The Moth Radio Hour: Rooted in the Past

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Speaker 2 From PRX, this is the Moth Radio Hour. I'm Jennifer Hickson.
Memories are vital to storytelling.

Speaker 2 At the Moth, we ask that the stories people share are from their own memories, meaning that while it's tempting to tell a story that you heard from your grandmother about when she was a child, we always want our tellers to be first-hand witnesses.

Speaker 2 In some cases, however, our ancestors' stories are very much relevant to our lives today. Some stories start way, way earlier, like this first one.

Speaker 2 Hannah Drake's tale starts before she was born, and even before her mother was born, and even before her grandmother was born.

Speaker 2 Hannah Drake told this at the Muhammad Ali Center in Kentucky, where we partner with Louisville Public Media.

Speaker 2 The show was especially thrilling for us because Lani Ali, Muhammad Ali's widow, was in attendance. Here's Hannah Drake.

Speaker 3 In 2016,

Speaker 3 I had the opportunity to travel to Senegal with a group of performing artists called Roots and Wings.

Speaker 3 There were about 10 of us, and my daughter had an opportunity to join us on this trip. It was the first time that either of us were leaving the United States.

Speaker 3 The week that we were leaving,

Speaker 3 I logged onto Facebook

Speaker 3 and I remember watching Philando Castile

Speaker 3 being murdered by the police in the passenger seat of his girlfriend's car.

Speaker 3 And his girlfriend was streaming it live on Facebook

Speaker 3 and he had on a white t-shirt.

Speaker 3 And I remember watching the blood start to pool

Speaker 3 across his shirt.

Speaker 3 And his girlfriend was screaming, I know you just didn't kill him.

Speaker 3 And her daughter was in the back seat, and she was saying, mommy, it's going to be okay.

Speaker 3 And the day before that, Alton Sterling was shot in the chest by the police.

Speaker 3 And someone had recorded it and put the video on Facebook. So I also watched Alton Sterling be murdered on Facebook.

Speaker 3 And I was so ready to get out of here.

Speaker 3 And I remember boarding the plane, and admittedly, I felt a little bit guilty because I was leaving at a time as a writer and as a blogger where everybody was asking me, Hannah, what do you think about this?

Speaker 3 What is there left to say?

Speaker 3 And I didn't have any stories.

Speaker 3 I didn't have anything to tell them that would make it better.

Speaker 3 I just knew that I had to get out of here. I just needed a minute to breathe.

Speaker 3 And the minute that I stepped foot into Senegal, I felt like I was home.

Speaker 3 I felt like finally

Speaker 3 there was a place in this world where I belonged.

Speaker 3 And my friend and I, who joined me on the trip, Cynthia, we went to buy earrings.

Speaker 3 And I remember we were in the shop holding the earrings in such a way that the shop owner wouldn't think that we were trying to steal them.

Speaker 3 And when we went to pay for them,

Speaker 3 we realized that the shop owner was outside of the shop. She wasn't even paying attention to us.

Speaker 3 And it finally dawned on us here in Senegal, being black isn't a crime.

Speaker 3 And just trying to shop while black, we weren't criminals. And it was like the world finally opened up to me

Speaker 3 and said, Hannah, we've been waiting for you.

Speaker 3 And I was determined to enjoy every minute of being in Senegal, but I knew there would be one time, one visit that would be challenging for me.

Speaker 3 And it was when we were taking a trip to Gorey Island.

Speaker 3 And at Gore Island is the door of no return.

Speaker 3 And it's the last point

Speaker 3 where enslaved black people were brought before they were put on slave ships.

Speaker 3 And I remember we had to take a boat to get to Gorye Island and you could see the door of no return from the boat and it was so quiet and the mood was so somber on the boat.

Speaker 3 And we stepped off and went inside.

Speaker 3 They call it the House of Slaves. And it's just a two-story stone building.

Speaker 3 and in this building they have rooms for men, women, young girls, infants, and a room for those that would resist.

Speaker 3 And I went inside of the room for young for women and my daughter went in the room for young women.

Speaker 3 And I was staring out of the window in this room and when I say window, mind you, it's just two inches wide.

Speaker 3 And I heard my daughter start to weep.

Speaker 3 And she was crying this cry I had never heard come out of her.

Speaker 3 And it filled up the space of this room with echoes. And I started to walk to the door of no return.

Speaker 3 And I stood in the door and looked out at the ocean.

Speaker 3 And I could hear my daughter crying in the background.

Speaker 3 And I tried to imagine how it would feel in that time to know that I was getting on a ship and coming somewhere that I didn't know, and I would have to leave my daughter behind.

Speaker 3 And I never got that sound out of my mind, and I never forgot how it felt to stand in the door of no return. But I also

Speaker 3 never forgot how it felt just to be free for a minute.

Speaker 3 And when we came back to America, I was so incredibly depressed.

