Host: Dame Wilburn
Julia: [00:00:04] Hi, Moth family. We hope you're staying safe and healthy. As you may have heard, we've postponed all of our live events through May 10th, but here is some good news. In addition to new episodes of The Moth Radio Hour and Moth Podcast, we're bringing you our first ever virtual Mainstage. All Together Now, The Moth live in your living room on Wednesday, April 15th. For more information, head to our website, themoth.org. We hope you tune in, and thanks for listening.
Dame: [00:00:31] Welcome to The Moth Podcast. I'm your host, Dame Wilburn. This week, a story from Carly Johnstone. She told this at a daytime show in San Francisco, where the theme was Switching Gears.
This was an unconventional Moth show, as you'll hear, because Carly was telling her story outside at the Tour de Fat Festival when we partnered with New Belgium Brewery and their celebration of beers and bicycles. There are birds chirping and people milling about, but Carly holds her own, as you'll hear. Here's Carly Johnstone, live at The Moth.
Carly: [00:01:06] When I was a kid, having my bike taken away was pretty much the worst punishment imaginable. I was a foster kid, so I'd been in a lot of homes. But all of those homes pretty quickly realized that my bike was the key to some measure of good behavior at least for a little while.
By the time I was 14, I had landed in the McGregor Baptist Children's Home in Fort Myers, Florida. It had all of the cozy warmth of any institution that's afraid its inmates may attack at any time. Everything in the home was on a point system, so everything was assessed. So, did you make your bed and were you ready for a Bible study and what was your vocal tone? Did you help the small children?
Everything you did was assessed and given a point, and then those points were added together or taken away and put on this gigantic white board in the middle of the home. And on the board were the medals. So, there was platinum and gold and silver and bronze and copper. And those medals denoted your level of freedom. Could you go outside today, or use the phone, or stay in your room or have an extra five minutes in the shower? Everything was graded. But the freedom that was dearest to my heart was could I ride the bikes. Only gold and platinum were allowed to ride the bikes.
Shockingly, I was rarely allowed to ride the bikes. Even when you were allowed to ride the bikes, it was only in the carport or at the end of this cul de sac where the home resided. But even with those restrictions, it became like this huge symbol of freedom for me. I moved into the home in late November. So, I was like, “Yes, just in time for awkward holiday dinner with strangers with bad food and worse conversation.”
But this time was a little different, because there was a boy who moved in at the same time as me. His name was Tom. He was combative, and slightly violent and really sarcastic. I just love that about him. [audience chuckle] I instantly found a kindred spirit, and I also found company for the bronze copper level of our world.
Tom and I, when we were allowed outside, we would lay on this merry-go-round and spin and watch the sky spin and come up with all of these stories, all the things we would do when we were older and when we were out and when we were free. But inside the home, the environment there was just becoming more and more suffocating. It felt like every point that was taken away was just another piece of ourselves that they were taking from us. And so, we decided we really needed to come up with a plan that was more immediate and actually achievable.
So, we found a notebook, and somehow that notebook became the path to our salvation. We started having these secret, little furtive conversations in it, because everything in the home had to be silent. And in the home, there had to be a constant ratio of counselors to children, even at night. So, we made bullet points and timetables and started filling them in. We started making a plan. We picked a date, and soon we were pretty sure we were ready.
And night fell, and I put on my Doc Martens, and I got pillows and clothes and stuffed them under my covers, like some lumpy facsimile of myself. It was very original. I laid down on the floor, and I held my breath, and I heard the footsteps coming down the hallway and I watched the door open, and I saw the flashlight go through the room over my bed. It seemed like it lasted way too long. And then, it went back, and they closed the door and they kept walking.
I almost peed myself when Tom knocked on the window. But I got up, I made it, [audience chuckle] and it was just him. He was trying to open the window from the outside. We had spent the last week on super good behavior, so that we could get outside privileges. We had broken the locks, because at the home, all of the locks were on the outside of your windows. I had gotten kitchen duty, and I had gotten olive oil on paper towels and greased the frame, so it would be quiet. We're both working on this window, just hoping. It went up. It went up with no sound.
I jump out of the window, and we're crouched down and what we really felt were, like, stealthy poses and crab walked across the asphalt towards our goal, which was the bike rack, of course. And the home had, like, over 20 bikes there. They're all donated by our holy sponsors and we had been eyeing our prizes. Tom chose this big, black mountain bike with aggressive tires and pegs on the back and I chose this bike that looked like it was from a different era. It was pink, and it had a big banana seat and a basket on the front. All that was missing were streamers.
And so, we took our bikes and we crouched and walked quietly up to the main street. We got on our bikes, and I realized, like, we had made it. We were totally awesome. We had gotten out. We had made it out of the house. We just looked out, because Florida is really flat. There's no hills to speak of. It just stretched ahead of us, like this wide expanse. It felt like the beckoning hand of God asking us to conquer it. And we're ready for that.
We started our ride with congratulations about our amazing and daring escape, and sang horrible, horrible songs to each other, and laughed, and just mocked each other and laughed. I felt like the first time I had really laughed in years. Everything was so quiet. There were no people and there were almost no cars, and it just felt like the whole world took this breath for us to give us this night. We rode down Colonial Boulevard towards the center of town and tried to knock each other off. I flashed him, and we both almost fell off our bikes, but somehow we kept going.
We hit Summerlin and made a left, and we saw a cop and we ducked into this driveway on the right like criminals on the lam. We found ourselves in this huge cemetery filled with crypts and gravestones and just tons of space to explore. We started riding around there and making up stories for all of these lives that had passed, all these dreams.
And soon enough, our time was almost up. We only had two hours between rounds at the home, but I realized no one was grading us, no one was assessing us, nobody was giving or taking points and we were taking back something. We were taking back something that this home would never really feel like we deserved anyway. It was just he and I in that space. It was so quiet and it was finally enough.
But we made the ride back. But we knew we'd have to do it over and over again and we did. Every night that we could for the rest of the time Tom and I were in that home, we made that ride. It was two hours and seven miles of freedom. And Tom, he's still my friend and he is still my brother in arms. A lot of those dreams we made up, a lot of them did not come true, but some of them did. But that feeling of riding with your arms outstretched, laughing in the wind with everything ahead of me, I still dream of that. Thank you.
[cheers and applause]
Dame: [00:09:02] That was Carly Johnstone. Carly is now a nursing student starting yet another adventure, but she's still waiting for that bike with the streamers. I feel you, Carly.
That's all for us this week. Until next time, from all of us here at The Moth, have a story worthy week.
Julia: 00:09:19] Dame Wilburn is a longtime storyteller and host at The Moth. She's also the chief marketing director for Twisted Willow Soap Company and host of the podcast, Dame's Eclectic Brain.
Dame: [00:09:30] Podcast production by Julia Purcell with help from Rowan Niemisto at WDET. The Moth Podcast is presented by PRX, the Public Radio Exchange, helping make public radio more public at prx.org.