Heavyweight - #34 Annie

Episode Date: November 5, 2020

Every time Annie’s family comes to town, they exclude her from their plans. Annie needs to know why. Credits This episode of Heavyweight was hosted and produced by Kalila Holt, along with Stevie Lane and Jonathan Goldstein. Special thanks to Emily Condon, Alex Blumberg, Mathilde Urfalino, Mia Bloomfield, Emma Munger, Zac Schmidt, Sam Reisman, and Jackie Cohen. The show was mixed by Bobby Lord.  Music by Christine Fellows, John K Samson, Bobby Lord, Hew Time, Blue Dot Sessions, and Shanghai Restoration Project. Our theme song is by The Weakerthans courtesy of Epitaph Records. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hi, dear. How are you? Do people ever approach you to tell you that you sound just like Jackie from Heavyweight? No. That wouldn't happen. If they did, would you tell me or you would feel like it would... I would know. Of course, I would not share it. So how do I know if someone has said it? You don't.

Someone has said it, haven't they? No, Johnny. Ah, you paused before you said no. I'll talk to you soon. Like, not soon, but like, in a long time from now. In a soon time from now, right? Soonish. I'm trying to break up, John. I'm trying to break up with you.

Wait, you can't break up with me because I'm breaking up with you. You want to see who hangs up first? I don't. It's like a duel. Rats. From Gimlet Media, I'm Jonathan Goldstein, and this is Heavyweight. Today's episode, Annie. Right after the break. in an exciting live dealer studio, exclusively on FanDuel Casino, where winning is undefeated. 19-plus and physically located in Ontario.

Gambling problem? Call 1-866-531-2600 or visit connectsontario.ca. Please play responsibly. Every day, I receive emails from people looking to make peace with the past, resolve some long-standing hurt that still nags at them. These are emails filled with regret and reflection, carefully chosen words, labored over sentences. Annie's email possessed none of these elements. Annie's email possessed a lot of exclamation points and words in all caps. The story she told was of her uncle

and all the ways he had wronged her over the years. The infractions Annie described were really pretty small, but her anger was enormous. Annie was gearing up for a face-off. She even signed her email, Let the confrontation begin! Punctuated by two exclamation points. I was conflicted.

On the one hand, I was horrified by Annie's willingness to cause such a royal stink. But on the other hand, I was delighted by Annie's willingness to cause such a royal stink. Who among us hasn't wished at some point that we could call people out on the little things that hurt us? After all, most often, it's the mini bite-sized betrayals and small slights that really eat us up. But for fear of being called petty, we pretend to let it all go. But not Annie. I did indeed want to see someone join Annie on her healing journey of screaming and yelling. I just didn't want it to be me. My producer Kalila is not me.

She is also quite possibly Annie's complete opposite. Kalila is undisposed to confrontation. She told me she once had a job where, rather than cause a fuss, she allowed her co-workers to mistakenly refer to her as Callie for four years. Kalila could help Annie, and maybe along the way, a little Annie would rub off on her.

And even better, I wouldn't have to get involved in this mess at all. Yeah, I had a different thought about this one. And so, I lay out the plan to Kalila. I will pass the baton to her so that both she and Annie can grow into their best selves. I was thinking, you know, I would sit this one out and allow you your chance to shine. So you want to send me into a cringey situation instead?

I think so. Mm-hmm. I feel like an armchair colonel dispatching a foot soldier on my behalf. I have to stay behind to do paperwork. Right, and I have to go out there and get shot. I do feel like you can offer support, and she can maybe teach you something as well.

Here comes wellness. What did you just swallow? Was that saliva? Yeah. Really? Yeah. In spite of what Jonathan might think, Annie and I actually have a lot in common.

My favorite food is breakfast. Me too. I have a breakfast tattoo. Stop it. Yeah. I love breakfast. Annie goes by two different names, Annie and Andrea, and so do I, Kalila and Kaylee, while in for four years, Callie. My birthday's April 5th and her birthday's April 6th. And in our youth, we both harbored a weird obsession with cows. But of course, there's the one key way in which Annie and I are different. Annie has no problem causing a fuss. And as for me... Good morning.

Good morning, is this Joe? It is. Hi, it's... This is me talking to Joe. Joe is the audio engineer I hired to record Annie's side of the conversation. Annie and I are talking over the phone. I'm in New York. Annie's at Joe's studio in Seattle. Are you guys all set up, like, you're recording and everything?

