MFM Minisode 436

Speaker 1 This is exactly right.

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

Speaker 1 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 1 Reese plays Niall Jarvis, her new neighbor and possible murderer. But who's the monster and who's the bad neighbor? That's another story.

Speaker 1 It's a game of cat and mouse that sets them on a collision course with fatal consequences. The Beast and Me, now playing only on Netflix.
You will not want to miss this. Goodbye.
Goodbye.

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Goodbye. Goodbye.

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Goodbye.

Speaker 1 Hello, and welcome to my favorite murder. The Miny Sodes.
Mini so. They're little.
They're so tiny. They're emails.
Go first. Okay.

Speaker 1 I demand it. The subject line of this email is the one where mom destroys the evidence.
Okay. Intense.
And then it just says, hi, hi, hi.

Speaker 1 Longtime listener and thought you'd like to hear about the time my mom tried to destroy crime scene evidence.

Speaker 1 This all happened about 15 years ago at the height of my career in the restaurant industry.

Speaker 1 It was not uncommon to get out of work around midnight and go hit the town with my buddies until we stumbled back home around three, four,

Speaker 1 sometimes five in the morning.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 How late would you stay up? Well, probably three because everything closes at two here in California. So you'd go out until they close at 1:30 or 2, and then you'd go get pancakes.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 And then you'd get home on a Tuesday, 3 in the morning, having to get up at 7 to work. Yeah.
It's great. Yeah.
How did I do that? I don't know. White drugs? No, no.
Just a guess. Just never, never.

Speaker 1 It was just youth. It was youth.
Right. You had the drive to earn a living.
Youth and whiskey. Okay.
On one of these mornings, I get shaken awake by my mom at 7 a.m.

Speaker 1 She has a panicked look on her face and she keeps begging me to tell her what happened. Over and over again, she says, It's okay.
Please just tell me what happened. It's okay.

Speaker 1 I promise I won't tell anyone. I have not a single clue what she's talking about and only a few hours until I have to get up for work.
So naturally, I tell her to go away. Oh, God.

Speaker 1 About 11 a.m., I finally drag myself out of bed and go see what all the fuss was about. I'm greeted by my mother and my uncle sitting at the kitchen table.
My mom is crying and saying, it's okay.

Speaker 1 Whatever you did, we'll figure it out. We cleaned the blood off your car.
We just, we won't tell the cops. We know you were drinking last night.
Just please tell us what happened. This poor woman.

Speaker 1 Oh my God. Also, how about I snap right into the crying motherfucker? That was good.
That was great. Thank you.
Thank you. Neither the actress.
I'm the Margot Martindale of this podcast.

Speaker 1 I finally pieced together what's going on and I burst out laughing. My mom and uncle are dumbfounded.
I said, wait, you cleaned my car because you thought I was drunk and hit someone with it?

Speaker 1 Oh my God. I then proceed to tell them about my drive to work the day before.
I was on my way to the restaurant, stopped at a red light, waiting to make my U-turn.

Speaker 1 Out of nowhere, I see a huge swan come flying down from the sky, headed straight toward my side of the car.

Speaker 1 The thing hits my passenger door and lands on the road in the next lane. At this point, the light turns green.
So I shake off this insane brush with Mother Nature and go about making my U-turn.

Speaker 1 Fucking swan, those things are huge. And you're not immediately looking up what that symbolizes.
And you can't react because someone's honking at you.

Speaker 1 It reminds me, remember when we were in my car and that crow just flew into your sunroof. Like literally tried to get in.
Apparently good luck. Thank God.
Yeah,

Speaker 1 for real. We kept driving.
Okay.

Speaker 1 All of a sudden, this fucking thing rises up off the ground and comes at me a second time. It hits the front of my car head on and flies up over the back.
I pull over and stop the car.

Speaker 1 I get out along with a couple of other drivers to check out on the bird. But based on the amount of blood on my car, it is clearly dead.
Oh my God. At this point, I am extremely late for work.

