#34 Annie

Pushkin

Hi dear, how are you?

Do people ever approach you to tell you that you sound just like Jackie from Heavyweight?

No, that doesn't happen.

If they did, would you tell me or you would feel like it would?

I would know, of course I would not share it.

So, how do I know if someone has said it?

You you don't.

Someone has said it, haven't they?

No, Johnny.

Ah, you paused before you said no.

I'll talk to you soon.

Like, not soon, but like in a long time from now.

In a soon time from now, right?

Soon-ish.

I'm trying to break up, John.

I'm trying to break up with you.

Wait, you can't break up with me because I'm breaking up with you.

You want to see who hangs up first?

I don't.

It's like a duel.

Rats.

From Gimlet Media, I'm Jonathan Goldstein, and this is Heavyweight.

Today's episode,

Annie.

Right after the break.

This is an iHeart podcast.

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Every day, I receive emails from people looking to make peace with the past, resolve some long-standing hurt that still nags at them.

These are emails filled with regret and reflection, carefully chosen words, labored over sentences.

Annie's email possessed none of these elements.

Annie's email possessed a lot of exclamation points and words in all caps.

The story she told was of her uncle and all the ways he had wronged her over the years.

The infractions Annie described were really pretty small, but her anger was enormous.

Annie was gearing up for a face-off.

She even signed her email, Let the Confrontation Begin.

punctuated by two exclamation points.

I was conflicted.

On the one hand, I was horrified by Annie's willingness to cause such a royal stink.

But on the other hand, I was delighted by Annie's willingness to cause such a royal stink.

Who among us hasn't wished at some point that we could call people out on the little things that hurt us?

After all, Most often, it's the many bite-sized betrayals and small slights that really eat us up.

But for fear of being called petty, we pretend to let it all go.

But not Annie.

I did indeed want to see someone join Annie on her healing journey of screaming and yelling.

I just didn't want it to be me.

My producer Khalila is not me.

She is also quite possibly Annie's complete opposite.

Kalila is undisposed to confrontation.

She told me she once had a job where, rather than cause a fuss, she allowed her co-workers to mistakenly refer to her as Callie for four years.

Kalila could help Annie, and maybe along the way, a little Annie would rub off on her.

And even better, I wouldn't have to get involved in this mess at all.

Yeah, I had a different thought about this one, I think.

And so I lay out the plan to Khalila.

I will pass the baton to her so that both she and Annie can grow into their best selves.

I was thinking, you know, I would sit this one out and allow you your chance to shine.

So you want to send me into a cringy situation instead?

I think so.

I feel like an armchair colonel dispatching a foot soldier on my behalf.

I have to stay behind to do paperwork.

Right.

And I have to go out there and get shot.

I do feel like you can offer support and she can like maybe teach you something as well.

Here comes wellness.

What did you just swallow?

Is that saliva?

Yeah.

Really?

Yeah.

In spite of what Jonathan might think, Annie and I actually have a lot in common.

My favorite food is breakfast.

I me too.

I have a breakfast tattoo.

Stop it.

Yeah.

I love breakfast.

Annie goes by two different names, Annie and Andrea.

And so do I, Khalila and Kaylee.

while in for four years, Callie.

My birthday is April 5th, and her birthday is April 6th.

And in our youth, we both harbored a weird obsession with cows.

But of course, there's the one key way in which Annie and I are different.

Annie has no problem causing a fuss.

And as for me, Good morning.

Good morning, is this Joe?

It is.

This is me talking to Joe.

Joe is the audio engineer I hired to record Annie's side of the conversation.

Annie and I are talking over the phone.

I'm in New York, Annie's at Joe's studio in Seattle.

Are you guys all set up like you're recording and everything?

Getting settled.

Normally about five minutes.

Okay.

By okay, I mean this is not okay.

The great Canadian documentarian Jonathan Goldstein once told me that the way one captures the magic is to ABR,

always be recording.

So when I booked studio time, I asked Joe, repeatedly, to start recording Annie the moment I phoned.

Instead, he seems to be taking pictures of his dog, Domino.

But I would never confront Joe about this because that is not the person I am.

The person I am would rather take on huge amounts of discomfort myself than make anyone else even a little bit uncomfortable.

Unless someone is being outright cruel to me, it always feels like, well, their intentions are probably good.

