Deep Dive
Shownotes Transcript
This episode is brought to you by The Hartford, a leading provider of employee benefits and income protection products that is dedicated to standing behind U.S. workers to help them pursue their goals and get through tough times. For more information about The Hartford, visit thehartford.com slash employee benefits. We've also got a link in our show notes. This podcast is supported by FX's English Teacher.
Um, how are you?
Most people answer that question with, fine, or, but obviously it's not always fine, and it's usually not even that good. This is a podcast that asks people to be honest about their pain. To just be honest about how they really feel about the hard parts of life. And guess what? It's complicated. I'm Nora McInerney, and this is Terrible. Thanks for asking.
I am, and I don't love this about myself, but I am capable of very deep pettiness. If there is a wrongdoing against me, but more likely a loved one or even a complete stranger, I am unlikely to forget it. I'm unlikely to forgive it. I will hold on to it forever. If I see a cross to bear, I will bear it.
Many of you will recall the first time I told you about my grudge book. Back in, I don't know, 2015, 16, I had a therapist recommend that I write down all of the grudges that I was holding.
The exercise was massive.
meant to, I believe, help me get some objectivity to these very, very subjective experiences. And in the process of writing them out, I discovered that sometimes the problem was me. Hi, hello. And sometimes, you know, I really had been
through an experience that was not my fault. I was able to see the humanity in people. I was able to forgive some people. I was not done with the exercise when I forgot this notebook was
in the seat back pocket of an airplane, never to be seen again. This would not normally be a big deal for the average person, but I don't know that the average person does what I do when I start a new notebook. I open it up and on the inside front cover, I write my name. I write my phone number. I write my email address.
I put a lot of identifying information into this notebook that also had a lot of deeply personal stories within it.
Now, a lot of people would take this to their grave and hope that this notebook was never found and probably published on some forum somewhere. Honestly, this day and age, someone finds that notebook, they're making a TikTok series about it that then gets optioned into a limited series on HBO. But I thought, you know what? I can't be the only person in the world with a treasure trove.
of grudges, big and small, that they're carrying around at any moment. There have to be other people like me. So back in 2021, I asked all of you to submit your grudges and you delivered. We had so many submissions from all of you, enough to fill three whole premium episodes with grudges that didn't fit in our first grudge book episode. But now...
The calendar tells me it's 2024. 2024. And we all think it's been a little too long since we last aired our collective grudges. So in the spirit of one of our favorite terrible traditions, this episode is myself and Marcel Malekibu sitting together in the city of Minneapolis, opening the grudge book.
Find electricity where you are. USB to lightning, USB to USB-C, USB-C to USB-C, USB-C to lightning, the kind of charger where you set something on it and it charges, mag safe, whatever, mag safe? I feel like it's not mag safe. Yeah. There's something very unsafe about the mag.
Mag, charge, all kinds of chargers organized in a zipper container. I've sold many of these on an airplane. People look at me and they're like, where'd you get that? I talk to them. I literally give them the Amazon link. It's bag smart. I leave it on the plane. I don't even realize. I do realize at some point that my bag is really light, but I just think I've been so judicious about packing. I didn't bring three books.
In my carry-on. I know I'm not going to read three books in a plane ride. So I didn't do that. No, I'd left all the chargers. This is a pattern of mine. Not the losing of the chargers because I kept that bag for probably like six years at this point. No, that's a fact. Like it was stained. It's been through tours. It's been through tours. It's been through, like some of the elastic was loose. Several years ago, the advice of a therapist, I was dealing with a lot of the anger phase of grief.
which is not appealing to a lot of people like externally, right? Like people are kind of fine with you being sad. They don't love like when you're just ready to turn up on. Yeah. Yeah. Leftovers. Oh, okay. Oh, so now we're meeting 30 minutes later.
Okay. I was just really like an angry person and I'd spent a lot of time calculating all of the ways that people had wronged me. And my therapist was like, look, what I need you to do is to write it all down. I need you to write it all down, get it out and be detailed. Describe the situation, describe how you felt, what happened, what they said, what you said, what happened, how you feel about it now and write it out by hand. Right.
Right. And so I did. I get a fresh new notebook. I always, when I get a new notebook, I write my name, my address, my phone number. So if I lose the notebook, it comes back to me. And most of my notebooks are really boring. You know, it's like to-do lists. Notes. Calendar pages. Notes that don't even make sense to me. From meetings, yeah. Yeah, they don't even make sense after the meeting. Check. Yeah. Yeah.
