♪ NIMISHA LADVA: And then he asks me out, and before I know it, we're dating.

(laughter) And I like it.

ROB BECKER: Most of life does not go to plan.

But love is absolutely worth putting yourself out there for.

JEFF SIMMERMON: When you have a great big adventure right in front of you, you just got to turn the radio all the way up and step on the gas and see what happens.

THERESA OKOKON: Tonight's theme is "How We Met."

ANNOUNCER: This program is made possible in part by contributions from viewers like you-- thank you.

OKOKON: Do you want to meet the love of your life?

It's easy, just fill out this profile, upload a picture, and then get busy... waiting.

I have had friends who have applied spreadsheets to track their dating, data used to try to determine who their secret number-one love of their life might be.

But sometimes, fate is going to decide to crash the party.

You can be the most unexpected of people in the most unexpected of circumstances, and suddenly, somehow, love blooms.

♪ LADVA: My name is Nimisha Ladva.

I live in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

I was born in Kenya, raised in England, educated in California, and I am a mom, a storyteller, a writer, and a professor.

OKOKON: So can you tell me about the first time that you told a story?

LADVA: I must have been about eight years old, and I was living in England, which has miserable weather, so we had a lot of indoor recess, and on one of these days, a girl decided to get up and tell a story to the class, and people laughed and enjoyed it, and I thought, "Well, I should go next."

And so, I got up, and I got up to tell my story, and the kids actually booed me.

And it was a horrible experience, actually.

(laughs) OKOKON: Oh, no!

LADVA: So, the fact that I'm doing exactly that, now, as a grown-up, is sort of a miracle, actually.

OKOKON: And I've heard that you consider the stage to be a sacred space.

LADVA: Yeah, I was raised Hindu, and to sort of ground myself before I approach a stage, I would usually just sort of touch it and touch my heart, and it's sort of an offering, and it does calm me.

And I do consider it just a space where something more than yourself is being exchanged with the audience.

LADVA: So it is the end of the first day of new professor orientation, which I am attending because of my new job.

And I'm leaving the building, and it's pouring rain, which is a problem, because I'm a transplant from California and I'm unprepared.

I have no jacket, no umbrella, flimsy open-toe shoes, and the only way I have to get home is by bus.

But then that's when I see him.

The man who sat across from me at new professor orientation.

He's got salt-and-pepper hair.

He's wearing a tweed jacket with real elbow patches.

(laughter) And he has these gold-rimmed glasses that are ugly, but not in that cool way.

(laughter) And he's walking towards me, and I think he's going to talk to me.

And he does.

"Hi, I'm David, "and I couldn't help but overhear "you were going to take the bus today.

"You know, I've got my sedan "right here on campus, and I'd be happy to give you a ride home."

And I say no thank you.

Because isn't sedan a red flag?

(laughter) And, also, my good Indian immigrant girl upbringing has kicked in, because the truth is, I know I'm not supposed to be really interacting with men until my parents find a suitable boy for me to marry.

You see, ladies and gentlemen, I'm supposed to be having a sort of slightly arranged marriage.

This means that in California, my parents are handing out my biodata sheet.

(laughter) It has my name, my height, my weight, how dark my skin is, my education level, and a photograph.

But in Philadelphia, it's still raining.

So I say, "Actually...

I'd love a ride."

So I get a ride home.

A few weeks after that, I see him with some other faculty members, then we go out with friends of his from out of town, and then he asks me out.

And before I know it, we're dating.

And I like it.

(laughter) And I realize that I should probably tell my parents.

I mean, he's amazing in ways that really surprise me.

For example, you know, he's very self-aware and willing to call himself out.

So two months into dating, he tells me that he's been lying to me.

And it turns out that...

He knows that I have been a lifelong vegetarian.

But he has kept from me the fact that he has been vegetarian for 14 years already.

You see, he wanted me to like him for him and not the convenience of his diet.

(laughter) Now, it's a small lie, it's a withholding lie, but it is manipulative, and he owns it.

And I realize that he has emotional maturity, and I like it.

