Ep44: Evelyn accidentally scared Indonesian chickens; Nick made lunch awkward.

Episode 44 is what happens when two people try to be kind… and instead create lifelong emotional damage for someone never to be seen again.

Evelyn shares the story of sponsoring a young child in Indonesia and doing her absolute best to keep things simple, relatable, and culturally sensitive… only to accidentally step right in it and create the worst possible threat for any 5 year old's beloved family pet: I'm going to eat you.

Nick follows with a story from his teenage years working at a theme park, where a well-intentioned restaurant recommendation lands with a thud he’s never been able to forget. What he meant as helpful was received as something else entirely, and the moment has been living rent-free in his brain ever since.

Together, Nick and Evelyn unpack the quiet chaos of good intentions gone wrong, the weird permanence of small social misfires, and the deeply human experience of realizing (often years later) that you might have been the accidental villain.

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Want to get in touch with Nick & Evelyn? 

Email them at reversejackass@gmail.com

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:00

It's remote.

SPEAKER_01 0:07

Evelyn. Yep. What? I'm here to repair US Canadian relationships and chew gum. It looks like I'm all out of gum.

SPEAKER_00 0:16

Looks like I swallowed my gum.

SPEAKER_01 0:18

Oh, yours is better. Can I lead us in? I would, I would really love it if you did. Please take it. Folks, folks, welcome back to the Reverse Jackass podcast. I'm so, so very glad you're here with us. My name is Nick. With me as always is Evelyn the Canadian Blade. Evelyn, say hello to the people.

SPEAKER_00 0:34

Hello to the people. I'm so glad you're here. And I'm glad Nick's here. And I'm glad I'm here. It's just let's all let's all sing kumbaya. Kumbaya.

SPEAKER_01 0:43

Wow. What a middle finger. She's like, I'm glad everybody's here. Everybody's equal to me. I'm so glad you're here. I'm glad I'm here. I'm glad Nick's here or whatever. Let's sing, let's sing a song. Well, Evelyn, I'm here to be sincere. You can be however feels right to today. Uh because it's an Evelyn episode.

SPEAKER_00 1:01

That's right. Ooh, that was good. Wow. Do it or worst. Okay. Well, I want to tell you, I want to tell you a story today.

SPEAKER_01 1:08

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 1:09

And uh, I have not told you this story yet. So I just thought this would be great. Because I know sometimes we tell stories on here that we maybe have told each other, but not our listeners. So this is new for everybody listening. Um and the only person who knows this story is Jason Flanagan. So he's not here right now. Um may he rest in peace. On the couch downstairs. So God, sorry. Sorry, sorry, sorry. So he probably is resting. Okay, yeah. That's what I that's all I meant. I want to tell you a little story about a time that Jason and I sponsored a young child in Indonesia. And we've done that for a few years. We've had a variety of sponsored children. Um, it's through a foundation called Compassion Canada, which I imagine is similar to like World Vision or something. Something like that. It's the it's the same premise that you're, you know, you're you're sponsoring them with money, they're getting some kind of programming and food and education and all those good things, right? So she was a young girl in Indonesia, I would say maybe four or five years old. And I really struggled with having a sponsored child that young in terms of communication, right? Okay. Because the whole thing is you're supposed to write letters and you're supposed to um, you know, get to know them. They write letters to you. Sure. And I found that really challenging. We've had sponsored children that are much older. Often I like to look through the profiles of kids who maybe have been waiting for a really long time and they're like, you know, 15 or 16. And like I like that because I have more experience with that age group. I'm more comfortable with them. But for four or five, that's hard to keep a conversation going in person, let alone between.

SPEAKER_01 2:53

Imagine what it's like for them.

SPEAKER_00 2:55

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 2:55

Well, here they are, they're writing their best George Washington Carver essays, and you're like, what else you got? What else you got?

