In this week’s episode, both our storytellers’ lives are altered by an unexpected mishap.

Part 1: When teenage Ron Hart accidentally walks through a glass door, he lands in the ER on the worst possible day: a tornado drill.

Ron Hart is a television writer, a Moth GrandSlam Champion, and a recovering mascot.

Part 2: After a car accident leaves all of her teeth bent inward, Di Cai begins to rethink her life as a scientist.

Di Cai is an investment professional by day, a stand up comedian at night, and a sailboat skipper (aka “captain”) if there's good wind on the Hudson River. A former Chinese TV hostess turned PhD scientist; an investor moonlights as a comedian, going by a stage name Dr Dee in the underground New York comedy clubs. Whether it's stand up or storytelling, Di has her unique perspectives as an immigrant, a woman, and a badass.

Episode Transcript

Part 1

I was 14 and I was very excited, because my friends were coming over for an afternoon to play the board game Risk. That should answer all of your questions about me at the age of 14.

Now, back then, there was an ad on television for Risk. The announcer would say, "Risk, win the game and you win the world."

Then, for whatever reason, at the end of the ad the guy would change his voice and say, "Parker Brothers' kind of fun."

Ron Hart shares his story at the Crawford Family Forum in Los Angeles, CA in December 2024. Photo by Louis Felix for LAist.

I basically had two friends in the whole world and I would call them up and I'd be like, "Excuse me, would you care for some ‘Parker Brothers’ kind of fun’?” And these dorks would come running. My two friends had the time and the interest to play a seven‑hour board game.

Now, this is August, the dog days of summer. Or, as we call it in Illinois, the fall. It was the end of a really horrible summer break because I was between middle school and high school, and I was just dreading this change. It was going to be a bigger school and I just knew I was going to be socially invisible. No one would notice me. Because I had just gone through middle school and barely anyone noticed me there. I mean, I wound up with two dorks for friends, right? I just thought high school was going to be like, fighting a protracted land battle on multiple fronts in Asia, which any Risk player will tell you is a horrible, horrible way to lose.

So, I had a lot of anxiety about it. I just needed a calming afternoon of rolling dice for world domination to relax me.

The one good thing that had happened that summer was my leg hair had started to come in. So that afternoon, I'm rocking a sweet pair of ‘80s short shorts to show off the thigh fuzz and I'm carrying Doritos and Jolt Cola out to the screened‑in porch where I'm setting us up so me and the boys can have some ‘Parker Brothers’ kind of fun’.

As I go from the living room to the porch, I hear a clap of thunder. But it's not off in the distance, it's like I'm in the thunder. Then I see the sky falling, like I'm Chicken Little. I realize the glass door to the porch that I thought was open had been closed. I hadn't even felt it hit my head but I had shattered it. I looked down and there's just a billion shards of glass everywhere and I'm covered in blood.

I realize this is my blood. I'm bleeding from everywhere. So I say, “Help?” Literally. Like that with a question mark.

My dad comes running in. He sees his son covered head to toe in blood and says, “Oh, geez.” That's the type of fiery, impassioned emotional response that's the hallmark of men of the Midwest, right? Years later, I would tell him that he was going to be a grandfather for the first time, and his reaction was, "Neat!"

So then my mom comes in, she takes one look at me and immediately just starts screaming. It's just like wordless bellow that is so loud, woodland creatures miles from our home are running for cover. She's terrified. And because she's terrified, now I'm terrified, so I start screaming.

The second I start screaming, she stops and snaps into mom mode. She's like, "Knock it off!"

So, I'm like, I'm cut on my arms, both of my semi‑hairless legs, my chest, there's a gash right next to my eye and there's this really deep cut on my hand. So my mom takes my right arm and she sticks it up over my head so that it's over my heart and will bleed less. Then she looks to my dad and says, "We've got to stop the bleeding. Go get some towels."

He's like, "Okey dokey," and he goes off to the linen closet. And when he comes back, she's like, "Not the good towels!"

