The Moth Radio Hour: Surviving Being Human
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Hey there. We here at The Moth have an exciting opportunity for high school sophomores, juniors, and seniors who love to tell stories. Join The Moth Story Lab this fall. Whether for an aspiring writer, a budding filmmaker, or simply someone who loves to spin a good yarn, this workshop is a chance to refine the craft of storytelling. From brainstorming to that final mic drop moment, we've got students covered.

Plus, they'll make new friends, build skills that shine in school and beyond, and have a blast along the way. These workshops are free and held in person in New York City or virtually anywhere in the U.S. Space is limited. Apply now through September 22nd at themoth.org slash students. That's themoth.org slash students. From PRX, this is the Moth Radio Hour. I'm Meg Bowles.

Over the years, some of the best stories we've heard here at The Moth have been the ones where people are willing to tell on themselves, to reveal the not-so-pretty sides of themselves. Sometimes the more interesting story is the one about the near-miss and the absolute and utter failure, because these imperfect moments are a constant in our lives, and surviving them is what makes us human, what builds character and humility and hopefully empathy.

Today we bring you stories that celebrate those very things. The embarrassment, the rejection, the wrong turn, and sometimes the sheer fragility of a human soul. Our first story comes from Cynthia Shelby Lane. She told it at one of our monthly Story Slam events in Detroit, Michigan, where we partner with local public radio station WDET. Here's Cynthia Shelby Lane, live at the Moth.

So I decided to apply for a job and it wasn't just any job but the deadline for the application was December 31st at midnight. So I went home and I thought about it and with all the self-doubt I just put it off and two or three months went by and then I decided on December 31st to fill out the application.

I finished it around 11.30 p.m., and I looked up, and I had one half hour to get it to the post office. So that's when I got in my car, drove all the way downtown Detroit to the U.S. Post Office on 4th Street. You may know that place. It used to stay open 24 hours. I got in a line. I'm looking at my watch. I'm like, oh, my God, I'm never going to make it. I'm never going to make it. And then I get to the front of the line. The postal clerk stamps it, 11.59, December 31st.

And then I realized what I'd done. I had applied to NASA to be a United States astronaut. And then I went back to my car and self-doubt started creeping in again. What did I do? What have I done? A U.S. astronaut? That's the good old white boys club. Jet pilots. There are no black female astronauts at all. You be the first. And number two, there's only a handful of women.

Okay, so forget it. You know what? I'm just gonna go back to work. I'm a doctor anyway. I'll just be a doctor. So I went home and I went back to work and I kept working and then, you know, the anxiety crept in. I kept getting hot and sweaty and like, are they gonna call? Are they not gonna call? And then I just forgot about it. And then my staff said, Dr. Lane, NASA's on the line. I'm like, really? Really?

So I said, "Hello." He said, "Yes, Dr. Lane, congratulations. You've been selected to be a candidate for the U.S. space program, a mission specialist. You're going to come down to NASA, Johnson Space Center. We'll arrange your trip. It'll be a week-long interview." Ah, okay! Then I thought again, self-doubt, you know what, I can't go. I'm working that week. I can't get off.

Then I called my boss and he said, "Okay, fast forward. I arrive at Houston Intercontinental Airport. I get to rent a car, get to Johnson Space Center, get into one of those little bunks." You know, it's kind of a government-issue bunk at Johnson Space Center. "It was hot and sweaty on a Sunday afternoon in Houston, Texas.

I'm ready to settle in to get ready for this week long interview. They call me up. There's a little piece of paper on the bed actually. They said, "No, you're going to come to a debriefing right now." That's what they call it, debriefing. I get to the debriefing and there's other US astronauts and there are other candidates, my 20 competitors. Now it's me against me and me against them. They give us homework.

Yeah, homework. I've already filled out the application, took time off from work. Here it is. You have one night to go back and rest, and in the morning we want to know a fifth grade essay, Why You Want to Be an Astronaut.

Okay, fine. I don't sleep all night. I get up the next morning. I get there. They give me an orange jug for a 24-hour urine, and I give them that paperwork, okay? Then they take you into a room with psychiatrists, six-hour psychiatric evaluation. They're grilling your brain. Are you a team player? Do you like to work in an environment that's more serious or more humorous? What do you think your chances are of being an astronaut, Dr. Lane? 100%, 99%? I don't know, 90%? What? I don't know. Self-doubt.

