Hey, listener, it's Zach Harper, Amino, has an Anthony Mays of Cinefo. You may be asking yourself, what is Cinefo? I mean, would you like to fill in the people? Cinefo is the podcast for Zach and I watch movies that are poorly rated on Ron Tomatoes, and try to ascertain.
I'll try to ascertain. Yes. Assertain. Whether or not they're accurately poorly rated, or maybe they didn't get a fair shake.
Cinefo produced by this guy, Anthony Mays. Hey, that's me. I produced this show. I also watched the movies, even though that wasn't included in the description, and I also ascertained.
Whoo, whoo, whoo. This month is wow. Oh, oh, oh. Oh, man, it's what you say that?
Supercharge it so that this promo can remain evergreen. I feel like explaining a little bit more. In 60 seconds? I don't know.
Maybe I don't bring attention to it. Assuring people like, look, if you listen, you're going to get it. Just give it time. That's a good promo.
Just listen to it. Give it time. You'll figure it out. Is this the promo right now?
Isn't it? Oh, I think we got it. Sit above. Where are we going to find this?
Hey, folks, this is Kevin. On this week's episode of Risk, you'll hear David Montgomery. Don't show favoritism. And this one is particularly difficult, because some kids fucking suck.
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Enter her risk. Now here's the show. Whoa, kids, this is risk. The show where people tell true stories they never thought they'd dare to share.
I'm Kevin Allison. This is Seven Fisher behind me now. And we are calling today's episode live from Philly five. Holy shit.
We have had so many great experiences. So many great stories have been shared in the times we've gone to the great city of Philadelphia. I always think of Philly as kind of being like New York's little bro. You know, people are kind of down to earth.
Raw and real. There's a lot of history there. I don't know. I just love Philly.
And every time we go, it's an amazing show. We're going to play this entire set uninterrupted. And we're going to start with a comic book editor. His name is Tom Brennan.
And he edits for, I think it's Valiant Entertainment. Hold on a sec. Yes, I am holding in my hand a gorgeous comic book called Faith. About a young woman, superhero.
It's got a gazillion raves on the back cover. Tom is also involved in the show electoral dysfunction at the People's Improv Theater in New York City. Here he is now. Tom Brennan with a story we call a friend in need.
It's the spring of 1999. And I am just livid with my mother. Just furious with her. All right?
Yes. You know why? Because she is sending me to Spain during spring break with my high school class. Right?
The fucking monster. I won't call my mom a bitch in public. But what a monster. Because here's the thing.
She's not sending me to Spain just because she wants me to have like an amazing experience that only privileged white kids get to have to see the world and they're saying themselves. She's sending me. Because I don't have any friends. Thank you.
I thought the same thing. So I was a sophomore at Loyola school in New York City. It's an independent Jesuit academy on Park Avenue in Manhattan. Beautiful building.
Looks like a castle from the Lord of the Rings. And I wasn't unpopular. But I wasn't particularly popular. You know?
Like I didn't have friends. And I didn't have them for two reasons. No one. I didn't know how to make friends.
Like once you got past like you're a little kid, so we'll just drop next to someone and they're your friend. Now that's it. I didn't know how to do it. I didn't know how to talk to other people and become their friends.
And on top of that, I'm not good at asking for help. I'm still not. It's horrible at back then. Whenever I need to ask for help, a little voice would just pop in my head just like, bing, you don't know how to do that.
Everyone knows how to do that. If you ask for help, they'll know you're an idiot. So I didn't try to make friends. I can't do it.
And my mom is really concerned at this point, because she's a mom in a very good way. So I didn't call her a bit before. And she had started calling other boys from my class to ask them to hang out with me. Not their mothers.
I want to clarify. She called them. And she'd be like, hang out. And she had great taste.
They were real great guys. Like we weren't, this just didn't pan out, but it was very kind of her. And I remember we're arguing about going to Spain. And I remember she said, well, what plans do you have on spring break?
I have plans. I got four Blockbuster gift cards from Christmas I have not used yet. And the guy our Blockbuster does not card for our rated movies. So I'm going to rent Dark City, the 1998 sci-fi masterpiece.
