Host: Sarah Austin Jenness
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Sarah: [00:00:13] From PRX, this is The Moth Radio Hour. I'm Sarah Austin Jenness.
I come from a game-playing family. Growing up, we played dominoes, UNO, gin rummy and pounce, which is competitive solitaire. We also loved backgammon. And in fact, my great-aunt Fanny, at 97 years old and right before she died, beat my mom in a backgammon match. Aunt Fanny always played to win. So, this Hour is all about play and competition. It's an Hour with winners. And because The Moth loves an underdog, plenty of losers too.
First up is Joey Garfield, who finally gets to hang out with the big kids on the block. Joey told this at a Moth StorySLAM in Chicago, where we partner with public radio station WBEZ. Here’s Joey, live at The Moth.
[cheers and applause]
Joey: [00:01:04] So, when I was about five or six years old, I was upstairs in my room, beautiful summer day, minding my own business, when I hear some shouting from the backyard. Like a lot of voices. And they’re going, “Joey, come outside, there’s hot dog gum in the middle of a Twister board.” [audience laughter] I was like, “What?” Like, “Joey, come outside, there’s hot dog gum in the middle of a Twister board.” So, I walk up to the window, open it and I’m like, “What?” I see my older brothers and their friends sitting around a Twister board. And they’re like, “Joey, come on downstairs, there’s a hot dog gum in the middle of a Twister board.” [audience laughter]
So, I assume most of you guys know what a Twister board is. It’s that sheet with the polka dots and you play Twister on it. And hot dog gum is that individually wrapped little nickel candy that looks like a hot dog, but tastes like gum. [audience laughter] Not the opposite. You got to realize, to a five or six-year-olds, hot dog gum is very exciting. [audience laughter] But what’s more exciting, is that my older brothers wanted me to play with them.
These are like the neighborhood kids, the older brothers. These are real kids who can skateboard [audience laughter] and pop a wheelie on a ten-speed. These are real kids. like, “I’ve got matches, let’s blow something up,” real kids. [audience laughter] And they wanted me, because there was a hot dog gum in the middle of a Twister board. [audience laughter] So, I ran downstairs, and I knocked open the screen door and there they are surrounding the board. There is this hot dog gum, [audience laughter] right in the middle of the Twister board and none of them are going for it.
So, I step out on the Twister board and I go for the gum. They all stand up and I fall in a pit. [audience aww] Like the grass line up to my eyes. They had dug a pit under this Twister board. [audience laughter] Now, the biblical irony of being named Joseph [audience laughter] and having your brothers drop you into a pit, now that was not lost on my five, six-year-old self. [audience laughter] So, I made sure that I found that little hot dog gum and had that in my mouth before I let them pull me up out of the pit.
[cheers and applause]
So, they lift me out and they're all cracking up and cracking wise and, giving each other five and patting me on the back. I went back upstairs and chewed my hot dog gum in my room. I'll say this, a hot dog gum, the flavor lasts about three minutes tops. [audience laughter] But the flavor of betrayal [audience laughter] from your older brothers, that's a taste that lasts. [audience laughter] Thank you.
[whistles, cheers and applause]
Sarah: [00:04:42] That was Joey Garfield. Joey grew up in Evanston, Illinois, but moved to New York City to pursue a film career. It turns out the Twister pit incident never truly left his mind. A few years ago, he made a short film all about it. It’s called Ex Bully. It premiered at the AFI Film Festival in Los Angeles. Joey’s brother lives in LA, so he invited him to come see it. And Joey says, “My brother clapped at the end, but he still hasn’t apologized.” For a link to Joey’s film, head to themoth.org.
Our next story is also about sibling games. Tod Kelly told this at a StorySLAM in Portland, Oregon, where we partner with Oregon Public Broadcasting. Here’s Tod, live at The Moth.
