The Moth Radio Hour: Facing Off and Facing Up
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This autumn, fall for Moth Stories as we travel across the globe for our mainstages. We're excited to announce our fall lineup of storytelling shows from New York City to Iowa City, London, Nairobi, and so many more. The Moth will be performing in a city near you, featuring a curation of true stories. The Moth mainstage shows feature five tellers who share beautiful, unbelievable, hilarious, and often powerful true stories on a common theme. Each one told reveals something new about our shared connection.

To buy your tickets or find out more about our calendar, visit themoth.org slash mainstage. We hope to see you soon. From PRX, this is the Moth Radio Hour. I'm Jodi Powell. In this hour, stories of confrontation.

Growing up in Jamaica, I was so used to hearing the shouts when a fight was on in the schoolyard. I would often find myself standing at the edge peering in. And one day, I got caught in the rumble with a classmate. And this time, it was me in the center, fighting. I desperately needed to get out, but I quickly realized the only way out was to go fully in.

And so I fought back, and the schoolyard sounds enveloped us. And before I knew it, it was over. But I was terrified because now I had to go to the vice principal and face what I had just done. I got two days suspension and more chores for my grandmother than you can count.

A confrontation isn't always like a schoolyard fight. It can mean asking yourself hard questions, understanding and sticking to boundaries, rolling up in a space that is not meant for you and owning it. It can mean finding courage. That was true for our first storyteller, Harjas Singh, who told this at a main stage in New Bedford, Massachusetts, where we partnered with the Zyterian Performing Arts Center. Here's Harjas, live at the Moth.

Ever since I was three years old and my hair was long enough to be tied into a bun or a jhuda, my mom and I had developed our daily ritual. I would sit down in front of her, my back towards her, and she would oil my hair, comb it, braid it, then tie it into a bun. She would then cover it with a one foot by one foot square cloth called a patka.

But there was another daily ritual that I would observe every morning. I would be sitting at the breakfast table and I would see my grandfather, an older, bearded, Dumbledore-esque gentleman with a bun on his head. And he would take this really long piece of cloth, let's say the length of the stage, and he would hold one end of it. My father would hold the other end. And they would roll it from either side until it looked like a long pipe.

He would then take it to his room and he would walk out and there would be this beautiful turban sitting on top of his head. And to me, it looked like a king wearing a crown. He almost had an aura about him. And I would ask him, "When can I wear that?" And he would say, "When you're older, when you're more responsible." I had no idea what that meant. I was three. But all I wanted to do from that day on was be older and more responsible.

So when I woke up on the morning of my 13th birthday, I was bursting with energy because today was finally the day. Today I would transition from boy to man and it would be marked by my very own turban tying ceremony. See, the turban tying ceremony is not too dissimilar from a bar mitzvah or a more religious sweet 16. But instead of reading from the Torah, we read from the Sikh holy book, the Guru Granth Sahib.

But more importantly for me, my grandfather would switch out my patka with a 16-foot long The Star or turban. So I shower quickly that morning, I put on my favorite Bugs Bunny sweater, and I make my way outside and I see my grandparents and I touch their feet to seek their blessings. My parents, they're so happy on this day because for them, with the turban on my head, I would be fully accepting my identity as a Sikh.

that I live an honest life, I give back to society, and I remember God. And I was really, really excited, but it had also been a little while since I was three years old, and I had seen some stuff. Before the ceremony started, I thought back to my first day at St. Xavier's school. I was five years old, and I would be attending the same school that my father had attended when he was a child.

And I was so proud and I almost felt like I had bragging rights, like, you know, kids who go to Harvard and say, oh, my parents went to Harvard. And my mom and I went through our daily ritual like we did every morning. She oiled my hair, combed it, braided it, tied it into a bun, covered it with a patka. I put on my school uniform, my navy blue shorts, sky blue shirt and tie. And my grandfather dropped me off at the bus stop, me riding behind him on his LML Vespa scooter.

And as a kid who'd grown up in a Sikh family and in a Sikh neighborhood, I thought everyone is supposed to have a bun on their head or wear a patka or have a turban. So it was to my surprise when I get to the bus stop and none of these kids look like me. No one is wearing a patka. No one has a bun on their head. But these kids keep looking at me funny.