The button. Yeah. Yeah. Check the button. Like, interesting? Question mark? It's like, what were you talking about? I am practicing this journaling thing on an airplane. And I'm like, you know, writing, writing, writing, writing, writing. And, you know, when I –
get into my seat on a long flight. I situate myself. I take out that bag of chargers and I put things in the seat back pocket. There's a place for your phone. There's a place for books, a computer, whatever. Because I don't want to be... I mean, I very rarely put anything up, but I don't want to be up and down. I don't want to be rifling, trying to bend down when there's no space anyways to go through a bag. It's like, I just want my thing. So I do all that.
I'm writing, I'm crying, you know, all the normal stuff you do on the plane. And then, you know, get off the plane, you know, get to my destination. I don't have the notebooks.
The notebook's still on the plane. Nice. The notebook is in that seat back pocket. What color is this notebook? That notebook is, I'm guessing, I mean, it was, I know what brand of notebook I was using at the time. So it would have been, I mean, I would assume it was yellow. Like, honestly, at this point, I don't even know if I could, it would be a moleskin. Would it be a yellow one or would it have been, it was, I was doing dot grid. I was doing dot grid at the time. And it was soft cover.
So anyways, it's gone. And I'm like, oh,
Because it's like I was leaving like first name, last name, date. Like my identifying details are in there, but so are like the identifying details of like, it's like my mom, you know? That's crazy. I code anytime I've journaled about some shit I'm mad about. I don't care if it's only me. In fact, I code it. So I code it. I write in the worst chicken scratch I can. It's like a mental exercise. Yeah. And then I burn it within a week. Oh, that's smart. That's probably also like.
Yeah, yeah. And like symbolic. Only with negative stuff. If it's positive, I'll leave it there. But if it's like, oh, I was just mad about something, I'll write it. And then I literally, I don't know if that's like a ritual or something. I'm not in a cult. Yeah, you should be. Right, a good cult. You should be, yeah. You should be in a cult. But yeah, so I did that. And then I shared that with people. And we...
made an episode called The Grudge Book.
Where I basically said, I know I'm not the only person carrying around all these little trivial grudges. There's no way it's just me. So if you have a grudge, share it with us and we will make our own grudge book. And we will leave it in the metaphorical seat back pocket of a podcast. And we've done that a few times. We actually filled three bonus episodes filled with grudges. Yeah.
that didn't fit in that first Grudge Book episode. But now when we release this, it will be 2024, a brand new year. Right now it's at the tail end of 2023. We're at an Airbnb. And I think to celebrate this new year, we have to bring in the past. We have to live in the past for a little bit. So this is one of our favorite traditions. Marcel and I are going to open the Grudge Book.
The first one we have is an email I'm going to read to you. Hello, here's a grudge against a company. Best grudges to hold. Right. Keep them nameless, faceless. You know, like you want to just be like punching up, you know, like at a Goliath. Peach Bellini. Okay.
What was that? Bath and body works? Bath and body works. The peach Bellini candle. I made people who came to our VIP meet and greet on the tour sit down and watch. People were just like... People were like, what the fuck? What the fuck is wrong with this lady? Okay, um...
If you don't know what we're talking about, it will be linked in the show description. If you're watching on Patreon, we'll link to it and you can watch it. And that is an example of a great grudge against a company. But this is not about Bath & Body Works.
Okay. Our writer says, apparently Abercrombie and Fitch makes great plus-size clothing now, but I, an elder millennial, cannot forgive them for the trauma of not being able to purchase a damn thing in their store as a teen who wore large or extra large. I hate them. I...
I'm with you. Abercrombie and Fitch was, you know, they didn't invent body dysmorphia, but dang, they stoked the flames. They were like, oh, are you a skinny little girl? They were complicit. Yeah, they were. They were like, your jeans should slide off your body.
Without unbuttoning them. Like you should be so bony that your fitted t-shirt hangs off your body. And they did it to boys too. They're like, if you don't have abs, die. And you can hold that grudge and so do I. I hold that grudge too because I looked at Abercrombie & Fitch catalogs and thought, why does my stomach have any subcutaneous fat at all? Yeah. At all.
