Chapter 1: What themes of advice are explored in this episode?
This is the Moth Radio Hour. I'm your host, Chloe Salmon. As an older sister, I love giving advice. My brothers might say I love telling them what to do, but I object, Your Honor. I say there's a lot of value in having someone pull up a chair, look you in your eyes, and give you their honest and objective take on whatever ails you. Now, acting on that advice? Another thing entirely.
And I think that's okay. If we always did the sensible thing, I expect there would be far fewer good stories in the world. And who wants that? So in this episode, stories of advice. Given, taken, and not so taken. And a chance to ponder your own wisdom-giving chops when I sit down with one of our storytellers, who's also an advice columnist, who brought in some juicy questions to share with us.
Let's get going. First up is Stacy Nicholson. She told this story at a main stage in Fargo, North Dakota, where we partnered with Prairie Public Broadcasting. Here's Stacy, live at the Moth.
I don't have a single memory of ever having lunch in the lunchroom during my entire four years of high school. I must have, but if I did, I likely ate my lunch as quickly as possible and then spent the rest of the lunch period roaming the hallways, because I do have a lot of memories of roaming the hallways.
In my mind, the tables in the lunchroom were reserved for the cool kids, the big groups of friends who sat around laughing and making plans for the weekend ahead, and I was definitely not one of the cool kids. I was a shy, weird introvert, but I wished I could be the kind of person who could sit around a table laughing and making plans with friends.
Then in my 20s, I developed an almost crippling social anxiety to the point where I might make myself physically ill if I had to go anywhere, especially if somewhere where I might not know anybody, because I had decided that the world was divided into two groups of people, the people who thought I was weird and the people who knew I was weird.
And since I wasn't going to be welcome at any of the cool tables, and I didn't want to spend my time roaming the halls, it was easier to just stay home. But eventually I realized that if I was ever going to have the life I wanted to have, I was going to have to make myself leave the house, which is how I found myself being introduced to my now-husband Skip at Ralph's Corner Bar.
Skip played bridge, and despite its reputation for being a difficult card game, I thought it might be something fun that we could do together. So I signed up for beginning bridge class, three times. Because bridge is hard, but I was determined to learn. The last bridge class I took was held in one of the meeting rooms of the bowler.
There were four or five tables with four bridge players per table and we would sit around practicing with whoever had ended up at our table, raising our hands frequently to ask the teacher questions about how to bid or score or play a hand. I was 26 and everyone else was at least 60. It was mostly women, mostly widowed or divorced, and mostly retired.
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Chapter 2: How does Stacy Nicholson confront her social anxiety?
Sometimes someone would have to miss, so our group expanded to include regulars and subs. I lived in constant fear that they would replace me as a regular, so any time I had to miss a week, I made sure to volunteer to host the next week so they couldn't exclude me. And at the end of every night, we had dessert. Sometimes we had dessert at 10.30 or 11 o'clock at night, but we always had dessert.
And depending on where we were, we might be having dessert at two tables of four or one big table of eight, but I finally had a big group of friends sitting around a table laughing and making plans. Maybe we weren't making plans about boys or parties, but we were at least making plans for next Monday night.
And at some point, I don't know how or when, I looked around and realized I wasn't at the cool table. I was the cool table. Anytime anybody new came into our group, I was introduced as, this is Stacy, the young one, or this is Stacy, she keeps us young. These women weren't sitting with me because they had to or because there was no room at another table.
These women were sitting with me because they wanted to. Somehow I had become the life of the party and I loved it. We played bridge on Monday nights for 21 years. My ticket to the cool table has been a Bridge tally. But even more important than that, I've learned there's a third group of people out there.
Besides the people who think I'm weird and the people who know I'm weird, there are the people who know I'm weird and love my weird, and that has been the true gift of Bridge. Thank you.
That was Stacey Nicholson. She spent 17 years as a legal assistant, turning other people's lives into affidavits for the court. Stacey ventured into live storytelling, hoping to build the courage and skill to share stories at funerals and overcome her fear of public speaking. Most of the practical advice she got from her newfound friends was bridge-related.
How to play, bid, bridge etiquette, and so on. Helpful. Even more helpful was the unspoken advice. In her Bridge Ladies, Stacey found a blueprint for how to get older without getting old. Keep learning, have fun, and laugh a lot. In a moment, a stranded teenager gets some words of wisdom from his mom. When the Moth Radio Hour continues.
The Moth Radio Hour is produced by Atlantic Public Media in Woods Hole, Massachusetts. Hey, psst, you didn't hear this from me, but Normal Gossip is back for its ninth season. Join me, Rachel Hampton, as I share the juiciest gossip from the real world with some very special guests.
This season, we're bringing back some old friends, a Radiotopia buddy, and for the first time ever, a Nobel laureate. That's right, we have Malala on season nine. Normal Gossip is out on all your favorite podcast platforms.
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