212: The Other Man

exactly one, and it was kind of a disaster.

Robert Redford ended up their house because he had heard about a book that Sarah's stepfather was writing, about Leonard Peltier, of the American Indian movement. He was still just a manuscript, and the stepfather didn't want to send copies of it around,

“so he told Redford that the only way that Redford could read it is if he would do it at”

their house, England, Ireland. Redford agreed. As the atmosphere in the house when he arrived, it was completely different from any other time in her childhood. I remember mostly my mother, like consciously trying to be very charming, and being very charming,

and talking to him a lot, and asking all sorts of questions, and laughing a lot at what he said, and kind of flitting about the house in a way that I hadn't remembered her doing before. But Robert Redford told stories, even the simplest story, about his trip to the house. Her parents nodded and smiled along with an enthusiasm. The stories did not necessarily seem to merit to a living-year-old Sarah.

I was really, I was selling, and I think I was making a really concerted effort, not to be impressed.

“You know, now 20 years later, I think I was jealous that he was suddenly the star of the”

house, whereas I was used to being the star of the house as the youngest kid, and, you know, I was sort of the one who I'm used my parents, and, you know, here was the stranger coming in, who had, you know, served my role. And I remember when he came in, poor guy at the first night, my mother made this special dinner, and we ate in the kitchen, we had this big wooden table, and it was definitely fancy

than usual or like one more course than we usually had, maybe we had an appetizer or something

which we never normally had, and she had put down these placemats that were, we only brought

them out on special occasions, you know, it all looked really festive and nice, and so he sits down and we started eating and Robert Redford says, "Oh, do you always, do you always eat like this? It's so nice!" And I said, "No!"

And my mother at the same time said, "Yes, we do!" It was bad, and then another thing happened where the seats at that table were these benches, so I was sitting on the same benches, Robert Redford, and I started rocking, you know, kind of rocking, like partly unconsciously because I kind of always did that, but also just knowing I'm sure that it would be highly irritating to whoever's sitting on the bench

with you. So their poor Robert Redford was rocking back and forth, trying to eat his dinner, and my mother said, you know, Sarah stopped rocking, you know, and sort of scolded me in front of Robert Redford. And next day, a friend of Sarah has been on the street as to if she could come over,

and eat the house gas. So she comes over and she reacts the way you are supposed to react, like she's just, you know, her eyes open wide and she's just smiling and saying, "I'm such a fan, and I love your movies, and can I have your autograph?"

And he's delighted, you know, finally someone is showing the proper protocol, and he's

like, "Oh, sure, yeah, hey, and my mother's standing there smiling, you know, and how sweet."

“And she says, Sarah, would you also, like, his autograph?”

And I said, "Now." And that was like the crowning glow. It's like somehow, like if you picture your family is like this little solar system, you know, in and of itself, like with its own set of normal gravitational fields and all that, suddenly, like, like, I don't even know what, like another star and other planet

that entered in and it completely shifted everyone's orbit away from the way it normally is. Right. And I couldn't handle it. All my behavior, I think, was aimed at trying to get it back to the way I had wanted

it or the way I was comfortable. Because in the oldzo system, pretty much you were the son, like you were the center. Right. And he was so clearly, like, a bigger son, you know, he was, he was literally a star. Well, today on our radio program, stories of what happens when an outside or arrives

and changes everything for better and worse. From WB EZ Chicago, it's a American life. I'm Eric Glass. Our program today in three acts, act one, psychic Buddha, Keska say, his story of what happens to an average American family when mom, who is completely rational and charming

no one else can see, who last walked the earth hundreds of years ago, back to the Jackson II.

“The story of a politician whose life is shattered by two different men, both of whom share”

his same name, act three, Mr. Fun, Jonathan Goldstein and Heather O'Neill tell the true story of what happened when he first arrived in her life, and why her little daughter explained to him that he is the daughter's 19th-favored person in the world, and not like would arise. Stay with us. It's a American life from our class.

Today shows a rerun, act one, psychic Buddha, Keska say, a quick nap before we start this next story. Even people in the story, our reporters' mother is completely deaf. She woke up one morning when she was 29 and her hearing was gone, and so to communicate with her, the family uses sign language and finger spelling, she can read lips if you

talk very, very slow. It sounds like this. "Can I have 20 bucks?" "Can you have 20 bucks?" "No."

This is a story where another man shows up in a family, and the other man is an ancient spirit named Erin. Her mom started channeling Erin years ago. Erin has been through lifetime after lifetime, going back a couple thousand years. He instructs her in Buddhism and in meditation.

Her son, Davey Rothbart, but together this story, and what it is meant to have Erin, around all these years, in their family. But also, when he went to interview everybody in the house that he grew up in, in

Ann Arbor, Michigan, he realized that they had never sat down as a family, and actually discussed

whether they thought Erin was real, whether they actually believed in Erin. They got a chance to do that, too. He's Davey. I was 12 when Erin showed up. My older brother, Mike, was 15.

My little brother, Peter, was 7. I first found out about Erin by reading through my mom's journals when she wasn't home. What some people call her dirty snooping, I called being curious, and I was a curious kid. I remember reading about Erin this, Erin that, and all these long, incredible conversations in my mom and Erin that had.

For a while, I thought Erin was some dude, my mom was sneaking around with. Then one morning in the dining room, she explained to me my brother's about Erin, how he just came to her one day.