So then they send you off for a colonoscopy. They look a hot butt thing up your butt. They dilate your pupils, and you walk around in the hot sun. Then they put you in this ball. They put you in a ball because what's the ball for? You zip yourself in. You're in there about 30 minutes with yourself just twiddling around. You zip the inside. They zip the outside. You're a victim now. And they want to see if, in fact, the space shuttle blows up and you're ejected into the Indian Ocean, you can survive.

Well, I survived the heat for 30 minutes. I'm like, no, no big deal. So then the next day, we go to the space shuttle simulator. Ha, who's there? CBS News, Walter Cronkite. I'm on national news. My heaters don't work, so I have a ponytail. My father says, I saw you on the news. You look stupid. You have a ponytail. You're not my daughter. And...

And then the final test, the treadmill test, they hook you up because you've got to have the right stuff to be an astronaut in America. They hook you up. The EKG things are all on you. The oxygen is in your mouth. And they take it. They say, we're going to put it inclined. We're going to make it go faster. Inclined, it'll go faster. When you think you're 60 seconds out, just give us a thumbs up, Dr. Lane, because we're going to take you down. So we're going faster, and we're going up. And I said, I've been practicing at home. I know I can run this. Oh, shit. Okay. All right. All right. Okay.

Okay, my heart rate, I can see it. It's 220. My blood pressure's up to 100. Hey, the over 100. Oh, no. Thumbs up. 60 seconds. No, no, no. I can't stay on here another 10 seconds. All of a sudden, they take it down. They take it down. 12 men come and take me off the treadmill test for a U.S. astronaut.

The next day, it's the last supper. That's when we meet the head of NASA. If you get a call from the head of NASA, you made it. If you didn't make the cut, it's somebody else. I go back home. I'm sitting there another two months. The FBI, CIS come around. They've tried to figure out who I really am. Then I get that call from NASA. Dr. Lane? I said, is this the man? This is the head? I don't remember his voice. Who is this? This is NASA. I'm sorry, doctor. You didn't make the cut. I said, oh...

But I can tell you this, never sabotage yourself, never have self-doubt, be 100% clear, because I was willing to go and sit on 750,000 tons of TNT and blast my ass off into outer space. Cynthia Shelby Lane is a doctor, humanitarian, speaker, and comedian. As a physician, she's committed to a healthier world. She believes that laughter is good medicine.

You can see pictures and find out more about Dr. Shelby Lane by visiting our website, themoth.org. Our next storyteller, Lim Sise, is a celebrated and beloved poet and novelist and chancellor of the University of Manchester in England. He was born to an Ethiopian mother in Wigan, a town in Greater Manchester. Lim's mother went to study in Great Britain, and after finding herself pregnant, she was placed in a mother and baby unit.

At two months of age, Lim was placed into the care of social services. His mother was asked to sign papers allowing Lim to be placed for adoption, but she refused, hoping she would be reunited with her son when she was better able to manage. Instead, after spending 18 years in the care of social services, Lim was finally released without a penny to his name and no record of his personal history, except for a birth certificate and a letter from his mother. ♪

Lim shared his story at an evening we produced at the Union Chapel in London. Here's Lim Cisse live at the Moth. The first thing that I was given when I left the organization, the social services, was my birth certificate in 1984. Up until then, for the first 17 years of my life, I thought that my name was Norman. The...

The birth certificate had my name and my mother's name, Lem Cissé. I was given a letter from my mother pleading for me back, dated 1968. She came to England to study and she was advised, because she was pregnant, that she should see a social worker and she wanted me fostered for a short period of time. The social worker had no intention of giving me

back to her. It was his evaluation and the organization believed in evaluations.

I grew up in foster care for my first ten years and after that I moved into a series of children's homes in my mid to late teens. There was a file that was being written about me that lasted from 1967 to 1985 and I wanted to see those files

I wanted to see the proof of my existence. I wanted to see me. All family is, is a group of people proving that each other exists over a lifetime.

All family is is a group of disputed memories between one group of people over a lifetime. Births, deaths, marriages, you congregate around these moments. You fall out with each other, you fall in, you separate, you come back together.

