Armchair Anonymous: Holiday Nightmare II

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Speaker 1 Welcome, welcome, welcome to Armchair Anonymous. I'm Buck Rogers, and I'm joined by Monica Lightyear.
What would the holidays be without crazy holiday stories on Armchair Anonymous? People got them.

Speaker 1 They got them. They're going to keep coming.
These are great. Hopefully, they'll get you in the mood.
Let me just quickly glance and make sure no animals have died prematurely. No, that's fine.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I think we're good here. We're good.
Yeah, going to the holidays strong with crazy holiday stories. We are supported by T-Mobile 5G home internet.

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Speaker 1 Hard

Speaker 1 Hi!

Speaker 1 Hi, Tracy. Nice to meet you.

Speaker 3 Nice to meet you both as well. Well, thanks for taking my story.

Speaker 3 When you guys started Armchair Anonymous, I was like man i got a story oh you knew one day so excited so this is a christmas story that happened about 20 years ago on christmas eve okay

Speaker 1 2004 yeah so our children at the time daniel he would have been about 13 and abby would have been about eight hold on a second you do not look nearly old enough to have had a 13 year old in 2004.

Speaker 3 I will be 56 tomorrow.

Speaker 1 Nice.

Speaker 2 Also, happy birthday.

Speaker 1 Thank you. Also, you're looking very foxy.
Yeah, you're aging very gracefully.

Speaker 3 I'm having about 100 hot flashes now because I'm a bit nervous.

Speaker 1 Okay, that's all right.

Speaker 3 As the mom, the head shopper, my goal every Christmas when the kids were younger was to really have a great day. And it's not just about gifts, but a lot of it is about the gifts.

Speaker 1 They never hurt. It's a big deal.
Yeah.

Speaker 3 And it's not about the quantity. It's just about making sure that they're getting what they put on their Santa list.
So I'm in sales and at Christmas time, I'm super busy.

Speaker 3 So I always try to get everything done before we get into December. And I think it was like December 3rd.
I hauled everything out and was going through everything.

Speaker 3 And we have to have the same amount per kid. The Christmas spirit is happening in that bedroom as well as you get my drift here.
So I'm making everything fits in the stockings appropriately.

Speaker 3 And I'm making lists. Okay.

Speaker 3 Abby's done. Daniel needs a couple of things, and it's getting late.
It's 12:30, so I tie everything up to make sure that I know where it is.

Speaker 3 And went down two flights of stairs, and we have this crawl space that no one goes in because we're frightened to death of the crawl space.

Speaker 1 Nothing scarier than a crawl space.

Speaker 3 Oh, yeah, it's terrible. I threw them down over the stairs, and I went, Oh, no one's going down here tomorrow.
I'll put it in the crawl space when the kids go to school.

Speaker 3 So, let's go ahead to Christmas Eve that year, and we're having a great day, visiting family and I'm having some wine. Sean's driving.
Mom is partaking.

Speaker 3 Nothing serious, just having a couple of drinks. And we said, okay, it's time to go home and get the kids straightened away and read our stories and do our traditions.

Speaker 3 And myself and my husband, Sean, we sit on the couch and it's actually a... unbelievably beautiful evening.
The snowflakes are coming down. We're just getting ready to have a cocktail.

Speaker 1 Oh, this is the dream.

Speaker 3 This is not the norm. Usually it's just a gong show.
And I'm a stress-bagged. Is everything okay? I got to cook a turkey tomorrow.
Was that out? He looked at me and said, you are doing so good.

Speaker 3 I said, I know. This is great.
So it's getting late. It's about 10-ish.
And I said, let's get everything organized for under the tree. So that's dawn.

Speaker 3 And then we can just relax for an hour before we go to bed. He said, all right, I'm going downstairs and getting everything.
So I'm looking out the window and life is perfect.

Speaker 3 And I'm just so happy with my family.

Speaker 3 And I could hear him open up the crawl space then I heard him close the crawl space then he opened the other crawl space and when he opened the second crawl space and closed it and he went over the third one I just kind of like perked up yeah yeah and he called out he said Trace where are the gifts and I was like they're in the same place they always are

Speaker 3 and I started to go downstairs and at that point Tent is thrown out, Coleman stoves, every piece of hockey equipment Daniel owned, every every old toy that the kids had from growing up that you just throw in the back of that.

