December 11, 2025 • 39 mins
Meredith unknowingly ate a bag of her teenage son’s weed gummies. She wants him to apologize. He wants her to apologize. At a stand-off, they call Jonathan for help.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:15):
Pushkin. We have quite a story for you today, But
before we begin, a warning. This episode contains themes of
drug use. Listener discretion is advised. Yeah. Oh, finally, I
(00:39):
wanted to tell you about my billboard in Times Square.
Oh wow, you're jelly. You want to billboard too?
Speaker 2 (00:47):
I feel like you like it.
Speaker 1 (00:50):
What gives you that impression?
Speaker 3 (00:52):
Your relationship with being you know, famous, I'm sure is
something as an artist that you use.
Speaker 1 (00:56):
Wait, hang on a second. Did you just say that
I was famous? It sounds like you did and something
of an artist?
Speaker 4 (01:03):
I said, you.
Speaker 3 (01:04):
Wanting to be famous and your relationships are wanting to
be famous?
Speaker 1 (01:07):
Do you remember you?
Speaker 3 (01:09):
Are you recording?
Speaker 1 (01:10):
Because I said, do you remember asking? I'm recording you
in my memory?
Speaker 3 (01:15):
Am I going to hear this on the radio?
Speaker 1 (01:17):
You're definitely not going to hear this on the radio.
Speaker 3 (01:20):
Oh yeah, Actually just got a radio the podcast, right?
Speaker 1 (01:23):
You know that I do a podcast? Am I on speakerphone?
Speaker 5 (01:29):
No?
Speaker 1 (01:31):
Because you know when you put someone on speakerphone, you're
supposed to tell them From Pushkin Industries, I'm Jonathan Goldstein
and this is Heavyweight Today's episode, Meredith. Right after the break,
(02:06):
I consider myself a fair person. If a plumber enters
my home, I offer him or her a cup of
coffee when presented with a bowl of restaurant mints, even
when unobserved, I make sure to leave a few for
the next guy. And if you have the good fortune
of eating tapas with me, you should know right now
(02:26):
you'll be eating at least half the plate. So in Meredith,
a fellow Minnesotan, asked me to weigh in on a
matter of fairness. I was raring to go. And so
it is on a sunny day in late March that
I find myself pulling up to Meredith's Hi. Yes it
(02:47):
is hello. Nice to me, Hi. Meredith ushers me inside.
Speaker 2 (02:52):
I thought you'd have like bigger hair.
Speaker 1 (02:54):
I have no hair?
Speaker 2 (02:55):
Really? Has it always been that way?
Speaker 1 (02:57):
Have I been? I was born bald. Yeah. As Meredith
acclimatizes herself to my unexpected baldness, we settle in.
Speaker 5 (03:09):
Okay, I'm got to get some coffee.
Speaker 2 (03:10):
Have I gotta have cup?
Speaker 1 (03:12):
How much coffee have you had today?
Speaker 2 (03:14):
Can you tell?
Speaker 1 (03:16):
Meredith fetches her fourth cup this morning, and I have
a look around. She just moved in here three months ago,
but the house is already feeling homie. You have a
quote from the Dali Lama on the This was a.
Speaker 6 (03:28):
Gift to me from my Gallantines party. There are only
two days in the year that nothing can be done.
One is called yesterday and the other is called tomorrow.
So today is the right day to love, believe, do,
and mostly live well.
Speaker 1 (03:45):
No offense to the Dali Lama, but I've built a
career on the idea that something can be done yesterday,
or at least about yesterday. And so I have Meredith
tell me about her past misfortune, which all began, she says,
three years ago on a Saturday morning.
Speaker 6 (04:02):
You have to understand that a I'm a sweet tooth, okay.
And the second really important piece of information is that
my sister in law owned a candy store.
Speaker 1 (04:13):
This sister in law routinely sent boxes of candy to
Meredith's three children, and because of the whole sweet tooth thing,
Meredith would tell her kids to keep the candy in
their room. That way, she'd only have access when she
was in their rooms tidying up. The agreement even had
a name.
Speaker 6 (04:31):
I would take what I would call the candy tacks
as a price of me helping them clean up their room.
Speaker 1 (04:38):
And cleaning up is what Meredith was doing on the
Saturday morning in question. She was in Aidan's bedroom. Aidan
is her son seventeen at the time, and Meredith was
hunting for his leftover cereal bulls.
Speaker 6 (04:51):
When I saw on the table some peach rings, you know,
those like little chewy gummy candy.
Speaker 1 (04:58):
I know them well right, They're.
Speaker 6 (05:00):
Really tasty, and I shoved them in my mouth like
num num numb.
Speaker 1 (05:06):
Meredith finished Aiden's entire bag of peach rings candy tacks.
From there, she moved on to her daughter's room to
continue cleaning.
Speaker 6 (05:15):
And it was about thirty minutes later when I started
to feel a little bit, you know, like a little
bit oh, something's not quite right.
Speaker 1 (05:24):
At that moment, a thought popped into Meredith's mind. What
if the peach rings weren't just peach rings?
Speaker 6 (05:32):
Maybe a small detail. Most times peach rings look like
orange and white. These were purple and blue. But I
didn't think anything of it other than, oh, it must
be a different version of peach rings.
Speaker 2 (05:45):
Maybe they're flavored blueberry.
Speaker 1 (05:47):
Sure, those blueberry flavored peach rings. Then there was also
where she'd found the blueberry flavored peach.
Speaker 2 (05:54):
Rings in a ziploc bag.
Speaker 1 (05:57):
They don't usually come in a zip block.
Speaker 2 (06:00):
They don't usually come in a ziplock.
Speaker 1 (06:01):
How big was the ziploc bag? Like those little like
the kind you would put drugs in.
Speaker 2 (06:06):
No, Jonathan, the kind you put a sandwich in.
Speaker 1 (06:12):
Meredith just thought Aiden had put the gummies in a
ziploc to, you know, preserve freshness. But now, as her
head began to swim, she thought a new thought.
Speaker 6 (06:23):
And in the moment of time it took me to
think that thought. My knees buckled. I dropped on all
fours because whatever was coming for me hit me like
a freight train, a.
Speaker 1 (06:34):
Freight train freighted with box car after box car of
gelatinous marijuana.
Speaker 6 (06:44):
My son comes running up the stairs and I yelled
to him what was in those gummies? All he says
is what were you doing in my room? I then
say what was in those gummies? He says how many
did you eat? And I was a member trembling. I
(07:04):
was said all of them? How much was in those?
He's like, mom, twenty five milligrams each.
Speaker 1 (07:15):
Meredith had eaten four peach gummies. That is one hundred
milligrams of weed.
Speaker 6 (07:23):
I'm the person that takes the gummy that somebody gives
you at five and starts shaving it down.
Speaker 2 (07:29):
So I knew, like two and a half is my limit.
Speaker 1 (07:33):
She'd ingested forty times her limit.
Speaker 2 (07:36):
And then I start yelling, well, you just killed your mother.
Speaker 6 (07:43):
The next several hours I can't only describe as kind
of coming floating in and out of consciousness. I mean
I have moments of sort of dream like I was
in a forest running and then the tree roots started
coming up and grapping around my legs.
Speaker 2 (08:01):
I mean, that's not fun.
Speaker 6 (08:02):
Trees twist around your legs and are trying to like
suck you down to the earth, Like what is that?
Speaker 1 (08:08):
Meredith didn't if she needed to go to the hospital.
She wondered if she would die. She phoned a few
friends to ask them to check up on her throughout
the day.
Speaker 2 (08:16):
You know, by like boy style.
Speaker 1 (08:18):
Because you weren't even capable of using the regular dialing.
Speaker 6 (08:22):
Jonathan, I couldn't move my fingers enough to get the
right buttons. It's like laying there with a piano on.
Speaker 1 (08:35):
You, her friends later told her. She kept repeating things
like am I going to be okay? And God helped me?
Speaker 2 (08:53):
All in all, twenty three hours.
Speaker 1 (08:57):
Oh my god, that's like longer than labor.
Speaker 2 (09:00):
It felt, it felt in some ways eternal.
Speaker 1 (09:06):
Sometime around ten am the next morning, Meredith finally began
to feel herself coming down, and with that the anger
set in. Anger at her seventeen year old son, aidan.
Speaker 2 (09:18):
Well, now we got to deal with the problem.
Speaker 1 (09:20):
You didn't know that he kept drugs in the house.
Speaker 2 (09:22):
No, I did not know.
Speaker 1 (09:24):
Meredith says she'd always had open conversations with her kids
about drugs and alcohol, but for the kids to keep
drugs in the house was not allowed. And on top
of that, leaving them out in the open when he
knew about the candy tacks, how could Aiden have been
so careless? And what made it all the more upsetting, Well,
Meredith was on all fours.
