Ira Glass
Act 3, It's Gesture Imagination. More than anybody on our staff, maybe more than anybody I've ever met, actually, one of our producers, Elna Baker, really, truly believed in the power of grand gestures. It was this kind of magical thinking that lasted well into adulthood for her, into her late 20s.
Elna Baker
I believed that it was the surest way to show someone you love them or to win love.
Ira Glass
And a grand gesture could be, like, what?
Elna Baker
A declaration of love, like a speech, but in a very public manner. A giant cardboard sign. Showing someone that you especially knew them through a very special gift.
Ira Glass
Elna grew up Mormon. And talking to her about how she loves grand gestures made me think of those kids from Payson High School. Remember them? We started today's program with them. Lots of those kids are Mormon. And the way they ask each other to dances at that school happens all over Utah. And it occurred to me, is there something about being young and Mormon and grand gestures that go together?
And this isn't something you could prove one way or another, but just to say it, you have these kids who are forbidden to drink or have sex. Maybe that's one reason that their feelings for each other play out with these elaborate schemes, right? And that made sense to Elna.
Elna Baker
Yeah. No, I definitely-- once I started having sex, I stopped doing grand gestures. Because I was like, oh, turns out you can just-- [MUMBLING] You know? You could just have sex with someone.
Ira Glass
That made it weird dirtier, the way you just said that.
[CHUCKLING]
Elna Baker
OK.
Ira Glass
OK.
Elna Baker
And I grew up on grand-- like my parents, the way my parents got together was-- I grew up on stories of grand gestures.
Ira Glass
Oh, is that true?
Elna Baker
Yeah.
Ira Glass
Like what?
Elna Baker
My dad and mom dated for about two and a half weeks. And my dad went to the Mormon temple, and he was just praying to see if he should date this woman. And he said that he heard the voices of his future children, like me and my brothers and sisters, and we were like, hurry, go, do it. Like, we want to be born.
Ira Glass
Really?
Elna Baker
Yeah. And he rushed out of the temple, went and found my mom, knocked on her door, brought her outside of her dorm. And in front of the dorm, there was a rock, like a big rock. And he made her stand on top of the rock. And then he knelt down and said, "Will you marry me?" And she said yes.
They'd been dating for two and a half weeks. They've known each other for four weeks. And my parents actually are very in love, and very happily married. And so I believed that love was like hearing a voice that basically told you this was right. And then you would do anything for that voice.
Ira Glass
And that's the attitude towards love Elna carried into adulthood. When she would talk to our friends about their romantic lives and situations, at some point, Elna would tell them, OK, here's what you have to do. You have to go big. And she'd give advice that, today, she thinks was totally wrong headed. Up until her 20s, she had no experience in love, had never had a real adult relationship, was completely naive about all of it.
But she still cheerfully jumped in with her advice. She encouraged her friend Nick to move to New York City to prove his love for a woman who had broken up with him and did not want his love. She convinced your friend Allie to give a guy that she'd just started seeing this giant birthday crown, homemade with fur and feathers and a star with his picture that kind of jumped off the crown. He never went out with Allie again.
When Elna's friend Louise regretted breaking up with her boyfriend, Gabe, and decided she wanted Gabe back, Elna suggested a gift. She remembered that a couple months before they had found this vintage 1970s-era McDonald's uniform in his exact size. And he'd had all these stories of working at McDonald's in high school. So Louise bought this thing for him, to give as a present on Halloween, but never gave it to him.
Elna Baker
So he got it from the closet, and I was like, what you have to do is go over to his apartment and leave it at his door. He'll get it. He'll know that you get him, and you love him.
Ira Glass
Now, when you suggested this to her, what was her attitude about it?
Elna Baker
That's a terrible idea. She was very, very resistant. But then this thing happens when you're with me, apparently, where I just got her all spun up into the idea.
Ira Glass
Your air of confidence drew her in.
Elna Baker
Totally. It's like I put her in a box and shook the box, and then-- or when a kid is going to play pinata, and you turn them around and then push them in the direction--
Ira Glass
Of the pinata. That's what you did to her.
Elna Baker
That's what I did to her, where she eventually just started getting excited about the gesture itself.
Ira Glass
Which is key. It became about the bold thing that they were doing, versus how Gabe would feel. And it worked out about as well as you would expect. Louise left the box with the gift for Gabe, with no note-- just left it in his building.
Elna Baker
And so they met up and had this huge blow out fight, where she was like, how come you didn't thank me for the gift? And he was just like, you totally broke my heart. You crushed me. And it actually is offensive that you think that this gift could just instantly make up for all of that.
Ira Glass
Were you surprised?
Elna Baker
Shocked. I was waiting like a puppy at the door for her to come in and tell me, thank me.
Ira Glass
Yeah.
Elna Baker
And she walked in, and she was crying, and totally devastated, heartbroken.
