State of Emergency (CRE329)

Hello kids, this is Risk, the show where people tell true stories they never thought they'd dare to share. I'm Kevin Allison, and every Thursday we release these special episodes where we look back at content from our earlier years. Sometimes single stories, sometimes whole episodes. Keep in mind that years ago people might have worded things differently than they would today.

As always, the title of the whole series, Risk, is itself a content warning. This week an episode that first premiered in May of 2012, it's an episode we call, State of Emergency. Hello kids, this is Risk, the show where people tell true stories they never thought they'd dare to share. I'm Kevin Allison, and today's episode is a state of emergency.

Nothing better, nothing better for a story than a little old bit of crisis. And we're bringing it to you in the high fidelity stereo, or something. We're bringing it to you via some recent technology. I could almost swear to it.

This is Django, Django, behind me now. And first up today is one of you guys. Sherry Cleland, she went to the submissions page at our website at risk-show.com. She sent us this pitch.

We said, all right, let's do this. So this is Sherry Cleland with a story we call, The Choke. I woke to the news that there was a bad accident on the Bay Bridge. Traffic was a nightmare, and I had a lot of work to do.

So I made the decision not to go into the city, but to stay in Oakland and work from home for the day. Around mid-afternoon, I was in my living room, working on my laptop. When, through the floorboards, I heard my downstairs neighbor having some sort of a coughing-choking fit. And I didn't think much of it at first, but it just kept going.

And it started to sound like she was having a hard time getting air back into her lungs. It was kind of like a... And so after a few minutes of listening to this, it sounded like something was really wrong. So I decided to go knock on her door just to make sure she was okay.

No answer. So I knocked again. Sheila? Are you okay?

Sheila? No answer. Well, now what do I do? Do I call 911?

Do I want to escalate this? So I went back up to my place and I'm pacing around my living room. I didn't hear her at all anymore. This voice in the back of my head kept saying, what if she's really in trouble and you're sitting here doing nothing?

And I could imagine her boyfriend coming home and she's unconscious and blue and he comes up to tell us the horrible story. And I say, oh yeah, I heard her choking and I just offered to do nothing. And then I dialed 911. This is 911.

What's the emergency? And I said, well, here's the thing. I'm not sure if it's an emergency. I heard my neighbor having a coughing choking fit and now I can't get her to answer the door.

So they asked me some questions and determined it's necessary to send a unit. And I said, okay, well, let me run down again and I'll see if I get a hold of her. And if I do, I'll cancel. So after going down and yelling and banging a second time, there was still no answer.

And at this point, I can now hear the sirens coming down the street. So I go back up to the sidewalk and I see a fire truck and a cop car pull up with the light slashing and they get out of their vehicles and they ask me what the situation is and I explain everything. And the two police officers tell me to stay upstairs with a fireman. They ask me your name and then they go downstairs to bang on her door in a very complex fashion.

Bam, bam, bam. This is the open police. Open the door. Nothing.

Bam, bam, bam. Sheila, this is the open police department. Open the door immediately. No response whatsoever.

So when the police officers turns around, looks up at us and says, we're going to kick the door down. Okay. So one officer takes a big step back, kicks the door, and it breaks into a bunch of pieces. And I'm just standing at the top of the stairs with the fireman hoping to God that this woman is okay.

And after about five minutes, they come out and I yell down, she okay? And the officer announces, she's fine. She's been smoking a lot of weed. And at that moment, my eyes went huge.

My mouth dropped open. My hands went up to my face like that scene at home alone with McCauley-Caulkin. And I honestly wasn't sure if I was going to throw up or pass out because all I could hear inside my head is my inside voice screaming, what have you just done? You just busted your downstairs neighbor.

So as I'm standing there shaking and stunned, I turned to the officer and asked, what is going to happen to her? And he looks at me and says, don't worry about it. This is oaksterdam. I couldn't believe it.

I was so relieved that not only do I live in a city that happens to have a high tolerance for cannabis consumption, but that in my attempt to help this woman, that I did not get her hauled off and arrested instead. So after I had a minute to catch my breath, I said, you know what, let me go down and talk to her. And the officer said, I'm going to escort you down. So he takes me down and he says, Miss, your upstairs neighbor would like a word with you.

And all I hear from inside is, I don't want to talk to her. So although it was mortifying for both of us, and the big picture we're both fine, my wish is that someday she and I will be able to look back at this and laugh. This is Risk. You are hearing our good friend, Teddy Pressberg, behind me now.

I am super excited about this next story for two reasons. First, I am a huge fan of Tim and Eric. I think that they have achieved a level of insanity in their work that is just inspiring. And the second thing I'm so excited about is that Tim was just so game to tell a serious story seriously, and what an astounding experience he lived through.

