Black Boomer Besties from Brooklyn
Black Boomer Besties from Brooklyn
Ep148 Wildcard Questions : Do we really know each other after 50 years?
Two best friends trade wildcard questions about possibility, mortality, love, and “enough,” mixing belly laughs with clear-eyed truth. We unpack being overlooked, parenting triggers, belonging in medicine, and building a good life rooted in self-agency and joy.
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Chapter Markers
- 0:00
Reunion, Exhaustion, and Warm-Up Banter - 2:54
Who We Are and Why We’re Here - 3:45
The Wildcard Framework Explained - 5:05
Possibility vs. Limits: “Nothing’s Unreachable” - 7:35
Mortality and Radical Preparedness - 10:45
Being Overlooked and Proving Yourself - 13:07
Motherhood, Boundaries, and Defensiveness - 16:00
Age, Love, and the Art of Letting In - 19:04
Belonging in Medicine and Family - 21:30
Working With Difference Without Friction - 24:20
Defining a Good Life and “Enough” - 35:40
Gratitude and Patreon Sign-Off
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Hey Ange. Hey Les, how are you? We are back together again. Pseudo together, virtually together. Yeah, but we haven't recorded together.
SPEAKER_02:We haven't recorded in a long time. We pre-fronted stuff because we were traveling. You were traveling. I didn't go anywhere. But um but man, this is awesome.
SPEAKER_00:I know. It's hey girl, hey! Hey girl, hey! I've been super busy working on a production at one of the universities in my state, and it um opened last night was opening night. So as a designer, you stay until opening night, then someone else kind of does the run of the show. And so I am tie red. Yeah. But I'm happy to be here.
SPEAKER_02:I'm tired also. I got home at well, you and I were on the phone. I got home about what, 1.30 or so from work this morning. And yes, I did call you because I knew you were up. You're not out. And and didn't get to bed, sleep until like after two. But I was up at 4:30 to the gym. Impressed.
SPEAKER_00:So impressive. Wait, what's that over there? What's what's that over there? What? Do that again. Let me see. Nope. I want the other hand over here so I know you're not pushing it up. The other side. I know your tricks. I know your tricks. All right. Could you introduce us? You introduce. Hi, folks. I'm Angela, and that's Leslie, my best friend of almost 50 years. We are two free-thinking 60-something-year-old black women, and we've decided to live our lives more boldly and with more joy. And we invite you to come along with us on our journey, but also to get about your joy journey to. Today we're going to go back to something that we did a few months ago asking each other questions. We have full full transparency. We have just kind of did a cursory view of the questions. Leslie doesn't know what I'm going to ask her, and um, because it's a long list, and vice versa. And we're not going to answer the same questions, right?
SPEAKER_02:So you know I'm not comfortable with that surprise element stuff. Because it's like sometimes I disclose too much, then I gotta do it.
SPEAKER_00:No back seats. We're in it. We're in it. It's recorded, so we must be real. Yes. So tell the people about um first before you ask them the question, can you tell them about the podcast, the the the framing that we're using? What podcast idea that we're we're drawing from? I forget the name of it.
SPEAKER_02:Ah so it's Wildcard with Rachel Martin. And it's one of the um NPR um programs or stations. But but there's a couple other things that I need to say. First of all, I didn't let you guys know. You all know already, though. We are black boomer besties from Brooklyn. I'm a little, let me just be transparent. I'm a little distracted from my hair.
SPEAKER_01:Okay.
SPEAKER_02:I'm I'm kind of seeing myself.
SPEAKER_01:Okay.
SPEAKER_02:I'm just I'm pretty so I'm kind of like like doing this. I just washed my hair. I'm getting on a flight in an hour and a half or whatever. Whatever. And um, I washed my hair. I just kind of twisted it. I didn't get a chance to finish drying it yet, and still here I am. I'm here for you, guys. Commitment. I'm here for you. But um my hair is still wet, it's in the process of being done. So anyway.
SPEAKER_00:And it looks good.
SPEAKER_02:Well, thank you, babe.
