TUS01503-Podcast 01 2025 January Part 2

Marc Moss: [00:00:00] Welcome to the Tele Something podcast. I’m your host, Marc Moss, founder and executive director of Tell Us something. The next Tele Something event is October 7th, 2025. The theme is Walk on the Wild Side. You can learn about how to pitch your story and get tickets@tellussomething.org. This week on the podcast,

Mark Schoenfeld: I’ve been told I look like Matt Damon and you’d have to imagine me. Skinnier with more hair on my head and less on my face. Little bit.

Kelley Provost: My hand finds its way to my purse. I do not let go of these hot five fingers that are my child’s hand, and I grab my phone and it does not ring a second time. My sister and my husband lock eyes with me. We know that this is the news that we’ve been waiting to hear since we left Missoula.

Marc Moss: Four storytellers share their true personal story on the theme. Hold my beer.

Tess Sneeringer: So I turn back to Officer [00:01:00] Becky who has a second question, which is, have you been drinking? And I say, no, ’cause I have not been drinking. And she walks closer than me and she smells me. And she goes, you’ve been drinking.

Jeff Ducklow: I looked to my left. And a tower of ice, probably the size of two Wilma buildings stacked on top of each other was slowly starting to lean away. And I just went, oh my God. My heart was beating so fast. I couldn’t feel it. It was, I was just frozen in disbelief.

Marc Moss: Their stories were recorded. Live in person in front of a sold out crowd on January 13th, 2025 at the George and Jane Denison Theater in Missoula, Montana.

I do have to apologize for the quality of the recording. The gain was set too high on the recording device and there was a lot of his and background noise. I did what I could to remove it, and a lot of that is gone in the process of removing most of the his, all of the applause and ambient noise went away.

The hiss is still noticeable in places. These stories are great [00:02:00] though, and it has been too long. That they’ve been sitting dusty on my hard drive. So let’s get to it. Tell us something acknowledges that we are gathered on the traditional ancestral and unseated territory of the Ponderer Salish and Kni peoples when tell us something engages in land acknowledgements, we try to make them specific to the time of the year that the live event took place.

Keeping that in mind, we know that traditionally storytelling is reserved for the winter months for many tribes. This was a practical choice given the fact that during the other seasons people were busy growing, gathering and hunting food. When the stories on this episode were recorded, it was winter with long, dark evenings, the snow and wind blowing outside, and that is wind telling stories is used to entertain and to teach the children.

Another reason for winter storytelling is that many traditional stories contain animal characters. [00:03:00] To be respectful. People wait until the winter when animals hibernate or become less active so they cannot hear themselves being talked about. We take this moment to honor the land and its native people and the stories that they share with us.

First up is Mark Schoenfeld, who dives into a captivating story of a college sophomore’s unexpected adventure abroad from a covert mission to buy bootleg DVDs to an even more clandestine identity as an undercover evangelical Christian missionary. What happens when a spontaneous prank involving a Matt Damon lookalike turns serious, forcing a confrontation with an organization that calls itself the company and challenges the very meaning of faith?

Mark calls his story. What would Jed do? Thanks for listening. I should start by saying that I can’t tell you where this story takes place. The main [00:04:00] reason is that I would like the option to go back.

Mark Schoenfeld: If I, you know, wanted to, I was a sophomore, just finished my sophomore year of college. I had never been abroad, but here I was halfway across the world and that night, one night we went out on town, a couple guys from the program and myself, we were on a mission to buy. Bootleg DVDs.

So we were in this open air market and uh, the two guys and I had invited, this guy had met in the country to help us because we had no idea what we were doing, and he was going to show us. This opener market and teach us how to find bootleg DVDs. [00:05:00] And it was a lot like, I would imagine trying to find like a woodpecker or something in Greeno Park because there’s a, call it, it’s kind of staccato, it’s D dd.

Listen, and you kind of move around past like some fake Gucci purses and DV.

Past the row of CDs and other trinkets there in an alley was a man with two suitcases and I imagine probably sunglasses, I can’t really remember, but he was looking, trying to look nondescript, and we went and uh, we had invited this friend Jimmy along and he was talking to the man and he was like. Okay, any motion for us to come back.

And he opened up these two suitcases and it looked like he had knocked off a Blockbuster video. [00:06:00] They were overflowing with DVDs and we were just like digging through them. ’cause you know, this is a long time ago. DVDs were a really big deal. I don’t even think Netflix was mailing them yet.

And if I was a college student, so I wouldn’t have been able to afford it. And these were a dollar each. Anyway, I was glad Jimmy was there because he was able to point out some issues that we might have with these DVDs. Like, say exam for example. It was 2002. The, the, uh, third Lord of the Rings movie hadn’t come out yet, but there it was in this suitcase, return of the King, except instead of Mortenson, it was Tom Cruise.

And I had to buy it, and it was legend and it was still a good purchase. And the same was true. Well, he, he also, Jimmy also noted [00:07:00] that there would be some movies that were in theaters and they were probably filmed surreptitiously. So I bought The Born Identity, Matt Damon. Terrible quality, pretty good movie.

You know, he is all like confused about who he is and he is a. So we bought some DVDs, went and had some food, and someone got the idea over beers to pretend like I was famous. See, my two friends in the group both had family from this country, so they could really blend in, they could speak the language.

And Jimmy obviously was from the country. Um, I was not, and I stood out.

And can’t tell you what country it was, but you can just guess that I stood out. And so they said, let’s pretend like you’re famous. It’s not a big tourist town. And I said, okay. And they said, who? Who do you look [00:08:00] like? Who could we say you are? And I said, well, I’ve been told I look like Matt Damon,

and you’d have to imagine me skinnier. With more hair on my head and less on my face. But I, a little bit, I also, I also get Louis Anderson,

which keeps me humble. So anyway, Jimmy and I go to this fountain area where people are taking pictures and hanging out and talking. And a couple minutes later, my friends from the program come and approach us. Talking excitedly come up to me, wanna, to wanna approach me, but Jimmy’s kinda holding him back.

But then I’m like, no, come on. And they come and I sign autographs and take turns taking pictures. And as we had hoped, there were like two more people, maybe four. And then I, you know, kind of repeated it and, and [00:09:00] Jimmy’s like talking to the people in the outskirts. And I can’t understand a word he’s saying except for Hollywood and Matt Damon.

But I’m just signing and signing, taking pictures with people, and I’m just caught up in it. And then I look around. If you were to zoom out, it would be this one white speck in just a sea of non-white people, basically the inverse of Missoula.

Not that I can relate, but. I start to get nervous. Um, and I look at my friends on the outside of the circle now, the ones from the program and they’re whiter than I am, and ask them, they’re these like two kind of official looking people watching us and not happy. And I turn to Jimmy and I say, Jimmy, we gotta go right now.

And he’s got this like shit eating grin [00:10:00] and I’m so glad he didn’t ask me why. Because I would’ve had to lie to him again. I had told him that I was a foreign exchange student, which is what my visa said. But the truth is, I was an undercover evangelical Christian missionary, and I was breaking every rule in the rule book

I had. I had come to the country a few weeks before. And spent all this time in this basement. So you can imagine with this guy who looked like a youth pastor telling us how to do things, and I’ll never forget his goateed face, the way it distorted when he told us how Christians were still persecuted in this country.

And so they gave us code words like God, the father was Fred, Jesus was Jed, and the Holy Ghost was Casper. [00:11:00] Uh. Christians were family and the organization, which you’ve maybe heard of, I won’t say real crusaders though. Um,

they were called the company, which is what they call the CIA and spy movies. Uh,

let’s see. There was competition for adding people to our family, you know, so we called the Mormon and Jehovah’s Witness missionaries, momos and Jojos, and this was fed to us. And they, and, and then there would be competition for our time. So say someone wanted to come and like practice their English on us and not wanna receive the gift of eternal salvation, we, they called them leeches.

Which I found only slightly less offensive than their term for the whole [00:12:00] mission, which was the Orients Express. I think they’ve changed it

at this point. I was, um, pretty disgusted with this organization. I decided to, you know, still do it. Uh, but I was gonna like, do it how I thought Jed would do it. Like ww JD what would Jed do? I had read the Bible, which we were the, the, the textbook. I mean, and I wanted that kind of authentic faith. So I called up, you know, after that night, kind of racked with guilt and just really wanting to be there for my friend that I’d made Jimmy.

I called him up and we went to the coffee shop, tea shop where we had first met, and like that night we started with tea and switched to beers. And as things got looser. I told him the truth that, uh, that I was a family member and that I [00:13:00] wanted to tell him about this guy named Jed. And he, he, he told me that he, he did feel like something was wrong in his life and that he did need something.

