’t mean that every stormtrooper gets personal one-on-one time. So I try to explain this whole Death Star thing, and it doesn’t work, I still get that disappointed look. And frankly, nobody’s more disappointed than I am. I mean, nobody wants me to meet the president more than me. And there’s two reasons for this.

The first is kind of corny, but it’s true. I moved to Washington because I thought, I don’t know what it is, but there must be something I can do for my country. I want to be the kind of person where the President of the United States is just a little bit better at his job because I’m in the room.

And the second reason is I would really like Barack Obama and I to become best friends. And now I’m not saying that every White House staffer imagined that they would become buddies with the president. I’m just saying that none of us ruled it out. Like you would hear these stories you know somebody got a fist bump in the hallway, or someone else got invited up to play cards on Air Force One. And the moral was always the same. Any moment could be the moment that changes your life forever.

Now my first chance at a life-changing moment came in November 2011 when I was asked to write the Thanksgiving video address. I will say up front, if state of the union is all the way on one end of the presidential speechwriting spectrum, happy Thanksgiving America is kinda on the other side.

But as far as I was concerned, this was the most important set of words Barack Obama would ever say, and so I threw myself into this. I mean, I wrote, and I rewrote, and I made edits, and then I made edits to the edits, and finally the day of the taping came.

And I went to the diplomatic room which is one of the most beautiful rooms in the White House. It has this wraparound mural of 19th century American life. And the advice I always got was, you have to act like you’ve been there before. So I’m standing there, trying to act like I’ve been there before, and the woman behind the camera takes one look at me and goes, ‘this is your first time here isn’t it’, and I crack immediately. I’m just like, ‘yes I have never been here before, please help me.’

And she says, ‘don’t worry.’ She explains her name is Hope Hall, she films the president all the time, she’s gonna take care of everything. All I have to do is wait. So I wait, and I wait, and I wait, and I wait. And just when I’m wondering is this whole thing a nightmare, is it a practical joke, somebody gets an email on their blackberry, and they say, ‘okay he’s moving’, and then there’s kind of a crackling in the air, and a minute later President Obama enters the room.

And he’s standing up, so we all stand up. And he sits down, so we all sit down. And he looks at the camera to start taping when Hope stops him, and she says, ‘actually, Mr. President this is David. This is the first video he’s ever written for you’, and President Obama looks at me, and he says, ‘Oh, how’s it going David?’

I had exactly one thought in that moment. I did not realize we were going to have to answer questions. And I have literally no idea what I said after that. I mean, I actually blacked out. Like I went home for Thanksgiving and my family was like, ‘so have you met him yet?’

And I was like, ‘yeah.’

And they were like, ‘what did he say.’

I was like ‘how’s it going?’

And they were like, ‘what did you say.’

And I was like, ‘I don’t know, I blacked out.’

And I get that disappointed look. And I can’t blame anybody, because if I’m gonna be the kind of person who makes the president a little bit better at his job when I’m in the room, I am going to have to deal with questions more complicated than how’s it going.

And at the moment there’s no indication that I can do it. But I make a promise to myself. I say, if I ever get another shot at a life-changing moment I am not gonna let myself down. And I didn’t know if it would ever happen for me, but in fact, it happened just a couple weeks later.

I was sitting in my office. I got a phone call from the chief speechwriter at the time, a guy named Jon Favreau, and he called me up, and he said ‘Betty White is turning 90 years old, and NBC is doing this special where different famous people wish her a happy birthday in these 30-second skits, and you’re pretty funny, and no one else wants to do it. Want to give it a shot?’

And I said, ‘absolutely.’ And again, I understand the State of the Union is over here, and happy birthday Betty White is over there, but this was my Gettysburg Address. And so we had one week to make it perfect.

We started off. John and I came up with a joke for the president. We were gonna have him fill out a birthday card, and then while he was filling it out you would hear his voice on a voiceover say, ‘Dear Betty ,you’re so young and full of life I can’t believe you’re turning 90. In fact, I don’t believe it. Please send a copy of your long-form birth certificate to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, Washington, DC.’

