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WEBVTT
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Hello and welcome to season two of Truth Be Told, Love and Theater.
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Fourteen new stories, each performed at Ensemble Studio Theater, as part of Truth Be Told, a night of amazing, weird, embarrassing, profound, and completely true stories created by Susan Kim and David Zelnick.
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Season two draws from two sold-out nights The Moment I Knew and The Theatre.
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Every Monday, tune in for stories of love and realization.
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And every Thursday for stories of the joys and madness behind the curtain.
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And now, without further ado, from writer John Augustine, 1969, Visiting Grandma's House, A Lava Lamp, The Virgin Mary, and whatever the secret is inside Norman's bathroom.
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I was nine years old.
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The year was 1969.
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It was the year all the grown-up kids at school were giggling about.
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My oldest brother Joey got a big magic marker and he wrote 69 with quotes around it on the back of his gray sweatshirt.
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My mother yelled at him and said it ruined his clothing and that that wasn't a nice thing to put on your shirt.
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I didn't understand why 69 in quotes was wrong, but I got the message it was dirty.
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My parents owned a mom and pop grocery store slash pizza shop slash moving and storage company, all in one building on the corner of 10th and McKinley Avenue in Canton, Ohio, home of the Football Hall of Fame.
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And the Hoover Vacuum Cleaner.
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Don't be jealous.
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Sometimes at the end of a workday, after my mother was finished counting all the money in the big cash register, and after my father had finished moving beer cases around or yelling at some customer on the phone, or hammering something into something so it could do something else, my mother would announce that we were going to visit my dad's mother.
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Mary was near death, we were told.
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So I suppose they thought there was no need to say your grandmother.
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It was always just dad's mom.
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Even after she died, it was dad's mother is dead.
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So on this one particular day, my dad told me and my big brother Joey to grab a lava lamp from the display in the window and find the box that came with it.
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Nobody was buying the lava lamps.
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I was there the day that the salesman came to the store to talk my dad into carrying them as a novelty item.
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They would be a good addition next to the other novelty items, the ones that never ever sold.
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These are very popular, the lava lamp salesman glowed.
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His face kind of looked like a lava lamp.
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It was all very expressive and gooey.
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They're very popular with the young people and the newlyweds wink wink.
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His suit was shiny and skinny.
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I had never seen anybody dressed this way, except for Tom Jones on TV, singing Havanegila.
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Watching Tom Jones sing and move around gave me a funny feeling in my stomach.
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I didn't know what it meant, but I liked the feeling.
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I had just started to learn to play the piano, and my mother wondered why I was so fixated on playing Havanegila.
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She wanted me to play patriotic songs like Stars and Stripes Forever or American Patrol.
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I played them for her, but I always went back to Havanegila.
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I was mesmerized by his singing, his dance moves as he sang.
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And his shirt was always open, he had hair on his chest, dark, dark hair.
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I wondered if I would have hair on my chest when I got older.
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I wanted to look like him.
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My brother snapped at me, shocking me out of my thoughts about Tom Jones.
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Stop daydreaming! Dad told us to get Mom a lava lamp.
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Go get the box it came in.
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Joey grabbed the orange lava lamp from the display.
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It was covered with dust.
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It hadn't been plugged in for a while.
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The whole display was very dusty.
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We cleaned the dust off the lava lamp and loaded it into a box.
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I loved the lamps when they were on.
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I asked my dad if we could take the blue-green one to our house.
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I was shocked when he shouted grumpily, Yeah, take it, I don't care.
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They're not selling anyway.
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But then don't say I never gave you nothing.
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Thank you.
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And as soon as I said thank you, I knew what my father would snap back with.
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Thank you doesn't pay my bills, money does.
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Well, I don't have any money.
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Well, get a job.
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Money doesn't grow on trees, you know, I'm not made of money.
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We all got into his pickup truck.
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My mom and dad in the front, my older brothers Joey and Stevie and I were
Load full transcript
in the back of the truck, sitting on a pile of moving blankets.
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The gray quilted pads my dad used when he moved people.
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I love these blankets.
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I felt it showed that my dad cared for the furniture, wrapping it carefully like he was putting the furniture to bed.
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We pulled up to my dad's mother's house.
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It was the color of the blankets.
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The blinds were pulled down.
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They were always pulled down.
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The blinds were dusty dirty the same way the lava lamps had been.
