♪ ANOUSH FROUNDJIAN: I'm setting the table for the most unnecessary meal of the century, and I'm thinking, "Mom, why did you roast an entire chicken?

He doesn't even love me!"

(laughter) JERRY REILLY: We are really bad foster parents, and I said, "What are we gonna do?"

And Marie said, "We should go out to eat."

(laughter) I had a miserable life.

But I didn't know how miserable it would become until Larry was born six years later.

WES HAZARD: Tonight's theme is, "It's All Relative."

ANNOUNCER: This program is made possible in part by contributions from viewers like you.

Thank you.

HAZARD: So we're here again for another one-of-a-kind evening of storytelling, this time on the theme of, "It's All Relative."

And, while of course it means "family," it also speaks to the intense empathy and understanding and engagement with another person's perspective that is required to make our family relationships healthy.

But no matter what, I guarantee you with every single teller that you see tonight, you're going to have at least one moment where you'll listen to their story and you think, "Yes-- that was me, that was my family."

♪ FROUNDJIAN: My name is Anoush Froundjian.

I'm from New York, I come from a big Armenian family.

I'm a storyteller and I also have a web comic that I illustrate.

It's about a girl that talks to inanimate objects, and it's called "Anoush Talks to Stuff."

HAZARD: How did you become a storyteller on stage?

FROUNDJIAN: You know when you discover something, you'll be, like "Oh, this is allowed?

"Like, this is a thing?

"People can get up "and tell five minutes or six minutes "of... about, about themselves?

"And it doesn't have to be just jokes?

Like, I want to do-- I think I can do that."

And, you know, I started out doing improv.

So, I was thinking, like, you know, start writing.

HAZARD: Well, I'm a standup comic at heart myself, and yeah, I totally agree with you, it is very liberating to come to Stories and realize that you don't have to get a laugh in the first 30 seconds and you can talk about whatever you want.

So, right there with you.

It's a pretty magical feeling, right?

FROUNDJIAN: Yeah.

HAZARD: Yeah.

FROUNDJIAN: And I mean, they'll laugh, but, you know... (both laugh) ...you won't know when.

HAZARD: Exactly.

And so, I have to ask, you know, what kind of stories do you usually like to tell?

FROUNDJIAN: Mostly about my family, because I grew up with a huge Armenian influence.

You know, it'll be maybe me growing up or how I felt as a kid or in middle school or as a teenager, but it always has to do with my family and how I grew up.

♪ It was the summer of 2003.

I had just finished my first year at Mount Holyoke College and I was now working as a box office manager at a theater in Sharon, Connecticut.

And I'd be living there with everybody in the dorms who worked backstage, and this dorm, it was-- it was, like, a house, but more like a big cabin.

And when you walked in, the first thing you noticed was that it smelled like cigarette smoke, and that the floors were lined with empty beer bottles, or what they would call "empties," and I'm not a partier, I never was.

I was an old soul since day one, and honestly just too busy being Armenian to have any time for drinking, drugs, or anything else.

But I was 19 at the time, and I felt that it was time that I saw how the other half lived.

So, within my first week of work, I drank for the first time, smoked pot for the first time, and also lost my virginity to the guy who operated the sound booth.

(laughter) So, so I now had a boyfriend, kind of, and had also earned myself the nickname "Tequila."

(laughter) But since I didn't have a big group of girlfriends at the time to get advice from or ask questions to, I was kind of figuring things out on my own.

Like, asking myself if it was normal that he wasn't talking to me this much afterwards.

Or if it was normal that my body hurt this much afterwards.

Or if it was normal that I always felt like I had a giant lump in my throat, and if so, then I wanted to know how much of their sadness women typically express, as opposed to the amount that they just keep inside and try to forget about.

So, so after awhile I couldn't take it anymore, and one weekend when I was visiting my family, who lived a couple of... who lived a couple of towns away in their summer home, from Sharon, I caught a glimpse of myself in the porch window and I started to sob.

And my uncle, who was sitting a couple of feet away from me, notices and says, "Are you all right?"

And I just ran away, and I swung open the porch door and I ran down the hill, and as I'm running down, relatives are coming up, and I bang shoulders with my dad.

And he looks at me and he goes, "What's wrong?"

And I didn't know what to say.

I, I mean, I wasn't planning on discussing it with my parents, but, um...

But my parents are also cool, but they're, they're also Armenian, and my dad is from Lebanon, so I don't know, I wasn't sure what to do.

And since my dad is so good at reading me, he looks at me and he goes, "You went all the way."

(laughter) And, and I... And I said, "Yeah," and he goes, "Are you okay?"