She's always meditated every morning, and I guess this one time in winter, while she was

sitting quietly in the living room, she felt the presence of someone. Then she saw him, a biblical looking figure with blue eyes and a long white beard. At first, my mom thought she was hallucinating. She asked the guy who he was, he said his name was Erin, he's never gone away. I feel his presence there constantly, but it's like sitting in a room with somebody

again, you're reading a book and they're reading a book and you don't know what's at the top two each other. You just feel the other person's presence and if it's somebody you really love, there's a comfort in that person. Is he your best friend kind of, hmm, it's not that kind of relationship.

Yes, he's a friend, a very dear friend, but it's a more reviewed teacher than a pal.

“Do you and dad still knock boots, do we still be making, make them with the bow?”

What does Erin do, what does Erin do, when make love? I've noticed he ever sees games, so it's the one time that he's really mad around, although one of my cold, or maybe with things, but I think he's the coolest person in the world. When Erin showed up, one of the first things he did was dictate to my mom a piece of 2,500-year-old Buddhist scripture called the Sati Patana Sutra.

My mom says she'd never heard of it before.

Erin kept teaching her more scriptures and coached her in meditation in the Buddhist traditions. After a while, a couple of my mom's friends wanted in on the teachings, so she started showing them how to meditate and began channeling Erin for them. It was strange, my mom and Erin became these gurus, and more and more folks started coming by.

Every night of the week we'd have a crowd of new age types in the kitchen, grazing on vegan cookies and forging through our herbal teens. My mom and Erin would lead meditation sessions out and not convert it to rocks. Just leave ring your attention to the touch of the breath. Wherever my mom was, so was Erin, and if you're wondering what it was like growing up

“in a house like this, the only way I can describe it is, it felt completely normal.”

Erin was just another member of the family. We'd be at breakfast or driving in the car, and my mom would tell us things that Erin would say to her. There's like he was an old college friend of hers who we all knew well. He had a weakness for puns, and dumb jokes.

He was always marveling at new things that hadn't existed in his last lifetime. I remember how intrigued he was one time by the site of a fair suite, a lot of school carnival.

who we never really felt embarrassed or weird about it.

“This was Ann Arbor, the Berkeley of the Midwest.”

Our friends' parents were ex-hypis and liberal professors. Nobody thought channelling was that strange. Not long ago, on a winter weekend, my brother Mike was in town visiting, and we went for a walk to the elementary school playground near the house. I was taken over exactly the point where I started to believe that it really was channelling

and not just mom going slightly psycho. You don't want to remember? I just remembered. It was at Shirley McLean movie on TV. I don't know.

It was just the worst satpy, silly stuff ever. My mom loved it, and one of this all the while. Yeah, she was eating it up, and it was soon after that she met Erin. I was like, "That's convenient." Mike is 30 years old and married now.

He lives in Madison, Wisconsin. He's a professional photographer, and he's into the outdoors. Out of me and my brothers, he's probably the most spiritual. When Mike started getting into Erin and his teachings, I wasn't sure what to make of it.

I just felt like, okay, you and me and Peter used to all make fun of mom's students and stuff like that. Well, most of you and Peter used to make fun of them. Okay, yeah. Me and Peter used to make fun of these weird people that come from the house.

But sometimes you would try to be down with me and Peter, and you would try to make fun of them too. And then you were up there doing all the voodoo stuff along with dress love. I did used to feel, I used to feel torn that I didn't want to be cool or kind of be accepted by you and Peter.

Yeah. But I was really interested in what they were doing. Of everyone in the family, Mike has turned to Erin the most. And this freshman year of college Mike basically had a breakdown. What happened was he started dealing with the fact that he got molested by a neighbor

when he was little. The emotional weight of that started tearing him apart. He couldn't function. At first I felt like I was thinking, like, you know, pet, just thinking further and further, getting depressed.

I didn't much of anything. And then I don't know what I just basically eventually just got so bad that I just called mom and asked her for help. She said, well, basically she said, well, I'll put Erin on the line. Yeah.

What can Erin say that, like, I mean, like, after what she went, some dude, like, touched you improperly. I mean, that seems pretty f***ing.

“What can Erin say to make that better or go away here?”

He can't take it back. If I was Erin was more like the punitive type of spirit. And like, if you said some dude, like, improperly touched me. And he was like, no, he was just like, put like a bolt of lightning and, like, f***ing. You know, we read about the paper the next day.

Then I would be like, yeah. Right. But basically when I would call, I'd explain how I was doing. And Erin would just really help me to see things from a more universal perspective. Like, here I was. You know.

Like your problems aren't really that big or, like, more that my problems were temporary. I remember when Mike would call from school to talk to my mom and Erin. She didn't have a death telephone back then, so Mike would talk to me. And I'd translate into sign language from my mom. And I remember there'd be long stretches where I'd just do the sign for crying.

Running my finger down my cheek again and again. Over the past 12 years, I've watched my mom and Erin help literally thousands of people. Folks come to them in so much pain and seem to leave feeling so much calmer.

I've always felt really proud of my mom for all the works she's done to help people through their darkest times.

In fact, when Erin first arrived in our house, things in our family were pretty miserable. Both my mom and my dad say that when my mom went deaf, it was incredibly difficult for them. And then it began to tear them apart. Here's my dad. I think one way to characterize it would be just a short, tough it was.