[applause]
Tod: [00:05:47] When I was seven years old, I came home from school one day and my sister greeted me with her friends. Everybody has that one person in their life they want nothing but approval from, because they hero-worship them. And for me, it’s always been my sister. My sister greeted me with an Almond Joy bar and said, “This is for you, and I need to tell you why it’s for you. I was talking with my friends today, and they were explaining how all their little brothers and sisters are terrible people. I thought, I’m so lucky. I never treat you very well, and I realized how lucky I am that you’re my brother and I love you and I bought this for you.” I was so thrilled. I opened it, I took a bite and then I started--
So, here’s what my sister did, real quick. My sister had bought an Almond Joy and she'd steamed the package. She'd opened it, she'd pulled it out, she'd taken a bar of soap, she'd carved it in the shape of an Almond Joy. She melted chocolate over. She put it back, she glued it back and given it to me with this thing of sisterly love. I am going, [cries] “Oh, why did you do that?” And my sister goes, “Because in this world, there are winners and losers and you are a loser.” [audience laughter] This is 1970s. This is well before Mean Girls had L-fingered to forehead technology. But I have this memory of her doing this. My sister is five years older than me and there's nothing I can do.
Fast forward real quick, I'm a freshman in college, she's in graduate school. By this point, we get along well. My sister and I to this day are unbelievably close. We're home for break. I make a list of 10 things that she's done to me in childhood that I'm going to repay her for. [audience laughter] Later that night, we're having wine and I tell her about the list and she goes, "Well, that's fine. My guess is that like you'll probably get them all, maybe even this trip. But I'm telling you right now, you will never get me to eat chocolate-covered soap." And I'm like, "I could." She goes, "No. And this is why. Because I act with instinct. You overthink everything you ever do. That's why I will always be five steps ahead of you and that's why I beat you every time we go head-to-head.”
Challenge on. So, for the next 10 years, [audience laughter] I try so many ways. I actually made a salad with grated Parmesan cheese and I grated soap into it as well. It didn't matter what I did. One point even I stopped for three years, knowing that in the fourth year I would do it again. [audience laughter] It wasn't like she wouldn't eat anything that I made. She'd eat it with gusto, unless it had soap in it. It was just instinctively she knew. [audience chuckle]
Two nights before my wedding, my future in-laws are coming into town. It's the night before the rehearsal dinner. My new sister-in-law explains to me that she's going to make this little dessert thing. They're like little fig things and they're covered with chocolate. And it hits me. This is my chance. My sister won't see it coming from my sister-in-law. Who would do that? Nobody would do that. My sister won't see it coming. My wife-to-be was like, "Do not do this." [audience laughter] Partially because we're a day and a half away from being married and partially because her family is already a little worried that my family is really weird and crazy, which is an idea that they've come up with through, what do you say, observation.
And she goes, "You can't do this." "Honey, just let me do this. I promise it won't get weird. I promise it'll be fun. My sister will love it." And she goes, "Okay, here's the thing. When your sister figures it out before she even eats it, you need to promise me you never do this again. That's it." And I promise. And so, I help my sister-in-law and I make this little fake thing with chocolate over. And then, we have the dinner and then it's dessert time and some people are doing the dishes and my sister-in-law's putting them on this platter.
My parents have this long porcelain platter and we put them one in a row. And the thought is, my sister-in-law will serve them first to my mom, then to my dad, then to my sister, then to my future mother-in-law. And by now, my sister-in-law, by the way, is getting cold feet. She's like, "I don't know that this-- I'm cool with this." I'm like, "No, it's going to be fine." [chuckles] And she's like, "Well, your sister will find it amusing." "No, she will cry. It's going to be great." [audience laughter]
So, I am putting them on the thing and I go, “One for my mom, one for my dad, one for my sister, one--" I am like, “No, my sister is going to know that the third one is soap. So, I am going to put the soap in the fourth one.” So, I put it down. And then, I am like, “Wait, hold on. My sister is going to know that I know that. [audience laughter] And so, my sister is going to go for the fourth.” So, I switch them back. And then I go, “No, because my sister is only several steps-- my sister is going to know that I know that she knows, she'll never suspect it in the third.” And so, I keep switching. I am like Wallace Shawn in The Princess Bride, [audience laughter] just back and forth between the third and the fourth.