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As we walked up the broken steps to our father's mother's house, we were told by my mom that Mother Mary's bed was now in the living room, and for us not to comment on it.
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My mother warned in a hushed tone, and don't stare at her feet.
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Well, why would we stare at her feet?
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Because she doesn't have any feet anymore.
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So don't try and look at them and don't try to touch her feet.
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Can we look at where her feet used to be?
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No, that isn't polite.
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Why doesn't she have feet?
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She has the sugar, the diabetes.
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Like dad?
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Yes.
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Is he gonna not have feet someday?
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Not if he watches his sugar.
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We went up to the porch.
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My dad's sisters, Aunt Shirley and Aunt Virginia, were there.
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Shirley and Virginia looked old.
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They were in their 40s.
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They both wore the same kind of work pants my father wore.
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And they wore men's shoes and white socks.
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They both kind of looked like men in a way.
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Shirley was already standing at the screen door looking out.
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As we got closer to the door, Aunt Shirley shouted to my dad, Norman isn't home today.
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Well, where the hell is he?
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He had to go somewhere and do something.
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That man's got something wrong in his head.
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All three siblings still lived with their mother.
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I remember from the last time we visited that we were not allowed to use the half bathroom on the first floor.
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We were told to go upstairs.
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I wondered if this was still a rule.
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My mother warned, if you need to use
the toilet, don't go in there.
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That's Norman's bathroom.
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Use the one upstairs.
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Norman's bathroom.
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Why does he have his own bathroom that is off limits to everybody else?
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And is it because he's a man and the others a woman?
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My grandmother's bed was in the middle of the small living room.
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It had metal gates around it.
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I asked about it.
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Shirley said it was a hospital bed.
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My brother Joey and I went to give the boxed gift to my dad's mom.
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We noticed the space under the blanket where her feet would be.
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We were staring and staring, just hoping for a glimpse.
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When my dad shouted, don't just stand there, plug the goddamn thing in, set it up, put it on top of the TV set.
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My dad's mom offered, well, they can unplug the Virgin Mary and put it there.
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Put Mary on the floor.
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She doesn't light up now, anyways.
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She needs a new light bulb inside of her.
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There seemed to be many long extension cords going this way and that way around the room, like an octopus surrounding the area.
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The Virgin Mary was made of solid, heavy plastic.
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She stood on an old lace doily.
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We unplugged the Virgin Mary with care, because you know she was Jesus' mom.
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And we placed her gently on the floor on a pile of look magazines.
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The lava lamp was now on top of the old TV set, and the Virgin Mary was on top of Bobby Kennedy.
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We plugged it in, and nothing happened.
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Just the light came on.
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The lava was settled and frozen to the bottom of the lamp.
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Look, Mom, my dad said proudly, like he expected a prize.
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It's a lava lamp.
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I brought it into you from the store.
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Uh-huh.
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Well, that's something different.
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Oh, that looks nice, all lit up like that.
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We all stood staring at the lamp, waiting for it to perform.
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It didn't.
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After several minutes, Dad's mom said, Well, what's the idea of that?
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What's it supposed to be?
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Well, it's not doing nothing yet.
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You have to give it time.
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It needs to warm up for a few hours.
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Then it moves around like lava.
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Then you can look at it.
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Oh, uh-huh.
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Well, I hope it doesn't use up all the electricity in the house.
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I don't believe in making the electric company rich.
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More time passed.
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Mom, I I need to use the toilet.
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Well, go upstairs, my mother warned again.
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My dad said, they can use a toilet down here.
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They're grown boys.
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No, said Virginia in a shaky voice.
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That's Norman's bathroom.
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Why did Norman have his own bathroom?
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And why did the grown-ups all still live in the same house?
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None of my older siblings lived with us.
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They all left home as soon as they could.
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I heard someone say one of my sisters had to get married.
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I head off to the toilet, but I was determined I was going to go into Norman's bathroom and see what was in there.
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Luckily, the door to his bathroom was around the corner and down a dark hallway.
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But first, as not to attract attention, I walked upstairs and peed in the assigned bathroom.
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It was a cold room, and the toilet seat had paint chipping off of it and a dirty pink fuzzy thing covering the toilet, and there was this weird little roll of toilet paper under a doll's dress.
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I quietly sucked back down the stairs.
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All the grown-ups were staring at the TV.
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Lawrence Welk was on.
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Nobody talked.
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Although I did hear my mother announce in her usual, that is so beautiful.
