Family Trips with the Meyers Brothers - LISTENER EPISODE: Holiday Mishaps

Episode Date: December 26, 2023

We're back with another listener episode! From getting arrested on Christmas night, borrowing other people's dogs for family Christmas photos, and even the odd thing someone did while on a holiday road trip...thank you to all our listeners who submitted their hilarious stories! Sponsors:Airbnb.com Thanks again to Nissan for sponsoring this episode of Family Trips and for the reminder to find your more. Learn more at NissanUSA.com. Go to usbank.com/altitudego to learn more about how you can earn 20,000 bonus points, worth $200, if you spend $1,000 in the first 90 days of opening your account. Eat out or eat in, with the U.S. Bank Altitude® Go Visa Signature® Card. Limited time offer. The creditor and issuer of this card is U.S. Bank National Association, pursuant to a license from Visa U.S.A. Inc. Some restrictions may apply.

This episode is brought to you by Airbnb. Here we go. Family trips with the Myers brothers. Family trips with the Myers brothers. Here we go Hi Pashi Hi Sufi You are wearing such a colorful shirt Yeah, Mackenzie got this for me years ago

It's my sort of, I guess it's my ugly Christmas sweater But it's not really a sweater Yeah It's a, yeah In a sci-fi movie It looks like what athletes wear in a new, yet-to-be-invented sport. And the name of your team would be the Christmas T-Rexes. Yeah, when I first got this, I thought, I'm not down with the whole ugly sweater scene.

No, you never have been. Never really liked it. But there's something about this that I know it's made to be ugly, but there's something about it that I really like. And it's very comfortable. I think that would be

the most important part. Yeah. This is our Christmas episode. Yeah. Well, no, excuse me. It's a holiday listener episode. Let me make clear, it's a holiday listener episode.

And I'm glad I made that clarification because you'll be listening to this the day after Christmas, but we've been through the holiday season. Yeah. And, you know, a new part of my holiday season that was not a part of our upbringing is, of course, Hanukkah, which I get to celebrate with my children now. Yeah, they get eight nights of presents. If they had to give a Yelp review to Hanukkah, it would focus on the eight presents. I feel like maybe the message of Hanukkah at that age is not quite getting through.

Right. I will say that it's getting through the least with Addie, who every night when we light the candles, and again, Addie is two and a half, so I don't want to be too hard on her. But every night when we light the candles, she sings Happy Birthday. That's nice. Yeah. Well, it's a great song. It's a great song.

Yeah. And then she also sings I'll Be Wrapped Around Your Finger. What was the police song where there's a lot of candles in the video? Is that it? Yeah, that's it. Yeah. Okay, good. So there's certain candle triggers for her.

Yeah. You sent a video the other day of your son Axel, who's five, screaming Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer. Scream singing it, yeah. He's somewhere where there's music being played and there's a lot of people around. And initially, I thought another song was playing and he was just sort of insisting on Rudolph. And then when I heard the music actually playing Rudolph, I wonder if they adjusted what it

was they were playing because they were like, we can't out-volume this child who's screaming. It was Rudolph. And I will say, the great thing about Rudolph, probably not developed this way because they couldn't have known that Axel would one day be on this earth. There's that nice, slow start of Rudolph, you know, where they're naming all the,

I'll say it, the dud reindeers. And it gives a kid like Axel a lot of time to sort of load up for that first Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer. Yeah. He has no interest in singing the preamble. And he was a full half to three and a half measures early on when he screamed Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer. And you can see him sort of sense when he's gotten ahead, and then he has to wait for the music to catch up, and that's when he gets a, he takes a couple

deep breaths, and then goes full launch into the next verse. It's very funny, because this seven-year-old Ash does not like anybody who draws attention to themselves, and so he's really drawn. The short straw is Axel, who is just constantly everybody's looking at him.

And I feel like Ash is like, ugh. Now, when we were kids, well, we sort of spoke with a childish patois, if you would. Yeah, I think that's a very nice way of putting it. Instead of foggy, we would always say froggy. Froggy. It's very froggy out. And Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer then won Foggy Christmas Eve, and I would get very upset if we were singing and people didn't say froggy.

Yeah, you would shut down a group of carolers if they wouldn't frog you in. Yeah, I feel like people that weren't our family, I would let them have it. But among our group. Yes, internally you didn't want. You wanted us to hue to the way you felt it should be pronounced. Yeah. You know, we asked people about holiday travel, which is another thing I do now. We're going to be going out to New Mexico with my wife's family.

But when we were growing up, Josh, we never traveled. No. We were home, we were in that living room, and we were in that family room. Yeah. Never once did a Christmas away game our entire upbringing. No. We were home, we were in that living room, and we were in that family room. Yeah. Never once did a Christmas away game our entire upbringing. No. Yeah. Jarring to me to even think about it. Yeah. The first Christmas we weren't all together.

You left and went to New Mexico on like a Christmas morning at like 6.30, and we all woke up, and it was very like, what's happening? Yes. And we were also like old. Right. I think that's, I'm glad you put that in because if Alexi was listening to this, she would say, tell him how old you were. I do think the first Christmas I did not spend with my parents and brother, I'm going to

guess I was 39. Yeah. Something like that. Yeah. So then it was just me, mom, and dad alone at home with the dogs in New Hampshire. And we were sitting in the living room, which is a room we rarely sat in, but that's where our tree was. And it was lovely, lovely room, but it was just sort of like it was, I hate to say it's more formal, but it was just fancier. We weren't necessarily being fancy when we were at home. We're never in it. It's

one day a year we're in it, and it's Christmas. Yeah, and we were sitting in that room, you know, very, very casually and just chatting, and the tree fell over, and Alexi and her family was blamed for that tree falling over. It fell over completely unprovoked. There was nothing near it, but we felt like since you weren't there, that was... Yeah, it was some sort of inter-family hex. Yeah, I will say that when I got out that year, because this is a real bone to pick for me as years have gone on, and I should know mom and dad have now come out to New Mexico and spent Christmas there, and you've been out and spent a Christmas there, I think.

