813: Is That What I Look Like?

From WBE ZChicago, it's This American Life. I'm Nancy Updike filling in for Ira Glass. Today's show is a rerun, a good one. And I'm going to start with this story that I want to share.

It's a little personal. I was at Mac, the makeup store, not the computer store. And I was buying foundation, which I almost never wear. It's the makeup you put all over your face to give yourself the pretend perfect skin.

And I asked the salesman for help finding the right color. And he looked at me and he said, almost like he was thinking out loud, he said, your neck, it's so much more yellow than your face. And then he turned away to start looking for the impossible color that would solve this problem of the yellow right next to the so much more yellow. And if you're thinking, oh, this was just a sales technique to invent a problem and then offer to fix it with more products, I wish that that had been the case.

But this was not an upsell. This was a credo cur. The man really just seemed to be expressing his frustration at this stumper of my mismatched face and neck. This sort of out of the blue, perfectly sharpened comment stops you cold because it's not an insult.

It's an observation that is true. You just hadn't thought of it before. It's shocking because you think, I know myself, I know what I've got, what I haven't got. No one's going to spot something about me that I haven't already seen.

Not true. You can be among friends, doing something you love, feeling great. We were back, getting ready to go on preparing. This is Dee Watson.

She was in a play a while back. And with all black women, we were all, some of us were a little bit bigger than the average, and it was a supportive atmosphere. And the subject of big behinds came up. And me having one, I know all about it.

And one of the younger cast members, she's about 25, said, my mother thought your butt was so big, it had to be a prop. Oh my god. And at that moment, I didn't hear anything else. Anybody said, I just was echoing through my head, and I could hear it be laughing.

Oh my gosh, that's so funny. And I'm standing there about, I wanted to cry. I really wanted to cry. And I really don't think the young girl really meant to hurt me.

Well, and maybe it's like, you know, we're all women. And so, you know, this is, it's safe here to say anything. I think she thought I would think that was funny. I did not.

Hey. These are not statements that a human being forgets. The moment you hear the observation, it becomes part of how you see yourself. Seemingly forever.

Even something tiny, if it hits you right, can turn into this chirpy little voicemail that your brain is never able to erase. And it doesn't have to be about looks. It can be a comment on how you run, or laugh, or drive, how much money you make, what books you've read, or haven't read, any outside assessment of you that you never saw coming and could not shake once it was uttered. One of our former producers, Jane Feltis, she's actually now Jane Marie.

Years ago, Data Demand, who she later decided was a jerk. He wanted to make her feel insecure. But one night, they were watching TV, and her feet were sticking up out of the blanket. And he turned to me, and he said, oh, you have juice box toes.

And I was like, what? And he said, yeah, like Fred Flintstone feet. He's a caveman, literally a caveman. A cartoon of a caveman, a chubby squat cartoon of a caveman.

And I know it's so stupid because he cares what shape my toes are. But you do want the person that you're in love with to just think that every part of you is amazing, and beautiful, or shot up about it, or shot up about it. Maybe they're ugly. I don't know.

Now that I'm looking at them, my big toe is definitely square. When I get shot, I get one of the things I do with them is I try to give them permission to make fun of me. This is a fifth grade teacher named Matthew Dix, who is either the bravest or the most full hardy man in America. And they often come out of their shells by becoming the person who can tell the teacher.

This sounds very dangerous. No, it is. I mean, you have to teach them where the line is. And sometimes I don't know where the line is either so.

A few years ago, there was a girl in his class, very shy. And she got the nod that it was OK for her to make fun of Matthew if she wanted. So my name, she came in, and she just walked in very casually. And she looked at me, and she said, hi, Jerry.

And I looked at her, and I said, Jerry. And she said, never mind. And she just walked away. And I knew she was setting me up for some joke.

And it went on for days. She would just every time she walked by. And she'd say, hey, Jerry, how's it going? And so finally, after about a week, I couldn't take it anymore.

And she came in one morning, and she said, how are you doing, Jerry? And I said, fine. Who is Jerry? And she said, Jerry's your bald spot.

Yikes. And I tried to play it off like I don't have a bald spot. Go sit down, give me a break. Ha, ha.

That was the most ridiculous week long joke I've ever heard in my life. But as soon as my kids left the room to go to gym, I ran to the bathroom, and I leaned over the sink. And at the very top of my head, I had a bald spot. And I had no idea about it.

