Navigating Life With a New Partner

When Sarah was a kid, the number of movie stars who came to stay at their house was exactly one, and it was kind of a disaster. Robert Redford ended up at their house because he had heard about a book that Sarah's stepfather was writing about Leonard Peltier of the American Indian movement . It was still just a manuscript, and the stepfather didn't send copies of it around, so he told Redford that the only way that Redford could read it is if he would do it at their house, in Long Island. Redford agreed. Sarah says the atmosphere in the house when he arrived was completely different from any other time in her childhood. I remember mostly my mother like consciously trying to be very charming and being very charming and and uh talking to him a lot and asking all sorts of questions and laughing a lot at what he said and kind of flitting about the house in a way that I hadn't remembered her doing before. Robert Redford told stories, even the simplest story, about his trip to the house. Her parents nodded and smiled along with an enthusiasm that the stories did not necessarily seem to merit to 11-year-old Sarah I was really um I was sullen and I think I was making a really concerted effort not to be impressed. You know, now 20 years later , um I think I was jealous that he was suddenly the star of the house. Whereas I was used to being the star of the house. I was the youngest kid and you know, I was sort of the one who amused my parents and you know here was this stranger coming in who had you know usurped my role. And I remember he when he came in, poor guy, the first night. Um my mother made this special dinner and we ate we ate in the the kitchen. We had this big um wooden table and it was definitely fancier than usual or like one more coarse than we usually had. Maybe we had an appetizer or something which we never normally had. And she had put down these um placemats that were th we only brought them out on special occasions. You know, it all looked really festive and nice and um and so he sits down and we start eating and and Robert Redford says, oh, do you always do you always eat like this? This is so nice. And I said, no. And my mother at the same time said, yes, we do. It was bad and then another thing happened where the the seats at that table were these benches. So I was sitting on the same bench as Robert Redford and I started rocking, you know, kind of rocking. No it like partly unconsciously 'cause I kinda always did that, but also just knowing I'm sure that it would be highly irritating to whoever's sitting on the bench with you. So there poor Robert Redford was like rocking back and forth, um, trying to eat his dinner and my mother said, you know, Sarah, stop stop rocking, you know, and um sort of scolded me in front of Robert Redford . The next day a friend of Sarah's from down the street asked if she could come over and meet the house guest. So she comes over and um she's you know do she reacts the way you are supposed to react. Like she's just you know her eyes are open wide and she's just smiling and talking, you know, and saying I can I'm such a fan and I love your movies and can I have your autograph? And he's delighted, you know, finally some someone is showing the proper protocol. And he's like, Oh , sure, yeah, hey. And my mother's standing there smiling, you know, and how sweet and and she says, Sarah, would you also like his autograph? And I said no . And sh that was like the crowning blow. Well it's it's it's it's like it's like somehow like if you picture your family as like this little solar system in and of itself, like with its own set of normal gravitational fields and all that, suddenly like like I I don't even know what, like another star, another planet entered in. Right. And it completely shifted everyone's orbit away from the way it normally is. Right. And I I I couldn't handle it. All my behavior I think was aimed at trying to get it back to the way I had wanted it or the way I was comfortable. Because in the old solar system pretty much you were the sun. Like you were in the center. Right. And he was so clearly like a bigger son Well today on our radio program stories of what happens when an outsider arrives and changes everything, for better and worse. From WB Easy Chicago, it's this American Life. I'm Ara Glass. Our program today in three acts. Act one: Psychic Buddha Keskese . The story of what happens to an average American family when mom , who is completely rational and charming and funny, starts to spend every day in direct contact with an ancient Buddhist monk who no one else can see, who last walked the earth hundreds of years ago. Act two , The Jackson II, the story of a politician whose life is shadowed by two different men, both of whom share his same name. Act three, Mr. Fun, Jonathan Goldstein and Heather O'Neal tell the true story of what happened when he first arrived in her life, and why her little daughter explained to him that he is the daughter's nineteenth favorite person in the world and not like Wood Arise. Stay with us . Each story you hear on Planet Money starts with a question : What happens if we refund tariffs? Why are groceries so expensive? At MPR, we stand for your right to be curious because the forces shaping our world can be hard to seek. Follow NPR's Planet Money wherever you get your podcasts and start seeing how the economy really works . So it was a rerun, Act One Psychic Buddha Keskiss . A quick note before we start this next story. One of the people in the story, our reporter's mother, is completely deaf. She woke up one morning when she was twenty nine and her hearing was gone. And so to communicate No . This is a story where another man shows up in a family, and the other man is an ancient spirit named Aaron. Mom started channeling Aaron years ago. Aaron has been through lifetime after lifetime going back a couple thousand years. He instructs her in D I was twelve when Aaron showed up. My older brother Mike was fifteen. My little brother Peter was seven. I first found out about Aaron by reading through my mom's journals when she