Walking the Walk: The Moth Radio Hour

walk in the walk, someone their own, some with some help and others who let's just say need

“a little extra nudge. We have stories of uniquely awkward situations, unrequited love, the search”

for beauty, and what it's like to have a crush on a classmate when your mom is the teacher. We start with a story from one of the Moth's grand slam events in Boston, where we partner with PRX and local public radio station WBR. Here's Kristen Lee, live at the Moth. I'm 13 years old and just said goodbye to my parents after they've dropped me off at the University of Iowa dorms for summer, sleep away, genetics camp. I am so excited.

I'm going to stay up late talking to my roommate, hang with friends whenever I want to. Plus we're going to learn about my toastess and myosis and mental and mutations and how can this

possibly not go well. When I get back up to my roommate, Megan has just moved in and the first

thing she says to me is I knew we were going to be friends from the moment I saw the clothes hanging in your closet. That's a little odd but at least she likes me and that first day a small crew of girls forums around Megan and me and I'm so excited to have already made my friends. The first week of camp is a paradise of biology. We make 3D models of the double helix structure of DNA lining up those A's and T's and C's and G's. We transcribe DNA sequences into RNA

“and translate that into amino acids and protein structures and I feel like we've been given the secret”

code of life which we have. I geek out over a punit square problem sets and mapping pedigrees, shading those circles and squares to show how a disease is transmitted through a family classic summer camp activities. It's the best. I have to admit though I'm getting some weird vibes from my new friends every morning as we walk through the University Quad on the way to class, Heather makes fun of my hair and T's is me about the key chains on my backpack.

Tori scribbles on my homework and crumbles it up. Megan starts borrowing my stuff without asking and I find notes on my desk written in my eyeliner that say I'm wearing your sandals today. But it's okay. I know how to deal with people like this. 13 years growing up as a Chinese American girl and Iowa have taught me how to fit in as an interloper. Be super nice, erase my own personality,

“go with a flow. It's never failed me before and surely it's not going to fail me at nerd camp where”

by definition no one here is too cool for school. So I keep trying to be as agreeable and accommodating as possible. At the end of the first week of camp we're playing a game in class that requires other people to help us solve our mystery genotypes. This involves passing slips of paper to our friends with questions on them. Like if I had a kid with someone who has attached earlobes,

is it possible that our kids could have attached earlobes too? And if the answer is no,

then I know that I'm home as I guess for the autosomism in a trade of having detached earlobes. Super simple. But during the game, my friends instead of passing back real answers to me on the slips of paper, they write, "Why are you so ugly and you're a stupid?" And at the end of the game, I'm the only one who hasn't been able to figure out my genotype. As the classroom empties out, I sit in my chair and I rack my brain trying to think of what I've done to offend,

Megan, and Tori, and Heather, and the others. And I really can't think of anything. But I hope that maybe this is just some weird hazing ritual. Maybe if I weather anything that they throw at me, they'll finally accept me. So I trail along behind them to the cafeteria, and we

set our trays down at the same table where we always sit. And the other girls pass around a look.

And Megan says, "I have a story to tell." Last summer at camp, and there was this girl who no one liked, and she kept trying to hang out with us, and we didn't know how to get rid of her. Heat floods my face. Thus far, I have refused to read the signals that these girls have been sending me because I'm under the mistaken impression that ignoring, meanness, and other people, is the nice thing to do, and we'll make it go away. But now Megan here has told such an obvious

parable that she's basically forcing me to read between the lines. I know she's talking about me. I know I'm not wanted. I get up quickly, bust my tray without having to walk back to my room, but I can't even take refuge there because soon Megan and the other girls go back there to hang out and I don't want them to see me crying. But I have a new problem. Tonight is the Friday night

camp counselor if I can just stay in my room and read a book. But she says, "No." So I go out on the

“hall, new plan, ask a random girl if I can use her dorm room phone. I unspool the court as long”

as it can go to try to get some privacy, and I call my mom and I say, "Mom, please come pick me up. I am done with camp." Because you see, I live 10 minutes away. I live in Iowa City, where camp occurs. There is no reason for me to stay in this place for another week. But my mom says, "No." So my last plan is just to hide in a corner of this girl's room and try not to cry until the time of the dance. I shuffle off to the dance alone.

