The radio version of an episode we did live on stage and beamed to movie theaters. David Sedaris, Tig Notaro, Ryan Knighton, and the late David Rakoff in his final performance on the show. The other half of this two-hour show was visual, including dancers, animation, and more. You can watch it on YouTube. Visit thisamericanlife.org/lifepartners to sign up for our premium subscription.Ira interviews Ryan Knighton, a blind guy who had a very peculiar experience with a hotel room telephone. (7 minutes)Act One: Ryan Knighton tells a story about trying to get his daughter to understand his blindness. (7 minutes)Act Two: Famous people are supposed to be somewhere else, invisible to us. Comedian Tig Notaro tells this story about repeatedly running into Taylor Dayne, who was a pop star in the late 80s and early 90s. At the end of the story, we have a little surprise for Tig. (16 minutes)Act Three: David Rakoff tells this story, about the invisible processes that can happen inside our bodies and the visible effects they eventually have. (15 minutes)Act Four: Ira Glass's sister once met David Sedaris, and commented that he was much nicer than she thought he would be, given his writing. David replied, "I'm not nice, just two-faced." In this story, David shares the thoughts running through his head as he attempts to buy a cup of coffee. (8 minutes)Transcripts are available at thisamericanlife.orgThis American Life privacy policy.Learn more about sponsor message choices.
Chapter 1: What peculiar challenges does Ryan Knighton face as a blind person?
Ryan started going blind when he was 18, so it's been a long time now that he can't see. And one night he flies to Chicago for this work thing and gets to his hotel room and he wants to call his wife back home in Canada to let her know that he's arrived safely. So all he needs to do is find the phone.
And so I walk into the room and I find the bed. And then to the left of the bed I feel along and I find this nightstand. which is where I expect the phone to be. And so I feel up the nightstand and there's no phone. Fine, so I reach across the bed to the other side and find the other nightstand. And I feel that one up and there's no phone. That's unusual, right? It's a bit odd, right?
So Ryan can shuffle cautiously around until his knees graze into things, and that's how he finds a sofa, which orients him.
And so I turn to where I think there might be a table, and poof, there's a coffee table. So I grope this coffee table for a while, and there's no phone on it. Grope is kind of a funny word to use for this. It sort of feels that way, though. You know, you're just sort of, because you don't know where anything begins or ends, so you really maul it.
He says that as he moves around any new place, he doesn't exactly draw a map in his head. He says that it's more like wandering around in a first-person video game, one where nothing is visible until he touches it. So he figures, okay, let's see what is on the other side of this coffee table that he's found. And he edges forward in the room. And I find there's a desk.
And I'm like, aha! the desk, right? So I feel around on the desk and there's a lamp and there's the notepad I'll never use and there's stuff, but there's no phone. So I'm left to my last sort of blind guy resort, which is I go back to the beginning, you know, back to the bed and I find the wall and I start Marcel Marceau-ing the walls.
You know, I'm wiping them up and down and I round the fourth corner and I get to the bathroom and I go past the bathroom and there's nothing. And I feel behind me again, and the bed is back behind me again. So I've circled this room. And I even thought, well, maybe it's like a super fancy hotel, and maybe there's a phone in the bathroom. And I go in there, and there's nothing.
So I circle the room two more times this way, wiping it down. And I check the coffee table again. I check the desk again. And I just figure, forget it. I'll just go to bed and try again tomorrow.
So he goes to bed, doesn't call his wife, sleeps. And in the morning he wakes up to the sound of something curious, a phone ringing. And Groggy, he follows the sound and finds somehow now there is a phone in this room.
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Chapter 2: How does Ryan Knighton communicate his blindness to his daughter?
I ended up doing the Marcel Marceau thing. I start wiping the walls, feeling my way along the edges, and it wraps back around until I find the bed is actually behind me.
He was in a part of the room that he hadn't encountered the night before. This was an alcove. on a side of the bed that he just never discovered.
So here's what the room actually looked like. There are two coffee tables and two sofas on the left and the right side of the bed.
The mistake that he made the night before was this. When he was Marcel Marceau-ing the walls, he got three-fourths of the way around the room and got to the last wall. And he didn't actually feel all the way along that wall until it met another wall. Basically, he went a little ways down that wall, felt that the bed was behind him,
And when he realized that the bed was behind him, he figured he was done. He stopped feeling that wall. He just assumed that the wall continued for another eight feet or so. But it didn't continue. It stopped. And there was this alcove.
And this is the problem. When you're blind, you just can't assume anything. And the problem is you get a picture in your mind, and if you get it wrong...
You just live inside the mistake. This kind of thing happens to him a lot, way, way more than you would think. Two weeks before our interview, he got lost in another hotel room, this one in Los Angeles. He couldn't find the door to get out of the room. He says that during the decade that he slowly went blind.
It took me a long time to come to understand that blindness actually wasn't the main problem. The main problem was embarrassment. That, you know, I had to sort of give myself over to the slapstick of things.
To state the obvious, sometimes it is just a lot easier to see things. Clears a lot of things up. And today on our radio show, we have all kinds of stories of people trying to take things that are normally invisible to them and make them visible. I'm talking about unspoken feelings. I'm talking about people's secret lives.