So this was recorded at the Nerd Melt Theater in Los Angeles where we do our show each month. It's Tim Heidecker with a story we call, sudden blood. Hello. Try the music off, please.

I'm not going to tell a funny story, but I am a funny person. So you're probably going to laugh. So that's good news. It happened in March of 2006.

I was living in Los Angeles in Los Felis. I was living in a little bungalow community, and I was asleep. It was around 1230 at night, and I was awoken from my sleep by the pounding of my iron gate, and the voice of my neighbor, an older woman, screaming, Tim, please help. My son is overdosing.

My son is going to die. I don't know what to do. I've called the police. No one's come.

I need your help. So I get out of bed and put on some sweatpants and a t-shirt and run out of my little one bedroom bungalow, and to the right, and I run upstairs to the second floor of their apartment. Her son, by the way, is 17. He's about six foot three in community college, and I had known them very well.

I'd known the family. I'd known the mother and the son and the daughter, and was very close with them, and they're very friendly, lovely people that I was happy to have as neighbors, spent some holidays with them. So I was very happy and eager to help and do whatever I can. I was running out of my apartment, running up the stairs, barefoot, thinking to myself, I don't know anything about overdosing.

I don't know anything about CPR. I don't know what kind of help I'm going to be, but I'll do whatever I can, and expecting to find somebody unconscious, you know, chump, thinking to myself, you know, Jimi Hendrix with vomit in his mouth, and because I was also there during that horrible experience. And as I'm getting about halfway up the stairs, I hear this. And I immediately start running back down the stairs.

It was the scariest sound I've ever heard in my life. It was the sound of this young man. I'm going to start calling him Joe. That was the sound of Joe, but it sounded like a lion.

It sounded like a beast. And for some reason, my body said, don't go up there, because that's a bad sound. I started running the other direction down the sort of middle path of the bungalow, and I immediately sensed and felt, and I must have seen him coming right down the stairs after me. And he had a knife in his hand.

He had an eight-inch kitchen knife. And so I continued to run. And I ran out onto Talmadge and up onto Fountain, and I ran up to Sunset Boulevard the entire time, literally a mad man yielding a kitchen knife running mere feet behind me. Again, five minutes ago, sound asleep.

I turned on to Sunset, and if you go on Google Maps, type in Tangs Donuts, you'll be able to see Tangs Donuts, which is where I ran into the Tangs Donuts parking lot. It's a parking lot where a lot of degenerates and hobo's and weirdos and weird chess player kind of types hang out. And I'm literally running around like cars, you know, and this kid's chasing me. And for a second, I'm about to run into Tangs Donuts, and you know, I think if I had run into Tangs Donuts, I'd be dead, because in Tangs Donuts was nobody, except for like a four-foot-two, you know, 16-year-old Korean girl, a man in the counter, who would have been no match for this young gentleman.

So my brain told me, don't go in there, that's a trap. I run across Sunset Boulevard to the McDonald's, which is lit up, and get to the McDonald store, and they're closed. They're not open past midnight. I kind of had this thought in my head of the scene in Ghostbusters when Rick Moranis is getting chased by that.

So Granny Weaver's beast, you know, that beast basically kills Rick Moranis against this window of like tavern on the green or something. So he's again still chasing me. I looked to my right, there's a gay bar in the corner called Ackbar, and it's Thursday night there's a tremendous amount of, I guess you call them bears out front. Large strapping men, smoking cigarettes, bouncers, a variety of different kinds of men out front, and I run into Ackbar, barefoot, and run, I'd been in there once with a friend.

And I ran immediately into the bar and took a left and went directly behind the bar. I'm screaming, I'm screaming for my life, I'm screaming, help, help, this person's trying to kill me. He comes right in after me, I mean the whole time he's literally, you know, 10 feet behind me, between 10 and 5 feet behind me. And I just kind of collapse behind the bar, and he comes running in full steam into the bar, into 30 guys, three or four of the guys tackling him down the ground, take the knife out of his hand, and throw the knife on the ground at this point, for the first time I feel the warmth and wetness of the blood running down my back.

I have, to this day, no memory of the actual impact of the knife, which is kind of a fascinating thing to me, that I have no, you know, the adrenaline running through my veins as I'm running a fountain, I think, prevented any feeling of pain when the actual impact of the knife went into my back twice and kept me kind of focused on continuing to run. I mean, has anyone had the dream where they're being chased by a murderer in the middle of the night? And you have the feeling that you're running through molasses and you can't move and you're not going to be able to get away? That doesn't happen in real life.