And in the dorm basement, 90s tunes are pumping. Want to be by the spice girls,

everybody by back street boys. And in my normal life, I'm too self-conscious to really be

much of a dancer. But tonight, I'm like, "What the heck? I don't know anybody here who I care about. Why not let loose?" Because these girls' rejection of me, yeah, it's kind of broken me. But it's also freed me. Because why contort myself into something else when it's not going to make people like me. Why not just be myself? So I let the music take over and I dance. I get pulled into this big dance circle and everyone around me is smiling and I'm feeling the beat

and soon I'm smiling too. So when the camp counts are tasked me on the shoulder and says,

“"Hey, your mom's here." I'm like, "What? Why is my mom here?" And then I remember that a few hours”

ago I was bawling and asking you to go home. I end up staying at camp. I do learn very cool stuff about my toastess and my osis and mutations in Mendel. And I make new friends who are nice

normal people. But I never forget that there really are mean people in this world. And you can't

always win them over with kindness. But you don't have to let them crush your spirit. Thank you. That was Kristen Lee. Kristen is an avid reader, book reviewer, an aspiring writer who lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts with her partner, three children, and a mini golden-doodle fluffy. Kristen ended up working in a genetics research lab during summers in high school and went on to major in biology and college, which eventually led to medical school. You can see a picture of

“Kristen and Fluffy on our website, TheMoth.org.”

Mourish Niders shared this next story on another grand slam stage. This one at the Lincoln Theatre in Washington, D.C., where we partnered with local public radio station WAMU. Just to note, Moura alludes to teenage sexual awakening. It's all very innocent, but just wanted to mention. Here's Mourish Niders, live at the Moth. I once lived in a world where sex was only practiced between two consenting Barbie dolls.

My best friend Emily and I spent so many unsupervised hours when we were seven in her basement, kneeling in front of Barbie's dream house and carefully unveil crowing blouses and pressing nippleless boobs against chiseled chests and giggling. And then when we were eight, the summer we were eight, we emerged from that dark basement and realized we went to the pool and we realized that non-plastic living boys could also make a skig all. We would whisper about the cutest ones

in laugh when they belly flopped or tried to eat a whole hot dog in one bite and there was one boy who rolled them all. This mustily blonde middle school, her name's Scott. When he was there, I felt like there was a magnet in my chest pulling me towards him and he was so beautiful. It was like the world was brighter and better when he was there. Emily liked him too, my best friend. And so we would tread water next to him trying to get his attention and she was really bold. So she'd say

things like it looks like that modeling contract is going to come through Scott or time my underwater handstand. I was really shy, I would try and talk but I would just stare at him, hoping that that would evolve into a romantic relationship. Instead, Scott after a week of being these perpetual giggling shadows next to him, Scott got tired of it and he pushed us away from him in the pool and yelled, you guys are so annoying, just leave me alone. I was heartbroken.

Emily and I gathered up our stuff and ran back to her house and once we have changed, we went back down to the basement where we were just seething with anger. So we'd been playing relationships

We had no framework for rejection. And before I go on, I just want to remind you that there

“are a lot of adults in the world to do not know how to handle rejection without lashing out.”

And I still had 12 of my baby teeth. So we started plotting like you I wanted to take that pain and get it out of me and on to Scott and I do not know why, but the solution was a letter. A sexy letter. A sexy prank letter. We would write a letter and sign it from a made-up name

and it would drive him crazy and he would never be able to find her so we'd win.

So we started writing. Emily had better handwriting so she was doing most of the writing and she was coming up with some real good lines about butts. And I was inspired by all of those hours of research at Barbie's Dreamhouse. I said, write this down. I want to get naked and hug and kiss you.

“It was the best. And we signed it love Sally because we thought that was the sexiest woman's name.”

We ran over to his house and jammed it in the mill slot when the close was clear and then we ran home and played it cool. And because I was eight the next morning I had basically forgotten about it.

