♪ CYNDI FREEMAN: And there I was, a year and a half later, and I have a paid gig, $20 an hour, in the 1980s, as a Christmas elf.

EKHLAS AHMED: I was not surprised when I found myself at 1:00 a.m. shopping for Ramadan food.

MATTHEW DICKS: He invites me to Thanksgiving dinner, and I sit at that dining room table, I sit right beside him.

It's like having the father I never had.

WES HAZARD: Tonight's theme is holiday horror.

Some people, they think of the holidays with warm, fuzzy feelings.

It's something to be looked forward to, because it generally offers a lot of down time, and you can reflect on the year that you've had, and you can have some adult cider and eggnog, and hang out with your family.

Other people look at the holidays with apprehension and angst, because you have a lot of down time, and you have to reflect on the year that you've had, and you get a little tipsy with your family.

But whatever your perspective is, the holidays are coming every single year, you cannot stop it.

And you have to reckon with them in some way.

♪ My name is Cyndi Freeman, and I am a storyteller.

I perform it, and I teach it, and I coach it.

I grew up in Boston, actually, in Newton, Massachusetts, and I live in New York now, which was always my dream, to be in New York.

You make your living as a storyteller.

FREEMAN: Mm-hmm.

Have you seen opportunities for that grow and increase since you've been doing this?

So, on a corporate level, I work with a group called Story Studio.

And we go all over, working with small companies, non-for-profits, and Fortune 500, teaching them how to tell the stories of their business.

I also... one of my most rewarding jobs, I also work at a prison.

These are people that are in a "time out" from life, and they're worried.

They're worried about their future lives, and we're like, "Don't talk about why you're here, "tell us a story about who you are."

And you start hearing about when their first child was born, or how wonderful their parents are, or a teacher that believed in them, or a moment of... that they took pride.

The stories tend to be very positive.

If you had to give one piece of advice to prospective storytellers, what do you think is most helpful to them?

That the audience wants to hear from you, and that your story is a gift.

And that they're going to be grateful.

It is the mid-1980s and I have just been hired, I'm 22, as a Jewish Christmas elf.

(laughter) And I am really excited about this.

Not so much about Christmas-- I'm Jewish-- but it is a paid performing gig.

Oh my God.

And the reason why this is exciting to me really has to do with the education I just came out of.

I graduated from an arts school, it was a theater program, where the teachers there, they kind of believed in breaking you down and leaving you there.

(laughter) As far as they were concerned, the world is tough, and they were going to toughen you up.

I remember my senior acting teacher taking me out at the end of the year to tell me, "Sweetheart, I don't know that you should continue.

"I don't think you have what it takes.

"You should quit now and save yourself the heartache."

Which added to me a certain amount of self-doubt, but, you know what, I was going to be tough, and I was going to proceed.

And there I was a year and a half later, and I have a paid gig, $20 an hour, in the 1980s, as a Christmas elf.

Yeah!

(cheers) So... thank you.

I look ridiculous, I look like Kermit the Frog in my uniform.

But our Santa's amazing.

His name is Sean.

He is a Shakespearean actor, six foot four.

All his real silver hair and beard, he has a booming voice, and he loves playing Santa.

We start on the day of Black Friday.

We are put on a horse-drawn sleigh, and we are marched into the center of town.

There are so many families.

We work for a department store, and they have done, like, full-page ads, and it's like 300, 400 people.

And as Santa appears to the kids, they're just like, "Santa!"

Like, the crowd goes wild.

I feel like a rock star, right.

So, it's me and Lisa and Sean-- she's the other elf.

And we get onto the platform.

The mayor is there and hands Santa the keys to the city.

And then Santa announces, "Ladies and gentlemen, ho, ho, ho!

"I present to you, as a gift "for the Christmas season, "100 doves of peace."

And there's dove handlers, and they're in lederhosen, and they open this giant box.

And out scream a hundred white doves.

It's just like, literally, it's like fireworks but alive.

And they pour out, and they pour out.

And just when you think there should be no more doves, there's more doves.

It's like, it's like a clown car of doves, right?

And they get into the sky, and they're, like, spinning.

And the audience is going crazy.