Speaker 3 Things are going everywhere. And I'm like, what the actual is going on here? Yeah.
I said, it's right there. I know.
No one opens this door. The kids don't look there because they're terrified of it.

Speaker 3 He's in the other crawl space. Then he's out in the garage and the garage door is opening and closing.
We're not giving into the panic, but it's just on the surface.

Speaker 3 And we start to go back to the night that I did all the gifts. And we realized when I threw them down over the stairs, the next day was garbage day.

Speaker 1 Oh.

Speaker 1 No.

Speaker 3 So now it is 11 p.m.

Speaker 3 on Christmas Eve. And I'm just like, oh my God, what's open? What's open? What are we going to do? What are we going to do? And at that point, he actually

Speaker 3 started to cry.

Speaker 1 And I was like, oh, no, no, no, no, no. I get to cry.
Yeah.

Speaker 3 to be strong. He was like, I threw them out.
And I said, well, I threw them down over the stairs.

Speaker 3 I'm thinking, I have to get up in the morning

Speaker 3 and tell those two little children, one who is the big believer of the Christmas spirit, that their parents are idiots and there is no Santa.

Speaker 1 And we chucked all your presents. We had gotten you all the stuff you wanted.
Yeah. Oh, my God.

Speaker 3 Listen, and people have really bad shit going on in their lives. I'm going to tell you, this was the worst feeling I had in my life up to that point.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 3 I got a bit of a hangover starting on top of it.

Speaker 1 I got a headache. I'm crying.

Speaker 3 Sean's breaking out. We're just like, we are the worst parents.
And then Abby wakes up and goes, what's going on? My Santa's here and you guys are awake. And I'm like, just go back to sleep.

Speaker 3 And there's no cell phone. So I'm not texting my girlfriend and going, help.
It's getting late. I called my mom.
My mom had just been recently retired.

Speaker 3 So she would like tinker around around in stores and at little gift shops and secondhand stores she said okay i'm on my way and she brought this box i mean i looked in it and there was comics from 1982

Speaker 1 oh my god

Speaker 1 okay that'll do

Speaker 3 sister and husband and two kids were living overseas in guitar and they were home for christmas and she's really super organized so i knew she'd have some stuff in a tickle trunk somewhere

Speaker 3 she said i got these we're gonna come over i was getting so latent we took all this stuff they had and started poking it in stockings and unwrapping stuff.

Speaker 3 And there was gifts that Sean's family, they live in Calgary, they sent to us and I started unwrapping those saying, could we use some of this?

Speaker 1 Desperate times. Yeah.

Speaker 3 So now it's two o'clock in the morning.

Speaker 3 I am a broken, destroyed human.

Speaker 1 They've wrapped up a bunch of bullshit.

Speaker 3 We just go to bed. Sean goes, I don't know.

Speaker 1 This is going to be bad.

Speaker 3 I'm like, we are idiots.

Speaker 3 A couple hours later, Abby wakes up and she's super excited. She has no idea what's going on.
And she goes into Daniel's room, gets him up. The rules are: you're not allowed to go downstairs.

Speaker 3 Mom and dad have to go down, get the video camera going, like it's the old-fashioned video camera. There's no phone.
Yeah, me and Sean aren't even speaking to each other.

Speaker 3 We're just looking around, going, This is so bad. Come downstairs and they start going through their stuff.

Speaker 3 And because Daniel, I still had to get him a couple of things. He did okay.

Speaker 1 He liked the 10-year-old comic books.

Speaker 2 These are vintage.

Speaker 3 Sean's sister Trudy had a camera with an SD card. That was a gift he wanted.
And at the time, this is when brand names like Nike and West 49, the skateboard clothes was getting, and it was expensive.

Speaker 3 And he had asked for this specific sweatshirt. Wasn't there.

Speaker 3 Anyway, Abby's going through her stocking. So she's this little eight-year-old girl that the spirit of Christmas is alive and well inside of her.
And she's digging her hands into everything.

Speaker 3 And everything she takes out, she looks at it with this little

Speaker 3 look on her face, like, what did Santa bring me? And then smiles, lays it down.

