As Good As It Gets

BRENDYN SCHNEIDER: So we get to Coney Island and I'm a little nervous, because it's drizzling, and we start going up... (makes ticking noises) And whoosh!

(laughter) Away we went.

KRISTIN BAKER: I'm having a contest to see how many unbroken Cheez-Its I can fit in my mouth at one time and wondering whether 2:00 a.m. is too late to open another bottle of wine.

ADAM WADE: We got the cake and it's all lit And we're loud and singing and everybody in the restaurant's watching us, and he doesn't know what to do.

♪ SCHNEIDER: My name is Brendyn Schneider, and I'm a storyteller.

Do you feel like it's second nature for you to tell stories?

I think it's second nature for everybody.

The interesting thing about storytelling as an art form is, it's within every single art form, but every single art form isn't within storytelling.

If you're doing sculpture, you have to be telling a story.

If you're writing, obviously you're telling a story.

If you're singing opera, if you're dancing, if a piece of art does not have a story in it, it's not art.

OKOKON: Mm-hmm.

SCHNEIDER: So I think it's just, it's connected to us, it's part of us being human.

That's a bold statement, and I think I agree with you.

SCHNEIDER: Thank you.

OKOKON: I've never thought about it that way, but I think I agree.

Mm-hmm.

You know?

What do you think that storytelling can do for us as a community?

It can bring us together and help people to listen to each other.

We're in an interesting time in the world's history right now.

I think it could be argued that one of the biggest issues that we're experiencing as a world community is that we're not listening to each other.

When someone is telling a story, they're listening and they're thinking to themselves, "Have I ever experienced that before?"

And "What would... what's my story?"

When you're going to to propose, everybody has advice.

Somebody at a party said to me, "All right, chief, here's what you do.

"You get tickets to a Sox game.

"You talk to the guy who runs the big board beforehand.

"As soon as you kneel down, I'm telling you, she's yours."

Somebody at my job said to me, "What you do is you take her out to a fancy restaurant "and you put the ring in a glass of champagne.

That's gonna be beautiful."

Well, I didn't want Kelly choking to death on the way to Mass General.

So the champagne thing, the big board thing, none of that was gonna work.

No, I wanted something different.

Something us.

And that's when I thought of the Cyclone.

(audience chuckling) The roller coaster, Coney Island, New York.

Coney Island is majestic.

1930s, carnival style.

You got the big Ferris wheel, the Wonder Wheel, you got the rides for the kids, you got the haunted house, you got the sound, the surf, the boardwalk, the wacky people.

The whole place is like spinning candy.

Coney Island's like the first time you played Chutes and Ladders.

Or the first time you heard really good swing.

And Kelly was the perfect match for that.

A miracle, a beauty.

We met each other at work.

Couldn't stay away from each other.

Kept our relationship secret from our coworkers for 11 months.

Our job had this, this crazy HR rule.

"It isn't that we frown upon relationships in the workplace, we just want to know about them."

Yeah, right.

But that made it more fun.

I mean we'd be in the elevator making out and break just as the doors would open up.

Or we'd see each other in the hallways and keep our composure.

"Hello, Kelly."

"Hi, jerk face."

And even after she left that organization and the cat was out of the bag, we were having so much fun.

One New Year's Eve, we went to a swing dance party and neither one of us knew how to dance.

We jumped in the ocean in the middle of February for charity.

We would crash open houses in Brookline as a power couple from Connecticut.

(laughter) "I'm Blaine, this is Monica, and we're both violently rich."

(laughter) Sometimes we would rent a car and drive to different states just to see which one of us can rack up the most air hockey wins.

I think she's still in the lead.

So we get to Coney Island, and I'm a little nervous because it's drizzling and I don't want them to close the Cyclone.

I mean, proposing in front of the house of freaks would send the wrong message.

(laughter) From where we parked-- we parked on the far end of the roller coaster, and you have to walk all the way around, and I'm looking at the roller coaster and I'm not seeing any of the cars moving, right.

So I'm starting to feel my heartbeat in my ears.

(mimics heart beating) I mean, what about my plan?

What if they really were closed?

Would we have to break in and steal the Cyclone?

But we didn't have to worry about that, because the gate was open and there it was-- the Cyclone.