I didn't know people used to edit the images. I didn't know either. Like when I was at Southdale or something. And I wasn't into Abercrombie because that's just not what was popular. I was like, all my white friends, I was like, like free Chloe from the shackles of Abercrombie. Like,
It got her in a chokehold. This girl could not stay out of Abercrombie and Aeropostale, which was like slightly worse than Abercrombie. Well, the hierarchy was Abercrombie, American Eagle, Aeropostale. Oh, God. And they all smelled like Abercrombie had the most distinctive smell, which then when Ian was in high school, he started wearing that cologne. And I was like, oh, God, no. It's like bringing me back to – it's like a sense memory of –
And then they all kind of tried to have their own scent, but it was all kind of like a ripoff of that. So I agree. We do not need to forgive them. And also Abercrombie, as a person who was lured back in
to Abercrombie recently because everyone's like, oh, they're jeans and they've got a curvy fit where it's like, you know, bigger and like your hips and thighs. No, no, no, no, no, no, no. And the size that I wear at like J.Crew, I ordered at Abercrombie and I still could not get that size over like my upper thigh. I was like, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. So there's still
They're still on my list. It's like if Nora's having trouble putting on jeans. Yeah, I'm having trouble getting on a pair of jeans. What is a lot of the possibilities you could have? Oh, God. Okay, our next one is a voicemail. You want to play it? Yeah, let's do it. All right. My grudge? I am currently 26, four years out of college, and I am still...
angry at a girl, let's call her Jessica, for in
So first grade, after school care, we're lining up to go to the carpool thing, and I have Skittles that I earned. And I have always eaten my everything that has color, color-coordinatedly. I either eat in pairs or a certain combination, or I'll eat all of one color and leave the favorite for the end. And I had saved all of my red and purple Skittles towards the end.
And Jessica walks up to me, knocks them out of my hand onto the ground, and then eats them off the ground in front of me. And I have never been more confused or angry. And I'm still confused and angry. Yo, that's a violation. She smacked the shit out of her hand. And then just ate them off the floor. Five second rule. Five second rule.
The reds and purples too. Like at least do that with the yellows and greens. That's the new scam is just slap shit out of people's hands and then eat it off the ground. Jessica. Hopefully Jessica's repented for that. Okay. We have another email. Here's how I handled my grudge against a horrendous toxic boss. This one's from Marcel. Okay.
I worked in emergency management for a large public jurisdiction in Texas during the February 2021 blackout. Oof.
I slept in my office for seven days, assisting with coordination and planning of the city's response. The director was the absolute worst, most toxic person I've ever met, and I had already decided to resign as soon as our response to the latest disaster ended. Also, people who work in city planning, city management...
Yeah. Like that's such an intense job. I've done two speaking events for city managers and the stress of that job of like managing the people who do all the invisible things that make a city work is so intense. And like to do it during a disaster and be like this, I'm in hell, I'm sleeping at work. I'll wait till after the disaster is over. I'll put the entire city first is like...
Hats off. Is that who I call to get someone put a shopping cart in the creek by my house? Is that who I would call as the city manager or Parks and Rec maybe? Well, the city manager manages in most instances. Yeah, Parks and Rec manages like the, you know, the...
Shout out to me who worked for a city's parks and rec and met with the city manager and I still don't know. Yeah, they're managing the budget for waste management. Right, new housing developments. Who's patching the potholes and all that kind of stuff. Can we have a Cinnabon? Yes, yeah. Can we have a Cinnabon? I don't know.
Part of my job entailed sending out meeting invites during the week and participants would accept and send a response. Side note, another grudge. Don't send a response when the invite list is literally hundreds of people. I have to agree. Just press accept. I counted them, which gave me an idea. The director was religious, didn't wear pants, wouldn't get vaccinated. So I left exactly 666 deleted unread emails because I knew the first thing she would do once I was gone was read my email.
That's crazy. I also emailed LinkedIn about her profile because she was eventually fired, told to resign, but left her position as director on her profile long after the next director had been hired. I got an email that LinkedIn flagged her profile until she changed her job title. I am petty AF. Is it petty? It's factual. Okay. You just, you're just representing the facts.
