Host - Christina Norman
Christina Norma: [00:00:02] Welcome to the Moth Podcast. I'm Christina Norman.
I don't know about you, but I find this time of year just a little bit stressful. It's not the constant Santa ads on TV. It's not the long dark days. It's the pressure to give the perfect gift to everyone you love. If you celebrate the holidays at all, it can be totally nerve-wracking. What if my BFF's enthusiasm for tinned French sardines doesn't match mine, and what if I spend too much money or worse yet, too little, on my office's white elephant gift? What if my brother doesn't like the whiskey stones, I got him? That's just a joke. Please don't get your brother whiskey stones. Trust me.
On this episode, we have two stories about giving gifts and what you receive in return. Oh, and don't worry, even though one story mentions Santa, it doesn't reveal any of the big guy secrets.
First up, Stephanie Garibaldi, who told this at a Moth StorySLAM in Washington D.C. Here's Stephanie, live at The Moth.
[cheers and applause]
Stephanie: [00:01:09] I have always hated visiting the mall, Santa. As a shy kid, I much preferred writing a letter. It seemed much more civilized than sitting on a strange man's lap and making demands. [audience laughter] My parents would drag me anyway. When Santa would invariably ask what I wanted for Christmas, I would just mumble something like, “Whatever you have in this sleigh is fine.” [audience laughter]
As a parent, it wasn't any better. You waited in a huge line to pay a huge amount of money for a photo of your kid sitting on a stranger's lap, either grimacing, fake smiling or worse, out now crying. So, I was pretty relieved when I thought that my daughter at age nine had maybe outgrown the whole visiting Santa thing. So, I just didn't take her that year. Only imagine my horror, three days before Christmas, she says, “Mom, I need to tell Santa something. Can you bring me to him?”
Okay. As a single mom, I have already gotten her whatever presents I'm going to manage to get her. They're neatly wrapped, ribbons and bows and they're hidden away ready for Christmas morning. So, I'm panicking, because she's going to make some big request of the hot toy that you can't get anymore three days before Christmas. This is not good. So, I try a strategy. I say, “You know, I'm in pretty tight with Santa, so why don't you tell me and I'll pass it along to Santa?” But she says, “No, this is so important. I need to tell him face to face.”
So, I take her two days before Christmas. The line is longer than ever. We finally get up to the front, and she jumps right up there and it's like, she is ready for that first question. He says, “So, have you been a good girl this year?” And she's like, “Oh yes, I've been very good. So, good that you're probably going to bring me a lot of presents. But here's the thing, Santa. That's what I wanted to talk to you about. See, I learned this year there are lots of kids who don't have very many toys. Yeah. In fact, some kids don't even have a bedroom of their own or a parent. I'm lucky, because I have three parents, I have my mom and my grandparents. So, I want you to take all the toys that you were going to bring to me and give them to kids who need them more.”
I got to tell you, [chuckles] I am trying not to lose it like a fool in the mall Santas line. All my fears, when you're a single mom and she has to go to aftercare after school and she's spending so many hours with a stranger, you think she's not getting good values. You don't those dreams that these fancy schmancy two parent families have. You don't think things like my kid could be the president one day. No, you just hope and pray that she'll become like a decent human being. We hadn't even talked about this, so she's come up with this out of her own heart. And I am floored.
And then, I saw something I've never seen before. Santa's taken it pretty hard too, because I see him wipe a tear away from his cheek. [audience laughter] He gets himself together. He harrumphs a little bit and then he says, “Well, it's a privilege to honor such a request. And I will.” He said, “But I think I can also find a few extra gifts for a sweet girl like you in my bag, so I'll bring you something too.” She's happy and she says, “Thank you, Santa.” She reaches up and gives him this big hug. We're making it off to the car, and she holds my hand on the way to the car-- I'm still trying to get myself together. I'm speechless still. I put her in her little car seat in the back, because even though she's nine, she's tiny, she still fits in one of these car seats.