And I was playing dolls in my second floor bedroom and I looked at the window and there is Scott

marching down the street with his brother and he's holding the letter. My mom was working. My sister was watching us. She and Scott were the same year in school and I shouted down her, "Don't let him in!" But okay my sister's awesome but she was like not married cool in school and Scott was and she chose status over sisterhood and escorted him upstairs and I panicked and ran to the bathroom to hide but our bathroom door didn't lock so I had to like jam my shoulder against the wall,

events of door and Scott and his brother and my own sister are pushing on the other side and but I've got a lot of adrenaline so I'm folding my own and everyone's allowed the door pops open and Scott and I make eye contact in the mirror. He's still so cute and I pop it back and he starts interrogating me and I'm denying everything, everything and it's longest conversation that we've ever had and then he's like "Who's Sally? Who's Sally?" and I'm like "I don't know"

“and then he's so Sally and I say "I think she goes to Emily's school."”

He leaves. He goes down and I'm like "Oh my God, he bought it! I'm in the clear!" And what I think dang! I sold out my best friend like really quick and then I'm like can we still have that romantic relationship? Well surprise it was not over. Scott's mom called my mom and Emily's mom and they had what must have been the most awkward conversation my mom has ever had as a mom and afterwards she came home and came out to my room and sat on my bed and said

"Mora, do you have any questions about your body or your feelings and I'm like "Oh my God, no, no, I don't want to talk about this but when I open my mouth, I just start crying." And I'm embarrassed and I know I'm in trouble but I started this summer thinking that sex was just a game that she played with adults and then in the last 24 hours I had burst into this world of shame and rejection and erotic revenge letters and now everybody in my neighborhood knew that I knew what sex was

and I realized once you go into that world, you can never go back. Thank you!

Mora Schneider is a writer and illustrator living in Fredericksburg, Virginia. Her graphic essay is of appeared in the believer and no tokens journal. She is currently working on a graphic memoir about sexuality, consent and caregiving. What I love about Mora's story is not just a sudden realization that she's in over her head but that she's got to stay there a while. Mora told me that she wishes she'd learned earlier not to be so scared of embarrassing yourself but the absolute lack of

control that comes with parenting encouraged her back to that place of bold gut-driven risk-taking that gave her the nerve to get up at the moth stage at her first slam and win. In a moment, stories of helping hands

Public Media and Woods Hole, Massachusetts. This is the moth radio hour I'm Samuel James. As I was listening back to these stories, I was reminded that walking the walk doesn't just show others who you are. Along the way can

“reveal who you should be, who you can be, who you want to be, and sometimes even more than that,”

like with our next storyteller, Kaya Jarvis. They shared their story at a showcase we produced featuring stories from women and girls that we presented in partnership with the Kate Spade Foundation in New York. The quick note that this story references an eating disorder. Here's Kaya Jarvis. In March of 2020, my parents drove me and my sister from our New York City apartment

upstate to spend quarantine in a little cabin. It was heated by a fire place for the first two

months. It didn't have running water so we had to use our neighbors' hose to brush our teeth and take showers. It was very tight and cramped and like everyone else, we were kind of going crazy. We were fighting a lot. I was finishing eighth grade at the time. I didn't want to be stuck in a house to my family. My sister didn't want to be stuck in a house to the family. My parents

“didn't want to be stuck in a house together or with us. And it was a lot. And throughout eighth grade,”

you know, I felt very isolated and insecure and I didn't feel very connected to the people around me. And I was going through a lot of depression and anxiety. And this got really heightened in quarantine because I had more time to just sit with my thoughts. And I didn't have the

distractions of taking the subway and always being surrounded by people and things to take me away

from what I was feeling. And you know, throughout my life, I've always kind of dealt with bad feelings with food. You know, if I have a bad day, I would eat something that made me feel really good and happy. But in eighth grade, I kind of approached food in a very different way. Instead of eating something that made me happy, I would restrict to take my mind off of things that we're causing me stress and to give me something else to focus on. And this progressed a lot in

“quarantine to the point where all I could think about was food and what I would eat and what I”

would not eat and how many calories I wanted to eat and how much I weighed and what I looked like. And this got worse and worse throughout quarantine and I couldn't think about anything else. And my mom wanted us to really connect. And so she started making these really elaborate dinners a couple of times a week and she would make us all get off of our phones and sit us down at the table and present us with roasted vegetables and salad and pasta and whatever she could come up with.

