840: How Are You Not Seeing This?

Tobin Low

From WBEZ Chicago, it's This American Life. I'm Tobin Low, in for Ira Glass. You may have heard of comedian Tig Notaro, but if you're a gay person like me, you have really heard of Tig Notaro. She is what I would call gay famous, which makes the story of what happened to her so surprising. She and her wife, Stephanie, have two kids, twin boys.

And after seven years of living in the same house with Stephanie and Tig, having their two moms tend to every meal and butt wipe, seven years of the boys telling their teachers and random whoevers that they have two moms, they're all in the car on the way to first grade one morning.

Tobin Low

Tig's been with her wife for over a decade. And as far as they knew, they've been gay for the entirety of their children's lives. But apparently, it was news to Max and Finn.

Tobin Low

Before Tig can say more, they're pulling up in front of the school. The car ride is only a couple minutes long. And then the kids are running out of the car, and Tig and her wife are left to wonder how their sons had possibly not seen something right in front of their faces.

Tobin Low

One reason all of this was especially mystifying was that the boys, like I said, definitely knew they had two moms, were kind of proud of it.

Tobin Low

Tig and Stephanie eventually figured out what happened. Sure, Max and Finn knew they had two moms. But Tig and Stephanie had never sat down with them to say, two moms who are married, that's what gay is. And more importantly, they never said the words, "We're gay."

This stuff happens all the time. The people close to you miss something about you that seems so obvious. The truth is right in front of their face, and they don't see it.

Today on the show, we have stories of people trying to end this misunderstanding once and for all. In one, they build an actual machine to try to convince the other person. In another, they call a scientist for help. One person even tries reaching out to the federal government, which kind of works. Actually, in every case, they get a certain kind of satisfaction. Stay with us.

Tobin Low

It's This American Life. Act One, "There Will Be Blood." OK, so in this first story, a person gets so fed up with other people dismissing a thing that was happening to them that they devise a way for the other person to actually experience it firsthand. They build a machine that simulates period pain.

Maybe you've seen these videos on TikTok of people, mostly men, getting hooked up to one of these things, getting to feel for the first time what a person with a uterus goes through regularly. Aviva DeKornfeld, one of the producers on our show, got curious if this social experiment really changes anything, if men who didn't really believe their partners about what happened during their periods would be convinced by this experience.

So she went to see it in the wild at a rodeo in Calgary known as The Stampede, where the machine was set up for anyone who might be a doubter. Here's Aviva.

Aviva DeKornfeld

I'll admit, I came into this pretty skeptical. The idea that five minutes of manufactured cramping could somehow make men understand women better, it seemed optimistic, especially when their starting point seemed to be so basic. I asked men standing in line for the machine the question, what does a period cramp feel like? Their guesses included food poisoning, bone pain, getting kicked in the balls, a pinch, and being really full.

More often than not, they made these guesses while standing next to their partner, who was off mic, silently shaking her head no. Either more women than I thought avoid talking about their periods with their partners, or most of these boyfriends have extremely selective hearing.

Aviva DeKornfeld

His girlfriend asks, what did you think was going on when I was in bed?

Aviva DeKornfeld

This kind of ignorance is the exact motivation for Lux Perry, the person running the simulator. Lux is 31. They're sharp and funny. They first started running the simulator a couple of years ago and have since taken it all over the world.

Lux is doing all of this because period pain has been the defining factor of their life. They have severe endometriosis, which is a chronic disease where tissue that's supposed to grow inside the uterus grows outside of it, which causes all sorts of problems, including extreme pain. Lux has been to the hospital with complications over 75 times, and it took over 20 years for them to even get a diagnosis.

Aviva DeKornfeld

Lux isn't the only one who's done this. There are lots of period simulator videos online. But the machine people are using in those other videos only triggers a very superficial cramp, nothing like a real period. Whereas Lux had their machine modified to make the cramps more intense, with the goal of getting people to understand what period pain actually feels like.

