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Hello. And welcome to My Favorite Murder, the mini-sode. We read you stories that you wrote us, which we appreciate.
00:02:16
Do you want to go first? Sure. So I'm not going to read you the title. A Proper Greeting in This Economy.
00:02:24
That's how it starts. They're like, I don't love. Beautiful. Well done. Strap in mateys, ladies, and dateys.
00:02:31
I have a good old American classic hometown murder for you. I grew up in a tiny town in the Pacific Northwest where my preschool class was the same as my
00:02:39
high school graduating class. And our Walmart was the central hub of culture. As such, I have omitted my name to avoid any unwarranted Facebook messages from any pyramid
00:02:49
scheme prima donnas or fishing bros back home. While crime was not unheard of in my town, it is always front page news when any violent crime happens and the talk of the town for months.
00:03:01
Let me set the scene. I'm in my early years of high school when people still sent chain messages via giant mass group text.
00:03:08
Think, quote, send to five people and your true love will text you tonight. Remember those?
00:03:14
And so it's nothing to me to receive a message with an image attached from a friend in a nearby town sent to me and 10 others.
00:03:21
Him and some friends had been out fishing at a local pond, and although it was hard to decipher
00:03:25
an early 2000s phone picture, I still remember the pixelated outline of an odd shape amid the still
00:03:31
water. The caption for this photo? Upper found, LOL, a hand, thinking it was a mannequin hand
00:03:38
floating in this farmer's pond. Only, it wasn't a mannequin. Pro tip, it's never a mannequin.
00:03:46
It's never a mannequin. As it turns out, these boys had reeled in a literal human hand.
00:03:53
The weeks that ensued were chaos. Body parts began popping up in the wilderness around town.
00:03:59
Fingers and joints scattered outside an abandoned cabin. A torso hanging from a tree.
00:04:05
Oh no. All part of a sickening puzzle our ill-equipped police force was scrambling to put together.
00:04:12
Town culture shifted. No one left bars alone. No one walked alone late at night.
00:04:17
Parents kept kids at arm's reach. And teens still partied in the woods, but you know, with more caution.
00:04:24
As a town, we began to believe we had our next cold case on our hands. You see, in the early 1980s, a woman my mom lived next door to in the dorms was found
00:04:32
beheaded at a local park after her walk home from the bar back to campus. The evidence was mishandled.
00:04:40
And though the prime suspect was cleared, her killer was never brought to justice.
00:04:44
With that history, we were sure we were 0-2 in solving murder cases. Luckily, the answer came only a couple months later.
00:04:52
A man in his 20s was arrested and charged with the murder of three people, two men and one woman.
00:04:58
He had killed them in some kind of rage or debt owed over my home county's number one export,
00:05:04
the true liquid gold of rural America. That's right. This man, a local house painter, killed and chopped up three people over $25 worth of
00:05:13
meth, buried their heads and scattered their remains throughout the woods. It's a bad drug.
00:05:19
I never really looked into what he was eventually convicted of, but I know he was put away for
00:05:23
a long time. As a town, I think we were just happy to bring our unsolved crime rate down to 50%.
00:05:29
And I'm happy that those who met such a brutal end were ultimately given justice and a final
00:05:33
resting place. But although years have passed and I have moved far from home, a reoccurring thought
00:05:39
still haunts me to this day. Did they ever find all the body parts? Enough thanks could not be given for the way you advocate, emphasize, and humanize so many
00:05:47
of your cases. As a teacher and sex worker who fully understands the ways in which I put my life at risk every
00:05:53
day in both positions I cannot explain how much it means to know that there are still people out there who see me and others in my profession as human Just like those who lost their lives because of drugs high risk does not mean low priority
00:06:07
Stay sexy. And remember, it's never a mannequin. No name. High risk does not mean low priority.
00:06:13
Yeah. Wow. I love that. That was good. Yeah. Real hometown. Also, just so disturbing. It's like that kind of thing where from the outside, those poor people in that town, like discovering body parts and all these alarming and like the second you hear meth, you're just like, ugh.
00:06:29
Yeah. It's just people going totally insane. Yeah. Over $25 worth of a drug debt or perhaps so awful.
