Ep58: Evelyn was no stranger to a good wipeout; Nick wasn't even singing.

In this episode of the RJ Podcast: obnoxious morning radio show hosts, bad Sean Connery impressions, hot-pink stilettos, Evelyn not knowing how to walk properly, karate choreography, and the emotional aftermath of an eight-year-old loudly pointing out the obvious. 

It's an episode about embarrassment, survival, and the strange way our most mortifying moments can follow us around for decades. 

Also, as always, a reminder that democracy is fragile, memory is forever, and somewhere out there an audience member still remembers exactly what happened at that talent show. 

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Want to get in touch with Nick & Evelyn? 

Email them at reversejackass@gmail.com

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

It's reverse challenge.

SPEAKER_02 0:08

Well, I have a great prompt for us today that I think you're going to enjoy. And if you rise to the challenge, I shall also enjoy.

SPEAKER_01 0:14

I can't wait to rise to the challenge. Do you want to start us off or do you want me to?

SPEAKER_02 0:18

Folks, welcome back to the reverse jackass podcast. I am Evelyn, the Canadian Blade. You probably know that by now. And if this is your first episode that you're listening to, welcome. I don't know what you're in for. And I mean, you don't either. So we're all in this together. Speaking of being together, I'm here together with my friend from afar, Nick Bagner. Nick, say hello to the people.

SPEAKER_01 0:44

Hello, people. I too am so glad that you're here with me and the blade.

SPEAKER_02 0:49

The blade. Nick and the blade. Nick and the blade. Coming back in the mornings. Yeah, I was gonna say, is this a precursor to a morning show? Because I We'll get traffic with Stinky Jeb coming up. Weather on the tens with Jeb. With Jeb the Perv. I almost asked why is he called Jeb the Perv? But then I like, I don't actually want to know.

SPEAKER_01 1:19

You well, I mean, you know, it's a it's a it's a character. They build characters for themselves. There's always like the like the sort of medium hosts that sort of carry the conversation, and then there's always the one sort of super gross guy, the super gross sex guy, and then there's the super gross potty guy, and then there's the the blonde woman who really puts up with a lot of sexual harassment. Um then there's the guy that can do 25 different C minus impressions, and then there's the semi-serious news guy that they give a like a nickname to, but he only does new stuff, and then there's 85 Yahoos that call in over the course of the morning. It's really a pretty standard cast.

SPEAKER_02 1:57

Wow, pretty formulaic.

SPEAKER_01 1:59

Yes.

SPEAKER_02 2:00

Pretty formulaic. Like I kind of I kinda like that. Oh, you said something back there that made me think of something, and I don't remember it. It was before Oh, see the C minus impressions. And he like his go-to is Sean Connery. Yes, but it's a real bad, it's a real bad Connery. Oh yeah. Walken.

SPEAKER_01 2:21

They also love Christopher Walken. Oh, yeah. That's one that everyone thinks they do really well.

SPEAKER_02 2:24

The news at eight. Catch the news at six.

SPEAKER_01 2:31

Yep. They it's a classic. Yeah, it's ubiquitous.

SPEAKER_02 2:35

And his only connery is adding moneypenny to the end of everything.

SPEAKER_01 2:40

Yes, or to regurgitate SNL lines from the Jeopardy sketches. It's actually they're doing an impersonation of Daryl Hammond doing Don Connery, right?

SPEAKER_02 2:48

Yes. Oh, yeah. I actually would listen to that. I would listen to that whole show.

SPEAKER_01 2:53

Let me tell you, I don't know if they have it in Canada, but in the States, every FM station has that program. Some variation of that program.

SPEAKER_02 3:00

I don't think the ones here, like I have a friend who does morning radio, and she is great at it, and it is not as insufferable as you just outlined.

SPEAKER_01 3:11

So I'm trying to imagine what the Canadian team would be. They'd be like, okay, welcome back. It's it's uh Jeff Rowe and the lumberjack coming at you in the morning, and they're like, uh, we're gonna do some impressions with uh Jeff the Logger doing his best trudeau. We're gonna have Rob Ford in here later.

SPEAKER_02 3:37

Get the old get the old fart canon going. Oh, that'd be so good. You know what? That's probably that's probably what it's like. It wouldn't be Jethro.

