After recording a conversation with Rainn Wilson for the 7MS bonus series: The Storytelling University, Aaron reveals the anxiety he felt before the interview: wanting to make a meaningful connection without making the moment feel transactional. That anxiety somehow got wrapped up in a gift bag from Aaron’s hometown of Medina, Ohio, and a candle he suddenly worried might be a strange thing to give someone he had just met. What follows is a reflection on hometown pride, human connection, and the quiet realization that where we come from has stories worth carrying into the room.
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The Team:
Story created & performed by: Aaron Calafato
Senior Audio Engineer: Ken Wendt
Additional vocals: Cori Calafato
Art: Pete Whitehead
Original Theme Music: thomas j. duke
Additional Soundscape Design: Isaac Gehring
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TRANSCRIPT
I gave Rainn Wilson a candle, and then we hit record.
And to be frank with you, I was a little worried about this whole thing. But it’s not for the reasons you might think.
Now, if you haven’t heard my conversation on the most recent bonus episode of The Storytelling University, just click one episode back in your podcast feed, or wherever you’re hearing this, and listen to my chat with Rainn.
We covered a lot of stuff, and it was awesome.
But for this story, just hang with me here for a few seconds, and we’ll continue right after the music.
You’re listening to 7 Minute Stories. This is season six.
Is giving a candle to a stranger a weird thing?
I’m not sure.
We do it all the time at holidays and stuff, but you never know what people’s allergies are. All I could think about was, what if I gave him this candle, he lights the candle, and all of a sudden he starts coughing, his throat’s itching, he has to take Benadryl, and all he can think about is, “Why did that guy give me a candle?”
And he’s left with this terrible stain and memory of our interaction.
See, the whole theme here was, let me get as many things from my hometown and my home region as I can, put them in a bag, and share this piece with him.
I don’t know what came to mind. I think it was just watching a lot of videos of the Pope recently. When he interacts with people, they’re always bringing each other gifts.
But there is something inside of me besides the bag of gifts.
There is a hyper-awareness in me that I always have that I don’t want someone to think I’m not in a conversation for the right reasons.
And I am in it for the right reasons.
But I think we live in a world where there’s so much transactional stuff happening. There’s so much headline grabbing. There’s so much influencer marketing. Sometimes it becomes this engine, which you have to have and need to a certain extent, but sometimes I feel like that can stain or create a distance before a conversation starts.
And so maybe this bag of gifts was my peace offering to say, “Hey, I’m in it for the right reasons, and I really want to talk to you.”
Maybe it’s being from Ohio. Maybe it’s that underdog thing, or the stigma that I think sometimes folks from here feel like we carry when we talk to people who have national recognition.
In the back of our minds, we carry that story with us.
So my producer Ken and I packed up the equipment, got in the car, and made our drive.
Rainn and I were going to meet in the same town as my alma mater, Bowling Green State University. He had given a speech the night before. I was coming through there. And when you’re booking guests like this on a show, one of the things I’ve realized is that you want to make it easy for the people you’re talking to.
So our team took the effort to try to book a space so Rainn could just show up the next morning and we could talk.
Well, he happened to be staying at a hotel across the street from the university. The university would have been too complicated with forms and all this kind of stuff. So I ended up getting in touch with the hotel.
We paid $70 for a conference room, and I thought, “This is going to be great.”
And it was, because we got the room.
The problem is, the room itself had no air conditioning. Or it was broken.
A few people tried to come in and fix it. It kicked out a bunch of dust and weird stuff, and I thought, “Oh my God, not only do I have a weird candle, but now we have dust and all kinds of allergens in the air conditioning unit.”
And then the conference room was just beautifully placed right next to a pool, where kids and grandparents were swimming in the morning after their stay at the hotel.
Because of the pool being there, it had a sauna-like effect, where there was chlorine and thick steam sort of permeating through the carpet, and it felt like a sauna.
After we got the equipment set up, I’m standing in the lobby of the hotel waiting to meet Rainn and his team. I find a map of Ohio, and all I can do is find the county where I’m based, which is Medina.
And I’m pointing to the city of Medina, and I say, “Medina is like the staircase of Ohio because of the way the county is shaped.”
And Rainn comes out and goes, “Hello.”
And I said, “Hey, I’m just looking at a map.”
We shake hands. We smile awkwardly. And I lead him down the hallway of this hotel into this conference room.
And I begin apologizing for the fact that we are going to be heading into the sauna, that it’s going to be a little hot, and he is extremely graceful.
We get in there. We get through the awkward stuff. I had a button-up shirt that I had to take off because I was sweating. Both of us had coffees and our hands were shaking because we love caffeine, apparently, and we had already had a couple of lattes before the start of the interview.
We’re sitting across from each other at the table, and now comes the presentation of the gifts.
And the next thing I know, the gifts were accepted, and I was locked in.
And so was he.
And we had a great conversation.
Like I said at the top of the show, you can hear it on the previous episode to this story.
The funny thing is, there are very few times in life, and I don’t know if you’ve experienced this, where you can really lock in to a conversation.
I think that’s why I love this bonus series so much.
We have so much stuff happening inside of our own brains and outside of our own brains. All the information we’re trying to get to and get away from. All the noise.
Sometimes the podcast becomes a tool where you can just go into a room, even if it’s next to a weird pool at a hotel, and connect with another human being in a meaningful way.
We shook hands. We went on our way.
Rainn was off to Notre Dame, and Ken and I were off to a place called Pollyeyes, which has the greatest chicken and cheese stuffed breadsticks you will ever have in Bowling Green, Ohio. They’re still there, right across from campus.
Actually, it’s technically called Campus Pollyeyes.
We waited there, and we stood in line so long that we couldn’t actually sit down and eat. I had to eat my chicken and cheese breadsticks in the SUV while Ken took a Zoom call, and I tried to be quiet and not make a lot of noise while I was chewing and doing the whole Bill Murray in What About Bob?
Where he goes, “Mmm. This is scrumptious.”
I mean, the breadsticks are that good.
And I was reflecting for a moment, looking at the campus and all the life and the students and the movement happening there at my alma mater, where I graduated from in 2005, over twenty years ago.
Looking back at who I was twenty years ago. The dreams I had twenty years ago. The people I wanted to talk to twenty years ago. The stories I wanted to tell twenty years ago.
It was a full-circle kind of day.
See, I walked into this conversation excited, but also worried about the wrong stuff.
I’m worried about allergies and candles and getting everything right.
And as usual, I was gifted something from the universe that fulfilled my soul.
A conversation about story, something I have so much reverence for, with a person I deeply respect.
And a love for my hometown and the place I come from, that I can’t stop talking about, that I love so much that now I’ve developed a tradition of giving gift bags with merch from the place I’m from.
And I think, subconsciously, what I’m trying to say with that gift is, “Hello. I appreciate you. And where I’m from, humbly, matters.”
That we have a note we can add to the composition of culture.
And that the people from here who helped bring me up, and the people I choose to live my life with, we have stories to tell too.
We have stories to tell too.
I’ll talk to you next week.