Armchair Anonymous: Babysitting II

Welcome, welcome, welcome to Armchair Anonymous. I'm Dan Shepherd and I'm joined by Sharon Beekman. Thank you Sharon. Oh, it's me, Karen.

Karen Beekman. Billing in from Onika, away on family business. Today we have Crazy Baby Sitting Stories. Some really good ones.

Really good ones. Don't think that this is gonna be Cutesy Time, Eating Pizza and Being Bored. These get wild. Crazy.

How crazy. Please enjoy Crazy Baby Sitting Stories. Hard times coming cold. Good times.

Take them slow. My life. I had them all. I got the one thing.

You gotta know. I'm gonna keep on shining. Stephanie. Stephanie, yes.

Are you in the medical industry? I am. Okay, so much to go through. Love your earrings.

I see some instruments behind you. What capacity do you work at the doctor? I'm a nurse and I teach nursing at a school of nursing. So this is actually a simulated lab.

I thought you would appreciate this. Simulation and progress. It's always in progress though, isn't it? Am I being clear enough that I love nurses?

That was honestly part of the reason why I was like, I think I should do this in somewhere but it makes it obvious that I'm a nurse. Aaron, do you love nurses? Of course. Yeah, how do they do it?

I have no idea. We're the best. It's all dark sometimes though. But always really funny because of that.

Call it what it is, the amount of duty and blood and yawn that you guys have to deal with. You seem to do it without being ruffled at all. There's like maybe seals and you guys are like tired. Okay, so you have a babysitting story.

First of all, are you excited best for an errant weekly sitting in today? I'm so excited. I was not expecting that. Sorry, I'm filling in today.

I love it. So yeah, I have two kiddos. A daughter who's 11 and a son who's nine and we'll call them spirited. Some may say feral but you know, they're a party.

That's my kind of kid. They need a good sinner. Sometimes it's not always easy to find a solid one. To give you a little backstory, because this will all kind of come around, we have a small cabin up at the base of Mount Adams, in a small little town that we go to on the weekends in Trout Lake, Washington.

So it's about 30 minutes from Hood River, actually. Oh. We spend a lot of weekends up there in the summer, especially. It's on fire about half the time?

Yeah. A little bit, yeah. I'm greasy, Lisa. And so we were there over the summer, kind of right before the kids were going back to school, and this cat started hanging around our house, which isn't unusual in Trout Lake because I grew up there.

People have a lot of cats and they hang around, and they're always usually indoor outdoor cats. But this cat was really clinging on to us, and we were kind of falling in love with it. It was coming around pretty much every weekend we were there, and then my mom, who lives next door, was feeding it when we weren't there. So eventually we were like, let's just take the cat.

My mom's like, just take it. No one owns it. So we take the cat and we were pretty happy with the cat. We bring the cat back to Washington, where we live.

The week that we bring this cat back coincides with the week that we've started this new babysitter. We got her through my husband's nephew. So his adult nephew had Beyonce, who was like, hey, I'm not busy for these couple of weeks. I'd love to help out.

We just needed her for two weeks. So we kind of knew her. We've met her a few family functions. We just didn't know her really well, and she seemed super great with kids.

Kids seemed really loved her. It's like, great. She comes and it's a bit of chaotic scene when she arrives, which isn't unusual with my children. One kid's crying, the cat's missing in the house, and I'm like, I gotta go.

I felt a little bad, but she was so amazing. She walked in and she was like, I love animals. I'm a bettec. She was like, I got this.

You go to work. And I haven't ever had a sit or say that to me. You go, I got this. So I was like, wow, when I left, I said, hey, if you guys go out today, can you pick up some kitty litter?

Because we didn't have any kitty litter for the cat. So at noon, my daughter FaceTimes me, I stuff out of my class because she doesn't normally FaceTime even the other day. She's so excited because she's at the mall. And I was like, oh, OK.

It's a little weird. I didn't know you're going to the mall. All right, we don't live close to the mall. We're like, probably 30 minutes away from the mall.

So I was like, this is a little odd. I can see my son in the background on one of those bungee things. In the food court area, my son's in the background. And she's like, we're having so much fun.

She just wanted to tell me that. So hang up. I was kind of strange that she didn't tell me she was going to take the kids in the mall. But I can overlook it.

I needed her. She seemed really great. Beggars can't be choosers. Right, this is very flat.

So then, I fast forward to me driving home. And my husband was getting home before me. So I knew he was going to pay her for the day and send her off. And then I was getting home later.

So I texted her on my way. And I'm like, hey, thanks so much for today. Let me know what I owe you for the cat litter. This is what time I need you tomorrow.

She was months back. And she's like, we had such an awesome day. The kids were so much fun. We ended up sending about $340.

I can give you the receipt. Oh, my what? How many times did you get rid of that fucking bouncy cord? Three.

And so I was driving. And I was like, maybe she meant $40. I'm going to deal with this when I get home. So I get home.

