815: How I Learned to Shave
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Remember the day my dad told me how to shave something, to take the time, to instruct me about anything was so unusual at, if all we stood there, the thing I thought I remembered IT. I wanted to remember that I wanted to mean something like with some sort of boy becomes a man rate of passage, that the kind of send mentalities is more my personality than my dad that put anything .

of the kind I .

still think about at some mornings when I shave. Decades later, I remember every part of his instructions that I had to let my face down with hot water to soften the barely existent facial hair, which, you know what? Not the kind of man's whiskers that need soft.

So I wonder if he knew he was talking about. He showed you how to hold a rather the end of the strokes, but he came time to demonstrate the actual saving. He realize he couldn't actually do IT from the front.

He had needed to stand behind me and then reach up to my face at the same angle that he was used to having his own face with. So we got him back to me and sort of reach his arms and around me, close and mate what I did that, which was the 女装。 He was a county and just dad, a worried dad, a caring dad. But we never much physical contact. IT sends out most about this memory, so how few I have that are like that of him, actually teaching me something, taking the time to import some kind of .

lesson about the world to .

get that kind of focus attention. Who whose rare he grew up without .

a dad and .

he is best, but I am much feeling for what a sun might want. Or my cat from my father daily day. His mind didn't seem to be on me or my sisters at all, but on his job, use an accountant, stressed out, working long hours at the fermi I started years ago, I was invited to contribute to short chapter, to a book about what men learned from their dads.

And I wrote something saying that this shaving memory is one of the few that I have of him passing on some kind of knowledge of wisdom, and shows him the draft worry they would be hurt, that I would think that, or they would say publicly. But the biggest problem with what I wrote was that I called him an account. He was a cpa. He told me, very different.

Can I change IT? Because I again. He died a few weeks ago at ninety with the mention, it's weird watching somebody with your same body, your same role, fat around their stomach, some hands, some fingers, same skin. Go great and stop breathing, right? Let me, I thought soon enough, and i've .

been thinking .

a lot about the part of him medicine on me. My dad wasn't very curious about others. If you met you, he would ask you, ask a questions to figure out who you are, how you wasn't the most talkative.

If anything, some of the moves that had developed as an interviewer, so directly from being in the car with him and trying to actually get him to speak about something, anything which gets happens a lot. Kids developed personalities to fit ten to the jigsaw pieces of what the parents aren't. I honestly see his good traits in me and all of his bad ones too, all the time.

Because of those some deep part of me, they feels so much more comfortable when I am alone than when i'm around of the people. 相当于 all I， anna, be as along and just not deal that kind of think isolated my dad from people who cared about him from love and experiences that he could have had understand at me as well at times. When was the day he taught me that I think most of what we learn from our parents, they never intended first to learn this, just just shows up inside of us like a virus, one that they never meant to transmit.

We will mean the catch the middle cup later, and there are us while we watch them, or more fine, struggling with the breathing. And after the gone as well today, and I show, we have stories with kids, grapple with their dads, legis stuff about them consciously and unconciously good and bad. Give up behind .

OK for this.

Next time I have an recording of my .

dad from W B E Z. chicago. Is this american life?

Dad, you are such a pro.

Stay with us.

Like one, am I my father's trapper? Keeper, keeper. Before we get to the father in this story, we play this to the days two teenagers and crowd guibert. They stand up and woop s but into each other.

papers follow the ground. Sorry.

sorry.

That's good acting. Then this realistic piece of dialogue.

here you are, say.

what is that thing? It's my travel for me, and sure is a lot neater than this.

This an add for a trapper keeper notebook, one of main selling points. Keep out your papers trapped. Get IT so they don't fall out and i've .

got a trip foto fruit subject what's pretty needs and the trapper keeper holds all my trappers. This flat even has a alco closer to keep everything inside.

But i've got to get a .

trapper .

and get my act together. If you do all, i'll let's Carry my books.

The less I kind of gets to me, what is wrong with me? Heads like this are the kind of thing that either revoke nostalgia or complete batman. But if you're around in the eighties, you knew the trapper keeper.

The welcome are sound. When you open IT the pictures on the covers, the rings of the binder, they sort of smoothly slit open and shut instead of snapping, so wouldn't catch your fingers. According to a release from the time, half of all middle school and high school students had a trapper keeper in one thousand nine hundred eighty nine. I don't know if I believe that, but there a lot of them around. Anyway, when the event of the trapper keepers died last year got a lot of attention.

e. Brant crutchfield, the inventor of the trapper keeper, has died. If you were in school .

during the one thousand nine hundred eighties or nineties, i'd be willing to bet good money. You Carried around the cultural phenomenon of a binder by a man named e bryant. Crush field M.

P. R. The, they show the washing and post in new york times their own story. Then we got the female, some woman, who was very surprised by the subtitles, because so if you knew the invention, the trapper keeper was very much alive, and he was her father, SHE her dad and invent IT, not the guy in the orbit. And he was not happy about IT. Obviously, this is not the kind of tip that is self respecting radio producer can just go the event on here in a program trying to fight out what was going on.