For all they could care, I must have looked like Shrek to them. But instead of being ugly and green and an ogre, I was ugly and had this thing on my head, this turban. So after my grandfather had left, some of these kids started circling around me like vultures. One of them came close to me and said, "Hey, what's that thing on your head? Is that an egg?" And another kid said, "No, dude, that's a tomato."

And then another kid said, "So you put a tomato on your head every morning and then you cover it with a piece of cloth? Eww!" Five-year-olds can be pricks. And then out of nowhere, one of these kids comes and smacks my forehead trying to squash that tomato. Pride turns to shame and shame turns to fear. And it's the first time I realized in my life that I could be hurt for no other reason than how I look.

I go back to the bus stop every morning and this game continues. And I suffer this day after day and I don't tell anyone until one day it becomes too much. I go back home crying to my mom and I ask her, "Why do I look like this?" My mom's first reaction, she rolls up her sleeves and says, "Who are these damn kids? And what are your teachers doing? Not protecting you?" And then she calms down and looks at me crying, wipes my tears,

gives me a hug and she says, "Beta, my son, we are six. The turban is a part of our identity. It's a gift given to us by our gurus. And who are you to try and blend in when you were born to stand out?" Easier said than done for a kid who's just trying to fit in with his friends. But things only got worse after 9/11.

It was almost as if an anti-turban rhetoric had taken hold of the world and it didn't leave my small town of Ranchi in India. This game of whack-a-mole that started at the bus stop continued for the next couple years. And the more I would tell these kids not to touch my patka, the more they would want to do it. So one day I was at school and this kid tried to touch my patka and my jhura and tried to like rip it off. And I told him, "No, don't touch it." And he said, "Why? Are you hiding a bomb underneath there?" I felt hurt.

confused, disturbed, angry. Why had this kid called me a terrorist when I wasn't one? I went home crying to my grandfather. He was sitting in his reading chair in his room and I asked him, "Why do I look like this? Why do I need to wear a turban?" And he gave me a little bit of a history lesson. He said when Sikhism started in India five centuries ago, India was ruled by kings.

And turbans were a symbol of royalty. Only kings and noblemen could wear them. And these kings weren't necessarily kind. They would put people to death for no other reason than practicing a religion the king didn't approve of. So the Sikh gurus had instituted the turban as a symbol of equality, as a symbol of standing up against the injustices of these kings. This was the first time I had questioned my religious identity and received an answer I thought I understood.

But even though I theoretically understood why I should be wearing the turban, the world outside kept giving me reasons not to. So back at the ceremony, as excited as I was about putting this turban on my head, I was also conflicted with all these memories of being treated like I was an outsider. The entire family then started the ceremony. We moved to the prayer room in our house where the Guru Granth Sahib sat atop a palki or a pedestal.

My father took his place behind the palki while we sat around on the floor as he read verses from the Anand Sahib, the prayer of happiness and bliss. Then from a crumpled purple plastic bag, my grandfather took out this beautiful red and golden polka dotted turban. It had been custom made for me just like all the turbans had been made for my father and my grandfather before me.

My grandfather held one end of the turban, I held the other, and we rolled it from either side until it looked like a long pipe. I knelt down in front of the Guru Granth Sahib, clutching one end of the turban in my mouth, and my grandfather put down layer after layer of this turban over my head. And with each layer that he put down, the weight of the turban started to feel more real.

And I realized that it wasn't just the weight of the turban. It was the weight of history on my shoulders. It was a weight of expectations that I wasn't sure if I was ready to carry just yet. When the ceremony was over, I bent down to touch my grandparents and my parents' feet to seek their blessings. I then went into my room, stood in front of the mirror, and looked at myself with this turban on my head, and I thought, "I look weird."

