Transcript of Armchair Anonymous: Wild Card XI

Welcome, welcome, welcome to Armchair Anonymous. I'm Dan Sheppard, and I'm joined by Monica Padman. Hi. Today is wild card. What number in a wild card do you think this is?

Nine.

Don't you think you went further than what you really think, right? Because you know I'm going to say it's high. Sure. Do you really think it's seven?

No, I think it's nine. You think it's nine.

It's eleven. Oh, wow. Oh, my wild card. Lucky eleven eleven.

I love eleven eleven. That's my number.

I guess that's when we do Wild Card, the 1111th episode. You'll get really excited. You're only halfway there on 11. But there's a doosy as all wild cards are, and that's why we keep doing them. And that's why we're going to push, push, push until we get to 1100. Push, push, push. Lewis, forget about the car. Push, push, push.

That's Toto, a friend of the pot. Toto Wolf.

Please enjoy Wild Card. 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 shiny. Hi, Marcos.

Hello, I'm doing great.

Where are you?

In South Texas, McAllen, Texas, out in the Rio Grande Valley.

What's the biggest city I would know close to there?

I was actually very curious about this because I always hear you talking about everywhere in America.

You found my blind We are about five hours south of Austin.

Oh, okay. We are literally on the river.

Mexico is across the river.

Yes, I'm actually an hour east of South Padre Island.

Where I went on vacation at one point, Christmas time. And are you a drummer?

Yes, I'm a music teacher.

Wonderful. And what's great, Marcos, is wild card. You could have murdered someone, you could have saved someone. We have no clue.

The year is about 2006. At the time, 19 years old, one of the only one of my group of friends to have their own apartment. That was always the place we would all hang out. I'm hanging out with our local ska band, who was also a bunch of 18, 19-year-olds as well. They would play shows. After the show, we'd all go back to my place, hang out, have a great time. One of the main characters in this story, we're going to call him Marine Mike.

Oh, what a great name.

He's fresh out of service. This is 2006, so he was all over the world. We met through an acquaintance. We're both from small towns that are really close to each other, so we became real quick good friends. After one of these gigs, we're out of my place. It's probably around mid 1: 00 AM. So you can imagine.

I need to know how inebriated we are. Are we smoking weed, just drinks?

A lot of drinks and just stuff a ska band would be doing. Okay, great.

Ska shit.

So we're there hanging out, sliding doors open, people smoking cigarettes outside. Half of us are inside the apartment. Now, the apartment is a block away from a main road. In between that block is a bunch of grass, trees. And this is like very Southern Texas. So mesquite trees, tall grass. So we're all in the apartment. We hear screaching tires. Real long... We heard the crash, and initially, we all look at each other, excited. Let's go be a part of this car accident. Let's go see what happened. But as soon as we look at each other, we hear an explosion.

Oh, my goodness. Oh, wow.

Okay. One of the guys that was outside, he piques over the fence, and he's like, There's fire out there. As soon as Mike hears that, he is gone. He bolts out the gate. We all look at each other like, Well, we got to follow him.

Okay. To help, not to flee.

No, right. Marine Mike is going to save the day.

He wants to save. We ran out the apartment, crossed the parking lot. We see a silver Cadillac. Can't remember the other vehicle that's in the middle of the intersection. The Cadillac is completely on fire. The whole front-end flames going all the way up to the stop light.

Does that make you feel sad because you love Cadillacs?

I hate to see a Cadillac burn if that's what you're asking. That's what I'm asking. But also from Marcos, I'm getting strong Jason Deli on vibes, which makes me feel very heart-swelly.

Okay, yeah, because I looked over and you had... It's 11: 11.

Oh, a lot of things were happening.

And you had a big smile on your face.

And it was because I was like, oh, my God, he's so Jason Delia on, and he's in a punk scene, but he's a good kid. Yeah, it's all happening.

The scary thing about the Cadillac was that I had just started a new job, and one of my coworkers had the same car. I thought maybe it could have been her because We all lived in that same little neighborhood. I start running towards the car. I see a man. I can't remember if he's hanging out the passenger window or if he's hanging out the door. Mike is yelling at us, Help me. We got to help. We got to do something. Mike's already pulled the guy outside of car. Me, three other guys, and another girl, we run up to the man, grab him each by a limb. We start dragging him because the car's on fire. He's yelling at us about his kids. My kids are in the car.

Oh, no. This is horrifying.

He's trying to get up to go get him. We're trying to keep him down. I look at Mike, he knows what's happening. He tells me right away, I already got the kids out of the car. You get him away from the car.

He's like, I do more before 5: 00 AM than most people do all day. I already got the whole family out.

To my recollection, he was out there directing traffic, checking on the other car. Traffic's piling up on both ends. So we dragged this man maybe about 20 feet away from the car. The fire is only getting bigger. Let's pull him further away. We actually get him onto the main road, which is probably about 30, 40 feet away. I'm looking at Mike, he's running back and forth, making sure everything's going clear. A lot of traffic, no ambulance, no fire trucks, no cops have shown up yet. We're all there leaning on this guy, trying to keep him calm, letting him know your kids are okay. They're already out of the car. He's got blood all over his face, all over shirt. I look to my right with all the traffic lights and everything that's happening, all this car lights. I see five women running up to us in club gear, heels, skirts, everything. They're just yelling at us. We're nurses.

We work in the ER. Oh, my God. This is great. Sexy nurses.

