The Moth Podcast: Goodness, Gracious
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There's an African proverb that says that until the lion learns to write, the hunter will be glorified in every story.

And in that moment, I had become the lion that could write. Hear stories like that and more from your local community at the Moth Grand Slam in D.C. on Monday, November 18th at Lincoln Theatre. Ten champions from our story open mics will share hilarious and high-stakes stories. The crowd will decide who becomes the D.C. storytelling champion.

Buy tickets now at themoth.org forward slash DC. That's themoth.org forward slash DC. We hope to see you there. Welcome to the Moth Podcast. I'm Michelle Jalowski, your host for this episode. Lately, I've been thinking a lot about what we owe each other, what our responsibilities are as strangers, as friends, as family members, as fellow human beings, what the balance is between looking out for yourself and taking care of everyone else.

I like to think that it's everyone's responsibility to give kindness and care and that they're owed the same in return. On this episode, we'll have two stories, along with a pitch from our pitch line, about that very topic, giving and receiving kindness. First up is Matthew Dix, who told this at one of our open mic story slams in Boston. Here's Matthew live at the Muffin. I'm sitting in the break room of a McDonald's restaurant in Milford, Massachusetts. I'm eating an Egg McMuffin and I am not happy.

It is the spring of 1987. I'm 16 years old and it's not the Egg McMuffin that's causing me to be unhappy because an Egg McMuffin is the most guaranteed source of joy in my entire day. But not on this day.

I'm upset because I'm about to meet my mortal enemy for the first time, and I know it's not going to go well. I've been working at this restaurant for two months now. I actually live three towns away in Blackstone, Massachusetts, but I found out that this place pays $4.65 an hour, and that's 20 cents more than the White Hen Pantry five minutes from my house. And I figured even though it's a 30-minute drive, the 20 cents will absolutely make up for the time and the gas, which it does not.

But it changes my life in a really significant way because when I arrive here, I discover the joy of a clean slate. I'm growing up in a tiny town, 82 kids are in my class, so the same 82 kids I knew in kindergarten, and they remember everything.

And so when you want to be something different or you decide you could be something better, no one lets you because they remember everything. They still talk about the time in sixth grade when I exposed myself to class because my gym shorts were a little too short and my underwear was a little too big and it was a little too much manspreading. They talk about it to this day.

And they remember the braces and the buck teeth and the bad haircuts and the free and reduced lunches. And all of that has prevented me from becoming something that I think I could be and being trapped in what they think I should be.

But I've arrived in this new town. Nobody knows me. And on the first day of work, Erin Duran comes and asks me if I have a girlfriend. And the way she's hoping I say no. And that's never happened to me before. And it turns out that because they don't know me, I can be the thing I think I can be. And suddenly I have more friends than I've ever had in my life.

And I'm good at my job, shockingly good. In 1980s, the job at the McDonald's that is the hardest is running the bin. I have been a public school teacher for 24 years, and I can tell you that I have not had a day in my classroom as taxing as a day running the bin at McDonald's during rush hour in 1987. It is coordinating a kitchen full of 16-year-olds and 60-year-olds and convincing them all to do work for you at the same time.

And watching a drive-thru screen and listening to cash registers and figuring out how much food needs to be here at any moment without causing waste and making short profit. It's really hard. And for some reason, I can hold all this information right here and I'm good at it and people respect me for it. But as soon as I got good at it, all I heard was one word. Benji.

"You're great, but Benji's better. "Benji's the best bin person in this restaurant. "Actually, he's the best person in this restaurant. "He is fantastic and everyone loves him "and everyone respects him, and I hate Benji. "All they do is tell me how great he is, "and with every single word they say, I hate him more." And then I discover they're telling him about me. And they're saying how this guy came in and he might be better than you. They're spreading gossip about me to him, and so we have never met each other, but we hate each other.

And so this day we're coming together for the first time, our shifts are crossing and I'm gonna meet him. And so I go out into the dining room at the end of my break just to see him 'cause he's already working and I see him, there's nothing to this guy. Like he's not that good looking, he's not an athlete, he's got the body of a bass player in a failing high school rock band. He is nothing.

I watch and a couple minutes later, I realize I'm wrong because he's funny, effortlessly funny. And he's endearing to everyone. He makes the older customers who are waiting for Big Macs actually happy to be waiting for their Big Mac. And the managers love him. And he's good at the bin. Like he is really good at calling bin. I hate him so much.

And because he's doing my job, I have to run for drive-thru today, which is the second hardest job in the restaurant. 80% of the orders go through the window, so 80% of the food will pass through my hands. But that means I need to work with the bin guy the whole time to coordinate and negotiate and make sure everything runs, which means I have to work with Benji. And so for the first hour, we don't talk to each other unless it's about work. And we clearly hate each other. We're not hiding it in any way whatsoever. But unless it has to do with work, I don't say a word.

