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I sold my car in Carvana last night.

Well, that's cool.

No, you don't understand. It went perfectly. Real offer, down to the penny. They're picking it up tomorrow. Nothing went wrong.

So, what's the problem?

That is the problem. Nothing in my life goes to smoothie. I'm waiting for the catch.

Maybe there's no catch.

That's exactly what a catch would want me to think.

Wow, you need to relax.

I need to knock on wood. Do we have wood? Is this table wood? I think it's laminate. Okay, yeah, that's good. That's close enough.

Car selling without a catch. Sell your car today on Carvana. Pick up fees may apply.

This is the Moth Radio Hour. I'm your host, Jay Allison, producer of this radio show. In this hour, stories of culture shock, crossing the boundaries between people, communities, and even species. Sometimes we adapt, sometimes not so much. Our first story is told by Jason Cordellis. He told this with us at the U.S. Comedy Arts Festival in Aspen, Colorado. Here's Jason, live from the Wheeler Opera House.

In December of 2001, I went on my very first cruise. And I had always dreamed of going on one of those all-gay RSVP cruises. You know, the ones that you read about, too. Sunny Acapulco or Puerto Vallarta or Puerto Rico. All that sun, all those banana coladas, and all those boys. This, however, was not that cruise. On September 11th, my best girlfriend, Marion, lost her firefighter husband, Dave Fontana, and she was left alone to raise their five-year-old son, Aiden. The date also happens to be their wedding anniversary. so I quit my job and I've been by her side pretty much ever since and she says I don't have to do that and I say well it's what anyone would do and she says well no it's not and I say well then it's what Susan Sarandon would do and I mean prior to the 11th I was really just the gay best friend but since then I have kind of been promoted and Marion has come to refer to me to all the people in her life the firefighters and the widows and the neighbors and cousins, she refers to me as her new gay husband. And I joke, and I say, like Liza and David Guest. And Marion laughs, but most of the others ask me, Liza who? You see what I'm dealing with. Now, then came this cruise. Now, Royal Caribbean had generously offered this cruise to all the 343 firefighter families who had lost. And when Marion asked me if I was interested in going with her and Aiden, I kind of envisioned this gay family vacation. Sort of a Will and Grace meets Love Boat meets Six Feet Under. And so, absolutely, I said. I would even make all the arrangements. So I call Royal Caribbean, and I speak to this Ms. Shapiro, a very surly woman. But I'm very excited about the tan that I know I'm going to have. And I want to know where the ship is going to be going. Where's the ship going, I ask. She says, nowhere. I say, well, what do you mean? She says, I mean nowhere. I say, well, the ship has to have a destiny. It must go to Puerto Rico or Acapulco or Puerto Vallarta. She says, no, it goes nowhere. I say, what, is the ship to stay in port? She says, no, it goes out to sea. I say, to where? She says, nowhere. This woman sounds as though she's reciting lines from an Ionesco play, poorly. I say, I'm sorry. I'm not getting this. So the ship has got to have a destination. She says, well, yeah, it leaves New York Harbor. It floats out to sea. Then it floats back. We're calling this a cruise to nowhere. And I pause. And I wait for Rod Sterling to begin his voiceover. And then I continue. And I say, let me get this right. You're sending a boat full of widows and their grief-stricken, terrorized families onto something called a cruise to nowhere? She says, yeah. I say, okay.

And then later in the conversation, when I inquire as to why we have to provide passport numbers if we're really not going to go anywhere, she says, well, you're going somewhere, but the somewhere is nowhere, and therefore everyone needs a valid U.S. passport number. I should have known then that this cruise had the potential of sinking me. Comes cruise day.

