This American Life
Hosted by Ira Glass
People discovering information about their own lives that they did not know and suddenly everything looks very different.
10,244 words · 11 speakers
Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
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Back when Pete was 18 years old, it was the summer before he went away to college. He's home, in the living room with his dad.
And he turns to me and he says, "Peter, let's go for a drive." And that was not something that he ever said. That's not something that we did.
So Pete knows something's up, but he has no idea what. They go outside, get in the Volvo. Pete asks his dad.
"Shouldn't we get Will, my younger brother? Because he was at home. He was probably 13 or 14. And my dad just shook his head, no.
This drive for Pete, alone with his dad, turned out to be kind of a big moment in his life. Before the drive, if you had to describe his family, it wasn't hard. He could do it in two words.
Completely mundane. I mean, we lived outside of DC. My parents worked for the government. I mean, they were good parents. They were kind and attentive. And we would have dinner every night. My dad would cook dinner.
Good cook?
Oh, incredible cook.
The way Pete remembers it, he did salmon Sundays, made a great pot roast, had a pizza they'd make on Fridays. His mom was the one who'd make sure they did their homework and cleaned their rooms. She was direct and more talkative than their dad. I was really quiet.
They were not gregarious. They didn't really have friends. They didn't really have hobbies.
Okay, and so now he is in the car with his dad. Just the two of them, dad pulls out of the driveway.
So we start driving through our neighborhood and we get to the stoplight at the end of our neighborhood. And he says to me, Peter, it's time to tell you about the family business. Espionage.
I mean, my first reaction was like, what, what, what, what are you doing right now? What kind of joke is this?
And then the next thing that he said is, open the glove box.
And so I opened the glove box and inside was a sheet of paper. And he said, take out that sheet of paper. And so I took it out and I'm scanning the page and it's his resume from the CIA.
Did you know he worked for the CIA?
No.
Where'd you think he worked?
Well, he said he worked at the State Department.
But now, on the sheet of paper, listed all the different countries that Pete had lived with his parents, Germany and the Netherlands and Jamaica, countries where Pete had always thought that his dad was going off to an embassy or consulate every day to work for the State Department.
And I'm seeing like, counterintelligence and counterinsurgency and deputy chief, chief of station, case officer. I didn't know what to ask next. And I, and I honestly don't know that we talked very much at all. So we actually drove in a big loop and drove back down into the driveway. And I was like, oh, wait, does, like, does mom know about this? And my dad goes, oh, um, she works there too.
This stunned him. His daddy could kind of see. His daddy was quiet, like somebody who keeps secrets.
But with my mom, it was completely out of... It was just a complete surprise because of how she was.
What do you mean?
She just was somebody who... It just seemed like you were getting exactly what you got.
Mm-hmm.
She just didn't really seem like somebody who could deceive. But I guess she was.
And were they the kind of CIA employees who, you know, analyze data and sit at a desk, work a desk? Or were they like out in the field, you know, like spying, like pretending to be people who they aren't, you know, like carrying a gun? Were they that kind of CIA?
They were out in the field, yeah. They were undercover. They had passports with other names. And the way it was described to me is that they were not spies. They were recruiting spies from other countries. And in doing so, they were, you know, pretending to be people who they were not.
Pete says before this, he just hadn't really thought much about his parents and their lives and their jobs. He was a kid. He once asked his mom, like, "What do you actually do at your government job all day long?"
And I think my mom said something like, "Oh, you know, it's just meetings and memos." And I was like, "Yeah, I figured. Just boring stuff."
Yeah. Which I have to say, I bet there were meetings and memos. So it's like, that isn't 100% lie. It's just leaving some stuff out.
Yeah. No, definitely using boringness as a kind of deception.
In retrospect, Pete says, there were clues that he could have maybe picked up on. His mom spoke several languages. The family lived most of his life in other countries. His dad owned a 9mm pistol. He was always up at 4:00 in the morning to go running on a track. It was the fact that his parents didn't have friends and never had anybody over to the house, which of course doesn't mean that you're a spy, but still.
Yeah, it actually wasn't until a lot later that I realized that a lot of adults do have friends and still hang out. And there were things like when I would go to the mall with my mom,
she always made sure we knew a code word. And she would say like, okay, so if mommy's ever not here
and somebody comes to pick you up, make sure they know the code word. And the code word was always Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.
Wait, anytime you would go to the mall? Your mom would remind you of this?
Yeah, we'd be in the backseat and she'd be like, okay, boys, what's the code word? And we'd say Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.
At the time, he says, he chalked it up to 1990's stranger danger stuff. But later he learned that other parents do not do this. Pete told me there was one more clue about his parents' jobs. A clue that was sitting right there during the years that moved back to Virginia.
Maybe the biggest clue of all is that we lived right across the street from the CIA headquarters.
Wait, what?
Yeah. That makes a lot of sense because my dad was super pragmatic and he hated traffic.
To be clear, they weren't literally across the street, but in a neighborhood, right across the street. Door to door, less than five minutes. Pete's parents are both dead now. They both retired from the CIA after long careers, which is why it's okay to talk about it here on the radio, by the way. But when Pete learned about this, it really did make their lives seem so much more impressive.
