A special Moth Radio Hour with stories originating from our annual "Love Hurts" StorySLAM. Love lost, love found, unwanted spotlights and the family we choose. This episode is hosted by Moth Senior Director Jenifer Hixson. The Moth Radio Hour is produced by The Moth and Jay Allison of Atlantic Public Media. Storytellers: Andrew Brown comes face to face with his academic nemesis. Joshua Arnold dreads being singled out during altar call. Daisy Rosario meets her brother for the first time at their father's funeral. Gary Sizer shares a love of Star Trek with his step father.. Antoinette Thorne, a trans woman, is recognized by her father in a small town. Podcast # 721 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: Who hosts The Moth Radio Hour and what is the theme?
This is the Moth Radio Hour. I'm Jennifer Hickson. The first Moth Story Slam was in 2001, and we are still going strong. There's different themes and different hosts in different cities. A lot has changed. A lot continues to change. But one thing stays the same.
Every February, as a sort of answer to Valentine's Day or an alt-Valentine's Day, we put on shows all over the country with the theme, Love Hurts. Now, maybe it sounds to you like it would be a huge bummer, but somehow it's not. Yes, people bring stories of heartbreak and good love gone wrong and being crushed and kicked to the curb, all of that. But it's always somehow a lot of fun, too.
The math of love always switches things around. You lose, but then, lo and behold, you find again. We always enjoy the interpretations of our themes, and in this hour, we'll hear five stories all born in February at a Love Hurts Story Slam. Our first story was told at the Love Hurts Story Slam in Boston, where we partner with PRX and WBUR. Little inside baseball.
At our storytelling competitions, people sign up to tell, but there are often more wannabe tellers than there are slots. So as a rule, we only hear 10 stories. After those 10 stories are told, we have all the people who didn't get a chance come up and give their first lines. But every once in a while, there aren't three or eight extra names in the hat, but just one extra.
And if the audience gets wind of it, well, just listen to how our Boston host handles it. Here's Jeremy Brothers trying to keep the Boston crowd at bay. And then after that, the 11th storyteller, Andrew Brown.
Let's welcome up right now the person who didn't get to tell his story tonight so that we can just hear the first sentence. Please welcome up Andrew Brown. Andrew Brown. Thank you. Yes. The first sentence of Love Hurts from Andrew Brown.
This story goes out to my wife, who I love very much, and encouraged me to come up and tell my story.
Oh. That's so sweet, but it's also such a tease. Cause that's not the first story. That's like the, that's the prelude. Well, you know, assault him in the front room. All right, Andrew, get on up here. Oh my God. It's a moth first. We're doing 11 stories. This one is not counting toward the judging. All right. Andrew will tell his story right now. We'll do the judging.
Look, we're completely off book with the running order tonight. Give it up one more time.
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Chapter 2: What is the story of Andrew Brown's academic rivalry?
So I was a pretty prolific high school student. Won many awards, scholarships for university. There was one event, though, that was sort of like the Oscars, where you didn't actually know who was the winner. So everyone was sort of blinded to the results. Basically, I'm sitting in the front row. And there's an award that I think I'm going to win. And I hear my name, Andrew.
And I start to button up my suit jacket and get ready to accept my award. And the announcer finishes the sentence. Andrea Black. And I'm furious because this woman has the feminized version of my name, Andrew. And she also has a color for the last name, Black. My last name is Brown. So I leave this event furious. I'm in the back of the car. My mom's like, why are you so angry?
I'm like, I just lost. And for the next few months, if I received a scholarship letter and I didn't win, I thought to myself, Andrea Black probably won it. And for years, this was in the back of my mind, years in the back of my mind. And so I'm in my first year of medical school, and a friend of mine is like, you know, we should try this website out. It's called POF, Plenty of Fish.
I don't know if you guys have heard of it. And so I'm like, yeah, sure, whatever. I'll try it out. And the first person I messaged, really cool person, aligns very much with my goals. She likes philosophy. She seems very educated. I think it's a good match. And we start to have a bit of a conversation. And we sent emails over the winter break. She asks me, tell me a bit about yourself.
And I say, you know, I'm from this town, Mississauga. I have a key to the city. And she's like, key to the city? Hmm, I got to Google this. So she Googles me, and she sees my name, Andrew Brown. And she says, ha, ha, ha, look how funny that is. My name's Andrew Black. Your name's Andrew Brown. Ha, ha, ha, isn't that funny? And I'm like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, like capital letters.
Is this the Andrea Black? Like angry capital letters. And I was like, were you at this event in 2003? Were you at this event? And she's like, yeah, that was me. And so for years, I carried this hate in my heart for this Andrea Black. And we had an opportunity to meet. We had dinner, and it was fantastic. I was able to sort of take a step back, and you know, it was years ago.
