You’ve Come to the Right Person | This American Life | Episode 856

Key Takeaway

When uncertainty is keeping you stuck, replace private stories with one small, reality-based experiment. Ask a trusted neutral person for direct feedback, make a low-stakes invitation, or gather one piece of missing information before deciding what something means. Yuna’s decision to talk normally with her jiu-jitsu crush did not create romance, but it punctured an idealized fantasy and gave her useful evidence. Progress can mean clearer information, not just the outcome you hoped for.

Episode Overview

This American Life assembles stories about people finding unusually well-matched guides for questions they cannot resolve alone. A stunt coordinator reassures a child worried about movie safety; comedian Daniel Sloss’s relationship metaphor prompts breakups; incarcerated nurse Quinetta Harris becomes an underground health-information source; and blind elder Harriet encourages Yuna to risk vulnerability and make the first move.

Full Transcript

Transcript of You’ve Come to the Right Person | This American Life | Episode 856 from This American Life. Auto-generated from episode audio; may contain minor errors.

a quick warning there are curse words that are un beeped in today's episode of the show if you prefer a beeped version you can find that at our website thisamericanlife.org from WB Chicago it's This American Life I'm David Caston Bal sitting in for IR glass and I'm just going to let my first two guests today introduce themselves my name is Gary pal I'm a stunk coordinator second unit director in motion films name a couple movies o Titanic James Bond Mission Impossible okay miles your turn I don't have a job you could say your name though miles miles is seven well almost seven and we rained from him to talk to Gary because he had some urgent questions about car chases from movies and Gary that's his particular set of skills I drove the cran in Terminator the bus in Harry Potter wait you drove the bus in Harry Potter I did a little background miles loves cars his mom says that before he could read he could tell you make and model and sometimes year of any of their friends Cars he draws cars makes cars out of Legos he brought one with him actually and he and Gary quickly got down to Talking Shop I do car chases with my like seven and eight cars right so do you choreograph little car chases for yourself then you that's cool you know what you should do before this conversation with Gary miles showed me this one kind of amazing drawing he' done it's a scene from a particular movie he's drawn what looks like a black police car in the air flying backward over a second car miles would tell you the second car is a Ford binto miles hasn't seen the actual movie this is from just this scene over and over have you watched The Blues Brothers C ches that's 8 minutes long yes I have have you seen the backwards flip the one at the end yeah yeah that's a picture of it this is the thing he had questions about the famous car chase at the end of The Blues Brothers whole thing is actually 11 minutes long I remember the first time I saw it I fell over cuz it was so amazing I mean like are those people billionaires if they can buy 150 Dodge Dodge police cars only to crash them if you haven't seen the movie it's a ridiculous massive smashup of cars miles had questions about how it was all done and Gary Powell World expert on car chases said he was happy to help hey miles should we just play through it and um and whenever that you have a question you just say stop all right all right here we are the final car chase scene and The Blues Brothers let's go I'll Mar it for you it starts with The Blues Brothers sunglasses black suits driving an old beat up black cop car that they bought used it's their single car being pursued on the Highway by a long line of police cars officers are in Pursuit a black and white 1974 D do are those Nazis real Nazis he's talking here about members of the Illinois Nazi party who joined the car chase in an orange Ford Pinto are those Nazis real Nazis uh no they' be actors playing those parts ah miles is like good to know we move on to action Jak chase continues I got to pull over Dan a drives right through a highway barrier and down the embankment they continue okay but the cop car behind them crashes followed by the one behind them and the next one some upside down it goes on quite a while pause pause do they actually um are the people okay in the cars when they crash like are there people in there like real people who are yes there is there'll be stump people in those cars they'll all be strapped in they'll have roll cages inside the cars probably wearing crash helmets some of them so yeah they'd be safe almost all of miles's questions were like this about safety some version of are those people I'm seeing in the movie okay like in this one scene where the Blues Brothers in their car go plowing through a mall and all these people have to jump jum out of the way at the very last second they're all stump people that have been trained and they all move on a queue you know they're really good cuz you can see they leave it right to the last second before they move but that was lots of stump people lots of rehearsals we continue miles shouts pause a couple more times once to ask if Dan akroy had to take special driving lessons answer probably yes another time to ask if that car that goes flying through the air and sticks into the side of a truck is real answer yes and then then we're at the climax of the chase the one that Miles had drawn a picture of The Blues Brothers are now being chased by just the Nazis who are pursuing them ridiculously in the orange Ford Pinto Blue's Brothers Gun it up an on-ramp to a highway but oh wait the highway hasn't been built yet it's just a ramp into the air Blue's Brothers hit revers somehow flip backward over the Nazi car behind them but the Nazi car keeps going off the ramp and into the air it flies through the air impossibly and comically far and then there's a shot of it falling straight down a really long way you see the Chicago skyline in the background and the car smashes into the ground wait pause pause pause this is where I had the question how do they film that part Gary explains that they actually dropped the Ford Pinto from a helicopter and then they're just dropping it and then obviously when the wide shot we see the car dropping again that could be filmed from a helicopter or a building and