Aviva DeKornfeld

The way Lux's machine works, you place two sticky pads where your ovaries are or would be, which is lower than you think.

Aviva DeKornfeld

Those pads are connected by wires to a handheld machine, which then triggers a cramp. The machine goes from 1 to 10. Lux says most women who have tried the machine say their normal period pain is around level 7, some a little lower, some much, much higher.

I watched 100 people get hooked up to the machine over the course of two days. When Lux cranks the simulator up, women tend to be stoic. They calmly describe the pain they're feeling. I watched one woman on a level 10 say thoughtfully, huh, this is what it felt like when my cyst ruptured. Whereas men tend to sound more like this--

Aviva DeKornfeld

Whenever a guy was hooked up to the machine, women would crowd around the booth to watch. They would shout questions at the man. Would you still be able to go to work? Go out with friends?

Aviva DeKornfeld

Another woman jumps in.

Aviva DeKornfeld

The women badgered and heckled from the sidelines, good-naturedly, but still, oftentimes, they would lament to one another that the simulator could only simulate cramps, wishing it could somehow also trigger the headaches, back pain, hormones, acne, nausea, depression, and everything else that comes with menstruation. There seemed to be a real pleasure in watching the men writhe. A tiny bit of justice, if only for a minute.

Let me just say, I know how all this sounds so binary. I don't mean to drag us back to a time when we thought of men and women as two totally different species. And I'm not saying all men acted this way, and all women acted this other way. There are obviously exceptions, though, honestly, as far as I saw, not many.

To be clear, most of the men I met were nice, empathetic. They clearly knew what they were supposed to say. Of course, they believe women, even if other feelings slip out sometimes.

Aviva DeKornfeld

At least half the men who tried the simulator did so because their girlfriend or wife was dragging them, sometimes literally, over to the booth and forcing them to try it. And Lux would have a number of couples storm off afterwards. They like to guess which couples are going to break up.

Aviva DeKornfeld

Endo, short for endometriosis.

Aviva DeKornfeld

So can this humble machine change a man's mind? Eughan and Kasia are a great test case for this question because they do not see eye to eye about her periods at all. Eughan's from South Africa. Kasia is from Poland. They're both in their early 40s, and they're the kind of couple that is always talking past one another, constantly disagreeing.

Aviva DeKornfeld

Even so, there was a real affection between them in a sort of old timey, the old ball and chain, is my spouse a real pain in the ass, kind of way.

Aviva DeKornfeld

Eughan was actually the one who spotted the booth first and suggested they try it, which surprised Kasia. She said he's never displayed an interest in her period pain, though secretly, she wondered if he was doing it to see if she was exaggerating or at least prove his own toughness.

Eughan and Kasia get hooked up to the simulator together so they'll feel the exact same thing at the exact same time. This way, Kasia can say to Eughan, this right here, this is what my cramps feel like. While they're hooking themselves up, Eughan repeatedly tells Kasia, don't cheat. And he looks over at her to make sure she's putting the pads on in the right place.

Aviva DeKornfeld

Eughan, for some reason, seems convinced that Lux might secretly crank his machine up while leaving Kasia on a lower level. Lux walks them through the levels. They get up to a level 6.

Aviva DeKornfeld

The next cramp comes.

Aviva DeKornfeld

Lux stops Eughan's machine, but keeps Kasia's on, who's now up to a level 9. Eughan does not want to join her.

Aviva DeKornfeld

Kasia eventually convinces Eughan to get back on the machine.

Aviva DeKornfeld

Is this like giving birth?

Aviva DeKornfeld

Eughan went from, "My wife complains too much about period pain," to asking why she didn't make more of a scene during her period over the course of five minutes. So, theoretically, mission success.

A few days later, the longevity of Eughan's transformation was tested. He and Kasia were back at home in England, and Kasia had her period. She was sitting on the couch and told Eughan, I'm at a level 8 right now. He said, OK. He understood. Kasia told me, if you think he then got me a glass of water or a pillow or took care of me in some way, that's not the husband I have. But he acknowledged my pain, and that was new. And I appreciated it.