He said he often felt like he was, uh, a ship lost at sea. He was like, I’ve got a textbook story for that one. And I was really surprised he was so open and we met. Again and again. Every day after that, until it was time to leave, I was so disappointed. I wanted to go home. I wanted to sit on the toilet,

but I didn’t wanna leave Jimmy. The company told me it was my hubris, uh, that they, that I wanted to convert it. But what the truth is, the night before I left, Jimmy looked at me and he said, am 60% sure Jet is real. But I’m a hundred percent sure I’m a sinner, and the company told me that I had done the hardest part.

I [00:14:00] wanted to go back, but it turns out they don’t let you go be a missionary if you’re not a Christian anymore. So I’ll never get to, I’ll probably never get to see Jimmy. A almost willing to believe in the life.

Marc Moss: Thanks, Mark. Mark Schoenfeld has been a lot of things, a window washer, a screen printer, a public radio host, a middle school teacher, and an adjunct professor to name a few.

One thing he’s always been is a writer of stories, songs, and poems, which led him to earn his MFA in creative writing from the University of Montana. A disgruntled Texan Mark and his family now call Western Montana home. His work has appeared in print, online, and on air, which you can find@markshow.com.

That’s M-A-R-K-S-C-H o.com. In our next story, join Tess Sneeringer, a high school junior on Halloween night in 2009, as she navigates an exclusive party, a ninja clad twin brother. And a [00:15:00] sudden police raid that turns into a chaotic scramble for escape. What happens when a misplaced car and a nosy officer Becky, make this unpopular attendee, the unlikely culprit for the entire bust?

Tess calls her story a chance to be popular. Thanks for listening.

Tess Sneeringer: So there I was sitting on the hood of my mom’s pink Toyota Avalon with my twin brother David, and our friend Paul. Waiting for the cop in front of us to call back up. It was 2009. We were juniors in high school and it was Halloween and we got ourselves into this situation because I decided to go to a party, a party I was barely invited to.

This was really David’s friend’s party and he was always Mr. Popular. And I had my friends and we knew our place and we were not popular. And that is kind of how David and I existed in elementary school, middle school, high school, the whole way through. So much so [00:16:00] that when we got to this new high school on my first or second day, I’m still meeting people and they’re like, oh, you’re David’s sister.

And I was like, oh, that was fast. I guess I gave a my parents a little relief by making friends in the first place. ’cause I saw an email left up one time on the family desktop that said Tess had friends over last night. Thank God. But it was junior year at this point, and the social standings had been set.

But tonight, David knew he needed a ride home from this party and he wasn’t cruel. So he invited me to the party. And yes, I had my friends, we had our place, but you know, if you’re not popular, like okay, maybe, maybe tonight I could be popular. And so I go to the party, but I go late. And I leave DC where we grew up and go out into the suburbs to this house I’ve never been to in a neighborhood called Chevy Chase.

That is the name of the neighborhood. And this is the land of manicured lawns, big houses, cul-de-sacs, [00:17:00] like safe, quiet streets. And again, I don’t know this girl well enough to ever have been to her house, so I’m like trying to decipher the house addresses. This is before smartphone, GPS, and I finally. Find it and I pull over into the first parking spot find, and I, I do have a flip phone, so I text my brother, I’m here, and he comes out and he is dressed as a ninja so I can barely see him, and he is like beckoning me from the bushes.

Okay? So I follow him through this gate, down the stairs, into this basement where there’s full high school rager, ensuing. There’s Natty Light, there’s beer pong, there’s scantily clad Halloween costumes. And I am dressed as this like doth girl and I have a black wig and black lipstick and fake piercings and like a studded belt and combat boots.

And I love that Halloween costume. But that night it might’ve worked a little too well ’cause I went into the party and barely anybody [00:18:00] recognized me. And I really hope that’s ’cause it was the costume and not just ’cause they really didn’t know who I was. But I, I tried my best. I socialize, I held my own.

For about an hour until we hear pounding upstairs on the front door, and sure enough out the like basement windows, we see red and blue lights and the party is officially busted. And despite the host, having told everybody that you go out the back door only leads to the front, everybody goes out the back door and people are hopping fences, army crawling through bushes.

It is a complete. Cluster, everybody’s scattering. And I just glue myself to my brother ’cause I have no experience running from the cops. I, this is well outside my comfort zone. And our friend Paul attaches his fate to ours and joins our team of escape. And so we’re make our way around to the front of the house where we’re kind of in the bushes, but we can see the street [00:19:00] and we see the cop car kind of rolling down the hill, um, away from us chasing our friends.

And so we make a break for it. ’cause our car, I park the car a little bit up the hill, and the second I get my driver, my hand on the driver’s side door, I see the reverse lights from that cop car speed way back up the hill at like 20 miles an hour and stop right in front of us. Officer comes out, introduces herself as Officer Becky, and she asks me, do you know where you’ve parked?

Where I parked? What, and I look around and I see that I am blocking the neighbor’s driveway. They have a car in that driveway. And in the following moments of silence, I realized that I am the only reason the cops have busted this party I was very invited to. So I turn back to Officer Becky who has a second question, which is, have you been drinking?[00:20:00]

And I say, no, ’cause I have not been drinking. And she walks closer than me and she smells me. And she goes, you’ve been drinking. And I’m like, I don’t like, what do you want me to say? But in my head, my father, the ever present lawyer in my life has told me that if I ever end up at a busted party while sober, I should tell the cops to say, I offered to take a breathalyzer test and make them put in in writing.

And so Officer Becky says, you’ve been drinking. And I say, breathalyze me. Officer Becky doesn’t even have a breathalyzer test. She’s a, she came to gimme a ticket, maybe tow my car and ended up ally busting an underage party. So I’m sitting on this hood with me, my brother and Paul, who are probably cursing my name offering to give breathalyzer tests and we’re just waiting there ’cause she has to call backup and these two.[00:21:00]

Fools decide to make polite conversation with Officer Becky and, oh, I’m so sorry. I have to work on Halloween. That’s such a bummer. And this cop is like, actually it’s my favorite night of the week to work. Oh, okay. Super fun loving person here. And then she decides she wants to search us. And again, these two really emboldened tonight, uh, decide to put their.

Recently learned, uh, civil liberties course material to an application and say, do you have probable cause? And she asked them, well, do you have any weapons? My brother is dressed as a ninja. He goes, I have some nunchucks. These are my nunchucks. I took karate. He used them for his costume, hands them over, she searches us.

She doesn’t find anything. And she asked me for our, my id. And I look [00:22:00] nothing like my id. I have a black wig on. I have all this stuff. So I hand it to her and I’m like ripping everything outta my face. Wig piercings out, like trying to smear my makeup, just trying to like it’s me, I swear. And that’s as about about as much as she has to do with us until finally this cop second cop car comes out and this guy comes out, he’s probably like 20 years old, and he just walks up to me and gives me the breathalyzer test.

And I’m like, I don’t know what to do with this. Like, how do you use this thing? And so he takes it back, he unwraps it, he like undoes the straw, hands it back, and Officer Becky goes, you can take this, but you’re not gonna pass. And in my head I’m like, hold my LaCroix. Watch me and I blow into this lyer test, hand it back.

And I see this young cop just like flip the screen a little bit to Officer Becky and then I can see it. There’s three beautiful zeroes. Plus passes flying colors [00:23:00] and Officer Becky goes, have a safe note and that’s it. So the three of us get in the car, you know, we’re all mad at each other for how the other handled the situation.

Um, but we get back to our house in one piece and Monday rules around, and the school day is pretty uneventful for me. But then I get to softball practice and I, one of my friends comes up to me and she’s just like, Hey, are you and Monica okay? Monica’s my softball co-captain, and I’m like, why would Monica and I not be okay?

She goes, oh, well she was at that party and she got her third citation and now she has to go to court. And in my head, two things. One, the first two citations were not my fault. The third one, definitely, I’ll take that one. But the first two were. The second thing that I realized is my name has probably gotten drug through every A OL in instant message group chat.

Like every side conversation, people probably hate my guts, but [00:24:00] I’m not even worth being angry to my face. I’m that unimportant. And in that era that was kind of worked out in my favor ’cause I didn’t have to deal with their hate to my face. Um, and I can’t say I dabbled that much into the popular crowd anymore in high school.

Um. But we made it. My friends and I graduated. College got better years after college got better, and so I just wanna say if any of you are in high school or have a high schooler for which any of this sounds familiar, this too will pass. And if you peaked in high school, I am so sorry. Thank you.

Marc Moss: Thanks Tess.

Tess Sneeringer has lived in Missoula for six years and landed here after spending the first half of her twenties as an outdoor educator across the American West, far away from her childhood home in Washington DC [00:25:00] telling a story for tele something became a Missoula bucket list item after she saw her first show in 2019.

So she told a story in 2021, but then she stayed in Missoula longer than she thought she would. So. She figured she’d do it again. Her first appearance featured a survival story set in the Utah Desert, and she’s back on this episode of the podcast with another survival tale. This time of high school social life.

