878: New Lore Drop

A quick warning, there are curse words that are unbeaped in today's episode of the show. If you prefer a beeped version, you can find that at our website, thisamericanlife.org. Back when Pete was 18 years old. It was a summer before he went away to college. He's home in the living room with his dad. And he turns to me and he says, Peter, let's go for a drive. And that was not something that he ever said. That's not something that we did. So Pete knows something's up. There's no idea what. The grass side, getting the ball will. Pete asks his dad. Shouldn't we get Will, my younger brother, because he was at home. He was probably 13 or 14. And my dad just shook his head. No. This drive, for Pete, I'll go on with his dad. It would have to be kind of a big moment in his life. Where the drive, if he had to describe his family, it wasn't hard. He could do it in two words. Completely mundane. I mean, we lived outside of DC. My parents worked for the government. I mean, they were good parents. They were kind and attentive. And we would have dinner every night. My dad would cook dinner. Good cook. Oh, incredible cook. We had a great wife. He remembers it. He did salmon Sundays. Made a great pot roast. Had a pizza they'd make on Fridays. His mom was the one who'd make sure they did their homework and clean their rooms. She was direct. And we're talkative than their dad. It was really quiet. They were not Cragarius. They didn't really have friends. They didn't really have hobbies. Okay. And so now he is in the car with his dad. Just two of them. Dad pulls out of the driveway. So we start driving through our neighborhood and we get to the stoplight at the end of our neighborhood. And he says to me, Peter, it's time to tell you about the family business. Espionage. I mean, my first reaction was like what are you doing right now? What kind of joke is this? And then the next thing that he said is open the glove box. And so I opened the glove box and inside was a sheet of paper. And he said, take out that sheet of paper. And so I took it out and I'm scanning the page and it's his resume from the CIA. Did you know he worked for the CIA? No. Where did you think he worked? Well he said he worked at the State Department. But now on the sheet of paper, listed all the different countries that Pete had lived with his parents, Germany and the Netherlands and Jamaica. Countries were Pete. I always thought that his dad was going off to an embassy or a consulate every day to work for the State Department. And I'm seeing counterintelligence and counterinsurgency and deputy chief, chief of station, case officer. I didn't know what to ask next. And I honestly don't know that we talked very much at all. So we actually drove in a big loop and drove back down into the driveway. I was like, oh wait, does mom know about this? And my dad goes, oh, she works there too. This stunned him. His dad had kind of seen. His dad was quiet. Like somebody who keeps secrets. But with my mom, it was completely out of, it was just a complete surprise because of how she was. What do you mean? She just was somebody who, it just seemed like you were getting exactly what you got. She just didn't really seem like somebody who could deceive. But I guess she was. And with the kind of CIA employees who analyzed data and sit at a desk or a desk, or they like out in the field, you know, like spying, like pretending to be people who they aren't, you know, like carrying a gun. Were they that kind of CIA? They were out in the field. Yeah, they were undercover. They had passports with other names. And the way it was described to me is that they were not spies. They were recruiting spies from other countries. And in doing so, they were, you know, pretending to be people who they were not. He says before this, he just hadn't really thought much about his parents and their lives and their jobs. He was a kid. He once asked his mom, like, what do you actually do at your government job all day long? And I think my mom said something like, oh, you know, it's just meetings and memos. And I was like, yeah, I figured just boring stuff. Yeah. Which I have to say, I bet there were meetings and memos. So it's like that isn't 100% why. It's just leaving some stuff out. Yeah. No, definitely using boringness as a kind of deception. And retrospect, Pete says, there were clues that he could have maybe picked up on. His mom spoke several languages, the family of most of his life in other countries. His dad owned a 9 millimeter pistol. I was always up at four in the morning to go running on a track. It was the fact that his parents didn't have friends and never had anybody over to the house. Which of course doesn't mean that you're a spy. But still. Yeah, it actually wasn't until a lot later that I realized that a lot of adults do have friends and still hang out. And there were things like, when I would go to the mall with my mom, she always made sure we knew a code word. And she would say like, okay, so if mom is ever not here and somebody comes to pick you up, make sure they know the code word. And the code word was always teenage mutant Ninja Turtles. Wait, anytime you go to the mall, your mom would remind you of this? Yeah, we'd be in the back seat and she'd be like, okay, boys, what's the code word? And we'd say teenage mutant Ninja Turtles. At the time he says he chalked it up to 1990, stranger danger stuff. But we're going to do that other parents do not do this. Pete told me there was one more clue about his parents' jobs. A clue that was sitting right there during the years that moved back to Virginia. Maybe the biggest clue of all is that we lived right across the street from the CIA headquarters. Wait, what? Yeah. That makes a lot of sense because my dad was super pragmatic and he hated traffic. To be clear, they weren't literally across the street, but in a neighborhood right across the street. Door to door, less than five minutes. Pete's parents are about dead now. They both retired from the CIA after long careers, which is why it's okay to talk