Speaker 6 (09:45):
Aiden flees, He's like, I got to go to work,
and I'm just left here having to somewhat fend for myself.
Speaker 1 (09:53):
Was a part of you proud that you had raised
a son who honored his work responsibilities.
Speaker 6 (10:00):
He was so committed to his work at Piepchang's that
his mom took the back burner.
Speaker 2 (10:09):
You know, I probably did writ as a kid with
a good work ethic. I'll give him that.
Speaker 1 (10:13):
But here's the thing that three years later, Meredith still
can't get over. Aidan refused to apologize. Instead, over and
over he uttered the same refrain.
Speaker 2 (10:25):
This is not my fault.
Speaker 1 (10:26):
Aidan felt like this was on you.
Speaker 6 (10:29):
Aiden one hundred percent felt this was on me, and
that no other parent would be that clueless.
Speaker 1 (10:38):
Meredith admits she is the sort of person who often
gets herself into these kinds of noodles.
Speaker 2 (10:44):
Oh, I've got a feel.
Speaker 6 (10:46):
I rescued a stray dog that was loose from a yard.
Speaker 1 (10:52):
What happened was Meredith's dog was routinely escaping her yard,
and people around the area would post about it on
next door, writing comments like who can't control their dog?
And Meredith, your dog is out again. She felt publicly shamed,
and so when she saw someone else's dog that was lost,
(11:13):
it felt like a chance to reclaim the respect of
her neighbors.
Speaker 2 (11:17):
And I proceeded to pick it up.
Speaker 6 (11:19):
You know, it was a portybound dog, and I took
it and really thought that.
Speaker 2 (11:23):
I was doing a good deed.
Speaker 1 (11:30):
As Meredith started walking home, the dog started jolting spasms
of gratitude. Perhaps she got the dog home safely, made
a post and waited. Finally the owner showed up.
Speaker 6 (11:44):
And I was expecting to be met with like, oh,
I'm so happy that you got my dog.
Speaker 2 (11:49):
I've been worried sick about it.
Speaker 6 (11:52):
Well, it turns out that I had taken a dog
from a home that had an invisible fence.
Speaker 1 (12:03):
Oh that's why it was jolting.
Speaker 6 (12:05):
Yes, it was jolting. Yes, And instead it was cause
you took my dog from our yard and you shocked
it and thinks.
Speaker 1 (12:17):
Is this why you had to move?
Speaker 2 (12:19):
It's probably a consideration.
Speaker 1 (12:27):
As for the drugging, However, Meredith doesn't think it was
all her fault.
Speaker 2 (12:31):
This could happen to any of us.
Speaker 6 (12:34):
I even googled, like looking for validation of like, oh,
this happens all the time, right.
Speaker 1 (12:40):
Sadly, Meredith didn't find the validation. She was looking for.
Speaker 2 (12:44):
A lot more stories about dogs.
Speaker 6 (12:46):
But you know what, I think this has probably happened
to a lot more people. But there's maybe they're harboring
some sense of shame about it.
Speaker 1 (12:53):
You're just not talking about it.
Speaker 2 (12:55):
If it happened to you, you are not alone.
Speaker 6 (12:58):
If it could happen to you, beware, Okay, maybe assess
the color of the gummies.
Speaker 1 (13:04):
Maybe assessorry to interrupt, but who do you think you're
talking to right now?
Speaker 7 (13:09):
Parents like me that wouldn't think their kid would have
gummy candy in their room.
Speaker 1 (13:19):
The thing about people like Meredith, people who can laugh
at themselves, is that it can be hard to know
when they need to be taken seriously. Beredith can joke
about the gummies, but it doesn't mean it wasn't scary
at the time, or that she doesn't want some acknowledgment
from Aiden.
Speaker 2 (13:35):
I keep waiting for this moment.
Speaker 6 (13:38):
When he comes through the door, he says, Mom, I've
been reflecting a lot, and I thought about that time
when this happened, and I just want to say I
get it.
Speaker 1 (13:50):
I'm sorry because he never apologized.
Speaker 2 (13:54):
He's never apologized.
Speaker 6 (13:55):
Ironically, of my three kids, he is probably the most
sensitive in terms of care and concern, so it was
somewhat surprising to me that he could dismiss that experience
so flippantly.
Speaker 1 (14:13):
Meredith has tried to draw the apology out, bringing it
up once or twice a year. She tells herself it's
an important teachable moment. She tells herself that Aidan's refusal
to apologize reflects poorly on her parenting, so she keeps nujinghim,
most recently in a canoe.
Speaker 2 (14:31):
Just the two of us.
Speaker 6 (14:32):
There was no escaping, and I went so far as negotiation, okay.
Speaker 2 (14:38):
I started at fifty to.
Speaker 1 (14:40):
Fifty, meaning percent of blame, fifty percent on her, fifty
percent on Aiden. Aiden is an econ and computer science major,
and Meredith was trying to speak his language.
Speaker 6 (14:51):
I went down to eighty twenty okay, twenty percent on him,
twenty percent on him.
Speaker 1 (14:57):
You wouldn't accept that, would not accept that.
Speaker 6 (14:59):
At this point, I was like, well, now what do
I have to lose? I went all the way down
to ninety nine to one. I'm looking for a shrapnel
okay of accountability, but.
Speaker 1 (15:08):
She had hasn't even gotten that. For three years, Meredith
and Aiden have been at a stalemate in terms of
who should be held accountable. It keeps popping up and
nothing gets settled. Meredith has tried recruiting friends to adjudicate,
but Aiden has always questioned their impartiality.
Speaker 6 (15:30):
So I thought a real, independent, objective third party might
be the ticket to finding our path here, someone that
could see both sides and talk empathetically with my son
about accountability.
Speaker 2 (15:49):
Do you think it's something you could be able to,
like broke her.
Speaker 1 (15:52):
While we're all familiar with the idea of a claim adjuster,
what Meredith needs is a blame adjuster, someone who can
adjust some blame onto her son and make him apologize.
I accept the job, beg forgiveness once more for my baldness,
and myself to leave when you want to take it. Yeah,
(16:13):
Meredith's phone rings. Hey, Hey, on the phone is Meredith's
eldest daughter, Quinn.
Speaker 2 (16:20):
I'm here with Jonathan.
Speaker 5 (16:21):
Hi.
Speaker 2 (16:22):
Hello.
Speaker 1 (16:23):
The Quinn was out of town during the weed dosing catastrophe.
She remembers it. Well, oh, right, as long as we
have her on the line, I asked Quinn if there's
anything more I should know about. Quinn pauses, then asks
her mother a question, was this before or after your
airplane incident?
Speaker 4 (16:44):
Oh?
Speaker 2 (16:44):
My god, Quinn, the airplane incident?
Speaker 1 (16:47):
What's the airplane incident? Enter Exhibit B the airplane incident.
Speaker 8 (16:57):
I'd need to have my side of the story on
this because there's some definite biases from my mom.
Speaker 1 (17:03):
This is Meredith's son Aiden, and when I phone him
up at college, he tells me that the gummy incident
is only one of two accidental druggings in this family.
Speaker 8 (17:13):
My mom was on a business trip out to the
UK and Scotland, and then as a birthday present I
had just gotten to go with.
Speaker 1 (17:20):
Three months after the weed gummies, Aidan went on a
trip with his mom. They were in the Amsterdam airport
about to board the nine hour flight back home to Minneapolis.
Speaker 8 (17:30):
I knew she had like some sort of like sleeping
aid and I was like, oh, maybe I could like
have some for the flight.
Speaker 1 (17:37):
Aiden's about twice Meredith size, so when he asked, she
figured it couldn't hurt to give him half of what
she normally took.
Speaker 8 (17:44):
And then I just remember like being in the Amsterdam
airport and I was like, man, I feel really gross right,
and like I felt like pretty nauseous.
Speaker 1 (17:53):
When boarding started, Aiden was having a hard time standing straight.
Speaker 8 (17:57):
Like right as I hand them my passport and ticket,
I just completely pass out.
Speaker 6 (18:03):
He's behind me, and then I hear a crash as
Aiden has collapsed into the stanchion.
Speaker 8 (18:09):
Basically what I remember was kind of just like half consciousness.
She had just like kind of grabbed me by the
shoulders and she was like, we need to get it together.
Speaker 1 (18:15):
You need to get on this flight.
Speaker 2 (18:16):
He look at me.
Speaker 6 (18:18):
They're like, there's no way you are going on displight
and you need to go to medical emergency or whatever.
Speaker 8 (18:26):
And I remember they like ran tests and like kind
of contact, like poison control.
Speaker 1 (18:35):
Just like Meredith. Aiden was fine eventually, but also like Meredith,
Aiden was disappointed by his mom's reaction. Does she accept
blame for the incident? Has she ever apologized to you
for that?
Speaker 4 (18:52):
I don't know.