Speaker 1 So I get back in the car and I haul ass to the restaurant. I work the whole shift, party the whole night, and totally forget about the small

Speaker 1 encounter. Oh my God.

Speaker 1 Until we reach the beginning of this story with my mother in a panic thinking I had just committed vehicular manslaughter and telling me she got rid of the evidence. Unbelievable.
SSDGM B. Wow.

Speaker 1 I mean, now you know that your mom is

Speaker 1 got your back. She's not a real one.
Yeah. She actually does love you.
Yeah. Can you imagine? No, that's so fucking.
I mean, my mother would be like, I called the police. Call the police.

Speaker 1 Go downstairs, comb your hair. I feel like my mom would hide evidence for me.
She would. Yeah.
All right. This is my neighbor.
I'm not going to read you the rest.

Speaker 1 I don't want to get roasted for a shitty intro, so I'll begin with a simple, hi. Stupid.

Speaker 1 God, what are you even doing? I've been listening to you guys since 2020, and I've wished I had something to write in about, completely forgetting about the one story that is my entire personality.

Speaker 1 Other than the fact that the building John Wayne Gacy was interviewed in by police is now the office of my best friend's corporate job and is a town over from where we grew up.

Speaker 1 That is some deep trivia. Yeah, totally.
Okay, anyway, I grew up in the northwest suburbs of Chicago, right behind the city courthouse.

Speaker 1 Our block had about 15 kids living there, including my three siblings and I. And this was the late 90s, early 2000s.
So there were always kids outside when it was nice.

Speaker 1 Well, one day when I was maybe seven or eight, we had a new neighbor move in next door to us named Jeff, not his real name.

Speaker 1 Jeff was a single adult man who at the time seemed to be about 40, but I was also seven, so I didn't know. No, no, he was about 28.
Yeah, exactly.

Speaker 1 We received a knock on our front door one day after he moved in, and being the nosy child I was, I went to the door with my mom to see who it was.

Speaker 1 I loved meeting people, so I was excited to see a new face. Hey, hi, I'm seven.
Well, Jeff introduced himself and began to inform us that as part of Megan's law, and it says, yes, you read that right,

Speaker 1 he had to go door-to-door and let all the parents know that he was, in fact, a registered sex offender. Holy shit.

Speaker 1 I feel like that should probably happen more than it does in Los Angeles. Right.
I mean, the door-to-door part, well, it reminds me of the Big Labs. Of course.
It's like, of course. God damn.

Speaker 1 He's a pedarast. Peterast.

Speaker 1 Now, when we were told the story by him and our parents, he told us he was watching regular old porn and his nephew walked in and saw it. told his mom, Jeff's sister, who then reported him.

Speaker 1 He was a very nice guy and his crime seemed relatively harmless. So naturally, all the parents let us go to his house whenever we wanted.

Speaker 1 No.

Speaker 1 Late 90s, early 2000s. He was a cool guy in his 20s, right? He always had those long popsicles.
You know, the ones in the plastic sleeve in his garage freezer for all of us.

Speaker 1 And we would often go over to his garage and grab some whether he was home or not. He was that kind of cool adult.
A parent, a cool, long

Speaker 1 popsicle kind of adult. He always had free sweets.
I used to dog sit for him by myself, too. Yikes.
He never did anything to any of us. And it wasn't, not that you know of.

Speaker 1 And it wasn't until we were all older that we realized how absolutely batshit our parents were for allowing us to spend all caps, one-on-one time with this man. It turns my stomach.

Speaker 1 My mom would have scratched his eyes out in the moment. She would never have allowed that.
My mother would have gotten him out of the city. Yeah.
She would have absolutely disappeared, that man.

Speaker 1 Yes, 100%.

Speaker 1 Anyway, my brother is now in law enforcement and recently did more digging because surely his only crime wasn't simply for watching porn.

Speaker 1 That doesn't make sense. All caps.
Nope. All caps.
It was for child pornography, film slash photos of a 13 year old when he was 26.

Speaker 1 Again, why were our parents so lax about this? Because 90s, 2000s, I guess. I'm glad the registry is so easily accessible now because what the fuck? Yeah.

