SHAY RODGER: She asked us if there were any volunteers to share our coming out stories.

And I threw my hand in the air so fast, and then realized what I had gotten myself into.

LINDA K. WERTHEIMER: My fourth- grade teacher escorts me to a room the size of a supply closet.

I sit in there alone while my classmates are learning about Jesus.

ALEXIS CHEN JOHNSON: A microphone was thrust in my face, TV cameras were rolling, and the vice president was asking me questions.

WES HAZARD: Tonight's theme is "Unfamiliar."

At some time in our lives, we all know what it's like to experience the unfamiliar.

But with courage, and the right attitude, and the right people at your side, it is most often a positive and enriching experience to come through the other side of the unfamiliar.

♪ RODGER: My name's Shay Rodger.

I'm a transplant from Northern New York.

I've lived in Boston for about ten years, and I've worked in tech for four-and-a-half of those years.

I'm wondering, what kind of stories do you most like to tell?

I tried a couple at first.

I tried really serious stories, and tearjerkers, and things that had a lot of pathos attached, and then I tried comedy.

I told a couple of stories that I thought would get a lot of laughs out of the audience-- and I did.

But I think my, my niche, and what I prefer to tell are those highly emotional stories that intentionally attempt to shift perspective.

I want people to think after they're done listening to me.

The people who are going to listen to your story tonight, what would you most want them to take away after hearing it?

To check in with people.

To, to, and also to remember that how you might perceive someone very likely isn't real, or, or rather it could be, but you should still double-check.

Perception is not always reality.

And hopefully, people have an opportunity to learn from each other.

♪ I went to school in a really tiny town in Northern New York called Potsdam.

Cows outnumbered people by a pretty significant margin, about 100 to one.

And the straights outnumbered the gays by an even wider margin.

I know this to be true because I, I was born there.

I grew up there.

When I, when I finally got to SUNY Potsdam, my college, it was a liberal oasis in this conservative, northern territory.

There were finally people there who were a bit more like me that I never experienced before.

SUNY Potsdam had all walks of life, all kinds of people with different majors.

There were musicians, there were painters, sculptors, writers-- that's who I was.

But more than that, there were, there were so many different kinds of people along that human spectrum, all different kinds of shapes and colors, diversity that I had never seen before.

And I was so excited to finally be part of.

It wasn't long before I found the LGBTA.

It's a gay club run by students.

And I, I joined it because I had finally found someone who I hadn't ever seen before, someone who looked more like me and acted more like me.

These were people who we could share experiences with, we could talk about what it was like to be gay for the first time, really, in a safe place.

It was run by this woman who I think was the first elder gay I'd ever met before.

She was an out and proud adult lesbian woman.

I had never seen anyone quite like her.

All the rest of the gay people I knew were 19.

So this woman was someone I idolized.

I kind of worshiped her, and I would follow her into battle wherever she took us.

So one night, she came to our LGBTA, and she asked us if there were any volunteers who would go with her to a neighboring school to share our coming out stories.

And I threw my hand in the air so fast, and then realized what I had gotten myself into.

(audience laughs) The neighboring school, Clarkson University, was pretty different from SUNY Potsdam.

So if Potsdam was this liberal oasis, then Clarkson was the extreme opposite of that.

Back then, the ratio between men and women was about 70-30 favoring men.

And these weren't just men.

These were cisgender, heterosexual white guys.

And again, I don't know if the rules have changed or if the laws are different now, but I think back then, if you identified as male, you had to be a hockey player?

It was a... (audience laughs) Suffice to say, these were big guys.

And, and to our frail little gay kid brains, they were terrifying.

So we picked up these, these, this gaggle of LGBT students, and we dropped them in this concrete-lined colorless room, a lecture hall, and lined us up in firing squad formation.

(audience laughs) And, uh, we're all staring out at this audience full of these tree-sized white guys.

(audience laughs) Our faculty adviser says, "This is the SUNY Potsdam LGBTA.

"They're here to share their coming out stories with you, starting with my dear friend Shawon Rodger."

(audience laughs) Of course.

So I take a step forward.

I'm thinking about, about my story, and then my heart starts to pound, because I'm also looking at what's going on in front of me, these people.

And I reach deep down, and I'm thinking I'm going to pull out rainbows and glitter, because I was from SUNY Potsdam.

I was, I was queer and I knew it, but instead it was, it was darkness and sadness.

