Transcript of Armchair Anonymous: Crazy Neighbors II New

Welcome, welcome, welcome to Armchair Anonymous. I'm Dan Shepherd, and I'm joined by Lily Padman.

Hello.

Today we are going to entertain you with crazy stories of neighbors.

We've all been there.

I mean, really, it seems pretty universal, doesn't it?

It does.

I've had a handful of questionable neighbors.

But these really, these are tippy top.

Yeah, these are more extreme than I have ever dealt with.

Yeah.

Uh-oh.

Oh, that's one of these burps you're talking about, but I knew I did it and it was— and I couldn't—

I didn't—

I couldn't help it.

I don't actually think that was one.

That was from all the colostrum and I've been—

yeah, that wasn't one I'm talking about.

Oh, okay, that wasn't one of the tick ones.

Yeah.

Okay, please enjoy Crazy Neighbors. Hard times come and go, good times take them slow. My life, I had them both, but one thing Hi. Wait, your name is in quotes. Does that mean it's a fake name?

It does.

And is your fake name Kelsey?

My fake name is Kelsey.

Great. We're not even gonna ask you what your real name is.

I'm not gonna ask, but I do want to know, is this a nod to the Kelsey Brothers?

Oh shit, no.

Okay, great. Just wanna see what we're dealing with.

Why Kelsey?

Do you have a friend that you Do you have a dog that's named Kelsey?

No, I can't actually say much 'cause it'll give it away. I just thought it was a good option.

Great, I'll stop hounding you about it. I just thought it could be a cute thing. Don't steer me. Kelsey, where are you?

I am in Thunder Bay, Ontario, Canada.

Oh, what's Thunder Bay?

Thunder Bay is the same place that you guys had a caller in that had the gross shin melty puddle.

In the restaurant.

The restaurant.

Yeah, like kind of a seaside party. Towny vibe?

Yeah, up on Lake Superior.

Oh, you're on Lake Superior?

Right on the northern part there.

Wow, and let's just tell people, Lake Superior is the most beautiful of the Great Lakes. It's the biggest, the deepest, the coldest.

It's superior.

It's freezing.

Height of summer, what's the temp of that water?

Oh, way too cold for me. The kids will go in 'cause they'll go in anything, but way too cold.

Sure.

I couldn't even guess.

And it gets dicey on Superior, like the Edmund Fitzgerald crash there. You get some high seas, Monica.

Oh my gosh.

Yeah.

Yes.

Okay, so you have a crazy neighbor story.

I have a very crazy neighbor story.

Oh, wonderful. I'm so excited. Yeah, yeah, we like a crazy neighbor story.

I know, I was a little bit nervous to tell, but you know what? I'm just gonna put it out there and tell it. So I do have notes just because it was over a few years.

Also, you're an armchairer, which means you're smart and organized and a good storyteller.

Oh yeah.

And you have your notes. It's very common.

Yes, this all started during COVID So during COVID while I was very pregnant with my second son, we bought a house. And immediately got warned about the woman next door. Within the first week, my husband and I were, like, looking out the window, and we saw her lining up rocks. So our yard sort of goes, like, right against her driveway. So she was lining up rocks along the length of our yard and then started digging up our yard as though she was going to, like, expand her driveway onto our yard.

Okay.

Interesting. How old is our— neighbor friend?

I would put her in her 60s-ish.

Oh, sure, sure.

So my husband and I are watching this and he's like, you know what, I'm gonna go out and talk to her. And I'm like, okay, let's just tread lightly. I'm a little bit more of the cool, calm, collected. He can have a shorter fuse when provoked.

Dax Shepard type? A little bit, yeah.

So we go outside and she immediately screams at us, stay back, it's COVID, stay back, it's COVID. And like puts her shirt up over her face. To sort of protect her, I guess, from us. So my husband asks what she's doing. She tells us that basically our yard is her property. And there's a little heated exchange where she ends with telling him to go fuck himself.

Oh wow.

He returned the sentiment and he walked back inside. I'm like very pregnant, waddling behind him.

Can I ask, is this a vacation property or your primary residence?

Nope. This is like our primary residence. So you're not living next to So we decided, let's be adults about this. We'll get a survey to like properly determine the property line and we will build a fence because as we know, fences make good neighbors.

Yes.

Yes.

The survey company came, they marked out the line. Our property actually ended like a foot or two into her driveway. She wasn't home at the time, so they left a card in her mailbox. We just thought, you know, okay, great. It's COVID, so we had to wait a bit for lumber because as you guys know, like things were just crazy during that time. No one could get supplies. And I guess she took it upon herself to call the survey company, threaten them to the point where the survey company actually called me and they said, look, we know your husband's working out of town. We've actually gone on lockdown here because she's making threats to come down here. So we're just suggesting you sort of lock your doors and do the same.

Oh my God.

They're on lockdown at the surveying place.

Wow.

Okay.

Yeah. And so I was home with my 3-year-old son at the time. So that was kind of sketchy, just not really knowing what was going on. So between when we had the survey, and when we actually built the fence, there were multiple police calls. We actually had her on video saying, "Just wait until your kid comes over here again." Mm. But she never finished the threat, so the police couldn't do anything about it.

Oh my God.

Yeah. And he was 3 at the time. Like, he wasn't ever going over there. They would take pictures of my son outside playing. To this day, he turns 9 next week and he's still afraid of her.

Well, really quick, does she have a husband in the mix or a—

Yes.

He never really gets into the dust-ups. It's mostly her, but he is around. Every time the police showed up, of course, the whole neighborhood comes out to kind of see what's going on, especially during COVID We were all looking for cheaper, free entertainment. Yeah.

Yeah, yeah.

You were providing it.

Yeah. She would be out there screaming to everyone about what terrible parents we were because we let our kid roam around. She threatened to call Children's Aid on us. She called 911 so many times. Oh my God.

This is like that doc.

It is. We ended up being on like a first name basis with the police. My little guy, he thought police were just a normal part of life, that they were at everyone's house all the time.

Yeah.

She called bylaw to falsely report our dog running at large. So things became really uncomfortable. We had such bad anxiety. We didn't wanna go outside. You never knew what you were gonna get with her. She would stare at us. So we'll jump forward to, this is now like August 2020, and we finally have the materials to build the fence. My husband's very handy, so him and some buddies, some family all came over to build this fence. They would not move their vehicles so that we could get in there. They just stood there, hands on their hips, staring at us.

Oh my God.

She called 911 reporting that my husband was standing in the yard with weapons, which was like a drill and a hammer because we were building a fence. Fence.

Do you think 911's ever blocked a call? I know! If I worked there, I'd just be like, "You know what? I'm not taking this woman's calls anymore.

It's blocked." That's what we kept saying. Like, what a waste of resources to send all these police all the time.

Ugh.