SPEAKER_00:And and you're just telling the people that you're a human being and you you're a lock lady, and so locks take time to dry and all the things. So they're just they're just knowing that you have a whole life, whole full life.
SPEAKER_02:Well, there you go.
SPEAKER_00:And you still look amazing. So with the what?
SPEAKER_02:All right. Thank you, pal. Okay. Shall I ask you the question first? Yeah, go ahead. Go ahead. Oh boy. I ain't scared. See, the problem with this is so many of these questions. I can't I think I know the answers that you're gonna say.
SPEAKER_00:I've been knowing you for a long time, and you know, I may I may mix it up. And the uh listen, not everyone listening knows me. So if you think I'm gonna give an amazing answer, choose choose that one. Okay, I have I have one that I don't know the answer.
SPEAKER_02:Okay. Do I? No, okay, go ahead. What feels unreachable to you? Oh unreachable? Yes, that's the question. What feels unreachable to you? Okay, bet.
SPEAKER_00:Nothing. Wow. Honest to God. I I always think impossibilities. Wow.
SPEAKER_02:I wasn't planning on.
SPEAKER_00:The only time when I don't think something is possible is when no, not even then. What I was gonna say is when I try it and it doesn't work, but I'm never gonna think it before I try it. Or before you know the that I understand. You know what I mean? The stuff that that's possible come come together.
SPEAKER_02:Like you have to be convinced that it doesn't work by doing, by trying.
SPEAKER_00:Right. And because, for example, if I'm saying that it involves someone and that person dies, okay. It's not gonna happen, but I really am wired to think in possibilities because I know that if if it doesn't happen the way that kind of quote make the most sense, unquote. Um, or close quote, the it doesn't mean that it's that it can't happen in in in so many other ways, right? I I reading the the Bible and seeing things that you never ever could think would happen, and then you see it happen. Or um just my experience has taught me that, and I'm kind of wired that way to see it. Like, I I don't think about like um it's not can I do it, it's how can I do it. I hear you.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, good to have you around. Yeah, sometimes when I know I can't do something, I'm like, Ange. What you think about? I capitalized on that for a long time quite a few times.
SPEAKER_00:I'm just saying, like, look look at look at you in med school. I mean, let's just say it again. You were a single mom 36. All that time before you were like, oh, never, could never happen. And then you made it happen. It wasn't like a snap, it was doing the work, but yeah, of course, anything is possible. And guess what? I believe in anything is possible, anything is possible, and this is how I'll end it. I will say that nothing is too good to be true. That I believe. Nothing is too big, too good to be true. I like that.
SPEAKER_02:I like that. That's a good motto, too. That's a good hashtag.
SPEAKER_00:There you go.
SPEAKER_02:Okay, I'm ready for your next question. Your question. All right. I'm a little afraid.
SPEAKER_00:Don't be afraid.
SPEAKER_02:Don't be afraid. You'll be kind to me.
SPEAKER_00:Oh, I didn't say that, but just don't be afraid. Just okay. So my question to you is um where'd it go? Oh, have you made peace with mortality, with your mortality?
SPEAKER_02:Absolutely. I I finally have. When I was younger, um, years or decades ago, it was something that I feared, perhaps feared to the point of I don't need to think about that now. I'm not going to think about that now. But when you get to this uh tender age of 63 in your 60s, you know, I think that my coming to terms with it is being prepared.
SPEAKER_00:You know, um you've been prepared well, well before.
SPEAKER_02:Well, that's what that's what that's what I mean, you know, like just being prepared. And I don't only mean financially, but I mean, you know, it's like there's not too many things that I would need to settle or take care of um if I were not gonna be here, you know, tomorrow or so. I guess I would need to. Yeah, even conversations. Yeah, a couple of that I could still have. But um, you know, I even um I think I gave you like the pass key that the the 50-digit pass key to my Facebook stuff or my not just Facebook, but the Apple uh Leslie is such nuts a planner.
SPEAKER_00:Such a planner. Why you gotta tell all my business? Listen, you just told what she's such a planner, right? Like, um if I didn't if I didn't get to the point in my life where where I have a decent level of confidence, I would feel so small around her and her her planning is like this and it extends back and goes back. Like how you open a fan.