The ad. His name is john wind, lives in south korea. Ina is eighty three years old, and I can definitely confirm his alive.

How do I know? I talk to him. He saw the orbit when he was looking at his computer one day. And there on the screen with his old colleague, e brand catch field.

After I read that, I told my wife, I said, a poor, but he's gone. But I just looked at, thought, well, I know the truth. What could I do? I am. I was not about to sit down and write rebuttal and send IT in the new york times.

How come?

Well, just not me.

The sense I get from taking a john is that he's someone who taxes feelings away, sealed tightly, maybe with val, grow. Well, that is not true of the rest of his family, his daughter, jacky, the one who wrote us. Here's how he remembers .

that day I was sitting in my kitchen and um my phone rings and my mom called me and he just said, you're not going to believe this. You're not going to believe this.

IT was a little bit she's like.

and it's everywhere I am like, wait in less. I started google trap keeper winter, and I started looking at all of the results and I was like.

all be like all these .

publications, you know, all these online people like a bloggers and I I just was like, I didn't tell her 了。 I go, yeah OK I see yeah, it's it's out there in the universe somewhere. Arn and SHE like this. This is this terrible, 不是 terrible。 SHE was on fire.

Jackie told me. John, maybe too late to say IT, but creaming the trapper keeper has been a big part of his identic, his legacy. A few months before he talked us, he was at his golf club.

I was talking to a couple, and I just happened to have a meat jacket on, said me, on IT. And this woman looked, this, did you work for me? And I said, yes, I did.

Yeah, thirty six years. And he said, made the trapper keeper I said, what's interesting? You bring .

that up I said.

I was very involved in pretty that little turkey together and he said, oh my god, oh he said, that was the needs school supply I I H I said, i'm trapper john.

trapper john. That's actually what some of his friends call him. Here's how john says the trapper keeper came to be. Back in the seventies, john was working as director of new product development at me. He was the person whose job was to build new stuff the company could sell.

And he says, crutchfield, the guy in the abets who worked in marketing, came in one day and asked him to make a binder that could hold these folders that had vertical pockets. John says there wasn't much more guidance than that. And so over a few weeks, he put together the pieces that become the trap keeper. John says he designed the shape of the binder, the shape of the folders, the flap closure, the logo and even the plastic clippard in the back with the spot for the pencil. That was something he invented earlier .

with another guy. IT was a full three dimensional prototype designed, created with colors named the whole works. I can remember setting at my desk with a tracing pad and tracing out of IT a typography book. The logo, and it's still the same logo that's on the product today. IT was the exact trapper keeper here.

IT is, john says the whole idea that I would trap paper so they don't fall out like the main sell .

of that commercial. T you has to keep everything inside job.

That was, he created the flap closure so nothing would fall out. He even came up with the name trapper keeper. Some of the overeating actually give john credit for this.

In the new york times, they say over a Martini field lunch, john suggested the name to brian. IT even quotes bryant saying, bang IT made sense. That's not only mention john gets in his family, they're pretty sure casual, deliberately cut amount of the story, grabs all the credit for himself.

Learning all of this, I felt for john, maybe anybody would, but I really did like, couldn't let you go. Did I feel a little silly ly saying this? But I identify with john.

I'm also behind the scenes kind of person. I hardly ever talk on the radio. I'm an editor here.

I love helping make things happen in the background, so I saw myself in him. In fact, another producer started the story, dan woo, who you hear in some of the interviews. SHE lost interest in MIT, but I wouldn't let IT die. IT felt like if I could get his hard work, noticed the world in some tiny little way would feel more fair.

So did some marketing guide do a marketing job on his own legacy, like convinced the national press to tell the story he wanted told? Obviously, the person who would have answers was crushed LED himself. But since that was an option, I found his kids can, and Carol, i'd seen can posting about how proud he was of his dad accomplishments. I didn't relish the idea of calling these people whose dad had just died to say, you know, there's this other guy who says he invented the traffic keeper and your dad took all the credit for himself, but they were open to talking about IT.

Yeah, that sounds like my day time he would do.

This is Carol creatural daughter. I told her in her brother what john said, that her dad had been a big part of the trapper keeper success to great marketing for IT, but that john was the one who actually built the thing yeah.

that makes sense that that they were more than one person involved and creating the trapper keeper. But yeah, he he took all the credit. IT feels, amit feels kind of lucky because I feel bad for them, because I don't know about him. But yeah, yeah, it's uncomfortable.

Would IT be out of character for your dad to play up his role in .

something he's always been to talk her um you know and he is always somebody who you know thinks you know to talk about himself. That's one what was one of his favorite subjects?

Here's what I learned about e. Brian crutchfield, or crutch, as his friends called him from talking his kids. Crit was a memorable guy.

