The Moth

So Mike and I went out this week to The Moth – a live storytelling event where you go, put your name in the hat, and then if your name is drawn out of the hat during the course of the night you have to get up on stage and tell a five minute story on that night’s theme with no notes in front of 200 people.

Yes, terrifying.

No, I don’t know why I regularly feel compelled to do things I find terrifying.

Anyway, Mike and I both seem to be afflicted with that particular problem, and we both put our names in the hat.

Mike got pulled as the first storyteller of the evening and told a great tale of coming home to America after being an aid worker overseas and trying to relearn what being at home here meant after spending years building toilets in remote villages that (as an added bonus) can help prevent gender-based violence (see Jesus Wants You To Build A Toilet).

I was picked as the last storyteller of the evening, and told the story of how Mike and I met, and fell in love, and got married (yes, in five minutes, I told the short version – although many of my uninhibited friends have implied that that’s about all there was to our unusual courtship, a short version).

Short version of this story about the moth is… I won. Or, I tied with another contestant, so technically we both won. And now we both have to… I mean, get to… compete in the LA Moth Grand Slam event sometime in September.

Thanks to Mike for making my story possible in the first place, and for setting me up so nicely. I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t have won without the “awww-factor” set-up. As in, “Awwww, the stress management trainer married that charming toilet-building aid worker whose job helps prevent women from being raped. How romantic is that?”

So, now, the question becomes what on earth am I going to say at the Grand Slam?

Maybe I’ll be out of the country in September – in Sudan or Pakistan perhaps.

One can only hope.

Thanks for dropping by,
Lisa