Host: Dan Kennedy
Dan Kennedy [00:00:01] Welcome to The Moth Podcast. I'm your host, Dan Kennedy, and this week we're celebrating Father's Day. Two stories from a son's perspective. One of the things I remember about growing up with my father was he would take me on these amazing fishing trips on the Pacific Ocean. I remember, at that age, I was 65 pounds, and we were fishing for fish that were 30 and 40 pounds. My dad almost always was the guy who hooked the fish. I didn't really have the skills. I was the same sort of bookish podcast nerd that I am right now. He would hook into a fish, hand me the rod, and the most loving gesture I could imagine was he would take his hand and hang on to my belt loops and hold me while I battled a fish that was about my weight and size, as he had a beer and talked with the guy next to him.
First up on the podcast this week, we have Majdy Fares. Majdy told this story at a StorySLAM in Washington DC, where the theme of the night was “Distance.” Here's Majdy live at The Moth.
Majdy Fares [00:01:10] Thank you. My family's huge. I have four brothers and 64 first cousins, and my dad is the patriarch of it all. He receives a tremendous amount of respect. He receives royal treatment, and he deserves it. He's earned it. One day, he and I were arguing about my wedding plans. I wanted to have my wedding in a tent. He felt like tent weddings were for Bedouins and nomads. Normally I would back down out of respect, but this was my wedding, so I stood my ground. And of course, he stood his ground. What should have been a small argument escalated into a shouting match. We've argued in the past, but this time I crossed the line. I insulted him.
I called him stubborn and proud, which might not seem like a big deal to you, but in my family that's like Simba clapping back at Mufasa. [audience laughter] It was a horrible fight. Family dinners were awkward. Even the family group chat was awkward. I don't even know how that's possible, but it gave me insomnia and anxiety. So I decided one day to drive from DC, where I live, to Michigan, where he lives, to apologize. The drive is about eight hours, which was great because it gave me plenty of time to mentally prepare and rehearse this really heavy conversation. The problem with an eight-hour drive is that it requires a lot of coffee. And on the Ohio Turnpike, I saw a sign that read, “Next restroom, 45 miles.” I immediately had to pee. I didn’t have to pee until I saw that stupid sign.
I should have pulled over like a normal person, but instead I kept doing math. “If I'm going 75 miles an hour and the restroom is 15 miles away, that's only 12 more minutes. You can't quit now.” I hit the gas. Forty agonizing minutes later, I arrived at the restroom, which was actually a food court, and I was in rough shape. I was sweating from weird parts of my body, and my legs were cramped from straining. But I made it, I finally made it. Or so I thought. What I didn't know at the time is that I have a nerve condition that makes me faint if I've been straining for too long. Apparently, it's only geriatric patients and me, and that’s it. When I opened the doors to the food court, I became lightheaded and crashed against the wall. I was confused. I propped myself on the handrail. I didn’t know what was happening. My body was saying, “Lay down, relax.” But my brain was like, “You've been holding your pee for 45 miles, and you're only 30 feet away from relief. You can't quit now.” [sighs]
So I mustered all the pride and stubbornness in my blood and I went for it. A few seconds later, I woke up on my back surrounded by Midwesterners. The first guy I saw was wearing a camouflage hat. He said, “Son, do you know where you are.” I said, “Yeah, I'm in Sandusky.” He said, “I think you had a stroke.” Then some lady with a poodle embroidered on her sweater said, “He didn't have no stroke. He had an epileptic seizure. My brother went down the same way.” And some other guy was like, “He could have had a heart attack.” And I thought, “Am I in a WebMD forum? What is happening right now. [audience laughter] “Everybody relax. I don't have epilepsy, and I didn't have a stroke. I just really need to pee.” And then poodle lady said, “Well, not anymore, you don't.” [audience laughter]
I looked to my right, and there was a yellow trail circling the floor drain five feet in front of the bathroom. The crowd all around me was clamoring, and I could tell how big it was from the murmur. So I scrambled to get up, but security wouldn't let me because when I fainted, I hit my chin and split it wide open. My pants were soaked in urine and my shirt was covered in blood. My only thought was, “Oh, shit, if this goes viral, my life is over.” [audience laughter] The paramedics came and asked to call my emergency contact or my family physician. Both of those people are my dad. So I watched the paramedic call my dad and tell him the whole story. Then he said, “Your dad wants to talk to you.” “Oh, man. God.” “Majdy, are you okay?” “Yes, dad, thank you for asking.” “Why you don't pull over?” I said, “Because I'm proud, and because I’m stubborn.” He said, “Well, you learn from the best.” Thank you.
[applause and cheers]
Dan Kennedy [00:07:01] That was Majdy Fares. Majdy grew up in Dearborn, Michigan, and currently lives in Washington, DC. He recently left a career in medical sales to try his hand as a comedy writer, and this was the first story he told at The Moth. When we followed up with Majdy, he told us he received eight stitches, argh, on his chin from that fall and that his father met him at the hospital where they did, in fact, make amends, which is great to hear. Dr. Fares was also the MC at Majdy's wedding, which did take place under a tent after all. Majdy and his wife Rena are going to celebrate their second anniversary this summer. Happy anniversary you two. If you want to check out extras from Majdy's story, visit our site at themoth.org for photos from the wedding. Up next, Adam Ellick.