Could be a chAllenging guy, fun loving, very proud of his kids. Big emphasis on providing for his family, maybe some impostor syndrome, a big advice. Ed giver, a lover of drink, the Martinis in the story, made sense. And can says that for most of his life, the trapper keeper wasn't to think he talked about a lot. Can wasn't even aware of his does a relationship with the binder until about a decade ago, when a reporter for the website, mental floss, read a long story about the invention of the trapper keeper, and the piece was all about his dad, kis friend stated, sending him the article.

You know, I got a bit of a choko out of IT, but I didn't really think much more of IT than that because, you know, I think my dad has always been somebody to have certain narratives and things that we would talk about. So I he managed to talk about harvard in that article. You know, if he was talking to a perfect stranger, there's a couple of topics that would come up. And one of them was he would find a way to work into the conversation, something about harvard.

What does he do? IT. harvard.

IT was basically like a semester of an M. B. A program. So I think that was a proud thing for him, especially having grown up in in alama and somebody that was first two go to college. Really, I think in this family.

the mental flow story in the orbits explained catches role, creating the trapper keeper. This way, the crutch was the one who spotted in need for something like the trapper keeper. The copy machine had made its way to schools.

Kids had lots of papers. They needed a way to keep them in place. And catch had also learned that there was a different kind of folder that he thought was so well. IT had vertical pockets. He put those things together and sold IT to the world, which, with this kind of product, is everything, as can put IT.

the imagery, the pop culture, the finding, the trends, being able to reach the audience. You know what, Frankly, is kind of a complex sale. How many kids were able to buy their own product who had disposable income to buy IT versus had to influence their parents to get the the binder they wanted .

talking a cam, reading the orbits. I do think crush played a really significant role in the creation of the trapper keeper. I found this case study all about catches approach to the project.

I talked to a former boss. IT really seems like the trapper keeper wouldn't happened without him. I think he does. Is our credit just .

not all of IT?

That mental plus article seemed like IT was the inspiration for all those obeid. Uarts were crushed in both in new york times and the washington post. But link to IT and karl says the mental first article start things up for her dad back when he was still alive.

He was in his seventies when the reporter got them up. Before that, Carol agreed with her brother. The trapper keepers wasn't a bit .

topic for him. The last, like probably five years of his life, was very much would turn everything around to try to show that he had a legacy. He would stop people in the restaurant say, I am down at the trapper keeper, oh, really yeah. I would find him over here talking to somebody asking them what they're eating and i'd have to go get him, you know? And they leave these people alone.

They're eating oh, but they want to hear about the traver keeper really yeah and I think that that came about after that whole mental floss interview and that got him thinking, oh, I do have a legacy huh and and then he's just kind of went with that and focused on IT and look how good looking I used to be. And look, you know, I did this, so it's all ego. I'm sure my mother would love to hear that from me.

Carol wanted to make IT clear that he loved her dad. He was warm, very funny. Her friends loved him. Shouldn't think he was trying to be mean or steal anything. He was just the star of his own show.

I like if my dad was here right now, I asked them about john. He would say, oh yeah, john did this and john this and john did this. You know, like he wouldn't I don't think he would lie about IT, you know like purposefully because my dad wasn't like that. I think his brain just kind of twisted facts to meet his own you know ego needs hh, there towards the end.

I was struck by how honest and thoughtful both kids were about their dad. And after talking to both of them, I got back in touch with john jack, were layed with the crushed eld kids, had sad and they told me and made them feel Better. Turns out cretins eld son wants to write a book about the trapper keeper and really wants to talk to john.

I sent them each other's emails. It's funny. As I worked on this story, I realized the reason I love the trapper keeper actually has nothing to do with john or crack.

Who was the cover hard, those rainbows and lisa Frank images and puppies and palettes. I am pretty sure your mind had outer spacing with geometric shapes. I trying to find out who the artist was who deserves credit for that. But I haven't had any luck if that happens to be your dad or mom. Parent, please write me.

The abon hates being on the radio for now. Anyway, we're working on her. She's an editor here at our show. Coming up explaining the sex robots of the future to your great grandkids, another legacy issues we have yet face, but will someday that in a minute from chicago, abba radio, want a program continues.

To american life from our our glass today's program, how are you going to shave stories of our parents legacies and what we going from our dad, whether it's intended or not? We've i've did two of our show, like two raised by wolf. So when I turned to this father and son who go hunting together, have all kinds of adventures and then things, they are complicated. Both of them were raised by wolves because they are our wolves. Here's a seven.

Rick marini re. Has spent more time watching wild wolves than anyone. The world he's been doing IT for over forty years. His focus on them is singular and complete. He lives alone in a little cabin just outside of yellow stone.

In every day, seven days a week, gets up before dawn, figures out what they are and watches them write down what they do. It's now over thirteen thousand pages of field notes, single space. It's turn those notes into books reading them.