And have us all eat there and sit together. But these dinners didn't really help me and they made me feel very stressed out because I would look at this plane in front of me and not be able to eat it. And I would try to hide it from my parents, but at one point I couldn't hide it from them. So I had to sit my mom down and tell her that I had an eating disorder and that I needed some help with it. And so my parents were very supportive and they signed me up for therapy and my mom started driving

me down to a doctors in Manhattan once a week where I would get weighed and I would have to list everything that I ate that day and everything that I had eaten that week. And I was very lucky to have this help but I also felt very watched and in trouble and like I was doing something wrong which I was but I also couldn't really tell that I was doing something wrong at the time. And you know this went on. I kept on going to these doctors appointments. I kept on having therapy but it wasn't

really helping that much because I still felt really isolated and disconnected. And one time while my mom was driving me to the doctor's appointment she brings up my friend Lana and she's like hey why don't you reach out to Lana and ask her to hang out you know she lives right by the doctors you guys could go to the park it might be nice for you to talk to someone outside of the foreign family members that you're stuck in a house with. So I reached out to Lana and Lana was one of the only

other black girls in our mostly white upper west side middle school. So we always had this connection

that I didn't really feel with any of my white friends and we always understood each other on a deeper level and I reached out to Lana and we made plans and there are quarantine she was one of the only people I ever actually stayed in contact with. I was kind of isolating myself from school and my friends and even my family because all I could think about was food and so I reached out to Lana and we make plans to hang out and I'm really excited and the next week I go to the doctors appointment

watched again but I know I'm going to see my friend in a couple of hours so I make my way from the

“doctors appointment I walk 10 blocks to her house but as I'm walking over to her house it hits me”

that I'm sick and I have an eating disorder and when you hang out with people you're supposed to eat and you're supposed to have fun eating and you're supposed to talk with each other and not focus on the food but all I could focus on at the time was food so I'm making my way over to her house and I'm very excited but I'm also deeply deeply stressed but I pick her up and we do a little air hug and we start walking over to Central Park and then she's like hey there's this pizza place

around the corner and it's really good you maybe want to get a slice and I'm like sure yeah I love

pizza like that sounds great but we go to the pizza place and I'm really stressed out the entire time

I get my slice though and we go over to Central Park and we sit down at this really nice bench

“and it's super sunny and the wind is blowing perfectly and she's telling very great stories she's”

a very funny person and we're like looking at TikToks or whatever and she starts to eat her pizza and I look down and I open up this box in front of me and I can immediately smell how good this pizza will taste and I look at it and it has the perfect amount of cheese in the right crust and it has all of these things that I really love but also all of these things that at the time I'm really scared of you know cheese and oil and bread and whatever and so I don't want to be weird and I

don't want a lot of to suspect anything and I just want to have a normal hangout so I take a couple of bites and I kind of just make myself eat but I don't finish the slice and it's okay and she doesn't notice anything and we just go on with the hangout and it's okay and the next week I go to the

“doctors again and we hang out again and we got pizza and I'm still really scared and I don't finish my”

slice but at least I know Lana won't be watching me and I know that she'll still treat me like I'm normal and this goes on every week I go to the doctors I go to therapy I feel really watched by everyone including my family you know my mom would check my plate every meal and I would have to list everything

I ate but I would always get to see Lana every week and we would always eat together and I would

always be able to laugh and focus on what she was saying and over time these hangouts really help me because I'm able to associate food and eating with my friend and the laughter and the joy I feel when I'm around her and also when I'm eating with her and it's now about to be ninth grade we're about to start high school it's a very big time I'm kind of nervous about that but I'm also really excited to start something new and I'm doing a lot better with food I'm meeting a lot more

