295: Not What I Signed Up For

Ira Glass

It's This American Life from WBEZ Chicago, distributed by Public Radio International. I'm Ira Glass.

OK, the first thing you need to know is that the nuns came to Todd. Todd did not go to the nuns. His wife worked with these nuns at a Catholic charity.

The Todd in the story actually is Todd Bachmann, who works on our radio show. He's our production manager, which means that he sees the bills get paid and that the equipment works and everything runs smoothly.

Anyway, a couple years ago, these nuns that his wife worked with asked him to help out with this big black-tie charity event that they were throwing, this annual event. Donors pay a lot of money. There's a meal in a big hotel ballroom. And at some point during this thing, there's a presentation on stage about what the charity does. That's the part that the nuns wanted Todd to work on. One of the nuns actually asked him to direct this part of it.

Ira Glass

In previous years of this event, for the presentation part of it the nuns had some of the people who the charity had helped-- elderly people and young mothers-- come up onto the stage and read these little essays. And apparently, it felt a lot like school. You know, they got real nervous. It just felt like class somehow.

And Todd thought that he could do better. He had a vision. He had a vision, I'm telling you. He had just started working at our radio show at the time, and he thought, OK, you know he could do? He could interview these people on tape and then choose a couple of really, really great moments and play those to the crowd. And then people would come on up and take a bow or something. And on the tape, they would sound all relaxed and natural, and it would totally get to people.

Maybe they'd even make more money out of it this way. And the sister in charge of the whole thing agreed with all of his ideas. But as the event got nearer, something strange slowly became clear.

Ira Glass

But they never did get to it. And finally, after weeks and weeks of meetings, at the rehearsal, Todd's responsibility at the event were finally made clear to him, and they were not at all what he expected.

Ira Glass

You got played by a nun.

Ira Glass

I just think that if you can be used by a nun, man, you can be used by anybody.

Ira Glass

There's a whole of experiences like this. You're asked to do something, you think it's go one way, it turns out to be something completely different, and then you're stuck. You can't do anything about it. It's too late to quit. It's too late to get out of it. This can happen to you at work. It can happen to you with friends. It can happen on a plane. It can happen on a train. It could happen on a run. It can be caused by a nun.

Today on our program we hear two rather dramatic examples of this phenomenon. Our program today, Not What I Signed Up For. Act One of our program, The Double Whammy, a story of someone who gets into two situations where things work out very differently than she thought they would. One of those situations with the president of the United States. Act Two, Small Fish, Smaller Pond. We have a story by Nick Hornby. Stay with us, and we will thank you.

[MUSIC - "THANK YOU" BY NATALIE MERCHANT]

Ira Glass

Act One. This story is one of those stories that starts off as a tragedy and ends up not exactly as a comedy, but it's one of those things where it just sort of sits there, you know, halfway between tragedy and comedy. It starts sad.

Marian Fontana. Her husband was a firefighter. He dies at the World Trade Center. And then after 9/11, she finds herself embroiled in a series of political fights with the city. The first one is to see that her husband's firehouse isn't shut down by the city. And then it goes on to how the cleanup is going on at the ground zero site. And in the course of this she starts an organization with some of the firefighters' widows.

And she talks a lot to the press. She talked about these issues. She talked about the conditions that firefighters were working under when the World Trade Center attack happened. Her husband was earning less than $26,000 a year.

Anyway, so she's getting maybe 100 calls a day from all kinds of press. From Polish TV to Newark Radio. And she had to choose.

Ira Glass

Another firefighter's wife, who was a PR person, helped her field the 100 press calls a day and figure out which interviews to do. Which leads us to this story, about a time when Marian ended up in a very different situation than she thought she was signing up for.

Ira Glass

Marian Fontana. She's written a book about her experience called A Widow's Walk: A Memoir of 9/11.

Coming up, who'd have thought? Two stories in one program where somebody meets their president. That's in a minute from Chicago Public Radio and Public Radio International when our program continues.

It's This American Life. I'm Ira Glass. Each week on our program, of course, we choose a theme and bring you a variety of different kinds of stories on that theme. Today's program: Not What I Signed Up For.

