First

ERIN BARKER: I lived in terror that I too would one day be exposed as someone who has a period, like a billion other people in the world.

ALI AL ABDULLATIF: Unfortunately, like many of the teenagers before me, within the first few months of getting the car, I crashed it.

DYAN deNAPOLI: I had no idea how we were even supposed to do this.

This was the largest animal rescue ever attempted, and the pressure was tremendous.

WES HAZARD: Tonight's theme is: "First."

There's a first time for everything.

And quite often, those firsts can be gamechangers-- your first day of school, your first job, your first love, your first heartache, the first time you hold your child, and the first time that you lose a loved one.

If you've ever had these experiences, they are seared in your memory.

And tonight, our tellers will share their stories of their important firsts and, even more so, the lessons that they learned from them.

♪ deNAPOLI: My name is Dyan deNapoli.

I'm better known as The Penguin Lady.

I live on the North Shore of Boston and I am a penguin expert, an author, and a public speaker.

I'm just wondering, what are some facts that people might not know about penguins?

I think the number one fact is that they do have knees.

(laughing): So that's the number one question I get.

Do penguins have knees or not?

And they do.

And that most species are actually threatened or endangered and their populations are, are crashing precipitously.

What can a person do, like, you know, just at your... at home, what are steps that you can take?

Because climate change, global warming is the number one threat to penguins, I always say, you know, one of the best things you can do for penguins and the greater environment that they're living in is to determine your own carbon footprint.

So there's all these carbon footprint calculators online that you can go to and, and figure out, you know, how much carbon am I putting into the atmosphere.

If you want to do something more specific, I always say you can donate to one of these penguin rescue centers that are throughout the Southern Hemisphere.

Tonight, what would you hope that our viewers take away from the story that you're going to share with us?

That we don't really know what we're capable of until we're tested.

And that we all are actually capable of much more than we even know.

And also that it's never too late to pursue or achieve a dream.

♪ The first time I held a penguin in my arms, I instantly fell in love.

His name was Sanccob, and he was this tiny African penguin chick, and he was ridiculously adorable.

He was all belly and big feet, and he was covered in this soft, fluffy down, and he reminded me of my first pet-- a soft, fluffy bunny named Lilac.

I've always been a huge animal lover.

So when I first learned about endangered species as a kid, I was traumatized.

And I've always felt deep down that I was meant to help those animals somehow.

But I always wondered, what could I possibly do?

At 31, I went back to college to become a veterinary nurse and I met Sanccob during an internship at the New England Aquarium.

He was named after a rescue center in Cape Town South Africa that saves African penguins, which are now an endangered species.

Five years later, I'd be at that rescue center holding a wild African penguin in my arms.

Only this one would be covered with oil.

In June of 2000, a ship named Treasure sank near Cape Town and 20,000 African penguins were oiled.

In the blink of an eye, these birds were in a harrowing fight for their lives.

I was now penguin staff at the aquarium and a week later I was on a plane to Cape Town to help with the rescue.

And thousands of eager but completely inexperienced local volunteers also showed up to help us.

And nothing can ever really prepare you for walking into a massive warehouse filled with thousands of penguins that are coated in thick black oil and in a state of shock.

Penguins are normally loud, boisterous birds and they're constantly honking and braying and fighting each other.

But these penguins were standing statue still and they were completely silent.

It was a surreal and devastating scene.

And I quickly realized I'd have to shut down my emotions to get through this because it was just too painful to take in the suffering of so many animals.

At the end of our first day there, two of us were put in charge of running a huge room with more than 4,000 penguins in it.

It was the most terrifying moment of my life.

I had no idea how we were even supposed to do this.

This was the largest animal rescue ever attempted.

And the pressure was tremendous because the future survival of an entire species was literally at stake.

And in our hands.

What if penguins died because I screwed up?

Each day, we'd have to train and supervise more than 200 volunteers in our room alone and keep our 4,000 penguins alive until it was their turn to be washed.

For many birds, this could be a month-long wait.

Until then, every penguin had to be force fed every day, which could be hazardous.

First, we'd have to catch a penguin, but they were in these round pens, and so with no way to corner them, we'd end up chasing each other around the pens in circles like some Keystone Cops routine.

Once we finally did catch a penguin, we'd have to pry open their beak and shove several fish down their throats.

But they were fighting us and ripping our flesh with their razor-sharp beaks.

One of our volunteers was bitten completely through her lip by the penguin she was feeding.

Our grueling days ran from dawn to midnight and there wasn't even time to stop and eat.

The stress was intense, and relentless, and I didn't know we'd have PTSD afterwards.

Every morning after getting home, I would wake up and think that there were thousands of oiled penguins filling my apartment, and that I'd have to take care of them all by myself.