Speaker 8 (18:54):
I don't want to fly out to say no, but
I'm like leaning more likely.
Speaker 1 (18:58):
Not, Aiden says. When he first collapsed, Meredith was mostly
focused on getting him onto the plane, even if it
meant dragging his still limp body down the jetway weekend
at Bernie's style, I would.
Speaker 8 (19:11):
Have expected that the priority is that I'm okay, not like, oh,
but we need to get on the plane right.
Speaker 1 (19:17):
Meredith wanted to keep things on track, which not so
different from Aiden, who hurried off to pf chains. And
to top it all off, when they eventually were rebooked
on a new flight, Meredith's ticket got upgraded. And guess
who didn't offer that upgraded ticket to a certain somebody?
Speaker 8 (19:35):
I remember asking her Oh, did you ever consider, like
maybe if I got the seed for that.
Speaker 1 (19:40):
Point, that you had been the one who was drugged.
Speaker 8 (19:42):
So yeah, And then she said I was supposed to
be home ten hours ago, which, like that behavior in
that scenario was uncharacteristic.
Speaker 1 (19:55):
They're very good pals, this is Meredith's daughter again, Quinn.
Speaker 6 (20:00):
But I think they have a harder time like being.
Speaker 2 (20:04):
Soft around each other.
Speaker 6 (20:06):
When they get in disagreements, both of them just like
hoard it up really quick.
Speaker 1 (20:11):
Quinn says. Aiden and Meredith are both similar in their stubbornness,
to which regarding the gummy incident, Aiden holds a hard line.
He says Meredith is wrong about basic facts, like, for
one thing, the drugs weren't out in the open, but
rather stashed in an old iPhone box on a shelf.
Andy says he would never have left the house while
(20:33):
Meredith was still panicking on the floor. It was only
once she was panicking safely in bed that he went
off to his job, of which.
Speaker 8 (20:41):
I never worked at Pfchain's.
Speaker 1 (20:44):
Aiden briefly worked at a Panda Express, but that was
months earlier. The job he was rushing off to was
his caddying job at a golf course. My son had
to head off to go serve Chinese food. Does that
sound like more egregious than so my son had to
leave to hit the golf course.
Speaker 8 (21:04):
I mean both of those. When you say it like that,
that just sounds like self.
Speaker 1 (21:09):
When I first got into this, I was certain that
Aiden and Aiden alone was to blame. But now that
I've spoken with Aidan, I'm not so sure. I'm still
willing to adjudicate, but I'm starting to feel a bit
out of my depth, which drugging was worse. I don't
know much about drugs. I couldn't tell you the difference
(21:30):
between happy dust and happy powder. Lucky for me, though,
I know a medical expert. After the break, a very
special guest, A very special doctor guest.
Speaker 9 (21:45):
It's Jackie.
Speaker 1 (22:08):
Hello Jackie. No, this isn't a glitch in your podcast
app The episode is not starting over. But this is
indeed my friend doctor Jackie Cohen. Doctor Jackie Cohen is
a doctor, and I'm phoning her today in her expert capacity.
I start with the airplane incident. So what do you think?
Speaker 8 (22:30):
Like?
Speaker 1 (22:30):
Do you know what I mean?
Speaker 4 (22:31):
Like?
Speaker 1 (22:31):
Is that a reasonable like? Would you do that? Would
you share my pills with my son.
Speaker 3 (22:37):
Of course not of course not listen. I okay, it's
not the worst, it's not the worst thing she ever did.
It's not the worst parenting moment. But it's certainly not
up there. And the reason it's not up there is that,
I mean, the only red flag to me and this
is coming to you with her problems. So that's the
first problem.
Speaker 1 (22:56):
That's that's your big that's the biggest lit miss for you.
Speaker 5 (22:59):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (22:59):
So basically, yeah, you didn't. I mean, by your logic,
you think that every single person who has come to
me in all these years is not well by virtue
of the fact that they have to me for help.
Look at our dear friend Mary Club. Mary Cloude came
to me for help.
Speaker 4 (23:14):
She did, she did.
Speaker 1 (23:15):
There's an episode. Did I not help her to get
her real estate license? Did I not?
Speaker 3 (23:20):
Okay?
Speaker 2 (23:22):
Yes, and it was a good story.
Speaker 3 (23:24):
Okay, fine, you're right.
Speaker 10 (23:25):
You're absolutely right.
Speaker 1 (23:27):
Although Jackie concedes the point that not everyone who comes
to me for help is certifiably deranged, she does think
Meredith is certifiably undeserving of an apology. From Jackie's perspective,
it's aiden who deserves one.
Speaker 3 (23:42):
I'm totally with a son on this one. I think
his response is is so appropriate, like, you know what
it was on her to be elect fishing around his
room and consuming candies.
Speaker 1 (23:52):
The when I tell Jackie about the seed, upgrade him right, No,
she didn't. She took it herself. She does seem to
enjoy Meredith's hutzba. He ain't.
Speaker 3 (24:06):
The myth she could do is let him sleep it
off comfortably.
Speaker 1 (24:09):
Right, that's what the kid felt.
Speaker 3 (24:11):
Yeah, I'm fowly with kids. Kit's great, by the way,
it is on the ball.
Speaker 4 (24:20):
Hey, how are you? I'm good.
Speaker 1 (24:23):
As with any medical question, I need a second opinion.
So after my call with Jackie, I consult with a
second drug expert. Not a doctor per se, but a
doctor of the streets. Are you in your underwear?
Speaker 3 (24:37):
Yes?
Speaker 1 (24:37):
Sorry, This is my friend Steve marsh. If his voice
sounds familiar, it's because he was the subject of another
episode of this podcast and is thus by Jackie's estimation unwell.
Steve has done ayahuasca in peru Iboga in Gabone and
(24:59):
participated in the unofficial Champions League of Ecstasy at Bergheim
in Berlin. Even though I pretty much don't know what
any of these words mean. I do know that Steve
has been breaking on through to the other side since
his teens and hiding weed from his mother since he
was in diapers. So I tell him the gummy story
(25:19):
and ask for his take.
Speaker 4 (25:21):
I don't think he's really understanding what his mom went through.
Maybe like I've done the heroic dose of almost any
drug you can name, and yeah, that's a serious dosage.
Speaker 1 (25:32):
So serious. Steve says, the twenty five milligram gummies aren't
even legal in the state of Minnesota. Steve himself has
never taken one hundred milligrams of vetibles at one time,
but he's sympathetic to Meredith's plight because of the time
he quote dabbed weed, which he explains is inhaling a
super high concentrate of THC.
Speaker 4 (25:53):
I had to sit on the side of a hill
and like, you know, our friend Marisa, Yeah, Marisa had
to come out back and like gently rub my back
if I was like having a panic attack, which I
pretty much was, you know, So I like, I've been
there before, Meredith. I get it, you know, like it
is helpless and catatonic and scary.
Speaker 1 (26:14):
For Steve, it's pretty cut and dry Unlike Jackie, he
believes it's Aidan who owes Meredith an apology. But to
make sure he has all the information, I tell him
the plane story too.
Speaker 4 (26:26):
I would argue that's nearly irrelevant.
Speaker 1 (26:29):
You know, on top of it, one of the tickets
gets bumped up to first class, and she takes.
Speaker 4 (26:35):
It as is her maternal right. I have to say,
I just think that your mom ate your drugs, man, Like,
why can't you get your head around that you have
to be responsible for your shit? Man?
Speaker 1 (26:52):
After weighing Jackie's expert testimony and Steve's sort of expert testimony,
I can only come to one conclusion, King Solomon, like,
and it's tit for tatnus, Meredith and Aiden need to
apologize to one another. And because two apologies require two
apology shamans, do you want to go there with me, sir?
(27:18):
After the break? Apologies all around?
Speaker 4 (27:21):
Yeah? I want to know where this kid is getting
this high powered We've got me as too, Emily.
Speaker 1 (27:53):
I said, there's a really good restaurant here here called
Broyer's or something voters. Aiden is home from college for
the week, and so on a warm afternoon, Steve and
I in our capacity as independent objective. Third and fourth
parties make our way to Meredith's.
Speaker 4 (28:12):
It's like, right, here is this the house?
Speaker 1 (28:16):
Yeah, that looks like it. The plan is to get in,
get some apologies, and get out in time for an
early lunch at Breyer's or Brothers or whatever it's called. Hi,
how are you thank you?
Speaker 3 (28:39):
Right?
Speaker 4 (28:39):
Yeah, I've been briefed. I've been briefed.
Speaker 1 (28:43):
Okay, Meredith welcomes us in. Aiden is seated on the
far end of the living room couch. Meredith sits down
beside him. Steve and I begin by trying to secure
an apology from Aidan about the gummies.
Speaker 8 (28:57):
It's not like I started on on a silver platter.