And then after an hour, it gets like awkward and I start to think maybe he thinks I'm afraid to say something to him. So I'm like, no, I'm going to do something here. And so I go up to him and I say, why are you coming in at 1030 on a Saturday? What's 1030? And he says, I watch Saturday morning cartoons, which in 1986 is a thing. All the new cartoons, the Smurfs and the Snorks and Super Friends are all out in the morning and we eat sugar disguised as cereal and we watch these things.

And he says, the gummy bears start at 9.30 and they end at 10 and then I come to work. And he says it without irony or embarrassment. I can't believe it. And so I walk over to the drive-thru, I drop a bag off and when I come back to the bin, I say, listen to me. Dashing and daring, courageous and caring, faithful and friendly with stories to share. And I take some food and I walk back to the drive-thru.

And as I come back over, he is singing before I get to the bin. He says, "All through the forest, they sing out in chorus, marching along as their songs fill the air. And standing next to the bin with Benji, we sing together. Gummy bears, bouncing here and there and everywhere. High adventure that's beyond compare. They are the gummy bears."

There's a second verse, a bridge, and another chorus. I will not share them with you, but we sing them that day because I watch the Gumby Bears too. And to this day, I can sing that song. And that's it. A single theme song to a cartoon melts all the ice between us. And 37 years later, he is still my best friend. It is the most significant relationship in my life, with the exception of my marriage.

When I get thrown out of my house when I'm 17, Benji takes me in and lets me live in his college apartment. And when I'm 21 and I need a credit card and can't get one, he gives me his extra card and says, just use it and pay me when you can. He saves my life again and again and again. And this day, we live in Connecticut, two miles from each other. And when I think back on that day that I stood at that bin and sang a cartoon song to him,

I'm reminded how little it takes to sort of reach out to someone and like just open the crack of a window. And you just get the window open and then it becomes a door and it becomes a lifetime. Thank you. That was Matthew Dix.

Matthew is an elementary school teacher and the author of the novels Memoirs of an Imaginary Friend, Something Missing, Unexpectedly Milo, and The Perfect Comeback of Caroline Jacobs. He is the founder and creative director of Speak Up, a Hartford-based storytelling organization. Matt loves ice cream cake, golf, tickling his children, staring at his wife, and not sleeping.

To see photos of Matthew with Benji, including one of Benji at Matt's wedding where he served as Matthew's best man, just visit our website at themoth.org/extras. There are so many ways to show up for others. Checking in on a family member, volunteering for a local community organization, even listening to someone's story. Personally, I'm a big fan of the check-in.

Whenever I'm going through hard times, a quick text or phone call from a friend always makes me feel cared for, so it's something I like to do in return. I want my friends to know that I'm thinking of them and that they mean something to me. You don't even need the right words. Sometimes a simple, "Hey, how are you today?" is just enough.

Up next, we've got a pitch from Heidi Munson. The Moth has a pitch line where anyone who wants to, anywhere in the world, can leave a two-minute story pitch via phone or our website. We listen to every single one and we often develop them for one of our stages. Heidi sent us one about a special way to show up for someone, even in a difficult place to do it. Here's Heidi.

I had just redeployed back from the northern border of Iraq to Germany, where a support mission was taking place. It was the spring of 2003. My job was to oversee and coordinate the return of soldiers' remains due to loss of life while deployed.

from arranging for their remains to be transported home to coordination for a chaplain to notify their family. It was a very grim job. My husband was deployed in Baghdad, as were eight of my close friends. Every morning, a list of names was placed on my desk in a secure folder. The list contained the names of the deceased from the past 12 hours. I would anxiously arrive daily and skin the list to assure none of those on the list were my friends, and specifically not my husband's name. My

My drive into the office was of mental and emotional preparation every morning. After I safely skimmed the list, I would begin my daily tasks.

One morning, I arrived about 15 minutes earlier than normal, and I saw my sergeant sitting at the desk. I looked at him and inquired of him what he was doing. He looked up at me with the sweetest eyes and said, Ma'am, every day since the start of our mission, I come to work a half an hour early to make sure that your husband's name is not on the list. I have been doing this since the first day we started this job.

He stood up from my desk humbly and respectfully, stood at attention, and stepped back to allow me to sit. I didn't. I instinctively hugged him. It was one of those long hugs where you feel emotion welling up. I stepped back a bit and was holding him by his upper arms and looked him straight in the eyes and mouthed, thank you. He and I both knew there were many more words I wanted to say to him, but I couldn't. I never walked into the office again fearful. I was blessed because not one time did a name appear on that list that I knew.