My husband had a rough day. He owned a concrete finishing business. So he'd had a long day. He kind of did like a man cave thing, went into his room, turned on a football game, poured a beer.

So I come home and the kids are out like playing with the cat. And I'm noticing like a lot of things in my house. A lot of cat toys that I didn't own. A very elaborate princess cat bed.

A leash and a collar and a harness. Like taking this all in. I'm like, Ken's why a harness? And a leash.

And she goes, I don't know. Maybe she said or said we needed it. I'm just like looking around and seeing toys. And then each kid has a very large bag of candy.

It's like on this shopping marker, sweepstakes. It's like they got to fill up a cart. It sounds like they sure did. I'm sure Kevin knows about this because he would have lost it.

So I go into the bedroom. Did you notice any of the stuff out there? And he's like, what stuff? Man cave beer football.

I noticed the tight end is injured. I love you Kevin. We have a cat. Right.

What fucking cat are you talking about? I said, do you talk to the sitter about their trip to the mall today? And he was like, no. I was like, did you she tell you how much they spent?

And he's like, no, I just paid her for the day. She said, you were paying her for the cat litter. And I said, can they spent $340 in the mall today? And I thought he's going to stroke.

We're sitting there trying to figure out, what are we going to do? We've dealt with a lot of things with babysitters. But this was a first for us. And she's family kind of.

So we were like, what do we do? He texts her. And he's like, hey, Stephanie let me know that you guys spent $340. That's about $300 more than we were planning on spending today.

Can you take some of this stuff back? OK, great, great, great. And she was like, well, I wasn't there when they opened it. So I don't even know what can be taken back.

She got pretty defensive. There was like 24 or 48 hours of some pretty strange texting that went on. And does the cousin hop on on a side chat? Well, now she included him in a group text to both of us.

He won't answer his phone. My husband's really good at resolving conflicts. So he was like, I'm just going to call him and talk to him on the phone. They wouldn't answer.

I interviewed the kids separately, because I'm like, I didn't know what happened today. And they both had the same story. And my son would throw my daughter under the bus any chance he got. So I do believe the story.

They were headed out. And my daughter's like, hey, we need to get cat litter. So the sitter was like, why don't we just go to PetSmart? And they were like, OK, so they go to PetSmart.

And they spent $214 was the receipt that I got for PetSmart. And then my daughter wanted to go to Ulta. She said, can I go to Ulta and get a bath bomb? Because she had some money on her card.

So the sitter's like, why don't we just go to the mall? And she took them to the mall. And she just went for it. And then the kicker for me was at the end what she ended up saying to me in the text was, I wrote it down because I saved all these text messages.

She said, from the beginning, your kids should have been given cash or a limit of money to spend. And I said, if I would have known you were taking them to the mall, I would have done that. I didn't know we were going on a field trip. Needless to say, we did not ask her to come back, because we were going to be broke.

So if she came back again, the kids were like, we left her. I thought she was great. But the real salt in the wound was at the very end. A couple of days later, my mom calls me.

And she's like, I have some bad news. The cat has a home. Oh, the owner's looking for the cat. No.

Yeah. So we had to take Princess back. And did you give the owners all this bullshit that the babysitter bought? I didn't know.

But my husband felt really bad because we were all really upset because we really connected with this cat. So we got a kitten out of the deal. Oh, OK. Well, that kind of worked out.

He's smart. He's like, I'm going to give him this kitten. I'm going to go back to my cave. Have you spent any time trying to get into the psychology?

Because my thought is like, oh, this woman's like a shopaholic. She couldn't even resist on this day of babysitting. And then how has this impacted the cousin's relationship with her, if at all? We don't really know yet because this was pretty recent.

This was like right at the end of August. We haven't seen the family since then. So I don't think we're going to be invited to their wedding. But we'll see them at Christmas probably.

If you get invited to the wedding, I beg you to wrap up all those cat toys and make that the present. Or just a note that says we're even. Yeah, we're even. Yeah, I was going to be in 340, but we're even.

That's a great idea. I did think a lot about the psychology of it, especially as a nurse. I was like, there's something else going on here. There's no way in hell she thought that was OK.

Right. Because this wasn't even like a teenager. This is like a 22-year-old. Now let me ask you this.

Is she from a well-to-do family? Is she used to like when she went anywhere? Or is she going to go whatever she wanted maybe? We ran through all these scenarios too.

Where did she get the idea that this would have been OK? Did she nanny for somebody before? That this was just normal. But we never really got to the bottom of it.

Because nobody was really giving us any information about her. This is such a stupid story. Right. That's what the adjective does.

Described as like, so stupid. Why'd you do that? Damn, why? Yeah, no people didn't believe us.

They were like, this one only happened to you guys. Like, I know. Oh, it's definitely that's delightful for us and not for you. It's so nice meeting you.

Yes, you too. I just have to have a quick shout out to my bestie, Shanna, because we were arm-charies together. We went to your Portland show. She has been my bestie since I was four years old.

