High podcast friends. As regular listeners know, I try to run a family friendlish podcast, but because it's integral to the plot. In this episode of Heavyweight, we dropped the F bomb and unprecedented nine times. If they were giving out peabodies for swearing, maybe i'd get one. Also, as long as I'm giving advisories, I also pronounced the word garage as garage. I encourage you to listen anyway. Hello, did you get a message from me a couple months ago?
A phone message was on your birthday. I was wishing you a happy birthday. It's possible I didn't hear anything back, so I was concerned. Yes, when someone leaves your message on your birthday, you have no obligation to return that message. But that's it. Oh my gosh, it would have been nice to get. I'm not saying a thank you card. But you know, if I.
Was under no obligation, why are you now giving me rushes as to how I should have responded.
Some things in life aren't obligatory, but we just do them, you know what I mean?
Absolutely, like picking up the phone when I just saw that.
You called me exactly like, hey, wait a minute. From Gimblet Media I'm Jonathan Goldstein, and this is Heavyweight. Today's episode Sky Sky and her son Clark ever ritual, Well, I don't know about you. Every night, after his teeth are brushed and he's all tucked in, right before Clark goes to sleep, Sky sits down on the edge of his bed and they talk.
What was your favorite part of that movie? Probably like the end was a good end. The helicopter scene was good.
Clark's eleven. Naturally, there's a lot of discussion about comic books and movies.
I don't think it was a movie. You know, the original Jumanji was not funny.
But there's something about the stillness of nighttime that also frees Clark up to speak in a way that he doesn't normally. Not only does he tell Sky about what he's watching and reading, he tells her about his feelings. He shares stories about what's going on at school, and Sky shares stories too, stories from her childhood. Some stories she tells just to entertain Clark, but other stories she
tells to impart a lesson. There's one story in particular she's told Clark over and over again throughout the years, and lately it's been coming up a lot recently. Sky told me the story.
So the story, in a way, the story starts when I moved.
When she was eleven years old, Sky was best friends with a group of four girls. They wore a spree sweatshirts, and watched love Boat on the weekends. They were the popular girls.
That was sort of the vibe of that group was like, we're exclusive and we're kind of the shit. Yeah, you know how like in high school they have you know, most beautiful and most popular, and all of those. We decided to make our own book of you know, awarding people various prizes. We gave me best Eyes, and I remember sort of having this pride in that.
They spent all the fifth grade together. Then summer came and with it long days filled with lazy bike rides and trips to the candy shop. But early one summer morning, Sky woke up to find her yard had been teepeed covered in toilet paper and there was more.
Someone had written fuck you on our garage door. And we had a double garage, and so fuck was on one you was on the other, and they were written in large white letters on our brown garage.
Sky's mom had seen the vandals make their getaway. The words fuck you had been written by none other than Sky's for best friends.
And they had been written in paint.
I wish they had done it was something that had come off, because I do remember this feeling of like being driven home day after day and seeing those words on the garage door. Teeping someone's house is one thing, it's sort of a common prank, but the fact that they wrote fuck you, that felt to me like it really came from anger. And they had to have brought the paint, you know. There had to have been some thought put into this.
Why had they done it? What were they angry about? Sky had no idea. Did you ever see those girls again?
Well?
I saw them again, for sure.
We all funneled into this junior high school that fall, and I think that I just avoided them. I never ever said a word to any of the four girls ever. Again, I pretended it never happened.
And when Sky tells Clark this story, here's where she delivers the moral. Awful things do happen, but in the end everything turns out fine. Sky grew up, got married, has a job she likes, and a family she loves. Her story, she tells him, has a happy ending in the past. When he's heard this story, Clark's taken his mom's lesson at face value. But Clark is now the same age Sky was when her friends turned on her. He's starting to see his own classmates leave old friends
behind for the more popular crowd. For the first time, He's able to image what it would be like if his own small group of friends suddenly cast him out, stopped coming over to his house to play video games, stop speaking to them altogether. So Sky's moral that everyone lives happily ever after is starting to feel untrue, and so Clark has a question for his mother, why didn't she ever confront her friends about what they did? Why not then? But also he asks Sky, why not now?
Like did they do it for themselves or because of you? Or was it because of something you did or something?
