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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
What did the weird kid in your school do that
you'll never forget. This was at university, which makes this
even weirder. I studied geology, so we went on a
lot of field trips. One time we went to Spain,
and I noticed this rather strange girl had a tally
chart in the back of her notebook. Now this girl
was odd. She wore all black clothes that were clearly
not washed very well. She had bright ginger hair and
would hair huge spiky plastic jewelry that was usually bright orange,

(00:23):
like big spiky plastic necklaces or bracelets. She would pick
her nose aggressively and class kind of girl anyway. I
asked some of the other girls if they knew what
the tally in her notebook was about, and they said
that she was counting the amount of time she had
successfully taken a piss while standing up. I don't know
about you, but I found this fascinating. I started casually
following her one day on our field trip in Spain,
and sure enough, she would find somewhere she thought was discreet.

(00:43):
It wasn't discreet. I saw everything. She would take her
pants fully off, then take a mean piss standing up.
The whole time with a demonic smile on her face.
Crap was scary. Then she puts her pants back on,
gets out her notebook to add another tally mark, then
saunters off into the Spanish wilderness to do more geology.
It was almost as disgusting as it was Mesmer. So
one day we had a day off to relax and
do what we wanted, so everyone agreed we would go

(01:05):
to Madrid for the day. So we all get on
a big coach and set off. The drive is like
two hours. Thirty minutes in, she starts mumbling to herself
about needing the toilet, Everyone around her going quiet as
she becomes more agitated. Eventually she jumped up and waddled
down the aisle to ask the driver to stop. After
a bit of arguing and Spanish shouting from the driver,
we pull over, the bus doors open. She walks back
up the aisle and gets off using the door. Halfway

(01:26):
down the bus, she takes three steps away from the
door and starts digging a hole like an effing badger
in heat. Now at this point, I think, deep down
I knew what was about to happen. She's about to
take a massive piss right here in front of everyone
as the ultimate wind slash. Af you to her classmates
she clearly hated, but boy, I was wrong. She finished
digging her hole. It was quite impressive given how dry
the ground was. She turned herself away from the bus,
dropped her trousers and took a squad over the hole.

(01:48):
What is this, I thought, maybe she's too shy for
a stand up piss. Nope, out comes the most horrific
crap from her pasty white butt hole, like gallons of it.
I've never seen so much. The hole she dug, whilst impressive,
was not sufficient for the brown mass that spewed forth.
She finished, wiped her butt with a small piece of
tissue she had in her pocket, and got back on
the bus with the same maniacal grin I saw her
have with a wild piss. Every One was silent, our

(02:11):
professors just staring at each other, clearly thinking what the
f just happened? Jim did that girl? Seriously? Just Unlesia
turned tsunami in front of forty people. The rest of
the journey was just silence. I think we were all
in shock. We get to Madrid and everyone slowly gets
off the bus. A crap girl starts saying again that
she needs the toilet, and everyone turns to look at her.
Her bright orange trousers are soaking wet, like she'd been swimming.

(02:32):
One of the other students said, Jesus Christ, what the
hell happened? And casually is anything? She turns to him
and says, the bus ride was too long. I pissed
myself a few times. Common At this point, I'm losing
my mind. What the f lady, you stopped the bus
so you could decimate the landscape. You couldn't have pissed,
then you might as well have. I mean, every one
saw your massive dump. I don't think a quick piss
would have bothered anyone seriously. Anyway, two girls took pity

(02:53):
and carted her off to a public toilet. The rest
of us went to a few museums and had a
great day, but it was hard to enjoy. To be
quite honest, Madrid's Natural History Museum didn't have the same
jovial atmosphere After watching a grown woman crap and piss herself, Bartenders,
what is the most memorable interaction you had with a customer?
He wasn't completely hammered, but I'll share my favorite interaction
I've had with a bar guest that honestly was a
huge eye opener to how to live my own life instead.

(03:16):
The restaurant slash bar I work at as an odd concept.
We have a lot of different things going on throughout
the week, so some nights it goes from a nice
place to grab food and drinks for dinner to straight
up dance club slash high volume bar. I love it
because it's just a glorious, well executed and managed crap show,
so walking and always keeps me on my toes. Anyways,
getting off topic, we do trivia on Sunday and Monday
nights in our table taps big tubes of beer that

(03:38):
sit on the table or bar so everyone can pour
their own beer are half priced all night. So we
were a fairly new establishment and we were still getting
a lot of new people in to see what all
the fuss was about. This guy comes in and he's
probably late forties, normal looking guy. My first thought was
he looks like a friend of mine's dad. I'm fairly
observant and noticed his hands looked like those belonging to
someone who was in construction or some sort of manual
labor type. Profession. Nothing wrong with physical labor. I've done

(04:01):
the work myself. I just sort of scanned people naturally
and harmlessly in my head, put them into a certain stereotype,
and then try to see if it holds up. I
love it when the negative stereotypes don't hold up. I
had been trying to work on not being so judgy,
which I could have been, like, this guy's probably going
to be a typical sort of construction guy.

Speaker 2 (04:15):
Whatever.

Speaker 1 (04:16):
I told him about the special and that it actually
comes out cheaper to buy the beer tower at half
priced than drink three of the large beers. He wasn't
overly grumpy or snarky, just very short with his answers.
Just seemed like he didn't want to talk much. If
you want to listen, I'll talk, that's for sure. So
I talked him into the tower. He watched whatever sports
games were on the TVs, drank some beer, and ate
some food. Eventually he loosens up and gets to talking

(04:37):
about how he just moved back in the area in
the last few months after living in New Orleans for
twenty five years. As we're talking about New Orleans, a
classic rock song might have been led Zeppelin they're one
of my favorites, so we'll say. Ramble On came on
and I said, ooh, this is a great song. So
we start talking about music, and he mentions he lived
right outside of some fair grounds in New Orleans and
he his wife and daughter would walk down the street
to concerts that would come through. Widespread Panic was one

(04:59):
band he meant that stood out and sort of bonded
us because I had just seen them at Hangout Fest
in Gulf Shores not long before this night, and we
both liked some of the same bands. Throughout our conversation,
he would sort of randomly mention, well, yeah, my daughter's
normally with me during this time, but she's in college
now and down in Florida on spring break, which I
mistook for a dad missing his daughter who is now
growing up, and the beers sort of bring that emotional
side out. Finishing our music conversation, he pays out after

(05:22):
he's been at the bar for about three hours. Our
convo was sort of off and on as I went
back and forth to other guests. He gets up and
asks which way to the restroom as he comes back
from the other room, and by my bar, I'll never
forget it as long as I live. I'm not just
saying that, but the events of our seemingly normal encounter
got burned in my brain. He stops and sort of
lends up to the bar and looks me in the
eye and says, hey, man, I'm sorry if I was
a buttthole when I came in earlier, and I told

(05:43):
him he didn't come across that way. Guess he realized
how short and sort of unapproachable he was being at first,
and the Bruski's brought out that apology, and he said, well,
thank you for still talking to me. It's been a
rough day because this is the first year my daughter
hasn't been with me today, and it's the four year
anniversary of my wife of thirty years passing away. So
thank you for not just dismissing me. He reached his
hand out to shake mine and told me to have
a good night and walked out the door. I'm a

(06:05):
fairly emotional guy, not in a dramatic way or anything,
just very empathetic. And I have recently lost my grandmother,
with whom I was very close, so I got teary eyed,
had someone watch my bar and go outside to smoke
a cigarette and settle down. And it's still an encounter
I think of almost every day. Those minutes after that,
just thinking by myself were so profound. Why did you
in your first significant other break up? Around fourteen, me

(06:25):
and a few of the guys I went to school
with started hanging around with these girls from another school
on the other side of the city. We hung out
a lot, all friends. Then the other guys started dating
some of the girls, and in an effort to not
make me feel left out, I wasn't interested in dating
at the time. I was quite happy playing football and
chilling out. So they brought their other friend. We'll call
her Maria. Anyway, Maria and I are talking. We have
very little in common. I like sports and music. She

(06:48):
likes to do very little and read. I should point
out here Maria was absolutely stunning at the time, a
solid ten, where as I sat somewhere around a five
pushing a six. All good. This goes on for a
few weeks. I like her, She's funny, gorgeous, and I
was quite happy basically sitting looking at her. This all
takes place during summer holidays. Anyway, school comes around me
one of my best friends are sat in our electronics class.

Speaker 2 (07:10):
We picked it for our GCSS.