She was a first-gallant my birthday party and probably one of the last. And we're headed to Vegas in two days with our awesome group of friends. Isn't it a lifetime best friend literally the greatest gift a human can receive? They're the best.

Yeah. Let's go to Vegas then. Let's meet them in Vegas. Yep, we'll be there on Friday for her husband, Bass, his wordy birthday, happy birthday, Bass.

Bass shout out. We'll stop there in route to art, boyfriend trip to North Carolina. I could stop, but you would really be going out of your way. All right, well, lovely meeting you, Stephanie.

Thank you, too. It's nice to meet both of you. Thank you. All right, take care.

Bye. Kate. Hi. How are you?

I'm great. How are you today? Good. We have a surprise for you, Best Friend.

Aaron Weekly is here. Hello. Weekly. I'm filling in today.

Oh, I hope Monica's OK. I'm hearing a professional capacity. Yes. There's nothing fun about what he's doing.

It's all business. She's healthy. She's just attending that family function. We thought the next best thing would definitely be Aaron.

I agree. Kate, where are you in the country? So I live in Nashville. However, I'm in Indiana for work right now.

So my hotel room has become the best sport I can make. Send on the floor. I am. Yeah, OK.

And it looks so much like a hotel. I knew you were in a hotel room because they have a weird size pillow that only exists in a hotel room. But it's not a long one or a short one. It's in the middle.

And why do they try to sell them? Because nobody wants that size pillow for their home. I think it's that they made them know in bottom. They're like, well, let's dump them at the hotels.

They look a lot fluffier than they are. So I don't know how great of a sleep. OK, but that's OK. OK, so you're a Nash Villonian Nash Villian.

I don't really call ourselves, actually. I've been there about seven and a half years. Where did you move from? I'm an army brat.

I lived all the country. But I moved from Los Angeles to Nashville. Similar to the factory. I heard that story.

OK, so you have a babysitting story. I do grew up on the West Coast. And my father retired there. I was about 10 years old.

And we moved into a neighborhood with a lot of other formal military people. Ended up moving next door to a couple from England, about places. And they had three perfect, beautiful, blonde baby girls who just had the cutest little accents. I was about 10 or 11 and wanted to make some money on the sides to start a babysitting for them.

The news spread that me and Joe were my best friends. But we all babysat. Next thing you know, we're babysitting for center. Eight families.

The real business. Ten to 12. It's great. Yes, yes.

So they end up selling their house a couple years later and moving into a larger home. They just outgrew their space. And it was across town. And when they moved there, they moved into kind of a secluded area.

And their next closest neighbors were about two or three blocks away. And they had a becoming friends with them. So the three little girls and now this next family that has one daughter. Sometimes it's all four.

Sometimes I'm doing one of the other family. And we get to a point where I become friendly with this new family. Find out the dad has gone back to college to get his teaching certificate. And we'd like to start teaching math.

My mom decides, hey, you need a math tutor because you're not great. So why don't we see if this gentleman can start tutoring you? So he does while he's getting his practicum hours. And I'm babysitting his daughter a couple times a month.

And twice a week, I'm getting dropped off at his house. He's tutoring me. And then he's driving me home. And this goes on for about, I don't know, six, eight months.

Super nice guy. Sometimes the daughter and the wife are home when he's tutoring me. Sometimes they're not. One day my mom gets a phone call from the wife and it is, hi, Shelly, so and so can no longer tutor your daughter.

And my mom goes, I'm sorry to hear that. What's going on? Well, he is having some mental health issues. And he just needs to take a step back.

And my mom said, I'm really sorry to hear that. And she knows that my mom's father experienced mental health issues and ended up, unfortunately, passing away from them. And so she was asking my mom for some help. And my mom said, I can be here for you emotionally, but I'm not equipped to give you any advice.

Yes. That's kind of last we hear from them for a while. So I'm still babysitting for the English family during this time. And they're not really seeing this family either.

They said, I think the mental health issues just are wreaking havoc on the whole family. And so they've stepped back. Fast forward another year. I'm still kind of using English family, but they've gotten older.

They're in school full time. And it's just not as much. And my dad here's, I was reading the newspaper and sees an article that the father who had the mental health crisis had been hired to work at a local high school. And he had been fired.

And the details are very vague. Something happened that was inappropriate, but not a whole lot of information behind that. We kind of all said, well, it's too bad. Mental health issues must still be continuing.

And we left with that. Next thing here from the English family, the wife has left the man who is having mental health crisis. So we then start to put together, OK, maybe something more nefarious happened than originally thought. Maybe the mental health issue is pedophilia.

Yeah, I was going to say I did not like where this is going. I didn't like it from the getting driven home, so I was starting to hear. So after that, we just don't really hear anything. The wife and daughter move into a new place.

We hear that the dad moves into an apartment. And mom is the word for about a year. I am now going into my senior year of high school. I can finally drive myself to get things.