Speaker 4 (28:59):
Yeah, but hiding them sufficiently means your mom didn't overdose
on weed.
Speaker 1 (29:02):
The thing is, I think I did have them, But unsurprisingly,
Aidan is defensive.
Speaker 8 (29:07):
I just think there's so many signs that like would
have just should be red flat.
Speaker 4 (29:12):
But even if she missed them, all, you're still responsible
for the drugs. And if you can just admit that,
then you can do drugs for the rest of your life.
What were I evenm just saying like I'm sorry?
Speaker 8 (29:30):
At that point, I don't know, I don't, I think you, but.
Speaker 2 (29:33):
I think you're probably worried.
Speaker 1 (29:34):
Are you worried?
Speaker 11 (29:35):
Yeah?
Speaker 8 (29:36):
I think that just kind of ties back to the
whole thing. Like how much of the blame is that.
Speaker 1 (29:40):
Well, I don't know, I get I think we're caught
up in like pie charts and ratios. I mean, I
feel like it's just you know, my mother got hurt
because of something that I was a part of.
Speaker 9 (29:52):
You.
Speaker 1 (29:52):
That's it.
Speaker 4 (29:54):
Do you feel like you were hurt? I don't, like.
Speaker 6 (29:55):
I mean you saw me basically melt and freak out and.
Speaker 1 (30:02):
Then you checked out, which is of course how Aiden
feels about how Meredith responded to him in the amster
Nam airport, a point he raises.
Speaker 8 (30:12):
It wasn't like, oh my god, I know you're okay.
I just here, we need to get on the flight.
Your site.
Speaker 6 (30:17):
I know, I know, I know, because I honestly I thought,
you know, I love you, but like.
Speaker 2 (30:21):
Sometimes you like you're a little dramatic. You're a little dramatic.
Speaker 6 (30:26):
Sometimes you're a little dramatic, And I thought, Okay, how
bad can it be?
Speaker 4 (30:32):
Strings right, like, how bad can this be?
Speaker 1 (30:33):
Mom?
Speaker 4 (30:34):
Well, do you guys realize that there's some stuff that's
happening on both sides.
Speaker 1 (30:40):
A lot of stuff on both sides. But just when
I'm starting to think there will be no sorries, Meredith
starts inching towards the light.
Speaker 6 (30:49):
I just I just felt so bad. I think I
did feel like shame about it, and then making the
apology more grand would just be somewhat underscoring my shame
about it.
Speaker 2 (31:02):
Sure, I just would like, just can we just move on?
Speaker 5 (31:04):
You know?
Speaker 6 (31:09):
But I think your point is I missed your suffering.
Speaker 5 (31:15):
And.
Speaker 6 (31:18):
I you know, I will apologize for not being there
in the right way at the time. I'm sorry, like
I should have had more empathy for you in that situation.
Speaker 1 (31:28):
Aiden nods, but he still doesn't offer an apology back.
So Steve offers a helpful push.
Speaker 4 (31:35):
So maybe what's going on here is just like you're
getting better at modeling apologies.
Speaker 2 (31:41):
Uh huh.
Speaker 4 (31:42):
And now Aiden will go back and think about what
a real remorseful apology sounds like. Maybe that's maybe the
first time he's heard like the gesture of apology could
be bigger. Yeah, maybe just like is under rehearsed in
the family. You know.
Speaker 1 (32:01):
When I spoke with Quinn, she told me that It's true.
As kids, they didn't have many examples of what it
looks like to say sorry and mean it, which might
be why Aiden is struggling.
Speaker 4 (32:11):
So right now, you could acknowledge Aiden that maybe you're
not good at that. Do you think you're good at
apologizing from the heart?
Speaker 8 (32:19):
Probably not?
Speaker 4 (32:20):
Yeah, and maybe it doesn't have to happen today, But
like it's a good thing to acknowledge that, Hey, I'm
a kind person, I'm a good person, but I might
suck at apologizing. Yeah, that's fair.
Speaker 11 (32:33):
Yeah, yeah, I mean, like because it's like I mean,
I could just like say it and then like again, Okay,
I'm sorry that my accents cause you harm and.
Speaker 4 (32:52):
I might.
Speaker 8 (32:54):
And that my irresponsibility was inflicted upon you.
Speaker 2 (33:02):
Thank you.
Speaker 4 (33:04):
You know.
Speaker 6 (33:04):
Maybe originally my motive or my sort of questioning of
this was someday you're going to be in some kind
of a relationship right with some other person in which
you're going to have to see things from their perspective,
and you're going to have to back down a little bit,
no matter how convinced you are that you were in
the right.
Speaker 1 (33:25):
It feels like Meredith is speaking from experience. I asked
her about it later on, and she tells me that
she was. She was thinking about her most recent relationship
it had just ended, and she says the situation could
have used an apology. She wants her son to learn
from her experience. That is, after all, what good parents
(33:46):
want most.
Speaker 6 (33:48):
And so, you know, part of my yearning here was like,
how do I help.
Speaker 2 (33:53):
You get there?
Speaker 1 (33:59):
My hope going into this was that Aiden would accept
blame for the gummies and Meredith would own up for
what happened in Amsterdam. A little quit pro quo and
everyone goes home happy. And that did kind of happen,
sort of. In the weeks after the conversation, I find
myself thinking about this business of modeling behavior that Steve
(34:20):
had brought up. If Meredith hadn't modeled apologies for her kids,
it begs the question who had modeled not modeling apologies
for her? So I reached back out to Meredith to
ask whether her parents ever said sorry to her. I
don't think so, but at times it would have been nice,
she says. By way of explanation, Meredith tells me about
(34:43):
all the time she'd be left waiting after ballet class
or school for her mom to pick her up.
Speaker 10 (34:50):
I just remember feeling like the last kid standing waiting
like an hour outside. Yeah, and I think she I
don't know what she was doing, but I kind of
the message was like, well I kind of see I'm
a lower priority. It's funny now I think about me
picking my kids the whoror that I would if I'm
late by like five minutes?
Speaker 4 (35:12):
Is it?
Speaker 1 (35:12):
Because like you remember that feeling of.
Speaker 2 (35:14):
Just waiting and feeling like does anybody care?
Speaker 1 (35:20):
And it wouldn't come with an apology. No.
Speaker 12 (35:24):
I wasn't allowed to be angry about it, right, you know.
It was like, well that's the situation and you just gotta.
Speaker 1 (35:31):
Like suck it up.
Speaker 4 (35:32):
Suck it up.
Speaker 1 (35:33):
Anything other than that would be dramatic, you know?
Speaker 12 (35:37):
Did that somehow sort of translate down in the way
I raise my kids? I mean, Aiden's reaction to me
overdosing on his gummies was suck it up, right, which
is exactly what I did to him.
Speaker 1 (35:51):
Like family heirlooms or the gene for color blindness, the
value of apologizing is handed down. But if you didn't
come from a family where there was space for all that,
it's hard to create that space when you become a parent. Yourself.
How can you give the thing you never received? I
don't know the solution to that, but I do know
(36:11):
that it can't hurt to keep trying. Do you think
it's still possible to change? Like you know where you
can have a relationship with the kids where you can
apologize to them in the moment and they hear that
feel it.
Speaker 2 (36:25):
Can people change?
Speaker 1 (36:28):
Yeah, we can't change yesterday, and we can't know who
we will be tomorrow. No, Jesus, maybe the Dalai Lama
is right. Today is the right day to love, believe, do,
and mostly live. And hey, if you choose to smoke
(36:50):
a little of the good stuff along the way, just
be sure to consult your pulmonary cardiologist. First, Heavyweight takes
no responsibility for bad trips, only the good ones.
Speaker 5 (37:32):
Now that the fern ures returning to its good will home,
now that the last month's rent is scheming with the
damage to possible, take this moment to dissolve if we message,
(37:53):
if we tried to felt around for far too from
things that accidentally talk.
Speaker 1 (38:08):
This episode of Heavyweight was produced by supervising producer Stevie
Lane and me Jonathan Goldstein, along with Phoebe Flanagan. Our
senior producer is Khalila Holt, editorial guidance from Emily Condon.
Special thanks to Ben Nattafaffrey, Daphne Chen, Alexandra Garaton, and
Sam Reisman. For more Steve Marsh, you can enjoy his
(38:28):
written work in Minneapolis Saint Paul Magazine. Emamonger mixed the
episode with original music by Christine Fellows, John K. Sampson,
Blue Dot Sessions, and Bobby Lord. Additional scoring by bobble
Michael Charles Smith, Chris Zabriski, and Virginia Violet and the Rays.
Our theme song is by The Weaker Bands, courtesy of
Epitaph Records. Follow us on Instagram at Heavyweight Podcast or
(38:50):
email us at Heavyweight at Pushkin dot Fm. We'll be
back next week with the final episode of the season.