SPEAKER_01 3:46

It would be like, it would be like I was trying to think of what a funny Canadian name would be.

SPEAKER_02 3:49

I don't know. You could really you could pick anything like Tim and the Beave.

unknown 3:55

Tim and the Beave.

SPEAKER_01 3:56

Yeah. We're taking a call right now from Cliff from Alberta. Cliff from Alberta. How are things out there? Uh well, you know they're pretty cold out here today. No kidding. All right, we're gonna give you two free tickets to the tragically hip Coliseum.

SPEAKER_02 4:10

Oh my gosh. You know what? This is I love witnessing somebody come into their purpose of life, and I'm hearing you come into your radio host era. Yeah, I shouldn't live this life. This, you're incredible at it. I'm like, I felt like I was watching it. I almost I was like, right, this isn't real. I have to react. I have to react. I have to react. That should be the name of this podcast. No, that's the podcast that's gonna happen when we make a podcast out of listening to these episodes and doing live commentary, and just brutalizing ourselves. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think that's how this is gonna work. Oh my gosh, what an intro! Well, it's an Evelyn day. Um thank God says the audience. You know what? I don't know. I don't know. So uh I have two stories that really it's kind of a cautionary tale in a way, and clearly it wasn't cautionary enough because this is the reason there are two stories, is because it basically happened to me twice. So the first story takes place at my convocation, my graduation from university, and I went to two of them because we had one at the end of my bachelor's of music and one at the end of my bachelor's of education, and I don't remember which one this happened at. So at it was at some point between the year 2004 or 2005, doesn't it's we're going back uh 20 years here, as most people do at their convocations from do you call them convocations? No, good god, no. Oh, what do you call them? Graduation. Okay, well, I'll use the word graduation. Um if just so that we under just to eliminate any kind of understanding hurdles here. Sure. In case you didn't make it through 13th grade. Well, that's when we learned the term conversation.

SPEAKER_01 5:58

Got it.

SPEAKER_02 5:58

Yeah. So you wear the gown, you wear all the colors and the hat with the tassels and the whatever. And you don't really try on the gown until the day of. Like you order it, you get like kind of a length that you think will work, and then you put it on the day of. And mine was, I wouldn't say it was long, but it was maybe longer than some of the people who had it just going past their knees. Mine was probably between knees and ankles. Okay. It looked fine, is what I'm here to tell you. Yeah, knees and ankles, is it supposed to be shorter than that? Well, no, I I really kind of played that up and I don't know why.

SPEAKER_01 6:34

Yeah, that seems like a really appropriate length for a complication ground.

SPEAKER_02 6:39

We let we I mean, it was a nice update from the booty gowns. Okay.

SPEAKER_01 6:44

Sure. Yes. Back in the days, back in the days where they were really making women earn their place in the university.

SPEAKER_02 6:50

Yeah. So the the joke always was if you have to go upstairs or do something with this gown, just raise the front a little bit, right? Grab the front and just kind of raise it so you your foot clears the gown. Some of us missed that instruction. Okay. Or heard it and chose not to heed that advice. As I was walking up, this is held in a large hall here on our campus, our university campus, and filled with I don't know how many, like a couple thousand people, it must be, right? Parents, fellow graduates, all this kind of stuff. And so I remember we you file through two groups of attendees, you file through, and then you make your way to go and cross the stage at the front. Sounds like a labyrinth. It kind of was, actually. The way it was coordinated, it was a total labyrinth. And you really can't see anything. Like my my parents and my sister, all they see is this herd of black gowns and black caps and whatever. And our color was, I don't know, might it might have been purple. And so we're walking. And as I'm walking to go, there were stairs on the side of the stage. By the way, Christopher Plummer gave our address, which was super cool. Do you know who that is?

SPEAKER_01 8:00

Captain Von Trapp, right? Yeah, Captain Von Trapp, yeah. Did you do it as Captain Von Trapp or did you do it as Christopher Plummer?

SPEAKER_02 8:07

Do I remember anything he said? No. No. And it was he was giving out um insults. He was just it was a roast, actually, which was super cool. He was just roasting people as they walked by. You, I'm gonna call you eyebrows because you don't have any. When I walked by, when I walked by him. And so anyway, I'm going up the stairs, and the famous line that I remember after this event was my sister said, I was looking down and I saw you, and then all of a sudden, I didn't see you, and I didn't know where you went. And that's because I stepped on my gown and face planted going up the stairs.

