The Moth Podcast: Gifts and Gratitude

On this episode, two stories about being grateful, especially around the holidays. This episode is hosted by Christina Norman. Storytellers: Stephanie Garibaldi’s daughter has a sneaky plan for Santa. Justin Werfel tries to impress his father with a gift. Podcast # 888

• 0:00Speaker 00

  Buy smart, drive for less, and trade for more. That's Toyota Fordability, and it all starts with a great deal from your local Toyota dealer. Make a smart buy on an all-wheel-drive Camry, Corolla Cross, or get a Corolla Sedan, packed with the latest features, advanced tech, and head-turning style. Take a test drive in two of Toyota's most popular SUVs, the spacious, family-friendly Grand Highlander and adventure-ready RAV4. And with so many hybrid and plug-in hybrid models available across the lineup, plus efficient all-electrics like the BZ, BZ Woodland, and all-wheel-drive CHR, you can drive your way and skip the pump. And long after you leave the lot, your Toyota keeps delivering with legendary resale value, built on a reputation for quality and reliability. So when it's time for your next Toyota, you could trade in for more.

• 0:44Speaker 00

  From a great deal today to a great value tomorrow, a Toyota is right for you. Shop toyota.com for deals and details, or stop by your local Toyota dealer today. Toyota, let's go places.

• 0:55Speaker 01

  Gifts mean more when they have the power to give more. They can inspire more discovery, give more confidence, and unwrap more of who you are. This Black Friday, give a gift that goes beyond the box. The Dell XPS 13 laptop, with a beautiful design and cutting-edge performance, it helps you unlock more possibilities. It's the thinnest, lightest XPS laptop yet, with touchscreen, a backlit keyboard, and long-lasting battery life to power you through your day. Built with a durable aluminum chassis, weighing just 2.2 pounds, and Intel Core processors, it's fast, reliable, and portable enough to keep up wherever you go. Visit dell.com to explore the possibilities with XPS. While shopping, you'll also find great perks like Dell Rewards,

• 1:36Speaker 01

  fast free shipping, premium support, and financing with flexible payment options. Plus, you can find great deals on monitors and accessories. That means you can score a whole new setup now for less. This Black Friday sale is one you don't want to miss. Head to dell.com/deals. That's dell.com/deals.

• 1:59Speaker 02

  Welcome to the Moth Podcast. I'm Christina Norman. I don't know about you, but I find this time of year just a little bit stressful. It's not the constant Santa ads on TV. It's not the long, dark days. It's the pressure to give the perfect gift to everyone you love. If you celebrate the holidays at all, it can be totally nerve wracking. What if my BFF's enthusiasm for tinned French sardines doesn't match mine? And what if I spend too much money, or worse yet, too little, on my office's white elephant gift? What if my brother doesn't like the whiskey stones I got him? I mean, that's just a joke. Please don't get your brother whiskey stones. Trust

• 2:40Speaker 02

  me. On this episode, we have two stories about giving gifts and what you receive in return. Oh, and don't worry, even though one story mentions Santa, it doesn't reveal any of the big guy's secrets. First up, Stephanie Garibaldi, who told this at a Moth Story Slam in Washington, D.C. Here's Stephanie, live at the mall.

• 3:06Speaker 03

  I have always hated visiting the mall Santa. As a shy kid, I much preferred writing a letter. It seemed much more civilized than sitting on a strange man's lap and making demands. My, my parents would drag me anyway. And when Santa would invariably ask what I wanted for Christmas, I would just mumble something like, "Whatever you have in this sleigh is fine." As a parent, it wasn't any better. You waited in a huge line to pay a huge amount of money for a photo of your kid sitting on a stranger's lap, either grimacing, fake smiling, or worse, out now crying. So, I was pretty relieved when I thought that

• 3:49Speaker 03

  my daughter, at age nine, had maybe outgrown the whole visiting Santa thing. So, I just didn't take her that year. Only imagine my horror. Three days before Christmas, she says, "Mom, I need to tell Santa something. Can you bring me to him?"

