The Last Word On Nothing

Last year, I told a story for This American Life (TAL), my favorite radio show. My story was about being so lost in grief over my sister-in-law’s death from cancer that I mistook a pizza delivery guy for an undertaker.

My error wasn’t as ridiculous as it seems. The pizza guy had the wrong house, and the only stranger we were expecting at the door was the one who was coming to take away our beloved’s body.

As I wrote in an essay about the experience,

For a while, the pizza was the only thing I could really talk about. In hindsight, it was funny and that took some of the edge off. But in a way, it also explained everything. A few days before she died, Pia had told me, “My world has gotten so small.” Her universe had become mine, but my accidental collision with the pizza guy had given me a glimpse beyond Pia’s death bed. Out there, the world was going on without us, oblivious.

I learned that TAL wanted my story, and the next thing I knew, I was at my local public radio station getting ready for a call from Ira Glass. At the appointed time, Glass called in. After a bit of small talk, which gave me a chance to express my bewilderment that TAL could have omitted my all-time favorite segment from their recent highlight reel, he asked me to tell the story.

I recalled how the doorbell rang, and there was the undertaker — a teenage boy wearing a baseball cap backwards, which seemed odd. He handed me a bottle of root beer, which seemed ever weirder, but my mind instantly fixated on the little square, padded box he was holding. She’s not going to fit in there, I thought. And what the hell are you planning to do with the root beer? I want no part of this.

I continued with my story, and when I was done, Glass asked me if I’d mind telling the story again. That detail about the baseball cap, for instance, maybe gave too much away.

So I tried again. I knew what he meant — I needed to tell the story as a storyteller, not the person experiencing the event — even as I realized that I probably couldn’t do that. It was years later, but still too fresh.

I told Glass that I knew I wasn’t very good at telling this story. The first time I’d shared it, in front of about 150 people, the audience had started laughing prior what I’d assumed would be the punchline. It was obvious to them that this was not the undertaker, but it still wasn’t obvious to me. As our conversation continued, Glass told me about his own grief over the recent death of TAL contributor David Rakoff, also from cancer. It felt like a shared a moment.

As a journalist, I know damn well that Ira Glass is not my friend. He’s storyteller looking for material. I know that I don’t actually know him, because I’ve been on the other end of that assumption when readers have acted as if they knew me, when all they knew were the stories I’ve chosen to share. Despite all that, my guard dropped during our hour-long discussion. So much so, that without even realizing it, I divulged a detail I did not want to make public.

It was a little thing, but one that Glass and his producers pounced on. If I was in their place, I would have done the same. It was a surprising, personal thing about me, and if I was a telling the story as an objective third person, I surely would have included it in the story. It’s nothing terrible. No one else died, there were no illicit love affairs or illegal activities. It’s the kind of secret that’s important only to the person who harbors it.

The thing about this untold story of mine is that even while I’m afraid to share it, part of me yearns to talk about it. It was that need to unbury my pain that Ira Glass scratched with his questioning.

After the interview, I was riddled with anxiety. My story was in TAL’s hands. I still had every right to back out, but the journalist in me couldn’t. I admired the work of Ira Glass and his team, and I had to trust them. In some weird way, I felt like I deserved this situation I’d willingly gotten myself into. After all, I’ve held dozens, maybe even hundreds of personal stories in my own hands over the years. How could I possibly complain when the shoe was on the other foot?

It was a giant leap of faith, but I decided to take it, perhaps because I knew in my gut, from the moment my interview with Ira Glass ended, that I wasn’t going to end up on the show.

The problem was my telling. I was only capable of telling my story from inside the moment — with details that gave away the punchline before I’d ever had a chance to set it up. Also, it was supposed to be funny. It was funny. I wanted it to be funny. But when I told it, I felt sad, not funny.

I don’t actually know why TAL cut my story from the episode. It seems the decision was made on the fly, because just hours before the first on-air broadcast, the show’s fact-checkers were calling my husband to ask things like how many times times I’d called him as his sister was dying. They never told me why they dropped my story, and I understand why. No one wants to say to a contributor or source, “Yeah, we didn’t really like the way you told your story,” or “Oh your voice! It’s just so… weak.” Especially when that person has put a lot of time into a snippet that you’re relegating to the cutting room floor.

I was out of pocket when the episode without my story first aired, and when I learned that I wasn’t included, I was disappointed, but my overwhelming reaction was relief. I had regained control of my story.

Which gets me to Serial, TAL’s first spin-off. (I’ll admit — I’m obsessed.) The show follows TAL producer Sarah Koenig’s re-examination of a 15-year-old murder case.

Serial is not a show about a murder. It’s a show about a reporter trying to figure out who really dunnit. That’s an important distinction. Koenig isn’t telling Hae-Min Lee’s story or Adnan Syed’s. She’s telling her story of how she became obsessed with this case and how she went about reporting it. Which is exactly why I find it so fascinating. It’s a show about the process of reporting.

The show has now released 10 of its 12 (or so) promised episodes, and along with its popularity has come backlash (and backlash against the backlash). I understand the criticisms, but most of them miss a fundamental point. Just as TAL was aiming to produce a compelling episode on a particular theme — not my personal story from my individual perspective — Serial’s overreaching purpose isn’t to tell the personal narrative of any of its various characters. Those stories are surely worthy of telling, but they’re not the point here. Serial is Koenig’s story of her attempt to find out who really killed Hae-Min Lee. It’s a lofty pursuit, but that hasn’t stopped her yet.

Photo of Ira Glass via Flickr.