Armchair Anonymous: Thanksgiving III

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0:16Welcome, welcome, welcome to Armchair Anonymous. I'm Wondery. And I'm joined by Lily Padman. Hi. It's that time of year. The seasons are upon us. It's holiday time. It's the holidays. I love the holidays, Monica. Me too. Me too. It makes me feel very, very dusty. I feel bad for Bah Humbuggers. A, I'm sad that they're missing out on the joy I have. But then additionally, can you imagine if you didn't like it and then everyone around you loved it? That would really compound it. That'd be hard. It'd be really hard. But that's not us, luckily. We love it. No, we love it. Yeah. Of course, for this holiday of giving thanks, we have Thanksgiving disasters.

1:01Thanksgiving is always good for some disasters. and we have them today. Please enjoy Thanksgiving disasters.

1:28Hello. Hi. What fake name are we going to go with? Whatever you want to give me. Okay, I'm looking at you. You've got kind of a cool dark vibe about you. That's just because I'm in my dark closet. No, it's a good vibe. Okay, how about Jenna? Oh, great. I love it. You know how I got there? Tell me. Dark Vibes, Wednesday, with Jenna Ortega. Oh, very nice. And you seem to have behind you a shirt that I've been looking for for 15 years and just recently got, right? That's true. That's a checkered, button-down, lumberjackie shirt. Me, my husband, and both of my kids all have matching shirts of that, actually.

2:06Oh, I want to hang with you guys. I hope you went to a cider mill matching. Every weekend, yes. Fine. Okay, so you're somewhere in the Midwest-y? Yeah, I'm actually in Naperville, so Rob would know it. Oh, I know it very well, he would. Inside and out, some would say. Yes. Okay, so you have a Thanksgiving disaster store, or just Thanksgiving. I don't know if it'll be a disaster. It's a disaster. Oh, okay, great. You could have won the lottery on Thanksgiving. I guess that'd be worthy of a story. That would have been a preferable story to this one. Oh, great. So I grew up in the Midwest and I have a very big family.

2:41So this story takes place about 20 years ago. And my dad is one of 12 and eight of them are girls. Lots of us. Yeah. So because of this, our holidays were always crazy, chaotic. Yeah. What do you guys rent an arena to have a Thanksgiving? How the fuck do you accommodate this many people? Sometimes we would try to break off into groups, but that always had its own drama of who was going where and when. So about 20 years ago, my aunt, I'm going to call her my Aunt Sally, is newly married and had just bought her first big girl house. So she wanted to host Thanksgiving. And this was a typical 90s house.

3:20So there's carpet everywhere, white carpet, including in the dining room and the living room and pretty much everywhere besides the kitchen and the bathroom. There's just white carpeting on the floor. Ambitious. Especially for hosting your first Thanksgiving. And there's about 35 people there. And my aunt is very high strung. So think Monica from Friends is very much how my aunt is. And Monica from Armchair Expert. And so she's spending a lot of the time making sure coasters are under drinks and sweeping up crumbs to make sure nothing is staining anything in her brand new house. So we all get there.

3:56It's probably around noon and we are not eating until five or six. So there's been five hours of just mingling, eating, drinking. And for my one uncle, who's an alcoholic, at this point, he's been having liquid snacks up until we sit down for dinner. And he's had between one and two, two liter bottles of Coke with Jack. So his drink of choice was Jack and Diet. That's Dax's. So he went through four liters of Coca-Cola, which means he went through a fifth and change of Jack. What's normally the ratio? If you're responsible, a third Jack, two thirds Coke. If you're pretty normal, half, half. If you're like Erin and I, you want like 70 % Jack, 30 % Coke.

4:38It's a splash of Coke. Yeah. We're in her dining room. There's a huge table, several tables like pushed together, pulled from other areas of the house. And you still have people sitting on couches. So we sit down to dinner. My uncle happens to be sitting right across from me. And in slow motion, I see him just start to go. Oh, no. And he proceeds to throw up probably around three liters. Ew! All over the table. You 100 % could smell the Jack Daniels immediately, couldn't you? Oh, yeah. 100%. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, come on, Uncle Turkey, whatever we're calling him. keep it together because it's all liquid the splash zone let's say was quite large and of course now there's 35 other people there all age ranges and so two of my young cousins proceed to also oh no it's contagious at this point everyone is screaming it's just pure chaos and nobody handled it well.

