MFM Minisode 433

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Goodbye.

Speaker 1 No one brings out your inner monster like a bad neighbor.

Speaker 2 Claire Danes and Matthew Reese find that out for themselves in The Beast in Me, a new eight-episode drama from the team that brought you homeland. Danes plays Aggie Wiggs, a grieving writer.

Speaker 2 Reese plays Niall Jarvis, her new neighbor and possible murderer.

Speaker 1 But who's the monster and who's the bad neighbor? That's another story.

Speaker 2 It's a game of cat and mouse that sets them on a collision course with fatal consequences.

Speaker 1 The Beast and Me, now playing only on Netflix.

Speaker 2 You will not want to miss this. Goodbye.
Goodbye.

Speaker 2 Hello

Speaker 2 and welcome to my favorite murder. The mini soad.
Hi, here it is.

Speaker 1 Here it is, small in a container, delivered to your ears.

Speaker 2 You want to go first? Sure.

Speaker 1 So this is coming out April 28th.

Speaker 2 So important day for you.

Speaker 1 Well, the month of April is actually an important memorial, which I did not remember. And maybe you will.
The subject line of this email is Oklahoma City bombing 30th anniversary.

Speaker 1 So it says, Dear Karen of Georgia, my hometown was the victim of the deadliest act of domestic terrorism in U.S. history, the Oklahoma City bombing.

Speaker 1 I've been listening to the podcast for years, but never written in.

Speaker 1 It's the 30th anniversary of the bombing this April, so I thought this would be the time to write in and remember those who were lost or affected by this tragic event.

Speaker 1 On April 19th, 1995, the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City was bombed. This resulted in the deaths of 168 people, including 19 children, and over 600 were injured.

Speaker 1 The building housed agencies like ATF, U.S. Secret Service, and U.S.
Military Recruiting, a credit union, and many others, as well as a daycare.

Speaker 2 The daycare of like all the workers there. Yeah.

Speaker 1 That was kind of the lead in all the stories that like is so devastating. Okay, we're back in the email.

Speaker 1 It says, this attack was executed by Timothy McVeigh, an Army veteran who believed the government was oppressive and infringing on Americans' rights to possess guns.

Speaker 1 It is also believed that the ATF raid on Waco, Texas furthered his extremist political views and was the reason April 19th was the date chosen for the bombing.

Speaker 1 He was arrested just 90 minutes after the bombing during a routine traffic stop. And at that time, police had no idea he had anything to do with the bombing.

Speaker 1 While still in custody, it was discovered that he was involved. McVeigh was executed by lethal injection on June 11, 2001.

Speaker 1 Terry Nichols, his main co-conspirator, is serving life in prison without the possibility of parole.

Speaker 1 I have many friends whose families were affected as I was born just a year after the incident, and any Oklahoman you talk to will likely have a story. I have two personal connections through my mom.

Speaker 1 She worked for Pat Ryan for many years, the former U.S. attorney in the prosecution and conviction of McVay.

Speaker 1 She has also worked for an attorney for 25 plus years whose son was one of the survivors of the daycare in the bombing.

Speaker 1 I realize a story of this magnitude needs more time, and I wish we could have read about some of the victims.

Speaker 1 But you can read about each victim on the Memorial Museum website, which is memorialmuseum.com.

Speaker 1 This is my hometown, and I hope you think of Oklahoma on April 19th and come visit us in our memorial someday. SSDGMK.

Speaker 2 Wow.

Speaker 2 Yeah, we've never covered it because it's just so horrific.

Speaker 1 We've never covered it because to me, when we first started this podcast, it's like talking about serial killers. Right.
But something like that is so outside of what we even knew to talk about.

Speaker 2 Right. We wouldn't be able to tell the story with what it deserves.
Yeah. Okay.
Well, let's change pace. Okay.

Speaker 2 My first one is called Classic Hometown from My Grandparents, and it's definitely a classic. Okay.
It says, hello, besties and beasties.

Speaker 2 My dad, aunt, uncle, and I were hanging out with my grandparents in a hotel we were all staying at, and they were all reminiscing about small town life in the 80s.

Speaker 2 My aunt Cindy's high school graduation came up, which was memorable because a drunk guy got on stage, yelled multiple profanities, and mooned everyone. Remember when mooning was popular?

