(cheerful piano music) - Welcome to "Stories From the Stage," produced by World Channel and GBH Boston in partnership with Tell & Act.

Today, two ordinary people share stories of unexpected connections.

I am Patricia Alvarado Nunez.

- And I'm Liz Cheng.

Patricia and I help create "Stories From the Stage."

Today's stories have twists and turns with many aha moments.

Just when you think you know it all, you're surprised.

CHATMAN: My name is Angie Chatman, and I'm originally from Chicago.

CHATMAN: But I live now in Watertown, Massachusetts, which is a town outside of Boston.

- Angie tells many stories.

One common theme she returns to again and again is race.

And it's no wonder.

If you're a person of color, chances are you've been defined by the dominant white world from birth.

It's the first and last thing people see about you and your experience with white America has often been negative.

Um, I grew up in the '60s and the '70s, and so that was the defining issue for my time growing up.

One of my uncles was the same age as Emmett Till.

And then... Chicago's so segregated, and...

It's just all those things, so it, it comes back to race.

- While realistic, Angie remains hopeful, open, and kind.

- Yes, and I love that she always finds a way to include her mom in her stories as a sort of salute or wink.

Here's Angie.

Remember the days when traveling was fun?

Before you could only carry three ounces of liquid in your carry-on?

Before you had to take your shoes off and put them in that gray plastic bin?

Before you had to hold your arms up in the diamond shape to be scanned, and pray that you didn't also have to be felt up by TSA agents?

(laughter) When I graduated from graduate school, I was really into flying, because I was finally making money and I had the company credit card.

(laughter) I volunteered for every necessary business trip I could.

"Does anybody want to staff a trade show in Las Vegas?"

"I do!"

"Angie, we need somebody to go talk to the client in Los Angeles."

"Okay, I'll go!"

"And how about a training session in the new software upgrade in Phoenix?"

"Yes, just tell me when."

The problem was, is that I was based in upstate New York.

And the good news is that I had to connect through Chicago's O'Hare Airport, because that's my hometown.

And pre-9/11, you can actually leave the airport in between layovers, and so I would leave, and my mother would drive up from the South Side and her home and pick me up, and we'd go out to breakfast for pancakes.

So I'm on my favorite flight one time, um, the red-eye from L.A. that leaves at 11:30 and gets into Chicago at 6:00 a.m. And I'm curled up under the blanket with my book, you know, just chilling with the overhead light, and the seatbelt light goes on, and the pilot comes on and says, "We expect turbulence."

And I'm, like, "No big deal," I've taken this flight before, but you know how you can smell somebody else's fear?

And it's not Chanel?

(laughter) That's what I was sensing from the woman next to me, and I look over, and she's a white girl, and she has a nice red ponytail, and she has freckles sprinkled all over her nose, and the reason why I could tell is because her face was so pale with fear.

And so I look over to her and I said, "Are you okay?"

And she says, "We're all gonna die, aren't we?"

(laughter) And I'm, like, "No, we're not gonna die."

And she looks back at me and she's, like, "How do you know?"

I said, "Because when we land safely, I'm meeting my mother for pancakes."

(laughter) And she laughed, too, and it gave me that warm feeling, like when you see a baby crying, and so you make funny faces till it stops.

(laughter) (laughs) So I go back to my book, and the plane bounces again.

And now she's gripping the armrest really, really tight and doing those deep breathing exercises.

(breathing deeply) So I put my hand over hers on the armrest and I say, "What's your name?"

And she says, "Amanda."

And I say, "Oh, Mandy," and she says, "It's Amanda!"

(laughter) I'm, like, "Okay-- Amanda.

Where are you from?"

"I'm from Appleton."

"Where is that?"

She says, "It's in Wisconsin."

I said, "I know it's in Wisconsin, but is that near Milwaukee or Madison?"

And she says, "It's up by Green Bay," and I said, "Oh, dear."

She's, like, "What?"

And I said, "I'm a Bears fan."

(laughter) And again I got that laugh, like the baby stopped crying.

And I'm, like, "This really feels good."

I go back to my book, though, but this time when the plane hits turbulence, it's so bad, I feel it.

