Pull up a chair and tell me a memory Why does
it matter to you? I want to hear your story,
your point of view Tell me what happened to you
and welcome back to Tell Me What Happened, the
podcast that features folks from all walks of
life telling us of one childhood experience and
how that event impacted who they are today. I'm
your host, Jay Rehack, and like you, I've had
my share of childhood experiences. Some of them
have been really enjoyable, but some of them
were actually quite painful. But I'd like to
think that whatever's happened to me in my life
has made me who I am today. Tell Me What Happened
is sponsored by Sideline Ink Publishing, publishers
of quality books, including Susan Salador's classics,
One Little Act of Kindness, and I've Got Peace
in My Fingers. Both of them are available wherever
quality books are sold. All right, today I have
as my guest a good friend of mine. Actually,
it's a very good friend of my daughter's, and
as a consequence, I became Alana's friend, so
I don't want to pretend that I'm more of a friend
than I'm not. It's more of my daughter's. But
anyway, Alana Bennett. Alana is a screenwriter
and a culture writer. Her work's been seen all
over the internet, but you can also find it on
Roswell, New Mexico, and the upcoming Exo Kitty.
Welcome to the show, Alana Bennett. I'm so happy
to be here. I'm so excited. Well, I'm fired up
because I know you're a great storyteller. I
don't want to put any pressure on you, but you
are a great storyteller, someone that I've known
for a while and would love to hear some backstory
on you as a person. So I'm going to mute myself
in about a minute here, Alana. But I want you
to know that when you're finished with your story,
I'm going to ask you absolutely one question.
And that one question is, how do you think the
story that you tell us has impacted who you are
today? So take it away, Alana. Thank you. I am
so excited. I am nervous because usually I feel
like a little writing mole rat just in my little
office tip -tapping away versus I've never been
much of a performer. I've never done a lot of
verbal storytelling so we will see how this goes
but I am excited for the prompt and the challenge.
I will start with some background to this story
that I'm telling this period of my life but Basically,
this story I've decided to tell today is about
when I realized that my family had a lot less
than other kids did financially. I did not really
realize how much in poverty my family was until
the time period of the story that I will tell.
So my family moved from Los Angeles to Portland,
Oregon, when I was about three. We never had
much. We lived in a one bedroom apartment. So
my brother had the bedroom. My mom took the couch.
I had like a little nook that my mom built. I
was so young that it didn't really faze me. And
then we moved into a three bedroom apartment
after that, which felt like lavish to me that
I was like, this is a mansion. I had a friend
who's older. brother had gotten his girlfriend
pregnant and so both of them moved into the third
bedroom when my brother went off to college and
I had a nanny and it was really my mom helping
these two broke 18 year olds who had a baby but
to me it felt like felt like I had live in child
care I never really thought about anything that
I lacked I felt like I had everything that I
needed yeah this three -bedroom apartment was
was very memorable to me and then the time period
that I'm focusing on kind of starts when my grandfather
Hugh Bennett got cancer he got melanoma in his
early 80s and my mother thought that she wanted
to move to be closer to him in Orange County
and so we gave up our apartment but I don't know
exactly what happened here. Maybe I should ask
my mom. I haven't circled back to this moment,
but I don't remember exactly why, but we didn't
move down to California yet. I will circle back
to that because that the story kind of ends with
when we finally do move down to California. But
at this point, we had given up our three bedroom
apartment, which was way out in what I think
Portland calls the numbers. It was like 139th
Street or something. It was like not the best
neighborhoods. It was kind of just a dreary part
of town, but we had this three bedroom. It was
great. We gave it up and because we had left
our apartment and didn't move down to Orange
County, we didn't really know what to do next.
And so this is when my family at this point,
it was me and my mom because my brother had moved
out. We started living in. motels. So we live
in a couple different ones. There was a main
one that we lived in that was right near the
Portland Convention Center. So that's like a
very, it's not a really neighborhoody neighborhood.