Like they met in the CIA, you know, fell in love in the CIA. They were globe trotting and bringing their kids around and doing god knows what.
I'm not exactly sure like how to ask this question, just so I'm just going to ask this straight out. Like, the one thing that I know about spies from movies is that they're all really, really hot. Were your parents really hot?
I mean, yeah, they were, they were hot. Yeah, they were hot. They were, they were very attractive people. My mom was like, like, I have these old pictures of her and she's just beautiful.
And your dad?
Yeah, handsome guy.
There's this concept that originally was in video games and then it spread to TV shows and to social media where, okay, say in a video game, there's the universe that everything takes place in, right? And then at some point, the game creators do a new lore drop where they give backstory or reveal important details that suddenly make everything seem different and richer and more complicated. She had a whole new life. Pete had that. He had a new lore drop in his actual life. He thought his parents were one thing, then went backstory that changed his whole picture of them. So what's it like to live through in real life?
Yeah, I mean, I think at first it was a shock, the fact that they were able to deceive me for my whole life. And that is just weird. It did make me look at them differently, like, wow, the rug just got pulled from under me. Everything I know is a lie. But then when that wears off, it's kind of like, well, it's still just mom and dad.
Pete says everybody goes through the thing when they grow up, where they learn to see their parents, not just as the boring human furniture around the house of their childhood. And for most of us, the new information that we absorb about our parents, it happens over years. The new lore drop version that Pete got was just kind of the accelerated program.
Yeah, I got it all in one drive.
Earlier on our show, we have other human beings who are not video game characters and are not fictional people on long-running television series who get hit with all-new information about their own lives, backstories that rewrite everything, new lore drops in real life. From WBEZ Chicago, it's This American Life. Today on the show, I will still be playing the part that I always play here, and I have not learned that I am a princess from Genovia and my grandmother is actually Julie Andrews. I am still Ira Glass. Stay with us.
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This American Life, Act One: Save the Drama for Your Grandmama. Sometimes, a lourd drop happens when you least expect it. Look at this next story. A beauty at Kornfeld explains.
When I first met Jake, it was obvious. This is a guy who is hardwired to try and connect with people. He's like this friendly bulldozer, Kool-Aid-manning his way into emotional intimacy. And Jake's always been this way, in part, perhaps, because he grew up surrounded by people. He comes from this big Irish Catholic family in Rhode Island, and he had a sort of sitcom upbringing. His aunts and uncles and cousins all lived close by. One grandma lived literally next door. The other set of grandparents lived a 15-minute walk from his house. And Jake saw them every day. It was the best. And then, when he was seven years old, his family moved to Vermont, away from his extended family.
And he hated it, really missed them. And this missing only intensified when his grandma back in Rhode Island was diagnosed with breast cancer. To little Jake, it was obvious what to do.
I just started calling her all the time. And I think because I just wanted to keep talking to her because I was so afraid she was gonna die.
Oh, my god, it's so sweet.
I know. It's funny to think back on because it was so purely intentioned, but it's also so-- the motives of it are so transparent that it must have just been like a reminder to my grandmother every day, like, this kid thinks you're gonna die because you might. You know what I mean?
Yeah.
It was kind of like, no.
She's like, OK, relax.
No, she was like, I was trying to have like one day of fucking peace. And I'm like, hi, grandma, can I talk to you again before you die?
I kind of have this memory of the calls kind of running out of steam a little bit because I was calling every single day. And I was like eight or nine. And so it's like, what do you have to talk about? And so I think I had introduced her to Harry Potter just as I had started reading it. And I think we were then like, we would read them at the same time and we would read a chapter and I'd talk on the phone the next day to we would discuss the chapter, sort of like book club with my grandma. I remember my mom always jokes like the most-- one of the most upset times she ever saw me was I caught that my grandma had read ahead. Because she accidentally said something on one of the calls that hadn't happened yet. And I was like, what are you talking about? And she was like, well, it doesn't it? And I was like, you read ahead. And she had read the whole book because she couldn't put it down because she loved it.
Right.
But I was like, never do that again. Like swear to me that you'll not-- because I loved that I had that experience with her.
This Harry Potter book club evolved into talking about other books, books they're reading separately. The way it worked, they would each read their own book and then they'd hop on the phone and summarize it for the other person, chapter by chapter.
Was part of my nightly ritual. I feel like it was like, come home, do homework, maybe have dinner, then call grandma and recap the book. Because I loved, I always loved recapping my books to her. Like, I loved having someone to tell this story to, so that it was like, I loved being able to retell it. Like, I want to tell her this story in the way it made me feel. I want to make sure I hide this suspense. I want to like, if there was a surprise in the book, I want to make sure I tell her the story of the book in a way that keeps the surprise, so that she's as surprised when I tell her as I was when I read it. And then I'd be like, OK, and what about your books? And she would tell me. And I remember kind of clocking pretty early on that she definitely didn't have that same flair for like, she just didn't. She would be like, oh, and then like, yeah, they're starting to fall in love. And I'd be like, well, how did they fall in love? Why do they like each other?
