Armchair Anonymous: Meet Cute II

Wondery Plus subscribers can listen to Armchair Expert early and ad-free right now. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts.
Or you can listen for free wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome, welcome, welcome to Armchair Anonymous.
I'm Dan Rather and I'm joined by Mrs. Mouse.
Hi. Meet Cute Part Do.
That's right. I feel like it's part tray, but it's part due.
It is. Part due.
We love a Meet Cute. It's very hopeful and sweet, and we need to throw those in.
Yeah, they kind of are palate cleansers. They're uplifting.
They're hopeful. Yeah.
Yeah, we needed it because we had animal attacks, and we've had shit in your pants. There's a whole host of depravity, really.
A lot of nasty stuff. Could be called armchair depravity.
Could. But it's not.
It's called Armchair Anonymous. And this is Meet Cute Part 2.
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How often? I am five times a week on that Peloton. Five times a week.
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It's so nice. Yeah.
It is also like elegant. Yeah, it is.
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Hard times come and go. Good times take them slow.
My life, I had them old. But one thing you gotta know.
I'm gonna keep on shining. Hi.
Can you hear me okay? Oh my God, this is beautiful setup. What is happening? Thank you.
I'm underneath my standing desk. Oh.
Do you watch Severance? It looks like you're in that welcoming room where she delivers information. Your Audi is a very good roller skater.
That's right. I do have a little lamp with a sheet over it to give it a little ambience.
Oh, well, it looks great. First of all, where are you other than this cute cave? I live in Beverly Hills, Michigan.
Oh, my God. By Aaron Weakley.
Do you ever see Aaron Weakley? No, he's not my neighbor. Dang.
But Beverly Hills is tiny. I love Beverly Hills.
That's such a secretly great place of Michigan. It is really nice.
Do you have a nice yard? Yes, we do. Yeah.
It's all about the yards, Monica, in Beverly Hills. Does it feel a little like why'd they have to name it that? Do you know the history of why it's called Beverly Hills? Does it predate? I have no idea.
I like to think so. Okay.
We'll say so. Did you grow up there? I grew up in Royal Oak.
Wonderful. I actually went to a shrine.
Of course you did. Okay, that's Kristen's high school for people who don't know.
You had to. Okay, Heather, you have a meet cute story.
Yes. So it takes place at Central Michigan University.
It was New Year's Eve 2008. I was up there after Christmas to go back to work.
My roommate, Mary, was up there with me and my neighbor, our friend Kelly, was also there. And Kelly at the time was dating this fraternity guy.
They're actually now married, but the fraternity was having a New Year's Eve party. So the three of us decide that we're going to get dressed up and go to this party.
As the party's going on, my roommate Mary comes over to us and she's like, hey, there's this guy Brian here. I think you two would really hit it off.
He's upstairs in the attic with some friends. You should go up there and say hi.
So I grab my friend Kelly and we go up there and they're all smoking in the attic. Cigarettes or marijuana? Marijuana.
Probably cigarettes too. Yeah.
Nice mix of marijuana and cigarettes. It's the last day of the year.
You're allowed. Yeah, you're about to quit tomorrow.
And they're smoking out of this six-foot bong. They called it Godzilla.
It was filled with champagne, not water. Oh my God.
Very classy. Elevated.
We say hi to Brian and he packs the bong for us. We hit it and then we're like, OK, bye.
We go back downstairs.

As the party goes on, we don't really talk again.

Fast forward a month later, I go to a house party that some of these fraternity guys live in.

So I noticed Brian's there and he's brought his dog with him. And his dog is this big bloodhound Doberman mix named Homer that he's just letting run around the party.

And I love dogs.

So I'm like going up to the dog, petting it, becoming best friends. Is he a student at this point? I've never known a student to have a dog on campus.
He was not a student anymore at Central. He was a part of that fraternity when he was there.
And then he left to go to community college. Brian and I keep kind of making eye contact throughout the evening, but we haven't really talked yet.
So as the night goes on, we find ourselves upstairs talking at the top of the steps. We're sitting down and we've been talking for some time.
His dog is laying on his lap, his head is kind of in my lap as well. And all of a sudden the dog just kind of looks up at me and gives me this look and gives me this low growl.
I've been drinking. I thought this dog and I were best friends at this point.
Is this a meet cute story with the dog? That would be such a great twist. So I kind of look at this dog like, what's going on? And I give it a little noise.
That was a very big mistake. The dog launched up and bites me in the face.
No. Oh my God.
Half Doberman, half Bloodhound. This is a big dog.
He's a big boy. Yeah.
I got to say, I'm now staring at your face extra scrutinizing. It looks pretty perfect.
Yeah, you're fucking lucky. That's a big mouth.
Yeah, I immediately just throw my hands up to my face. And I use my right hand to kind of prop myself up off against the wall to stand up and go to the bathroom.
And Brian has thrown the dog off of him and follows me into the bathroom

as well. It's probably 2.30 in the morning or so.
And the three guys that all lived upstairs,

they all come out because they've heard the commotion. So they're all just staring at me

in the bathroom while I'm just bleeding over the sink. Where'd it get you? Right in my upper lip.