SPEAKER_01 8:47

Oh, Evelyn.

SPEAKER_02 8:48

And I was that person that fell in front of thousands of people by tripping on my gown.

SPEAKER_01 8:53

And your sister somehow missed this? This should have been a dream come true for her.

SPEAKER_02 8:57

How did that? Well, no, she said like she could see me, but because they were kind of far away and everything, like there's all these black gowns everywhere. It's just a herd of like people in black gowns. All of a sudden, I just wasn't there. Like I dropped so quickly that she's like, You were there, and then you weren't, and then you were there again. And I remember thinking, Did I actually just do that? Did I actually do the one thing that is the whole don't do this at your graduation? Yes, I did. Hell yeah. So the second story I want to tell you, and you know, I used to believe, let's just for a second, I used to believe it was because of the bad footwear. I was wearing, I was wearing a sandal at the time. I don't want to blame it on the footwear, but it might have been the footwear. The second story I want to tell you is also about footwear. And it was in my teacher's college year. So the actually these might have happened within a year of each other, come to think of it. Because some people, including teachers, don't learn. The worst students are teachers, I'm telling you right now. That's heartbreaking. This was in my yeah, my student teaching year. So I was not yet a fully certified teacher, and it was in my third practicum, my third placement, and I was at a school in a little, like a little country school outside of London. Called McGill. Okay, first of all, you know what? Yeah, yeah, it was McGill. McGill? Okay, fair enough. Yeah, um, I was doing a a French practicum. My first two, you get three. My first two were music, my last one was French, and this one was a grade nine French class of 29 students. And I would say 28 were boys, country, small town, bumpkin boys in this class.

SPEAKER_01 10:41

Nice. You're listening right now, going, you know what? Fuck you.

SPEAKER_02 10:45

Yeah. What are they listening from? They're like, no, I'm not, I'm not.

SPEAKER_01 10:48

No, oh, nope. Now you have to deliver. Nope. You got to the porch, deliver the package.

SPEAKER_02 10:54

No, nope, I'm not. I I this is called just catching yourself.

SPEAKER_01 10:59

This is called this is called wouldn't it be wouldn't it be something if you could have caught yourself at graduation? Oh, oh, oh. No, that one, that one's for all the bumpkins.

SPEAKER_02 11:10

Oh, it sure was. And so at this point in my life, I was very obsessed with footwear. Very obsessed, stylish footwear. I was wearing stilettos, which for those of us who don't know what it is, it's a pointy-toed shoe with a decent heel on it. I would say anywhere between two and four inches, two and three and a half inches on it. Yeah, I was wearing those every day. That was what I like to wear. And I look at myself now and I'm like, Evelyn, that was a different life ago. And it was, it really was. Every day. Every day. Yeah. If I was going to school to work, I was wearing a hot shoe. I loved it. And my favorite pair of shoes at this time were like a Barbie pink stiletto. And it was a great shoe. I loved this shoe. I sure I loved it, and I, and and kids would be like, what shoes is Miss King wearing today? Right. And it was just this fun little thing. And I was like, I'm the I'm the cool teacher. Okay, right? I loved this.

SPEAKER_01 12:06

I'm not a regular teacher. I'm a cool teacher. I'm a cool teacher. I'm just basically like imprinting foot fetishes onto an entire uh school year with the kids. There's there's kids listening to this right now, grown men licking Barbie pink stilettos, going, Oh, yes, I remember it very well. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 12:25

Well, it was short-lived. Those pink shoes were short-lived. Because one day it was the first lesson I had given this class, and I was killing it, not in a good way. Like I was absolutely killing my reputation with these 28 boys because I must have looked like the freshest of meat just coming out of teacher's college. I mean, they're grade nine boys, sure, but I felt like such a dope, such a nerdy dope in front of these people. I did not know how to make learning fun at this point in my teaching career. So, of course, obviously, what am I gonna do during my first lesson? I'm gonna give them a worksheet. So I give them a worksheet, you know, that creates relationships. So I give them a worksheet, and I'm and I'm walking up and down the aisles. And I loved, this is me just being totally vulnerable. I love the sound like a powerful shoe on a floor. I love it. I was like, yes, this I'm like, that's a great sound to me. As I'm thinking this, I come up to the front of an aisle and I was turning to go back down the row to the left of me, and I wiped right out. Day one. Day one, day one, wiped, my heel didn't land securely. Imagine that. A grown woman standing on something the size of the end of a pencil. Head of a pen, right? Didn't didn't provide the security that all of the movies told me it might. And I and my foot went right out from under me, and I not only fell, but fell on the desk of a student.

