Host: Jay Allison

[pre-show music]

Jay Allison: [00:00:12] From PRX, this is The Moth Radio Hour. I'm your host, Jay Allison, producer of this radio show. And this is an hour about rules. When my oldest daughter was small, we were sitting at the dining table, and I felt a sharp pain in my leg. I said, “Yow.” My daughter asked, “What happened?” And her mother said, “Oh, I kicked daddy under the table without meaning to.” My daughter’s face lit up and she asked, “Can I kick daddy under the table without meaning to?” There are lots of ways to bend the rules. [background chatters]

In this hour, our storytellers will be questioning the guidelines, official and self-imposed, the rules worth following and the ones made to be broken. Well, start in childhood, work our way through the hard to abide by rules of teenage-hood and end with the rules we full grown adults follow or don't. 

Our first teller, Steven Michael Carr, found a creative way to free himself from his school's restrictive reading system. He told this at an open mic StorySLAM in Louisville, where The Moth is promotionally supported by Louisville Public Media. Here's Steven, live at The Moth. 

[cheers and applause]

Steven: [00:01:31] So, my mama read to me in the womb. By the time, I was in kindergarten, I could read whole words. Whenever I was seven years old, the movie, Matilda, came out. Do y'all remember Matilda? Yes. So, it's about this little girl who did not fit in with her family. Honestly, I could relate. She read so many books that she developed the power to move things with her mind. And so, I spent a lot of time as a seven-year-old staring really hard at things, trying to move things with my mind. Never accomplished that. But I did manage to pop a blood vessel in my eye from bearing down so hard. [audience laughter]

Now, it's a good thing that my parents instilled this love for reading in me, because when I was eight years old, my parents got a divorce, and I moved with my mom to Shepherdsville, where I did not have any friends at all, except for one person. And that was my favorite childhood author, Stephen King. [audience laughter] Now, you may be thinking to yourself, “Stephen King is really not appropriate reading for an eight-year-old.” You were absolutely right. But my parents were so enamored with the fact that I love to read, that they basically just gave me any book that I wanted. I remember very specifically, the first Stephen King novel that I ever purchased for a dollar was at the Shepherdsville flea market. It was like one of those holographic copies of the shining paperback. Loved that for me. [audience laughter]

So, that was the year that I went into the fourth grade at Robey Elementary, and that was the year that I was also introduced to my worst enemy, the Accelerated Reader program. Do you all know about the Accelerated Reader Program? Let me break it down for you. Each book in the library is assigned a reading level and points. You read the books-- You're only allowed to read the books in your reading level. You take a computer quiz on the book, not on the internet. This is pre-internet. And if you got a 90% or above, you passed the test and you got the points. You had to get so many points per semester. I hated it, because all the books that I, a dark, scary little child, wanted to read were not in that library, okay? “Where was all the pig's blood? Where were the demon possessed cars? Who gave a shit about Charlotte's Web after you've read Misery?” Am I right? [audience laughter]

Right? Because, see, even at eight years old, I knew books-- The real world were not those books that they were having me read about rainbows and butterflies and talking pigs and shit. The real world was dark and it was scary. Adults were complicated and they could not be trusted, you see, because a lot of the adult people in my family were addicted to drugs. My grandmother would often have schizophrenic episodes. At the time, I didn't know what that meant. I just knew that they scared me. My mom ended up having an affair with the man who is now my stepfather. And that was the reason why we lived in Shepherdsville in the first place. 

So, I knew that the world was not like those books. I wanted to read books that were the world that I lived in. And so, I came up with an idea that I was going to beat the system. I was going to destroy the Accelerated Reader program. And it took me three years. We're talking long game people. Chess, not checkers. [audience laughter]

And here's how I did it. I started by taking the test and getting put in my reading level. I would then make sure that all the books that I read were at the very top of that reading level that I was allowed to read at. And then, I would take those tests and of course, I would pass them. [audience laughter] And then, that would bump me up to the next reading level. By the time I entered the seventh grade, 12 going on 13, about to be a teenager, I got to the Bullitt Lick Middle School library. There was only one book standing between me and freedom, between me being able to read whatever the hell I wanted to. It was a 13.1 reading level book and it was Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift. Y'all, that book was so damn hard to read as a 12-year-old. Let me tell you, I spent days, weeks, probably a whole month going over this book-- I have bought the cliff notes from Winn-Dixie. [audience laughter]