The Cyclone is the greatest roller coaster on earth, bar none.

I mean, it's old.

It was built in 1927.

It's wooden and it's more than a little rickety.

You get to that first drop and I swear you, you-- you go in a little bit, you can actually see the track right beneath you.

And in that instance you think to yourself, "Well, this thing's been around longer than any roller coaster regulation I know about."

(chuckling) We get in the front car.

Got to be the front car for something like this.

Bar comes down, and guy comes over, "Tickets, please."

(makes clicking noise) "Tickets, please."

(makes clicking noise) And that's when I made the ultimate connection.

See, up until that point, I just wanted to do something cool.

But if you think about it, a roller coaster is marriage.

Right?

And it was this particular roller coaster, the Cyclone, because marriage is a cyclone.

Ups and downs, confusing, exhilarating, screaming kids, more kids, mania.

And wild laughter.

"Your ticket, please, for the ride of your life."

Literally.

So we hand over our tickets.

The car goes around the bend and we start going up.

(mimics clacking) And we've got planes and clouds beneath us.

I mean, the whole world falls down around us.

I wait till we're about halfway up when the wind is really whipping, right?

(mimics wind blowing) And I take out the ring.

Hang on.

(laughter) I haven't asked her yet.

I said, "Hey, it's been a long time coming.

What do you think?"

Now, some women might cover their mouths, some might cry.

Not Kelly, though.

No.

Kelly might be the only woman in history to snatch the ring from her boyfriend's hand, shove it onto her own finger, all while yelling, "Yes, yes, give me that before we drop it."

And whoosh!

(laughter) Away we went.

Now the really crazy thing is that when we were down on the boardwalk, Kelly tells me that like a week before she had a dream that I proposed on a roller coaster and we dropped the ring.

(laughter) So imagine what was going on in her mind.

But we didn't drop it, and we've been married five years.

Hunter S. Thompson used to say, "Buy the ticket.

Take the ride.

"Some rides are short, and others last your whole life."

And they're just as punchy.

It all depends on who has the ticket for the seat next to you.

Thank you very much.

(cheers and applause) ♪ BAKER: My name is Kristin Baker.

I live in Woburn, Massachusetts.

I work at Suffolk University.

I run our co-curricular arts program there, and I am the mother of three kids.

Can you tell me a bit more about your work at Suffolk University?

BAKER: I run the Suffolk Performing Arts, which is a co-curricular arts program for those students who maybe don't have the arts as a career goal or an academic goal but want to keep engaged with it or start becoming engaged with it while they're at college studying something else.

We're there for that.

How long have you been telling stories on stage in this way?

BAKER: Not very long.

Just over a year ago, I took a workshop and we had a recital at the end of it, and it's been pretty addicting.

(laughs) Telling stories is pretty addicting.

And what do you feel like you've been learning about yourself through storytelling?

I think that there is something very meaningful and revealing about taking your own experiences and looking at them through the lens of narrative.

It gives them some weight, and is super revealing, I think, of, of what those experiences mean to you and what you learned from them and how you grew from them and how they turned you into the person that you are.

So it's a little after 2:00 in the morning on a Tuesday in the early part of May, and I've just started my fourth consecutive episode of one of those really bleak British crime dramas.

You know, the ones that are all like windswept gray seascapes and murdered vicars and tortured detectives.

And I'm having a contest with myself to see how many unbroken Cheez-Its I can fit in my mouth at one time, and wondering whether 2:00 a.m. is too late to open another bottle of wine.

This was not the high point of the quarantine for me.

I have three kids, which is objectively too many kids.

I mean, they outnumber us.

When, uh, when my second and final kid turned out to be twins, my husband and I transitioned from like a double team man-to-man defense to an outnumbered zone, and, honestly, I don't think we've ever gotten the ball back since.

I also work.

I run a university arts center, a job that I care about a lot.

And when you're a working parent, you get used to wearing a lot of different hats.

But when my kids' schools closed and my university went to remote learning in, in March, I went from wearing those hats one at a time to having them all stacked up on my head simultaneously.

But we were lucky.

You know, we were safe, we had everything we needed, and, you know, it was a scary and stressful time.