I'd flown to Calgary to watch men get hooked up to the simulator to see what they'd learn about period pain. I hadn't planned on learning anything about periods myself. I already have one. I figure, I know about them. But I was shocked by how many women offhandedly mentioned going to the hospital for their period pain. At first, I wasn't sure if I was just way more ignorant about period pain than I'd realized, or if I was just in Canada, where regular people can actually afford to go to the hospital with some regularity. It was probably both.

But there were just so many women in so much pain, so much of the time, like this woman, Gabby, with endometriosis. She's 27. She has to walk with a cane. And she's applied for disability since the pain is so debilitating. And when I met her, she was about to fly to the US to pay for her second surgery, which costs about $40,000 out of pocket. Lux walked Gabby all the way up the scale on the simulator. She got to a 9, didn't blink.

Aviva DeKornfeld

When I tried the machine, my level was 7, average. At levels 8, 9, and 10, I couldn't even speak. I was just silently breathing through the pain. It was so much worse than my cramps. And watching Gabby casually hold a conversation at level 10, I felt like I finally emotionally understood the whole point of the machine.

It's easy to think that because you've experienced a piece of a thing, that you understand the entirety of it. But on the spectrum of period pain, Gabby's experience is as far from mine as mine is from the men. I felt angry that I somehow didn't know any of this before. And when I got home from Calgary, I couldn't stop talking about what I'd seen, asking everyone with the fervor of a college freshman who just learned about feminism, do you have any idea how much pain women are asked to endure?

Before this, I think a part of me felt like these guys were being kind of insensitive dummies, totally unaware of the pain of the people around them. But I guess I was basically as clueless as they were.

Tobin Low

Aviva DeKornfeld is a producer on our show.

Tobin Low

Act Two, "Face Your Demons." This next story is about a man who wants, more than anything in the world, to be able to see people around him accurately, which is not an easy thing to do. Our producer, Alix Spiegel, has the story.

Alix Spiegel

Love was always important to Jason Werbeloff-- probably the most important thing. As a kid growing up in South Africa, he often imagined his future partner, what the man might look, how close the two of them would be. Jason was crossing his fingers for the standard version of the love story, the one in all the movies.

Alix Spiegel

So it felt like good news when, at the age of 24, Jason met Marius, an artist with thick black glasses who proudly held Jason's hand in public. This was 2008, and Jason had recently graduated from university with a degree in philosophy. He was out on his own, trying to get a life and a small software business up and running. And Marius was incredibly supportive, confident that Jason would succeed at whatever it is that he tried.

Alix Spiegel

But then one night, pretty early in the relationship, Jason had an experience that left him deeply shaken.

Alix Spiegel

The expression on his boyfriend's face-- for a moment, Jason thought he saw a look of pure hatred. It was just a flash, but it was unnerving. It felt like Jason had seen a glimpse of something deeper, like the expression revealed some buried inner truth. Jason didn't think he'd said anything to offend his boyfriend. And there was nothing in his boyfriend's voice that was nasty or malicious. But the expression-- Marius looked like someone who clearly meant him ill.

Alix Spiegel

Jason eventually let it go, and the rest of the night was normal. Unfortunately, in the days and weeks that followed, those brief, menacing expressions, they continued. Jason kept catching Marius with a malicious look on his face, a kind of ghoulish snarl. Every time he saw it, he felt his heart race. The look was almost demonic.

It wasn't all the time. And usually, the look would emerge and then disappear just as quickly, so Jason was never absolutely certain that what he thought he saw was what he saw. But still, it upset him almost every time. No matter how many times Marius told him that he was just imagining it, that Marius loved Jason and only wanted the best for him, Jason found the expressions impossible to ignore.

Alix Spiegel

Marius and Jason were together for four years until, eventually, the expression problem came to a head. Jason says he remembers the exact moment. He'd come into a room where Marius was working on an art project.

