853: Groundhog Day

Ira Glass

It's a little ritual that Parker invented for herself and it's always the same, every year. Around this time of year, February 2, to be exact.

Ira Glass

Groundhog Day, of course, is the 1993 Bill Murray comedy about a self-centered weatherman who gets trapped in time, repeating the same day again and again, a day where he covers a Groundhog Day ceremony on local TV.

Ira Glass

Bill Murray spends the whole film repeating February 2nd.

Ira Glass

Until, finally, at the end of the film, he unsticks himself in time and wakes up on the next day. Again, here's Parker.

Ira Glass

Parker says she's not a big birthday person, but this is a little thing she's done for herself to mark the day ever since she was 22. First saw Groundhog Day in a film class.

Ira Glass

So she created this birthday movie night for herself to do alone, that she still does alone every year with the film Groundhog Day, that she's going to do this year for the 16th time. And maybe you think that means that she's really into the film Groundhog Day. Nope.

Ira Glass

Parker says there are lots of films she'd much rather be watching once a year, year after year. Like her favorite film, Point Break, the Keanu Reeves surfing film.

Ira Glass

Today on our program, for Groundhog Day, the power of repetition, how it can be utterly devastating to do something you love dozens of times or hundreds of times. You can rob it of all feeling. You can turn it into drudgery. But repetition can also do the opposite.

The more you do something, the more you can find in it and live in it. I've said these next few words hundreds of times, and I say them today excited for what is to come this hour. From WBEZ Chicago, This American Life, I'm Ira Glass. Stay with us.

Ira Glass

This American Life, Act One, "Will You Still Slug Me Tomorrow?" Sometimes, choosing to repeat the same moment over and over again is an act of love. Aviva DeKornfeld has this true life example.

Aviva DeKornfeld

Bridie and her dad, Brin, have been playing the same game for decades. It's called a pinch and a punch.

Aviva DeKornfeld

One of them would actually pinch and punch the other.

Aviva DeKornfeld

They first started playing this game when Bridie was really little. She can't really remember ever not playing it. It was just one of the many games they played. Brin traveled a lot for work when Bridie was young, and the games were a way for them to stay connected while he was gone. But pinch and punch, this is the game that stuck. It kept going for years and really leveled up when Bridie was in secondary school. One day, when Bridie was 14--

Aviva DeKornfeld

These days, now that Bridie is grown up and moved out, most of the pinches and punches are low key, a phone call, a text. Sometimes Brin or Bridie will try to disguise the sentence in an email sent to the whole family. Bridie says her dad has learned to not open anything from her that's sent just to him on the first of the month. So month in and month out, Brin and Bridie are living in this very specific type of loop, where in order for them to stay in the loop, they have to keep changing it, inventing new ways to win.

Once, a few years ago, Bridie had to get jaw surgery on the first of the month. Her dad was her next of kin, and so she mocked up a fake medical form for her dad to sign, and convinced the nurse to tuck her fake form in with the rest. Bridie proudly won that month. That was kind of a famous win for her, actually, because while Bridie wins more often, her dad's wins tend to be more memorable. His have more flair.

Like once, he convinced Bridie's best friend to interrupt her own wedding to deliver a pinch and punch. He even got Bridie while she was on live radio. The family is from New Zealand, but Bridie lives and works in Sydney, where she was a guest on this weekly local radio show and Brin conspired with the host to get her on air.

Aviva DeKornfeld

Over time, the rules have evolved. No middle of the night calls. You have to respect time zones. Also, the game is formally suspended on New Year's Eve, since Bridie and Brin would hijack the countdown for their game, And according to Bridie's mom, kept, quote, "ruining the holiday." Bridie says her dad escalated the game to a whole new level in 2019. She was flying home to New Zealand for her cousin Jeremy's 30th birthday party, and the flight was on May 1st, very early in the morning.

Aviva DeKornfeld

The flight attendant tells her she's getting bumped up to premium economy and brings her to her new seat.