wasn't home. What some people call dirty snooping, I call being curious, and I was a curious kid. I remember reading about Aaron this, Aaron that, and all these long, incredible conversations my mom and Aaron had had. For a while I thought Aaron was some dude my mom was sneakin' around with. Then one morning in the dining room she explained to me and my brothers about Aaron, how he just came to her one day. She's always meditated every morning, and I guess this one time in winter, while she was sitting quietly in the living room, she felt the presence of someone. Then she saw him, a biblical looking figure with blue eyes and a long white beard . At first my mom thought she was hallucinating. She asked the guy who he was. He said his name was Aaron. He's never gone away. I feel his presence there constantly. But it's like sitting in a room with somebody and you're reading a book and they're reading a book and you don't always have to talk to each other. You just feel the other person's presence and if it's somebody you really love, there's a comfort in that presence. Is he your best friend kinda ? Mm it's not that s kind of relationship. Yes, he's a friend, a very dear friend, but it's a more a revered teacher than a pal . Do you and dad still knock boots ? Do we still be making with the love . What does Er in do? What does Erin do when we make love ? I've noticed he averts his game. Since the one time that he's really not around. Although if I called on him he would be, but I didn't feel his presence of energy . When Aaron showed up, one of the first things he did was dictate to my mom a piece of 2500-year-old Buddhist scripture called the Satipattana Sutra. My mom says she'd never heard of it before. Aaron kept teaching her more scriptures and coached her in meditation in the Buddhist traditions. After a while, a couple of my mom's friends wanted in on the teachings, so she started showing them how to meditate and began channeling Aaron for them. It was strange, my mom and Erin became these gurus , and more and more folks started coming by. Every night of the week we'd have a crowd of new age types in the kitchen grazing on vegan cookies and foraging through our herbal teas. My mom and Aaron would lead meditation sessions out in our converted garage. Gently bring your attention to the touch of the breath. Wherever my mom was, so was Erin. And if you're wondering what it was like growing up in a house like this, the only way I can describe it is it felt completely normal. Aaron was just another member of the family. We'd be at breakfast or driving in the car, and my mom would tell us things that Aaron was saying to her. It was like he was an old college friend of hers who we all knew well. He had a weakness for puns and dumb jokes. He was always marveling at new things that hadn't existed in his last lifetime. I remember how intrigued he was one time by the sight of a Ferris wheel at a school carnival. When kids from school came over, me and my brothers always explained about our mom and Erin. But we never really felt embarrassed or weird about it. This was Ann Arbor, the Berkeley of the Midwest. Our friend's parents were ex-hippies and liberal professors. Nobody thought channeling was that strange. Not long ago, on a winter weekend, my brother Mike was in town visiting and we went for a walk to the elementary school playground near the house. I wish I can remember exactly the point where I started to believe that that it really was channeling and not just mom going slightly psycho. You know what I remember? I just remembered. There was that Shirley McLean movie on TV. Out of the limb. I remember there was just the worst sappy silly stuff ever. Yeah, she was like eating it up, and it was soon after that she like met Aaron. And I was like, that's convenient. Mike is 30 years old and married now. He lives in Madison, Wisconsin. He's a professional photographer and he's into the outdoors. Out of me and my brothers, he's probably the most spiritual. I just felt like, okay, like you and me and Peter used to all like make fun of like mom students and stuff like that. Well we mostly mostly you and Peter used to make fun of Okay yeah me and Peter used to make fun of these weird people that come over the house. But sometimes like you would try to like sort of be down with me and Peter and you would like try to make fun of them too. But then you were up there like doing all the voodoo stuff along with the rest of them. I I did used to feel I used to feel torn that I did want to be cool or kind of be accepted by you and Peter. Yeah . But I was really interested in what they were what they were doing. Of everyone in the family, Mike has turned to Aaron the most. In his freshman year of college, Mike basically had a breakdown. At first I felt felt like I was sinking, like like in a pit, just sinking further and further, getting depressed, not doing much of anything. And then I don't know. I just basicallyally eventu just got so bad that I just called mom and asked her for help and she said, well, basically she said, well, I'll put Erin on the line. Right. What can what can Aaron say that's that uh like I mean like after what you want some dude like touched you improperly and I mean that seems pretty f what can Aaron say to make that better or go away Aaron. can He't like take it back. He can't I if I wish Aaron was more like the punitive type of spirit. And like if you said some dude like improperly touched me and he would he would no he would just like put like a bolt of lightning and like you know, we read about in the paper the next day. Then I'd be like, yeah . Right. But basically when I would call I'd explain how I was doing and Aaron would just really help me to see things from a more universal perspective. Like here I was, you know. Like your problems aren't really that big or like? More that my problems were temporary. I remember when Mike would call from school to talk to my mom and Erin. She didn't have a deaf telephone back then, so Mike could talk to me and I'd translate into sign language for my mom. And I remember there'd be long stretches where