But this was the time to sort of, like, you know, dig deep and rise to the occasion for my, for my students, for my staff, for my, for my family.

And I'm a planner, so I planned.

I read a bunch of homeschool blogs and I spent some time on Pinterest.

I reorganized my dining room to be a co-working and homeschool space.

I knew it was going to be important to establish a routine.

So I knew we'd, we'd start every day with a family walk at 7:00 and get some fresh air.

If it was raining, maybe we do a yoga video.

I'd make morning baskets for the kids to keep them engaged in learning while I had my morning meetings.

Mid-morning, maybe we'd do a puzzle or play an educational game.

After lunch, we'd have some quiet reading time so I could catch up on emails and whatnot.

And then, in the afternoon, we would do a science or an art project.

I downloaded curricula.

I printed out worksheets.

I decorated folders.

I bought one of those big whiteboard easels to keep us all organized.

You know, I had this.

We were going to come out of this pandemic stronger.

The first thing to go was the morning exercise.

We managed maybe a handful of, like, chilly grumpy forced marches.

The first rainy day, I did yoga while my kids sat on the couch like those two old Muppets in the box, just like heckling and cracking each other up.

The work baskets got less demanding.

This wasn't real school, I wasn't their real teacher, they knew it was all made-up busywork and if they didn't do it, like, what was I going to do, call their parents?

I held out screen time like this golden laurel that they got to earn every day.

And they did the bare minimum to get it, and I let them, because if they were zoning out in front of a screen, I could zone out in front of a screen.

My science experiments went from growing our own sugar crystals and making a weather barometer to naming the fish on my screen saver.

And not even like naming the types of fish.

We were giving individual fish names, and we weren't even doing that well.

We had three Jeffs.

I was so disappointed in myself and in, in us, you know?

It felt like parenting during quarantine was the sink-or-swim moment and I was definitely sinking.

I was anxious, I was scattered, and I wasn't wearing any of my hats particularly well.

I started staying up later and later, So quiet after everybody went to bed and I just scrolled through my social media, which was just alternating posts about how the world was falling apart and how everybody was handling it better than I was.

And then sitting there with a dozen Cheez-Its in my mouth, I decided it was probably time to carve out some more productive, healthy me-time projects.

Then really late one night, after a couple of glasses of wine and a particularly smug blog post I read about how important it was to have your kids make their beds every day, and feeling ashamed of the fact that no one in my family had even gotten out of their pajamas that day, I kind of cracked, and I ended up ordering 1,000 long, thin balloons.

I honestly couldn't tell you how I got to this decision.

I'm not a naturally crafty person, but they arrived, and I spent a little while watching YouTube tutorials on how to make balloon animals.

The key to making a successful balloon dog, I learned, was proportions, right.

The actual sequence of, of bends and twists aren't actually that complicated, but even in the right shape and sequence, if they're not in the right proportion, it doesn't look like a dog, it doesn't look like anything.

Also important is how much air you have in the balloon.

Like you need enough space for the pinches and the, and the twists, but you also need to make sure you have enough space to fill out all the limbs.

The whole thing, it turns out, is about balance, and I was not very good at it.

But unlike my yoga, this one I stuck with.

It was something about the sort of the short-term investment, the thinking about how much air, different parts of it required, the, the ability to try it and fail at it and put it down and move on felt manageable.

And, as silly as it sounds, when I was making a balloon dog, like, that's what I was doing.

I wasn't able to make a balloon dog and worry about my kids' atrophying social and academic skills.

I wasn't able to make a balloon animal and miss my parents and my sister and wonder if there was ever going to be a world where I got to hug them again.

Or worry about my friends who lost their jobs, or, or watch the world that I knew slowly crumble.

I was just making a balloon dog.

And I got better.

Not great, but better.

Sometimes I would look up and I would find myself surrounded by a little multicolored army of misshapen balloon animals kind of looking back at me.

So, I still haven't quite got the balance of, of wearing all these hats at the same time, but when things start to get a little overwhelming and a little tight, I, um, I take a breath, and I bend a balloon into a lumpy, inconsistent, and misshapen dog.

And then I name it, mostly Jeff, and I let it go.

♪ ADAM WADE: I'm Adam Wade.