And we arrive at Pier 58, me, the gay husband, Marion, little Aidan, and we see the ship, which is, it's gotta be eight blocks long and 14 stories tall, and it boasts its very own ice skating rink. In line, there are 5,000 people, because apparently the trip was offered to the entire fire department, and they all seem to have accepted. So I, the gay husband, wait in line, three hours, low blood sugar, after which I am dragging all of our luggage up a very steep ramp, at which point the all-male Ice Capades dance team tramples me. I kind of get my bearings, and out of my pockets fall Aiden's Star Wars action figures out of my brand new Dolce & Gabbana puffy white ski jacket. And he runs up screaming at me and sprays me with his very berry juice box all over the brand new Dolce & Gabbana puffy white ski jacket. So I'm trying desperately just to keep it all together, my hair, my emotions, my outfit. he hits me because queen amidala's got all messed up i'm thinking not the only queen and we get on board the ship and the ship the glorious ship the interior of this ship looks to me as if it is perhaps exploded out from the bowels of siegfried and roy i mean there are american flags everywhere and and and in metallic everything and their kids screaming and widows crying and firefighters guzzling free beer. And my very tasteful gay male aesthetic begins to have kind of a panic attack. I mean, because like the Barneys warehouse sale on a Saturday, I can handle, but this husband vacation stuff, not so much. And I just chant the mantra that I have since the beginning of all this, which is, it's about Mary and not me. This is about Mary and not me. And I take a deep, calm breath. And then we set sail to nowhere. And if you're wondering just how long it takes to get to nowhere, the answer is about 18 hours. which is a bit distressing because it's taken me 34 years and I rally for Marion as best as I can and I'm introduced to the firefighters as her gay husband and I curtsy politely but no one gets me no one gets it no one gets it I have not been around another gay man for three months because I'm cooking and cleaning for Marion I'm putting Aiden in bed and I'm giving her foot massages like her husband did, and providing her with sympathy and valium. And I look around, and I see that I'm the only gay husband on board. I'm the only gay anything. And I begin to see that for some reason, surprisingly, there isn't a high demand for the gay man in the world of a wife of a firefighter. Which is surprising, because with all due respect to the wives of firefighters, they could really benefit from us. Really. I mean, that first night, I kind of gave my services to this woman. And we were sitting and chatting. And I said to her, you know, Veronica, you're much too pretty to be wearing that much lip liner. I mean, just soften it. And she didn't like that. Back in Brooklyn, I made sense of Marion's life. But here, not so much. You know?

And so the second night, we put Aiden with a babysitter, thank God. And we go to dinner. And at the dinner, the orchestra plays Marion's wedding song. So we leave. and we take a stroll on board and it's chilly and it's moonlight, it's very romantic and we pause to gaze at the moon and I can see that Marion's about to start crying and I've been able to now kind of gauge her emotional moods like a seismologist kind of reads a Richter scale and I want to say something funny so I joke and I say it's like our gay honeymoon and she kind of laughs and then it's quiet and for the first time I start to miss my own life. I mean, clearly we should be here and having this moment but I think with different people, her with her husband, and me with, I don't know, the Ice Capades dance team, maybe. And I start to wonder, and maybe it's wrong, but I was like, God, is this really all that my life has become now? You know, I'm just going to be a gay man married to this wonderful but kind of high-maintenance woman. Is this what happened to Tom Cruise? I don't know. And then like a gift from the gods, I swear to God, Marion hears this beat, she hears a disco beat, because above us there's a discotheque, and it sounds so queer but I mean Barbra Streisand and Donna Summer's Enough is Enough is Enough starts playing and Marion is infected and she wants to dance and I'm like yeah I don't know do it for me and she says I say oh fine because it's Donna Summer so we dance and we go up to the discotheque Jester's and Jester's has got dry ice and gargoyles and all this and that and she's dancing and I'm on the sideline pouting because I'm supposed to be on a gay cruise not a widow cruise until I hear Patti LaBelle's Lady Marmalade because this is my song right this is the song I came out to 20 years ago to my best friend so I'm in this disco trans all of a sudden those widows from Staten Island kind of look like drag queens to me and I take to the dance floor and I like months of despair and sadness are just dripping off of me in the middle of this dance floor in the middle of this cruise in the middle of fucking nowhere and it doesn't matter where we are what kind of cruise it is because my friend Mary and I were dancing