You're representing the facts. Can't tell someone how to react, man. That's what I've learned in life. Yeah. I actually think the email thing is genius and really funny. Yeah, that's funny. A little gut shot real quick. Yeah. And you also had to hope no one else should email me. Make sure you're not subscribed to anything. Nothing's going to come in overnight. Right.
So you got to perfect that. Keep it on the mobile app or something. You know there's that weird place in between where they haven't fully denied you. You still got the keys to the basement or whatever. Just make sure that you're deleting it to 666. Yeah, I support that. I like that. Until they shut it down.
We get support from FOREA and the only people who can listen to this advertisement. I want everyone to listen to it unless you know me in real life because I'm going to talk about intimacy products and I am a recovering prude. But I can tell you that I reached out to FOREA after using their products and I was like, I need you to be a sponsor on my podcast because I want to talk about this even though it's hard for me to talk about, but I don't think that's just me. I think that's
A lot of us. Phoria has a cult following for a reason because their products transform people's sex lives. It feels like magic. It feels like alchemy. I don't know how to describe it other than to say if you think that you have had decent orgasms before, even good ones, if you feel like you've had good sex, you're about to
take it to a different level. You are about to have your mind blown. You are going to be just sailing through space on another planet and you will be amazed. You will be amazed. I am a huge fan of the Awaken Arousal Oil. The sex oil is also chef's kiss. They also have this thing called the Pleasure Set, which is their three bestselling products, which includes the Awaken Arousal Oil, the sex oil, and Intimacy Meltz.
The three of them together is like the ultimate sexual experience. Like you will be so connected to your partner or to yourself. Like honestly, you have to try this. I urge you to have the urge to use these products, which will give you more of the urge. Treat yourself, treat your partner, but especially yourself. Go get your juiciest, deepest, sensual experience today.
Foria has a deal. There's always a deal. Get 20% off your first order by visiting foriawellness.com slash terrible or use code terrible at checkout. That's F-O-R-I-A wellness.com forward slash terrible. You'll get 20% off your first order. You can thank me later. Honestly, don't thank me. All I need from you is for you to have that experience. Okay? Don't thank me. Thank yourself afterwards.
My dad works in B2B marketing. He came by my school for career day and said he was a big ROAS man. Then he told everyone how much he loved calculating his return on ad spend.
My friend's still laughing at me to this day. Not everyone gets B2B, but with LinkedIn, you'll be able to reach people who do. Get $100 credit on your next ad campaign. Go to LinkedIn.com slash results to claim your credit. That's LinkedIn.com slash results. Terms and conditions apply. LinkedIn, the place to be, to be.
We get support from Sun Basket. Cooking is not my specialty. I have historically been a person who is more of a snacker than a meal eater, a person who maybe has not taken the best care of myself, and getting a delivery from Sun Basket with the
gorgeous, healthy meal options that were actually easy and fun to cook has been such a delight. Sun Basket makes it easy and convenient to cook healthy, delicious meals at home. They take 30 minutes or less.
I'm gluten-free, which is not always the easiest when you also have picky eaters in the house. But we got our Sun Basket delivery. We unboxed it. We went over the meals and it was such a relief to know that we had meals that were pre-planned for us. And guess what?
Following directions, putting things together. That was fun for our kids too, our picky eater kids. And they even ate this stuff. I'm telling you, it was a lifesaver. We are at the end of summer here in our city. We are out of ideas for dinner. We are out of ideas for lunch. We are out of ideas, period. This was zero prep, zero mess. And voila, we had a beautiful, fast, gorgeous, healthy dinner.
Go to sunbasket.com forward slash terrible today to save $120 across your first four deliveries. That's sunbasket.com forward slash terrible, and you'll save $120 across your first four deliveries, plus free shipping on your first order. You're going to love it. Go give it a try. All right, we have another voicemail.
Hey, Nora. I saw your story on Instagram asking for grudge stories. I have lost both of my parents and my childhood home in the last three years. And since that time, I have upticked my grudge holding.
So much so that I build new ones every day. But the two that I want to talk about are two of my friends, close friends, loving friends. Both of them got the date of my father's memorial wrong when he died in 2020. And then when my mom died in April of this year, neither one of them showed up.
And one of them told me, oh, I'm sorry that I didn't come to your mother's memorial, even though it was online. So it was like super easy because we have guests over. So and the other one didn't even acknowledge it. I'm clutching to that grudge, those grudges, like my life depends on it. I'm not proud of it, but I thought I would share. Thanks.
