132: Father’s Day ‘99
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Alex was seven. He had a teddy bear named Tony. Tony had been with him forever. Tony was with him back when he had all sorts of surgery. And nobody was sure if he was going to pull through. But Alex did pull through. And afterwards, when the nerves of the family were still jangling, Alex continued to carry around Tony for years, sleep with Tony. When he was seven, he took Tony with him to Disneyland. And when the family got back home to San Francisco from Disneyland, Alex's parents unpacked the bags and looked for Tony. And Tony was not there. Alex's dad, John, tells the story. So Alex was in the room and we told him, it appears that Tony isn't here. And it took him about a minute to really realize that Tony was gone. And at that point, he said two things. First thing is, he said that he couldn't imagine life without Tony. And the other is, he said, "I feel like I've lost my spirit." At that point, you know, what's apparent to do? You know, what do you do? So they call the hotel and the hotel says over the phone, they have not found this teddy bear. And so John flew down there the next morning, tried to be a good dad, rented a car, retraced the family's path, made his way to the hotel. After waiting for a few minutes in the lobby, security guard came and said, "Well, Mr. Holtzman, we have bad news for you. We know what happened to the bear." And they explained that a maid had seen the bear, apparently in the garbage, and that he'd been thrown away. And so my immediate reaction was, "Well, that's great. That's not bad news. That's good news, because at least we know where he is." He said, "Well, no, you've got to see the problem here." And we went around to the back and there was this huge, sealed dumpster with a compactor on the front, literally the size of a semi-trailer, 25, 30 feet long, at least. They looked at it and there was literally no way into this dumpster. John started to despair. And I started asking, "Well, when is the next garbage pickup?" And they said, "Well, today from now, I'm thinking, what are we going to do?" And just as we were having this discussion, the truck arrives to pick up this giant dumpster a day early. And you know, this is kind of an amazing thing, because if I had gotten there 15 minutes later, or 20 minutes later, the garbage truck would have been gone. Squad of Hotel employees was deployed to travel with John and the garbage truck to the recycling plan to search for the Teddy Bear. And you know, there are only two possible attitudes that adults would have towards this particular mission. One, they would be into it. Or two, they would think that John's a nut. And incredibly, none of them thought that he was a nut. But why? Because almost all of them were parents. And at some point or another, almost all of them had been in the same or a similar situation. I mean, you couldn't be a parent without having dealt with your kids dealing with loss, you know? And it's so horrible. And yeah, I mean, I think everybody rallied to exactly that to cause. It's just because I think that a lot of parents get to points at different points in their child's lives where they want to intervene and they feel like they will not allow fate to hurt their child. Absolutely. And they will simply do whatever they can to stop fate. There's no question. And you know, if you've ever had a child, you know, who almost dies, you know, it means a lot in a way to be able to protect your kids from, you know, from that kind of thing. Well, on this Father's Day, we bring you stories of dads trying to protect their kids and kids trying to protect their dads. From W.B. E.C. Chicago and Public Radio International, it's this American life, Myra Glass. Today on our program, the protection racket that is parenthood, our program today in three acts, act one, Paddington's Day at the dump, the story of a man, a small toy bear, and tens of thousands of pounds of soggy garbage, act two, trip down memory lane, a son takes his father on one last road trip to Jog's dad's failing memory of his own wife, act three,
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