Hey, can I ask a logistical question? How does a fifth grader spot the top of your head? Oh, so in my classroom, I teach them Shakespeare to my students. And we have a stage in my classroom.

I built a stage with curtains and lighting and everything. So if you're standing on my stage in the classroom, you can look down on me. Now you can say that Matthew brought this on himself. He gives some students permission to make one of him.

And he built a stage where students can peer down at him, in judgment. But even if he did none of that, he's still a sitting duck for this exact kind of critical gaze. You have 20 people. You have 20 students?

Yeah. You have to be changed 20 and 30 every year. OK, so it's between 20 and 30 people looking at you all day, every work day, and just taking stock of you. Yes, the concept.

I had pink eye a couple weeks ago. The kid knew I had pink eye before I did. Because they just there at you all day. And they see any sort of minute change in you.

You're really the only thing they look at for a great majority of the day. So they notice these little things. If I get a new shirt, they immediately notice everything that changes about me, they notice right away. Today on the radio show, I, Nancy Yellowneck, update, renew stories about people facing the unexpected moment of realizing how other people see them.

What that means and what in God's name to do about it. Today's show is that what I look like, prepare to learn the truth. Plus, special guest appearance that will surprise and delight you. Stay with us.

Act 1, blunt force. Domingo Martinez has this story about a vision in Brownsville, Texas. Here's Domingo. When I was 16, I realized as far as my family went, school was considered my time, which meant I couldn't be pressed into labor by my father or grandmother.

They were farm workers, and they made no claim on my time when I was supposed to be in school. So I learned to take advantage of this. I'd make it to school before 7.30 AM, either by school bus or my mother's torus, and then wait out options for escape. By my sophomore year, this kid named Tony Garcia had become my primary friend.

Tony was nearly 19 and only a junior, but he didn't seem all that bad because he had good parents and an even better little brother who was about to lap in the graduation. Together, Tony and I would find ways to while away the hours by doing anything other than attending class before we had to report home again. We were big fans of Huckleberry Finn and Tom Sawyer, and we believed we were continuing a long celebrated American tradition by ditching class and getting stoned. A fantasy combination of Mark Twain and Hunter S.

Thompson. But really, we were just lazy and looking for a good time. The skipping itself was not a problem. The problem was taking care of our grades and absences on our report cards before they reached our parents.

And it was actually Tony who initiated me into the trade that I'd eventually pursued, graphic design. But in this early stage, in high school, it was plain and simple forgery. There was no design in what we were doing. It was Tony who placed the first exacto knife I ever held in my hands, and immediately, I felt an overwhelming sense of possibility, holding that little penknife.

We'd intercept the report cards when they came in the mail. And then Tony took careful pains to explain this whole process to me, his funky, a term that came uncutably close to becoming literal. Over the photocopier in the library, feeding dimes into the machine like he was playing slots in search of a copy that didn't blur or show the incisions in the original. Look, man, he said through his trendy, untinted John Lennon glasses of Wanker style even then.

You just gotta remove the two from the 23 absences, and then lighten the reproduction, and now you got three absences in first period instead of 23. Now take the eight from the 48, move the four over, and put the eight in front of that, and now you have a B in Spanish instead of a F. Oh, I said, then total understanding, a big smile growing on my face. Give him a ride, he skips for a day.

Teach him how to forge. It was ridiculously short-sighted, sure, but at that age, I never thought further than the immediate threat. Simply convincing my mother everything was quiet at school was enough for me. Dealing with school records and the larger consequences of robbing myself of even a substandard education, all that I would face at a later date, and certainly have.

Tony would usually borrow his mother's car for our expeditions. A blue Olds will be able to be 88. We'd leave school and drive to South Padre Island, a resort town at the end of a 28 mile highway that felt much more cosmopolitan than Brownsville, Texas ever could. We did that drive back and forth three or four times a day, listening to Led Zeppelin, nodding our heads in unison as the room ever else was stoned or drawn to the car.

My junior year and his senior year, Tony's parents bought him a Dodge Daytona. It was a year he would most assuredly graduate they felt, and it was a chance for him to develop responsibility. In the mornings, the minute my mother would drop me off at school and disappear around the corner, Tony would drive around in park right in front of the school to pick me up, right in front of everybody. Dude, you gotta come skipping with me today, he'd say.

But on one particular morning, late in 1988, I balk. Not Tony, I gotta go back to class today, I protest. It's Thursday, and I haven't been since last week. Look, he says, I got two side re-entry slips.