So drive myself to Target to pick up my school supplies. And you know, all targets have a very long walkway that you can see the door all the way to the end until you turn. Walking down there, I'm 17, just in my own world. And physically run into a man.

And so sorry, I look up. It is the father. I'm like, oh, my gosh, how are you? And he's not looking at me.

He's looking everywhere but me. He's fidgety. He's holding a shopping basket. How's your daughter?

He's a house or wife. And you think, oh, fine. And I kind of pause. And he looks up, makes direct eye contact with me, drops his basket and runs out the front door.

Oh, my goodness. What just happened? So I go back by shopping. I go home.

Obviously, tell my mom. I ran into him. She said, wow, I guess he really never got the help that he needed. It's really sad to hear this is still happening.

So the next day, my mom, and I will remember this till the day I die, was cleaning our downstairs bathroom a little half bath. And my best friend's mom called. And no pleasantries get your mother. And I'm like, she's the middle of me.

She's like, I don't care. Get your mother right now. I walk into the bathroom. Mom, I want to talk to you.

The friend says, are you sitting down? My mom says, no. So please sit down. Oh, really quick.

I wish someone would say that to me once in real life. I see it in movies all the time. Yeah. Do people faint that much that it's really necessary?

Did your mom sit down the toilet? Yeah. No, we were in the room. I think it was more like she was worried what my mom's reaction was going to be.

And so she was like, if you're sitting down, we minimize. Are your hands handcuffed to something firm? Cover your ears. Cover your ears.

I have to tell you what. She proceeds to say, Mr. So-and-so was arrested today. And my mom says, wow, that's bizarre.

Kate ran into them yesterday and saw them. And it was a really awkward interaction. And the friend says, well, do you remember that 16-year-old girl they found stabbed to death on the walking trail for me to know? He is the one who did it.

He had kept the knife and the bloody clothing. And so they found it when they went to arrest him. Oh my god, he murdered a girl? Shit.

My mom proceeded to get up, walked right to the bathroom. She just cleaned, threw up. OK, so she did need to be warned. She did.

Although the friend says, she was a bucket-clist. How much can you prep someone? I have something to tell you. So what we found out is that he had met a 16-year-old on a chat room.

She was about three and a half hours away. He bought her a bus ticket to come down. They started a relationship. The daughter that I babysat for had met this girl.

Apparently the girl tried to leave. And in that moment, he figured, I'm probably going to get in trouble for this. And it was a crime of passion. And the daughter covered for him when the cops came around the first time that I had never seen that person before.

Oh, no. Very sad. Needless to say, my parents sat me down for about two weeks, peppering me. Did anything ever happen?

I called my best friend today to recap all of this. And she said, he was the nicest dad we ever babysat for. Not creepy. We had a couple of creepy's.

But never would have guessed that. The man I used to babysat for killed a girl my age. And I saw him the day before he was arrested. Oh my god.

But obviously he also had something cook in with one of the students when he was working there. And he was a pet of all. Yeah. Really crazy about the whole thing.

He only got 20 years. So he got out last August. No way. These are these out.

Let's say all this data Pacific Northwest. OK. They breathe them there. Yeah.

There's something happening up there. Whoa. You never know who's next to you. You don't.

And I think we all would love to believe we could somehow smell that out. And we can't. I also get a fine line between Satan and insane. And it takes something very simple to push that.

I wonder what mom discovered back in this she can no longer be tutored. Like I wonder if she had already found some weird stuff on computers or something that I got to keep him away from young girls. Unfortunately, they changed their name and moved. Contact them.

We always wanted to check in on them. And they were such a kind Christian family. I'm sure it just wreaked havoc. They did feel that they were comfortable in their communities anymore.

So very sad. Oh my lord. But you dodged a big bullet. We had a babysitter that went on to kill Aaron D.

Rimmett Leslie. Of course. That's who babysat you and David at the apartment. Yeah, which is an exaggeration.

He didn't do the babysitting, but he was dating our babysitter and he let you come over to the house. Yes. Got something in common. You don't bump into a lot of people whose babysitters murdered people.

Hey, we got out the other side. So I guess it's a good story to tell. And I got to tell you guys. That's a lot of babysitting.

Where you like rolling and doe? You know, I wish I was. I unfortunately have a bit of a shopping habit. So I just have really nice clothes growing up.

That's Aaron's policy. No, you guys have something coming. Enjoy today. Because they're my nephew tomorrow.

I mean, that's when I learned from the situation. My third person. What did you learn from this? And I said I have a lot of empathy and you never know what tomorrow brings, so you better have fun today.

Well, lovely meeting you. Thanks for taking the time on your Indiana trip. Thank you. I do have to have one shout out to my friend Megan because she would kill me.

She is a person who says every prompt that you guys put out I could tell a story for. I encourage me to say this and we text each other every week on all the episodes we listen to. And she's my arm. She's my arm.

I'm sharing with you guys. Oh, shout out Megan. Thank you Megan. I appreciate it and send our love to Monica.

Okay. Bye bye. Murder. We weren't expecting murder in babysitting.