SPEAKER_00 3:01

I'm like, that's not interesting or relevant to this either of us, to be honest. And so we, I mean, we I would say, how old was she when she left the program? Probably 13, 12 or 13, maybe. So sometime between five and 13, probably closer to five, but not yet 13. Our communication just narrowly.

SPEAKER_01 3:26

Not yet 13.

SPEAKER_00 3:27

So our communication, the compassion gives you these like templated letters. They send them to you, and they're for the young kids, usually they're they're fun. They have little sections on the paper, and there's they can draw something for you. They can, you know, you can check off things, and it's usually one of the program workers that are helping them or a family member that's helping them fill these out. Obviously, it's not them. I like to think the drawings were them, though, because if those were done by a 40-year-old program worker.

SPEAKER_01 3:55

Pretty badass, though. I mean, that's that's just to me. Tells me that that program worker is ready to go to the mat to get these kids announced their compassion. It also tells me that that those kids said, I don't work for you. Yeah, yeah. Like if you want to send money, send it. You want a drawing? I'm not creating art on demand for you. Are you kidding me? Art comes from a different part of my soul.

SPEAKER_00 4:14

Wow. And that's the premise of Compassion Canada. You know, okay, just as much, as much attitude as possible. Like, if we can, if we can just bully each other through this sponsorship.

SPEAKER_01 4:27

Then your mission is accomplished.

SPEAKER_00 4:28

Missions accomplished, needs are met, we're all happy. So our communication was entirely through these templates that Compassion would send. And they had very basic prompts on them. What's your favorite color, right? What's your favorite subject in school? What do you want to be when you grow up? And so a little background knowledge. I saw my parents sponsor children all the time in this way. And something my mom and I had talked about uh years and years ago, and she wrote, she was so dedicated in her letter writing to these. And I am absolutely awful. We can even do them online now, and I still don't do them. Like, I just feel like a terrible person. We can't get into it because this might be the crying episode we talked about. Oh never had wrong. Oh, it's crying time. Do you say do you say that in your therapy sessions? Oh my god.

SPEAKER_01 5:19

It's all I say in my therapy session. That's the first thing they teach you in grad school is how to just make people feel like dog shit crying. And I'm the best in the business.

SPEAKER_00 5:27

Yeah. Well, as you tell me. So the so something my mom and I talked about was when you're writing or sending a picture, like she would send an updated picture of my dad and her, right? So they know who you're getting to know. Keep it simple because these these people are often in impoverished areas, right? We're not taking a picture in front of like a brand new car here, right? Where it's a plain background, you know, you're not wearing all the jewelry, you're not being someone you're not, you're just keeping it very simple, is what and I and I'm flashy. Yeah, not flashy. No, there's no need. And even in the letters, like my mom was very good about, you know, asking a lot of questions. I mean, it is a it is a Christian business, so there was a lot of like, here's my favorite Bible verse, like that kind of stuff in there, too. Okay. So so I tried to adopt that model. I tried to keep that in mind, and especially when writing to a five, six, seven-year-old who obviously the school system is very different in Indonesia than it is in North America. I'm I'm doing my best, is what I'm telling you. Okay. I'm doing my frickin' best, Nick. So get off my back.

SPEAKER_01 6:36

Yeah. So that's sounds like it was enough.

SPEAKER_00 6:41

Nick just did some wild side eye right there, just letting everyone know. Uh, so these letters, as you can, as you can imagine, would take months to go back and forth. Sure. Right? That really complicated things here. So there was always this time lag confusion overlap. You would answer questions not knowing what she would already have written, vice versa. And like she was five. It's kind of felt like Groundhog Day, like we're talking about our favorite colors all the time. And we're, you know, what's your job? Well, my job, right? Color, it's always I should I should have changed it every letter. Well, it's blue today. But a five-year-old would also get that. It wouldn't matter to a five-year-old, right? So one month, the prompt on my template was, What is your favorite food? Simple, a you a universal statement.