Coming up after the break,

Kelley Provost: my hand finds its way to my purse. I do not let go of these hot five fingers that are my child’s hand, and I grab my phone and it does not ring a second time. My sister and my husband lock eyes with me. We know that this is the news that we’ve been waiting to hear since we left Missoula.

Jeff Ducklow: I looked to my left and a tower of ice, probably the size of two Wilma buildings stacked on top of each other, was slowly starting to lean away, and I just went, oh my God. My heart [00:26:00] was beating so fast. I couldn’t feel it. It was, I was just frozen in disbelief.

Marc Moss: Stay with us. Remember that. The next tell us something event is October 7th.

The theme is Walk on the Wild Side. You can pitch your story by calling 4 0 6 2 0 3 4 6 8 3. You can learn about how to pitch your story and get tickets@tellussomething.org. Thank you to our story sponsor who helped us pay our storytellers The Good Food Store For more than 50 years, the Good Food Store has been Missoula’s Homegrown independent source for natural, organic, and locally sourced food.

Learn more@goodfoodstore.com. Thanks to our media sponsors, Missoula events.net. Blue Dog Media and Missoula Broadcasting Company. Learn more about them and listen online@missoulabroadcastingcompany.com. Thanks to our in kind sponsors Float Missoula. Learn more@floatmsla.com and Joyce of tile. Learn about Joyce and the work that she [00:27:00] does@joyceoftile.com.

Alright, let’s get back to the stories. You are listening to the Tell Us Something podcast. I’m Marc Moss. In our next story, Kelly Provost shares her raw and honest journey of self-acceptance and defiance. Beginning with a lifelong struggle against body image that culminates in a breast reduction, but just as newfound confidence blossoms on a dream European vacation.

A phone call in London’s West End moments before the Lion King performance delivers a life altering diagnosis that changes everything. Kelly calls her story Careful what you wish for. Thanks for listening.

Kelley Provost: We were about ready to walk in to a production of The Lion King in London’s West End when I was diagnosed with breast cancer, now, I always knew my breasts were going to kill me when I was 12.

I thought it was going to be from embarrassment because I realized for the first time that they’re [00:28:00] supposed to be there. 13 and 14 more of the same. I am buying bras for just very little content, but it’s making me feel a little better about myself to, uh, you know, be a part of middle school. 14 and 15.

Come and boy, howdy. So did the knackers violently, seemingly overnight they appear. Think two globes on a stick, not what I ordered. Thank you very much. So the tone of the embarrassment shifts from non-existent to, oh my god, I gotta hide these ladies. Um, a very intricate, very large lever and pulley system exists to keep them found in where they’re supposed to [00:29:00] be and hidden.

Saying goodbye to button up shirts and sassy straps, and God forbid strapless on any occasion at all. And it just becomes this whole thing. So from about 16, I would say till 38, it was hide and seek. It was, you know, under pillows. Hiding my bra hooking up and just lamenting and loathing the breasts that I had so desperately in seventh grade.

I must, I must, I must increase my bust. You know, be careful what you wish for.

So I had looked into getting a breast reduction before and when I was about 21, I had some good insurance. And, uh, I made the appointment and I went in and they had said that, um, that was all fine and dandy, except for [00:30:00] that I wouldn’t be able to nurse future baby. I have no idea why at 22 that mattered. I mean, the way I was living my life was not conducive to a child in any form, but I thought, oh no, I better not do that.

And, uh, so I didn’t. So life goes on and I’m, I’m having the boobs. It’s all a big mess. And, uh, I meet the love of my life and we start having beautiful babies. And finally these large ridiculous mammies do their job and they nourish two beautiful, healthy babies. So by the time I’m 38, I’m, I’m back on the breast reduction train thinking I might do that.

It took a while to convince the, uh. Insurance company that running as I am a runner with size. I mean, we’re talking like double K shit you’ve never heard of, they don’t sell ’em in Dillard’s, y’all. Um, you know, I, I’m, I’m sending pictures after a 20 mile run, like do it, [00:31:00] you know, blood, ugh. They finally agreed to this breast reduction.

So at 43 years of age in 2015, I get. And you’re going, what took me so long? Well, I’ll tell you this. I finally had the figure. I had wanted. I was proportioned. I was happy. They were beautiful. And so from 43 to 44 to 45, I bought all the clothes I wanted to. I do love fashion. I was having so much fun with it, and I decided I was having so much fun that I was gonna take these beautiful ladies.

My husband, our two young sons, and my sister to Europe. So we all went, my family and my chest and myself and my cute suitcase filled with a lot of clothes that I was excited to wear on many different occasions. We were starting off in London and we’re gonna do a week in Paris, and then two [00:32:00] weeks in Spain.

So I cultivated my outfits carefully. So here we are. In London. It is July 5th, 2017. We had landed in Europe on July 2nd, so we’re just day three in. We’d had a day of sightseeing and we’re gonna have a little lie about in our flat in London. Before the nights events, we were really excited about this one, the kids, because they like the Lion King.

Of course, it’s on London’s famed West End. We know the production is. Brilliant costumes, acting all of the events. I am mostly looking forward to looking good with London’s elite in the West end, having a fabulous meal. Soaking it all in nodding yes, I see you. You look so good. Me too. Right. And uh, you know, just, just really [00:33:00] enjoying a night out with London’s culture.

As one wilt with expectations, they begin being dashed almost immediately. What turned into a three hour break, turned into a two hour break, turned into a one hour break, and I don’t look fabulous. I’m hot. I hate being hot. We’re late. I hate being late. And instead of my fabulous sit down dinner with really insensible shoes that we took an Uber to, it’s looking like we might not eat at all and we might not make it to the theater on time.

Damnit, dammit, dammit, dammit, dammit. So we hop on the London, uh, metro system and we pop off that Piccadilly Circus, think Times Square, think. Super crowded. Think any other time in my life I’d be soaking it all in, loving every minute of it, but instead I’m feeling [00:34:00] real gross. ’cause we’d eaten McDonald’s.

We were very overdressed. Um, I’m hot, I’m sweaty. But we, we, we land in Piccadilly Circus. Very crowded, very busy. Lots of bodies that I didn’t create or I’m not married to or related to touching me. And we’re late and it’s starting to be a real problem for me, and I’m losing the battle to not ruin the evening for everybody.

And I death grip my 6-year-old son’s hand, and it’s hot and it’s sweaty, but I ain’t losing this boy. And I’m kind of watching my husband’s blackhead Bob as he navigates us to what we know is the West End and the theater. And we’re looking for that marquee that says The Lion King. And my phone rings. Now you might think that from what I just described, that I would fumble for my phone and it falls off and breaks, and that’s the story.

But it’s not because I’m [00:35:00] waiting for this call. Tom Petty had it right the way is the hardest part, so my hand finds its way to my purse. I do not let go of these hot five fingers that are my child’s hand, and I grab my phone and it does not ring a second time. My sister and my husband lock eyes with me.

We know that this is the news that we’ve been waiting to hear since we left Missoula on July 2nd. Is this Kelly? Provost? It is. This is Dr. Ty. It is breast cancer. Hey. Thanks Dr. Tai. That’s what I thought. Um, okay. Got a run. Now when there is a crack in the universe such as that, you sort of remember everything that happened before then, and very little of what happened immediately after.

But I can tell you it was something [00:36:00] like Dr. Strange or The Matrix, but without the capes or the portal or the drugs and. Uh, I took a second. My sister, my husband, I don’t know if I uttered it, but we all simultaneously knew that I had just been diagnosed with cancer, breast cancer. I didn’t know what kind, I didn’t know how fast moving.

I wasn’t sure if I could continue on for the rest of my vacation. And time didn’t stand still, as it turns out. So we’re still rushing. We’re still going, and we make our way into that Dang theater. Stunned. Not completely surprised. But you know what a feeling, never have I been so grateful for the lights to dim so that I could come into my body.

My death flashed before me. And unlike other times, I’d fantasized about my death because I had, let’s face it, um, this, this time [00:37:00] I wasn’t thinking, oh, they’ll be so sad. I was like, man, I married a good man. He’ll remarry and she will love those kids. My sister has the best relationship with them that she possibly could.

They will miss me, but they could read my diary because I have conducted myself in such a way that I leave behind a leg. Legacy of love and beauty. So. Intermission hits, lights come up. I tell my husband to go get the kids some souvenirs, and I get the information that I was really looking for, which was, can I stay on vacation, or is this shit super serious that I need to fly out early?

We’d already discussed such a proposition. I make my way outdoors and I, I get on the horn and I, I reach St. Ronnie, a community medical Senator Center. She is a nurse navigator and she starts telling me information that I’m digging. She starts saying things like, it’s [00:38:00] stage one, it’s slow moving. It’s the good kind of cancer.

