Armchair Anonymous: Wild Card XI

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, and I'm joined by Monica Padman. Hi. Today is wild card. What number of 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.

0:38Lucky 1111. I love 1111. That's my number. I guess that's when we do wild card the 1111th episode. You'll get really excited. You're only halfway there. But, you know, there's a doozy as all wild cards are, and that's why we keep doing them. And that's why we're going to push, push, push until we get to 1100. Push, push, push, push. Lewis, forget about the car. Push, push, push. That's Toto. friend of the pot please enjoy wild card

1:30hi marcos hello i'm doing great where are you in south texas mcallen in Texas out in the Rio Grande Valley. What's the biggest city I would know close to there? I was actually very curious about this because I always hear you talking about everywhere in America. You found my blind spot. We are about five hours south of Austin. Oh, okay. We are literally on the river. Mexico's across the river. 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 wild card.

2:02You could have murdered someone. You could have saved someone. We have no clue. The year is about 2006. At the time, 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's 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.

2:34We 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? A lot of drinks and just stuff a ska band would be doing. Okay. Okay, great. Ska shit. So we're there hanging out, sliding doors open, people smoking cigarettes outside. Half of us are inside the apartment. Now, the apartment is a block away from a main road. In between that block is a bunch of grass, trees.

3:06And this is like very southern Texas. So mesquite trees, tall grass. So we're all in the apartment. We hear screeching tires. Real long. We heard the crash. And initially, we all look at each other kind of excited. Let's go be a part of this car accident. Let's go see what happened. But as soon as we look at each other, we hear an explosion. Oh, my goodness. Oh, wow. Okay. One of the guys that was outside, he peeks over the fence. And he's like, there's fire out there. As soon as Mike hears that, he is gone. He bolts out the gate. We all look at each other like, well, we got to follow him. Okay.

3:38To help, not to flee. No, right. Marine Mike's going to save the day. He wants to save. Yeah, yeah. We ran out the apartment, crossed the parking lot. We see a silver Cadillac. Can't remember the other vehicle that's in the middle of the intersection. The Cadillac is completely on fire. The whole front end, flames going all the way up to the stoplight. Does that make you feel sad because you love Cadillacs? I hate to see a Cadillac burn if that's what you're asking. That's what I'm asking. But also from Marcos, I'm getting strong Jason Deleon vibes, which makes me feel very heart-swelly. Okay, yeah, because I looked over and you had—it's 11-11.

4:10Oh, maybe a lot of things were happening. And you had a big smile on your face. And it was because I was like, oh my God, he's so Jason Deleon and he's in a punk scene, but he's a good kid. Yeah, we love this. Yeah, it's all happening. The scary thing about the Cadillac was that I had just started a new job and one of my coworkers had the same car. So I thought maybe it could have been her because we all lived in that same little neighborhood. So I start running towards the car. I see a man. I can't remember if he's hanging out the passenger window or if he's hanging out the door. Mike is yelling at us.

4:39Help me. We got to help. We got to do something. Mike's already pulled the guy outside of the car. 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.

5:11To my recollection, he was out 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.

5:41He'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 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 gonna show up they're gonna 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.

6:20I grab the girl that was next to me. I pull her into me and then the car explodes again. Oh my God. Wow. I was talking to Micah by he had mentioned the car exploded when he was trying to pull the guy out, which is the second time because initially the first time was what we heard. So we're thinking maybe it was either the battery, the gas tank or the tires. Or something in the trunk that was explosive. A body. Maybe he had a can of gas in the trunk or something. But that last time it was very Final Destination scenes of sparks and the shrapnel and everything just flew right between us and nobody got hurt, nobody got hit.

6:53And that's when I'm like, okay, that's it. It's time for us to go. I called my friends who were there. Like everybody, let's go. We gotta go, we gotta go. We start running back to the grass. I can't find Mike. I start yelling at everybody, where's Mike? He's already halfway between me and to the apartment, puking in the middle of the empty lot. Oh, wow. Just adrenaline. He tells me later on, he inhaled a whole bunch of smoke. Oh, yeah, yeah. While this is happening, my pregnant sister is calling me because she lived two doors down. She heard the explosion. She knew I was out and about. And I'm there out of breath, yelling at people.