Getting settled. Normally about five minutes. Okay. By okay, I mean this is not okay. The great Canadian documentarian Jonathan Goldstein once told me that the way one captures the magic is to ABR, always be recording. So when I booked studio time, I asked Joe, repeatedly, to start recording Annie the moment I phoned. Instead, he seems to be taking pictures of his dog, Domino.

Domino, this way. Perfect. Perfect. But I would never confront Joe about this because that is not the person I am. The person I am would rather take on huge amounts of discomfort myself than make anyone else even a little bit uncomfortable. Unless someone is being outright cruel to me,

it always feels like, well, their intentions are probably good. And so I tell myself Joe's just doing his best, and I wait a few more minutes. Hello? Are you recording, Joe? Um, no. Machines are firing up right now. For listeners unfamiliar with the more technical aspects of podcasting, the process of going from

not recording to recording consists of raising your forefinger and then lowering it onto the record button. Yet ten minutes in, I'm still just listening to Joe rustle around in a mysterious way. And rather than yelling, press the stupid button, I make small talk about the weather, about how it's February 2nd.

A lot of twos and zeros on the date today. I'm sorry, who am I talking to on the phone? Kalila. Kalila, could you speak for just a few moments and just have a conversation? Yeah, sure. Are you recording? Just about. I'm just kind of focusing the mic. Well, I make problems worse by pretending that there is no problem. Annie makes problems worse by flying off the handle. We're rolling. Oh, great. Thank you, Joe. And once we can finally start talking,

Annie explains how this is precisely what happened with her uncle. I really look up and admire my uncle. Annie's uncle, Tim, is like an old-fashioned cowboy out of a western. When she was a kid, her family would drive from Seattle to Utah every summer to visit his dairy farm. I loved going to Utah. I loved it. I couldn't even wait to be dropped off at Uncle Tim's. Like, everybody else was staying at Grandma's down the street, and I just couldn't even be bothered to put my bags down. Just drop me off at Uncle Tim's.

Him teaching me how to milk cows, and I got a special title when all the cows line up, and you have to sanitize and clean their udders and everything before you start milking them. I was the dippy girl. Tim only became more important to Annie as her other family dwindled. Her dad died when she was a teenager, and then she lost a cousin she was close with to a traumatic accident. It made her realize how abruptly people could be taken from you. She wanted to hold on tight to the family she still had. She wanted to hold on to Tim.

All through her teen years, Annie continued to visit Tim on the farm. And after he retired, Tim and his wife would make regular visits to Seattle, where Annie's whole family lives. The whole gang would go out to eat, attend baseball games together. But in recent years, something's changed. Now, they'll come a couple times a year. And they don't tell me, and I don't hear from my mom, when they're coming. This isn't something that happens, like, occasionally. This is now every time they come here.

How long has this been going on for now? Years. I would have to say at least 10. For 10 years now, when Tim and his wife come to town, they always hang out with Annie's mom, but not with Annie. Annie has countless stories of being left out, each more hurtful than the last. Got a couple of favorites. Yeah, please. Okay, so I had called my mom, and I'm on Fourth Avenue. The details of these stories are convoluted, and understanding the true extent of each slight

requires a greater knowledge of Seattle geography than this reporter possesses. There was a time Tim and his wife went to some big Ferris wheel called the Great Wheel and Annie was not invited, even though it's only two blocks from her office. I can see it out the window of my office. Then there was the night they said they were eating dinner too far

away for Annie to join, when it turned out that really, they were all eating right around the corner at the Space Needle. But the final straw, the incident that made Annie right into the show, occurred last summer, while Annie's mom was visiting Tim in Utah. One morning, Annie called her mom to chat. And she's, oh, oh yeah, no, we're all at breakfast. And I was like, oh, that's fun. Are you guys at Maddox? Maddox being a restaurant in Utah. Annie's mom didn't answer. Instead, she put Annie on speakerphone so Annie could chat with her cousin, Tyler. And I was like, oh, are you guys at Maddox? What are you guys doing? And he's like,

no, we came here. Here being not Utah, here being Seattle. It turned out the whole family had flown back to Seattle together the day before, and no one had told Annie. I said, what now? He said, we're here. We're with your mom. I'm on her phone. We're at Patty's Egg's Nest. In the background, I hear my mom, tell her we'll call her back. We're eating. I am like 12 minutes away from these people. I was even like more offended, more hurt that it was breakfast. Yeah, I completely understand that. And I totally, listen, I think I blacked out. I don't know what happened, but something inside me snapped. I was so mad that I said, listen, you tell her that if you are indeed out at breakfast at the Patty's eggs nest, do not bother calling me back.