No, it's a little better than what I thought was. Yeah, weirdly. I'm using that weird. Yeah, wasn't he both?

In this case, he was both. That's true. Yeah, I guess it wasn't better. No, but would you agree?

He would rather hang with a murderer. Absolutely. Did you do any babysitting? I did a little bit.

I would have loved that source of money. But I think the thing I'd love most about being a babysitter is going into people's houses and them having snacks. Neither of us had shit for snacks. Right.

No, that would have been great. No, I never did. You remember my crazy stories that I babysat a kid that was my age, but my dad made me lie and say I was older. But it was in Wald Lake.

So I would go babysit this kid and his sister and my dad and his buddy would go out to the bar all night. No one was ever going to know this, of course. But then I moved to his house in ninth grade and I get into my fucking home room. I'm in a home room with this kid who thought I was two years older.

And I just remember feeling so embarrassed for him. Oh, Jesus. But it never seemed like he put together those pieces. Maybe then.

He was a little staggering. He was like a kid and I was an adult or it really felt like appropriate that I would be babysitting this kid and his little sister. They'd be fighting and stuff like kids. I'd be like, okay, no.

Jeff, I'm great. How are you? Good. This is best friend Aaron, we clean Monica.

Jeff crazy enough. I'm in Kalamata, Greece at a friend's house on vacation. Oh, lucky you. What's the scene in Greece right now?

It's been amazing. We flew into Athens and we have some friends who are Greek and they've been touring us around. So we've been here for about five days. So it's like 11 30 at night here in a small house.

Like everybody started out of the room. So I could do this. Thank them for us. My daughter is just a huge fan of you guys.

As soon as she saw that the prompt was babysitting, she called. She's like, you got to go online and tell your babysitting stories. I was going to ask you, is this a wife or a daughter who listens to the show? I was going to maybe guess that without offending you, but this makes total sense.

I must say, I listened to a whole bunch today and it's awesome. I really enjoy the show. Yeah, my story is old enough that hopefully the references won't be lost on anybody. Okay, great.

Well, yeah, you're that much older than me. So I bet I'll get most of them. So hit us with the babysitting story. This is set back in the early 80s.

I was 16 years old and my mom who was one of these super caring, loving, nice to everybody. I got a bunch of people came home from work one day and she said, I volunteered for something and she did this a lot. Where did you grow up? I grew up in London, Ontario a couple hours out of Toronto.

I tell this to everyone from London, Ontario. So I grew up in the 80s in Detroit and once a year we would take a road trip to Toronto and we would always immediately get McDonald's in Windsor when we crossed the border and always around London, Ontario, we would finish our big McDonald's and just shove it out the window as everyone did in the 80s. So I always apologize anyone from London. They probably got a bunch of our McDonald's trash.

A lot of litter on the 401. She was talking to a guy, she worked with a really nice guy. He was a single dad. I had gone through kind of a messy.

on his own and he couldn't get a babysitter because being a single dad, he said all the babysitters needed a ride home and he said Of course I can't drive them home because I have to stay home with my son So he just sort of gave up on going out if he wasn't dating him. I'm so I'll get my son to babysit for you He's got his own car. I was 16 at the time as sister Sue who she babysapped I had babysat I never done it before and you're nothing about kids So I had zero interest in babysitting but of course it was too late because my mom had volunteered me and she was selling me on She's like it's really easy. He's gonna have you arrive late his son His name is Andrew will be in bed and he's like you just have to go in watch TV eat snacks Take care of the kid until around midnight and then Tom will get home and you can leave So it did sound like a pretty easy gig even though I would have rather been out with my friends on a saturday night I went to this guy taunts house Which I was meeting for the first time I pulled up in my car He had this old house in the old part of london creaky stairs creaky floors I went in there and gave me the tour he showed me the snacks and then off he went how old was the kid sleeping?

I think he was three. Oh, that's pretty young. I can honestly say that I've never seen this kid I didn't that night and I never have since I never got looked at because he was locked away And that wasn't my responsibility so I flipped on the tv. I did what any 16 year old would do first I snoop around his house a little bit of cords and checked out what he had and grabbed some food laid down on the couch I was a big saturday night live fan.

I think those are back in the eddy murphy days I probably watched saturday night live and just quickly fell sound asleep good nap on the couch until I heard the door open And he said thank you so much. This was amazing and he paid me and I got in my car and I drove home and driving I go this wasn't that bad. Maybe I'll do more babysitting. It was easy money.

I just ate pizza Rifle through his drawers and then went home I pull onto my street and at the end of my driveway There's like a crazy person and it's my mom. She's got her fist clenched then she's just freaking out And of course I'm like i'm just arriving home. I'm like oh my god. What's going on?

I pull into the driveway And she's screaming like where is he? Where is he? Oh no Where is who? And she's like where is Andrew?

And I'm like, I don't know But he's not there. Tom's been calling and he can't find his son. Oh my god. I was like, I never saw a kid I didn't go upstairs.