• 4:06Speaker 03

  Okay, as a single mom, I have already gotten her whatever presents I'm gonna manage to get her. They're neatly wrapped, ribbons and bows, and they're hidden away, ready for Christmas morning. So, I'm kinda panicking, because, you know, she's gonna make some big request, of like, the hot toy that you can't get anymore, three days before Christmas. This is not good. So I try a strategy. I say, "You know, I'm in pretty tight with Santa, so why don't you tell me and I'll pass it along to Santa?" But she says, "No, I, this is so important, I need to tell him face to face." So I take her. Two days before Christmas, the line is longer than ever. We finally get up to the front, and she jumps right up there, and it's like she is ready

• 4:51Speaker 03

  for that first question. He says, "So have you been a good girl this year?" And she's like, "Oh, yes, I've been very good." "So good that you're probably gonna bring me a lot of presents, but here's the thing, Santa, that's what I wanted to talk to you about. See, I learned this year, there are lots of kids who don't have very many toys." Yeah, in fact, some kids don't even have a bedroom of their own, or, or a parent. You know, I'm lucky, because I have three parents. I have my mom and my grandparents. So, you know, I just, I want you to take all the toys that you were gonna bring to me, and give them to kids who need them more. I gotta tell you, I am trying to lose it like a fool in the mall Santa's line.

• 5:33Speaker 03

  I, all my fears, you know, when you're a single mom, and she has to go like, to aftercare, after school, and she's spending so many hours with a stranger, you think, she's not getting good values. And you don't have those dreams that like, these fancy schmancy two-parent families have. You don't think things like, "My kid could be the president one day." No, you just kind of hope and pray that she'll become like, a decent human being. And, and we hadn't even talked about this, so she's come up with this out of her own heart, and I am floored. And then I saw something I've never seen before, Santa's taking it pretty hard too, because I see him wipe a tear away from his cheek.

• 6:13Speaker 03

  And he gets himself together, he kind of harumphs a little bit, and then he says, "Well, it's a privilege to honor such a request, and I will." He said, "But, I think I can also find a few extra gifts for a sweet girl like you in my bag, so I'll bring you something too." And she's happy, and she says, "Thank you, Santa," and she reaches up and gives him this big hug, and we're making it off to the car, and she holds my hand on the way to the car. I'm still trying to get myself together, I am speechless still, and I put her in her little car seat in the back, because even though she's nine, she's tiny, and she still fits in one of these car seats. And we're heading off from Anarunda Mills, and I get onto 295, and that's when I've

• 6:56Speaker 03

  kind of gotten myself together enough, and I took a deep breath, and I just glanced in the rearview mirror briefly at her, because I don't want to risk injuring this beautiful, future Nobel Peace Prize-winning person. So, just glance, and I say, "You know, that was a really kind thing that you asked Santa for. It made me very proud." And she said, "Oh, I didn't mean it."

• 7:25Speaker 03

  So, yeah. So I hit the brakes, and I [makes a loud roar], and I go off onto the shoulder of 295, even though you're not supposed to, just so I can turn at my seat and say, "Excuse me? I'm sorry, what did you just say?" And she said, "Well, as you know, I haven't been very good this year." So, I thought, yeah, I thought if I asked Santa to give my gifts to other kids, that he would be fooled and think that I'm this amazing kid, and he would bring me gifts anyway.

• 8:05Speaker 03

  And then she says, "And it worked."

• 8:13Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 8:16Speaker 03

  All of a sudden, she's gone from like, modern day Mother Teresa to Machiavelli. I am so upset that I've only had like 15 minutes to relish in the joy of this moment before it's cruelly ripped away from me. And part of me, I'm not gonna lie, part of me is proud because she thought of this, you know? But the bigger part of me is concerned. And also, she's missed the big picture and she has bet on the wrong horse, not understanding the Santa mother thing. So, and I think to myself what I should do.

• 8:57Speaker 03

  If I was a responsible mother, what I would do, when I get home, I'm gonna unwrap all those presents I got for her and I'm gonna give them to other children and I'm gonna take pictures of those children. And I'm gonna wrap those pictures in an empty box.

