Black Boomer Besties from Brooklyn
This is what the world needs now: two free-thinking “seasoned” Black women speaking their truth and inspiring others to do the same. Shaped by 45 years of friendship that began at the prestigious Brooklyn Technical High School through the Ivy League, medical school, marriages, divorces, triumphs, parenting queer children, life-threatening illness and many many amazing adventures. Each week, besties Leslie Osei-Tutu and Angella Fraser will push against boundaries in love, culture, careers, faith, politics and out-dated assumptions about women of a certain age. Remember, you’re never too old to change your mind…or your hair! (but more on that later :-)All views are our own and do not reflect the views of our institution/company. Information provided is not intended to serve as medical advice.
Black Boomer Besties from Brooklyn
Allow Us To Reintroduce Ourselves
Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.
Now that the podcast is 31 episodes in and nearing the end of Season 3, it's a great time to reintroduce The Besties by rebroadcasting their very first episode. It's their origin story originally entitled: But Can She Sew. They were brand new to podcasting but determined to jump in with both feet, excited to show how two 60 yr old Black women can live bold expansive lives, without the boundaries placed on them by expectations of age, race, gender, faith traditions, none of it!
Leslie and Angella first met at Brooklyn Technical High School in 1977 as sophomores, two undercover nerds. They could never have imagined all that this bond would get them through over the next 46 years.
Enjoy this rebroadcast and discover/rediscover all that created this truly amazing friendship!
Visit Black Boomer Besties from Brooklyn website for behind-the-scenes extras.
Navigating Friendship and Differences
Speaker 1into it and do it because, um, yeah, it's pretty amazing, um, so I'm sure a lot of people are going to want to know how we met. Like, how did we meet in 1976? Was it.
Speaker 2I think we met in 78.
Speaker 1It wasn't no 78. I guess it could have been or 77. Okay, let's meet in the middle, okay 1976 and a half. It was 1977. Is that?
Speaker 2in the middle it was 1977, folks we met.
Speaker 1Where did you first see me? That you can remember?
Speaker 2I gotta tell you, I think, before we even go into how we met, yeah, why are we here speaking about ourselves?
Speaker 1Oh like, why are we doing this podcast? And?
Speaker 2you know where did that come from. First of all, I gotta say you're the one that brought up the idea of the podcast and. I thought you were insane.
Speaker 1Absolutely, but that's the story of our lives.
Speaker 2It is.
Speaker 1Um the um very creative, like you know. Let's do this, leslie, we can do this, and Leslie is real cautious. This wasn't always the case, so we'll talk about that, but that's how it is now. Um, I really recognized how blessed we have been through our lives. It's not always been easy.
Speaker 1It's been devastating um many times, but we've reached a point where we found out how to live in joy despite the circumstance, and it's not like things have gotten some things have gotten great, but other things have gotten terribly worse and um, and I think also, I feel like we have a responsibility to share the ways that we have learned and been blessed through experiences, to share that with other people. I really felt that that was a duty that we had and that's why I brought it to you, and I think you felt it as soon as I said it. You didn't always realize that we could do it or that you could do it, yeah, but I think you always knew that you ought to have done it and so it wasn't that hard to sell.
Speaker 2Well, nothing that you do for me is really that hard to sell. I tell you. What's coming up for me is that you and I have talked about over the years, over these 45 plus years how uniquely different we are in the way that we navigate the world. Yeah, Our spouses, our other friends, our coworkers people have looked at us over the years and have remarked at how we do things differently Right Trendsetters maybe, trailblazers maybe.
Speaker 1Well, differently. When you say differently, you mean differently from other people or differently from each other Differently from other people?
Speaker 2Yes, definitely, and that's what I thought was important to bring to the public.
Speaker 1Yeah, give me an example of that.
Speaker 2I'll give you an example. That is actually pretty unusual that obviously at my age, at 60, I've had many other romantic relationships before this long-term relationship with my husband, and I got to say that I am very close friends with all of my past people in my relationship. I don't harbor ill will. I think fondly of them. Many of them I still love deeply and I've come over the years with maturity to recognize that I was never meant to be with them forever. I was with them for a season and I can appreciate that season and it's created who I am and as a result, I'm a better person in relationships for it.