There’s, there’s no such thing. FYII love ani, but no. And, um, I’m relieved. I’m relieved that I can stay on my vacation. I decide I’m gonna be done trying to watch my figure so that by the time I get to Spain, I look great in my bathing suit. Because here’s the thing, please don’t wait for a cancer diagnosis to eat all the tear soup, extra butter on your bread to live your life out loud, to rip your top off in every beach in Spain, which I did.

I encourage you to start living now and you can keep your top on if you want.

Marc Moss: Thanks Kelly. Kelly Provost is a survivor, a thriver, a lover, and a lover. She loves Duran Duran fashion. Laughing and dancing. Watching people be proud of themselves is her favorite thing [00:39:00] ever. Her goal is to create a community of people who love themselves so much.

That they inspire others to do the same. A life coach. A life lover, a life liver. Closing out this episode of the Tell Us Something podcast, Jeff DLow embarks on an adventure Wish, a seminary graduate Turns sea kayak guide Jeff recounts the incredible dangerous decision to paddle towards and touch. A Tidewater glacier in Alaska.

What began as a bold pursuit of a memorable death could quickly become a fight for survival against one of nature’s most unpredictable forces. Jeff calls his story a terrible idea. Thanks for listening.

Jeff Ducklow: So before I tell you what happened on August 7th, 2015, I need to clear up a couple things. The first thing is it wasn’t when I looked back.

That I knew what I did was stupid. I knew before I did it that it was stupid. [00:40:00] The second thing is, even if you graduate from Princeton Theological Seminary with a master’s in Divinity, yes, a master of Divinity,

it doesn’t necessarily make you any wiser. And for those of you. Who might judge me as a man with a death wish. I say, no, it was not a death wish. It was an adventure wish. So skipping over the part where a seminary grad who is headed for ministry becomes an adventure guide heading towards a glacier. I’m gonna save that for the next, tell us something with a theme.

Hold my Bible.

But since this is hold my bear. It was a warm Alaskan summer day and I was paddling in a remote fjord all by myself because it [00:41:00] was my day off from sea Kayak guiding. It’s at this time I got one of the worst ideas I’ve ever had. It was the most unrecommended, the most dangerous thing I could do that day.

I decided I would approach one of the most powerful, unpredictable forces in nature. I would approach my sea kayak a Tidewater glacier, and touch it with my bare hand. Now again, I did not have a death wish, but I have to be honest, I always admired family trees that had really interesting deaths.

And I thought, you know, being crushed by a glacier, that’s, that’s pretty good.

I had seen others like trampled by elephants in [00:42:00] Borneo or died after catastrophic igloo collapse. I never wanted a mundane death like died while choking on a hot dog at the state fair. That wouldn’t do. But crushed by a glacier, not too shabby. So I decided today was the day as I started paddling. I’m thinking this is a terrible idea.

Now, the glacier I’m talking about is huge. At the face of it, where it comes into the water, it’s a mile long. It’s about 500 feet high. It stretches back. It’s basically a river of ice going 13 miles up to some very high of elevation where it’s a 700 square mile ice field. So I dunno if you’ve been around glaciers, but it’s basically this river of ice always moving downhill.[00:43:00]

And the tide water glacier in particular is very unstable because as it comes into the ocean that water is starting to erode the foot of the glacier. I’m making it even more unstable as the rest of it continues to move downhill. And sometimes they pop, they crack, and at other times it might sound like an incredible boom of thunder when a big chunk of ice will break off the face of the glacier and land in the water.

In fact, it’s so compelling. Cruise ships would come and they would watch the Glacier Cat Now. As a guide. I knew this, and yet I continued forward.

The other thing about the glacier is when it calves off, it leaves icebergs in the water, and in this case, it really matters because you’ve heard of the phrase tip of the iceberg. [00:44:00] These tips were huge. These were very large tips.

After the last story, I want you to hear ’em saying tips.

Some of these tips were the size of submarines or a house and what that meant as a sea kayaker. If you’re cruising by one and it decides to roll like they do. It will scoop you up to an early grave. So you try to stay away from the berg. Remember the Titanic? So now I’m paddling, and if you’ve ever been in Alaska, you also know it’s so huge that it’s almost impossible to judge distance.

I’d never gone anywhere this far with with my clients. So. [00:45:00] An hour, hour and a half had gone by and it seemed I wasn’t much closer. And then I get to the spot where I’d seen cruise ships, where they watched the glacier calving and calving, by the way, doesn’t involve cattle. I was confused for about a month up there looking for cows in the water.

Someone help ’em. Um, it’s just big chunks of ice that break off and become icebergs. So I get to the, this place and it’s, it’s a half mile back because that’s the law that a cruise ship needs to stay a half mile back from the glacier because when a big chunk of ice breaks off, it can create a wave as high as 30 feet.

It can also create an underwater tsunami just as large, which could capsize, uh, a large, and just for reference, I’m in a sea kayak.[00:46:00]

Which is basically a 14 foot tube of plastic, and I’m going past that mark, and I’m thinking, this is a terrible idea, but somehow I feel like I’m being sucked in against my will. I thought I heard the ice saying, come to the eyes, and like, yes, my frozen Lord. And now I’m getting pretty close and I see where there’s a group of harbor seals.

They’re hauled up on the ice like they do. And normally they’re super cute. They have these big eyes and they’ll pop up next to your kayak and look at you. But this time they look more concerned.

I thought I saw one. Say what? In the name of humanity. And I don’t know if seals are religious, but I’m pretty sure I saw one of them with his flipper make the sign of the cross

and bean [00:47:00] seals. They followed me for a while. That’s what they do. But then they suddenly disappeared as if to say, we have pups to feed, we have fishing to do, and even though we’re waterproof, this is as far as we go. And now I get to. I really close to the glacier. I can’t see the top of it, just the wall in that.

And suddenly the temperature plummets and the atic winds, as they call ’em, are blowing off the glacier and I’m freezing. There’s gear for these kinds of expeditions, but I wasn’t wearing it.

And I’m getting up closer to the glacier. It’s amazing. It’s blue, it’s white, and it looks like. Giant rock crystals rising up from the sea into the sky. It’s like I landed on another planet. I’d never been this close before. And then I remember why I went and [00:48:00] kept on going and now it’s like 50 yards, 25 yards.

What am I doing? But I’m in too deep, my friends. And now it’s 10 yards. 10 feet, and I stop paddling. I drift in.

I’m looking straight up, 500 feet of ice over my head. And I don’t know if I touched it too hard.

I looked to my left and a tower of ice, probably the size of two Wilma buildings stacked on top of each other. It was slowly starting to lean away, and I just went, oh my God. My heart was beating so fast. I couldn’t feel it. It was, I was just frozen in disbelief. And then I thought, here comes the Darwin Award.

I, and [00:49:00] I had certainly earned it. It was nature’s way of saying, excuse me, we, we don’t think you should reproduce. And it was a cold hand on the shoulder saying, we’re gonna have to take you outta the gene pool. And then I thought, I heard the ice again saying, come towards delight Jeff. Come towards delight.

And for a moment I thought, okay, I thought I didn’t really have a choice anyway. Then I thought I heard the voices of loved ones saying, don’t go towards the luck. And then I thought, I heard the voice of my very practical mother saying, oh, great, now who’s gonna mow my lawn? And just then the will to live was ignited and with an incredible,

that’s what it felt like. I paddled as hard as I could, and I was just [00:50:00] waiting for this multi-story wave to crash down on me with huge icebergs. And I saw a huge iceberg in front of me. So I started going towards it and I was able to get to the far side of it. And as I did, I heard an amazing sucking sound and I thought, this is it.

And I looked over to my shoulder and this iceberg is about the size of a small house, went straight up out of the water, like an atomic cloud. And I go, this is it. But I also remember thinking, so that’s what the bottom of a glacier looks like.

And so I was still paddling for my life when suddenly I realized I was spared all the energy for that falling tower of ice was absorbed by this iceberg, and in suddenly I looked around. It was sunny, it was warm, and I was alive, and I, I started paddling in reverence. [00:51:00] No more whistling, no more singing. I passed by the seals again.

One of them was shaking his head saying, you lucky son of a bitch.

I got back to the lodge. I didn’t tell anybody what I’d done.

I went into my cabin and I pondered and I came up with this. I paddled away agnostic on whether or not nature was my friend or my buddy, but I also came out a believer. That nature wasn’t against me. This experience didn’t get me back on the religious road, but I do believe that day I made my peace with God. Thank you.

Marc Moss: Thanks, Jeff. Jeff Ducklow has always loved nature. As a youngster, he spent most of his free time playing in the woods and felt more at home there than he did anywhere indoors. He considered nature his friend, even into adulthood when [00:52:00] he decided to turn his passion for nature into a career as an adventure guide.