You run like a crazy person, you run screaming, and you, you know, like I said, I was barefoot and running through the middle of the street in the middle of the night to survive, to live. So, I realize I've been just been stabbed, first time ever being stabbed. I have the moment of, oh, I'm going to die in a gay bar, behind the bar. This is going to be one of those, you know, my parents are going to have a hard time explaining the story.

They immediately clear the bar out and a lovely woman came behind the bar and who was a paramedic student and assisted and gave me some first aid and put some bar towels on my back and really was, you know, the first line of someone just saying, like, you're going to be okay, it's not that bad, it's going to be okay. And as I'm lying there on the ground, like, really starting to panic, I see these guys walking out and they're all kind of like, hmm, because by now my shirt's off. And I felt really, you know, I'm not homophobic in any way but I felt very protective and defensive of my body at this point that I was not some kind of piece of meat that you guys can just look at on your way out. That's very troubling.

So this is the first point when I'm being taken out to the ambulance, I have this first sudden rush of paranoia and fear that the family that I'd grown so close to was planning this and this was a conspiracy and that this was all as was supposed to have, this was their plan that I was going to be killed this night and that the way they're going to do it was to arouse me from my sleep and create this false story. So I become really paranoid and upset and my girlfriend who was, her side of the story is incredible as well because she was asleep as well and her side of the story was she sees me run out to help somebody and then sees me run down the stairs being chased by a person with a knife. So she came and met me there and we went to the hospital and you know the adrenaline wears off and the pain comes in and you start feeling the pain of a knife in the back. What kind of pain you can imagine would be.

I don't know if you've ever cut yourself. It's a bigger version of cutting yourself. I remember being in the emergency room and in a variety of doctors and policemen and paramedics walking past me looking at my window, oh shit, oh shit, that's what I kept hearing, oh shit. It's going to be all right.

Am I losing blood? Am I dying? Am I still dying? I know I'm in the hospital.

What if I'm bleeding inside? I don't know. It really hurts. It's hurting more and more.

Then I was given this wonderful drug called delodin. Does anybody know what delodin is? It's heroin. And it really, really is great.

And I recommend if you guys don't have addiction problems you try it because it's really wonderful. It's the greatest feeling I've ever had, ever had in my life. Was that drug intravenously going through my veins? It started with a little bit of warmth around the nose.

And then I just felt like, wow, I could just really, I really love all the people around me and I could really just be here for the most comfortable I've ever been. So I'm not going to get into any opiates. I think that's a good lesson. And then the sister of the brother showed up and was a really great friend and still is a great friend.

We caught eyes and she looked at me as if her brother had killed somebody and with the look of regret and remorse and guilt that I never want to see again and we just both were sobbing and I'm sorry. I don't know what to say. I'm sorry. I don't know what to say.

Clearly the fear and paranoia that this family was looking to take me out of the game was gone. The next few days it kind of came out that this kid was, he was smoking marijuana and which is fine and I have no problem with that. I think there was something else that started coming into the supply that was like this synthetic marijuana. Does anybody know what I'm talking about?

Does that ring a bell? PCP kind of stuff. These drugs that don't have names, you just have letters and numbers, like TH976 and it really makes you psychotic and this kid had gone on sort of a bender of this and had completely lost his mind and was from what I hear later was had a knife and was threatening to cut off his penis and his mother was freaking out obviously and he had the burners on in the kitchen and was threatening to burn the house down and was completely out of his mind. And when he came to, when he became conscious and became sort of aware at the LA County Jail after being arrested for the crime of trying to kill me, he asked what happened?

What am I doing here? What's going on? Why am I in jail? Which is way scarier than what happened to me in my opinion because I knew it was going on and I could place what was happening in some kind of context and understand it and understand why it was happening.

He couldn't do that. He had done something that he should have done and it led to a gap in time where he ended up in jail. So he had a lot more work to be done to him than I had to be done to me and I'm fine. I can't walk.

I know what you saw come up here. It took a lot of drugs and I took a lot of courage but I usually can't walk. And I guess I'll close it by showing you my scars, right? I'm planning on getting plastic surgery because I can't stand to look at my back.

It probably sits back there too. Someone took a picture. That was like the biggest violation of trust I've ever had to lead it. Could you imagine?

Anyways, thank you for having me. I hope you learned something. It's true story. This is a song called Credible Threats by the 1 AM radio.

Next up we're going to hear two radio stories from folks who have taken our classes at the storystudio.org versus a fascinating lovely woman named Katie Peabody. Here she is with a story we call SideFX. My story takes place about 25 years ago. At the time I had been carrying around feelings of sadness and hopelessness every day, all day, or as long as I could remember.