Thank you. Keep her southern one, Jennifer Connolly. By the way, if you don't ever go to Spain, but you do watch Dark City, you have gotten a cultural experience. My mom's a social worker.
And before she gets mad at us, like when she before my sister and before she really like yells at us, she'll try to reason with us much the way she does with her clients. And I was just looking at you and goes, well, don't you want to have friends? You can't argue with that. Everyone wants to have friends.
Nobody doesn't want to have friends. You might not want to make them. So I said the meanest thing I could, which was, oh, I slammed my door. Just closed it.
Go into Spain. Fine, mom. I'm at school on Monday. And I have to find a roommate for the strip to Spain.
And again, I don't have any friends. So I don't know who I should room with. I know who I don't want to room with. I know that.
Christoph. Oh, I don't want to room with him. I've hated him since I met him freshman year. You know why I hated him?
You know what he did? He wanted to be my friend. Like, he ate. He looked like a high school, George Costanza, just like a short, stocky balding guy, and his big grin on his face.
He'd ask me questions on Monday morning like, how was your weekend? Fine. He'd be hanging out in the cafeteria, strumming on his acoustic guitar. And be like, hey, do you like music?
Yeah. My high school is doing, of course, I like music. I have the soundtrack to Dark City and my Disc Man. Of course I like music.
Now, at this point, you're probably like, hey, boy, you sure spent a lot of time around this guy you didn't want to be friends with. Well, thanks, mom. I know that. Thank you.
So I know my options are Christoph or Alex and Eric. Now, Alex and Eric, they really don't even matter much to the rest of the story. Imagine the villain from an 80s teen movies, two sidekicks. It's those guys.
I really didn't like them. I thought they were bad people. But they didn't want to be my friend. I knew that.
So boom, I'm remembering Alex and Eric, I'm going to Spain. And so I go to Spain. And it was an amazing trip. If you've never gone, go.
It's the greens are more green. The golds are more gold. The shittiest looking building in Spain looks way better than the best building in the United States of America. I saw like, best art in the world, image red.
I saw a sword get made. It was Holy Week, which is a huge festival there. Didn't make friends, mom. OK, I did not do that.
You make friends. But I had a great time. It's about the last day or two in Spain. We're in Barcelona.
And we've all been sent to just go get lunch on your own. I guess the teachers just need a minute. And geniuses that we were in Europe, we're high school students, culture at our fingertips. We're in some back corner and back street of Barcelona.
And the shittiest looking diner I've ever been in my life. It's like someone came there and was like, what a greasy spoon like in America. And they're like, all right. And they just dump the shittiest place on Earth.
They just harp. And I'm sitting there next to Christoph. And he says, hey, when we get back to the states, we should hang out somewhere. Yeah, we get back to the states.
We're from the states. We don't say the states. They say the states. Leave it alone.
I order an amber geysa, which for those of you is hamburger. It's Spanish. And they bring it. I look at it.
And it's more ham than burger. It's not a burgade set. It's a patty of ham, like a pink ham that has been grilled and charred to look like a hamburger. I guess they got the exact translation.
I take a bite out of it. And it's like salty. It's nuclear. Pink, it's the worst thing I've ever eaten the entirety of because I'm a high school student.
And I will eat whatever you put in front of me. Also, I want to get the hell away from Christoph. Finish the burger. Out the door.
To meet up with the rest of the group that we're going to go to or go walk down to Lasarambas. Wonderful, beautiful tourist destination. Bar's alone. And I'm mispronounced.
And I'm good. I move to sort the middle of the pack of the students. Get away from Christoph. And that's when it happens.
Oh. Oh. Oh. Ooh, number of geysa, no espuedo.
Oh. It wants out. It wants out right now. All right.
Take a deep breath. Just keep walking. Keep walking. All right, we're good.
I'm not throwing up today. Not throwing up today. You will not throw up in front of 20 other boys and girls. Until it happens again.
Oh. Oh. Oh. It wants out.
And it does not want out the way it came in. It's too low now. It's gone too far. It wants out.
Oh, I got to take a shit. I got to take a dump more than I ever had in my life. All right. Well, there's Mr.
Linus. Let's just ask him for help. Bing. That's the voice in the head.