Speaker 3 I knew that I was back to being the other person

Speaker 3 and back to being racially profiled and

Speaker 3 back to being concerned about driving and back to my skin feeling so heavy.

Speaker 3 And I remember I called my mom

Speaker 3 and I told her we were there for two weeks. I had 20,160 minutes of all my life just to be free.

Speaker 3 And we started talking about slavery and the South.

Speaker 3 And so nonchalantly, my mom says,

Speaker 3 well, Hannah,

Speaker 3 you know I used to pick cotton.

Speaker 3 And I couldn't believe that my mother had said this. And I said, what did you say?

Speaker 3 And she said, when I was a little girl, I used to pick cotton.

Speaker 3 And I said, well, how long did you do this for?

Speaker 3 And she said, for three years,

Speaker 3 from the time that I was nine until I was 12.

Speaker 3 And I said, well, tell me about it. And she said, my grandmother would pick me and my brothers and sisters up and bring us to the cotton field.

Speaker 3 And we would pick cotton for 80 cents a day.

Speaker 3 And I couldn't imagine that my mother had to do that.

Speaker 3 And I said, well,

Speaker 3 what happened in the fields? Tell me about it. And she said, I wouldn't repeat the names that they called me in those fields.
And my mother is 70 years old.

Speaker 3 And I said, well, can you tell me about your grandmother? What was her name?

Speaker 3 And she said, I don't remember. We used to just call her Mamie.

Speaker 3 And I said, can you remember anybody?

Speaker 3 beyond your grandmother and she said no

Speaker 3 and it was like the history of who I was was lost in that cotton field

Speaker 3 and I knew I had to see them I knew it was calling me

Speaker 3 and as life would have it

Speaker 3 with my job they said Hannah you're going to do some work in Natchez Mississippi

Speaker 3 And admittedly, as a black woman in America, I didn't want to go to Mississippi, but I knew something inside of me had to go to Mississippi.

Speaker 3 And I was there to do some work with a young group of girls called Girls in Pearls teaching them art and history and heritage. And I wanted to take my daughter with me.

Speaker 3 And they connected me with a tour guide.

Speaker 3 And I called him and he said, Hannah, when you fly into Baton Rouge and drive to Natchez,

Speaker 3 Do not go through Jackson, Mississippi, because I cannot guarantee your safety.

Speaker 3 And when me and my daughter got in the car and started started driving, we were so afraid.

Speaker 3 And as we drove, it was like you were going back in time.

Speaker 3 And we could see plantation homes and cotton as far as your eyes could see and the Confederate flag waving everywhere.

Speaker 3 And when we made it to our destination, I knew I have to see this. I have to bear witness to this.

Speaker 3 So we started, my daughter and I started to tour the plantation homes and when I say homes this is not like a two-bedroom home here they are mansions,

Speaker 3 sprawling mansions and you still have to pay to get into them and I thought at this point can I get in for free? I mean at least a discount.

Speaker 3 And we started touring them and I remember my daughter and one started touching everything and I was looking at her and they still had the fine china and the bedding and solid gold chandeliers and she was touching everything in the rooms and I said why are you doing that I thought for sure they're gonna put us out of here and she said I wanted to touch things that I knew slaves wouldn't be able to touch

Speaker 3 And we continued to visit other plantation homes and in one, everything kind of started to look the same. So I asked one of the tour guides, Well, take me to the slave quarter, show me that.

Speaker 3 And I get that these homes are beautiful, but that is not where I would have been. Take me

Speaker 3 where my people would have been.

Speaker 3 And she said,

Speaker 3 Oh, we've covered those up. We've turned those into offices.

Speaker 3 And just like that, once again, the history of who I am was gone.

Speaker 3 And I went to another plantation home and there was a black tour guide and he showed me through the home and we stood in the dining room table and it was huge with the original china and they had a casserole dish and the knob on the casserole dish was shaped into a cotton ball and it was solid gold.

Speaker 3 And above this table was this huge fan, and it had a string connected to it, pulled off to the side of the corner.

Speaker 3 And he told me that a little child, often a girl, would have to stand in the corner and pull the string so the fan would wave and keep flies off of the food.

Speaker 3 And I was so heartbroken

Speaker 3 because I couldn't believe

Speaker 3 that somebody was enslaved to keep flies off food.

Speaker 3 And he told me, don't weep for her

Speaker 3 because she has a very important job.

Speaker 3 When people eat, they talk.

Speaker 3 And her job is to stand in that corner and listen to everything

Speaker 3 that is being said at this table and go back and tell her mother.

Speaker 3 And I remembered that to go back

Speaker 3 and to tell.

Speaker 3 And finally, I knew it was time for me to go to the cotton fields.

Speaker 3 And I went to Frogmore Plantation, and they have 1,800 acres of cotton.