Or that for months afterwards, I would struggle to find any meaning or purpose in life.

Because compared to saving all those penguins, nothing seemed important.

Of those 4,000 penguins in our room, there's one penguin that still haunts me to this day.

One morning, a volunteer handed me this lifeless, emaciated penguin and begged me to bring it to the I.C.U.

I instantly knew this bird was way beyond saving, and the vets would just put it to sleep.

But in the chaos of running that room, it was several hours before I could finally break free long enough to bring the bird there.

I could have helped end its suffering sooner if I had just asked someone else to bring it to the I.C.U.

But in my frenzied state, that never even occurred to me.

And it brought back this very painful memory from my childhood that I had completely buried.

When I was 12, and my bunny Lilac was two, she got sick-- really sick.

And when we brought her to the vet, it was too late to save her, and she had to be put to sleep.

I was crushed and sobbed so hard I could barely breathe.

But my grief was mixed with guilt because I knew her death was really my fault.

You see, Lilac lived outside in a cage, and I hadn't been paying close enough attention to her.

And by the time I did notice she was sick, she was almost as lifeless as that penguin.

I may not have saved Lilac, or that penguin, but whenever I am feeling guilty about that one bird, I have to remind myself that we did save most of the penguins in our room.

And, thanks to an amazing army of volunteers, 90% of those 20,000 oiled penguins were saved.

It was the largest and most successful animal rescue in history.

And being a part of it was the greatest privilege of my life.

And on the flight back to Boston, the deeper personal significance of the rescue suddenly hit me.

I had just achieved my lifelong dream of doing something tangible to help save a species.

I was awestruck and deeply humbled.

And my next thought was, "If I die tomorrow, "I'll be okay with that because I feel as though I have just fulfilled my destiny."

♪ AL ABDULLATIF: My name is Ali Al Abdullatif.

I was born in Saudi Arabia and moved to Boston about 11 years ago.

Live in Somerville right now and I work in a pharmaceutical company.

And was storytelling a big part of your family life in general?

Like did the adults tell stories?

Is that like, you know, a tradition or...?

Yeah, so storytelling is a very big thing in Saudi Arabia, where stories are told by everyone constantly.

That's how we communicate.

Like wisdoms or lessons, it's just always come through stories.

But, I think my family specifically, we're really interested in, like, just telling ridiculous and fun stories to each other.

And it's kind of where I got like the understanding that stories can be real and deep but they can also be like just complete fabrications and funny and interesting.

I'm wondering, what keeps you hooked?

What keeps you interested in, in storytelling?

I think just that that moment when you're telling a story that you think is personal and vulnerable that no one else gets, and you're on stage, and you say something, and suddenly you feel the reaction back where people are like, "Yeah, no, that, that happened to me too and you're not alone."

No matter how weird you think your story might be, someone else has been there, too.

♪ When I was eight years old, I found my first set of dinosaur bones.

And, despite what my sisters might tell you, I'm still pretty sure they weren't just discarded chicken wings.

My siblings and I grew up in Saudi Arabia, a serious Middle Eastern setting filled with serious adults and staid realities.

But despite our surroundings, all five of us ended up being completely absurd individuals.

This was only possible because of the love and support of our parents.

My mother and father were also serious people.

Born the daughter of a cook and the son of a fisherman, they worked their way up, her becoming a successful pediatrician and him an electrical engineer in one of the biggest oil companies in the world.

They had to be serious, though, not only to survive in the world they came up in, but to thrive and create opportunities for their children that they never had.

But unlike many of the parents around them, they encouraged us to be the silliest versions of ourselves.

I remember a friend asking me growing up how I was able to crack a joke about my father in front of his face, something no Saudi son would ever do in front of their fathers.

And I just shrugged, saying, "If you can make him laugh, it's fair game."

Growing up we spent a lot of time driving to or from somewhere.

And in the back of our minivan we used to just entertain ourselves with the silliest games, sometimes speaking for hours only in hacky movie quotes.

Other times we'd sing the same lyric over and over and over again just to annoy each other.

We used to play this game similar to Punch Buggy, except we punch each other every time we saw an FJ, which is a very popular off-roading vehicle in the Middle East.

For those who don't know, an FJ looks like a jacked-up Mini Cooper, and we saw one every other block.

So that meant that car rides would often break into all-out wars with five kids jumping over seats trying to attack each other.

The only break in the chaos would be when someone started singing the lyrics to a song we all liked, and then suddenly we're all belting "Stand By Me" at the top of our lungs.

And then the next FJ would drive by.

Well, this might seem normal to some, it just wasn't how many of the kids around us came up.

But my parents just laughed and enjoyed the fact that we were just entertaining each other.

