Hey folks, I'm Max Young-Rice.
We've got a special episode for you today.
The StoryCorps Archive is the largest collection of human voices in history, because we try to record as much as we can in as many places as we can.
And yet, there will always be stories in this country that we can't get to.
That's why we like it when you reach out to us.
Every episode, we ask a question and have you leave your answer in a voicemail at 702-706-TALK.
And you tell us stories about everything.
A lot of you share really important moments, and we'll get to those.
But first, we're going to start with some not-so-important moments.
Stories about misunderstandings and faux pas.
Things going wrong, even when there's no bad intent.
I mean, we've all been there.
It's the StoryCorps podcast from NPR.
Let's get started.
Hi, this is Kathy calling from Enola, Pennsylvania.
I am blind.
My favorite Halloween story.
I was sitting on my porch with my bowl of candy and I heard these people coming up and I heard the parents say say it, say it.
So I knew there's a child involved and I wanted to be encouraging.
So I did my very best Wicked Witch of the West.
And she ran screaming away.
And they said, oh, man, we've been practicing this for two weeks.
And so I really messed up their Halloween for a minute.
But it is what it is.
That's all for now.
Thank you.
My name is Carla Kruzik.
I'm from Glen Rock, Pennsylvania.
My daughter, I'll call her Lou, was about five years old.
And I took her to gymnastics for an open playtime.
And while she was there, she was watching an older child.
And the girl said, hi, I'm Melissa.
And so my daughter kept following Melissa around and saying, Vanilla, watch this.
And Melissa would watch her and say, oh, wow, my name's Melissa though.
And Lou would say, okay, Vanilla, can you do this?
And the third time it happened, Melissa turned to me and said, does she know my name is Melissa?
And I said, I'm sorry, Melissa.
It's a beautiful name.
She's never met someone named Melissa before.
They played and played.
And after a while, it was time to go.
So we get in the car and I'm strapping her into her car seat.
And she said, Mama, I had so much fun playing with granola.
My name is Kate Burns, Jacksonville, Florida.
I remember oatmeal cookies.
I was 12 years old.
I loved baking.
A friend of my father's came and gave me a recipe because I admired her cookies.
I made them and when she happened to come and visit again, I gave her one of the cookies very proudly, because they tasted pretty darn good.
When she asked me who I got the recipe from and I told her it was her, she got really mad, told me I was a liar.
I was very frightened because I was only 12, but they were better than hers and that made her mad.
I still make the cookies.
It's no secret.
It's a basic recipe, but I guess I make them with love.
Sometimes things not going the way you expect isn't so bad.
Larissa called in with this.
I met my first love in college, and I, at first, was just friends with him.
But, you know, he won me over through his sense of humor.
He would do these crazy things, like we'd be walking down the street.
He would be wearing a long t-shirt and he'd let his pants slowly start dropping all the way to his knees.
And I would just run away screaming.
Once there was a dead rat in his house and he chased me with a dead rat.
And I know these don't really sound like romantic gestures, but I just totally fell for him.
I don't know why this worked on me.
I really don't.
But it was just so wild.
And I liked it.
Out of all the guys I've dated, I'd say he's the one I really miss.
It was truly an original.
Some stories stay in your mind because they're funny or they're weird, but others stick with you because they made you who you are.
You'll hear those voicemails after a short break.
This message comes from NPR sponsor Subaru.
This February, Subaru and its retailers are partnering with Operation Warm, visiting homeless shelters and support agencies to provide more than 150000 children with brand new necessities like coats, shoes and socks.
This initiative is part of the Subaru Love Promise commitment to improving lives in the communities where they live and work.
Just one of the reasons why Subaru is more than a car company.
To learn more, visit Subaru.com slash help.
Welcome back.
Sometimes people call the voicemail to respond to one of our questions, but a lot of the time they call in unprompted because they just have a story that they want to share.
Like our listener Kavanaugh, who wanted to remember her late grandmother.
Her name was Melissa Fletcher Allwood.
She was from Jamaica.
She was very old school.
And my grandmother was not the kind of person to be all lovey-dovey.
When I was about 13, I got diagnosed with bipolar disorder.
Both of my parents worked many jobs.
Nobody could take me to my therapy sessions but my grandmother.