And the last dove sort of flickers up, and we look down.

And at the bottom of the box, there is 20 or 30 dead, crushed, bleeding doves.

And we look up, and it's nothing but happy children.

Now Sean is a trooper, and he's like, "Ho, ho, ho, meet me at Santa's throne in 30 minutes, children."

And we march off, and we're put in the bowels of the department store.

And we're all like, "What happened there?"

And the dove handlers come in, it's a married couple, and they're middle, middle-aged, and they seem happy.

And we're just like, "What happened there?"

And they're like, "What do you mean?"

And we're like, "The doves, they... "many of them didn't make it."

And the wife says, "Oh, yeah, that happens all the time."

(laughter) I know.

I know, and Sean, he just lifts to his full six foot four and says, "Are you saying that every time you pull this stunt, "30 of the animals in your care are either killed or maimed?"

And she says, "Well, you can't get that many doves "in a box that small and have them all survive."

The husband says, "What are you, a vegetarian?"

"Did you eat turkey last night?"

And then they're like, "Hypocrites, ha-ha!"

And they're laughing at us, and then we have to go out and entertain children.

Now I'm in shock, but the one thing that my college has done, because we weren't allowed to cry there, and so I know how not to cry when I want to, I make it through the day.

But once I'm at home, and I am alone, I just start tearing up.

And I'm sitting on the couch, wiping my tears, thinking that this is what they meant by the world being cruel, and the world for a performer being tough.

And maybe I don't have what it takes, maybe my teacher was right.

And you know what, maybe the moral high ground is admitting, "I never want to be this tough, that this would be okay."

And the phone rings.

It's Jeff, he's the booking agent who booked us.

And he's like, "Are you okay?"

And I'm like, "Uh, yeah."

And I'm not used to authority figures caring about my feelings, right.

So I'm, like, not sure how much to reveal.

And he's like, "Well, Sean came by, "he told us about the doves."

I'm like, "Yeah, it was pretty harsh."

And he's like, "Well, Sean has written a letter.

"He would like Lisa and you to sign it.

"Can I read it to you?

"I've already signed it."

And the letter is as eloquent as only a Shakespearean actor could write.

It ends with, "Perhaps you don't care about the job as Santa and the elves.

"But me and my fellow actors do.

"We believe that we... our job is to bring magic to children.

"And this is magic that they will take with them "for the rest of their lives.

"And what we witnessed "does not only go against the spirit of Christmas, "but the spirit of humanity.

"And if you want us to continue our work with you this season, "we need not just an apology, "but you need to assure us you will never work with live animals again."

(cheers and applause) He was good.

I love this man.

And I said, "Yes, please, sign my name to that letter."

He asked, "Are you okay to go to work tomorrow?"

And I said, "Sure."

And I get there, I get a big hug from Sean.

And then, I guess the letter got to the executives real quick, because in march eight people in suits.

And their spokeswoman was this woman-- she was like Barbie's mother.

You know, probably late 40s, absolutely beautiful, ex-model, in a little pencil skirt like this with high heels.

And she's just-- like, the tears.

It's just, she goes, "I am so sorry.

"We believe in magic too, and this is not what we want."

This is not what we do."

And Sean just stood up and gave her a hug as well.

We had a wonderful season.

In fact, it was such an amazing job I kept it for three years, telling all the kids that, "All the elves are Jewish."

(laughter) "Who else do you expect to work on Christmas Eve?"

(laughter) But I do have to say, perhaps executives saved Christmas for those families and those children for that year.

But when it came to believing that there's kindness in the world, and kindness within the arts, and that I was going to be okay as an artist, I've got to say, Santa, Sean, he saved my soul.

Thank you.

(applause) ♪ My name is Ekhlas Ahmed.

I'm originally from Sudan, Darfur.

My family and I had to leave Sudan when I was about 12 years old, due to seeking refuge from the ongoing genocide in Darfur.

But thanks to the United Nations, we were able to be resettled in Portland, Maine, in around 2006.

What kind of stories do you like to tell the most?

Usually stories of just... about my life, or me living as a black Muslim woman, living in one of the... or the whitest state in America, living in Maine.