Speaker 1 Stay sexy and maybe don't let sex offenders move into neighborhoods full of children. S.

Speaker 1 God.

Speaker 1 I mean, almost seems like you should have to like give them a piece of paper that says what you did on it instead of being like, here, all I did was like, I got caught urinating in public or something.

Speaker 1 You know what I mean? Like, it should be like, nah, this guy's fucking making shit up.

Speaker 1 Now that you can look it up, guys, sex offender registry

Speaker 1 tells you how many sex offenders live in your neighborhood. It's truly terrifying.
It's alarmingly insane. They're mug shots and it's scary.
Yeah.

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Goodbye.

Speaker 1 The subject line of this email is because everything goes here, apparently. Hi, beloveds.
I was listening to.

Speaker 1 I'm so sorry. I love it.
Hi, beloveds. I don't think anyone's ever said that to me.
I like it.

Speaker 1 I was listening to a mini-sode from 2021 tonight that featured a six-year-old yelling to her mom to get her favorite wine from the liquor store.

Speaker 1 When it finally sank in, that you will read any kind of story. So here's your.
Shut up. That's a good one.

Speaker 1 But also, yes, you're finally getting it.

Speaker 1 When I was nine, my dad brought my brothers and I with him on a business trip to Washington, D.C. My 14-year-old brother, Andrew, got to bring his best friend, Graham.

Speaker 1 I honestly don't know what my dad was thinking, letting Graham come with us. He and my brother were constantly getting in trouble.
Oh, Jesus.

Speaker 1 We stayed at one of those hotels whose lower level was attached to a below-ground shopping mall. Oh, yeah.
So rad. You don't have to go outside ever.

Speaker 1 I think we stayed in that hotel in Washington, D.C.

Speaker 1 Remember that we stayed in those before. And it had the habit trail connector to a different building.
Yeah, because it's freezing there all the time. I think so.
Yeah. Okay.

Speaker 1 Also, I just like to always be a part of everybody else's memories, too. Me too.

Speaker 1 My younger brother and I stayed with my dad in one room while Andrew and Graham got their own room and a strict curfew, my dad's second mistake.

Speaker 1 One night after my younger brother and I fell asleep, my dad decided to check on Andrew and Graham. I guess his gut told him that they were up to no good.
And behold, their room was empty.

Speaker 1 It turns out that earlier in the day,

Speaker 1 they're 14. Yeah.
Earlier in the day, they had met some girls in in the mall and made a plan to meet up with them later that night. Now, this was back in 1989, well before cell phones.

Speaker 1 So my dad had to wait in that hotel room getting angrier and angrier.

Speaker 1 Finally, at midnight, these two 14-year-old dummies stumbled back into the room and came face to face with our furious dad, who uttered the words that have become infamous in our family.

Speaker 1 When we get back to Michigan, you two are dog meat.

Speaker 1 Dog meat. Oh my God.
Dog meat.

Speaker 1 Let's just say that Graham did not join us on any future trips and my brother spent the remainder of the school year grounded in parentheses. This was spring break, so we're talking months here.

Speaker 1 Stay sexy and don't bring troublemakers on your family vacations. Warmly, Stella.
Stella, I have that same brother. He had that same best friend.
Yep. They would have burnt something to the ground.

Speaker 1 So actually, your dad should have been pleased that they came home by midnight. Like, that's not that bad.
I mean, you know. know, that's very true.

Speaker 1 Cause for a second, I was like, are these 14-year-olds going to be drunk? Yeah. Or are they going to be like, yeah, the Secret Service is like, excuse me, sir, you need to come get your kids.

Speaker 1 Like, that's what my brother would have fucking done. They were in the Oval Office.
Asher broke into the Oval Office.

Speaker 1 Asher and Ryan, they broke in and they stole a bunch of fucking, they drank, took a sip of every single different alcohol in the fucking bar cart. And they lived.
They lived their lives. They thrive.

Speaker 1 They actually did that at my friend, at his friend's house, drink one sip of every alcohol in the bar. Yeah, get that cream to mint.
Oh, they got drunk. Okay, this is about a Siamese cat.
Okay. Hero.

