222: Suckers

Ira Glass

Here's the kind of thing that changes you from one kind of person into another. Adam and Wendy had been looking for a house for years, which is what you have to do if you don't have a lot of money. And finally, they found this house that they liked. And the broker showed it to them before it came into the market, so the actually had a shot at getting the house. And then, they were completely ripped off, but ripped off in this way that seems almost calculated to get inside their very molecules and rip them off at the cellular level.

Ira Glass

An inspector came and pointed out a few problems with the house. For instance, the owners had said that the roof was brand new. But in fact, the inspector said, it had simply been painted silver and was a web of cracks and problems. The steps leading up to the house were being rebuilt, but the inspector said that the workmanship was no good. It would not last the winter.

And then there was the question of the abandoned house next door. What was going to happen there? They understood that they knew nothing about it, nothing at all. But might it affect the value of this house? The owners insisted on talking out the problems face-to-face.

Ira Glass

Negotiations went back and forth for weeks. Wendy and Adam barely got their way on anything. But they bought the house anyway because they knew that if they didn't, somebody else would. They move in. And then, the very first time that it rains, streams of brown water come pouring into the house.

Ira Glass

The second day they were in the house, Adam was walking up the steps to the front door, and he heard a sound, the steps cracking under his feet. Their first weekend in the house, they woke up to a different sound, the sound of jackhammers. It turns out that not only was there construction starting on the house next door, it would extend that house 15 feet back, blocking out all of the western sunlight from Adam and Wendy's backyard. And if that were not enough, neighbors informed them that the previous owners knew all about it, in fact, had led an organizing drive on the block to stop this construction.

And what makes the whole thing so galling is they're still living in the home of the people who took advantage of them. Every day, they're reminded of these people. They smell their smell in the closet. When the drains back up, it's their hair and grease.

Ira Glass

Now, Wendy and Adam, I should say, are the sort of do-gooders who, when they move out of an apartment they've been renting, they'll hire a cleaner to make sure that the place is spotless for the next tenants. When they sell a car, they get that extra brake job for $600 before putting it on the market, not because they necessarily think it'll get a better price, and usually it does not, but because they think that it is right. They believe in deals where everybody walks away feeling like the deal was fair. Or anyway, that's the kind of people they used to be before they bought a house.

Ira Glass

Just last weekend, they went to a big home supplies hardware chain, a chain where they have gotten terrible advice in the past, terrible service. They needed some bolts. And, filled with anger and a spirit of vengeance, they simply stole them. The opportunity presented itself. They took advantage.

And my friend, it felt good to steal. It felt good to make somebody else the sucker. They think they're going to do it again. That is what they have learned from the previous owners of their house.

Well, from WBEZ Chicago, it is This American Life, distributed by Public Radio International. Today on our program, Suckers. There are some people who see the world as a place where everybody can work out their differences and come to settlements, where everybody is happy, everybody getting along. And there are people who believe it's eat or be eaten, screw or be screwed. Today, the chasm that divides those two worldviews.

They both can't be right. Either the world is dog-eat-dog or not. Today, we try to figure out which it is. Stay with us.

Ira Glass

Act One, No Receipt, No Surrender. Perhaps you're familiar with the story of a certain New Jersey family. They live in a lovely suburban home. The neighbors have no idea how all the nice stuff they own arrives there, or if they suspect, they keep their mouths shut. The attitude of the head of the household, sometimes there are opportunities to take, and you take them. Or maybe you don't know the family I'm talking about.

Ira Glass

This is a woman who asked to be identified only by her first name, Sheila, for reasons that will become all too clear to you. I should say that she does not make a living off of her little random opportunities. Her husband is a doctor, and he supports the family. But she embodies the kind of worldview that we're talking about in this week's show.

She's the sort of person who talks hotels into giving her discounts when, really, they have no reason to, who shows up at famous restaurants where she has no reservation, sneaks a look at the names in the reservation book, and then claims to be one of the people listed in order to be seated right away. She's talked her way into sold-out events. She's talked her way into the Getty Museum. Here's a typical scam.

Ira Glass

Well, after our interview, since Jen said that she wished that she were more like her mom, we got the idea to have Jen's mom give her a little lesson, a training exercise in being her. Here it is. Here's Jen.

Jen

We decided to try something simple. My assignment was to return a bright yellow sweater my boyfriend had received as a gift four years ago. It was from a high-end clothing store called Burberry. It was the type of sweater that might have been appropriate on a public golf course in Scotland in the mid-'80s. Suffice it to say, I hated the sweater.

