Armchair Anonymous: House Sitting

Buck Henkley
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Welcome to Armchair Anonymous. I'm Buck Henkley, and I'm joining my monster mash. Aw. Monster Mash is a cookie boy. Everybody, meet the cookie boy.

Monster mash. Today is crazy house sitting stories. One of these stories had us just absolutely howling out of our mind. It's impossible. So funny.

Monica
And it's so well told. It is. Left hook. Oh, my God. Is it good?

We're not gonna spoil. Not gonna spoil. But I do believe everyone is free to listen to this one. Just glancing at the four stories. Yeah.

Buck Henkley
Yeah, this one's good. Give it a shot. But it's been a while. You probably haven't listened in a couple months, so please enjoy. Crazy house sitting stories.

Speaker C
Come and go. Good times. Take em slow. My life.

Remember one thing you gotta know I'm gonna keep on shining.

Buck Henkley
Phoebe, can you hear us? Look at this fort. I know. It looks kind of like a wooden ship. Those are windows.

Monica
Yeah, it does. Can you hear us? I can. Can you guys hear me? Yes.

Buck Henkley
Could you hear us? Talking about your fort. It weirdly looks like a wooden ship from the 13 hundreds no, this is. The best that I could do, so I hope that it's incredible. Why do you have such a nice mic setup?

Speaker E
My fiance is a musician, so thank goodness he helped the situation. Yeah. Good on him. So the fact that you want to go by Phoebe is exciting because it makes me think this house sitting story potentially has legal ramifications, which is a great setup. Um, sure, we'll go with it.

Buck Henkley
Okay. So where in the world does this house sitting story happen? We are going to set the stage in the mountain west. A lot of states come to mind. You've got Utah, Colorado, Montana.

Speaker E
You're pretty good with geography. Oh, thank you so much. This was mid two thousands. I was very newly 18. So as you guys know, the prefrontal cortex is not doing its thing.

I'll take accountability for this, but I don't think I should have to. Oh, great. I was a pretty easy going kid. Very mature, held down a job, didn't get in really a lot of trouble. So my mom gave me a lot of flexibility, which did mean that I was able to get away with a lot.

And there's things that she's still hearing to this day. But because of this, she had a friend, and we'll call her Rachel. And Rachel needed someone to house it for her while she was going to be out of town for a couple of days. This sounded like a great option for me. I was still living at home.

I was still in my senior year of high school. So this was an opportunity to pretend to be an adult. Yeah. I would love this. It was amazing.

So I said, absolutely happy to do it. I should also introduce too, there is one more character to this story, and we'll call him Chandler. I see what's happening. Oh, you just got. As soon as I heard Rachel, I felt like she was playing to the choir.

Monica
Oh, my God. But I originally was gonna name Rachel Monica. And I was like, wait, I'm gonna talk to Monica. I can't do that. It would get confusing.

Buck Henkley
We can't have Monica as a character in this story. So Chandler was new in my life. He was a little bit older. If I had, like, a medium amount of processing ability, his was definitely lower. Sure, sure.

Speaker E
I head to Rachel's house for the first day. She's still there. She gives me the layout of the house. She encouraged me to eat or drink anything that I would like to other than the beers in the fridge. The responsible part of me was like, yeah, absolutely.

No problem. Rachel leaves. And the first night, as far as I remember, went really well, and how. Often was mom checking in on you? Was she calling, like, every 45 minutes to make sure everything was groovy?

Nothing. She was taking the night off as well. She was acting like an adult. Yeah. Full time trust.

And night two, I think I was just feeling a little bit more confident, a little more settled in. And wouldn't you know it, Chandler comes right over. I'm pretty sure I had permission for Chandler to come over. I think the vibe was just, he can't spend the night. However, as soon as Chandler got there, we were definitely cracking open the beers.

Oh, wow. Okay, sure. And really quick. Did you have a plan on how you were gonna replace them before the next day? Loosely, we would replace them.

Did we think about how did we think about how they were all different kinds of beers? Like, there was several different brands? No. Why would I think about that? So we're feeling good having a couple beers apiece, and I get this idea that inspires me to start investigating.