I remember sitting in the lobby and grandma just started praying over me in front of all these scenes, you know.
And I was so embarrassed.
And at the time, I wasn't happy with who I was and where I was at.
I just didn't feel like I belonged.
But one time my grandma grabbed me by the shoulders and she looked me in the eye and said Kavonna, you are everything.
You are everything.
You know, she was probably the only person who saw me for who I was in that moment.
And I'm 24 now.
I'm a teacher.
I'm just so lucky that I was able to have her in my life at that moment.
I'm not religious, but she's definitely up in heaven and is thrown next to God.
So I just wanted to memorialize that in a voicemail somewhere.
If you're really lucky, family is there for you in those critical moments.
And the families in these last two stories were very lucky.
Hi, my name is Michelle.
I'm calling out of Camarillo, California.
My family came in 2001 to the U.S.
And I came at the ripe old age of about six going on seven years old.
When we immigrated from our small island in the Philippines, we landed in Manila and talked to an immigration officer.
And I was zoning out as a kid does because there were adults speaking and I was not interested.
At some point the immigration officer stopped talking to them and pivoted to me and asked me hey, where are you going?
And I was so young, I couldn't say it.
I said, Santa Barbara instead of Santa Barbara.
And he laughed and he was like, well, what do you want to be when you grow up?
I said, I want to be somebody that helps people.
And it wasn't until years later, as an 18-year-old about to go into college, that my mom told me that my answers were pivotal to us being admitted into the US, because the immigration officer turned to her and said make sure she stays in school.
I hope she helps other people moving forward.
I stayed my whole life in Santa Barbara up until COVID and I'm now working in the California State Legislature for a state elected official.
I just want to help people, and I've carried that motto with me ever since.
Hello, my name is Eric George-Tauber, and I am calling from Cincinnati, Ohio.
I would like to tell the story of my Tante Ellie.
She was not a blood relative, but she was just such a close family friend that we all called her Tante Ellie.
I was a child as I got to know her in the 1970s.
And she was just this sweet, very funny, smart old lady.
I remember Ellie was sitting on our couch and I rested my head against her chest.
And I said, Ellie, I can hear your heart beating.
And she goes, if it stops, you will let me know.
That was her humor.
But there were things I did not know about her until she died in 1988 when she was 90 years old.
We were sitting in the funeral home and her granddaughter delivered the eulogy and told us her backstory.
She was a German Jew born and raised in Berlin.
Her husband was Max, Maximilian Kronenberg.
He was a prominent rocket scientist, and she was living in Berlin with her daughter.
And then a law was passed that engineers could not leave the country.
Max was Jewish, which meant their lives were in danger.
But Max was on an academic tour in the United States giving lectures.
Ellie knew that she had to get him a telegram, but she had to get that past the censors.
Because if it said, don't come home, he would never receive it.
Come home and then be trapped.
So she sent him a telegram with a single word on it.
Canada.
That was their code.
And he knew exactly what it meant.
He went to Canada, got his visa renewed, and came back to America.
Max was able to get visas, and Hunter Ellie was able to get out.
Sitting in the funeral home, I was a little breathless, honestly.
She could have been shot or shoved into a gas chamber, but she wasn't.
And I am so thankful for that because she became a very special part of my life.
I've made a career of teaching.
I have taught English to refugees and I have lived among refugees.
And as they tell me what they left and why they left, I get it.
Because of Ellie's story.
And they become part of my life and honestly part of my nefesh.
They are part of my soul.
And my soul is richer for having let them into it.
If you recognize the name Max Kronenberg, it's because, after coming to the US, he went on to work with multiple presidential administrations and the UN.
That's all for this episode.
As always, we'd love to hear from you.
This week, we want to revive one of our all-time favorite questions.
Is there an animal that mattered to you?
It could be a pet.
It could be an animal you saw in the wild one day.
Tell us that story in a voicemail at 702-706-TALK.
Or tell us any other story that's been on your mind.
That's 702-706-TALK.
This episode was produced by myself.
Judd S.D.
Kendall is our senior producer.
And our executive producer is Amy Drozdovska.
Jared Floyd is our technical director.
I'm Max Young-Rice.
Thanks for listening.
Support for this podcast comes from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, a private corporation
