Host: Devan Sandiford
Devan: [00:00:02] Welcome to The Moth podcast. I'm Devan Sandiford, your host for this week. I'm also, as it happens, your storyteller for this week.
In this episode, you'll hear my story, Lost in Their Eyes. It's actually the second story I ever told. And afterwards, I'll talk to some special guests about what the story means to them. So, please stay tuned in for that after the story.
For 2022, The Moth is counting down each of The Moth's 25 years. So, this story is from 2019. I told it at a New York City StorySLAM, where theme of the night was Neighborhoods. Here's, well, me live at The Moth.
[cheers and applause]
Devan: [00:00:43] It's 1991. I'm six years old, and I'm being chased through the lunch yard by a group of five girls. I'm sprinting through lunch tables, dashing behind drinking fountains. I'm even hurtling over other boys who've fallen trying to get away. I'm really killing this escape.
I just moved back to my hometown. It's a small town an hour east of Los Angeles. It's the type of place, the type of neighborhood, where white and off-white houses are lined up in a row. They have beautiful front yards and curated backyards. I live on a cul-de-sac block which curves around a tree at the end of the block, so I can ride my bike or chase balls into the street without even worrying about getting caught hit by a car.
I've just started first grade, and a group of the boys have pulled me aside in the back of the class and they're like, “You really have to watch out for the girls. They're going to chase us, they're going to corner us and they're going to kiss all over us.” [audience laughter] They tell me how gross it is, and then they start educating me about this rare disease that girls have, and I can get it if I kiss them, and apparently, it's called cooties. [audience laughter] I've never heard of cooties, because I've just moved from Miami, Florida, and my neighborhood's completely different there. The houses aren't lined up, they're just randomly scattered and all colors. Cars drive by with their music bumping.
When I moved to California, all I could think when these guys were telling me about the cooties was that I have this golden opportunity, because I know girls don't have cooties, because I've already kissed a girl when I was four years old. So, now I'm two weeks into this elaborate plan to literally play hard to catch, and today is the day. I start to slow down. I take these deep breaths like I'm really tired. I look over my shoulder, and I see the girls are gaining on me. I can see in their eyes they're so excited, because this is the closest they've been in two weeks.
A little while later, one of them grabs me on the shoulder. They pull me around. And now, I'm looking at them face to face. I look into their beautiful blue and hazel eyes. And instead of excitement, I see horror. And one of them says, “Eww.” And they all run away. I'm stuck right there, standing in my shame. And for the first time in my life, I feel like I'm nothing. But I didn't want to stay in that place, so I pretended like it didn't hurt. I covered up my shame by playing it off and chasing after them. That was kind of the game for the rest of the first grade. But for the next 25 years, even when I tried to pretend and even after I had been married and had two beautiful boys, I continued to look in the eyes of the beautiful women as they passed by, looking for an indication that I was beautiful or that I was valuable.
Then three years ago, I moved to New York and I was very excited to be in this diverse melting pot until my wife, who's Indonesian-American, and my two boys walked into a dessert shop on the upper west side to buy Japanese cream puffs. When they walked in, it's a small store, there's only a few small tables and a handful of chairs. So, when a little girl says, “People with brown skin aren't pretty, mommy.” My wife is taken aback. When she tells me later that day, I'm instantly back on that lunch yard staring those girls in their eye. But by this point, I've had a whole life full of questions like, why is your nose so big, or why is your top lip brown, or why is your skin the color of poop?
So, instead of covering my shame with jokes, I now cover it with anger and I just say, “Oh, whatever. It's just the upper west side and its lack of diversity and inclusion.” I try and move on with my life. Until three weeks ago, I'm vacationing in France with my family. It's a very small suburban town in Lyon, where we are. I'm walking down the street, and I catch a glimpse of myself in one of the windows of the building and I start to fix my shirt in the front and the back. I don't want my ass to be showing too much. Then I put my hands in my pockets and pull my shorts down a little bit. I don't want my thunder thighs to show.