Speaker 1 She goes through everything.

Speaker 3 She takes out the comic books, covers off it.

Speaker 1 I'm like, how did I put that one in there?

Speaker 3 1979, I'm sure. And she's just like, oh, wow.

Speaker 3 I am just shell-shocked.

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Speaker 3 At the bottom of the stocking, she hauls out this little clear cylinder package, and it's all filled with gold, like gold chains. I don't know what it is.
She goes, mommy, what is this?

Speaker 3 I said, let's just open this up. So we open up.
I don't know what it is.

Speaker 3 As it opens up, it unfolds into like a Cleopatra costume headdress.

Speaker 1 Oh, fun. That's great.
It's like a chain male hat.

Speaker 3 Absolutely. So I put it on her little face.
Some of her teeth are adult teeth. Some are little baby teeth.
She's got this weird old crooked smile. She puts this thing on, it goes over one eye

Speaker 3 and she looks at me and she goes, Mommy, am I princess? And I remember thinking that sweet little child does not care.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 2 She doesn't know. Yeah.

Speaker 1 She likes that she was thought of by Santa. Yeah.

Speaker 3 And I just remember looking at her and my heart just soared. And I went, baby, it is beautiful.
You are Santa's little princess.

Speaker 1 This is gorgeous.

Speaker 3 and just thinking oh my goodness did we pull this anyway i took daniel aside he was older and i said buddy i am so sorry

Speaker 3 he said mom i got everything i wanted this is great

Speaker 3 and we kind of just went oh my goodness we pulled this off

Speaker 3 Daniel knew, but he kind of just parked it in his memory. And quite a few years later, I said to the kids, do you not remember that crazy Christmas? And they were, no, no idea.

Speaker 1 That's that kind of, that's informative. Maybe we put too much effort into it.
Just wrap shit up, dump it under the tree.

Speaker 3 It was the worst feeling ever. I thought, I'm going to get up in the morning and tell that sweet little eight-year-old that there's no Santa.
And that crushed me.

Speaker 2 Okay. I think this is what I would have done.
I would have written a note from Santa.

Speaker 2 And it would have said something along the lines of Santa couldn't make it everywhere this year. And so he's coming back in a couple days.

Speaker 1 Okay.

Speaker 1 All right.

Speaker 2 And in the meantime, the elves dropped off some trinkets, but the real presents are coming in a couple of days because he got in over his head.

Speaker 1 Okay. So you throw Santa under the bus.
Of course. Okay.
That's what he's there for.

Speaker 3 We ended up, once everything opened up, we took the kids shopping.

Speaker 1 Let them pick out what they wanted.

Speaker 2 Shopping's free.

Speaker 1 Have fun. Yes.
People get cancer diagnoses. Those are worse.

Speaker 1 But when you have just spent this much time getting the gifts, then wrapping them, then putting them perfectly in the thing, there's a lot that's going wrong at once.

Speaker 1 You've wasted all that time, all that money,

Speaker 1 and then you have Christmas morning coming. So, there's a lot there to be frustrated with.
Third option: I would have just gone cash. Okay, Santa brought cash this year.

Speaker 1 He wanted you to know you're old enough to go shopping, like made a whole thing about that.

Speaker 2 Okay, just been like in a pinch, but you also want them to be opening the stuff.

Speaker 1 We'll wrap each bill individually. Yes, yes, Tracy, where in Canada are you? You have the most specific accent, and I'm so curious.

Speaker 3 St. John's, Newfoundland.

Speaker 1 I had a weird hunch because it's almost got a hint of Scottish in it, doesn't it, Monica?

Speaker 1 Okay,

Speaker 3 maybe Irish sometimes.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 3 I love that. Beautiful island on the east coast of the country.

Speaker 1 And home to the cutest dogs ever.

Speaker 3 Oh, yes. The Newfoundland dog.

Speaker 1 You're big, big boys.

Speaker 2 Wow.

Speaker 1 That was fantastic. Yes.
Thank you, Tracy. And sorry that you guys went through that.
I love that the perfect buzz with the snowflakes turned immediately to a hangover.

Speaker 1 That's kind of my favorite part because I know that moment.

