Rerelease: Dax's Mom (Laura Labo)
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Wondery Plus subscribers can listen to Armchair Expert early and ad-free right now. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts. Or you can listen for free wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome, welcome, welcome to Armchair Expert. I'm Dan Shepard. I'm joined by Mrs. Moose. Brown Mouse. Brown Mouse. Brown Mouse.

You probably caught that in the fact check, Pantone color. Uh-huh. Okay. And Wobby Wob. Uh-huh. The one and only Wobby Wob. So what we're doing in these, in our one week off is we thought we would, we all got to pick our favorite, two of our favorite episodes. And so the episode you're going to hear today is my sweet, sweet mom, Laura LeBeau. Laura Louise LeBeau, L-L-L. Triple L. Triple L, L cubed. Okay.

Yeah, I think this is- Why'd you pick it? Well, because I love my mom so much. And beyond that, this is probably number one episode I hear about from people when I bump into them on the streets. I think it was uniquely powerful for a lot of women who have been through a lot. Yeah. Agreed. So please enjoy my sweet mom, Laura LeBeau.

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He's an outcast.

Welcome to the Armchair Expert. I am your resident expert, Dax Shepard. My beautiful sidekick is across from me. Hi. Hi. Hi. Monica Padman. Today is... Special day. It's very, very special. A lot of people have asked for this and it makes me happy that they wanted to hear this because my number one love of my life is on today. Yeah. My mom, Laura LeBeau. Oh my God, I just welled up even saying that.

You love her so much. I love her so much it hurts. And I just want to say you're going to hear all the reasons I love her. She's so honest and open and brave. You know, 100% of that I get from her. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah.

Very emotional and wonderful for me. And I hope all of you guys get as much out of it. Yeah. And, and just disclaimer, there's a portion, a very small portion that, um, Dax has to go potty. Yeah. And, uh, but we kept rolling and, and, uh,

And I was talking to your mom and I decided to leave it in because she says a couple of pretty profound things during that. Yeah. So don't think when I like you hear me get out, I haven't had a heart attack or anything. I haven't left on a stretcher. Yeah, because if you stop talking, people are going to get concerned because they're used to hearing your voice. Ever present droning nonstop voice. So, yeah, my sweet, lovely mother. Enjoy. My mom, the love of my life, Laura Louise Lebeau, who's here.

Upon popular demand, I think a lot of folks have... Well, not I think. I've gotten a million tweets asking for me to talk to you, which I would have done anyways. But I just want you to know that you're highly desired by Armcherry's. Because he talks about you so much. Well, she listens. You listen, Mom, right? Oh, yes. Just recently, you kind of...

Binged. You binged, right? Yes. But I had been listening here and there, but I had a real good binge on the drive up. You're busy. I'm not expecting you to listen to it. But yeah, you had a 16-hour drive from Oregon to L.A. two weeks ago. I think to say that I'm not your number one fan would be an outright lie. Okay. But how many did you plow through in that ride? Oh, quite a few. I listened for two days straight, and I drove...

Wow. That's a lot. Yeah, I got through a lot of them and I really, really enjoy. The thing I like most about your podcast is that I learn about these people in a much different way than their public persona. Like I get to hear their vulnerabilities and the things they've overcome and their fears. And I don't know, it just seems like so much more interesting, like they're real people.

Yeah, because when I watch TV, I'm like, oh, that guy's a millionaire. He's got it made. He wakes up and starts cheering, right? It must feel awesome. Exactly. All his problems are solved. Knowing that I was going to record with you, I did have a little bit of...

Since memory of the last time I thought one of the love of my life would be a really easy interview, which was Kristen. So I have prepared for 50% shot of this going up in smoke. Well, I would have thought you would have hired someone to take me to Michael's yesterday to head that off at the pass. Okay, yeah. Is there any grievances you have? Am I keeping you from doing anything in LA that you... No, no. You were born in 1951. You have five brothers. All right.

And you were the third eldest, right? Yes. Uncle Larry, Uncle Tom, then you, then Uncle Alger, then Uncle Joel, then Uncle Robbie. Right. Yeah. And as a little sister to two boys. Yeah.

infatuated with them. You were. Oh my God. They were so, who wouldn't have been? They were so good to me. They were. Well, I mean, I could tell you a thousand stories, not just the ones where they use me as a goalie in the basement when they played hockey. Um, and I had a zillion pads on and stuff and they just kept shooting pucks at me. But, um, the better stories are, you know, my brothers both had paper routes, which was crazy.

common for boys in the 50s. In Michigan, by the way, this is all in Michigan. Oh, yeah. This is all in Livonia, Michigan. Livonia, Michigan. 29583 McIntyre. And in the wintertime, my brother Larry would put me on the sled with all his papers and

And he would pull me the whole neighborhood. I'm talking this neighborhood was probably, I'm going to guess a thousand little after the war, three bedroom brick houses. Yeah. A little bungalows. And he would pull me on the sled and deliver all his papers. And then,

There was a guy, rain or shine, even in the winter, would come around with his truck that sold cotton candy and caramel corn and stuff. And he would always say to me when the truck would be approaching, do you want some caramel corn? And he would reach in his pocket and buy me a caramel corn. And I would sit on the sled and he would pull me. And then my brother Tom also had a paper route. And he would put me on the, think about this, my brother Tom, even though he's four years older than me, people in the neighborhood thought we were twins because I was the same size as him.

Oh, really? Because you were a big girl or he was a small boy? He was a very small boy. He had a lot of health issues when he was a little kid. Right. And so anyway, I would sit on the front handlebars of his bicycle, which he also had the paper bag with all the papers on this handlebars. And he would pedal me all over his route. And when he would take me to the paper station, he would stop at this little, I don't know, like a beer and wine store. And he would buy me a

RC Cola and a moon pie. And I would sit there and watch him fold papers and load his paper bag. And I never asked for anything. My brothers just always, they just. Were they being coached to do that nice stuff by Midji or Joel LeBeau, the patriarch of the family? I don't.

I don't think so. I think they genuinely, I mean, maybe I'm delusional, but I honestly think they just really liked me. Like they were just good to me. Out of the goodness of their heart. Yeah, we were real close. We often did things together. Like we had a shopping center that was two blocks from our house and it was 57 stores all under one roof. Wonderland Shopping Center, which was really a big deal in the 50s.

And they would walk up there with me and we just, you know, look in all the stores together and stuff and come. I mean, we didn't things regularly. Right. Do you think that made you a tomboy? Because I sometimes look at Carly, my little sister, your third offspring. And I think, you know, in some way, I'm sure I irreversibly damaged her by being like the who she was trying to be like as I was trying to be like David. She was probably sometimes trying to be like me.

So consequently, she fist fought on the bus, right? So sometimes she got in trouble for... She kicked that boy in the face. Yeah, she kicked the boy in the face. With her little Vans tennis shoes. Yeah, really cute little pink Vans tennis shoes. Yeah.

And I just wonder, you know, if that was for the best or not. But you played field hockey and shit, right? Yeah, I did. But I wasn't like a tomboy. Like, I really liked doing everything with the boys. However, I loved dolls. I was very much a girl in that respect. But yeah, I guess I was. Did you always want to have kids?

Always. I always knew I was going to be a mom. Always. Even though you are you were saddled with a ton of child rearing yourself, right? Because you had three younger brothers and you had to do a ton of mom stuff, which you didn't always appreciate, did you? Well, that's a tricky question. No, I did not always appreciate it. I mean, I...

I loved my brothers and I genuinely did things on my own that I loved and enjoyed with them. But when I started to get into like junior high and high school and my friends were doing things after school and I wanted to do it with them, I did not have the option of going with them. I was to report back home because.

my mom needed help. And that I was a little resentful of that. Yeah. And then the last baby she had robbed my mom. I'm, I'm going to guess, I think my mom was 38 or 40 when she had robbed. Oh wow. And she did not recover as quickly as,

I don't think she wanted to recover. I think she was really enjoying the hired hand. Also, if she were to recover, there might be a fucking seventh child on the way, right? Pippi just would not stop. Yeah. Yeah. They had a good romance. They had a high fecundity, right? Like rabbits. Yeah. So when I was in, I've got to think if I was eighth grade or ninth grade, you know,

You know, Rob was in my room in his crib and we shared a room. And so when he came home from the hospital, he was born in August and he was a preemie. So in September, when school started, he was still on a real every three or four hour bottle schedule. Yeah. And my mother will tell you to this day, she thinks she was very clever, which I suppose she was that. Yeah.

When she would hear him cry, she would pretend to be sleeping and wait for me because I'm not going to let him cry. So I would go downstairs. And back those days, there was not a microwave. So you heated a bottle on the stove. And then it was a glass bottle, I assume. Glass bottle. You put it in a pan of water and you heat it up. And you were also changing diapers with cloth and baby pins, right? Yes. And my brother Rob was, he had quite a few bouts with a thing they called Rosie Ola, I think. Yeah.

Have you heard of that? Delta had that. Did she? She did? Rose Aoli. Remember we kept calling it Aoli? Yes, in New York last summer. Our fevers? She didn't. Well, we did some. It was self-diagnosed Rose Aoli. As our most medical conditions in our house. But we think it was. She did have a fever one day or she was sick and then she just had this cramp.

Remember her face looked crazy. Oh, yeah, yeah. She got that crazy rash. Crazy rash. Yeah, real rosy cheeks like, yeah. And Robbie had that. Well, Robbie used to get it frequently. Well, I look back on it. Maybe he had it a couple times, but in my memory, it's frequently. Yeah, yeah. And he would run these ridiculously high fevers. And back in those days, the theory was that you give them ice baths. So you would take...

a pan with water and ice in it and put bath towels in it. You'd lay one bath towel on the floor and put the baby on top and another ice towel on top of him while he screamed his lungs out. And so medieval, it was medieval and it was the cruelest thing. And he would just scream. He's just a little baby. And so my mom and I would do that during the night. And then I'd go to school the next morning, you know, after torturing the little baby or giving him bottles during the night. So again, yeah, I feel like,

Well, I similarly changed many of Carly's diapers. Not similarly. I never had to torture her with icy towels. But I did have to use those cloth diapers because that's what we used when Carly was born in 1981 or whatever. And boy, I was very nervous about putting that big safety pin through the cloth. And I thought I was going to stab the little baby. And she was so cute. And she had a temper, too. Well, and I...

You know, looking back on that, I mean, I really didn't have any options at the time, as you remember. You and David were my support system. However, looking back on it and knowing what I know now, I feel really...

for you guys because I feel like I put you in the same position that I hated being in. Oh, well, I have all kinds of things that I look back on and think could have been better. That's not one of them. And I definitely, you know, when when Kristen and I brought Lincoln home from the hospital, I think generally new parents have a moment of panic when you leave the hospital and you glance in the backseat and you go, Jesus Christ, they let us leave that hospital with a little human that's dependent on us. Or at least I've heard that from a lot of friends of mine who are dads.

I did not have that at all. I was like, oh, I know how to do this. I was doing this at six and a half years old. I can totally do. Yeah. You change their diapers and you give them food and you're good. Do you remember how great you guys were? I worked midnights at the GM Proving Grounds and I would come home. I'd get off at eight and I would fly home. I'd be home by like 815 and I would come in and little Carly would always be

in a dress with Pat Mothers shoes and tights with ruffles on the butt and I'm talking she was very little and I would say why didn't you put her in her little jammies and it was like she's a girl mom and

But if she would wake up, you know, before I got home, they would take her in. They inevitably babies always fill their drawers during the night. And so in order not to deal with it, like I'd walk in the bedroom and there would be the changing table with her jammies from the night before and a poopy diaper. And there would be like six thousand wipes all just packed.

on top of it like they just touched it once and they would take her in the bathtub and just dunk her lower half of her body in the water to get her clean and then dress her. I mean that, come on, how loving is that? Yeah. I remember enjoying caring for her

So you were a little bit of a troublemaker, even though you were a nice girl. Yeah. We like you and you're a nice person, a nice girl. But you also had a rebellious streak and you were you were a little you were a vandal at times. Yeah. There's that. Yeah. Yeah.

So you use what we would label now as a terrorist attack you performed in your high school because you go ahead. Tell us. You didn't like that you were expected to take typing, right? So when you say, are you a tomboy? Here's the things that I was a tomboy about. Explosives.

explosives, by the way, we'll get to that. But my I thought it was just so boring and awful and nasty that they expected girls to take shorthand and typing. It was like, I don't like this. I'm never going to be a secretary. And please, for anybody out there listening, I've had administrative assistants that worked for me that were

far better at spelling, typing and everything. And I depended on them and they are awesome people. But for me, it sounded like going to the guillotine and I just was not going to do that. So I had gone to my counselors, this is at Whitman junior high. And I had gone to my counselor several times and said,

I got to get out of this typing class. I hate this typing class. I hate it. I don't want to type. And they would say, you know, well, you know, it's middle semester or whatever. They give me some excuse. So finally, I had this boyfriend, Steve Stanley, who, by the way, had a 61 Chevy Biscayne. Oh, that's a great drag race car.

Oh, and he had painted the wheel wells white and put little lights in and put little spacers so it was raised a little. Oh, sure. Oh, this is a great car. But anyway, that's neither here nor there, except for the fact that that was the vehicle we used to go down to Toledo when I skipped school the day before. And we had bought a bunch of cherry bombs.

Ohio in those days, I don't know what their stance is now, but very liberal fireworks policy compared to Michigan. If you wanted to get the good stuff, you had to go south. Right, right. So here I am 14 years old and I have a boyfriend with a car. And so we go down. Already a great recipe. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So we skip school and we go down and get these cherry bombs. So the next day, of course, I have a few in my purse who wouldn't carry them. And I went in, it was in between classes and I went and Mr. Stoner was the typing teacher.

And I went in and I was alone in the classroom and I took out a cherry bomb and I lit it. I put it in between the keys and it actually bent. This is an old fashioned typewriter. It actually bent the keys and blew the mic off the desk. And as you know, cherry bombs are great for sound effect. They really give a lot of boom for that. Yeah. Yeah.

So everybody in the school heard it and everybody came running down. And I could have pretended that I just ran into the room and I was the first one there. Mr. Stoner came in and said, you know, he was crazy. You know, who did it? Who did it? And I said, well, I did, of course. Oh, really? Oh, because I wanted to get out of that car.

Oh, okay. It was deliberate. Oh, interesting. I wanted to be thrown out. You were like the person in a relationship who cheats just to get out of the relationship. You want to get caught so you don't have to deal with... Wow, so you just go, yeah, I did this. Yes. And...

Did it work? Did you get kicked out? I did get kicked out. And I actually got kicked out of school that day, which this is hilarious because I came home from school. I walked home and it's like noon and I come in the back door of our house. My mother's in the kitchen and my mother turns and gives me that hated look.

And she, and of course, I was nervous about it. I got kicked out of school. I started laughing. That didn't go over well. And she looked at me and she said, if anybody asks you your name, it is not Laura LeBeau. Oh, she disowned you. And she said, go sit on the couch and wait till your father gets home. So I went into the living room, sat on the couch. By the way, that's going to be a long wait. If you got home at noon. Heck yeah.

Heck yeah. Yeah. I couldn't even go to the bathroom. I mean, it was... I was stapled. I was stapled to the couch. So...