Ira Glass

We've arrived at Act Two of our show. Act Two, Small Fish, Smaller Pond. For this act, we wing our way across the Atlantic for this story from Nick Hornby.

Nick Hornby

I was six or seven when I found out how small our country was. I was the last one to know in my class. The teacher pinned a big map of Europe up on the wall and show us the countries around us. France, Switzerland, Italy. And I put up my hand and said, "where are we? Where's Champagne on the map?" And everyone, even the teacher, laughed at me.

"You can't see [? Champagne ?] on the map, Stefan," she said.

"Why not," I asked.

"Because we're too small."

"But we must be there somewhere."

"Of course, we are, but you can't see us," the teacher said.

"How can you not see a whole country on a map," I asked her. I could feel my ears getting red. The other kids knew something I didn't, I could tell.

"Do you know why we're called [? Champagne," ?] the teacher asked me.

I shrugged. "No, I thought it was because we were champions of something." All the other kids laughed again.

"And what would we be champions of," said the teacher. "No, champe is French for field. We're called Champagne because our whole country is no bigger than a field. [? Champagne ?] used to be a field until we built the village on it."

"You mean we're the only village in the country?" I couldn't believe it. Our village is tiny.

"The other side of the stream is France," the teacher said. "Italy is behind the fence at the back of the village shop, and Monsieur Petit's garden is half in [? Champagne ?] and half in Switzerland. You could walk across our country in less than a minute. You could do it while holding your breath if you wanted to. You could even throw a stone across it so long as you threw high and didn't hit Monsiuer Petit's bedroom window.

"Why didn't you tell me we lived in the smallest country in the world," I asked my mum when I go home.

"I thought you knew," she said.

"How am I supposed to know," I asked her, "if no one tells me."

"What difference does it make, anyway," she said.

"I know everyone who lives in our whole country," I said.

"Well, that's nice, isn't it," my mother asked me. I wasn't sure about that.

"Anyway, don't countries have presidents and prime ministers and things?"

"Of course," said my mother. "We're no different."

"OK, so who's the president of [? Champagne?" ?]

"I am," she said. I looked at her face to see if she was joking, but she wasn't.

"You're the president of [? Champagne? ?] You?"

"Yes," she said. "I thought you knew that, too."

"You don't-- you don't do anything. You just make our sandwiches and do the washing."

"I go to a meeting once a month in Monsieur Gramonde's bar," she said.

I knew about those meetings. All the grownups in the village talk about litter, and mending the fences so that the cows don't wander into the road.

"Well, what about saluting soldiers," I asked her. You have to remember, I was very young.

"We don't have any soldiers," she said.

"And what about putting people in prison?"

"We don't have a prison," she said.

And we went on like that for a little while until I understood that [? Champagne ?] isn't really a country in the same way that Italy is a country, or France, or America. It doesn't have its own stamps or money or television or prisons or soldiers or air force or navy. Anyone could invade us tomorrow if they wanted to, but no one wants to. There wouldn't be any point. No big countries need an extra field, a shop, and a cafe.

But even though we didn't have most things you'd kind in normal countries, we did have our own soccer team.

My dad broke his leg because of soccer. He wasn't playing, though. What happened was that he was watching a game on TV and the TV suddenly started flickering and then smoke came out of it and the screen went black.

I wasn't watching. I was reading on the sofa. I hate all sports, especially soccer, because soccer is the one that people talk about the most. He was really annoyed that the TV was broken. He stood up and he kicked his chair.

"What about the old one," my mother said. "The little one worked perfectly well." She was angry when my father bought a new TV. She said we didn't need a big screen, but that's because she only watches programs where people talk. She doesn't watch sport. If you need to see a tennis ball or a soccer ball, then a small TV is no good.

"Where is it," my father said grumpily.

"It's in the attic," said my mother.

He was in too much of a hurry because he didn't want to miss any of the game. He got the ladder, climbed into the attic, and then fell when he was trying to carry the TV down again. We all heard the crack. We knew straightaway that he had broken something.

Three days later, when he was pushing himself into the kitchen on his crutches at breakfast, he said to me, "you know what this means, don't you?" And I pretended I didn't, but I did. It was the first thing I thought of the moment he fell out.

