552: Need To Know Basis
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Josh likes to go bird watching at this park in chicago right by the lake. And generally he's the onest person there, like by far he in his point.

usually its older couples. The one of the first times that I went there, I spent the majority the morning with couple old ladies trying to find the a warbler.

That afternoon he walked around with two old men. And when josh melt down to get a Better look at the bird, one of the men remarked, I remember when I could do that, you know, new down so that you're seen, there's your people.

absolutely. So IT was a refreshing change.

One day I fall when just got to the park, and a college kid came up to him like eighteen, nineteen years old, and they start talking about birds just had seen that day.

And he starts saying things that he seen, which we're really impressive. Basically, this whole list was new to me at that park at least. He seen in northern strike earlier some long experts that were flying over snow buntings, which I had seen ever actually.

And this kid is also super knowledgeable, not on a show off your weight. He just knew tons about birds, so it's fun to talk to him. And they decided to walk around the park together, and they hit down this path into the trees. So it's like dense with trees around them on both sides. And the path itself is really narrow, just like two with feet wide.

A certain point he he spots a sparrell and we get our bacheller on IT and he says that a fox sparrow and I I said, I don't know that the fox sparrell looks the toleration looks like, right? It's really deep read, but IT looks a little too small for me, looks more like A A song spon size and he said, I think I have those.

I think I have those.

that I think I have those and then .

the he sets down his backpack on the ground, and he opens a front lab, and john assumes is going to take us some photos or something to compare to this bird. But the kid was out two little weight bags or meet their envelope .

pes reges inside them, and just delicately shuffles out two birds on the ground .

and turn off .

at a sung spirit. In a fast spirit.

we will wait. He, he hoenir two bags, and there are two of the exact birds you're talking about in the two bags.

That's correct.

Like just just dead birds.

dead birds, just the dead birds that we were talking about.

The kid apologizes for the smell, says he found the dead on the ground the day before. They weren't taxed by to anything, and they were starting to and have to paying them on the ground. The college looks at the sizes of the two birds and says, jush, oh, you're right, like fox, sparrow is bigger than songs sparrow.

And then he carefully puts the two birds back into their weed envelope and into the absence. And josh acts like, this is the most Normal thing in the world, when, in fact, he told me, this is totally weird. This is not something birders ever do.

He has found out since this is actually illegal, to have any migratory birds dead or alive. And then they spent four or five hours together that day. And charge says nothing about IT. As nothing never brings IT up.

I couldn't envision a scenario which saying something would lead to A A good conclusion. Princess.

maybe the cable would think that was intrusive or rude from desk, or maybe the kid was doing something shady.

might have been not the best thing to ask. Isolated behind this hedge, you know.

right? You're like alone in some thicket.

yes.

Did you the thing like anything could happen? Like do you feel like if you address the wrong question, he would return to the bag and pull out like a human ear?

And that was what prevent me from asking. Yeah.

I did talk to the college student. He told me at the time he didn't know that keeping birds was illegal. But now that he does, he's gotten rid of all of his dead birds and he has me not to use his name here on the radio, he says, and all, he picked up maybe fifteen and twenty birds at somebody.

He realized, you just find them near certain buildings with big windows. They would find the windows and die. And he didn't see the harm. They had no idea that josh still wonders about this today. And you should have ask me more about if, well, he was a little scared to ask .

you about IT.

He was scared what the answer might be. Yeah, I guess I really freak them out. Yeah, I guess that is trying growth to be Carrying that birds around your matter.

Any ideas like, what would you gonna do with them? What would you said? Nothing really just .

can keep me around.

See that creepy. Interesting to have them to look at closely so you can see think he wouldn't see on bird sitter out in a while.

So i'll pretty innocent, but josh didn't know that. Like josh still thinks they did the right thing not to bring .

IT up .

with them like .

if if I would say he had his entire back for of birds and his car full of birds and I started asking questions, and he knew what he was doing was illegal. Then probably wouldn't have been the best idea for you to do that.

You may think got a gun in that.

Pg, too, I don't know.

And then the next person he sees on the trail, he reaches into the bag and he pulls out like your head, my this what? Happens to people I ask.

And maybe sometimes too many questions as one.

you know.

Maybe be easy, chicago, to this american life, amErica glass, a little information can change everything, makes something that seems totally medicine, totally benie. And the problem is IT is not always clear when to disclose that information. If I could, might not even occur. R to you to disclose IT. If you're on the other side, you might not feel like if you're right to ask like judge with this kid, he felt he didn't Normal enough to pride where we have stories where people's lives change in amazing dramatic ways because they decided to disclose or not to disclose certain facts about themselves. Stay with us.

One for the scores. You know most of us, we basically just keep stuff to ourselves, right? We will hold information.

We do not say everything you went to tell in acquaintance on the street and they ask you, how are you? You generally do not tell them how you are. Really, I don't live means we provide information on a need to know basis.

Your mom, you know, I ask you on the phone about something you think that the two of you are just going to fight about. Sometimes you did, right? You do not talk about things that you don't want to talk about. But what would I be like to not live like that? Well.

Michael levin knows I just have a very unusual family. They are. They valued honesty to an extreme extent, microsys authorities.

And he was raised my parents, who encourage timeous siblings to tell everything the whole truth all the time, believing that a hurts relationships when we avoid awkward truths, that we all just just man up and talk things through, we should work things out. And being honest also means being true to who you are, right, which obviously anybody wants with their kids.