It's the convention center and a bunch of rundown
motels. And then like there's a mall, there's
McDonald's. It's like where the conferences are.
And so this period was, we moved out of the three
bedroom when I was ending third grade and we
moved into the motels at the beginning of right
as I was entering fourth grade. So I was 10.
I remember that we had two cats. And so it was
two cats in a motel room with me and my mom.
And I remember we had a hot plate for for cooking
stuff. My mom was working at OHSU as a medical
assistant and it was an easy commute on the bus
for her. And she gamed it so that the motels
that we were living in also helped so that I
could go to an elementary school in a cuter part
of town. So we were bussing into a very cute,
very idyllic area called Selwood -Morland, Selwood
-Wes -Morland area of Portland, which is kind
of what I... have since come to consider my hometown
neighborhood. It's very beautiful. There's a
duck pond. It's exactly what you think of when
you picture Portland. It's green. It's super
walkable. I remember starting fourth grade there
and like... walking to the Boys and Girls Club
after and there would be ducks crossing the street
and all of the elementary school kids walking
to the Boys and Girls Club stopping to help the
ducks not get hit in the road. It wasn't a suburb
but it was kind of on the edge of where the suburb
started and it felt very like a part of a type
of childhood I had never had access to but it
was ironic because I was busing in from this
very like city convention center kind of nothing
neighborhood and living in this little one room
motel with my mom and two cats and a hot plate
as we tried to figure out like what to do and
so this was the period when i started to realize
oh like i have a lot less than these kids have
like these kids are living in really beautiful
craftsman homes and like and we just didn't have
we just didn't have money i started to realize
like oh i'm on free lunch and not all of these
kids are on free lunch i was late to school because
like there was huge train tracks between my neighborhood
and them we were literally on the other side
of the train tracks and the and the big freight
trains would would go by for like a half an hour
at a time and stop our bus and yeah i just started
getting a lot it was a lot more conspicuous to
me at that point that i had less and one particular
moment that i remember is you know at age 10
you're still growing a lot i grew out of my shoes
my mom couldn't afford to replace them right
away and i'm not quite sure the details of getting
a homeless kid into a new school. I don't know
what goes on behind the scenes with the administration,
but clearly they knew about our situation. And
so I got pulled out of class and taken to this,
at the time it seemed like a magical place where
that was just full of clothes and shoes and they
were like, take whatever you want. They gave
me a big like garbage bag and they're just like,
take whatever you want. I got to like raid as
many shoes as I wanted, as many free coats and
stuff like that. And at the time it felt like
nice. and shiny, but also like, oh, I don't think
the other kids need this to happen. And so it's
more in retrospect, but it was in that era that
it was kind of dawning on me how much I would
go to sleepovers and they would live in like
beautiful Victorians or beautiful craftsmen and
not be worried about this stuff. And it would
never come up for them that they grew out of
their shoes and didn't have replacements and
stuff like that. but you know when you're a kid
you're super resilient and it didn't bog me down
at the time it was more like oh there's this
there was a dilapidated like old big white house
across the street from the motel we were staying
in it was like one of the only houses in the
area and i remember i made friends with the girl
who was my age who lived there i think her parents
were russian or something like that and we would
just play all the time like it's just like you
make what you can out of what is around you and
we would have so much fun and then I remember
that we were playing one day she had this we
were taking turns on a scooter that she had this
was like the prime era of like razor scooters
sweeping the nation and we would just race up
and down this kind of empty motel street and
this feels so extremely like 2001 because this
was this that's the year that this was I was
wearing too long for me bell -bottom sweatpants
as I was doing this running and I tripped running
after the scooter like running back and forth
with her and I tripped and I broke my arm I landed
right on my arm I still have the scar on my on
my wrist and that I've broken two bones in my
life that was the first one and so I just start
screaming and and I just remember like that my
mom was alerted because because the motel manager
heard me like heard this little girl screaming
across the street. And so I remember he had to
go get my mom. We drove to the hospital. And
there's just something particularly memorable
about this time period for me, I think, because
right at the end of this. period like right after
I broke my arm, I think when I still have the
cast on is kind of where the light at the end
of the tunnel came, you know, because it really
was cramped, like living in that one bedroom
with or one room little space with two cats and
a tired, tired mom who's just trying to figure
things out and in a hot plate and. I think it
really felt like the breaking of my arm was kind
of a climax because the next thing I knew on
the jobs board at OHSU where my mom was working
as a medical assistant she saw that one of the
OBGYN residents, her name was Jeannie, was looking
for a live -in nanny. Her nanny was moving in
with her partner in the same neighborhood but
she couldn't keep on her nanny and she was a
single mom who very much needed for her residency,
somebody who could take care of her two kids
who they were, I believe, five and three at the
time, Cory and Jake. And so I think I still had
my cast on when my mom applied for this job.
