660: Hoaxing Yourself

parents.

Here is all the evidence and you need. The TV is bad for kids, especially public TV. When Sean was 14, he loved watching those British TV shows. They're always running on PBS, Masterpiece Theater, Doctor Who. And then there was this show that I would stay up really late and watch and tape and watch over and over again the tapes called Dempsey and Make Peace, which was about an American detective who went to London because he had been like set up at home and he was teamed up with a woman

who was this aristocrat named Lady Harriet Makepiece. And I was really on her side. I thought, you know, she's got it going on. You looked down on the America. Oh, yeah. What Chan liked about Lady Harriet Makepiece and all the other Brits on TV was their aloofness. They seemed above it all. They looked down on Americans. What Chan did also.

convinced there must be something wrong with the nation that produced jocks and bullies who were asked him in school. And sometimes, joking around with his friends, he would talk with the British accent. And then it was just something that spiraled out of control. I know that eventually I was just using an English accent literally from waking to sleeping morning, noon, and night.

Sean spoke with the British accent from the time he was 14 until he was 16. At some point his mom thought, you know, maybe I need to do something about this and took him to see a psychiatrist. He was just really, he must, I don't know, you know, the different schools of psychology, but he was really very confrontive. And he was like, well, you know, you've got to stop doing this, he said, because you're not British.

And my mom just sort of sat over next to me, and she sort of went, yeah, to agree with him and sort of help him in showing me this. Sean was furious. He had an impostor lecture to the guy on how, in fact, he was British. And the only problem with that was that, A, he knew very well that he was not, and B, his mom was sitting right there. She was sure to contradict him. He didn't know what to do.

The situation seemed impossible, because that's what I was thinking. Like, there has to be a way that I can be British still. There must be a way that this is true somehow. Yeah, exactly. When they enter radio program, stories of people who tell a lie, and they get to the point where they believe the lie more than anybody else does. It feels like it must be true. It happens all the time.

And gotta say, we are not even gonna get into what happens with political figures in this show, kidding themselves about the facts of things. Today we have stories of civilians, people like you and me, basically pulling hoaxes on ourselves. From WBZ Chicago to this American life, I'm Ira Glass. Like one of our program today, the sun never sets on the Moosewood restaurant, in which two young men, both from small towns, try on new identities, false identities, and what they have to do to keep the lies going.

Act 2, Conning the Con Men. Nancy Updike reports on a federal sting operation and how it caught con men by setting up a con of its own. Act 3, Oedipus Hex. A little kid tries to get rid of his own father, but they very, very unlikely plan. Stay with us.

This is the story of two young people who, for a period in their lives, in their search to figure out who they were, pretended to be people who they were not. We're going to hear from Sean Cole and from Joel Level. We're going to start with Sean. Today's show is a rerun. This was quoted years ago. These days, Sean is a producer here at our show. Sean grew up in a small town in Massachusetts, a town that was approximately 3,350 miles from London.

It was second nature. It was first nature. To this day, I have trouble saying, oh, I faked an accent for two years. I mean, I had an accent for two years. I like... Shawn, could I just ask you to take a deep breath and describe for me what you had for lunch today, or perhaps for breakfast this morning, in as close to the accent that you can invest in. As close as I can. Yeah. Okay, I'm going to take a sip of water here.

Well, I had a salad. I had it at the Boston House of Pancakes. Or a pizza, rather. What was the beverage? It was a snapple. A just lemon flavoured. I don't really like the peach.

Joe Lovell's story began when he left the working-class town where he grew up in upstate New York. His parents owned a liquor store in a small town. He was the first member of his family to go to college, and it was an especially big deal because he got into an Ivy League school. Cornell.

It was one of those first days of college, you know, when you spend a lot of time. Everybody kind of moves and hoards, and you spend a lot of time in each other's dorm rooms. And there were about, oh, I don't know, 10 or 11 of us in this one guy's room. And we were just like sitting around eating pizza and talking, and people were talking about what they're...

where they were from and what their parents did and stuff like that. And there was one guy whose dad was a doctor for the Knicks. There was another guy whose father was an elected representative from New York State. And then this other guy whose father was on the World Court, literally was a member of the World Court. And so it suddenly seemed like this incredibly impressive group to me. And they seemed like just sort of worldly in ways that

you know, there was just beyond my wildest imagination and, you know, worldly beyond, you know, what I am now, frankly. And I remember sort of sitting there at the time thinking, oh my God, I'm so out of my league here. And then completely unplanned, I suddenly said, you know, as a slice of pizza was passed to me, this sort of pizza would sausage on top of it. I said, you know, I can't take that because my parents are vegetarians.

And everybody in the room kind of sort of turned and looked at me because it wasn't even as if I said, well, I'm a vegetarian. But I said, my parents are vegetarians. And there's a sort of puzzled look on everybody in the room. And I said, well, and I am too. I've never eaten meat.

And I'm not entitled, well, I mean, I have some ideas now about why I said that. But at the time, I had no idea what I was saying. It was like, suddenly I'd become possessed. And I had to think of something to say about myself that seemed interesting. And in vegetarianism was the thing that I chose.