We can take care of it from here. We got it. Don't worry about it. We got it because we're just a bunch of kids. We're all 18, 19-year-olds. Let's let them do their thing. We stand up. I'm starting to think, cops are going to show up. They're going to ask questions. We've been doing our own thing. And as soon as I start thinking about that, I hear a click, click coming from the car. I grabbed the girl that was next to me. I pull her into me, and then the car explodes again. No. Oh, my God. Wow. I was talking to Mike about it. He had mentioned the car exploded when he was trying to pull the guy out, which was the second time, because initially the first time was what we heard. So we're thinking maybe it was either the battery, the gas tank, or the tires.

Or something in the trunk that was explosive. A body. Maybe he had a can of gas in the trunk or something.

But that last time, it was very final destination scene. The sparks and the shrapnel and everything just flew right between us, and nobody got hurt, nobody got hit. And that's when I'm like, okay, that's it. It's time for us to go. I called my friends who were there. Everybody, let's go. We got to go. We got to go. We start running back to the grass. I can't find Mike. I start yelling at everybody, Where's Mike? He's already halfway between me and to the apartment puking in the middle of the empty lot. Oh, wow. Just adrenaline. He tells me later on he inhaled a whole bunch of smoke. Oh, yeah, yeah. While this is happening, my pregnant sister is calling me because she lived two doors down. She heard the explosion. She knew I was out and about. And I'm there out of breath, yelling at people. We got to go, we got to go. She's just like, You need to come to my house right now. I need to see your face. And I was like, Okay. I get everybody together, go back to my apartment. I run to my sister, calm her down. I go back into our apartment.

And this party scene that used to be now is just everybody sitting in silence, staring at each other.

Yeah, trying to process everything that went down.

And then somebody was like, Well, I guess we got to cheers to that. Then we just went right back at it. And the whole night, we kept wanting to peak over, but some of us were just like, No, the cops are going to show up.

Because what you're afraid they're going to get you for underage drinking or something?

That was our main concern.

That'd be a fucked up police department with that much going on there. Like, wait, we got to prioritize these miners in possession.

We're always just trying to play it smart. So I talked to Mike about it. I feel like in the time it happened, he said he blacked out, but now it's come back to him and he said he can clearly remember getting into the car to pull the man out. He saw the dashboard melting. We all remember his hat had been singed. His trucks were all black.

And the kids were fine?

So the next morning when Mike was leaving, he saw the cops out there doing an investigation.

So he pulled over to ask him. He's like, Hey, I did your job last night for you. Give me some info.

Well, this happens. Yeah, I was the one that pulled them out. He's like, Oh, do you want to leave a report? He's like, No, absolutely not. We found out everybody came out of it just fine. The other car looked like it had just had damaged, but that Cadillac, I got it really bad.

Scary. Save the day.

I've always been very curious about it, but that was almost 20 years ago, so it's hard to look back on reports and find out what might have happened.

What town is it? Is there military close?

No, it's like a port town. We're in between South Padre and Laredo. Really big on culture. We're very proud of ourselves, 956. Everybody that moves out of here to bigger cities will tell you the one thing they miss the most is the food. Austin's okay. San Antonio is better. We're probably the best.

No kidding. In what? Tex-mex? Is that what we're calling it?

Tex-mex, tacos, barbacoa, tamales.

Keep talking.

In fact, Mike actually lives in Colorado now, and that's what he was telling me. He's like, That's the one thing I miss the most.

Yeah. So what did Mike end up doing for a living? How does he keep this adrenaline up?

He was into bikes. I know he was into cooking for a little while. We lost base for a while. So when I caught up with him, we spoke for about a couple of hours. He It just reminds me a lot of Udex.

Well, this is hilarious because you remind me so much of Jason Deleon. Did you major in Anthro in college?

I should have. I was a halfway music major and decided I'm going to go my own way. I teach at a private music school.

And you teach teach all instruments or just drums?

Mostly a drum instructor, but we also teach groups and how to be in a band, how to play in bands. I run the school. I have about four different groups of all ages. I like to say I teach from four-year-olds to retirees.

Well, Marcos, it's a delight meeting you.

Yes. If I can do a quick shout out to my fiance. She's the one that set up the headset, and she would like for me to let you know Dax. She's a year plus sober now. She's also a very proud sponsor. Listening to everything you guys talk about really puts that in perspective for me. I come from addiction as well, but she takes her sponcies very seriously. She's really great to them. It makes me very proud of her. Hearing everything that you've been through and people you guys talk to really puts a lot into perspective and makes me see how special she really is.

Oh, thanks, Marcos, and congratulations. Please give her our love.

I will. Thank you so much, guys. I love the show. Thanks, brother.

Take care.

All right. Bye, bye.

I mean, that's insane how much he was like, Deleon. Do you remember what he looks like enough?

I have a picture of my head.

In a fucking musician, in the punk. Deleon was in Texas originally. Something spooky. It could be- You know how there's only a few copies of us?

Exactly. I was just about to say. There's cookie cutters, and then they change little tiny things, just a couple of tiny's.

That's right. For deniability.

Hello.

Hi. How are you?

Good. Can you hear us, Jane?

Yeah, I can hear you. Can you hear me? Yeah.

Wonderfully. We're already charmed by your accent. Where are you?

I'm in the UK. I'm from England.

Oh, wonderful. So what time is it there right now? 7: 00?

