And That's Why We Drink - Listener Stories: Vol. 36

Episode Date: January 1, 2020

Happy New Year! We're flappin' into 2020 (because we're flappers now) by reading your story submissions and we've got some great ones for you this month! We're diving into badass grandparent stories and, listen, your grandparents are amazing. We hear about grandpas in the witness protection program, grandmas who claim the title "scholarly badass," and grandparents who lived across the street from the conjuring house. We also learn about Satan's sand from the beaches of hell... and that's why we drink!Please consider supporting the companies that support us! Explore your creativity at Skillshare.com/DRINK2 and get 2 free months of Premium Membership!Go to Vistaprint.com and enter promo code DRINK for free shipping on all business cards, any style, any quantity!

okay hello and welcome to 2020 happy new year today's the first and it's the first listeners episode of the decade of oh wow it just hit me that one took me for a ride if we had thought of that in December, that it was the last of the decade, we probably would have had a meltdown. We would have done something really dramatic, I'm sure. Like scream into your ears. Wow. Okay. Well, happy decade, guys. Welcome to the roaring 20s. Wow. And my little flapper, Christine, is right here by my side. Flapping along. Flap, flap, flap. Flappy bird. As you do. So we have a whole new decade of spooky things to talk about.

Welcome. I'm excited. We have so much in our future to look forward to. You know what's weird? That means if we do 12 a year and there's 10 years in the decade, that's 120 listener episodes. That's good math, though. Awesome. I'm pretty impressed.

That's a matter of just putting a zero at the end. That's what made it. You lost me real quick on that one. That's good math, though. Awesome. I'm pretty impressed. That's a matter of just putting a zero at the end. That's what made it. You lost me real quick on that one. So for those who are watching for the very first time. Or listening. Or listening and don't know what this is. On the first of every month, we put out a listeners episode where we read out some submission stories that our wonderful favorite little flapper, Eva, has picked for us.

Yes. And usually they're themed all of a sudden. That was not how this worked in the beginning christine yelled themes and people actually listen and eva actually listened so thank you for that i don't know why i do these things but i do so six or seven depending on the story uh we do we read that many of you guys's submissions and as long as they're about the theme sometimes it's about catboys sometimes it's about doppelganger sometimes it's about cheese twins one day it'll be about cheese um yeah we have a good time and this apparently last week or last month i requested grandparent stories so we got a lot and if you guys want to submit your own stories are we doing it through

the website oh i was gonna say i never actually told anyone including eva so because she was in new zealand but i added a submission page on our website so that you can put your name, pronouns, your submission, your story. And there's a separate entry form for a personal story and a topic suggestion form. So if you want us to cover a certain story. It looks very nice, very sleek. It's very elegant. So elegant. And just by looking at these emails, it already looks like it's very easy to read. And it's helpful on the eyes.

I was amazed because I never announced it. And all of a sudden, just hundreds were coming in. And I was like, do that many people just look at our website? Thank you to the hundreds of people who look and also to the future hundreds of people. Please go to our website and send in your stories there because it really does make reading this so much more concise. And send in your stories there because it really does make reading this so much more concise. I also wanted to say if you do send one online, we will get it. So don't send it again via email. I mean, you can, but then we just get double of it. If you do send it to and that's why we drink at gmail.com, you can make sure that the topic is in the subject line. So it's easier for Eva to look through. And also, sorry, Eva, I never told you about it.

And all of a sudden you got back from New Zealand and there were just like hundreds of these like submissions and I'm so sorry but anyway we got grandparent stories this month and Eva put in the email that this is one of her favorite topics so far that we've ever done I love this already I'm so excited my favorite thing that out of all of this is that when Christine made that submission uh request part for this is that uh there is now a section for people's preferred pronouns so yeah we are obviously big advocates for knowing people's pronouns going into things and sometimes they put like you know people will sign them at the end and we'll be like like we didn't read to the end first so i'm all about normalizing pronouns i'm very excited with