Speaker 5 (38:58):
Painted in an empty road sign in an empty rope.
(39:18):
Mm hmm
Pushkin. We have quite a story for you today, But
before we begin, a warning. This episode contains themes of
drug use. Listener discretion is advised. Yeah. Oh, finally, I
(00:39):
wanted to tell you about my billboard in Times Square.
Oh wow, you're jelly. You want to billboard too?
Speaker 2 (00:47):
I feel like you like it.
Speaker 1 (00:50):
What gives you that impression?
Speaker 3 (00:52):
Your relationship with being you know, famous, I'm sure is
something as an artist that you use.
Speaker 1 (00:56):
Wait, hang on a second. Did you just say that
I was famous? It sounds like you did and something
of an artist?
Speaker 4 (01:03):
I said, you.
Speaker 3 (01:04):
Wanting to be famous and your relationships are wanting to
be famous?
Speaker 1 (01:07):
Do you remember you?
Speaker 3 (01:09):
Are you recording?
Speaker 1 (01:10):
Because I said, do you remember asking? I'm recording you
in my memory?
Speaker 3 (01:15):
Am I going to hear this on the radio?
Speaker 1 (01:17):
You're definitely not going to hear this on the radio.
Speaker 3 (01:20):
Oh yeah, Actually just got a radio the podcast, right?
Speaker 1 (01:23):
You know that I do a podcast? Am I on speakerphone?
Speaker 5 (01:29):
No?
Speaker 1 (01:31):
Because you know when you put someone on speakerphone, you're
supposed to tell them From Pushkin Industries, I'm Jonathan Goldstein
and this is Heavyweight Today's episode, Meredith. Right after the break,
(02:06):
I consider myself a fair person. If a plumber enters
my home, I offer him or her a cup of
coffee when presented with a bowl of restaurant mints, even
when unobserved, I make sure to leave a few for
the next guy. And if you have the good fortune
of eating tapas with me, you should know right now
(02:26):
you'll be eating at least half the plate. So in Meredith,
a fellow Minnesotan, asked me to weigh in on a
matter of fairness. I was raring to go. And so
it is on a sunny day in late March that
I find myself pulling up to Meredith's Hi. Yes it
(02:47):
is hello. Nice to me, Hi. Meredith ushers me inside.
Speaker 2 (02:52):
I thought you'd have like bigger hair.
Speaker 1 (02:54):
I have no hair?
Speaker 2 (02:55):
Really? Has it always been that way?
Speaker 1 (02:57):
Have I been? I was born bald. Yeah. As Meredith
acclimatizes herself to my unexpected baldness, we settle in.
Speaker 5 (03:09):
Okay, I'm got to get some coffee.
Speaker 2 (03:10):
Have I gotta have cup?
Speaker 1 (03:12):
How much coffee have you had today?
Speaker 2 (03:14):
Can you tell?
Speaker 1 (03:16):
Meredith fetches her fourth cup this morning, and I have
a look around. She just moved in here three months ago,
but the house is already feeling homie. You have a
quote from the Dali Lama on the This was a.
Speaker 6 (03:28):
Gift to me from my Gallantines party. There are only
two days in the year that nothing can be done.
One is called yesterday and the other is called tomorrow.
So today is the right day to love, believe, do,
and mostly live well.
Speaker 1 (03:45):
No offense to the Dali Lama, but I've built a
career on the idea that something can be done yesterday,
or at least about yesterday. And so I have Meredith
tell me about her past misfortune, which all began, she says,
three years ago on a Saturday morning.
Speaker 6 (04:02):
You have to understand that a I'm a sweet tooth, okay.
And the second really important piece of information is that
my sister in law owned a candy store.
Speaker 1 (04:13):
This sister in law routinely sent boxes of candy to
Meredith's three children, and because of the whole sweet tooth thing,
Meredith would tell her kids to keep the candy in
their room. That way, she'd only have access when she
was in their rooms tidying up. The agreement even had
a name.
Speaker 6 (04:31):
I would take what I would call the candy tacks
as a price of me helping them clean up their room.
Speaker 1 (04:38):
And cleaning up is what Meredith was doing on the
Saturday morning in question. She was in Aidan's bedroom. Aidan
is her son seventeen at the time, and Meredith was
hunting for his leftover cereal bulls.
Speaker 6 (04:51):
When I saw on the table some peach rings, you know,
those like little chewy gummy candy.
Speaker 1 (04:58):
I know them well right, They're.
Speaker 6 (05:00):
Really tasty, and I shoved them in my mouth like
num num numb.
Speaker 1 (05:06):
Meredith finished Aiden's entire bag of peach rings candy tacks.
From there, she moved on to her daughter's room to
continue cleaning.
Speaker 6 (05:15):
And it was about thirty minutes later when I started
to feel a little bit, you know, like a little
bit oh, something's not quite right.
Speaker 1 (05:24):
At that moment, a thought popped into Meredith's mind. What
if the peach rings weren't just peach rings?
Speaker 6 (05:32):
Maybe a small detail. Most times peach rings look like
orange and white. These were purple and blue. But I
didn't think anything of it other than, oh, it must
be a different version of peach rings.
Speaker 2 (05:45):
Maybe they're flavored blueberry.
Speaker 1 (05:47):
Sure, those blueberry flavored peach rings. Then there was also
where she'd found the blueberry flavored peach.
Speaker 2 (05:54):
Rings in a ziploc bag.
Speaker 1 (05:57):
They don't usually come in a zip block.
Speaker 2 (06:00):
They don't usually come in a ziplock.
Speaker 1 (06:01):
How big was the ziploc bag? Like those little like
the kind you would put drugs in.
Speaker 2 (06:06):
No, Jonathan, the kind you put a sandwich in.
Speaker 1 (06:12):
Meredith just thought Aiden had put the gummies in a
ziploc to, you know, preserve freshness. But now, as her
head began to swim, she thought a new thought.
Speaker 6 (06:23):
And in the moment of time it took me to
think that thought. My knees buckled. I dropped on all
fours because whatever was coming for me hit me like
a freight train, a.
Speaker 1 (06:34):
Freight train freighted with box car after box car of
gelatinous marijuana.
Speaker 6 (06:44):
My son comes running up the stairs and I yelled
to him what was in those gummies? All he says
is what were you doing in my room? I then
say what was in those gummies? He says how many
did you eat? And I was a member trembling. I
(07:04):
was said all of them? How much was in those?
He's like, mom, twenty five milligrams each.
Speaker 1 (07:15):
Meredith had eaten four peach gummies. That is one hundred
milligrams of weed.
Speaker 6 (07:23):
I'm the person that takes the gummy that somebody gives
you at five and starts shaving it down.
Speaker 2 (07:29):
So I knew, like two and a half is my limit.
Speaker 1 (07:33):
She'd ingested forty times her limit.
Speaker 2 (07:36):
And then I start yelling, well, you just killed your mother.
Speaker 6 (07:43):
The next several hours I can't only describe as kind
of coming floating in and out of consciousness. I mean
I have moments of sort of dream like I was
in a forest running and then the tree roots started
coming up and grapping around my legs.
Speaker 2 (08:01):
I mean, that's not fun.
Speaker 6 (08:02):
Trees twist around your legs and are trying to like
suck you down to the earth, Like what is that?
Speaker 1 (08:08):
Meredith didn't if she needed to go to the hospital.
She wondered if she would die. She phoned a few
friends to ask them to check up on her throughout
the day.
Speaker 2 (08:16):
You know, by like boy style.
Speaker 1 (08:18):
Because you weren't even capable of using the regular dialing.
Speaker 6 (08:22):
Jonathan, I couldn't move my fingers enough to get the
right buttons. It's like laying there with a piano on.
Speaker 1 (08:35):
You, her friends later told her. She kept repeating things
like am I going to be okay? And God helped me?
Speaker 2 (08:53):
All in all, twenty three hours.
Speaker 1 (08:57):
Oh my god, that's like longer than labor.
Speaker 2 (09:00):
It felt, it felt in some ways eternal.
Speaker 1 (09:06):
Sometime around ten am the next morning, Meredith finally began
to feel herself coming down, and with that the anger
set in. Anger at her seventeen year old son, aidan.
Speaker 2 (09:18):
Well, now we got to deal with the problem.
Speaker 1 (09:20):
You didn't know that he kept drugs in the house.
Speaker 2 (09:22):
No, I did not know.
Speaker 1 (09:24):
Meredith says she'd always had open conversations with her kids
about drugs and alcohol, but for the kids to keep
drugs in the house was not allowed. And on top
of that, leaving them out in the open when he
knew about the candy tacks, how could Aiden have been
so careless? And what made it all the more upsetting, Well,
Meredith was on all fours.
Speaker 6 (09:45):
Aiden flees, He's like, I got to go to work,
and I'm just left here having to somewhat fend for myself.