Speaker 3 Oh, my head almost blew off my shoulders. When the kids were young, I used to always try to have Christmas Day at the house.
Didn't want to disrupt them from their stuff. So my family would come over.

Speaker 3 So my older sister, my younger sister, we're all like little bit glam queens. And they showed up like just superstars.
I'm still in an old t-shirt.

Speaker 3 Basca down my face. And they're like, what the heck is going on with you?

Speaker 3 I said, you're never going to believe what happened this is the worst day ever well not the worst ever this was just the worst situation we threw out christmas

Speaker 3 every year for about 10 years after that at 4 30 i would run and just look for the gifts just get my eyes on them sure because i knew if that everything's closing in about an hour if they're gone i can hi taylor to a walmart or to a store and just buy something double safety check it's a good cautionary tale story as well for people sure do a few check-ins with with those gifts leading up.

Speaker 1 Well, Tracy, that was a delightful story. Thank you so much for telling us.

Speaker 3 Oh, thank you for having me. Can I get my husband to come in and say hello?

Speaker 1 Sure, of course.

Speaker 3 He's the guy that helped me throw out the gifts.

Speaker 1 Hello, Sean.

Speaker 1 In my defense, they were in green garbage bags.

Speaker 2 That's fair. How would you have known?

Speaker 1 You were being a very nice gentleman and taking the trash out. This is not on you.
And it's not on Tracy, but it is on Tracy. No, it's not.

Speaker 3 My girlfriends were trying to blame him. I said, no, I threw those down the stairs and should have tucked them away.

Speaker 3 The green garbage bag at the time was the downfall of that evening, that's for sure.

Speaker 1 It's been a fun story for a long, long time.

Speaker 1 Well, it's lovely meeting both of you.

Speaker 1 Yes. Have a great holiday.
You as well.

Speaker 3 Thanks so much, guys. All right.
Bye-bye.

Speaker 1 Yeah, they have like almost Irish accents. The dad did, too.

Speaker 1 All right. Let's talk to Lori.
Hi. Is this Lori? This is Lori.
Hi, Dax, Monica. Nice to meet you.
Are you in your office?

Speaker 4 I am.

Speaker 1 And what's your university poster, I see?

Speaker 4 That is Ohio University in Athens, Ohio. So I'm a proud graduate of OU.
Currently, I'm living outside of Cincinnati.

Speaker 1 In Ohio still, not in Kentucky.

Speaker 4 I actually do live in Northern Kentucky, but I work in Cincinnati right across the river. So I have a very nice view of the Cincinnati skyline.

Speaker 1 Oh, beautiful. And that's the home of Josh Hutcherson.
Do you know that actor? He's a Northern northern Kentucky boy. Yes, he is.
Okay, so you have a crazy holiday story.

Speaker 4 I do have a crazy holiday story. This happened in Cincinnati as well in 2008-2009.
Some history on me. I had lost my mom about two years prior to that.
Very young. She was 52.

Speaker 4 And I was just going through a lot of grieving, probably self-medicating with food and alcohol and just letting myself go a little bit.

Speaker 4 So I decided to join a gym and gyms kind of entertainment dated me a little bit. So I chose a place, I won't name any names, but it's known primarily for focusing on being for women only.

Speaker 4 They were primarily targeted at the older crowd. I mean, I'm 30 at this point.
Most of the women who were going to this gym were 20 to 30 years older than me.

Speaker 4 It was a good start for me to get back into working out.

Speaker 4 I also got to talk to people who were my mom's age, have some maternal healing there, and actually just talk to other women who had lost their mother.

Speaker 4 I was the only one at that time in my friend group because I was so young and she was so young. They really didn't have anyone to relate to, you know, mess with different ladies.

Speaker 4 And we started hanging out outside the gym, having dinner, going for a drink, going art fairs, craft fairs.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I feel like that would be a good crowd to stumble into. They're like older gals who are making an effort to stay healthy.
They're probably engaged in a lot of ways in life.

Speaker 4 Yes, it was very good. It was what I needed at that point.
And realizing that everybody is going through different things, and grief doesn't have a timeline.

Speaker 1 Right.

Speaker 4 One of the ladies was having a Christmas party. We were doing a white elephant gift exchange.

