Armchair Anonymous: Little League/Coaching

23:38So I've got two strikes on him, no balls. Right before I throw the third pitch, I look over at my dad and he's just got this look on his face. He nods his head up and down like, yeah, you know what to do. I love your dad. This is uncharacteristic of you, Monica. You're voting for violence. This is not like you. Right? Yeah, you never go for violence, Monica. I know. This is my role. This little shit deserves it. Third pitch, I throw it as hard as I possibly can right at this kid's body. I didn't throw it at his head. I wasn't trying to kill him. That was nice of you. Monica's upset, but continue.

24:11You could have, but you showed some mercy. The kid panics when he sees the ball coming at him. And instead of turning away from it, he opens his body to it. And it just lands right in the middle of his chest. Everyone can hear the thud. And he immediately falls to the ground. He throws his bat and he just starts bawling. Oh, okay. So now did it turn, Monica? Or are you still in? I'm still kind of in. I mean, he's definitely an incel right now. That I do know is what the product of this was. The umpire was finally like, hey, you can take your base to first base. And about that time, his mom had come down out of the stands, out onto the field and took the kid out of the game and they left completely.

24:53The country? Maybe. Amongst all of that drama, I looked up in the stands to my mom and she was pissed off like I could tell. At you or your dad? Well, she knew I had done it on purpose. She had a hunch that he was behind the whole thing. Of course, yeah. So later that night, we got a pretty good lecture about how terrible the lesson that is for a nine-year-old. Uh-huh, yeah. Fair. Sure, sure. But I felt vindicated. I loved every second of it. Oh, good, good, good, good. Yeah. I hope that's the last time he opened his mouth to a girl. But I'm afraid it maybe got worse. I'm afraid, too. I know love's the answer, Monica.

25:28It's hard. Tell him love is the answer. He sucks. Well, the funniest part of the story is years later, I ended up having a one night stand with this guy. No. Stop it. Stop it. Wait, wait, wait, wait. You got to give us a little more than that. Under what circumstance? I got to love this left turn. Did you give him blue balls? Was this like a long game? I ended up going to high school with him. And when this all happened, I didn't make the connection at this time. I didn't realize it was the same kid until later on. And I don't know if he made the connection either. Obviously, he wasn't too bad about it.

26:02But let's just say he was about as good and bad as he was at playing baseball. Oh, this piece of shit. I mean, the bar is fucking low. No, he sucks. He sucks. We knew it then and we know it now. That's right. Oh, wow. Oh, my God. I love that you hooked up with him. That's crazy. What would you do in that situation, Dax, if a kid said something when you were girls? It's really funny you would bring this up because I didn't foresee this would ever be a thing that I would have to deal with having girls. But I'll leave them for you to guess. But one of them has a classmate that keeps touching her inappropriately.

26:38And she has told her like very directly, do not touch me. Again, I'm going to be a little sympathetic. This girl's probably got something going on. I don't know why she is this way. Oh, it's a girl doing it? Yeah, I hate to. I have to assume something's not great at home. At home, yeah. And they're young. And I said, okay, well, here's what we're going to do. we're going to make the teacher aware of this. And that is step one. And if it does not correct itself, you have my full blessing to do whatever you want. If someone's ever touching you inappropriately, whatever has to happen, I stand by you in this situation.

27:09So weirdly, that just came up. I approve of that. Okay. TBD. Teacher first. You know, you do all the protocols. Yeah. But you don't let someone touch your body if you don't want them to. And again, it breaks my heart because I think this girl's probably already got some stuff going on. So I don't also want her to get beat up but i've seen delta go after her older sister and uh i mean that's it's obvious yeah it's kind of obvious i've seen delta go after her older sister and i have had the thought i hope no one ends up on the other end of her because she is a feisty motherfucker i love it it's good quality oh megan what is yeah that was fantastic i love that story monica's horny i want to say something real quick before i go i know you don't like talking about day seven but May of 2022, I was in a gnarly relapse.

27:56And one day I had a particularly bad night. And the next day I was home alone and decided to listen to day seven again. And when you started talking about how it just hit you all of a sudden that you needed to get honest with Kristen and Monica, that sat with me and it was just like, oh my God, I have to get honest with my wife and everyone. And so later that night, I told her everything I'd been hiding. And a week later, I got into treatment and I've been sober ever since. Oh, my God. Congratulations. That's so beautiful. Yes, yes, yes. Oh, you're killing it. Yeah. How liberating is that, huh?

