Host: Catherine Burns
[Uncanny Valley by The Drift]
Catherine: [00:00:12] This is The Moth Radio Hour from PRX. And I’m Catherine Burns. The Moth is all about true stories told live. On today’s show, a little girl with a scary heart defect, a chance encounter with Mr. Rogers and Eddie Murphy, late-night drama in the ice cream section of a supermarket, a visit to the Coney Island boardwalk circa 1959.
And our first story told by Dr. Danielle Ofri.
[cheers and applause]
Here’s Danielle, live at a show we produced with our friends at the World Science Festival.
Danielle: [00:00:43] The most ominous day of the year, if you’re becoming a doctor, is July 1st. On July 1st, everything turns over in the medical world. So, medical students become doctors. They're now interns. Interns become residents, residents are now fellows, fellows become attendings. You're not supposed to remark on the bizarreness of being ratcheted up a notch at the stroke of midnight. No. On July 1st, you walk into your untested role, cool as a cucumber, and you act as though the world of June 30th and before never existed. [audience chuckle] Or, as the interns say, when in doubt, pretend. And so, on June 30th, I was a measly medical student. And on July 1st, I was now one of those interns.
I had been scheduled to start internship on night float, four weeks straight of night shift only. At 10 o'clock at night, I walked down First Avenue in the pitch darkness for my first day of internship. Now, night float is supposed to be the direct continuation of medical care from the day teams. But as a night float intern, I had the patient load of four other interns, so this wasn’t possible. My beeper never stopped. “Mr. Rivera, 19 south needs a new IV. Mr. Soto in 16 east is having chest pain. Mrs. Ahmed in 17 north has a fever. Mr. Hallal's daughter’s here and wants to talk to a doctor. Mrs. Rashid fell out of bed. Mrs. Kwan’s refusing her meds. Mr. Nolan’s having a blood transfusion reaction. Mr. Rivera’s IV is out again.”
And so, night float turned out to be 10 hours of damage control. I raced from one ward to the next, patching things up, putting out fires, just hoping to keep everyone alive until the sun came up over the East River and the day teams [audience chuckle] came back. So, one night, in my second week of night float, I get paged by my resident around 3 o’clock or 4 o’clock in the morning. “Elba Rodriguez’s blood count just dropped 13 points. Get over to 16 north, do a rectal, see if she’s bleeding from her gut.”
Now, you should know that in the human body, there are only a few places where you can bleed briskly enough to drop your hematocrit to 13 points. And the GI tract is the prime suspect. And if you bleed anywhere along that line, from mouth to esophagus, stomach, small intestine, large intestine, rectum, there will be traces of blood in the stool. So, the way you check for a GI bleed is you get a stool sample, you put it on the card and you put a few drops of the special developer fluid on it. If it turns blue, that’s blood. And the way you get a stool sample is you send an intern over to do a rectal exam. [audience laughter] [audience applause]
And so, at this point in my career, I was very adept at taking orders. I didn’t ask questions. I did what I was told. Mrs. Rodriguez was a tiny, wrinkled Dominican woman with layers and layers of family at the bedside. So, I walk in and say, “Hi, I’m one of the night docs. I’m not her regular doctor, but I’m just here to do the rectal.” [audience laughter] And I’m thinking, Dr. Ofri, rectal specialist. And so, the grandson steps forward. He says, “Well, we understand what you have to do, doctor. I’m actually a nurse. And if you don’t mind, I want to stay with Abuelita while you do the exam.” “Stay while I do this?” And I’m thinking, what is the protocol for this situation? I’ve been a doctor now for two whole weeks, and I have no idea what to do when the family wants to stay. But I say, “Okay, you know, whatever.”
So, the rest of the family goes out to the hallway. We pull the curtain for some privacy from the other three patients. The grandson and I roll Mrs. Rodriguez on her left side, and I start disgorging my pockets, the gloves, the lubrication fluid, the test cards. And then, I realize I’m missing the bottle of developer fluid. So, I say to the grandson, “Can you just hold on for one second? I need to get one more thing.” So, I dashed out of the room, and I avoid the gaze of the family members there, and I run to the supply closet and start rifling through the shelves and the bins. No developer fluid. So, I raced down the hall to 16 west to their supply closet. And of course, none there, all the other interns have pocketed them.