Yeah, 20 past 7: 00.

Oh, what happens today? That's a joke. Yeah, tomorrow. Oh, tomorrow. It happens tomorrow? Is it 07: 00 AM?

No, it's 07: 00 PM. I know.

That was my joke. Like, what happens? God, it really didn't land. I got the joke. Thank you. I know.

I heard Rob. I tried. Don't be mad at me, Billmore. I just didn't get it. Okay, so Jane, you have a wild card story.

Yeah, which took place last summer. So the summer of 2023, my daughter got engaged and she said, I would love to have my wedding in Florida. She's a Disney baby. Oh. Oh, okay. So we said, Fine. So it was her, her husband, her two children, and just a small group of family. But we said, If that's what we're doing, there has to be a big party when we come home. So we had a fantastic wedding in Florida for the whole of May.

And were you physically at Disney World for the wedding?

No, just outside. And then we spent 19 days every day. She had us a military program. Oh, wow.

At the park.

Hold on. You went for 19 days in a row to Disney World? Yeah.

That's incredible. She's a real Disney adult.

She'll be thrilled to hear you say that. I love it.

Is she in one of those gangs? Did she wear gang colors?

Oh, yeah, they Yeah, there's Disney Gang, remember? Yeah, and Club 33.

How did this happen to her in the UK?

It's our fault. We took her to Disney when she was four for the first time.

Like many do, but some just really take to it.

I wonder if because for her, it was so far away, that adds.

Very enchanted.

Very much so. And two young grandchildren who are exactly the same two girls who appear in this story.

19 days. Wow, wow, wow. That's great. I love it. I would like to know what the world record is. I feel like you have to be approaching it.

Okay, so you got back for the party.

The party was in June. So it was a Friday evening. I had woken up that morning, and I was a little bit sad because my parents had called me and said they couldn't come. My dad was in his late '80s. His heart was failing. And he said, I just can't make it. So I thought, I'll go for a walk, and then I'll come home, and I'll get myself ready. So I came home from the walk and thought, I must go up in, we call it a loft. You guys call it attic. Yeah, okay. Went up into the loft, fitted the ladder to the loft. Climbed up the ladder. This is where it changed. Three steps from the top, I leant into the loft to grab a suitcase, and the ladder just went out from underneath me.

Sure, sure, sure, sure, sure, Seven feet. Completely unprepared and falling backwards, right?

Well, luckily, I fell standing, but I turned midair. And as I turned, my knees buckled. I hit my head on a cupboard on the way down, and then just ended up sitting on the floor on a ladder. And my first thought was, when you're a child, when you've broken something, nobody needs to know about this. It's fine.

Yes, of course.

I'll dust myself off. It'll be fine.

What is wrong with us? It is everyone It's one's instinct.

But we want it to be fine. Our brain really wants it to just be done and okay. And so I think we trick ourselves.

But there is this also added layer of you're embarrassed. Of course. It'd be best if no one ever knew. And it's like, we think we're so unlovable that if we were to do something like that, we got to hide that.

I held that thought until I stood up and I couldn't put my left leg on the ground.

I had what we call trainers, you call sneakers.

I took the sneaker off and my foot was swelling. I was on my own in the house. My husband was out doing last minute chores before the wedding, and my daughter was due any minute to wrap up final arrangements. So I started to cry. I went down the stairs on my bottom like a baby. Got to the bottom of the stairs, switched onto my knees, craw down the hallway on my knees, got to the stairs. We have a cupboard under the stairs and dragged some crutsches out.

Oh, that's convenient.

Because I I had knee surgery.

What if they were in the attic again and you put the ladder back?

I just got to get back up there to get those crutsches.

I don't ever go back up in the lot. Got myself up onto the crutsches and found a telephone, phoned the emergency services, and they said, We've got a car in the area. We're with you in 20 minutes, which is very unusual.

That's quick, right?

Yeah. We can wait for hours in the UK, 4 hours, 5 hours. So I was thrilled. Took some painkillers. The adrenaline is going. I'm still thinking, This is going to be fine. It's going to be okay.

You've got an urgent care in your house. You got painkillers, you got the cruches. I don't know why you need to go to the hospital. You should have popped in the X-ray machine and called it a day.

Open the front door, found a nice pack, and just sat down in the chair and waited. They arrived and walked in, lifted the ice pack up and said, pain on a scale of 1-10? Seven. I was like, Do you take morphine? Yeah.

Yeah, that sounds nice.

Loaded me up with the morphine. She said, We need that to just kick in. We'll have a look, and then we'll call for an ambulance. But it could be hours. Suddenly, I remember I've got to be at a party at seven o'clock in the evening, and this is now midday, and I'm panicking, still crying. She said, We're never going to get you there. It's just not going to happen. I was saying, I've seen this on the television. You tell that to everybody. Today, it's not an option. My daughter appears, she's crying. I said, Can my husband take me? And they said, No, we've given you morphine. What does that mean?

The husband isn't.

Can't we drive ourselves?

I I know, but maybe not if they've administered something.

Still, arrest me. Call the cops on my way to the hospital.

So I said, We've got one option. Put me in the back of your vehicle. Clear the back seat on the driveway. Get me in the car. And to be fair, they agreed.

Oh, nice. Good.

So hobbled down to the car, got into the car. We live fairly near to a hospital, so they took me to our, we call it Accident and Emergency, and it's full of interesting characters. I'm sure you have the same in emergency rooms.