So they get the crummy towels and they start applying pressure to all these cuts when my dad notices on this really deep cut, there's a shard of glass sticking out of it. So he pulls my hand down and he plucks the shard out, which you've seen this before. Yeah, a geyser of blood starts shooting out everywhere.

So my mom takes my hand and puts it back up, and now it's like there's a garden hose of my blood just spraying the whole room.

Before I knew it, the whole house seemed to be filled with first responders. There's two paramedics. They're slapping bandages on me seemingly everywhere. And there's a cop who's right in my face.

He's like, "What are you on, son?" Because I'm a teenage boy who's just walked through a sheet glass window, so in his cop brain I have to be having smoked PCP or something.

He's like, “The doctors need to know what you took.”

I don't know why the cop is Jack Nicholson tonight. I'm sorry.

He's like, “The doctors need to know what you took,” and I'm like, “I took some of the Doritos.”

At this point, his partner comes in from the porch and he's holding up the game box for Risk, like it's evidence. The first cop just shuts his notepad, like, “Okay. Case closed. This kid is definitely not cool enough to be doing drugs.”

So the paramedics, they strap me onto the gurney and they start wheeling me out and I'm like, “But Matt and Tim are coming.”

And my dad is like, “Who?”

My mom is like, “His nerds.” And she's like, “I'll call their parents. It's fine.”

So they wheel me out and they put me in the back of the ambulance with my dad. When they closed that door, that is when the shock wore off and the panic set in, because they're taking me to the hospital. I'm bleeding a lot. This is scary. This is like life‑threatening.

Then they threw on the lights and sirens and I was a five‑year‑old boy like, "Woo‑hoo, woo‑hoo!" I'm like, "I don't care if I bleed out. I'm in an ambulance with lights and sirens on." It was just so exciting. I had wanted to be seen and now I was rolling through town and they were going to wheel me into the ER. I figured it would be like on TV with all the doctors shouting orders and everything. It's going to be all focused on me.

So the ambulance stops and they open the door. We're not at the ER. We're not even in the parking lot. We're on the road in front of the hospital because there's a line of ambulances waiting to get in.

And the paramedics are like, "Do you mind walking in?"

So when we get into the ER, it's packed. There's people lining the halls, the lobbies full, and all of them have bandages everywhere. We go to the nurse's station and she tells us that the hospital is doing an emergency preparedness drill and all these patients are actually volunteers from like the Lions Club or Girl Scouts. They're pretending to be victims of a fake tornado. And she's like, “But it's a great day to come because we have snacks.”

So my dad is like, “Neat!” He takes a Diet Coke and we go off to the exam room. They put me in the exam room and my dad sits in the corner, pops open the Diet Coke and the Cubs game is on. He's set for the day, right?

Then we wait.

And I'm like, “Okay, I've never been to an emergency room before, but I kind of thought it would feel more like, I don't know, an emergency.” But I say to him, like, “Dad, is it normal to wait for this long?"

And he's like, "It's going to be fine."

It was not. Here's why. I'm in a hospital that's filled with fake patients for this fake tornado. All these doctors are running around trying to quickly take care of these fake patients of the fake tornado. Meanwhile, my chart lands on their desk and it says, “14‑year‑old boy, multiple lacerations, broken window,” which, you know, sounds a lot like something that might happen in a tornado.

And, obviously, these doctors have to ‘fake’ take care of the people who are more seriously injured, like a guy whose spine has been severed is a lot more important than some kid with a few cuts on them, except for the fact that I was actually bleeding.

When we got there, my bandages had spots of blood, but pretty soon they were completely soaked and I was watching them get darker and darker. The panic came back, because I'm like, “Okay, I'm not bleeding bleeding, but I am definitely oozing blood.” And I don't know how long you can ooze blood before you die.

Plus, I have cuts everywhere. I'm like, “Am I going to look like a jigsaw puzzle when this is over?” So, I'm freaking out. I expected, at this point, I would have captured Alaska and be ready to invade Kamchatka, instead I'm looking at my crimson red bandages everywhere.