The CCU, the cardiac care unit, was always well stocked, but I knew the nurses guard their supplies like hawks, so I crept in from the back door of the CCU-- [audience laughter] You know, where they keep the dirty laundry and the used bedpans, and I tiptoe over to the supply shelf. I start going through the shelves and there’s gauze pads and IVs, blood tubes, culture bottles, glycerin swabs and Betadine swabs. Right behind the chest tubes is a single yellow bottle developer fluid. I snatch it just as the nurse yells, “Hey, those are CCU supplies.” I cram it in my pocket and I run out with my head down, because from the back all interns look alike, [audience chuckle] or so I hoped.
So, I get back to 16 north, and I’m out of breath and I’m flustered and sweaty and the grandson is still calmly balancing Mrs. Rodriguez on her left side. [audience laughter] And so, I undo the floral housecoat, the cardigan sweater, and the patient gown, I get down to her skin. While I’m doing the exam, like a good night float intern, I’m running my scut list in my head, all right, I’ve got to do those blood cultures on 15 North. I’ve got to do the chest X-ray to follow up on 17 West and that guy in 19 South keeps pulling out his IV. And so, I’m doing the exam, running the scut list, and the grandson says, “I think that Abuelita is no longer with us.” “No longer with us? What was he talking about?”
With his free hand, the grandson crossed himself and murmured something in Spanish. I’m still frozen in the middle of the exam, “No longer with us? Mrs. Rodriguez is dead?” The grandson sighed. “Abuelita lived a long and wonderful life. She didn’t want any heroic measures or machines. She just wanted to drift off in peace. We just need you to pronounce her dead, doctor, and then we can take her home.” I’m staring at the grandson. Suddenly, my mind begins to race. I tear the glove off and I’m thinking, okay, okay, how do I declare a patient dead? I’m running through the file cab in my head, thinking, okay, okay. Pupillary reflexes. That’s it.
So, I whip out my handy pen light and I shine into Mrs. Rodriguez’s eyes. To my dismay, she has huge cataracts and probably wouldn’t have had reflexes anyway. [audience chuckle] Okay, okay. Respirations. Dead people do not breathe. And so, I whip out my stethoscope. By now, the family is filtered in from the hallway, and they gather around a watch that I put in one earpiece and the other, and I plant the bell on her chest. And suddenly, a twitch vibrates through her body and I jump back. Was this rigor mortis, or might she still be alive?
Suddenly, dawns on me that we never had a lecture in medical school on how to declare a patient dead. I guess it was assumed to be pretty obvious, dead is dead. And if you’re not dead, then you’re alive, right? Pulse. Pulse. That is it. Dead people, for sure, do not have a pulse. And so, I run my fingers along her left carotid and then along her right. Of course, the only way you know you found the pulse is when you’ve found the pulse. [audience laughter] How do you document the absence of something when its presence is defined by hunting until you found it? [audience chuckle] Maybe I was in the wrong spot. Maybe I’m pressing too hard or not hard enough.
Was I supposed to go over her entire body to document the absence of a pulse? Another twitch runs through Mrs. Rodriguez’s body, and the family is staring at me, waiting for an answer. But how can I say anything? What if I got it wrong? Okay, okay. An EKG. That’s it. If I get a flat line on EKG, nobody could argue with that. So, I run out and get the EKG machine and wheel it back in. These old decrepit EKG machines that Bellevue had, all the leads are tangled up. These old machines have these red rubber suction cups to put on the chest. When you squeeze them, electro jelly for EKG goes by, slithers out in crusted blue clumps.
And Mrs. Rodriguez, the skinny little woman, doesn’t have much bulk on her chest for the suction cups to stay onto. So, I’d squeeze one on, another one would pop off, and so I’d apply more jelly and put it on, another one would pop off, back and forth. The family is like watching, like a tennis match, back and forth [audience laughter] as I’m chasing down the obstreperous suction cups. Finally, finally, I get the EKG set up, all the chest leads, all the limb leads and I press the start button. We all stare at this skinny strip of graph paper that’s sneaking out of the EKG machine. I’m praying for something definitive. It emerges with completely unreadable squiggles between the rattling air vents and three IV pumps. the next bit over, I can’t get a stable baseline. I readjust the leads, and two more suction cups pop off.