Speaker 1 (07:12):
And we were starting our projects that week, and he says,
I bet you twenty pounds in a packet of whatever
it is you're smoking that you can't make you and
Maria official. I took it as a joke and said, yeah, whatever, man,
you're on. So for the next few weeks we were
getting on well. We started meeting up earlier than the
others and going hanging out on our own. By this point,
she'd found out that I liked her, but guys being guys,
my friends never mentioned if it was mutual. We hit

(07:33):
each other's phone numbers as well, and would text all
the time. This was back in two thousand and four.
We didn't have what sapp were, I Message, etc. We
had ten P texts and a pay as you go phone. Anyway,
fast forward about three more weeks, we've sort of fallen
into being a couple. We've not told anyone, as we're
kind of just confused about it as well. She asks
if I think we're a couple. I said, it's up
to you. I'm happy either way. She says, yeah, let's

(07:55):
make it official. So back in those days, you had
MSN Messenger, in my space, so to make it official,
it was a top friend on MySpace and a name
drop in your MSN.

Speaker 2 (08:03):
Name that happened.

Speaker 1 (08:05):
The friend that made the bet with me instantly messages
me saying, bull crap. You've told her and she's going
along with it. I asked what he was about. He says,
the bet we made. I said, I thought that crap
was a joke and men were just going to see
what happened. Anyway, the next time I see him, he
pays up, even though I said I thought he was joking.
A year or so later, me and my mates are
stressed as all hell. GCSEs are getting us down. We're

(08:26):
starting to worry about college, et cetera. Soul electronics class
happens again. I'm nearly done with my project, a laser
tripped home security system made for under twenty pounds. He's
finishing up his road safety thing and knocked my project
off the table while I was going picking some more
parts out of my tray of components i'd ordered. I
get back to the desk and my craps and pieces
on the floor.

Speaker 2 (08:44):
I go metal.

Speaker 1 (08:45):
It took Kyle about six months to design, sim, order parts,
and build to a point where it would work. I
punched him for it. He knew how hard I'd worked
on it. After a at the time, I thought this
well deserved beating. He says he's going to tell Maria
about the bet. He proceeds to do so. The next
time I saw her, she gave me a slap, says,
so this year was nothing but a bet between you
and your mates.

Speaker 2 (09:06):
You're a jerk.

Speaker 1 (09:07):
His girlfriend splits up with him because he split me
and Marie up, and she thought I was a nice
guy and he'd messed my electronics course up entirely. Few
months later, me and Maria bump into each other out
and about I'm off to band practice. She's going to
the library next to the practice rooms. After we'd done
our respective activities for the day, we met for a milkshake,
had a chat, and tried again. Five months later, we
split again for unrelated reasons. I just wasn't into it anymore.

(09:29):
Fun times. What was the worst reason someone gave for
breaking up with you? About six years ago, I lived
in an extremely tiny town. Nobody locked their doors or
cars or anything of that sort. Everyone knew each other
and it was a very tight knit community. For reference,
I am twenty five years old, six feet four inches,
two hundred and sixty pounds around ten percent body fat.
I have an IFBB pro card in bodybuilding. This will

(09:51):
come into play later in the story. So my wife
and my dog are sleeping in our bedroom, which is
on the opposite side of our apartment, with the door
closed so the dog doesn't rumble through the garbage at
night while we sleep. It's raining outside, and usually the
apartment creaks and makes noises because it's very old, but
I ignore it and go back to sleep, as it
happens every night. Now, this night, in particular, I was
hearing some extra noises. My dog, who usually ignores the

(10:12):
sounds as well, was going absolutely bonkers in the room.
He's not a barker, but he lets me know when
he hears something by jumping on the bed and licking
my face, also when he's scared. So to get back
to the story, my dog is going nuts, my wife
is sound asleep, and I am up watching Netflix at
around three am when I have work at eight am.
I keep hearing these faint noises, like a cabinet opening
and closing. But like I said before, we are in

(10:32):
a very small community. And I think nothing of it.
No way, someone is actually in my apartment. So all
of a sudden, I take one earphone out and I
hear it the flicker of a light switch. It's an
old house, so it has those loud light switch flicker
when you turn something on and off. I eminently knew
something was wrong, as this is not a sound and
normally here. And I get up and creak my door
open just a little and see a light on in
the near kitchen room. I know I shed all the
lights before showering, before bed, so I leap into action,

(10:55):
wake up my wife and tell her to stay here
with the dog and lock the door and to not
come out unless I say everything is safe. I walk
into the kitchen and there is a guy, probably late thirties,
going through every drawer and cabinet I had. I said
hey in a loud voice and scared the absolute crap
out of the guy. I guess he thought no one
was home, and he charged at me. So for reference,
remember I said six four two hundred and sixty aeth
seven pounds and the guy charging at me around five

(11:17):
feet ten inches slash one sixty. So he charges at
me and I shove him against my wall with my
forearm against his neck, make a huge hole in the
wall and begin to headbutt the guy until he's nearly unconscious.
I turned him around and proceeded to hold him in
a choke hold headlock, and out of nowhere, his wife
I later found out it was his wife, was also
in my apartment and came charging at me. I put
up my foot exactly how you would imagine it in
the WWE and I punted that goober right in her

(11:39):
gut and she fell to the floor. So now the
guy is unconscious, the girl is on the floor in
massive amounts of pain, and I'm standing there covered in
blood from this guy's face. I feel funny, not sure
what this feeling is. I feel cold in a spot
on my stomach, sort of like if you spit on
your stomach and a strong gust of wind comes and
it feels extra cold. You know what I mean. Well,
I looked down and realized I got stabbed. I had

(12:00):
a four dot five inch knife in my clear abdomen muscle.
While I was headbutting this guy. He was able to
sneak a knife he had right into my gut without
me realizing it. I quickly start to panic and call
nine one one. I sit there until they come. Go
to the hospital, nearly dying. I recovered well, missing all
vital organs, and when I woke up in the hospital,
I had policed there and was told that the guy
robbing my apartment was dead. My head butts broke his

(12:22):
skull and he internally bled out in his brain. My
heart sank. Yes, the guy stabbed me. Yes, the guy
threatened my wife and dog, who was like my son,
and yes he came on to my property. But I
did not want to end anyone well anyway, to sum
up the story, When I awoke in the hospital and
they told me this, my wife divorced me on the spot,
saying she can't stay married to someone who ends someone
else regardless of the situation. What reason did you break

(12:43):
up with your BF slash gfor that they will never
know about. I watched him cheat on me, and he
will never know. We lived in the same city and
had been dating for about ten months. The last couple
of months his passive aggressive manipulations had begun to come
a bit more transparent, but I was young and convinced
I could fix everything. On a Friday, when we had plans.
He called to say a friend work had been fired
and he was going to go out with him to
help cheer him up. It was fine, I said, and

(13:04):
he hung up before I could finish my sentence that
I had left some work papers at has placed the
night before and needed to grab them. I had keys,
so I didn't think anything of swinging by after dinner
and drinks with my brother to let myself in to
grab them. As expected, he and his two best friends
slash roommates, were out. What was not expected was when
I was in a little office adjoining his bedroom gathering
my papers, the apartment door opened and a lot of
giggling ensued. I kept quiet, as I assumed one of

(13:26):
his friends was getting lucky and I didn't want to interrupt.
Imagine my surprise when the giggling and intoxicated slurring approached
the bedroom I usually occupied, followed by the squeaking bed
springs and a symphony of noises usually associated with mating pigs.
Any hope I might have had that it was one
of his roommates too intoxicated to find his own room
was dashed when she started yelling his name, as they
were both clearly shnoozled. It didn't take long for them
to pass out mid thrust. I managed to unfreeze myself,

(13:48):
and after spending several very sad moments looking at the
irrefutable proof that this relationship was not worth saving, I
slipped out the front door. I spent all night walking
the city, at first feeling ashamed that he had cheated
on me, then increasingly more angry that I fell ashamed,
then finally angry at him. By the time morning arrived,
I had decided how best to deal with the situation.
I walked back to his building and called him. When
he picked up, clearly mostly asleep, I told him we

(14:10):
needed to talk and I would be up in five
minutes and hung up, smiling for the first time as
I imagined his panic. Five minutes later, sitting in his
living room, I simply said I felt we weren't working out,
that I was not as happy as I suspected I
could be, and that while our relationship used to be exciting,
it was feeling more like a chore. I wished him
the best and was walking out the door before he
managed to pick his jaw off the floor on a hunch.