When my dad came in, and this is, I know we all have different memories of my dad. And him and I were co-conspirators on many things. He had a great sense of humor. I was going to mention that. You were head over heels in love with your dad, right? Oh, absolutely. Yeah. And he came in and he sat in the chair opposite me. And he put his hand on his knee and his hand on his chin like his elbow on his knee. And he looked at me and he said, you blew up a typewriter?

And I said, yeah. And he just started to laugh. And I laughed with him. Oh, boy. And we laughed hysterically. Oh, your midget must have been pulling her hair out. I could feel her from the dining room staring at us with the daggers. And he just laughed hysterically. And ever after that, he would come home from work. And we had a thing in our family. Like, he'd sit at the dinner table. And my dad would say, you know, Tom, what'd you do today? Larry, what'd you do today? You know, did you make the world a better place? And...

He said he would always say to me, Laura, did you blow up anything today? So it was great. Stay tuned for more Armchair Expert. If you dare. We are supported by Quince. Tis the season of holiday gifting, but finding the perfect gift can be pretty overwhelming. For timeless gifts made from premium materials at an affordable price, Quince has your back.

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So you make it to high school, shockingly, because you should be in a juvenile home probably from that pyrotechnics. But you go to high school and you meet a guy who's not conventionally handsome, is he? He's not. Is he? It's not that he's like the most dashing guy there. He's a little heavier than your average Gene Kelly type.

But boy, he has a sweet car, right? What's the first thing that attracts you to Dave Shepard, my father? Well, he had a great personality. I first noticed him on the bus. I don't know if you know all these stories, but I first noticed him on the bus. We rode the same bus. He was around the block from me. Yeah.

You guys lived one street over. And he was, like you say, he was a large guy. He was a 6'1 or 6'2 and he was a big guy. And he was very, very friendly to everybody, always. And so he would always sit up front and talk to Barb, the bus driver. Okay.

And so whenever Barb needed, the door didn't close well on the bus, she would say, Dave, and Dave would get up and he would close. Put some weight behind it. Yep. Fix the door for her. Anyway, so I knew him from the bus. And so one day, this girl, Cindy, I can't think of her last name. But anyway, she sits next to me and she says, Dave Shepard has a.

a little crush on you. And I said, who's Dave Shepard? And she says, you know, the big guy on the bus that always helps Barb. And I said, Barb's best friend. And, um, and I, like I said, I knew him from school. He was on the football team and stuff. You know, I knew who he was.

And I said, really? And I was new. We had just moved in. And I said, really? And she says, yeah. What grade is this? 10th? 10th grade. Her name was Cindy Mitchell. And she said, he wants to ask you out. And I said, oh, really? So a couple days go by.

And I'm sitting on the bus and he sits down next to me on the bus on the way home. And he says to me, would you like to go to a grasser? And a grasser in those days, you went to Edward Hines Park and you laid on the grass and you drank. And it was usually happened on curriculum day where you got out early. And I'd never been to one, but I'd heard about them. And he said, would you like to go to a grasser? And I said, oh, I don't know. I've never been to one. And he said, oh, I'm not asking you. I'm just telling you where there is one. Yeah.

Oh, he pulled the rug out. So I was kind of. All right. So then you think, OK, I got hit on the nose with the newspaper. I learned. But no. So spring comes and the prom. We didn't have a senior class that year. We had a junior class and he was part of it. And so he comes and sits down next to me and he says, do you have a date for the prom?

And I said, no. Thank you. This is the setup question. Uh-huh. Sure. And he says, oh, I do. Oh, he's just sharing. Oh, wow. He's just sharing that. He's playing a real game. Anybody in their right mind would have said, this guy's a jerk. But he is.

So a little more time goes by and I had a little serving detention for skipping a semester of gym. Again, Cindy Mitchell comes up to me and peeks her. She peeks her head into the principal's office. She was a real Cupid. She really wanted to see you paired up. Oh, I think your dad was leaning on her. OK. So anyways, he he she sticks her head in the principal's office and says, you know, hey, do you need a ride home?

Well, I did need a ride home. I lived far and this was not in the days where moms picked you up. So I said, sure. She said, there's a blue 61 or 62 Chevy Impala. Meet me out there. She says, meet me out there in the Impala. And I said, okay. So I go out there and the windows are rolled down and nobody's in the car, but I get in the passenger seat and I think it's Cindy Mitchell's car. Well, a couple minutes later, your dad walks out and gets in the driver's seat and starts the car. And I said,

Where's Cindy? He says, oh, she doesn't need a ride. I just had her go in there to ask you. So I got a ride home from him. Okay. And then to follow up that, he had asked Cindy for my phone number, but he forgot my name. So he called my house and my dad answered the phone and he said, is your daughter home? Oh, geez. He's crazy.

Like some of the parts are romantic and some of the parts are not romantic at all. I'm going to say they're real 15, 16 year old courtship. Yeah. Yeah. Thank God he wasn't courting one of your brothers because if he had called and said, let me talk to your son, he'd say, well, I have five to choose from. He would need needed to know a name. At that time, he was driving that your grandma Yolis's car. OK. But shortly after that, he bought a 396 Chevelle 1968 Chevrolet.

And it was with the fastback. It was just white with a black roof, right? No, no, no. White on white on white. Because of Bill Grumpy Jenkins. That was the drag racer then that always drove white Chevys. So it had and had Kregger mags and it had, you know, dual exhaust. Walker chamber exhaust. Oh, yes. Yes. Yes.

And you were wild for that car, right? Oh, my God. It was like a love machine. He put in a little Sergio Mendez, you know. Let's just say, what a guy. What 1968...

high school kids listening to Sergio Mendez in a Chevelle. This is all very weird, right? It was very unconventional. I mean, most people were listening to the who and I would get in and it was eight track tape decks and he would literally like stick in a tape deck and it's like girl from Ipanema or something on the hill. And it's like, what the heck is he playing? But I liked it. Yeah. Were you attracted to that? He was so confident.

I was attracted to many things about him. He was, ah, he was extremely kind to me. And he was, um, if I even like hinted that there was something I liked or so-and-so had this,

I mean, he always worked. He would go out and buy it for me. And I don't mean like, oh, he bought me things. I don't mean like that. No, it was more tender. It was more like he wanted to please me, wanted to make me happy. And he was listening to you. Very much so. Yeah. But your father was very, very in touch with his feminine side. This is a man that could have a conversation on the phone for hours and hours. Uh-huh. Yeah.

Me too. You passed that on to me. Both you. Both you and your brother. So things are going great. You guys are having a blast. But this all takes a turn. As much as you wanted babies, you unintentionally, yeah, became pregnant in 12th grade.

Well, kind of, kind of not. Okay. I would say that I eventually wanted to marry your dad, but your dad was, when I was in 12th grade, he was in the Navy, and I had applied to Western, and I'd gotten accepted, and I had big dreams of being a flight attendant. Uh-huh. And so I was. Because you wanted to travel. You loved traveling. I loved to travel. Yeah. That's not stopped. That's not stopped. You have wanderlust. Yes. I think I'm part gypsy.

But so I had intentions of going to college and being a flight attendant and doing all these things and then getting married and having kids. Well, he came home from boot camp and

To say that it was unintentional is sort of true and sort of not because, oh, I was also supposed to go to Europe that summer. I had worked at Sears saving money to go to Europe on this student exchange program. And so I definitely did not want to get pregnant. But at the same time, at the moment,

you know, I knew I would get pregnant and I made the conscious decision of, well, so then we'll get married, you know, like, so can't say it was unintentional, but it was unintentional.

Unplanned. Unthought out. Cognitive dissonance. You were juggling two different goals that were contradictory in pursuing both at the same time. I think this is what you would call 17 year old experience and logic making a good decision. Yeah. When I graduated, I was four months and no one knew I was pregnant. No. No.

But give me just a context. How many girls, because that was Vietnam, how many girls were getting pregnant in high school back then? Was it like 10%? Is it less? Is it more? I don't know what the percentage was, but in my... It was common though? Yeah. And it was common for both males and females. I mean, there were probably six or seven of us in my senior class that were married at graduation. Wow. Yeah. That's pretty wild. Yeah. It was a different time. It was...

you know, like I can remember in my senior year, maybe in the fall or not positive, but in my senior year, I can remember there was a girl in school that, um, um, what's his name? Dan. Anyway, it doesn't matter his name, but, um,

He was killed in action and she was engaged to him. And so here she is engaged in senior year, which is not uncommon. A lot of girls in my class were engaged to guys from the upper class that had gone to Vietnam. And I just remember being so sad for her that she had lost him. Yeah. Yeah. That's brutal. Yeah. At 17 or 18. Yeah. So dad, somehow he gets out of the Navy, right? You guys write some kind of letter and say, no one's going to support this kid.

Isn't that how it kind of worked? Kind of. He went to his regular Thursday night meeting and your dad was quite a salesman. And he went up and bold-faced lied, told the commanding officer that he loved the Navy, wanted to be a lifer. And he just really, just was really concerned about me that I might lose the baby and stuff. I was never sick a day the whole time I was pregnant. Uh-huh. Jesus, uh-huh. Yeah.

And the guy said, well, listen, Dave, I'll tell you what. And he gave him the paperwork and he said, have everybody in your family over 21 sign the papers that they will not support her. And the baby, if something happens to you, we'll get you an honorable hardship discharge. When she has the baby, come on back. I'll make sure you get all your time. Oh, boy. Yeah. And he was like, you know, are you sure? You know, he really...

You know, played it up really good. And he had a deferment. And within days of getting that deferment, they stopped giving hardship deferments. Oh, really? So he just got in under the wire. So you have David, my older brother. Yeah. Yeah. And you guys moved to a little apartment. Well, actually, we had a little house. I thought you moved to Deer Creek first.

Oh, that was a few years later. But yes. Oh, it was. Okay. Yeah, we lived in a... So you started in a house. Yeah, it was a little two-bedroom house at Ford Road and Middle Belt in Garden City. It was... And you were happy? Oh, so happy. You were. You loved being a mom. I loved being a mom. I loved being a good wife to your dad. Like, I mean, I remember like...

You know, I would get up in the morning while he was getting dressed and I would pack him a lunch and make him breakfast and I would walk him out to the car and he would back the car up and I'd close the gate behind him. And when he would come home, I would have bathwater waiting for him and I would have dinner ready. And it was, I don't know, it was like playing house, I guess. Yeah, yeah.

Yeah. And how long of plain house before you go like, oh, okay, well, that was fun, but I got a whole lot of life ahead of me and maybe I want to do more stuff. It kind of happened in increments. As years went by, he became very successful selling cars. He was really, really good at it. And he made very good money and we bought a bigger house and all that thing. And we had friends that traveled and went places and did things. And...

how do I say this? It, we got distracted. We got distracted by, uh, running fast, you know, having things and going places. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Hosting parties. Yeah. And it was just, we have lots of pictures of my childhood and we lived on a couple acres and there were these gigantic outdoor parties and right at Halloween, there were,

be hay rides and there were a lot of drunks around and there were dune buggies and motorcycles. Sounds so fucking fun, by the way. I hope my retirement is exactly like those backyard parties. It was very fun, but we lost track of things. And

alcohol became a more ever present thing because in the early years, I mean, we were 17 and 18 when we got married, we weren't legally able to drink. And so we didn't do anything like that. And, you know, pot became a bigger thing and we even grew our own pot out there. And, and you weren't a big drinker, but you love smoking pot and growing pot, right? I did, but I was a social pot smoker. And so, yeah,

it went from being like, Oh, we would have people over you pass a joint around to, then it was a good escape. It was real easy if he was high that I could get on the other couch and zone out and listen to music. And then I feel like, you know, in between I had started going to college, you know, your grandma had really encouraged me to go to college. And it was like, wow, there's more out there. There's more out there. And I, I feel like,

I was lonely for him. I was lonely for the communication that we used to have. I was lonely for. And he was gone. He worked pretty far away. He worked far away and he worked a zillion hours. I mean, there came a point where I remember, you know, saying to him, you know, I don't, I don't care about the money. I, you know, I just want you to be home with me. I just want to have that. And, you know, it's, it's hard, you know, once you've,

Yeah. Well, you get on the treadmill. He got a cool truck. Then he got an LTD. Then he jacked up the truck. Then he got a great tractor. Then he got dirt bikes. Then, you know, right. It's all the things that you would think he loved things. Symbol of success. Yeah. And again, providing for me. His parents were very modest. So this was kind of like the way he had wanted to live. Probably. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. And so you I come along.

Yes. Yes. And I'm a hard baby, yeah? Oh, the first...

The first four or five months with you was treacherous because there was a... You almost killed me, right? There were times where you were nervous. I was going to die of shaken baby. I was going to say, let's just say shaken baby hadn't been identified yet, but I may have invented it. But you brought me home to a single wide mobile home? Yes. Well, let's back up here. We had been living in Deer Creek, that apartment, when I got pregnant with you.

And your dad came home from work one day and he had sold a car to a guy named Kenny and he managed a mobile home park out in Highland. And he said, hey, I've got. Which, by the way, is the country compared to where you guys were living. Oh, yeah. Highland was the country. Very much the country. Yeah.

And he came home and said, you know, Kenny says he's got this repossessed mobile home that we can get into for dirt cheap. And I really wanted a house. And he said, you know, we can get into this really dirt cheap. And at that time, there was a lot of stuff on the news about mobile homes burning down really quickly. Or they were always blowing away in a tornado. You name it. Yeah. I mean, they've come a long way. But anyway, so at that time, I was very terrified of that. So he said, you know, on this Sunday afternoon, he says, come on, let's go out there and take a look at this mobile home. And so...

we get out of the car and I walk in the front door. I walk through the mobile home. I walk out the back door and I go sit in the car. And he says, he gets back in the car and he says, I don't think you're being very open-minded about this. I said, I'm not living in a tin can. That's going to catch fire. You know, that's just not going to do that. And he said, well, if you can afford to,

the rent on the apartment, you're welcome to stay because I'm moving here. Wow. He bought it without me. Oh, OK. Which is his kind of his move. Right. He wanted motorcycles. You said, no, we can't afford them. We need a house. And then you came out Christmas morning. There was two motorcycles in the house, right? They were out in the parking lot. He said, look out the window. Your presence out there. And I looked out there as two motorcycles. I said, I didn't want motorcycles. And he said, oh, it's going to be great fun. And he was right. It was great fun. Yeah.

Yeah, you really took to it once you got home. Oh, God, I loved it. Yeah. But anyways. But you brought me home to a mobile home and you're out in the fucking country and you don't have a car, right? Well, there was a recession that the guessing that was the Christmas where you weren't allowed to have Christmas lights and stuff. And the oil embargo. Yes, yes, yes. So here. The pump. Yeah. So your dad's not selling any cars. So we only have his company car. So I'm literally in a mobile home with a kid that's got colic. Colic that you screamed.

night and day. It never ended. And you could just, and I didn't know the tricks that you have put the babies on reset, you know? Oh, right, right. The five S's and all that. I didn't, I wasn't aware of that stuff. And I would just walk with you and I would pat your back and I would rock you. And I would. Also, you were strongly, strongly urged by my grandma Yola's, my dad's mother, who you worshiped, right? Cause she was a double master's degree holder in history and science. And she said, you'd

Do not breastfeed these kids. She said, you're too high strung. You're too active. You won't have enough milk for them. And you'll just be tethered to these babies. And so I believed her and I didn't breastfeed, which maybe had I breastfed, you wouldn't have had all the stomach issues, but you were in dire straits. And so they tried you.

soy milk they tried you know this this this all these different kinds of formulas and finally what we ended up settling on the first few months you were alive was caro syrup and water i mean that just can't be enough for a baby to live on right oh my gosh that's all his stomach could tolerate i mean he just was in misery yeah but can you imagine i mean what's in caro syrup just sugar she was getting calories right but i mean yeah and just that oh god

And you were just. Miracle. I should have been six, five, maybe. You were a screamer. And so there were times that I would get so frustrated that I just couldn't, that I would, it's January. I would put on my coat and sit on the step of the motor home, mobile home outside because I was afraid I would hurt you. The crying was just more than I could deal with. Yeah. I finally went. You weren't really smoking pot yet.

