Harold Cox

The Moth Radio Hour is produced by Atlantic Public Media in Woods Hole, Massachusetts.

The Moth Radio Hour is produced by Atlantic Public Media in Woods Hole, Massachusetts.

I was a creative and imaginative child.

I played a clarinet, I played the piano, and I also listened to Rachmaninoff's piano concerto and pretended like I was playing the piano two or three times a day.

I was also a talker.

My mother would tell me, Harold, sugar baby darling, please just shut up.

I wouldn't.

My mother was a homemaker, and she was also the woman who made the cookies and other stuff, whatever you cook, for our school.

She made this for my class as well as for my brother and sister's classes as well.

And my father was a minister.

He had lots of advice that he liked to give.

He would often say, I would rather be two hours early than 30 seconds late.

I heard this almost every day.

And he also said, if you tell the truth, the truth will set you free.

All right, good words to live by.

In addition to this, I was, well, truth to be told,

I was a dramatic kid.

And I learned that if you got sick, that there were certain things that you might not need to do.

So what I did is I learned the fine art of passing out.

I used to faint so that if I didn't want to go to school, I fainted.