The Moth Podcast: Hoses and Home Ec

On this episode... two stories, one about a Home Economics class, the other about a sibling rivalry. This episode is hosted by Suzanne Rust. Storytellers: Suzanne Ketchum Adams learns to stand up for herself in a Home Ec class. Jeff Rose’s mother tells him not to ruin his nice suit for Church. Podcast # 922

• 0:02Speaker 00

  I'm Suzanne Rust and welcome to The Moth Podcast. On this episode, high schools and sibling rivalries. First up is Suzanne Ketchum Adams, who told this story at a Boston Grand Slam where the theme was "Never Again." Here's Suzanne, live at The Moth.

• 0:21Speaker 01

  It's October of 1973, and I'm a freshman in high school in a small town in Pennsylvania. And I'm sitting in my third required year of home economics class. I have just sewed two red patch pockets onto the front of a yellow dress. But they're upside down. Now, before I can do anything to correct this, Ms. McSparren, my teacher, comes bustling over to inspect my work. And instead of making a joke about how this would make it hard to hold on to my lunch

• 1:02Speaker 01

  money, she starts to rip apart my work in front of the whole class, criticizing my seam allowance and my basting. And at this humiliation, I start to cry, to which she responds, "I don't want your tears. I just want you to take some pride in your work." Well, I took pride in most of the work I did, but I didn't want to learn to sew. I didn't want to be in home ec. class. And I'm still fuming about this later that morning in study hall, not just over the humiliation,

• 1:45Speaker 01

  but over the injustice of it, because the boys in ninth grade did not have to take home economics. They didn't even have to take industrial arts anymore as they had in seventh and eighth grade. They were all done with that. Thank you. Thank you. And I'm thinking about this as I pull out my civics homework. Now, that is a class that I love. I love the teacher, Mrs. Klaus, and I love what we're studying right now, which is the Constitution of the United States, and especially the First Amendment. And now, when I look at the First Amendment, I notice something I hadn't seen before, nestled in there next to freedom of speech. And freedom of religion is this phrase about having the right to petition for the redress of grievances.

• 2:32Speaker 01

  And there has just been a grievance about my dress.

• 2:40Speaker 01

  So I start to scribble out a petition with my big ballpoint in my spiral notebook, and it goes like this. "We, the girls of ninth grade, do hereby protest the requirement that we take yet another year of home economics while the boys in our class are free to take electives. And furthermore, boys and girls should never have to have different course requirements in the first place." And I sign it.

• 3:09Speaker 01

  I sign it, and I start passing it around the study hall to my classmates, and almost all of them sign it right away. And as the day goes on, I hand it around all of my classes. And by the end of the day, I have this long list of signatures. And I think, okay, time for action. And I'm thinking, well, it must be the principal should be able to do something about this, right? And so I go down to the principal's office, and I'm thinking, oh, he can get this abolished by next week. You know? And, well, the principal is busy. So I talk to the assistant principal. And he seems amused at first, but when I start to say, and it's really not fair because boys don't have to take it,

• 3:52Speaker 01

  he says, "Miss Adams, you are right about one thing. The boys don't have to take this class, but you do have to take it, unless you don't want to be promoted to 10th grade." Well, that pretty much took the wind out of my sails and I kind of backed out of the office. But I still had the same problem, how to get through this year with this awful teacher. Well, it turned out that it was less of a problem than I expected because word got around about this petition, and I guess it got back to Ms. McSparren. She suddenly seemed kind of afraid of me.

• 4:33Speaker 01

  And she backed off in her criticism. And I kept my head low. And when I walked out of that classroom on the last day in June, I knew that I would never again have to take Home Ec. Well, the summer passed and September came again, and now I'm walking down the same hall as a sophomore when I see my teacher, Mrs. Klaus, the civics teacher from the previous year, and she motions for me to come over, and I think she's just going to ask about how my summer was. But instead, she tells me that the Home Ec requirement for the incoming class of ninth grade girls has been dropped.

• 5:17Speaker 01

  Now, she doesn't say anything about my petition, but really, as I'm starting to absorb this, my first thought is, well, that's not fair. We had to take that class. But then it starts to sink in, and the words I'd written in the petition, "we," the girls of ninth grade, well, honestly, when I wrote them, I was just trying to get out of Home Ec. And the last thing on my mind was this class of girls coming along the next year.

• 6:00Speaker 01

  But it turned out it wasn't all about me, because these new ninth grade girls, well, they can still take Home Ec if they wanted to, but they didn't have to take it anymore. Thank you.

• 6:28Speaker 00

  That was Suzanne Ketchum Adams. Suzanne loves reading, hearing, telling and writing stories. She takes a special pride in coaching others to tell their own stories with passion. Suzanne lives in Massachusetts with her family and is currently at work on a novel. Oh, and way to go Suzanne. Learning how to use your voice is everything. Back when I was a teenager, I didn't have home ec. in school, but I did have a mom at home who liked to cook. She showed me how to clean shrimp, prepare artichokes, and my favorite, how to sweat sliced eggplant or make them cry, as she called it. Learning how to cook for yourself is an important skill. You know what else is an important skill? Knowing how to tell your story. If you're a high schooler that loves to stand up for themselves, or if you have one

• 7:13Speaker 00

  in your life, The Moth's education program has a ton of programs and guidance that help young people tell their own story, whether that's up on stage, in their college application essay, or just with their friends. To find out more, go to themoth.org/edu. Up next, some sibling drama. We'll be right back.

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• 9:32Speaker 00

  Welcome back. Up next, we'll hear about the ways a kid tried to get out of something they couldn't stand. Jeff Rose told this at a New York City Story Slam, where the theme of the night was temptation. Here's Jeff, live at the Moth.