so everyone just go through the website from now on because i like hearing people's pronouns okay so i'm gonna go first as you do as i do and this is called uh badass grandparent story amazing very exciting uh this is from jordan he him thank you jordan and uh jordan's story is hey friends jordan from michigan here i'm so excited i finally have a story that fits a theme my girlfriend and i are huge fans of the show and we'll definitely be seeing you in chicago in 2020 you mean this year buy tickets uh oh yeah please buy tickets and that's where we drink.com slash live you can also submit your story at the same time our website is just so efficient guys um okay so my dad told me that our last name was changed a few generations ago because of the witness protection program get out of here what uh basically my story is that uh his great-grandfather so my great-great-grandfather was a bootlegger for al capone oh jordan this story's coming in hot this is the first story

of the decade thank you oh my god jordan it's the first story i don't think you realize what you did here wow uh my triple g okay so great great great or great great grandpa was named curtis scrogum what a name what a name he lived in southern indiana and would run liquor for al capone's gang down into kentucky and tennessee well eventually he made the mistake every protagonist of a good man on the run story makes and he fell in love oh god forbid god forbid he wanted out of the game so he decided in order to have an out he turned himself into the authorities in exchange for protection for him and his budding family he gave as much information as he could to the authorities and served a reduced five-year

prison sentence and his first baby was born while he was in prison and this baby had his cousin's last name which is now my last name uh i did some research because sometimes my dad likes to make up a good story. But almost all records of the last name Scrogum in the U.S. are people who live in southern Indiana or Illinois or northern Kentucky. So I think it's a little more of a coincidence. It's a little more than a coincidence if my dad made this story up over 15 years ago. Wow. Anyway, thanks for listening to my short story about my badass outlaw grandpa who got out of the game for love oh jordan that was great that was amazing

is your has your name changed at all since uh your family moved around in the world mine yeah oh i feel like most people not most people a lot of people have a story like that um no because we i'm like first generation american so nobody like right that came to the U.S. with a new name or anything. Gotcha. As far as I know, anyway. What about you? My mom's maiden name was changed four times. Oh, wow.

My mom's maiden name is Kaiser, and they are very intense about it going as many generations as possible. So I don't think they're ever going to screw with that one. No, ours, well, because all of my family came over here starting as Salishettes, very Jewish. What a name. And then it got switched to Salsettes at the, I think at Ellis Island. It got, they Americanized it to Salsettes. I know, I love when they're just like, no, this is your name now. They're like, I don't know how to spell Sisitz, so I guess you're Salisitz.

And then from there, the family Salisitz changed the name again, but it was like two branches of the Salisitz family. Half of us switched our name to Sales, and some of us switched our name to Salis. Wow. Yeah. And none of you hopefully were in the Witness Protection Program. Not that I know of, but I guess we wouldn't know. I need to look at my Ancestry account account i guess we probably wouldn't know depending um thank you jordan thank you jordan all right i have a story for you um my grandparents and

the conjuring house well that's just says it all dear m christine eva and all adorable fur babies tm so this is an actual email but krista did send her pronouns anyway yay i love normalizing pronouns hi my name is krista she her one of my best friends introduced me to your podcast about six months ago and i've been hooked ever since thanks for constantly keeping me both scared and entertained during my long trek to and from work in the last listener stories christine said she wanted to hear stories pertaining to grandparents and i have a pretty good one for you guys i'm sure you've heard of the conjuring movie but in case you need a really quick refresher it's about the parent family who lived in an insanely haunted house on sherman farm road in

harrisville rhode island back in the 70s horrible and disturbing incidents happened there during the parent family's 10-year stay at the house my grandparents just so happened to live across the street for them my grandparents i feel like we're glazing over that sentence okay sorry i was just in so if you ever watched the conjuring across the street that where the camera is not pointing was this person's grandparents house okay got it was it filmed at the house i don't know oh but in the imagination world but like but like right so the house setting it would be across street okay interesting i've never seen this so i have no idea my grandparents lived on round top road right across from sherman farm road Their house had its own demons, literally.