SPEAKER_02 7:31

Sure.

SPEAKER_00 7:31

So I filled it out. I was like, I gotta keep this also relatable. I'm not gonna be like, I really love this baked pasta dish that my mom made. Like, no, I wrote chicken. Chicken. Okay. Okay, right? I'm like, this is we we we can get this. Okay. A week later, so my letter was still probably somewhere in a sorting bin in London. A week later, I get a letter from her.

SPEAKER_01 7:54

My parents were killed by a chicken.

SPEAKER_00 7:58

That would have been better if I'm being honest with you.

SPEAKER_01 8:01

Oh, okay.

SPEAKER_00 8:02

I get a letter back from her, totally different template, like it's a different letter altogether, different questions. One of the prompts for her was what is your favorite pet? And she wrote in big seven-year-old letters, chicken. Now, logically, I knew she hadn't seen my letter yet. Mail's slow. There's no way she was responding, but it was immediate dread. I read this and I felt the color drain out of my face.

SPEAKER_01 8:36

Okay, so there's only one thing you can do in this instance, which is you have to go to Indonesia and intercept the letter. That's the only choice you have. Yeah, okay.

SPEAKER_00 8:43

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, you're right. Because, like, at some point in the future, this sweet five-year-old girl is going to be singing about how much Jesus loves her. She's thinking about she's thankful for her sponsor family. She's there's food on the table, there's you know, a job for her mom, there, like there's support for her parents, and her sponsor family is going to say, Our favorite food is your best friend.

SPEAKER_01 9:05

Oh, oh, Evelyn, that's awful.

SPEAKER_00 9:08

I considered writing a follow-up letter, being like, well, not your chicken, like a like a different chicken, a chicken that you've never gotten to know. But then, like, by the time that letter would get to her, we'd be like, like, I it's this is irreparable at this point.

SPEAKER_01 9:23

Oh, it's over, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 9:25

Um, so uh, I just live with the knowledge that somewhere in Indonesia there's there's a small child thinking that her sponsors were like Canadian predators. Was that the last letter that you all exch like it might have been? Well, I don't I doubt it because we had her like as a sponsor child for quite some time after that.

SPEAKER_03 9:42

Holy shit.

SPEAKER_00 9:43

Um so my question for you, Nick, is what's the most innocent misunderstanding between you and someone else or something else that accidentally made you look like a villain? And it's a it's a misunderstanding. Not we're not talking moral catastrophe here. Like we're just talking about like two letters across the Atlantic Ocean never seeing each other, and one says, I love chicken, and the other one says, I love chicken.

SPEAKER_01 10:16

I'm a chicken killer.

SPEAKER_00 10:18

I'm a chicken killer. Murder most.

SPEAKER_01 10:20

Before I answer that question, because I actually have a story that's coming up, but I want to say, oh, Evelyn, I'm so sorry. That's that's miserable and awful, and I'm so sorry. And obviously, it's not your fault, but holy isn't it great?

SPEAKER_00 10:36

It's a great story. It's a great story in my attempt to be so relatable and and kind and I'm not sure.