And I said, "Yeah."

And then he kind of pats me on the shoulder, like in a "welcome aboard" kind of way, and, and, and then he was, like, "Okay!"

And I immediately felt better, because it meant that I could stop feeling guilty and angry at myself and could just feel sad the normal way now.

And, but-- at the end of the night, everybody goes home.

Like, my dad goes home, my relatives go home, and now it's just me, my mom, and my little brother Rafi, who's about ten at the time.

And my mom reacted a little bit differently-- she found out.

She lit a cigarette and sat me down and said, "What the hell were you thinking?"

And, and, um... And my mom has a way of coming on really strong, till you realize that it's just her way of fighting for you, and eventually she said, "I just don't know why you never look out for your heart."

And I said, "Mom, who looks out for their hearts anymore?"

And she goes, "You know what?

"I think you should invite him over here for dinner.

"I think you should invite him over "to have dinner with me and Rafi.

I think it'll be fun."

And I said, "What?"

And she says, "Yeah, this is who you are.

"If someone's going to like you, "they have to love all sides of you.

Don't you dare minimize yourself for somebody else."

So I don't know what it was, maybe it was my inner Mount Holyoke-ness or my, my inner Armenian, and I look her and I go... (growling): "Okay."

(laughter) So, so I go-- so the next day, I go to the sound booth and I go, "Look, I know we're not getting married or anything, "but my mom wants to know if you want to come over and have dinner with her and my little brother and me."

And he goes, "Okay."

And I go, "Okay," and I'm thinking... And so then I'm setting the table for the most unnecessary meal of the century.

And my mom is in the kitchen cooking this elaborate meal and I'm thinking, "Mom, why did you roast an entire chicken?

He doesn't even love me!"

And then a car just...

I hear his car driving up, and I hear the car door slam shut, and I'm just ready.

And he comes in, and it's fine.

It's fine.

We're sitting at the table, my mom and he are talking about bands that they both like, my brother is talking to him about instruments he wants to play, and-- and I'm just kind of not sure of anything and I feel like I'm disappearing, and I'm not sure of how anything is going to go.

But then something happens.

Because my brother, who's too young to really get what's going on but is also not too young to know what's going on, gives me this look from across the table, kind of a look that's, like, "Kind of interesting evening, huh?"

(laughter) And-- and I start laughing, and I'm laughing and laughing and laughing, and it's noticeable.

And after awhile, I don't even know why I'm laughing anymore, I'm just so happy to finally have my voice back.

And I realize that it can take you-- it can take so much courage to run away and do all these crazy things, but it takes twice the amount of courage to be able to come back.

And I realized that he wasn't the special guest my mom invited to dinner that night.

That special guest was me.

(applause and cheering) ♪ REILLY: My name is Jerry Reilly, I live in Newton, and I'm a software engineer by day, but in my spare time, I run the Newton Nomadic Theater, and it started about three years ago, and we started our own story slam, and I've kind of completely got into the storytelling since then.

HAZARD: I'm very interested to ask if you could talk a little bit about your creative process.

You know, when you're working on a story, how do you sort of hammer it out and make it perfect and ready for the stage?

REILLY: Ah, well, it all involves being stuck in traffic.

HAZARD: Oh?

REILLY: I have a long commute, and I-- if I'm going to do a story, I always practice in the car, and the worse the traffic gets, you know, the more I get into it.

And I'm that guy, if you look over, I look like the crazy guy talking to myself very emphatically in, in the car by myself.

And then, once I kind of get the hang of it, I'll get the phone and time it-- you know, turn that on.

But I find if I write something down, as soon as I write it down, it becomes kind of frozen.

HAZARD: So, I think you should be given an award.

You have found a use, a purposeful use for Massachusetts traffic... (Reilly laughs) ...which I think is probably a first for anyone, so congratulations on that.

REILLY: My stories will just get better and better.

(both laugh) HAZARD: So, what do you think is special about storytelling versus all of the other arts?

REILLY: Well, I think today, you know, almost all of our entertainment, whether it's movies, it's the big blockbusters-- I love the big blockbusters-- or music, very produced.

It's all very-- all of our sort of packaged entertainment is very heavily produced.

And storytelling is the opposite.

Storytelling is, like, strip it all down, you know, a face, a person, telling you a story, and I think that's its big appeal.

Anybody can do it.

♪ So, you can't pick your family.

Especially if they're just dropped off on your front door.

Now, about 20 years ago, my wife and I decided we were going to become foster parents.

We wanted to foster little babies and toddlers.

So we signed up for classes, and every Saturday, we went and took these classes.

Went through the whole program.