And finally, it just hits me that, like, I'm going to lose again. This is my one opportunity to ever win against my sister and I am going to lose the way I always do. And then, I remember what she had told me at this point 12 years ago. And I thought, I'm overthinking. I'm just going to do instinct. I'm going to close my eyes and I'm going to open them and what would my sister do and I'm going to put it there. I close my eyes, open, I put it there.
Dessert comes. My sister-in-law, my mom takes one, pops it in her mouth. Dad takes one, puts it in his mouth, hands it over to my sister. My sister's about to go for the third, and she stops, and then she goes to the fourth, and then she stops, and then she looks at me, [audience laughter] and then she gets this shit-eating grin on her face, and she slowly reaches all the way to the back, and then two down, [audience laughter] and picks it up and pops it in her mouth, and then lets out a scream because that is where I had put the soap with the chocolate. [audience laughter] [audience applause]
My sister screams, she gets up so fast that the chair falls back. I am laughing maniacally. She's now chasing me around the table. Finally, she grabs me by the shoulders and she takes me down like a steer and she's just pounding on my chest going, [imitates his sister] I am laughing and I see my in-laws, and they are horrified and my wife is so angry and I've got so much to make up for and I don't care, because for this one moment, I am the winner. Thank you.
[cheers and applause]
Sarah: [00:13:30] That was Tod Kelly. Tod is a writer who has embedded himself in bizarre and extreme subcultures in America. Klan rallies, exorcism camps and professional cuddling conventions. He's also the creator of the storytelling and live music show 7 Deadly Sins in Portland, Oregon, where he lives with his wife and two sons. His wife has asked Tod not to teach the kids about hijinks like this.
It turns out the soap was actually the last prank that he and his sister played on one another. After that, he says anything more would be a letdown. To see two photos of Tod and his sister, each taken the year they got the other to eat soap, go to themoth.org.
[whimsical music]
After our break, a story of learning to run and a competitive Latin club, when The Moth Radio Hour continues.
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Jay: [00:14:55] The Moth Radio Hour is produced by Atlantic Public Media in Woods Hole, Massachusetts. And presented by PRX.
[softhearted music]
Sarah: [00:16:06] This is The Moth Radio Hour from PRX. I'm Sarah Austin Jenness.
We're exploring competition and sport in this hour. And weirdly, we also have a sub-theme of candy and chocolate, as you'll note. Our next story is also about wanting to win. Wanting to win at all costs, when you're in the high school Latin club and competing against college kids. Romy Negrin told the story at the Bell House in Brooklyn at our first showcase of The Moth's High School Education Program. Here's Romy.