Winn-Dixie was a thing. I read the book. I followed along in the cliff notes, y'all, because I was going to beat this, because there was nowhere else to go after Gulliver's Travels. So, I studied, and I studied, and I studied and I finally finished the book. It took me a month. It was probably the longest I'd ever spent reading a book up until that point. I sat down in front of the computer to take the test. I was sweating bullets, y'all. I was thinking, “What if I fail? What if I get trapped in the hellscape that is the Accelerated Reading Program? What if I never escape? What if I disappoint my childhood hero, Stephen King?” [audience laughter] I finally clicked that last question, and I hit send, and I waited for the computer to calculate and eventually, it told me that I got a 93%. [audience cheers and applause]

Oh, yes. So, I beat the system. For the rest of my seventh grade year and all of my eighth grade year, I got to read whatever the hell I wanted, because there was nowhere else for me to go. While I looked over at all these kids’ reading their Charlotte's Web and Sherlock Holmes and whatever, I got to read Stephen King. Consequently, that was the same year that I bought from my friend, Kevin, who sat behind me in language arts, his new, pristine hardback copy of Stephen King's new novel, From a Buick 8. And it was the first book that I ever read as a free man. [audience laughter] And to this day, it is still my favorite Stephen King novel. Thank you. 

[cheers and applause]

[upbeat music]

Jay Allison: [00:07:36] Steven Michael Carr is the founder of SMC Story Coaching, where he helps nonprofit professionals in Louisville, Kentucky, learn how to tell stories. He also produces local storytelling shows such as Come Out Lou and Tales from the Jukebox. At night, he works as the co-owner of the Old Louisville Brewery. When you win a Moth StorySLAM as Steven did that night, you are invited to participate in GrandSLAM in which 10 StorySLAM winners battle it out with new stories for the title of Moth GrandSLAM Champion. [background chatters] Gabriela Quiroz told our next story at a GrandSLAM in Los Angeles, where we partner with public radio station, KCRW. 

[cheers and applause]

Live from The Regent, here's Gabriela. 

[cheers and applause]

Gabriela: [00:08:32] So, for most people in this country, for most children, the last day of school is the most exciting day. For me and all the girls in my school, in this remote town in the Peruvian Andes, this was the day we feared the most. Our culture had taught us that men were superior to women, implicitly and explicitly. We would never dare to challenge men, or even fight back if we were put in a situation where we were put down or abused. Not even at school. 

There was this boy. He was a bully, and he was the oldest and the tallest in our class, because he kept repeating grades. [audience laughter] He would harass the women. Actually, he had this little mirror that he always had with him and he would use it to look under our skirts. He gave me a nickname. He called me skeleton, because I was the youngest, so I was an easy mark. But I also was the skinniest in my class, even though my mom fed me tons of potatoes. [audience laughter]

I was the last of nine siblings, and my mom told me that education was going to be my only way out of poverty. So, even though I had to face the bullying and walking to school for six miles every day, I was eager to learn and to go to class except on the last day of school, when traditionally all the boys would grab the girls and take them to the water canals around the plaza and throw them into the freezing water. This was just for fun as an end of the year celebration. [audience laughter]

And while all the boys had fun, we were terrified. They would literally drag us by force. Our knees were scratched, our skirts were rolled up and they would throw us into the stream of freezing water from the mountains. We were supposed to accept it, just like everyone else in the town had accepted it. The major would watch from the balcony in the main plaza, the police from the station in the corner. It was free fun for all, and I hated it. 

This is how it had been for years. The boys would walk away laughing while we, the girls, had to walk back home in the cold, drenched from head to toe. But this year, I already talked to some of the girls in my class who are trying to come up with a plan to hide. But it's almost impossible to hide, because there's only one main road to go back home. But the clock's ticking, and this bully boy is staring at me. He's looking at me like when Gollum looks at the rain. [audience laughter]

So, I am terrified, and I make up an excuse. I get out of the class, and I run to the back of the school and I climb the back wall. As soon as I land, the bell rings. I can hear the commotion on the other side of the wall like, the girls are screaming, the boys are laughing, the nightmare has started. So, I see a cornfield, I run to it and I hide. I'm waiting there-- I have so much anxiety. I see this girl running by, and I'm about to call her. She's a girl from my class. I see two guys coming, and grabbing her and just dragging her away. 

