The Moth Radio Hour: Follies of Youth

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From BRX, this is the Moth Radio Hour.

I'm your host, Jay Allison, producer of this radio show.

Childhood and teenagehood are times when all decisions feel significant.

But with our still developing brains, we may not yet yet be the greatest at making those decisions.

In today's episode, we explore the follies of youth: naivete,

impulsive actions, and general wackiness.

Our first teller, Trevor Norse, told his story at a moth grand slam in Louisville, where we partner with WFPL, a Louisville public media station.

From the Baumhard Theater, here's Trevor.

Three of us went into the cave that day.

Yeah, I get a little fuzzy on details, but I know Jamie was there because he's the one that threw the rock.

And I know my friend Terry was there because he kept going on about his watch.

My friend Terry was a techie before that was really a thing.

And he had just gotten this new watch.

Timex had come out with this Indiglow watch line.

And this watch had this new cool feature.

You hit a button and it lit up this fluorescent bluish green color.

And a funny thing, I told some kids this story and they all wanted to know, did the watch have GPS or

could you play games on the watch?

No, it was the 80s.

The watch lit up.

That's what it did.

They weren't impressed,

but we thought it was cool.

And since I was the only one who had been into the cave before with the older kids, I had the flashlight and I led the way.

Now, the the entrance to the cave was a rite of passage all on its own.

It was less than 30 inches in diameter.

It was a 40-foot claustrophobic crawl that not everybody could make.

But for those who did, it was worth it.

Because it then opened up into this massive ballroom-sized cavern, and it had all these connecting tunnels that led to other caverns.

There was a steep drop-off section with a shallow ledge that forced you to kind of hug the wall as you maneuvered across.

There was even an underground river.

And we had made it just about that far when we started to hear noises.

We heard these squeaking, scratching, rustling noises.

So I shined my light

towards the sound and the ceiling.

And there were bats.

There were 50 bats, 100 bats.

There could have been a thousand bats

hanging from the top of that cave.

And that's when Jamie threw the rock.

now I don't know if Jamie actually hit a bat but he might as well have because those bats got pissed

and those bats descended into that cavern like a big black bat tornado and I don't know where I got the thought I don't know if I read it in a book or if I heard it in a movie, but my only thought was that bats attack the hair of the head.

And so I fell to the ground and I threw my hands up to protect my head.

head and somewhere in the midst of all of that bat frenzy attack yelling screaming calamity and commotion

I dropped the flashlight

it went out and it was dark it was pitch black jet black it was deathly black

now apart from being home to some of the the most magnificent cave systems in the world, a lesser known fact about south central Kentucky is that it's also full of ghosts.

The ghost of a well-to-do southern debutant who, in her vanity and anger, cursed the sky and God above, and was struck down by lightning.

The ghost of a freed slave who was killed in a clearing at the end of a dirt road in the old county.

On one of my earlier forays into the cave, the older kids had told me another ghost story.

They told me a story about an awkward shy boy named Lonnie who was lured into the cave by some of the older kids of his day.

Kids who played a prank, a prank that went tragically wrong.

And according to the legend, Lonnie never made it out of that cave.

And it was right then, with my head full of ghost stories, that something appeared before me there in the darkness.

I seen a face floating there in the darkness, and I was frozen stiff.

And I reeled back in shock when the face spoke and what the face said was,

you dropped the flashlight in the river.

I had three reactions, the first of which was confusion, followed quickly by realization and relief.

I was relieved when I realized that the face that I saw there floating in the darkness was not the face of the ghostly face of a boy named Lonnie,

but the face of my friend Terry, illuminated by the glow of the In the Glow Watch.

It would be eight years before I would become a soldier in the United States Army and get the kind of night navigation training

I could have used that day.

But I'd get a crash course.

Because the light of the watch only allowed us to see a few feet in front of us, so so we were forced to crawl most of the way, clutching tightly to each other's belt loops, and we encountered several creepy crawlers, and it took us twice as long to get out as it did to get in.

But we were able to find our way out of the darkness by the light of the End of Glow Watch.

And our adventures didn't end there at the cave.