And I hung up. And I hung up. When she gets angry like this, Annie's family dismisses her as just being dramatic, which makes Annie even angrier. After this breakfast situation, I had an absolute temper tantrum on Facebook. What did you say? Oh, God.

I'm cringing because this is what I did. I make a post that says, PSA. Uh-huh. If you are at a gathering with family and not all your family in the area has been invited? You are an asshole. I can see that when I'm hurt like this, like just so deeply that it really manifests as anger. I never allow myself the luxury of that kind of anger. I've had family vacations planned with no consideration for my schedule,

a family portrait taken without me. And while I'm genuinely hurt by these things, I'd never make a scene. So I admire the way Annie is so willing to call people out, no matter how great the consequences. In the days following the breakfast incident, a new thought dawned on Annie. Maybe she wasn't being excluded accidentally. Maybe Tim and the family just didn't want her around. And now, Annie wants to know, why don't they want her around?

I just want to know what it is. Do you have any, like, theories about what... I have a million theories. A million. You know, I was raised Mormon. I'm not Mormon anymore. I got pregnant with my daughter at 17 years old. I am gay, and I am loud, and I say off-the-cuff and out-of-pocket shit. Have you ever asked them point blank, like, what's going on? No, I haven't asked them directly.

I mean, and now we're at a point where I haven't talked to them at all. And I can't talk about this without it just blowing up. And so it just doesn't get anywhere. You know, no resolution. This is where I come in. I think it would help having somebody else ask why. For all her bluster, Annie's anger hasn't led to anything constructive.

So while the old host of this program thinks Annie has all these lessons to teach me, maybe I have lessons to teach her, too. So maybe, like, a combination of your directness and my extreme hedginess together would form a reasonable person who could find something out? I think so. Annie tells me that no one in her family knows she's contacted Heavyweight about this. And so... You're going to have to cold call.

I hate cold calling. But what I do not hate is advertisements. calling. But what I do not hate is advertisements. So brandish your toilet plunger because here comes a crap ton of savings about to overflow the toilet onto the toilet floor of your bank account. Jonathan made me say that. FanDuel Casino's exclusive live dealer studio has your chance at the number one feeling, winning. Which beats even the 27th best feeling, saying I do. Who wants this last parachute? I do. Enjoy the number one feeling, winning, in an exciting live dealer studio, exclusively on FanDuel Casino.

Where winning is undefeated. 19 plus and physically located in Ontario. Gambling problem? Call 1-866-531-2600 or visit connectsontario.ca. Please play responsibly. I start my cold calls with Annie's mom, Angie. Annie's mom is the person Tim always reaches out to when he's in Seattle. In all of Annie's stories about being left out, her mom, Angie, is a key player. For me, a cold call is a terrible trap of anxiety and dread.

As the phone rings, I pray it will go to voicemail. Hello? It does not go to voicemail. So to convey, we're all pals here and you shouldn't yell at me, I raise my voice several octaves. Hi, is this Angie? Yes, it is. I try to put Angie at her ease,

explaining how I work on this podcast about helping people. And it's usually hosted by this guy, Jonathan. But Jonathan handed me Annie's case because he thinks it's high time I learned a good lesson about personal resilience or something. Possibly the value of a dollar. Finally, much to my relief, Angie cuts me off. Yeah, um.

Okay, well, do you want to hear my side of the story or not really? Yes, please. Yeah, yeah, please. Okay, so. To Angie, this whole breakfast blow-up was, to quote Billy Shakespeare, much ado about nothing. She explains that, to quote Billy Joel, she didn't start this fire. Tim was going on a cruise that sailed from Seattle, and so he and his family spent one night at Angie's house so she could drive them to the dock in the morning.

You know, this is a mad dash rush to get them to the cruise ship. It wasn't like we had planned a breakfast. We had decided that morning, are we going to go grab something at Jack in the Box or do we have time to go to the restaurant? And her telling, like, she didn't even know that the family was stopping in Seattle.

