This episode features KN Potter, a student in Campfire’s Advanced Storytelling class. You can learn more about KN Potter on the Campfire website, https://cmpfr.com/events/winter-2019-advanced-storytelling/.
These episodes of The Campfire Storytelling Podcast showcase students who went through our Advanced Storytelling class. These students take a six-week class to prepare to tell a story about life and how they live it. Season 30 students told stories about false narratives.
This episode was originally performed December 2019, produced by Jeff Allen, and recorded live at The Focal Point.
This episode features KN Potter, a student in Campfire’s Advanced Storytelling class. You can learn more about KN Potter on the Campfire website, https://cmpfr.com/events/winter-2019-advanced-storytelling/.
These episodes of The Campfire Storytelling Podcast showcase students who went through our Advanced Storytelling class. These students take a six-week class to prepare to tell a story about life and how they live it. Season 30 students told stories about false narratives.
This episode was originally performed December 2019, produced by Jeff Allen, and recorded live at The Focal Point.
Steven Harowitz: 0:12
Hello, Internet. I'm Steven Harowitz, and I'll be your host for this episode of Campfire at Home, recorded here in St. Louis, Missouri. Almost every month, we gather at the Campfire to hear stories about life and how we live it. Campfire at Home is how we bring that live storytelling experience to you wherever you are. In this particular episode, I have something special for you because we have stories to share from the capstone event of our Season 10 Advanced Storytelling class. These students signed up for a class through Campfire to learn about public speaking and storytelling. That first class, the students are always nervous, excited and looking around, not knowing who each other are yet. But then they slowly get to know one another as they collectively reflect on their lives through story. They started to see the output of their training and the power and the liberation of owning and sharing their own story. And even when it got scary or their nerves crept up, as it inevitably does, they kept choosing to take on the challenge. And then there they were, onstage in the lights, delivering some truly delightful and some truly heavy stories. All in all their advanced storytelling training went over six classes, with some additional time for individual coaching. This series of podcasts includes the four Advanced Storytelling students, Gabe, Javier, Jermar, and Potter, all telling a short story on the topic of quitting. And then beyond the hugs and smiles each storyteller got after the event, I got to say, as their instructor, a heartfelt congratulations to four people with newfound skills in storytelling, confidence in their voice and speaking publicly, and an understanding of the power of story. Let's head to the Campfire to listen to Potter's story on quitting.
KN Potter: 2:15
Alright, thank you all for coming. The past several years, I've been on this journey of realizing that my parents don't have all the answers. I think everybody kind of has this one. With this journey, it's been a mix of that particular realization and coming to the conclusion that really I can't rely on my parents to give me all the answers as well. So growing up I had this idea that my parents had all the exact answers to all the exact questions that I had at the exact times that I had them. I mean, why wouldn't I, right? Because of my parents, I had a home, a place to live, roof over my head. I had people who cared about me, I had friends and family who took care of me when maybe my mom was busy and wasn't able to do it herself. I had food, right? I had space to grow and learn and figure out what it meant to be a person. A human in this world. So, yeah, my parents had all the answers. Now, one of those things that I figured they probably had all the answers to was how do we manage our money, right? And I always figured that they had it figured out. You know, we had the home, we had the space, we could do what we needed to do. And I took what they said to be the truth. Right. And as I moved towards independence in my life, move towards going, "Alright, so this is how we live. This is how we be human," I started moving towards this idea that, you know, I needed able to use my money. I need to be able to spend it on things. I need to be able get the things that I need, and as part of that process, my parents really impressed on me, don't get a credit card. Never ever get a credit card. It's just better and safer and more secure and smarter to save up the money that you I want to get the things that you need. And they really worked to show me that this was true. When I was in high school, I wanted to go on this trip and this was a really cool ass trip. Y'all I was gonna go to Japan halfway across the world, check out a whole other place, actually use the language I've been learning since Freshman year. And but of course, it costs money. So Mom and I sat down sophomore year and we worked out a plan together. That plan was over the summer, I would get a job. And with that job, I would raise the money for half the trip and my spending money. If I did that, Mom would then be really awesome and then pay the other half for me. Now guess what? Yes, I accomplished this. It was really exciting. I went the summer between junior and senior year of high school. I turned 17 in Japan. Yeah, really exciting. And it was so awesome. And I could see what they meant when they said that to save up and accomplish those goals was this really awesome thing to do. I got that. And as I kept getting older and kept going towards independence, I saw that their part of their job was to teach me how to use my money and how to do those things that we had to do. By the time I was in college, I had accepted essentially that the answers that they had for their life, the right answers about how we do money, had to be the right answers for how I live my life and how I do money. So don't get a credit card. The thing is, that worked for me until it didn't anymore. Having a credit card was a bad choice. My parents said this. They had credit cards. Clearly they knew what the choices were. It was irresponsible, I kept getting told, and besides, my step-dad, who knew me very well as a human being, constantly insinuated to me that if I got a credit card, I was going to be this hugely irresponsible human being, get into debt, be irresponsible, spend more than I had. And it wasn't gonna look pretty. Bad choices. But then there came a time senior year of college, and I needed to get a new set of hearing aids. If I don't have hearing aids, y'all, I can't really work very well in the world. I need to be able to hear things. I think a lot of us do. And especially someone who's been wearing hearing aids since they were five years old. Uh, this was part of my way of walking through the world. And I remember sitting with my audiologist across the desk from him going, "How the heck