I felt very connected to her through the books and through the storytelling, because I think, you know, grandma was not, she wasn't particularly forthcoming about herself. She wasn't someone who like, would come home and like, drop her bags and be like, God, I gotta tell you about my day. Like, that was not her. And this was like, the first time that I felt like I was having a conversation with an adult who was talking to me about stuff going on in their own life, even if it was just the book they were reading.
Jake's grandma worked at Fyleen's in the shoe department. She was a real coupon hound, loved to sell. She was nice, but not exactly sweet in a grandmotherly kind of way. She was often way too honest. Like, if you said you weren't feeling good about yourself because your clothes didn't fit right, she would offer, well, you gained weight. She liked reading all kinds of books, but she especially loved thrillers. Jake remembers one of her books in particular, Smoke and Mirrors, about a librarian whose half-sister was murdered. The librarian tries to figure out who murdered her half-sister with the help of a guy who knew her. It was suspenseful. His grandma loved a mystery. The two kept this book club going for years.
Jake would pace back and forth in the hall between the dining room and living room in his house in Vermont, phone tucked under his ear, while his grandma sat nestled in her favorite armchair back in Rhode Island. The calls were long, sometimes lasting hours. Jake says his summaries were, unsurprisingly, pretty exhaustive. He didn't want to leave a single detail out. Until, when he was 12 or so, he stopped being completely honest with his grandma about what he was reading. Because he started feeling like there was something off about the books he liked. He worried they were too girly.
The ones where I was like, oh, like, these were the ones that really caused like a crisis for me. There was this series of books called Twitches, which was, which were about twin witches. And they were like, the covers were like, those old school, like, early 2000s photo shoots, where they would do like stock image photo shoots. It wasn't like an illustration. It was like a photo shoot of like two teenage girls.
Like Olsen twin style.
Totally, exactly. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It was like about these two girls who found out that they were adopted and that they were twins. They're also witches. When they meet, they develop magical powers. And I was like, well, I literally have to read these. But like, I don't want to tell my grandma that I'm reading a book about like two teenage girls that are like, have magical powers and like boys. And also, I don't want to carry this book around at school. And so I think that's when I started editing a little bit and like-
And why didn't you want your grandma to know you were reading those books?
Because I think I knew it was speaking to some. I think I was also probably starting to realize like, like, because I also was, I was a pretty effeminate child. So like, at this point, I was already getting called gay. So I think this was all kind of like interwoven.
And so, do you remember deciding, like intentionally deciding to start changing details?
I remember in Twitches, I think I changed their gender. I think I made them both boys. I think I changed their powers. I think I said that one could move things with their mind and that one was like strong.
And the details you were changing, it was to make it align with what you thought a straight boy would be reading?
I guess so. I was like, I'll change these details because they don't affect the plot.
Okay.
And I, so I was like, I'm not going to change the plot. I'm just going to change like the details around it to make it like a little bit more masculine. Like, it's going to be, instead of like being able to passively stop it through like clairvoyance and telepathy, it's like they use their like physical powers of telekinesis and strength.
And do you think you were convincing? Do you think that she thought that you were straight at the time?
Uh, no. I don't think that anyone ever thought I was straight.
Really?
No, I don't think so.
It's really sweet and really sad to imagine you like putting on this disguise by changing the details for your grandma. It's like you're wearing a fake mustache, but it's actually a skew and you have no idea. And everyone's like, that's not a real mustache.
Yeah, 100%. And like as though like if I'd been sitting here talking to you for an hour and a half and then just suddenly put the mustache on and expected you to think it was real. Like you've been talking to me without a mustache this whole time. And I also think this kind of led to the end of the book club a little bit was like when I started to be like, I don't want to read these books and have to tell my grandma. You know what I mean? Like, like also she beat the cancer. Congratulations.
Oh, so you're like, okay, it's not an emergency.
Kind of. Yeah.
It took Jake a few more years to formally come out to his family. He was 16. And he told me he thinks he remembers his grandma mentioning his coming out once and saying that she loved him. But it was such a non-issue that he can't even really remember specifics. Jake's sexuality, that is not the lore drop in this story. There was one, but it came years later when Jake was in his 30s. By then, his grandma had developed dementia and then got really sick. Jake made a point to visit her every month or two. And then, one day-
I was visiting my grandma and she was in in-home hospice and it was like kind of sad. And she was on the first floor in the the living room. And then I went up to my mom's old bedroom. And my mom's bedroom, there's this like radiator that always was just like covered in my grandma's books. And I like remember being in, I went, I think I probably went up to the room to kind of like take a breather or something. And I remember like seeing the books on the windowsill and on the radiator.
He saw titles he remembered from when he was a kid, the books she'd recapped for him.
And I remember I picked up one of the books and thumbed through it and found a sex scene. And I was like, was she reading? They're romance novels. Like, these were sexy books. And so I like picked them up and I started like flipping through them. And I just remember it being like graphic in the way that it like described genitals. Like it was like, it wasn't just like, and then we went to the bedroom. It was like, like, you know what I mean? It was like that sort. And I was like, oh, oh, okay. I was like, are those all smut?