Oh, I'm holding that one for you, too. I'm holding that one for you, too. It takes a lot to, like, realize that people can only, like, do what they're emotionally capable of. Right. And also... But there's baseline. There is baseline. There's baseline. You can acknowledge that someone died. I know. There is a baseline. And, like, I, you know, grew up Catholic, and that's, like, a very, like...
I don't know. Like it's a, you just show up for someone's funeral. You know what I mean? I went to funerals where it was like, my mom was like, Oh, my high school teacher's mailman died. We got to go to a wake tonight, you know? And so I was just like always at funerals and wakes as a kid too. And it's just like, yeah, it's like the decent thing is that you go, you know, even if it's going to be uncomfortable for you. And I remember a girl from our high school died when we were adults and her boyfriend, uh,
from high school wasn't there and I like texted him I was like hey we're waiting for you and he was like I don't want to go this isn't how I want to remember her I was like well it's not how her parents want to remember her either nobody want to remember yeah it's like well we're not we're not remembering her this we're not remembering her as dead we're remembering her as alive and that is really painful and I also just like those aren't like the best of friends I don't know I just remember being very like
very affected by the people who showed up who I was not expecting to show up.
You know? Yeah. Like really, really. That's the majority of the people is like just these kind of solid. Yeah. Not, it's not always like a standout person, but then they stand out to you after that. It's kind of like a person that was like in the background, like just the green grass. Yeah. Oh, you were here the whole time. Yeah. Solid rocks. Yeah. Yeah. And I don't, you know, I don't, I'm not wishing any death in your family, but at some point I would really like to go to a Liberian funeral. Yeah.
Yeah, it's fun. So you let me know who does. Celebratory. And we're more like that too, like where the whole community comes out. And like it was nice at my grandmother's because there was all these random people who were like back in the early 90s, she let me stay with her and she watched my children for free. She literally raised like 100 kids or something. So it was cool to see people that none of us knew, the closest people. And they're like, yeah, she used to watch because I'd go to her house and there'd be this random baby there.
And she would just watch people's kids. So yeah, man, that's tough. They could have acknowledged it. Like baseline, jump on the Zoom. Jump on the Zoom. We were in a car going on a tour and I jumped on the Zoom for my aunt's funeral. In the middle of absolutely nowhere. I've released many grudges over the years as I've matured.
Proud of you. But there is one I am pretty sure I will take to the grave. Love it. In 2009, my older sister died. Well,
Okay. Take that to the grave. Fuck. No. Okay. In 2009, my older sister died after a long and rare illness, adrenal cancer. She was 27, 22 when diagnosed. As you are probably very aware, Minneapolis is a very small town. Yup. And if you are a young person, it is easy to feel like you know everyone. Yes. My sister and I had overlapping social circles and she met this girl at work and they became roommates shortly thereafter. Okay.
Turns out we had lots of friends in common. So this girl was everywhere. My sister really felt a bond with her and felt like they were best friends and spent the next year or so connected at the hip to her. Then my sister got sick. She had a five pound tumor removed from her abdomen and had to quit her waitressing job. Then she had to move back home to start treatment to St. Paul.
Minneapolis to St. Paul, for some people, is a literal bridge too far. No, it's like a trek. It is a trek. It's a little trek. That's a half hour depending on where you are and then traffic. I never went to St. Paul growing up. Really? Ever. Ever.
Ever. I feel like there's no real... Yeah. All right. No one come at me. I lived in St. Paul for a while, but everyone knows if you're in Minneapolis, there's no reason to go to St. Paul, but the opposite is not true. There's so much stuff that you can do in Minneapolis. Okay. None of her friends reached out.
They never called or sent a letter. My sister spent so much of her energy after that grieving the loss of her friendships with that girl and her people. Simultaneously, this girl and her friends were slowly making their way into my social groups, and I saw them everywhere. Sometimes they even showed up at my house when my roommates and I had parties. The main girl started an extremely popular jewelry company, dying to know, dying to know, tell me who.
Contact me privately. Oh, I thought that was the name of the jewelry company when you said dying to know. Dying to know. Another started a nationally popular band that everyone went crazy for and they're getting back together this month to everyone's delight. I'm dying to know who that is.