“That's what I felt every day, just about every minute, like screaming.”

And I think I did it frequently enough. When I first lost my hearing, it was devastated. It was totally cut off. But there wasn't no communication at all. Just a sense of being totally isolated from the world.

When my mom first went deaf, she didn't read lips or use sign language. She lost her job teaching sculpture at the university. She couldn't communicate with her friends. In fact, a lot of them just disappeared. My dad got frustrated and upset with her when she couldn't understand him.

He says he felt like she was taken from him, like his wife was gone. And he didn't handle it well.

It was a big shock. I never meant anybody that was deaf.

And I was concerned that maybe she had brought it on herself.

I'm a very cold and windy day and true abuse to put on a jacket or a coat or anything.

So I figured that was her fault. And I kept asking myself the question.

“The same strange now, but the question was, why is this happening to me?”

And dad was totally overwhelmed by. He couldn't talk to me. I could talk to him because he could hear me. He couldn't talk back to me again. So he had so much anger. And his anger cut me out.

I would get mad. I would curse that her. I would yell at her because she couldn't hear me cursing. But then she told me that, yes, she could tell the expression of my face. That I would say is something viable. It was like this for 15 years.

We could never tell when my dad was going to just blow up.

A couple of times my mom packed me and my brothers into the station wagon. Ready to leave. My mom says she was praying for some kind of relief. And then Aaron appeared. And after that, things began to change.

My mom got a focus in purpose in her life. People looked up to her. She wasn't isolated anymore. And Aaron worked with my dad to help him learn how to manage his anger. It's always seemed to me that my little brother Peter is the one of my family most skeptical of Aaron's existence. Growing up, me and him would tease our mom for talking to ghosts.

We used to mess around and do imitation of Aaron for our friends. Our favorite thing was when sales people called Nass for Aaron. Usually it's for Mr. Aaron undetermined. Yeah, I guess that's, yeah, they ask. Is Mr. Aaron undetermined there?

I have to explain to them that Aaron is not of this world. Do you believe in Aaron?

“In what sense do I think that everything mom says about Aaron is real?”

I don't pretend to know. I don't think it's important to me. Like, is Aaron really a higher spirit that tells mom all this stuff? Or is he just like, is he just some sort of imaginary friend that developed as a psychological tool for helping your figure out her own problems? It's just like, it doesn't seem like something I can really figure out.

I gotta say, I completely understand Peter's agnostic stance. It's tough to start asking the question of whether or not Aaron is real when either answer you get could be pretty unsettling. I mean, say Aaron is real. Then all the stuff he talks about is real too. It means God exists and reincarnation.

And that there really is this whole vast spirit world that most of us can't see. But alright, say Aaron's not real. If Aaron's not real, either my mom's lying or she's diluted. I know she wouldn't straight up lie about this. She clearly believes in him.

Which means if Aaron's not real, then she's a crazy person. And that now she's snuckered thousands of followers into believing along. I decided I should just go to Aaron directly. I asked my mom if he would take a meeting with me. She was down and she said Aaron was down.

Once no way afternoon we went for a walk in the woods behind our house and sat down to talk on a big ol' fallen tree. I had a list of questions.

“Should I ask them one at a time or should I ask them all?”

Probably, I'll ask them one at a time.

First, can I ask Aaron what other kinds of humans has Aaron been?

I'm going to start there. Start there. My mom leans back slightly and closes her eyes. She purchase on the snowy log breathing deeply and sitting completely still. Aaron, I've lived in every lower off body.

I've lived there. Aaron says he last walked at earth in human form about 500 years ago in Thailand. In that lifetime, he was a Buddhist meditation master. And my mom was one of his prized students. One night, a man attacked Aaron with a spear.

And my mom gave her life to protect him. Aaron says he and my mom have been together in many lifetimes as teacher and student. In a couple of lifetimes, he's even been her father. I have a question for you, Aaron, Aaron. Isn't it possible that my mom invented you because she felt so alone and isolated with her deafness?

The first, I cannot approve, but I'm real and it's not necessary.

Certainly, she could have invented me. In my experience, that's not what happened because I exist. Since it's not something one can prove either way. I tend to simply ask people whether she invented me or I'm too new. The ideas that I offer from some.

“I think it's something from catching me.”

Or the ideas you're supposed to. These are all baseball pairs. Later that afternoon, I went up into the attic to look for some old pictures and things. Where do you think you're, oh, what's this one? I wouldn't point my mom came up to help. She started telling me about a weekend channeling works out.

She gave a few years ago. She said that channeling is not some secret gift.

That even my brother Mike had channeled once.

Mike channeled. Is that her reddit hair? I thought channeling, skips a channel racing. My experience was that anybody can learn how to jump. As I said, it's like playing basketball.

Doing it is easy. Doing well is hard. David, that was channeling. That was channeling. No. True. That was fun.

You're pulling my, you're gay.

“We had 20 people here on about 18 of them ended up channeling, but the end of the weekend.”

Let's get that. It's held down there. I'll come on around here. What? It's, it's a family.

Okay. Well, we're about my dad. He's a real performer. The kind of dad who will improvise Gilbert and Sullivan songs with new lyrics.

Always willing to entertain.