Speaker 1But that's a different outlook.
Speaker 2Not everybody can think of their exes in a way like that. And certainly current partners don't appreciate that.
Speaker 1Yeah, that's true. You're really special in that way. Let me stop you for a moment. Are you recording, Leslie?
Speaker 2I am recording.
Speaker 1OK, are you sure, give me evidence of that. I want evidence of that. Ok, I see the evidence, so I will continue. Listen, listen. He stopped me for a reason Listen.
Speaker 2OK, I can't be mad at that.
Speaker 1Listen, let me just tell you. You will see why that is necessary. We need to do this for each other because we may seem to be these two cool chicks, but we are, these two clumsy. We are clumsy and charming and capable and all the things. So we check in on each other and I wanted to make sure that no one was going to miss this juiciness.
Speaker 2And we also make sure that we don't come out of the bathroom with toilet paper in our ways ban.
Speaker 1Yeah, that type of thing.
Speaker 2And that has happened too.
Speaker 1Anyway, leslie is very unique that way, and I didn't always appreciate the ways that you were different. I think that because you grew up very differently than I did.
Speaker 1I grew up in a very strict West Indian immigrant household. I wouldn't say it was very strict. It was very strict in some ways. I remember I was. The biggest kind of scolding that I would get, from my mother especially is that I was too Americanized. I came to America when I was eight and the idea of having friends outside of your siblings or wanting to sleep over people's house I think that's a black thing, not just such a Jamaican thing, but those types of things of wanting to having friendships outside of the home it was a very kind of American concept and so there was a lot of rules that I had around that and you grew up. How did you grow up?
Speaker 2well, I, as you were speaking, I was just thinking. One of the things, surprisingly enough, that attracted me to you was the type of structure that you had in your home. Now, we both grew up in homes headed by women. Our parents, our mothers, were single mothers at the time when we met.
Speaker 1Yes, for sure.
Speaker 2My mom had the three of us, my brother and sister. We were three very young and she and my dad divorced young. So I grew up in a single mother household and, my mother being very young, we did not have as much structure as you had. So I know one. I mean I was in a very permissive household where I didn't have a lot of curfews, there weren't a lot of my mother. My mother was too busy to have a lot of eyes on me. So I really appreciated the structure that mom Gladys provided. You know, when I was over your house and the sleepovers and things, it was a safety feeling to Wow.
Speaker 1So imagine that, folks, they were one and more structure and I was dying to be free. I was dying to be free and I think, what, what Leslie, what I saw in Leslie, and what remains true is that she's a safe place. So I was able to kind of push my boundaries without feeling like she was going to put me in any danger. Right, what is? What a level of freedom that is when you feel like you can fly but you're protected by someone who loves you and wants you, know the best for you. And that's what I had with Leslie and, and we've we felt this way about each other from pretty early on yeah.
Speaker 2Even before we had words to talk about exactly how ironic it is for you to say about a place of safety in lack of structure.
Speaker 1When we met in the middle, me yearning for more structure, you appreciating less structure, and man, because I clicked so early on, because I I knew that your well of Love was really deep. I, when I came to America In elementary school, I was bullied a lot because of my accent. That was at a time when being Jamaican was not cool, be you know, reggae was, was considered some kind of jungle music and and I was bullied. And so to have an American friend who I felt safe with it, said a lot about you, you know what I mean. I don't know if I ever told you that.
Speaker 2I didn't really know that you were bullied. Yeah, no, I didn't know that, yeah it was.
Speaker 1I've never been bullied.
Speaker 2Yeah, because you were the bully or no?
Speaker 1I'm kidding, no, no, you weren't a bully, but everybody was scared of you because you could fight.
Speaker 2It wasn't that I was a fighter, because the last fight I had- was before I met you. You were not a fighter. I found out that people were intimidated by my perceived maturity.
Speaker 1Right, you were not a fighter, but people were afraid to fight you because they probably thought you could kick their ass Probably, yeah. So imagine just really beautiful fun, all the guys you know flocked around Leslie and with all of that, just this beautiful spirit, really smart, you know. Who could not just want to be around you? Whoever didn't see it in you, that just didn't matter. Some people saw you, I think superficially, it's like they just wanted to hang out with you because you were popular and all of that.
