Host: Aimee Mullins
Aimee: [00:00:03] Welcome to The Moth Podcast. I'm Aimee Mullins, athlete, actor, Moth storyteller and your host for this episode.
This summer in Paris, thousands of athletes will be running, swimming, throwing javelins and surfing, skateboarding. And for the first time in Olympic history, breakdancing, or as the games call it, breaking. They'll be competing against their fellow Olympians and Paralympians trying to win gold.
Yes. But more than that, they'll test themselves. They'll represent their countries. They'll make their loved ones proud and they'll give it everything they've got on the world's biggest stage. And to celebrate this collective four weeks of momentous daring, on this episode of The Moth, we're sharing three stories, either about the games themselves or the feelings they inspire in us and the memories they create.
These games certainly mean a lot to me. I had the honor of being named Chef de Mission or Chief of the Mission, the de facto leader of Team USA for the London 2012 Games. And in 1996, I had the privilege to compete in the Paralympics in Atlanta, Georgia. Let me tell you, there's absolutely nothing like the experience of being an athlete chosen to represent your country.
From the thrill of the opening ceremonies to bonding with the athletes in Olympic Village, dealing with the nerves right before your event's about to start, to the bittersweet ache of the closing ceremonies, the whole event is profoundly meaningful. The great American Olympian, Evelyn Ashford once told me that, “You never put the word former next to the word, Olympian. It's a club you belong to forever.” The experience of joining that club completely altered the trajectory of my life in ways that can feel almost indescribable. Sometimes it just comes down to a feeling that percolates inside of you.
Our first story is from someone who knows all about that feeling. Juliet Hochman told this at a Portland, Oregon, StorySLAM. Here's Juliet, live at The Moth.
[Audience applause]
Juliet: [00:02:11] So, my story starts about half my lifetime ago. It's the summer of 1984, and I've just finished my junior year in high school. My family's vacationing in a small town on the coast of Maine, and they all want to go out on the lobster boat for the afternoon to catch that night's dinner. But I don't want to go out on the lobster boat, because that afternoon, NBC is televising the Olympic final of the women's rowing eight race.
I was a junior rower, and I wanted to watch these women row. So, they all appeased my request. We sat around this tiny 18 inch black and white television in this tiny inn and watched this race. The women won. It was the first gold medal ever for women's rowing for the United States. My dad quietly put his arm around me and said, “That's going to be you in four years.”
So, fast forward almost four years, and I'm a junior at Harvard University. I'm rowing. I'm training. I'm working really hard. I'm studying Chinese. I'm holding down a part time job. And this sounds really hard, but actually, when you wake up in the morning every morning, and you have one thing in the world that you want to do more than anything else, and you have the steps laid out in front of you to do that and all you have to do is execute, it's really easy.
So, I'm training, and I'm rowing and I'm trying to get everything into a 24 hours day. My parents are supporting me and they're making up jobs for me to do, so I can earn money to pay for training. I think one summer, they said, “If you paint the barn, we'll give you $800.” I painted the barn, and I don't think it needed painting, but I had enough money for training for the next year. All the time, both of them said to me, “We're so proud of you. We don't care how far you get. But whatever you do, make sure you ride this wave all the way into the beach.”
And so, at the end of the time, however far you get in this crazy dream of yours, you know that there's nothing else you could have done to get there. But it was terrifying. You have this thing you want so badly. It's the only thing you're thinking about, and it completely consumes you. I would lie awake at night scared to death that I wasn't going to be able to do this thing to make this Olympic team. Everyone was bigger. Everyone was older. I was the youngest by two years. I was the only one still in college training. It seemed impossible.
So, every single night, I would go to sleep thinking about the same thing. I would think about, “What it would be like to walk into the opening ceremonies in Seoul, South Korea on September 18th, 1988 in front of 100,000 people?” I saw it in my head every night for 500 nights leading into the summer of 1988. I felt what it was like to be in that hot holding stadium with 10,000 athletes from 200 countries. I could hear their languages and I could see their national dress.
I remembered, I could feel what it would feel like to walk into that cold tunnel that leads underneath the stadium and how the noise would reverberate quietly and then, what it would be like to walk out onto the track in front of 100,000 people. I could smell it, and I could feel it and I could taste it. That's how I fell asleep every night for 500 nights.