Did I ever channel? Yes. Sure. I took the channeling class through your mother. Is she a channel? Yeah.

Oh, yeah. I have a tape of it. Shoulder, shoulder, shoulder. You say? I channeled both. I can probably do it again.

Can you channel one, go right now? I'm asking dad to channel manga. My dad stands there on the pull-down edict steps and closes his eyes. Well, my mom gets an increasingly worried look on her face. Now, I would strongly suggest that you're not taking it from the challenge.

Mom and my dad sit down and admit that you can get yourself into a stupid choice. Dad just don't worry about it. She's crazy. She's channeling.

“I think I'm feeling, I'm feeling his presence.”

I'm asking for respect for the process. I could sit down and I'd have to be more comfortable. I think my mom hoped that that would be the end of it. Baby Papa. The next morning I got my dad alone while he was shaving in the bathroom.

How come I wouldn't let you channel manga earlier? You're my feeling about it. I think she felt that it wasn't sincere, but it was real. Do you do manga now? Can you try?

I mean, I know if you feel I'm closer than others. I can do it. I feel this presence. I won't be able to shave and have to stop shaving. Well, yeah. I can do it.

I feel I'm around. I have to close my eyes and kind of concentrate a little bit. Hello. My name is Monga. And I come from India.

I'm here now. Now I'm speaking. Not to be disrespectful and not to focus on manga's accent. But I just didn't find this as believable as my mom's channel. Still though, there's my dad standing there at the sink in a bright green bathroom.

His glasses on and shaving cream all over his face, channeling. Already this was turning into one of my favorite memories of my dad ever.

Davy is a number two son for an April 11th, 1975. Right. I might put 11. 152, I believe. 142.

I have these feelings about your physical appearance. Monga was like one of those carnival barkers. They try and guess you're exact height and weight, or you win a giant pencil. Why didn't Aaron ever entertain like this? I don't want to say, and he's to all human beings on planet earth.

I never really realized my dad was so cool with the whole spirit world thing.

He was always a gracious host at all the meditation classes and channeling sessions. But sometimes he also seemed to resent how wrapped up and Aaron and her work my mom had become. She was always going out of town to lead meditation retreats and workshops around the country. And I don't think he'd be in home alone so much of the time. And sometimes my dad would get annoyed by all the students constantly coming in and out of the house.

“Honestly, I thought Aaron was just something he tolerated.”

But listening to him and Monga, I felt moved. Really, what could be a sweeter way for him to show acceptance of my mom's work, that for him to channel his own spirit? Is Aaron just a part of you? I don't know what, yeah.

It's, he, I don't experience him as a part of him.

There were still a couple of questions I had left for my mom.

I know Aaron has dictated entire books to her, interpretations of ancient Buddhist writings. Scholars who've read them have been impressed. But Aaron's teachings, she's become a widely known and respected meditation teacher. Even the most established Buddhist bigwigs admit that the depth of her knowledge is astounding. But then there's sketchy things too. Like one time when Aaron said that thinking he missed most about being an actual human being was his taste of cognac.

Aaron's last lifetime was supposedly more than 500 years ago, and I checked it out. cognac was barely invented then, and the only people drinking it were a few dudes in France, not Buddhist monks in Thailand. And then there's the fact that Aaron says he can read minds and see the future, but then refuses to demonstrate these powers. Why won't he just prove himself? It's so easy.

I have a number between one and a hundred. He says he won't play that game. So he's not real. It's the good side. Does he know the number? He doesn't have to say it.

I just want him to know the number. Does he know? He says he has everything in his eyes. He's choosing not to look at it. I'm begging him, please. I just want to know.

And then I mean, I know it doesn't matter. His teachings are pretty cool. It doesn't matter if he's real or not. But I just want to know.

So just look, just Aaron, I'm asking you for one second.

Trust a little hug.

“If you want to understand what having Aaron in our lives is really done for my family,”

here's something that happened while I was home to work on this story. We went out to dinner on Valentine's Day. My dad met us at the restaurant and when he walked in he said, Happy Valentine's Day to my mom. But she had just turned away and didn't see him say it.

My dad got kind of agitated. And so she was ignoring him by choice. He still hasn't fully gotten over her deafness. A minute later, he said something else to her, but now he was sore at her. And he didn't use sign language and barely moved his lips.

My mom said, "I can't understand you." And my dad, getting more upset, repeated himself even faster. Way too fast to lip read. This used to be how it would all start with them. My dad's anger at my mom's deafness.

We bring out her unhappiness over it. Soon they'd be shouting at each other. But Erin's influence has changed everything. On Valentine's Day, when my dad started freaking out, my mom just smiled at him and shrugged.

Like, this is your problem, not mine. Things don't escalate the way they did before Erin came around. He's helped my mom discover a total sense of calm.

“Erin came in peace, and that's what he brought us.”

It now, if Erin had come along. I think that and I would have been the worst. I'm not sure, maybe not, I'm not sure.

As for me, I think believing in Erin is a lot like believing in God.

“I have a hard time having an unswerving faith in something you can't see or prove exist.”

But I do have that kind of faith in my mom. That's why I believe in Erin. You? You'll have to make your own decision. Davey Rothbard is a creator of Found Magazine,

and the author of a book of essays called "My Heart Isn't Idiot."

He first broadcast this story.