I'm looking at myself in the reflection, again, and all I can think, is my body turning these perfectly normal shorts into booty shorts. I'm so distracted that I walk full speed into a pole, and it hit my face so hard I could still hear the pole vibrating as I was walking away. It made me realize that my problem with beauty doesn't have to do with the neighborhood I am in. And I could say, sure, I've been hurt by the looks and the words of people that have told me I'm not beautiful. But what had really been hurting is that I didn't think I was beautiful myself. And so, I'm finally ready to stand here today and say that I'm done looking in other people's eyes for my beauty and I know where I need to look. Thank you.
[cheers and applause]
Devan: [00:05:54] That was me, Devan Sandiford. Now, I've got some people that have a thing or two to say about that story.
Here are those two boys of mine grown up a little bit, and my wife. Say hello, everyone.
Devan’s Wife and Kids: [00:06:06] Hi. Hello.
Devan: [00:06:07] You guys’ mind introducing yourselves?
Jay: [00:06:10] Okay.
Sid: [00:06:11] I'm Sid. I'm seven.
Jay: [00:06:14] I’m Jay. I’m 10.
Deborah: [00:06:16] I'm Deborah.
Devan: [00:06:17] Where do you feel like the messaging for what beauty is comes from? Where do we learn about what is beautiful?
Jay: [00:06:25] I think from movies, shows, and any other influences in regular day life.
Sid: [00:06:32] But I don't know what you're talking about.
Devan: [00:06:35] You don't know what we're talking about?
Sid: [00:06:36] No.
Devan: [00:06:39] Remember in the story when the girls in the playground, they were afraid of me and they would run away from me?
Sid: [00:06:46] Yeah.
Devan: [00:06:47] I actually told this story at your school, and I told a revised version of it. Do you remember the revised version? Do you remember that day in kindergarten?
Sid: [00:06:53] Yeah.
Devan: [00:06:56] What did I do differently in that story than in this story that you heard today?
Sid: [00:06:59] You cut out the part where they feared you.
Devan: [00:07:05] I cut out the part about race, right?
Sid: [00:07:07] Yeah.
Devan: [00:07:08] Yeah. I had come into your classroom and I didn't really want to talk about race to your kindergarten classroom, but you had wanted me to tell this story so desperately. And so, I was trying to save myself some of the hurt of having to talk about this. It's a big conversation and ended up telling the story without that part. And what happened after that?
Sid: [00:07:29] One of my classmates figured out what.
Devan: [00:07:32] And what did they do when they figured it out?
Sid: [00:07:36] They shouted it out.
Devan: [00:07:38] They shouted it out. Not hurtfully, but they just shouted out, it's because he's black. And so, the reason that those girls at the time were afraid of me was because of the color of my skin. And so, now we're having a conversation about what it means to beautiful, because I carried their opinion of me with me throughout my whole life, thinking that there was something wrong with me. So, now we're talking about where the idea of beauty comes from. Like, what is beautiful, who's beautiful, how do we learn that? Do you think it's something that you're born with, knowing who's beautiful and not?
Sid: [00:08:10] No, I just think everyone is.
Devan: [00:08:13] You think everyone's beautiful? I love that. I'm curious, do you imagine there being a world where you do not discuss the topic of race and beauty with the boys?
Deborah: [00:08:24] No, absolutely not. I think the conversation of race and beauty in its different forms comes up all the time. We might not articulate it in the same words every time, but I think it's a constant conversation that we have a constant topic. It's had its permutations, iterations, variations, all the tions [Devan chuckles] for the last decade that we've been parents. So, it's always fair game for us to talk about those things.
Devan: [00:09:01] Yeah. One of those iterations. I'm sure you remember, but at one point, when the boys were a little bit younger, if not both, one or both thought that you were white.