And it affected pretty much everything in my life. It affected my job where I just kind of droned away in my cubicle working on assignments without interacting with anyone there. I was lucky enough. I was in a relationship with a guy named Larry who was, I think, the funnest guy on earth.

I lived in terror that he would wake up one day and realize that he had hooked up with the biggest wet blanket on the planet and leave me. And just in general, I didn't enjoy life. I didn't feel joy or pleasure from anything. And I desperately wanted to fix myself.

I felt like I was in a constant battle with the beast that was my mind. I was seeing one in a long line of therapists that I'd seen and the one that I was seeing at the time I was getting ready to quit therapy with him too. And he might have known that because in what would be our last session together, he told me about a clinical trial that was happening at Columbia University for a drug, a new depression drug that everybody was very excited about. It was supposed to be like the Nexoloft or something.

But he asked me if I would be interested in getting into the program. So I was very interested. This was hope for me. And it seemed easy enough and free too.

So I went up to Columbia. They did a couple of rounds of blood work on me and they interviewed me extensively and they let me into the program. They assigned me to my therapist up there who was named Dr. Edelman.

Dr. Edelman was not like any therapist I'd ever worked with before. He was more of a research guy with a background in chemistry. Nice enough man.

But he talked out a little bit like a robot and during my first session with him, he explained to me, the program will run for six weeks. Once a week, every week, you will come up to Columbia and give blood and be interviewed by me. I will also ask you to keep a journal. Some people in the program will be taking the actual drug.

Some people will be taking a placebo. You may be taking the actual drug. You may be taking a placebo. You will not know until the program is complete.

Dr. Edelman picked up a vial of pills from his desk and explained, this is a week's supply. You are to take one every day with breakfast. I reach for the pills.

He pulls them back and says, there's one side effect that you need to be made aware of. When combined with chocolate, the drug has been known to cause blindness in some subjects, while the effect has been shown to be temporary in most cases. To be on the safe side, you should avoid chocolate throughout the study and for two weeks after. That means no chocolate candy, no chocolate cake, no chocolate ice cream, no chocolate.

Do you understand? I told him that I did and I left with the pills and a feeling of excitement. I was a little bombed about the placebo thing, but I was pretty sure that I would be able to tell the difference between the real drug and a sugar pill right away. A week into the program, I was feeling great.

I was feeling fantastic, even the sadness, the hopelessness that had been with me forever had just lifted. The negativity that I brought to every situation in life was just gone. I was feeling something that ordered unhappiness and it just got better and better as the days went on. I was walking into work instead of my usual, dragging myself in with my head down, lost and fought.

I was greeting people. I was looking people in the eye and striking up conversations and making jokes and I stopped hiding out in my cubicle anymore. I was going into other people's cubicles and talking to them about what I was working on and what they were working on. I was going to the offices and finding out if there were any other assignments and I started meeting people for drinks after work.

It totally changed the way I felt about my job. It went from being a grind to being something that I really looked forward to. I did start getting better assignments. My relationship with Larry got better.

Instead of just shutting him down and saying no to some of his spontaneous suggestions. I started saying yes and I remember one week he wanted to go to Coney Island to ride the cyclone and I would always have said no and I did have said no in the past, but I said yes and I went and we had a great time and I started doing that more with him and it was great for our relationship. It was more insane. So my whole life had opened up and clearly I was taking the real drug and that was kind of the icing on the cake.

That was important to me. About four weeks into the trials, Larry and I were at home in our apartment. We lived near the seaport in a little studio apartment with the sleeping loft and Larry went out to get the papers and when he came back he had one of his favorite breakfasts which is Entomene's Chocolate Donuts. Now I love Entomene's Chocolate Donuts and I pretty much love everything about them.

I love the little click sound that my teeth make when I pierced the chocolate shell on the doughnut. It's kind of like biting into the chocolate bonnet on a soft serve ice cream, but with the doughnut it's really only what's outside the counts because the cakey part inside is so whipped with air that there's almost nothing there and I think the Entomene's people just put it there so they could call that a doughnut when what it actually is is this chocolate for breakfast. And of course these doughnuts were very special because if I had the courage they had the potential to tell me whether or not I was taking the real drug or not. There was a big part of me that didn't want to know.

Unfortunately there was a bigger part of me that had to know. So I reached for one of those doughnuts and I took a bite and I took another bite and I took another bite and then I finished the doughnut. And then I just sat there and I think I sat there like that waiting for about a half hour when things started to go dark and then darker and then I was completely blind. I told Larry as nonchalantly as I could.

