The Moth would like to thank our donors and sponsors for their generous support, with your help, we're able to continue our work virtually producing storytelling workshops and resources for students, educators and community organizations. Your support also allows us to continue to share stories through our radio, our podcast and our virtual shows, furthering our mission of building empathy in the world. One story at a time from the entire mothe community.

We thank you. Empirics, this is the Moth Radio Hour. I'm Sarah Austin Ginés. I come from a game playing family growing up, we play Dominos, UNO, Gin Rummy and Pownce, which is competitive solitaire. We also love backgammon. And in fact, my great Aunt Fanny at 97 years old and right before she died, beat my mom in a back in a match. Aunt Fanny always played to win.

So this hour is all about play and competition.

It's an hour with winners. And because the moth loves an underdog, plenty of losers, too.

First up is Joey Garfield, who finally gets to hang out with the big kids on the block. Joey told this at a moth story slam in Chicago, where he partner with public radio station WBB zero. Here's Joey alive at the moment.

So when I was about five or six years old, I was upstairs in my room just beautiful summer day, minding my own business when I hear some shouting from the backyard like a lot of voices, and they're going to go outside of my house, I was like, joke about that is not going to move to the bar.

So walk up to the window.

And I opened it up and I'm like, what am I?

I see my older brothers and their friends sitting around the twister board and they're like, Joey, come on downstairs. There's a hot dog. I'm in the middle of a twister board.

So I assume most of you guys know what a Twitter board is, it's that, you know, sheet with the polka dots and you play Twister on it and a hot dog is that like, you know, individually wrapped a little nickel candy that looks like a hot dog, but tastes like, um.

Not the opposite, and you got to realize two have, you know, five or six year olds, hot dog is, you know, very exciting.

But what's more exciting is that my older brothers wanted me.

You know, to, like, play with them. This these are like the the neighborhood kids, you know, the older brothers and know these are like real kids who, like, can they can skateboard and they can pop wheelie and on a ten speed, you know, these are real kids, like I've got matches.

Let's blow something up. Real kids. And they wanted me because there was a hot dog in the middle of a twister board. So I ran down the stairs and I knocked open the screen door and there they are surrounding the twister board and there's this hot dog right in the middle of the twister board and none of them are going for it.

So I step out on the twister board and I go for the gum and they all stand up and I fall in a pit.

Like Updyke, the grass line up to my eyes. They had dug a pit under this twisted. And now the the biblical irony of being named Joseph and having your brothers drop you into a pit now that was not lost on my five or six year old self.

So I made sure that I found that little hot dog and had that in my mouth before I let them pull me up out of the pit.

So, you know, they lift me out and they're all cracking up and cracking wise and, you know, giving each other five and patted me on the back and I went back upstairs and chewed my hot dog in my room. And I will say this, a hot dog.

The flavor lasts about three minutes, tops, but the flavor of betrayal. From your older brothers, that's a taste that lasts. Thank you. That was Joey Gaffield, Joey grew up in Evanston, Illinois, but moved to New York City to pursue a film career.

It turns out the Twister pit incident never truly left his mind. In a few years ago, he made a short film all about it. It's called Bully and it premiered at the AFI Film Festival in Los Angeles. Joey's brother lives in L.A., so he invited him to come see it. And Joey says, My brother clapped at the end, but he still hasn't apologized.

For a link to Joey's film, head to the morgue. Our next story is also about sibling Gaines, Todd Kelly told this at Historicism in Portland, Oregon, where we partner with Oregon Public Broadcasting. Here's Todd live at the mark. When I was seven years old, I came home from school one day and my sister greeted me with her friends and everybody has that one person in their life that they just want nothing but their approval because they hero worship them.

And for me, it's always been my sister and my sister greeted me with a almond joy bar and said, This is for you and I need to tell you why it's for you. I was talking with all my friends today and they were explaining how, like all their little brothers and their their little sisters, they're terrible people. And I thought, I'm so lucky and I never treat you very well. And I realized how lucky I am that you're my brother and I love you.