Deborah: [00:09:10] Right.
Devan: [00:09:11] And I'm curious if you-- How did that make you feel and how did that inform your parenting about going forward about race?
Deborah: [00:09:24] I think both of the times that happened, each child did that, it was pretty shocking to me. [chuckles] Of all those scenarios that I think I would have come across with as a parent, that was not one that [chuckles] I thought I would come across. Definitely came out of left field.
First, it made me sad, because I don't remember which one of them it was, but one of them followed that up very quickly with, “I was not part of the family because of the color of my skin,” which was very deafening to me. Yeah, it was very hard to hear that.
Sid: [00:10:07] I remember a time where I was drawing. I don't know why. Sometimes I just usually draw characters that look like they would be peach, their skin tone would be peach. And then, my dad told me, “Why don't you draw some characters that are black?”
Deborah: [00:10:27] You did draw a lot of peach people. I do remember that.
Sid: [00:10:31] And then, I thought about it and then I started drawing with only brown characters. One of the reasons why I actually did that, only peach characters, is because when you draw with pencil, then you do brown over it, you can't see any of the details.
Devan: [00:10:56] Mm. Yeah.
Sid: [00:10:58] Oh, and that's kind of a metaphor-ish. I don't know, because all people see is the brown on your skin.
Deborah: [00:11:08] And not the details.
Sid: [00:11:09] Yeah. And not the details of who you are.
Deborah: [00:11:13] Amazing.
Devan: [00:11:14] You guys have heard the story. I wonder if you could speak to six-year-old Devan and let him know, what would you say to six-year-old Devan?
Sid: [00:11:2] I would say, why do you care? I would also say--
Deborah: [00:11:32] He would say that.
[laughter]
Sid: [00:11:36] I also wouldn't be playing that game in the first place, actually. [Deborah laughs] I would say, don't play that game in the first place or just tell somebody about your feelings.
Deborah: [00:11:51] Sid.
Sid: [00:11:52] I would say that's not true.
Devan: [00:11:54] Mm. What's not true, specifically?
Sid: [00:12:00] Like race.
Devan: [00:12:05] The ways in which they looked at me and made me feel reduced. I shouldn't have felt that way. It's not true.
Deborah: [00:12:12] Amazing.
Devan: [00:12:14] Love that.
To honor Black History Month, we've put together a playlist of stories that celebrate the black experience. To listen to those stories, just go to themoth.org/extras. We'll have a link there. That's all for this episode. From all of us here at The Moth and from my family, we hope you have a story worthy week.
Marc: [00:12:37] Born and raised in a small city in Southern California, Devan spent his childhood and young adult years keeping his personal stories hidden from almost everyone. Then, feeling a voice within him longing to be heard, he moved to Brooklyn, New York with his wife and two sons hoping to push himself out of his comfort zone and unlock the power in his voice.
Devan is now a published writer, an award-winning storyteller and the program manager of community engagement at The Moth. Devan's stories have been featured in the Washington Post, The Moth Radio Hour and Podcast, Speak Up Storytelling, Writing Class Radio and elsewhere. Devan has contributed his opinions on parenting, race and identity for the New York Times and Washington Post. He is also currently working on his debut memoir, Human, Like You: Confessions of the Six-year-old Man. You can find out more about Devan on his website.
This episode of The Moth Podcast was produced by Sarah Austin Jenness, Sarah Jane Johnson and me, Marc Sollinger. The rest of The Moth's leadership team includes Catherine Burns, Sarah Haberman, Jenifer Hixson, Meg Bowles, Kate Tellers, Jennifer Birmingham, Marina Klutse, Inga Glodowski and Aldi Kaza. All Moth stories are true, as remembered and affirmed by their storytellers.
For more about our podcast, information on pitching your own story and everything else, go to our website, themoth.org. The Moth Podcast is presented by PRX, the Public Radio Exchange, helping make public radio more public at prx.org.