SPEAKER_02:My planning is like this, like the dentist says, wider, and you're like, it's open. He's like open, it's open. No, it's not okay. So I certainly have in answer to your question.
SPEAKER_00:Okay, good. I'm ready.
SPEAKER_02:When have you felt overlooked?
SPEAKER_00:Oh wow, overlooked. Um, definitely. I'll I'll choose one.
SPEAKER_02:It's there's there's been there's been many with black people in America. Many times. How much time we have.
SPEAKER_00:How much time you have? Um wait, what day is today? Many times. And now at my tender age of 63, I have different ways that I respond to it, right? Um, like I remove myself from situations. But when I was younger and didn't really know how or I was too concerned about whether people like me or those types of things, um one was um one was uh in college when I um when I did really well on a I think it was a heat and mass transfer class. Um it was uh it was a tape.
SPEAKER_02:It was a wait, you just gonna just breeze over heat and transfer. And mass transit and mass transfer. It's like I know mass transit. Um I know heat because I'm kinda get hot flashes, but putting the two together, heat and mass transit. Mass transfer. What language are you speaking?
SPEAKER_00:But anyway, so my heat and okay, so mechanical engineering, it's it's really just just how heat I understand flows, you know, like why why there is why is there like uh um those slats in front of um uh your AC or any heating device, or why is a radiator. Remember those old time radiators? Why are they designed like that?
SPEAKER_02:Oh, yeah, we have in Massachusetts, right?
SPEAKER_00:So you have a lot of surfaces for the the heat mass tress? So anyway, tell me about when you felt overlooked. And um, so it was a a take-home exam. It was a it was a it was a doozy. And you know, there were some rules around so you can get it done. And I did really well. And my professor, he was uh white South African, and um he wrote on my paper, he gave me a grade, and he wrote on my paper, if if it was your own work. So, you know, you get the A, and then you get all of this doubt about your um ability in the same moment. You don't even have a second to intuitive the fruits of your labor. Well, you know. Oh my gosh. Yeah, but that was that was I I felt overlooked in his class, um, overlooked, undervalued in his class. We were um, I think maybe there were two or three um black students in a large class, and yeah, I felt overlooked the whole time. That's probably why I did try so hard to do well on on that, because I understood the concepts and so on, and then and then I got that. So that's one time.
SPEAKER_02:I'm thinking about another, and but we don't have time, so yes, yeah, there've been there many they have. Look at my whole Mr. Rhino story. Yeah, and you know, I don't really think of that as overlooked as much as insulted, you know. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, mischaracterized. But we we could do a whole podcast, wow, about those things and what it creates in us. Life what it has created. Alright, you ready for yours?
SPEAKER_00:No, but I'm not sure. You're gonna get mad at me, but we're gonna do it anyway.
SPEAKER_02:Um I sworn to honesty. Yes, you know how I am about it.
SPEAKER_00:What makes you irrationally defensive? Irrationally is the operative word. Speak the truth and shit. But it's easy.
SPEAKER_02:I I I actually I thought about that when I um looked at the question. I know very much. I try to tamper it down, but how much I overindulge Omari.
unknown:Okay.
SPEAKER_02:You know, and I I think some of the my reasons might might be irrational about how I dote on him and um may perhaps overly generous or permissive or whatever, you know. So I think I'm irrationally defensive if people say, you know, he's a grown-up, you know, why are you supporting him in that way? Or why are you helping that, or why are you saying that, or doing that, or whatever, you know? It's like he had a um, he has an upcoming uh doctor's appointment. And I started to say, can I come with you? You know, he is not a child, he's a grown-ass man, but you know what I mean. It's like so not that per se, but um so you get defensive about if people say that I am um Yeah, yeah, like he's too much a somebody um once said to me, you know, you know Omari's a mama's boy, and I was like, you know. Yeah. I was like they gave a couple of examples, I think. So that would be it for me for real, for real.
