Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Welcome to 50 First Dates. I'm your host, Jolie Moore. I now know that hindsight is 20 20. This season I'm going to share that wisdom with you. In every twice weekly episode. I'm going to highlight one of my postcards for my take note stories of narcissistic abuse project and the unvarnished truth behind them. A lifetime of gaslighting and abuse are the reasons why my 50 first dates experiment was the unmitigated disaster that it was. I think it was kind of funny. A little bit tragic, but still a mess. Join me as I take on the task of finding out if my future self can forgive that person who lived through abuse and came out of the other side still searching for a crazy, beautiful love story. Ready?
[00:00:45] Speaker B: Strap in. Let's go.
[00:00:54] Speaker A: Hi and welcome to 50 First Dates.
[00:00:55] Speaker B: This is your host, Jolie Moore. We're up to card number 10, the pinch.
Whenever I showed any emotion or displeasure in public, my mother would choose a spot on my body no one could see, then pinch me hard enough to bruise. It kept me quiet and compliant.
This one actually, I think about all the time. So my mother would do it right before you got to the checkout counter. And even though it was years ago, I assume it was the same as it is now, where it was like candy, gum, mints, random stuff, magazines. I don't know. The thing is, she would always say when we went into any store, don't ask me for anything. And the weird thing is is that she said it long before I even thought to ask for anything. I just. It wasn't.
Honestly, it's not something I think about. I actually hate shopping.
Although now that I say that out loud, maybe this is why I hate shopping. I, like, absolutely detest shopping. It's like one thing, if I could not do it, I would not do it. And to answer your question, the home delivery services don't work. When somebody mistook cabbage for lettuce or steel cut oats for quick cooking oats, I was done with that. Anyway, I think that the main place I remember this happening is this story. It used to be called TSS in Brookly, which stood for Times Square stores. I know there's one in Brooklyn and Linden Boulevard. I actually don't know where any other ones were. And God knows I went out of business in the 80s. But TSS was like, I don't know, Woolworth's, Target. Probably more like Target, less like Woolworth. Because I don't think there was food in there to my memory, God knows, because I Didn't ask for anything, so who knows? So we'd go to TSS for. On occasion, actually, usually when. With my grandmother. My grandmother would always get me something. She was actually kind of fun to shop with my mother. No.
So we would go to tss, and there's this big parking lot. I mean, Brooklyn's. You know, New York City is New York City, and Manhattan is one thing, but Brooklyn is, like, in a lot of ways, like a lot of other American places. So there's big stores with big parking lots in the front. Honestly, not the best use of real estate. And we'd pull into the parking lot. My mother had this orange Ford Maverick for years.
And we'd get. I don't even know why we went there. To shop for who knows? And on the way in, she said, don't ask me for anything. And then when we got to the checkout counter, she'd always pinch me really hard or if I said anything in the store that, like, upset her. So I was pretty quiet. Although I always got reprimanded for also being quiet.
And I just don't know. My mother always treated me as if I were about to be a delinquent. I mean, it was endless. Like, don't do this, don't do that, don't flunk out of school. I got straight A's. You know, I remember when I broke up with my first college boyfriend, the thing she said was, at least you didn't get pregnant. As if that. As if in the world where I were living, which was like, you know, the post Nancy Reagan, you know, say no to drugs. And we were just about to leap into the abstinence world, but we were just also in the AIDS world. So, you know, we were fearful of sex because STDs are one thing, but at the time, you know, HIV, AIDS was incurable. And God knows you don't want to die from having sex. So I didn't get pregnant. I've only been pregnant once.
And so it's just there was a lot of, like, what would be the word? Like, I can't think of the right word actually, right now. But, like, she was always convinced I was, like, a. About to run off the rails. And the only way she could, like, preemptively manage it was pinching me or saying something to me or chastising me or berating me before anything happened. And I really think about this because. So I was a pretty good kid. I really didn't act out much.
And I have a kid who actually doesn't act out at all. And I wonder. So I don't know if I'm well regulated. My son is well regulated. We have like certain, we have a very similar personality. So I don't know if our personalities are such that we're pretty well regulated.
I was, I had a have a single child so arranging my life around his naps and eating schedule, especially when he was really young was super easy. So I did not take him out until he was like awake and fed and the minute he was done being awake or kind of hungry gave him like a couple naps, nuts and some reasons and then we were like back in the car and back home. So I had very short excursions but a lot of them. But I don't know what it was about my mother that she always assumed I was going to act out. And I know there are a lot of people out there who had like the black mom and who were very much into controlling kids behaviors because we as African Americans have a legacy of if acting out could kill you. But we're talking about like modern New York City and we're talking about like stores and banks. You know, I wasn't like out in the street acting crazy. So I just could never pinpoint why she always thought I was on the verge of bad behavior. But all that said, she spent a lot of time trying to regulate said behavior, which didn't leave me with many positive experiences of life inside or outside of my house. So you know, I'm really thinking about this as I say this because not only do I struggle with shopping, I struggle with buying myself things. Like I have bought maybe two magazines from the checkout rack in my lap and I probably still feel guilty about it. One actually is right here on the shelf of some recipe and who knows what the other was. I used to sometimes buy LA magazine, I think before I get a subscription, so I don't know the reason for it. I'm actually going to think about it a little bit. But that preemptive pinch, man, I'll never forget it.
[00:07:13] Speaker A: I'm Julie Moore and this has been 50 First Dates, the podcast. If you've enjoyed this podcast, I hope you share, rate and review it on.
[00:07:21] Speaker B: Apple, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts.
[00:07:24] Speaker A: It will help others find the crazy beautiful love stories that I like to share. Also, please hit the subscribe button on your podcast app if you'd like to know how this project started. My memoir, 50 First Dates, is available wherever books are sold. A link is always included in the show Notes. I'm also a romance writer. If you want to know more about my books, please visit joliemore.com for more information. You can also follow me on Instagram TikTok and Substack at xojolymore. The essays accompanying these postcards are available on Substack. You can also follow me on all social media at the same handle. Xojoely Moore thanks for listening and I'll be in your ears very soon.