Yes. Jake's grandma was an avid reader of smut. Jake sat there laughing out loud to himself as he started Googling his grandma's favorite authors. Jane Anne Krentz, who wrote the book Grand Passion, in which protagonist Max Fortune heads to a B and B in search of his hidden inheritance, only to find himself irresistibly compelled by the attractive innkeeper, Cleopatra. J D Robb, she wrote the book Naked and Death, where a woman somehow works through her past trauma by sleeping with a hot and mysterious Irish businessman. And another one from Jane Anne Krentz that Jake remembered his grandma recapping to him. Smoke and Mirrors, the one about the librarian traveling around,
trying to solve her half-sister's murder with the help of a guy she meets along the way. That was the way Jake remembered it, anyway. But now, reading the book.
The whole book is just her wanting to have sex with this man. That's the entire book. The murder is almost never mentioned. They're just walking around this town, trying to find out if the murder. The entire time, she's just like, this man is so hot. She literally had to make up so much plot. Like, this is so central to the plot. Like, I remember thinking, like, damn, grandma doesn't give that much of a shit about the narrative. And I'm like, no, grandma was making up a narrative because like half of the plot was about these people having sex. So you want me to read this passage?
Okay. In this part of the book, they just tried to break into a house to like look for clues. And like an unseen person like chased them out of the house. And they like had to run away. And now they've like, they're back at his place and they're like, safe. Okay.
Thomas shrugged out of his jacket and came to stand behind her. Their eyes met in the mirror. Unlike her, he looked terrific, she thought. Hard, tough, and totally in control. She had to fight an irresistible urge to turn and put her head into his chest. His hands closed over her shoulders. Take it easy. You're just feeling the aftershock of the adrenaline. It'll fade. I know. The weight of his hands was not having the calming, soothing effect he probably intended. She suddenly wanted to do a lot more than just put her head down on his shoulder. She looked at his mouth in the mirror and wondered, what would it be like to kiss him?
Wondered how his mouth would feel on other parts of her body.
Let's stop there because we can't conjure an image on the radio. You guys were doing the same thing.
We were doing the same thing.
What went through your head when you realized that?
It really tickled me. Like, I was like, because I remembered that feeling of being so afraid towards the end of the time when we were calling each other that I would like out myself or just feeling, once I became like a sexual person myself, like a pubescent myself, those conversations about like those books being like, ah, like, don't see me.
And realizing she probably felt a version of that the whole time.
Totally.
Or was just having to constantly think about like, okay, don't talk about when they had sex in the kitchen, but what happened in the plot line? Like, I don't know, it makes me feel closer to her that we were like doing this song and dance.
I love the idea that you and your grandma were lying to one another three times a week in the name of bonding.
Exactly. It's like, lie almost feels like too harsh of a word. Do you know what I mean?
It's just like two people translating what they're, what's going on in their lives for the other person, you know?
Right, it's a version of what we all do all the time.
100%. You know, like when we talk to like our parents about like our relationship, you might not be like, well, I think I might break up with them because the sex not great. Like, you, you might, I'm just not feeling it, you know what I mean? We do these edits all the time.
Yeah, like, yeah, we were fading and then we made up.
Exactly.
Jake's grandma died this past June. She was 84. Jake and his grandma and their book club, it was never really about the books, obviously. The point was to spend time with one another, to feel close. And it worked. It worked so well that Jake still gets to spend time with her, even now, even in some very unexpected moments.
I've been watching Heated Rivalry, which is like this HBO Max show that's based on a romance novel, but it's a gay romance novel. It's about hockey players. And I'm like, loving it. It's like my favorite show right now. And I'm kind of like laughing to myself as I watch it because I'm like, I come from a line of people who enjoy this. Like, this is like, you know, it's like-
I'm continuing my family tradition.
Not that I'm thinking, let's be clear to the listener. I'm not thinking about my grandma necessarily when I'm watching a lot of those scenes, but like, when I think about it now, I'm like, there is something kind of like nice about that, I guess. Like, I found my version of it that I enjoy. There was a period of time in my life where I was like terrified of my grandma knowing I was gay. And now I'm like watching Gays Not on HBO and I'm like, the gene that makes me like this comes from her.
Sometimes the new lore drop isn't some big revelation. Sometimes it's just a funny little detail. You get to enjoy it and carry on with your day.
Aviva DeKornfeld is one of the producers of our show. Jake is a comedian. He told a version of this story on stage, which is where we first heard about it. His work and his tour dates are on Instagram, @JakeWCornell. Coming up, one more reason to hate Mark Zuckerberg. This one, I bet you did not see coming. That's in a minute from Chicago Public Radio, when our program continues.
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This American Life. I'm Ira Glass. Today's show, new lore drop. Stories of people discovering information about their own lives that they did not know. Information that makes them see things very differently. Okay, so just a quick reminder as the show continues, if we get separated and you can't find me and somebody comes to get you, let's just review. What's the code word?
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.
That's right. Don't forget it. We've arrived at Act Two of our program. Act Two, Bully Pupit. So reporter Ben Austin had a kind of lore drop happen to him recently. And it was not the clarifying kind of lore drop, where everything suddenly makes sense. The world seems clearer. It was kind of the opposite. Ben says the whole thing started over Facebook. Ben is one of those people who hates Facebook. He hates, but also keeps looking at. Maybe he's not the only person who ever does that. Ben had this rule. He would accept friend requests, but he'd never make them.
