Armchair Anonymous: Wild Card V
2024-07-26 01:02:16
Hi, I’m Dax Shepard, and I love talking to people. I am endlessly fascinated by the messiness of being human, and I find people who are vulnerable and honest about their struggles and shortcomings to be incredibly sexy. I invite you to join me as I explore other people’s stories. We will celebrate, above all, the challenges and setbacks that ultimately lead to growth and betterment. What qualifies me for such an endeavor? More than a decade of sobriety, a degree in Anthropology and four years of improv training. I will attempt to discover human “truths” without any laboratory work, clinical trials or data collection. I will be, in the great tradition of 16th-century scientists, an Armchair Expert.
Welcome, welcome, welcome to Armchair Anonymous. I'm Dan Shepard. I'm joined by Monica Maus. Hi. We have our favorite prompt, wild card.
Okay, sorry, this is reminding me of something. Does this ever happen to you where you're listening? This has happened multiple times to me. I'm listening to a podcast. I fall asleep to it.
And then I wake up to this.
Oh, because ours auto starts. Yeah. Yeah, and it's-.
And it's our voices. Do you hate it? And it's so jarring to be woken up by your own voice.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
I think I would like it.
What? Oh my God, okay. I don't think I could fall asleep to a podcast. I'm so interested in podcasts. As I told you, I got the full works of Dostoevsky on Audible, 264 hours.
Yeah.
And I'm listening to Brothers Karmazov right now. And it puts me to sleep. There are so many Russian names. I'm like, I'm just struggling to keep up with who they're talking about. And it's so exhausting.
I wouldn't be ever be able to do audio book on something like that.
Yeah, well, certainly I read Crime and Punishment and it was easier to follow than Brothers Karmazov on Audible.
Okay, anyway.
Anyways, that's not what this prompt is. This is the wild card, which we love wild cards because we don't know what's coming our way. It is a gruesome, gruesome injury in this one.
We got some gross stuff.
This is a lot of gore. That's what I'll say about this one. This one's got a lot of bloody gore.
Can people listen?
I don't think so.
Okay. Yeah, it's best not. See you next week.
If you could skip ahead to the second one and then no other ones else. But don't, it's too much. You're liable to land on the wrong one. So just, we'll see you next week. Just skip it.
All right. Before we go, I want to announce the Armchair Anonymous prompts for August. Hot month, hot month. Hot, hot month. So we're coming at you with hot prompts.
Tell us about a cooking disaster you've had.
Oh yeah. Let's hope it's fiery.
Yes, I got a hunch. some will include fire. Tell us about your worst parenting moment. And we're going back to the well on this one, because the first one was so fucking good. Airplane stories.
God, to fly is to gather stories, isn't it?
It sure is.
You see something almost every flight that turns your head because you're with 300 people in a tube.
Also, flights are getting, knock on wood, crazier and crazier.
Yeah, I felt grateful just to get home the other day. Yeah. And then, lastly, tell us a crazy grocery store story.
Something that happened to you at the grocery store.
Store story.
It could be a meat queue. It could be a weird thing at the deli.
A murder. Hopefully someone's witnessed a murder at the grocery store. But it has to be. they're getting murdered, so it's their story.
So you're a ghost.
We don't want to shame any murderers.
Yeah. Right? We're absolutely against shaming.
Anybody. Okay, so that was worst parenting moments, crazy grocery store stories, cooking disasters, and airplane stories. ♪ Hard times, come and go. ♪. ♪ Good times, take them slow.
♪ ♪ My life, I had them both. ♪ ♪ Remember one thing, you gotta know ♪ ♪ I'ma keep on shining. ♪ Hi. Hi, Gabriela.
Yeah, you can call me, Gabby.
I would love to call you Gabby. I have a niece who's Gabby and she's wonderful.
Oh, well, that's good to know.
Did you live up to the nickname? Are you Gabby?
Yeah, it was written on all of my report cards. Everyone's always, like, your parents did a good job naming you.
Oh, wow. Are you a younger sibling?
I'm the youngest of three.
Oh, yeah, yeah. They get real Gabby. the more iterations. I feel like the Gabby-ness goes up.
I think so too, but just because you always have people surrounding you, you're never alone.
Yes. Where are you in the world?
Currently, I am in the Bay Area. I'm outside of Oakland. So I'm like in the suburbs in Concord.
And how long have you lived there?
Since 2015, I moved here. I'm originally from New York. I grew up on Long Island.
And how do you like the culture shift? That feels pretty dramatic.
It is pretty dramatic, but honestly, I like it. I miss New York, don't get me wrong. Nothing will ever compare to living in New York, but I really love the California work-life balance of the fact that I'm able to sit in and record a podcast at noon.
and just block out my calendar, no questions asked.
I told my manager, she was like, cool.
Have fun. Okay, so you're a wild card story, which is so fun for Monica and I because we never know what's coming. So please set us up, time and place.
So my story takes place in 2011.. I am a junior in college and I decide to study abroad. There's a lot of programs to pick from. I choose a semester at sea. It's pretty much what it sounds like.
You circumnavigate the globe by ship. You study while you're at sea. And when you pour into docks, you can do quite literally anything you want to do.
Oh, my gosh.
As long as you are safe and back on the boat by the time you move on to the next country.
And is the boat a dedicated education vessel or are you like on a cruise ship?
Everyone on the ship are either students, faculty and staff, or something they call lifelong learners. So like, if you're not in college, you could choose to be on the ship, take college classes.
Ooh, I'd like to do, yeah, let's do that.
It's really fun. There was a lot of lifelong learners and they brought their kids and homeschooled their kids on the ship.
Oh, wow. And was it a nice boat?
Yeah, it was like a carnival cruise. Oh, wow.
Are there classrooms on the boat?
There are classrooms, but they're just basically what would normally be like a ballroom or a private dining room.
Where you'd see the magician show at night.
Right, it's really hard to study on a rocking boat. Like in between classes, you can go to the top deck and lay out. Oh, my God.
Is there a lot of bed hopping? I would pray that there's like a ton of hooking up in this scenario.
Oh, yeah.
That's what college is in general, really.
They don't like to ram that, but for sure there is hooking up going on.
Okay, wonderful. Where did it leave from?
So it left from the Bahamas. We went to 13 countries, Bahamas, Dominica, Brazil, Ghana, South Africa, Mauritius, Singapore, Vietnam, China. We were supposed to go to Tokyo that year, but it was the year of the tsunamis. And so we were rerouted to Taiwan and then back to Hawaii. And then we ported back in mainland United States and San Diego.
My goodness.
My story takes place in China. So we port in China. I choose to do a third party overnight excursion with the friends that I've made on this boat. So it's not a sponsored semester at sea trip. It's through a local touring company.
The whole gimmick is they do a day tour of Beijing and then they take us to the Great Wall. We sleep in a watchtower, watch the sunrise on the Great Wall. And then next day we hike the Great Wall. Wow. So we arrived to the Great Wall.
It's around 8 p.m. It's pitch black because we're in a remote area of the wall. So I don't know if either of you have been to the Great Wall of China, but there are a lot of areas that are restored and unrestored. We were in an unrestored section. The hike up was super treacherous.
It was not like taking stairs up and I'm very ill prepared. I'm wearing knockoff Converse. All of the layers of clothing that I have in my backpack. I'm wearing because it's 30 degrees. They hand us a sleeping bag, a yoga mat, and a little manual wind up flashlight, because it's so dark and it's kind of useless.
