241: 20 Acts in 60 Minutes

Ira Glass

From WBEZ Chicago, it's This American Life. I'm Ira Glass.

There's this theater company in Chicago that, for years, put out a new show every single week where they performed 30 plays in 60 minutes, called the Neo-Futurists. And when we first broadcast today's program all the way back in 2003, a bunch of us were sitting around talking about that group. And one of us had just seen one of their shows. And we thought, that would be really fun-- 30 stories in 60 minutes? Let's try that.

Instead of our usual-- each week we choose a theme, bring you three or four stories, blah, blah, blah, public radio, very reflective, what kinds of stories would we end up with if we did 30 in one hour? Or even 20? What would it sound like?

We honestly had no idea. And so, that's what we're going to do today. Today we're going to find out. And I have to say, time is wasting if we're going to fit everything in.

How many will it be? How many will we squeeze in? There is but one way to find out, and that is to stick around.

Ira Glass

(HOST) IRA GLASS: And let's begin with this one, Act One-- Don't I Know You? Throughout this hour we're going to be bringing you two-minute documentaries, fantastically short works of fiction, and all kinds of little stories that we ordinarily can't use on the radio show because they are just too short, even though they're really fun stories to listen to and perfect stories for the radio. Our first story is one like that. It's one of those stories-- you know how people you know have their greatest hits stories of things that happened to them? We went on a massive search for stories like that from all over the country, and this is one of the stories like that that we found.

It happened to this actor named Tate Donovan. He told it to our producer Starlee Kine. He was out one night going to a Broadway play with a friend, being treated in this way he never gets treated.

Ira Glass

Tate Donovan with Starlee Kine.

Ira Glass

(HOST) IRA GLASS: Act Two-- No, Of Course I Know You. One of the things that's been really interesting about putting this show together this week is going to some of our regular contributors and commissioning stories that are just two or three minutes long from people who normally write stories that are 10 times that length. This story is an example of that, from Scott Carrier in Salt Lake City.

Scott Carrier

Who was that woman, that woman I just saw while walking out of the restaurant? She was sitting at a table by the door, glasses, a hat, like Lois Lane.

She looked at me like she knew me. And I said hello because I thought I recognized her. But I couldn't remember her name, so I just kept going out the door.

Now I can't even remember how I know her. I know I know her, or used to know her. Somehow she was very important to me. She helped me out in a time of trouble.

She used to roll her eyes. I'd say something dumb and she'd roll her eyes and get me something I needed, even though she didn't have to. Maybe she works in the library, or the county recorder's office, or at the newspaper.

I think I may have been in love with her. No, she's too young. I was never in love with her, not in that way. It's just that I wanted something, needed something. And she was able to give it to me, almost out of the goodness of her heart. And now I can't even remember who she is.

I'm sick. I'm old. I should just walk out into traffic and kill myself. At home, at night, I go to sleep, searching for the lost memory.

Did I meet her down by the river in a canoe, or was it on a ferry in southeastern Alaska, or at the Foreign Correspondents Club in Phnom Penh along the Mekong? She has something to do with water, with life, with mud.

I sleep poorly, turning and maybe even groaning in anguish. I don't care about the woman anymore. I'm worried for myself. I feel as if there's a black hole in my brain, and slowly but surely, it's swallowing all the memories of my life.

I get up at 5:30 and drive to work in the dark. I feel terrible. I look like a piece of gum in the gutter.

I pull in to Java Joe's to get some chemical help, and there she is behind the drive-up window. I want to tell her I love her, but I don't because it would be too weird. All I can say is, wow. And she rolls her eyes and gets me my cup of coffee.

Ira Glass

Scott Carrier in Salt Lake City. If you haven't heard his podcast yet, it's called Home of the Brave.

Ira Glass

(HOST) IRA GLASS: Act Three-- It's Commerce That Brings Us Together. In 1997, Susan Drury and her husband moved to rural Tennessee, not too far from the Alabama line. They grew attached to the local radio station.

Susan Drury

We couldn't really get any other radio stations at the house, but WKSR has a lot going for it-- the way they read the obituaries on the air, the way people call in during the tornado to tell everybody they're OK and where the roads are flooded, the ads from the same downtown stores over and over and over. And then there's the show we like best.