"What does it mean," I asked him.

"It means you have to play," he said. I didn't say anything. "You have to," he said again.

"I don't," I said. "There's no law that says so."

Including my dad, there are exactly 11 men and boys in [? Champagne ?] who can run up and down a soccer pitch, and they all play for the national team. No one has ever refused, even though it's torture. We should be playing against other villages, but because we're a country, then we play against other countries.

They're not big countries. We play against San Marino and the Vatican and places like that. But all these places have more than 11 players to choose from, and they all beat us hollow. San Marino, for example, usually lose their games against Italy or France by 9 or 10 goals. But when they play [? Champagne, ?] they beat us 30-0.

No one had ever asked me to play before because I was too young, and because I wasn't any good at sports anyway. And, I'll admit it, I was a little bit fat. Not gross, just chubby, I suppose you'd call it. I spent a lot of time reading books and playing chess, and not so much time running around like a lunatic, which is how the other kids around here behave.

But now I was 14, and I knew that if anything happened to any of the other players, I was the next in line. And now something had happened, to my dad, of all people.

"How many kids of your age can say they've played soccer for their country," my dad asked.

"It's not really much to boast about, is it," I said. "You're only asking me because there's no one else. If there was one other boy or man of the right age in the whole of Champagne, you wouldn't be asking me."

"Everyone plays," said Dad. "Nobody has ever said no. It's your duty, Stefan, your duty as a citizen of [? Champagne." ?]

"You always have to have 11 players in a soccer team," I asked him. "I mean, everybody does?" Dad looked up at the ceiling and rolled his eyes. "I can't do it, Dad," I said. "I'll just make an idiot of myself."

"But if you don't, none of us will be allowed to play," he said. "There are rules about this sort of thing. Anyway, we'd look bad. We'd be the country that didn't have enough players for a soccer team.

"We're already the country that didn't have enough players for a soccer team. I'm not a player."

"Play as a favor to me," he said. "To make me feel proud of you."

"But that's just the thing," I said. "If I play, you'll be ashamed of me." And then I went into my bedroom and shut the door and read a book.

A few days later, I was at home watching TV when there was a knock at the door. Mum and Dad were in the cafe having one of their meetings, but in [? Champagne ?] it's safe to leave your kids at home without a babysitter, and it's safe to answer the door. You'll always know the person standing on the other side. It was Monsieur Gramonde.

"The president wants to see you," he said.

My mom was still the president. No one else wanted the job, so people kept voting for her. There didn't seem to be any rules about how long you could stay president.

I laughed. "I'll see the president later," I said.

"It's not funny," he said. "She wants you to come to the cafe. Immediately."

"She can talk to me when she comes home."

"She'd be your mother then," Gramonde said. "This is presidential business, not family business."

"And what happens if I refuse?"

"Then I'll have to take you there by force. The president has given me permission to do so. She was worried that you'd be unhelpful."

I didn't want to be dragged down to the cafe by Monsieur Gramonde, so I put my shoes on. All the grownups were in the cafe. My mother was sitting on her own in the middle of the room like the teacher used to do in kindergarten when she read us a story, with everyone else arranged around her.

"Ah," she said. "Stefan, take a seat."

Someone got a chair for me and put it inside the circle so that everyone could watch me talking to my mother.

"This is so stupid," I said. Somebody tutted, probably because I'd been rude to the president.

"I'll ignore that last remark," she said.

"Is it right that you gave Monsieur Gramonde permission to bring me here by force," I asked.

"I knew he wouldn't have to," she said. "You're a sensible boy."

I looked at her. I didn't want to have an argument in front of everyone, but I wouldn't forget it.

"You know why we've asked you to come here," she said.

"I wasn't asked. I was ordered."

"I'll ignore that, too," she said. "Do you know why you're here?"

"I guess because of the soccer," I said.

"You guessed right," said my mother, the president. "Because of the soccer. You've been given the honor of representing your country and you said no, is that correct?"

"That is correct."

"And you're aware that if you don't play, nobody can play?"

"I suppose."

"And you haven't changed your mind?"

"No! I hate soccer, and I'm rubbish at it, as you know," I told her. I noticed my shoelace was undone, so I spent as much time as I could tying it up again.

