Chapter 1: What is the premise of Armchair Anonymous?
Wondery Plus subscribers can listen to Armchair Expert early and ad-free right now. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts. Or you can listen for free wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome, welcome, welcome to Armchair Anonymous. I'm Dax Shepard and I'm joined by Monica Padman. Hi. Our favorite promo, well, that's not entirely true. We like. Evacuation's our favorite.
Yeah, we love that. But second to that is Wild Card. Mm-hmm. And we're often blessed with an evacuation story within Wildcard. That's right. Yes. Yeah, this spans the whole map of different possibilities. So love Wildcard. Keep them coming. Keep submitting Wildcards. Yes, we have that prompt up all the time. So feel free to submit at any time. Yes. Please enjoy Wildcard number nine. Ooh.
Hard times come and go. Hello. Hi. Normally I would say, hi, blank. Nice to meet you. But of course, we're going to use a fake name. So have you picked one? I have not. Do you have a fake name? I do because I'm looking at my Nicorette spray and I'm going to say your name is Nikki. I'll take it. Nikki's fun. Okay. So Nikki, where are you? I am in the Rocky Mountain West. Okay. Okay.
I like to find patterns and sometimes they're really not there, but I do think of the many people that remained anonymous. It's tends to be in that Rocky Mountain area. I'm having like a few other memories. Pack Northwest and Rocky Mountains, people like to keep it a little quiet. I like that theory. My track.
Chapter 2: What is a Wild Card story in the context of the podcast?
Okay, so you have a wild card story, which is always our favorite because we have no clue what you're going to tell us about. I will say I did put it in for another prompt and it didn't work out. So I'm glad it's in the wildcard now, but I'm not going to give any clues on the other prompt. Okay. Okay, good, good, good. Keep us in the dark. This happened in North Idaho, summer of 2007.
I am freshly 18. So I decide with a couple of my guy friends that we're going to bike downtown to the lake and we are going to take our slackline. Do you know what a slackline is? Is that the thing you balance on? You tie it to a couple tree trunks and try to walk across it? Exactly. It's like an inch and a half piece of webbing. You do little circus activities. You've seen that, right, Monty?
I think so. Yeah, it looks very hard. It was very much a vibe in 2007. There was kookas and hemp necklaces involved and you hang out and you're very cool. Yeah, it felt like it was adjacent to the hacky sack. Oh, sure. We get our bikes, we get our slackline, and we go downtown. And we're going to go down to a boat slip down on the docks and tie the slackline up between two pillars. Genius.
So you'll fall into the water? Yep. We pedal down there and Iron Man is going on. So downtown is absolutely swamped. Every parking lot is filled. There's bicyclists. There's all these ripped ultra athletes wandering around. There's tents. There's speakers. We're like, okay.
so we shimmy through all of this we still go down to the boat launch we hook our slack line up cinch it down and the guys are like you can hop up first so i hop up make it about halfway across the line I fall and the line snaps me pretty hard right between the legs and I fall into the water. When you say in between? 100% contact on my vagina.
I fall into the water, completely have my breath taken away, come out gasping, doggy paddle to the edge of the dock. And I'm like, oh, this is bad. Something is not good here. So I get up out of the water. Oh, what if you saw your vagina floating? And then you go, catch that vagina! Like when you see your bathing suit bottoms floating and it's like, oh!
I stand up and blood is just pouring out of me. Ow, ow! There's a puddle of blood and these two guys are staring at me just panicked.
and one of them says get back in the water and I'm like oh okay so I hop back in the water now I can't see the blood pouring out of me I'm face to face of the pool of blood in front of me and I'm looking around and the water's all shiny and glistening and there's just gasoline and oil from the boats and All over. And I'm like, there's definitely an open wound.
I probably shouldn't be in the water. So I jump back out and the blood starts pouring again. These guys are zero help. They're panicking and they say, I'm going to call Jessica, who's my best friend. So they call Jessica and they say, Jessica, something happened to Nikki. She's hurt. You need to bring towels and come down here. And that's all the information she gets.