you just seeing it dropping all the way down but like the question the question I have for that part like are they okay once the car lands because you don't see it after it lands so in the car when it's dropping when the physical car is dropping they've probably got two dummies sitting in there no real people oh but how do they get out Gary explains that the interior shot of the two people in the car while it's falling that was done separately safely on the ground miles nods miles is actually the son of one of our co-workers here at the show Alysa she has a theory about miles's interest in the blu's brother's Chase and all those questions about are the people save which is that some of it has to do with the thing that happened last summer a girl miles nose was in a pretty serious car accident miles told Gary about it I have a friend her and her dad were driving in their old Subaru out back and they were at an intersection they stopped there was a is soul coming there was a lady an 95-year-old lady in the car asleep at the wheel oh dear and she rammed them into a tree oh was they okay yeah because my friend was trapped tightly into the back seat like that's why you have to wear your seat belts and all that so that was lucky hey Gary how often when you're shooting like a car chase does somebody get hurt in the making of it um it's it's rare um I've unfortunately been involved in one car chase where someone got seriously hurt because the special effects rig failed um and that is obviously not a nice experience but I think it's you know out of the 35 years that I've doing it I've only had one serious accident in a car chase other than that you might get a bit like Whiplash or something like that but that's you know for us that's nothing miles can I ask you a question what now that you know how this stuff is done do you think it's better to know how they did the stunts or better not to know better it's good to know how they do that so you know that none of them the people like like are just random people who have like a chance of dying in the film or something so that's the reason it's good to know it's nice when you get to talk to the exact right person you get answers to the questions that have been circling in your head and sometimes reassurances you didn't even realize you were asking for nice to meet you miles hope it makes things better for you probably will well today we have stories of very idiosyncratic experts all them with super specialized knowledge giving life advice we have one story about a comedian Ian whose jokes have a strange power to change people's lives another story about a woman in prison who uses the skills she learned outside prison to mcgyver solutions to all kinds of impossible problems and another with the expert's expertise includes the fact that she successfully had an affair in each of these you really think who else could have helped them from WBZ Chicago it's This American Life stay with us it's This American Life Act One ask Daniel this one starts with someone who gets some advice though interestingly when it begins they're not looking for advice Aviva dornfeld has this one David was in a situation that so many people find themselves in at one point or another he was in a relationship that by every metric with was pretty good and yet somewhere in the back of his mind he found himself wondering if it was good enough David was 24 and had been dating his girlfriend for three years at that point I don't know if you've ever went through this yourself where you just have this like a niggle you know and you go I don't know what the niggle is because everything's perfect and the niggle being like a little hint of Doubt is that what that is yeah a slight doubt like confusion it just didn't have that oomph I say we were vanilla beige but lovely what does that mean so I mean you wouldn't be thinking that we were maybe flying off to France and having a romantic getaway together there was nothing wrong but no no passion mhm yeah yeah there was Zero French in any of the relationship it was a very British relationship one night David's at a party without his girlfriend talking with some people and his friend Daniel who's newly single and thrilled about it starts telling everyone about his Grand theory of love he just come up with it the theory went like this our life is like a jigsaw puzzle and as we grow up we slowly piece the puzzle together bit by bit but the thing is we've all lost the box to our individual jigsaws so none of us know what image we're trying to make so we start with the four sides our family friends job hobbies and then we're all taught the the piece at the very center of the jigsaw the one we need to complete the puzzle is our partner and this is the important part people are so desperate to find their missing puzzle piece that sometimes they try to cram a piece that obviously doesn't fit or strip out other parts in order to make room for that centerpiece because they believe that to be better than being alone David is listening to all of this I just had that holy [ __ ] moment of this is my life you're describing right now and and I didn't realize it David hadn't ever considered breaking up with his girlfriend because there was nothing to break up over but hearing Daniel talk about this jigsaw analogy David begins to panic and then I had this moment and I was like what do I do now with this information um and he's like well I think you know what you need to do in this this situation oh you literally asked him that what do I do oh yeah oh yeah yeah what yeah I was really taken back Daniel's analogy worms its way into David's brain once it's there he can't shake it so he breaks up with his girlfriend and he actually explained the jigsaw analogy to her as if anyone wants to hear that they're a misshapen puzzle piece which he tells Daniel the next time he sees him how' it feel when he told you that they'd broken up because of what you'd said um I mean he was happy yeah so it felt good and you know I I never thought that they were the perfect couple I never thought that they would be together forever like when they were together I was like oh this ain't this ain't a she's great you're great but you together ain't great this is Daniel David's friend another friend of theirs who also heard Daniel's analogy he broke up with his partner too Daniel had hit on something he's a comedian Daniel SAU maybe you've heard of him and feeling the wind of his friend's breakup under his sails Daniel