SPEAKER_01 10:44

Yeah, and that's the worst part, is that it came from you actually trying to like be relatable, and you're like finger licking. You're like, I wish I had a chicken here right now. I would chop the head off that thing so fast. Here's a picture of me eating chicken. Yeah, exactly. Here's the sorry for the grease stains, for the chicken grease stains on the on the paper here. I just got done with a chicken feast. Um I'm sending uh included in this envelope are are feathers for your collection. Oof. Yeah. Oh man. Yeah. Okay. So picture this. I'm 17 years old. I work at a theme park in Virginia. Um, it is the nicest, second nicest theme park in Virginia out of two. Um it was, but it was fine. It was a job that I enjoyed. And one thing about theme parks in general is that the food is not very good at theme parks, right? Now, as a 17-year-old, I didn't give a shit. I loved pizza, I loved fried foods, I love all that shit. But it was not lost on me that the that the quality of the food was poor, right? And honestly, needlessly poor, because I remember they'd throw little parties for us, and then they'd have the you know, the pizza place make a bunch of pizzas, and you'd eat it, and you'd go, it's just not hard to make good pizza. Like there's no need for you to make it this way, but fuck it, it's free pizza, I'm gonna eat it, right? Yeah. The employee cafeteria just just replete with all kinds of fried goo and you know, soda and stuff like that. But like the the best food at this place was not good, right? Okay, they really tried. There were different theme areas, and again, it just was all the same fried carnival shit. But there was one restaurant that I did actually really enjoy, and it was at the top of the park, was called International Street, which is hilarious because the most international perspective in Virginia is not international, but like um International Street, a long street with a fake Eiffel Tower at the sort of crest of it. Pleasant. I make fun, I I break Virginia's balls a lot, but it was pleasant. It was a nice place to work, nice place to spend a summer. So there was this one Mexican restaurant on International Street that, like, whenever I came to the park, I would eat there because although it wouldn't stand up on anybody's top 10 list of non-theme park restaurants, it was head and shoulders above the other restaurants at the park. And here's where I'm going to say something that I have never said before and I will never say again, which is that in this moment, the moment where it really counted, I didn't see race. Oh. Right? That thing you're never supposed to say. Yep. Okay. And hey, you know what? Freud said there are no accidents. So maybe there was, maybe this was just me acting out in a super racist way. But one day I was walking to lunch break at the cafeteria with this girl that I really had a crush on because life is when it's unfair, it's really unfair. And this couple walks up to us and they said, Hey, is there any place that you would that you would recommend to eat? Like, what's the best place to eat? And I said, Oh my god, there's a Mexican place on International Street that's amazing. You should totally go there. And in that moment, the it was a it was a hetero couple, the female partner, like her eyes flared for a second, and she just walked away. And the guy just looked really sad and he goes, Okay, thank you. I appreciate that. And he left and followed his partner. And I didn't know what to make of it. Like it was it was so odd that I just didn't even calculate like what happened. And this girl, who again I want to say I had a big crush on, turns to me and goes, What are you doing? And I said, What? That's the best restaurant in the park. And she goes, Those people were Latino, and you just told them to go eat in a Mexican restaurant. What is your problem? Oh no, no, no, no. And I said, It was the best restaurant to eat in. And then I replayed it in my mind for the first of what would be 15,000 times over the course of the rest of my life. And the part of it that I can still see as clear as day, and I want to be clear that I'm not a person with a great visual or photographic memory, is I can still see the look of hurt in that guy's face. And I gotta say, he was so nice about it. Like he clearly took it exactly the way I didn't intend it, and he was still really nice about it. And no shade to that woman for walking off, because if I felt as insulted as I think she must have felt in that moment, I would I would walk off like that too. And so all of this is to say is that I I really, I swear to God in that moment, I didn't think about anything other than there's one restaurant I really love in this place, and I want to tell you about it because it's awesome, or at least awesome for this context. And and I told them, and I still to this day, I still feel really, really bad about it. And I just I wish there was some way for me to go to find them wherever they are and go, I'm sure that you have endured aggressions, macro and micro, your whole lives. And I'm sure that it is hard to be in Virginia.

SPEAKER_02 15:30

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 15:30

And if I wrecked your day at that theme park, I'm so, so fucking sorry about it. And I still hope that you ate at that restaurant because the alternatives were so bad that I would be remiss uh if I recommended them to you. So yeah, so that's an example of a time where I really fucked up and I really, really regret it.

SPEAKER_00 15:51

That's exactly the same. It came from a place of total, I would say a healthy cocktail of innocence and uneducation.