Speaker 3 And they showed me the bags

Speaker 3 that slaves had to put cotton in. And I was thinking in my mind, of a small bag, but when they showed me the bag, it's six feet long and three feet wide.

Speaker 3 And I asked her, well, how much cotton can fit in this bag? And she said 70 pounds.

Speaker 3 And slaves were required to pick two to 300 pounds a day.

Speaker 3 And I went out in the cotton field

Speaker 3 and I started picking cotton.

Speaker 3 And it was hot.

Speaker 3 And I tried to get the seeds out of the cotton, and it was difficult.

Speaker 3 And I thought about my mother

Speaker 3 in those cotton fields.

Speaker 3 And I thought about standing in the door of no return.

Speaker 3 And I remember the curator of the door of no return said to us, welcome back home. You made it.

Speaker 3 Everybody didn't get a chance to come back home.

Speaker 3 And I started running my hands

Speaker 3 over the cotton.

Speaker 3 And I thought about

Speaker 3 my life

Speaker 3 and my mother's grandmother, whose name I don't even know.

Speaker 3 And I thought about all the little slave girls named Hannah.

Speaker 3 And I thought about all the stories that were lost in the cotton fields.

Speaker 3 And I remember what the tour guide told me,

Speaker 3 that I was like that little black girl in the corner waving the fan.

Speaker 3 And my job was to go back and tell the stories. Thank you.

Speaker 2 That was Hannah Drake.

Speaker 2 She's a blogger, activist, and poet selected by the Muhammad Ali Center to be a daughter of greatness, which features prominent women engaged in social philanthropy, activism, and pursuits of justice.

Speaker 2 In her work, Hannah is not one to shy away from uncomfortable spaces. She says it's the place where significant change can take place.

Speaker 2 I spoke with Hannah in the green room after the show. Because we don't know anything about Hannah and

Speaker 2 your other ancestors who've been kind of lost, have you been tempted or have you done 23andMe or any of the ancestry services?

Speaker 3 Here's how I feel about that. One, I think it should be free for black people.

Speaker 3 And two, and I understand that these companies believe that they are doing the right thing, but how can you truly tell me where I was from? What tribe I was from? What language did I speak?

Speaker 3 You know, where did I come from? How does it just end? And I don't know. And this is another thing.
If people, this kind of goes with your question. A lot of people take that for granted

Speaker 3 to be able to go back generations after generations. And they saw my family came over here and we came to New York and Ellis Island and we come from there.

Speaker 3 And for many black people, it just ends and we just don't know and we'll never know. And even I've had people do the DNA and the thing.
And so you kind of get a guess.

Speaker 3 Oh, well, I'm kind of Nigerian and I'm kind of from here. And I'm kind of, I want to know exactly where my people were from in Africa.
And and I'll never know that. How did I get here? Why am I named?

Speaker 3 Where did my name? Where did my last name come from? Was that the slave owner's name? I don't know.

Speaker 3 What could it have been? So it's so many questions and I want people even just to understand that little part. It's a privilege to know that about your family.

Speaker 2 That was Hannah Drake. To see a picture of Hannah on her trip, visit themoth.org where you can also download the story you just heard.

Speaker 2 When we return, a young man holds on to some meaningful relics from his past, and a new employee discovers that old habits die hard. That's when the Moth Radio Hour continues.

Speaker 7 The Moth Radio Hour is produced by Atlantic Public Media in Woods Hole, Massachusetts, and presented by the Public Radio Exchange, PRX.org.

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Speaker 6 The Moth is supported by AstraZeneca. AstraZeneca is committed to spreading awareness of a condition called hereditary transthyroidin-mediated amyloidosis, or HATTR.

Speaker 6 This condition can cause polyneuropathy, like nerve pain or numbness, heart failure or irregular rhythm, and gastrointestinal issues.

Speaker 6 HATTR is often underdiagnosed and can be passed down to loved ones. Many of us have stories about family legacies passed down through generations.

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Speaker 2 This is the Moth Radio Hour from PRX. I'm Jennifer Hickson.
This next story is from Craig Mangum, who grew up in Ohio.

Speaker 2 Craig told the story in New York City, City, where we partner with public radio station WNYC.

Speaker 2 The theme for the Grand Slam was growing pains, which sometimes includes shedding some family traditions and practices.

Speaker 6 Here's Craig.

Speaker 8 It was two weeks into the relationship, and I was in the back seat of my boyfriend's red Mustang when he reached down and touched my knee and suddenly pulled his hand back in shock.

Speaker 8 And immediately I knew why. It was my underwear.
I mean, this wasn't any regular underwear. I was 22 and a student at Brigham Young University, a Mormon-owned university.

Speaker 8 And as a devout Mormon at the time, I wore what you all may have heard called the magic Mormon underwear.

Speaker 8 I wore it every day underneath my clothing except for when I was showering or swimming day and night.