I now was looking at myself like those kids had looked at me at the bus stop, like I was Shrek. And I realized, I started to question in that moment that there were other kids who I had grown up with, other sick kids, but instead of wearing turbans now, they would wear baseball caps. Instead of keeping their hair and their buns, they would now shave their hair off. And I would wonder,

Is it worth continuing to fight for your right to just exist instead of just trying to blend in? I realized after the ceremony that the turban had been given to me wasn't something I had accepted. My grandfather had tied the turban on me, but it wasn't my turban. It almost felt like an organ my body was rejecting, but I also wanted to be proud of my religion and my culture just like my father and my grandfather were.

So over the next few years, I tied the turban off and on, mostly on special occasions like friends' birthdays or family events, because those felt like safe moments where I could put the turban on and become comfortable with its weight. And every time I tied the turban by myself, the weight of the turban started to feel lighter, as if the turban itself was evolving to fit with my head, becoming one with me.

So on the morning of my high school graduation, I woke up and I went through my morning ritual again. I oiled my hair, combed it, braided it, tied it into a bun. I put on my school uniform, my navy blue pants, sky blue shirt and tie. But instead of choosing to wear the patka like I had for so many years before this, I chose to wear my turban on this day. I decided I was done feeling afraid of who I was and I wanted to be proud in who I am.

I rolled the turban from either side into a long pipe. I carefully put down layer after layer of the turban over my head. And when I was done tying, I stood in front of the mirror again and I asked myself, "Why do I look like this? Why can't I just blend in?" But this time the answer came from within. Why try to blend in when you were born to stand out? Thank you. That was Harjaseen.

who is now more confident in his identity, which gives him the strength to be an active representative of the Sikh community after 11 years of being in the US. He is now a software engineer, but also a storyteller, and thinks he inherited storytelling from his grandfather.

He still gets the occasional stare from someone who's never seen a man with a turban before, but oftentimes his turban is a great conversation starter. He'll happily discuss religion with complete strangers anytime. In a moment, we hear from a backgammon champion and a mother introduces her kids to the movie Home Alone and they come up with a plot of their own. That's when the Moth Radio Hour continues. ♪

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 Jodi Powell. Our next story comes from Antoinette Marie Williams. She told it from her motorized scooter that she calls her Ferrari. And she calls herself handicapable. Live from our Harlem main stage at City College's Aaron Davis Hall, here's Antoinette Marie. As far back as I can remember, Rachel and Henry Williams played cards. At 10,

I listened to the laughter and teasing around the card table. My dad invited me to play. He needed a partner. He taught me the rules of the game, how to win, and he also taught me how to hold the cards in my small hands to play bid-wisp, pinochle, and cutthroat pinochle. They lit up the room with passion and confidence.

and it rubbed off on me. I learned to play Backgammon from my friend Terry almost 50 years ago, probably longer than most of you have been on the planet. Backgammon is a board game that's been around probably longer than and found in Tutankhamun's coffin. The game is played with 15 checkers and dice for each player.

Each player rolls the dice and moves their checkers around the board according to the numbers on the dice. You win the game by getting your checkers to your home board and getting your checkers off before your opponent. I loved backgammon. I was dying to play. I was hungry to play this game. I found Chess City a few blocks away from my apartment. They played bridge, chess, and backgammon there.

Only a few women were in the game of bridge. I found a group of men playing over in the corner, four Bulgarians and one Haitian. They were arguing, mostly in Bulgarian, about the plays to make. They made some of the worst plays I had ever seen. They were really bad.

After watching for several days, Figgy, one of the Bulgarians, invited me to play. Had he read my mind, Jesus, he invited me into this game. I was so excited. That evening, I walked home with more ducats than I came with. It was truly reassuring and exciting to play with them. We played several days a week, and I walked away generally with more money in my pocket.

Sometimes I lost, and my motto, it's just an investment, kept them coming back, putting more money in my pockets. After playing with them for a while, I heard about Monte Carlo. Monte Carlo has the largest world backgammon championship in the world. I always thought that this Mediterranean Wonderland tournament was out of my reach, too expensive.

I did some research. Monte Carlo, here I come. It was a week-long tournament in July, and I went. There were over 200 people in the intermediate division, very few women, but I was there representing the sisterhood. When I walked into the room, I heard the melodious tune of the shaking of the dice. It was music to my ears.