So you couldn't have fired up a doobie? Well, I had smoked pot at that point, but I was not, obviously. You weren't caring. Yeah, and I wasn't self-medicating to get away from it, which made me wind up being a good idea. But anyway, but I remember going to the doctor, to the pediatrician and saying, because I took you a thousand times, like something is wrong with him. He's screaming bloody murder, you know? Yeah, yeah. And I finally said to the doctor, I said,

I need you to give him something to make him stop crying. If you can't give him something, I need you to give me something. I'm afraid I'm going to hurt him. And I was dead serious. I mean, I was just at the end of my rope. And so he finally begrudgingly gave me, I think it was called paragoric. Paragoric. Yeah. It was these little blue drops and I would put one or two. He said, use this very sparingly. He said, it was for me. And he said, yeah. And he said, um,

Um, if you, cause I couldn't even get a babysitter. I told him I can't even get a babysitter. Nobody will sit with him. Nobody. I mean, it was, it was, and if I would like go to the grocery store, I would say to his dad, I need to go to the grocery store. I need to get out of the house and I need to get groceries. He would say, well, take that kid with you. Don't leave that kid with me.

So I take you to the grocery store up and down the aisles, just screaming bloody murder. Oh, boy. Oh, boy. I couldn't do it. Can I just throw in the part about you not being a really pretty baby? Yeah, yeah, right. I was breech, so my head was very deformed when I came out. Yeah, you were big. I think it carried with me. I have a lot of incongruity in my face. And you are a beautiful person. But you had a carl mold and nose, and you looked like a tomato that somebody had thrown down on the ground. One side was small.

It's not an exaggeration to say one side of my head and face was at least 60 percent bigger than the other side. Right. You were a little rough looking. Yeah. As your dad said when you were born, he's ugly, but he's ours. But I would take you to the grocery store places. I'm not exaggerating, Monica. People would like lift up the blanket and take a peek at his head and they would go.

He's a big one. And it got to be where it was funny to me because I knew they were not going to say, oh, what a cutie. They would say, is it a boy? I mean, they would. What is this thing? They would search for words. But you could see their faces. Is it a plantain? Is it a rhubarb? But then by the time he was like four months, he was the cutest little. Oh, he was so adorable. Well, my cheeks really came in powerfully. Right. And your head straightened out.

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But then we moved about a mile down the road, our middle road. To our house. To the house, which this is David, my older brother's utopia. This is the greatest period of his life.

from five years old to eight years old in middle road on property. Right. Yes. Dirt bikes. Yep. A dad, a mom, everything was great. Well, I, in fact, even now in my current home, when I ride my tractor to cut my grass, I often say a secret prayer to myself and say, don't be an idiot. Don't, don't blow this this time. This is your happiest. Uh,

Because I remember on Middle Road being so happy riding the tractor, cutting the grass and two little boys. We had a dump cart on the tractor and I put the boys in the dump cart and I would take them out in the woods and we would find wild pear trees and pick pears. And it was just like heaven. It was like everything I ever wanted. It was just I was so incredibly happy. It was perfect.

And then things go sideways and we don't need to get into that. Yeah. Just 23 year olds being married with two kids pressure. He's not home. You guys, God knows what kind of hanky panky you're both up to, but suffice to say you leave dad. Yes. In 1978. Yep. I'm three, right? Yep.

So this is a very bold decision. How much fear did you have going into it? Lots. I would have left sooner had I not been afraid. I was very afraid of how I was going to support you and David. I was well aware that

It costs money to rent an apartment, to buy groceries, to do things. And I had been a housewife. And although I had two years of college, I did not have a degree. I did not have a skill set other than waitressing. And I really didn't know how I would support you. And I started sending resumes once a month to the GM Proving Grounds. And every 30 days I'd send a new one in. And I got this call.

And it was in July. And they said, we have a position, a per diem position as a janitor. And I thought, Jesus, I got two years of college. Do I want to be a janitor? And I said, how much does it pay? And they said, 50, 75 a day.

Oh, that sounds pretty good for $50 and 75 cents a day. That was gigantic. It was like winning the lotto. Well, in my world. Anyway, I said, yeah, I'll come down for the interview. And I got the job. Your dad called me. He called that afternoon. He said, how'd your interview go? And I go, really, really good. I got the job. And he said, so you're leaving, aren't you? Oh, wow. Just like that. Yeah. He knew it was in the tea leaves. Yeah. And I said, yes, I am. And he said, OK.

Wow. And here's the part that confuses me and of course is exhibit a when I used to build my case against dad and why I hated him. How on earth is the decision you're getting divorced? He'll he'll keep the house. He'll stay there. He'll stay in the three bedroom house on the property and you'll move to a little apartment. An ADC special. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. I don't even remember. I don't remember. You just feel like you felt guilty about leaving and taking the kids. And you thought then I didn't want to just keep that house. He had worked hard. He deserved everything. I walked away. OK. I took maybe guilt motivated. Maybe. Maybe guilt. I mean, yeah, possibly it could have been guilt because you deserved guilt.

First of all, you deserved half of everything. Oh, I didn't feel that. I felt like he had worked really, really hard. I knew how hard he worked. Yeah. But the part of the deal was you were a house slave who cooked all the meals, cleaned the house, raised the two kids. So he got to have everything he wanted, cut the grass. His life was turnkey because he went to work. So it was a partnership. But yeah. Yeah. At any rate, you didn't ask for anything. I didn't ask for anything. But that just...

That's always been hard for me to swallow because let's just say if for whatever reason, Kristen and I got divorced and she left with the two kids and my two little beautiful daughters were going to go live in a welfare apartment and I was going to stay in our house. I just I really will never wrap my head around that. Yeah.

Maybe it was different times. I don't know. Maybe I raised you better. Not that his parents didn't raise him better. They could not have been proud of that decision. They were. Your Papa Bob was very angry with him. Uh-huh. Because they loved you. Yeah. Yeah. So you start out on your own. You have a job as a janitor. We moved to this. You know, it was the worst.

I don't think I'm exaggerating to say it was the worst apartment building in our area. It was pretty bad. Yeah, it was pretty rough. That one of the tenants, who was crazy, wanted to murder my brother. Yeah, drove a car up on the grass, chasing him with a car. Tried to kill him. Yeah. Real crazy stuff happening right out of the gates when we got to this place. If you've seen that movie about a boy, it's a...

Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's similar to that, right? Yeah, it was a rough go. Yeah, so it's a paranoid. Boyhood, boyhood. Is that what it is? Boyhood, yeah, yeah. Richard Linklater. Yeah, yeah. Such a great movie. Yeah, when I saw that movie, I cried my eyes out. I thought, oh my God, I'm not the only one that lived this life. And she wasn't bad. She just kept making bad decisions. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, I've never ever related to a movie more. The scene in that movie where they're at the table and the stepdad is drunk.

And they're all waiting to see how bad this is going to get. I was just like, oh, my God, I've sat in that chair a hundred times and I know. Oh, man, did it bring me back? God, that movie just to me watching the professor come up to her then professor, but later husband and.

come up to her and just be so kind to her and tell her how he thinks the boy is just a wonderful person. And, oh, all boys do this and stuff like that. And just baiting her and then seeing her out in the garage and him just being

talking so horrible about her children and just being slapping her and stuff it's like oh my god this is my life this is my life and I fell for it every time I've always been dying since seeing that movie to talk to him and ask if that was his life I don't know how he could do that that authentically without having had that experience it was a great movie

So you now when you start as a janitor, you don't start on night shift, do you? No, I started on day shift and I worked six weeks as a janitor and there was a posting for an opportunity to go into material control and

So I applied for that and they had never had women in material control. And what material control is, is not only do you unload trucks and you put parts away, but they send you to school and you learn how to build a car top to bottom. And so when you're in an environment that they're...

using current model cars and that are a mix of future model cars, you're always trying to figure out parts when they're. Yeah. They're using old parts to create prototypes. So you have to realize. Yeah. And so anyway, so I went through that training. So I went from day shift to.

afternoon shift to midnight shift. And then after the training was done, then I was on afternoon shift for a couple of years and then I was on midnight shift and midnight shift. Then I went to fleet operations and I started working with computers. And how are you juggling? Cause you didn't have babysitters when we lived in middle road, but now you have to like have a pretty full time assistance, right? Cause we're, yeah.

Because I'm three. So you're dropping me at the My Little Cottage or whatever. When you were three, you went to My Little Cottage in Milford. And David went to school. And David went to school. So that was day shift. And when I went to afternoon shift, that's when I ended up with the babysitter cycle. And that was. It must have been so stressful. I when I think of moms today that work, it's your job is not the hard part. Keeping the house up is not your hard part. The hard part is solving day

Yeah. It's a constant solving daycare. Yeah, because these are young hourly employees, so they're calling in all the time, right? Or they're just not in the mood. Oh, they quit. They don't show up, you know. Yeah. And, you know, you're constantly, at first you start out with these, I'm not leaving my kids with anybody that's not, you know, I interview and make sure they're really good people. And by the end you're like, oh, their eyes were open. If you find...

A stranger on the street that'll sit there with them. Because you've got to be at work because now you're on probation because you've missed days because of babysitters. Oh, man. Sounds so stressful. It's horrible. So you're also, you're at work on, I assume, afternoon shift one time. And you get a call from one of our babysitters. And what happens? I hear this. The babysitter was Robin Wakeford. And she says, I need to put Dax on the phone.

And I said, what's happened? And she says, I'm going to let him tell you. And she was clearly upset. And I hear this little voice come on. And you're like three and a half, four years old. Delta's age, yeah. And I hear this little voice. I said, Dax, did you do something bad? I threw a fucking rock through the auto parts window. Now, I want you to know this.

I did not condone him using this language and I did not encourage this language. And so I said, wait a minute. And I pressed speaker and I let my coworkers hear this. And I was presumably, first of all, my older brother urged me to throw the rock through the auto parts window. And then I have to imagine he also gave me the line to tell you. I mean, he must've suggested I say he threw a fucking rock through the window.

Yeah, he and I got, we were really, we were starting to feel the first part of being unsupervised, which by the way, are some of the highlights of my childhood is that we were also, we would just stand on the side of the road. We'd throw shit at cars. And I threw a mat. My David told me to throw this car mat and it hit a guy's windshield. And the guy swerved off the road. Then he chases. My brother left me in the dust. The man caught me.

Uh, there was just, you know, it was the beginning of a lot of mischief, I think. Suffice to say that I just was in Florida the other day and my brother Tom was telling me stories about you. And when I wasn't around, when you would visit grandma for the, uh, in the summer. And, um,

Suffice to say, everybody that knows you and David would say things behind my back that I'm now learning about how awful you guys were. Yeah. Yeah. They were terrorists. They were a tag team. This isn't in defense of my bad behavior, but because I started saying when you were on day shift, you came home. I'm sorry. Afternoon shift. We were asleep and you shook us awake.

And you said, come on, let's go. Let's get in the car. And it's like two in the morning. I know where you're going. You have cans of spray paint. And we go to a apple orchard that is down the road from our house. And this apple orchard, what did the sign say? It said, pick your own apples.

And so I encouraged the kids. We sprayed over the word apples and we wrote the word nose. So that the billboard said pick your own nose for five cents or something. But it was like a middle of the night operation. Well, and how about when we took the sign and put it on Ray Barnes' door that said hard salami.

Cause I knew he was courting that girl. And we wrote that and I painted the water tower. Happy birthday, David. And yeah, scale the fence to paint the water tower spray paint. So it was in your, it was in your blood. I came by it. Honestly. Oh, there were many, many scotch taping, the placemats and the napkin. That's one of the funniest. My mother always carried scotch tape in her purse for, I don't know why. Um,

But one of the things was we were at an ice cream shop in Greektown in downtown Detroit, and there were two workers. One of them was behind the counter. The other one was dead asleep, clearly hung over at a table.

And the guy that was alert kept nudging him going, hey, man, my shift's over in five minutes. You got to wake up and run the place. And the guy's like, oh, yeah, no problem. I'm on it. So that the responsible one leaves his shifts over. The other guy goes right back to sleep. So we're just in this ice cream parlor with attended unattended. And so my mom goes, oh, I have tape in my purse. Let's make signs that say build your own all you can eat Sundays.

25 cents, which at the time was they were that was free. That was a hell of a bargain. So we sat there. We must have took 30 minutes. We made big signs with crayons and then we taped it to the window and then we went across the street and we just sat there and watched. We sat on the curb and watched.

And more and more people start going in there right now. The place is getting very full of people who want this incredible deal. And of course, the guy sleeping is now up, but he can't put two and two together. And there's a lot of folks in there before you finally see him go to the window and tear the signs down where he figures out why. Oh, boy.

That's a good prank, Monica. Yeah, you guys are good pranksters. So we are, again, in my memory, we're there for a while, but probably we're not, like by my now timeline. We're not in those apartments long, huh? We're in there for one year. Okay. Oh, and I just want to add one thing that was so great about my mom. My brother was obsessed with Kiss, and she knew he was bummed that we were leaving Middle Road and everything, his motorcycle. So she...

hand-painted murals of every member of KISS on her wall, and she did a phenomenal job. It was really sweet. And I used metallic paint, and I painted it on the wall opposite of the street light outside, so at night the light would come in, and it had silver. Make a three-league. Oh, wow. It was pretty darn good. That's cool.

You probably didn't get your deposit back because of that. No. So we then moved, we moved to at the end of main street, which was a step up. This is, I told the story the other day that we had Jewish neighbors and that was the first Jewish people I met. And I couldn't figure out what was different about them other than that. They drove a beetle bug. And I assumed all Jewish people drove beetle bugs. I was like, Oh, I guess that's what's different about that. I don't really know what's different about them. You were a human scab in that place. Cause you were learning to ride a two wheeler. Yes. Crashing regularly. Um,

but you at this point now you meet, we can say his name cause he's passed away. Uh, you meet Greg who's a friend of my dad's and you guys fall in love quite quickly. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Quick courtship. And then you get married and when you guys are dating, he has two jobs, very productive. And then you guys get married and he has zero jobs and then he has, he goes down to zero jobs. Right. And, uh,

we're not there too long either, right? How long are we at the end of Main Street? A year. A year. And so this marriage goes south quickly. Yes, very quickly. And I think you could be very illuminating to a lot of us because when I have been on the outside listening to women who are caught in a cycle of an abusive relationship, it's so hard for me to comprehend how you could stay in that.

And you are a very, very strong woman. And so I think it would be enlightening to know what, what is happening mentally when you're going through that. Cause you don't take shit from anybody yet. You ended up taking shit from somebody, right? Yeah. Boy, I think what goes through is I had kids again. I'm thinking about one of the things that was an issue with him was he

He was unable to tell the truth and he was a drug addict. And so I had gone from being self-supporting with you and David to marrying him and taking on a ton of debt because he was constantly charging things at a gas station that the guy would give him cash so he could put it up his nose and things like that. So by the time I was aware that this was not a good situation, I need to leave. I need to get my kids out of this. I need to get me out of this.