about it here on the radio, by the way. But when Pete learned about this, it really did make their lives seem so much more impressive. Like they met in the CIA, you know, fell in love in the CIA. They were globetrotting and bringing their kids around and doing God knows what. I'm not exactly sure how to ask this question just so I'm just going to ask this straight out. Like the one thing that I know about spies from movies is that they're all really, really hot. Were your parents really hot? I mean, yeah, they were hot. Yeah, they were hot. They were very attractive people. My mom was like, I have these old pictures of her and she's just beautiful. And your dad? Yeah, handsome guy. There's this concept that originally was video games and then it spread to TV shows and to social media where, okay, see in a video game, there's the universe that everything takes place in, right? And then at some point, the game creators do a new wardrobe where they get backstory or reveal important details that suddenly make everything seem different and richer and more complicated. Shout a whole new light. Pete had that. He had a new wardrobe in his actual life. He thought his parents were one thing, then went backstory that changed his whole picture of them. So what's that like to live through in real life? Yeah, I mean, I think at first it was a shock. The fact that they were able to deceive me for my whole life. And that is just weird. It did make me look at them differently like, wow, the rug just got pulled from under me. Everything I know is a lie. But then when that wears off, it's kind of like, well, it's still just mom and dad. Pete says everybody goes to the thing when they grow up, when they're going to see their parents. Not just is the boring human furniture around the house of their childhood. And for most of us, the new information that we observe about our parents happens over years. The new wardrobe version, the Pete got, was just kind of the accelerated program. Yeah, I got it all in one drive. What did they want to show? We have other human beings who are not video game characters and they're not fictional people on long-running television series who get hit with all new information about their own lives. Backstories that rewrite everything. New Lord drops in real life. From WB Easy Chicago, it's this American life. Today on the show, I will still be playing the part that I always play here. And I have not learned that I am a princess from Genovia and my grandmother is actually Julie Andrews. I am still a reglass. Stay with us. Right now we are living through some of the most tumultuous political times our country has ever known. I'm David Remnik and each week on the New Yorker Radio Hour, I'll try to make sense of what's happening. Alongside politicians and thinkers like Cory Booker, Nancy Pelosi, Liz Cheney, Tim Waltz, Katangi Brown Jackson, Newt Gingrich, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Charlotte Main the God, and so many more. That's all in the New Yorker Radio Hour. Wherever you listen to podcasts. It's American life, act one, save the drama for your grandmama. Sometimes a Lord drop happens when you least expect it. Look at this next story. Have you, De Cornfeld, explained? When I first met Jake, it was obvious. This is a guy who is hardwired to try and connect with people. He's like this friendly bulldozer, cool-aid manning his way into emotional intimacy. And Jake's always been this way. In part, perhaps because he grew up surrounded by people. He comes from this big Irish Catholic family in Rhode Island, and he had a sort of sitcom upbringing. His aunts and uncles and cousins all live close by. One grandma lived literally next door. The other set of grandparents lived a 15-minute walk from his house. Jake saw them every day. It was the best. And then, when he was seven years old, his family moved to Vermont, away from his extended family. And he hated it, really missed them. And this missing only intensified when his grandma back in Rhode Island was diagnosed with breast cancer. To little Jake, it was obvious what to do. I just started calling her all the time. And I think, because I just wanted to keep talking to her, because I was so afraid she was going to die. Oh my God, so sweet. I know. It's funny to think back on, because it was so purely intentioned, but it's also so the motives of it are so transparent that it must have just been a reminder to my grandmother every day. This kid thinks you're going to die because you might. She was like, okay, relax. No, she was like, I was trying to like one day of fucking peace. And I'm like, hi grandma, can I talk to you again before you die? I kind of have this memory of the calls kind of running out of steam a little bit, because I was calling every single day and I was like eight or nine. And so it's like, what do you have to talk about? And so I think I had introduced her to Harry Potter just as I had started reading it. And I think we were then like, we would read them at the same time and we would read a chapter and I'd talk of the phone the next day to read. We would discuss the chapter sort of like book club with my grandma. I remember my mom was one of the most upset times she ever saw me was I caught that my grandma had read ahead. And she accidentally said something on one of the calls that hadn't happened yet. And I was like, what are you talking about? And she was like, well, it doesn't it. And I was like, you read ahead and she had read the whole book because she couldn't put it down because she loved it. Right. But I was like, never do that again. Like swear to me that you'll not because I loved that I had that experience with her. This Harry Potter book club evolved into talking about other books, books they are reading separately. The way it worked, they would each read their own book and then they'd hop on the phone and summarize it for the other person, chapter by chapter. It was part of my like nightly ritual. I feel like it was like come home, do homework, maybe have dinner, then call grandma and