I can get you back in tomorrow or next week. It's not a problem. And I found a new place to get killer weed. Finding Pot was always a problem.

So when Tony said he found someone new, and it wasn't one of the morons who hung out by the tennis courts before school, I was intrigued. We first drive to a housing project east of school, where a woman sold two daughter courts of Budweiser out of her living room from a cooler to anyone with money. No questions asked. We buy a couple of courts and smoke the last half joint Tony has on the way to his new killer weed supplier.

I was getting a bit high when I began to recognize the route he was taking, and was in theory taking a back when he drove right into my grandmother's driveway. I couldn't understand why, it just didn't make sense. This was the same driveway my family Pontiac would regularly pull into after church on Sundays when I was growing up in the late 1970s. My mother's mother's house in downtown Brownsville.

I was, I think the term is unnerved. My two uncles, Johnny and Abel, were working on a 79 Camaro and Tony drives up in parks, hood to hood with their car. The hood was up and they were both leaning into the guts of the engine. Their heads popped up like bearded biker prairie dogs.

I sat frozen in the passenger seat, uncertain what to do next. Tony, noticing that I was startled, tells me to be cool, to chill out. These guys look mean, but they're all right. Anyways, he says that he's getting out of the driver's side.

They're kind of dumb, but they got great weed. Didn't I know it? Abel and Johnny had a long history with local biker gangs, even a rumored affiliation with the Hell's Angels. They could get drugs nobody else could in this town.

And as a result, they were total burnouts, hardly capable of cogent speech patterns in either English or Spanish. They landed in jail as often as other people that attended church. But what they lacked in brains, they certainly made up and brawn, not that they tear apart a teenager like Tony or me, but in the daylight anyway. They had a code about that sort of thing.

But if they felt cheated, they'd have taken a tire iron to my head long before they recognized me as her nephew. They were that burned out. So I sit there, paralyzed in the front seat, side B of houses of the hole he's playing on Tony's cassette deck. And because it's hot, the AC is blasting.

So once Tony closes the door, I can't hear anything. I just watch as this terrifying pantomime plays out before me. Tony, half shaven in his preppy clothes, closes the door and hails his greeting. My uncle Abel, already brain dead from yours of sniffing paint, narrows his eyes in suspicion.

And then noiselessly responds with a nodding, hey. Tony averts eye contact, looking anywhere but directly at Abel for fear that Abel might charge, like a gorilla. Abel gives up a suspicious quick upward jut of the chin that says, did I sell to you before? Who told you I got weed?

Tony lowers his head in quiet confidence, talking to Abel. Then my uncle Johnny nods towards me in the car, says something to Tony. They all turn to look at me. My eyes go wide, a big smile on my face, nodding.

Tony says something, and then they all laugh together. Led Zeppelin still plays loudly in the car. Then my uncle Abel slaps Tony on the back and leads him around to the back of the car, right where I am. Johnny stands there, too, looking at me and smiling, makes his index finger and thumb into a mock roach and laughs.

I mimic the roach back. Even now, he doesn't recognize me. Then Tony and Abel emerge around the other side of the car with Tony's hand in his pocket. And both of them are laughing like they're suddenly old friends.

Tony turns in waves, and both Johnny and Abel wave back. The door opens, and Tony says, dude, we got a big joint for two bucks as he gets in the driver's seat. This is free to be out to no end. Abel and Johnny are both waving, making the universal roach smoking signal as we drive off.

And it leaves me feeling really, really conflicted. The car slips up the southernmost terminus in Highway 77, and we head north from urban Brownsville to drive around as we smoke the joint. Tony lights it, and it starts burning purple. Purple haze, he says, and then follows it with his characteristic.

Ah, hey, man, I'm sorry. I'm kind of scared about smoking this. I've never seen one burn this color. Dude, says Tony.

Don't worry about it. Those guys got killer weed, man. They're like bikers or something. It's probably laced with something.

That's why it was two bucks. This idea sounds appealing to Tony. It scares a shit out of me. We're both getting incredibly high.

Hey, man, says Tony. Wouldn't it be messed up if like when you were high, your hair went into like a huge orange Afro, and the higher you were, the bigger your Afro got? You couldn't go anywhere because people would be like, man, that guy stoned. I sit there and Tony's car and think about my uncle's Johnny and Abel.

Johnny had been stabbed in the back with a flat-headed screwdriver about a month earlier in a street fight. His lung had been punctured, and my grandmother said you could hear whistling every time he inhaled. He wouldn't go to the hospital to get it treated for three days. We're halfway done with the joint when I say to Tony, hey, man, I don't want to get stoned anymore.