He knew about the side effect I told him in the very beginning and I asked him to please help me climb a ladder to our sleeping loft so that I could wait this thing out lying down. I had to believe that it was temporary and I lay there in my bed and I could feel his eyes on me and I could smell his doubt too and he said to me so you can't see anything and I said I can't see anything and he said how many fingers am I holding up? And I said Larry it's not funny I'm totally fucking blind and he said let's totally fucking go to the hospital and I said no I said I just want to wait it out it's gotta be temporary let's just the wait a little. So he went back down the ladder to eat some more doughnuts and I lay there in the bed and I just started freaking out in my mind and the voice in my head was just yelling I'm blind I may never see anything ever again I may never see Larry's goofy face again I may never people watch in Union Square again I may never see another movie how am I gonna shop and what difference will it make I won't even know what I look like what about my job how's that gonna work and what about my relationship is Larry gonna want to be with someone he has a walk like a dog dog I'm gonna have to get a guide dog and that's not good this is a no pets building God damn it why did I eat that donut if I thought I was depressed before what's it gonna be like now that I have something to be depressed about and I just started crying and I could feel the tears spilling out of my blind eyes and then I fell asleep and I guess I was asleep for two hours or so and when I woke up I opened my eyes and I could see I could see everything I was really angry with myself for eating the donut and taking that risk but more than that I was really happy that I was taking the real drug two weeks later I went up to Columbia for the last time and I handed in my notebook to Dr.