SPEAKER_00:I love it when you do that. Um ready. Come on, Leslie, do whatever I mean.
SPEAKER_02:What does age? What does age teach you about love? Okay. These are conversations that we've been having for years.
SPEAKER_00:This is what came to me, and this this imagery is kind of what my partner and I have been using, and it immediately came back to me in this way. I feel like throughout my life, especially in this area of love and all the things that kind of connect up to it, self-esteem and all of those things, right? That connect up to how you accept love, how you define it, all those things. What it looks like is like a painting. And you know, sometimes you have a painting and you see a painting and it's pretty either sparse or you could tell it's like one layer, and then you see other paintings that are that have ridges, and you know that they they did a background and then they they used acrylics and they gave it density, and you can see shadows in it, and and it just gets it's a really kind of um you could tell that it is a painting that has been built built upon um versus just being single dimension, single layer, um, let's say basic. Um that's how I think about love and how I have changed, it has changed in its definition for me over my now six um decades of life. And when I say love, I mean in all its forms. Even, you know, the love for my children, right? I mean, being a when my first child was born, um, there was so much love, and I got so nervous that when I found out I was pregnant with my second, I had these real fears about I'm gonna have to take love from the first one to give to the second one. How can I, you know, it was this real and then I realized that it's just additive, and that's what I I recognize that that's how God is. You know, you think how could God have, you know, love every it's it's it's it's not you're not taking from one to give to another, it just grows.
SPEAKER_02:Wow, that's that's a deep answer.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, and so when I think about it in terms of relationships, it's just layered, you know. I had a very kind of um childish understanding of love. It worked, you know, when I was a child, it worked, but as you grow and you get to know yourself and get to know what you deserve and starting to believe that you deserve certain things, you know, and even like you could in this same imagery of this painting, you could have all these layers on one section of the painting and not very many on like the edges, but you start filling out the edges. So it's this constant kind of adding to an understanding of the things that you need, what love looks like, what this is the most important thing, and I'll end with this for me is what you allow in. Wow. Um, you know, both what you don't allow in and what do you allow in. Because sometimes I think that is the that has been like the biggest issue for me is maybe not recognizing some of the things that I should have allowed in and allowing in some of the things that I shouldn't have.
SPEAKER_02:Uh-huh. So it almost sounds like proper editing.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, a good curating, a good culling sometimes. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, that's how you um that's how I would. That was that was okay. You know, you you kind of go deep there.
SPEAKER_02:Thank you.
SPEAKER_00:All right, you ready?
SPEAKER_02:Uh, I'm ready.
SPEAKER_00:Okay. Oh boy. I I won't do that one. That one is too hard.
SPEAKER_02:Um I beg your pardon. Yeah, no, I don't know. No, but but you know how superficial I am. So go ahead. Thank you for skipping it. No, no, no. No, no, no. You don't want to embarrass your bestie. Okay. You'll ask me a question and I say yes.
SPEAKER_00:You say B. Um uh Oh. Um, when do you feel most like an outsider? You can answer it in the past or present. Even though it was meant to be present. No, only the present. I changed I changed the parameters.
SPEAKER_02:Thankfully, I thank God that very rarely do I feel like an outsider. You know, can you find that time when you a little difficult for me? I mean, I could I could bring it in and say, you know, my experiences as a black um woman in medicine as a physician, you know, especially in anesthesiology, when I go to national meetings or local organizations, there are very few of me. So I um I usually use my personality, my non-physician personality to be a little bit more um friendly than most people. You know, many people are, you know, a little staunchy. So what do you say, staunchy or whatever? You know, they're like buttoned up and they, you know, but you know, I um I bring my non-physician personality to the physician world and interact in that way.
SPEAKER_01:Okay.
SPEAKER_02:Um but I would say when I am around um many of my um, you know, the national colleagues that I don't work with on a regular basis, I feel um more like an most like an outsider.
SPEAKER_01:Okay.
