Armchair Anonymous: Wild Card X

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Welcome, welcome, welcome to Armchair Anonymous, our favorite prompt.

Wildcard. We say our favorite prompt pretty much every time, but we do really like wildcard.
It's not our favorite prompt. Say it about free.

I know, but we have to be. I have three favorite prompts.
Okay.

What are they? Go.

Mast.

I mean,

clean it up.

What is just masturbation series? I know. We do that.
This is basically it.

So, yeah, then I was like, ew, okay. Cause

it's a kid show. Oh, that's right.
It is a kid show. Unexpected orgasm.
Yeah. Shit yourself.
Unauthorized evacuation. And wild card.
And wild card.

And mostly wild card just because they often include one of those aforementioned prompts. Does this one have any duty? No, I don't think we have any duty.
Oh, then don't listen. Yeah, don't listen.

But this one has maggots. Oh.
Yeah, maggots are always good. Oh.

Okay, please enjoy wildcard.

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Hello, Lydia. How are you doing today? I'm doing great.
How are you guys? Good. Where are you? I'm in Portland, Maine.
Oh,

okay. Continuing our Northeast tour.
These things are really suspicious.

It's been a day of the Northeast. Have you had anyone in Maine? No.
Not Maine, but we just got off with a New Hampshire. And I'm dying to go to Maine.

It kind of popped off on social media this summer. Like, everyone's in Maine.
Oh, I think it's so beautiful. I think it's the next Hudson Valley.
It's that vibe. I want to go to both places.
Okay.

Great.

Lydia, can Moni stay at your spot while she visits? Oh, my God. Of course.

I'll give you all the wrecks. There's so many good restaurants and places to go.
Amazing. And do you serve wine in the home? Oh, yes.
There are so many cute wine bottles

you will be taking care of.

Oh, sign her up. Okay, Lydia, you have a wild card story, which means we know nothing about anything.
This story actually happens in New England. It's not Maine, but actually Cape Cod.

Growing up, my family and I would go to Cape Cod to visit my grandparents. They lived on a lake, grew up going there.
It's really gorgeous. So the story is in 2010.
I'm about nine at the time.

So on the lake, there's a lot of different guided tours you can go on. So you can go kayaking, paddle boarding.

And we had tried basically all of them up until that point, except for learning how to sail a boat. Oh, boy.
Okay.

There was a kids' sailing camp that I really wanted to go on. I'd grown up watching all the kids learn how to sail in the lake.

So as soon as I was old enough, I asked my parents for an early birthday present and they signed me up. So my sister and I, ready to go.
At nine. Which seems way too young to be put on a sailboat.

How old's the sister, older or younger? She's two and a half years older than me. So she was like 11 at the time.
Neither of you equipped for a sea voyage, but let's go. We start the camp.

It's a week-long day camp and the winds are only high in the afternoon. So it was after lunch to dinner time.
That's when we were out in the water.

So the first half of camp, the counselor was was in the boat with us it was like a small 10 to 15 foot sailboat nothing crazy did they call it a sunfish there were sunfishes this was like a little bit bigger than that

so about six of us kids could fit in one comfortably the ages ranged anywhere from i think i was the youngest at nine to 13 maybe and the whole camp was run by a bunch of 16 year olds so really starting off not great we started the week had the counselor on the boat, learned the ropes, learned how to do everything, felt pretty comfortable.

And then the second half of the week, all of the counselors left and they were in a skiff puttering around following us. So we were left to our own devices.
And I was excited for the freedom.

I was nine. I hadn't experienced much of that before.
The last day of camp was what they called Pirate Day. It sounds exactly like what it was.

We were able to go around to the other boats on the lake and try to capsize their boat and like take them over. Oh, fun.
Really jazzed.

I was a really competitive kid and our group had gotten pretty close during that week that we were at camp. And by Thursday, we decided we needed to practice.

The way that we thought it was best to practice was to intentionally capsize, so like flip over our own boat, practice getting it back up. Little dress rehearsal for the big war.
Exactly.

So we spent the entire time flipping over the boat. We had been doing it all afternoon.
It went really smoothly and mostly.

And then the last 20 minutes of camp, we decided to do one more before we were called back in. Here's my public service announcement.
Never last one.

If someone says, all right, last trip down the hill when you're snowboarding call it last session on the track call it last stunt i mean we already nailed it we don't need to do it again it's a jinx we should definitely have called it about 20 minutes prior to this moment we were all tired we were all cranky we had decided to do it one more time and the way that you capsize a smaller sailboat is you pull in all the lines so there's no loops of rope hanging in the water okay and you all shove to one side So we wait for the boat to kind of catch and start flipping on its own.

Think of the boat at this point kind of horizontal in the water, the sails like lying flat on the top.

At this point, typically we would push off and swim away and let it do its thing.

But I had seen a lot of the older girls doing like this thing where they'd climb over the top and end on the bottom of the boat so they were completely dry. This was not condoned by the counselors.

This is not what they taught us to do, but I thought they were really cool. So I really wanted to do it.

I thought you were going to say that the trick was going to be to like hold onto the mast at the last minute and get flung back up with the boat. That would be insane.

We were told very sternly not to touch the mast. So we all steered pretty clear of the sail and the mast.
Those were the fancy parts of the boats and we didn't want to break them.

All the rest of the girls including my sister, so four of them swim away and I'm kind of just hanging on like you would to like a monkey bar with my hands on the top edge of the boat with the other girl that decided to stay with me.

And is your abdomen laying on the bottom side of the boat or on the top side of the boat? We're on the hollow end. So like where we would sit.

I was kind of dangling with my feet in the water, but everything else was above the water. I was going to follow this girl's lead.
And as soon as she started climbing over, I started climbing over.

I realized pretty quickly this was a lot harder than it looked like. And I did not have the upper body strength at nine years old to do this.