I thought I'd give her a chance. And she was a great person. And at our wedding, her... Her father was actually able to find videotape from 2003. where Andrew's accepting her award, she's going up the stage and she's getting her award, shaking hands. And then Andrew Brown, he's coming up to the stage and shuts off the camera. Didn't even take a photo of me, like it was crazy.
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Chapter 3: Why did Josh Arnold feel uncomfortable at church?
And this is at our wedding and people are like, ah, it's so funny. And it brought back all those feelings of resentment and fear and hatred. But I can say I do love my wife very much, we're doing fine, we've gotten over that hurdle. Sometimes it's a problem, but for the most part, I think we're doing all right. Thanks so much.
That was Andrew Brown, Dr. Andrew Brown. He's now a specialist in interventional radiology. His wife Andrea is a teacher and educational consultant. I got a note from Andrea, who reports that Andrew is, quote, a fantastic husband and a doting father of two. She says they're no longer rivals, but a fierce team.
To see a picture of Andrew and Andrea at their wedding, visit themoth.org, where you can also see the video clip of the awards ceremony that left Andrew so ticked off. Next up, we hear a story from Josh Arnold at the Love Hurts Story Slam in Kentucky, where we partner with Louisville Public Media. For this story, you should know two things.
The chair Josh refers to is a wheelchair, and an altar call is when a person is called up to the altar at church to receive blessings. Here's Josh Arnold.
Well, I didn't really expect to do this, but okay, here we go. I think I'll just say I lost a bet. But, you know, you would suppose that if you went to church, that's supposed to be where you experience love. But most people, when they look at me, they don't get an accurate read on what I am. What they do is they see the chair, and they remove me from it, and they put themselves in it.
So, and I've been dealing with this most of my life, all my life, and especially in church. And my cousin one time, he asked me to go to this church down in a very small town in Alabama. There's like less than 600 people there. And I don't think anything about it. I go with him. And the church, the service is good. The music's good.
And, you know, I'm not really uncomfortable until it's time for the altar call. And those are supposed to be emotionally uncomfortable anyway. I mean, the guy that came up with them actually said that. It was written down somewhere. Though I forget his name.
You know, those are supposed to be uncomfortable, but I began to especially feel uncomfortable as he kept, the minister, whatever his name was, kept saying, is there anybody out there that feels they need some help? Is there something they want to let go of? You know, and I was like, I began to get suspicious that, oh, shit, he's talking about me. It's always me.
Why, God, why is it always the cripple boy? And I'm like, this is not about me. This is not about me. I was really nervous, a lot more nervous than I am now even. And... So I was like, this can't be about me. And then I hear the minister start telling a story.
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Chapter 4: How did Daisy Rosario meet her brother for the first time?
And I ain't never coming back. When somebody said, give him a microphone, and I thought, oh, yes. Please, God, if you have never heard anything else, let me have that microphone. And... So the minister leans in and he says, do you have anything you want to say? I said, yeah, I do. He said, well, what do you want to say? I said, please quit. He said, excuse me? I said, you heard me.
I said, please quit. He was a little surprised, and he says, why? I said, because I didn't come here for this. I said, you know, you didn't ask anything about me. You just saw the chair. What you don't know about me is that less than two years before this happened, or this is happening to me now, I had a really bad drinking problem. I don't have one today.
Also, at the same time, I was a slam atheist, and I'm not now. As a matter of fact, I'm skipping the church where I'm the associate pastor to come down here to make my cousin happy. And I say, you just assume that you know what God wants for me to do. As far as I know, God has told me, or it's been told to me, that I can do what I'm supposed to do with or without the chair.
And he looked at me and said, do you want to tell the congregation that? I said, yes. And I did. And he got up to his credit. He's like, I think we've all learned a very valuable lesson here today. That, you know, we can look at people and assume that we know what they need. And we don't. Now, to their credit, they knew what...
You know, they thought they knew what they needed to express love to me and they did not. And I don't really fault them for that, you know. And for my part, I thought that if I said anything, that I would just be being rude and I'd need to shut up. But the thing about it is for me is that, you know, whether or not it sounds polite and sweet,
The biggest way to show somebody love is to tell them the truth, even when they need to quit.
That was Josh Arnold. And I just want to pull out a quote from his story because it's so perfect for this Love Hurts theme. The biggest way to show somebody love is to tell them the truth. Thank you, Josh. Do you have a story about the beauty or pain of love or sometimes all together wrapped up in one? Well, we want to hear it.
We have a pitch line and we encourage you to call it and leave us a message. You can pitch us your love heard story by recording it right on our site, themoth.org or call 877-799-MOTH. That's 877-799-6684. The best pitches are developed for moth shows all around the world. When we return, a story about meeting a close family member for the very first time at a funeral.
When the Moth Radio Hour continues.
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