So the police ended up actually just sort of staying at our house the whole day to keep the peace, because every time they left, she would call back or we would have to call because she ran into the backyard at one point and was throwing tree branches over the fence.

Oh my God! She needs a job.

She needs a mental facility.

She scribbled on a cardboard sign "For Sale" and hung that up in her tree as we were building the fence. She's very clearly not well.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So this is where things started to get scary. So around that same time, our dog out of nowhere got really, really sick. Vomiting nonstop, lost a ton of weight. We had to take him to the emergency vet, and they said that his blood work showed that there were toxins but unless we knew what toxin we were looking for, they couldn't actually confirm. So the fence got built with police on standby.

Did you reclaim all that? Did you go into her driveway or did you back off of the driveway?

No, we were nice about it. We just went where the yard line was at the time. We didn't really wanna poke too much. So after my second son was born, I don't know if it was because it was COVID and she had nothing better to do maybe, but as she backed out her driveway would just blare on her horn the full minute it took her to back out. Oh my God, my room's on that side of the house, the baby's room was on that side of the house. It would be like early, early morning, middle of day, every time she would just blare the horn.

Can I— I'm gonna pause for one second. I just want to check in with Monica because Monica and I debate about this all the time, and she's right, physical violence should never happen. Do you not think this woman just needs to get her ass kicked by another woman? I mean, someone needs to go, you can't act this way, I'm not gonna allow it. I mean, I think verbal Fully, yes. That won't work. But if that went— what's that? It's not going to deter her.

I just don't know that even physical violence would deter someone like that. Like, I just think she needs help. She needs to be put in a hospital. Okay.

Okay. Okay.

Bye-bye.

Go to a hospital. Yeah, bye.

I could see in the '80s this going on for 3 weeks in my neighborhood, but I feel like some mom would have punched her and then that might have been the end of it.

Right.

Yeah, I don't condone physical violence.

Okay. All right. We're not there yet.

Still.

Okay. Just checking in. Just wondered if this rose to the threshold.

Okay.

If she hurts the kid, I'll say yes.

Okay.

Okay.

I know, not the very, like, friendly Canadian stereotype that we typically have up here. So she would like stand in her driveway watching me put my son on the school bus. She actually called the school bus company trying to get the stop moved because she didn't want it stopping in front of her house. Oh my God. She took so many pictures of us, so many videos of my son.

What's the threshold for harassment? Like, can you sue somebody? This feels like harassment.

We'll get to that.

Okay, okay, okay.

Yeah, she made all kinds of fake police calls. I think at one point she made a 911 call saying my husband was like revving his sled, his snow machine in the middle of the night or like racing it down the street, something ridiculous. At one point she told the police, referring to my husband, she said, "I'm not gonna let some snot-nosed kid tell me to go fuck myself," which we've always thought is hilarious because my husband is a tradesman, he's in his 30s, he has a full beard, he's very much not a snot-nosed little kid. Mm-hmm. So at that point, I think we had about 20 police reports from all of the false complaints and harassment. But the thing that finally led to her having having criminal charges was when she decided to email my husband's employer.

Hmm.

My husband drives a work vehicle. His company and everything is blasted all over the side. It's not hard to see who he works for. Police were here for something, I can't remember, but they had said to us they had just talked to her and she was thinking about emailing my husband's boss. So the next day she sent his company an email. She basically laid out that my husband was dangerous, creepy, intimidating. She actually said, I don't think I I could take him if something, like, physical was to happen, which is crazy. My husband's the nicest guy. He would never hurt a fly.

But also, yeah, you can't take him.

Right.

That's also true.

What does that have to do— yeah.

Yeah, yeah.

You probably can't take a lot of 30-year-old dudes.

Right.

She also attached a bunch of pictures of his work vehicle just parked in the street, our house, him walking down the street. Thankfully, she was dumb enough to put it in writing because that was the final straw. That's what led to her being charged with 2 counts of criminal harassment.

Ooh, God.

Yeah.

She dragged the court proceedings out for close to 2 years. We almost went to trial, and she finally pled guilty, like, days before we were supposed to go to trial.

And during the 2 years where she was about to be on trial, did her antics stop?

No, not as intense, but more of an intimidating, like, every time we were outside, she would make sure she was outside. The pictures never stopped. She did accuse my husband of being a voyeur one time while we were waiting. She called 911 to say he was peeping in her windows.

Ugh. You know, I bet when you look at her phone, the 9 and the 1 and the 1 are, like, worn out.

Yeah, exactly.

Like, on a security pad.

Ugh!

So once she pled guilty, what did they say? If you do it again, you could end up in jail? Like, I can't imagine they sent her to jail for this.

No, she didn't go to jail. She had— I think it's called a suspended sentence. So basically, we got, like, a restraining order so she couldn't communicate with us or our kids, couldn't come onto our property. That was the part that bothered me the most, was the kids. Like, if you want to harass me and my husband, we're adults.

Well, you're not those kids, but yes, I get your point.

Yes.

How many years ago was that, that the conviction happened?

2022.

And have you had 4 years of peace?

I don't know if I would call it peace, but things have certainly calmed down since she was convicted. She still lives next door.

Oh, wow. Oh my God.

You know, you never know.

I mean, the only compassion I can find in this is She's very unhappy.

Well, we don't know if she's unhappy.

She is.

Well, she's unwell, but I think sometimes unwell people might not be unhappy.

I think she's so grouchy and easily annoyed, and anything that's happening, she feels like it's a personal assault, and her fucking fight or flight's probably up, and her cortisol's dumping. I mean, I bet she's suffering because of this, this way she's chosen.

Some people get high on that.

Well, we've heard various stories from the other neighbors streets over saying, oh yeah, 25 years we've known that woman. She's been like that her whole life. So that's my crazy neighbor story.

Wow. That's a rough one.

That is rough. Luckily, I wanna say, I know what it's like to live in that type of area and your neighbors are more relevant in that type of neighborhood. Like we have that here.

Yes.

We have someone we can't stand. We don't care. We don't see them.

Yeah. You can avoid it.

Nothing's gonna happen. Everyone's in their house in LA. It's fine. But if we lived in a rural area and we shared a yard, it'd be a different scenario.

Yeah.

Especially our summers are so short here. We wanna get outside. And be outside as much as we can. But I will say, after so many years of anxiety, something cool has finally come of this experience. So I'm gonna count it as a win.

Oh, good. Well, I'm glad that there was some silver lining to it.

Exactly.

I'm glad. Well, Kelsey, lovely meeting you. Yes. Yeah, thanks for telling us that.

Thank you so much. Can I just say a very quick shout out just to everyone who has heard this story for years, all my friends, all my coworkers, and of course my husband who has gone through all of this with me. We're a great team and hopefully we don't have any more, uh, challenges like this down the road.