But hearing how far his family went with this and make you really understand how incredibly strange your daily life would be if you were to never withhold the truth. Like for a long time, Michael believed that have somebody asked him a question, I mean, like any question at all, he had to answer IT. Honestly, this is funny.

because in job interviews, people would asked me what my biggest floor was, and I would go into a long rant about all my flaws and all the negative things anyone's ever said about me. And, you know, people would look at me. I got used to the expression of of horr. And sometimes IT was kind of comic. People would laugh like, wow, you thought you had to actually answer that.

That's amazing. That's really amazing. Yeah, you are the only person in the history of job interviews to have ever done that.

Not the only person that's true.

His brother judged is the same thing. More on that later. Let's stay with Michael now.

okay. One time I went on a date when I was in college and I went on the state, I spent the whole day explaining why he should want to be with me, what was great about me, and also why other people didn't want to be with me, and saying all the bad things that ever happened me, why I was rejected by the world. No, that was just being honest. I was just telling her all the information necessary in my mind to decide whether to be with me. I thought I was my responsibility as a person on a date to explain everything they were dealing with from the first moments of the date so that they could make an informed decision about how to move forward.

That's what I love about story, is that you thought you were doing a good job and I thought you were acing the date or yes. For a long time, if mico decisions, you don't want hang out with somebody anymore, you don't come out and to say, IT, let's not be friends when he would go in here, musician bodies of his perform, they would ask him afterwards, you know how you like the show? He would do the thing that nobody ever does.

He would actually tell them, you know, rangements get Better. You should not play with this band. The first number should be in double time. If somebody told Michael about A T, V show that they like, really, if they expressed any opinion out on any subject, like they told him they love chocolate, he could not help himself from affery his own opinion forrests fully, he hates jacket.

and they would see IT as, why would this person say this thing? Why would this person trash something I love? So immediately they must just be doing that as an active aggression. But really was more gut instinct from my childhood that conversation was expressing whatever was going on and the .

radio express your honest feelings about chocolate. Now it's my turn to express my honest feelings about chocolate. Yeah, but would you do things like you would perceive an a conversation with somebody just met? Are this person's kind of boy and then when you say, like, you know, I think you're very busy a .

lot of the time things like that would happen yeah, a lot of time I would feel like I was my job to observe things and to tell people how they were and go like so it's funny you know you do this thing and I wouldn't notice that he was trigger ing to people to say something like that to go, oh, you notice you're very controlling.

Did you notice that? Like, why are you like that? And I would ask these questions that would lead in horrible directions all the time.

See, I think all of us have met people who who will say, well, I just tell IT how IT is and people don't like to hear the truth and and I think most of us just feel like, well, that person is just an asshole or just has something wrong with them that they don't give a them about other people's feelings. And what you're saying is somehow you you aren't this as a kind of like strategy for dealing with the world from the star?

Yeah and to me, that was kind of like an exciting conversational thing to do to be like let's talk about ourselves like everyone's having these small talk conversations. They're so pointless and boring, really. We should get to the real stuff immediately. This is so interesting. I'm learning about you and it'll be much .

more real and interesting. You way is so idealistic. Think about for a second and all the people pleasers will say anything in the conversation just to kind of get by know all the folks who spend years in therapy getting the courage to tell people what they really think it's being for myself.

I feel like I don't even know what I think of the time or or what I believe and have lots of conversations where I know what I believe. And I don't say that because I don't want to have conflict, I want to avoid conflict. And I think that lots of us like that, not Michael.

His parent taught him be stronger than that. You know, I don't know what Michael talk to you about is Michael's dad, mark. Everybody says that he was brutally honest when his kids were growing up.

He made his living in the music business and all of his life. He has also worked to probably enough as a professional critic. Michael mom is a therapist to will tell you straight out.

I just can't lie.

But Michael dad told me he was back on his kid's childhoods with a lot of regret for just how harshly he would tell everybody the truth all the time, as he saw, and especially for how Frankie worse about things with his own kids from my point of view, some of my part was not very age appropriate let's say um we kind of revealed to the children information about our marriage that most parents I don't think would reveal and yeah and more less left the .

kids to deal with.

IT Michael head told me about this. There were a few stories of parental over sharing. But the one I think captured just how disturbingly far this could go sometimes happened while his parents were splitting up, his parents divorce when he and his siblings were teenagers.

And every year back then, family would go to a place I was really surprised to hear exist at all family. There will be camp. Recent selling sessions were done in public throughout the day in front of other people.

And so they're at this camp and their parents having troubles and in front of other families and therapies and also in front of their own children. It's thirteen, sixteen and nineteen. Michael parents hashed out the issues.

So for instance, I remember one therapy session that my mother did. There was all about how he felt being married to my debt you about feeling invisible about these kind like talking about very intense personal, like her despair and her, the things that SHE dealt with in that marriage um and also I got to see the man my mother was leaving my father for they would all be there and talk about their feelings towards each other, talk about what had happened, talk about the grievances they had with each other fights. They would yellow each other and accuse each other of things, and you know, kind of air dirt about what the other had done. And IT was all in front of us.

But did the parents understand like though that was a problem?

I don't think so. I think that they at the time, we're very much like we are speaking our truth. The kids should know what happened, and these are our feelings, and they can just imagine IT, but would be Better if they actually knew what was going on and they knew how we felt.

Just to be clear, at the time Michael agreed with this, I was like.

all this is great. This is how I should be. This is the honest way to do with that.