Most of the men there, male opponents, underestimated me. They thought that I was a mere dilettante in the game. But I was going there to prove that I was a winner, that I could beat them. Day one, Pierre walked in, tall, dark, mustache, and handsome. Fine by my definition. He sat down to play. Pierre had no chance. I rolled like Wanda Possessed.

and beat him 13-0. He walked away graciously, but disheveled. I strutted to the scorekeeper's desk to claim my win. Throughout the rest of the week, I played all-male competitors, and I beat them all. Undefeated, undefeated, I won the intermediate division of the Monte Carlo World Backgammon Tournament.

I won a trip to Spain to use a car at the timeshare, a $1,200 German backgammon set, and a trophy, and the recognition of my peers at this tournament. I had made it. After playing some more tournaments, winning and losing, there was this tournament again.

In San Antonio in 2017, I was the only black female and the first woman to ever be in the finals of this tournament. But not only was I the first woman, there was another woman. She and I were in the finals, both from the Big Apple. We sat down to play and Layla was beating me 8-5 in an 11-point match. I took a break from the defeat.

I rolled to the bathroom on my Ferrari and I got to the sink and I splashed cold water on my face and I heard my father's voice play every game like it's your first. I talked to myself in the mirror. God damn it, Antoinette. You can't let her beat you. Second place is not an option.

I roll back to the table. People are standing on chairs, encouraging. Thumbs up, smiling at me, rooting for me. The score was 8-5. We started to play. I rolled. I got to the best part of my game. I turned the cube. Layla passed. The score is now 8-6. We play on. I get into a good position again. I double the cube.

Layla passes. It's now 8-7. My inner voice is saying, "That's when I go with it. You've got it going on, girl. Move, move." We start the next game. I put one of Layla's checkers on the bar. She has to come into my home board. She can't come in. My board is closed. I'm rolling to take my checkers off. I'm shake, shake, shaking vigorously. I'm nervous. My heart is pounding. I think everyone in the building hears me.

I'm shaking the dice. Layla can't come in. I'm finally taking off all my checkers. Layla still is on the bar. Oh my God, I'm winning this game. I'm winning this tournament. Before I know it, I've won four points. Not only did I win, I back-amateur. I won six points. I won the San Antonio tournament. The first woman, the first black woman to win this tournament and the prizes.

I am so happy people are surrounding me with joy and thanking me, giving me congratulations. That same year, I won third place in the American Backgammon Tour, the first woman to ever win in that division as well. A black woman in this game representing other women.

Finally, I got a phone call that said that I was nominated for the Backham and Hall of Fame. I've been recognized by my peers. I'm so happy to be recognized by my Backham and peers. I love the game as much as I did in 1973 when I first learned. And I'm proud that there are other women joining in this male-dominated game. I remember what my father taught me. I still take risks.

And I still play every game like it was my first. Thank you. Antoinette Marie Williams is an exuberant advocate, an educator and a world traveler. At 75, she's still playing and she gives free backgammon lessons to adults and teens outdoors in the park in Harlem or on Zoom. And according to Antoinette, she doesn't plan to slow down anytime soon.

To see photos of Antoinette, please visit themoth.org. Our next story comes from Rachel Kane, who told this on the Ann Arbor Story Slam stage with our media partners, Michigan Radio. Here's Rachel. All right, so my mom died when I was nine years old. And ten years later, I was getting married and having babies of my own. And when I put it like that, it's like, oh my God, that was way too young. But yes. And I found myself at this age thinking,

feeling completely lost. I didn't have a mom. I was a mom and I was constantly questioning if I was a good mom and if I was going to do this right. And I cared. I cared a lot and I had a lot of really grand ideas that have

It's gone down a lot since then. But at the time, I really dreamed of sharing the highest forms of art and music and literature with my children. I fantasized that they'd be reading Shakespeare at five. No. It's a lot of Pokemon. It's not good.

But I had these fantasies and one day, in an effort to get started on this, I brought home a really great classic art house film to share with my two children, four and five years old. You guys might have heard of it. It's called Home Alone. It's great. It's one of the best.