SPEAKER_01 16:01

Yours is yours is more brutal because you were trying so hard to do it the right way. Mine was just, I was a dum-dum who didn't see things for what they were. And you were like actively trying to pick something that was gonna be relatable for this kid and just happen that by sheer force of coincidence. So I would I would argue that your story is is less blameful, fair, more brutal because you were trying so hard to do the right thing, and mine is just embarrassing and fucking ignorant.

SPEAKER_00 16:29

You were just a teenage boy, like a teenage boy who's like those tacos are banging.

SPEAKER_01 16:33

Just a would-be restaurant critic trying to spread the truth.

SPEAKER_00 16:39

Listen, your options when you go to international land in Virginia. International land. It's international street. Sorry, international street. It's a street, it hasn't yet.

SPEAKER_01 16:49

It's not a land, the land is Virginia, the street is international street.

SPEAKER_00 16:53

Your options are uh tacos. Sorry, no, nachos. That's probably what it was. Nachos with the pump with the pump cheese and a scoop of questionable beef. Um beef and quotes, yes. Beef and quotes. Yes. Your options were probably pizza, obviously. Um, what else might have been there? Uh, you said France. You said an Eiffel Tower, so I'm thinking there was probably. There's nothing French. There was literally just the Eiffel Tower.

SPEAKER_01 17:22

International Street. There was a there was a Busch Gardens. That was the actual nice, nicer theme park in Virginia that I didn't work at. And they had like different European themed things. So they actually had a France. We just had a fucking Eiffel Tower. The Eiffel Tower. You could go to the top of it. And it's funny, when I saw the real Eiffel Tower, I was like, oh shit. Because in my mind, I thought the real Eiffel Tower would be the height of the Eiffel Tower that I was used to in Doswell, Virginia. And let me tell you that the the actual Eiffel Tower is by uh by many factors a much larger and more majestic achievement.

SPEAKER_00 17:52

Yeah, I would be I would be personally offended if it wasn't. And I have no connection to it at all. But I just think if the better of the Eiffel Towers is in Virginia, I would be amazing. I would feel somehow really upset about this and carry that. I I'd carry it with me for the rest of the day. And I don't need that.

SPEAKER_01 18:12

Well, Virginia actually has a long pedigree of doing things, doing French things better. Like you've never been to the Ashland Film Festival. Le Film Fest, the one that just, yeah, putting can on its back heels. That's right. Yeah, that's right. You know what I mean?

SPEAKER_00 18:25

Like you know what? There is a saying up here in London, Ontario, that the best croissants come from Virginia. That's true.

SPEAKER_01 18:32

And people call the uh people call the Children's Science Museum of Richmond the Louvre of the West. Um yeah. So there's a lot, yeah. People sleep on Virginia, but if you want, if you want a cigarette and a brioche, book your flight to Richmond. You're actually right about that because that's tobacco country. Uh you're gonna get better better cigarettes cheaper in Virginia. So that is one place where Virginia and France are well aligned.

SPEAKER_00 18:55

Okay, so maybe that was also what was on international land or street or whatever it was.

SPEAKER_01 18:59

Guaranteed there were plenty of places to buy cigarettes.

SPEAKER_00 19:01

There was a place to buy smokes, there was a place to get pizza, a nachos with the cheese fountain. You probably also had, I'm willing to bet, um Klingons?

SPEAKER_01 19:11

It was owned by Paramount, and so they had Star Wars characters walking around the in fact, I knew it. I met a guy later in college who had been one of the Klingons. Yeah, so they're actual Klingons and Romulans too, sometimes walking around talking to people.

SPEAKER_00 19:22

International alley?

SPEAKER_01 19:24

Yeah, again, International Street is international in name only. That's literally just what they called it.

SPEAKER_00 19:29

So they just had people like they had Klingons from like Kidmere 7 roaming around. Like, did they have any of the food? Is that a real fucking Star Wars? I've watched it many times. Oh, it's horrifying. Cut your judgment. Cut it.

