This American Life - 850: If You Want to Destroy My Sweater, Hold This Thread as I Walk Away

Episode Date: December 22, 2024

The tiny thing that unravels your world. Visit thisamericanlife.org/lifepartners to sign up for our premium subscription.Prologue: Ira talks to Chris Benderev, whose high school years were completely upended by an impromptu thing his teacher said. (8 minutes)Act One: For Producer Lilly Sullivan, there’s one story about her parents that defines how she sees them, their family, and their history. She finds out it might be wrong. (27 minutes)Act Two: For years, Mike Comite has replayed in his head the moment when he and his bandmate blew their shot of making it as musicians. He sets out to uncover how it all went awry. (13 minutes)Act Three: Six million Syrians fled the country after the start of its civil war. A few weeks ago, one woman watched from afar as everything in her home country changed forever – again. (9 minutes)Transcripts are available at thisamericanlife.orgThis American Life privacy policy.Learn more about sponsor message choices.

A quick warning, there are curse words that are un-beeped in today's episode of the show. If you prefer a beeped version, you can find that at our website, thisamericanlife.org. This is not a setting where Chris was used to learning anything important, much less having his whole world rocked by something somebody said. He was 15, in health class, in San Juan Capistrano, California. As Chris remembers it, it was the beginning of the period. Class was just beginning to settle down. The teacher was also the school's basketball coach.

You know, in my memory, he's sort of the standard issue, I don't know, tallish white guy coach with like neatly parted brown hair. And you know, the bell rings, class is supposed to start, and we're all just, you know, the bell rings, class is supposed to start, and we're all just, you know, talking over him, not listening, and he's trying to get class started. And I think he's getting understandably a little annoyed. And then at one point, one of the girls said loudly, like, we're all going to be friends

forever. And then he gets our attention and said something like, you know, just for your information, you're not going to all stay friends forever. And let me tell you a little bit about like how friendships work. He says like in a couple of years, you know, high school's gonna end and you're gonna all scatter to different jobs or colleges and you're gonna start falling out of touch with each other and eventually you're not gonna talk to most of any of these other people. And now you might…

Can we just pause? That is such… It's real, It's very true. But like, what a funny thing to say to a bunch of kids. Yeah, it's like suddenly he had our full attention. But then, the teacher kept going. He wasn't done. He got very specific and said, okay, you might stay in touch with a few friends from high school.

He said like, well then you're going to get into your 30s and your 40s and it'll be harder. You know, you'll be working and then, you know, some of you might get married and your free time, a lot of that should go towards your spouse. And if you have kids, oh, like whatever little free time you have left, like that'll go to the kids. And finally, he said, like, the only friends you're going to be left with are the parents of whatever kid your little toddler or whatever randomly sidles up to because they both like the same part of the playground. Like, that person, that parent, that's going to be your friend.

That is a very thorough and vivid and not inaccurate, like, picture of the future that it's amazing that he went into that much detail. Yes, by then we were like, I remember a sort of like stunned silence at that point. And maybe there's like one person who said like, no, or like, no, he's wrong, or we're going to stay friends or something. And then the class began and I don't remember anything else from that day. This is actually one of the producers on our show, Chris Beddarev. He says he remembers the other kids in class kind of shrugging this off like, yeah, whatever. But he couldn't. Did you think it was true? Did you think it was true? Absolutely. I thought that he, I remember thinking, oh no, I hope that he's wrong, but it sounds like he's right. That's what I remember thinking.

It had the air of truth. Like, partly because it was so specific. The playground detail, especially. Before this moment, Chris hadn't bothered picturing what the future was going gonna be like very much. He had a vague sense that things were gonna get better and better. But now thanks to this random speech by this otherwise forgotten teacher, he realized the future he was facing. It's gonna get tedious and small and narrow and boring. Because like when you're in high school, like what is better than hanging out with your friends?

Like that was the best thing you could do. And so you're going to have less and less of that. And this tiny world where you don't even get to pick your friends, I don't know, that just seemed very sad at the time and scary a little bit. In fact, as senior year approached, as graduation day approached, Chris says that this tiny two-minute speech by this teacher totally colored how he was seeing it. He loved his friends. I was scared of the end of high school in a way that I think most 18-year-olds aren't.

It seemed like this was going to be the beginning of the end. And so I became very kind of nostalgic and also fearful, like, you know, a doomsday clock or something was running down. Chris actually tracked down the health teacher recently. And of course, he had no memory of making that speech. Though he said it was exactly the kind of thing that he might have said. And in fact he did remember saying it at some point to his own kids. This teacher said that he would like to believe that he meant it in a kind of nice, cherish-ly

special time sort of way. And he was horrified at the thought that this made Chris or any other kid feel bad for the rest of high school. But it just goes to show you that somebody can say something off the cuff that this made Chris or any other kid feel bad for the rest of high school. But it just goes to show you that somebody can say something off the cuff that can accidentally turn somebody else's world completely upside down. We asked listeners if they ever experienced this and hundreds responded. Some of the sentences that were said casually to them, later alone, they obsessed over.

It's not your glasses that aren't even, it's your face. You must have been surrounded by some pretty insensitive people growing up. No, no, you're the only circumcised one in the family. And one last one said by a childhood acquaintance at a funeral. Jenny, little Jenny, you're the one that nobody liked. In Chris's case, the teacher's comment obviously stayed with him. How old are you now? I am 38.

And how many friends from high school are you in touch with? A few, a few. Count. Three or four, three or four. And really only one that I see regularly. So the guy was right. Yes, he was absolutely right.