The grandson curls his hand around his grandmother’s wrists and he says, “She’s dead, doctor. You don’t have to do any more tests.” The family joins hands and begins to pray in Spanish, and I’m standing there, with EKG jelly crusted under my fingernails, burning with embarrassment, how could I not figure out whether or not Mrs. Rodriguez was dead? Isn’t that what doctors do, pronounce the time of death? How could I ever be a doctor if I couldn’t tell a dead person from a live one? [audience laughter] How could there exist so much to be ignorant of? When were these magical medical skills going to materialize, and what was I going to write on the death certificate as the immediate cause of death?
The sun came up over the East River, as it always does, even after the longest, hardest night of night float. As I’m signing out to the day teams, I’m thinking about Mrs. Rodriguez. I imagine her as a young woman, a fresh immigrant, right off the boat to New York. Maybe she came to Bellevue every year for her annual checkup. Maybe she had her children at Bellevue. Maybe she thought she would die at Bellevue. Wherever she was, I hoped she forgave me for the indignity she suffered at the hands of an inexperienced intern.
Now, most of us, when we go home at the end of the day, it’s the end of the day. The light is falling, twilight’s coming, dusk. But when you work at night, the end of the day, it’s brilliant morning sun. I did night float, the month of July, and so it was so bright. I remember I would go home every morning like this, with my eyes covered. When I look back at that time now, I realize that I spent so much of my medical training with my eyes closed.
Learning medicine, so internally focused, cramming in all those facts, all those diseases, I always had my head in a book. But one of the things about becoming a doctor, is that you need to open your eyes. You need to open your eyes to the world around us, to the experiences that teach us medicine. But our truest teachers are our patients and their families, whose lives and experiences we are so, so privileged to be a part of. Thank you.
[cheers and applause]
Catherine: [00:12:55] That was Danielle Ofri. Danielle’s a physician at Bellevue Hospital, the oldest public hospital in the country. She’s a co-founder and editor in chief of the Bellevue Literary Review, which is the first literary journal to ever come out of a medical setting.
When I was getting ready to work with Danielle and her story, I read her book called Singular Intimacies: Becoming a Doctor at Bellevue. I liked it so much that I read her next book and then her next and then her next. So, by the time I got off the train at Bellevue on my way to meet with her for the first time, I had this surreal feeling, like I’d stepped onto the set of my favorite medical drama. It was like Grey’s Anatomy, only real. Her fifth book, What Patients Say, What Doctors Hear, is out now.
Coming up, a little girl is told by doctors that the only way to save her life is by stopping her heart. That’s next up on The Moth Radio Hour.
[melancholy music]
Jay: [00:14:09] The Moth Radio Hour is produced by Atlantic Public Media in Woods Hole, Massachusetts. And presented by PRX.
[melancholy music]
Catherine: [00:15:19] This is The Moth Radio Hour from PRX. I’m Catherine Burns.
Our next storyteller is Isobel Connelly. We just had the story from a doctor in a hospital, and now we’re going to hear from a young patient. We met Isobel when, at age 15, she signed up for- [audience cheers and applause] -our high school StorySLAM workshop at the School of the Future in New York City. Here’s Isobel.
Isobel: [00:15:43] So, I’m six years old. I’m afraid of kites, balloons, Santa Claus, [audience chuckle] the Easter Bunny and really any adults that aren’t my parents. I sit in an ER with my mom. I’ve gone there, because this weird thing happened to my heart and it started beating really, really fast and no one really knew what it was. And so, we sit there and this kind doctor comes in and he looks at me and he looks at my mom and he says, “Isobel, there’s something wrong with your heart, but we don’t really know what it is.” They said, “It could be this thing called supraventricular tachycardia, or SVT. Essentially what this means, is that there is an arrhythmia in your heart and so your heart beats really, really, really fast and it’s very dangerous” in the deaf sense [chuckles] of the word. [audience laughter]
But they didn’t tell me that, because I was six. Instead, they said, “Isobel, when this happens, you need to find an adult immediately and get to the ER.” And for six-year-old Isobel, this is two very terrifying things happening at once. [audience chuckle] I have to talk to an adult that I don’t know, and then I have to go to the ER, a place that I don’t know. And so, they just let us leave, because they said there’s nothing you can really do until it happens again and you come back. And so, we leave and I go to school and it doesn’t really affect me. I try not to think about it. I go to my friend’s house with my mom.
