Transcript of Armchair Anonymous: Wild Card IX

Wndri Plus subscribers can listen to Armchair Expert early and ad-free right now. Join WNDRI Plus in the WNDRI app or on Apple podcast, or you can listen for free wherever you get your podcast. Welcome, welcome, welcome to Armchair Anonymous. I'm Dax Sheppard, and I'm joined by Monica Padman. Hi. Our favorite prompt... Well, that's not entirely true. We like... Our evacuations are our favorite. But second to that is Wild Card. And we're We're often blessed with an evacuation story within Wild Card.

That's right.

Yes. Yeah, this spans the whole map of different possibilities. So love Wild Card. Keep them coming. Keep submitting Wild Cards.

Yes. We have that prompt up all the time, so feel free to submit at any time. Yes.

Please enjoy Wild Card number nine. I'm Jon Robbins, and on my podcast, I sit down with incredible people to ask the very simple question, How do you cope? From confronting grief and mental health struggles to finding strength in failure. Every episode is a raw and honest exploration of what it means to be human. It's not always easy, but it's always real. Whether you're looking for inspiration, comfort, or just a reminder that you're not alone in life's messier moments, join me on How Do You Cope.

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All times, come and go.

Good times, take them slow. My life, I had them both. But for one thing, you got to know, I'm going to keep them shining.

A Hi.

Normally, I would say, Hi, blank. Nice to meet you. But of course, we're going to use a fake name. So have you picked one?

I have not. Do you have a fake name?

I do because I'm looking at my Nicolette spray, and I'm going to say your name is Nikki.

I'll take it. Nikki is fun.

Okay, so Nikki, where are you?

I am in the Rocky Mountain West.

Okay. I like to find patterns, and sometimes they're really not there. But I do think of the many people that remained anonymous, it tends to be in that Rocky Mountain I'm having a few other memories. Pac Northwest and Rocky Mountain, people like to keep it a little quiet.

I like that theory.

My track. Okay, so you have a wild card story, which is always our favorite because we have no clue what you're going to tell us about.

I will say I did put it in for another prompt, and it didn't work out. So I'm glad it's in the wild card now, but I'm not going to give you any clues on the other prompt.

Okay, good. Keep us in the dark.

This happened in North Idaho, summer 2007. I am freshly I decide with a couple of my guy friends that we're going to bike downtown to the lake, and we are going to take our slackline. Do you know what a slackline is?

Is that the thing you balance on? You tie it to a couple of tree trunks and try to walk across it?

Exactly. It's like an inch and a half piece of webbing. You do a little circus activities.

You've seen that, right, Moni? I think so. Yeah, it looks very hard.

It was very much a vibe in 2007. There was kukas and hemp necklaces involved, and you hang out and you're very cool.

Yeah, it felt like it was adjacent to the hacky-sack.

Oh, sure.

We get our bikes, we get our slackline, and we go downtown, and we're going to go down to a boat slip down on the docks and tie the slackline up between two pillars.

Genius. So you'll fall into the water? Yeah.

We pedal down there, and Ironman is going on. So downtown is absolutely swamped. Every parking lot is filled. There's bicyclists, there's all these ripped ultra-athletes wandering around. There's tents, there's speakers We're like, Okay. So we chimie through all of this. We still go down to the boat, launch. We hook our slack line up, cinch it down, and the guys are like, You can hop up first. So I hop up, make it about halfway across the line. I fall, and the line snaps me pretty hard right between the legs, and I fall into the water. When you say in between- In between? A hundred % contact on my vagina.

I fall into the water, completely have my breath taken away, come out gasping, joggy paddle to the edge of the dock, and I'm like, Uh-oh, this is bad.

Something is not good here. I get up out of the water, What if you saw your vagina floating?

And then you go, catch that vagina.

When you see your bathing suit, your bottom's floating, it's like, Oh.

I stand up and blood is just pouring out of me. Oh, There's a puddle of blood, and these two guys are staring at me, just panicked. And one of them says, Get back in the water. And I'm like, Oh, okay. So I hop back in the water. Now, I can't see the blood pouring out of me. I'm face to face of the pool of blood in front of me, and I'm looking around and the water's all shiny and glistening, and there's just gasoline and oil from the boats all over. And I'm like, There's definitely an wound. I probably shouldn't be in the water. I jump back out and the blood starts pouring again. These guys are zero help. They're panicking and they say, I'm going to call Jessica, who's my best friend. They call Jessica and they say, Jessica, something happened to Nikki. She's hurt. You need to bring towels and come down here. That's all the information she gets.

Just to be clear, Jessica is not an EMT. She's not a health care worker. She's just a gal pal who might know about periods is what they're thinking.

Yeah, they're associating this with a period somehow.

I'd bring tampons, I guess.

Oh, no.

Jessica is a pretty shy, straight and arrow girl who's just down to take care of her friends. At this time, I've decided that it's better for me to sit on the dock because then we don't see the blood falling as far. I'm concerned about the murder scene that I'm sitting in and fancy people walking by. I'm trying to put water to dilute the that's on the dock. Me in the meantime, the guys have decided they'll take down the slackline. They're just trying to be busy, not by my blood.

Yeah. And they're 18 as well or-ish?