This is what we had working for us. The sweater had originally been purchased at Burberry and had a Burberry label. There was even paper folded into the sweater, printed with the trademark logo. On the downside, we had no receipt and no hangtag. And of course, the sweater was four years out of fashion and looked it, none of which fazed my mother.

In fact, she thought the whole thing so easy, she decided to up the ante. She wanted me to try for a cash refund instead of a store credit. She was going to show me how.

Jen

My mom showed up at my office wearing a crisply pressed blouse, gigantic Jackie O sunglasses, and a pair of knockoff Burberry plaid pants that simultaneously embodied her two biggest beliefs in life. Always dress the part, and never pay full price. The training session started with some role-playing.

Jen

This isn't the way my mother usually works. She believes in pure improv. But for my benefit, she concocts a backstory for me. It's astonishingly complicated.

Apparently, I live in Arkansas with my Arkansas businessman boyfriend, who got this sweater as a gift, along with a lot of other Burberry clothing. Anyone who knows him knows it's his favorite store. I'm only in town for a day, and I rarely come to New York, so I want cash, not credit. And by the way, I don't know when the sweater was purchased, but he received it recently. It's such a crazy collection of facts that I have a hard time keeping it all straight.

Jen

This is method scamming. We head over to Burberry's. I'm wearing a hidden microphone, and my stomach immediately starts to hurt.

Burberry is a sleek, luxe store filled with coiffed salespeople and stylish Japanese tourists. There's plenty of taupe cashmere muffling the sound system. Everything is ordered, serene. I'm directed to the manager.

The manager barely glances at me as he informs me of their policy. No receipt, no returns, no exceptions. I muster up the courage to try again and instantly forget every lesson my mother taught me. I volunteer information. I say things that could be used against me. I can't keep the facts of my fake story straight.

All I want to do is get out of there. The guy is, after all, just doing his job. No receipt, no returns, no exception. I nod feebly and wonder why we don't just give the sweater to Goodwill.

I can feel that it's killing my mom to see me struggle like this, but she's trying to hold back. Finally the manager says, look, for all he knows, the sweater wasn't even bought at this store. It could have just come from some outlet. And that does it. My mom, unable to contain herself any longer, steps in.

Jen

My mom saying she's not an outlet shopper is like saying she's not an air breather. My mom spends all of five minutes dealing with the manager before deciding it's a waste of time. Her cardinal rule is if you want something done right, you have to go straight to the top. Positioning herself firmly in front of the store's only cash register, she pulls out her cell phone and calls Burberry corporate headquarters.

Jen

I want to climb into the revolving rack of raincoats and disappear.

Jen

The lies fell from her like notes in an improvisational jazz saxophone solo. She's on a tear, and she will stop at nothing.

Jen

Also coincidentally, people are starting to clear away from us. I'm sure the only thing the manager would attest to at this point is that he wants me, my mother, and her fake, Burberry, plaid pants the hell out of there.

Jen

It's 12:00 in New York, which makes it 11:00 in Arkansas.

Jen

She's on the phone for over 20 minutes. Burberry's return policy is designed precisely with people like my mother in mind. They just keep repeating over and over, no receipt, no returns, no exceptions. At this point, I'm surprised to find that I'm getting mad. The nerve of them. After an hour and a half, we finally leave, defeated.

Jen

Hear that? That's why I think my mom is so good at this. She truly believed she was in the right. She was actually furious at Burberry for not falling for her lies. She tells me this is unheard of. They've just lost a valuable customer. Never mind that she was never an actual customer in the first place. Later, back at the office, she chalks up our failure to one small strategic mistake.

What started as a lark for me, a little mother-daughter bonding time, escalated far beyond that for her. It was now a question of honor. She shot off letters to the CEO, the CFO, and, to leave no stone unturned, the mayor of New York. She refused to read these letters to me, and I'm terrified to imagine what she said.

They must have been some letters though. The salesman called a week later to say that they were still working on the return. He called a few days after that to tell her that there was a credit waiting for her in the Spring Street store. They credited us for $59, which was brilliant on their part, because they paid less than the sweater was worth while getting my mother out of their hair forever. Honestly, if they paid her a dollar, she'd have declared victory.