We live in San Francisco, and so you have to drive everywhere and there are a lot of hills. We get there and I’m upstairs and we’re doing whatever little six-year-old kids do. And my heart starts to beat so quickly. I look around and I’m a little bit freaked out and I go downstairs and I grab my mom’s wrist and I’m like, “Mom, it’s happening. We have to go to the ER now.” And so, she takes me and we jump in the car and we drive to the ER. And because this is San Francisco, the only parking space is at the bottom of the hill, and the ER is at the top of the hill. [chuckles] And so, we run up the hill. My mom’s out of breath, and I’m even more out of breath and everything’s starting to get a little bit hazy. We get in there and the woman at the front desk is like, “Welcome to the ER.” [audience laughter] And my mom’s like, “She’s having supraventricular tachycardia.” [audience chuckle] And the woman’s like, “Oh, my God.” [audience laughter]
[cheers and applause]
They whisk me into this other part of the ER. I’m in a bed, this white cot. And suddenly, there’s this wash of blue, the blue scrubs. I’m starting to realize that I don’t really feel very okay anymore. I can feel my heart beating and they’re attaching all these different things to me. And this man grabs my arm and he says, “I have to put the IV in your arm.” And this has happened to me like six times now and I know how much it’s going to hurt and I so badly do not want him to do it. And I say, “Please, please don’t.” And he says, “I have to.” And so, he does. And I hate it.
And then, they look at the monitor. And for those of you who don’t know, a regular heartbeat is about 60 to 100 beats per minute. At the height of this heart thing, my heart was beating 360 beats per minute. [audience aww] So, they look at the monitor and they’re looking at me, and I’m looking back at them, hoping to just find something in their eyes telling me that I’m going to be okay. And the doctors start to look nervous. When doctors start to look nervous, I get nervous. [audience laughter] They look at me and they look at the monitor and they call the head cardiologist from the hospital to come down, because they’ve never seen anything like this. They all go away into this corner.
My mom wears these clinky bracelets. When I hear them, I know it’s all going to be okay. But I don’t hear those clinky bracelets anymore and it’s really quiet and I really don’t think I’m going to be okay. The doctors come over to me, and they start unpacking this thing and they go, “Isobel, we’re going to have to give you this medicine. This medicine is going to stop your heart from beating and it should pick right back up again. But if it doesn’t, we’re going to defibrillate you.” So, they put two stickers on my chest, and the guy sits there with the defibrillator, and he looks at me, and the head cardiologist puts this medicine into the IV, and they look at me, and they look at the monitor and suddenly it goes flat. And then, it goes beep, beep, beep and I’m okay.
So, by this time, they’re 100% sure I have supraventricular tachycardia. [audience laughter] And they tell me, “Isobel, you’re going to have an operation. They call it an ablation.” I will be the third person in the world of my age to have the operation. I’m fine. I had it. I’m okay. My heart is totally normal now. But I’ve had lots of different encounters with hospitals and doctors. What I’ve really taken away from it, is that I’m no longer that little kid who’s afraid to say how they’re feeling. I call people out on their shit. [audience laughter] I have this feeling inside of me that if doctors can save me once, I really believe that they can save me again. Thank you.
[cheers and applause]
Catherine: [00:22:02] Isobel Connelly has participated in two high school GrandSLAMs on The Moth Mainstage, and was also part of our first ever All City StorySLAM team. She’s now a student at the Rhode Island School of Design, and she’s an aspiring artist and filmmaker. We’re pleased to report that her heart continues to be absolutely fine.
Now, we’re going to hear from David Newell. You may not recognize his name, but you and your children would recognize his face. David starred as the beloved Mr. McFeely, spending 33 years bringing speedy deliveries to Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood. He told his story at a Mainstage show in Pittsburgh, where we partner with Pittsburgh Arts and Lectures and public radio station WESA.
[cheers and applause]
Here’s David Newell, live at The Moth.
David: [00:22:55] When I was nine years old, my grandfather took me to see my first play at the Nixon Theater in downtown Pittsburgh. And the name of the play was Harvey. Well, I was mesmerized by not only the play, but the theater. The Nixon Theater was built in the early 1900s, and it was said to be one of the most lavish theaters Pittsburgh ever had. I remember a sea of red velvet, and polished marble and gold trim everywhere. It's then that I realized that I wanted to be involved in some form of theater. But in the summer of 1967, I had the chance to go to London to visit my cousin. And then, after that, tour Europe on $5 dollars a day. You could actually buy a book, tour Europe on $5 dollars a day.