But my Grammy always suspected some of the spirits of the farmhouse infested her home as well. Good night. I love when Grammy's like, ah, demons on the loose. Whatever Grammy has to say, you fucking listen. You listen. I was little when they still lived in Harrisville, so I don't remember much about it. And I was probably too enamored with my grandparents' dogs to really pay attention to anything else. Fair. My dad, however, grew up there there so he remembers a lot about the weird creepy

incidents that went on even just crossing the intersection of my grandparents street my dad said you could feel a shift from solace to dread not to be confused with salace and not to be made like if we're changing names why on earth did we not just go straight into solace? That would have been. Solace is good. Shalom in the home. Both of my grandparents and dad recall lights turning on and off by themselves and cold spots that weren't there near, that weren't near windows or doors. When my dad was a teenager, sand would appear in his bed. Okay. Sand.

I don't like that. That is like bringing something out of another world. Goodbye. Goodbye. Yeah. It's like something appeared and then disappeared. Or it's like you're being possessed at night and sleepwalking ew either is bad ew uh sand would appear in his bed even if the sheets were just changed or cleaned when i did some

research on this a few people on reddit said the same thing would happen to them in their haunted house when there was no other explanation still not sure what the significance is to this or why it is considered paranormal, but maybe you, Em, have an idea. Your face. No, I, nope, I don't know. I just listed my theories. I've literally never heard of this before. I've never heard of that sand in the bed. Like sand, like, from hell?

Like dirt? Maybe it's like, yeah, maybe it's like soil from under the earth. Sands from the beaches of hell. Satan's sand. Satan's sand. Both my, oh, I forgot that already. soil from under the earth sands from the beaches of hell satan sand satan sand both my oh sorry about that already the dining room had an antique chandelier which would spin by itself at night goodbye that wouldn't make me so nervous that it would fall i would collapse i would collapse you would collapse yes oh i thought you meant the i was like i would collapse if the thing fell on me oh no i would collapse if i saw it spinning period whole body, I would just be engulfed with fear.

And sand. You'd just fall right into the sand. Exactly. There was no AC or anything that would cause it to turn, and sometimes it would spin too fast and aggressively for it to have been a breeze. There were unexplained noises and sights, and their family pets refused to go near certain parts of the house. I don't like that, specifically upstairs.

The creepiest memory that my dad told me was that whenever he looked across the street to the parent house, he would see a bunch of orbs flying around. Sorry, I have allergies. Oh, I thought you were being taken aback by the story. I am also that. My dad admitted he never felt comfortable there and he felt like something was always watching him. He avoided staying there alone as often as he could. When my grandparents moved out in the mid-2000s, my dad was doing some rounds around the house to make sure nothing was left. He checked some closets, leaving the doors open before exploring the remaining parts of the

house. When he returned a minute or so later, the doors had shut by themselves. He left that house with the same feeling of dread in his gut as he did all those years living there. While I never saw anything strange in myself, my sister and i recalled something that we didn't realize was very weird until years later my grandfather would ask us if we wanted to see someone called mr mac i certainly don't goodbye i certainly do not grandpa what does matter with you absolutely not do i want to meet mr mac oh i don't even want to talk about mr mac anymore why do i have to do this sounds like a demon name sorry for names mac anything mr something is creepy if it's not a real unless it's like person even if it's actually i was gonna be like well maybe if it sounds happy but no that makes it worse like mr giggles unless yikes what's the mr giggles trying to think of happy things no giggles are not happy things

um okay some kind of entity that so happened to lit that just so happened to live in their wildly creepy basement. Oh good, Mr. Mac lives in the basement. We asked who he was and why he didn't ever come out when we visited them. God damn it. I hate this. And my grandfather said he was invisible and couldn't leave the basement. Or at least he didn't want to.