Yeah. Jessica comes down, but she has to park a quarter mile, half mile away because there's so much chaos downtown. She comes down with this beige towel. The most logical thing is to wrap me up a sumo wrestle diaper. Sure. I'm in my swimsuit, in this diaper, waddling through all of these Ironman from all around the world. The beige towel is going from beige to red.

This is a 911.

I knew you were going to say. We get into the car, finally. I grew up poor. I was like, I'm not going to the doctor. I think we just need to go get eyes on this. We don't really know what's going on yet. And so Jessica was like, Sure. So we went to Jessica's house. I hop in the shower, and I can't really get a visual on what's going on. I can feel a decent gouge. Oh, okay. I can't I see it. And so I decide, Jessica needs to come in. Not part of our friendship in the past. This is a really new level for us. So I'm in the shower. She's trying to position herself under me to get a visual on what's happening. And she's like, There's a decent gouge. But this time, my grandmother calls. My grandma's who I get life advice from. And so I had told her on the car ride over, I'd called her. She called her Sister, so my great aunt.

Let's get everyone involved.

So far, no one's contacted a doctor. Yeah.

Great aunt Susie says, You need to go to the ER right now. It can be a hematoma. Call my mom, who I'm not overly close with, but I'm like, Mom, you got to come get me. We got to go to the ER. At this time, I have a super pad on and pants. When I walk into the ER and the first person I see is my high school principal.

Oh, wonderful.

His son was my age, star quarterback of the football team, very attractive kid. I'm like, great, this is really special.

Was his dick bleeding, hopefully? I mean, that would neutralize everything.

Maybe this is a meet cute story since we don't know.

I finally get called back. Another guy that I go to school with, Mom, is my nurse. I get in the stirrups. The doctor comes in. At this point in my life, I've never been to a gynecologist. I've never had my vaginal area medically examined. She pulls out a swab that's 12 inches long. He starts swabbing around. He says, You're going to need stitches. I'm bawling. I'm like, I can't. I don't want stitches. So he says, Well, if you don't get stitches, you'll have a scar, and somebody's going to be able to see it later in your life.

We're an incentive to pitch.

It was very strange. But I said, I can't really see it. So I'm going to just say, We don't need stitches. Just put a sticker on there, a little butterfly. Sure. And that's what we do. So I go on with my life. About a month later, I go to college, and I see some kids at the slackline. I have no friends. I'm just trying to make friends. This is horrible. You're vulnerable.

You're in a compromised situation. There it is. You got back on that horse. Your pathway to friendship, the slipper line or whatever.

It didn't work last time, though, because those guys sucked. And it's like, maybe those aren't the people.

But it did reveal.

What did it reveal?

A big gash in their vagina? That you can't go hiking with them on a big trip. You learned what they were made of.

I approach the slackline, I'm hanging out. Oh, fuck. And one of the guys says, I heard this story about I had a girl who fell off the slackline and was bleeding all over downtown and had to be taken to the ER. And one of the other young people says, In an ambulance? He was like, Yeah, in an ambulance. I'm like, This story sounds pretty familiar. I said, I think I might be the person you're telling a story about. I think I am her, she is me. But I could not track how these people would know this. And so they tell me, This happened in I said, I am that girl. Knowing that now all of these strangers have some question of what's going on with my vagina because the story ends this way. It did lead to friendship. It also led to me being the ER vagina girl, slackline Girl for a while until a new slackline injury happened. Uh-oh. And somebody else ended up in the ER. They literally almost lost their leg.

Oh. I mean, it's not that fun. This is dangerous. Slacklining isn't it? It's like you prove you can do it, but is it that fun?

I know.

But that's how I made some friends on my first day of college.

Oh, first day of school.

And did you have any other residual issues? It's not like that area ever opened up on you unexpectedly or anything.

It was tender. I didn't ride my bike for a while. I will say nobody has ever commented on a scar existing and that being an issue. Mostly everything's good to go.

Okay, wonderful. This has a happy It does.

A very happy ending.

Oh, that sounds absolutely terrible.

Yeah, you can feel it. I can feel it.

I can feel it. Just imagine a seatbelt of a car. Oh, this is awful. Did you ever slackline again? I did. You did. Did you wear a lady cup or anything?

No, but you can't cinch the line down so tight. It was so tight that the force... There wasn't any give.

Okay, you want a nice bit of give if you're going to...

Or you I don't want to hit the line flat. I'm guessing the line had twisted and maybe I hit it sharp.

I don't even have one, and I can feel it. I know. Yeah.

Thanks for sharing that.

Thank you, Nikki.

Yeah. Thanks for having me. This has been so fun. Armchair Anonymous is a part of my family's routine weekly. With kids? With kids. I usually scan it, but they're big enough. Something comes up, we just fast forward.

We had no idea we were creating a kid show, but that is what we learned. I know.

Yeah. I'm just going to play it for them. They don't know I'm meeting with you all.

Fantastic.

Let's see if they get mom's voice. How fun. All right. Well, lovely meeting you. Thanks so much for telling us that.

You too. All right.

Take care. Hi. Hello. Is this Reilly?

Yes, this is Reilly.

How are you? Where are you? Who's a skateboarder in your life?

You? My fiance. I'm actually in his studio, and I am currently in the suburbs outside of Philly.