It's like you're out there with him seeing what he sees. I just watch the wolves. Lots of scientific papers have been based on his observations. Four, rick and others started doing this work. We really didn't know much about wolves well, except one thing that we didn't want them around, even in yellowstone.

The early rangers back to the nineteen twenty is like pretty much everyone else in amErica at that time felt that wolves were no good and that they should all be killed off. And those really rangers did the job in a very thoro manner.

U. S. Park rangers killed off the last of the walls in yellowstone. Then in the one thousand and nine years, we realised that was a big mistake.

So we decided to reintroduce them by capturing three families of wild walls from canada and bringing them back to try to get them to settle in and repopulate the park. They put tracking colours on them so they could find them and watch them, which meant we could really learn with these animals. Were lake, I can wait.

That hadn't impossible for most of history. That's what rick's job was. And of all the things he observed, this is the story that got to him most of two wolves, a father and a son.

We're going to start with the father, who was one of the first wolves to be reintroduced to yellowstone. As rick puts in his book, if shakes be relling the story, he'd started deeping a forest deep in a wolf. Stan, three pups are running out of the then Albert bus and strong like their father. And then a fourth pub tumbles out after them like an after thought, a scandi grey pop. The pub seem least likely to amount to anything.

He was the runt of his litter. His three brothers were all bigger and stronger than him, and he looked different from everyone else in his family. He had a very dull db.

Gray coat. His mother had a beautiful White coat. His father was jet black, and all of his brothers looked exactly like the far they wolf.

They also had black codes. So he really stood out, but stood out in in a really bad way. His brothers constantly picked on him.

He at last, they would chase him around the pan. They would pin him, beat him up. And IT was really a tough time for him.

They named the pub wealth eight because the colors they gave the wolves, each one had a number, and he was number eight. So that became his name. These pups are new to the park.

Miracle was kind of to his job, too. This was the first time he'd ever gotten to watch wolves so closely. Mark felt for eight immediately, sorry, calling him the little guy, worried about him. But then one day he was watching eight outplaying with his brothers.

They were just falling around chasing each other, and suddenly they stopped and they stared into a pretty thick forest. And then they suddenly ly just read full speed into those trees.

brick last side of them in the trees for a while. Then they came darting back out the three bigger pups in the lead line.

And as usual, because he was the slowest, was eight.

One of the big pups was Carrying a dead elk cafe. At first, rick was impressed that such Young pups had taken .

down A K but IT turned out that they had not kill that milk, because just behind IT is he ran out of the trees was a huge greasy bear. And IT was really the bears ill cafe. The bear was gaining on little late.

He was getting closer and closer. He was looking back over his shoulder, and IT looks like at any moment the bear would pounce on eight. Eight was maybe sixty, seventy pounds.

At that time, the bear was maybe four hundred pounds. But then the aid just stopped, turned around and confronted that huge grazy. And somehow IT worked.

The bear stopped. IT looked at this little thing that was standing up to him like he didn't understand. And as the bear was confused, he had lost sight of his brother, who had the old cave.

So now the bear literally didn't know what to do. So IT basically just struck his shoulders, turned around and walked off the other way. But that made me realized that there was really a lot more to this wealth. And then any of us had .

ever realize his bigger, beautiful brothers didn't see this act of paroisse. No one showed the elk with him, and they kept picking on him as a month past eight starts, spending more and more time alone to get away from them. Just kind of wondering the forest like a high school or might do to get away from your family.

And again, rick felt for him small like that out there all by himself, with the family who didn't get him. Then one day will fit was out wandering alone as usual, when he ran into these wolf pups. Her mother was in a rough spot.

She'd had a litter of eight pups, and SHE was all on her own because the same day SHE gave birth, her pups, her mate, was illegally shot and killed. And the thing is, it's really hard to raise wolf pups alone in order to produce milk to feed them. He needed to hunt and eat, but that would mean leaving them alone.

A newborn e pus can't regulate their body temperature of their own, so starve, freeze, gentle pups were screwed. The wolf project staff was so worried, they've been captured the family for a bit, so they can feed them. But then one of eight came along. The little guy, just a hearing start by himself. He saw these pups, and he started playing with them.

And the mother wolf was watching that from a distance. And SHE was desperate. SHE needed whatever help SHE could get, and he already made friends with all of her sons and daughters.

So a moment later, he ran to him. They greeted each other. They played a bit eight lights.

His family, over the next days, he started hunting for them, bring them back. Little snacks, little tension. I learned from the books a wolf often feed pups by regrading ating.

The meat is hunted. A wolf can Carry up to twenty pounds of me in its belly, which is easier than Carrying that much in his jaws over a long distance. And once back of the, then the pops then trigger with geritol by making its face.

That's why your dog likes your face. It's trying to get you to pick goes right to what if he's going out hunting and bring back his little snacks? As I said of these little pups, that was the first time that ever documented something like that. A male wolf caring for another packs pus, who he wasn't related to.

and he was invited into the family. Meaning now he went from being a pick down, bullied undersize wolf to being a big shot. Alpha mae. Perhaps her first impression of saying this undersize earing wasn't um that he was the best candidate but he had shown up he was there.