Yeah, for sure. First year I went out, and again, it was Christmas morning. I flew on Christmas. I'd been a real bitch about it, let me also point out. I had not gone sweetly to spend Christmas with, yet I think maybe not. I mean, I definitely wasn't. We weren't married at that point.

It wasn't like I was telling my wife I wasn't going to spend Christmas with her. But I went out and got there, and they have this beautiful home, and it was the biggest Christmas tree I've ever seen. In this beautiful room they have, sort of their common area. Gorgeous, full, tall, and I thought, well, this family really knows how to do Christmas. And it turned out what happened was that morning, Alexi said,

well, he's coming here for Christmas. We have to have a tree. And they drove by a place that was selling Christmas trees and since it was Christmas morning there was just a sign

that said free trees so my father-in-law Tom grabbed a free tree and put it up best tree there because he's paying 0.0 dollars for it

yeah and it was like six successive years later of shitty trees where he said what happened to that first year? What was the difference?

And now we know. The difference was free tree. Yeah. Mackenzie and her mother, I feel like, used to steal trees. I'll get sort of the real story on that. But I feel like there was like a Christmas tree farm that they would drive by in the dead of night. And they wouldn't take, you know, the biggest, nicest tree. They just wanted like something to have in there. Yeah. But, yeah, take, you know, the biggest, nicest tree. They just wanted, like, something to have in there.

Yeah. But, yeah, her mom, Linda, was never super into Christmas. And so I feel like she, begrudging, they would be like, all right, you want a tree? You know, let's go take this tree. Let's go cut one down. The other thing about our sort of formal, and again, formal is real. Put quotes around formal. It's just, you know.

It's a room that no one ever sits in, so everything's nicer. Yeah, everything's a little bit nicer. Although the dogs lie on the couch, so I think if you actually told somebody that's our fancy room and they saw it, they'd be like, oh, what? Yeah, also I feel like most of the pieces of furniture in that room are like 30 to 40 years old. Yeah, I think that's also accurate. Very lumpy. I would describe the couches in that room as being of lump. Yeah. One of the traditions of our Christmas as well is rotating through. Someone would go over to the tree, give one present to everybody, and then we'd all open it.

And I think the most traumatic part of my Christmas growing up would be the moment when mom would have to open something from dad. Oh, yeah. Never liked it, would you say? That was my memory. I'm sure it was better than my memory, but I would tell you that she never liked a single gift he gave her, and she never once could hide her disdain. Yeah, I mean, I don't know why it stands out to me, but there was a pink cowboy hat. I remember the pink cowboy hat. That was such a big swing on dad's part. Like,

mom has never worn a cowboy hat, and the notion that she would wear one that is a color of a cowboy hat that no one's ever seen until Barbie would come out in 2023. Very ahead of the curve on Barbie. That is true to dad's credit. Yeah. He was prescient. But yeah, that was such a miss. But then what they started doing, which I kind of applaud and kind of appreciate is they would buy their own gifts, but they would act like they were surprised. Like mom would slowly unwrap a gift and like hold something up and be like, oh, well, this isn't bad. And I don't know if they were doing it for our benefit. It was just theater for us.

They wanted us to know that two people could love each other and also be capable of buying gifts they liked. Yeah. But yeah, now they don't miss because they're buying things for themselves. The pink cowboy hat would be the sort of thing someone at a self-help seminar would tell you to do, like to wear something. You know, a bunch of sort of sad people at a learning annex trying to turn it around and there'd be some life coach on stage on stage saying pink cowboy hat do it i also feel like the pink cowboy hat must have cut he must have been on like a business trip or something and he saw it which means it was

like unreturnable yeah or maybe it was like back in the day where you would actually ship something back to a like single brick and mortar store and be yeah, this didn't work out. Pink cowboy hat. We'll see if we can dig up a photo, throw it in the old show notes for you guys. Yeah, I don't know that there is a photo of that. I feel like I would remember it, but yeah. So we were not Christmas travelers. We were not holiday travelers.

No. We loved a home game, the Myers family. That will not surprise you. But we have asked a bunch of you for yours, and so now we would like to hear her first story that was sent in by a listener named Chris. Hey, guys. This is Chris. Love the show.

When I was a child, most of my holiday travel was back and forth between parents. My mom moved out west, and so I would fly back to Florida to see my dad for the summers and also for Christmas. And I remember I would travel alone. This was before the TSA. So they would just put me on a plane with a little badge that said unaccompanied minor. I got little wings. It was kind of cool. I got to meet the pilots and sometimes see the cockpit.

But I was unimpressed with this after a while because I did this all the time. The stewardess would take me to my seat and then take me from the airport to layover, whatever. And I would just be sort of ushered to my father. I remember one year on Christmas, I was traveling and I stopped at some airport. I don't know what it was. I had my itinerary. I was like, I know, okay, I'm supposed to be here and I'm supposed to get on this plane at this time. I was very focused on these things. I was seven or eight and the stewardess walked me from the plane to this little room in the airport. It was maybe the size of a walk-in closet, very small. But she was like, sit here.

And I was like, OK, I got to go to the thing. Don't worry, I'll come get you. OK, so I'm sitting there reading my Star Wars book. And the time to get me comes and goes. OK, and I'm sitting in this closet, unsure of what to do. I think I probably cried a little. Eventually a woman comes in and she's, who are you? And I wipe my eyes. I'm Chris. Where are you supposed to be? Well, I don't do something. They told me to sit here. I'm supposed to be here. My plane had left the gate. They started talking

to each other. Who is this kid? What have we done? I can tell they're upset. They all look like they're mad at me though. And I'm like, hey, I just sat where they told me to sit, read my book. They rushed me to the gate. The plane has left the gate, but it hasn't gotten airborne yet. It's just like taxiing. And so they bring the plane back to the gate for me because they have clearly made a mistake with a child. I don't know this until I get on the plane and every person on that plane looks at me and they are livid.

Like I have ruined their life. I'm just a kid. You know, I walk down the aisle and I hear this one woman go, oh, it's just a little boy, but they all look so mad. And I sit down next to this mean-looking stranger, and he's like, you know they brought the plane back for you.