we're having a good time and we're laughing and she's smiling and sweating and we're mouthing those immortal lyrics, gitchy, gitchy, ya, ya, da, da, you know? And for just a moment, it feels like nothing's changed. No, not that nothing has changed, but that at least as Gloria Gaynor would say, I will survive or she will survive or whatever. You get the point, we'll survive. And then, who should spill onto the dance floor but, thank you, the entire all-male Ice Capades dance team? And I am stunned because I have not seen another homosexual up close for three months. And I look at them, and I'm so intrigued by their movement and their pageantry, you know, and I want to dance with the Ice Capades dancers, but I'm dancing with Mary. Ice Capades, Mary, Ice Capades, you know, and she sees me looking longingly, and she motions with her hands to me as if to say, go, Jason, go, be with your people. I will be all right. And so I do, and I talk to them, and I introduce myself as a gay husband, and they laugh, and one of them wearing a headdress says no shit well like liza and david guest and we all laugh and i feel i feel great and um and then i look over and marion is is alone at the bar and she's sipping a cocktail and she's crying and i and i go to walk over to her but then this captain this very handsome captain approaches her with a cocktail and she blushes and i think of course of course i mean eventually i'm going to be replaced i mean it's natural but it kind of so then there's a little squeal over here because a share song has come on and the ice capades dancers want to dance and the one with the headdress asks me if i want to dance and i look at him i look at mary i look at him and look at the headdress he's wearing a headdress i say yeah i want to dance and so i do And that's it.

That was Jason Cordellos. Jason left New York in 2007 to write for Mad TV in L.A. for a few seasons. Since then, he moved back to his hometown of San Francisco and is writing a book about his pioneering ancestors' history. They were one of the families in the infamous Donner Party in 1846. In a moment, cultural icon Cheech Marine discovers a new world just a few towns away, when the Moth Radio Hour continues. The Moth Radio Hour is produced by Atlantic Public Media in Woods Hole, Massachusetts.

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this is the Moth Radio Hour I'm Jay Allison and in this episode stories of getting your bearings after your world shifts next up is actor comedian and activist Cheech Marine he told this story at a main stage event we produced in partnership with the Mesa Art Center in Arizona here's Cheech Marine live at the mall

bam bam bam

I was only eight years old, but I knew exactly what that sound was. I think that every eight-year-old in South Central L.A. knew exactly what that sound was. There were gunshots, and they were being fired three feet outside my bedroom window. Bam, bam! Another two shots, and I just slid out of the bed and crawled as fast as I could into the living room where my mom and dad slept in a Murphy bed that pulled out of the wall. mom mom they're shooting back there I know me who'll stay down and she grabbed me and threw herself on top of me and it must have been my heart was beating so hard I could feel it in my feet man and she stayed on me for a long time and then finally she got up went to the window pulled back the shade and then red and blue swirling police lights filled the whole room mom where's dad he's out there what's what's what's happening there was a burglary and indeed there was a burglary happening in the barbershop next door and over the years I asked my dad what happened that night and this is what he told me about three o'clock in the morning he heard this faint tinkle of a low rent burglar alarm going off, tinkle, tinkle, tinkle. He said it sounded just low rent. And at this time, he was an eight-year veteran of the Los Angeles Police Department. So he got up, pulled back the shade, and he looked over there, and there was a guy in the barber shop walking around with a little flashlight without thinking. He got on his khaki pants, put on his white t-shirt, and got his gun. He told my mother, call the police, give them the address, tell them, I'm LAPD, and I'm going out to investigate. And be sure to tell them I'm wearing a white t-shirt. So he went down the alley, got to the place where the door had been jimmied open, saw the guy in there, shone his flashlight and his gun at him and said, I'm a LAPD, come out with your hands up. And the guy complied, and he walked out of the place, and he stood there in the alley while my dad turned him around, put his hands up against the wall and started frisking him. In one pocket, he pulled out three straight razors. In the other pocket, it was a very long screwdriver, which I guess he used to jimmy open the door, and he held him there. The guy said, what are going to do with me? My dad said, I'm just going to hold you here until the cops come. They're on their way. It had been raining that night and he had laid his umbrella up

