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Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC. For our last 15 minutes or so today, we're going to open up the phones for a call-in to invite your stories about moments in which you have asked for help or helped others in need. 212-433-WNYC. Why do we ask this today? Well, recently, Julie Beck wrote in The Atlantic about how planning her wedding last year made her realize, as she put it, that, "The big life moments offer permission to ask for assistance. You should seize it."

Now, before she and her fiancé could think of asking for help, family and friends offered to help plan the bachelorette party, make flower arrangements, and decorate the venue. As grateful as Beck was, however, she worried that she was asking too much from her friends, even though they offered to help. One question we're asking is, have you ever felt like this? Do you find yourself asking, "Are you sure?" in response to a friend or loved one offering to help?

Give us a call or text. Maybe you've even read that story and said, "Yes, that sounds like something I went through," or, "Oh, what's her problem? Of course, she should just accept their help." 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692, call or text. There was a study in 2008 cited here by the American Psychological Association that found that people who need help tend to predict that others will say no, underestimating the likelihood of getting help by as much as 50%.

Have you ever gone out on an uncomfortable limb to ask for help and were maybe surprised by how willing people were? Has anyone ever surprised you by showing up for you when you weren't sure if they would, or maybe you surprised yourself by saying yes? This could be from that angle, too. Maybe you surprised yourself by saying yes when someone asked for help with something like planning a wedding, or maybe something more intense. 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692. A little more.

While we tend to overestimate how inconvenient our requests for help are, that was part of the premise in the article that the psychological association found that people tend to overestimate how inconvenient our request for help will be, Beck, in The Atlantic article, argues that we underestimate how happy it will make the person offering to help. We can also flip the question. When have you offered help and have actually been taken up on that offer? Did it make you happy?

Did you feel awkward reaching out to ask what someone needs like your offer might not help the situation, or you might say the wrong thing, or it might be invading their privacy, or did you just go ahead and do it without asking? Maybe you made that lasagna for their freezer. You know what I mean? You showed up on move-out day. "I'm here to help. Give me the mattress. I'm going to bring it into the truck."

How did you offer to help in a way that actually helped someone, maybe even by surprise? Call 212-433-WNYC and tell us these stories, or text 212-433-9692. Beck raises this other great point in her piece that weddings, funerals, and births are examples of life moments that make it easier to ask for and offer help, but she argues that we shouldn't wait for what she calls the magic of occasions to ask for that help. Maybe moving day doesn't quite fit into that life cycle category of weddings, funerals, and births.

If we shouldn't wait for the magic of occasions to ask for help, what is the threshold? Many of you have more help available than you think as part of the point of her article. The very act of asking for it could make your relationship stronger. Tell us how you have strengthened your relationships with asking for or offering to help, even in little mundane ways. Call us. Give us a text. 212-433-WNYC, 433-9692. We'll take your stories after this.

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Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC. Now, to your helper stories. Boy, let me say, as I look at the board here. If we were talking about life's relatively little moments like making a flower arrangement for your friend's wedding or bringing a casserole on moving day so people didn't have to cook at the same time, we are getting stories that are so much bigger than that. Nadia in Bloomingdale, New Jersey, you're on WNYC. Hi, Nadia. Thank you for calling in.

Nadia: Hi. Thanks for letting me on. In January 2024, around that time, my husband's cousin's daughter, so it's my husband's side of the family, she was diagnosed with a condition called biliary atresia. That's congenitive. Essentially, what that leads to is liver failure in babies. They don't make it past two years unless they have a liver organ transplant. She was in the hospital for months. She spent her first Christmas in the hospital, like her parents. It was the first kid.

She was deteriorating really fast, and they couldn't find a deceased donor in time. Her mom put out a call on Facebook. I remember seeing it New Year's Day, and that they're looking for a living donor, this blood type, da, da, da. I have three kids. I have a 2, 5, and 10-year-old. I have three little kids at home, but I saw that I was a blood match. I reached out to her to say, "Maybe I can look into donating."

She said, "You have three kids. You're in New Jersey. I'm in St. Louis. It's fine. Don't worry," but I applied anyway, and I got it. Within two weeks, I was tested. I ended up going into surgery. Ended up being stuck in St. Louis for a month. I couldn't come home to my kids. My husband had to figure out childcare, everything. Surgery went successful. I was able to come back. I donated the left lobe of my liver. It was a major surgery. Her name is Eden. She's thriving. She just turned two years old two days ago. I'm doing well. I recovered very well. I didn't have any complications.

Brian Lehrer: Wow.

Nadia: It's amazing to see because she probably wouldn't have seen her second birthday unless there had been that liver transplant. I love my husband's family. They're from El Salvador. I'm from Bangladesh. We all have this great multicultural family. That act, it really solidified first on my relationship. It's almost like I have a blood relation to his family now because I donated part of my organ that you'll have forever.

Brian Lehrer: Yes, literally.

Nadia: His family from El Salvador were posting on Facebook like, "Bless you and thank you. We love you." All of his relatives, all from California and Texas and El Salvador were just praying for her and thanking me. I think it really did deepen my relationship with them on a level that I don't know is possible usually, in a way where a child's life was really on the line, and doing amazing now.