[cheers and applause]
Romy: [00:16:44] Hello. So, at my school, there are some kids who take Latin. We call them losers. [audience laughter] Some of those kids have gone the extra mile and joined the competitive Latin team. We call them pathetic losers. I am one such pathetic loser. [audience laughter] I started taking Latin in seventh grade. I was like, “Oh, it'll be fun and ancient, whatever.” [audience laughter] Everyone I knew was like, "Don't take Latin. It's a dead language. Who are you going to speak to in Latin, the Pope?” Someday. [audience laughter] But I started taking Latin, and I fell in love with it. Aww. [audience laughter]
At the beginning of eighth grade, my Latin teacher was like, "Hey, you should join Certamen, the competitive Latin team." Certamen, for those of you who do not know, means competition in Latin, because you go to competitions to do Latin. And I was like, “Sure.” So, I joined the Certamen team. It's me and three other kids in the novice team. We start practicing for the first big competition of the year, Yale. They have these competitions at all the big universities. Yale, Harvard, Princeton, where you expect this sort of thing to be. [audience laughter]
We start practicing, and the big day finally arrives. We gather at Grand Central at 05:30 in the morning. Too early. But we do not care, because we are off to New Haven. New Haven, Connecticut. [audience laughter] What a town. [audience laughter] So, we get on the train. One of my friends has brought along this ball of chocolate, this big, huge sphere of chocolate, wrapped in the shiniest tin foil you ever did see. [audience laughter] We agreed as a team that we would eat that chocolate if and only if we made it to semifinals. So, that is an extra incentive, other than the fact that I am inherently competitive by nature. And there is glory in victory. [audience laughter]
So, we are on the train and we are practicing. We are conjugating our verbs like, porto, portas, portat, portamus, portatis, portant. [audience laughter] We are singing our song, Row, row, your emperors. [audience laughter] My Latin teacher is just there, and she is like, “Yay, we are all going to have fun.” And I was like, “Yeah, winning would be fun.” [audience laughter]
We finally arrive at Yale. Every competition starts off with a lecture, where they bring in one of the classics faculty to give us a talk about Roman pottery to get us into the competition mood. [audience laughter] That is like the start of the day. And then, they ask you questions about Roman history, mythology, Latin vocabulary, grammar, literature, basically everything.
And so, we go to the lecture. After the lecture, they tell us that they have pioneered this fun new system, a bracket system, where for each division, novice, intermediate and advanced, there will be two brackets. An A bracket for people who have been to a Certamen before, and a B bracket for people who had no idea what they were doing. We clearly belonged in the B bracket, because we had never done it before. We are like, “Off we go to the B bracket.” But the B bracket would only send one team to semifinals, while the A bracket would send eight teams to semifinals. Yeah. [audience laughter] You can all do math. [audience laughter]
So, after the lecture they say, “Hold on a minute. One of the teams from the A bracket is not here. Would one of the teams from the B bracket like to join the A bracket?” We looked at each other and we are like, “Eight is greater than one.” [audience laughter] So, we are like, “We will join the A bracket, please.” So, we switched. We are high-fiving ourselves about this decision that we have made. We skip along off to our first round where we meet our first challengers, Acton-Boxborough.
Acton-Boxborough is the name of their school. Just think about that. Five syllables. [audience laughter] So many syllables. You know it has to be pretentious. [audience laughter] And they were. Their team was comprised of a junior and a senior in the novice division. And we are in eighth grade. [audience laughter] And the senior is flirting with the moderator, because the moderator is just like a sophomore at Yale. [audience laughter] Yeah. So, he is like, "Who is your favorite Roman poet?" And she is like, "I like Ovid." And he is like, "Ovid? I love Ovid." [audience laughter]
am just looking at my friends like, "Ovid?" I have never read Ovid. I am still stuck on Book Two of the Cambridge Latin Course. [audience laughter] A great read if you ever have the chance. [audience laughter] So, that is Round One. But we actually do pretty well in Round One. So, Round Two. Our fiercest competitors yet, Oak Hall. Only two syllables, but one of the syllables is Hall. [audience laughter] Just contemplate that. They are buzzing in before the questions are finished. It is like, "In what year did the emperor--” “123 AD." [audience laughter] "What is the ablative singular form of--" “Pane." And it is like, “How did they know?”
The reason they know is because they have a coach, Adam. Adam, he ties his long hair back in a ponytail and he wears this flannel and he stares those children dead in the eyes. [audience laughter] God forbid, they should get a question wrong, because then Adam has something to say about it. He goes, "Excuse me, but actually, in Virgil's Aeneid Book 1, line 324, he uses the alternative poetic form of the word, which is the form that Keegan answered with." [audience laughter] Keegan is your name if you go to Oak Hall, I guess. "So, Keegan deserves to be awarded those points."