Adelman and he held at his hand to me and as we shook hands he said thank you for participating in our program it has been a pleasure working with you I turned to go and as I was walking away he called after me don't you want to know what you were taking of course I knew what I was taking but it turned around and I said sure and he said the placebo you were taking the placebo and I left there in a days I couldn't believe it the drug hadn't made me blind at all I had made me blind just like I had made myself upbeat and positive and cheerful just like I had turned my life around it was all in my head I had done it without any help from anyone and it just occurred to me my mind is fucking powerful I hope it has my back but what do I know I moved to New York about seven years ago and I couldn't believe how fabulous it was here and when I moved here I fell in with a bunch of people who liked to party as much as I did I developed mild to moderate cocaine habit I would say during that time Janken awful art was having a great time and the only problem well the only problem as far as I can see it with this lifestyle was I was having trouble finding a boyfriend and I remember being in the toilets of a club on the low east side with a friend of mine doing lines off of a filthy toilet chopping up these lines of cocaine snorting them and being like yeah I mean I just can't I don't know why I'm having so much trouble finding a man in her being like yeah I mean I can't imagine either you're so cool you're so awesome yeah we're great we're awesome that was pretty much the lay of the land at where the story begins before this I had also I'd broken my ankle a few weeks beforehand so I had an ankle in the cast and I was hobbling up first Avenue to go to this pub to meet these friends of mine and so I got there and I walked in and they were sitting with this gorgeous Nigerian doctor so I did my best to sort of sashay in a sexily on crutches with the cast which isn't easy to do but apparently I managed to do it because we got on like a house on fire one thing later and he came back to my house and it turned out that he was leaving in a month to move to LA so he's packing up all his stuff and leaving but it was great it really meant that we could have this really light-hearted fling and there was sort of no immediate consequences the month you know came to an end and so I had invited him to come to a show that I was going to and to my surprise he turned up and I was so thrilled it was like two days before he was gonna leave and I bought him a champagne so we should well on his trip and we were having this great time and then I went back to his place and I hadn't actually stayed at his place before he'd always come to stay at my place so we weren't really paying attention we were both a little bit drunk and we were making out the elevator and making out the hallway and we got into his place and I remember kind of saying hi to his remakes and then going to bed and just before I fell asleep I remember really just thinking I really really need to go to I really need to be I really need to go to the bathroom but I just couldn't I can't get up I was exhausted and then I fell asleep and I had this dream that I was trying to get to the bathroom and I was going through all of these hallways and pushing all these really big metal doors and I couldn't get through and I felt really trapped and I was really really frustrated and then I woke up and I was pushing and shoving a big metal door and looked around me and I had no idea where I was there was I was in a stairwell and I was completely naked and I had absolutely no idea how I got there and waking up from sleepwalking it takes a few seconds but what feels like a much longer time I think for your consciousness to fully realize that you're not dreaming anymore and your logical mind is trying to wrap yourself around what's happening and I just stood there naked in the stairwell just just my mind was melting basically so the first thing I did when I saw what I came to was to turn around throw open the door and run it to where I assumed his apartment was and I was just twisting the handle and pushing against this door when I looked up and looked around and there were a bunch of other doors that looked exactly the same and I had no idea which door was his door I couldn't swear to it and so I ran straight back into the stairwell and I really really really need to go to the bathroom at this point and I just thought well the first thing before I can think straight I just have to pee I have to pee and I just thought well I don't want to pee on anybody's floor on the floor where people live so I'll go down and pee on the ground floor by the lobby I don't know what I thought that was a good idea but I did so I ran downstairs completely naked and I leaned in the corner oh god and I think this I have to say I think I could safely say it's the lowest point of my life so far I hope I never think any lower than this I had one arm on the door trying to keep it shut so if anybody wanted to come in they wouldn't be able to another wall to balance myself and I was hunkered down and I peed at the bottom of the stairwell and anyone any ladies who've been camping can tell you that you have to look for a sloped ground if you want to pee and not pee all of yourself when you're camping and obviously that wasn't a case in the stairwell so I was peeing all over my face completely naked in the stairwell and I don't talk to God very often but I did pray at that point and was just sobbing looking up I was like a little animal I was like a little vulnerable animal and it's just looking up the stairwell saying please God please please please I swear I swear I'll be good I'll never do any cocaine again just don't let anybody come down the stairs please please please please so I finished peeing round back upstairs and I had actually funny enough just spoken to a friend of mine about time he got locked out the hotel room naked and he said look the one thing you have to remember if anyone catches you naked you don't want them to catch you standing still so just keep moving keep moving and that was the only thing I could think of so I just I just moved I just went running all over this stairwell in the middle of the night and once it's been about three or four in the morning I just got my cast off so my leg was all gimpy and weird I was limping up until I was so well naked and sat down I had a good cry and then I remember just thinking you have to put yourself together you can't be you cannot be naked in the stairwell when people start getting up going to work you have to find a solution pull yourself together so I did and I thought well okay I'm gonna try every single door in this building because one of them has to one of them has to be his apartment maybe it's not the kind of door that locks behind you on my travels around though I had heard a bunch of noise coming from one of the rooms on the sixth floor so after trying everything I could think of I finally thought I have to go I have to knock on the door of this party and I went up to the door I pumped myself up I think I tried about three times before I finally rang the bell and then I ran back into the stairwell and this I heard this voice around the corner saying we make it too much noise you know what's going on like no no no you're not making too much noise could you just come over here just come around here and so this really confused looking girl sort of came around the corner and I just had my head outside of the stairwell fucked around the door and I sort of said well hi yeah hi hi this is really weird I don't normally do this but I just I feel like I just have to tell you I am I'm naked I'm naked I'm in the stairwell I don't know where I came from and I really need some clothes and