Speaker 4 They specifically said, bring something that's already in your house so that you're not spending any money on anything. So a bunch of us go to the party and we start this gift exchange.

Speaker 4 With this particular format, you didn't open the gift. until everybody had picked and all the gifts were stolen.

Speaker 4 So really people were doing it based based on the shape and the size of the bag or the packaging.

Speaker 1 Oh, they were doing stealing before the reveal. That's different.
That is interesting. Yeah.

Speaker 4 Yeah. If it was heavy, if you could shake it and make noise.
So, there was probably 20 of us or so.

Speaker 4 We get through, everyone gets their final gifts, and then we're going around the room opening the gifts.

Speaker 4 They're getting Christmas decorations, they're getting ornaments, they're getting wreaths, they're getting candy, they're getting, you know, just all kinds of different items.

Speaker 4 You can say it bullshit from other people's houses yeah or things that people have re-gifted they may have gotten it for christmas last year sure sure and that gets to me then i pull out this item that looks and feels like it's a vase oh oh it's got a cover on the top with the cover almost like a paper that's been taped on the top of it so maybe used yeah i know what it is yeah me too i pull it out i'm looking at it i'm trying to figure out what it is and i hear a voice coming from the back.

Speaker 4 One of the older ladies said, well, I was told to bring something that I already had. And this is my husband.
Well, it's my husband's ashes. And he wanted me to spread them in a local park.

Speaker 4 And I just can't bear to do it alone. I couldn't bear to do it at all.
So I thought that if I came here.

Speaker 1 This is not what I thought.

Speaker 2 Oh, you didn't?

Speaker 1 I thought it was a dildo. Oh, for sure.
Oh, no. That's what we were going.

Speaker 2 I knew it was ashes.

Speaker 1 You knew it was. Who would give someone an obligation?

Speaker 2 Because death was a part of this story.

Speaker 1 Okay, so this is healing, maybe.

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Speaker 4 You know, I thought that if I gave it to someone that they could help me or they could then take the ashes and dispose of them the way that she wanted them to.

Speaker 4 And I mean, she was very emotional saying this, and I was still sort of in grief state.

Speaker 1 Now you have someone else's ashes.

Speaker 4 Yeah, the whole room was quiet and like nobody was saying anything at this point.

Speaker 4 You know, I was like, okay, ruby i'll help you with this so then kind of just sat there and i wasn't the last one to open so there were still some other gifts that people needed to open and everyone's done opening the gifts and we're mingling around again i was 30 so everyone at that point felt so much older than me yeah right if she was 58 you thought she was 70.

Speaker 4 i feel like she was at least in her 70s i go over i give her a big hug and i said ruby i'm gonna help you with this we're gonna do this she may have at at some point told me what her late husband's name was.

Speaker 4 I don't remember that, but she's like, we'll do this for him and we'll make sure his wishes are all met.

Speaker 1 We'll get Mark all spread out over the

Speaker 4 we're not facing each other. We're hugging.
So she's on my shoulder and I hear her and I think that she's crying and she's actually laughing.

Speaker 1 Uh-oh.

Speaker 1 Oh God.

Speaker 4 She says, oh, honey, that's not my husband. Those ashes are from my outdoor fire pit.
And I just thought that this would just make such a funny gift exchange and a fun story to tell.

Speaker 1 Oh, my God. Oh, it was a prank.

Speaker 4 A holiday prank.

Speaker 1 Oh, wow, about a dead husband.

Speaker 2 But that's like really sick.

Speaker 1 She should write for a really dark comedy sketch group. Yeah, that's next level.

Speaker 4 Crazy. It was not what I expected at all.
You don't expect to get. a base of someone's ashes and then come to find out that it's not a base yeah this is a real roller coaster for you.

Speaker 1 Yeah, did you laugh with relief at that point? Like, oh, thank God, I don't have to spread this.

Speaker 4 Yes, there was a lot of relief. Grief is hard.
So just trying to let people deal with things the way they could.

Speaker 4 But it was just a very odd situation. And she did end up giving me a candle that she had bought.

Speaker 1 I admire this woman because when the present was opened, everyone got uncomfortable. And that was an opportunity if she was losing her resolve to go, like, I'm just kidding.