SPEAKER_01 14:06

Just magical.

SPEAKER_02 14:08

Just wiped it. Just just wiped it.

SPEAKER_01 14:11

Just sweet zone baby.

SPEAKER_02 14:15

Oh my gosh, that's great. That is great. If I can go back in time, I actually want to relive that moment just so I could just so I could go over the Dr. and Mrs. Vandertram verbs with them before. Right? Yeah, that was maybe one of your finest moments. That was good.

SPEAKER_01 14:31

Many thanks.

SPEAKER_02 14:32

That was good. So I picked myself up, and I probably was redder than a tulip. Like I was so red at this point. And I just got up and I acted like nothing happened. Just kept going. Solid. Solid strategy. Solid. The only thing I could do. And I kept wearing those shoes, and I kept wearing them. But I I was more hesitant after this. So my question for you, Nick, is what is the most embarrassing thing you have ever done in front of a group of people?

SPEAKER_01 15:01

Oh. Oh man. What is the most oh god, what to choose? Oh, wow. Okay, Gary. You're rolling. I live in a state of perpetual embarrassment. The notion that there would be one thing I could choose. Mm-hmm. The most embarrassing thing I've ever done. I need to give it some thought. Okay. And not where I thought this was going. Although it wasn't beyond prediction. Yeah. But you tell a hell of a story. And so I was listening to it. The most embarrassing thing I've done in front of a group of people.

SPEAKER_02 15:37

While you're thinking, there was also another time I fell up some stairs. There was twice in high school that I fell up the stairs. And I fell off yes. Yes, which is why it's like first of all sticks out in my memory because it was falling. Like who falls upstairs? One, I fell with my arm full of binders in high school.

SPEAKER_01 15:55

University graduates, apparently.

SPEAKER_02 15:58

Correct. In the presence of Christopher Plumber. And I also fell up the bus steps, the school bus steps. And I fell, and I remember this was at the time, at least I was a senior, so all my friends are sitting at the back of the bus. So we had a good laugh over it. But I got up from falling up the bus stairs, and I stood up and I purposely flipped my hair behind me, and then I just walked down the bus aisle because I thought this could be mortifying, but we're gonna laugh about it.

SPEAKER_01 16:27

Good for you. And I bet that worked, right? I bet you kind of got ahead of what could have been some real bullying.

SPEAKER_02 16:32

Yeah, but I made up for it a convocation. Sorry, graduation, so it made sense. Anyway, back to you.

SPEAKER_01 16:38

Okay, so there are many ways to be embarrassed, but I will say that one of the most humiliated that I ever was in front of a group of people. This is a this is a real painful story. Um and it takes place at the same shitty school that I went to for one year where we had to sing jingoistic songs in front of newscrews and stuff. That place was a real clusterfuck, and I guess I'm lucky I only had to go there for one year.

SPEAKER_00 17:01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 17:02

Um I I need to take you back to the 80s and to a very short-lived game show that was on the air called Putin on the Hits. Um did you see Putin on the Hits?

unknown 17:11

Nope.

SPEAKER_01 17:11

Okay. Putin on the Hits lasted for one season. It was like a low-budget, crappy star search. Its logo was a big open mouth, like almost like that gross Rolling Stones logo that they have. Oh. And it was a lip-syncing talent show.

SPEAKER_02 17:27

Oh my gosh, I would have loved this. I would have loved this.