recap the book because I loved I always loved like recapping my books to her. Like I loved having someone to tell this story to so that it was like I love being able to retell it. Like I want to tell her this story in the way it made me feel. I want to make sure I hide this suspense. I want to like if there was a surprise in the book, I want to make sure I tell her the story of the book in a way that keeps the surprise. So she's a surprise when I tell her I was when I read it. And then I'd be like, okay, what about your books and she would tell me. And I remember kind of clocking pretty early on that she definitely didn't have that same flair for like she just didn't. She would be like, oh, and then like, yeah, they are starting to fall in love and they go, well, how do they fall in love? Why do they like each other? I felt very connected to her through the books and through the story telling because I think my grandma was not, she wasn't like particularly forthcoming about herself. She wasn't someone who like would come home and drop her back and got a guy to tell you about my day. Like that was not her. And this was like the first time that I felt like I was having a conversation with an adult who was talking to me about stuff going on in their own life, even if it was just the book they were reading. Jake Scrama worked at PhyLeans in the shoe department. She was a real coupon-hound, loved to sail. She was nice, but not exactly sweet in a grandmotherly kind of way. She was often way too honest. Like, if you said you weren't feeling good about yourself because your clothes didn't fit right, she would offer, well, you gained weight. She liked reading all kinds of books, but she especially loved thrillers. Jake remembers one of her books in particular, Smokin Mirrors, about a librarian whose half-sister was murdered. The librarian tries to figure out who murdered her half-sister, the help of a guy who knew her. It was suspenseful. Jake's grandma loved a mystery. The two kept this book club going for years. Jake would pace back and forth in the hall between the dining room and living room in his house in Vermont, phone tucked under his ear, while his grandma sat nestled in her favorite armchair back in Rhode Island. The calls were long, sometimes lasting hours. Jake says his summaries were, unsurprisingly, pretty exhaustive. He didn't want to leave a single detail out. He was still, when he was 12 or so. He stopped being completely honest with his grandma about what he was reading. Because he started feeling like there was something off about the books he liked. He worried they were too girly. The ones where I was like, oh, these were the ones that really caused a crisis for me. There was this series of books called Twitches, which were about twin witches. They were like, the covers were like those old school early 2000s photo shoots where they would do stock image photo shoots. It wasn't like an illustration. It was like a photo shoot of two teenage girls. Like, listen, twin style. Totally. Exactly. Yeah. It was about these two girls who found out that they were adopted and that they were twins. They're also witches when they meet. They develop magical powers. And I was like, well, I literally have to read these. I don't want to tell my grandma that I'm reading a book about two teenage girls that have magical powers and like boys. And also, I don't want to carry this book around at school. And so I think that's when I started editing a little bit. And why didn't you want your grandma to know you're reading this? Because I think I knew it was speaking to Semp. I think I was also probably starting to realize, like, because I was a pretty effeminate child. So at this point, I was already getting called gay. So I think this was all kind of interwoven. And so do you remember deciding, like, intentionally deciding to start changing details? I remember in twitches, I think I changed their gender. I think I made them both boys. I think I changed their powers. I think I said that one could move things with their mind and that one was like strong. And the details you were changing, it was to make it a line with what you thought a straight boy would be reading. I was like, I'll change these details because they don't affect the plot. Okay. I'm not going to change the plot. I'm just going to change the details around it to make it a little bit more mask. It's going to be, instead of being able to passively stop it through clear voice and telepathy, it's like they use their physical powers of telekinesis and strength. And do you think you were convincing? Do you think that she thought that you were straight at the time? No. I don't think that anyone ever thought I was straight. Really? No, I don't think so. It's really sweet and really sad to imagine you like putting on this disguise by changing the details for your grandma. It's a good way to fake mustache, but it's actually a skew and you have no idea. And everyone's like, that's not a real mustache. Yeah, 100%. And like as though, like if I had been sitting here talking to you for an hour and a half and then just suddenly put the mustache on the next day, I just didn't think it was real. Like you've been talking to me without a mustache as a whole time. And I also think this kind of led to the end of the book club a little bit, was like when I started to pick, I don't want to read these books and have to tell my dad that you don't need me. Like also she beat the cancer. Congratulations. So I was asking the mother. Oh, so you were like, okay, it's not an emergency. I think so. Kind of. Yeah. It took Jake a few more years to formally come out to his family. He was 16. And he told me he thinks he remembers his grandma mentioning his coming out once and saying that she loved him. But it was such a non-issue that he can't even really remember specifics. Jake sexuality. That is not the Lord drop in this story. There was one, but it came years later when Jake was in his 30s. By then his grandma had developed dementia and then got really sick. Jake made a point