Ira Glass
Elna didn't just organize these kinds of schemes for other people. She did them herself. Like, one time, she was taking tickets as a page for The Letterman Show and met this random guy.
Elna Baker
He was in line to see the show, and we talked very briefly. And I thought I heard a voice that said, "This is who you are meant to be with."
Ira Glass
She knew, of course, from her parents to trust that voice. So she gave this guy her number and dated him for a month and a half, and it went nowhere. Then, two years later, still hung up on this guy, who'd moved to Zambia, she wrote him an email.
Elna Baker
Which I have here. Do you want me to read the email I wrote?
Ira Glass
Totally.
Elna Baker
All right. "I don't know if you're still in Zambia, but my girlfriends and I are going to South Africa in the spring to visit some family friends of mine. I'm not sure how far Zambia is from South Africa, but if it's close, I'd love to come up and say hi. It'd be fun to see you. It's been a while. I hope you're well. X, Elna."
But OK, I did not have a trip to Africa planned.
Ira Glass
Do you have some sort of friends in South Africa?
Elna Baker
No, made that up entirely.
Ira Glass
And then "I don't know if Zambia is near South Africa." Did you actually look on a map?
Elna Baker
Yeah.
Ira Glass
Yeah, OK.
Elna Baker
But that's why I chose South Africa.
Ira Glass
She roped two girlfriends into this trip, spent all her money, thousands of dollars on plane tickets. They stayed at this guy's little studio apartment, and on the very first night of a 10 day visit, she snuck over to his sleeping bag, woke him up, and tried to kiss him.
Elna Baker
And he said, I think this is a bad idea.
Ira Glass
And so what were the next nine days like?
Elna Baker
Really uncomfortable. Yeah.
Ira Glass
And then there was the time that Elna tried to drag her friend Heather into pursuing a guy with one of these capers. Heather was one of the friends that Elna took on that trip to Africa. She was a page at The Letterman Show. And Elna would sometimes ask her--
Elna Baker
Who do you like? Or tell me about your relationships. And she was always really vague about it. And she would just say that she'd been in love before, but it just hadn't worked out.
And so I kept fishing for details. Eventually, after a few months, I got out that they were college sweethearts. They'd been together about five years. And it just hadn't worked out.
And so I kept trying to strategize. I was like, OK, well, we gotta-- if you still love him, we're going to make this work out. What can we do to show him how you feel?
Ira Glass
What did you suggest that she might do?
Elna Baker
Well, I asked well, when are you planning a trip home? Can you see him? No, I can't see him. Well, why not?
And then after, maybe six, seven months of this, one day she said, "Look, I feel really bad for not having told you this, but the reason it didn't work out is that he died in a forest fire." And yeah, and they were planning on getting married. He was her whole life, her whole future. She imagined having kids with him.
Although I will say in retrospect, I was like a goldfish. I blinked my eyes, and I was like, well? Like, I took the information, and I was like, well, have you liked anyone since?
[CHUCKLING]
Ira Glass
Very sensitive.
Elna Baker
Yeah, I asked her if, in the time since-- which I think had been about two years.
Ira Glass
And the answer was yes, one guy. It was before she moved to New York. She was working at a little puddle jumper airport in Idaho, and was checking in this guy for a flight. And they started talking, had this really nice talk for 45 minutes.
Elna Baker
When he was on the airplane, she looked up the roster, found his name, and found that in a week, he was going be flying back through the same airport. So she changed her schedule, made sure she was working at that time, got all dressed up, waited a whole day. He didn't fly through. That was it.
And so she finishes the story, and I was like, this is the worst story I've ever heard. That was it?
Ira Glass
This is the most tragic. Right, because it seemed like true love to you?
Elna Baker
Oh, yeah.
Ira Glass
Because, just to review, you hadn't been in love yourself yet?
Elna Baker
Yeah, but I'd been in love at a glance.
[CHUCKLING]
Ira Glass
That's as far as you had gone.
Elna Baker
Yeah, and it feels-- ah.
Ira Glass
And then Heather admitted she'd googled the guy, found that he worked at a river guiding company. He was in a picture on their website. And every now and then, she would look at the picture. And Elna, of course, was like, great. You know his name. You know where he works. Time to act. Heather responded in the way I think most rational people would.
Elna Baker
She was like, this dude does not remember me. Like, I'm sure this dude doesn't remember me. It had been like a year and a half since they'd spoken once for 45 minutes. And I was like, well, you never know unless you try. And so I kept at her for, I think, like four months or so, I just kept being like, just write the letter, write the letter.
Ira Glass
Then one day, Heather was visiting Elna's apartment, and Elna pulled out a box of fancy stationery.
Elna Baker
And I was like, OK, I know we're not going to send this letter, but if we did send it, what would we say? And so I gave her--
Ira Glass
So sly.
[CHUCKLING]
And did she see through your clever stratagem?
Elna Baker
Well, she played along.