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Chapter 3: What happened during the wild card story in North Idaho?
Bring tampons, I guess. Jessica is a pretty shy, straight and arrow girl who's just down to take care of her friends. At this time, I've decided that it's better for me to sit on the dock because then we don't see the blood falling as far. And I'm concerned about the murder scene that I'm sitting in and fancy people walking by.
And so I'm trying to put water to dilute the blood that's on the dock. In the meantime, the guys have decided they'll take down the slack line. They're just trying to be busy not by my blood. And they're 18 as well or ish. Yep. Jessica comes down, but she has to park a quarter mile, half mile away because there's so much chaos downtown. So she comes down with this beige towel and
And the most logical thing is to wrap me up kind of like a sumo wrestler diaper. Sure. I'm in my swimsuit and this diaper waddling through all of these Ironmen from all around the world. And the beige towel is going from beige to red. Yeah. This is a 911. I knew you were going to say that. We get into the car finally. I grew up poor. I was like, I'm not going to the doctor.
I think we just need to go get eyes on this. We don't really know what's going on yet. And so Jessica was like, sure. So we went to Jessica's house. I hop in the shower and I can't really get a visual on what's going on. I can feel a decent gouge. Oh, okay. I can't see it. And so I decide... Jessica needs to come in. Not part of our friendship in the past. This is a really new level for us.
So I'm in the shower. She's trying to position herself like under me to get a visual on what's happening. And she's like, there's a decent gouge. But this time, my grandmother calls. My grandma's who I get life advice from. And so I had told her on the car ride over, I called her. She called her sister. So like my great aunt. Yeah, let's get everyone involved. So far, no one's contacted a doctor.
Great Aunt Susie says you need to go to the ER right now. It can be a hematoma. Call my mom, who I'm not overly close with. But I'm like, Mom, you got to come get me. We got to go to the ER. At this time, I have like a super pad on and pants. And I walk into the ER and the first person I see is my high school principal. Oh, wonderful.
His son was my age, star quarterback of the football team, very attractive kid. I'm like, great, this is really special. Was his dick bleeding, hopefully? I mean, that would neutralize everything. Maybe this is a MeCute story, since we don't know. I finally get called back. Another guy that I go to school with, mom, is my nurse. I get in the stirrups. The doctor comes in.
At this point in my life, I've never been to a gynecologist. I've never had my vaginal area medically examined. She pulls out a swab that's like 12 inches long. He starts swabbing around. He says, you're going to need stitches. I'm bawling. I'm like, I can't. I don't want stitches.
So he says, well, if you don't get stitches, you'll have a scar and somebody is going to be able to see it later in your life. Weird incentive to pitch. It was very strange. But I said, I can't really see it. So I'm going to just say we don't need stitches. Just put a sticker on there. A little butterfly. Sure. And that's what we do. So I go on with my life. About a month later, I go to college.
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Chapter 4: How did the slacklining incident lead to an unexpected injury?
And so they tell me this happened in Idaho. I said, I am that girl. Knowing that now all of these strangers have some kind of question of what's going on with my vagina because the story ends this way. I did lead to friendship. It also led to me being like the ER vagina girl, slackline girl for a while until a new slackline injury happened. Uh-oh. And somebody else ended up in the ER.
They literally almost lost their leg. Oh. I mean, it's not that fun. Slacklining isn't. I mean, it's like you prove you can do it, but is it that fun? I know. But that's how I made some friends on my first day of college. Oh, first day of school. And did you have any other residual issues? It's not like that area ever opened up on you unexpectedly or anything. It was tender.
I didn't ride my bike for a while. I will say nobody has ever commented on a scar existing and that being an issue. Mostly everything's good to go. OK, wonderful. This has a happy ending, man. It does. A very happy ending. Oh, that sounds absolutely terrible. Yeah. You can feel it. I can feel it. I can feel it. Just imagine like a seatbelt of a car. Oh, this is awful.