I'm feeling a lot less stressed about it and a big reason for that is Lana and so we're hanging out in that day we get pizza and we decide to go to Riverside Park and we find this really nice spot that's away from everyone where you can see the river and we're covered by trees and we start to get our food and I notice that I'm not thinking about the food and I'm just thinking about what she's saying and how nice it looks at day and so I decide I want to tell her and I go hey Lana

throughout quarantine I've had an eating disorder and I'm a lot better now and you're one of the main reasons I'm a lot better and I'm scared to tell her this you know I don't want things to change I want to feel normal I don't want to feel watched but she gives me a hug and she tells me she's proud of me and she tells me how strong I am and things go back to normal and we watch TikToks and we talk and we laugh and it's fine and throughout ninth grade in high school I'm now a junior

we've stayed friends and I'm fully recovered now and every time we hang out we eat together and we laugh and we share stories and instead of focusing on food and the negative parts of it and the things that are scary about it I can now focus on what I love about food and also what I love about the people that I share food with Kaya Jarvis is a 16 year old born and raised New Yorker they said they spend their hours going to school playing in a band making art

curled up in a ball with headphones on and skipping around with friends to see a picture of Kaya and find out more about any of the storytellers you've heard this hour as well as info about other moth live events you can visit our website at themoth.org Our next story is from Dr. Sam Blackman he shared this emotional story about his work

live from the avi art center here's Sam Black

“I looked in the usual places I looked in the lab and the labor and delivery ward and”

and the operating room but for me the image is under the microscope we're just mostly interesting and the birth of a child if it's not your child is not beautiful and sorry and and in the operating room I found more brutality than beauty

as a second year pediatric resident if there was beauty in medicine I wasn't seeing it after

hundred hour work weeks a kid could craft rose petals and I would just do to flee put some in a vile and note it in the chart and don't confuse cute with beauty sick kids even really sick kids can be cute but disease is not beauty and parents of sick kids are not beautiful parents of sick kids are terrified and when you feel that the life of your child is in danger you want some element of control and what you don't want is a second year pediatric resident and you

“certainly didn't want me at that time because between the crushing fatigue and the constant”

fear of screwing up and not knowing enough not only was there no beauty in my life but I was actually getting uglier because I would let the frustration and the fear creep in and sometimes my words would hurt the people that I was there to help and it turned out that there were moments where I was so ashamed because for someone who so desperately wanted to be a doctor I was not being the doctor that I wanted to be I was not being my best self. Brianna's mother took this

to a whole new level um the rage that she felt and that she made the team feel pervaded us on a daily basis and we all knew why her child was going to die and there was nothing that we could do about it she had the period worst period tumor period ever she had a diffuse intrinsic punting glioma bastard of a tumor that invades the brains them it's inoperable inoperable in all situations

“you can't touch with chemo a radiation it's 100% fatal and most children die within eight months”

of diagnosis and her rage was compounded by the fact that she was a single mother and she was going through this alone and so she would wall herself off she kept the glass door to her room closed she kept the curtains drawn and the lights off and she wouldn't let us in at all for around she wouldn't even let us in to examine Brianna because what was the point and so we would do to probably hover every morning outside of her room to go over the days labs and to go over the plan

and we would beg to come in but she would not let us come in and she wouldn't even talk to us or want to hear the treatment plan except for where she wanted us to use her treatment plan and then we would negotiate substitute herbal tea for water sure skip the steroids and blood pressure medicines no coffee animals what about coffee animas we had a week long debate about coffee

animas it's a thing and my attending had never heard about coffee animas and so he sent me to go

research coffee animas and when I came back he said you go into the room and tell her why we can't do daily coffee animas and so I went into the room but because I presented both sides of the issues to her she actually started to let me in literally let me in I was the only doctor who could go into the room and every day I would sit outside and we'd round as a team and then I would go into the room and I would examine Brianna and I would talk to her about the plan and then I could

come out and communicate with the team and so for a few weeks until I went off service I was exclusively Brianna's doctor but then rotations end and teams rotate off and residents change and I went on to the next thing about a month later I was coming home from dinner with my wife on Saturday night my picture went off and it was a nurse from the pavilion which is the part of the hospital where the palliative care patients stay and the nurse said she thought that Brianna was dying

and wanted to know if I would come in now I wasn't on call or on service but something told me that I should go so I called my attending on service and I said would you meet me there because