Everyone else, we just hide their divorce is the cowards. You, they they would deal with the revere in private, you know. And IT would be very safe for everyone. But IT was actually a lie. You know, the kids wouldn't really know what was going on with their parents.

So you have actually superior to others.

That was a big part of that. I think that that you know other people are cowards and they're very weak and they can handle the truth and they're afraid to express who they really are. They're inauthentic, out of fear. And we are actually bravely being authentic, expressing how we really feel and not hiding things.

So the three children grow up like this, and they head out into the world as adults. And they had to confront the fact that these are not the rules, that the rest of us are lying under. And the dad says he knows that he trained them to give in a world that does not exist, a world where people are way more friend with each other.

And we really are. Look, how do you create the world that should exist, except by acting as if acting the the way you want to, to make the world through your own actions. Three siblings are now in their twenties and thirties. Being on us, this mean different things to each of them for microsystem um it's been the easiest, SHE said. SHE knows that he is not somebody that anybody would ever tell a secret too, and their time SHE can't help .

herself self from saying the truth. Sometimes, like in work meetings, i'll disagree with something. And then I think, like, why did I say that?

But it's manageable. He says, no bad consequences. Michael ther jasa is also still a believer, which is remarkable considering the one big life changing way that this level of hyste is affected him. He trained for seven years to work in an enforcement to be one of those experts who analyzes crime scenes and figures out what kind of gun was used in the bullet. Ject tories, all that stuff. He is a mater degree in forensic politics CS, but isn't have a job doing this because when he asked about his drug use and job interviews, he always admits that in one thousand nine ninety seven was fourteen years old. He tried mushrooms one time.

People always just asked me, well, did, why did you tell them about that? Is there a record of IT? And now there's not a record of anything.

But I feel like I passed, tell the truth, I just never thought about lying, even I didn't even consider IT. And I think like everybody is saying that IT is okay, the line and circumstances because everybody else does. I kind of look at IT like in sports, it's kind of thinking you exactly to take steroids. Um they have to do IT because everybody takes their rides in order to compete and I kind of want to succeed without taking stair rides, even in the world takes their rides.

so make sense.

Michael, meanwhile, seems to have had a much harder time, the either of his siblings when IT comes to host y by the time he was in his late twenty years. Michael noticed that acting exactly the way that he thought a principled person should be acting. He was constantly getting in all these awful clashes with people like all the time.

And you you didn't like that. And the part of his life where was especially vexing was dating over and over. He would meet somebody you really liked, ground date. And then they are never want to see him again, and he had no idea what he did.

Well, that's the hard thing about dating. It's hard to learn when you're dating because people don't tell you what you did wrong, that you don't know why you were rejected. You have to figure out yourself so and that's why a lot of dating is is a very hard thing to improve upon like it's pretty hard to improve your dating because like you know, this is the thing is famous if you're bad kiser does anyone say, by the way, you're bad kisser here's how to kissed Better.

They just never kissed you again.

not their responsibility.

They never kissed you again.

right? And you don't know why you were rejected IT could have been anything. You just have to have your parents ied fantasy of all the millions of things that you think you did wrong. But I could have been anything dating chaos in that week.

even when he had dates for a while, seemed to be going okay. He would boord out something honest at a habit and run a.

if anything beautiful or cool happens, I would stop everything. And o wasn't an amazing moments. Let's just stop and like talk about how amazing that was. That barely ever happens. And all of the time, the moment be ruined by my commenting .

on IT talking about.

uh, well, okay, for insinuation time, I was walking with this woman and I was having a state that was going well, and SHE put a cigarette, her mouth, to smoke, and I grabbed the cigarette out of her mouth and kiss her. And IT was great. And then he stepped away, and we finish this kiss, and I said, wow, that was like, that's not something I usually do.

That was really amazing. I was actually very inspired there. Usually i'm just so awkward. And actually that was much, and I just ruined the whole thing. There was no reason for me to comment on how cool.

like, I think, the key where there was usually, I think usually kind of kill that moment. 哦。

yeah, well, that's actually another thing here. I was my tendency to talk about my general dating experience and to talk about those things as IT. Because, just because they were on my mind when I was on a date, I was naturally thinking about other dates and other things that have happened. So I would say, oh yeah, ec, i've done a couple other amazing things on dates like that. I would just start saying these things that I would bw in everything .

I feel like when you tell some of these stories, you like somebody from another planet or something who got dropped into our world.

that what I felt like I was in the wrong world. And I I had a meeting. I didn't understand the concept to polite this when I read, I actually at one point around the same time, I read like a polite tss book.

I actually read an adequate book, be trying to figure out and IT was just one advice to IT was like, just every time I was just lie, lie, lie IT was just, oh, here's a situation, you don't know someone's name, lie. Here's a situation someone's gone through something horrible, just lie. Here's another IT was just right.

IT didn't say on the page lie no.

I didn't say the lie, but every piece of advice looked like .

that's what I came down to and IT was.

IT was all about other .

people's feelings, and somebody that occurred to Michael that honesty was coming in the way of noticing other people's feelings and maybe needed to change that. And a finally, twenty nine, that's five years ago, he decided had enough, and he started experimenting on his dates. But how we acted, and these were not complicated experiments by any means. If we have something honestly would occur to him, they wanted to say, I would not say that .

I saw a very visual way how I could change my behavior and IT would go over Better. And I could actually have a great time if I just shut up about certain things. I actually made a list of things not to talk about.

You made a list of things .

not to your writing, list of things to talk.