to visit her every month or two and then one day I was visiting my grandma and she was in in home hospice and it was like kind of sad and she was on the first floor in the living room. And then I went up to my mom's old bedroom and my mom's bedroom. There's this like radiator that always was just like covered in my grandma's books. And I like remember being in I went I think I probably went up to the room to kind of like take a breather or something. And I remember like seeing the books on the windowsill and on the radiator. He saw titles he remembered from when he was a kid. The book she'd recapped for him. I remember I picked up one of the books and thumbed through it and found a sexy and I was like was she reading what their romance novels like these were sexy books. And so I like picked them up and I started like flipping through them. And I just remember being like graphic in the way that it like described genitals. Like it was like it wasn't just like and then we went to the bedroom. It was like like you know what I mean it was like that sort and I was like oh okay. I was like are those all smart. Yes Jake's grandma was an avid reader of smart. Jake's out there laughing out loud to himself as he started googling his grandma's favorite authors. J.N. Anne Crence who wrote the book Grand Passion in which protagonist Max Fortune heads to a B&B in search of his hidden inheritance only to find himself irresistibly compelled by the attract of innkeeper Cleopatra. J.D. Robb she wrote the book Naked in Death where a woman somehow works through her past trauma by sleeping with a hot and mysterious irresist businessman. And another one from J.N. Crence that Jake remembered his grandma recapping to him. Smoke and mirrors the one about the librarian traveling around trying to solve her half sister's murder with the help of guys she meets along the way. That was the way Jake remembered it anyway. But now reading the book. The whole book is just her wanting to have sex with this man. That's the entire book. The murder is almost never mentioned. They're just walking around this town trying to find out if the murder the entire time she's just like this man is so hot. She literally had to make up so much plot like this is so central to the plot like the I remember thinking like damn grandma doesn't give that much of a shit about the narrative. And I'm like no grandma was making up a narrative because like half of the plot was about these people having sex. So you want to read this passage. Yeah. Okay. They just tried to break into a house to like look for clues and like an unseen person like chase them out of a house and they like had to run away and now they've like they're back at his place and they're like safe. Okay. Tom has shrugged out of his jacket and came to stand behind her. Their eyes met in the mirror. Unlike her, he looked terrific. She thought hard, tough and totally in control. She had to fight an irresistible urge to turn and put her head into his chest. His hands closed over her shoulders. Take it easy. You're just feeling the aftershock of the adrenaline. It'll affect it. I know. The weight of his hands was not having the calming soothing effect he probably intended. She suddenly wanted to do a lot more than just put her head down on his shoulder. She looked at his mouth in the mirror and wondered what would it be like to kiss him. Wondered how his mouth would feel on other parts of her body. Let's stop there because we can't conjure an image on the radio. You guys were doing the same thing. We were doing the same thing. What went through your head when you realized that? It really tickled me. I was like, because I remembered that feeling of being so afraid towards the end of the time when we were calling each other that I would like out myself or just feeling. Once I became a sexual person myself, a pubescent myself, those conversations about those books being like, don't see me. I'm like, she probably felt a version of that the whole time. Or was just having to constantly think about, don't talk about when they had sex in the kitchen, but what happened to the plot? I don't know. It makes me feel closer to her that we were doing this song and dance. I love the idea that you and your grandma were aligned to one another three times a week in the name of Bonding. Exactly. It's like lie almost feels like too harsh of a word. Do you know what I mean? Yeah. It's just like two people translating what's going on in their lives for the other person. You know? Right. It's a version of what we all do all the time. 100%. You know, like when we talk to our parents about our relationship, you might not be like, well, I think I might break up with them because the sex is not great. Right. You might, I'm just not feeling it. You know what I mean? We do these edits all the time. Yeah. Yeah, we were fighting and then we made up. Yeah. Exactly. Jake's grandma died this past June. She was 84. Jake and his grandma and their book club. It was never really about the books, obviously. The point was to spend time with one another, to feel close. And it worked. It worked so well that Jake still gets to spend time with her, even now, even in some very unexpected moments. I've been watching He Did rivalry, which is like this HBO Max show that's based on a romance novel, but it's a gay romance novel. It's about hockey players. And I'm like loving it. It's like my favorite show right now. And I'm kind of like laughing to myself as I watch it because I'm like, I come from a line of people who enjoy this. Like this is like, you know, it's like not that I'm thinking, let's be clear to the listener. I'm not thinking about my grandma necessarily when I'm watching a lot of those scenes, but like when I think about it now, I'm like, there is something kind of like nice about that. Yes. I sound my version of it that I enjoy. There was a period of time in my life where I was like terrified of my grandma knowing I was gay. And now I'm like watching gay smell on HBO. And I'm like, the gene that makes me like this comes from