Transcript of 878: New Lore Drop

A quick warning.

There are curse words that are unbeaped in today's episode of the show.

If you prefer a beeped version, you can find that at our website, thisamericanlife. Org. Back when he was 18 years old, it was the summer before he went away to college. He's home in the living room with his dad.

He turns to me and he says, Peter, let's go for a drive. That was not something that he ever said. That's not something that we did.

So Pete knows something's up, but he has no idea what. They go outside, get in the Volvo. Pete asks his dad.

Shouldn't we get Will, my younger brother? Because he was at home. He was probably 13 or 14. And my dad just shook his head. No.

This drive for Pete, alone with his dad, turned out to be a big moment in his life. Before the drive, if he had to describe his family, it wasn't hard. He could do it in two words.

Completely Absolutely mundane. I mean, we lived outside of DC. My parents worked for the government. I mean, they were good parents. They were kind and attentive, and we would have dinner every night. My dad would cook dinner Good cook? Oh, incredible cook.

The way he remembers it, he did salmon Sundays, made a great pot roast, had a pizza that he'd make on Fridays. His mom was the one who'd make sure they did their homework and cleaned their rooms. She was direct and more talkative than their dad. It was really quiet.

They were not gregarious. They didn't really have friends. They didn't really have hobbies.

Okay, and so now he is in the car with his dad. Just two them that pulls out of the driveway.

We start driving through our neighborhood, and we get to the stoplight at the end of our neighborhood. He says to me, Peter, it's time to tell you about family business, espionage. I mean, my first reaction was like, What are you doing right now? What joke is this? And then the next thing that he said is, open the glove box. And so I opened the glove box, and inside was a sheet of paper. And he said, take out that sheet of paper. I took it out and I'm scanning the page, and it's his resume from the CIA.

Did you know he worked for the CIA?

No.

Where did you think he worked?

Well, he said he worked at the State Department.

But now, on the sheet of paper, listed all the different countries that Pete had lived with his parents, Germany and the Netherlands and Jamaica, countries where Pete had always thought that his dad was going off to an embassy or a consulate every day to work for the State Department.

I'm seeing counterintelligence and counterinsurgency and deputy chief, chief of station, case officer. I didn't know what to ask next. I honestly don't know that we talked very much at all. We actually drove in a big loop and drove back down into the driveway. I was like, Oh, wait. Does mom know about this? My dad goes, Oh, she works there, too.

This stunned him. His dad could see. His dad was quiet, like somebody who keeps secrets.

But with my mom, it was completely out of... It was just a complete surprise because of how she was.

What do you mean?

She just was somebody who... It just seemed like you were getting exactly what you got. Mm-hmm. She just didn't really seem like somebody who could deceive. But I guess she was.

Were they the CIA employees to analyze data and sit at a desk, work a desk, or were they out in the field spying, pretending to be people who they aren't, carrying a gun? Were they that CIA?

They were out in the field. Yeah. They were undercover. They had passports with other names. The way it was described to me is that they were not spies. They were recruiting spies. From other countries. And in doing so, they were pretending to be people who they were not.

He says before this, he just hadn't really thought much about his parents and their lives and their jobs. He was a kid. He once asked his mom, What do you actually do at your government job all day long?

And I think my mom said something like, Oh, it's just meetings and memos and And I was like, Yeah, I figured. Just boring stuff.

Yeah. Which I have to say, I bet there were meetings and memos, so it's like that isn't 100% lie. It's just leaving some stuff out.

Yeah. No, definitely using boringness as a deception.

In retrospect, Pete says there were clues that he could have maybe picked up on. His mom spoke several languages. The family lived most of his life in other countries. His dad owned a nine-millimetre pistol. He was always up 4: 00 in the morning to go running on a track. It was the fact that his parents didn't have friends and never had anybody over to the house, which, of course, doesn't mean that you're a spy, but still.

Yeah, it actually wasn't until a lot later that I realized that a lot of adults do have friends and still hang out. And there were things like when I would go to the mall with my mom, she always made sure we knew a code word. And she would say, Okay, so if mommy's ever not here and somebody comes to pick you up, make sure they know the code word. And code word was always Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.

Wait, anytime you would go to the mall, your mom would remind you of this?

Yeah, we'd be in the back seat and she'd be like, Okay, boys, what What's the code word? And we'd say, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.

At the time, he says he chalked it up to 1990's Stranger Danger stuff, but that he learned that other parents do not do this. He told me there was one more clue about his parents' jobs, a clue that was sitting right there during the years they moved back to Virginia.

Maybe the biggest clue of all is that we lived right across the street from the CIA headquarters.

Wait, what?

Yeah. That makes a lot of sense because my dad was super pragmatic and he hated traffic.

