Armchair Anonymous: Stealing II

0:00Wondery 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. I'm joined by Lily Padman. Hi. Now, this prompt really hits home for you personally because you're a known thief. No. You're a known and admitted thief. Okay, I was once a thief in my younger years, particularly age six. Yeah, I wonder what percentage of people get through their whole life without stealing. It's got to be very low, right?

0:40Everyone's done a little klepto. I hate that I'm about to do this. This is not my normal MO. Okay. I do kind of think shoplifting is a female. Heavy. Yeah, it leans female heavy as far as the vices. Well, I think that people who have the kleptomania. Yeah. We could even look it up now. But yeah, I do think it does skew. I know. It's interesting. It is. There's some kink about it. I guess because like, you know, men murder. Yeah, that's our thing. Women. Wait till we cover that. Women kind of, I think it's still connected to like nesting and having things and squirreling away things for the babies.

1:29Well, also, evolutionarily, you would see things and you would take them and you'd bring them back to your village. You'd see them there in nature. Yes. You'd gather them and take them. Yeah. You wouldn't pay for them. Sure. So I think it's in you. Yeah. And like me, I have to murder. You know, people come into the village. They want to take the children and the wives who are busy taking. Scurrying around. Stealing. Yeah. I will be. I want to be very, very, very clear. I've never shoplifted. Never? No. Okay. I have, but I really stopped young. I don't think I did it as an adult, other than when it was like past 2 a.m.

2:03and I had to have alcohol. Oh, then you can't. That doesn't count. Yes, that counts. No, that does not count. Of course that counts. If it's for your survival, it doesn't count. And remember you tried to. That's like when a poor beggar steals a loaf of bread in the 1700s London. Nope. You can't put them in prison for that. Get them the bread. Remember when you tried to steal the parking meter? Not try. I succeeded. I thought you couldn't get it out. No, I fucking got it out and drug it all the way up to my apartment. And Brie woke up, obviously, before me and said, why is there a parking with the whole cement base?

2:36Yeah. I can't believe I didn't tear any tendons getting it up into my apartment. And as I told you, there was just a scrape mark for a block where I drug it down the sidewalk. You didn't do a good job hiding it. Barney Fife could have cracked this case wide open. Okay. Okay. Without further ado, please enjoy Stealing.

3:16Shelly? That's me. Hi. I'm so grateful for your headset. You sound impeccable. Oh, thank you. You'll be happy to know these are my nine-year-old's Nintendo headphones. which I ridiculed him last week about spending so much money on. Now here we are. It worked out. And the nine-year-old has his own funds? Saved up allowance, and he's obsessed with headphones, even though he's not allowed to chat on the Nintendo. Okay, great. Oh, how cute. He just wanted to be like the other big boys who have headphones. And what's on his list of chores that earns him this? He takes the big rolly trash can all the way down our long driveway and back up and feeds the dog and makes his bed.

3:54Oh, okay. These are good. What about dishes? Too young. Our cabinets are weirdly high. So I haven't graduated the kids to dishes yet. At nine is a little slippery. You're dealing with a lot of broken dishes. And where do you live, Shelly? I am in a small town about an hour north of Sacramento called Orville. And have you lived there your whole life? I moved here when I was 12, which is right about the time that this story comes into play. Wonderful. So we've set the scene. Please tell us. I grew up in the Bay Area and I moved here in seventh grade. It was a very formative year for me like you.

4:30And my junior high years, I was in with all the bad girls. It was just party time through seventh and eighth grade. And would you say that's because you were new to the school and they were the easiest group to fall into? I guess so. One friend just saw me sitting at a table and came up and said, you're mine now. And I just went with it and then drank and smoked and made out with boys in bushes. When it was time to go to high school, I had this big epiphany and decided I didn't want to be around those people anymore. And I switched to the other high school in town. So then I was with more good girlfriends.

5:01It was my freshman year of high school and I'm hanging out with my good girlfriend, Ashley. And suddenly I see one of my old bad girlfriends come storming across campus looking for me. And she's like, Shelly, our other friend, Teresa, she thinks she's pregnant and she's grounded. She's like DEF CON 5 grounded. She cannot leave the house. She needs a pregnancy test. What a funny dichotomy. It is like a very childhood thing, grounding versus a very adult thing, pregnancy. I know. So it's up to us to get her a pregnancy test. And the school I go to is down the road from the grocery store. And God forbid a bunch of 14 year old girls actually buy a pregnancy test.