I was 17 and a half years of age without any proof of the existence of me except for what was in these files. And I was leaving the organization that had kept me for 17 years. And all I wanted was proof that I existed.

So I was out of the organisation and I went to the Citizens Advice Bureau because there was no internet and I needed to know what my rights were to be able to see the files that had been written about me in my childhood. And I typed, I found out, and I typed the letters on a black

Olivetti typewriter and it took me about two years to work through the system and finally I received a message I received a message from the organisation asking me to come in and see them at the regional office

And I walked from the village that I was in, through the town, past the homes that I'd been contained in as a child, past the people who'd written the reports about me. About once every three months in my life, somebody wrote a report about my development. It was like being a rat in an experiment. And I...

arrived at the regional office and I walked in and I spoke to a receptionist and she asked me to sit on a chair outside of an office and it was summer. I watched there as spools of spools poured through the air and the door opened and the spools, they turned like grey horse's head and nodded me in and I walked into his office and

I can't remember most of the people who had taken me through the corridors of childhood but I remembered his name because I only knew any of them for six months or a year. It was a Mr Sumner and I sat down and he had the files on the table and he said, "We can't show you the files."

But you can ask me a question about them and I will go through them and I will tell you what has been said. And I, in my mind, a whole room filled with a wild wind and hundreds of panicking, squawking seagulls beating their wings and I pushed my hands inside my head and the seagulls settled and I said to him, I said, my mother, my mother,

And he said, your mother. And he peeled open the paper and he was very clear to me that he was editing the sifting and as he was looking through those papers that everything that was the memory of me was being siphoned and filtered through him as a representation of a hierarchy that was built to look after me.

I wanted to push his head inside those files and say to him, you, you, you. And then the strangest thing happened. He stood up and he said, I need to go into the office next door and to speak to somebody about something. I may be a while. And he walked out. And there I was with my files alone in the room. I just wanted to...

pick them up and race through the front door of the office and throw them into the main street and watch the cars swill the air and push them up into the clouds so that they could be what I knew that they were and I could stop people in the street and say, See! It was the final trap of the organisation to get me to do something wrong at their dishonest behest. So I sat there

for a long, long time until Mr Sumner returned and sat back in his seat in the chair. "Are we done?" he said. But I wasn't done. 25 years later, 25 years later, only a couple of months ago, I received my files from the social services.

They came in four black folders, A, B, C, and D. Each of them has hundreds of plastic sheets, and in those plastic sheets there are A4 pieces of paper which are slipped into each one of them. Each one, a photocopied representation of each file that's

that's the memory of the first 18 years of my freaking life. And they were redacted. There were pages missing. There were names taken away. There were whole parts of my life that I could not see. The last thing...

In those files was a letter written on a black Olivetti typewriter. It was a letter from me requesting them to see my files 25 years later. And there was another letter from my mother dated 1968 pleading for me back to a social worker to whom she had me fostered to for a short period of time. The social worker, his name was Norman.

He'd named me after himself. You've been a blessing. Thanks very much. That was Lim Cisse. Lim says that for months after receiving his files, he found them very painful to look at, let alone read. So he decided to take them to a place where he felt the safest, to the stage. He produced a one-off production called The Report, where he could read the files aloud and discuss his reactions.

And even though the material is obviously deeply personal, he finds it easier to do this in a theater setting. He told a reporter for The Guardian that, Some critics have called it theater as therapy, theater as protest, and even theater as survival.

Coming up, a story of one woman's desperate attempt to hide her past 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 Meg Bowles. Our next story comes from Natasha Gwines. I just want to give a little word of caution that Natasha's story deals with some adult situations and may not be appropriate for all listeners.

She shared her story at a main stage event we produced in Baltimore, Maryland. The theme of the night was Eye of the Storm. Here's Natasha Gwines live at the mall. My dad and his wife would lock us out of the house for hours. And while they were inside getting high, my sister and I used to run around the yard and I would tell my friends that when I grew up, I was going to move to the East Coast, go to Harvard, and be President of the United States.

