Host: Alfonso Lacayo
Alfonso: [00:00:01] Welcome to The Moth Podcast. This is not Dan Kennedy. I repeat, this is not Dan Kennedy. I'm Alfonso Lacayo.
Diavian: [00:00:08] And I'm Diavian Walters.
Alfonso and Diavian: [00:00:10] And this is The Moth Education Takeover.
Alfonso: [00:00:13] We're taking over as cohost of today's podcast to bring you two great stories from The Moth Education Program.
Diavian: [00:00:20] For those of you who don't know, The Moth has an education program here in New York City. High school students meet once a week to work on their stories. And at the end of six weeks, we perform our stories at a StorySLAM at our school.
Alfonso: [00:00:35] So, the first story we've got for you today is by Dante Jackson. Dante told this story at his school, School for Classics in 2013. The theme of the afternoon was Freedom. This, by the way, was Dante's first ever time getting up in front of a crowd to tell a story. Hey, Diavian, how was your first time telling a story?
Diavian: [00:00:55] My first time telling a story was completely and utterly nerve wracking. I was second to last. I'm sitting there just enjoying all the time. I had to go over my story in my head, and then I went a lot earlier than I thought that I would have. And so, when I got up there, I was just like, “Oh.” Everything that I had prepared in my head just went out my ear and flew away. But I struggled. But after that, everything went smoothly. Did you have similar experience?
Alfonso: [00:01:26] Definitely. I definitely had a similar experience the first time ever getting on stage. It was sophomore year, and I think I was last. So, you got that time before going, you're just thinking the whole time, am I going to mess up? Am I going to mess up? When you get up there, it's just to get the hang of it and you got your friends and family there and it just like-- It goes smoothly.
Diavian: [00:01:50] Nothing like support from people in the audience. All right, guys, are you ready? Here's Dante Jackson.
[cheers and applause]
Dante: [00:02:01] Okay. Well, back in middle school, I wasn't really the type of kid to let myself have any fun. I was afraid that if I let myself have fun, I'd end up being judged. I don't like being judged.
So, eighth grade comes around, prom is coming up, everybody's talking about it, “Hey, you going to prom?” “I'm going to proms.” “You know, what you wearing? You know, who you going with?” “Oh, I know what I'm going with.” But me, I wasn't planning on it. I didn't really want to go. I thought I'd just skip it, I thought I just end up being a kid in a corner, chicken in hand, [audience laughter] just standing there. [audience laughter] So, after being constantly bugged by friends and family, I decided, “You know what? What the heck? Might as well go. Let's just hear what it's going to be about.”
So, graduation and prom was on the same day. Graduation was early on in the day. We sang Celine Dion. I hated it. [audience laughter] So, I go home, I get dressed, I throw on my suit, have my little fedora on. Stunting. [audience laughter] I should mention that at first, we had no idea how I was going to get there. We knew no buses that ran by, so we figured we were going to take a cab with my friend. Shannon comes, she says, “Hey, my mom got a truck you can swing by. My mom will drop you off.” I'm like, “Oh, cool.” So, my mom was okay with it. They knew each other. We decided to go along with the plan.
So, I'm going to my friend Shannon's house. It's a block away from my house, not far. She lives next to this daycare I used to go to. There's a family of Trinidadians. I've known them since birth. They're like my second family. We're all outside chilling. My mom's taking a bajillion pictures, you know, how to get around this kind of town. [audience laughter] Yeah.
Well, I should say first that Shannon comes outside, and typically she's a tomboy. She's usually just wear a shirt, jeans, sneakers, that's it. But she comes out, she got her hair down, she got her little white dress on, she got the real huge hoop earrings, you know? [audience laughter] So, now, I'm standing here, I'm like, “Huh. [audience laughter] Well, now--”
So, we get in the truck. It's about a 15, 20-minute drive, not very long. I get there, all my friends stand outside, “Hey, Dante. Hey, you decided to show up.” I'm like, “Hey.” So, I go inside. The space is a little bit smaller than I thought it would be. Granted, it's not a lot of us, but it was pretty fancy looking. I thought it was a good place to be. Music starts playing. Everybody's on the dance floor. I'm in the corner, standing there, chicken in hand. [audience laughter] I had a few people come up to me and try pull me on the dance floor, but I wasn't moving. I was not moving. I wasn't moving for anything, but chicken.
So, the DJ decides to put on this song, and now he's saying, “Everybody that's not dancing, you got to grab them. Grab them, pull them on that dance floor. Anybody you see anybody standing on the wall, you got to grab them, bring him on the floor.” So, immediately, 20 heads come at me and try to drag me onto the dance floor. At this point, I'm just done fighting it. I'm like, “You know what? What the heck, I'm just going to go on that dance floor. I'm going to have a good time.”