I decided to bail. I'm like, I'm going to cut my losses.
I'll try it again tomorrow. Pretty rational for a nine-year-old.
I was a little bit embarrassed.

I let go, but I hadn't realized that at this moment, the girl that was in charge of the main sail line had not brought in the line all the way. So there was kind of a mess of ropes underneath it.

Uh-oh. Are you you going to leave? Monica just made such an abrupt movement that it looked like she might depart.

So I let go and I fall into this loop of rope. And I didn't realize this at the time because it was pretty slack.
It wasn't fully capsized yet. It was just laying in the water.

And it was kind of up above on my like upper body. So my life jacket was not letting it touch my skin.
So I couldn't feel it. So I start trying to swim away and I realize I'm not getting very far.

And as I kind of lean forward to start swimming, the rope slips up and now is stuck around my neck.

Oh,

it wasn't super tight at this moment. So I was like, oh, I can just probably take it up over my head like you would the sweatshirt or shirt.
I would be fine.

But what I didn't realize is the last little bit of it fully turning like a 180, the boat goes pretty quickly. So as soon as I realized where it was on my body, I couldn't get it over my head.

So I was kind of stuck. I need help.
So I look at my sister who's not paying attention at the time. And I like call over to her.
I'm like, help. I can still talk at this point.
I'm all fine.

And she realizes we might need the counselors. Let's call them over.
So all the girls kind of motion for them to come over in their little boat. They're about 200 yards away.

And this boat motor is really old and really small. So they don't move very fast.
At this point, instead of staying in one place, I'm being dragged back by my neck towards the side of the boat.

And I'm panicked a little bit, but I'm kind of in shock. I don't know what's going on.
And pretty soon, the back of my head is kind of flush with the side of the boat that's almost fully a 180.

And the rope starts tightening and tightening and is not getting looser. Oh my God.

So I had my fingers like in between the rope, but at a certain point it got so tight that they kind of popped out. And I couldn't breathe at this point.
Oh, Jesus.

And the water is maybe up to my chin. And I'm not fully panicked at this point.
I'm just kind of like, keep your head above water, keep breathing as much as you can.

My sister, though, is fully in hysterics. Yes.
So helpful, isn't it? But also, how could she not? I don't blame her. And I talked to her before this, and she was like, You looked like you were dying.

Yes.

I mean, you kind of were. I was like getting there.
You're on the road to death for sure. Instead of saying, it's okay, we called for help.
It's going to be okay. She starts just screaming, don't die.

Are you going to die? Clia, don't die. Okay, no, round the side.

Do not die. That made me get way more scared than I ever was.
I didn't realize that nine years old I could die.

The boat is still about 100 yards away with all all the counselors in it. And my sister's fully freaking out.
The other girls are like, what the hell is going on?

And no one's attempting to loosen the tension on this rope. No, they're all kind of just staring in shock.

But at this point, the rope starts dragging me underneath the water rather than just keeping me above.

So it was trying to bring me down to where the mast was, which was about 10 to 20 feet under the water, which is how tall it was. And at this point, only my nose and my eyes were above the water.

And I was starting to swallow a lot of water. I was trying to cough it up.
I didn't have enough air to cough it up. I start fully panicking.

I'm kind of gasping in a lot of air and I can hear now that my ears are under the water, like the vibration of the boat coming towards me. So I know that help is on the way.

I am turning blue at this point, my sister told me, and I was almost fully submerged when the boat with the counselors pulls up and the lead counselor jumps in the water to try to cut the ropes underneath the boat.

Good. So someone has a knife.
Very small pocket knife. These ropes were kind of thick and big.
It was taking a while. I am now kind of starting to pass out a little bit.
My vision's going.

I'm getting like kind of drowsy. I knew I would probably be okay, but in the back of my head, I just heard my sister's voice just screaming over and over again, like, don't die.

I'm like, are you going to die? Yeah, yeah. So not helpful.

But after what felt like another six hours, I felt the rope like slightly loosen around my neck. I start coughing up all the water.

I get hoisted into the boat by all the counselors and I get brought back to the dock with my sister.

Since we lived on the lake, they knew where we were at and my parents had heard all the commotion and come down to see if we were having a good time.

They thought all the screaming was just kids having fun. My sister and myself are dropped off completely hysterical.
I was crying at this point, coughing up a lot of water.

And I had this massive rope burn from underneath one side of my ear all the way across to the other.

And it was bruised. My whole body kind of hurt because I was just like straining against the water and like the rope.
They tell my parents what happened.

My parents were just so thankful that they could get there in time and I was fine and everything was okay. My parents thought I would be afraid of the water for the rest of my life.
I wasn't.

I asked to go back to camp the next day after I had calmed down. You wanted to participate in Pirate Day?

Yeah, I was so excited. It was like the big day.

And they were like, okay, we'll walk with you and see how this goes. So they walked me over.
The counselor was like, we don't want the risk on the water. You can come in our boat.

We don't want you in a sailboat. And I was like, so fair.
I totally get it.

And come to find out, they thought my parents were going to sue them. So that's why they were like so nice to me and my sister after that.
They didn't know my parents weren't very litigious.

It was fest that they didn't know. They were not going to sue them.
They realized it was just me being dumb and I was okay and everything worked out.

But yeah, that's the story about how I almost died. Wow.
Wow. I hate those stories.
Everyone's having fun and then we're not having fun. Yeah.
Yeah. Scary.

I'm glad you made it. Have you stuck with sailing? Are you still a sailor? I have never sailed since.
Okay. I find it scary.

That whole like getting out in a boat for days. That's where you'll find my confidence and fearlessness ends.
That's good. I'm glad it has an end.
Well, Lydia, I'm glad you made it.

I'm glad that the counselor had a knife. Yes, me too.
Telling all them going forward. I hope they start adding those into the boats at this point.
Me too. I honestly haven't seen the camp since.