Alix Spiegel

And it wasn't only with Marius. This happened with other people, too, these flashes of apparent malice. It happened with his mother, some, though not all, of his friends, random strangers he encountered in the world. It wasn't everyone. It wasn't all the time. But it kept happening.

So Jason started to change his patterns. He went out with friends and family much less, even created a work-life where he could spend most of his time alone. He just couldn't stand to see the terrible expressions. And they bothered him most in the context of his romantic relationships, that part of his life where he had so hoped to find unconditional love and support.

Jason desperately wanted a healthy relationship, and so he did the typical thing that people do when they're having trouble in love-- he consulted experts, went to see therapists, one after another.

Alix Spiegel

This went on for 13 years, and Jason withdrew more and more. Every romantic relationship ended the same way, with a look so terrifying, Jason could no longer stand it. In fact, in one case, the look on his boyfriend's face was so disturbing, Jason made him leave that instant, literally went online, paid for an Airbnb and told him to pack.

But then, about three years ago, Jason stumbled on the source of this problem. And understanding what it was made him think about his whole life differently. It started one day when he was on this online forum and got into a conversation with a woman named Catherine. Jason described to Catherine his experience with faces, the strange flashes he saw that haunted him for days afterwards.

And Catherine told him that she thought she knew what his problem was. She said the name of a disorder that he'd never heard of, then told him that to figure out if he had it, he should purchase this special light, which allows the user to change the color of the light through the full color spectrum.

Alix Spiegel

Now, when Jason was a kid and, really, all through high school, he told me he'd felt pretty good about the way that he looked. He considered himself reasonably attractive. But when he was in his mid-twenties, that started to change.

What Jason saw when he looked in the mirror was someone whose right eye kind looked out of place and was much smaller than the other one, and he decided he wasn't very attractive. He was kind of a strange-looking guy. So anyway, Jason sits down in his bedroom and arranges the light, just like the woman said. And then he looks in the mirror.

Alix Spiegel

But then Jason turned the dial.

Alix Spiegel

It turned out that Jason had an actual neurological condition. There was a name for what was going on.

Alix Spiegel

Not much is known about PMO. It's extremely rare. But for people with the disorder, facial features distort, melting and swelling until the expression of the person is so twisted, it looks demonic, an exaggerated snarl that, for Jason, was impossible to tell wasn't real. And sitting in that dark room, looking at his face in the mirror, suddenly the last 13 years made a certain morbid sense to Jason.

Alix Spiegel

Since he found out, Jason's been working with a researcher at Dartmouth who studies this condition, a man named Brad Duchaine. And looking back, they realized that all of his symptoms started after he'd had this really bad case of mono in his early 20s, right before he started dating Marius, actually. So they think that that's what caused it. PMO seems like it can come on after an illness or trauma to the brain.

And here's another quirk of the disorder. For some people, including Jason, the distortions are harder to notice if the person he's looking at is wearing glasses, because, apparently, glasses interrupt the typical way that a face is processed by the brain. It's an obstruction that kind of resets things. So if you wear glasses, you can look perfectly fine.

But even knowing all this, it's obvious that it's still surprisingly hard for Jason to put aside something that he's seeing with his own eyes. Jason has literally spent months working with researchers, building a detailed understanding of his disorder and how it changes his visual experience. But still, emotionally, it's just so hard to ignore.

Like one time, Jason and I were talking over Zoom, which is typically a little bit tough for Jason, because if he has to look directly at a face for too long, it'll distort. But fortunately, I was wearing glasses.

Alix Spiegel

For all those years, all those relationships, Jason had been seeing the world through a distorted lens and didn't know it. Now that he knows, Jason has developed workarounds that he didn't have before. Like when he goes out to dinner, he sits next to a person, not across from them. He also has green lights for his home. All of that has eased things. He even has a partner now. They've been together for a while.

Alix Spiegel

For the rest of his life, Jason will be surrounded by the faces of demons, and he says his heart will always jump when he sees them because it always, always does. But he knows he doesn't have to listen to those warnings, that the ghouls that he sees are only projections. They mean him no harm.