Speaker 1 Long time listener, and I miss your Evis. And you just read a story about Elvis.
And it's my story.

Speaker 1 I'm trying to try not to cry. Long time listener, I still miss your Elvis because we had a spunky Siamese cat as well.

Speaker 1 His name was Rutherford, and I like to think of him as a distant murderino relative of Elvis because he understood the assignment to protect me.

Speaker 1 One night while I was in junior high, the police put our entire neighborhood on lockdown. Police wanted every window and door locked with all curtains closed.

Speaker 1 Someone had driven by our neighbor's house and shot through the picture window about half a dozen times. Whoa.
Our friend was sitting in a recliner and got hit in the leg.

Speaker 1 Bear in mind that this was 1977. We had zero idea what gun violence was and drive-by shootings weren't a thing for decades to come.
That's insane. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Later that night, I cracked my bedroom window open about two inches. Why, you ask? Because my cat loved to sit on the windowsill and what Rutherford wanted, Rutherford got.
I bet.

Speaker 1 This left my curtain slightly parted and not entirely closed as instructed by police. Suddenly, Rutherford jumped to the floor and flattened himself out.

Speaker 1 I mean belly to the floor with all four legs stretched out like a cartoon character. He laid there staring through the wall as if he could see outside and was literally growling just like a dog.

Speaker 1 Elvis has growled. before.

Speaker 1 I swear he looked at me and then looked at my bedroom door and then back at the wall facing outside and just kept growling. I knew he wanted me to hit the deck and get out of my room.

Speaker 1 So I did my best G.I. Joe army crawl and slithered out of the door and up the stairs to tell my parents that Rutherford spotted something outside.

Speaker 1 Sorry, but just the description of the eye where it's like you out now. See that? You get to my six.
Yeah. Totally.
It's so like hilarious.

Speaker 1 That Rutherford was also a Navy SEAL, not just a Siamese cat. That's right.

Speaker 1 Navy Seal Point, because he was a Seal Point. Navy Siamese.
My dad hopped out of bed, bolted past me, rushed out the door, and literally chased a man into a field behind our house.

Speaker 1 So there really was someone there. Fuck.
Dad returned safely with my mother screaming at him that he could have been killed.

Speaker 1 I remember being terrified of a shooter and mortified, I had witnessed my pale-skinned, bony-legged father running around in nothing but his tidy white knees.

Speaker 1 Dear God, and baby Jesus, 48 years later, and I still can't unsee it. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Thankfully, due to our encounter, the police apprehended the creep. Rutherford fucking got him.
Jesus Christ.

Speaker 1 Got the bad guy. He had recently been released from jail and was seeking revenge on our neighbor for stealing his girlfriend while he had been incarcerated.
The guy got shot. Oh, shit.

Speaker 1 The police said he had returned that night to see if he had been successful in killing the guy.

Speaker 1 Turns out the week prior to the shooting, he had placed a bomb on the front doorstep of the man responsible for putting him in jail in the first place. Jesus.

Speaker 1 Luckily, both his victims recovered from their wounds. As a murderino, I'd like to say that my Siamese cat saved me from a peeping tom and a poorly skilled attempted murderer.

Speaker 1 Maybe Ruth Woodward was Alvis' great grandpa and grandpa is P-A-W.

Speaker 1 Wow. All the things you love in one sentence.
Stay sexy and listen when your pets are trying to save you from psychos. Inga.
Inga. That's a great name.
Wow. Yeah.
Nice. I know.
Yeah. Boy.

Speaker 1 Every family has so many amazing stories that no one has ever heard before. That's why Story Worth memoirs are perfect for your loved ones this holiday season.

Speaker 1 It might sound a little intimidating, but it's so easy. They'll love it.
It's a gift they won't see coming, something that makes them feel truly special. And it turns out it's a gift for you too.

Speaker 1 Their magic layout and new book designs make your books and photos look even more beautiful. What's not changing? Customers love for StoryWorth.

