Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
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 Dan Shepard and I'm joined by Monica Padman.
Hi.
Today is wild card. What number in a wild card do you think this is?
Nine.
And don't you think you went further than what you really think, right? Because you know I'm going to say it's high. Sure. Do you really think it's seven?
No, I think it's nine.
You think it's nine. It's 11.
Oh, wow.
Oh, my wild card. Lucky 11-11. 11.
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Chapter 2: What wild story does the guest share from their past?
Yes, I'm actually an hour east of South Padre Island.
Where I went on vacation at one point, Christmas time. And are you a drummer?
Yes, I'm a music teacher.
Wonderful. And what's great, Marcos, is wildcard. You could have murdered someone. You could have saved someone. We have no clue.
The year is about 2006. At the time, I'm 19 years old. One of the only one of my group of friends to have their own apartment. That was always the place we would all hang out. I'm hanging out with our local ska band. There was also a bunch of 18, 19-year-olds as well. They would play shows. After the show, we'd all go back to my place, hang out, have a great time.
One of the main characters in this story, we're going to call him Marine Mike.
Oh, great name.
He's fresh out of service. This is 2006, so he was all over the world. We met through an acquaintance. We're both from small towns that are really close to each other, so we became real quick good friends. After one of these gigs, we're out of my place. It's probably around midnight, 1 a.m., so you can imagine...
I need to know how inebriated we are. Are we smoking weed? Just drinks?
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Chapter 3: How did the car accident unfold during the wild story?
Me, three other guys and another girl, we run up to the man. grab him each by a limb. We start dragging him because the car's on fire. He's yelling at us about his kids. My kids are in the car.
Oh no, this is horrifying.
He's trying to get up to go get him. We're trying to keep him down. I look at Mike. He knows what's happening. He tells me right away, I already got the kids out of the car. You get him away from the car.
He's like, I do more before 5 a.m. than most people do all day. I already got the
whole family out to my recollection he was up there directing traffic checking on the other car traffic's piling up on both ends so we dragged this man maybe about 20 feet away from the car The fire's only getting bigger. Let's pull him further away. We actually get him onto the main road, which is probably about 30, 40 feet away. I'm looking at Mike.
He's running back and forth, making sure everything's going clear. A lot of traffic, no ambulance, no fire trucks, no cops have shown up yet. We're all there leaning on this guy, trying to keep him calm, letting him know your kids are okay. They're already out of the car. He's got blood all over his face, all over his shirt. I look to my right.
With all the traffic lights and everything that's happening, all those car lights, I I see five women running up to us in club gear, heels, skirts, everything. They're just yelling at us. We're nurses. We work in the ER. Oh, my God.
This is great. Sexy nurses.
We can take care of it from here. We got it. Like, don't worry about it. We got it because we're just a bunch of kids. We're all 18, 19 year olds. Let's let them do their thing. We stand up and I'm starting to think cops are going to show up. They're going to ask questions. We've been doing our own thing. And as soon as I start thinking about that, I hear like a click click coming from the car.
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Chapter 4: What challenges did the narrator face during the rescue?
played smart so i talked to mike about it i feel like in the time it happened he said he blacked out but now it's kind of come back to him and he said he can clearly remember getting into the car to pull the man out he saw the dashboard melting we all remember his hat had been singed his trucks were all black and the kids were fine so the next morning when mike was leaving he saw the cops out there doing an investigation so he pulled over to ask him he's like hey i did your job last night for you give me some info
Well, this happened. He's like, yeah, I was the one that pulled them out. He's like, oh, do you want to leave a report? He's like, no, absolutely not. We found out everybody came out of it just fine. The other car looked like it had just had damage, but that Cadillac, I got in it really bad.
Scary.
Saved the day.
I've always been very curious about it, but that was almost 20 years ago. So it's kind of hard to look back on reports and find out what might have happened.
What kind of town is it? Is there like military close?
No, it's kind of like a port town. We're in between South Padre and Laredo. Really big on culture. We're very proud of ourselves. 956. Everybody that moves out of here to bigger cities will tell you the one thing they miss the most is the food. Austin's okay. San Antonio's better. We're probably the best. Wow.
No kidding. In what? Tex-Mex? Is that what we're calling it?
Tex-Mex, tacos, barbacoa, tamales. Oh, keep talking. In fact, Mike actually lives in Colorado now. And that's what he was telling me. He's like, that's the one thing I miss the most. Yeah.
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Chapter 5: What unexpected events occurred after the accident?
You know how there's only a few copies of us? Exactly.
I was just about to say. There's cookie cutters. And then they change little tiny things. Just like a couple tinies.
That's right. For deniability.
Hello. Hi, how are you?
Good. Can you hear us, Jane?
Yeah, I can hear you. Can you hear me?
Wonderfully. We're already charmed by your accent. Where are you?
I'm in the UK. I'm from England. Oh, wonderful.
So what time is it there right now? Seven?
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Chapter 6: How did the narrator's family react to the situation?
And so I think we trick ourselves.
But there is this also added layer of you're embarrassed. Of course. It'd be best if no one ever knew. And it's like, we think we're so unlovable that if we were to do something like that, like we got to hide that.
Yeah. I held that thought until I stood up and I couldn't put my left leg on the ground.
Ah.
And I had what we call trainers, you call sneakers. So I took the sneaker off and my foot was swelling. I was on my own in the house. My husband was out doing last minute chores before the wedding. And my daughter was due any minute to wrap up final arrangements. So I started to cry. Yeah. And I went down the stairs on my bottom like a baby. Yeah.
Got to the bottom of the stairs, switched onto my knees, crawled down the hallway on my knees, got to the stairs. We have a cupboard under the stairs and dragged some crutches out.
Oh, that's convenient.
Because I had knee surgery. What if they were in the attic again and you put the ladder back?
I just got to get back up there to get those crutches.
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Chapter 7: What lessons were learned from the wild experience?
The National Health Service is free for accident and emergency. It's perfect. The issue is... The system has an infinite demand and a finite resource and it can't cope. So people are readily used to spending hours waiting for treatment as an emergency. If you're in a road traffic accident, it's different. You know, if it's life threatening, it's different.
The challenge comes if you need a hip replacement or a knee replacement and you're on a waiting list.
How long might you wait?
Could be six months. It could be a year. It could be three years. There's a big backlog in the system because of COVID.
Oh, wow.
Every emergency I've ever had, having my daughter, no complaints at all.
Okay, great. And the free part's really nice. You just left the hospital and that was it. You waved goodbye, right?
Yeah, we pay from our salaries. We have taxes and something called national insurance and that contributes to the cost, but it doesn't cover all of it. But yeah, it does the best it can under the circumstances. And that day it saved me.
Yeah. Okay. Wow.
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Chapter 8: How does the story conclude and what reflections are shared?
My favorite boy's name is Roman. Roman. That's been my favorite boy's name forever. And that was going to be my boy's name. And then, of course, I had three daughters.
But that's what happened to us, and we just said, fuck it. We were like, yeah, we're going to have a boy. He's going to be named Lincoln. Uh-oh, it's a girl. Okay, still going to be named Lincoln. So Roman as a girl could have been radical.
Definitely could have been, but I couldn't get my husband on board, so there we go.
Husbands, who needs them?
I'll send him a letter.
For sure. So, Dani, where are you?
I am in Germany. Oh, my goodness.
This is our second international call in a row.
Oh, cool.
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