To be clear, they weren't literally across the street, but in a neighborhood right across the street. Door to door, less than five minutes. Pete's parents are both dead now. They both retired from the CIA after long careers, which is why it's okay to talk about it here on the radio, by the way. But when Pete learned about this, it really did make their lives seem so much more impressive.

Like they met in the CIA, fell in love in the CIA. They were globe-trotting and bringing their kids around and doing God knows what.

I'm not exactly sure how to ask this question, so I'm just going to ask this straight out. The one thing that I know about spies from movies is that they're all really, really hot. Were your parents really hot?

I mean, yeah, they were hot. Yeah, they were hot. They were very attractive people. My mom was I have these old pictures of her, and she's just beautiful.

And your dad?

Yeah. Handsome guy.

There's this concept that originally was in video games, and then it spread to TV shows and to social media, where, okay, say in a video game, there's the universe that everything takes place in. Then at some point, the game creators do a new lore drop where they give backstory or reveal important details that suddenly make everything seem different and richer and more complicated. She had a whole new light. Pete had that. He had a new lore drop in his actual life. He thought his parents were one thing, then went back to story that changed his whole picture of them. So what's it like to live through in real life?

Yeah. I think at first it was a shock, the fact that they were able to deceive me for my whole life. And that is just weird. It did make me look at them differently like, wow, the rug just got pulled from under me. Everything I know is a lie. But then when that When it comes off, it's like, well, it's still just mom and dad.

Beats as everybody goes through the thing when they grow up, when they're going to see their parents, not just as the boring human furniture around the house of their childhood. And for most of us, The new information that we absorb by our parents happens over years. The new Lord Drop version, the Peacott, was just the accelerated program.

Yeah, I got it all in one drive.

Today on our show, We have other human beings who are not video game characters, and they're not fictional people on long-runting television series who get hit with all new information about their own lives. Backstories that rewrite everything. New Lord drops in real life. From WBEZ Chicago, It's This American Life. Today on the show, I will still be playing the part that I always play here, and I have not learned that I am a princess from Genovia, and my grandmother is actually Julie Andrews. I am still Ira Glass. Stay with us.

Here at Life Kit, we take advice seriously. We bring you evidence-based recommendations. To do that, we talk with researchers and experts on all sorts of topics because we have the same questions you do. Like, What's really in my shampoo? Or, Should I let my kid quit soccer? Or, what should I do with my savings in uncertain economic times? You can listen to NPR's Life Kit in the NPR app or wherever you get your podcasts.

This is American Life, Act One. Save the drama for your grandmama. Sometimes a lord drop happens when you least expect it. Look at this next story, a view to Cornfield explains.

When I first met Jake, it was obvious. This is a guy who is hardwired to try and connect with people. He's like this friendly bulldozer, Kool-Aid manning his way into emotional intimacy. Jake's always been this way, in part, perhaps because he grew up surrounded by people. He comes from this big Irish Catholic family in Rhode Island, and he had a sitcom upbringing. His aunts and uncles and cousins all lived close by. One grandma lived literally next door. The other set of grandparents lived a 15-minute walk from his house, and Jake saw them every day. It was the best. And then, when he was seven years old, his family moved to Vermont, away from his extended family, and he hated it, really missed them. And this missing only intensified when his grandma, back in Rhode Island, was diagnosed with breast cancer. To little Jake, it was obvious what to do.

I just started calling her all the time, and I think because I just wanted to keep talking to her because I was so afraid she was going to die. Oh my God, it's so sweet. I know. It's funny to think back on because it was so purely intentioned, but it's also so... The motives of it are so transparent that it must have just been a reminder to my grandmother every day. This kid thinks you're going to die because you might.

You know what I mean? It was like, no.

She's like, Okay, relax. No, she was like, I was trying to have one day of fucking I'm like, Hi, Grandma, can I talk to you again before you die? I have this memory of the calls running out of steam a little bit because I was calling every single day and I was like, 8 or 9. It's like, What do you have to talk about? I think I had introduced her to Harry Potter just as I had started reading it. I think we would read them at the same time and we would read a chapter and I'd talk on the phone the next day. We would discuss the chapter, a book club with my grandma. I remember my mom was so excited. One of the most upset times she ever saw me was I caught that my grandma had read ahead because she accidentally said something on one of the calls that hadn't happened yet. I was like, What are you talking about? And she was like, Well, it doesn't it? I was like, You read ahead. And she had read the whole book because she couldn't put it down because she loved it. But I was like, Never do that again.

Swear to me that you'll know. Because I loved that I had that experience with her.

This Harry Potter Book Club evolved into talking about other books, books they were reading separately. The way it worked, they would each read their own book, and then they'd hop on the phone and summarize it for the other person, chapter by chapter.