Yes, Jeff felt he and nature were buddies, A belief he wholeheartedly embraced until the events in his story that you just heard shook his faith and gave him more insight into the nature of nature. Thanks for listening to the Tell Us Something podcast. Coming up on the next episode of the Tell Something podcast,

Nita Maddox: he walks up and he’s got this completely unredeemable action adventure movie, and I pull up his account and it’s just bad movie choices and $50 in late fees, and he tries to introduce himself again, and I was like.

Listen buddy. You have terrible taste in movies. You owe $50, you’re gonna need to pay us $20 of those late fees. Take your crappy movie and kick rocks.

Joyce Gibbs: And so I run around to the back where the, where the nesting area is while she’s eating her food. And I open up the cage or open up the back of the hutch.

[00:53:00] And there they are. Four furlough eyeballs closed. Squirmy little baby rabbits. And they’re squirmy so much so that one of them falls out of the back of the hutch and lands in the snow and it starts screaming

Amanda Peterson: and I was in it. So by in it, I mean that by age 16 I had signed a purity contract with God.

Really it, it was just a piece of paper that some guy in a church printed, but to me it was from God and I was signing it for him. Thus, I took it very seriously and I wore a purity ring.

Marc Moss: Listen to the stories from our return to Butte America in April of 2025. On the next episode of the Tell Us Something podcast.

Subscribe to the podcast so you’ll be sure to catch these [00:54:00] stories. On the next Tell us something podcast. Remember that. The next tell us something event is October 7th. The theme is Walk on the Wild Side. You can pitch your story by calling 4 0 6 2 0 3 4 6 8 3. Learn more and get your tickets at Tell us something org.

TUS01503-Podcast 01 2025 Hold My Beer

Marc Moss: [00:00:00] Welcome to the Tele Something podcast. I’m your host, Mark Moss, founder and executive director of Tell Us something. The next Tele something event is October 7th, 2025. The theme is. Walk on the wild side. You can learn about how to pitch your story and get tickets@tellussomething.org. This week on the podcast,

Jeremy Keene: Willie was one of those people, you just kind of into his energy and his mischief, like moths to a flame.

Meco Correia: And I turn off of sixth Street onto a side street. And so I’m in the heart of Missoula and I look up on the horizon. And something catches my eye and my first thought is it’s a helicopter. And as I look at it, I say, that’s going too fast.

Marc Moss: Four storytellers share their true personal story on the theme.

Hold my beer,

Kali Neumeister: and we get an alert on our phones that says Severe storm warning. And [00:01:00] then the power goes out. I don’t know if you know where you were at on July 24th, 2024, but I was 38 weeks pregnant having contractions. Knowing what to do with my evening ’cause I’m not quite ready to go to the hospital.

Tom Attard: So I tell him, Tim, you are impossible to love. You are destroying yourself. Like, what is your problem? Do you hate yourself? Are you mad at God? Do you have some kind of bitterness or anger?

Marc Moss: Their stories were recorded. Live in person in front of a sold out crowd on January 13th, 2025 at the George and Jane Denison Theater in Missoula, Montana.

I do have to apologize for the quality of the recording. The gain was set too high on the recording device and there was a lot of his and background noise. I did what I could to remove it and a lot of that is gone. In the process of removing most of the hiss, all of the applause and ambient noise went away.

The hiss is still noticeable in places. [00:02:00] These stories are great though, and it has been too long that they’ve been sitting dusty on my hard drive. So let’s get to it. TE us, something acknowledges that we are gathered on the traditional ancestral and unseated territory of the Ponderer Salish and Kni peoples.

When te us something engages in land acknowledgements, we try to make them specific to the time of the year that the live event took place. Keeping that in mind, we know that traditionally storytelling is reserved for the winter months for many tribes. This was a practical choice given the fact that during the other seasons.

People were busy growing, gathering and hunting food when the stories on this episode were recorded. It was winter with long, dark evenings, the snow and wind blowing outside, and that is when telling stories is used to entertain and to teach the children. Another reason for winter storytelling is that many traditional stories [00:03:00] contain animal characters.

To be respectful. People wait until the winter when animals hibernate or become less active so they cannot hear themselves being talked about. We take this moment to honor the land and its native people and the stories that they share with us

tell us something. Stories sometimes have adult themes. Storytellers sometimes use adult language. Please take care of yourselves. In our first story, Jeremy Keen and his buddies embark on a cross country road trip with a big gulp, super glued to the roof of the car, right along with Jeremy to experience the hilarious reactions and unexpected encounters Everywhere they went, Jeremy calls his story Big Gulp.

Thanks for listening.

Jeremy Keene: So you, y’all know what a big gulp is, right? It’s that 32 inch. A cup that you get at seven 11 comes with a lid and a straw. Your favorite soft drink have [00:04:00] seven 11 around here. But you know what I’m talking about. All the, every convenience store has one of these things. Well, the best thing we ever did was alluded to the top of my brother’s car.

It was my friend Willie’s id. He found this tube of super glue in the glove box. And he was like a little kid at Christmas. He’s all looking around and smiling, like, we gotta glue something.

So Willie was actually my brother’s friend. We were all going to school together in Boulder, Colorado, and uh, we’d hang out. Willie was one of those people, you’re just kind of drawn to his energy and his mischief, like moths to a flame and. One of our favorite things to do is to go on road trips. My brother had this 1973 Volvo station wagon he got from our parents.

Bright yellow had [00:05:00] the four speed manual and way too many miles. We packed that thing full of sleeping bags and potato chips and beer, some extra oil. So the back end sagged, like it wouldn’t make it around the block. We but it, but it did. And we went places. Went to Newport Beach and went to Mexico to the Grand Canyon and uh, Willie would always go along.

It wasn’t like he didn’t have to ask him or anything, he’d just show up. He’d have his long underwear and his cutoff shorts, and his pillow in one hand is toothbrush in the other.

Going on road trips with your buddies is a little bit different than road trips with your parents. This is the same car we used to take family road trips in, but when you go with your buddies, you see life through lens and Willie’s lens was like a carnival.

So the last road trip we ever did with Willie was we went to Mardi Gras [00:06:00] and we were around the backyard waiting for my brother to get outta class or something like that. And, um, fixing things on the car, which was basically Willie scraping the bugs off of. The windshield that the spatula

Tom Attard: found

Jeremy Keene: made, the cards fixed.

So that’s when he found the super glue and then he spotted the big gulp in the console between the seats. And, uh, I wasn’t, didn’t think it was a good idea. Glue up to my brother’s car because, you know, it’s a piece of shit. It’s his car. He’s gonna be pissed that we ruined the paint. But Willie thought this was the funniest thing he’d ever thought of, and he was determined.

He glued that thing right above the passenger side door where he might set it and get. Then I remember there’s this picture of Willie standing on the running board with his arm on the door and he is got his mouth on the straw thing, stayed on for 1500 miles.[00:07:00]

I’d be surprised. The lengths that people go to to tell you, you’ve left your big gulp on top of the car. They would run after us as we were pulling outta the gas station. There was this whole group of church kids in a van and it was like a slalom course driving through ’em as they tried to save the big gulp

where people would catch up to us on the freeway going 70 miles an hour and honk and point and. And we just smile, like had no idea what they were talking about.

Willie uh, Willie liked to do this thing. He called Newton’s. He put the, he put the car in neutral and put both feet on the floor and let it start rolling down the hill. So, if you remember, um, Newton’s law of motion is force equals mass times acceleration, where force is measured in Newton’s. And this is a 1973 Volvo station [00:08:00] wagon and acceleration is gravity, 19.8 meters per second going down the hill.

We’d all hang on and we’d watch the speedometer. 75 80, 85, 95. People trying to save the goal would give up. Fall behind.

Willie also used to love to get kicked outta things. He would get us kicked out of everything at at Mardi Gras. We waited in the rain to get into this restaurant for like an hour and by the time we got in there all hungry and wet and they put us at this little table in the middle of the whole restaurant and I could tell it wasn’t gonna work.

Willie’s, he can’t sit still. He is running. And talking to everybody, slapping people on the back, buying drinks, yelling at the waitress, and the, the manager finally comes over, guy named Michael. He is got Michael on his name tag and [00:09:00] he’s real polite, says, Hey, you know, we just, we just need your friend to come sit down and, you know, stop cussing so much.

So we call Willie over and Hey, Willie, come. And, and he, he just says. More money and he disappears out the door into the rain to get find an ATM machine. We don’t see him again for like 30 minutes, and we do, Michael’s got him by the arm and he says, look, your friend just has to sit down and stop swearing.

And Willie immediately says, shit, Michael, your pants are too fucking tight. You should relax more often.

Now I didn’t eating anything all day and I ordered this one of these Cajun burgers with all the fixings and puppies on the side, and I can see back in the open kitchen, they’re just about to bring our food out. I looked at Willie and I looked at my brother, [00:10:00] my friend Jeff,

and then my brother stands up and says, well, if he goes, we all go.