Oh, we don't get a ton of Philly suburb, folks. No, we like this. We like it.

We'd like for you to spread the word a little more on our behalf.

Well, I feel like everyone in my life listens to this, but I've realized that not many people know how to submit to this. That has since changed since I've told my friends I was going to be on it.

Yeah, I'm not sure I would know how to submit to this.

Oh, you just go on to the website and you submit.

Armchiefexpertpod. Com? Mm-hmm. Okay, I guess it's easy. It is. You have a wild card story, which is our favorite because we have no clue what you're to say.

Yes. I don't think I'm going to even give you any information beforehand. The story takes place in 2015 in Philadelphia. It was this summer, I was going into my junior year of college. Something else to note is that I went to temple. That's important just for some of the things that go on.

When you say temple, you mean Jewish temple?

No, Temple University. Oh, I'm glad you check. At temple during the summer, everyone pretty much goes home. It's completely empty.

Where's it at? Forgive my ignorance.

It's in North Philly.

Is it pretty?

The campus is. The surrounding area is considered pretty dangerous. Okay, fun. Yeah. But Temple is strange because it's like this, Oh, oasis within North Philly. You go on campus and there's trees. It's weird to be like, Oh, I just walked through all these bad neighborhoods and got followed on my way to campus, and now I'm among the trees and the benches and the flowers. It's weird.

I think that's the USC experience as well.

I think it's actually a lot of colleges. A lot of colleges, yeah.

Basically, I was alone for the summer. All my friends went home. I stayed because I worked, and my mom lived an hour away. I was like, I have no car. I'm just going to stay here. So one of my friends was like, There's this guy. We'll call him Dan for the sake of the podcast. She's like, Oh, Dan's still on campus. Why don't you start hanging out with him? I was like, Why not? He seemed nice enough the couple of times I met him. And so he was nice but strange, but we were both a bit lonely, so we just struck up a friendship that mainly consisted of us going to campus, meeting up, just sitting, talking.

Nothing romantic happening?

Not at this point. One day, we decided to hang out at his house, which was on the complete opposite side of campus from me and watch the Lord of the Rings because I had never seen it, and apparently that was criminal.

Kind of know what guy he is now. I have at least a pretty good clue.

I feel like you'll get a really good clue as to what guy he is.

Just know that I've never told a woman, You haven't seen Lord of the Rings?

So many people say that to me.

I get that a lot because I still haven't seen it.

Oh, exciting. I go to his house and we do kiss, but as soon as he pulls away, he looks at me and goes, I could see myself falling in love with you.

Oh, boy.

Oh, boy.

Yeah, and I immediately was like, Well, oh, shit. I thought we were just lonely and keeping each other company.

So I go to leave, and I had ridden my bike there, and my bike tires are stolen.

And it was night time, and I lived pretty far, and it's dangerous. And I had a job where I was making $7 an hour. I wasn't going to take a ride share. So I had to stay the night, which I understand now I should have just risked walking home. Well, I don't know.

I mean, you got a couple of shitty options.

Yeah.

Yeah, it wasn't great. I leave and I tell him I only want to be friends. He got really mad, was blowing up my phone, dozens of unanswered texts. It got out of hand pretty quickly, and so I just had to cut off contact completely. This started a whole slew of weird occurrences where I'd walk outside of my house and I would see him riding his bike, which didn't make sense because I lived among nothing. No one had to be there.

And he lived on the opposite side.

And then he actually dropped out of school, but I would see him wander in campus all the time. I'd be sitting on a bench. There he is. He was just always there. So a few months went by and I got a text from him that says, Hey, Riley, I know we're not friends right now, but something bad happened. I really need someone to talk to. This is a time in my life where I had pretty poor boundaries. I was painfully empathetic. And I'm like, Oh, my God, this person I don't want to talk to. I have to talk to them.

They weaponized your empathy.

Yes, they did. And so I was like, Okay, well, I'm going to my mom's later. I have I'm taking the train. I could talk to you. Until then. He's like, Okay, yeah, great. So we meet up and he tells me that his house was robbed and that he was held at gunpoint. This wasn't a crazy thing. This happened at temple, and he seemed shaken up, so I felt really bad. I was like, Oh, my God, that's horrible. Don't want you to get held at gunpoint.

I don't wish that even on my…

Stalker.

Yeah. I was like, Okay, well, I have to go to my mom's. You can text me and I'll be busy, but I can answer when I can. He's like, Oh, my God. Yeah, thank you. Whatever you can do. But apparently that wasn't okay because I got there and again, a bunch of unanswered text, getting really mad. He's like, I can't believe you're not answering me. I was like, You know what? I'm done with this. I tried to be nice. I told you the deal. You said it was okay. A week goes by, and this is where things get crazy. I get a text from him one morning and it goes, Hey, Reilly, I just wanted to say that I'm sorry and this isn't your fault. Goodbye.

Oh, he's breaking up with you.

No, he's going to kill himself.

That was my thought. I was like, Oh, my God, that's a suicide text. Right.

Yeah.

I call him and I'm like, What the hell is that supposed to mean? And he was like, Well, you're not stupid. You know what that means. I He's like, Well, where are you? He's like, I'm just walking around waiting it out. He's hinting that he's taken something and he's just essentially waiting to die.