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I like anything with music.
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My big brother Stevie was sitting cross-legged at my father's feet.
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He saw me come down the stairs and turn the corner.
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He shot me a look that said, If you're going to explore Norman's bathroom, I won't tell.
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Joey gave me the same look, only more so.
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I go down the hallway, the door is closed.
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I slowly turn the fancy glass doorknob that seemed out of place in this house.
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I looked both directions to make sure that Norman wasn't like suddenly home.
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I opened the door, the light was off.
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I felt for
the light switch.
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I closed the door in the dark, being careful so that the light wouldn't flood into the hallway.
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With the door closed and my hand on the light switch, I flick it on.
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I am now inside Norman's bathroom.
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It's small.
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There's a toilet and a sink very close together and a slanted ceiling that goes the angle of the stairs above.
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And on the walls, there were many, many cut-out pictures of naked ladies from magazines.
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Many.
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And not even one of Tom Jones.
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Or any man.
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They looked like they were glued to the wall.
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Most of the ladies in the pictures had their tops off and were holding their hair up over their heads with both hands.
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They all had very fancy hairdo's and bright red lipstick.
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Many of the pictures showed the ladies' boobies.
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My mother referred to boobies as bosoms.
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The ladies in the pictures didn't look anything like my sisters, and not at all like Aunt Shirley and Aunt Virginia.
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I was wishing there were pictures of Tom Jones instead, or even that guy from Doctors of Ago, Omar Sharif.
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I snuck out.
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My brother Joey was now in the kitchen.
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He saw me leaving the bathroom.
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Psst, psst, come here.
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What's in there?
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Nothing.
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Nothing at all.
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Just a bunch of naked ladies on the wall.
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Really?
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Well, I want to see.
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You better not.
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We'll get in trouble.
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Go watch and tell me if anyone's coming down the hall.
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Okay, but don't turn on the light until you close the door.
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I kept watch as Joey was inside Norman's bathroom.
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Joey was in there what seemed a very long time.
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He was making noises.
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I think he was doing that thing I sometimes heard him do at night when his bedroom door was closed and locked.
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Whenever he did this, my brother Stevie would threaten, I'm gonna tell mom you had your door locked again.
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Joey finally came out looking different, rested, calm.
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He went back toward the kitchen.
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I went back to the living room to check on
the progress of the lava lamp.
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Seeing me, my dad said, We thought you fell in.
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The lava lamp was still on, and it had not used up all the electricity in the house.
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One little bloop of stuff was struggling to break free from the waxy floor.
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It was stretching up like a cat waking from a nap.
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Finally, the gooey stuff was free, and it floated effortlessly to the top.
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And then more broke free and more till there was a beautiful lava dance.
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My mother, my father, his mother, Aunt Shirley, Aunt Virginia all sat silently taking in the spectacle of the lamb.
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Seeing them all like this made me wonder, who are these people?
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Was I adopted or do I have a different father?
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And why do I feel so different?
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On the truck ride home, my nine-year-old self thought, well, if Uncle Norman could glue up people he liked on his bathroom wall, maybe I could do the same thing in our bathroom of people I liked.
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Problem is we only had one bathroom for eight people, and I'd have to ask my mom permission because she wouldn't like me gluing pictures to the walls.
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And I was pretty sure my family didn't like Tom Jones as much as I did.
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A new thought came to me.
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I bet I could use the door in my bedroom.
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The closet door.
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Yeah, I bet it would be okay if I take pictures I like on the inside of my closet door.
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I'll start with Tom Jones, the one of him singing with his shirt open.
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Epilogue.
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Cut ahead 40 years, and with the advent of DNA testing, I learned that I was right and that Mr.
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Augustine, my dad, was not my biological father.
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But that's another story for a different day.
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John Augustine's plays have been produced in New York City at The Zipper, here, Naked Angels, Ensemble Studio Theater, Miranda Theater, Manhattan Theater Club, and 59 East 59 Theaters.
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His anthology of 20 short plays, Augustine's Confessions, is published by PlayScripts.com.
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Truth Be Told was created by Susan Kim and David Zelnick, and each episode was produced and scored by Eric Svakar.
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If you enjoyed this, please tell your friends and keep listening.
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More stories of the Moment I Knew will be released every Monday and about theater every Thursday.
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And do hit like and subscribe, it really helps.
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Till next time, remember, truth wants to be known.
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Yours too.