5:39So we decide that we're going to steal it. I bet that and condoms are the number one stolen thing. There's a reason that they store them right in the same area together, right underneath the big window where the manager can see what you don't think about when you're 14. The three of us, my good girlfriend, Ashley, and my bad girlfriend, Jenny, we head on down to the grocery store and we're devising our big plan. We walk in the door, they're going to do recon, and I divert off to go to the deli to get a big pickle out of the big pickle jar because what else am I going to do? I love the big pickles.

6:10And this was back when you would just get it in a bag and pay for it at the checkout. So we go to the aisle with the personal care goods and we have this big elaborate plan where we lean in and we get it and walk down the whole little way and there's a pet display and we make this big show of like leaning in to pretend to look at how cute a dog on a label is to something like, oh, how cute while she's shoving it in her back. Yeah, this is an elaborate plan. We barely make it halfway down another aisle and we get stopped by a manager, you know, you stole, you come with me right now. And we get taken back up to the back office, the three of us.

6:48Because there were cameras? I realized this later in hindsight, literally the back of the store had a second story with the offices and those double mirrored walls. So they were looking straight at us. Oh no. So we're in the office and they full blown call the cops. This would have been 2001. Zero tolerance policy over there. Yes. A cop shows up and we're in this office. We're all sitting down and there's the manager and there's the cop. And I had a rough childhood. I saw a lot. So when this cop gets there, I could just smell the bullshit a little bit. They're kind of acting like Keenan from the scared straight skits on SNL.

7:28They think they're going to really put one to us. And I'm just kind of like, really? Yeah. So they put the three of us in handcuffs. This is the only grocery store in our small town. So everybody there probably knows who we are or our parents. We're walking down and I don't know what got into me, but I decide to tell this cop that's leading me, I go, I haven't paid for my pickle yet. Yeah. Nasty. I see his face, that dichotomy between let's get this shit over with and I can't let her steal a pickle when I'm trying to arrest her for stealing. So he has to divert me off to the checkout. He was just so pissed while we're waiting in line for me to buy my 59-cent pickle.

8:11We get through the checkout register and I'll go in and get in the cop car and get taken down to the station. Oh my God, this is insane. For three little girls still in a brink, as he says. They didn't put the sirens on or anything. They didn't go that far. No, no, no. But I was very surprised to learn there's no cushions in the backseat. It's just that hard plastic, which makes sense. Because so many men are soiling themselves as they get put in there. Oh, true. So we go to the station and all they're doing is calling our parents. We're not actually being booked or charged or anything. So good girlfriend Ashley's parents show up and they are horrified.

8:46Poor Ashley herself is horrified. She can't believe what she's gotten herself into. Her parents forbid her from ever speaking to me again. Jenny, being the one who actually shoved it in her backpack, may have gotten a little charge and had to stay longer. And then they call my parents and my mom and my older brother who had gotten out of prison a week prior for robbing a bank. No! Oh, my God. Oh, no. They show up, and they're just laughing. And I'm laughing because I can't take this serious enough. And we all just laugh our way home. And that was my first and last encounter with the law because I tried to steal a pregnancy test from a grocery store.

9:30But fun little P.S., The friend that we thought was pregnant, she was pregnant, had that baby. And then the daddy left her and had a baby with Jenny, the one who stole the test. What a twisty turny. What a fertile guy this guy was. He was not as good at the pullout method as he thought he was. Most people aren't as good as they think they are. We should have been stealing condoms instead. Yes. They need to be free. We're going to save a lot more money downriver. Exactly. If we make those free. I think they are now. You know, you go to the health clinics or Planned Parenthood and they just give you a handful of them.

10:05Can we go back to your brother? What age was he when he tried to knock off this bank? He was in his 20s and he was a pretty major meth addict slash drug dealer and one day was bored and walked into a bank with an empty Funyuns bag and had no weapon and just went up and asked for the money. I swear to God, I wish I would have found a news article and sent it to Emma. They loaded the Funyuns bag full of cash. He went outside and sat on a bench and ordered a pizza and waited for the cops to come and get him. And he spent like three years in prison. For being a dumbass. Because he was just so high.