Speaker 1 It's from, you know, but she resisted and she let everyone walk away thinking she was nuts. The commitment to this bit is really admirable.
We must tip our hat to her.

Speaker 2 But then, what does she get from it? The joy of a prank is to then be like, just kidding.

Speaker 1 But she was intrinsically motivated, which we would all aim to be. She just knew in her own heart, this is hilarious.
They all think this is real.

Speaker 1 That's next level. That's like Andy Kaufman.

Speaker 4 And I think she was known to be a prankster. I just didn't know her that well at this point, but probably about 10 years after that, she herself did pass.

Speaker 4 And a few of us from that gym did go to the funeral.

Speaker 4 And we heard a lot of other stories of the different pranks and just funny things that she just tried to do to live life and make people laugh and smile, even if it was a dark humor sort of.

Speaker 1 Wow.

Speaker 1 I kind of like her. I would have been friends with her.

Speaker 2 I like you. I'm

Speaker 2 very impressed. I know that I would have felt fucked with,

Speaker 2 especially if I was in the middle of grief myself and had lost my mom. And then I was having these ashes.
And I'd be like, oh, I guess I got to do the right thing.

Speaker 2 Even though I don't want to do this and I got to help this other person. And then it was all a lot.
I would be so pissed.

Speaker 1 Okay.

Speaker 2 So I'm impressed.

Speaker 4 I'm not a super confrontational person, so I was probably just letting it right out.

Speaker 2 Yeah. Wow.
Interesting.

Speaker 1 Baller prank, especially an all ladies, some widow Christmas party. Yeah.
Yeah. That's something you might expect at a fraternity or at the friars club.
Sure, sure.

Speaker 1 Right.

Speaker 4 But it was something I'll never forget. And I have just a silly story from it.

Speaker 1 She gave you a gift.

Speaker 4 Yeah. And now that I've told it to the masses, not something I could do in the future to try to pull a prank on someone.

Speaker 1 Well, Lori, we're grateful that you told us that. I like that woman, this now past past woman.
Yeah, rest in peace. She was a spunky gal.

Speaker 4 She was very spunky. It was great.

Speaker 1 Well, happy holidays to you.

Speaker 4 Thank you.

Speaker 1 I hope you get a legit present this year at White Elephant.

Speaker 4 I better.

Speaker 1 All right. Take care.

Speaker 1 Okay, last one. David.
Bring us home, David.

Speaker 1 Oh, can you hear us now? Hey, how are you? Wonderful. How are you, David?

Speaker 5 I tell you what, I'm doing okay. Thank you.
You want to know something so bizarre?

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 5 I have that painting of the Great Dane.

Speaker 1 You do?

Speaker 2 You have this painting?

Speaker 1 You have that exact one?

Speaker 5 The exact same one.

Speaker 1 No. How did you discover yours? My mom.
Oh. Wow.

Speaker 5 I had a house for a long time with nothing on the walls. And she's like, here's a great Dane.
And it's the exact same one.

Speaker 2 Oh, my God. Is it a famous painting?

Speaker 5 Well, it is now.

Speaker 1 It comes into two above. Obviously.

Speaker 5 I would probably get some stock in it if I could.

Speaker 1 Yeah. So, David, I had moved into a house.
It was completely empty. I didn't know what to do.
I just started surfing around the internet looking at images I could order. And I stumbled upon this one.

Speaker 1 I'm like, I love that great date. And I have another one that matches, and it's a whippet.

Speaker 5 Oh, yeah. That's Frisbee dogs.

Speaker 1 Sure, sure. They're lightning fast.
Where are you at, David?

Speaker 5 I live in Gilbert, Arizona.

Speaker 1 Where's that?

Speaker 5 Just outside of Phoenix, but I'm originally from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

Speaker 1 Okay, very similar vibes to Detroit.

Speaker 5 Yeah, very much. I think we did a little bit better in the Rust Belt, but hey, what can you do?

Speaker 1 Both heavy industry towns with a lot of drinking.

Speaker 5 You got that right. Funny you say that.

Speaker 1 Oh, ding, ding, ding.

Speaker 5 That's what this story's about.

Speaker 1 Okay, wonderful. Please tell us about it.