You can't ask for help. What do you mean I can't ask for help? I have to go to the bathroom. You're going to go in front of 20 other boys and girls and just say, hey, can we stop?
I have to go to the bathroom. We're out in public. We're in a residential neighborhood. I have to go.
You have to go. You have to hold it. I can't hold it. I had a bed winning problem.
You're 15 years old. You haven't went to bed in six months. Okay. Let go.
Hold it. I will not hold you. No, you should. No, you should.
I just shit my pants. I have just shit my pants. I am in Spain. I am with other students from high school.
I am wearing tan khaki pants and I am just shit. It's all right though. Take a deep breath. Just a little turtle head in there, man.
What are we going to do? Just don't move. You know, the voice in my head that interrupted me whenever I asked for help has apparently just quit and joined another body at this point. I'm just like, all right, just stand here.
Just stand here. Hey, Brennan, we got to go. Yeah, I'm just looking at this traffic light. It looks very interesting.
Come on, we got to go. Okay. Let's take a step. And another step.
Oh, it's shit everywhere. It's gone past the turtle head. It's all the shit that's ever been in my body. Just warm and wet and slimy and on my legs and every fucking where.
And I just kept walking just like, oh, just pretend this isn't happening. In a dark city, they would have stopped time. Gone in and changed all their memories. Maybe that could still happen.
You don't know. I'm just looking at the entire group of students stop to look at a fountain. So far no one's noticed. And I start to think maybe I'm getting away with this, you know.
And then it happens. Ugh. It smells like shit over here. Like a virus.
It just went through all the other 20 again, boys and girls. Just, oh God, oh, it's not smelling shit. So once we got dumped, even Mr. Linus looked at me at one point and just goes, smells like a burnt cigar over here.
And I responded with, oh, I was half of it. But no one seemed to call me out on it. And this is high school, right? I've seen movies in high school.
Everyone's mean to each other, right? They have to have known. But no one said anything. It's a Barcelona.
The Philadelphia, Spain. You know, like maybe it's just they just think that's a smell. And nothing's saying I get back to the hotel. I've gone away with this.
Until I get to my hotel or door. I pull my key up to open it and it's locked from the inside. If it's locked from the inside, that means Alex and Eric are inside and they have bolted the door. Could have bolted it for any number of reasons, right?
I hear a voice behind me. Do they lock you out? They said they would. I turned around.
It's Jenny's name I made up because I don't remember the name of the girl. But just imagine a Jenny that you hate. And I go, yeah, they lock me out. It's like, they said they would.
Ooh, to her room. I look up and down the hall. Every door is closed. Every one.
Teacher seems they're just gone. And I look down at my pants. Yeah, they know. And I never felt more alone in my life.
And now you're a voice over my shoulder. Hey, man. And I turn around. And it's Kristoff.
He goes, I got an extra pair of pants. You can use a shower in my hotel room. I think I saw this guy really wants to be my friend. More than anything in the world, clearly.
So I went to his room. And his acoustic guitar was there. He had broad plastic bags, presumably in case of potential friend's shatters pants on the trip. And he wanted to help me out.
We disposed of the evidence. We went to dinner. No one in the class looked at me. I looked at Kristoff.
So what kind of music do you like? Here's like, again, it never really came up. And my best guess is maybe as much as I knew it happened. It was the most horrible thing.
And maybe the perspective of being away from America, every one of these high school students from America were like, well, I'm just glad that it didn't happen to me. If I call it out, and I have to live with it. It never came up really again. I kind of forgot about it when I went back to school.
You know, only remembering it. Like when I saw Bridesmaids. I was like, oh, I remember that. It just didn't really come up in my life again.
So September 13, 2015. My wedding. Don't worry. My best man comes up to me.
He goes, hey, I'm almost done with the best man toast. Great question. Do you think the crap would like the story about the time you ate in Emburgays in Spain and chat your pants? And I looked at my best man and I said, Kristoff, I don't think that's the right time for this story.
Apparently this was. Thank you very much, everyone. All right. That was super fun.
Okay, great. I want to bring up our next story teller to the stage. She is doing something really remarkable that you should check out. It's called the Evans Family Lego Project.