Oh, yeah. Have you seen the pet?

No, we can't get back here yet. I'm desperate to see it.

I can't wait for you. Eventually, it'll come. It has to come over there.

Well, I'm an ER baby, so I remember.

Yes. Noah Wiley, don't worry, he's still hot. Hotter. He might be hotter. Yeah.

They will be into what they call majors. You need a head assessment because you've hit your head hard. We're just going to park you here and you need to wait. So I sat for another hour and they came out, took me in for assessment. Your head's fine. We're moving you to minors. Another hour goes by. By this time, I'm feeling quite sick because of the morphine. I'm vomiting. This is awful. I need to go to a party. They finally take me through for X-ray. I wait another hour, and then they pulled me back in and said, The orthopedic team have said you've done a very bad break to your foot. You've crushed your foot. It's what they call a nut cracker. So where I landed and twisted, my toes went one way, my heel went the other, and the middle part was compressed. So So you're going to be in plaster cast for six weeks on crutsches, no weight bearing. I'm still looking at my watch and my phone. Don't care. Just get it done. They plastered me up, and I was discharged at 6: 00. My husband drove me home. Oh, victory.

Oh, my God. You made it.

Got dressed in my new clothes for the party. One shoe on because I couldn't wear the other shoe, which is deeply distressing Monica, as I'm sure you'll understand.

Yeah, she's making an outfit.

My husband piled me into his 911 Porsche. We got to the party. Somebody had commandeered a wheelchair. I don't know where from. I didn't ask. And I arrived at the party an hour late, but to cheers and celebrations. So it was hard.

But we made it in the end. I'd say this Silver Lining blessing is you're on your feet a lot at those weddings, and you got to just be seated, and you still had some residual morphine cooking. Maybe you had a cocktail. It might have been nice.

I wasn't allowed to drink because they give me blood thinners. But yeah, there's pictures of me in the wheelchair, dancing, having a great time. It was fantastic. But at the time, it was just awful.

Wow. Okay. At the risk of getting political, I am curious, what would you give your overall health system there? Because we're told over here that it's like Eden, and I'm just curious from the story, what would you give it out of 10?

The National Health Service is free for accident and emergency. It's perfect. The issue is the system has an infinite demand and a finite resource, and it can't cope. People are readily used to spending hours waiting for treatment as an emergency. If you're in a road traffic accident, it's different. If it's life-threatening, it's different. The challenge comes if you need a hip replacement or a knee replacement and you're on a waiting list.

How long How much you wait?

Could be six months. It could be a year. It could be three years. There's a big backlog in the system because of COVID. Oh, wow. Every emergency I've ever had, having my daughter, no complaints at all.

Okay, great. And the free part is really nice. You just left the hospital Exactly. And that was it. You waved goodbye, right? Yeah.

We pay from our salaries, we have taxes and something called national insurance, and that contributes to the cost, but it doesn't cover all of it. But yeah, it does the best it can under the circumstances, and that day, it saved me.

Yeah. Okay. Wow.

You made it to the wedding.

Would you agree maybe we're the same age? I do think there probably is an age where maybe you have to admit yourself, there's no more up ladders anywhere. But it's hard to know, right? Because I feel quite confident to climb a ladder right now, but I'm hearing the story. I'm like, Yeah, that could happen to me for sure this weekend.

I'm a little bit older than you. I'm nearer 60 than I am 50. So I've never been up a ladder since.

Yeah, that's wise.

Ladders are a young man's game. They are indeed. Well, Jane, we're delighted that we have a listener in the UK, or minimally your daughter who made you tell this story to us. However it came out, we're happy to have you.

I don't know any other armcherries in the UK, but I'm sure they will appear as a result of this. So it's been great to meet you.

Get us out there.

You need a piece of merch. That's what you got to cruise around town in a little merch, and then maybe they'll be like, What's that?

That would be great.

They're in your next 19 day trip to Disney World.

It's been great to meet you both.

Yeah, you too. Take care.

Have a good day.

All right. Bye-bye. 19 days at Disney World. My imagination of it is there would be phases, right? It's like the first three days would be great, and then it'd be a lull, right? And you'd be like, We got to stop coming. And then it'd shoot back up again. You'd have a great day, right? Yeah. You'd think you'd have the A whole spectrum of experiences.

Probably, but she sounds, the daughter, sounds diligent and knowledgeable. So she had a whole system. So she's not doing repeats.

Yeah, isn't there eight parks if you mix in water park? Exactly. Wow, do you think they went to the water park?

Oh, they went to all the parks. They went to all the parks. Glizzard Beach. Epcot, that one with animals. Animal Kingdom. Animal Kingdom, thank you.

Four Seasons, Lazy River.

Do they still have MGM?

Universal. But it sounds like she's just Disney.

It's It's all.

It's all in the mix.

Magic Kingdom. Maybe she's in Magic Kingdom like four days.

Kiss Me, Florida. Gosh. I could go back. I was pretty recently, maybe Lincoln's birthday.

I mean, World.

But also I am, too. Oh, World, Erin I went to World. Erin and I went to World. World is fun. We had Kaitlyn, the guide who's in Armcherry, and she's wonderful. Hello. One of my favorite girl names, Dani.

Hi. Well, thank you very much. I wish I had a part in picking it, but I didn't.

Yeah. Do you have a favorite boy's name?