• 9:47Speaker 04

  I always hated, I always hated going to church. Even before I could remember, I hated going to church. Because I've been told that when I was about three and a half or four years old, I stood up on the pew in the middle of the sermon, and in a little, small, but confident voice announced, "This is taking too long. I'm leaving."

• 10:14Speaker 04

  I was just saying what everyone was thinking, honestly. So by the time that I was eight, I knew, I knew how much I hated going to church. And my family always went to church. We never, ever didn't go to church, so this was unavoidable for me. And what I really hated the most about this was that they would demean me. They would dress me up in this little pinstriped suit, this little blue pinstriped suit with a little clip-on tie. And if you see little boys in Brooklyn on a Sunday, dressed up in suits, they all look like, you know, like, they can't wait to take it off. They cannot wait to take the suit off. And, you know, I mean, it's completely a demeaning thing.

• 10:57Speaker 04

  Adults come by, they say, "Oh, you look so grown up and handsome. It's so ridiculous." But... So, when I was eight, for Easter, I was left in the care of my grandma with my two sisters. And my two sisters and me just fought all the time then. My older sister was four years older and she was 12. And her name was Laura. And she was really over having a little brother. And our relationship was mostly sitting in the back of the car and elbowing each other and yelling. And then my, my younger sister, Margaret, sat in the front and she was four. And my grandma would yell at us for fighting with each other and go, "Shut up, kid, shut up." And then Margaret up front would go, "I'm being good, aren't I, grandma?"

• 11:41Speaker 04

  Which, which was the one thing that me and Laura were bonding over at the time. It was unacceptable.

• 11:48Speaker 04

  So, it came on Easter Sunday. I got up, I put, put on my, my little suit and sat there and waited, because I wanted church to be over so I could get candy. And, um, in the meantime, my parents had sent along two little dresses for my sisters. And my grandma was working on them and working on them and working on their hair. And my grandma said to me, "Jeff, why don't you go outside and water the garden, but promise me that you will not get your suit wet and muddy." And I don't know why she did this. Maybe I just looked so grown up and handsome that she believed it. But I went out to water the garden and, and I was a pretty good kid, so, you know, I was trying. I had the, the hose out away from me and, and I was playing with it, because we didn't have a nozzle.

• 12:33Speaker 04

  So, so we just, I was using the thumb and kind of like working it, making it spray more or less. And kind of like, I kind of got into it a little bit and kind of forgot where I was and forgot about the fact I was in a suit and kind of not wanting to be there. And then suddenly, off to the side on the garden path, I heard a little voice. And it said, "Jeff, hurry up, we're gonna be late to church." And I looked over, without holding the hose. And there was my four-year-old sister, Margaret. And she was about three and a half foot tall at the time. And she was wearing this little pink outfit that had little frilly, you know,

• 13:15Speaker 04

  just kind of knock-kneed with the, the little frilly skirt coming out. And then I, I looked back at, at my hose.

• 13:25Speaker 04

  And then I, and then I looked back at her and she had like little, little shoes with the little ribbons on them. And, and, and her hair was all up and curled with, with the ribbons in it. And her face was red. She, she looked like a little, a little magnolia blossom, basically. And I, I looked back at the hose again. And in that, you know, they, they say that professional athletes actually have this thing that they go into called the zone. Yeah. I don't, I don't, I don't really know. I, I didn't play sports or anything in high school. But, but you know, you, you envision something that's gonna happen and then you do it perfectly.

• 14:13Speaker 04

  I kinda wish she was here and the theme was gloating, actually. But, um, so, um, I just, I turned it on her and it was wonderful. She, she was, I think, I think she was too young to really know guile or hatred. So, so she just took it flat-footed.

• 14:38Speaker 04

  She didn't, she didn't even close her mouth. Her mouth stayed. And I, I just started at the top and just, you know, used my thumb so it sprayed a little harder and then just hosed her all the way down and her whole outfit just lost all its volume.

• 15:00Speaker 04

  She was like a, a little dog, you know, that just gets... And, and, you know, my, my, my grandmother, my grandmother, um, took a yardstick down off of the, the, the top of a, and she, she proceeded to break it on me. And, and, and my, and my older sister, um, you know, she remembers that it actually stung me and then I was sad. But, um, the way that I remember is that I was particularly happy to get to show up, Margaret. And I was also happy because I got to get out of my suit. But mostly, I was happy about the fact that we didn't have to go to church.

• 15:54Speaker 00

  That was Jeff Rose. Jeff is a New York City-based writer, performer, and web consultant. He served as digital producer of Art, Humanity, and Action, a short podcast series that encourages everyday people to get involved through real stories about grassroots action. That's it for this episode. From all of us here at The Moth, we hope you stand up for yourself in home ec. class or beyond.

• 16:17Speaker 05

  Suzanne Rust is The Moth's senior curatorial producer and one of the hosts of The Moth Radio Hour. In addition to finding new voices and fresh stories for The Moth's stage, Suzanne creates playlists and helps curate special storytelling events. This episode of The Moth Podcast was produced by Sarah Austin Jenness, Sarah Jane Johnson, and me, Marc Sollinger. The rest of The Moth's leadership team includes Sarah Haberman, Christina Norman, Jennifer Hickson, Kate Tellers, Marina Kluchay, Suzanne Rust, Leigh Anne Gully, and Patricia Orenya. The Moth Podcast is presented by Odyssey. Special thanks to their executive producer, Leah Reese Dennis. 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

• 17:02Speaker 05

  our website, themoth.org.