Speaker 1 They've printed over a million books and preserved 35 million family stories since their founding 13 years ago. They have over 48,000 five-star reviews on TrustPilot.

Speaker 1 Wirecutter, The Strategist, CNN, Fox News, and more agree StoryWorth is the perfect gift for the people you love most. I mean, what a great thing.

Speaker 1 There's always the gift list for people that are impossible to buy for, people that you've bought everything for, on and on.

Speaker 1 This gift truly is like different than any other gift you give because it's literally giving your family members their own memories back to them. Totally.

Speaker 1 And it's something that you can share and cherish for generations, really. So give your loved ones a unique keepsake you'll all cherish for years.
Story Worth Memoirs.

Speaker 1 Right now, save $15 or more during their holiday sale when you go to storyworth.com/slash MFM. That's storyworth.com/slash MFM to save $15 or more on your order.
Goodbye.

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Speaker 1 All right. Well, thank you.
No, you have one more and I have one more.

Speaker 1 My apologies.

Speaker 1 There I guess. I have one more, which means you must have one more.
Yeah, I must. Okay, so let's see.
The subject line of this email is an almost kidnapping. Hello, ladies.

Speaker 1 I've been listening to your podcast since 2017, and I try not to miss an episode. Thank you.
Thank you. But you know what? They keep.
Like, if you do miss one, it's just sitting there waiting for you.

Speaker 1 It's not radio. But we need those numbers week by week, you know? That's true.
That's true. You two have made me laugh, cry, and check the backseat of my car every single time I get in.
Love it.

Speaker 1 And I thank you for it. Before I get into my hometown story, I have to share a quick hot dog moment.

Speaker 1 My husband and I shop at Costco, and like Pav loves dogs, we cannot leave without the $1.50 hot dog and Coke combo. Hell yeah.
It's delicious.

Speaker 1 And honestly, the hot dog being longer than the bun just feels like a win every time. Have you seen there's like a t-shirt going around? That's just the picture of the hot dog deal on the Costco.

Speaker 1 On the menu. On the menu.
Just a t-shirt with that. I love it.
It's so good.

Speaker 1 Also, that's the kind of thing where it's like, ha ha ha, that's so funny. It's like, no, everyone wants that t-shirt.
Totally. Everyone loves it.
The hippest t-shirt. Especially now.
Yeah. Hot dog.

Speaker 1 Hot dog. Costco are heroes.
Hot dog are heroes. Bye-bye.
Okay. Karen's going to do the hot dog or sandwiches or heroes thing? No.

Speaker 1 No. No.

Speaker 1 Okay, now to my story. When I was 15, I ran track for my high school and often had to take the five o'clock activity bus home.
This was 1986.

Speaker 1 And back then, oh, thank God, someone that's almost my age. What a great fucking feeling.
This was 1986. And back then, school buses didn't drop you off at your front door.

Speaker 1 Instead, they get you within a mile or two and you walk the rest. Usually no big deal because I was with friends or my sisters, but not this day.
This day, I was the only one getting off at my stop.

Speaker 1 My house was the last one on a long dead-end road lined with trees and houses.

Speaker 1 I was about halfway home walking on the right side of the road when a man in a small red hatchback pulled up next to me with the window rolled down.

Speaker 1 He leaned toward the passenger side and tried to act friendly, saying I looked tired and that I should get in so he could drive me home. Fuck you.
Anyone that tells you that you look tired,

Speaker 1 whether it's someone in your office or somebody in a car on the road. There's an ulterior motive.
The person that

Speaker 1 is trying to, yeah, make you feel bad or that you feel it like look like shit. And the person's trying to get you in their fucking car.
Yeah. Just reject it all.

Speaker 1 No niceties. Nope.

Speaker 1 Okay. Immediately I got that feeling.
You know the one, the back of your neck tightens and your mind is screaming, stranger danger. I knew who Ted Bundy was.
I'd read the stranger beside me.

Speaker 1 I wasn't about to play nice. Hell yeah.
I love this. I didn't talk to him or look at him or even acknowledge him.
I just kept walking eyes straight ahead. He kept trying, insisting I get in his car.