They're getting back together this month. And here I sit with hate in my heart forever for them and scorn for anyone that rolls with them. And as much with most grief, it is mine and it's what's left of her. So if I maintain this grudge, I can foolishly feel like I'm protecting her, even if she's been gone a long time. Damn. And you are. I don't know. I feel that. That's like a tiger sister, you know? Yeah. That's like that fierceness. Do you think too, though, that sometimes...
Sometimes that 22, 27, before you even turn 30 and stuff like that, I feel like sometimes you're just a little too young to understand the impact of certain things, like the value of reaching out to someone's family after something happens. Because sometimes when it's someone adjacent to me or in my, especially in my 20s, I'd be like, oh, well, do their parents really care about some random guy that was your kid's friend that you don't really know? Because we were all just...
going to bars and stuff like that. And I now know that that is something that's valuable. But at the time, sometimes you just, I don't know. It's like the people who show up are the right people and the people who don't are not. And it is so like the part of this email that I like really just like gets me is like,
Like, she's so mad for her sister who had to go through something horrible and also just feel alone and abandoned by her friends. And I had a lot of that same rage. That was a lot of the grudge book was Aaron being so popular. Like, it was like the great Gatsby, only he wasn't full of shit. But like, you know, he was like, there was always something to do. And then this is like, he was sick during the,
like the rise of four square which i don't know if you remember but it's like you could check in it was like the silliest thing now you can check in on facebook or like locations it was a location-based social media app where you could we could make this a location and we could be like checking into terrible town marcel's the mayor of terrible town and like
Aaron was so into this app and his house was named Death's Doorstep before he was sick. Isle of Tortuga, you know, just the silliest stuff. And then he was the, he kept checking into his neighbors. She probably holds a grudge about this. We never met his neighbor across the alley, but she was like an older woman who had like renovated her back patio and had made a location called Danny's Room.
Danny's rocking patio. So Erin kept checking into it and he was the mayor of it. And she had commented, he's never even been here. Losing your mind. I didn't like block people from checking in somewhere. People used to get into it all four square. I've been at this all these. I've never even seen you here. And like, he was like the mayor of his radiation uncle.
And we could see like his friends like hanging out without him, you know? Yeah. And it was like, that was really hard because I wanted to just like call and be like, just fucking invite him. Like, even if he can't go, like he just wants to be, you know, invited. Like he can, he might not be eating a lot, but just invite him to brunch. Just fucking invite him, you know?
anyways it's and also now i kind of recognize that as like the the limits of somebody's capacity for suffering too and when you're young yes it is really hard you also have a hard time and thinking about the girl who died after high school she was sick during high school like and right like she needed a liver transplant and we were like good luck babe you know like you're back like we did not it did not come it's like oh well she's gonna die and that's just i don't know we just i don't know we're
know we were like yeah just get a new liver yeah like i don't know like you just didn't move on yeah i don't know just everything feels so like out of context like it just like we the horror could not sink in for us like we did not have that a much emotional depth right but that said all these things i feel this so deeply that once she tells me whose jewelry brand that is and what band that is i'm holding this grudge you know and i will keep your sister alive that way
Getting dressed can be stressful. Maybe because you open your closet and you just see a bunch of stuff but nothing to wear. Maybe because you don't really like shopping. Or maybe because you're trying to cut down on your consumption.
Armoire makes getting dressed easy. It is a clothing rental membership that helps you build the perfect wardrobe with brands that are high quality, unique, and importantly, recommended just for you. I signed up for Armoire, took a five-minute style quiz, and selected items from a personalized closet that included one of my very favorite brands, Bowdoin.
And guess what? I actually got to rent a Bowdoin top that was sold out before I could even buy it. So now I still get to wear it. The styles show up at your door in as little as two days. And when you're ready for something new, you can just swap them out for more new-to-you styles. There's plenty of inspiration, suggestions. I actually found an influencer on Armoire who had an entire collection targeted towards tall women. Guess what I am? I'm a tall woman.
So whether you're planning your outfit for a date night, packing for a conference, want something to wear on a regular old day, or are looking for a special gown for a black tie event, you can find it on Armoire.com.
And right now, you can give Armoire a try and get up to 50% off your first month. That's up to $125 off. Just visit armoire.style.com. That's armoire.style.com to get up to 50% off your first month and never worry about what to wear again. Try Armoire today.