So I brought this home, my kids watched it, they loved it, and it turned out to be a real bad movie to show them. Because the next day they got real mad at me. I had made cookies and I had told them, I'm a real bitch here, I had told them, "You have to wait till they cool before you can have them." And they lost their goddamn minds.

I mean, just lost it. They stormed out of the room, they slammed themselves against the wall on the other side of the wall where I was holding clothes, and they plotted their revenge. And they were at this perfect age where they didn't realize this complicated scientific theory that noise travels. And they were also really horrible at whispering. And so I heard everything. And everything was they were going to murder me.

Yeah, like full-on Macaulay Culkin murder me. And so I'm sitting there and I have this dilemma, right? Do I get up? Do I walk over there? Do I kneel down? Do I tell them softly, that's not how we handle our big feelings. We don't do it like that. We talk it out and whatever. Or do I listen to the other guy on the shoulder and do I just like go with it and see what happens? Yeah.

I listened to him. So I wait for them to get this all set, and they had an Easter basket that, mind you, I had lovingly filled like months before. But they took that Easter basket, and they filled it with stuffed animals, and they tied a rope to it, and they swung it over the banister of our stairs. And their plan was to do that every time I walked by, right, until they got me. And so I walked past.

I walked past the first time and they missed, which does not surprise me. My son plays basketball now and he's not good. But they missed. I walked back again and they missed again. I did that eight times until finally it hit my shoulder and that was it. I couldn't do it again. So that was it. That was the one, right? So I just swung back. Now, I'm an English teacher, so I've got some Shakespeare in me. So like it was full on death scene, right? And I'm like...

clutching my heart inexplicably. They didn't hit my heart, but like, oh! Oh my god! And I lean against the wall and I sink down, 'cause I can't do squats very well, so I had to like, move the help. And I sink down, and I fall over, and that's it, I'm dead. I'm dead. And there's silence. Just silence.

And then my five-year-old starts wailing. Like he just starts running down the stairs, tumbling over himself. I mean, just weeping. He prostrates himself over my corpse. And I have this moment where I'm like, I might have like taken this too far. But I was working so hard to hold in the laughter that that went away really fast.

And I'm there and I'm dead and he's wailing and then my younger four-year-old comes down and there's not a tear to be seen. He's just full on like, "Oh yeah, we fucking did." And I'm there, you know, peeking out of the slits of my eyes because they're stupid and they don't know that I can see them.

And I'm wondering if I am in trouble. Do I need to find a counselor? I mean, four-year-olds are notoriously awful human beings anyways, but this feels extra awful. There is no remorse. And I'm wondering if it's over for me. This is it. We've got a psychopath. It's bad. And then my four-year-old leans down to my weeping five-year-old, and he strokes his cheek and wipes the tears away and just pulls his little chin up.

And he says, "Don't cry brother, the cookies are free now." And that's the moment when I knew I'm doing this parenting thing okay. By day, Rachel Caine says she's a serious bespectacled public media employee. By night, she's a slightly less serious bewigged content creator on TikTok.

Though those once mischievous preschoolers are now mischievous preteens, Rachel is happy to report they have never tried to murder her again. Well, not intentionally at least. They may still give her a heart attack though. To see pictures of Rachel and her family, please visit themoth.org and go to extras. Coming up, a seventh grader on a life-changing school trip.

and an unexpected face-off with a wild cat. That's when the Moth Radio Hour continues. 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 Jodi Powell. Our next story is from Eddie Laughter, who shared it at a Moth Community Engagement Program showcase in Brooklyn. The evening was presented by our friends at the Kate Spade New York Foundation. Here's Eddie live at the Moth. I grew up going to a Quaker school.

And I was one of the only three actually Quaker kids there. My dad was Quaker, so is Quaker still. And I thought that made me an expert. Whenever it came up in class, I was like, inner light, I know all about that. I've gotcha. And I was in like fourth grade, by the way. And I was going to Quaker meeting for worship every Sunday because my dad wanted me to. But I would just kind of sit downstairs and doodle while our parents were in worship and

That was just what would happen on Sundays. And my mom is Jewish, and my connection to that side of my family is even foggier and more distant. I would just visit my family for the holidays and get really confused about how I knew everybody, and then I would come back and then go to school the next day. And weirdly, a lot of kids at my Quaker meeting were also this combination of Quaker and Jewish, and we like to call ourselves Quakersh.

