811: The One Place I Can’t Go

This American Life

Society & Culture, News, Politics, Arts

4.6 • 88.8K Ratings

🗓️ 1 October 2023

⏱️ 58 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Spots we’re avoiding in our private maps of the world.

Prologue: Guest host Bim Adewunmi talks to her cousin Kamyl about a funny thing Kamyl did when she was small, regarding a dog named Foxy. (4 minutes)
Act One: Comedian Atsuko Okatsuka moved suddenly from Japan to the U.S. when she was eight years old, and has long joked that it was because her grandmother kidnapped her from her dad. But she'd never talked to anyone in her family about what had actually happened. (31 minutes)
Act Two: Producer Emmanuel Dzotsi has a tale about something he avoids at all costs, even though it seems to follow him everywhere he goes. (8 minutes)
Act Three: Writer Tamsyn Muir spent her childhood craving a world that she could not find on earth. So as an adult, she just created it. And it was perfect. Until she became the one person who couldn't go there. (12 minutes)

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Transcript

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0:00.0	From W.B. Easy Chicago, it's this American life. I'm Bimari Wunmi in for Ira Glass.
0:07.2	My younger cousin Camille is not really a dog person, but there is one dog she adored.
0:13.0	Her name was Foxy, because she looked exactly like a fox, except she was black. She was
0:18.3	the neighbor's dog, but she and Camille seem to have a real kinship, maybe because they
0:22.8	both weren't very far from the ground. Camille was around four or five years old back
0:28.0	in. She had a little lisp, so Foxy came out as Boshy. I thought it was one of the cutest
0:34.0	things I'd ever heard. The way Camille remembers Foxy, it's almost like a movie. Her memories
0:40.4	feel like endless summer, hazy and perfect, like a scene shot on Crackly Film.
0:45.5	I just remember the feeling of being excited to go and see Foxy. I haven't imagined my
0:51.6	head of coming to the house, and I could see Foxy was outside. I can see Foxy through
0:59.4	the door, at least to the garden. There's a story about Camille and Foxy that I think
1:04.5	about fairly often. I've talked about it with my sister for years, but never with Camille.
1:10.1	And it's this. Once when they were playing, Foxy nipped at Camille. Nothing serious, just
1:16.0	an excited kid playing with an excited dog. One minute they were playing half under the
1:20.6	coffee table in the middle of the room, and the next they weren't. There was no need
1:25.1	to go to the hospital or anything, but it was enough to startle Camille and to make her
1:29.1	cry. But it's what happened after that I think about the most. The day after Foxy nipped
1:35.3	her, Camille went right back to playing with the dog. But she would not go back to the
1:40.2	place where the nip happened. If her feet unthinkingly moved her towards the coffee table, she'd
1:46.1	redirect, she'd swerve her little body around it. Instead of avoiding the dog, she steered
1:52.2	clear of the place. When I brought this up to Camille, she had no memory of doing it.
1:58.4	Did anybody try, did they like test me? Yes, they like put a tree in that area and I just
	...

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