This Should Be A Movie: The Moth Podcast

We're almost at the Oscars, and to celebrate, we have two stories that feel especially cinematic. This episode was hosted by Jodi Powell. Storytellers: Jitesh Jaggi discovers why his father never taught him to drive. Nick Vega’s fake ID business hits an unexpected snag.

• 0:16Speaker 00

  Fade In, a recording studio in New York. It's small but cozy, with sound dampening mats on the wall and two mics on either side of the table. One of the mics is unused, but in front of the other mic sits our protagonist. Close up, the face of Jodie Powell, younger, 30s. Her expression is one of excitement. She's ready to share stories, ready to welcome listeners to The Moth Podcast. Welcome to The Moth, I'm Jodie Powell. There are moments in our lives that feel especially cinematic. Maybe it's not when you're recording a podcast, but maybe it's your first kiss with a longtime crush. Your belly in knots and you can almost hear the music swell.

• 0:58Speaker 00

  Or at a trap meet, when you're in second place and you're right about to catch up to the frontrunner and you feel just like Rocky Balboa. Or maybe it's just a golden hour view of the Montana countryside that looks exactly like a moment from a Terrence Malick film. Or Summer in Harlem, painted by Spike Lee. Dominoes, fire hydrants, and Al Green's love and happiness on the score. On this episode, to celebrate the Oscars, we've got two stories that feel especially cinematic. One that's more independent coming of age, the other, a bit Judd Apatow. First up is Jitesh Jaggi, who told this story at a Chicago Grand Slam, where the theme was Deal Breakers. Here's Jitesh, live at The Moth.

• 1:41Speaker 01

  I had made it to the last round of the interview, when I almost got rejected. "Do you have a driver's license?" they asked. "We can't give you the job without one." They didn't mention if they were also offering to buy me a car. But I didn't say that. Instead, I said, "I'm on it." And that is how I found myself among teenagers, also taking the driving test. Learning driving as an adult was harder than I thought, especially as an immigrant. I was used to seeing cars drive on the other side of the road. That's like learning how to write for the first time, but you can only grab the pen

• 2:26Speaker 01

  with your feet.

• 2:29Speaker 01

  So I get an instructor and we practice in the parking lot of a Jules. On more than one occasion, he had to use the passenger side brake to stop me from going inside the store.

• 2:42Speaker 01

  Somehow, he convinced me that I was ready to take the test, so I go to the DMV. Now, the DMV is a unique place.

• 2:52Speaker 01

  In that, neither the people receiving the service nor the people providing the service want to be there.

• 3:02Speaker 01

  The person who was going to test me acted like I had dragged him out against his will and bound him to the passenger seat. He was pissed at me already and I'm like, "I haven't even started the car."

• 3:15Speaker 01

  The result: fail, fail, fail.

• 3:20Speaker 01

  No, literally, thrice.

• 3:26Speaker 01

  At that point, I had to accept that maybe it's not just the DMV. Maybe I'm a bad driver.

• 3:35Speaker 01

  "How come you're 30 and still don't know how to drive?" my instructor asked me, and I give him every excuse. "Oh, where I come from in India, there's so much traffic and we have cheap rickshaws." And then he asks, "Your dad never taught you how to drive."

• 3:52Speaker 01

  My dad gave me pause.

• 3:56Speaker 01

  As he steered me away from the store entrance again.

• 4:02Speaker 01

  I had still not gotten over the hurt from 10 years ago when I asked my dad if he would please teach me how to drive and he said, "No, you don't need to learn how to drive."

• 4:14Speaker 01

  I was too stunned in that moment to say anything and then I never brought it up again.

• 4:21Speaker 01

  What I didn't tell the instructor was my father's profession.

• 4:27Speaker 01

  He was a taxi driver.

• 4:31Speaker 01

  For twenty years. Then a car mechanic for twenty. His job was to make sure people can drive. And I can barely tell the gas pedal from the brakes.

• 4:43Speaker 01

  So that night, I call him, my father, and I never confront him. And I told him how hurt I was. And look how laughable it is to be a cab driver's son and not know how to drive. But it wasn't about the driving. I told him, "You infantilized me, Dad.