In many years ago, Davey's mom and dad are now in their 80s, and still going strong as are Erin and Manga. In fact, Erin celebrates the big 2100 this summer. Now, here's Davey's dad using his improvisatory powers. Hey Pete, hurry down. Dad's going to sing.

If you're a god fairy man, and you're trying to answer all the personal questions that you can. I suggest you call A-A-R-O-N. Erin is the man that can solve your problems. Do you have any today? It's a way to live in the world today.

Can you solve your problems?

“If you can't, let me remind you there's a wonderful spirit in the world.”

At his sayings are good as gold. Some of modern and some are pretty old. So my response to you. Coming up, the difficult task of running for Congress, again, someone with your exact same name,

and a seven-year-old explains a few things to a grown-ass man. In a minute, from Chicago Public Radio, when our program continues. Just American life, Amira Glass. Each week, of course, we choose some theme,

bringing you a variety of different kinds of stories on that theme. Today's show is a rerun from years ago, the other man, stories in which some outsider arrives on the scene, disturbing the normal orbits of the planets, disrupting out everybody deals with everybody else.

We have arrived at the second act of our show, Act 2, the Jackson 2. So Jesse Jackson was a national figure for decades. Prodigy of Martin Luther King, two-time presidential candidate. Somebody would show up on the news all the time.

So imagine for a second, what do we mean? To grow up with the name Jesse Jackson, if you weren't the Jesse Jackson. Okay, you're with me so far. Now, imagine if you grew up with the name Jesse Jackson,

and you were Jesse Jackson's son, and you wanted to go into public service of some kind. Your dad would forever be the other man in the room.

His shadow would always be there, his presence,

an invisible boulder in any room you walk into. Run for office, there're going to be some people who love you, some people who dismiss you because of your dad. His name is shared. Okay, so that is the situation that Jesse L. Jackson Jr.

found himself in back in 2002. When we first broadcast today's show with this story, the story that's kind of a classic kind of hard-knuck-old old-fashioned Chicago political brawl. Okay, so at the time, Jesse L. Jackson was a congressman,

for Illinois's second district in Chicago, and after 34 years of living with the name Jesse L. Jackson Jr. and seven years of living as congressman, Jesse L. Jackson Jr. Jesse L. Jackson Jr. was in a meeting with campaign workers. When somebody told him about this,

strange turn of men's. And he said, "I've heard the news that you heard the news." That said, "Oh, what's the news?" He said, "At 11.59, the last minute of filing for Congress

and the second district of Illinois,

you now have another Jesse L. Jackson running against you."

“I think at the first people were questioning whether they really”

was such a person. I mean, it really said that there was an actual question that he even existed. Yes. Mike Brown covered all this for the Chicago Sun Times.

He says that the other Jesse L. Jackson turned out to be a retired truck driver. He lives in a suburb called Robins. 68 years old, no previous political experience. At first, we couldn't even find him. He was ducking everybody.

And then they produced him for a little dog and pony show where he came out in front of the microphones and read a statement that said he really does exist. Indeed, he was a real person. He was just a regular guy.

Who clearly had somehow been recruited to get into this race. They recruited by home. Well, nobody was a bit of anything, but for weeks, news reports were featuring gleeful quotes

from two local politicians, Robert and William Shaw. They were twin brothers, old school operators

the Black Democratic Organization.

“He reportedly resented the relative ease”

with which Jesse Jr. became a congressman. After all, he started at the top. It was his very first elected office. When he won that position, he beat out of the candidate that they had supported for the job.

The job brothers called Jackson a Bragg and a crybaby. And in 2002, soon as this other Jesse L. Jackson appeared on the ballot, they were merrily telling reporters and anybody who would listen, they'd only seem fair. The congressman Jackson realized

that he wasn't the only one who could run for office on his father's name. The only way he got in public office is through his dad's name. But this other Jackson had the name long before.

This young boy had it, the congressman. Senator William Shaw talked to me from his office. You know, I'm so happy looking back at history that Andrew Jackson didn't come along in this time.

He never would have been the president.

Ever had been left up to this guy. Wait, wait Andrew Jackson, explain what you mean. You know, Andrew Jackson, he was one of the presidents. Very right, of course, he's on the money. But listen to congressman Jackson,

anybody with the Jackson name, he feels old that they shouldn't run. This guy's not of his mind. He's thinking he have a pattern on the Jackson name. And the congressman's point of view, this is all pretty much exactly what you do not want people

talking about in the newspapers and on television. Again, imagine you spent your whole life trying to get out from under the shadow of that other Jesse Jackson, and now there is yet another Jesse Jackson. And the main story about your reelection

is not what you've accomplished for your district or what you hope to accomplish.

“But once again, did you get your job on your daddy's name?”

You know, and that's for someone who takes the process very seriously, it has been annoying. In the last six years, I have had eight press conferences. Two of them have been on this subject. To give you some idea that I don't run to the media

to show you some difference between me and my father. My dad might have had eight yesterday. I'm not anti-press. I'm prepared to do press, but when I do press, I want it to be about issues of concerned to my constituents.

And so rather than running a race on a third-year

port and P at tone or discussing, or hair expansion, or how to get more jobs, I'm caught in a fight with people who aren't even running for congress in my race. The people who refer to, of course, are the Shaw Brothers.

