The Moth - Making Moves: Ashley Johnson & Peter Laughter

Episode Date: December 5, 2020

In this episode, two stories about making it happen. This episode of The Moth Podcast is hosted by Dame Wilburn. Make sure to head to themoth.org/extras to check out more from our storytellers! Hosted by: Dame Wilburn Storytellers: Ashley Johnson, Peter Laughter

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, Dame Wilburn. Look, the world is strange right now. Now, we don't all get along and we don't all have the same perspective on things,

but I think we can pretty much all agree that this is a strange time we're living in. And with so much of this out of our control, the decisions we do get to make for ourselves become all the more important. So in this week's episode, we have two stories about getting your life together and taking matters into your own hands. First up is Ashley Johnson.

Ashley told this story at a Washington DC Story Slamp where the theme of the night was awards. Here's Ashley, live at the moment. I am originally from Maryland and I knew at a young age that I wanted to be a professional actress. I was one of those weird kids who would lock myself in the bathroom and look in the mirror and make myself cry because I was getting prepared for all the dramatic roles that I was gonna play. So, I decided that after I graduated from college, that I was gonna move to Los Angeles.

So, three months after graduating, I moved to LA, the place where dreams come true. Well, let's just say that things didn't quite work out how I thought they would when I got there. So I ended up getting a corporate America job. But it's okay because I figured I could work in corporate America while pursuing my acting career and I wouldn't have to be a star of an artist. So year one rose by I'm working in corporate America not really doing anything acting related but it's okay because I just got to LA

still trying to find my groove. You're two roads by. Got a promotion? Not really doing anything actin' related, because I'm making money, more money than I've ever seen, straight out of college. You're three roads by, you're four roads by,

you're five roads by, and I am miserable. I did not move to LA to work in corporate America. I'm tired of sitting at that cubicle, so I quit. And I knew that there were three things that I needed in order to pursue a career in acting. I needed a good headshot. I needed training and I needed an agent. Head to headshot was taking classes during the training,

but I didn't have an agent. So I started sending my resume out to different agencies. My head shot and resume out to different agencies all over LA. And one day, I got an email from an agency asking me to come into audition. So the big day for the audition arrives. And I get to the office building where the agency is,

and I'm greeted by the receptionist. She gives me two different scripts, one is a commercial script, and one is a dramatic script. And she tells me that I have five minutes to prepare and that she'll come back and get me and take me to see the agents. So I prepare, I'm ready, I go in the room, I go through the commercial part of the audition,

did a great job on that. I go through the dramatic part of the audition, did a great job on that. And I'm thinking I'm done. I look over to my right. Well, let me tell you how the room was set up. There was three agents, one on my right, one on my left, and one in the middle.

So I look over on my right, and I notice that the agent has my resume in his hand. He's staring at it a little longer than he should be. And his eyes stop at the bottom of my resume. He says, you sing? And I'm like, yeah, I sing, because I put it on my resume. And he's like, let's hear something.

Okay, pause right there. Three days earlier, I was having dental work done. I've had a chip tooth since I was a little girl, so I decided that if I'm gonna take my acting career seriously, I need to get my tooth fixed. So I decided to get a veneer, and if you're not familiar with that, they pretty much shave your tooth down

to nothing to put the permanent tooth on there. Well, at least that was my experience. So they did that, and they weren't able to give me the permanent tooth that day, so they gave me a temporary one, and they also gave me a plastic cover to keep the tooth in place just in case. Back to the audition. You sing?

Yeah, I sing. Let's hear something. So I walk over to the agent's desk, and I take a tissue off his desk without asking my you, and I spit the plastic cover in the tissue, and then I sit it on his desk. I don't know why I did that. My nerves must've got the best to me.

And I go back to the center of the room, and I proceed to singing, boom. The tooth falls out on the floor. Oh my God. I was so embarrassed. It was so silent in there, you could hear a pen drop. Well, in this case, you could hear a tooth drop. Oh my God.

In that moment, I had to make a decision, a decision. And I going to finish this audition. Am I going to run out of here from sheer embarrassment? Yeah, I want to know what I did. I picked the two-foot off the ground, popped it in my mouth, and sang my heart out. Oh! Oh!

Oh! Oh! Oh! So, I'm happy to report to you all that I did end up getting signed by that agency. I was awarded a contract and they really didn't care about my mis-infront tooth after all because as the saying goes in show business, the show must go on.

That was Ashley Johnson. Since sharing this story at The Moth, Ashley has published two books and wrote, directed, and produced a short film called Where's Mother. Ashley continues to write and act, and she says she's looking forward to sharing more stories for many years to come. But more information on Ashley's work head to the extras for this episode on our website, themoth.org slash extras. Up next, Peter Laughter. Peter told this story at a New York City Story slam where the theme of the night was named.

Here's Peter, live at the Moth. My wife came out of the hospital room and her eyes were ringed with red. And I took her to my arms and we just both cried. She was saying goodbye to my brother and we were taking him off life's report that night after about three weeks of him being in a coma. And we broke our embrace and she looked up at me and she said, I promised that it would name our first child either Edward or Dweena. And I looked at her and I said, oh, you better hope he lifts through the night because you got to take that shit back. And I said that for two reasons.

Because one, I just didn't want to say the name Ed Weena for the rest of my life. And I knew with my karma as a shitty teenage boy that I was definitely having a daughter first. There was no question about that. But the second reason, so names have power, right? And I think I know this more than most people. And the day I realized it, I was in a bank in Mexico. And I passed the teller, a travelers check.

It was 1991. And she looked at the travelers check and she looked at my passport and then she disappeared. And I leaned over and I looked around and she was on the floor laughing. And this was not a surprise. The name I was born with was Fercasso. And an Italian F Fricaso means explosion or natural disaster, which is kind of fitting for my life. But in Spanish, Fricaso means complete and utter failure.