I'd just do the sign for crying, running my finger down my cheek, again and again . Over the past twelve years, I've watched my mom and Erin help literally thousands of people. Folks come to them in so much pain. And seem to leave feeling so much calmer. I've always felt really proud of my mom for all the work she's done to help people through their darkest times. In fact, when Aaron first arrived in our house, things in our family I I I think uh one way to characterize it would be uh just to show how tough it was it was that's the way I felt every day, just about every minute, like screaming and I think I did it frequently enough. When I first lost my hearing it was devastating. It was totally cut off. There wasn't no communication at all. Just a sense of being totally isolated from the world. When my mom first went deaf, she didn't read lips or use sign language. She lost her job teaching sculpture at the university. She couldn't communicate with her friends. In fact, a lot of 'em just disappeared . My dad got frustrated and upset with her when she couldn't understand him. He says he felt like she was taken from him, like his wife was gone, and he didn't handle it well. It was a big shock. I mean I I never met anybody that was de af. And I was concerned that uh maybe she had brought it on herself because we went to a mall in Detroit one time on a very cold and windy day and she refused to put on a jacket or a coat or anyt hing. So I figured that was it was her fault. And I and I kept asking myself the question, it seems strange now, but the question was, why is this happening to me? And Dad was totally overwhelmed by it. He couldn't talk to me . I could talk to him because he could hear me. He couldn't talk back to me . So he had so much anger, and his anger cut me out. I would get mad , I would curse at her, I would yell at her. Something fire . It was like this for fifteen years. We could never tell when my dad was gonna just blow up. A couple of times my mom packed me and my brothers into the station wagon, ready to leave. My mom says she was praying for some kind of relief. And then Aaron appeared. And after that things began to change. My mom got a focus and purpose in her life. People looked up to her. She wasn't isolated anymore . And Aaron worked with my dad to help him learn how to manage his anger . It's always seemed to me that my little brother Peter is the one in my family most skeptical of Aaron's existence. Usually it's for mister Aaron undetermined. They asked I have to explain to them that Erin is not of this world Um do you believe in Aaron ? Um in what sense? Do I think that everything mom says about Aaron is real? I don't pretend to know. I don't I don't think it's important to me. Like is Erin a really a higher spirit that tells mom all this stuff ? Or is she just like is it just some sort of imaginary friend that developed as like a psychological tool for helping her figure out her own problems? It's just like it doesn't seem like something I can really figure I gotta say, I completely understand Peter's agnostic stance. It's tough to start asking the question of whether or not Aaron is real when either answer you get could be pretty unsettling. I mean, say Aaron is real. Then all the stuff he talks about is real too. It means God exists and reincarnation, and that there really is this whole vast spirit world that most of us can't see . But alrig,ht say Erin's not real. If Erin's not real, either my mom's lying or she's deluded. I know she wouldn't straight up lie about this. She clearly believes in him. Which means if Erin's not real, then she's a crazy person, and that now she's snookered thousands of followers into bleeping along . I decided I should just go to Erin directly. I asked my mom if he would take a meeting with me. She was down and she said Erin was down. One snowy afternoon we went for a walk in the woods behind our house and sat down to talk on a big old fallen tree. I had a list of questions. Should I ask them one at a time or or should I ask them all? Probably ask them one at a time. Okay . First um can I ask Aaron what other kinds of humans has Aaron been ? Start there. Start there . My mom leans back slightly and closes her eyes. She perches on the snowy log, breathing deeply and sitting completely still . I have lived in every colour of body male, female , Arctic climates and tropical , deserts and wilderness of mountains . And so have you. But you don't remember the I do . Aaron says he last walked to Earth in human form about five hundred years ago in Thailand. In that lifetime, he was a Buddhist meditation master. And my mom was one of his pri zed students. One night a man attacked Aaron with a spear, and my mom gave her life to protect him. Aaron says he and my mom have been together in many lifetimes as teacher and student. In a couple of lifetimes, he's even been her father. I have a question for you, Erin . Erin , isn't it possi ble that my mom invented you because she felt so alone and isolated with her deaf ness Oh Mar y , I would not freeze it quite that way First, I cannot prove that I am real and it's not necessary . Certainly she could have invented me . In my experience, that's not what happened, because I exist . Since it's not something one can prove either way , I tend to simply ask people whether she invented me or I'm quote new . The ideas that I offer come from someone are they useful to you? Forget me . Are the ideas useful to you? And pause. These are all baseball cards. Later that afternoon, Mike and I went up into the attic to look for some old pictures and things. Where do you think yours are wait, what's this at one point my mom came up to help. She started telling me about a weekend channeling workshop. She gave a few years ago. She said that channeling is not some secret gift that even my brother Mike had channeled once. Mike channeled very well. Is that hereditary ? I thought channeling skips a gener ation . My experience is that anybody can learn how to journal. As I said, it's like playing basketball. Doing it is easy. Doing it well is hard . Davy? Dad was channeling