Clark brings up Sky's story during their bedtime ritual, asking for details, weighing the injustice, fantasizing about Sky looking up her old friends and confronting them with some questions.
I think you can't be like the person that you normally are, where you're like tim and little.
Mommy funny that you think of me as timid Mommy, that's very interesting.
Yeah, well, I have like a lot of occasions to prove that your New Year's resolution was to say no more often. That was your resolution because you were too timid to say no.
To people before that.
Well, I like to think that it's less about me being timid and more about me being a can do kind of person.
There it is right there. At school functions, Clark watches his mom try to accommodate the other parents and get steamrolled in the process. In restaurants, he sees his mom settled for the wrong meal rather than bother the waiter. For once, he wants Guy to stop worrying about everyone else's feelings. He wants her to focus on herself.
I would really love to know, like why it's important to you.
It's basically for me, are like my mom avenging. Those people just wanted you to kind of like get your avenge, my revenge, avenge yourself. Sorry I'm using the wrong word. You gotta be like you did this and do you remember why it happened, and say sorry to me, he said.
At the end, Mom, You've got to figure this out. You've got to go for it. You have to have a chance to find out why this happened.
It's not just Clark who feels this way. There's someone else who also wonders why this happened and has always wished Sky had had the chance to ask. Is this Rachel? This is Skuy's mom, Rachel, the only eyewitnessed what happened that night, and the person talking to her while chewing a hunk of munster cheese and hollow bread because his boss Alex thinks taking lunch breaks is more of a BizOps thing, is me?
I got out of my chair and I stood at the window and pulled back the drape, and I see their bikes sort of going off into the night.
The night the girl showed up around two or three in the morning, Rachel was reading in an armchair by the window. She's always up in the middle of the night. It's a habit that began in childhood. She tells me that her own mom, Sky's grandmother suffered from schizophrenia. She was unpredictable, and the middle of the night was the only time the house was ever quiet and safe. Who was during those calm nights alone that Rachel began writing poetry?
And here I am all these years later, and I'm still doing it. There's something holy about the middle of the night. Nobody's hassling you, and you can really hear yourself somehow.
But on the night the vandals struck, she could also hear four eleven year old girls making their getaway. When the sun came up, Rachel saw the fuck you on the garage and immediately she phoned up one of the girls and spoke with both her and her mom. Well neither denied what had happened. Nothing much came of the conversation, and after that Sky begged Rachel not to make any
more phone calls. The idea of confronting anyone just upset Sky Moore, so Rachel stopped calling, and after a few days things seemed to go back to normal.
We felt it was over, and for her it really wasn't. It really took her, being I think, grown up, for her to start saying to me, I think about this all the time, and it was shocking to me. I had not understood that, and I felt dopey that I hadn't understood that, because I thought I was pretty well attuned to her and her feelings. It broke my heart. She always understood how to sit in with people, completely
unlike her parents. My husband, you know, was born in Finland and was a mathematician and had his PhD when he was nineteen. And I was this strange, you know, high school dropout poet. I mean, we were really odd and eccentric birds, and here was this kid who was just exquisitely normal. And to us, she's always been a wonder,
you know, like, who is this very social being? This is a kid who whose first word was high and who when she was small literally sat on the front step all day and said hi to every person who passed on the sidewalk, and we loved her for that. And what happened with the girls, This had the effect of making her more you know, pulling in her wings.
And this is the person Clark sees today, someone who keeps her wings tucked in so tight for fear of them getting in anyone's way, that she's forgotten how to open them. Rachel knows that Clark has recently begun urging his mom to be less timid, and she approves.
There's something authoritative about a child they haven't had. They're not all hammered by doubts and worries about what they're saying they're like, well, why didn't you do this?
You know, Rachel had asked me to call at the end of her work night. It's now seven thirty AM, close to her bedtime, so we say our goodbyes, but just before putting down the phone, she offers a final benediction, as I was so beautiful.
The way he wanted her to figure this out. Because she'll hear that from him in a way that she probably could never hear that from me, it has more of a chance to wake her up.
And with that, Rachel heads off to bed, and I turned back to Sky, who, with a little help from Clark, is still trying to wake up.
He does have this sense of but that's an unfinished thing.
Yeah, like the good that this good ending hasn't fully happened yet.