But available for a chat.

Sent me a text message, really wanted me to know. I'm freaking out. He up on me. He won't tell me where he is. I'm calling him. He'll answer. And the thing also that is so strange is that throughout the call, he's sounding more lethargic. He's groaning, grumbling. Sounds how I would imagine someone who has taken a bunch of pills.

All right, so he's performing a bit of an OD.

Something's happening. I called the police. They're like, Well, we can't do anything.

Really? They can't just go to a wellness check?

Not in North Philly. They're like, We got bigger fish to fry.

So I ended up calling the Suicide Hotline because this is also for people who need support. Yeah, great. This poor man, he's being so kind, and he's calming me down because I'm on the phone. I don't know what to do. He stopped answering me. I'm like, He's dead. So I use Google Earth to find his exact address because I didn't know what it was. I'm zooming in on all the houses on his street, and I find it. And the Suicide Hotline guy ends up calling the police for me because I think they are held more accountable when they call. And then he calls me back and he goes, You're not going to believe this, but he's at his house just watching TV. He's fine, hasn't taken anything. I was in such a state of shock where I was like, he literally sounded dead. What a performance. And so as I'm on the phone with this guy, I get a call from Dan. I'm like, Oh, my God, he's calling me. And this is that hotline guy. It's like, You need to cut things off with this person. This person is unwell. Don't talk to him I was like, Yes, yes.

Okay. So I answer and he's on the phone. He's like, Why the fuck are the cops at my house? You told me you were dying. What did you expect me to do? He was like, Well, you could have just talked to me. Hey.

Oh, puke. I know.

I don't like it. So I was like, Okay, well, now I'm never going to talk to you again. I blocked him. I found out about a month later that the robbery thing was fake. We had a friend who was his old roommate. And so he was like, No, I actually got mugged on the street. It had nothing to do with him. So that was all just a big manipulation to get me to talk to him. And then I would get blocked phone calls for about a year after, and it would always correlate when he was looking at my story. Really strange behavior. So that's the story about how someone pretended to die on the phone with me.

Oh my God. What you all women deal with, man.

The manipulator. Relation is so bad.

I hate to say it, but the Lord of the Rings for me was the first red flag.

Don't say that. I'm going to say it. We have a lot of Lord of the Rings listeners.

Calleigh loves it. She tells you to watch it. Go ahead and watch it.

Yeah, I still haven't seen it. I was in Norway with my friend Cass, and she was like, You have to watch this. I'm like, Well, the last time I watched this, it began an obsession. I feel like it's cursed for me. I haven't gotten past the first 20 minutes of the movie. Wow.

I'm sorry that happened. That's really yucky.

The best case scenario can be for you women is minimally, it's inconvenient. Like, you got to fucking deal with all this crap. Then to see someone, oh, man, if I looked outside and saw a chick I had broke up with riding her bike in front of my house, I would panic. I'm like, Oh, my God. What am I supposed to do?

It's interesting now because I'm a therapist. I work with a lot of people who have suicidal ideation. It's something I'm comfortable working with now. I feel like that just shocked me. But now I'm like, I can handle it. Right.

Interesting. So maybe this This is a glass half full. This is to set you on a path, perhaps.

Cautionary tale.

But slash- A lesson learned. Don't we have prompts that were like an event you thought was bad, but turned out in retrospect to be good? A blessing in disguise. Blessing in disguise.

I don't know about that. I was on this track before that.

Let's not go that far.

I really could have done without this.

All right, we take all that back. I'm just always trying to put a nice positive spin on everything. It's not necessary. Lovely meeting you.

It was lovely meeting you, too. My friend Cass said if she ever got on, she would do a shout out to me. Now I feel like I'd be a dick if I didn't do it. That's fair.

To Cass?

To Cass. Shout out. Love the name. Me, too.

Big shout out.

Cass loves Lord of the Rings, and Cass loves armchair expert.

Okay, I'm going to take everything back.

Well, thank you so much, guys. It was so nice to meet you.

You too. You too. Have a good rest of your day. Bye. Christina? Yes. Hi. How are you? Good. How are you guys today? Wonderful. Where are you?

I live in New Hampshire. Oh, lovely.

We're hitting some new spots today. Yeah, we are. And I like that.

We're in the Northeast.

I mean, it's fall foliage season.

You can't beat this time of year. Oh, lovely. Okay, so you have a wild card story, which are our favorites because we have no clue what you're going to tell us.

All right, let's get started. So this all started in January of this year. Recent. Very recent. And it was a freezing cold day as January days typically are in New Hampshire. This was the day that you go outside and within 2-3 minutes, your nose hairs feel like they're completely frozen. I was taking my daughter and her friend and her friend's mom down to Boston College for a La Crosse camp for the day. We parked in the closest parking garage that we could find to the stadium so that we didn't have to walk outside very much. We dropped the girls off at La Crosse and then headed out to get sushi in Boston together. I don't know about you all, but I love a lot of soy sauce with my sushi.

Sure, me We spent about three and a half hours just enjoying a relaxing dinner out, and then we headed back to Boston to get the girls.