Well, you could do it in 1967 if you didn’t want to eat. [audience laughter] But it was also hard to locate anybody in Europe. This is 1967, and there were no computers and no cell phones. So, it was really difficult to catch up with someone who’s on the go. I had a friend in Pittsburgh who was trying to locate me. His name was Bob McCully. He located the American Express office in London and sent a telegram in hopes that I would get the telegram and the message when I came back to London. Well, I did. And the message was that “Fred Rogers had gotten some underwriting to take Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood national.” And he said, “I have set up an interview for you with Fred Rogers when you get back to Pittsburgh.”
So, about three days after I got back to Pittsburgh, I met with Fred. Now, I didn’t know Fred. I knew him from the popularity of his first program called Children’s Corner and the regional production of Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood. So, during the interview, he explained the concept of the program and said, “The job we’re offering you, is that of a production assistant. You would be in charge of finding props, and making sure they are ready to go when we tape, and checking the costumes and so forth.” Oh, and he said, [chuckles] “And dressing the puppets.” [audience laughter] That was the job description.
And so, after about an hour, he hired me. So, I had a job. On the first day of taping, I had props already, all my assignments were done, the costumes were in order and also the puppets were dressed, even King Friday. [audience chuckle] I was in my delivery costume, waiting in the corner of the studio to get for a ready for taping. Well, we started taping the first program, and my first delivery, I remember it was an armadillo, [audience chuckle] a South American animal, armadillo.
Now, I don’t know how that worked in the context of the script, I can’t remember but somehow it did. Then my delivery service was called Speedy Delivery, a one-man delivery service. We finished the scene and I was leaving, I said, “Speedy Delivery, Mr. Rogers.” And he said back to me, “Speedy delivery, Mr. McFeely.” And off I went and it’s been my catchphrase for 40 years. [chuckles] [audience cheers and applause]
Well, we were a success. We went from black and white to color and we were renewed and renewed and renewed. As the years went on, I worked in public relations for the program. Fred and I were in New York City. Fred was rehearsing for the interview on the David Letterman Show. Oh, by the way, the guests that night were Julie [chuckles] Andrews, Andy Kaufman and Fred Rogers. [audience laughter] Between the rehearsal, there was about an hour before the taping. There was a crewman on the floor. I don’t know, he came over to me and started whispering. It was sort of hushed. He said, “Why don’t you take Fred up to Studio 8H? They’re rehearsing Saturday Night Live there and surprise Eddie Murphy.” [audience laughter]
Well, if you don’t know, Eddie Murphy did a lot of spoofs on the neighborhood. [audience laughter] And he called them Mr. Robinson’s Neighborhood. [audience laughter] Not all of them were G rated. [audience laughter] Anyhow, we went up. Oh, the man said, “Take that elevator, because it goes right to 8H. No one will stop you.” So, we did. When we got there, they were on a break. Eddie was in his dressing room. That was it. They recognized Fred and said, “Oh, Mr. Rogers, Eddie’s dressing room is over there.” [audience laughter]
Fred goes over and knocks on the door. Eddie opens it, and he was truly surprised. [audience laughter] Actually, he stepped back a little, and then gave Fred a big hug and said, “The real Mr. Robinson.” [audience laughter] Oh, somebody took a Polaroid picture of the famous meeting of Eddie and Fred, and Fred took it down to Letterman later that evening and showed it to Letterman and his audience. You know, Fred Rogers skillfully used television to communicate. Even someone as cool and as talented as Eddie Murphy knew that.
I think it’s a connection that Eddie made as he was growing up. He said he watched the program. Well, meeting Eddie was years ago. But just recently, some cast members and I, we were at Idlewild Park. Idlewild Park is a charming amusement park about 60 miles east of Pittsburgh. We were there meeting and greeting. A family came up to us with their son, who was a teenager in a wheelchair. I had met them before, but this time, they had a picture with them, a photograph of me as McFeely holding a young child. And they said, “Do you know who this child is?” And I said, “No, I don’t.” And then, they pointed to their son in the wheelchair. It was just then I realized that this family has probably been coming back to see us every year of that child’s life.