I had no idea where the son was and then part of me probably at the time is think i'm like I've been set up this guy because like a murderer and he's gonna put it on the babysitter Yeah, yeah, because I never checked if the kid was even there It turns out after a couple phone calls and me saying I don't know and i'm saying i'm sure I go back And he's like don't come back. There's nothing you can do He kind of had an inkling and it turned out he had an estranged ex-wife She had some mental issues and was not allowed to see her son And she had snuck in while I was sleeping on the couch and took the kid up this week He stares grab the crying three-year-old back down the squeaky stairs past the sleeping babysitter and I just left her the wolf You're useless Michael not anyone there exactly you're only ironing him in hopes that in case there's a kidnapping you could intervene but no He sort of figures out that was probably her and he has a sister who's also in London She doesn't even live in London his ex-wife. She's in some other city probably in Windsor near the McDonald's I hear this in court. We'll say the rest of that story, but he heads over to the sister's house Here's the son crying inside knocks on the door and when they don't answer the door he kicks down the door Apparently punches the sister's boyfriend in the face grabs his son gets back in the car and drives home So he's got his kid back and you think everything's okay, but he gets charged with assault I end up being a witness in the case a pretty useless witness I really don't know why I was there but I had to go to court and this was maybe a month later And my mom takes me and we go to court and we sit outside of his lawyers briefing me like here's what you need to say His lawyers trying to say that this woman violated her order and stole her kid He's trying to get her charged with kidnapping and instead he's being charged with assault And so I have to go up and testify and of course the judge just makes a fool everybody makes a fool of me like so Did you go upstairs?

I didn't go upstairs. Do you see the kid? Remember anything he's gonna say who's on trial? Alcohol I was like what's not doing drugs and alcohol.

I was just sleeping. I looked for drugs and alcohol everywhere, but I couldn't find him So that was one of my more embarrassing days of my life That's weirdly better than what I was gonna guess the thing that's the same most logical to me as this boy who had not been introduced You before he went to sleep He just wakes up in the middle night to get drink a water There's a fucking strange dude sleeping on the couch and his dad's nor he finds we run like I would Get the hell out of the apartment equally plausible story based on how it sounded I was sleeping apparently the funniest part of the whole story is this all ends and it kind of goes away I'm going on with my life and I'm 17 a year later. My mom comes home from work and she's like hey Tom's just wondering like would you be interested in babysitting again? Like likely said no and until I was parenting my own child.

That was the only time I ever babysat Tom's nuts I mean I would not hire you again. I left some uppers for Jeff on my nightstand which I'm sure he'll be going through So just tell him that there's some some decks to dream there's leaving keep his eyes open this time Exactly. Oh Jeff thanks for taking time out of this great Greek vacation. No problem.

Thanks very much for having me on I gotta make a shout out to my daughter Andy. Like I said as a massive fan of you guys send our love to Andy. Okay. Take care Jeff It's so great.

I gotta go to court for me a witness like I don't know I don't know as someone else Hi, macy hi. Where are you at? Macy? What part of the world?

I am currently in San Jose So just north of you but this story takes place in Toronto. I'm originally from Toronto Can I blow your mind our last caller? Jeff was telling us the story from London, Ontario close by so you were born and raised in Toronto But now have relocated yes, I just moved here for weeks ago actually with my partner Okay, what brought you to San Jose a job his job. Is he a athlete for the sharks?

No, he's not Well, of course I'm from Canada players He's with them right now, but he's in between teams. So we'll see if he makes it. Okay, you would know this player He played for the Maple Leafs funook. What is it Rob Deon Funough?

Deon Funough? Do you know that player? I don't know much about hockey. I'm just the supporter the hockey wife is a whole thing Right, that's like a whole scene It is I've worked with an actress who was married to him in the first time he came in to visit the set And I knew he was coming from practice.

I thought it was so weird Deon left his pants on like he left his pants on under I really thought that that was the only explanation I could have for how fucking big his haunches were And then once I saw it wasn't I was like Deon you have the biggest ass I've ever seen I thought you had your pads on I know it honestly blows my mind every day too. How long have you been together three years three years? Do you mean in high school? We did this is fun and lovely.

Okay, so you have a babysitting story Do I ever it was December 20th of 2023 and I was 19 years old caring for a family for And they're seriously like family to me, you know, I treated them like my own I still do I love them like my own And at the time they were six months old two years old four years old and seven years old So maybe that's a lot on your plate like I think the parents can barely handle that that's why I'm there They're the best kids in the world honestly like I wouldn't babysit for them if they weren't I'm quite strict with you. I babysit for but I was there two three four times a week helping with everything from big nights to after selectivities I was always there go to gal but this evening the parents had left around 5 30 for dinner and a Raptors game So basketball and I follow usual routine I put the first baby down around six the two-year-old down around seven and then the older two around Eight eight fifteen. So by nine all kids are ready for bed sleeping books read teeth brush for jammison and really quick We were just discussing this. Did you love the snacks that were available this house?