too? Dad was channeling? No . True. Dad was John? You're pulling my gang? We had 20 people here on about 18 of them ended up journaling by the end of the weekend. That's cadet . Is Hel down there? Hal come on around here. What? Okay. A word about my dad. He's a real performer. The kind of dad who will improvise Gilbert and Sullivan songs with new lyrics. Always willing to entertain. Did I have a channel? Yeah. Yeah, see you remember channel? Sure. I took the channel in class through your mother. I shall channel? Yeah. You never told me about that. Oh yeah, I have a tape of it. Should channel you say? I channeled Monga. Who did he channel ? I could probably do it again. Can you channel Monga right now? I'm asking dad to channel manga . My dad stands there on the pull-down attic steps and closes his eyes while my mom gets an increasingly worried look on her face. I would strongly suggest that you're not taking DV up on that challenge. Anonymous to sit down and meditate and get yourself into a speech and do bliss. about she's crazy she's channels i th I think i'm feeling i'm feeling his presence i'm asking for respect for the process okay i i i could sit down i if i sat there, I'd have to be more comfortable . I think my mom hoped that that would be the end of it. Hey, Bapa. The next morning I got my dad alone while he was shaving in the bathroom. How come mom wouldn't let you uh how come mom wouldn't let you channel manga earlier? Here's my feeling about it. I think she felt that that it wasn't sincere, but it was real. It was real. How about uh could you go to do manga now? Uh can you try? Can I mean I know sometimes these you feel him closer than others? I I I I could do it. I I feel his presence. I I won't be able to shave, I'd have to stop shaving. Well yeah. But but I I I can do it. I feel I'm around. Um I have to close my eyes to kind of like concentrate a little bit. Hello . My name is Munga and I I come from India . I'm here now I'm speaking and not to be disrespectful and not to focus on Munga's accent, but I just didn't find this as believable as my mom's channel. Still though, there's my dad standing there at the sink in a bright green bathrobe his glasses on and shaving cream all over his face, channeling. Already this was turning into one of my favorite memories of my dad ever. Longa this is Davy. And can I ask you? Davy is uh number two son , born April 11th, 197 5 . Right. Five foot eleven , one fifty-two, I believe. One forty-two . I I have these feelings about your physical appearance . Mungo was like one of those carnival barkers. They try and guess your exact height and weight or you win a giant pencil. Why didn't Aaron ever entertain like this? I have no more to say and peace to all human beings on planet Earth, you call it I never really realized my dad was so cool with the whole spirit world thing. He was always a gracious host at all the meditation classes and channeling sessions, but sometimes he also seemed to resent how wrapped up in Erin and her work my mom had become. She was always going out of town to lead meditation retreats and workshops around the country, and I don't think he liked being home alone so much of the time. And sometimes my dad would get annoyed by all the students constantly coming in and out of the house. Honestly, I thought Aaron was just something he tolerated. But listening to him in manga, I felt moved. Really, what could be a sweeter way for him to show acceptance of my mom's work than for him to channel his own spirit? Is Aaron just a part of you ? I have no idea. It's he I don't experience him as a part of him. There were still a couple of questions I had left for my mom. I know Erin has dictated entire books to her, interpretations of ancient Buddhist writings. Scholars who've read them have been impressed. With Erin's teachings, she's become a widely known and respected meditation teacher. Even the most established Buddhist bigwigs admit that the depth of her knowledge is astounding. But then there's sketchy things, too. Like one time when Aaron said the thing he missed most about being an actual human being was his taste of cognac. Aaron's last lifetime was supposedly more than five hundred years ago, and I checked it out, cognac was barely invented then, and the only people drinking it were a few dudes in France, not Buddhist monks in Thailand. And then there's the fact that Aaron says he can read minds and see the future, but then refuses to demonstrate these powers. won't he just prove himself it's so easy I have a number between one and a hundred. And he says he won't play that game? So he's not real. That's for you to decide Does he know the number? He doesn't have to say it. I just want him to know the number . Does he know it? He says he is everything as us, he's choosing not to look at it. I'm begging him, please. I just want to know . And then I mean I know it doesn't matter. His teachings are pretty cool. It doesn't matter if he's real or not. But I just want to know . So just look, just Aaron , I'm asking you for one second. Just look . If you want to understand what having Aaron in our lives has really done for my family. Here's something that happened while I was home to work on this story. We went out to dinner on Valentine's Day. My dad met us at the restaurant, and when he walked in, he said, Happy Valentine's Day to my mom. But she had just turned away and didn't see him say it . My dad got kind of agitated, as though she was ignoring him by choice. He still hasn't fully gotten over her deafness. A minute later he said something else to her, but now he was sore at her, and he didn't use sign language, and barely moved his li ps. My mom said, I can't understand you. And my dad, getting more upset, repeated himself even faster, way too fast to lipread. This used to be how it would all start with them. My dad's anger at my mom's deafness would bring out her unhappiness over it. Soon they'd be shouting at each other. But Aaron's influence has changed everything. On Valentine's Day, when my dad started freaking out, my mom just smiled at him and shrugged, like this is your