So, it's the summer of 1988. I make the team. I'm the youngest. I'm the smallest. I'm so excited. I make the priority boat. We get over to Seoul, Korea about a week before competition starts. It comes to the night of the opening ceremonies. It's exactly as I had always imagined it. There was the holding stadium with those 10,000 athletes in a million colors, in a million languages. We were sweating like hell, because it was so hot in our nasty JC Penney opening ceremony uniforms. [audience laughter]
It comes time for the opening ceremonies to start. We're shepherded into that tunnel. It's cold. It's dank. Our voices are hushed, and they're reverberating off the cement walls. And then, we burst out into this cacophony of noise, and light, and people screaming, and we're crying and we're laughing. This is the revolution will not be televised. This was pre-cell phone. No one was facetiming this live. [audience laughter] We were in it
As we walked around the track, I noticed that the organizing committee had organized the athletes’ families according to national teams. So, you could see the Italian flags, and the French Flags, and the German flags and South African, Chinese all the way around. And three quarters of the way around the stadium, the greatest flag wavers on earth, the Americans were there. It seemed like thousands of American flags.
As I made my way around the track with my American teammates in a crowd of 100,000 people, as if they were the only ones in the stadium, I saw my parents. I watched as my dad grabbed my mom's hand and raised it above their heads. I could feel his arm around my shoulders just as he had been that was four years early in that tiny town on the coast of Maine.
I realized in that minute that the biggest award of all is not the team that you might make, or the podiums that you might stand on or the medals that might end up around your neck. The greatest award of all is understanding, and appreciating and recognizing those people who support you unconditionally in achieving your dreams. Thank you.
[cheers and applause]
Aimee: [00:08:14] That was Juliet Hochman. After discovering what she calls The Athlete 2.0 within herself, Juliet now helps others chase their dreams as a triathlon coach. Wow, having become a world champion triathlete in her 50s. The mother of two grown sons, she lives in Oregon with her husband and frenetic black Lab. She loves her work. To see a photo of Juliet marching in the 1988 opening ceremonies, just visit our website at themoth.org/extras. Listening to Juliet's story makes me want to dig out a training mixtape a roommate made me.
Yeah, yeah, I know I'm dating myself here, but it was the 1990s. Getting a mixtape was one of the most heartfelt gifts you could receive back then, because it took a lot of time to make. And this mixtape had those songs to get you through the toughest parts of your training regimen for sure. But one entire section was kicked off by the Olympic Fanfare and Theme, that song that plays throughout the games with the trumpets sounding all regal and processional. You know what I mean? I bet if I played you the first four seconds of that song, you could summon the rest by heart. There you go, take a listen.
[Olympic Fanfare and Theme]
Right? I'm sure the rest of the song is running through your head right now. Anytime I hear that song, it still gets me so emotional, because it's an instant memory transport to either being at the games myself or being a spectator watching these athletes on television step up onto that three-tiered podium as the medals were placed around their necks. It gets me every time. Fun fact, the Olympic Fanfare and Theme was composed by none other than the national treasure that is John Williams.
Whether you're competing in the Olympics or just watching them on TV, there's this sense of togetherness that comes through, the sense that most of the world is focused on this one thing. And thankfully, it's not something tragic or awful. It's rigorous, but friendly competition. I mean, that's glorious. Not only do you root for your own country's athletes, but you discover the incredible stories of athletes from around the globe who surmounted overwhelming odds to be there. And you become invested in them too.
Case in point, the Jamaican Bobsled Team. Remember them? The athletes who become stars in the Olympics aren't made. They're revealed to us by what they do. The Olympic stars of my childhood had Americans like Jackie Joyner-Kersey and Mitch Gaylord, but also Katarina Witt from what was then East Germany, and the figure skating duo out of Great Britain that was Torvill and Dean. Look them up for some amazing hair and makeup looks.
Up next is Mandy Hu, to tell us a bit about her childhood memory of the Olympics and one Olympian in particular that she had a special connection with. She gave us this story at a Berkeley StorySLAM. Here's Mandy, live at The Moth.