against the wall and all of a sudden you could hear a siren coming down the street and he looked at my dad and said, I'm not going back to prison and he made a lunge for his gun and knocked it out of his hand. The gun was on the ground, on the wet ground and they both went for it, and whoever got there first was going to live, and he wrestled with a guy, and he was trying to keep him away from the gun as much as he could, and he was trying to get a hold of him, and the guy broke free, grabbed the umbrella that was lying there and started to whack him over the head with it. Just at that same time, the cops came out of their car at the head of the alley. My mom opened the window, my husband's a policeman, he's the one in the white t-shirt, the white t-shirt, he's the cop. by this time my dad had found the gun on the wet ground turned on his back and fired and he hit the guy in the shoulder at the same time the other cops let go bam, bam, bam, bam the guy staggered almost made it to the end of the alley and then collapsed he was dead and in every police involved shooting there's an inquest everybody that's participated or had something to do with it gives testimony. All the cops, my dad, even my mother, the man's parents who lived in the area, they came and they testified that they had tried their best to raise their son, but he had a significant criminal record and had just spent four years in the state penitentiary for armed robbery. But they said he didn't deserve to die for this bullshit burglary. They concluded that it was a justifiable homicide and the act of an armed robbery case closed. Everything went back to normal, but it never went back to normal for me. I had nightmares every single night. Anything woke me up and I was out in the window looking around and my heart was always beating. I was on the juvenile track to a fast heart attack. And so, about six months go by, and my dad announces one day, we're going to go take a trip out to the San Fernando Valley to see my police buddy, Ernie. Okay, well, I'd never been to the San Fernando Valley. Sounded like an exciting adventure. I'd never been to the country, what country there was. So, we all piled in the Plymouth and headed out for Granada Hills. I remember getting on the freeway and the freeway in those days stopped at Van Nuys and we had to go through five or six towns before we got to Granada Hills and all the Orange Groves it was in the middle of Orange Grove and it was kind of boring, it was a long ride and I started looking out the window and what I noticed that shocked me people had swimming pools

in their backyards their own private swimming pools how could wow and so i started counting them as we got along i got a search form i looked through fences and and behind stuff and where i could see a flash of blue there was a swimming pool how can there be so many and by the time we got to the dickens house that was the the name of the family we were going to visit i'd i'd gotten up to 50. wow so we we got to the dickens house ernie virginia and their son mike and they were very nice and they made us lunch And my dad and Ernie fell into this easy camaraderie that all cops have. And then they announced, Ernie and I are going for a ride and we'll be right back. Oh, okay. So we continued to chat with Virginia and Mike and tell stories. And they became our lifelong friends. After a couple hours, my dad and Ernie came back and chatted a little more. Then my dad announced, well, we're going home now. Okay, see you later. We all climbed back into the Plymouth and headed back for South Central. And my dad was very silent on the way back home. He didn't say a word to, we're almost home. And then he said, I bought a house today. And my mother's jaw dropped. What? Yeah, I just made a down payment on the house a block over from Ernie's. We're going to move it in a week. My mother at the time was eight and a half months pregnant with my twin sisters. She started breathing really heavy. I thought she was going to deliver right there. So a week later, I find myself in the cab of a moving truck with my dad on the way to our new home in Granada Hills. And I was scared. I was excited, but I was scared. I wasn't scared about leaving South Central. That was a scary place for me. I had seen two homicides by the time I was seven. And there was always... I was kind of missing a couple friends, but not much. But I would miss my extended family who lived all over the South Central. My cousins, my aunts, my uncles, my grandmother, my grandfather. But we were going to this new place, Granada Hills. So as soon as we got off the freeway, I started counting swimming pools again. And by the time we got to our new house, I was up to 75. And so there we were in front of our brand-new house, glistening in the middle of this dirt lot. And I looked up and down the block, and there were similar houses on the brand-new house, dirt lot. And I was like, wow, this is amazing. And we got out of the car and walked up to the house and opened the door, and that smell, that smell of a brand-new house. if you could take the smell of a new car