So we feel good about the joke ,but we still need a birthday card. So one day that week I go to CVS near the White House. It’s a half block away. I grab a birthday card that I think it’s gonna be pretty good. And then right when I’m about to leave, I realize we don’t actually need one birthday card, we need two identical birthday cards, because we have two different camera angles.

We don’t want anyone to know that the president has already written his birthday greeting. And I think, yes, this is how White House staffers are supposed to feel. I mean, I’ve saved the day. And so I walk back to that to that Hallmark rack and I get an identical card. And I ring it up, and I go back to my office, and I’m feeling really good.

And then the last thing we need, we need some way to end the video. And so what I come up with is, we’re gonna have the President put in headphones, and then he’ll listen to the theme song from the Golden Girls, which is Betty White’s most popular show.

So I find the perfect pair of headphones that go over the ear, they look great on camera, and I listen to the Golden Girls theme song on repeat just to get in the mood. And then finally, on Friday I get the call. Come on over. No here’s what they don’t tell you about having a meeting in the Oval Office.

When you have a meeting in the Oval Office, you do not just walk into the Oval Office. The first thing you do, you wait in this kind of windowless chamber. It’s a little like a doctor’s office, except instead of last year’s Marie Claire magazine, they have priceless pieces of American art.

And instead of a receptionist they have a man with a gun who in a worst case scenario is legally obligated to kill you. It turns out this little room is the perfect place to second-guess every life choice you have ever made. And so I’m sitting there with Hope Hall, the videographer, and I’m just thinking, do I remember how to explain the joke, are both of the birthday cards in there.

I check my pants pocket. Are the headphones still there. Are the headphones still there. Are the headphones still there. I’m on the verge of a nervous breakdown when finally one of the president’s aides pokes her head out and says, ‘okay he’s ready for you go on in.’ To my credit, the first time I entered the Oval Office, I do not black out.

I can remember this very clearly. Right in front of me, I can see a painting of the Statue of Liberty that was done by Norman Rockwell that someone has told me is valued at 12 million dollars. And behind me, out of the corner of my eye, I could see the Emancipation Proclamation. Not a photocopy of the Emancipation Proclamation. The Emancipation Proclamation.

And I can feel the message that this document is sending through the room. And that message is, ‘I’m here ’cause I freed the slaves, what are you doing here?’ And I look across the desk at the President, and I realize he may also be wondering what I’m doing here. But I feel great. I mean, I’ve spent an entire week just practicing how to explain this one joke to the President.

So I step up. I look at him. And I open my mouth. And what comes out is like I’m trying to ask for directions but in Spanish. Like the nouns and the verbs are there but there’s nothing in between them. I just say, ‘Betty White, video, NBC very funny, everybody laughs, está bien.’

And the President gives me kind of a confused look, and Hope, the videographer, jumps in and explains everything and rescues me, but I’m a little concerned, because I am here to show the President how professional I am, and in my professional opinion, we are not off to a great start.

Still, I’m not that worried, because I have that second birthday card in my pocket. And so I’m gonna get a chance to show President Obama how I saved the day. And as soon as Hope is finished filming, even I am surprised by how confident I sound when I walk up to the desk and I put my hand down and I say, Mr. President, I’m gonna need to take that birthday card and replace it with this identical birthday card because we don’t want anyone to know you’ve already written your birthday greeting.

And President Obama looks up at me and he says, ‘we’re filming this from all the way across the room?’

And I say, ‘yes, that’s right.’

And he says, ‘so no one’s gonna see the inside of the card.’

And I say, ‘yes, that’s right.’

And he says, ‘so I can just pretend to write in the card? We don’t actually need another one?’

And I say, ‘yes, that’s right.’

And I put the card back in my pocket, and it’s strike two. But I’m not giving up yet, because I made that promise to myself, and besides, I really do feel good about the the ending with the headphones. And so the moment Hope is done filming her second camera angle I walk back up to the President, and I reach into my pocket, and I pull out what looks like a hairball made out of wires.