Tobin Low

Alix Spiegel is a producer on our show. Coming up, a person finds a way to create an almost unlimited quantity of gold. What could go wrong? That's in a minute from Chicago Public Radio, when our program continues.

Tobin Low

It's This American Life. I'm Tobin Low, in for Ira Glass. Today's show, How Are You Not Seeing This? Stories of people struggling to agree about what's right in front of their faces. We're at Act Three. Act Three, "Pump It Up."

So in this next story, the fate of the entire world is at stake. And one person finds himself completely alone, surrounded by people who just do not get what has to happen. The person is our very own David Kestenbaum.

And the thing that he was trying to do was to replace the furnace in his house with a heat pump. The furnace he was replacing ran off natural gas, a fossil fuel. The heat pump, much greener, runs off electricity and can miraculously both heat and cool. When David saw the federal government was offering people $2,000 tax credits to switch to heat pumps, he figured it would be easy. It was not. David here has this, uh, guide as how to get your heat pump and tax credit.

David Kestenbaum

If you want to get a heat pump, you'll start with the usual thing of asking a bunch of HVAC companies to come out and give you estimates. They'll pull up in their little vans with the company's names on the side, poke around your house, measure some things. You'll tell them you want a heat pump.

They'll say they usually install gas furnaces, and why don't you stick with that? You'll tell them you're worried about climate change. And, you point out, the heat pump is actually a little cheaper when you include the new tax credit. You just need to make sure the one they install qualifies for the tax credit, which is when they'll tell you they've never heard of the tax credit, even though it's been around for a year.

Undeterred, after they leave, you'll go to the IRS website because you want to make sure you get a heat pump that qualifies. On the IRS website, you'll find this-- heat pumps with a thermal efficiency rating of at least 75% qualify. That seems simple, except you won't know what thermal efficiency rating is. No matter because it turns out this is wrong.

You'll find out this is wrong from a second IRS document, which is very clear. It says, in order to get your $2,000, the heat pump must satisfy, quote, "the energy efficiency requirements in Q1." You may wonder if Q1 refers to the first financial quarter. It does not.

It refers to question 1 further down in the document, which says that heat pumps must, quote, "meet or exceed the highest efficiency tier, not including any advanced tier, established by the Consortium for Energy Efficiency that is in effect as of the beginning of the year in which the property is placed in service." This will fill you with despair until you see that there is a searchable database of equipment that'll meet the qualifications. That sounds great, but there is no link.

So you google around and find a government website that has a link with instructions for how to use the database. But the link does not load. You will wait five minutes for it to load because you figure it'll sort itself out. But it does not. You try back the next day, and no, it really does not seem to exist.

The only way forward seems to be to look up the actual requirements for you to get your $2,000 tax credit. You go to the Consortium for Energy Efficiency website, where you will finally find it spelled out. And I am going to have to spell here because these are not words. The heat pumps SEER2, EER2, HSPF2, and COP measured at 5 degrees Fahrenheit, all have to be above certain values.

You will also learn here a fact skipped over elsewhere. If you are in the northern US, there are different requirements. You'll need a cold climate rated one. At this point, you will cry because how are we ever going to solve climate change if this is what it takes to get one heat pump installed in one house?

At some point in your searches, you will find something hopeful-- a government web page that seems designed for simple people like you, energystar.gov. It's run by the EPA, and it's friendly, with iStock type photos of parents playing happily with children on couches. This is where you should have been all along.

It's basically a database with a nice, clean design. It shows you a giant list of heat pumps. There are search filters on the left-hand side. There's even a box for tax credit eligible. So you check that. And now it's showing only heat pumps it says are tax credit eligible.

But you soon realize there was a problem. It's not taking into account the fact that the requirements are different if you live in northern states. This seems really bad. It should say, if you live in the north, only these ones. There is a box to check for cold climate certified for people who live in the north. But if you click that, for some reason, it doesn't change the search results.