Do you still have .

that was I actually do I add to IT sometimes still because because it's hard for me to remember, I have to concentrate very hard to not follow my good instinct to tell the whole truth about things on that list.

You don't have to give an opinion. You don't have to say things out loud just because the true is not helpful. You can choose not to answer a question, don't really explain, make a quick say, you tell them later in the conversation first, don't try to impress.

Well, one actually really good one was to stop explicitly describing myself in any way, positive or negative, that I didn't have to say, oh, i'm this kind of person. I do this.

Why would that come up at all on a conversation like I would be like i'm the sort of person who like, why would you be saying that?

Because I believe that's what conversation was and they couldn't see those things. I didn't understand that they could see those things in your behavior, that they would read behind what you said and learn things. You have to say IT explicitly, otherwise you are misleading them.

Okay, next one.

at one point, I resolved that if I didn't recognize someone or I didn't remember their name to just pretend I did, you know, which was something I used to always go, or I don't recognize you, or I we've met before I don't remember, or I don't remember your name, I realized that I could pretend to know someone's name while I figured out what her name was. And that .

changed so much one year. He's news resolutions tied out, or quote, tell no one about my problems. Listen to how others feel instead of telling them how I feel, pretend more.

And people please remember to make others feel like I find them smart and cool. Act like I agree on the same page, quote my list of things that I am not allowed to talk about. I ideological commentary, unnecessary, brutal truths, triggering questions and unwanted and grease, avoid asking people what they mean when they use certain words or this this one.

Okay, so I wrote, you take nothing at face of value. Don't investigate things people say, remember, their minds are chaos.

What do you mean?

I know it's a strange, strange thing to say. What what I meant was that people are, I was of the mindset that other people were saying what they meant. And I would sometimes get into ideological battles with people who hadn't even really been thinking very hard about what they'd said, because I would say, what do you really mean that?

I mean, what do what do you mean you say that? And I would investigate IT further. And IT would become this attack when really, they didn't mean and like this.

they didn't mean anything.

but they were the same things. They thought we're socially acceptable kind of conversations that I would agree with them, but then I would evolve into this horrible discussion. And a lot of time I would get kind of angry and sometimes they would say, you know, it's like I don't really mean anything by IT like they would start to backtrack because they hadn't ever mentioned in the first place I was.

remember, their minds are chaos.

You meaning that there's lots of stuff going on that leads to why people say what they say and that I can't know what those things are, that their minds are chaos of feelings, that they are human beings.

Was kind of inspiring. Talking to Michael is that although he seemed like somebody who dropped into our world without a clue about how the rest of us behave, he then, you know, made a study of why I was fAiling. And he came to conclusions on his own, and he made up this to do this.

And then, like a scientist in a scientific film, who brings up a miracle, likes, are in the lab, and then decides that he should be the one to try. At first, Michael has put his theories into action and it's working. He said, girlfriends, last november, he married one of those girlfriends.

And so these days, when he's being like super honest in some inappropriate situation, his wife to him without that was an interesting way to handle that or wow, we're doing that now. He says he still has a way to go with all the stuff. But what he's concluded after this live long experiment at onest y is that honesty is not enough. You have to read people for science that they do not need or do not want to hear the entire truth. In fact, the whole idea of a world where everybody is honest all the time.

IT was almost the world where people didn't have feelings. The idea that someone would be upset, they weren't supposed to get upset. They were supposed to just hear what I said and go, oh, you know, wow, okay, that's cool. You were honest. I value that.

The real world, Michael says people of all kinds of feelings swing around in their heads and insecurities and struggles. What they say may or may not be what they believe. He says, that's great. It's Normal chaos.

Grown up lying your way through college. That's a minute from chicago o public radio when our program continues. IT is american guy from our our glass each week in our program, of course, we use a theme, bring you different stories on that theme.

Today's program need to know basis the stories of people with holding information in a way that has life changing consequences. We have arrived at two of our program, that two total equips of the sun, that son S O N stay with me, that's gona make sense later. So the united states surprisingly high college dropout rate, particularly at community colleges, were only a third of all first time students have their two year degree by the end of three years.

Community colleges, by the way, are a huge number of students. Almost half of all american cow students are in community college. We did a bunch of stories about college dropouts on our show a most recently a couple weeks ago.

Apparently, the first year is the key. Make a break time, whether not something going to drop out. So he chased, spent last fall on the campus of a community college in the south brogs hostiles community college, reporting on what kids need to not drop out.

I was looking for that one student in the one in three, the kid who succeeds. As soon as I saw the material at the freshman orientation, I thought all there is the success front row, always raising his hand, volunteering for the skids. And when I talk to him, he assured me I had found the right person.

If there is a valid Victorian spot available, that is what I am trying to get, that your yeah and if someone somehow beats me out and becomes valid Victory, then I should at least be so the tory. If someone somehow pulls that off heads off to them, truly, they're moving on to do great things.

I thought if I spent time with him, I could see what he's doing, right? He looks like the one in three because demetri us has two things that are really hard to come by, extremely high expectations for himself and complete confidence that he will meet or surpass those expectations .

through my whole life. I try as something not only do I get IT, I usually like sweet, but like i'm play guy, i'm vastly superior to most if I try and something like, I feel like I kind of been a great restyle, then I been one of best restful ers anybody e's ever see.

Doesn't matter what IT is, demetris is always about to be a star from the back. Demetris is a grown man, tall and bright shoulder in a leather coat from the front. He's still a teenager, round freaky baby face, eighteen years old.