I waited there in hiding for an hour, then two hours. Every minute, I feel like I'm having a mini panic attack. Time goes by, and it starts to get dark. And now, my mom has always told me never go into the corn crops at night, because that's when bad things happen to women. So, I decided I need to get out, I need to go back home. So, I start going out to the road, and I find two of my friends that are also hiding in the crops. So, we are so relieved that the boys are gone, because we can't hear any noise anymore, no crying, no screaming, nothing. So, we decide, “Okay, now, we're going to go out and go home.” 

So, we're walking for about three blocks. And a hand holds my shoulder. I turn around, and it's the bully boy. He's been waiting for us. My two friends run, and they're screaming and they run away. But I had it, like I literally had it. This was enough. So, somehow, I grabbed the boy by the arm and twisted. He trips and falls on the ground. And I sit on him. [audience laughter] And then, he lets out a cry, of course. My friends turn around and they're in disbelief. We somehow drag this boy to the canal. [audience laughter]  And there's people watching, and they actually can't believe this either. [audience cheers and applause] And so, we are afraid of what we're doing. But once we get to the canal, our hands are firm as we swing back and throw the boy in the canal. [audience cheers and applause]

And then, we look at each other. These girls that I'm seeing are not the same girls that I had seen moments ago before we were feeling defeated and scared. And now, what I see in their eyes is an air of victory, a new confidence, a fire. The fact that us and I, the skeleton, dare to be defiant, changed me. 

[cheers and applause]

Jay Allison: [00:14:57] That was Gabriela Quiroz. She won the GrandSLAM that night. 

[upbeat music]

Gabriela is a screenwriter, director and artist who told us she grew up as the granddaughter of a witchdoctor in the Peruvian Andes. She has worked for various studios like Bad Robot, Paramount and Legendary. But most importantly, she says she has an alpaca named Oso. 

[upbeat music]

In a moment, senior prom and senior pranks when The Moth Radio Hour continues.

[upbeat music]

The Moth Radio Hour is produced by Atlantic Public Media in Woods Hole, Massachusetts, and presented by PRX. This is The Moth Radio Hour from PRX. I'm Jay Allison. And in this episode, we're talking about The Rules, bending them, negotiating them, breaking them. In other words, we were up to the teenage years. 

When I was a young teen, my friend and I were playing in his barn. His dad had told us reasonably, “Don't be stupid and don't ever play with matches in there.” Well, did I mention we were teenagers? My friend had some books of matches. We thought it would be a fun idea to strike them and throw them at each other in the barn, where at one end was a head high pile of burlap bags holding seeds. 

One of my matches landed on that pile. And within a second, the end of the barn was a wall of flame. It was blinding, and loud and terrifying. All the small fibers in the burlap had ignited. And in an instant, they flared together and then all went out together. Poof. Gone. This had been a merciful, flaming message from God to me. It said, “Don't be stupid and don't play with matches.” I've done pretty well with that rule ever since. [background chatters]

Our next story is from Caroline Connolly, who told this at a Boston StorySLAM, where we partnered with public radio station, WBUR and PRX with a classic example of high school rebellion. Here's Caroline. 

[cheers and applause]

Caroline: [00:17:58] As the daughter of two former prosecutors, I became accustomed at a very early age to losing in arguments. [audience laughter] This was not because I was unskilled at the art of debate, but because in my house, my parents were the judge, the jury and literally, two lawyers. So, quite frankly, the system was just corrupt. [audience laughter]

I can say this with confidence, because my parents convinced me and my sisters to follow every strict rule of our house by posing potentially traumatic consequences to us. For example, when I was 10 years old, I left our backyard gate open, and our Bichon Frisé, Koko, escaped. My mother, furious, stormed inside our house and announced to me and my sisters, “Koko is dead.” [audience laughter] “Just kidding,” she said, an hour later. But that could happen if you don't follow our rules. [audience laughter]

Now, however flawed this logic may seem, it pretty much presided over my entire life, right up until my junior prom after party in high school. My parent’s worldview was shaped by a Law & Order: SVU episode. Mine was formed by romantic comedies and teen dramas. And so, when I was told I could not attend my junior prom after party, because premarital sex and pregnancy were likely outcomes, according to my parents, I was devastated. This was a rite of passage that I felt every teenager deserved to experience. I was determined to experience it myself. And so, I crafted a plan to commit high treason in my household and sneak out. 