Kristy suffers from something called Ellers Danlos Disorder. And in order to bring attention to it, she and her family are creating a massive city out of Legos. Right now it's in their house, but it's become too big and they're going to have to move it to another space soon. But check it out.
It's called the Evans Family Lego Project. Super cool. And I'm pretty sure Kristy's never shared a story on stage before. So this is a trip.
This is a trip. Please give a very warm welcome to Kristy Evans. Hi, I am completely new at this. So try to take it easy on me.
Thank you. My name is Kristy. I'm 34. I have Ellers Danlos Syndrome as he was explaining, which basically means that all of my joints dislocate all of the time.
So I will try to hold it together literally for this. Right now I am a stay at home mom. I've got a five year old son and I am pretty much his manager. I deal with his YouTube page and his Instagram and dealing with the Lego Project.
So that's what I'm doing now. But before I got diagnosed with Ellers Danlos Syndrome, I was a police officer. I was a police officer in Florida. I come from a long line of first responders.
My dad worked for the fire department for like 19 years. My brother is a captain at the fire department. So I kind of knew what to expect when I was getting into law enforcement. I mean I knew that you're going to deal with a lot of blood and guts and gore and crazy calls.
But Florida is kind of another breed of crazy. I'm sure that you have noticed when you watch the news or you hear a crazy story on the radio that anytime something really out there happens, it probably happened in Florida. So I mean you've got that story with the homeless guy in Miami that got his face eaten off by someone else. And you hear about alligators eating golfers and just crazy stuff.
So we had a few sayings when I was down there and you hear things about Florida like it's the home of the newlywed and nearly dead or you know it's God's waiting room which is pretty accurate. In law enforcement we had a favorite one which was you come down on vacation and go home on probation. So yeah so 2005 I graduated from the police academy. Like I said I kind of knew what to expect but I was really eager and excited and I'm going to tell you a little bit about one of the calls that I went on very early in my career.
So they had this saying I'm sure you've probably heard it doesn't just apply to law enforcement but you know that shit rolls downhill and that's how we explain Florida. Basically that's how I kind of come to figure that all of the crazy ends up down there. You get all these seniors that move down there that are retiring that are there for the nice weather and you get all of the crazy transplants that move down there. And sometimes you get people that are a little bit of both which I can definitely attest to having been a cop there for a while.
It's crazy. So I started and I got hired at Charlotte County Sheriff's office about halfway down on the left coast on the left side of the state. When I was in the academy we had a guy that was a senior he had horrible dementia and he hadn't driven in years. And he apparently somehow got the keys to a car got behind the wheel and was driving along when he hit the pedestrian and he just kept driving.
And this dead guy is hanging through the windshield of his car and he went eight miles with a body hanging through his windshield. And it was Halloween which I guess was a good day for that kind of thing to happen. So he pulls up to the toll booth which is right in front of where our academy is. Yeah and the toll booth operator looks out and I can only imagine what he was thinking when he saw this body through the creepy head.
At first he said he thought it was a gag you know Halloween trick until he saw the blood. So you know that is the kind of crazy that I was trying to gear myself up for. So when you get hired and you start as a new police officer they don't just throw you out there. And you go through the thing called the FTO program.
It's the field training officer. So you are assigned to another officer so basically tells you what to do. When you first start the first phase you just go in show up and follow somebody else around all day and try to see how to do this job. And as you progress through each stage they follow what you are doing and they write up reports on how well you are doing your job and then if you do well you get passed on to the next one.
By the time you get to the fourth phase you are pretty much doing everything and an officer is there to make sure you don't fuck up royally. So that's where I am at when this story starts. I am in the fourth phase of FTO I am only a few weeks from going out on my own and I am just starting to get my confidence. So I have to explain who my FTO was because that puts this whole thing together.
I was assigned this really grumpy old white guy and it was definitely a good old boys organization and he was definitely one of the good old boys. I mean he was alligator cowboy boots to work every day. We didn't get along real well and so I was always on edge when I was with this guy. I was a little bit nervous and we had gotten into a fight in his patrol car about four days before the story took place.
So I was really on edge because I didn't know when he wrote up my final report whether I was going to still have a job or not. So we get dispatched first thing in the morning to a late reported burglary. Basically what that means is that somebody came home and found out that their shit had been taken and they called us later. Or like they were out of town and something happened and they returned home.