Oh, yes, she did. Yes. Oh, yeah. Okay, then there was another incident when we were all in Seattle. One by one, Angie refutes each of Annie's stories of exclusion. And hearing Angie's take on the whole thing, it does all sound like a big overreaction. It makes me wonder whether Annie, to quote Billie Eilish, is the bad guy. There's always drama surrounding Annie. She's really got in her mind that we just are totally cutting her out.

When, from my perspective, we're not cutting her out. After getting off the phone, I don't know whether to believe what Angie said or what Annie said. I would need some sort of tiebreaker. I'd need to hear from more family. So to turn this she said, she said into a she said, she said, she said, she said, I call Annie's daughter, Savannah. I'm at work, but I'm totally free right now.

But if someone comes in, I don't need to, like, take care of them. And Annie's sister, Jamie. Living with my own drama over here. My fiancé of nine and a half years has moved out. Ugh, God, I'm sorry to hear that. Well, I'm not. So let me be with my sister's drama. Everyone in Annie's family speaks with a similar affect.

Talking to them feels a bit like watching one of those movies where Jim Carrey plays eight roles. I asked Savannah, is this really happening or not? Is Annie being excluded from plans with Tim? Oh, definitely. I asked Jamie the same question. They come out a lot and they don't invite her. Are you getting invited to this stuff?

Nope. Not even a little bit. Does it bother you? No. I do not care. I definitely have one of those personalities that if someone doesn't want to involve me, I'm just kind of like, okay, don't let the door hit you or the good Lord split you. But my mom kind of gets like, hey, wait, but why not? Why don't you want to hang out with me? Or like, what's going on?

Hold on. Have a good one. Where do you work, by the way? Seattle Suntan. Oh, is it like a tanning place? Yes. Oh, is it like a tanning place? Is Seattle's suntan a tanning place? I can't believe this family's happiness rests in my hands. As for Jamie, she says she's too busy for any additional plans.

Somebody called me and said, hey, you want to go to the Great Wheel? I'd be like, no, not today, definitely not tomorrow. Like, I'm chasing kids through hockey games. I want to be and have been that mom who has been to every hockey game. And me and other moms, we will tell you, like, there's no family like hockey family. But unfortunately for Annie, she doesn't have a hockey family. She's stuck with doesn't have a hockey family. She's stuck with just a boring old family family. Her siblings have spouses, little kids, whole sports teams of community. Annie's a single mom.

Her daughter is 20 now, already out of the house and forging her own life. One of the few people Annie's always had to turn to is Tim. And now, it feels like she doesn't even have him. Baseball season is starting soon, and Tim always visits Seattle to see the Mariners play. So I decide I'll fly to Seattle at the same time, coordinate a plan Annie is a part of, and then the whole gang can get together for a nice breakfast at Patty's Egg's Nest,

where I can order a frittata with hash browns and an English muffin. I just have to coordinate the timing with Annie and book my plane ticket. Right, travel plan. I'm a little paranoid I'm, like, gonna get stuck there with all this virus stuff going on. Oh, ho, ho, this virus stuff. That conversation was recorded at the end of February, 2020. A month and a half later, and I've purchased an office chair for my bedroom, hoarded canned goods and toilet paper, texted all my contacts, how are you holding up,

learned what Zoom is, started having my groceries delivered, stopped doing laundry, cried in every room of my apartment, and finally I, along with everyone else, am realizing this is not going to go away in a week or a month or even a year. And in the meantime, we have to continue to exist, and part of existing is sorting through the important issues, like why you weren't invited to breakfast at Patty's Egg's Nest. And so I email Annie and ask for her uncle's phone number. It's time to go directly to the source of her troubles. I figure if I call Tim alone, without Annie on the line to blow up at him, I can get him to speak candidly about why he hasn't been including Annie. Annie sends me the number and says that Tim is hard of hearing, so I might have to shout.

For a while, I do nothing. Every time I think about calling an elderly dairy farmer to yell at him, I feel sick. But as the weeks go by, not calling just makes me feel worse. And finally, when my anxiety reaches an absolute fever pitch. Hello? Hi, is this Tim? Yes. Hi, this is... I try to put Tim at his ease, explaining how I work on this podcast about helping people, and it's usually hosted by this guy Jonathan, but Jonathan thinks it's high time I learned a good lesson about personal resilience, and as I blather on, I keep hoping Tim will cut me off.