00:06:39
Okay. I'm going to change the tone a little bit. Good. With, as the subject line reads, a drunk parent story.
00:06:45
Oh, good. Hello there, ladies. I've submitted a few of my stories, but I knew I had to send you this one
00:06:51
also after hearing your request for drunk parent stories in Minnesota 305. Here we go.
00:06:57
My parents rarely drank. When I started reading this email and I saw that line, I'm like,
00:07:02
well, this is, here we go. Those are always the best ones. It's the parent who barely drinks that always has the most fun.
00:07:08
Yes. So my parents rarely drank, so they've always been lightweights. Kind of a joke around
00:07:13
the family because everybody in our family drinks, even all of their now adult kids.
00:07:17
This story happened back on New Year's Eve, 1986. I had just turned 14 in November and we had
00:07:24
traveled to Austin, Texas to spend the holidays with the family. Us kids were left at grandma's
00:07:29
house while my parents were picked up by my uncle and taken out to celebrate the new year on the
00:07:34
town. It gets to be about 1030 and us kids are sitting up watching movies and waiting to watch
00:07:39
Dick Clark drop the ball at midnight when the phone rings. My grandmother answers the phone in
00:07:43
the kitchen and I hear her chat for a minute. And then she walks into the living room and tells me
00:07:48
the call is for me. I can see that in my head where the grandmother's walking from the kitchen
00:07:53
with the phone cord that's crazy long into the living room. Those just don't exist anymore.
00:08:01
They're just entirely gone. Bring back landlines, everyone. Landlines, wall phones, avocado wall
00:08:08
phones. Okay. So she says the calls for me. It's my mother. I go to the kitchen. Oh, so that whole
00:08:14
thing I mentioned didn't happen. I go to the kitchen. It was one of those real short cords,
00:08:19
like nobody was springing for the 20 foot cord. Okay. I go to the kitchen, get on the phone and
00:08:24
hear my mother and father giggling on the other end and music in the background. In a slurred voice,
00:08:29
my mother proceeds to explain to me that they are drunk and ready to come back to grandma's,
00:08:33
but nobody is sober enough to drive. She asks me to get her keys from her purse and drive downtown
00:08:40
and pick them up. 14. Okay. I love it. So it says, now I had some driving experience as we lived in
00:08:49
a rural area. So I had driven around our property and on some back roads, which is, that's how it is
00:08:55
in the country. You just kind of like get to drive sometimes and there's absolutely no stakes and
00:09:00
nobody's around for miles. There's no rules probably either. It's not like you have to follow
00:09:04
the... No, you can weave from lane to lane and kind of learn what you're supposed to be doing
00:09:08
as you go. The next line is, but this was the city on New Year's Eve at night and it was 1986. So
00:09:17
there was no GPS or cell phones. I had to jot down drunken instructions from my mother and then find
00:09:23
my way to downtown Austin, find parking, find my parents and then get them back home.
00:09:30
My God. This is like adventures in babysitting. Yeah. I was nervous, scared, and totally down to leave the little kid's party at my grandma's
00:09:37
and accept this challenge. I found my mom's keys, fired up their gigantic four-door Caprice classic.
00:09:44
Holy shit. Chanted, just be cool and keep it together to myself and headed into the night.
00:09:50
I love this person. I love this story. My really sketchy plan got more sketchy as I realized that I would have to read my hastily
00:09:57
scribbled driving directions to myself in the dark car while driving. In hindsight,
00:10:04
why couldn't the grandma go? Well, because the kids would be alone. Yeah, but he was 14. He could have watched the kids.
00:10:09
I'm in that same age racket. My grandmother did not drive. She had never driven a car in her life.
00:10:13
Are you serious? Because she was San Francisco native. Right. That makes sense. I feel like my mom would have been like, don't tell grandma we're drunk.