Hi, it's Nora with a little bit of an update. Terrible Things for Asking is on an indefinite hiatus, which means that for the foreseeable future, you won't see new episodes in the main feed. But if you want to support the work that we've done, get access to our entire back catalog with no ads, you can do that by clicking on the link in the description.
You can join us on Patreon at patreon.com slash ttfa or on Apple Plus. We are still making two episodes a month.
for subscribers, which is a sustainable workload for us emotionally and financially. There are still plenty of episodes here for free on the main feed, so no pressure. But if you want to join a community of Terribles, come over to Patreon. And if you just want more Terrible, join on Apple+. Okay, we have another caller.
I hold grudges against basically anyone somewhat close to my husband who died of suicide and close to myself that I think should have shown up. There's people that I give passes to that may or may not have
done the best things after his death but there's people that I do not give passes to who may have just not shown up because they didn't know what to say or felt bad nonetheless they basically ghosted me or pretended I don't exist um but a lot of people just didn't
show up, didn't even acknowledge that he died. My high school best friend never came to the funeral and neither did his best friend. I will never forgive. I shouldn't say never forgive, but I find it difficult to forgive the people who
go to your wedding or claim to be so close to you or claim to have such a hard time, yet they can't be there for someone who is the closest or someone whose children are the closest. I don't know how you can see someone else's pain and know someone else's pain that deeply and lack the empathy to go outside of yourself. Yep.
Yeah, I felt that deeply. Yeah, that was beautifully put. That was beautifully put. Yeah, those are two great ones to play back to back because it's that same feeling. And we approve that grudge. Yeah, my dad used to say, don't worry about when you're doing like birthday parties and weddings and stuff. He's like, don't try that hard to invite people because...
you know, a lot of people will just like eat well and leave and they're there for a good time. And if they do make it to your funeral, they're going to eat well, you know, and, and leave. He was like, at the end of the day, it's all about those people that come and, you know, hold you and come around you, you know, that's tough. Uh, we have another call, I think.
Okay, so the grudges I want to talk about are
goes back to elementary and kind of transfers over to high school, weirdly enough. So I attended a full from junior to grade eight elementary school. And near the end of the year for a graduating class, traditionally how it went is that the valedictorian would be told in secrecy, have to prepare their documents,
speech and secrecy and whatnot and everybody would be like guessing like who it could be and so a lot of my classmates thought it was me and on the day of uh it wasn't it was this other student which was you know at the time anyway second round into high school um
the end of the year for my grade 12 graduation, there was three runners up, myself and two other people. And I remember finding it so weird that like when they passed the ballots out, all the
grade 12 students, they gave one to me and I sat there for the longest time in Mr. Halsman's class, literally trying to decide who I should vote for because it just didn't seem right to vote for myself. But at the same time, like I couldn't really make it.
between the two other people. Anyways, my friend next to me is like being like, you gotta vote for yourself, you gotta vote for yourself. And I'm like, no, like, what? This is so weird. Like, this just felt so uncomfortable. Anyways, I ended up circling this guy's name and my friend next to me goes, wouldn't it be so funny if he literally wins by a point?
Surely enough, this is exactly what happened. I had, like, a close teacher tell me this in private, and I was, like, honestly so devastated. I really do think having, like, a career and working with children and youth, in hindsight, like, I do think a lot of the teachers could have seen that this really, really would have benefited me in a lot of ways, just having, like,
Pretty good understanding that that lit came from like a pretty unstable home, etc, etc. This is kind of where the grudge lies. It's like, guys, like he didn't really need it. But anyways, weirdly enough, not even weirdly, he ended up plagiarizing his whole speech. His whole speech, he ended up plagiarizing.
I called him out on it months later via Facebook at the time, and he denied the whole thing. I sent him the video that I found on YouTube that was the exact same speech. Yeah, and I'm just still not over that.
I sent him the YouTube video of the exact same speech. And you know what? That's his punishment. He has to live with that forever. I know what you did last summer. I know what you did. I know what you did. Great speech. I loved it when I saw it on YouTube. Yeah. Oh, it kind of reminds me of this thing I saw on YouTube last week. Let me send it over to you. Oh, amazing. Amazing.