I find this childhood ambition kind of cute and funny now, given that no one in my family had yet graduated from college. And the most I knew of politics at the time was David Duke, being from Louisiana and all. But this dream would become my escape plan. So shortly after my 20th birthday, I packed everything I could into a single suitcase and I maxed out my one credit card on a one-way plane ticket to Washington, D.C.,

In my mind, I had this all figured out. I was going to move to D.C., go to college, and work for NOW, the National Organization for Women. But as soon as I stepped foot off that plane, my reality became very different. I realized I was naive and completely unprepared because I hadn't found a place to live, and I hadn't gotten into any colleges because I hadn't applied. And I didn't have a job at NOW or anywhere else. I just had this dream.

I managed to find a place to live in a group house on the outskirts of Capitol Hill, not a particularly safe place for a young woman at the time. I worked 10 jobs, so I was always dead broke and I struggled to pay my rent. One night I was over at my neighbor Alice's complaining to her about my life and how much it sucked and how I had no money and how I couldn't pay my bills. Now in hindsight, Alice was not the best person to be giving me advice. She drank Bloody Marys for breakfast and she cried throughout her day.

But I remember what she said to me, and that was, she said, if I were young and cute like you, I would be an escort. She made it sound easy, like I'd go to some nice places, make some fast cash, how hard could it be? And the next thing I remember, Alice and I were sitting on the floor of her bedroom flipping through the escort ads in the back of the phone book. I dialed Pamela Martin and Associates, and a woman named Julia answered. But I know now, Julia was Debra Jean Palfrey, and Debra Jean Palfrey was at her call at the D.C. Madam's.

She explained her rules. I had to be 24, with some college experience, and go on a test run with one of her regulars. But before getting started, she required a photograph and a picture ID. It was about this time I explained to her that I was only 20 years old, but she said I sounded mature enough. So I sent her my photograph and an ID. She mailed me an entire book of guidelines. She stressed the importance of good hygiene and always having shaved legs, always dressing professionally, and always using a fake name. I picked Lily.

And for five months, I worked as an escort for the D.C. madam. It was only five months, but this time my life felt like an eternity. Some nights, I'd be lying next to my third John of the evening. My skin would crawl. My heart would ache. I'd end each night by numbing myself with whiskey and drugs. And over time, I began to feel broken, like I couldn't be touched, I couldn't be looked at, and I definitely couldn't show up for work.

And I remember I called Julia to tell her I was quitting, and I remember as I stood in the middle of my studio apartment staring at the dresser shoved into my closet as I told her I have to quit, I just do. Oh, I could tell she was super annoyed with me by the tone in her voice as she reminded me that the couple hundred dollars I had rolled up in my sock drawer wasn't going to last me long. And as I stood there staring at the dresser shoved into the closet, I kept thinking, how does she know? Because of course she was right. I quit working for Julia, but I kept drinking.

Then one night after a lot of vodka, whiskey, and pills, I landed in D.C. General Hospital for seven days with an IV in my arm. After this, I realized if I didn't change my life, I was going to be dead by the time I was 22. And I attended my first child step recovery meeting. These meetings weren't easy for me. I remember I'd go in my pajamas, but I'd keep going. I got my first sober job as a checker at Safeway.

And slowly, with the help of a lot of people who were once in my position, I managed to graduate college and then go on to serve in AmeriCorps. But I don't want to suggest that for even a moment that this was a clean upward trajectory. One time, my money was tight and bills were piling up again. I thought about going back to the D.C. Madam for fast cash. I'd even called and set up another appointment. But in the end, I decided that I didn't have the option of going backward. I had to continue moving forward.

In early 2008, a year after I'm finally done with college and I'm finished serving in AmeriCorps, a friend of mine recommended me to a director on Capitol Hill by the name of David. David was looking to hire someone to answer phones in the office of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. And I remember sitting in Senator Reid's front office in my black suit and pearls, desperately trying not to fidget. I was so nervous, and I knew landing this role would literally be a dream come true.

A few minutes later, I'm sitting across from David and he's doing the normal interview and I guess I did a good job because in the end he offered me a position: staff assistant. The salary was $28,000 and I took it. I literally lit up like a light bulb inside. I could barely contain my energy. I knew what this meant. This meant my life was on track. This meant I was progressing and most importantly, this meant no one knew anything about my past. One day I was working in the read office and I don't know what possessed me to do it but I decided I would Google myself.