Now, did you tell people that you were actually from England? No. No. Never that I was from Britain, but in a way that I was British. You know, there was a real distinction there for me. Like, you know, I'd taken it on. Like, I was culturally British now. Well, I think what it was is, um...

I mean, I think I did some sort of calculus that took like a nanosecond in my head. And I thought, you know, I can't actually lie about what my parents do. But I think the connections that I was making were this. It's somehow like, because I was from this town in the sticks, if my folks were vegetarians, then the whole history that that suggested was that they were sort of these kind of leftist academic radicals who had sort of dropped out of society and gone back to the land and I was living in this.

bump in town and upstate New York. And you know, my folks were living some sort of life that was driven by their political philosophy rather than, you know, I was just a guy who grew up in upstate New York. You know, I did the old kid thing of like wishing that my real British parents would come and tell me I was adopted and take me back to London. So I'm sitting there in the room and all these guys are looking at me and they're like, dude, you know, then what do you eat?

And suddenly I realized, I realized in that moment how little I knew about vegetarianism. And I tried to be a real sort of vague about it. We eat salads and lentils, I remember sort of saying lentils a lot. And there was a gap certainly in my education, because I would be using words

that Americans just don't use. Instead of saying drugstore, I would say chemist. I would try my best to remember to say bonnet instead of hood or boot instead of trunk, but I often couldn't. On the meal plan, I ended up eating a lot of big piles of iceberg lettuce and chickpeas.

And during that time, would you find yourself sneaking to go to get meat somewhere? Yeah, definitely. At first, I would go really far from campus in order to have a BLT. There was this diner downtown in Ithaca, and it felt incredibly illicit. I'd be sitting there and I'd have some reading material or something with me, and I'd be the lonely guy in my booth.

And I would order the BLT and I would sort of watch it kind of coming from across the room, you know, with its toothpick in the top of it. And a side of French fries with this meat gravy on top. And it would just, you know, when it landed on the table, it would just seem like this incredibly, you know, sort of wonderful moment, you know, when you're doing something just totally unlike what anybody would expect of you.

I was nobody. I was living in a extremely small kind of rural town in the middle of nowhere. It was, I guess, in a way, like this was my way of traveling, you know, in a way, and of being somebody.

and sort of achieving an identity, which I guess I didn't feel like I had, like I didn't feel like I'm just sort of really realizing this now. But I guess I didn't feel as though I had anything that made me up.

I mean, what I realized fairly quickly is that if this is going to be believable, I actually have to, well, I have to believe in it. But I also began to not only believe, but really sort of take on as my persona, all of the stuff that I imagine was associated with vegetarianism. So like what?

Well, you know, certain political convictions and ways of dress. I wore ripped jeans and I wore combat boots, but I also wore like a kind of stage jacket that you would see, you know, in a community theater production of Hamlet. Yeah, you know, I bought sandals.

I very specifically remember going down to this thrift store in downtown Ithaca and buying a pair of fatigue shorts, which just seemed like, you know, I might as well have been Shaco Vero at that point. This morning, I mean, as far as I was concerned, I was, yeah, I was a dangerous leftist.

Did you at any point during this, find yourself in the following argument where you would say, I've never had a hamburger and somebody would insist, oh, you must have had meat at some point. And then you had to argue your side? Yeah, definitely. It wasn't pretty. And of course, I had grown up, just to put this in context for a second, if you don't mind. I mean, not only had I had hundreds of hamburgers,

and gone to the McDonald's drive through hundreds of times. But the counterpoint situation that I always think about when I remember this time is that when I was a senior in high school, my family for sort of time-saving reasons decided that

A great thing to do would be to go to Arby's roast beef. I don't know if you have those on Chicago. I think they're countrywide. So my dad and I would go to Arby's on say like a Thursday afternoon or something or after I got out of school. And we would go in there and we would buy 48 Arby's roast beef sandwiches. And they would put him in this cardboard box. And we would bring home. We would bring home this giant box full of those

tin foil covered Arby's recipe sandwiches, and we would stuff them in our freezer. We would freeze the Arby's recipe sandwiches, and then we would have them there. Buns and all? Buns and all, yeah. And so we would have them there as ready-made snacks whenever we went well. And that's the kind of mediating that my family was engaged.

The other thing was that I had these run-ins with doubting my British identity. Oh, really? Yeah, as though it were slipping away. And I would really go nuts at that point. And there was one time it would happen at home. I was at home. And I was like, oh my god, I have to do something. I have to affirm my devotion. So I think I opened up the window.

I psyched myself to do it, I was like, oh man, if I don't do this, it won't come back and I open up the window and then I screamed, this is the middle of the night, or 10 at night, I screamed. I love England. And of course in a British accent, outside the window. And then you felt better, you felt like you had reassured yourself. I felt like I had done something at least. For England. Yeah, I had fortified my Britishness.