Susan Drury

Swap and Shop is a low-tech, personable sort of Ebay. It's not fancy or particularly well-produced or anything. It's just a show where people call in to say what they want to sell or buy or give away. They give their phone number, and that's it.

Susan Drury

The show is hosted by a guy named Don Estep, and he almost never comments on anything people are trying to buy or sell. He's like a lot of my neighbors, particularly the men. The attitude is, your business is your business. There's no shame in tough times, and nobody turns himself inside out to tell you everything.

Susan Drury

Mostly you're just left to wonder about the story behind these things. You don't get too many answers.

Susan Drury

Swap and Shop is not unique to this station. Local stations across the country have these radio classifieds type shows. WKSR's version has a regular segment called "The Doggone Show."

Susan Drury

That first winter in our house, we had no heat, which we thought was adventurous, but was, in fact, just cold. And when we heard a lady call in with an ugly but functional wood stove for sale for $75, we called her. We got it, and we were toasty.

Ira Glass

Susan Drury, Tennessee.

Ira Glass

(HOST) IRA GLASS: Act Four-- The Sound of One Hand Waving. For this one, let's go to the beach for a one-minute and four-second vacation on Nantucket Island.

[WAVES CRASHING]

Ira Glass

Patty Martin from Nantucket. She talked to Jim Sulzer. She has since passed away.

Ira Glass

(HOST) IRA GLASS: Act Five-- The Sound of No Hands Clapping. This one came from Vicki Merrick and Eric Kipp and Jay Allison, who's the voice you hear.

Ira Glass

(HOST) IRA GLASS: Act Six-- Reaching Out With Radio. Blunt Youth Radio is this project where they work with incarcerated teenagers. This story comes from Long Creek Youth Development Center in South Portland, Maine.

And just imagine how this works-- you're a teenager. You're locked up. You're in juvenile detention. And this group comes to you and says they will help you make your own radio story on a subject that concerns you. What do you do that story about? Well, here's Joey.

Joey

Hi, I'm Joey, and I ate somebody's urine. It all started when I went to dinner at the cafeteria and someone told my friend not to eat the pudding. Then my friend told me, after I ate, that someone had peed in it. I survived that day, but I couldn't stop thinking about it. So I went to the cooks to see if they had an answer.

This is Joey and Jake. We're about to see if we can interview Bill Wyman on--

Joey

--people messing with our food.

Joey

We're not too happy. Excuse me, Mr. Wyman? I was wondering if I could interview you and talk to you about people putting-- if it happened-- glass in our pancakes and peeing in the pudding and stuff? We was wondering what you had to say about that.

Joey

We heard that it was brought up at briefing that somebody put glass in the pancakes.

Joey

Do you know how it got into the pancake batter?

Joey

We heard that it was--

Joey

All right, this is obviously not working. I'm going to have to interview somebody else. I heard some kid got jumped because he supposedly peed in the pudding.

Joey

I don't know what to think. If someone did contaminate the food with bodily fluids, I guess I'd rather not know since I'm stuck here and I have to eat the food. Thank you for your time. This is Joey.

Ira Glass

Joey-- he was 18 when he recorded that story. His friend Jake was 16.

If you're just tuning in, this is This American Life. We have tossed out our regular way of doing the show this week-- trashed it, chucked it, spurned it. We laugh at it, we spit on its grave. And instead, we are bringing you as many short stories as we can fit into 60 minutes. It is barely, what, 18 minutes into the show, and already we are at Act Seven, an incredible achievement.

Ira Glass

(HOST) IRA GLASS: Act Seven-- Up Where the Air is Clear. We have this story from Jonathan Goldstein.

Jonathan Goldstein

Before he ever moved to Gotham City, before he grew into the overweight, obsessive sad sack of his later years, the Penguin was a poet and a dandy who lived in London. He wrote complex villanelles and threw lavish dinner parties at which he only became more charming the more he drank. He wore a monocle, a top hat, and carried an umbrella.

One evening, at one of his dinner parties, after hours spent sipping absinthe, the Penguin ran up to the roof of his building, opened up his large black umbrella, and leaped off into the air. As he coasted to the ground, he hollered out lines from Blake, stuff about grabbing life by the fat of its stomach and giving it a twist. He was that crazy. He was that bursting with life.

From that night on, he made it his habit to jump off roofs ever higher, while clutching an umbrella. After a while, he got pretty good at it, too. He saw that by kicking his legs and twisting his back a certain way, he could actually prolong his flight, coasting all over the place, sometimes only landing after several daring minutes aloft.

