860: Suddenly: A Mirror!
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From WBEC Chicago, it's This American Life. I'm Ira Glass, and I am joined in the studio right now by one of my coworkers, Aviva de Kornfeld. Hi, Ira. Hi there. And so you're here to tell us a story. Yes. It happened probably when I was 11 or 12. I was with my older sister, Ora, who's probably 14, and our cousin, Jake, who's 16 or so, he was visiting us.

And one night we decided it would be fun to sneak into the community pool, which is just a few blocks away from our house. The community pool was closed. Yes. It's probably midnight. Our parents are asleep. We'd never snuck in. So we're walking to the pool. And I actually didn't even want to sneak into the pool. I was scared. But I just... The bliss of being included with the older kids as the younger one very much overrode my reservations. Absolutely. So...

We get to the pool, scale the chain link fence, hop over, triumphant. Immediately, like one second after we've entered the pool, sirens go off. They're so loud. It's like, woo! And then an automated voice comes on and it's like, you are trespassing. The police have been alerted. They're on their way. Evacuate the premises. Right. And you guys are children, so... So we panic.

And my cousin, he is the oldest and tallest, and he just like runs to the fence, hops over it, clears it, no problem, takes off running. And then my sister is next, and she hops up on the fence, but then she like kind of falls down. She like doesn't quite make it over, and then she hops up again, and she was just moving so slowly in my mind. It was probably 15 seconds actually.

And what I did in my panic is she was up about two feet off the ground holding on to the fence. And I grabbed her waist and I ripped her off the fence and I climbed over myself. And it's the... We get home, she's fine. She like eventually makes it over. But for me, this is the first moment that I remember thinking...

I have been shown what kind of person I am and I am a very bad person. Or there is a part of me that is like deeply selfish or capable of deep selfishness. Yeah. That's like a very grown up thought to have. And there comes a time when you think that for the first time and right, like you're 11 and you're capable of that. Yeah. And what I saw was this is who you are. You

You're the kind of person who prioritizes yourself over other people, including the person you love the most. Like my big sister is like the person I idolized at the time and we're still very close. But I was like, really, like anything for you. I love you so much. And then it turns out, actually, nope, I just want to save myself when I'm scared. And the whole reason I'm here telling you this story is because I think that lots of people have moments like this where

And that these moments can act as a kind of mirror that reflects something back at you about yourself. And does this moment come back to you in the years since? Absolutely. Every time I do something a little selfish or say something kind of shitty or just like I have some sort of failure of kindness, I think back to this moment and I'm like, well, that's the real you. Okay, so the reason you're telling this story, I know, is...

is that you have come here today with a collection of stories and moments like this one from a variety of people. Yeah. And with that, I'm going to just step out of the way and just hand over the show to you to host. Okay. Do I—wait, should I say I'm a Viva de Kornfeld, City and Fryer glass or no? No, no, no, you don't have to do that because I think everybody's gotten that by this point. They know who's who. Yeah. Okay. They have the cast of characters. Okay. Okay.

Today on the show, we have stories like mine about people who are suddenly confronted with a part of themselves they had not previously known and how they deal with that newfound knowledge. Stay with us.

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Learn how at AmazonBusiness.com. This message comes from Warby Parker. What makes a great pair of glasses? At Warby Parker, it's all the invisible extras without the extra cost, like free adjustments for life. Find your pair at WarbyParker.com or visit one of their hundreds of stores around the country. It's This American Life, Act 1. On top of spaghetti, all covered with shame. So, that moment with my sister when I was 11. Did it change me?

I can tell you that I have never pulled her or anyone off a fence while running from the police again. Not even once. But beyond that, no. I think this moment gave me a little window into myself. And that's about it. Fundamentally, I am the same person. My coworker, Tobin Lowe, when I told him this story, he was like, well, yeah. I'm sure most people who have these split-second moments of selfishness don't really change.

And to that, I say, what kind of world is that? Not one I want to live in. So I sent Tobin searching to see if he could find someone who had one of these moments and actually did change. I'll let Tobin take it from here. David and his girlfriend were fast asleep in his apartment in London when someone started banging on the door downstairs, screaming fire. He got up and opened the bedroom door to find smoke piling in.

And here is where he had his moment of split-second decision-making. My first reaction was, okay, self-preservation. I'm going to get my passport because if that burns up, I'm going to stuck here. I'm going to get my trousers because, again, I don't look foolish waiting downstairs in my underwear. And then I got my shoes. I ran outside and I ran so vigorously. I ran up against a wall and I got a burn, like a carpet burn, but from the wall outside.

And I really wanted to get out of there. He made it outside. And it occurred to him only then that his girlfriend existed, and she'd also been in that smoke-filled room that he'd fled, passport in hand. He realized this because she was standing next to him. She'd made it out too. But he had to admit to himself. Oh, I'm glad she's safe, obviously, but I didn't have anything to do with that. His girlfriend, who's now his wife, says, I'm pretty sure I ran out ahead of you.