I would find myself in these conversations where people were saying, you know, you've never had a McDonald's hamburger. What kind of American 18 year old American has never had a hamburger for McDonald's? Quite a legitimate question I would add. Absolutely. Absolutely. And I would say, yeah, you know, I've just never had one. They scare me and I would sort of like.

talk about the ways, you know, and I would make up these stories about how I'd come close a couple of times, how my friend, a friend of mine at high school had bought me a big Mac and there I was sitting on the front seat of his car and I almost ate it and couldn't bring myself to do it. And so yeah, there was all the sort of drama that I am, that I lied about.

My mom and dad came down to visit for parents' weekend. And they were really proud that I was going there and really excited to come down. And they came down to visit. And really proud because you were the first generation to go to college. You moved into this Ivy League school. It was a big, big deal. Right, exactly. Exactly. And so they drove down from Camillus, which is about between an hour and an hour and an hour and a half. They came down. And in that week leading up to parents' weekend,

Everybody's talking about their parents coming and everybody's making reservations at restaurants, you know, where to eat on Saturday night and everybody's sort of planning on taking their parents to the football game on, you know, Saturday during the day. And it suddenly occurred to me, this real sort of panic set in that, you know, that my parents would come down and we would go to a football game and my dad would buy a hot dog. And, you know, when somebody across the field would see Mr. Lovell eating a hot dog, you know, and then, of course, the cat would be out of the bag.

And so I thought, you know, I've got to make a reservation at a restaurant at someplace either A, where nobody else's parents will be, or at a vegetarian restaurant. And so what I did was,

was make a reservation at the Moosewood restaurant, which is in Ithaca. You know, there's the Moosewood cookbooks that are out and vegetarian cookbooks. Exactly, yeah. And it's this nice little vegetarian restaurant in Ithaca in a slightly famous place. But then we got there and

I remember sitting down at the table in the moosewood. And the bowls are these kind of carved wooden bowls. And everything about it feels like, well, like a vegetarian restaurant. And just a vegetarian restaurant, but kind of a cartoon of a vegetarian restaurant. Exactly. And I was looking at my parents across the table, and they were sort of dressed up, and they were excited to be coming down.

And I could tell my dad was sitting there and sort of perusing the menu and thinking, well, maybe this lentil salad will be good, or whatever. And I could tell he was sitting there thinking, geez, I just drove an hour and a half. All I want is steak and a baked potato and a beer. And there I was bringing them here. But they were so game about it. They were sort of willing to go along with it, because for some reason they thought I really wanted to bring them there.

And I just thought, jeez, these people might put my parents have really given up a lot for me to come there. I mean, financially, they were really stretching themselves. And we were taking out all sorts of loans. All those things that people do in order to go to college. And they never complained once about doing it. And they just wanted to come down and see me there and feel proud that I was there. And I was hiding them out in this vegetarian restaurant.

and I felt so bad about it afterwards. And they never once complained. They went home and I imagine, I sort of imagine them stopping at a hardy's just outside of it the good. I'm getting up for her as soon as they say goodbye. But after that, I just thought, geez, I've got to find some way to come clean about this.

I mean, is it okay if your child decides to express himself in an alternate personality for a period of two years? I think there's... That's funny. I never thought I would say this, but I think there's nothing wrong with that. I never thought I would say it because I wish that I hadn't done it now. But...

Maybe I learned something from doing it. I think that that is par for the course. Now I think that's part of growing up. I think it was probably necessary for me at that time in my life. Because it gave you more confidence. Yeah. And there was some bridge that this allowed me to cross.

Joe Lovell and John Cole. Joe Lovell is the executive editor of a podcast company called Pineapple Street Media and an actual vegetarian these days. Sean Cole works in public radio. Indeed he does. He's one of the producers of our program. That piece of me

On your plate Buying was murder in his brain Think about your act makes me feel under The weather that you wouldn't care if we came out In feathers that you wouldn't care if we came out in feathers You're such a psycho

At two, conning the con men. The American legal system, for the most part, does not uphold the principle of eye for an eye. If you steal somebody's car, the judge does not steal your car in return. If they catch your selling weed, they do not sell weed to you as your punishment. But if you're in the business of running scams, authorities catch you by running a scam on you. This is the story of a con man who made millions by fooling people over the phone until he was the one who got fooled. And it's the update report.

The guy's name is David Diamond. That's his actual name. He was one of the most successful salesmen in one of the longest running telemarketing scams in Los Angeles history. David Diamond was a salesman at a boiler room.

This is Dale Sakovich. He's been a Federal Trade Commission investigator for 29 years. He's the one who busted Diamond. He was living in a very expensive home up in the hills in Woodland Hills. He drove a custom Porsche Carrera that he had shipped over here by airplane from Germany, from the factory. They lived very high on the hog.

David Diamond was just one of a whole bunch of guys making money hand over fist in an operation in Southern California that was basically running the same scam over and over under different names for seven years. It was an investment scheme. Give us your money and we'll put it into this great 900 number business or this online shopping network or this hot new internet service provider. Needless to say, no one ever made a dime except the people running the scam who cleared $40 million.