(14:30):
I went out the back door, and was pleased, if
not surprised, to find his half dressed companion crouching out
on the fire escape. What followed was weeks of pleading, denial,
and desperation on his part. When I was unyielding, he
began to be suspicious. Did I know about his indiscretion?
He of course couldn't ask me in case I didn't know,
so he started lashing out at all of his friends
and co workers who had been there that night, accusing

(14:51):
them of telling me, and in this manner, they all
learned of his infidelity. It caused I later found some
major rifts between him and his friends as they all
liked me, and led to him being let go at
work for increasingly erratic behavior and causing hostility with his coworkers.
Parents have read it, Why are you disappointed in your
adult child? I just disowned my steps on last week.
He came into my life at twelve, a few months

(15:11):
short of turning thirteen. He turned twenty three a couple
of months ago. It's been ten years of hell. I
missed my children. Divorce sucks, and I didn't see them
enough and really looked forward to him being my son.
I knew from the moment he moved in that he
was lying to me about virtually everything, no matter how
big or small. He would deflect outright lies. He started
getting bad grades in school, claiming I don't want to
be a nerd.

Speaker 2 (15:32):
We worked with him.

Speaker 1 (15:33):
He'd get straight a's for six weeks, then purposefully start
failing again. Then he got involved with the less desirable
elements older than him as well. He started fighting a lot,
became his group's enforcer. At fifteen, he got locked up
in a juvenile detention center with a boot camp like
program for six weeks. Model citizen, perfect grades, respectful. The
instructors told us that they had no idea why he

(15:55):
was even there. Came home three days before his sixteenth birthday,
perfect gentleman. On his birthday, he went out with friends
and disappeared for days. Came back, had obviously been using something,
got in a fight with his mother, left, came back,
kicked in the back door and stole some electronics. We
called the cops and they had him in thirty minutes.
On his way to the pawn shop in court the
next day. He was rude and belligerent. Did six months

(16:17):
in real juvy this time, came home after Christmas, back
to school, back to fighting, finally got jumped by three
guys with brass knuckles that put him in the hospital.
Finally quit fighting, dropped out of HS at seventeen, got
married a few months later. My wife is an idiot
for supporting it gets her pregnant. They split up a
few months in kewed the cycle of him arguing with
his mother, being hateful and nasty to her, and leaving.

(16:39):
Weeks or months go by, he comes back. Over the
course of the last six years, there have been girlfriends
living with us because my wife cannot say no to
her little boy. He won't hold a job. Best streak
of working is about two months. Meanwhile, he's been locked
up multiple times for substances, being in a burglary ring,
domestic violence, driving without a license, failure to pay child support.
Did I mention that there are two casids by different

(17:00):
mothers now The latest is a return of one of
the psycho girlfriends that I have explicitly banned from our property.
That's crazy. Turns out, a few weeks back, they informed
that she's pregnant. At the same time, I warn her
that the more she lets them hang out while I'm away,
the better the chance that something bad happens. It did.
He had one of his flare ups one evening late.
I'm out of town. He's stone cold, sober, gets pissed

(17:21):
off at nothing really. I reviewed the security footage. Proceeds
to get into an argument with his mother, screaming in
the front yard. It moves over by the garage, grabbed
her and threw her down on the driveway. Landed on
the corner of the concrete on her tailbone. Couldn't get up.
Spent most of the night in the hospital. I drove
in from two hours away in the middle of the night.
She's okay, but it could have been much worse. This

(17:42):
is one more in a long string of events that
culminated in physical violence. For the first time, I didn't
mince words, never again disowned. She has agreed somehow. I
don't think it will last, and that makes me sad.
I have been clear though from hereout she can pick
one of us, him or me. What is the deepest,
darkest secret you found out about a friend that really
messed with your head? When I was around eight years old,

(18:03):
I met a girl named Molly. Her family had moved
in that summer to a house a few houses down,
and I really didn't see her for the first month
or two that summer. My first memory of her was
when I was playing with a small aunt hill in
my backyard and she came over and joined me. She
showed interest in my aunt hill, and by eight year
old logic, she was the coolest person ever, and we
became best friends. We would play every day that we
could in her backyard or my backyard, go to the pool,

(18:24):
ride bikes, ride scooters, and play basketball. Basically, if I
went outside, she would be out with me. A few
years later, we were still best friends and did everything together.
When we were about twelve thirteenish. I remember it was
the late fall of seventh grade when she didn't show
up for a month of school. When she came back,
she didn't really tell me why she was gone. She
said that she was sick and was taking medication to
get better, so I never thought too much about it.
After we would still hang out every day, but I

(18:46):
started to notice that she wasn't the same. She wasn't
as hyper as she always was, like she would have
to take breaks more often when we were doing stuff.
The summer before eighth grade and eighth grade, she still
seemed pretty normal, but I remember that her mom would
call her in to take medication and she could stay
out as long with me anymore. High school started, we
went to the same high school, but didn't get to
hang out as much because I was playing baseball and
she started to take up playing the piano. She used

(19:07):
to play softball slash baseball with me until she said
she had to stop playing baseball, so she took up
an instrument. Because of our different schedules, we didn't get
to see each other too often, and we would once
or twice a week, but it felt like we never talked.
In the summer after freshman year, we used to hang
out every day and but she couldn't go out as much.
She would be inside her house more and I would
go over to her place and watch TV, play video games,
and she got really good with the piano, so she

(19:27):
would play when my family would go over for barbecues.
This summer was also the same summer she was going
to the doctors more often. She would always tell me
it was just a check up, and if she didn't
say check up, she would say she was getting testing done.
She would tell me that she was okay, but I
knew something wasn't okay. Our family shared a beach house
down in South Carolina that we would go to in
August of each summer. About the second week of being there,
that's when I found out. We would go out to

(19:48):
the board walk pretty much every morning before it go
too hot, and just go to the beach, get ice
cream cones every day, and do whatever. This was the
first summer that her dad had to come with us everywhere,
and it wasn't really a big deal. Neither one of
us really minded, but I didn't know why he wanted
to come. Standing in line to get food when I
saw her pass out in the middle of ordering food
for everyone, I was freaking out while her dad called
her mom to meet them back at the house because
Molly passed out. So he picked her up and we

(20:09):
ran back to the house, which was about five minutes away,
and just got in their car and started speeding towards
the local hospital. Her parents took her to emergency care
and I waited in the waiting room. I called my
parents and told them what happened, and they met me
at the hospital about six hours later. I was allowed
to see her and she told me that she was okay,
and that she must have passed out from the heat
and not drinking enough water. She was staying at the
hospital overnight, so she and my parents took me out

(20:30):
to eat and stopped by the house first to get
changed and stuff before heading back to the hospital. I
had just finished showering and getting changed when her mom
stopped by my room and told me that she and
parents had to talk to me. This was the scariest
moment of my life. Her parents had told me that
Molly was diagnosed with als amiotrophi lateral sclerosis back in
the seventh grade, and that she wasn't expected to live
much longer. Her condition was getting worse and she might

(20:51):
only live for a few more years. I didn't know
what als was, so they were explaining at me, and
I remember crying for an hour's I went back to
the hospital with her parents to check up on her
and get her food, and then we went to her
room and they told her that they told me what
was happening. She was literally a year or two from death,
but she didn't cry or feel sorry for herself. She
had just passed out and was smiling and joking about
saying she wasn't going to have to do her summer
projects and homework at least, and was comforting her parents

(21:13):
and I. She was the most amazing person I have
ever meant to be able to be that happy and
confident in the face of death. She ended up coming
back to school that fall with me, and she told
our small circle of friends what might happen to her
in the coming year and how she wanted it to
be the best year. It was the most bittersweet moment
of my life. All my friends and I quit sports
and after school clubs so we could hang out with
her every day, and we all just did whatever she wanted,

(21:33):
any place she wanted to go, anything she wanted to do.
My parents would even let me sleep over at her
house whenever we wanted, and I basically ended up living
with her for the entire sophomore year of high school.
That was the most fun year of my life and
I won't forget it. That summer, her condition worsened, and
on August seventeenth, she passed away. She was the prettiest, smartest, funniest,
most confident, outgoing, energetic, friendliest and loving person I will

(21:55):
ever know. People with traumatic childhoods. What are the effects
that trauma had on your adult life. Okay, but having
an alcoholic dad still trying to forgive. We're working on it,
for sure, did a few things to my personality. I'm
very quick to get defensive. I can feel it in
my chest. Critiques or comments about small, innocuous things can
put me in survival mode, partly because I think I
spent so much time in survival mode justifying anything I

(22:17):
was currently doing that I have difficulty getting out of it.
I hate having to justify myself, but I tend to
over explain everything to get out ahead of the argument
I assume is coming. Typing that out just made me
realize I'm very often trying to get out ahead of
an argument before one even starts. I remember when I
was in high school, my dad came screaming into my
room that I was napping too much and that I
was on some crappy substances admitted in reality, I had

(22:38):
a six am weight training class I felt like I
needed to take because then maybe I wouldn't be as
much of a target for him. And my only time
of relative piece was late at night after everyone was asleep,
so I slept like five hours, went to school, then
came home and napped for an hour before I had
to go to work until midnight. Things that aren't really
attacks feel like attacks because that's how it would always
start passive aggressive comment, then full blown explosion later if
a couple of comments didn't work, I can reach the

(23:00):
emotional state of a room.