And I say, Chandler, let's snoop through Rachel's house. Let's just see what kind of secrets are in here. For sure. We start systematically going room to room, kind of looking through closets and drawers, under beds, and really did not find anything too interesting. Kind of winding down, like, okay, this is fun, but not really.

When we decide to look in the last room, which was the bedroom situation, it was in this room that I stumbled upon a box, seemingly unopened, that had inside of it something I had only ever heard of in fairy tales. I will say, when I say fairy tales, I do mean sex and the city. Okay. And inside of this seemingly unopened box was a rabbit vibrator. Sure.

Buck Henkley
Oh, God. And you know immediately what it is. Immediately. I've always heard about these things. They're apparently a big deal.

Speaker E
I was too broke financially and also scared to take myself to anywhere to buy something like that. Right. Where do you hide it? In your room? Exactly.

So many logistical issues. I'm just thinking to myself, I'm not thinking about ethics, but I'm like, this sounds fun, so I'll spare you the gory details. But the box was opened. Oh, Micah. What could be more exciting for a couple of 18 year olds than stumble upon on the rabbit and incorporate it into their brand new experimenting?

Buck Henkley
Right? We're adults. We're having some beers. This is such a mature thing to do. It's totally normal.

Speaker E
It's totally fine. The first consequence to kind of show up in my purview was the next morning when I awoke flooded with anxiety. And panic about. All right, what are we gonna do? Like, how are we gonna tie up some loose ends and make sure no one ever finds out about this?

I'm hungover. Did Chandler spend the night? He did spend the night. We just go into, like, action plan times. So we very respectfully decided we should sanitize this utensil.

And how else would you sanitize it but to put it in the dishwasher? Oh. Uh. Oh, boy. We threw Mister Rabbit in the dishwasher and then embarked on replenishing the beers.

Fortunately, Chandler did have a fake id. Oh, good. Thank God. Yeah, we need that. But we very soon found out that buying, like, six to ten six packs was incredibly expensive.

I had a list of all the beers we had drank. We were trying to replace all of them. Okay. Also, Chandler should have fucking shown up with a twelve pack of Bud light. What on earth?

Buck Henkley
Why have that thing you knew you were gonna drink? Exactly. He was. He's at fault a little bit. Yeah, I agree.

Monica
I think he took advantage of the situation. Oh, well, I wouldn't go that far. No, not of you, but of the situation where he's like, I could buy it and be romantic, but there's free beer, so of course I'm gonna do that. It is his fault. I've always felt that.

Speaker E
So I appreciate that validation. We probably spent about $60 and then we're like, we can't buy any more. If she realizes that one or two fat tires is not in there. It is what it is. We get back, we clean up the house.

I take lovely Mister Rabbit out of the dishwasher, make sure he's nice and dry, put him back into the packaging, seal it up, and then he goes back into his normal home. So house sitting ends, and I'm still feeling so anxious and so panicked. What is going to happen? The plan was for me to leave, and then Rachel and I would connect at a later time and she would pay my money out. This whole span of time, I'm just, like, sick with anxiety.

And I wish I could say guilt over impacting other people, violating their privacy. But I think primarily I was just really worried about getting caught. Of course. Yeah. It's a couple days later.

Rachel has reached out. We planned to meet in a public location. It was actually outside of my job at the time for us to exchange money. All of the anxiety symptoms are there. Upset stomach.

I'm sweating, I'm ruminating, I'm gassy. It's just a bad time. You're, like, crossing the border with kilo in your luggage. I am. I'm like, how do I look?

This woman in both of her eyes. Right now, knowing what you've shared, you've. Shared a lover, I'm really telling myself that it was brand new. Okay. Okay.

It turns out I didn't have to worry about any of that because Rachel showed up, did not look me in the eyes, paid me my money, and left. And I never heard anything else about it. I was never asked to house it again, but my mom never said anything to me about it. Never any fallout, I will say. My mom actually introduced me to armchair, and when I got Emma's email, I was like, all right, well, cat's out of the bag.

Phoebe
I gotta tell her. So I picked Mother's Day to let her know that. Oh, good. Did you go all the way? Did you tell her about the rabbit?

Tyler
Oh, yeah. Oh, wonderful. What a moment to share on Mother's Day. It was. It's nice.