I've never attended a death before and believe it or not attending a death is a lot more

complicated you don't just sort of stand there and wait for the person to die one of the horrible things that they neglect to tell you at the start of your pediatric residency is that children take a really long time to die because they've got brand new hearts and brand new lungs and their bodies really tried to cling to life and think about that for a minute and think about what that looks like so it was 10 o'clock at night and for the next four hours we did our job we gave

medicines to help her diagonal breathing and to alleviate any pain and when we couldn't do any more

that she thought that Brianna had stopped breathing and the attending physician said to me that I

“should go and pronounce her dead because the mom knew me and appeared to trust me and I said all right”

but I'd never done this before I didn't know it to expect. So I quietly went into the room and I

said I need to examine Brianna one last time and then I performed the ritual I felt for the absence of a pulse and I put my stethoscope on her chest and I listened for a full 60 seconds for the absence of a heartbeat and I said to her mother I'm so sorry if you're a loss and I noted silently the time of death and as I was getting ready to leave the room I turned to her and I said is there anything I can do for you and she paused and said could you pray with me and I hesitated

because I met lapsed Jew from New Jersey and I don't really pray and I don't really believe in God

“and frankly for tending to pray in the face of a dead child seemed like the absolutely wrong thing”

to do but then there in that moment it dawned on me that this wasn't about me Brianna's mother

needed me to be the doctor that she saw me as and this was the opportunity for me to be the doctor that I wanted to be and so there in that room lit just by silent glowing monitors I had the one truly beautiful moment for myself in medicine where a stranger held my hands and we stood over the body of her daughter and I closed my eyes when she did and when she started to speak words have a prayer that I had only heard a few times before somehow came forth our father who art in heaven

how would be thy name thy kingdom come they will be done on earth as it is in heaven thank you

Sam Blackman is a pediatric oncologist cancer drug developer and chief medical officer at

day one bio pharmaceuticals he lives on orcas island in Washington state with his wife Julie daughter Anika and a managerie of pets Sam said his decision to enter medicine was last about science and more about understanding life and what makes it so precious and special this experience was a tipping point for him and he has carried the memory of Brianna with him for over 20 years you can see a picture of Sam from his residency days on our website

themoth.org coming up navigating teenage crushes in high school where your mother is also your teacher when the moth radio hour continues the moth radio hour is produced by Atlantic public media and wids whole Massachusetts you're listening to the moth radio hour I'm Samuel James we all know that high school years can

“be strange and nerve-racking and that's what Annie Lynn told us about at a story slam we produced”

at the miracle theater in Washington DC where we partnered with local public radio station wamu here's Annie Lynn live at the moth as I prepared to enter high school my mom introduced a new rule I would have to call her Mrs. Hoblet and even though I threw a huge fuss about calling her by her teacher name it turned out that this was not the most difficult part of our mother daughter student teacher

relationship that we are going to have to navigate I was a highly dramatic teenager who just wanted to fall in love and she was a stoic Norwegian American teacher who just wanted her students to love grammar and she laid out some pretty strict rules at the beginning you know she was not going to pull any strings for me this was not going to be like the drama teacher who cast her daughter and as a lead in every play no resentment there but and I didn't really want her

to or need her to because I was a super goody goody rule follower so you know she didn't really need to do anything for me for me to get along in high school the one exception that she did make was that she bumped me up on the list for driver's ed not because she wanted me to get my license

on the icy Montana winter roads but then things got a little more blurry when she actually

“became my teacher it turned out that her omnipresence had a bit of an effect on my romantic life”

so when I first had her as a teacher at my sophomore year for English and I started to

scheme about how she could be useful in more ways than just teaching me how to write which she was very well known for being very good at but my first high school boyfriend broke up with me several days into the school year and you know he was it was not a serious relationship we held hands a couple of times and he kissed me on the cheek but I still was very dramatic and wanted to feel all the feelings and so I plotted this revenge plan that I pitched to my mom over dinner

is it so mom Nate's desk is not that far away from your desk and you have this she called it the