problem, not mine . Things don't escalate the way they did before Aaron came around. He's helped my mom discover a total sense of calm. Aaron came in peace, and that's what he brought us. It now if Erin hadn't come along . I think Dad and I would have been divorced . I'm not sure . Maybe not. I'm not sure . I understand why my mom believes in Aaron. As for me, I think believing in Eren is a lot like believing in God. I have a hard time having an unswerving faith in something you can't see or prove exists. But I do have that kind of faith in my mom. That's why I believe in Aaron . You , you'll have to make your own decision. Davy Rothbard is the creator of Found magazine and the author of a book of essays called My Heart is an Idiot. He first broadcast this story many years ago. Davy's mom and dad are now in their 80s and still going strong, as are Eren and Munga. In fact, Eren celebrates the big 2100 this summer. Now, here's Davy's dad using his improvisatory powers. Hey Pete, hurry down, dad's gonna sing . If you're a God-fearing man and you're trying to answer all the personal questions that you can , I suggest you call A R O N Aaron is the man that can solve your problems. Do you have any today? It's a way to live in the world today. Can you solve your problems? If you can't, let me remind you there's a wonderful spirit in the world, and his sayings are good as gold . Some are modern and some are pretty old. So my response to you Coming up the difficult task of running for Congress against someone with your exact same name and a seven year old explains a few things to a grown ass man in a minute from Chicago Public Radio when our program continues. Myra Glass. Each week, of course, we choose some theme, bring you a variety of different kinds of stories on that theme. Today's show is a rerun from years ago, The Other Man. Stories in which some outsider arrives on the scene, disturbing the normal orbits of the planets, disrupting out everybody deals with everybody else. We have arrived at the second act of our show, act two , the Jackson 2 . So Jesse Jackson was a national figure for decades, protege of Martin Luther King, two-time presidential c andidate, somebody who would show up on the news all the time . So imagine for a second what it would mean to grow up with the name Jesse Jackson if you weren't the Jesse Jackson. Okay, you're with me so far ? Now, imagine if you grew up with the name Jesse Jackson and you were Jesse Jackson's son, and you wanted to go into public service of some kind . Your dad would forever be the other man in the room . His shadow would always be there. His presence. An invisible boulder in any room you walk into. Run for office, there are gonna be some people who love you, some people who dismiss you because of your dad, whose name you share. Okay. So that is the situation that Jesse L. Jackson Jr. found himself in back in 2002 when we first broadcast today's show. With this story, a story that's a kind of a I don't know, a classic, kind of hard-knuckled, old-fashioned Chicago political brawl. Okay, so at the time, Jesse L. Jackson was a congressman for Illinois' second district in Chicago, and after thirty four years of living with the name Jesse L. Jackson Junior, and seven years of living as Congressman Jesse L. Jackson Jr., Jesse L. Jackson Junior was in a meeting with campaign workers when somebody told him about this strange turn of events. And he said, uh have you heard the news? Had you hear have you heard the news? I said, no, what's the news? He said at eleven fifty-nine, the last minute of filing for Congress and Senate Oh they didn't actual question if him he even existed.. Yes Mark Brown covered all this for the Chicago Sun Times. He says that the other Jesse L. Jackson turned out to be a retired truck driver who lived in a suburb called Robbins, 68 years old, no previous political experience That said he really does exist . Indeed, you know, he was a real person and he, you know, was just a regular guy who who clearly had somehow been recruited to get into this race. Trevor Burrus Recruited by whom? Well, nobody was admitting anything, but for weeks, news reports were featuring gleeful quotes from two local politicians, Robert and William Shaw. They were twin brothers, old school operators who came up through the rank and file of the Black Democratic Organization, who re portedly resented the relative ease with which Jesse Jr. became a congressman. After all, he started at the top. It was his very first elected office. When he won that position, he beat out a candidate that they had supported for the job. The Shaw brothers called Jackson a brat and a crybaby. And in two thousand two, as soon as this other Jesse L. Jackson appeared on the ballot, they were merrily telling The only way he got in public office is through his dad's name. But this other Jackson have had the name long before. Uh this young boy had it, the congressman. Senator Williamshaw talked to me from his office. You know I'm I'm so happy looking back at at history that Andrew Jackson uh didn't come along in this time. He never would have been the president . But listening to Congressman Jackson, anybody with the Jackson name, he feels as though that they shouldn't run. This guy's n this guy's out of his mind. He thinks he have a patent on on the Jackson name. not want people talking about in the newspapers and on television. Again, imagine you have spent your whole life trying to get out from under the shadow of that other Jesse Jackson, your father, and now there is yet another Jesse Jackson. And the main story about your reelection is not what you've accomplis annoying. Uh in the last six years I have had eight press conferences. Two of them have been on this subject. Uh to give you some idea that I don't run to the media to show you some difference between me and my father. My dad might have had eight yesterday. Um I I'm I'm not anti-press. I'm prepared to do press, but when I do press, I want it to be about issues of concern to my constituents. And so rather than running a race on a third airport in Piotone or discussing O'Hare expansion