Whatever. Vibes are high.
Hike up to the watchtower.
We make camp. We're sitting there. We're laughing. And this is where it's my story, but this is the last thing I remember of the night.
Oh, oh, oh, oh, wow. Nice foreshadowing.
So I'm told by my friends that at some point in the night, we decide to walk over to another watchtower. I had to use a bathroom. So I was hoping to find a bathroom on the way and there was more kids there. And I'm walking in front of my friend, Jeanann. She said that I had met a girl that I had a class with on the ship.
We were like formally introducing ourselves because we didn't really know each other. We're walking a few paces ahead of her. One second she sees us and the next we like disappear off the horizon.
Are you walking along the wall?
On the wall. Uh-oh. Because it was an unrestored portion. There were sections where there were just random stairs or, where the wall had collapsed, where they had been stairs. So out of nowhere, 12 steps down, a landing, and then 12 steps up.
We had fallen down a set of stairs. When they get to the bottom, they find Lily. She's severely injured. She keeps saying, both of my legs are broken. They can see her kneecap through two pairs of sweatpants.
And she's like, Gabby fell too. I don't know where she is. Oh.
Oh my God. And it's pitch black.
And it's pitch black.
Oh, my gosh.
My friend Greg finds me. He says that I'm face down. I have a circle of blood expanding around my head on the pavement. And when he moves my hair back to see my face, he's not sure if he's looking at the inside of my head or the outside of my head.
Oh, my God. You could have written into near-death experience. Maybe she did. Oh, sorry, you did.
You could have written into wall attacks.
Yeah, you really should have done that.
Tell us about a crazy time. you've been attacked by a wall.
So they start calling for help. Of course, the tour guides are nowhere to be found. They don't know where anyone is. And they start asking students, does anyone have medical experience? By luck of all luck, there is one student named Eric.
on the trip. He had some medical experience. I don't know if he was studying medicine or if he was an EMT, but he took charge. He instructed everyone to find something that could be used as a stretcher. A group of guys pulled a door off the great wall.
Oh, vandalism. Put it next to me, carefully, put me on the wall, and then a group of guys carried me off the wall, the same hike that we just did up. It took them about an hour to get down. Oh! Like, when they got to the bottom, magically, the tour owner had appeared and he had called a van for us to go seek medical help.
It was like a passenger van and they put all the seats down and they wedged the door in there. And the door was so big that they had to hold the door closed the whole duration of the ride. They got to the first local hospital. It was a rural hospital. So the doctor comes out, takes one look at me, and is like, I can't help this girl.
Basically, she's a goner. You have to go to a major hospital. Then they continue on to Beijing. So that's another two and a half hours.
Oh, my God.
And really quick, generally an injury where you're bleeding a ton, they'd put a tourniquet around it. We can't tourniquet your neck. Like, did they tie anything around your head?
No, I know that, Eric, he like, tourniqueted Lily, the other girl's legs. I don't think they could do anything for me. My friend Alex, who was riding with me, she reported to the doctors that I was seizing in the van. I was moving at that point and making some guttural noises. So she was like, she's alive, but I don't know what state she's in.
Oh, this is horrific.
They get to the hospital and the doctors are like, we can't see them until we have a credit card on file.
Well, it is a little comforting to know that there is one worse medical system in the world than ours. I felt some pride in that. we would have treated you. You would have gotten a bill, but we would have started.
Alex had the wherewithal to grab my backpack. on the way down. She grabs my wallet and she pulls out my Hello Kitty debit card. And this is just like proof of my age. Like I'm 20 years old.
I don't even own a credit card. Gives it to them. And then, while she's in my backpack, she finds the international cell phone that I had. It was an old brick, like Nokia cell phone, that I'd put minutes on. So she calls my dad in New York.
Oh, my God.
Hey, Mr. Gonzalez, I'm with your daughter, Gabby. She got into a really bad accident. She's in critical condition. They're going to put her on a respirator.
I have to get back because the boat's going to leave without me. One of you has to come here because somebody has to make decisions.
Oh my God. And if he leaves the second, he gets the phone call, he's still 20 hours away.
Also, you need a visa to get into China. They also received a phone call after this. And they're talking to the administration. They've received a phone call from the U.S. ambassador being like, hey, the university called us.
We know your daughter's an American in the country. Please do me a favor. Don't try to come here without a visa, because if you come here without a visa, I won't be able to help you. So they have to spend the night in New York and wait until the next day when they have an appointment at the embassy to get a visa. The next morning, they go to Manhattan, they get a visa.
My mom's on a flight at 2 p.m. And at that point, my parents made a decision. My dad would stay and my mom would go. My mom's in the medical field, so she knows medical jargon. And my dad really didn't want to be out of communication in case somebody called needing permission of some sort.
So my mom went on a 22 hour flight. Luckily, Semester T had required all of us to get travel medical insurance. So the medical insurance had facilitated a translator. pick my mom up at the airport. They go to the hospital and she's not allowed to see me until 2 p.m.
the next day.
What? This is now, 48 hours since you fell off?
Yeah, maybe three days. I don't really even know. And my mom is losing it. And she's like, I'm not leaving until you. let me see her.
Throwing a fit, pulling her New Yorker, Latina.
Triple whammy, American, Latina.
Medical professional.
Yeah, finally they let her in to see me and she describes it as atrocious conditions. It's not like a United States hospital. Nurses there are there to help work. the machinery, not necessarily help the patient. The visiting hours are for the family to come in and clean up.
the patient, change the sheets. So she finds me and I'm not even on a bed, I'm on like a metal table with a sheet. I'm butt ass naked.
And my hair is matted.
because I have all of these fluids and blood and vomit. And I'm so bruised that she says she can't even see like the tattoo on my body and it's traumatic.
Yes, maybe more for her.
Yeah, and that's kind of the interesting part of my story. As much as it's my story, because all of this is not my recollection, I feel kind of imposter syndrome sharing it. I understand that this affected a lot more people than just me. My story really begins at the recovery.
In China or did they get you out of there?
So I actually don't have any memories until I got back to New York.
Oh, wow.
I was in a coma for seven days. They transferred me to Hong Kong because it was a more Western hospital. I was in Hong Kong for two weeks and then they transferred me back to New York. They transferred me back on a commercial flight and it was delayed because I'm a tall girl. I'm like five, eight.
When you wake up from a coma, it's not like a lifetime movie where you just wake up and you're like, oh my God, I'm so happy to see you. I woke up and I was quite literally like an infant again. Picture like a terrible two-year-old in a 20-year-old's body. I'm thrashing, I'm kicking, I'm biting. I don't know how to read, write, talk, drink from an open cup.
I can't use the bathroom. I'm in a diaper. They had to special fly in a doctor from Thailand because there was no doctors in China that were tall enough to handle me. They wanted to know that there was a doctor that was bigger in stature that could actually handle my aggressive thrashing. Wow.
When you got back to New York, you then check in, I presume, to another hospital?
Yeah, so my whole family too is in the medical field. I'm kind of the black sheep of the family, that's not. My aunt works at a hospital on Long Island that, coincidentally, has one of the best brain injury units in the state, so I check in there. I have the reading level of a first grader. Again, I can't walk, I can't do anything.
So I was admitted on April 20th and I was discharged on May 5th, so I wasn't there that long, but I was in outpatient therapy. So I was in occupational therapy, physical therapy, speech therapy, neuropsychology, and that's where they retrained me to be me. That was for the whole summer. And by September, I was back at school. What?
What were your injuries?
Cognitively, I have no injuries. I fractured my wrist in the fall. They describe it as a left hemorrhagic stroke, or maybe it was a right, I'm not sure. Essentially, my head hit the floor and my brain ruptured on the opposite side of my head. So my head hit the left side and the right side ruptured.
And I had internal bleeding in my head. Because of the suspected seizure that my friend reported, I was put on seizure medication. I was on Keppra, Monita.
Ding, ding, ding.
When I went back to school, I felt almost like numb to the world. But also, you have to understand, I had no cognitive deficits. I could go back to college, but emotionally, I was like a teenager. I honestly attribute it to my now husband and my roommate, Rachel. Shout out to Rachel.
She's the one that made me write it in.
Thank you, Rachel.
They're the reason why I was able to stay in school, because they held my hand through it. Rachel's like my mom. Like, okay, Gabby, we're gonna do laundry today. Let's take a shower tonight. It's been a few days since you washed your hair.
And that's because of the actual damage or just trauma?
It's not like I wasn't capable of it. Emotionally, I was just immature.
Yeah, maybe, like the frontal lobe, took a minute longer to come back fully online and think ahead and plan.
And the Keppra really numbed me out. When I went off of the Keppra a year later is when I really started to see the deficits in my mental health. They weaned me off of it. And for the first time in like a year, all of these emotions came. I went through like the stages of grief.
Like, holy shit, I just lost my semester abroad. I mean, I graduated on time, but I took a semester after I walked in graduation to, like, finish credits up. I thought that was a failure. I was just so hard on myself. I'm also a Virgo.
We have a lot in common, Keppra and Virgo.
Really, the hard part was after the fact.
Oh man, it's incredible that you're functioning and living on your own.
It's like the craziest success. I mean, I cannot believe you were back at school.
I can see it now in retrospect. I see the story through a different lens. every year that I get past it. I celebrate the day of my accident. I call it my death day.
Like I didn't clinically die. My heart never stopped, but I do feel like a part of me died that day. When I came back, I wasn't 21.. I couldn't even drink. on my 21st birthday.
I was just very much aged and almost jaded. So it definitely changed the outcome of my life. I'm also a mother now. As soon as I became a mother, I saw my mom's story through a completely different lens, and my dad too.
Wow, that is quite a story.
If you were a Scientologist, I think they would implore you to go back to the wall of China, right where you fell to undo, whatever the Enneagram, or whatever it's called. Do you ever want to go there?
I don't really have a desire to go there. My mom is very much like a tough love. She's the one that pushed me to travel. She was like, you have to get back on the horse. This isn't going to stop you.
Like. think of what you had to go through. So I have been to Machu Picchu. I have been to Thailand. I've traveled.
I just really don't have a desire to go back to the Great Wall.
Yeah.
In researching this, I like went back to the tour's website and just seeing pictures of the wall. Like I have PTSD.
I'm sure. Of course.
My throat was closing up. So many times. I was like, I don't think I can talk to them about this because I don't think I can get through it. The body really does keep the score. I don't remember it.
But it does.
Yeah, something in me knows.
Well, you did an awesome job telling it. It was harrowing and insane. Yeah. Man, life.
It's really impressive.
You're just walking. You're excited. We're going to go up here. I'm going to use the bathroom in the next hour. And then literally the floor falls out.
Thank you for telling us that story. That was wild.
Thank you for having me. Monica, I have to say your episode in Sync'd, where you read what you wrote, the seas, the day, you have to write a book.
Oh, thank you. Monica can write.
You can write. And also I relate so much to you feeling other, feeling everything, even down to the Keppra and the Invergo.
Exactly.
Great hair. You have to deal with having great hair. You do have great hair.
So do you.
Perfect smiles. I don't know. I don't know how you guys get through it.
Well, I really appreciate that. Thank you.
All right. Well, great meeting you, Gaby.
Great meeting you. Thank you guys so much for having me. Take care.
Hi. Hi.
I'm so nervous.
Don't be nervous.
Be excited. Okay, I'm not going to use my real name. Okay.
What fake name do you want?
So I'm at my best friend, Nicole's house. So I think I'm just going to use Nicole. Oh, great.
So we'll use Nicole.
I have little kids, three, a toddler, a baby. So I spent most of my energy trying to get to a place where I could have this conversation and not be interrupted. I didn't have much time to practice my story. And every time I set my timer, somebody interrupts me.
I'm sorry. you would even have any anxiety that you would feel. I would never think anyone would feel like they need to practice. That's the first time I've heard that. I don't want this to be like a test for anyone.
I mean, I do like tests. It's the 15 minutes or less.
Oh, is that a stipulation? we say? Okay. Well, I usually blow by that. It is smart.
Well, we have to, because there's been some, you know. Exactly. It's funny, I'm just nervous because I listen to this podcast all the time and Armchair Anonymous is my favorite version of armchair. And so I feel like I already know the drill, but now I'm doing it.
Nicole, do you have a favorite story you've heard?
Oh my gosh. I have almost peed at the gym, laughing so hard.
Us too.
Well, the waiter.
With the puss?
Yes.
Oh, so memorable.
The pile of puss. Oh, actually I know. the one that I listened to while I was at the gym was the girl who gave herself an orgasm. I was like, oh my gosh, I know exactly what equipment she's talking about. I know exactly the situation.
So since I've been listening to Armchair Anonymous, I have always said, oh, I have a story. And third time's a charm.
I'm glad you keep at it. Me too. Because I think some people would think that their story wasn't good, but there's a lot of submissions.
Well, this last time, Emma did contact me, but I was in the Dominican Republic and I wasn't checking my email enough and I read it like hours before recording and I missed my chance. Oh. I was so upset. But I also didn't have a computer with me in the Dominican and I don't know where I would have ever recorded. So it worked out fine.
I'm currently in Phoenix, Arizona. My story, however, takes place on a little island known as Cuba. So quick background. By the time I went to Cuba, I had already traveled Latin America by myself. I had already lived in Costa Rica for a time.
I had a relationship when I was young and changed my whole life to be with this boy. Thank goodness I didn't marry him. Then I did a revenge South America trip when we broke up. Like all the places I could have gone if I weren't wasting my time in Costa Rica with you. So I have been all over Latin America.
I speak Spanish and Portuguese. I stayed in Brazil for a while. So I was back in Arizona teaching and right when Trump won the election, my aunt also has traveled, but never to Latin America. And she's never roughed it like me. So her and I had said, like, we'd love to go to Cuba one day.
If Trump just won, we might miss our chance. So we kind of got in our heads, like, we have to go. The time is now. So I had a week off for spring break. This is our first time traveling together.
I love her and we get along, but we've never lived very close to each other. So, you know, we both know we love traveling. We get along, but we've never spent this much time together. I will say, I also have a bad habit of meeting boys. Every country I travel, I fall in love for a short or long term.
I don't know why that's a bad habit.
My dad doesn't love it. My dad told me this is not eat, pray, love. Learn the language, do your thing, but please don't come back with a husband, which I did. I did come back from Brazil with a husband and now we're divorced. So by the time I went to Cuba, I promised my aunt, we have one week, I told her, no shenanigans.
We're just going to have fun. We're just going to dance. We have like an Airbnb apartment in Havana. And I promised her, I will not bring anyone back to the apartment. I'll be very respectful.
So we had a tour guide who we'll call Ernesto. He was recommended to us from one of her friends who had already gone to Cuba. And she had said, he's the best. And he was the best. So he picked us up at the airport.
He was immediately like a family member. We just loved him. We spent every day with him. We got to know him really well. So one of the days he picked us up in a different car and it was this amazing 1960 convertible Buick, bright red, picture perfect in Havana.
Old American car, it's shiny. The driver, who I'll call Rafael. He was younger. He was kind of like my age at the time. They let me sit in the front and we're kind of flirting, but I was like, don't worry.
I told Ernesto, I won't fall in love, I promise. But we spent the whole day. He drives us around this cool car. We do a tour. I love to dance.
He's like, oh, I could take you dancing. That's easy. So that night he took us, but my aunt and I were determined, like we're not going to separate. My aunt is very, very cautious. She was nervous about me even going on this podcast and telling this story.
Cause this is not a story I could tell many people. She was like, is someone going to see your face? Are they going to know your name? Are you sure you should do this? What about your future career?
So we went out dancing together. We had fun. She doesn't speak Spanish, but I do. So I'm translating and we're getting to know. Rafael.
We have a great week. Every day we do something different. We do fun stuff. We're always on adventures. We have had already some funny hiccups.
Fell for a scam. I bought fake Cohibas in somebody's living room. So our last day comes, we have to say goodbye to our tour guide, Ernesto. We cried, like we cried, saying goodbye. I told him, I just want to go out one more time.
Like it's our last night. He said, call Rafael. So he took us out, but my aunt was over it. She's like, okay, it's getting late. We have to get up really early for the airport.
But I was like, no, I don't want to sleep. Like, this is my last night in Cuba. I have to just live it up. So we agreed. She said, just take me home.
You guys can go dancing. What could possibly happen in the next few hours before we go to the airport? It's fine. We know Rafael. We trust him.
So I'm drinking Cuba Libres. We're dancing. I told him, one thing I discovered on this trip was I love cigars. I've never smoked in my whole life. I told him, I want one more cigar.
He's like, oh, don't worry. I got you. We step out. I don't know if he already had a cigar. We bought one.
I don't remember, but he was like, I know the perfect place to smoke the cigar. And I'm like, okay, perfect. So we get back in his car and he drives us to this little beach. It's almost like at the end of a neighborhood. No boardwalk.
He clearly knew where he was going and he knew this part of the beach. We're far enough from the street that like no one could really be near us. So we're in this park, beautiful convertible in Havana.
You're hammered.
I mean, maybe, not too hammered. Like I can remember everything. He left the keys in the ignition. And so we're just had the car running, the music playing. He put his cell phone up on the dashboard.
But then of course we start kissing.
Yes, of course.
He puts the convertible up to give us some privacy. We climb into the back, then everything comes off. Sure. He's sitting and I'm straddling him. You have to have this visual, everything's going.
And then, out of the corner of my eye, I kind of like see something real quick. And I saw this arm come out, like it was in the car, and he pulled it back up. And I was like, oh, my God, I think there's somebody right there. And he's like, what? So we're both like, that's weird.
So I kind of like look out the window a little bit. And in the darkness, you can barely see the shadow of someone that was hunched over running away. And of course, Rafael is like, yeah, weird. Okay, let's keep going. Yeah, let's get back.
And I'm like, I don't know. Are we sure no one else is out there? Like, were they videoing us? So then I look around and I'm like, our clothes. Our wheels are spinning, start freaking out.
I'm like, okay, hold on a second. We climb in the front, there's my little sweater. Thank God. there is my little hand purse with my passport. Oh my God.
Thank goodness. he has the key and the ignition. His phone is on the dashboard, but his wallet was in his pants. And he's freaking out about that. Cause he's like, my ID, has my home address on it.
We're butt naked. He gets out of the car and I told you, we're kind of at the end of a neighborhood. So in the distance, he sees a cop car driving. So he whistles and waves them down.
And he doesn't have pants. They've been taken.
He asked me to borrow my little sweater. So he's wrapped it around him like Tarzan, but his butt is still exposed because he had to choose to cover the front or the back. And you are fully nude as well. Totally naked. I'm in fetal position in the front seat, just hovering over, just covering myself.
So the police officers, there's two of them. They come over, they're just laughing. They're like, what were you thinking? Like this beach at one, two in the morning, what were you expecting? You know, like, duh.
And they're looking at me. and then they're like, who is she? And I was like, oh my God, my aunt's going to kill me if I go to Cuban jail hours before our flight home. It's obvious that they're thinking that maybe he has a wife at home. and they're wondering like, who is this girl?
Why are you sneaking at the beach? They decided to start looking for the clothes. So they're walking around the beach. And I'm really upset about my blouse. That blouse was really special.
I got it on sale at Forever 21 for like $7.. And I had saved it for this trip and it was beautiful. It looks so cute. It was covered in sequins. It was so pretty.
So the cops can't do anything. Can't find anything. Sorry, go home. We just start driving back to my Airbnb. As we're driving, I can't stop laughing, because I'm like, how could he have gotten all of our clothes without us noticing?
And he's not laughing at all. He's so angry.
Well, if he does have a wife, he's got to come home naked. That's going to be a real tough explanation to your wife. Like I had diarrhea, it got everywhere.
Forgot about my wallet. I don't know, threw it away. So we pulled up to my Airbnb and it's one of those apartments, a lot of Latin America's like this, where the stairwell is all windows. And of course it's lit. There's this doorman whose job is to be security to the building.
And he's sitting outside, just hanging out. And I know him now because I've been there all week. So Raphael calls him over to the window. He comes to the window and he's like, can she borrow your jacket? We had a situation, we lost everything.
And he's like, what do you mean? you lost everything? And this guy's like asking more questions. What happened? What's wrong?
And Raphael's like, can you not fucking see? we're both butt fucking naked?
Give me your jacket.
So then he kind of looks in the window more and I'm covering myself and he just starts laughing. So he lets me borrow his jacket. I wrap up in his jacket, run upstairs. My aunt must've been waiting up for me. She comes out of her bedroom, kind of half asleep.
Like, hey, how was it? And I said, stop, don't move. Don't ask me any questions. Go back to your room. I promise I'll explain it in a minute.
I realized all we have is women's clothing. So I find a towel. I run back down, give him a towel to cover himself. I tell him, come on up. He calls his dad on the phone and say, I need you to bring me some clothes.
Long story, I'll explain it later.
Oh, my God.
So then he's in my bed. We're waiting for the clothes. And he's like, well, while we're waiting.
Switching my mind back into freak mode.
And I'm like, what? No, not even a chance. Like that is so far in the past. We are so done with that. So then his dad comes and I'm so embarrassed.
I go downstairs probably three in the morning, and this guy looks very angry, very confused. Take the bag of clothes. I brought it to him. So he got dressed and you know, he's like, when can I see you again? Can we stay in touch?
I'm like, honestly, I don't know. You just go. So he goes, I go back to my aunt. I eventually can get the story out. I sleep for one hour.
We get up. We have to go to the airport. We call Ernesto. I tell him the story and he is like, I cannot believe this happened to you. I am so sorry.
We said goodbye. And I was in a daze the whole morning, the whole day, the airport. I could not stop thinking about it. I'm like that blouse. I loved that blouse.
Yeah, it was a hard one.
That's a sad one. Well, you think they're going to sell it? Oh, my gosh. What are they going to do with my clothes? And my aunt finally said, enough.
You have to shut up about the blouse. Listen, you're lucky that you're not dead or in jail. And that was it. We just split ways, said goodbye. I went back to my state.
She went back to hers.
Is she willing to travel with you again, or did that put a bad taste in her mouth? Cause you did break rule number one. You're not bringing a guy back. You did bring a guy back.
Yeah, I did indeed. Exactly. She turns out to be more forgiving than I realized, but no, we totally would do it again. Now I'm married with three kids and we laugh. It was like another lifetime ago.
Aren't you glad you did it?
Oh yes. I have a crazy story from every country that I've been to, but I did come home and I was on the hunt.
For the blouse?
Yeah, Forever 21 didn't have the sale anymore. So I ended up finding it online and I paid four times the amount. Oh, there it is.
It's very cute. Yeah, no wonder. And it's kind of see-through. It's really cute.
It's like just see-through enough. I get it. All these nice little sequins. It like showed my little belly I had back then. So beautiful.
Raphael reached out to me quite a bit and I was like, Raphael, I'm not going back to Cuba anytime soon.
Yeah. Oh, he loves it. He is. You're the one that got away.
I mean, he never did finish.
Oh, he has blue balls still. He still hasn't finished all these years later.
That's kind of a cool trick, getting people on the hook.
That's the move, yeah. Well, Nicole, this was great. Thank you so much for sharing. Yeah, I want to go to Cuba.
Thank you guys so much. This is so exciting.
Have a good rest of your day.
Wait, I do want to say, this is really important. I guess I'll say it later.
Oh fuck, you're going to forget.
I know. I already forgot.
Whisper it really quickly. Give me one word.
Nope.
Hi.
Hi, is this Jaden?
This is Jaden.
Have you met a lot of other Jadens in your travels?
Not many, but they all spell it differently.
Oh. Yeah, I've not seen it spelled the way you're spelling it. There's usually a Y in the mix, isn't there?
Yeah, or J-A-Y-D-E-N, or just J-A-D-E-N. My mom was ahead of the game, I guess.
Yeah, very unique.
I think it's a generational thing, right? Like, I think it's a semi-common name now, and I had never met a Jaden.
Yeah, I've heard it, for sure.
Well, Jaden Smith, right?
I've heard it other than that.
Me too.
It's so good to see you guys.
Hey. You too.
Where are you at, Jaden?
I'm currently in Charlestown, Rhode Island. I'm not from around here, I'm just here for work.
Oh, okay, where are you from?
I'm from St. George, Utah.
Oh my God, I was just there. I was driving from Idaho home, and I, in fact, camped in Cedar City, I don't know, 40 miles north of St. George, a week ago.
That's where my story takes place.
Right at that exact spot? This is a crazy dingles.
At the Chipotle I ate at. that was very substandard, or?
Oh, don't say that. That would be exciting, but no, it happens in the mountain of Cedar City.
Oh my gosh, okay, please tell us the year and everything that happened.
Okay, so it was summer of 2022.. So my family has a cabin up there on Cedar Mountain, and it's not like a cabin community, it's this very isolated, it's like 30 minutes up the mountain. My grandpa has a cabin up there, and his siblings all have cabins up there, but they're all very spread out. So I planned a little trip with some friends to go up there. My friend Alexa and I drove up, and then we invited my friend Kimmy and Hunter to come.
And Alexa and I got up there first, so we were just kind of having a nice night to ourselves and singing some show tunes and having a good time. Sure, sure. Kimmy and Hunter came later that evening, and we decided to go play some games upstairs. So the way that my cabin is laid out, it's very symmetrical. You walk in straight into like a living room area, but my cabin sits on a hill.
So as you walk in, there's huge windows that just kind of stack up, that overlooks the entire side of the mountain. It's really, really beautiful. And then upstairs, we have like a little game room loft area that overlooks the living room below. So we're playing games upstairs. The game room table is like tucked up against the banister.
We're playing Farkle. Have you guys ever played Farkle before?
Yeah, I have. Yeah, there's like a dome and some dice. The Hansons were super into Farkle, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah.
So we were playing Farkle, and it was kind of funny. Through this whole time, we were probably playing for like two hours. We kept saying, we should watch a scary movie tonight. Like, which scary movie should we watch tonight?
Are we drinking or we're not drinking? This seems like a big question mark for me.
We're not drinking. We're all pretty sober. Okay. So we're playing, and out of nowhere, we're just in the middle of a game. We hear just this knocking at the back window, not on like the front door or anything.
We just are hearing like these knocks on the window downstairs. And we all, just kind of like, freeze and like, are clocking in with each other. And then everyone starts asking me questions or just like, who is that? Who's coming up? Like, is anyone else coming?
Like, what's going on? And I was like, no, no one else is coming. It's also like midnight in the mountain, like in the middle of nowhere. And my grandparents' cabin is not occupied. My uncle has a cabin next to his that he may or may not have been at.
But again, it's really, really late. We all just kind of try to calm down, and then we hear more knocks. And then Hunter and I were sitting closest to the banister, and Hunter peeks over and then, just like jerks, his head back really, really quick. And it's just like sheet white. Oh boy.
And he just says, there's someone down there in a mask.
Oh, my goodness.
In a mask.
In a mask.
That's really bad and scary.
Terrifying. I mean, my first thought is prank. There's a fifth person who feels excluded. Not when it's mask-y. And this is legit.
We're talking about getting some knives out of the kitchen. Only serious, serious killers wear masks. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
That was my thought, and all of our hearts like dropped into our buttholes. My first thought was like, I feel like I'm in Strangers. Have you seen that movie?
No, I've never seen that. With Liv Tyler?
Yes. What happens?
A masked guy? And Scott Speedman. It's like Charles Manson-y. Oh, oh, okay, Manson-y. Hi, Rob.
I love when he chimes in. Yeah, so in that movie, there's like two people who are like camping in a cabin. They just get married, and then people just start harassing them, and they wear these like really scary doll masks. Ooh. And it's like terrifying.
And I think that movie feels so real because it could be like a real scenario. And so anyway, that's where my first thought went, and then I immediately was just like, this is not how I go. So he says that, and we all just kind of collectively stand up, and we shuffle over to the room. that's like adjacent to where we are. So there's the game room, and then in the corner, there's like a movie room, and then next to that is a bedroom.
So we just shuffle over to the bedroom. In the bedroom, and on the opposite end of the cabin, the other bedroom, they have a walkout porch. And we just, the year before, extended them and connected the two. And then my dad had just installed a spiral staircase on the side of the cabin. So now my mind has gone from like, my life is over, to like, okay, where are all the entry points?
He just added this. So, like, basically, the whole cabin is accessible. All the windows are open, all the lights are on. They can see everything. They have every advantage right now.
And I'm just like, where do we go, what do we do? I have come from a family of hunters, so I know my dad has guns downstairs, but his bedroom's downstairs. I don't think I can get down there without being seen. I don't know what this person has. I don't know what I'm up against.
I love how methodically you're thinking through all this, though. I feel like you're a good man for the job. So far.
I guess so. At first I was like, I'm gonna die. And then it was just like, okay, we gotta like figure this out, because this is not how I die. So upstairs as well, we had just built an additional loft.
This is quite a cabin. I wanna go there.
I know, it's becoming like Snoopy's dog house, where it's like, it's impossibly big, inside. It's like, and then we also had a game bridge.
There was a pool upstairs on the next level.
And then the trampoline was next to the theater room. It's like 13 stories tall cabin.
I wish it was that elaborate. The loft is very small. It's just big enough to fit a bed. So we pull the ladder down. I'm just like, okay, Alexa and Kimmy, like you guys, get up there.
There, there's not as great of a vantage point for whoever this person is. And we can just shut a few of us up there. So then I climb up there. Hunter's grabbing whatever he can find on hand. He grabs like a piece of trim.
that's just like lying around. And then I'm like, Hunter, do you want to come up here? Or do you want me to shut you in? And then you, Skeldabanister, like, what do you wanna do? He's like, I'll come up there.
I was like, okay. I run back into the bedroom because there's a propane tank in there. And I go and I haul this propane tank up there, because this is the hardest and heaviest thing that we've got right now. So if they try to climb up, then I'll just crack their skull. I don't know.
Oh, I totally skipped something that's really, really crucial. I just skipped over all this. And when we shuffled to the bedroom, I tried calling my dad first. Okay. He didn't answer, because obviously it was late at night and he goes to bed early.
So we just called 911.. Yeah.
Yeah, great. That, I'm like, ugh. Yeah.
So I was on the phone with the dispatcher. this whole time. We're obviously in the middle of nowhere. And so Hunter pulls up Google Maps and he's like feeding me like coordinates. And I'm like, we're at, you know, 35 degrees west.
You know, whatever.
Now you're like a naval person, yeah.
So this is all happening. And then all the shuffling starts happening. And I get the girls up there. I get Hunter up there. I shut the ladder.
And then the loft sits right above where the staircase is. And there's like a little banister. And I was gonna hop up onto that and then just scale up into the loft. So we were all locked up there. While doing all of that and still on the phone with the dispatcher, Alexa gets a phone call.
And then she starts screaming at me. And she's like, is it Nate? And I was like, I don't know. I pulled the phone away from my ear and I opened my text messages and I put the dispatcher on speaker phone just to try and see. And our friend Nate had texted Alexa and I in a little group.
And all it says is, guys, I think I took it too far.
Oh, no.
Nate didn't know that only serious killers wear masks.
He thought pranksters wore masks. Oh.
I guess. I don't know. So we're still screaming at each other, though. Cause we're trying to confirm that. it's for sure.
Nate, we get brave enough to go downstairs and open the door. And sure enough, Nate is there with his wife.
In a mask. He's like, hun, stay in the car. I just have this quick prank I wanna.
Oh my God. Nate. This is why I hate pranks.
Well, I'm gonna go even darker. So he's there with his wife. Exactly. Yeah. I'm remembering, I think I've already told on here before, but I joined this group of people out at Joshua Tree.
A big group went hiking. Then we're all hanging out on mushrooms. And all of a sudden they come running out of the desert and they are freaked the fuck out. And they're saying we're being chased by a gorilla or a Sasquatch. And we're like, what the fuck?
There's no such thing. We all stay on this rock together. And sure enough, you see coming across the desert, an enormous, seven foot tall gorilla. And I'm going, this is impossible. I know about animals.
Holy shit, no, this is happening. And when I was thinking after all this, so obviously cut to, someone in the group had brought a full on gorilla costume, got out ahead of them on their hike just to do this whole thing. And I was like, they don't know me. I could have had a gun with me. I would have definitely started shooting at this thing.
Everyone was scattered and ran to their tents at the last minute. And if you would have gotten downstairs in time and got a gun out, we don't know where, like people, gotta think these pranks through when there's guns in the mix.
Having talked to him, I think he had a Diet Coke in hand or Dr. Pepper, but Hunter doesn't know Nate.
And he's the one that clocked him. And when Hunter, just like, looked at us and was like, there's someone down there in a mask. I was not gonna look. Of course. I don't wanna see that.
So I didn't even like second guess. So they drove up with his wife and then their two kids were in the back.
Oh, Nate.
This is a grown man with children. If your dad died because of a prank,
it'd be so embarrassing. He had a Dr. Pepper. That was the big sight gag.
You guys, these two people are like the most angelic humans that you will ever meet.
Yeah, I probably would love both of them and their children.
It's like if Amy did this.
Yeah, uh-huh. You can see Ryan doing this. Yeah.
They are so sweet. And so, when we compared stories, they had driven up and we didn't hear the car, which we typically do. They're like, the music was blasting. The kids are asleep in the backseat. Mallory's, standing on the porch with like veggie trays.
And we're upstairs just fighting for our lives.
Oh, this is hilarious. Oh, Jaden.
I know.
Well, it's good to find out how you are in those situations, even if they're fake. It sounds like you did pretty good. You did do good. Yeah, you got everyone's safe-ish. You talked to the dispatcher.
Oh, that's embarrassing. Were you so embarrassed when you had to tell 911??
Actually, it's just Nate and Dr. Pepper.
I don't think I was embarrassed. We were just relieved, because where your mind goes is just so dark. Alexa, she's got a kid and she was like, my mind just went to, like, I have to beg for my life because I have a child. Oh, this episode. Nate, poor Nate.
Nate really fucked up. But if Nate really wanted it to be good,
he would have bought like a burner phone and then called, and then, you know, the calls coming from inside the house.
Sure, sure.
They would have ended up just killing themselves in panic. somehow. Everyone would have fallen, like they would have been scampering to get higher in this crazy house, this Dr. Seuss house. Oh my God.
And people would have fallen from great heights.
It turns out he was wearing a Freddy Krueger mask on top of it, so.
Oh, that's a scary one.
It was pretty freaky. So luckily we're okay. Everyone's good.
Good, good, good. We're still friends. Yeah, and everyone survived. Well, Jaden, thank you. I liked the end of that.
Yeah, that was a cute story. You guys sound so innocent up there playing Farkle. Farkle.
I just wanted to shout out my friends that put me on your podcast, who have been listening from the beginning, Jenny and Chelsea. They were beside themselves when I told them I was gonna go on.
Oh, shout out.
Thank you, Jenny and Chelsea.
Oh, they're gonna love that. And then I have to shout out my friend Ellie Mae, so I'm an actor.
I knew, you didn't have to tell me. Show tunes. There was a lot of context clues.
I was dropping some hints. I had a show last night and I randomly told one of the girls in the cast and she's obsessed with you guys. And she was pacing last night after I told her, so, shout out to Ellie Mae as well.
Thank you, Ellie Mae.
Thank you, Ellie Mae. Thank you, Jenny and Chelsea.
Good job. And fuck you, Nate. And also, we forgive you.
And Mallory and the children,
I don't know why you signed off on this. I'm so sorry you married Nate. Yeah, yeah.
Oh, no, they're the best people. And just from a personal standpoint, I just wanted to thank you guys. I very recently got out of a very toxic and unhealthy relationship with, probably, a narcissist. I've gone back and I listened to a couple of your podcasts. The one with Goldie Hawn, there's something about her talking about it.
Did you hear our narcissist expert?
Yes, I've also re-listened to that one quite a few times. Recovery for those is a bitch.
Yeah.
It's not a joke. So whenever I'm really doubting, I honestly just go back and listen to those. So thank you.
Oh, wonderful. Yeah, I'm glad those are there for you to listen to. All right, well, Jayden, it's been a pleasure meeting you. Yeah, good luck with everything.
Thank you so much. You too, take care.
All right, bye-bye. I loved that story. Even during it- That's something that could happen to you.
Yeah, and during it, I kind of thought, this is kind of fun.
Yeah, of course. It's a sleepover at a cabin.
And then it's scary, but then-.
The cabin's its own story, though. That was kind of, I'm so glad you two are like, how many, wait, how many floors, how many lofts can there be in one structure?
Yeah, pretty fun.
I kind of want to see the place now. I was right there. I was sleeping behind the Best Western.
You could've worn a mask and broke in.
Shout out to Cedar City. I went to a really fun place. It looked like an old movie theater. It was converted into a brownie shop. Brownie and ice cream.
We walked there and had brownies and ice cream. They had a gluten-free brownie that was to die for.
Yum.
I appreciated it.
I want to right now.
Let's talk to Jacob. See if he's got it for you.
Hello, how's it going?
Good, hi, Jacob. So sorry we're late.
Oh, that's okay.
But we're here. Thanks for your patience. Where are you at other than your closet?
I am in Anaheim, California.
Oh my God, do you have any affiliation with Disney?
I did. So. I worked there for about five years and then COVID happened. I was placed on a leave and then, when they offered me my role back, I just wasn't able to take it.
Is it because you left? Because I imagine working there is kind of like my experience at the Groundlings, where it's like it's your entire worldview and you're spending so much time there that you forget there's a world outside of it. Is that kind of what happened?
Yeah, it's kind of like a niche group. If you're in it, you're in it. It's not a bad thing per se, but your view of the world is kind of shifted. You think that's the only thing, but there's a whole big, beautiful world out there.
And what were you doing at the park? Because I could see you as a guide for sure.
Yeah, so I worked in entertainment. So I did shows and all sorts of entertainment. I like to kind of keep it a secret to keep the magic still alive.
Okay, great. You were Mickey Mouse. I got it. Maybe Minnie, who knows? Okay, great.
So this is a wild card story. So, Jacob, we have no clue what's coming our way. So give us some context in a year and walk us through it.
So it was Friday, December 9th, 2011.. And I was, so I'm 30 now. What is that?
Uh-oh, fast math. You were 19..
Super close, I was 17..
Oh God, Jax. Oh shit, I fucked up. Rob, cut that out. No. And then I say you're- Retake, retake.
30, 30, so you're 17..
Oh, super good, super good. Yeah, so I was a senior in high school. I'm working at a Christmas tree lot. I throw trees around, I give them fresh cuts. People are happy to be there and it's great.
This is my second year working there. My brother worked there as well. And actually this is the company, it's the Tree Kings. They're super, super great. They're also Arm Cherries too.
And they're up in Oregon. So anyway, it's a busy Friday night. It's the first big weekend. I had just started swing dancing and it was a true passion of mine and it was just so much fun. And I was gonna go out dancing after my shift and it was about seven o'clock and my boss was like, hey, would you mind staying 30 minutes?
And I'm like, no big deal, I'm here. I might as well make money. Pretty much right after that, the boss says, hey, could you go get a permanent stand? And that's just a metal rebar stand. You have to drill a hole into the tree and then you hammer that sucker in.
It's reinforced, and so it's super strong. And I say, yeah, absolutely. And me, being 17 years old and not spatially aware, I'm like running and dodging, missing the chainsaws, and like dodging people. And in the parking lot of the Sears, there's an island and a palm tree. It's like a curbs, that way cars will butt up against it.
That's an obstacle. So what do I think? I'm gonna jump over it. I'm in the zone, adrenaline's rushing. I go and I jump over it and I look where I'm about to land and there's a Christmas tree.
spike straight up. No. And I land directly on it and it pierces the bottom of my foot.
Oh, no, so it's just an errant stand sitting in this little island. Like a ponji pit for catching a tiger.
I become a human Christmas tree for a moment. It happened so fast. I didn't even feel it going. So I stumble a little bit, and so I lift up my foot and this Christmas tree spike is still attached to me. I grab it and I yank it out.
Oh no, you pulled it out immediately.
And that's when the pain started. It was so intense and I pretty much just stumbled to the ground. I ended up sitting on the curb. I take off my shoe. I'm just wearing like no name skater shoes.
It just went through the bottom. I look at my sock and there's like a little hole in the sock and I'm like that's not normal. and I peel off my sock and I see this little line and I'm like, no, I'm okay. But I'm gonna squeeze it just to make sure. And that's when blood just started flowing out.
It was just flowing and flowing. My dad's taught me if you get any sort of wound, raise it higher than your heart. So I'm sitting there in the Christmas tree parking lot. I clutch my foot, I'm applying pressure and I have it close to my chest as high as I can get it.
You're doing a stretch.
Which is also really hard to do, yeah.
My pants got all bloody, my shirt got all bloody, and so, thankfully the boss, his name is Matt, this guy was on it. He came over, he saw what happened. He was in shock, but he was also in like action mode. He's like we gotta call whoever. Well, I have a brother and a sister and my two parents, nobody answered.
And so finally I called my dad after the first round of calling and he picked up. there's been an emergency, I got a tree spike in my foot, I need to go to the hospital. He booked it. He told me he blazed a trail. So I mean I can only imagine my father getting close to the three digits.
Pushing the Pacifica to its limits. What was dad driving back then?
Chevy Cavalier.
Yeah, he's wringing its neck to get it there. Yeah.
He finally gets there and Matt was so good. He was like let me get you some water. Let's just like remain calm and just controlling the situation. And the irony here is that I'm bleeding out and people are there shopping for Christmas trees, right? It's the happiest season and here I am.
Young boy dying in the parking lot.
So, thankfully too, I was off to the side, so it wasn't like a big spectacle. My dad gets there and he comes over, he's like all right, we gotta take you to the hospital. Two guys lift me up and they put me in the car. The hospital's like a 30 minute drive and we got there in like 15 or 20 minutes. So we get to the hospital and he pulls up right by the emergency room and he says hey, my son needs to be checked out.
He got a Christmas tree spike in his foot and they say okay, like we'll get to him. We're in the car because I'm immobile, I can't really move. Couple minutes go by, which feels like forever. He's frustrated, he goes back and he says dirty rebar, Christmas tree spike in my son's foot. So then they bring out a wheelchair, they get me in and they put me in an emergency room.
What was interesting is that the supply closet was right next to me. We had lots of nurses coming in and each nurse every single time walked in and said it smells like Christmas in here.
Oh, my god. Really glass half full.
Spreading Christmas cheer.
Finally the doc comes in and says we have to clean out the wound, we gotta flush it out, we gotta make sure it's okay. She like opened up the wound, stuck some raw needles in there and flushed it out and it hurt so bad.
Did it go all the way through? Are they putting water on the top and it's coming out the bottom, or vice versa?
I sent pictures, there's a Christmas tree spike. You can see where the spike went in the foot and then it actually pressed on the top of my foot and you can see there's a little dark mark surrounded by red. That's where it pushed on the bottom of the top layer of skin.
It really went almost all the way through.
And kinda sideways too, I'll add.
That's the thing, ew.
Oh, fuck yeah, people are like trying to imagine what the Christmas tree spike looks. It's the most horrific medieval looking metal.
I'm so sorry, Monica. I'm so sorry.
It's really coarsely fucking whittled. Can we post a picture of the spike?
Oh yeah, absolutely.
Okay, great.
So yeah, so then they stitch up the wound and they say we'll see you in a couple days to take the stitches out and I go back home. So that was Friday night. Also, I was gonna go dancing and I was gonna meet the girl that I fancied at the time. And she texted me like, where are you? Why aren't you here?
And I'm like, I got a Christmas tree spike in my foot. Like chill out. So then Saturday comes and goes, family. come and visit, everything's okay. I'm high on pain meds because it's pretty intense.
Then Sunday comes and my dad, he's pretty medically inclined. He's like, we're not going to church today. We gotta take you back to the hospital. I have no idea what's going on. And he's like, I think it's infected.
And because it's stitched, it wasn't able to flush out all the way. So there's redness going up my leg. And so the big concern is, how bad is this infection going to get? So we drive back to the hospital. They check me in and the nurse, sure enough, says, oh yeah, we gotta take those stitches out.
You're going to be in the hospital for a couple of days. So then I'm in the hospital Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday. So yeah, so I'm on their peds unit. The nurses are doing such a great job. So huge shout out to nurses.
My girlfriend's a nurse and they just get everything thrown at them.
No, they're angels. They deal with the most horrific stuff, the entire eight hours of their shift.
Except the ones in China. we just learned, but that's a different.
That's a different prompt. Yeah.
I don't remember exactly what day it was, but the doctor comes in and says, hey, so what we're going to have to do is we're going to have to open up the wound. We're going to stick this sponge thing in. It's about the size of a dime and about a centimeter in length. And what that'll do is it'll keep the wound open so the fluids can like flush it out. And I'm like, okay, that sounds fun, but you're going to get some morphine.
So that's exciting. So they stick some morphine in my IV and I just remember so vividly. It just travels up my arm and then, as soon as it hits my shoulder, it just spreads so fast and I'm high as a kite.
It works for a while, yeah.
So then my dad's right next to me and he says, hey, like, squeeze my hand if you're feeling pain. And I'm like, okay. Well, it didn't hit my foot. in time. The doctor rips open the wound and quickly sticks the sponge in there, and I squeezed my dad's hand so tight.
He was like, Jake, Jake, Jake, Jake. Like he's screaming because I'm squeezing so hard. Poor guy. So that was pretty much the most painful part of staying in the hospital. I got lots of visitors, lots of phone calls.
I got homework too, which was a bummer. I took a couple laps around the unit with crutches.
Did it put a damper on your 2011 Christmas?
I was out of the hospital by then. But yeah, I mean, I was definitely couch ridden. The following week, I go back to school. I'm just crutching along. I was in band.
I played drums, so I needed both my feet. So that was kind of an interesting time. But I was like, I still want to go dancing, but not dance. I'll just go and I'll socialize. So I'm driving myself to and from a place in Irvine that I go dancing and then also Disneyland, because I used to do dancing on Saturdays.
Anyway, a month and a half goes by. I'm walking again. In fact, the doctor had told me, there's so many bones in your foot. There's two arteries, tendons, like everything. It was an all soft tissue wound.
Wow, that's incredible. Yeah, lucky.
It's the most amazing thing.
Christmas miracle.
It truly, truly is. Because it could have been catastrophically worse.
Yes.
Yeah, this could definitely be an amputation situation.
Oh, 100%. So then I'm at Disneyland and the girl that I still fancy, she's like, hey, we're going to go ice skating. I was like, oh, okay, yeah, I'll go. We go to the local rink. I'm a confident skater.
I can skate forwards and backwards and I can turn and stop.
Jacob, you're so active. It's so adorable. You're dancing, you're ice skating, you're drumming.
I'm all over the place. It's freshly resurfaced ice. So there's some puddles of water, no big deal. I know it's going to be a little slippery. So I'm out there and I turn around and I'm skating backwards trying to impress the girl and the skate slips out from under me and I just eat it.
And I land directly on my chin. And the last thing I remember is I saw the side of the rink and then lights out.
Oh.
And so there I am, just unconscious on the ice. Thankfully, the on ice staff came over immediately.
This girl is like, I can't date him.
He is very accident-prone. I don't like going to the hospital and he seems to be there every other week.
I busted my chin so bad, it split right open and there's some blood on the ice. Her parents called my parents, they came and picked me up.
Your dad fires up the Cavalier again, puts it in high gear.
Poor dad, oh.
So then we go back to the hospital. They stick me in the same room with the freaking supplies. on the left side. Nurses are coming in left and right and around the curtain enters this nurse and she says, it's the Christmas tree kid. And I had the same nurse.
And then she went and she told a couple nurses who she's like, look, it's my same patient. And so they came, they saw it was me again. So long, story short, here, they just stitched up the wound, sent me home and all was well. But the running joke for a while was, all right, you had December, you had January,
what's February's hospital visit going to be?
Decapitation. Well, no wonder that you're dating a nurse, makes total sense.
Seems, like you needed that.
She definitely keeps me grounded.
I hope she carries her suture kit with her.
Yeah, we have a triage kit. just specifically for me. The moral of the story is look before you leap.
Cautionary tale.
That made me excited for Christmas. And nostalgic for 17.. You were on fire to do all this stuff.
You were jumping around.
You were driving here and there. Oh, I love it.
Well, thank you guys so much for letting me share my story. I'm so thankful for everything you guys do.
Well, thank you, Jacob. We're delighted to have you as a listener and thanks for telling us that story.
All right, thank you so much. Nice to meet you guys.
Take care, bye.
Oh boy, what a sweetie pie Jacob was.
Yeah, I loved him.
He'd be the nicest person I've ever met. Every time he had to point out how nice the staff was, he loved his bosses. And he said the Christmas tree spike was really nice. Yeah, he was gentle, avoided all the arteries.
It wasn't the Christmas tree's fault. Okay, the thing I was gonna say. Yes, I mean, it feels weird to say it now, because it was about the first story, which was, if we remember, pretty hard. But it's sort of one of these, you just never know when something can come out of nowhere. The other day I was walking down Hillhurst.
I walked by my store and all the lights were on, but the doors were locked. So I was pissed because I wanted to go buy a round soap. I come back later and I said, oh, I came by earlier and it was locked. He was like, oh yeah, well, cause, did you see what happened down the street? There's a cafe down the street and there was a car accident.
A car drove off Hillhurst into the cafe.
And there's outdoor seating in front of the cafe.
Exactly, like obviously ran into all the outdoor seating and through the window.
Nuts.
And no one was hurt, but there was a guy who was sitting outside, but was in the bathroom.
The most lucky case of diary ever had in his life. Ever, ever. Wow. Isn't that crazy? I know, I know.
And it probably confirms both of our worldviews, right? Like any information you hear, confirms your worldview. So for you, it confirms, like, the world's really dangerous. You gotta be really careful. And then, to me, it goes like, yeah, you might as well be as reckless as you want, because madness comes out of nowhere and you can't even plan for that.
I didn't think like, oh, my God, you have to be so careful. It was just, wow, life is so fragile. You just really do not know.
You don't know. Almost nobody dies of the thing. they were afraid they were gonna die of, that's for sure. Knock, knock. I'm afraid I'm gonna die of old age at 2000,, so I don't wanna knock.
Okay, don't knock.
And I die of an organism. Don't knock. Okay, I don't, this is getting confusing and I don't like it. All right. Okay, bye.
Bye, I love you.
Do you wanna sing a tune or something? We don't have a theme song. Oh, okay, great. We don't have a theme song for this new show, so here I go, go, go. We're gonna ask some random questions and with the help of arm cherries, we'll get some suggestions.
On the fly, I rhyme-ish. On the fly, I rhyme-ish. Enjoy.
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