Basically the burglar is not still in the place. So we are pulling up to this late reported burglary and my FTO looks. I mean he says this is pretty easy. I think you've got it.
So you go take care of the call and I am going to write up your review. Your evaluation. So of course now I am twice as nervous and I am running through the checklist of what it is that I have to do on this call. I am thinking to myself do I have my fingerprint kit.
Do I have the witness statement for everything I need to do when I get inside. And I am walking up to the door of the apartment and I am running through this checklist and I am looking at my boots and just walking to the door. And right about that moment I look down and I realize there is blood everywhere. I mean a massive, massive pool of blood is just everywhere.
Footprints all through it and my heart stops. I am like holy shit. This is not a late reported burglary. And before I can finish my thought what happened I hear the door start to open.
So of course my training kicks in and I pull my weapon out and I point it and this guy opens the door. He was very surprised because apparently there had been a burglary and he was a victim. So he probably wasn't expecting to be met at gunpoint. But to be fair there was a lot of blood and I didn't know if somebody stabbed or shot or what.
So at this point my FTO who is sitting in the car looks up and sees me standing there with this guy at gunpoint. And I can only imagine what he was thinking. Probably that I had just lost my mind. So he jumps out of the car and comes running over and joins me.
And we have to sort out what the heck is going on. And the guy staring down the business end of my gun is like no I really am the victim. He said I came home last night and somebody broke it into my place. And so we go inside the apartment and get things sorted out.
Sure enough the back window had been jimmyed open and it looked like somebody had crawled in, fallen, when they came in the window onto an aquarium that was on the floor. And that's where the blood trail starts. So there is like arterial spray on the walls. There is pools of congealed blood everywhere.
From the back of that apartment where the person came through the window all the way through the living room down the hallway and back to the front door. And near the front door there is I mean I have been since then on scenes of like double homicides that had less blood than there was on this scene. It was really very bloody. All you could smell in the room was the copper.
And the guy must have seen the look on my face because all I could think about was if I came home at midnight and found my house with that much blood in it, I don't think that my first instinct would have been to go to bed. Maybe that's just me. So the guy is looking at me and he had been explaining what his theory was. And you know at that point he sees this look on my face and he's like oh you're probably wondering why I didn't call.
Yeah dude just a little. That's exactly what I was thinking. So he says well the thing is when I looked around the apartment I realized nothing had been taken. He's like I looked around and I figured they came in and they felt they heard themselves.
They decided to leave and they didn't actually take anything. So the guy was like I figured I just call you in the morning. And I'm like okay again that much blood not my thing but you know if you could go to sleep fine. So the guy called us at 8 o'clock in the morning.
So I'm like you know we're wrapping up we got all the information from him and I head outside back to my car. And at this point I bumped into his neighbors and his neighbors are like oh yeah are you here because of all the blood. I'm like yeah yeah that's part of why we're here. And he's like did you see anything?
Did you hear anything? And he's like oh well at 5 o'clock this morning when we got up to go to work my wife and I we saw the blood everywhere. And I'm like okay and you didn't call anybody. You didn't think that there was any I said do you like your neighbor?
He's like oh yeah great guy takes our trash cans out for us all the time really nice and I'm thinking to myself. This blood did not concern you in the slightest and the guy looks at me and goes well you know around here we mind our own business. And that was when I knew I was in Florida. So I'm like you know we were basically wrapping things up at that point and we're getting ready to head out.
And when I'm standing outside the front door I look down and I realize there is the blood and the bloody footprints. But there's actually a trail of blood leading out into the parking lot. And I'm like okay well I'm not a detective but I think I'm gonna follow that trail and see if I can figure out where this guy went. So I start walking across the parking lot and following the blood drips and I notice out in the distance that there is really tall grass.
And now all I can think is great. This dead guy is going to be in that grass and I'm going to spend the rest of my day in the 100 degree sun with 100% humidity in long sleeves and polyester and bulletproof vest, babysitting a dead guy in the grass. So I'm walking towards the grass and as I get over there and I'm bracing myself I look up and I realize that on the other side of this tall grass is another set of apartment. That looks just like the victim's apartment behind me.