that's it and I went by the way again and if you really wouldn't mind and she blessed her heart bless her little heart she just turned around and said oh come on in and she turned around and started walking back into her apartment and I shouted after her I was like oh could you just could you just bring me some clothes first and she said oh don't worry honey it's just girls and gays and she just walked into this apartment and as the door was swinging shut behind her I took a deep breath and I just ran in after her and dived behind this sofa that was that they were about I think three or four people it was just a get together they were all sat on the balcony I'll never forget this guy's face he just turned around and looks at me his jaw dropped open and then I sort of popped up out from behind the sofa and was like hi hi hi how are you can you just please give me some clothes can you just please she was like oh yeah I forgot so she went she threw me a pair of you know tracksuit bottoms and a t-shirt now I have to find out where I came from so I told her she was like well who was this guy and I described him and she was like oh I totally know that dude he lives on the third floor so she takes me downstairs we knock on a bunch of doors nobody answers so finally everybody leaves the party and we have to go to bed so she goes to sleep and I slept on the sofa and she had let me have blackberry because I had to get up and go to work so she let me have blackberry and when it went off in the morning I had to unlock the phone so that I could switch off the alarm and I didn't have her password so I had to go into her room and make her up and she smiled turned over in the bed and looked at me like oh that totally really happened and she was like hey I was like hey yeah I'm the naked girl thanks so much we didn't mind unlocking your phone and she did and she gave it to me and so I phoned my phone and it rang and this stranger answered the phone this voice I didn't recognize and this guy was like who are you who are you and I told him my name and he was like what's your last name what's your last name and I told him and then I heard this russling and he passes the phone over to this guy that I've been seeing and this guy was like where the hell are you what the hell is going on and I was like oh you'll never believe it the funniest thing happened I broke up in the stairwell and he was like whatever I was like well what part number you are you and he told me and we had been looking on the wrong floor he was on the third floor so I you know said my goodbyes to this lovely lady who used to save me from the stairwell and I went down into the elevator and the doors opened up on the third floor and there was this gentleman I'd been seeing two policemen and two of my best friends in New York all just stood in front of the elevator and they were all absolutely furious and it turned out that this guy had woken up not long after I had left and couldn't find me all of my clothes were in his apartment and I was nowhere to be found so the only friend of mine that he knew was my friend Rochelle so he phoned her and she said well you know you have to call the police she made him look all over his apartment and she also did say to him have you looked in your roommate's room which I still to this day think was a little bit unfair I may have not had that many morals back in the day but I certainly would never have done that anyway so all's well but ends well I was saved I don't do drugs anymore I would love to say that that was the last time I did any but it took about a year probably for me to just get over the shock of waking up naked and say well but it took me about a year to sort of wind down after that and yeah I finally found a decent man in New York and he has told me since that he will tell that story at my wedding and he will never ever ever be invited to my wedding I was somewhere lovely little song called dizzy by a band called glass pear from a nation called Uruguay not true last part completely false I just wanted to say Uruguay the story we just heard was from a story studio.org student Ms. Morgan Bartlett we call it new descending a staircase and the song before that was modern medicine by 41st and home now every now and then on the show we like to feature a story that comes to us from a different storytelling show and by far one of the most beloved one of the most wonderful storytelling shows in the New York City area is the story collider you can find them at story collider.org Ben Lilly curates the story collider he's a wonderful story teller himself Ben focuses on stories about how science touches our lives and be sure and check out their free podcast it's also on iTunes anyway the following story was recorded at the story collider show this is David Gellis who is a writer for the financial times and he calls this story have fun be safe hi everyone so I am an only child and for five critical years in there about the time I was five to ten I was raised mostly by my mom and she was a working mom which meant she spent most of her time at the office which meant that for most of my time I was largely unsupervised and as a seven year old eight year old nine year old even then I knew how to get into trouble I always told her what I was going to do so I would say mom you know Monday I'm going to go play kick the can with my friends until midnight she would always say have fun be safe on the weekends I would say mom I'm going to go to the old abandoned bridge in the park and jump into the river with my friends have fun be safe I would say mom I'm going to go to Mark's house and Mark was the kid that everyone knew was maybe into drugs a little prematurely played with knives and maybe it started the fire have fun be safe you can say she maybe had a bit too much faith in my well being as if whatever happened the natural world was magically going to take care of me and for the most part it worked and then when I was ten my mom was invited to New Zealand for three weeks she thought this would be a great opportunity to take me on my first international trip we get to spend some time together and I said okay because while I didn't know exactly where New Zealand was a ten year old would do absolutely anything and go absolutely anywhere to get out of school for three weeks and so we got there but when we got to Auckland it was more of the same she was there for work and so instead of me kind of shadowing hers and what we were going to do for the day she gave me two pockets full of quarters and brought me off at the nearest video arcade she asked the sketchy guy at the candy counter to look after me and said I'll be back in six hours have fun be safe so instead of learning about the Mallory I played Mortal Kombat for a week but then she finally got a free day and we traveled from Auckland down to the South Island of New Zealand to a small town called Kayakura on the southern coast and as we're walking around town that day deciding what to do we see the sign right on the roadside it says swing with dolphins and have you been cooped up in an arcade for a week I thought that sounded like a good idea so before too long mom and I are at this little boat shack and we suit up in wetsuits and get our masks and snorkels and some flippers but no bifests and then soon we're on a boat with a couple other tourists who are all suited up and with this captain's open top boat we're zooming out into the Pacific to the southern ocean and I didn't know anything about dolphins at the time except that hopefully they weren't in my two and fish sandwiches but as we're driving out there the captain starts telling us about the dolphins we're going to encounter he explains to us that these are dusky dolphins they're indigenous to the southern coast of New Zealand and they have a