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Chapter 3: What is the significance of Taylor Dayne in Tig Notaro's life?
And part of me felt useless as a father, and another part of me just felt really angry at Nerf. Another time, I picked up Tessa to daycare, and, you know,
Papa, papa, she screams as I walk in and she sees me and I squat down and I open my arms and I wait for the hug because it's best that I wait because the floor is dotted with babies between us and nothing ruins our sweet moment like me stomping on babies. So her body slams into mine and she wraps herself in a monkey hug and I tell her how much I missed her and of course to that she cries.
But she cried on the other side of the room. And suddenly, I feel this body, and it's not familiar, and in fact, it's a little boy. And Tess is crying, Papa, Papa, as if the word itself hurts on the other side of the room. And so she just can't understand why I've hugged another child, and I chase after the sound of her, and I'm sorry about the babies.
So the miscommunications piled up and they were mostly just little heartbreaks, but sometimes they were dangerous. You know, there's times when I would walk her to the daycare in the morning, and I work at a university, and we'd walk across campus together in the morning, and she'd be in one of those NASCAR roll cage backpack things, which are great for blind fathers.
And we'd make our way across campus, and it's beautiful, it's in the mountains, and it's forested. And I say this just so you can understand my legitimate panic, when from her backpack, she said to me one of her few words. She said, bear. Bear. And I froze. What's that, pumpkin? And I turned, because I can still see some smears, so I looked for a big black one. Bear. And I said, there?
Like, we're going over there? And she's, bear, bear. And she's getting more upset very clearly. Now, this is Canada. We're in the forest. This is the mountains. And the bears love our dumpsters. They dine frequently. The security guards just tell us which entrances and exits to avoid.
And they even just lock down the daycare and let the kids bust out the goldfish crackers and watch the bears from the windows like some demented drive-in movie. And now Tess is watching one from the comfort of my back. And where it is, I have no idea. Now I can feel she's upset and she's sort of leaning. So I reached behind me and I grabbed her hand and she was pointing right behind us.
So I reeled around to face the bear and I smelled for it. And I have no idea what bear smell is. Now I didn't know if I should run or if it would startle the bear to charge us or if I would just run into the bear and that would be ironic. So I said, let's just go this way, pumpkin. And I started to run and she got really upset. So I said, actually, let's go this way. And she got really upset.
I thought, well, you know, and I'm running, I'm pinballing around this parking lot, like with a baby on my back, like a Geiger counter. And And then it occurs to me, and I reach back with both hands, and yeah, she dropped her teddy bear. And yeah, she'd grown a little frustrated. But everything changed when she was three, and I remember the exact moment.
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Chapter 4: How does Tig Notaro repeatedly encounter Taylor Dayne?
We were sitting in the kitchen, and I asked her to pass me a cookie, and she did, and I reached for it and did my usual dumb crab pinching the air thing, and she said, Papa doesn't see. And I thought, that's what I've been saying! We said, yes, Tess, Papa doesn't see. And then she had to check. Mommy sees? And we said, yes, Mommy sees. And she said, Tess sees? And we said, yes, you see.
And one week later, we were sitting in the living room, and she was watching Sesame Street or something. And she said, Papa, who's that? And I said, ah, Papa doesn't see. And so she grabbed my hand and she put it on the screen. And she drew it over whatever she was looking at. Thank you.
Brian Knighton. He's the author of the books Come On Papa and Cock-Eyed.
I've been waiting for months Waitin' for years, waitin' for you to change. Ah, but there ain't much that's dumber, there ain't much that's dumber than pinning your hopes on a change in another. And I guess I'll need you. What good's that gonna do? Leading is one thing, and getting, getting's another.
This, by the way, is the band OK Go playing a song on handbells with the audience. They were all playing bells on a special app they downloaded to their phones for the live show for this song. Act 2, Groundhog Day. So some people are supposed to stay invisible, out of our lives, not pop up during our daily routines. And specifically, the people I'm talking about are famous people.
We are not supposed to run into Angelina Jolie at the CVS. But sometimes that kind of thing happens. Tig Notaro has witnessed it.
So I live in Los Angeles, and I went to this party with my friend Pam. And we were going to leave the party, and she said to me, do you know who that was standing by the door? I said, no. She said, that was Taylor Dayne. Do you know Taylor Dana? No? She was a pop singer in the late 80s, early 90s. She sang, Love Will Lead You Back. She sang, Tell It To My Heart. Anyway, I love Taylor Dane.
And not ironically. Yes! I love Taylor Dayne. So I went back into the party and I went up to her and I said, excuse me, I'm sorry to bother you, but I just have to tell you, I love your voice. And she just turned and said, yeah, I don't do that anymore. And then I looked over and this other friend of mine was doubled over laughing at me. She was like, yeah, you just got dissed by Taylor Dane.
Didn't feel great. So I left the party. Then like nine months passed. And I happened to be out to eat with that same friend of mine, Pam. And there was a party of 10 seated right behind us. You guys are not going to believe who was sitting there. Any guesses? Just think about, what's that? That's correct. It was Taylor Dane. Pam said, oh my gosh, you have to say something to her.
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