I took one last look at my burger. I knew that was gonna be a good burger. And then when I followed my friends out the door side, Willy’s standing on the sidewalk looking, sorry. He’s got bare feet cut off shorts. He’s wearing Hawaiian shirt that’s only got two buttons left. He’s got Mardi Gras beads down to his waist.

His curly hair is all wet, hanging in his face. I just looked at him. I said, Willie, man, where the fuck are your shoes? And then Michael comes back and tosses, Willie’s shoes out onto the sidewalk, and he sits down on the curb and kind of Dejectedly puts them and looks at us and says They were wet, explained everything.[00:11:00]

Then he got up and looked at the people still waiting in line to get in and said, y’all don’t eat there. Food sucks. If we’re going down to the corner where there’s a hot dog stand, they’ve got hurricanes now. Hurricanes are these rum and fruit drinks that they serve at Mardi Gras and they come in a big plastic cup with lid and a straw.

We probably should have glued one of those to the car. I don’t know. When we lost the big Gulp, when Mardi Gras was over, we drove to Pensacola so we could save Florida. Sat on the beach all day and filmed a Kung Fu movie. Willie and my brother fighting the waves as they came into shore.

Uh, and then, you know, when the sun went down, we got in the car and started driving home, and it was probably somewhere in the middle of the night, three in the morning I stopped take a piss, and standing there in the headlights, I saw the big gulp, was all it was [00:12:00] left was this ring of super glue.

A couple years after that, Willie was gone. My brother called me and said he’d crashed his hang glider into the side of, I’d never known anybody that died before, at least nobody my age. And for a long time I just kept thinking we’d find him again. Like all those times that Willie would get lost. You could be standing there talking to Willie one minute, and the next minute he’d be gone.

And then you wouldn’t see him again for like three hours and we’d go looking for him. ’cause you know what? If something happened, but we could never find him, and then he’d just turn up later at the hotel sleeping in front of the door. I,

I think some people just burn so bright. They’re only here for a flash, a shooting star or a bolt of lightning. And afterwards, you’re never quite [00:13:00] sure what you saw. That’s how it was with Willie. I think we all know somebody like that. If he’d lived, he’d be in his fifties today, have a hard time imagining what he’d be like.

I like remembering when he was 20. It reminds me that not everyone gets to stay here for very long, and it reminds me, I’m glad I’m still here. I’m glad I get to stay a little longer, and I know Willie’s not lost. He knows where he is. We just can’t find him. Right. Thank you.

Marc Moss: Thanks, Jeremy. Jeremy Keene graduated from the University of Colorado in 1994 and landed a three month temp job in Missoula and never left.

He met his wife Heather, and they raised two talented daughters who are now flung far and wide in the world after a long career, engineering streets and highways, Jeremy became the city Public Works [00:14:00] director in 2019. When he is not sailing on Flathead Lake, you might find him riding mountain bikes in the hills around Missoula or playing beer league hockey at the Glacier Ice rink.

In our next story, Miko Correa is a former PACU nurse with a heightened awareness of horizons and the lingering echoes of trauma. Discover how a unique self-care practice involving Japanese rope art provides grounding and connection, setting the stage for an extraordinary encounter with the unknown. On a quiet Missoula Street, Miko calls her story eye on the sky.

Thanks for listening.

Meco Correia: From 1998 to 2000. I worked in a local hospital in the post anesthesia care unit, also known as the recovery room, and several times a month I had to carry a [00:15:00] pager and be on call. For those of you that are not from pre-cellphone error, that’s a way that somebody could get in touch with you.

And believe it or not, I was told I needed to explain that. Uh,

so, um, as the, my day off technically, but I was an on-call day off, and if my pager buzzed I well prior to my pager buzzing, I became very acutely aware of the horizon. Um, where the helicopters would be coming in and the helicopters usually meant that somebody had something really awful happen to them where they made a bad decision and now they were life fighting in.

So I became aware of watching [00:16:00] the horizon. Um. Not just when I was carrying a pager, but it became a heightened sense that I noticed things in the sky. And when I would feel, what I would feel is my heart would start racing, my stomach would clench, my hands would get sweaty, and it really helped me to tune into that sense of embodiment, like how things felt for me.

And this segues into, I am from those experiences of recognizing that people carry a lot, a lot of, a lot of traumas. In both my career I used the opportunity to, to connect and touch people, to help ground them. So that kind of segued into. I am a [00:17:00] whole creator in a community here in Missoula, built on helping people to ground an essential way to heal their collective traumas.

And so it’s a very supportive, very loving environment and it’s pretty powerful. So part of that is also finding different ways that help me to feel grounded and uh, one of those ways was. On the afternoon of October 13th, it was a Sunday in 2024, so three months ago, and I was spending an afternoon doing, um, a sari session.

ChAARI is the Japanese art of rope tying or rope bondage, and in a session, if I have ropes. Um, when they’re tied on me, they’re not tight, [00:18:00] but it allows a compression that releases an incredible amount of endorphins, so your natural opiates and that helps relieve and, uh, my autoimmune issues where I carry a lot of inflammatory side effect, but it also helps me really ground into a deep space of connection and.

Wholeness. So on that afternoon, after that, um, session, I was out running some errands and I had just, as I was out running the errands, I was listening to have Chorus Sing. It’s a, it’s a song, but it’s a mantra, a Hindu mantra called, oh. Potty m and all is [00:19:00] considered by the Hindus as the sound of the universe, universal sound, and in that sentence of M potty M, it’s a mantra to all in relief from suffering.

For each of us, it’s like a global prayer to help relieve our suffering. And it’s a beautiful, uh, choir that’s singing this. So my car is just reverberating with this gentle praise music, and I turn off of sixth Street onto a side street. And so I’m in the heart of Missoula and I look up on the horizon and something catches my eye and my first thought.

Is it’s a helicopter, which after all these years I’m still, I still have a bit of a [00:20:00] response to them, and as I look at it, I say, that’s going too fast. And it is literally in less than a blink of an eye, it traveled across that half of the valley and I stopped in the middle of the road. No, no cars. It’s a side street.

Not a lot of traffic. But I stop and I look at this, and in this microsecond observation, I say, what the hell? And there above me, it’s not a helicopter. It’s bigger than a helicopter, but smaller than an airplane. It’s kind of lowy. Metal. So it’s got its own radiance. There are no lights, no reflectors, no propellers, no [00:21:00] gen engines, no turbo boosters or thrusters.

There is no, uh, chem trail that cross the sky. It’s dusk. Um, I looked at my, my. A clock on my dashboard and it was 5:09 PM and I like super fast, took in these details that it’s silver. It had kind of a dry type shape front, and the body had what I would say would be wings, except they were tipped up and they were shaped like flattened, uh, triangles.

And on the one wing there was an arch of red with, or it was an arch, but had red symbols and it was like, like an arch. And then there was another arch below it that [00:22:00] had red symbols and they were just out of focus where I couldn’t make out what they were. But this spacecraft was just above the tree line.

And there was no seams, honest crap and no windows. And immediately I have this sense of incredible love, like grounded in love. I didn’t the sweaty hands, I didn’t like the clenched stomach. I didn’t have that visceral response. It was just the opposite. It was beautiful. And as I’m looking at this spacecrafts, I wanna say spaceship, I, I mean, I said all it’s, you know, I said in my head, no words in my head [00:23:00] because I had such an incredible sense of love.

If you are a UFO, you could totally take me. And by golly, that. That craft slid over to the left and turned slightly toward me, and I realized at that point we were communicating and I got a download that without words, there were no words. It was just this sense of knowing that my mission is to love myself abundantly.

Uh, and to let that spread out to others and to teach them about self-love and connection and let that ripple out through our planet. And I was recognizing that the sense and the feeling that I had from this experience was [00:24:00] equal to the sense that I had when I had the ropes. Very grounded, very loving, very reassuring.

And so I don’t know what you would do if you saw a UFO, but this is what I did. I said thank you, and then I drove away.

Marc Moss: Thanks, Miko Miko. Correa is a believer that a nourishing meal cooked and shared in love will advance soul healing on this planet. She’s a co-creator in a sensual healing touch community, a culinary artist, a watercolor dabbler, a gypsy gardener, and an RN that has touched many lives and bodies in this community for over 25 years coming up after the break.

Tom Attard: So I tell him, Tim, you are impossible to love. You are destroying yourself. Like, what is your problem? Do you hate yourself? Are you mad at [00:25:00] God? Do you have some kind of bitterness or anger?

Kali Neumeister: And we get an alert on our phones that says severe storm warning, and then the power goes out. I don’t know if you know where you were at on July 24th, 2024, but I was 38 weeks pregnant, having contractions, knowing what to do with my evening ’cause I’m not quite ready to go to the hospital.