SPEAKER_01 17:30

I think you can still watch it on YouTube. Yeah, it was, and and here's the thing. I I thought, and I didn't realize until I was an adult that this was not a nationwide phenomenon. I didn't realize that this was a very small thing that didn't go anywhere and that nobody gave a shit about because in my household, we cared about it deeply. By which I mean to say that my brother and sister got into it and they were into it, and then it was, as was often the case, the only thing that existed in my life. Everything my brother and sister did became the sole focus of my life, and I assumed that the entire world revolved around it. Okay. So they must have had tryouts in our town, which is an unlikely place for them to get it, because I don't remember, they certainly weren't on the show, but I remember that my brother and sister both had routines. Wow for it. Um, and I'm trying to remember what songs they did. I think my brother's was was The Lion Sleeps Tonight, and I can't remember what my sister's was.

SPEAKER_02 18:21

I'm just gonna pause for a sec. Bobby, if you're listening to this, this is the true test of if you're listening to this podcast, Bobby.

SPEAKER_01 18:28

Bobby, if you're here and you want to fill out any details, please feel free. His memory is incredibly Oh my gosh.

SPEAKER_02 18:34

Bobby Gay.

SPEAKER_01 18:35

My sister is the least reliable narrator in the history of the world, but my brother is exacting and photographic in his memory. So, yes, Bobby, if you want to correct me on any of this, please, please do feel free to write reversejackass at gmail.com or you can call me or text me and we'll figure it out. So I remember as a kid seeing this thing. Okay, then same same year, Putin on the Ritz comes out, which is the taco dance song from the 80s, yeah, and I could check out the record at the library, which I did and then renewed it over and over and over and over again for months because it turned out nobody else is interested in checking out that record. And as has been the case my whole life, I listened to the same two fucking songs on it over and over again for months, to the points where my my dad still occasionally will like will like bring it up, right? Oh wow, okay. So lip sync becomes a very important part of my life, and again, I don't realize how not a part of the world lip syncing is. I think now there's a little more room for it with talent shows and with like performance is different. Yeah, it's a big deal. It was not a big deal back then. Like acting like you were singing without without singing was not a fucking cool thing back then. So flash forward a couple years later, I'm at this crappy school, my musical tastes have changed. I now own a copy of Flood by They Might Be Giants, which was the like the first sort of current cassette. My sister got it for me, and I am fucking into it. So they have this talent show, and I decide that this is where I'm gonna turn my fortunes around at this school. I'm going to do my lip-syncing act, and it's gonna slay, and everyone is gonna think I'm a genius. And this will be the thing that takes me from being the world's most bullied kid to some kind of a celebrity, a local celebrity. So we have to do tryouts. Okay. So good. Tryouts, and all these kids show up for tryouts, right? And this one kid gets horrible stage fright and finally gets coaxed on stage, and he does his thing, and he kind of sucks, but I applaud for him because I think we applaud for each other, and that's a nice thing we do. And then these two other kids get up and do a crappy Disney song, and it's probably adorable for adults, but it kind of sucks, and I clap at that too, and I'm being such a good sport, and then it's my turn to get up. And I have a few things that go against me. One is that nobody gives a shit about lip syncing. Second thing is in Virginia 1990, nobody gives a shit about they might be giants. Third thing is to lip sync, you have to have like dance moves, and I didn't realize that. So I just stood in front of the microphone and lip synced this song because I'm 10. And so I get done, I'm very proud of myself, and the first thing I hear is a kid go, he wasn't even singing. No applause. It's awful. No applause? No, it's a the school is a bad place filled with bad people. It probably still is. Like not even teachers, though. I mean, I'm sure there, I'm sure there was a smattering of applause. But what I remember was a deafening, crushing silence, penetrated only by an eight-year-old going, he wasn't even singing. This this is my favorite story you've ever told. Good, because there's more story. So strap in. And this is on the same stage where later I would have to fucking read Lee Greenwood's Proud to Be an American, like it was a poem. So much trauma in my life took place in this school. I've literally done EMDR around that auditorium, and I'm not kidding, right? Are you serious? I'm telling you. Oh, so tone down my laughter. I bring it up to my mom, and my mom was like, Live singing probably isn't the right thing for Oh, by the way, they let me in because of course they're like the parents or teachers, whoever's running this, they're not in the business of like saying no to kids.

SPEAKER_02 21:48

No, no. I bring it up.

SPEAKER_01 21:50

I tried to really just to see if you could show up, right? So they let me in. So suddenly I have a slot on this thing, and my mom's like, I don't think that's the best idea. And I'm terribly hurt because nobody understands my argument. But I also know that I can't do this fucking thing again, right? So I'm very scared, very concerned. And I finally managed to change my act. Okay. And the act I did instead.