The problem now is I can't go get the credit, because I'm supposed to be in Arkansas. Not only that, but the store is just three blocks from my job. I'm so afraid they'll recognize me, I try to avoid their street completely. When I can't, I cross the street, so they won't see me. I know my mom wouldn't hesitate to stroll right by.

Ira Glass

Act Two, The Stereo Type. The sucker worldview is that when an opportunity presents itself, you and I should grab that opportunity. And if we do not, we are suckers.

Unfortunately, this mentality could also lead us to become big suckers because, of course, there is no better mark than somebody who thinks that he is about to beat the system. There's no bigger sucker than somebody who thinks that he is about to make someone else into a sucker. Well, with that in mind, we have this little fable about suckerdom from our producer, Alex Blumberg.

Alex Blumberg

My friend Shane has this story about being a sucker and then getting the chance to get revenge on the people who suckered him. It starts when he was just 23. He had gotten one of his first adult paychecks, which seemed huge at the time. He was wearing a new suit that he'd bought with the money. He was walking down the street, thinking, this adult life is a breeze. Never before or since did he feel that the world was such a benevolent and bountiful place.

Alex Blumberg

Shane played along, acted like he's down, he's been through this before, he's one of them.

Ira Glass

Shane Dubow and Alex Blumberg. Coming up, an entire nation which holds to the sucker mentality. Can you guess which nation I'm talking about? Can you guess? An answer in a minute, from Chicago Public Radio and Public Radio International when our program continues.

Ira Glass

It's This American Life. I'm Ira Glass. Today on our program, Suckers, in which we ask the question, is the world in fact a place where you either make someone else into a sucker, or you're the sucker. We've arrived at act three of our program, Act Three, Suckers in the Promised Land.

Regular listeners might remember not so long ago when reporter Adam Davidson and I did some stories from Israel. And while he and I were traveling around there, Adam told me to notice how often people use the word freier, which is the Yiddish word for sucker, the Israeli word for sucker. And I have to say, it happens all the time, because the idea of being a sucker is so much more powerful in Israel than it is here. Adam put together this primer on the huge place that freierism has in Israeli life, and how it explains things you didn't even know might need explaining.

Adam Davidson

There is this amazing moment that was caught on film at the Camp David Peace Accords in 2000. President Clinton is leading then-Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak and Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasser Arafat into some log cabin for more negotiations. At the door, Arafat opens one arm to invite Barak to go in first. Barak stands there, impishly, and extends his own arm, telling Arafat to go in first.

Things degenerated quickly. And you can actually see Barak and Arafat in a sort of fake wrestle, as Barak is trying to physically force Arafat to enter the door before he does. The thing seems irreconcilable until, through the door, you see President Clinton's long arms grab both men and pull them in.

I think some Americans saw this and thought it was a good sign. These two old enemies are now friendly enough for roughhousing. But for any Israeli watching, the message was clear.

Barak was telling Arafat, I'm in control here. I decide who goes in and who doesn't. Nobody tells me when to go in a door. Put another way, I'm not your freier. I'm not your sucker.

Adam Davidson

This is Tom Segev, an Israeli journalist and historian.

Adam Davidson

I think it would be impossible to understand Israelis without understanding the whole notion of freierism. It is at the heart of Israeli culture, affecting how people work, how they shop, how they vote, how they think about themselves and the people around them. Freierism is everywhere.

When I asked my cousin David if he'd ever been a freier, like any Israeli, he first said no. But when I pressed, he surprised me by recalling, in detail, an incident that happened years ago. He was in line to pay at a supermarket, and this woman came up and asked if she could jump in front of him because she only had a few items. He said sure. Then she wheeled over this cart filled with groceries. He realized that she had made him a freier.

He thinks about that woman every time he goes shopping, and he has never let anyone get in front of him since. This was years ago. Again, here's Tom Segev.

Adam Davidson

From an Israeli point of view, Jews were suckers for 2,000 years in exile, constantly being tricked and persecuted. The whole idea of Israel was to create a place where Jews were in control, where Jews would never again be freiers. And even though Israel is now a powerful state, the fear of being taken advantage of hasn't gone away.

Israelis even fear that their own Jewish government makes them all freiers. Many Israelis say you're a freier if you pay your parking tickets, if you follow traffic laws. Even if you pay your taxes, you can be a freier.

Adam Davidson

Israel has an improvisational feel that America lacks. It's a place that hasn't quite settled yet. Every price can be negotiated. Every law is up for debate. Being a freier doesn't just mean getting taken advantage of, like being a sucker does here. It means you don't get how the whole system works.

