Act Four. Learning to Shut Up.

https://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/220/testosterone?act=4

Ira GlassAct Four, Learning to Shut Up. We thought we would end today's program as we began, with the story of a 15-year-old boy. We have this story about one with his mom's questions about his maleness as his body floods with adolescent hormones. His mom, Miriam Toews, tells the story.

Miriam ToewsFirst off, his hair is red and shaggy and longish, and he's pale and slim and six feet tall. Music is everything to him, which makes sense because he's 15. I was 22 when he was born. I'd never had brothers, or any close male relatives, and I'd always dreamed of having a brother or a son. The idea of having a boy in my family was strange and exotic.

When he was born, it was like I had given birth to a llama or something. All my girlfriends came to visit me and him in the hospital. And I took them down to the second floor nursery, and we stared at him in awe from behind a glass window.

"That's him," I said, "with the orange fuzz on his head." He was lying naked and spread-eagled under a bright heat lamp. He seemed very content.

My friend Carol gasped and said, "Oh my God. He's got the biggest balls I've ever seen in my life." We all started laughing our heads off. And then the nurse came and told us his scrotum would shrink to normal size in a few days. I haven't seen him naked in years. But it still often feels, when I look at him, that I'm gazing at an odd creature from behind a glass.

Miriam ToewsSo do you think about girls?

Owen ToewsYes.

Miriam ToewsAnd what do you think about them?

Owen ToewsI don't know. Some of them are cool.

Miriam ToewsSo what makes them cool?

Owen ToewsI don't know.

Miriam ToewsAll his life, Owen's been a quiet kid, not sullen, but just rather silent. When he was a baby, and I'd be pushing him around in his stroller, people would stop and crouch down and talk to him and expect him to laugh and smile. And all he'd do was sigh and stare at them.

When he got a little older and went over to his friends places to play, and it was time for him to go home, he just got up and walked right out the door to the car. He didn't say, "Hey, thanks for having me," or "Next time, we'll play at my place," or even "Goodbye." We'd be driving home, and I'd be trying to explain to him that it seemed rude and that sometimes we just had to say certain things at certain times. It was polite and expected. He'd just sigh and nod, and kick the dash, or stick his head entirely out the window.

But back then, I could kind of figure out what was going on in his head even if he didn't come right out and say it. Like, when he was three and he didn't want me to go out, instead of grabbing my leg or having a tantrum or something, he'd hide my shoes, and then sit on the couch, pretending to read the newspaper while I searched all over the place.

When he was eight, and angry, and sitting in a tree, and throwing stones at the car or something, I'd go outside, knowing it would be a matter of minutes before he'd start to cry and then slowly spill his guts about whatever series of events it was that led to his meltdown. And that the whole scene would end with hugs and apologies and probably a large-muscle activity, like him cheerfully taking shots at my head with a soccer ball.

Now, though, the signs are harder, if not impossible, to read. I'm not sure there are any actually. And I have no idea where to begin my search.

Miriam ToewsWhat do you think girls think about you when they think about you?

Owen ToewsI don't know, nothing.

Miriam ToewsYou think no girl ever thinks anything about you?

Owen ToewsMaybe. I don't know.

Miriam ToewsHe brought 85 CDs with him for a family road trip that would last 11 days. He also brought his sketchbook, which started out as an art class project and has since evolved into a kind of diary, I think. He tends to write things down like, "Jesus, I got to find someone irrational," or, "The [BLEEP] I'm passing off as writing is slowly killing me."

The first day of our road trip, through North Dakota to South, the music wars started. His 12-year-old sister, Georgia, claimed the very back seat of the minivan, and was content to lie there, surrounded by nail polish and beads and thread and Hershey Kisses and Archie comics, and listen to her music on her Discman, mostly R&B stuff, Destiny's Child and the Save the Last Dance soundtrack. My husband, Cassidy, and I sat in the front. And Owen sat on the

seat right behind us, so he could listen to his CDs on the stereo. We'd tell him to listen to them on his Discman, which he did sometimes, but then he'd miss out on our sporadic conversations, which he enjoyed either participating in or mocking.

Sometimes, he'd give us a choice of his CDs to play. "Nirvana?" he'd say. "You guys like Nirvana, right?" "Yeah, but the unplugged one," we'd say. "Oh, Lord, help me now," he'd say. He'd pop a dozen CDs into the player, They Will Know Us by the Trail of Dead, Black Rebel Motorcycle Club, At the Drive-In, other stuff. And we'd listen to half a song from each one and go, "Nope, nope, nope."