We're heading off from Anne Arundel Mills and I get onto 295 and that's when I've gotten myself together enough. I took a deep breath and I just glance in the rear-view mirror briefly at her, because I don't want to risk injuring this beautiful future Nobel Peace prize winning person. [audience laughter] So, just glance and I say, you know, that was a really kind thing that you asked Santa for. Made me very proud. And she said, “Oh, I didn't mean it.” [audience laughter] Yeah. So, I hit the brakes and I go off onto the shoulder of 295, even though you're not supposed to, just so I could turn on my seat and say, “Excuse me. I'm sorry. What did you just say?” And she said, “Well, as you know, I haven't been very good this year.” [audience laughter]
Yeah. I thought if I asked Santa to give my gifts to other kids, that he would be fooled and think that I'm this amazing kid and he would bring me gifts anyway. [audience laughter] And then, she says, “And it worked.” [audience laughter] [audience applause]
Yeah. All of a sudden, she's gone from modern day Mother Teresa to Machiavelli. [audience laughter] I am so upset that I've only had 15 minutes to relish in the joy of this moment before it was cruelly ripped away from me. And part of me, I'm not going to lie, part of me is proud, [audience laughter] because she thought of this, but the bigger part of me is concerned. And also, she's missed the big picture and she has bet on the wrong horse not understanding the Santa mother thing. [audience laughter]
I think to myself, what I should do. If I was a responsible mother, what I would do when I get home, I'm going to unwrap all those presents I got for her and I'm going to give them to other children and I'm going to take pictures of those children [audience laughter] and I'm going to wrap those pictures in an empty box. [audience laughter] That would teach her, right? Then maybe she'd have the value she needs to. But who has the time and the energy [audience laughter] to do that when you're a single mom? So, I vowed that I would talk to her later. And the later never came. And you know what? We had a pretty good Christmas that year. Thank you.
[cheers and applause]
Christina Norma: [00:07:49] That was Stephanie Garibaldi. Stephanie describes herself as the hardest working story coach in the D.C. metro area. Maybe even the world. As the Director of Story Extreme, she runs monthly storytelling shows in Alexandria while teaching classes all over.
Speaking of the perfect gift, my favorite gift of all time was my cork fetching half Siamese cat Cleo, a present from my then boyfriend and now husband, Charles. She popped out of a wet cardboard box one December night and sealed the deal. Rest in peace, Cleo. On theme of gratitude, I'd be remiss not to mention that the gift of story always fits. I work for The Moth. What else can I say?
We're in the midst of our year end donation drive. So, if any of The Moth stories have touched you and you want to share them with other people, you can support our mission by going to the moth.org, or text give24 with no space in between to 78679. Your support helps us bring storytelling workshops to students and community groups around the country. Once again, that's themoth.org, or text give24 with no space in between to 78679.
Next up, here's Justin Werfel, who told this at a StorySLAM in Boston.
[applause]
Justin Werfel: [00:09:08] All right. Two to one, that was the score. My father is not an easy man to give presents to. It's not that he doesn't like surprises, it's more that he doesn't like anything. [audience laughter] He's not shy about saying so. So, while the rest of my family is all gathered around exchanging gifts, trying to share with our loved ones the things that we found for them that we thought would delight them, my dad opens a present and says, “Oh, why'd you waste your money on this? I don't want it,” which isn't such an easy thing to hear when you're six. [audience laughter] But you get used to it, which doesn't mean that you stop trying.
My sister and I had a running competition. Throughout our whole lives, we kept track of how many presents each of us had gotten for him that he'd actually liked. The lifetime score was two to one. [audience laughter] To be fair, he was always very clear about what he actually wanted, and that was a sports car, [audience laughter] which I think is the traditional present you get a child for their parent if you're the emperor of the 12 kingdoms. It’s obviously he didn't expect to get one as a present, but from his point of view, it was like, “Why would he want some other thing that he didn't want? So, we would get him things that we could that we thought he would like and he would vocally not want them.” That was the system.