There would be many more close calls and narrow escapes, but somehow we managed to survive those restless and reckless southern Kentucky summers.

And I don't know if there ever really was a boy named Lonnie, but if there was,

I hope he found his guiding light as well.

Thank you.

That was Trevor Norse.

Trevor works as a tree climbing arborist using skills he honed as a kid growing up in South Kentucky, scaling green silos and climbing the cottonwood trees that line the muddy banks of the Ohio River.

With a reputation as a snappy dresser, Trevor has worn many hats, literally and figuratively, from being a paratrooper in the U.S.

Army to a welder in a shipyard and a forestry firefighter.

Next up, the cutthroat world of children's pickup baseball.

Storyteller Susan Rohde told this at one of our Open Mic Story Slam competitions in Chicago, where we partner with public radio station WBEZ.

Here's Susan live at the mall.

So I was always

the last picked on the sports teams.

Always.

I don't tell you this to garner sympathy, so I win tonight.

It was just a fact.

I was short, a little bit heavy, and my mom used to cut my bangs so they looked like the skyline of Chicago.

And I only had one eyebrow that went straight across, and I wasn't very athletic.

So

I actually would not have been allowed in the vacant lot to to even compete if it weren't for my older sister, who had some status with the cool kids.

So I got in, but even my sister didn't want me on her team.

So just whoever was stuck with me.

So it was a Saturday and we were playing wiffle ball.

And it was my turn to bat.

And I hated my turn to bat because the spotlight is on my incompetence.

And

I was wondering, like, why do I put myself through this but I did so I'm ready to bat and the pitch comes towards me and I swing and there was this thwack

this loud sound and the ball soared over everybody's head and my eyebrows shot up

and I saw the ball

roll to the back of the vacant lot

and my team is screaming, Run!

So I ran, I ran to first, and I made it, and they said, Keep running.

So I kept running, and I made it to second base, standing up, no problem.

And I was beside myself.

I'm not sure I'd ever hit a ball, let alone a fly double stand up.

I am there.

So thank you.

Thank you.

So while I'm waiting for the next batter, I have this fantasy in my head of my teammates like hoisting me onto their shoulders and carrying me out of the vacant lot to this podium they had just built for me to receive my award.

And I am so lost in my fantasy that I don't notice the next batter who hits a high fly toward second

where I step off the base and I caught it.

Never.

I was beside myself.

I hit a double.

I caught a fly ball.

Surely I am in a league of my own.

And I am so excited until I hear this laughing and the other team is clearly laughing at me.

And my team is so mad, so angry.

And there is this fight breaking out over whether that should count as one or two out

because those rules have not been written yet in baseball.

So while the two teams fought this out, I kind of sulked out of the vacant lot, fully understanding the thrill of victory and the agony of defeat.

Susan Rohde earned a bachelor's degree from Northwestern University at age 35.

After that, she says she knew she could do anything, including careers in both professional development and clinical research and earning two graduate degrees.

She is most proud of the family that she and her husband created.

as foster parents for 20 plus years.

Susan is a four-time Moth Story Slam champion.

She also teaches storytelling at McHenry Community College and can be seen at various storytelling shows around Chicago.

We asked Susan for an update on her story, and she said,

still not good at sports.

In a moment, teenage rebellion, bike jumps, and the important responsibilities of a camp counselor.

The Moth Radio Hour is produced by Atlantic Public Media in Woods Hole, Massachusetts, and presented by PRX.

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This is the Moth Radio Hour from PRX.

I'm Jay Allison.

In this episode, we're talking about the misadventures that go along with being young.

Our next story takes place in a setting legendary for youthful hijinks, Summer Camp.

From our Philadelphia Story Slam, here's Martha Cooney.

The summer after I graduated from high school, I started working at this overnight camp.

It was a Catholic camp in the Pennsylvania woods, and I really wanted to win rookie of the year my first year.

This was a time when health and safety standards were really sort of open-ended,

we had all these theme weeks.

For Halloween week, the counselors got into costumes, we filled tube socks with flour, and went around just pummeling the shit out of the campers.