As long as the violence stayed at play, and the swears didn't contain any of the bad words, we were good.

Sometimes these long car rides would take us on incredible adventures.

We would go up to the mountains, which was my father's favorite destination.

There we all got to pretend to be Indiana Jones discovering ancient artifacts.

Every imprint in the dirt was left there by a dinosaur and every piece of trash left by a hiker must have been a relic from the ancient pharaohs.

One of my favorite moments is when my brother found a toothbrush half buried in the sand, and asked my father if it was a dinosaur's tooth brush.

He laughed about that for years, I think really enjoying the image of a T. Rex trying to brush its back teeth.

But as we grew older, my relationship with my father started to change.

As the elder son, there were responsibilities I was expected to meet, and the patriarchy had come to claim me.

I was expected to join him in being a serious person, something I never really got good at.

This meant standing in long bureaucratic lines, going to the weddings of people I barely knew, and learning outdoor skills when I was clearly an indoor kid.

I had to relate to older men who seemed immune to my charm and unamused by my wit.

But as my father started telling me about how I should be responsible, we started to take each other more seriously.

Slowly, we stopped going on adventures, and eventually, we stopped seeing our silly sides altogether.

Late night jokes about nothing ended up becoming long conversations about how to provide for my family and what would be expected of me after he passes.

The weight of these responsibilities became clear to me and I realized that even if I wasn't able to be a serious person, I'd have to pretend to be.

At 17, I was given the keys to my first car.

This was the first responsibility that was given to me that afforded me some sense of freedom.

The main purpose of the car was to run errands, and help my mother and sisters out wherever I could.

But when I was off duty, I got to break free.

Whether it was a long trip to the beach, or just a drive around the neighborhood with my best friend, I went on adventures again and I got to be silly.

But, unfortunately, like many of the teenagers before me, within the first few months of getting the car, I crashed it.

Panicked, I called my father, asking him what to do.

He asked me where I was and calmly showed up.

Seriously, he checked that I was doing okay, and went to the next driver to see the same.

When he realized we were both okay, he handed us each a bottle of water and called the insurance agency.

Because of the damage, we were asked to wait as someone came to assess it.

So we did-- quietly.

Neither of us spoke, me too ashamed to even look at him, just stoically staring out into the street.

I start to panic, thinking about how I was going to be punished.

I realized that this was the first responsibility, the first big responsibility, that was given to me, and I'd already blown it.

And suddenly I hear a screech and feel a thud to my side.

I turned and I realized my father just lightly punched me.

I look at him, and he smiles and goes, "FJ!"

And suddenly I feel a great sense of relief.

I see the man who raised me and I feel comforted, realizing that being serious and being silly were never meant to be mutually exclusive.

Archaeologists will tell you the first set of dinosaur fossils were found in Saudi Arabia in 2014.

But there's a toothbrush in my parents' basement that proves that my brother got there 15 years earlier.

♪ BARKER: My name is Erin Barker.

I'm originally from West Virginia and southern Ohio.

I live in New York City now with my husband and my dog Wally, and I'm the executive director of The Story Collider, which is a science storytelling nonprofit.

Can you tell us a little bit about Story Collider and how it started?

Yeah, Story Collider got started about 11 years ago now by myself and a couple of physicists.

And we had this idea that by, you know, sharing stories about science, we can connect people to science in a different way, in a more human way, in a more emotional way and show everybody that they have a voice in it and a role to play.

So you're obviously a very accomplished storyteller.

You know, you've kind of done it all.

I'm wondering what kind of stories are your favorite to tell?

I love to tell stories about my family, I think because they're such significant people to me.

I think they're hilarious.

(laughs) And it's, I think, the most meaningful stories I tell are the ones that are about them.

And sometimes it's tough because I can't bring full context of our relationships into any of these stories.

And I hate when somebody listening, you know, thinks of one of them as a villain or something like that.

Um...

I love my family.

We're super close.

So it's just really important to me that everyone knows that, and it's really special to me to have their support in telling these stories.

♪ My parents got divorced just as I was starting puberty, which is really adding insult to injury, if you ask me.

Especially because my mom moved out and was working overseas, and she was the only person in my family who understood even remotely how periods worked.

My little brother and my dad certainly did not.

The three of us were very close.

We spent every weekend practically playing baseball, and tennis, and stuff like that, but this was not their department.

My dad was raised Southern Baptist in the 1950s in West Virginia.

And so anything related to menstruation, or really reproduction in general, was terrifying to him.

He was always really good about going to the store to buy pads for me, but he would often return with one of everything they had and this wild look in his eye like he'd been through this perilous ordeal.

And I don't blame him.

I was scared too.