It came to pass that the Penguin started hearing more and more about a certain nanny named Mary Poppins. She too, he was told, had been floating around London hanging from an umbrella handle. Everywhere he went, the Penguin kept hearing about her, how it was simply insane that they had not met each other yet.

So finally, a dinner party was arranged by someone who knew them both. And on the evening of the party, the Penguin walked into the drawing room, saw Mary Poppins on the divan, doffed his top hat, and bowed low, as was his style in those days. He'd planned a few things to say and do when first meeting Mary Poppins. He thought he might lift up his umbrella as though challenging her to a duel. He imagined she would smile and take up her own frilly, perhaps pink, umbrella, and then together, they would dance about the room, leaping over furniture, parrying and thrusting, perhaps even winding things up, breathing heavily nose to nose.

Instead what happened was the Penguin became very shy and quiet. As he stood there staring at her, his top hat felt needlessly clumsy, his monocle too small for his face. And the squinting needed to keep it in place was giving him a slight headache. For the first time in his life, the Penguin felt ludicrous.

I imagine you two must have an infinite amount of things to speak of, said their host as he sat them together at the dinner table. The Penguin nodded uncertainly. After three or four minutes, it became clear that the Penguin and Mary Poppins had absolutely nothing to say to one another that did not deal exclusively with umbrella travel-- getting stuck in trees, the shoulder aches, anxiety about tipping over in the wind.

Everyone at the table just sat there, staring at them expectantly, which made the whole thing even more awkward. Trying to move things along, Mary Poppins asked the Penguin if he liked to sing, to which the Penguin responded, only when I'm drunk. Then she asked if he enjoyed children, to which he replied, yes, in a sweet wine sauce.

The Penguin then asked Mary Poppins how she kept people from looking up her skirt when she flew. She smiled politely, then turned to the man on her left and asked him how he was enjoying the lamb. The man on her left was wearing an elegant, aristocratic cape. Mary, a bit drunk on the sherry, noted that if he spread his cape out, he might be able to glide about like a bat. The man on her left chuckled and suggested that, after dinner, they head up to the roof and give it a try, which they did.

Ira Glass

Jonathan Goldstein-- he's the host of the podcast Heavyweight, which feels exactly like this story except the people in it are not fictional.

Ira Glass

(HOST) IRA GLASS: Act Eight-- the Greatest Dog Name in The World. Yes, we have the true story of its origin. Years ago, an exclusive told by two brothers, one of whom is 12, the other is 13.

Ira Glass

Their names? Valion and Paris Lotze, age 12 and 13. They spoke with Katia Dunn.

Ira Glass

(HOST) IRA GLASS: Act Nine-- Of Dogs and Men. Elaine Boehm used to work at a pet shop.

Ira Glass

Elaine Boehm talked with Jim Sulzer.

Ira Glass

(HOST) IRA GLASS: Act 10-- so let's close out this part of our show before the break with a story from the theater group that gave us the idea for today's jam-packed little program in the first place-- that group, again, the Neo-Futurists. Every single week for over two decades, they did these shows where they would perform 30 plays in 60 minutes. Turns out you can get across a surprising amount in a two-minute play.

Some of their plays are monologues, some of them are scenes. But a lot of them just take some simple concept, one idea, and then spin that concept out on stage for two minutes. This one's like that.

Greg Allen

Statement, statement, statement-- question?

Heather Riordan

Agreement.

Greg Allen

Reassured statement, confident statement, confident statement. Overconfident statement.

Heather Riordan

Question?

Greg Allen

Elaborate defensive excuse.

[LAUGHTER]

Heather Riordan

Half-hearted agreement.

Greg Allen

Insecure statement, distracted statement, absurd statement.

Heather Riordan

Clarification question?

Greg Allen

Panicked [BLEEP] explanation! Quick, meaningless comic non-sequitur.

Heather Riordan

[LAUGHING] Laughter.

Greg Allen

[LAUGHS] Fake laughter, fake laughter.

[LAUGHTER]

Accidental compliment of physical characteristics.

Heather Riordan

Pleased response.

Greg Allen

[GASPS] Shocked continuation of meaningless comic non-sequitur.

Heather Riordan

[LAUGHING] Laughter.

Greg Allen

[LAUGHING] Relieved laughter.