For Christmas week, the local fire company came and they pumped like three feet of the foam, the toxic forever chemical foam, onto the grass for snow.

300 campers were in.

It was a free-for-all, breaking ankles, eyes are burning.

So great.

So Monday morning of Olympic week, Dave, one of the 20-somethings who ran the camp, approached me.

Dave was a former pro-rugby player from Scotland, and he used to wear his high-cut scrum shorts around camp, like basically the same coverage as a Speedo.

And he came up to me and said, Martha, Would you carry the torch for opening ceremonies tonight?

And this was a huge deal for me because I was new to camp.

I really wanted to be accepted.

I hadn't done anything yet where I would be in the spotlight.

So stakes were high and I was like, yeah, I will carry the torch.

The other torch runner was Jonathan from Archery.

He was a really quiet, really nice priest in training.

Because the archdiocese would sometimes send seminarians to help out for the summer.

There was this other guy who came like every year for one week, and he had great hair, but he was always a little bit drunk.

So, Monday night of opening ceremonies, the entire camp, 300 kids, they process up to the colors field.

That's what we call the flagpole field.

And they all have their flags of nations and their noisemakers, and they line up.

I'm ready.

I have my sneakers on, and I go to the torch handoff spot by the basketball courts.

The bullhorn sounds.

Chariots of fire starts playing from the speakers.

The whole camp turns and looks at me.

Jonathan from Archery emerges from the woods.

Now when Dave said Olympic torch,

I thought

paper towel tube,

red and orange tissue paper, glitter.

Jonathan from archery was carrying a branch that had been wrapped in a rag, doused in gasoline, and set on fire.

He's running toward me.

The flame is like two feet wide.

It's hot.

Smoke.

It's spitting sparks like a piece of furniture from Satan's living room.

He's got a panicked look on his face.

There's sweat dripping from his head.

He's like, take it, take it.

I don't want to take this, but Everything is riding on this.

This is my initiation into camp.

The whole camp is waiting.

So I reach through the smoke and I grab the end of the stick that is not on fire and I think if I hold it lengthways like a tennis player doing a forearm I'll be fine.

The flame runs down the stick onto my hand.

My hand is on fire.

I drop the flaming stick into the hot July grass.

Jonathan from Archery does not have time for this.

He gets a look of cold steel in his eyes like he's about to deliver a baby and he goes in.

He reaches through the fire, grabs a branch, and runs to to the colors field like the devil is after him.

300 campers part like the Red Sea.

He goes through, up the ladder, into the silver bowl at the top.

He drops the flaming Olympic torch, getting the glory that should have been mine while I stand frozen in the handoff spot.

Ten minutes later, Jonathan from Archery and I are both in the camp infirmary, and Dave is wrapping up our wounds.

He's burned all the hair off of his arms.

My hand is crispy.

Dave says, you were on fire and you didn't let go.

Why did you not let go?

And I didn't say anything because you remember, I did.

Years later, I asked Dave, how did you decide who to pick for these important things like running the Olympic torch?

And he said, well, my job was risk and stupidity mitigation.

So I tried to pick someone who wouldn't do something foolish and fuck it up.

Well, that summer, Jonathan won, Always Willing to Volunteer.

Dave won Best Legs.

And I won Rookie of the Year.

Martha Cooney is a writer and comedian from Philadelphia.

She's the author of the essay collection, Walk Me Through Your Resume, and writes the monthly humor letter, Yo, from Martha Cooney.

Next up, what would teenagehood be like without a little rebellion?

Yusra Ghazi told this story at a Grand Slam in Washington, D.C., where we're supported by public radio station WAMU.

Here's Yusra.

I'm the nerdiest kid in my family.

In my rebellious phase in high school, I got really, really religious.

I started wearing hijab or headscarf.

I changed the radio presets in my family's car, all of them to NPR.

The least sinful of stations with the least amount of music, you know, a gateway to bad behaviors.

And I didn't do drugs, didn't do sleepovers, and followed all the rules.

I even somehow convinced my parents, or tried to, that not wearing your seatbelt in the car was also a violation of Sharia law.