28:30To finally stop carrying all that? It's great. In fact, we're going through some tough stuff with my son right now. And I'm like, thank God I'm sober, man. It would be way worse. That's the big gift, right? You can show up for people. That's right. Thanks for telling me that. Yes, of course. You guys take care. You two keep proselytizing. Okay, I will. All right. Bye. Bye. She's awesome. And I love her. I hate that boy. Yeah, you really hate that boy. Was it you? Really brought up some stuff. No, I didn't talk to girls like that. I was a nice boy-ish. You talk to me mean. You talk to me mean. I know.

29:02You're a worthy adversary. Maddie. Now, you know I say I don't like when people spell standard names differently. I'm really enjoying the spelling of this. What is it? M-A-D-I. Oh, I like that. Right? That's good. I reversed my position. Reverse back. Hello. Hi. I was just saying, Maddie, I generally don't like when people spell a standard name differently. Yet, here I am. I love M-A-D-I. Thanks. My name's Madison. And so when I was little and people called me Maddie, I just cut off the S-O-N. Ditch the sun. Smart. Efficient. Okay, Maddie, you have a Little League story? I do. For context, I grew up in Northern Virginia, which is kind of intense with sports, kind of intense with academics.

29:42Really quick, why? Is that where George Washington is? What's there? Why is it academically hard? It might just be because it's outside of D.C., but I know that it's like nationally ranked. Wow. Oh, OK. And I did crew. I rode for my high school and we had to practice five days a week. We had races on Saturdays and it was a whole day affair. Also, we were required to go to this training camp every spring break and it was in South Carolina. Our whole team would get in a bus and we would drive eight or nine hours down to South Carolina to go to this crew camp. and we would practice and train for six to eight hours every day for a whole week.

30:18It was fun. It was a cool destination. It was a Boy Scout camp. So the place itself was maybe a little bit run down, but it was fun for high school. We were having a great time. We were a little sleep deprived. It was all together. Good experience. And we were down there and I've got two kind of related stories to share from the same trip. Also, our coach was probably as old as I am now. I'm like 27. I don't think this guy could have been older than I am. Oh, oh, well, hold on. Don't worry yet. Don't worry. He was in the military and then wasn't anymore. I think he had some sort of experience with crew and he took himself very seriously.

30:55But we as a team maybe didn't take him as seriously as he would have maybe liked for us to. I can picture it perfectly. Yeah. So he had the idea that we should go on a night row, which isn't a thing. Never done it before. never done it since, but he thought we should go rowing at night by the moonlight. And as an adult now, I know that there are requirements for the kinds of lights that you need to have on a boat to go out in the water at night. You need a little light in the front and a light in the back. We didn't have that. The coach Skiff did not have that. And it's kind of a silly atmosphere.

31:27It's very leisurely. It's a little whimsical. And we're out here and we're rowing and something hits the bottom of our boat. Can I ask, are you in a lake or a river? We're in a lake and you're not supposed to keep going if something hits your boat you're supposed to stop because the rudder underneath can break off so we stopped rowing and whatever it is that's just hit our boat is now sliding towards the front of our boat but in a way of like a living creature no like it's not going in the same direction as the current and we're in south carolina so we're sure that this is an alligator that's underneath her boat.

32:00Of course. Oh, I hate your coat. I'm going straight to gators. So that alleged alligator then hits like thwacks the bottom of the boat in the front. So we're spooked. It's dark. And we've been messing around this whole time. So the tatter from us is not probably alerting our coach that anything's wrong. The girl in the front of the boat then starts telling everybody that there is water coming in to the boat from underneath her feet. Oh. We're trying desperately to get the attention of our coach. He comes over. It's really hard to get a little motorized boat next to the really small crew boat that we have.

32:35So he's trying to investigate and see what's going on, but he can't really see. So he just takes our word for it and he gets on his coach voice and he's like, all right, we got a power 10 all the way back to the dock. So now this goes from like leisurely funny and then we're rowing full speed all the way back to the dock. Can I ask a quick question? Did he even bring a flashlight? Did he shine a light at the boat to see if water was coming on. It did shine a light. I can't remember if it was his phone flashlight or if it was an actual flashlight. We know it was the phone. Oh, geez. Okay. So we get back.