My favorite section of Seventeen magazine was the part in the back where girls would write in their stories of embarrassing things that happened to them.

It was called "Traumarama."

Almost exclusively these stories were about the author being publicly exposed as a menstruater and the resulting shock and disgust that inevitably followed such a hideous revelation.

I lived in terror that I too would one day be exposed as someone who has a period, like a billion other people in the world.

And it was starting to feel like this fear was maybe not unfounded.

Recently, some idiot on the PTA had decided that our class t-shirts that year would be white.

So every week on spirit day, you could tell exactly which of us 12-year-old girls was wearing a bra and which of us wasn't.

I was in the unfortunate latter camp, which was mocked mercilessly.

So I knew that I had to ask my dad to take me bra shopping.

There were no other alternatives.

We both knew this would be excruciating, but we also both knew it was unavoidable.

I wasn't going to go into reverse puberty anytime soon.

So we went to Kohl's, and my dad didn't seem to know what to do with himself while I shopped.

At first he followed me into the juniors lingerie section, then seemed to decide that wasn't a good idea, and then he just sort of lurked on the periphery, which honestly wasn't much of an improvement.

I was trying to hurry, but I had no idea what I was doing.

I had no idea what any of the sizes meant.

So by the time we got up to the register, I think we were both a little bit flustered.

I could tell because the cashier, as she rung up my training bras, turned to my dad and said in an incredibly misguided attempt to defuse the tension, "They grow up so fast, don't they?"

I have never wanted to disappear from the earth as much as I did in that moment.

And, judging by the silent curt swipe of my dad's credit card, I think he felt the same way.

Every year my family goes on vacation to Myrtle Beach, like all West Virginians.

And this year my dad decided that we would still go, even without Mom, and that we would have just as much fun, if not more fun.

I was 12 years old and didn't quite understand yet the complexities of adult relationships.

But I still had a feeling that my dad's determination had something to do with the fact that my mom had just moved back to town with her new husband and her new baby.

Dad needed a win.

And we all wanted this win for him.

So we embarked on our trip down to Myrtle Beach and everything was going great so far.

We were playing "I spy," we were listening to the Beach Boys, we were getting hyped.

Dad had shaved off his mustache into his casual vacation look.

Everything was going great.

And then that first morning I woke up in the hotel room and I had my period.

And here's the thing-- no matter how many times I carefully reviewed the instructions on the side of the box, I couldn't figure out how to work the damn things.

It just seemed impossible to me that people were able to use them in the manner described on the side of the box.

It didn't make any sense.

So, needless to say, there was no way I could go down to the beach in a swimsuit.

Not without risking a potential "Traumarama" moment.

So I went over to my dad and I said, "Dad, I can't go to the beach.

I have my period."

And he says kind of uncertainly, like he's not quite sure he has it right, "Isn't that what the tampon kind of are for?"

And I said, "Well, yes, but I don't know how to use those."

And he looks at me and he says, "What do you mean you don't know how to use those?"

And I said, "I don't know, I can't figure it out!"

And, he just stares at me until finally he says, fine, he and my brother will go down to the beach by themselves.

I can stay in the hotel room alone.

And he leaves and I can tell that he's hurt.

I can tell that he doesn't quite believe me.

I can tell that I am ruining what is supposed to be the best vacation ever.

But I'm so mad.

After they leave I just stomp around the hotel room for a while.

I'm mad at my mom for not being there.

I'm mad at my dad for not being my mom, for not understanding.

I'm mad at my body for having the audacity to mature at such an inconvenient time.

I try to entertain myself for a while by watching a show hosted by Mario Lopez.

I think "I can't possibly spend the whole day like this."

So I come up with a plan because there has to be some way I can still go down to the beach.

There has to be some way that I can still be a part of this vacation.

So I decide I'm gonna put a pad on the inside of my swimsuit, and wear jean shorts over top, and it's genius, nobody will ever know.

So I go down to the beach, and I find my dad and my brother, and they're so excited to see me.

And right away it's just like old times.

We're burying each other in the sand, we... then we take the raft out on the ocean and we ride on the waves.

And then this big wave comes and crashes over us and submerges the raft.

We all kind of resurface, laughing.

I look out over the ocean, and that's when I see it, bobbing on the waves, drifting just out of reach-- my pad.

And I watch it wind around couples, and families, and girls who go like this and say, "Ew!"

And I realize this is my "Traumarama" moment.

I should be penning my letter to Seventeen right now.

But then I hear my dad and my brother calling me back to the raft.

They're oblivious to all of this.

And I look back and suddenly I don't feel so mortified.

I didn't figure out how to use a tampon until I was in college.

I didn't even know my correct bra size until last year.

But when I was 12 years old, I had a really damn good vacation.

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