I don’t really know what happened. I guess somewhere in that waiting room I have just worried this thing into a hopeless tangle. And now I don’t know what to do, so I just hand the entire thing to the President the United States. Now, if you work in the White House, you will hear the phrase, there is no commodity on earth more valuable than a President’s time. Which I always thought was a cliche, until, I watched Barack Obama, untangle headphones, for 30 seconds, while looking directly at me.

And he untangles and untangles, and when he finishes he looks at Hope and just goes, ‘shoddy advanced work.’ And he does it in this way that lets you know that A. he’s only joking, and B. he is not even a tiny bit joking. And I’ll tell you, my heart just sinks. I mean, this was my third chance to make a second first impression on the President, and I let myself down. And all I want to do is get out of there.

And President Obama says something like, well would it be funnier if I bob my head in time to the music. And I say, ‘yeah that would be funnier’, but my heart isn’t in it. I mean, I know I don’t belong there, and the president looks into the camera to tape this final scene, and then suddenly he stops, and he says, ‘well wait a second, if I’m going to bob my head in time to the music, I need to know how the music goes.’

Does anyone here know the Golden Girls theme song? And President Obama looks at Hope. And Hope doesn’t say anything. So I look at Hope, and Hope doesn’t say anything. So President Obama looks at me. And suddenly I know exactly what I can do for my country.

And so I’m standing there in the Oval Office, with the Emancipation Proclamation right behind them, and I look our commander-in-chief in the eye, and I say, ‘bump bump bump bump thank you for being a friend, bump bump bump bump travel down the road and back again, something, something, you’re a pal and a confidant bump bump bump.’ But he looks kind of amused, so I keep going. So I’m like, ‘if you threw a party invited everyone you knew’, and that’s when he gives me a look that’s like okay, President’s time.

But it works.’ President Obama bobs his head in time to the music and Betty White gets her card, and NBC gets their special, and I leave the Oval Office that day with my head held high knowing that the President of the United States was just a tiny bit better at his job because I was in the room.

And people still ask me after that, they still say, have you met him yet, have you met Obama yet?’ And I can finally say, ‘yeah actually I have’, and then just to myself I think, not to brag or anything, but technically, I’m thankful he’s a friend.

Thank you very much.

[Note: all comments are my opinions, not those of the speaker, or The Moth or anyone else on the planet. In my view, every story is unique, as is every interpretation of that story. The sole purpose of these posts is to inspire storytellers to become better storylisteners and to think about how their stories can become more impactful.]

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Journey Jamison on The Moth Mainstage at the BAM Harvey Theater

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The Moth has been hosting storytelling events for 20+ years, and the thousands of storytellers who have graced their stages are proof that every story is unique, and that the best stories come from our personal experiences.

In this story, as told by Journey Jamison, we are taken into a scene that few of have ever experienced, especially at the age of 15. But in a broader sense, I’ve heard many personal stories about how people reacted during an emergency, and you may have such a story to tell. The details that Journey provides bring audience members into her experience as the scene plays out.

But there’s also a larger story at play here, as Journey realizes how her training prepared her for that situation, and in turn, she was able to provide that same training to the victim’s family, thus bringing that wisdom full circle. Think about how story worthy experiences from your life contain such a circular narrative.

Transcript

When I was nine years old, my best friend died. We’d spent the entire day together at an amusement park and she’d been struggling to breathe. So when we got home her dad tried to get her as much help as she could, but it just wasn’t enough, and at three o’clock that morning, she died of an asthma attack.

It was always really hard for me to deal with because I’d helped her with her asthma before, and I just felt like I could have done something. So five years later, when my mother and I found ourselves at a grassroot gunshot wound first aid training, I was immediately intrigued. Now, some of you might be thinking, “Gunshot wound first aid, what?”

But I’m from Chicago, and the lack of resources in our communities makes that training so much more important. We don’t have any trauma centers on the South Side of Chicago where I’m from. So I knew the importance of this training and I paid attention. I sunk my teeth in, I got trained two months later, and I’ve been doing workshops all over the city. Yeah, I know how to apply an occlusive dressing with a credit card, but I was still just a regular teenager.

And so, the following summer, I was coming home from my very first day. I come home, I turn on the TV, I crank up the AC, just like any other day, and then I hear it. Back to back gunshots that sounded like they were right next to me, just back to back, to back. And I just thought to myself, “Is this real? Is this serious?”