Speaker 8 And

Speaker 8 Let me describe for you what this was like. It extended ever so gracefully in a white, unbleached cotton down to my knee.

Speaker 8 And it was accompanied by an undershirt that had a very billowy mid-arm-length sleeved and a swooping neck. And in it were embroidered symbols that related to theological concepts of Mormonism.

Speaker 8 And it was sacred.

Speaker 8 But when my boyfriend touched it,

Speaker 8 he

Speaker 8 got very quiet because touching a garment mid-makeout is kind of like stumbling on granny panties from God. It's a really, it's a mood killer, to say the least.
And he got quiet and he said,

Speaker 8 I can't tell you what to do but I'm falling for you and the fact that you wear those makes me scared you'll go back to them the them being Mormonism this religion that I loved that was my home but that taught me that our relationship was a sin It was my mom who taught me the protocol of the garment.

Speaker 8 I noticed as she sorted our family's laundry onto the floor, she would take the garment and place it in a special hamper.

Speaker 8 They were so sacred to her, she would never let them touch the ground, and which watched them separately from the rest of the laundry.

Speaker 8 She told me that we don't really talk to people outside of our faith about the garment, but that we wear clothing modest enough to cover it at all times.

Speaker 8 She said, when a garment gets old and is worn out and needs to be thrown away, we cut out the special symbols and we burn them.

Speaker 8 So the only time I was encouraged to ever use matches as a child was when I was literally burning my parents' underwear in the backyard.

Speaker 8 And when I received my own garment as an adult, I was told it would be a shield and a protection, a symbolic shield from sin and temptation, but also a literal one that would protect my body from harm.

Speaker 8 And I believed it deeply. So when my boyfriend said that,

Speaker 8 I remember it was a very awkward end to the date. And I went home and I just stood in front of my mirror and looked at myself in this garment and I thought, who are you? And what do you even want?

Speaker 8 And after a lifetime of having answers to that question, I realized I had no idea. And I knew I needed space and time away from this thing that had been so important.

Speaker 8 So for the first time, I committed the Mormon sin of taking off the garment with no intention of putting it back on. And I got a rubber-made container from my closet and I put that garment in.

Speaker 8 And I went to my underwear drawer and I put all the garments into it.

Speaker 8 And through the next weeks and months, as I would clean my apartment, I would put anything that just radiated Mormon into that until I filled the entire thing and I put it in the back of my closet, which I thought was a great metaphor, right?

Speaker 8 To let gay Craig out and put the Mormon into the closet for a while and see how they liked it, right?

Speaker 8 And I left it there. for almost two years as I began to experience life outside of the garment.

Speaker 8 And I wore a white undershirt so my friends and Mormon family wouldn't know the change that was occurring in me until graduation rolled around.

Speaker 8 And I knew I would be moving and taking refuge in New York City. And I finally had to decide what to do with the rubber maid.

Speaker 8 So I pulled it out and I looked at all of these items, and I knew I would never be going back.

Speaker 8 I knew I could never believe the way I had. I knew I would never be straight again.

Speaker 8 And so I thought, what do I do? It didn't feel right to just leave them at a, you know, goodwill or throw them away. This was my life.
This meant so much to me at one point.

Speaker 8 And so then I remembered what my mother had taught me, how to get rid of the garment. And I drove down to southern Utah, to Zion's National Park, and I built a huge bonfire.

Speaker 8 And I assembled the contents of the rubber maid on a picnic table. And I prepared my own little ritual, a ritual of goodbye.

Speaker 8 I started with the pamphlets that had taught me that my homosexuality was a sin, written by prophets I no longer believed in, and I tossed them in the fire.

Speaker 8 And then I took the black name tag I wore as a Mormon missionary that called me Elder Mangum and tossed it in the fire with the white pants I wore as I baptized people into the religion I was leaving.

Speaker 8 I took the letters

Speaker 8 from a woman I thought I would marry and it saved so our children could know the story of how we fell in in love. And I tossed them in the fire.
And with other things, I threw in the fire.

Speaker 8 All that was left was this mound of garments.

Speaker 8 And one by one, I tossed them in the fire. And I said goodbye to this life that had been mine and it existed only now with me.

Speaker 8 And it was done.

Speaker 8 I say that night I came out as flamingly gay,

Speaker 8 Finally

Speaker 8 exposed, uncovered, and ready for anyone and everyone to see me exactly as I am. Thank you.

Speaker 2 That was Craig Mangum. Craig is a designer and writer and performer.
He was the founding president of the Out Foundation, a philanthropic network for the LGBTQ plus alumni of Brigham Young University.

Speaker 2 On top of his design job, he's currently doing research on a book about his three uncles because not one, not two, but three of his Mormon uncles identified as gay, and all three lived with that fact in very different ways.

Speaker 2 We're looking forward to hearing some stories from that book.

