The Moth - A Little Crush: Tim Lopez & Janine Hilling

Episode Date: January 15, 2021

This week, stories of childhood crushes and all the fun and embarrassment they entail. Hosted by: Chloe Salmon Storytellers: Tim Lopez, Janine Hilling

Attention Houston! You have listened to our podcast and our radio hour, but did you know the Moth has live storytelling events at Wearhouse Live? The Moth has opened Mike's storytelling competitions called Story Slams that are open to anyone with a five-minute story to share on the night's theme. Upcoming themes include love hurts, stakes, clean, and pride. GoodLamoth.org forward slash Houston to experience a live show near you. That's the moth.org forward slash Houston. Welcome to the moth podcast. I'm your host this week, Chloe Sammon. There are few experiences as simultaneously embarrassing and thrilling as a childhood crush.

Whether you were brave enough to approach the object of your affections or were more of a pining from a far type. In this episode, we have two stories of childhood crushes and all of the highs and lows they entailed. My very first crush was on Kyle S in my kindergarten class. He had boy band hair, could run really fast on the playground, and just generally made my five-year-old heart beat fast. I don't think I ever had the courage

to actually say one single word to him, a crash theme that would follow me through my childhood, but I still remember getting goose bumps whenever I saw him smile. Our first storyteller was a bit braver than I was in his pursuit of young love. Tim Lopez told this story at a New York City Grand Slam where the theme of the night was fuel to the fire. Here's Tim live at the Moth. All right, hello. All right, so it was the first day of sixth grade, which was the last year of elementary

school, and the quasi-romantic but completely non-sexual attention was running high. Years of simmering feelings, required aid and or unrequited crushes, and general preteen angst that come to a boil. In this, our last year altogether before, being scattered to the winds of junior high. Everybody knew who they liked, everybody knew who they liked liked, and the social orders basically

get pretty much determined. And there was this crazy sense of urgency in the air, you know, like a manic, it's now or never a kind of feeling, you know, like Europe before the war. And into this powder cake of, you know, proto-Hormones, walked what could only be described in today's terms as a game changer. Her name was Renika Powers, and she saw her

into our classroom, but if she'd sprung from the pages of a J. Crew catalog. She had very long curly blonde hair, bright blue eyes, faint dusting of freckles, and this kind of perfect smile framed by these absolutely symmetrical dimples. She was empirically speaking the cutest girl of all time. And in addition, she had some personality. She had a panache, style. And as soon, she had some personality. She had a panache style.

And as soon as she walked into our classroom, you could practically hear the sound of our collective innocence shattering. Every guy immediately fell into some kind of love with her and fierce competition in suit to see who would get her attention. Now, personally, I felt like I kind of had the inside lane on this.

I was the class comedian. I don't say clown because I feel like it demeans my work. And people really seem... I knew where I stood. I felt like I was respected among my peers. I felt like all I really had to do to get her was turn on the proverbial charm. Unfortunately, it became abundantly clear early on that she was more bemused than amused by my antics.

I tried everything. I pulled out all the stops. I started with some physical slapstick stuff that was kind of a specialty of mine at the time. When that didn't work, I moved on to kind of some more cerebral things. Topical references, nothing. Nothing was landing at all. And everything really hit a low point this one time out in the playground. We were all out there. I was doing some bits. Things were working. I felt like everything was fine. I was getting laughs, and then when it kind of died down,

Renika says, in front of everybody, so do you think you're funny? And I said, well, yeah. And she says, huh. You know, I just don't think you're quite as funny as you think you are. I mean, which is like, ouch, you know oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, her even more and want to impress her. So, after that, I really toned down my act. I backed off quite a bit until a Christmas time rolled around. It was time for the annual Secret Santa. And, you know, I pulled the name out of

the hat. I unfolded a little piece of paper and I saw the name written in purple ink, Renekka Powers, with a little heart dot over the eye. And I thought, this is perfect. This is my chance. This is my chance to impress her. And so I went home and I told my mom, I said, mom, there's this girl that I like at school. And I have to get her a gift for Christmas and I want something that's going to really impress her. And my mom said, okay, how about jewelry? And I said, jewelry sounds good.

So we went to the mall, went to Macy's, and we picked out this brooch. It was like a gold. It was a gray brooch, right? It was gold. It was a great brooch, right? It was gold. It was a reindeer. And it had like a little red clearly fake ruby nose. And so I was like, all right, that's good.

This is seasonally appropriate. It's classy. I like it. I'm into it. We're driving home. And I just had this feeling, like, I don't know about this. I don't know. This just doesn't have enough punch.