33:06He sees that there is a hole. We can't take that boat out anymore because we have to repair it back in Virginia. So that boat is out of commission.

33:29Then we fast forward to the last day of our crew camp. We would always do like a scrimmage. On this day, it was really cold, maybe 45 or 50 degrees, and it was really windy. And other coaches had safety concerns about putting us out on the water because there was whitecaps and it was really windy. Obviously, our ex-military coach is having none of that. So he determines that we should probably go on this race, even if it's just the boats from our school. So he's like, we're going to have our own scrimmage. It's going to be great. Oh boy. So we're mad and it's hard to kind of row against the waves and we're generally not having a super great time.

34:07And we get like five or 10 minutes out from the dock. And then he realizes that the other boat that was with us is lagging behind. So he tells us to pull our boat over into this little cove off the main waterway of the lake. And he says he's going to go back and check on the other group. So he goes back We're sitting there and the waves are lapping up on the boat and it's uncomfortable. It's splashing us like it's really cold. Quickly, the boat starts taking on water. The waves are coming over the side of the boat. We start trying to bail out the boat with our water bottles, with our shoes and by just splashing water out.

34:45That's clearly doing nothing. I don't know how much time elapsed between when he told us to pull over and when we're like way steep in water. but I think it was five to 10 minutes. And I'm talking like I was up to my waist. The boat was underneath the water, but we were still sitting in it. Oh my God. He's coming over and we're like arms up in the air, screaming, panicking. There's crying, there's laughing. Everything's kind of going on. At any point, did anyone think to row to shore and get off the fucking boat? No one thought about that. And I couldn't tell you why there wasn't like a shore shore that we could have rode to it was houses with docks and like a seawall but nobody thought that we should move or do anything right because you've been bludgeoned into submission by a coach yeah the military is dicey because sometimes you gotta break that chain of command he comes over and he yells at us and he says listen to me you need to row and at the time that was the most hilarious instruction that could have been given because we're almost sunk and it's hard to get the oars up out of the water.

35:49And so nobody listened to him right away. And then his complex kicks in and he's like, I know what the hell I'm doing. You need to row. And so he's yelling at us. So then we do start trying to get our little oars up out of the water and like push the water back and we get a little bit of momentum and we come up out of the water a little bit, but barely. And then his next instruction to us is that we need to get rid of our oars because these boats are really skinny and the oars are really long. And so the oars are kind of keeping the boat balanced. And the goal is essentially for us to abandon the ship and flip it over.

36:23Oh, we need to jump off on opposite sides of the boat. We all get off. And at this point, my memory is a little bit fuzzy because we're in the water and it's freezing. And we know there's alligators in there. At some point during this predicament, a family came out on their dock and they saw what was happening. A bunch of young girls dying. And some man yelling. Or some dishonorably discharged cadet is screaming. They must have beckoned to us or to our coach to say that we could come to their dock if we needed to get out of the water. And our coach informed us that he was going to rescue the boat.

37:01He was like, I'm going to take the boat back so that the boat is safe. So he hooks the boat up to a tow line and it peaces out of the situation. What? while you guys are just in the water? Yeah, we're in the water. We're 14. I'm just really glad we could all swim. Did you have life vests on? No. And we had layers on. Like I had a sweatshirt and this little vortex jacket because it was cold. So we're like flailing around. He leaves with the boat. We go up onto the dock of these strangers and then they took us into their house and gave us towels and tea. So luckily they were good Samaritan strangers.

37:36Very well. You could have never heard from the nine of us again because he just left. What a champ. We had to call a parent chaperone from the home phone of this nice family's living room. And they had to drive from the camp to come get us and bring us back. Oh, how many girls are in the boat? There are nine. So there's eight that row. And then there's one that coaches or is like the captain. Oh, wow. They had nine girls in their kitchen trying to warm up. Did that coach get fired? He didn't come back the next year. Now, how did you guys perform that year? Sounds like you had gone through hell and back.