Speaker 2 In this next story, a woman's first real job demands that she modify some of her old tendencies.

Speaker 2 We first met Luann Fox Sims at the Philadelphia Story Slam, but asked her to come to New York City to share this story. Here's Luann.
All right, there's those.

Speaker 3 Good.

Speaker 3 Thank you.

Speaker 9 After college, all my friends went on to get jobs.

Speaker 9 While I stayed for years in our university town to hang out in grad school, hit the weekly bar specials, and have my parents continue to pay for my car insurance.

Speaker 9 Sure, I had my part-time job at Lady Footlocker,

Speaker 9 but when I could no longer afford the minimum payments on my credit cards, I knew it was time to make a change.

Speaker 9 My friend Bonnie suggested that I apply for an opening in her company, and it seemed like a good opportunity to enter the professional world and have something positive to talk about at my upcoming high school reunion.

Speaker 9 So I moved back to my hometown and started a new career selling medical supplies, full of confidence that my master's degree in philosophy had prepared me well for the corporate world.

Speaker 9 Right off the bat, it seemed like a good decision. They hooked me up with a laptop, a flip phone, and a company car.

Speaker 9 I had been in the job for only two weeks when Bonnie asked if I would be willing to drive to Maryland and take her place in a meeting with some coworkers from across the company and some very important clients.

Speaker 9 Stay in a hotel, Cinemax, room service? Yes, I would take this free vacation. My only concern was I was so new to the company.
Was I really qualified to represent our district?

Speaker 9 But Bonnie assured me that all I had to do was show up. I just had to be there.
In fact, the last thing she said to me before I left was, it is impossible for you to screw this up.

Speaker 9 I got down there just fine and had a great night in my private private hotel room, but I stayed up until the wee hours watching late-night cable TV, which made it difficult to get ready on time to meet my coworkers in the lobby at 8 a.m.

Speaker 9 But I came strolling out of the free hotel buffet at 8.05 feeling pretty good because 8.05 was the same as 8 o'clock in my mind.

Speaker 9 I saw them immediately waiting for me in a huddle, my medical supply sales executives.

Speaker 9 And when I could see them looking at their watches and sizing me up in my big hair and the suit I had borrowed from my mom, I realized they weren't going to see me as the adorable intellectual rookie as I had hoped.

Speaker 9 One of them asked if I had the car, and that's when I found out that I was responsible for driving us all to our client meeting.

Speaker 9 Because I had keenly observed that they already hated me for being late once, there was no way I was about to tell them that I still had to go up to my hotel room on the seventh floor to get my bags and the car keys.

Speaker 9 But I was quick on my feet and I suggested that they wait around in front of the hotel and I would go out to the garage and swing around and pick them up in the car. Luckily, they agreed.

Speaker 9 The moment they were out of sight, I raced up to my hotel room, frantically packed my stuff, and then paced in front of the elevator, which seemed like it was taking forever.

Speaker 9 I made my way down, found the car, hid all of my Burger King trash and my CDs, and finally I was ready to go get my colleagues.

Speaker 9 As I pulled out of the garage, out of the corner of my eye, I saw a sign, a very small sign, and it had an arrow.

Speaker 9 It said to lobby, and the arrow was pointing in the opposite way from the way I was driving.

Speaker 9 As it turns out, the way I was driving should have had a sign that said, this direction will take you further and further from the three executives who will now have now been waiting for you for 15 minutes.

Speaker 9 It shot me out into a traffic circle and I was immediately caught up in the vortex of swirling cars. I couldn't merge and I was forced off to the right down a one-way street.

Speaker 9 And I'm looking in my rearview mirror at my three executives who are getting smaller and smaller in the reflection.

Speaker 9 I keep making right turns trying to to get back to the hotel, but the streets are all weird. And before I know what's happening, I am headed north on I-95.

Speaker 9 And the first sign I see says, Next exit, nine miles.

Speaker 9 I whimpered out loud in the car, and I immediately became drenched in sweat. My whole body was shaking as my mind tried to process the reality of what was happening.

Speaker 9 And the only thing I could think of to do, the only decision that made any sense, was to keep on driving to Philadelphia.

Speaker 9 I would get home,

Speaker 9 put on some sweatpants,

Speaker 9 get some lunch, and start putting my resume out on monster.com.

Speaker 9 But as I kept driving, I thought about the fact that this was a company car,

Speaker 9 and I'd already sold mine, and I didn't have the credit score to get a new one. And I thought of my friend Bonnie, who'd gotten me the job and thought it was impossible for me to screw this up.

Speaker 9 So as I hit that first exit, I got off and turned around and headed back toward the hotel. I started doing SAT questions in my head.
If I go 85 miles an hour, how quickly can I get back there?

Speaker 9 If I go 90, how fast can I do it? And then I

Speaker 9 started trying to think of what kind of story, what kind of lie can I come up with that's going to explain the fact that I've been gone for so long getting the car from the back of the hotel.