I've been doing storytelling now for about 15 years in the New York area a couple times a week.

Yeah, I love it.

I mean it's, it's...

I found, what I... what I really, something that I really like to do.

So you've been storytelling for 15-ish years, something like that.

How would you describe your style as a storyteller?

My style definitely evolved over the years.

I think it was very one-dimensional, almost like a caricature when I started.

But I realized with doing it and talking to audiences, the more I was myself, the more they were connected.

If I tried too hard, they knew.

(Okokon chuckles) You know, if I try to be too funny, or too heartfelt, or too... but if I was just myself, uh... they gave me what I needed back.

And I understand that you teach storytelling, is that right?

WADE: Yes.

So what's the number one tip that you would give to a student about how to do storytelling?

When you get up on stage, you take a, take a deep breath and smile.

Mm-hmm.

With storytelling audiences, unlike audiences like stand-up audiences and stuff like that, they want you to succeed.

I still get nervous, I'm still tense, but when I get up there, take a deep breath, I look at everybody and they smile, and I...

I truly feel like I'm home.

OKOKON: Yeah.

WADE: I spent the first 22 years of my life in New Hampshire and then I decided to move to New York City, the big city, to get into like TV or some type of entertainment.

And I didn't know anybody there.

So when I was on the Greyhound bus going there, I was just scared.

I had seen the movies Death Wish and The French Connection.

And I was just afraid I wasn't gonna meet anybody that was nice.

But fortunately, within two weeks I got a job at Virgil's Barbecue in Times Square, and that fear went away.

There was just so many nice people there, they adopted me, they took care of me.

And nobody took care of me more than Robert.

Robert was a senior waiter there, in his, like, late 40s.

He'd moved in his early 20s like me, to New York, only from Arizona, specifically to be a Broadway star.

And it started pretty good for him.

He got some small roles on and off Broadway, but then after a while, the roles dried up, and he started to gain weight, and all these years later, the closest he could get to Broadway was working at a barbecue place in Times Square.

But he was always there for me, this guy.

I was a really bad waiter, like terrible.

If you've ever had a bad waiter, multiply that by like a million, and that was me.

And so I have the worst shifts, and when you have the worst shifts, and you need to do something during that time, I had a very difficult time trying to get other waiters to take those shifts, because you're not making any money.

Robert would always take the shifts for me.

He also had a collection from 1984 on of VHSes of the Tony Awards.

And he said, "If you ever want to borrow one, let me know," and he would always say that.

He's like, "I got them all, I got them all."

(laughter) About a month in of working, I was a runner and I was carrying four Pig Out Platters, which is a signature dish at Virgil's.

It's all the meat, it's like everything, and it's very heavy.

I'm not a big guy and I dropped it.

Four Pig Out Platters splattered all over the place.

And for a rookie, that was a fireable offense.

Somehow, like a vapor, Robert showed up and grabbed the tray just as the manager came by, and he took the... he took a bullet for me, and where I would have got fired, he just got tapped on the wrist.

He was always doing nice things for me.

And my hope was that one time I'd be able to do something nice for him.

So about a year in, I'm working with him, fortunately section by section, one night.

And, uh, this guy comes in, and he's gotta be in his early 50s, he's got this like silver fox, beautiful hair, his face, handsome guy.

And he's wearing like, a T-shirt and jeans, but they're like $1,000 each.

I mean he looks good, good-looking guy, and he's with-- which was like, a little shocking-- was with a young woman, probably in her early 20s, not his daughter.

They were holding hands and, uh, she had peroxide blonde hair and she had a dress that was a little too-- about two to three sizes too small.

And they went and they sat in my section.

And he was facing the wall, and she was facing me.

And I kind of like that, because when a pretty girl's in your section, you're waiting tables, if you can look over and you see her, kind of helps the night go.

So I'm just kind of, like, in a little daze, and Robert comes over and he's like, "Oh my God, oh my, oh my, oh my."

And I'm like, "What?"

And I've never seen him like that, And I'm like, "What's going on?"

He goes-- and he points, I go, "I know, she's beautiful."

He goes, "No, no, who she's with, that's the Silver Fox."

And I'm like, "Who's that?"

And he goes, "This is this famous Broadway actor.