He adopted those pups like they were his own. This is one of the things they were seeing while monitoring wolves, by the way, wolves, the glass of creatures, IT really distinct personalities. And now they could see some hobs are aggressive, some are aloof. And eight seemed really, I know how that sounds. He seemed really nice.

So that's the dad, which brings us to the second wolf in the story, the sun, one of eighth adopted pus, known as twenty one. When eight came along, instead of feeding the family, he and twenty one really bonded father and adopted son. Part of IT was that eight was Young with her, her father just a year older than the pups.

So still puppy like in lots of ways. Eight would do things like let all the pups attack him, roll on his back and pretend to lose to them, or they might chase them around. And eight would pretend to be scared and run away.

Not all father walls play with their pups like this summer, stand office or dominant. The twenty one seemed particularly connected to eight as the years when on the other pops and the litter wondered off, joined other packs. It's just what wolves do.

Twenty one, though, stayed first one year and then another. There is one spring that their day was especially visible, and rick, spotting scope, had a clear view of them. So that whole season where IT was able to watch them every day for hours on end as they chased and played.

and that's where I really began to understand the the depth of the relationship between eight and twenty one. IT was the peak of my wolf watching career to be able to to watch that.

They were a funny couple because I was so small and twenty one, his son grew huge, came significantly larger than a dad. Rick describes, twenty one is an almost cartoon version of a wolf. Like, if you wanted to draw wolf as a marvel superhero, IT look like twenty one.

They go hunting together. Eight would decide what to go, and a twenty one wasn't around eight would hold and weight, and then you'd head out together when they found the prey. Twenty one. So mostly and fast would usually get their first and grab hold together. They pick IT down so .

they would go off and hunt. They would come back with food. They were just inseparable. They were buddies. They did everything together, with eight being the the older guy, the one in charge, twenty one essentially being .

the another season passed, and still twenty one stayed in the pack. He was nearly three at this point, which honestly is like too long for a grown as wolf to be living with his parents. IT would be like a twenty four old with no friends except for his mom and dad.

Eventually, tony, when did leave? And here's where things get complicated. He went to the pack right next door, but ricker's team had been calling the drew ID peak pack a pack that their family did not get along with.

They battled in the past. There are still a lot of tension. The druid peak pack was LED by a female who was like, notoriously violent and seriously SHE was wild.

SHE drove her own mother and sister out of the pack bricks. Pretty sure he killed entire letters of her sister s pus. Two years in a row.

To this day, rick calder, the psychopath and SHE was the leader, the whole alpha male running the pack thing, by the way, one male beating all the others in the emission. That's a math. A pack is usually just the family of wolf's.

And the lead male, just the father. The one calling the is actually a female. She's in charge of strategy and decisions.

And this female was terrifying. At one year after twenty one joined her pack, twenty one sister wounded into th Epace's t erritory. The psychopath just went off on her. Someone from the wolf project was in a plane. So what I.

all the researcher in the plane, took photographs of what was happening. And I later looked at everyone of those photographs. IT was not a pretty site.

There was snow in the ground. And as the photos were taken, you could see more and more blood on on the snow. And SHE was biting at the helpless opponent.

Twenty one was there, but he was in her pack. And SHE was the leader. He didn't intervene .

as he .

was one by. He got bigger and their pack thrived. He became the leader of the pack, and he had pups of his own. His true love seems to be wolf forty two, a real sweet heart. Rick says they're bed down together all the time.

And is pack crew huge too? So on out a documentary, a lot of the footage focused on twenty one and one actually got famous for being this amazing bajus c wolf. People would travel to yellow storm to see him. No one really came to see as dad.

One winter, the tension started to escalate. E, between twenty one's pack, would you a peak pack? And his father, wolf, eighth pack, there could be at home and hear the packs hanging at each other from across the valley.

You can tell from the radio colors, they were encroaching on each other's territory. Neither side seem to be backing down. The main way wolves in the park die is in fights with other wolves, broken, seen wolf fights.

They could be brutal. And if a clash came, twenty one in his father, eight would be pitted against each other. Twenty one s job was to protect his pack, and eight job was to protect his.

I was very worried about eight. He was now very old. He had a lot of health problems.

He was losing his, strengthen, his speed. Twenty one was middle age at that point. He was at the peek of his strength and fighting ability. He had never lost a fight in his life. He was the undefeated heavy champion of yellow one.

Then there was the lead female. The vicious one. Eight would be up against her too.

I was in lama valley. I was getting signals from both the drew ID peak pack to the east. I got the signal from eight family to the west.

Both of those packs were travelling to each other. IT looked like they were both traveling on the same ridge, special ridge on the outside of the more valley. They were moving to each other, meaning there was gonna a fight.

One side hold, the other side hold. Is january through snow out? Brick pulled over in his truck, got a spotlight scope on the wolf's eight pack was up on the ridge.