I was thinking about my coming out story.

And so then I started.

I'm the kind of person who could never really take the rainbow off.

And to me, that means that from a really young age, before I even knew what being gay was, I had these insults thrown at me.

And back then, these were insults.

It was things like homo, queer, faggot, gay.

And I never really knew what it was.

I don't know if it was the way I dressed or how I acted, or if it had something to do with the way I spoke, but people were cruel.

And then when I turned 15, I kind of had a more, a true understanding of who I was, and I shared that with one of my best friends, and she shared that with the school accidentally.

So the verbal assault became physical assault.

People would push my head into lockers until I bled.

I was tripped going down the stairs a couple of times.

People would drop the books out of my hands, and I remember this one time, I was standing in front of our social studies teacher's classroom, and this big group of guys, all sneering and angry and aggressive-looking, walked by, knocked stuff out of my hands, "Pick it up, faggot!"

And I looked to the teacher for help, and he laughs and walks into the classroom.

So I finish my story and I take a step back.

And by then, I'm, I'm looking down.

I'm not looking up at the students again, because I realized suddenly, "Oh, man, I just shared that story with the same kinds of people who I was remembering."

And so the person next to me starts to share their story, and I don't hear them, really.

And then the third person starts to share theirs.

And finally, I look up, and I see something completely different from what I thought I would.

The students were taking notes, or they were concerned.

They had these expressions of anxiety or anger toward the situation, not toward us.

And it dawned on me that, that they didn't have to be here.

This was a human sexuality class.

They chose this elective.

So if they weren't allies coming into the room, I think they might be now.

When I left the class that night, it was with a bit of shame for having a preconceived notion about these people I never met before, and also hope.

I had the pleasure of bringing students with me myself for the next couple of years.

I took over for our faculty adviser because I wanted them to experience the same kind of "ah-ha" moment that I had, that beautiful moment.

I also noticed that by the end of some of those classes, someone would inevitably raise their hand and they would say, "Why do you do it?

"If it is so hard, if coming out is such a scary thing for you, why not just stay safe, why not just stay in the closet?"

And flair for the dramatic that I have, I would pause and let that silence fill the room, and then I would respond, "For acceptance.

"For love.

Wouldn't you?"

I kept facilitating that class because I was so driven by that hope that I felt that these students would take our stories with them when they went back out into the world, and then slowly, just maybe, we could together build a better, more love-filled world.

Thank you.

(cheers and applause) ♪ WERTHEIMER: I'm Linda K. Wertheimer, not the Linda of NPR.

And I live in Lexington, Massachusetts.

I'm a professional journalist, and I'm the author of a book called Faith Ed: Teaching about Religion in an Age of Intolerance.

Do you feel that any of your past professional experience translated into, you know, helping you into crafting your story?

Yes, I do.

I've even taught writing classes, and I talk a lot about just how important it is to have that, you know, a beginning, a middle, and an end.

And I've also done personal essays, too.

So I think it's actually a beautiful kind of segue to go from writing to storytelling.

And what was your preparation like for crafting this story?

You know, how did it deviate, or did it deviate from what you would do, you know, filing a story?

I mean, it did deviate, because when you write a story, you know, you're not thinking about how it's gonna sound if you're standing in front of a group of people.

In a way, it was a little bit challenging to kind of just sort of take away some of those ingredients of writing a more narrative essay, and really just kind of let myself be out there.

You know, it definitely makes you feel more vulnerable, I think, to do the "storytelling."

In the first half of my childhood, I lived in a hilly neighborhood called Orchard Knoll in Horseheads, New York.

Our parents let us roam in the woods and in and out of our friends' homes, and our neighborhood had at least some diversity.

When I was about eight years old, my mom gave me my very first Jewish star, and I wore it proudly all around town.

It's the kind of place where it's okay to be you.

When I'm nine years old, my dad, a mechanical engineer, announced that he's going to get transferred to a company in the Midwest.

We're gonna have to move to Findlay, Ohio.

I've never even heard of it.

All I know is, my brothers and I are going to have to go to a tiny rural district called Van Buren public schools, and it has less than 1,000 kids.

Worse, we're moving in April, the middle of the school year.

That very first week of school, I'm sitting in my fourth-grade classroom and this woman in a long skirt walks in.

I call her the church lady, because she starts telling us stories about Jesus and all the miracles he created.

My face flushes red when she asks us all to sing "Jesus Loves Me."