So I think I might have been the last year that this

was put on. I think I might have scarred them all a little too much.
Thank you for sharing. Yeah, it's lovely to meet you.
Yeah. Thanks, guys.
Take care. Bye.

Hello. Hello.

What fake name are we going to go with? We are going to go with Stacey. A shout out to my best friend, who I'm hoping will become a devoted listener once he hears this.
Oh, we love this tactic.

Yeah, it's a good tactic. It's flattery and light manipulation, but we like it.
For sure. I'm surprised she doesn't already.
I talk about it all the time. So you have kind of a Tina Fey vibe.

Have you heard that before? I have not, but I will take that because one of my co-workers loves Tina Fey. Well, she's the queen on earth.
She is. I love her.

I actually did want to say to Monica in particular that I am a PT. So we're already friends.

Exactly. I work exclusively with kids and I have a special interest in concussion.

Oh, wow. God, you guys should really go out for drinks.
CTE plus PT, so many letters.

I thought I have to share this because the number of times I hear you mention CTE on the podcast, I'm like, oh, this is right in my wheelhouse. I love talking about concussion.

What's the very most common way kids get concussions? It's typically sport-related. I would say in the last few years, 90% of the kids that I've worked with have had concussions from sports injuries.

A lot of hockey, we see a lot of that wearing from.

Yeah, okay. You're in Canada.
Yeah.

As a Michigander, I know.

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Okay, so what is your wildcard story? My story occurs over the course of about 18 months from October 2009 when my son was seven months old to about March of 2011. The timeline's fairly important.

Key players including my husband will call him Logan. Neighbors Jenny and her husband Johnny and their next door neighbors will call them Candace and Neil.
Listen, Stacey, I'm applauding you.

It's very hard to remember fake names. I find this when wherever we're using someone's fake name, it's hard.
So the fact that you have about seven to juggle is going to be impressive.

Hopefully I can land it. Candace knows Logan because Logan's family owns a very well-known restaurant in our city.
Candace introduces Logan to Jenny because Jenny's running an event.

where she needs some prizes. So Logan generously has his family donate some gift cards for this event that Jenny's running.

Within a short period of time, Jenny happens to be walking in the neighborhood and sees us on our front porch, stops by, introduces herself to me. So now I know who Jenny is.

I'm seven months postpartum. I'm not super comfortable in my postpartum body, but Jenny is ultimately very friendly, neighborly, but she's not terribly threatening.

Fast forward a few months to about May of 2010, and I start seeing Jenny around the park. I'm now...
taking my over one-year-old son to the park. Jenny and I start hanging out.

We spend a lot of time together. We text, we email, we confide in each other about our respective marriages and things that are going on in our lives.

She's a primary school teacher with two kids of her own.

It gets to the point where she generously offers to babysit my son so that Logan and I can go to Sunday baseball, which is a few hours every Sunday. This is great, right? I'm terrified.
I'm a new mom.

I don't like sending anyone in to look after my kid. This is costing me nothing.
Jenny and I continue our friendship, and then she kind of falls off the face of the earth.

So around August 2010, I stop hearing from her. I reach out a handful of times and figure, okay, she's confided in me that she's struggling in her marriage.

Maybe she's focusing on her marriage and she doesn't really have time for this relatively new friendship. So I think nothing of it.

In November 2010, I go to the fertility clinic for an embryo transfer. Both of my kids are the product of in vitro, yay science.
Yes.

So I have my transfer a couple weeks later, get confirmation that I am in fact pregnant with my second child. And you've got a 14 month old at this point or something?

They're about two years and four months apart. He's like 19 months, I guess.
Get halfway through my pregnancy.

So about 19 and a half weeks, I go to jump on the elliptical because this time I'm going to be super fit for my pregnancy. But I take a detour and I check my email instead.

I open the email and I see this email from Johnny. Johnny's married to Jenny.
Johnny and I have met, but we've never had a conversation. In fact, I thought he was a little bit creepy.

So I actually assume that it's Jenny sending this email because I had sent her a couple of emails over the last little while, hadn't heard back. Maybe she got rid of her email and she's now using his.

I start reading and it's super cryptic. They're going on about the year from hell, knowing information and how it's had an impact on their life.
And I'm reading and I'm not really getting it.

I don't understand what's going on until I see one. line.
Your husband had an affair with my wife. Okay,

okay, doke. I must have read it like three or four times thinking, wait, what? So you're saying that Logan and Jenny had an affair.
Clearly it's Johnny. I figured that out at this point.

And I'm like, wait a minute, Johnny has just alluded to the fact that he has had this knowledge for a year. That means the affair ended or he found out in March of 2010.

Well, maybe he could have found out last week. And he said, how long was that going on? And she said, a year.

I didn't actually think of that but i surmise that the affair would have happened around october 2009

till it effectively ended march 2010 when johnny found out but then i'm like well wait a minute if it's march 2010 that johnny finds out jenny became my friend in may of 2010 after the affair would have ended.

She came into my house and babysat my son and looked us dead in the face. Me, obviously not knowing, but my husband totally letting her come in and babysit our child.

You've got to almost recompute every interaction you've ever had with her. Absolutely.
So it's basically like from a movie where everything is in reverse.

Yeah, and you start playing through everything. But also, how would she have known him before you guys even met? The timeline comes in.
So Logan and Jenny meet in 2009 in October.

I meet Jenny at the same time. They have an affair that ends 2010.
She becomes my friend two months after it ends.

Now we've got some clues that I can build a little theory on, which is the husband shut it down, but she wants another way back in. She wants to be around the husband.
I don't know.

That's where my head would go. This is strange.
It really is.

So the first call I make is to my mom. Incidentally, my parents.
just returned at that point from Savannah, Georgia.