And that was the extent of our analysis of that. And if I'm being totally honest, all I wanted to do when I was little was pretend to be a dragon with my friends. So religion is not pretending to be a dragon, so it was thus not high on my list of priorities then. But as I got older, it eventually was no longer cool to pretend to be a dragon, and it wasn't cool to really talk about religion either. I got into middle school and got...

everything got more awkward and I got less friends. And I got really distant from religion. I stopped going to Quaker meeting on Sunday because no one was really making me. And so I talked about it less. My Quakers and facts weren't fun or cool things to tell people.

But I could never really get out of going to the Jewish holidays. They happened so infrequently that I had to be there, and I didn't see my cousins very often. So it was important that I went, but I got that it was important for my mom. I didn't get how it was important to me. I never really saw myself there. It felt weird and complicated, and I just felt so awkward all the time that I didn't understand what it had to do with me specifically. And...

In seventh grade, my school took a field trip to a Holocaust exhibit in a Jewish cultural center in Manhattan. And I had learned about the Holocaust, we were learning about it in history class, and we were learning about World War II in Germany in the '30s and '40s. And it was something that happened in the past, so this was a field trip.

And it was just a time to not be in class. So we're in seventh grade and we enter the museum in a sort of rambunctious fashion because it's seventh grade and that's just what kind of happens. And the museum goes in chronological order through timelines. So we're in the beginning part and me and my two friends are just sort of like walking around and sort of like making fun of propaganda. And then the museum takes a hold on us as it is designed to do and my friends go elsewhere and I'm by myself walking

And the floor of the museum is carpeted, so it kind of eats away at footsteps, so you can't really hear anyone else around you. And I'm by myself, and I'm walking, and I turn to my left, and I see this long hallway. And at the end of the hallway is this wall that looks like it's made out of a bunch of small tiles. And I get closer and realize that they're not tiles, but they're actually very, very small portraits of...

photographs of people who entered and died in Auschwitz. And there are so many of them. They go all the way down this hallway. They turn the corner, and there are these pillars in the museum, just architecturally, and they wrap around. And I'm overcome with this wave of, like, this urge to make eye contact with each and every one of the pictures.

and I feel like I need to give them the space that I owe them and take my time and try to give all of my attention to them. And I physically cannot do that, but I'm trying my hardest in this sort of frantic fashion of making eye contact with everyone. And the pictures start to feel different. All of a sudden, they feel like a mirror, and I see parts of my own face there. I see my nose and my eyes, something about my bone structure and my hair there.

And it's overwhelming and it's terrifying. My mom would talk about feeling like she looked really Jewish in certain places when there weren't a lot of other Jewish people around. I never knew what that meant. And then all of a sudden it makes sense. It clicks. It clicks in a crushing way. And I was someone who was very familiar with the concept of loneliness. I felt really isolated at school, in middle school. And I was really...

When I would walk down a hallway, it felt like I was lonely to the point where it felt corrosive in my body. But this loneliness that I feel in this museum is not like anything I had experienced before. It's like the museum had singled out me and left me somewhere stranded and I was almost in free fall. And...

It was so much that when I eventually left the exhibit, all I wanted to do was find someone to talk about this with. And so I'm going up to people in my class and trying to relay the information that this museum is apparently about me, specifically. And my classmates don't really seem to get how shocking this feels.

I feel like I'm crushed and everyone just sort of takes it like a, "Mmm, yeah, Eddie." And my... This is the reaction I get from my non-Jewish classmates and also from my Jewish classmates. Someone just sort of gives me a "Yikes!" face, which doesn't help at all. And we eventually leave the museum and find our way to a playground, because that's kind of like where field trips always lead. And people are running around and playing tag, and I can't get myself to do that. I'm...