But I start to get nervous, because I am going to have to tell my parents, and... Two years later, I do.

(laughter) And perhaps you can imagine their reaction, but just in case you can't... My father actually handled it pretty well.

There is just this one day, I'm back in California.

I'm driving.

We are on a mountain road at night, and he grabs the wheel.

"Oh, my God, Daddy, what are you doing?"

"Just leave me on the road to die."

(laughter) And then there's my mother's reaction, which comes every day, three times a day, on my voicemail.

Like a pill.

"Hi, it's Nimisha, leave a message.

Thanks, bye."

(imitates beep) (imitates sobbing) (imitates beep) (laughter) No words.

And so, one day, David hears one of these messages, and he says, "You know, Nimisha, your mother is choosing to react this way."

And I lose it.

"What kind of stupid thing is that to say?

"Are you crazy?

"I am killing my mother with this, with us.

You don't get it!"

And I realize he doesn't get it.

Maybe he doesn't get me, he doesn't get my Indian-ness, I don't get his whiteness.

We're not going to be able to bridge this divide.

It's driving me crazy, I am in turmoil.

I'm not sleeping, my hair is falling out.

And in all of this mess, do you know what David does?

He asks me to marry him.

(audience murmuring and laughing) I say no.

I give him back the ring.

I quit my job.

I move back to California.

It's awkward.

We talk from time to time, but it's weird.

Um, he calls me one day, and he says he's going to be in California, and would I like to go see a film?

Whatever, I say yes.

So, we get to the movie theater, and it's packed.

It's just really crowded.

So David says, "Why don't you wait at this bench while I go to get tickets?"

And David walks away.

But I don't sit at the bench.

I get up and I walk away.

I walk away because I'm still thinking of my mother's voicemail messages.

I walk away because I'm thinking about how I'm not living up to being a good Indian daughter, and I find myself in a balcony looking down at the theater crowd below, and I can see David walking back with the tickets.

He looks like walking sunshine.

And he gets to the bench and he can see I'm not there.

I don't go back, I just watch him.

So he's taking little circles around the bench, and I guess he doesn't want to move too far away in case I come back.

He starts taking bigger circles and all that sunshine from his face, it's gone.

He just keeps looking and looking and pacing and pacing, and the movie starts.

David doesn't leave.

He just keeps looking and looking and pacing and pacing.

And I get it.

In all that crowded movie theater, the only person he's singularly and absolutely looking for is just me, and I want to walk back.

And I want to tell him that I have made some judgments about him and his appearance, about the things he could change... (in low voice): Like the jacket and those glasses.

(normally): And the things he can't change, like the color of his skin.

And I realize he makes the hard conversations easy.

So I do walk back.

I walk back to David.

And shortly after that, we do visit my parents, and we ask for their blessing.

And, to their incredible credit, they give it.

My father asked David if he would like to have a rabbi at the wedding.

David says no, it's okay, he's happy with a Hindu wedding.

He's just glad everyone is at yes.

So we have a lovely Hindu wedding.

We've been married for more than ten years.

We have three kids and one big fat mortgage.

Thank you very much.

(applause) ♪ SIMMERMON: My name's Jeff Simmermon.

I live in Brooklyn, New York.

I'm a storyteller and stand-up comic.

I used to be a PR executive for a large cable and broadband internet company.

I worked there for about five years.

And I started their blog, and I was the guy who saw all of the complaints, so everyone in the whole country that hated their cable company tweeted at me.

OKOKON: And so, at some point, you quit your job to do this full-time.

SIMMERMON: Right.

OKOKON: Do you feel like that was a good choice?

SIMMERMON: Uh, we'll check in at retirement age and see how it turned out.

OKOKON: (chuckles) So, I understand that you came to storytelling by way of painting.

SIMMERMON: Yeah.

I was a painting major in college, and I was always into folk art, and, like... Like, Southern outsider art, and comic books.

And so I would always paint the story of the painting on the painting.

And then, the words just got bigger and bigger and bigger, there's more and more words, and the pictures got smaller and smaller, and then I was just kind of painting essays on boards.