We're sending you all the good vibes.

All right. Well, lovely meeting you. Enjoy this little glimpse of summer coming your way.

Thank you so much, guys.

Take care. All right.

Bye.

Take care.

Hi.

Hello. Hi. How are you?

So good. What fake name should we go with?

Well, I was hoping you could maybe assign one to me.

Okay. I'm going with Claire.

Ooh, I like that.

Claire's a very friendly name, isn't it? I've known a few Claires over the years. They're all very friendly.

I've never met a bad Claire.

It's hard to find a bad Claire.

Or a bad eclair.

That's easier. I've had some bad eclairs. Claire, where are you? I am currently in Maine.

Maine.

Ooh, I wanna go.

Maine's having a real moment, right? A lot of people moving to Maine.

Yeah, especially after the pandemic. A lot of folks moved up here, including our families.

Yeah, I have a good friend who moved there, lived there for the last 5 years, just sold his house, and it had tripled in value in the 5 years he owned it. That doesn't happen. That's so nice.

I really wanna go there. It looks so idyllic.

It's pretty.

Where did you come from?

So we moved here from the Seattle area.

Oh, okay. So all the way across.

Yeah, we like the corners.

Yeah, you like the corners. You could have also moved We also agreed to only live in towns named Portland and Stillman in the Pacific Northwest.

That's true.

Okay, so your crazy neighbor story, was it in the Seattle area?

Yes.

Walk us through it, let us hear.

This took place in early September of 2018. At the time, we were living in a very idyllic suburban area. Outside of Seattle, there are some very family-friendly towns. They have a name and they have their own private park. Kids ride their bikes still. It feels very like 1950s. They're just running into each other's houses and stuff like that. And so that's where we were. We had 2 young kids at the time and tons of families where we lived. The kids were like early elementary school, and my daughter was good friends with 2 other daughters in the neighborhood. They all hung out together and stuff, and our families began to hang out.

What ages?

The youngest being like 5 and the oldest being 8. I'll give you a couple of names, a couple of the players. So Karen and Heather, Karen's kids and Heather's kids, all of our daughters, they all hung out together. And so Karen and Heather and our family, we would get together for trick-or-treating and Easter eggs, and community events, and all of those kinds of things. We even went camping together in that summer before. So we knew each other well, but always with tons of kids, and husbands, and people always around. There was another family, Jennifer's family. She had two boys, but she was like our kids' soccer coach. So we all knew each other, and again, kids all in the same age, going to the same school, same bus stop. And in early September, one of the daughters had a birthday party. Heather and Karen and I, we were hanging out after the birthday party, and we're like, "We should do a mom's night out." Mm-hmm. Like, school is back in session, long summer, let's have a good time.

Yeah. Yeah.

We decide that we're gonna do it the following weekend. And in between time, there was a soccer practice. So I was like, "Hey, why don't we invite Jennifer too? 'Cause she's cool, she's friendly, super funny." And she's the mother of the boys. She's the mother of the boys. And the other two moms are like, "Yeah, that sounds great." We decide to go to a country western bar with a mechanical bull.

Oh!

The moms are going hard.

Keep in mind, at this point, I'm in my early 40s, so is another mom. Everybody else, late 30s. We are not mechanical bull riding people.

Sure, sure, sure.

But it's hilarious, and why not?

Yes.

And Chippendales isn't in fashion anymore.

That's right. And that wasn't really our style anyway. We're like, "Let's just go and make fun of ourselves and have a couple beers." But in the lead-up, we start a group text, and Karen sends a text of Debra Winger from Urban Cowboy.

Yeah, yeah. Know it well. Bud and Sissy.

In that movie, Sissy is, like, erotically riding the bull.

She's in a white tank top, braless. Yeah, it's a lot.

It's a lot. So she sends a GIF, jif, whatever you call it, of Deborah Winger riding the bull. Now again, this is not really our vibe for the rest of us. So we're like, "That's a choice." But could be funny.

Yeah.

We were like, "Okay, let's go the funny route." So we were like, "All right, let's embrace our Deborah Wingers. You know, we're gonna have a good time." So I'm the designated driver. The rest of us, we all meet up. I take everybody out. Heather is particularly happy. She just got a new job, so she's like happy drunk.

We're all just laughing, having a really good time.

Having a good time. Karen is a little on the quiet side. We decide to go do the mechanical bull.

Really quick, had she arrived in an overtly sexy outfit or just normal?

Just normal.

Okay.

All right. We were all just kind of normal, trying to get our country on, but that wasn't really our situation either. So, I go up first. I comically fall off the mechanical bull kind of instantly. We're laughing really hard. We're all having a good time. Jennifer goes up, Heather goes up. We all instantly fall off. Karen goes up, up. And she's been very quiet, very kind of serious this whole time. And she does kind of seductively ride the bull.

Okay.

A little longer than the rest of us. She's kind of whipping her hair back and forth.

Living out a fantasy.

We're like, "Okay." But we're cheering for her. We're like, "That wasn't what bus stop moms we were expecting, but we're like, 'Go, Debra!'" You know? She gets off, and she kind of struts over to us. She's very straight-faced. We're laughing. We're just enjoying ourselves and making fun of the whole situation. And she's like, "Yes, my husband is a very happy man." Oh, all right.

Oh, wow.

Thanks for telling us.

Oh, wow. Okay.

And she kind of keeps walking back to the table.

Oh, she, like, says it in passing.

Yeah. She throws it away.

So she goes back to the table. You know, we carry on. We're having a good time. We're line dancing. A couple hours in, and again, Karen's pretty quiet. I come back to the table from line dancing, and it's just Jennifer and Karen at the table. And Jennifer's kind of teary-eyed. Uh-oh, boy. Oh, okay. And Karen is very flat-faced, like flat affect. And Jennifer's immediately like, "I'm going to the bathroom." So she goes to the bathroom, and Karen follows her.

Oh!

I have no idea what's going on. I'm fat, dumb, and happy.

You're not even drinking, right?

Yeah. So I'm like— And we're all grown-ass women.

Yeah. You're like, "What the hell?" You know what I mean? Yeah.

But Heather immediately is alarmed. And she said, "Something's wrong." "Karen is attacking Jennifer." What?! Whoa. And I'm like, "What are you even talking about?" Keep in mind, we had just gone camping together the month prior. Like, this was so out of left field. And so Heather's like, "You need to go check on them in the bathroom." Okay, hold on one second.

Do you have a guess?

A little bit.

I have a guess too.

Minimally, she thinks this woman's fucking her husband.

That's right.

That's my guess.

And Karen thinks—

That Jennifer is fucking her husband.

Jennifer's fucking her husband.

That's my guess as well.

Yeah, she's like, "Look, I'm sexier than you. My husband's very happy.