They deny having anything to do with Jesse Jackson of Robbins, the truck driver. But congressman Jackson started investigating the petition drive that put Jesse Jackson of Robbins onto the ballot. He found that many people who signed the petition

had been told specifically that they were signing for the congressmen

“who enjoyed a 90% approval rating in the district.”

Further investigation showed that those petitions were notarized by a political ally of the Shaws. The 4400 signatures were gathered by men who came from a homeless shelter, one of whom testified that they got the jobs gathering signatures one day

when Senator Shaw's chief of staff came by and took them to the Shaw's office at 144th Street. In an affidavit, this man said that both William and Robert Shaw were there in the room and sent them out to get the signatures.

Not only there and sent them out, but there eating catfish and sent them out. And specifically said, go help the congressmen. We don't get along with the congressmen. We don't care much for the congressmen,

but we're going to help him get back on the ballot. Now, the congressman is saying that he's got affidavits on people who went around and got signatures to get this other Jesse Jackson, the one from Robins under the ballot.

He says he's got affidavits. Some of those people saying that they met, they were organized in Shaw headquarters. What do you all say to that? I don't say anything.

You know, anything might have happened. You know, I have hundreds of people in my head quarters. I'll come in and out. We involved in a campaign here. And to my knowledge,

I don't know anything about that. And I think that the congressmen, you know, he's written some water probably out of DC. We have better waters than that in Chicago. Do we wait, and what is the water from DC, do you?

The water is making him a delirious. He's this what I think. For a while, there were not only two Jesse L. Jackson's on the ballot. The Shaw brothers officially supported a candidate in the primary named Ivan Williams.

And at some point, another Williams turned up on the ballot as well. Anthony Williams. And of course, this happens on ballots all over the country. If you're running against an Irish politician, you get another Irish name on the ballot.

If you're running against a woman, you get another woman. If you're running against Jesse Jackson, you get another Jesse Jackson. Again, William Shaw. Yeah, that has happened many, many times.

And people just think of what a grain of salt. It's not such a big deal. Yeah, I was wondering if you think we should think it's tragic or just funny.

I guess it's funny.

Everybody, but the Congress.

Well, it is kind of funny. Again, Congressman Jackson.

“But there are political forces in my congressional district”

that are notorious for election shenanigans for deceiving voters and even having the reputation of stealing voters. And after deploying seven lawyers, two private eyes and $150,000 to investigate how Jesse L. Jackson of Robins got under the ballot, the Congressmen pursued legal action.

He tried to prove that the Shaw brothers intentionally deceived voters. Intentionally, tried to convince voters that they were signing petitions for the congressmen, when in fact, they were signing for the other Jesse L. Jackson. If you could move that, it would move this entire incident out of the category of political prank and into the rather more serious category of political fraud,

which is a criminal offense.

Rabbit hunting is fun until the rabbit gets the gun. And so what happens when you come up against another big bear in politics, who has the resources and the capability of pursuing it to the integrate of the law and starts demanding justice? And I saw the same Eddie Murphy movie that they saw,

and I'm determined not to let it happen in our district. The Eddie Murphy movie being the distinguished gentleman, a gentleman who gets elected to Congress by the name of Jefferson Johnson. After the congressmen dies, his name is Jeff Johnson. He runs for Congress and he gets elected. He's a felon, by the way.

Do you think that actually they saw the movie?

“I'm pretty sure someone saw it, and I think what's also becoming a clear”

is that many people forgot how the movie ended, and that is that some people went to jail. But on this final, you got to court. The Cook County judge refused to bring in the shaws to testify under oath. Congressmen Jackson's lawyers then threatened to make William Shaw defend it in the case

that is to sue him directly. And not long after that, after several weeks on the ballot, Jesse L. Jackson of Robbins dropped out of the race. Congressmen Jackson went on to win that election by a huge margin, and five more after that until he ended up in prison,

which are just of improperly using campaign funds for personal purchases. His political trial William Shaw died in 2008. Jackson served his time, and just this year, ran once again for his old congressional seat. The this time, voters did not come out from the name Jesse Jackson.

Jackson lost.

“At three, Mr. Fun, we have this story of what it is like to intrude”

on a perfectly happy, perfectly idyllic family of two, when one of the two falls in love with you, and the other most definitely does not. Heather and Neil and Jonathan Goldstein explain what happens. I was 20 years old when Arizona was born.

I thought I could just put her in a little suitcase, and that would be her bed. I figured now that I'd given birth the hard part was over. I moved into a big building over a laundry mat, where they didn't ask for any references.

People left their apartment doors open and waved to you from their couches when you walked down the hall. The apartment was our own cozy little universe of porcelain dolls, posters of Hong Kong and tiny colorful paper umbrellas. It was a universe of two plates, two cups, and two toothbrushes,

until I met Johnny. I was introduced to Heather by some friends over drinks. I was impressed by how fast she drank her beer, and she was impressed by the fact that there was only one arm on my eyeglasses. From the side you look like a cartoon doctor, she said.

She looked like she was from some bygone era where women worked with their hair tied up in kerchiefs on assembly lines to help the war effort. By all of this I mean to say that I was smitten by her. I knew that Heather had a little girl,

and I also knew that I wasn't very good to a children. Ironically, my job at the time was teaching after school magic classes to kids and elementary schools. I wasn't that great a magician to begin with, and kids made me nervous.