He fully predicted my future. These days, Chris is married. One child. In fact, the only friends I've made recently are the parents of the other kids who were in my son's daycare. Yeah. And in fact, now that you are married and have children, is your life tedious and narrow and boring? In some ways it is, but I like it. I really like it. It is, but I like it. I really like it.

I obviously like spending time with my kid and my wife and the people I made friends with that are the parents of the kids randomly assigned to my kid's daycare class. Yeah, they're delightful. What a day on my program. If you want to destroy my sweater, hold this thread as I walk away. We have stories about the things that people say that unravel your world, turn it upside down, shake it like a snow globe, pick your own metaphor for this. Some of these offhand things that people say are completely accurate, others are the exact

opposite and it can be really hard sometimes to tell which is which. We have real-life case examples, including somebody who thinks his life was completely upended after a single brief real-life encounter with Weezer from WBEZ Chicago. It's This American Life. I'm Ira Glass. Stay with us. no hidden fees. Download the Wyze app today or visit Wyze.com, T's and C's apply. Hey, this is Ira talking now in the break. I'm here in the break to give you this little talk that I feel a little ashamed of, but I'm also going to do, which is to remind any last-minute shoppers out there that you can give

a This American Life Partners subscription as a holiday gift. If you have a loved one who's a fan of the show, someone who would enjoy getting all the bonus episodes that we've been putting out and so far there's been one every other week it's a lot of material, Life Partners also here the show without ads like the one you're listening to right now. They get a greatest hits collection of hundreds of favorite shows right in their podcast feed shows up right there. So if you know somebody who might like that and you need a last-minute present, sign them up at thisamericanlife.org slash life partners. That link is also in the show notes.

It is also a gift to us here at our show, of course, because all these subscriptions help us keep making the show. Okay, that's all I have to say about that. Back to today's episode. episode. This is American Life, Act One. The world has turned and left me here. So let's kick off this show about people saying things that unravel your picture of the world with this from Lily Sullivan. In my family there's a story, the kind your family never forgets. It's about a hitchhiker. It happened decades ago in 1974. There were three women in a car. My aunt Manuelita, her daughter, and their cousin. Manuelita was driving. And I was going in my car and then I saw him hitchhiking like this.

Holding his finger in the air. Manuelita is now 96 and her daughter in the car, Anita, remembers more of the details. So I'm gonna let Anita tell a lot of this. She was a kid at the time, 10 years old. For me it was such a shocking event. It permeated every cell of my being meaning like I just remember it all very clearly. We were in the car, my mother was driving, she was always impeccably dressed if she was going out. And it was raining that day. My mother exited the freeway

and she spotted this young man hitchhiking. He was tall and lanky and he had long, blonde, dirty blonde hair, well, because it was wet, it was raining, you know, and his beard was just like down to his chest. And he had his shirt inside out and miss buttoned. And she said, oh, he has such kind eyes. And I was like, no he doesn't,

you can't see his eyes, it's raining. And she said, no, I was not afraid of him. But she was? Yeah. Anita was scared because they were in Northern California, and there were serial killers, a few of them, around there in the 70s. Even at 10, Anita knew this. All three women in the car were small, all under five feet. Anita in the front seat, their cousin Cecilia in the back. Again, here's Anita.

And then, of course, I was protesting loudly, don't stop the car. And Cecilia even said, no, Manuelita, don't do it. Don't do it. Manuelita stopped anyway. The man came to the window. Don't do it. Don't do it. My relative stopped anyway. The man came to the window and he had to talk through the passenger side window where I was sitting and kind of like freaking out that he was in my face now. I need to remember sitting stock still staring straight ahead, afraid to make eye contact

as a stranger somehow talked them into letting him into the car. And my mother didn't speak very good English, neither did Cecilia. But guess who did speak Spanish? Serial killer looking white guy? Turns out, fluent in Spanish. The hitchhiker lumbered into the backseat, next to Cecilia. Cecilia had only been in the country a few weeks

at that point, and was like, what on earth? She was 26. And Cecilia, you know, she was all dressed prim and proper and, and she even had little white gloves on. And he had a booming personality to match him, booming voice. He had a great voice. He got in the car and everybody calmed down when we heard him speak to Cecilia so kindly and my mother introduced them and she pointed out that she

had just come. Cecilia had just come to the U.S. from Peru. And this is how the story started. Their life changed. Our lives changed. It was like a meteor hitting the earth when we met Brian. Brian, that was a hitchhiker's name, which I know because that guy's my dad. Cecilia, their legendary first meeting. It was followed by a similarly legendary first date. My mom's sister and cousin dressed her up in their own clothes, white bell bottoms, white platform heels.

My dad showed up in a poncho, and he took her hiking in the Redwood Forest, where it rained. He ended up carrying her so that she wouldn't ruin the shoes she'd borrowed. Two weeks later, they eloped, headed off to Reno, but ended up stopping in a random town nearby where marriage licenses were $5 cheaper. They got married at 7 a.m. on Christmas Eve. Anita remembers them coming home after with their marriage license. I can remember even the knock on the door.

And I ran to open it. And there they were, standing there. I yelled to my mom that they were here and she came running. Her mom, Manulita. She welcomed them in and I don't know what happened next, but they came back married. And they loved each other till the end. That's so cool. It's such a good story.