It was like I was so in debt. What am I going to do? How am I going to support this? How am I going to move on? That was one issue. And that was a big issue because, again, you know, I'm pretty logical. That's a pragmatic issue. Yeah. Right. But the emotional issue is I was brought up super duper Catholic and I didn't

Being divorced from your dad was, to say sinful and a disappointment to my parents would be an extreme understatement. And I felt a lot of shame about that. And so now here I am, married less than a year. It's a very bad situation. I've been kicked around the kitchen, bounced off the floor. Humans do bounce. And I need to get away, and yet I cannot...

admit defeat. I cannot. The second failure. The failure thing was so, I was so ashamed. So, so ashamed. And it was just beyond me to, you know, like, I'll just try harder. I'll just try harder. I'll figure this out. Yeah. And it was just a very bad situation. Did you guys go to counseling or anything? The first time I was physically abused,

Um, I kicked him out and, um, I stayed in the house this time I was getting smarter. Um, I kicked him out and his mom called me and really pleaded his case and how sorry he was. And he would go to counseling. So, okay. I took him back and we went to counseling. I'm going to say maximum two times. And that was the end of the counseling. He was not up for that.

And so then the behavior was repeated again. Sure. Counseling didn't work. Talking about it didn't work. And then it happened again. And when it happened again, I didn't know it, but I was pregnant with Carly. Hmm.

And I right away the next day, a friend of mine came over now. Yeah. And he. Yep. He changed all the locks on my door and he bandaged me up. He was so nice. And I went to the lawyer and I was sitting in the lawyer's office and they said, are there any children from this marriage? And I said, no. And then I started thinking, oh, my God.

Like it started occurring to you at that moment. I'm pregnant. It occurred to me when was my last period. Oh, my God. Oh, my God. If I'm late, I'm pregnant. I'm never not pregnant. Oh, my God. And I just had this real like, oh, and I didn't say anything to the lawyer. I went down in the lobby. I called your dad from a pay phone and I said, oh, my God, I think I'm pregnant. I just, you know, I just filed for divorce and I think I'm pregnant. And your dad said to me, tell them it's mine.

I won't deny it and I'll take care of it. Just go ahead and divorce him. And, um, and he said, unless you want to have an abortion and if you do, I'll drive you and you know, I'll be supportive. So I said, I can't afford three kids. I just can't, I, this is no way I can do this alone. Right. So I scheduled, I went to the doctor, scheduled, um, an abortion. Uh huh. And, um, when I went for the abortion, um,

my doctor said, let's just see if we can get a heartbeat, see how far you are. And he put it on speaker and I heard the heartbeat. And I believe very much in abortion. I think it's a necessary option for people that need an option. But for me, I could not do it. Right. And so I decided to have her. So then I was single and pregnant with two kids. And it was just...

Like I would I remember riding my bike in Oxford Acres and I would ride past people's houses and I would see their lights on and think that they were all having dinner together as a family. And I would cry on my bike and say, why can't I have this? Why? Why am I? I'm so not good at this. I just can't figure this out. Mm hmm.

It was awful. Yeah. It was a bad time in my life. And financially, I was just so because I had to provide him a car. I had to pay him half the house. But that's down the road because he then joins us in terror and he lives there when Carly's born. He came back for a short period of time again. That's my memories of him being violent is in that house. Yeah. Yeah.

Yep. Yeah. And he was a very physically imposing guy. He was like a athlete. He had played in the minor leagues for the Red Sox or something. Yeah. And he was...

You'd come home from work and Carly would be crying and Carly would have pooped her diaper, right? The worst one was, well, he kept the car. So he had a car. So he would drop me off at work. I work afternoons and he's supposed to pick me up at midnight. And on several occasions, he would get hammered and not show up.

And there was a time I walked from the Proving Grounds at midnight back to Axford Acres. Oh, Jesus. Yeah. And there were times that Nels would be suspicious and Nels would come back and give me a ride. Nels was my gay friend. He was just the most wonderful buddy. Anyway, this one particular time he did not show up, did not show up. And Nels and this other girl, my little buddies, they...

We're suspicious and they came back to the proving grounds like at one o'clock in the morning and I'm still sitting there waiting for Greg to pick me up. And they came and got me and they drove me home and they said, you know,

We'll come in the house with you because, again, Nels was very suspicious of what would be the situation. We opened the front door. Again, what a brave, sweet guy because he was not physically imposing. Oh, my God. To throw himself in that situation. No, he was such a good friend. And we opened the door and stopped.

The smoke is billowing out the front door. The smoke alarms are going off. The stove is on fire. Flames shooting out of the fire. And my children are asleep. All three of them are asleep in the house. And he is passed out drunk on the family room floor. And the house is on fire. The steaks are on fire in the stove. Oh, my God. And it was like, okay.

So, you know, Nels is putting out the fire. Diane's helping me get the kids out of bed and out on the front lawn to breathe. You know, I just it was like that's that's very chaotic. It was very chaotic. So shortly after that, there was the breakfast departure, which we all know the story of the breakfast departure. Well, but there was another story.

There was another moment in that that I think you considered killing him at one point. Yeah. Yes. Yeah. One time I had been beat up pretty bad, badly. And I was really in bad shape.

And I was up in the bedroom, locked in the bedroom, and he eventually passed out on the couch in the family room. And I got up because it was quiet. And I came down into the kitchen and I had a cast iron skillet that Grandma Yoles had given me. And I...

took the skillet and I went to the couch and I stood over him and I was so black and blue all over. I mean, my logic was I'm going to take the cast iron skillet and I'm going to hit him on the head and I'm going to smash his brains out. And when the police get here, they will see how physically beat up I am and it will be self-defense and it'll be okay.

And I stood for a very long time. And then two thoughts ran through the first one, which was not the most overpowering, which was if I don't kill him in the first swing, he'll get up and use the pan on me. Yeah. The second thought, which is the one that won was if you kill him and if you don't get off on self-defense,

The kids will be alone. I cannot lose my kids. I went back upstairs and locked the door and I did not do it. But that's how desperate I was. I was very mean. And we saved you a couple of times throughout your life. Right. That same rationale where.

You were contemplating hurting yourself, and that kind of was the life raft. Yeah, that's it. Because I knew, because at that time, your dad was using very heavily, and my family lived far away. Yeah. And it was like, I was literally all that you guys had. Right. Yeah, Greg couldn't raise Carly. Dad couldn't raise the three of us. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I knew that this was, yeah, I could not...

If you're wondering why would I just drag my mom down this terribly traumatic memory lane? I think what's really powerful and amazing about your story is if you are 28 years old right now and you're getting beat up and your life is miserable and you think that's it and that's the rest of your life. What's coming is so beautiful. And there's so much ahead. There was so much ahead for you. I can't imagine in those moments you felt like there was so much ahead for you. There was so much. I was so far in debt.

And it was such my self-esteem was so smashed. It was so it was such a horrible, horrible time that looking back on it, I'm amazed. That was my life. I'm amazed, you know, because it feels like someone else's or a movie or something. It really does. Yeah, it really because, you know, well, even I would say even at 17, you know,

being pregnant and my father was very disappointed in me and made some very hurtful remarks to me. And I would say to anybody that is in that situation, any bad decisions that you've made, that you got yourself there, that was that decision. And tomorrow is another day and you can choose again. Right. Dust your knees off. You can, you can choose again. Yeah. You keep picking. Yep. All right.

You're saying to yourself, Monica, that, oh my God, I've met this lady a lot of times. I would never think she'd be that stupid to be in a situation like that. No, that's the opposite of what I was thinking. I was thinking that how easy it is to get there. So easy. Yeah. It is so easy. And I think it's easy to say like, I would never, it would never be me. I would be stronger. People that are like that, in my opinion, are...

such top drawer bamboozlers. Yeah. I mean, there's been books that have been written called smart women, foolish choices. And it's like, I know really smart women that are incredible. I worked with a lady that she was like my role model and she was really a great person and sent herself to school to become an engineer, then got a master's in business and just did all sorts of things. And I know two different times that she was in relationships that

she just like would come home from a business trip and her husband was in bed with another woman or met this guy and he promised her the moon and all he did was ring up her charge cards and stuff and not work and left her in complete debt. Like it happens because we want to believe we want to believe. Exactly. I think that people underestimate that power, but also that I'm sure what is maybe hard to admit after the fact is

that he was also giving you something he was in or at some point did. Yeah. So there's also that, that maybe that'll come back or that was, well, I think that there's, there's something else involved here that maybe, I don't know if anybody else can relate to this, but maybe it's only the time or the era that I grew up in, but

Being prom queen or being the head cheerleader are all those things that we when we're very young and impressionable and, you know, we haven't got things figured out. Those things kind of cement like I don't want to say maybe values or criteria to judge yourself by. Yeah. And so I think that we become for me.

somebody telling you you're pretty and that they want you to be desired. And those butterflies that you feel in a relationship become very addictive there. Absolutely. I mean, it's a, it's a high for sure. It's a drug. Yeah. And so like any other drug, it's like, I feel like when I would get in that situation and what would happen was the cycle was that I would get out of a very bad relationship. And so then I would be alone because I'm not going to be bamboozled again. And I just need to protect my kids and be with my kids and,

And you get so lonely that the first person that comes along that suspects that feeds into that and supplies you that drug again. Yes. And so there you are down that path again. Yeah, that validation, I think, is the most powerful. And while I take responsibility for my own actions, I think that.

A lot of our society really sets females up for that. I mean, every advertisement is you look hot and then a guy, you get that validation. Yeah. That's how you find love. Yeah. It's rough. So when I finally met Dave Barton, by then I was so jaded. Yeah. That when a nice guy came along, I mean, like I remember, um,

We went a couple of years where he had an engagement ring for me that I just would not accept because every time he would say, I would say, I'm not good at this. Yeah. I'm not good at this. Yeah, the pattern shows one thing. Yeah, I'm a failure at this. I don't know how to be married.

Yeah. But then you did it. I finally did it. And it's surprising that I did do it because even, if Dak can tell you, the day of my wedding, David begged me not to do it. He said, I can't pick you up again, Mom. Wow. Yeah. I'm sure we'll talk about it, but I want to know how you met him. Blind date. Oh.

I'd never figure it out on my own. Yeah, that's what it took. Somebody. Yeah. Honestly, if I had to figure it out on my own, I still believe that. Like, if I should ever date again, which right at this moment I have no intention of, I would not date without like Dax picking up the person or something, you know, like somebody I trust. Yeah, that's smart. That's how I feel. Okay, the one little thing I want to go over before we move off of Greg and Tara and all that is,

To me, I feel like this is where my first introduction to being a love addict kind of starts because, and by the way, these are my fondest memories alive. So I'm not being critical of this. I'm just aware of it. You worked so much. You had so much going on. You were so fucking tired. You were cleaning the house. You were making all of our meals. I sincerely don't know how you do it. Kristen, I can barely do it with, uh,

Carly helping and Monica helping and everyone helping and having money. I don't know how it was done. I don't think you do either. But the way we dealt with that is Saturdays, we would often just get in the bed. We'd get we'd be allowed to come to your room and we would lay in bed.

virtually all day long and snuggle is that your memory of it oh my it's my favorite favorite favorite favorite favorite memory in my whole if you know how if you could time travel yes the moment i would go back to would be those weekends where we would start in the morning we would have breakfast in my bed and carly was little and she would crawl around on us

And David was reading David Copperfield in school required reading. And I would read chapters of David Copperfield and we would all be snuggled under the covers and we would spend the whole day. It would be like lunchtime. Oh, I'd go down to the kitchen and bring more food back up. And we would just, it was just so, so happy. It was the best. It was. And it was euphoric and it was drug-like and it was so fun.

And opposite of the rest of the week, I got this association with like, I don't even know how to describe it, but just like real highs, lows, highs, lows, highs, lows. And not even like I when I think back in that time, there is a period of my childhood where I do remember being lonely.

Which is coming up. But at that time, I don't feel that. I remember like being friends with Trevor and I had all these friends and I felt like you were around enough. And then I remember those Saturdays. But clearly now that I have kids and I'm aware of how much time my job affords me with them.

And I recognize, well, there's no way yours could have afforded that much time. You know, I was probably on my own more than, say, my kids are or whatever is. I just remember like when I was on midnights that I would try to stay awake during the day with Carly and.

And that was why I took midnight so I could still be with Carly. And then I would leave at, you know, eleven forty five to get to work. But after dinner and Carly was in bed, I would lay on the floor with you and David because I wanted to have time with you and be with you. So we'd put the pillows on the floor by the TV and you guys would watch a TV show and I'd have one of you on each side of me with my arm around you.

They were such terrorists. I would be so tired and I'd be asleep and I would hear them. They would like clap their hands really louder. They'd say, or I'd hear them say, mom, mom. And I'm half asleep. I'm so tired. And they would say, we're taking the car. We're going up to Kroger. Can we have money? All right. And I'd say, this is my purse. And,

Let me also add on top of all the, the jobs and the divorce and everything that was going on. David and I were also fucking terrible kids. I mean, we fought nonstop. We were constantly in a fight that you were separating us. You wanted my attention. Yeah. So what did we, we fought nonstop. Oh, I can only imagine what it was like dealing with that. So anyways, you and Greg, you get divorced and then you meet another man. We'll keep him anonymous. Cause he's still alive. And yeah,

You've now been through this twice. What was it that this time around you were like, fuck it, I think I'm going to go for it again? Did you have to talk yourself into that? Very candidly, I will tell you that we had a visit from my in-laws and they were sitting in the family room.

And they started openly talking about how good my two stepchildren were and how awful my three biological children were because we had custody of all five. And they started talking about it. And I said to them, I'm very uncomfortable with you speaking badly about my children. And I need to ask you to stop.

And they kept going and I asked him again. And when they kept going a third time, which I actually think it was choreographed by my ex-husband. And I just stood up and I,

Yelled down to your bedroom. Dax, pack your shit. We're out of here. And I went in the kitchen and got a garbage bag. And I went to Carly's bedroom and started throwing her shit in and my shit in. And Dax came running up from the lower level with his bag. And David ran out of his bedroom with his bag. And we got in the car real quick. We're on the move. But what had happened just prior to this happening was all in one weekend. Why?

while they were visiting and i was so just really quick because we skipped over you met a man uh at work and you married him and he had two kids so now there were five of us kids and this man had to travel during the winter time and so you were often throughout the winter left with five kids now and also a full-time job and i was going to school at night right and i um

I did not have a problem with his kids. I actually loved his kids very much. And I felt very much like in that movie. I felt bad when we separated that I had to cut off that relationship. Yeah. And did you get a different awareness about how hard it is to be a step parent? Oh, like prior. Right. Because before it's just you're seeing through the lens of you would probably want Greg to be a better stepdad or whatever. Yeah.

And until you're in a situation like that, right, it's hard to imagine what a hard fucking role that is. I don't know how people do it. Honestly, I admire anybody that can do it successfully. And I gave it my all. In fact, I remember seeing a therapist at the time and saying, I just can't bake enough cupcakes to make this right.

It just was the hardest. You're dealing with kids that have a lot of baggage because they've been a battleground for their parents to fight, you know, their property in a divorce and they're damaged. And you're trying to blend them with your kids and you have a partner that has his baggage and your kids that have their baggage. And it's everybody living in one house. And it's just. Yeah. Yeah.