His plan is to get his associates transfer to a four year school major in video game design and then become one of the best video game designers the world has ever seen. Demetris tells me he has not always done the work to match his high expectations in high school. He says he did not always do his work, but this year he's serious.

I haven't lent like more than three hours past yet me getting an assignment and finishing IT. If it's possible for me to to finish finish the assignment with then the three hours of me receiving that assignment, then i'm going to finish IT like I simply can't allow myself to get behind. I've got to be active.

I got to make sure I get this done and should be told i'd fully expect that i'm going to have one of the highest G, P. S. In the school.

So I started following the mattress around talking with him and went to his classes. The computer lab met his girlfriend. He's in love one day. After months of this, at the end of the semester, we went to a meeting at the school with someone .

called a success coach class godless of your G.

P. A. Every incoming freshman at hostel is assigned a success coach, someone to keep them on target. It's different from an adviser in that the success coach is more of a full time catcher in the ride. Someone who tracks their progress through the school year and if they're falling behind to figure out why and try to fix IT, someone helps them pick their classes each semester so they graduate on time, which is why we are here right now.

here to see if my advisor cannot read into an own english class. Because guy, all is all semester. So straight .

is all semester as promised. So we sit down with ray cartage ana to meet usus coach. He's in navy reserves, huge arms tatoes. He makes the materials look little.

Are you doing in straight? Is what do I need to fulfill my requirements? They lean over the computer together and look at his schedule.

No.

doing work doesn't work to thirty.

Then something happens. I totally didn't expect in the middle of registering demetrius for his college courses. We call his dad. Hello, sir.

How how are you? My name is right out and the meters.

the success coach, and we're trying to build the schedule for him now. Well, we wanted to reach out to you and and get your approval on IT.

So the midi ous, his dad seems to take an unusual amount of interest in the muncie of his son's schedule. No, three classes on one day, one class on another day, because then you have too much time on your own. I have a history with him in too much time on your hands, he says, can lead to issues.

This is weird. Demetrius is facing his classes. His professors really like him.

He spends a lot of time in the computer, and he wants to join student government. Why is his dad all over him? He's in college. If they can't find a Better schedule for him, his dad promises dismissed around, I will find a way to occupy his time.

Which occur his time.

Demetra seems a little embarrass when we walk out. His bravado has kind of drained away. So I ask about his dad, what's the deal? We sit on a park bench to meet. Drew stares straight head.

He doesn't trust me. So my dad is just stuck in all, but he missed up once. He messed up once, was one time in the history once, then he messed up.

Therefore, he will mess up every tell their time. He attempt something for the rest of his life. Because what he mess that once, once, and that was big, was very big and very bad spectacularly.

This up, this was is really bad. What I did. And then it's good.

It's particularly good. What i'm doing now, like, is really good. What i'm doing.

the story about the once is about to spill out. And this story IT tells you a lot about why the graduation rate at community colleges is one in three, how even someone as confident as the materials could become a drop out instead of the one who makes IT the once is theatrical. It's in a elaborate mistake.

And it's not a story about this year. It's a story about last year, because when I met to me trees, I did not know. This is actually his second freshman year, his second time around as a freshman in college, the first time you went to college.

IT wasn't the south bronx. In fact, IT couldn't feel more different at finger leaks, community college woods, wineries, Blakes. Five hours north of new york city, his mom dropped him off.

me off and and went back to new york and seen the room. I was like, i'm alone. Like, this is IT.

I'm, i'm here now. Now I was summer. But at the same time he was exciting.

Like, I am alone and I was like, i'm alone. My room may heading guy there yet I was like this, it's pretty awesome. Like, I stepped outside as if to test IT. Like, open the door, looked around and others, lake, I can just go.

just go anywhere.

Like this is, this is good. Then school started and I was like, okay, you know, schools, the main focus on make sure I do IT and at first IT was, but then started going to parties when I should be studying or do one homework started hanging in out they, you know, the xbox warned in P. S. four. Came out you during that stretch.

Demetrius also noticed its way easier to get girlfriends in college than in high school. But the big difference between college and high school, nobody is there to make you go to class. Nobody y's collecting your homework. Nobody y's making sure you're keeping up with the reading.

You know, on occasion I would just cut class and that go.

he says nobody seemed to notice. He got letters from the school. He ignored them. His grades were dropping and then lead into the semester.

A relative died that he was close to and he had to go back to the city for the funeral. He came back to campus, but never went back to class. He felt terrible, totally depressed.

Would be where I would just be in my room, like i've just sit there and cry. And at the same time, I made me feel worse because I knew I was fAiling. I knew I, I, I screwed up in my first semester.

The meter is, let everything slide. The chess I was getting from the government to cover his housing. He spent those. He only paid the rent once.

He says he was confused about when he was supposed to pay what by the end of the semester, there was nothing left. He owe a couple thousand dollars. He says, family for Christmas break. He could have confessed everything. He could have gotten help, but he didn't do any of that.

I obviously I lied and said I did well in school and never brought up the debt.

And after Christmas vacation, that's when he got into some real magical thinking. He kicked up his deception to a whole new level. He was like the circumstances of my life on and needs to know basis, and nobody needs to know.

He thought he could turn things around all by himself and secretly handle this entire episode. Here was his plan, get a full time job at the taco bell, earn enough money to pay back the money he owed for his housing. Never tell anyone what happened and quietly reinstall .

next semester. Honey, I never registered for classes, basically started living on the run, was hiding out. In my room, in my best friend's room, immediately next door.