[cheers and applause]
Mandy: [00:11:14] Yes. Thank you. Yeah. The year is 1992. I'm an 11-year-old girl. I'm lying on my stomach on a carpet in a living room in northern California in front of a giant, ancient television. On the television is the Winter Olympics, the women's figure skating competition. It's the only event that matters, because the other winter sports are preposterous. They're anonymous. I'm not going to root for a helmet careening down a mountainside. [audience laughter]
Give me instead the Soviet-Block judge or the flower collecting girls or the rinkside commentators. I love all of these accessories of figure skating, because I love visible human faces. And in figure skating, they're often crying, which is great. [audience laughter] But I'm lying on a carpet in a tan living room, in a tan house in crushingly boring, northern boring California. [chuckles] Next to me are not flag waving fans, but cool ranch Doritos, kiwi strawberry soda and a 12-ounce can of niblets. Do you know what niblets are? It's corn off the cob in a can, and it's delicious. [audience laughter]
Anyway. I'm watching TV, and the figure skaters, they're slipping and sliding. Their edges catch, they fall and then they teach me lessons in physics through their personal pain. And then, after their routines, they stand ringside and they smudge mascara off their cheeks as their inky tears flow. I love it. I love watching this. I'm spooning corn into my mouth and I'm watching this. [audience laughter] But it's time. Finally, it is time for her. Behold, Kristi Yamaguchi. [audience cheers and applause]
Her unitard is as golden as her performance. Her hair is as long and black as a night without her highlight reel. Albertville, France, 1992, Kristi Yamaguchi, in literal translation, mountain mouth. Yama means mountain and Guchi means mouth, or the mouth that launched a thousand ships, the mouth of my life, the mouth of my loins. [audience laughter] The breathless post skate interview showing off that prominent mouth mole and her coloratura soprano and her moist, ample teeth. [audience laughter] I told you I love faces. And hers is so good. [audience laughter]
“Kristi Yamaguchi, the stars are aligned. You're from the Bay Area, just like me. Your slanty eyes and your sallow pallor are just like mine, so hard to find on television in 1992, even in the Bay Area, where we are citizens of the world, because the world of television is still predominantly Aryan. You're wound-up golden gams in midair as delicious as a hot sugar twist. In just five years, I will have my driver's license and I will drive my Volvo station wagon over the Dumbarton Bridge and rescue you from sulphuric Fremont. [audience laughter] And then, we'll live together forever in an ice palace filled with beds. We'll never have to leave. We'll just dehydrate and die happy.” [audience laughter]
So, I'm an 11-year-old girl. I'm feeling feelings that I didn't know I could feel, and I want to say things that I don't know how to say. So, after the medal ceremony, I get up off the carpet, I go to my diary and I write a letter to Kristi Yamaguchi. “Kristi Yamaguchi, I wish you would marry some guy I know, [audience laughter] I know, which the God that I still fear approves of. I mean, it is holy matrimony, it's bridal, it's conjugal carnal marriage for Kristi Yamaguchi and some guy I know. [audience laughter] So, Kristi Yamaguchi, I wish you would marry some guy I know.” But I'd write the S and the O in some and the guy I know in slightly smaller letters, so that God and I both know that what I'm actually trying to say is, “Kristi Yamaguchi, I wish you would marry me.” This is when I start to worry that I might be gay. Thank you. [audience laughter]
[cheers and applause]
Aimee: [00:16:15] That was my Mandy Hu. Mandy is a writer, a musician and a union side labor lawyer based in Berkeley. She wants you to know that in Disney's movie, Frozen, ice is described as “beautiful, powerful, dangerous, cold.” Mandy says she is essentially its antonym.
The final story we'll be sharing is from me. I told this at a New York City Mainstage where theme of the night was A More Perfect Union. Here I am live at The Moth.
[Audience applause]
So, two weeks ago, I was a bridesmaid. And the reception was actually here at the New York Public Library. I will never forget this wedding. Yes, it was very beautiful. But more importantly, I survived the slick marble floors that are all over this building. Tile and marble floors are public enemy number one to a stiletto loving girl like me. When most people learn to walk in very high heels, and I had five-inch heels on that night, they bend their ankles so that the ball of the foot touches the ground first to give more stability. I don't have ankles. So, I hit each step on the stiletto, which makes the possibility of the banana peel wipe out very likely. But given the choice between practicality and theatricality, I say go big or go home and go down in flames if you're going to go. [audience laughter]
I guess I'm a bit of a daredevil. I think that the nurses at DuPont Institute would agree. I spent a lot of time there as a child. Doctors amputated both of my legs below the knee when I was an infant. And then, when I was five, I had a major surgery to correct the wonky direction in which my tibia was growing. So, I had two metal pins to hold that full plaster cast on both legs. I had to use a wheelchair, because I couldn't wear prosthetics.
One of the best things about getting out of the hospital is the anticipation of the day you returned to school. You know, I had missed so much class. I just couldn't wait to get back and see all my friends. But my teacher had a different idea about that. She tried to prevent me from returning to class, because she said that in the condition I was in, I was inappropriate, and that I would be a distraction to the other students, which, of course, I was, but not because of the cast in the wheelchair.
Clearly, she needed to make my difference invisible, because she wanted to control her environment and make it fit into her idea of what normal looked like. It would have been a lot easier for me to fit into what normal looked like. I wanted that back then. But instead, I had these wooden legs with a rubber foot that the toes broke off. It was held on with a big rusty bolt that rusted out, because I swam in the wooden legs. You're not supposed to swim in the wooden legs. The wood rots out too.