"Sometimes," the president said, "we have to do things we don't want to do. In wartime, young men have to go to war but they don't want to."

"This isn't a war," I pointed out. "It's a dumb soccer match, and soccer sucks."

"Right," said my mother. "OK, then. Will you wait outside for a few moments, please, Stefan? The council needs to talk in private."

I stared at her, saw that she was serious, and left the cafe. They closed the door behind me so I couldn't hear anything.

When I was let back in, I could see that my mother had a very serious expression on her face, and for a moment, I almost believed she was a president.

"Stefan," she said. "We respect your decision not to play for our national team, but you must understand that living in our small country-- well, as a citizen of [? Champagne, ?] you are entitled to many things, things you probably take for granted. You attend our school. You use this cafe. You buy candy and cookies in the shop. You walk on our roads and paths. Those rights are now withdrawn."

For a moment, I couldn't understand what she was saying.

"You mean, I can't go to school?"

"No."

You might think that was no big deal, but it was. The only library was in the school, for example, and if I wasn't allowed to borrow books, I'd go crazy.

"You're not joking?"

"No."

"You're not going to let me walk on the roads?"

"No."

I'd been given a prison sentence. I'd be stuck in my house forever.

"I'm sorry if this seems unkind or unfair," my mother said. "But when you live in a small place, you have responsibilities. What you choose to do or choose not to do has much more of an effect than it would in a bigger country. We don't think you should be allowed to take without giving something back."

My other shoelace had come undone. I tied it up.

"OK," I said. "I'm in. I'll play, but only because no one gave me a choice." They didn't hear the last part, though, because they were all clapping.

I didn't have to train. I told him that I wasn't going to, and that was the one thing they let me get away with. The rest of the team met every Tuesday evening. They always ran a couple of miles first. They usually jogged up the hill into Switzerland. We can't even go for a run inside our country because it's too small, unless you want to run random round the field.

I mean, I know I should have gone to training. I hadn't kicked a ball since I was about three, and anyway, it wasn't like I was super fit. But I didn't want to have to think about soccer until I actually played the stupid game.

When you play for a team for the first time, they call it your debut. Well, I made my debut against San Marino, is if you couldn't have guessed. [? Champagne ?] hardly ever played anyone else. The last time we played them we had lost 28-0, but the general feeling was that it might be even worse this time. No one said this was because of me, but I could tell that's what they were all thinking.

It was a home game, which meant that we changed in our homes. The San Marino players changed in the toilets of the cafe. My father gave me his red and white striped shirt, and I found a pair of white shorts. I didn't have any boots so I wore sneakers. Then I put on my denim jacket and walked down to the field with dad.

"You might enjoy it," he said. I laughed.

"You don't have to watch," I told him. "It's going to rain. Why don't you go home?"

"Everybody watches," he said. "The whole village, the whole country."

"I've never watched before," I told him.

"No," he said. "You were the only one."

That made me feel bad. I felt bad that I didn't know everyone else always watched the team, and I felt guilty that I'd never made the effort. It wouldn't have killed me to do something everyone else did once in a while. When we got to the field, Dad patted me on the back and wished me luck, and I went to stand with my teammates in the middle of the pitch.

I was the youngest player, and Monsieur Gramonde, who was a bit younger than Dad, was the oldest. The only one who really looked like a soccer player was Monsieur Blanc, who worked at a fitness center in Italy. He was tall and slim, and he could do that thing with the ball where you keep kicking it and you don't let it touch the ground. He was our captain.

"Stefan," he said. "Welcome." He shook my hand. "We thought we'd play you midfield, wide right."

I didn't understand a word, and I stared at him with my mouth open.

"Well, you know your left from your right, don't you?"

"Yes, of course."

"So you see Michel, there?" He was pointing at Monsieur Flammeny, who's a painter and gardener. "He's the right back. Stand about 20 meters ahead of him and try to help him if he needs help."

I nodded. I didn't think it was a good idea to ask any more questions, though, and in any case, it was time for the game to start.