• 9:13Speaker 03

  That would teach her, right? Then maybe she'd have the value she needs to. But who has the time and the energy to do that when you're a single mom?

• 9:28Speaker 03

  So, I vowed that I would talk to her later and the later never came. And you know what? We had a pretty good Christmas that year.

• 9:45Speaker 02

  That was Stephanie Garibaldi. Stephanie describes herself as the hardest working story coach in the DC metro area, maybe even the world. As the director of Story Extreme, she runs monthly storytelling shows in Alexandria while teaching classes all over. Speaking of the perfect gift, my favorite gift of all time was my cork fetching half-Siamese cat Cleo. A present from my then-boyfriend and now-husband Charles, she popped out of a wet cardboard box one December night and sealed the deal. Rest in peace, Cleo. On the theme of gratitude, I'd be remiss not to mention that the gift of story always fits. I work for The Moth. What else can I say?

• 10:28Speaker 02

  We're in the midst of our year-end donation drive, so if any of The Moth stories have touched you and you want to share them with other people, you can support our mission by going to themoth.org or text GIVE24 with no space in between to 78679. Your support helps us bring storytelling workshops to students and community groups around the country. Once again, that's themoth.org or text GIVE24 with no space in between to 78679. Next up, here's Justin Werfel, who told this at a Story Slam in Boston.

• 11:04Speaker 04

  All right.

• 11:08Speaker 04

  Two to one. That was the score.

• 11:12Speaker 04

  My father is not an easy man to give presents to. It's not that he doesn't like surprises. It's more that he doesn't like anything. And he's not shy about saying so. So while the rest of my family is all gathered around exchanging gifts, you know, trying to share with our loved ones the things that we found for them that we thought would delight them, my dad opens a present and says, "Oh, why do you waste your money on this? I don't want it." Which isn't such an easy thing to hear when you're, you know, six.

• 11:46Speaker 04

  But you get used to it.

• 11:50Speaker 04

  Which doesn't mean that you stop trying. My sister and I had a running competition. Throughout our whole lives, we kept track of how many presents each of us had gotten for him that he'd actually liked. And the lifetime score was two to one.

• 12:05Speaker 04

  To be fair, he was always very clear about what he actually wanted. And that was a sports car. Which I think is the traditional present you get for, you know, a child for their parent. If you're the emperor of the 12 kingdoms. I mean, it's, obviously, he didn't expect to get one as a present, but, you know, from his point of view, it was like, why would he want some other thing that he didn't want? So, we would get him things that we could, that we thought he would like, and he would vocally not want them. That was the system. Uh, there was one time, when I was like, I was probably seven or eight, I went into a Hallmark store, and, uh, and they used to sell these little cardboard jigsaw puzzles, like, 100 pieces in a square little box. Like, there, there was a section of the store devoted to these.

• 12:48Speaker 04

  Which actually, like, now that I'm looking back on this and saying this out loud, strikes me as really kind of strange. Like, 100-piece jigsaw puzzles, that's a really specific niche audience. I mean, you've gotta be enough of a control freak to, like, enjoy setting things in order for recreation, but also too impatient for something that's gonna take you more than a couple of minutes? Anyway, I used to be really into these. I had a whole collection. And, uh, so I went in the store that day, went to, to the inexplicable, uh, little cardboard puzzle section, see what they had. And, oh my god. There was a puzzle there with a photograph of a red Ferrari, and in big letters on the box, it said, "Your very own sports car.

• 13:30Speaker 04

  Some assembly required." Perfect. I could not wait for the next gift-giving occasion to come around. And, uh, when it did, my dad opened the carefully wrapped package I gave him, and he looked at it and said, "Oh, why'd you get me this?" And it may have been that some disappointment showed in my face, because he handed it back to me, and he said, "Here, you take it. You'll use it." I didn't really.