“singer this high pitched bell that she would ring she probably got out of the mom store to”

to get to get students attention and I said you could just ring it in Nate's ear and it would be very nosh line he sits right there he just consider it and she didn't but it turned out that the population of boys in that particular sophomore English class would be fodder for many dinner time conversations throughout the year as I recovered from the heartbreak of Nate something very surprising happened and that Caleb started flirting with me and he was much cooler than me

he was the star of the basketball team and I was not quite sure what to do with all this attention especially because the attention mostly came in the form of him telling dirty pick-up lines to might easily scandalized self so for example walking into class he says hey Annie let's do math add a bed subtract the clothes divide our legs and I'll multiply I know a real winner on it off the course so I like go my own way and we're working on our like individual writing assignments

and he pokes me across the aisle he's like hey Annie do you want to help me with my math and I was like okay bring it over here like I was very you know this was not uncommon for people to ask me for help with homework and so he's like no you helped me with my math and I was like okay bring it over here and he goes no well you help me with my math and all of a sudden the joke clicks into place and I screamed oh my gosh and my mom whips around she goes youtube detention

I said mom this is how I'm so hot I had never had detention in high school and now my mom was my

sentenceer and she wasn't just gonna settle for any old detention she is out of that it wouldn't set up going to the detention room we were going to clean her classroom so over dinner that night

“I tried to plead my case like you should be glad that I had that reaction to a dirty joke she said”

you should be glad that I just got you an hour by yourself with Caleb and I realized that she was right and so I prepared for this detention with great hope like in the very romantic setting of my mom's classroom I could have my first real kiss and so the day of detention I like dressed up very my mom's like look at me I were breakfast like okay you're taking this really seriously and we go and I've got you know I'm I'm really excited and he just acted like we were not there

because of his attentions to me and like nothing there was nothing between us and it was the first of

many heartbreaks of the ruler coaster of my sophomore year with Caleb and later on in the year I said my mom I'm so over him and she goes okay good well just please can we not you can not like develop feelings for anyone else in this class like it's becoming a little bit disruptive and I was like who could I possibly like in the class and she like raised rise it mean was like um Patrick and I don't know if it was motherly wisdom or teacherly wisdom but Patrick and I are married

and we are expecting our first child this fall and I am not a teacher so I'm going to have to figure out another way to really shape and influence my child life both academically and romantically Annie Lynn works on global public health and is based in Boseman Montana

herself and now she's getting ready to do it all over again with her second child

“I asked Annie if her mother had used her teacherly wisdom to predict anything else in her life”

she said her mother predicted both that Annie would be able to hold her own out in the world but also that she'd sometimes struggle with letting things go according to Annie both especially the latter are definitely true you can see a picture of Annie and her mom aka Mrs. Hoblet on our website theMoth.org if you happen to be in Fremont, Washington at the height of summer you might come upon the

Annie will Fremont Solstice Paray which features people on their bikes in various states of

nudity covered in body art our final storyteller Evio Riley told us about her first time

joining this annual tradition at a story slam we produced in Seattle, Washington where we partnered with local public radio station KUOW live from the Abbey Arts Center here's Evie O'Reilly

“so the first time you do the naked Solstice cycle you want to look amazing”

and you have a lot of plans and you have a lot of objectives and they fold away because you have life and so the day before you get body paint and that morning you wake up earlier than you ever normally wake up in a Saturday and you paint yourself and you look in the mirror and you think I look fantastic my god I should do this every day I thought I was bad at makeup but this is amazing now this was established with clown paint and the center of my body

and smashing green side and orange side because I was going to be the Irish flag and then you have this moment where you look you're saying like this is brilliant go ha just such it what about my back and so you panic and you think he'll be a

never mind he'll be up he'll do it and so you ring your friends and you get that like is

morning like what hiya what are you up to I was asleep great that's brilliant I love that um the what you um she might be coming over are you alright yeah I'm great I need you to paint my bum I'm sorry what I I need you to paint my bum long long pause okay click minutes later I'm being painted now the next thing was I hadn't actually worked out at the time I lived in Capitol Hill how to get to free month normally I would have taken a bus

but that seemed like a very bad idea under my current situation plus I now had a bike that I wasn't entirely confident could make it to free month I was sure it could make it somewhat along the race whatever we're recording it but two free months I don't know so I I think and I look at my friends and like your boyfriend is a car right yeah so what's done doing this morning it's the next thing I know this poor exalted teacher is

getting me in my car going try not to get paid too late there's going to be paint there is paint to this day so he gets me there and then I have the next bit which I can't work at which I'm like oh there's all these people I are actually going to draw you

