Matthew Dicks's Blog, page 115

Imagining color

While sitting together on a paddleboard yesterday, Charlie asked me this:

“Why can’t I imagine a new color? I’m trying so hard, but I just can’t picture a new one in my mind.”

It was one of those questions that are both ridiculous but also profound.

Possible answers that scrolled through my mind:

“Do we really need another color?”

“Aren’t there bigger problems to solve in this world?”

“I don’t understand your brain.”

“Why do you think I would be able to answer this question?”

“You own more science books than me. Look it up.”

“How did we get from the election of 1800 to your incapacity to imagine a new color in a single sentence?”

Instead, I said this:

“The universe disappoints, Charlie. It confines us with unreasonable and unnecessary boundaries that we can try to escape but often cannot.”

Charlie was quiet for a moment. The water lapped quietly against the paddleboard. Birds sang in the nearby trees. The wind whistled across the water. Then he sighed and whispered, “Stupid universe.”

I told him to keep trying. “We managed to bust open the atom, so who knows. Maybe you’ll figure this one out someday.”

He didn’t seem satisfied. Understandably so.

What I Like About Me

My friend, Heather Clow, published a list called “What I Like About Me” on her now defunct (unless she starts writing again!) blog “One Thousand Words Project.”I like her list a lot, and I like the idea, too. I think we deserve to be exceedingly kind to ourselves whenever possible. This can be tricky because we never want to appear as egomaniacal, boastful, or bombastic.

But making a list of things you like about yourself feels right to me. It gives you the opportunity to focus on yourself for a bit. Consider yourself and your life. Seek out those rays of sunshine. It also exists as a permanent record for those days when you’re not feeling especially fantastic.

If you share the list online, it still might make some readers think that you’re bragging, but if you write to please everyone, then you write to please no one. First, we write to please ourselves, then, if we’re lucky, others will like it, too.I like Heather’s idea. I hope you do, too. I also think it’s important because in Heather’s own words:”This is very hard for me because I don’t usually think about myself in favorable terms.”I think this sentiment is more pervasive than we think. For a multitude of unfortunate and terrible reasons, human beings often have an unjustifiably negative view of themselves. A lot of this, I suspect, has something to do with the way our prehistoric brains are trained to remember the negative far better than the positive.

In a hunter/gatherer society, where predators and starvation constantly threaten your existence, remembering what might kill you is critical to avoid being killed. But in today’s far less dangerous world filled with doors and Doritos, we don’t need to emphasize the negative so much anymore. Sadly, our ancient brains still do.

Cultivating positivity, optimism, and feelings of self-worth is important.

I think Heather’s idea does this well.

Duly inspired by Heather’s list, which you should read, I offer mine. Even better than reading mine, though, take a few minutes (or, like me, a few days) to make one of your own. When I finally finished mine, I felt pretty good about myself. Better than when I had started.We all deserve to feel good about ourselves. Every day, if possible. Make a list of things you like about yourself and perhaps feel far better about yourself than when you started.

What I Like About Me

I married Elysha.I’ve never used an emoji.I’ve performed stand-up comedy and made audiences laugh.I’ve published six novels and two books of nonfiction.My children think I’m fun, crazy, ridiculous, dangerous, and hilarious.I rarely experience stress.I can hold my breath for an exceedingly long time.I’ve never experimented with or used an illegal drug.I’ve been teaching elementary school for 24 years.I put myself through college.I’ve written musicals, comic books, and magazine columns.My cholesterol is low and my recent calcium score was 0.I’ve won 57 Moth StorySLAMs and 9 Moth GrandSLAM championships.I putt well.My cats really love me.I have many excellent friends.

Crying over Hamilton

Driving home from Washington DC last week, our family decided to listen to the Hamilton soundtrack, performed by the original cast.

This meant we would be listening to the show in full.