Don't even think about it." Yeah, don't you fucking think about it.

"Think about it." "You piece of shit, I'm gonna assault you in the bathroom." "Don't do this." "Because actually, I'm very insecure." Okay, let's resume.

Okay, but don't tell us if we're right.

Let's just hear it. I go in. Long story short, they wind up leaving. Karen walks out of the bathroom. Jennifer looks at me and is like, "She is a crazy fucking bitch." Oh my God. And this is not how Jennifer talks. And I'm like, "What just happened?" She's like, "I don't wanna cause any more drama. She's very territorial with me. She's saying really nasty things about me. She basically just verbally attacked me for the last 10 minutes." Whoa! And Jennifer's like, "I'm catching an Uber, and I'm leaving." So Jennifer leaves. I come back to the table, and mind you, I have a lot of experience, like, de-escalating heated situations, both personally and professionally. And so that part of my brain kind of clicks in, and I'm like, "I'm gonna stay cool and calm and collected. I'm gonna leave with some curiosity. I'm really clear about what's mine and what's not mine, and clearly, whatever's happening with Karen is not mine." So I come back to the table, and I'm like, And I'm like, "What's going on?" And she's like, "You know what's going on." She starts talking in this, like, really cryptic, kind of hostile way towards me.

And she says, "You are such a bully. And you know what? So is your daughter." Oh, no.

Oh, uh-oh. Now it's gonna be hard to de-escalate. You've brought my child into it.

Oh.

My daughter, she barely turned 8 at this point. Everybody that I talk to about her is just like, "She's the sweetest, kindest kid." So I kind of instantly know this has nothing to do with me. Nothing to do with my kid. And if there is something of mine or something of my daughter's, some transgression, I'm happy to own it. We get talking and I'm like, tell me more. She's kind of circling around, you know. The only specific thing I can get from her is one time my daughter and Heather's daughter whispered in each other's ear and didn't tell Karen's daughter what they whispered.

So a bully, she's a bully. A big bad bully. Yeah, big bully.

And so I was like, I see that as a parenting difference. I'm okay with that. Children whispering in each other's ears. She's not de-escalating. In fact, she starts then verbally attacking my husband. So I'm all done with this conversation. I'm starting to get triggered. This has gone on too long, but I'm still the designated driver. We're a half hour away. I'm still willing to take you in my car. And keep in mind, Heather is sitting there the whole time, but she's no longer happy drunk. She is very sad drunk, holding on to her beer like, hey, girl.

This was supposed to be a very fun mom's night out and it did not turn out. Yeah, it was supposed to be fun. Sounds more like a trip to Vegas.

That's right. I had been texting my husband this whole time, 'cause he's like, "How's it going?" And I'm like, "Holy shit. It's going sideways." So, I'm like, "Going once, going twice. Okay, you guys are staying. I'm leaving." I leave, I call my husband, I'm talking to him on the phone, trying to tell him all the crazy things that had happened. I'm just a minute or so out, and Heather calls. And I'm like, "Fuck you. I'm not answering your phone call." I don't want any, like, "Come on back. We were having fun." You know, I don't want any of that. And I'm like, "You chose to stay." So I'm out. I keep talking to my husband. She calls a second time. I ignore her call a second time, but I tell my husband, "Hey, Heather just called me twice. If she calls a third time, I'm answering." She calls a third time. I pick up the phone, and she says, "She punched me." Oh my God.

She punched her?

Oh my God.

Where this bar was, it's kind of like 4 wide lanes of highway, like car dealerships around, you know, like very— industrial kind of place. She had crossed the street and was just hightailing it in a direction on the street. She's like, "Can you come back and pick me up?" So I do. I come back, I pick her up, and she's like covered in beer. Apparently what happened is I left the bar, Heather, who's been kind of standing by her side this whole time, turns to Karen and says, "It's just the two of us now. What are we gonna do?" And Karen is like, Karen punches Heather in the face.

Oh my God!

Heather drops to the ground. Karen punches her a second time on the ground.

Let's remember, within an hour of bully allegations, which is spectacular. Right.

I think she was just, like, raging with impotence. I could tell she wanted to get a rise out of me, and I wasn't giving her that, and I think she just kind of snapped. But somebody helps Heather up. Heather walks out of the bar. Karen follows her screaming at her. Heather crosses the 4 lanes of traffic, That's when I pick her up. Turns out, in the car, Heather opens up to me and begins telling me that Karen had had a baby a year or so prior. She was postpartum, going through something, had kind of sworn Heather to secrecy, was really worried and paranoid, but had been doing all this emotionally manipulative stuff that is more prevalent in maybe some emotionally abusive relationships. She had also been verbally attacking Heather's daughter Karen, like, really seemed to be targeting a lot of hostility towards not just my daughter, but hers. So there was, like, a long-standing pattern that I had no idea about. And Heather was actually reluctant to come out with us that night, but because I didn't know anything, I was just like, "Let's have mom's night!" And anyway, that night, Karen reached out to Heather.

Heather sent her a text that said, "You fuck off and die. Don't ever talk to me again." And Karen kept talking. Texting. Heather filed a police report. A restraining order was issued. I was able to fact-check myself because we have a lot of court documents documenting the whole night.

Oh, boy.

And when the police officer came to take the report, he was like, "Oh, my gosh. Bus moms, soccer moms." Yeah, fist fight.

By the way, in their defense, there was a lot of fist fights at that bar in Urban Cowboy. So she, like, really was living out— I think even Sissy got in a fucking girl fight. She really was living her life. Yeah, yeah, she did it.

It was really awkward because Jennifer was still our soccer coach. Karen and I were still on the soccer team. The season had just started. Her and her husband pretended like nothing had happened.

Oh boy.

I had to send some strongly worded texts to everybody saying, "Oh no, we're not pretending." Karen's accounting of the night, because again, a restraining order was issued, and her recounting of the night was that Heather had said, "Oh, I wonder who you're going to fuck tonight." And also that she had accused Karen of doing sex acts with Jennifer's husband.

Okay.

Okay. She's mixing it all.

So it was a very, like, dissociated from reality, but the daughters still hung out together. So we had to tell our kids, you can't hang out with her daughter anymore because she was so targeting our daughters.

Yeah, that's tricky.

Yeah. And they would, like, find each other in different friends' houses. And we wanted to protect her mental health status. And her daughter's ability to shape friendships.

You're making me grateful I haven't become friends with a lot of the kids' parents. I just mostly felt guilty about that, but now I'm feeling a little grateful.

I know. It gets very amesh.

It can get so fucking messy.