Like I said, legendary. This story is the bedrock foundation of how I see my parents, especially my dad. I picture him at 26, his Miss Button shirt, catching rides through the West Coast alone, this big white guy from Detroit climbing into this car full of immigrants, just exuberant, and thinking, wow, I'm going to marry this lady. And I picture my mom at 26, having just arrived in the country, self-contained, determined, seeing this weirdo and deciding, yes, him. When you enter the family,

this is pretty much the one story we make you memorize. And then you could be a citizen of the family. Here's my brother-in-law, Lars. How many times do you think you've heard this story? I don't know, many times. 50, 100. Many times. And the meaning of this story has always been clear. If they didn't pick him up, we would, all of us wouldn't be here right now. Here I am with my niece and nephews.

I wouldn't be here, and you wouldn't be here, your mom wouldn't be here. And Sammy wouldn't be here. Sammy wouldn't be here. Tina wouldn't be here. Marian wouldn't be here. Wally wouldn't be here? And Sammy wouldn't be here? Sammy wouldn't be here? Nenna wouldn't be here? Marian wouldn't be here? Wally wouldn't be here? Anyone that we know wouldn't be here? No.

Well, we wouldn't be here to know them. No. No. No. No. No. No. No.

No. No. There's something predestined about it. This is such an important story, I thought. You know what? I want to visit the spot where the meteor struck. My dad died 10 years ago. I miss him.

Always. And he doesn't have a grave. He insisted on cremation by, quote, the cheapest means possible. He didn't like fancy things. And I also think that he didn't want to be a burden. Anyway, when I want to remember him, there's not like a location I can go to. I can't like put flowers by a tombstone. So how about this place? This legendary spot where he climbed into a car and our family began. So, can't be hard. So where was it? Anita says it was by the

freeway exit by our house. Manuelita says it was an on-ramp heading downtown. They're not definitive about it. So I went to the third person in the car that day, my mom, and she says, sure, I know exactly where it was. And then she starts to tell me this story. I remember, what I remember is that we were walking, down the street, walking to the car. And Brian said, hola. Brian, my dad. And Manolita said, hola, hola, we all said hola.

You saw him when he was walking? Yes. He was walking to go to the bus stop. The bus stop? He was taking the bus? This is not the story I'd always heard. In my mom's version, they weren't in a car. She and Manuelita were walking down the street.

They'd just left the Jacksons' house. The Jacksons were a family where my tía Manuelita worked as a cook. She says it was a beautiful day, not raining at all, and most importantly, dad wasn't hitchhiking. Was he like holding up a sign or something saying he wanted a ride? No. Because the story's always been hitchhiking. No. Wait, mom, but your story and Anita's story is completely different. She remembers it clearly.

Yeah, that was what came to stop. Then why does she remember this other story? I don't know. From my mom's point of view, this is especially mysterious because she's quite certain that Anita wasn't there. Not in a car. Not on the street. Not there for this moment at all.

I don't think Anita was. Anita remembers it. I don't think she was. No, no I don't. Okay. This kind of knocked me over. The hitchhiking story, as I've said, is the origin story of my family. My mom's had a private version of it for 50 years, but she's kept herself during the

many, many conversations where we tell it. When my dad died 10 years ago, we wrote about this story in his obituary. Like, printed it in our local newspaper. We ran that obituary by my mom. Did you think it was worth correcting? Dad was the memory keeper of our family. A big-hearted, big-brained guy who held on to everything that happened. Who had chicken pox first as a kid? Natalie, he'd say. What was the name of that iguana that we had that died? Mari Iguana, he'd say. He would absolutely know exactly where this happened.

And the thought that he's not here to tell us, it makes him feel so gone. Like we had a favorite photo of him, and we have no idea where it is anymore. When my dad died, it was sudden and it devastated me. As time passes, we've lost so much of him. His clothes have lost the smell of wool and sawdust and too much tied laundry detergent. And this, it was like losing a big piece of him again. Because in his absence, and in our negligence, we simply forgot to remember. Unforgivable.

I had to fix this. I had to get to the truth. I forced the three of them, Manolita, Anita, and my mom, to sit down together to try to work this out, come to some agreement about what happened and where. Anita is stunned to hear that my mom and Manolita don't think she was in the car. So yeah, my story's not going to change. I was in the car, I was in the front seat. You were in the back seat. Mom turns to me.

I don't remember never anything wrong. She tells the others they weren't even in a car. But Manulita, you remember him hitchhiking, and you were driving, and you pulled over, right? Yeah, of course. That's why I pick him up. Yeah. She remembers walking, that you all were walking. No, we were not walking.

Oh yeah, I was driving. Yeah, I was driving. Yeah, hitchhiking. He was hitchhiking. This went nowhere. And the fact that we've been telling this hitchhiking story for 50 years, and my mom's never mentioned that she thinks it's complete bullshit, I have to say, that's very much like my mom. She's eminently capable of keeping her thoughts and feelings to herself. She has feelings, obviously, but she shows love in concrete ways.

An unasked for plate of fruit, a bowl of soup. She'd give me her kidney or hide a body for me, no questions asked. But sitting around gabbing about feelings, not her thing. She finds that trying. She'll either roll her eyes or blurt out something explosive and walk away. Or clam up. Here's us in the car. Mom, so, but, but, I just, is it interesting to you that you have one memory and other people have a different memory? Is it interesting? Um, I know that stories are like that. I know, I know, but is it interesting? I want to talk about the feelings of it. That's good. Yeah, that's how we met.

Yeah, but what's it, what's it like? How do you feel? Nothing. It's okay. She gets impatient. She dodges. In response, I get impatient with her. About everything. I compulsively nitpick everything she does. Can you put your bag in back? There's the noise. It's too much noise. Rustling that bag makes noise that gets on the mic, I tell her.

So does her beaded necklace. Could you take off your necklace? Rather than engage with me, she whips out her little pot of Mary Kay cold cream and starts stabbing it on her cheeks and forehead. This will crease my face. Now I can't even make it work. It's about to get slippery. Okay. Can you just put the cream on after we go?