am I gonna pay for this? How are we gonna do this?". And he goes, "Well, you have a credit card, right? You have some history. Let's go and apply for a loan. And, well, you can pay that off." And I was like, "I don't have a credit card." And his face as you look back at me, absolutely flabbergasted. Like, "What do you mean you don't have a credit card? You do know that building history and doing all the stuff helps you get the things most of us want in life, right? Do you want a car? Do you want to buy a house?". Like I mean, yeah, I think so. Why don't you have a credit card? I looked at him, and all I could say was because my parents told me not to. Yeah, he had a great face. We ended up working a deal out, so hilariously we talked to my mother. She had a credit history, and we were able to set up a credit line to borrow against so that we could pay for my hearing. This turned out useful a little bit later again. And I would pay her back so we could pay that line of credit. As I got older and kept moving on, I remember moving to St. Louis and talking with friends about our money. How did we live? And how do you survive? I moved here for AmeriCorps. We didn't have any money at all, So we kind of needed to figure out ways to do that. And all of my friends, all these people in my life were giving me these answers and this advice that completely contradicted what my parents had told me. They're like, make sure you have a credit card. Make sure you have this history because, like your audiologist said, don't you want to get a car someday that isn't this crap, the one that you already have. Or houses are great. Let's get a house. I still rent. And every time I would think about going against this advice, this answer that my parents had given me I'd kind of break out in the cold sweats. Just why, why would I do that? Why would I assume that I this naive 23-, 24-, 25-, 26-year old would be right against my parent? That my parents would be wrong? How could I assume that? Well, all I knew was that I didn't want to do wrong by them, that I wanted them to approve my life choices. So I did what they said was the right thing to do. Well, cue being 27 years old, and I'm sitting in front of my computer, filling out a credit card application for Amazon, those points, man, and because I figured at this point, you know, maybe my parents didn't have the right answer for me. I don't know. Let's test this out. And when I filled out all my information, put that forward and just waited for the approval to come through, my brain was roaring with anxiety, and when that approval popped up on the screen, it was this moment of intense relief and a giant "What the fuck did I just do?" rolling through my head. Because all I could hear was my stepdad's insinuations and stories and ideas that I was going to fuck this up, that I would not be able to handle this responsibly and all I was going to do is get myself into debt. Not that by this point I wasn't already because I went to grad school, already there, and I think back to that moment now, four years down the line and I kind of laugh at myself a little bit because since then I've done pretty well with this credit card. I have not gotten into debt. I have not spent too irresponsibly. I have paid off my payment every single month, made sure the balance was gone, which was great because that meant I didn't have to deal with the 24.6% APR, which is a very large APR for your credit card. And I had started to figure out finally that this maybe was a right answer for me at this time, that I could use credit cards and manage my money in this way regardless of what my parents said. Now, the last couple years, I've had many conversations with my mom about money and credit cards, and what do we do. In particular, I had this one conversation. I was home. I was visiting them up in Michigan and I was telling my mom. I forget why we started this conversation. I was telling her, you know, from my perspective, it seems like you all did pretty well, you know, after you got married, you know, cause we went from living in this trailer park to this big house and all this lovely stuff and, you know, two incomes. For my, for my view, you all did pretty great. The look on her face as she just barked out this laugh caught me off guard and she was like, "We did not do well. We are not doing well. We made some horrible choices when it came to our money," and I just looked at her completely flabbergasted. What do you mean? As she kind of told me what that looked like for them and how their choices led to massive, massive amounts of worry for her and anxiety to the point where she couldn't even look at bills some months and how it put them to living at the edge of what they were capable of. And hearing this over and over again, the story of essentially how my mother fucked up on this thing that I thought she had down pat, my mind blew just a little bit. And I just, whoa, my parents didn't have the answers. And because they didn't have the answers, the only thing that could offer me was the answer that they didn't use. So they told me not to get a credit card, not to make irresponsible choices, because clearly they had made some themselves, and all they wanted for me as a result was to make better decisions that will put me in a better place in life. So my parents don't have all the right answers. Definitely not for me. Maybe not for themselves. Realizing this, quitting this idea that I could take my parents' answers and apply them to me has actually given me some really amazing gifts, I think, in life. Some of them still working out applying now. One, I realized that my parents aren't perfect. And if my parents aren't perfect, then I get to be imperfect as well. Because I get to be imperfect, that means I then have a chance to build and develop expertise in my own life like they did. And because they were able to do that and I'm able to do that, I don't have to rely on them anymore for the answers. Instead, I can figure out my own right answers at my own right time for the questions that I have. Thank you.
Steven Harowitz: 15:19
And that's a wrap. You can make sure to hear the other episodes from our Season 10 Advanced Storytelling graduates by subscribing to Campfire at Home wherever you get your podcasts. And if you like what you heard, please leave a review. It helps others find our podcast, and it supports our students. If you're in the St. Louis area, we'd love to have you come out to an event or take a class. Visit cmpfr.com. That's c m p f r dot com for all of the details. And for those of you that don't live in St. Louis who just want to know more about what we do here at Campfire, you can also visit our website at cmpfr.com. That's c m p f r dot com. As always, a big thank you to the Campfire team, our photographer Jenn Korman, our videographer and podcast producer Jeff Allen, and the home for our classes TechArtista. Tonight's stories were recorded live at the Focal Point in Maplewood, Missouri. Thanks for listening to Campfire at Home. I've been your host, Steven Harowitz. Until next time.