Thankfully, it did not puncture through. I probably should have gone to the hospital,

I think probably to get like a tetanus shot. I'm a college kid.
I'm not going to go to the doctor.

Thank you. Oh.
Thankfully, it did not puncture through. I probably should have gone to the hospital, I think, probably to get like a tetanus shot.
I'm a college kid. I'm not going to go to the doctor.
So Brian hands me like a wad of toilet paper, put some pressure on it. I just look at him.
I'm like, I need to go home. Thankfully, one of the guys that lived on the main floor, he sees us and he hands me a t-shirt to put better pressure on the wound as I'm walking home.
Did he take it off his body? No. I mean, it could have been a dirty shirt from his room, but it was better than toilet paper.
Even more shots needed now, but continue. So now it's Brian, myself, and this dog walking back to my apartment.
So we get home. I show him where the first aid kit is.
So he starts cleaning it up, seeing what's happening. That's when we find out it's not that deep.
We should be okay. But my lip is starting to swell at this point.
The bleeding has stopped. So we're just kind of putting some ice on it.
And then we go to bed. So I let him stay the night.
Oh my God. Good job.
He does try to give me like a little kiss goodnight. My lips a little swollen.
I can't really kiss. We wake up in the morning when we go downstairs and the dog's just hanging out with my roommate, acting like he's just a great little boy.
And Brian takes the dog and leaves. He doesn't ask for my number.
I don't ask for his number. I think we were both kind of embarrassed and didn't know what to do.
Can I ask at this point how much you like Brian out of 10? A good question. Maybe seven.
Oh, wow. Probably about a week goes by and he Facebook messages me.
So then we start talking, we exchange numbers and we start dating pretty soon after that. So we've been together since then.
We've been together for 16 years and we've been married for seven and a half. Wow.
How long did the dog last throughout this? Maybe one more year. And then he tried to bite me a couple more times.
Jesus Christ. He was jealous.
Yeah, that dog's got to go. He could smell that there was a love connection and that they were going to be together forever.
And he was a little drunk from the champagne water he drank out of the bong. Of course, yeah.
I know that was two different parties, but still. That's all right.
One of the best parts, besides obviously meeting Brian, was when I stood up after getting bitten, I used my hand to kind of push up against the wall. Well, I left this bloody handprint at this house.
I didn't clean it off. They never cleaned it off.
So it was there for the rest of the semester. So I would show people the scene of the crime.
It's interesting you said I put my hand up and touched the wall. When you said it, I thought that's an interesting detail.
Is that foreshadowing? Oh, and then it was. It was.
Yeah, you must ask yourself, had he not bit your face, and both of you are not asking for anyone's numbers. Like, neither of you are pursuing this with any kind of gusto.
Had the dog not intervened and caused this walk home in the ice pack, I don't think we're here. Probably never would have happened.
It's a good point. I hate to give the dog any credit.
Well, you got to give credit where credit's due. I must.
That's also another ethos of yours. Well, Heather, it's lovely meeting you.
I'm delighted we've got a Michigander in the audience. We don't talk to nearly enough people from Michigan.
Oh, I feel like we talked to just a lot of them. But I love them.
You guys are a great group. Yeah, before we go, if you had to guess what the best amusement park in the world is, what would you say? My husband and I were literally talking about this earlier.
Cedar Point, of course. Let's go, baby.
But have you been to Six Flags over Georgia? Yes, I have. That's so great.
Over Georgia. I don't think that one makes any less.
Not there. Oh, it's so good.
Okay, so we can't really speak on it.

Although I've never been to Cedar Point, so I can't either. We're definitely going to have to do an armchair

trip there, for sure. Well, thank

you so much for chatting. Yeah, it was nice

meeting you. It was great meeting you guys, too.

Have a good day. Take care.
Bye.

Okay,

two things. Yes.
One, when

she talked about going up onto the stairs,

I was like, is this going to be a staircase sex story? Oh, God. One we've been waiting for.
And then also, it reminded me, like, do men have this? Or boys, when you have a crush, you really want a piece of clothing? No. Okay.
That's a women's thing. Like, you really want that shirt.

The t-shirt.

You put it over your pillows.

Yeah, you smell.

You can smell the guy.

Yeah, I'd be really curious if we could get an evolutionary biologist to explain why that is.

Do we not smell as good?

Is it more important for a female throughout history to be able to identify her partner?

There has to be an explanation.

Because you definitely don't have that.

Zero desire.

