TEDxPennQuarter 2011 - Adam Wade - Reinventing Storytelling

How are you doing, everybody? My name is Adam Wade, I'm originally from New Hampshire, when I was a freshman in high school, it was probably the worst year in my life, socially. I was in the marching band and I played the saxophone. I wasn't very good but I practised and I practised a lot, to the extent that my ears started like cracking. I started getting ear aches and ear infections, so my parents brought me to, like the ear doctor, and we were sitting down and he goes like "I got some bad news for you" and I go "Oh, my God, am I going to die?" He goes "No, but you have very sensitive ears, if you keep blowing and playing the saxophone, you're going to do damage to your ears, and you wont be able to hear anymore, so you can't play the saxophone". So, I remember driving in the car with my parents, and they were like "Ah, you're going to have to give up the band", and I told to my parents defiantly "No, I'm not a quitter, I'm staying in the band". So I stayed in the band. The band, in the hierarchy socially of high school, the marching band was ostracized from the rest of the school, and when I started now playing in the band without playing, I would just go like this and smile -- I mean, they had a lot of pride, the band members, and God bless them, but they took out this frustration, that they were losing their validity, because I wasn't playing and I was making the mokery of the band. So, we had the high school, and then the marching band, and then slowly I was ostrasized from the marching band I was alone, I was an island, and my parents, fortunatelly, I loved them, they were worried about me, they didn't know what was going to happen, so my father made a few phone calls, it was the only sign of nepotism I was fortuate to have, and I got a job as a busboy, at a local Greek restaurant, "The Pure and Backroom" and it was awesome, because I was able to reinvent myself, because I was in a community of people that didn't know about me in high school, and they were a lot older and I found out that I could communicate and get along better with people at least five years older than me. Basically, my job was just to clear the tables, that's it. But I'm up to a notch, I would get ice for the bartenders, there was a four female wait staff, I would always made them desserts, and after a while I became like the patron saint there, they didn't have like an employee of the month, but if they did -- I would've got it a few times -- and I never had a nickname, for that period of my life I have a nickname now, I had some bad nicknames, but this one, I was called "Busy" because I always looked busy, I mean, it felt good. So, there was like a hostess there just graduated from my high school, and her name was Suzy it was like the summer time when I was working there, and I was in love with her, She was my first love and she had puffy blond hair kind of like Whitney Houston, sort of "I want to dance with somebody". (Laughter) She had like flowered dresses and she smelled like oranges, and she was very nice to me, like -- I work hard and people say "Good job" and stuff but she'd come up to me and she'd squeeze me and go "Great job". Women never touch me, besides my grandmother, my aunt and my mother, so, in puberty, this was nice, I enjoyed this, I was akward, I don't know what to do, at the moment, but it was great and I appreciated it. Now Suzy, one thing about her is that she had a front tooth that was slightly green when she was in junior high, she was in a pool party, she was just having a good time, she was being a kid, and she felt off the diving board and slammed right on her face, and they fixed her up, she looks the same, except the tooth, and they had bleached it, they did all the stuff but it was still a hint of green. And all the other hostess and staff, they would make fun of her behind her back and stuff, but to me, it wasn't an imperfection, this made her perfect to me, because we had a connection. Suzy had a boyfriend and his name was Terry, he was kind of a prick. (Laughter) He rode a Kawasaki motorcycle and would pick her up every night by the trash compacter outside, and she would be waiting for him, smoking her cool mentol cigarrettes. Like he was like in his mid twenties and I don't want to be too cruel, but he was a wannbe *** and he worked in his parents convenient store, and he was in the George Thorogood cover band, called 'The Bad to the Bones', And he was George Thorogood so, I remember one night, I'd always time it perfectly , like she'd wait for him, she'd be smoking, and I threw the garbage and she said "You know, Adam, you know I love Terry" and I go "Oh, that's nice", and she goes "You know, he looks just like George Thorogood", and I go "Yes, he does!" and she goes "But he is terrible at the guitar, he is just very bad at the guitar, and he told me about that and he is really insecure about that". And I'm "Ok, ok, where is this going...' and she goes, "It's just, I'm so attracted to vulnerability!" And when she said that, I thought my head was going to explode, because at that moment in my life, I had a lot of vulnerabilities! (Laughter) Now, the people at "The Pure and Backroom", they were very nice, they get me the job, but they were very cheap and whenever we wanted to eat food and stuff like that, they would always charge us, so what I would do is I would sneak hot dogs and chicken tenders into the bathroom that was my way of -- I was a rebellious phase, and that was my way of sticking it to the man. But, it was all the ice cream you could eat! Now, I was a little chubby, so what I would do is, really, I added like five or six milk shakes, like fraps, like per chef I'm lactose intollerant now, I don't know why -- but again, it made me feel good! And my Magnum Opus was this thing called "The Andes mint milkshake". If you've ever had like an Andie mint, it was just like that; in a sense, I'd take two scoops of mint chocolate chip ice cream, and put like a layer of hot fudge and