He doesn't buy that. Still beats himself up. Says it's like a cloud of shame that follows him around. And yet. Do you think it caused you to be the kind of person who runs towards a fire now? Like, do you think you're more that person now? I think no. I think I'm definitely, I don't think I'm a hero. ♪

I put the call out in multiple places, talked to everyone I knew, wondering if I'd find a kind of superhero origin story. Someone who took their pain and turned it into action. Turns out, there are many people out there haunted by the ghosts of split-second decisions past. Jonah in Illinois. One night, his girlfriend woke up with terrible food poisoning from eating a bison sloppy joe. She was suddenly and violently throwing up.

He said he thought of helping, but instead snatched the blanket off of her, threw it over his head, and ran out of the room. He said the smell was too terrible. Did it change you in some way? Um, no. No, I would say no. But I was a bit embarrassed, like ashamed, that I didn't step up to the plate a little bit better. In my defense, like, it was...

extremely, extremely gross. To be fair to Jonah, I don't know that I would have stuck around for a repeat appearance of Bison's sloppy joes either. Though there was a small pattern developing in my search results: a recurring theme of boyfriends making the quote-unquote "wrong decision" but not doing much differently afterwards. I wish I could report that it's going to change from here on out, but here we go. A lot of times, it was the girlfriends who wrote in to tell us what happened.

There's Jana, who lived in bear country. One afternoon, a black bear charged. And what did her boyfriend do? He ran for his life, leaving Jana to fend for herself. A similar thing happened to another woman, but instead of a bear, it was a charging bull. When she turned to grab her boyfriend's hand, she discovered he was already long gone, racing to the car. Jenny in North Carolina. She and her high school boyfriend were sneaking back into her house after curfew.

Her stepdad thought it was an intruder and pulled a gun on them. What did her boyfriend do? He yanked her in front of him, used her as a human shield. Did you dump that guy right after it happened? Oh, absolutely not, no. They stayed together for five more years. And surprise, surprise, he was a jerk the whole time. It ended very tragically and heartbroken for me, which is funny looking back on it because it was like, he was a really bad boyfriend. ♪

Talking to all these people, my search was coming up empty. Nobody seemed to be changing their behavior. They felt guilt, shame, embarrassment, sure. But actually changing? Not so much. Then I talked to Becca. Becca is a pharmacist who lives in Chicago. Her story happened while she was on a medical mission trip in Ethiopia. Her and her team were there working at a local clinic.

It was the end of her stint. She was headed back to the airport from the village she had been working in. There was Becca, a paramedic, and this older volunteer couple, Frank and Sue. Before their flight, they sit down for a meal at a restaurant. They're starving. Everyone else gets burgers. Becca orders a plate of spaghetti. And, like, Frank just becomes...

unresponsive a little bit at the table. Like, he didn't faint. He just was sitting there staring into space and breathing heavily. And I just thought he was dehydrated. And I was like, Frank, here, drink this. Like, our food's here. And I'm, like, so excited to eat. And then he's not responding to his wife. Like, she's like, Frank, Frank. And he's just sitting there labored breathing. Frank falls out of his chair, fully passes out. And then the paramedic

Immediately jumped up this huge, you know, like six, five bulky guy. And he just throws him over his shoulder and starts like running back towards the van and is like, come on, we're finding a hospital. And his wife is confused and she's following and just like, oh, okay, what's going on? Is Frank going to be okay? Like just frantic. And I...

This is so bad. I sat at that table like an idiot trying to get the wait staff's attention to see if we can get to-go boxes for the food. And, like, Cornell, the paramedic is yelling, like, let's go. We have to go. I stand up and I pick up my plate of spaghetti carbonara on a white, like, porcelain plate with silverware, like,

and take that with me into the van. So we're like zooming away, Frank's in the backseat, like for all we know dying. And I'm holding this plate of spaghetti in the car. I talked to Cornell, the paramedic. He said yes. He remembers her holding the plate of spaghetti while he performed CPR on Frank the entire ride to the hospital. And also feeling kind of like, okay, I guess I'm on my own here.

When did you eventually put the plate of spaghetti down? Frank ended up being okay. They hooked him up to an IV. He felt better after a couple of hours. They got back in the van to head to the airport.

And dear listener, if you're wondering if the plate of spaghetti was still there, if the driver of the van handed it back to Becca like a trophy of shame, if it sat on her lap because she was too ashamed to eat it in front of everyone else, yes, that did happen. Afterward, they joked that she was just looking out for them. She was just bringing them a snack. What do you think was actually happening in your head at that moment? I think I was hungry and I wanted spaghetti.

I think I was being really selfish. I really do. I think I was being really selfish. It doesn't sound good, right? Like when I say it. To me, it sounds like someone who went into shock. And you don't make rational choices when you're in shock. But everyone else did. I think that's what still gets me. And I have since almost swung the other direction of like...