00:10:22
Oh, yeah. Even as an adult, it's like, don't tell grandma. My mom would be like, don't tell grandma I smoke
00:10:26
pot. And I'm like, you're 70 years old and your mom can't know that you smoke pot? Like, what the
00:10:31
fuck? And then my grandma would say it's a gateway drug as if my 70 year old mom's going to start
00:10:37
shooting out. In hindsight, I probably should have brought a co-pilot, but there was no going back
00:10:43
now. Just be cool and keep it together. It took me about 30 minutes to get downtown. There were
00:10:49
lots of cop cars and I had many heart stopping moments as I navigated traffic for the very first
00:10:54
time. I found the building with the bar where they were supposed to be, but it took me another 20
00:11:00
minutes of driving around trying to find a place I could park where I would not have to back up
00:11:05
or parallel park. Right. Yeah. Once I did park, I realized I did not have money to put in the meter.
00:11:11
So I just had to cross my fingers and hope the car would still be there when we got back.
00:11:16
Isn't New Year's Eve a holiday? I think New Year's Day is. I had to walk a few blocks back to the bar. Once there, I did not know what to do to let my parents
00:11:27
know that I was outside. That's on them. They should have been waiting outside the whole fucking
00:11:30
time. Or at least looking out the window. Yeah. But they're drunk. They're probably on the dance
00:11:35
floor. Fucking Long Island's in hand. They just had one clear moment where they're like, get to
00:11:40
get to get. We need to get picked up. This is crazy. So after watching a couple drunk couples
00:11:45
come and go, I decided that sending somebody else in with my message was probably not going to be my
00:11:50
best option So I stood up straight thinking that if I looked taller I may pass in as an adult And I walked into the bar expecting to be arrested at any moment Just be cool and keep it together I never been in a bar before so I did not know what to expect It was very lounge
00:12:06
Think the Regal Beagle from Three's Company, which was good because I was familiar with what that bar
00:12:12
looked like. There was nobody at the door, so I got in with no problem. The bar was busy but not
00:12:18
crowded. I meandered through, trying not to make eye contact with the bartender and found my parents
00:12:23
in a booth in the back corner, laughing and looking sloppy drunk with my uncles and aunts.
00:12:28
They all greeted me happily when I got to the table and I received many whacks on the back
00:12:34
for making it alive. There was a few, I told you he could do it comments. And I'm pretty sure I saw
00:12:39
some money exchange. Yep. I'm pretty sure my family was betting on whether I would live or die.
00:12:46
Jesus. I spent the next few minutes explaining to my mother that she'd called me for a ride
00:12:51
over an hour ago when she came at me with, what the hell are you doing here? Oh my God. This is epic.
00:13:00
Apparently there was no problem with me walking my tipsy and stumbling parents out of the bar
00:13:05
and three blocks back to the car. Everybody kissed and hugged us goodbye. And more than one
00:13:10
uncle told me that I should drop them off and come back to party with them. I got my parents back to grandma's house that night without any issues while they both passed
00:13:18
out in the back seat. I caught crap by my grandmother for blocking the whole driveway
00:13:23
with my parking job the next morning. Uh-huh. 14. Typical. My parents were embarrassed when the rest
00:13:31
of the family teased them all the next day for having to call for a ride from a 14-year-old.
00:13:36
For the record, this was completely out of character for my parents. They are actually
00:13:39
considered the squares of the family for the most part. I, on the other hand, was the hero of the
00:13:44
holiday as word spread through the family that I had driven out on New Year's Eve to pick up my
00:13:49
drunk parents from the bar. Legends were made that night and the story still comes up whenever the
00:13:54
family gets together. It's so awesome. Plus, when I finally did get my driver's license a couple of
00:14:00
years later, I had earned some cred from them on being a responsible driver. Yeah, goddammit,
00:14:05
they can't say a word to you after that. That's fucking right. Whenever you're in over your head,
00:14:09
just stay sexy be cool and keep it together rick oh rick that was a epic story great job
00:14:18
beautifully done beautifully written it's so funny i mean but also it's that kind of thing
00:14:24
where like it feels like that time is also over where a 14 year old would even roll those dice
00:14:29
like i think that ended right around 1988 probably and then it was like no everyone's getting too
00:14:36
wise to, you know. Maybe. Well, there's Uber now, too, thank fucking God. Yeah, but I mean, like, as a 14
00:14:43
year old, I can't think of a 14 year old who would risk that or roll the dice like that. Now I'm thinking of my nephew, Micah,
00:14:49
who's 13. Eh, if he got the opportunity to drive. He'd want to. Yeah, he'd be gung-ho on it. He's up for it.