Speaker 1 When I didn't respond, he finally snapped. He yelled, fuck you then, bitch, and squealed his tires as he sped down the road.
Of course, this is a dead-end road.

Speaker 1 So I knew he'd be coming back.

Speaker 1 I crossed the street so I'd be further from him when he passed again, thinking at the very least he couldn't grab me easily from across the car. Oh my god.
And yep, here he comes, slowing down again.

Speaker 1 This time he was all apologies, saying he didn't mean to yell, that he felt bad and he still wanted to give me a ride home to make it up to me. You fucking psycho.
What a creeper.

Speaker 1 Okay. No, sir.
If I didn't get in your car before you cursed me out, I definitely am not getting in now. Right.
I stayed quiet, kept walking, and ignored him again.

Speaker 1 He finally drove off a second time, yelling more profanities out the window, of course. Soda.
Now I had a new problem.

Speaker 1 He didn't know where I lived, but I was terrified he might come back again to see which house I went into.

Speaker 1 I also knew enough to know how stalkers operate. I wasn't about to lead him to my front door, so I tightened up my backpack straps and ran the last half mile home.

Speaker 1 I made it, locked the door, and thankfully nothing else happened. I didn't tell my mom.
I'm still not sure why. Because it was 1986, and you literally would have been yelled at

Speaker 1 for being harassed. Totally.
Sorry.

Speaker 1 Maybe I just wanted to believe it was over. I kept taking the five o'clock bus, but from then on, I switched to the one that dropped me a little bit further out.

Speaker 1 I had to cut through the woods and hop a fence into my backyard. But honestly, that felt safer.
Sorry, but that is such 15-year-old logic. No.
I'll go the way more dangerous.

Speaker 1 Or go the way where no one can see me. I'll go the way where this guy is waiting.
Yeah, where he's camping.

Speaker 1 Do you remember back then being like, I don't want to tell my mom because she'll make a big deal of this and I don't want to deal. Like, she'll make it a big thing.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 And we're just like so annoyed that she was so like,

Speaker 1 but it's like, oh no, yeah, you should have made it a big, a big deal. Yeah.

Speaker 1 It was the luck and the benefit of being a child and not understanding what she was upset about. Right.

Speaker 1 Because like she's going to make a big deal about it because she knows things that you wouldn't imagine possible. Right.
She's not embarrassing you. She's like trying to protect children.
Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Just tell your mom. Just tell your mommy.
It's how they do it these days. Yeah.
Okay. Oh, that was the end.
Anyway, thank you for being the murdery aunties we all need. Stay sexy sexy and never

Speaker 1 underestimate the Costco hot dog. SSDGM Bettina.

Speaker 1 Good one, Bettina. Beautiful.
Okay, well, actually, this one kind of fits in the theme. Hot dogs, no children, fucking politeness.

Speaker 1 So, same thing. Perfect.
Okay, first time I heard the fuck word from my 12-year-olds.

Speaker 1 Hello, my ear canal BFFs. Hey, hey.
I'm a very long-time listener, many time mental emailer, but first time actually emailing. Welcome.

Speaker 1 Last night, my 12-year-old daughters, I have identical twins, informed me of an incident that happened to their best friend earlier this week. Their friend said she got off the bus after school

Speaker 1 and was walking home with her two friends when she noticed a man in his 60s following them.

Speaker 1 She said she recognized him from a few years ago when he followed her from the bus and told her he knew her mom and asked her to come with him.

Speaker 1 At that time, she knew something odd was up and said, no, thank you, and quickly walked home. Earlier this week, as soon as she saw him, she recognized him and she told her friends to run.

Speaker 1 The three 12-year-old girls ran into her apartment and locked all the doors. He eventually caught up and was looking into her apartment windows and sliding glass doors.

Speaker 1 This is exactly what you just read. Yes.
She immediately called her parents, Yay, who then called the police.