I don't know what I said to him because I was seven, and he was an angry stranger, but what I thought in my heart was good. Anyway, that was my traumatic Christmas travel story. I love the show. Josh, I love the songs. Keep it up. Thank you, Chris.

Yeah, thank you. It is so nuts. Now now because I can't remember what I was like at seven. But now that Ash is seven, thinking about that through the eyes of my oldest, who just seems like a baby to me still. Yeah, that is so crazy. Yeah. Also, I mean, it is such respect for authority, like sit here and wait here and we'll come get you. And as an unaccompanied minor, someone shepherds you everywhere you go. And yeah, then to be forgotten. Yes. My seven-year-old Ash would definitely sit and wait.

He would not break any rules. One time, a plane went back to the gate to kick our son Axel off. This is just like a reminder of like pre, he mentioned TSA. Like the airport used to be the wild west. It really, I feel bad for the people who never got to go to airports, you know, before 2001.

Because man, oh man, the planes would go back to the gate. You know, I remember once going on vacation, my friend Alex was with me. He didn't have an ID. And we used a—I had our high school yearbook. Sorry, our middle school yearbook. And it was just a picture of him with a name, and they were like, yeah, all right. Just stuff like that.

Yeah, I mean, there are a lot of people out there with bad intentions, so I know you can't do it. But I wonder how many bad things would happen if we didn't have TSA. Is it like one a year, two a year? I mean, I'm sure it's more than that, which is also a real bummer about society. But yeah, there wasn't a lot of bad stuff happening on the regular. I mean, there's always going to be bad people doing bad things. You could do a lot of talking your way back on in a plane. It was a lot of that kind of thing. Yeah, now it's like when they close that door and you know the plane's right there, it's just a hard no.

There's no, they will not, and maybe they actually can't. There is no code that will open that door. That doesn't make sense, though. But I don't know. I think one of my favorite details of Chris's story is I like the idea that they bring the unidentified miner up to the pilot's cockpit to impress them. Yeah. But at some point you just get so jaded.

Yeah. And it must be so funny to the pilots when a seven-year-old comes in and is like, yeah. And they must be like, oh, man, his parents have been split up for a while. His heart rate did not raise at all when he saw all these buttons and control knobs. Yeah.

Yeah, I remember being in a cockpit of a plane and then it was like hey do you want to fly for a minute and we were actually like flying like it was mid-flight and then you like hold on to the stick and then like they're like all right you're flying but you don't do anything and you know there's like the either the pilot or the co-pilot is holding a similar one so they're not going to let you you know jerk the thing to the pilot or the co-pilot is holding a similar one, so they're not going to let you jerk the thing to the right or the left. And I remember being like, oh, this is super boring. Like, you don't do anything. So if you're listening and you're in the aviation industry,

Josh's two takes on modern flying is, one, pilots don't do anything, and two, if we didn't have TSA, there'd only be one incident a year. I know they do things. They didn't let me do anything, and two, if we didn't have TSA, there'd only be one incident a year. I know they do things. They didn't let me do anything, which was also the right call. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But I thought it was going to be like, hey, this is like driving a go-kart or sitting in dad's lap driving the old Lincoln town car. I also wanted, before we move on, applaud young Chris, now obviously adult Chris, for his bravery.

Seven-year-old, getting on a plane, going back and forth. God love you. Yeah. God love you. All right, let's hear our next story is from Shelly. I want to tell you a Christmas story about our dog, Bandit, and he's going to kind of live up to his name. It was Christmas Eve, and when my mom came home for work or errands or whatever, I let her know that Bandit had eaten one of my brother's stocking stuffers. He chewed a hole right through it, and I knew he ate a gift because there was Christmas wrap shavings on the floor.

And my mom was immediately livid and furious that this had happened. I couldn't understand why she was so upset. I started getting mad at her because she was getting so upset. And I kind of went off on her saying, you're going to ruin Christmas. It's just a stocking stuffer. Just replace it. It's not that big a deal. Then I think I went downstairs, took a nap. Eventually I came up and we had Christmas Eve and we have a tradition that we would open our stocking stuffers and maybe a Christmas present. And so then I found out why my mom was so mad because she had given me the exact same gift. When I unwrapped a roll of Lifesavers, there was a $50 bill wrapped around that Lifesavers. And I found out that

my brother had been given the same thing, but the dog ate it. So mom had called the vet. And I'm pretty sure he laughed at her. But he did say, just put some castor oil on his food. And sure enough, the next morning, the dog goes out, does his business, and she was able to retrieve the $50 bill. And she got the money replaced. Love the podcast. Keep doing what you're doing. Oh, my God. First of all, that is such a happy ending. Second of all, I love a mom for taking. That's a very cool stocking stuffer present. Oh, yeah. Because you think like, ah. Yeah.

Lifesavers, okay. And then 50 bucks. That's also very in line with the way we would do things. We would have, although we, sorry, we wouldn't do stockings till the morning of. We were allowed one present each on Christmas Eve. But then we would start our morning with stocking stuffers and Josh and I would also have the exact same things.

Yeah. So we would race and rip open everything and try to scream out what it was in order to ruin it for the other one. Yeah, because there was nothing in there classically that would be, like, truly special. There might be one thing, but it was really, it was like pencils. Floss. Yeah, scotch tape. Socks. There was one, a thing that I lost that I'm very heartbroken I lost. Mom got me a bottle opener that played, it played one of two things. It either played the radio call when the

Boston Red Sox won the 2004 American League Championship Series, or the radio call when the Boston Red Sox won the 2004 American League Championship Series or the radio call when they won the 2004 World Series. And it made me smile every time. So that was, I shouldn't say they were all shitty gifts. They were all cheap gifts, some of which had great emotional value attached. Yeah. I think that I had one of those or I had yours. I imagine I would have gotten the same one. And that was one of those things that had a little sort of recorder inside of it to play that, you know, audio memory.