It was part of my nightly ritual. I feel like it was like, come home, do homework, maybe have dinner, then call grandma and recap the book. Because I always loved recapping my book to her. I loved having someone to tell this story to, so that it was like, I love being able to retell it. I want to tell her this story the way it made me feel. I want to make sure I hide this suspense. If there was a surprise in the book, I want to make sure I tell her the story of the book in a way that keeps the surprise so that she's a surprise when I tell her as I was when I read it. Then I'm like, Okay, what about your books? She would tell me. I remember clocking pretty early on that she definitely didn't have that same flair for… She just didn't. She would be like, Oh, and then like, Yeah, they are starting to fall in love. I'm like, Well, how do they fall in love? Why did they like each other? I felt very connected to her through the books and through the storytelling because Because I think grandma was not…

She wasn't particularly forthcoming about herself. She wasn't someone who would come home and drop her back and be like, God, I got to tell you about my day. That was not her. This was the It was the first time that I felt like I was having a conversation with an adult who was talking to me about stuff going on in their own life, even if it was just the book they were reading.

Jake's grandma worked at Filings in the shoe Department. She was a real coupon hound, loved to sail. She was nice, but not exactly sweet in a grandmotherly way. She was often way too honest. If you said you weren't feeling good about yourself because your clothes didn't fit right, she would offer, Well, you gained weight. She liked reading all kinds of books, but she especially loved readers. Jake remembers one of her books in particular, Smoke and Mirrors, about a librarians whose half-sister was murdered. The librarians tries to figure out who murdered her half-sister with the help of a guy who knew her. It was suspensful. His grandma loved a mystery. The two kept this book club going for years. Jake would pace back and forth in the hall between the dining room and living room in his house in Vermont, phone tucked for his ear, while his grandma sat nestled in her favorite armchair back in Rhode Island. The calls were long, sometimes lasting hours. Jake says his summaries were, unsurprisingly, pretty exhaustive. He didn't want to leave a single detail out. Until, when he was 12 or so, he stopped being completely honest with his grandma about what he was reading because he started feeling like there was something off about the books he liked.

He worried they were too girly early.

The ones where I was like, Oh, these were the ones that really caused a crisis for me. There was this series of books called Twitches, which were about twin witches. The covers were like those old cool early 2000s photo shoots where they would do stock image photo shoots. It wasn't an illustration. It was a photo shoot of two teenage girls.

Like Olson twin style. Totally.

Exactly. It was about these two girls who found out that they were adopted and that they were twins. They're also witches. When they meet, they develop magical powers. I was like, Well, I literally have to read these. But I don't want to tell my grandma that I'm reading a book about two teenage girls that have magical powers and like boys. Also, I don't want to carry this book around at school. I think that's when I started editing a little bit.

Why didn't you want your grandma to know you're reading those books?

Because I think I knew it was speaking to something. I think I was also probably starting to realize… Because I was a pretty effeminate child, so at this point, I was already getting called gay. I think this was all interwoven.

And so do you remember intentionally deciding to start changing details?

I remember in Twitch's, I think I I changed their gender. I think I made them both boys. I think I changed their powers. I think I said that one could move things with their mind and that one was strong.

And the details you were changing, it was to make it align with what you thought a straight boy would be reading?

I was like, I'll change these details because they don't affect the plot. I was like, I'm not going to change the plot. I'm just going to change the details around it to make it a little bit more mask. Instead of being able to passively stop it through clairvoyance and telepathy, it's like they use their physical powers of telekinesis and strength.

Do you think you were convincing? Do you think that she thought that you were straight at the time?

No. I don't think that anyone ever thought I was straight. Really? No, I don't think so.

It's really sweet and really sad to imagine you putting on this disguise by changing the details for your grandma. It's like you're wearing a fake mustache, but it's actually a skew and you have no idea.

Everyone's like, That's not a real mustache. Yeah, 100%. If I'd been sitting here talking to you for an hour and a half and then just suddenly put the mustache on and expected you to think it was real. You've been talking to me without a mustache this whole time. I also think this led to the end of the book club a little bit was when I started to be like, I don't want to read these books and have to tell my friend about them. You know what I mean? Also, she beat the cancer. Congratulations. I was less scared about her.

Oh, so you were like, Okay, it's not an emergency.

Kind of. Yeah.

It took Jake a few more years to formally come to his family. He was 16. He told me he thinks he remembers his grandma mentioning his coming out once and saying that she loved him. But it was such a non-issue that he can't even really remember specifics. Jake's sexuality, that is not the lour drop in this story. There was one, but it came years later when Jake was in his 30s. By then, his grandma had developed dementia and then got really sick. Jake made a point to visit her every month or two.

Then one day- I was visiting my grandma, and she was in home hospice, and it was sad. She was on the first floor in the living room. Then I went up to my mom's old bedroom, and My mom's bedroom, there's this radiator that always was just covered in my grandma's books. I remember being in… I think I probably went up to the room to take a breather or something, and I remember seeing the books on the windowsill and on the radiator.