S'ar, well, put it out, Tony says, nodding his head back and forth to Zeppelin. Tony's left out his fingering cords into the neck of an imaginary guitar as he's driving. I watch his fingers move for a few seconds, suspended and twisting around like they're an overturned king crab, and I can find no correlation with the cords in the saw. Man, I mean, I don't want to smoke pot anymore, I say to him.

I don't want to skip class anymore. I want to get back to school, not today, but like in general. I don't want to feel like this anymore. Like I'm doing something bad.

I feel like this all the time now, dirty. Look at that really small house over there. We were on an overpass, and I just noticed a house beneath us in the Brownsville Country Club about a quarter of the size of the houses surrounding it. Tony starts laughing so hard I have to make him focus back on the driving, but then I laugh along with him.

You're stoned, he tells me. Yeah, I say, I'm way stoned. Hey, man, I say a little later. We're driving back to South Badra Island now.

You know those guys we bought weed from earlier today? The bikers, Tony says, that was my grandmother's house, man. Those are my uncles, I say, even though I'm really embarrassed by it. Tony finds this befuddling.

He can't figure out what the bikers were doing at my grandmother's house. Those dudes were my mom's brothers, man. My uncles, I explain. Tony is laughing so hard he has to pull over to the side of the road.

His laughing is infectious, and I find myself laughing right along with him, laughing harder than I have laughed in a really, really long time. But I'm feeling utterly beyond redemption on the inside. Like I just done something today that I couldn't take back. Like my course was now set.

Domingo Martinez, reading a story from his memoir, The Boy Kings of Texas. Act two, not my first time at the radio. Parents and children are lifelong mirrors for each other. How do you see me?

How do I see myself through my relationship with you? Even when you're not face to face with one of your parents, there are conversations between you that play back in your head, your whole life. What they said, what you said, sometimes you repeat those conversations to explain to someone else, or to yourself, who you are, or who your parents are. But what if you could re-hear the actual dialogue decades later, not your memory of it, but the words that were truly spoken between you and a parent?

A while back I did a story about someone who got that exact chance. Bill Leahy was in his early 20s on the phone with his father in 1978 when he heard a pinging sound on the phone. He mentioned it, and his father said, What did that say? Two decades later, after his father died, Bill was at his dad's house in Ohio cleaning out the office.

And I opened up a file cabinet and found 30 or 40 cassette tapes with his unmistakable handwritten notations of names and dates. And I knew instantly what they were, that he had been surreptitiously taping us. Even at the time, his father was recording. Bill had guessed what could be going on.

It was the kind of thing his father might do. And he did. He recorded hours of calls with Bill. And according to his own handwritten labels, he also taped his four other children, his wife, his mother, other relatives, his priest.

He recorded calls at home and in the car. Test number four, road noise, average to low, speed 60 miles an hour. From the dates on the cassettes, Bill figured they were an archive of his father trying to get the people around him onto his side. Bill's mother had left his father after 37 years of marriage.

Bill remembered the gist and tone of those conversations pretty well. They were memorable. And he put off listening to the recordings of them. For 12 years, they sat in a black nylon duffel bag that he would move every time the family moved.

This was a pile of information Bill wasn't sure he wanted. From an era of his life, he knew he didn't want to relive. He decided with his mom in the divorce, even before the divorce. Since junior high, he'd been lobbying her to leave his dad.

As Bill saw his father, he was smart, tenacious, and a tremendous bully, with a bad quick temper and huge blow-ups. He got worse over time, and he's worse when he drank. What Bill remembered from the taped conversations were long calls where his father bullied him, and he fought back hard. He saw himself as his mother's advocate and protector.

I remember him trying to recruit me in his campaign to keep his marriage together. And so my memory was me saying versions of, she doesn't want to do that anymore. You guys have tried for a long time. Let it go.

Some version of face facts. It's over. So you remember pushing back verbally, arguing with him? Yeah, yeah, all the time.

After those 12 years of holding onto the tapes, Bill finally reached just about the age his father had been when he'd made the recordings. And suddenly Bill wanted to hear them. He felt ready, but nervous. Here was raw data about what I actually did in conversations with my dad.

And I just took one of the tapes with me, his mind came on it, and went into our car in the back of our house, partially because it was the only place that had a cassette tape recorder that I knew of. And the first thing came on was his voice pretty aggressively questioning me about something. And his voice was as clear as the day I heard it. So you got pretty involved there, didn't you?

