From PRX, this is the Moth Radio Hour, I'm Jennifer Hickson. In this hour, we're sharing

stories about situations where things are not as they seem. From purposeful deception,

to just coming to terms with who you are versus who you thought you were. We found our

first storyteller, Phil Branch, at our Story Slam in Washington DC. Here's a story he

developed for a show in Boston where we partnered with Public Radio Station WGVH. Here's Phil Branch.

So my senior year in high school, I am your average, all American teenage boy, interested

in average, all American teenage boy things, like having a cool car and taking a hot

date to the prom and designing my date's prom dress. My senior year, I'm 5'6", 129 pounds,

and this might be surprising, but I could not catch and or dribble a ball of any sort.

So the fact that I had a date at all was a miracle. My girlfriend's name was Dana and

she was the most beautiful girl that I had ever seen. And we were together most of senior

year and as we got closer to senior prom, we began planning. And when I say we began

planning, what I really mean is that I began to sketch what we were going to wear to the

prom. Prom was a big deal in my family and my parents went to the prom together and

several of my aunts and uncles went to the prom together and all those pictures were

up on the family wall. And I knew it was my turn and nothing could go wrong. And one

day I was at home watching music videos and there's this artist named Christopher Williams

who was really popular at the time. And he was this tall, gorgeous man with this great

curly hair and it was this music video called Promises Promises and he's wearing this

white, navy collar suit and he just looks so regal and strong and I look up at him with

my 129 pound self and say I'm going to look like that for prom. So I began sketching this

suit. Now I'm not going to completely rip off Christopher's style because you can't

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