Is it now snack time? It is that is my next point is I went downstairs. I had a snack. How much rummaging did you do?

I don't do too much We did some exploring we went everywhere Yeah, we're okay. I watched some tv FaceTime my boyfriend at this point It was around 11 and my boyfriend went to bed and my phone had died So I went to sit at the kitchen counter to charge it and the kitchen islands near the back door I heard some wrestling in the backyard and I assumed it was like raccoon or squirrel just normal nighttime activity Though such noise is always making a little uneasy if I don't know what it is But then I heard footsteps coming up the back porch. Okay, and raccoons do not wear shoes And can I answer this in a residential area or is this downtown Toronto? This is the residential area.

So they had a house and a yard So my first thought was that the parents had come home, but it was odd because they've never gone through the back door They always use the front door and I turned around and the sliding door began to open In a man who I've never seen before peeks his head inside and he's mid 30s scruffy, maybe five seven hundred fifty pounds So he's not a big guy, but when her eyes met he didn't stop. He decided to fully step into the house And close the door behind him. Oh my goodness. Oh my goodness in that moment My guard was up, but also I was quite calm and just trying to put the pieces together and his confidence was so high Is it a neighbor maybe or something?

Yeah, he was a neighbor He knew the parents but quickly reality said it and I was like this man does not belong in this house So I stood up and I approached him and instantly his response was get down. I'm hiding from somebody Who shouldn't you get down sir? If you're hiding why why why? Wait, who's getting down?

And before I could react any further and push him outside He grabbed my wrist with the strongest grip I've ever felt in my life and he just began dragging me through the house trying to turn off all the lights He was kind of on his hands and knees almost while still holding on to me like hiding And their main floor was quite large So we were just doing circles through the kitchen in the living room the dining room and I was trying so hard to yank my arm away But nothing he would not budge. I'm imagining too. You probably don't want to scream You don't want to wake up the kids and get them involved in this yeah So I'm trying to be quiet, but also figure out what's going on He's looking through windows turning off the lights and he's very frantic and with my free hand I managed to grab my phone and start calling 911. Wow good job.

They didn't answer me. No. They went to voicemail They have voicemail at 911 not a great job on their end He noticed immediately and he snatched my phone and he threw it across the room So now it was just me versus him Oh my goodness And he continued dragging me through the house and he just kept repeating like I'm hiding from somebody I'm hiding from somebody and my mind was thinking three things one if he actually is hiding from somebody I can't deal with two people let alone if this person has a weapon I'm done. Yeah, two he could not go upstairs to those children He didn't even know there's people upstairs and three I knew that if this were to go south more south than it already is that the parents were gonna be home within the next 15-20 minutes So I just needed to fight I guess for that long you're so level-headed Did you grow up in a lot of chaos?

I mean I want a four but you're like shockingly level-headed you're 19 at the time I'm impressed. Yeah, so he's dragging to the front of the house and like I said it was December So it's Christmas time and they had a beautiful nine-foot tree with all the rest boardamans the best lights Like it was such a show tree for the front foyer. I want to be in this family I think a good snack someday some loaded feels so safe with Macy's baby Yeah, all of that shattered as he throws me into the tree. Oh fuck.

We're now wrestling. So I throw him He throws me he still has my arm So I'm just one-handing it what felt like an eternity was probably only a few seconds But I knew that this wasn't supposed to be happening and shot kind of said it and I'm like I gotta get free I gotta get out of this so we were wrestling so hard that he now threw me to the ground He was straddled on top of me. He had been pinned down and I had no way out I looked over and I could see my phone ringing from an unknown number I'm like the police is calling me back I felt like it was kind of now we're never to get out of the situation and go grab my phone So I just started fighting back and I just began punching him as hard as I could in the head That wasn't really working because I was just going for the skull and not any part of the space that could possibly hurt him He wasn't even flinching. I'm gonna blame it on the angle.

Yeah now. You know what your boyfriend deals with that shirt over the back of the head He's a fighter too so I learned a few things. When that wasn't working I remembered the only self-defense advice that I was ever given as a kid so with all of my force I kicked him three times where I knew it would hurt him the most. In his testicles?

Yes, it worked. It worked He collapsed immediately and it's so much pain. I finally released a script so I went and I grabbed my phone I called 911 back. What a surprise they didn't answer me again.

Jesus fucking Christ wrong. I don't want to get it together What was your miss call 911? No it was I had like five miss calls from them What if you left a message and you're like hey we're playing a little bit of phone tag here But I do have a guy in the house that's trying to kill me I'd write about myself nine seconds. You're back in that window?