He saw titles he remembered from when he was a kid, the book she'd recap for him.

I remember I picked up one of the books and thumbed through it and found a sex scene, and I was like, Was she reading? They're romance novels. These were sexy books. I picked them up and I started flipping through them. I just remember it being graphic in the way that it described genitals. It wasn't just like, and then we went to the bedroom. It was like, here. You know what I mean? It was like that. And I was like, Oh, okay. I was like, Are those all smut?

Yes. Jake's grandma was an avid reader of smut. Jake's out there laughing out loud to himself as he started googling his grandma's favorite authors. Jane-ann Crence, who wrote the book Grand Passion, in which protagonist Max Fortune heads to a B&B in search of his hidden inheritance, only to find himself irresistibly compelled by the attractive innkeeper, Cleopatra. Jd Rob. She wrote the book Naked in Death, where a woman somehow works through her past drama by sleeping with a hot and mysterious Irish businessman. And another one from Jane Anne Crence that Jake remembered his grandma recapping to him. Smoke in Mirs, the one about the librarians traveling around, trying to solve her half-sister's murder with the help of a guy she meets along the way. That was the way Jake remembered it anyway. But now, reading the book.

The whole book is just her wanting to have sex with this man. That's the entire book. The murder is almost never mentioned. They're just walking around this town trying to find out if the murder... The entire time, she's just like, This man is so hot. She literally had to make up so much plot. This is so central to the plot. I remember thinking, Damn, grandma doesn't give that much of a shit about the narrative. I'm like, No, grandma was making up a narrative because half of the plot was about these people having sex. You're going to read this passage? Yeah. Okay. In this part of the book, they just tried to break into a house to look for clues, and an unseen person chased them out of a house, and they had to run away. Now they're back at his place and they're safe. Okay. Tom has shrugged out of his jacket and came to stand behind her. Their eyes met in the mirror. Unlike her, he looked terrific, she thought. Hard, tough, and totally in control. She had to fight an irresistible urge to turn and put her head into his chest. His hands closed over her shoulders.

Take it easy. You're just feeling the aftershock of the adrenaline. It'll fade. I know. The weight of his hands was not having the calming, soothing effect he probably intended. She suddenly wanted to do a lot more than just put her head down on his shoulder. She looked at his mouth in the mirror and wondered, what would it be like to kiss him? Wondered how his mouth would feel on other parts of her body.

Let's stop there because we can't conjure an image on the radio. You guys were doing the same thing.

We were doing the same thing.

What went through your head when you realized that?

It really tickled me because I remembered that feeling of being so afraid towards the end of the time when we were calling each other that I would out myself or just feeling... Once I became a sexual person myself, a pubescent herself, those conversations about those books being like, Don't see me. I'm realizing she probably felt a version of that the whole time. Or was just having to constantly think about, Okay, don't talk about when they had sex in the kitchen, but what happened in the plot line? I don't know. It makes me feel closer to her that we were doing this song and dance.

I love the idea that you and your grandma were lying to one another three times a week in the name of bonding.

Exactly. It's like lie almost feels like too harsh of a word. Do you know what I mean? It's just two people translating what's going on in their lives for the other person. Right.

It's a version of what we all do all the time.

A hundred %. When we talk to our parents about our relationship, you might not be like, Well, I think I might break up with him because the sex is not great. I'm just not feeling it. You know what I mean? We do these edits all the time.

Yeah, we were fighting and then we made up.

Exactly.

Jake's grandma died this past June. She was 84. Jake and his grandma and their book club, it was never really about the books, obviously. The point was to spend time with one another, to feel close. And it worked. It worked so well that Jake still gets to spend time with her, even now, even in some very unexpected moments.

I've been watching Heated Rivalry, which is this HBO Max show that's based on a romance novel, but it's a gay romance novel. It's about hockey players. I'm loving it. It's my favorite show right now. I'm laughing to myself as I watch it because I'm like, I come from a line of people who enjoy this.

I'm continuing my family tradition.

Let's be clear to the listener. I'm not thinking about my grandma necessarily when I'm watching a lot of those scenes, but when I think about it now, I'm like, there is something nice about that, I It's like, I found my version of it that I enjoy. There was a period of time in my life where I was terrified of my grandma knowing I was gay, and now I'm watching Gaysemont on HBO, and I'm like, The gene that makes me like this comes from her.

Sometimes the new the lourdrop isn't some big revelation. Sometimes it's just a funny little detail. You get to enjoy it and carry on with your day.