Speaker 1 (09:53):
Was a part of you proud that you had raised
a son who honored his work responsibilities.
Speaker 6 (10:00):
He was so committed to his work at Piepchang's that
his mom took the back burner.
Speaker 2 (10:09):
You know, I probably did writ as a kid with
a good work ethic. I'll give him that.
Speaker 1 (10:13):
But here's the thing that three years later, Meredith still
can't get over. Aidan refused to apologize. Instead, over and
over he uttered the same refrain.
Speaker 2 (10:25):
This is not my fault.
Speaker 1 (10:26):
Aidan felt like this was on you.
Speaker 6 (10:29):
Aiden one hundred percent felt this was on me, and
that no other parent would be that clueless.
Speaker 1 (10:38):
Meredith admits she is the sort of person who often
gets herself into these kinds of noodles.
Speaker 2 (10:44):
Oh, I've got a feel.
Speaker 6 (10:46):
I rescued a stray dog that was loose from a yard.
Speaker 1 (10:52):
What happened was Meredith's dog was routinely escaping her yard,
and people around the area would post about it on
next door, writing comments like who can't control their dog?
And Meredith, your dog is out again. She felt publicly shamed,
and so when she saw someone else's dog that was lost,
(11:13):
it felt like a chance to reclaim the respect of
her neighbors.
Speaker 2 (11:17):
And I proceeded to pick it up.
Speaker 6 (11:19):
You know, it was a portybound dog, and I took
it and really thought that.
Speaker 2 (11:23):
I was doing a good deed.
Speaker 1 (11:30):
As Meredith started walking home, the dog started jolting spasms
of gratitude. Perhaps she got the dog home safely, made
a post and waited. Finally the owner showed up.
Speaker 6 (11:44):
And I was expecting to be met with like, oh,
I'm so happy that you got my dog.
Speaker 2 (11:49):
I've been worried sick about it.
Speaker 6 (11:52):
Well, it turns out that I had taken a dog
from a home that had an invisible fence.
Speaker 1 (12:03):
Oh that's why it was jolting.
Speaker 6 (12:05):
Yes, it was jolting. Yes, And instead it was cause
you took my dog from our yard and you shocked
it and thinks.
Speaker 1 (12:17):
Is this why you had to move?
Speaker 2 (12:19):
It's probably a consideration.
Speaker 1 (12:27):
As for the drugging, However, Meredith doesn't think it was
all her fault.
Speaker 2 (12:31):
This could happen to any of us.
Speaker 6 (12:34):
I even googled, like looking for validation of like, oh,
this happens all the time, right.
Speaker 1 (12:40):
Sadly, Meredith didn't find the validation. She was looking for.
Speaker 2 (12:44):
A lot more stories about dogs.
Speaker 6 (12:46):
But you know what, I think this has probably happened
to a lot more people. But there's maybe they're harboring
some sense of shame about it.
Speaker 1 (12:53):
You're just not talking about it.
Speaker 2 (12:55):
If it happened to you, you are not alone.
Speaker 6 (12:58):
If it could happen to you, beware, Okay, maybe assess
the color of the gummies.
Speaker 1 (13:04):
Maybe assessorry to interrupt, but who do you think you're
talking to right now?
Speaker 7 (13:09):
Parents like me that wouldn't think their kid would have
gummy candy in their room.
Speaker 1 (13:19):
The thing about people like Meredith, people who can laugh
at themselves, is that it can be hard to know
when they need to be taken seriously. Beredith can joke
about the gummies, but it doesn't mean it wasn't scary
at the time, or that she doesn't want some acknowledgment
from Aiden.
Speaker 2 (13:35):
I keep waiting for this moment.
Speaker 6 (13:38):
When he comes through the door, he says, Mom, I've
been reflecting a lot, and I thought about that time
when this happened, and I just want to say I
get it.
Speaker 1 (13:50):
I'm sorry because he never apologized.
Speaker 2 (13:54):
He's never apologized.
Speaker 6 (13:55):
Ironically, of my three kids, he is probably the most
sensitive in terms of care and concern, so it was
somewhat surprising to me that he could dismiss that experience
so flippantly.
Speaker 1 (14:13):
Meredith has tried to draw the apology out, bringing it
up once or twice a year. She tells herself it's
an important teachable moment. She tells herself that Aidan's refusal
to apologize reflects poorly on her parenting, so she keeps nujinghim,
most recently in a canoe.
Speaker 2 (14:31):
Just the two of us.
Speaker 6 (14:32):
There was no escaping, and I went so far as negotiation, okay.
Speaker 2 (14:38):
I started at fifty to.
Speaker 1 (14:40):
Fifty, meaning percent of blame, fifty percent on her, fifty
percent on Aiden. Aiden is an econ and computer science major,
and Meredith was trying to speak his language.
Speaker 6 (14:51):
I went down to eighty twenty okay, twenty percent on him,
twenty percent on him.
Speaker 1 (14:57):
You wouldn't accept that, would not accept that.
Speaker 6 (14:59):
At this point, I was like, well, now what do
I have to lose? I went all the way down
to ninety nine to one. I'm looking for a shrapnel
okay of accountability, but.
Speaker 1 (15:08):
She had hasn't even gotten that. For three years, Meredith
and Aiden have been at a stalemate in terms of
who should be held accountable. It keeps popping up and
nothing gets settled. Meredith has tried recruiting friends to adjudicate,
but Aiden has always questioned their impartiality.
Speaker 6 (15:30):
So I thought a real, independent, objective third party might
be the ticket to finding our path here, someone that
could see both sides and talk empathetically with my son
about accountability.
Speaker 2 (15:49):
Do you think it's something you could be able to,
like broke her.
Speaker 1 (15:52):
While we're all familiar with the idea of a claim adjuster,
what Meredith needs is a blame adjuster, someone who can
adjust some blame onto her son and make him apologize.
I accept the job, beg forgiveness once more for my baldness,
and myself to leave when you want to take it. Yeah,
(16:13):
Meredith's phone rings. Hey, Hey, on the phone is Meredith's
eldest daughter, Quinn.
Speaker 2 (16:20):
I'm here with Jonathan.
Speaker 5 (16:21):
Hi.
Speaker 2 (16:22):
Hello.
Speaker 1 (16:23):
The Quinn was out of town during the weed dosing catastrophe.
She remembers it. Well, oh, right, as long as we
have her on the line, I asked Quinn if there's
anything more I should know about. Quinn pauses, then asks
her mother a question, was this before or after your
airplane incident?
Speaker 4 (16:44):
Oh?
Speaker 2 (16:44):
My god, Quinn, the airplane incident?
Speaker 1 (16:47):
What's the airplane incident? Enter Exhibit B the airplane incident.
Speaker 8 (16:57):
I'd need to have my side of the story on
this because there's some definite biases from my mom.
Speaker 1 (17:03):
This is Meredith's son Aiden, and when I phone him
up at college, he tells me that the gummy incident
is only one of two accidental druggings in this family.
Speaker 8 (17:13):
My mom was on a business trip out to the
UK and Scotland, and then as a birthday present I
had just gotten to go with.
Speaker 1 (17:20):
Three months after the weed gummies, Aidan went on a
trip with his mom. They were in the Amsterdam airport
about to board the nine hour flight back home to Minneapolis.
Speaker 8 (17:30):
I knew she had like some sort of like sleeping
aid and I was like, oh, maybe I could like
have some for the flight.
Speaker 1 (17:37):
Aiden's about twice Meredith size, so when he asked, she
figured it couldn't hurt to give him half of what
she normally took.
Speaker 8 (17:44):
And then I just remember like being in the Amsterdam
airport and I was like, man, I feel really gross right,
and like I felt like pretty nauseous.
Speaker 1 (17:53):
When boarding started, Aiden was having a hard time standing straight.
Speaker 8 (17:57):
Like right as I hand them my passport and ticket,
I just completely pass out.
Speaker 6 (18:03):
He's behind me, and then I hear a crash as
Aiden has collapsed into the stanchion.
Speaker 8 (18:09):
Basically what I remember was kind of just like half consciousness.
She had just like kind of grabbed me by the
shoulders and she was like, we need to get it together.
Speaker 1 (18:15):
You need to get on this flight.
Speaker 2 (18:16):
He look at me.
Speaker 6 (18:18):
They're like, there's no way you are going on displight
and you need to go to medical emergency or whatever.
Speaker 8 (18:26):
And I remember they like ran tests and like kind
of contact, like poison control.
Speaker 1 (18:35):
Just like Meredith. Aiden was fine eventually, but also like Meredith,
Aiden was disappointed by his mom's reaction. Does she accept
blame for the incident? Has she ever apologized to you
for that?
Speaker 4 (18:52):
I don't know.
Speaker 8 (18:54):
I don't want to fly out to say no, but
I'm like leaning more likely.