• 13:58Speaker 04

  You know, a few years ago, I was thinking about this puzzle. Like, it was just, it was so symptomatic. You know, of all of the things that I got him over the years that he couldn't stand, like, that one might have been the best. It was just, it was so ideal in so many ways. And it turned out that I wasn't the only one thinking about it. Like, a month later, I was visiting home, and my dad just started talking about it, out of the blue, totally unprompted. And the reason this is so weird is, like, aside from the coincidence of both of us thinking about it around the same time, my dad has the worst memory. Like, he just absolutely remembers nothing. So for him to suddenly start talking about this present after a quarter of a century means that it must have really, you know, made an impact on him. And it had.

• 14:43Speaker 04

  What he said was, "You remember that puzzle, the sports car you got me? That was the worst present." And I said, "No, that was the best present. That was your little son, who loves you, trying to get you something to please you." He said, "Okay, I get it." I said, "No, you don't. That was, that was the thing you were always saying you wanted. That was me finding a way to make it come true." He said, "Okay, I get it." I said, "No, that was connecting my interests to yours, which is a thing you've spent my entire life saying you want to do." Like I said, I'd just been thinking about this. And eventually, I actually got him to change his mind about it, which is, you know, yet another thing that never happens. But in this case, like, eventually, he came around to thinking, "Huh, that actually was

• 15:28Speaker 04

  a good present after all. And, huh, like, what a shame," sort of in the, in the way he received it. And, you know, what a lost opportunity. Well, I've always been organized. And, you know, when I grew up and moved out, over time, most of the stuff got moved out of my room, but a lot of it really just got moved down to the basement. So that night, I went down to the basement, and I found my old little chest of drawers, and I opened the bottom drawer where I kept my puzzle collection, and there it was, you know, where I'd put it, when he gave it back. So when the next gift-giving occasion came around, my dad opened the carefully wrapped package I gave him, and this time, he got it. He keeps it on his desk now.

• 16:12Speaker 04

  It's the first thing he sees every time he sits down. Three to one.

• 16:22Speaker 02

  That was Justin Werfel. Justin is a research scientist at Harvard, where he studies collective intelligence in systems from robots to termites. His work has had the rare honor of being denounced by a former Assistant Secretary of the US Treasury as, quote, "an enemy of the human race." That's it for this episode. From all of us here at The Moth, please know that listening to us is the greatest gift we could ask for.

• 16:52Speaker 05

  Christina Norman is the Chief Creative Officer at The Moth. She's excited to expand the world of The Moth and empower more storytellers everywhere. She lives in Brooklyn, and you can find her most Saturday mornings in Prospect Park with her husband and her Ridgeback, Pepper. This episode of The Moth Podcast was produced by Sarah Austin Jenness, Sarah Jane Johnson, and me, Mark Sollinger. The rest of The Moth's leadership team includes Sarah Haberman, Christina Norman, Jennifer Hickson, Meg Bowles, Kate Tellers, Marina Cluchet, Suzanne Rust, Leanne Gully, and Patricia Orenya. All Moth stories are true, as remembered by their storytellers. For more about our podcast, information on pitching your own story, and everything else, go to our website, themoth.org.

• 17:36Speaker 05

  The Moth Podcast is presented by PRX, the Public Radio Exchange, helping make public radio more public at prx.org.

• 17:47Speaker 06

  With over 600 live events each year, plus the production of our storytelling workshops and The Moth Radio Hour and podcast, it takes a lot to keep The Moth moving. And the other day, I was browsing the Vistaprint site, and I thought, Vistaprint can be an incredible resource for us. We can use Vistaprint to customize banners for our stage backdrop. Walking into an event where your signage matches your merch instantly gives you that polished, established look that we love. Vistaprint gives you so much more than what you paid for, offering top-tier quality that makes your business look like a million bucks without blowing your budget. Plus, with real people and intuitive tools ready to help you nail every design detail, you get complete assurance from start to finish.

• 18:29Speaker 06

  There's a real reason over 17 million small businesses rely on Vistaprint to elevate their brand. Vistaprint: Print Your Possible. Right now, new customers get 20% off with code NEW20 at Vistaprint.com. That's 20% off at Vistaprint.com using code NEW20.