Actually, I do. My favorite boy's name is Roman. Roman. That has been my favorite boy's name forever. That was going to be my boy's name. Then, of course, I had three daughters.

But that's what happened to us. We just said, Fuck it. We were like, Yeah, we're going to have a boy. He's going to be named Lincoln. Uh-oh, it's a girl. Okay, still going to be named Lincoln. Roman as a girl could have been radical.

Definitely.

Definitely could have been. Then I couldn't get my husband on board.

So there we go. Husbands, who needs them?

I'll send him a letter.

For sure. So, Danei, where are you?

I am in Germany.

Oh, my goodness.

This is our second international call in a row. Oh, cool. Are you in the military? Are you on vacation? What's happening in Germany?

I am military-adjacent. I'm a federal civilian employee, and I support the medical detachment for the army out here. So we've been here for about four years.

Wow.

So you're a CIA spy? Is that what that was code for?

I can't confirm or deny.

Did you respond to the CIA prompt?

Tell us if you're an undercover CIA agent. Did anybody, though?

Let's hear it. Wow. That's exciting.

Yeah. Do you like it there?

Yes and no. I mean, there's a lot of things about the states that I miss convenience culture. We live in a very rural part of the country, so everything is shut down on Sundays. After 2: 00 PM on Saturdays, you can't really get anything done. So it's a culture shift. But it's also just been an incredible experience. My oldest daughter is nine, and she's already been to 17 countries. It's incredible.

And has she picked up German?

A little bit. So our German collectively is not good because I live and work in an American bubble. They go to an American school. We think and communicate in English, so we can get by at restaurants and ask for directions and stuff, and that's about it.

Wow, how fun.

Okay, so you have a wild card story. I don't even know if you would know it's a wild card story, but for us, it's wild. We have no idea what's coming.

Do you want to know what prompt it would have been under?

No, you can tell us after. No, I like surprises.

Okay, so I'm very intentionally keeping some of the details here vague. The reason for that will become self-evident a little bit This starts in 2012. At the time, I was 23, and I had just started my first graduate program. I'm in grad school. I was going to a private university in a very overpopulated, very high cost of living part of the country, back in the States for this. During that time of my life, because I was in grad school, everything was expensive. I was hustling hard. I had an assistantship at my graduate school to offset some of the costly tuition. I was a freelance writer for a handful of health and fitness lifestyle type online publications, and I waitressed. I was gone all the time. I've been a hobby bodybuilder power lifter for 20 years now.

Why aren't you wearing a tank top or something? I'm bummed I can't see your guns.

I thought about it for a minute, but that's not the point. Okay. Anyway, I am never far from my gym back, right? At this point between having three jobs and classes and this time-consuming hobby, it was not uncommon for me to leave my apartment at 6: 00 in the morning and then not come back at all until midnight or later. Every time I left my apartment, I had to take everything with me. My car was the center of my universe. At the same time that I had just started grad school, I also started working at a new restaurant. The night that this started, I was leaving my shift at my restaurant. It was my third or fourth shift where I was able to take my tips home. They typically don't have an employee area in the back of the restaurant, so there's nowhere for you to put your stuff. I left it all in my car. You I had the option of leaving it in the back office if you wanted to, but this type of establishment- It's hard to know what was less safe, the car or the office. I cannot confirm or deny that our assistant manager was selling drugs from the curbside pickup.

What a blast.

He's a hustler, too. It sounds like.

I just left everything in my car. My car was locked. It was in the employee parking. My plan for the night was to run by my bank, make one giant cash deposit of my three or four days' worth of chips, and then go home. My first indication that something was wrong was when I got to the parking lot and the driver said, door to my car was wide open.

Yeah, it's a bad sign. Generally not good.

But of course, I immediately defaulted to self-blame and was like, God, Danny, you're so stupid. I can't believe you left your door open. I start walking in my car, and I realized that it had been just ransacked. It was trash. There was stuff all over the place. To make a long story a little bit short, my car got broken into an additional two or three times that same week. Wow. Oh, wow. The people who came and broke into my car initially, it was an easy target because you have to make a police report. You have to find an auto body shop that can fix your car. It's not like I can just fix my vehicle and then life didn't stop. At the time, I was driving a 2006 Dodge Charger. I've since learned that that was a particularly easy car to break into because all you really had to do was stand there by the driver's side door, and with the right amount of force and the right shape tool, you could just punch the manual lock out of the door, and then it would just open.

It's always in the top three most stolen cars in America. Really? Oh, yeah, I follow these. I think my Hellcat in particular is the number one stolen car, and mine was stolen. Oh, yeah.

Over the course of these three break-ins, they took all of my grad school textbooks.

That's weird. It's just heavy and not that valuable.

Well, full of knowledge.

The motivating factor there was is that my textbooks were in a coach bag. They took the bag that had all the books in it. They got my laptop that I carried around for writing. They got my lifting belt and my lifting shoes. They took everything. But one of the salt in the wound things for me was they took my iPod, which is whatever, but they took my auxiliary I had this double-ended auxiliary cord because it was 2012, and you still needed that to play your music for your speaker. This cord was bright green, neon green. I have, to this day, never seen a piece of audio equipment this color, and I thought it was so cool. We fast forward two years. I've recovered. Things are fine. I'm now at the end of my graduate school program. I am no longer working as an assistant for the graduate school program, but I am interning because internship was a significant part of my grad program. The internship that I had at this point was for a nonprofit that provided individual and family therapy services for juveniles who were involved with the juvenile drug court system. I am a therapist.