and multiply it by 100,000 times that's what that smell was that fresh paint and that parquet floor that never been stepped on we were the first people who ever lived in this house and it was like we were in dreamland so we walked in and looked around and it was four bedrooms where we had been living in this tiny, tiny duplex in South Central. And it was four bedrooms, two baths, and a huge lot. I would learn all my basic gardening skills in that lot. And that night, we went to sleep. We only had two pieces of furniture in the whole house, two beds. The one I slept in and the one my parents slept in. I went to sleep. and in the middle of the night I woke up I heard a sound it's happening again I looked out the window we didn't have any shades on the windows at this time we had just moved in looked out the window and could see nothing but this it sounded like our house was getting electrocuted. Open the window, and the sound got louder. And I opened the window the whole way, and it's really loud now. And it took me a minute to figure out what exactly that sound was. It was crickets. A million crickets. A million crickets had replaced screaming sirens, which I heard 10 times a day in South Central. And the next day, my dad had to get up and go to work, and all the way in downtown L.A., he took the only car we were there at the house. My poor mother would just wander around trying to find some shady spot, sit there and pant like a German shepherd. She was going to deliver any day. So I would walk her around. I got up, and I would walk, she would waddle, and we would go into every room and just kind of sit there in the room and feel the ambiance of the room there was no furniture, we'd sit on the floor even at that age it was hard to pick her up after we had to get out of there and we'd go into I picked up my room okay that's going to be, that's great look it's a parquet floor, it's just like at the Boston Gardens this is amazing and then we'd pick up the room that my twin sisters, Margie and Monica would occupy and we would look out the window of every room and then we would go and sit in the living room and look out those windows and imagine a big lawn in front and gardens in back and we didn't have a swimming pool and we would never have a swimming pool and it was okay I didn't really care it was just a status symbol besides I didn't even know how to swim at that point so summer went on

and it was always hot. It was just 100 degrees every day. And my grandmother came out to help with the care of the twins and they were born, Margie and Monica. And we were having a great time settling into our new house. I remember the first day my mother walked in the kitchen, turned on the taps and mud came out. That's how new that house was. So summer was over, and I was ready to start my new school, Granada Hills Elementary. So my grandmother had come, and she was watching over my twin sisters, and my mother walked me through the Orange Grove until we arrived at Granada Hills Elementary. And we got up to the playground, and there was kids yelling and screaming. It looked just like South Central, only everybody was a little more polite, but it was loud. We walked in and found my classroom. The teacher was very nice. She greeted me, showed me to a desk. I was trying to be on my best behavior. I was actually trying not to wrinkle my clothes. I walked like a starched robot. I sat down. I don't even remember what she said. She was just going on about this is here, this is there and these are the rules and blah blah blah. The recess bell rang. All the kids headed out the door. So I got out there and looked around at the playground and I noticed that everybody was white. Everybody, not all white. There was a few Mexicans but no Asians and certainly no blacks. I said, well, this is weird, but okay. I mean, one day, everybody in my neighborhood is black, and then the next day, everybody was white. It was like going from Nigeria to Knott's Berry Farm, you know? What is going on here? So I looked around for something familiar, something I could relate to, and in the distance, I saw a tetherball, and kids were playing tetherball hey they had tetherball in my old school i'll go i'll go try that walked over and sat down on the bench to be the next one to play and they were playing tetherball just like they played tetherball in south central okay i know these rules and in the in the near distance i saw these two kids walking towards me and they were laughing to each other and they were pointing at me and then they would laugh again and then point again and finally they got up to the bench where I was sitting, and the bigger of the one shoved me right off the bench. And he said, hey, get to the end, blackie. I didn't know the procedure here in Granada Hills. I only knew what I knew from South Central. So I swung as hard as I could and hit this guy right in the mouth. And I guess that was the first time his sense of entitlement ever got challenged. Because he lit

up like a thermometer and he didn't stop crying for a half hour and and this teacher a nearby teacher heard little Johnny crying he came got the both of us in March

marched us off to the principal's office. And on the way there, I thought of the beating that I was absolutely going to get from my father for misbehaving, but it paled in the comparison to the thought of at least one little a-hole was never going to bother me again. Nice first day. So I was thinking, South Central was undeniably a violent place. sirens every day but the but the violence was general it was all around it was happening to other people this is the first time it was personal this is the first time i'd ever been in a fight i didn't fight with my friends they were with my friends and so i wondered i was the same kid in the situation so what was different about that world and the new world What was that dividing line? What was that boundary that separated those two worlds? And I came to the conclusion that it was a line of 75 swimming pools. Thank you.