At the end of it, they gave us this certificate-- "Congratulations, you are now a foster parent."

We went home and we waited.

And a few days later, I was at work, and Marie called, she said, "I, I, I just got a call, they got a kid for us."

I said, "Great, what's the deal?"

She said, "It's a girl named Tara, she's 15 years old."

I said, "Wait, 15 years old?

I thought we were-- the little kids," and she said, "I know, but they-- "they were in a jam, they have this kid, they have no place to put her."

So we talked about how... We said, "Well, let's just do it."

So I hopped in the car, I drove home, I pulled up just as the social worker was pulling up with Tara.

She gets out of the car and she was tiny, really small, and you could tell as soon as you laid eyes on her that she was feisty and funny and she was going to be a handful.

But totally lovable.

So, Tara was surprisingly relaxed, considering this funny situation.

She comes in, we have dinner, it's all good.

And after dinner, we sit her down.

We say, "Okay, there's going-- there's a few rules, "not too many, but the most important one is, "you have to go to school every day.

"Now, there's only four more days left in the school year, so we think you can manage that, you know."

Anyway, she hangs out, goes to bed that night.

The next morning, we get up, we make her breakfast, and I take her to the bus stop; she's got to go across town to, to school.

So, I head off to work and I'm working away.

It's, like, I don't know, 10:30.

I get a call from Marie.

"The principal just called, Tara's not at school.

She's hooking school."

And I was, like, "Oh, gee, this is... "We haven't been 24 hours and our kid's, like, truant?

This is really bad."

So we're talking, "What are we gonna do?"

And we realize, okay, she doesn't know that we know that she's hooking, and so when she comes home, you know, this afternoon, she's busted, and you know.

Then we're talking, "What do we do?"

And we'd never been parents before, and especially, like, now, with teenage discipline.

And you know, do-- you can't-- a time out?

No, that's, no.

You know, we're just trying to figure this out.

So I get off the phone, go back to work.

Later that afternoon, Marie calls.

"I'm really getting worried.

"She should've been here an hour ago, "and I'm thinking we should call, report her missing to the police."

And I said, "What do you mean, missing?

"She's not missing.

"Not like, milk carton missing, this is, like, you know..." And she goes, "Yeah, but, you know, "we're responsible for her "and we haven't seen her "since she walked out this morning.

We have no idea where she is."

I said, "Yeah, yeah, I guess that's true-- well, all right."

So she calls the Boston Police, gets this guy, he's very good.

She explains the situation.

He says, "No, no, no, you're doing the right thing.

"We'll put out a call, you know, put out a report.

"If anybody spots her, "they'll just pick her up and bring her home, and, you know, there's no repercussions."

Half an hour later, Marie calls up.

"She's been arrested."

I'm, like, "What?!"

I said, "Marie, this is..." (stammering): "This is the first 24 hours, this is really, really bad."

And I go, "What's she done?"

And they said, "You know, "it's just something stupid.

"The kids were at the train station, "they chased them out, "they came back, they chased them out again, and eventually they just picked them up and..." She goes, "We have to pick her up in an hour at the police station."

And I'm, like, "Oh, we are really bad foster parents."

(laughter) So I said, "Well, I'll be right home."

So I get in the car, I drive home.

By the time I get home, she says, "The police called back.

They're holding her overnight."

I said, "What?

She's 15 years old!

What..." They said, "Well, because she's-- "she was on probation, and because she was truant, "and because you, because we reported her missing, "now they have no leeway.

They have to hold her and arraign her in the morning."

And I said, "What are we going to do?"

And Marie said, "We should go out to eat."

(laughter) And I said, "What?

Wha..." And she said, "No, no, no, think about it.

"Tara is safe till the morning.

"We can't do anything about it, "and we're not going to be going out to eat for a long time after this."

So we did.

And we not only went out, we went out and we splurged and we went to this really nice restaurant and we had a great time.

We were totally giddy and totally guilty at the same time.

And we were, like, "You know, our kid's rottin' in jail and we're living it up!"

(laughter) So the next morning, at 9:00, we go down to the courthouse.

We don't know where we're going or what we're doing, We come in, I ask some guy, and he gets wind that we are brand-new foster parents, and he thinks this is the funniest things he's ever heard.

All of a sudden, he's telling everybody, people are pointing at us in the courthouse.

The court-- they call the court, we go in.

The first three cases are very serious cases, like armed robbery, you know, burglary, DWI, then they clear the courthouse, or the courtroom, and-- because she's a minor-- and the door opens up, and there's Tara, little Tara, in a prison orange-- like, two-sizes-too-big prison jumpsuit.