But he does not. Yeah, so like, so your niece Annie actually had reached out to us about some stuff sort of that's going on with your family. Do you have any idea what I'm referring to? No. This whole incident with this breakfast do you remember this slightly whereas annie has poured over the details a million times all tim remembers is that annie got mad about something or other can you tell me what her perspective was what we did to her yeah sure i mean like i think from, yeah, she just feels left out. Like, she feels like there's sort of a pattern of,

look at me explaining a problem head on instead of just nervously avoiding it. I don't like to have you come to town and not tell her and make time to see her. I think she just, like, to her, it does feel more personal. I love Annie to death. I mean, from the time Annie was a teenager, it does feel more personal. I love Annie to death. I mean, from the time Annie was a teenager, me and Annie got along. We have got along really well. I hope she's ain't got something against me.

I would never intentionally make Annie feel bad, ever. And I hate to hear that she's doing over this still. I haven't talked to her for quite a while. And now I know I need to. So, in an effort to get the reconciliation train chugging along, I suggest to Tim that we turn to the thing so many of us have turned to in these difficult times. Let's do a Zoom. I did try one of them Zoom or whatever they are called,

meetings, and I did not like it a bit. I have trouble hearing, and the joke has been, boy, I love to keep Uncle Tim on the phone more than five minutes because I know he's going crazy just trying to hear. I hate electronics myself. No, I'm going to give Annie a call. I'll call her and just talk to her. And if I can do anything else for you, I'll do anything for Annie.

Time to sit back and wait for the catharsis to roll in the only problem is it doesn't not by a long shot After speaking with Tim, I told Annie to expect his call. But for days, she heard nothing. At first, I was kind of like, what the hell? I would have called my niece right away. And then I kind of, you know, I kind of circled back into like, oh, he must be really trying to come up with like a thoughtful response to me. You know, maybe he's just feeling really bad. And then Tim did call. After speaking to me, Tim reached out not to Annie, but to Annie's mom, his middleman, Angie.

Angie spoke with Tim the same way she did with me, contradicting Annie's timeline and basically reminding Tim of how dramatic Annie can be. And in Angie's telling, I'd become an extension of this drama. Apparently, Angie and Tim call me the podcast lady. I hope I'm not, like, making things worse by calling all these people.

No, this is always how, this is what it is. And this is why I emailed in the beginning. I'm out of my depth. So I call up the person who got me into this mess to begin with. Hello? Jonathan? Hey, Dogie wants to say hi. Hi. Hi, Augie. How are you? Good. Good. Glad to hear. What's up? Well, you know, I'm doing that Annie thing that you told me to do today's episode right any i basically i i thought things were going pretty well and now things are uh not going well i explained the whole fiasco to jonathan my call to tim tim's call to angie my now being the podcast lady. They see her contacting a podcast as

kind of a dramatic flourish. Right, right, right. So you're at that point where you feel like you're making things worse, not better. It's very familiar to me. It's always, there is always that risk. Sometimes it just takes time. I think that's the thing.

That's the money loser of our operation, I think. It's just you can't rush these things. Do you call him Uncle Tim when you talk to Annie? No. Well, maybe that's the problem. You have to become embedded as one of the family,

and a part of that is referring to him as Uncle Tim. I'm not going to do that. Johnny said Stuart Goldstein. Did you know that John Stuart's middle name was Stuart? Yeah, you told me. That his real last name is Leibowitz. Okay, okay.

But this is great. I mean, this is great for me. It's like I'm on holiday. I've put a pin in this whole cats in the cradle situation. I'm spending much more time with Augie and it's just been, it's been fabulous. Augie, I think you should maybe put that down, honey.

That's not a toy. He's holding a big mallet. Well, anyway, I hope so. Does this help? So you're saying give it a few days to play out? Yeah, give it a few days to play out. Yeah, give it a few days. I give it a few days. Then a few more days. Then a few more.

Then a few weeks, just to be safe. I talked to your uncle a month ago. Yeah. He said he was going to call you and... Nothing. Jonathan told me to give it time, but time has gotten me nowhere. So I gear myself up to be the pushiest I've ever been in my life. And the sweatiest. And the highest pitched.