She's really trying to change. There are other examples. Like last year when she was driving on the highway when she saw a car accident. Someone flung from their vehicle.

She immediately pulled over, left her keys in the ignition, her dog in the backseat, just trying to get to this person to help. Becca is the only person I talked to who actually lives her life differently after reflecting on how she acted. Like, I'm trying to use that in a positive way, I think, now, because it's pretty gross what I did. Do you think each time you're doing something like that, are you thinking about that plate of spaghetti on some level?

Honestly, I think maybe I am somewhere in the recesses of my mind, yes. I think we're tempted to think of these moments of panic as revealing our true nature. But really, that's just the animal part of your brain reacting on instinct. The stuff we do after those moments, when we apologize or double down or gaslight or atone, that's the part that makes us human. ♪♪

Tobin Lowe, he's an editor at our show. Act two, BWE, big wig energy. You know those moments in life where everything's falling apart and it feels like you're drowning? You've gone through a breakup, you've been laid off, and so you just grab onto the first log you see floating down the river, just so you have something to hold on to, like a rebound relationship or some new hobby you get way too invested in. That's what Leisha did.

Which led her to trying on this whole new identity. It began when Leisha's best friend adopted a dog, and Leisha decided to buy a present to celebrate. Leisha's best friend is a hardcore Pittsburgh Steelers fan, so she decides to buy the dog a Troy Palamalo jersey. Troy was her friend's favorite player on the team, known for, among other things, his long curly hair.

Alicia finds a dog jersey, no problem. And I thought, oh, this would be great. I'll get the wig to go with this jersey. I went to all the pet stores. I looked online. And I could not find a wig. And I thought, well, this is like a void that needs to be filled. And I decided I was going to be the one to do it.

These days, pet wigs are everywhere. You can order one with next day shipping. But this was back in the primitive days of 2014, before our culture had advanced quite that far. Leisha is good at lots of things. She's a musician, an actress. You might recognize her from the L word. But none of that translated to knowing how to make a hairpiece for a dog. Fortunately, her sister is a hairdresser.

So together, they bought a bunch of styrofoam balls in three different sizes to represent the heads of small, medium, and large dogs. Then, they bought some cheap wigs for humans to cut up and turn into prototypes.

They came up with 10 different iconic hairstyles from throughout history. They made a mullet, a B-52 style beehive, a gray Golden Girls wig. I had a Farrah Fawcett, like long, blonde, flowing hair, feathered. I had like a bob, like can I see the manager kind of bob. What's your favorite wig that you made? I think for me it was the beehive because it was so, it was just like the ultimate wig. It was amazing.

like fire red. It had little like sideburns that were curled that came down. And it got funnier as it got smaller. Like it made a lot of sense on the pit bull, but when it went down to like a chihuahua or a Pomeranian, it was hilarious. ♪

I think that was a big part of this, is that it was so silly and so joyful. It was enjoyable to wake up and think about. And that's a really nice thing to follow. Leisha had had a really rough year before this. Her mom got sick. Then she went through a big breakup. Then she left the band she'd been in for the better part of 10 years, which meant she was also out of work. But now she had a mission.

Leisha went all in on the pet wigs. Over the next few months, Leisha and her sister make 30 wigs, all 10 designs in each of the three sizes. She also got an LLC, opened a bank account. Of course, she needed a name for her product. She decided to keep it simple. Pet wigs. One word. I had a tagline, it's a wig for your pet. Very descriptive. Yeah.

Well, you know. If you didn't get from the name that it's wigs for pets. Exactly. Because that was always the second, that was always the follow-up question when I said I'm making pet wigs. People would say. What is a pet wig? It's a wig for your pet. Like it's, it was almost so shocking to people that they had to have that follow-up question. So I made it clear.

Three of Leisha's friends were living with her at the time. Their prototypes were always scattered around the living room, and all three friends got really into the project. One made a website, another took over social media, the third signed her up for conventions, including DragCon. Leisha was very excited about DragCon. She could show the wigs to people who really know and love wigs and find out if there's any possible market for them. So, in preparation, she spent a ton of time building out her booth.

It was beautiful. I just want to give it full props. It was a really great looking booth. It was like a room you walked into. It was all white and clean.

I had all the samples on a wall on shelves. And I remember I really wanted it to sort of feel like when you walk into the Apple store. I wanted it to be clean lines, white walls, very stark. And then I wanted the pictures and the wigs to be the moment. So I wanted it to be like top of the line classic, like so high. I want it to feel high end.

The reaction that people had when they rounded the corner, people lit up in a way I've never been a part of. Like, I've never seen people so happy. I had a line out the door. Like, I'm not going to say they were climbing over each other to get to it, but it was sort of rabid. RuPaul himself even came by the booth. He loved the wigs. And it's then that something shifts for Leisha. Because it's one thing for your sister or your friends to like your idea.