00:14:55
He is. He's fun. He's fun. Hey, everyone. It's Cal Penn, host of Earsay, the Audible
00:15:03
and iHeart Audiobook Club. This week on the podcast, I'm sitting down with Will Wheaton,
00:15:08
who played Gordy Lachance in Stand By Me 40 years ago and now narrates Stephen King's The Body, the novella that inspired it all.
00:15:17
We talk about what it's like to return to a story that shaped his life, channeling his memories of River Phoenix and the recording booth,
00:15:24
and why the friendships you have at 12 might be the most important ones you'll ever have.
00:15:29
I know Gordy Lachance. I am Gordy Lachance. Like, I mean, even when I was a little kid, I was Gordie Lachance when I didn't know it.
00:15:39
Listen to Earsay, the Audible and iHeart Audiobook Club on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts.
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Pets age zero to 10. OK, this one's called the Taco John's Bandit. Hello Karen Georgia and fellow murderinos Love you Love the pod Let get right into it In the mid nineties my parents hired a college age quote nanny to hang out with me 11 and my little brother eight for the summer
00:18:05
The idea was she would take us to do fun things like swimming, go to the movies,
00:18:09
take us to the park. You get the idea. Anything to get us off the couch while my parents were at
00:18:14
work. We loved Cindy. She was fun, beautiful. Think a Julia Roberts type and so cool to a
00:18:21
couple of kids. She could drive with her knees while applying mascara in the rearview mirror.
00:18:26
Oh, yeah. Yes. It says yes with us in the car. That was like the height of coolness back then
00:18:32
in like adulthood. She had lovesick boyfriends buy us Pizza Hut lunch buffet. And then it says,
00:18:39
quote, kids grab extra breadsticks and stuff them in my bag. And she would leave us unattended at
00:18:45
the mall arcade while she went shopping at Herberger's. And then it says, I had my brother
00:18:50
climb on top of a ramp of the skee-ball game to feed the balls into the thousand point slot for
00:18:54
those sweet, sweet tickets. Hell yeah, smart plan. One day, my brother and I asked Cindy if she would
00:18:59
take us to Taco John's for lunch. We each had a coupon for a taco, small potato olays, and a small
00:19:07
drink for free. Where'd they get those coupons? Cindy asked us where we got the coupons. We explained
00:19:15
that our mom took us to the local library to sign up for the summer reading program, and the library
00:19:19
gave them as a reward. Hell yeah. Cindy decided we were going to the library that afternoon.
00:19:26
After scooping out the joint, Cindy told my brother and I to approach the desk and ask the librarian a question.
00:19:31
Our mission was to get her away from the desk. We asked the librarian for help finding a book,
00:19:36
successfully distracting her, and giving Cindy time to snag a all caps thick stack
00:19:42
of those coupons. That summer, we called ourselves the Taco John Bandits. We were careful not to hit the same Taco John's twice in a row, so as not to draw suspicion.
00:19:54
Luckily, there were three in town to choose from. We told our parents she was the best babysitter we had ever had, and they hired her for two more summers.
00:20:01
Hell yes. Uh-huh. We haven't heard from or seen Cindy in decades, but I hope she thinks back fondly on the summers she spent as a member of the Taco John's Bandits.
00:20:12
Stay sexy and maybe don't teach kids to steal from the library. Love Ashley, she, her.
00:20:18
And Alex, he, him. Ashley and Alex, you're some of the luckiest kids in America to have the coolest, most badass babysitter of all time.
00:20:28
Write that as a movie. It's so funny. Also, it's so like I had older cousins that live next door that were like that, where they were always like, I remember saying somebody's mom yelled at me or whatever.
00:20:40
And my cousin Lisa goes, tell her to fuck off. And I was like seven years old. Like it was always that, you know what I mean?