So, there you are in second grade music class doing the twist and mid twist, I hear this [makes crashing sounds] And I'm on the floor, and the lower half of my left leg is in splinters over there. The teacher faints on the piano, and the kids are screaming. And all I'm thinking is, “My parents are going to kill me. I broke my leg.” [audience laughter] It's a mess.
But then, a few years later, my prosthetist tells me, “Aimee, we got waterproof legs for you. No more rusty bolts.” This is a revelation, right? This is going to change my life. I was so excited to get these legs until I saw them. They were made of polypropylene, which is that white plastic milk jug material. When I say white, I'm not talking about skin color. I'm talking about the color white. The skin color was the rubber foam foot painted Caucasian, which is the nastiest shade of a nuclear peach that you've ever seen in your life. It has nothing to do with any human skin tone on the planet.
These legs were so good at being waterproof that they were buoyant. So, when I'd go off the high dive, [audience laughter] I'd go down and come straight back up, [audience laughter] feet first. They were the bane of my existence. But then, at the Jersey shore one summer-- By the time we get there, there's 300 yards of towels between me and the sea. I know this is where I first honed my ability to run really fast. I was the white flash. I didn't want to feel hundreds of pairs of eyes staring at me. And so, I get myself into the ocean. I was a good swimmer, but no amount of swimming technique to control buoyant legs.
So, at some point, I get caught in a rip current, and I'm migrating from my vantage point of where I could see my parents’ towel and I'm taking in water, and I'm fighting, fighting, fighting. All I could think to do was pop off these legs and put one under each armpit [audience laughter] with the peach feet sticking up and just bob, like just wait. Like, someone's got to find me, you know? A lifeguard did, and I'm sure he will collect for therapy bills. [audience laughter] You can see it. Like, they don't show that on Baywatch. [audience laughter] But they saved my life, those legs.
And then, when I was 14, it was Easter Sunday. I was going to be wearing a dress that I had purchased with my own money for the first thing I ever bought that wasn't on sale. Momentous event. You never forget it. I had a paper route since I was 12, and I went to The Limited and I bought this dress that I thought was the height of sophistication. Sleeveless safari dress, belted, hits the knee.
Coming downstairs in the living room, my father's waiting to take us to church. He takes one look at me and he says, “That doesn't look right. Go upstairs and change.” I was like, “My super classy dress? What are you talking about? It's the best thing I own.” He said, “No, you can see the knee joint when you walk. It doesn't look right. It's inappropriate to go out like that. Go, change.” I think something snapped in me. I refused to change.
It was the first time I defied my father. I refused to hide something about myself that was true and I refused to be embarrassed about something, so that other people could feel more comfortable. I was grounded for that defiance. And so, after church, the extended family convenes at my grandmother's house, and everybody's complimenting me on how nice I look in this dress, and I'm like, “Really? You think I look nice? Because my parents think I look inappropriate.” And I outed them. [audience laughter]
Kind of mean, really. But I think the public utterance of this idea that I should somehow hide myself was so shocking to hear that it changed their mind about why they were doing it. I had always managed to get through life with somewhat of a positive attitude, but I think this was the start of me being able to accept myself, “Okay, I'm not normal. I have strengths. I got weaknesses. It is what it is.”
I had always been athletic, but it wasn't until college that I started this adventure in track and field. I had gone through a lifetime of being given legs that just barely got me by. I thought, “Well, maybe I'm just having the wrong conversations with the wrong people. Maybe I need to go find people who say, ‘Yes, we can create anything for you in the space between where your leg ends and the ground.’” And so, I started working with engineers, fashion designers, sculptors, Hollywood prosthetic makeup artists, wax museum designers to build legs for me.
I decided I wanted to be the fastest woman in the world on artificial legs. I was lucky enough to arrive and track at just the right time to be the first person to get these radical sprinting legs modeled after the hind leg of a cheetah, the fastest thing that runs. Woven carbon fiber. I was able to set three world records with those legs. They made no attempt at approximating humanness. But then, I got these incredibly lifelike silicone legs, hand painted capillaries, veins. Hey, I can be as tall as I want to be, so I get different legs for different heights. [audience laughter] I don't have to shave. I can wear open toed shoes in the winter. [audience laughter] Most importantly, I can opt out of the cankles I most certainly would have inherited genetically. [audience laughter]
So, then, I get these legs made for me by the late, Great Alexander McQueen. They were hand carved of solid ash with grapevines and magnolias all over them. Six-inch heel. I was able to walk runways of the world with supermodels. I was suddenly in this whirlwind of adventure and excitement. I was being invited to go around the world and speak about these adventures. Now, I had legs that looked like glass, legs covered in feathers, porcelain legs, jellyfish legs, all wearable sculpture.
