Hey, I'm Ellen from Jacksonville, Florida.

Hey, I'm Cody from Emory, Alberta.

I'm Eric from Nashville.

Both I with Dessie Thorn is produced independently and supported by listeners like you and me.

You should support the show like I did.

Just visit maximumfund.org slash donate.

I'm Jesse Thorn.

The comedian, Mosha Casher, wrote a book about his childhood.

The title basically says it all.

Casher in the Rye, the true tale of a white boy from Oakland who became a drug addict,

criminal, mental patient, and then turned 16.

Now, I don't think I need to tell you that Mosha was kind of a problem-child in school.

His mother was deaf and he was not ashamed to take advantage of that fact.

I would be called into a parent-teacher conference with my mom, of course,

as deaf so she needed some translation.

But the school system didn't think that there was a flaw in the plan of just asking the subject

of the parent-teacher conference to also translate the information to the parent,

who as if I didn't have a vested interest in not seeming like a huge jerk.

So they would say something, you can't just be like,

your son's great and we love him very much because there would be an obvious problem there.

So I would sort of shade it.

You know, they would say your son is becoming a severe behavioral problem and has been absent in

...