I don't know the words.

I feel stuck.

I want to leave, but I can't.

After school, I run off the school bus into the house and I tell my mom everything.

She and my dad go to talk to the school superintendent, and they, and they protest, they're, like, you know, a class can't exist like this in a public school.

And the superintendent says, "I can't do anything about this.

Our school board wants all the kids to have Christian values."

But the superintendent offers my parents a solution.

He says I can be excused from the weekly Christianity class.

My parents are furious, but they don't fight it.

They don't want us to stand out in this rural area that's so devoid of diversity.

My brothers and I are the only Jews in Van Buren schools.

So the next week, when the church lady comes in, my fourth-grade teacher escorts me to a room the size of a supply closet.

I sit in there alone while my classmates are learning about Jesus.

My mom complains about the room, so at least the next time, I get to go to the library.

But each week, I sense 20 pairs of eyes following me when I leave the room and the church lady walks in.

And this girl in my class, she says to me, "Well, why don't you stay in the class with us?"

"I'm Jewish."

I think in my nine-year-old brain that anyone would understand why a Jewish girl would not want to be preached Christianity.

But she persists.

"Do you believe in Jesus?"

I shake my head no.

"Well," she says, "if you don't believe in Jesus, you're going to Hell."

(audience chuckling) So I go to Hell a lot during elementary school.

(audience laughs) The church lady keeps coming all the way through sixth grade.

The funny thing is, I'm not even a religious Jew.

You know, my parents, they take me to Sunday school every week because I got to go, right?

And I do wear my Jewish star there, and I love wearing it there.

But as soon as we get back to Findlay, which is, like, an hour away from the closest temple, in Lima, I slip my star underneath my blouse.

I want to keep my Jewishness invisible, but so many times, it's impossible.

But still, I do make some friends at Van Buren.

There's my basketball buddies, and I have buddies in band, and there's my friend Didi who lives across the street.

She's just two years older, and she becomes like a big sister.

But when I'm still in high school, one Saturday... (sighs): ...my family and I wake up and we see swastikas on every window of our house.

Someone has etched them in white soap.

And they've also drawn them on my brother's green Barracuda car.

All of us are spooked, but we don't call the police.

We've lived in Findlay for several years now.

We don't think anyone is going to stand up for one of the few Jewish families in this entire area.

So in the next hour, my family and I together just wash away those stains.

And on Monday, instead of riding in that Barracuda with my brother to school, we both take the school bus, and we hear whispers.

In high school, looking for an outlet, I write for the school paper, but I have to write the stories that my school teacher wants me to write.

In college, I study journalism, because I want to write stories that expose wrongs.

And I spend the next several decades working for newspapers, and I tell other people's stories, until one day, I tell my own.

And I write about the church lady and the scar she left.

And when I write, it feels so empowering.

At 41, I celebrate my adult bat mitzvah and chant from the Torah.

Because I finally am ready to embrace myself as a Jew.

And now I live in a Boston suburb, and it's home to people of many, many faiths.

One day, I go to our mailbox, and there is a surprise from my old friend Didi from Van Buren.

I take the box in the house and I unwrap the tissue paper, and there's this beautiful, white, stained-glass Star of David.

In her note, Dee says that she knew it was hard for me as a Jew at Van Buren, and she always wishes she could have done something.

She said she made me this star because she knew I had begun to embrace my Jewish identity.

Now, whenever I wear this star, I put it on top of my blouse as a talisman of my faith that everyone can see.

Thank you.

(cheers and applause) ♪ JOHNSON: My name's Alexis Chen Johnson, but everybody calls me Lex, and I live in Lexington, Massachusetts.

So I do match my town, and I'm a public speaking coach.

I'm also a writer and a dancer and a mom.

So I understand that you have written a memoir titled Homesick, and I'm wondering, how do you see the connection between that book and the story that you're going to share with us tonight?

When you grow up in places-- I grew up, um, in one country and left it when I was eight years old and didn't go back until I was 38-- you know, that's a really formative experience that gets pent up inside, it goes somewhere, but you don't know what to do with it.

And I have found that I've needed to write, you know, for my own personal sense of self and my own personal healing.

Needed to get those stories down to pay tribute to, to the things that were harder to claim-- that I was homesick for.

I think you're so right.

Everybody has a story that is cinematic in its scope and proportions, but so many people will never get the opportunity to share that with people, and if only they could.