00:20:47
It's very 70s gritty kind of like every man for himself and the parents really aren't paying
00:20:52
attention. And it's never paying attention. It's the best thing for little kids where it's just
00:20:56
like, you're going to get to do this someday. Totally. You can be the person that reads all
00:21:01
your books from library and cashes in your Taco John coupon. Fine. That's fine. We don't think
00:21:06
you should steal from the library. But here's another option. Yes. Have kind of a like a bandit
00:21:12
summer that's good times that's okay i love it okay well this actually goes along perfectly with
00:21:18
the cindy story also ashley and alex you guys need to know my sister was a babysitter during
00:21:25
college you know it's like something she was doing to make money or whatever we talk about
00:21:29
those kids she babysat all the time oh send us your stories of being babysatter of babysitting
00:21:34
yes guys and how bad you were at it or whatever yes bad good indifferent it's all totally yeah
00:21:40
Okay. This subject line says, it gives it away, so I'm not going to read it. It just says,
00:21:47
Hi, everyone. I was listening to Minisode 348 about almost burning down the house while trying
00:21:51
to win tickets to the Jingle Ball concert. I don't remember that one. No, I don't remember
00:21:57
anything. It was because they were on the phone and there was some like flammable thing in their
00:22:02
room and that candle, I think, and they were over on the phone. Distracted. Okay. This reminded me
00:22:08
about my best friend's sister's waterbed story. Yes, she had a waterbed. No, we're not 75 years
00:22:14
old, but it was the 80s. My sister's best friend, Marlene, got a waterbed when she was in her mid
00:22:21
teens. The height of coolness back then, you guys. The next line is, she thought it was so cool.
00:22:27
It was though. It really was amazing. She rigged the hose to the bathroom sink and attached the
00:22:33
other end to the mattress. It was taking forever to fill up. So she and her boyfriend at the time,
00:22:38
Greg, Greg and Marlene decided to go to the mall for a while, which was just down the street.
00:22:44
What could go wrong? When Marlene and Greg got back home a while later, the waterbed mattress
00:22:49
had blown up like a giant water balloon. In her panic, she ran to the bathroom and turned off the
00:22:56
water. What to do now? She would have to figure out how to empty some water without making a mess.
00:23:02
Suddenly the balloon popped and sent a rushing river down the hall and a beautifully cascading waterfall down the steps into the living room.
00:23:11
Marlene thought my mother's going to kill me and ran to the basement to see what she could use to
00:23:16
clean up before her mom got home. And that's when she realized it was raining in the basement.
00:23:22
I'm sorry, but where was your parents? What parent lets a teen fill up a waterbed on their
00:23:28
own. I feel like Marlene, that's on them. It's so true. And this is my forever rage is there was so
00:23:35
much lack of guidance and actual help in the 70s and 80s. It was like, sure, you could have a
00:23:42
waterbed, figure it out. Everything was fucking figure it out by yourself. Don't ruin anything or
00:23:47
you're going to get in huge trouble. But also figure it out. No one will walk you through this.
00:23:51
And so you won't have a waterbed if you don't fill it up. No one's going to fill it up for you,
00:23:56
But you don't know how to do it. It's insane. Okay. it was raining in the basement so it says how do you explain that there's no little white teenage
00:24:05
lie that would cover this one she had to come clean and i'm surprised her mom didn't kill her
00:24:10
insurance covered the repair for the water damage which was mostly due to the basement rain but there
00:24:15
were lots of family treasures that got ruined stay sexy and don't fill up giant water balloons while
00:24:20
you're at the mall d oh my god i feel that one like i feel how grounded she was after that and
00:24:28
those parents probably mad at themselves were like, of course we shouldn't have let her get a
00:24:32
waterbed. What were we thinking? Right. No, they were like, our daughter's bad. Yes, that's right.
00:24:38
You're grounded forever. Hey, everyone. It's Cal Penn. I'm the host of Earsay, the Audible and iHeart audiobook club.
00:24:49
This week on the podcast, I am sitting down with Ray Porter, the narrator of Andy Weir's
00:24:54
audiobook project Hail Mary, massive sci-fi adventure about survival and science and what
00:25:02
happens when you wake up alone very far from earth. I really had to make a decision because
00:25:07
I caught myself getting that frog in my throat and starting to get teary as I'm narrating some
00:25:12
of these sections. And it's like, okay, yo, yo, yo, is this indulgent? And I really thought about it.
00:25:16
I was like, no, at this point, it would kind of be betraying the trust the author and the listener
00:25:22
have in telling this story if I don't go through it. But there's places in this book that deeply
00:25:28
emotionally affected me, and I left it on the mic. That's great. Because it served the story.