But eventually the battery started dying and it just started like wearing out and the voice was all warbled. Yeah. And you could still crack a beer with it, but then it would just, it would just sound terrible. Pretty sure the great Joe Castiglione was the voice, and there was a real good, can you believe it? I think that was right in there. It was very nice. Was it Folk, somebody?

Yeah, Folk, Pokey Reese. These are all people who made, I feel like, were part of the last out. Yeah, and it was like a flip to first. And then there was a missed opportunity. Can I say what this family missed? Shelly's family missed? Yeah.

Once they talked to the vet, here's what they should have done. Found what you would call in the con man game, a mark. Okay? Find some local Oh, I see. I know where you're going. Some sort of Scrooge type figure who only cares for riches. Right?

Go over to his house on Christmas morning and say give me, what's a good rich person name? Like old Mr. Haversham? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Old Mr. Haversham. And you're like, Mr. Haversham, please. Mr. Haversham, it's Christmas Day.

We don't have any money. And he's like, what do you have for me, boy? And you know what you say? We've got a dog that shits $50 bills. Yeah. And he goes, that's madness, boy. There's no such thing. Let's walk him around.

His name's Bandit. And then you walk Bandit around, who then shits a 50. Yeah. Come on, Haversham's got the money. What's he giving you? Thousands? Thousands. Thousands at least.

Yeah, it's the golden goose. It's the tale of the golden goose. It it's the golden goose. It's the tale of the golden goose. It's the classic golden goose. It's the dog. I guess originally, probably because it was based on something that actually happened, the golden goose, it probably was a dog that shit a 50, but they were like, we can't. We can't do it. Yeah, they brought the first drawings in.

They're like, can we maybe switch it? Maybe do a goose? Because the guy was like, they were like, could you do like eggs? And he's like, dogs don't lay eggs. And I'm like, well, make it a goose. What if it's just a dog that shits a 50 that's wrapped around some Lifesavers? That was the original story. Have you heard the old parable of the dog who shits 50s?

I mean, you know we've got this new dog, Woody. And man, he just like, he ate a pair of my sunglasses last night when we were out. We got home, gone. You know, at the time of recording this, we're about to get, we're going to get a tree later today. And we're so nervous of what he's going to do to these precious ornaments that we have. Well, that's the thing. I mean, precious ornaments you've already lost. Well, every ornament we have is precious.

We have ornaments that you and I had as kids, that Mackenzie had as kids. You're living a life I don't want to live. Like, to have precious ornaments. Again, they're just, I want to have a box full of precious, fragile things. I can't live a life like that. Yeah, well, we'd live a life like that.

That's why the only thing, and I know you don't want me to get on my high horse about this, that's why the only thing I spend money on is NFTs. Dogs can't eat NFTs, guys. Go to FamilyTrips.com for the new Sufi and Poshy coins. No, don't sell NFTs. We purchased, I've ordered from Amazon, and this is like just throwing money away, but a one-foot-high white picket fence to put around our tree.

And I'm hoping that our dog, Woody, who is very sweet, but I think he has a small-ish brain because he has a very small head, and I'm hoping that this one-foot-high fence completely throws him off. And he's like, well, this is an impossible barrier for me to cross. So we're crossing our fingers. Yeah. I am, again, you know me. I'm clumsy.

I'm forgetful. I don't know where things are. So the more fragile, important things that come into my homes, I'm just like, the clock's ticking until it's my fault that it got broken. Yeah. Well, isn't it nice to have kids to blame though? Especially one who's like not super verbal. It's funny. It does all come back to me. Yeah. Hey, we're going to take a quick break and hear from some of our sponsors. This episode of Family Trips is brought to you by Nissan. Posh, these days too many people have to settle for the next best thing especially when it comes to choosing a car yeah but at nissan

there's a vehicle type for everyone for every driver who wants more whether you want more adventure more electric more action more guts or more turbocharged excitement nissan is here to make sure you get it because nissan is all about giving people a whole spectrum of thrills to choose from with the diverse lineup of vehicles. Sports cars to sedans to EVs, pickups, crossovers with Nissan's diverse lineup. Anyone can find something to help them reach their more. What are you looking for more of, Josh? I like a nice ride.

I like a nice sound system. I like something that's, yeah, that's comfortable. You like to have room to load up a bunch of gear, go somewhere, do an adventure. I do. I'm never happier than when I have sort of a full car, a roof rack on my car. Makes me happy. And all I need is a cup holder for an iced coffee. And Nissan can provide you with both of those things.

So thanks again to Nissan for sponsoring this episode of Family Trips. And for the reminder to find your more. Learn more at NissanUSA.com. We are supported by Airbnb. Hey, Pashi. Hey, Sufi. Well, our visit to Pittsburgh is over. We stayed at an Airbnb, and I hope this isn't crazy to say,

but I think about it as another home we grew up in. It was great. I mean, I think about it like that maybe. Well, why not? Mom and Dad were there. Yeah. We had our own bedrooms. Yeah, we did. It was, yeah. You and I could talk through a wall. I liked doing that maybe. Well, why not? Mom and dad were there. Yeah. We had our own bedrooms. Yeah, we did.

It was, yeah. You and I could talk through a wall. I liked doing that again. Mm-hmm. Doing our little secret knocks. I want to say it was charming, but it was like, it was big and cozy.

Charming makes it sound like it was a little cottage, but it was... It was many things. It contained multitudes. Yeah. A five-bedroom house in a charming Pittsburgh neighborhood

in Shadyside. Can't recommend it enough. When you go to a city, you can find your way into a neighborhood. You can feel like you're part of the fabric of the community. It was a great week. Thank you, Airbnb. This is very exciting. I hope this is our listener's name.

Bill Wall. Wait. What's here? Hi, this is Bill Wall. And I am calling with a story about traveling over the Christmas holidays. So this took place when I was, I want to say it was either second or third grade. I was living with my family in Salem, New Hampshire. And we were members of a millenarian restorationist new religious movement. We'll call it a cult for short and did not celebrate any holidays at all. So the holidays were already quite fraught for me, especially at that age. All my friends would come back from the holiday break with like new toys and new presents and stories about all these amazing meals and Santa and all these things.

