Transcript

I’m Major Jackson and this is The Slowdown.

I wince still today about that time I told a group of fellow writers at the Bread Loaf Writers conference that I attained the rank of an Eagle Scout, when I had only done a year as a Boy Scout. How utterly embarrassing! I felt myself sinking when asked a series of questions by a guy who actually completed the requirements. He jokingly called me out in front of everyone gathered around the campfire. I admitted my fib then jumped into the waters of the lake. I wished I could stay hidden underwater all night.

For all sorts of complicated reasons, I lied. I wanted to belong, to not be seen as different. I was young and in an environment that was competitive and foreign. I feared society’s projection of me as an interloper, and thus, burnished my biography. I think I added that I also rowed in the Dad Vail Regatta along the Schuylkill River. That summer I learned one of the most important lessons of my life: nothing beats simply being yourself, which I already knew.

Language was complicit in my acts of reinvention. I used the fluidity of words to craft a new self…a former Eagle Scout. Writing was the tool by which I used language to understand myself. However, like many, I took my imagination too far, which is why Plato worried about the corruption of Greek youth and kicked the poets out of his imagined Republic.

Everyone there knew how powerful a good story could be. But did that matter more than a true story?

Today’s poem illustrates the extent to which people will fabricate narratives to come off more gallant, more caring, more whatever, or simply not what they actually are. And yet, it unearths the human desires that show us why we lie.

Ambition
by Sarah Wetzel

I wanted to tell her that I knew the truth—
she didn’t adopt her dog from a kill shelter,
which is what she was telling a group of us.
I held my tongue for fear of appearing petty.
We all want to be better than we are.
Yesterday, my brother called and asked for money.
At first, I told him no.
But he’d received the third notice from Georgia Power
so I paid his $700 electric bill though told him
never again, unless his wife got a job, any job.
I cc’ed her on the email.
She wrote back, you’re an awful person
with a mixture of rage and bitterness I could hear
even on the screen. Still, this time
I meant it. I overheard the woman at the party
tell her friend they’d actually purchased the dog
from a breeder in upstate New York. 
We spent so much money, we could have adopted
a baby from China. I found her statement funny.
I want to be better. I want to save a dog, to save
my brother. I want to tread lightly on this world without
leaving footprints or too many
plastic wrappers. I want to see Singapore
and Vietnam, to spend a summer in Italy writing 
short stories and a sonnet or two.
Learn to tango and foxtrot equally well.
I want to be good. I want to write one poem so perfect
that when I’m dead, a stranger will pin it to the wall, 
perhaps even claim it as their own.

"Ambition" by Sarah Wetzel. Used by permission of the poet.