Speaker 1 It was a really big deal to pull down your pants and show people your ass. It was

Speaker 1 a statement.

Speaker 2 The height of comedy.

Speaker 2 The drunk guy then attempted to escape through the audience only to be tackled by the vice principal who immediately punched the drunk guy in the face multiple times oh no man that guy was crazy said my dad referring to his vice principal if he wanted to punish us he made us eat lunch with him it worked because nobody wanted to be around him he was so crazy just really intense That's when my grandma decided to defend him by saying he was a good vice principal.

Speaker 2 Killed a guy, but I loved him. What?

Speaker 2 After I got over the absurdity of that statement, I insisted that she tell me everything. Apparently, she liked him because he was really nice to the parent volunteers.

Speaker 2 Like the time he cleaned up after a school dance by himself so my grandma could attend church on Sunday.

Speaker 2 Both my grandparents liked that he ran a tight ship and didn't suffer any, quote, idiots messing with his M.O.

Speaker 2 And this says, I think this speaks to how type A my dad's side of the family is.

Speaker 2 A couple years after my aunt Cindy's wild graduation, their beloved vice principal got promoted to become the principal of a different high school where he clashed with the bureaucracy of the school district.

Speaker 2 One day, he walked out of a meeting with the superintendent and calmly told the secretaries to call the police because he had just shot the superintendent. What?

Speaker 2 My grandparents said he did it because he, quote, couldn't handle working with idiots. And quote, the stress drove him crazy.
Oh, no.

Speaker 2 I googled his name later, and my dad's old vice principal is still in prison.

Speaker 2 During his incarceration, he got multiple theology degrees and married one of the teachers from the school he'd been principal of.

Speaker 2 I have no idea if they started dating before or after he became a murderer. Either way, I'm sure it's a wild story.
Anyway, I should get back to work now.

Speaker 2 Maybe later I'll resend the time my sister kind of lived through the plot of while you were sleeping. Oh, oh, no.

Speaker 2 Stay sexy and don't shoot your boss, even if he's an idiot. CJ, she, her.

Speaker 1 Oh my God, CJ, you said while you were sleeping, which is the Sandra Bullock Bill Pullman movie from Christmastime.

Speaker 1 I was thinking of the Julia Roberts movie with the abusive husband where she has to escape.

Speaker 2 Oh my God, sleeping with the enemy.

Speaker 1 Sleeping with the enemy. That's the first thing I thought of.

Speaker 2 I fucking love that movie. But while you were sleeping, if someone's in a coma, she falls in love with a brother, I think, right?

Speaker 1 Yes, it's like Sandra Bullock sees Peter Gallagher. He's super hot.
She's like, I love that guy. He drops on the subway platform where the L-train platform where she works.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 She goes to the hospital to make sure he's okay. And the family assumes she's the girlfriend.

Speaker 2 So she just plays along with it.

Speaker 1 And she loves the family so much, but then slowly but surely she's like, don't give it away.

Speaker 2 But it's just under.

Speaker 2 It's just an itchy. She loves no equipment.
Guys, you got to watch it. It is a Sandra Bullock.
She was the love of all of our lives back then.

Speaker 1 It's a classic. She went from while you were sleeping to fucking practical magic.
It's just like speed.

Speaker 2 Oh my God. She was

Speaker 2 a knit girl. Yeah.

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Bye-bye.

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Speaker 1 Join the over 14 million all-time customers who have already saved and invested over $27 billion with Acorns.

Speaker 2 Head to acorns.com slash MFM or download the Acorns app to get started.

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Speaker 1 Investing involves risk. Acorns Advisors LLC, an SEC registered investment advisor.
View important disclosures at acorns.com slash MFM.

Speaker 2 Goodbye.

Speaker 1 So this one, the subject line is. My hometown murder was on forensic files.

Speaker 2 Three-minute read. Damn.
Right?

Speaker 1 And then it just starts yes you read that right i also believe the story would make a great colombo movie but i missed the boat on that one five-year listener first-time writer anyways love you both to bits and karen i just want to say that mr show's watch us have sex is just about my favorite sketch in the history of comedy bravo

Speaker 2 Wow.

Speaker 1 You should have seen how furious my dad was when we saw that sketch.

Speaker 2 You let him watch it?

Speaker 1 We were, I think we were just watching the episode and then that one came on. It wasn't wasn't like I was in every sketch.
So then I was like, I really wanted them to see me performing.