And I would have, well, none of that. We did often though travel over the holidays because it was the time when there was no school. And we took road trips, so many road trips. There were a million of us, so many kids, smashed into a van as cheaply as possible. I mean, there was just so much about these trips that was odd. And now at this age, it's very difficult for me to know which of my parents' choices were because we were in a cult and which were because they're strange. And how much of their strangeness was because of the cult. It's a chicken and an egg.

Who knows? So I really don't know what was what, but always did everything as absolutely cheaply as possible. But this one particular year, my mother pulled me out a week early. I don't know why, but for some reason we were going to leave a week before the holidays actually began. And my teacher, because my mother was taking me out a week early and she told her that we were going to take a drive down to Florida, she said, oh, I would like for her to keep a journal and then she can share with us the class when she gets back. I'm sure she just felt bad, I realize now as an adult, but at the time she kind of made it seem like this was important academically that I keep track of everywhere we went and everything

that we did and then share it with the class when we got back home. Anyway, in the car, I was sitting up front with my mom on the first leg of the drive, saying that I really didn't know what to write, because we didn't really do much that my classmates would find exciting. And my mother, again, was this insanity? I don't know what this was. But she said, and she did it like it was a light bulb going off. She was like, I know what you can do.

There are these secret markers on the side of the road that most kids don't even know exist. They happen at very specific intervals and you can count how many there are between here and Florida. She was of course referring to mile markers. And she's like, you should keep track of how many mile markers there are. And then you can report to your class about these secret things and tell them how many there are. Well, I was just young enough that I believed her that this was a secret that nobody else in the world knew. And then I proceeded to stay awake the entire drive down.

I stayed in that front seat like it was my job and counted every single mile marker between Salem, New Hampshire and Dunedin, Florida. And then proceeded to, after the holidays, stand before my class and proudly announce to them this secret thing that I knew, which I discovered when they started laughing at me hysterically, that it was not secret and it was nowhere near as exciting as Santa and presents and the Christmases they had just had. Love the podcast. Thanks.

Oh, wow. Well, first off, Bill Wall. Yeah. You asked me to improvise a name for someone. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I forget the context, but yeah. So I appreciate that, Bill. Again, it's so weird to have it called out right after you nailed Haversham.

Yeah. Well, really putting Poshy on the spot to come up with names. Bill Wall. We would love Bill Wall to be the John Doe of the podcast, or the Jane Doe in that case. Right. If you need to tell us a story that you can't affix your own name to because of other people that might listen, and we could also run it through our voice changer. Say Bill Wall through the voice changer. Bill Wall, I was driving from Salem, New Hampshire, out into the Florida.

I, you know, yeah. So, for example, if you're on the run from the cult you joined up with as a kid, feel free to use Bill Wall. I don't think that this Bill Wall, this most recent caller, I don't think she joined a cult as a kid. That's true. I want to make it clear. Yeah, it seemed like maybe that was not her choice.

Yeah. Not a great advertisement for cults, though. There are so few good advertisements for cults. I like the idea of, are you weird because you joined a cult, or did the cult make you weird? I feel like the cults, you have given a chance to cults to be like, they were pretty weird when they got here. Yeah, but then if you got out, then you can always pin it on the cult. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. In fact, if you're having a rough time, maybe do like a week at a cult,

and then you can be like, you know what it was. I'm fine. Yeah. Millenarianism, that is a word I will admit I had to look up. Are those hat makers? No, that's the kind of cult it is. It's millennia. Oh, millennia.. Are those hat makers? No, that's the kind of cult it is. It's millennia.

Oh, millennia. Yeah. But millinery, I believe that's, isn't that the making of hats? You thought it was a cult that made hats? No, millinery, the word. Yeah, I know, but she said I was in a millenarianism cult and you were like, okay, hat cult. That was your takeaway.

I don't know. Culture into weird stuff, man. Oh, no. Oh, I just thought of something. Oh, shit. Do you think dad was trying to get mom to join? Was the pink cowboy hat him trying to get her to join a military cult? That's in that

millinery cult. Yeah. They were just like hats that don't make sense. Yeah, exactly. The color doesn't match the style. That's how you know it's a cult hat, is it does not fit the weather, any of the other clothes. Oh, my God. The hat cult. All right.

Anyhow. You know what happened? You got caught showing off your vocab. You wanted everybody to know you know what millinery means. Well, you're over here tip-tapping on your keys like, oh, see what, I don't know this cult. It's called empathy. I heard someone was in a cult and I decided to do a little light Googling. Counting mile markers is the kind of thing you would have been down for. Yeah.

Yeah. Well, it was before Google Maps. There was no way of knowing how many miles you'd gone. I mean, you'd like to think that Bill Wall would have figured out on this drive that the miles go in order. Oh, right. Yeah, right. That one you might want to put on Bill Wall's school district. Yeah, sort of a non-sequential bunch of numbers you could believe was the secret message. But that would be really funny if I'm going to send you a secret message. One, two, three. Are you writing this down?

Of course. Four, put on your Kangol. My great old buddy Bobby Stewart moved down to Dunedin, Florida. We went there for a trip. I remember, and you came back with a shirt, because what major league baseball team had a minor league team there? You came back with a shirt. The Blue Jays?

Yeah, well, you know, there you go. Yeah, there you go. You got it. That's tough The Blue Jays? Yeah, well, you know, there you go. Yeah, there you go. You got it. That's tough sledding, counting those numbers, but you learned something. Thanks for putting in the time, Bill Wall. Thanks for listening. Up next is Cameron. Hey, guys.

Like the podcast. Figured I'd do one of these and tell you about a Christmas trip that my family had when I was a kid. I would have been about 10 or 11 years old, and we and another family that we were very close with still are. We all went on a trip together to this place in France called Courcheval, and it's this big ski town. It was very exciting. I hated it because I was an indoor kid. I liked computers and video games. My brothers loved it.