00:25:34
People will say like, oh my God, I cried at the end. It's like, yeah, dude, me too.
00:25:37
Listen to Earsay, the Audible and iHeart Audiobook Club on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get
00:25:44
your podcasts. Now I'd like to introduce you to Meaningful Beauty, the famed skincare brand
00:25:50
created by iconic supermodel Cindy Crawford. It's her secret to absolutely gorgeous skin.
00:25:55
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00:26:00
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00:27:50
I'm not going to read you this. Hi, ladies. I wanted to share my heroic dog story. I met my dog Tess 12 years ago. I volunteered to
00:27:58
walk some dogs at my local vet. And once I met her, that was it. She's been with me ever since.
00:28:05
One thing about Tess is she hates water. She will tolerate up to about her ankles and that's it.
00:28:12
One year I decided to take her on a holiday and we hit the beach. I knew she wouldn't swim,
00:28:17
but I thought she would enjoy the sunshine and fresh air. Fast forward, I'm swimming out where
00:28:21
the waves are getting a little bigger and I get slammed by a wave and dunked. When I popped up and
00:28:27
looked toward the beach, here is my little hero battling her way through the waves to get to me.
00:28:33
When she finally reached me, we got hit by another wave, but I grabbed her and dragged our soggy butts
00:28:38
out of there. I couldn't believe this little dog who was so scared of the water, let alone the ocean,
00:28:44
swam out to try to save me. She's getting older now and I know our time is limited,
00:28:51
but I will never forget how loved I felt in that moment that she literally risked her life for me.
00:28:56
She did. Stay sexy and always let dogs rescue you back. Jemima. Oh, what a great name.
00:29:05
Jemima, that's a great name. Isn't that sweet? I love that story. I'm not going to read you the subject line of this.
00:29:12
Okay. Hello, esteemed Karen in Georgia, all pets and producers. Love it, right? As young Northeasterners growing up in the Boston area, my younger sister and I regularly
00:29:24
skied in the New Hampshire, Maine, Vermont area. Beautiful, thrilling, not as big as out West.
00:29:30
I don't care. And then in parentheses, it says there's a lot of ski one-upmanship out there.
00:29:35
We're all so competitive, aren't we? Were we amazing skiers? No, but it was fun.
00:29:40
One snowy day, my sister and I were in line to get on the ski lift ahead of our mom.
00:29:45
Why were we not with her? No idea. Most lifts fit two large people or three people if one is a child.
00:29:52
If you've never been on a ski lift, they're terrifying. The empty chairs come dangling down the line, sweep around a sharp turn at high speed,
00:29:59
then lower to some kind of butt height average that is not at all kid friendly and slow for
00:30:05
about six seconds. And during this six second window, you have to power shuffle forward, make a hard 90 degree turn to situate yourself facing up the hill and brace for the chair.
00:30:16
It scoops you up at the tail end of that slow moment and picks up the speed at a pace that does not feel safe or humane and results in a lot of dropped gloves and hats.
00:30:27
To get to this moment, you're strapped into your boots and skis, neither meant for walking, and are awkwardly edging forwards in line, trying not to tip over, fully aware that when it's your turn, all eyes will be on you.
00:30:39
Oh my God, I'm like getting flashbacks of skiing as a kid. It's a nightmare. Okay as a shy kid it was my continual nightmare Oh that weird There was really no way to get better at it Being a kid is basically not in your favor The chairlift favors long legs and confidence It was during the six second scoop
00:31:00
moment that our story begins. Oh, dear. We were about 12, me and seven, my sister. I was and still
00:31:07
am the more cautious one. I was scared of going fast, scared of the lift, scared of being the
00:31:12
center of attention. There were a lot of minefields for me on those trips. Our turn loomed. The chair
00:31:18
was whipping around the corner. We got ready. It slowed. We power shuffled. We braced. We felt it
00:31:23
scoop us and did our best to hop up so as to better land on the seat. Again, not kid, but high
00:31:30
friendly. We were scooped in airborne. Almost immediately, the chair lift swings you up to about
00:31:35
12 feet and starts rapidly climbing the mountain. As it goes up the mountain, it also gets higher up
00:31:40
in the air. My sister was sitting next to me between myself and some random lady who'd gotten
00:31:45
on with us. Suddenly my sister slipped. She must not have really gotten on. Boots and skis are also
00:31:52
really heavy. Her butt never made it to the center of the seat. Gravity won. I somehow managed to grab
00:31:58
her hand. She dangled from her seven-year-old and my 12-year-old hand fully off the chairlift.