Yeah. There were two big takeaways from it. One was that the judge said he wouldn't have issued the restraining order had my friend not been so clear and said, "Do not contact me again." And the other thing was Jennifer and Heather and I have trauma bonded, and we are still in touch. We talk to each other every week. But one of the things that we found when we were all debriefing briefing about some of the weird stuff that had led up to it was that we kept using this word "weird." Like, "Oh, I had this conversation with her, and it was kind of weird. And this situation happened, and that was kind of weird." And I'm like, "You know what? I have a new mantra. Weird equals warning." Not Weird Al Yankovic weird, like kooky, delightful weird.

Not like Austin weird.

Not the way you like to use it, Daphne.

Yeah, that's right. Right.

Austin weird. That weird is fantastic. But those conversations where you're trying to justify it and being like, "Huh." Did we find out if she had fucked anyone's husband?

Husband, or her husband had fucked anyone?

No, no, we don't think any husbands were fucked besides her own.

Okay.

Who was very happy.

Yeah, she does it well.

Clearly.

Okay, so there was no impropriety outside of her own imagination, probably.

It sounds like she was kind of like—

yeah, she had some psychosis. Yeah. Did she have a period where she was infatuated with you?

You know, she did send me kind of a cryptic text that was like, I so admire you and the strength you have.

You think she has borderline?

And then she thinks everyone's out to get her. To the point where you're willing to punch Yeah. I mean, you've really convinced yourself this person's trying to harm you. We're really diagnosing people these days. We are. You're not supposed to do that, but I'm going to keep doing it.

Yeah.

I just want everyone to know, if you tell me not to, it's a waste of your breath. I'm gonna continue to do it.

There were signs of that kind of borderline stuff because one of the things Heather said is one day she kind of followed them after the bus stopped, and she had her 4-year-old with her, and she would yell at Heather about what a terrible mom she was, and then the 4-year-old started crying, and then she would, like, switch and be like, "Oh, honey, everything's okay. It's okay." And then she would yell at Heather again. Go back to attacking. And the reason why everybody's names have been changed is because Jennifer and Heather and Karen still live there.

Yeah, that's real talk. Yeah.

Wow.

They got some years left. You were like, "Fuck this, let's go to Maine." Yes, sure. We'll see how the people in Maine are.

Honestly, God.

Well, Clare, what a spicy night out for the moms. Not what we were expecting. But it broke the monotony. Some drama's kind of fun. I'd be liking it all. I'd be a good mom.

But not your neighbors, 'cause you can't remove yourself.

That's the problem.

It was awkward 'cause she's a big part of the PT group. TA and would be a part of family events, it just got really awkward. But yeah, it does make for a good story. And Jennifer and I would celebrate by sending Heather little gifts like fruit punch and sockeye salmon, you know, things to commemorate the budding of our intimate friendship, our strong friendship that we now have. Oh, that's fun.

Well, thank you.

Well, yeah, thank you, Clara. That was great.

Thank you so much. I appreciate it. If I could give just two shoutouts, just shoutout to Shalice. She is a day one listener who got me hooked into you all.

Oh, thank you, Chelyse.

And then the other thing I just wanna say, Dax, I know a lot of people talk about how much your stories of sobriety means to them. And my dad was an alcoholic. He never went into recovery at all. In fact, he went the other way, died of cirrhosis. Tragic. But your stories have been healing for me even after his death and shows me the amount of courage and strength and fortitude and support that my dad really didn't have. And it gives me a lot of compassion for him.

Oh, good. It's very hard.

It's healing for me, so I appreciate it.

Oh, my pleasure. That's so nice to hear. Thank you. All right. Have a great summer up there.

Bye.

Bye.

Hi.

How are you? What name are we using? Your name is in parentheses, which makes me think it's a code name.

It is a code name. I'm gonna go by Caroline today.

Caroline. Caroline, where are you? First of all, your environment is so well put together.

It is.

This is my home office. I'm in Colorado.

Oh, okay, great. Your arms are ripped. Are you like a climber or something?

Absolutely not. I just have two toddlers, so I carry around a lot of really bulky children all day.

They'll tone up those biceps. That's one of the favors they do for us.

Exactly.

And are you from there or did you move there?

Moved there actually. So originally from Maui, which is where my story takes place.

Oh wow.

That's rare. My story takes place around 2016 and I was with my boyfriend for about a year at the time and we decided to move into our first place together. So big step. We found this gorgeous apartment, like especially if you're in your 20s, this was a score. It had like a spiral staircase. It was lofted. It was in a dream apartment. We moved in, and it was great at first. It's a large house, to give context, that was subdivided into multiple units. So kind of a slumlord situation. We had our place, which was probably like an add-on to the house. It was above a carport. There was the main house that had maybe 3 people living in it. There was a unit around back, and then there was a 2-car garage that had been converted into 2 studio apartments. And that's kind of where the focus is. So we had James on one side.

Uh-huh. And then Jamie on another side.

The Other Side, and they had actually started dating and became a couple.

Oh, that's fun. Oh, dangerous and fun.

Yes, exactly. James, we kind of knew of. He was kind of in my parents' circle, so we knew him. And Jamie was very quirky. She was, let's say, mid-50s. She had a giant tramp stamp, and she always walked around in a sports bra and tiny shorts.

Yeah, good for her. Will you give a vibe check for Maui? Because I imagine a lot of people move there with kind of interesting, lofty spirituality dreams or something. Is it a hodgepodge? Odge of people?

You get a really good mix of people. You get hippie crunchy, you get, obviously, people that are Native. There's a lot of different competing vibes there. It's kind of a strange place. A lot of vibes is just the best way I can say it. And Jamie had a vibe. She really did. I mean, she would smoke cigarettes outside all day. She didn't work. She told us she was undergoing cancer treatment, which I'm not sure if that is true or not because I don't think she was left the house much at all. So anyway, we're enjoying our apartment, everything's great. My now husband, then boyfriend, made great friends with Jamie. They get along great, super friendly, quirky but not threatening. And then fast forward to maybe a month living in the apartment, and I received a package in my name. I open it up, it's from Sephora, and it's like a laser device of some sort, maybe like a laser skin device, I want to say. I did not order this. I looked it up on Sephora and it was like an $800— Oh shit! It was, but it was your name, not just your It was in my name to my address, but I had not ordered this.

And there's no way I could have afforded this. I was like 23, 24 at the time. Like, this was expensive. I kind of set it aside. I was like, I'm gonna have to investigate this. I'll ask around our neighbors. This is strange. A couple days later, we're chit-chatting outside on our patio with our neighbors, and I go, hey, by chance, did you guys order a large package from Sephora? I didn't order this, and it's really strange because it was really expensive, and I just want to see if anybody else I want it to get in the right hands. I could just see the wheels turning in his head. He goes, "Well, how much was it for?" And I was like, "You know, it was about $800." He goes, "I just had a fraudulent charge on my card from Sephora for about that amount." Oh, no.

Okay.