And so, I tell myself Joe's just doing his best, and I wait a few more minutes.

Hello?

Are you recording, Joe?

Um, no, um, machines are firing up right now.

We're just kind of getting for listeners unfamiliar with the more technical aspects of podcasting, The process of going from not recording to recording consists of raising your forefinger and then lowering it onto onto the record button.

Yet 10 minutes in, I'm still just listening to Joe rustle around in a mysterious way.

And rather than yelling, press the stupid button, I make small talk about the weather, about how it's February 2nd, a lot of twos and zeros on the date today.

I'm sorry,

who am I talking to on the phone?

Khalila.

Khalila, could you speak for just a few moments and just have a conversation?

Sure.

Are you recording?

Just about.

I'm just kind of focusing the mic and getting that stuff out.

Well, I make problems worse by pretending that there is no problem.

Annie makes problems worse by flying off the handle.

We're rolling.

Oh, great.

Thank you, Joe.

And once we can finally start talking, Annie explains how this is precisely what what happened with her uncle.

I

really look up and admire my uncle.

Annie's uncle, Tim, is like an old-fashioned cowboy out of a western.

When she was a kid, her family would drive from Seattle to Utah every summer to visit his dairy farm.

I loved going to Utah.

I loved it.

I couldn't even wait to be dropped off at Uncle Tim's.

Like everybody else was staying at grandma's down the street and I just couldn't even be bothered to put my bags down.

Just drop me off at Uncle Tim's.

Him teaching me how to milk cows, and I got a special title when all the cows line up, and you, you know, you have to sanitize and clean their udders and everything before you start milking them.

I was the dippy girl.

Tim only became more important to Annie as her other family dwindled.

Her dad died when she was a teenager, and then she lost a cousin she was close with to a traumatic accident.

It made her realize how abruptly people could be taken from you.

She wanted to hold on tight to the family she still had.

She wanted to hold on to Tim.

All through her teen years, Annie continued to visit Tim on the farm, and after he retired, Tim and his wife would make regular visits to Seattle.

where Annie's whole family lives.

The whole gang would go out to eat, attend baseball games together.

But in recent years, something's changed.

Now, they'll come a couple times a year.

And they don't tell me, and I don't hear from my mom when they're coming.

This isn't something that happens like occasionally.

This is now every time they come here.

How long has this been going on for now?

Like years.

I would have to say at least 10.

For 10 years now, when Tim and his wife come to town, they always hang out with Annie's mom, but not with Annie.

Annie has countless stories of being left out, each more hurtful than the last.

Got a couple of favorites.

Yeah, please.

Okay, so I'd called my mom, and I'm on 4th Avenue.

The details of these stories are convoluted, and understanding the true extent of each slight requires a greater knowledge of Seattle geography than this reporter possesses.

There was a time Tim and his wife went to some big Ferris wheel called the Great Wheel, and Annie was not invited, even though it's only two blocks from her office.

I can see it out the window of my office.

Then there was the night they said they were eating dinner too far away for Annie to join, when it turned out that really, they were all eating right around the corner at the Space Needle.

But the final straw, the incident that made Annie write into the show, occurred last summer while Annie's mom was visiting Tim in Utah.

One morning, Annie called her mom to chat.

And she's, oh, oh yeah, no, we're all at breakfast.

And I was like, oh, that's fun.

Are you guys at Maddox?

Maddox being a restaurant in Utah.

Annie's mom didn't answer.

Instead, she put Annie on speakerphone so Annie could chat with her cousin, Tyler.

And I was like, oh, are you guys at Maddox?

What are you guys doing?

And he's like, no, we came here.

Here being not Utah.

Here being Seattle.

It turned out the whole family had flown back to Seattle together the day before.

And no one had told Annie.

I said, what now?

He said, we're here.

We're with your mom.

I'm on her phone.

We're at Patty's Eggs Nest.

In the background, I hear my mom, tell her, we'll call her back.

We're eating.

I am like 12 minutes away from these people.

I was even like more offended, more hurt that it was breakfast.

Yeah, I completely understand that.

And I totally,

listen, I think I blacked out.

I don't know what happened, but something inside me snapped.

I was so

mad

that I said, listen,

you tell her that if you are indeed out at breakfast at the Patty's Eggs Nest,

do not bother calling me back.

And I hung up.

When she gets angry like this, Annie's family dismisses her as just being dramatic, which makes Annie even angrier.