Did you ever slackline again? I did. You did. Wow. Did you wear like a lady cup or anything? No, but you can't cinch the line down so tight. It was so tight that the force, there wasn't any give. Okay, you want a nice bit of give if you're going to... Or you want to hit the line flat. I'm guessing the line had twisted and maybe I hit it sharp. I don't even have one and I can feel it. I know.
Yeah. Thanks for sharing that. Thank you, Nikki. Yeah, thanks for having me. This has been so fun. Armchair Anonymous is a part of my family's routine weekly. With kids? With kids. I usually scan it, but they're big enough that something comes up. We just fast forward. We had no idea we were creating a kid show, but that is what we learned. I know. I'm just gonna play it for them.
They don't know I'm meeting with you all. Fantastic. Let's see if they get mom's voice. How fun. All right, well, lovely meeting you. Thanks so much for telling us that. You too. All right. Bye. Take care. Hi. Hello.
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Chapter 5: What was the reaction of friends during the injury incident?
Is this Riley? Yes, this is Riley. How are you and where are you and who's a skateboarder in your life? You? My fiance, I'm actually in his studio and I am currently in the suburbs outside of Philly. Oh, we don't get a ton of Philly suburb folks. We like it. We'd like for you to spread the word a little more on our behalf.
Well, I feel like everyone in my life listens to this, but I've realized that not many people know how to submit to this. That has since changed since I've told my friends I was going to be on it. Yeah, I'm not sure I would know how to submit to this. Oh, you just go onto the website and you submit. I'm JeffExpertPod.com. Okay, I guess it's easy. It is.
So you have a wildcard story, which is our favorite because we have no clue what you're going to say. Yes. And I don't think I'm going to even give you any information beforehand. The story takes place in 2015 in Philadelphia. It was the summer I was going into my junior year of college. Something else to note is that I went to Temple.
That's important just for like some of the things that go on. And when you say Temple, you mean Jewish Temple? No, Temple University. Oh, I'm glad you checked. At Temple during the summer, everyone pretty much goes home. It's completely empty. Where's it at? Forgive my ignorance. It's in North Philly. Is it pretty? The campus is. The surrounding area is considered pretty dangerous. Oh, okay. fun.
Yeah. But Temple is strange because it's like this oasis within North Philly. Like you go on campus and there's trees. It's kind of weird to be like, oh, I just walked through all these bad neighborhoods and got followed on my way to campus. And now I'm among the trees and the benches and the flowers. Weird. I think that's the USC experience as well. I think it's actually a lot of colleges.
A lot of colleges, yeah. Basically, I was alone for the summer. All my friends went home. I stayed because I worked and my mom lived an hour away. And I was like, I have no car. I'm just going to stay here. So one of my friends was like, there's this guy, we'll call him Dan for the sake of the podcast. She's like, oh, Dan's still on campus. Why don't you start hanging out with him?
And I was like, why not? He seemed nice enough the couple of times I met him. And so he was nice, but kind of strange. But we were both a bit lonely. So we just struck up a friendship that mainly consisted of us going to campus, meeting up, just like sitting, talking. Nothing romantic happening? Not at this point.
So one day we decided to hang out at his house, which was on the complete opposite side of campus from me and watch the Lord of the Rings because I had never seen it. And apparently that was criminal. Kind of know what kind of guy he is now. I have at least a pretty good clue. I feel like you'll get a really good clue as to what kind of guy he is.
Just know that I've never told a woman, like, you haven't seen Lord of the Rings? So many people say that to me. I get that a lot because I still haven't seen it. Oh, exciting. I go to his house and we do kiss.
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Chapter 6: How did the situation escalate to a call for help?
But as soon as he pulls away, he looks at me and goes, I could see myself falling in love with you. Oh, boy. Yeah, and I immediately was like... Whoa, shit. I thought we were just lonely and keeping each other company. So I go to leave and I had ridden my bike there and my bike tires are stolen. And it was nighttime and I lived pretty far and it's dangerous.