Aviva De Karnfeld is one of the producers of our show. Jake is a comedian. He told a version of this story on stage, which is where we first heard about it. His work and his tour dates are on Instagram @ Jake W. Cornell. Coming up, one more reason to hate Mark Zuckerberg. This one, I bet you did not see coming. That's in a minute from Chicago Bubble Radio when our program continues. This is American Life, Am I a Glass? Today's show, New Lord Drop. Stories of people discovering information about their own lives that they did not know. Information that makes them see things very differently. Okay, so just a quick reminder as the show continues. If we get separated and you can't find me and somebody comes to get you, let's just review. What's the code word?

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.

That's right. Don't forget it. We arrived at act two of our program. Act two, Billy Poupet. So reporter Ben Austin had a war drop happened to him recently, and it was not the clarifying war drop, where everything suddenly makes sense, the world seems clearer. It was the opposite. Ben says his whole thing started over Facebook. Ben is one of those people who hates Facebook. He hates, but also keeps looking at. Maybe he's not the only person who ever does that. Ben had this rule. He would accept friend requests, but he never make them. Then one day, he sees a post that his sixth grade teacher had died. This was a teacher he loved and everybody loved. All of his old classmates were sharing memories.

I was sitting there and I was like, Man, these are my friends that I grew up with. And so I started friending them. I broke my rule. And there was this kid, Chaka, that I hung out with, and this girl Elana, and Malcolm Speller. I just started friending all of them. And then there was this one other kid. His name was Eddie, and I paused.

Should he reach out to Eddie? He got in school with Eddie since he were first learning to walk. Initially, this Jewish day school on the south side of Chicago.

We both transferred to this public school in sixth grade, and I remember hearing that his mom told the office lady at the Jewish day school who told my mom that the reason Eddie transferred schools followed him to the public school, i. E. Ben Austin, meaning me, I was the reason he transferred.

You were the reason he transferred to public school, and then you turned out to go to the same public school?

Yeah. I was like, he probably doesn't want to hear from me.

But on the other hand, decades have passed. They were adults now. They both had kids. This guy, Eddie, had actually become a rabbi. An adult, Ben, didn't want an adult, Eddie, to somehow see that he had friended everybody else, and then not him, and then be hurt by that. So he sends the friend request. Very quickly, he gets a message back.

And there seemed to be a 2,000-word essay that he wrote me in response.

Let me ask you to read a little bit of that.

Okay. Before I broadcast to the world via my 2100 Facebook friends that you and I are friends, I need to get something off my chest. This may sound petty, but when we were boys at Akeba Schechter, I felt insecure in your presence. From nursery school through fifth grade, I recall feeling verbally and at times physically threatened by you. I'm not going to go into specific incidents, and I don't think it matters. What matters is how I felt. I'm sad to say it, but when I teach my own children and students in my synagogue about bullying, the image in the deepest recesses of my mind is a memory of feeling threatened by you.

And then he goes on in his message to you to say, We were kids. I realized it wasn't your fault. You were a kid. Then he says, But even as we got older, I have still carried with me all those years the burden of that experience. Then let me ask you to read how he ends this message to you.

All right. I need to release myself from the burden that has plagued me for so long. I am sorry for throwing all this at you over an innocent friend request. I apologize for holding back all these years and not trying harder to bring about healing in our relationship sooner. If you are willing to acknowledge the hurt and the insecurity that I felt in your presence when we were boys more than 30 years ago, then I not only will forgive you, I will be happy to be your friend in all senses of the term. Best regards, Eddie.

What did you think when you got that?

Honestly, I was like, Fuck Facebook. But I also thought- Wait, you're blaming Facebook for this? Yeah. I was like, Why was I on that? Why did I participate? It was like, I knew it. I knew it. I mean, to be honest, The biggest thing I felt was I couldn't think of something that I did to him. I don't have any recollection of a single incident of harming him or saying something cruel to him. At the same time, I'm thinking, That doesn't mean it didn't happen. I'm also thinking, Maybe I actually just wasn't aware of it or I didn't recollect it. So all those things are swirling through my head.

Before this, Ben had never thought of himself as a bully. He says, Yeah, as a kid, he was unruly. He spent a lot of time in the principal's office, but generally fun-loving. Nothing like what Eddie was describing. Still, Ben figures he'll apologize, even though he doesn't remember doing anything. Then what he ends up writing is this carefully worded non-apology apology. He writes that he's deeply embarrassed. He's sorry he made Eddie feel this way. And then, he can't resist. He goes on to tell this story. It's a memory he had from when they were little kids together. Their teacher had taken the class out to a park across from the school. They're sitting in a circle playing DuckDuck Goose, and this dog runs over. Off leash, golden retriever might. Maybe it was a puppy, Ben. Thanks.

The most unintimidating dog you could ever see in your life. I remember looking over and seeing Eddie's face as he saw the dog, and he looked like he had just seen a ghost, just pure terror. He stood up, and I remember shouting at him, and maybe I'm inventing this memory, but this is how I remember it. I said, Eddie, sit down. The dog isn't interested in you. And he starts to run. And the dog, being a dog, gave Chase. I said to Eddie that maybe I was a lot like that dog, like rambunctuous, playful, and When things ran, I was the person that would give chase.