Brian Lehrer: Well, let me be the thousandth person to say thank you and you're amazing. I'm surprised you could even, as a grown-up, donate a liver or part of a liver to a six-month-old baby because of the size difference. Obviously, you could.

Nadia: Right. Well, you're actually right about that. If I was a 6'4" football player, I couldn't donate to her. My vascular system, my liver would be just too big even if they cut a piece of it off, right? I always complain that I'm 5'2". I can't reach the cookies at the top of the counter sometimes. Being 5'2" and petite really came in handy because the doctor said I was literally the perfect fit for someone like her. A petite woman, actually, who's a smaller size, ended up being the absolute perfect liver for her.

Brian Lehrer: How about that? Amazing story, Nadia. Congratulations on doing that. You will have that as a badge of honor as well as warmth for the rest of your life, I'm sure. All right, so here's Jay in Suffolk County, who's a chronic helper for a specific thing, it looks like. Jay, you're on WNYC. Hello.

Jay: Hi, Brian. I would see people on the highway, and they got flat tires. I have one of those professional jacks. I have the impact wrench and everything. It takes five minutes. Sometimes, even if I'm tired going home and they're on the other side of the highway, I would turn around and stop and help them because I have been in situations where my tire was flat and I had to call a tow truck. You wait two hours, especially if it's 9:00 PM. That's just how I help people.

Brian Lehrer: That is so nice. How much do you do it?

Jay: So far, it's probably been 11 times in the past three to four months.

Brian Lehrer: Wow.

Jay: In the past two weeks, I probably changed five different wheels for people. Especially out in Suffolk County, if you're going out to Riverhead, there's nothing there. The Pine Barrens, it's just you and those trees and the deers. If it gets dark, it's just a scary situation.

Brian Lehrer: Jay, thank you very much. All right, Jay in Suffolk County, out in the Pine Barrens, and all of that. A chronic helper for people with flats. Siobhan in Rockaway, New Jersey, you're on WNYC. Hi, Siobhan.

Siobhan: Hi. Longtime listener and contributing member.

Brian Lehrer: Thank you.

Siobhan: So grateful for you guys. My husband has been suffering from severe long COVID for almost two years now, and been very hard on our family. We have a three-year-old. It's basically just been his parents, my in-laws, and me taking care of him. He lives at my in-laws' house right now to get full-time care while I work and take care of her son. "Framily" is what we call them. Our friend family, our chosen family. They're always so willing to help.

We just never really ask anything of them because we feel like we've got it. My in-laws, recently, they're in Norway right now on vacation. I found myself really struggling to get by to take care of him, to go back and forth between our houses. My framily has really stepped up, going over to my in-laws' house, sitting with him, feeding him, getting him his medicine, ensuring that he has food and drink and socialization. Additionally, I found myself in a jam. My babysitter bailed on me last minute. They stepped up when I had to work and babysat our son.

I was talking to one of them, and I said, "I feel so guilty to ask all this of you." One of them said, "No, we're happy to do this. We're grateful. We finally feel like we're being useful. We felt so helpless, and we want to be there. We want to contribute." They made food and brought it over, and all of the things that you need. I know, for me, I have that mom guilt just innately a part of myself. Then the guilt to ask for help is even harder, but they showed up, and they want to show up even if I have a hard time accepting it.

Brian Lehrer: Are you surprised by the wanting to show up that consistently?

Siobhan: Yes, I am in a way because I do feel that guilt. I'm surprised when people want to just drop what they're doing, or leave work a little bit early, or get home a little bit late. It's surprising. Also, in a way, it's not because I know that they love us and they're always there for us. Whether it's a phone call, emotional support, or physically showing up, I know that. They do want to be there. It's an interesting mindset.

Brian Lehrer: You got to love the so-called chosen families, right? The families of friends who become like your family. Siobhan, thank you. Let's see. I think we have time for probably just one more. I think we're getting a very New York story here from Ray in Washington Heights. Ray, you're on WNYC. Hello.

Ray: Hey. Hi, Brian. Thank you for taking my call. Yes, exactly. Very familiar story for a lot of New Yorkers. I was walking in the Fashion District on Seventh Avenue, and there was a little hole in my pocket. The keys went right through the leg, right down onto the subway grate. Perfect timing. Then right through the subway grate and then fell right in a place that was not vertically accessible. I could run into one of the fashion stores there and get some thread and a hook and try to fish them out. Of course, people saw me doing this.

Sure enough, a very cool group of guys just started coming around and offering suggestions, and then offering for this and that. Then, eventually, people were running. One guy ran back to his office and got some really powerful magnets. We tied those to the string. After about 25 or 30 minutes of key-fishing with this little crowd of us all around, we finally managed to get the keys. It was such a cool moment. I was so grateful that these five New Yorkers of busy jobs, a very diverse group of guys, some of them immigrants, looked like cab drivers, they just--

Brian Lehrer: Amazing.

Ray: They just jumped to my help and had a good time. It was very moving.

Brian Lehrer: As we run out of time, we leave people with that image. Five guys key-fishing with magnets down a subway grate. Ray in Washington Heights, thank you for sharing. Thanks for your amazing stories of helping and receiving help. So many others on the board. We should do this again when we need to feel good about something, right? Stay tuned for Alison.

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