Do you think so too, Rob? Yeah, I agree. All right.
We have a pair. Oh, fun.
Huh? You're in two different locations. We are.
Did you do that for sound? Yes, that was the advice given. We both wanted to be here because we're both big fans.
Oh, how exciting. You guys are so cute.
But wait, are you in the same home? We are. We're vacationing in Colorado Springs, actually, and building a fort at your Airbnb, talking to Dax and Monica, was not on our vacation bingo cards, but we love it.
Really quick, why does one go on vacation to Colorado Springs? Is there an activity you both love that's available there? Hiking. And we're actually with friends right now, so we did a little couple's trip just to get away from it all.
Yeah. And you'll hike in the snow? It's actually right at the end of snowy season.
So we haven't had to have the snowshoes or anything. So we only slipped a little yesterday.
Oh, anyone go down? Just a little bit, but they bounced right back up. You don't want to out anyone.
That's a different prompt. Someone someone did fall, they were embarrassed and they're being kind and not telling the story.
Okay. Sean and Megan, who begins? I usually tell this story and Sean fact checks me or helps to keep the plot going.
So I will kick us off. Sean and I are from Cincinnati, Ohio.
Go ahead. I don't even need to ask him.
We know. Yeah.
Great. Greatest place on earth? Absolutely.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

It's so funny that you don't get intrigued.

Has there ever been a topic that's so unanimously loved we've ever brought up anywhere?

I know.

It must mean something horrible about my personality that all it does is make me say,

drives you away.

Absolutely not.

You can't even ask people, do you like Coca-Cola and get this level of approval.

I agree with that.

And just a side note, my mom also works at Kings Island. Even another layer on top.
That was closer for you guys, right? Kings Island? Yeah. The beast.
Heck yeah. Okay.
Cincinnati. We went to the same high school, shout out Coleraine High School.
The year was 2008. I was a shy little baby sophomore and Sean was a senior at the time.
The junior class was having a fundraiser for Valentine's Day and they had the whole school take a compatibility test. Oh, fun.
I know. Do you guys remember Scantron? Yes.
Like those little tickets. So that's what we all use to like fill out our compatibility tests.
There must've been one 11th grader that was like a future Bill Gates. Who could orchestrate this whole thing? Is that person now a billionaire? Well, not surprised me.
Very organized thing. And I was type A.
So I was like, great, just tell me who my boyfriends are. Let's just get this whole thing over with.
Give me a list. Right.
On Valentine's Day, you handed over five bucks and then you got your little report of your top 10 matches in the school. The cool part was, is you could see where you fell on your matches list because it wasn't always your number one match.
You were their number one match because they could have had someone more compatible. Oh, this is my nightmare.
By the way, if I had designed this test, I would have rigged it where everyone got me in their top five. Is this from a psychology class? This is wild.
I have tried to look it up because I've had people like, what is the authenticity here? And I'm like, I didn't ask any questions. It also begs the question, is your perfect match someone that's got the same interest in you? I don't think so.
I think your perfect match is the opposite of you. I open up my little report and I see my top 10 matches.
And I'm like, oh my God, I matched with a senior. That's a man.
What am I going to do? I went from like, no boyfriend, never been kissed. Now I'm matching with a senior man.
So I turn around to my friend in class and I'm like, do you know who this Sean guy is? And she's like, wait, you matched with him. That is the hottest guy in marching band.

Oh, in marching band.

It was off to a great start.

But then you're like, oh, this is a very small pool of people that he's the hottest.

Still great.

Our school was big.

So I had never heard of him.

Hottest guy in the marching band.

That should be your autobiography, Sean.

I know.

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See nerdwallet.com for details. At 24, I lost my narrative, or rather it was stolen from me.
And the Monica Lewinsky that my friends and family knew was usurped by false narratives, callous jokes, and politics. I would define reclaiming as to take back what was yours.