I felt like, you know, this is my mistake. IT was my problem. I messed up, so I need to handle IT my own.

So, thousands of dollars in debt. College drop out, three hundred miles away from his family. This was demetrice as life. He copied a friends transcript into microsoft word, changed the name to his and texted IT to his dad. Like, see how great i'm doing in school. Three months passed like this, and in mind have continued for longer, except then that April, deep into the metrics, would be second r. His dad decided to surprise him at .

school and talk to, and he said to me, well, dad, you know, the weekend would be Better, not as busy with school, work and work, so the weekend would be great with anything I said. Sure.

please meet the man from the speaker phone, the father of demetrius Wilson, demetrius Wilson senior. He is a big guy, the sAnitation ation worker for new york city. He is incredibly friendly, loves to talk.

So back in April, the meter is the dad shows up at the school with his Younger son, alisa IT was alysia spring break. Their plan was to have a little vacation driver around the wineries. After saying hi to demetrius junior.

i'm in room two, twenty two, twenty two, some. So I see the two girls on his daughter. He said he, he's live in a life.

This is a good dude. I was so proud of these two. Pretty gross.

I want to say, didn't I go off to the room? The girl is take off, and I do with him. I go to the room and hi. I see the video game on a big Green to me.

to you, stuck to the policy, admit nothing.

I mean, I was, I was still acting like everything's great, like I had great to see you.

And he says all I would be in class, except that was cancelled.

His dad looks at him. No class today. Yesterday, you just found out on a short notice, right? Will let that right.

What are you thinking there?

Are you thinking anything right? We got a thing called jokes. When someone running jokes, you could see .

running jokes. It's sang like running a kind game.

And people do all time like they say you you like they don't match up with what they just say. So you just keep in parking into another thing come up.

So now they're watching each other saying nothing, waiting IT out next day the meter is is dead, makes a move. Hey, I want to go to one of your classes. Let's go to one of your classes together.

They walk around, around. We get to another part of the campus. He goes into an empty trailer.

I won IT. Now, yes, now we no one's in the class. Class is cut off, lights off.

Now they like this, sydney. Large is still not knows a way, everybody. So he says, just one minute, what's out the door?

We take me to the office, take me to the office. I was close. Then this should be a short trip. Take me to the office was close to be a short trip, right?

And he has stand IT like, i'm so .

nervous like this. You in this, do my name is the js walking? Where is he supposed to be? His name is the matter will son.

The reception looks up to metro, his name on the computer.

and goes quiet. He is, looks, boy, don't know what to say. Sir, he's not registered this year to me.

Jis marches his son out to the car, shut them inside and takes a walk. And his thoughts are going one hundred miles an hour. He kind of wants to nack his sun out and drive away. But of course, that now we is going .

to do this work.

I work in the world.

I like .

how man you .

felt them. You should have been them and all you can hurt them now. No, you do.

Do you heard them? I don't heard them. If you hurt of men and what you prove, my.

We can be up. Can you go back to school? Is this me walking on the campus?

This is what he was thinking about. First of all, demetrius, his dad wasn't around for lots of little demetrius his childhood, the parents broke up and he'd see little demetrius maybe every few weeks or so, sometimes less. so.

When his son slacked off in high school, he blamed himself partly for not being there. Now, is son slacking off in college? What do you expect? Also to meter is his dad has a college degree, but his first time around he dropped out when he tried state college in north a Virginia. He says he had this problem when he was Young, where he would come right up to the edge of being successful and then pull back he knows I was kid must be feeling right now how hard you can be to push yourself through your doubts. I mean.

for me, IT definitely really was like, I couldn't done a lot more if I was pushed. I think what happens with a lot of people that whatever, whatever makes them go over that age, it's more than just a in intelligence, is something else. IT could very well be to follow somebody, follow a family member. They did IT i'm to do IT to think that government could be that no one else there's done this. Who am I to think that I could do .

IT so demitra senior comes up with a plan for sun demitra. Nothing's gonna happen in his life that I don't know about. I need to know everything. He decides to bring little demeter ious back to new york city in rolling in college in the bronx, ten minutes away from his dad apartment. Again, the me juice is dad works for new york sAnitation, and his garage is directly across the street from where demetris goes to school.

I'm on IT in the school, on IT at his job and on IT at home. There's no, you make the decision. No, I make the decision and we discuss IT, but you don't make a decision to come back to me who you make the decision. You have anything been you have that much experience.

The material is on his dad couch every night at school, across the street from him, every day on weekends at a job that is, dad proves of working as a cash year. At the of shorts in midtown. They check in every day, a few times a day.

The difference between the metres of myself, quite honestly, is that I didn't have me. The moment you say you can't do IT or add, I have to do IT. There should be something to push and sometimes IT has to be external.

I don't think I had IT externally, and I think internally I knew I could, but I don't not, don't turn in this way. I know back. He got to go A. P for what some reason or another once just that he's going had to work really hot at IT and he can do IT in my house.

There is a popular idea right now among people studying why kids drop at a college. There's this whole set of skills that students lack, non academic skills, like organizing their time, knowing who to ask for what, and that lacking those skills is one of the biggest reasons kids fail.

And that something schools are trying to address so they can keep their students the way that loads of school see IT is that they have to develop their own demetrius is dead. They call IT an intrusive advisor or an enhanced adviser to me, do this new school host. They are trying this thing.