In the midst of the penultimate song, wherein Hamilton dies in his duel with Burr, I began to get teary-eyed. I subtly wiped away the tears, admittedly feeling a little silly for becoming emotional over the soundtrack to a Broadway show playing through the sound system of a Honda Odyssey minivan.

I’ve seen Hamilton live. I’ve watched it more than once on Disney’s streaming service. I’ve listened to the soundtrack many times. Driving through western Connecticut was hardly the place to become emotional over a song.

Truthfully, I’d become pretty unhinged three songs earlier during “It’s Quiet Uptown” but had managed to hold it together through that awful moment in Hamiton’s life. But “The World Was Wide Enough” ruins me every time. The combination of the finality of death, the tragedy of dying so young, and an inexplicable connection that I feel to Hamilton (at least as he’s presented in the musical) crushes my heart whenever I hear that song.

Even while driving my family home from vacation.

But I managed to pull myself together. Clear-eyed and resolved, I continued to listen, steeling myself against the emotions threatening to wash over me.

But then the final song, “Who Lives, Who Dies, Who Tells Your Stories,” began to play, and that was it for me. I couldn’t hold back the tears anymore. As Hamilton’s wife, Eliza, sings about her husband’s legacy and her own, I couldn’t hold back anymore. As the first tear splashed on my cheek, I heard a sniffle.

I looked over to Elysha. She was crying, too. “I can’t…” she said, fluttering her hands in front of her face as if to try to brush the emotions away. “I can’t… this song…”

My instantaneous thought:

When you find someone who, like you, weeps at the end of the soundtrack to Hamilton while crawling through traffic on the interstate, you have absolutely, positively married the right person.

Just like Hamilton.

7,000!

Yesterday I wrote my 7,000th blog post on Grin and Bare It. My very first post, published on November 18, 2008, read:

Greetings! Welcome to my little corner of the world.

My name is Matthew Dicks. I am a writer.

In the spring of 2008, under the guidance of my remarkable agent, Taryn Fagerness, I sold my first novel, Something Missing, to Broadway Books, an imprint of Doubleday, and thus made one of my childhood dreams come true.

Slated for publication in July of 2009, I thought that a blog like this would be a good opportunity to connect with readers and writers, in order to discuss the writing process, the publishing process, my experience in the world of literary agents and editors, and answer any questions that people may have about the book, my life as a reader and a writer, my latest projects, and anything else that may come to mind.

I’m currently working on my second novel as well as finishing the final editing and proofreading of Something Missing. In addition to fiction, I write poetry, essays, and opinion pieces and have published them in major newspapers and journals throughout the United States.

I look forward to sharing my thoughts, experiences, and my ideas with you!

It seems like a million years ago. And it wasn’t my 7,000th post overall.

Prior to Grin and Bare It, I published on two different blogs.

My blogging journey began on December 10, 2005, with my very first post on the now defunct blog Perpetual Perpetuity.

It read:

Originally this blog began as an assignment for a class at Trinity College on blogging. Under the tutelage of our professor, Colin McEnroe, we spent a semester reading and studying blogs and reporting on our results (in part) on blogs of our own. I was sure that I would hate blogging, and more importantly, I worried that it would take me away from my more serious work. I’ve worked on a novel that is probably about half finished, and I have a potential book deal with a company that publishes educational texts designed for teachers. Both of these projects should be consuming what little free time I possess, yet here I am, writing this, reformatting my blog, and getting ready to blog in a way that is much more personal and much less academic. “Your blog writes you” was a quote from one of my classmates last semester, and it turned out to be true. I tried to ditch this damn thing, but it keeps coming back like a bad penny.

So here goes. Hope you enjoy.

That blog was removed from the internet after a small band of soulless cowards attempted to destroy my teaching career by using the contents of that blog, manipulating it in a variety of ways, and using it against me in a townwide, anonymous, libelous smear campaign.

I saved the content before deleting that blog, of course.

The last post on the day I took that blog down was this:
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I see Elysha half-naked every day! All the way naked, too!