Speaker 5 This is a long time ago, 89 to 91. Not even sure if I remember, but on New Year's Day, there's the Polar Bear Club.
And my friend, Billy, had a house with an in-ground pool.

Speaker 5 So he had a party every year.

Speaker 5 You can see.

Speaker 1 Oh,

Speaker 1 lovely. Right.
So he chopped a little hole by the ladder.

Speaker 5 So you hop in, swim to the wall, and back and out.

Speaker 1 Oh, God.

Speaker 5 A bunch of us did this and kept going back inside, drinking a lot of tequila, a lot of Sierra Nevada pale ale in a keg back then,

Speaker 5 which was like unheard of, especially in Pittsburgh.

Speaker 1 That's an expensive keg.

Speaker 5 We had to special order it in. But anyway, got his fireplace going.
We're having a great time. We decide, hey, let's go do it again.

Speaker 5 Hop back in. We're having a blast.
We come back in, drink more tequila, throw more firewood in the fireplace. And the next thing you know, there's smoke pouring into the house.
Oh.

Speaker 5 We don't know what is going on, but there's about 12 drunk guys. I mean, really a mess, obliterated drinking this much tequila and beer.
Have no clue what is happening. So anyway,

Speaker 5 we end up trying to get people out of the house. And of course, you know, I'm bulletproof at 22 years old.
So I pull the attic open, figure that's got to be where the fire is.

Speaker 1 Okay.

Speaker 5 So I peek up in there and then the whole roof just starts to go in blaze.

Speaker 1 Oh, God. Oh, okay.

Speaker 5 So we get everybody out of the house. You know, other than the house burning, everything seems to be okay, but it doesn't stop there.

Speaker 5 My friend Billy, whose house it is, now back then he had a Nissan Pathfinder. So Billy said to me, please move my Nissan Pathfinder.

Speaker 5 So sure, I go out there, put the key in the lock, and it snaps off so not only did his house burn down but the pathfinder melted along with uh

Speaker 1 oh my god

Speaker 2 wait what happened the fire it was just from the fireplace i think they've

Speaker 5 put too much well you tell me do we know post-mortem what happened well yeah we put too much wood in but he barely ever used his fireplace and there were cracks in the flue up top so that sparks were going up and going out through the

Speaker 1 attic.

Speaker 5 Yeah.

Speaker 1 Holy shit.

Speaker 5 All the fire trucks show up. Everybody's outside.
I see the fire chief suburban, and I just crawled into the back seat and took a nap.

Speaker 1 Oh, went straight to sleep. I am done.

Speaker 1 Wow.

Speaker 1 Wow.

Speaker 5 So the last thing I remembered was the fire chief waking me up saying, hey, you can go back in the house. Oh, all that was left was the two brick walls on the side.

Speaker 1 Oh, geez. Oh, fuck.
It burnt all the way down. All the way down.
Oh.

Speaker 4 He did rebuild.

Speaker 5 Every year after that, he had the burn the mother to the ground party.

Speaker 1 Oh, my God.

Speaker 1 Is he alive still?

Speaker 5 No, you know what? Sadly, he passed away from alcoholism addiction.

Speaker 1 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1 Years ago. Yeah.

Speaker 1 And what's your journey? What happened with your drinking?

Speaker 5 I'm very moderate. You know, I like a beer now and then, a glass of wine now and then, but that's it.

Speaker 5 I can really relate to the scene you were at i was at a lot of those scenes oh god yeah it was just incredible when i saw that you guys wanted stories about winter holidays

Speaker 1 i figured

Speaker 5 she can't even look

Speaker 2 i mean the whole house burning down and the car and the car melting down that was a hot car in the day the pathfinder that was yeah everything burning i mean it really speaks to addiction in some ways because that wasn't his bottom and he kept going yeah you've lost almost literally lost everything

Speaker 5 yeah it does suck though. I have a son, he's an addict, he's in recovery over in Oceanside right now.
He's doing great, though. He's doing the steps.

Speaker 5 I think he went through step eight, finished up this weekend.

Speaker 1 Oh, awesome!

Speaker 5 So, very proud of him doing that.

Speaker 1 Yeah, yeah, good for him.

Speaker 5 Yeah, but I found out about you guys through Bridget and Crystal, two beautiful souls that are in my life. They say hello and they love you.