After this breakfast situation, I had an absolute temper tantrum on Facebook.

What did you say?

Oh, God,

I'm cringing because this is what I did.

I make a post

that says, PSA.

Uh-huh.

If you are at a gathering

with family, and not all your family in the area has been invited,

you are an asshole.

I can see that when I'm hurt like this, like just so deeply that it really manifests as anger.

I never allow myself the luxury of that kind of anger.

I've had family vacations planned with no consideration for my schedule, a family portrait taken taken without me.

And while I'm genuinely hurt by these things, I'd never make a scene.

So I admire the way Annie is so willing to call people out, no matter how great the consequences.

In the days following the breakfast incident, a new thought dawned on Annie.

Maybe she wasn't being excluded accidentally.

Maybe Tim and the family just didn't want her around.

And now, Annie wants to know, why don't they want her around?

I just want to know what it is.

Do you have any like theories about what?

I have a million theories.

A million.

You know,

I was raised Mormon.

I'm not Mormon anymore.

I got pregnant with my daughter at 17 years old.

I am gay

and I am loud and I

say off

the cuff and out-of-pocket shit.

Have you ever asked them point blank, like, what's going on?

Um, no, I haven't asked them directly.

I mean, and now we're at a point where I haven't talked to them at all.

And I can't talk about this without it just blowing up.

And so

it just doesn't get anywhere, you know, no resolution.

This is where I come in.

I think, um,

I think it would help having somebody else ask why.

For all her bluster, Annie's anger hasn't led to anything constructive.

So while the old host of this program thinks Annie has all these lessons to teach me, maybe I have lessons to teach her, too.

So maybe like uh

a combination of your directness and my extreme hedginess together would form a reasonable person who could find something out?

I think so.

Annie tells me that no one in her family knows she's contacted Heavyweight about this.

And so.

You're going to have to cold call.

I hate cold calling.

But what I do not hate is advertisements.

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Jonathan made me say that.

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I start my cold calls with Annie's mom, Angie.

Annie's mom is the person Tim always reaches out to when he's in Seattle.

In all of Annie's stories about being left out, her mom, Angie, is a key player.

For me, a cold call is a terrible trap of anxiety and dread.

As the phone rings, I pray it will go to voicemail.

Hello.

It does not go to voicemail.

So to convey, we're all pals here and you shouldn't yell at me, I raise my voice several octaves.

Hi, is this Angie?

Yes, it is.

I try to put Angie at her ease,

explaining how I work on this podcast about helping people.

And it's usually hosted by this guy, Jonathan.

But Jonathan handed me Annie's case because he thinks it's high time I learned a good lesson about

personal resilience.

Basically, is about or something.

Possibly the value of a dollar.

Find some sort of resume.

Finally, much to my relief, Angie cuts me off.

Yeah.

Okay, well, do you want to hear my side of the story or not really?

Or Spilled?

Yeah, yeah, please.

Okay, so.

To Angie, this whole breakfast blow-up was, to quote Billy Shakespeare, much ado about nothing.

She explains that, to quote Billy Joel, she didn't start this fire.

Tim was going on a cruise that sailed from Seattle, and so he and his family spent one night at Angie's house so she could drive them to the dock in the morning.

You know, this is a mad dash rush to get them to the cruise ship.

It wasn't like we had planned a breakfast.

We had decided that morning, are we going to go grab something at Jack in the Box or do we have time to go to the restaurant?

And her telling, like, she didn't even know that the family was stopping in Seattle.

Oh, yes, she did.

Yes.

Oh, yeah.

Okay, then there was another incident while we were all in Seattle.

One by one, Angie refutes each of Annie's stories of exclusion.

And hearing Angie's take on the whole thing, it does all sound like a big overreaction.

It makes me wonder whether Annie, to quote Billie Eilish, is the bad guy.

There's always drama surrounding Annie.

She's really got in her mind that we just are totally cutting her out.

When, from my perspective, we're not cutting her out.

After getting off the phone, I don't know whether to believe what Angie said or what Annie said.

I would need some sort of tiebreaker.

I'd need to hear from more family.

So to turn this she said, she said into a she said, she said, she said, she said, I call Annie's daughter, Savannah.

I'm at work, but I'm totally free right now.

But if someone comes in, I'll need to take care of them.

And Annie's sister, Jamie.

