Because Words Matter

I took a chance and a moment of bravery to enter the "Long Beach Searches for Greatest Storyteller" event. (Think The Moth, but local). As I watched the room fill, I scanned the audience wondering if my story would resonate or if the crowd would even understand my perspective.

Eight storytellers. Six minutes. No notes. I was number seven on list and shared the story below. I was astonished beyond words to get a standing ovation, win the $100 prize and have one of the judges, the multi-talented Paul Williams, not only come looking for me afterwards, but ask to give me a hug. (HUGE compliment coming from a guy whose music I've loved since the age of six!)

I don't think of what I share as unusual. However, people often note my ability to be authentic and say what others don't. If my life's purpose is to continue to be the giant record scratch, then so be it. "Just say it!" as my late wife would often prompt.

You’ve heard the adage about sticks and stones? I wanted to share this story because I think we sometimes forget the power some words can have.

When my wife and I moved to Long Beach in 2014, we held to our promise to help her mother with her TO DO list every summer. My wife, Wendy, was a professor at LBCC and on graduation day she would take off her robe, put on shorts and we’d drive three days to Louisville, Kentucky.

There are many ways to get there and taking the 10 is most efficient, but when you hit Texas, it’s a full day’s drive before you get out of the state and we’d hate it.

After my wife was diagnosed with stage 4 colon cancer in 2022, on her literal death bed she asked me to please take care of her mother. I knew that was another promise I had to keep. So, I sold our condo and most of our things and headed out on the road.

During that first day of the drive, my mother-in-law called to tell me that now she had been diagnosed with Stage 4 bladder cancer. Fantastic. I get to my first stop at a friend’s house in Tucson. I’m grief stricken, I’m tired from driving and I know I’m heading into cancerpalooza again with my mother-in-law. So, I just didn’t think to take my wife’s beloved bicycles off the back of the SUV. She was an avid cyclist and loved those bikes. Her computer passwords were not “I love Chris,” or the names of our dogs, it was always Trek2300.

When I woke up to leave at 6 a.m., the bikes were gone. Someone clipped the locks and stole them from the rack. I was a mess and was sobbing so hard I was vomiting. I had to fill out paperwork for a police report and didn’t get on the road until hours later.

It was after dark when I started to get hungry. When I pulled off the highway, my choice was only a Speedway or a McDonald’s. They didn’t have the fish sandwich, so I told the woman I wanted the two cheeseburger meal, but without the cheese. And she couldn’t wrap her head around it.

“So, no cheese on cheeseburgers?”

"No."

"So, they're not cheeseburgers?"

“Right. They’re hamburgers. I want them instead of cheeseburgers.”

"But just the hamburgers?"

"No, the meal."

"But without cheeseburgers?"

We go back and forth because she can’t understand what I'm requesting and then another woman gets up from a booth and comes over to me and says,

“The way you’re talkin’ to them, that ain’t right.”

I say, “I’m sorry, but with all due respect, my wife died, someone stole her bikes, my mother-in-law has cancer and I’m having to move across the country to live in Louisville, Kentucky. This is the first meal I’m eating today. I was just asking for hamburgers.”

She looks at me.

And then jumps back as if I’m on fire and says, “You’re a woman married to a woman?”

Then I realized…oh hell, I’m in Texas.

She then yells loudly, “You are an abomination against God!”

I grab the bag of food and make a beeline to the door.

And she’s still yelling for the entire restaurant to hear as she walks behind me, “You have sinned against God! You are a sinner!”

I think: It’s dark, I’m in Texas and my wife’s not here.

I was terrified.

I immediately jump in the car, get on the phone with a friend and she conferenced in six other people so they could talk to me for an hour as I kept looking in the rear view mirror just hoping no one followed me.

Now, with all the anti-gay rhetoric that’s bubbled up over the last year, I think about that day from time to time. I seriously wonder whether if then were now…whether I still would have gotten out of there and been able to drive to Louisville to care for my mother-in-law until she died…or I would I have ended up with a bullet hole in my rear window because of something someone said about me?