The photographer at Saturday’s wedding informed me that lingerie photos are the latest wedding craze. Brides are giving their future husbands photo albums of themselves wearing lingerie as a wedding gift.

I don’t get it.

Can’t the average husband expect to see his wife in lingerie from time to time, and if so, why the need for a photo album? If a bride is so willing to pose in lingerie for a stranger with a camera, isn’t it reasonable to expect that she will occasionally don a negligee or teddy in the presence of the love of her life?

Elysha gave me a new golf bag and a sand wedge on our wedding day, and this was better than a slew of half-naked photos.

I can see Elysha half-naked (and totally naked) every day. I don’t need a photo album to remind me of how good she looks.
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As you can see, not much has changed since 2007.

My second blog, Conform Me Not, ran from June 25, 2007 through November 1, 2008, when I decided to switch from a purely blogging platform to a website that supported blogging. By then I had published my first novel and realized that I needed a place for readers to land that included more than just a blog.

Conform Me Not still exists online at conformmenot.typepad.com. Many of the links are now broken and images don’t always load, but it remains in all its ancient glory.

From May 14, 2008 (the day we discovered that Elysha was pregnant) through December 20, 2015, I also wrote to my children every day on a blog called Greetings Little One. That blog was eventually converted by the great Kathryn Gonnerman into six enormous tomes that sit on a bookshelf in our dining room and are read by the kids often. That blog still exists at greetingslittleone.typepad.com.

I am so grateful for the last 17 years of blog posts. Not only have I created a tangible, written record of my life, but blogging has proven to be an excellent training ground for the magazine columns and newspaper pieces that I write now.

It’s also forced me to write every single day, though admittedly that may have happened with or without a blog.

I’ve written every day since I was 17 years-old, so skipping a day without blogging was unlikely.

Also, when you’re required to say something every day, you get really good at generating ideas. Listening carefully. Reading a lot. Monitoring your own internal reactions to things. Finding stories in your everyday life.

I’ve also met an enormous number of people through blogging. Some have gotten to know me online, and others have become friends in real life.

My blog is also a wonderful way to stay connected to friends, especially those that have moved away. Though we can’t talk every day, many read every day and send me emails or messages through social media that keep us connected.

Yes, blogging also created an enormous problem for me back in 2007, but even that will likely work out well. I’m still teaching, of course, in the very same school in the very same classroom as that fateful day when I discovered their cowardice and avarice. Their attempt to destroy my career failed, and none of them have found the courage to apologize to me or take me on again.

I’m also working on a memoir about that time in my life, including revelations about the people involved and the rottenness of their actions that have never before been revealed.

It’s quite the story. Hopefully, it’ll sell and make me a lot of money.

In addition to all of that, so many amazing things have happened as a result of putting so much of my life into writing for anyone to read.

Here are just a few:

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In the fall of 2016, I wrote a post advising Hillary Clinton to take certain strategic steps in her next two debates with Donald Trump. That post made it into the hands of a senior staffer on the Clinton campaign and was passed around amongst her people. I don’t know if Clinton herself read it, but I like to pretend that she did.

Sadly, she didn’t use any of my advice.
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In June of 2010, I wrote a post about the Blackstone Valley sniper. When I was a child, a pair of men spent almost two years firing bullets into windows in my hometown and the adjacent towns, forcing us to turn out our lights at night and crawl under the picture window as we passed through the living room. We lived in fear for a long time. There was a total of eleven shootings from 1986-1987 (in addition to acts of arson and burglaries), and though no one was killed, four people were wounded in the attacks.

For a time, the National Guard patrolled the streets at night.

The two men guilty of the shootings were sentenced to prison in 1989 and were released on probation in 2008.

Five years after writing that post, the girlfriend of one of the shooters saw the post and wrote to me, complaining about my disparaging remarks about her boyfriend, who was turning his life around.