Everyone else loved it. We were there for Christmas, and it was about Christmas Eve. We were all sitting around the table for dinner, and all of a sudden, there are these big windows on one side of the room. We start seeing fireworks go off. And we look out the window at these beautiful fireworks. Everyone's oohing and aahing. And we all walk out onto this porch and watch the fireworks.

Just some random display, random act of fireworking occurring in the middle of the cul-de-sac. And it was really great. And one of our friends said that she wanted to go grab her cell phone so she could take a video of it at the time, which was a very novel idea in whatever year this was. So she runs downstairs to the room that she was staying in and she tries to get in her door and it's locked. And she goes, well, that's weird because it only locks from the inside and I'm not in there. So she keeps trying it and keeps trying it. And eventually she figures, well, that's weird because it only locks from the inside and I'm not in there. So she keeps trying it and keeps trying it. And eventually she figures, well, there's just a window outside. Maybe I locked it behind myself. I'll go in through the window. So she goes outside, she goes

through the window and she realizes someone else had thought of the same thing because there's stuff everywhere. A few of her things were missing and there's snow all over the floor. We quickly call the police because they had stolen her cell phone. Luckily they didn't touch the passports, but we call the police. It's Christmas Eve around 11 PM and these obviously very inebriated French officers come into the room. And I don't know what we expected, calling the police at near midnight on Christmas Eve. But this one officer walks into the room and in a Clouseau-esque style, takes a very good long look around and then goes, there's snowy footprint on the bed,

safe is open, everything's gone. And he looks at all this and he goes, it looks like Zayah came in through the window. And we all went, yeah. And then he left and never got our stuff back. And actually an interesting part of that is that we figured that the fireworks we had seen earlier were just a ruse to get us away from our rooms so people could steal from us. So the next night, these fireworks start going off again. And apparently other houses had also been burgled that last night. So my father and a whole collection of fathers go out to surround this poor French firework operator. And honestly, I do think that he was probably part of the whole carbuncle, part of the whole carbuncle, but I would like to think that it was just an association of fathers just threatening some unsuspecting firework seller who wanted to bring joy to the children for the holidays. Thank you very much. Love the podcast. Thank you, Cameron.

Josh, I'm going to put you on the spot.. Yeah please be a French inebriated police officer coming into a room and looking around. Bonjour. Bonsoir. Oh mon dieu. All of these things are scattered around the room. Yeah yeah we called you because they're scattered around the room. Yeah, yeah, we called you because they're scattered around the room. Je pense que je pense que l'intrudeur

Yeah? Entrée cette chambre Oui, through the fenêtre. Yeah, yeah, yeah, we know. Through the fenêtre.

Ouf, mon dieu. Why are you looking in the minibar? I really tip my cap if it was a firework distraction. That's really good. Yeah, because people love fireworks. They can't help themselves. I really tip my cap if it was a firework distraction. That's really good. Yeah. Yeah, because people love fireworks. Yeah. Can't help themselves.

That's such a bummer to get broken into. It really stinks. You got robbed in Rome? Where'd you get robbed? I got robbed by children in Rome. Yeah. They were like, should we use the fireworks? They were like, we don't need the fireworks. We're just dope.

No. Save your fireworks. I was at an internet cafe, and my wallet was on the table next to the keyboard. And one kid came up to my left, and he was holding up a little sign that says, I'm hungry. And when I looked at him, the one on my right took my wallet, and they got out of there. And I was like, oh, those poor kids are hungry. That was that. They could have used a sign that said, my friend's stealing your wallet right now but in Italian

yeah it'd be like I don't know I don't know man well good for you good for you good I'm glad you got a friend in my defense oh here we go his sign did say o fame which means I'm hungry so I knew that little Italian there well they ate like kings that night. Yeah, they did. I think the best, like where I'm like, what did I just do? Is I think the first time I came to New York City by myself, which was I was doing an internship. So I was in college. And I got off at Penn Station and went out.

And a guy said, where are you going? And I gave him the address. He goes, okay, literally just a dude standing on the street. He was like, where are you going? And I'm like, oh, I'm going Upper East Side. He goes, oh, 20 bucks. And I gave him 20 bucks. He goes, okay, literally just a dude standing on the street. He was like, where are you going? And I'm like, oh, I'm going Upper East Side. He goes, okay, 20 bucks. And I gave him 20 bucks. And then I got into a taxi.

And I was like, wait a second, that guy doesn't, he's not connected to this taxi. The speed at which I realized, and then I'm trying to remember. I want to say that I was smart enough not to say to the taxi driver, but I think I might have been like, hey, so I just gave $20. And that's not just checking. That's not your associate because there was no receipt. Scammed on vacation is going to happen every now and then. Part of the journey. Probably that's why we didn't travel on Christmas.

Yeah. Mom and dad. They would take me aside and they'd say, we travel with you, but Josh is too dumb. And someone will steal all his presents. Someone will steal all his presents because they'll make a hand shadow on the wall, and your brother will stare at it for an hour, and then we'll come in and be like, hey, where are all your Legos? He'll be like, hmm?

All right, smarty pants. What's Christmas in French? Joyeux Noël. Oh, you got there. Yeah, you know what I got there? Babar. There's a Christmas babar. You don't think you would have gotten there otherwise?

No. All pass for me, you're cut by Babar. There's a Christmas Babar. You don't think you would have gotten there otherwise? No. All pass for me or cut by Babar. Yeah. All right. And now we're going to take a quick break to hear from one of our sponsors. This episode is brought to you by U.S. Bank with the holidays fast approaching. I can't help but think about food. One day, I'm craving Chinese food.

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You did? I did. And I'll tell you this. I didn't pay cash. I put it on a card. You know what I'd like you to also do? What's that? I'd like you to put on a card some gifts for mom and dad that you can say are also for me, since you're better at

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Hi, my name is Julia. And for Christmas one year, we traveled to Neodoshay, Kansas to visit and celebrate with my aunt. Our celebration was good and fine. Our drive home was a bit crazy. Just outside of town, they had a checkpoint. They were checking for illegal wildlife in game. My husband Bill was driving, and our kids were in the back seat. We pulled over.