And we were like, "Oh, my God." So we pull the package out. We're all looking through it. We're looking for any sort of clues. We find a phone number on the receipt. Obviously, we're calling it. We're gonna call it. And it was Jamie from downstairs.

With the tramp stamp and the cigarettes and the questionable cancer treatment.

Exactly.

At this point, we kind of put together, so she uses his credit card, puts it under my name to avoid suspicion, but doesn't work. So she hoped to intercept the package. Kind of a wrench in her plans.

Like they'll call and they get confused at this multi-person dwelling.

Yes.

But what she didn't account for was my boyfriend's former roommate was our FedEx driver. Oh! So they were total buds, and he would just just walk into our house and just drop off packages.

That was the other thing I wanted to ask you about Maui. It's a small place. There's not a ton of people, right? So if you grew up there, even the fact that you said your parents knew some of the neighbors—

Everyone knows each other. I didn't know her. Nobody really knew who she was. But like I said, it's like, okay, well, how threatening could she be? We know the other people that live here. We knew her boyfriend. Like, how bad could it be? Anyway, we find out she had ordered it. She hoped to intercept it. FedEx driver thwarted that plan. We're at this point, we're like, okay, well, we have to file a police report. So we call the police, the non-emergency line. They send out an officer. He shows up and immediately is like, is this where Jamie lives?

Oh, perfect, perfect.

Apparently she had had problems with the other tenants that used to live there. They had maybe accused her of possibly stealing a laptop, but I don't think anything ever came out of it. They had since left the apartment. So he basically takes our information. He says, you know, we'll file a report, keep me in the loop with anything else that comes up, gives us his card. I wanna say maybe a week or so later, I get a credit card statement. I had taken out a new credit card, but I never received the credit card, but I didn't really think anything of it. Again, I'm in my young 20s. I'm not super organized at this point. I get the statement and there's thousands of dollars worth of charges racked up on this credit card that I never even received.

Oh my God.

Thousands. Yeah.

Call, get it cleared up. Basically, we're able to figure out, Indeed, Jamie had taken it out of the mailbox once it arrived and gone on a shopping spree.

Oh. Oh.

What kind of stuff did she buy? More beauty products? Jamie.

No, she bought more short shorts.

It was all Macy's.

She went crazy at Macy's.

Wow. Good for Macy's.

Get that canceled. And then at this point, I luckily had a credit monitoring service through my work as a benefit. I started just getting pings after pings. She took out probably 8 credit cards in my name in the span of 1 week.

Oh my God.

Really quick, had you guys converted confronted her in face to face or no, you just called the police and let them deal with it?

We never really confronted her at that point.

Okay.

Okay. Down the road we did a little bit, but I don't wanna lose this apartment.

Yeah. Okay. There we go.

There we go.

No offense.

No offense.

It's my dream apartment. Like I don't wanna stir up drama. So she takes out about 8 credit cards in my name, is able to go shopping with a few of 'em. We're able to get those canceled. We continue to file police reports. They're telling us, okay, we're gathering evidence. We're probably gonna arrest her at some point. At some point. She does end up getting arrested, and then the next day is out watering plants outside, acting like nothing ever happened. Then it kind of gets to a point where we're like, okay, this is crazy. She's obviously just continuing to try and open credit cards in my name, fake emails in my name. She's deranged. So we talked to our landlord. He starts taking steps to get her removed from the property. But as I discussed earlier, she would was dating James, who lived in the other unit. So even after she was evicted, we were catching her sneaking onto property, going through our mailbox.

Did your husband ever pull James aside and go like, bro, how do you like this girl? She's a fucking criminal.

She's a thief. What is funny is then he started to get confrontational towards us. He threw the window, tried to get confrontational with my boyfriend. I also had my dad over for dinner one night, which is funny, and he tried to fight my dad. Oh wow. Oh my God.

He was the one, though, that was also involved in Sephora.

No.

Oh, there was a fraudulent charge.

Not James. Different tenant. She continues to sneak on property. Like I said, she actually keeps ordering packages in my name and I keep receiving them. She ordered that same laser 2 more times.

Oh my God. She should just quit smoking if she wants her skin to lighten up. That's what I'm most irked about, to be honest.

Just spent $3,000 on these things and never received them. I hope you used it.

Isn't it crazy, though? The thing I'm most triggered by is like, girl, stop smoking. Buy products. Like, get your shit together.

Sure, sure. It's just getting more and more chaotic. It seems like she's not going to leave us alone, but we're just kind of trying to hope, like, okay, it'll smooth out. She's off property now. The landlord's involved. We had to switch out the mailbox for a locked mailbox. We're just kind of hoping, okay, things are surely going to kind of start to taper down. Then one day, I am walking into the grocery store, one big main grocery store that everybody shops at. I'm not island. I'm walking in, I kind of see something out of the corner of my eye. I don't fully process it. I walk into the store and I just had that gut feeling of, what did I just see? So I walked back out and on the glass door is a flyer. My boyfriend's picture is at the center of the flyer. There's a heading, "New pedophile to the area." No!

Oh, wow.

Oh, wow.

Oh my God.

Oh my God.

I did send in a picture of the flyer.

Oh my gosh.

If you didn't know what you were looking at, she tried to make it look official.

No, he looks pretty pedophile-y in that photo. He's got a mustache.

It was working against him. He's got his mustache. There's also what's really funny. It looks like he has a tattoo on his neck.

Yes, it does.

That's a photo of his driver's license, and that's the watermark of the state of Hawaii going across his neck.

Oh.

So are Our theory is that she walked into our house at some point, found his wallet, pulled out his driver's license, and took a photo of it for this flyer. Because how else would she have that?

She tried to make it very official. It says, "New local pedophile to Maui, Hawaii Criminal Justice Data Center, Department of the Attorney General." Like, it's—

A lot of words.

Wow.

Data center. My heart was in my stomach. Like, I could not believe that. It's got our address printed on the back of it.

Yeah.

Wow.

Pedophile and my address? This is not something that makes me feel safe. So call my boyfriend, we go home. Immediately he's like, okay, we gotta start telling neighbors like what's going on. Like to let us know if you see her, if you see anything suspicious. So he goes and knocks on our neighbor's door. She literally tells him, get off my porch. I know who you are. Yes.

See, this is now, oh no.

Oh boy.

She had distributed this flyer in everybody's mailbox in our entire neighborhood.

This is a real liable case here. This is like— You can literally win a liable lawsuit over it.

Yeah, it's true.

I thought about it, but I'm like, this woman clearly has nothing to her name.

You steal your own shit back?

Yeah.

Exactly.

Our neighbor across the street had it posted in their laundry room. Like, this poster had gotten around. And again, small island, people had seen this poster. It had been circulated for a while. We just didn't know about it.

Oh boy.