Speaker 2 (23:01):
I'm always looking and noticing how people are feeling.

Speaker 1 (23:04):
It is not out of altruism, but out of Habit
had to get good at it kept anger and comments
away from my brother. I'm almost one hundred percent in
the ballpark. I can't read minds, but I notice if
someone feeling pissy slash annoyed very early, or if there's
some tension. I need absolute quiet to sleep. People slash
noises in the middle of the night immediately bring me
from zero to eleven. I need to know what the
noise is, what is going on, who is where. I

(23:26):
don't find any difficulty in cutting people out of my life,
and that one is concerning. I feel like a normal
response to that would be to at least grieve a bit,
but it's just so matter of fact with my thoughts. Okay,
they are gone forever now, I don't talk to them.
Moving on overthinking and overplanning after one argument. Okay, that
person is gone. Now we had an argument. They hate
me forever, so let's plan on how to never see

(23:47):
them again. When someone in the room is angry, anxiety
goes through the roof, heart rate goes to the moon.
Must fix, can't let the anger get worse. Do whatever
you can to appease now. It's going to be very
bad if you don't fix their anger. I tend to
keep my interest to myself and only share them if
I'm certain the other party is also interested in the
same things. Everything my dad didn't already like music, Any

(24:09):
sport I played that he never did, hobbies he wasn't
interested in, was deemed stupid, dumb, waste of time, crappy.
How could you call that crap music, et cetera. So
I just stopped advertising what I thought was cool. I
still tailor playlist, slash movie, slash activity, slash, et cetera
to the people I will be around, I think in
a subconscious effort to avoid setting anyone off. Difficulty saying
no in people pleasing, especially in my career. One that

(24:31):
I really need to keep working on is how I've
somehow internalized certain insults and tossed them about casually, especially
on the internet. I hate how I go from normal
disagreement to you, mouth breathing, dipcrap. You are the dumbest
mother ducker alive, quick to anger. I hate being told
them wrong much more than the average person growing up.
No matter what evidence or what have you, I had,
I was wrong and sometimes guess what I am wrong.

(24:52):
But when I'm in an argument or a disagreement, it
brings me right back to when my dad would be
clearly waiting for me to stop talking so he could
yell at me until I shrunk back down. And I
feel like I have to die on whatever hill I
am currently on, or it's all over. I'm never going
to get people to listen to me ever again. I'm
really trying to work on this, but my knee jerk reactions,
you're not listening to me. I'm right back to being
a kid trying to explain how I couldn't have broken
the goddamn plugins on the back of the TV. Just

(25:13):
admitted goddamn it because I was at school all day.
One response only to yelling slash tense argument, slash et cetera,
shut down completely and stop talking while stewing an anger.
How did you stupidly make your medical condition worse? It
was Valentine's Day and I was sick. Fever, chills, fatigue, nausea,
and general misery had kept me home for the day.
I'm in the medical field myself, and it seemed that
the entire region was currently decimated by this year's influenza strain.

Speaker 2 (25:36):
So no Biggie Dot.

Speaker 1 (25:37):
That weird twinge in my side that started a few
days ago was probably a pulled muscle from too many
back stretches at the dance studio. Right, I had shrugged
it off, but now it legitimately hurt with every step
I took.

Speaker 2 (25:47):
Uck.

Speaker 1 (25:47):
Fine, I'll go to the stupid clinic today, but later.
First I need some more sleep. I woke up with
barely enough time to fling myself out of bed and
towards the hall bath, getting there just in time to
vomit more fluids than I thought i'd consumed. Also, I
noticed the lack of the coughing or congestion that typically
arrives with the flu. So maybe there's something else going on.
That pain is right over my left kidney, but it's
probably nothing. Okay, then I should probably get my puky

(26:10):
butt to the nearest urgent care clinic, and I definitely
shouldn't be driving. I called husband and explained the current circumstances,
asking him to come home and take me to the
doctor's Because I'm a stubborn paramedic who hates it when
people go directly to the hospital's emergency room for ridiculously
minor things. I went to an urgent care clinic near
my house.

Speaker 2 (26:26):
I expected to have.

Speaker 1 (26:26):
A PA confirm my self diagnosis and tell me to
tough it out with flonase and mucinex, because treating a
virus like influenza usually means managing the symptoms and trying
to decrease the discomfort. The PA took a quick look
at me and told me to go to the er,
as is my wont I protested, but she was serious
enough that I was actually considering going. I finally agreed
to go just to make husband more comfortable with the situation,
but I fully expected that this was a waste of

(26:48):
time and hours of my life I'd never get back.
By the time we arrive. I've accepted that I have pylonephritis,
a kidney infection, but still feel the er is overkilled.
After triage and a preemptive blood draw for LAPS, I
was taken to a room. I didn't even have time
to change into the stupid drafty but bearing gown provided
before my nurse arrived to start a sailine drip to
treat my dehydration.

Speaker 2 (27:07):
Cool.

Speaker 1 (27:08):
Pretty standard stuff so far. Several minutes later, I was
talking with the physician about my signs and symptoms when
there's a perfunctory knock at the door and a lab
tech entered to hand deliver my test results. Oh, this
can't be good. I watch her eyes widen as she
reads the CBC values, and then she announces, Yeah, we're
going to be keeping you overnight. She then orders a
second four line hardcore painkillers and a massive dose of

(27:29):
four antibiotics and leaves me trying to figure out what
just happened through a pain and narcotic case. Well, okay,
it is around eight in the evening at this point,
so overnight observation seems reasonable. I expect a patient transport
tech to come fetch me and take me upstairs to
a general medical ward. Instead, an r N starts to
will my bed towards the elevator, which is really weird.
Nurses usually have better things to do than move patients

(27:49):
between wards. At this point, I hadn't been told anything
about what was wrong or where I was going, but
I start to get somewhat nervous as I'm moved into
an intensive care unit. I rationalize this by telling myself
that they must be out of general men d slash
serge beds, and so I'm being put into this room
as overflow. It's a huge room, and my nurse appears
to have only one patient, me. Man, this crap keeps
getting weirder. Within minutes, I'm hooked up to every type

(28:11):
of monitor I've ever attached to a patient and then some.
Plus I've got a transmitting cardiac telemetry monitor stuck to
me too. My nurse goes through the endless list of
health history, lifestyle, and medication questions and asks husband to
bring my birth control pills from home. What the F
I have pyloniphritis? And this is ridiculous? Ah is that
really necessary? I mean I'll be home tomorrow. She looks

(28:31):
at me with both amusement and pity, and then continues
bustling about the room doing important nursing tasks.

Speaker 2 (28:36):
Yeah, I was wrong. It wasn't the flu.

Speaker 1 (28:39):
She shattered my last layer of denial by showing me
my lab results and holy efing crap, my white count
is twenty eight point seventy seven. I'm effing dying. A
normal white blood cell value is between three and ten,
and I was so far past that I was in
critical condition. Turns out I was in septic shock in
addition to renal failure and e educt coliseptoicemia, and had
I waited a few more hours to seek medical help,
I'd have probably been to eff I couldn't deny the

(29:02):
seriousness of the situation anymore, but I just felt too
crappy to even care. After a sleepless night and an
endless parade of nurses, CNAs, phlebotomists, ex ray slash imaging texts,
and a priest, I finally met my attending physician and
a whole crew of residents. I'm exhausted, grumpy, and in pain,
but apparently I still need to be lectured on how
dangerously close to death I'd gotten by waiting to seek help,

(29:22):
despite the fact that I had practically zero reason to suspect.
So anyway, afterwards, we have a nice roundtable discussion of
my treatment plan, how the antibiotics are working, and about
how I'm probably going to be just fine in a
couple days.

Speaker 2 (29:34):
Ha wrong again.