Dealing with my own drama over here.

My fiancé of nine and a half years has moved out.

Ugh God, I'm sorry to hear that.

Well, I'm not.

Well, let me want to be with my sisters.

My sister's drama.

Everyone in Annie's family speaks with a similar affect.

Talking to them feels a bit like watching one of those movies where Jim Carrey plays eight roles.

I asked Savannah, is this really happening or not?

Is Annie being excluded from plans with Tim?

Oh, definitely.

I asked Jamie the same question.

They come out a lot and they don't invite her.

Are you getting invited to this stuff?

Nope.

Not even a little bit.

Do you bother you?

No.

I do not care.

I definitely have one of those personalities that if someone doesn't want to involve me, I'm just kind of like, okay, don't let the door hit you or the good Lord split you.

But my mom kind of gets like, hey, wait, but why not?

Why don't you want to hang out with me?

Or like, what's going on?

Hold on.

Have a good one.

Where do you work, by the way?

Seattle Suntan.

Oh, is it like a a tanning place?

Yes.

Is Seattle Suntan a tanning place?

I can't believe this family's happiness rests in my hands.

As for Jamie, she says she's too busy for any additional plans.

Somebody called me and said, hey, you want to go to the Great Wheel?

I'd be like, no, not today and definitely not tomorrow.

Like, I'm chasing kids through hockey games.

I want to be and have been that mom who has been to every hockey game.

And me and other moms, we will tell you like, there's no family like hockey family.

But unfortunately for Annie, she doesn't have a hockey family.

She's stuck with just a boring old family family.

Her siblings have spouses, little kids, whole sports teams of community.

Annie's a single mom.

Her daughter is 20 now.

already out of the house and forging her own life.

One of the few people Annie's always had to turn to is Tim.

And now, it feels like she doesn't even have him.

Baseball season is starting soon, and Tim always visits Seattle to see the Mariners play.

So I decide I'll fly to Seattle at the same time, coordinate a plan Annie is a part of, and then the whole gang can get together for a nice breakfast at Patty's Eggs Nest, where I can order a frittata with hash browns and an English muffin.

I just have to coordinate the timing with Annie and book my plane ticket.

Right, travel plan.

I am a little paranoid I'm like gonna get stuck there with all this virus stuff going on.

Oh ho ho, this virus stuff.

That conversation was recorded at the end of February 2020.

A month and a half later, and I've purchased an office chair for my bedroom, hoarded canned goods and toilet paper, texted all my contacts, how are you holding up, learned what Zoom is, started having my groceries delivered, stopped doing laundry, cried in every room of my apartment, and finally I, along with everyone else, am realizing this is not going to go away in a week or a month or even a year.

And in the meantime, we have to continue to exist, and part of existing is sorting through the important issues, like why you weren't invited to breakfast at Patty's eggsnest.

And so I email Annie and ask for her uncle's phone number.

It's time to go directly to the source of her troubles.

I figure if I call Tim alone, without Annie on the line to blow up at him, I can get him to speak candidly about why he hasn't been including Annie.

Annie sends me the number and says that Tim is hard of hearing, so I might have to shout.

For a while, I do nothing.

Every time I think about calling an elderly dairy farmer to yell at him, I feel sick.

But as the weeks go by, not calling just makes me feel worse.

And finally, when my anxiety reaches an absolute fever pitch,

Hello.

Hi, is this Tim?

Yes.

Hi, this is.

I try to put Tim at his ease, explaining how I work on this podcast about helping people.

And it's usually hosted by this guy, Jonathan.

But Jonathan thinks it's high time I learnt a good lesson about personal resilience.

And as I blather on, I keep hoping Tim will cut me off.

But he does not.

Yeah, so like,

so your niece, Annie actually had reached out to us about some stuff sort of that's going on with your family.

Do you have any idea what I'm referring to?

Uh

no

this whole incident with this breakfast.

Do you remember this

slightly

Whereas Annie has poured over the details a million times.

All Tim remembers is that Annie got mad about something or other.

Can you tell me what her perspective was, what we did to her?

Yeah, sure.

I mean, like, I think from her perspective, yeah, she just feels left out.

Like, she feels like there's sort of a pattern of.

Look at me explaining a problem head-on instead of just nervously avoiding it.

And, like, to have you come to town and not tell her and make time to see her.