That was Cheech Marine. In addition to his fame and notoriety as half of Cheech and Chong, he's directed Broadway shows, been honored by the Smithsonian, written children's books, and a memoir called Cheech is Not My Real Name But Don't Call Me Chong. Cheech is of Mexican descent and holds one of the most significant private collections of Chicano art in the world. I caught up with Cheech recently on an internet call. obviously you're a comedian you're also a memoirist how does telling a story at the moth differ from the other ways you talk about your life uh more frightening you know really because

these are you know untested things and the only react the first reaction you get is when you put it in front of an audience so you don't know how they're how's it gonna go or you know you don't know where the spots are and you just just go and do it so it's it's it's tightrope walking for me you know i'm used to you know rehearsal i know exactly what i'm doing oh there was a lot of improv in it but this was this was frightening and it was it was this particular one was a subject that was you know very uh fragile to my psyche because of the traumatic events that you went through as a kid yeah exactly and the neighborhood and then my father was a policeman in the middle of it all it was you know it's it was you know when you're growing up as a kid you that everything seems normal you know because that's all you know you know gunshots in the middle and three o'clock in the morning is normal you know and every kid in that neighborhood knew what that was getting shot or hit or i mean it's like oh that's normal that happens every day well it doesn't happened every day in most neighborhoods but it didn't mind until you got to the swimming pool neighborhood into the swimming pool guys that line you know i mean you know what for me what it brought back was a lot of i mean those memories sitting in the back of the car in the back seat of the car you know i'm all alone i like in your stories the way you talk about childhood it seems

like it's really vivid for you you bring it back really easily like you transport yourself and us

there yeah you know i was coming into consciousness basically i'm just passing the age of reason and uh starting to figure a little few things out and then when you had something to contrast it with south central to granada hills is as much contrast as you could get you know like okay how do i fit in here how do i do this so this so those memories are very very vivid are you going to tell any more moth stories you think i don't know i mean it's that was very scary for me it really is a higher wire deal you know you're tilting over here and you got to tilt back you know but but you're listening to the audience for reaction for the very first time and it's like but you know

A moth story, audience reactions, I mean, as a comedian, what you said is true. If they don't laugh, it's not funny. But with a moth, you might just change their rate of breathing or you might just. That's exactly it. That's exactly it.

When they're quiet, when they're quiet, that's much more fearful because you never heard it before. And in that silence, there is great depth and great meaning. It's mentioned that you have like The largest collection of

Chicana art or

something like it. Can you tell me a little about that? Yeah, I don't, you know, I don't claim to have the largest. I mean, there's other large collections out there. I just claim to have the best. I mean, you know, you can argue with that, but show me your museum.

Cheech Marine. His recently opened museum in Riverside, California, is the Cheech Marine Center for Chicano Art and Culture. He says it will probably be referred to as the Cheech. In a moment, two stories about crossing the boundary between the human and the animal kingdoms, when this hour about culture shock continues. The Moth Radio Hour is produced by Atlantic Public Media in Woods Hole, Massachusetts.

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This is the Moth Radio Hour. I'm Jay Allison. We're hearing about relating to new worlds, and our next stories are both about ways we relate to the world of animals. The first comes from our Houston Story Slam, where we partner with Houston Public Media. Storyteller Prachi Mehta grew up afraid of animals. So when she arrived in Texas from her native India, the ubiquity of pets was surprising and even profoundly uncomfortable. Here's Prachi at Warehouse Live in Houston.