My hands were always sweaty, and I was always dropping coins all over the place.

One time I was really losing the attention of a classroom of six graders while teaching them the jumping rubber band, so I told them that if they listened quietly, at the end of the class I would walk through a wall immediately, they all shut up. At the end of the class, I took about two full minutes

where I just stared at the wall at the back of the classroom. If any of them said a word, I would reprimand them for breaking my concentration and start all over again. Finally, I slowly started walking towards the wall. The way the kids were looking at me, I'll open mouth and expect it.

I almost felt like I could actually pull this off. When I smacked into the wall, I turned to them and said,

They all looked at the wall, then they looked at me.

“Then, slowly, reluctantly, they all shook their heads now.”

I hoped I would have better luck with Heather's daughter. Over drinks, I had told Johnny that Arizona had shoved our TV set off the coffee table, and now surprise surprise. Here he was, carefully winding his way up the staircase to our house, with an old RCA in his arms.

The old fashion antenna still attached and dragging behind him on the floor. When he came in, Arizona was over at the neighbors, a Greek family who liked to give her a good bath every now and then. It was a family event for them with shishk bobs in an uncle who played accordion on the clothes lid of the toilet.

As me and Johnny sat on the couch, Arizona walked into the apartment freshly scrubbed, smelling a baby powder and Greek food with four bows in her hair.

Johnny kept clapping his hands together and going on about

how she looked just like Shirley Temple. She stopped dead in her tracks and gave me a confused look. Before he left, he asked me if I wanted to come to his house

“for dinner that weekend and I said, sure.”

I called my sister and asked if she would babysit. She begged me not to have another boyfriend. In other words, no babysitting. So I took Arizona along on my day with Johnny. I stood on my front steps waiting for her to get there,

and when I saw her coming down the street, pushing a stroller, I wondered if I had any juice in the house. We sat down at my kitchen table and I brought out a big pot of curried vegetables and rice. Arizona climbed up on the table, opened the lid and wrinkled her nose.

I picked her up and put her back down in her chair, but as soon as I did, she would get right back up and roll around all over the plates. Most of the time while pointing at me with an angry look on her face. She wasn't like Shirley Temple at all.

She was like the Muppet Baby Joe Peshie. After dinner, Johnny walked into his living room and saw the word Arizona, written in pen with the backwards R on his desk.

At first I was sort of delighted.

It was the first time she'd ever written her name without me coaching her. But I kind of felt for Johnny, whose apartment was all full of neatly arranged furniture and superhero figurines that stayed exactly where they had been placed. Johnny walked around the apartment with his head down

and an expression on his face like he was a seven-year-old reviewing time's tables in his head. He tried to ease into our lives with grace. After the first time he slept over, he got up in the morning before Arizona woke.

He put on his jacket and went outside into the hallway and knocked on the front door, pretending he had just arrived. "We don't want to damage the child's psyche," Johnny said. Arizona's bedroom was closest to the front door,

so she got up and let him in. "Hi," he said. "I was just in the neighborhood." He walked in without shoes in his belt and done. He dropped onto the couch and fell back asleep.

Arizona looked at him. "Why do you even come by?" she said angrily. "If all you're going to do is go to sleep." ♪ Johnny and I had very different ideas about the environment

in which one should raise a kid. The stove needs to be fixed to be complained. You can't cook meals over a hot plate. Rats are riso cooks meals over a hot plate.

“And who on God's name puts laundry out on the line at midnight?”

Children need discipline. They like it. It was a favorite banner of Project Goldstein. ♪ "Hether called all of my domestic tips, bourgeois."

"How was cleaning the crisper bourgeois?" I asked. "How in the world is keeping your child for running naked through the halls of the apartment building, wearing my boots, a symptom of the bourgeoisie?" Arizona could tell that Johnny was trying to change things,

and everything between them became a battle of wills. She would reach over and squeeze the indiglo button on his watch, and he would chastise her, telling her that indiglo was used only in emergency situations, like if you're in a blackout, or stuck in a cave.

But as soon as his head was turned, she'd push the button again. ♪ And what I considered a bit of cultural exchange,

Arizona, all of six years old, turned to me in the middle of if I was a rich man,

“and said, "That's what you do all day long.”

You bitty, bitty bum." She paused for a moment, and then, just to make sure the point wasn't being lost on me, she added, "That means you're lazy." When the three of us walked down the street, Arizona would say, "My mom's shadow is longer than yours. That means you're short."

She was starting to like him less and less. One day, he made her list all the people that she loved most in order, and who do you love next best he would ask hopefully, and the next, and the next. He came in at number 19.

He actually ranked below the neighbor's dog, and the plumber who drank two gallon bottles of Pepsi while he worked and let Arizona hand him wrenches. Every time I tried to kiss Arizona, she would pull back and sifting that my beard was too scratchy.

“It got to that I was shaving twice a day,”

but still, she would wave me off. I would stand in front of the mirror like an obsessive compulsive, desperately scraping the blade across my cheeks,

the word scratchy, ringing in my head, like the ravens never more.

One time we had some friends over at Heather's, and someone started playing the guitar, and Arizona started to dance. It struck me as one of the most beautiful things I had ever seen. Everyone stood around and clap their hands while Arizona spun around with their arms over her head.