Speaker 9 I made it back,

Speaker 9 and there they were, my three executives, still waiting for me.

Speaker 9 I braced myself for their wrath as they got into the car, and there was a lot lot of loud sighing and slamming of doors.

Speaker 9 And then it got really uncomfortable in the silence as they waited for me to offer an explanation. But the only thing that would come out of my mouth was,

Speaker 4 hey!

Speaker 9 There was a lot of tension the rest of the day

Speaker 9 and a lot of passive-aggressive behavior aimed in my direction.

Speaker 9 But can you believe no one ever asked me why it had taken me 37 minutes to get the car from the back of the hotel?

Speaker 9 Eventually, I got a haircut and my own suit, and I learned how to tell time.

Speaker 9 And by the time our annual meeting came around, I was awarded Sales Associate of the Year for our district.

Speaker 3 But

Speaker 9 as I walked up through a crowd of my colleagues to accept the award, I noticed there were three executives who I had only met on one occasion who were not clapping.

Speaker 3 Thank you.

Speaker 2 That was Luann Fox Sims. Luanne lives outside of Philadelphia with her husband and two kids.
To see Luann's profound hair metamorphosis, you can find her before and after shots at themoth.org.

Speaker 2 Watch her go from big hair to business associate of the year.

Speaker 2 When we return, a man who survived a terrible accident as a teenager is asked to help others going through the same thing.

Speaker 7 The Moth Radio Hour is produced by Atlantic Public Media in Woods Hole, Massachusetts, and presented by PRX.

Speaker 6 Today's show is sponsored by Alma. I know I'm not the only one who turns to the internet when I'm struggling.

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Speaker 6 This way, you can find someone you connect with on a personal level and see real improvements in your mental health with their support. Better with people, better with Alma.

Speaker 6 Visit helloalma.com slash moth to get started and schedule a free consultation today. That's hello A L M A dot com slash M O T H.

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Speaker 2 you're listening to the moth radio hour from prx i'm jennifer hickson in this hour we're hearing stories about how we carry the past with us Our next teller, Dan Ariely, suffered greatly as a teenager when some explosives burnt over 70% of his body.

Speaker 2 While Dan has spoken and written about this a lot, even after all these years, sometimes the emotions come out.

Speaker 2 Live at the Carolina Theater of Durham in North Carolina, here's Dan Aleali.

Speaker 10 It was

Speaker 10 summer, a couple of years ago, I was having dinner with some friends, and all of a sudden I got a call from somebody I didn't know.

Speaker 10 And they asked me to go to hospital

Speaker 10 to meet a family I didn't know.

Speaker 10 And I got to the hospital and there was this terrible tragedy. There was a family that was involved in a terrible accident.

Speaker 10 And the two kids were very badly injured. And the mother asked me, what do I think that her kids would want to know? And what would they not want to know?

Speaker 10 And she asked me, because

Speaker 10 I was badly injured

Speaker 10 many years earlier.

Speaker 10 I was badly burned in about 70% of my body and

Speaker 10 I was in the hospital for about three years,

Speaker 10 not in a very dissimilar situation to her kids.

Speaker 10 And

Speaker 10 when she asked me this question, I went back to the early days in the burn department. I was thinking to myself, like, what was my state?

Speaker 10 And I remember the fear, and I remember the machines and the sounds.

Speaker 10 The expression that kept on coming to me in the early early days in the burn department was this idea of a pain person.

Speaker 10 I felt that there were moments that there was nothing else going on. There was just pain.
The pain was just engulfing every aspect of me. It was capturing me.

Speaker 10 There was nothing else. There was no history.
There was no future. There was just a moment.

Speaker 10 of that pain.

Speaker 10 I also remember the early days in the bath treatment.

Speaker 10 Most of my body was burned, and every day the nurses had to take the bandages off,

Speaker 10 and they would tear it off, and when they finished, they would have to rub the flesh to get some blood going on, and then they would cover me with bandages again,

Speaker 10 just to repeat the same process again.

Speaker 10 And when she asked me what to tell her kids, I was trying to remember those days and the fear and the noises and the pain.

Speaker 10 And I told her that what I wanted to know was what beeps meant that everything was

Speaker 10 okay

Speaker 10 and what beeps meant that something was not okay

Speaker 10 and when was more pain coming and when is some relief going to come and I tried to describe all of those to her as best I could

Speaker 10 and then I left.

Speaker 10 A few days later I got another call, this time from the mother herself and she didn't say much, she just asked me to come back to the hospital.

Speaker 10 So I went back to the hospital, and she told me that one of the kids died.

Speaker 10 And she asked me what to tell the other kid.

Speaker 10 And

Speaker 10 I was trying to figure out

Speaker 10 how do you deal with something like this?

Speaker 10 How do you grieve?

