Tell Me About Them
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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 episode is brought to you by Shopify. Whether you're selling a little or a lot,

Shopify helps you do your thing, however you cha-ching. From the launch your online shop stage, all the way to the we just hit a million orders stage. No matter what stage you're in, Shopify's there to help you grow. Sign up for a $1 per month trial period at shopify.com slash special offer, all lowercase. That's shopify.com slash special offer. There are certain things that are easy to remember about the dead. One, that they're dead. Two,

Although, sometimes, sometimes your brain will let you forget, just for a moment, maybe two, and you'll think, I should call my dad. Two, how they died, especially if you were there and especially if it was gruesome or traumatic. But there's so much more to a person than how they died. And so when I know a person is grieving the death of a loved one, I always say, tell me about them.

Not about how they died. Why do you need to know, by the way? But tell me about them. Tell me what made them special. What made them laugh. How they made you laugh. Tell me what you'll know about them forever. I'm Nora McInerney, and this is Terrible Thanks for Asking.

My husband, Aaron, loved the pop star Robin. He loved pop culture. You know how people used to type out I H8 this, like I hate this? He would type I H9 it because that's more than H8. And it's a really good joke that actually works more visually than anything else. But still, it works. And when I really like a friend, I introduce them to this. I'll text them I H9 this.

My dad used to jokingly, jokingly, jokingly, jokingly, threaten to give us a spanking, but he would call it a hot hinder. And now my boys will rub their hands together menacingly like little cartoon villains and say, who wants a hot hinder?

When my dad washed my son Ralph's face as a baby or a toddler, he'd cup water in his hand and then vigorously just splash it all over Ralph's face. Again, this works better visually. And today, that's how my boys like their faces washed. They'll lean over a sink and say, give me the grumpy wash. Grumpy was my dad's grandpa name. These are the little things that keep a person alive.

And they'll keep going. And eventually, even when nobody who knew my dad is even alive anymore, some little kid will say, give me the grumpy wash. And their parent will cup water over their palms and wash their face like a cartoon character. So we have this thing called The Terrible Club. It's a little Facebook group for listeners who have supported the show financially. And it's also a nice little community.

And one day, one of our listeners posted what would become the idea for this show. My husband, Andy, died in February of 2016. A vibrant, funny, smart, witty man was suddenly gone. Through the mechanical processes that occur when someone dies, it felt like he, his entire life was being erased.

So I purchased two bricks with his name. One is in the Portland, Oregon Pioneer Plaza, and one is in Carpinteria, California. But I don't see either of them every day. In fact, I may never see either of them again. So I try to imprint him onto others. He was from Scotland and had so many unique phrases. I try to keep him from being erased by keeping some of those uniquely Andy phrases and words alive.

One from his mom was mousetrap cheese, the term for cheddar. If you're going to the market with your shopping list, it would include nice cheese by name, manchego, brie, or the list would say mousetrap. I love the term and hope my kids will continue to use it. Sometimes I just know an episode when I see it. I immediately knew what Lynn meant, how we become vessels that carry the memory of the people we've lost.

how the little things about them really are the big things. And I asked Lynn if she'd talk to me and tell us more about Andy and about Mousetrap Cheese. The first time I heard Mousetrap Cheese, I was probably visiting Scotland with my husband, was before we were married, and met his mom who lives in St. Andrews, or she lived in St. Andrews, she's passed away.

and we were probably going to the cheesemonger because in St. Andrews they have such thing as a cheesemonger, and she asked us to pick up some mousetrap, and...

know what I thought at the time. I mean, the first time I went to Scotland, I really didn't understand anybody. It wasn't until I got used to the accent that I started to understand. So I probably asked Andy, what is your mom talking about? And, you know, it's just such a great phrase that we used it. I don't know that

He ever used it before he heard his mom use it, but maybe because, you know, he loved his mom and, you know, and I thought it was so unique and funny that he started using it more often. So what did she mean by mousetrap? When she told you to get mousetrap, what did she mean? Cheddar, just cheddar cheese, anything that you'd stick in a mousetrap. You wouldn't stick your really good cheese in a mousetrap. You'd stick the cheddar. That's so funny. That's so funny.