SPEAKER_01 19:42

I can't. I can't. You're demanding me to judge you. Yeah, yeah, it's true. Fair. But yes, they had people in full fucking Klingon costumes.

SPEAKER_00 19:51

Did they in International Boulevard, did they also have, like, did they have any kind of Chinese food? No.

SPEAKER_01 20:00

No, and I can't decide. So not that whether that would have been the best restaurant. Yeah, I'm telling you, International Street was a fucking name only. The same way that, like, I don't know, there's Colorado Boulevard that runs through um all the way through Pasadena, but it's not in Colorado. Like, there's no part of it that stretches into Colorado. It's just a name.

SPEAKER_00 20:18

You didn't even have, like, on I'm just thinking, if I didn't know this, you live in London for God's sakes.

SPEAKER_01 20:23

Do you think anyone thinks of Ontario when they think of London? Every time you go, I call the London Board of Health. I have to recalibrate to remember that you're not calling somebody in England. Sometimes the name is just a name.

SPEAKER_00 20:32

The London, do I tell you I'm calling the London Board of Health? Like, do I say that? Have I every day? Well, I gotta get this. I gotta get this rash under control, man. You're like, I'm calling the London Board of Health. I'm calling the London Board. I'm calling the Bobbies. Let me get my phone book that's in that's in the boot of my automobile. Yeah, sometimes I think you don't know where you are. You know what? Truer words have never been spoken on the reverse jackass podcast. I just think that if I was one designing an international cul-de-sac, I would have included at least four countries.

SPEAKER_01 21:10

Yeah, that would that would make you a candidate to work for Busch Gardens, which separated this park into England, France, Germany, and Italy. And that's Busch Gardens. King's Dominion was, I was trying not to use their name, but I just did, uh, was started in the 70s, and then it was just a regular ass theme park for a million years, and then it was bought out by Paramount. And so for the time that I worked there, we had a bunch of Paramount themed stuff. Like there was Days of Thunder, and there's Wayne's World, which is actually pretty cool, and Volcano, which everyone thought was gonna be a huge movie, but was not. There was, I think there might have been a Jurassic Park. I can't really remember. Nickelodeon, all kinds of things, and then eventually Paramount sold it to somebody else, and then all the proprietary stuff went away, as far as I know. So then they just rebrand, they just take all the stuff and just take all the signage down and turn it into something more. But yeah, so you are you. You are putting so much you're projecting so much deliberate work at a place where deliberation was not valued.

SPEAKER_00 22:10

Yeah, well. Do you mean do you mean on International Crescent or Virginia as a whole?

SPEAKER_01 22:15

Uh uh, I think both. I'm gonna say that I'm gonna say that International Street and that theme park in general were a microcosm oh yeah of the state of Virginia, a metaphor, if you will.

SPEAKER_00 22:30

And you know what? You know what? I think that my story is also a metaphor. I was trying so hard. I am I'm a person who tries so hard, spinning her wheels in the mud. Uh-huh. And inevitably, I'm just gonna want to chow down on someone, something someone loves. Someone's best friend. Someone's best friend. Powerful. That feels like that feels like a something that I want people to sit with. So should we call it there? I think we should. And I think, I think I'm gonna I'm gonna put that in the show notes in case you've already blown through this, or in case you didn't even make it this far in the episode. I'm gonna put it in the show notes so that if you can journal that, you can use that as your journal prompts tomorrow morning, everyone.

SPEAKER_01 23:09

Folks, thank you so much for joining us on the reverse jackass podcast. Uh, I'm Nick, this is Evelyn the Canadian Blade. Evelyn, blow that air horn for those people. We love you. We'll see you next time.

SPEAKER_00 23:20

Some neighbors are besties.

SPEAKER_01 23:22

Others quarrel bitterly. Stuck together through geography. One of us has nukes, and the other has tokes.

SPEAKER_02 23:32

It's American Canadian diplomacy. It's reverse.