Robin Whetstone

  A story I told at The Moth story contest about the biggest scandal to ever have rocked a small North Florida town. CW: Swearin' https://youtu.be/Ozeghp8V9Z0

One Wednesday night in 2009, I had just finished washing my face in the bathroom sink. I was drying my face in the towel hanging from the shower curtain bar when I heard a voice say, very clearly, "Your mother is going to email you and tell you that your grandmother has died." My face was totally buried in the towel when whoever it was announced this. I knew I was alone in the house, but still, I stepped back and looked all around the small bathroom. Who said that? It was a male voice, and a bland one. Not deep, or scratchy, or anything, and no particular inflection. Just a very neutral statement from a very neutral voice that definitely wasn't my own. I walked into my room and sat down on the bed. Looked at the clock. It said 9:55 pm. I thought things over. My grandmother was in her 80s, and lived 200 miles away, in the same city as my mom and stepfather. She'd recently moved to a retirement home, where she'd promptly started a residents' committee and been e...

Back in 1985, I showed my mom a picture I'd taken of some of my punk-rock friends, whom she knew well. In the picture was a new friend, a big guy with dreds, which, in 1985 Orange Park, Just Was Not Done. "He's SO cool, mom," I said.  "HIM?!?!" said mom, wrinkling her nose. "He looks like trouble." She doubted that a person so unconventional and menacing-looking would amount to much.  Last night, I spent some time standing next to this same guy, whom I haven't seen since that day back in '85. He lost the dreds long ago, but is still SO cool. We each have kids who are older than we were when I snapped that photo. And not only did he amount to something, he's an incredibly accomplished and successful person. An overachiever, even! So, and I mean this in the most loving way possible, TAKE THAT, MOM.  This is but one of the many ways that worlds collided and the past and present folded in on each other last night in Athens at the 40-Watt, w...

The other morning, I was cleaning the bathroom and realized that it was the small things I did while waiting to become "what I was always meant to be" that determined what I actually became. Specifically, while waiting and hoping to become a "great writer," I did smaller-scale things that turned me into someone who tells stories, and who helps others tell them. Also, my bathroom's clean.  Here are some of the things I did while I waited. The Moth Rabbit Box Be Golden Write Club The Flagpole

If you think 2018 is a crap year, try 1933 on for size! What made the 1930s  so miserable? Dictators! Not enough people know about dictators, but Dictator Minute aims to fix that. Take a minute every day to learn to learn something new. You'll be glad you did! 9. Dictators Target Transgender People First Dictators get their start dictatoring by going after the most vulnerable, least popular members of society. Before Hitler graduated to the Jews, he cut his genocidal chops on groups he knew "real Germans" would not miss: immigrants, the disabled, and transgender people. Very early, way before Germany's descent into mass murder, was the sacking of the Institute for Sexual Science, an institute that researched transgender-type things, performed reassignment surgery, and advocated for equal rights and tolerance. But Hitler and the people at his rallies thought that transgender and other non-conforming folks were impure, depraved, and "un-Germa...

Some kids are born with empathy. They automatically put themselves in others’ shoes. They watch Charlotte's Web and wonder, “How would I feel if I were Wilbur?” Then they sob inconsolably for two whole days. Other kids, if you don’t talk to them explicitly about empathy? Watch out. They’ll grow up to be sociopaths. I’ve had many interactions with kids that go something like this: ME: “Why did you poke him in the eye/unfold all the laundry/ decapitate these zinnias? KID: “Because I wanted to.” My 4-year-old is somewhere in the middle of the cry-for-days-because-the-pig-is-sad/murder-your-sibling-just-because spectrum (Figure 1). Her empathetic abilities are still emerging, and being shaped by the feedback she gets. Figure 1. She vigorously comforts and protects her little brother, for example, but then she also doesn’t understand exactly why we should not let our dog eat the neighbor’s cat. “Oh no, we shouldn’t go over there,” I said to her one afternoon....

Six months ago I was sitting on my back porch watching the toddler smear cream cheese on the dog when I received a Facebook message from a person I had never met. She did not really explain who she was or why she was contacting me specifically, but I guessed it was because she'd read the recent Flagpole article about  my first attempt at local politicking  since the run-up to the Gulf War years before. Her message only said that Jody Hice, the “Freedom Caucus” Congressperson for the 10 th district of Georgia, was attending a donor breakfast at a doctor’s office early the next morning, and did I want to go jump him? Jumping people is a hobby of mine, and there was actually something I wanted to ask Congressman Hice. So, even though I had never ambushed a federal representative before, and especially not at a gastroenterologist's office, I agreed. The next morning I showed up in the parking lot of the doctor’s office at 7am. Waiting for me there were the stranger wh...

“Hello,” I said to the staffer who answered the phone at Johnny Isakson’s Atlanta office. “I am a constituent of Senator Isakson’s, and I had a problem this week that I need some assistance with.” “Absolutely!” she said, “How can we help you?” She sounded relieved. Maybe I wasn’t calling to yell at her about Trump. Maybe I needed help with something simple, like a neighborhood meth lab. “Great. Well, two things happened, actually. The first is that my 5-year-old saw pictures of the march in Charlottesville. She saw the picture of people marching with swastika flags and confederate flags, and then she also saw the picture of the guy carrying the torch and chanting and wearing the Make America Great Again hat. And she asked me, mom, why do Nazis like Trump? “And so then, later, we were driving behind a pickup truck over in Monroe and the guy had a bumper sticker on one side that said ‘Trump’ and one on the other side that said ‘Trump That Bitch’. And my eleven-year...

If you think my hobbies are limited to reading about 1930s world history, writing poems to trade magazines, and thinking about maritime disasters, think again. I also enjoy cross stitching. Here are some of my favorites. This is the first in what I hope will become a series of safety-icon cross stitches. I call it "Corrosive."  This one is called "Abu Ghraib." I did it back in 2003, when the story about torture at the notorious prison, where people were kept for years without charges, broke. Maybe I was thinking something deep about persecution based on religion, but I think I was just struck by the form of the image of the man on the box, wires attached to his outstretched arms. It seemed archetypal to me back then, like it referenced something more than what it was. This one is called "Jesus," because it's an image of Jesus. I'm very sad that I can't find the finished cross-stitch ...

"Your receptionist tells me you don't experiment on any of the meat you sell to the public." "Well, sometimes we do," he replies. Read more >