Bing, ding, ding. My mom thinks someone has died.
I'm on the phone sobbing. I'm halfway through my second pregnancy and I've just disclosed that my, my husband has had an affair.

I hang up with my mom. My next call is to Logan.
I got to say something. I actually blurted out to his sister who answers the phone.
She just quietly passes.

I'm sure she handed him the phone with quite a specific look on his face. Like you're fucked in joy.
Yeah, pretty much.

It should come as no surprise that he denies it, tells me I'm acting crazy and I hang up on him. Now I'm like, well, how do I get confirmation? Because I'm reeling at this point.

I'm like, wait a minute, Candace introduced Logan and Jenny. She'll know.
And real quick, are you considering calling the husband to just say, like, okay, I got your email. I need a little more

proof. Not at that point.
I call Candace. She confirms, yes, Jenny and Logan had an affair.

She said, I had told Logan that if I had ever asked him, she said that she would tell me the truth. At this point, my son has now woken from his nap.

I plop him in the car and I drive to Jenny's house.

Oh, wow. Okay, Here we go.
Here we go.

Face to face. So I drive to Jenny's house.
I'm sitting in the driveway. Obviously, Candace has alerted her as to what has happened.
Jenny considers waiting me out, but this is never going to happen.

I'm pretty persistent. And her personal trainer actually shows up.
So they have a standing session that she's supposed to make. So she finally shows up.
She pulls into the driveway.

She's got her five and nine year old in tow. And we each get out of the car.

And I said, look, I am not about to cause cause a scene i'm not going to scream at you i just want some answers yeah yeah she invites me into her house and our kids go into the play area she doesn't want her older kids in earshot they clearly know something is off so they give us about 30 minutes maybe not even and i ask all of my questions like how long when did it start hash out those details but then i say to her What on earth possessed you to become my friend after this whole thing ended?

Because it did actually end in March of 2010 when Johnny found out. She said, I wanted confirmation that you were a really terrible person so that I wouldn't feel badly about what I did.

But it turns out I'm not a terrible person. Right.
Was the husband. Yeah, you're a Tina Fey person.

It was

your husband telling her that you were a bad person. I mean, obviously, I guess.

Yeah, that was basically the long and the short of it is that nothing good was said about me at the time that they were having this affair and unfortunately for jenny she came to find out that i'm a pretty likable good person and i didn't deserve that and she actually really enjoyed our friendship but clearly had to cut it off i mean you don't carry on a friendship like that this is all interesting i'm just gonna say i believe her i believe your husband said those things i don't believe she needed to go find out if that was true that's immaterial what the fuck it's not on you to like go become an investigator now that's her own obsession with logan I think.

I could see it because if that ended, she's probably mad at him. Yeah.
So she's like, he told me all these things and now I have to sit with this guilt. I want to know if that's warranted or not.

I think that's just adding more cruelty onto you. It's not nice or wise, but I can see how.

That happened. I think she wanted to go answer if he has been lying across the board.

I think she probably, when they broke up, felt like, I wonder if anything he said was true about how he felt about me.

And now one way I can go find out if he's full of shit is I'm going to find out if the wife was really a terrible woman. Right.

I think she more wanted to find out if she had been lied to about everything and used our friend Stacey here to confirm whether he was a liar across the board, which I don't think is your right to do.

Interestingly enough. Obviously, my suspicions at this point are raised, but I'm halfway through a pregnancy with my second kid and I have an almost two-year-old.

I decided, well, I should try to see if this is a marriage that we can work to repair.

I've I've been able to get access to his phone, however, and it is very clear by text messages to numerous people that his behavior is not going to change.

Like he would say things to other women, like, I was a nag and he wasn't getting any sex and having those kinds of complaints. So I was like, okay, well, our marriage is.
effectively over.

So about nine days before my daughter was born,

we sat down two days after my birthday, actually, too. What a week.
Boy, this is a horrible

What a time to be alone.

Oh, boy. So anyway, our marriage effectively ends.
And what I will say is that we have a fine relationship now. He has remarried, not Jenny, and I love his wife.

His wife is one of my most favorite humans on the face of the earth.

That's nice. Everything is good.
My kids are now 14 and 16. And it was actually my 16-year-old who told me to write a

story.

Yeah, I owe him a debt of gratitude for this whole thing happening.

The other really interesting piece for me personally is that were I to have found out anytime between March of 2010 and November 2010, my daughter wouldn't be here.

And she was meant to be on this earth. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Great things can come out of nothing. That's a beautiful way.

Absolutely.

The last piece of this story, because there's more, is a few years after this whole thing happened,

I find out that Jenny is now married to Neil. Oh, Jesus, the other neighbor.

My god,

this is a sexy subdivision here. This is very desperate housewives vibes.
And I've told this story so many times because it's a great party story.

And it's not until I actually start telling that I'm like, this is crazy. You can't make this up.

That's why my son was like, you should write in because we listen to Armchair Anonymous Friday mornings on the way to school. Lovely.

we love that

we do we love it i don't know if it's good content for kids but they love it kind of wholesome about the whole family listening yeah yeah hearing how messy it gets out there this is so weird but the new wife that you really like do you ever feel defensive of her are you like well he's kind of a bad dude why are you nice lady who i like married to him that's another complication on top yeah well my hope is always that he turned a new leaf and is a stand-up guy I said, you know, if he fucks this up, I'm going to murder him because she's just phenomenal.

Well, if he did fuck it up, minimally I would point out that this is his problem. There's no perfect mate for him.
Oh, wow.

That's a wild story. Yeah.
What's a fake name we can give your 16-year-old? Because when you guys listen to it together, I want to say hi to them. What is a good fake name?

You've used all of the names.

Let's call him Liam. Liam, nice.
Nice, Liam. Strong.
Liam, we love having you in the audience. Yeah.
Infect your high school peers. Exactly.
Tell them they're missing the boat. All right.