10:43Nothing was making sense. It wasn't his first offense. But we still, to this day, make fun of him by calling him the Funyuns bandit.

10:52Did he end up finding sobriety? Not yet. Okay. Fingers crossed. Was this all in the 90s? Yeah, it was late 90s that he robbed the bank and it was 2001 when my brush was stealing. When I was little and cops would come and raid our house, I remember yelling at the cops once to stay out of my underwear drawer. But look at this. Now you have kids and your kids do chores and save their money. How beautiful. I always say I grew up with the very best bad example and I went the other way. Yeah. Congratulations. That's hard to do. Thanks. And last follow up. Did you and Ashley abide by the edict or were you friends anyways?

11:31It's a small school, so we certainly saw each other a lot, but it definitely stopped the sleepovers. I looked her up on Facebook a while back and she seems to be happy, married kids doing good as well. Jenny went to prison for beating up her mom. Oh, OK. You shouldn't beat up your mom. Well, I don't know. We don't know. Maybe the mom asked for it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I had a buddy in junior high, Nick Havostik, and his father did not want Nick to be friends with him and told him he couldn't be. And I've always thought this was so poetic. He looked his dad in the eyes and he said a wall of fire couldn't stand in between me and Dax.

12:08Oh, isn't that incredible? That is sweet. A wall of fire. Oh. Well, it was a delight meeting you, Shelley. Yes. Thanks for telling us that story. Thank you so much, guys. And you really did ruin the stainless bottle industry with the mouse story, because this morning I'm like, I just can't. I haven't forgotten about it. I think about it every day. She lost us that as a category of advertisers in the mouse. Advertisers have not come in to fill the void. Yeah. You got to hit the now gains or whatever the glass ones are now. That's right. Well, thank you, guys. I love the show. I'm a big fan. Thanks.

12:42Bye. Hello. Hi. How are you? What name do we want to use? Kind of went back and forth where I should use my real name or a fake name. Let's go with Jack. Jack? Yeah, your shirt says Jackalope. So that was easy for us. I was just in Nashville in July visiting some buddies of mine. Jackalope Brewing. Cute! Where are you at in the world? I'm in the Hudson Valley, New York. Oh, lovely. And are you happy that people are moving there or are you upset? Because that seems to be the hottest spot in the country right now. It's a mixed bag. It's cool because there's better restaurants. There's better things to do.

13:17But I'm just outside of Beacon. A lot of people are moving up here and have been the last 10 years from Brooklyn, mostly. I did. I moved up here 20 years ago from Brooklyn. And we did all kinds of really fun street art projects and projection mappings and live events. And that gets everybody interested in moving here. And the money comes in here. And then we can no longer afford to live there. Yeah. Yeah. That's the catch 22. too. Have you been to First Bloom, Alison Roman's store? I think it's in Hudson Valley. No. Oh, you got to check it out. The Hudson Valley is pretty big. Yeah. Okay. My last question, and we'll get into stealing.

13:54Are you close at all to John D. Rockefeller's house? Do you know where that was at on the Hudson? I'm kind of obsessed with going there. I imagine it's up north of Poughkeepsie, up by the Roosevelt Mansion in that area, by the CIA, the Culinary Institute. Yeah, that sounds right. It's right by First Bloom. I'm pretty sure. It's in the shadows of First Bloom. Okay, so you have a stealing story. I'm going to call this the greatest beer run ever. You want to say part two because I think that's a movie. It is? Yeah, the greatest beer run. Oh. Jack. Efron. Zach Efron. Oh, didn't that. Jack Efron. My buddy, we'll call him Mac, got into all kinds of nonsense in high school and never got caught and had this charmed existence of doing all kinds of after hours madness, sneaking around, breaking into places, never really doing anything bad, but just getting into some adventures and driving around until we got lost and finding our way back kind of thing.

14:49This takes place in North Jersey, where we grew up. It was the summer of 92 or 93, just graduated or about to graduate high school. We were both waiting tables at night at different restaurants. And during the day, we were working as sort of a gatekeeper, badge checker guys at this private swim lake. Families could come. It's a lake on the beach with slides and tennis courts. And there's a YMCA camp. But we were the kids at the gate like, hey, what's up? Cars would drive up. Do you have any guests? That's$2. We'd collect their$2. And we're basically sitting on a picnic table getting sun and really easy, cushy job.