I had wanted to learn more about him from his music. I was pretty sure his lyrics would tell me more about him than he would. But the problem was, I couldn't understand most of the lyrics. And none of his CDs, which he'd bootlegged, had liner notes. We asked him if he didn't miss having liner notes. And he said, "Man, liner notes. You guys have this unnatural relationship with your liner notes."

Miriam ToewsWhat are some of your favorite lyrics?

Owen ToewsI like some of the lyrics from the Pixies.

Miriam ToewsCan you say some of the lyrics from the Pixies?

Owen Toews"You're so pretty when you're unfaithful to me."

Miriam ToewsSo what does that mean to you?

Owen ToewsI don't know. I just thought it was funny.

Miriam ToewsWhen Owen was little, I discovered I could get him to do anything by timing him. "Go get your jacket," I'd say, or "Clean up your toys, quick. I'll time you." He loved competing with himself and beating his old records even if I just made up times. And it evolved into a huge, competitive, sports-loving thing that I still don't really understand or enjoy.

That timing thing didn't work at all with Georgia. She'd just look up at me and say, "What do you mean, time me? What for?"

The difference between him and Georgia in the talking department is huge. Georgia will come home from school and literally reenact her entire day, so that she's telling me about it almost in real time, hour after hour. Owen, on the other hand, might tell me that his day was good, even if it was bad, but usually he just shrugs and makes an "I don't know" kind of sound. And then he'll head down to the basement and play his guitar.

Miriam ToewsSo do some of your friends have girlfriends? And do you ever think that you'd like to have a girlfriend?

Owen ToewsYeah.

Miriam ToewsWhat do you think they think? How would they describe you to their friends, do you think?

Owen ToewsI don't know.

Miriam ToewsDo you think you do know, but you just don't really want to talk about it with me?

Owen ToewsI think that, yeah, I think so.

Miriam ToewsI can dig it.

I've learned over time not to worry too much about his silence, although it used to drive me crazy. I wondered if maybe he'd turn out to be a psychopath, although I'm not sure why I associate evil with silence. Anyway, I'm getting better with it.

Cassidy often reassures me by saying stuff like, "It's a guy thing," or "He's a 15-year-old boy. What do you expect?" He told me that when he was Owen's age, he sat in his bedroom by himself for hours on end, typing page after page of angry vitriol against the world on an old manual typewriter, until his fingers bled. And he seems really happy now.

I realize my kids sound like boy and girl stereotypes. Owen is taciturn and into sports, and Georgia is chatty and prone to the occasional crying jag. But it really just is that way. I don't know why. It's not like we planned it. I don't want to think it's because he's a boy and she's a girl. But if it is, who cares?

When Georgia was upset about something at school the other day, and facedown on the couch, he sat on the floor beside her and said, "It's hard being a girl, isn't it?" I'm not sure that it's any easier being a boy. And I don't know what he does exactly when he's sad, other than listening to music. Except for once, it's been years since I've seen him cry. I'd kill to read his notebook.

Miriam ToewsIs there anything about girls that you envy?

Owen ToewsNo, nothing, nothing.

Miriam ToewsWhat about their, it seems, their ability to talk about how they feel about things easier?

Owen ToewsSure, yeah.

Miriam ToewsYou envy that?

Owen ToewsI definitely envy that.

Miriam ToewsWe were all pretty quiet as we drove up to Colorado Springs on our way to Denver. The sun was shining, but it was raining a bit. And we saw not one, not two, but three dead cows in fields, stiff, with their legs in the air. And it bothered us.

After the third dead cow, I played my favorite song of the summer, Gillian Welch's "Elvis Presley Blues." It's a wistful song about the King as a 15-year-old boy, just starting out with a big rock-and-roll dream in a shirt his mother made. And it was kind of miraculous because Owen actually liked it too.

For me, it was a song about a boy becoming a man and leaving home, and it made me a little sad. I think Owen was probably hearing it as a song about a cool 15-year-old who was about to conquer the world. But really, I haven't got a clue how he heard the song or how it made him feel. All he said was that it had a decent pop sensibility. And then he was quiet.

These days, the more I press him for information, the faster he shuts right down. The other day, I tried a new approach, his. I was annoyed by a bunch of things, and rather than broadcast it all over the house, I sat on the couch and glared at the TV and sighed periodically.

And strangely, Owen responded. He observed my weirdness for a while and then left. Then he came back and looked at me again, and said one word, "Mom," but in such a nice way that I smiled and said, "Owen." And that was it.

And then we sat there for a while, silently. I was surprised by how completely comfortable it felt. And then, finally, wordlessly, he got up and took his laundry upstairs.

Ira GlassMiriam Toews is a writer in Winnipeg. She wrote The X Letters in one of our programs. Her latest book is called Swing Low.