We let in a goal after about a minute. It wasn't my fault because everything happened over the other side of the field. The tall chap who played in the middle of their defense sort of wandered forward with the ball, and then gave it to another man who was standing right from the edge of the pitch near where my dad and the rest of the country were standing. And this edge man ran very fast with the ball towards our goal, passed it sideways, and someone else, a little guy who didn't seem to do much apart from score goals, kicked the ball into an empty goal. About three minutes after that, the same thing happened. Tall chap to edge man to little goal-scoring going guy-- goal. And then again and again.

San Marino scored 13 times in the first half of the game, and nine of these goals came in the same way. I only touched the ball once in the first half. Monsieur Flammeny got the ball and passed it to me very gently because he knew I wouldn't be able to do anything if he kicked the ball hard. I stopped it with my right foot. Well, I nearly stopped it, anyway. And the next thing I knew, I was lying on the ground and every single part of me was ringing as it I were a bell.

My head hurt, my back, both my legs, one of my arms. I knew that in a soccer game, people could sometimes be told they weren't allowed to play anymore. It seemed to me that this man, whoever it was-- I hadn't seen him coming or going-- might not be allowed to play football ever again. He would probably have to go to prison for a week or two. I almost felt sorry for him. But when I picked myself up and looked around, no one cared. Everyone was just playing on as if nothing had happened.

When there was a break in the play, I said to Monsieur Flammeny, "did you see that?"

"What?"

"What happened when you gave me the ball."

"Yes. You lost it. You gave it away."

"I didn't give it away. Someone came in and smashed me to the ground and took it from me."

"It's called a tackle, Stefan. Get used to it."

"So that's what it's like being grownup," I thought. "People can just knock you down whenever they feel like it and no one says anything" It made me wish that I was getting younger every yearn, not older.

At halftime we stood on the pitch because there was nowhere to go. Monsieur Blanc gathered us round him.

"Well," he said, "it's obvious what's going wrong-- we have to stop that little guy from scoring all the goals somehow. We're not marking him properly. He's got too much room."

I didn't say anything. I just listened.

"I know what we should do," he said. "We'll have to stop worrying about the left side and pull Michel into the middle." Michel Gaurde was an accountant who lived in the village with his mother.

I suddenly realized that even though I was the worst player in the team, the rest of them didn't understand what was happening in the game. They really couldn't see it. So what was I supposed to do? I was new to the team and useless at the game, so nobody would listen to me. But if I kept quiet, we'd let in even more goals. If I kept quiet, we could lose by 50 or 60 goals, and everyone would say it was my fault.

There was something else I'd noticed. Monsieur Blanc was our captain and our best player, but he didn't do anything. He was always standing too far away from the action with his hands on his hips. I couldn't understand it. He was 26 and tall and very fit, and he was happy to watch everyone else do all the work.

He saw me looking at him. "Something on your mind, Stefan?"

"Not really, no," I said.

"Any tactical changes you want to make?" Everyone else laughed at his joke, and that annoyed me.

"Yes," I said. What did it matter? The worst that could happen was they wouldn't ask me to play again. "It's not the little guy who scores all the goals we should be worrying about," I said. "It's the edge man."

"The edge man," he asked. "Who's the edge man?"

I looked over to where their players were standing chatting and laughing and spotted him. "Him there, the one drinking out of the water bottle now."

"Why is he the edge man?"

"Because he plays on the edge of the pitch."

"The winger," said Monsieur Blanc as if I was stupid. "What about him?"

"He's the one that gives the goal scorer the ball. Without him, the goal scorer couldn't do anything."

Monsieur Gaurde nodded. "He's right. He's been running past me all game, and I can't stop him. I need help."

Monsieur Blanc looked annoyed. He thought I was going to say something ridiculous, and instead, I'd seen something he hadn't.

"Anything else, Stefan, seeing as you're the expert?"

"I'm not an expert," I said. "I just noticed some things."

"Oh, well, tell us some other things you've noticed."

I shrugged. "OK. I'm not being rude, but what do you do in this team?"

"I'm the striker. That means I'm supposed to score the goals."

"But we're never going to score a goal," I said. "We never have the ball, and we're never at the right end of the field." This time a couple more people nodded, and I saw Flammeny smile to himself. "But if you wanted a job to do, you could stop the tall man."

"Which tall man?"