For somebody who didn't want to take sides. His father was talking about the fact that Bill and his four siblings all sided with their mother in the divorce in one way or another. So why did you do it? You feeling sorry for your mother?

She was going around in a wheelchair. How would you feel, Bill? And have that kind of a situation where mother hadn't been protected from who? She's got to remember to believe in that I'm a goddamn bully.

She's so psychotic and she's got to remember believing that I'm a bastard. That's how psychotic she is. How would you feel if you were me, Bill? And I listened for probably two minutes.

And I was like, OK, that's what they are. This is just really intense. I took the tape out, went back and went into the house, told my wife about it, and didn't listen to them again for, I don't know, three or four months. When Bill went back to listening, for real, what he heard was his father pushing one main point with him hour after hour, which was, how about you talking your mother into trying again?

How do you feel about that assessment? Well, has anybody tried it, but if she wants to or not? And the answer obviously is no it isn't fair. Down the drain and lose the war for a few battles, without trying this to me absurd.

All right, so there was a bunch of them. What the hell is the difference? Good times. Why do you look at the black part?

We had no happiness, Bill. We just said you never saw the times when we did. We used to go up the lake here. We had a lot of good time.

You know, are you saying there's no use trying? What's the bottom line? Let's get down to it. This is a lot.

Let's never tell me what your attitude is. Are you advocating that we don't try? No, I want to know. Kind of like, say something like, you know, just don't sit there.

I was less confrontational than I remember or expected. But I could remember that thought process, that I went through. If I say X, he's going to blow up. If I say Y, I'm going to throw my mom under the bus.

I just know what mother is leaving so much. She took about a long time. No, not no long time. Maybe four or five years.

Bill, do you know what her mind might be affected? And she may not be herself psychologically. Or her mind, yours. Do you realize that her mind might be affected?

She may not be herself psychologically. But for that long of time. Yes. Would you like to see it?

See us happy if we can arrange to be together? Sure. Why don't you say that? Where was the warrior in me?

Where was the stand-up person that was willing to call a lie, a lie, willing to draw bright lines and say, I'm not, I won't even put up with a conversation about this? And some of these conversations go on so long, I mean, 45 minutes and an hour. And he's just hammering away at you. And at the point he's making, why did you stay on such a long time?

Why not just say, you know, dad, I got to go? Yeah. No, I mean, I was always living in Wisconsin during a lot of this taping. I felt badly that my mom was back there, basically by herself dealing with him.

And I think I had some notion that by staying on the phone with him, it's like a little bit of the rodeo clown. You know, the old rodeo clowns would be sent out, the cowboy would be bucked off the bull. To distract the bull. And the rodeo clown would go out to distract the bull.

Bill wasn't crushed by the difference between what he heard on the tapes and the tough line he'd remembered taking with his dad. But it did throw him off balance. He really had seen himself from the time he was a kid, as a warrior, standing up to the strong, protecting the weak. I started superhero when it came to arguing against his dad.

But I was less heroic. It was like I was more pragmatic. It was less of an epic struggle of right and wrong and more mundane than that. I mean, what kid fantasizes about being a pragmatist?

Bill says his mother thrived after the divorce. His father, he says, stayed more or less the same. He married again, divorced again. Bill kept up a relationship with him his whole life.

That had been his other goal during these calls, besides protecting his mom, not losing his dad. He had thought about that even during the worst arguments. Better along silence than words he couldn't take back. Bill saw his father once or twice a year, every year, after the divorce.

And he spoke to him by phone every few weeks until he died. Coming up, what the movie The Breakfast Club can teach you about parenting, if you were in the Breakfast Club. That's in a minute from Chicago Public Radio, when our program continues. It's This American Life.

I'm Nancy Updike sitting in for Ira Glass. Every week we choose a theme, you know that, and we present various stories on that theme. Today's show, is that what I look like? Stories of seeing yourself through other people's eyes, whether you want to or not.

And we're here at Act Three, which I think is going to be kind of a two-parter. Act Three, Ben, do you want to do that part? Sure. Act Three, the Blender Years.

I'm talking to Ben Calhoun, one of the producers here. And he's got a small story. He's embarrassed to tell it, but I'm making him. So Ben, take us back.

It's eighth grade. Eighth grade. And I should just say, I played tuba. I was small.