Then, one day, he sees a post that his sixth grade teacher had died. This was a teacher he loved and everybody loved. And all of his old classmates were sharing memories.
I was sitting there and I was like, man, these are my friends, you know, that I grew up with. And so I started friending them. I like broke my rule. And there was like this kid Chaka that I hung out with and this girl Alana and Malcolm Speller. I just started friending all of them. And then there was this one other kid. His name was Eddie. And I paused.
Should he reach out to Eddie? He got into school with Eddie from like, since they were first learning to walk. Initially, this Jewish day school on the south side of Chicago.
We both transferred to this public school in sixth grade. And I remember hearing that his mom told like, the office lady at the Jewish day school, who told my mom that the reason Eddie transferred schools followed him to the public school, i.e. Ben Austin, meaning me, I was the reason he transferred.
You're the reason he transferred to public school? And then you turned out to go to the same public school?
Yeah. So I was like, oh, he probably doesn't want to hear from me.
But on the other hand, decades have passed, right? They were adults now. They both had kids. This guy Eddie had actually become a rabbi. An adult Ben didn't want adult Eddie to somehow see that he'd friended everybody else and then not him and then be hurt by that. So he sends the friend request very quickly. He gets a message back.
And there seemed to be like, a 2,000-word essay that he wrote me in response.
Let me ask you to read a little bit of that.
Okay. "Before I broadcast to the world via my 2,100 Facebook friends that you and I are friends, I need to get something off my chest. This may sound petty, but when we were boys at Akiva Schechter, I felt insecure in your presence. From nursery school through fifth grade, I recall feeling verbally and at times physically threatened by you." I'm not going to go into specific incidents, and I don't think it matters. What matters is how I felt. I'm sad to say it, but when I teach my own children and students in my synagogue about bullying, the image in the deepest recesses of my mind is a memory of feeling threatened by you.
And then he goes on in his message to you to say, you know, we were kids. I realized, you know, it wasn't your fault. You were a kid. And then he says, but even as we got older, I have still carried with me all those years the burden of that experience. And then let me ask you to read how he ends this message to you.
All right. Oof. I need to release myself from the burden that has plagued me for so long. I am sorry for throwing all this at you over an innocent friend request. I apologize for holding back all these years and not trying harder to bring about healing in our relationship sooner. If you are willing to acknowledge the hurt and the insecurity that I felt in your presence when we were boys more than 30 years ago, then I not only will forgive you, I will be happy to be your friend in all senses of the term. Best regards, Eddie.
What did you think when you got that?
Boy. Like, honestly, I was like, fuck Facebook. But I also thought.
Wait, you're blaming Facebook for this?
Yeah, I was like, why did I? Why was I on that? I was like, why did I? Why did I participate? It was like, I knew it. I knew it.
I mean, to be honest, like, the biggest thing I felt was, like, I just, I couldn't think of something that I did to him. I don't, I don't have any recollection of a single incident of harming him or saying something cruel to him. And at the same time, I'm thinking like, that doesn't, that doesn't mean it didn't happen. I'm also thinking like, maybe I actually just don't, I just wasn't aware of it, or I didn't recollect it. So all those things are swirling through my head.
Before this, Ben had never thought of himself as a bully. He says, yeah, as a kid, he was unruly. He spent a lot of time in the principal's office, but generally fun-loving. Nothing like what Eddie was describing. Still, Ben figures he'll apologize, even though he doesn't remember doing anything. And so then what he ends up writing is this kind of carefully worded, non-apology apology.
Okay? He writes that he's deeply embarrassed. He's sorry he made Eddie feel this way. And then, he can't resist. He goes on to tell this story. It's a memory he had from when they were little kids together. Their teacher had taken the class out to a park across from the school, sitting in a circle, playing duck, duck, goose. And this dog runs over, off-leash, golden retriever mutt. Maybe it was a puppy, Ben thinks.
You know, the most unintimidating dog you could ever see in your life. And I remember looking over and seeing Eddie's face as he saw the dog. And he looked like he had just seen a ghost, just pure terror. He stood up, and I remember shouting at him. And maybe I'm inventing this memory, but this is how I remember it. I said, Eddie, sit down. You know, the dog isn't interested in you. And he starts to run. And the dog, being a dog, gave chase. And I said to Eddie that maybe I was a lot like that dog. You know, like rambunctious, playful, and like when things ran, I was the kind of person that would give chase.
Were you saying through that story, like, maybe I did something, but the problem was that you were too scared of me and I meant you no harm? Like, that dog? Is that what you're trying to say with this story?
Totally. I was saying, like, I'm sorry, and I don't want you to feel bad. And I'm willing to, like, step up and, like, you know, say the things. But then I also had to tell this damn story, which is like, it's actually not me, it's you. Like, you know, I'm not sure that's fair. But like, but like, you know, you were scared of things that weren't, like, actually threatening you.
Ben ended his message, "I do understand. I do acknowledge. I am sorry. Sincerely, Ben."