Sitting on this bench and this feeling that I've found in the museum is kind of like sticky and it feels like I can't leave the museum. And I'm sitting there with my friend talking to me about TV shows that I don't want to talk about, watching everybody else play tag. And I feel so angry that they're able to play tag and I can't because that was all I would have wanted to do in a normal school day. But I'm sitting there and...

With this feeling that I've found this whole new piece of who I am in that museum, and I have to hold on to it and somehow fit it into my perception of who I thought I was, which is so hard. It was like suddenly my whole face meant something different than what I thought it did. And how do you deal with that when you're 13 and all you do is think about the way your face looks in comparison to other people? And I've just sat with that piece for a really long time, and...

I just felt it grow into myself, or maybe I've grown into it. And I found other people to talk to this about. And with my half Jewish friends, we talk about how we exist in this sort of limbo space of maybe we're not necessarily practicing, but it's still very much in our lives. And everybody who I talk to has their own sort of definition of what it means to them. And somewhere along this journey, I realized that I really like

going to all the family gatherings and I get upset when I miss them. I was sick for Rosh Hashanah one year and I was just like, "How am I going to have a sweet new year?" I was like, I was distraught. There's a lot of comfort and connection in those gatherings. Sometimes it feels like Judaism is a part of my body in that very physical way that I got in that museum. And at the same time, I have recently, after taking a very long break from it, I've recently become a member of my Quaker meeting.

And I'm finding that Quakerism is its own piece that's separate from Judaism in my life. But they can go, they can both be there together and they can both exist and they don't negate each other. They're just both there. And I don't just have that afternoon in a playground to figure it out. I can sit with them for however long I need and I can ponder my spirituality, what being Quakish means, and the fact that I have a heritage. Thank you.

Originally from Brooklyn, New York, Eddie Laughter is attending Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts, where she is studying different forms of storytelling, wandering aimlessly, and over-analyzing monster movies. Our final storyteller is Michael Donovan, who told this at a story slam in New York City, where WNYC is a media partner of The Moth. Here's Michael, live from the Bell House in Brooklyn.

All right. I was a firefighter in New York City for... Thank you. And like many firefighters, most of us, we all had second jobs. And my second job was I was a carpenter. I worked as a carpenter. And a couple of the other guys in my firehouse, they were also carpenters, and so we would all get jobs, and if they needed help, they would call me. And my friend Kirk called me, and he goes, Mike, I got a great job for us. We're going to be doing hardwood floors...

on the Upper East Side of Manhattan in my friend Brent's building. Brent was a pharmacist. And, you know, when you think of a pharmacist, you think of a gray-haired with the glasses looking over the top of his glasses. Brent had a ponytail. He had tattoos. He had a wife, Shannon, who liked to go to the strip clubs and bring back another story for another night.

But anyway, Brent was a little different from your normal pharmacist. And he owned the building that his pharmacy was in. Pharmacy was on the first floor, apartments on the second floor, and Brent had the entire third floor. Small building, but he had the whole third floor.

And so we called Brent and we were discussing the job and he was explaining the apartment to us. The apartment was one big open area, kitchen in the back, dining room next to it, living room. And then in the front was his bedroom. And the bedroom had French doors, glass French doors. And that's where his bedroom was. And we discussed price and what we were going to do. And Brent said to us, he goes, there's one little problem.

And we said, well, what's the problem? He goes, I have a cat. I was like, I like cats. Kirk likes cats. It should be fine. No, you don't understand. I have a wild jungle cat as a pet. And we were like, you have a tiger in your apartment on the Upper East Side of Manhattan? He's no, no, no, no, not like a tiger. It's more like a cheetah or a jaguar.

And we were like, it's called a saval. And we had never heard of a saval. And he assured us, he goes, when my wife Shannon is home, the cat is like a domesticated kitty cat. But when she's not home, the shit's on. But you really don't need to worry because Brent likes to watch TV late.

and then he sleeps late, so you're probably not going to see him. And we'll keep him in the bedroom, which he called the cat's lair. And the cat's name was Slash. So he'd say, the cat will be in Slash, he'll be in his lair. And he'll pace back and forth. He doesn't get up until about 11 or 11.30, so you're probably not going to see him. So, all right, we're just there to do the floors. So the first day comes, the first day comes,

And we have to bring all our tools up to the third floor. So we block open the door to 2nd Avenue. It was right on 2nd Avenue, the apartment. We block open the door. We block open the door to the apartment, and we're carrying the tools up. We're bringing them in, and we start working. We're working on the floor, and sure enough, about 11 o'clock, Kirk gives me a little, Mike, Mike, look. Oh, one other thing I forgot to tell you is...