Have you all ever watched those movies where they portray animals as extraterrestrial beings with different senses from us, capable of talking in their own little language and having special powers? I was one of those people who believed that to be true. I grew up in India where animals live a very different life from us humans let me explain growing up I watched cats and dogs walking down the street having a ball they had no rules they would chase each other scavenge for food hunt do whatever they pleased I rarely saw pets, and for me, animals were someone to be afraid of, someone to be feared and respected. Now, this perception was greatly challenged when I moved to the United States six years back. And when I moved here, my first stop was Austin. For those of you who have been to Austin, it's a beautiful city with beautiful people, and you hardly see animals walking down the street. Animals were people's friends here, best friends. They were companions. of the American people and I was not used to that idea it was very strange to me sometimes I would walk into conversations where I thought they were talking about their kids for instance they would be talking about how education and development and learning and daycare and sickness and at some point I realize they're talking about their pets. It was amazing. I would always feel like I had nothing to contribute at this point. And so I would just, you know, nod my head and say, yeah. So not just the fact that I was there in America and, you know, living a new life. I was so excited trying to make new friends, and just, you know, live it up. You know, it's the American dream. But my American dream came to a full stop when I had to understand that I had to deal with pets everywhere. Everywhere I went, my friends, my friends' siblings, my professors, everyone had at least one pet. I walk into their house very excited, trying to make friends, and as soon as I entered their house and saw a pet, I would jump on the couch, or jump on the bed, because I wanted to be as far as possible from these pets. My friends, they were tolerant, you know, they were very nice to me, and they would

actually make sure that they locked their pets and kept them as far as possible. And at some point, I felt that if this continues, I can definitely see myself staying in the US. as things went on, you know, two years down the line, I was almost done with graduate school at UT Austin, and I was still keeping my arm's distance from any kind of pet possible. Now, as it happens, you know, life has its own course. So the last month that I was in Austin, I had to stay with my cousin, and I used to visit this cousin often. She lived in Round Rock, and she did not have pets. So I was fine, right? And I go there, very excited to spend my last month in Austin with them. And I walk in and I see this little puppy walk up to me. And she has three kids, my cousin. And they're like, Prachi Masi, look, we have a pet. Dad gifted one to my mom last week. And I was just like, oh my God, I can't do this. I just ran. The kids running towards me and I was running towards the couch. And again, it was a little puppy, a sweet little puppy, a Labrador. And in retrospect, it was just so cute. But at that time, I just felt like it would claw. It would come and bite me. And I thought that all they wanted to do was to come and bite you. It was just like a deception. They're so sweet and cute, and those little cats and little dogs, and you go close to them, and as soon as you go close to them, You're gone. So the next month, I spent very carefully in my cousin's house. I was on the topmost surfaces as possible, on the first floor, on beds, on couches. I would not try to put my feet down because the puppy was roaming everywhere. And it was tough. My niece and nephew, they would take the dog and come to me close, brandishing it as a sword when they wanted something from me. So at some point, my cousin sat me down. She had had enough. She took me close to the dog. And she was like, you are touching this dog right now. I closed my eyes, and with trembling hands, I touched the dog. And sensing that it was not going to bite me anytime soon, I actually stroked it. And I stroked it once more. And it was fine, you know. It actually did not bite me. So I felt that my fear had gone away at that point, but no, it took a couple more months. I had to meet with more pets, more cats and dogs. I made it a point to go and say hi to all of my friends' friends' pets. And at some point, I got rid of the fear. And that has set me free. Let me tell you something. Letting go of fear is empowering. And from that point onwards, I'm okay with any pet. I have just one rule.

Don't lick me. Otherwise, bring it on. Thank you.

Pachi Mehta has been living in the United States for almost eight years now, working in the energy sector. She tells us she's proud to finally be able to occupy the same room as someone's pet. She now adores Jimmy, the pup in the story, and when she visits him, Jimmy still knows to lay down calmly, to be padded and not to lick. See a photo of Prachi, unafraid, despite having a cat in her lap. You can go to our website, themoth.org. How we regard other creatures can range from reverence to food. Our next storyteller, Marnie Litvin, tries to bridge that divide. She told this at a story slam in New York City, where WNYC is a media partner of the moth. Here's Marnie, live from the Bell House in Brooklyn.