So he sends a message. Eddie writes him right back.
Again, it felt like the ping came back almost like, you know, the moment I press in. And he starts, "Baruch atah Adonai, Eloheinu Melech Ha'olam, shehakianu ve'kiyamanu ve'higianu lazman hazeh."
"I give thanks to God who has given us life and sustained us and allowed us to reach this moment. Today is a joyful day. I can't adequately express how moved I am by your words. You are a mensch. I am stunned by the accuracy of your recollection of the 53rd Street Park, now the Herald-Washington Park. To be honest, I struggled with phobia of dogs well into adulthood."
And let me just interrupt you there. So then he sort of retells the story too, but he doesn't seem to understand the point you were trying to make with your story, that maybe he was the one who was a little too scared of things that weren't scary. And then he writes that he feels like he can literally bury the tension between the two of you that went unacknowledged for more than 30 years. Just read his closing lines here.
Yeah. "I am grateful for this new chapter. Needless to say at this point, but still important, I forgive you. I look forward to staying in touch and enjoying a true friendship. Your friend, Eddie."
At this point, do you feel like you might have done something to bully him? Or do you actually not believe you did anything? And it's all in his head? Because I think both things are possible, right? You really might have done something real that he could tell you if you asked him directly and you realized, oh, yeah, I did that. But it also might be possible, like, he can't come up with any incident. What do you think is the truth?
Yeah, I got to, I actually don't know. I mean, the way you frame that, like, I have no fucking idea.
This got stuck in Ben's head. What had he done, if anything? Had he been a good kid or a bad kid? Ben decided to find out. It seemed like a good question to ask a rabbi, right? He prepared this report.
I reach out to Eddie, ask if he's game to revisit the messages we sent back and forth, our memories of each other. "Sure," he says. "It makes sense to do this in person." He's in Florida, a short drive outside Boca Raton, in a subdivision. "There's a palm tree right in front of us, sculpted bushes." "There's also a house glowing with Christmas decorations, another displaying a beware of dogs sign. I know neither can be Eddie's. His is the one in between." Eddie emerges from the front door.
Eddie.
Welcome.
Thank you.
Great to see you. Thanks for doing this. Hope you got some sun rays today.
I've seen Eddie only once since we were kids, and I'm struck by how much he looks like the kid I remember. Even though he's now about six feet with gray in his goatee. He's wearing a yarmulke. He's also got this pouch attached to his belt for his phone. He leads me inside.
It's my wife Ariella.
Hi.
Hi, nice to meet you. Welcome, welcome. I've heard a lot tonight.
His teenage daughter is home. His other two kids are out in the world. He says one is about to get married. He's been a rabbi at different congregations, but he tells me he now works as a chaplain at a hospital. He likes it because he gets to tend to people of all religions. Eddie guides me into the dining room. Laid out on the table, there are all these photographs, nearly every one of them of us. All right, I'm a little embarrassed of seeing all these things, Eddie.
Yeah, yes.
It catches me off guard. Eddie's been preparing for this meeting. We went to the same high school, too. Our yearbook is open to my senior picture.
Yeah, so that's you.
Oh, yeah, yeah.
That's me.
I just, this is a-
And your wife is in here.
Yeah, she is. My wife Danielle also graduated high school with us. Obviously, I kept in better touch with her. Then Eddie points to a faded photo I've never seen before. It's of little kids in a classroom, around a table, eating cupcakes. There's Eddie standing, and not far from him, me.
1977, you and I both turned six. So May was my sixth birthday, and this is my sixth birthday party. So that's me with the crown, and that's you, of course.
Yeah, front and center. Both of us are smiling as wide as can be. But I know for more than 40 years of Eddie's life, he looked at a photo like this one and was haunted by me. Was he right to feel that way? Have I been wrong all these years about who I am? Eddie tells me about the moment he first heard from me again. He was just down the hall here, in the kitchen, making dinner for his family.
I picked up my phone and was getting the table set, whatever, or waiting for dinner to warm up. And I saw a friend request from Ben Austin, and it stopped me cold. In a strange sense, it surprises me even to this day. Because, I mean, you know, I've encountered a lot of people throughout my life, and for something was different with you, and that's my memory of you, I felt threatened by you. I felt you were a bully towards me.
All right, this is why I came down here. This is a way harder question for me to ask you. And one that I've probably avoided. I know I've avoided before. And what did I do? Like, how was I your bully?
Yeah, I'm glad to have the opportunity to discuss it. I didn't want to burden you about petty stuff. I mean, we're talking about stuff that happened between us when we were six, seven, eight years old. And here we are now, almost on the cusp of being fifty-five years old. So this is fifty years almost in the past. So it seems petty. But do you remember what you called me in those early years?
Not at all, Eddie. And I'm, I'm, I'm, I, like, I almost want to run out of the room. Like, I don't, I don't know.
All right. So you called me Eddie Spaghetti.
My response right then, and I feel terrible for saying this. I want to laugh. I mean, I definitely could see myself saying this. I'm not denying that. But in the absence of any memory of what I did to Eddie, I had imagined, I don't know, something so much worse. I came all this way to Florida for a goofy rhyme?