So how has your experience living in the United States, how has that affected your storytelling?

I find there is a huge struggle, especially at the beginning, where I was so unfamiliar with many aspects of the U.S., the language, the culture, the people.

I felt I was silent for a long time.

But very recently, I feel like I am a part of my community, a part of Portland, Maine, a part of the U.S., and finally feel like this is my home now.

And now I have a voice.

I'm able to speak English.

And it influences how I tell my story.

And I tell it in a language that I feel very comfortable and comfort in.

The day before Ramadan is usually a hectic one for everyone in Sudan, but especially for my family.

The thing is, my mother waits until the last second to shop for 30 days' worth of food.

So yes, I was not surprised when I found myself at 1:00 a.m. shopping for Ramadan food.

My brothers get to sleep in, but here I am.

My feet were so tired, I was so exhausted, but most definitely, so hungry.

In Ramadan, you have to eat right before the sun comes up.

So I wanted to make sure I get home on time.

We waited for taxi after taxi after taxi, and finally we found one.

The second we got into the taxi, we heard the call for prayer, the adhan.

And we knew it was too late.

We did not make it home on time before we can eat to fast for the next day.

So that night I went to bed on a hungry stomach.

It's okay, I woke up on the first day so excited about Ramadan.

Ramadan is my favorite Islamic holiday, because we get to be together with family and friends, and I get to cook in the kitchen with my mom.

So we got in the kitchen, we start cooking our favorite Ramadan food.

My mom got to cook her favorite lentil soup with all of her spices.

I got to cook the okra dish for my dad, the potato for my brothers.

We were happy.

The tradition in Sudan is that you place all the food right before the sunset right on the ground, so the family can join in the circle and enjoys the meal together.

So that's exactly what my mother and I did.

15 minutes before we can eat.

All I was thinking about was all the delicious food that was waiting.

My brother, who was taking a shower-- and he was sleeping all day, and now he got up to take a shower-- suddenly came running so fast and tripped on the food that we just cooked for six-and-a-half hours.

He got a second-degree burn on half of his body.

So I wasn't thinking about the food, I was rushing with my mother and my siblings to the E.R., because we were concerned.

We got to the E.R., there was no food there.

My family lived so far away, so nobody could get us anything so we can break our fast.

We waited and waited and waited.

I feel like it was a century that we were in that hospital.

And finally the doctor came out.

He said we could go home.

And yes, I was going to be able to eat after three days of waiting.

We got in the car.

My dad drove and drove and drove and drove.

I was thinking about the lentil soup, the potato dish.

I was thinking about the okra.

And I slept in the back of my dad's truck.

I was quickly awoken by the sound of adhan again.

It was 5:00 a.m., and we have missed our chance to eat before fasting.

It has been four days.

I knew that Ramadan was all about sacrificing, to feel the hunger, to feel what it means to be hungry, but this one was just way too much.

Especially for my stomach.

Thank you.

(applause) My name is Matthew Dicks.

I live in Hartford, Connecticut.

I have a lot of jobs.

I'm an elementary school teacher by day, I'm an author, and I tell stories.

And I teach storytelling.

What's the hardest part of storytelling for you?

For me, it's always the beginning of the story.

I build my stories by starting with a moment that I want to share with people, and it's always the end.

It's what I call the five-second moment.

It's a moment of transformation of some kind.

And that's sort of what my story's always leading to.

But finding those right words to grab people instantly and to deliver them perfectly, is really the greatest challenge for me.

So I fight for great first lines.

And sometimes I give up.

I'll move on to another story.

And two years later, the first few lines will hit me, and then I will have, like, the key to unlock that story.

So that's a tricky thing for me, is finding those first lines.

I'm sitting at the dining room table in my girlfriend's parents' home.

I'm eating a cookie.

My girlfriend, Lisa, is beside me, and she's talking, but I don't hear a word that she says.

I'm staring at the front door.

I'm waiting.

I'm waiting for it to open and for her father to come home.

I'm a 19-year-old boy waiting to meet my girlfriend's father for the very first time.

And I am terrified.

And then the door opens, and the man walks in.

And I stand, and we meet in the middle, and I reach my hand out to shake his.