38:09Maybe you would be great after all that. We were all right that year. I think that there were other schools that were definitely a lot more competitive than us, but our boat did okay. Luckily, it didn't go in the direction you were fearing it would. Alligators. No, even before that. You heard 26. Oh, I did. I did. Oh, yeah, young folks. So at least that wasn't on the table. But he sucks. Oh, I bet he was the boy in the baseball game. You think he grew up and wanted to take out his frustration against women? Yes. On women? It's a through line. Wow. Well, you made it. I'm sure you guys had a blast ripping him apart every time he wasn't looking or listening.

38:46That's a bonding. That part's fun. Absolutely. It went down in history. We talked about it for years and years and years after. Well, Maddie, what a disaster. Thanks for telling us that. Yeah, absolutely. Thanks for having me. Have a great day. All right. Nice meeting you. You too. Bye. Bye. Hello. Hello. I'm going to cry. Don't cry yet. Cry at the end. Save it for the end. What name are we going to use? So my name is Mary today. Mary. Okay, Mary, Mary. We love when someone wants a fake name. That feels like it's very promising. Like maybe there's residual legal issues or something. Mary, are you allowed to tell us where you're at?

39:22Or do you think that'll be too revealing? I'm in the Midwest. That works. That's enough of a stereotype as I need. And of course, I'm changing some of the details to protect the innocent. Okay, great. Wow. Back when my daughter was in kindergarten, we were trying to get her into different activities to make friends. The sport that she chose first was t-ball. She was so excited about it, made lots of friends through all of that. And as you know, with any group sport, you get added to a group text with tons of people. If you're the parent, right? If you're the parent, you're in the group text, for sure.

39:51And so right off the bat, the first week, getting tons of notifications, I put it on silent. And I'm thinking, I'll check this when I can. So around that same time, something that you should know is I was going through a divorce with my ex and he was having a good time. Different lifestyle. He's single. He's free. Okay. He's not really dealing with the T-ball. He's not dealing with the T-ball. It's okay. Hard to be present with T-ball when you have this other life happening. During that time, I also wanted to take my kiddo on vacation. You're just trying to make life as normal as it can be when you're going through something like that.

40:23And so I invited a new T-ball mom to go on this trip with me. And again, daughter was very excited. We actually go to Florida. So we're out on the beach, right? We're doing fun things. Not looking at my phone. Notifications are off. We get back to the room at the end of the night, pick up my phone, at least 50 notifications from the group text. I'm nervous because I'm thinking, oh no, someone got hurt at the T-ball. You know, something innocent happened. And so I look at the text messages and the very first one in the list is my ex-husband. Uh-oh. He's asking for a sexual favor from someone. Oh, my God.

41:05And that was obviously not intended for the T-ball group sex. Sure. Oh, God. If you're comfortable, what did it say? Do you want to spell it out instead? Do you want to draw a picture for us and we'll describe it? Can we do like a base? Yeah, sure. Oh. Third base. He wants oral? He's requesting third base. Okay. From a specific person? He thinks he's texting with just one member of this group text. Oh, somebody on the group text? Yeah, so he met some other t-baller mom, and then he now thinks he's got a side thing going, but he accidentally, he went to her name, Gail, and then got too hasty because he's in the mood for third base, and then he fires off a text, and he didn't realize it was the one where they list all the options.

41:45No! Is that right? Is that what happened? It's so close, but it wasn't someone from the Dexchain. I'm looking at these messages, right? And I'm with this fellow mom on the T-ball team. And I look up at her and she looks at me and our kids are with us. And I'm like, I don't know what to do. So you had some dads that were cool about it, like making jokes like, oh, lucky guy, you are. Oh, boy. Y 'all come over and do that. Oh, my God. No one knows what to do. Did any women say, how dare you? For sure. Okay. It got to the point where finally the coach stepped in and was like, hey, guys, this group chat is for kindergarten T-ball.

42:25So let's keep it to that and move on. So needless to say, the rest of the T-ball season was very awkward because, you know, I walk up to a mom and you know they want to ask you about it. You must have felt so self-conscious. You're also going through a divorce. I feel like all this would just be so hard to deal with. So much. But yeah, I'm going through divorce. Yes, my husband's clearly on the war path. And now you all know. She doesn't know, thank God. But that people know that your daughter's dad, it's too much. Men, keep it in your pants for a little while longer. Be considerate, right? Okay, two questions.