What is this moderator going to do? She is 19. It is the middle of a Saturday afternoon. So, she is just like, "Yeah, I guess." So, Oak Hall thrashes us. But the preliminaries end and we actually feel pretty good about our score. We are looking at each other like, “We think we are going to make it to semis.” We are looking at our chocolate like, “We are going to eat you.” [audience laughter] We are just waiting for them to post the scores. We are waiting, we are waiting and we were like "Eighth place or better. Eighth place or better. Eighth place or better." And they post the scores. We are in ninth place. [audience aww] I know. I know.
The worst part, the most worst part, is we looked at our score and we looked at the top score from the B bracket. And yeah, you can guess, our score was higher than the top score in the B bracket. So, had we remained in the B bracket, we would have advanced to semifinals. Argh. [audience laughter] My Latin teacher is like, "Ninth out of eighteen. That is pretty good. Let us get back on the train." [audience laughter] And we are like, “Not good enough.” We are looking at each other and we are looking at that chocolate and we are like, “Oh, we did not deserve this chocolate.” But I will be damned if we did not eat it anyway. And we swore that next time, we would earn it. Thank you.
[cheers and applause]
Sarah: [00:25:26] That was Romy Negrin. Romy told this story when she was a senior in high school. She refers to herself as a denizen of New York and the best friend of her cat, Edith. She named this story, Dulce et Decorum, which translates to it is sweet and right. Romy says she is a prolific reader, a mediocre baker and a terrible athlete.
Certamens are run by college classics clubs, and Romy would love nothing more than to organize one of these competitions of her own someday. To see photos of Romy from the Latin club Certamen in this story, go to themoth.org.
Next in this hour, a story from the running club. Tahmin Ullah told this in one of The Moth's college workshops at the City University of New York. Here's Tahmin, live at The Moth.
[cheers and applause]
Tahmin: [00:26:32] Hi, everyone. So, since I was a little girl, I always wanted to be strong. The idea of having muscles was just amazing to me. A lot of the women in my family were like, "Whoa, you are crazy." But I was always suppressed from my dreams, because where I am from, girls were raised to be married and not really have an education. But my mother, she always wanted me to have an education. And also, get married too, but education first. But I do not really care about marriage at all, [chuckles] to be honest.
Not just that, but my mom also had a dress code. She taught me to always cover up. I did not really always like that. It never fit for me. So, I have always been kept indoors. I never had the freedom as a kid to go outside and play in the park like most kids do. My mom just gets scared that maybe I will get lost or something.
But anyways, I had an idea in my head when I was about 13, like, I want to do a sport. I want to be athletic. But would my mom allow that? No, she would not. [audience laughter] No, she would not. She would say things like, "You know, men are going to look at you when you are running around and you are wearing shorts." Hearing those things always really hurt my heart, because I strongly believe that she is wrong. But she strongly believes that she is right. [chuckles]
So, one day, I am at Hunter, and I am at the athletic room and I see pictures of strong, athletic women, like, sweating. They look determined and they look exhausted, but they look like, “I have to do this.” I see these women and I know that is me. It’s my third year in college. I thought to myself, I kept myself inside for way too long. I have to do something that makes me who I am, because I am tired of not being me. So, I joined track. [audience chuckle]
I kept it a secret for a while. In the beginning, it was brutal. Every single day, I felt like I was dying. [audience laughter] I was always the last girl to finish the race. My coach would yell like, "Oh, for this girl, two minutes, three minutes." And then, when I am coming in, he would yell, "Five minutes." [audience laughter] I am exhausted. But all the other girls on the team pat me on the back, because they know that I just started and this is new and it's hard.
So, one day, I'm coming home from track and I'm passing by my mom's room. She calls me over. My mom, she's sitting on her bed and she looks pretty tired and calm. She makes me sit down on the bed, and she asks me like, “Are you doing track?” My stomach turned. I just decided to tell her the truth, because I didn't want to hide anymore. I'm tired of hiding. And I said, “Yes.” There was a really long pause. She wouldn't even look at me in the face. And she said, “You're going down the wrong path.”