Speaker 1 And he's like, what the hell are you doing down there? And I was like, oh,

Speaker 1 I didn't think you'd take it literally anyway.

Speaker 2 Oh, you're Catholic. Shit.

Speaker 1 Yes, that's all not allowed.

Speaker 2 Okay.

Speaker 1 We're back in the email. I'll try to keep it brief, but this story has many twists and turns.
In 1966, Deanne and Jean, and I'm going to assume the name is pronounced Keitel, K-E-I-D-E-L.

Speaker 1 Keidel or Keitel.

Speaker 2 Sounds right.

Speaker 1 A newly separated couple with four kids living one block from my current home in Phoenix, Arizona. Deanna had been at a nearby bar one night with a man she was seeing.

Speaker 1 They said goodnight, and she drove home only to never be seen again.

Speaker 1 Jean moved back into the family home after her disappearance and was quickly ruled out as a suspect as he told police how promiscuous she had become since their separation.

Speaker 1 And then it just says in all caps, Ugh.

Speaker 1 Unfortunately, the man she was with at the bar had died of a heart attack the day after Deanne went missing, so he couldn't be questioned.

Speaker 2 Suspicious. Right?

Speaker 1 Then it says unreal with an exclamation point.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 1 Flash forward four months, and Gene had left his kids sleeping at home to go to a nearby laundromat. A fire broke out in the house, killing two of the four children.

Speaker 2 Good God.

Speaker 1 God.

Speaker 1 The son, Greg, escaped through a window while his younger sister, Lori, was found inside badly burned, but alive.

Speaker 1 One of her sisters. Wait, this sounds familiar.
One of her sisters died on top of her trying trying to shield her from the flames.

Speaker 2 Oh, Jesus.

Speaker 1 And the other sister was found dead in her bed, a horrible tragedy. The fire was ruled accidental as they found a melted aluminum pot on the stove.

Speaker 1 Jean rebuilt the house and raised the remaining two children there.

Speaker 2 Oh my God.

Speaker 1 Poor Lori survived only to endure an abusive life at the hands of her father and brother.

Speaker 2 Oh, stop.

Speaker 1 Flash forward 27 years. In 1993, Lori, now in her 30s, went to the Phoenix Police Department to finally report a crime she witnessed as a child, but was too scared of her father to do it sooner.

Speaker 1 The night her mother disappeared. She and her sister had witnessed Gene beating Deanne to death.

Speaker 1 Then he dragged her out by the pool and they watched as he dug her grave in the yard. At only five years old, Lori didn't understand what was happening and thought her mother was asleep.

Speaker 1 The next day, Jean poured a concrete slab over the grave. Now in 1993, Lori was able to show the police exactly where where they would find her mother's remains.

Speaker 2 Oh my God. Right?

Speaker 1 They used ground-penetrating radar to find her skeleton with a nylon wrapped around her neck and 1960s women's clothing.

Speaker 1 58-year-old Gene was indicted for murder, spent the remaining 10 years of his life in prison. We take walks by the murder house and I think of that poor lady and her children every single time.

Speaker 1 Stay sexy and take a harder look at the spouse for crying out loud. Yeah.
Katie, she, her. I remember that forensic.
This forensic files is so upsetting.

Speaker 2 Yeah, that last part sounds really familiar with the concrete slab where it's like, you don't investigate a concrete slab that's getting put in the backyard. I guess, I don't know.

Speaker 1 I guess not, but

Speaker 2 yeah.

Speaker 2 How brave of the surviving daughter to do that. I mean, that is fucking incredible and like such a testament.
So he probably started the fire too, right?

Speaker 1 I mean, I think that's what we probably can assume, although it could have been a horrible accident. Who knows?

Speaker 2 Like, but then he had nothing to do with the heart attack because that is like wild. That's almost like good luck for him because they were like, oh, it must have been that guy.

Speaker 1 If anyone knows more than the 1993 forensics have told them to this point, it'd be fascinating.

Speaker 2 I'm sure we got a lot of Phoenix murderinos, right? Yeah, they might know. Wow.
Good one. Okay, this is called A Hot Dog and Almost Certain Death.
Hello, Karen, Georgia, and all others affiliated.

Speaker 2 I thought I was going to say afflicted. I was like, yeah.

Speaker 1 You could say that.