7:27Like, we got to go, we got to go. She's just like, you need to come to my house right now. I need to see your face. And I say, okay. I get everybody together, go back to my apartment. I run to my sister, calm her down. I go back into our apartment. And this party scene that used to be now is just everybody sitting in silence, staring at each other. Yeah, trying to process everything that went down. And then somebody was like, well, I guess we got to cheers to that. Yeah, we just went right back at it. And the whole night, we kept wanting to peek over. But some of us were just like, no, no, no, the cops are going to show up.

7:57Because what you're afraid they're going to get you for underage drinking or something. That was our main concern. That'd be a fucked up police department with that much going on. They're like, wait, we got to prioritize these minors in possession. We're always just trying to play it 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.

8:25So 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've happened.

8:58What kind of town is it? Is there like military clothes? 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. Yum. 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.

9:31Yeah, so what did Mike end up doing for a living? Like, how does he keep this adrenaline up? He was into bikes. I know he was into cooking for a little while. We kind of lost base for a while, So when I caught up with him, we spoke for about a couple of hours. He just reminds me a lot of UDex. Well, this is hilarious because you remind me so much of Jason DeLeon. Did you major in anthro in college? I should have. I was a halfway music major and decided I'm going to go my own way. I teach at a private music school. And you teach all instruments or just drums? Mostly a drum instructor, but we also teach groups and how to be in a band, how to play in bands.

10:04So I run the school. I have about four different groups of all ages. I like to say I teach from four-year-olds to retirees. Well, Marcos, it's a delight meeting you. Yes, if I can do a quick shout out to my fiance. She's the one that set up the headset and she would like for me to let you know, Dax. She's a year plus sober now. She's also a very proud sponsor. Listening to everything you guys talk about really puts that in perspective for me. I come from addiction as well, but she takes her sponsees very seriously. She's really great to them. Makes me very proud of her and hearing everything that you've been through, people you guys talk to really puts a lot into perspective.

10:37and makes me see how special she really is. Oh, thanks, Marcos. And congratulations. Please give her our love. I will. Thank you so much, guys. I love the show. Thanks, brother. Take care. All right. Bye-bye. I mean, that's insane how much he was like Deleon. Do you remember what he looks like enough? I have a picture in my head. Oh, and a fucking musician. And a punk. Deleon was in Texas originally. Something spooky. It could be. 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.

11:09That'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? Yeah, 20 past seven. Oh, what happens today? That's a joke. Yeah, tomorrow. Oh, tomorrow. What happens tomorrow? Oh, I know. Is it 7 a.m.? No, it's 7 p.m. I know. That was my joke. Oh. Like, what happens? Where? God, it really didn't land. I got the joke. Thank you. I know. I heard Rob talking. I tried. Don't be mad at me, Bill Maher.

11:48I just didn't get it. Okay, so, Jane, you have a wild card story. Yeah, which took place last summer. So, the summer of 2023, my daughter got engaged, and she said, I would love to have my wedding in Florida. She's a Disney baby. Oh, okay. So we said, fine. So it was her, her husband, her two children, and just a small group of family. But we said, if that's what we're doing, there has to be a big party when we come home. So we had a fantastic wedding in Florida for the whole of May. And were you physically at Disney World for the wedding? No, just outside. And then we spent 19 days every day.

12:26She had us like a military program. Oh, wow. At the park. Hold on. You went for 19 days in a row to Disney World? That's incredible. She's a real Disney adult. She'll be thrilled to hear you say that. I love it. Is she in one of those gangs? Did she wear gang colors? Oh, yeah, they have those. Yeah, there's Disney gangs. Yeah, in Club 33. How did this happen to her in the UK? It's our fault. We took her to Disney when she was four for the first time. Like many do, but some just really take to it. I wonder if because for her it was so far away, that adds. Very enchanted. Very much so. and two young grandchildren who are exactly the same two girls who appear in this story.