• 5:00Speaker 01

  You made me feel like a child, and part of me still feels that way. Like I can't have a grown-up job and drive to it myself like a grown man."

• 5:12Speaker 01

  He listened.

• 5:15Speaker 01

  And then he said, "What did your uncle do?"

• 5:20Speaker 01

  And I said, "He was a car mechanic." So, "What did your other uncle do?" I said, "He was a car mechanic." So, "What did your grandpa do?" I said, "He was a cab driver." He said, "You see, generations of our people have worked menial, manual jobs for cash tips." It felt like we were under a curse to work with our hands under the sun, and we just wanted somebody, an eldest son at least, to work in one of those air-conditioned offices. I did not teach you because I was so afraid if you would start to consider driving for your work. I simply couldn't bring myself to teach you what was following us like a curse for generations.

• 6:04Speaker 01

  I wanted a better life for you than men before you.

• 6:18Speaker 01

  A week later, I go back to the DMV.

• 6:23Speaker 01

  And this time to my car, they send Fred, this loving embodiment of the Midwest.

• 6:32Speaker 01

  He's so sweet.

• 6:36Speaker 01

  He's giving me tips on how to find parking when I will have my license, and I haven't even started the car yet. We take a lap, and I drive us back to the DMV. And he steps outside, and he comes back with my first-ever driver's license.

• 6:56Speaker 01

  And I look at it and I say, "Thank you, Dad, Fred."

• 7:03Speaker 01

  Now, eventually, I did get that job and I did work in a lot of air-conditioned offices, but these hands,

• 7:12Speaker 01

  they love labor.

• 7:16Speaker 01

  It's in my genes.

• 7:19Speaker 01

  And I drove myself here tonight.

• 7:23Speaker 01

  And I drove wonderfully.

• 7:37Speaker 00

  That was Jitesh Jaggi. Jitesh is an immigrant writer and poet from India, currently living in Chicago. As an educator, Jitesh loves teaching the joys of storytelling and giving keynotes on the power of the personal story. We'll have links to where to find him on our website, themoth.org. He tells us that his dad is now retired and only drives for leisure. There's a few moments of my life that feel like a movie.

• 8:07Speaker 00

  It's the summer holidays in Jamaica and I'm making my way from my grandmother's house, goodies tied up in a bag and a cool drink to keep my company. I stop by my aunt's house and my aunt announces that she and her family are going to the big fair. We have never been at this point and my family, we don't really have the extra money. But I perk up and I ask my aunt, "Hey, do you think we could go?" And she says, "Yes." And I sprint uphill to my house. I go through tiny pathways and I don't stop to take a very necessary breath. And I burst into my house and I announced it to my mother and my sister. And my sister and I, we squeal and we run laps around the house and we're just giddy in delight and we're like, "Oh, we finally get to go." And we quickly start to get dressed.

• 8:51Speaker 00

  And we put on our clothes, humble clothes, our matching jeans shorts and t-shirt with, like, cartoon characters on it. And my mother sits us down to make her hair and she combs it and plats the end and put beads on it. All over the best way we can, put on our Sunday best. And we sit on the veranda and we're just jittery with anxiety. And we hear our aunt's car approaching. But instead of stopping, my aunt rolls right by. She doesn't stop. She doesn't pick us up. And my sister and I, I honestly think we maybe cried for days. All our lives, all we wanted to do as kids was go to this fair. And I have to tell you that I'm sure my aunt doesn't even remember this story. Honestly, I think she probably forgot she even told me that we could join.

• 9:37Speaker 00

  But every time I tell it, I cry a little, even now, years later. Because I go right back there. The wound is gone, but the taste of it still feels so real. That moment became a scene in the movie of my life. One of the quiet ones. The kind that stays. Sad, tender, a little humiliating, and somehow full of love. At the Moth, we believe we all have those moments. The ones that mark us. Even if no one else remembers them happening. After the break, another story of a moment that feels like a movie. Back in a bit.

• 10:18Speaker 00

  Welcome back. Our next story is from Nick Vega, who told this at a Seattle Story Slam, where the theme was business. Here's Nick, live at the Moth.

