772: The Kids' Table
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A quick warning, there are curse words that are unbearped in today's episode of the show. If you prefer a beeped version, you can find that at our website, thisamericanlife.org. Kids can be so confident about what they know and what they think they can do. And then they get tested. What are our producers on a baker who talked to somebody who has tested like that as a girl? He either or not. Hi, Eyra. Yeah, so the person in this story, who names Molly, and Molly grew up in an apartment complex outside of Houston, lots of families, and the parents, they worked long hours, some multiple jobs, which meant that this complex was really run by the kids. They had total free reign, and they did all sorts of things that you could only do if there were no adults around. Like, there was this four-lane highway up behind the complex, and the kids would go up to the highway. And we would play leapfrog across the highway. This is Molly. And we would wait until a car came. That way it would be kind of scarier. If we could see headlights coming, this is when we're like, "Alright, now's the time to leapfrog." Oh my God. I know. And then sometimes those lights would be a police officer. So they would turn on their lights and turn around real quick and start speeding toward us. And this is when it was fun, because we were like, "We're ditching the cops right now." We would run and back into the complex and just spread out and hide wherever we could under cars, in bushes, in truck beds, and watch through the cracks. Molly loved hiding. So her and her best friend Ariel, they come up with this reason to hide all the time. They decide that they are spy detectives, and it is their job to sort of spy on everyone in the complex. And at the time, you know, they're 10, 11, and they're tiny too. They're these tiny girls, so they can fit everywhere. They would go into the laundry room and hide inside the machines with the door cracked, so they could eavesdrop. Or they would hide in the laundry room trash cans. Which is disgusting, but we didn't care. So they're hiding and spying on people all the time. Yeah. The only thing about it is everywhere, if you were a kid in this building, you never actually had a moment of privacy, and then you'd hear them giggling, or you know they were there, and there they are. Did the other kids in the complex know that you guys were spies? Yeah. Yeah, because they always knew who was stalking them. So all of this is going on for over a year. And then Molly and Ariel, they leave the apartment complex one night to go to sleep over. This is 2005, they're 12 and 13.
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