Speaker E
She was shocked, which feels hopeful. I'm like, okay, so Rachel didn't know, but, Rachel, if you're out there, I'm really sorry. First of all, I want to recommend everyone. This is a Raymond Carver story. It's one of the.

Buck Henkley
The best short stories ever. This couple house sitting for another couple's apartment, and they just can't stop going in there and looking at all their stuff and just like, yeah. And it's so amusing and I think relatable. Yeah, we're curious creatures, curious cats. If she didn't look at you, I wonder if you didn't put the rabbit box back in its spot.

Monica
And so she felt embarrassed that you found it. Maybe she was just like, oh, no, she found this because you wouldn't be. Embarrassed that you drank some of her beer. I think that would be best case scenario. When I told my mom, she was like, what if she had cameras?

Speaker E
I was like, it was so early. It was before people recorded everything. So, I mean, I think, worst case scenario, she knows, and she didn't want to confront a high schooler for having sexual relations at her home. Well, and I'm afraid people will call me perverted for saying this, but it's like, I would be delighted to know that someone did that in my house. That's great.

Monica
Not take the vibrator. No one wants anyone to use their fucking vibrator. That's just. I mean, you're in a monogamous religion. I'm not judging, but that is disgusting.

Buck Henkley
Oh, I don't know. You can judge as a full grown woman. I would never well, also for you. You weren't. That's the whole thing.

Monica
You were using a new one. But the idea then that she would then use it after you've used it. No. It's tough. Okay.

Speaker E
There definitely wasn't consent involved. Correct. So I apologize for that. Correct, correct. But that's okay.

Buck Henkley
You know what? I think this is a win. This is a big win. Well, it is a win. Nothing happens.

Nothing happened. You had a great night with Chandler. Oh, even with. God damn it, Chandler. I mean, it's teenagers.

Speaker E
You don't really know what you're doing. But I will say it at least allowed me to talk to you guys and become closer with my mom. Now she knows one more of my secrets. Okay, wonderful. Wonderful.

Buck Henkley
Well, Phoebe, so nice meeting you. Wonderful to meet you guys as well. This is amazing. I do have to just say, monica, I am in the mental health field. And I have a lot of clients that struggle with fertility questions around having children.

Speaker E
And I recommend race to 35 all of the time. Oh, that is so nice. I appreciate that a lot. All right, well, be well. And thanks so much for telling us that.

Of course. Thank you guys so much. All right. Bye bye. Ready for ally?

Buck Henkley
Yeah. Hello. Is it working? We can hear your voice, but your face is still a mystery. I'm really keeping it anonymous, aren't I?

A little too anonymous. Okay, let's fix that. Hold on just a sec. Oh, there you are. Hello.

Phoebe
Hi. Wow. When we could only just hear you, it sounded like her. The movie. Oh, like Scarlett Johansson, robot talking to us, but like a really advanced robot.

Buck Henkley
Well, it'd be interesting to see if AI does trick us at any point. Yeah. Yeah. But you're clearly not AI docs. You might be interested in where I am right now because I think you visit this area quite a bit.

Phoebe
Austin, San Luis Obispo. You go to the dunes a lot, right? I have been to pismo, to those dunes. But my dunes are Glamis, south on the mexican border. But I do love that area.

Buck Henkley
But you're Cal Poly. Whenever I hear the dunes. I just assumed you meant pismo. You know, where I spent a lot more time right by you is Atascadero. Because when I very first came to California on a road trip with Aaron weekly our friend from Michigan was visiting his cousins that lived in Atascadero.

And we ended up spending tons of time there. Cool. Okay. Yeah. Okay, so you have a crazy house sitting.

And did it take place in San Luis Obispo? I have a house sitting disaster story. Oh, good. And it took place in Berkeley, California in 2012. Okay.

Twelve years ago. Berkeley hippies. Well. Oh. So I'm gonna start off strong with Monica here by telling her that I was house sitting for a college professor.

Monica
Fuck yes. Oh, I just got pqs. Yes, he was attractive. Oh, my God. Was he married?

Phoebe
He is now to another professor. They're both very attractive and very intelligent. Lots of good things to be said about them. So it's too bad that I had a disaster of a house sitting story to report back in 2012. My boyfriend at the time and I, this was our intro to befriend this young, cool professor, so we are pretty excited to have him ask us to house it.