Heather Riordan

Laughter.

Greg Allen

Relieved laughter.

Heather Riordan

Superficial compliment.

Greg Allen

Self-assured agreement as denial.

[LAUGHTER]

Exaggerated statement, exaggerated statement, grossly exaggerated statement.

Heather Riordan

Clarification question?

Greg Allen

Extremely exaggerated elucidation.

Heather Riordan

Mental compliment with accidental double entendre.

Greg Allen

[LAUGHING] Confident laughter.

Heather Riordan

Laughter.

Greg Allen

[INAUDIBLE]

Heather Riordan

Embarrassed laughter.

Greg Allen

Confident suggestive proposition.

Heather Riordan

Violent denial!

Greg Allen

Aghast repetition as question?

Heather Riordan

Disgusted violent denial.

Greg Allen

Defensive incriminating implication.

Heather Riordan

Offended retort.

Greg Allen

Aggressive childish insult.

Heather Riordan

Disbelieving rhetorical question?

Greg Allen

Aggressive childish insult.

Heather Riordan

Stunned silence.

Greg Allen

Aggressive childish insult.

Heather Riordan

Defensive childish response!

Greg Allen

Aggressive childish insult!

Heather Riordan

Defensive childish response!

Greg Allen

Aggressive childish--

Heather Riordan

Defensive childish--

Greg Allen

Attempted condescending conclusive statement.

Heather Riordan

Brilliant scathing remark with literary allusion and long-term devastating scatological implication.

[CHEERING]

Greg Allen

Pathetic self-revelation.

[LAUGHTER]

[INAUDIBLE]

[APPLAUSE]

Ira Glass

Greg Allen and Heather Riordan from Too Much Light Makes the Baby Go Blind: 30 Plays in 60 Minutes, which ran every weekend in Chicago for 28 years until it ended its run in 2016. The Neo-Futurists have a new show, which also features lots of little two-minute plays. It is called The Infinite Wrench. Their website-- neo-futurists.org.

Coming up, David Sedaris on an important-- and I have to say-- undiscussed question about cell phone use, and so many, so many other little stories, I don't even want to count them, in a minute from Chicago Public Radio when our program continues.

Ira Glass

(HOST) IRA GLASS: Well, this is turning out to be an interesting show, isn't it? It's This American Life. I'm Ira Glass. And if you're just tuning in, this week we are throwing out our regular way of doing things-- you know, three or four stories on some theme, blah, blah, blah. To hell with all that.

Instead, we are trying to cram as many stories into one hour as we humanly can. We guarantee 20. There may be more. We are at number 11, Etiquette Lesson. Here's writer David Sedaris.

David Sedaris

In a men's room at LaGuardia Airport, I watched a man take his cell phone from his jacket pocket, step into an empty stall, and proceed to dial. I thought he had come for the relative privacy, but looking through the space beneath the door, I saw that his pants were gathered about his ankles. He was sitting on the toilet.

Most airport calls began with geography. I'm in Kansas City, people say. I'm in Houston. I'm at Kennedy. When asked where he was, the man on the phone said simply, I'm at the airport. What do you think?

The sounds of a public toilet are not the sounds you would generally associate with an airport, and so his 'what do you think' struck me as unfair. The person he was talking to obviously felt the same way. What do you mean what airport, the man said. I'm at LaGuardia. Now put me through to Marty.

A few hours later, I was in Boston relating the story to my sister, Tiffany. I mean, he actually placed a call while sitting on the toilet. Tiffany is big on rules, and so I expected a certain degree of outrage. I wanted disgust, but instead, she said only, I don't believe in cell phones. But you do believe in talking on the phone while sitting on the toilet?

Well, it's not a belief, she said, but I mean, sure. When asked how she explains the noise, Tiffany scrunched up her face and held an imaginary receiver to her mouth. I say, (STRAINING) don't mind me, I'm just trying to get the lid off this jar.

Her face returned to normal and I thought of all the times I had fallen for that line, all the times I had pictured my sister standing helpless in her kitchen. Try tapping the lid against the countertop, I'd said, or rinse it in hot water, that sometimes works. Eventually, after much struggle, she would let out a breath. There we go, she'd say. I've got it now. And then she would say thank you. And I'd hang up thinking, well, it's a good thing she called me.

Ira Glass

David Sedaris. His new book Calypso comes out this May.