And I bought this for you. And I was so thrilled. And I opened it and I took a bite and then I started. So here's what my sister did real quick. My sister had bought an almond joy and she'd steamed the package. She'd open it, she'd pulled it out. She'd taken a bar of soap. She'd carved it in the shape of an almond joy. She'd melted chocolate over. She put it back to the back and give it to me with this thing of sisterly love.

And I am like going that way. And my sister goes because in this world there are winners and losers and you are a loser.

She didn't say this is 1970s.

This is well before. I mean, girls had el fingered before had technology. But I have this memory of her doing this. My sister is five years older than me and there's nothing I can do. Fast forward real quick. I'm a freshman in college. She's in graduate school. By this point, we get along well. My sister and I to this day are unbelievably close and we're home for break. And I make a list of ten things that she's done to me in childhood that I'm going to repay her for.

And later that night, we're having wine and I tell her about the list and she goes, well, that's fine. My guess is that, like, you'll probably get them all, maybe even this trip. But I'm telling you right now, you will never get me to eat chocolate covered, so.

And like, I could go, no, and this is why, because I act with instinct, you overthink everything you ever do, and that's why I will always be five steps ahead of you, and that's why I beat you every time we go head to head. Challenge on so for the next 10 years, I try so many ways, I actually made a a salad with grated Parmesan cheese and upgraded soap into it as well. And it didn't matter what I did.

One point I even like I stopped for three years knowing that in the fourth year I would do it again and it didn't. And it wasn't like she wouldn't eat anything that I made.

She'd eat it with gusto unless it had soap in it. It was just instinctively she knew. Two nights before my wedding. My in-laws, future in-laws are coming into town, it's the night before the rehearsal dinner, and my new sister in law explained to me that she's going to make this little desert thing. They're like little big things when they're covered with chocolate and it hits me.

This is my chance, my sister won't see it coming from my sister in law who would do that? Nobody would do that. My sister won't see it coming.

And my wife to me was like, do not do this partially because, like, we're a day and a half away from being married and partially because her family is already a little worried that my family is really weird and crazy, which is an idea that they've come up with through. What do you say? Observation.

And she goes, you can't do this and just let me do this. I promise it won't get weird. And I promise I promise it'll be fun. My sister will love it. And she goes, OK, here's the thing. When your sister figures it out before she even eats at, you need to promise me you never do this again. That's it. And I promise. And so I help my sister in law and I make this little fake thing with chocolate over.

And then we have the dinner and then it's dessert time. And some people are doing the dishes and my sister in law's put him on this platter. My parents have like this long porcelain platter and we put them one in a row. And the thought is my sister in law will serve them first to my mom, then to my dad, then to my sister, then to my future mother in law.

And by now, my sister in law, by the way, is getting cold feet. She's like, I don't know that this I'm cool with this.

I'm like, no, it's going to be fine. And she's like, well, your sister will find it amusing. You know, she will cry.

It's going to be great. So I'm putting them on the thing and I go one for my mom, one from my dad. One from my sister, one. I'm like, no, my sister's going to know that the third one is soap. So I'm going to put this up in the fourth one, so put it down and then I'm like, wait, hold on. My sister is going to know that I know that, and so my sister is going to go for the fourth, so I switch him back and then I go, no, because my sister is only several steps in.

My sister's going to know that. I know that she knows she'll never suspected in the third. And so I keep switching. I am like Wallace Shawn in The Princess Bride, just back and forth between the third and the fourth. And finally it just hits me like I'm going to lose again.

This is my one opportunity to ever win against my sister and I am going to lose the way I always do. And then I remember what she had told me at this point 12 years ago, and I thought. I'm overthinking, you know, I'm just going to do instinct, I'm going to close my eyes and I'm going to open them. And what would my sister do? And I'm going to put it there. I close my eyes open. I put it there.

Dessert comes my sister in law. My mom takes one, pops it in her mouth, dad takes one, puts her in her mouth, hands it over to my sister.

My sister is about to go for the third and she stops and then she goes to the fourth and then she stops and then she looks at me.

And then she gets this shit eating grin on her face and she slowly reaches all the way to the back and then to down and picks it up and pops it in her mouth.