Now, I grew up in one of those old federal houses here in Massachusetts with creaky floorboards and were doorknobs just fall off at random. And so, it was like a Victorian trap, if you were a teenager trying to escape. [audience laughter] But on the night of my prom, I took every precaution. So, I unlocked our big old front door that no one ever used and left it slightly ajar, so I could get out without making any sound. I instructed my boyfriend to wait for me 100 yards down our street in his car with a change of clothing for me, like we were two teenagers committing a grand heist. When I got home from the dance that night, I was officiant. I said good night to my parents, I went straight up to my room and I waited for them to fall asleep. 

I sat on the floor for what felt like hours, plucking bobby pins from an updo until all I could hear was the hum of our air conditioner in their window. Then I made my exit. I crept down three flights of stairs, holding my breath the entire way until I reached that front door. I was so relieved to see it was still open. I silently slid out. It really wasn't until my feet hit the sidewalk that I could finally exhale, because I had made it. 

While I had envisioned my after-prom party would look something like a John Hughes movie where I was like beloved and super popular by the end, this was more like six sweaty teenagers drinking Natty light beer, someone smuggled in wondering who was going to make out with whom by the end of the night. It was super gross, but also perfect. When I woke up wedged between my two best girlfriends the next morning with my boyfriend sleeping by himself in a corner- [audience laughter] -I felt super proud of this rebellious teenage act I had just committed. And then, I looked at my cell phone. I realized I had five missed calls from my mother. It was 06:00 AM. So, she knew I was not home, and I knew I had been caught. As I sat there envisioning all of the punishments, I knew she was going to dole out. I honestly wished I had been pregnant, because I thought maybe she wouldn't kill me then. [audience laughter]

I was contemplating what a summer would feel like grounded at my house when I had another thought. That was maybe I wasn't caught yet. Maybe I could still pull this thing off. So, I woke up my boyfriend, and we jumped in his car and I ordered him to drive to our local Kmart, which was about to open. I asked him to go inside and buy running sneakers, running shorts and a T-shirt. He looked totally perplexed as I threw all of this on in the backseat of his car and then doused myself in water, because- [audience laughter]  -my plan was to just pretend that I had been out for his 06:00 AM jog after prom. It is worth noting that this guy never asked me to another prom again in high school. [audience laughter]

But he dropped me off 100 yards down from our house on our street. I proceeded to run up it. I walked through the door, panting as a runner would. My mother was standing right there waiting for me and glaring at me. She said so calmly and coldly, “I'll never forget it,” like a serial killer, and “Where have you been?” It still makes me sick. [audience laughter] And I was like, “I was running, obviously. “I could see by the look on her face she was not buying the story. But then I could also see she was taking in all of the physical evidence in front of her that supported what I was saying. [audience laughter] Because I was wearing sneakers, I was wearing shorts and I did look exhausted from something. [audience laughter] And so, she peppered me with questions. “When did you leave? Where did you go? How far did you run? What was your pace?” [audience laughter] And I somehow flawlessly answered all of them. She was stunned, because she had no other recourse than to accept this ridiculous explanation. [audience laughter] And she did. I totally got away with it. [audience laughter]

I will admit, all these years later, the thought of spending an entire night out and drinking Natty light beer is so wholly unappealing to the independent adult I've now become. [audience laughter] But what does still excite me are those moments of independence from teen years today and the feeling I still get when I'm bold enough and creative enough to go after them. Thanks. 

[cheers and applause]

[upbeat music]

Jay Allison: [00:24:02] That was Caroline Connolly. Caroline grew up in Massachusetts and has spent the last decade reporting for news stations across the country. Her work has been featured on NBC's American Greed and Access Hollywood. She lives in Boston with her partner and their dog. Caroline also won the SLAM, the night she told that story. 