Speaker 1 She was interviewed by the cops and said she couldn't stop shaking for the rest of the night. Yes.
Of course not. Amazing.
You were. in serious danger.
You were right.

Speaker 1 As you can imagine, hearing the story really shook us up.

Speaker 1 And as I processed it, my girls proceeded to come up with a plan, including what they would do in that situation and what they would say to the police.

Speaker 1 Because remember, kids are sometimes afraid of the police or they think they need a really big reason to call them like someone is hurt or there's a fire.

Speaker 1 As my girls were going through their pretend 911 script, I calmly and deliberately channeled Karen and Georgia.

Speaker 1 And I let them know that if they are ever in any type of situation where a stranger or a stranger

Speaker 1 adjacent is asking them a question or trying to speak to them, they don't owe them a single glance or utterance utterance in their direction.

Speaker 1 Listen to your gut, run away, call 911 and find an adult that they trust or a goth. Find a goth, find a goth.

Speaker 1 I told them they can fuck politeness and I even instructed them to repeat the phrase back to me. They looked at me wide-eyed,

Speaker 1 mouths agape, and as I nodded encouragement and showed them my serious face, they gladly shouted, fuck politeness.

Speaker 1 My heart swelled with pride for my baby murderinas and gratitude for the lessons you brave ladies have taught us, possibly even saving some lives along the way.

Speaker 1 Because here's the thing: some of us can become so consumed by our anxiety and our involuntary imaginations that, in order to protect ourselves, we develop an off-switch where we tell ourselves that doesn't happen here or it won't happen to us.

Speaker 1 Alternatively, many of us are sheltered and naive, and whether we want to admit it or not, we simply don't have the impetus to mentally prepare ourselves.

Speaker 1 Staying sexy and not getting murdered up here in Michigan, and it says, yeah, Vince, I'm with you too.

Speaker 1 Elena, she, her.

Speaker 1 Amazing job, Elena.

Speaker 1 First of all, I think it's like, I sometimes do get worried when 12-year-olds write in and they're like, I listen to your podcast, where it's just like, it just simply is not for children. No.

Speaker 1 But if they're in their world, some hideous adult breaks through and they suddenly have to start considering what these hideous adults may or may not do, then they do get to say the F word. Totally.

Speaker 1 And they get to do all these things. They practice it so they're not terrified, you know? Yes.

Speaker 1 And they practice kind of saying like this weird thing that's happening that when it does happen to you, and like I'm sure everyone could tell a story like this, where suddenly as a 12-year-old, you're interacting with a grown man who has the weirdest vibes.

Speaker 1 That is all you need. Yeah.
to make a scene. That's all you need.
That experience singularly. You don't have to keep on.
It's not three times. It shouldn't happen.
It shouldn't happen at all. Yeah.

Speaker 1 So literally go find someone that looks like someone's grandma. Yeah.
A cashier, an older lady cashier. Yes.
And say, that man keeps talking to me, and I don't know who it is. I love that.
That's it.

Speaker 1 Hell yeah. Send us your stories.
Do you have one of those stories where you fucked politeness before? We want to fucking hear those stories so bad at my favorite murder at Gmail. Please.
Please.

Speaker 1 And until you have a story like that for us, stay sexy. And don't get murdered.
Get away.

Speaker 1 Elvis, do you want a cookie?

Speaker 1 This has been an Exactly Right Production. Our senior producers are Alejandra Keck and Molly Smith.
Our editor is Aristotle Aceveda. This episode was mixed by Liana Squalachi.

Speaker 1 Email your hometowns to myfavorite murder at gmail.com. And follow the show on Instagram at MyFavorite Murder.

Speaker 1 Listen to MyFavorate Murder on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And now you can watch us on Exactly Right's YouTube page.

Speaker 1 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 1 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 1 Reese plays Niall Jarvis, her new neighbor and possible murderer. But who's the monster and who's the bad neighbor? That's another story.

Speaker 1 It's a game of cat and mouse that sets them on a collision course with fatal consequences. The Beast in Me, now playing only on Netflix.
You will not want to miss this. Goodbye.
Goodbye.

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Goodbye.