• 10:29Speaker 02

  If you're gonna produce fake IDs for most of your senior class, you should probably anticipate someone doing something stupid to get you caught. And you shouldn't be all that surprised if that someone ends up being you. You should only hope that the stupid thing that you do isn't lock the keys to your dad's car inside while you're at a nightclub in Sayerville, New Jersey called Hunka Bunka. That's what happened to me. But first, the IDs. Up until a couple of years ago, New York State driver's licenses were not like most states are today, which are glossy and smooth. Ours were really flimsy and grainy and matted. So if you had black, white, and red colored pencils, a can of hairspray, and a steady hand, you could alter your date of birth. I had all three of these things, so I had a small business on my hands. I started out by doing it for me and my friends. And it was

• 11:13Speaker 02

  It was really easy for me. We were all born in 1983, so all I had to do was change the three into a zero and eighty-three became eighty. And on our eighteenth birthdays, we were all twenty-one. Same photo, good to go, go to bars, have fun. I could even change an eighty-one or an eighty-two into a seventy-eight or seventy-nine, but I charged more for that because it wasn't as easy. And so, we called this method chalking, and I called myself the chalk king. And I really, I really wish I made that part up, but I did. I charged ten bucks if I had to change one digit and twenty bucks if I had to change two. And as word started spreading throughout the school that these were working and we were going into bars, more and more people started handing me their IDs. Before long, every single day, I was going home with a pocketful of some people's driver's licenses.

• 11:56Speaker 02

  And it was really fun. I was getting known, and I had no idea whose IDs I was chalking, but I was making more money than I was working at the YMCA, so I was happy. My only real rule was, don't take them into New Jersey. It's a whole nother beast. Getting into bars on Staten Island and Brooklyn was easy, mostly because it was kind of lenient. As long as you had something that looked like anything, they would really just kind of let you in. But New Jersey, they really, like, they were looking for fake IDs. They had black lights, they had sandpaper, they had nail polish remover. And they also had a real disdain for New Yorkers. They hated us coming down to their bars, see Jersey Shore for reasons why.

• 12:31Speaker 02

  Until, of course, one day, I broke my own rule because a girl I had a crush on said that her and her friends were gonna go check out Hunka Bunka in Sayerville. And I said, "Oh, the ID will work, and I'll come with you." So I grabbed my two friends, Paul and Anthony. I borrowed my dad's Ford Tempo, and we drove to New Jersey. I was really excited to go see this girl. I even went to the store in the Staten Island Mall called Trends and bought a powder blue club shirt. I had never been to a club before, and I thought this was what you're supposed to wear. Of course, she didn't show up. Her and her friends decided to do something else that day. We tried to make the most of it, so we just went into the club anyway, until we realized that,

• 13:11Speaker 02

  even though our IDs said that we were twenty-one, inside this nightclub, we really did just look and feel like stupid teenagers. And so, we decided to just leave. And so, it was about midnight when we walked out. I realized that I had locked the keys to my dad's car inside.

• 13:27Speaker 02

  It was 2001, we didn't have cell phones. I didn't have enough money to call like a tow truck or like a roadside assistance. And I certainly couldn't call my dad because I had broken his number one rule of don't drive into New Jersey borrowing his car. So I went inside and I talked to the bouncer and I said, hey, do you have like a slim jim or a coat hanger or something to help me get my car door open? And so he said, you're gonna have to wait until after the club closes. Now, the club closes at two, bouncer would be off work at three. My dad wakes up for work at 3:30 to go sanitation. This was not gonna happen, this was not gonna work out. So I did the only thing I thought to do, since this was a nightclub in Sayerville. Every 20 or 30 minutes, a patrol car would roam around the parking lot just making sure no one was up to any like dirty business.

• 14:11Speaker 02

  And so I flagged the cop down and I asked him, hey, we're locked out of my car, can you help us in? And he said, sure. And he was eyeing us the whole time. And he opened, he popped the car door open in about 10 seconds. And then he just stood between me and this open door and he goes, were you just inside there? He goes, and I said, no. And he goes, don't lie to me, I saw that powder blue shirt going in about an hour ago.