- Absolutely.

- Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, incredible privilege to, to do storytelling, to write-- to do anything that can, you know, share what you care about, and connect with others.

When I was seven, a microphone was thrust in my face, TV cameras were rolling, and the vice president of the United States was asking me questions.

I was standing next to my family on the Great Wall of China.

We were there as tourists, and Vice President Mondale was there on a diplomatic mission.

We just happened to visit the Great Wall on the same day.

It was summertime and hot, so the sun was likely shining down on us, but my memory of that day is infused with gray.

The year was 1979, and Chairman Mao had passed away three years earlier.

So Chinese citizens mostly wore gray, sometimes dark blue, occasionally green.

There weren't masses of crowds on the Great Wall that day.

The people we did see were not only wearing the same color of clothing, but the same style of clothing, as well, loose-fitting jackets, almost like a box, over a pair of pants.

My American family was in China because my father is originally from there.

He was born in China in 1942, and by the time he was seven years old, he and his family needed to escape.

Mao and the Communist Party had taken over, and my grandparents faced extermination.

So my father and his family fled by boat, first to Taiwan, and then they pushed on and they made it to New York City, where they settled as refugees.

We were also in China because it was en route from the United States to Bangladesh, the country where we actually lived.

So I shared a bedroom with my big brother on Gulshan Avenue in Dhaka, Bangladesh, the capital city.

And we were there because of my father's job.

It was the closest job that he could find to next door in India.

So this is where my story gets a little bit more complicated.

My mom and her European American grandparents migrated from Ohio to North India back in 1916, and members of my mother's family have stayed on ever since.

So my blonde-haired, blue-eyed mom grew up American in India and she just really wanted to go back.

Bangladesh was as close as we could get.

Now, I don't know why Vice President Mondale chose to come over and speak with us, but if I had to guess, it was probably my brother's Red Sox cap that caught his eye.

(laughs): Every summer during our childhood in Asia, my family, which was an expatriate family, was granted something called "home leave."

And yes, it was very confusing as a child to travel from one home to another.

We traveled from Dhaka to Boston every summer, and we would use this city as a home base for visiting family in the area.

For the six weeks of home leave, my brother and I gorged on McDonald's hamburgers and Saturday morning cartoons.

And every year, we went to a Red Sox game at Fenway Park, enjoyed it from the bleachers.

And then we would leave America behind and return to Dhaka before a single New England leaf had changed its color.

When I was seven, I didn't know who Vice President Mondale was, but I knew he was someone important, because he had a film crew with him, and people were stepping aside to let the entourage through.

Vice President Mondale and his cameras looked down at me.

"What's your name?"

It was a simple question spoken with a warm voice, but I had a tight and an awful feeling in my stomach.

"My name is Alexis."

"Well, hello, Alexis.

How old are you?"

Another easy question, but that tight and awful feeling was getting bigger.

"I'm seven," I said.

I was nervous about what came next.

It almost always seemed to come after "what's your name?"

and "how old are you?"

And sure enough, the vice president of the United States leaned over and asked it, the confusing question.

"Where are you from?"

Over the years, my brother Greg and I, we got good at anticipating this confusing question.

We would look at it as a puzzle, and figure out the pieces that needed to be solved.

You know, where we were, who was asking, and why, to come up with a suitable response.

But sometimes the situation could be really tricky.

If I told people I was from Dhaka-- that's where my bedroom was, where my pets and my friends all lived-- they would look at me funny.

If I told people I was from the United States, sometimes I discovered that actually, there was a question hiding underneath their question, because they would repeat the question to me, this time with a new emphasis.

"No, no, no, where are you from?"

Meaning the question underneath the question: "Why do you look the way you do?"

If I told people I was from China, sometimes they got really excited and started speaking to me in Mandarin, and I didn't understand Mandarin.

So then I felt like a fraud or that maybe I had lied somehow.

Certainly, that I was failing a test.

On that hot summer day back in 1979, I couldn't figure out what information this important man with his film crew wanted from me.

I just could feel the cameras looking at me.

I could feel my heart racing.

I didn't know what to say.

Thank goodness.

My brother leaned over and saved the day.

He gave an answer that made Vice President Mondale nod and smile in recognition.

He said, "Boston, we're from Boston."

And just like that, our puzzle was solved.

Thank you.

(cheers and applause) THERESA OKOKON: Watch Stories from the Stage, anytime, anywhere.

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