Aviva DeKornfeld

She spent the rest of the flight thinking about how she would get him back. Luckily for Bridie, Air New Zealand is apparently extremely into pranks and offered to help. So together, they made a fake Father's Day themed ad for the airline. Air New Zealand actually got real pilots and flight attendants to appear in this short video, which Bridie wrote, and then she got her mom to show it to her dad.

Aviva DeKornfeld

This, of course, is Brin Connell. The video starts out thanking dads for doing regular dad stuff, but as it progresses, it starts getting more and more specific, naming things Brin has actually done.

Aviva DeKornfeld

There are 12 firsts of the month each year, and Bridie and Brin have been playing this game for roughly 25 years. So they've done hundreds of pinches and punches at this point. The thing about having such a long running game, though, is that life happens all around it, all the good and bad. A few years ago, Bridie lost someone very close to her.

Aviva DeKornfeld

There's a lie built into the premise of pinch and punch. It's when they say no returns. They say it every month, and every month, they return.

Ira Glass

Aviva DeKornfeld is a producer on our show.

Ira Glass

Act Two, "I'll Repeat the Question." So our show today is about Groundhog Day and what repeating the same thing over and over can accomplish or reveal. And I don't want to say much about this next item before it starts, except to say that it is a common thing when radio reporters sit down to interview somebody, we have to set the record volume properly. So we need the interviewee to just say some words about something while we set recording levels. And so we'll ask them some kind of neutral question, to describe the route they took to work that morning or what they had for breakfast. This comes from radio producer Talia Augustidis.

Ira Glass

That story from Talia Augustidis. She's the creator of the podcast Unreality. She first produced this story for Shortcuts, a Falling Tree production for BBC Radio 4.

Ira Glass

Act Three, "Raiders of the Lost Chard." Sometimes the repeating situation that you find yourself stuck in every day is something you do not like, and you want it to end. And I guess like Bill Murray, who was caught on repeat in that old movie, you have to strategize and figure out how to minimize the unpleasantness. David Kestenbaum has this story about that.

David Kestenbaum

The garden was a thing of beauty. Jeff had just moved into a new house in Middletown, Delaware-- kind of a rural area. House did not have a garden, so he built one.

Jeff is a do it yourself kind of guy-- handy with stuff, fixing cars, things around the house. The garden he makes is pretty big. He turns over all the soil, plants rows of seeds. It takes a long time.

David Kestenbaum

But gardening, as the writer Margaret Atwood has noted, is not a rational act. In nature, plants do not grow in tidy, pristine, labeled rows. In fact, nature does not care at all about your little setup.

Jeff was on vacation when it happened. A friend was watering his garden for him.

David Kestenbaum

Jeff is really upset. He has no idea what is eating his vegetables, so he sets out a trap. One of those cage things that closes when an animal goes inside. And how did that work?

David Kestenbaum

Goes out to check on the trap? Empty. Food in it? Untouched. What is eating the garden? Jeff runs through a list of possibilities.

Jeff thinks, enough with this. It really is driving him kind of mad. So he gets a motion detector camera. He borrows it from his brother, uses electrical tape to tape it to this old bucket he has and sticks it in the garden. It's one of those cameras that sends videos to your phone. So Jeff waits. He does not have to wait long.

David Kestenbaum

And I just want to pause here to describe the cinematic perfection of this next moment. What Jeff sees at first in the video is nothing, like the camera's triggered off, something blowing in the breeze. You see a log in the background and the garden fence. And then a groundhog pops up with what appears to be a cucumber in its paws, rapidly chewing. It is staring right into the camera, head-on. It takes up the whole frame-- so close, you can hear it chewing.

[GROUNDHOG CHEWING]

David Kestenbaum

Every day it was get up, drive to work, alert on phone, groundhog. Get up, drive to work, alert on phone, groundhog. The only thing that changed was the image-- groundhog with one of Jeff's tomatoes, groundhog with zucchini, groundhog with corn. Never peppers, somehow. Apparently, it didn't like peppers. He is in a Groundhog Day situation with an actual groundhog who, if he has to admit, is kind of cute.