Speaker 1 (18:58):
Not, Aiden says. When he first collapsed, Meredith was mostly
focused on getting him onto the plane, even if it
meant dragging his still limp body down the jetway weekend
at Bernie's style, I would.
Speaker 8 (19:11):
Have expected that the priority is that I'm okay, not like, oh,
but we need to get on the plane right.
Speaker 1 (19:17):
Meredith wanted to keep things on track, which not so
different from Aiden, who hurried off to pf chains. And
to top it all off, when they eventually were rebooked
on a new flight, Meredith's ticket got upgraded. And guess
who didn't offer that upgraded ticket to a certain somebody?
Speaker 8 (19:35):
I remember asking her Oh, did you ever consider, like
maybe if I got the seed for that.
Speaker 1 (19:40):
Point, that you had been the one who was drugged.
Speaker 8 (19:42):
So yeah, And then she said I was supposed to
be home ten hours ago, which, like that behavior in
that scenario was uncharacteristic.
Speaker 1 (19:55):
They're very good pals, this is Meredith's daughter again, Quinn.
Speaker 6 (20:00):
But I think they have a harder time like being.
Speaker 2 (20:04):
Soft around each other.
Speaker 6 (20:06):
When they get in disagreements, both of them just like
hoard it up really quick.
Speaker 1 (20:11):
Quinn says. Aiden and Meredith are both similar in their stubbornness,
to which regarding the gummy incident, Aiden holds a hard line.
He says Meredith is wrong about basic facts, like, for
one thing, the drugs weren't out in the open, but
rather stashed in an old iPhone box on a shelf.
Andy says he would never have left the house while
(20:33):
Meredith was still panicking on the floor. It was only
once she was panicking safely in bed that he went
off to his job, of which.
Speaker 8 (20:41):
I never worked at Pfchain's.
Speaker 1 (20:44):
Aiden briefly worked at a Panda Express, but that was
months earlier. The job he was rushing off to was
his caddying job at a golf course. My son had
to head off to go serve Chinese food. Does that
sound like more egregious than so my son had to
leave to hit the golf course.
Speaker 8 (21:04):
I mean both of those. When you say it like that,
that just sounds like self.
Speaker 1 (21:09):
When I first got into this, I was certain that
Aiden and Aiden alone was to blame. But now that
I've spoken with Aidan, I'm not so sure. I'm still
willing to adjudicate, but I'm starting to feel a bit
out of my depth, which drugging was worse. I don't
know much about drugs. I couldn't tell you the difference
(21:30):
between happy dust and happy powder. Lucky for me, though,
I know a medical expert. After the break, a very
special guest, A very special doctor guest.
Speaker 9 (21:45):
It's Jackie.
Speaker 1 (22:08):
Hello Jackie. No, this isn't a glitch in your podcast
app The episode is not starting over. But this is
indeed my friend doctor Jackie Cohen. Doctor Jackie Cohen is
a doctor, and I'm phoning her today in her expert capacity.
I start with the airplane incident. So what do you think?
Speaker 8 (22:30):
Like?
Speaker 1 (22:30):
Do you know what I mean?
Speaker 4 (22:31):
Like?
Speaker 1 (22:31):
Is that a reasonable like? Would you do that? Would
you share my pills with my son.
Speaker 3 (22:37):
Of course not of course not listen. I okay, it's
not the worst, it's not the worst thing she ever did.
It's not the worst parenting moment. But it's certainly not
up there. And the reason it's not up there is that,
I mean, the only red flag to me and this
is coming to you with her problems. So that's the
first problem.
Speaker 1 (22:56):
That's that's your big that's the biggest lit miss for you.
Speaker 5 (22:59):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (22:59):
So basically, yeah, you didn't. I mean, by your logic,
you think that every single person who has come to
me in all these years is not well by virtue
of the fact that they have to me for help.
Look at our dear friend Mary Club. Mary Cloude came
to me for help.
Speaker 4 (23:14):
She did, she did.
Speaker 1 (23:15):
There's an episode. Did I not help her to get
her real estate license? Did I not?
Speaker 3 (23:20):
Okay?
Speaker 2 (23:22):
Yes, and it was a good story.
Speaker 3 (23:24):
Okay, fine, you're right.
Speaker 10 (23:25):
You're absolutely right.
Speaker 1 (23:27):
Although Jackie concedes the point that not everyone who comes
to me for help is certifiably deranged, she does think
Meredith is certifiably undeserving of an apology. From Jackie's perspective,
it's aiden who deserves one.
Speaker 3 (23:42):
I'm totally with a son on this one. I think
his response is is so appropriate, like, you know what
it was on her to be elect fishing around his
room and consuming candies.
Speaker 1 (23:52):
The when I tell Jackie about the seed, upgrade him right, No,
she didn't. She took it herself. She does seem to
enjoy Meredith's hutzba. He ain't.
Speaker 3 (24:06):
The myth she could do is let him sleep it
off comfortably.
Speaker 1 (24:09):
Right, that's what the kid felt.
Speaker 3 (24:11):
Yeah, I'm fowly with kids. Kit's great, by the way,
it is on the ball.
Speaker 4 (24:20):
Hey, how are you? I'm good.
Speaker 1 (24:23):
As with any medical question, I need a second opinion.
So after my call with Jackie, I consult with a
second drug expert. Not a doctor per se, but a
doctor of the streets. Are you in your underwear?
Speaker 3 (24:37):
Yes?
Speaker 1 (24:37):
Sorry, This is my friend Steve marsh. If his voice
sounds familiar, it's because he was the subject of another
episode of this podcast and is thus by Jackie's estimation unwell.
Steve has done ayahuasca in peru Iboga in Gabone and
(24:59):
participated in the unofficial Champions League of Ecstasy at Bergheim
in Berlin. Even though I pretty much don't know what
any of these words mean. I do know that Steve
has been breaking on through to the other side since
his teens and hiding weed from his mother since he
was in diapers. So I tell him the gummy story
(25:19):
and ask for his take.
Speaker 4 (25:21):
I don't think he's really understanding what his mom went through.
Maybe like I've done the heroic dose of almost any
drug you can name, and yeah, that's a serious dosage.
Speaker 1 (25:32):
So serious. Steve says, the twenty five milligram gummies aren't
even legal in the state of Minnesota. Steve himself has
never taken one hundred milligrams of vetibles at one time,
but he's sympathetic to Meredith's plight because of the time
he quote dabbed weed, which he explains is inhaling a
super high concentrate of THC.
Speaker 4 (25:53):
I had to sit on the side of a hill
and like, you know, our friend Marisa, Yeah, Marisa had
to come out back and like gently rub my back
if I was like having a panic attack, which I
pretty much was, you know, So I like, I've been
there before, Meredith. I get it, you know, like it
is helpless and catatonic and scary.
Speaker 1 (26:14):
For Steve, it's pretty cut and dry Unlike Jackie, he
believes it's Aidan who owes Meredith an apology. But to
make sure he has all the information, I tell him
the plane story too.
Speaker 4 (26:26):
I would argue that's nearly irrelevant.
Speaker 1 (26:29):
You know, on top of it, one of the tickets
gets bumped up to first class, and she takes.
Speaker 4 (26:35):
It as is her maternal right. I have to say,
I just think that your mom ate your drugs, man, Like,
why can't you get your head around that you have
to be responsible for your shit? Man?
Speaker 1 (26:52):
After weighing Jackie's expert testimony and Steve's sort of expert testimony,
I can only come to one conclusion, King Solomon, like,
and it's tit for tatnus, Meredith and Aiden need to
apologize to one another. And because two apologies require two
apology shamans, do you want to go there with me, sir?
(27:18):
After the break? Apologies all around?
Speaker 4 (27:21):
Yeah? I want to know where this kid is getting
this high powered We've got me as too, Emily.
Speaker 1 (27:53):
I said, there's a really good restaurant here here called
Broyer's or something voters. Aiden is home from college for
the week, and so on a warm afternoon, Steve and
I in our capacity as independent objective. Third and fourth
parties make our way to Meredith's.
Speaker 4 (28:12):
It's like, right, here is this the house?
Speaker 1 (28:16):
Yeah, that looks like it. The plan is to get in,
get some apologies, and get out in time for an
early lunch at Breyer's or Brothers or whatever it's called. Hi,
how are you thank you?
Speaker 3 (28:39):
Right?
Speaker 4 (28:39):
Yeah, I've been briefed. I've been briefed.
Speaker 1 (28:43):
Okay, Meredith welcomes us in. Aiden is seated on the
far end of the living room couch. Meredith sits down
beside him. Steve and I begin by trying to secure
an apology from Aidan about the gummies.
Speaker 8 (28:57):
It's not like I started on on a silver platter.
Speaker 4 (28:59):
Yeah, but hiding them sufficiently means your mom didn't overdose
on weed.