She took us to meet them. We all went to the
beach together to see if it would be a good fit.
And then we moved into their house, which happened
to luckily be in the same neighborhood as the
one that my mom loved the one that she had me
in elementary school at the time in Selwood.
And so we moved into their house. The old nanny
had lived up in a bedroom on the top floor, but
because we had cats and because we were two people,
we took over the basement. And so it was, it
was, we moved into the basement of this lovely
home in this beautiful neighborhood. It was like
two blocks from the... duck pond that I had always
loved and that my mom had always loved. And we
got like huge Ikea cheap rugs to like make the
basement less basement -y. It was literally me
and my mom on two twin beds in the same room.
And we put up shelves and kind of made a mini
studio apartment. But that kind of, that period
really turned into, it felt so idyllic to me
because it was the first time I'd ever lived
in a house. I'd always lived in apartments. And
it was the first time I lived in a house in a
really cute neighborhood. And it felt like I
had little siblings to boss around and put on
plays with me. And ducks would land on the front
lawn, and we would walk to school. And so yeah,
when I first broke my arm, it was, oh, like.
The motel manager has to go get my mom. Like
this is, we're running down this dilapidated
old kind of abandoned streets. And then by the
time I got my cast off, I was enmeshed in this
kind of new household. We were still, it was
still colored with a lot of things. It was, we
were definitely more guests there than not. Like
it was when their dad had them, had the kids,
when their dad had the kids and Jeannie had like
a date. we would go to a hotel or a motel again
for a night. It was a very upstairs downstairs
moment but at the time for a fourth grader it
felt really nice to be enmeshed in that kind
of space. And yeah so it was a moment that really
highlighted the differences between us and them
but also that gave me a glimpse into a different
kind of life that we didn't have access to before
but we had to gain access to it as the staff
and the kid of the staff. But it was a mixture
of things, but it was also lovely in a lot of
ways. And I still, we stuck with the Selwood
area throughout the rest of my time in Portland
through when I graduated high school. Like that
was always, that was our home, that was our space.
And so we kind of claimed it for ourselves and
we made what we could of what we had for ourselves
there. And then our time with that family ended
when my Mom did succeed in getting us down to
Southern California to spend time with my grandfather
who still had cancer. And yeah, so that is that's
that's the story. I think that little that little
young little girl, you know, riding on the razor
or whatever and breaking her arm. And then you
write the upstairs downstairs moment before I
get to asking you how you believe that moment
impacted your life, that that experience that
a motel to being the resident of a basement or
whatever in somebody's house. Did you ever talk
to that little Russian girl with the razor again
or did she drop out of your life? She dropped
out of my life and I don't even remember her
name at this point but yeah it was like a couple
it was like a two month wonderful friendship.