Something you possess is lost or stolen, and ultimately you triumph in finding it again. So I think listeners can expect me to be chatting with folks, both recognizable and unrecognizable names, about the way that people have navigated roads to triumph.
My hope is that people will finish an episode of Reclaiming and feel like they filled their tank up. They connected with the people that I'm talking to and leave with maybe some nuggets that help them feel a little more hopeful.
Follow Reclaiming with Monica Lewinsky on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen to Reclaiming early and ad-free right now by joining Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts.
So the marching band gets wind of this and we have interconnecting friend circles. So they all coordinated our little meet cute in the band room at the end of the day.
I was a nervous wreck the whole day and they had to like drag me down the stairs, push me on my heels. The band separates in the band room and there he is.
The hottest guy in marching band. Oh, I believe it.
Looking at Sean, I believe that. Sean is hot for the listener.
I would say for people who watched that Kingdom show, the lead of Kingdom, very handsome dude. Frank Gorillo.
I think you look like Rob McElhaney. Oh, that too.
I love all of this. What was your instrument? My main instrument was trumpets.
I still play. Shout out to the marching band folks.
It does happen. Yeah.
But I actually teach college music now. Oh, awesome.
Now, Sean, and I don't want to jump ahead, but was she on your list? She was. We both saw each other's and everything was all mixed up except for the number one spot.
So both her and I, we saw Megan and Sean. And did they say Megan's the hottest chick on the math team? Well, I was talking to some folks, same question.
Like, do you guys know this Megan? Like, oh, wait, you match with her too? Let me talk to her and we're going to set something up. It was a lot at once.
It was a very big day. This test had the school in a frenzy.
I can only imagine how unruly everything. No one learned a fucking thing for the next week and a half as they tried to get married.
Okay, so it parts and you see Sean and you're like, schwing. Wow.
I was like so shy and intimidated by the whole thing. I was like, great.
Hi, we did a hug. And he had that deep voice.
So I was like terrified. And he's pretty shy too.
It took us a minute to actually reconnect. I ended up texting him when I was a senior and he was a sophomore.
So nothing happened. You guys met, but you didn't pursue it.
You let it go to see if it would return. It was almost like too much.
It was very intense, very overwhelming. I wasn't ready to get married.
You're looking for a first kiss. Within that meeting, all of our friends were just surrounding us.
Yeah, this is too much. Before my senior year, I went to leadership camp and I got all this confidence and it was like, I'm going to text the hottie from March again to see if he remembers me.
And he was in college now, so I was ready for a college boyfriend. So I sent him a text and the rest is history.
You started dating immediately? Pretty much. Together in total 15 years, been married for eight.
Needless to say, best five bucks ever spent. I wonder who else got married from this.
Well, yeah, I was gonna say, how connected are you still to your class? Have you gone to a reunion and found out that 30% of the people were married to their match? Really good question. We are still friends with quite a few of the people who got us together.
We always text them on Valentine's Day. Like, thanks so much, guys.
And are you still in Cincy? For the past three years, we were actually living in Seattle. I was finishing up my doctorate work at University of Washington.
Go Huskies. Yes.
Just this past year, we moved to Wichita, Kansas. Got a job up in central Kansas up there in Bethany College.
Shout out. So yeah, we've been bouncing around a little bit.
We're loving it. But like you asked about, sometimes your perfect match isn't a one-to-one match.
He's a Scorpio. I'm a Sagittarius.
So there is a lot of things in common, but plenty of difference. And I think that's what really clicked in for us was that it was all about balance.
We pushed each other, but also challenged and supported. So even our careers complemented each other.
I'm a graphic designer, so I work remote. So I can go wherever.
It's like, we're moving to Wichita. I'm like, great.
They have computers and Wi-Fi there, right? No big deal. Okay, I'm going to ask a challenging question now.
So you've been with, I don't know what number boyfriend he was, but certainly from your senior year till now adulthood, you've been with the same person. Is there any tension with that? No, and he was really my first real boyfriend because I didn't date anybody after that match.
I was just so terrified of dating and seeing my friend's heart get broken. My mom was a single mom and I was like, this is a lot.
And I think I just needed to be ready to open up. I think once I started dating Sean and he was so kind, so patient, so sweet, I didn't really need to look anywhere else.
It all just kind of felt right. It just worked.
Yeah, Sean's kind of a storybook figure, right? I didn't think they they existed. I didn't.
And see, when I tell you they exist, I can always point to Sean now. You're right.
6,000 interviews later, we've met one. Oh, my God.
That's hilarious. Well, congratulations, you two.
You guys are such a cute couple. I'm so happy for both of you.
Me too. I'm sorry I asked that question.
No, no, no. I'll do it.