It was an interesting exchange of ideas.
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In April of 2011, I wrote about my desire to become a professional best man. I declared myself ready and able if anyone needed my services.

Since I wrote that post, four grooms and one bride have attempted to hire me (scheduling prevented those bookings from happening), and a fifth groom actually hired me for his wedding but canceled later on.

I’ve also been contacted by three different reality television producers about the possibility of doing a show in which I would be a professional best man at a series of weddings. None of these shows came to fruition.

In 2015, comedian Kevin Hart wrote to me upon the release of his film The Wedding Ringer, in which he plays a professional best man. He kindly acknowledged that it was my idea first.
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In 2012, I wrote about my desire to find my first library book. I recalled a few details about the book – the color of the cover and a few details about the plot – but nothing terribly specific.

Two years later a reader correctly identified the book. A couple of months later another reader sent it to me. It now sits on my bookshelf.
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In September of 2016, I wrote about Mrs. Carroll, the woman who taught me how to tie my shoes in kindergarten.

One day later, I was informed by a reader that she is 94 years old and still going strong.

By the end of that day, I had been given her home address by another reader. I sent her a letter telling her how much she meant to me and how I think about her every time I tie my shoes, and on the last day of my school year, I received a letter from her, detailing specific memories about me from my year in kindergarten.
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In March of 2016, I wrote about telling a story at The Moth about my former elementary school principal, Fred Hartnett, for whom a new middle school in my hometown is now named. A few days after writing about the story, Mr. Hartnett, retired for more than 20 years, contacted me, and we’ve since exchanged several emails.
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In February of this year, I wrote about my former McDonald’s manager, Jalloul Montacer, and the important lessons he taught me while working together. After posting, several readers managed to locate Jalloul, now in Texas, and I’ve since reconnected with him.
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Clara has started reading my blog every day. It has resulted in some fantastic conversations and some eye opening revelations for her about her father.

She is currently my favorite reader.

These are just a few of the many remarkable things that have happened because I write and publish every single day.

I guess it makes sense. When thousands of people read your writing each day, connections are going to be made. Miraculous things will occasionally happen. You’re going to occasionally touch hearts and minds.

Annoy your fair share of people, too.

But even that can be fun.

Thanks so much for reading every day. I’m honored and humbled by the thousands of people who read my posts here and on the social media outlets where my blog posts go every day.

But even if I had just a dozen readers, I’d still be writing every day. The rewards, audience or no audience, have made it more than worth my time.

The not-so-hidden meaning behind “Come Sail Away”

Charlie and I have recently become enamored with the song “Come Sail Away” by Styx.

It’s admittedly an odd song. It opens quietly with solo piano, slowly building as it runs through two verses about heading out to sea in search of a better future.

Then the song transforms. Electric guitars erupt. The drums pound away. The lead singer, Dennis DeYoung, shifts his vocals from quiet and contemplative into a raucous, energized tone.

But still, the chorus hasn’t arrived. DeYoung sings four more lines about a gallery of angels appearing over their heads, singing a song of hope, and the angel’s song is, at last, the song’s iconic chorus, a full two minutes and 57 seconds into the song.

While most songs are wrapping up, Styx has finally arrived at the chorus.

Then there is the bridge, long and filled with a variety of futuristic, synthesized sounds and instruments, including synthesized flugelhorn, French horn, and flute.

Oddly enough, the official video for the song does not include the bridge, lopping off a whopping minute and a half from the song.

Up until now, the song is odd only in structure and instrumentation. But then we hit the last four lines of the song, where it’s revealed that those angels were actually aliens, and the characters in the song climb aboard their starship and head off to outer space.

The lyrics:

I thought that they were angels
But to my surprise
We climbed aboard their starship
We headed for the skies, singing…

So yes, “Come Sail Away” is actually a song about aliens coming to Earth and inviting human beings to join them in outer space.

When Charlie finally listened closely to these final lines and discovered what this song was about, we couldn’t believe it. We burst out laughing, then we fell even more in love with the song.