And as I'm looking at it I notice that the third door down which is white has bloody handprints all over it. Now again I'm pretty new at this but I you know there's a pretty good chance that that's where our guy went. So I get my FTO and I'm like come on you know I solved the crime. Let's go get him.
We can make our way over to the apartment and start knocking on the door there's no response and I'm thinking this guy's probably dead. I mean that's a lot of blood so I'm not really expecting anybody to answer the door. We get there when I'm looking through the window and I can see that as much blood as there was in the first apartment there's even more in the second apartment. I mean pools of blood congealed everywhere.
Whoever this was that came in had shed his socks his shoes his shirt on the way in the door and every one of them is just brown and crusty and just there's you can see the spray on the white walls down the hallway. And the blood trail disappears around the corner where I can't see anyone. So we start looking through the other windows trying to see if we can find this guy. And I go around the corner and I realize that if I peer in up on my tip toes I can see into the bedroom and that was where he ended up.
Sitting there laying there on the bed face down is our burglar and he's not moving. So I'm knocking on the window and I'm like okay you know again pretty good idea that this guy's not alive but I'm looking real hard trying to see if he's breathing or moving at all. So I took out my mag light and I'm knocking on the window and no response. And finally my FTO says to me let's call the fire department and get him to take the door down so that we can get in there.
So we make our way to the backstarts of the front of the apartment and he's talking on the phone and he's got his back to me and he's talking to our supervisor and describing the scene and everything that we found. And at this moment I'm looking still through the window towards where the guy is. And at that very moment the dead guy sits up. And now my face must have gone super white.
I mean I'm already white. But super white. And my FTO who's got his back to me turns around in time to catch my face at having seen this. And he says to the guy on the phone that he's talking to oh man I gotta go.
My rookie looks like she's gonna puke. I gotta go before I got a call and ambulance for her. So I can't say anything. I'm seeing this guy and his head is fully open.
I can see his skull. And I'm not comprehending how this person just sat up but I can't get any words to come to my mouth. I'm trying really hard and nothing's coming out and my FTO just the more worked up I get the funnier he thinks it is. And he's laughing.
He's like you need to go sit in the shade before you pass out. He thinks it's hilarious. So that's about the moment when the dead guy opens the door. And my FTO dropped his phone which smashed into a million pieces which was funny to me but I tried not to laugh.
And my FTO was like whoa. Because like I said the guy's head opened and I can see his skull and he's not actively bleeding anymore because I don't think he's got any blood left at this point. I really just am not comprehending how he's standing there. But the guy opens the door and the first thing he says is if you see my bicycle I think I lost my bike.
Dude yeah you got some bigger problems and you're missing bicycle. Sit down. So the EMTs responded in the fire truck and they thought they were breaking down a door to get to it. They were just a surprise.
Well maybe a little less surprise than we were. But they were surprised when they got there and they found this guy in horrible condition and they get him loaded up in the ambulance. And one of the EMTs walks over to me and he says to me. So did you notice that his eye was missing?
And I'm like no it didn't look that close. So he's like yeah could you go back to the apartment and see if you can find it? Like yeah I'll go back and see if I can find it but I'm not bringing it back. That's where I draw the line.
I'm like I did not sign up for this. So I walk back across the parking lot and go over to the victim and he opens the door and he's really kind of surprised. He's like hey did you find the guy? I said yeah we did.
We found him. He said he's actually alive believe it or not. And the guy says well did you find out did he take anything? He said no but we think he left something.
So that was when I broke it to him that I needed to go look around his apartment for the eyeball. And I did. And I found it was in the aquarium. Pretty good.
So anyway it was pretty much an open and shut case. I mean it was nice. We had our bad guy. You know we found him.
There was nothing to solve. The guy had had a pretty healthy dose of karma. So it was probably my guess that if he survived the ordeal that he would probably not be burglarizing too many more places or at least you know he'd be doing it with one eye. And my FTO was not mad at me anymore.
He had forgotten completely about the fight that we had. And now he was like showing me off to everyone that we worked with. He was like you gotta hear this story it's hilarious and disgusting. And it prepared me.