"The tall man who plays in defense. He's the one that gives the ball to the edge man every time. So if you, I don't know, got in the way or something, it might make it harder for them." It was weird, I knew I was right, but there was still no reason for Monsieur Blanc to listen to me.

Just when I was about to give up and tell them to forget it, my mother, the president, walked onto the pitch to give us some encouragement. "Bad luck, lads," she said. "Your're playing well."

We all looked at her as if she was mad.

"Any plans to change things in the second half," she asked.

"We're going to double up on the right winger," said Monsieur Blanc. "And I'm going to work harder to close down their center back, cut off his supply."

It took me a little while to work out that these were my ideas because I didn't understand the words he was using. But when I understood, I looked at him to see when he'd tell her that these were my ideas.

"Very good," said my mother. "Sounds very sensible." And then she walked off again. I tried to catch Blanc's eye, but he wouldn't look at me.

The second half was really exciting because we didn't let in another goal for ages and ages. Every time the tall defender got the ball, Monsieur Blanc went over to him and stood right in front of him, and quite often he had to turn and give the ball back to the goalkeeper. And even though San Marino were winning 13-0, the longer they went without scoring again, the more embarrassed they became. The tall defender and the winger even have an argument.

And we all started to run faster and jump higher and tackle harder. The crowd got excited, too, when they saw things had gotten so much better. They knew we couldn't win, and they knew that they weren't even going to get a goal, but as we went 15 minutes and then 20 minutes, even nearly 30 minutes of the second half without letting the other team score, you could tell that they were proud of us. They even started chanting and clapping.

We made three stupid mistakes in the last 15 minutes and let in three goals. But when the referee blew the whistle for the end of the game, there were a lot of smiles on our team. Losing a second half three to nothing was [? Champagne's ?] best ever international results.

"Just think," said Gramonde. "If we could play like that in the first half and the second half, here we'd lose every game 6-0 [UNINTELLIGIBLE] Flammeny."

I knew what Gramonde meant, though. 6-0 felt like a soccer score. Good teams, teams you've heard of, lose 6-0 sometimes. Nobody ever loses 26-0, though.

As we walked off the pitch, the whole crowd, the whole of my country, cheered us. And then my teammates did something I will never forget. They walked quickly to the side of the pitch, stood in two lines, and clapped as I walked between them. Even Monsieur Blanc joined in.

That was the last time I ever had to play. The next game, they used Gramonde's 10 year old son Robert in my position, and he was better than me. I was told to watch and tell them where they were going wrong. I became the coach.

"You've got brains," Gramonde said. "We haven't."

In my first game as coach, we lost 12-0. At the end of the game, the team did a lap of honor.

Ira Glass

Nick Hornby. Hi lives in London, and normally calls it football, not soccer.

His story appears in a collection of stories for children and young adults that is a fund raiser for the literacy program 826NYC. The book is called Noisy Outlaws, Unfriendly Blobs, and Some Other Things That Aren't As Scary, Maybe, Depending on How You Feel About Lost Lands, Stray Cellphones, Creatures in the Sky, Parents Who Disappear in Peru, a Man Named Lars Farf, and One Other Story We Couldn't Quite Finish so Maybe You Could Help Us Out. That would be the name of the book right there. That's the entire name. Lemony Snicket's in the book, too.

Well, our program was produced today by Jane Feltes and myself without Alex Blumberg, [UNINTELLIGIBLE], Diane Cook, Sarah Koenig, and Lisa Pollak. Our senior producer is Julie Snyder. Elizabeth Meister runs our website. Production from Todd Bachmann, the Catholic.

[ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS]

Ladies and gentlemen, this is very last week when you can call in and get on the radio by telling us your true, honest to God, it really happened scary stories for our Halloween show, which is just around the corner. To get on the radio, call our hot-line. 1-866-66-SCARY.

You know, you can download today's program in our archives at audible.com/thisamericanlife. This American Life is distributed by Public Radio International.

[FUNDING CREDITS]

WBEZ management oversight from Mr. Torey Malatia, who came up to me earlier and asked, [VOICE OF NICK HORNBY] "OK, I'm not being rude, but what do you do in this team?"

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

Announcer

PRI. Public Radio International.