So the first time that I heard the phrase mousetrap cheese was in The Terrible Club. Yeah, yeah. You know, I was just in a mood that day, I think, and thinking about Andy and just how I just don't want his uniqueness to disappear, you know. So I'm from the States. My kids are all here. And they had never heard that term before.

And Sandy just used it all the time. And when I mentioned it to my kids, they said, oh, yeah, mousetrap. You know, so it really has become part of their lexicon now. I was just thinking about him and wrote about how I just really wanted him to continue in some way. And then people responded on that Facebook post.

page about they really liked it and they several people so they're going to start using that term because it's just so fun. And I'm starting to use it too. I love it. I love it. I love it. And so Lynn, this will be the beginning of this episode for us because you are the reason that we're making this episode. You and Andy are the reason why we're making this episode. So we asked a lot of people to send us their version of Mousetrap Cheese and

And so that we can all hear these little things that made our people their people. And maybe we'll pick up some new phrases. Maybe we'll pick up some new habits. And these things that we love about our people are going to live on in strangers who will spread the word. Yeah.

So really, Lynn, I just want to thank you. I want to thank you for sharing Mousetrap Cheese, for sharing Andy, and for making it possible for everybody in this episode to do the same. Oh, thank you so much, Nora. I really appreciate that. Mousetrap Cheese. From here on out, cheddar cheese is Mousetrap Cheese.

And yes, I know that there are gourmet artisanal cheddars out there. I've enjoyed them, okay? I actually prefer an Irish cheddar, but that's just me. I grew up next to cheese country. My husband's from Wisconsin. If you are a cheese lover who... Just don't come for me. That's what I'm saying. If you live in a nation where you're giving your mice something fancier, also please let me know and call whatever kind of cheese that is Mousetrap Cheese. We'll be right back. ♪

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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.

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One of my favorite ways to truly unravel, to just tumble down into the endless pool of my own anxiety is to let my brain wander into the future. To think about, and I'm so sorry to bring you down with me, but here we go.

that someday everyone who ever knew my dead dad will also be dead, that everyone who ever knew my alive mom will be dead, that everyone who knows the people I love will all die and will be lost, all of us, to the march of time. Sometimes this happens when I'm just driving and thinking. Sometimes this happens at estate sales or antique stores or thrift stores. When I see the evidence of someone's life just sitting there on a dusty shelf,

When I see vintage photos of real people just sitting in a bin somewhere and they're like five for a dollar. When I find a yearbook at a thrift store and I think, wait, nobody wanted grandpa's yearbook? And then I buy it because I want to be the person who remembers your grandpa?

Or maybe I do it, and I'll ask my therapist about this, because it is somehow comforting to me to hold on to pieces of people, knowing that someday we'll all just be a memory. We'll all just be ghosts haunting our once-treasured items. And we'll be stories. Phrases. Little mannerisms and actions passed down and around. A way to be remembered even by people we've never met.

So one of the things my husband used to always do is, you know, we had an elliptical machine in our workout room. And for the life of him, he could never remember the name of the elliptical machine. Like he could just never say elliptical machine. His thing was always the reciprocal machine. So every time I think of an elliptical machine, I think reciprocal machine.

It's just, it makes me crack up every time. Three years ago, my dad passed away suddenly from a heart attack. And there's tons of things that I still carry with me because he passed away way too young. But one of the biggest things is that when we were growing up,

He always had rock stations playing. It was always a rock station out of Topeka or a rock station out of Kansas City. And he would always ask me, who sings this? Who sings this? And when I was younger, of course, I had no idea. I didn't even know half the rock bands that were out there.

So growing up and just the more he asked me, the better I got it saying, okay, well, this is Metallica. This is Aerosmith. This is Led Zeppelin. And just getting better and better at figuring out singers' voices or the types of songs that were played. And it got to the point where I could tell who sings it from the first couple notes that are played.