I mean the nice thing about having something like that happened so early on in your career is that it prepared me for the things that happened later. Like the car accident that I was on it was a really bad crash or roll over. Five people had been ejected from the vehicle. One person had been killed and one was trapped in the crush van.
And as I'm down there on the ground trying to make contact with the person that's in the crush vehicle to see if they're still alive. I'm down there on my hands and knees with a flashlight and I'm yelling to the lady. Is anybody okay? Can you hear me?
And somebody taps me on the shoulder. And I'm like a little busy. So I'm like hello here. Are you alright?
And I get tapped on the shoulder again and I turn around and this woman hands me an arm. Yeah that's a whole other story though. But anyway so this burglary kind of prepared me for those moments in my career. And it was great because I had a story to tell that most of the veteran.
No. I mean they've seen a lot of crazy shit too but probably not quite that. It was nice because there's a lot of sayings in law enforcement. There's a lot of like advice that gets passed on from the people that have been doing it for a while to the new rookies.
And one of the things that I hear heard a lot was you know law enforcement is 98% boredom and 2% sheer terror. And so if you can just kind of make it through that. You know if you know what to expect you'll probably do alright in this career. But I have to say that most of them have probably not had a conversation with a dead guy before breakfast.
So anyway thank you guys so much. Christianne! So I believe we've had blood and eyeball and an arm so far tonight. What might be next?
It's very messy evening. I want to bring our next storyteller. He has been on the show a couple of times now. I think we did a radio story once and we definitely did a live story in New York once.
Or maybe in Pittsburgh. He tours for the Moth main stage now. And he has a podcast called Two Gays No Girls at a Pizza Plays. I did it and we because of my bizarre eating rituals we had to have raw vegan pizza.
Which was horrible. As you might have guessed. Please welcome to the stage David Montgomery! You was not kidding.
It was fucking terrible pizza. Hi everybody. How are you doing? So I just realized Father's Day is right around the corner and Father's Day has never really meant a whole whole lot to me.
I'm not a father myself. On paper it kind of looks like I have daddy issues. I remember vaguely inappropriate things happening when I was a kid. Thankfully I was not overly molested or anything like that.
Before your mind goes there. Not getting molested does not make me feel unpretty or anything like that. I totally got most of it if I wanted to. But my dad was not a really good guy.
He had a drinking problem and a hitting problem and a yelling problem. And having sex with people he definitely shouldn't problem. And we left him when I was pretty young. My mother, despite doing the right thing in the broad stroke there, she was kind of off the leash for a while so she wasn't really such a great person herself for a while.
And my concrete memories of when they were together would be like me in bed covering my ears with a pillow so I wouldn't have to hear the yelling happening downstairs. Now the yelling was like my dad coming home, wasted drunk, beating the hell out of my mom, raping her or one of my siblings or any combination of that wonderful laundry list. When ever we first left him I think I was probably about five years old. I was in kindergarten and my dad went out for a pack of smokes.
That old chestnut. And instead of him leaving my mom came and took all seven of us kids into the kitchen. She had each one of us a grocery store bag and she said alright we have two minutes. Go upstairs pack every single thing you need in the world into this bag and meet me down here.
We're going to run up the street and live at my friend Janet's house. Now Janet and her two sons didn't exactly live in a house per se. They lived in a really tiny two bedroom apartment. And they were about to get eight house guests for the upcoming year or two.
It was very comfy. But so we moved in with Janet and it wasn't great if you can even imagine that. It was not a super fun time. Now I was in kindergarten so whenever she told me to pack everything I own it included the following items in that grocery store bag.
A pillow, stuffed animal Miss Piggy, Kermit the Frog, end of list. And so my dad had partial custody. We'd see him on the weekends and he would take us on the coolest imaginable field trip. So we'd favor him over my mom as the cool parent.
We'd go to the duck pond and the movies and my personal favorite is AA meetings. No they were awesome. It was so great. We used to just get to run around this bar that was closed down one night a week.
Because I come from a town so I ask backwards that they have AA meetings at a bar. And so I'd get to play pinball and Pacman and the jukebox and then we'd go home to his house because he lived alone in the house that I grew up in. That makes sense. So that happens and I get to have my own room and I get to stay up late and I get to watch TV.