And then lets had a scream because that is where I had put the soap with a chocolate.

My sister screams and she gets up so fast that the chair falls and I am laughing maniacally and she's now chasing me around the table and finally she grabs me by the shoulders and she takes me down like a steer. And she's just pounding on my chair, scoring guard Jericho. And I am laughing. And I see my in-laws are they are horrified and my wife is so angry and I've got so much to make up for. And I don't care because for this one moment, I am the winner.

Thank you.

That was Todd Kelly. Todd is a writer who has embedded himself in bizarre and extreme subcultures in America, Klan rallies, exorcism camps and professional cuddling conventions. He's also the creator of the storytelling and live music show Seven Deadly Sins in Portland, Oregon, where he lives with his wife and two sons. And his wife has asked her not to teach the kids about high jinks like this. It turns out the soap was actually the last prank that he and his sister played on one another.

After that, he says, anything more would be a letdown to see two photos of Todd and his sister each taken the year they got the other to eat soup. Go to the morgue. After a break, a story of learning to run and a competitive Latin club when the Moth Radio Hour continues, be the body that they believe. They believe that he that the Moth Radio Hour is produced by Atlantic Public Media in Woods Hole, Massachusetts, and presented by PUREX.

This is the Moth Radio Hour from Prick's, I'm Sarah Austin Ginés. We're exploring competition and sport in this hour. And weirdly, we also have a subtheme of candy and chocolate. As you'll note, our next story is also about wanting to win, wanting to win at all costs when you're in the high school Latin Club and competing against college kids. Romy Negrin told the story at the Bell House in Brooklyn at our first showcase of The Moth's High School Education Program.

Here's Romy. Hello, so at my school, there are some kids who take Latin, we call them losers, and some of those kids have gone the extra mile and joined the competitive Latin team. We call them pathetic losers. And I am one such pathetic loser. I started taking Latin in seventh grade. I was like, oh, it'll be fun and ancient, whatever. And everyone I knew was like, don't take Latin. It's a dead language.

Who are you going to speak to in Latin?

The Pope someday of. But I started taking Latin and I fell in love with it.

And at the beginning of eighth grade, my Latin teacher was like, hey, you should join Kratom in the competitive Latin team, Kratom. And for those of you who don't know, means competition in Latin because you go to competitions to do Latin. And I was like, sure. So I joined the Katamon team and. It's me and three other kids in the novice team, and we start practicing for the first big competition of the year. Yeah, they have these competitions at all, the big universities, Yale, Harvard, Princeton, you know, where you expect this sort of thing to be.

And we start practicing and the big day finally arrives and we gather at Grand Central at like five thirty in the morning, too early. But we don't care because we're off to New Haven, New Haven, Connecticut.

What town? So we get on the train and one of my friends has brought along this ball of chocolate, this big huge four chocolate wrapped in the shiniest tin foil you ever did see.

And we agreed as a team that we would eat that chocolate if and only if we made it to semi-finals. So that's an extra incentive other than the fact that I'm inherently competitive by nature and there's glory in victory.

So we're on the train and we're practicing we're conjugating verbs like Puerto Portus Potok, poor Thomas Port Totipotent, and we're singing our song Row, Row, Row, Your Emperors and my Latin teachers just there.

And she's like, yay, we're all going to have fun. And I was like, Yeah, winning would be fun.

And we finally arrive at Yale and every competition starts off with a lecture where they bring in one of the classics faculty to like give us a talk about Roman pottery to get us into the competition mood.

That's like the start of the day. And then they ask you questions about Roman history, mythology, Latin vocabulary, grammar, literature, basically like everything.

And so we go to the lecture and after the lecture, they tell us that they've pioneered this fun new system, a bracket system where for each division, novice, intermediate and advanced, there will be two brackets in a bracket for people who have been to a kirtzman before and a B bracket for people who had no idea what they were doing. And we clearly belonged in the B bracket because we'd never done it before. And we were like, off we go to the bracket.

But the bracket would only send one team to semi-finals while the eight bracket would send eight teams to semi-finals.