And just yeah, and I have no idea what happened
to her. I kind of I kind of do wonder. And I
think about the motel manager too. I like I remember
so clearly what he looked like he was like big
and burly with red hair and like, and and he
was so concerned about me that day. And I'm sure
that was a bad like knock on the door for my
mom. But But yeah, it feels very like of the
period too, of just like, I don't know where
my kid is. She's somewhere down the block hanging
out with one of the other families. But yeah,
I had, I have no idea what happened to her. So
I kind of violated my own rules. So I'm going
to circle back to, how do you think? Well, I
don't want, I want my listeners to know I'm trying
to be honest with this, but tell me, how do you
think that that experience has impacted who you
are today? Yeah, I think it's everywhere. I think
that that period of time from going from third
grade into fourth grade really defines so much
when it came to the specific nature of my life
with my mother, both in terms of her specifically
as she's kind of a vagabond spirit, she's kind
of like a free spirit, like she will always try
to be as like independent and feminist and as
she can and she's super wonderful and I think
it's a really big testament to who she is as
a person and who she was as a mom and who she
is as a mom that it took me so long to realize
that we didn't have as much as other kids like
I felt spoiled growing up because I had a lot
of toys like I had like a great cat I had loving
siblings and family and and it took me until
that time to realize that there was something
else and it was literally because it's like oh
like who else is living in a motel right now
like who else is living like without a kitchen
and and all of that and at the time i'm like
okay yeah this is just what we're doing this
is like and you just kind of follow it and you
kind of go with the flow and i think the fact
that i could go with the flow for so long and
i even did for so long after this it's kind of
more in retrospect that a lot of class issues
come up and you realize some of the nuances of
what you were feeling in that time. But I think
she gave me a lot of resilience with that, that
it took me so long to catch on. And then when
I did catch on, it was when things became so
undeniable. And I think that it really does follow
me through adulthood just in terms of, even when
I was in college, when I went to spring break
at a friend of mine who lives in Boston's house.
And her house just felt huge to me. I was like,
this is where you live. And it's not like she
even was like a wealthy classmate. She was, she
considered herself firmly middle class. But I
think that that period just really highlighted
for me how many people who don't think they have
a lot have so much and how even just living in
like that was a time, it was not a big house
that we were staying in when we were nannying.
It's not that this family wasn't even wealthy
or anything, but living in a house, that's when
it occurred to me, like how crazy that felt.
It felt like the wildest world jump. And so I
think that is what impacts me today. It still
is a reminder. Like every time I enter a big
house, I'm like, wow, I really grew up not in
that. It's a good perspective to keep. All right.
Well, last question, again, a little bit of a
violation. I'm hoping is your mother still alive?
Yes, she's still she's still very much around.
She's still kicking. She lives in her own house
now. Loves it. She's not in the motel anymore.
No, no. She had some living in a car stuff through
my mid -20s, but she is very much in her own
home now. It's very much her. She's made it her
own. She has a beautiful garden she's obsessed
with. She knows everybody in the neighborhood.
She's doing great. Great. That's good to hear.
Well, thank you, Alana. I really appreciate you
taking the time to speak with us. Thank you.
It's great to know a little bit more about you.
I've been tracking your career a bit, again,
because of my daughter. And I know you're highly
successful and that's kind of fun. But more importantly
than that, the fact that you're resilient really
makes me happy because life takes all of us in
different directions and different bounces. And
it's good to know that I'm sure no matter what
happens, you're going to be strong. So that makes
me happy. Thank you. Really, thank you so much
for the time and the space. And I've been following
you and your life and career and retirement as
well. And so I'm excited to spend this time together.
Thank you very much. All right. I'd like to thank
my guest, Alana Bennett, the great Alana Bennett.
I'd also like to thank my sponsors, Sidelining
Publishing and laughsaver .com. So I'm going
to end this show with Susan Salador's classic,
Love Reveille. Because I think what Alana is
talking about is a love story between a mother
and herself and the larger issues of the world.
So until next time, this is Jay Reheck asking
you all to please stay safe out there and try
not to hurt anybody. Love Reveille is supposed
to wake up our hearts. I love you. I love you.
I love you. Every single day I hear you, I hear
you, I hear you And all that you have to say
I see you, I see you, I see you And all the kind
things you do I love you, I love you, I love
you just because you're you. That's the truth.