I get this call from a guy who had seen me speak years ago when I was at the beginning of my track career, and he says, “We loved it. We want you to come back.” It was clear to me he didn't know all these amazing things that had happened to me since my sports career. So, as I'm telling him, he says, “Whoa, whoa, whoa. Hold on, Aimee, the reason everybody liked you all those years ago was because you were this sweet, vulnerable, naive girl.” I'm afraid that if you walk on stage today and you are this polished young woman with too many accomplishments, for real.” He said that, “I'm afraid they won't like you.” Wow.
He apparently didn't think I was vulnerable enough now. He was asking me to be less than a little more downtrodden. He was asking me to disable myself for him and his audience. What was so shocking to me about that was that I realized I'd moved past mere acceptance of my difference. I was having fun with my difference. Thank God, I'm not normal. I get to be extraordinary, and I'll decide what is a weakness and what might be a strength. And so, I refuse his request.
A few days later, I'm walking in downtown Manhattan at a street fair, and I get this tug on my shirt and I look down. It's this little girl I had met a year earlier when she was at a pivotal moment in her life. She had been born with a brittle bone disease that resulted in her left leg being seven cm shorter than her right. She wore a brace and orthopedic shoes, and it got her by, but she wanted to do more.
Like all internet savvy kindergarteners, she gets on the computer and googles new leg. She comes up with dozens of images of prosthetics, many of them mine. She prints them out, goes to school, does show and tell on it, comes home and makes a startling pronouncement to her parents. “I want to get rid of my bad leg.” She says, “When can I get a new leg?” Ultimately, that was the decision her parents and doctors made for her. And so, here she was, six months after the amputation, and right there in the middle of this street fair, she hikes up her jeans leg to show me her cool new leg. It's pink, and it's tattooed with the characters of High School Musical 3. [audience laughter] Replete with red sequined Mary Janes on her feet.
She was proud of it. She was proud of herself. The marvelous thing was that this six-year-old understood something that it took me 20 something years to get. But we did both discover that when we can celebrate and truly own what it is that makes us different, we're able to find the source of our greatest creative power. Thank you.
[cheers and applause]
Aimee: [00:28:55] Hi, again. Listening to the rundown of prosthetic leg creations just now reminds me of a pair I had designed, especially for the opening and closing ceremonies of the London 2012 Games when I got to lead the U.S. Paralympic delegation into Olympic Stadium.
The legs have a silicone skin like covering with a metallic gold inlay of laurel leaves spanning the sides, an Olympic symbol of victory and honor since the time of the ancient Greeks. They are really something. If you'd like to see what they look like, I'll make a photo available at themoth.org/extras.
Well, that's it for this episode. From all of us here at The Moth, we hope that you have a wonderful story filled week.
Hey, extra credit for those who are inspired touch that Olympic spirit this week, whether that's to pretend you're Apolo Ohno skating in your socks on your kitchen floor, or giving us your best Simone Biles with a cartwheel in your living room, or do like I did when I was little, try and do Greg Louganis flips onto the bed from the headboard. Actually, maybe skip that last one. Good luck.
Marc: [00:30:02] Aimee Mullins has built a storied career as an athlete, model, actor and advocate for women sports and the next generation of prosthetics. She competed NCAA Division I as a champion sprinter and set three world records. In 1998, Aimee made her runway debut in London at the invitation of Alexander McQueen, being a pioneer in challenging the notion of what disability means. As an actor, Aimee received accolades for her debut in the art epic, Cremaster 3 by Matthew Barney, and is now in the Netflix mega hit Stranger Things. Aimee Mullins story was directed by Sarah Austin Jenness.
This episode of The Moth Podcast was produced by Sarah Austin Jenness., Sarah Jane Johnson and me, Marc Sollinger. The rest of The Moth’s leadership team includes Sarah Haberman, Christina Norman, Jenifer Hixson, Meg Bowles, Kate Tellers, Marina Klutse, Suzanne Rust, Brandon Grant-Walker, Lee Ann Gullie and Aldi Kaza.
The Moth would like to thank its supporters and listeners. Stories like these are made possible by community giving. If you’re not already a member, please consider becoming one or making a one-time donation today at themoth.org/giveback..
All Moth stories are true as remembered by the storytellers. For more about our podcast, information on pitching your own story and everything else, go to our website, themoth.org. The Moth Podcast is presented by PRX, the Public Radio Exchange, helping make public radio more public at prx.org.