Yeah, yeah, the good ending hasn't happened. So it's sort of turning into a different story, which is that it's kind of never too late to summon courage and do something.
That scares you.
I guess in a way, I want to live up to his to who I think he'd like me to be. You know, I think like I need to show him that I can stand up for myself.
Thirty five years later, and Sky's finally decided she's ready. She just needs help reaching the girls and not backing down when she does. So you want to do this?
I think that I want to do this. Yes, I want to do this. You know now I'll be able to say I did what I could.
And if you want to be able to say you did what you could to save scads of cash with some truly great deals, here's the chance you've been dreaming of your entire life. Sky and I get to work reaching out to the four girls, Sam, Nicky, Randy, and Tessa. We begin with Sam because Sky already has their contact info. They'd run into each other at their ten year high
school reunion. Sky Sam had said, it's me. It would have been the perfect opportunity to ask about the fuck you on the garage door, but Sky just couldn't bring herself to mention it, so instead they made awkward small talk.
And then she fronted me on Facebook, which practically made me laugh.
But I.
This sounds ridiculous, but I didn't want to be rude, and so I accepted her friendship.
I helped Sky write a Facebook message to Sam saying she has some questions about the end of their friendship, but with no response, Sky follows up again and again. Eventually, Sam writes back, we just naturally grew apart as life events progressed, she says. She concludes by saying that Sky's attempts to contact her are making her feel quote overwhelmed and stressed, and that makes Sky feel bad. Second is Nicky, who says that even though Skuy's mom clearly remembers her
being there that day, she absolutely wasn't. In fact, she says, she and Sky weren't even that close. Third comes Randy. Randy's hard to get a hold of so when we get no answer on her house phone, we try all the numbers we can find. We leave her repeated messages, but it seems like she's not even getting them. But as it turns out, she's gotten all of them, because she sends Sky an email to say that she's not
happy about it. In fact, she's creeped out. Sky was at the grocery store when she received the email.
I was in line and I completely was out of my body as I was reading it. I so forgot where I was that someone had to say, are you in line?
And I was like Uh, no, I'm not, and I.
Had to push my cart away from the checkout stand because I could not focus.
Sky went into damage control mode, writing back to Randy to say how deeply sorry she was. I asked her to read me what she'd send.
Randy, I'm so grateful that you wrote me back. It makes me cringe to think about how so my creepy and weird it must have seemed to get those messages. I'm kicking myself for letting that happen. I'm still hoping to talk to you privately and just explain myself.
Would that be okay?
Like, you know, is there a kind of like do you feel like your default is to sort of apologize for having reached out?
Yeah?
I do.
That has occurred to me.
Later, Sky shares the email with Clark, and it seems like it's occurred to him as well.
I think you were over apologetic if you say yourself as the kind of character was like, oh sorry, sorry, sorry, I shouldn't have done that. That automatically makes her basically.
Like gives her power. Yeah, puts her in.
A better spot than you're in, and that's bad.
At Sky's insistence, Randy finally agrees to a phone call, but in the end, all she tells Sky is that she doesn't remember that night, doesn't remember any toilet paper or grasdoor, She doesn't remember anything at all. Of the four friends, only one remains, Tessa, the girl Sky's mom phoned directly after the incident. Over the next couple weeks, I speak with Tessa several times. She can't decide if
she wants to talk with Sky. For one thing, she says it was so long ago that she doesn't remember much, to which I rejoin that she's all we've got. For another, she adds getting contacted like this through a third party interlocutionary international podcasting host is pretty weird, to which I
admit that it is slightly unconventional. Finally, Tessa says she doesn't want to inadvertently drag the other girl's names through the dirt for something they did as kids, to which I say, well, let's change those names and draw some pseudonyms through the dirt. And once I agree to change the names of the four girls, Tessa, not her real name, agrees to sit down with Sky, still her real name, so she can finally have a conversation about the night
in question. Both Sky and Tessa live in California, pretty close to where they grew up. I figure my presence at their meeting could be calming, helpful even All Sky has to do is invite me out there to join her. I like California, and no I love it. But because of her cursed timidity, Sky just doesn't have the lima beans to ask. So I continue to offer her prompt. I haven't been there in some time.
Well, it's a lovely state.