Brent warned us, he said, "Whatever you do with the cat," and the cat did look like a, it did look like a cheetah, you know, with the spots, but the head was small, it was called a saval. He goes, "The one thing you have to make sure you don't do, don't make eye contact with the cat."

So we're working on the floor, working on the floor, and Kirk gives me a little, he gives me a little elbow. He goes, "Mike, Mike, what's that?" And the two of us look up, and there behind the glass doors is the cat pacing back and forth. And we look, and the cat kind of looks at us, and we both divert our eyes. And we keep working. And after a while, it became routine. The cat would pace, we were working, we would look at him, we would divert our eyes.

So day one went by, day two went by, now the third day was going to be we were going to finish the job, get paid and go home. And we chalked the doors open at Second Avenue, we chalked the door open to the apartment, and we're bringing our tools up. And as we're walking through, Kirk says to me, he taps me again and he goes, Mike, what's that on the back window sill in the living room area? And I

Brenton, his wife Shannon, had great taste. They had these beautiful white, lacy, sheer curtains and brown stone windows with the low sills. And we could see a silhouette behind the curtains. And with the tools, we leaned forward. And just as we leaned forward far enough, a gentle breeze blew the curtains. And there was Slash. And we made eye contact with the Magnificent.

And the cat freaked out. Two leaps. And Kirk and I were pinned to the wall. The cat leaped halfway across the apartment, hit the couch and bounced. And now it was at the French doors trying to get into its lair. And it kept throwing itself into the glass and hissing and spitting at us. We're pinned to the wall. And...

Kirk leans over to me and we're thinking, "This is a $7,000 cat. It's gonna cut itself, it's gonna kill itself, or worse than that, the door to 2nd Avenue is open. This is gonna be a wild jungle cat running down 2nd Avenue. We're not gonna get paid." So Kirk leans over to me, Kirk leans over and he says, "Mike, one of us is gonna have to open that door and let the cat in its lair."

And being a fireman, you know, you have to keep your wits about you. You have to stay calm in situations. So I leaned over to Kirk and as calmly as I could I said, "Well, it ain't gonna be me!" And Kirk looked at me with disgust and he opened the door and the cat went in. We closed the door. We looked at each other and we were like, "We're out of here." We picked up the tools. We went down. We told Brent, "You're paying us for the day. The cat's in his room. Thank you very much."

And the moral of the story, we went to a bar, we drank for the rest of the day. The moral of the story is that a cat on the sill is worth a beer and a bar. Michael Donovan spent 25 years in the New York City Fire Department, finishing his career as a captain in special operations. He is currently retired and spends his time between South Carolina and Vermont.

Michael is still very good friends with Teddy and describes him as one of the toughest people he has ever known. But he has lost contact with Slash and its owners and has never had another close encounter with a jungle cat since. To see some photos of Michael, please visit themoth.org. And that's it for this week on the Moth Radio Hour. Thank you for joining us. ♪

This episode of the Moth Radio Hour was produced by me, Jay Allison, and Catherine Burns, along with Jody Powell, who also hosted and directed the stories in the show.

Co-producer, Vicki Merrick. Associate producer, Emily Couch. The rest of the Moss leadership team includes Sarah Haberman, Sarah Austin-Jeunesse, Jennifer Hickson, Meg Bowles, Kate Tellers, Jennifer Birmingham, Marina Cloutier, Suzanne Rust, Brandon Grant, Inga Glodowski, Sarah Jane Johnson, and Aldi Casa. Moss Stories are True is remembered and affirmed by the storytellers.

Our theme music is by The Drift. Other music in this hour from Blue Dot Sessions, Neil Mukherjee, Anat Cohen, Wolfpack, and Kanet Ghanayen.

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.