Speaker 1 (29:35):
Turns out the massive infusion of fluids and treatments to
kickstart my kidneys caused my lungs to fill with fluid,
resulting in a condition called ards, in which well, you
can't freaking breathe. The LVLI, those little sacks in your
lungs that do the CO two slash oxygen exchanging, were
effectively flooded, meaning that no matter how much air you're gulping,
and you simply can't extract the amount of oxygen needed
to live without medical intervention. I really really didn't want

(29:57):
to end up indbated with a ventilator breathing for me
and my awesome attending Let me try the less dramatic
option of diuretics and staying awake to remember to breathe.
It sucked, seriously, the worst, most miserable experience I've been through,
But it worked, and on the morning of day five
in the hospital, I got transferred to a general medical ward.
It was blessedly quiet, at least until I dozed off
and my oxygen soots would drop again, and then the

(30:17):
monitor would shriek me awake. I was slowly weaned off
of supplemental oxygen over the next few days, and eventually
got to go home on the condition that i'd sleep
with a little extra oxygen at night. The scariest thing
about the whole experience was how it snuck up on
me so stealthily. Our working theory is that I must
have had a completely asymptomatic UTI that progressed to my kidneys,
but will probably never know for sure. I mean, UTIs
aren't generally subtle, and if I'd even suspected I had one,

(30:39):
I'd have gone to urgent care for a UA and
an antibiotic script. I knew what to look for, and
it still nearly managed to end me. I'm fine now,
feeling much better. I'm definitely still tired and lack stamina,
but I'd say I'm at about eighty five percent, and
it shouldn't be too long until I'm as completely healthy
as I'm likely to get. I may have lost some
kidney function, so I'll continue to go in for routine
blood tests, but were very omistic about how the most

(31:01):
recent scans looked. I took LSD and pretended to be
French for ten months. About eleven months ago, I moved
into a new house as a temporary sort of thing
until I could get the money together to sort something
out properly. I was hoping to have already moved out
by this point. On my second day, after I'd finished unpacking,
I decided to break the house in with a nice
acid trip. I'd brought some with me that I'd recently
bought but hadn't had the chance to use yet. Things

(31:21):
were going well with the trip, but then it seemed
to be getting really intense, and I quickly realized that
the tabs were much stronger than I had been told
they were, and I thought being locked up in the
unfamiliar house wasn't helping me relax, So I figured the
best thing to do to relax would be to go
for a stroll, because I was starting to get pretty
overwhelmed at that point, so I left the house to
start my walk, and my next door neighbor happened to
be just arriving at the same time. It's a street
of tightly packed terraced houses, so next door's door is

(31:43):
about one meter away from mine. I'd not met anybody
on my street yet and didn't realize this was a friendly,
tight knit community where people talk to each other. She
said something along the lines of alone, nice to meet you,
my names her name? Are you new to the area.
So basically, I do this thing sometimes when people try
to sell me things on the street, et cetera, where
I pretend I can't speak English. I remember a few
words from my GCS French, so I just say some

(32:04):
nonsense sentences and then people usually leave me alone. In
the state I was in, this conversation seemed like it
would be way too intense for me, and French just
sort of came to me as my default response to
the situation. My exact words were javudrey un boulangerie, one
of my favorite lines to use, and I shrugged my
shoulders a bit with a weak smile. She pretty much
just left me to it after that, and I got
on my way. I did my walk and got home

(32:24):
about two hours later. I was tripping majorly, so the
walk ended up taking a lot longer than it needed to.
When I got home, though, my next door neighbor was
standing in her doorway talking to another neighbor who was
standing outside. I tried to keep my head down because
I couldn't handle any more human interaction, but she waved
at me and said bonjour. So I instinctively returned the
bonjour and got inside my house as fast as possible.
When I got and I started freaking out straight away

(32:45):
because I realized that I'd just become French and now
two of the neighbors think I can't speak any English.

Speaker 2 (32:50):
The next day, when I.

Speaker 1 (32:50):
Woke up, I realized the best thing I could do
as an Englishman was just live with a life for
the rest of my short stay in this house, to
avoid the excruciating embarrassment of having pretended to be French
for seemingly no reason. Fast forward ten months, I still
live here, and at this point I'm in deep. My
life on this street is a web of lies. I've
perfected my French accent, and over the course of ten months,
French me has learned a decent amount of English so
he can hold a disjointed conversation. I'd gotten to know

(33:13):
the neighbors pretty well, and I was the nice, quirky
French guy on the street. I didn't let the lye slip, ever,
because every day, in every conversation. I had just meant
that it would be even worse if anyone ever discovered
I wasn't French. If I had friends come over. I
don't have many, so it wasn't too bad they would
never speak to the neighbors because of my strange situation.
Most of them found it amusing. At least things were
going okay, and I wasn't too worried about being exposed

(33:33):
anymore because I'd gotten so used to it. I'm not
home that much and when I might rarely leave the
house for any reason, so I only had to do
it for maybe five minutes a day when I was
out on my street. If anything, it was a nice
way to spice up my day when I got to
take on my French persona French me somehow had much
better social skills than the real me, even if his
English was a bit limited. But then there was the
day it all came crashing down. I was walking to

(33:54):
my car and saw one of the neighbors coming towards
me from the opposite direction, with someone else next to her.
I didn't recognize. She stopped to say high as she
normally does, and then she said to her friend, this
is f sevent j seventy eight. The guy I was
telling you about you might be able to see where
this is going. Her friend hit me with a question
in French that I didn't understand a word of, and
I knew he was actually French straight away because his
accent was way better than mine. I didn't know what

(34:15):
to do, and I just froze. Every second that went
past just made it so much more painful, and after
way too long of a pause, I just decided I
had to come clean. I told her I wasn't actually
French and couldn't speak French, and then I tried to
play it off like some kind of practical joke I've
been doing on everyone. Nobody was buying that. I fast
walked straight to my car and then let the embarrassment
just swallow me for a while. I haven't spoken to
any of my neighbors since, some of which i'd struck

(34:36):
up a friendly relationship with over those ten months. I
make sure nobody is around now whenever I leave the house,
and i'd do a loop around the block in my
car if any of my neighbors are walking down the
street when I get home, so that I never come
into contact with him. Every time I think about the
day I was discovered, the embarrassment physically hurts me. Women
who gave the creep a chance?

Speaker 2 (34:52):
How did it go?

Speaker 1 (34:54):
There was a guy that came into my work restaurant
a few times a week for lunch. He did this
for a little over a month, so he became regular.
He had asked me out every time I brought his bill.
He always asked in a light hearted way and never
seemed upset or anything. When I turned him down, I
assumed that after the first few questions, he may have
thought of it as more of an inside joke at
that point, like he was just asking now to make
light of the previous rejections and to make it less

(35:15):
awkward or something. He always gave me weird vibes, but
seemed nice enough, so I thought I might have just
been making assumptions because of his appearance and wasn't being fair.
One time that he asked, I decided randomly to agree
and give him a shot.

Speaker 2 (35:26):
Why not?

Speaker 1 (35:26):
I thought he was always super kind and I had
gotten rather used to the awkwardness I felt being around him.
He seemed so excited, and I asked him to leave
his number on the receipt, and I would call slash
text him when I wasn't busy to set something up,
so it wasn't really much of a joke to keep
asking me out. I mostly figured that though tvh a
few days later, I hadn't text him yet to set
anything up or even give him my number. And I
get a text only a few minutes after walking into

(35:47):
my house after I got home from work. It said, Hey,
it's from I know it's a long shot, but I'm
free tonight and board want to hang out if you're free,
that is. I asked him how he got my number.
He said I gave it to him the night. I agreed,
I absolutely know I didn't. I got really creeped out,
but decided not to confront him about it and just
play like I'm a ditz and believe that I must
have done that I just didn't remember because it was busy.

(36:08):
I told him that I wasn't free to hang out
that night, that I was going to be working later
to help cover a shift and then would be pretty
pooped by the time I was off. I only ever
saw him come in for lunch, not ever dinner shifts.
A few minutes passed before he responded, He said, why
are you lying to me? I just responded with what lowell?
He said, I know you were home. If you didn't
want to hang out tonight, you could have just said so.