I'm standing awkwardly in the middle of the dance floor, just looking around. [audience laughter] So, I try not to make myself look suspicious, so I start doing a little-- [audience laughter] I started doing a little two steps. This is where it was at. [audience laughter] Gradually, over time, I start getting more into it. The little two step turns into a little to a shuffle. [audience cheers and applause]
That shuffle turns into a crisscross, [audience laughter] and that crisscross turns into a God knows what. I don't even know what I was-- [audience laughter] [audience applause]
I don't even know what I was doing anymore. [audience laughter] I just know that I'm on fire, [audience laughter] and I'm busting moves I never thought was possible for me. I wasn't aware of this until I took the time to look around and I'm stuck in that little circle they make. Everybody's like, “Hey, go Dante. Go Dante. [audience laughter] Hey.” And it turns out that was one of the best nights of my life. It's like, my life up until that point, I was locked in a dark room, but then I decided to unlock the door and I took a step out and I learned how to dance.
[cheers and applause]
Diavian: [00:07:34] That was the amazing Dante Jackson. Dante graduated from the School for Classics in East New York, where he participated in The Moth High School StorySLAM. He's an aspiring writer and actor who played Sebastian in his high school production of The Twelfth Night. His favorite color is black. That's great. And he loves to make people laugh. Black is a wonderful color. I agree.
Alfonso: [00:08:01] All right. Next up, we got a story from Brie Mann-Hernandez. She told this story in 2013 at her school, School of the Future in Manhattan. The theme for this one was Risk.
Diavian: [00:08:12] Ooh. Risk takers.
Alfonso: [00:08:13] [chuckles] Here we go. Brie Mann-Hernandez.
[cheers and applause]
Brie: [00:08:25] In third grade, Cinderella was one of my top 10 movies. And my least favorite character, as I'm pretty sure everyone's was, was the stepmother, because she was mean. So, I started to associate the word step with being bad. Put step in front of something and it was automatically horrendous. So, when I was told I was going to be spending the summer with my stepgrandma, I thought I was being punished. I must have done something wrong. She is going to step give me a live, i don't know, do something, lock me in a basement.
On the plane right there with my sister, we were going alone, which was pretty cool. We were pretty awesome. [audience laughter] We were torn between being excited for California, because again, it's also pretty awesome for a third grader. You have to fly there by yourself. Being terrified of meeting our stepgrandma on the plane right there, we're talking to each other, saying how awful she's going to be, what she's going to do to us, how she's going to, I don't know, kill us and replace us or something like that. [audience laughter]
When we get off the plane, we wait by the information desk, because we're unaccompanied minors. We look around and up walks this really sweet looking old lady. She walks up and she's like, “Hi.” And I'm like, “Hello? What do you want?” She goes and signs us out. And I was like, “Oh, God.” And it turns out she is my stepgrandma. She says, “Hi, I'm Mila.” And I'm like, “Oh. I remember.” Because when I was younger, my mother told us stories about Mila.
She had us call her Mila, because she's too young to be a grandma. One story she told us was Mila took her to get a haircut. At the end of the haircut, Mila asked her, “How do you like it?” And my mom says, “Oh, it's a little short, but I actually really like it.” Mila didn't like that. She goes off about how ungrateful my mom had to be, how she's disrespecting her. She paid for her to get her hair cut, which in itself was weird, I guess. [audience laughter]
So, when we get off the plane and we're in the car driving to our grandparent’s house. I look over to my sister and we are just having a conversation with eyes and we're saying, “Oh, God, what do we do? How's this going to work?” She was so nice on the drive there. She's pretending she's being fake. As soon as she gets out of the car, we decide we're going to tear her persona down. We're going to prove that she's being fake.