I did a little bit of farm work in college and a little bit of farm work after college. And when I'm 24, I get this summer job at a Quaker farm camp in Vermont. And I'm gonna work in the garden and I'm gonna teach teenagers how to work in a garden and I'm gonna have a very relaxed summer, and I'm gonna learn all about Quaker values, and it's gonna be real chill. And in my second week of training before the kids arrive, the head farmer is teaching us about the values of nonviolence and simplicity and interdependence and valuing the light in all of us. And I'm dozing off. And then I hear her say, and that is why we do chicken harvest. And I'm like, excuse me? That is not the right verb. But it turns out that at this camp, this camp where we have kids working on a working farm all summer, doing construction projects, volunteering at a day camp, this is a real service-oriented camp, one of the things that we have the kids do is raise chickens and then kill them and eat them. Um, and because I'm part of the garden staff, I get to run it. I'm a vegetarian, um, been a vegetarian for 20 years, um, and I worked on farms with vegetables. Uh, vegetables. I do vegetables. and I'm like okay this is what we're gonna do and all summer long we get these chickens they're called broiler hens they're like franken chickens and they grow super fast and they're the kind of chickens that that are used in like meat processing like they're they're not cute they they are like they grow these giant breasts like within six weeks and like their little legs like can't even support them and so for the whole summer every kid has to help take care of the chickens we feed them every day we water them we talk to them we love them and then at the end of the summer it's time for chicken harvest and I don't know how I'm going to get through it because I've never I've never slaughtered an animal I've never killed anything never wanted to

but I'm like okay we're doing this so the way that I go about it is that I make sure that everything is perfect I set up all the stations that the kids are going to go through with their chickens I lead a training beforehand on how it's okay to cry it's okay to laugh on accident it's okay to it's okay to hit your friend you know we don't know how we're going to react you know at least of all me and every kind of you know we all have to respect each other and the kids are like okay okay okay and they're looking at me and I'm like it's totally fine right and they're like you tell us and so the day of chicken harvest I wake up in the morning I assemble all the kids and I tell them okay, the first part of chicken harvest is to give your chicken the best last day ever. So the kids I pair the kids up each kid gets a chicken and they spend the day cuddling the chicken. Taking the chicken to the lake. Thank you. doing arts and crafts with their chicken and then it's the afternoon and it's time to harvest so I'm just like I'm so focused on the preparations for it that like it's just it starts happening and it happens so fast and before you know it first there's a field of chickens and kids and then there's just a field and Within an hour, it feels like it happens in seconds. Everyone has killed their chicken and processed their chicken. And at the end of it, we're all covered in blood and feathers. And I go down to the lake to collect my thoughts. And I want to cry, and I can't, because it was so easy. I'm looking at my reflection in the water and I'm like you are a person who can kill things I didn't know that about myself and I thought I can't wait to eat this chicken and most of us don't have the opportunity to know what it's like to kill something Um, but I know that when the revolution comes, I'm gonna love it. Thank you.

That was Marnie Litvin. Marnie is a writer and comic living in Ann Arbor. They are a student in the Helen Zell Writers Program at the University of Michigan. To see a photo of Marnie as well as a link to their website where you can hear and read more of their stories, visit our website, themoth.org. While you're there, you can pitch us your own story. Do you have one about animals or crossing a cultural divide? You can pitch us by recording two minutes about your story right on our site or call 877-799-MOTH. The best pictures are developed for moth shows all around the world. You can share any of these stories or others from the Moth Archive and buy tickets to moth storytelling events in your area all through our website, themoth.org. There are moth events year-round. Find a show near you and come out and tell a story. You can find us on social media, too. We're on Facebook and Twitter at The Moth. That's it for this episode. We hope you'll join us next time. And that's the story from The Moth. This episode of The Moth Radio Hour was produced by me, Jay Allison, Catherine Burns, and Meg Bowles. Co-producer is Vicki Merrick, associate producer Emily Couch. The stories were directed by Sarah Austin Janess and Leah Tao. The rest of the mall's leadership team includes Sarah Haberman, Jennifer Hickson, Kate Tellers, Jennifer Birmingham, Marina Cluche, Suzanne Rust, Brandon Grant, Inga Gladowski, Sarah Jane Johnson, and Aldi Casa. Mall Stories Are True is remembered and affirmed by the storytellers. Our theme music is by The Drift. Other music in this hour is from Epidemic Sound. Podcast music production support from Davey Sumner. We receive funding from the National Endowment for the Arts. The Moth Radio Hour is produced by Atlantic Public Media in Woods Hole, Massachusetts. Special thanks to our friends at Odyssey, including executive producer Leah Reese Dennis. For more about our podcast, for information on pitching us your own story, and everything else, go to our website, themoth.org.

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