Shadowing Practice: The Moment I Realized I Was Wrong | The Moth StorySLAM Winner - Learn English Speaking with Video

I'm standing in line at McDonald's on a Monday morning trying

not to get involved with this situation that's happening in front of me.

I've promised my wife Alicia

that I will no longer get involved in public disagreements unless I am directly pulled into that public disagreement.

And it's really hard because this is a bad one.

Like a week ago we were standing in CVS

and it was a long line and one cashier and the woman in front of us turned and said, can you believe how slow this woman is

and I said in a voice loud enough for all of

the CVS to hear why are you telling me how slow

she is go tell her don't talk about people behind their back

and my wife she's already gone she just walked out she

knows she just as soon as I take a breath she's gone

and the woman's losing her mind

but I hate it I'm standing up at Gillette Stadium it is a national anthem

and some thick neck idiot five rows behind me shouts at

this poor soul who's forgotten to take his hat off on a two-degree day.

He says, take the hat off.

And so I turn around and I say, I don't know, I think it's more disrespectful to shout during the national anthem than it is to leave your hat on,

you idiot, which is not a safe thing to do.

Like, I acknowledge my wife is right.

It is dangerous out there in public.

There are high stakes.

You do not know what people are going to do when you sort of do the things that I do.

But this is a bad one in McDonald's.

Maria is behind the counter.

She is an employee who serves me every single day.

And there's a woman who is placing an order and things have gone wrong.

This woman, she's an older woman and she's awful.

She is cornstalk wrapped in barbed wire.

She's like this horrible thing.

And she's ordered a big breakfast hot cake, and the woman is complaining that it's too much.

And I know what's wrong, because I worked at McDonald's.

I managed a McDonald's for 10 years, from the age of 16 to 26, to put myself through college.

I know instantly that this woman wants hot cakes, but she's affixed the word big breakfast to it for reasons we will never understand.

And now Maria has charged her for both items, and that's why it's too much.

And I could just sweep in and fix it, but my wife has forbidden it.

So I stand and I wait.

And eventually, Gloria comes over, the manager, and she knows right away what's wrong, and she fixes it.

And Cornstalk with barbed wire goes off to make her coffee.

And I step up to Maria, and I smile, the smile of, can you believe what people do these days?

And she smiles back to me, the smile of, I go through this all the time.

And I know, because I remember going through it too.

So I get my cup, and I go over to fill my Diet Coke, and the lady's right there, and as I'm filling it, she turns to me and she says,

can you believe how stupid these people are?

And I am so happy, because the door is open.

Like, she has involved me, and now I get to respond.

My wife cannot complain, so I turn to her and I say, you are an awful person.

You are a terrible, despicable, and she tries to talk, but I run right over her with my words.

I say, no, no, no, you're an awful, you're a terrible person, you're the worst.

You are just awful.

And for the rest of the day, every time I speak to someone, I'm gonna tell them about you and how awful you are.

And she begins to cry.

And I think, perfect, I have done my job here, take my Diet Coke, my Egg McMuffin, I leave.

I am a social justice warrior.

I go to my classroom where I teach 10 year olds and I tell them the story and they listen.

And the mood in the room is not what I expect.

And when I'm done, Alexis, the sort of student who was in charge that year, the leader of the class, She speaks first.

She says, you went too far, Mr. Dix.

And I say, what are you talking about?

She was terrible.

And he, and Alexis says, you became the bad guy in your own story.

And I'm like, no, I did not.

She was terrible and she needed to be told.

And so I asked the class, raise your hand if you think I did the right thing.

Two hands go up.

The two most morally questionable children in my class that year.

Like, future criminals agree with me.

And I couldn't believe it.

Like, I genuinely felt I did the right thing.

And I believed that.

Until the next day, I walked into McDonald's.

And I saw Maria at the counter waiting for me.

And it just hit me in a way I had not realized.

For ten years, I worked at McDonald's.

And almost every day, at least one person treated me like a non-human.

I was once hit by a car in the parking lot, bringing food out, and the person leaned out of the window and said, sorry, and just continued to drive,

as if I was irrelevant.

It happened to me every day, and it happens every day to Maria and Gloria and all these people.

And that was 25 years ago.

I thought I had put that stuff down and walked on

and it took Alexis and 17 other decent 10 year old children to let me know I had not put anything down.

Like the anger and the shame and the embarrassment and the rage that I felt every day doing that job,

that decent hard-working respectable job, all of that it's still right here.

And as much as I wanted to pretend

that I was doing the right thing that day and helping Maria

when she couldn't speak for herself because of the position she was in, that That was all nonsense.

The only thing I did that day was took 10 years of anger

and shame and embarrassment and decided this is the person I'm going to unload it on.

25 years and to this day it is still right here.

I'm still trying to put it down.

I am not saying I did the wrong thing that day.

But I think Alexis was right, that I probably went too far.

That when 18 10-year-olds think that you have gone a little too far and done a little too much,

you have to start to think that they may be right.

Thank you.

What is the Shadowing Technique?

Shadowing is a science-backed language learning technique originally developed for professional interpreter training and popularized by polyglot Dr. Alexander Arguelles. The method is simple but powerful: you listen to native English audio and immediately repeat it out loud — like a shadow following the speaker with just a 1–2 second delay. Unlike passive listening or grammar drills, shadowing forces your brain and mouth muscles to simultaneously process and reproduce real speech patterns. Research shows it significantly improves pronunciation accuracy, intonation, rhythm, connected speech, listening comprehension, and speaking fluency — making it one of the most effective methods for IELTS Speaking preparation and real-world English communication.

Shadowing Practice: The Moment I Realized I Was Wrong | The Moth StorySLAM Winner - Learn English Speaking with Video

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What is the Shadowing Technique?