And so what happens, instead of laying my hand on hers on the armrest, I actually intertwine my fingers with hers.

And I just continued to ask her inane questions to keep her talking.

And while she's doing that, I'm looking at our hands intertwined like a Benetton commercial for black and white unity and understanding.

(laughter) And I realize that I have never held hands with a white person before.

I grew up in the '60s and '70s, and so even though my school was not segregated, the nuns had us line up on opposite sides of the wall, and we were not allowed to touch.

And even though the Loving decision made interracial marriage legal across all 50 of our states, laws may change, but customs do not.

So I never had a white boyfriend walk me from the library to the dining hall in college.

I wonder if the same happened with Amanda.

But I didn't ask her.

Instead, I kept on the inane conversation until we landed safely.

And when we did, Amanda grabbed her carry-on from underneath the seat in front of her and ran down the aisle without even saying goodbye.

I took my time getting my carry-on out of the overhead compartment and I walked down the aisle, and then to the jetaway, and when I got out into the waiting area, there was Amanda, her hand outstretched.

And so I walked up to her and I shook it, and she said, "Thank you."

And I said, "Go Bears."

(laughter) And she said, "Always a Cheesehead."

(laughter) And we went our separate ways.

I don't know where Amanda went, I never saw her again.

I went to go get a stack of pancakes.

Thank you.

- Angie Chapman is a writer, editor, and an avid knitter.

- I knew that as a writer, I would need to pitch my stories if I wanted to get published.

But I was telling somebody else who had never told stories, it gets addictive.

And what gets addictive is not the telling so much but being in a crowd where everybody's listening to your every word.

It's such a rush.

- Liz, does the phrase Christian missionary bootcamp mean anything to you?

(laughs) - I love this story.

Believe me- you won't want to miss it.

It's coming right up.

DUNHAM: My name is Kelli Dunham, I live in Brooklyn, New York.

And I'm a nurse, and I work in the New York City public school system.

- Kelli grew up in rural Wisconsin where cows outnumber people.

Her words, not mine.

I mean, I have never been to Wisconsin.

- Me either.

And, Kelli's mother agrees to send her to a religious camp, where as it turns out, she does discover other teens just like her.

- Talk about unexpected connections.

Buckle up, it is going to be a bumpy ride.

When I was a teenager, and other folks my age were drinking wine coolers-- it was the '80s.

(laughter) And making out in the back of their friend's borrowed Camaro, I was going to church three times a week and asking complete strangers, "Um, excuse me, have you accepted Jesus Christ as your personal savior?"

I was a very fervent born-again Christian, which made my very fervent born-again Christian mom very happy.

But I was also, as you can see, a lifelong tomboy.

And that made my fervent born-again Christian mom... very sad, or... At the very least, super-worried.

I came home from school-- it was a spring day my sophomore year of high school-- and I found on the kitchen table a folded piece of paper.

My mom had written on it, "This looks like something you'd love!"

Exclamation point.

And I opened it up, and it was for the Lord's Boot Camp missionary training program.

And it was full of these smiling teenagers, and they were physically building churches and they were asking total strangers, "Excuse me, have you accepted Jesus Christ as your personal savior?"

And I thought... "This does sound like something I'd love."

(laughter) Once I'd made the decision to do it, I only had three months to raise the $1,200 that was the participation fee.

At first, that seemed really daunting, but then, somewhat inexplicably, all the adults at church really got behind me.

And they let me do a car wash on Sunday mornings, and sell popcorn after Wednesday night Bible study, and they even made me cookies to sell at a weekly bake sale.

In the brochure, it said that the Lord's Boot Camp was, quote, "No pamper camp."

(clicks mouth) When we arrived at the Lord's Boot Camp, we found that boy howdy, they were not kidding.

It was essentially an unchanged Florida wetland.

We slept in these tiny little tents that were so covered in mildew they looked like the side of, like, a Guernsey cow.

(laughter) We were supposed to clean up in this kind of swampy pond thing that they completely unironically called "God's bathtub."

(laughter) It was attached to a drainage ditch where two alligators lived.