Has anyone told your grandfather that I think he's a medium and he doesn't know it? Because he's seeing things that are not there. It seems like he probably knows. He doesn't seem very concerned that there's a man in his basement or an invisible man yeah it does sound like yeah it does sound like he knows that he's the only one here something right being little kids with wild imaginations we of course agreed to go see this supposed mr mack i remember being frightened though because the concept oddly scared me that's not odd by the way that it scared you you should have not been judged or felt guilty for that but at the time i didn't know why there wasn't anything to look at he just led us downstairs to the empty dark

abyss and told us to look into the dark i think he's going to murder you actually what is happening i can't tell either he's sacrificing you to a demon or he's just gonna push you down a while right who knows most of the time my grandfather would say mr mac was too shy to come out so nothing ever came of it i do remember my mom getting pretty worked up about him doing that so the visits to mr mac i did just yell where are your parents so that answers that question um so visits to mr mac were stopped abruptly however looking back on it my sister and i are pretty sure our grandfather was taking us to go say hi to a spirit that he named mr mack but if that's true i'm not sure why he wanted to expose his grandchildren to a ghost sorry this is so long but i hope it was at least

an interesting read thank you for all of your hard work and i'll see you in boston for the 2020 tour oh yay don't bring mr mack oh god he's not invited just like in case you didn't know that that's my request not a plus one we're gonna put him actually on a list right security he's actually blacklisted we do not want mr mack here all of the love and petrified fruit in the world krista oh thank you krista all right see you in boston thank you krista see you in boston alone hopefully so this is from hope she her hello hope uh hopes email title subject life that's what i was thinking is the time everyone thought my grampy was dead okay i like where this is going yeah hope says bonjour y'all whoa my hope it my hope my name is hope my hope is name yeah my name is hope and my grandfather

on my mother's side was basically jewish Bond. What is with all this undercover potentially Jewish things? Hank Chalmers was an amazing man that led a mysterious and wild life. Not only was he a very successful and intelligent businessman, but he also dabbled in the occult. Oh, so did this guy. They should get together. Apparently, it was just positive energies. And this is the reason I am the woman I am today okay hope let's hear it after he passed away i was still in middle school and after i was old enough to handle them my mom started telling me more and more about the absolute

badass my grampy was you might think i'm spelling grandpa no thank you because i did actually wonder wrong uh that is what i called him when i was a toddler and he encouraged me to call him grampy ever since so cute pronounced grampy okay cool i'm doing it this story takes place in the 1960s on a resort in hawaii uh my grampy was on a company retreat and he and his co-workers were drinking and having a fine wine a fine night when uh maybe a fine wine also a fine wine we're having a fine night when one of his co-workers got a little too drunk so they were having a fine wine or a fine bourbon who's to say he watches the man wandered around the balcony of the resort which sat off of a cliff above the ocean and fall over the balcony into the ocean below oh my god also having been drinking my grampy threw himself over the balcony to try and help the man but grampy but he he dropped lord knows how many feet into

the sea below holy shit her grampy feet into the sea below. Holy shit. So Grampy fell into the sea below trying to help this guy who already fell before him. Wowza. He woke up the next morning on the beach and wandered through the town for days before finally finding his way back to the resort where everyone was shocked. Apparently the man he was trying to save had fallen into an uncovered pipe of the resort and died of his injuries but no one had seen the first man fall they all had they had only seen hank dive from the balcony and so they thought that he was the one that had died wow oh so they found the body but they only saw one guy jump yeah wow oh my goodness i feel sorry for that poor man and his family but i'm thankful my grampy missed the pipe

and lived on to be an amazing grandfather he was an amazing man who encouraged me to become the woman I am today. He even visited me the night after his passing where he sat on the end of my bed and put his hand on my knee and told me it's going to be all right. Thank you guys for so much for an amazing piece of media. I love you guys so much. Keep up the good work. Hope. Amazing what?

Piece of media? Wow. Yeah, piece of media. I like it. And keep up the good work. Wow, I got goose cam from that. I still have goose cam from that. That's pretty Wow. Yeah, Piece of Media. I like it. And keep up the good work. Wow, I got a goose cam from that. I still have a goose cam from that. That's pretty bananas.

Yeah. Thinking, I mean, also imagine the people that literally just watch them swan dive into off a balcony. And then just hearing. And they just wanders back in a couple days later. Like, what kind of adventures are you going on? That is some supernatural shit. Anyway, thank you, Hope.