I love where this is going.

I specialize in addiction, and I specialize in trauma. But at this point, I wasn't fully licensed. I was just a little tiny baby intern. I didn't know what the hell I was doing. All of my clients were between ages of 10 and 19. Most of them were male, and they had all been at one point in time incarcerated or involved with the law because of drug crimes. Given where we were at that point in time, the primary substance was meth. It was such a cool experience. That was a really good internship for me. But it wasn't what you think of, typically, when you imagine doing therapy as this very naive junior baby therapist because I wasn't in some plush office asking people about their mothers. I was going to rehabs, and I was going to halfway homes, and I spent so much time in the youth correctional facility where I would sit there with my hands on the table where the security guards could see them. My patient, my client, would sit across from me with their hands on the table, and we would interact with each other while the security guards walked by and stared at us.

It was just such a bizarre environment to be in. That's where I was on this day Having a conversation with one of my kids that I had been working with at that point for about four or five months. To get to the point where a drug-addicted teenage boy is comfortable being vulnerable with you is a heavy lift. That is a lot of work. But I was there, and he was open with me, and he had been using this session time to start reflecting on some of the shame that he was feeling now that he was incarcerated and sober and able to reflect on some of the things that he had done while he was in pursuit of his addiction. He was processing the shame of stealing from his grandmother and selling her stuff for drug money and stealing from his friends and selling their stuff for drug money. Then he was telling me about how when he ran out of things to steal and sell from his biggest family members, how he and his best friend, who, ironically, was also one of my clients, they resorted to breaking into cars. He then starts telling me about all of the stuff that he was stealing out of cars.

Again, he was really processing some shame. He was describing things like, he got a Cheetos puffs jar full of loose change that said Disneyland money and kids handwriting on it.

Yeah, that'll burn. Doesn't feel good.

But he was doing a really good job of sitting in the shame. If I had been a good therapist at that point, I would have known to keep him there because that's where the work is. I was not a good therapist. I was a crappy little baby intern. When he wanted to immediately pivot and start telling me stories that made him look cooler and feel better about himself because that was safer for him, I let him, which is why he started telling me stories about cool hauls that he got, like when he would get purses or big chunks of change or cash or this one time that they were able to hit the same car three times in one week. Yeah. And how they got all this gym equipment and how they got the iPod. Then he tells me the only thing I didn't flip was there was a lime green auxiliary cord, and it was my favorite color, and I'd never seen one that color before, so I kept that and I still have it.

What?

I I'm fully dissociated because in what world am I sitting there in the youth correctional facility as the substance abuse counselor for the kid that robbed me blind? Yeah, three times.

This is sim.

Monica, your dad was putting in overtime. This was crazy.

Yeah, wow.

Oh, my God. Did you tell him? I didn't say a word.

Unless you were so involved in his recovery that he was eventually making his ninth step, and you could say, at that point, Hey, that was my shit, and give him an opportunity to forgive. But other than that, my question would be to myself, this is really interesting that this happened to me. What is the thing that I am supposed to be learning right now about this? I guess I feel like I would hope I would go, Oh, wow, yeah, I was so bent out of shape about all that stuff. It's so rare and unique that I would get to hear what was happening in the other person's life on the other side. It might right size how I felt about that whole thing. Like, Oh, right, that was just stuff. But that was someone's life in total chaos and destruction.

Well, and ultimately, that's where I landed. I just froze in the moment because I did have so much respect for how hard it was for him to create a trusting relationship with someone, given everything that had happened to get him to that point in his life. I didn't want to destroy that. I knew that if I responded the wrong way, that therapeutic relationship was gone. In reflecting on it in supervision with my supervisor and my college mentor, he needed something for me when we were having conversation, and he needed something from me when he was rambling my car, and I didn't need anything from him.

Yeah, that's what I'm hoping was the feeling. It's like if you've listened to me, you've heard me for a minute, say as my mom said to me at one point, Do you want to be the person that gets called for help or the person who calls for help? Because those are your choices. It rightsized my annoyance of getting called and asked for money so much. I was like, All right, I'd rather be picking up the phone. Exactly.

It's funny because every time you have said that on the podcast, it makes me think of the story. I was like, I got to throw this one in.

Yeah, that's wild. I thought for a second, just like half a second, it could have been a meet cue.

Oh, wow. That she's going to date her patient. Just for a second. Because you both love the cord.

I just love meet cues. I know. I'm looking for them at every time.

Yeah, in any combination.

I did also meet my husband during this phase of my life, but he was not involved in this story.

He was working at my grad school. Okay, it's not a meet cue.

Well, but hold on, we have something for you because he was working at your grad school. Was he a professory? No. It wasn't an abuse of power?

I'm not interested.

He was the associate athletic director, and I was the grad assistant.

That's nice. Okay, that's fun.

Do you guys train together?

We have three children, so our training schedule has changed dramatically. So we just do what we can at this point.

That makes sense. Well, Danny, that's a wild story.

That is so sim. That is crazy. What did you submit for?

I submitted wild card, but it could have also been simulation moment. Okay, yeah.

Oh, yeah, yeah. That's what I wondered if that was the case.

You guys haven't put out a prompt about robbing your therapist for drug money.

No, not yet.

We'll do that on the same week. We do. Tell us if you're an undercover agent with your full name. Well, Dani, lovely meeting you.