Sometimes weird is so good.

We die forever.

Someone recently told me that I need to come to terms with the eventuality of death.

This seems like lunacy to me. I couldn’t get through the day if I had to accept the eventuality of death.

Do you know who understands me?

Molière. Molière gets it.

Molière’s quote says it all.

The dying is bad enough.

The length of time that you’ll be dead is even worse.

How to handle household chores

I was asked, oddly enough by a person who I don’t actually know, for advice on dividing household chores if you’re married or operating in a similarly cohabitating, romantic entanglement.

My response, fancied up a bit:

I’ve heard a multitude of ways in which couples divide household responsibilities:

Everything from assigning permanent chores to actual chore wheels to a weekly chore auction. I’ve also heard people gripe, complain, and obsess over equity and fairness in the home. I’ve watched couples go to war over who is responsible for what and who is pulling more of the cart than the other.

I offered this instead:

Try to do as much as you can for the person you love. Ideally, they will in turn do the same. As a result, each of you will do as much as possible for the other, and things will get done.

Everyone will be happy.

I like to think that this is how Elysha and I divide chores. At the very least, it’s how I approach our household needs. If I can do it, I do it, because it makes things a little easier for Elysha.

I think she does the same. She may not possess the same heroic, selfless desire to adorn my journey with metaphorical roses and chocolate ice cream, but I like to think she does.

If not, allow me to pretend.

But yes, it’s true that we also have chores that one of us does more often than the other.

I tend to wash and fold the children’s laundry. I’m more likely to take out the trash. I probably empty the dishwasher most of the time. I make the kids their breakfast almost daily.

Elysha changes the cat litter. She waters the plants. She makes the bed every morning. She purchases and rotates the children’s clothing. Shampoos cat vomit off the carpets.

Until the pandemic, she cooked and I cleaned the dishes. Then I learned to cook, so today, one of us cooks and the other cleans. We probably split these chores evenly.

Elysha handles all things related to doctors and dentists. She is the person who deals with the exterminator, electrician, handyman, and landscaper. She purchases gifts for most occasions.

I handle all things related to finance. I manage the Boy Scout, baseball, and summer camp paperwork and scheduling.

I sweep. I do the vast majority of sweeping in our home. I also mop. I am definitely the only person who mops unless there is an actual spill.

But nothing about this is set in stone. As I write this, Elysha is folding the children’s laundry. She emptied the dishwasher earlier today. I was going to surprise her by changing the cat litter, but the basement stairs were so in need of a sweep and a mop that I did this instead.

But I’ve been known on occasion to change that litter. And before we owned Tobi and Pluto, we owned Jack and Owen, and I changed the litter for those two cats.

When I see something that I can do to make her life a little easier, I do it. I think she does the same. We work hard to make the day a little easier for the person we love.

If a chore wheel or auction or multi-colored chore chart or Sunday night argument over who is doing what works well for you, great. If you and your partner assigned chores long ago and have fallen into a blissful, copacetic routine, bully for you.

But I think our way works well, too.

Simply seek to make the person you love a little happier by lightening their load. If they are doing the same, all is well.

Of course, if your partner is a selfish monster, a lazy freeloader, or an incompetent boob, disregard everything I’ve said.

Also, my condolences.

I support virtue signaling

I support virtue signaling.

Virtue signaling happens when an individual, through action or practice, publicly expresses opinions or sentiments intended to demonstrate their good character or the moral correctness of their position on a particular issue.

Examples of virtue signaling include:

A person shares a status on social media in support of an environmental cause because they want to show others that they’re a good person.A person wears a shirt showing that they donated money to some cause because they want others to think that they’re charitable.A company announces that they’ll change their terms of service because they want to improve their public image.

An excellent, real-life example of virtue signaling was the 2014 ice bucket challenge, wherein people dumped ice water over their heads, posted footage of the event on social media, and claimed to have made a donation to the ALS Association.