I forgot to tell you that I am a thirsty person at baseline. I have a water bottle with me everywhere I go, and I usually have a pink stainless steel water bottle that if I'm going somewhere for five minutes, I have it, or if I'm gone for the day, I literally choose purses based on if I can fit a water bottle.

It's your blanky. It is.

A lot of people I'll do this.

The girls all have steel water bottles. We leave the house with them, and then they leave in my car, and it sounds like bowling balls rolling around in the back seat. I know. Of all the blankies they have, I think it's the best, probably water.

It's a good one. But when you add soy sauce on top of already a thirsty person, I was absolutely parched when I got back in the car. And of course, I had drank my water bottle as we traveled from New Hampshire to Boston, so I didn't have any water left. So when we arrived to pick up the girls at BC as if the Hydration gods had spoken, and there was a huge cooler of smart water, like the fancy alkaline kind, at the camp. So I helped myself to one of those. We got everybody back in the car. I poured it through the spot of my water bottle, and we continued on our way back up to New Hampshire. So it was an uneventful evening. We went to bed. Alarms went off the next morning, and it was Monday. So I have about a 35-minute commute to work. One of my routines in the morning is that I bring coffee and water in the car, and I force myself to basically have a sip of coffee and then a sip of water, mostly just to feel adequately hydrated and adequately caffedated before I get to work every day.

My nine-year-old son frequently makes my coffee in the morning. Let's just say that quality control is not his forte.

Sure, sure, sure.

That's so sweet, though.

A variety in each morning's batch.

On this particular morning, about six minutes into my drive, I have a gritty piece of something in my mouth. This isn't super out of the ordinary for me. Again, coffee grounds are a frequent thing that I find in my coffee. So I pick it out of my mouth and it's white, not brown.

Oh, interesting.

So it's not a coffee ground. But again, my son has Creative freedom with coffee making. I've had candy canes in my coffee, hersy Kisses.

Are there any ceramics in the mix? I'm thinking, what could be white in your coffee? Is it broken ceramics?

No, it's in a stainless steel coffee mug. I continue on with my drive. I also notice that my water tastes a little funky this morning, so I'm really wondering what is in my coffee today? Because the water just didn't taste quite right. But again, it was the fancy alkaline water from the night before. Drank my whole coffee, drank my water all the way to work. So I work in a health care office, and so I see patients all day long. So I had a really busy day, patients back to back. Mid-morning, I stop and I fill up my water at the water-cooler. And I notice near the spout of the water, it almost looks like tiny calcifications where you put your mouth. I think maybe it's lip gloss. I don't know. I scratch at it a little bit. Nothing comes off. So I make a mental note to just make sure to soak my water bottle when I go home for the night. I continue through my day and head home around 5: 20. When I get home, I'm there with my 12-year-old daughter, and I bring my water bottle over to the sink. I squirt some water right through the spout where I found those calcifications, and I flipped my water upside down just to let it soak for a little bit to get it real clean.

About five minutes I unscrew the lid and I dumped my water into the sink. And what came out? A soaking wet, stiff as a board, dead. No. Mouse.

No.

No.

How? Monique is fucking shook.

Monica, I sent Emma a picture.

No. When and where did a mouse get in there?

So my first thought thought was maybe that this was a prank.

Oh, I don't think Monica can look. There's no way looking at that's going to do you any good.

I have to.

Fuck, you're not going to be well. You have to. I told you not to. No. No. It's fucking enormous. We're calling it a mouse, but also maybe a rat.

It's tailsy.

It was enormous.

How could this possibly happen?

My best guess was the parking garage. Gosh, because this was not a New Hampshire field mouse. It was not a tiny mouse. It was a giant city mouse.

It was a city mouse. Like Monica, a city mouse. Big apple mouse.

I should feel bad for it.

You should. What was that weird taste? His dead mouse taste.

And then dead mouse days. And then dead mouse, and then the white stuff. So stuff on it.

Oh, I didn't even know what the white... Oh my God.

The calcifications on my water body.

I'm on the verge.

They were bite marks from my furry friend trying to escape.

No, don't call him that.

No, no, no. Do it. And this happens all the time. Wait. What do you mean? Hold on. I frantically googled it, and I called my sister Andrea, who's a veterinarian, and Also an arm cherry, by the way.

Oh, good. Well, we like her.

This happens constantly for people who leave any type of water, soda can, anything in their car.

No. Overnight.

Oh, my God. So this is a caution It's a cautionary tale.

It is a very cautionary tale.

It's a PSA. So you didn't have the top on it.

So the size of the opening was less than the size of a dime, to put it into perspective. I'm assuming that I must not have completely screwed the cap on.

So You can squeeze that tiny? Yes.

He's like an octopus. But I'd rather have an octopus in my water than a mouse. Me too.

People eat that.

Mousewater all day long.

Don't say mousewater.

Seven refills, Monica. What?

Did you call 911?

You had filled it up seven times with that mouse in there?

I think because it was so dead and its legs and arms were pushing out. Stop.

It didn't shift back and forth.

I don't know. Christina. So my dear husband, he is a sweet man, and he bags up the mouse in a plastic bag and then puts it in a brown paper bag and sends me off to urgent care with Exhibit A in a brown bag.

Yeah, we're I guess, test him for things.

You have rabies and all kinds of... Eew.