Unfortunately, the reason why we are house sitting is because he had a last minute trip back to the east coast to bury his father. Okay. He had four cats and a dog for us to take care of. Lots of pets to keep track of. This happened Thanksgiving week.

We were house sitting from probably Tuesday to Sunday. Before we started house sitting, we went over to get instructions. We're there with Joe, the professor that we're house sitting for, and Joe has some interesting instructions. So the first piece of information he wanted to relay to us was, all of these cats are cats from the street. I lured them in here.

Buck Henkley
Oh, my God. If they ever get outside, they're never coming back. They're kind of captive cats. He very graciously adopted feral cats. And they smell freedom.

They're gonna sprint. Yeah, yeah. So he'd had them for a while, and it was a good deed of him to get them off the streets. But he did warn us, these are feral cats. If they get out, they probably won't come back.

Phoebe
Another thing that we were told about the cats is if you can't find them, they hide inside the couch. Know what I said? Inside. Not under, not behind. So worried about this story.

Monica
I wish that professor knew that all those cats are gonna eat his brain within 24 hours of death. He may know that. Yeah. But maybe he's okay with his nutrients going about, apparently. I think a lot of people feel good about that.

They do? Yeah. Yeah. And I get it. They're not judgmental of the cat for having a free meal.

Phoebe
The other piece of information that he gave us is, hey, don't mind the guys outside, across the street on the corner. They are there all day, every day. They're totally harmless and definitely drug dealers. Great. Heads up.

Buck Henkley
You don't need to call the cops on them. They're good. It starts off strong. Thanksgiving comes and passes, and then it is Black Friday, and it's just a stay at home day for us. We end up walking the dog and taking our time.

Phoebe
We stopped by one of those coffee shops and check out the neighborhood some more. We're probably gone for an hour and a half, maybe. And when we get back to the house, we open the front door, and the front living area is just full of smoke and the fire alarms going off. We do what anyone would do, and we rush in and we open up all the doors and windows, and we start throwing around pillows over our heads, trying to air out the place, turn off the smoke alarm. We're wondering if the fire department's going to show up.

We find the source of the smoke. It was me. I caused the fire. What was it? After I had showered, before we went out, I took my bath towel and I threw it on top of the furnace.

And I did check that the furnace was off, but I grew up with central heating. I didn't know that there was a pilot light. Yeah, right, right. The furnace was this box unit that was inside of the fireplace. The fireplace was no longer used as a fireplace, but that's where the heat source was.

That area has tile around it, and it meets carpet. So when this towel caught on fire, it ended up falling onto the carpet and the tile. The fire was out when we got there, but the carpet was smoldering and there was a big burn, probably about the size of this water bottle. So standard size water bottle against the tile there. Whatever flame retardant is in carpets did pretty well since it didn't just ignite the rest of the carpet.

Monica
Yeah, for real. Oof. Of course. We are freaking out. We're sitting on the back step, and this guy's at his dad's funeral.

Phoebe
Are we gonna call him before he gets home? Are we gonna wait till after he gets home? Or are we gonna somehow make miracles happen and fix everything before he gets home? Was it wall to wall carpet or was it a rug? Oh, no, it was wall to wall carpet.

Buck Henkley
Okay, so, yeah, we gotta tear the whole thing out. Main living area. And then we think, oh, God, the cats. We run inside. We have all these feral cats and open doors.

Oh, Jesus. Oh, my God. Yeah. So we close up the doors, we start searching all over the house. There are no cats to be found.

Phoebe
We're looking under furniture. We're looking in furniture. We flip over the couch. We're really looking in the couch. Like, just how deep do they burrow?

They're not in the couch. They're not in closets. They're not under furniture. The cats aren't there. No cats.

No cats. Four out of four cats missing. Oh, boy. Oopsies. So now not only do we have to tell him that I caught his house on fire, we also have to tell him I lost four out of his five pets.

Buck Henkley
Yes. Yes. 80%. This is so stressful. Oh, it was so stressful.

Phoebe
So we're looking all over the neighborhood for 2 hours. In retrospect, I don't know what our plan was. How are we going to capture these cats? No, you can't. Maybe they'll see one run away, but that's about it.