Hi, Tim. Yes? Hi, this is Kalila, who's recording with a podcast with Annie. Do you remember me? Oh, yeah. I just had been checking in with Annie, and she said that she hadn't... She hasn't heard from me. Do you want to just try calling her together right now?

Actually, I am just walking out the door to go to work. Okay, it doesn't have to be today either. I'm open to whatever is best for you. If there's another day that's better. Well, I don't know. I haven't thought about that right now. Actually, I'm in a real hurry right now. And Tim's supposed to be a Mariners fan?

More like a Dodgers fan, am I right or am I right? Two weeks later, I check back in with Annie. You didn't happen to hear from your uncle, did you? No. No, he didn't call. No. It's he didn't call. No. It's not going to happen. Having spoken with Tim,

I'm not exactly feeling like a ray of optimism myself. But while Annie is 100% certain Tim has written her off, I'm only 97% certain. I don't want her to slam the door just yet. It's going to happen. Yeah just yet. It's gonna happen. Yeah, right. If it's gonna get off the ground, I mean, it's definitely gonna have to be us.

But that's okay. It's not okay to me, and I don't think it's really okay to Annie. If Annie's the one to reach out, she'll just be playing into the same dynamic as always, showing up at the table and begging for scraps. So I encourage Annie to just wait. But a week goes by, and another, and then another, and I start to feel like Annie was right. Her uncle will never call. Hey Annie, trying to get a hold of you. Call me.

I didn't hear my phone ring or anything, and then weirdly it just came through on my watch that I had this voicemail from Uncle Tim, and I was like, my heart just went boom. Annie had been with friends, watching the movie Burlesque, when finally, out of the blue, Tim called. Amidst the excitement of Cher yelling at Christina Aguilera to make the stage her own, one of Annie's friends asked her what was up. I was like, no, it's just my uncle.

And my one friend goes, the one that doesn't talk to you? And I was like, yeah. Well, I guess he is trying to talk to me. And I've spent this whole time thinking that that I'm not really like worth a call. So I was glad to know that he had called. And so then when I heard his voice, I was like kind of emotional because I haven't like talked to him in so long. At this point, it's been almost a year since Annie and her uncle last spoke. We decide Sunday is the day. That's when we'll call Tim back. But then Annie pushes it to Monday.

I'm really nervous, she tells me. On Monday, she cancels last minute. Annie's now feeling something different than she's used to. It's not anger, something she can yell her way through. Instead, Annie's feeling vulnerable. And that's scarier. Instead, Annie's feeling vulnerable. And that's scarier.

I finally get her to commit to Tuesday. Tuesday will be a better day anyway, Annie says. Because Tuesday is Tim's birthday. To me, a birthday is a worse day. Instead of gifting the poor man a nice pair of socks or something, Annie's going to usher the podcast lady on stage like an unwanted birthday clown. Nevertheless, on Uncle Tim's birthday, I procure a frittata. I tell Annie to get a breakfast too. We can all eat on the call and pretend to be at Patty's egg's nest together. But when I get on the line with Annie, her frittata plate is frittata-less.

I have not even eaten like today. I'm totally freaking out. I cannot believe I'm doing this. Okay, I'm ready. Should we do it? Okay. Um. Wait! Okay, go. Hello? Hi, Uncle Tim. Hello, how are you? Happy birthday. Well, thank you.

Kalila is on this call too. Hi, Tim. What did you just say? I said Kalila's on this call too. Hi, it's... Okay. I just want to talk to you, if that's okay. That's fine. I feel like...

That's fine. I feel like sometimes I feel like I'm genuinely hurt and upset about sometimes when everyone's getting together and I feel kind of left out. Or like an afterthought when everyone is going out but I just wanted to tell you about it because I I feel like there's maybe like two people on the planet that like really get me and like I feel like you're my person especially after my dad died you were like basically a father to me and I always even even like I always wanted you to be my dad because I love you so much. So that's why I feel like when I'm not included, I know that I'm rambling, but I feel like when I'm just not included, sometimes it just like I do feel sad. Well, it wasn't intentional and I hope it never happens again so anyway Tim wants to sweep the mess of Annie's feelings under the rug but before he just moves on I raise

the question Annie brought to me in the first place Annie can I ask too like it seemed like part of it was that you were afraid that it was something about your personality. Yeah, I have felt like that. Like if people don't want me around because I'm too loud or it's like there's something about me that people are like offended by. I can tell you, if you're not like pissed at somebody, we all know you're the funnest to be around. Right? But when you get, like, you're, like, mad at somebody, it's not, like, the sweetest to be around then. All that clattering is coming from Annie's side of the call.