Many complained at the time that this was an obvious case of virtue signaling. People around the world wanted to signal to their friends, family, and community that they were charitable enough to do something difficult in the name of medical research.

Also, many made no donations to the charity. They merely posted their recording in order to garner attention and make people think that they were doing a good deed.

But here’s the thing:

Even if they didn’t donate a penny to the ALS Association, their action demonstrated support for the organization and encouraged others to do the same. Their actions and deceitful claims about making a donation spurred others to dump ice water of their heads and actually make a donation, leading to the largest fundraising event in the history of the ALS Association, raising more than $220 million worldwide.

Even if you’re doing something virtuous simply to signal your goodness to others, you’re still doing something virtuous.

For example, even if you’re campaigning relentlessly for climate action but still flying in a private jet more than anyone else in the world (Taylor Swift), you’re still campaigning for climate action. You’re still raising awareness, promoting an important cause, and perhaps encouraging others to make a change in their lifestyle.

Yes, it would be enormously beneficial to the environment if Taylor Swift and her wealthy friends would fly in their private jets less often, but her virtue signaling is still undoubtedly making a difference. She’s still doing something virtuous, even if her actions may constitute virtue signaling.

This is the great thing about virtue signaling:

Even if you’re virtue signaling, you’re almost always still doing something virtuous. It may simply be raising awareness for an issue or expressing support for a cause, but these are still good things. Not as virtuous as you might be portraying, but virtuous nonetheless.

People who point fingers and criticize others over their possible virtue signaling are soulless monsters. These are the people who are cognitively incapable of accepting the reality that human beings are complicated:

We can say one thing (and really believe it) while doing entirely the opposite.

We enjoy public affirmation for beliefs that we may not possess to the degree we express.

We may take positive action with the sole purpose of burnishing our image or impressing others.

None of these are ideal acts of virtue, but virtuous action is still taking place.

If you make a large donation to reduce your tax liability, you still make a large donation.

If you make a donation large enough to add a wing to the hospital with the sole purpose of having your name on the building, the new hospital wing still exists.

If you purchase a tee shirt expressing your support for Black Lives Matter while doing nothing else to improve the lives of your black neighbors, you’re still demonstrating support for the cause. And the money from the purchase of the tee shirt probably supported that cause in some small way.

If you hang a Ukrainian flag from your window while doing nothing to support the Ukrainian people in their war against Russa, you’re still expressing support. Spreading the message. Perhaps encouraging someone else to educate themself about the crisis, make a donation, or call their Congressperson.

It would be great if every virtuous act came from a place of selflessness. It would be great if every act of virtue was as generous as it might seem. But as long as you’re not causing harm while claiming to be helping, I support virtue signaling.

More importantly, I despise the sanctimonious pests who take great pleasure in calling out virtue signaling whenever possible.

Shut up and go do something virtuous.

Color TV in 1967

April 14, 1967. The Beatles release Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, my mother is still in high school, and channel 2 in Iowa begins broadcasting in color for the first time.

The live switchover from black and white is interesting, but so, too, is everything else about the broadcast:

The scripted nature of every word spoken, absent any attempt by the reporters to sound natural or off the cuff. It’s almost as if they want the audience to know that they are reading from a script.

The slow pace of the switchover. The producers seemed to understand that something should be said as the reporter moved from one studio to the other, but they didn’t script enough dialogue, leaving this long period of silence as the reporter finished his walk and a sound technician affixed a microphone to his jacket.

Also the lack of teleprompters.

The weirdness of the sets, with books on a shelf behind the reporters in both studios that surely aren’t ever used.

Even the joke that the reporter offers is so oddly worded:

“I feel double doubly honored to have been chosen to be the first one involved in our big change because there are so many much more colorful characters around here than this reporter.”

It’s not a terrible joke by television news standards, but boy did the reporter choose an odd collection of words to land it.