Yeah, you can all do math, so. At after the lecture, they say, hold on a minute. One of the teams from the age bracket isn't here with one of the teams from the bracket like to join the bracket. And we looked at each other and we were like eight is greater than one.

So we were like, we will join the eight bracket, please. So we switch and we're like high five in ourselves about this decision that we've made. And we skip along off to our first round where we meet our first challengers, Akton Boksburg Act on Boksburg is the name of their school. Just think about that.

Five syllables, so many syllables. You know, it has to be pretentious. And they were their team was comprised of a junior and a senior in the novice division.

And we're in eighth grade and the senior is flirting with the moderator because the moderator is just like a sophomore at Yale.

So, yeah, so he's like, oh, who's your favorite Roman poet?

And she's like. All of it. And he's like all there. I love all of it, and I'm just looking at my friends like Arvid. I've never read of it.

I'm still stuck on book two of the Cambridge Latin course, a great read if you ever have the chance. So that's round one.

But we actually do pretty well in round one. So round to our fiercest competitors yet.

OK, Hall, only two syllables, but one of the syllables is hall. So just just contemplate that and they're buzzing in before the questions are finished.

It's like in what year did the Emperors 123 A.D. what's the ablative singular form of parner. And it's like how did they know?

And the reason they know is because they have a coach, Adam and Adam. He ties his long hair back in a ponytail and he wears this flannel and he stares those children dead in the eyes.

And God forbid they should get a question wrong, because then Adam has something to say about it. He goes, excuse me, but actually in Virgil's Aeneid book, one line three hundred and twenty four, he uses the alternative, the alternative poetic form of the word, which is the form that Keagan answered with Keegan is your name. If you go to ocal, I guess. So Keegan deserves to be awarded those points and what does this moderate are going to do?

She's like 19 and it's the middle of a Saturday afternoon, so she's just like, yeah, I guess so. OK, thrashes us. But the preliminaries end and we actually feel pretty good about our score.

And we're like looking at each other and we're like, we think we're going to make it to semis and we're looking at our chocolate and we're like, we're going to eat you and we're just waiting for them to post the scores and we're waiting and we're waiting.

And we're like eighth place or better. Eighth place or better. Eighth place or better. And they post the scores. And we were in ninth place. I know, I know, and the worst part, the most the worst part is we looked at our score and we looked at the top score from the bracket.

And yeah, you can guess our score was higher than the top score in the B bracket.

So had we remained in the B bracket, we would have advanced to semi-finals. And my Latin teacher is like ninth out of 18. That's pretty good. Let's get back on the train. And we're like, not good enough, and we're looking at each other and we're looking at that chocolate and we're like, oh, we didn't deserve this chocolate, but I'll be damned if we didn't need it anyway.

And we swore that next time we would earn it. Thank you.

That was Romi Negril, Romey told the story when she was a senior in high school. She refers to herself as a denizen of New York and the best friend of her cat, Edith. She named the story Dulci et decorum, which translates to it is sweet and right. Romy says she's a prolific reader, a mediocre baker and a terrible athlete, Kurtzman's are run by college classics, clubs, and Romey would love nothing more than to organize one of these competitions of her own.

Someday to see photos of Romey from the Latin Club curcumin in this story, go to the morgue. Next in this hour, a story from the running club Tammin Olla told this in one of the moth's college workshops at the City University of New York.

Here's Tammin live at the moment.

Hi, everyone.

So since I was a little girl, I always wanted to be strong. The idea of having muscles was just amazing to me. And a lot of the women in my family like, whoa, you're crazy.

But I was always suppressed for my dreams because where I'm from. Girls are raised to be married and not really have an education. But my mother, she always wanted me to have an education and also get married to whom?

But education first. But I don't really care about marriage at all, to be honest.

Not just that, but my mom also had like a dress code, she taught me to always cover up and I didn't really always like that.

I never fit for me. So. I've always been kept indoors, I never had the freedom as a kid to go outside and play in the park like most kids do.

My mom does get scared that maybe I'll get lost or something.

But anyways, I had an idea in my head, like when I was like 13, like, I want to do a sport.

I want to be athletic. But will my mom allow that? No, she would not.