We at Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood are touchstones for people, giving families the opportunity to come back again and again for a visit. Of all the things that I do, these visits are most important to me. As the saying goes, “If you love what you do, you'll never work a day in your life.” And for that, I have my grandfather, and Fred Rogers to thank and generations of children who grew up in Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood. Speedy Delivery, Mr. Rogers. [audience laughter]
[cheers and applause]
That was David Newell. Having been with Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood since its inception in 1967, David has been the show's property manager, associate producer and director of public relations. David continues to make personal appearances as an ambassador for the Mr. Rogers Neighborhood series.
[jazz music]
Coming up, a man is busted trying to hoard cartons of an elusive flavor of ice cream, when The Moth Radio Hour continues.
Jay: [00:33:25] 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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Catherine: [00:34:38] This is The Moth Radio Hour from PRX. And I'm Catherine Burns.
[cheers and applause]
Now, we're going to hear from many-time StorySLAM champion Steve Zimmer. Here's Steve, live at the Music Hall of Williamsburg.
Steve: [00:34:52] It's 2010 and I'm 46, the age when emotionally retarded single men in New York try to replace their mommy girlfriends with daughter girlfriends. [audience laughter] But as usual, I'm trailing my peer group and I'm dating Kate, who has a 12-year-old son. Kate says I don't get to meet her son until we've been dating three months. And that's fine with me. I previously dated a woman with a kid and I'm still very close to them. They're my quasi family. I don't need two quasi families. That's not even counting the quasi family I grew up in. [audience laughter]
So, Kate and I quickly develop a strong mutual bond, because she's a taker and I'm a giver, calculator, resenter. [audience laughter] So, time flies and we hit three months and Kate wants me to meet her son. And I say, let me think about it, because there's a lot of issues. There's a big ones like Kate's ex-husband and subtler ones like, for example, Kate and I experience sarcasm differently. [audience chuckle] Kate likes to make good-natured sarcastic comments about me, whereas I like to compile and analyze Kate's supposedly good-natured comments, [audience laughter] a process she refers to as Steve's psycho echo chamber, [audience chuckle] which is exactly the type of comment that goes in the chamber. [audience laughter]
So, after five months of dating, I still haven't agreed to meet her son. Kate's discontent begins to color everyday conversation. One night I say, “Well, for dinner tonight, I made stuffed green peppers. But this time, I used ground turkey instead of ground beef, so they may not be as good.” And Kate says, “I have no illusions.” [audience chuckle] That night after dinner, we don't speak. I need to give Kate an answer about her son. My answer will clarify our relationship. In addition, for me, it will address the eternal New York men's dating question of, will I ever be an actual grown-up? [audience chuckle] And for Kate, it will address the eternal New York women's dating question of, what the fuck? [audience laughter]
So, I decide I'm going to give Kate her answer within the week. I also decide to visit the supermarket. Now, it's already 11:30, so I go to the Food Emporium, which is open until midnight. So, at the Food Emporium, I walk around trying to figure out what I want. I find it in aisle three, half-gallon cartons of Edy’s Grand Light Ice Cream in the elusive seasonally available Girl Scout mint cookie flavor. Unfortunately, scumbags have hoarded all but five of the cartons. So, I take the remaining five [audience laughter] and head to the lone checkout line. Immediately, ahead of me in line is a woman, late 30s, no ring. She sees my ice cream and says, “Your kids are going to love you.”
Now, let me just stop here and say that romantically speaking, I've never done anything drastic. I've never hit on a stranger and I've certainly never cheated on someone. But I'm 46 and the supermarket's closing soon, [audience laughter] so I say, “I don't have kids. I'm single.” And she says, “You must really like Girl Scouts.” [audience laughter] And I'm like, “Oh, no, no, the ice cream was on sale, half price,” which is a total lie. It's not on sale, but this way I don't seem suspicious. So, she says, “Would you hold my place in line? And I say, “Sure.”
And she's gone before I realize that she's going to get the ice cream, because it's on sale, except it's not on sale. [audience chuckle] She'll not only discover that I'm a liar, but also that I took all the Girl Scout ice cream, [audience laughter] even the damaged one. So, this woman's about to know me much better than Kate does, and so I need to run and somehow stop her. So, I turn to the guy behind me to ask him to hold my place in line, but he's hunched over his cell phone, so that no one can interrupt his meaningless conversation. Meanwhile, the woman I love has disappeared into aisle three and she'll be back soon with no illusions. I can't face her. So, I wheel my cart around and head to the far opposite corner of the store, ultimately settling in poultry.