Speaker 1 (29:02):
The thing is, I think I did have them, But unsurprisingly,
Aidan is defensive.
Speaker 8 (29:07):
I just think there's so many signs that like would
have just should be red flat.
Speaker 4 (29:12):
But even if she missed them, all, you're still responsible
for the drugs. And if you can just admit that,
then you can do drugs for the rest of your life.
What were I evenm just saying like I'm sorry?
Speaker 8 (29:30):
At that point, I don't know, I don't, I think you, but.
Speaker 2 (29:33):
I think you're probably worried.
Speaker 1 (29:34):
Are you worried?
Speaker 11 (29:35):
Yeah?
Speaker 8 (29:36):
I think that just kind of ties back to the
whole thing. Like how much of the blame is that.
Speaker 1 (29:40):
Well, I don't know, I get I think we're caught
up in like pie charts and ratios. I mean, I
feel like it's just you know, my mother got hurt
because of something that I was a part of.
Speaker 9 (29:52):
You.
Speaker 1 (29:52):
That's it.
Speaker 4 (29:54):
Do you feel like you were hurt? I don't, like.
Speaker 6 (29:55):
I mean you saw me basically melt and freak out and.
Speaker 1 (30:02):
Then you checked out, which is of course how Aiden
feels about how Meredith responded to him in the amster
Nam airport, a point he raises.
Speaker 8 (30:12):
It wasn't like, oh my god, I know you're okay.
I just here, we need to get on the flight.
Your site.
Speaker 6 (30:17):
I know, I know, I know, because I honestly I thought,
you know, I love you, but like.
Speaker 2 (30:21):
Sometimes you like you're a little dramatic. You're a little dramatic.
Speaker 6 (30:26):
Sometimes you're a little dramatic, And I thought, Okay, how
bad can it be?
Speaker 4 (30:32):
Strings right, like, how bad can this be?
Speaker 1 (30:33):
Mom?
Speaker 4 (30:34):
Well, do you guys realize that there's some stuff that's
happening on both sides.
Speaker 1 (30:40):
A lot of stuff on both sides. But just when
I'm starting to think there will be no sorries, Meredith
starts inching towards the light.
Speaker 6 (30:49):
I just I just felt so bad. I think I
did feel like shame about it, and then making the
apology more grand would just be somewhat underscoring my shame
about it.
Speaker 2 (31:02):
Sure, I just would like, just can we just move on?
Speaker 5 (31:04):
You know?
Speaker 6 (31:09):
But I think your point is I missed your suffering.
Speaker 5 (31:15):
And.
Speaker 6 (31:18):
I you know, I will apologize for not being there
in the right way at the time. I'm sorry, like
I should have had more empathy for you in that situation.
Speaker 1 (31:28):
Aiden nods, but he still doesn't offer an apology back.
So Steve offers a helpful push.
Speaker 4 (31:35):
So maybe what's going on here is just like you're
getting better at modeling apologies.
Speaker 2 (31:41):
Uh huh.
Speaker 4 (31:42):
And now Aiden will go back and think about what
a real remorseful apology sounds like. Maybe that's maybe the
first time he's heard like the gesture of apology could
be bigger. Yeah, maybe just like is under rehearsed in
the family. You know.
Speaker 1 (32:01):
When I spoke with Quinn, she told me that It's true.
As kids, they didn't have many examples of what it
looks like to say sorry and mean it, which might
be why Aiden is struggling.
Speaker 4 (32:11):
So right now, you could acknowledge Aiden that maybe you're
not good at that. Do you think you're good at
apologizing from the heart?
Speaker 8 (32:19):
Probably not?
Speaker 4 (32:20):
Yeah, and maybe it doesn't have to happen today, But
like it's a good thing to acknowledge that, Hey, I'm
a kind person, I'm a good person, but I might
suck at apologizing. Yeah, that's fair.
Speaker 11 (32:33):
Yeah, yeah, I mean, like because it's like I mean,
I could just like say it and then like again, Okay,
I'm sorry that my accents cause you harm and.
Speaker 4 (32:52):
I might.
Speaker 8 (32:54):
And that my irresponsibility was inflicted upon you.
Speaker 2 (33:02):
Thank you.
Speaker 4 (33:04):
You know.
Speaker 6 (33:04):
Maybe originally my motive or my sort of questioning of
this was someday you're going to be in some kind
of a relationship right with some other person in which
you're going to have to see things from their perspective,
and you're going to have to back down a little bit,
no matter how convinced you are that you were in
the right.
Speaker 1 (33:25):
It feels like Meredith is speaking from experience. I asked
her about it later on, and she tells me that
she was. She was thinking about her most recent relationship
it had just ended, and she says the situation could
have used an apology. She wants her son to learn
from her experience. That is, after all, what good parents
(33:46):
want most.
Speaker 6 (33:48):
And so, you know, part of my yearning here was like,
how do I help.
Speaker 2 (33:53):
You get there?
Speaker 1 (33:59):
My hope going into this was that Aiden would accept
blame for the gummies and Meredith would own up for
what happened in Amsterdam. A little quit pro quo and
everyone goes home happy. And that did kind of happen,
sort of. In the weeks after the conversation, I find
myself thinking about this business of modeling behavior that Steve
(34:20):
had brought up. If Meredith hadn't modeled apologies for her kids,
it begs the question who had modeled not modeling apologies
for her? So I reached back out to Meredith to
ask whether her parents ever said sorry to her. I
don't think so, but at times it would have been nice,
she says. By way of explanation, Meredith tells me about
(34:43):
all the time she'd be left waiting after ballet class
or school for her mom to pick her up.
Speaker 10 (34:50):
I just remember feeling like the last kid standing waiting
like an hour outside. Yeah, and I think she I
don't know what she was doing, but I kind of
the message was like, well I kind of see I'm
a lower priority. It's funny now I think about me
picking my kids the whoror that I would if I'm
late by like five minutes?
Speaker 4 (35:12):
Is it?
Speaker 1 (35:12):
Because like you remember that feeling of.
Speaker 2 (35:14):
Just waiting and feeling like does anybody care?
Speaker 1 (35:20):
And it wouldn't come with an apology. No.
Speaker 12 (35:24):
I wasn't allowed to be angry about it, right, you know.
It was like, well that's the situation and you just gotta.
Speaker 1 (35:31):
Like suck it up.
Speaker 4 (35:32):
Suck it up.
Speaker 1 (35:33):
Anything other than that would be dramatic, you know?
Speaker 12 (35:37):
Did that somehow sort of translate down in the way
I raise my kids? I mean, Aiden's reaction to me
overdosing on his gummies was suck it up, right, which
is exactly what I did to him.
Speaker 1 (35:51):
Like family heirlooms or the gene for color blindness, the
value of apologizing is handed down. But if you didn't
come from a family where there was space for all that,
it's hard to create that space when you become a parent. Yourself.
How can you give the thing you never received? I
don't know the solution to that, but I do know
(36:11):
that it can't hurt to keep trying. Do you think
it's still possible to change? Like you know where you
can have a relationship with the kids where you can
apologize to them in the moment and they hear that
feel it.
Speaker 2 (36:25):
Can people change?
Speaker 1 (36:28):
Yeah, we can't change yesterday, and we can't know who
we will be tomorrow. No, Jesus, maybe the Dalai Lama
is right. Today is the right day to love, believe, do,
and mostly live. And hey, if you choose to smoke
(36:50):
a little of the good stuff along the way, just
be sure to consult your pulmonary cardiologist. First, Heavyweight takes
no responsibility for bad trips, only the good ones.
Speaker 5 (37:32):
Now that the fern ures returning to its good will home,
now that the last month's rent is scheming with the
damage to possible, take this moment to dissolve if we message,
(37:53):
if we tried to felt around for far too from
things that accidentally talk.
Speaker 1 (38:08):
This episode of Heavyweight was produced by supervising producer Stevie
Lane and me Jonathan Goldstein, along with Phoebe Flanagan. Our
senior producer is Khalila Holt, editorial guidance from Emily Condon.
Special thanks to Ben Nattafaffrey, Daphne Chen, Alexandra Garaton, and
Sam Reisman. For more Steve Marsh, you can enjoy his
(38:28):
written work in Minneapolis Saint Paul Magazine. Emamonger mixed the
episode with original music by Christine Fellows, John K. Sampson,
Blue Dot Sessions, and Bobby Lord. Additional scoring by bobble
Michael Charles Smith, Chris Zabriski, and Virginia Violet and the Rays.
Our theme song is by The Weaker Bands, courtesy of
Epitaph Records. Follow us on Instagram at Heavyweight Podcast or
(38:50):
email us at Heavyweight at Pushkin dot Fm. We'll be
back next week with the final episode of the season.
Speaker 5 (38:58):
Painted in an empty road sign in an empty rope.
(39:18):
Mm hmm
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