Speaker 2It could be that wasn't me.
Speaker 1I saw you deeper babe.
Speaker 2I saw you deeper. Okay, I like that, but listen, why did we name this episode one? But can she sew? Oh, this is such a great story, such a great story.
Speaker 1We were such nerds Like okay, so Leslie and I both know how to sew. We knew how to sew then. Okay, my mother taught me how to sew from when I was little in Jamaica she had one of those sewing machines that had the kind of rocking plate underneath and use your foot pedal.
Speaker 2Yeah, the old singer, yeah, exactly yeah.
Speaker 1And little by little, she would let me hang around, she would let me cut the strings off of her garments. You know, I wasn't allowed to take the scraps to make what we call dolly clothes until she finished her outfit, because my mother, she didn't use pattern. She just so you never knew when she was going to use pieces to kind of make a pattern out of it. So anyway, I've been sewing for for quite a while and Leslie knew how to sew also.
Speaker 2My grandmother taught me how to sew.
Speaker 1Yeah, so isn't that amazing.
Speaker 2I would go over to my grandmother's house and very often I would be the only one at my grandmother's house, and my grandmother was a seamstress. So as a result of that, I would use the fabric that she had at the house and she would just teach me to show. So to the point where I was sewing in middle school, and certainly in high school, I was making my own clothing to wear to school, and hence another connection with and we loved it because it was we could use very little money get some great fabric.
Speaker 1There was like a dollar stores, dollar yard stores yeah, could just make anything. We wanted clothing, unique clothing, so anyway, it was whenever we saw someone that we were a little jealous of. You know, whatever they were cuter, had nicer clothes or whatever.
Speaker 2Or if we wanted to allow them into our inner circle.
Speaker 1Yes, yes, we always said yeah, she's this or that, but can she so? Because that was like something that.
Speaker 1That was like our God no higher, we could, we could so and is like, but can she so? And that was our way of saying, okay, they may be all of that in a bag of chips, but if they can, so they're out, they're out. They just we don't need them. We don't need them. So we named this episode but can she so? Because it was a way of kind of nodding to our, our, our growth, the ways that we found protection and found our voice, I think, around being being different, but not seeing that difference as something that made us weird. It was something that we both had and it just felt right that it be kind of our origin story, because it reminds us of this time when we were becoming self-assured and becoming different and comfortable with being different than the rest of our friends in high school.
Speaker 2Yeah, so you may be thinking that these ladies have been hanging around each other for 45 years, so we're so similar and we finish each other's sentences, which we do and whenever I agree with her in conversation with my husband, my husband says, yeah, but Angie is always going to say that, or like she's a plant. But we are actually not as similar as one would think.
Speaker 1So you want to talk about that for a little bit. I do want to talk about that. So, leslie, I would say Leslie is very sequential, right, she's a logical thinker. If we haven't said it already, she's a physician and it's really her being a doctor comes out of her being the way that she is, not that. She learned to be this way in medical school. She's always been this OK, you do this, then you do that, then you do that, then you do that. Me, I'm like OK, that's one way to do it, but you can also do this and then that over there, and then that over there, and then that, and then come back to this. So I've always seen it drives me nuts.
Embracing Differences and Expanding Perspectives
Speaker 1I've always seen possibilities and Leslie once. She finds that one way to do it, that is the way it's going to get done and that is the way it's supposed to get done. But but here's the thing, the fact that we are that different is actually one of the things that brought us so close together, because she definitely expanded me and I definitely expanded her, and so the idea of I don't even think it's like opposites attract, it wasn't like that type of thing.
Speaker 2No, no, no, not at all, because we have enough similarities that I wouldn't call each each ourselves opposites, but I think that we fill in each other's holes, yeah.
Speaker 1Yeah, and we have a high level of respect for each other. So, and each other's opinions and each other's opinions, right, it's like we trust each other and we seek each other out.
Speaker 1We seek our opinions out.