15:28We became friends with the lifeguards at the beach. We always hung out with them after hours, jumping off the diving platforms, playing with the scuba gear, and just getting into all kinds of fun after hours nonsense. This one particular night, we had a few beers, campfire, hanging out. We're winding down, and the lifeguards went home. It was just me and my buddy Mac. We decided to break into the snack bar. Of where you work. I was texting with Mac yesterday, actually. I wasn't sure of the year because we worked there for a year or two. and I think this was the year after. Oh, okay. So we didn't work there anymore, but we were still friends and go there after hours and there were no security cameras or anything.

16:07So you could just go there, go swimming, have a good time. Everybody's gone. It's just me and Mac. We're like, let's get some snacks. So we climb sort of over the door. It's just sort of like a shack with a padlock, but there's a gap. So you could climb over the wall and then get into the snack bar. Stole some Swedish fish. And I'm like, wow, you know, we're out of beer. It's late. Nothing's open. and he's like, I know where I can get some beer. I'm like, where? He's like, let's get in your car, we'll go.

16:49We get in the car, we have an 84 Dodge Caravan. This is my hand-me-down vehicle, white with wood paneling on the side. We called it the dog house. this thing wouldn't die you would get close to it with the key and it would just start we get in the doghouse and he's like okay there's a racket and swim club a couple towns over my parents play there and sometimes they have tournaments and when they have tournaments by the tennis courts they have a beer tent sort of set up with a keg i'm like a keg he's like yeah we go in there it's after midnight country road winding i'd never been there before we see the tennis courts coming up in the darkness.

17:28I'm like, okay, so where is he? He's on the other side of the tennis courts and the road kind of winds around the tennis courts to the main building. So he gets out right by the tennis courts and he's like, go around the corner and meet me on the other side. So I get out, he runs off into the darkness. I don't know where I'm going. I'm just following the road around and I see him coming out of the darkness, carrying the keg. I got it. But there's more. What are you talking about? There's more. It's like, come with me. I need help stop the car we put the keg in the car follow him over to the tennis courts and there's one of those co2 or nitrous or whatever the tank is that pressurizes the keg and there's a cooler sitting there with a tap and inside the cooler those copper cooling coils that go in there you fill it with ice and it chills the beer as it goes through the thing he's like let's take it all okay let's go you can't just take the keg somebody's gonna notice so we have to take everything so we We take everything, run back to the car, throw it in the car, casually drive the back roads back to my house.

18:27I forgot to mention, my parents, my brother, and my sister are all gone for a week or two. They left me home by myself. What a blessing. What a blessing. I was the middle kid. I watched my brother get in trouble. I figured out how to not get in trouble. My parents just trusted me. I never got caught, so it's okay. So we get back to my house, and we set it up in the backyard by the pool. You feel like kings at this point, I bet. It was the best. We're eating Swedish fish, drinking free beer by the pool. We go upstairs. It's late. And we fall asleep in the limbering room, which has a window that kind of looks over the backyard.

19:02Wake up in the morning to this pop. We just hear hissing and a big bang. So we go to the window. We look. And the lines had warmed up in the sun. And we never turned off the pressure to the keg from the pressure tank. And there's just beer spraying everywhere. Oh, gosh. All of it. so we run down there trying to grab the wines it's like firehouse just going crazy spring beer where we turn everything off we get everything fixed and hooked back up and that's most of the story the rest of it is what are we gonna do with the rest of this beer so we had a party that day oh that's fun so you got away with it absolutely totally got away with it boy that just made me so nostalgic i know what a time i know i wish you were 93 and aaron and i could go get into a little trouble.

19:47You brought back, this is a bad one. This isn't good. But Aaron and I, one time we were on a bit of a bender. We were probably 22 and we were up now. It was like day two, no drugs yet involved, but it was four in the morning and we were out of booze and we were like, what are we going to do? And we just were like, well, let's go to Meijer. There's a bunch of booze there, but after 2 AM, you can't get it. And so we just went to Meijer and then we just strolled through the cowboy doors into the back warehouse and then we just wandered around the warehouse found a half gallon of jack daniels put that in the winter coat and then just strolled out of the cowboy doors and went back to the car it was closed at the time no it's a 24 hour store but you can't buy booze after 2 a.m so we just went into the fucking storage room and just sniffed around until we found a pallet of jack daniels i remember that sort of thing i went to school in Northwest Ohio at Bowling Green and they would put the big chains across the coolers and stuff in the stores right at midnight or something.