And as his hand wraps over mine, I can feel the roughness of his skin, I can feel the calluses, I can see the dirt and the grime under his fingernails.

It's like shaking hands with a Brillo pad.

These are hands that build and repair.

This is a man who can fix plumbing.

He's a guy who can change his own oil.

He's the type of guy who can take a tree down and then, like, put it back up if necessary.

(laughter) And as I'm shaking his hand, I realize I'm in a lot of trouble.

Because my hands are nothing like his.

I have the hands of a boy who plays Ms. Pac-Man at the arcade on Friday nights.

I have hands that roll 20-sided dice onto card tables in basements while playing Dungeons and Dragons.

These are hands that play the flute.

These are not hands that build and repair, these are hands that purchase and replace.

(laughter) And as I shake his hand, I know I'm in trouble, because I've been in this situation before.

Before I loved Lisa, I loved Laura, my high school sweetheart.

Laura's father's name was Butch, and he was the dictionary definition of that word.

I met him in his driveway one day, next to his dump truck, his bucket truck, and what I would later learn was a stump grinder.

Shaking Butch's hand was like putting your hand into a bag of broken glass.

I asked Butch what he did for a living, and he said, "Whatever needs to be done."

(laughter) I am not a man who does whatever needs to be done.

I hire people to do what needs to be done.

And so as I'm shaking Lisa's father's hand now, I know I'm in trouble.

Because the reason Laura and I aren't together anymore is because even though she loved me, she respected her father more than any woman I have ever met in my life, and I was never going to match what he was.

And now I am worried that I'm not going to match what this man is, either.

And I'm already starting out behind.

Lisa's father is a car guy, and six months ago, I owned a 1976 Chevy Malibu with a 357 V8.

I don't know what those numbers mean, except I know that car guys like those numbers.

But I have sold that car, and I am now driving a powder-blue Toyota Tercel.

He looks at my car, and I swear he wants to punch me in the face.

He asks me where I live, and I tell him, "In Attleborough, with some of my friends," but I can never take him to my home, because it is the home of boys.

The walls are plastered with Bart Simpson posters.

I've got two rabbits that run around my house like cats, they use the litter box and eat out of bowls.

We got them because we thought we would get girls, which we actually kind of do, but he can't see this.

And we have 20 hamsters that are spread out in cages all over the house, with tubes, connecting all over.

It's like Steampunk Hamsterville.

Wherever you're standing, there is a hamster over your head.

(laughter) I cannot bring this man into this world of boys.

And I am a McDonald's manager.

And I know it's the hardest job I will ever do in my life, but to him, I know, I am flipping burgers.

It is going to be a hard win in this case, but I've got a plan.

I'm going to win this guy over.

He's Portuguese, so I decide I'm going to learn everything about Portugal, which in 1991 is a very big deal.

Because to learn something in '91, you have to go to a brick building during office hours.

You have to slide open a card, and find that card, and use it to find a book, and none of those books have "Control-F." You have to read the whole damn book to find the one fact that you are looking for to impress your girlfriend's father.

It is a commitment that I stick to.

And then my rabbits become a problem, because they're chewing through the cords.

They've knocked out our television and one of our lamps.

My buddies and I decide we need to get rid of the rabbits.

And one day, I'm at Lisa's house, and I see that her father has a hutch full of rabbits.

And so I say, "I've got a problem with my rabbits, sir.

Would you like my rabbits?"

And he says, "Yes."

And I swear, as I pass my rabbits over to him, it's like we get closer.

Like, we don't become friends, but we become friendly.

And then he invites me to Thanksgiving dinner.

And this is a big deal for me, because for the past two years, I have not had a Thanksgiving.

My Thanksgivings are the Dallas Cowboys and Domino's and despair.

And so having an actual, like, Thanksgiving, with real food and a family, is a big deal for me.

And so I go to their house, and I sit at that dining room table.

I sit right beside him.

It's like having the father I never had.

And there is turkey, and there are breads, and there are stuffings, and there are stews.

And I feel like a member of the family-- I have done it.

And then he turns to me, and he says, "What do you think of my stew?"

And I say, "I love it."

And he says, "You should.