OKOKON: So, tonight's theme is "How We Met."

SIMMERMON: Yeah.

OKOKON: What does this theme mean for you?

SIMMERMON: The "how we mets" questions are always... That's the one prompt that gets a good story out of almost anybody.

The world is made of human relationships, right?

And so it's all-- it's how we bounce off of and connect with each other and interact.

And, you know, everybody has somebody who's sparked something in them that pushed them further than they thought they were going to go.

And that's kind of what I'm talking about.

SIMMERMON: I'm just going to address any lingering perceptions you all might have about my appearance at this time.

You are all correct.

I did, in fact, play the drums in a doomed rock band in 2003.

(laughter) That's-- you nailed it.

Our keyboard player was in medical school, and right after she graduated, she came home to my house and said, "Guess what, guys?

"I just got an incredible residency "at Brigham and Women's.

"I'm going to be moving up there from Virginia in two months.

My medical career is on fire, this is gonna go great."

And I was the only person in the room who said... (thickly): "Yeah, but what about the band?"

(laughter) I lived in a house that was just exactly the color of a bunch of dirty Band-Aids, and my van... Actually, I held the taillights into my van with a series of bumper stickers.

And that's fine if you have a cool rock band.

But if your rock band breaks up, then I'm just a dude with a busted house and a crappy van.

And instead of, like, working on a career or going to grad school or learning to code or anything like that, I just spent a lot of time focusing on this new website in 2003 called hotornot.com... (laughter) ...which is a lot like Tinder except for not as deep, and... (laughter) I would just look at the profiles of women that lived in other countries, very far away from wherever I was, and just imagine that I had a cool girlfriend in some whole other country and none of the problems that I lived with, and that everything was going wonderfully.

And I just did that instead of my job for the most part.

And then one day, I connected with this woman from Perth, Western Australia, which is as far as you can get from where I lived in Richmond, Virginia, without first putting on an astronaut suit.

And we, we clicked.

We started emailing and sending each other these flirty emails, and the emails got longer and longer.

Then we started I.M.-ing for hours and hours, and then we talked on the phone, and we'd talk on the phone for hours and hours.

It was incredibly expensive and just thrilling.

And then one day, she pops the bubble and says... (exhales): "What are we doing here exactly?

"All right, we're just talking and talking, "and that's really great, "and you sound like a guy that ticks off all my boxes.

"But I want a boyfriend I can see and touch, right?

"We're just, we're just wasting our time here.

"Let's just go back to our regular life.

I just, I just can't do this anymore."

And I said, "No, no, no, no, you can't."

You don't understand, you guys.

She roped me in with all these cool stories about crocodile attacks in Australia, and I've just never heard anyone cuss so creatively.

And I just was, like, "I've got to know what you're like "in person.

Give me a month, and I'll have a plan."

She said, "Okay."

And in order to show her that I was serious, I sent her a mix CD.

(laughter) And not just a mix CD.

I sent her a mix CD that would make Michelle Obama consider an open marriage, okay?

(laughter) And during that month, I sold my van.

I sold my drums, sold my vinyl-- that hurt.

I quit my job, did not renew my lease, and I bought a one-way ticket to Australia.

It sounds incredibly romantic, but round-trip was prohibitively expensive.

(laughter) So I called her up and said, "Hey, I got a ticket!"

And she said, "But-- you were just supposed to have a plan."

And I said, "Well, I've decided to start overachieving.

You know, this is, this is how I live now."

And she was, like, "Well, well, you're going to just come here?

"Some guy off the internet?

"You're just going to meet me in person?

"I'm gonna flip my whole life upside down?

"I don't know if I'm into it.

I can't, I can't just have this."

And I said, "Look, I understand where you're coming from, "and from your perspective, I see why you're saying that, "but I need you to consider my perspective, okay?

"Because some guy is coming to visit you.

"But I just sold all my stuff, "so I'm either going to meet you in the Sydney airport "or I am going to have to move to the Sydney airport, "because I don't have a house anymore.

"And, look, we got an adventure staring right at us here, "and when you have a great big adventure "right in front of you, "you just got to turn the radio all the way up and step on the gas and see what happens."