She's got handcuffs and shackles on her feet and she shuffles in-- it's the most pathetic thing you've ever seen.

The judge was great, the judge was very stern with her and sort of, you know, kind of rattled her that she was going down a path that was, you know, was dangerous, whatever.

Judge released her to our custody.

She went back, got changed.

She came out, and then we walked all the way across the lobby.

She didn't say a word.

We walked out the door, and as soon as we get outside, she said, "I didn't do nothin'!"

(laughter) And that was out first 24 hours as foster parents.

But Tara only stayed with us for a couple of weeks, then she went back to her family.

And as mostly happens, once kids go back, the families generally want to put this whole chapter behind them.

And so, you know, we didn't know what happened.

But, four or five years later, Marie was in the dentist's office, and who walked into the dentist's office but Tara, and they had a just big, joyous reunion.

So, after that time, we had many foster kids, little babies up to teenagers, sometimes two, three at a time.

And, uh, you know, I think it was the hardest thing I've ever done, and the most rewarding.

And the most soul-destroying, and the most exhilarating.

And I would recommend it to every one of you, you know, you do it.

(laughter) And no matter how crazy things got, we always consoled ourselves with, "Well, at least they're not spending the night in jail."

(applause) ♪ GEORGE VENDURA: My name is George Vendura, and I'm from the Bronx.

I'm Italian-American, and I graduated from college and went to grad school at Penn State.

And from there I went to California, and my job was working with NASA in JPL, Jet Propulsion Lab.

And worked on satellites and Mars rovers.

And we developed these solar cells that are actually on Mars, on the Rover right now.

But however, I've always had a writing and a storytelling level to myself, and I've always nurtured that.

I was a lunch table storyteller among scientists who don't know how to tell stories.

HAZARD: I don't think that a lot of people can say that, you know, the things that they've invented and designed and touched are actually on a different planet.

What is that like?

VENDURA: You know, because there's so many exciting things happen in NASA and Jet Propulsion Lab, it was quite kind of routine.

But what really startled me is when the movie Martian came out recently, and now it's, it's in the popular culture.

My nephews and nieces, they actually found a toy that Mattel made back when... when Sojourner was first manufactured, and they're buying them on eBay, and they want me to write letters for posterity, so like, it's, it's quite exciting, to say the least.

HAZARD: Collectors' item now.

Yeah, that's incredible.

And the story that you're going to share with us tonight, I have to ask: what would you hope that the audience would take away from it after they've heard it?

VENDURA: It's not a child's story, but it's a story from the early life when we were competing for toys and competing for parental attention.

So, I would like to just strike a chord with-- and I think it will-- with anybody and everybody who, who had a brother and sister and had these, this stress in this ridiculous growing-up period.

♪ ♪ I come from a huge Italian-American family in the Bronx.

I'm supposed to love my little brother.

I don't, I hate him.

Larry is just evil.

Evil, evil.

I born quite robust; there was nothing wrong with my nose.

And there was nothing wrong with my chest.

So Mama said I had to eat all my spinach.

And Mama said I had to eat all my sweet potatoes, and I hated it.

And Mama was over there with the wooden spoon.

She was very strict and a little religious.

She said, "This is God's food!"

(in low voice): "You eat it."

(laughter) I had a miserable life, but I didn't know how miserable it would become until Larry was born six years later.

He was born with a couple of minor medical defects.

One, his nose would spontaneously bleed.

You know St. Francis, he had holes in his hands, and holes in feet, and holes in his side?

You know, Christ's wounds?

And it would spontaneously bleed?

Well, that's the stigmata.

Larry had the stigmata of the schnozzolo.

(laughter) All of a sudden-- all of a sudden, this blood would just burst out.

It was a river of red.

A regular rouge Niagara Falls.

And my mother, of course, would go berserk.

She'd pull down the curtain, she'd pull over the tablecloth, she'd rip the shirt off my back and smash it against his bleeding schnoz.

It was terrible.

He had another defect.

My dear brother Larry, the evil one, had a hole in his chest.

It wasn't really a hole.

His ribs dented in a little bit, and there was this little shallow trench there.

But Mama said, "No, it's the hole in his chest."

(laughter) Any moment, this little brat was going to die.

So she had to take extra good care of him.

And he knew it, and he'd get away with murder.

I was six years old and so he liked my toys, but he loved to break them for spite.

He took my Lionel trains and dropped them out the second-floor bedroom onto my bicycle, one by one.

I made a V8 engine, that was an engine that had eight cylinders.

It was plastic, you could see through it.

It took me 1,000 hours, and it had little parts that would go up and down.

And Larry pointed at it and would say "I want it."

And I said, "No!