Okay. It's okay. It's going on. You can't be messing with it as we drive. Okay. I'm a nightmare. She lets it go. She's a good mom.

Of course, the day my parents met, there was one other person there. My dad. I'd interviewed him in 2010, years before he died. Before he even got sick. I've never been able to bring myself to listen to that recording, just too hard. So I had no memory of what we talked about that day, but I had a hunch that if I'd done an interview with him, I would have asked him to tell me this story. I had no idea where this interview was, but I'd given him a copy and I knew he would have kept it. The week I talked to my mom, I spent hours digging through old file cabinets and boxes in the garage. I finally found it one night at 2 a.m. I threw on all the lights, ran into bed, and listened immediately. Okay, um, how did you meet mom? I was hitchhiking on Rio Del Mar Boulevard and Manuelita

picked me up and I believe Anita was in the car too. Oh my god of course he has all the answers. Anita said no don't add don't even think of stopping for this guy and Manuelita said he's cute and and that's how I met your mom. What kind of car were they driving? Huge. Lincoln Continental. It was like a Star Wars machine. The front of it went by and then five minutes later the rear of it went by. It was huge, biggest car in the world. Manuelita's smallest person in the world. And what did you think when you got in the car? I said she's a cutie.

That's the first thing you thought when you got in the car? Of course. You weren't like, who are these tiny ladies picking up a huge... You weren't like who are these tiny ladies picking up a huge I Didn't know I you know, I didn't know what I was getting into. Oh, why did you think she was cute? she was very self-confident and Oh really? Well, you know your mom

She's nothing if not self-confident. She's smart. Yeah, she's really smart. Really smart. So they picked you up on Rio Del Mar. In front of what? What would it be there today? Same. It hasn't changed. Rio Del Mar and right by that bridge, you know the bridge on Rio de Mar Boulevard. I went by like a... The little bridge that goes across that little ravine there. Oh, right there?

Yeah, right there, uh-huh. And so then what happened in the car? When did you get out? They invited me over to dinner. Mind what Leitha did. So I went over to dinner. Anita was against this. Very much against it. And then did you ask mom out? Either that or Manuelita asked us both out. I think Manuelita asked us both out. She said, when are you coming to take her out? Something like that. What did she say? I said, oh, I don't know, tomorrow. She goes, okay.

This recording is from 14 years ago. I haven't really heard his voice in 10 years since he died. I hadn't forgotten, but I sort of had forgotten how much fun we had just talking to each other. And my dad told the same story as Anita and Manoelita. This story my dad tells about their meeting. It was not news to my mom. She says, yeah, we always disagreed about that. Of course he said that. He's got it wrong. Always has.

I remember we are your last when we told people how we met. People laugh. He wants to say one thing, I want to say another thing. But, yeah. I thought a lot about why my mom prefers her version, where he's walking to a bus stop and not hitchhiking. And the main thing I keep thinking about is, in my dad's version, my mom's people make the first move.

Their meeting is kind of random, a split-second fluke. But in the version my mom likes, everyone's on foot on this rainless, beautiful day. And my dad sees them and approaches. He makes the first move. Which is maybe more romantic. Everyone wants to be chosen. I run my hypothesis by her. She kind of blinks at me blankly, slightly impatient.

Nothing. The day after I found that interview with my dad, I woke up early and the mismatched memories, it all started clicking together. Okay, this is just me in my room. It's Wednesday. Last night I listened to that recording and dad said it was in Rio Del Mar, right by the bridge. So I think, I think I just figured it out. I think their car was parked on the street a little ways from the Jackson's house,

and they had to walk to the car from the house. So my mom remembers that walk. And then they got in and had just started driving when they hit that bridge and saw my dad. That's like a block away from the Jackson's. No time at all. Easy for my mom to forget. And there he stood, not at a bus stop, but hitchhiking. Okay, here's me explaining my theory to my mom. And you had barely gotten in the car, you went around the corner, and dad was right there. Mm-hmm. We drove around the corner. Maybe because what dad said, and dad has a really good memory, you know? Oh yeah, I know. But what I think might have happened is, mom, your feet, can you stop? Yeah.

I think you guys might have just gotten in the car, barely driven, and then he was right there. Yeah, I think so. I think that's where it is. You think that sounds right? I think it sounds right. Yeah, that's how I remember. Not much driving. Yeah. Do you want to go drive and see where he said? Sure. Yeah, let's go look at that. Yeah, it was that way.

We drive to the spot my dad said. Do you remember? Rio de Mar and right by that bridge, the little bridge that goes across that little ravine. The Jackson house is maybe a minute away around the corner. There are trees everywhere, an intersection between residential blocks, not much around. Except for... Look, there's a bus stop. He was walking here. Mom, it's a bus stop!

Yeah. I've never seen this bus stop before. She had been talking about this bus stop the whole time, and I didn't believe her. Mom, but it's the bus stop, the one you've been talking about. Yeah, uh-huh. But he was walking to the bus stop. I think this is it, Mom. Oh, I'm so glad. I knew this road like the back of my hand,

and I'd never seen a bus stop there. But here it was, tucked under some trees, just a sign and a little bench. Mom, good job. Where the past memory never goes away. I'm so relieved. Very close, everything is so close. Good job.

We found the bus stop. Wow. This was it. What I'd wanted to find. The place our family began. A bus stop I'd driven past a million times. Not the fanciest spot in the world, but pretty. A place you wouldn't mind visiting again.