starts trying trying out this bit in bigger venues he told it on stage at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival performed it for a month straight imagine all of our lives are like her own individual jigsaw puzzles and as we're going through life we're just slowly piecing it together bit by bit Bas after the show I was at a nightclub and a girl came up to me and she was like I saw your show a week ago and I broke up with my partner uh and I was like oh cool awesome like are you bare for it she was like yeah I'm way bare forter much happier that's why right Daniel felt like oh this little party trick works with strangers too he started touring with it performing all around Scotland some of us will take the wrong person the wrong jigsaw piece and just [ __ ] Jam them into our jigsaws anyway after show up in dundy this he must have been about 50 52 years old guy came up to me and he went hey man just want you to let you know I saw the show and I finally got these through and he showed me the first uh divorce papers and I remember being like oh this is this is something how long have they been married do you know 20 20 years I think oh my God yeah then there was the 19-year-old girl who brought her parents to the show in an attempt to make them realize they were miserable together it worked she asked them to autograph their divorce papers which he did happily then Daniel started taking the show abroad we're don't Hungary and a guy had driven I'm going to say like 800 mil from somewhere like in Russia with his divorce papers just to see the show so funny that people want to show you their divorce papers it's like a cat bringing a dead you know bird to your doorstep like I made it for you that's such a great way of describing it Daniel eventually turned this analogy into an hourong special called jigsaw it's on Netflix and the part in the special where he talks about love and couples stuck in bad relationships honestly feels more like a TED Talk than traditional standup you can spend five or more years with someone and only then after all the fun you had be looking at the jigsaw and realize you're both working towards very different images only then realize that you want different things and in that moment you have a very very difficult question to ask yourself one do I admit the last 5 years of my life have been a waste two do I waste the rest of my life my generation has become so obsessed with starting the rest of their lives that they're willing to give up the one they are currently living we have romanticized the idea of romance and it is cancerous I am very aware that this is not a particularly funny bit of the show toward the end of the special Daniel says if you break up with someone after watching this please let me know he's been keeping a rough tally of his breakup stats ever since to date between the people who come up to him in person the tweets he's tagged in the DMS he gets on Instagram he estimates that as many as 30,000 couples have split up after seeing his show the thing I don't understand is the stuff Daniel says in a special most of it is not particularly novel his jigsaw analogy isn't that far from a lot of the stuff you might find in a self-help book like the idea that you should be happy and whole on your own and you shouldn't settle that's the thing people tell you about love so what is it about this guy and the way that he delivers this familiar message why is it so effective I wanted to talk to some of the people who broke up after watching jigsaw and let me tell you they were not very hard to find I heard from over 50 people from all over the US the UK Australia Italy Kazakhstan the United Arab Emirates I spoke with eight of them and there is a real fervor to Daniel's fandom people speak about him breathlessly with a kind of awe they'll quote lines from a special like it's scripture or something one person said she and her friends say in sloth We Trust as their motto and there are a lot of people out there walking around with puzzle piece tattoos most of the people I spoke with have watched a special over and over to fully absorb the teachings some returned to it in moments of Doubt after breaking up with their partner and what's crazy to me is that no one I talked to had had any immediate plans to break up with their partner when they first sat down to watch it I came away from those conversations with a couple of theories as to why Daniel's message hits so hard and I want to tell you about one person in particular Charlotte because her story encompasses all of them Charlotte watched jigsaw back in 2018 shortly after it came out she's from East London and like everyone I spoke with got together with her husband when she was super young she was 20 still figuring out who she was and Charlotte like the others just kind of thought I guess this is what it feels like to be in long-term relationship it was flat just flat Charlotte had been with her husband for six years when she sat down one night to watch a special alone I can remember sitting there and actually not touching my phone not scroll on anything I was absolutely hooked on what he was saying because it felt like he was talking to me in a weird way there's a part in the show where said you think that you're so special uh you think you found your soulmate 30 minutes down the road and I was like oh no there are 7.5 billion people on this planet and you found your soulmate 20 mil from where you live it was one of those things that it just dawned on me that I've settled and I it's like settling into a bad job you're still getting paid you're still going through the motions uh there's somebody there you go on holiday it's not like you're overly happy but you're not overly sad right after watching the special Charlotte tells her husband you need to see this which interestingly was another thing so many of the people I spoke with did Charlotte told me she hoped it would prompt her husband to take a hard look at their relationship like it had for her no such luck he spent the whole hour on his phone scrolling not listening at all even after I started following the breakup tally on Twitter he still wasn't kind of getting how much it really had resonated with me wait you showed him how many people had broken up as a result of the special as like a nudge yeah yeah oh my God and what' he say oh okay it sounds like you were kind of trying to tea him up to break up with you is that right yeah but he was not paying attention no he was up