And it was awesome for me then. Now we were filthy dirty little kids. We were those kids in the neighborhood. We had headlights constantly.
If you could, as I'm scratching my head, totally fine now. But if you can imagine like a super gay version of Pigpen from Charlie Brown, then mostly sums up what I was like as a child. And this was around the time, I was in second grade and my teacher was giving us a spelling test and she stopped at my desk and she looked down and said David, when's the last time you had a bath? I couldn't remember.
And long story short there, we started getting these surprise inspections from the health department. I called them raids. I felt like I was Anne Frank or something. But instead of like the nazis killing us, they would take us away to a much better life.
But this was around the time my mom met the man who had eventually become my stepfather. He was not abusive but he was an alcoholic and he did brig drawings into the house. So she definitely had a type. He was a real stand up guy.
Like a youngish, single guy, no kids playing house with a little old woman that lived in a shoe and her little village of children. It was kind of admirable. And he didn't work for like the first ten years of the relationship. But my mom really liked him.
And the only time he ever laid a finger on us was me one time, just one time. It was the late 80s, so I loved Ghostbusters. And I loved them like too much. I was like obsessed with them.
And he decided he would make fun of me for that. Like the way someone that's seven years old would do, not Louis, an adult man would talk to a child. So I knew I couldn't overpower him or anything like that. So I used the power of my words and I very ironically said to him, shut up you faggot.
I realized even then, like, come on David, really? He beat the hell out of me that day. My mom, like, averted her sad, powerless glance and we moved on with things. But like, things didn't exactly improve for a long time with the neglect situation, all that stuff.
And before I know it, I'm in like middle school and high school. And I'm seeing the people around me slowly becoming the terrible adults that were in this town. Another one of my friends had gotten pregnant. And she was like 14 or 15 years old.
And I had this like moment with her. I said, what are you going to do after you have the baby? And she goes, I don't know. I hope I get a job at the dollar store in a year or two where my mom works.
And at that moment I go, these are not my people. I can't be like these people. So I start thinking like, if I stayed in this town, if I did this town, if I did the same thing that everybody else did and just went with the flow, I saw myself like as a gay person, here's the way it's going to go. I'm going to get progressively sadder and lonelier and turn to drugs and then elicit sex with strangers and then harder drugs.
And like as hot as all of this sounds, it doesn't work the same way in a small town. I pictured like in reality what would happen is I'd be like that super skinny weird guy in town and never got married and everybody whispered about them. They weren't sure. And then he got even skinnier and then he died.
And I started, I got a picture of like a very gaunt sickly boy George in my head dying in a hospital bed. And I said, I do not want this life. And I started researching colleges that very day. So I did really well throughout school because I wanted to get the hell out of there.
So I became the first kid in my family to graduate from high school. The only one to move on to college. Thank you very much. I was the only one to move on to college and I decided I would go to school for elementary education because I was already used to being poor.
And I paid my own way through school. The only way that I knew how, by working minimum wage and feeding a debilitating addiction to student loan debt, I needed to get through this. So I ended up doing my student teaching a tiny weird little private school. And a lady that I student taught with was kind of insane.
She was a miserable old woman. She hated kids and she was very vocal about that. I can't stand children. I'm like, you know you teach third grade, right?
And I was beside myself before school started. Like a day or two before the kids arrived. And I felt like this need to become the change that I want to see in the world. I felt like I was going to be like a father to these kids in some way.
I needed to do a good job. I couldn't fail the way that my parents had failed me. So I'm sitting there thinking about how I'm going to do this. I'm so worried.
She saw this. And this woman of very few words came over and patted me on the shoulder two times, technically consoling me. And she said, David, you're fine. Just remember, try to be a good example.
The children are always watching. And then she stormed away. And I was like, that wasn't that inspiring. I'll take it.
So she ends up, you know, I use this little bit of what I've been given. And I decide I'm probably not going to get a whole lot more guidance than those 10 or 15 words. So I'm going to make up my own set of rules of like how to be that good example. How to be that change I want to see in the world.
My first rule out of all of them was to be calm. If a kid is having an emotional meltdown, it's because they're stressed out. It doesn't make sense to get angry at them. That's like trying to get rid of diarrhea by eating a burrito and washing it down with a latte.