I say to Dad, I'm like, “You got to go talk to the nurses. You got to do this.” Because this was the only card I had to play to send the most mild‑mannered man in America to go plead for life‑saving care for his son.

So, he goes out to the nurses station but there's a line of people, because they have told the fake victims that they should all be advocating for their health the way real patients were. And they're all screaming at the nurses.

So, the ‘Oh, geez’ guy is not going to get anywhere with them, so he comes back with another Diet Coke, and we wait.

An hour goes by. At this point, I'm getting right with Jesus. I'm like, “Cause of death, oozing.” A doctor happens to walk past, looks in the doorway, when he sees me. This doctor says, "Oh, shit!" Which is not a thing you ever want to hear a doctor say. He's like, "Everyone, get in here!"

So, they have like every med student in Illinois basically here for this drill and this guy had been showing them, like, "Oh, you fix that fake broken arm," or this pretend concussion. So, they all jam into this exam room like it's a clown car, because they want to see the honest‑to‑God real patient.

They're crowding around me and he's shouting out directions. They're taking off my bandages and cleaning the wounds, they're cutting me out of my clothes. And he tells them, “We got to make sure that there's no embedded shards of glass.”

I had wanted so badly for people to see me and now I was surrounded by strangers who were literally inspecting every inch of my body with magnifying glasses. And these med students would be like, “Doctor, I see something.”

He's like, “It's a zit. Move on.”

“What about…”

“Pimple. Keep going, people.”

Literally, every 14‑year‑old's worst nightmare.

Then it's time for the sutures. They're all like they can't wait to do this now. They're med students.

And he's like, “ I need 15 in that leg. Let's do nine over here.” The cut on my hand is so big, he's having them switch off every three cuts or whatever.

So I have my arms and my legs and they're surrounding me like a NASCAR pit crew doing a tire change. It's incredible.

Then they get me all stitched up and now I need fresh bandages. This is when the nurses tell them they are out of bandages, because they've been slapping them on the Lions Club out in the lobby all day.

So some poor nurse has to run to the maternity ward and she comes back with the panties they give to women after childbirth and the med students are just taping this to various points in my body.

Now, they didn't touch the cut near my eye because it was too close and the doctor was worried, so he got a consultation. The head of the hospital comes in. There's all these medical dignitaries here for this drill and he says, “This is the top ophthalmologist in the state and the other guy is like the premier plastic surgeon in the Midwest.”

The ophthalmologist looks at my eye, makes sure there's no glass. He's like, “You're going to be fine. You're not going to lose any vision.” And then the plastic surgeon says, “I'm going to personally stitch you up so you don't have a scar. You'll keep your marquee idol good looks.”

And the head of the hospital leans down to me and he says, “Son, you are so fortunate that this happened to you today.”

And I look up to him covered in dry blood, zits, and pregnancy diapers, and I say, “Yeah, I was just thinking about how lucky I feel.”

So they sent me home. I have like 96 stitches in seven places. I walk into the house. My mother had just finished mopping my blood off the ceiling, and she says, "Well, at least now you know what to tell people when they ask you what you did on your summer vacation."

But the truth is, what I had done on my summer vacation was freak out about high school. I was worried about it. I was so convinced I was going to just appear invisible there, but I just spent an afternoon seeing that being the center of attention is not always the greatest thing.

Then there was a knock on the door and it was my Risk buddies, because they were worried about me. Yeah.

I was worried that high school is going to be this unwinnable battle, but the way you win at Risk is to slowly build up your numbers. Sure, this was going to be a war, but at least I knew I was starting it with two allies.

So, I took the boys out to the porch. My mom brought us some fresh Doritos, and we all had some ‘Parker Brothers kind of fun’.

Part 2

I was 26 years old. I was in South Florida. I had just finished a PhD in Biochemistry and I was doing my postdoc at a brand new institution in a small town called Jupiter. Jupiter is a place that is slow. It's warm, it's nice, it's comfortable, but I didn't quite feel like I belonged there. It's the town that you rarely see any young people, not to say young people of minority ethnicity. The closest Asian market was 45 minutes away and it's smaller than your typical 7‑Eleven.