I'll just wait here until she leaves the store. I figure 10 minutes. To keep the ice cream from melting during this wait, I place the Girl Scout cartons amongst frozen Purdue chickens. [audience laughter] The resulting diorama is unexpectedly sad. [audience laughter] Because it's such a mess. I need to go home and tell Kate that I'm not going to meet her son. I could have told her that two months ago if I didn't believe my own bullshit. By the time I return to the checkout line, it's all new people. In New York, there's always new people. The cashier is a 40-something woman with an oddly compassionate voice. She says, “Did you find everything you were looking for?” And I say, “Yes, thank you.” She probably knows I'm lying, but it's late and she gives me a smile. Thank you.
[cheers and applause]
Catherine: [00:40:43] That was Steve Zimmer. When I asked Steve for a bio, he wrote this. "An aging yuppie from the Midwest.” Steve is known for telling funny childhood stories about navigating the grown-up world with undeveloped emotions and sad adulthood stories about navigating the grown-up world with undeveloped emotions. Listen, that bio aside, let me tell you what Steve is really like. He's an incredibly generous guy. He has this old school New York loft, and he's always loaning out to friends for birthday parties and baby showers and wants even a funeral. I'm thrilled to report that Steve recently met an amazing woman and put a ring on it. He's now a married man.
[applause]
Our final story is from Helen Cooper. We met Helen through a Moth community workshop at the Family Center in Brooklyn, New York. So, now, we are taking us way back to Coney Island in the year 1959. Here's Helen Cooper.
Helen: [00:41:47] I'm one of the seven children, the third, which was very hard, being the third. We got along pretty good. We did a lot of fighting and that was fun. [audience laughter] Usually, on our birthdays, our mother gave us a choice of what type of cake did you want. We didn't have regular birthday parties, so choosing your cake was really nice. My sisters and brothers always wanted something plain, chocolate, vanilla, coconut. But not me. I always wanted something exciting, something different. I wanted purple and rainbow, [audience chuckle] something with M&Ms on it.
But something wonderful happened around the time of my 12th birthday. My mother asked me, “What do you want to do for your birthday?” Not what kind of cake you want. She said, “What did you want to do?” I couldn't believe my ears. She was asking me, “Helen, what did I want to do for my birthday?” I quickly said, “I want to go to Coney Island and play skeeball.” [audience chuckle] And to my surprise, she said, “Yes.” Coney Island was a beautiful place back then, 1959. They had so many attractions. They had the fun house. They had the fat lady. You guess how much she weighed. [audience chuckle] They had the petting zoo for the children. They had that two-headed snake and the three-legged chicken. [audience laughter] Oh, it was wonderful. [audience laughter] [audience applause]
They had the Steeplechase Park, you thought you were winning the race, but they were mechanical horses. [audience laughter] They had the roller coasters. The Thunderbolt was the best. It whipped around the corners faster than just the plain old. I forgot the name of it, [audience laughter] The Cyclone. Then they had the games you played. I only loved skeeball. It was a bowling type game. You had three circles you had to get these balls into to win points. The points amounted to so much, you got tickets for it, you could buy a gift. That was the best game in the whole park. You could have your rides. I wanted to play skeeball.”
So, my mother said, yes, I could go. So, then I really took a chance. I closed my eyes and put my hand behind my back and crossed my fingers, I said, "Can I go alone?" [audience laughter] I opened one eye, because she was taking a long time. She said, "Yes, you could have knocked me over with a feather." “You mean I really can go by myself?” “Yes.” I couldn't wait to tell the others. You could imagine the uproar, “How come she get to go by herself?” [audience laughter] “It's her birthday and we're starting something new. When your birthday comes, you can choose where you want to go.”
So, the week went on and I'm all excited. My birthday fell on a Sunday, which was my father’s day off. My father was a cab driver and he did the evening shift. So, we never really got time to really talk to him or be around him, because when he was sleep, we were in school. When he was up, we were asleep. So, when Sunday came, I found out my father was taking me. This is extra icing on the cake. My father's taking me to Coney Island. He had brought his cab home the night before. So, I'm not only going to get to go with my father, I'm going to ride in a cab. I don't have to take the train. [audience chuckle] It's time to go.