(laughing): And she said, she said, "Okay, I'll meet you there."

I'm in the airplane, over the Pacific Ocean, somewhere between California and Australia.

It's the middle of the night.

And the guy next to me just turns to me and asks me, you know, what am I doing, where am I going?

And I told him.

And he just is, like, is, like... (growling): "Yeah."

Just, of course he's holding a beer.

"Yeah!"

(laughs) "All right, cheers, mate."

(imitates beer opening) Pops the beer: "Hope she shows up."

(laughter) I was, like, "What do you mean, 'Hope she shows up'?

"She's going to show up, that's how these things go.

"The people-- the people show.

What do you mean?"

(stammering): "You really think she's not gonna show up?"

Like, it starts hitting me right then.

And it had not occurred to me until that moment that maybe she could not show up.

And I'm just watching the airplane on the little viewfinder tick into the coast of Australia, and wondering what is going to happen next.

I got through customs and I got to the airport, and there's a huge crowd of people there.

And I don't see her anywhere.

And people that love each other are all hugging each other.

And then there's me.

And then in the back, I just saw this mop of blond hair jumping up and down, and I looked and it was her.

She just couldn't find parking, it was fine.

And... and I ran over to her and she ran over to me and we embraced, and we just looked at each other and we kissed, and we looked at each other some more.

And then...

This is always the part where people, like, lean forward and ask me, like, "Did it work out?

So did it work out?"

And... yeah, I can tell you, unequivocally, in, like, giant neon letters... "Sort of."

(laughter) All right?

You know, we were together for two years, and we're not now, and I'm cool with both of those things.

But, you know, like... Look, life is complicated, and it resists a deep analysis sometimes, okay?

Ultimately, I had to be a dishwasher and a furniture mover and a kangaroo shooter just to sustain this relationship.

I got some horrible sunburns.

I got bit by some terrifying animals.

And...

I don't know, I don't think... To ask what this means is to ask the wrong question, okay?

Nobody gets to live a life without regret, okay?

We all have them.

I just know that my regrets are based on a series of very fascinating decisions.

(applause) ♪ ♪ BECKER: My name's Rob Becker.

I'm a software engineer.

We live in Concord, Massachusetts.

We have two boys, 13 and 15.

I'm really into home improvement projects in spite of the toll it takes on the rest of the family.

OKOKON: Have you told stories on stage before?

BECKER: This is only my second time I've ever presented in front of a group.

OKOKON: What have you learned about storytelling so far?

BECKER: I think the... A good story has to resonate with the person you're telling the story to.

I find that it should be self-deprecating and enjoyable and fun.

But at the same time, we have to find a bond, a connection.

And I think talking about love and talking about relationships usually is something that resonates with everyone, we've all gone through.

OKOKON: And why did you pick this particular story?

BECKER: Well, it's the story of how I met my wife, Lisa.

We met in college under awkward teenage circumstances, and it just became a great story that we've told many times.

OKOKON: So, will Lisa be here tonight?

BECKER: Absolutely.

She'll be somewhere in the audience, hopefully not right in front of me, but this proclamation of my love is, is her Valentine's present.

OKOKON: That's so sweet.

(both laugh) BECKER: I, as a engineer, or enginerd-- however you say it-- I'm really good with numbers.

People, a little less so.

Back in college, I met a girl.

She was my next-door neighbor in our dorm.

Lisa was something.

She was beautiful.

She had big, captivating eyes, an infectious laugh.

She was strong, smart, and, albeit my height, she was the starting point guard for the varsity women's basketball team.

(laughter) Now, this year, the team was pretty good, and they eked into the playoffs.

I thought, "This is a really big deal."

I've never been to the bonus round of any sport.

(laughter) So their first postseason game was to be an away game at top-seeded Babson.

It would be the Tufts Jumbos versus the Babson Beavers at Babson.

Now, I didn't know much about sports, but that didn't stop me from coming up with a somewhat sketchy plan to make my intentions known to this amazing woman and to all the world as the official Tufts mascot for the big game.