00:32:05
skis still attached to her feet as the chairlift continued to climb in altitude.
00:32:11
I remember looking ahead and seeing we had not only the entire mountain to traverse,
00:32:16
but that we'd soon be over a long line of sharp ice-covered rocks, seriously like a rock jetty at the beach, but on a ski slope.
00:32:25
Oh my God. Our mom was in the chair behind us and started screaming to me to drop my sister.
00:32:31
Oh my God. Amazingly, because my mom is terrible in emergencies, she had realized that there was no way I'd be able to get my sister back in the chair and no way we'd be able to hold on for the 15 to 20 minute ride up to the top.
00:32:46
The more we held on, the higher we'd go and the more over rocks we would be. Right now, we were still over unplowed powder.
00:32:54
I had seconds to make a decision. I remember looking down at my sister who was silent this whole time.
00:33:00
Oh, God. She's a seven-year-old in full panic. Oh, God. Most likely focused on trying to keep a hold of my hand and saying to her, I'm going to let you go now.
00:33:10
Oh, my God. Oh, my God. Oh, my God. I said it very solemnly, like we all knew this moment would arrive.
00:33:16
And she said, okay. And I let go. Oh, my God. Those two sisters really shared that moment.
00:33:26
Yeah. She fell like a puppet without strings, all arms and legs and skis flailing, and then poof into a big pile of snow.
00:33:35
She lifted her head to let us know that she was okay, and almost immediately was nearly decapitated by the skis of the next people to come up the lift.
00:33:44
Because of course the lift had not stopped while this was happening. We screamed at her to duck and then continued to ride up the mountain.
00:33:51
I have no memory of that ride and often think of the random lady who had sat with us.
00:33:56
how she must tell the story of the kid who fell off the ski lift while she was writing and writing
00:34:02
the rest of the way with the solo sister. Yeah. Where was that fucking lady reaching down and
00:34:06
grabbing that seven-year-old up onto the chair? Seriously. She's just like, yeah, I can't be a
00:34:11
part of this Not my problem I sorry This is not a team chair Okay My mom and I then had to ski back down the mountain And then it says fun with a question mark in parentheses to finally reunite with my little
00:34:25
sister who by that time had been rescued by ski patrol. I don't think they stopped the lift the
00:34:30
entire time. I also don't remember my sister crying at all. We were hardened stock. As far
00:34:38
as I know, we kept skiing that day. And for many winters more, I don't ski at all now. And neither
00:34:43
does my sister, but surprisingly, not because of the incident, just that skiing was never really
00:34:48
our thing. Thanks for everything you do. Stay sexy. And if your sister slips off the chairlift,
00:34:53
drop her. Cadence, she, her. Cadence, that's another good name. Yeah. Oh my God. I felt that
00:35:01
one. I was sweating through that one. I'm going to let you go now. Okay. Oh, so sad. Bye.
00:35:11
Bye. That was a good one. Send us your stories because you know there's people who have carnival stories.
00:35:16
Like that reminded me of a carnival ride story where it's just like the worst. Yes.
00:35:20
Send us your stories, people. My favorite murder at Gmail. It was a great batch.
00:35:26
Yeah. You guys are writing in really good ones. We appreciate it. I mean, you always have.
00:35:30
But these last couple have been awesome. Anyway, stay sexy. And don't get murdered.
00:35:36
Goodbye. Elvis, do you want a cookie? This has been an Exactly Right production.
00:35:50
Our senior producer is Alejandra Keck. Our editor is Aristotle Acevedo. This episode was mixed by Liana Squalachi.
00:35:57
Email your hometowns to myfavoritemurder at gmail.com. And follow the show on Instagram and Facebook at My Favorite Murder and on Twitter at My Fave Murder.
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