I just always marvel that my eighth grade girlfriend, she broke up with me in ninth grade for another guy. And she is still with that guy.
A lot of my friends are that way. I guess I'm just too greedy of a pig.
I needed to experiment everything. Yeah, it's your personality.
Okay, you guys, so nice meeting you. I'm really heartwarmed by this.
Yeah, me too. Yeah, I feel good about humanity right now.
Thank you, too. We love the show.
We listen all the time. The genuine, heartfelt conversations.
It's great. Keep making them.
All right. We will.
Great meeting you guys. You too.
That was really sweet, and I feel hopeful. I do too.
I have a bad view of the world. No, you don't.
Oh, a little bit. Hello.
Hi. Where are you, Julie? I am in this city where you would throw your McDonald's bag out the window.
London, Ontario. You got it.
Home of Rachel McAdams. Wow.
Okay. Tell us your meet cute story.
What year? The year is 2009. It was October 29th.
I remember this because me and a few friends were going to the jay-z concert yeah he came to london ontario no i think artists come here because it's in between detroit and toronto so it's like another venue stop what do you guys have there you have like a little arena or something it's like an oh arena, which is a level below the NHL hockey arena. But we've had like Billy Joel, Stang, Cher.
Yeah, if you're someone who your big hobby in life has seen live events, good place to move. We're really lucky.
Hove came. And of course, we weren't going to pass that up.
But a caveat in the story was the Yankees were playing the World Series. So it's game two of the World Series.
And of course, they're going to ask him to perform. He was flying in late.
There was four openers. So it was probably okay that he was late.
But as a result, everyone at the venue was getting absolutely trash. Yeah, in Canadian style.
Yeah, yeah. So he's flying in privately after New York to London.
Not a long flight. But we got there when doors opened at the venue.
So we got pretty inebriated. I was 20 years old.
It was fun. How late is late? When does he get there? He probably didn't go on stage until even like 1030 that night.
It was rowdy. It was fun.
It was a good show. So after that, we wanted to keep the party going.
So we went to a local bar, walked to one. It wasn't too far away.
We were having fun at the bar in a booth. I got up to either see a friend or go dance, and I left all my stuff in the booth.
I was with friends, so I wasn't too worried about it. But when I went back, they were all gone.
Fuck. They took my stuff.
They're good friends. But as a result, I was like, I can't go meet them at another bar.
I don't have money for a cab. I don't have my phone.
They just left you? Yeah, I don't know. We were all kind of out of it.
Most generous case i could make is they thought she left the bar entirely she was hammered and they're like well fuck we better grab her stuff and she'll surface i wasn't mad at them happy-go-lucky having a great night so i just figured the night's about to wind down anyways i'll just walk back to their student house a few kilometers down the road there's a big strip of bars bars in London. So I felt very safe and not concerned at all.
Like most people were out partying that night were students, young people. Halfway through my walk, this guy starts walking with me.
He was holding a longboard. He wasn't at the bars, but he was a bit younger.
So I wasn't, again, concerned. And he did say, you shouldn't be walking alone.
Yeah. And I, again, happy-go-lucky me talked to everyone wasn't very concerned about it and i said well if you want you can walk with me so we started making small talk and he just said i just knocked someone out down the road oh no yeah okay i got tripped on my longboard and we got in a fight i was not too surprised he was wearing a tap out shirt so i said that seems on brand mentioned he was a trained fighter.
He got a lot out in that first couple minutes. Got 30 or 40 red flags to hit you with.
I want to get them out quickly. A few more minutes down the road, three cruisers pull over and they grab him and they grab me.
Oh my God. And he starts yelling like, let her go, let her go.
I don't know her. I was just walking with her.
Can I add one thing? If you knock a guy out on the sidewalk and you're trying to not get arrested, don't carry a longboard because they go, yeah, it's a guy carrying a fucking obnoxiously long skateboard and no one else is. Right.
And we were on like the main street too. You think he would have cut down a neighborhood street.
So ultimately they take him away, but they wanted a statement from me and I was all jazzed up to talk to the cops and thought it was hilarious. So I gave them one.
And they also drove me home and flattered me by putting on the lights. Oh, that's cute.
Time passes now after that happens. I kind of didn't really think much of it.
Now we're in spring 2011. Two years later.
Yes. I got a letter in the mail, me being subpoenaed to court.
So we're going to call the guy I was walking with longboard, Andrew. Basically, Andrew's attorney wanted to use me as a witness because he's being charged with assault.
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It starts with one girl developing strange, violent symptoms, and then another, and then another. Rumors begin to swirl.
Is it something in the water, inside the school, or is it all in their heads? Hysterical is my search for answers, and along the way, I uncover surprising connections to unexplained incidents around the world, events that challenge everything we think we know about our bodies and our minds.