It was horrid. And wow, it's just striking me as you were talking about this, because I have this terrible chip on my shoulder about rich people that I wish I could get rid of. I aim to get rid of it. But I do wonder if it was that's where it maybe started, is that they were perceived as higher class than us. He had been raised the stepdad had been raised in a family with money and they were kind of upper class and we were shitty.

And we were even reminded, no, she, she even made comments about how bad our English was and our manners and our grammar and mine as well. And what she even said when we got engaged, she said to me, she said, well, of course, congratulations. I want Rick to be happy. And she said, um,

of course we would be happy for Rick to remarry if he, if he should find a nice girl. And I heard that pretty loud and clear. Yeah. Yeah. And then his father actually told me one time that I was the worst thing that ever happened to their family. So, Oh really? Yeah. And then the fact that we went at Christmas and we watched them open presents and everybody got presents except my children. And Carly was like three years old and

And Carly kept waiting very patiently for her turn to open a present. Oh, wow. It just ripped my heart out. It was just... So, yeah, that go-around was... Very hard on my self-esteem. Yeah, hard on your self-esteem because this was a much different version now. And again, we'll edit out his name. This was...

Whereas Greg was physically abusive. This was very mentally abusive, right? This person was incredibly intelligent. Very, very tight. I looked up to him. Yeah. He had patents and he jogged marathons and he raced motorcycles. He was like. He was incredible. He was crushing at life. And he was. He looked like the Marlboro Man. Yeah. He was handsome. He was everything a girl would want in a husband. I mean, when you were shopping, you would think, oh, my God, this guy is a deal.

He's like one step away from a surgeon. Yeah, he was excellent. And then it became very apparent to me very quickly in the relationship that he was very, very to to to dump out the silverware drawer on the floor and say that I was a pig because I didn't stack the forks.

In the drawer. Correct. Or the meat wasn't filed in the freezer as in beef all goes with beef and pork all goes with pork and chicken all goes with chicken. And I'm a very neat person. Yeah, I'd say so. I keep a very clean house. Tidy. I was often...

told I was a pig and controlling you. Oh yeah. And also, yep. Because I started really believing it. I started really, you were trash. I did believe I was really trash and low rent. And then how long were you married to him? Two years. Again. Now this is something that in my mind occupies 20 years. Yeah. It's like a chapter, but it's not, it's like a few pages. Um, and,

And I'll also say this tons of great stuff came out of that. Oh, um, that guy who, uh, you know, I disagree with all the ways he treated my mom and us taught me how to be very present and mindful of what I was doing and thinking about how it was moving through the world. And he was so smart. He could answer any question. Um, he, uh,

He was a crazy good example of like just the intellectual life and pursuing things passionately. And he's probably why I race motorcycles and race cars. Very physically fit. He believed in exercise, you know, running marathons and.

Yeah, there were like it was such a mixed bag of things. Oh, this was going to say the number one thing he gave me is that I am like him in a lot of ways. And I will be on the verge of saying who didn't squish the sponge out before they put it back. That's how it gets mold. Right. I'm like the sentence is on the tip of my tongue. And I go, oh, I know what it's like to live with someone like that. And it's fucking miserable. Deal with the fucking mold on the sponge or whatever thing I want to say. It's not being done to my standards.

I'm grateful I had an example of what it feels like to be on the business end of that. It's grueling. It's exhausting. And you just can't do it right. And you're never going to do it right. So I thank him for giving me somewhat of an awareness for that. I got to the point living with him and we were in therapy, you know, almost our whole marriage. And I just got to the point where I just realized this is not going to get better.

And there's nothing I can do to make it better. And then subsequently, the next thought in my head was,

And I cannot go home to my parents and tell them I'm getting divorced again. I cannot tell people at work I'm going to get divorced again. I cannot drag my kids through another divorce. I cannot do that. The only option is to die. And so I had a friend at work that had given me a key to her house and told me. I never confided in her, never told her anything that was going on in my house.

but she had an antenna and we were not close girlfriends. We were just work friends. And she walked into my office one day and said, here's the key to my house. She was single. Here's the key to my house. If you ever need a place for you and your kids to come, you are always welcome. And your children are welcome as well. That's Ann.

Oh, that's so cool. Yeah. Well, she ended up being a therapist, a alcohol and substance abuse therapist. Yeah. But anyway, she walked out and I thought, why would she do that? Nobody knows what's going on. She knew. I mean, it was so obvious. She was an angel. She was an angel. And I'm so forever grateful for her. I mean, there's so much she gave me. Yeah. And so anyway, I was having just a horrific day one day.

And I went to her house. She wasn't home. I opened her garage and I pulled my car in to, I was going to run the exhaust and kill myself. And I went in and I knelt down on the floor to, I forget what I was doing now, kneeling down on the floor to get something or, oh, to suck the tailpipe. And you wanted to get close to the tailpipe? Yeah. This is brutal. It is brutal. And I had on white pants and,

And all of a sudden I realized, Jesus, her garage floor is dirty. My pants are getting dirty. And the absurdity of that, that I was going to kill myself, but I was concerned about my pants getting dirty. I went into a hysterical laughing thing, opened the garage drawer, drove the car out and said, no, I got to fix this. You can't just run away from everything. You have to fix this. Hmm.

Now, while all that's happening, which is, you know, the personal life is not is not thriving. You are climbing the ladder at General Motors very successfully for someone without a college degree and a woman. Yes. Against many odds. You end up at this point. You're the you're a fleet manager, right? Which is a good supervisor over three departments.

Right. So you're a baller now at GM. You've you've done very well. And they start they have this wonderful thing for the employees at the GM proving grounds. They have a family day and they invite everyone to bring their family in the proving grounds. If you have no awareness of it, is this.

You know, dozens of square miles of race track. It's Disney World for cars. There's hill climbs. There's tracks that you don't have such steering wheel if you're going 70 miles an hour. It's just a blast. And so you started volunteering because you wanted overtime, if I remember correctly, to start organizing this huge event that they would have at the proving grounds.

So you're doing that. You do that a few years in a row, I guess. And and the long lead press show. Yeah. That they had out there. Yeah. Right. So you're dabbling in this side thing just for overtime, which is basically event planning and execution.

So you get an offer to go work at an ad agency in Detroit, which is Campbell Ewald, which at the time had the General Motors account. I don't know if they still do or not, but Chevrolet account, Chevrolet account. OK. And then you are now working in advertising, which, again, pretty miraculous because there's no reason they should have hired you for that. Right. I started as an account executive in what they call that product information and.

And by the time I left two years later, I was vice president in motorsports, merchandising and marketing. Yeah. And you loved that job, right? Loved it. Loved it. But the only drawback was that to be in that job, you really should be a single person. You really needed to put in a lot of hours. And it was very, very hard for me with three kids. Yeah.

Yeah. And just having left a husband and trying to. So let me also fluff your pillows. So with all that going on, a divorce, a new job, my mom says, I'm going to build my own house. Always wanted to. This is something I can do myself.

Since I read Henry David Thoreau in high school and he said that it's as fitting and proper to build your own house as a bird builds a nest. And I said to myself, I'm going to do that someday. And you decided to do it right in the eye of a hurricane. I actually paid cash for the property because your brother David had given me a stock tip. He was in high school and he was taking a class in school and was watching stocks and he told me to buy consumer's power. Oh, really? And it went...

It like I forget he'll tell you, but it tripled or quadrupled or something. Oh, no kidding. So I had the cash and I paid cash for the lot off of Herb and Margaret Hoover. And then I went out and thought because I didn't think there was going to be any issue with building my own house. Yeah. Be my own contractor. And I went to the banks and as a single woman.

With zero building experience? I'm not going to say they laughed at me outright. I'm just going to say there was some snickering. So when I had bought the property, Herb said, if you need a building loan, I would be happy to loan it to you. But I thought, I'll go to a bank. I'm not going to do that. So I went back to Herb and said, are you still interested in giving me a building loan? And he said, absolutely. And the guy had met me just recently.

Wow. And, but he just believed in me. And so I took that loan in. So while you were doing that job, which was very, um, uh,

labor intensive. It was fabulous. You then started building a house and we did stuff like run the wire, us kids. And my favorite part is there was a painter who you had employed that we regularly had to go. We knew what bar he hung out at and he, in the most, the loveliest man ever, but we would have to go as a family and urge him to leave the bar and continue working on the house. Right. Yes. He didn't just paint. He roughed it in. He did a lot of things. Yeah. Yeah.

But you built a house, which was our first really nice house. It was a turning point in my life because I found out that when you build a house, like anything in life, that you dig the hole one day.

You don't build the whole house. You just dig the hole. And then, you know, you can get a book on it, which now you would go online, but I had bought a book. And the next thing after building the house, you need to, you know, pour the basement walls and then you have to, you know, put the cap on the floor and then you build the walls and then you do the rough plum and you do the rough. And I learned that everything was just one step at a time and that you didn't have to conquer the whole thing. And then pretty soon you actually have a house and,

it was like this huge victory to me. It was this, look, I could do it. If I could do this, I could do anything. Yeah. It's the climbing a mountain one footstep at a time metaphor, but I'd never done internalized that concept. Uh,

prior to this. It was really a big, big moment. Yeah, and if you focus on the little steps and not the overall project, you can kind of do things. And I want to give credit where credit is due. I want you to know that while I was doing this, I worked for Brent Morgan and Brent Morgan...

I probably could have done it without him. However, thank God for Brent Morgan because Brent Morgan would give me so many little tips like any new guys and stuff. Oh, he would recommend people and he would tell me, you know, like, did you did you go prop those basement walls? You know, you got to walk out basement. You really need to brace those walls before they do this because, you know, you could have trouble with it. And it was like, how do I brace the walls? And he would tell me and I'd say, OK, and I'd go out there and do it, you know, but like

What a great person to be in my life. I've had so many really awesome people in my life. A lot of mentors along the way. Oh, I'm so grateful. Stay tuned for more Armchair Expert, if you dare.

So while you were working at Campbell E. Wald, you've now built this house that we now live in. And to me, weirdly, when I think of my childhood, even though time-wise it's not the bulk of where we lived, my childhood is those three years in Milford, Michigan before I moved. It's your middle road. It's my middle road, totally. We had a big yard and a nice house. I was so proud of it. You had a half pipe in the driveway. I met Aaron Weakley, the love of my life.

When I hired in at Campbell Ewald, one of the things I said in the interview was that I was starting a business and that I would need time off for that business from time to time. And they agreed to it. Ah.

And I was on salary with them. That's great. Yeah, I had a great interview and a great, it was a real good thing. But what it was is Brent Morgan called me and said, hey, listen, there's a new person at Chevy PR doing long lead. And I bet if you called her, she could really use some help putting it together. And so I called Janet Eckhoff and I said, hey, you know, I understand you're doing long lead. I've done it before and I would be happy to contract you.

and she went in to talk to Ralph Kramer, who knew me. And that afternoon, they called me back, and that afternoon I went in and I had a purchase order, and that was the start of the business. Right, so that was your first...

bit of business, your first job. And this starts, um, you've of course do a great job cause you're so competent. It's crazy. You do a great job on that. And that starts leading to more and more shows. And how long are you working at Campbell Ewald? And before you decide I'm going to quit Campbell Ewald and do this full time. And how scary is that? Two years. And it was very scary. Um, I, um,

When I finally did make the release, it was tough financially. The first year of shows and shoots, I think I made $31,000 gross. Oh, boy. And so I had to pay payroll out of that and expenses and feed you guys. It was a little sketchy. Yeah, yeah. But we did it. Right. But we did it. And then we doubled the next year and we doubled the year after that. And pretty soon it was a real full-fledged business. Wow.

But you did not heed your father's best advice, which was the tube steak steak story, which he told all members of the family. And he very much urged people that when you can afford a steak, just go ahead and eat steak and stay in your position. Don't don't climb up and then eat tube steak again. Right. Just at some point, eat steak and be where you're at. But you didn't follow that. Right. Anytime we had an opportunity to live somewhere nice.

I guess what I'm saying is we were never like on super solid ground when we would make these leaps like out of the main street to Tara. That was by the skin of our teeth. And then obviously this house was by the skin of our teeth. Yeah. My theory has always been, I think because I was a waitress when I was young is if, if I have to bet that,

on me. If it's a 50-50 chance, if I'm going to make it or I'm not going to make it, if I'm the variable, I bet on me any day of the week. And that's how I felt like, okay, I'm going to start this business. And yeah, I read a lot of businesses fail, but if I've got a 50-50 chance, I'm going to tip the scale. I'm going to do that.

And so one show leads to another and then you quit and then you're now doing, I don't know, six or seven shows a year at some point when I'm in ninth grade or something. And then you take on David, my brother, as a partner and you guys start growing this business. Spoiler alert. So where it ends up is that this turns into many, many shows throughout the year. Twenty five years.

For 25 years, you had this business and the shows where the events turned into a fleet management business where we would house all these General Motors cars that would get lent to journalists around the country. So then we were delivering cars, managing fleets, receiving cars, prepping them. And then you get asked because you do a great job at this to service other zones in the General Motors world. And then at its height, there was a shop in Chicago.

You had a partner shop down in Atlanta. You had some set up down in, no, not New Jersey, but down in Texas, down in Dallas, you had a shop. Yes.

And at one point you had how many employees? 42. 42 employees and you're managing hundreds of cars. Yeah. And it was a big, big company. It's so impressive. It is. It's really, really mind blowing. Thank you. And I was in the catbird seat because I was 14 years old and I went to work for you and

I obviously got way more leeway than anyone would give me other than you. And I got to drive all these cool cars, which is all I cared about my whole life is cars. And I go on these, we go to racetracks and I get to do photography with the journalists. And I was encouraged to get sideways in cars and act like an idiot and do donuts. And it was all, everyone was happy when you did that. You got paid at the end of the week, but also suffice to say,

The hardest job I've ever had where you would regularly you turn in your hours at the end of a week on long lead in Wisconsin. And I was regularly working one hundred and five to one hundred and twenty hours in one week. It's almost impossible. You'd have like three hours off a night. Yeah. When I tell people in Hood River that know me now as a retired 66 year old woman that I own my own business and I worked one hundred hours a week. You know, they're sometimes more than one hundred. They look at me and I think they think, oh,

That's not possible. You're not working a hundred hours. Right. That's an exaggeration. But you did, you work seven days a week. So we had a car show in New York, the central launch, and we did three weeks, seven days a week, at least 20 hours a day. And it was just, but the culture in the environment at shows and shoots was such a party. It was so fun. It was all young people. It was many of my best friends. I loved every one of them. Yeah. And do you think that that was, um,

Being around that many young people for that period of time was like energizing or did it change your life? It was lifeblood. When I would be with my shows and shoots crew, I just would be so happy. It was just so fun. It was hard work, but we always joked and we always had stories and it was just...

they were all so beautiful. Every one of them were so beautiful and they were so invested to do a good job. And I don't know, it was just, it was like magic. Yeah. And you're the best boss I've ever had. Any boss that, and I've tried to model you when I've directed movies, like I try to work the hardest so that you're encouraging other people. I never asked anybody to do something I wouldn't do. No, you were always, if you had to do, we would go on these shows and every single night we'd have to prep 120 cars and

And you would do wheels, which is the shittiest job. You know, whatever it was, you always did the shittiest job with all of us. And you never went home early and you were always up with all of us. It was great leadership training for me. But as the business is growing, we're in this house. You meet Dave Barton. Dave Barton comes along and he is amazing.