Speaker 1 Oh, wonderful.

Speaker 1 Hello, Bridget. Did you say Bridget and Crystal? Correct.
Hello to them. Yes.

Speaker 2 Big shout out. Thank you for sharing that.

Speaker 1 Yeah, what a great story. I'm really there.
It sounds like a Michigan party or two I've been to.

Speaker 5 No doubt about it. I appreciate you guys.

Speaker 1 Happy holidays to you. Thanks so much.
Happy holidays. All right.
Bye. All right.
Take care, David. Bye.
I love that the swimming under the frozen.

Speaker 2 That was a red herring.

Speaker 1 It was a red herring. And for people who didn't see the photo he put up, there's just one little hole chopped by the ladder.
So they're swimming under the ice.

Speaker 2 100% someone was going to get stuck on it.

Speaker 1 We thought for sure this is a drowning Yeah. Everyone, the tequila and the keg of cereals.

Speaker 2 And they kept going back in there doing it.

Speaker 1 More wood, more plunging, more, more, more, more.

Speaker 1 Oh, wow. More and more.
I found the artist of your Great Dane painting. Oh, you did? Is it famous? Christine Merrill.
She's America's most extraordinary painter of dog portraits. Oh, that's cool.

Speaker 1 I agree with that assessment.

Speaker 2 It actually says her name on it.

Speaker 1 Oh, okay. I've never looked.
Yeah,

Speaker 1 she's from Baltimore.

Speaker 2 And it also says the name of the painting, but my eyes are bad.

Speaker 1 Recumbent Great Dane.

Speaker 2 How weird that he has the same one. How funny.

Speaker 1 Must be a popular print. I guess, yeah.
Yeah, it's on art.com. What if it's like

Speaker 2 the dolly, like the melting clocks, and we didn't know it?

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 2 Anyway, well, happy holidays to all.

Speaker 1 Let that be a warning of the holidays that are upon us. Keep your eyes peeled.

Speaker 2 The whole thing was a cautionary tale.

Speaker 1 I guess with a prompt, like crazy holiday stories, it's going to be cautionary. It does make me miss Grandma's on Fire.
Nana's on Fire story. Remember that one?

Speaker 2 Oh my god, yeah, that was Thanksgiving.

Speaker 1 Is it Thanksgiving?

Speaker 2 Uh-huh. That was funny.

Speaker 1 And Nana was fully ablaze. It wasn't Nana, it was like Mimi or something cute.
Mimi.

Speaker 2 We've had some great stories over the years.

Speaker 1 We have. These holidays, they keep producing terrible stories.
All right. I love you.
Happy holidays, everybody.

Speaker 1 Jingle, jingle.

Speaker 1 Do you want to sing a tune or something? Wouldn't it be a theme song? Oh.

Speaker 1 Okay, great.

Speaker 1 We We don't have a

Speaker 1 song for this new show, so here I go, go, go.

Speaker 1 We're gonna ask some random questions and with the help of our jerry's, we'll get some suggestions

Speaker 1 on the flyer rhyme dish,

Speaker 1 on the fly rhyme dish. Enjoy.

Speaker 1 Follow Armchair Expert on the Wondry app, Amazon Music, or wherever you get your podcasts.

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Speaker 1 Mom and dad, mom and mom, dad and dad, whatever, parents, are you about to spend five hours in the car with your beloved kids this holiday season? Driving to old Granny's house?

Speaker 1 I'm setting the scene, I'm picturing screaming, fighting, back-to-back hours of the K-pop demon hunters soundtrack on repeat.

Speaker 1 Well, when your ears start to bleed, I have the perfect thing to keep you from rolling out of that moving vehicle. Something for the whole family.
He's filled with laughs. He's filled with rage.

Speaker 1 The OG Green Gronk, give it up for me, James Austin Johnson, as the Grinch.

Speaker 1 And like any insufferable influencer these days, I'm bringing my crew of lesser talented friends along for the ride with A-list guests like Gronk, Mark Hamill, and the Jonas Brothers, whoever they are.

Speaker 1 There's a little bit of something for everyone. Listen to Tis the Grinch Holiday Podcast, wherever you get your podcasts.