I sit in the back seat like I'm a passenger, [audience chuckle] a paying passenger. As we go along, my father tried to talk to me like any other father would do. “How’s school?” “Oh, it's okay.” I didn't tell him about the things I had got in trouble about. [audience chuckle] But before we knew it, we were at Coney Island. I'm saying to myself, the most I can really hope for is $2, $3 to play this game. My father hands me a bill. I said, “Darn, he gave me a dollar.” And then, I look down, it was a $10 bill. I said, "Well, how much of this can I spend?" “All of it. It's yours." "Oh, thank you," and I rushed off to get it changed before he come to his senses. [audience laughter] So, here I am and I'm playing this skeeball. I'm just playing it.
And finally, I'm getting all these tickets. I'm really excited. Here comes my father. "It's time to eat now." “Okay.” Gather up my tickets and we go off to Nathan's to have that famous hot dog. [audience chuckle] I gobble it down as fast as I can, and I'm on my way back and my father says, "Wipe that mustard off your face." I didn't know I had mustard on my face. This is taking up time. [audience chuckle] Wipe it off. Rush back. To my horror, somebody was playing my machine. I stood there a minute and I said, "Well, maybe they'll get tired, and they'll go away and I can use this machine." I had done so well on it. It was mine. I waited a while, and they were just doing so well on it too. So, I chose another machine.
And lo and behold, I did better on that machine than I did on the other one. Finally, my father came again and he said, "We've got to go." "But Daddy, I got all these dimes." "Okay, finish that dimes and then we have to go." I finished up the dimes. I got so many tickets. Here I go. I'm going to the counter. I'm going to choose my gift. The first thing I saw was a big white cup with Coney Island on it and a picture of the Ferris wheel. That's mine, and nobody's drinking out of it but me. [audience laughter] Then I saw a cute little. Oh, that's mine too. It had a puff of blond hair and big rosy cheeks and it was on a stick. [audience laughter] Nobody's touching this but me. And then, it hit me. My sisters and brothers.
I'll have to buy them something, so they won't touch my stuff. [audience laughter] I get everybody something. Luckily, I had enough tickets to get everybody something. My stuff was safe. So, we started home. My father asked me, "How did I like my day out by myself?" "Oh, it was wonderful, Daddy. I never had a day like this. This is like heaven." I sat there looking at him as he drove the way home. I sat in the front going home. I just looked at it, said, "You know, I'm not just any kid. I'm his daughter and it's my birthday."
[cheers and applause]
Catherine: [00:50:39] That was Helen Cooper. Helen was raised in Brooklyn and Jamaica, Queens, and now lives in Far Rockaway.
[Coney Island by Tijuana Brass and Herb Alpert]
Helen told this story more than 13 years ago. When we decided to air it, I called her up to tell her and was so thrilled when she picked up. Remember how in the story she always wants a crazy fun cake for her birthday and not just vanilla? Well, she told me that she now makes cakes like that for her four children and six great-grandchildren.
That's it for this episode of The Moth Radio Hour. We hope you'll join us next time.
[Uncanny Valley by The Drift]
Jay: [00:51:35] Your host this hour was The Moth's artistic director, Catherine Burns. Catherine also directed the stories in the show along with Micaela Blei, Frank Damico, Catherine McCarthy and Kate Tellers, with additional storytelling coaching by Tim Manley and Nora Matthews.
The rest of The Moth's directorial staff include Sarah Haberman, Sarah Austin Jenness, Jenifer Hixson and Meg Bowles. Production support from Timothy Lou Ly. Special thanks to Brian Greene, Tracy Day and Kate Roth of the World Science Festival.
Moth stories are true, as remembered and affirmed by the storytellers. Our theme music is by The Drift. Other music in this hour from Chili Gonzalez, Stellwagen Symphonette, Yaman Jazz and Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass playing Coney Island. You can find links to all our music at our website.
The Moth is produced for radio by me, Jay Allison, with Viki Merrick at Atlantic Public Media in Woods Hole, Massachusetts. This hour was produced with funds from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the National Endowment for the Arts and the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, committed to building a more just, verdant and peaceful world. The Moth Radio Hour is presented by PRX. For more about our podcast, for information on pitching your own story and everything else, go to our website, themoth.org.