SPEAKER_02:I'll tell you another time I felt I felt like an outsider, but it's historical. As a young person, I often felt like an outsider in my family. And one of the reasons was that um I came f I come from a family of um educators. You know, mom is an educator, Monique is an educator, and um my grandfather was a principal. So uh as a science head and and medicine, I didn't feel that I could personally relate professionally on a professional level, of course I don't mean personally, but on a professional level with the rest of my peers because they weren't into science and math. You know, I was the only one of my siblings and uh immediate family members who, you know, took to that. So I there were certainly um ways that I was required to study or conversations that I could have had about how my day was or the impact of things like that that I don't think that my um family would have understood. So in that regard, I guess I could say I would have felt like an outsider.
SPEAKER_00:Okay. Fair enough. Thank you. You've you you pulled two out of that very narrow. Good job.
unknown:Oh my god.
SPEAKER_00:Good job.
SPEAKER_02:What emotion do you understand more than others?
SPEAKER_00:I think I understand how to connect with people who are different. Is that an emotion? Well, it shows up as emotion. It shows up as emotion because um for for many people when they interact with someone different, there's a lot of anger, there's a lot of you know, um disrespect, you know, why do you do it that way? Or um when I say other, I mean people who are wired differently, right? So like we were talking about before about how you're a planner. Um sometimes people who are um really flexible and can and like to make spur-the-moment decisions and things like that, they get angry at people who are what they would say really tight, you know, like to rein on people's parades. So it comes up to me as emotion because there's typically an emotional response to people who are different. People who are more like you often would say would think of me as, oh, you don't do anything, you're just full of ideas, you don't, you know, you get to the point, you're just an idea person, you know. That yeah, that type of thing. Right. Like you Yes, yes, when come on now. Like you get. So that's why I thought of it as emotion because it it it brings up an emotional response. Yes.
SPEAKER_02:Okay, okay.
SPEAKER_00:When people and I have learned, I have learned this was not this is learning. I have learned how to work well with people who are different from me and not um and help other people to do it and not just immediately go to emotionally, exactly, discount them, or their opinions don't matter, or you know, um they they're just raining on my parade, you know, that type of thing. Um and so all right, that's how I'm gonna answer the question because that's how it hit me. You want to redefine it for me? You want to make it go ahead. Because you're tune, go ahead.
SPEAKER_02:What I and you know I'm a very concrete person. Yes, but the way that I thought about it. I didn't even see the movie, although I heard that it was really good. The the cartoon where there was the emotions in the child, and it was like anger, happy, sad, this. So when you said when I said what emotion, I immediately thought of the cartoon that I never saw. But um, and I thought that you were going to say like sadness. Oh, you know, you know, but do you want me to answer that?
SPEAKER_00:No, no, no. Okay, all right. Thank you, because it's already answered, right? I'd like to hear you say it.
SPEAKER_02:Envy. Thank you. Envy is what you understand. Envy is you've been jealous of me all your life. Tell the truth. Tell the truth.
SPEAKER_00:Never, never.
SPEAKER_02:Um, my turn, I guess. Should this be the last question?
SPEAKER_00:Uh, yeah, because you kind of fight, don't you?
SPEAKER_02:I do.
SPEAKER_00:Okay. Um What does it mean to live a good life? I gave you a softball. What does it mean to a good one? That is a softball, I think. Thanks. No, but um, I'm still I'm gonna ask some follow-up questions. So go ahead. You try to softball it and I will I will make you dig deeper. Go ahead.
SPEAKER_02:Go ahead. Part of the answer invol Well, no, I would say. Because you didn't ask me, do I live a good life? You just asked, what does it mean? Okay, I understand. Okay, I can ask. Answer that.
SPEAKER_00:I let me read it again. The question is um what does it mean? What does it mean to live a good life? A good life. It's good practice to answer the question with the like how I used to teach Omari to it. Exactly.
SPEAKER_02:What it means to have a good life is for a person to have self-agency.
SPEAKER_00:Okay.
SPEAKER_02:And what I mean by that is it's self-determination.
unknown:Okay.
SPEAKER_02:If they have the power and the ability, whether they use it or not, to make good decisions or bad decisions for themselves.
unknown:Okay.