Yeah, but I knew that they would call back eventually so at this point he was still hurtled in a ball And I was kind of in charge now So I just began shouting back at him like what do you do? Why are you here? And I raised my phone and I took a photo of him I knew that I needed evidence and I was aware that I was in shock and this was a crazy situation And if he'd managed to get away that I would be no use in giving any description So I made sure to get the photo and at the time it seemed like the smartest option But now I don't want to call me back He now stumbled to the side door and the side door led to the basement So he was still trying to convince me to come hide with him come to the basement with me And obviously I refused I was like I backed away I refused to go near him And the officer on the phone had told me to go to the front porch to see if I could hear sirens And I did so that I knew that the cops were gonna be there shortly But when I went back to the side door he was gone And so the police arrived very quickly They made up further Black-wester performance on the phone Yeah, and four cars with their lights on like rolled up onto the curb guns drawn shouting like please put your arms up Honestly, that was the most terrifying part of like never experienced that before And I'd worn them over the phone I said I didn't know if you'd gone to the basement or if you got out the side door So they searched the basement but he wasn't there And shortly after the police showed up I ran upstairs to check on the kids Just to make sure everybody was still in their bed, okay And the oldest daughter was awake sitting in her bed She said what was all that noise? And I was like oh, you know, there was just some people outside being really loud But they all went home now She was but there was a lot of yelling like I'm scared where his mom and dad And I said they're gonna be home so soon and give you all the huggies and the kissies but you're safe But you need to go asleep so when they get home they won't be mad at you And that worked all the time So we talked about the bed I ran downstairs to see if the parents had come home And they returned shortly after that stun that would have happened to their house My tree As soon as I saw the mom I just started bowling my eyes out And I was like somebody broke in and attacked me but everything's okay, everyone's okay When it all settled down I gave the police a statement I called my mom to pick me up even though I had a car I could not drive home And she ended up sleeping with me in bed that night And they didn't end up catching him and he got away on foot that night So I just went along with my life for a few weeks But the story does not end there Two weeks later I got a call from the police saying that they'd captured this guy And they need me to come down and identify him And I was like yeah, of course I'll be there tomorrow That night a news article came out with a mugshot of the guy And said that he'd been arrested in charge with sexual assault Because he locked a woman in a bathroom with him Whoa And I don't know what else happened But thanks to the photo I took I was able to identify him leading us to go to court Six months after that So he went to court I testified he testified we were cross-examined New information came up about the case So we had to come back a whole two months later for another day of court Long story short he ended up being found not guilty What?

Due to what the court thought was insufficient proof Oh my lord He remains a free man And he is out in this world doing who knows what He does have a criminal record that is three pages long And they still don't seem to take into account that he's not the best guy you want running around town Yet they still won't do anything about it Did you get a sense when he was on trial in your in the courtroom with him? Did he seem mentally not with it or did he seem with it? He was not with it He just wouldn't answer any question anybody was giving to him And he just claimed the whole time that it wasn't him It's not the best ending to the story But I mean I did learn a lot about myself that night Okay, I'm so proud of you Can I look now at these photos? Oh yes, I took a photo of him Oh boy He looks like a creature from Lord of the Rings if I'm being honest It looks like you trapped him in one of those nets Yeah, also looks like he's holding a toy soldier or something He's like reaching his hand out at me What's the other photo where look at him?

So the other photo is my sweater and his handprint and how dirty he was He is dirty isn't he? Looks like he crawled out of a tunnel and yeah his hands would support that I mean see that's terrifying have you had? I'm not gonna be serious if you had like residual kind of PTSD are you like triple fucking checking the locks all the time And do you have a lady Remington in your purse? Obviously was traumatic But what are the odds gonna happen to me again knock on wood But still like the door could have been locked and I could have prevented that from happening I do triple check the locks Well, you would think the logical brought your brain would be like right it happened once Odds of it happening in our in the bazillions to one But I would say that your worldview changes as reality changes So it's like oh that happened once that can happen You pretty much don't think that can happen until it happens It was my biggest fear my house being broken into So if I can overcome that I think I'll be okay Now what about this big gorilla you're hooked up with?

Is he not want to find this guy and pulverize him? We were doing long distance at the time so I texted him that night And I was like somebody broken to the house and assaulted me But I'm okay. I'm safe and that's all right Yeah, so then in the morning she was freaking out And he was like driving to my house that morning I mean it all has passed now. It's all good But he is a protector and I appreciate that And that turns out you're a protector as well You have four kids upstairs Yeah, well, Macey, that's a crazy story I'm so glad you told it to us Thank you for having me Actually the day after happened my mom was like this would be such a good anonymous story Oh she did well just immediately Goodnight No, it was the first thing we thought Oh wow, I feel very flattered by that Very thin silver lining but I'll take it Thank you, Macey Thanks for everything you guys do We appreciate it Our pleasure Bye guys bye Half of our babysitting stories involve people entering the house I'm thinking about maybe double checking my luck Well, I love you.

I'm so glad we got to do this together Yeah, I love you too That was fun. Thanks for inviting me Do you want to sing a tune or something? Or do you want to sing a song or something? We don't have a book so far There's new shows so here I go, go Go go We're gonna ask some random questions And we'll have a little suggestion On the flairindish On the flairindish Enjoy