After several minutes of this elaborate dance, I get to the point, for both our sake, So does you do you think that?
Uh?
You think I should come?
That would be amazing.
And so it's off to California A for some long overdue Q and A.
Hi.
Good how about you guys? Hi Clark, nice to meet you.
Sky picks me up at the hotel. Clark's along too, to make sure his mom doesn't lose her.
Nerve Clark, you can continue to navigate for me.
WI.
Clark sits in the passenger seat, leafing through a comic book. All right, let me I'm just going to throw this in here if that's okay. Yeah, And then I tossed my bag into the back of the hatchback and we head off to meet Tessa. It felt great to be in San Francisco. It's just like the mom and the Papa saying if one is going to San Francisco, one
should wear flowers in one's hair. As we speed down the highway, I close my eyes, lean back, and would that I had hair, enjoy the wind blowing through it.
Wait, is the trunk open?
Oh wow? It seems that in my excitement to hit the streets of San fran I'd left the hatchback door open, which it turns out is the source of the San Franciscan breeze. She whizz, I'm sorry about that.
God.
Sky finds a place on the shoulder of the highway to pull over, oh man, and shuts the trunk door of that, and with that we were back on our way.
That's why they call me mister excitement. Actually, no one calls me mister excitement. San Francisco is pretty.
We're not in San Francisco, you know that, right? I mean?
As we drive to meet Tessa, I ask Sky how she's doing.
I feel nervous sighted, which is a word.
That I am when when I you use the word nervous sided Clark.
Like before, like baseball games and like stuff like that.
I mean, I kind of feel nervous sighted.
Nervous.
Sided is a portmanteau word, like the way say romance, a word denoting an incestuous relationship between brothers. Is or she lax the act of chilling out with a bar of family sized x lax.
How do you feel about meeting do you want to meet her? I will resist temptations to punder over what she did.
Clark is eleven years old. In the comic books he reads, that's how problems are solved with punches, kung fu chops. Writing the scales is a simpler business. It's one thing to hear stories about his mom being stepped on. It's another to be in the same room with one of the people who did the stepping. Sky tries to tamp down his need for revenge.
Well, as we were talking about last night before you went to slay, you won't forgiveness. Giveness forgiveness. We need to find the forgiveness.
I wanted a quiet place for Sky and tested to talk, and it turned out that on the weekends the local university had an unoccupied studio.
I think we're basically here.
We pull in the empty campus parking lot.
Clark, you want to look and make sure I'm within the lines. There was a little lines.
Okay, let's get set up. So this is where Clark and I, well, we'll sit.
The studio is only big enough for Sky and Tessa, So Clark and I sit in the control booth where we'll be able to eavesdrop on the conversation. There's a mic, so should the need arise Clark and offer guidance that only Sky can hear through her headphones.
I'm mom, Hi, Clark.
Okay, so you turn it on.
It's good to hear your voice.
Can you hear me?
Sky?
Sandy the studio technician helps us get set up and takes a level on Sky's voice by asking her an easy, neutral question. Tell me, how's it right in today?
How is the right end?
You don't have to shout into it.
It was easy, except for when we left the hatchback open on the freeway.
Laugh it up, Sandy the studio technician, Laugh it up. Tessa's running late, so Sky sits waiting in the studio by herself. Finally, wait, she's here.
Ah, okay, okay, Hey, I'm Jonathan, glad you made it a nice to meet you too.
Tessa's stylish and like Sky, looks younger than her years, you could still see a trace of the popular girl. I show her into the studio where Sky's been waiting. The two haven't seen each other since they were children.
Who do you do you keeping close touch with anywhere in high school? Anyone?
As they settle in, the mood is formal, a little stilted since the room is only about the size of a small elevator. Their knees practically touch.
You guys can start now, okay, thanks Clark. Clark says, we can start okay. So so I'm just gonna go backtrack a little bit. Yeah, so my memory is that we were all in sort of a tight knit group.
You know, is it too early for me to ask this discussion?
Why didn't you do it?
For both of us?
But then had also written fuck you on the garage door, and that then from from that point on, we never spoke again. And and it's something that has always stuck with me because I don't know why it happened. And so I guess I'd love to know what your memories are.