The officer came to the window and asked if we had any wildlife in the car. My smart-ass husband replied, just the two in the back seat. The officer didn't even smile. There were a couple of sheriff and game wardens conducting this checkpoint. They then asked for Bill's license. He took his license and went to his patrol car. After what seemed like forever, he came back and asked my husband to roll up his sleeve on his right arm, which he did. And the officer immediately started shouting, this is him. This is him. This is the guy. He had been arrested

in his early twenties. And that is why they asked him to roll up his sleeve and check for the birth mark he has on his forearm. He asked Bill to step out of the car. He took him to the hood of the car and began searching him. I am freaking out. We had been married less than a year and my mind is racing. Who the hell did I marry? The other officers started towards the car. They began reading him his rights and Bill began asking what was going on. Why was he being arrested? The officer said he had a warrant out for his arrest in a different county in Kansas for an insufficient check. Bill still is confused. And then the officer explains the warrant is for a bad check written for a haircut years prior to a salon. I remember vividly my husband saying over

and over, a bad check? This is for a bad check? They did arrest him. He spent the night in jail in Greenwood County for a bad check. It ended up all good. He was not an ax murderer, and he never wrote a bad check again. Merry Christmas. Great. So many great details. I mean, those kids must have been terrified in the moment, and then like so thrilled that dad had to spend the night in jail. Yeah. And thank God jail and not prison, because when you're in prison, you get very little respect when they say,

what are you in for when you're like, cut you the check for a haircut. At the salon. At the salon. No, no, no. Not a barber. It's so crazy how that stuff stays in the system. Yeah.

It's so funny to think back that someone at a salon, days later, right? So you get a check, okay? Some guy writes you a check for your haircut. Already a red flag, right? Maybe a different time. So you take checks? Sure. Writes a check.

Maybe a week later, you get it back from the bank, flight check. Call the cops. Yeah. That's the next step. In order for this story to work, you've got to from the bank, flight check. Call the cops. Yeah. That's the next step. In order for this story to work, you've got to call the cops. There's another thing. You've got to remember a birthmark on that dude's arm. You've got to remember.

You've got to visually be able to go back to when the check was reaching out. Yeah. Try calling the cops for that today. Today. Yeah. No way. Is this the case where it was a free haircut? You gave that one away for free?

I forget if it's coupe my cheveux or coupe my cheveux. Cheveux. One is a horse and one is your hair. One is the hair? Here was the way I wanted to hear the start of that story. Julia said, I'm driving with my husband. The cops are stopping cars looking for illegal wildlife and game, which is

a problem because my husband's a white rhino. I mean, a little aggressive policing there too by the wildlife. I mean, come on, guys. You know, if you don't see tiger pelts, this isn't about finding the haircut check kiter.

Yeah. I had an aggressive policing issue, which sort of is travel-based as well. We used to live in Amsterdam. Yeah. And there was a year, I don't know if it was Christmas or not, but it was coming back from Amsterdam. I had to fly through Houston, coming to L.A. And I had, like, marijuana is now legal in a lot of places in the States, but it's been legal in Holland forever.

And when you would buy a joint, it would be in a little plastic case. And I had two of these empty cases that I was bringing back as like a curiosity. And then also when I'm in the airport in Amsterdam, I go to the duty-free place and they have bottles of Absinthe. And it says, Absinthe, now legal in the United States.

Right. I'm like, oh, cool. As we know from previous stories, if Josh sees a sign, he takes it as his word. Whether it says, I'm hungry. Well, yeah. I'm in an international airport. So I typically would buy a bottle of scotch, an interesting bottle of scotch. But this time would like buy a bottle of scotch, you know, an interesting bottle of scotch. But this time I buy a bottle of absinthe.

So I get stopped in Houston and the TSA guy, the security guys, like finds the little joint cases. And he's like, what are these? And I say, they're plastic cases. And he's like, what's in them? I was like, nothing. He's like, what was in them? And I was like, well, joints were in them when I bought them, but now they're empty. And there was like a little bit of ash in them. And he's like, if I swab this and it comes up for, you know,

any percent of marijuana, you go to jail. And I was like, are you kidding? And he's like, yeah, he's like, or you can destroy them. And I said, destroy them? And he's like, throw them in the trash can over there. And I was like, all right, fine, I'll do that. And then he's like, or you can destroy them. And I said, destroy them? And he's like, throw them in the trash can over there. And I was like, all right, fine. I'll do that. And then he's like, what's this bottle? Sealed in a duty-free bag. And I was like, that's Absinthe that I bought at the duty-free shop.

He's like, Absinthe is illegal. And I'm like, there was a sign at the duty-free shop. And he's like, yeah, I'm going to have to confiscate this as well. And I'm like, all right, fine. I miss my connecting flight. I get back to L.A. Years later, like 12 years later, TSA pre becomes a thing. And you have to apply for it.

I apply for it. I have to go to the Long Beach airport and have an interview. And it's in the system. They're like, you tried to smuggle marijuana and absinthe into the country. And I'm like, what? And it's still on my record. I cannot get TSA pre. I cannot argue my case. I have written a letter to the ombudsman of TSA pre in Virginia. Denied. One of the reasons you can't argue your case is you're always hopped up on weed and absinthe. Incoherent. Yeah.

Didn't even have the wormwood in it. That's what you need to make it real absinthe. That's how you hallucinate. My favorite part is that you got caught smuggling empty joint containers back into the States. Like a guy who collects old crack pipes. The best. Everything. It's just, this is the thing, you guys.

I'm glad you guys are hearing these stories. Josh is a great travel companion, but there's always things go wrong. You're just very taken aback that he puts himself in these positions.

You just, every time he even goes to the bathroom on a plane, you're like, he's probably going to get his fucking arm stuck in the toilet. Anyhow,

I'm not a bad person. You're not a bad person. Thanks. I'm going to make you feel a little bit better because I did have to throw something once away with TSA. Oh, yeah? What was that? A hard salami. I bought like, you know,

the same thing, like at Skipple. I bought some like chowder cheese. A little hard salami. And then they were like, you can't bring this in? I think it was like a weird, when livestock in Europe didn't have our full faith and confidence. But I made a big scene about it, spiked it into the trash. Yeah, you'll do that.