20:47Right. But they can't lock the stock room door because people got to be in and out of there. So you just help yourself. You just go back there like you're doing. Don't help yourself. That's an amends I probably should make. I should just randomly send Meyer. $40 ,000. Well, no, I don't think it was that expensive. There's an Emotional cost. Yeah, pain and suffering. Well, Jack, it's wonderful to meet you. I love listening to you guys' shows and brings back a lot of memories. And the banter and the relationship you two have is awesome. I am not a day one listener, but I've listened for a couple of years now.

21:21And always when I'm in the car, I'm by myself. First thing I do, what's new? And I'm almost through all the back catalog. Wow. We appreciate that. We thank you. Yeah. Listen to the catalog, even if it's for one minute.

21:38all right well great meeting you brother be well thanks guys kelly can you hear us i can hear you you're in a closet i did my best to do right by monica thank you it sounds beautiful is it tilted or is the camera tilted the camera's tilted okay because it could have been a cool closet situation where it's like, you know. Like a Dr. Seuss closet? Yes. But don't you think all the garments would have been leaning gravity? They're in little pockets. Sure, sure. That could happen. But the garments themselves would not be perpendicular to the top. I wasn't good at physics. As we've established. Kelly, where are you?

22:21I'm in my daughter's closet outside Nashville in Nolensville. Where's that? In relation to Mount Juliet, the only place I know. So you hit Mount Juliet. You go a little bit south and hit Antioch area. And we're on down. So we're south of Brentwood next to Franklin. South of Percy Lake. What is it? Percy Priest. Yeah. And you like it there? How long have you lived there? I moved here in 08. My husband's from here. I like it. It's one of those things where it's like hard because it's changing a lot because everybody's finding out about it. Sorry. It's okay. It happens with good things. I don't think I started it.

22:57I think I was a late adopter. Well, we're happy to have you. Oh, OK. Obviously. You're an exception to the rule. OK. And what's getting better, more food options and stuff? Yeah, more food options and like more stuff that's close by. So we don't have to go as far into town to get access to things. And what's the downside? More traffic? Prices are higher? It's the mesh of the culture. I've lived in a lot of different places, moved around a lot. So I'm used to taking a step back and seeing how things kind of unfold, how people interact. and then kind of fitting into that. And I feel like sometimes people in any situation that don't have a lot of self-awareness come in and you don't do things fast in the South.

23:41I think you're tiptoeing around what I already learned while I was there is that there's a lot of Californians coming and the people can't stand it. And I love California. I love LA in particular. So I love the fact that people drive fast there with intention, get out of my way, know where you're going. So I can see both sides of that. But also here, they're very much relationship building people. So you can't bulldoze that. I was just sharing about this. I hope to think I'm like you, which is like, OK, I'm there. I'm going to follow how they do things. In my little town, I drive normally like an asshole.

24:17I mean, I drive fast and I want to get places. And in L.A., everyone does. And you're anonymous and you're never going to see these people again. So who gives a fuck? And then pretty quickly, I was like, oh, I'm going to see all these people. I'm passing at the fucking Tasty Freeze tonight and they're going to hate me and I got to straighten it up. They're going to get to know your car. Oh, yeah. I feel the same thing. So my kids in band and I'm like very involved in volunteering for that. So I'm very aware of not driving like an asshole around specific areas because I don't want them to think negatively of her based on my actions.

24:48I also drive a wood paneled station wagon that's seven on horsepower. So I don't think it's hard to memorize what car I'm in. Okay, so you have a stealing story. I do have a stealing story. It takes place in Vegas, as many great stealing stories do. If you're ever going to steal, that's a great place to do it. Ocean's Eleven. I mean, one of the best stealing movies. It's so good. So it was 92. I was 13, and I'd already moved around a lot as a kid. I had a lot of instability, not a lot of constants. I think I was already in upper teens, low 20s in the numbers of schools that I'd attended and been a victim of an assault.