in the end she had to do it so how did Daniel manage to break through to Charlotte she says part of it was that she was just caught completely off guard she had no idea what she was getting into when she decided to watch jigsaw everyone I spoke with said something like this that the fact that the advice came in the form of a comedy special made it easier to hear like wrapping a pill in cheese for an unsuspecting dog I didn't go into watching jiga thinking that I was going to be thinking about breaking up my marriage I was there for a laugh another thing about Daniel he's super prescriptive Charlotte wasn't happy but that low hum of dissatisfaction she felt it never quite seemed like enough to blow her life up over but and a special it's like Daniel reached out of the screen and grabbed Charlotte by the shoulders and told her actually that is enough it felt like he was saying well Charlotte just cuz you don't love him anymore doesn't mean you can't break up with him it's like you can break up with him breaking up with someone because you've grown as a person is a valid reason you should break up with someone whenever and you had never had a friend or a family member say it that directly too no not at all Charlotte's younger sister hated how different Charlotte was whenever her husband was around but her sister never told her outright to break up her mom understood that she was unhappy making a lot of sacrifices in her marriage but would also say things like I'm not going to tell you what to do whenever Charlotte's family and friends observed that she didn't seem particularly happy with her husband but I would defend him I would say oh well he's tired you know he works nights and would always defend his behavior even though he would embarrass me and H the fact that I could tell that my family didn't like him and they didn't think that he was he wasn't right for me hurt more because I'd made that choice do you think it was easier to hear the message from Daniel because he was a stranger yeah people take advice from strangers sometimes more than they do the people closest to them because they don't care in the sense that if I see someone on the tube or whatever and they've got lipstick on their teeth and I literally I make eye contact with them and I do that the motion of like wipe their teeth your friend is going to worry about how to say that to you I don't care like you got lipstick on your teeth you got egg on your face Daniel's a stranger this I think is another reason why he's able to cut through because there's no embarrassment when you hear what he thinks about your bad choices the way you might feel with a friend Daniel is a neutral party who can point out a problem on his way out the door entirely uninvested in what happens next he I think there's one more reason so many people split up after watching jigsaw maybe the most important factor in all this I first heard about jigsaw when it came out in 2018 at the time I was in a relationship with someone who was pretty clearly not a good match for me longterm and so when I heard how many couples this special was breaking up I thought no way am I watching that I know it'll happen my relationship will never survive this I'm not in that situation anymore more so recently I decided it was finally safe to see the show and I have to say I was totally right to be scared of it there are moments in there that I know what have gotten me back then like this terrible thought about being in a relationship that you don't know how to leave but you just sit there and you wait you wait looking for an excuse to get out just waiting for them to do something unforgivable so that you can actually break up with them with a real excuse and leave with your head held high but because unlike you they're not a piece of [ __ ] they won't do that so you have to start lowering your standards for what unforgivable is one week in you're like if they cheat on me this is perfect I can leave them my head held high and I will not look like a dick N9 Weeks Later they're faithful and you're like man if they buy orange juice with palpin it that is I can't live like that all I'm asking is if you've ever been in a situation like that in a relationship where you felt trapped like you couldn't get out of it and it was just easier to stay in it all I'm asking is if even for the briefest of seconds have you ever accidentally caught yourself thinking how much easier life would be if they were to just die and not because you want them to die but just because they am dying is like the easiest way for you to get out of that relationship and it doesn't involve either one of you getting hurt emotion L I have to say I've that I totally have that thought in my 2018 relationship and it's not even that you want the other person to die so much as you just kind of want them to evaporate because breaking up with them just feels impossible I I had never said this thought out loud before watching the special I didn't even know this was a thought other people had and hearing it laid out in such a bare way I know it would have been impossible to ignore that's the thing about this show the jigsaw analogy is a sound that only people in quietly unhappy relationships can hear if what Daniel is saying reaches you it's because there's a little radio tower in your head tune to receive his message Aviva de cornfeld is a producer on our show Daniel slo' specials including the one you just heard about are at Daniel slo.com streaming watch it if you dare coming up let's do this one Jeopardy style the answer is combine No More Tears baby shampoo and Vaseline into a paste the question that's in a minute from Chicago public radio when our program continues it's This American Life I'm David Ken bamman for Ira Glass our show today you've come to the right person stories about people finding very specific Guides Through life's great Mysteries we've arrived at act two ask quinetta so this story is about someone with very specialized knowledge giving advice in a very specific place I'll just note if you're listening with kids this story includes some adult topics it's an essay by quinetta Harris and to introduce it one of our co-workers here Diane woo called her up so quata can you say where you are right now I am in my C in Texas in a woman's prison and before you were incarcerated uh what was your job what was your special expertise oh I was a nurse who floated uh from the emergency room oncology to geriatric Care Home Health Care can you