Speaker 2 You could call it that. Yeah, for sure.
I was listening to a mini-episode. I don't know which one, but hot dogs were yet again the main subject.
Who are we?

Speaker 1 We don't know anymore.

Speaker 2 I started listening to you guys in 2020 and I've always wanted to write in, but I thought I had no stories. My life is pretty regular, so no surprise there.

Speaker 2 Well, listening to one of you tell a story about a hot dog, it finally clicked. I do have a story about that one time I almost died hot dog in hand.

Speaker 2 The scene.

Speaker 2 Eight-year-old me at my cousin's house where my mom was very skeptical of sending me. She had an older set of twins that were always getting into trouble, specifically my male cousin.

Speaker 2 Think minor theft and harassment of the neighborhood children.

Speaker 1 Oh no.

Speaker 2 On this day, because they were both going to be out, my mom weirdly decided to let me go. So me and my cousin Alyssa and her friend all get ready to watch a movie.

Speaker 2 And of course, we went to make a snack. The girls got popcorn ready and some honey buns from the cabinet.
I chose a hot dog. What's up?

Speaker 2 Fast forward, the movie is on, the dog is in bun, and we are in the living room. One of them, I'm not sure who, gets spooked by the shadowy figure standing outside the window.

Speaker 2 Being the youngest, I thought they were just messing with me. So when they told me to go up to the window and look out, I wasn't scared because I thought for sure this was a prank.

Speaker 2 I get my eight-year-old self off the couch, hot dog in hand, and go check out the front window. It's in that moment I'm staring face to face with a man dressed head to toe in black with his hood up.

Speaker 2 He He starts yelling something. I turn around to look at them and just like in a movie, I scream, run.

Speaker 2 We all trip over each other and scramble down the hallway to my cousin's room. One by one, we file underneath the bed like sardines.
It's at that moment I realized I still had the hot dog in my hand.

Speaker 2 But before I could celebrate, the sound of someone pounding on the bedroom window from outside filled my ears.

Speaker 2 We all went silent as we slowly heard the window slide open and someone prop themselves up. My heart was beating so fast, I remember thinking, is this thing going to come out of my chest?

Speaker 2 Next thing you feel is someone fall onto the bed from the window. I see two feet on the floor and then two hands on the floor.
The man looks at my cousin, screams, and then starts cracking up.

Speaker 2 It's at that moment that my cousin Alan starts yelling at Alyssa, freaking out that we didn't let him in the house. Oh my God.
It's the bad boy twin brother, cousin.

Speaker 1 He needs to get in.

Speaker 2 It says, turns out he had gotten himself into a fight fight down the street at the park and ran home to hide from the people.

Speaker 2 Then this morning, when I was listening to Karen tell a story about a hot dog, I realized I have no idea what I did with that hot dog when I realized it was my cousin and could finally catch my breath.

Speaker 1 It's been under the bed all these months.

Speaker 2 That's right. They have since moved and I wonder if when they did, they found the decrepit carcass of what was my hot dog.
Fuck. Good thing those things don't mold, right?

Speaker 1 I don't think they can.

Speaker 2 They shouldn't. So SSDGM.
And if you're breaking into your house announce yourself so your little sister and cousins don't fear sudden death and also keep a tight hold on your hot dog love kate

Speaker 1 it's so funny to imagine like a little kid screaming like for their life and hiding while holding a hot dog because it's like was she holding it like eating style where was it up to her mouth and was it sideways like what what are we talking about that's like a scared grip works for a hot dog so it's not like it's out of the question like keep hold of it you know?

Speaker 2 A scared grip is perfect for a hot dog. That's right.
Maybe that's actually what it is.

Speaker 1 That's why they have it every carnival.

Speaker 2 How do you eat a hot dog with a scared grip?

Speaker 1 It's got to be scared, whether you're camping, whether you're scared someone's just going to take it away from you.

Speaker 2 You're roller skating at the roller skating ring. No casual grip on a hot dog, please.

Speaker 1 First of all, someone could snatch it out of your hand and eat it themselves. Yeah.

Speaker 2 Or slap it out of your hand, which is the big thing that my cousins and sister love to do is just if you're casually holding anything slap it out of their hand that is i hate it and it's the funniest thing i've ever seen in my life at the same time it's always funny i know i think i've seen your sister do that literally i bet you have i think i have you've seen her slap the hot dog out of my hand

Speaker 1 Every car has that one cup holder full of coins and then maybe some slightly melted hard candy.