And I was shocked. It was a few years earlier that the D.C. madam had been arrested, and her phone records were now all online. And there I was, on the second page of results. My first name, last name, and old phone number. That was it. Quite simple and lacking details. My heart dropped into my stomach, and I ran up to the eighth floor of the Hart Senate building, and I started pacing back and forth, calling anyone who I thought could help me cover this up. And while I was pacing, I kept thinking, how can something I did for five months when I was 20 years old still be haunting me?

And more importantly, was it going to be there for the rest of my life? I became pretty consumed with this list. I started Googling myself quite frequently, though I wouldn't click the link because I didn't want to move up in the Google search. Every time I was called into a meeting, I expected the other shoe to drop. It'd be so easy for the other shoe to drop. It'd be so easy for someone to call me out on this. And I'd spent the last six years of my life working my way up from staff assistant to director of operations and...

friend calls and said he just finished having lunch with an old colleague who is asking about a phone list I try to play dumb and I quickly got off that call and I caught the old colleague and I was pissed I was like how dare you be talking about this you have no idea how do you know it's not it's not a misprint the wrong number anything you're spreading rumors and as I accused him of this I asked him have you shared about this list with anyone else specifically David

David, who I didn't work for anymore, but I still respected very much. And he said, "Yes." I hung up that phone, I sprinted across three Senate buildings to the Hart Building until I got to David's office and I shut the door and I said, "I hear you know about the list." He said, "What list?" I said, "You know, the list." But the look on his face said, "Don't ask, don't tell." And feeling relieved that I wasn't going to have to give an explanation, I said, "Okay, never mind." I started to leave.

But as I started to make my exit, David asked, well, since you brought it up, how did your name end up on that list? I started to cry as I told him a cleaned up version of the truth. I basically lied. It's all I had to offer at the time. Not long after that conversation with David, I left the hill. I felt like a failure, like my dreams were falling apart, like I couldn't hang.

A couple years later, a couple jobs later, I landed a law firm as a chief of staff, and I feel like, again, my life is progressing. Everything's on track. I'm making good money. What more could I want? And I had this nagging feeling that I wanted to be doing something more. And I got this idea. Maybe I could stop running and stop hiding and start using my experiences to help other women.

But first, I knew I needed buy-in. So I started going back to the same colleagues I'd spent so many years trying to hide my secret from to tell them about my story and my idea to form an organization that supports vulnerable young women. I remember sitting at the Firehook Bakery on Connecticut Avenue talking to a former Reed colleague and friend, Rodell, about my idea to form this organization and about my story. And the look on his face said he had no idea this was my past.

And as I connected the dots between my story and the organization, he offered and vowed to help me do anything he could to help me make it a success, but cautioned me that once this secret was out, there's no way I could put it back in. And though I wasn't 100% confident in my decision yet, I said, "I know." Because I kept thinking it was more important for me to start sharing about these experiences to help other women, prevent them from going down the same path, than to keep them inside.

Since that conversation with Rodel and in the last 15 months, her resiliency center has opened its doors and has served more than 70 young women, each with individual circumstances to help them get on the path to a thriving future. Roll call, roll call. A Capitol Hill newspaper recently did a front page feature about me. I would have gone with a different title than sex worker to Hill staffer, but it worked.

It got people all over DC to read about my story and the work we do at my organization. I worked in a place where I felt like the only way I could look successful is to look as if my life were perfect. And each day I'd show up in my best suit and smile and I would pretend. I know now that I spent way too much time running from my past, hoping that no one would find the truth and use it against me.

It was a lot of work and a heavy burden to carry those secrets all these years, and it's been much more empowering to be able to own them. Thank you. Natasha Gwines is the founder and president of the Her Resiliency Center, an organization in Washington, D.C. that supports vulnerable young women. In the first year alone, they've served over 120 women, giving them one-on-one support.

I asked Natasha if there was anything else she wanted me to mention and she wrote, "One person told me that my life could be different and then helped me find what that looked like. And that one person helped change the trajectory of my life." By the way, Natasha came to us through our pitch line. You can do the same thing. If you go to our website, themoth.org, and look for "Tell a Story," it'll give you all the info for how to call us or even record a two-minute pitch of your story right there on the website.