or how to get more jobs. I'm caught in a fight with people who aren't even running for Congress in my race. The people he refers to, of course, are the Shaw brothers. They deny having anything to do with Jesse Jackson of Robbins, the truck driver. But Congressman Jackson started investigating the petition drive that put Jesse Jackson of Robbins onto the ballot. He found that many people who signed the petitions had been told specifically that they were signing for the Congressman, who enjoys a ninety percent approval rating in the district? Further investigation showed that those petitions were notarized by a political ally of the Shaws. The 4400 signatures were gathered by men who came from a homeless shelter, one of whom has testified that they got the jobs gathering signatures one day when Senator Shaw's chief of staff came by and took them to the Shaw's office at one hundred forty fourth street. In an affidavit, this man said that both William and Robert Shaw were there in the room and sent them out to get the signatures. Not only there and sent them out, but they're eating catfish and sent them out. And specifically said, Go help the congressman. We don't get along with the congressman. We don't care much for the congressman, but we're gonna help him get back on the ballot Now the now the congressman is saying that he's got affidavits from people who went around and got signatures uh to get this other uh Jesse Jackson, the one from Robbins, under the ballot. He says he he's got affidavits from some of those people saying that that they met, they were organized in Shaw headquarters. What do you all say to that? I I don't say anything. You know, anything might have happened. You know, I have hundreds of people in my uh headquarters uh coming in and out. We involved in a campaign here. And um to my knowledge I don't know anything about that and I think that uh uh the congressman you know he's drinking some w ater probably out of D C. Uh we have better water than that in Chicago. No wait and what does the water from D C do to you? The water is making him d delirio us . That's what I think. For a while there were not only two Jesse L. Jacksons on the ballot. The Shaw brothers officially supported a candidate in the primary named Yvonne Williams, and at some point another Williams turned up on the ballot as well, Anthony Williams. And of course, this h appens on ballots all over the country. If you're running against an Irish politician, you get another Irish name on the ballot. If you're running against a woman, you get another woman. If you're running against Jesse Jackson, you get another Jesse Jackson. Again, William Shaw. Yeah, that has happened uh many, many times and uh uh people just uh take it with a grain of salt. It's it's not such a big deal. Yeah, I I was I was wondering if if if you think we should uh think it's uh tragic or just funny. Well I don't uh I guess it's funny to everybody but the Congressman. Well it is kind of funny. Again, Congressman Jackson. But there are political forces in my congressional district that are notorious for election uh shenanigans, uh for deceiving voters, and even having the reputation of stealing voters. And after deploying seven lawyers, two private eyes , and one hundred fifty thousand dollars to investigate how Jesse L. Jackson of Robbins got under the ballot, the congressman pursued legal action. He tried to prove that the Shaw brothers intentionally deceived voters. Intentionally tried to convince voters that they were signing petitions for the congressmen when in fact they were signing for the other Jesse L. Jackson. If you could prove that, it would move this entire incident out of the category of political prank and into the rather more serious category of political fraud, which is a criminal offense. Uh rabbit hunting is fun until the rabbit gets the gun. And so what happens when you come up against another big bear in politics The Eddie Murphy movie being The Distinguished Gentleman. A gentleman who gets elected to Congress by the name of Jefferson Johnson after the Congressman dies. His name is Jeff Johnson. He runs for Congress and he gets elected. He's a felon, by the way. I'm pretty sure someone saw it, and I think uh what's also becoming uh clear is that many people forgot how the movie ended, and that is that some people went to jail. The Cook County judge refused to bring in the Shaws to testify under oath. Congressman Jackson's lawyers then threatened to make William Shaw a defendant in the case, that is to sue him directly. And not long after that, after several weeks on the ballot, Jesse L. Jackson Improperly using campaign funds for personal purchases. His political troll William Shaw died in 2008. Jackson served his time, and just this year ran once again for his old congressional seat. This time, voters did not come out with the name Jesse Jackson. Jackson lost. Act three, Mr. Fun. We have this story on what it is like to intrude on a perfectly happy, perfectly idyllic family of two when one of the two falls in love with you, and the other most definitely does not. Heather O'Neill and Jonathan Goldstein explain what happens. I was twenty years old when Arizona was born. I thought I could just put her in a little suitcase and that would be her bed. I figured now that I'd given birth the hard part was over . I moved into a big building over a laundromat where they didn't ask for any references. People left their apartment doors open and waved to you from their couches when you w alk down the hall . The apartment was our own cozy little universe of porcelain dolls, posters of Hong Kong, and tiny colorful paper umbrellas. It was a universe of two plates, two cups, I was introduced to Heather by some friends over drinks. I was impressed by how fast she drank her beer, and she was impressed by the fact that there was only one arm on my eyeglasses . From the side you look like a cartoon doctor, she said . She looked like she was from some bygone era where women worked with their hair tied up in kerchiefs on assembly lines to help the war effort. By all of this I mean to say that