I'll do that. All right, we have one last story from Molly. Hi, Myers Brothers. My name is Molly, and my story isn't necessarily a family trip, but it is an interesting and weird situation with my family. So growing up, my family never had any pets. We were not a fan of dogs. I guess my mom was just terrified of them, and we never had them.

But throughout the years, she kept getting made fun of by her friends for not being a dog person. Anytime a dog would come over, she would be very much like, get away from me, not allowed in my house. Absolutely not. So one Christmas around 2005, she thought it would be hilarious to borrow dogs for our family photo, which would be our family Christmas card. So I remember being a kid and having three of our neighbor's dogs come over and have a professional photographer take our photo. Now, mind you, my family had never had dogs before. We had never had any pets other than goldfish. And so in this photo, you can see all three of my brothers and myself around these dogs, terrified, had no idea what was going on.

We just did not have a good time. Took the photo. It came out looking super bizarre, but my mom took it one step further by changing all of the dogs' names. I don't know if they were like Bingo or Spot or whatever, the real names. But she changed them to Axel, Rosie, and Slash because she loves Guns N' Roses. So then all of her friends got these Christmas cards, and they were like, whoa, Carol, what is going on? You got dogs.

For her to just say, no, I still don't like dogs, but I was sick of you guys making fun of me. That's great. You know what? I think that the Christmas card is a very good prank area that people do not take full advantage of. Yeah, that's really good. I feel like the classic is a kid crying on Santa's lap. Yeah.

But to put your children who aren't familiar with or comfortable around dogs in your Christmas card and taking them well out of their comfort zone for a picture where they should, is classically sort of, oh, look how warm and familial and cozy this season is. But to make your kids uncomfortable has got to be, I'd love to see that picture. It's really good. I have a niece, Agnes, who is obviously cousins. You guys know how family stuff works.

Cousins with my kids. And so the four of them together are really close. She lives a couple blocks away. Same schools. The best. Love, Agnes. Yeah. And one year, we put her in our Christmas card.

And again, I get it because our kids dress up for Christmas cards. And Agnes, again, they're like her siblings. And she came. And I remember saying, people are going to think it's our kid. You just can't put another kid in a Christmas card and not think people are going to think it's a kid. And Alexis said, don't worry, I'll put in the smallest print they have and Cousin Agnes.

And the real drag is by far the most photogenic of all four of the kids is Agnes. So a lot of people are like, oh, my God. Yes, beautiful child. Beautiful child. Takes a great picture.. So a lot of people are like, oh, my God. Yes, beautiful child. Beautiful child. Takes a great picture. And so the amount of people are like, oh, my God. I didn't realize you had a fourth. She's so beautiful.

And I'm like, oh, it's actually not ours. They're like, oh, okay, the other three are. Oh, that's good. Yeah, that was a weird one. To me, that felt like Ariel, your wife's sister, maybe just didn't want to do a Christmas card and was like, this is going to serve as ours. Oh, 100%. Yeah.

100. I mean, Ariel, very, very good eye on a way to avoid having to put the labor in. Also, you guys have like a photographer who's doing it. You've got kind of a setup. I do not blame anybody. Yeah, we use the infrastructure of having a late night talk show to take some very good Christmas photos. Yeah, you do.

They're excellent. Although we maybe made a mistake this year. Will you be honest? Not that I need to tell you to be honest. We fell in love with the pictures and we probably should have done one big picture and we did eight small pictures. Well, you saw it.

You've already seen it. I didn't have my glasses and without my glasses, I couldn't have seen any of those pictures. Dad said he needed a jeweler's loop to see the photo of my kids. So we maybe blew it. Yeah. Also, is it eight?

I thought it was nine. It looked like a nine box to me. It's too many pictures. But the problem is, I know what happened. We were looking at it on a computer screen, and they were all so great. But what we've done is we've chosen no photos, really. I know it happened. We were looking at it on a computer screen, and they were all so great. But what we've done is we've chosen no photos. Really?

Yeah. It looks like we've sent you a Christmas card that looks like a Christmas card someone very far away is holding. It's also like you can only email so many pictures. Yeah. And so sometimes if you need to email a bunch of pictures. And I know there's better ways to do this. You can use WeTransfer or Dropbox. I seem pretty angry about it, but keep going. If you're just sending an email,

I find that like nine is the limit, or ten. And it feels like you just sort of took a batch of pictures and sent them to the card place, and were like, pick one of these. And they were like, we're just going to do them all. Can't argue with you. We fucked up. But that's the real meaning of Christmas.

Once again, many thanks to our listeners for their wonderful holiday stories. We're going to be back next week with our first best of. Best of the year. Yeah. The year was 2023. It was a good year. It was great. We only did like half of this year. And we still had a real

robust set of podcasts and a lot of great guests. A lot of great guests. We'll talk about how great our guests are at our next one. But we would just like to wish everybody, whether you're traveling with family, whether you're not traveling, whether you're on your own, we are happier with us. And have a happy holiday, everybody. Happy holiday.

Happy New Year coming up, everyone. Don't go too crazy. Have a happy holiday, everybody. Happy holiday. Happy New Year coming up, everyone. Don't go too crazy. If you hear some fireworks, you know, make sure your stuff is locked up tight. Bye, everybody.

Little Chris was just seven years old. The kid who did what he was told. So when the plane left the gate Without him it wasn't his fault Julie's husband had some haircut debt Spent a night in jail making Julie sweat If the cut was 50 bucks Then Bandit would have shitted out. Oh,

oh, oh, these holidays. Oh, oh, oh, oh, happy holidays. Bill won't count it, ma Cause night and day She's been tricked by an adult I hope it's okay if i say that's classic freaking cult molly's family didn't have no pets but borrowed some for a photo and firework cracks on the cul-de-sac Let a burglar through the window

Oh, these holidays Happy holidays Thanks to Airbnb for sponsoring this episode.