And so when I got my very first invitation to go on a camping trip with a bunch of honor students in my freshman year of college, I thought maybe it's time for me to explore my wild side.

So I went over to my mom and I said, hey, I'm going on this mixed gender camping trip.

There will be boys.

Don't tell dad.

I made her swear not to.

And then I started to panic.

What do you take?

on a camping trip with some really cool honor students.

All right, so I had my sleeping bag from Muslim camp, check.

I had my portable prayer rug, check.

I got halal marshmallows so that I can make Islamically compliant s'mores,

check.

I even went out and found kosher hot dogs and deli meat because I couldn't find them at the Muslim store.

And that's what you eat when you go camping, right?

So I took all of these things on the day that my friends arrived in a van to pick me up a block away from where we lived.

And I got in the car and told myself even though I was feeling anxious that I should repeat the phrase be cool Gazi

and go with the flow and then I immediately put on my seatbelt because you know Sharia law

so that first night of camping was wild

there was firstly a guitar

We all sat around a campfire, sang Beatles songs and told stories

and there started to be some weird things that I noticed.

I recognized these red plastic cups making their way around the circle.

One was passed to me and my nerdy senses were tingling.

Is that an alcoholic beverage that I smell among the fruity hints?

And so I passed that on thinking, oh my god, I'm underage.

This is crazy.

And then I saw something that can only be described as the long wooden smoking pipe that belonged to Gandalf the Grey from

the Tolkien wizard from the Lord of the Rings series.

Now, I am familiar with the puff-puff pass ritual, but this pipe was making its way to me pretty quickly.

And so I freaked out and turned to the girl next to me, who happened to be just as much of a nerd as I am.

And I whispered really loudly, Hey, are you gonna take a hit?

And she turned to me, a little too cool for school, and said, yeah,

you?

So I said,

yeah, I'm gonna go with the flow, remembering my mantra.

And before I knew it, Gandalf's pipe was in my hands.

And I held that pipe for what felt like hours.

which was probably only a few seconds.

But I thought, oh my God, what am I going to do?

My heart was racing.

My mind was doing mental gymnastics, trying to think about the legalities and the morality of whether or not one can take a hit.

And then I took a deep breath and quickly passed it on to the nerd on my right.

And just as I was doing that, all of us started to hear the siren of a patrol car, whoop, whoop, and saw the blue and red flashing lights approaching us.

And the campsite was mayhem.

All of a sudden, Gandalf's pipe was thrown in someone's bag, a makeshift bong was stowed away in someone's car trunk, and a patrolman started to walk towards us, announcing very loudly, all right, folks, this is a random ID check.

Please get your IDs and stand in line.

Oh my God,

does passing a weed pipe count as drug trafficking?

Can you get a contact high

by handling a cup of booze?

I didn't know what to think, so I grabbed my driver's license and got in line.

And as I made my way towards the front of that line, I realized I was about to go through a real American rite of passage in the teen community.

I was about to take the breathalyzer test, the most badass test I would ever take in my life.

And I passed.

Thank you.

I even asked the officer if I could keep that little plastic nozzle that I breathed into as a little souvenir, but also as evidence that at one point I was a badass.

Anyway, the next day we got home pretty late.

It was around 2 a.m.

when I was dropped off.

I walked into our family's house and realized that I'd startled my father who had fallen asleep on his armchair.

And now I'm thinking, oh my God,

could he smell the weed and booze from my friends who consumed it and not me me from the night before?

Did he see any of the boys in the van that had just dropped me off?

My heart was racing.

And then I started to bust out with all these excuses.

Sorry, Papa, there was a lot of traffic.

My girlfriends are really bad at directions.

We got lost.

He slowly got up and walked towards me and patted me on the head and said, go to sleep, Yusra.

You're a good kid.

And I did go to sleep that night, feeling pretty proud of myself that I had at least one experience as a hijabi gone wild.

Thank you.

That was Usra Ghazi.

Usra is now a U.S.

Foreign Service officer, currently living in Doha, Qatar.

She grew up in northern Chicago and originally hails from Karachi, Pakistan.

