This is the Moth Radio Hour.
I'm Meg Bowles, and in this show, stories of persevering, persisting, and going the distance.
The challenges we face from perilous mountains to epic battles and crushing fears.
Sometimes we make it through with grace, and other times, well, not so much.
Our first story comes from Sarah Johnson,
who took the stage at one of our open mic story slams where WNYC is a media partner of the Moth.
From the Bell House in Brooklyn, here's Sarah.
When I was eight years old, I had a nanopuppy.
You guys know what that is?
It's like a Tamagotchi.
It's a little plastic egg toy with a screen and three buttons, and it's like an electronic pet.
It's like a dog or an alien or whatever.
And you have to feed it and bathe it and play with it and put it to sleep and basically keep alive this little...
pixelated dog-shaped blob you know and um it was super fun man i gotta tell you and and i was eight years old and me and the animal puppy are just having a blast okay and i take we go everywhere together he's my best friend i hook him on to my little belt loop on my jeans and i walk around and he like bounces i love him um but i started to notice after like two weeks uh every time I need to do something like human eight-year-old related like like sleep or go to school nanopuppy dies of neglect and like the the guilt and the the devastation and the humiliation that I feel as an eight-year-old is frankly inappropriate
like It's like anxiety through the roof,
right?
So I make it my life's mission to keep this generation of nanopuppy alive.
And it turns out that is a 24-hour day job.
Because every time it gets hungry or sleepy, it beeps.
So it's like all night, all whatever, it's just beeping at me.