In America, you're a sucker if you buy your stereo from some guy in a parking lot. But in Israel, it's the exact opposite. Anyone can buy a stereo in a store. You're the only one who knows that Moishe's cousin from Uzbekistan just got a shipment of off-brand stereos with Sony parts, and he's selling them out of his car in the central bus station for cheap. It's not that Israelis are obsessed with getting things cheap per se. It's just that if you don't, you're a freier.

I've always known that. And I've always noticed that when I get to Israel and start speaking Hebrew, my whole personality changes. I'm on guard. I'm ready to yell.

But I don't think I really understood what freierism means until I was checking out of this hotel in Tel Aviv a few years ago. Because of some glitch, the hotel's computer put on my bill all these phone charges to places I've never called in my life, Poland, Uruguay, Sri Lanka. I went to the manager, and in seconds, he and I were screaming at each other.

I'm yelling at him, asking how he can charge for calls I never made. He's yelling back at me. This goes on for a while, until suddenly, I realize that he and I completely agree. He doesn't want me to pay the phone charges. I don't want to pay the phone charges. What we're really fighting over is who gets to say whether or not I pay the phone charges.

He's saying, "I'm the manager. You don't tell me you don't pay the bill. I tell you if you don't pay the bill." And I'm yelling back in Hebrew, "I'm the customer. You don't tell me if I pay the bill. I don't pay any bill that isn't correct." That's when I got it. We weren't fighting over money. We were fighting over who was the freier, him or me.

(INTERVIEWER) ADAM DAVIDSON Have you been a freier recently?

Adam Davidson

Again, here's Tom Segev.

Adam Davidson

In fact, the whole peace process is infected with the idea of freierism. Both sides know what the final outcome is going to be, a Palestinian state next to Israel, Israel giving up some settlements in the West Bank and Gaza. But each side has to play its hand to see that it gets the absolute best deal, that they aren't taken for freiers. And of course, any peace depends on both sides trusting each other. And trusting, everyone knows, is the mark of a true freier.

Ira Glass

Adam Davidson in Los Angeles.

Ira Glass

We now move on to Act Four, Mother Sucker. We have this story about the meaning of parenthood and the prevalence of being made a sucker from Heather O'Neill.

Heather O'neill

When I was 18 years old, I moved out of my dad's house with a suitcase and headed downtown. And there was nothing anyone could do about it. I grew up in the smallest apartment in the world, with my dad yelling all the time. My two sisters and I all slept in a tiny room with two bunk beds and a cardboard box of clothing that we all shared. After an atrocious childhood, I was delighted to be a grown-up.

My friend, Ben, and I got an apartment. You turned on the oven at 3:00 in the afternoon if you wanted it to be hot by suppertime. We never locked the door. We'd lost all the keys.

After living there peacefully for a couple of months, one night, Ben brought home Jimmy. Jimmy was a 16-year-old boy that he had found at the Electric Bumbum, a club down the street. Ben said that Jimmy had been walking around the bar, asking all the women for a hug. He was carrying a little leather bag that looked like a doctor's kit that he kept his underwear in. He had just escaped from Shawbridge, a juvenile detention center that was north of the city. He had tried to go home, but his mother had moved without telling him her new address.

I could see why Ben had decided to help him out. Jimmy looked like the Little Prince. He had the biggest eyes on the planet. And he always had a surprised expression on his face. He had blond hair that was sticking straight up, and he was small for his age. He was 16, but he looked about 11 or 12. On his pale bicep, he had a homemade tattoo that said Lisa. Lisa was a half-sister he had only met once, five years before.

He also acted like a little kid. That first night when Ben brought him into the living room, I handed him this transparent balloon with white stars on it, and Jimmy went on and on about how it was the most beautiful thing anyone had ever given him. I liked that.

Jimmy needed a place to stay for the night. Ben said he could sleep on the couch. So Jimmy took off his pants and folded them on the coffee table. He was wearing Spider-Man underwear.

"Heather, could you tuck me in?" he asked. I thought he was joking, seeing as he was 16, and I was 18. But he just lay there, perfectly still and straight, waiting for the blankets to be pulled up to his chin.

So I did it. I tucked him in. What else could I do? It was silly, but it also made me feel warm inside. Suddenly, I felt very mature.