Well, lovely meeting you. Take care.
Bye.

People really can accumulate some stories over a life. It sounds like that whole neighborhood should have just done like musical chairs.
Everyone just stood up, moving to the house next door.

Let's just keep this thing going. Hi.
Hi. How are you? I'm good.
How are you guys? Good. You have such a warm and inviting smile.
Oh, thank you very much. Where are you at in the country?

I am in Athens, Georgia. What in the whole world

and i went to uga go dogs when's the last time you ate her favorite cake what's it called yes good memory at last resort my strawberry cake i went to the last resort for brunch a few months back but it was too early for me to have the cake you can always have the cake I should have just had the cake.

Exactly. That's the move.
I think the actual store closed that she used to have. Well, she also passed.

Uh-oh. Okay, I didn't know that part.

Well, I'm glad her cakes live on that's her legacy yeah you're making me very nostalgic knowing you're there i hope you're enjoying it i love athens you have light fantasies of just moving there right it's the best and the vibes are so good that could be your second place we'll think about it okay yeah i lived in austin for a while and then i just moved back because i was like i want to be back close i grew up in athens as well love it okay so you have a wild card story which we love because we have no clue what the topic is even the story is about the time my babysitter threw me my 12th birthday.

Oh, great. Unconventional already.
The babysitter generally doesn't handle that. Right.
My babysitter was very special. She handled a lot of things in my life.
Her name's Allison.

It set the stage for this 12th birthday. I switched from going to public school to a smaller private school for middle school in sixth grade.
And this private middle school was K through 12.

So people had been there kindergarten all the way on. So everyone knew each other and and had kind of been together their whole lives.
And then I just popped on in there.

So I was really nervous, as most 12-year-olds probably are starting a new school. My babysitter, Allison, who was also kind of a nanny, she traveled with us.
She was with us a lot.

She had this great idea. It was like, let's just throw this epic birthday party.
We're going to get all these girls to be your new best friends. This is like a common trope.
It definitely is.

It kind of is like movie-esque, where it's like, let's just do this one thing.

I was totally down for it, though. So I'm approaching my parents, like, can I have this huge sleepover? It's going to be a few of my old friends so that I feel more comfortable.

And then basically all the new girls in my class. And then my little sister and her friend, because she always has to be included.
Yeah, yeah. About 20 kids.

So my parents are not thrilled with the idea. As a parent of a 12-year-old, no, thank you.
Worst nightmare. So then Allison steps in and is like, don't worry, I will handle it all.

We're going to do this for Sophie. It's going to be great.
You guys can even just go to a hotel for the night. I really got this.
She was actually a fabulous babysitter. How old was she?

I think she was about 25. She was an adult, but with a very childlike, chaotic, creative spirit.
I had a lot of fun with her. All my friends were obsessed with her.

They always wanted her to be there when they were hanging out with me. So she convinces my parents.
They go to the hotel. Everyone gets there.
And the first thing she does is round us all up.

And she's like, guys, there's one rule. It's that there are no rules.
Oh, boy. She has like a whiteboard.
Like she presents it like we're about to go through all the rules.

And then that's the only thing she writes.

2012 year olds. Oh my God.

And then she goes through some stuff that will happen. We're going to have a fake wedding.
We're going to have a talent show. A fake wedding.
That's ambitious.

The first thing that happens is there's a tornado drill. Wait, a planned or a real life tornado drill? We're practicing for a real tornado.
Oh, okay. But she's put this on.

We know that there's no tornado. We're practicing because she's like, there might be thunderstorms tonight.

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so we all have to squeeze into this tiny little bathroom in the middle of my house, the safest spot, all 20 of us in this bathroom. She's like, let's put someone on someone's shoulders.

So that's how the party started. Then we're going to order pizza.
She's like, this is going to be great. I think you guys should put on a show for the pizza guy.

I was always dancing to Britney, Spice Girls, and saying, like, it was my constant thing was, will you please sit down and let me show you this? I was very into it. And I picked the song.

I decided we would do the intro to bring it on. Nice.
So each girl could have her own part, sort of like each of the cheerleaders.

And when you walk into my house, you open the front door and there's a staircase right in front of you. So I'm like, we can each walk down the staircase.
We'll line up. We'll each do our bit.

We're all dressing in feather boas, glittery things. We have like tons of makeup.
We really raid my costume drawer.

And then Allison's like, wow, this is the best performance I've ever seen in my life. You know what I think we need to do? I think we need to order from not just dominoes.

I think we need to order from Papa John's and Pizza Hut. So you guys can really put this performance on.
What is happening? She's losing control of it, but she's instigating all the loss of control.

Yes, that is her in a nutshell. Oh my God, Allison.

Is she okay?

Also, if I'm like a 22-year-old pizza delivery man, I don't want to see 12-year-olds put on a show for me. I'm going to feel very uncomfortable.
Right.

As a 12-year-old, I thought it was going to be the most amazing thing. Also, why didn't you guys order from Gumbies? They're not good audience members, the employees at Gumbies.

They're like, we make good pizza and that's it. We're not offering audience services.
They made such good pizza. All right, Allison, she made some mistakes, but okay.
Okay.

So the first pizza guy arrives and the music is like blaring.

And so we do our performance and we didn't really plan for what would happen if the second pizza guy arrived when the first pizza guy was there. We're stacking up.
Okay.

Do we reset or just say join mid-show?

it is mid-show but you're invited to watch yeah things got a little hectic and so we finish and we start over she's like up the stairs again again music starts over we're back down the stairs midway through i i'm noticing that the two pizza guys are like talking very animated and then all of a sudden they start fighting physically fighting they got an FS fight they're down my front steps and they're literally rolling around

because like whose pizza better? Or what did instigate it? Some of this is hard for me to remember, but the rumor was that they dated the same girl. Oh, that's why.
Yeah, that'll happen.