No, she she would say things like, you know, men are going to look at you when you're running around and you're wearing shorts and hearing those things always really hurt my heart because I strongly believe that she is wrong, but she strongly believes that she is right.

So one day I met Hunter and I'm at the athletic room and I see pictures of strong athletic women like sweating and they look determined and they look exhausted, but they look like I have to do this and I see these women and I know that is me.

This is like it's my third year in college, and I thought to myself, I kept myself inside for way too long. I have to do something that makes me who I am because I'm tired of not being me. So I joined I joined track and I kept it a secret for a while, in the beginning, it was brutal. Every single day I felt like. Like I was dying, I was always the last girl to finish the race and like my coach would yell like, oh, for like two minutes, three minutes.

And then when I'm coming in, he would yell five minutes and then and and I'm like, exhausted.

But all of the girls on the team pat me on the back because they know that I just started. And this is new and it's hard.

So one day I'm coming home from track and I'm passing by my mom's room and she calls me over my mom, she's sitting on her bed and she's she looks pretty tired and calm.

And she makes me sit down on the bed and she asks me, like, are you doing track? My stomach turned and. I just decided to tell her the truth because I didn't want to hide anymore and tired of hiding, and I said yes and. There was like a really long pause, she wouldn't even look at me in the face and she said, you're going down the wrong path. I could have argued with her like I've argued with her in my whole life.

But I knew that she will stick with her beliefs just as much as I will stick with minds, and I just left the room.

So whenever I go to practice, I would always remember that my mom doesn't want me here.

And then I would question why, why am I here, why am I putting myself through all this pain? Why go and do this and feel like I'm going to throw up after a run and be last and suck to.

But every time I finish the race, I feel I feel good about myself, I feel stronger every day. I can feel my legs getting stronger. I would run just four blocks and I would get exhausted.

But then I pushed myself to go, OK, go one mile now go two miles and I'll double, like double that, try it. And like, the longest I ever did was six. And I'm just so amazed at myself whenever I'm running.

And I feel like maybe I should stop halfway because I can do it. I tell myself, no, don't don't insult yourself like that. You can do it. And then I would hear all the voices of the people that I love and they would say, like, go to me and go, you're almost finishing this.

And like, finish strong, always finish strong. I have people in my life that's waiting for me at the finish line waiting to hug me, and that's why I do it.

I'm never going to stop, I'm always going to fight because. I want to love myself. And it doesn't matter how slow or how fast you are, as long as you finish the race. Thank you.

Tom Minola is a graduate of Hunter College, where she studied human biology.

And to find out more about our high school and college workshops. You can go to the morgue.

After our break, our final story, an inventive and almost disastrous marriage proposal when the Moth Radio Hour continues.

The Moth Radio Hour is produced by Atlantic Public Media and Woods Hole, Massachusetts, and presented by the Public Radio Exchange PUREX Doug. You're listening to The Moth Radio Hour from PUREX, I'm Sarah Austin. Janez, the last story in this hour about winning and losing is from Abby Shiksha Abby told this in Alaska, where he partnered with the Anchorage Concert Association. Here's Abhishek LaVert The Mom. Wow, that would be one. A couple of years back, I went to India to visit my family.

And during that time, I remember I went to this nightclub and I saw this beautiful girl and I was looking at her. And they kept looking at her. And then she looked somewhere else.

And then she looked at me and then I looked somewhere else, and then we both looked at each other and we fell in love at the third site.

A year later, you are dating, you know, we had now decided that we wanted to get married, but see, our relationship was more than in a sense, it was a love marriage, but it was still traditional in a sense that we wanted to get the blessings of our parents and approval of our parents. Otherwise, we had decided that we will not get married.

So first I introduce my girlfriend to my parents and my parents loved her and she loved my parents.

It was amazing. Now, it was my turn to meet her parents. And I didn't know how this was going to go because my girlfriend had warned me. That her dad's personality is exactly opposite as mine. I was a little bit concerned, I was like, I don't know, I have to create this good first impression, you know, in order to make sure that he likes me. So the next day, they invited me over for the dinner at my girlfriend's house.