I also didn't quite like the work I was doing as a lab scientist. It's the same thing every day, 24 hours a day, and I know what my life is going to be like five days a week. I could see the end of it.

And the work was not rewarding. My research was very deep and narrow, I felt like I was changing no one's life, not even my peers. I'm not making a dent in the field at all. Probably because I wasn't the greatest scientist and, if I were honest with you, I don't think I like science all that much.

Di Cai shares her story at QED Astoria in Queens, NY in February 2025. Photo by Zhen Qin.

I got to a point I felt like I wanted to change, I wanted to switch careers. I have always dreamed of doing something interesting, being out there and living a bigger life, so I thought probably going to business school and becoming a businesswoman that fit that image. I didn't know what MBA does. Sounds general, maybe useful, but that's what I went after.

So, in 2009, I applied for 12 top business schools. By spring of 2010, each one of them had sent me a rejection letter, but I wasn't even devastated because I couldn't even figure out where my life could be either. This place is not the best, but it's very comfortable. I wasn't making much, but it doesn't take much in Jupiter. Maybe I would just marry someone local and end up living here, and that is okay. It's really not that bad.

This was April 9th, 2010. It was a Friday, department happy hour. I was just half‑heartedly drinking with my co‑workers and lab mates while, in my head, I was really thinking about this guy, Paul. We met in a bar on Tuesday and he said we're going to go out on Friday. We're going to watch sports with his friends, but he hasn't called yet. I needed the details.

I was just thinking, “What do I do? Do I call him? Or do I play it cool? Should I head home now and just get ready and look pretty?” Especially now I'm getting into an argument with this annoying new Chinese kid Gao Yu.

He is a new third year PhD student, the most argumentative, the most annoying person who is so arrogant. He thought he's the smartest person on the floor, but he's the only one who does not have a doctoral degree yet. We were arguing about different ways of a sensitizing peptoid on a Friday. Seriously? Why am I even here?

So I put away my half‑opened Bud Light. I just left. I just goodbyed.

I walked out of the building and we had an outdoor parking lot. The sun was just about to set. It's dead silent, you know, Florida.

I walked to my car, I sit down. I did not have my seat belt on. This is what I do a hundred times. It's burning hot. I usually put on the seat belt only after I hit the road or go on the highway.

Then I just started driving, driving very slowly in the parking lot. At this time, my phone rang. It must be Ga Pau. He's calling me.

So, I looked down trying to find my phone. My right hand is searching down here while my left hand is still on the steering wheel. But somehow, I couldn't find my phone. I think it fell to the floor. So I'm just looking down, kept searching while my left hand is still on the steering wheel, still driving slowly in this parking lot.

Then I heard a loud bang. I looked up, I saw my car got on the curb and hit the light pole. My forehead hit the windshield, broke the windshield into a spider web, and my chin hit the steering wheel.

So immediately, I opened the mirror to check on my face. The forehead was fine and then I opened my mouth. My entire lower teeth were bent inward. I smelled blood, but I didn't feel any pain. It's more of a shock. It's like a horror movie scene, except I was the main character.

I had a hard time processing what just happened. This is what I do every day and it's never a problem. I was driving very slowly, maybe eight miles an hour. I was not drinking. How could this end up this bad?

I was 26 years old. I was an attractive young woman, still am. I was in performing arts. I was a singer. I do emcee and hosting. I took great pride in my voice and my ability to be on stage. In that moment, when I saw my face, I saw what is inside of my mouth, I felt like I died. I just lost a big part of who I am.

I wanted to scream. I wanted to hit myself. I wanted to ask for help, but I couldn't, because my teeth were in the way of me making any noise. I didn’t know how can I escape from this moment.

At this time, I saw someone walking out of the building. It was that annoying Chinese kid Gao Yu. Well, at least it's somebody. He's probably the last person I wanted to be vulnerable with, to want to see the worst moment of my life, but I needed help.

He saw the car accident. He walked to me and he asked me, “Are you okay?” I shook my head.

