In this hour, a trip through the phases of life—childhood to awkward adolescence, first jobs to careers, and big leaps in adulthood. This episode is hosted by Moth Senior Curatorial Producer, Suzanne Rust. The Moth Radio Hour is produced by The Moth and Jay Allison of Atlantic Public Media. Storytellers: Anne McNamee Keels is "not the cool girl" at school. Matthew Dicks finds a friend at McDonalds. Kate Greathead finds out that her dream at age 7 is a nightmare at age 14. Linda Grosser discovers more about herself on a sailboat. Ron Hart loses passion for his dream job. Karen Lascher has a complicated relationship with Mother's Day. Podcast # 914 To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Chapter 1: What is The Moth Radio Hour about?
This is the Moth Radio Hour. I'm your host, Suzanne Rust. Moth story slams are magical. Each evening has a theme like lost, busted, or love hurts. Brave people from all across the country show up with a five-minute story that relates to the theme and drop their names in a hat for the chance to step on the stage and share it. No notes.
This week's hour, which features stories from these slams, explores how we reflect on our worlds at different ages and stages of our lives, from childhood and teens to adulthood and later life. From personal experience and non-scientific observation, I think it's pretty safe to say that in middle school, confidence levels are not at an all-time high.
So the last thing most kids want is to be the center of attention. Our first storyteller found herself in that position and live to tell the tale. Ann McNamee Keels told this at a Chicago slam where we partner with public radio station WBEZ. Here's Ann, live at the Moth.
My story takes place in 1998 at a school on the south side of Chicago. No joke. But this was a Catholic school on the south side of Chicago, and I was the student. It's 1998. It's April of 1998. Tuesday morning, I am in my polo shirt and my ugly...
Chapter 2: How did Anne McNamee Keels become the center of attention in school?
uniform skirt with a very heavy backpack full of math, science, and religion textbooks with my head down, getting onto that black top behind the church, behind the school, before the first bell, just kind of quietly slinking in as I normally do before the first bell. To say I was not the cool girl in eighth grade is kind of an understatement, so I'll tell you what I was at this school.
I was the kid who had shown up, transferred to the school in fourth grade, which doesn't sound like a big deal, but at a K through eight Catholic school, it's kind of like I had shown up to the birthday party after the candles had been blown out, you know? Like, songs had been sung, alliances had been formed, and there I was.
Also, no one had told me when I signed up, when I got to this school, I didn't sign up, I was sent there, that... That the main form of like social capital was the sports you could play and the sports teams you were on. And I was the kind of kid who all but broke out in hives if I was like a couple feet from a volleyball. I'm like the opposite of athletic. So I was on zero sports teams.
I was a music theater art nerd at a school with no music theater or art. So... I became the kid who at lunchtime could be found reading a Babysitter's Club book over her peanut butter and jelly instead of talking with my classmates. And my goal was to like, it's April of eighth grade, right? So I'm putting my head down, get through. That's the goal.
So I literally have my head down, getting onto that blacktop. But something weird is going on. I hear, like, weird murmuring when I get there. And I look up, and it seems like all the girls in my grade are looking at me. They are talking, I think, about me. And they are pointing at me. Oh, my gosh. So I look down, like, do I have a stain on my uniform shirt? Did I spill something?
I don't think so. And I'm like, oh, God, did someone tell the entire grade who I have a crush on again? No. But that doesn't seem to be it. And then Emma walks up to me. Now Emma's like the closest that I have to a good friend in my grade. We're friends sometimes and not at other times. But today she seems very excited. She says, oh my gosh, have you seen the May issue of Teen Magazine?
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Chapter 3: What was Anne McNamee Keels's experience with Teen Magazine?
Now for the young people, I just need to do a little quick background. In the late 90s, Teen Magazine and others of its ilk, Seventeen, YM, they were our Instagram, our Facebook, our Pinterest, our TikTok. They were how we knew how to dress, what kind of makeup to do and how to do our hair.
They were how we knew that we were not thin enough and we were not yet pretty enough, but we could be if we followed their advice. Also, there was always like some weird story about a girl in white pants getting her period in front of her crush. I'm not clear what that was, but they were our Bible. And so she's, Emma says, do you have, did you see the May issue? And I say, it's April.
And she says, oh, like everyone in the grade has a subscription. We get it a week early, which is like another check against me. And so she hands me the teen magazine May issue and she opens to page 14 and on page 14 y'all is me. There is a picture, my school picture, frizzy hair, blotchy skin, all of it.
And then I remember months prior when I had been going through the issue and, you know, like back the, you know, December issue for like the third time. And I'd seen the tiny fine print because I'm a big nerd. And it said that they were looking for girls who want to makeovers. And I sent in...
I'd sent in my school picture, along with a letter detailing how my frizzy hair is a problem, how I can't find makeup because I'm a redhead, how my eyes are too small, and my face is too blotchy, and please help. So did they give me a makeover? Just to be clear, they didn't give me a makeover. They didn't send me makeup samples. They didn't even tell me they were using my picture.
They just put my picture there, along with a makeup artist telling me all the things to fix all my problems. So, of course, I'm, like, horrified, right? Like, oh, my gosh, this is so embarrassing. But I look up, and all these girls, they do not look like they're making fun of me. They look impressed, maybe even jealous. Remember, this is before social media. I am in a magazine.
Leonardo DiCaprio is on the front, along with Jennifer Leigh Hewitt. And Titanic has just come out. Everyone is looking at this magazine, and there I am. So the girls are freaking out, all the girls in my grade, and they're coming around me, and I don't know what to do with this attention. We get in school, and somebody shows a teacher, and it spreads like wildfire.