When I was growing up, we had a small, black-and-white television, but we also had a color TV, which is a sentence that also sounds bizarre today.

We once defined a television by the colors it was capable of projecting.

I never thought of color television as a technological marvel of any kind. Since we had a color TV, I simply thought of the black and white TV as a small, cheaper version of television.

The color TV was in a wooden box that was large enough to be adorned with nicknacks and other decorative items. It was essentially a piece of furniture with a television screen affixed to the front.

VHF and UHF attentsas. No remote control. When you turned it off, the screen dissolved to a pinprick of light before turning off entirely.

When I first moved out of my home and started living on my own, my friend and I also had a black-and-white television that we set atop an old baby changing table. It was quickly replaced by a color TV, but for a short time, back in 1989, I was once again staring at images projected in back, white, and varying shades of gray.

Later, we would define televisions by other qualities:

Rear projection. Flat screen. High definition. LED. QLED. Plasma. Eventually, televisions moved from the floor to the wall. Expanded in size. Connected to the internet.

I think that if Bob and Doug were still alive, they would be fairly astounded by what television are capable of today.

But back in 1967, “full spectrum color” seemed like a pretty big deal to them.

Sometimes familiarity is good, too.

Elysha, the kids, and I have been on vacation for the past week, We’ve been visiting with friends in Washington, DC, touring museums and monuments, and seeing the sights.

It’s been a lovely trip. Spending time with our friends has been the highlight of the trip, but the novelty has been good, too. Seeing things never seen before is always fun. Watching your children gaze upon the monuments to our country and some of its most remarkable people has been unforgettable.

But routine can also be appreciated. Reminders of home can sometimes make the struggles of travel a lot easier. Knowing that some things are consistent wherever you go can be pretty fantastic, too.

Last night my friend, Kathy, and I went to a Moth StorySLAM at City Winery in Washington DC. Kathy and I would attend Moth events together routinely before she moved to DC, so it was a bit of a return to a tradition that I’ve been missing dearly since she moved earlier this year.

I’ve never been to a Moth StorySLAM in Washington DC before. I’ve competed in 98 StorySLAMs over the past decade (and attended many, many more), but only in New York City, Boston, and once in Seattle.

I wasn’t sure what to expect when I climbed the stairs and entered the venue.

Of course, I should’ve known what to expect, because other than some cosmetic differences, it was no different than attending any other Moth StorySLAM:

An entertaining host guided us through the night. Storytellers took the stage and entertained us with stories about their lives. Some of the stories were brilliantly crafted. The audience was enthusiastic, generous, and appreciative, as Moth audiences tend to be.

But the little things were the same, too. The unspoken communication that Kathy and I share as a story is being told. The conversation we enjoyed with our tablemates, who included a man who grew up in the Boston area and shared a great deal in common with me. The kind words of audience members following the telling of a story.

Even more shocking, I knew someone in the audience, which happens a lot in New York and Boston, but I didn’t expect it to happen in DC. After telling my story, I was approached by a young woman who had attended one of my summer camp workshops at Miss Porter’s School in Connecticut years before. In fact, the only Moth event she had ever attended prior to this night was the StorySLAM in Boston that I had brought her to as a camper years ago.

She couldn’t believe it when I took the stage to perform.

I also knew one of the other storytellers performing that night, having shared a stage with him in the past.

Even though I was 300 miles from home, in a venue I had never seen before, it felt just like home.

Novelty is lovely. Seeing and experiencing new things is joyous and fun. But it’s also good to learn that wherever you go in this country, some things remain the same. I like to think that we travel to see new things, but we also leave home to understand that regardless of your locale, people are the same wherever you go. Despite geography and climate and distance, some things are always the same.

I won the Moth StorySLAM last night, which meant Kathy and I celebrated in the way we have always celebrated:

French fries at McDonald’s.

It turns out that this, too, was exactly like every other city where I have performed:

Salty, celebratory goodness in a red carton.