But when a stranger, clear-eyed in their total indifference to your well-being, when they tell you your idea is good, you believe it. So, riding the high of DragCon, Leisha decides it's time to go big. She sets up an appointment with Walmart. She flies to Bentonville, Arkansas, home of Walmart headquarters. The building is hulking and corporate, with big glass doors and security guards. A far cry from her sunny living room, littered with wigs.

It's suddenly all feeling very official. It felt, you know when Annie walks into, in the musical, when Daddy Warbucks, you know, she walks into the house and she's looking around, like, almost like that, like, am I going to like it here? A rep meets her in the lobby, and they walk down this long hallway to his office, passing dozens of identical offices, each filled with other people pitching their products. Alicia said it felt like a factory.

Leisha sits down opposite the Walmart guy, setting her bag of wigs next to her on the floor. She takes a deep breath and makes her pitch. She starts as confidently as she feels. One of the first things out of my mouth was, I'm about to blow your mind. This, unsurprisingly, was not the first time this guy had heard this. But then Leisha goes in for the hard sell. I think I talked a lot about the void in the market, the missing piece.

The finishing touch to every costume out there. The billions of costumes that are sold every day. To pets, to owners all around the world. Yet they're not completed. Because that was a real frustration of mine. It honestly was. Like, it drove me crazy that you couldn't complete a costume. Mm-hmm. He said, okay, let me see them. And I put them on the desk and presented my pitch deck and

And the first thing he said was, great. I'd like to place an order. I think this would be great for Halloween. Let's launch it Halloween. Oh, my God. I know. And right away, the questions started coming at me. How much can you make them for? Where are you making these? How are they packaged? How fast can you turn these around? Do you have insurance? You know, just on and on.

Of all the questions the Walmart guy asked you in your meeting, how many of them did you have answers for, would you say? Zero. I had nothing. But how did you think that, how capable were you of fulfilling the Walmart order? I had no means at the time to fulfill one wig order. Not even one? Yeah. I would have called my sister back up and said, we got to get Kraken. I got like some wigs to make.

I just had the idea. I had a great idea. All at once, the improbability of Leisha's whole scheme caught up to her. Until now, Leisha had been charging full speed ahead, never stopping to consider even basic questions of viability. But now, here was this Walmart guy, forcing her to consider, for the first time, the reality of this project.

Which, frankly, Leisha had no interest in doing. I remember just wanting to take the wigs and put them back in my safe little bag with my great little ideas and like zip it up and just like, yeah, never mind. You know, you just want to like protect them from. Yes, from the horror of reality. Because that's what he represented too. He was like reality crashing and ruining the fun.

100%. I think he just made me realize it was about to become very unfun, very, very fast. Yeah, and that was the point of it. That was it. And with that, Leisha did what so many people fail to do. That little life raft she'd created for herself when things were rough, that log she'd jumped on, she jumped right back off.

She didn't double down. She didn't marry the rebound relationship. Suddenly, she was able to see her pet wig's fever dream for what it was. It was sort of a strange, like, fantasy bridge that I walked across for a year and a half. Like, because once it was over, things sort of normalized. And the pieces of my life that I was used to started falling back into place again.

Yeah, I think I was better. I think I was done. Leisha tossed the pet wigs into a bin in the shed behind her house. Didn't think much about them. And after some time, she threw them away. How did it feel when the Halloween rolled around? The first Halloween, you know, when I would walk through the pet aisles, I'm like, no, they're still not here. I still don't see a wig. Someone should really do something about this. Someone should really. But it's not going to be me. Exactly. Exactly.

Sometimes the reflection you see of yourself, it's just a mirage. There for a moment, then it disappears. And there you are again, the same person you always were. Coming up, how not to explain drugs to your kid. That's in a minute from Chicago Public Radio when our program continues.

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This message comes from Lisa. Lisa meticulously designed their mattresses for exceptional comfort and support. Visit Lisa.com for 30% off mattresses and a free sleep bundle, plus get an extra $50 off with promo code NPR. It's This American Life. I'm Aviva de Kornfeld, sitting in for Ira Glass. Our show today, suddenly, a mirror. We have stories about people catching surprising reflections of themselves and what they do with that information.

When I was thinking about this theme, I remembered this story about this guy I went to college with. His name's Ari. We went to school just outside Los Angeles, and Ari moved to L.A. proper after graduation.

One afternoon, the summer after he graduated, he was driving around. I couldn't have been more brains off in this moment. I mean, I was just stuck in traffic, driving along the highway, and was just passively playing radio. Like zoning out highway hypnosis. Yeah, I was doing a drive like that. Had done it a million times kind of thing. He was listening to KCRW, one of the local public radio stations.