There was one time when-- I was probably seven or eight, I went into a Hallmark store. They used to sell these little cardboard jigsaw puzzles, like 100 pieces in a square little box. There was a section of the store devoted to these, which actually, now that I'm looking back on this and saying this out loud, strikes me as really strange. Like, 100-piece jigsaw puzzles, that's a really specific niche audience. You've got to be enough of a control freak to enjoy setting things in order for recreation, but also too impatient for something that's going to take you more than a couple of minutes. [audience laughter]
Anyway, I used to be really into these. I had a whole collection. So, I went into the store that day, and went to the inexplicable little cardboard puzzle section to see what they had. And oh my God, there was a puzzle there with a photograph of a red Ferrari. And in big letters on the box it said, “Your very own sports car. Some assembly required.” [audience laughter] Perfect. I could not wait for the next gift giving occasion to come around. When it did, my dad opened the carefully wrapped package I gave him and he looked at it and said, “Oh, why'd you get me this?” It may have been that some disappointment showed in my face, because he handed it back to me and he said, “Here, you take it, you'll use it.” I didn't really.
A few years ago, I was thinking about this puzzle, like it was so symptomatic. Of all of the things that I got him over the years that he couldn't stand, that one might have been the best. It was so ideal in so many ways. It turned out that I wasn't the only one thinking about it. A month later, I was visiting home, and my dad just started talking about it, out of the blue, totally unprompted. The reason this is so weird is, aside from the coincidence of both of us thinking about it around the same time, my dad has the worst memory. He just absolutely remembers nothing.
So, for him to suddenly start talking about this present after a quarter of a century means that it must have really made an impact on him. And it had. What he said was, “You remember that puzzle of the sports car you got me? That was the worst present.” And I said, no, that was the best present. That was your little son who loves you, trying to get you something to please you. He said, “Okay, I get it.” I said, no, you don't. That was the thing you were always saying you wanted. That was me finding a way to make it come true. He said, “Okay, I get it.” I said, no, [audience laughter] that was connecting my interests to yours, which is a thing you've spent my entire life saying you want to do. Like I said, I've just been thinking about this. [audience laughter]
Eventually, I actually got him to change his mind about it, which is, yet another thing that never happens. But in this case, eventually, he came around to thinking, “Huh, that actually was a good present, after all. And huh, what a shame, in the way he received it. And what a lost opportunity.” Well, I've always been organized. When I grew up and moved out, over time, most of the stuff got moved out of my room, but a lot of it really just got moved down to the basement. So, that night, I went down to the basement and I found my old little chest of drawers and I opened the bottom drawer where I kept my puzzle collection and there it was [audience laughter] where I'd put it when he gave it back.
So, when the next gift giving occasion came around, my dad opened the carefully wrapped package I gave him and this time, he got it. He keeps it on his desk now. It's the first thing he sees every time he sits down. Three to one.
[cheers and applause]
Christina Norma: [00:14:25] That was Justin Werfel. Justin is a research scientist at Harvard, where he studies collective intelligence in systems from robots to termites. His work has had the rare honor of being denounced by a former Assistant Secretary of the US Treasury as, “an enemy of the human race.”
That's it for this episode. From all of us here at The Moth, please know that listening to us is the greatest gift we could ask for.
Marc Sollinger: [00:14:55] Christina Norman is the Chief Creative Officer at The Moth. She's excited to expand the world of The Moth and empower more storytellers everywhere. She lives in Brooklyn, and you can find her most Saturday mornings in Prospect Park with her husband and her Ridgeback, Pepper.
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 include Sarah Haberman, Christina Norma, Jenifer Hixson, Meg Bowles, Kate Tellers, Marina Klutse, Suzanne Rust, Lee Ann Gullie and Patricia Ureña. All Moth stories are true, as remembered 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.