That was me. And definitely zero attention from the girls in Roosevelt Middle School. I had this teacher, though, who, her name was Miss Savage. She was the cool teacher.

Is that bad? Yeah. She was younger than pretty much every teacher in the school. She was into Jane's addiction.

And she was the rock and roll teacher. And all of the kids sort of idolized her. Okay. And we are going in a GPG direction with this, right?

Just checking. Yeah. Okay. Continue.

So there was just this one day when I'm just standing in the classroom. And it was a crowd of girls that were standing around Miss Savage. And I have no idea what they were talking about. And Miss Savage is saying something.

And then out of the blue, she says. And she points to me. Like I'm standing on the other side of the room. And she says, look out for that Ben Calhoun.

He's going to be a heartbreaker. And did the girls turn and look? It was like a crowd of faces pivoted like satellites and like looked at me. And I was just like, I don't totally know what happened.

But it feels like maybe my life might have changed just right then. And? You mean like what? Did it change?

Yeah. Yeah. Did the girls kind of start to notice? One girl in particular.

That's what you need. Yeah. And that really can be all you need to change your life when you're a teenager. Just one person who thinks you're great.

Because chances are your own sense of yourself is way off. A friend of a friend, this is a woman in her 50s, came across an old photo of herself as a teenager. And it had been years since she'd seen any pictures of herself at that age. And she looked at them and thought, oh, wait.

I was pretty. I was pretty. It kind of floored her because of course the girl in the pictures looked nothing like the way she thought of herself at the time. She said she'd known it back then.

It would have made a difference. Lots of us have had that experience. Looking at old family pictures or yearbooks, seeing things we never saw at the time. This next story is a very specialized case of that kind of thing.

It's about the actress Molly Ringwald, who of course doesn't just have photos but movies beautifully shot, wide screen, full length Hollywood films of herself as a teenager. She's the redhead, the star in those three iconic 80s movies by John Hughes, Pretty and Pink, 16 Candles in the Breakfast Club. Recently, she revisited one of those movies, not exactly by choice. And she talked to Ira Glass.

Here's Ira. I suppose it's not a big surprise that Molly Ringwald does not sit around watching old Molly Ringwald films. You know, she's seen them. She needs a big reason to go back to them.

And recently, her daughter gave her a reason. Her daughter, Matilda, is 10. And Matilda wanted to see the Breakfast Club. Of course, 10 is a little young to see the Breakfast Club.

But most of her friends had seen it. So it was kind of weird that she was the only one that hadn't seen this movie. And she said that it was a conversation at slumber parties where that's a movie that some kids want to watch and that she had always said, please, I don't want to watch it. Can we watch something else?

Because she wanted to watch it with me. I thought that was really nice. I wonder if it's like she wants to watch it with you. Like, that's a nice thing to say to your mom.

But the truth could also be she just doesn't want to watch it with them. You know what I mean? Like, can you imagine like watching your mom with a group of your friends? And you have no idea what's about to happen?

Yeah, I didn't even really think about that. But yeah, I'm sure that had something to do with it. Matilda does not like surprises. And the fact is, Molly Ringwell preferred to watch it with Matilda.

It just seemed like it might be a nice experience to share together. And there were things in the film that she knew that she was going to want to talk to Matilda about, like for instance, there's a scene where she smokes pot in the film as a teenager. So Molly showed her the Breakfast Club. Not sure at all how she was going to react.

Not sure what it would be like to see the film through Matilda's eyes. We said a tape recorder to record what happened. Which by the way, Matilda loved the tape recorder. Hello.

She loved talking to the tape recorder, she loved answering questions. She is not going to hear this radio story for a long time. That's the plan. The Breakfast Club, if you've never seen it, is five kids.

They're stuck together in school on a Saturday for all day detention. They're kids who would normally talk to each other in school. It's a jock, a brain, a tough kid, a popular girl, and an outsider girl. And you know, it's a John Hughes movie.

They bond talking about all these things that everybody feels in high school. And you can totally see why it still gets the kids. And why it's the John Hughes film that Molly Ringwell looks back on. That's her favorite.

She made popcorn, they fenced around with TV. And you know, stars are just like us. They do not know how to operate their video systems. Either they cannot figure out how to turn it on.

And is it DVD or HDMI? HDMI. It sounds really silly. It's almost like a date.

You just want everything to go okay. I didn't want her to not like it. I didn't want her to get bored. Okay.

It's fun to do. Oh my gosh, you! Was there any point during the film we had second thoughts about watching it with her? The sex stuff, I was cringing a little bit.