hear me okay here or should I stand somewhere else am I okay yeah where is that where are you standing uh on top of the toilet seat really holding my tablet in the air like stat like Lady Liberty like the Statue of Liberty yes and I have the other hand on the wall to hold on um so you you and I have been working on this story for a while now right yes it's been it's been a minute yeah um and we were hoping to record to come to the prison and record you but they denied our request and since the phone line is bad and we don't want you to have to read the story standing on top of your toilet we we decided to bring in an actor to read the essay instead oh thank God could you read the first couple lines of the story to get a started and then we'll we'll Crossfade to the actor sure the first thing that happened was I lost everything I remember exactly the moment I real I remember exactly the moment I realized it it was in 2009 just a couple weeks after I had been transferred from the county jail to prison I'd injured my shoulder working in the kitchen stirring pots with canoe sized paddles so I went to Medical I entered a crowded waiting room interrupting a lecture by a Medtech and a guard when they asked me what did I want with all eyes on me I said I need some ibuprofen for my shoulder the Medtech launched into a sermon stop looking for a quick fix stop popping pills try to stay clean pray on it drink more water and lose weight all that for a few moin as she talked I noticed she was wearing the exact same scrubs I had in my bedroom closet at home light blue ones with the pink breast cancer awareness ribbon all over them it hit me like a body punch to see her in those scrubs talking to me in such dehumanizing language before she would have been one of my colleagues now I was on this other side and there was no way back but then a window back to my old life appeared I started to get medical questions from the women incarcerated with me it took a few years word got out early on that I was a nurse but there are many nurses in prison some of them are in prison because they were doing nefarious things as a nurse so people didn't want to ask them for help but once it was cleared up that I wasn't one of the nurses that hurt their patients I slowly started getting questions people would come and talk to me in the yard or in the shower or when people were too ashamed to ask out loud they would write it down on a tiny slip of paper and get it to me first it was just the girls in my dorm then they started asking for their friends who told their friends now over a decade later I get notes from almost every women's prison in Texas these notes are surreptitiously passed during meal time or laundry exchange tucked into dirty socks or folded under a tray pass between women from different prisons on the bus to the prison hospital many are from strangers who have just heard that they can write to Mama Detroit that's me they're folded up in a square with tiny writing on white or colored pieces of paper on the inside of candy wrappers the thin plastic from CeX pads I even get questions on squares of toilet paper one reads my roommate uses her inhaler all the time I think she's addicted to it is that possible another girl who's in a church choir here wrote about someone she sings with when she sings her breath smells up the whole choir her teeth are all rotten and peppermints are not helping what can we do the range of questions people ask is very wide anything from what's this medicine for to which homemade dildo is safest none of them everyone involved in passing the notes is taking a risk the writer the person delivering the note me if you're caught with a note on you it can be a disciplinary infraction possession of Contraband if you have three or more of these infractions in 30 days that can get upgraded to a major case which can be used to justify a parole denial I deliberately store all my Unwritten notes in a brown paper bag in the corner of my cell so I can always claim it's trash Lou wrote to me about her friend prissy who bought Contraband eyeshadow from someone working in the prison print shop The Print Shop has pretty bright powdered ink that people steal for makeup Lou wrote that prissy couldn't get the blue eyeshadow off she tried toothpaste it's stained she looking like a fat ass Smurf I wrote back mix No More Tears baby shampoo and Vaseline into a paste apply to your eyelid overnight then wipe rubbing alcohol repeatedly to the area it will slowly Fade to green and then eventually disappear I know this won't be the last time someone accidentally cosplays a cartoon character though we all miss feeling human you know like our old selves for me answering these questions it made me feel like my old self it was a way for me to still be a caregiver I felt needed I was needed in a very particular way I hadn't been on the outside because first the medical care that exists in our prison is extremely lacking there are only a handful of medical providers for the 12200 people here you have to pay to go to Medical $13.55 per visit which is a king's Ransom when we're forced to work in here for free and when you get there they treat you like crap and the medical staff can't answer their questions as well as I can because unlike the people they're treating they aren't incarcerated I know the materials available to women Vaseline baby shampoo I know the exact way to ask for certain treatments without getting punished like for yeast infections going in and saying I have a yeast infection will often lead the the nurse to start asking about your sex life and if you let slip that you have a girlfriend the guard supervising your appointment can write you a disciplinary the safer way I tell people is to tell the nurse you took antibiotics recently and are noticing this side effect you have to let the nurse think she figured it out also I know the various factors the women are weighing when they consider their own care for instance early on one of the most common medical questions people would write to me was do I really need to get a mamogram I know what they mean when they ask this we all hate the mamogram trip we have to take a nausea inducing bus ride that freezes US during the winter and Cooks Us in the Summers we have to pack all of our belongings to send to storage while we're gone and when we move back they assign us a new roommate it's so hard to get a decent roommate few people want to risk losing that by leaving when people ask me if it's