So we had to call the police again. They had to go door to door telling everybody, in fact, He is not a sexual predator. This is a fake poster. Please let us know if you saw this being distributed. He had to go door to door. It was completely—

Wow.

Horrifying. After that, we were like, okay, we throw in the towel. We're leaving.

But what did the police— they can't do anything about this? I know.

We couldn't prove that she had done it. They kept telling us she's gonna be going to jail. The police kept amping this up. Like, when they arrested her, there was mail on her counter that was it wasn't hers. Like, there was all of these things pointing towards her, but nothing ever happened to it. Last I heard, she was selling hummus at the farmer's market.

Ugh!

Do not buy that hummus. Oh my God, do not support that local business.

Nothing ever happened.

Ew.

After we moved out, I heard that she started harassing somebody else at a house nearby. So clearly this was her MO.

And did you guys bounce to Colorado?

After that, we were pretty quickly like, Okay, I think we need a break from the island. Wow.

People go crazy on an island.

Maybe some methamphetamines too. We suspect.

Wow.

Wow. That took a turn. Hated that.

Yeah, I don't like her. Love it. Love it. Love the story. And I weirdly admire her.

No, Dad.

I mean, she's just making an absolute mess of everything and somehow she's trucking along.

Nothing can get her down.

I wish I almost had that level of delusion.

Yeah, like if I had those things on my shoulders, like the cops came, there was mail everywhere, I've got charges, it would ruin me. Me. I couldn't just parade around.

You were doing drugs.

That's true.

That would happen. You're doing drugs.

Yeah, I mean, she was shameless. We would walk by, she would say, "Good morning." She'd be watering.

She forgot.

She did not give a crap about anything. She didn't care.

This prompt is making us grateful for the neighbor we don't like.

Very tame comparatively.

Anything is better than that.

That's awful.

I was about to pee.

Well, it's so nice meeting you.

Yeah, same. Nice to meet you as well.

All right, take Take care. Bye.

Hello.

We're gonna go with a fake name. I'm just been told.

Yeah. Yeah. I think I'll keep myself anonymous for this one.

Okay.

And what fake name would you like? Let's go with Mike. Mike. Okay.

Nice. Nice and generic.

Mike, where are you at?

So I am located in the foothills of Northern California, about an hour outside of Lake Tahoe.

Oh, okay.

Mm-hmm.

This will drive Monica crazy. Is it the 90 that runs through there?

Close, the 80.

Okay.

And dirt biking's big in the area or no?

Dirt biking's big in the area. A lot of off-roading, just a lot of outdoor adventure stuff. Yeah, we got a lot of rivers out here, skiing.

And do you go up to Tahoe a lot?

Yeah, my wife and I spend quite a bit of time up there. We like to ski and take our dogs up there.

Okay. So Mike, you had a crazy neighbor, or maybe you've had more than one.

Yeah, I did. And not so much one isolated incident as crazy neighbor stories often go, but kind of a progressive story over the period of a few years that kind of culminated culminated in one large event.

Ooh, fun. Okay. Breadcrumbs and then a loaf.

Totally. So 2022, my wife and I bought our house, moved back to the state. We both grew up in this area. It was a big deal for us, kind of buying our dream house and moving home, being close to family again. And we found this sweet little neighborhood. Everyone seemed really cool. Our next door neighbor is very friendly. Trails out of our back door. So it, it seemed just like this textbook picture-perfect little thing. And we settled in really well and started meeting all the neighbors and everyone was cool. And we met one guy who was a little odd, but seemed like he was successful, was driving around in a nice sports car and to have some odd conversations with him here and there at the mailboxes.

Were you guys way younger than all your neighbors?

We are. Yeah. Yeah. We're a generation below the majority of our neighbors, but this guy, not significantly older than us, but definitely in a different stage of life. Every once in a while, people in the neighborhood will shoot. It's not a big deal. It's the country. I don't mind.

Shoot guns?

Yeah, shoot guns. It's definitely a culture thing out here in the foothills. And he would shoot guns every few weeks. I'd hear some gunshots and whatnot coming from down the hill and wouldn't really think much of it.

Are people on acres in this neighborhood?

Yeah, these are all 5-acre and bigger lots, bigger parcels. You've got room to do that kind of stuff. So I didn't really think much of it at first. It became a little bit more frequent. And this is, you know, over the next year or so, the frequencies of these shooting events happened a little bit more. And I just started having some weird—

Shooting events.

Weird encounters with the guy around the neighborhood where he just seemed a little bit off.

Okay.

I work in healthcare. I've got a pretty good scope of when people just aren't quite at their proper baseline.

Yeah.

And I would just catch him out on the roads again at the mailbox, and he just seemed seemed a little off.

Did he seem angry?

Like mad at—

Not angry, but just having very strange strings of thoughts. Just those odd conversations you have where they'll just like interject with some very out there—

Non sequitur.

Exactly. Yeah.

Yeah.

Okay. And so I started having those with him and my wife had a couple of very odd encounters out on the road walking the dogs where he was behind the wheel of a car and seemed like, you know, he was not in a good state of mind to be doing so. So we're starting to get a little bit concerned about this. Nothing too acutely terrifying has happened, but we're starting to take notes. I also, like most people, lurk the local community Facebook page and just keeping tabs on the neighborhood. And I read a few posts from some moms in the neighborhood about, "Hey, there's just this kind of odd guy that's talking to my kids at the park and stuff." And they kind of described the vehicle. And I'm like, "Oh God, this isn't good." Oh my God.

Yeah.

And so we're now at this point, and it's last summer. When I initially sent this in, I thought July, but then I looked back at my videos and photos, and it was actually in, like, September. So peak fire season. I mean, things are bone dry around here. Over the summer, the shooting had grown to a point where it was daily. These shooting events were now going from, like, maybe 100 rounds to, like, a few hundred rounds.

Oh my God.

From what I understand, ammo's pretty expensive. Intensive. This was daily occurrences for days on end. And also, the kinds of guns he was shooting weren't just your normal, like, pop pop.

They were like fully auto.

Yeah, yeah, like some heavy-duty hardware kind of stuff.

Yeah, and I think full auto is illegal in California.

Yeah, there's no license you can have in California, I think, that allows you to have anything like that. At this point, I'm avoiding this guy. I was in school at the time. I was trying to study. It was interrupting my studying. I was kind of my wit's end with it. I am out in the yard one day spreading some gravel in the driveway, and I will never forget, my wife was standing up on the patio and we hear this enormous explosion down the hill, immediately followed by another explosion. And I hear somebody screaming.

Oh no.

There is a massive column of black smoke that just rises up in the air. And I'm thinking, here we go.

Yeah, he's now working in explosives. He's transitioned from small arms to C4. Calling it into CAL FIRE.