(laughter) Now, when we asked our leaders about it, their response was, "Now, do you really think... "Do you really think that an alligator is gonna eat 500 teenagers?"

(laughter) I mean, I don't think any of us thought 500.

(laughter) But, isn't even one kind of a lot?

(laughter) Every morning at 5:00, we ran the Lord's Boot Camp obstacle training course.

And it was a bunch of biblically named physical challenges that our leader said would help us develop the personality characteristics that it would take to survive as a missionary.

The first obstacle was called the Children of Israel's Luggage.

(laughter) And it was a whole bunch of decommissioned wooden artillery boxes that were filled with sand, nailed shut, and then they had painted the name of a book of a Bible on the side of each box.

We approached them, they'd be all in a heap, and then somebody from your team would go, "Genesis!

Exodus!

Leviticus!

Numbers!"

And everyone would scramble to put them in the order found in the books of the Bible.

(laughter) The last obstacle was a series of six-foot walls that were painted with the names of sins that we would have to get over... (laughter) In order to serve Jesus.

(laughter) It went pride, gluttony, greed, and then the last wall was named "confusion."

So, the motto of the Lord's Boot Camp was, "Get dirty for God!

Go lay a brick!"

So, we learned lots of construction, as well.

(laughter) I learned how to hammer nails without hitting my thumb, and saw a straight line, and I learned how to tie rebar, and lay bricks, and mix cement by hand.

So, obviously, I was kind of having a great summer.

(laughter) I mean, it was a whole summer of being a tomboy.

Now, the only thing that I didn't super-love-- it just seemed kind of random-- was, every afternoon, they split us up by genders, and the boys went to a class called God's Gentlemen.

And, according to the boys, what they learned was mostly about how to attract a Christian spouse.

Mostly, that was choosing the right activities.

Like, sports were a good idea, and theater, not so much.

The girls' group was called From Grubby to Grace.

And it was mostly about being ladylike and grooming.

There was a whole section on makeup, and it started with a quote from the Lord's Boot Camp founder.

It said, "If the barn looks better painted, why not paint the barn?"

(laughter) So except for that kind of random and somewhat, I guess-- now that I think about it-- misogynistic... (laughter) afternoon class, I, I had a great summer.

And I returned home with this newfound zeal.

I also had a new haircut.

So I had a spiral perm that I tried to bleach blonde with actual bleach.

And after six weeks of washing it in swamp water, it was so matted, I couldn't even get a comb through it.

So one of my team members kindly offered to shave off everything but a little bit on top and on the sides.

But she left me with a four-inch rat tail in back, because it was the '80s and I looked great.

(laughter, applause) I also had all these newfound muscles from all our hard physical labor building God's kingdom.

So I dragged, as you can imagine, my extremely smelly backpack onto my mom's front porch, and I said, "Mom!

Don't I look like a new creature in Christ?"

And she said... (sniffles): "You look a lot the same."

And she had a little tear coming out of her eye, and I thought, "Oh, my God, that's so sweet, she really missed me."

I've been an out queer person for 20 years, and I've been telling this story socially to illustrate what it is to be a born-again Christian teenager.

I did not know until last summer, when I was Googling the Lord's Boot Camp-- I wanted to show my girlfriend a picture of the obstacle course-- I didn't know what you guys already probably have an idea.

So I haven't confronted my mom about this.

And it's not just 'cause she's 86 and she has realized that my tomboy swagger and my girlfriend are here to stay, even though that's true.

(applause) And the final reason I don't bring it up with my mom is because I spent an entire summer learning how to use power tools.

(applause) So the summer that was supposed to make me less of a lesbian just made me great at picking up other lesbians.

(cheering and laughing) Thank you.

(upbeat music) - Kelli Dunham is a standup comedian and a nominee for the 2015 White House Champions of Change during the Obama administration.

Thanks for listening to Stories From the Stage.

I am Patricia Alvarado Nunez.

- And I'm Liz Cheng.

In our next episode, a high school student triumphs over math after years of being shamed at the blackboard in front of her class.

Check out more of our memorable stories at worldchannel.org and consider sharing them with people you care about.

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