And I had like a job where I was making $7 an hour. I wasn't going to take a ride share. So I had to stay the night, which I understand now I should have just risked walking home. Well, I don't know. I mean, you got a couple of shitty options. Yeah. Yeah, it wasn't great. I leave and I tell him I only want to be friends. He got really mad, was blowing up my phone, dozens of unanswered texts.
It got out of hand pretty quickly. And so I just had to cut off contact completely. This started a whole slew of weird occurrences where I'd walk outside of my house and I would see him riding his bike, which didn't make sense because I lived among nothing. No one had to be there. And he lived on the opposite side.
And then he actually dropped out of school, but I would see him wandering campus all the time. Like I'd be sitting on a bench. There he is. He was just always there. So a few months went by and I get a text from him that says, hey, Riley, I know we're not friends right now, but something bad happened. I really need someone to talk to. This is a time in my life where I had pretty poor boundaries.
I was painfully empathetic. And I'm like, oh, my God, this person has no one to talk to. I have to talk to them. They weaponized your empathy. Yes, they did. And so I was like, OK, well, I'm going to my mom's later. I have 30 minutes. I'm taking the train. I could talk to you until then. He's like, OK, yeah, great, great.
So we meet up and he tells me that his house was robbed and that he was held at gunpoint. And this wasn't like a crazy thing. This happened at Temple and he seemed shaken up. So I felt really bad. I was like, oh, my God, that's horrible. Don't want you to get held at gunpoint. I don't wish that even on my stalker. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I was like, okay, well, I have to go to my mom's.
You can text me and I'll be busy, but I can answer when I can. He's like, oh my God, yeah, thank you. Like, whatever you can do. But apparently that like wasn't OK because I got there and again, like a bunch of unanswered texts, getting really mad. He's like, I can't believe you're not answering me. And I was like, you know what? I'm kind of done with this. I tried to be nice.
I told you the deal. You said it was OK. So a week goes by and this is where things get kind of crazy. I get a text from him one morning and it goes, hey, Riley, I just wanted to say that I'm sorry. And this isn't your fault. Goodbye. Oh, he's breaking up with you. No, he's going to kill himself. That was my thought. I was like, oh my God, that's a suicide text.
And so I call him and I'm like, what the hell is that supposed to mean? And he was like, well, you're not stupid. You know what that means. And so I was like, well, where are you? He's like, I'm just walking around waiting it out. He's hinting that he's taken something and he's just essentially waiting to die. But available for a chat. Sent me a text message, really wanted me to know.
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Chapter 7: What were the consequences of the wild card story?
Right. So he's performing a bit of an OD. Something's happening. I called the police. They're like, well, we can't do anything. Really? They can't just go to a wellness check? Not in North Philly. They're like, we got bigger fish to fry. So I end up calling the suicide hotline because Because this is also for people who need support. Yeah, great.
This poor man, he's being so kind and he's like calming me down because I'm on the phone like, I don't know what to do. He stopped answering me. I'm like, he's dead. So I use Google Earth to find his exact address because I didn't know what it was. I'm like zooming in on all the houses on his street and I find it.
And the suicide hotline guy ends up calling the police for me because I think they are held more accountable when they call. And then he calls me back and he goes, you're not going to believe this, but he's at his house just watching TV. He's fine. Hasn't taken anything. I was in such a state of shock where I was like, he literally sounded dead. What a performance.
And so as I'm on the phone with this guy, I get a call from Dan. I'm like, oh my God, he's calling me. And so it's that hotline guy. It's like, you need to cut things off with this person. This person is unwell. Like, don't talk to him anymore. I was like, yes, yes, okay. So I answer and he's on the phone. He's like, why the fuck are the cops at my house? You told me you were dying.
What did you expect me to do? And he was like, well, you could have just talked to me. Hey, puke. I know. I don't like it. So I was like, okay, well, now I'm never going to talk to you again. Yeah. I blocked him. I found out about a month later that the robbery thing was fake. We had a friend who was his old roommate. And so he was like, no, I actually got mugged on the street.
It had nothing to do with him. So that was all just a big manipulation to get me to like talk to him. And then I would get like blocked phone calls for about a year after. And it would always correlate when he was like looking at my story. Really strange behavior. So that's the story about how someone pretended to die on the phone with me. Oh, my God. What y'all women deal with, man?