Ira Glass

(HOST) IRA GLASS: Act 12-- To Tell the Truth. This was recorded by Brent Runyon in the kids' section of the public library.

Kid 1

My parents punish me so many times because I lie.

[LAUGHTER]

Well, I was home one day and I tripped over my brother-- well, OK, don't tell anybody this. I jumped over my brother's chair. I jumped--

Kid 1

Yeah.

Kid 1

I told you I jumped.

Kid 1

I told you the first day I got my crutches.

Kid 1

Oh.

Ira Glass

(HOST) IRA GLASS: Act 13-- More Lies. This happened to Catherine and her husband John long before they were married, back before they graduated from college.

Ira Glass

[LAUGHS]

Ira Glass

[LAUGHING] So that people wouldn't know that you had eaten anything?

Ira Glass

At his insistence?

Ira Glass

[LAUGHTER]

Ira Glass

(HOST) IRA GLASS: Act 14-- Call in Colonel Mustard For Questioning, Or That's What Happens If You Don't Use a Condiment, Kids. See all the stupid jokes that you end up telling if you have a story that takes place in a hot dog factory about hot dogs? Here we go.

Ira Glass

This hot dog plant, Jim Bodman says, replaced the company's original facility.

Ira Glass

They tasted OK, he says, but they didn't have the right snap when you bit into them. And even worse, the color was wrong. The hot dogs were all pink instead of bright red. So they tried to figure out what was wrong.

The ingredients were all the same, the spices were all the same, the process was all the same. Maybe it was the temperature in the smokehouse. Maybe the water on the north side of Chicago wasn't the same as the water on the South side.

They searched. They searched for a year and a half. Nothing checked out.

Then one night, a bunch of guys from the plant are out having a drink, gabbing about the good old days, back in the old plant on Maxwell Street. They start talking about this guy named Irving, one of those guys who knows everybody in the plant, has nicknames for everybody. And listen to what Irving's job was. Every day, he would weave his way with the uncooked sausages through the maze of passageways in the old plant.

Ira Glass

And as they were telling stories about Irving-- Irving this, Irving that-- a light bulb goes off. In the fancy new modern plant, there was no Irving. Irving didn't want to commute to the north side.

There was no maze of hallways. There was no half-hour trip where the sausage would get warm before they would cook it. In the new plant, they just stuffed the sausages in a cold room and cooked them in a smokehouse in the room next door to it. Irving's trip was the secret ingredient that made the dogs red. So secret, even the guys who ran the plant didn't know about it.

Ira Glass

So you had to build this room?

Ira Glass

And so this room, essentially, is to simulate Irving?

Ira Glass

It's warm in Irving's corner, and it smells nice, too-- smoky, like hickory smoke and spices. Since I first heard this story years ago on a tour of this very plant, I found myself telling it now and then. I think that what I love about it is the fact that these guys at the factory had done everything right-- finally built their dream factory with the best equipment and expertise that money could buy. But you can't think of everything. Sometimes you have no idea why you were a success in the first place.

Ira Glass

(HOST) IRA GLASS: Act 15-- Mr. Prediction. In the mid-1980s, right out of college, David Rakoff moved to Japan and pretty soon ended up in this office job where he was convinced that he understood a secret about the company and its business that nobody else, not even the big bosses at the company, could see. It was like that from the start.

Ira Glass

[LAUGHS]

Ira Glass

Are there other examples besides Madonna and the internet?

Ira Glass

[LAUGHS]

Ira Glass

Pretty big, iconic ones.

Ira Glass

[LAUGHS]

David Rakoff-- the final book that he wrote before he died in 2012 is a book I just love. It's a novel in rhymed couplets-- Love, Dishonor, Marry, Die, Cherish, Perish: A Novel by David Rakoff.

Ira Glass

(HOST) IRA GLASS: You're listening to This American Life, where today, it is all about speed. We are, what, 43 minutes into the program and we have already finished 15 acts? And this brings us to Act 16-- That One Guy at the Office. So if you work at a big office, you know that there's always at least one person whose name you do not know. In Jordana's office, Matt is that guy for, perhaps, as best as anybody can figure, half the people who work there. Jordana will tell you about it.