We have a team of people, including me, and we listen to every story that comes in, and we'd love to hear yours. Hi, my name's Gary Weinstein. I live in Greenwich, Connecticut. My wife and I have three daughters. Our middle daughter, Kate, has Asperger's syndrome. She has difficulty with social interactions and impulsivity, and I have been determined to get her a driver's license, a

big challenge for some of the problems that she has uh... we gave her a lot of teaching many many extra hours and signed her up for her road test before the road test i said to her kate it is imperative that you act normal the instructor is going to see you for a very short amount of time i don't want them to prejudge you and she said to me dad stop yelling at me look at the dog cowering in the side of the room i can take it but the dog can't

appointed day came and we waited for her to be called they called her name she jumped up from receipt and immediately laid down on the floor i said quick get up the instructors coming over what are you doing she said all my back hurts of the doctor said to lie down when my back hurts i said get up now you got act normal

she leaves twenty minutes comes back with a big smile on her face i asked what happened she said wait me instructor will tell you instructor said kate did great she passed so i grabbed her in the middle of the motor vehicle bureau and i held her in a waltz like position and i danced up and down the whole length of the motor vehicle bureau with tears in my eyes saying

Kate, you did it, you did it. The whole time she looked at me and said, Dad, Dad, not normal, not normal. Dancing in the middle of a motor vehicle, not normal, must stop. Remember, if you have a story you'd like to share, you can pitch us at themoth.org. Coming up, a story of trying to overcome embarrassment by doing the unthinkable. 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.

This is the Moth Radio Hour from PRX. I'm Meg Bowles. Our next storyteller, Matt Brown, is a musician, writer, surfer, and a single father. But before all that, he tried his hand at something a little different. He told his story at the Portland Grand Slam, which is locally supported by Oregon Public Broadcasting. Here's Matt Brown live at the Moth. Growing up, I had a really hard time with embarrassment.

I'd get embarrassed really easy, and if I felt uncomfortable in a situation, fear would take over and turn it into this really acute chagrin. If a teacher called on me in class or if I was talking to a pretty girl. If I was in public with my mom, I mean, forget about it. It was just like, pfft. My face would just go crazy bright red and my ears would get all hot crimson and I would sweat. It was the worst kind of like hot Mr. Potato Head feeling.

I'm sure you've seen it before, you know, and it's just like I could be having a normal conversation with someone and then boom, red, sweat. And it would make the other person feel super uncomfortable, you know, and they'd look at you like, ooh, damn, what just happened, you know? And when I got to college, it actually got worse, you know, I was way out of my comfort zone and the problem actually ramped up a little bit and I started having like panicky, attacky kind of feelings. So I wanted to meet people, I wanted to have a normal life, I wanted to meet girls, I wanted to...

live out loud. I had this thing I felt like I needed to play in a band and the idea of being on stage with this red face the whole time was not punk rock, you know. So it was just like, I figured I needed to do something about it. So I put my young mind to the task of trying to solve this problem and the bright idea I came up with was that I should get a job. Some kind of challenging, mind-bending, part-time job.

You know, it was going to be the thing. It was going to take me completely out of my element, and it was going to take fear past its pole and extrapolate this negativity towards confidence and happiness, and it was a tall order. And nonetheless, I got up every morning and over coffee, I'd flip through the paper and look through the want ads, and it was full of the same old stuff, you know, office jobs and restaurants and hotels and construction and

Nothing sounded scary enough, but towards the end of the last week, the first week of looking, I found it. And it was right there on the page and all of its awful, disgusting glory. It made me cringe. And I looked at it and my fear compass, it hit an all-time high. And all it took was a few words in bold black print, clowns needed. No experience necessary. So...

I run to the phone before I can change my mind and I'm like, "Hi, this is Matt Brown. I'm calling about the job." And I hear this nice lady on the phone say, "Someone's called about the job." She comes back, you know, and she says, "We accept. If you can come in today, then we could train you and we have a few jobs for you this weekend." So it's Thursday. So I beat it down to the office and I spend the rest of the day at Party Animals headquarters

Learning about clowning and makeup and balloon animals and magic and juggling. A couple things I had to learn on my own, like how to not get punched in your clown nuts all day by a bunch of 11-year-olds. But the standard gig was like a 45-minute birthday party for a kid, and you would go, you know, and I accepted two of these for the following weekend. And I went home with this sack of clothes and toys and games, and what I hadn't anticipated was the reaction of my roommates and...