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trial of Wondery+, in the Wondery app, or on Apple Podcasts. So I show up at court and I was waiting and waiting.
So I sat down beside a different person and I just, again, as I do, I was chatting with them. The guy was kind of annoyed.
He was just saying like, I have to take off work to be here. We chatted for about 20 minutes and Andrew's attorney came to grab me and they read me my statement.
From that night. Yeah, they could not use it.
I was so drunk. I even say it in the statement.
I'm like, this is awesome. Mom, I'm so sorry.
Keep stuttering. I'm so drunk.
It was not usable. Inadmissible.
Ultimately, after they read it back to me, they decided I wasn't going to be a reliable witness, and they let me go home. On my way out, though, I did see that guy I was sitting beside, and I told him, good luck for whatever reason you're here, and I was on my way.
Did he tell you why he was there? Was he also a witness to something? Yeah, he was involved in one of the trials. But the thing is, where the courtroom is, there's 10 different courtrooms.
We didn't get too into it. He was a bit more of a shy guy, but now we're in September, 2011, just a bit later that year.
I start working at a new bar downtown and I started doing guest list and cover charge. So I would stand kind of outside the bar and it was quite a popular student bar, young person bar.
It had quite a line on busy nights. And if any of my friends knew me or anyone recognized me, they tried to cut the line.
I hear one night, Hey, Julie, remember me? It's Curtis from court. He remembered your name? No, that's impressive.
Yeah. I walked over and then I ultimately did remember him too.
And he was with a bunch of friends. So obviously asking to cut the line and I let them in later.
He had a bit of liquid courage in him and he asked if he could buy me a drink after my shift. I was intrigued and single, so I accepted.
The sim part of the story is that I was now having a drink with the guy who got knocked out by Andrew. No! He's the guy? No! Yes.
Oh my God. And the knockout happened in front of the bar I was working at.
Oh. So another one of the witnesses ended up being a bouncer that worked at that bar, too, which is kind of funny.
Wow. This is wild.
The reason it went to court was this Andrew guy, it wasn't his first assault, but he also hit Curtis so hard that he had brain trauma and was in the ICU for like a week. Oh, my God.
Oh, When this guy was saying he was a trained fighter, it all kind of makes sense. So a few weeks after that, Kurt and I started dating.
Now we're married. We have two kids.
Oh, my God. One was born two weeks ago.
Oh, congrats. Congratulations.
Wait a minute. Oh, my God.
This is a lot. You're having a hard time computing.
Cause this is sim and meet cute. It's so exciting.
Even when you told me that he said some guy tripped me on my skateboard and we got in a fight and I knocked him out. Even when I heard that in my mind, I was like, probably something inane happened and you overreacted and punched a guy.
So when you got to hear Curtis's side of the story, what was it? Obviously, he doesn't remember anything after being knocked out, but he probably did trip the guy. In London, Ontario, after the bars get out, it is like mayhem.
There are so many people out on the sidewalk. So for anyone to even be skateboarding down a sidewalk, it's going to run into someone.
You're making a strong case to moving to London. It's like the bars let out and it's chaos.
Jay-Z's there. It's incredible.
Come join us. Ultimately, it's kind of funny because me and Kurt are very different.
I'm super outgoing. He's a bit more reserved and he's always harping on me for talking to strangers, but I never would have met him if I didn't strike up conversation with him in court and I didn't walk with a stranger who had assaulted him.
Think about his versions even more of him. Like something terrible happened to him, but it resulted in the greatest thing.
How sweet. Well, Julie, what an adorable story.
Yeah, we love that. Thank you.
I wrote in for a few different things. Did you guys ever have a sleepwalking prompt? We did.
Some guy walked through a fucking plate glass window and fell down two stories. I wrote in for that one too, but if it ever circles back.
If we do a part two. Yeah, Rob, flag that.
You got it after staircase sex. We're going to put out a prompt.
Tell us about a staircase fucking that went wrong. Do you think anyone's going to submit to that? Do you think people have tried to fuck on a staircase? It doesn't have to have gone wrong.
Yeah, just tell us about time. Okay.
I think people do it at sports stadiums all the time. Oh my god, you're reminding me me i had sex in the stairwell of the luxor hotel when i was 23 but not on the stairs not on the stairs leaning against a railing okay well you acted so shocked when i did but i had not even thought of stairwells have we already put it on our list to do the foreign bodies and the colon thing, whatever that official term was?

