This is the Moth Radio Hour.
I'm Chloe Salmon, one of the directors at the Moth.
As a kid,
I found myself watching a lot of TV shows that implied I was just one after-school special moment away from growing up.
And once that moment hit, no more uncertainty,
no more bad choices, only me being magnificent from that point on forever.
I turned 30 this year and I'm starting to suspect that I will still be figuring it all out,
sometimes with dignity, but more often awkwardly, for the rest of my life.
Growing up is hard to do, but discovering who you really are is worth the mess.
In this hour, stories of growing pains and the transformations that follow.
First up is a slam story from Jennifer Lubin who told it in Washington DC where we partner with public radio station WAMU Here's Jennifer live at the mall So the happiest day of my life was the day that I realized that my mom was not gonna give me up for adoption Now mind you my mom was never gonna give me up for adoption nor did she ever threaten to do that but I was a seven-year-old drama queen in the second grade at the time,
and I had managed to convince myself that the possibility of her giving me away was going to be real.
So why did I think that?
Well, the young lady that triggered my fear was known by many to be one of America's sweethearts.
To me, she was a sneaky rascal, a tab-dancing red-haired one, otherwise known as Lil' Laura Finani.
Now.
For the record, I did not dislike Annie from the very beginning.
I actually loved her a lot when the 80s version of the movie came out on video.
And she quickly became one of my heroes, along with Wonder Woman,
She-Ra, and Punky Brewster, of course.