Were you saying through that story, Maybe I did something, but the problem was that you were too scared of me and I meant you no harm? That dog, is that what you're trying to say with this story?

Totally. I was saying, I'm sorry, and I don't want you to feel bad, and I'm willing to step up and say the things. But then I also had to tell this damn story, which is like, It's actually not me, it's you. I'm not sure that's fair, but you were scared of things that weren't actually threatening you.

Ben ended his message, I do understand. I do acknowledge. I am sorry. Sincerely, Ben. So he sends a message. Eddie writes him right back.

Again, it felt like the ping came back almost like the moment I press in. And he starts, Baruch atah danoy, Elohenu melech ha alam, shehekianu, v'kiamanu, v'hijianu, lasman hazeh. I give thanks to God who has given us life and sustained us and allowed us to reach this moment. Today is a joyful day. I can't adequately I can't really express how moved I am by your words. You are a mensch. I am stunned by the accuracy of your recollection of the 53rd Street Park, now the Harold, Washington Park. To be honest, I struggled with phobia of dogs well into a adulthood.

Let me just interrupt you there. Then he retells the story, too, but he doesn't seem to understand the point you were trying to make with your story that maybe he was the one who was a little too scared of things that weren't scary. Then he writes that he feels like he can literally bury the tension between the two of you that went unacknowledged for more than 30 years. Just read his closing lines here.

I am grateful for this new chapter. Needless to say at this point, but still important. I forgive you. I look forward to staying in and enjoying a true friendship. Your friend, Eddie.

At this point, do you feel like you might have done something to bully him, or do you actually not believe you did anything and it's all in his head? Because I think both things are possible. You really might have done something real that he could tell you if you asked him directly and you realized, Oh, yeah, I did that. But it also might be possible he can't come up with any incident. What do you think is the truth?

Yeah, I actually don't know. I mean, the way you frame that, I have no fucking idea.

This got stuck in Ben's head. What had he done, if anything? Had he been a good kid or a bad kid? Ben decided to find out. Seemed like a good question to ask a rabbi, right? He prepared this report.

I reach out to Eddie, ask if he's game to revisit the messages we sent back and forth, our memories of each other. Sure, he says. It makes sense to do this in person. He's in Florida, a short drive outside Boca Raton in a subdivision. There's a palm tree right in front of us. Sculpted wishes. There's also a house glowing with Christmas decorations, another displaying a beware of dog sign. I know neither can be Eddie's. His is the one in between. Eddie emerges from the front door. Eddie.

Welcome.

Thank you.

Great to see you. Thanks for doing this. Hope you got some sun rays today.

I've seen Eddie only once since we were kids, and I'm struck by how much he looks like the kid I remember. Even though he's now about 6 feet with gray in his goatee, he's wearing a Yamaka. He's also got this pouch attached to his belt for his phone. He leads me inside.

It's my wife, Ariella.

Hi. Hi. Nice to meet You're welcome.

My brother-in-law.

Hi.

Good to meet you. His teenage daughter is home. His other two kids are out in the world. He says one is about to get married. He's been a rabbi at different congregations, but he tells me he now works as a chaplain at a hospital. He likes it because he gets to tend to people of all religions. Eddie guides me into the dining room. Laid out on the table, there are all these photographs, nearly every one of them of us. All right, I'm a little embarrassed of seeing all these things. It catches me off guard. Eddie has been preparing for this meeting. We went to the same high school, too. Our yearbook is open to my senior picture.

So that's you?

Oh, yeah. That's me. Your wife is in here. Yeah, she is. My wife, Danielle, also graduated high school with us. Obviously, I kept in better touch with her. Then, Eddie points to a fated photo I've never seen before. It's of little kids in a classroom around a table eating cupcakes. There's Eddie standing, and not far from him, me.

1977, you and I both turned six. So May was my sixth birthday, and this is my sixth birthday party. So that's me with a crown, and that's you, of course.

Yeah, front and center. Both of us are smiling as wide as can be. But I know for more than 40 years of Eddie's life, He looked at a photo like this one and was haunted by me. Was he right to feel that way? Have I been wrong all these years about who I am? Eddie tells me about the moment he first heard from me again. He was just down the hall here in the kitchen making dinner for his family.

I picked up my phone and was getting the table set, whatever, or waiting for dinner to warm up. I saw a friend request from Ben Austin, and it stopped me cold. In a strange sense, it surprises me even to this day because I've encountered a lot of people throughout my life, and if something was different with you, and that's my memory of you. I felt threatened by you. I felt you were a bully towards me.