Speaker 2 With Acorns, you can take that spare change and put it to use by investing in your future.

Speaker 1 Acorns is the financial wellness app that cares about where your money is going. And with the Acorns Potential screen, you can see what your money is capable of.

Speaker 2 The Acorns Potential screen shows you the power of compounding and how your money could grow over time. Plus, you can adjust how much you're investing to make sure you're building towards your goals.

Speaker 2 Sign up now and Acorns will boost your new account with a $5 bonus investment.

Speaker 1 Join the over 14 million all-time customers who have already saved and invested over $27 billion with Acorns.

Speaker 2 Head to acorns.com slash MFM or download the Acorns app to get started.

Speaker 1 Paid non-client endorsement. Compensation provides incentive to positively promote Acorns.
Tier 2 compensation provided.

Speaker 2 Potential subject to various factors such as customers' accounts, age, and investment settings. Does not include Acorns fees.

Speaker 2 Results do not predict or represent the performance of any Acorns portfolio. Investment results will vary.

Speaker 1 Investing involves risk. Acorns Advisors LLC, an SEC registered investment advisor.
View important disclosures at acorns.com/slash MFM.

Speaker 2 Goodbye.

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Goodbye.

Speaker 1 The subject line of this email is great grandma beats up intruder. Okay.

Speaker 2 Great grandma. Nice.
Okay.

Speaker 1 It says, hello all exactly right, folks. I've sent several stories, but fingers crossed, you'll choose this as it's a favorite.

Speaker 1 My great great-grandma, Grandma Marion, lived on her own till she was 88 years old.

Speaker 1 My nana and papa, her son and daughter-in-law, were always trying to convince her to move in with them so they could look after her, but she always insisted she was just fine on her own.

Speaker 1 Grandma Marion lived in a duplex and down the street was a boarding house. It was a pretty quiet neighborhood for the most part.
One day she was in her kitchen when she heard a noise.

Speaker 1 She walked into the living room to see the front door open and heard noise coming from her bedroom. She looked inside and saw a man crouch down and trying to unplug the phone from the wall jack.

Speaker 1 Good God.

Speaker 2 That is just like immediate sinister. Yes.

Speaker 1 This was an older house that had the heating vents along the wall with beautiful metal scroll work covers. You know the type.

Speaker 1 Well, unfortunately for this guy, Grandma Marion was a badass bitch and wasn't about to wait and see what his intentions were.

Speaker 1 She hurried over, grabbed this man by the hair, and bashed his face multiple times into that beautiful scroll work wall vent.

Speaker 2 Oh my god.

Speaker 1 Because she had the advantage because he was bent down looking at something else.

Speaker 2 Yeah. Oh, she just like fucking charged him.
Oh, yes, Marion.

Speaker 1 He jumped up, ran out, and down the block. When the police showed up, they followed the blood trail to the boarding house and even right to his room.

Speaker 1 After this, she finally agreed to move in with Nana and Papa.

Speaker 2 My God.

Speaker 1 My siblings and I were very lucky to have three wonderful grandparents in the same house offering a safe place for us whenever we needed, which sadly was often.

Speaker 1 Grandma Marion inspired our love of reading by reading to us whenever we wanted,

Speaker 1 even if it was the same book over and over. When her eyesight got too bad, she would have us read to her.

Speaker 1 Thank you, ladies, for being such loving advocates of mental health and letting us share in your jokes, stories, and side stories. Stay sexy and make sure you get a good grip on the hair.
Rachel.

Speaker 2 Oh, Grandma Marion, that's so badass because it's not like she walked in and he was like rifling through her jewelry box. Unplugging the phone is like premeditation to something else.
Yes, it is.

Speaker 2 And she didn't even fucking scream or think twice. She fucking, that's what you can apologize later if it turns out it was a misunderstanding, right?

Speaker 1 You're in the house. It's too late.

Speaker 2 That's amazing. Okay, my last one's called Shitbag Sisters.

Speaker 2 It says, hello.

Speaker 2 I recently listened to a mini-sode where you asked for telephone stories and I have a bunch about my sister and I from the days before Caller ID.