My neighbor next door is standing out in his yard looking at me like, "Whoa, what's going on?" I'm on the phone with dispatch trying to tell them what's going on, and there are just explosions going off in the background. Oh my God. My wife and I go into action mode. You've got the grab bag, you've got animals, the cash, the documents, all that list of things they tell you to have ready to go. Well, the one thing that we had to get was our husky. If you know anything about Huskies, they've got their own agenda normally, and it tends to be the exact opposite of what you want in the moment.

And they like to get out and just roam, right?

Yeah. They're kind of wild animals at heart. Add some explosions on top of that and she's like, nope, sorry guys. So she's gone.

Mm-hmm.

Oh.

I'm like, okay, what do we do here? We have elderly neighbors. So I'm like, let's just go start letting people know.

Because at this point you're concerned the fire's gonna take over your neighborhood.

Yes. Yeah. Right up the hill. I mean, we are bone dry, peak fire season. We're in the hills. This guy sits at the foot of a hill. But we drive down to the neighbor's house. We let him know, hey, so-and-so's house is on fire and we're waiting around. We're just looking for the dog. And at this point, they've got helicopters overhead scouting it. They've got spotter planes. They brought in the Cal Fire bombers. So they jump on it and I start seeing fire engines. I hear the sirens. So I jump down the hill. I'm guiding them back down to the correct house. Props to the local fire department. They jumped on it. I was so impressed with how much resource they sent to this thing to get get on it right away because it could have been nasty. But it seemed like they got on it. It was limited to just the structure and the guy's house and nothing really blew up from there. But it was a very close call that we all saw coming, I think, from a mile away. I rode my quad down once things seemed to have stabilized and I hopped on my ATV and rode down and this big fire inspector guy sees me and he's like, "Are you the homeowner?" And he starts walking up to me.

I'm like, "No, man, I called you guys in." Like, I live up the hill. He's like, well, we found like IEDs in the roof and apparently they found some wild stuff in this guy's house. I haven't seen this guy since. He has been AWOL.

What?

You have still never seen the guy?

I have still not seen this guy. He disappeared.

Did you guys ever learn from the fire investigators if he had set off the explosion or if something self-ignited in there?

I never heard anything. I never got any follow-up on it. So I don't know if it's still like an active— if they're like looking into something. And was the house burnt to the ground? It was still standing. I sent a video in, I think. If you guys got that, it shows they're spraying down the upper level of the house. It was completely burned to the bones.

Oh my God.

Yeah, it's still standing, but if you look at it, it's done for.

Mike, we've got the video.

Okay, we're going to watch it.

Rob's going to show us the video right now. Oh shit, I feel like a real news show.

Me too.

Oh yeah, this is a big scene. By the way, it's beautiful where you live.

Thank you.

Oh, it sounds like the end of end of the world with all the fucking goats blatting.

Yeah, I mean, probably 20 different fire engines. They had 2 different planes on it. It was impressive watching how they went after it.

Dying to know what this guy's ism was.

Dax, I am right there with you. Maybe some schizophrenia with substance.

Yeah, sure.

I mean, they often kind of follow each other like that.

Self-medication that's making it worse. Oh wow.

That is rough.

While a couple of years, and then that problem kind of taken care of itself for me, I guess.

Yeah, so it's kind of like a PSA to other people. Like if you got that neighbor, don't worry, he'll blow his house up soon enough.

Well, he might blow your house up, so you gotta be aware.

Well, you never know what your neighbor has. Like there was just that news story about the kid who inherited his dad's house and he had like a brick of C4 in it.

Oh really?

He was an old demo instructor. Yeah, that was just like last week here in California. You never know what your neighbor's got.

Wowzer.

What is going on in these homes, you know?

I know.

I also bet up there there's a mix of some raw dog dudes.

Yeah, there are definitely some people hiding out up here.

Yeah, yeah, that's a great way to say it.

We're close enough to the city that, you know, you do have the professionals and stuff that come up here to just get away from it, but you've also got the other side of it.

Sure, some guys trying not to be found.

Yeah.

Oh, well, Mike, this was delightful. I'm sorry that happened.

But that was a good story.

Thank you.

Yeah, it was fun to share share with you guys. And if I can just give my wife a quick shout out, she's the one that turned me on to the podcast, and she's getting ready for work right now actually, so she wasn't able to hop in.

What do we call her? We're gonna have to call her a fake name.

Kathleen.

Kathleen.

Thank you, Kathleen.

Very sexy Kathleen Turner, you know, seductress. Great meeting you, brother. I love that story.

Yeah, this was fun.

And send our love to your wife.

Absolutely, will do. Y'all take care.

Be good, brother. Bye.

I liked him because he was a medical professional. And it was mixed messages.

Yeah, I like that. He was a medical professional and owned a quad.

Yeah. And he was a great storyteller.

And it was mixed messages.

And he was on top of it because he was helping the neighbors.

He was—

He was taking care. He was gonna get the old folks out.

Yeah, it's nice.

I did that during our fires, if you recall.

That's nice.

I went up to that really old gal, who still walks. We have a neighbor, she's so impressive. She's in her 90s. 90s, I think. And she walks home from the grocery store with her groceries.

Oh my God.

And I went over and I said, hey, how you doing? I just wanted to invite you to our house if it gets tricky.

Or you need—

and she's like, oh, I'm good. Almost offended, you know. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, you're good, you're good.

I thought maybe you saw my lady's ghost and you thought she was alive and real.

Your lady's ghost?

The lady who lived in my home before me.

Oh, who died in your house?

She didn't die in there.

Yes, she did.

No, she didn't. I looked it up.

My old house, Listen, I know, but that's not what happened, okay? I looked it up. She didn't die on the property. They have to disclose that. She probably died in the hospital, would be my guess. But she was 100, and I thought maybe you went over there to check on her and she was there 'cause she was a ghost.

Oh, and she said, "Ghosts can walk through flames. I'll be fine." Yeah, that's right.

Yeah.

Oh, I don't think she'll like that you said that.

Are you inclined to, like, learn a lot about her?

Yes, I thought I was. Many times, I guess, spoiler, about doing a documentary that's me investigating her and her life and also the neighborhood.

Oh yeah, that would be nice.

Because, you know, she was called the Queen of Laughlin Park.

Oh.

You don't know a lot about her.

Other than that she died in your house.

No, don't do that. She's going to be mad at you for saying that. She might haunt you.

I bet she'd prefer that she died in her house than the hospital. So I bet she likes this revisionist history.

She wants the truth to be told.

Okay, let's tell her the truth. She's very honest. All right.

I love you.

That's the truth. Do you want to sing a tune or something? We don't have a theme song. Oh, okay, great. We don't have a theme song for this new show, so here I go, go, go. We're gonna ask some random questions, and with the help of Armchair Jerry's, we'll get some suggestions. On the fly rhyme dish, on the fly rhyme dish, enjoy.