All right. This is why I came down here. This is a way harder question for me to ask you, and one that I've probably avoided. I know I've avoided before. And what did I do? How was that your bully?

Yeah, I'm glad to have the opportunity to discuss it. I didn't want to burden you about petty stuff. We're talking about stuff that happened between us when we were six, seven, eight years old, and here we are now, almost on cusp of being 55 years old. So this is 50 years, almost, in the past. So it seems petty. But do you remember what you called me in those early years?

Not at all, Eddie. I almost want to run out of the room. I don't know.

All right. So you called me Eddie Spaghetti.

My response right then, and I feel terrible for saying this, I want to laugh. I mean, I definitely could see myself saying this. I'm not denying that. But in the absence of any memory of what I did to Eddie, I had imagined, I don't know, something so much worse. I came all this way to Florida for a goofy rhyme.

For the six-year-old version of me, I was hypersensitive. Every time you called me Eddie Spaghetti, I burst into tears, and the rest of the class would laugh. Mark would laugh, Ari would laugh, and other people would join in calling you Eddie Spaghetti.

You're pointing at the yearbook pictures here of these kids.

It all seems so silly now. It's utterly silly. But as a six-year-old kid, I felt like I was the one everyone made fun of in class.

I do get it. It's about what a hard time Eddie had back then, how much he felt like an outsider, and how I was one of the kids who made it harder. But it's also just so weird, the two of us sitting here, two men in our 50s, and hearing him repeat what I said when I was like six or seven. I make a nervous joke about spaghetti being positive. It's noodily flexibility, plus it's delicious. Those are the kinds of things I say to people, always have. I recognize that how you react to Eddie's words, What you feel right now about him or me probably depends on your relationship to your own past. Maybe you're remembering things being done to you or doing things to someone else. Or maybe you're the type who's forgotten all this stuff, and that's exactly where you want to keep it. Eddie pauses, and I think he's done. That's all he's got. I guess I wasn't such a bad kid after all. But then Eddie looks down at a yellow legal pad. It's covered in handwritten notes. There's definitely more.

It must have been first or second grade because most of us had those metal lunch boxes, usually with themes from TV shows on them. What did you have? My Lunchbox was the 6 Million Dollar Man with Steve Austin, played by Lee Majors. I love it.

This turns out to be a story about a time I did something That seems worse, physically worse, at least. He says, When we were six, I kicked his ass. I'm not sure why he didn't lead with that. Here's how he remembers it going down.

It's lunchtime. The teacher's telling everybody to get their lunchboxes in the line up. I pull my metal lunchbox off, and someone else's metal lunchbox falls on you, falls on your shoulder. Maybe you had a bruise the next day. But what I do remember is you then just started whacking me. Like I hit you? Yeah, hitting me multiple times. I really remember seeing your eyes and seeing rage in your eyes.

So you're physically-Physically, whacking me.

And then finally, a teacher came over and separated us, and I don't remember anything else that day. I remember you hitting me, and I remember the rage in your eyes.

He says he wasn't seriously injured or anything. We were both just little kids. I don't recall any of this. Well, I'm definitely sorry for that. I don't quite know what to make of it. What does it mean that I did that? I think, Eddie, I probably thought a lot at those times. It's terrible I beat Eddie up. This doesn't seem totally out of character for me. I mean, I remember on the playground back then, kids throwing a ball in my face. I'd get mad and throw it back in theirs. And then we'd go on playing. What I don't get is why what I did to Eddie that day stood out so much from the other chaos of childhood around us. In the middle school, Eddie and I both attended, it wasn't uncommon for one kid to say to another, after school. Meaning at 3: 30 in the parking lot or on the playground, we're going to fight. It was sometimes said to me. When we got to high school, I tried to avoid fights as much as possible. The stakes were too high. I saw kids at my school swing bats, golf clubs, once a hatchet.

Our junior year, two guys jumped me for a gold chain. My wife says when I showed up at school that week with a broken nose in two black eyes, it was the first time she noticed me. Like, noticed me as a potential mate. Not sure what that says about either of us. I remember these moments, but I don't feel plagued by him, not in the way Eddie was by me. But I realized in saying all that, part of me is defending myself. Little kid Ben. I'm trying to prove I wasn't a bully. Later, I even talk with an elementary school principal in Chicago to see whether my actions back then check their four boxes of bullying. I did check at least two. Eddie has one more memory on his notepad that he wants me to hear.

As I recall, We're at the 53rd Street Park. Teacher took us out on a nice day. We're sitting playing duck-duck-goose.

He repeats the same story I shared with him in our Facebook exchange. It starts just as I remember, but with a different conclusion. It's that story of how when we were seven or eight and our class went to the park, a dog was off leash.