Marc Moss: Stay with us. Remember that The next tell us something event is October 7th. The theme is Walk on the Wild Side. You can pitch your story by calling 4 0 6 2 0 3 4 6 8 3. You can learn about how to pitch your story and get tickets at, tell us something. DOT org. Thank you to our story sponsor who helped us pay our storytellers the Good Food Store for more than 50 years, the Good Food Store has been Missoula’s homegrown independent source for natural, organic, and locally sourced food.

Learn more@goodfoodstore.com. Thanks to our media sponsors, Missoula events.net Blue Dog Media and Missoula Broadcasting Company. [00:26:00] Learn more about them and listen online@missoulabroadcastingcompany.com. Thanks to our in kind sponsors Float Missoula. Learn more@floatmsla.com and Joyce of tile. Learn about Joyce and the work that she does@joyceoftile.com.

Alright, let’s get back to the stories. You are listening to the Tell Us Something podcast. I’m Mark Moss. Tom Attard shares his story about a raw and emotional Christmas Eve encounter at a Kalispell bar where a man’s heartbreak leads him to his little brother. A drywall delivering, street fighting functional alcoholic.

They’re intertwined lives, marked by a decade of distance and dangerous choices build to a powerful, desperate conversation about change. Crack a beer and listen along to Tom’s story that he calls a ride home from the rainbow. Thanks for listening.

Tom Attard: Where do you go when you get dumped on Christmas Eve?

You go to the [00:27:00] purveyors of peace, the home of the magical elixir of emotional amnesia. You, you go to the bar, but who are you gonna find at the bar on Christmas Eve? Well, I’ll tell ya. You are gonna find somebody who’s burnt every bridge, someone who’s taxed every relationship in their life, to the point of breaking, who has no one left, no relationships to speak of.

And so to the bar I went. So I’m walking up to Stockman’s Pool Hall in Kalispell, Montana. And I look across the parking lot and I see this big, burly guy’s got a bushy beard smoking a cigarette. He’s got a Santa hat on. I start getting closer. I look at that guy, looks familiar. [00:28:00] Lo and behold, it’s my little brother, Tim.

Oh, and what does Tim do when he sees me? I’ll tell ya. He grabs me. He picks me up. He puts me on his shoulder, parades me around the entire bar, introducing me to everyone who he knows by their first name. Every bartender, everyone, because my little brother lives at the bar. He is the most functional alcoholic I’ve ever met.

He can drink all night long. And get up at five 30 in the morning to deliver drywall. He would drive that boom truck. And Tim is the strongest person I’ve ever met. He can beat me arm wrestling on both sides while I’m using two hands. [00:29:00] His hands are so big around that I can’t even close mine around his when I go to shake his hand.

And he’s delivered drywall so much. One of his arms is longer than the other. This might not mean anything to you, but he can carry two sheets of five eights thick, 12 foot long sheet rock at once. He didn’t pull the tape. If you’ve picked up one sheet, you know that that’s impossible. So calling him my little brother was a misnomer.

He is taller than me. Six foot three, just super strong. Uh, but I didn’t have much of a relationship with my brother for about a decade. I only saw him twice a year at most Thanksgiving and Christmas. And that is because if you ever got a call from my little brother, it was from one of [00:30:00] two places. He either is gonna call you from jail.

Or from the hospital, and that’s because he was also the bravest person I’ve ever met. He never backed down from a fight. In fact, he’d fight four or five guys at once, which often lance you in the hospital. So at this moment in time, me and my little brother, our lives merged. We became two peas in a pod.

We were on the same life path. And, uh, yeah, I had a lot of my first experiences with my little brother. Um, I didn’t even know what last call was for until I met him the first time. He came down to Missoula to go out with me. We’d been out drinking and bar hopping and two in the morning at Charlie B’s. He would walk the [00:31:00] call, last call, he walks up to the bar.

He orders three beers and three shots, and he drank them in five minutes and he just was unstoppable and he was so fun. Um, yeah, we would just stay up all night playing guitar and hand drums until they called the cops on us. And then we would laugh at the cops ’cause we were like. It’s Friday night, Missoula.

What did you expect? Um, so I just couldn’t keep up with the guy. I gave it my best shot and for two years I tried to keep up, but after a couple years realized, man, I can’t keep doing this. And I tried to get my life together, you know, I tried to stop drinking, tried to stop doing. All the other stuff. Uh, but I was still [00:32:00] chasing this girl in Whitefish and, uh, she invited me to her house warming party on Valentine’s Day.

And I said, well, if, if I’m gonna come to your house, housewarming party on Valentine’s Day, I’m gonna break you up with your boyfriend. I’m just gonna ha kiss you in front of him. We’ll get in a fight. And then ta-da, I’ll be your boyfriend. So I, uh, went up to Whitefish with evil intentions and I get up there and I get to the party and everything’s going great, right?

According to plan. And I get a call about 10 or so that evening, pick up the phone, and who is it? It’s my little brother and he’s like, Hey, I called to tell you I love you. [00:33:00] And I’m like, Tim, uh, where are you man? He’s like, I’m at the Rainbow bar. And I was like, he’s obviously drunk out of his mind. So I was like, don’t go anywhere.

I’m gonna come and get you. And he started laughing. He says, you’re gonna drive all the way from Missoula, Montana to pick me up from the rainbow bar and give me a ride home. And I said, no. Nope. I actually happened to be in Whitefish, so I’m gonna come get ya. So I left the party and I got in my car and I was, I was pretty angry.

I was frustrated with this guy. And so as I’m driving, you know, I’m working up this whole lecture in my mind. I’m gonna give it to him, and I get to the [00:34:00] rainbow and I pick him up and we’re driving him back, driving him to his trailer, uh, to his fiance’s house. Now, Tim, uh, he. Was actually a recovering meth addict, and he’d been on and off meth.

Meth and oxycont back and forth. So to Tim, alcoholism was a recovery program. A lot of people recovering alcoholics will become chain smokers. Tim recovering meth addict, became an alcoholic. This was actually the best he’d ever been doing in his whole life. He had a house, he had a fiance. But we get back there and he’s his fiance and step kids are there and he walks into the trailer, he trips over this broken tv and she’s just like, Tom, you [00:35:00] gotta get him outta here.

I don’t want him around the kids. It’s like, okay, I understand. So I, we go out on the porch and I’m gonna let him have it. So I tell him, Jim. You are impossible to love. You are destroying yourself. Like, what is your problem? Do you hate yourself? Are you mad at God? Do you have some kind of bitterness or anger?

What is going on? And he looked at me and he said, you know. I made my peace with God. I don’t have a problem with anything. It’s the people. It too many people have hurt me too badly and I just can’t. I can’t stop. I can’t change, and [00:36:00] I wasn’t gonna let up. I was like, man, you can change. Anybody can change.

I’m trying to turn my life around. You can do it. Like, come with me. And he says, you know, I can’t change. I’ll never change. And the more he’d said that, just the more frustrated I got finally, just really in his face. And I’m like, that’s a, that’s not true. You can change. And he looks at me right in the face and he said, Tom, I’ll never change.

I’ve seen it. I’m gonna die. He said, I love you, goodbye. And I was even more, it’s impossible. You don’t know that you can change. You just gotta try. And [00:37:00] so I just, you know, he wasn’t listening. I said everything I had to say and I walked away and I got my car and I drove back to Missoula and I was deeply frustrated, but I was also, I was confused and I wanted to believe so badly that people change, that I could change, that Tim could change.

And four days later, six in the morning, my phone rang. And it is my mom. She was crying and I said, I know Tim’s dead. And she said, how? How do you know? He said, he told me. And that began [00:38:00] a decade of a journey of living my life. As a memorial for my little brother, Tim, to do all the things that he’ll never be able to do and to experience all the things he’ll never experience.

And I went, I got that phone call and I went to my fridge and I got my last beer, you know, went outside and I opened it up and poured it on the ground. And it’s not been an easy road, didn’t. Find sobriety right away. A week here, a month, six months, still going. But I realized along the way that

the strongest thing that I can do is to admit that people [00:39:00] hurt me and to feel my feelings. And the bravest thing that I can do is to choose to trust people and give them a chance. And so that’s what I do every day and I do it all for 10. Tim.

Marc Moss: Thanks, Tom. Tom Attard was born and raised in the great state of Montana and is a father, husband, general contractor, ultra runner, and lover of all things outdoors.

You can find him on most dark winter mornings, running a trail on any of the surrounding slopes in constant motion from birth. Tom rarely still skiing, rafting, fishing, hunting, running, and finding any excuse to get out there. Rounding out this episode of the Tell Us Something podcast, Khali Neum Meister invites you to forget what the movie’s taught you about pregnancy.