My mom said next time I'm in town, we should go sit at that bus stop. Bring champagne. Toast my dad. Probably get a ticket, she said. But to hell with it. Part of what made this whole project a little weird for me was this thing that I've mentioned a few times. That my mom doesn't really like discussing feelings. But I learned something talking to my sister Kim about all this stuff, but driving home I really wanted to tell my mom. Do you know that when he was sick Manuelita came to the house and she was

sitting with him and he was sick you know he was just lying down and not really talking that much at that point. But he did say to her, he said, Marilita, thank you for my life. Did you know that? She said, I don't remember. I think she said something, yeah. What does it feel like to hear that he said that? It's nice. Tell me more. Tell me more about what it feels like. Well, I feel like I'm just crying.

What? I'm crying. You feel like crying? Yeah. Do you feel like crying? Yeah. I'm so sure we will know that he will end up dying so fast, so soon. Well, like, I think when I hear that story, it's kind of beautiful to me because he loved his life so much. He loved it, yeah.

And he loved his family and he loved you. Yeah. Yeah. Right? Mm-hmm. She said thanks to me too, and kind of, you know, we're not perfect, but we can forgive each other if we hurt, if we, if he was dying. I brought up my dad's last days, and my mom's mind went straight to their last night together,

cut to the heart of her grief, to this moment when he was dying, and they forgave each other for their hurts. We've never talked about this. My mom never talks like this. You know, she said, number one, that everything was in order, and I forgave him whatever he did, because we were not perfect, and he forgave me to whatever I did.

So we talked in the room, you know, then? Yeah. And then we hug and I saw that we sleep together the last night, but they were so afraid to touch him they didn't want to hurt him. So I just touch his legs, touch his feet. And that's why we sleep the whole night too, no problem. Mom didn't stop there.

She told me something else. When I was nine, my parents had a rough patch in their relationship and decided to separate. After a few months, they got back together. I never really knew how or why. I didn't like to speak about that time in my family. But as I was talking to my mom about all this, she brought it up. You wanted the real hitchhiking story, she said. And she told me that, during the time they were separated,

one day she was driving down the street and she saw my dad was walking. And as she approached him on the road, he saw it was driving down the street, and she saw my dad was walking. And as she approached him on the road, he saw it was her and her Volvo, and he threw his thumb in the air. Cool joke, huh? So she stopped, picked him up. Couple days later, they got back together.

That's the important story, she said. After that, my parents stayed married another 20 years. During that time, they had a blast together, sometimes inseparable. The best time of their marriage, my mom tells me, after they returned to that root moment where everything started. Only this time, it wasn't random chance. It was his choice to flag her down and hers to scoop him up. Lily Sullivan is a producer on our show, special thanks to Lily's sisters. This song is one of their dad's favorites. He used to play it for them on the piano when they were growing

up. Tomorrow's the day our pride's gonna come. Whoa, are we gonna fly down in the easy chair? Coming up, one badly tuned instrument on one song at one concert can change your life. That's a minute with Chicago Public Radio when our program continues. This is American Life. I'm Eric Glass. Today's program, if you want to destroy my sweater, hold this thread as I walk away. We have stories about small moments between people that suddenly change how everything looks. We've arrived at Act 2 of our program. Act 2, What's With These Homies Dissing My Girl. In his early 20s, Mike Cometay wanted to be a professional musician. He was trying his

absolute hardest to make that happen until one day it all came undone. Weirdly, right in front of Weezer, Mike tells what happened. There's this video. I've watched it more times than I'd like to admit in the last decade and a half. Kind of like a retired football player watching old game tapes from his glory days, who pauses and rewinds that one play where he tore his ACL over and over to see where his career went sideways. It happened at Bonnaroo, this music festival with some of the biggest acts in the world. That year Dave Matthews Band and Jay-Z were playing.

It was 2010. The band I was in was invited to play on one of the medium-sized stages, which is a huge deal for us. There'd be over 2,000 people watching. It'd be the biggest stage we'd ever played on. But then I saw that Weezer was also playing Bonnaroo. It felt like some kind of fated opportunity. We were actually covering a Weezer song in our set. And so I had this big idea. Our front person Julia was a musician who had blown up on YouTube. She had thousands of followers on social media.

What if we got them all to tweet at Weezer's lead singer, Rivers Cuomo, to see if he'd come sing with us? I asked Julia, and she was game for it. And shockingly, it worked. Better than we could have hoped. Rivers didn't come sing with us. Instead, he invited Julia to come play her ukulele and sing with Weezer during one of their songs on the main stage.

Julia's visibility of Bonnaroo would be multiplied tenfold. If this went well, who knows where it could lead. Maybe Weezer would bring us on tour with them as their opener. Our agent immediately submitted us to their team for some of their upcoming shows. Or maybe Rivers would write a song with Julia, play on our record, or she'd play on theirs. The possibilities kept me up at night. I was 22, I'd only been playing music professionally for a year at that point.

But I was convinced this would be the moment that would transform our careers. ["Rivers of the Sun"] The day of the show, Julia split off from our group to rehearse with Weezer on their tour bus. I felt a little sting finding out I wasn't going to meet them too. Weezer went on a little before sunset. Me and the rest of the band sat way back in the crowd on some bleachers, while Julia was

somewhere backstage. There had to be at least 20,000 people between us and Weezer. I couldn't believe that a dumb idea I'd cooked up in rehearsal had led to this. The song Julia was going to play on was called Trippin' Down the Freeway. Weezer started at a few songs into their set. Julia's offstage for the first half of the song, but after the guitar solo, Rivers brings the band down to a vamp and has Julia come out, kind of dramatically. All right, we're going to bring out a special guest now.