That's what their success coach program is when navy reserve guy ray calls to mejias his dad on the phone to figure out his one class on one day issue that's intrusive advising, which in this case doesn't look so different from parenting. Of course, parents in in can be a thinkless job and seems to be when IT comes to demetrius, he doesn't credit his turnaround from drap out to straight student to his dad, holding him accountable. Demetrius mostly gives the credit to himself, to a change in his own frame of mind.

I I learn from my mistakes. I got rid of my mental, whatever is that caused me to make them in the first place.

His dad doesn't care that the me thinks he did IT on his own. In fact, he's happy about that. He prefers that he wants him to feel empowered, and that over thinking, he wants his son to move on.

And that spent time reflecting on why he got stuck a year ago that could stagnate his son, whose only focus supposed to be doing well in school. I want him to just keep flying. He told me the other day, not so close to the sun that he melts his wings, but just keep moving forward. Don't pull back. Stay in motion.

Chase is one of the production of our show after the favorite. So we closed our show today with this example of information provided on a need to know basis. One of our producers, stephane food.

when I was in the seventh grade, I gotta assignment to write a one page, I say, about my favourite place in the world. I wrote ten pages, single space, about malaya. I moved amErica from malaysia when I was three years old, but the rest of my family still lives there.

We went back a lot when I was little at all, and so I remember crawling under firms and hybiscus in the yard, catching mouse the size of my head, playing hide and seek during monsoon storms. But in that essay, I didn't write about the mean reason why I loved malaysia. I loved malaysia most because malaysia loved.

I was the favorite child, and not even the extra serving of cake, kind of favorite, the kind of favorite where everyone would trade up, say, at family gatherings. Stephen is the best. My answer will tell their children, why can you be more like her? Then did by me all the toys I wanted.

And the person leading this campaign was the metric of our family, my dad's ant. We all call her anti. Every time I walked into a room, anti would reach for me cool.

how? Why she's a well behaved shit. So nice. SHE saved me. All the best pieces of the chicken taught me.

Maria asked only me to sit on her lap on the big pupa son as he taught me songs in chinese. The other adults fell in line to say something nice about my eyes, my dimples. I remember I had this cousin who wanted to be an artist when he grew up.

SHE filled up an entire bookshelf with her sketches. I showed up and sour doodling, and everyone flocked around me, telling me I head natural talent. My cousin stormed off and didn't talk to me for days.

I was proud to be auntie's favourite because even though he was under five feet tall with coke bottle glasses, SHE was also a total batch anti group, destitute with three sisters and a single mother in japanese occupied malaysia, the girl shaved their heads to avoid being harassed by the japanese soldiers. And they opened a gambling then where they hustled patrons out of money and 走 的。 O, B M.

SHE had an impatient opinion about everything when he hated something, SHE screwed up her face and disgust and would actually bang her fist on the table. The clearing 切 don't like nicky in nh。 Why SHE got black, White people here when she's a black woman? Not that one I had ever met.

A black woman shouldn't like travelling, shouldn't like cheese. Her decisiveness sometimes didn't quite mix. Like one time when I offered her an apple, SHE shook her head and said, apple is just like what day though, and i'd rather have what day though.

The things he loved seemed just as impatient and just as arbitrarily the lottery was. He went over forty times in her life. This one did the girl on the korean silpa ers and me.

I once ask my mom where I got the special treatment I did. He said I was simple. I was the favorite because my dad was the eldest son in the family and I was his first borne child.

This sounded enough like something out of an amy tian novel for me to believe IT. I left IT at that, but things i'll started to change when I was thirteen. Everyone in the family heard about that one day in August, when my mom told my dad and me that he was leaving us.

They heard about the lawyers, the money, the house, and they heard about what a brat I was after which I was. I argued with my teachers, flunk out of a lot of classes. When my dad started dating, he wasn't around much, then even come home lots of nights.

And I started fighting with him all the time. I said his copy of parenting, you out of control, teenager on fire and almost burn the apartment down in the process. Two years after my mother left, my dad moved out completely, went to his girlfriend's place.

I found a roast chicken on the kitchen counter once a week, but basically he left me in the house on my own. I was sixteen and furious. I knew my family, malaysia, gotten your full about my bad behavior.

I got a couple of emails from ants telling me I needed to get IT together. And that cousin who loved to draw, he wrote me to say, I ought to feel bad for breaking up my parents marriage. So I stopped emAiling my family.

I got up the nerve to visit malaysia again after I graduated from high school. Not with my dad though, I about my boyfriend instead. And things started off Normal ough anti crack jokes about my boyfriend, surprising ability to eat spicy food sh'd call him the White devil in cco.

But everyone seemed a little reserved. I wasn't the golden child anymore. I had a filthy mouth and blue hair.

I picked fights about their opinions and their politics. Finally, someone asked me how my dad was. I said I didn't know.

I said he was an asshole. They got defensive unt in the rest of my family asked me why I couldn't be a Better daughter. They asked me if the stories they're heard.

We're true. The one about the burning books, the one about me chucking my dad d's car keys into some bushes. Okay, yes, IT is true. I had done all those things, but then I realized they didn't know that my dad had moved out. They didn't know that most days, IT was all I could do to microwave a hot pocket for dinner.

When I told them, they didn't believe IT before, they took me to the airport, anti grabs hold of me and hugged me tight to her, and then SHE whispered in my ear, you are not a good person, okay? You need to become a Better person. Then SHE let go and walked away.

I didn't go back to malaysia after that. Instead, I grew up. I learned how to land a job, make a piana 摆摊儿。

I learned a few deep breathing exercise. I didn't said anything else on fire. Finally, a couple years ago, my father called me and told me that ni was sick.