(36:29):
Alarm bells rang in my head. I thought, there's no
way he's outside my house. He is just trying to
call my bluff creepy, but not a full blown stalker.
But I felt exposed. I felt a crawling on my
skin that only burns into you when someone is staring
at you, the vulnerable pulses that are felt only by prey.
I looked out through the blinds of my bedroom and
he was parked right outside my house. I could see

(36:49):
his face lit up by the phone screen. He was
so close. I texted him and said, ah ha ha,
you caught me. How did you know I was bluffing.
I'm sorry. I do want to hang out soon. I'm
just not feeling up to it, and called nine to
one to one. The police showed up and went up
to his car and talked to him for a bit.
He drove away a few minutes later, and then the
officers came to my door. They told me that they

(37:09):
acted like a random neighbor complaining about a strange car.
They didn't implicate anyone, but made it seem like it
was an older person, so probably not me. They took
his plate information but asked him politely to move so
he didn't upset anyone in the neighborhood, and he complied.
I went to my friend's house that night and filed
a restraining order the next morning. I later found out
that he most likely got my number from the shift
sheet behind the hostess counter, because several coworkers had seen

(37:30):
him at different times snooping back there and kindly stopped him. He,
I guess, grabbed a roll of silverware, claiming that the
server hadn't left him any and he didn't want to
bother anyone because he knew they were busy, so just
grabbed himself. This stopped anyone from suspecting him of anything odd,
and that his car had been parked at my house
almost every night neighbor's security camera. I don't know how
he got my address, but I assume he must have
followed me. He must have been full on stalking me

(37:52):
for a while. He did come into my work a
day or two later for lunch, acting like everything was normal.
I immediately went and got my manager, and she informed
him that he had a restraining order against him, preventing
him from eating there because he would be in violation
of it. I had already changed my phone numbers, so
I don't know if he tried to text me, and
I didn't sleep at my house for weeks. But I
never saw him again after that, and I often find
myself thinking back to that time and wondering how much

(38:13):
more he did and for how long that I don't
know about, Like maybe he stalked me long before he
started coming into the restaurant and only started coming in
there because he felt more brave than before to interact
with me. How much of my private moments throughout my
life were actually not private. Also, I have never once
stopped feeling scared that he might have still stalked me
and knows where I am even now. But is keeping
himself hidden? I doubt it, but the fear is still there.

(38:34):
I have never felt comfortable being alone ever. Most of
this would have still probably happened even if I didn't
agree to give him a chance. But if he hadn't
slipped up about having my phone number when he shouldn't,
I would have gone out somewhere with him, and who
knows how badly they could have ended. What is the
worst first date you have ever been on? More like
a first date that never wanted to end, So this
might be long. I had just moved to a different
state and decided to try out the online dating scene.

(38:55):
This was before the days of tender and match dot
Com was one of the only options. I matched with
a guy that seemed to be pretty genuine, decent looking,
and wasn't horrible in phone slash text conversation. We decided
to meet at a restaurant to grab appetizers and drinks.
When we got there, the conversation seemed great. He even
looked like his picture. Shortly after getting there, we both
decided to order dinner because we were both hungry and

(39:16):
had a rough day at work. He offered to pay.
Shortly after ordering, he grabs my hand as it was
resting on the table next to my drink. He proceeds
to hold it and seems to have no desire to
let it go. Sadly, he still seemed very genuine. He
then switches our conversation from work and friends to how
he is baby fever. We're both in our young twenties.
Mind you, he's still holding my hand. No amount of

(39:36):
tugging will give him the message. And at this point
I'm beyond creeped out to the point of scared. I
don't believe I said a word to him after he
uttered the words baby fever. Food comes. Thank Heavens, I
can finally get my hand back. Nope, think again. He
wants to hold hands and eat at the same time.
Of course, me being a young twenty something, I ordered
a salad, which is totally doable with only one hand.
Rookie mistake. The waiter comes over and can obviously see

(39:59):
my desperation. I'm fairly certain I'm sweating at this point.
My hand feels gross, and I'm awkwardly looking around for
an exit strategy. I can't even grab my drink without
making a bigger effort. Then the glorious moment happens. The
waiter accidentally spills my wine on my date. My hand
is finally free. My date rushes off to the bathroom
to clean up. He seems overly understanding after having an
entire glass of red wine dumped on him. The waiter apologizes,

(40:21):
then looks me dead in the eye and says I
got you go now, I'll take care of it. I
immediately got up, said thank you, and got out so
fast I almost forgot my coat. Waiter chased me down
to give it to me. At this point, I have
no clue what happened after I left, and I didn't care.
I get a text later from my date that says
how he hopes everything is okay, ignore and block. A
day or so later, I get a message from a

(40:42):
coworker that someone is waiting in the hallway for me.
Where I work, you can't get into the building without
being an employee. I think nothing of it and walk
out to see who it is. It's common to wait
there as our office is only open for the it nerds.
I opened the door, turn to see who's there, and
yelp excited to see me and I'm left. I must
have had the biggest look of discussed and terror mixed
with gas on my face. Mister creepy hand hold her

(41:03):
online dating sucks First aid works in my company. He
asks how my grandma is doing. I play along, assuming
that the waiter said something about her. He reaches out
to grab my hand and I yell out I'm infertile.
I had no clue where that came from, nor did
I have any idea if I was. He looked at
me strangely without saying a word, and I used the
awkward distraction to go back into my office. I got
a message from him later that day on my work
chat asking if i'd be interested in fertility treatments. I

(41:25):
noped right out of that conversation and went directly to security.
I never heard or saw him again. What happened at
a wedding that lets you know the marriage would fail?
My cousin Jan's wedding was basically just a preamble to
an elaborate dance of divorce that we all knew was
coming from the moment the engagement began. For context, this
took place fifteen years ago in the backwoods of NC.
My family is just a generation or two removed from

(41:45):
snake handling in church, so some of the wackiness is
the product of upwardly mobile inbreeding and redneck gumption, just
a few things that come to mind. Her fiance proposed
to her over the corpse of her father. He was
over with the family watching TV when Jan's dad collapsed
on the floor. He died before her emergency services arrived,
her boyfriend grabbed her hands as she was sitting next
to her father's body, pulled her up to her feet,

(42:05):
and then asked her to marry him. He later said
that he didn't want her to get away. The fiance
then disappeared for a month. A week after the funeral,
nobody knew where to reach him. The bride's white trash
mother told Jan that she had to get married within
four months because she the mother my aunt, planned to
move to another state with her new boyfriend to avoid
bill collectors. When Jan's fiance showed back up, he was
cagi and weird. Eventually it came out that he'd been

(42:28):
living with his ex girlfriend because she insisted that he
had to give her a month of his life or
she'd take him to court for child support that he
was supposed to be paying on their infant son but
had never paid. Throughout all of this, Jan continued to
insist that she wanted to marry him. My mother and
I did most of the wedding prep and arrangements. Jan's mom,
despite insisting on the four month timeline to help pay
for the wedding before her move, never contributed a dime
and we were both pretty convinced that the wedding was

(42:50):
going to be canceled at any moment, but the day arrived,
and so did the principal players. At the wedding itself,
the groom walked around drinking PBR out of a massive
travel thermost with a novelty straw, and told everyone who
would listen that Jan was a good starter.

Speaker 2 (43:02):
Wife.

Speaker 1 (43:03):
Jan threw several tantrums about stupid crap, including one in
which she accused the groom of stealing her drink. He
told her she was a dumb whore, but it all
worked out because then she found her drink. The groom
pulled the ring off of Jan's finger during the reception
and swallowed it as a joke. The groom picked a
fight with his father because his dad had asked the
ex girlfriend to stay at home, and the groom had
really wanted her to be there. Jan was in the
dark about this invitation until the fight broke out, shocking

(43:25):
precisely nobody except possibly Jan herself. They eventually did divorce.
Eating the ring caused the groom some discomfort, so they
had to cancel their honeymoon to the mountain so that
he could go to the er and get hospital grade laxatives.
They lost money on the cancelation and the er visit,
which they really didn't have to lose. That resulted in
some immediate debt problems, and they lost the trailer they'd
planned to rent when they couldn't come up with a deposit.

(43:45):
That resulted in both of them moving into the groom's
parents home into his old bedroom. Things went downhill from there.
The groom's ex girlfriend popped back up less than three
months after the wedding, heavily pregnant with his second child.
She went after him for another shared month, but Jan
wasn't cool with it. The ex ended up taking him
to court for child support. Jan got a second job
to make end's meet while resigning herself to living with

(44:06):
her in laws for a while longer. One day after
he'd dropped her off at work, the groom sold Jan's car.
He then disappeared for several more weeks. She lost both jobs,
and shortly thereafter realized she was pregnant. The groom accused
her of cheating because he thought he couldn't have more
than two children in a lifetime and his ex girlfriend
had already filled the quota. As I understand it. This
is what ultimately caused the rift in their relationship. My

(44:27):
roommate left her FECEI smeared all over the bathroom walls
and poisoned me. I lived with an offal now x
room mate. This happened back in twenty twenty. I moved
out of a living situation where a caregiver was allowing
a small dog to attack my cat. I moved out
fast for her safety, unknowingly into an even worse situation.
In my state, the government helps home homeless people through
a program and incomes Sherry fake name for privacy's sake.