But on the roof, this is Julia Nunes on ukulele. Julia walks on stage strumming her uke, but something sounds off. Are we in the right tuning? They are not in the right tuning. She's in a different key. Oh, it's supposed to be E flat. For a split second, I'm convinced I'm having a nightmare.

I try telling myself to wake up. It's all right. She's got this amazing tuner on her ukulele that'll get them straight down right now. Nope. Weezer is still on stage having a conversation mid-song about Julia's tuning through the PA system. Rivers pivots.

I'm going to tell a little story while you tune your ukulele. He turns to the crowd and starts talking about how Julia had ended up on stage with them that day. About Twitter. About Julia's fans. They started hitting me up singing. Hey dog! Julia's an amazing

singer and ukuleleist. Most of the time she even knows what key the song is in it. So why don't you guys have a look? He's making fun of her? I start clenching my jaw from the stands. I said, I don't know man. This is Weezer. This is a professional act.

We demand perfection. And Julius Man said, trust us dog, Julius the Monk. I'm mortified. I can't believe how mean he's being to her. Just so passive aggressive. At this point, our crew member who's been sitting next to me excitedly filming Julia's big moment quietly stops recording and puts down her camera. This isn't her video. Someone else posted this one to YouTube. I couldn't help thinking I'd been the one to suggest she do this in the first place. This was on me.

After an excruciating 62 seconds of improv, Rivers wanders across the stage to where Julia's trying to retune with another band member. So, uh, we could just have you sing? I'm just gonna sing. I'm just gonna sing, she says. All right, she's just gonna sing. Check your mic. Oh, what the hell? Yeah! Whoo!

Yeah! All right, give us the bass, guys. Rivers counts off and starts singing, and Julia jumps in. One, two, three! No way we ain't gonna break up. We made a promise that we won't fade out. Julia looks so small from where we're sitting, but I can tell she's holding her ukulele by her side as she sings.

They finish the song, Rivers thanks Julia, and she walks off the stage. I'm sitting in the bleachers shocked by what just happened. Weezer keeps playing a bunch of my favorite songs and I can't enjoy them. Alright, give me a guitar, my man. The next day, Rivers tweeted at Julia and thanked her for playing despite the mishap. A few weeks later, Weezer's manager officially turned us down for the opening spot on tour. In the music business, you need some moment to pull you out of obscurity and propel you forward.

And it felt like for us, Weezer had been it. Instead, we'd blown it. And that was the beginning of the end. After Bonnaroo, Julia and I stayed busy touring just the two of us for a while. But then things slowed down. Julia and her management were about to part ways. I started getting nervous about being able to support myself. So I tapped out of touring with Julia and got a full-time job where a lot of struggling musicians and actors end

up. At the Apple Store. And so this is when I started watching and rewatching that video, the Weezer performance. I've been doing that for the last 14 years. Each replay I keep hoping that it won't be as bad as I remember. But it always is. I'm still stuck on what the fuck happened, and in particular, was it our fault? On stage, Rivers admitted seemed like it, but I've

gone through the details again and again. Julia had received tuning instructions from Weezer's road manager. Were those incorrect? Had Julia done the math wrong tuning her uke? Had I? I'd helped her with that. I found a video of Julia rehearsing with Weezer on their tour bus. She was in the wrong tuning there too, but no one had noticed. Julia might know what went wrong, but I never really talked to her about that show. Only once right after. It was uncomfortable.

She was clearly upset, had been crying. She asked to let it go. So I did. But she must remember something from that day. So I called her. When is the last time you thought about the Weezer performance? It doesn't like revisit me in the quiet dark night. Okay. like, revisit me in the quiet, dark night. Okay. I think when Weezer comes up, like, if Weezer is on at a party,

I might or might not be like, I've played with Weezer once, and I'm totally... -♪ Fumbled. -♪ LAUGHS Fumbled. Julia lives in Austin, Texas now. She's still releasing music, but her career has shifted more towards life coaching and guided meditation. Her memories of the Weezer incident were not as vivid as mine. She didn't remember how she and Weezer got in touch. She didn't remember what year it happened. She definitely did not have the email from the road manager about the tuning,

and she never puzzled over why her tuning was off. Because for her, that whole show was a totally different experience. When Rivers was saying all that stuff about her on stage, It never registered to me as like anything, anything other than like a musician just trying to make the show go. Oh my god. I feel like I've just been stewing in it for so long. Being like that dude was an asshole to my friend. Oh, Mike.

No way, man. I have never once thought that Rivers was mean. I didn't know what to say in that moment. I didn't know what to do. He could have just been like, OK, never mind. But the fact that he came up with a real-time solution to be like, yeah, just sing. I was so grateful.

I watch this video probably more often than I should. I feel like I'm responsible for it. In a way that's like, if I had just not said anything in that rehearsal that day, we could have just gone about our days and rehearsed and just had our set at Bonnaroo and then you would have come to Weezer's set and sat in the bleachers with us, and we just would have enjoyed Weezer together.

SHANNON COFFEY Oh, my, don't you dare. GIGI But instead, you went on stage with him, and this thing that could have changed your career, in my view, had this effect that could have changed your career, in my view, had this effect that this, like, you seemed so sad afterwards and devastated. And I was like, oh my God, if I had just said nothing, this wouldn't have happened to you. God, I don't think that experience had any sort of detrimental pivot for my career. The thing that made my career not happen

is that I couldn't take the pressure. It's not that you, I think that you offering that Weezer thing was brilliant. I wish I would have done a bunch of different things, but like not playing with Weezer and not fucking up on stage is not one of my regrets at all. I'm glad. Julia was so much more at peace with the day than I was. She said the band, our band, wasn't sounding good to her anyways. She thought opening for Weezer was a long shot, even if she had been in the right tuning for Trippin' Down the Freeway.