So then the third pizza guy, which is Pizza Fit, arrives. He jumps out, puts his pizza boxes down, just jumps in and starts trying to break this fight up.
Oh, a good Samaritan pizza man. Yeah.

So then the one pizza guy, I think it was Papa John's, gets up and runs and gets into a car. And then the dominoes guy is like, that's my car.
He's stealing my oh my God.

This is pandemonium.

This is like a slapstick. I hate to blame Allison, but I do.
I do think it's her fault.

We got a guy in the wrong car now. Oh, yeah.
Oh, my God.

Then all of a sudden, the cops are there. Some of the girls are scared.
They're upstairs. Other girls are more adventurous.
They're kind of like peeking out, walking onto the front porch.

I always say these are the moments you find out what everyone's child home life is like. If you're out there in front, you're like, okay, they see some action.
They're used to this. I was downstairs.

I was very polite. People pleaser.
I'm like, this is my party. I need to make sure everything's okay.
So I was very anxious. So this party had fog machines, strobe lights, disco balls.

Each room was themed. And I looked down and there is dry ice because there were dry ice little stations in the sinks up to my knees.
Like I can't even see the floor of my house.

And it's just basically billowing out into the yard. Allison turns around and she's like, fire drill.
Oh my God. At this point, things had calmed down outside.
We love Allison. She's a great baby.

Now I'm a little wondering if she's in some kind of a swing is something going on she had kind of like a manic swing that was so ambitious what kind of 12-year-old party has a tornado drill and a fire drill three pizza delivery it's a lot it's a lot wow

okay all right so the last part of the story is that we go inside after this fire drill police are gone And she's like, let's just try and regroup here. Let's do the talent show.

Then the phone rings because it's back in early 2000s. So my landline ominously rings.
And I distinctly remember this part of being like, Allison, will you get the phone?

She's like, no, it's your house. Get the phone.

And it's the county calling me to inform me that some prisoners or fugitives or something that were cleaning up around the area did not make it back onto the bus. And they were missing three people.

So we needed to stay inside, keep the doors locked for the night. It's dark by this time.
Like it's pitch black out. So I hang up the phone and something came over me.

And instead of my normal shy polite i'm like there's fugitives on the list oh my i wish i had been at this birthday party she did throw a bag did this is when we're like i am gonna be friends she's like everyone to the basement immediately what if she handed out guns she handed out blankets instead of guns and she was like everyone cover the windows And we have to do this talent show in the pitch black with this tiny little show must go on.

Kat and I'm starting to wonder if she bribed the drivers to fist fight. That's what I'm saying.
Is all this planned?

I think we watched the never-ending story and we finally fell asleep. The next morning, she walked each kid out to their car.

After everyone was gone, she was like, I didn't give anyone goodie bags, but I gave them this note. Why don't you read it out loud?

I didn't have the note, but I texted her yesterday and she's just amazing. She texted me the note from like 22 years ago.
And yes, it was all a prank.

And I can read the little section of the note if you want me to. Please, I want to hear.
Oh, and I want her numbers so she'll plan my next birthday party.

So it says, thank you for coming to Sophie's party. There are no party bags, but there is this note.

When you think about it, getting a note is actually better than a party bag because you can fold it up, carry it around with you everywhere.

It doesn't rot or become too sticky or spoil or leak all over the bottom of your purse. It's just a cool piece of paper that can last forever.

You guys were really all fun to hang out with, very entertaining and so talented. Who knew that so many people could fit in a tiny bathroom?

And then she lists other things that happened at the party.

And who knew that Allison's friends, Eddie, Chris, and Brad, were such good actors that they were able to come over, dressed as pizza guys, and pull the biggest prank on you?

Oh, the fucking car that was stolen was actually not from Pizza Hut. And who knew that the police officer was actually a neighbor?

And the person that called about the escaped prisoner was just another friend of Allison's. I mean, seriously, what a great, talented bunch of people we are.
You just really fell for it.

Don't forget to adhere to the rules. Thanks for coming.
Oh, I love her. Wow.

I mean, it lasted years. Oh, my God.

That's my story. That's fantastic.
It is. Wow.
Allison, what is she doing now? Did you ever see the movie The Game? It's David Fincher's maybe second movie with Sean Penn and Michael Douglas.

She should be planning real life the games where it leads you all the way to ending your life, but then reinventing your life. Yeah.
Yes, I love that movie.

She was a screenwriter for a while, so it all tracks. Yes, that does track.
She works for TCM and Atlanta, editor and stuff. That's so funny.
Oh, the Turner Classic Movie? Turner Classic Movie.

Oh, good. I'm glad she's in a creative capacity.
That's awesome. She actually worked at UGA for a while.
I don't know if you, so she was the coordinator on the can study abroad.

Wait, Alice, did she have red hair? Yeah, that's her. No.

Oh, my dingle. No.

That was her job before TCM. And then she did screenwriting on the side.
That's my nanny. Did she ever run you through drills? No, but Allison was so cool.

I used to go to that because my dad is Nate Cohn.

Stop.

What's happening? Stop!

I actually was going to say, are your parents professors and who are they? No, her dad was a professor who took the kids to the cann film festival and we were in his class. We had to do movie reviews.

She became the coordinator because she was my nanny. And then she was like, this is not enough work for me.
What else can I do? There's kind of similar stories here. I am shook.

Also, Allison was so cool. She like looked so cool.
And everyone in the program was like, oh my God, Allison. And like, she told us we should go buy like French makeup products.
That's very funny.

And I feel like she is really going to get a kick out of this one. I'm about to call her.
Oh my God.

What a small world. But maybe it redeems her a little bit.
You know what? It does.