So the better I got, the more he would try to make it harder. That way he could stump me and say, okay, well, what record was this on? Or what album was this on? And okay, well, what year was this made? And okay, who's the lead singer? And he would just try to make it as hard as he could. And the better I got at it, the more frustrated he got that he couldn't stump me anymore. So when he passed away, nobody was asking me anymore, who sings this?

I had all this useless information that I couldn't

pawn off to anybody. So I have started that same game with my husband. So anytime we're listening to a rock station and I'll be like, Oh, who sings this? Who sings this? Cause I know who sings this and try to stump him. And he, at first he was like, I really don't care who sings this. And so it was kind of, kind of a bummer there, but he's starting to get into it and starting to really think about who sings it. And every time that

he gets the answer right, it makes me so happy. So now I totally understand why dad was doing all of this because I mean, he wanted to kind of pass his knowledge on to somebody else because he had all this random music knowledge. And so he passed that on to me. And so that's one of the things that I still carry to this day with me.

My best friend passed away about five years ago. We were best friends since seventh grade. She died when she was almost 39, so we were best friends for a long time. But she would watch football as a kid. She loved watching football games, but she didn't understand what some of the fans were doing, and...

Instead of seeing defense in the fans, they would have the letters D-E, and then they would have what looked like a picket fence. For some reason, as a kid, she thought it was a gate, and so she would chant D-GATE instead of D-FENCE. And as soon as I learned that, that's all I can see whenever I watch football or hear football is I don't hear D-FENCE, I hear D-GATE.

I explained a joke to my father once because he didn't think what I said was funny and he normally was a good audience. So his reply after I explained it was, if you have to explain it, it wasn't funny. And we frequently say that amongst the family members.

Hi, my name is Rose. I'm calling to let you know about something my dad, who passed away, used to say and that we say all the time when we're driving around.

He firmly believed that only assholes drove Lexuses. And invariably, we'll be driving somewhere, and there'll be a terrible driver, and they're driving a Lexus. And we all laugh out loud and say something like, it figures...

who's driving Lexus to the natural. Hi, my name's Margaret. My husband Kirk died five years ago.

five years ago, but he used to make fun of my speech because I grew up in Minnesota in my early 20s, but evidently carried the accent with me into my later years. I would be trying to explain something to him, and he would just laugh and laugh, and evidently a word I said

Made him respond, oh, that's so Minnesota. I don't talk like that. But that evidently is how he heard it. Hi, I'm calling in regards to the post about silly ways to remember our people. It's my brother's birthday on Sunday.

Every time I talk about him, I cry. It's impossible not to. I miss him so much. But one of the silly ways that I like to remember him is

is listening to Creed songs, which sounds absurd because I don't really like that band very much, but he used to do the funniest Scott Stapp impersonation, and this is no criticism of Scott Stapp. I'm sure he's a lovely person, but he used to do this really boisterous and silly version of him singing, like...

With arms wide open Kind of thing Like And I just It's one of the only times When I get to think about him And laugh and not cry right away And yeah So I just wanted to share That silly way that I remember him His name is Brett He would have been 35 This Sunday And thank you for giving me a chance To tell you about him

Hi, Nora. I'm just responding to the Facebook request for silly things that we carry on from those we love that we've lost. So...

Here it is. I lost my dad last October, and I immediately thought of mouse turds. My dad affectionately called mustard mouse turds, and I continue to use that phrase to this day. He also jokingly suggested he'd squish me like a pancake to get me out of bed when I was a kid, and I sometimes do this to my husband. Thanks for letting me share this. It's pretty cathartic.

One thing that I would love for people to carry forward, a loved one of mine that has passed on, is the proper way to make an ice cream cone. My grandpa was a huge fan of ice cream, loved to share it, and he always loved to be the first person to give a baby their first taste of ice cream.

So the proper way to make an ice cream cone is to fill the entire cone with ice cream, and then you put your scoops on top. So you get ice cream all the way through. I don't know why, but every one of us in the family, we just talk about, hey, you got to make an ice cream cone the way Grandpa does it.