[PRINTER PRINTING]

Jordana Gustafson

Matt Ostrower sits next to the printer in the busiest hallway at our office. People walk by him dozens of times a week on their way to retrieve printouts. And though he actually works in the New Media department and has nothing to do with the printer, most people don't know this. It's his sad fate that most of his conversations at work are about one thing.

Jordana Gustafson

I'd been working in the office a few months when, one day, a friend called me and said he was hanging out with one of my coworkers who lives in his building. Who, I asked? Matt, he said. I had no idea who that was and said so.

Then I heard a voice in the background say, tell her I sit next to the printer. And that's when his predicament hit me. So I decided to survey my coworkers to see if they knew who he is, what his real job is. Do they even know his name?

Jordana Gustafson

I wondered if Matt was at all surprised by this.

Jordana Gustafson

I'm wondering if you know the name of the guy that sits right out here in the hallway?

Jordana Gustafson

And Matt's response?

Jordana Gustafson

I'm wondering if you know the name of the guy that sits in the hallway next to the printer.

Jordana Gustafson

Matt says the printer shows up in his dreams sometimes. In his dreams, he'll be at a party waiting in line for the bathroom, or at a parking lot at the beach, people everywhere. And there will be the printer, off to the side, chugging away, occasionally jamming.

Ira Glass

Jordana Gustafson in Boston.

Ira Glass

(HOST) IRA GLASS: Act 17-- You Can't Choose Your Gift.

Ira Glass

Richard Cary talked to Jim Sulzer.

Ira Glass

(HOST) IRA GLASS: Act 18-- Party Talk. Here's writer Chuck Klosterman.

Chuck Klosterman

This was a conversation that happened to me at a party two years ago. At one point in the conversation, I suddenly found it necessary to mention that Journey was rock's version of the TV show Dynasty. This prompted a spirited debate we then dubbed, "Monkees Equals Monkees."

The goal of this game is to figure out which television show is the closest philosophical analogy to a specific rock and roll band. And the criteria are mind-blowingly complex. It's a combination of longevity, era, critical acclaim, commercial success, and, most importantly, the aesthetic soul of each artistic entity.

For example, the Rolling Stones are Gunsmoke. The Strokes-- Kiefer Sutherland's 24. Jimi Hendrix was The Twilight Zone. Devo was Fernwood 2Night.

Lynyrd Skynyrd was The Beverly Hillbillies, which makes Molly Hatchet Petticoat Junction. The Black Crowes are That 70s Show. Hall and Oates were Bosom Buddies.

U2 is M.A.S.H. because both kind of got preachy at the end. Dokken was Jason Bateman's short lived sitcom, It's Your Move. The Eurythmics were Mork and Mindy.

We even deduced comparisons for solo projects, which can only be made to series that were spawned as spin-offs. The four Beatles, post-1970, are as follows: John equals Maude, Paul equals Frasier, George equals The Jeffersons, and Ringo equals Flow. David Lee Roth's solo period after Van Halen was Knot's Landing. So there's proof-- marijuana makes you smarter.

Ira Glass

Chuck Klosterman reading from his book called Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs: A Low Culture Manifesto.

Ira Glass

(HOST) IRA GLASS: Act 19-- The Hard Life at the Top. Here's a ritual that takes place every summer on the last day of June-- 1,200 new army cadets, mostly teenagers, survivors of one of the most exhausting application processes in the country, arrive at West Point. And then, in the space of one morning, they're separated from their parents. Their clothes are taken away. Their hair is taken away.

They're weighed. They're measured. They're issued a bag, an army uniform, and underwear. They take their oath of office.

And then, here is the first act they have as non-civilians. All they have to do is say a single sentence. Once they get it said, they can go to their barracks, but not until then. David Lipsky spent four years writing about these guys and describes what happens each year.

David Lipsky

The drill is simple. The new cadets have to step up to a tape line, drop their bags, and make their report to upperclassman wearing red sashes. You will walk up to the line, the red sashes tell them. And you will say, sir, new cadet Doe reports to the cadet and the red sash for the first time as ordered.

The new cadets swallow, nod their heads, and then the screwing up begins. This cadet is so nervous, he doesn't realize he's supposed to swap his own name for Doe.

David Lipsky

"Is your last name Doe?" the red sash screams. "No, sir," says the new cadet. "Then say your name, new cadet," says the red sash. Words count, even footwork counts. New cadet Clinker, a jittery 18-year-old female cadet, finds this out when she steps a little too far forward.