her. Sometimes the new Lordrop isn't some big revelation. Sometimes it's just a funny little detail. You get to enjoy it and carry on with your day. If you've even a cornfeld is one of the producers of our show, Jake is a comedian. He told a version of this story on stage, which is where we first heard about it. His work and his tour dates are on Instagram at JakeW Cornell. Coming up one more reason to hate Mark Zuckerberg. This one I bet you did not see coming. That's in a minute. When Chicago Public Radio, when our program continues. This is American Life from Ira Glass. Today's show, New Lordrop. The stories of people discovering information about their own lives that they did not know. Information that makes them see things very differently. Okay. So just a quick reminder as the show continues, if we get separated and you can't find me and somebody comes to get you, let's just review what's the code word. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. That's right. Don't forget it. We've already had act two of our program act two. We'll probably pop it. So reporter Ben Austin had a kind of wardrobe happened to him recently. And he was not the clarifying kind of wardrobe where everything suddenly makes sense. The world seems clearer. It was kind of the opposite. Ben's is the whole thing started over Facebook. Ben is one of those people who hates Facebook. He hates but also keeps looking at. Maybe he's not the only person who ever does that. Ben had this rule. He would accept friend requests but he never make them. Then one day, he's a post that his sixth grade teacher had died. This was a teacher he loved and everybody loved. And all of his old classmates were sharing memories. I was sitting there and I was like, man, these are my friends that I grew up with. And so I started friending them. I broke my rule. And it was like this kid Chaka that I hung out with and this girl Alana and Malcolm Speller. I just started friending all of them. And then there was this one other kid. His name was Eddie. And I paused. Should he reach out to Eddie? He got to school with Eddie since he was first wanting to walk. Initially there's Jewish Day School on South Side of Chicago. We both transferred to this public school in sixth grade. And I remember hearing that his mom told like the office lady at the Jewish Day School who told my mom that the reason Eddie transferred schools followed him to the public school. IE Ben Austin meaning me. I was the reason he transferred. You're the reason he transferred to public school and then you turned out to go to school. Showed him public school. Yeah. So I was like, he probably doesn't want to hear from me. But in the other hand, decades have passed, right? There were adults now. They both had kids. This guy Eddie had actually become a rabbi. And I don't Ben didn't want to adult Eddie to somehow see that he'd friend it everybody else and then not him and then be hurt by that. So he sends the friend request very quickly. He gets a message back. And there seemed to be like a 2000 word essay that he wrote me in response. We're going to ask you to read a little bit of that. Okay. Before I broadcast to the world via my 2100 Facebook friends that you and I are friends, I need to get something off my chest. This may sound petty, but when we were boys at a Kiva Shecter, I felt insecure in your presence. From nursery school through fifth grade, I recall feeling verbally and at times physically threatened by you. I'm not going to go into specific incidents and I don't think it matters. What matters is how I felt. I'm sad to say it, but when I teach my own children and students in my synagogue about bullying, the image and the deepest recesses of my mind is a memory of feeling threatened by you. And then he goes on in his message to you to say, you know, we were kids. I realized, you know, it wasn't your fault. You were a kid. And then he says, but even as we got older, I have still carried with me all those years, the burden of that experience. And then we ask you to read how he ends this message to you. All right. Ooh. I need to release myself from the burden that has plagued me for so long. I am sorry for throwing all this at you over an innocent friend request. I apologize for holding back all these years and not trying harder to bring about healing in our relationship sooner. If you are willing to acknowledge the hurt and the insecurity that I felt in your presence when we were boys more than 30 years ago, then I not only will forgive you, I will be happy to be your friend in all senses of the term best regards Eddie. What did you think when you got there? Oh, boy. Like, honestly, I was like, fuck Facebook. But I also saw, wait, I'm blaming Facebook for this. Yeah, I was like, why did I, why was I on that? I was like, why did I participate? It was like, I knew it. I knew it. Um, I mean, to be honest, like the biggest thing I felt was, um, like I just, I couldn't think of something that I did to him. I don't, I don't have any recollection of a single incident of, of, of harming him or saying something cruel to him. And at the same time, I'm thinking like, that doesn't, that doesn't mean it didn't happen. Yeah. I'm also thinking like, maybe I actually just don't, I just wasn't aware of it or I didn't recollect it. So all those things are swirling through my head. Before this, Ben had never thought of himself as a bully. He says, yeah, as a kid, he was unruly. He spent a lot of time in the principal's office, but generally fun loving. Nothing like what Eddie was describing. Still Ben figures he'll apologize, even though he doesn't remember doing anything. And so then what he ends up writing is this kind of carefully worded non-apology apology. Okay. He writes that he's deeply embarrassed. He's sorry. He made it. He feel this way. And then he can't resist. He goes on to tell this story to memory he had from when they were little kids together. Their teacher had taken the class out to a park across from the school. He was sitting in a circle playing duck duck goose and his