I had to get dewormed. What the fuck? And treated on antibiotics. Yeah. Mama. And then subsequently replaced every stainless steel water bottle in our entire house with clear glass water bottles. Smart. That I can see all the way to the bottom now.

Yeah, I bet you'll never, ever drink from something again without that crossing your mind. I won't ever.

No one listening to this will. So we just crushed the stainless steel water bottle industry. It's over. We just ended it with that story.

Or keep your lids on very tight because they also can't open tight lids.

Or just don't leave it in your car. That's the real public service announcement.

We all leave shit in our car all the time.

Well, look, I only drink out of see-through, so I'm ahead of the curve. I'll take my potential microplastic damage over mouse damage.

You should probably go check all those stainless steel water bottles. They get so in the car.

People just leave them in there.

Maybe they need a cat that sweeps the car every time.

It could open it with its little teeth, the lid. And then, mice are very smart, so they can pull the lid back on once from the inside and twist it back up.

Maybe that's what happens. That makes me feel better.

Oh, my God. Did you throw up?

I felt incredibly nausey in it. Yeah, of course. Which, obviously, at urgent care, they were concerned because of stomach issues that can come up with this. But honestly, it was just me feeling disgusted.

Yeah, grossed out for sure. Oh, my God. Oh, Lord. That made me feel…

That was a lot to take.

Rough inside. Yeah. We've heard some stuff, too.

This is similar to the jelly legs.

It's in that realm. You've hit the bar and it was high. Wow. Did you see that come in at all?

I did not.

And that white, gritty thing was probably part of the mouth.

Why? Yeah, I mean...

It had to be.

It's like tailfungus.

Maybe it was biting. I had a finger nail. Oh, sorry. Okay, all right. We got to shut it down. Monica is not in the healthcare profession. I want to cry. So we got to tread a little.

Can I give a quick shout out to my sister, Andrea, and her friend, Brett, who gave us the idea for this admission.

Yes. Thank you, Andrea and Brett. We appreciate it. That was horrific, and we love you for it. Thank you so much for telling us that.

Of course. And I'm sorry, Monica.

All right. Thank you. All right. Well, lovely meeting you. We're going to regroup. We're going to regroup and reset. All right. Bye.

All right.

Bye.

I don't know what's happened here, but I'm really- You're spilling your coffee everywhere? But I think it's leak. To give us a faulty lid. What if there's a mouse in there?

I'm going to have to see if there's a- One of the mouse from behind you turned alive. Eew. Dope, man.

Hello.

First of all, there's a lot happening. Let's agree on a fake name.

Let's do Zelda.

Zelda, lovely. We were talking about Lord of the Rings, and that feels adjacent.

Do you like Lord of the Rings?

You know what? I've never seen it. Is that not wild?

I haven't seen it either.

I think that's pretty normal. I think it was a very It was a very popular movie.

Did you watch Harry Potter when you were growing up? Yes, I loved it. See, that's another one that I never got into.

That's a mistake. You should do the whole marathon.

My parents won't allow me to, but I'm going to grow up in a so maybe I'll ask.

Yeah, just check in. Tell me about all this Ted Seeger. Where did all these six-packs come from?

I bought them all. I direct a food and beverage department at a resort, and I made it one of my number ones, I have to carry Ted Seeger's. It's a non-negotiable.

Oh, my God. Thank you.

Yeah. I did temporarily take it off for maybe two weeks. And the feedback I got, they demanded I brought it back. Yeah.

That's great news.

I do think it's the best one. It's really good. And what part of the country are you in?

I am in a very small town. It's the town I grew up in, in Colorado. I can't tell you exactly where because you'll see why.

But, Zelda, can I tell you we had one other fake name today, and it was from the Rocky Mountains. And I said, I do think we index in folks from the Rocky Mountains and Pacific Northwest that remain anonymous. I have no judgment based on that, just an observation.

Exactly. I grew up in the town that I live in now. So just tucked in the middle of nowhere, the Rocky Mountains, and the population was less than 2,000 people. Back then, at 17, I graduated high school, and I just really wanted to get out of this tiny town. I bid a due to my high school sweetheart, and I just ran for the hills, and I went to San Diego.

Sure, sure. Good landing pad.

I had the time of my life out there. It was so much fun. So 2014 rolls around. This is three years into my San Diego adventure. And I'm in a relationship with a guy named Fred, Tried and True Jersey boy. We had nothing really in common other than doing drugs together because I'm also a recovering addict.

There we go. He was probably hot and liked drugs.

That's all I needed. One day, Fred decides to surprise me with a hike because he knows that's what I love to do. I grew up in Colorado. I hiked. I love to ice fish. I love spelunking, which I know you guys also love to do. Terrified. We decided to go on a hike, but San Diego doesn't have a ton of trails that will get me exhilarated, if that makes sense, especially ones that I hadn't already done. So we go to Descanso. It's big mountain ridge. It's very deserty. There's a lot of oak brush there, and the mountain peaks are pretty high. So it was towards the end of the season. The month is September. So in California, as you guys know, September days are really hot still. But at night, especially in the mountain region up top, the temperature will plummet. Oh, yeah. It gets really, really cold. I wasn't worried about the cold because it was only supposed to take about four hours or so round trip. So I wore a tank top, shorts. He wore a tank top, shorts. Fred had a sweatshirt that he tied around his waist. And I vividly remember getting the ick so bad.