5:50So everyone is just trying to save any food. Poor Aunt Sally. The whole family just hosed down the fucking whole dining room. Her response is she just starts screaming at everyone to clear out the dining room because she has to shampoo the carpets right then. Oh, oh, oh, wow. She's like, move the furniture, throw away the food. Yeah, Thanksgiving's one day. These carpets are for life. I guess that's true. You don't want it to seep in. Smell of Jack Daniel's remains forever. Eventually, we get all the furniture cleared out of the dining room. All the food just goes in trash bags and gets thrown away.

6:30Oh, it all got pitched. Nothing was salvageable. And what's the uncle's reaction? This was not anywhere close to like the rock bottom for him. This is probably mid-range of getting to rock bottom. I just kind of like left the room and was like, oh, my stomach's empty. Pour in another drink. Pretty much. Oh, boy. We ended up leaving. We got pizza on the way home. And my Aunt Sally's marriage did not last for more than two years. Oh, well, that's a big family to take on. Wait, was it Aunt Sally's husband? Oh, no, no, no. Oh, no, no. It's her terrible family. And this guy's like, I'm out. Her brother.

7:10That sucks. He ruined a marriage along with the Thanksgiving. Did he get sober at some point? He is sober now. This was 20 years ago. It took probably about 10 more years to get there. Okay, good for him. And so my follow-up question is, did people receive an amends for this Thanksgiving disaster? To your knowledge, did anyone get a phone call like, hey, I'm doing my ninth step? I don't think so. But I mean, we continue to make fun of him to this day. Nobody wants to sit by him at any of the holidays. because everybody's like, we like to like yak all over the food. And he's like, thanks guys. This is kind of the beauty of families.

7:45It's like, you know, you get some fuck ups. It's also probably hardest to hit your rock bottom around family because there is some cushion and built in forgiveness a little bit, maybe. I mean, I don't know. Or I imagine too, it just ends up confirming whatever story he already had about his family. Like, of course they hate me. I'm sure he was a victim by the end of the night is my guess. I'm sick. Because I don't have a big house to host. All the insecurities are coming out. Oh, wow. Well, I can't believe it caused a chain reaction. It was horrible. Three people in total puked all over the food.

8:21I imagine, like, take cover. I picture people running out of the room into the kitchen before they get hit with piaq. Wow. Jenna, that was great. That was great. Thank you for your time. I really appreciate it. Take care. Bye. Yeah, for real. People from Chicago are very fun. And they drink a lot. Yeah. Very drinky city. I feel like they're in a tie with Detroit, but I don't know. I bet we could look it up. What I can say with ultimate certainty is Chicago is the type of town that if you're walking around at 2 in the morning, every 10th person is going to throw up in the street. It's that kind of.

8:53Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, like over servings is standard. I've seen someone pass out on the street with shit out of his butt. Sure. Sure, sure, sure. I saw that in spring break. Yeah, I was going to say, that's like college town behavior you see, but it's not a college town. No, no. And the people aren't in college that are doing it. That's what I mean. Yeah, I guess that's what I meant. Caitlin? Hi. Yes. Hi. What is this cute shirt you have on? It's a little cowboy hat. Cute. Well, I'm in Louisville, Kentucky, so I feel like it was appropriate. I'm becoming increasingly interested in Kentucky. You're close with Nashville now, so you got to come up.

9:29And I watched that Triple Crown show on Netflix. Oh, how good was that? It's so good. And that place could not be more beautiful in the summer and spring. It's just green. That show put me into horse racing in a way that's like dangerous. You ever go to the Derby? Oh, yeah. We've went a couple of times. It's like a little pricey now these days. It's more fun a couple of days before. That's the days I recommend. They call like the Thursday before Derby. Oh, Derby. And what's happening there? Just younger horses are running or something? I think so. It's just a locals day. It's still dress up, but it's like$2 beers, live music.

10:03Couple dozen fights in the parking lot. Oh, yeah. I feel like Furbies really miss an opportunity to do a collab. What is Furby? Remember Furbies? Sort of like the old school boo-boos. They were these little things and they had little owl noses. Beaks. They would just say their names over and over. They would just say Furby a lot in the middle of the night. They're a little haunting. Yeah, but they were a big deal for a minute. There's got to be some crossover to happen with the Derby there, though. Bring them back. Bring it back. A special Derby Furby, obviously. Exactly. Limited edition. Now you have a Thanksgiving story.

