This American Life
850: If You Want to Destroy My Sweater, Hold This Thread as I Walk Away
Sun, 22 Dec 2024
The tiny thing that unravels your world. Visit thisamericanlife.org/lifepartners to sign up for our premium subscription.Prologue: Ira talks to Chris Benderev, whose high school years were completely upended by an impromptu thing his teacher said. (8 minutes)Act One: For Producer Lilly Sullivan, there’s one story about her parents that defines how she sees them, their family, and their history. She finds out it might be wrong. (27 minutes)Act Two: For years, Mike Comite has replayed in his head the moment when he and his bandmate blew their shot of making it as musicians. He sets out to uncover how it all went awry. (13 minutes)Act Three: Six million Syrians fled the country after the start of its civil war. A few weeks ago, one woman watched from afar as everything in her home country changed forever – again. (9 minutes)Transcripts are available at thisamericanlife.orgThis American Life privacy policy.Learn more about sponsor message choices.
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This is not a setting where Chris was used to learning anything important, much less having his whole world rocked by something somebody said. He was 15, in health class, in San Juan Capistrano, California. As Chris remembers it, it was the beginning of the period. Class was just beginning to settle down. The teacher was also the school's basketball coach.
You know, in my memory, he's sort of the standard issue, I don't know, tallish white guy coach with like neatly parted brown hair. And, you know, the bell rings, class is supposed to start. And we're all just, you know, talking over him, not listening. And he's trying to get class started. And I think he's getting understandably a little annoyed about
And then at one point, one of the girls said loudly, like, we're all going to be friends forever. And then he gets our attention and said something like, you know, just for your information, you're not going to all stay friends forever. And let me tell you a little bit about, like, how friendships work.
He says, like, in a couple of years, you know, high school is going to end and you're going to all scatter to different jobs or colleges. And you're going to start falling out of touch with each other. And eventually you're not going to talk to most of any of these other people. And now you might... Can we just pause?
That is such... It's real. It's very true. But, like, what a funny thing to say to a bunch of kids.
Yeah, it's like suddenly he had our full attention.
But then the teacher kept going. He wasn't done. He got very specific and said, OK, you might stay in touch with a few friends from high school.
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