It's your rabbit."

(groans and laughter) And I can't believe it.

I turn to Lisa to see if she's in on this, and she's just as appalled as I am.

And so I turn back to this man, and he is smiling.

He thinks it's funny that he has just fed me my pet rabbit.

We stare at each other for what is probably three seconds, but feels like three years.

There is silence at the table.

And then I stand up, and for the first time in my life, I speak to a man like a man.

I tell him what a terrible thing he has done, I swear at him at his dining room table.

I tell him exactly what is in my heart, and then I turn, and I leave his house.

My hands are just as soft as when I was 19 years old.

I cannot change oil, I cannot fix a single thing in my house, I cannot assemble a single one of my children's toys.

But that was the moment a 19-year-old boy stood up and became a 19-year-old man, and for the first time in his life, he told another man exactly how he felt.

Thank you.

(applause) HAZARD: Fantastic story, let him know!

(cheers and applause) So 1984, Hasbro came out with a doll for boys.

It was supposed to teach you about friendship and caring for others, all right?

You get tucked into bed with it, you watch TV with it, you play outside with it.

It was called My Buddy, all right?

Hugely popular doll, massive, big blockbuster.

So big, they made a girl version, like, Kid Sister.

Like: ♪ My Buddy, Kid Sister.

Okay?

I get that doll for Christmas in 1988, when I'm four.

And I love this doll.

For me, it's exactly like the commercial, like, this is my buddy.

I do everything with this doll, like, my best friend, okay?

Love it, life is good.

Later on in 1988, some psycho came out with a movie in which a doll that looks exactly like My Buddy in every way-- little blue overalls, striped shirt, little hat-- is imbued with the spirit of a serial killer who then spends 87 minutes trying to murder an eight-year-old boy, okay?

It was called Child'sPlay.

Chucky, we're all familiar, right?

They made, like, five sequels and a reboot, okay?

I see that movie on home video in 1989 because my father often made questionable parenting decisions, all right?

(laughter) Now, I'm five when this happens.

Like, I'm sitting on the couch, the doll's right here, all right?

You know a kid's mind.

I'm, like, watching the movie, I'm looking at the doll, I'm watching the movie, I'm looking at the doll.

I'm, like, "Oh, my God, "this doll is going to try to kill me.

I'm not going out like that."

I hatched a plan.

So I waited until the daytime, because I knew his powers came out at night.

I wasn't going to mess with him then, all right?

I got the drop on him, and I took this doll, and I bound him with duct tape and twine, and then threw that in three black plastic trash bags in a broken clothes dryer in our garage.

Now, I'm five.

I think I've just killed the devil.

I'm feeling pretty good about myself, like, I'm a man today, son-- it was amazing, like, you know.

But also, it was, like, an Old Yeller moment.

Like, that was my best friend in the world, I had to put him down, but whatever.

I handled that, things are good, I'm living my life again, no more fear.

Flash-forward four years later-- nine.

We move.

My mom's cleaning out the house.

She cleans out the garage, opens up the dryer, opens up the bag, finds the doll, and, for whatever reason, thinks to herself, "Oh, Wes must have forgot his doll.

"Let me put it on his bed so he can find it when he gets home from school."

What?!

And I did-- it was the scariest moment of my life, to this day.

Like, think about this.

Four years have passed, I am not thinking about this.

This doll is dead, gone, out of my mind.

I'm in third grade, I come home, like, "Oh, man, recess was crazy today..." (shrieks) Like, you know... Heart attack, a massive coronary, immediately, all right?

And, like, I just want to know, like, what was my mom's thought process?

It was in black trash bags in a dryer.

Its hands were bound behind its back.

It had duct tape over its eyes and mouth.

I cast spells on it, and she just saw it and, like, "He wants this."

Like, what?!

And it affects me to this day, because now that doll is sitting on a really high shelf in my mom's home office.

And every time I go home, she has something for me to do.

Like, "Hey, the Wi-Fi's acting up," or, "Upgrade my iPad, take care of it."

And to this day, as a grown man, I still have to, like, open the door just a little crack, and stick my head in and make eye contact, and be, like, "Are we cool about that thing from 20 years ago?"

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