(44:49):
Sherry is an alcoholic with extreme ibs and, as you
probably guessed, came off the streets. It was my first
time moving out on my own. I noticed pretty early
on that Sherry was a slob, but this was to
be expected, as shit. She didn't really have experience cleaning
a home. The issues started when I woke up late
at night and used the bathroom. When I sat down
and felt the floor and seat was wet, I turned
the lights on and to my horror, it was like
a brown slaughter scene. Human feces spread on the toilet, seat,

(45:13):
the floor, the walls next to the toilet. It was
like a diarrhea bomb went off. I didn't even know
that was possible. I informed my landlord, who only believed
me with picture evidence, which should have been a huge
red flag at the time, but I was still a teenager.
I confronted her the next day and she explained that
she has ibbs that she can't help it. I said,
I understand you have a condition, but if you make
a mess, it has to be cleaned. She mopped the

(45:33):
floor and I had to take her back into the
bathroom and instruct her to clean the walls and the
toilet seat where the stains remained. I thought all was well.
Fast forward two weeks. Both of us in my cat
are experiencing dry throat, intense stomach aches, migrains, and dizziness.
I noticed that when I walked on the bathroom floor,
my feet were burning. I asked Sherry if she also
felt sick. She said yes and didn't know why it clicked.

(45:53):
A day later, I asked what she cleaned the bathroom
floor with. She says, bleach. I said, how much water
do did you dilute it? With silence? I asked again
and she said I just used bleach. I said, straight bleach.
She started yelling and I shut myself in my room furious.
I remopped the floor twice before the symptoms disappeared. My
cat was living in my one bedroom at the time,
and so she had the most exposure, unable to go

(46:15):
anywhere that could get away from the scent of bleach
fuming into my room from under the door. This incident
made me incredibly angry with Sherry, but I let it go.
Since she was brought into the house using a government program,
it was hard to kick her out. For the landlord,
it sucked because she'd spend all her money drinking herself stupid,
which made her ibs that much worse. Every incident was
documented and shared with him. It is important to know
he gave us access to the upstairs bathroom if we

(46:37):
needed it. Cut to a few months later. I'm cleaning
the kitchen and mopping. I wear headphones while I cleaned
to make it easier to focus, and I at this
point have kept my room locked since I found Sherry
opening my door without knocking and suspected she was snooping
through my stuff. The apartment has a kitchen door identical
to and right next to my bedroom door. I locked
my door and get to mopping. Suddenly the kitchen door
is being banged on and Sherry is screaming, well, I

(46:58):
had unknowingly locked the kitchen door instead of my own.
She was howling, banging and threatening to end me, along
with calling me slurs I won't repeat. I apologized through
the door, but was honestly scared she'd attack me outright.
I waited for her to walk away, unlock the door,
and locked myself in my room. I call the landlord,
tell him what's happening, and he says that she's just kidding.
She won't do anything. She's just an old woman. I

(47:19):
tell him she's threatening to end me, and he brushes
me off. It isn't until she calls him and threatens
to end me to him that he even comes over
to see what's going on. Suddenly, the banging continues, and
I mean walls are shaking. She's hitting the door so hard.
I recorded this and said I just unlocked the door.
She screams, yeah, and I locked it back so landlord
could see what you did. Stupid be you made me
crap myself. Landlord gets there and doesn't believe me until

(47:40):
I make him watch the video. He tells her she
just could have gone upstairs. I tell him he needs
to believe me when I say something is going on
that serious, I mean it. She ends up finally getting
kicked out, and someone even worse moved him before I
get the hell out of there. What's the dumbest thing
you've done? Out of pure horniness, spoke to a guy online.
He was older and kept mentioning fer I thought that
meant that he was identified as a bear. He kept

(48:01):
saying he loved fur and all things fur. I was like, okay,
he must be into hairy guys and bears and crap
like that. Being moderately hairy myself, I thought I could
satisfy his need for fur well. Upon arrival at his house,
he greeted me in an ankle length fur coat chinchilla.
At this point I realized he meant actual fur and
fur items. I went in and he had liked an
entire room full of fur coats, most of them on

(48:23):
the floor, all spread out for us to lie on.
I hooked up with him for a bit. He loved
to rub the fur coat on his willy and crap whatever.
It was very humdrum. Those boomers are so easy to
get off since they went through puberty without internet, adult
flimps and the slightest breeze across their willies gets them
hard anyway. On my way out the door, he asked
if I liked fur I said I loved fur coats.
Then he offered me one a floor length Arctic Fox.

(48:45):
I of course declined. I did not have a spare
five K to give him, nor did I want to
owe him for anything. I told him flat out that
I did not plan on continuing this, that this was
just a hook up, and that I would essentially never
see him again, let alone arrange for some form of payment.
I wasn't about to hore myself out victually for a
ladies fur coat from the eighties, shoulders looking like a
mixture of a quarterback and Alexis Morrel Carrington Colby Dexter Rowan.

(49:07):
He insisted that he really wanted me to have it,
and that I would never have to owe him for this,
and that we would never even have to meet again.
I took the coat and this is where I aft up.
Days later he texts me, when will we meet again?
I ignored him for a while. Days go by, I
get another more insistent text, when are we meeting up again?
I gave you that fur coat? You need to see
me now. I went through the hole. I told you

(49:27):
I had no intentions of seeing you again, and you
insisted i'd take this coat after I rejected it like
three times, and also you insisted I would owe you
nothing and that I take the coat. He said that
I needed to see him again to return the coat,
or that he wanted me to give him a pair
of my dirty underwear.

Speaker 2 (49:39):
I was floored.

Speaker 1 (49:40):
He knew I had no intention of ever seeing him again,
no means of paying for a coat like this, and
that I was above pooring myself out let alone for
a measly fur coat. I reminded him of this. I
said that I did not feel safe meeting him in
person to give him this coat any longer, since he
was now attempting to manipulate me and coerced me back
into an intimate circumstance with him. He then said that
he would call the police on me. I reminded him
that he gave me the coat, insisted that I take it,

(50:01):
and insisted that I would owe him nothing for it.
He then said that if I did not return the coat,
or give him my dirty underwear. He would tell everyone
I was gay. I laughed and informed him that he
was free to do that because everyone knows I'm gay
as hell, and b I don't live a cowardly life
in the closet and therefore don't care. I told him
I did not appreciate him lying to me and then
trying to blackmail me into having intercourse with him, giving
the coat back, or giving him a pair of my

(50:23):
dirty underwear like some back page slag. He got frustrated,
thinking that these scared tactics and blackmailing would induce me
into taking him seriously and suddenly believing him to be
honest and true to his already broken words. Then he
brought out the big guns. He said that if I
did not meet him to hook up, give him a
pair of my dirty underwear, and give him back the coat,
he would tell his wife all about it. I did
not know he was married or masquerading as a straight man.

(50:44):
He was one of those guys, the straight closet guy
who wants all the benefits of sleeping with men, but
none of the responsibility or social stigma. Effing scared coward,
I said to him, so let me get this straight.
You want me to hook up with you again after
you said I wouldn't have to. You want me to
give you back the coat you insisted i'd take against
my wishes, And you want me to give you.

Speaker 2 (51:01):
My dirty underwear.

Speaker 1 (51:02):
And if I don't comply, you're going to tell your
wife on me, a wife that you conveniently failed to
even mention before. I laughed, and he got really angry.
It was then I realized he gave me the coat
thinking that he could use this and his threats against
me to coerce me into having intercourse with him and
all his fur coats again. I informed him that I
was aware of this. He hung up on me. What
story do you have that disproves the worst she can

(51:22):
say is no? In high school, I once asked a
girl out that I didn't think I had any chance with.
I figured, hey, the worst she could say is no.
Assumed she would probably say no, and planned on using
the experience as a comfort when trying to ask someone
out that I thought I had a chance with. In
other words, when trying to work up the courage to
ask someone out in the future, I could think back
to this moment realize from this experience that being told
no wasn't so bad and go for it. I asked

(51:44):
her out. She said she was going out with someone
else and that was that easy and painless. And then
she started telling people that I demanded that she switched
from her current partner to me, and that she had
to shout at me to get me to leave her alone.
Someone else started a rumor that after I got rejected,
I ran into the bathroom and cried. Someone else came
up with a short little theme song about how I
got rejected. Everyone found it catchy, including people I thought

(52:05):
were my friends, so people would sing it at me everywhere.
Random people in the hallways would see me and start
singing it at me. I couldn't escape it until people
finally lost interest several months, maybe even a year, I
don't remember exactly. Later, I was horribly humiliated and depressed
and sad and so on for all that time, but
I figured it was just a fluke. Then in the
fall semester in college, a female friend promised to me