I was like, you know what, I'm going to create a very good first impression, but I reach at the house like two hours late. Because there's a lot of traffic. And when I reached, he was like hardly talking to me, so I was trying to diffuse the tension, so I kind of tried to do like a fist bump. But he didn't react, so I just did a fist bump by myself.

And everything that night I tried to do it just didn't work, so I was like, you know what, I have to keep trying in order to impress their parents. Like the next day I told my girlfriend to switch off the Internet. And then I went to her house and they fixed the Internet. It didn't work out. Her dad realized that all I did was put the Daptone back in socket.

So I was like, you know, I'll keep crying like the next day, I know that her girlfriend likes to go for running every morning, like for health reasons. So I just kind of joined, you know, just to do like an informal conversation. I would try to crack a joke. I was like, oh, you when you go for running every day, even I go for running every day to the restroom.

When I eat a lot of spicy food. He didn't like the joke. He didn't. So everything I kept trying, it kept getting worse and worse, I was like, you know, I need to do something very quick because I have to come back to United States. And I was getting a little desperate, said that time I realized there was this one friend of mine who had helped someone in a similar situation. So I called him. I was like, you know, I need your help.

Can you help me?

Now, this friend of mine, he was a big Bollywood fan, like everything he would do is over-the-top nonsense, wouldn't even make sense, like he would do everything over the top.

So I called him. I was like, you know, let's meet. He met me. And I was like, you know, what can I do? Can you help me? And he was like, Bro. I got this, bro, I got this. This is what we are going to do, OK? You meet your girlfriend with her parents and then I will come and snatch the purse of your girlfriend.

And then I will run and you follow me, and then you bring the purse back and her parents would think you are the hero.

I'm like, what? That's a terrible plan.

It was like, bro, it's 100 percent guaranteed success.

If you follow this plan, you will be good for the rest of your life. I was like, I don't know, I wasn't very sure with the whole plan, but then I told my girlfriend and she was like, really, you are going to impress my parents with fake mugging.

I was like, yes, that's that's exactly how this is going to work out.

So we both weren't sure whether this would work or not, but we also knew that we were running out of ideas to impress her dad. So I was like, you know, we'll go ahead with the plan. So we decided, like the next day it was her mom's birthday and they go to a fixed restaurant, like this very beautiful restaurant every year. And I was like, that's the restaurant where will execute our plan.

So I told my boyfriend that this is the restaurant, this is the table, there's a table in the corner, and you come there and you do your thing and be there at 8pm. So the day comes, next day, I reach to a restaurant like two hours before. And I'm nervous, I'm like a nervous wreck, I'm sweating, I would like to thousands of thoughts like what if this doesn't work? What would happen if it works? Like what's going on?

And I was just very nervous. I was pacing back and forth. It was like then seven pm seven fifteen, seven thirty. And as the time was coming close to eight pm, I was trying to call my Bollywood friend just to make sure that the plan is still on. But he wasn't responding like his phone was going directly to voice message. He wasn't responding to my text messages. So I was like, you know, I was just getting more and more nervous.

And then my girlfriend and her parents came and we sat down for the dinner. It was almost like half an hour, like eight thirty. And I still didn't hear anything from my friend. So I was like, you know what? Maybe he just backed out of the plan. Maybe he doesn't want to do this anymore. And just around 83, I see a stranger person walking towards our table. And he snatches the purse. And he starts running, I'm like, who is that guy?

He wasn't even part of our plan. What is like I'm confused, my girlfriend is confused and it's all happening so fast, I'm like, I don't know what I want to do.

So I just stood up and started running after that stranger and he just disappeared. He dropped the purse somewhere in the corner. So I took the purse. I came back to the table and I told her parents I took care of him.

And at that time, like Anglophones, dad was so happy and relieved to see that, you know, I was OK and for the first time I saw him smiling.

And I remember I wasn't even eating a dessert, but it tasted like a sweet million bucks.

I was like, you know what? This wasn't part of our plan, but it just worked out in our favor. So I was like, very happy. And just when we were about to finish our dinner.

My Bollywood friend shows up. And now I don't know what to do.