Thus far, opposite of what you've generally been attracted to, because you're attracted to kind of people who are bucking the system, who are living out loud, who are attention getters. Right. And here comes this sweet man, an electrical engineer who dresses terribly, drives a minivan and is just soft spoken and not looking for attention. He's just the most wonderful human being. Yes. And you. But I didn't know it at the start.

Yeah, you didn't. He didn't have a fast come online. He didn't. He wasn't the fast dancer with the hottest moves and, you know, clothes that he couldn't afford and charged. He just wasn't that person. Right. And but slowly he wooed you. And you guys got married when I think I was 16, 15 or 16. Ninety. Yeah. Ninety.

In 90. I think that's right, because it would be 28 years this November, so 90. Right.

And now let me just ask you, because, you know, in AA, there's this concept of contrary action, which is if you've seen the results of your instincts enough times at a certain point, you have to go, who let's try doing the opposite of what feels right as an experiment. Or at least that's been my experience. I go, oh, yeah, this feels really right. I'm going to turn away from that because when I do the thing that always feels right, I know where it ends up. Yeah.

So Barton was very much contrary action, whether you were aware of it or not. Very much. You were aware of it. Yeah. And you thought maybe this might just work because he's the opposite of. No, I never thought it would work. I totally went into it feeling that I'm not good at this. Never going to be good at this and just enjoy this moment and not even looking to where it's going to go.

And then you ended up marrying him. I did, but he asked many times and I resisted because I was sure I would end up in divorce. Right. And, um, I just, you know, it was a whole different thing. And he, he taught me so much.

Yeah, me too. He had a an internal confidence, not an external confidence, not a look how great I am. But he he really was confident in on the surface. You wouldn't have guessed that. No, but he had an internal belief in himself and he knew what his he was very, very intelligent. He knew that he did. But yet he had zero impulse to change.

He's the opposite of the Dunning-Kruger effect. He would know the most about a topic and just let everyone else talk about it and not have to be the show off and tell everyone. And it took me a long time. I don't know how long it took you, but it took me a long time to recognize what was going on that, oh, my God, he's the smartest guy in the room. That's interesting. Yeah, absolutely. One of the things that I liked about him, and when you say this quiet confidence,

One of the things was no matter how busy I was with my business, no matter how many things I did, he was never that person like previous partners I had had. He would always say, oh, my God, that sounds so perfect for you. Go do it. Go do it. You know, he was always encouraging and he wasn't threatened by he wasn't threatened at all. And all the times I was in the road and anybody who's worked for GM said,

or probably any industry, when you are on the road a lot with a lot of the same people all the time, there is much. Everyone's fucking. That's right. It's much fooling around. And I never, ever did because I would never want to have seen his face had he found out something like that. But the thing is, he never, ever, ever,

Even remarked like, do people fool around or would you ever consider? Yeah. He was so confident with himself. Which is attractive, right? Oh my God. So it made me even more so I would never think of. Yeah. Then a super fucking patient guy because you were gone a ton. Oh, I regret that. You were gone so much, right? I regret that now. I feel like I'm lucky I didn't lose him. I mean, he was a married man that didn't have a wife often. Right. Yeah. Yeah.

And you were kind of, we were watching a John McCain documentary last night, which we both loved. And I was saying, man, the,

Dudes in the 50s, they had a different program. They just pursued that career and they saw their kids 10 minutes a week and that's what it was. But you got to try on an unconventional hat, which is you were building a fucking business. And I knew we all understood that. We knew our roles. We knew that you were doing this thing and we were going to have to be patient about that. And that was going to happen. As if you were a 50s dad. And by contrast, Barton was the one...

And he never, ever balked about it. He stayed with Carly. And he didn't just babysit her or, you know, cohabitate with her. He taught her things and he was gentle with her and he was patient with her. I mean, she tested him. I mean, you think about a stepchild. Yeah. She'd throw a pencil at his eyeball and tell him she couldn't do the math. And he would just very calmly, that's not...

You know, that's not going to work and you need to take a breath. We're going to try this again. Yeah, he was an amazing stepdad to Carly. Oh, God, he was fantastic. Carly was in Outward Bound at Cranbrook in her 10th grade year. Which is a thing where you go hiking out in the woods and you kind of learn self-defense.

dependency. Yeah. It's like you go for a couple of weeks out in the woods with a compass and a sleeping bag. Yeah. And it's a real deal. And they do it in March. And the previous year there had been an incident with the Cranbrook crew and they got stranded. They got stranded and somebody got frostbite. It was bad. Yeah. It was real bad. So,

When Carly went, here we are watching the news back in Michigan and we see that there's snowstorms in the mountains. And I think about my little five foot two Carly and she's so little. And I say to Dave, you know, Dave, they're having snowstorms. I'm so worried about her. She's going to get hypothermia. And Dave says, she's not going to get hypothermia. She's going to be fine. And I said, Dave, you know, I'm not like that. I need to know why she's going to be okay. Give me something logical. And he says very calmly, yes.

She's not going to get hypothermia because her clothes are going to be dry. And I know her clothes are dry because I unpacked her bag before she left and I put everything in individual Ziploc bags so that everything is dry in her backpack. Mm hmm.

And again, didn't tell anyone he did it. Didn't want the credit. I would have been bragging all day about having done that. And to me, it was like, that's what... You guys hear I put Carly's clothes in Ziploc. Guys delivering the mail. Hey, man, what's your name? I just did a good thing. I need to tell you about it. Exactly. But to me, it was like, this is what real dads do.

Right. Real dads that really love their children do. Yeah. And I also want to applaud because I found myself in the same situation in life and it is hard. Uh, in fact, I wish I would have been able to talk to him about it more, but, uh,

For a man to have a wife who makes more money than him and is basically driving the ship, you got to go in her direction because ultimately it's worth more to, you know, if someone's going to sacrifice something, it's going to be me, not Bell. It just doesn't make sense for the family. And that has that took me years to get comfortable with. And Barton seemed to just.

Never bothered him that his wife was paying for things or taking us on vacations or buying stuff. All that stuff. Didn't bother him. No. Yeah. He just totally... Or even when your brother... He was smart enough to go, oh, this is fucking nice. She's going to buy a house in Bloomfield Hills. Great. But even the day that your brother got married...

That day, your father called on the phone and said, hey, when they do the dance where the bride and groom dance and then the parents dance also, I want to dance with you. I don't want you to dance with Dave. I want you to dance with me because he's our son and he's our baby that we're giving up. And I said to he said, I said, well, let me talk to Dave about it. And I said to Dave, how do you feel about this? And he said.

I don't have a problem with Corey Head. He was so secure. He was so gangster. Never, ever got in that testosterone zone. Yeah, and I just want to add that layer is that one thing I'm so happy that you did was that my dad, you always kept him in the fold. He was allowed to be at the house on Christmas night if he wanted to spend the night and wake up with us.

Went on all our family vacations. Went on our family vacations. I even bought us tickets. Yeah, you always kept him. You never bad-mouthed him. You always kept him around. And I can't imagine that was always the most pleasant thing, but that was just a really nice, evolved thing that you did. And I would pray I had that kind of. Thank you. To me, it was like you kids didn't get divorced. We did. Right. I didn't ever want you to have to choose. Right. That was nice.

Okay. So you marry Barton. You have this thriving business. You guys have a pretty storybook life.

By my estimation, from 91 to 2000, whatever your left Bloomfield Hills, right? You really found your stride. You made good money. Carly went to Cranbrook. She then went to Michigan State. I was in college. Things were great. You and Barton were happy. Life's damn good. You guys decide to retire. What year do you retire?

I retired twice. Right. The first time. The first time I think was in 2002, maybe. For a bunch of reasons that don't really matter. The business ended up crumbling after you retired and then you had to come out of retirement. And now is a phase of kind of just a really long period of pretty darn good happiness. Yeah. Instability. Yes. Is your depression at through those years? Can you remember it being intolerable at any point?

Uh,

I definitely had depression during that time. Did you realize you had depression? No. Right, because in retrospect, we could all go, oh, yeah, you wouldn't get out of bed sometimes. Yeah, it was so apparent. Yeah, there's all these things you would do. Same with dad. Like, all of a sudden, when dad goes, oh, I'm going to treatment, I'm an alcoholic, I'm like, oh, yes, of course, you're a flaming alcoholic, but I don't know why until that moment. Like, yeah, you took us in the morning to the bar, and we hung out there all day long.

That's not what most dads do with their kids. So, yeah. So I'm just going to jump ahead. When you had to come back out of retirement, you had then some really bad bouts with depression. Really, really bad. Enough to force you to finally confront it, right? Yes. And...

And just like you're saying about your dad, it's like I never really thought of it that I had depression until I had a really, really serious episode. The long and short of it is I had someone say something to me that really triggered from my past being sexually abused as a child. And I went into a real severe, severe depression situation.

I honestly went to work in my pajamas for a couple of weeks and did not bathe. When you own your own business, you can get away with that. And then I and Dave was taking care of his mother at the time in Florida. I was alone at the house and I just got to. I mean, I don't know how explicit you want me to be on that. Well, you tried to kill yourself again. I tried, but a real serious attempt. This was not.

I mean, other times I thought at the time it was serious. This one was I did the double whammy. I mean, I heat duct taped all the vacuum cleaner hoses to the car to make sure I would get asphyxied. And I took every single pill in the medicine cabinet to make sure that I would die. And by the way, what I just want you to think of is this is someone who's now both kids are in college now.

I'm a working actor. I have a great life. You've built an incredible business. You have a successful marriage. David has children. So just, I just want to point out that you can have all the indicators that you told yourself will make you feel great and that you'll love yourself and have self-esteem and all those things. And those outside things all of a sudden will be absolutely powerless.

Right. Absolutely. Absolutely. It's because even are you even building a case in your head like you shouldn't do this? Your life's good. You your kids are doing great and you're you're happily married. Oh, so many. Yeah, absolutely. And they just have no weight. Right. You list those things and they don't mean shit in that moment. In that moment. The only way I can describe it is it's like if someone took you and put you in a black garbage bag.

And cinched the top and you are in a garbage bag suffocating and you're so hot and so miserable and it's so black and so that the only thing you can think of is I have to die because I can't keep going like this. Right. And again, like you say.

I had all the indicators that my life was successful, but I wasn't able to feel it. I was only able to feel that I was suffocating and that I just could not take another step. I was so tired. Right. I just could not take another step. And you, luckily, you did not die. I remember getting a call. I was in New York at the time. And David called me like, this is for real. You need to.

We need to get involved here. We need to circle the wagons. And you went to an outpatient treatment. I did. They wanted to put me inpatient and I did not want to. I did not want to be away from Barton. And so I did an outpatient program, which. That would make sense then. But for me, it was like, here's when the lights really went on is, first of all, as soon as Dave Barton came home and he was this wonderful self.

He wrapped his arms around me and I asked him to take I surrendered for the first time in my life. I surrendered and I said, I need you to take care of me. And he said, I've been waiting for you to ask. And so he immediately drove me right from there to our family doctor. We had no appointment.

Went to the nurse, explained it. The doctor came out, told us of a psychiatrist that he wanted us to go to. We left there and went to this office and we sat down. And the guy's first words were, you've had a suicide attempt. I assume you were sexually abused as a child. Really? And to me, that was...

I was so pissed off at him. Like, that's to me like, oh, and you hate your mother. I mean, it was like, are you kidding me? What a cheap shot. And I was sitting there just steaming, and I answered his questions very curtly and short, and he wanted to put me in treatment, and I agreed to go to the outpatient. We walked out the door. I got in the car, and I said, I'm never seeing that guy again. And Dave said, what's the matter? And I go, are you kidding me? Absolutely.

Ask me if I was sexually abused. Why not?

crappy thing that's just crappy it feels lazy right or oh yeah yeah it was like you can't take the easy road yeah and like you're not paying attention of what's going on in my life right because you're pretty convinced in those moments that it's all the things around you right now right now yeah yeah and then the lights went on and i connected in the car in that same moment all of a sudden the light went on and it occurred to me that the comment that

The Me Too moment I'd had with a GM executive and that sexual abuse as a kid, the powerlessness of being a kid. And it was my dad's boss and I could not tell anyone because I didn't want my dad to lose his job. And so here I am with a GM executive and he did it. And it's like, I can't tell you that situation. I can't lose my my purchase order. I can't tell anyone. Yeah. Yeah.

And it was so the dots connected and it was like, oh, my God. Yeah. And so then I went very open mindedly. We share that. Sadly, many members of our family share this experience. For me, what it tells you is.

Oh, wow. The world's not a safe place. It's not. And people will take advantage of me if I don't have my guard up. And the whole world changes in a moment. Yes. Like, you are still an impala on the plains of the Serengeti. Yes. It's just very...

It changes your worldview really quickly that I can be, I can be outsmarted. I can be overpowered. I can be outmaneuvered. I can be all these things and that I'm vulnerable in this world. And it doesn't matter how smart and how cunning you are. No, that's for me. The biggest chunk of the shame is the embarrassment that I could be out, outsmarted or outmaneuvered or outwitted. You can't see it. That I couldn't see it, that I didn't realize what was happening. All those things are so shameful to me because I,

I hang all my self-confidence on my competence. To me, it's a real confusing squirrel cage. When I said that to Barton that I need you to take care of me, the longer version of that is when I said that to him, I said...

Whatever everybody else has learned in life, I was absent that day. I can't tell the difference of who to trust and who not to trust. I need you to be that person that tells me who's untrustworthy because I don't have that skill set. Yeah.

And that's how I've gotten myself in the jam of all these marriages and everything else, because I don't have that skill set. And, and so when you say like that feeling is like, so not only is it vulnerable, it's like, you just want to keep looking in the backpack for the tool and everyone else has got the tool. Why don't I have the tool? And maybe it's down here somewhere. No, it's not down here. I don't have it. And it's so, it's confusing to me and it's baffling and it's,

vulnerable and it's horrible. Yeah. It's frightening. And one of your worst qualities and I, we share it is, um, just a complete inability to ask for help. Oh God. Right. It's just, you'd rather fucking bleed to death and pick up the phone and admit you cut yourself. Uh,

And I always thought it was I didn't really want to be helped because I didn't want to owe someone to help them in return. But I realized I don't think that's it. I think it's just my ego and being able to be vulnerable and be flawed and admit I'm flawed. Flawed. Flawed. Yet you're not capable. Yeah. Why can't you take care of yourself? Yeah. It's really embarrassing. Ooh. Yeah. And we all need it. So you went to this treatment center and I'm going to Reader's Digest this for you, but you...

One thing they asked you right away is how do you sleep, right? And you didn't sleep, right? No, I had a very hard time sleeping. And you started learning a lot of the warning signs of depression. You learned how it worked. You learned about medication. You got on medication. You learned how to make a game plan, right? Or in theory. In a program, it's not just medication. It's that

you know, you do need to get outside and get vitamin D. You do need to be walking or exercising so that you can get rid of the lousy chemicals you're producing and bring in good ones, you know? Right. It's imperative. And also what I've noticed you've gotten great at over the years is, and this is a mistake a lot of people make in AA, I made it my first few times of trying to get sober is

Failure to plan is planning to fail. So if you're going to go to a party, you're newly sober. You can't wait till you get to the party and the guy you really want his approval hands you a drink. And in that moment, you're going to figure out your game plan. You're done. That's too late. You got to go Friday. I'm going to a party.