(52:26):
that she would get me laid by the end of
the spring semester. I'd overheard her talking to people about it,
wondering whether it would be better to pair me with
another virgin or with someone experienced, for example. So even
though months passed with no actual progress, I assumed things
were happening behind the scenes. On the last day of
the spring semester, there was a big party at her place,
so I texted her earlier in the day, so, if
today's the last day of the semester, does that mean

(52:46):
I'm getting laid? I was thinking the worst she could
say was no, as in, hah no, that was all
a joke or something to that effect. No harm in
bringing it up, right, I wouldn't have been upset if
that was what happened. I don't remember her response exactly,
but I think she took it as a joke and
replied non seriously with the hell yeah or something along
those lines. Halfway through the party that night, she gets
everyone's attention and announces that she got the best text

(53:08):
ever today. I assumed it wasn't my text because it
wouldn't make sense, so I was looking forward to hearing
what she had to say. She then proceeded too, in
a mockingly stupid voice, read my text to everyone with
absolutely no context, and then point to me. Everyone effing
lost it with laughter. I heard one guy later say
to a girl next to him, don't get too intoxicated,
or you might end up sleeping with him, while motioning

(53:28):
to me. They both laughed pretty hard about that one.
I was already intoxicated at that point, so I couldn't
drive home, so I was trapped. I spent a lot
of time silently crying to myself in the bathroom. I
was tempted to try to drive home anyway, because I
really didn't care what happened to me at that point,
but the thought that I might end up hurting someone
else stop me. The events of that night replayed in
my head almost every day for the entire summer. I

(53:49):
felt like I was worthless as a person, completely undesirable
romantically and intimately. I felt like I was just uselessly broken, unrepaarable,
that I was a misfit that didn't belong in this world.
What's your worst rejection story? Senior year of high school.
This girl I had met through a mutual friend and
I suddenly had multiple random encounters. A few weeks go
by and we really start to hit it off. We

(54:09):
spend every day together. I call and talk to her
on the phone. We even end up going out to dinner,
not an official date. I'm totally smitten by this girl
and things are moving along perfectly. Our prom was coming up,
and I decided to ask her. Now, the place I
lived in had rather elaborate methods of asking people to
prom slash homecoming type dances, So my buddy and I
hatched a plan to ask this girl out by messing
with her room and putting some clever personalized stuff around.

Speaker 2 (54:31):
Seriously, this is normal.

Speaker 1 (54:33):
I call her mom to get permission to do all this,
and I start to get really excited when she agrees.
That night, I got a phone call from the girl
that basically went like this, Hey, so I know I'm
not supposed to know this, but I heard you were
planning on asking me to prom, and I think that
would be a bad idea. So normally this is where
the story would end. This one doesn't do that. After
putting my shattered pride back together, I move on with

(54:53):
my life. I graduate, leave town, and generally proceed to
think about the crappy events as little as possible, but
it always stings a little when I think about her.
About a year after this whole incident, I got a
random phone call from this girl. We strike back up
our old friendship and things move along quite nicely. In
the course of getting to know one another again, she
tells me that the prom thing wasn't my fault. Turns
out she'd just gotten out of a pretty rough relationship

(55:14):
and wasn't ready to start something new and didn't want
to hurt me. I get really excited about this. As
we continue to talk every day again, I realize that
I'm totally into this girl for the second time. As
luck would have it, I also made some plans that
meant moving back to town a few months down the road. Well,
Christmas rolls around and I make a trip back to
visit family and friends. When I get into town, I
call her and make plans to take her out on

(55:35):
a real first date. We end up spending the majority
of the day together something like twelve hours, and everything
goes perfectly. The night ends and I couldn't be happier.
We made plans to get together later that week at
a friend's house. When she shows up to our friend's house,
she almost immediately hides out in her car to take
a phone call for about three hours. In my heart,
I know this is bad news for me. When she
finally comes in, she purposefully sits across the room from me,

(55:57):
even though I try to get her to be near me.
From that point, we stopped talking to one another every
day and move down to about once every few weeks.
I find out months later through Facebook that she's dating
someone else, her ex boyfriend, the one who called her
while she was at our friend's house to profess his
love and apologize for whatever wrong things he did two
days after what up to that point had been the
most perfect date of my life. We eventually became friends

(56:18):
again and we both got married. Who was the worst
kid under fifteen you ever met? Used to work at
a summer camp where we would have kids from every
demographic and socioeconomic group, kids on scholarship who barely made
it all the way to the super rich. All in all,
the kids were good, with a few exceptions, one of
which I will call John now. John was about thirteen
when I worked with him, and clearly had some emotional
issues that were not being addressed by his super wealthy parents,

(56:40):
who instead would ship him off to summer camps all
over the country. Being that he was a teen, he
went into our teen camp, which was more autonomous but
still relatively structured. To get to the camp site, you
had to cross a bridge that was over a narrow
but very deep creek. Relevance will come up. One day,
as I am sitting in my office, I get a
text from a counselor at the teen camp who told
me to get over there as soon as possible. So
naturally I get up and sprint there. I show up

(57:00):
in John is sitting at a picnic table with three
other kids and two very upset looking counselors. As I approached,
John starts yelling that whatever they say is a lie
and they hate him. I pulled the lead counselor aside,
and he tells me that they caught John throwing a
brick from the campsite on Duck and her chicks as
they were peacefully swimming down the creek. Unfortunately, John hit
the mother but didn't end her. So now there was
this poor duck thrashing around in front of her chicks
on the shore of the creek. Commandot. All of this

(57:21):
was about forty feet from another cabin group of young girls.
We called an animal rehab specialist who came out and
safely got all the chicks, but the mother died shortly afterwards.
He also punished a poor little girl and broke her glasses.
Needless to say, the head camp director is pissed and
wants him to leave immediately. We had a behavioral provision
in the camp rules that said if children became too
hard to work with, they would be sent home. Called
his parents, who did not seem alarmed with the behavior,

(57:42):
and said they were leaving for a cruise. The next day,
camp director reminds them of the provision and how their
son was no longer welcome than camp. Again, parents don't
seem alarmed and finally send a friend to.

Speaker 2 (57:51):
Get the kid.

Speaker 1 (57:51):
I saw on Facebook that John is currently studying medicine,
which scares the absolute life out of me. When was
someone's assumption about you terribly wrong? I was once assumed
as a perdo hear me out? I had taken my
nephew to the park. My sister and Bill were in
town for a few days and they were going out
for dinner, just the two of them. I took my
little three year old nephew to the park.

Speaker 2 (58:09):
It was just us.

Speaker 1 (58:10):
We were running around, having a good time, pushing him
on the swings, finding cool rocks, et cetera. A lady
and her big dog had walked over to me at
one point and asked, Oh, your son is so cute.
I responded with thanks, but it's not my son. She then,
without time to explain, flipped a switch tried to get
between me and my nephew while taking pictures of me
on her phone. I was telling her to get the
hell away from us, making my nephew cry because he

(58:31):
didn't know what was going on. She called the police,
and she's screaming at the top of her lungs for
me to stay back or she'll defend herself while trying
to pick up my nephew. I suddenly stopped caring if
she thought I was a pardo or not. She had
her hands on my nephew and that wasn't going to
fly with me. I picked him up and we started
speed walking back to my car. Big mistake. She started
telling the cops my license plate number makeslash model of
my car, saying I was kidnapping him. I was so mad,

(58:54):
I was seeing red. I sat in the car because
I thought it would be best if at that point
I waited for the police. I had him buckled it
into his car seat. With the engine running just in
park Idly. She's slamming her hands on my windshield, trying
to get other people to come help her, but a
few people just come and stand behind my car so
I can't leave. Please show up. Gun's drawn telling me
to egsit the vehicle. I get out. I have tears

(59:14):
in my eyes at this point because I'm so mad
slash confused. I got handcuffed. I was asked a million
questions until they finally understood that this woman didn't know
either of us. I finally got to tell my side
of the story, which consisted of I took my nephew
to the park. This lady asked if I was the father.
I said no. She didn't listen to a word I
said after that, and tried to take her from me.
The lady is looking super embarrassed. Once I'm done telling

(59:34):
the story, my nephew is asked to come up in
my arms because he's scared. I picked him up and
he cuddled right in. The cops asked the kid if
I was his uncle, and he just nodded yes silently.
The woman starts this sob story about how she was
abducted as a child and thought she was doing the
right thing. I didn't care at that point. I was
so mad at her. We leave all laugh about it
at dinner. Life went on, but f it had got

(59:54):
to be the worst time of my life.