And the DJ on the radio was just playing a lot of really good music, like song after song. It was like, whoa. Like what kind of songs were they playing? I want to say like just a lot of things that were very popular in 2015. So like indie pop music.

And I was just like, whoa, who is this DJ? And then they start back announcing the songs, which means after they play a couple songs, they have to do the credits. And I just start having this picture in my head of who they are.

Like this classic idea of what I understood KCRW DJs to be like, which was like a really cool woman who's single in her late 30s, early 40s, has like been on the alt scene for, you know, her whole career, has a short pixie cut. I don't know why. So you're really imagining her. Yeah. Yeah. I just like saw it.

So Ari is driving along, feeling like he's found his radio DJ soulmate. I was like, wow, this person has the exact same music taste as me. This is going to become a staple of my commute, catching their show. And this is going to be just the start of a rich, wonderful, one-sided relationship. And after they back announced everything...

They go, you're listening to the Frothy and D-Electronic show with me, DJ Ari, here on KSPC. And I realize that the voice is me.

And I mean, I was just so out of my body floored because... You're the lady. Because I'm the lady, exactly. That's so weird. Yeah, it was like reality broke for a second. I just, how is it possible that I am hearing my own voice? What had happened was this.

Ari was not listening to KCRW. He had accidentally tuned to KSPC, our college radio station, where he had DJ'd as a student. And this set he was listening to was actually a rerun of a show he had done a few months prior.

This mistake he'd made, it was actually a version of a mistake that many, many people had made. You see, any time Ari is on the phone with someone who doesn't personally know him, they always assume that he's a woman. Every single time. And that doesn't really bother him. It's not like he finds it insulting or anything. It's more, he just finds it confusing.

I don't see it, basically. Like, I just don't hear this is something that I'm going to immediately presume to be a female voice. Until I did, in the moment of hearing my voice on the radio. It's cool that when you finally heard your voice as the rest of the world hears it, you really liked it. Oh, hell yeah. I was picturing, like, the coolest person. Act 3. Act 3.

There will be questions. This next story is about a dad who catches glimpses of himself in the questions his daughter asks him. The dad is comedian Mike Birbiglia, and he's been traveling around talking about these questions on stage for over a year now. It's a pretty wide-ranging show. Here's an excerpt. I'm walking my daughter home from school, and my wife and daughter and I live in Brooklyn, and there's all these smoke shops there, and they have these cutesy names like

blazy Susan and yes, we cannabis. And, and my daughter Una looks up, she's nine years old. She looks up at the name of one of these shops and she goes, dad, what's the good life? I was like, I don't even know. It's not what I'm doing. And, but then it was one of those moments where I'm like, oh, I should try to explain drugs as best I can. And I was like,

It's like, well, you know, some people use drugs and they sort of make your brain happy, but it's sort of a fake happy. And you don't want to get too happy because then you've got to use more drugs to get it as happy as it was the first time. And then the eighth or ninth time, you're in real trouble. Anyway, Mom and I use them sometimes. Not often. Most of them were younger. Not your age, like three years older than you are now.

But I use prescription drugs. I don't want to, but I have to because I have a serious sleepwalking disorder. The reason I bring up the sleepwalking is that 20 years ago, I get diagnosed with REM sleep behavior disorder, and they put me on Klonopin. And I recently went to a new doctor, and she's looking at my chart, and she goes, you've been on Klonopin for 20 years? And I go, yeah. She goes, all right. I was...

That is not what you want to hear when you go to the doctor. I go, are you concerned? She goes, well, do you know the side effects? I go, I don't know. She goes, depression, loss of memory, poor motor skills. I said, oh, I just thought that was my personality. Like, it's a strange moment in one's life when you realize your personality is side effects. LAUGHTER

Because then I'm just like self-conscious about all my daily activities. Like one thing I do every night before bed is my dosage of Klonopin is one and a half milligrams. And so I have to break a pill precisely in half. Yeah. You know who shouldn't have a precision task like that? Someone with poor motor skills. Because inevitably I break it in half and there's like a pile of Klonopin dust on the sink. And I'm depressed and I'm

crying into the dust and the tears are merging to form a Klonopin sorbet and then I lick up what I perceive to be a half a milligram but definitely isn't a half a milligram. So how do I explain that to my daughter? That's the good life. Yeah, that's the good stuff.

There are so many things I feel like I can't explain to my daughter. Like, she's nine years old, and it's just getting harder and harder because when they're younger, it sort of doesn't matter. Like, they're an animated bag of rice, and you just got to make sure they stay animated. And then even when they're toddlers, it's a lot of layups. What's that? That's an egg. I'm a genius, you know. And my wife doesn't know that much stuff either. She's a poet. I'm a comedian. Together, we're a sculptor. We...