10:41I do. This was last year. Oh, good fresh. So my husband and I, it was our first year as a married couple and we're hosting Thanksgiving. We're super excited about it, of course. And, you know, our families, mine's coming in from West Virginia. His is coming in from Oklahoma. So it's just a big story. We had hosted holidays and everything before, but there's a weird pressure that comes with Thanksgiving. Enormous. You got to all of a sudden be a chef. All props to my husband. He's an amazing cook. And he has got a little bit of embarrassing parts in this story. But I want to preface this with props to him.

11:14But anyways, he's on the meat. I'm more of a sides girl. So I like the mashed potatoes, the deviled eggs, the rolls. I like to do the entertaining part of stuff. I'm not necessarily let's go stare at the meat. Guys love to talk about two things. What interstate did you take to get here? And like, how did you cook the meat? We're simple. He's doing a turkey. He's doing a ham. There's a smoker involved. There's a grill involved. There's the oven involved. A lot of things happening. And I'm just having fun until an hour or so before is really when most of the sides need to have some action. And so the last place the ham ends up is in the oven.

11:48There's so much juice in one of those aluminum foil pans. So it's those big disposable ones. So big ham in that, but just a ton of butter and a ton of juice that it's sitting in. And I'm working on the sides in the kitchen. And a key point of this is I had just bought this heating pad that you put on a counter and it keeps the pots and pans warm. And I thought in my head, because there's this pressure of hosting, oh, we're going to need this because we've got to keep the sides warm. Not thinking the sides are already going to be warm, like you're cooking them in that moment. And then everybody's just eating.

12:21There's not this like big break. I stand by your plan. I don't think it was crazy. Yeah, that helps me a little bit. So I had planned, you know, the meats over here, the sides are over here, there's a whole flow to it, that I've not really told anybody, which is like most of how life goes. And my husband's arguments is, you know, I've got this plan, and I've never told him the plan. And he just has to follow the plan. And so in my head, meats here, sides here. So I was like, Oh, Drew, we need to set up my heating pad over here. And he's, you know, buzzers going off, got to get the turkey from outside, got to get the ham from the oven, he's moving around.

12:55And I'm like, I need you to set up this tray really quick right here. He just put it somewhere and I was like, oh, that's not where I meant for it to be. But he had just pulled the ham out of the oven and he had sat it on the counter immediately. You know, it's super hot and just like really heavy. He sat it immediately down. And I'm like, that's not where the ham goes. That's where my heating pad goes. Sure, sure. Those pans are like Ikea furniture. He starts moving it around. It's going to like taco and all the shit's going to leak out. He can't be moving it a lot. It's probably got two moves in it.

13:24Really true. That was his exact argument. He was like, well, we can't move it. Like, it's already bent a little bit. It's home. He's like, this is where it's staying. And I'm like, well, I don't know what to tell you. We got to move it. Aesthetics are key on Thanksgiving. I'm a Virgo like you, Monica. So I was like, the flow has to be right. Our family who's eaten with us hundreds of times. The impression's over. My in-laws were there. I didn't have to impress them. I'm already married. Like, I don't know what I was doing. I was like, Drew, you just have to move it. So he's like, fine. He picks it up.

13:54it immediately buckles yeah yeah absolutely gallons of hot juice down him oh it's scalding hot because he had just pulled it out of the oven oh shit oh a medical emergency he was immediately screaming immediately every curse word from a to z is coming out and not at me directly but i could hear it oh i would have been like you made me fucking move this you would have picked up the throw it through the glass window or something if it weren't like on the ground in the tray i'm sure it was coming at me i'm like immediately like oh god let me get a towel and start to help pick this up and everyone like are you okay i take one step and just completely eat it the kitchen is a complete ice rink so all our family come rushing into the kitchen from the living room from the other side because our kitchen's kind of in the center of the house.