Twenty one's pack was running up hill through forests in medows. Twenty one was out in front of his pack. Eight was in front of his. Both packs were charging at each other.

So here I was watching the two walls I admire the most, the world father and adopted son running at each other. They started to come together. They were charging each other eight. He wasn't running as fast, but he was still out of, in front of his family, and nothing was gonna stop him.

I meet even now thinking about IT. And in great distress because I remember how I felt. Then I.

I did not want to to see eight killed. I did not want to see him turn apart of all the days that could be fall aid. In my mind, this would be the very worst. This should be such a horrible ending to their story.

Greg starts taking through possibilities, trying to figure out if there was some way out. Twenty one could just pin IT down and let them go. But no, that would not work.

The psychopath was right behind. Twenty one SHE surely jumped in. Kill eight, no question.

And I was just helpless that there was nothing that I could do as a researcher other than just watch and document what was about to happen in front of me. They got to within forty ards, thirty ards, twenty yours, twenty yours. And I knew just a in a moment he was all going to be over.

So they are I am standing. They are looking through my spotting scope. The moment arrives. They're just a couple of feet apart from each other. Well, in that moment. Twenty one did something, ran right past stage without stopping, just in the very slightest way. Twenty one angles away in your shoots, past state.

That was a strange est thing. Two sides heading in the battle and then running right past each other. Twenty ones pack kept following twenty one because you know he's leading the charge. So when he sprinted past, they just kept following him.

All the other dude, walls were and pass date and all the other rules and they didn't have the ability to to turn around. He just kept on going as well. Walls from both packs, they were just running back.

And four, they were holding each other with a confusing situation. No walls were harm. No walls were fighting. And that was the end of the fight. That never was.

This happened twenty three years ago, but rick still thinks about IT all the time, wondering what happened that day. Bricks convinced that what twenty one did that day was intentional. He thinks the twenty one changed the battle into a game of chase, knowing that the other walls would keep following him and also that he could not .

run them all twenty one has just come up with a genius solution to save the wolf that had reason. Um IT IT was probably the most emotional moment of my life.

IT was the most emotional .

moment of .

your life yes, by that time I had known twenty one and in eight for so many years and I respect, admire them for so much um I was rooting for eight to somehow survive but reality was I I didn't see any way that that could be in the end of the story. And somehow twenty one figured that out. He saved the day we had .

been .

watching eight and twenty one day after day for years, their whole lives. And IT was such a nice wolf. I know how that sounds, but I really can't think of a Better word for IT.

You think that in the world as brutal as theirs, nicest could get you killed. But in the end, there was a thing that saved him. After all, twenty one learned had to be a wolf from eight, like a dad who just poured out of his love, and the sun inherited IT.

Really solve is a pressure on our show direct mcintire told the story of eight and twenty one in his book the rise of wolf eight. Rick says we've eight died a few months after the fight that never was from what good dike he died taking care of his pack and milk kicked him in the head while I was out hunting for them. That three story core the post to pacco s edition because I don't show today with Simon rich who has this story about a dad who was also a grandfather and a great grandfather who is some very strong ideas about what he wants family members to come after him, to know about him and his life.

I interviewed my great grandfather Simon, because he is the oldest person in my family who is still alive. He was born in a country called amErica on earth. He said he used to be a writer.

I asked him if he wrote spider man, and he said, no, he wrote other things that we've been lost. My great grandfather was one of the only meant to escape from earth, the rest of the people who got seats on the escape ad for women and children. My great grandfather says they let him on because they needed one man to roll the spaceship.

I'm not sure what he means because there are no owners on a spaceship, but that is what he said. My great grandfather told me how scary IT was when earth became too hot to live on, the skies burned with fire day and night, and you couldn't walk across the street without collapse in. I asked him if he had any kind of warning about climate change, and he said, yes, there been articles, movies and books about how was going to happen.

I asked him if he tried to stop this from happening, and he said, yes, of course. I asked him how, and he said that he had done something called recycle, which is where you throw your garbage into different colored boxes. I asked my mom what he was talking about, and he explained that when people become as old as my great grandfather, the brain start to break down, and it's almost like they turned back into babies.

Since my great grandfather is going to die soon, and he is one of the only survivors of earth, I decided to ask him what his favorite memory of the planet was. I thought he might tell me about the end of world were four, or going to see spider man, but instead he told me about the first date he went on with his wife, my great grandmother kathleen. They met in college, which is the place people used to go to after high school or drink alcohol.

My great grandfather said that when he was in college, online dating hadn't been invented yet. Instead of matching with someone through a dating APP and sending a series of new photos to each other before eventually meeting up for sex, you would meet them in person before doing anything else. This meant that when my great grandparents went out for the first time, they had no idea what each other would like naked.