Yeah. So the friendly neighborhood drug dealers directed us to kitty city. Oh, okay. We weren't sure if they were messing with us or not, but sure enough, we follow their instructions, and we get to a vacant lot. And it was very obvious that we got to kiddie city because there had to have been, like, just two dozen cats hanging out.

So we're looking at the cats, and I don't think we would have even been able to identify them, right. Nor would we be able to capture them. It was hopeless. So we split up. I go back to the house.

Maybe the cats are going to come home to eat. I end up calling my mom, just sobbing like, mom, I really fucked up this time. And my mom was very, very sweet and pretty good at de escalating. But there's only so much that someone can say to someone who has caught a house on fire and lost four cows while the homeowner and pet owner is away dealing with his own tragedy. Yeah.

So I make it back to the house, and I'm going into the bedroom, probably just to collapse and defeat. And when I open the door, right in the middle of the room is a cat. One cat. One cat. We looked everywhere.

So I close the door back up, and I'm like, are there other cats in here? So I start looking in the closet. I start looking all over again. I'm like, okay, well, maybe the couch isn't the only furniture that the cats hide in. So I find a baseball sized hole in the box spring, and I take a flashlight and look in there.

And sure enough, one, two, three sets of eyes. Oh, my God. All four cats were there. My thought was, there's smoke going. They're gonna leave the house as soon as they can.

But no, they hid in the box spring. Thank goodness. That's a huge. It's Friday. Joe's supposed to be back Sunday.

We have that much time to figure out the rest of this mess. So it's probably like 03:00 p.m. at this time on black Friday, I start calling around for carpet repairs. I really don't think I'm exaggerating when I say that I made 40 calls until I got a hold of one man off of Craigslist who said, yeah, I can do that job. I'm busy tomorrow, and I'm on a job right now.

But if you don't mind a later late night repair, I can come tonight around eight. Oh, wow. Okay. That's not too bad. It's not midnight.

Yeah. And a late night carpet repair off of Craigslist. What could possibly go wrong? Yeah. Yeah.

So this guy gets there, and let's call him Dave. I don't know if we thought about this ourselves or if Dave instructed us to do this, but we actually found a carpet scrap in the basement. So the carpet that matched the carpet inside, or at least we thought it did, Dave came and gave us the bad news that this carpet's not going to work. This carpet's been in here for years. There's foot traffic damage.

There's five pets in here. It's not going to match up. It's going to stick out like a sore thumb. But I can take a piece of carpet from somewhere else in the house. I can put your scrap of carpet in that place where it's less noticeable, and then in this main area where it gets all this natural light, we can put that other piece of carpet and it'll blend in a little better.

And he did it. He sewed it right up. He did an amazing job. You could not tell. Really?

Monica
That's genius. Oh, I would not expect that outcome. Well, right off the bat, it was this lighter piece. So just imagine 222 year olds going outside, grabbing some dirt, rubbing it into the carpet, vacuuming it up, and soiling it again. We were taking sandpaper to it.

Phoebe
We did that until it matched the surrounding carpet. Oh, wow. Congratulations. I'm impressed. And it worked.

So perhaps the craziest part of this story, that guy refused our payment. He is working on Black Friday at night, out of pity. Would not take. Because he loved. Cause he loved cats so much.

Monica
Like, did you tell him about the cats? He had applied to Berkeley. Maybe he knew the professor. He just was a really nice man who was like, these poor kids really need help. Wow, what a saint.

Phoebe
He was a hero of the story. The other hero of the story was the boyfriend, who I was going through all this with, because he was incredibly helpful at figuring out the rest of the damage. He's just so, so, so resourceful. We were able to fix up the rest of the mess. There was another miracle that happened where Joe called and asked if we could stay an additional three days.

We have three more days to air out the house and fix up the rest of the damage. Because what I didn't mention is it wasn't just the carpet. The tile and the furnace also had surface damage. So we uninstalled the furnace, turned off the gas, detached it from the gas line, brought it outside, put it on a tarp, sanded it down, resurfaced it with the appropriate heat resistant enamel. This guy's a stud.

Buck Henkley
You were banging. And then we had to do the same thing with the tile. Just resurface it. It looked too good. So again, we're soiling it.