worth going on the trip I write back explaining breast cancer and ask if their mom or anyone else in their family has a history of cancer I try to convince them and myself that it's only once a year and probably worth going but the prison instituted a new rule last summer they now promise to hold our assigned bed and roommate for a week people are still refusing to go though even though you could get a disciplinary infraction if you ski the trip ain't nobody riding in that wheel cauldron more questions I've received my roommate got lupus can I catch it from her no you don't have to worry about that it's an autoimmune disease which means it's her body fighting her body this girl wrote me and said I pee only a little bit each time I go is this my prostate that's not your prostate you don't have one this is a UTI I have two girls in here who wrote me with signs and symptoms of endometriosis the problem is the only way you can diagnose endometriosis is surgery I'm still figuring out what to write back to them I used to think my special expertise was to help women who were incarcerated with me but then I started getting mail from released friends too like one from my friend Al call Flocka who asked me what can she drink to get rid of her pregnancy she was sexually assaulted by a guest at the motel where she works abortions are illegal in Texas Flocka has a snitch on her ankle in the form form of an electronic GPS monitor so she can't slip over to New Mexico and get abortion care she can't get medical abortion pills mailed to her in the faith-based halfway house that opens all incoming mail Flocka still has to figure out how to get health care while being surveilled and restricted these days feels like women all over Texas do not just those of us in prison all I could tell her was to call the national Planned Parenthood hotline not from her phone because parole officers might search her phone history I was relieved to hear that she ended up getting the pills by having them delivered to someone else's address I just hope it's a friend somebody who won't try to extort or tell on her Flaka is still on parole since receiving Flocka's letter a year ago I have received eight more letters from women asking for abortion care resources when I've needed medical advice I don't have anyone to ask for help I've had to figure out how to be my own Mama Detroit about 9 years ago I was sent to solitary confinement and a few years in I started to feel like I was losing it I couldn't sleep and I started to get incredibly emotional one day one of the girls below me told three of us through a shared heating vent that's our phone about a letter from her her father asking for forgiveness as I stood listening at my vent I just couldn't stop crying this was not normal for me but I had read about how in solitary people react differently to extreme isolation then my memory started to go I started needing to use my cell walls as a whiteboard to jot down reminders from myself the date of my daughter's next volleyball game or what three things I want wanted to talk about at my next doctor appointment my memory has always been really really good my second husband used to say that we got divorced because of my memory because I just couldn't let things go it was hard to let go that he kept cheating so when I started not being able to remember anything it was a really scary moment for me I couldn't focus on what I was reading my body achd it was late 20 20 and I thought this is long Co this is solitary confinement finally one of my friends on the outside wrote to me saying you think it might be menopause I told her I am not that old I was only 48 they never taught us about menopause in nursing school it was just some punchline about hot flashes which I started to get too there isn't air air conditioning in our prison building in Texas it gets so hot in the summer that Coke cans will just spontaneously explode toothpaste liquefies in June 2019 I fainted from the Heat and the sergeant took the temperature in my cell that day 129° so I already felt like I was being cooked before the hot flashes but when that burning feeling hits the middle of my chest then radiates to the rest of my body body it's unbearable I learned to keep bowls filled with tap water to dump over my head at the start of each hot flash I always expect the water to sizzle so I wrote to my friends back home and asked what they use to treat their menopausal symptoms they told me about Black Kos flax seed apricots and berries but the general consensus was that the most effective treatment was estrogen vaginal cream and hormone replacement therapy my friend's inside prison told me there's no way you're going to get any of those I went to dreaded medical and tried for 3 years to get hormone replacement therapy I finally got a prescription and the change was instantaneous it was like a switch turned me back into the old me my skin cleared up my hair regained thickness my mood was lighter and the brain fog cleared best of all the hot flashes stopped it was a miracle drug until the prescription ran out after 2 months the doctors would not give me a refill that was 2 years ago so here I am living with all my symptoms waiting for this phase to pass the symptoms can last a decade studies show black women experience more hot flashes longer hot flashes and longer Perry menopause I learned this from the radio and from a pamphlet about menopause that I asked my lawyer to send me when I tried to learn more by ordering books like the bopa manifesto the prison denied the books for being sexually explicit meanwhile I've gotten a few questions from other neighbors about menopause we're all getting older in here after all these years I'm not tired of answering questions yet but I am tired of answering the same questions I am tired of repeating the same answers Depo shot is the name of the birth control everyone wants because the guards don't hand out enough pads and tampons the flu shot will not give you the flu no the covid vaccine didn't have a chip in it tampons don't cause cancer they don't cause infertility I thought by 2025 we'd move on to something else but the girls still aren't getting this information anywhere else I wish I could put the 10 most asked questions on a flyer and just pass them out but that's not how it works in here so I keep writing quinetta Harris's story was read by the actor Kesha Lewis you can see her on Broadway now in her Tony award-winning role in the musical Hell's Kitchen we did