Since Diamond was one of the operation's top salesman, he made $2 million in commissions in just four years on the job. He got 30% of whatever he talked a person into investing. That means he personally conned people out of more than $6 million.

The FTC caught Diamond and the others in the operation, essentially by conning the con men. They had volunteers pose as dupes and record their phone calls. Because the FTC brought a case against the operation Diamond worked in, some of those recordings are now part of the public record. I got Dale Sokovich to listen to the tapes with me and talk about David Diamond and the FBI volunteer who caught him.

The woman on the tape, I can't tell you her real name, but she uses the alias of Marge. She assumed the identity of a person who is named Marge. Marge was a real person who we in law enforcement and who people in the telemarketing business refer to as a mooch.

Amouche is someone who will essentially buy anything from anybody who calls her on the telephone. In fact, she did over a number of years. She spent hundreds of thousands of dollars. The real march. The real march spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on bogus prize promotions, investments, gold coins, you name it. So the FBI went to march.

and said, we really think that we need to take your telephone number away from you because it's being used to ruin your life. So once Marge agreed to that, her telephone number was installed in the home of an FBI volunteer.

and that volunteer every time that phone line rang the march line that volunteer would pick up that telephone and answer it and pose as march yes and david i don't know what i'm okay i don't want to hear yeah i think of a video and uh... package yes i have it okay the video is with regard to mark eric and

Mark Erickson is the person who is heading up the program, and he is very successful in taking upstart companies and making them successful. You've probably heard of hard copy, you know, original producer of hard copy. I've heard of it, yeah. Okay. You're smiling as you listen to this. What are you smiling about?

Well, I'm smiling because it's been a while since I've heard Marge, and she sounds so old and so fragile and such an easy mark when in fact, you know, she's this sharp FBI informant. She doesn't look as old as she sounds, trust me. So that's one aspect of it. The other aspect is this whole Mark Erickson fact. Yeah, is he a real person? Mark Erickson is a real person. He was named in our lawsuit.

And was he an original producer of Hard Copy? No. He was a segment producer and on the air reporter for Hard Copy for a brief period of time.

And I mean, is this sort of typical of the cons and the tapes that you've heard that they'll try to associate what they're selling with a legitimate business or organization or television show, something that people have heard of? Exactly. They want to make this something people can relate to. Here's the thing, you have to invest everything you've got or do nothing at all.

And I'll say that again, you should invest everything you have. You should transfer all of your investments into this program or do nothing. It doesn't make sense to do just a little bit. You should think about doing a million dollars in this program. I don't know. That's a lot of money. You need to liquidate every nickel you've got. You either want to be in the situation, you either want to be in the situation wholeheartedly,

and upgrade your investments or you don't. My suggestion is to do the whole thing. Well, I would never liquidate everything I have. My question is why not? Because there's always gimbals in anything like this. Anything like what? Well, any investment like this. Like this? What does that mean? Well, anything you invest in, there's always a gamble.

Now I want to ask you...

You told me once that you thought he sounded nervous on this tape, and in this part where she's saying, you know, an investment like this, and he's sort of, you know, questioning her, well, what do you mean like this? I wonder, is, do you have any sense that he's suspicious that she might know what he's up to? I mean, do they know that volunteers are out there trying to trap them, posing as dupes? No, since we talked about this tape last, I actually sort of had a revelation that came to me as to why.

I listened to over 40 individual tapes of David Diamond, conversations with Marge and conversations with others over the course of about a year. And one of the things when you've listened to all of them, you find that David, in sort of the earlier part of that year,

was much more kind of sweet and cautious and trying to bond with these women and patient and sometimes would spend an hour on the phone with them. The tape would be an hour long. But this tape was made towards the very end of that year period, probably within a week or two of our raid.

having gone in on the raid and searched David Diamond's desk that day, I came to realize that David Diamond was starting to question whether he wanted to do this anymore. He was starting to really have some concerns about moral concerns about what they were doing.

And I believe that in these last couple of weeks that, and it's kind of shown in this tape, he was becoming a little bit desperate. He wanted to make a couple of more big hits and he just couldn't figure out why this woman wasn't going to write him a check. So he started getting frustrated and it comes out in his voice. What evidence did you see that he was starting to have moral qualms about what he was doing?

David had become born again. There were religious tracks all over his office and posters on his wall. Just recently? I don't know exactly what the time frame was. We do know that he had given a lot of the money that he had made to his church.

And we believe that a lot of that was sort of a self-imposed penance that he could justify what he was doing because he was giving, he was tithing this money that he was taking from these poor victims into his church. If $30,000 is what you made on every $5,000 and you put $50,000 in this program, that's $300,000 return.

That's why I'm telling you, you need a few million dollars in this program. I don't know. I would never put that much in any program. Do you have an obligation to yourself as an investor to make the most amount of money possible? Well, you know, at my age, it's really not that...