You know, we just don't know a lot. And it just started to become very clear to me about a year ago because I get a call from my mom, and she said, Dad was sick this week, and I tried to get him to go to his doctor, but he wouldn't go. And then yesterday he fell down in the bathtub, and I called 911, and the ambulance took him into the ER, and it turned out he had had a stroke. And I get off the phone, and...

I'm alone in my bedroom and then I go into my closet and I'm just sort of organizing things and I just start crying alone. And my daughter Una comes in and she goes, "Dad, what's wrong?" And I go, "Well, Grandpa had a stroke." And she says, "Dad, what's a stroke?" And that's when I realized I can't really explain what a stroke is. I took a swing. I mean...

I know the bullet points, you know. I go, it's a brain injury, and there's bleeding in your brain. And then it was a lot of free association after that, you know. I was like, it's your brain, you know, your brain is bleeding, and I'm not sure where the blood was, but I think it was, like, in the vessels, and they're sort of all in there, you know. But now it's just, you know, it's everywhere, I think. And...

Maybe ask your mom about that. Or grandpa, but not this week, you know. So Una goes, is grandpa Vin going to be okay? And I go, I don't know. I'm going to go home tonight. So that night I drove to Providence, Rhode Island to the hospital, and I take the elevator up to the eighth floor, to the stroke unit, and I see my dad, and he's crying.

And he's just a shell of himself. He can't move half of his body and he can't really speak. And the neurologist came in and she goes, Vince, we're going to do a spinal tap. My dad happens to be a retired neurologist. So from the condition he was in, he suggested a type of spinal tap. He goes, guided spinal tap.

which is impressive, but also a good example of how controlling my dad is. I'm watching a half-dead neurologist tell a fully alive neurologist how to do her job. I mean, that is next-level mansplaining. I mean, that is... It was devastating seeing my dad in this condition because, you know, when I was a kid, I always viewed my dad...

as larger than life. He was almost like a mythological creature, you know? I just, in a way, I sort of wanted to be my dad because he knew so much stuff. Like, he was a doctor, and in his free time, he got his law degree. Yeah, that's how much he didn't want to be a dad. He was like, he was like, what could I do in these slots of time when I would be parenting? Yeah.

In fairness, we weren't great kids. We always wanted a dad. And he wanted another secondary degree. So our goals were at odds. My dad was a doctor, but I didn't really see him that way, you know? Like, every once in a while when I was a kid, strangers would come up to me, they'd be like, your dad is a great doctor! And I'm like, alright, you know. From Worcester, Massachusetts, that's how everyone talks. Your dad is a great doctor! Yeah!

It's like we don't, none of us fully understand what our parents do when we're kids. Like, it was rare that I saw my dad as a doctor. Like, I remember a couple times, like, I played soccer when I was a kid, I was the goalie, and one time I dove headfirst for the ball, and I got to it, and then the kid on the other team kicked my head, I know, with the intensity he had intended for the ball. And I don't know the rest of the story. laughter

But I have been told that I hopped up and I was like, "I'm good!" And they took my word for it and they kept me in the game. And about 15 minutes later, I just wander off the field onto another field. My teammates ran over, they go, "Mike! Are you okay?" And I said to them, and I quote, I go, "What are we even doing here?"

And my dad ran onto the field and he picked me up and he carried me off and he drove me home and he asked me all the questions that doctors ask their patients. What's your middle name? What are the classes you take at school? I was like, oh, okay, this is what my dad does. And then the other time when it came up is that I went to St. Mary's School for grade school in Shrewsbury, Massachusetts. And every Friday night we had Science Club, which is kind of like a mafia front for Catholic school. Like,

We believe Jesus turned water into wine, and also there were dinosaurs. So every Friday night, it's like a different parent explaining what science has to do with their job. And one night, it was going to be my dad, and I was so nervous. I was like, what's he going to say? He doesn't know anything about science. And he came in.

And he brought his medical tools and he took them out one by one and he explained what each of them does. He took out a three-dimensional model of the brain, explained the hemispheres of the brain. And all these kids came up to me afterwards and they were like, "Your dad is wicked smart. You have the smartest dad." I was like, "Yeah, I do have the smartest dad." But how come he didn't explain any of that stuff to me sooner?

'Cause I just didn't see a lot of that, you know? What I would see of my dad was he'd come home from work around 8 o'clock at night and he would sit in the corner of the living room and read a war novel and scowl. And every now and then he'd sort of fly off the handle about some little thing. He'd be like, "Where are the goddamn keys?" You know? I'd be like, "We gotta find Dad's keys!" I spent my whole life looking for those keys.

So we'd look for the keys and then my mom would just pray. She'd be like, "I'm gonna say a prayer to Saint Anthony." I was seven, I was like, "I don't think this is gonna work. We need more concrete tactics to locate the keys." My dad would not like that joke. My dad doesn't like a lot of my jokes, but he particularly doesn't like it when they're crude. And then also personal.