13:0719 days. Wow, wow, wow. That's great. I love it. I would like to know what the world record is. I feel like you have to be approaching it. Okay, so you got back for the party. The party was in June. So it's a Friday evening. I had woken up that morning, and I was a little bit sad because my parents had called me and said they couldn't come. My dad was in his late 80s. His heart was failing, and he said, I just can't make it. So I thought, I'll go for a walk and then I'll come home and I'll get myself ready. So I came home from the walk and thought I must go up in, we call it a loft. You guys call it attic.

13:41Yeah, okay. Went up into the loft, fitted the ladder to the loft. Oh boy. Climbed up the ladder. This is where it changed. Three steps from the top. I leant into the loft to grab a suitcase and the ladder just went out from underneath me. Oh, sure, sure, sure, sure, sure. Seven feet. completely unprepared and falling backwards, right? Well, luckily, I fell standing, but I turned midair. And as I turned, my knees buckled, hit my head on a cupboard on the way down, and then just ended up sitting on the floor on a ladder. And my first thought was, like when you're a child, when you've broken something, nobody needs to know about this.

14:22It's fine. Yes, of course. I'll dust myself off. It'll be fine. What is wrong with us? It is everyone's instinct. But we want it to be fine. Our brain really wants it to just be done and okay. And so I think we trick ourselves. But there is this also added layer. 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.

15:08and 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 drag 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?

15:48I just got to get back up there to get those crutches. I don't ever go back up in the lot. Got myself up onto the crutches and found a telephone, phone the emergency services. And they said, we've got a car in the area. We're with you in 20 minutes, which is very unusual. That's quick, right? Yeah. We can wait for hours in the UK, four hours, five hours. So I was thrilled, took some painkillers. You know, the adrenaline's going. I'm still thinking this is going to be fine. It's going to be okay. You've got like an urgent care in your house. You got painkillers, you got the crutches. I don't know why you need to go to the hospital.

16:20You should have popped in the x-ray machine and called it a day. Opened the front door, found an ice pack and just sat down in the chair and waited. They arrived and walked in, lifted the ice pack up and said, pain on a scale of one to ten? Seven. I was like, do you take morphine? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, that sounds nice. Loaded me up with the morphine. And she said, we need that to just kick in. We'll have a look and then we'll call for an ambulance. But it could be hours. Suddenly, I remember I've got to be at a party at seven o 'clock in the evening. and this is now midday and I'm panicking, still crying.

16:55And she said, we're never going to get you there. It's just not going to happen. I was saying, I've seen this on the television. You tell that to everybody. Today, it's not an option. My daughter appears, she's crying. And I said, can my husband take me? And they said, no, we've given you morphine. What does that mean? The husband isn't. Can't we drive ourselves? I know, but maybe not if they've administered something. Maybe. Still, arrest me. Call the cops on my way to the hospital. So I said, we've got one option. put me in the back of your vehicle, clear the back seat on the driveway, get me in the car.

17:26And to be fair, they agreed. Oh, nice. Good. So hobbled out to the car, got into the car. We live fairly near to a hospital. So they took me to our, we call it accident and emergency. And it's full of interesting characters. I'm sure you have the same in emergency rooms. Oh yeah. Have you seen the pit? No, we can't get back here yet. I'm desperate to see it. Oh, I can't wait for you. Eventually it'll come. It has to come over there. Well, I'm an ER baby. So I remember. Yes. Noah Wiley, don't worry. He's still hot. Hotter. He might be hotter. Yeah. So they will be into what they call majors. You need a head assessment because you've hit your head hard.

18:03We're just going to park you here and you need to wait. So I sat for another hour and they came out, took me in for assessment. Your head's fine. We're moving you to minors. Another hour goes by. By this time, I'm feeling quite sick because of the morphine. I'm vomiting. This is awful. I need to go to a party. They finally take me through for x-ray. I wait another hour. And then they pulled me back in and said, the orthopedics team have said, you've done a very bad break to your foot. You've crushed your foot. It's what they call a nutcracker. So where I landed and twisted, my toes went one way my heel went the other and the middle part was compressed so you're going to be in plaster cast for six weeks on crutches no weight bearing I'm still looking at my watch and my phone don't care just get it done they plastered me up and I was discharged at six o 'clock my husband drove me home oh my god you made it got dressed in my new clothes for the party one shoe on because I couldn't wear the other shoe, which is deeply distressing, Monica, as I'm sure you'll understand.