This ended up being Usra's last camping experience in the U.S., but since she moved to Amman, Jordan, where she camped in desert valleys.

She recently tried glamping in Saudi Arabia.

Next up, another story about youthful risk-taking from Sivad Johnson.

Sivad told this story to Slam in Detroit, where he partnered with public radio station WDET.

Here's Sivad.

Right there?

When I regained consciousness, I recognized my mom, dad, and a few friends standing over me, looking concerned.

Someone asked, Savad, are you okay?

I didn't answer.

I did, however, have one question on my mind.

I was 12 years old and my birthday had just passed, and I received a new BMX bike.

It was royal blue.

It had gold decals, hand brakes, and multi-spoke wheels.

I pictured that with the right pilot aboard, that bike could probably jump over the school up the street.

And I'm sure that wild imagination is what caused me to challenge my friends to a jumping contest.

Now, the auntie got up when one of them suggested jumping over a large bush that for some odd reason was planted in the middle of his front lawn.

Okay,

challenge accepted.

The following Saturday, five young daredevils assembled, ready to take flight.

And the day was perfect.

The ramp was constructed of the finest components.

We had two car ramps placed side by side with a couple of milk crates on top of that.

We had a slightly warped piece of plywood and a few bricks at the base to keep it all anchored.

I'm pretty sure Hollywood stuntmen were using the same materials back then.

We rode up to the starting spot and the first kid takes off for the ramp.

He jumps but goes off center and lands at the right just clipping the bush.

When the second kid takes off, he decides to abort his mission before even reaching the ramp.

The third contestant goes and actually clears the bush, but when he lands, Both of his feet slip off the pedals.

He nut crunches on that middle bar

so hard,

lets out a blood-curdling scream, and instantly becomes a spectator for the rest of the event.

We laughed at him too.

The fourth jumper goes, clears the bush easily, and lands perfectly on the other side.

But he can't stop fast enough and slams into a car in the driveway next door.

Amateurs.

Last but not least is Moi.

My parents are out front now and the rest of the kids are parked and waiting.

I'm in the zone.

I picture a jump so epic that it should be on the front of a Weedies cereal box.

I decide to build anticipation by going through a series of poses and I end it all with the double biceps.

I rock it off from two houses away in the middle of the street.

Pedaling as fast as I can, I whip into the driveway, headed straight for the ramp.

Perhaps a little too fast because my right foot slips from the pedal and the bike wobbles.

But I recovered.

I recovered just in time to hit the ramp

and it shifts.

I tried to save it by pulling the front wheel up, but it clipped something and oh shit, here we go.

My bike is leaving me.

The grass is above me and the sky is beneath me.

How can this be?

But then the grass and the sky switch back, and I violently splat, and everything goes black.

But I regain consciousness, and my mom, dad, and friends are standing over me.

I'm laid out flat, probably similar to a murder scene body sketch or something.

They ask if I'm okay, and I don't answer.

But I did have that one question on my mind:

Hey,

how's my bike?

My dad nods and signals okay.

My mom throws her arms up and walks away.

My friends are all laughing at me, but I learned three lessons that day.

Lesson number one,

if you're going to jump some bush,

don't prematurely celebrate.

Save it for a perfect dismount.

Lesson two,

speed is nothing without control.

When you're riding, stay super focused and maintain your rhythm.

And three,

if you're performing any physical feat and happen to black out and then wake up surrounded by your friends and parents, always,

and I mean always,

check your equipment first.

Thank you.

That was Savad Johnson.

Sadly, in August of 2020, while rescuing three young girls from the Detroit River, Savad passed away.

He was a Detroit native, husband, father, artist, and second-generation firefighter.

Savad was a many-time moth storyteller.

He described himself as a student of life.

His legacy lives on through the Savad Johnson fireboat named after him, which is used to put out fires and rescue people along the Detroit River.

Sabad's family says they believed he was destined to be daring, given his Swahili middle name, Heshamu, which means brave young warrior.

To see photos of Sabad and learn more about him, visit them.org.

After the break, a boy listens to his gut and a girl prepares for the first of school.