I was smitten by her . I knew that Heather had a little girl, and I also knew that I wasn't very good with children. Ironically my job at the time was teaching after school magic classes to kids in elementary schools. I wasn't that great a magician to begin with, and kids made me nervous. My hands were always sweaty and I was always dropping coins all over the place. One time I was really losing the attention of a classroom of sixth graders while teaching them the jumping rubber band, so I told them that if they listened quietly, at the end of the classroom Room. If any of them said a word, I would reprimand them for breaking my concentration and start all over again. open mouthed and expectant. I almost felt like I could actually pull this off . When I smacked into the wall, I turned to them and said, You didn't really think I could walk through a wall, did you ? They all looked at the wall. Then they looked at me. Then, slowly, reluctantly, they all shook their heads no . I hoped I would have better luck with Heather's daughter . Over drinks I had told Johnny that Arizona had shoved our TV set off the coffee table, and now, surprise, surprise, here he was, carefully winding his way up the staircase to our house, with an old RCA in his arms, the old fashioned antenna still attached and dragging behind him on the floor. When he came in, Arizona was over at the neighbors, a Greek family who liked to give her a good bath every now and then. It was a family event for them with Shishk Bobs and an uncle who played accordion on the closed lid of the toilet. As me and Johnny sat on the couch, Arizona walked into the apartment freshly scrubbed, smelling of baby powder and Greek food with four bows in her hair. Johnny kept clapping his hands together and going on about how she looked just like Shirley Temple. She stopped dead in her tracks and gave me a confused look. Before he left, he asked me if I wanted to come to his house for dinner that weekend, and I said sure. I called my sister and asked if she would vape She begged me not to have another boyfriend. In other words, no babysitt ing. So I took Arizona along on my date with John ny. I stood on my front steps waiting for her to get there, and when I saw her coming down the street pushing a stroller, I wondered if I had any juice in the house. Face. Arizona climbed up on the table, opened the lid, and wrinkled her nose. I picked her up and put her back down in her chair, but as soon as I did, she would get right back up and roll around all over the plate , most of the time while pointing at me with an angry look on her face , she wasn't like Shirley Temple at all. She was like the Muppet Baby Joe Pesci . After dinner, Johnny walked into his living room and saw the word Arizona written in pin with the backwards R on his desk. At first I was sort of delighted. It was the first time she'd ever written her name without me coaching her. But I kind of felt for Johnny, whose apartment was all full of neatly arranged furniture and superhero figurines that stayed exactly where they had been placed . Johnny walked around the apartment with his head down and an expression on his face like he was a seven-year-old reviewing times tables in his head. He tried to ease into our lives with grace. After the first time he slept over , he got up in the morning before Arizona woke. He put on his jacket and went outside into the hallway and knocked on the front door, pretending he had just arrived . We don't want to damage the child's psyche, Johnny said. Arizona's bedroom was closest to the front door, so she got up and let him in. I, he said, I was just in the neighborhood. He walked in without shoes and his belt undone. He dropped onto the couch and fell back asleep. Arizona looked at him . Why do you even come by? she said angrily, if all you're going to do is go to sleep . Johnny and I had very different ideas about the environment in which one should raise a kid. The stove needs to be fixed, he complained. You can't cook meals over a hot plate. Ratzo Rizzo cooks meals over a hot plate. And who in God's name puts laundry out on the line at midnight . Children need discipline. They like it was a favorite banner of Project Goldstein . Heather called all of my domestic tips bourgeois. How is cleaning the crisper bourgeois? I asked. How in the world is keeping your child from running naked through the halls of the apartment building wearing my boots a symptom of the bourgeoisie . Arizona could tell that Johnny was trying to change things, and everything between them became a battle of wills . She would reach over and squeeze the indiglow button on his watch and he would chastise her her, telling that Indiglow was used only in emergency situations , like if you're in a blackout or stuck in a cave. But as soon as his head was turned, she'd push the button again In what I considered a bit of cultural exchange, I had a sit on the couch and listen to the soundtrack from Fiddler on the Roof . Arizona, Olive six years old, turned to me in the middle of If I Was a Rich Man and said, That's what you do all day long. You biddy biddy bum. She paused for a moment, and then, just to make sure the point wasn't being lost That means you're lazy . When the three of us walked down the street, Arizona would say, My mom's shadow is longer than yours. That means you're short. She was starting to like him less and less. One day he made her list all the people that she loved most in order. And who do you love next best? He would ask hopefully. And the next? And the next He came in at number nineteen . He actually ranked below the neighbor's dog, and the plumber who drank two gallon bottles of Pepsi while he worked and let Arizona hand him wrenches I would stand in front of the mirror like an obsessive compulsive, desperately scraping the blade across my cheeks, the word scratchy ringing in my head like the ravens nevermore. One time we had some friends over at Heather's, and someone started playing the guitar When I touched her, she whipped her hands away and stopped cold. I retreated back to my seat as the music continued to play. All the