Oh, are you medically free to do? Or is it psychological? I didn't mean it that way. You guys are putting words in my mouth.

You know, there's a whole part where everyone's saying, did you do it? Did you do it? Why don't you just answer the question? Be honest, nobody do it.

Answer the question, Claire. Talk to us. Answer that question. So then I'm thinking, she's going to ask me, what are they talking about?

But then she just didn't ask. It was not all of that stuff. She just didn't want to know. And so I was trying to sort of ask her what she got out of that, what she thought we were talking about.

But trying to ask her in such a way where I wouldn't tell her, where I wouldn't end up talking about sex, if she didn't know. So all the talk about, like, did she do it? Did she not do it? All of that stuff?

Kind of. Well, the what part? Well, they were like, did you do it? Did you do it?

Claire, just answer the question. Answer the question. Wait, which part? They were, well.

And my husband's sitting there looking at me, just stop, stop. She doesn't get it. So this is the first time that you saw the film as a parent. Did you see it differently?

Absolutely. I really did. Like, I really kind of felt for the parents. For people who haven't seen the Breckers Club, a lot of it is about the kids being disappointed in the parents.

Yeah. And how alone and isolated and frustrated you feel with your parents. And now I see the movie and I just, I think, oh, they're poor parents. And I think that when it was pointed out to me that the movie just talks about how all parents suck, you know, then I thought in my mind, well, actually that might be kind of good because then she can see that she doesn't have parents like that.

And then she can, you know, appreciate us. And, you know, but that can go another way. Yeah. That was my focus, I guess.

Okay. So afterwards you're talking to her about the film and there's this moment that gets surprisingly emotional and I'll be play you that. Which character, when the characters talk and you think like, oh, that's what I feel like, are there any that you say like, yeah, that's like what I feel like. Guess a little bit of like, is he like Brian or something?

Yeah. Yeah. Brian, I should say, is the straight A student whose parents pressure him to get to the grades played by Anthony Michael Hall. You kind of feel like Brian?

You do. He's really sweet, isn't he? I know, but you kind of like sometimes pressure me in school. Wait, you think I pressure him?

No, barely. Like, wow, really? No. No, no, no, no, no, tell me.

Tell me. Oh, hey. Hey, no, what's okay? Sweetie.

It's okay. Okay. It's okay. Okay.

Okay. I'm just, I'm just surprised. I told you barely. Like, just barely like a little bit.

Yeah. Okay. Well, you know what? That's really good for me to know.

I had no idea. Like, when did I make you feel like that? No, you kept on saying like, I wish I did better in school. Oh, because I said that I wish I did better in school.

Yeah, so I'm like, you wanted me to do good. I'm sorry. I made you feel that way. But you don't anymore.

Do you remember the thing she's talking about of you saying to her? Like, oh, I wish that I had done better in school. I was really surprised. I was not expecting that at all.

And the only thing that I can think of really is we have this homework battle. And it's incredibly frustrating. It's frustrating to get her to do the work. Yeah, because it's really easy.

I mean, and I'm not just saying that, you know, as an adult, I mean, it's easy. It's easy work for her. If she would just sit down, do it. It would take 15 minutes, 20 minutes.

But she resents the fact that she has to do it so much. And it became such a battle that she would sort of lie sprawled out, you know, kind of barely you couldn't even read her writing. And I would just get so frustrated with her. And, you know, and I would yell at her and say, you know, you can do better than this or smarter than this.

You know, all the things that parents say. And I think it must have affected her. And then she said, well, you know, you don't do it anymore. You know, and the reason why I don't do it anymore is because I don't do her homework with her anymore.

Because I can't. I find it too frustrating. When she said that I thought, like, oh, she just being protective of you, you know. I think she was being protective of me too.

I think the thing that I noticed the most was Matilda kind of wanting to make me feel okay. She really did not want to hurt my feelings or make me upset. And she wants to please me too. I can hear that when I...

Yeah. Well, the fact that the next thing that happens, she instantly goes to, I have better parents than they do. Yeah. I know, like, it's scripted.

I know. So is there anything else that you got out of the movie that you... Um, I bet... Well, I have better parents than...

You're just saying that to make me feel better. Come on. I mean, it was bizarre how she just said the thing that I hoped she would get out of it. She knows.

I mean, she could intuit that. She knew that I was hoping for that. Yeah. She was, like, giving me a little present wrapped in a bow.