Now, it just doesn't have enough penache. And so the next day at school, our class went to go visit the third grade class in their exhibition of gingerbread houses, an annual tradition. And as we're all online, I'm a few steps behind Renek on a friend, and we get to this one gingerbread house that's very ornately decorated and festooned with these gourmet jelly beans.

And Renek says to her friend, oh my god, gourmet jelly beans, I love these. And her friend's like, what are gourmet jelly beans? And she's like, you know, they're like regular jelly beans, except they have these like crazy flavors, you know, like root beer and coconut and margarita. And her face totally lights up. And she's like, I love gourmet jelly beans.

And I look and I'm like, that's it, gourmet jelly beans. But I go home to my mom. I'm like, mom, we have to go to the mall. Now, I need to get gourmet jelly beans. My mom says, what are gourmet jelly beans? And I'm like, they're just like, they're regular jelly beans, except they have these crazy flavors,

like margarita and pinucolata. And my mom says, are these for kids? And I said, I don't know, and I don't care. So she drives me to the mall. I go to the sweet factory. I'm about to buy a pound of jelly beans. And then I decided by two pounds of jelly beans, because I'm like, I'm not gonna blow this

for lack of jelly beans. So, I pounds of jelly beans because I'm like, this is, I'm not gonna blow this for lack of jelly beans. So, I get the jelly beans. The next day is the big reveal of the secret Santa. I go over to her and I, you know, I had her the broach, and she nicely wraps and everything, and she opens the broach and it's a tepid response. She's like, oh yeah, it's nice, you know, like thanks. And I was like, and also I got you this.

And it's a bag and it's very wrapped. And she opens it and she pulls out the jelly beans and they absolutely killed. She, I just saw a look on her face change. She went from kind of like this neutral like, huh, until like, she literally did the, ah, and then she said, how did you know? And I said, I just knew.

And, and, she comes into hug me. She wraps her arms around me and we share this kind of hug and I, you know, she wraps her arms around me, and we share this kind of hug, and I feel her cable knit sweater under my hands, and her hair is on my neck, and I feel something in the pit of my stomach that I've never felt before. And we take a step back from each other, and she looks at me, and she gives me a look

that I've definitely never seen before. On the next day, she shows up at school, wearing the brooch, and she's my girlfriend. And, yes. Yes. On the next day, she shows up at school, wearing the brooch, and she's my girlfriend. And yes. Yes. And you know, it took many, many, many more years for me to realize that getting a girlfriend and keeping

a girlfriend are two completely different things. But that's a different story. Thank you very much. That was Tim Lopez. Tim Lopez is a storyteller and teaching artist from Los Angeles. His stories have been heard on public radio stations and podcasts far and wide. He is also an educator with the Moth community and education Programs where he works in local communities and with high school students to craft and perform true personal stories in New York City and beyond. Our stories this week gave me a very good excuse to get nosy and ask some friends to share

their own experiences of past crushes. So before we hear our next story, here's one from Mothhost, Dame Wilburn. She said, his name was Marco, and we were sworn enemies from fourth to eighth grade. During a school trip to the sand dunes, when I was sitting with my knees bent, Marco sat in front of me and leaned his back against my legs. It was the first time a boy touched me. And 34 years later, he still crosses my mind whenever I see sand.

Whew, damn, my goodness. Truly an eighth grade romance for the ages. Honestly, just a romance for the ages. And Marco, if you're listening, drop us a line. You can find us on Twitter and Facebook at the Moth and at Moth Stories on Instagram. Up next on the podcast, Janine Hilling. Janine told this story at a Story Slam in Melbourne, Australia,

where the theme of the night was creepy. Here's Janine live at the Moth. Applause At 13, I was a small town bogan with a bad attitude and an even worse haircut. But the man in my dreams he was everything I wasn't. He was handsome, he was sophisticated, he was from the city, he was also 23 years old and my teacher. And look, nowadays when I think about Mr. Chao, I realize he wasn't really all that. Like, he was just an average looking guy

who will the same jump at a school every single day. And it looked like it was made out of cat hair and tinsel, but back then, that wasn't the deal breaker that it might be today. At first, I watched Mr. Chow, I loved Mr. Chow from afar. His house was just behind ours, with just a vacant block in between. And so after school where my parents were at work, I'd stand on the back veranda with a winy red

and a pair of binoculars that I borrowed off my mum's friend's suit and I'd watch him and sometimes I get my camera and put it in between like a really shit paparazzi and try and get candid shots of Mr. Cha taking his bins out and that was okay for a while but eventually I decided it was time to make my feelings known. It was a risky move but eventually I decided it was time to make my feelings known. It was a risky move, but I knew just the person to help me with it. My friend Joe had an extensive collection of cosmopolitan magazines, and we were convinced these things would help us find a way for me to impress Mr. Chao and make him want to