while Arizona stared me down like her prison bitch . He tried buying her love with really inappropriate gifts, things that he liked that he thought she might learn to like. He bought them matching wallets and a mood ring that wouldn't fit her for at least another five years. He got her a pop-up book of nightmare analysis that included a chapter on giving birth to aliens . In the best of time, she treated him as something that made me happy, and she quietly tolerated him. Like the way she sat through a Hitchcock documentary at the museum. But then sometimes she would just explode. One day at Burger King he refused to let me bring her hamburger back to the counter for a third time to ask for even more pickles. And she started screaming. She pounded the hamburger with her fists. I can't stand him, she said. Why did we have to go out with him today? Tell me why. He's my friend, I said, and you have to pretend to like him. She had a little friend who would come over and bite his own toes while they watched TV and I never said a thing. I figured it was the least she could do for me . One day I was trying to finish my dad's income tax and Arizona was bored. She was whacking the wind chimes with a broom. She was all out of ideas when Johnny asked her if she wanted to take a walk with him. She sighed and got her jacket. Before they left, he explained that the plan was to walk to a bank to cash his check and then find a barber that would cut his hair for a reasonable price. We were walking along when Arizona came to an abrupt stop, and so I stopped too . She looked up at me, and in this tone that I had never heard her use before, she said This isn't what you do to have a good time . It was like she had summoned up every little bit of maturity she had. And she told it to me in this way that was like maybe it just wasn't something We went back to the apartment and got our bathing suits. Arizona wanted to go to the beach. Arizona treated me like I had never been to a beach before. This is sand, she said . And people like to dig in it. Beside the sand is the water, but it's not the drinking kind. She treated me like she was nursing me back to health. For my part, I tried my best to live up to what a six-year-old's vision of fun would be. I bought every single thing the vendors had to offer. I even got us these overcooked mushy corn cobs on a stick that were smothered in butter and mayonnaise . Mayonnaise And when she went into the water past her knees, I bit my fist and kept my panic to myself. At the end of the day, Arizona persuaded me to buy a watermelon that some men were selling off the back of a truck . As we rode the buzz back home, tired, looking out the windows in silence, Arizona suddenly turned to me and said, Why did I ever marry you? Marry you . All the way home the question just sat there, big and awkward, like the watermelon on my lap that we would have for dessert that night. Around that time, Johnny and Arizona invented this game where they pretend to be two old-time vaudeville partners who can't get along. She is always the wiser burnt-out one, and he is always the mincing bootlock who wants to please the producers and the audience. They pretend they're backstage yelling at each other as the audience hollers for them to come out. Let's get out there, Johnny yells. They're waiting for us. They paid a lot of money for those seats. We'll be sued, dammit. We'll be finished in this town. This is my last show, Arizona says every time, shaking her weary head. And then I'm through. I can't do this anymore . They come out into the hallway nervously. They stand in front of the record player, Arizona on top of a Webster's dictionary to be taller. Johnny starts singing A Bicycle Built for Two. And Arizona is supposed to be the bicycle bell and sing ding ding, but she doesn't. Johnny starts the song over again. Still, Arizona ignores her cue, staring blankly ahead in the throes of a showbiz meltdown. The audience starts throwing tomatoes in Arizona ducks behind Johnny . He holds out his arms to protect her from the crowd. She crouches in back of him, laughing her head off as the angry mob covers him from head to toe in imaginary rotten fruit . Heather O'Neill is the author of many books. Her latest is The Capital of Dreams. Jonathan Goldstein is the host of the podcast Heavyweight. And Arizona O'Neill, these days, all grown up. Her debut graphic novel is called Opioids and Or gans Fall is here yell back to school ring the bell y shoes, walk in blues, climb the fence, books and pens. I can tell that we are gonna be friends I can tell that we are gonna be friends with today's program was produced by Jonathan Goldstein and myself with Alex Bloomberg, Wendy Doreen, Starlene Kine. Senior producer for today's show was Julie Snyder, Elizabeth Meister ran our website at the time, production help from Todd Bachman and Maria Shell. Help on today's rerun from Mike Komite, Adrian Lilly, Molly Marcello, Catherine Marimondo, and Stone Nelson. Special thanks to Mark Brown for helping us with our Jesse Jackson story for the rerun. This American Life is delivered to public radio stations by PRX, the public You get a special Greatest Hits archive in your podcast feed. We hope it's great for you. It helps us. You can do this at thisamericanlife.org slash life partners. That link is also in the show notes. Thanks as always to our program's co-founder, Mr. Tori Malatia, who describes what it was like the first few years hearing us talk about them like we do here at the end of the program. would be uh just to show how tough it was it was I'm Aaron Glass back next week with more stories of this American life we are gonna be friends . Next week on the podcast of this American Life, the most famous black American in the nineteen fifties was Paul Robson, an icon of the Harlem Renaissance. An actor, activist, singer, athlete, family man. Little known fact about Paul. One day he said to his wife, We both said we want an unconventional relationship. Why don't we open up our marriage? The messiness of our ancestors. Next week, on the podcast, or on your local public radio station.