I think she just, like, to her, it does feel more personal.

I love Annie to death.

I mean,

from the time Annie was a teenager, me and Annie got along.

We've got along really well.

I hope she ain't got something against me.

I would never intentionally make Annie feel

bad, ever.

And I hate to hear that

she's going over this still.

I haven't talked to her for quite a while.

And now I know I need to.

So in an effort to get the reconciliation train chugging along, I suggest to Tim that we turn to the thing so many of us have turned to in these difficult times.

Let's do a Zoom.

I did try one of them Zoom or whatever they are called meetings, and I did not like it a bit.

I have trouble hearing, and the joke has been, boy, I'd love to keep Uncle Tim on the phone more than five minutes because I know he's going crazy just trying to hear.

I hate electronics myself, but no, I'm going to give Annie a, I'll call her her and just talk to her.

And if I can do anything else for you,

I'll do anything for Annie.

Time to sit back and wait for the catharsis to roll in.

The only problem is it doesn't.

Not by a long shot.

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With built-in security on the first nationwide 5G advanced network, you keep private data private for you, your team, your clients.

And with seamless coverage from the world's largest satellite-to-mobile constellation, your whole team can text and stay updated even when they're off the grid.

That's your business, supercharged.

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After speaking with Tim, I told Annie to expect this call, but for days, she heard nothing.

At first, I was kind of like, what the hell?

I would have like called my niece right away.

And then I kind of, you know, I kind of circled back into like, oh, he must be really trying to come up with like a thoughtful response to me.

You know, maybe he's just feeling really bad.

And then Tim did call.

Oh, he called

my mother.

After speaking to me, Tim reached out not to Annie, but to Annie's mom, his middleman, Angie.

Angie spoke with Tim the same way she did with me, contradicting Annie's timeline and basically reminding Tim of how dramatic Annie can be.

And in Angie's telling, I'd become an extension of this drama.

Apparently, Angie and Tim call me the podcast lady.

I hope I'm not like making things worse by calling all these people.

This is always how

This is what it is, and this is why I emailed in the beginning.

I'm out of my depth.

So I call up the person who got me into this mess to begin with.

Hello.

Jonathan.

Hey.

Aggie wants to say hi.

Hi.

Hi, Auggie.

How are you?

Good.

Good, glad to hear.

What's up?

Well, you know, I'm doing that Annie thing that you told me to do.

Today's episode.

Right.

Annie.

I thought things were going pretty well, and now things are not going well.

I explained the whole fiasco to Jonathan.

My call to Tim, Tim's call to Angie.

My now being the podcast lady.

So they see her contacting a podcast as kind of a dramatic flourish.

Right, right, right.

So you're at that point where you feel like you're making things worse, not better.

So it's very familiar to me.

It's always, there is always that risk.

Sometimes it just takes time.

I think that's the thing.

Like that's the

money loser

of our operation, I think.

It's just you can't rush these things.

Do you call him Uncle Tim when you talk to Annie?

No.

Maybe that's the problem.

You have to become embedded as one of the family and a part of that is referring to him as Uncle Tim.

I'm not gonna do that.

Johnny said Stuart Golden.

Did you know that Jon Stewart's middle name was Stewart?

Yeah, you told me that his real that his real last name is Liboys.

Okay, okay.

But this is great.

I mean, this is great for me.

It's like I'm on holiday.

I've put a pin in this whole cats in the cradle situation.

I'm spending much more time with Auggie.

And it's just been, it's been fabulous.

Aggie, I think you should maybe maybe put that down honey

that's not a toy

he's holding a big mallet

um well anyway I hope so does this help so you're saying give it a few days to play out yeah give it give it a few days

I give it a few days Then a few more days.

Then a few more.

Then a few weeks, just to be safe.

I talked to your uncle a month ago.

Yeah.

He said he was going to call you.

And...

Nothing.

Jonathan told me to give it time, but time has gotten me nowhere.

So I gear myself up to be the pushiest I've ever been in my life.

And the sweatiest.

And the highest pitched.

Hi, Tim.

Yes.

Hi, this is um Khalila, who who's recording with a podcast with Annie.

Do you remember me?

Oh, yeah.

I just had been checking in with Annie, and she said that she hadn't.

She hasn't heard from me.

Do you want to just try calling her together right now?

Actually, I am actually

just walking out the door to go to work.