I could have argued with her, like I've argued with her my whole life, but I knew that she will stick with her beliefs just as much as I will stick with mines and I just left the room. So, whenever I go to practice, I would always remember that my mom doesn't want me here. And then, I would question, why am I here? Why am I putting myself through all this pain? Why go and do this and feel like I'm going to throw up [chuckles] after a run and be last and suck too? [chuckles] But every time I finish a race, I feel good about myself. I feel stronger every day. I can feel my legs getting stronger.
I would run just four blocks and I would get exhausted. But then I pushed myself to go, "Okay, go one mile. Now, go two miles.” I'll double that, “Try it." And the longest I ever did was six. I'm just so amazed at myself. [audience laughter] Whenever I'm running and I feel like, maybe I should stop halfway because I can't do it, I tell myself, "No. Don't insult yourself like that. You can do it." And then, I would hear all the voices of the people that I love and they would say like, "Go, Tahmin, go. You're almost finishing this. Finish strong. Always finish strong."
I have people in my life that's waiting for me at the finish line, waiting to hug me. That's why I do it. I'm never going to stop. I'm always going to fight, because I want to love myself. It doesn't matter how slow or how fast you are, as long as you finish the race. Thank you.
[cheers and applause]
Sarah: [00:32:19] Tahmin Ullah is a graduate of Hunter College, where she studied human biology. And to find out more about our high school and college workshops, you can go to themoth.org.
After our break, our final story, an inventive and almost disastrous marriage proposal, when The Moth Radio Hour continues.
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Jay: [00:33:10] 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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Sarah: [00:34:22] You are listening to The Moth Radio Hour from PRX. I'm Sarah Austin Jenness.
The last story in this hour about winning and losing is from Abhishek Shah. Abhishek told this in Alaska, where we partnered with the Anchorage Concert Association. Here's Abhishek, live at The Moth.
[cheers and applause]
Abhishek: [00:34:45] Wow. [audience laughter] Hello, everyone. Couple of years back, I went to India to visit my family. And during that time, I remember I went to this nightclub and I saw this beautiful girl. I was looking at her and I kept looking at her and then she looked somewhere else and then she looked at me and then I looked somewhere else and then we both looked at each other and we fell in love at the third sight. [audience laughter]
A year later, we were dating. We had now decided that we wanted to get married. But see, our relationship was modern in a sense that it was a love marriage, but it was still traditional in a sense that we wanted to get the blessings of our parents and approvals of our parents. Otherwise, we had decided that we will not get married.
So, first, I introduced my girlfriend to my parents. My parents loved her and she loved my parents. It was amazing. Now, it was my turn to meet her parents. I did not know how this was going to go, because my girlfriend had warned me that her dad's personality is exactly opposite as mine. I was a little bit concerned. I was like, “I don’t know, I have to create this good first impression in order to make sure that he likes me.”
So, the next day they invited me over for the dinner at my girlfriend's house. I was like, “You know what? I am going to create a very good first impression.” But I reached at their house, like two hours late, because there was a lot of traffic. When I reached there, he was hardly talking to me. So, I was trying to diffuse the tension. So, I tried to do like a fist bump. [audience laughter] But he didn’t react. So, I just did a fist bump by myself. [audience laughter]
Everything that night I tried to do, it just did not work. So, I was like, “You know what? I have to keep trying in order to impress their parents.” Like, the next day I told my girlfriend to switch off the internet, and then I went to her house and I fixed the internet. [audience laughter] It didn’t work out. [audience laughter] Her dad realized that all I did was put the adapter back in the socket. So, I was like, “I will keep trying.”: Like the next day, I know that her girlfriend likes to go for running every morning, like for health reasons. So, I just joined just to do an informal conversation.
I would not try to crack a joke. I was like, "Oh, even you go for running every day? Even I go for running every day to the restroom, [audience laughter] when I eat a lot of spicy food.” He did not like the joke. He did not. So, everything I kept trying, it kept getting worse and worse. I was like, “I need to do something very quick,” because I had to come back to the United States and I was getting a little desperate. So, at that time I realized there was this one friend of mine who had helped someone in a similar situation. So, I called him. I was like, "I need your help. Can you help me?"