dog runs over. Off-leash. Golden retriever might. Maybe it was puppy Ben thinks. You know, the most unantimidating dog you could ever see in your life. And I remember looking over and seeing Eddie's face as he saw the dog and he looked like he had just seen a ghost. Just pure terror. He stood up and I remember shouting at him and maybe I'm inventing this memory but this is how I remember it. I said, Eddie, sit down. You know, the dog is an interest in you. And he starts to run. And the dog being a dog gave chase. And I said to Eddie that maybe I was a lot like that dog, you know, like Ram Bunkshus playful and like when things ran, I was the kind of person that would give chase. So you sang through that story like maybe I did something but the problem was that you were too scared of me and I meant you know harm. Like that dog is that what you're trying to say with this story? Totally. I was saying like, I'm sorry. I don't want you to feel bad and I'm willing to like step up and like, you know, say the things. But then I also had to tell this damn story which is like, it's actually not me, it's you. Like, you know, I'm not sure that's fair. But like, but like, you know, you were you were scared of a man of things that weren't like actually threatening you. Ben ended his message. I do understand. I do acknowledge. I am sorry. Sincerely Ben. So he sends the message. Eddie writes him right back. Again, it felt like the ping came back almost like, you know, the moment I've pressed in and he starts. Baruch at Aranoia, Lohenu, Melachalam, Shaheqiyanu, Vakiyamanu, Vaheqiyanu, Lasman, Hazeeh. I give thanks to God who has given us life and sustained us and allowed us to reach this moment. Today is a joyful day. I can't adequately express how moved I am by your words. You are a man. I am stunned by the accuracy of your recollection of the 53rd Street Park, now the Harold Washington Park. To be honest, I struggled with phobia of dogs well into adulthood. And I'm just interrupt you there. So then he sort of retells the story too, but he doesn't seem to understand the point you were trying to make with your story that maybe he was the one who was a little too scared of things that weren't scary. And then he writes that he feels like he can literally bury the tension between the two of you that went unacknowledged from within 30 years. Just just read his closing lines here. Yeah. I am grateful for this new chapter. Needless to say at this point, but still important, I forgive you. I look forward to staying in touch and enjoying a true friendship. Your friend, Eddie. At this point, do you feel like you might have done something to bully him or do you actually not believe you did anything and it's all in his head? Because I think both things are possible, right? He really might have done something real that he could tell you if you asked him directly and you realize, oh, yeah, I did that. But it also might be possible like he can't come up with any incident. What do you think is the truth? Yeah, I got it. I actually don't know. I mean, the way you frame that, like I have no fucking idea. This got stuck in Ben's head. What had he done if anything? Had he been a good kid or a bad kid? Ben decided to find out. See, my good question to ask a rabbi, right? He prepared this report. I reach out to Eddie, ask if he's game to revisit the messages we sent back and forced, our memories of each other. Sure, he says. It makes sense to do this in person. He's in Florida, a short drive outside Boca Raton, in a subdivision. There's a palm tree right in front of us. Sculpted bushes. There's also a house glowing with Christmas decorations. Another displaying a beware of dog sign. I know neither can be Eddie's. His is the one in between. Eddie emerges from the front door. Eddie. I'll stop. Thank you. Great to see you. Thanks for doing this. Hope you got some summaries today. I've seen Eddie only once as we were kids, and I'm struck by how much he looks like the kid I remember. Even though he's now about six feet with gray in his goatee, he's wearing a Yamaka. He's also got this pouch attached to his belt for his phone. He leads me inside. It's my wife, Ariela. Hi. Nice to meet you. Welcome. Welcome, my good last year. His teenage daughter is home. His other two kids are out in the world. He says one is about to get married. He's been a rabbi at different congregations, but he tells me he now works as a chaplain at a hospital. He likes it because he gets to tend to people of all religions. Eddie guides me into the dining room. Layed out on the table, there are all these photographs, nearly every one of them of us. All right. I'm a little embarrassed of seeing all these things. It catches me off guard. Eddie's been preparing for this meeting. We went to the same high school, too. Our yearbook is open to my senior picture. Oh, yeah. So that's you? Oh, yeah, yeah. That's me. I just, this is your wife. Her wife is in here. Yeah, she is. My wife, Danielle, also graduated high school with us. Obviously, I kept in better touch with her. Then Eddie points to a faded photo I've never seen before. It's of little kids in a classroom, around a table, eating cupcakes. Eddie's standing and not far from him, me. 1977, you and I both turned six. So May was my sixth birthday, and this is my sixth birthday party. So that's me with the crown. And that's you, of course. Yeah, front of center. Both of us are smiling as wide as can be. But I know for more than 40 years of Eddie's life, he looked at a photo like this one and was haunted by me. Is he right to feel that way? Have I been wrong all these years about who I am? Eddie tells me about the moment he first heard from me again. He was just down the hall here in the kitchen, making dinner for his family. I picked up my phone and was getting the table set and whatever, waiting for dinner to warm up. And I saw a friend request from Ben Austin and it stopped me cold. And in a strange sense, it surprises me even to this day. Because I mean, I've encountered a lot of people throughout my life. And for