Yeah, thanks for chatting.

You too, guys. Hey, thank you so much for everything that you do and you put out there. I am so appreciative, both personally and professionally, of the work that you've done. With everybody having the internet in their pocket now, the risk associated with vulnerability out in the wild is so high that often people just aren't doing it. We get so wrapped up and isolated in the loneliness of whatever story we're telling ourselves. What you guys have created here with this allows people, through these parasocial relationships that we've developed with you, to experience authenticity and vulnerability and imperfection and all of that stuff in an environment that feels safe. It enables people to then be empowered to go practice that out in the wild in their real lives. I have so much gratitude for you, and I hope you have an appreciation for what you're putting out there. So thank you guys.

That's really nice. That's really nice. Thank you, Dani. Auf Wiedersehen.

Yeah. Cheers.

See you guys for a day, night.

Is it night there also? I guess it is.

It is probably 9: 00 there.

Oh, my God. 9: 00 PM. Dead night.

Hi.

Hi. This is so exciting.

How are you, Erin? Are you in a hotel?

I am, and I tried to be in the hotel closet, but it's in the bathroom.

No, you've done a great job.

Hotels are generally good, and I was going to comment on this. I knew you were in a hotel because I knew you would never put that carpet in your home. But carpet's very good for sounds.

It is good.

That's great. And the cleaning team is done next door. They just finished. I was like, You guys have to leave.

Are you on vacation or you're working? Neither. You left your husband today.

My husband is in a wedding. I did. I left him. We've been married three weeks, but that was I said, No.

You'll thank God you figured it out that soon. It could have been gone on for a long time.

We're in Richmond, Virginia. We actually live just outside DC. I live two miles from where Lauren Graham used to live.

Oh, no kidding. Okay, so you have a wild card story, which means we have no clue what's coming. All we know is there's a stack of photos that we have not piqued at.

Yeah, I'm sorry about the photos. You'll understand why. It was August first of 2024. My then-fiance and I were out in Washington DC for a night with his brother, and we decided to head home back to Arlington on the Metro. It's important to know that at this point in our lives, my now husband and I were deep in our scooter phase. We thought that we were saving the world one lime ride at a time. We get off of the Metro, and there's a bunch of scooters parked right outside the Metro from people who left them there, and we're like, Let's scooter home. My husband's having a hard time getting his going, so I just take off. I'm like, eat my dust. I'm out of here. And I make it half a block, and not a New York block, an Arlington block, so not far. There's a really small pot hole with loose gravel in it. I hit that and I'm in flight. And I'm not going slowly. I had a few drinks, not too many, but enough.

But enough to ride a scooter and leave your fiancee behind you.

It's like eat my dust like a Michelle Tanner or something.

Exactly. So I'm in flight, I remember trying to catch myself with my arms, but I don't. I catch myself with my face. I'm launched into a wall of rocks, and then I hit the cement, and then the handlebars hit my chin. So it's three boys.

What do they call that? A hat trick.

Yes, exactly. For one second, can we just ponder, how does Lyme exist liability-wise? I don't understand. I know. I mean, I'm glad people can take their own risk and ride these things. I want that society. But I'm also shocked with like someone's on AI and it didn't give them the right thing and they're suing AI over someone's like, no, this is a machine. You don't need any training. Everyone's getting fucked up.

We've heard so many of our best friends.

Yeah, our friend blew out a MCA ACL, ACL.

But you sign something.

Oh, when you first sign up for the app.

Their terms of service make Apple look like a joke. And you don't read it, of course. They probably say death, dismemberment, all those things. But you're just thinking, I want to get on and ride.

Yeah, I'm in the mood to get going.

Okay, so were you wearing a helmet?

No. No. Don't be a fucking, don't be a nerd. Guys, stop this. She's coming from the bar, girl.

There's been no scooters since, so don't worry. I don't have a need for the helmet. But Anyway, my then-fiance rolls up a few seconds later, probably in the grand scheme of things. I'm face down, passed out in a pool of my own blood. Wow. Arguably, one of the best parts of the story is a very calm woman is walking her dog by me, and she turns to my fiance, who's jumping off of his scooter, trying to see if I'm okay. And she just turns to him and goes, I think she needs help.

Oh, well.

And he's like, Thank you for that.

This makes me think of something I just learned about on the internet today, which is there's a gag people do when someone's crashed their car, it's in the intersection or it's up on the grass, and you drive by and you roll down your window and you go, Oh, I'm so sorry, you can't park there. And the reaction that people... A hundred % of the people react the same way because they've just crashed their car. They're like, Fuck you. It was a montage of all these people saying, You can't park there. It's such a funny trend. And that's what that woman did. Like, Oh, I think she might need help. Oh, really, motherfucker?

Yeah, exactly.

He was like, Her lack of real concern is crazy. He's like, She should be studied and be in crisis situations because she wasn't worried at all. At this point, everything goes black for me. I have nothing from that happened around 11: 00 PM to 05: 00 AM. Oh, wow. The ambulance takes us to the hospital where Rocco, my husband, now tells them he's not my husband.

He's got to go.

His name is Rocco, and he has a temper that matches the name. Oh, shit. Okay, great. Brooklyn New Yorker. So he gets in a very big fight with the charge nurse, uses some colorful language with her, and he He's forcefully asked to leave by security.

Again, the pit.