Okay, it doesn't have to be today either.

Like,

I'm open to whatever is best for you if there's another day that's better.

Well,

I don't know.

I haven't thought about that right now.

So

actually, I'm in a real hurry right now.

And Tim's supposed to be a Mariners fan?

More like a Dodgers fan.

Am I right or am I right?

Two weeks later, I check back in with Annie.

You didn't happen to hear from your uncle, did you?

No.

No, he didn't call.

No.

It's not going happen.

Having spoken with Tim, I'm not exactly feeling like a ray of optimism myself.

But while Annie is 100% certain Tim has written her off, I'm only 97% certain.

I don't want her to slam the door just yet.

It's gonna happen.

Yeah, right.

If it's gonna get off the ground, I mean, it's definitely gonna have to be us.

But that's okay.

It's not okay to me, and I don't think it's really okay to Annie.

If Annie's the one to reach out, she'll just be playing into the same dynamic as always, showing up at the table and begging for scraps.

So I encourage Annie to just wait.

But a week goes by, and another, and then another, and I start to feel like Annie was right.

Her uncle will never call.

Hey, Annie, trying to get a hold of you.

I didn't hear my phone ring or anything, And then weirdly, it just came through on my watch that I had this voicemail from Uncle Tim.

And I was like, my heart just went boom.

Annie had been with friends watching the movie Burlesque when finally, out of the blue, Tim called.

Amidst the excitement of Cher yelling at Christina Aguilera to make the stage her own, one of Annie's friends asked her, what was up?

I was like, no, it's just my uncle.

And my one friend goes, the one that doesn't talk to you?

And I was like, yeah.

Well, I guess he is trying to talk to me.

And I've spent this whole time like thinking that I'm not really like

worth a call.

So I was glad to know that he had called.

And so then when I heard his voice, I was like, kind of emotional because I haven't like talked to him in so long.

At this point, it's been almost a year since Annie and her uncle last spoke.

We decide Sunday is the day.

That's when we'll call Tim back.

But then, Annie pushes it to Monday.

I'm really nervous, she tells me.

On Monday, she cancels last minute.

Annie's now feeling something different than she's used to.

It's not anger, something she can yell her way through.

Instead, Annie's feeling vulnerable.

And that's scarier.

I finally get her to commit to Tuesday.

Tuesday will be a better day anyway, Annie says, because Tuesday is Tim's Tim's birthday.

To me, a birthday is a worse day.

Instead of gifting the poor man a nice pair of socks or something, Annie's going to usher the podcast lady on stage like an unwanted birthday clown.

Nevertheless, on Uncle Tim's birthday, I procure a frittata.

I tell Annie to get a breakfast too.

We can all eat on the call and pretend to be at Patty's eggsnest together.

But when I get on the line with Annie, her frittata plate is frittata-less.

I have not even eaten like today.

I'm totally freaking out.

I cannot believe I'm doing this.

Okay, I'm ready.

Shall we do it?

Okay.

Wait,

okay, go,

Uncle Tim.

Hello, how are you?

Happy birthday.

Well, thank you.

Khalila is on this call, too.

Hi, Tim.

What did you just say?

I said, Khalila's on this call, too.

Hi, it's.

Okay.

I just want to talk to you, if that's okay.

That's fine.

I feel like

sometimes like I feel like I'm genuinely like hurt and upset about sometimes when everyone's getting together and I feel kind of left out or like an afterthought when everyone is like going out.

But I just wanted to tell you about it

because I feel like

there's maybe like two people on the planet that like really get me.

And like, I feel like you're my person.

Especially after my dad died.

You were like basically a father to me.

And I always even, even like, I always wanted you to be my dad because I love you so much.

So that's why I feel like when I'm not included, I know that I'm rambling, but I feel like when I'm just not included, sometimes it just like I do feel sad.

Well,

it wasn't intentional, and I hope it never happens again.

So anyway.

Tim wants to sweep the mess of Annie's feelings under the rug.

But before he just moves on, I raised a question Annie brought to me in the first place.

Annie, can I ask too?

Like, it seemed like part of it was that you were afraid that it was something about your personality.

Yeah.

I have felt like that.

Like if people don't want me around because I'm too loud or it's like there's something about me that people are like offended by.

I can tell you, if you're not like pissed at somebody, we all know you're the funnest to be around,

right?