The Moth Radio Hour is produced by Atlantic Public Media in Woods Hole, Massachusetts, and presented by PRX.

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You're listening to the Moth Radio Hour from PRX.

I'm Jay Allison.

We've all made mistakes in our youth, including me.

For one example, among many, consider the time my friends and I decided to have a BB gun fight at point-blank range.

Stupid enough for you?

Could we have put our proverbial eyes out?

Yes.

Was I covered with enough bruises that there was no reasonable falsehood to tell my mother?

Yes.

Should your kids or mine ever act like this?

Please, no, it's not worth it, even for the stories.

With that behind us, our next storyteller, Jim Hassen, perhaps like many of us, grew up with a, quote, healthy fear of strangers instilled in him by his parents.

Jim really took the lesson to heart.

He'll tell you about it, live from Restor Slam in Philadelphia.

So for as long as I can remember, I've had a fear of being kidnapped.

And I know where this comes from.

My father was a police officer, and he often saw people at their worst.

So he kind of tried to instill this healthy fear of strangers to my sister and I.

And the first time this kind of manifested itself, I was about eight years old.

As the neighborhood kids would play in the creek near my house that wound lazily through our town and butted right up against the street.

You know, we did the things that kids did in creeks.

Lifted up rocks to find crayfish and minnows.

We built dams and took those same rocks and threw them right at our friends' feet to splash the shit out of them.

So

this one day a stereotypical white windowless van pulls up to us and we are

a middle-aged man gets out and comes and starts asking us questions like what our name is, what are we doing, where do we live.

Most of the kids kind of like gleefully walked up to him and answered his questions, but I kind of stood in the back, very cautious, and watched him.

And it wasn't, my Amber Alert didn't go off until the moment when he started telling us that he would buy the fish that we pulled out of that creek.

And even an eight-year-old knew that we were not pulling any fish out of that creek that could go on a plate to eat.

So I took off.

You might want to note that I was not a hero.

I wasn't like, come, friends, let's get away from this guy.

I just kind of worthlessly ghosted out of there and went home.

And

so I had mentioned that my dad was a police officer, which meant he worked shift work, which meant he was in one of three states.

He was whether at work,

he was asleep, or he was home wishing he was asleep.

So I went in the house and told, and he happened to be in this third state.

He was home.

And to his credit, when I told him the story about the guy in the van, he didn't brush me off.

He said, Jimmy, get in the car.

And we did.

It was my dad, the police officer, and his little deputy.

And we drove back to the creek and asked the kids where their van went.

And then we began winding our way through Havertown to try to find this white van.

And luckily, we never found it because I honestly don't know if I want to know what would have happened if we did.

But it was kind of nice because of my dad's job.

We didn't get to spend much time together and we had a little bonding moment there looking for that van.

But my vigilance against kidnapping did not wane.

When I was 13, I would walk to and from middle school,

mostly alone.

It was about two miles, and since my offspring is here, I'll say it was uphill both ways.

And I had the overactive imagination where I would imagine getting almost kidnapped, and I would escape, and I had different contingency plans for each leg of my trip.

Most of them involved going over that very same creek and assuming that kidnappers didn't want to get their feet wet.

And it was very, you know, again, overreactive imagination and irrational until the day that it actually happened.

I was walking home.

It was a late spring day, very impossibly sunny.

And I was at the leg of my trip when I was almost home.

I could see my house.

So I actually didn't, ironically, I didn't have a contingency plan for that situation because I figured I'd just sprint home.

And then, sure enough, a car that I didn't recognize pulls right up to me.

The driver pushes open the passenger seat door and beckons me over.

And I kind of looked in, and because of the way the sun was, I couldn't see the person.

It was just a shadowy figure wearing a baseball hat and sunglasses trying to get me to come in.

And I was like, oh, hell no.

And I took off, except it didn't seem right for me just to go straight home.

So I cut through the neighbor's driveway and then began making my way home through their backyards, knocking over swing sets, trampling gardens, just disturbing all manner of neighborhood dogs, making them lose their shit.

And

going through pricker bushes, over fences, until finally I grabbed the door handle of my house and I knew I had made it.