And in certain countries, which was new to me, but apparently Mexico is one of them, Fricaso is synonymous with the word fuck up. So I could completely understand that if someone handed me a piece of paper that said Peter fuck up, I would laugh hysterically too. But it was that moment where I realized, this is my father's name, a man who left when I was two, that I have not seen since I was eight.

He never paid child support, lied about his address. We couldn't find the fucker to actually contribute to my life. And here I am, I'm carrying this name, which this is horrible legacy. And so in that moment, I decided to take on my mother's name, which was an upgrade, not a big one. My mom's last name was slaughter. But after witnessing people's reaction to my name

and that by laughing so hard that they had to fall off their chair at their place of employment, no doubt, I realized it was time. It was time for me to really choose the woman's name who had raised me, who had contributed the most to my existence and my adulthood. And so when I came home from that six-month period in Mexico and I saw my mom and I explained,

hey, I made this decision. I want to take on your name. And she said, funny, funny, you should mention that. I have been thinking about dropping the S. And I thought that was awesome. So together, I took on her name and we together dropped the S. And I spent a lot of time thinking about, like, you know, I at that time, I was, you know, 20, 20 years old and I wanted to get my PhD in sociology and teach and I thought, but Dr. Lafter sounded a little bit too much

like a pimp. And yeah, so I went with a pronunciation louder and Peter Lauder sounded much better than Peter fuck up. And so life went on and then I got married. And my wife, who took on my name, thought that I was completely psychotic for using the prensination lauder. When it was spelled laughter. It was just like, that was just absolutely absurd. So, she went by laughter and I went by lauder. And it was totally confusing.

Until much to my surprise, I found myself one day introducing myself as Peter laughter. And when you introduce yourself as Peter laughter, people react to you in a very, very specific and positive way. That's what a great name. You must be so happy. And you know, when 50 people say that to you in a period of a month, you actually start to believe it.

You start to take that on. And so when my wife said that she was going to name our daughter, Edwina, I knew that was a mistake. Yeah. And we talked about it and we decided that we were going to name our child Eddie, either way. And I knew it was going to have a girl and I worried about the reaction to people who had to boys name.

And we spelled it EDDY, like a current moving in the opposite direction, because I wanted the magic of my brother and the magic of moving against the current to be part of her life. And I remember when she was about four years old, we were at a birthday party, and there was a magician who asked for volunteers, and she volunteered, and the magician said those words.

Isn't that a boy's name? And I remember myself standing up and I was angry and I was waiting for this moment. I knew it would come and my daughter at four just looked at him like he was a stupid idiot and said no, that's my name. And I knew that the magic worked. Thank you.

That was Peter Laughter. Peter told us that he and Ed were bas big brothers, big sisters a when Peter was just nine said, Ed was the best man long after we met that we become brothers in every Peter sat down with his about how she feels about

Peter and Eddie. So Eddie, you were named after your uncle Ed, my brother, who you have never met. And I've been wondering what the fact that you're named after a man, and you're a young woman, and how that, you think that impacts you. It's, I know it's something that's really special to me, and I think it's really fitting for who I am. And I think if people didn't bring up the fact that it's, quote, quote, boys name, I would have never thought about it. And I, but I even think the kind of like ambiguity of it is really important to me.

And it's just like, it feels very me, I don't know. It does feel very you. And it's one of the things that, yeah, surprised me ever since you were three. And up until now, 14 years later, you know, the name suits you. The thing, and I know I read into this because I loved your uncle so much, but I see so much of you in him. And it's not, I mean, clearly it's not genetic, because we were not genetically related

at an eye but your just intense curiosity was something that I saw in him and when you latch on to something you really latch on, yeah just, you're desire to learn everything about some very very obscure thing was something that he really shared. And, yeah, I had this just as wonder in intellectual discovery, which I grew into, but I think that something that you've always had, which is fascinating to me. That makes me really happy to hear. I, I make me really happy. I remember when I was younger and you describing that I was named after him and just sort of deciding that because of that I was like, is like a part of me from there and I, I feel very connected to

him even though I know about him but in the only very abstract senses. Well the other thing that I think about with, but in the only very abstract senses. Well, the other thing that I think about with your name is this constant reminder of what family is or was for me, and now is for us and our family, and because Ed adopted me as a little brother when I was nine. You know, I realized that family is what you choose, not what you end up with, and that's been really powerful. Definitely. Yeah, so, yeah, and your name is a constant reminder

of that for me. Oh, no. No. Love you, kiddo. That was Peter and Eddie Laughter. To see some photos of Peter and his family, go to the extras for this episode on our website, the moth.org slash extras. My middle name is Sheherzai. Yes, 12 letters.

She was the storyteller in 2001 Arabian Knights. And we are in no way related. And no, Sheherzai is not a family name. I didn't know I was a storyteller when I was an infant. My mother, possibly, didn't know I'd a storyteller when I was an infant. My mother, possibly, didn't know I'd grew up to be one, but I totally get where Eddie's coming from. Sometimes your name isn't just what they call you.

Sometimes it's who you are. And from this Damien, I understand exactly what it means to be an idiot. Before we go, we like to give a special shout out to all the Edwin's out there. We think your name is lovely. From all of us here at the Moth, have a story-worthy week. Dame Wilburn is a long-time host and storyteller at the Moth. She's also the host of the podcast, Dane's Ecclectic Brain. Dame Wilburn is a longtime host and storyteller at The Moth. She's also the host of the podcast, Dame's Ecclectic Brain.

Podcast production by Julia Purcell. The Moth Podcast is presented by PRX, the Public Radio Exchange, helping make public radio more public at PRX.org. or