As I pull into the driveway of that party, I should probably call someone in AA and just check in and remember why I'm in AA and blah, blah, blah. And then just expect that that thing's going to happen. And when it happens, I have this plan. You can't.

You cannot expect a different outcome unless you have a completely strategized game plan going into these situations, right? Absolutely. So you just dealt with the most heartbreaking thing ever, which is Barton died a few weeks ago. And we shared that together. Yes. And going into that, I think all of us, which is great because you've opened yourself up to be checked in with, which is wonderful. So all of us are like,

you, what's your game plan to work out? You know, what, what's your game plan for this? What, like what we know what's coming. That's not, that's unavoidable. We can kind of be prepared for it. So, and I think I did make plans. I think I was really, uh, looking ahead and it wasn't like I was planning Barton's death or looking forward to his death. It was when he dies, what is my game plan? You know, how am I going to get through this?

And I know that it's going to require a lot of faking it until I make it. And so how am I going to do that? It's going to require you acting your way into feeling different, right? Absolutely. You're not going to sit in your house and just wait for to feel different because that's not going to for us work. I have rules.

And rules that I didn't have before he died. Like when he was actively dying, we had a lot of sleepless nights because of the pain he was in and stuff. So it was not uncommon for us to take a nap during the day together because we had been up all night. And right now it's napping and sleeping are...

They're no-nos. I'm not allowed. Yeah. I can't allow myself because that's the sliding. Yeah. I'm not allowed to stay under the covers. Yeah. That's like putting one foot in the trash bag. Absolutely. Yeah. And so, and what's great is you got a dog. You smartly got a dog. I did that ahead of time. Because you knew something was going to be reliant on you. If I won't get myself out of bed to exercise...

That's one thing. But I will never. I mean, you know, with you kids, no matter how depressed I was when we were going through all that, when you were growing up, I would get up and go to work to feed you guys. I would get up for you guys. I might not have gotten up for me, but I would get up for you guys. Yeah. So I have the dog codependent.

Absolutely. It's my specialty. Well, what's really funny, too, and I haven't pointed out yet, but you never met an addict you didn't love, right? You just fucking love addicts. I could find if you buried one addict in Cobo Hall with a couple million men that were all healthy. I will find the guy and I will take him home and try to fix him.

Yeah. Do you think, well, A, it's a little more exciting because there's like an element of the unknown. You really don't know what's coming day to day with an addict. But do you think there's some there's some relief or there's some peace in having to focus on someone else's issue?

That gets you out of having to think about any of your own issues. Is that part of the appeal subconsciously? Maybe. But usually if you're with an addict, they have the same, they like the same drugs you do. Most addicts love the butterfly feeling, that drug that you get in a relationship.

They love a good codependent relationship. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I do. It's singing a lot of my song. Yeah. But, but I do applaud. And again, it's worth its own whole podcast, but you, you were very present during the whole thing. You were checking in with a lot of people. You read books. You, you felt like you owed this experience a lot of attention and,

And you didn't want to just wake up and it be over and have not. Experienced it. Yeah. One of the things I'm very, very grateful to Barton for is we made a pact. We consciously talked about it and we repeated it. Often we would talk about it and reiterate what our pact was. And that was that we would be 100 percent honest, even if we didn't want to during the process and that we would experience it together. Because I said to him,

I can be by your side and I can be supportive and I will, you make all the calls to all the shot. You know, you call the shots on this, on what your treatments are and how you do this. And I will be there and be with you, but I need you to be honest all the way with me and I need you to share it with me. And this is a man. He's an engineer, you know, not necessarily foaming at the mouth with, with discussion. He's not over shares like you and I. Right. Right. And so it was probably the very best, um,

Other than that first few months when the butterflies are crazy in the beginning, but probably the best part of our marriage because we talked regularly, openly and really shared the experience. And just like sharing an experience like a pregnancy and a birthing of a child, the bond that we were able to, you know, forge from that experience was,

It was extremely intimate. Yeah. Very, very close and very intimate. And I'm actually grateful. I feel really grateful for that experience with him, even though it was living hell. Yeah. I'm grateful for it. Yeah. And it was a long, it was a three year process. Yes. Yeah. So it was a big, it was a big chunk. Yeah. Yeah. Of your life. Before we go, I want, I just want to pass on.

Some of the things I feel like you gave me that I'm most grateful for. And one of them is I realized really set me up to be interested in anthropology because anthropology, at least when I went, it's probably changed, but they were very into cultural relativism where your goal was not to judge or label a group of people as primitive, evil, backwards people.

You could look at something like infanticide, which on the surface seems absolutely unimaginable. Who could kill a child that's just been born? They must be evil. But they didn't have that interest. They had the interest of understanding why would that have happened. And you can't understand things if you're only there to label them. And you were this crazy example of that. We'd read about a murderer like there'd be a there'd be a murder and a murderer and it'd be in the paper.

And your first line of thought was always, wow, that guy was a little baby one day. Right? What do you always say? That somebody passed out cigars for that baby. Yeah. You know, that was somebody's little boy. That was somebody's son. And he was loved and celebrated. What happened? What went wrong? Yeah. The tragedy on both sides. The tragedy that a victim was killed. And then the tragedy that a life with a lot of potential happened.

went down that road that's that's equally worth mourning and you kind of always had that perspective there'd be like you know kids would kill other kids in drunk driving accidents in our town and in the town is going oh that motherfucker drove drunk about and you would go straight to like holy cow he woke up in jail cell this morning yesterday he was going to college what his parents who saw that potential and put all this time and energy into it and just

You never seem very interested in just labeling something good or bad or black and white, evil, good. Thank you. That's wonderful. Sinful, heavenly, whatever the things were. You didn't live in this binary thing and you were very interested in the nuance and the details and the context and all this stuff. And it's such an awesome way to process the world and

just very empathetic and it was such a great example for you to have given me it's very interesting it's weird and you and I went through this I start sharing my story publicly and it overlaps with your story and it's a little in one time I offended you I remember and I felt really bad about it and then you called me a week later and you said you know what I'm wrong that's your story you're allowed to tell it yeah so do you even remember what it was

I forget. It was something that you said something. Oh, my mom's married a lot of times. And because I'm so ashamed of that, you know, I you know, it was it was hard for me that, oh, geez, that's the dirty laundry. You know, do we have to air that? Yeah. You know. Yeah. It's weird, right? It is. But then again, at the same time, it's like, you know what?

You went through that too. I didn't go through it on my own. You kids, I, I, I drug you through it and I, it's one of my regrets, but it is what it is. And we got where we got because of it. And yeah, it's yesterday. Yeah. And yeah. So I just, I thank you for, for, for giving me, you know, the, the, the permission to drag you into this. And I bet it's a weird scenario. I'm sure if,

Lincoln or Delta gets famous. I'll start hearing all these things about myself. Do you know what though? Just, you know, not to keep beating it to death, but, and I haven't talked about that movie in years, but that movie that we were referring to boy, when people do art and when people do come out and talk about things like that, it, since that movie, yeah, I'm still ashamed of how many times I've been married and all the things I went through. However,

That made me realize that I'm not an idiot. I just made some bad choices. And a lot of other people made those bad choices too. And guess what? They're not idiots. They're nice people. And so I feel like if you have your story and you share your story and something comes of it that someone else hears it, it's like, gosh, that would be great. You know, I think everything that's good about me is something that you taught me. I think I'm genetically talented.

was destined to be my father. We have the same broken shoulder, the same missing knuckle, the same everything, the same crazy, stupid alpha male, get out of the car to stop. And so much wonderful from him. Yeah, I'm sure. But I, I credit you with, um, uh, taking all of that and adding your perspective and your empathy and your, in, in how endlessly loving you are. And, uh, you're the greatest thing that's ever happened to me in my whole life.

Thank you, buddy. You're the number one love of my life. That's so nice. Through all that stuff that I complained about here on the show. I didn't hear any complaining. Yeah, I would not. I can't imagine being luckier than having been born with you as my mom. Thank you. I hope to God I can do half the job with four times the amount of resources that you have. So I love you. Thank you for coming on the Armchair Expert. Thank you. All right.

It now begins my favorite part of the show, Fact Check with Monica Padman.

This is my mommy's fact check? Yeah, that's right. Oh, boy. Shall I bring you in with a song? Yes, please. Well, I'm scared because I don't really have... Generally speaking, I have a song circulating through my mind all day. And then I just plug your name into that. Not to give away the recipe or tell you how the sausage is made. Okay. You don't have no songs in your brain? Well, I guess Delta was singing one this morning. It's still kind of in there a little bit. Okay.

Here she comes to tell us all of the facts. Singing do, I did it, I did it, I did it, I do. She's holding some papers with some corrections. Singing do, I did it. Okay. That was good. That was enough. That was good. Okay. Thank you. All right. Let's begin this very special fact check. Most special. Very special episode. I'm so glad we did that.

And you really instigate. I mean, I had always wanted. We always knew we were going to interview her. But you really seized the moment when she was visiting to set it all up. Yeah. Because I think it's well, for one, she's super inspirational and interesting. And she is so eloquent and is good at telling her life story. Yeah.

And I already knew that. So I knew that would be fun and interesting. Good. But it's also it's also so endearing and nice to to have a little peek into your relationship with her. But I did have some anxiety in that. Like, I certainly know how she talks at a dinner table quite successfully. She can hold court, but she's never been interviewed. I was like, is she going to like once microphones in her face, is she going to start feeling self-conscious or weird or.

No, she did not. No, she crushed. She did great. And it was lovely to be sitting here through that. I enjoyed it.

So your mom mentioned RC Cola. RC Cola is short for Royal Crown Cola. It's a cola flavored soft drink developed in 1905 by Claude A. Hatcher, a pharmacist in Columbus, Georgia. Oh, all the way home for you. Yes. Columbus is where I won two state championships. In your cheerleading career. Correct. Yeah.

And you said you balled after both of those, right? Or was it that you balled when you lost? No, we won both times. Oh, okay. You got hurt though. I got hurt before the second, my senior year. I got, I pulled my hamstring before the state championship, but I did it anyway. Oh, you just put muscle through it. You had to. Cause you were the high flyer. I was a flyer. Yeah. Oh,

And then, yeah. And then, well, we knew it was going to be very close between us and the and Peachtree Ridge, our rival. We knew it was going to be so close. It came down to one point. Oh, my goodness. Out of how many?

What if he's out of 10,000 points? No, that's not how it went. I don't know what the perfect score was you could get. Is it in the hundreds? Yeah, maybe it's like 300 or something. Or 200. That is significant. And that's like 99.8%. Yes. And they were like, fourth place, third place. And so then we...

than waiting to hear whose second place was. Have you ever been more alive in your life? No. No. Never. Like truly never. And I never will. Even if I give birth, I won't. Yeah. I agree. Yeah. And then I just like lost control over my whole body. Did you go wee wee in your slacks? Maybe. In my bloomers. In your bloomies? Mm-hmm. In my grundles. In your grundles? Your grinders? Mm-hmm.

Anyway. We should call them grinders. No. That's not what they should... Well, I guess... Yeah, you're right. Never mind. Never mind. I was going to say it's not what they should be encouraging these young girls to be doing, but we should be, I guess. Yeah, you're right. Let's have some fun. But they're not very careful, those young girls. That's why. Well... It is why. Like, I wouldn't encourage...

Why can't you just encourage them to be careful? Yes. That. Yes. Yeah. Most of my friends were really careful who were having sex at that time. Just pop on birth control. Yeah. Get on it. But you have to be able to, you have to feel comfortable to tell your parents. I don't think you have to. Yeah. You can just go. Yeah. But that, that require, I'm saying that requires a lot of a 15 year old, 15 year old brain is going to think, Oh, that's something,

Someone has to drive me to Planned Parenthood. Like it's a lot more. And then you got to hide them. You got to hide. It's a whole secret. It's easier to just fuck. Yeah. It is easier to fuck. I think it's one of the easier things to do. You remind me though of this invention I created at 24 years old and I just was positive. It was a hundred million dollar idea. Okay.

And here's my thought. In my 20s, I was regularly coming across women who are like, oh, shit, I forgot my birth control today. Or they would be like, they'd spend the night at my house. I'm like, oh, I forgot my birth control. People never forget their toothbrush. No one ever forgets to brush their teeth. I'm never running into women like, oh, fuck, I forgot to brush my teeth this morning. Everyone brushes their teeth. So I thought,

How about the birth control toothbrush? They also, let me tell you why it works on a couple different levels. Toothbrush manufacturers also want you to replace your toothbrush every month or something. Some, some at some rate that no one's doing. Right. So this would be a perfect tie in with like an oral B because you, you get your toothbrush from the pharmacist. It has 30 pills in it. And every morning you just pop one out and then you brush your teeth. And then when you travel, you like, you go to your boyfriend's house, you throw your toothbrush in your purse. Hmm.

It's all great. Isn't that a trillion dollar idea? Why would you be hating on my birth control? I'm not hating it. I'm not hating on it. I think it's good. You're trying to poke holes in it. I am. Because I know that there are some, but for some reason, none are popping out. It's a solid idea. But also, why not just...

Some inventor in Columbus, Georgia is going to hear this and he or she is going to make this. Claude Hatcher. And the next time we see them, we'll be on a 400 foot yacht in St. Barthes. Someone's going to take my idea and run straight to the bank, to Deutsche Swiss Bank. They might. But look.

Also, if you get in a routine that in the morning I take my birth control before I brush my teeth, it's the same. You can train your brain. It's a good part of your routine. But let's just, I say, let's build on what's already working as opposed to reprogramming. People just go like, well, everyone's holding their toothbrush in the morning. Why not put the thing you need in that thing you're going to hold? The girls that are coming over who are forgetting their birth control are remembering their toothbrush, but they're forgetting their birth control.

See that to me, for me, that would not happen. But you're a responsible person. You recognize people have different levels of responsibility. They're responsible if they're bringing their toothbrush. They're very responsible for their teeth. Yeah. Yeah. That's incredibly responsible. I'm reminded of my father's favorite thing to always say to young people. You would always say, be true to your teeth or they will be false to you. That's cute. Yeah.

OK, so you said Ohio, when you were a little kid, had a very liberal fireworks policy. And you say you don't know about today. So I don't know if they do. I think they I think they do. But the top five states that are most that are easiest to get fireworks are. Do you want to guess? I do. I know you did go. Idaho is one of them. No.

Bullshit. I've bought like quarter sticks of dynamite in Idaho on my way to Wyoming. Well, it's probably... I'm sure many are easy, but these are the craziest. Okay, yeah. Hit me. Indiana. Oh, sure, sure. Also a border state of Michigan. Missouri. Missouri. Missouri.

If you're from Missouri, you say Missouri. I know. I don't like that. You don't want to do that? No. Okay. Pennsylvania. Pennsylvania. Texas. Tejas. Yeah. Tejas. And most importantly, South Carolina. Oh, that makes those all kind of pretty much what you'd expect, I feel like. Yeah. According to this website, it said home to more fireworks outlets than McDonald's, we think. Yeah.

That's great. There's a lot. That's great. They're going to have a great 4th of July there. Yeah, I always stop in Idaho on my way to Wyoming and I get these mortar tubes.