No, no, no, Larry!"

And Mom said, "Give it to him."

(laughter) And I watched as he took it and, in spite, threw it on the floor and stomped on it right in front of me.

(audience groans) We never had ice cream in the house before Larry was born.

(laughter) Now there was tons of ice cream.

All strawberry, my favorite.

But I still had to eat my broccoli and I still had to eat my sweet potatoes.

Larry would turn up his nose and push the plate away, and Mama would jump up, take his plate, and put it on top of my empty plate, and say, "Eat it, it's God's food!"

And she'd run for the strawberry ice cream, a big tub, and she's scooping it out, making a mountain in front of Larry, and-- strawberry's my favorite-- "Ma, can I have a little..." "No!

This is for Larry.

It's medicinal strawberry ice cream."

(laughter) And the little creep didn't eat it.

He just stirred it, and he watched me.

Stirred it and stirred it and stirred it and stirred it until it became mud, and Mom goes in the other room.

He'd take the ice cream, go to the sink, dump it in, and run the hot water and look at me.

Every night, Mama would tiptoe in the room, our bedroom-- Larry would be sleeping.

And then she'd look over him to see if his, maybe his nose was leaking.

Or maybe his little chest wasn't going up and down.

And she'd light a candle to Jesus on the little end table.

And she'd make the sign of the cross and say, "My little angel."

Time went on.

By this time, I'm 16 and Larry's ten.

I'm a bit of a scholar.

I'm always working late, and Larry's always sleeping, because he's ten years old.

And I have all my books and all my index cards and all my wonderful Magic Markers around me.

He'd get bored, 2:00, two in the morning, and I'd look over, and the little guy, he really does look like an angel when he's sleeping.

But he sleeps like a rock.

So I get my 18-inch ruler and I poke him a little just for the fun of it.

And of course he doesn't start, because he is dead to the world.

A bomb couldn't set this guy off.

So, I poke him again.

I'm enjoying myself a little here.

(laughter) But then the devil on my left shoulder starts whispering in my ear.

And I go, "Yeah, yeah, yeah."

And I lower myself by the side of his bed, and I open the red Magic Marker, and before you know it, red running out of his nose!

And around his mouth!

On his cheek, down his neck.

But I wasn't finished yet.

A Frankenstein scar with football stitches.

And for extra measure, I slit his throat.

(laughter) Well, I got tired.

It was time to go to bed.

My fun was over, I didn't think anything of it.

Threw myself on my bed.

Before I knew it, screams.

And more screams and more screams.

I open my eyes, it's light out, I don't know where I am, and I hear these screams and I-- I just, you know, scoot up to the edge of the bed, at the corner of the bed.

And there's this crazy woman's backside in front of me.

And she's looking down at Larry's bed and her hair is out to here and I can't make it out.

Oh, no, and it all flashes back to me.

It's Mama, and Mama has the pillow, and she's pounding the pillow into Larry's nose trying to stem the blood.

(laughter) But the blood is all dry.

He's dead, her little bambino is dead, it finally happened.

And I start laughing to myself, but I wouldn't laugh out loud.

And Mama just falls on her knees and she throws her hands up to say, "Jude..." The patron saint of hopeless cases, by the way.

And she cries out, and lo and behold, like Lazarus, Larry's eyes start fluttering.

(laughter) And the little brat comes to life!

And Mama looks real close, and now, she sees the Frankenstein scar and the throat, and she knows.

And she looks at me real evil, but she can't stop now.

She has to show she's the boss.

She has to know, show she, she knew all along.

So she starts yelling at Larry.

"Larry!

Look at you, just look at you, look at you.

How, how, look how disgusting!"

Well, he doesn't know what's happening, he can't see himself.

So Mama drags him, drags him to the mirror, and Larry does one of these things.

And he starts, he starts feeling his face, his wounds.

Well, Mama still has to be in control.

"Go take a shower!

Take a shower right now!"

And she pulls off his pajama tops.

And there, on his chest, is my masterpiece.

(laughter) A deep black hole... with aliens crawling out.

(laughter) Green with red eyes and purple antennae.

And around them, this molten mess of nuclear spent fuel.

And the debris of the U.F.O.

And Mama goes crazy.

She screams and grabs the tennis racquet and starts beating me, and beating me and beating me.

And I'm under the covers smiling, because my skin is thick.

And besides, it's just an oversized fly swatter.

But I'll tell you something, I've never enjoyed a beating from Mama like that in my whole life.

(applause and cheering) HAZARD: George Vendura, let him know.

ANNOUNCER: This program is made possible in part by contributions from viewers like you.

Thank you.

♪