Because even though you loved Allison, I was like, well, I had a moment where I was afraid she was in the middle of a ramp up. Right.
But now I realize she's just a party animal.

She's just a really cool girl.

Oh, I'm so happy that she's doing well. I love that.

What a fun thing that just happened. But it's not a small world.
Athens is a small city. No, it's a small world.
Okay, okay, okay. It's both.
That is really cool. That is so,

I can't wait to tell my sister, too. She is an avid listener, but my sister is going to be like, How did I not make this connection already? That is so wild.

So nice to meet you. You too.
You guys are both so George. I love it.
I love all this. I can't wait to tell Lane.

All right. Well, lovely meeting you, Sophie.
You as well. And if you run into the old babysitter teller, I think she's a gangster.
Please tell Allison I said hi and that she's the coolest.

And please eat some cake soon. I'll do all of those things.
Okay. Okay, bye.

Wow.

That was wild. In the middle of her story, I was going to, I was like, oh, I should ask if her parents are professors.
Like maybe they're in the theater department because of all this.

And they weren't, but I still knew them. You still knew them and you went to France with one of them.
Listen, I went to France with the main character. Incredible.

Oh, do you have soundboarding behind you? Yeah, I do.

Yes, we have the same soundboarding at the Nashville studio. I would say it's more for aesthetics than anything.
It's gorgeous. It sounds nice.
Thank you very much. Andrew, where are you?

I've been in Denver for the last four years, me and my wife. Now, you're our first Denver caller to use your real name.
We've had two others today, but they wanted code names.

And I'm trying to make... a big stereotype that people in Colorado want to stay anonymous more than other people, but you've broken that a bit.
I have. Maybe it's my Canadian connections.

Well, no, the other Canadian we had wanted a fake name. Oh, no.
Stacy. Yeah, Stacy.
Didn't make no meal of that. It was clean slate.
It's going to be great, regardless. Let's hope so.

How has Wildcart been going so far? So fun, always. What part of Canada are you from? Calgary.
The cold part. One could say, I love Den Brights.

They think that they get cold winters, but pales in comparison to what we get up north. Or you're cut from a different cloth, we might say.
Yes. A freezing cold cloth.
The coldest of the cloths.

Okay, so you have a wild hard story, and we're dying to hear. So let's let's move back 15 years, 2011, fresh grad out of university.
I graduated with a degree in geology.

Still a solid decade for my prefrontal cortex fusing, which served me really well in terms of what I was about to experience.

I was looking for a really good, fun, new job coming out of school, and I took one down in Suriname, South America.

So I took a gold exploration geology job where I would be hiking out in the middle of the Amazon, doing field mapping, running field crews, doing stream sediment sampling.

Part of the job description said, must be comfortable sleeping in hammocks under tarps and 100% humidity. It was rotational type of work, 30 days on, 26 days off.

So it just scratched every itch I had. Did they downplay the bugs, though, in the first warning? Okay, you're getting ahead of this.
Okay, sorry, sorry.

But I think in that list should have been extreme bug contact. Yeah.

If you look at my day-to-days, they were hiking out in the bush where my white collar friends and friends that had more traditional type of jobs, people were phoning in sick with like a head cold or their kids were sick or whatever.

In my case, we'd have field crews go down with dengue fever or leishmaniasis, which is a fancy way of saying flesh eating disease.

I mean, I'm basing all this on the path between two seas when they tried to build Panama Canal, the amount of disease that was just riddling through all those crews. A lot of snakes as well.

I hate everything you're saying. And you know what? I loved it, Monica.

I couldn't have asked for anything better. Trust me, right now I look back at this.
I have no idea how I survived. So I'm about a year in.
I've gone through a few rotations here.

I've gotten the lay of the land. So I wake up one morning out of my hammock and my eye's bugging.
I mean, it's just like a little bit of a... infection.

I'm like, oh, it's a stye in my eye or something like that. And what any 20-something year old male would say is it's probably just going to clear up on its own.

I'm just going to give it a few days and I'll be fine. Three days go in.
It just keeps getting worse to the point where every hour, basically on the hour, it's almost like clockwork.

It felt like a wasp was stinging me in the eye. I kept on looking at my eye and like, what is happening? I couldn't see anything.
There's like a little bump, but nothing major.

Again, thinking like, this is a really weird style. So eventually I break and I go to my coworker, Fiji, who actually reappears several times in the story.
She was a godsend.

Hey, my eye's been really bugging me for for a few days. I think it's more than just a sty.
Can you just have a look and get to the bottom of this? So, all five-foot flat of Fiji's up on her tiptoes.

I'm crouched back in my chair, and she's peering in, and then her face drops. She says the words I would never want to hear.
There's something alive in your eye.

Okay, okay, okay, okay. Is it in your lower eyelid? Upper, upper eyelid.
Oh, trying to get to your brain.

No, don't say that. Sorry, that's what it wants.
Yummy and and something.

No, don't say eatings about brains. I'm scared.

Rightfully so. We both race off to the medic.
The diagnosis is a bot fly had bit me and laid eggs in my eyelid, which had hatched, and I had an unwelling host of essentially maggots.

No!

Mama, the timing of this. We just had a maggot take over of a trash can.
I've been fighting them all week. Oh, my God.

Yes. Yes, I have video.
Oh, I don't like rockets. Oh, Andrew.
Maggots in the eyes. Woof.

Woof. Okay.
What's the treatment schedule for this? And now I feel like you have to do it. I probably do.
I probably do. This place is fucking crawling in my life.
Stop.

Plan A is traditionally you can pop out bot fly larvae, kind of like a pimple or something. Sure, sure.
For some reason, one medic sits on my chest.

They put a stick in my teeth that I can bite down on because they figure they're going to have to really reef on this thing to get it out.

But as you know, if you pop a sit, you kind of need some foundation, something structural behind it to get the leverage, like a bone or a muscle. But we're dealing with an eyeball at this point.