Thank you, Hope. That is pretty crazy. And thank you, Grampy. Yes. you sound like an amazing man all right oh boy here we go my grandpa stood up to the kkk goodbye that's so they're all badass grandparents for sure we've got spies we've got swan divers that are saving people we've got kkk anti uh fans yeah i think that's what they call what we all are hopefully my grandpa stood up to the kkk and negotiated a hostage situation get out of here hi christine m eva geo and the assortment of fruit on the last listeners episode christine asked for some badass grandparent stories and boy do i have a twofer for y'all so a little backstory my badass

grandpa i'm actually named after him his name was sydney with an i and my name is sydney with a y that's so nice my grandpa was known as a gentle giant he was six foot five was literally the kindest and most humble person and spent the majority of his career as a principal slash coach oh okay so now that you have that backstory let's get into him being a badass so my grandpa received a call when school integration happened that he would be changing schools. The school that he was being placed at was almost directly between what was then Malcolm X University and one of the main KKK headquarters in the state of North Carolina. Oh, North Carolina. Wow. At the time, the school's flag was the Confederate flag.

Their fight song was Dixie and their mascot was a rebel. Yep. Yikes. That was Sydney and me. A lot of schools in Virginia still have rebels as their mascots. Yours is? Not mine. But I like rebel was like a regular.

I've heard that mascot many times before. Very bad. My grandpa immediately changed that because one, racism. And two, he did not want to did not want students of color to feel even more uncomfortable, scared, or excluded than they were likely already feeling. Ugh, I love this man. Once word got out that my grandpa was now principal and making these changes, the KKK showed up at his house. What? And told him not to allow students of color to attend.

My grandpa calmly explained that even if he agreed with them, that this was a federal law and that he could do nothing about it and kindly asked them to leave him and his family alone. But at the very first football game, kkk showed up and i mean showed up oh no cloaks hoods and torches my fuck my grandpa calmly walked over to them not knowing who he was talking to since he couldn't see their faces on honestly so terrifying by the way oh yeah and just an added i mean they're all let's be clear the terror of terrible in many ways but the added element of not knowing who the person is it's like shrouding yeah yeah uh and told them that he was extremely disappointed in them for being so hateful and that he could not imagine how sad they must be for having so much hate in your heart amen how sad they must be for quote having so much hate in your heart that you despise another person for

who they are and what they look like. End quote. My grandpa told me that he actually ended up knowing several of the men, and they came up to him later and said that what he said made them reevaluate themselves and realize just how hateful and racist they were being. One man even approached me at his funeral to tell me a similar story. Whoa. Wow. Okay, so now on to the hostage situation. Okay.

Right, yeah. Apparently there's a lot of layers to this onion. Anyway, next. Later on in his career, my grandpa was the assistant superintendent of our school district. At the time, there was a principal that we'll call Mr. B. Mr. B was kind of a jerk, and there were a lot of upset teachers at the school who were requesting to meet with the superintendent, who happened to be a former Secret Service agent. That'll be important in a minute. I bet it will.

Maybe. I have no doubt so the superintendent and the teachers were having a meeting in the library and were discussing all the bad things that mr b had been doing well what they didn't know was that mr b found out about the secret meeting and was so upset that he hid in the lot oh no that he hid in the library with a gun at some point during the meeting he jumped out and told the teachers and superintendent to get on the ground and was threatening to hurt them. Right about that time, the secretary was about to call over the intercom to give the superintendent a message when she heard that something weird was going on.

She walked down to the library to investigate and saw the superintendent on the floor, all of the teachers with their hands up, and Mr. B pointing a gun at them yelling. She called my grandpa and asked what she should do. My grandpa called Mr. B and my grandpa asked if he she should do my grandpa called mr b and my grandpa asked if he could come down and talk to mr b my grandpa said he wouldn't call the police if mr b would keep everyone safe until he got there to talk so my grandpa gets to the school and goes into the library while mr b has everyone at gunpoint and was able to talk him down and get him to put the gun down then the former fbi agent so the superintendent right secret service took the gun they called the police and no one was hurt thanks to my papa unfortunately the news ran the story wrong and