They thought I'd done some dumb shit before, but this one, I guess, kind of went over the line, and they were convinced that I was just an idiot. I did my best to ignore them, and Saturday rolled around. It was the first gig, and I got up bright and early, and I was in the bathroom, and I was putting on my makeup, and I was realizing that this is much harder than I thought it was going to be. I don't have a steady hand or much of an attention for detail, and my first try, I get death metal clown, and I...

I erase that and I go second try and I get murder clown. And third try softens up enough for my standards and I'm cool with it and I'm looking in the mirror and I'm saying to myself, what the hell are you doing? You don't even like clowns. And then my roommates wake up and it's on. They're laughing and it's, oh, I'm a freaking clown and oh, here we go.

So I get the hell out of there. I grab my gear. I go out to my car. I start up my car. And that's when the fear sets in of how scary this is really going to be. And I crank up the radio just to drown out my thoughts. And I'm like, I'll rock out. I'll drive for a little while. I'll just, I'll head towards this party and I'll decide how I feel about this. And I'm driving along and I'm doing that thing where I'm like, man, you don't have to do anything you don't want to do. You know, like you can quit this right now.

And I get to this stoplight about a mile from my house, and this heavy blanket of dark fear just drops down around my whole body, and I'm frozen, and I'm like, I can't do this. There's no way. This is over. I'm not going to get out of my problem this way. I don't get to win this time. I'm going to have to quit. So I turn the music down. I'm sitting there looking all melancholy Gene Simmons, and...

I hear this racket and this noise and it's screaming and I'm looking on both sides of me. There are these giant family cars and they're full of kids and the kids are hanging out the windows and they've got their arms out and they're yelling, clown, clown, hello, clown. And I roll down my front windows, man, and I just, I reach out as far as I can in both directions at these kids and I'm like, I can do this. I can do this.

Matt Brown never clowned again. The closest he's come is dressing up as Santa Claus for a friend's family Christmas party. He said putting himself in that situation as a young dude, his words, was like standing on a ledge of individuality and fear. He appreciated how much freedom clowning afforded him. It forced him to conquer his shyness. And he added, there is no way to be cool when you're dressing up as a clown.

I first met our next storyteller after he called the moth pitch line and left a two-minute pitch. Actually, I think it was less than two minutes, but when I heard it, I was instantly moved by his candor and his honesty. We worked together on his story, and he told it live on stage in his hometown of New Bedford, Massachusetts, where we're supported by local public radio station WCAI. Here's Daniel Turpin, live at the Zyterian Theater. So it was Friday, and I'd just come home from the hospital with my mother,

She'd had spinal fusion surgery. It's the kind where they weld some of your vertebra together. You see, my mother, she worked so hard she actually wore herself out. She's an amazing woman. She grew up between British boarding schools and these remote islands in the Pacific Ocean. And she sailed around the world with her father when she was 21.

And for the last 30 years, she's successfully built this small company that's provided for the two of us. So when we found out she was going to have the surgery, I was happy that I could help. I'd be able to schedule the employees. I'd be able to handle the payroll and the cash and deal with the clients. And so on that day, we got her home. We got her in bed, got her comfortable.

And she had fallen asleep. And I was, of course, late to the office. I was rushing around the house, trying to get ready. And I happened to look outside and I noticed that there was someone coming to the house. And I had this thought, I just, I desperately didn't want them to knock because my mother had just fallen asleep and she really needed her rest.

So I race down the hallway and of course it's the loudest knock I've ever heard in my life. Someone wailing away at the door. And as I reach for it, it opens, which is strange. And I see this arm slide through the doorway and it's holding a handgun. And my first reaction is to try to slam the door closed, but I slip on the linoleum floor. And he puts the gun to my head and he says, stay down.

Don't move. And I freeze. The gun immobilizes me. I can't keep thoughts in my head. And then he says, "Where's the money?" Where's the money? He knows who we are. It's Friday. It's payday. And things are moving so fast. I tell him the money is on the table. And I think to myself that if he gets what he wants, then maybe he'll just leave. And so he grabs me by the back of the shirt. He pulls me over to the table.