David Lipsky

The red sash asks her to do it again. This time, she stands in the right place, but she's forgotten what to say.

David Lipsky

For these specially selected red sashes, breaking in the new cadets is a great honor. The day before, they've even practiced being hard on local civilians in a full rehearsal. Every year, a bunch of teachers, sons, daughters, groundskeepers from around town sign up for a fun day as practice cadets. Every year, a handful leave in tears.

David Lipsky

New cadet McLeod stutters on his first attempt. He's asked to drop his salute and start over. On this one day, almost 1,200 young men and women will make their report. If everyone did it right the first time, it would take about an hour. I don't see anyone go through the first time. It takes all day. New cadet McLeod tries again, but the words won't come.

David Lipsky

Drop your salute, the red sash tells him. Are you a n-new cadet or a new cadet? New cadet, he says, forgetting the sir.

David Lipsky

Poor new cadet McLeod has already screwed up twice. To get here, he spent 18 years excelling in nearly every way he can-- in schoolwork, in athletics, at student council meetings. He's beaten his way to the top of the 50,000 applicants who fill out requests for information forms.

He's been interviewed by senators, congressmen. And now, here he is, in the last place he ever thought he'd find himself, a sudden death play audition. He only has to say one line. He draws a breath, tries one more time. And after letting go of his family, his hair, his clothes, he drops the last vestige of his civilian life-- he forgets his own name.

Ira Glass

David Lipsky-- his book following one cadet class at West Point for four years is called Absolutely American.

Ira Glass

(HOST) IRA GLASS: Act 20-- The Greatest Moment I Ever Saw On a Stage. I'll say, first of all, that this moment that I saw caught me completely off guard. I was at a play where I was not expecting anything special. It was put on by an organization that works with teenagers. Storycatchers Theatre is what it's called.

And among other things, they get kids who are locked up in Chicago's juvenile detention center, The Audy Home, to write and perform musicals about their lives. This one was performed by teenage girls. OK, so we're in the detention center. Folding chairs have been set up.

The girls' parents-- it's mostly mothers and grandmothers, very few men-- are sitting directly in front of the stage. And imagine for a minute what it's like to be one of those parents, OK? Your kid's locked up, possibly on very serious charges, some of these girls were. You're worried about what's going to happen to them next. You're probably still mad that they didn't listen to you in the first place and got into all this trouble and ended up behind bars.

What can theater possibly do for you in this situation? It seems like such an old-fashioned idea that it can do anything. So there's this one scene in the play.

Ira Glass

And it's the story of this girl named Candace. And Candace basically wanted better clothes so the other kids at school wouldn't laugh at her. She steal some clothes from Nike Town. And she gets in trouble, she gets caught. And then she joins a gang to earn some money and be more popular.

Her mom finds some drugs in the house, and a gun, and feels completely betrayed because that was not how she raised her daughter. And one thing leads to another, and Candace gets locked up.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

Then, the girl narrating the story says, and this is how Candace feels about her mom now. And then all the girls in the play come out on the stage and stand in a line, facing their mothers and grandmothers who are right there in front of them.

Ira Glass

One of the verses goes, "Mama, I'm sorry for making you come to court, for almost losing your job to give me moral support. Mama, I'm sorry for putting your through all this stress, for making you worry yourself and depressed. I'm ready to come back home. I'm willing to make a change."

And, by this time, the girls are all crying, the parents are all crying. And each girl has a cut-out little heart, like on Valentine's Day, like that, made from red construction paper, the size of your palm. And written on each one is the words, "I'm sorry."

And each girl goes out into the audience to where her mom is sitting, or her grandma is sitting, and hands her the heart. And the parents are crying, and the kids are crying, and everybody is hugging. It was really something.

Ira Glass

Here they were-- not just saying this to their mothers, but saying it publicly in front of the world, in front of their friends. Saying this thing that could be so hard to say in any case. Singing it out and hoping that it can heal something that is going to be hard to heal, no matter what you do.

Ira Glass

And that's our show for today, 20 Acts in 60 Minutes. Thanks today to Atlantic Public Media, WCAI and WNAN, our website, thisamericanlife.org.

This American Life is delivered to public radio stations by PRX, the Public Radio Exchange. Thanks, as always, to our program's co-founder, Mr. Tony Malatia, who remembers all the way back to when we started the show.

Ira Glass

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