Where I want to say, I have enough to live on for the rest of my life. I understand. Plus, is it still in your best interest to make the most amount of money possible if you can find it, do it as safely as possible? It's my obligation not to lose what I have for the rest of your obligation to keep your money working for a lot of other ways.

When I heard this part of the tape, even though I knew that this woman, this particular woman was not getting conned, that she was in fact conning him and trapping him, I started to get so angry because I was thinking, you know, he is really trying to take

All of this old woman's money, all of it. She's saying, I have enough to live on. He's saying you have an obligation to make more. Do you ever hear things like that and just get angry, even though you know that she's sort of in on the con on the joke?

Every time I hear these pitches, I'm outraged because I am the person that spoke to people who really did send David Diamond tens of thousands of dollars that consisted of their life savings and now don't have any money to even buy groceries. I've interviewed them. I've seen them sob.

Uh, yeah, it makes me very angry. And what sort of recourse do they have? Uh, slim and none. Slim and none. We have public companies that want to take you public. So, if you've got a public company that's passed judgment on, it's not even me talking anymore. If Mark Erickson wants to do this, but he's not even me talking anymore. He has the ability to make an absolute fortune.

And it doesn't make sense not to have every nickel you've got in this particular program. That's why I said it's the emergency investment situation and you should do it least 50 to 100 150 units while you have the opportunity. Well, how much are you investing in this? I'm not investing anything in this. Uh-huh. My investment comes in the time they put with my client. Yes. Right.

in the fact that when they make money, they reinvest with me. Right. That's the whole point. You were smiling again when she said, you know, how much are you investing? I mean, is she just screwing around with him? Of course she's playing with him. Yeah. I mean, she's trained to ask him those kinds of questions so that he responds with a misrepresentation.

But that doesn't sound like it's part of the script. That just sounds like her, I mean, her being mean in sort of a delicious way. No, she's... Well, no, I think what we were trying to do, or her handler was trying to do, was get her to get him to say, oh yeah, I'm in it, and I've got my mother and my grandmother in it, and I'm putting away money for my child's education with it, because then we could show later that he hadn't.

Did you ever talk to Marge about what it's like to do this? Do they ever sort of have fun just thinking, I'm just turning the tables on this guy. He has no idea. I wish I could answer the question. I've never spoken to them. I'd love to get the answer to that. I'd like to ask that question myself. I think they get a lot of personal satisfaction, though.

How often do you get a chance to catch a bad guy as just a regular civilian? Yeah, exactly. You know, I do it too. I take people using an alias in cases that I work. And is it fun? I love it. I love to get these people to tell me stuff. It's like acting. There's a rush.

The rush of a con, the pleasure of it, is knowing that you have more power than the person you're conning. You know more. You know that it's a con. And let's face it, given the choice between being the mark and being the con man, nobody's going to choose to be the mark.

But the problem is, the more confidence you have in your own con, the more easily you become a mark yourself. Conmen get taken by other conmen all the time. There just seems to be something about the particular arrogance of always being on the knowing side of the con that makes for a really, really good mark.

Nancy Updag is one of the producers of our program. In the years since we first broadcast this episode, today's show is a rerun. Dale Sekovich, the FTC investigator who busted David Diamond, has died.

Coming up, a child tries to fix his own family by harnessing the most powerful force that exists anywhere that's in a minute. The Chicago bubble radio, when our program continues.

to American life in my real class. Each week in our program, of course, you choose a theme, bringing a variety of different kinds of stories on that theme today's show, hoaxing yourself. Stories of people who are fooling themselves, sometimes, that is a side effect of trying to fool others. Sometimes they just don't know better, and pin their hopes and beliefs on something that is simply not true at all. We've arrived at Act 3 of our show, Act 3, Oedipus Hex.

Shalom Auslander tells this story, which happened to him when he was a boy in one of those ultra-orthodox Jewish religious schools called Dushivas. I wanted to listen to that, although this story is about a little boy. In the story, the dad is not so nice to his kids, which might not be a thing that little kids will enjoy hearing at all. So, take that under advisement. Here's Shalom.

Rabbi Breyer walked into our third grade classroom, hung up his long black coat, took off his big black hat, and handed each student a small black booklet entitled, The Guide to Blessings. We had one week, he told us, to prepare for the annual Yeshiva of Spring Valley Blessing Bay.

My heart leapt. This was just what my mother needed. The blessing bee would make her forget all the troubles of our home. To have a son who's a Talma Khacham, a Y student, that was the ultimate. Her brother was a respected rabbi, and if her husband couldn't be one well, maybe her son could be.

The guide to blessings was a 70 page long listing of hundreds of different foods, soups, breads, fish, desserts. I flipped through it, slowly realizing the size of the challenge that lay ahead. Falafel, herring, eggplant parmesan. I had my work cut out from a...

Friday afternoons, the Yeshiva closed early so that we could all rush home to help our parents prepare for Shabbos, the Sabbath. Rabbi Breyer told us that the sages tell us that the Torah tells us that the preparation for Shabbos is equal to the importance of Shabbos itself. Most of my preparations involve searching the house for kosher wine and pouring it down the toilet. It was a thankless job I admitted to nobody.