SPEAKER_02 22:12

Oh no. Oh.

SPEAKER_01 22:14

It was better. It was the kata that I learned in my karate class to the tune of Exodus, the theme from Exodus. Do you remember theme from Exodus? Uh, vaguely, I'm gonna have to listen to it. Instrumental. You'll have to listen to it. It's still out there. It's a it's very melodramatic. And so imagine the most serious 10-year-old you've ever seen in your life doing a series of choreographed karate moves to this thing. But the best part is that, and it's appropriate for this podcast, I was wearing an American flag ghee that I had begged my parents to buy for me. And it was like at my karate club in Virginia, it was called the Virginia Karate Club in the 1990s. One of the highest level things you could do would be to pay the extra 100 bucks and get this American flag ghee.

SPEAKER_02 22:54

Oh, jeez.

SPEAKER_01 22:55

And I begged my parents for it and they got it for me. And so I did the fucking kata in the American flag ghee. And fortunately, that didn't follow me around for the rest of my life that I'm aware of. But it was like, even as I was doing it, I was humiliated and thought, I just don't know how to win at these kind of things. And so that was it. So the most embarrassed I ever was was the lip-syncing thing. And the second most embarrassed that I ever am is when I repeatedly and frequently think back on doing a kata in an American flag gi in the auditorium in my fifth grade. So thanks for making me revisit that. What a what a blast.

SPEAKER_02 23:30

I just want to remind you, as you always tell me, you can make stuff up. You didn't have to go that hard. I should start making stuff up. Oh my god. If anybody brings this story up, I'm gonna die from it. Holy God. This is this is an incredible story. I hear a few things here. I want you to know that I'm thrilled for you that your most embarrassing moment was like 35 years ago. I mean, I'm sure there's others, but that's the one that's the one that's that's the one that's lip-syncing at the talent show, front and center. It's like it's coming right out. It's gonna be a winner, yeah. The the second thing I hear is that you really were, and I do know this about you, is that you the biggest loser. I do know that you are the biggest loser I've ever met in my life. No, I know that you are forward thinking in many ways. So I can only imagine that it was very challenging for you as a 10-year-old who was really psyched by some new music, who had older siblings he was looking up to, and you were like, this is gonna be great. I'm gonna wow people with this thing that I'm doing that you know they're gonna think it's so cool. And then it just falls flat because no one gets it. I don't think there's any worse feeling as a creative person than getting so psyched up about something and getting so prepared and really rehearsing something over and over and actually being emotionally tethered to this experience. And then what happens in your body and your soul when an eight-year-old metaphorically says he wasn't even singing, cannot be explained in the English language, I think.

SPEAKER_01 25:12

Nope. It has to be it has to be felt and felt for over 30 years. If if this is formative, and I think it was, I think one thing is that one thing that I think I'm kind of I don't know that I'm not known for this, but one thing I know myself for is that I am not a big risk taker, and I really try not to ever take shots that I don't think I can make. Like I really do not take risks, especially publicly. Um, I really, I really try not to speculate. Like if I if I show up for something, it's because I'm very confident that it's gonna work out. Um and I think that this was helpful for me to know that like there are variables everywhere and you need to shore up all of them before you show up with your with your fucking flood on cassette tape.

SPEAKER_02 25:55

Yeah, you need to have dance moves. You need it.

SPEAKER_01 25:58

That's the only thing that could have made it worse. I had this joke I used to tell for years that my my biography was gonna be called Nick Wagner, won't you please stop dancing?

SPEAKER_02 26:05

Oh my gosh, that's so great.

SPEAKER_01 26:07

That's so Well, it's is it great or is it is it a testament to humiliation?

SPEAKER_02 26:11

No, I think it's a great title. I would immediately look at a book. Like with a title like that, I'm struck by a good title. And that to me is a good title. Especially if there were no stories about dancing in there.

SPEAKER_01 26:22

Oh yeah, no, no, no. I can't tell those stories, they're too humiliating.