For the six-year-old version of me, I was hypersensitive. Every time you called me Eddie Spaghetti, I burst into tears. And the rest of the class would laugh. Mark would laugh, Ari would laugh, and other people would join in calling me Eddie Spaghetti.
You're pointing at the yearbook pictures here of these kids. Yeah, yeah.
And it all seems so silly now. It's utterly silly. But as a six-year-old kid, I felt like, you know, I was the, I, I was the, the, the one everyone made fun of in class.
I do get it. It's about what a hard time Eddie had back then. How much he felt like an outsider. And how I, I was one of the kids who made it harder. But it's also just so weird, the two of us sitting here, two men in our 50s, and hearing him repeat what I said when I was like six or seven. I make a nervous joke about spaghetti being positive. It's noodley flexibility, plus it's delicious. Those are the kinds of things I say to people, always have. I recognize that how you react to Eddie's words, what you feel right now about him or me, probably depends on your relationship to your own past. Maybe you're remembering things being done to you,
or doing things to someone else. Or maybe you're the type who's forgotten all this sort of stuff, and that's exactly where you want to keep it. Eddie pauses, and I think he's done. That's all he's got. I guess I wasn't such a bad kid after all. But then Eddie looks down at a yellow legal pad. It's covered in handwritten notes. Oof, there's definitely more.
It must have been first or second grade, because most of us had those metal lunchboxes, usually with themes from TV shows on them.
What did you remember?
My lunchbox was the Six Million Dollar Man with
Awesome.
Steve Austin, played by Lee Majors.
I love it, yeah. This turns out to be a story about a time I did something that seems worse, physically worse at least. He says, "When we were six, I kicked his ass." I'm not sure why he didn't lead with that. Here's how he remembers it going down.
So it's lunchtime. The teacher's telling everybody to get their lunchboxes and line up. And I pull my metal lunchbox off, and someone else's metal lunchbox falls on you, like falls on your shoulder. Maybe you had a bruise the next day, but what I do remember is he then just started whacking me.
Like I hit you?
Yeah, hitting me multiple times. And I really remember Seeing your eyes and seeing rage in your eyes.
So you're like you're physically.
Physically whacking me. And then finally, a teacher came over and separated us. And I don't remember anything else that day. I just, I remember you hitting me and I remember the rage in your eyes.
He says he wasn't seriously injured or anything. We were both just little kids. I don't recall any of this. Well, uh, I'm, I'm definitely sorry for that.
I don't quite know what, how to, what to make of it.
What does it mean that I did that?
I, I think Eddie, I probably fought a lot at those times. It's terrible I beat Eddie up. This doesn't seem totally out of character for me. I mean, I remember on the playground back then, kids throwing a ball in my face. I'd get mad and throw it back in theirs and then we'd go on playing. What I don't get is why what I did to Eddie that day stood out so much from the other chaos of childhood around us. In the middle school Eddie and I both attended, it wasn't uncommon for one kid to say to another after school, meaning at 3:30 in the parking lot or on the playground, we're gonna fight. It was sometimes said to me.
When we got to high school, I tried to avoid fights as much as possible. The stakes were too high.
I saw kids at my school swing bats, golf clubs, once a hatchet.
Our junior year, two guys jumped me for a gold chain. My wife says when I showed up at school that week with a broken nose and two black eyes, it was the first time she noticed me, like noticed me as a potential mate. Not sure what that says about either of us.
I remember these moments, but I don't feel plagued by them. Not in the way Eddie was by me. But I realize in saying all that, part of me is defending myself. Little kid Ben. I'm trying to prove I wasn't a bully. Later, I even talked with an elementary school principal in Chicago to see whether my actions back then checked their four boxes of bullying. I did check at least two. Eddie has one more memory on his notepad that he wants me to hear.
As I recall, we're at the 53rd Street Park. Teacher took us out on a nice day. We're sitting, playing duck, duck, goose, and...
He repeats the same story I shared with him in our Facebook exchange. It starts just as I remember, but with a different conclusion. It's that story of how when we were seven or eight and our class went to the park, a dog was off-leash.
I had a serious phobia and I just high-tailed it. And I ran screaming. I don't know if it was that time, but I know there were other times that I ran across Hyde Park Boulevard, which is a busy street with buses and cars and trucks, back to the safe side where the school building was. And I remember being laughed at by you and other students in the class. Not saying you're the only one, but I perceived you as the ringleader.
Man, I mean, in the story I told, it was the opposite of laughing.
Like, I was, I was trying to protect you.
Of course.
That's the part we remember so differently. Maybe I've held on to my version because in it, I've cast myself as the good guy. I see his terror and I'm the one calling out to him, telling him not to run. Eddie describes another boy who teased him that day about how fast Eddie ran from the dog. He could be a track star if there was always a dog behind him. Eddie blamed me for that one, too. That's just how we saw me back then.
My memory over the arc of our young childhood was being teased by you. And at some point, that became layered on my dog phobia. And then, so in a way, you became the dog.