But when you get like you're

like mad at somebody, it's not like the sweetest to be around then.

All that clattering is coming from Annie's side of the call.

She started pacing around, organizing her toiletries.

She's agitated by what Tim is saying.

Annie is willing to call people out no matter the consequences, but there are consequences.

It seems Tim's distance has nothing to do with Annie's being gay or not being a Mormon or having been a teen mom.

It might simply be that generally, people just want to eat their eggs in peace and pretend like everything's fine.

But even though Tim's criticism hurts, Annie doesn't do what she usually does.

She doesn't unleash her anger.

I do feel really bad about the, I think that when everybody was at breakfast, I was just shocked and I straight up flipped out.

I was so upset.

And so, like, you know, I'm sorry that I obviously didn't handle it very well.

I've am in a better place.

And if we're being honest, medicated.

And so,

wait.

Like, I know I'm not perfect.

That's

that's all.

And

Tim stays quiet for a moment.

And when he speaks, it's not to Annie, but to me.

Much as he might resent my presence, Tim, like always, chooses to go through a middleman.

Well,

and as far as Annie goes, she's just always been special to me.

The first time she's going to get married, I was going to give her away, you know.

I says, Yeah, I'll buy me a new suit.

I'll do anything for you.

And

anyway, and then he was cheating on her or something.

A few years later, she says, You're going to give me away.

And I says, You bet.

And she says, Well, does it matter if I'm marrying a girl?

And I says, Annie, if boys don't work, girls are fine for me.

I'll do anything for you.

And

I feel like she's my daughter.

I've loved Annie since she was just a little girl, and we've always just connected, my little dippy girl.

I mean,

I've laid for hours on Annie's bed and just, you know, and held her.

And we could talk about anything or not say anything.

I've never thought bad of Annie.

Then suddenly, mid-sentence, Tim addresses Annie directly.

I've never thought of leaving you out i know if you feel bad that it

if you're feeling bad especially when i'm talking to you it really makes me feel bad so

i know

um

i just i love you tim a lot

definitely missed hearing your voice and i feel like we haven't talked in so long and so it got to make more effort to even talk like this because it is nice to hear your voice too Well, that makes me feel better.

It's not a breakfast invitation, a baseball game, or even a Zoom.

But despite the fact that Tim hates being on the phone for more than five minutes, he's still here talking.

I think this is the longest I've talked to you over the phone.

I wish I'd give you a big squeeze right now.

Me too.

Maybe next time that you guys come down, we'll just plan something just for me and you to do.

Yes, we will.

I love you.

I love you too.

Thank you for talking to me.

I will talk to you anytime.

You know that.

Love you, Annie.

Love you.

See ya.

Bye.

Bye.

We did it.

We did it.

I'm disappointed that now there's a pandemic and we can't go to Patty's Eggs Nest, which I really wanted to go to.

Right, as they like blay us out with our silverware clinking around in the background.

Yeah.

I can hear it now.

Yeah, I just park in the grave.

Ah, no, I'm moving on.

My date's here.

All right.

Yeah, you got a lot going on.

I won't keep you.

Thank you for everything.

I'll talk to you later.

All right.

Talk to you later.

And with that, I settled down at my desk alone to finish eating my frittata.

A frittata delivered to my apartment cold and in a coffee-soaked bag.

But rather than kick up a fuss, I thanked the delivery man profusely and tipped him generously.

Like all of us, he's probably just doing his best.

Just enjoying my breakfast.

Now that the furniture's returning to its goodwill home

Now that the last month's rent is scheming with the damage to cause

Take this moment to decide

if we meant it, if we tried.

Suddenly,

from things that accidentally looked touch.

This episode of Heavyweight was produced by me, Khalila Holt, along with Stevie Lane and Armchair Colonel Jonathan Goldstein.

Special thanks to Emily Condon, Alex Bloomberg, Matilda Urfalino, Nia Bloomfield, Emma Munger, Zach Schmidt, Sam Reisman, and Jackie Cohen.

Bobby Lord mixed the episode with original music by Christine Fellas, John K.

Sampson, and Bobby Lord.

Additional music credits can be found on our website, gimletmedia.com/slash heavyweight.

Our theme song is by The Weaker Thans, courtesy of Epitaph Records.

Follow us on Twitter at heavyweight or email us at heavyweight at gimletmedia.com.

We'll have a new episode next week.

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