something was different with you, and that's my memory of you, I felt threatened by you. I felt you were a bully towards me. All right. This is why I came down here. This is a way harder question for me to ask you. And one that I've probably avoided. I know I've avoided before. And what did I do? Like, how was I your bully? Yeah. I'm glad to have the opportunity to discuss it. I didn't want to burden you about petty stuff. I mean, we're talking about stuff that happened between us when we were six, seven, eight years old. We are now almost on the cusp of being 55 years old. So this is 50 years almost in the past. So it seems petty. But do you remember what you called me in those early years? Not at all Eddie. And I'm like, I almost want to run out of the room. I don't know. Okay. All right. So you called me Eddie Spaghetti. My response right then, and I feel terrible for saying this. I want to laugh. I mean, I definitely could see myself saying this. I'm not denying that. But in the absence of any memory of what I did to Eddie, I had imagined, I don't know, something so much worse. I came all this way to Florida for a goofy rhyme. For the six year old version of me, I was hypersensitive. Every time you called me Eddie Spaghetti, I burst into tears. And the rest of the class would laugh, Mark would laugh, Ari would laugh, and other people would join in calling me Eddie Spaghetti. You're pointing at the yearbook pictures here of these kids. And it all seems so silly now. It's not every silly, but as a six year old kid, I felt like, you know, I was the, I was the one everyone made fun of in class. I do get it. It's about what a hard time Eddie had back then. How much he felt like an outsider and how I was one of the kids who made it harder. But it's also just so weird the two of us sitting here, two men in our 50s and hearing him repeat what I said when I was like six or seven. I make a nervous joke about spaghetti being positive. It's newtally flexibility plus it's delicious. Those are the kinds of things I say to people, always have. I recognize that how you react to Eddie's words, what you feel right now about him or me, probably depends on your relationship to your own past. Maybe you're remembering things being done to you or doing things to someone else. Or maybe you're the type who's forgotten all this sort of stuff and that's exactly where you wanna keep it. Eddie pauses and I think he's done, that's all he's got. I guess I wasn't such a bad kid after all. But then Eddie looks down at a yellow legal pad. It's covered in handwritten notes. Ooh, there's definitely more. It must have been first or second grade because most of us had those metal lunch boxes, usually with themes from TV shows on them. My lunch box was the $6 million man with Steve Austin played by Lee Majors. I love it. And so I... This turns out to be a story about a time I did something that seems worse, physically worse at least. He says when we were six, I kicked his ass. I'm not sure why he didn't lead with that. Here's how he remembers it going down. So it's lunchtime. The teacher's telling everybody to get their lunch boxes and line up and I pull my metal lunch box off and someone else's metal lunch box falls on you, like falls on your shoulder. Maybe you had a bruise the next day, but what I do remember is you then just started whacking me. Like I hit you. Yeah, hitting me multiple times and I really remember seeing your eyes and seeing rage in your eyes. So you're like, you're physically... Physically whacking me. And then finally a teacher came over and separated us and I don't remember anything else that day. I just, I remember you hitting me and I remember the rage in your eyes. He says he wasn't seriously injured or anything. We were both just little kids. I don't recall any of this. Well, I'm definitely sorry for that. I don't quite know what to make of it. What does it mean that I did that? I think Eddie, I probably fought a lot at those times. It's terrible I beat Eddie up. This doesn't seem totally out of character for me. I mean, I remember on the playground back then, kids throwing a ball in my face, I get mad and throw it back in theirs and then we go on playing. What I don't get is why what I did to Eddie that day stood out so much from the other chaos of childhood around us. In the middle school, Eddie and I both attended. It wasn't uncommon for one kid to say to another after school, meaning at 3.30 in the parking lot or on the playground, we're gonna fight. It was sometimes said to me, when we got to high school, I tried to avoid fights as much as possible. The stakes were too high. I saw kids at my school swing bats, golf clubs, once a hatchet. Our junior year, two guys jumped me for a gold chain. My wife says when I showed up at school that week with a broken nose and two black eyes, it was the first time she noticed me. Like, noticed me as a potential mate. Not sure what that says about either of us. I remember these moments, but I don't feel plagued by them, not in the way Eddie was by me. But I realized in saying all that, part of me is defending myself, little kid Ben. I'm trying to prove I wasn't a bully. Later I even talked with an elementary school principal in Chicago to see whether my actions back then check their four boxes of bullying. I did check at least two. Eddie has one more memory on his notepad that he wants me to hear. As I recall, we're at the 53rd Street Park teacher took us out on a nice day. We're sitting playing duck duck goose. And he repeats the same story I shared with him in our Facebook exchange. It starts just as I remember, but with a different conclusion. It's that story of how when we were seven or eight and our class went to the park, a dog was off leash. I had a serious phobia and I just high-tailed it. And I ran screaming. I don't know if it was that time, but I know there were other times that I ran across Hyde Park Boulevard, which is a busy street with buses and cars and trucks back to the safe side where the school building was. And I remember being laughed at