David Kestenbaum

At some point, a female groundhog turns up. Presumably, she was Chunk's partner. Jeff names her Nibbles. But now he has two groundhogs. Weirdly, both of them would pop up on camera together, facing the same direction, each eating something of his.

[GROUNDHOGS CHEWING]

Jeff, desperate now, has one last idea for how to get out of this endless loop. And when I heard it, it seemed both adorable and completely unlikely to work. The following year, when it's time to plant the garden again, he goes out with his shovel, turns over more earth, and--

David Kestenbaum

A reporter for the website The Dodo heard about the story. The resulting video is titled "Guy Builds Veggie Garden for Family of Groundhogs," which I saw and had questions about. That's why I called Jeff in the first place. I did not see how that was going to work.

Sure, now the groundhogs have their own garden that does not have some big fence around it. But wouldn't they eat their vegetables and then still break through the fencing into his like before? What's to stop them?

David Kestenbaum

Chunk is still there. Jeff last saw him in the fall. He's probably hibernating under the shed. It's been seven years at this point, which is old for a groundhog, though they can live longer. It helps to have a reliable food source.

Ira Glass

David Kestenbaum is our show's senior editor. Coming up, one man combats the chaos of the world on a narrow block in Brooklyn, week after week, every Tuesday and Thursday. That's in a minute. Chicago Public Radio when our program continues.

This is This American Life. I'm Ira Glass. Today's program, "Groundhog Day." Have you ever had a day that just seems to repeat again and again?

It's This American Life. I'm Ira Glass. Each week on our program, of course, we choose a theme and bring you different kinds of stories on that theme.

It's This American Life. I'm Ira Glass. Each week on our show, of course, we choose a theme and bring you different kinds of stories on that theme.

Well, it's This American Life. I'm Ira Glass. Each week on our program, we choose a theme and bring you a variety of different kinds of stories on that theme. Today's show, "Fiasco." Today on our program, "24 Hours at the Golden Apple."

Today on our program, a story of race and politics in America-- the story of Harold Washington.

Well, it's This American Life. I'm Ira Glass. Today's show, a special co-production with MPR News. A step by step look at what exactly happened during the subprime mortgage crisis.

I'm Ira Glass. It's This American Life, the radio program that dares to ask the question--

Ira Glass

It's This American Life. I'm Ira Glass. Today's program, "The Long Fuse."

[EXPLOSION]

[CHUCKLES]

I had forgotten about that one "The Long Fuse." Doing this theme this week, I have to admit, made me really think about what it feels like to do our program week after week, 853 times. This is our 853rd episode, and it does feel very different making this show for the 853rd time than it did at the very beginning. Definitely, there is a sameness to doing things again and again every week that is not entirely pleasant.

But, of course, while the process of making a show is always the same, the content of the show changes so much. And there's just something about-- I don't know how to put it-- like, it's creating the little dream that radio can be. It always is. I don't know, it just gets to me. When the music enters.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

Thank you for that. Everything you say just sounds smarter when you're saying it over music. And just making all the little parts of the show perfect, or at least as obsessively perfect as you can make it. It's just so easy to get lost in that, even on the 853rd time.

Ira Glass

Act 4, "Heart of Parkness." People who own cars in certain cities really are just asking for pain. Certain cities are not set up for them and deliver regular, repeated punishment to car owners. Valerie Kipnis's hometown definitely does that on a schedule that's literally posted on signs.

Valerie Kipnis

Growing up in New York, you get used to the fact that for a few days every week, your street becomes total chaos. That's because the street cleaning truck is scheduled to come through. The first day, you can't park on the left-hand side, so the sweeper can drive down that way. The second day, you can't park on the right. And it's not like there are empty spaces on other blocks you can move your car to.

So all over New York, what people do on street cleaning day is double park. They move their car so it's sitting next to the row of parked cars on the other side. And then they just leave their cars there, double parked, unattended, in the middle of the street for 1 and 1/2 hours, making room for the street cleaner to sweep next to the curb where their car had just sat. 8 million people, and this is the system we use.