[joyful music]

Our next story is told by the self-proclaimed nerd, Saad Sarwana. But even nerds sometimes bend the rules just with science. At a StorySLAM in Phoenix, where we're supported by public radio station, KJZZ, here's Saad. 

[cheers and applause]

Saad Sarwana: [00:24:57] My guilty conscience was making my heartbeat so loud. It was almost about to jump out of my chest. I was standing in the principal's office with my friends, and it was possible we were about to get expelled. I only had one person to blame for this. My chemistry teacher, Mr. Jabbar. [audience laughter]

It all started a few weeks earlier. Me and my nerdy friends, they were discussing how the cool kids would probably pull off a high school prank in one of the last few days of school. Someone said, “We should do one too,” and we immediately started brainstorming. That's when I remembered something my chemistry teacher had said way back early in the semester while reminiscing about the good old days. 

He was saying he used to do an experiment where he mixed iodine with ammonia to make these crystals. When you step on them, they pop. It was a really fun experiment, but the loud noises were too distracting, so he wasn't allowed to do it anymore. So, he said, “We should do that.” [audience laughter] So, this was pre-Internet-day, so we didn't know where to get the materials or what ratios were involved, but we did have access to this. [audience laughter] We did have access to this one book, which would help you find anything or almost anything, you might have used it when you were younger. It's called the Yellow Pages. [audience laughter] So, we looked under chemicals and we found industrial chemical wholesale. [audience laughter] That sounded right. [audience laughter]  We gave it a call. No caller ID. Do you have ammonia and iodine? “Sure, how much do you want?” We hung up. [audience laughter]

So, it was a business-to-business place. It was in the industrial wholesale area. A couple of kids couldn't just walk in and get chemicals from them. So, we found a piece of stationery from a pharmacy and we wrote on it, “One bottle of ammonia, one bottle of iodine.” [audience laughter] Since I looked innocent enough at that time, I was asked to go in. My hand was shaking. I gave it to the guy, I said, “My dad asked me to pick this up.” [audience laughter] He didn't even flinch. He just handed me the things, and he's like, “All right.” [audience laughter]

So, the next day was the penultimate day of school. We came in super early. We got some plastic glasses and plastic spoons from the cafeteria. We mixed the two mixtures in. We could see the crystals form as we stirred the mixture. We poured these crystals on the asphalt blacktop. These purple crystals were almost, like invisible. Being nerdy people, we had to try it out. So, we stepped on it. Nothing. We stepped on it again. Nothing. Finally, we heard a barely audible pop from the edge of the spill. And so, we thought we might not have used enough. So, we mixed the entire batch and poured it all over this area. [audience laughter] Now, this area connected two school buildings and is swarming with students as they go in between classes. [audience laughter]

So, in preparation for this, I looked up what happens. And it's a very common science experiment. What happens is ammonia reacts with iodine to form nitrogen triiodide. And in the wet form, the crystals are completely stable. It's only when they dry up is when they become unstable. [audience laughter] There are also warnings online, “Not to use more than a gram of iodine.” [audience laughter]

So, we poured this in the blacktop. We went into first period. When we were in first period, the sun came out and the crystals began to dry. Imagine the loudest thunder you've ever heard of- [audience laughter] -and then double it, and you still won't even get close to how loud it was. Because once the first period bell rang, people stepped on it, and bang, bang, bang. And teenagers, being teenagers, were deliberately stepping on this. [audience laughter]

But what had happened was, by this time, there were sections-- only sections had dried up and other sections were still wet, and the wet sections were getting stuck under people's shoes. [audience laughter] They were then becoming carriers and moving it to other parts of the school- [audience laughter] -where inside buildings, you would hear just a deaf-ish bang. Our prank had worked. [audience laughter] [audience cheers and applause]

It had worked a little too well, because everyone wanted to figure out who was responsible. It was pretty easy. It was the people with the iodine stains on their hands. [audience laughter] We were caught purple handed. [audience laughter]