Adam told this story at a StorySLAM here in New York City. The theme of the night was Endings. Here's Adam live at The Moth.
[applause and cheers]
Adam Ellick [00:08:05] When my father, Eugene, passed away, I was 21 and completely broken. In our house outside of Philadelphia, he left behind so many valuable things, precious memories, a closet full of Sherlock Holmes audio cassette tapes, endless books about his favorite subject, the Battle of Britain. But the most painful thing he left behind were two tickets. Two season tickets to the Philadelphia Eagles at Veterans Stadium, Section 309, Row 8, Seats 4 and 5. Going to games with dad on Sunday was a bridge to unite a very odd father son pairing. My dad was a huge intellectual dork, and he yearned to make his son share his love of ideas and books and history. But I was obsessed with one thing, American football.
Going to games at the Vet was the place where we learned how to be together. I still remember being stuck in traffic for hours on the bridge, and we would talk about school and family. I remember him holding my hand tightly during game winning field goals. We shared more bear hugs over those two red plastic seats than probably anywhere else in the world. But not that many bear hugs, because the Eagles sucked. [audience laughter] Really. The last time they won a championship was 1960, and that was before it was even called the Super Bowl. The Vet was a creepy place to bond with your dad because Eagles fans are famously bitter, angry, and violent. There were fights every Sunday, most of them were bloody.
The stadium was actually the first in the country to install an operational municipal court during games on Sundays in the basement to hold trials for those arrested on the spot for fighting. [audience laughter] Good parenting, huh? One time, someone shot a flare gun across the stadium. So you can imagine when he died, I had quite the challenge to find out what to do with these two tickets, how to fill the void of Seats 4 and 5. So I invited a revolving door of people who were close to me. My best friend from high school was a huge fan, so I took him to games. It didn't work out because I would start crying before kickoff and hope he didn't notice, and he would pretend not to notice.
And then I invited my mom, and she kept asking, “What's the difference between a first down and a touchdown?” That unleashed a comedy of errors when she started saying, “When are we supposed to cheer?” I invited college professors, friends from overseas, girlfriends. The truth is, I just resented everyone who was in that seat next to me because they weren't my father. I think grief strikes people in different ways. For a lot of people, it hurts on birthdays or holidays. For me, it always stung on Sundays. Football Sundays.
Over the years, the Eagles kept losing, and they moved into a new stadium, and then they kept losing some more. Over time, I started to resent the people who sat in our section as well. The lifers. Right in our row was a father-son couple. The kid was about six years old, the same age when I started going to games with my dad. He was a redhead with a little Eagles cap. Sometimes I would miss a play and find myself staring at them in envy. He was enacting everything that I had lost right in front of my face.
So I started selling my tickets and I stopped going to games. Then, as you may know, this season came along, and it was the Cinderella story for the ages. The Eagles just couldn't stop winning, even though the odds were 60 to 1 for them to win the Super Bowl, and their star player got hurt, and they just kept winning. I felt like a six-year-old kid again. And I had to go to the last game of the year, the NFC Championship game.
I invented a solution. I decided to sell my dad's ticket on the internet to a stranger and go to the game alone. This afforded me the space, to grieve without resentment or embarrassment. I went in an hour and a half early, sat in those seats, and just thought how much my dad would have loved this underdog team. And I felt like an idiot, I kept telling myself, “18 years have passed now since this man died, and you're still here paralyzed by grief.” But grief has no expiration date. Eventually, all the characters started coming in. The drunks, they high fived me. It was like a high school reunion. And then the little redhead came in. He wasn't little anymore. He was now 20, 6’3”, and about 300 pounds.
One of the drunks grabbed him from behind like an endless bear hug and said, “Today we're going to do it. We're going to do it for Pops.” I realized right then that the redhead had also lost his dad. I wanted to console him because I saw his eyes filled with tears. The moment passed because 66,000 people that had just stood up and were cheering and trembling as the Eagles just came out of the tunnel. Philadelphia had been waiting, an entire generation, or in my case two, for this exact moment. All I could think about was this poor kid whose eyes were filling with tears just like mine. I really wanted to console him. For a second, I even forgot my own pain. Then the ball kicked off and went into the air. We stood next to each other for the next three hours, watching the game together without our dads. Thank you.
[applause]
Dan Kennedy: [00:14:28] That was Adam Ellick. Adam says he's never had the courage to talk to that redhead boy who sits in his row. Attending the NFC Championship game alone was actually very healing. He watched the Eagles win the 2018 Super Bowl on TV with two of his best friends in Philadelphia. Adam is a Pulitzer Prize and Emmy winning journalist who has spent many years covering human rights issues. He claims to be the only person in the world who watched the Eagles lose a championship game from TV sets in Indonesia, Lithuania, Pakistan, and Philadelphia. He's been attending Moth StorySLAMs since 2005, but just recently put his name in the hat. Like Majdy, this was his first ever Moth story. That does it for us this week. We'll be back soon with more stories from all of us here at The Moth.
Dan Kennedy: [00:15:18] We hope you have a story worthy week.
Credits: [00:15:22] Dan Kennedy is the author of Loser Goes First, Rock On, and American Spirit. He's also a regular host and storyteller with The Moth.
Dan Kennedy: [00:15:29] Podcast production by Julia Purcell. The Moth Podcast is presented by PRX, the Public Radio Exchange, helping make public radio more public at prx.org.