From PRX, this is the Moth Radio Hour. I'm Meg Bulls and in this hour we'll hear four

stories told live on stage of moth events around the US. True stories told without notes

about real, sometimes surprising events. If 2020 taught us anything, it's that life

as we know it can change on a dime. The stories in this hour all deal with moments that

caught people off guard. Some moments are a test of will while others can throw a person's

life completely off course. Our first storyteller is Aaron Pang. He shared his story at a

main stage presented by WGBH in Boston. From the Wilbur Theatre, here's Aaron Pang, live

at the Moth. So I'm commuting home from work and when I walk into BART, San Francisco's subway

system, I'm instantly annoyed because I walk with a cane and I wear leg braces and I notice

that the elevators and escalators are out of service, which means that after sitting

on my butt in my office for eight hours, I have to start off my commute by walking down

three flights of stairs down to the platform. And there's nothing I can do, that's the

only option. So I walk up to the mouth of the stairwell and I take a deep breath and

I pull my hands on the inevitably sticky hand rail and I begin my descent. Whenever I'm

walking downstairs, I have to stay relatively focused. I have to stay focused and so I

don't notice immediately. But about seven or eight steps down, I realize that nobody

is passing me. Even though it's peak commute hours and there's so many people in the

station and the stairwell is actually wide enough for two people to walk side by side. And

so I pause and I turn around and I see all of these people behind me walking at my pace.

And this woman at the front, she looks to me and she gives me this little fist pump and

she winks and she says, honey, you got this. And I realize they're not passing me because

they're trying to be considerate. They're trying to give me space. But what they don't

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