then in the milk and then I would blend it, and when you would sip it -- I don't have this copyright, when you sip it, the hot fudge with the chocolate, it would melt in your mouth and it was unbelievable. So, I was on my third of the night, and I was sucking it down, and Suzy came over I go like "Hey Suzy, how are you doing?" and I explained it to her and she's like "That sounds delicious, can I have a sip?" Now, growing up, I was very germophobic, I did not like sharing my stuff, and I was eating a little piece of steak and my mother'd be like, "Let my try it." I'd go "Have it, you know, I want mine, you have yours, come on mum!" And then my aunt Ricky would be like "Let my have a sip of your coke" and I'm like "Just have it, take it, I want mine and you have yours!" But when Suzy asked, things changed. And I took it and I go "Absolutely, have a sip!" So Suzy took a sip, she loved it and she gave it back to me, and I just remember the purple lipstick around the white straw, and I was just shaking and I said to myself "Walk away now, please, walk away!" So, she would walk away. I put it right to my mouth, and took a sip and it was the closest I'd come to kissing a girl! It was awesome! It was awesome! And that doesn't come before a while, you know, but in my mind it did... (Laughter) So I started making sure that our schedules were the same, I'd always switch and I was hoping no one would really be knowing, and I'd always manage to be outside when she'd be waiting for Terry, smoking while I'll be doing the garbage. And we started having this long conversations, she did most of the talking, and she would tell me at the end of the summer "I'm going to the university in Nevada, Las Vegas, I don't know what I'm going to do, I'd like to study penguins in the North Pole --" I was smart enough to know that penguins are in the South Pole but --Come on! Come on! Follow your dreams! (Laughter) And she wanted to, maybe, perhaps, go into the CIA, but she wasn't sure exactly what it was -- she had seen "The Silence of the Lambs" -- So, I'm not a poet and I don't write poetry but for her I was moved and I started to write this poem, and I worked on it, and I worked on it and I had it, and for the last month before she left, I'd keep it in my back pocket, and there were so many times when I wanted to give it to her, but I finally found a place in my life where people accepted me, reinvented myself into Busy, the hardworker and I didn't want to ruin it. And I was just afraid if I gave her the poem and she laughed, or she told everybody, then I'd be back to where I was in high school. but then it was her last night and it was a do-or-die situation for me, and whenever I get very nervous, like tonight, I go to the bathroom and I do the "Rocky" theme song in my head (Laughter) and I looked in the mirror at myself and I don't like eye contact, but I looked, "You're going to do it! Get out there!" and I scared myself, and I ran out! (Laughter) And I go, "Suzy, I wrote a poem, I want you to read it". And this is the actual poem -- and I didn't look at her when I read it, because I was shaking -- 'Suzy at work', by Adam Evangelus, Busy Wade, the first. "Suzy at work do the locomotion, here is your milkshake, the way you love potion. It's mint chocolate chip ice cream of hot fudge and milk, I love your flower dresses, are they cotton or silk? I've got a ten speed bike Ya, I'm the motor, born to be wild, I'm a fifteen year old Hell's Angel. And I would ride my bike thinking -- No -- no one understood what I was trying to go for -- (Laughter) "You see people at the restaurant, you're the hostess with the mostess, I may clean off the tables, but I'm a rebel -- like James Dean." I was in my James Dean phase. My uncle Ricky had given me a red barracuta jacket, so when I'd ride to work, I had like this Pompadour sort of thing with vaseline -- Nobod knew what I was going for! Nobody! (Laughter) It's like a 100 degrees and it's got like grease -- It was just awful! (Laughter) This was our inside joke, that we talked about with her, "Cliff the dishwasher can crap his pants again, but you smell just the opposite of him!" (Laughter) Everybody knew about Cliff, he did it all the time, I could poke funny -- he wasn't nice to me! "I can't smoke because I have baby lungs" -- I'm asthmatic -- "But you look sexy when you do it outside, while I empty the garbage into the trash compacter. (Laughter) Do you remember when you told me you had 14 cabbage patch dolls? I've got a big heart for you, even though my lungs are small. I love you Suzy, You are my Carpe Diem!" I was taking Latin at the time! (Laughter) -- but I'm not excelling in it! (Laughter) 'Busy' works hard -- So that was the poem and when I was done, I looked up at her finally and I saw that she had tears in her eyes and she came over to me, and she hug me really hard and I don't have a lot of regrets in my life, but I'd never hugged anyone besides my mother, my grandmother and my aunt -- So I just kind of gave her like a dead fish, I hold her, you know, and she said "I hope you know how special you are", and then Terry showed up a *** blocked me, (Laughter) she got on the motorcycle and waved and drove off. The last duty of the night for me, after the trash was I'd get a Maxwell House coffee tin and I'd have to go around the parking line and get fifty cigarrette stubs, and once I'd get those, I could leave. So I was walking around the parking line, I was crying, I was sobbing, I'm not going to lie, I'm not good at a lot of things, but feeling bad for myself, I'm terrific. (Laughter) And I'm crying and I'm picking these up, and then I stopped and I said, Wait a minute! Think about it! You showed the girl, the first girl you ever loved, like YOU, ok -- and she was moved! Now, things aren't good right now, but maybe next year, maybe in ten years, maybe in fifteen years down the road, you're going to be all right, and it was the first time in my life that I had hope in myself and I believed in me! That I had potential. Thanks! (Applause)