But I don't remember where it doesn't feel like that at all. No. No, not at all. The whole thing, I've been wondering a lot about what happened when Matilda cried and how she handled it and she told her to talk for longer and she did ask her questions or different questions.

You know, you just can never know what things that you say to your kids are going to stay with them and you're just a little thing, said in the passing moment that are going to bounce around in their heads and lead them to conclusions that you don't intend or expect in any way. Yeah. I think there's always moments where you... You perceive things differently.

I know it with my own mom and dad. I mean, you know, there are times where I'll tell a story that I've heard a million times over the years, you know, and my mom will just completely switch it up or she'll see it completely differently. A sister from your childhood, like you're telling the story about something they did or something? Yeah.

Yeah. And they're just like, no, no, no. Well, yeah, I mean, there's one. You know, I come from a family where my sister was sort of designated as the great beauty in the family.

And this was just like, no, my sister. I was the talented one. My brother was the smart one and my sister was the beautiful one. And I remember actually asking my mom at, you know, I must have been around Matilda's age, you know, if she thought that I was pretty.

And she said, you're cute. And... Who? Yeah.

And that is really not what you want to hear when you're... I mean, now it's okay. I would be okay with you. But, you know, when you're 10, it was just devastating.

And she completely denies that now. And I mean, something that would have such an impact on me. I mean, I just wasn't making it up. It really affected me.

And she just says it didn't happen. She says, oh, I always knew that you were beautiful. You know, ask your father. And obviously, like, if she had any idea how it bounced around in your head, she would have never said it to.

She didn't think like, oh, that's going to stick. No, I don't think that she did. I have a friend. Her mom would tell her and her sister, no, you girls are average.

Oh! No, like, you guys are average. Average, you know, like, you're smart, but you're average smart. And I was like, wow, you were not raised by Jews now.

That's just like... That's not the message you get. I mean, in my experience, there's a lot of like, you're so special. You're the most special.

You're so special. You know, like, the boys on the girls. Yeah. You know, like, she's the most talented.

Well, I was always told that I was special. I mean, there was no question that I was special and that I was destined for greatness. As a little kid. As a little kid.

Wow. From the time that I was, you know, really little. I mean, to the point where... This is kind of happening, but I'll tell you anyway.

My first brother died. He was the first and I was the last. So we never met. But my mom was, you know, understandably just devastated by this and was sort of suicidal for a while.

I mean, didn't actually try anything but she was considering. And then was... This makes her sound so hippy-w. She's not at all.

But she believes that she conversed with a spirit. And what they said basically... And this is a story that I've heard since I was very small, that she was here for another reason, for someone else. And as soon as I was born, she knew that it was me.

That's a lot to put on you. Yeah. It's heavy. Like she told you that when you were a little girl, she was put on this earth because of you.

She believed that that was why. Yeah. Because she knew that there was some reason why she was supposed to stick around and... And stay alive.

And it was to have this little girl who was you, who was such a special gift to the world. So how strange that you would end up famous by the age of 15 or something. Well, I kind of had to. I mean, I kept my mom alive.

And so then when you actually did become a movie star as a teenager, did she take that as proof? Like, oh, see, that was not true. Yeah. And did you at the time?

Like, did the whole story fit together for you too? Yeah. I had to succeed. I had to be great.

What a lot of pressure on you. I know. And then what do I do? I turn around and I pressure my daughter because I think she's so great.

I know. Yeah. I read Jake Glass with Molly Ringwald. She's still acting and translating and she's working on a new book about her Paris years.

And Matilda, she's in college now and just finished filming her first movie. Our program was produced today by Jonathan Mihivar with Alex Bloomberg, Ben Calhoun, Sean Cole, Stephanie Fu, Hannah Joffee Walt, Sarah Kainig, Brian Reed, Robin Semyon, Alyssa Ship, and I Were Glass. Our senior producer for this show was Julie Snyder. Production help from Simon Adler and Lily Sullivan.

Additional production help on today's rerun from James Bennett II, Michael Comite, Katherine Ray Mondo, Stone Elson, and Matt Tierney. Our website, thisamericanlife.org, where you can stream over 800 of our episodes for absolutely free. Thanks, as always, to our program's co-founder, Tori Malatia, and to our boss, Mr. Ira Glass.

While he was hosting the show recently, he spent a little time moonlighting as a realtor. He's really got to work in his pitch. Look at that really small house over there. I'm Nancy Updike.

Ira Glass will be back with more stories of this American life.