Oh, no.

Is that insane? No, we can't control what gives us the ick.

Dex, do you tie your sweatshirts around your waist when you go hiking?

Only in an emergency.

I've never seen you do it.

I don't know why that just really stuck for me.

It's a lot of potholes for us to avoid. If you're listening, boys, just be mindful when you tie that sweatshirt on your waist.

Well, no, because some people can do it.

I had a backpack on, and all I brought was three Eight regular-sized water bottles, a couple Nutri-Grain bars, which are the driest thing on the planet, and then just tons of weed and paraphernalia and stuff that we had no business on a hike, but I brought it. So we start the hike. It goes fine. I noticed two things. One is that there's no directional signage. There's only neon spray-painted arrows dictating to and fro. And the other thing was that there was no people. There was one couple that we passed on our way in that had already wrapped up their entire hike and was finishing and walking on their way out. And they were looking at us like, Are you sure you want to do this this late in the day? Because we did start probably around 2: 00 PM. The hike goes great. We get to the destination. It's a very underwhelming waterfall. If I were to give my opinion. We drink some water. We have some snacks.

Mock a couple of bowls.

Not yet. I'm getting there. Okay. We start our walk back. Fred and I had recently set a precedent in our relationship. We like to get free he outside.

Oh, good for you guys. Yeah.

Thank you. I was a younger woman then. We're four kids. He starts making the fishing comments that men make. I could really... He wanted fellatio.

Oh, okay. She wanted an outdoor blowjob.

I could really.

I could really go for a mid-hike blowjob.

It feels like... Yeah, exactly. I was born and raised super conservative, very Christian, but I was recently just ripping off those bounds.

Yeah, those shackles.

I was just waving that freak flag around.

You two were in the mood for a mid-hike blow job, probably.

Yeah, exactly. I'm a giver. So at this point, we decided to leave the trail because just in case, there's another couple, we decided to make way for privacy. We weaved all the way back, found a good spot. I get the job done. And then we decide, now, let's smoke a couple of bowls. So it get nice and high, I'm sure. Not so much memory there. And we start wandering back to the trail to where we think it is. We're looking 30 minutes passes. Are we even in the right area at all? 40 minutes pass, right? The sun is starting to set a little bit. It's feeling a little bit like dust, and we're starting to give in to that full panic of, I think we're actually lost. Oh, no. Oh, boy. Let's whip out the cell phones. There's no service. I'm a type B person, so my phone is just permanently dead or just not anywhere around me. But Fred's phone was on I want to say somewhere near 5%, just barely hanging on the way. But he decides to just try to send a text to his roommate at the time saying, Zeldai and I are lost.

Send help. It does not go through. That's what his phone registers as. Sunsets I have been in these weird scenarios before, in the middle of the mountains. I know if you're ever in question, just to backtrack. That's honestly your best bet. Just stop what you're doing, turn around, and go back to where you know is familiar. This is what I start to to suggest. Fred thinks it's a better idea to hike this mountaintop as high as we possibly can get so we can survey the land. Oh, boy.

Okay. Get a good vantage point.

And spot his car.

But We know we know he should be going downhill, so I'm not going to go uphill.

It's getting darker by the second.

What I know is uphill is not the way out, and downhill is the way out.

You guys are both right. Honestly, I'm telling myself these things, but as we do when we're young women, we just zip our lips and we lead the way.

His precious pride is on the line here. Very delicate situation.

Oh, yes, exactly. We start to ascend this apex thing. I start to notice that Fred is getting nervous just by the way that he's moving. His movements are sporadic. He's a little bit panicked. So much so that this incline is so steep that he tries to parkour.

Oh, he has seen Lord of the Rings.

He has seen all the Lord of the Rings. He parkour his core off of this boulder to hopefully propel himself further up the mountain. No. He doesn't. He bashes both of his kneecaps directly into the boulder, drags them all the way down, and they are fully busted, and they are fully bleeding.

Also, when someone makes a leap uphill, did they not think they're going to have to make that same leap down now? Exactly. Now, a ton of momentum.

So he starts breathing very sporadically. I'm just like, Are you going to be able to keep going? He says, Yes. I know he's max capacity, panicking, but at this point, we just keep going. We climb this ridge past the tree line. It's so cold up there. There's no stability. The soil is just like soot, and we're just perched there. And descending is not an option at this point. If you were to just try to descend them out and you will tumble. So we start to scan and there's no Honda Accord. We're hungry, we're dehydrated, I'm sunburned. I'm literally shivering. And Fred looks at me at one point and says, I know I should give you my jacket, but I'm just so cold. Oh, Fred. At this point, I'm considering calling 911. Let's call some people. Let's get some help out here. What's crazy is we didn't know, one, if the call was going to go through. We have no service. I didn't know how that worked back then. But the biggest part was we didn't know how much it would cost for us to be lifelighted out of the Descanso Mountains. And I know that sounds crazy.

No, I think that's really a normal thought.

It's definitely a normal thought.

Our friend got himself lodged in Sedona, and I was like, What's this helicopter ride going to cost? But I don't think it cost anything. That makes sense. We have a federally-funded and state-funded rescue department.