Hi, Nora. This is Ella. My friend Talia, who passed away suddenly a few years ago, used to always say, we deserve nice things. It was like her rallying cry and her justification for all kinds of silly things and serious things. So when someone wasn't treating you well, she would remind you that you deserve nice things. And when you wanted to buy a nutcracker from a salesman on the beach at Coney Island or Brighton Beach, she would say, no.

we deserve nice things. That is what I try to remember. And I had an illustrator friend of hers after she passed away made us a little illustration that says we deserve nice things. And it's above my bed so I can remember it every day. Thank you. Hi, Nora. This is in response to your request for silly things that we never want to forget about our loved ones.

My mom passed in March of 2020, but there's just a couple of things I never want to forget. And one of them is she made us this meal one time and she was always very thrifty with food and she always froze stuff and she'd make stuff out of it later. And we all sat down to the table and kind of looked at it and it smelled sort of funny and it was a little bit green. We were like, mom, what is this?

And she just looked at us all and put this little smile on her face. And she said, well, it's beef. And we said, it doesn't really look like beef. And it doesn't really taste like beef. And it's like, what is this? And my dad went out to the kitchen and he looked and it said Thanksgiving turkey. And it was August. So it was definitely not beef beef.

In any case, whenever we get together and we're not sure what mystery meat we're eating, we always go, oh, it's beef. Hi, Nora. This is Erin. There are two things that my brother used to do that I really try to hold on to. Both of them are irreverent and hilarious, and that was him. The first one is that my younger daughter was only four when he died. So, you know, during the last part of his life, she was very young and

When she was about two, you know, about that age where they really start talking, he started coaching her that my name was Buttface. And so anytime he would be around, she would be, you know, pointing at me and laughing and calling me Buttface. Or he would be going, who's that? And she would say Buttface and they would high five. And there are many videos of the two of them doing this.

And, you know, our mothers hated it, my mom and my husband's mom. But after he died, you know, we told him, you're stuck with butt face, sorry. And the other thing he would do is if one of us left our phones unattended, he would talk one of our children into unlocking it so he could get on our Facebook and post things. And usually they were posts like, I have explosive diarrhea or I love the smell of my own farts or, you know, something like that. That was very much his sense of humor. And

To this day, I have things pop up in my memories that say, you know, I love my own farts or whatever. You know, so anytime I see those now, I laugh. My grandparents came to the United States from Ukraine after World War II, and they had beautiful and rich accents. But the one thing they could never say was the V sound. So they would say vacuum and vodka. And in our house, we vacuum the house. We don't vacuum here. We only ever vacuum.

We got some submissions in writing, too. And this one is from Sarah in Wichita, Kansas. My dad died last September, and he was the most funny and ornery person you ever met. He loved to answer the house landline and say, Casa Taco, knowing that most people would hang up thinking they dialed the wrong number. I love that, and I miss landlines. This one is from Beth in Birmingham, Alabama.

I lost my only sister to colon cancer on March 13th, 2019. She was 48 years old. We were super close. And even though we lived far apart, I tried to spend as much time with her as possible. I even quit my job to be available to her and her family. Our birthdays are both in January. About that time in 2019, we knew that Amy would not take any more treatments and that her time on earth was coming to an end. We talked and texted all the time.

During one of our exchanges around our birthdays, I told her that instead of telling her I loved her, now I was just going to say that I sister her. Because to us, there really was no greater love or connection than what we had with each other. So while I don't get to use it anymore, to me, sistering someone is more than loving them. Whew. We're going to take a quick break. ♪

This podcast is supported by FX's English Teacher, a new comedy from executive producers of What We Do in the Shadows and Baskets. English Teacher follows Evan, a teacher in Austin, Texas, who learns if it's really possible to be your full self at your job, while often finding himself at the intersection of the personal, professional, and political aspects of working at a high school. FX's English Teacher premieres September 2nd on FX. Stream on Hulu.

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Every time I rent a car, I rent the same kind of car. I also always stay in the same hotel chain, book the same room, eat the same thing at the airport. I love, say this with me, a consistent experience. And the car I choose always, always, always, always is a Kia Optima. And the reason why is my friend Luke.