A few years ago, I moved to a new neighborhood where the situation is even more intense. The street I live on now is incredibly narrow, just under 25 feet across. I know because I measured, which means that if you don't double park perfectly, very close to the row of already parked cars, you end up blocking all traffic. No cars, no street cleaner can get through. And if one neighbor doesn't come out and move their car, that can block all traffic too.

But this new street I live on also came with something I'd never seen before-- a guy who twice a week has made it his job to try to make this all run smoothly. His persistence, his dedication to this thankless job has always sort of puzzled me, so I went out with him on a Thursday this fall. His name is David, in his 50s, a former Marine-- and, as it happens, my landlord. It's a few minutes before 11:30 when the whole thing begins on our street. David's wearing his usual uniform of a crisp gray cotton T-shirt and basketball shorts.

Valerie Kipnis

A blabbermouth. David always worries he's coming on too strong.

Valerie Kipnis

His goal this morning is to get everyone on the left side neatly double parking down the middle of our street. To do this, he tries to know everyone on the block. Which cars belong to who? Who tends to run late? Who runs early? Who's new around here? Who needs a reminder?

Like, let me read you some of our most recent texts. Hey, Valerie, it's time for the car. Hey, Valerie, is that your car across the street? Hey, Valerie, don't forget about the car. Today, I'm on time.

Valerie Kipnis

David's got a black Grand Cherokee Jeep. It's about midway up the block.

He spots James, our neighbor, who just walked out of his house.

Valerie Kipnis

David nods his head in the direction of my car, like, come on, enough with the interview.

It's a really tight parking job. You have to get so close to the car on the other side of the street that your side view mirrors touch.

Valerie Kipnis

Sometimes when I don't do a good job, David will offer to help, grab my keys, and repark the car for me. Today, I do OK. He lets it be.

It's a couple minutes past 11:30 when all the cars are supposed to have been moved, but only a few have. A few other neighbors, one holding a toddler, the other clearly on a work call, have started coming out of their houses. David waves at them and signals for them to move their cars. We've still got time before the street sweeper comes.

We climb in. He double parks. Before David started doing this job, when he was still just a kid growing up on the block, someone else did it. He was a local legend, a guy named Eddie.

Valerie Kipnis

One old-timer on the block told me, hey, don't make a hero out of Eddie. Apparently, he was a complicated guy. He would sit in a lawn chair in the street so that cars couldn't get through. He once laid down in the road to save a parking spot for his daughter-in-law. But still, he kept things in order.

Valerie Kipnis

Actually, it wasn't like David just became that person. When Eddie got old, he actually passed the mantle to David.

Valerie Kipnis

But it's gotten harder. When Eddie was the street parking conductor, most houses had one car and the neighbors all knew each other, were all on board with this parking system. They'd grab the keys and move the car for one another. But recently, this block has really changed. Something like a quarter of the houses have been sold to new folks.

It used to be a blue collar, Italian neighborhood. Now it's got people with enough money to throw millions of dollars into buying and renovating entire brownstones. On street cleaning day, the new people seem happy to leave their cars and get a ticket. And also because of the renovations, there are constantly trucks parked on the street which take up space in this game of parking Tetris. Michelle, one of our neighbors, walks past us looking frustrated. David points to her and shakes his head.

Valerie Kipnis

Michelle can't double park her car because there's a Tesla in front of her that hasn't moved in a couple of weeks, and there's a construction dumpster behind her. If she pulls into the spot in the middle lane that's across from where she is right now, she'll block the entire street. This kind of stuff happens all the time. And David knows how he sounds saying this-- like some old guy at the park feeding the pigeons and complaining. His words, not mine. But it really didn't use to be this way.

Valerie Kipnis

Empty.

Valerie Kipnis

In the last two years, David's had five family members die. Three of them lived here with David in this house, on this block. He took care of them, and it was a lot.