19:10Yeah, shoes make an outfit. My husband piled me into his 911 Porsche. Oh. We got to the party. Somebody had commandeered a wheelchair. I don't know where from. I didn't ask. And I arrived at the party an hour late, but to cheers and celebrations. So it was hard, but we made it in the end. I'd say the silver lining blessing is you're on your feet a lot at those weddings and you got to just be seated and you still had some residual morphine cooking. maybe you had a cocktail it might have been nice i wasn't allowed to drink because they give me blood thinners but yeah there's pictures of me in the wheelchair dancing having a great time so it was fantastic but at the time it was just awful wow okay at the risk of getting political i am curious what would you give your overall health system there because we're told over here that it's like eden and i'm just curious from the story what would you give it out of 10 The National Health Service is free for accident and emergency.

20:03It'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.

20:40Okay, 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. Wow. You made it to the wedding. Would you agree maybe we're the same age? I do think there probably is an age where maybe you have to admit to yourself, there's no more up ladders anywhere. Yeah. But it's hard to know, right? Because I feel quite confident to climb a ladder right now.

21:12But I'm hearing the story. I'm like, yeah, that could happen to me for sure this weekend. I'm a little bit older than you. I'm nearer 60 than I am 50. So I've never been up a ladder since. Yeah, that's wise. Ladders are a young man's game. They are indeed. Well, Jane, we're delighted that we have a listener in the UK or minimally your daughter who made you tell the story to us. However it came out, we're happy to have you. I don't know any other armchairs in the UK, but I'm sure they will appear as a result of this. So it's been great to meet you. Get us out there. You need a piece of merch. That's what you got to cruise around town and a little merch and then maybe they'll be like, that would be great.

21:47Maybe your next 19 day trip to Disney World. It's been great to meet you both. Yeah, you too. Take care. Have a good day. All right. Bye-bye. 19 days at Disney World. My imagination of it is there would be phases, right? It's like the first three days would be great. And there would be a lull, right? And you'd be like, we got to stop coming. And then it'd shoot back up again. You'd have a great day, right? Don't you think you'd have the whole spectrum of experiences? Probably, but she sounds, the daughter sounds diligent and knowledgeable. So she had a whole system. So she's not doing repeats.

22:23Yeah, isn't there like eight parks if you mix in like water park? Exactly. Wow, do you think they went to the water park? Oh, they went to all the parks. Blizzard Beach. Epcot, that one with animals. Animal Kingdom. Animal Kingdom, thank you. Four Seasons Lazy River. Do they still have MGM? Universal. But it sounds like she's just Disney. It's all. It's all in the mix. Magic Kingdom. Maybe she did Magic Kingdom like four days. Kissimmee, Florida. Gosh. I could go back. I was pretty recently maybe Lincoln's birthday. I mean, world. Oh, world. Erin and I went to world. World is fun. We had Caitlin, the guide, who's an armchair, and she's wonderful.

23:04Hello. One of my favorite girl names, Dani. Hi. Well, thank you very much. I wish I had a part in picking it, but I didn't. Yeah. Do you have a favorite boy's name? Actually, I do. 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.

23:33But I couldn't get my husband on board. So there we go. Husbands, who needs them? Send him a letter. So Dini, where are you? I am in Germany. Oh my goodness. This is our second international call in a row. Oh, cool. Are you in the military? Are you on vacation? What's happening in Germany? I am military adjacent. I'm a federal civilian employee, and I support the medical detachment for the Army out here. So we've been here for about four years. Wow. So you're a CIA spy? Is that what that was code for? I mean, I can't confirm or deny. Did you respond to the CIA props? Tell us if you're an undercover CIA agent.