You'll hear the ambulance in the background. I decided as a broadcast professional when I was moving to Portland to rent an apartment in what I call Ambulance Alley. It's literally the one road every ambulance has to take. If there's an emergency on the west side of Portland, the ambulances have to go on the street that my apartment is sitting on top of. There's probably 70 a day. And I have a one-year lease. I'm so fucked.

Luke is a very handsome man that is unrelated to the story, but it is a fact. And he is the co-host of Too Beautiful to Live. It's a daily podcast that he hosts with his friend Andrew Walsh, who is also so handsome and also so sweet. I love these guys. All I want for my job is to just talk to you for a living. And I'm not joking. I was like, I can't wait till Andrew dies.

I don't actually want Andrew to die. I really don't. But if he did, I do call dibs on his job. And it is in, this is not writing, but the next best thing. So back to the Optima. Remember how we started this episode with Lynn telling us why she still calls cheddar cheese mousetrap cheese? Well, I choose the Kia Optima for a similar reason, because it's Luke's mousetrap cheese. It's a way for me to remember a man I never met.

So my friend Jason Newman, he had this Kia Optima that he is very proud of. I have a feeling that the salesperson had sort of upsold him. Like he went in there just looking to spend a certain amount of money on like a kind of middle of the road Kia and had gotten- Yeah, maybe a soul. A soul. Yes, right. And he had been sold on all of the bells and whistles of the Kia Optima.

So he loved this car. He had actually taken it to one of those aftermarket stereo places and had like an extra new sound system put in, which I didn't know anyone did after high school. So he had like a huge subwoofer. He would just one summer he was obsessed with the song. Why you got to be so rude by magic? And we were driving around this place called Lake Chelan in Washington state, participating in what we refer to as Chelanigans.

And we would be sitting in Newman's Optima and he would just be bumping that song by magic. And he had this kind of weird ability to get into something that we were not into, but that he was so deeply into it that he was like by the end of that summer, that was my favorite song. And he had this he would do a hand motion along with saying optimize. And you and I are looking at each other on video so I can show you. We would be sitting around. We're like, OK, we're going to go to the casino or whatever, some kind of

you know, debauchery. And we'd be trying to figure out whose car are we going to take? What are we going to do? And he would go, let's optimize. And then he would put his hand up like he was going to give you five, but then he would pull his hand down into a fist. So it'd be like this. Let's optimize.

And that's the other move you have to do is to pull your hand out into a weird fist to symbolize or to signify that you are now optimizing whatever event you're going to by way of taking his Kia Optima. I will be doing it. I will add that in. Yes. I will add that in. To confuse looks at the Hertz Rent-A-Car counter as you do that counter.

Ms. McInerney, would you like to take the undercoating and would you like to upgrade to our special insurance? And you say, yeah, let's optimize. And then you do the fist. And then, you know, Jason Newman will be will be smiling down from somewhere with that. He was this kind of person who was kind of always the funniest person in the room, but not because he was

like working on his standup routine or like making jokes that were somehow like, you know, timely based on the news or whatever. He just had these quirky behaviors. Speaking of the casino, when we would go to the casino and you're playing like blackjack and you're betting on the, the main bet, like, am I going to have a better hand than the dealer? But then there are these side bets, which are,

Just terrible odds. Like you win a lot of money if you hit them, but also that's because you never hit them. He would call that putting a little candy on it. So he had this other hand sign that was kind of almost like an okay, like we're going to be okay. He would then sweep his hand across the table and say put a little candy on it, which was him indicating he was now going to put one of these extra really bad bets down.

So he was just like full of stuff like that, that we would say at the time, like when he was living, it would just made us laugh to optimize and put candy on it or whatever. But now that he's, he's gone, it has sort of like extra significance. And the thing that's kind of nice in our friend group is we all knew him really well. And so we are kind of keeping the flame going of like weird Jason Newman isms. Um,

You know, if you're a person who had like, say, a partner, like the person who kicked this whole conversation off, I can kind of understand feeling a little bit of internalized stress about losing the language. Right. Like, yeah, you know, we have a bunch of people that are all kind of reminding each other of like the things that were funny about Jason or also the little things that he used to say that cracked us up.