Speaker 1So I think in general I would consider myself right brain and Leslie left brain for sure, definitely for sure. But we meet in the middle, at that intersection of the two and I pull her over to my side a lot and she tries to pull me over to her side a lot, but I think she has a tougher time than I do. But I think when people hear that we're very different, they can't believe it because they think we think a lot. And if you Stay with this podcast and I certainly hope that you do we will expose the differences that we have, the different opinions that we have, the different ways of looking at life that we have, and one of the things that we're hoping that our listeners learn is that difference does not mean that you cannot coexist or find joy in another person who thinks differently from you. There's some middle ground that you can find to make relationships with people who are different work really well. But you'll get to see that we don't have to talk about that anymore. You'll get to see it.
Speaker 2Well, while we're speaking about that, what I do want to say is and I'll give you a shout out by saying that one of the things I still appreciate about you all, over all of these years, is how I still grow with you. We talk a little bit about, we trust each other in our opinions and we know that the love is there. So we're not out to harm each other. But I'll run something by you. That an instance where I know that I'm correct and because I'm very linear in my thinking, just speaking to you about it, I can still learn things and expand my thinking about it, and I give you an ear because of that trust and respect, whereas with other people I might not have that much faith in them, so yeah, it comes out a lot.
Speaker 1I'll take that. I will take that. You've received that. I received that down to my toes. So what do you think is on our next 40 year journey? What are some of the things that you think we're going to go for?
Speaker 2Wow, I'm really excited about that. One of the things that I envision is that the people who are viewing us will think that we've lost our mind.
Speaker 1We lose our minds on a weekly basis, For example.
Speaker 2I've always been pretty conservative in my dress, in my thinking, and I'm now seeking red dreadlocks. And when I say red, I mean color red, not just orburn red. You know, that's a big change. I just think that as I'm getting into I'm 60 now in my next 20, 40 years, I want to go out with a bang. I want to go out with a bang.
Speaker 2I want to realize things that I've been thinking about. Now's the time to start checking off your bucket list with vengeance and a lot of it. I've already checked, but I'm fearlessly going into those things. So if you come across a physician with bright red, dreadlocks.
Speaker 1That might be me, okay. Well, I think this podcast for you is one of those things that is breaking you out of your shell. I was a little concerned, to be honest. I knew that you were all in, but I was concerned about whether you would find a place to be comfortable with. You know, being as open as Exposure, right? Yeah, I knew that you would, but I thought that it would be harder for you than it is, and I really appreciate you pushing through, because I know that that's what you're doing. You're pushing through, you want to be more relaxed, more comfortable, more vulnerable, and you're willing to do that with me, and I think that's so awesome.
Speaker 2Yeah, yeah, and I may have said it a few times already, but growth is still important. I don't want to be that person that has nothing more to learn or nothing new to experience. I think I have a wonderful life right now, but I, god willing, I can only envision more.
Speaker 1Right. So we are right now in New Jersey. We are in a beautiful closet that is perfect for its sound quality. It's actually one of the bedrooms in Leslie's home that was converted into a gorgeous closet, and it's a perfect place for a podcast. I am going to be going back to my home in North Carolina tomorrow, but so I don't know where I'm going to podcast from there yet, but I'm going to find a great space that will give us the best sound quality possible. So I think are we going to call this a wrap. Is there anything else you want to say in our Virgin episode?
Speaker 2of. I just want to say thank you again for pushing me in this direction and I really want to invite our listeners to continue to come back to hear some of our funny stories, to hear some of our more serious stories, how we got through challenging times, challenging interactions, and talk a little bit about our faith journey, which is a little bit different than many other Christians.
Speaker 1That's going to be a good one.
Speaker 2So we have good plans for you guys.
Speaker 1Yeah, yeah. So stay with us. We are in it to win it. We are going to keep this going because we do believe that this is ordained for us to do this. This is a part of it's our testimony, in a sense right, and we're supposed to share our testimony.
Speaker 2So here we are.
Speaker 1So we're going to call this a wrap. Thank you for listening. We'll see you next time on what is it.
Speaker 2Black Boomer Besties from Brooklyn.
Speaker 1From Brooklyn. See you Bye.