SPEAKER_02:Um that's a good idea. I think that I I think that is a good life when you have autonomy and um and the the rights and the ability to determine things for yourself. Um I'm not going to say that people's mistakes should be limited per se. You know, it it almost sounds uh libertarian in what I mean, because all the mistakes that I've made. No, let me let me say like this. The two mistakes that I've ever made in my life. I just want to be honest. You know, we learn from our mistakes. And then again, if you're a believer, you don't believe that things, you know, we know that things happen for a reason and you're supposed to w uh have a lesson from it. So anyway, self-agency is one of them. And um, as um Karen Hunter says, freedom to move around the cabin. You know, um, and whatever that means to you, it doesn't necessarily mean financially um that you have a lot of money. I I think that having what we call enough money is uh a good life. Um you know what having the love of people um and the respect of people also affords a good life, in my opinion. You know?
SPEAKER_00:So it's interesting because um, you know, I'm from Jamaica, and so my childhood um and you know, teenage years when I used to go back pretty regularly, I I saw so many people living a good life with very little money. Um it's like it's not that money wasn't a factor, but it was you can go out and you grow your food. The you know, you get mango, you get peer, you get cane, you get breadfruit, you get pumpkin, you get yam, you get um cocoa, you know, chocolate from the the the cocoa plant. You get all of these things are are right there, colorlow, all those things, you're right there. You have your family, you have a roof over your head. And you know, you can trade to get the things that you need. I saw that so much that especially now that you know we're we're getting gearing up for retirement and we're thinking about moving abroad, and so and you know, there's always a conversation about whether you have enough money to to do these things. And now, you know, I've been in America for um the the bigger part of my life, and this idea around what is enough, it always is something that really you you you really don't think you can, you know, and I guess it's what you're used to and all of that. I'm just kind of saying that it always kind of hits me as like you have to take a step back. With a little conflict, yeah.
SPEAKER_02:You have to take a step back. I kind of think that when you come from uh a place like you described in Jamaica or in other places, met most places around the world, I would say, you know, we you you would come here and it almost like that type of satisfaction gets adulterated. So your perception of enough changes. Right. You know, I've always lived in this society, and you know, even though I've moved in in um different social classes, you know, I think even that promotes, you know, adulteration of what's enough, really. You know, we start confusing the wants with the needs.
SPEAKER_00:Yes.
unknown:Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:And as soon as you turn on a television, you know, it starts playing with your mind about what you need versus, you know, get a car every three years because get a phone every three years because it's new feature. The camera is better. The camera is better. Who the fuck needs a camera? You know, it's like, but you know what I mean. And then we start longing for things.
SPEAKER_00:Right.
SPEAKER_02:And um, it's all psychological, so much of it. So, yeah, yeah, good life is um it's so relative. But I'll tell you, and this harks back to our plans to move out of the country. I really think it's gonna be a reset.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:And as we will have um loved ones with us and other loved ones a phone call, a video call, or a plane right away, yeah. I think we'll have the uh I pray that we have the opportunity to really start thinking about um what's enough, what's a good life, and all of that stuff. And that harks back to the question you just asked me earlier about, you know, do you think about your own mortality and stuff? I want my last days to be in a state of enough and in a state of joy and not wanting or chasing.
SPEAKER_00:You know, chasing, well, killing.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, yeah. Keeping up with, you know what I mean, and things like that. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. Excellent. Okay.
SPEAKER_02:Wow.
SPEAKER_00:This episode was produced by Leslie Michelle, who's our OCT. Ah, thank you. I guess so.
SPEAKER_02:Good job.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, you're a producer.
SPEAKER_02:All right. Well, well, thank you guys. Thank you for listening. We really appreciate you. And we appreciate our Patreon subscribers too. Yes. In fact, we really appreciate your support. So you can join our Patreon um Besties Squad Squad for a five or ten dollar monthly pledge. We appreciate it. It helps us, and we can bring new content new content to you. So I'll end by saying this has been another episode of Black Boomer Besties from Brooklyn.
SPEAKER_01:Brooklyn