So I have this impulse. I don't want to leave anything to chance, right? Because the one time that I do, things go awry. I was in Los Angeles a week ago and I was at LAX and I was standing in the area where the rental car shuttle is supposed to come pick you up and it's very clearly marked.

rental car shuttles only, right? So I'm waiting for Avis to take me to my Kia Optima. So I'm standing there at the place that's very clearly marked for shuttle buses only. And of course, because it's Los Angeles, this like very conventionally handsome man, kind of like maybe in his like late 20s,

is standing there. He has a man bun and he has a very conventionally attractive, I don't know, girlfriend or wife pulls up in like a fancy, like Mercedes Benz. And she pulls right into where the rental shuttles are supposed to be. And then he kind of like saunters over to her. And then they have a moment where they're kissing in the car and like everything's going well in these people's lives.

And at the same moment, the Avis rental shuttle pulls up. Now, my normal move in these situations is to like grab my bags and run into traffic and go like, I'm here, I'm here, I'm here because I have no chill because I'm worried that if I don't run out and do that,

the Avis bus will continue on. And most of the time it's unnecessary. I'm just like being overly proactive. And in this particular case, wouldn't you know it? I decided it's Los Angeles. I'm trying to be like a cool guy and fit in here. I'm just going to assume that the Avis shuttle bus is going to wait for this attractive couple to finish their thing. And then he'll kind of pull in and we'll be fine. No, Nora, we were not fine. He just...

decided to keep driving because i had not run into the street flagging him down it was one entire hour before another one of these shuttle buses came i was tweeting at avis they have a thing on the app where you can look for um where the shuttle buses are in your area and the entire united states map was represented on this app with zero shuttle buses i was tweeting i was like avis

We exist. I was sitting there imagining ways that I wanted to yell at this attractive couple about how they had stolen an hour of my life with this move. My night was whatever the opposite of optimized was. That was what the rest of my night was because I lost an entire hour of it waiting for the next shuttle. You know, life is just like water. It just can flow in one of two directions. Either you're optimizing or you're not optimizing anything.

So yeah, in honor of Jason Newman, and honestly, just because it will make your life better, you got to optimize and you got to put a little candy on it sometimes. Every time I rent an Optima, I think of Jason, I think of Luke, and now I will absolutely add in the hand gesture to go with it. And when appropriate, put a little candy on it. This has been Terrible Thanks for Asking. I'm Nora McNerney.

Our team is Marcel Malakibu, Jordan Turgeon, Jacob Maldonado-Medina, Megan Palmer. We are a production of APM Studios. Executives in charge are Lily Kim, Alex Sheffert, Joanne Griffiths. Our executive producer is Beth Perlman. I close my eyes and draw these from memory. That is how powerful my brain is. I can remember nine whole names. So, yeah.

And I hope that's the legacy that I, you know, have moving forward, that my children are like, well, you know, your grandma could barely string together a sentence. But.

But she had other good qualities, like she collected things that belonged to dead people she never knew, and she cried a lot. And she wrote some sad things and some funny things. But you know what? Enough about grandma. Let's go to an estate sale. That's what I hope my legacy is. Where were we? Theme music by Joffrey Lamar Wilson.

Oh, you can always call us if you'd like. It's great if you want to leave us a voicemail. Comments, questions, complaints, concerns, 612-568-4441. Our email address is podcast at noraborealis.com. Borealis is not my legal last name. It is an internet name. It is a

play on the Aurora Borealis, the number of people who don't know that, well, it just makes you think, is there any respect for the Northern Lights anymore? I don't think so. Oh, thank you to everybody, by the way, who sent in their mousetrap cheeses. Truly, it's wonderful. I love that about these episodes and making these things is that we have such a good community of people who will share these things with us and share them with each other. Pretty, pretty cool. Pretty cool.

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