The manipulation is so bad. I hate to say it, but the Lord of the Rings for me was the first red flag. Don't say that. We have a lot of Lord of the Rings listeners. Callie loves it. She tells you to watch it. Go ahead and watch it. Yeah, I still haven't seen it. I was in Norway with my friend Cass and she was like, you have to watch this.
I'm like, well, the last time I watched this, it began an obsession. I feel like it's cursed for me. I haven't gotten past the first 20 minutes of the movie. Wow, I'm sorry that happened. That's really yucky. The best case scenario can be for you women is minimally it's inconvenient. Like, you got to fucking deal with all this crap.
And then the scene someone, oh man, if I looked outside and saw a chick I had broke up with riding her bike in front of my house, I would panic. I mean, oh, my God, what am I supposed to do? It's interesting now because I'm a therapist. I work with a lot of people who have suicidal ideation. It's something I'm comfortable working with now. I feel like that just shocked me.
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Chapter 8: What lessons were learned from the experience shared in the episode?
Right. Interesting. So maybe this is a glass half full. This is a set you on a path, perhaps. Cautionary tale. But slash. A lesson learned. Don't we have prompts that were like an event you thought was bad, but turned out in retrospect to be good? A blessing in disguise. Blessing in disguise. Well, I don't know about that. I was kind of on this track before that. Let's not go that far.
I really could have done without this. Yeah. All right. We take all that back. I'm just always trying to put a nice positive spin on everything. It's not necessary. Lovely meeting you. It was lovely meeting you too. My friend Cass said if she ever got on, she would do a shout out to me. And now I feel like I'd be a dick if I didn't do it. That's fair. To Cass? To Cass. Shout out. Love the name.
Me too. Big shout out. Cass loves Lord of the Rings and Cass loves Armchair Expert. Okay. I'm going to take everything back. Well, thank you so much, guys. It was so nice to meet you. You too. Have a good rest of your day. Bye. Christina? Yes. Hi. How are you? Good. How are you guys today? Wonderful. Where are you? I live in New Hampshire. Oh, lovely. We're hitting some new spots today.
Yeah, we are. And I like that. We're in the Northeast. I mean, it's fall foliage season. You can't beat this time of year. Oh, lovely. Okay, so you have a wildcard story, which are our favorites because we have no clue what you're going to tell us. All right, let's get started. So this all started in January of this year. Recent. Very recent.
And it was a freezing cold day, as January days typically are in New Hampshire. This was the kind of day that you go outside and within two to three minutes, your nose hairs feel like they're completely frozen. So I was taking my daughter and her friend and her friend's mom down to Boston College for a lacrosse game.
camp for the day we parked in the closest parking garage that we could find to the stadium so that we didn't have to walk outside very much so we dropped the girls off at lacrosse and then headed out to get sushi in boston together so i don't know about y'all but i love a lot of soy sauce with my sushi yeah sure me too so we spent about three and a half hours just enjoying a relaxing dinner out and then we headed back to boston to get the girls
So I forgot to tell you that I am a thirsty person at baseline. I have the water bottle with me everywhere I go. And I usually have a pink stainless steel water bottle that if I'm going somewhere for five minutes, I have it. Or if I'm gone for the day, I literally choose purses based on if I can fit a water bottle. It's your blankie. It is. A lot of people do this.
The girls all have steel water bottles we leave the house with, and then they leave them in my car, and it sounds like bowling balls rolling around in the backseat. Of all the blankies they have, I think it's the best. Probably water. It's a good one. But when you add soy sauce on top of already a thirsty person... I was absolutely parched when I got back in the car.
And of course, I had drank my water bottle as we traveled from New Hampshire to Boston, so I didn't have any water left. So when we arrived to pick up the girls at BC, as if the hydration gods had spoken, and there was a huge cooler of smart water, like the fancy alkaline kind, at the camp. So I helped myself to one of those. We got everybody back in the car.
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