So they have a go for a solid three, four minutes. Medics out of breath.
I'm getting a little woozy from them just kind of hammering away at my eye.

And it's quickly determined we can't pop this thing out. So we are moving on to plan B.

And plan B is we're just going to wait this thing out. Nope.
Let them get a little bit bigger.

Then if they get bigger, maybe we can get that leverage, pop them out, or they'll just crawl out on their own. They don't have any desire to live in your body.
They want to leave anyways.

They just want to feast and grow and get big enough. And then eventually they'll fly away at a certain point.
How? They just pierce through? Yeah. So there's a small hole.

And this is actually where plan C comes in. So I don't love plan B.
As I'm leaving the medics, I'm like, I can't stick this out for another few days.

And I run into some of the local field workers and I go, no, no, no, don't listen to the medics. What we would do is we just suffocate these guys, kill them.
They'll just fall out.

We break apart a cigarette, mix it with some Vaseline, smear it over the hole, over my eyelid, and patch it all up. And I think I sent in a photo.
Oh, no. Okay.
This is before I went to bed.

Yeah, you look great. Okay, it's covered.
It's covered. Thank God.
Okay. No, but it looks like you were out hunting with friends and someone shot you in the eye.

Yeah, we've put that amount of appropriate dressing over. Oh, it's suffocation.
Yeah.

I'm glad you said the Vaseline because I was like, what are we going to put a suction cup over there and suck all the air out? How are we going to do this? I'm so itchy.

I made the core decision of posting that to Facebook. I thought this was like the coolest thing ever.
And my mom's on Facebook.

The first response was a what all exclamation marks followed by my sister commenting saying you need to talk to mom immediately. And this is while you were still down there.
Oh, yes.

That's not nice, what you did to your mom. Court decision as a son.
So I wake up the next morning and the pain's gone. I'm feeling great.

I think, hey, I'm in the clear, off to the races, can get back to my regular day-to-day. Unfortunately, again, not quite the case because I never saw the bot fly larvae after that point.

So again, a few days go by. I keep getting a little bit bigger, not a cherry size, but to the point that it's starting to obstruct my vision.
So I go.

back to Fiji and say, hey, I need to go and see a real doctor at this point. We hop into a truck.

We drive the hour and a a half to Paramaribo, the capital, and this is where we get a little bit of some chaos at the hospital.

We have a Cuban doctor who only speaks Spanish, speaking to their translator into Dutch, speaking to Fiji into English.

And we're playing this game of medical telephone where the gist of it is they need to open up my eye, do a surgery, and clean it all out, and then stitch back up.

I feel like that should have been plan A. Sure, sure.
But okay. Funnily enough, this is actually where I put my foot down.

And and i said i can't rely on this medical game of charades to feel super comfortable i was in a foreign country i figured hey i'm flying home in a week i i'm gonna be back into a situation we're more familiar with can see the family doc and we again leave take the hour and a half back to our camp but Fortunately, I didn't have to wait the full week.

The next day, I'm chatting with some coworkers, Fiji included. I kind of forget the whole thing for some reason.
I scratched my eye because it was a little bit itchy. Oh, boy.

And I could tell by the gush of warm liquid across the side of my face, coupled with the absolute horrified look of my co-workers, that it had just erupted.

And we had botfly remnants and unknown liquid and pus all came out. And honestly, by the time I made it home, it had fully cleared up and you couldn't even tell.
They didn't see anything fly out.

No, no, no. We managed to suffocate them before they became the full-blown botfly.
You were just expelling carcasses at this point. I'm sorry, but that's what happened.
And then it just felt great.

And then you went home and you didn't even need to see the doctor. Still have 2015 vision in both eyes.
That was post-laserized surgery, but I always like to brag it's better than 2020.

Whoa, that yeah, that would be hard for you.

I'll choose death. And I embarrassingly would have probably gone through all these steps you did in the exact same way.
Like, well, let's just see. I have no optimism in my life except for my health.

I'm like, oh yeah, that'll probably fix itself. I mean, I guess it kind of did.
It kind of did. I did end up getting a few few more larvae in my shoulder, a few rotations later.

I tried to bring them home because I wanted to freak out all my friends, but the pain does get pretty bad. I wanted to bring them home.
Don't bring back

America larva.

They freeze so fast they couldn't handle that.

Maybe in Atlanta, they'd be all right.

Oh, no.

Oh, gross. And I love it.
That was really quite a story. I hated that, and it was great.
What's so great, Beauty? You're both huge fan, been listening to guys forever. Yes,

you have a great day. Bye.
Bye. Take care.

You'd have no idea looking at his eye that he was a host. I can't believe he wanted to bring those guys back to America.
That show is broke.

Look at this.

Oh, boy.

All right. All right.
Love you.

Do you want to sing a tune or something? I'm going to do a theme song. Oh.

Okay, great.

We don't have a

song for this new show, so here I go, go, go.

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Guess what? It's Mel Robbins. I'm popping in here taking out my own ad.

Holy cow, Dax, Monica, and I, I don't want this conversation to end and I'm so glad you're here with us. And the other thing, I can't believe, Dax loves the Let Them Theory.

He can't stop talking about it. I hope you're loving listening as much as I love having you here.

And I also know since you love listening to Armchair Expert, you know what you're going going to love listening to? The Let Them Theory audiobook. And guess who reads it? Me.

And even if you've read the book, guess what? The audiobook is different. I tell different stories.
I riff, I cry. You're going to love it because it's going to feel like I'm right there next to you.

We're in this together as we learn to stop controlling other people.

So thanks again for listening to this episode of Armchair Expert and check out the audiobook version of the Let Them Theory, read by yours truly. Available now on Audible.

You can even try it out for free with an Audible trial. Download the Audible app today.