• 14:35Speaker 02

  And so he goes, there's no way you boys are 21. He goes, let me see your license. And I reluctantly handed it to him. And he didn't say anything, he just reared back and hocked a loogie right on my license. And then he used his gloved hand and his uniform and he rubbed it and rubbed it and rubbed it. And the next words out of his mouth were, oh, there you are. And so he goes, you boys got those too, let me see them. So my friend Anthony and Paul handed them to him. And he goes, these are really good, who makes these? I thought it would be obvious, don't say anything, but impulsively, I guess when you're asked a question that you know the answer to, my friend Paul just without hesitation said, he does.

• 15:13Speaker 02

  He makes them.

• 15:16Speaker 02

  And so, he goes, "All right." He goes, "Where do you boys live?" And we're like, you know, he looked at the ID. We're like, "We live on Staten Island." And he goes, "Where do you go to high school?" Here, I was about to say a different school than where we went to, but impulsively, when asked a question that he knew the answer to, my friend Paul chimed in, "We go to Tottenville." And I'm just standing there, you know, in disbelief. So, he gives us a huge grin, and he's threatening to take us to a holding cell and make our parents come pick us up. He's threatening to, you know, charge us with all these things. I beg and I plead, and finally, he lets me go. And he says, "Don't ever come back here. Don't ever try this again. Go to school on Monday." And we're in our sixth-period math class, and my teacher, Mr. Asher,

• 16:00Speaker 02

  who's a big guy who's actually a bouncer himself on the side, he tells us all to take out our driver's licenses, which we all do. And he circles the room with his little hole puncher, punching a hole into the corner of all of our licenses that, instead of 1983, say 1980. And he gets to me, and he puts one right in the middle of my forehead. And he goes, "See me after school." The photo of the forehead, not my actual forehead. So, after class, I go and I talk to him, and he goes, "I heard you met my brother on Saturday." And I was, and I said, "Yeah." I said, "He was really nice to let me go." And he said, "Yeah, don't pull that shit again."

• 16:43Speaker 02

  And he goes, "Oh, and he probably would have let you go, but he said that powder blue shirt gave you away." There is no way, there is no way that someone that wore that shirt was in their 20s. Good to know. For all of my friends that had holes punched in their licenses, the fee to get a new license issued in New York was $6, so I did the noble thing. I kept my $4 profit, and I paid for their, I paid for all of their licenses to be replaced, and I re-choked them off of free. Thank you.

• 17:19Speaker 00

  That was Nick Vega. Nick is a Seattle-based writer, storyteller, and quiz master from New York City. He is the co-founder of Bar Stories Live on Stage. His work blends sharp wit, hustle, and emotional honesty usually learned the hard way. Wow, I can't believe the podcast is almost over. You know, as I stand here in the recording studio, I have so many people I want to thank for this opportunity. I've dreamed about hosting a podcast since I was a little girl, and I've got to say thank you to all our Moth listeners, Moth storytellers, our funders, my grandmother, my aunt featured in the story, my sister, my dear, dear, dear mother, my next-door neighbor, my pastor, and my English teacher who always

• 18:06Speaker 00

  You know, it's an Oscars episode. We had to do a little bit of an Oscars speech. Genuinely, though, thank you for listening. From all of us at The Moth, we hope your life feels cinematic in the warm, beautiful, worth-remembering and sharing type of way.

• 18:27Speaker 03

  Jodi Powell is a director and educator at The Moth who enjoys listening to and seeking stories from beyond the main corridors. Originally from Jamaica, she currently lives in Harlem. Jitesh Jaggi's story was coached by Larry Rosen. 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 Gina Duncan, Christina Norman, Marina Kluch, Jennifer Hickson, Jordan Cardinalle, Caledonia Cairns, Kate Tellers, Suzanne Rust, and Patricia Uranya. The Moth podcast is presented by Odyssey. Special thanks to their executive producer, Leah Reese Dennis. All Moth stories are true, as remembered by

• 19:10Speaker 03

  their storytellers. For more about our podcast, information on pitching your own story, and everything else, go to our website, themoth.org.