And he doesn't like political jokes. As a matter of fact, when I was in my 20s, I was doing a political joke, and then we ended up having this discussion from it about politics, and it was tense. You know, I was visiting him, and we went for a walk on this wooded path

behind his house. And the farther we walked, the more tense it got to the point where he was just saying mean-spirited things about me. And then I started saying mean-spirited things about him. And I got back to my car and I said, bye, dad. And he didn't say goodbye. He goes, well, you've gone another way. And that was it. And I just drove home and I just felt so adrift in

You know, I thought my whole life I sort of wanted to be my dad, and at a certain point I decided I wanted him to be me. So I'm with my dad in March at the hospital, and it's devastating. I mean, if you've been with someone who's had a stroke, I mean, it's the worst thing you can possibly imagine, but I will say, if I'm being completely honest, it has calmed him down. Stay with me. Most of the jokes are for you, but a few of them are for me. This is a...

This is a coping mechanism. I hope it is for you, too. I mean, most of the time, this is horrific. But then every once in a while, I'm like, where was the stroke when I was five? You know what I mean? Like, when I was a kid, he'd be like, where are my goddamn keys? Now he's like, keys. And I'm like, I can't say I don't prefer the latter. It is a little more polite. So I'm with my dad now.

Mike Birbiglia. This was an excerpt from his brand new comedy special, The Good Life. It comes out this week, Monday, the 26th. Go watch it. Act 4, Trouble Afoot.

As you've heard many, many times in today's show, how you behave in a crisis, sometimes it shows you who you really are. That can be true even with a very small crisis. Here's David Kestenbaum. The story starts with a shoe that one day seemed to stop existing. It was a gray and white Adidas belonging to one Ruby Gans, age 24. Ruby had worn it and its mate to work like she did just about every day. She's not a person who has a lot of shoes.

At the end of the day, she switched to her running shoes to go for a run with a friend. The Adidas, she stuck in her car. After the run, she drove home, then reached over to the back seat where she had put the shoes. And there's only one shoe. And so I, you know, I did my best. It was dark at that point, so I did my best to sort through the car and, like, look under the seats. Still, only one shoe. It was weird to lose just one.

The next morning, she looks everywhere. Around the car, on the sidewalk. This is in Santa Barbara, California. She texts her parents who live nearby. I seem to have lost a sneaker. Her dad texts back. Have you looked on your feet? Ruby, I have looked on my feet. Dad's. She rechecks the car. I even, like, I did the whole deep cleaning thing where you take out all the carpets. Because, like, it has to be somewhere, right? Yeah, totally. Yeah.

Ruby is a science type, works in a lab. So she comes up with a working hypothesis. She figures she had dropped the shoe getting into the car, and the street sweeper had come by and swept it up, which would explain why it was nowhere. Case closed. She kept the one lonely sneaker. Just, you know, because. Hope. It's a new month. I have a new basic pair of shoes that I wear every day. It's a pair of black Doc Martens shoes.

And I knew that I had those shoes in the car. I was getting ready for work. I got out to the car and I could only find one shoe. I was just completely shocked and confused because how could this have happened? Not once, but twice. Like, I don't know anyone who has ever lost one shoe. And now it's happened to me twice. This just is not possible.

And I looked around, I mean, pretty thoroughly, checked everywhere I could think that a shoe would fit, and there was only one shoe in the car. And I was, I would say panicked is too strong, but I was worked up about it. Like, this is not a thing that happens in real life. Where is my shoe? I was into Ruby's story. I find losing things to be completely maddening. Objects cannot just disappear.

Here's what I want. I want when you die for them, and I don't know who I mean by them, to tell you where everything you lost over the course of your life actually was when you were looking for it. Anyway, Ruby, who is wired similarly, decides she is not going to work until she finds this shoe. Her hunt begins with deduction. She feels sure it was in the car yesterday, which meant it must have fallen out of the car.

Which feels kind of unlikely now that I say it. Like, did the shoe hurl itself out somehow? Anyway, she makes a list of every place she had gone the day before. She'd gone to a city office to file a form. She'd gone to a Trader Joe's. And she'd gone to work. So she checks all these places. The parking lot at the city office. No shoe. The Trader Joe's actually goes into the Trader Joe's and asks the manager, did any workers find a single shoe in the parking lot? No. No.

She texts the facilities guy at work, who texts her back a laughing face emoji and no, no shoe. She also goes to look at her boyfriend's house, where things took a turn. And I went and I looked all around the house, didn't find the shoe, but I did find his dad who had showed up. And his dad was like, have you considered that someone's messing with you? And I was like, no, I had not considered that. But you're right, I should.

He'd just mentioned it in passing, but suddenly things made a lot more sense. The question was, who was it? It had to be someone who knew about the first shoe and how crazy that had made her, who had then taken the second shoe as a kind of prank. There was a short list of suspects. Maybe a friend at work. There are cameras in the parking lot. She could ask the facilities guy to go through them. Or maybe actually her boyfriend. It would have been easy for him to grab her car keys. I texted him saying, be straight with me.