be my boyfriend. So we read these things, covered a cover, and eventually we found an article called something like, 10 easy ways to snare a man or something terrifyingly like Cosmo like that. And the way we went with was like a nightclub situation where I could use these man-eating moves that I would learn from the accompanying article to seduce the objective of my desire on the dance floor. And this was perfect because we had a school disco coming up the very next week. So all week I practiced my moves and I picked out the sexiest song I could think of. And by the time the disco came around I felt like I was ready. So there we are, me and Joe at the disco in the car park, neck half a bottle of

Carrington Blush. Have a couple of quick darts and I'll wobble up to the DJ booth. One glassy aisle Mr. Chair who's over there in the corner completely unaware of what is about to go down. I have a quick word with the DJ who winks and puts on my song. AC, DC, you shook me all night long. With moves that look probably nothing, my the ones in Cosmo, I advance towards Mr. Chao. And the thing I remember after all this time is just the look of pure horror. On this guy's face as he saw me coming, he looked around for another

teacher to help him, but everyone was busy. He was all alone. I advanced. He retreated. I circled him like a sheep dog, eventually dancing him into the corner where he remained presumably in a state of shock for the rest of the song. And I say presumably because by this time I was so intent on nailing my man-eating moves, I wasn't even paying attention to him anymore. I wasn't dancing with him, I wasn't even dancing for him. I was dancing at him. When the song was over, I turned on my heel and I walked straight out of there because, according to Cosmo, this would add an air of mystery to the whole thing. And leave the object of your desire, feeling like he didn't know what had hit him.

So Joe joined me shortly afterwards and confirmed that my dance moves had been off the hook. And B. Mr. Charles definitely looked like someone who didn't know what had hit him. I was so excited to go to school the next day. I didn't know what this was going to mean for my name is the Charles relationship, but I was pretty sure he was going to want to be my boyfriend. What I wasn't expecting was a trip to the guidance counsellor's office. He had told her everything. I need even had the nerve to call my dance moves bizarre and inappropriate. I was gutted. Mr. Chow did not want to be my boyfriend. I was moved to a new class pretty much immediately after that. And although I still saw Mr. Chow around when he wasn't quick enough to just duck into a doorway when he saw me coming, eventually I just sort of filed that away in the part

of my brain that I reserve for all the many humiliating things I've done in my life. But nowadays when I think about it, like part of me is just absolutely horrified that I could have done anything quite that creepy. But there's another part of me that's almost a little bit proud of that dumb, horny little dirtbag. Who was trying so hard to be the sassy, sophisticated dirtbag she eventually became. Thank you.

That was Jeanine Hilling. Jeanine is a Melbourne-based writer and storyteller who comes from a long line of tailspinners. Her stories have been featured on ABC radio national in Australia, and she's currently working on her first novel and a collection of short stories. Crushes like most things from our childhood can be kind of cringey to reflect on.

But the stories in this episode remind us to look at the golden parts as well. The butterfly rush, the vulnerability, and yes, the laughter. In that spirit, I'll leave you with one last crush moment from Moth Assistant Producer, Adrian Vento. Adrian said, from 5th grade through high school, I would ride all my crushes' names on a hidden spot on the wall in my bedroom. We painted the room recently, but you can still see faint sharpie underneath the white paint. If you'd like to read more little crush moments from Moth Storytellers and staff, head over to the extras for this

episode at the moth.org slash extras. Thank you to everyone who shared a moment or a story in this episode, and to you for listening. From all of us here at The Moth, have a story-worthy week. Chloe Salmon is a producer on the Moth's main stage and story slam teams, a director on the main stage and a member of the pitchline team. Her favorite Moth moments come on show days. When the cardio is done, the house lights go down and the magic settles in.

This episode of the moth podcast was produced by me, Julia Purcell, with Sarah Austin Janess, Sarah Jane Johnson and Chloe Salmon. The rest of the moth leadership team includes Catherine Burns, Sarah Haberman, Jennifer Hickson, Meg Bulls, Kate Tellers, Jennifer Birmingham, Marina Klucce, Suzanne Rust, Branding Grant, Inga Glodowski, and Aldi Kaza. Moth stories are true as remembered and affirmed by story tellers. For more about our podcast, information on pitching your story and everything else, go to our website, themoth.org. The Moth Podcast is presented by PRX, the public radio exchange, helping make public radio

more public at prx.org.