Valerie Kipnis

11:45. We get out of the car to check on how the parking is going down the block, and immediately it's clear there's a problem. There's a truck that can't get through with a growing line of cars behind it. No way the street cleaner is going to make it through here.

Valerie Kipnis

The problem? On our block, a construction crew has left a barricade of giant plastic orange traffic barriers in the street to hold space for their dump truck. The barriers are on the street cleaning side by the sidewalk, and near them, in the middle of the street, someone has parked their car. No name, no number on the dashboard. There is no room for anyone to squeeze through.

Valerie Kipnis

For a split moment, David isn't sure what to do. Then a couple other old-timers, our neighbor Bob and this guy Kenny, approach him and they huddle off to the side. I look at them and back to the street. Any minute now and the honking will start. The chaos will ensue. It's tense. The three of them consider their options.

Valerie Kipnis

Meaning the barriers are going to be super heavy, like hundreds of pounds. But they've got to try to do something anyway. So the three of them go over to the barriers, which are too heavy to lift, and try to drag them off the road.

[GROANING]

Valerie Kipnis

It takes a while, but they manage to drag the barriers next to the lawn of the house undergoing construction.

Valerie Kipnis

The truck is able to get through. The line of cars finally starts to move, and then after them comes the street sweeper. Sweet, sweet victory.

[ENGINE RUMBLING]

It swerves around the unmoved Tesla and the three other cars that no one cared to move, but makes it through nonetheless. There's no celebration, no moment of victory. David heads out to pick up his mom's meds, then he comes back to feed the birds because he actually does that. In a bit, David gets in his car and moves it back to the left side of the road, checks and makes sure I reparked mine correctly, that the others have, too.

The barriers will reappear overnight, except this time, they'll take up more space. David, Bob, and Kenny will push them to the sidewalk again and then again. The Tesla won't move. The neighbors will be late. Every week, the cycle will repeat itself. This little universe will break apart and David will put it back together again.

Ira Glass

Valerie Kipnis is a producer on our show.

Ira Glass

Act Five, "It's Been a Hard Year's Night, and I've Been Working Like a Hog." So Punxsutawney Phil is not the only groundhog who gets drafted into annual Groundhog Day ceremonies around the country. There's actually a website, groundhogday.com, that lists over three dozen of these poor critters around the United States and Canada. There's French Creek Freddie in West Virginia, Woody the Woodchuck in Michigan. There's a groundhog in New York City at the Staten Island Zoo.

In New York, in the past, the city's mayor used to be part of the groundhog ceremony till 2015, after Bill de Blasio dropped a groundhog. It died later that same week. The current mayor, Eric Adams, is a well-known rodent hater who launched a war on the city's rats, and he has never shown up in person to the ceremony. And as the man who runs the city, he could use his powers to try to shut down the Groundhog Day ceremony on Staten Island once and for all.

And there's somebody out there who would like that very much. We are pleased to bring her to you now. This is a This American Life exclusive. She is a resident of New York, specifically Staten Island-- more specifically, the zoo.

Bess Kalb

Dear Mayor Adams, I'm the groundhog. My name is Susan. I'm nine years old. I have 48 children. None of them are potty trained. All of them need braces. Their fathers are always digging and never helping.

All eight of my nipples are unrecognizable. I haven't ever taken a shower, and I'm at the end of my goddamn rope. You call it Groundhog Day, but have you ever considered what I, the groundhog, actually want?

Do you even know who I am besides some nameless creature you can foist in the air for a photo op? Do you have any idea what I sacrifice for you all? Because when I think about it, from the time I turned two and started having litters of tiny, hairless babies, I have been expected every year to decide the fate of the Northern Hemisphere of the planet.

And not that you have time to even look it up between all your various staged perp walks, but I'm supposed to hibernate from October to April-- from October to April. That's when the rest of my family sleeps. And it's supposed to be when I am finally able to get some rest. Those months, I'm supposed to be out cold, like you-- one Valium deep in a lay-flat business class seat on Turkish Airlines.