Speaker 2 Side note, I was trying to think of the name y'all use for irresponsible slash ass Holish family members and had already typed shitbag sisters in the subject line before remembering trash dad slash trash mom, or in this case, trash sisters, was the phrase I was looking for.

Speaker 2 Shitbag fits as well, so it stays.

Speaker 1 It doesn't. It needs to be like it's so perfectly more intense than normal for sisters.

Speaker 2 Shitbag sisters. Shitbag sisters.
It says, anyway, on to the stories.

Speaker 2 Much like many feral children left to their own devices growing up in the late 80s, early 90s, my sister Jenny and I would often pick up the phone and keep ourselves busy by making prank calls when we were bored.

Speaker 2 In the days of the telephone book, we would pick people at random and create chaos with our calls. My God, we totally fucking did this.

Speaker 2 One of our favorites was to call a person, tell them we were contacting them because they had recently made a purchase at Venture, a now defunct Midwest chain of department stores where everyone shopped, and tell them they had been chosen at random to receive a $50 gift certificate in a customer appreciation drawing.

Speaker 2 We even gave them instructions about going to the service desk to pick it up. I can only imagine the confusion we created in the store.

Speaker 2 I always hoped one day we would be in the store when someone came to claim their quote prize. Sometimes we would look for the couples listing in the phone book.

Speaker 2 For those who don't know, the white pages were residential listings with name, address, and phone numbers.

Speaker 2 Each year, the phone company would have you fill out how you wanted your listing to appear, and couples would sometimes choose to list both the husband and wife's name.

Speaker 2 For this particular one, we we only called couples.

Speaker 2 If a man answered, we hung up. If a woman answered, we asked for the man.
If she went to get the man on the phone, we hung up.

Speaker 2 The exact situation we were looking for was for the woman answering to take a message. The message was, quote, could you please let him know that Roxy called and I left my bra in his car yesterday?

Speaker 2 No.

Speaker 2 Oh, no. Wait, it says, I sometimes wonder if we destroyed any marriages, but I'm sure we sounded like kids making print calls complete with teen giggling in the background.
I hope so.

Speaker 2 God, we were shitbags.

Speaker 2 We also found a man named Kermit who we would call at random rivet and hang up.

Speaker 1 The phone book, the power of the phone book.

Speaker 2 Oh, you could just like, it was like a diary of everyone. You knew everything about people.
Yes. You could just fuck with them.

Speaker 1 Did you ever look up your own name in the phone book as a kid?

Speaker 2 Oh, yeah. Oh my God, we're famous.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 We were enlisted because my mom worked at a psychiatric hospital. So we couldn't be in.
We weren't allowed to be in the phone book.

Speaker 2 That makes absolute sense. Okay.
Our piece of resistance came when I got a phone in my room at 13. For the record, it was a corded see-through phone.
I had this that had multicolor inner workings.

Speaker 2 Yes. It says, I know one of you had one.
I fucking totally did.

Speaker 1 I wanted that. My sister got a pink and white phone that was one of the most gorgeous pieces of technology I'd ever seen because it was not a normal looking phone.

Speaker 1 It was kind of like wide-based and it was very stylized. But that was the phone that I would have picked if they let me get a phone.
Right.

Speaker 1 That they didn't. It was like Laura got a phone and they were like, wait a second, no one gets a phone.

Speaker 1 That's a bad idea. No one can handle having a phone because it's just chaotic.

Speaker 2 I think I won it like at a fucking like county fair bingo game, which is like the best time of my life.

Speaker 1 It was so 80s, though. That is the 80s.
It's like, it's a clear phone that you can see the wires and will make the wires pink and

Speaker 2 pink and hurt me on. Yes.
I I says, I know one of you had them. Mine was probably purchased at Venture.

Speaker 2 I had two windows in my room, one overlooking the backyard and one that had a view into our neighbor's kitchen. The phone was by the backyard window.

Speaker 2 So for this prank, one of us would be the watcher and the other the dialer. We waited until our neighbors, a mom and dad and two kids a little younger than us, would sit down to eat dinner.

Speaker 2 The watcher would tell the dialer to call, then watch as someone, usually the dad, got up from the dinner to answer the phone. You know where this is fucking going.

Speaker 2 And then the watcher would say, hang up, waiting for the exact moment the dad placed his hand on the handset. Now,

Speaker 2 the family would sit back down and resume eating. Oh my God.
Since the dialer didn't get to see into the kitchen, of course, we had to switch roles and repeat the prank.