Speaker 10 How do you deal with going in and out of consciousness, with the pain, and at the same time trying to digest

Speaker 10 something like this?

Speaker 10 And I told her to try

Speaker 10 and hide it for as long as possible and not to share it with the kid.

Speaker 10 And then a few months later, I got an email from her. She said the kid was doing better,

Speaker 10 on the path for recovery.

Speaker 10 And she asked me to record or send the kid some message, some optimistic note of hope about his future.

Speaker 10 And

Speaker 10 this question

Speaker 10 brought me again back to my days in hospital.

Speaker 10 I remember that about that time,

Speaker 10 for the first time, I

Speaker 10 was starting to walk a little bit.

Speaker 10 I felt a little bit stronger, and I opened the door and I walked to the room next door, which was the nurse's station.

Speaker 10 And I walked into that room, and there was this big full-size mirror.

Speaker 10 And I've seen parts of myself before.

Speaker 10 I was laying in bed or in the treatment room, and I could see parts of myself, but this was the first time I saw my full self and it was a shocking sight. It was not something that looked real to me.

Speaker 10 It was hard for me to imagine that this was me.

Speaker 10 My legs were very bent,

Speaker 10 the whole body was in a different shape. My arms, I couldn't really hold them, they were

Speaker 10 disformed and there were skin coming out of different places. My face was all kinds of colors.
There was red and blue, there was yellow, there were pieces of skin hanging.

Speaker 10 The right side of my face looked very strange and my eyes was closed. The only thing that looked real was my left eye.

Speaker 10 But even that didn't look that real because I could recognize my left eye but it looked from a

Speaker 10 mask that didn't look anything like me.

Speaker 10 And I was standing there looking at some disbelief that this could actually be

Speaker 10 me

Speaker 10 but very quickly the pain came over me standing was very hard for me and I had to walk as fast as I could back to bed and the pain was so intense that I couldn't even keep on thinking about myself in the mirror

Speaker 10 and I remembered all of those things and I was thinking what do I write this kid

Speaker 10 he was just starting his path and this was going to be a long long path.

Speaker 10 I was almost 30 years after my injury and my next treatment was still scheduled. This was not something that you get over very quickly.

Speaker 10 I had no idea then and I was wondering what what do I tell him? How do I give him a hopeful message?

Speaker 10 What do I do between the brutal honesty of the challenges and the difficulties that he's about to face and

Speaker 10 some hope.

Speaker 10 The truth is that I thought he would have been better off dead. I thought that his family would have been better off this way.

Speaker 10 But I couldn't tell him that. And and I cried a lot in the next 48 hours.
I cried a lot trying to figure out what is the right thing to say.

Speaker 10 And eventually I my hands are not that good, so I recorded a voice message for him and I was trying to find a balance between hope and realism and I recorded something and I sent it to his mother and two days later I get another note from her telling me how much she appreciated it, how much her son appreciated it and asking me to

Speaker 10 write him another one.

Speaker 10 And then a few months later I went to visit him in hospital.

Speaker 10 And before I went to see him in hospital I was very worried. I've been to hospital before,

Speaker 10 I've went to see my nurses, my doctors, but this was the first time I was going to see a patient and a patient who was a teenager much like me when I was injured and somebody that I felt close to by that time.

Speaker 10 And I didn't know how things would turn out, how would I feel.

Speaker 10 And to my surprise, things went quite well.

Speaker 10 We spoke about all kinds of things, in hospital, out of hospital. I shared some things about my own life.

Speaker 10 He he told me a little bit about what was going on with him and things were really going on quite well for the first maybe two, two and a half hours.

Speaker 10 And then the nurse came in and she informed him that he was going to have a new treatment

Speaker 10 and he asked her if they could wait until tomorrow and the nurse said no.

Speaker 10 And he asked if they could wait a few hours. And she said no.

Speaker 10 And he asked if they could wait an hour.

Speaker 10 And she said no.

Speaker 10 He asked if they could do it for just one part of his body today.

Speaker 10 And she said no again.

Speaker 10 And at that point, I couldn't stand anymore. I had to sit down and I put my head down and I was trying to breathe very heavily.

Speaker 10 Some almost an anxiety attack came over me because I remembered all the times when I was trying to negotiate with something that would delay the treatment a little bit, give me some control.

Speaker 10 But then the treatment came and I had to part way and live and

Speaker 10 get out of the hospital and go on my way.

Speaker 10 But it made me realize that until that moment, I really thought about my injuries being mostly physical.

Speaker 10 You know, it's easy to think about the pain, it's easy to think about the scars, looking different to other people,

Speaker 10 having difficulty regulating temperature, physical limitations, disability. All of those things are easy.
But the reality is that helplessness was a huge part of that.

Speaker 10 And I think it's actually the part that made me hate hospitals the most.

Speaker 10 And the sad thing about it is that it's the part that we create for ourselves.