SPEAKER_02 26:25

Yeah, no, we won't. We those aren't those are when we're not recording those stories. Oh my gosh, Nick, that's a great story. And I'm sorry that you've been severely traumatized by it. But I will say, I think the best stories on this podcast, the best episodes, are when one of us is just ripping open the freshly clotted wound of a trauma experience that one of us has had.

SPEAKER_01 26:50

Or taking a saber to a scar so thick and aged that it hasn't felt anything in years. And seeing and seeing the still bubbling wound that lies beneath it. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 27:01

Yeah. Picking away at that chickenpox scar that won't absolutely.

SPEAKER_01 27:08

Reaching into the wastebasket for the Kleenex that contain infected mucus so that you can continue to re-enjoy the same sickness that you heal from over and over again.

SPEAKER_02 27:18

Putting on the very pink stilettos that caused you to faceplant on a 14-year-old boy's desk, and the stinger at the end of the story is that years later, years later, I was at a teaching colleague's house. His son was there, had a friend over, they're part of the Salvation Army. And so the community is vast at large. And I know what vast means, Evelyn. I know. I really don't know why I tagged that second word in there. I think maybe just to delay, maybe just so I can regulate my heart rate as to where I'm about to go right now. And we're sitting having dinner, and this friend of the sun says to me, Did you teach at such and such a school? And I was like, Yeah, for like one year. And for or for maybe like a month and a half. And he says, I think you taught me French. And I went, Oh my gosh. And I said, Were you in so-and-so's class? And he said, Yep. And he goes, Hey, remember when you fell? And I'm talking, this was probably a solid 10 years after that happened.

SPEAKER_01 28:31

He said, You taught me French, but more than that, you taught me to laugh again.

SPEAKER_02 28:36

More than that, you taught me about the importance of rubber soled shoes. Right, exactly. Balance. Balance in all things. Oh my gosh. Well, Nick, thank you for for being vulnerable as usual. And thank you for a great story. That was a great story. I felt like I was there. I felt like I was sitting beside that eight-year-old who was just stymied at the fact that you weren't actually even singing. But I would have clapped. 10-year-old Nick, you stumbled so that I could walk. I I would have clapped. I guarantee that if I was sitting in that audience, I would have clapped and you would have been like, Great, now the dork that falls everywhere is clapping for me.

SPEAKER_01 29:16

I only wish there had been tape of it so that somewhere there'd be some they might be giants retrospective documentary. Where like maybe they're too nice to do this, but maybe they'd be talking about it and they'd be like, that guy was pathetic. Like, what the was the matter with that kid? This is why when I don't make music, this is why I don't make music.

SPEAKER_02 29:32

Yes. Do you have any pictures of you in the gi? Oh god, I don't I hope that I really hope so. I know your parents don't listen to this, but I really hope they do. Amber, can you make this happen somehow?

SPEAKER_01 29:43

The only reason we'd have a picture of the gi would be if my brother put it on. Let's just put it, let's just put it that way. That's how photographs work in my household. Let's just say that if my brother put it on, we'd have a photo of it. But I uh but if I but me, I could have worn it fucking to picture day every year and and we wouldn't have a photo of it in my home. Darn, okay. Well If BB had worn it, if BB had gotten into the the BB the dwarf boodle had gotten into a it'd be hanging in their house right now.

SPEAKER_02 30:12

In a shadow box on the all above the fireplace. No, there wasn't typically a hole in it for the tail. No, we got that added in after Nick was done wearing it. Bibi wore it better.

unknown 30:26

Amen.

SPEAKER_02 30:27

All right, Evelyn, I have to go to supervision. Will you take us home here? I will. Thank you for listening. Thank you, Nick, for sharing. This is uh just a little PSA. Wear proper footwear, everyone, and you know what? Lip syncing is cool. Don't don't take risks. But lip syncing is cool in 2026. And if you're good enough at it, you can even get a few likes on Instagram. This is Evelyn Blade. Thank you, folks. This is Evelyn the Canadian Blade signing off. And this is Nick, who just said thank you, and I talked over him, but I'll probably edit that out. Goodbye. Some neighbors are besties.

SPEAKER_01 30:59

Others quarrel bitterly. Stuck together through geography. One of us has nukes.

SPEAKER_02 31:07

And the other has toutes.

SPEAKER_01 31:09

It's American Canadian diplomacy.

SPEAKER_00 31:14

It's remote.