Like, I I cannot see anything, so I'm trying to express with my eyes.

Like, don't do anything, I've already proved that I am a man.

But my Bollywood friend, he has an I.Q. of minus infinity. So he just ignores the whole telepathic thing and just goes and grabs the purse.

But before I could do anything, my girlfriend's father jumped on him.

And he started punching him. And just at that time, this is what my friend says, Abby Sheik, help me. I'm like, I don't know you. And then he goes on, he's like, oh, I was late, my phone was switched off, so I sent one of my other friend to take care of this thing.

Oh, my God, what a great time to bring that up.

And we were just disappointed, like I was extremely disappointed, my girlfriend was extremely disappointed, and just when I reached home, I was thinking, where did I go wrong?

Everything was a mess. Everyone was disappointed and I was just thinking that, you know, I what I did wasn't very good. So I just opened my laptop and I sent her dad an email that, you know, whatever I did today, I'm extremely sorry. I know it's not the right thing, but my intention was not bad. And if there's any person whom I ever get married to, it would be your daughter. And this is 100 percent honesty.

And then I closed my laptop, I was just awake the whole night, I couldn't sleep. And there was nothing from the inside. And then the next day, I got a call from her dad. And he told me to bring me and my family all the invited us over the lunch. We went to that place and I was like, I don't know how this is going to work out. And then her dad told me that, you know, it's not that you are a bad person, we know you are a good person, but to send my daughter all the way to a new country, you know, to move all the way to a new country is an extremely huge decision for us.

But if she does move, then it would be only with you. And then I try to do like a fist bump. And this time he did give me a fist. Well, now we back, thank you. That was Abhishek Shah, Abhishek works as a biomedical engineer and even with a few missteps, he won. In the end, he and his wife phenyl have been married for years now and live in California with their two kids. Abhishek never spoke to his Bollywood friend after this, but he has a great relationship with his in-laws and yes, his father in law still makes fun of his botched proposal whenever they're together.

And for anyone out there considering a proposal, Abhishek says, if you're trying to make a good impression with your could be in-laws, be honest. Keep it simple and don't act in desperation.

It makes things messy. I asked Abhishek if there were any photos from the night of his mother in law's birthday, and he said no.

But to see photos from his wedding with all the family and 1500 guests all looking very happy, go to the morgue. And the math is all about true stories, so our fact checking team in this case me, called up Abby Exwife final. Hey, final.

I've been wanting to chat with you for so long. Same here. Hi, Sarah.

So I had to call and ask you to. This really happen?

Yeah, actually, yeah. It's it happened and it's unbelievable. I told him that it's really not a good plan. Let's not let's not do this. But he is like, you know what? We are running short of time and we can do this. Trust me, it will be fine.

I love seeing the photographs of your wedding that he sent. It's the best wedding ever. Like we had like 14 to fifteen hundred people in our wedding. Yeah, it was like a one week, one week celebration.

That was final show. Remember, you can share these stories or others from the math archive through our website, the math idealogue. Find us on social media to share on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter at the math.

In the end, it's not really about winners or losers.

It's the story of how you play the game. Right. That's it for this episode of The Moth Radio Hour.

We hope you'll join us next time. Your host this hour with Sarah Austin Ginés, Sarah also directed the stories in the show, along with Katherine McCarthy with additional coaching in the high school program by McKayla Bly.

The rest of the also directorial staff includes Kathryn Burns, Sarah Habermann, Jennifer Hickson and Meg Bowles production support from Emily Couche. Most stories are true, is remembered and affirmed by the storytellers.

Our theme music is by the drift of the music.

In this hour from Medeski Martin and Wood CAMAC, Penguin Cafe Orchestra, Blue Note Sessions and Jerry Douglas and Vibert. You can find links to all the music we use at our website.

Moth Radio Hour is produced by me, Jay Allison with Viki Merrick at Atlantic Public Media in Woods Hole, Massachusetts.

This hour was produced with funds from the National Endowment for the Arts. The Moth Radio Hour is presented by parsecs.

For more about our podcast, for information on pitching us your own story and everything else, go to our Web site, The Moth Dog.