AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:
It's time now for your letters, and we've gotten a wide variety of response to our series "Teenage Diaries Revisited." All this week, we've been catching up with people who first told their stories on our air when they were teenagers in the 1990s with help from independent producer Joe Richman. We've received emails like this about their radio diaries.
ROBERT SIEGEL, HOST:
Why should I care? I don't. That's from Melissa Craig of Washington, D.C.
CORNISH: And we've gotten messages like this one.
SIEGEL: It's not often we get as profound a view into humanity as this. That's from Luanne Jorewicz of Houston. And that second letter referred to our radio diary yesterday from Josh Cutler. He suffers from Tourette's, which causes involuntary tics and outbursts. Josh said he has more control now compared to his teen years.
JOSH CUTLER: I had absolutely no control over anything I said.
(SOUNDBITE OF SCREAMING)
CUTLER: Everybody thinks of things that they wouldn't actually say, but my filter wasn't there.
UNIDENTIFIED MAN: You suck. Sorry.
CORNISH: Daniel Kamin of Somerville, Massachusetts, wrote this about Josh's piece: I loved this story and the candor and beauty in relationships that it depicted. Kamin goes on: This story makes the case for how unhelpful, wrong, boring, and narrow-minded it is to want people to act or try to act or just be normal.
SIEGEL: And we can't end our letters segment without one more reference to this.
APAULA BROWN: (Foreign language spoken)
SIEGEL: That's Samoan for turkey tails, a favorite dish in the Pacific Islands. And as I reported yesterday, the back end of the turkey has another name.
CORNISH: I finally learned what a pope's nose is, writes Michael Kramer of Guilford, Vermont. He explains: Back in high school, I made my first attempt at reading James Joyce's classic "Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man." Early in the book, the young Stephen Dedalus attends a very contentious family Christmas dinner. While his father is carving the turkey, he offers other members of the family the pope's nose. While he clearly considers this something of a treat, it is also clear that he is using the term to irritate others around the table. I never knew what that term meant. And now, after all these many years, I know. Thank you ALL THINGS CONSIDERED.
SIEGEL: And thank you for your comments. You can write us by visiting npr.org. Click on Contact Us. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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