by you and other students in the class, not saying you're the only one, but I perceived you as the ringleader. Man, I mean, in the story I told it was the opposite of laughing. Yeah. Like I was trying to protect you. That's the part we remember so differently. Maybe I've held on to my version because in it, I've cast myself as the good guy. I see his terror and I'm the one calling out to him, telling him not to run. Eddie describes another boy who teased him that day about how fast Eddie ran from the dog. He could be a track star if there was always a dog behind him. Eddie blamed me for that one too. That's just how we saw him back then. My memory over the arc of our young childhood was being teased by you. And at some point, that became layered on my dog, Fobia, and so in a way, you became the dog. And I mean, I became the dog. For Eddie, I turned into this major figure in his life. I became this villain. Eddie tells me that when he changed schools, I wasn't the only reason, but I was part of it. And he tells me how decades later he saw a photo. It was from our 20th high school reunion. He spotted me in the background and was relieved he didn't go. Then, classic me, I sent him that note which was way more clever than honest. He opened it at a cemetery after presiding over a funeral. He tells me it was like a spell was broken. It set him free. I think I just wept at that moment. I was just so grateful to hear or to read that you would accept it. What I wrote with such incredible grace. And I just felt blessed. It was big. It was a momentous time in my life. I mean, it was... It's a time that there was a before and there was an after. Eddie, that's powerful. And complicated. Yeah, complicated. I decided to tell Eddie the truth. How in that message, the one that broke the spell, I had said sorry, but wasn't sure I had done anything wrong. My apology wasn't really an apology. Did he understand that when he got it? I think I did or at least in retrospect I did. I remember sharing it with other people. And they said did he really apologize? And I'm like my... My sense is that perhaps not fully, but it was enough. It was what I needed at that moment. And perhaps I chose to layer more apology on it than you were actually saying at the time. But you finished your note saying, I acknowledge and I'm sorry. And that's what I needed at that moment. And that's what I embraced. It's not just that Eddie and I see our memories of each other differently. I realize we also have a different way of seeing the world. Eddie, he's a man of faith. If it's enough, it's enough. Not me. I can't help it. I need to set the record straight. I'm embarrassed about the things I did and that I hurt you. But I'm also thinking that it's a lot of it. It's about being kids. And I don't think I was a bully in that sense. And I wonder if you think I am. No, absolutely. I don't mean right now. I mean, when you think back on those moments. How can I look at this picture of six-year-old Ben Smiley? But come on, but you looked at that picture for years and saw the dog. Yes, yes. But this little six-year-old Ben Smiley grinning, sweetest... I mean, look, you can pinch the cheeks practically. But that feels like a revisionist history of how you saw that picture for... That loomed in your imagination. But I am revising it now. But we as adults have a right to change the narrative. You know, Eddie, I feel like your version of me today and over time is both... I'm way worse than I am and I'm better than I am. There's a little bit of way of when you're saying you're seeing my true self. I guess what I'm saying is I'm not... You're also seeing these two extremes and I'm not really either of those. As he's pointing at this photo of me, this like everything has flipped. I'm no longer even a bully when I was a kid. And as an adult, he's talking about me like this great liberator. He even compares me at one point to a famous rabbi who marched with Martin Luther King. In some ways, what I'm hearing is I've sort of liberated you from this stuff, which also feels... Yeah, I don't know. That doesn't feel exactly me either. I mean, I try to do... I want to do good. Yeah, yeah. Look, there's people come to me and say that time you spent with me in the hospital or that sermon you gave, it changed my life. And did I really do anything? I did what I do every day. Every day I visit people in the hospital. Every day I study some piece of scripture, Jewish wisdom, and try to make some meaning out of it for a congregation. And sometimes it lands and sometimes it doesn't. And with you, you did something good. And I'm holding it up as good. How does that sound? It sounds like Eddie's a pretty good rabbi, and that he got what he needed from me. See, I'm not such a bad guy. But I got something out of this too. It's clear Eddie and I didn't know each other well as kids, and certainly not as adults either. But here I am in Florida, in his subdivision, in his home. I can see the books on his shelves, his kids artwork is on the walls. He's got a tree out back in his yard, a gross star fruit, Eddie's cut up slices for us to snack on. And we've managed on this night to talk for hours. I do feel responsible for my past actions, even the ones from way back that I can't remember. As far as what to do about that, we now know each other. At least better, that feels real. Maybe at this point in our lives, it's about the best we can do. Amen. Ed Austin is a writer in Chicago, his most recent book is Correction about the parole system. Getting to know you. Getting to know all about you. Getting to like you. Getting to hope you like me. Getting to know you. Today's show was produced by Aviva de Cornfield in Tobin Glow. The people who put together the show included Fia Benin, Michael Camba de Susanne Gabar, Cassie Howie, Lana Jaffee Waltseth, Lynn Meakey, Nick Catherine Raymond, Stone Nelson, Robin Reed, Nadia Raymond, Anthony Roman, Ryan Romeria, Lissa Ship, and Christopher Soutalla. Our managing editors are our obterroman. 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