Oh, my God. High school grudges are so funny to me because it's like, I don't care. Oh, my God. Okay, so I have to tell you one, which is I wrote about it in a book, so it might be old news to other people, but there was a girl in my high school. She was the better version of me. She was my height. She was just good at sports. I really had to work to be okay at sports. She was...
She had like a better GPA than me. I think she was the valedictorian or whatever comes next. And she was just, and we played the same position because we were both tall. Every sport that I played, she played. She was the better version. And then we were on the same volleyball team in high school. And I was in a very on and off again relationship with the only tall boy or like the tall boy that I had, you know, that had kissed me. And therefore I could never kiss another boy.
We went to a really small school, so it was kind of like if you were someone's girlfriend, you could never be someone else's girlfriend. Right. Like, truly. Right, right, right. And it was just so rough. But boys could have – it only applied to girls. Yeah, it's like, no, go back to Tyler. Yeah. Go back to Tyler. Yeah, that's it. That's it. So –
I was off again with that boyfriend and he asked her to homecoming, like knowing it would hurt my feelings and boy did it ever. But she said we were on the same volleyball team. Like, and she said, yes.
I was like, what do you think this is going to do to our team dynamic? It wasn't good. Mostly for you. Mostly for me. Mostly for me. Mostly for me. Mostly for me. And like, yes, I should have been mad mostly at him, but of course I wasn't. I was like, I knew it. I knew he always liked him and this is my proof. So our high school reunion comes around and we're golfing together, this girl and two of my best friends and I.
And she's like, I'm really sorry for when that happened. And my best friend Erin goes, oh, my God, who cares? And I was like, excuse me. I am. No, I do. Thank you for saying that. Now we're going to hash this thing out because.
I really was. I was like, excuse me, I am about to let go of something. You know, like I wasn't like really mad at her anymore or anything. But like, you know, the 17-year-old in me was, you know? Right, right. And I was like, Erin, give me a minute. I'm about to like have a moment with this girl. She's like, who cares? Who cares? Okay. Who cares? It was a damn. It's like a formative memory. I was like, we're about to have a moment. Like, what is wrong with you? Right.
This concludes our 2024 edition of The Grudge Book. I know it's early in the year to say it's our only edition. I can't promise it will be our only edition. I personally love hearing other people's grudges. Occasionally, I will get a DM or an email or a voice message that says, are you still taking submissions? I'm always taking submissions. If you are holding on to something delicious and deservedly petty, I'm always taking submissions.
I will always hold a grudge for you. You can always wad it up like tissue paper and place it in my hand. The image there is that you're a little kid who blew your nose and then you just handed it to your mom. Moms are always holding out their hand to hold somebody else's grudges or to hold somebody else's garbage. I don't think your grudges are garbage. I actually really love them and treasure them. So...
Thank you. Thank you for sharing all of your grudges with us always and forever. Earlier this month, we actually shared what I think is a related episode on our Patreon and our Apple Plus subscriptions about confessions, confessions, potentially, possibly socially incriminating tidbits of information about things you and our team have done.
You can listen to that episode and all of our premium episodes over on our Patreon, patreon.com slash ttfa, or by subscribing to Apple Plus in the Apple Podcasts app. As a premium subscriber, you get two bonus episodes a month. You get ad-free episodes. You get access to the whole back catalog over on Patreon. We have organized them by topic.
which people love. Terrible Thanks for Asking is an independent podcast. We are made possible by our subscribers. Our team is myself, Marcel Malakibu, Megan Palmer, who produced this episode. Good job, Megan. Claire McInerney, Michelle Planton, and Grace Berry. Our supporting producers are Kim Morris.
Bethany Nickerson, Rachel Humphrey, Jamie Zimmerman, and David Farr. Supporting producers are Patreon subscribers who support us at the highest financial level. I'm almost embarrassed to say how they support. It's $1,000 a year. It's fucking crazy. Thank you for being here.
You. We love you. We couldn't do this without you. I do mean that literally. Our theme music is by Joffrey Lamar Wilson, and we are a production of Feelings & Co., literally the only place on earth you will find any feelings, even petty ones.
When's the last time you thought about your employee benefits? I know you probably don't want to think about that right now, but they're important because you are important. Because people matter and so does technology, which is why The Hartford is so committed to providing a benefits experience like no other. Putting care and compassion into the technology behind benefits to create a better benefits experience for everyone. Learn more at thehartford.com slash benefits.