Clark's got this look on his face. Love to know what your memories are. From his perspective, his mom's doing what she always does. That is exactly what he told her not to. She's being overly sensitive to Tessa's feelings. But even after thirty five years of waiting to ask the question, Sky just can't help being Sky. Tessa takes a sip of water.
Sorry, I'm just my throat is dry.
Yeah, no problem.
Sky smiles warmly and gives Tessa a moment to collect herself.
Take your time, so I have a vague recollection.
It's really really vague. What I what really stands out is that we were just going teping, like we went teping a lot, you know, not just on that night, and we literally just stumbled upon your home. And that's why I remember.
Clark furrows his brow. He wants his mother to push harder, be more aggressively.
Mom, ask why you weren't invited to go toilet papering with them?
That's a really good question. We watch a. Sky waits patiently for Testa to finish speaking.
He wanted me to ask you why didn't come with you that night teeping?
Why weren't you invited? Not why didn't that come why I wasn't invited.
I I in my mind we had drifted apart by then.
Inside the control room, Clark shakes his head.
I think there's more the story, you do, Yeah.
What makes you think that? He slumps back in his seat and crosses his arms. He seems frustrated.
I remember your mom calling my mom, And for my mom it wasn't a big deal either. My mom, first of all, didn't even know what two being was. I had to explain it to her.
Oh okay.
I did not realize until maybe now that it was more of a big deal for you.
Yeah.
And I feel like you're being very, very honest, and I really really appreciate that.
When Tessa and I last spoke, she mentioned how odd this whole undertaking seemed to her. A woman she hadn't heard from in thirty five years, wanted to talk to her about a random night from their childhood. Oh and she also wanted to bring along her eleven year old son and his forty eight year old sidekick, both of whom would be communicating with Sky through a secret microphone WA's way so she can talk about wait wait wait. Inside the control room, I watched Sky perform a delicate
balancing act. She's aware that Clark is watching, so she's trying not to be too timid, but she also wants to set a good example for how to behave and through all that, she can't help seeing it from Tessa's perspective, how weird and uncomfortable this must be for her. Sky wants to help Tessa feel safe, and so she treads lightly.
I mean, I think being the parent now of a child, I understand how quickly things can get confused. And it really was the words that that's what seemed to communicate to me, I've done something terrible, like I must have it. I must be responsible for this in some way, you know, And so I wondered, did I do something?
You can see the TESSAs weighing her response. She doesn't quite know what to say, but with Sky being so gracious and open, it's like she feels the least she can do is try to meet her halfway, and so tentatively she offers a thought.
Ah, maybe you were a little different than them in what way?
Again? Tessa searches for the right words, all the while never seeing us or we, but always they.
They were like they were a little mischievous. You know, they were a little rebellious and wanting to do something bad, and I was, and maybe you weren't. Maybe you didn't want to go along with what they were doing.
Well, you know what's interesting about that is the whole tepeeing thing.
I remember that being a sing but I remember I actually remember not wanting to do that. Would you say that that maybe I was more like a goodie two shoes.
Type compared to them? Yeah, you know.
According to Tessa, if Sky had stayed friends with those girls, it would have meant a summer of drinking alcohol and pulling off semi illegal pranks after dark, all things Sky wouldn't have wanted. Even back then, she didn't want to upset anyone. To her friends, that made her seem like a goody two shoes, And to a goody two shoes who thinks they're better than you, what could be more of a fuck you than a literal fuck you? The words large and clear emblazoned across her family's grage door.
I turned to Clark to see what he makes of all this. Is there something that you feel like we're just kind of missing or we're not getting it?
I remember really not wanting to be.
Clark stairs straight ahead, watching his mom. I can see he's thinking something through. He makes a move towards the mic, but then shies away. He's antsy, rising from his seat, settling back. Eventually I make a suggestion, do you just want to go in there?
Yeah?
Totally. Clark gets up, leaves the control room and makes his way to the studio to talk to his mom in person. Watching him, I have no idea what he's up to.
Oh Clark is here.
Oh Clark enters the room.
Was that?
But it's not as mommy's addressing. It's Tessa. I take a deep breath as Clark begins to speak.
Uh, did you feel in any way like dragged into it, like to do like to toilet paper people's houses.
I don't know if I would say dragged, but I would say definitely I was a follower.