My father's frustrated rage at not having his managed-of-its-conquered grape was fearsome, but it was far better than his drunken rage if he did have it. I'd searched the pantry. I'd searched the garage. I'd searched my father's closet. But I was only eight years old, and there was always a bottle of ketam hiding somewhere I just hadn't thought to check.

That night, my father, drunk on a bottle of blush I bleed that got away, grabbed my older brother by his shirt collar and dragged him away from the shabbos table. He dragged him all the way down the stairs to our bedroom in the basement and slammed the door shut. Even the silverware jumped. Who wants the last smotsaball, my mother asked? I made extra.

When my brother returned to the table, his nose was bleeding. My mother brought a mechanic frozen orange juice to hold against the back of his neck, which was supposed to somehow stop the bleeding.

Rabbi Breyer taught us that it is prohibited to defrost orange juice on Shabbos because changing food from solid to liquid is considered cooking, and cooking is considered working, and even God refrained from working on Shabbos. There are 39 different categories of work that are prohibited on Shabbos. That's also why you're not allowed to switch on lights on Shabbos. The electricity causes the filament to glow, which is considered burning, which is considered working. Category number two.

My father came back to the table and drunkenly sang a few Shabbos songs, fudging the words and banging heavily on the table with his fist. I sat hunched over, absent-mindedly drawing circles on the condensation that had formed on the silver water pitcher. My father slapped my hand. Shabbos, he shouted, writing, category number five. Eventually, he stumbled off to his bedroom and fell asleep, snoring loudly. We sat in the dining room and picked glumly at our food.

The following Monday morning, as we all sat studying from our blessing books, there was a knock on Rabbi Breyer's classroom door, and Rabbi Greenbaum, the Yeshiva principal, solemnly entered. We all rose. The two rabbis conferred quietly for a moment before signaling us all to be seated. After a few thoughtful strokes of his long black beard, Rabbi Greenbaum sighed deeply and informed us that the night before, our classmate of Rumi Grunembaum's father had suffered a heart attack and died.

Some kids have all the luck. "'Blessed is the one true judge,' said Rabbi Breyer, nodding his head. "'Blessed is the one true judge,' we all answered, nodding our heads. I wondered what Mr. Grunabell might have done to deserve death. Did he bow down to idols? Did he walk four steps without his yamok on? Whatever it was, it must have been pretty bad.

as Rabbi Greenbaum turned to leave, he paused, and with a stern shake of his finger, reminded us all that the sages tell us, that the Torah tells us, that until the age of thirteen, all of a boy's sins are ascribed to his Father.

I turned to look at Avrami's empty chair. Avrami was a chubby kid with heavy orthodontia and foul breath, but a sudden respect for him grew inside me. I wondered what he might have done to cause his father's death. Whatever it was, it must have been pretty bad. Scowling fiercely, Rabbi Greenbaum advised each and every one of us to pray to Hashem, the holy one blessed be he, for forgiveness, so that he wouldn't kill our fathers too.

My heart left. Blessed is Hashem, he said. Blessed is Hashem, we answered. Blessed is Hashem was right. All of a sudden, I had two ways I could save my family. I could win the blessing bee for my mother, or I could sin so much. Hashem would have to kill my father. Courageous, I've run me Guru in a bow. Maybe one Shabbos night, he had switched on a light. Maybe he drank milk after eating meat. Maybe he touched himself.

That night, just before bed, I ate a drumstick, washed it down with some milk, touched myself, and flipped the bedroom light on and off. Break those lights and I'll break your hands, my father shouted. It was going to be a busy week.

The Blessing Bee worked the same way as a spelling bee. There are six basic blessings on food. Hamotee, the blessing for bread. Mizonos, the blessing for wheat. Hagefan, the blessing for wine or grape juice. Hates, the blessing for things that grow from trees. Hadama, the blessing for things that grow from the earth. And Chahakal, the blessing for everything else. Bagel Hamotee.

Oatmeal Mizonos. Gefilda Fish. Shahakol. The blessing for everything else.

But that was the easy part. Things became much more complicated when you started combining foods. Some foods are superior to other foods, and in combination with subordinate foods, the superior food gets the blessing. To make matters worse, some blessings are superior to other blessings, and you had to know which blessing to recite first. This is where they separated the men from the goys. Spaghetti and meatballs?

Mizonos, the wheat blessing, then shahakal, everything else blessing. Cereal with milk, shahakal for the milk, then Mizonos for the wheat and the cereal. Twix, the chocolate candy with the cookie crunch? Trick question. Twix is in kosher.

I spent the next week sinning and blessing and sinning, alternately praising God and then defying Him as much as one eight-year-old possibly could. Monday morning I stuffed myself. I had a bowl of fruity pebbles, misonos, a slice of toast, a motsi, a glass of juice, chahakol, half an apple, a eights, and a couple of old french fries I found at the bottom of the fridge, ha-dama. One meal, five blessings.