reach out to the Texas Department of Criminal Justice for comment they told us that guards are not supposed to be writing disciplinary infractions for notes unless they are violent or drug related and that the menopause Manifesto is on the approved book list also quinette has moved prisons over the years in her current one the mammogram trip isn't as long our story was produced by Diane woo you can find more of quetta's writing on her substack write or die raw dispatches from a Texas woman's prison act three ask Harriet so earlier in the show we had a story about how to know when to leave a relationship this last story is about a woman who wishes she had that problem and for the second time in today's show here's Diane woo yuna's life outside of dating is as busy as a ROM heroins she lives outside Boston near her family and a ton of beloved friends she has a job she likes fills her free time with jiu-jitsu and weightlifting she can deadlift 370 lb which if you don't know what that means it's as impressive as it sounds you's dream is to meet someone at the gym but that hasn't happened yet because you know a lot of men are very afraid to approach women at the gym which I totally understand because obviously people like a lot of time don't want to be disturbed in the workouts yeah but there are people that want to be Disturbed me by a hot man anyways um you is 29 and has never had a boyfriend not for lack of trying in high school and college she was a nerdy pianist who didn't really date but 5 years ago she got on the apps on her first date she was so nervous that her teeth were chattering as she waited for the guy to arrive didn't go great very few of them have sometimes it feels like in her friend group she's the last one standing I feel like we've always all been single like a lot of my best friends and like now they're all in relationships and that's when I'm like it's because I'm blind you's been blind since she was a little kid she grew up in Albania moved to Boston when she was five the way her blindness works is that everything is very very blurry she reads on her phone by zooming in a lot and then holding it right up to her face the friend she's thinking of who've paired off they're cited there's no other thing that explains why it's been so difficult for me I just like can't pinpoint another thing that separates me from the other people that I feel like are successful besides being blind y's like I think I'm at least average pretty I think she's pretty I'm fun to talk to also true what gives she experiments with putting that she's blind on her dating profile the number of matches she gets plummets doesn't surprise her she feels like meeting people in real life is also harder because of things like eye contact which doesn't come naturally to her I will often look at people's mouths cuz that's where their voice comes from so I think I'm always like 4 in under eye contact and sometimes I'll like consciously make an effort to like look higher than where I want to look but then I get very uncomfortable because another big insecurity I have is that my eyes make people uncomfortable and so I kind of feel bad looking at them in the eye so basically I've just like given up on like looking at people's eyes I'll just look at their mouth you know was sort of resigned to having a bad time of it but then a couple years ago her friend's mom told her my friend Harriet is blind too you guys should meet youo was pretty skeptical at first but liked Harriet right away they're both musicians both very talkative but what really stood out to Yuna was Harriet's Bountiful love life she's 78 and has had three husbands and more boyfriends than she can count even an affair which seemed to really impress youa you's always wanted to ask her what's your secret what should I be doing differently we went over to Harriet's home on December evening to find out her partner Frank let us in hi Frank in the kitchen youa tells me one of her favorite stories story of how Harriet and Frank met 20 years ago Harriet and Frank met on a redline train Harriet was playing recorder and Frank heard it and was like can you teach me that song right guys yeah that's how it he sat down next to me and he said I have my recorder with me which is crazy like Frank why did you have your record with you I don't know that was a certain time in my life they played together on the train exchange numbers became friends and 5 years into that friendship started dating we sit around the kitchen table and get down to business okay should we begin mhm so Harriet yes Ma youa starts by explaining how her dating life has gone so far no real success her conclusion that blindness is getting in her way so in your in your idea of your life right if you think back on your life have you ever thought to yourself that your vision impacts your dating or has it to you just not been a related topic except to share with people all the amazing experiences that I have kinesthetically and otherwise as a blind person mhm let's say like meeting people in person right one thing that I feel like is very difficult is that I can't make eye contact never could baby so I don't know what you're talking about but here it all like the videos on Tik Tok about like how to meet people at the gym and stuff or whatever is like the person make eye makes eye contact with you and then you smile to let them know that like you're available to com wav hands you I just bump into them awkwardly and say Where's treadmill okay I do that too sometimes but like but I mean with with panach you know with ease you know like uh Hey where's the bathroom you know can you walk me over there thank you I'll get it fixed I'll do it better next time you know whatever but don't you see it's it's like we're unwilling to be vulnerable everybody is well not here yet I have no problem I'll stand up in the subway and say hey anybody getting off at X spot I have to cross over from you know from the a line to the West Fourth Street you know whatever that's crazy like I have literally been lost for hours because I refuse to ask for help I'm like I'm going to wander around until I find where to go to avoid asking for help so now harri's laughing at me no not at you I'm just laughing at the discomfort and awfulness of it you know yuna's default mode is to be completely competent in everything she does she hates being underestimated or condescended to this is her way of protecting herself from all of that but talking to Harriet she realizes it