couple unique attributes they're very acrobatic he says so they'll jump all around they're particularly playful he explains to us that dolphins see in sonar and because of that they kind of have a hierarchy of humans who they like to hang out with they're less comfortable around grown men they feel a little threatened they're a little more comfortable around women and they tend to like children so depending on where you are on that spectrum you might either get a little more or a little less facetime with these dolphins and they tell us one more thing he says this is the last trip of the day because a storm is coming don't worry we'll be fine but we're going to do our dives and get back on shore pretty quickly so finally a couple miles off coast we rendezvous with this pod of 100 or so dusky dolphins and it doesn't look like much from the boat just a couple of things slicing through the dark water and he says alright get ready hop in five minutes for your first time and so mom and I jump off the boat and there we are in the southern ocean and it was a little scary at first even though it was relatively calm you could feel the ocean swaying you back and forth and you're so far out there that the floor of the ocean is nowhere to be seen but then finally we started observing what was around us and sure enough there were a handful of dolphins and I don't know if any of you in the audience remember swam with dolphins what is fucking amazing these things aren't everywhere and they're just zipping by you and they're real dolphins and as I think you're own this miraculous and there's one of them the other and mom and I are with the other people from the boat and we just kind of bob there and maybe we paddle a little this way paddle a little that way and I remember I had this little disposable plastic camera and I would put it up to my eye and look through the lens and a whole dolphin head would fill the frame as if it was right up against the window and after five minutes finally captain called us back on the boat back on the boat heated up with some tea and some hot cocoa talked about how amazing it was and they said alright second dive ten minutes everyone jumps back in the boat same thing paddling around with the group just extraordinary dolphins everywhere lovely time and I'm starting finally to feel a little comfortable it was a little less scary the second dive after ten minutes back on the boat warm up with some tea and hot cocoa and he says finally fast dive 15 minutes he says 15 minutes we're back on the boat we're headed in now my mom at this point says I'm not gonna go see she had had both of her knees replaced already and the cold was finally starting to get her she could feel the weather changing it just wasn't a good idea so she said stay with the group 15 minutes back on the boat have fun be safe I jumped in and this time I figure I've been out with these guys for five minutes 10 minutes it's just 15 minutes I'm just gonna let loose and hang out with these guys so I start swimming I start paddling and dolphins kind of swim over there and they swim over there and I finally just totally relaxed I'm just swimming with them and I'm so comfortable I don't even have to take my head up I'm just breathing through my snorkel and finally after you know swimming with them what I figure has been 15 minutes now I pop my head out the water ready to get back on the boat and there's no boat the sky had gotten darker the waves had gotten a bit bigger and I suddenly realized that the situation was changing very quickly a wave hit me in the face and I ingested a little salt water and started coughing and panic started to set in pretty quickly and I start thrashing around looking for the boat and it's still nowhere to be found and I'm kind of turning this way and that extending that valuable energy and I realize how cold I am and I realize that I'm starting to get tired because I'm 10 years old and I've been swimming in this other ocean for 30 minutes now and I also realize this would have been a good time to have that life vest that we didn't have but still no boat but then I noticed there's still a couple dolphins around and then something happens first one dolphin buzzes me and then another dolphin buzzes me and then a third and a fourth and there's suddenly enough around me that I start to at least pause and reassess the situation and try to understand what's going on because suddenly there's a handful of them and they're swimming in a circle around me and they've actually corralled me and it calmed me down enough that my breathing settled down at least and I was more attuned to what the dolphins were doing than to my own predicament and then something else happened first one of these dusky dolphins jumped and then another jumped and then a third and a fourth and as a few of them corralled me others started to fountain into the air I didn't know it but back on the boat it had been 20 minutes everyone else was back my mom was in an absolute panic because she had let her only son swim it into the southern ocean with a pot of dolphins and no light chest and no one else in provision had a storm approach from him the captain luckily had a more level head he handed up binoculars and he told everyone on the boat find me dolphins everyone started looking scanning the ocean and finally someone saw dolphins about 50 yards away jumping above the waves they said over there captain threw the boat into gear started motoring in my direction before long I heard the motor approaching the dolphins scattered and stopped jumping and I climbed onto the boat and into my mother's arms and she had probably never squeezed anything so tightly in her life I was like mom stop and back and it was the first time when I was out there as a 10 year old that I really realized I could die that I realized my fate was not in my own hands and at that point the ocean had me but I think it was also the first time my mom realized just what she had done she finally got it that it wasn't nature's job to magically protect me it was hers and she never really let that go I'm 32 now and I probably get 10 texts a day for my mom are you okay I'm at work and so on she never got overprotective and she's always let me do whatever I want to do but when I tell her mom I'm going to climb him out with some friends her mom I'm going to travel through Vietnam for a couple weeks she still always says the same thing she says have fun hun but for God's sake be safe thank you very much that's our show this is electric guests with waves hey remember that risk is live on Thursday May 24th in Los Angeles at the nerd mount theater we've got Greg Fitzsimmons a Fitzdog radio also Brian Babylon that same night May 24th 2012 we are at the pit in New York City we've got Kurt Braunuller and Elne Baker come out and see us live I'm always talking to risk fans who say hey I always hear you talk about how you got two day workshops and nine week workshops and four week workshops I just feel like I'm too shy or maybe I don't have enough crazy stories to tell or you know I don't have writing or performing experience it's be as folks everyone is a wealth of experience everyone is a wealth of personality and you you tell stories already you just practice it with another person so why not do it with us we have a wealth of knowledge on the subject techniques and exercises and lots of experience training people to master it and hell you heard today on today's episode if we like one of your stories we might put it on the show so get off the fence I want to get you in on all of this at the story studio dot org type that into your browser and let's get going do you know what I'm getting at I mean today's the day folks take a risk you are hearing our pal pretty pretty tesper I believe I mean teddy presford oh my joy that's it