Tuesday I touched myself. I also partook of bread without first ceremoniously washing my hands. And that evening, before going to sleep, I sat on the edge of my bed and carefully recited and asked a dozen times each. My father banged angrily on my bedroom door. Lights out, he barked. I smiled, for you and me both pal.

Wednesday, I stole $5 from my mother and didn't recite any blessings at all on the bag full of candy that I bought with it. A Charleston shoe, which is traved to begin with. And a chunky, which would have been a shahakal if I weren't trying to kill my father. A chunky with raisins, shahakal then hates.

Thursday, I didn't wear a tis. Rabbi Breyer noticed that the strings weren't dangling from my sides and grabbed me by the ear and pulled me to the front of the class. Speak to the children of Israel, he quoted loudly from the Torah as he spanked me hard on my bottom and tell them to make tis on the corners of their garments. That afternoon, after not respecting my elders by taking out the garbage like my mother had told me to, I touched myself and silently begged God to just this once credit those sins to Rabbi Breyer's account.

Later, I defiled a prior book by carrying it into the bathroom. The Blessing Bee was the following morning, and I could barely sleep. Lentil soup, mezonos, potato canesh, ha-dama. Root beer, is it a root, is it a beer? Ass. I tossed and turned, I blessed and cursed, and finally I fell into an uncomfortable sleep.

After a week at home, Avrami Grunabam conveniently returned to school just in time for the blessing bee. It was all I could do to not lean over and ask him how he did it. Psst. Avrami, tell me. Was it lobster? Did you eat lobster?

Rabbi Breyer told us that the sages tell us that the Torah tells us that when Abraham died Hashem comforted Isaac. We learn from this that it is a tremendous mitzvah or good deed to comfort the bereaved. Rabbi Breyer instructed us all to line up at Avrami's desk to shake his hand and recite the traditional mourners' consolation. May Hashem comfort you among the mourners of Zion.

Being just eight years old, I wasn't entirely familiar with a chem system, but it occurred to me that, along with all my sins, my father might also be getting all my mitzvahs. I wasn't taking any chances. Soon it was my turn in line.

How's it going?" I said to Avrami. Rabbi Breyer pinched me. How? I screamed. Schmendrick, he grumbled. After the last boy had asked Hashem to comfort Avrami among the mourners of Zion, Rabbi Breyer smacked his desk loudly. The blessing bee began.

We lined up at the back of the classroom, nervously pulling on our Tsitsis and twirling our payas. The rules were simple. Name the correct blessing and remain standing for the next round. Name the wrong blessing and you take your seed. Last year's winner, Yuka-Siyo-Zaman-Yehud-ishnak stood beside me. He leaned calmly against the wall, mindlessly picking his nose.

Our slander, Shalom, called out Rabbi Breyer. I stepped forward. Apple, he shouted. Apple, I called out. Hates, the blessing for food from trees. Correct, Rabbi Breyer said.

The blessing bee usually started off pretty easy. David Borden got tuna, shahakko, the everything else blessing. Ari Moshinsky got matzah, Hamotsi, the blessing for bread. And Abi Tuckman got stuck with Kugel, which he thought was Hadama, food from the earth, but was really Mizonos, the blessing on wheat. Three other kids got taken out by oatmeal. Borshed with sour cream, claimed two others. And by the end of the first round, almost a third of the students were already back in their seats.

Round 2. Auslander, Shalom, cold red by Breyer. I stepped forward. Mushroom barley soup, he shouted. Mushroom barley soup, mushroom barley soup. Damn, I knew I should have studied the chapter on soups more. I'd wasted half the week on entrees. Was it I'd dumb on the mushrooms, which came from the earth, or was it mezonos on the barley? Maybe it was chahakol, the everything else blessing on the soup. Mushroom barley soup, I called out. Mezonos.

Rabbi Breyer tugged on his beard, his eyes narrowing into angry little slits. And uh, Shahakul, I added. Rabbi Breyer triumphantly smacked his desk, signaling that I was correct.

Apple Strudel took out David Borgen, Joel Levine, and Shlomo Pomerance. My friend Muddy Greenberg got stuck with cheesecake, and I could tell just by the expression on his face that he had absolutely no idea. He wisely offered two answers, one for thin crust and one for thick, and somehow managed to stay alive. It was hard to believe this was only round two.

Avrami stepped forward. I smiled at Mutti. Avrami may have killed his father, but he wasn't very bright, and he never did well at these things. He was lucky to even be in the second round at all. Bagel shouted Rabbi Breyer. Bagel. I looked at Mutti in disbelief. Was he kidding? Bagel? Bagel called out Avrami. Hamotsi. This was bull****. Correct, shouted Rabbi Breyer. Very good.

The frame green-blatt of Rummy Epstein and Yole Franko all got out on Charlotte with barley and large pieces of meat, while chopped liver on challah with a slice of lettuce and a bit of olive took out four more, including mutty. And then there were three. It was just Yucasil's alma knew who to snack, of Rummy Grunabao, and me. Round three began. Ouchlander, Shalom, called out Rabbi Breyer.