14:51My dad's like, what's happening here? What do we need to do? He sees and just immediately gets to work. He's like, let me get some towels. And then he falls. I was about to say, I was about to say, no, no one should come in. It's like when there's broken glass. Everyone's immediate reaction was like, let me help. But Drew and I are in so much pain from falling. And I mean, he's still screaming. His legs are scalding with burns. And so no one has time to say, don't walk. Yeah. Yeah. Glass. So my dad's doing like breakdance moves essentially to like stay off the ground.

15:42finally we get towels and clean it up and everything gets secure drew goes upstairs and he's like i'm gonna change he's so furious His legs are just burning. I go upstairs to do my wifely duty of a little unapology and just say, I see where I was in the wrong here. I had my goal, but I see it wasn't your goal. Our goals didn't quite line up. Pulled his pants down to change pants. And they're just attached to his thighs, essentially, because it just made the fabric go into his leg. It's got like second degree burns happening here. And so we wrap them and put some Neosporin and thing on it, like whatever we can.

16:22And so it's like, well, let's just go eat. We're not ruining this. But he puts on a different pair of pants. The issue is he put on the same pair of boots that he was wearing while we were in the kitchen. So as we go to go back downstairs. Slippery Sue. Just fell completely down the stairs. No! Oh my. He's like Charlie Brown in this story. His kids keep on coming. and at that point did you go over to him and you were like oh my god so this one definitely wasn't my fault crazy that you put on back the same pair of cowboy boots they don't get great traction when they're not covered in oil words otherwise maybe no disposable trays maybe no heating pads this thanksgiving can i throw something out there still use the disposable tray but put a cookie sheet under it so that when you're picking it up and moving it, you're actually moving the cookie sheet.

17:14Yeah. You want some stability under that thing. And ditch the cowboy boots on this day. You can get right back in them the next day. And also I would say don't ditch the heating pad. I think the heating pad's great. Nothing went wrong with it, right? Other than it caused all this. You know what's crazy though? It's like I've not ever brought it out again. It just makes us all think of it. Yeah. You might want to get that over to Goodwill and ruin someone else's holidays. Maybe it's got like a jinx on it at all, man. It's not. Listen, it was put in the wrong spot. And if it had been put in the right spot at the beginning, then maybe this whole thing wouldn't have happened.

17:48We wouldn't be on this call right now? That's right. It was one of those ads that I got fed to me and it was like perfect hosting. And I'm like, I'm the perfect host. Let me buy this. Yeah, I need it. Instagram? Oh, yeah. Yeah. They know how to get you. They're fucking good. And it's just a click away. So easy. Yeah, they really figured it out. Was the ham salvageable? Did we eat the ham? It was. Some had to get shaved. The parts that hit the floor got a little cut off. But, you know, the rest of it made it. Yum. And then my second question is, here's the tricky thing about the juice in that tray.

18:18At first, quite slippery. But I'm imagining after you toweled it all up, now it's sticky sitting there. Yeah. I mean, it was days of our house smelling like ham and just days of being sticky. You got to get like an industrial degreaser probably to cut through that. We cleaned it. It felt like every day for like two weeks, and we were still finding areas that needed it. Yeah, maybe the move would have been to throw a whole bag of kitty litter down on the ground, like an oil spill for a car, and then sweep it up. Because did it have some sort of like brown sugar glaze on it or something? Yeah, of course.

18:50Yum. This is in the South, girl. It was as good as a ham could get. That's what I'm saying. I imagine it with the brown sugar glaze, so then the sugary, that's adding another sticky element. I need one right now. I'm starving for a big honey-baked ham now. Wow, I am ham ham. I do, I love ham. Wow, that was great. Yeah, this sounds like a fun family. We have a good time at all holidays. I just need to tell you guys, I need to say a quick little thank you to both of you. Your day seven podcast is my lifeline. It's everything to me. My husband is an addict and went to treatment earlier this year.

19:25So we're sober this year. Yeah, I wouldn't have made it through this year without you guys. Dax, you truly gave me insight into an addict that I did not know before. And I just can't sing your praises enough. And then Monica, thank you so much for shining a light on what it's like to love an addict and how to love them through it and get through lies and manipulation and all of those things, but still show compassion and love and be everything that an addict needs. And I just think that you need a little love for that because the day that he went to treatment, I listened to your guys day seven, like three times in a row.