Ira Glass
Then Heather was like, how do you get over the problem that I'm writing a letter to this guy a year and a half after we met each other totally out of the blue? Well, here's the letter Elna wrote.
Elna Baker
"Hey, um, you probably don't remember me. We met at the airport. And I made a misstep, missed the opportunity to connect with you then, and it just so happened a year and a half later my younger brother is thinking of being a river guide. And we were looking on sites of river guides, and I came across this picture. And I was like, wait, how do I know that guy?
Well, I saw him at an airport a year and a half ago. And I thought, wow. I missed that chance then. Let me write him a letter now. So I just wanted to say hello, and you know, here's my email if you ever want to connect."
The part that was a lie was her brother wasn't interested in being a river guide.
Ira Glass
Also, of course, the whole rest of it, stumbling across this picture accidentally, the whole thing. Over the next few months, they drafted and redrafted this letter. And it was like a game. They would show it to people. They would get edits and suggestions.
Then one day, Heather calls Elna and tells her she sent the letter. And really, for the first time, Elna realized, oh wait, maybe this is a bad idea.
Elna Baker
I don't know. It hit me in that moment that sending the letter would mean that Heather was going to get hurt. And I felt really nervous.
Ira Glass
Yeah. Because every other time you've tried this, it's failed.
Elna Baker
Exactly.
Ira Glass
And suddenly you realize, oh, she's going to be hurt, and she was feeling OK, and now I got her hopes up.
Elna Baker
Yep.
Ira Glass
And she's going to feel bad, and it's my fault.
Elna Baker
Exactly. Yeah, but then at the same time, I also felt proud of her. Because this was the first-- I felt like she put her heart out again. I guess the consolation in that moment was, this probably isn't going to work out, but she showed the universe, or whatever, that she's willing to try again.
Ira Glass
Well, she showed herself that she's willing to try again after all the sadness that she'd had with her boyfriend. So does she end up getting a boyfriend after that?
Elna Baker
Well, so two weeks later the guy who got the letter wrote back.
Ira Glass
Mhm.
Elna Baker
And it was actually pretty short and friendly. He remembered meeting her, and she left an impression on him too. And they started dating. And they dated for seven years, and now they're married.
Ira Glass
What?
Elna Baker
Mhm.
Ira Glass
Wait, that's the end of the story?
Elna Baker
Yeah, they actually got together.
Ira Glass
What?
Elna Baker
I know. I gave a toast at their wedding, where I told this story of writing the letter. It's kind of the most magical thing that I've ever helped facilitate.
Ira Glass
OK, so that worked with her. Do you think these kinds of things are a good idea?
Elna Baker
Grand gestures?
Ira Glass
Yeah.
Elna Baker
No, not anymore. And actually, I think it worked--
Ira Glass
Wait, wait, I'm confused now. Why are they a bad idea?
Elna Baker
It seems false. It's not really how you show someone you love them in the way I thought it was. I feel like it has more to do with you than the other person.
Ira Glass
She actually hasn't done this stuff now in almost a decade, doesn't miss it. And when she looks back on it, she thinks she was doing those big gestures because she was so unsure of herself.
Elna Baker
I was afraid that they wouldn't like me, if I just was like, hey, I'm interested in you. This is who I am. I thought maybe you like construction paper, and giant signs, and hot glue gun art.
Ira Glass
Uh-huh.
Elna Baker
And if I'd show you all of that and I'm standing behind it, then if I'm not enough, at least you'll like that, and you'll say yes.
Ira Glass
It's scary being real with another person. And there are so many ways to avoid it. This is just a particularly splashy one.
Our program was produced today by Miki Meek. Other staff, Susan Burton, Zoe Chace, Dana Chivvis, Sean Cole, Neil Drumming, Karen Duffin, Stephanie Foo, Chana Joffe-Walt, David Kestenbaum, Seth Lind, Jonathan Menjivar, Robyn Semien, Matt Tierney, Nancy Updike, and Diane Wu. Research help today from Christopher Swetala and Michelle Harris. Music help from Damien Graf.
Students Ivan Webber, Ezri Staheli, and Max Bennion helped with reporting at Payson High School. Thanks to them. Special thanks today to Jesse Sorenson, Clint Peery, Kurt Braunohler, Lauren Cook, Robin Moore, Enrique Lamadrid, Key West Ghost & Mysteries Tour, Clinton Curry at Ghosts & Gravestones, the Diaz-Ayala Collection at Florida International University, and Heather Wright.
Our website-- thisamericanlife.org. This American Life is delivered to public radio stations by PRX, the Public Radio Exchange. Thanks as always to our program's co-founder, Mr. Torey Malatia, who has been wiretapping former National Security Adviser Mike Flynn's telephone for months now, and finally today is releasing the audio to the public. We have a clip.
[SPEAKING GIBBERISH]
Michael Flynn
Just shout random words.
[SPEAKING GIBBERISH]
Ira Glass
I'm Ira Glass, back next week with more stories of This American Life.