Now, this friend of mine, he was a big Bollywood fan. Everything he would do is over the top, nonsense, would not even make sense. Like, he would do everything over the top. So, I called him. I was like, "Let's meet." He met me. I was like, “What can I do? Can you help me?” And he was like, "Bro, I got this. Bro, I got this. [audience laughter] This is what we are going to do, okay? You meet your girlfriend with her parents, and then I will come and snatch the purse of your girlfriend, [audience laughter] and then I will run and you follow me and then you bring the purse back and her parents would think you are the hero." I am like, “What? [audience laughter] That is a terrible plan.” He was like, "Bro, it is 100% guaranteed success. [audience laughter] If you follow this plan, you will be good for rest of your life." I was like, “I don’t know. I was not very sure with the whole plan.”
But then, I told my girlfriend and she was like, "Really? You are going to impress my parents with fake mugging?" [audience laughter] I was like, “Yes, that’s exactly how this is going to work out.” [audience laughter] So, we both were not sure whether this would work or not. But we also knew that we were running out of ideas to impress her dad. So, I was like, “We will go ahead with the plan.”
So, we decided-- The next day, it was her mom's birthday. They go to a fixed restaurant, like this very beautiful restaurant every year. And I was like, “That is the restaurant where we will execute our plan.” So, I told my Bollywood friend that this is the restaurant. This is the table. There is a table in the corner. You come there and you do your thing. And be there at 08:00 PM.
So, the day comes. Next day, I reach to a restaurant two hours before. I'm nervous. I'm like a nervous wreck. I'm sweating. I have like thousands of thoughts like, “What if this doesn't work, what would happen if it works?” Like, “What's going on?” I was just very nervous. I was pacing back and forth. It was like then 07;00 PM, 07:15, 07:30. As the time was coming close to 08:00 PM, I was trying to call my Bollywood friend just to make sure that the plan is still on. But he wasn't responding. Like, his phone was going directly to voice message. He wasn't responding to my text messages. So, I was like, I was just getting more and more nervous. And then, my girlfriend and her parents came and we sat down for the dinner.
It was almost like half an hour, like 08:30, and I still didn't hear anything from my friend. So, I was like, “You know what? Maybe he just backed out of the plan. Maybe he doesn't want to do this anymore.” And just around 08:30, I see a stranger person walking towards our table. He snatches the purse and he starts running. [audience laughter] I'm like, “Who is that guy? [audience laughter] He wasn't even part of our plan. [audience laughter] What is--" I'm confused, my girlfriend is confused and it's all happening so fast. I don't know what to do. So, I just stood up and started running after that stranger. He just disappeared. He dropped the purse somewhere in the corner. So, I took the purse, I came back to her table and I told her parents I took care of him. [audience laughter]
At that time, like her girlfriend's parents, dad was so happy and relieved to see that I was okay. And for the first time, I saw him smiling. I remember I wasn't even eating a dessert, but it tasted like a sweet million bucks. [audience laughter] I was like, “You know what? This wasn't part of our plan, but it just worked out in our favor.” So, I was very happy. Just when we were about to finish our dinner, [audience laughter] my Bollywood friend shows up. And now, I don't know what to do. I cannot say anything. So, I'm trying to express with my eyes, like, “Don't do anything. I've already proved that I'm a man.” [audience laughter] But my Bollywood friend, he has an IQ of minus infinity. [audience laughter] So, he just ignores the whole telepathy thing [audience laughter] and just goes and grabs the purse.