She waits a minute. He texts her back. It wasn't funny to her either, but anything was starting to seem possible at this point.

I was starting to feel a little bit genuinely concerned. It didn't really process at first, but then once I was thinking about it, I realized that would mean somebody is getting into my car, and that makes me pretty uncomfortable. And I'm starting to feel kind of afraid. Ruby wonders, should I call the police? She drives home from her boyfriend's house, sits on the front steps, when a thought occurs to her. And that thought is...

Wait. Yesterday. Didn't I come home for 10 minutes? I did. And didn't I park over there? She gets up, walks over to that spot. I looked in the street. I looked in the gutter. It wasn't there. And I was like, ugh, okay, fine. But then I looked up. And there in the tree was her shoe. I'm kidding. It was a few feet away on a curb next to someone's yard.

It looked like someone had helpfully picked it up and set it off to the side. And I was so relieved. I was relieved beyond words. To see the shoe sitting there, I took a picture of it. So many things were put right in that moment. It was confirmation that objects do not suddenly stop existing and disappear. And also, the world was suddenly repopulated in her mind, with people who were generally kind and helpful.

It was really nice to, you know, swing from thinking that a stranger is trying to break me psychologically to, oh, a stranger picked this up for me. It was still a little crazy-making that the first missing single shoe was unaccounted for. But then a few days later, she was walking her parents' dog, and it jogged her memory. She'd parked in that very spot she was walking the day she had lost the shoe. It was after the run, but before she went home. She'd just forgotten. And there it was.

Beside the road, the gray and white Adidas. She was back in the world she had started in. It's interesting how quickly you went to seriously considering, like, the least likely things, you know? Yeah, I immediately started thinking about all the crazy, like, all the things that people believe and I think are crazy. I'm like, pfft, that could never happen to me. I'm way too smart and logical. Actually, it was logic, a kind of logic that led you there, right? Yeah. Like, maybe I would have thought that I was somehow...

or just, I don't know. Turns out I'm not. If you're listening to this and feeling a little disappointed, like you were promised a plot twist, something exciting and more dramatic than a story about a woman who had just lost two shoes in a row, because that is what you come to this show for, fair enough. But I am just holding up a mirror to the real world, where sometimes a lost shoe, it's just a lost shoe. David Kestenbaum is a senior editor at our show. Hey!

Thank you.

Today's show was produced by me and Tobin Lowe and edited by Laura Starczewski. The people who put together our show today include Fia Benning, Jendaya Yabans, Mike Kamate, Emmanuel Jochi, Angela Gervasi, Niki Meek, Catherine Raimondo, Stone Nelson, Nadia Raymond, Lily Sullivan, Frances Swanson, Christopher Switala, Nancy Updike, Julie Whitaker, and Diane Wu. Our managing editor is Sarah Abdurrahman. Our senior editor is David Kestenbaum. Our executive editor is Emmanuel Berry.

Special thanks to Brittany Luce, Kathy Tu, Ellie Fishman, John Herbert, Alyssa Lowry, Michael Bergen, Sheila Maloney, Ora DeKornfeld, Nathan Englender, Katie Rhodes, Chris Thompson, and John Skidmore. Our website is thisamericanlife.org. I know this is the spot where Ira mentions This American Life partners and all the perks you can get, like bonus episodes. I did one a couple months ago in which Ira called me, quote, mean and eye-rolly. So if you want to hear that, head on over.

But really, all the bonus episodes are so good and funny and super different from the stuff you normally hear on our show. Ira cries in one, which is kind of cool. So to hear those episodes, and more importantly, to help us keep making the show, subscribe at thisamericanlife.org slash lifepartners. That link is also in the show notes. This American Life is delivered to public radio stations by PRX, the Public Radio Exchange.

Thanks, as always, to my boss, big dog Ira Glass. He's back on the dating scene and has this new approach where he's trying to be radically honest about what he needs from a partner. And so if the first date goes well, he sits the person down before the end of the night and lets them know. This is going to be just the start of a rich, wonderful, one-sided relationship. I'm Aviva de Kornfeld. Ira will be back next week with more stories of This American Life. I got the steelhead.

Next week on the podcast of This American Life, Mosem waited over a year to take a citizenship test. But then, when the day finally came, he got this feeling. It's a trap. That was the immediate thought? You were the idiot. I have not even, like, thought twice about it. And so, he had to make a decision. Show up, risk deportation, or go into hiding.

his choice, and how it played out differently than he ever imagined. Next week on the podcast, our new local public radio station. This message comes from NPR sponsor NetSuite by Oracle, your AI-powered business management suite. If your revenues are at least in the seven figures, download the free ebook, Navigating Global Trade, Three Insights for Leaders at netsuite.com slash story.