It is the pit. Yeah. He's not even allowed to be in the hospital with me anymore. So at some point, he was allowed back in when things calmed down, and I think when her shift ended. I wake up 5: 00 AM I look at him. He's like, Hey, don't freak out. You're fine. You got in a scooter accident. And he says he didn't say this. I remember it clear as day. He says, Your face is a little fucked up.

Yeah.

But you're fine. And he swears he doesn't say that.

He did. That's not the thing you forget.

And you know what? For the listener, I think you'll be comforted. We're looking at Aaron and she looks completely normal. Her face is beautiful. Yeah, I can imagine someone going like, Does she have a face? Exactly.

His aunt insisted that no ER doctors touch my face, that a plastic surgeon takes care of the face. I find out in the next few hours that I had cut, like I said, my face, the top of my head, my chin. So I have 12 staples in my scalp. I I have, I think, 11 stitches on my forehead and another eight on my chin. I broke my radial head, so my elbow. I scanned both my knees to shit, and I cracked six teeth and bit off like an inch of my tongue.

I think you could have got less hurt diving out of the third story of a building.

Oh my God.

For sure.

I'm really scared of the pictures. Me too.

Monica, for you, I didn't include the tongue picture.

Oh, thank you. That's too much.

It's not positive. Also, I'm insecure about the tongue picture because I didn't have the best oral health in the following days, so my tongue doesn't look great. I couldn't let you guys see that.

And did it affect your speech at all?

Tongues heal quickly. So I was able to talk pretty normally within a few days, but it hurt for a couple of weeks. But you guys can look at the pictures now. I have the whole night, the progression. So it starts with a nice selfie of us.

Oh, you guys are so happy right now. I saw a hint of the next. Okay.

Here's what he was talking about, your face being fucked up.

I think he meant that one because like...

No, I think... Okay.

Okay, it's swole. Yeah, we're getting... Okay.

Yeah, we're getting a little... Oh, we're back to cute. Now you have a lot of- You're wearing a cute tank top. You have a lot of bandages all over your face.

Then I also included my bachelorette party was three weeks later. They made me a sling that said bride on it. They tried to make festive. Oh, that's cute.

That's sweet. Okay, we got a head. You got an enormous gash on the head. I can see why it required 12 staples. This is the blood residue on the sidewalk where you fell? Rocco had the good foresight to take a photo. Is that him that took that?

Yeah. Do you guys want to know something hilarious? This was the beginning of August, and we were in a very dry spell, so there was no rain for a month after. That stain is still a year and two months later on the pavement. Oh my God.

Oh, what pride you must feel.

It is a lot of blood.

But probably the best part, other than the woman with the dog, was a few days later, I'm talking to my dad on the phone about the accident. He's like, How far do you live from the Metro? Stop. And I didn't respond. I went silent. And he goes, Aaron, How far? And I said, 0. 4 miles. It's an eight-minute walk. There was no reason for us to get on these scooters. We just wanted to.

We just thought it was fun.

You wanted a little fun. They look fun. I get it.

They are fun until they're not.

Oh, they're so fun. We loved them. And we heard all of the accidents that happen. We have a friend who's an ER nurse, and she would tell me, Don't go on those things. I was like, Whatever, that's other people.

I try not to be judgmental because look, I'm riding my kid to school on a motorcycle, but we see moms and sons and moms and daughters riding two people on the lines to school every morning. I'm like, I just don't do me. I would say, pick a ball in scooters have kept the ER in the medical business in business over the last six years.

The dentist, when I went to him, he was like, You're like my 15th person this summer. It's a boom. The near Our Death episode had come out right before, and it made me feel better. I listened to it the day after I got out of hospital, and I was like, I'm doing better than these people.

Yeah. Oh, wow. As a smart investor, I feel like I'd like to find out where Bird or Lime is going next and somehow invest in the medical industry in the area. Dental care. Dental. Anything adjacent medical.

Find storage places next to military bases.

Oh, yeah, that's smart.

That was a good tip.

Cadavers. If I could invest in cadavers because they need the tendons for all the knee injuries. Oh, God. Well, Erin, this is delightful.

Thank you. I'm so thrilled you guys rescheduled because originally when you all reached out, it was the day of my wedding rehearsal. I did call my husband and I said, Can we push the rehearsal? And he said, For what? And I said, So I can meet Dax and Monica? And he goes, No, we can't push our wedding.

Rocco has standards.

Well, I can imagine if you had pushed it and I bumped into Rocco somewhere, it might be fist might be flying in a hurry. It sounds like with his temperament in mind.

It would either be love or something else.

Well, I'm old now, so it'd be love. I've figured out how to be loving.

He's a softy, too.

Well, have a blast at this wedding and just walk everywhere. Yeah.

No more scooters, unfortunately. I do miss it, but I don't miss the rehab. Not enough.

Yeah. All right. Well, have a great time at this wedding. It was lovely meeting you.

You guys, too. Bye. Thanks so much. Bye.

It would have been cool if we had FaceTimed into their wedding rehearsal. Oh, yeah. If you guys want us to do that, we might. We have to look at our schedule.

Okay. If it lines up perfectly, is that what you're saying? It's at 11: 00 AM. If your wedding's at 11: 00 AM. Yep. Pacific time. We'll be there. Okay. Wild cards, keeping them wild.

Keeping them real wild.

Real wild. 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 theme 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, I rindish, on the fly, I rindish. Enjoy.