20:05Like I just kept pressing play. You guys mean the world to me and we're a part of saving our marriage. So thank you, Caitlin. Have a great Thanksgiving this year and wonderful meeting you. Bye. Hi, can you hear us? I can. Can you hear me? Yes. Do you have a fake name in mind? Yes. I'm going to go by Liz if I can. Love it. Let's just build out the whole backstory of this fake name. Is Liz short for Elizabeth? Yes. See, that one little follow-up question cemented my opinion that you have an actual person in mind. I do. Oh! Yeah! Nice investigation. Good detective work. Good job. Okay, Liz, are you allowed to tell us where you're at, or at least an area of the country?

20:47Yeah, I'm in Southern California. Oh, SoCal. Close by. Close by. Are you behind us? Not quite. Okay. Okay, great. So you, Liz, have a Thanksgiving disaster story. This takes place just last Thanksgiving. Okay, another freshy. Last Thanksgiving was a big time for people. Still in SoCal, my fiance and I had just moved back from living overseas. Family's really excited. Everybody decides that they're going to come visit our very, very small Southern California apartment for Thanksgiving. Congrats. I've hosted some holidays in my previous one bedroom apartment and it's ambitious. I do it for Momsgiving.

21:25but it's hard. It can be done. Five people spent the night. A couple got a hotel room. In total, this Thanksgiving event, I think included 12 people. And I think our apartment was 800 square feet, one bathroom, quite small. So 7.5 square feet per person. Yes, it was standing room only. My fiance is a big chef, loves to cook. So decided that we're going to do the whole Thanksgiving spread by ourselves. My grandparents are coming. My mom is coming. My grandma is diabetic, so we make a whole second spread for her. Sugar-free, diabetic-friendly. We're very proud of it. Everything's good to go. Everybody comes over Thanksgiving Day.

22:04We're all eating, watching football. Everything seems to be going great. I've gone. I've got some fresh oysters. We're having a great time. So my family's there, and then some of my fiancé's coworkers, who I'm meeting for the first time, are also over. Having a great time. Everybody's eating. About halfway through dinner, my grandma starts to note that she's not feeling so hot. Oh, no. Oh, boy. Asks me if she can go to our bedroom and lay down. Yeah, absolutely. No problem. So everybody's still eating. She's coming in and out of the bedroom to the one bathroom. She starts to spend a lot of time in the bathroom.

22:40So I'm going to check on her. Asks my grandpa to come to the bedroom with her. She can have some company. So they're in there watching football. Everybody's still eating. Bend some plastic bags, handed through the bathroom door. So things aren't looking so hot. Can I ask quickly how old grandma is? Are we talking 60s or 100? She's in her 80s. At some point, my grandpa comes out to get me. And again, still, everybody's in the apartment. And he says, your grandma didn't make it. And I was like, what? To the bathroom. Oh, my!

23:19You remember if he came up that casually? grandmother did not make it was she fighting for her life i didn't even know what do you mean she didn't make it okay hold on hold on we gotta gather ourselves liz that was i was like holy fuck grandma died and that's the way he said yes so uh hey no biggie grandma didn't make it okay okay so grandma didn't make it to the toilet to the toilet so i go in there and My grandma had been laying on my side of the bed and had had a little unexpected evac through her pants. Oh, that kind. Through my duvet cover. We're soaked. Poor grandma. I get a spare pair of pants, a spare pair of underwear, help my grandma and my grandpa get to the bathroom to resolve it.

24:07But now I have to deal with the fact that my 800 square foot apartment with eight people still trying to eat dinner smells like human shit. I'm opening windows. I'm putting on fans. I'm lighting candles. I am stripping the bed as quickly as my little legs can carry me because I don't want this to soak into the mattress. But the in-unit washer and dryer is in the living room. So I am then pulling these sheets out into the living room and trying to stuff them into the washer and dryer as fast as I can. Keep the smell out of here. Any thought to put them in a trash bag and get them outside somewhere?

24:45That would have been a great idea. We were living downtown and we had one very small patio, which I would have had to walk through everybody to get to. Our options were limited. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I've got the door to my bedroom shut, as many windows open as possible. Everybody kind of starts to trickle out. We pack up leftovers for our friends. Hold on. Congratulations. So no one got wind of what was happening? And that's a pun not intended, but it doesn't work. Yeah. Except for my fiance, but none of the strangers at my house got wind. Wow. Great. So we pack them up some leftovers. We send them on their way.