(laughter) I would be Jumbo the Elephant.

(laughter) Now, Lisa worked in the sports information office.

So, when I called the Tufts sports information director, she somewhat overenthusiastically arranged for the official Jumbo suit to arrive at the game with the equipment manager in a nondescript black trash bag.

Shortly before halftime, I don the suit and padded over to the small Tufts bleacher section.

And I did the only thing I ever saw Jumbo do-- I thrust my arms out to the side and the section erupted with a resounding, "T!

U!

F!

T!

S!"

That was my full repertoire of mascot moves.

So I padded over to the end and I tried to watch the game.

Now, there's a bit more to this rig than you might think.

The body was basically a really thick, warm, plush, sleeper footie pajama with big mitt hands, but the head was something.

It was like a giant BOSU ball made out of hard fiberglass, covered with carpet, with big ears and a long trunk.

Inside this thing was like a sensory deprivation unit.

(laughter) All sounds are completely muted.

And you can only see out these two small cut-outs that are about a foot from my face.

To see anything is to swing this giant head in the direction you're trying to peek and kind of scan back and forth.

So, as play continues, I'm trying to watch the game from the corner, and I spy Lisa at times out on the court.

But we never make eye contact.

(laughter) The entire team is just completely dialed into the close game.

So as time expires on the half, I rush out onto the court to high-five the team as they run into the locker room.

But the suit doesn't let you see who you're high-fiving.

I just confidently told myself, "Surely Lisa saw Jumbo is here."

So now it's halftime, I'm in the middle of the court, they have some loud music kind of blaring, and I'm trying to dance in the suit as best I can.

And out of nowhere, there's this deep thud, and the large head kind of takes me for a little ride.

So I turned to the Tufts section.

Now, I'm far enough away that I can kind of see the entire Tufts section, and they're all together, yelling something at me, and they're all together, pointing over my shoulder.

So I turned to where they're pointing, and through my two little spy holes, all I can see is fuzzy brown.

So I take a couple of steps back, and as my luck would have it, there stood the Babson Beaver.

(laughter) Now, in my defense, the Babson Beaver costume was far simpler.

It was basically, like, you know, the traditional gorilla suit, except, you know, fuzzy brown and it had a little tail.

So this beaver's got his hands up in the air, and I don't know what to do, I play along.

I put my big mitts up in the air, and I kind of stomp my feet like I'm going to charge.

And poof!

He just disappears.

There's the Tufts crowd again yelling something and pointing over my other shoulder.

Thud!

The giant head rolls.

I kind of wander in a circle looking for this stupid beaver.

(laughter) There's the beaver, waving his hands.

I wave my hands, I stomp my feet.

Poof!

He disappears again.

Thud!

Anyway, this dance goes on for another minute or so before the entirely overheated Jumbo padded over to the bleachers, took his head off, and took a seat.

The rest of the night was rough on many levels.

Um...

The Tufts Jumbos wound up losing the game by a pretty large margin.

Uh, I had to drive back to campus with my buddy James recapping the humiliating time a small woodland creature beat up an elephant over and over again.

(laughter) And when Lisa got back to the dorm, where we'd already started a postgame party, I found out she never saw Jumbo.

A teammate told her about Jumbo at halftime, but Jumbo was gone before she got back out on the court.

But the night was young.

We talked for hours.

She told me all about what it was like being out on the floor, battling Babson.

I told her about being out on the floor, battling the beaver.

(laughter) Um... And I told her that night the official Tufts Jumbo was there for her, to cheer her on.

Now, I don't know if this is what she wanted to hear, but we were dating after that.

Actually, we dated for seven years, and I'm happy to say we've been married now for 22 amazing years.

(cheers and applause) So if the beaver taught me anything, it's certainly that most of life does not go to plan.

But love is absolutely worth putting yourself out there for.

Of course, if you ask my buddy James what we learned, he'd tell you, there is no mascot at away games.

(laughter) Thank you.

(cheers and applause) ANNOUNCER: This program is made possible in part by contributions from viewers like you-- thank you.

♪