Because I was just reading a Sedaris story, and he said that he has a couple different nurse and doctor friends, and that they all have the stories, too.

And he has a whole thing about it.

It's very funny.

I think it's on our list.

Well, you're delightful, and I think you are a very good ambassador for London, Ontario.

Thank you.

It was lovely meeting you guys.

You, too. Do everything in your power to bring Ted Segers to Ontario.
Okay. That's the goal.
All right. Okay.
Looking forward to it. All right.
So nice meeting you. Take care.
What about jury duty stories? Yeah, that's good. Also, I had an idea because I was watching ER.
Stories of you learn something from watching TV or a movie and it changed your life. Interesting.
There was an episode yesterday. So maybe this is a prompt for you.
Tell us. There was an episode with this guy who came in and he had hiccups and I was like, oh, weird.
And then turned out it was really, really bad. I mean, TV can can save a life yeah here's leah hi leah it's actually lee but you are the eight millionth person to get that wrong so we'll just blame my parents together and i'm gonna immediately throw rob under the bus because he said leah out why did mom and dad choose lee is there a story behind it both from england it's a more british typical name they're from england my dad was born in England.
My mom's whole family was in England, emigrated to Canada. That's where I was born.
Oh, back-to-back Canadians. Are you currently in Canada? I live in Greenfield, Massachusetts now.
Nice. What's Greenfield? How close is that to Boston? Two hours west.
It's very close to where you've been, Dax. You recorded The Judge in the town next to us in Shelburne Falls.
Shelburne Falls. Yes.
I love it there. We actually got engaged in that town.
Yeah, that's an incredibly beautiful part of the country. Okay.
So you have a meet cute story. Where does it take place? What year? I do.
Okay. So my story starts in November, 2010.
I was a junior in college at UMass Amherst. So me and my friends were at one of my friend's apartments.
We're partying, drinking, you know, as a junior in college does. Somebody notices our friend Alyssa's calendar on the wall and it says Johnston family Christmas party.
Alyssa, how drunk are you? Your last name is Johnson. Do you not know how to spell your own last name? And she was like, wait, you guys don't know this already.
My dad was a Johnston and my mom was a Johnson. So she only changed her last name by one letter.
So in our tipsy girlhood state, we all just start laughing and come up with this theory. Her parents were like the sweetest couple.
We all loved them. So we're like, it's fate, right? If it's one letter different, fate has spoken and you must be together.
I agree with that. Right? Why not? Continue on with our night.
Keep drinking. Mostly forget about this until the next night.
My best friend and I, Kate, who was at the party as well, part of this conversation, we go to our shift at the dining hall. Quick side note.
You guys have already heard about this dining hall. This is where the boy got poop on the staircase.
It's the same building. Isn't that so funny? Oh my God.
That is so Sim. When I heard that story, I was like, what are the chances? And then he's describing the building.
I'm like, yes, this is the building I worked in. And I think it's around the same time.
I want to say he said 2010, 2011. So we're talking could have been the next day.
Who knows? Did you work there? Yes. I was a student worker.
So we actually traded texts back and forth trying to remember who this person was. He was super charming and he's very tall.
So much is going down at the dining hall. I want to enroll there.
I'm going to move to London, Ontario and then commute to Amherst. So yeah, this is the same place.
So Kate and I go to our shift and our shift was late nights, which basically means serving fried food to kids stumbling and drunk or high, you know, on a study break, very laid back. And there's usually only like one or two cooks who are the supervisors for the night.
And then the rest are just student workers, 9 PM to 2 AM. But a good shift for people watching.
Can we digress for one second? I can't think of anything more fun than being at this college and being able to stumble and drunk between 11 and 2 a.m and fucking eat a bunch of diner food fuck with your buddies i didn't have that experience that's really so fun it honestly was the best and it was also great working because you saw all your friends they came in and said hi but you also just got a lot of good stories so yeah on this particular night we're setting up our station kate and i we see someone in a cook's outfit walk past and we're like, huh, I hadn't seen this person before. He's walking by and I definitely clock him.
He's tall. He's handsome, broad shoulders, bright blue eyes.
Pooped his pants. A little bit of poop coming out of his pants.
Not quite that's all. He got my Irish shirt.
Kate, of course, knowing me better than anyone in the world, she clocks me clocking him. She kind of gives me a smirk and she's like, OK, we like him.
And then that's when she, I think, remembers the joke. She's like, well, you can't date him unless it's one letter different.
There's no way. You know, it's the rule.
It's fate. We joke about it.
Then he comes over and is like, hey, I'm the cook for the night, which means he was our supervisor for the night. Oh, in power.
Not quite a professor, but almost. I'll take it.
He's on making the Philly cheesesteaks and he assigns me to the fry later, which is right next to him frying the onion rings, because of course, onion rings, Philly cheesesteaks. It's a good night.
Oh, what a meal. I'm starving.
We're next to each other all night. And to my pleasant surprise, the flirtation is on immediately.
We're chatting. What's the age difference? Three years.
Oh, nothing. It's not like a 45 year old guy.
No, no, no, no, no. The cooks were often just out of college.
We're flirting andate's clocking it and being my best friend that she is she's of course gonna give me a hard time about this so she just keeps as often as she can discreetly being like doesn't matter if it's not one letter different you can't date him joking so anyway the shift goes on more flirting happens and we're getting towards the end of the shift and she's just kind of like all right i'm taking stuff into my own hands now because we don't know if we're going to see this guy again because he doesn't normally work with us. So we don't know, like, is he new? Is he from another dining hall? Is he just covering? Next time he walks up to us, she just goes, hey, I didn't catch your last name.
What is it? And he goes, Herrick. And we just are frozen staring at him.
So he walks away and our jaws are on the floor because my last name was Derek. No.
Also was. Was.
Was. Wow.
Derek and Herrick. Is he related to the elephant man? Wasn't his last name? No, that's Merrick.
This is Herrick. Oh, Herrick.
Sorry. I went with an M.
I understand that's a lot to take in with the letters. So anyway, he walks away and we're like, we're logical girls.
That's crazy. We just talked about this yesterday.
There's no chance that this is real. So we come up with, he must have overheard her joking with me.
He was standing right next to me a lot. And maybe he got given like a list of staff names of who was working with him that night.
And so he just decided to pull a fast one on us. So he walks back and Kate, being the future badass lawyer that she is, immediately pounces on him and is like, there's no way that's your real last name.
What is it really? He's like, you don't believe my last name? Like, what do you want to see ID? And we both immediately were like, yes. He takes out his ID and just right there on his Massachusetts driver's license says Robert Herrick.
Oh. How soon do you explain to him what he's just fallen into? Not then because our jaws were plastered on the floor.
And I don't know how you really explain that in a non-creepy way. Yes, yes, yes.
Stakes are high. All of my friends have decided it's fate and you now must marry me.
And this is now 2 a.m. We're a little delirious.
He walks away and we clock out. We go on with our day.
But of course, the next day, Kate quickly tells all of our friends, oh, it's fate. Lee's met the love of her life.
She's getting married, joking around, and I kind of just blow it off because that's ridiculous. Nothing happens.
Don't see him again at the shift until a month later, he finds me on Facebook and slides into my DMs. Oh, wow.
Good for him. He just was kind of like, how's it going? You want to go on a date? So we did.
Somehow that date lasted four days. Sorry, mom.
Oh, wow. It was just one of those things where you start hanging out and you never stop.
I was still in college. So, of course, I continued on college.
But as soon as we graduated, we moved in together. And in 2016, Kate told this story at our wedding as my meeting honor.
How exciting! Yay! I love that. It's really good.
That's meant to be. So now you just had to change one letter.
I had to change one letter, which I have to tell you was way more of a pain in the ass than it was maybe worth. But I also couldn't fathom our future children having to explain Derek Herrick to people or like hyphenating.
That seemed really out of the question. One of my husband's friends, his suggestion was to compromise and go with an F in between D and H and go Ferrick.
Oh, that's also a great compromise. Did you keep it as a maiden name?