So I was lucky, but the dreaded list was there every day. So we put ourselves in the place of those who were losing someone and we continued respectfully to honor the fallen day after day. That was Heidi Munson. If you've got a story and would like to pitch us, you can call our pitch line at 1-877-799-MOTH or just leave a pitch on the website themoth.org. Be sure to take a look at the tips and tricks about how to make a great pitch.

Many of these pitches are developed for Moth Main Stages each year and we'd love to hear from you. Up next is a story from Lori Bushbaum, who told this at a Twin City Story Slam. Here's Lori, live at the Moth. It's Saturday, May 17th, 2014. And I'm up at the crack of dawn getting our family stuff ready for the annual garage sale. By 8:30 I'm standing out on the boulevard.

Clipping 50 hats to a clothesline strung between two trees. Now these were no ordinary hats. You couldn't get them at Macy's or even in Paris because my mom made them. Like this one. You can probably see it's purple. It's got purple and white flowers in the front and then tucked behind the flowers there's um, it's a bundle of sticks.

and on top of the sticks is a bird's nest, and in the nest is a bird, but it's a fake bird. No birds were harmed. My mom loved to make things. She and my dad started out by making kids. I'm the youngest of seven, and they weren't Catholic. But my mom's creative magic infused every day and every season of our lives. For example,

In the spring, she made two costumes each for me and my five sisters. That's 12 costumes. And at the end of the dance recital season, those costumes went into a magnificently large box that were our dress-up clothes. Now those boxes came back off the shelf two weeks before Halloween. Now we could be anything we wanted, from Cleopatra to a cowgirl, or the cow itself.

But my mom, she always had on her long black skirt, a black cape, a pointed hat, augmented with a long putty nose and a blacked out tooth. She reigned supreme as the neighborhood witch, handing out candy next to the bubbling cauldron of dry ice. When my mom's sister got cancer, my mom bought a few cheap hats at Target and decorated them so her sister would have something to wear on her newly bald head.

My mom had so much fun making those that she made a few for herself, and then a few turned into a few dozen. After my aunt died, my parents moved to Florida, and all the hats moved too, because my mother never left the house without one. Everywhere she went in town, someone would comment about her hats. She simply became known as the Hat Lady of Sun City. And over time, of course, her hats morphed. She went from silk ribbons and flowers to...

Oh, let's see. Birds nests, butterflies, clay mermaids, you know, sequins, glitter. They just got wilder and wilder. And then when my mom was diagnosed with Alzheimer's, we brought her back to Minnesota and we left 150 hats behind in the community room. When she died in December of 2012, the remaining 50 hats went into my basement. So it's

May 17th, 2014, and I'm standing in the driveway of the garage still thrilled as soccer cleats and skis and sweaters walk away with their new owners. And by two o'clock, as usual, everything's gone. Or almost everything. Which means I have to face the heartbreak that in fact there are still 50 hats on the clothesline. I mean, these were my mother's soul. What was I going to do with them? But a white car.

came up the street and it got to the trees and slammed on its brakes and a woman jumps out rushing towards me breathlessly, "Are these hats available?" "Yeah, they are." "How many are there?" I said, "Fifty." She goes, "Oh my God, I'll take them all. You see, my daughter is fighting cancer and she just lost all of her hair and last night we decided to have a crazy hat party and she tasked me with finding fifty hats." Remember, these are true stories. So,

We tenderly unclip each hat and nest it in garbage bags so as not to break mermaids or crush flowers. And then she says, how much do I owe you? And I answer the only thing I could possibly say, no charge. My mom, wherever she is, is happy beyond measure to give her hats to your daughter for her party. Thank you. That was Lori Bushbaum.

Lori is a retired minister living in Minneapolis, Minnesota, where she and her husband raised their two, now adult, kids. Her mother helped her learn to sew at a very young age, and she now spends much of her time making quilts and sewing for various charities and nonprofits. If you'd like to see a photo of one of the hats that Lori's mother knitted, go to our website, themoth.org slash extras.

That's it for this episode. From all of us here at The Moth, we hope that this week and in the future, you're there for other people and that other people are there for you. Michelle Jalowski is a producer and director at The Moth, where she helps people craft and shape their stories for stages all over the world.

This episode of the Moth Podcast was produced by Sarah Austin-Ginesse, Sarah Jane Johnson, and me, Mark Sollinger. The rest of the Moth's leadership team includes Sarah Haberman, Christina Norman, Jennifer Hickson, Meg Bowles, Kate Tellers, Marina Glucce, Suzanne Rust, Leigh-Anne Gulley, and Aldi Caza. 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 slash 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.

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