When I fantasized about having a kid, it was never about being in a relationship or being pregnant. I always imagined finding a baby in a garbage can and raising it as my own. I would do everything for that little baby and never give it up.

When I was still very little, my mother told me that she was moving to New Orleans. She said she had never been able to do fun things because she had had me when she was only 19. She said if she stayed and looked after me, she would only depress me. She said really, she was doing me a favor. She left her apartment and walked down the street with her things, saying that she was going to the airport. I found out years later that she had just moved across town.

The next morning, when I sat on the coffee table and asked Jimmy where he was going to go, he begged me to let him stay. I told him I didn't want to get in trouble with the law. And besides, we were broke.

"You guys could be my foster parents," he pleaded. Jimmy said that once a kid in foster care is 16, he can be eligible for independent living. As long as you got any adult to come and say they wanted you to live with them, it would be OK. He said he was very envious of his friend, Juan, who had talked a women who worked at his school's cafeteria into being his foster mom.

We had to go clear across town to visit Jimmy's social worker. It was a bleak kind of neighborhood. There seemed to be train tracks everywhere and laundry lines with no clothes on them.

There were two identical buildings next to each other at the end of a street. One of the buildings had all its windows broken. The other one was the Office for Child Welfare.

Before we walked into the building, I opened my mouth, and Ben squirted some breath spray in. The social worker stared at us. "Why do you want to be Jimmy's foster parents?" she asked. "I like to read books," I said. It was all I could think of to say. I'd always imagined that kids who were read to must be much smarter than me.

I was just quiet after that, but she didn't seem to care how we were planning to raise Jimmy. In fact, the only thing she wanted from us was proof that we were 18. Nothing else seemed to matter. Taking the long subway ride out there seemed to show enough initiative on our parts.

She gave us an address of a school that would accept Jimmy, and then she gave us a roll of green children's bus tickets so that he could get there each day. Then she gave us some forms to fill out, which she apologized profusely for. She explained it was a drag, but it had to be done for accounting, so that we could get money. "If you have any problems, don't call me. Call the front desk first," she said, waving goodbye.

We were given a $100 check to buy him things that he needed. It seemed like a lot of money to me. I took him out shopping for school supplies. We got a large purse with a rainbow on it that he could use to keep his school books in. I also bought him an umbrella and a pair of snow pants.

Then Jimmy and I saw this dress shirt with pink birds on it that looked like it would fit either of us perfectly. We both grabbed for it. I shoved him right into a plastic container of shoes. "Child abuse," he screamed. On the subway back home, he wouldn't stop bugging me, so I bit him on the ear. My dad used to always do that to me with his broken tooth. Pretty soon after Jimmy moved in, things started to go missing around the apartment. If we left a handful of change on the bathroom sink, it would disappear. So would Ben's cigarettes. The radio on the kitchen table was suddenly not there one day, but Jimmy denied that he had taken anything. In my heart, of course, I couldn't really believe him. But it wasn't like he was taking anything I couldn't live without.

Jimmy had to go to a remedial high school. It wasn't long before I was being called in to talk to his teacher. She said that he kept taking his shirt off in class. She said he had 100 spelling mistakes and never did his homework. And she said that Jimmy had been missing tons of school.

"Why haven't you been going to school?" I asked him. "What have you been doing with your days?" "I don't know," he said.

More things vanished from the apartment, records, books, cutlery. One afternoon, while sitting outside on the stoop, I noticed that the next door neighbor was wearing Ben's hat. I asked him where he got it. And the neighbor said, "That blond kid who lives with you sold it to me."

Then while cleaning, I found under Jimmy's blanket a sweat sock, stuffed full, like a Christmas stocking. There was my gold chain with a pink rose. He stole a tiny porcelain southern belle that an ex-boyfriend had given to me. There was even a magnet from the fridge in the shape of a cough syrup bottle with a 1-800 number on it. When I brought it up, Jimmy said they were just souvenirs.

I genuinely liked Jimmy, but I was slowly realizing that nobody else did. When we had friends over, he would moonwalk from one person to the next offering to massage their faces. He'd sit right next to them and ask, "If you could be any animal, what would it be? I'd be an otter because it's original and I like waterslides."

Also, he'd ask for everything. "Oh, that's a beautiful watch," he'd say. "Can I have it? Can I have your necklace? Please, I'll wear it every day."

"Why do you let that little mooch live here?" people would ask. "He's so annoying. He's so squirrelly." I defended Jimmy, saying that he was just going through a phase. He was only a kid. It wasn't his fault that he wasn't mature. I thought he was really showing signs of an artistic temperament.