But also, the moment Julia remembered most from that performance wasn't the mistake. It was the part of the video that I usually skip over, the moment where it works out, right after Rivers asks Julia if she wants to sing. I'm looking Rivers Cuomo in the eye. Once we decide to start singing, everyone cheers. And we start, like, dancing together, and we put our arms around each other,

and we're, like, head singing like full blast tripping down the freeway and I felt like we sounded really good together. Yeah I don't know like all of that feels important to me. You can't see any of this in the video I'd been replaying all these years. You can't see any of this in the video I had been replaying all these years. That one was shot from way back, near the bleachers, where I watched the show. I almost couldn't believe what Julia described, but changing up the wording of my YouTube search, I found another video from that day, filmed close to the stage. You can see everyone's faces, and even when the tuning mistake becomes apparent, they're smiling and they're laughing.

Julia and Rivers dance. They're having a great time. Watching it, I felt this wave of relief. It's what I was missing all these years. Julia was okay, and I believed her that the band didn't break up because of a tuning mistake. And this moment wasn't why I stopped playing music for a living. After Julie and I talked, I finally heard back from Weezer's former road manager. She

found the email they'd sent us before the performance, and the instructions were wrong. There would have been no way for Julie and me to tune correctly with them. I had the full answer now, but I was surprised by how little it mattered to me. I was over it. Mike Comite, he is one of these super skilled people who work here at the show doing audio mixes and adding music to our stories. Diane Wu produced this story. Here is Mike playing guitar and singing with Julia, whose full name, by the way, is Julia Nunes.

This is a song they used to cover together years ago. There will always be someone better than you Even if you're the best So let's stop the competition now Or we will both be losers I'm ashamed I ever tried to be higher than the rest But brother I am not alone We've all tried to be on top of the world somehow Cause we have all been losers I don't wanna be laid down

No, I don't wanna die knowing That I spent so much time when I was young Just trying to be the winner So I wanna make it clear now I wanna make it known That I don't care about any of that shit no more Act 3. If you see her, tell her it's over now. No more, no Act 3 And if you see her tell her it's over now In this last act we turn from small personal moments to big news that the whole world experiences But that it's some people very very personally You probably saw the headlines and reports that a couple weeks ago after his family ruled Syria for over 50 years

and reports that a couple weeks ago after his family ruled Syria for over 50 years, the president slash dictator Bashar al-Assad was run out of his own country very suddenly. Assad ran a government that did not tolerate dissent. He used chemical weapons against his own citizens. He spent much of the last 13 years brutally crushing an uprising. Hundreds of thousands of Syrians were killed, tortured, disappeared. More than half the population was displaced in that conflict. Six million Syrians fled the country. So when a rebel coalition forced to sought out two weeks ago, Syrians all over the globe had their world turned upside down. And a few of us here at the show called around to see what that's been like for them.

Diane Wu put together this story. The regime collapsed late on a Saturday night. My co-workers and I talked to a few Syrians who are living abroad now about what that night was like for them. One was up studying for an exam. Another was out to an anniversary dinner, kept checking his phone. But the person I want to tell you about is Selma. She was in London on Saturday. She lives in another part of England, but watching the news by herself in the days before that, she felt like she had to be around other Syrians. So she got

on the train and headed to her friend's apartment. She'd been crashing there since Thursday. It's like this tiny one. It's like a studio. So it's this tiny, tiny studio. We're all sitting together on this couch, five of us, and we're all like on our phones, and then the TV's on, and we're all checking, and there's like barely any space. I don't know if I would describe it as crashing because we didn't sleep. None of us were sleeping actually. It felt like we were on duty for some reason, you know, like we were like on call constantly. It felt like their job to not look away. Something huge was happening back home. The rebels kept taking more and more ground each day,

liberating more and more cities with hardly any pushback. Everyone was worried that Assad would do something desperate, like retaliate with chemical weapons or bombings, or that Russia would jump in. Salman and her friends were barely keeping it together. One of them, it's not funny, but he kept fainting, and so he would go into the room and then just almost pass out.

So the first thing I did was I didn't know what to do, so I gave him a tomato with salt on it, and I just shoved it into his mouth. And I was like, okay, I think your blood pressure is dropping. And were you guys like, were you worried or freaked out? Or was he kind of like, oh, this is something that happens? I don't think we were super freaked out just because a lot of us have medical training. Okay.

It wasn't that big of a deal. That's handy. Okay. They noticed there was a pattern to his fainting. First, he'd start sweating profusely, then go stand in the door to cool off, then head towards the bathroom. By the third time, we kind of got the routine down. We saw him open the door, we're like, he's about to pass out.

Someone start doing all the steps. We kept joking. They're like, you can't pass out now. You gotta be strong. You gotta make it till the regime falls. Selma told me that her friend who kept fainting had been detained by the regime when he was a teenager, three times.

He fled Syria after the third time, but his parents are still there. He was really concerned about them. Other people in their room were also having physical reactions from all the stress and fear. I think it was just like our bodies going into shock and like each person was kind of doing it differently. Like for me, I cry a lot and I have like panic attacks and then I throw up, which is kind of gross, but that's what would happen to me. Like I would get really nauseous, really nauseous, really nauseous.