[00:30:23] So, there we were in the principal’s office. She was really angry at us. But since we were good students, she said, “You know, you have to leave immediately.” They called our parents. We went home. We were grounded. We couldn't talk to our friends. But she allowed us to come back for the last day of school. So, I didn't talk to my friends. I walked into the last day of school, and the first thing that happens was one of the hot girls, she comes up to me as soon as I'm walking in, she's like, “Did you do that?” I'm like, “Yeah.” Getting ready to apologize. And she is like, “That was so cool.” [audience laughter] I am not kidding. I have won academic awards in school, but I was never congratulated by my peers. [audience laughter] But after this, I had strangers come up to me and high five me. [audience laughter] I don't even know if the cool kids pulled off a high school prank that year, because for those final days, we were the cool kids. [audience laughter] [audience cheers and applause] I guess the point I'm trying to make is, if you have an opportunity to do something with no consequences, do it. [audience laughter] [audience cheers and applause] You might just become a legend. Thank you. 

[cheers and applause]

Jay Allison: [00:31:50] Saad Sarwana is known as the standup physicist. He's a Pakistani-American standup comedian, physicist and a producer for the science storytelling show, The Story Collider. You can catch him live on stage or explaining science while cracking jokes on the science channel show, Outrageous Acts of Science. Maybe, you guessed it, Saad won his SLAM too. Sometimes it pays to push the boundaries.

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If you have your own story that you think could be a winner or you want to hear more stories like these, you can go to our website, themoth.org, and find open and mike StorySLAMs near you. Just so you know, we don't only air winning stories, there are lots of stories that we listen to that we love that didn't win at a SLAM. So, throw your name in the hat and win or lose, you might end up on the radio.

[rock band music]

In a moment, our final story in this hour, revisiting family rules when we're all grown up. That's when The Moth Radio Hour continues. 

[rock band music]

The Moth Radio Hour is produced by Atlantic Public Media in Woods Hole, Massachusetts. And presented by the Public Radio Exchange, prx.org. You're listening to The Moth Radio Hour from PRX. I'm Jay Allison. 

As kids, we follow our parent’s rules without question. But as adults, we start to understand them in a different way. My mother is in her mid-90s and going strong. She's very proper. Things are done the way they've always been done. As a kid, I felt shackled by those sorts of rules and by propriety in general. But now, I see them in my mother's life as highly functional. 

When order is failing all around us, self-imposed disciplines can square us up. As we all get older, we may need those rules to stay centered and keep us from collapsing, like handrails in the bathtub.

Our final story comes from Beth Ann Fennelly, who shared it at a main stage we produced in New York City. Live from the NYU Skirball Center, here's Beth Ann. 

[cheers and applause]

Beth Ann: [00:35:07] When I was growing up, if I asked my mother if she was hungry for lunch, the first thing she would do would be look at her watch. She'd look at her watch, because there was a proper time to eat, and that time was noon. So, if it was 11:59, no, she was not hungry, not for another 60 seconds. I offer this as an example of the very structured, very rule bound, very, very catholic family. 

I grew up in a Victorian house just north of Chicago. Victorian outside and inside as well. My father worked all day. My mother was a stay-at-home mom, ruled with an iron fist in her little talbot sweater sets and fluffy helmet of hair set at the salon once a week. My sister and I were disciplined to be ladylike, and pious, and chaste and quiet.

Frequent admonitions in my house included things like, children should be seen and not heard and don't speak unless spoken to first. Even now, when I look back on my childhood memories, I'm always a passive observer. I'm never an active participant. When I look back on those stories, I never hear the sound of my voice. 

There weren't a lot of models of self-actualized women fighting for change in my growing up, in my mom's friend group of stay-at-home moms or the nuns at catholic school. I remember in third grade, when a priest came into our class and announced a meeting for prospective altar boys. And I went. [audience laughter]

I think I wasn't partially trying to prove a point, but partially, I was into the whole altar boy thing. It seemed really dramatic. I liked the fashion. I liked the robes and the chains. I thought maybe it needed a belt or a little accessorizing, but I was going to work with that. But the priest came in, and saw me in the pew, and he pinched my arm and walked me across the church to the sacristy and pushed open this giant oak door to where a couple elderly women were ironing the altar boy’s robes. And he said, “This is where God calls you to serve.” 

So that evening, in my best penmanship, I wrote a letter tattling on him to Cardinal Joseph Bernardin. And I ended, “And PS, women should be priests.” Years went by before I discovered that letter in my mother's scrapbook. And two things immediately struck me. One was my mother's heading in the scrapbook, which was our little women's libber. [audience laughter]

The other was only then did I realize my mother never sent the letter, and even that small protest silenced. So, I became determined to live another way, find another way. Two things really helped me. The first was poetry. I had always scribbled in my notebook and kept a diary. But when I got to college, I had my first real classes, and I got criticism, and I began to try to listen to that little whisper inside me and turn the volume up. 

The second was love. Meeting my honey, the first day of our graduate program for creative writing. We live in Mississippi now, and we teach there, and we have a much, much different way of bringing up our kids. We have a loud, messy, comfortable house and three loud, messy, confident children. Far from being told, they should be seen and not heard. I think if we were really quiet right now, we might be able to hear them. [audience laughter]

This was very perplexing and upsetting to my mother. When she'd come down to Mississippi from Illinois, which was often, she criticized our parenting style, which she found too permissive. She criticized our lack of structure, which she found chaotic. Nevertheless, my husband and I thought maybe my mom didn't need to be living alone anymore, because by this point, my father had died and my sister had died. We asked her if she wanted to live with us, and she immediately said, “No.” I was immediately filled with relief. [audience laughter]

But we began to see signs of mental deterioration and we said, “Oh, mom's getting dotty.” I think we chose the term intentionally, because it made it sound less dire, because in truth, it was becoming dire. We had the sense that maybe my mom shouldn't be driving anymore. The big constant in my mom's life is that she hated change. And she didn't want to change. And if she had to stop driving, her life would completely change. 

One time, my kids and I were visiting her in Illinois, and she wanted to take us to the zoo. We got in her car on the highway, and she just swerved into the other lane. That car was beeping at her. She swerved back into the other lane, and that car's beeping and giving her the finger. I'm jamming for the emergency brake pedal, and I look in the rearview mirror. My kids are clasping each other's hands in fear. 

I told my mom to pull the car over, and she did. We switched seats, and I said the sentence that I had practiced saying. I said, “Mom, I don't think you should be driving anymore.” And she said, “Humph.” And I said, “And I think you need to be tested for Alzheimer's.” She said, “I have been tested. I don't have Alzheimer's.” And I said, “Can I talk to your doctor?” And she said, “He's busy.” 

That was January of 2020. In March, we started hearing this strange new term, coronavirus, killing the elderly people, which meant that mom couldn't visit us and we couldn't visit her. Her activities began closing down. One time, she called me, she was upset that no one showed up for bridge. 

And I said, “Mom, they didn't show up because it's not safe. You shouldn't be cruising for bridge partners. You shouldn't be sitting at a small table passing cards.” She sniffed, unconvinced, didn't like that. But that bridge cancelled, and ladies lunch bunch canceled and St. Mary's book club canceled. And then, St. Mary's, the mass went online, and she couldn't figure out Zoom. No matter how much time I spent with on the telephone, she couldn't figure out Zoom. She was alone, and lonely and depressed. 

All these canceled activities were more than just a dreaded change in routine. They were doors closing to the world beyond herself, and to the neurons that would have been firing when she was counting bridge tricks or discussing Oprah's book pick. I began to see the lights in her beautiful brain going out one by one. 

One time, I called her and I stopped her just in the nick of time from sending her money to an internet scammer. Another time, I called her and the phone rang. It just rang and rang, but where could she possibly be? She couldn't leave her house. Well, she'd gotten locked out. And I said, “Mom, what did you do?” And she said, “Well, I just walked up and down the street, knocking on doors till someone's called me a locksmith.” It was eight degrees in Chicago that day. 

So, one day, well, every day, my husband and I kept having that same conversation, “What should we do about my mom?” And the phone rang, and it was my mother of the stiff upper lip, my mother who had never admitted to having a problem of any kind. And she said, “Beth Ann, you need to come home. I think I'm falling apart.” 

So, the next day, I flew home to O'Hare, and I got a car service to my mom's house. When she opened the door, somehow, I was still surprised to find her so changed. I took her in my arms. She was small. She felt small. Her little talbot sweater set was stained, and the house was messy and she said, “What time is it, Beth Ann?” And I said, “Oh, mom, it's just past 06:00.” And she said, “Past 06:00? Well, then it's past time for dinner.” 

She led me into the kitchen and opened the refrigerator door. This wave of odor hit me, and I could see all these little rotting nuggets of food. And I said, “Mom, it's okay. You don't have to feed me. I'll borrow your car. I'll go get us some food. You just stay here. Just rest.” 

She was following me out to the garage. She was protesting, but I just kept going. I pushed open the door to the garage. That's when I found that her car was smashed up like a tin can. She had gotten in an accident and had hidden it from me. I turned to her over my shoulder, and she was cringing like the teenager I had been getting busted for coming in past curfew. I had heard of that moment when the parent becomes the child. And right then, it seemed like the transference was complete and her life did change very quickly after that. 

I got a hold of her doctor, who said he'd been trying to get ahold of me, but she had been telling him I was too busy. And he agreed she shouldn't live alone. So, that next day, I had her car towed away for parts and a for sale sign stabbed in the lawn of that big Victorian house. My husband and I moved her to an assisted living, not a mile from our house. What I think about now, what I wonder at, “Is why I didn't step in sooner? Why I had to let my mom get in an accident before I took the keys away?” I think it can be so hard to shoulder aside the roles we inhabit in our childhood. 

That voice I was so proud of developing, that precious voice I had nurtured, was nowhere to be found when I needed it. I'd always faulted my mom for her inability to change. But really, at that moment, it was me who was unable to change, because I didn't take action and protect her. And I failed her. 

[00:46:49] Well, she likes the assisted living. It's a very structured schedule. She likes when I visit her, and read her poetry and hold her hand. She likes to come to our house for lunch and dinner. She seems to tolerate the noise and chaos better than she used to, maybe because her vision and hearing aren't as good as they used to be. [audience laughter]

Or, maybe she's changed a bit. Maybe I have too, because I've noticed when she comes, I always try to serve her lunch at noon or dinner at 06:00, because it makes her happy and because that is the proper time to eat after all. Thank you. 

[cheers and applause]

Jay Allison: [00:47:50] Beth Ann Fennelly, the poet laureate of Mississippi from 2016 to 2021, is the author of six books, most recently Heating & Cooling: 52 Micro-Memoirs. She lives in Oxford, Mississippi with her husband and three children. We asked Beth Ann if we could read a couple of her poems about her own experiences with parenthood. 

This is The Night Game. “The parents of my generation are dying. The last line of defense. We're floodlit now, pals. We're casting shadows, the shapes of our bodies distinct on this earth. Who will catch the pass? The ball that's sown from skin.” 

This is one about Beth Ann's relationship with her own daughter. It's called Say Cheese. I've documented everything, Each Tooth, Your First Haircut, Your First Bath in the Sink. Later, when you claim neglect, I've proof of my side for your husband or your shrink. 

Those poems were from Beth Ann's book, Tender Hooks. To learn more about her poetry and to see photos of Beth Ann and her mother, visit our website, themoth.org. That's it for this episode. We hope you'll join us next time. And that's the story from The Moth. 

[upbeat music]

[00:49:48] This episode of The Moth Radio Hour was produced by me, Jay Allison, your host, and Meg Bowles. Coproducer is Viki Merrick, associate producer Emily Couch. The stories were directed by Catherine Burns, with additional GrandSLAM coaching by Choe Salmon. The rest of The Moth’s leadership team includes Sarah Haberman, Sarah Austin Jenness, Jenifer Hixson, Kate Tellers, Marina Klutse, Leanne Gulley, Suzanne Rust, Brandon Grant, Sarah Jane Johnson and Aldi Kaza. Moth’s stories are true as remembered and affirmed by the storytellers. 

Our theme music is by The Drift. Other music in this hour from Leo Kottke, Accordion, Magic in Threes, Aveeno, The Score, and Airelle Besson and Nelson Veras. We receive funding from the National Endowment for the Arts. 

The Moth Radio Hour is produced by Atlantic Public Media in Woods Hole, Massachusetts. And presented by PRX. For more about our podcast, for information on pitching us your own story and everything else, go to our website, themoth.org.