But before I could do anything, my girlfriend's father jumped on him [audience laughter] and he started punching him. And just at that time, this is what my friend says. “Abhishek, help me.” [audience laughter] I'm like, “I don't know you.” [audience laughter] And then, he goes on. He's like, “Oh, I was late. My Phone was switch off. So, I send one of my other friend to take care of this thing.” I'm like, “What?” What a great time to bring that up. [audience laughter]
We were just disappointed. I was extremely disappointed, my girlfriend was extremely disappointed. Just when I reached home, I was thinking, where did I go wrong? [audience laughter] Everything was a mess, everyone was disappointed and I was just thinking that what I did wasn't very good. So, I just opened my laptop and I sent her dad an email that “Whatever I did today, I'm extremely sorry. I know it's not the right thing, but my intention was not bad. If there's any person whom I'll ever get married to, it would be your daughter and this is 100% honest here.” And then, I closed my laptop. I was just awake the whole night. I couldn't sleep and there was nothing from their side.
And then, the next day, I got a call from her dad. He told me to bring me and my family, all. They invited us over the lunch. We went to their place and I was like, “I don't know how this is going to work out.” And then, her dad told me that, “It's not that you are a bad person. We know you are a good person. But to send my daughter all the way to a new country, to move all the way to a new country is an extremely huge decision for us. But if she does move, then it would be only with you.” And then, I tried to do like a fist bump, [audience laughter] and this time, he did give me a fist bump now here. Thank you.
[cheers and applause]
Sarah: [00:49:23] That was Abhishek Shah. Abhishek works as a biomedical engineer. And even with a few missteps, he won in the end. He and his wife, Fenal, have been married for years now and live in California with their two kids.
Abhishek never spoke to his Bollywood friend after this. But he has a great relationship with his in-laws. And yes, his father-in-law still makes fun of his botched proposal whenever they're together. And for anyone out there considering a proposal, Abhishek says, “If you're trying to make a good impression with your could be in-laws, be honest, keep it simple and don't act in desperation. It makes things messy.”
I asked Abhishek if there were any photos from the night of his mother-in-law's birthday and he said no. But to see photos from his wedding with all the family and 1,500 guests all looking very happy, go to themoth.org.
The Moth is all about true stories. So, our fact checking team, in this case, me, called up Abhishek's wife, Fenal.
Hi, Fenal. I've been wanting to chat with you for so long.
Fenal: [00:50:30] Same here. Hi, Sarah.
Sarah: [00:50:32] So, I had to call and ask you, did this really happen?
Fenal: [00:50:37] Yeah, actually, yeah. It happened and it's unbelievable. [chuckles] I told him that it's really not a good plan, let's not do this. But he is like, “You know what? We are running short of time and we can do this. Trust me, it will be fine.”
Sarah: [00:50:59] I loved seeing the photographs of your wedding that he sent.
Fenal: [00:51:02] It's the best wedding ever. We had like 1,400 to 1,500 people in our wedding. [laughs] Yeah, it was like a one week of celebration.
Sarah: [00:51:13] That was Fenal Shah.
Remember, you can share these stories or others from The Moth Archive through our website, themoth.org. Find us on social media too. We're on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter, @themoth. In the end, it's not really about winners or losers, it's the story of how you play the game, right?
That's it for this episode of The Moth Radio Hour. We hope you'll join us next time.
[overture music]
Jay: [00:51:50] Your host this hour was Sarah Austin Jenness. Sarah also directed the stories in the show along with Catherine McCarthy, with additional coaching in the high school program by Micaela Blei. The rest of The Moth directorial staff includes Catherine Burns, Sarah Haberman, Jenifer Hixson and Meg Bowles. Production support from Emily Couch.
Moth Stories are true, as remembered and affirmed by the storytellers. Our theme music is by The Drift. Other music in this hour from Medeski, Martin & Wood, Kormac, Penguin Cafe Orchestra, Blue Dot Sessions and Jerry Douglas and [unintelligible 00:52:24] You can find links to all the music we use at our website.
The Moth Radio Hour is produced by me, Jay Allison with Viki Merrick at Atlantic Public Media in Woods Hole, Massachusetts. This Hour was produced with funds from the National Endowment for the Arts. The Moth Radio Hour is 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.