You will puzzle over this for a long time and finally realize, even though you are asking it to show you things that are tax credit eligible and cold climate certified, it is showing you things that qualify for either, not both. Because you are a journalist, you will reach out to the EPA about this.

There will be a very awkward 20-minute interview with a public affairs specialist named Denise, who will seem surprised by this fact, that when you click on cold climate certified, it still shows you things that are not cold climate certified. Denise will click and see this for herself.

Then, another press person on the call will interrupt to ask, if the whole interview can instead be on background, if they can get you someone else to talk to. They will not get you someone else to talk to. They will not fix the website. Two months will pass. They will send an update saying they are waiting for a possible update from the IRS about which heat pumps qualify.

You do eventually buy what you hope is a heat pump that qualifies. A nice man named Algernon will come over with a crew and install it in a few hours. This is really nice, he will say. I think I might get one for myself.

Tobin Low

David Kestenbaum is our senior editor. Months after David talked to the EPA, just recently, the government did finally fix the website. The URL is www.energystar.gov/productfinder/product/certified-heat-pumps/results. Then you got to click a couple more times on the right things, and then at the end, select the Data tab. Anyway, good luck.

Tobin Low

Act Four, "I'm Great. Thanks for Not Asking." This last story's about a person going through something, and they want to share it with their friend. But that can be hard sometimes.

It's a short story by Marie Philips. Here's Marie.

Marie Phillips

We meet at the bar that you chose, 20 minutes from your place and an hour from mine. I'm five minutes early. You're 25 minutes late. You text me that you're on your way and ask me to order you a gin and tonic. The ice is already half melted when you flop down in your seat and say, "My god, it's been forever. How are you?"

But I can see in your eyes that "how are you" is not a genuine question. It's just a piece of perfunctory politeness, a chance to give me a sentence or two before we get down to the real business of the evening, which is talking about you.

I don't know how this happened. We used to share everything. But lately, I feel like you've been slipping away from me and taking less and less interest in my life. So I know that you don't want me to tell you about what it's like to still be living with my mum in a sketchy suburb of South London that you've never visited because you can't reach it on the Underground.

You don't want to know about how broke we got, how we resorted to selling our possessions on eBay or, rather, how I resorted to selling my mum's possessions with her permission because she still finds the internet confusing and asks me what her passwords are 50 times per day. I don't know, Mum. They're not my passwords. Why don't you write them down?

You don't want to hear about how I got catfished by some guy into selling him our beloved cow for some beans, the cow who lived in our garden, which, contrary to what our neighbors say, is completely legal. It's just that most people don't have one. Anyway, I sold her for beans.

And what would happen if I told you how my mum yelled and yelled at me about these stupid beans and how I threw them in the compost heap, and then the next day, there was a beanstalk that went all the way up to the sky? You'd probably just hijack the conversation to say that you're growing tomatoes this year. If you cared, you'd know that my garden is north-facing and tomatoes won't grow there. And I love tomatoes. I really do.

I'm not going to tell you about how I climbed that beanstalk because I don't want to hear about your triathlon training, actually. As it happens, there was a land out there and a house with a giant living in it. But I'm going to keep that to myself. You'd only ask about what the property values are up in the sky in beanstalk land, and would it be a nice place to have a second home.

If you really cared how I am, you'd read my newsletter. And you'd already know that when I got to the house, the giant said, "Fee Fi Fo Fum, I smell the blood of an Englishman. Be he live or be he dead, I'll grind his bones to make my bread." You obviously didn't read my essay on what it was like to be misgendered by a cannibal.

If we were still true friends, maybe I would trust you enough to tell you how I had to hide in the oven, an oven that other humans had literally been cooked in, until the giant fell asleep. And then I stole a bag of gold from him on the way out. I don't want a lecture. In my opinion, it's restorative justice. But whatever.

Anyway, it doesn't matter, because as you were so fond of reminding me, I'm terrible at budgeting, and I canned the lot on the Real Real. Yes, the gold is all gone. So I had to go back up the beanstalk.