Speaker 2 We did this prank on and off for years. Oh my fucking God.

Speaker 2 So.

Speaker 2 Total shitbag. This is shitbag behavior.

Speaker 1 This is true shitbag behavior.

Speaker 2 These are the kinds of stories I think of when I hear people people complain about kids today wasting time on their phones and gaming systems saying things like, we didn't have these electronics growing up.

Speaker 2 We made our own fun and found ways to entertain ourselves. We sure did.
Yeah. Shitbag entertainment that may have led to retail chaos, divorce, rivets, and cold dinners.

Speaker 2 Sigh, what was, is wrong with us?

Speaker 2 Everything. Everything.

Speaker 1 We were abandoned. Why wouldn't they pay attention to us?

Speaker 2 Welcome. Stay sexy and don't even bother trying to answer the phone at dinner.
Jesse, she, her. And thank you, Jesse, because now we need shitbag entertainment stories.
Please. Shitbag entertainment.

Speaker 2 Like, what did you do that now you're like, you would fucking have throttled yourself for back then?

Speaker 1 To pass the time, for example, Andy Widnington, my next door neighbor and I, filling our mom's old purses with shit and putting them in the middle of the road and waiting for a car to drive by.

Speaker 2 Literal shit? Literal cow shit.

Speaker 1 Go out into a field, fill a normal looking purse. I would be like, mom, do you want this purse? And she's like, no, you can have it.

Speaker 2 Oh, I was thinking it was like purses they were currently using with all their stuff in it. No, no, no, no.
It would be an old purse.

Speaker 1 You get, you get your mom to give you an old purse. Yeah.
Go into the field, put a bunch of cow shit, like sometimes like dried up big old cow pies.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 1 Fill it up, put it in the center of our street, Eastman Lane, that no one ever went down. It literally was a car every two hours.
Yeah. And then we would climb a tree and wait.

Speaker 1 Usually what would happen is the car would stop. They'd pick up the purse.

Speaker 2 They'd drive about 50 feet and then slam on the brakes and swear and sometimes they would reverse and go where the hell are you whatever oh my god hilarious whole point was just for them to stop and pick it up exactly that's amazing and just be near some shit and actually now that i'm giving this example it is a literal example of shitbag behavior it is oh my god it is shit bag shitbag behavior it's shitbag shitbag behavior yeah wow well that's perfect please send those to my favorite murderer at gmail or wherever you get a hold of us i don't know yeah completely.

Speaker 1 Get, yeah, exactly. Send us your vibes, but definitely send us your stories.
This is the place to admit what a shitbag you were. Oh, yeah, because we all were.
Get it off your chest. Yeah.

Speaker 2 Or bust your sister. All judgment.
I'm not going to say no judgment. All judgment, but really in a friendly way.

Speaker 1 We'll just get it all out at one time. Yeah.
Stay sexy.

Speaker 2 And don't get murdered. Goodbye.

Speaker 2 Elvis, do you want a cookie?

Speaker 1 This has been an Exactly Right Production.

Speaker 2 Our senior producers are Alejandra Keck and Molly Smith.

Speaker 1 Our editor is Aristotle Aceveda.

Speaker 2 This episode was mixed by Liana Squalachi.

Speaker 1 Email your hometowns to myfavorite murder at gmail.com.

Speaker 2 And follow the show on Instagram at MyFavoriteMurder.

Speaker 1 Listen to MyFavorite Murder on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Speaker 2 And now you can watch us on Exactly Right's YouTube page. And while you're there, please like and subscribe.
Goodbye. Bye-bye.

Speaker 1 No one brings out your inner monster like a bad neighbor.

Speaker 2 Claire Danes and Matthew Reese find that out for themselves in The Beast in Me, a new eight-episode drama from the team that brought you homeland. Danes plays Aggie Wiggs, a grieving writer.

Speaker 2 Reese plays Niall Jarvis, her new neighbor and possible murderer.

Speaker 1 But who's the monster and who's the bad neighbor? That's another story.

Speaker 2 It's a game of cat and mouse that sets them on a collision course with fatal consequences.

Speaker 1 The Beast in Me, now playing only on Netflix.

Speaker 2 You will not want to miss this. Goodbye.
Goodbye.

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Goodbye.