“in to drop me off I'm a proper part of this parade and I realize the only way to do this is”

be dropped at the Nickerson Street Saloon get out and then run across the bridge with my bike holding it and then scream at the crowds I'm sticky let me through this works very well if you're ever in emergency people scarcer nice this was a while ago and at the time there's still this vague fear of it being kind of illegal and people it was a side I basically I had no clue where to meet the other cyclists so I'm looking around looking around like I'm finally I mean

it's a moment of delight you see another naked cyclist you're like fantastic great world here I'm doing something proper so I meet up with them and we're all at sidehills and they're like oh we do this little cycle to ballered first and then we come around and I'm going I don't know which is all came by someone got a little bit I'll follow you anywhere and it was brilliant it was the year of the world cup and a lot of people were in different countries so the Irish thing

I got a lot of people screaming go wich leave and I'm like yeah you're rolling like it's French and well up until recently but that's not just sorry so we're cycling along the area and it's great and we're almost at 15th and suddenly that feather boa that I put on my bike is bringing back that quilt from the Avengers where they say no capes turns out no feather boa's either because I it could stuck in my chain and they all keep going and I'm going waste waste for me please

bike chain fully naked bathing is like as families are getting their morning coffee with their

“small children looking at we going oh isn't that authentic and now all I can do is cycle around”

to the free large area which as I said I was like I know clue where I was and I keep cycling and cycling and I'm looking for them no clue where they are and I would come across random people and they go hello have you seen a large group of naked cyclists and they go no just you now this went on for 20 minutes the longest 20 minutes of my life and yet I had a little dress

I never put it on I kept going I looked endlessly and finally I found them and I had this amazing

race and it was like this amazing justification I'd been at my lowest low and I'd found them and it was a very very very very very end of the whole thing I was at PCC I put the dress on but I had

“the silver wig and I was still painted and I felt a hand on my bum and I thought what the job this”

is not that time and I turned right and there's nobody there and then I looked down there's a tiny little person just about five she looks me she goes um are you real? and I was like yeah I'm pretty sure I'm gonna stop for some debates at times but yeah she goes awesome (Applause) that was EVO Riley Evie says that in addition to the Fremont Solstice parade she is also appeared

naked on a bike in a flaming lips video watching the planets she says she'd like to give a shout out

to Wayne Coin for normalizing and empowering nakedity and pour us for helping with that first

paint job and all her friends who have helped in the years sense to see pictures of Evie painted as the Irish flag and a pineapple peacock zebra and even John Luke Picard of the Starship Enterprise you can find them all on our website theMoth.org

“The Moth host slams all around the US in the UK and in Australia if you want to throw your”

name in a hat for a chance to tell a story you can find out all of the info for cities, dates and upcoming themes on our website the Moth.org The Moth finds a lot of storytellers from our story slams series but if you have a story you'd like

to share and there isn't a slam in your area you can always pitch us just go to our website

theMoth.org look for a tell a story and you will find all the info for how to leave a two-minute pitch that's it for this episode of The Moth Radio Hour we hope you'll join us next time and that's the story from The Moth this episode of The Moth Radio Hour was produced by me Jay Allison, Katherine Burns, Macboles and Samuel James who also hosted the hour, co-producer is Vicky Merrick,

associate producer Emily couch, education program and grand slam coaching by Michelle Jalowski and Larry Rosen. The rest of the Moth's leadership team includes Sarah Haberman, Sarah Austin Genes, Jennifer Hickson, Kate Tellers, Jennifer Birmingham, Marina Cluchet, Leanne Gully, Susanne Rust, Brandon Grant, Inga Gladowski, Sarah Jane Johnson and Aldi Kaza. Most stories are true as remembered in a firm by the storytellers. Our theme music is by the drift, other music in this hour

from Stellwagon Symphonette and Epidemic Sound, podcast music production support from Davy Sumner. We receive funding from the National Endowment for the Arts. The Moth Radio Hour is produced by Atlantic Public Media and Woods Hole, Massachusetts. Special thanks to our friends at Odyssey, including Executive Producer Lea Restennis. For more about our podcast, for information on pitching us your own story and everything else go to our website TheMoth.org.