Teachers from all over the school are coming in to see the magazine that I am in, because they had me in previous years. Later in the day, I get a call over the PA, Ms. Harris, will you send Ann Mack me to the principal's office? I never do anything wrong, but of course I'm terrified, because what if I accidentally did something wrong? LAUGHTER So I go to the principal's office.
I hate this, but I get there, and my principal, who I can only describe as looking like Mr. Potato Head, like very round face, you know, mustache, glasses, like Mr. Potato Head. He is sitting in front of this desk with all these important papers, and on top of all those papers is Teen Magazine with my picture. And he says, this is very impressive, and I think, is it?
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Chapter 4: How did Matthew Dicks meet his best friend at McDonald's?
I'm upset because I'm about to meet my mortal enemy for the first time and I know it's not gonna go well. I've been working at this restaurant for two months now I actually live three towns away in Blackstone, Massachusetts. But I found out that this place pays $4.65 an hour, and that's $0.20 more than the White Hen Pantry five minutes from my house.
And I figured even though it's a 30-minute drive, the $0.20 will absolutely make up for the time and the gas, which it does not. But it changes my life in a really significant way because when I arrive here, I discover the joy of a clean slate. I'm growing up in a tiny town, 82 kids are in my class, so the same 82 kids I knew in kindergarten, and they remember everything.
And so when you want to be something different or you decide you could be something better, no one lets you because they remember everything. They still talk about the time in sixth grade when I exposed myself to class because my gym shorts were a little too short and my underwear was a little too big and it was a little too much manspreading. They talk about it to this day.
And they remember the braces and the buck teeth and the bad haircuts and the free and reduced lunches and all of that. has prevented me from becoming something that I think I could be and being trapped in what they think I should be. But I've arrived in this new town. Nobody knows me. And on the first day of work, Erin Duran comes and asks me if I have a girlfriend.
And the way she's hoping I say no. And that's never happened to me before. So this is something. And it turns out that because they don't know me, I can be the thing I think I can be. And suddenly I have more friends than I've ever had in my life. And I'm good at my job, shockingly good. In 1980s, the job at the McDonald's that is the hardest is running the bin.
I have been a public school teacher for 24 years, and I can tell you that I have not had a day in my classroom as taxing as a day running the bin at McDonald's during rush hour in 1987. It is...
It is coordinating a kitchen full of 16-year-olds and 60-year-olds and convincing them all to do work for you at the same time and watching a drive-thru screen and listening to cash registers and figuring out how much food needs to be here at any moment without causing waste and making sure profit.
It's really hard, and for some reason, I can hold all this information right here, and I'm good at it, and people respect me for it. But as soon as I got good at it, all I heard was one word, Benji. You're great, but Benji's better. Benji's the best bin person in this restaurant. Actually, he's the best person in this restaurant.
He is fantastic, and everyone loves him, and everyone respects him, and I hate Benji. All they do is tell me how great he is, and with every single word they say, I hate him more. And then I discover they're telling him about me, and they're saying how this guy came in, and he might be better than you.
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Chapter 5: What was the turning point in Matthew's friendship with Benji?
And then after an hour it gets like awkward and I start to think maybe he thinks I'm afraid to say something to him. So I'm like, no, I'm gonna do something here. And so I go up to him and I say, why are you coming in at 10.30 on a Saturday? What's 10.30? And he says, I watch Saturday morning cartoons. Which in 1986 is a thing.
All the new cartoons, the Smurfs and the Snorks and Super Friends are all out in the morning and we eat sugar disguised as cereal and we watch these things. And he says, the gummy bears start at 9.30 and they end at 10, and then I come to work. And he says it without irony or embarrassment. I can't believe it.
And so I walk over to the drive-thru, I drop a bag off, and when I come back to the bin, I say, listen to me. Dashing and daring, courageous and caring, faithful and friendly, with stories to share. And I take some food and I walk back to the drive-thru. And as I come back over, he is singing before I get to the bin.
He says, all through the forest, they sing out in chorus, marching along as their songs fill the air. And standing next to the bin with Benji, we sing together. Gummy bears. Bouncing here and there and everywhere. High adventure that's beyond compare. They are the gummy bears. There's a second verse, a bridge, and another chorus. I will not share them with you, but we sing them that day.
Because I watch the Gumby Bears, too. And to this day, I can sing that song. And that's it. A single theme song to a cartoon melts all the ice between us. And 37 years later, he is still my best friend. It is the most significant relationship in my life, with the exception of my marriage. When I get thrown out of my house when I'm 17, Benji takes me in and lets me live in his college apartment.
And when I'm 21 and I need a credit card and can't get one, he gives me his extra card and says, just use it and pay me when you can. He saves my life again and again and again. And this day, we live in Connecticut, two miles from each other. And when I think back on that day that I stood at that bin and sang a cartoon song to him.
I'm reminded how little it takes to sort of reach out to someone and like just open the crack of a window. And you just get the window open and then it becomes a door and it becomes a lifetime. I stood at a bin in a McDonald's in Milford, Massachusetts and sang a cartoon song. And I ended up with the best friend of my life. Thank you.
That was Matthew Dix. Matthew is an elementary school teacher, best-selling author, and a nine-time Moth Grand Slam champion. Some of his favorite things? Play golf poorly, tickle his children, and stare at his wife. Oh, and also hang out with Benji. They live 15 minutes away from each other and often get together for long walks and talks where they never run out of things to say.
I asked Matthew something that he loved about Benji back then that he still loves about him today.
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