In Control, Or Not: The Moth Radio Hour
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What stories about control are shared in this episode?
This is the Moth Radio Hour. I'm your host, Jennifer Hickson. In this hour, stories about control. Wanting it, wrestling it from the powers that be, or happily surrendering it to those more capable. Whether it's a mighty battle for absolute command or a slight power adjustment so you maybe could just, you know, get a little sway. The battle for control begins in childhood with your parental overlords and sometimes extends into adulthood. which is the case with our first storyteller, Dame Wilbur. You may recognize Dame's voice, either from her first moth main stage story, where she attempts to take control by lifting a curse. Highly recommend that one. Or maybe you'll recognize her as one of the guest hosts on our radio hour and podcast.
If you know Dame, you know that she rarely follows the rules. Dame is a rebel. In this first story, we get to meet the woman who inspired the rebellion, Dame's mother. A woman so fierce, Dame weaves a tangled web to avoid her wrath. Live in her home city of Detroit, where we partnered with Music Hall Center for the Performing Arts, here's Dame Wilburn.
My father died the sophomore year that I was in college. And this made me the sole focus of my mother, the dragon. Now, she got that name because she wanted me to be a free spirit, but she was never prepared when I did free spirited stuff. And she would always respond to these moments with volcanic levels of fury that could only be described as dragon-esque. She was 5'10 and heels. She kept her talons sharpened. She would wear $2,000 worth of power suits and accoutrements. And she would smoke under no smoking signs for kicks. She also once sent a man a pink slip. He was in a coma. And she sent it to the hospital and had his wife sign for it. This is the woman whose eyes are boring into the back of my head as I sit at my graduation with my diploma holder trembling in my hand.
This holder and I have a secret, and we learned this secret about three months ago when my counselor said I was a few credits short of graduating. I was 15 credits short of graduating. Now, if you don't go to college and don't understand what that means, that's a semester. So I had somehow managed to be in school for five years and still be a semester short of graduating. Thank you. Some of y'all get it. And it was also at that meeting that she told me that if you weren't graduating until the fall, you could walk in the spring. And that's when it started. I began to come up with a plot that would extend the time between the time I graduated and the time my mother, the dragon, found out that I hadn't graduated.
Which means I've got a problem. while I'm sitting here in this chair. Now, I don't know how many of you have run a con, but if you're running a con, evidence is bad. Holding it is worse. And I'm holding something that's empty. So I need a Hail Mary pass. That's when I look to the young lady next to me and I see that she has a form letter that says the reason she didn't get her diploma is because she didn't pay her last bill. I take this out of her hand, put it in my diploma holder, throw my hat up into the sky, and celebrate my graduation.
How did Dame Wilburn avoid her mother's wrath at graduation?
Now, I walk outside and I get into the parking lot and my mother makes a beeline for me and snatches that holder off from under my arm because she can smell blood in the water. She opens it up, reads it, and says, Makes sense, and we go off to dinner, and baby, it was beautiful. I now have a little time on my hands, but here's one of my issues now. I can't go home, because under her direct gaze, I'm gonna crack, okay? So I told her, well, I'm gonna work campus security for the summer, and then when I come home in the fall, I'll get a job. Now, the key to a good lie is that it's got some truth in it. I'm a campus security officer. At least I was until I had an administrator and a police officer knock on my dorm door.
OK, now the word they use is embezzlement. But I feel like that word is too big. OK, stay with me. At the time, I had access to the charge account for campus security at the school bookstore.
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
What stories about control are shared in this episode?
0:13–4:33
2
How did Dame Wilburn avoid her mother's wrath at graduation?
4:33–9:55
3
What challenges did Tod Kelly face while confronting a bad driver?
9:55–14:48
4
How does Gabriel Woods Lamanuzzi manage chaos in a second-grade classroom?
14:48–19:35
5
What lessons does Nimisha Ladva learn from her father's actions?
19:35–25:15
6
How does Nimisha's experience with skinheads shape her perspective?
25:15–30:45
7
What insights does Nimisha have about cultural identity and acceptance?
30:45–34:47
8
What reflections do the storytellers offer at the end of the episode?
34:47–51:13