At this point. My mother, who was recording our interview, told my great grandfather that he was being inappropriate because this was a project for school, and he apologized, but said that the naked stuff was crucial to the story and that he was going to keep bringing IT up whenever IT was relevant. My great grandfather explained that not only had they not seen each other naked, he wasn't sure if my great grandmother wanted that to happen.

Sometimes in those days when someone agreed to go out on a date with you, they were still undecided about the naked thing and wanted to learn more personal information about you before making up their mind. Since this was before social media, the only way to get this personal information was by asking people questions to their face, like as if they are actual living, breathing face was their social media profile. Sometimes this would get embarrassing, like you might say, what do your parents do? And they would say, my parents are dead.

And then you would have to say something like, i'm sorry, I didn't know that because I have no information about you were strangers. The point my great grandfather said is that he had no idea what my great grandmother thought about him. He had no idea what he thought about anything.

He had zero information about her other than what he looked like wearing clothes. And also, how would sounded when he asked, which he had done a couple of times on their long, slow walk through campus, with the cool fall breeze whipped through the scattered leaves, my great grandfather said that all dates began with the same custom. The two people on the date would take turns verbally listing all the T, V shows they like.

If they both like the same show, they'd exchange means from IT. But here's the thing, gifts do not exist yet. So instead of texting the other person, a funny moment from the show, you would say out loud.

Do you remember the part when and then you would perform the meme yourself, using your face and body to imitate what an actor is said and done? Exchanging memes in person was much scarier than doing IT by text. Because when you text someone a mean and they don't respond, you can tell yourself that maybe they like IT, but just didn't have time to text you back.

But when you perform to me with your body and the other person didn't like IT, you would be able to tell because instead of laughing, they will just kind of sad, look away and say, yeah, I remember that part, and you would have to just keep on walking to the restaurant. Luckily, though, my great grandfather's mean performances went, or at least well enough to keep the conversation going. And while he still had no idea whether they would ever see each other naked, he knew was, at least technically still possible.

My great grandfather invited my great grandmother to a spanish restaurant because I was the only restaurant he knew that served. Why the people under twenty one. But when they arrived, there was too crowded to get a table.

They needed to find some other place to eat, but neither of them had internet access. So the only option was to physically search for food by walking around and looking in random directions, like truly the same process used by animal things. Screw tense, the sun had set.

And my great grandfather was fearful that they would not be able to find alcohol, but after a few stressful minutes, they followed the center of fried food around a corner and found a chinese place that served beer. And they are so proud of themselves that they spontaneously high five, and I was the first time that they touched. My great grandfather told me, they stated the restaurant so long that by the end they were the only customers left because they were strangers.

They asked each other very basic questions, like who are you? Where did you come from? What kind of a person are you? They ended up having a lot of things in common, which was exciting because I didn't usually happen on the first day.

Often the other person would dislike things you liked. There are other things that you hate IT. Or things would seem to be going pretty well, and the person would seem really nice.

But then out of the blue, they would say, what is your relationship with jesus Christ? My great grandfather said. The main thing he talked to my great grandmother about was how nervous they both worry about the future.

I asked if he met climate change, and he admit that the imminent climate holo cost hadn't come up much. And instead they mostly talked about their careers. IT turned out they both have the same dream to write stories now onto pieces of paper. In fact, they were both already trying to do that every day. They would each type out stories on computers and then print them with ink onto pieces of White paper. Their goal was to get Better at making these paper stories in the hopes that someday they might be able to persuade someone to reprint their paper stories on the multiple pieces of paper and then sell those pieces of paper for pieces of money, which were also made of paper.

At this point.

My mother whispers to me that I was time for my great grandfather to take a nap, and SHE gave me some medicine, which made him sleep for about four hours. When he woke up, though, he was still insisting all this paper stuff was real, and that he was the actual shared ambition to write stories down paper and then sell the paper for more paper. And my mother smiled and rugged his hand and said he believed him.

But while SHE was doing that, he buzz for the doctor, and he brought in this huge surrender that was almost like a gun, because he was made at a metal and and had this trigger on the bottom. And the doctor explained that he was going to shoot this thing into my great grandfather's brain to make him less confused. And my great grandfather laughed weirdly and said that he'd been joking about all that paper stuff.

And that really, what he and his wife had talked about on their first day was climate change. Because that's what any same person from that error would have. Prioritize zed be in a climate warrior.

And the doctor looked into my great grandfather's eyes with his finger on the trigger and said, are you sure? And my great grandfather swallowed and said, yes. And so the doctor left, but on his way out, he told my mom that he would stay nearby and case my grand grandfather got confused again, in which case you would come back.

And given that gunshot right in middle of his brain, my greek grandfather was quiet for a while, almost like he was afraid to keep going with a story. But I pressed him for more information, and he said the main thing he wanted me to know before was not what he and my great grandmother talked about, IT, was how they talked, because even though they were basically still strangers who had never even seen each other naked, they somehow believed in one another. From the start, my grand grandfather told me that all dates ended with the same custom.