I had a serious phobia, and I just high-tailed it, and I ran screaming. I don't know if it was that time, but I know there were other times that I ran across Hyde Park Boulevard, which is a busy street with busses and cars and trucks, back to the safe side where the school building was. And I remember being laughed at by you and other students in the class. Not saying you're the only one, but I perceived you as the ringleader.

Man, in the story I told, it was the opposite of laughing. Yeah. Like I was trying to protect you. Of course. That's the part we remember so differently. Maybe I've held on to my version because in it, I've cast myself as the good guy. I See his terror, and I'm the one calling out to him, telling him not to run. Eddie describes another boy who teased him that day about how fast Eddie ran from the dog. He could be a track star if there was always a dog behind him. Eddie blamed me for that one, too. That's just how he saw me back then.

My memory over the arc of our young childhood was being teased by you, and at some point, that became layered on my dog phobia. And so in a way, you became the dog.

I became the dog? For Eddie, I turned into this major figure in his life. I became this villain. Eddie tells me that when he changed schools, I wasn't the only reason, but I was part of it. And he tells me how decades later, he saw a photo. It was from our 20th high school reunion. He spotted me in the background and was relieved he didn't go. Then, classic me, I sent him that note which was way more clever than honest. He opened it at a cemetery after presiding over a funeral. He tells me it was like a The bell was broken. It set him free.

I think I just wept at that moment. I was just so grateful to hear or to read that you had accepted what I wrote with such incredible grace. And I just felt blessed. It was big. It was a momentous time in my life. I mean, it's a time that there's a before and there's an after.

Eddie, that's powerful and complicated. Yeah, complicated. I decided to tell Eddie the truth. How in that message, the one that broke the spell, I had said sorry, but wasn't sure I had done anything wrong. My apology wasn't really an apology. Did he understand that when he got it?

I think I did, or at least in retrospect, I did. I remember sharing it with other people, and they said, Did he really apologize? And my sense is that perhaps not fully, but it was enough. It was what I needed at that moment, and perhaps I chose to layer more apology on it than you were actually saying at the time. But you finished your note saying, I I acknowledge, and I'm sorry. And that's what I needed at that moment, and that's what I embraced.

It's not just that Eddie and I see our memories of each other differently. I realized we also have a different way of seeing the world. Eddie, he's a man of faith. If it's enough, it's enough. Not me. I can't help it. I need to set the record straight. I'm embarrassed about the things I did and that I hurt you, but I'm also thinking that a lot of it is just it's about being kids. And I don't think I was a bully in that sense. And I wonder if you think I am.

No, absolutely not.

I don't mean right now. I mean, when you think back on those moments.

How can I look at this picture of six-year-old Ben smiling?

But come on. But you looked at that picture for years and saw the dog.

Yes. But this little six-year-old Ben smiling, grinning, sweetest. I mean, look, you could pinch the cheeks, practically.

But that feels like a revisionist history of how you saw that picture for That loomed in your imagination.

I am revising it now, but we as adults have a right to change the narrative.

You know, Eddie, I I feel like your version of me today and over time is both, I'm way worse than I am and I'm better than I am. There's a little bit of way of when you're saying you're seeing my true self. I guess what I'm saying is you're also seeing these two extremes, and I'm not really either of those. As he's pointing at this photo of me, it's like everything has flipped. I'm no longer even a bully when I was a kid. And as an adult, he's talking about me like this great liberator. He even compares me at one point to a famous rabbi who marched with Martin Luther King. In some ways, what I'm hearing is I've liberated you from this stuff, which is also feels... I don't know. That doesn't feel exactly me either. I mean, I try to do... I want to do good. Yeah.

Look, people come to me and say, That time you spent with me in the hospital or that sermon you gave, it changed my life. And did I really do anything? I did what I do every day. Every day I visit people in the hospital. Every day, I study some piece of scripture or Jewish wisdom, and try to make some meaning out of it for a congregation. And sometimes it lands, and sometimes it doesn't. And with you, you did something good, and I'm holding it up as good. How does that sound?

It sounds like Eddie's a pretty good rabbi, and that he got what he needed from me. See, I'm not such a bad guy, but I got something out of this, too. It's clear Eddie and I didn't know each other well kids, and certainly not as adults either. But here I am in Florida, in his subdivision, in his home. I can see the books on his shelves. His kid's artwork is on the walls. He's got a tree out back in his yard. It grows star fruit. Eddie's cut up slices for us to snack on. And we've managed on this night to talk for hours. I do feel responsible for my past actions, even the ones from way back that I can't remember. As far as what to do about that, we now know each other, at least better. That feels real. Maybe at this point in our lives, it's about the best we can do. Amen. Ned Austin is a writer in Chicago.

His most recent book is Correction About the Parole System.

Getting to know you, getting to know all about you, getting to like you, getting to hope you like me.

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I don't think something bad will happen to us. Nobody cares about us. I'm not George Clooney. A few people telling some jokes, let them.

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