said that my grandpa had been taken hostage and when my mom saw it she almost shit herself well yeah awful oh my god dad has been taken hostage i mean this whole thing is awful obviously but your grandpa is a hero sorry that was super long but those stories are too crazy not to share my grandpa was also kidnapped for a hot minute as a kid but that's a story for another day is it okay i miss my papa every day he wasn't is my favorite person and i am so lucky that we share the same name his motto was to always be kind and it showed in every single one of his actions y'all rock and you make my crazy commute to work so much better give geo lots of love and pats for me sydney ps my papa was definitely team milkshake i love papa oh and then sydney wrote oh crap i realized i messed up my pronouns are she her and i meant to say secret service

not fbi oh that's okay that's okay i'm crying already though so that's a that's a great story wow okay i wonder if you're that badass in life like what is your if you've been buried what does your gravestone say like it can't just say like loving father like it should be like it yeah you kicked ass our generation's gonna have some really wild gravestones actually i have a great idea what if we what if we invent tmtm gravestones that have um like a qr code so that it just takes stop it directly to all the info because like you can't fit everybody's information on one little gravestone i mean maybe mine you can but this guy's like like it at least goes like directly to their obituary where it says all the cool things

they ever did that's a good idea thank you tmtm if it ever happens and we're not responsible there's a problem yeah there's a big problem. Okay. So this is from Sarah. Sarah's subject line is badass cowboy obsessed grandpa. Holy hell. All right. This is my. Oh, I'm so excited. Oh, my God. So Sarah says, hi, baby G, Junie, Eva, M, Christine, and reluctantly Lemon.

Reluctantly indeed. I love how I was last because they were like, Christine and Lemon don't deserve the time time of day this was the hardest part of the email to type because i was i wanted everyone to feel super important oh sorry i thought you were shitting all over lemon uh my name is sarah and i use she her pronouns thank you sarah for normalizing pronouns i'm a pansexual dog mom living in fort lauderdale and i love love love love love your show i think you need like a show about yourself because it sounds fascinating i am a i'm team anything oh and then wrote i'm pansexual hello uh and my job makes boozy milkshakes so here we go holy hell okay hello sarah you're very interesting also here are some pictures of my dog jupiter jupiter that's almost what i named that was almost yeah because when a juniper was had testicles all of a sudden um everyone was like juniper isn't a boy name and i was like first

of all listen to yourself right jerk second of all and then people were like are you gonna switch it to jupiter and i was like it's too late well also you thought about being jupiter originally before it was even juniper because when you first thought about getting a cat, you looked at Gio's horoscope and it said that Jupiter was about to be in his house. Would enter his house. Yeah, that's true. And so we were like, oh, well, we'll just name him Jupiter. And then he ends up like conveniently, coincidentally naming the cat Juniper.

Yeah, that's very weird. That's true. OK, let's crack into it. My grandfather wasn't a traditional badass with crazy stories of the war but he was obsessed with john wayne and had a badass cowboy hat and hat collection sarah you can tell your uh i don't know if he's still around but you can at least tell your family that uh john wayne i am somehow very distantly related to john wayne wait does my mom my mom is deeply and darkly obsessed with john wayne you need to tell so my step siblings are

his grandkids you need to tell my mother this immediately it's a very it's a very weird thing and it's not like a direct relationship i think they're my step i'm about to see them next week i'll ask them again i'm butchering the story i can't believe i didn't know this yeah they so i think their mom was adopted she found her birth dad and it like maybe was John Wayne. It's very, it's very weird. I'll have to, I'll have to come back to this at a later date after I talked to my stepdad about it. But he was like, it's pretty cool.

My stepkids are John Wayne's grandkids. You got to tell my kids are John Wayne's grandkids. I'll tell your mom when I, when I know the information. Okay. She's obsessed with John Wayne. I'm really butchering it, but I know them. I know that they, they're related. Okay.

John Wayne. I'm really butchering it, but I know that they're related. Okay. So my grandpa Larry was a funeral director most of his life while dabbling in department store catalog modeling. Okay. Come on. And he never had any crazy ghost stories, but he did have some interesting ones about how sometimes the muscles in the bodies would contract and go thump in the morgue.