And I opened the door, ready to tell my dad, who was going to be proud of me.

And he was actually in his third state again.

He was home.

He was sitting at the kitchen table with my mom.

They were laughing, and he was wearing a baseball hat and sunglasses.

And I started to tell him my story, and he interrupted me and said, Jimmy, what the hell is wrong with you?

You see, my dad had got a new car that day.

And he was very excited to pick me up on my way home from school to give me a ride, but I was so vigilant about being kidnapped that I just took off.

And, you know, in the midst of him yelling and laughing at me, I kind of read between the lines and knew that my dad was proud of me and that while he had a number of other things to worry about about me, kidnapping wasn't one of them.

Thank you.

Jim Hassen is a lifelong resident of what he calls the idyllic yet mysterious Delco, a Philadelphia suburb.

He works as a chef and tells us he has never lost the ability to get caught up in his imagination.

Jim took his own children, now adults, on a walking tour of his old neighborhood, and he says that the one-block kidnap run was a fan favorite.

Our last story in this hour of youthful adventures comes from Nadia Hakeem, who told this at a grand slam in Houston, which is supported by Houston Public Media.

Here's Nadia live at the mall.

I was removing the hair from my legs multiple times a week, obsessively tweezing my eyebrows, wishing for colored contacts, and wanting to dye my hair because genetics had started slipping streaks of silver.

And this list of things I wanted to change about myself was just continually growing, all the time.

And at this particular moment,

I was, at this particular moment in my list, I wasn't days away from starting the eighth grade.

So

11 years old, not even 12.

And I took a look at this list and

I prioritized that list and then compared it to what would be met with the least amount of resistance from my parents.

So

I decided to hyper-focus on the hair above my upper lip.

And my parents, they did everything they were supposed to.

They They told me I was beautiful, they were sincere about it, and they reassured me that the things I was picking apart about myself,

no one was noticing.

And especially when it came to my body hair, right?

And this is probably true because my father is from quite possibly the hairiest country in the world, which is Iran.

And then my mother is from quite possibly the least hairy country, the most hairless country in the world, which is the Philippines.

So with that spectrum, they would be able to identify hairy, right?

And

But I could not,

I was determined.

And one day my mom comes home and she has a special hair removal cream just for the face.

And I grab it, I rip apart the box, I toss the instructions.

And my hairless mother looks at me and she says, how long do you usually leave the cream on your legs?

And I said, 10 minutes.

She said, okay.

Well, how long do you think you should leave it on your face?

And me and my infinite wisdom, as a self-obsessed 11-year-old, I said 15 minutes.

So

we slather it on, we set the timer at the kitchen, and about 12 minutes in, I'm like, mommy, my skin's tingling.

And she said, well, does it hurt?

And I said, no, it actually feels like when you put vapor rub on my chest.

And she said, well, it's probably getting into the follicles.

You're okay.

So

I tough out the last three minutes and we start removing it.

And she can barely touch my skin with the wash rag without my eyes just swelling up with tears.

And we remove all of it and we had successfully removed all of the hair.

We had also successfully removed layers of my skin.

We had successfully given me a chemical burn.

So my skin was so raw and pink and I thought it can't get any worse than this.

I'm gonna go to sleep.

I'm gonna wake up in the morning.

Everything will be right as rain.

So I went to sleep, woke up in the morning, and it was worse because it had scabbed over.

It was this deep purple-brown scab in a perfect rectangle.

It strongly resembled a fascist dictator's mustache.

You know the one.

And I begged my parents, mortified.

I was like, you cannot let me go to school like this.

You cannot, I have to skip the first days of school.

But my parents are immigrants.

We never miss school, right?

So they sent me to school and I thought of clever ways to cover my mouth and walking with my head pointed down.

And

I made it through the first week of eighth grade just fine.

I made it through the eighth grade just fine.

So did all of my insecurities and that list just continued to grow and I continued ticking things off.

And as I got into high school and college, the women around me, I was hearing about their lists, what was on their list and what they would change about their bodies.

And if anyone ever mentioned how, you know, how they needed to whack something or tweeze something, I would tell them the chemical burn story, right, to lighten the mood.