And so, I spend the first three weeks of the vacation trying to make her break, trying to make her do something awful. She's going to yell at me for something. One particular moment that stood out is we come back from eating out and got a little toy from the Happy Meals or something like that. It was a troll doll. I remember that. They had just built a fire pit in their backyard, and we decide, silently again, that we're going to pretend to be in a cult. This is going to mess with her so bad. [audience laughter]
So, we tell them, “Let's roast the marshmallows. We're going to catch them off guard really badly.” And so, we go out to the fire pit. We've got our marshmallow sticks, and we set everything down. Me and my sister walk straight up to the fire pit, maybe a couple inches away from it. And the fire's blazing. We look at each other, and we hold our little troll dolls out and throw them into the fire. We start ceremoniously dancing around the fire bowing to, I don't know what. [audience laughter] We look around-- I'm feeling on top of the world. She's going to break, it's going to happen and I'm going to be awesome. [audience laughter]
And so, I look at my grandpa. He's sitting there like, “Kids? What are you going to do with kids?” I look over at Mila, and she's frozen. And I'm like, “It's working.” She jumps in. She starts dancing. She starts [audience laughter] making noises– [audience cheers and applause]
She starts [audience laughter] making noises which is even weirder, because we weren't making noises. [audience laughter] So, I'm getting a little weird out. Every time I circle the fire pit, I'm just getting angrier and angrier. My fists ball up, and I'm so upset. And finally, our troll dolls burn to a little puddle. She looks up, smiling, and I storm into my bedroom. [audience laughter] I am so upset. She won, I've lost, and she's the evil stepmother and she's tricking everybody.
[00:13:03] Later that night, I hear her on the phone with my mom, I sneak out, because I'm a ninja [audience laughter] and I'm stealthy. I hear her on the phone, and she's saying, “Oh, Brienna seems a little homesick.” And I go, “I've got her now. She thinks I'm not listening. She's going to be awful.” So, she tells my mom, “Oh, Brienna seems a little homesick. Maybe you should send her home. I mean, I'd love to keep her for a little while, but she seems to really miss you.” So, we get sent home the next day, and I'm like, “I did it. She broke. It doesn't matter that anybody else doesn't know. It was my doing. I won.”
[00:13:49] Two years-- No, not two years later. Two years ago, I went to visit them for the summer. We all went as a family. We took a road trip. Yay, road trips. [audience laughter] And in the car driving up their driveway, I'm going, “Oh, God, it's going to happen again. She's going to be evil.” I walk up to the door and I'm trying to decide, do I just let it go? Because I'm more mature now. I started high school. That makes me mature.
[00:14:19] I decide that I'm going to let it go. I'm going to see her as a new person. I open the door, and she rushes up to give me a huge hug. I realize that she's both people. She's the step and she's the grandmother. I also realized that in the end, I was the one being the evil stepchild. Thank you.
[cheers and applause]
Diavian: [00:14:45] That was Brie Mann-Hernandez. Brie is a junior at Wesleyan University studying technical theater, film and East Asian studies. She has absolutely no idea what she's going to do with her future. So relatable, which she has been assured, it's okay, because she's young, she has time. Brie loves her grandparents, especially her grandma. It’s cute. Grandmas are great.
Alfonso: [00:15:09] I love hearing stories from people in my school, because in high school, it was a group of people who we didn't really all know each other, but we slowly started to grow with each other and started to learn more about each other, the more stories we told with each other. It's a new experience, because not every day you see these people walking through the hallway. You might-- [crosstalk]
Diavian: [00:15:34] The person you never notice in the background.
Alfonso: [00:15:36] Yeah. And they're sharing a part of them.
Diavian: [00:15:40] You feel for them in a way you can relate to their experiences, so you actually know how it feels. When you see them tell the story, you see them reliving the moment, whether it be sad or happy. You can almost see the movie flashing in their eyes, which I think is super cool, because when we go onto the stage, we feel the same way.
Alfonso: [00:16:04] It's just a great experience to know that everybody has their own slice of life. Like, things they went through in a group that you've been with for a whole semester. And that's awesome.
Diavian: [00:16:20] The Moth should have a new motto, “Walk in as strangers and walk out as friends.” All right. That's it for this week of The Moth Podcast.
Alfonso: [00:16:28] It's been fun, but [chuckles] I guess we'll let Dan host next week's podcast.
Diavian: [00:16:33] Do we have to?
Alfonso: [00:16:34] Can do. We have to. We have to. This is Alfonso Lacayo.
Diavian: [00:16:40] And Diavian Walters. Thank you all for listening.
Alfonso: [00:16:44] And we hope you have a story-worthy week.
[00:16:46] Podcast production by Mooj Zadie, with help from Catherine McCarthy, Michaela Bly and Callie Thuma. Moth events are recorded by Argo Studios in New York City.
Diavian: [00:16:58] Supervised by Paul Ruest. The Moth Podcast is presented by PRX, the Public Radio Exchange, helping make public radio more public at prx.org.
Mooj: [00:17:10] Critical funding for The Moth's Education Program is provided by members of The Moth. Please become a member or renew your membership today to help us continue bringing the magic of storytelling to high school students in New York City. Visit themoth.org/studentstories to learn more today.
[Transcript provided by SpeechDocs Podcast Transcription]