Speaker 10 This is not part of the injury, it's just the way we treat people in all kinds of ways, not just in hospitals, but more generally.

Speaker 10 And I still get lots of emails and letters and phone calls from people with all kinds of injuries. About once a week I get a letter from somebody.
And I still don't know what exactly to tell people.

Speaker 10 People need to figure out how to reconfigure their lives, how to deal with the things that disability eliminates and how to deal with the new opportunities, how to deal with pain.

Speaker 10 And I try to give people the best advice about how to reconfigure their lives. But the one thing I have learned was to try and give people people advice, to try and gain some control.

Speaker 10 Just imagine what would happen if the nurse would allow

Speaker 10 this kid to delay the treatment a little bit, to have it on part of his body first.

Speaker 10 Maybe they would have allowed me to remove some of my bandages by myself.

Speaker 10 All of those things would have made a big difference.

Speaker 10 As for the

Speaker 10 other big question, the question is how to

Speaker 10 manage

Speaker 10 the conflict between brutal honesty and hope.

Speaker 10 That one I'm still struggling with.

Speaker 2 That was Dan Ariely.

Speaker 2 Dan is a professor of psychology and behavioral economics at Duke University and a best-selling author and an award-winning filmmaker. He also has a fantastic sense of humor.

Speaker 2 You should check out his bi-weekly advice column in the Wall Street Journal called Ask Ariely. To find a link to his work, visit themoth.org where you can also download the story you just heard.

Speaker 2 Do you have a story to tell us? You can pitch us your story by recording it right on our site or call 877-799-MOTH. That's 877-799-6684.

Speaker 2 The The best pictures are developed for moth shows all around the world.

Speaker 11 The fair had come to Cleveland County in rural North Carolina like it does every late summer. I was on my way home to spend a weekend with our aging father.
It was my turn after mama had died.

Speaker 11 I get there and there he is on the front porch hat in hand ready to go to the fair.

Speaker 11 Growing up, the county fair was the highlight of the summer. Me, my sister, my mom, and dad would go every year, but it was only Daddy and I that rode every ride.

Speaker 11 We never had the money to go to Disney or someplace like that, but it didn't matter. The fair was all I knew, and I thought the fair was wonderful, and so did he.

Speaker 11 I really thought it would just be a quick night, you know, eat some hot dogs, have some cotton candy going back home, but the minute we got there, he handed me a crumpled $5 bill and said, go get us some tickets for some rides.

Speaker 11 Well, he pointed to the pirate ship. You know, that one that slowly arcs back and forth to the point where it goes so high that everybody loses their stomach? I said, are you sure?

Speaker 11 Yeah, yeah, it looks like fun.

Speaker 11 So we get in one going up these steps with about 25 other rednecks under the age of 16.

Speaker 11 As the ride started going, I was loving it. But he had his eyes closed.
And I said, Daddy, are you okay?

Speaker 11 And he just smiled. When the ride was finished, he opened his eyes.
I said, are you okay? He said, well, I'm a little swimmy at it. I was like, oh, no.
I said, you ready to go to the house?

Speaker 11 No, you still got tickets left, don't you?

Speaker 11 So I said, okay, well, I'll ride the Ferris wheel. You just watch.
He said, okay.

Speaker 11 And as I was going round and round in a seat all by myself and feeling like an idiot, I looked down and there he was, standing with his arms crossed and his head tilted back with a huge smile across his face.

Speaker 11 And I knew in that moment that

Speaker 11 he was transported as I was back to my wonderful childhood where life was simple, his body was young, and I was his little tomboy once again.

Speaker 2 Remember, you can pitch us at 877-799-MOTH or online at themoth.org.

Speaker 2 That's it for this episode of the Moth Radio Hour. We hope you'll join us next time.

Speaker 7 Your host this hour was Jennifer Hickson. Jennifer also directed the stories and the show.

Speaker 7 The rest of the Moth's directorial staff includes Catherine Burns, Sarah Haberman, Sarah Austin Janess, and Meg Bowles. Production support from Emily Couch.

Speaker 7 We'd also like to thank the Education Foundation of America for their support of our Louisville show where Hannah Drake told her story.

Speaker 7 Moth stories are true as remembered and affirmed by the storytellers. The pitch came from Marion Stafford.
Our theme music is by the drift.

Speaker 7 Other music in this hour from Rhiannon Giddens with Franco Teresi, Boombox, Blue Dot Sessions, and Gustavo Santalala. You can find links to all the music we use at our website.

Speaker 7 The Moth Radio Hour is produced by me, Jay Allison, with Vicki Merrick at Atlantic Public Media in Woods Hole, Massachusetts.

Speaker 7 This hour was produced with funds from the National Endowment for the Arts. The Moth Radio Hour is presented by the Public Radio Exchange PRX.org.

Speaker 7 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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