And, and I mean... I became the dog? For Eddie, I turned into this major figure in his life. I became this villain. Eddie tells me that when he changed schools, I wasn't the only reason, but I was part of it. And he tells me how decades later, he saw a photo. It was from our 20th high school reunion. He spotted me in the background and was relieved he didn't go. Then, classic me, I sent him that note, which was way more clever than honest. He opened it at a cemetery after presiding over a funeral. He tells me it was like a spell was broken. It set him free.
I think I just wept at that moment. I was just so grateful to hear or to read that you had accepted what I wrote with such incredible grace. And I just felt blessed. It was big. It was a momentous time in my life. I mean, it was, it's a time that there was a, there's a before and there's an after.
Eddie, that's powerful. And complicated. Yeah, complicated. I decide to tell Eddie the truth, how in that message, the one that broke the spell, I had said sorry, but wasn't sure I had done anything wrong. My apology wasn't really an apology. Did he understand that when he got it?
I think I did, or at least in retrospect, I did. I remember sharing it with other people and they said, did he really apologize? And I'm like, my...
My sense is that, perhaps not fully, but it was enough. It was what I needed at that moment. And perhaps I chose to layer more apology on it than you were actually saying at the time. But you finished your note saying, "I acknowledge and I'm sorry." And that's what I needed at that moment, and that's what I embraced.
It's not just that Eddie and I see our memories of each other differently. I realize we also have a different way of seeing the world. Eddie, he's a man of faith. If it's enough, it's enough. Not me, I can't help it. I need to set the record straight. I'm embarrassed about the things I did and that I hurt you, but I'm also thinking that a lot of it is just, it's about being kids.
And I don't think I was a bully in that sense. And I wonder if you think I am.
No, absolutely.
I don't mean right now. I mean, when you think back on those moments.
How can I look at this picture of six-year-old Ben smiling?
But come on, but you looked at that picture for years and saw the dog.
Yes, yes. But this little six-year-old Ben smiling, grinning, sweetest. I mean, look, you could pinch the cheeks practically.
But that feels like a revisionist history of how you saw that picture. That loomed in your imagination.
But I am revising it now, but we as adults have a right to change the narrative.
You know, Eddie, I feel like your version of me...
Today and over time is both I'm way worse than I am and I'm better than I am. There's a little bit of way of when you're saying you're seeing my true self. I guess what I'm saying is I'm not, you're also seeing these two extremes and I'm some, I'm not really either of those.
Hmm.
As he's pointing at this photo of me, it's like everything has flipped. I'm no longer even a bully when I was a kid. And as an adult, he's talking about me like this great liberator. He even compares me at one point to a famous rabbi who marched with Martin Luther King. In some ways, what I'm hearing is I've sort of liberated you from this stuff, which is also feels, yeah, I don't know, that doesn't feel exactly me either. I mean, I try to do, I wanna do good.
Okay, yeah, yeah. Look, there's, people come to me and say that time you spent with me in the hospital or that sermon you gave, it changed my life. And did I really do anything? I did what I do every day. Every day I visit people in the hospital. Every day I study some piece of scripture or Jewish wisdom and try to make some meaning out of it for a congregation. And sometimes it lands and sometimes it doesn't.
And with you, you did something good and I'm holding it up as good. How does that sound?
It sounds like Eddie's a pretty good rabbi and that he got what he needed from me. See, I'm not such a bad guy.
But I got something out of this, too. It's clear Eddie and I didn't know each other well as kids, and certainly not as adults either. But here I am in Florida, in his subdivision, in his home. I can see the books on his shelves. His kids' artwork is on the walls. He's got a tree out back in his yard. It grows starfruit. Eddie's cut up slices for us to snack on. And we've managed, on this night, to talk for hours. I do feel responsible for my past actions, even the ones from way back that I can't remember. As far as what to do about that, we now know each other, at least better. That feels real.
Maybe at this point in our lives, it's about the best we can do. Amen.
Ed Austin is a writer in Chicago. His most recent book is Correction about the parole system.
Getting to know you, getting to know all about you. Getting to like you, getting to hope you like me.
Well, today's show was produced by Aviva DeKornfeld and Tobin Glow. The people who put together the show included Fia Bennin, Michael Comide, Suzanne Gaber, Cassie Halli, Chana Joffe-Walt, Seth Lind, Miki Meek, Katherine Rae Mondo, Stone Nelson, Robin Reed, Nadia Raymond, Anthony Roman, Ryan Rumory, Alyssa Shipp, and Christopher Sutala. Our managing editor is Sarah Abdurrahman. Our senior editor is David Kestenbaum. Our executive editor is Emmanuel Berry. Special thanks to Adam Ross at the Swanee Review, Shin Nee Pai, Lauren Hirsch, Sarah Veltzheim Staley, Cara Dietz, Jody Crummell, and Peter Kornbluh. Peter Lang Stanton, who you heard at the beginning of the show talking about his parents being in the CIA, made a radio story years ago about his dad's involvement in covert operations in Laos during the Vietnam War. We link to it from our website, thisamericanlife.org.
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Next week on the podcast of This American Life, 10 months after the fall of the brutal dictatorship in Syria, a group of Syrian comedians decides to go on a national tour. But it is really not clear what they can say with their newfound freedom, or it's still going to get them in serious trouble.
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