Woof. Goose cam. Yeah, goose cam. He recently passed in august after a short battle with complications from surgery from his colon cancer sorry to hear that i'm sorry for your loss um at his service i learned something very interesting about him whenever a body sits in the morgue for a long time a certain time frame goes by where if unclaimed the person gets cremated uh my grandfather being the kind human that he is would take those ashes out of

the cemetery and give that person a small private service just the two of them oh my gosh a few times his best friend also funeral director would go with him and said that those were the few and slim times that he would ever see my grandfather cry oh my gosh wow that's fairly sweet larry had the biggest heart i'd ever experienced and learning this about him made me realize that he was a true he was truly a pure soul and i'm so proud to be a descendant of him he may be a physical badass but he helped so many people through the toughest times of their lives and i know it must have been so hard on him but he truly loved what he did he was such a fucking awesome human i hope this made you smile it doesn't make it if it doesn't make it on the show that's okay. LOL.

I'm just glad you read it. I love you all so, so much. Happy Hanumahs. Hanumahs. Hanumahs. Christmas and Hanukkah. Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa. From a newly blended Jewish Christian home and a happy new year. P.S.

Please come to South Florida. Miami has lots of ghosts and Key West is creepy as fizzuck. Oh, my friend Celine has a house down in Key West and we go all the time and we used to go all the time and it is so haunted. Also, Robert the Doll's there, right? And then P.S. Also, M. I dress up as Fat Thor for Halloween.

What? And then here are pictures of Jupiter. Jupiter. Wow, Jupiter is cute as hell. Apparently, Sarah calls Jupiter Jupepey just like how you call your cat junie oh my god they're like distant twin distant relatives i love it thank you so much i'm crying and i'm proud of you for being fat thor for halloween it's great i can't deal with these they make me really emotional you asked for this i know i know i can't even be mad

we got one more one more badass grandma listener story from talia fun fact did you know my grandma calls herself a badass grandma whatever but i love it at one one time she was going through something and i told her she was a badass grandma and now whenever we hang up she goes your badass grandma loves you that is so sweet so you gave her the name and she's like that she was riding it for as long as she can love that that's so cute i didn't know if for as long as she can. I love that. That's so cute. I didn't know if she just one day was like, I didn't go by badass. No.

And also, I don't really cuss. So I don't know why I called her a badass to her face. But apparently she liked it a lot. I don't know. Some emailers would say otherwise that we cuss way too much. Oh, my poor grandmother. When she was like, I started listening to your podcast. And I was like, oh, my God.

Oh, no. It's like you're about to see a completely different person. She's a badass. Don't worry it um hi this is from talia hi atwwd family i love you all thank you oh wow we love you starting strong i just wanted to say i appreciate everything you do and i you bring so much joy into this crappy world my name is talia she her and i have a very short story but i just wanted to quickly tell you about my badass step grandma because even though she never did anything physically crazy i'm getting really emotional i don't know why i think it's because my step grandparents were always like much more grandparents to me than my real grandparents and so i don't know okay sorry um do you need a second no do you want me to do you want me to riff while you cry okay let me know i can do it even happened

yeah i don't know why i'm crying okay you got one more to get through oh my god and then you can boohoo all you want this is what happens when we record and i take my birth control so late every day and i keep fucking it up and my hormones get all over the place that's what i'm blaming it's okay it's just all of your stories are so powerful i found out that like something about i went to um a listen it's called a goddess circle i did not know what was going on but it was very fun and um i learned that the last full moon was in gemini and i think actually you told me that before and um last full moon of the decade sorry and uh i also learned that my something is in cancer which means i'm i cry a lot anyway oh no i wear the same on that that's your it's your

sun sign no my sun sign is gemini what is it there's a moon and then there's your moon is in cancer there's your moon cancer there's an ascending no my moon's in taurus anyway it doesn't matter okay something of mine's in cancer and that's why i'm super emotional i'm a cancer rising i believe i'm not positive i think that's what it might be i have a very short story but i just want to quickly tell you about my badass step grandma because even though she never did anything physically crazy, I still feel like she deserves the title of scholarly badass. Oh, okay.