And I spend so much money. You know, I'm typically cheap. So one of the things I will just blow so much money on is pyrotechnics. I'm not surprised by that. These mortar tubes are awesome. And you're dropping this like pool ball size explosive in the mortar. And it's just like you're at the Detroit River. I mean, it is a civic level pyrotechnics.

pyrotechnic. It's great. And I get way too many and then I have them the whole year and then they sit in my trailer and then I worry about the fact that I have all this gas in my trailer and I'm just waiting for the whole thing to blow up. I don't like that at all. Living on the edge. As Bon Jovi said, living on the edge. Jon Jovi.

Living on the edge. He said, living on a prayer. We also said that I think I used to love Bon Jovi. You did. Oh my God. Yeah. You're so American. It's amazing. You couldn't be more American. You love friends and Jon Jovi.

I went to a couple of those concerts. You did? Yeah, my friend Gina really turned me on to him. And we were also in love with them. Right. And what I've gathered from hardcore John Jovi fans is the thing they are particularly attracted to is doesn't he have infamously great buns?

Isn't that one of his things? I think he does, yeah. He always shows them off. Like he really always has his denim. He wears tight pants. His denim is like tailored to accentuate. He also has lovely hair. Yeah. And a beautiful face. Oh, yeah. He's a very good looking dude. I don't know how tall he is. He might underwhelm you if you... I'm speaking out of my ass. I actually don't know. But something tells me he might be...

Most people don't underwhelm me in their height because I'm so short. Yes, because you're sub five foot. No. I know you claim you're not, but I claim you are. It'll be revealed one episode. We'll get a tape measure in here. Hashtag how tall is my. OK. Oh, the story about your dad helping the bus driver was so sweet. Yeah.

The story your mom told in high school, he would help the bus driver. He would sit up front and help the bus driver. Yeah. That's so nice. No,

he got all these ladies yeah no delta would never help the bus driver she's so social and nice she's social but she like notices when people get new jackets and haircuts and stuff like i actually disagree i think she'll sit right next to that you do i do yeah i hope she does but i don't think so i think she's going to be too popular to sit up by the bus driver like she's going to be in the back and everyone's going to want to talk

to her about her day and trade erasers with her. My mom said that Delta reminds her so much of my dad. Really? Yeah, she thinks it's my dad reincarnated. Really? Yeah, which is kind of sweet. That's really sweet. I mean, I hope she doesn't develop a drinking problem. It makes me sad I never got to meet him. He could have been one of my soulmates, too. Yeah, you would have found a way to... You would have found all of his idiosyncrasies endearing, I think. Yeah. Yeah, he had a big heart. Um...

Okay. And also one more side note, your mom's recall of names is as good as to lips. Yeah. Especially for like people she went to elementary school. I know. It's boggling. First and last name she could remember. I was shocked. At first I was like, are she just making up names? I guess we wouldn't know. But no, she's not. They're the same names. I hear it.

I almost know her names more than I know mine. I mean, I have best friends from junior high. I can't remember their names. It's crazy. Like I've been wanting to apologize to this kid in elementary school. Like I want to find him, be it on Facebook or something, put it out in the universe that I want to make an amends for,

you know fighting him in like third grade and I can't there's no way I'm gonna remember his name what about but I went back the photos I have remember they were just like one sheet of glossy paper with 30 kids faces on them there weren't names oh my god there are no names in the year well no no in elementary it wasn't from junior high it was from elementary school I could maybe you know maybe my sixth grade yearbook I think he went to the same junior high maybe I could locate his name there but it does plague me I think about it all the time and I need to

Well, you're saying it now. Yeah, but he won't even know. Might know. We fought. You know what happened is we were in the spring mills.

they let us play in the parking lot and I can't remember why, maybe when the field was too muddy or something, but we, it was one on one of these days where we were playing in the parking lot for recess and I got into it with this kid and I punched him in the stomach. And when I punched him, it knocked the wind out of him and he fell down on the ground and he was, I don't think he'd ever had the wind knocked out of him. And he was really scared. Like he was crying and he was laying and I'll never forget it. I have the,

Picture in my head is he's right on a manhole cover in the in the parking lot. And it was so sad and I felt so bad as soon as it happened. And I just think I got to imagine for him. He remembers that. And that was terrible. And although at the time I did not think that, I'm sure he feels like I was a bully.

He was really scared. We'll find him. Normally those fights were fine. Both kid brushed it off, but this is, he got, he got very scared. That is, uh, well, we can, we'll find him. And his name is, you know, anyone's guess. Yeah.

Jake. Yeah, that's him. Okay. Your mom brought up Sergio Mendez. Another thing your dad, I guess, listened to in the car. I didn't know who he was. Did you listen to any of his music? Yeah. And then I realized I did know that one song. He did a famous version of Girl from Ipanema, I think. Oh, I didn't find that. No, there's a song called Never Gonna Let You Go. And I can't think of how it goes right now.

Never going to give you up. Never going to let you go. Never going to run around and hurt you. That's Rick Ashley. Yeah, that's not him. Sergio Mendez is Brazilian. And he has over 55 releases. He plays bossa nova heavily crossed with jazz and funk. It's awesome. I have some Sergio Mendez CDs. All right. So you talk about Shake and Baby. Yeah.

Yeah, you just call it shaken baby. But yeah, it's shaken baby syndrome, also known as abusive head trauma, shaken impact syndrome, inflicted head injury or whiplash shake syndrome. All these are terrible. Oh, they are. Yeah, and it's kind of, it's self-explanatory of what it is. You shake a baby and... Yeah. Yeah.

And before having kids, that always seemed like the most insane thing that could occur. But when you have a baby and they won't stop crying and you really are like in a weird panic. I although I never shook my kids. You could see how people end up there. I was like, man, if I was 20 years old and I was drunk or whatever, I could see where it happens. Yikes. Yeah. Yeah.

Oh, one thing I wanted to clarify because of because of the structure, just the way you guys were talking, because you have such a familiar knowledge base, you can like hop around and you both know what you're talking about.

So I just wanted to clarify the timeline of your houses. So when your mom and dad had David, they lived in a small house, she said. And then they moved into an apartment. And then I think they moved into an apartment in Deer Creek. Maybe Deer Creek was the apartment. Yes. Yes.

And then they moved into the mobile home where you were born. Brought home. Yes. And then you moved into they moved into the nice house. Middle Road. Yes. Yes.

So it kind of seemed at first like the nice house was there and then you were born. But it seemed like it was confusing. So that's the timeline. Yep. And then we left the Middle Road house when I was three. We went to those welfare apartments for a year. Then we went to Main Street for a year. Then we went to Highland and we lived in a house for three years. And then we moved into unnamed stepdad's house for a year. Then we moved into our friend Ann's house for about six months. Right.

We stopped at my dad's there for a few months until they fought too bad and we left. And then we lived in Highland. I'm sorry, Milford and how she built herself for three years. Then I moved back in with my dad. Then I moved back to. So, yeah, we had like. You moved back in with your dad after the nice house that she built. Yes, because my dad had gotten in a head on collision and he needed assistance. And I was afraid that everyone at Milford High School was going to murder me because so many guys hated me. Right.

And so it was a dual motivation. I went to Walde Lake Central and took care of him while he was recovering. But then when he and I got in such a bad fight and then I moved back in with my mom in 11th grade, but continued to go to Walde Lake Central. But anyways, because of that, I lived in my apartment in Santa Monica for 10 years and I've lived in this current house for 12 years. I do never want to move. It gives me so much anxiety because we move so much as kids. Yeah. Um,

Okay. I think your mom mentioned a Christmas where like couldn't turn on Christmas lights. And I think she's talking about the 1979 energy crisis. Hmm. That makes sense. Time-wise, that makes sense, right? Mm-hmm. 1979 oil crisis or oil shock occurred in the world due to decreased oil output in the wake of the Iranian revolution. Hmm.

they call that the oil embargo. Is that what you called it? That, but it's called the energy crisis. Continue to call it that. Oh, uh, you talk about colic. I think people know what colic is, but it's just like incessant crying from babies and it just, they won't stop. Which I got, I, I, I outgrew. Well, yeah, not if we show some videos of them singing. Yeah. Flash mobs. Um,

Dax cries at flash mobs. Well, not flash mobs. One of those Olympians choreographed a routine to text me. No, to call me. Maybe. Maybe. Yeah. I cried when we watched it because. Yeah.

So embarrassing. Why? It's not embarrassing. It's so sweet and endearing. Okay. You mentioned the five S's for resetting babies. And we talked about that on Ashton's fact check. So you guys can go listen to Ashton Kutcher's episode if you want to learn about the five S's. So you had to persist on a diet of Karo syrup.

I mean, when she was telling that, did you not just, I was thinking, how am I even here? You cannot feed a baby fucking sugar water. I know. I was shocked to my core that you spent so many, so much of your little tiny baby life. I would truly be, I would be six, five. There's no way that didn't shave off a couple inches. It could have been the next Einstein or something. I could have been so smart and I could have played basketball for the Pistons.

For sure. For sure. 100% no question. Thanks, Karo Syrup. Yeah. Karo Syrup has corn syrup, salt, and vanilla. Oh, my God. I mean, it's poison. Yeah. Mm-hmm.

I'm so proud of you for outliving that. I guess a little. This is a little bit of feather in my cap that I could have persevered on that diet. I know. Well, and then what a constitution that little baby. Yeah, I know. Because also your mom gave you paragoric because of your colic. OK. And what was that? And that was an opiate. Yes, it was.

Well, Jesus Christ, no wonder I'm fucking recovering, Anna. I did. I literally thought that when I read this. I was like, of course. It's a camphorated tincture of opium. Oh, my Christ.

It does say it does say here that it's a traditional parent remedy known for its anti-diarrheal. Diarrheal. And some other things. But it's they do give it to babies, I guess. But I was on heroin and syrup. Yeah. Wow. Wow.

I really, really should be smarter, I think. Which, you're pretty smart. I was like Burroughs. Who? Burroughs. William Burroughs. Bill Burroughs? He was a famous writer and heroin addict. Oh. He was part of the beat movement. They all kind of worshipped him. Naked Lunch. He shot his girlfriend. There's a great, I believe, Radiolab.

on him shooting his girlfriend at a party down in Mexico. And he just didn't deal, have to deal with that. Killed her. Yeah. Dead. Doing like a trick with a gun. Some people say it was, he was an accident and some people say it was not an accident. Yeah. But there's all this great tape and interview and yeah, it's a wild story.

I hope you don't kill me by accident. It's not inconceivable, right? Because we do like you go to the sand dunes with me. You've ridden on a motorcycle with me. There's not been any gunplay, but I would just say yet. Yeah. You know? Yeah. I don't want to die by your hand. Yeah. Yeah.

Okay, does Cambly Wald... Also, when you were saying it, I pictured it C-A-M-B-E-L... Wait. L-L, like the soup? L-L-Y...

A.L.D. Like one big word. Cambly Wald. Two people's names. Right. And it's Campbell Ewald. OK. Yes. Great. Cleared up that lawsuit for us. Campbell Ewald. And they don't have the Chevrolet account anymore. It's Campbell Ewald. 2010. General Motors.

Moved all its important Chevrolet business to another agency after 90 years. 90? More than. That's a big hit. Yeah. I think they're up there as the biggest spenders.

advertisement spenders. You brought up Aaron Weakley, but you didn't call him by his full name. My best friend, Aaron Weakley. Yeah. Because Dax brings up Aaron Weakley all the time. His old friend, his oldest friend. But he always says my best friend, Aaron Weakley. I was visiting Michigan. I went to my best friend, Aaron Weakley's house. At first I was offended.

Well, because you thought I thought you didn't remember. Yeah. Like, of course, I know who that is. You talk about him all the time. Well,

Like what? And then it became sweet. Well, but what's funny is while I was in Michigan, you would like ask what Delta's up to your soulmate. So with her. Yeah. Send me pictures. Yeah. I sent you pictures. And and every time I had done something with my best friend, Aaron Weekly, I would say to you, oh, I met my best friend, Aaron Weekly at Highland House. And we had to know I met my best friend. And even in a text, I would take the time about my best friend. But you did. I don't think you knew you were doing it until I called it out.

It was not a bit until I said. Yeah. Now it's become a bit. Now it's a bit. But it wasn't. It was very sincere. Yeah. Which is sweet. And also. You know, and I talk a lot on this podcast about people I love and how much I love people. But just truthfully, Aaron Weakley, my best friend Aaron Weakley. Cool.

I just don't know that I've ever felt about a human being the way I feel about him. I just, I just, I feel like we have the same cells in our body. And when I see him, even it'll be like a year and a half and I see him and I just, my whole body is electric and we can't talk for more than four seconds without laughing so hard. We're going to cry. Yeah. What a feeling. I hope everyone has a best friend like that. Yeah.

Uh, you mentioned tube steak. Tube steak is a hot dog. Yeah. I didn't know that. You didn't. I've also never heard that. That was my pippi. My mom's dad always called it a tube steak. Yeah. I've never heard it as a hot dog. I mean, clearly a euphemism. We all know it's not a fucking steak. It's like, um, the hooves, assholes and snouts of a pig. And also, I don't think hot dogs are claiming to be steak. Yeah.

That's what I'm saying is probably the worst meat product out there. I love them. Don't get me wrong. You can get 100% beef. Yeah. Beef asshole. Beef intestines. Beef eyeballs. It's not just because it's beef doesn't mean it's it ain't fucking filet mignon. Yeah, you're right. Yeah. It's whatever shit that they couldn't sell to somebody. I'll still eat one. Yeah. Yeah.

The John McCain documentary is John McCain for whom the bell tolls. It's on HBO. You can find it now. It's phenomenal. It'll make you love him so much and appreciate him. Well, I tweeted about that documentary. And then I, of course, got a bunch of my fellow liberals, you know, tweeting all these fucking insane things about what a terrible person he is and everything. And the whole reason I tweeted is, is, you know,

Fucking watch it before you jump in your party line. It's like the reason I like the documentary so much is that I am not ideologically aligned with him. Yeah. Politically there. But I am so aligned with him as a human being. He had so much integrity. There's so many admirable qualities. And I think it's a great thing for all of us to watch, to remember what little percentage of our personality,

as humans is our fucking political views. There's so much more to us than that. And it's a great reminder of that. But also he's that like he often not, you know, he, he, he has a lot of conviction for the things he cares about.

that I may not agree with politically, but he also votes against his party and he does, he really does do the thing that he feels is the right thing and doesn't feel like it's for political gain. It's just what he thinks is right. And even more impressive is that when he has been wrong, which he's been wrong,

He owns it, which is so attractive. Every single politician, I feel like, I mean, literally shit the bed in front of you and then explain why they didn't do it. You know, it's just there was a level of ownership over his mistakes. That is that was very admirable. Absolutely. Yeah. That's it. I mean, I also wanted to say that.

Her story was full with cheerleaders and angels and people who helped her and saw her. And, you know, she did so much, but she had people. And it's good to know that and recognize like those people in your life and that it's good to be that for other people if you have the chance and opportunity to do it. I just thought that was, for me, that was sort of a takeaway of

You got to help people. Well, especially in times where you've lost your perspective as she has to have a network of people that

you know, you're connected to who will sense, Oh, this is okay. This person needs help now. Yeah. Like a circle, the wagons. Yeah. Just be aware of. Yeah. You can't be an Island. I think that's the message. You guys are that for me. Yeah. Yeah. I hope to be for life. Yeah. Until I kill you with a handgun on the back of my motorcycle, jumping a dune buggy in the sand. I love you. I love you too. Yeah.

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