I'm not exactly surprised by Clark's question. It's the same one he's been asking since the beginning, essentially, why did you do this to my mother? But I am surprised by the way he's asking it, not with anger but with sympathy. For the first time, Clark's trying to see it all from Tessa's perspective, he's following his mom's example.
Sometimes you're with friends because those are the ones you have. So you'll stick with your friends even though you see things that you don't like in them. You just don't want to be alone.
Yeah, thanks, okay, yeah, thanks Claire.
And because Tessa didn't want to be alone, she continued to hang out with the girls for several more years before eventually finding a new group of friends. Tessa turns to Sky.
Honey, you freaking dodged a bullet.
That's what you did, not being with those girls, I have to say.
Sky tells Tessa that there's still one thing she's been wondering about. Why did Tessa agree to talk with her at all? It would have been easy to say no, everyone else did.
Why I said, yeah, truthfully, the call was so out of the blue, of course, I you know, at the beginning, I said, yeah, sure, you know, like, and then I talked to my daughter and she was like, no, like, don't do that.
How old is your daughter?
My daughter is almost thirteen?
Okay, yeah, what was she worried about?
She's she kind of said, like, what's in it for you?
Mm hm?
You know, she was kind of worried that, like I would come out as a bad person or something.
How is she feeling right now that you're here.
She's mad?
She is, Yeah, she's mad, But you know I told her, like not everything we do in life is for us, it's for other people as well, So she'll be fine.
Whereas Guy set out to show her Sun that she has the courage to stand up for her own needs, Tessa wants to show her daughter that she has the courage to stand up for someone else's.
I'm sorry that I didn't. The thought of you thinking for thirty five years that you had done something wrong is like, Oh, I really don't think that you did anything. I really don't. I'm sorry that you felt like that. You know, I wish that you hadn't.
I'm so glad. I'm hearing it now.
I'm glad too. So I'm really glad, And it's really good to see you. And you literally look exactly the same. Maybe your hair is a little shorter.
And.
Michael, go ahead, was that dramatic hug? Oh you want a dramatic hug.
That's glad. I think we have to have the dramatic.
Hug because the room's so small. When they stand, they're already almost touching. They look at each other for a brief moment, and then Sky opens her wings.
Oh, it's good to see you.
So good to see you.
After the meeting with Tessa, Clark didn't have much to say, but at night, back in his room, in that space where he feels free to open up, Clark's eager to talk about Tessa.
Honestly, I didn't know that person, so I thought they might like still be the bully, still bullying you. And I didn't want you to feel like scared or anything in that situation, so I was kind of anxious. Well, then I met Tessa and she was like super nice, she was super hard, And I feel like you'd like you weren't timid, Mommy, you were brave, Mommy.
Tonight there's no talk of avenging. Through his mom's example, Clark learning that one can be kind without being timid. The kindness can carry its own strength.
If you had if he hadn't had that night where you had said you have to figure this out, mom, I really honestly don't think I would have done it.
So thank you. You're welcome.
There's a lot more coming for Clark. Moments when he'll have to make difficult decisions. Some of them he'll talk about with Sky, and some he won't. But for now they keep talking, neither of them quite ready to go to sleep just yet.
Remember when you said that there was an international Tomato day, Jop judging.
Me, it was international.
Now that the fern entures returning to its goodwill home, Now that the last month's rent is scheming, with the damage to possible, take this moment to dissolve. If we meant it, if we talked, we felt around for far, tooting from things that accidentally talk.
Heavyweight is hosted and produced by me Jonathan Goldstein, along with Khalila Holt, Peter Bresnan, and Stevie Lane. The show is edited by Jorgeus, with additional editing by Alex Bloomberg. Special thanks to Emily Condon, Devin Taylor, Anica Pillsbury and jud jud Ju Ju Ju jud Ju Ju. Jackie Cohen. Bobby Lord mixed the episode with music by Christine Fellows, John K. Sampson, Blue Dot Sessions, and Bobby Lord he himself. Additional music credits can be found on our website gimltmedia
dot com. Slash Heavyweight our theme song is by The Weaker Thans courtesy of Epitaph Records, and our ad music is by Hailey Shaw. Follow us on Twitter at Heavyweight or email us at Heavyweight at gimltmedia dot com. We'll have a new episode next week