And I can see his arm reach past me and take the money. And now I'm thinking, he'll leave. But instead, he tells me to get on my knees. And I feel that hard, rounded edge pressed up to the back of my head. And it dawns on me that I've made a mistake. I'm going to die. He doesn't want to witness. And so far, I've done nothing. I've done nothing to save my life. And as this thought is running through my head, a familiar voice interrupts.

And I hear my mother say, "Excuse me?" And she's come around the corner and she's crashed into this guy. He has his back towards her so she can't see that he has a gun. And he turns and throws her into the wall and I'm horrified. I'm thinking about her surgery. And as I go over to her, he runs out the door.

And as I'm helping her up, I'm then realizing that I'm restraining her from running after him. And I say, "Mom, he has a gun and you just had surgery. You need to stay here." I grab the phone and I dial 911. And I go to the doorway and I have this surreal moment where I'm watching this man run across my yard. This man that threatened my life and hurt my mother. And I think I can catch him. I'm faster than he is. But I know he has a gun.

So I tell the police, I describe what he looks like, what he's wearing, and describe the car he gets into hidden behind the trees. But as I watch him drive away, I make another decision. I go after him. And I jump in my truck and I tear out of my driveway and I'm still talking to the police. But then the phone goes dead because it's the landline. So I'm going 100 miles an hour down Route 88, passing cars, and I realize I'm alone. I don't have a phone. I don't have a weapon.

I just have my anger. It turns out I meet the police first. And they explained to me that when I called, it was during a shift change. So instead of four cruisers on the road, there were eight. And they already had them in custody. I'd find out later that there were two other people in the car that used to work for my mother years ago. I'd also find out that my mother would have to have another surgery. But she'd be okay. But later that night, after I'd had dinner, fed the cats, brushed my teeth, and got in bed...

I stared at the ceiling and I'd go back to that moment, that moment when he told me to get on my knees and feeling that gun press up against your head, that gun just loaded with a lethal possibility. And the sorrow that I felt, the shame of my inaction, it's a guilt that doesn't go away. I couldn't understand how I gave up on my life so effortlessly.

You have to understand that I have a very fortunate life. I've traveled around the world. I've swum with sharks. I've jumped out of airplanes. I have parents and a family that love and care for me. I have friends that I'd call my brothers and sisters and a wife. I have a beautiful wife who makes every day better. In a laugh, I would move mountains to hear her.

But there I was, kneeling on the floor. I wasn't pleading. I wasn't struggling. I was waiting. Waiting for this stranger to kill me. People try to make you feel better. They say everything happens for a reason. And I understand the sentiment, I do. But I don't agree with it. When they say that, it sounds like there's some arcane justification for senselessness. That there's some cosmic fatalism at play. What I believe is that everything happens.

And we, it's our job as humans to give reason to it. We give meaning to the inscrutable. So as I think back on that day, I know that my mother, she's fine. She's still the caring, compassionate, wonderful woman that she's always been. Me, I'm a little more suspicious, maybe a little more guarded. Because moments like that, they shape you, they change you. You never forget them. And that's the terrible beauty of the past.

You remember the good and the bad. Thank you. That was Daniel Turpin. Daniel told us his mother is doing well these days and working harder than ever. He looks forward to covering her at work in the not-so-distant future so she can take a month off and relax. Daniel recently wrote in an email to me that one of the things he appreciates about The Moth is the opportunity to simply sit and listen.

He said, it's so rare these days. I know personally that I am too often trying to formulate my response to what's being communicated to me rather than really listening to what's being said. You can visit our website to see pictures and learn more about all the storytellers you've heard in this hour. And while you're there, you can find out more about our live events. That's on our website, themoth.org. That's it for this episode. We hope you'll join us again next time for the Moth Radio Hour.

Your host this hour was Meg Bowles. Meg also directed the stories in the show. The rest of the Maltz directorial staff includes Catherine Burns, Sarah Haberman, Sarah Austin-Janess, and Jennifer Hickson. Production support from Timothy Liu Lee. Maltz stories are true, as remembered and affirmed by the storytellers. Our theme music is by The Drift. Other music in this hour from Bill Frizzell, Chili Gonzalez, and Lullatone.

The Moth Radio Hour is produced by me, Jay Allison, with Vicki Merrick at Atlantic Public Media in Woods Hole, Massachusetts. And special thanks to WCAI, also in Woods Hole. 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.