At this point, it's pitch black. Fred's bleeding. He's not in the best shape. And we start to hear coyotes. They sound like they're right on top of us. I know enough about them that I know that they only yip if they're excited, and they're only excited if they're hunting, and they only get super yuppy if they're actually attacking.

We hear it all the time in our neighborhood. It's gruesome. It sounds like some seance, like a crazy devil worshiping seance.

Yeah, it has a really bad sound.

It's a crazy devil worshiping seance.

It's a sex cult that they're doing out there. I wish they would stop. At that point, we were like, I've heard enough. Our lives are worth whatever the California government deems necessary. So we make the call on his 5% phone. The call goes through crystal clear, just like, Just FYI, if anybody needs to know that. She tells us that the text that he sent to his roommate six hours prior did, in fact, go through. And his roommate responded saying something like, Are you serious? And by nightfall, he decided we were serious, and he called dispatch. So by the time that we had made that phone call, the helicopter was already searching about in Topso. Oh, yeah. For us. Which is amazing because this phone is going to die. So we had to say fairwell to her, which sucked real turn off his phone and just sit there and wait. It was probably about one and a half hours.

Oh, wow.

It was a while-ish, but we heard the helicopter before you can see it. Then we saw it, and we turned on the phone, turned on the flashlight. We're waving it. And just like the movies, they pop wide over. He propels down. He's like, Are you guys ready to get out of here? I love it. Fred books it towards the sky, and this guy says, Whoa, whoa, whoa. She goes first. And the only Our helicopter pad is the Barona Casino in San Diego. So they drop us off there. We have no money. Our phones are both dead by this point. We're bleeding. We're dirty.

You're at a casino. Yes.

We're sitting in this casino, and all these people are just walking by looking at us. But that is the time that I gave a blowjob that turned into real search and rescue.

Sometimes these blowjobs can threaten your life. People don't think that when they get in the mood for one. That's the cautionary tale as well. Did it permanently have changed your opinion of Fred?

It was immediately done after that.

He has no coming back. That was the last blow job Fred got from you. From me. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Hopefully not his last in life.

Well, hopefully, he learned some lessons in this. First of all, don't wear the sweatshirt. Now, we all learned that lesson. Don't wear the sweatshirt.

Maybe that's just a me thing, but I want to say two things before I go. Thank you guys both for doing what you do here. I'm a recovering addict. It took me so long to you get to the recovery part. Sure. Dax, you're definitely the biggest part that made me take that final step. So thank you. It's made me a better wife, better mom. But Moni, you hold the most special place because I grew up different than most. All of my friends have similar outlooks on life as you guys do. And those conversations are hard to have. You have different views, right? Especially if you love someone because you don't want to get into the heavy nitty-gritty of things. But with you, Monica, you lay it out there. I can understand it. It softened my heart a lot towards the other side.

Oh, thank you.

We like when our hearts get softer.

We love soft heart. Or bigger.

Soft heart.

Well, we really, really appreciate you.

I'll keep buying this, Ted Sears.

I think you have more than we have. Cheers to that.

Cheers, guys.

Thank you so much, Zelda.

Nice to meet you.

I have something antifeminist to say.

All right. I'm always up for one of those.

I guess it's not really fair. Women get to have the ick. We're allowed to talk about that, and we're allowed to say, Euh, they gave me the ick because of X, Y, or Z. I think if a man said, That girl gave me the ick, I'd be like, Don't say that. You're not allowed to say that. Yeah.

In Charlie Sheen's book, he said he was with Nicolas Cage, who had left an expensive lighter with his initials on it in Palm Springs at the bathing suit contest they were judging. And he came to see Charlie in treatment. He said, I left my lighter there. And the young girl I was with is excited because it's her initials, too. And she feels like there might be some serendipity, and she wants to drive it to me. I said, Merry Christmas. And she said, When someone says something, I forget what words to use, you want to yell taxi, whether you're in a bathtub or on horseback. So maybe that's our version. I like that. She did this, and I wanted to yell taxi on a bathtub or a horseback.

Yeah.

Because there are things us guys know when we talk about- Well, I know you guys have the things.

It's just if you say it, especially if you say it to women, I think. A lot of people would be like, That's not nice. Can't you just be fine with that?

I posted the little beginning of hit and run. Beautiful comment. So they shouldn't even even seen this, but one was like, This gave me the ick. What? Why? I was like, Don't ever need to hear from you again.

Also, if that gives you the ick, I'm just sorry for you because that means they don't like love.

Yeah. I don't know what's icky, but it gave someone the ick. We're all very specific with our- With our ickiness. With our ickiness. All right.

All right. Love you.

Do you want to sing a tune or something? We know a theme song. Okay, great. We don't have a song song for this new show, so here I go, go, go. We're going to ask some random questions, and with the help of our cherries, we'll get some suggestions. On the fly, Rhyme dish. On the fly, Rhyme dish. Enjoy. Follow Armchairs Expert on the WNDRI app, Amazon Music, or wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen to every episode of Armchair Expert early and ad-free right now by joining WNDRI Plus in the WNDRI app or on Apple podcast. Before you us about yourself by completing a short survey at wndri. Com/survey.