Like I would go and throw up. It was from inside this crowded apartment, scattered with takeout containers and nervous bodies, that these friends then witnessed a sudden unraveling that none of them had anticipated. Someone's from Damascus, the capital, which was the seat of the Assad regime. And as the rebels kept advancing across Syria, taking Hamma and then Aswada and then Homs, her friends from those cities celebrated around her.

If the rebels succeeded, her hometown would be the last to fall. When Salma saw a video of people standing on a tank in Umayyad Square in Damascus, singing Jannah Jannah, a revolutionary song, it was finally real to her. It was over. Knowing that we would be the last, I was holding it in.

And so the first thing I did was I cried. I hugged all my friends. I just, I sat there kind of like staring at the wall, crying, crying, crying, crying. They stayed up all night and then celebrated more the next day in Trafalgar Square. Then Selma went home and mostly laid in bed in the dark for a few days, trying to make sense of this brand new world. Selma's family had left Damascus in the first year of the war, 2011, when she was 15. They moved to

Connecticut where she joined the soccer team and tried to do regular life while going to protests against the regime on weekends. Now she had to figure out how to reverse this thing she's been doing since she was a teenager, separating herself from Syria. I knew I couldn't go back with the regime there. And so I started slowly distancing myself from my memories. Like before, I would post a lot of photos and saying I miss Damascus or I miss this or I miss my house and I miss that. And I stopped doing that kind of on purpose.

And even like between myself when I'm alone, if I would remember something or if I would find myself kind of like daydreaming, I would stop myself and I wouldn't let myself kind of go through with it. What kind of daydreaming, I would stop myself and I wouldn't let myself kind of go through with it. What kind of daydream? Like sometimes I would daydream about my house and like, sorry.

It's okay. Yeah, I don't know like it's a place where I have a lot of good memories and and it's the place where like me and my siblings did this and did that and sometimes I would just daydream about walking into my room and going back and sitting in my living room and looking out the window. And I just, I wouldn't let myself do that anymore. And even at times where I would have dreams about being in my house again, would like wake myself up and be like, no, like this isn't real. Someone else I talked to described it like this. Syria was on a different planet from the one he lived on now.

There was no way to visit it. He had to flip a page, start a new life. Better not to think about it anymore. But now that the regime was suddenly gone, Syria was back on this planet, a place like any other place, and they had to reset their minds to take that in, which was hard to do after so many years of doing the opposite. Salma started thinking about visiting home, not just in a dream way, but like the logistics of where she would stay when she went back. So we still have our house now, I'm like, would I stay at my house or would I want to

stay somewhere else? Or what am I going to do? And now I can think of all the plans. The euphoria of the regime falling was laced with heavy feelings too. In the days following the collapse, Esselma learned just how many people who had been disappeared by the Assad government had been killed or not coming home. She had another panic attack. Salman's been watching all kinds of videos coming out of the new Syria.

And there's a particular type that delights her, one I wasn't expecting. It was a girl in a karate uniform, and this guy was standing across from her with something on his head, I can't remember, like a water bottle. And she closes her eyes, and she like karate kicks the water bottle off the top of his head with her eyes closed. And then the camera pans back and everyone's like clapping and cheering. I saw people doing parkour in Damascus. They're like doing like back flips in the street in the middle of the celebration. Watching these people just be silly and happy. For Selma, she sees that as getting to watch them finally be free. In Latakia someone was lifting weights. Like in the street? Like in the street yeah like in the middle of. Like there's like fighters kind of passing by on cars, like waving flowers.

And he's like right on the side doing all of these moves. And his like gym clothes. It's just so, so, so serious, so fun. You know, like it's things you could have done before, but it's just the mentality of you're free, you can do anything and you belong to this country. It feels like it's yours. Again, I think the slogans of the regime were so damaging to our psyche. Calling it Syria al-Assad, Assad Syria, it removes you from the equation.

So who are you in Assad's Syria? You're nobody, you don't belong. Seeing the people now in Syria, seeing their reaction that are slowly kind of feeling like it is theirs. Like we, this is our country. We're the ones who are responsible for it now. We're the ones who are gonna take care of it. There's pretty much no way to overstate

how much there is to do next. How many things will need to be figured out, how many unknowns there are. But one person told me, none of it could be worse than what we live through already. Diane Wu is a producer on our show. This story was co-produced by Hanny Hwasli. That's Mike and Julia covering Weezer's sweater song, Undone. Our program was produced today by Lily Sullivan. The people who put together today's show include Fia Bennett, Dana Chibis, Sean Cole, Cassie Halle,

Khanna Jaffee-Walt, Henry Larson, Seth Lin, Catherine Mremando, Stone Nelson, Nadia Raymond, Anthony Roman, Ryan Rummery, Alyssa Ship, Lily Sullivan, Christopher Sertala, and Matt Tierney. Our managing editor, Sara Abdurrahman. Our senior editors, David Kestenbaum. Our executive editor, Emanuel Barry. Special thanks to Natalie Sullivan, Kim Sullivan, Sarah Kim, Steve Sopchak, Erin Marie Kometay,

Dave Burns, Todd Johnson, Leanne Victorine, Darianne Woods, and Yezen Abu Ismail. To become a This American Life partner, which gets you bonus content, ad-free listening, and hundreds of our favorite episodes of the show right in your podcast feed, go to thisamericanlife.org slash life partners. The link is also in the show notes. This American Life is a little to public radio stations by PRX, the public radio exchange. Thanks as always to our program's co-founder, Mr. Torrey Malatia. You know, he invented this new appetizer where you put a hot dog in a handful of

straw. What's he called? Hey dog! I'm out of her glass. Back next week with more stories of this American life. To travel, I assume, to be naked Lying on the floor, lying on the floor I've come undone Ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh,