Armchair Anonymous: Cautionary Tale

Welcome, welcome, welcome to Armchair Anonymous. I'm Buck Rogers and I'm joined by the Duchess of Duluth.

Where did Buck Rogers come from?

That was a show when I was a kid, Buck Rogers. It was kind of maybe a B version of Star Trek. He was a starship trooper, fighter pilot.

Okay, well, when you go by Buck Rogers on those days, can I go by Michelle Tanner?

Oh, my God, yes. Who's Michelle Tanner?

Mary-Kate and Ashley from Full House.

Oh, okay. Interesting. I guess that works. If we were playing Connections, it would work in TV characters. But I'm always inclined to pin a sci-fi name on you, like RTD2 or RDD, whatever he is.

It has to be something you can pronounce.

Okay, CP3.

C3PO and R2D2.

Okay. Those have always been hard for me. Do they roll off your tongue?

C3PO, R2D2,. yes, but I'm not into sci-fi.

Right, nor are you a robot.

But I am a Michelle Tanner.

Okay, great. Michelle Tanner. I'm now learning that name. I don't know that name, but I'm going to try to connect that.

You might have to practice.

Let's go from the top. And we're still rolling everyone back to one. I'm Buck Rogers, and I'm joined by Michelle Tanner.

That's me. You got it, dude.

Oh, my God, great, and you'll have a catchphrase. This works out big time for me. Today, we're going to hear cautionary tales. They run the gamut, as you might expect, these cautionary tales. But I also want to tell everybody next month's prompts, which are, tell us, a crazy stalking story.

Well, no, we do accept ghosts.

Okay. Yeah. Tell us a crazy stalking story. Tell us about a secret your parents kept from you as a kid. Shout out to the armchair, who suggested that great one.

You guys, mall stories can be lots of things. They can be shoplifting. They can be hookups. They can be in the food court.

I had a mall hookup in the Burger King bathroom.

See, you already want to tell it.

Yeah, but I must protect her identity. My hookup. DJ Tanner. RT Tanner. RTD Tanner.

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.

Cautionary Tales. Mine is, Don't Get Sick. That's my Cautionary Tale.

Did you take your Elite D?

I did, yeah. My big breakthrough was taking Tussin DM last night. Tussin? Tussin. It's the generic brand for Robitussin.

Oh, my gosh. Tussin. They're allowed to do that?

Yeah, Tussin.

I don't like that at all. Tussin. Tussin.

And boy, oh boy, I don't know why I haven't been taking that for the last week and a half. I didn't cough at all in the middle of the night, and that's what's been keeping me out. No coughs all night. It worked. Wow.

You died.

I'm dead.

Ready for Amy?

Yeah. Amen. Amy Hansen? Cautionary Tale.

The Kimmy H.

I hope it's Amy Hansen so bad.

I would love it to be Amy Hansen.

Oh, my God.

Can it please be Amy Hansen?

What if one of our friends called and told a really damaging story?

You know, I'm dying for that. Hi. Oh.

That's us. Hold on. We didn't plug in.

We were chitchatting. One second.

Amy?

Yes, hi. Hi.

Now I can hear you beautifully. We weren't hooked up.

Oh my gosh. It's important to be hooked up, y'all.

Very.

You gotta be. What is this lovely collage poster behind you?

Well, this is for Monica. It's actually a quilt that our friend Luke Haynes made for me. Do you remember him?

Yes, Luke, who made our quilt. Oh my God. Small world.

And the letters on it say Hospitaliano. Is that Italian for hospitality?

You know, it's a made up word. Have you ever been to the Olive Garden?

Oh, yes.

In the 90s, when you walked in the Olive Garden, the host would say Hospitaliano to greet you.

Oh, they would?

It was like the dumbest thing. I always thought it was hilarious, because it's just this word that Olive Garden made up. So when Luke made the quilt, he wanted me to put something on it that was like aspirational. So that's what I chose. Oh, I love it.

Also, it's beautiful. He's so talented.

He's so talented.

And I don't want to get too off topic, but do you know the Zagat Guide where they review restaurants?

Yes.

They let their comedic side shine when they review Olive Garden in particular. I don't know if you've ever read any reviews in Zagat for Olive Garden.

I have not.

The two that I've memorized is this Italian Denny's prides itself on blank, blank, blank. And then another one said, if you like, airplane food Italian.

Oh, God.

Yeah, they were rough. But I feel like that's where they cut loose a little bit.

That's hilarious. I'll have to look that up, especially since I'm such a fan.

What part of the South are you in?

How do you know I was from the South?

Because you said y'all.

Well, I live in Asheville, North Carolina.

We like it there.

You know how much I love it, right? I talk about it all the time.

I just moved here four years ago from Austin, which is another great place.

You're hitting up all the good spots.

Yeah, you're ahead of me. You're living out many of my dreams.

I'm just going to keep going to, like smaller and smaller, cool, hip, artsy beer towns until there's nothing left.

Okay. So you have a cautionary tale. Let's get to the business at hand.

I do have one. There might be several cautionary tales within this big meta cautionary tale.

Okay, great.

This took place in the summer of 1996.

I can already tell Warren's going to be the variable we need to keep our eyes on.

You can already predict that?

I can, yeah. I can feel that. He's going to be the issue, but continue.

Is the cautionary tale. don't trust Warren's?

It's generally the friend of the friend. that's the problem.

Totally. Yeah, this guy that we'd never met before was there, but the other four of us had been long-term friends. So we start drinking, we're hanging out, and the sun starts to set. And Ian's like, let's go down to the creek and see the water before it gets dark. It's really cool down there.

Oh, sure. Classic trick.

It's classic. Right, Monica? Of course we're going to do that. We're going to steal their clothes and run. So that exact thing happens.

They've been waiting their whole lives for two ladies to ask them to get naked. Yeah.

Totally.

I'm sorry to interject now, but this sounds very much like Crouse Springs.

Do you know where Wimberley is? Yeah. It was in Wimberley. Okay. Have you been to Crouse Springs?

Yeah, a bunch of times. I love it. But you walk down all these pathways and there's a ridge, and then there's a beautiful creek.

It's really similar.

My best friend lives in Wimberley. Oh, really?

Oh, my God. Oh, my God. Shout out.

Who's he?

Let's shout him out.

Matthew Vasquez.

Warren Vasquez.

Oh my God. Was it this Warren?

I hope it wasn't this, Warren. We're never going to get air. This Warren does not like me anymore.

Okay. So they get naked. They jump in.

As soon as they do, we bend down, scoop up all their clothes and their shoes, every single thing, and we just start running. We run up the steps. We're laughing. You know how you laugh so hard? You're out of breath.

Oh God.

Uh-oh. 30 minutes. No boys. It's getting dark outside. And we realized like something terrible has probably happened.

Oh yeah.

We didn't find a flashlight, but what we found was the thickest pair of eyeglasses you've ever seen. Oh no. Like Coke bottle thick. Oh no. And the two of us pull it out and we're like, oh my God, this guy is like seriously visually impaired.

Yeah, legally blind, for sure. And he didn't wear his glasses because he wanted to look handsome, and now he's trapped down in the water naked.

Exactly. And he didn't want to tell people. he was blind and he took off his glasses.

Oh, he wanted to be cool. He didn't want us to know that. Yeah.

Oh, you're right. There's a lot of cautionary tales. One is like, don't let your vanity kill you.

Oh, you're right.

Keep your glasses on. Yeah.

Also be nice.

Well, I think that'll be better, over.

We realized like, oh, we left this blind guy down there in the creek. It's super dark.

Oh, fuck.

We've got to go rescue them. So we grabbed the flashlights and we head back down the trail. And, as I'm telling this, I was thinking about this this morning, like it's really funny. We did not grab their clothes or their shoes or anything. Of course, we're just like get the flashlights and find these guys.

Like Lord of the Flies.

Scratches. Scratches?

Oh, my Lord. What the fuck? Was there a tiger?

His hair was all messed up. He had like sticks stuck on him.

Oh, no.

Was blood coming out of his eyes?

Monica.

Jeez, Monica. Well, you guys, he's blind.

He looked like someone had full force just punched him in the face. Oh no. His eye was all swollen up. It was a black and blue. He had a big gash on his forehead, like with all this coagulated blood.

His knees were all busted up.

Well, also, did you see how scary it looked like? It's dark and they're shining a flashlight and they're revealing Warren's mangled face. You got to think of how dramatic, too, the lighting probably was. Did you guys go like, ah! Wouldn't you shine the light on his face?

We're like, what the hell happened? Just as we suspected, as soon as we stole their clothes, they came charging after us. But since Warren couldn't see, he tripped over this log and he face planted immediately into a big rock.

Oh, Warren.

I want this story to be funny, but it's kind of sad, too. It's okay.

It can be sad.

Life is both a comedy and a tragedy.

He'd fallen on his face and they thought he was a little concussed. And because it was getting so dark down there, they didn't want to just leave him. So Ian, the cabin guy, stayed with him, while Jason, our roommate, tried to go find help.

Oh, my God. Naked. Was he lost?

Yeah.

How were you guys able to navigate to the cabin? No problem, but Jason?

Because it had gotten dark outside.

And he kept slipping in the mud or something?

Wait for it, Monica. He couldn't find the rustic stairs back up to the ridgeline. He had some rock climbing experience, so he decided he would climb up the 25 or 30 foot wall to get up to the cliff above.

This is also a cautionary tale.

Well, he's drunk and young.

Oh, he's drunk. I forgot.

Right. And remember, they're all still naked, which is important here, because this wall of this cliff was covered in vines.

So we went home.

We drove back to Austin.

That night, you didn't spend the night?

We just drove back. Yeah. Oh, man.

It was bad.

No one talked in the car on the way back. But flash forward to the next morning, Julie and I are hanging out in the kitchen having coffee. when we hear these sounds coming out of Jason's room, like whimpering, little groans, sad things. We opened his door and he was sprawled out on his bed with the sheets kicked off. He was, again, totally nude.

And was he blistered everywhere?

Some blisters had started in all of his crotchal region. Crotchal, yeah. Front and the back.

Poison ivy?

The vines were some kind of poison. Yeah.

So we took him to the emergency room and the doctor diagnosed him with, and I quote, the worst case of poison ivy he'd ever seen in his entire career.

What did they do for that?

They shot him full of steroids, tons of Benadryl, but he was just on his back in his bed for days after that.

Oh, my God.

Oh, my God.

Did you guys feel so bad?

I still feel bad. It's taken me 25 years for me to even want to tell this story, because I still feel so bad about it. I mean, that cliff that he climbed up was like Jurassic Park level, like poison ivy jungle.

And you know, the sad thing is it's such a G-rated joke. Like it started out, so silly and innocent. It's almost like out of a movie about ninth graders.

It's from now and then.

Yeah. What was that? Ninth graders?

A movie about ninth graders.

Yeah. It's so innocent and silly, and you guys almost murdered two people between Warren's concussion and this.

I know. But also, cautionary tale, for Jason, know your limits. You think you're this big rock climber and you're not, you know? Right.

It's almost like don't go chasing waterfalls.

Stick to the- Yeah.

Like you can climb rock. That doesn't mean you can climb vines.

You're not, Tarzan. Yeah. He took it a little too far with making his grundle and stuff.

Or his crotchle parts.

There was a lot of tales in there, but this one, I think, is just don't steal the skinny dipper's clothes.

And have you stayed in touch with Jason?

No. It's been a long time, but we were still friends after that. I mean, we lived together for a while. That guy, Warren, though, he told Ian, like, I, never want to see those girls again.

Well, he doesn't have to see them if he doesn't wear his glasses.

You know what's crazy? Don't make fun of people. I'm sorry. That was just so- I know.

That was really good.

I can't believe you didn't laugh. Then I had to be sad. I was thinking, what's funny is I had this dead wrong, which is Warren wasn't the issue. You guys were the issue. And from Warren's point of view, it was like, well, these friends of friends fucking almost killed us.

Uh-huh.

Warren's, like the innocent, sacrificial-.

You're the friends of friends. Yes. Oh, my God. What a twist.

If you found Warren and he told the story, it would be the opposite side.

We're talking to Warren at 240. actually. Oh my God.

I wonder where that guy is now.

That was a doozy. I mean, I'm going to say, yeah, no more pranks for anyone. Well- Yeah.

You got to add up all the pranks over time. The ones that went good, the ones that went bad. Did it curb your future prankiness? Did you back off pranks after that or no?

No. No. Just the stealing of clothes. I love to play pranks on people. Yeah.

That was a rhetorical question.

Wow. Yeah.

I had a hunch.

These cautionary tales are going to be a bummer, because no one's really learned any lessons.

Well, I guess that's true. Maybe you're just telling the story to yourself. We do that sometimes. We tell other people the stories we need to hear.

That was kind of therapeutic. Thanks guys. I needed to get that off my chest.

Well, Amy, that was a joy. And you seem like you were really fun to grow up with. I'm a little jealous that I wasn't in Austin with you or now in Asheville. Because I love to go skinny dipping and get poison ivy.

Come on. It's not too late.

Thank you for chatting with us.

Yeah. Very nice meeting you.

Could I ask you a super favor to say happy birthday to my friend, Lori? She is such an Arm Cherry fan. She loves you. She turned me on to you guys. And she's turning 50 next week.

Oh, amazing. Happy birthday, Lori. That means we were both born roughly the same time. I guess she was probably 74.. But I'm knocking right on the back door.

Hope she has a great birthday.

Stay strong, Lori. Happy birthday.

Thank you both so much.

Take care, Amy.

Even though I wanted it to be Amy Hansen, that was very fun.

It was. She's a fun person, that Amy we just talked to.

I hate pranks.

I know you do. They're one of your triggers. They make me cry.

Should we do that as a prompt? Oh, that's good.

Pranks gone wrong.

Have we not done that one?

No, didn't we? Because remember the girl in her school?

Yeah, we did.

I don't care. We can do it again. We're going to have to recycle for crying out loud. We've got to do 48 again. Not yet.

For like six more years, then we recycle.

All right. Here's Madeline.

Hi, Monica.

Hi, Dax. Hi, is this Madeline?

It's Madeline.

Look at your closet.

Madeline, it's one of the most beautiful names in the world. And I don't know if you've heard enough episodes to know that my grandmother's name was Madeline. And she thought, because she was born in, I guess, the 30s, that Madeline was a grandma name and an ugly name. So guess what? She went by her whole life.

Midge?

So much prettier. Objectively.

I love my name. So thank you so much.

No, it's so beautiful. We were always confused growing up. Like, why does Grandma Midge think Madeline is so gross? But Midge is like a super elegant name. Midge Boltink.

She just doubled down.

I guess she did.

Good for her. She did.

Yeah, maybe Madeline Boltink was too mixed messaging.

Yeah. Yeah. She's a straight shooter.

Madeline, where are you other than in your closet?

I'm in my closet in London, Ontario, Canada.

Oh, my God. So close to Detroit. Yeah, pretty close. Do you ever go to Detroit? No.

About two hours, yeah.

And you know, Rachel McAdams is from your hometown, right?

Oh, my God.

She is. One time I saw her in a coffee shop.

Wow. No.

What did she order?

Do you know? I don't know what she ordered. She was just in the coffee shop, but I used to work at the University of Toronto, and there was a coffee shop on campus that she went to.

Oh, my God.

Was she with Ryan Gosling?

No, I don't think so.

Was she a student there?

No, I think that she was just in Toronto.

Can you tell us more about her?

I wish I could.

Okay, so, Madeline, you have a cautionary tale. Does it take place in London, Ontario?

It doesn't. It actually takes place in Alberta, in a city called Grand Prairie, which is quite north in Alberta.

Sounds beautiful.

It was like a prairie, but it was close to the mountains, so I mean, I couldn't complain. It was back in 2017, and I moved there with my boyfriend at the time, who is now my husband, for his job. So, we were going to move into our first house there, and we worked all week. Wait, should I tell you the name of my cautionary tale first?

Yeah, please. You made a name for it?

That's great. I did.

The cautionary tale, bottom line is, don't brush your teeth sitting in bed.

Oh, okay. Oh, I love this.

Okay, good, good, because that sounds very innocuous.

I wasn't expecting that.

Like, it can't be dangerous.

Yes. We worked all week, and then got home Friday afternoon, and we were going to pack up the house to move over the weekend. And so, we packed until probably about midnight, decided it was time to call it quits, and so my husband went into the en suite and was brushing his teeth, getting ready for bed, and I was like, I'm just going to take a beat, sit on the bed, scroll my phone for a minute.

Really quick, Madeline, I hate to interrupt your flow, but do you call the bathroom off of the bedroom an en suite? You just educated me on something.

Yeah, that's what we call it. Wow.

Do you know that, Monica? Primary bath? No, I've heard that. Is it Canadian?

No.

It's not?

Yeah, we call it that here. Okay, so he was in the en suite, which is the bathroom connected to the bedroom.

That's correct.

Okay, lovely.

I was just sitting up against the pillow, scrolling my phone, and my husband's very sweet. Every time I'm around, and I haven't brushed my teeth yet, and he gets his toothbrush ready with the toothpaste, he does mine as well, so I knew it was sitting there waiting for me. So, I was like, can you just pass me my toothbrush? I'll brush my teeth while I'm sitting here and get up and continue with my bedtime routine. And so, he did, and I'm sitting there just brushing my teeth, and it's an electric toothbrush, and it runs its course, and it's done.

What?

So, I impaled my throat with my toothbrush.

It punctured your throat?

It did. No.

It went into my throat, yeah. No. So, I get up, I run to the bathroom, and I push my husband out of the way, and I spit into the sink, and it's just like a bloodbath.

Oh, God.

Really quick, when you pulled your toothbrush out of your mouth, did you feel it coming out of the back of your throat?

Good question. I don't remember.

Yeah, you were in a state of shock.

Oh, my God.

I know. I already had the heebie-jeebies at the notion you were brushing your teeth without water.

Oh, my God.

That's where my heebie-jeebies- What do you mean? The toothbrush had been buttered, then brought to her in bed.

Yeah.

For me to brush my teeth, I gotta butter it, and then I run it under water. I need a lot of water in there to get a-.

You did that before.

So, it came in almost drippy and a little messy.

Mine doesn't need to be dri- I rinse it first, then I butter it, and then I brush.

But just imagine, like I did, dry toothbrush, toothpaste, then handed to you in bed, and you just start smearing paste all over your mouth.

I get what you mean. You need it to be a little wet, but he had already gotten ahead of that.

Yeah, we didn't raw dog it.

Oh, my God. I just remembered the throat.

Oh, yes. Okay.

Bloodbath in the sink, and he's like, oh, my gosh, what happened? And I was like, I hit my toothbrush in my throat. So, he looks, and his face instantly changed from like, why are you pushing me? To like, oh, my gosh, we have to go to the emergency room right now.

Oh, gosh.

It's well after midnight. We're driving to the emergency room, and we get there. We're in triage, and the nurse is like, what happened? And I'm so embarrassed. Like, I don't want to tell her what happened.

Oh, that's worse.

Aren't we all weird? We're so weird. It's such a bizarre decision to make, but I can totally relate to doing that.

Me too.

Yeah, I was like, fight, flight, or freeze. So, they still provided me excellent care. We go into the waiting room, and we waited probably an hour, which is not bad. We get into the patient room to see the doctor, and he's just like flabbergasted. Like, has never seen anything like this before.

I feel like you need a surgeon for this.

Because how do you even.

It's so deep in your.

So, he gets out this big, long needle, freezes it. Once the anesthetic sets in, he pulls out this huge needle that is like curved. Like, it's like a fishhook.

Huge fishhook.

So, he starts stitching, and I'm laying back, and there's all these surgical lights above me, and my husband's standing there. And he's watching him, and he'll do a stitch, and then, like pause for a second, take a step back. And at one point, he's like, I understand why dentists have those suckers, because it was just like pooling saliva.

Oh, sure. Saliva.

Yeah.

In the back of my throat. So, we do a stitch, undo it, do a stitch, undo it. Like, I couldn't feel the pain, but I could feel it. So, anyways, he finishes up, writes me a prescription for antibiotics, so I don't get an infection, and sends us on our way. So, then the next day, I go to the pharmacy to get the antibiotics, and she's like, I see you have a penicillin allergy, but we normally don't prescribe this antibiotic.

How many stitches did you receive?

Do you know?

I don't know, but I did send in pictures before and after.

Oh, Rob says he doesn't have them, but I bet Emma has them. Did you send them to Emma?

I sent them to Emma, yeah. Let me text her.

I gotta see this. I'm gonna regret seeing this, but of course, I have to see this. So, wow, okay, that answers my question, because you can't get your fingers back in there, so you just have an enormous long fish hook that you do it with.

Yep, that's how they do it, which I never would have known. I do wish he called the dentist on call, though.

I just love, though, that you're, like, ascending level of embarrassment. You had the one lie, which is I did it brushing my teeth, which you didn't. Then even that's too embarrassing, so now it's just I cut my mouth. Yeah.

It felt like, you know, when you have a sore throat and it's razor blades. Yes.

Oh, you were just talking about that.

You just had that.

And that's a horrible feeling, so I took lots of Tylenol. I didn't really eat anything solid for a few days, but then it was like those stitches that dissolve, and out they went, and I just carried on.

Wow. Yeah, and your mouth heals very quickly. I imagine your throat does, too, right?

It does, yep.

This is such a specific cautionary. I am scared now. I am definitely only going to brush my teeth in an upright standing.

Standing up in the end suite.

Yeah.

Although you don't have an end suite yet. Monica has to go in a hallway like a caveman to go to her bathroom.

I do. It sucks. It's a long walk. But maybe it saved my life.

It could have.

Oh, God.

I would love video of you trying to rock yourself. Okay, here are the pictures. Oh, they've come. Let's see.

Oh, it is a legit just hole.

Okay, great, though. This is slightly better than I was expecting.

It's after the surgery.

Well, it's on the side of your mouth. Oh, here's a little more fresh before it's healed, I guess. That's the stitches. Yeah. I was picturing the center punching your throat.

No, it was kind of like biting it.

It is throat, it's just a little on the side.

But also, your tongue is so cute. Do you notice how you don't have any white on your tongue or anything? It's so bright.

Did you Facetune it?

I just brushed my teeth.

Well, look how healthy.

Maybe she did a filter on it.

This is one of the healthiest tongues I've ever seen. It's like a baby's.

It does look nice. I feel a little weird that we're zooming in on her tongue. No.

You like this, right? Because it's so complimentary?

Sure.

I'd be so anxious if somebody was zooming in on a picture of my tongue.

Unless you had that tongue. You'd be like, yeah, go ahead and get close.

Things have gone too far, but we're very grossed out by your story.

Well, I'm glad you're grossed out by it. Actually, after I submitted, my friend was like, no, you should submit a different story. No, it's perfect.

Well, maybe we'll talk to you a second time for a different story. Do you have a lot of stories?

Yeah, I'm a pretty clumsy person, so I also have another good cautionary tale. But if something comes up about washing machines, maybe I can do that one.

Okay, great. Well, it's very nice to meet you, Madeline.

I'm glad you healed up.

Thank you for having me. This was like a bucket list experience.

You probably don't even have a scar back there, right, because the mouth heals so nicely?

Not that I've noticed.

Well, send a picture, a close-up picture of your tongue and the side of your mouth. I'll give it a good once-over and I'll tell you.

You just want to see my tongue again.

It's gorgeous. You should be very proud. Well, really nice meeting you. Thanks for telling us that story.

Amazing. Thank you, guys.

Bye.

Yeah.

I feel like I want to go look at my tongue in the mirror up close.

To see if it looks like that?

I want to see what mine looks like.

I would be very nervous that mine had some white on it or something. Because you're sick? I don't know. I drink a lot of things. I know.

Most of us.

Oh, fuck. I don't want to make anyone self-conscious.

Uh-oh. What?

You know, sometimes you see someone and their tongue's like white.

That's.

Yeah, because I don't think anyone's picking that or doing it intentionally. I don't think you can give yourself that on purpose. But I brush my tongue really thoroughly every morning and every night. Me too. Because I have a big fear of having that whiteness.

Well, also, that's where a lot of the bacteria live. And you know where else it lives, according to my dentist? So once I learned this, I do it all the time. Your palate.

That's tickly.

Yeah, it's gaggy and tickly, but it's important to do.

I'll do it. Okay. I'll add that tonight. In fact, I can't wait now to brush my teeth. I might do it in bed.

Oh, my God.

You know what my therapist said to me? I've never laughed this hard in therapy. I haven't laughed this hard in a very long time. But he said to me, Well, you are, let's say, very resistant to learning.

Oh, that is.

And I fucking, that, hit me.

That's not true, though.

So hard. In many ways, it's really a bullseye.

I mean, in some ways, it's true. In some ways, it's not true.

Yeah, it really floored me.

I'm glad you could hear that.

Oh, my God. You know, like when someone hits something...

You can only hear that coming from a few people.

Hence the, you have a hard time learning. Oh, yeah. Because you don't trust anybody or anything. So, kind of came out of the blue, but I just said that because...

Tongues?

Yeah, because I am going to try brushing the roof of my.

And you're going to try to impale yourself.

No, I'm just going to make an effort to be more open to learning.

Oh, that's good.

I was laughing so hard because I'm like, it's so right and how embarrassing. I'm expressively someone who claims to love learning. I like learning info from a book that no one has to deliver to me.

I know.

All right, here's Eric. Eric Richardson?

All our friends are calling in.

Hi. Is it Eric? Yeah. You've draped some kind of makeshift sound dampener behind you. I like it.

Me too.

It's blankets and like one of those arc lights. I got some like potato chip bag clips. Oh.

You went all out.

It looks good. It sounds good. We appreciate it.

Are you a fabricator by trade? or just today you stepped up to the plate?

You called me on it. I'm an architect.

Oh. My God.

I'm a nerd.

Architects are cool. My best friend's dad is an architect and he's very cool.

Where are you at?

I'm in Seattle.

Great town for an architect.

It is.

And do you do commercial or everything? Did you love Fountainhead? Do you like Howard Roark? Tell me.

You know, I read it when I was in the eighth grade. When I was a little kid, I was obsessed with it. I was like, that's what I want to do. Then it kind of came out later that it's just this kind of narcissism and there's all this toxic philosophy in it. And I was like, huh.

Okay. Wow. Wow. Very Washington of you.

I lived all over the place. So I moved all around in Colorado, California. You've done it all. Yeah.

The Fountainhead, I think, appeals to a young man a lot, because it's all about having conviction in who you are and a vision. And then you get older and you're like, yeah, it's my way or the highway. And then I'm lonely and no one likes me. So maybe there's another approach.

Well, that's the biggest problem with architecture is egos. We call them, like, you know, the caved architects. They come in and it's like, I've come to save you, poor, ignorant people. Yeah. It's terrible.

You sound nice. Like my architect, Bill. Shout out. I love him.

I take that as the highest praise.

It is.

Okay. You have a cautionary tale.

Yes. This is actually from my honeymoon. Oh, 2007.. My wife and I got married in Portland. We wanted to go to Thailand for like a month and really like do it up.

And it's on the Caribbean. Yeah. Yeah.

We were in Ambergeese Key. We stayed at this little beach cabana, three cabanas, and then, like a restaurant, like a little tiki bar type thing.

That sounds like heaven.

I want to go there. Yeah.

It really was like the owners, maybe they'd been on like Jimmy Buffett tour too long. Yeah. Like stay too long in Margaritaville. Parrot heads. A little bit older.

Boozy.

Very boozy. I think one of them was reforms, but then it would like kind of go off the rails.

Sure. Dax Shepard type. Yeah.

They have a 14 year old son, and there was always this kind of like tension and drama. Like he was always getting into trouble. We were just having a good time. And we were trying to like ignore all of that. There were these like kind of fights and like, we're going to send you to military school.

Oh, my God.

It was a little bit of a lot. But anyway, so we kind of ignore that. We have beautiful days. And then, on the third night, we went to, like the nice local restaurant. My wife decides to eat the salad.

Okay.

And I was kind of like, oh, I don't know. The next day, Jackson Pollock and porcelain type situation. Yeah. You know, I wanted to like stick around, but you know, out of here.

Monica policy. Yeah.

I was like, all right, what do I do? And then I remember this kid that I've been like trying to put out of my mind. He's very boisterous. He was like, I'll show you the best spots on the islands for spearfishing. And I was like, oh, great.

Oh, okay.

What's that mean?

Hybrid language, like slang, island slang.

He was like really trying to fit in, take on the local language. But it was kind of like, eh.

Okay.

Sure, sure.

Poser.

Yeah. We went to the next spot. Same thing. We went to another spot. Each time, you know, he's like, oh, big time.

Yeah.