She's started pacing around, organizing her toiletries. She's agitated by what Tim is saying. Annie's willing to call people out no matter the consequences. But there are consequences. It seems Tim's distance has nothing to do with Annie's being gay or not being a Mormon or having been a teen mom. It might simply be that generally, people just want to eat their eggs in peace and pretend like everything's fine.

But even though Tim's criticism hurts, Annie doesn't do what she usually does. She doesn't unleash her anger. I do feel really bad about the, I think that when everybody was at breakfast, I was just shocked and I straight up flipped out. I was so upset. And so, like, you know, I'm sorry that I obviously didn't handle it very well. I am in a better place. And if we're being honest, medicated. And so. Who ain't?

Who ain't? Like, I know i'm not perfect that's that's all tim stays quiet for a moment and when he speaks it's not to annie but to me much as he might resent my presence tim always, chooses to go through a middleman. Well, and as far as Annie goes, she's just always been special to me. The first time she was going to get married, I was going to give her away, you know. I says, yeah, I'll buy me a new suit. I'll do anything for you.

And anyway, and then he was cheating on her or something. A few years later, she says, you going to give me away? And I says, you bet. And she says, well, does it matter if I'm marrying a girl? And I says, Annie, if boys don't work, girls are fine for me. I'll do anything for you. And I feel like she's my daughter. I've loved Annie since she was just a little girl and we've always just connected, my little dippy girl. I mean, I've laid for hours on

Annie's bed and just, you know, and held her. We could talk about anything or not say anything. I've never thought bad of Annie. Then suddenly, mid-sentence, Tim addresses Annie directly. I've never thought of leaving you out. I know if you feel bad that it... If you're feeling bad, especially when I'm talking to you, it really makes me feel bad. I know. I just,

I love you, Tim, a lot. Definitely missed hearing your voice. And I feel like we haven't talked in so long. And so. Gotta make more effort to even talk like this. Cause it is nice to hear your voice, too.

Well, that makes me feel better. It's not a breakfast invitation, a baseball game, or even a Zoom. But despite the fact that Tim hates being on the phone for more than five minutes, he's still here, talking. I think this is the longest I've talked to you over the phone. I wish I could give you a big squeeze right now. talking. I think this is the longest I've talked to you over the phone. I wish I'd give you a big squeeze right now. Me too. Maybe next time that you guys come down, we'll just plan something just for me and you to do. Yes, we will. I love you. I love you too. Thank you for talking to me. I will talk to you anytime. You know that.

Love you, Annie. Love you. See ya. Bye. Bye. We did it. We did it. We did it. I'm disappointed that now there's a pandemic

and we can't go to Patty's egg's nest, which I really wanted to go to. Right, as they, like, play us out with our, like, silverware clinking around in the background. Yeah. I can hear it now. Yeah, just park in the grass. Oh, no can hear it now. Yeah, just parking the grill. Oh, no, I'm moving on.

My date's here. All right, yeah, you got a lot going on. I won't keep you. Thank you for everything. I'll talk to you later. All right, talk to you later. And with that, I settled down at my desk alone to finish eating my frittata.

A frittata delivered to my apartment cold and in a coffee-soaked bag. But rather than kick up a fuss, I thanked the delivery man profusely and tipped him generously. Like all of us, he's probably just doing his best. Just enjoying my breakfast. I'm going to go get some food. Now that the furniture's returning to its goodwill home Now that the last month's rent is scheming with the damage deposit

Take this moment to decide If we meant it, if we tried or felt around for far too much from things that accidentally touched. This episode of Heavyweight was produced by me, Kalila Holt, along with Stevie Lane and armchair colonel Jonathan Goldstein. Special thanks to Emily Condon, Alex Bloomberg, Matilda Erfolino, Mia Bloomfield, Emma Munger, Zach Schmidt, Sam Reisman, and Jackie Cohen.

Bobby Lord mixed the episode with original music by Christian Fellows, John K. Sampson, and Bobby Lord. Additional music credits can be found on our website, gimletmedia.com slash heavyweight. We'll have a new episode next week.