Do you have any idea how exhausting it is to be me? 48 children, and they all co-sleep-- judge me-- so I'm kicked by 192 tiny feet all night, every night. And yet, the first week of February, you and your mayor friends are going to yank me out of my burrow because, surprise-- nobody knows how to do anything for five goddamn months without waking up mom.

So will there be six more weeks of winter? Did you see your shadow? Yeah, I see my shadow every time I look in a mirror because I am a shadow of my former self. They never even ask me if I saw it. They just presume whether or not I saw my shadow based on whether I wrinkle my snout at the ground.

This whole holiday, which is supposed to be about me, is predicated on a group of mouth-breathing men in top hats deciding whether or not I was capable of seeing my own shadow. And then they hold me up and shout in my face and then blind me with flashbulbs. But I don't feel seen at all. And I never get an apology. And I never get a thank you.

And by the way, I want everyone to stop calling me a groundhog. A ground hog? That's not even a species. It's an insult. It's calling me dirt pig. Did you know in Canada, I'm called a marmot? That's dignified, that's chic. That's apres-ski.

OK, I hear myself. I know how I sound. I sound exactly like my mother and her mother before her. I come from a proud line of groundhogs who have done this job year after year, and I'm not here to complain. No. Whatever I say, I know it's not going to make a difference. It doesn't matter.

[LIGHTER FLICKS]

[SIZZLING]

I can play my role. I can smile and go through the motions, and for one February morning, let you have a moment of pure escapism, however dumb and degrading and exhausting as it is for me. So go ahead, [PUFFS SMOKE] play the trombones, unfurl your little scroll, and have your weird rodent fortune-telling pageant, because you need it. So send in the clown.

And when you lift me, your groundhog, high into the air, I will look into the crowd and see your vulnerable, yearning human faces staring back at me, standing out in the cold, just desperate to see something that breaks up the gray monotony of your repetitive lives. Trudging in your little puffer jackets, staring at your phones to go sit at a desk and eat a salad every day.

And then you look up, and there I am, the groundhog. When you cheer for me, you are cheering for your own hope that if this ridiculous tradition can endure, maybe you can, too. May it be a happy Groundhog Day for us all. Sincerely, Susan Hog-Kaplowitz.

Ira Glass

Susan Hog-Kaplowitz's letter to Mayor Adams was written and read by Bess Kalb. She writes books and other funny stuff. Her newsletter, which you can find on Substack, is The Grudge Report.

["STUCK ON THE TREADMILL" BY RICHARD THOMPSON]

(SINGING) Well, our money goes out, the bills come in

Round and round, we go again

I come close, but I never win

I'm stuck on the treadmill.

Another day of punching steel till my arm's too numb to feel

Like a hamster on a wheel, I'm stuck on a treadmill

Well, our program was produced today by Aviva DeKornfeld. The people who put together today's program include Bim Adewunmi, Jendayi Bonds, Dana Chivvis, Michael Carmody, Angelo Giavazzi, Chana Joffe-Walt, Tobin Low, Miki Meek, Katherine Rae Mondo, Steven Nelson, Nadia Reiman, Ryan Rumery, Lilly Sullivan, Frances Swanson, Christopher Swetala, Julie Whitaker, and Diane Wu.

Our managing editor is Sarah Abdurrahman and our senior editor is David Kestenbaum. Our executive editor is Emanuele Berry. Special thanks today to Carrie Rose Tyson, Ethan Brooks, Eddie Wang, Lindiwe Dlamini, Saori Tsukada, Avery Trufelman, and Ned Ryerson.

This American Life is delivered to public radio stations by PRX, the Public Radio Exchange. To become a This American Life partner-- it gets you bonus episodes. It gets you ad-free listening. It gets you hundreds of greatest hits episodes that show up right in your podcast feed-- go to thisamericanlife.org/lifepartners. Also very important-- signing up this way also helps keep our program going. Thanks as always to our program's co-founder, Mr. Torey Malatia. You know, he is not a very good dance teacher.

Ira Glass

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