might come with a downside like when Yo's friend invites her to go salsa dancing even though she wants to try it she doesn't she worries the way she dances might look embarrassing you know what I mean realize how much you're basing all of your perceptions at least from where I'm sitting with this on the sided world but the sighted world is the world haret like it is but it hasn't been a problem I still feel that my world has total Integrity I feel like my world has total Integrity too but I feel like I don't know I think the hardest thing in life whether you're cited or anything is a deeper self-acceptance really and that it doesn't matter what the hell other people react to or what they think or whatever whatever you're sensing from me do you think that that plays a role into why it might be hard for me to date people yes okay why because you have a a lens you have a filter that is constantly on high that says they're not going to get me they're going to put me down they're going to ignore me they're going to pity me and if if that is sort of in the emotional undercurrent within you then it'll amplify everything accept yourself it's hard to know what to do with that kind of advice what do you think that I should do differently but like you can't say you have to deeply accept yourself because I just don't even know what that means so it's like that's fine carot gives her a concrete thing to try you's been taking J Jitsu classes that she really loves with mostly guys and she has a crush on one of them just see if they want to go out and have uh coffee or tea I just don't think people do that anymore Harriet like what so what maybe maybe they're all waiting I don't want to be the one to do it why can't they do it I always make the first move period treat it as friendship it's just a thought no I think you're right like the guy I have a crush on for example me and my friends call him my husband like your husband's not in class today and I'm like how am I supposed to go talk to my husband I'm too scared like I'm scared no no no you have to reset reset okay but like guys so last week Harriet yeah I was in class and my Jiu-Jitsu husband usually will ask me to spar once in class and this time we only had one Spar long story short we didn't get to spar and I'd only come to class to see my jiujitsu husband and and so I saw him on the mat right and I was like I'll go ask him but I was scared but I was like I'll go ask him cuz he always asks me I'll go ask him and I went to go ask him and he's like a very shy like introverted person and I asked him and he's like oh um yeah like actually I was stretching cuz I was going to leave but uh yeah I guess we can Spar yeah and I was like oh no it's okay uh we can do it next time yeah okay I like ran back to lockers and he came he like no no let's do it I was like no no no it's okay we can do another time he's like no let's let's SP anyways it took him like three different times they'll be like no let's do it and then we did and I was like I'm never talking to him again like he can talk to me if he wants but I am never speaking to him again in class because I was so embarrassed the fact that he asked you the three times is already not saying I want to be your husband but it is saying I would like to do that so it's authentic I think he's asking from just my sense about it from a very authentic place and so build on it just get to know him when you finish sparring you could say if you would like to go to brunch sometime just the two of us after jiujitsu let me know okay so um it's been 3 weeks since you went and talked to Harriet and I'm calling to see are there any updates oh my God I feel like I'm on like one of those dating shows shows anyways so I went the first time after talking to Harriet and I was like you know what let me treat this person the same way I treat everybody else in this class and just like be normal and be his friend mhm and so I started talking to him and it was like the worst conversation I've ever had in my entire life like not because of me like he it was like talking to a brick wall you guys it was like so terrible and I went to the dog park the next day and I was like you guys I think he has literally no personality and like then why do you like him and I said I literally think it's just because of his arms and I've been so stupid very wise person once tweeted a crush is just a lack of information though for youa getting that information progress youa determined to follow Harriet's instructions actually continued befriending the guy who ended up being much more fun to talk to later she still seems a long way from ever making the first move but now at least she knows it's an option Diane Woo is a producer on our show need somebody not just anybody you know I need someone well our program today was produced by Tobin low and edited by Ira Glass the people who put together today's show include FIA bennon Michael K uel Joi Angela jasi Cassie Howley Hana jofy Walt Seth Lind mcky Meek Katherine Rondo Stone Nelson Nadia Raymond Anthony Roman Ryan Ry Alissa ship Lily Sullivan and Christopher Swala our managing editor is Sara abduraman our executive editor is Emanuel Barry special thanks today to Susanna Fogle Susan Burton Emily nanco at empowerment Avenue David P O'Neal Thomas Reed Evan fante Derek Campana dashka Slater Jessica Peters and thanks to all the people who spoke to us about their breakups caused by a comedian one other quick note we checked the police report about that car accident that Miles told me about at the beginning of the show involving he said a Kia Soul sorry miles turns out it was not a Kia Soul the police report listed as a Chevy I don't know mon model we're going to try to find out for you our website thisamericanlife.org if you become a this American life partner you'll get bonus content adree listening and More in our newest bonus episode I repl two stories that never aired on the show not because they're bad but for more interesting reasons which he explains to hear it go to thisamericanlife.org Partners that link is also in the show notes This American Life is delivered to public radio stations by PRX the public radio exchange special thanks as always to our program's co-founder Mr Tory malatia he's seen Elon musk's Roman salute and Steve bannon's just has one question are those Nazis real Nazis I'm David Ken Bal back next week with more stories of This American Life help me if you I'm feeling ande help me let my feet the W you pleas help me