Before I knew it, I was walking over and taking her hands to dance with her. I wasn't the type to dance with kids, or to even dance at all for that matter, but I just couldn't help myself. When I touched her, she whipped her hands away and stopped cold.

I retreated back to my seat as the music continued to play. All the while, Arizona stared me down like her prison bitch. He tried buying her love with really inappropriate gifts, things that he liked that he thought she might learn to like. He bought the matching wallets,

and a mood ring that wouldn't fit her for at least another five years. He got her a pop-up book of Nightmare Analysis that included a chapter on Giving Birth to Aliens. In the best of time, she treated him as something that made me happy and she quietly tolerated him.

Like the way she sat through a hitchcock documentary at the museum. But then sometimes she would just explode. One day at Burger King, he refused to let me bring her hamburger back to the counter for a third time to ask for even more pickles. And she started screaming.

She pounded the hamburger with her fists. I can't stand him, she said, "Why did we have to go out with him today? Tell me why."

“He's my friend, I said, and you have to pretend to like him.”

She had a little friend who would come over and bite his own toes while they watched TV

and I never said a thing.

I figured it was the least she could do for me. One day I was trying to finish my dad's income tax and Arizona was bored. She was whacking the windchimes with a broom. She was all out of ideas when Johnny asked her if she wanted to take a walk with him. She sighed and got her jacket.

Before they left, he explained that the plan was to walk to a bank to cash his check and then find a barber that would cut his hair for a reasonable price. We were walking along when Arizona came to an abrupt stop and so I stopped too. She looked up at me and in this tone that I had never heard her use before, she said, "This isn't what you do to have a good time."

It was like she had summoned up every little bit of maturity she had and some she didn't even have. And she used her words to let me know something that she felt was really important for me to know that I just wasn't any fun. And she told it to me in this way that it was like maybe it just wasn't something I knew and that maybe I just had to be told and then everything would be okay.

Like maybe it could all be that easy. We went back to the apartment and got our bathing suits. Arizona wanted to go to the beach.

Arizona treated me like I had never been to a beach before.

This is sand, she said, and people like to dig in it. Besides the sand is the water, but it's not the drinking kind. She treated me like she was nursing me back to health. For my part I tried my best to live up to what a six-year-old's vision of fun would be. I bought every single thing the vendors had to offer.

I even got us these overcooked mushy corncobs on a stick that were smothered in butter and mayonnaise. And when she went into the water past her knees, I bit my fist and kept my panic to myself.

As we rode the bus back home tired, looking out the windows and silence, Arizona suddenly turned to me and said, "Why did I ever marry you?"

“I sat there completely tongue-tied on so many levels.”

Tell me why she demanded over and over, getting louder and louder until the six or seven people on the bus turned to hear how I was going to defend myself. Why did I ever marry you? All the way home, the question just sat there, big and awkward, like the watermelon on my lap, that we would have for dessert that night. Around that time, Johnny and Arizona invented this game where they pretend to be too old-time-voddville partners who can't get along.

She is always the wise or burnt out one, and he is always the mincing boot look who wants to please the producers and the audience.

They pretend they're backstage yelling at each other as the audience haulers for them to come out. Let's get out there, Johnny else. They're waiting for us. They paid a lot of money for those seats. We'll be sued, dammit. We'll be finished in this town. This is my last show, Arizona says every time shaking her weary head, and then I'm through. I can't do this anymore. They come out into the hallway nervously. They stand in front of the record player, Arizona on top of a Webster's dictionary to be taller.

Johnny starts singing a bicycle built for two. And Arizona is supposed to be the bicycle bell and sing ding ding, but she doesn't. Johnny starts the song over again. Still Arizona ignores her cue, staring blankly ahead in the throes of a showbiz meltdown. The audience starts throwing tomatoes in Arizona ducks behind Johnny. He holds out his arms to protect her from the crowd. She crouches in back of him, laughing her head off as the angry mob covers him from head to toe in imaginary rotten fruit.

Heather and Neil is the author of many books. Her latest is the capital of dreams. Jonathan Goldstein is the host of the podcast Heavyweight. And Arizona and Neil, these days, all grown up. Her debut graphic novel is called Opioids and Organs. I can tell that we are going to be friends. I can tell that we are going to be friends. With today's program was produced by Jonathan Goldstein and myself with Alex Bloomberg, Wendy Doran Starling.

Seeing your producer for today's show was Julie Snyder, Elizabeth Meister around her website at the time, production help from Todd Bachman and Maria Shell, help from today's rerun, the Mike Kamatea Adrian Lily, Molly Marcelo, Katherine Merimondo and Stone Nelson, special thanks to Mark Brown for helping us with our Jesse Jackson story for the rerun.

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Thanks as always to our programs, Hope Founder, Mr. Troy Malatea, to describe what it was like the first few years, hearing us talk about them like we do here at the end of the program.

I think one way to characterize it would be just a short, tough it was, it was. I'm around class, back next week, there's more stories of this American Life. Next week on the podcast of this American Life, the most famous black American in the 1950s was Paul Robson, an icon of the Harlem Renaissance, an actor activist singer, athlete, family man,

“little known fact about Paul, one day he said do his wife, we both said we want an unconventional relationship, why don't we open up our marriage?”

The messiness of our ancestors, next week on the podcast or on your local public radio station.