You hear all the time about gun violence in Chicago, but I’d never come face to face with it like that before. So I jump in gear. I know that I have this training that I can help people, but I know that the first step to being a first aid responder is knowing that the scene is safe and prioritizing my own safety.

So I glanced out the window, and I’m staring almost like I can see through the window, and I’m like, “What is going on?” I’m seeing people who are kind of running away from a gas station and towards my apartment complex. And I knew I had the tools to help. And I never imagined going outside and putting myself in danger to help anybody.

But it turns out that I didn’t have to, because seconds later, my back door flies open, and a young man, 19 years old, comes in holding his neck. It’s bleeding. And he’s just saying over and over again, “I’ve been shot, can you help me, can you help me?” And without hesitation I just said, “Yes.”

And from that moment, it was autopilot. I lay him down on the floor. I’m asking him questions about who he is. I asked him first, “Can I call 911 for you?” ‘Cause we emphasize that a lot in our first aid trainings. That you had to ask for consent for people because they’re their own person, bodily autonomy.

So I asked him, he says, “Yes.” I get on the phone with the operator. They’re giving me a bit of a hard time, but I put my feelings aside and prioritize the safety of the wounded. They say they’re sending a person on the way. I say thank you. I go back to Peta. I’m asking him more questions about who he is, I want him to feel safe.

He tells me where he’s from – the same apartment complex that I’m from – Oakwood Shores. He tells me he wants to go to college, that he’s 19, that he’s confused. And then I kind of realize I’m taking this all in. I’m 15 years old. I’m home alone with a man who’s been shot in the neck, and I’m giving him first aid. I should probably call my mom.

So I take out my phone, and I guess you can call it a mother’s intuition, because as soon as I am about the press call, my phone rings. It’s my mom.

She’s like, “Hi Journey.”

I’m like, “Hi mom.”

She’s like, “What’s up?”

I’m like, “Mom, you are not going to believe this. There’s a man, he’s in my house, fire, gunshot wound. He’s on the floor, I’m giving him first aid.”

She’s like, “Are you serious?”

I’m like, “No mom, why would I lie about this?”

She’s like, “Okay, okay, okay.”

And I can hear the car unlocking, and the car starting up, and I’m like, “Okay, she’s on her way, good.”

So for a second there, it’s just me and Peta, and I’m trying to examine exactly what is happening. He has two wounds. An entrance wound and an exit wound. The bullet went through his neck and up through his jaw. So I’m trying to apply pressure on both sides to get his blood to clot so the bleeding can slow down.

A few seconds later, my mom comes. And you would think that she might be like, kind of hysterical, kind of crazy, but she’s not, because she’d been through the training too. And for a few moments, it’s calm. Peta is calming down, his blood is starting to clot, the bleeding is not so drastic, and it’s calm. And then somehow, some way, people start to flood into my house. Bystanders, I guess, who had seen what was going on.

And my mom, she does a great job at keeping Peta’s privacy. Keeping questions away from him so that he’s not getting more stressed out – shout out to my mom, she’s in the audience – and so we’re just kind of juggling this thing, me and my mom, we’re doing this together, I’m taking care of Peta’s body, she’s taking care of Peta’s surroundings, and then the police come.

And I feel like it’s not a secret that black and brown people are not trusting of law enforcement, quite frankly, it just makes us anxious. And my mom, she didn’t want that kind of energy in our house, she was trying to persuade them like, “There’s no crime scene here. Can you wait outside? It’s very crammed in our apartment.”

But eventually she gave up her battle when they threatened to arrest her. And so eight police officers crowd into our tiny apartment, just watching me apply pressure to this young man. And after the police come which, after the police come, after my mom gets there, the fire department finally gets there. Not the ambulance, but the fire department. So that just gives you a glimpse of what healthcare is like in Chicago. The ambulances don’t really come to our communities that fast.

So the fireman gets there and he’s coming in to check Peta’s vitals and I have my hands over his neck, and he says, “You need to take your hand away.” And I was so overwhelmed and I just had all these feelings of doubt and I just reluctantly pulled my hand away, and just as I thought would, he starts bleeding again.