After the two people finished all the alcohol we've been served, one person will ask the other to come over the dorm room to watch arrested development. Arrested development was a non spider man show that you played by putting small round desks into a machine. The reason that existed was to create a way for people on dates to gage each other's interests and becoming naked without having to directly asked them.

The way this worked was a little complicated, but my great grandfather was able to explain all the steps. First, you ask the other person if they had seen arrested development, and they would respond some, but not all of IT. This would be your prom to ask them if they wanted to come to your dorm room to watch the episodes they missed.

They didn't want to see united. They would say that they had to finish a paper, which was an expression that, man, that they were not attracted to you if they did agree to watch rest the development, he meant that they probably did wannsee unit. But here's where IT gets complicated.

Sometimes IT did not mean that. Sometimes I just meant that they wanted to walk to rest of development. That's why there was a third part of the custom.

After walking back to your dorm room and putting one of the desks into the disk plane machine, you would sit side by side on a small couch. Your eyes would be facing the screen, but your attention would be focused entirely on each other. As the rest of development played, you would physically move closer to the other person, inch pie, without making any sudden movements.

The idea was that if you both moved incrementally towards each other, eventually your hands with touch, if the other person pull their hand away or laughed, said sorry, that meant that they had really, truly come to watch arrested development. But if they did not pull their hand away from yours, that man was time to start kissing, which is what my great grandparents did, even though they had never exchanged even the most rude amenti of nudes. And at this point, my mother told my great grandfather to stop telling the story, and he had to admit that the next part was genuinely inappropriate.

My great grandfather said that their marriage wasn't perfect sometimes they argued, and in the two thousand and fifties they both had full fledge affairs with sex robots. But they ultimately forgave each other because nobodies perfect. And also by the two thousand and fifties, sexual bots had become extremely advanced as well as incredibly persuasive.

Like if you refuse to have sex with them, they would start making really high level philosophical arguments about why IT wasn't wrong, using logic that was essentially bulletproof, while their boobs and dicks lit up and spd and stuff. And eventually I got to the point where the U. N.

Had to regulate the sex robot industry because they needed people to leave their apartments again so we could go back to being in a society. The point is, my great grandparents rekindle their romance in the two thousand and sixties, and they even ended up renewing their vows or riding on the escape new earth, surrounded by their daughters and her grandchildren. And my great grandfather asked my mom if he could remember the ceremony, and he said he was only four at the time.

But SHE did vg liver call how weird was to see him on the spaceship when I was supposed to be just for women and children. And my great grandfather said that they need to bring one man to help the women lift their bags onto the overhead compartments. And I reminded him that earlier he'd said he'd been on the ship to roll and war, and there was a long pause. And then he said that he was tired and had to go to sleep, and he closed his eyes, but he didn't really look like he was sleeping because every few seconds he would open his eyes to check if we were still there. And when he saw we were, he would quickly close his eyes again.

And IT was around this time that my great grandmother rolled up in her wheelchair and my great grandfather stopped pretending to be asleep. And he SAT up and smiled, and SHE smiled back and then lowered his voice and said, do you want to want to rest of development? And my mom reminded my great grandfather that arrested development has been lost, along with everything else on earth, because of his generation crimes against humanity.

But my great grandfather ignored her and motion for his wife to wheel next time. And he flip the random channels for their hands into slowly towards each other. And that's when I finally figured out what the earth was really like. IT was kind of like arrested development. IT was something people talked about and praised, and maybe even tried to save.

But the whole time when everybody secretly actually cared about was the person sitting next to them that were all mankinds effort, when the sweat in the toil of billions, not to saving the world, but to the frantic, desperate quest for love. And that's why the earth has gone, because there was nothing more than a conversation starter. IT wasn't what we really, truly cared about. We never even really lived there. We lived in the presence of each other.

And when my mom read my first draft of this, he said that I shouldn't ended this way because it's glib and defeated and seems to absolve my great grandfather for his political inaction. But it's not like anybody's gone to read this stupid, I say anyway. And even if they do, it'll eventually be lost like everything else beside spider man, sam is going to a stop IT right here because I want to go out and the night still Young.

Simon rich reading a short story history report is most recent collection of short stories is called new teeth.

when.

I took lesson from a neighbor, dy, but was going. You one got me a good teacher. I. Was I still protect this light? Burn out nose, cme.

Mi from sankara tearne Julie widger and dian woo are managing editor sorabjee ecuador dator is a manual berry special in the cobo FredErica as Robins tark future mark Johnson of global wild resources David me of the U. S. Geological survey and universe soa b White, our website, this american, lift out orgues.

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Cofer, mister milita know this. Having a little nephew was school project. This three, the typographical map of the autumn empire, which is very nice to call the kids teacher brag.

I said I was very involved in pretty that little turkey .

together glass bag next week with more stories .

of this american life when I was on my. Goss, no man. 你 不错， got a few of a shouters like fly.

Learn to pick. Don't get the and you life, sure, Young man, get out there. Make best of you why you can.