Like, is your name Lee Derek Harrakh?

Oh, no, I thought about it.

Facebook was the only social media at the time, I believe.

And I, as a joke, hyphenated it just to make people think.

And then I realized you can't change it back for three months.

So I got stuck with that for a while.

How cute.

Yeah, I like that story.

We got a five-year-old boy, a three-year-old girl. And I still work at the college where we met you were like this is so fun I'm not leaving that's smart yeah the best thing ever the best things ever and he found employment in that area you know what I mean I know what you mean paradise is in your backyard what is it what are you trying to go for home is where the heart is no I was just trying to say a regular sentence that those are the best times of your life.
Oh, I hope you had the time of your life. Is that what you're thinking? Yeah, that's what it was.
Well, Leigh, what a sweet story. Thank you.
We had a couple other weird things too, like the town he's from, Bernardson, Massachusetts. When we went to meet my parents, my mom was like, that's really weird because we live in Bernards Township, New Jersey.
And so a little Googling later, we find out that the namesake is the same person, Sir Francis Bernard. He was like a town slut.
He was just going all over the country and spraying his seed everywhere. You must believe in soulmates.
It's funny you say that we're really not the type of people to believe in that kind of thing, but it does feel like that's a little too much to be just coincidence. I still think it's coincidence, but I still like it just as much.
That's how I feel, Dax. I still think it's coincidence, but I love the story.
It's a fun story. It got me here.
So that's pretty exciting. Yeah.
Well, Leen, lovely meeting you and what a delightful tale. Thank you.
It's kind of a thank you to both of you. But Dax, when the podcast was first launched, my brother had just come to me and told me that he was struggling with alcoholism, but he wasn't ready to get sober yet.
And so that was a hard relationship at the time to navigate, really hard to help in that type of situation. But just so happened that I was a day one arm cherry.
So I started listening to a lot of your stories about AA and recovery, and it made me understand him in a way that I never could before. And it allowed me to see how his brain works in a way I couldn't before.
I would bring that to him and we would talk about it and he would open up to me and share with me what he was going through. And so then in 2021, he did the most courageous thing ever.
And he called me and asked for help. He told me those conversations were the thing that allowed him to open up to me and ask for help when he needed it.
And we got him to rehab and he's now three and a half years sober. Oh, man, that makes me so happy.
It's like the reach is further than you think. And I know people thank you as people who are in sobriety, but as a family member of someone in sobriety, it's a little bit not as talked about how hard it is to connect with the people you love who are struggling.
So having that insight and hope from someone who was on the other side of it was huge. Oh, wonderful.
And then Monica, on on day seven when you were talking about what it's

like to love someone in addiction that hits so deeply and you were so vulnerable about how you sometimes feel crazy and you don't know what to do we'll make you feel crazy sorry jackson i know yeah well i'm so glad it's been helpful yeah me too really really is yeah so thank you.

All right, take care.

Bye.

Oh, man.

Yeah, me too. Really, really is.
Yeah, so thank you. All right.
Take care. Oh, man.
Yeah, me-cutes are pretty cute. Me-cutes are so cute.
We do need one like every 20th episode just to cleanse the palate of all the gunk and garbage we put out there in the universe. Yeah.
I don't know, but there might have been a seed to a potential me-cute. Oh, gonna say well what a dick move to me what if i go the fucking greatest thing happened to me yesterday and i can't tell you this is different it hasn't turned into a meet cue yet but it may is this with your tow truck no but we'll get to that okay okay Love you.
Do you want to sing a tune or something? We don't have a theme song. Oh.
Okay, great. We don't have a theme song for this new show, so here I go, go, go.
We're going to ask some random questions, and with the help of our cherries, we'll get some suggestions on the flyer rindish on the flyer rindish enjoy follow armchair expert on the wondery 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 Wondery Plus

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