"And, you know, back in the day when I started, "I was in a couple of plays with him and his wife."

And I go, "His wife?"

And I go, "Oh, yeah."

He goes, "I even ate dinner with them."

I'm like, "Yeah, yeah.

Are they still married?"

And he's like, "Oh, yeah, yeah."

I go, "Well, he's like, caressing that woman right now."

He goes, "Oh, no, no, no."

And he was just all shaking, and I'm like, "You know, "I'm about to go take their drink order, Robert.

"I'm really busy here, why don't you take the drink order?"

And he's like, "Oh, I can't do that, I can't."

I go, "Go over there.

Go over there, take the drink."

And goes, "Okay, great."

So he runs over there to get the drink order, and I'm following him and I want to hear what's going on, and goes over and he goes, "Hello, hello, sir, "I don't know if you remember me, I'm Robert.

"Um, you know, we, we acted in these plays.

How's your wife?"

(laughter) This man was not happy, and he looks at him, he goes, "Get out of my face, you fat, pathetic loser."

(audience reacts) And Robert, he's my rock.

He just, like, breaks, and he starts crying, and he runs to the bathroom and I run after him.

And he shuts the stall door and he's crying.

And now I'm pissed off.

And I run back over to the table and I'm like, "Excuse me, is there a problem here?"

And he looks over, he goes, "Have you guys ever seen a celebrity before or what?

"Just get us our drinks, "get us our food, and get out of here.

"Do you understand?

Leave us alone.

Do you understand?"

And he points and yells at me.

I don't like when people point and yell at me, I don't know about you.

(light laughter) So I take the order and I run downstairs to the first floor and I get a biscuit, because I... there's a lot of times when I'd wait tables, I, I was on the verge of tears, so I knew what to do.

So I grabbed the biscuit and some maple butter and I made a little sandwich out of it.

If you have heart problems, don't do this.

(laughter) But for me, I would do this multiple times a night, and I was eating it and... it started to calm me down.

And I look over and I see the dessert guy, Elvis.

And Elvis, he was like the Michelangelo of Broadway dessert guys.

He would sprinkle stuff and just to watch him, it was, like, amazing.

So I'm doing that, and all of a sudden, I'm just starting to cool down.

And then I noticed the loudness of all the tourists there.

All the tourists are there and it's getting louder and louder, getting their drinks.

And I think of an idea.

And I go over to Elvis and I'm like, "Get me a birthday cake on the fly and light all the candles for me.

Thank you, Elvis."

And then I go over to the tourists and I'm like, "Excuse me.

Does anybody know who this Silver Fox guy is?"

And they all go crazy.

And I'm like, "Okay, calm down, calm down.

"I got some good news.

He's here tonight."

And they go crazy again.

"Calm down.

"Listen, I gotta tell you, "he came in about a half hour ago.

"And he's got a big ego, and when he walked in, nobody recognized him."

(laughter) "And of all days for nobody to recognize this poor guy, "it's his birthday.

"So I got a birthday cake, "and I want to make him feel better, "I'm gonna go up there, any of you want to join me and sing him happy birthday?"

And they go crazy.

And then there's this kind of sad guy with a fantastic jacket on and a, and a camera, and he says, "Excuse me, you mind if I take a photo?"

And I put my hand on his shoulder and I go, "You take as many photos as you want."

(laughter) So we go up, and we've got the cake, and it's all lit and we're loud and singing and everybody in the restaurant's watching us.

And all of a sudden, the Silver Fox, as we approach him, turns, and like a doe in the headlights sees us.

And the people swarm him, and he doesn't know what to do.

And they're taking photos and he's trying to give me dirty looks and then he's taking photos.

So this goes on for about 15 minutes.

Then I go to print out the check, I charge him for the cake.

(laughter) 'Cause he's a jerk.

And I go to bring him over the check, and... Robert comes out of the bathroom, finally.

His eyes are all bloodshot from crying, and he assesses everything that's been going on and he figures it out.

And he looks at me and he gives me a little smirk.

And then he gives me a big smile.

And for the first time, I was able to do something nice for my friend.

Thank you.

(cheers and applause) OKOKON: Watch Stories from the Stage anytime, anywhere.

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