I texted him. I said, “Drive me to the hospital, please.”

So, I went to his car. We sat down and he said, "Hey, why are you not talking? Can you just show me what happened?"

So I pointed to my forehead and then pointed to my chin.

He said, "Could you open your mouth?"

I paused and then there was this awkward silence in the car.

Then he said, “My mom is an oral surgeon. I grew up in her clinic. I've seen a lot of shit.”

I hesitated. Eventually, I opened my mouth. I saw him trying very hard to contain himself. He was just fiercely nodding and heavily breathing. And he said, "I've seen worse. They can fix it.”

We got to the emergency room. It's packed. Friday, of course. We walked through the crowd. At the reception, the lady, she was already flustered by all these people. She just asked me in a monotone, “So what brought you to the ER?”

I was still trying to think how do I explain when I couldn't speak? She asked again impatiently, as if language was a problem, so I decided to open my mouth. She started screaming.

She started screaming. That's how bad the shit was when the ER lady couldn't keep herself together.

She immediately brought me to the back and started calling the surgeons to operate on me. That was the very first time I got to beat the triage system in the emergency room.

The next six hours was just the most painful, physically and emotionally. All these drillings and the vibrations and that high‑pitched noise, God knows what things it is inside of the dental clinic the devices are making. Every time they were drilling through my gum, I feel like it is also drilling through my blood, through my bone, into my heart, asking me, "How did you fuck this up? How did you ruin all that you have for a random dude who didn't even care to call you?"

Oh, I never mentioned. That missed call was from my dad. So, Paul stood me up.

I had everything. Life was fine. And one split second, in my own mistake, it was totally different.

It was a very vague memory of what happened in those six hours. All I remember was the sound and the nurses talking. And all of those pain and drilling and high‑pitched noise, this very unbearable sound, that continued for the next two months, six months and a year. It took them that long to do the reconstructive surgery because my entire lower teeth were bent inward. They have to straighten it up and bend it back up and putting wires on it.

At the beginning of this recovery, I treat every session as a self‑beating session. The moment I lay down on those dental clinic chairs, I started cursing in my head. “What did you do to yourself? How could this horrible thing happen to you but no one else?”

Later on, it just became one of my routines. I got used to seeing the doctors for half a day, having them drill on my mouth, on my face, for twice a week. I started to accept this is the life now. This is what you do and you just adapt to your new reality.

And I started to do something different. You got to explore different things when you're a different person. Like I got into the habit of writing. I couldn't speak. Then I realized, there's so much you can communicate without a vocal cord.

Then, of course, I have to change my diet, a soft diet only. Mashed potatoes, chicken soup, steamed broccoli, that was a magical thing that I can actually eat vegetables when you couldn't chew at all, when we don't have the functional organs back here.

The time goes on. I still go into those sessions. There's a lot of work being done, but there hasn't been an end to it. I don't know when I will be finished with this whole process. It's a very helpless moment. It's in those time I thought about what Gao Yu said to me in the car. He said, “I've seen worse. They can fix it.” So I was hopeful.

And towards the end of those recovery, I started to see things differently. I felt like this car accident maybe it's not entirely a bad thing. Maybe it's a wake‑up call to tell me, “You don't belong to this small town called Jupiter, Florida. You always had dreams and ambitions. You want to be out there. You want to be at a bigger city. You want to be with people who are different, but also just the same as you, who are bold and curious.

Yes, you were rejected. You were rejected, but don't you dare give up on your dream and just decide to settle here. And you thought about marrying someone local and be here for the rest of your life, are you crazy? You don't belong here. Get out. Do not waste your time.”

A year later, when they finally removed all the stitches, I decided to apply to business school again. This time, I was accepted by one of the best schools. I finally moved away from Florida.

Now, 15 years later, here I am. I'm in New York City. I was doing a job I didn't think I would be doing before and I was actually good at it. In my spare time I can be imploring the performing art aspect and do comedy to stories and share that moment with all of you.

Before I leave, I just want to say that, you don't know what is out there in life when you lost what you value the most.

That's it. Thank you so much.