9.4 … 9.5 … 7.0
I had no expectations of winning. Well, not until the first two scores. 9.5 is a really good score on a 10 point scale.
Then, I met the harsh reality of audience.
You can’t please all the people all the time, but … I still try. Who is in the audience? What do they want to hear? In this case, I missed the mark by one third.
The Moth organizes Story Slams for “True Stories Told Live” on the theme of the evening. The open-mic storytelling competition allows 5-minute true personal stories to be told on the stage for a group of judges chosen from the audience. This evening’s theme, “I got it from Mama,” honors Mother’s Day as this was May 21, 2026, at the Sandrell Rivers Theater in Miami.
The marketing helps stimulate story ideas: “The prompt invites a wide range of interpretations, from family recipes and inherited humor to generational patterns, hard-won advice, distinctive features and the complicated wisdom passed down through mothers and matriarchs.”
When you decide to put your name in the hat, there is anxiety and this strange mixed feeling of wanting to be called but not wanting to be called. After the first name was pulled, a young woman that looked about twenty gets on stage and says, “I just told my partner that if my name is called, I think I’m going to throw up.” She didn’t, but she was nervous. “I’m sorry, I’m forgetting my train of thought,” she confided to us in the second part of the story. The audience rallied, “You got this,” someone yelled, and there was a huge applause. She collected her thoughts, and “stuck the landing” as they say in gymnastics with a beautiful last line.
I’ve found that I’m always nervous, but “exposure therapy” over multiple events has taught me that, even though it feels like it–I’m not going to die. At some point the inspiration to tell the story is stronger than the anxiety–if you have a story to tell, organize it, practice it, and then put your name in the hat and wait. The worse part is the wait.
The third teller announced, “I’m going to tell a story that you might have heard about the mental illness that I got from my mom,” which prompted an announcement by the organizer during the intermission to please tells new stories not yet told at this monthly venue. A middle-aged gentleman told a moving story about how his mother was his biggest advocate and taught him to do the same for others in his life as a park ranger advocating for the planet. Although not yet tabulated, the scores are written down on a flipboard on the stage, he was in the lead at the intermission. Only 10 tellers are drawn, so after 5 tellers we take a break with the encouragement to visit the bar for some “liquid courage.” Gabby, the emcee, kept things lively and fun, “if you’re going to tell a story though, I suggest you keep it to one drink.” She wore a sparkly short dress bedazzled with an image of the Beetles because her mother had been in a Beetles cover band.
Before the event started, little snippets of paper were passed out in the lobby with questions on the theme. The emcee used the snippets of stories and sometimes her own snippets in between the storytellers to give time for each of the 3 pairs of judges to come up with their score.
She read one of the slips: When was a time that you did something that your mother told you not to do? “I turned left at a no-left turn. The police agreed with my mother. Bad idea!” There was no name, no one knew that I had written it, but I got a laugh, so that felt good.
In the second half, the winner told a story about how her mother inspired her to be a nurse, which she has done now for 41 years, and how she helped a pregnant 15-year-old girl talk to her parents, encouraged men to talk to their doctors to get the care that they needed, and gave us more specific scenes of how she helped others in her career. I was inspired by how those little moments can make us who we are.
And now final story of the evening… Joel Ying.
I had just been thinking that it would be nice to just go home having listened to stories. The voices in my head said, “Oh, sugar” (maybe it was a different word) and a slightly less enthusiastic, “Yay.”
I told a story about my mother taking me and my brother to the public library every Saturday when we were young. She inspired a love of libraries, books, and learning. My academic degrees—I got them from my mama.
9.4 … 9.5 … 7.0
I have no idea why the disparity in judging. These are not professional judges, just audience members. Unfortunately, no feedback is given. I can only speculate. My mind has gone there, but I’ve pulled it back from the abyss to say, “Well, better luck next time.” Someone came up and said, “You were robbed.” They helped the ease the unspoken discomfort. Others told me how they appreciated my story and love the public library, and so I’m back to my reason for telling stories:
My stories have touched people today and connected us into a community.