43:06Did your ex-husband respond ever after he realized what he did? He said, sorry to the group. You know, wasn't intended, obviously, for this group text. And did you sidebar with him? Oh, yeah. Oh, you did? Okay. Now, how did that conversation go? I was very upset, obviously. You know, I was so embarrassed. Again, you're just going through all this already. And in the moment, it felt like my world was ending, honestly. And I was so angry, but we're fine now. And it's a story to tell. We've come a long way. Great co-parenting relationship. How many years ago was that? 12 years ago. Wow. Oh, boy. Ooh-ee.

43:38I can't imagine the searing heat that would shoot through my body the second I realized I had done that. I can't imagine a more embarrassing thing to all the parents.

43:53Yeah, as much as you suffered, I guarantee he too, probably. I don't know. We don't know how he is. I doubt he high-fived anyone after that. Did he remarry? He did a couple of times. A couple of times. Okay. But yeah, I'd say we all lived happily ever after and we're good. Well, I'm glad everyone's good or I'm glad you're good. Weird question. Did any of the fellow T-ball dads see this as a door opening opportunity for you? That's so funny that you said that, but no. I could see someone going like, ah, this poor gal. She's got embarrassed by her husband. I'll take advantage of her in her most vulnerable time.

44:25Well, just like, hey, you want to get frisky too to show them? No. No, out of generosity and kindness. Okay. Okay. You don't like that one bit. How long have you been listening? I started listening during COVID. I'm a very uptight person, as you can probably tell by I changed my name. And I even told her I wanted to change my voice when I was telling the story. But listening to your podcast has just like opened my mind in the best way. I learned so much. I actually have a few people in my life that struggle with addiction. And it's hard for you to understand, right, when you haven't been through it.

44:59It's been life changing. And I just thank you so much for doing that. Oh, that makes me so happy, Mary. Oh, my God. What a story. Thank you so much for telling us. Thank you. Have a good one. All right. Take care. if you could see her face what a sweet lady so so nice person that deserves to be on that text chain oh it's just hard because you're embarrassed but you're also sad there's a lot happening jealousy you feel betrayed oh that's a sad one that was a hell of a week of her life i don't know if i should state the obvious i don't think i should do it what do you say men are terrible A lot of bad men in this crop.

45:34A lot of men doing some not so hot stuff in this crop. I'm just going to say that. Yeah, we didn't have any ladies who really shit the bed ethically in this episode. It was pretty much every story had an unbecoming man. Sporty men don't tend to be the most evolved of our kind. Yeah, I think we could probably agree on that. You think so? Because CTE? Probably that, yeah. I don't mean to laugh at CTE. It's not funny. Yeah, I just think if you just live in the sports world, you're just with other boys and men all the time. Might be the sport itself. I find basketball players to be fairly evolved.

46:10They're just so regimented and disciplined. Okay, this is great. You know who I think are the most evolved? Soccer players. Yeah, I also like soccer players too. Because that was kind of the alternative sport when I was growing up. If you weren't like a jock-jock, but your parents wanted you on a team, that was kind of what you did. I like both of those types. What do we think is the worst? Chess players. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Arrogant. Know-it-alls. We know it's the worst. Football? I love everyone.

46:43Well, it would make a bit of sense that as you chart the violence of the sport. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, yeah. I mean, that's not terribly hard to imagine. It's not a big leap. You're probably over-indexing in testosterone. You've been told to be tough nonstop. Exactly. Yeah. All right. Okay, love you. Well, I love you. And I'm just so grateful that my kids aren't currently yet in. They're not in any of those. No. That's kind of funny. Well. Although someone is trying out today for something. I thought Lincoln played soccer, though. For a minute. Yeah. It didn't take. Well, no. It was just, I think that team only assembled to play a couple games, and then they did that.

47:21It was like her school. Remember she wanted to quit? And you were like, no. Remember back then? Well, that was when she was a baby. Yeah. That's what I'm talking about. Yeah, that's back when we were in the phase of like they have to be in something. Yeah. And then why, I don't know. Yeah, not necessary. Yeah. All right, love you. Love you. Do you want to 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 going to ask some random questions, and with the help of Arm Cherries, we'll get some suggestions.

47:57On the flyer I'm Dish On the flyer I'm Dish Enjoy