I stepped forward. Ice cream shouted Rabbi Breyer in a cone. Ice cream in a cone, ice cream in a cone. I knew ice cream, but why would he add the cone? Was there something different if it was in a cone? What was an ice cream cone made of anyway? Was it cake? Was it a wafer? Ice cream in a cone Rabbi Breyer shouted. Is the ice cream subordinate to the cone? Or is it the cone subordinate to the ice cream? If it's a sugar cone, maybe you really desire the cone. Ice cream in a cone Rabbi Breyer shouted again.

I had no choice. Ice cream and a cone I called out. No blessing. Everyone in the classroom turned to face me. Looking back on the whole episode, Rabbi Breyer had really left me no choice. No blessing, said Rabbi Breyer. Why no blessing? Because I explained nervously twirling my tittis. Because. Because the room smells like duty.

There was a long silence. Mutty giggled, and others followed. Rabbi Breyer slowly rose to his feet, his thick fists pushing themselves into the desktop. It may have been a loophole, but technically speaking, I was correct. Rabbi Breyer himself had told us that our sages tell us that the Torah tells us that there are three situations in which one is absolutely prohibited from reciting a blessing.

One, while facing a male over the age of nine years old, whose genitals are showing. Two, while facing a female over the age of three years old, whose genitals are showing. And three, in the presence of feces. Frankly, given the other two options, I think I chose the least offensive answer.

For a big man, Rabbi Breyer moved pretty quickly. It's true, I said, as you barrel toward me. The Torah says that he grabbed me roughly by my arm, lifting me clear off the ground and dragged me towards the door, shouting angrily in Yiddish the whole time. But it smells like duty, I yelled. The room smells like duty. Wait, there's a naked girl in the room. There's a naked girl. The door slammed shut behind me.

I stood in the hallway and rubbed my bruised arm. I began to cry. The Blessing Bee was lost. I was not a great rabbi, and my father was still not dead.

I tiptoeed toward the classroom door and listened closely. Two minutes later, you could see all Zalman Yuhuda-Schnick fell victim to matzabrai with maple syrup, and the last man standing was of Rumi-Grunanbao. Apples called out Rabbi Breyer. Apples of Rumi answered, her eights. Mazel Tov called out Rabbi Breyer, Mazel Tov. Total bull.

That night we had the traditional Friday night gefilte fish, Shahakol, with a little slice of carrot, ha dhamma. My father was drunk again, singing shaba songs, fudging the words and banging heavily on the table with his fist. My mother went into the kitchen and brought out the soup. When my brother said he didn't want any, my father slapped him, pushed him over backward onto the floor, and poured the hot chicken soup onto his face.

My mother took my brother into the bathroom and sat with him on the edge of the bathtub, pressing a cold washcloth against his cheeks, and I went back to the dining room to wipe the chicken soup off the floor. Chicken soup is a chahakal, even if it is cooked with vegetables, since chicken is the dominant taste in the soup.

Rabbi Breyer told us that the sages tell us that the Torah tells us that the Holy One blessed be He sent the Egyptians ten plagues in order to teach us that He gives people many chances to repent. And only then, if they still continue to sin, does He punish them with death. I went downstairs to my bedroom, took four steps without my yamok on, touched myself, flipped the lights off and on, and fell asleep.

Jilam Aaswander, he's the author of many great books. This story appears in his memoir, Four Skins Lament. His most recent book is called Feh, a memoir. Well, I went and lost her To the great imposter I stood and watched her fall

Our program is produced today by me and Blue Shevany, without Spielberg, Susan Burton, and Julie Snyder. Our contributing editors for today's show, Paul Tuff, Jack Hitt, Margie Rock and OE Spiegel, and Consul Yuray Seraval, mixing up today by Jared Ford and Katherine Raimondo. Production help on today's rerun from Matt Tierney and Henry Larson. This American life is distributed by PRX, the public radio exchange. Special thanks today to all of our new This American Life partners.

If you've heard me talking about this, it is the subscription version of our program where you get the program ad-free, you get bonus content, you get access to a greatest hits archive with over 250 favorite episodes right in your podcast feed, like right below the newest shows, and you help us keep going and keep strong. If you've been thinking about signing up the place to do it, thisamericanlife.org slash life partners. Thanks always to your program's co-founder, Mr. Dury Malatea. It was not jealous at all.

But the fact that this American life staff get to tape interviews all the time. You know, I do it too. I tape people using an alias. America Glass. Back next week with more stories of this American life.

All her friends, they just watch her. For they know the great impostor. And she's soon to join the roster. For they know the great impostor. And she's soon to join the roster.

Next week on the podcast of This American Life, everybody knows, depressingly, that we live in a country that is profoundly split and the two sides live in two different realities. Don't agree on the basic facts about election fraud, climate change, the COVID vaccine, so many things. And nobody seems able to bridge the gap. So it's fascinated to hear about somebody, a news source I bet you have not heard of that does exactly that. Next week on the podcast or in your local public radio station.