After all, Rimbaud was a runaway too. If we had found Rimbaud at the Electric Bumbum, I'm sure everyone would also think he was a pretentious teenager, what with his ranting and his poetry. Rimbaud might also knock over the lamp practicing his disco moves and wear glasses with the lenses popped out in an attempt to express himself.

We had had him six months, and still no money had come. Ben asked Jimmy to stop at the social worker and find out where the checks were. Jimmy said that he'd just been there, and that there was a paperwork problem, and we'd be getting the money soon.

Jimmy, our growing boy, was starting to develop a little potbelly from eating all the food in the house, while at the same time, Ben and I were starting to lose weight. Ben complained all the time about how there was never any food in the fridge. Jimmy would eat up every last thing. One time, we came home, and Jimmy was sitting on the couch, watching TV, with a big pot of spaghetti sauce on his lap. Ben started putting him on a scale to make sure he wasn't gaining weight.

At this point, Jimmy wasn't going to school at all. Ben started complaining that he needed to have some sort of activity, other than "eating all our food and following me around all day." "You should try to do something that involves ambition," Ben told him. "Don't you even have a hobby?"

He decided Jimmy had to get out of the house on his own for at least an hour on the weekends. Jimmy would just stand on the balcony, shivering. He'd get down on his knees and call for me through the mail slot. I told Ben that he was pushing Jimmy too hard. When the hour was up, I would rush to unlock the door and let Jimmy back in.

Then one day, Ben had had enough. Jimmy walked in the kitchen wearing Ben's shoes, except they were painted white and had little blue stars on them. "How do you like my dancing shoes?" he asked. "Those are my shoes!" Ben screamed. "No, you never had a pair of white shoes with blue stars on them," said Jimmy. "I would have noticed."

Ben told Jimmy he had gone too far. "I'm calling your social worker in the morning. I don't know how to deal with a kleptomaniac teenager."

The thought of kicking Jimmy out made me feel rotten inside. It made me feel like a degenerate or a criminal. I couldn't stand the thought of him having no place to go. I don't know if that means I'm a sucker or that I just don't care if I'm a sucker.

The next morning, Jimmy was gone anyway, along with a houseload of souvenirs. He didn't even say goodbye. I thought that I had been such a good mother too. I couldn't believe he'd want to run away.

When Ben woke up, he found that the envelope with his $150 that he had spent 40 hours working for was gone. The rent was due, and we were flat broke. Ben called the social worker to ask about the checks. She said that they had all been given to Jimmy. Jimmy had just been cashing them and spending the money himself.

Ben felt like Jimmy had totally taken us for fools. I felt like, well, what do you expect? Now, years later, I have a seven-year-old daughter, and I've come to realize that to be a parent is to be a sucker. You get suckered into being an unappreciated servant who works for free. You get suckered into giving up your privacy. You're suckered into giving up movies and holidays to pay for ballet lessons, and plastic alien babies, and enough bubble gum to stretch to the moon.

And kids will treat you like a sucker. They'll lie right to your face. My daughter tries to convince me before leaving to school in the morning that she doesn't have lip gloss on even though her lips are glistening like candy apples.

And what makes being a parent the ultimate sucker is that not only are you being taken for a sucker, but you actually like it. I lie and connive and manipulate on her behalf all the time, and I do it with pleasure. The other day, I sewed a little pocket inside her jacket so that she could sneak her cards to school after they were banned. "Watch out for the lunch monitors," I tell her. "They're on a power trip." I write her notes saying, "Please let my daughter go to the bathroom whenever she wants. She has serious stomach problems."

And I only wish I could do more. I wish I could sit beside her during her math tests and whisper her the answers. I wish I could cup her ears with my palms when the teacher starts yelling at her for not listening. I wish I could stand with her in the schoolyard at lunchtime and give her the sandwich I packed for work because she decided to feed hers to the birds.

Ira Glass

Heather O'Neill is a poet and novelist.

Ira Glass

This is the last program that we have the pleasure of working with producer-in-training Chris Neary. He has had many ideas on how to structure and rework stories that have made our show better, and we are the worse for him going. This American Life is distributed by Public Radio International.

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WBEZ management oversight by Torey Malatia, who's got an answer for anything we say about him here.

Ira Glass

I'm Ira Glass, back next week with more stories of This American Life.

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