I can just picture you stifling a yawn as I tell you how I went through the whole Fee Fi Fo thing again, and that this time, there wasn't a bag of gold, just a goose that lays golden eggs, and how I took her instead. Do you want to know how she is, too? Pretty discombobulated at living in South London. She doesn't like the traffic noise. Plus, as it turns out, it's quite hard to find someone who'll cash a golden egg for you and not ask too many questions about where you got it.

No, I do not want to hear that you have a guy. I still remember what it was like when I called the accountant you recommended, and she told me that she doesn't do jobs that small. Geese don't lay eggs forever. And ours has already started to slow down, fewer and fewer all the time. I doubt you care that once a goose has lost her fertility, she's considered worthless. But for me? Hard identify.

I'm not going to tell you about that, though, because you have no idea how it feels to be approaching midlife while childless. Otherwise you would not keep going on at me about how you were transformed by parenthood. And only now do you know the true meaning of love. You will never know the beauty of becoming close to a bird.

Though, having said that, because of the no more eggs thing, which could happen any day now, she will not solve our financial woes indefinitely. Plus, can you imagine what it's like to be financially dependent on a menopausal goose? No, I don't think you can. Oh, by the way, does your husband still run that hedge fund?

Well, anyway, I discussed it with my mum, and we decided that I had to go back up the beanstalk. She couldn't do it because she has problems with her knees. Not that you asked how she is. So, Fee Fi Fo Fum again. That little sting of being misgendered for the third time, but don't worry about it.

And the long and the short of it is that I stole a talking harp who kept yelling out, "Master, master!" because he has Stockholm syndrome or something. And the giant heard it and chased us down the beanstalk. And I was freaking out like, this is it! I am literally toast! But I got to the bottom first, and I chopped down the beanstalk with my mother's ax. And it came crashing to the ground, and the giant died.

But why would I tell you that? You'd just miss the point completely and ask some irrelevant question, like why does my mother have an ax? The thing is, though, I miss you. We used to have so much in common before you met your husband and started hanging out with his North London friends.

I remember when we were teenagers, and you ran away from home. You were living in a houseshare and working as a cleaner after school. You knew what it was like to go through tough times.

Back then, you would ask me how I am and mean it. I wish I could find the right words, the right question to remind you of that time, to bring you back to me. But instead. I take a sip from my warm white wine and say, "I'm fine. How are you? Do you ever hear from those seven dwarves?"

Tobin Low

Marie Phillips. She's the author of multiple books, including Gods Behaving Badly. This piece was produced by Bim Adewunmi.

["DO YOU SEE WHAT I SEE?" BY HUNTERS & COLLECTORS]

Tobin Low

Today's program was produced by Emmanuel Dzotsi and edited by David Kestenbaum. The people who put together today's show include Sean Cole, Phia Bennin, Zoe Chace, Michael Comite, Henry Larson, Katherine Rae Mondo, Stowe Nelson, Nadia Reiman, Ryan Rumery, Alissa Shipp, Frances Swanson, Christopher Swetala, Matt Tierney, and Diane Wu. Our managing editor is Sarah Abdurrahman. Our executive editor is Emanuele Barry. Special thanks today to Brad Duchaine.

By the way, Tig Notaro, who you heard at the top of today's show, has a very funny podcast. It's called Handsome. And you can listen wherever you get your podcasts. You can also check out her tour dates at tignotaro.com. Our website, thisamericanlife.org. You can stream our archive of over 800 episodes for absolutely free.

This American Life is delivered to public radio stations by PRX, the Public Radio Exchange. Thanks, as always, to my boss, Ira Glass. We're always talking about the election, which voting bloc might sway the vote. Whenever it comes up, he runs into the room yelling, Gen--

Tobin Low

I'm Tobin Low. Back next week with more stories of This American Life.

["DO YOU SEE WHAT I SEE?" BY HUNTERS & COLLECTORS]