And there was one time at,

this was in college, after classes, I was at work and I was working at a swanky gym.

And I go in and I start tidying up the women's locker room.

And there's this gorgeous woman.

She's standing in front of the mirror around the sinks and she is pinching her thighs and poking at her stomach and leaning over the sink and angling her face and pulling at her skin.

And we make eye contact in the mirror as I'm wiping down the sink.

And she said, I know I look crazy, but I'm about to go to this laser hair removal appointment.

And I'm thinking I should talk to them about nip, a tuck, Botox, fillers, what you know, something like that.

I'm gonna be in there for a minute, might as well.

And so I tell her the chemical burn story, right?

Again, to lighten the mood.

And she

looks at me, stunned.

Are you kidding me?

And you've never had to worry about hair there ever again?

What

a blessing, what a cost-efficient blessing.

I wish I would have had enough sense or my mother would have had enough sense to give me a chemical burn when I was young.

And I had heard variations of this response every time I told this story.

And I always thought, how bizarre is it that people are wishing they had gotten a chemical burn?

And even more bizarre that they wish their parents had inflicted it upon them.

But

for some reason, when this woman said it, it sent me into a spiral.

It sent me into a spiral because usually when I run into this woman, she's walking her kids to the child care center, and two of them are little girls.

And I could just see their big, beautiful, bright faces as we were having this conversation.

I just thought, enough,

enough.

Why is it that women are held to such ridiculous standards from when we're so little

all the way until when the day we die, we're supposed to be injecting and coloring and dying and tweezing and all these things and filling it?

Like, no, enough, enough.

So I tossed my list and I stopped fussing over my eyebrows and I let the salt and pepper grow in.

I stopped dying my hair.

And when I

look in the mirror, I see a free woman and I see a beautiful woman.

And that that is the blessing.

Nadia Hakeem is the daughter of immigrants, something she says has provided plenty of material for amazing stories.

She lives in Houston with her wife and three dogs.

She says, if I'm not buzzing around the garden with the bees, then I'm probably reading somewhere.

Nadia told us she's still feeling great in the skin she's in and is now rocking salt and pepper hair along with thick eyebrows.

She has kept her head shaved since September 2022 in solidarity with the women in her father's land, Iran.

Do you have a story to tell us?

Perhaps something about your youthful misadventures?

You can pitch us your story by recording it right on our website or call 877-799-MOTH.

That's 877-799-MOTH.

The best pitches are developed for moth shows all around the world.

You can share the stories in this hour or others from the Moth Archive and buy tickets to moth storytelling events in your area all through our website, themoth.org.

There are moth events year-round.

You can find a show near you and come out and tell a story.

You can find us on social media too.

We're on Facebook and X at TheMoth and on Instagram and TikTok at MothStories.

That's it for this episode.

We hope you'll join us next time and that's the story from The Moth.

This episode of The Moth Radio Hour was produced by me, Jay Allison, and Meg Bowles.

Co-producer is Vicki Vicki Merrick, associate producer Emily Couch.

Grand Slam coaching by Michelle Jolowski, Larry Rosen, and Kate Tellers.

The rest of the Moss leadership team includes Sarah Haberman, Christina Norman, Sarah Austin Janess, Jennifer Hickson, Marina Cluche, Leanne Gulley, Suzanne Rust, Brandon Grant, Sarah Jane Johnson, and Aldi Casa.

Moss stories are true as remembered and affirmed by the storytellers.

Our theme music is by The Drift.

Other music in this hour from Rob Stenson, Lionel Hampton, Vangelis, Balkan Beatbox, Michael Hedges, Charles Bertu, Stellwagen Symphonet, and Hermano Scuccieres.

We receive funding from the National Endowment for the Arts.

The Moth Radio Hour is produced by Atlantic Public Media in Woods Hole, Massachusetts, and presented by PRX.

For more about our podcast, for information on pitching us, your own story, and everything else, go to our website, themoth.org.

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I had hip surgery in November of 2024.

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Deborah needed help.

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Crystal and United Healthcare saved my life.

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