He was stable, but I should make a point to visit. So I went back with my dad. I felt weird traveling with him because for years we'd never spent more than a couple hours together.

But when anti saw me, he was so excited SHE almost fell over. SHE grabbed edge the table next to her just in time and cried out, wa, whole ying, you're so pretty. I relaxed, always forgiven.

Unti loved me again. SHE brought me food. SHE held my hand as we watched T.

V. I stayed with her a little over a week. I started recording some of my conversations with her. I wanted to remember this anti, told me stories from the gambling, then told me about my granda floating with boys for free sodas.

And then SHE started talking about when I was a little kid, and he said this thing that when SHE said, IT felt like he took a box full of everything I thought I knew about my relationship with her, about my relationship with malaysia, and dumped IT out on the floor. Apply you some of this. Take note.

Auntie english wasn't very good. He could only talk in the present tense even when he was referred to the past. And SHE didn't heard enters in at this point, but SHE started banging her fest on the table. And he said that the reason everyone had been kind of me when I was a kid was because they all knew that i'd suffered a lot.

Here's the tip. Everybody is kind of you, because everything that you suffer from. So so do you. 一样 a lot。 yeah.

And when he said that something collect, I knew what he was talking about. SHE was talking about my mom when I was a kid. If I lost something or said something wrong, or didn't clean a dish properly, my mother would scream, hit me.

Sometimes he threatened to kill herself. I was never not scared growing up. That's how I remember that. Anyway, my mother remembers IT differently before I go on. This is from the email SHE sent to our fact checking quote my daughter's stories about me that he has related to you, or figments of her imagination, or at best, highly prejudice memories. If released publicly, I would consider these fabrications and distortions about me as personally very damaging in quote. But what my auntie told me on tape was that basically everyone was so nice to me, not because I was the oldest child of the first borne son, and not because my cheeks were chubby, but because they saw what my mother was doing to me. Did you see .

her beat me? Everybody to? I'm asking uni.

if SHE saw my mom beat me. And SHE says every once saw you know that scene in eternal sunshine of the spotless mind where he's in Barnes and nobel. And slowly all of the lights turn off one by one, leaving him in darkness as anti was talking into my tea or quarter IT felt like the opposite, like all the lights were turning on.

I saw my family saw anti popping back up in those memories in a way i'd never imagined before, with them listening through walls, peering around corners. Suddenly I remembered this one time in my uncle's house in malaysia, I wasn't allowed to eat dinner. Instead, my mom told me I had, across my arms, pull in my ear lobes and do squats in front of my family who ate their meal in silence.

And then there was a time during a visit when I was six, and I disagreed with my mom about what my homework assignment was. SHE started beating me with a ruler. I think IT was a ruler.

I went on for a long time. At some point, i'd tried to hide under a table as he pulled me out by the legs. I started to scream for mercy.

I knew that the house was full of family. I wondered why nobody was coming to help me. I thought they must not be able to hear me.

I felt totally alone. I was not alone. Here's me an anti again.

I'm speaking in my english, malaysian pigeon english. I never thought this would be on the radio. Anything.

something your father that SHE saying?

If they said anything, who would suffer? Your father would 有 说过 把 米 沙发， 宝贝， 沙发 有有。

沙发 有有 you suffer。 If you say don't .

do that sh'll do more.

show more.

show bit more. Not to say it'll stop.

You think it's like that, meaning your mom, and stop when we said something, you think it's that simple. Then, auntie, I told me this story about how once when I was little, I woke up scared in the mill the night and walked into her room. SHE woke up in whispered reassurances and ushed me back into bed as quickly and quietly as he could.

SHE was terrified the entire time, SHE said. He believed if my mom found out that I got up in the middle night, she's hurt me. So aunt, he did not dare wake her up or tell her what happened.

is on five life is。

Like that. All that finding those compliments, and I told me they were only in part for me. My family indulged ged me with that immense display of kindness to show my mom how I deserved to be loved didn't work, but i'm still grateful for sure.

IT was a lie. I wasn't the favorite ite, but the truth was Better than the lie. For years I thought nobody got IT that nobody was on my side, but they were anti was.

Definite true. It's one of the production of our program. Keep in the door.

Kept the end of. But he chan coal of any food. I micky e. Brian read Robin semi an ship and mancy update our senior production jus' der editing help from joe level production help from Simon adeler satelindo is are our Operations director, Emily condo production manager, only burgers our office manager and the Baker scouts stories for our show research chop today from a show Harris and Christopher taller music up from damian and gray from rob getz of thanks that a jush why are going to carve a soda la.

Vera copas, Angela rio, David gomer, Robert Smith and the rest of the planet money team and M. P. R. This is our last programme with Adrian. Matthew.

Z, for eight years, Adrian has been the one who has been running our website, which means a lot of things, including ealing, with thousands and thousands of you, when you're write to us, you are usually first emAiling with her. And if you have done that over the years, you know that he is lovely and level headed and smart and just great. We will miss her.

SHE has always been a part time photographer, and now she's becoming a full time one. SHE is available for your freeLance game. By the way, we wish you the best.

Our website, this american live dot org, this american life, is deliver to public radio stations by P. R. X of public radio exchange. Thanks, as always, to a programme cofer maltee on vacation this year. He tried to go to disney world, but ended up at sea world.

I was in the wrong world that what I felt like.

amErica glass back next week, with more stories of this american life. We live dying luck. So I don't have any more.