And I’m just looking at the guy like And then another fire man comes in and he says, “Actually she needs to put her hand back there, you’re doing a good job. And I looked at him and I said, “Okay, I knew it.”

So I am continuing to apply pressure and keep my hand on his wound while they’re taking his vitals and preparing him to get in the ambulance. So then, a few, maybe five or six minutes later, the ambulance does come. They take him on a gurney. They take him away. And luckily my mom was able to get some information from his mentor who was there, so we could follow up with him later.

So my mom, she rushes all these people out of our house, and I go outside, and it’s so chaotic. The ambulance is there, the police is there, my neighborhood is there, the news station is there, and they’re kind of looking to me like this “Shero,” and I’m kind of very overwhelmed, and so instead of fielding questions, I took my story with me, and my experience with me, and I come back inside. I closed the door, I wash my hands, I grab my cell phone and my keys, and me and my mom get in the car. I zone out and I’m just replaying in my mind what just happened.

Then I snap out of my trance, and the car stops, and we’re at the beach. And I’m just like, “Oh my God, what is going on?” And she looks at me and she’s like, “Come on,” and I’m like, “Okay,” and we proceed to join a group of women on the sand doing yoga. And my mom just looks at me in her tree position, and she goes, “Self care.” And I was like, “Okay,” and I was just so grateful, that I had a mom who emphasized that a lot when I was growing up, and that I had the opportunity to really process what just happened in my life.

So, that happened, and then I resumed my life as a normal teenager. I go to camp. Conflict resolution camp, by the way. But I go to camp. I go to camp in Maine. And then I come back, and I’m in the car with my mom and she’s like, “Hey, I got in touch with Peta’s family, and, you know, he thinks you saved his life.”

And I never thought about it like that. For me, I was just in the right place, at the right time, with the right information, and I did the right thing. But to him, I saved his life. So that’s what it was.

So few days later, I see him. I visited him and I said, “Hey, look I know it was really cool that I was able to help you, but I was trained to do that, and I was equipped with the right tools, so how cool would it be if you were equipped with the same tools, and you can help your mom, or your brother.

And he’s like, “That sounds pretty interesting.”

And I’m like, “So do you want me to like, I can set up a training. I can set up a workshop. I’ll come to you.”

He’s like, “Aight, bet.”

So about two or three months later, we were able to train his whole entire family of about like 25 people ranging from three years old to 60 years old. And we trained his whole family in his apartment, and it was the most empowering thing for me.

And maybe some of you are saying, “Oh, I’m so sorry, this young girl had to go through that.” But it’s not something I feel embarrassed about or sad about. It was the most changing thing that I’ve ever been through. And it’s shown me the circle of change. You know, you go to school, and you learn about stories, and you learn about how there’s a plot, and that plot is like a hill, it starts the beginning, and then the rising action, and the climax, the falling action, and then the resolution.

But change, instead of it being a hill, it’s like a circle. And me training his family was this entire experience coming full circle, because I started at a training just like that one. And so maybe he could do something like I did, or I could do more things, but it was so empowering for me as a 15 year old girl to have that kind of experience.

So it changed my life for the better, and it showed me that I can change the world if I wanted to. And I guess it just kind of made me feel like I didn’t have to be afraid anymore of where I’m from and my community. I didn’t have to fear walking outside because I was empowered with the tools that I had. Sorry guys. And I thought about it, and I hear all the time, “Children are the future.”

And I’ll tell you guys, I’m a child, I’m a teenager, and it’s super intimidating. You know it’s like 400 years of slavery, an eternity of sexism, it’s intense, and you guys are like, and you guys are like, “It’s you, it’s you,” and I’m like, “Oh my God,” but this experience showed me that I don’t have to be the future, because I can be right now.

Thank you.

[Note: all comments are my opinions, not those of the speaker, or The Moth or anyone else on the planet. In my view, every story is unique, as is every interpretation of that story. The sole purpose of these posts is to inspire storytellers to become better storylisteners and to think about how their stories can become more impactful.]

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