This candid account reveals the [00:40:00] surprising realities of pregnancy from a challenging gestational diabetes diagnosis. To an unexpected labor during a severe storm. Follow one woman’s unforgettable journey to motherhood, proving that real life births are far more dramatic and unpredictable than anything you can see on a screen.

KLI calls her story a womb awakening. Thanks for listening.

Kali Neumeister: Pregnancy is not what you see in the movies. Oftentimes in the movies, they portray pregnancy as. A woman who runs out of some important meeting because she feels nauseous, she barely makes it to the bathroom to throw up. Then she looks at her calendar and calculates and says, maybe you should take pregnancy test.

Then you flash forward and you see her for her first ultrasound appointment. She gets excited and you see the bump, you know, gradually develop through the film, and at the end it’s this really dramatic, you know, moment. Either there’s a big [00:41:00] contraction and they say, oh my goodness, the baby’s coming. We gotta

Meco Correia: go.

Kali Neumeister: Or the water breaks at the most inopportune time with friends or at a restaurant. My experience with pregnancy was a little bit different after I found out I was pregnant, I, I go on my chart and I contact my doctor and say, Hey, I had a pre positive pregnancy test. And they say, congratulations, we’ll see you in a month.

Oh, okay. Well, what do I do in the meantime? Oh yeah, sorry. Here’s a pamphlet you can read. Okay, so take my prenatals. Don’t drink alcohol, avoid substances. What about the diet stuff? Okay, cool. So then you go to your first doctor’s appointment. That is my child right there. Spoiler alert.

So then you go to your first appointment, you get your ultrasound, they say everything looks good, you know, we’ll keep following up every month. And then you hit about [00:42:00] your 28 weeks of pregnancy and you go in for your glucose test, which I have a few pregnant people in my life, so I did know about this, but not from the movies for the record.

So you go in for your glucose test and you know you’re pretty healthy going into your pregnancy. So it’s a surprise when you fail the first test, right? Then you go through your second test and you’re not quite sure what the results will be. You have to fast and drink this awful sugary liquid. And then, you know, they tell you, all right, well you have gestational diabetes, which is something that was surprising to me.

I had to be on a pretty rigid diet and they test you, test your blood sugar four times a day, make sure the baby’s not getting too big, you have to go in for appointments, and that was challenging. I’ve never had a lot of exposure to the medical world besides just my regular exams. So. That was hard. You know, I had to worry a lot about her getting too big, her, her having complications, but things were okay.

They stabilized. So we’re going through this process of being on [00:43:00] this new diet and things are going okay. Well then July 24th, 2024 hits, and I’m about a week and a half out from my due date and I’m starting to get contractions through the week. And once again, it’s not something where you just rush off to the hospital at this point.

You have to wait. How long are the contractions lasting and how long is it between each contraction? So my husband and I aren’t at home. We’re just relaxing watching Netflix after a day of work, and we get an alert on our phones that says severe storm warning, and then the power goes out. I don’t know if you know where you were at on July 24th, 2024, but I was 38 weeks pregnant having contractions.

I’m knowing what to do with my evening ’cause I’m not quite ready to go to the hospital. So what do we decide to do instead? We don’t have our entertainment for the evening, so we decide to, um, you know, look through our list of things we have to get done, you [00:44:00] know, set up crib, check, set, you know, clear out the nursery.

Almost check. We had a, um, desk we wanted to, um, assemble, you know, before the baby arrived. So what do we do? We drag this, um. You know this box out, we pull out this desk and we have pieces all over our kitchen island. I put on my headlamp and my husband has his, his headlamp on. We’re lighting candles and we just gotta get this desk done before the baby gets here.

Right? It’s the only logical thing.

And so I hand him a wrench and I hand him, you want a bag of the tools?

Just gimme a sec. Okay. I’m good. What’s the next step? Because there’s no owner’s manual for what do you do when there’s a major storm event? But we have a manual to assemble the desk, so let’s do that. The contraction slowed down and my husband says, you know, the storm is over now. Um, you know, I kinda [00:45:00] wanna go check things out, see how things fared, see how our town is doing.

We had some branches fly across our yard. I later heard that my, um, sister and brother-in-law, they had their cottonwood ancestral tree pull up and drop right in front of their house. You know, we heard about, you know, trees coming down on top of roofs and cars and totaling them, you know, a hundred mile per hour winds on mount jumbo.

But we got through that, right? I didn’t have the baby. So then the next morning we both go onto our separate work days, and about midday, I noticed that I had some symptoms that I wasn’t really sure about. So I go to the bathroom and I pull down my underwear and I look down and there’s a little bit of fluid.

So I take a picture, shoot it off to my sister.

She has three kids. She has her md, so I thought she’d be the best person to talk to about this. There’s no water gushing, so I’m probably okay. Right. So at the [00:46:00] end of the day she says, you know what? You probably should just call lab and delivery just to be sure. So I go ahead and do that, and I say, you know, here are my symptoms.

I started having contractions, but they weren’t that intense yet. You know, this is what occurred today. And they said, okay, well, we can kind of see how things go. I said, oh, I forgot to mention, at her last appointment on Tuesday, just a few days ago, she was breech. And for those of you who don’t know about what that means, her head was straight up and her butt was straight down.

And we knew this. We knew that we should go to the hospital if, if things progressed and they said, you don’t have to rush, but we would recommend getting a bag together as quickly as possible and heading in. So I called my mom on the phone. I said, I don’t think we’re having the baby today, but we’re heading to the hospital.

I just wanted to let you know. So we do that. We get our bags packed and we say, you know, we’ll probably just check in with them. Go get takeout, head home, relax. I didn’t have any two intense tractions that day. So then we get to the hospital and [00:47:00] they do their little swab, and at that point we’re just relaxing and hanging out.

And, um, I get a test alert that says positive for amniotic fluid. And my doctor walks in and she says, we’re having a baby today. She explained to us that during major, um, bariatric pressure changes, something can happen called the preterm rupture of the membranes, which means your labor doesn’t progress very far, but your water can break.

And when we had driven up, the parking lot was full of labor and delivery cars. I wasn’t the only one. So we go back and they begin the process of going through the C-section and they numb me from the, the chest down. And my husband and I are behind this, this tarp. And for those of you who have been pregnant or have had a c-section of what that feels like, and they start to pull and, and tug.

And I feel this very bizarre pulling and tugging sensation. And I feel kind of dumb in this moment, but I’m like, have you started? [00:48:00] And she says, oh, we are well on our way. And she pulls our daughter out and she roars like a lion. And our doctor says, that’s a really good sign. She’s born the sign of the Leo.

She was born the year of the dragon, and she was born Amids. The greatest storm that I have ever been witness to, and I think back to Marian Zimmer, Bradley’s sci-fi novel Storm Queen. There’s this character who when she would feel great emotions, the storm would rage around her lightning bolts and wind.

And I’m saying, I think you are our storm queen. You brought this storm and you brought, um, as you went into this world. And I looked down at her with her bright, um, blue eyes, her stormy blue eyes, and her dark hair at that time. [00:49:00] And to this day, as you heard earlier, she still hollers, she still roars like that.

Lion and dragons are a big part of it too. The the Chinese sign of dragons is also very special to us. And I look down at her eye and I say, this is your new home. Now. You’re safe. If we can survive this, we can survive anything. Thank you.

Marc Moss: Thanks Khali. KLI New Meister is 33 years old and was born and raised here in Missoula.

A counselor by Trade kli enjoys the quiet life of reading and storytelling and the adventures of skiing and scuba diving. Thanks for listening to the Tele Something podcast. Coming up on the next episode of the Tele Something podcast,

Mark Schoenfeld: I’ve been told I look like Matt Dame, and you’d have to imagine me skinnier.

With more hair on my head and less on my face. But I a [00:50:00] little bit.

Tess Sneeringer: So I turn back to Officer Becky who has a second question, which is, have you been drinking? And I say, no, ’cause I have not been drinking. And she walks closer than me and she smells me. And she goes, you’ve been drinking

Kelley Provost: my hand finds its way to my purse.

I do not let go of these hot five fingers that are my child’s. And, and I grab my phone and it does not ring a second time. My sister and my husband lock eyes with me. We know that this is the news that we’ve been waiting to hear since we left Missoula.

Jeff Ducklow: I looked to my left and a tower of ice, probably the size of two Wilma buildings stacked on top of each other, was slowly starting to lean away, and I just went, oh my God.

My heart was beating so fast. I couldn’t feel it. It was, I was just frozen in disbelief.

Marc Moss: Listen to the concluding stories from the Hold My Beard. Tell us something. Event from January, 2025. Subscribe to the podcast so you’ll be [00:51:00] sure to catch it on the next Tell us something podcast. Remember that. The next tell us something event is October 7th.

The theme is Walk on the Wild Side. You can pitch your story by calling 4 0 6 2 0 3 4 6 8 3. Learn more and get your tickets at Tell us something. Dot. Org.