My grandma Fran was born in the 1930s, and at the age of seven, she contracted scarlet fever, which would leave her blind for the rest of her life. Shit. Of course this... I don't curse ever. The grandparent episode. Look, until I had a podcast, my grandma didn't think I cursed. My grandma... Okay, sorry. the grandparent look until i had a podcast my grandma didn't think i cursed my grandma okay

sorry uh of course she wouldn't of course this wouldn't stop her because she is a badass she still went on to pursue a degree in psychology and family therapy and since there was no textbooks since there were no textbooks with braille at the time oh my goodness she had to have another student read to her from her books wow cue my grandfather as the most patient tutor they bonded but wouldn't actually get married until years later when she recognized his voice in a coffee shop stop it fucking cam and asked him out fran ended up becoming one of the first women in michigan to get a doctorate and she did it while blind and without without the use of braille she worked as a family therapist almost until the day she died and she was the smartest blind and without without the use of braille she worked as a family therapist

almost until the day she died and she was the smartest woman i ever met a true scholarly badass sorry that was so short and not really true crime or paranormal we love it concise is good i just figured hearing the story of a badass chick might make your day i can't wait to see you guys in chicago my boyfriend and i will be road tripping from detroit and i can't wait please enjoy the attached photos of my zoo of animals okay i got cut off so if you're on youtube you can see the top half of the cat yay kitty kitty oh my goodness and then there's some other animals also if you're gonna be in they're gonna be in chicago so is jordan apparently so two people's stories that we read today are gonna be at the chicago show the grandchildren of some badasses are gonna be at our chicago show which actually sold out already more kitties kitty kitties look at this little guy is that

komodo dragon i don't know i don't think it's a komodo dragon i don't know i'm pretty sure those are bigger and yeah i feel like alligators kind of like little baby alligators i don't know hello you're cute, though. I'm down with it. All right. Thank you, guys. That was so, for some reason, very touching for me. I guess that's why I probably yelled at you to send them.

So yay. Do you have a theme this time? Let's do something like Roaring Twenties. Oh, interesting. A new decade. New decade, new stories. New decade, new theme. I got it. I got it.

I got it. Because next month will be February. So like Valentine's Day, we just heard this beautiful story about these people meeting i don't know if that's maybe paranormal like soulmate stories oh yeah like like gut feelings where you look and you know something's going on or just like maybe a little in love or just really cool soulmate stories where it feels like maybe it was meant to be or something paranormal happened or true crime and somebody was held up in a hostage situation and then the person the police officer who arrived fell in love with the victim i don't know i just made that one up but who's so you got an example there's your there's your template and

also if that happened that's awesome and i want to read it also i'm super sorry for the tragedy you had to go through to get there first oh well sure yes obviously but um no i don't know maybe that's fun on like a soulmate one also yeah right well thank you you can submit them to and that's why we drink at gmail.com and make sure you put the topic or the subject in the subject line or you can do it now and that's why we drink dot com is there a slash to that um i don't remember okay go to and that's why we drink dot there's on the home page there's a button to do it um but i also want to say also if you have other stories send them in i know i just keep yelling themes at you but like obviously if you're like oh i never sent in my grandparent's story or my cowboy story or says it anyway any other story send them in

because we we collect we collect some of our favorites and we'll i'm sure we'll get to them later yes all right well happy 2020 we made it big things are gonna happen this decade guys i think so yeah pretty roaring i've already decided i'm are going to happen this decade, guys. I think so. Yeah. Pretty roaring. I've already decided I'm going to meet my children this decade, so. I know. Looking forward to that.

You did. All right. On your way to being a badass grandparent. Yeah. Oh, I can't wait. I'm going to be the coolest grandparent one day. I just got to get through a couple of generations first. Okay.

That's it. And. That's. Why. We. Drink. I thought we were going to go woo. Yeah, because you always judge me for it.