Phoebe
And aesthetically, you could never tell anything happened. Congratulations. You guys would also be ready to walk right into the film and television business, because there are people who age and they make sets that have to look lived in. So there's a whole science to aging things. Yeah.

Monica
Taking a bat to a couch. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So you guys would have been ready to start. Yeah. So, to my knowledge, Joe never found out.

Buck Henkley
Wonderful. This is great. Yeah. Great job. Love to flatter ourselves and think Joe's listening, but I think it's low probability.

If it's the four cats and one dog, that would be the giveaway. And that he's married now to also a professor, that's a giveaway, too. I think he would be delighted at your resource. He'd be proud of you. This is impressive.

So the only thing you really screwed him over on is he was missing the towel, I guess. Oh, yeah. You know, I think he could probably get over that. You didn't think to just replace it all and then say, I think I would have been like, this horrible thing happened, but we've replaced everything. No, this was better.

Phoebe
So my parents and I were talking about this the other day. They're like, well, do you really think that he didn't have any idea that something happened? I was like, no, he definitely didn't. Because a few weeks later, he referred us. We house that for another teacher.

Buck Henkley
Oh, wonderful. Yeah. You got away with it. Yeah, it's all good. This is a big victory.

Yeah. I love it. Big win, big test. And you rose to the occasion. Yeah.

Phoebe
Now I got to tell it. Yes. Oh, that was tasty. Thank you for. Thank you, Allie.

Buck Henkley
That was great. Thank you. And I do want to mention, Stuart and I did not end up remaining together. But we did have a very nice friendship after some years apart. And he actually ended up passing away a year and a half ago.

Oh, no. In a freak plane accident. He was a pilot in one plane. The other plane hit him. It was just devastating.

Phoebe
And I've been wanting to write down this story to share with his mom. And by having to write down the story for this prompt, I finally stopped procrastinating this. And I finally wrote down the story. Oh, God, that's lovely. So now she's going to hear it for the first time.

Buck Henkley
And I called him a stub before I even knew that. That's right. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, it's so nice meeting you, allie. It's so nice to meet you, too.

Phoebe
Thanks for giving me the opportunity to share my disastrous story. We loved it. All right, take care. Bye.

Buck Henkley
We are supported by betterhelp. It feels like a lot has happened this year. There's barely even. We went to India for by Georgia. We sure did.

Monica
Lots to process already. Yeah. But even with so much going on, it's important to slow down, take a minute to reflect on yourself and make adjustments. And if you need a little help with that, I can't recommend therapy enough. We are both in therapy.

We are. We proselytize all the time, talk about it every day. Couldn't function without it. If you want to give therapy a try, check out betterhelp. It's entirely online and designed to be convenient and flexible.

Buck Henkley
All you have to do to get started is fill out a brief question. Plus, you can switch therapists whenever for no additional charge. So take a moment for yourself. Visit betterhelp.com dax today to get 10% off your first month. That's betterhelp help.com dax.

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Tyler
All right, ready for Melanie. Melanie. Melanie? Hello. Hi.

Speaker C
Yes. Is it Melanie? Melanie? Why'd you think that? Well, because Rob told me it was.

Monica
All kinds of weird stuff. I'm dyslexic. I have to defer to people. Don't do that again. That was a cheap shot.

Melanie is a classic way. Melanie, we got it now. Where are you, Melanie? In my closet in Omaha, Nebraska. Omaha, Nebraska?

Buck Henkley
I don't think we've ever had an Omaha, Nebraska. Probably not. It sounds new to me. Made famous by Omaha steaks. Lot of beef around here.

A lot of beef. Are there a lot of men there? Well, there's a lot of cattle, but also men. Yeah, farmers. Oh, yeah, farmers.

A lot of cowboy boots. Sure. But Omaha is the city. Well. And Lincoln.

Lincoln, Nebraska. I've driven through it a couple dozen times. Have you ever driven through it in your Lincoln? No, but that would be great with Lincoln. Yes, that would be ideal.

On our way to the land of Lincoln, Illinois. Okay, so you have a crazy house sitting story. I do. I have house sat and dog sat a ton and back before I had my own home, I would probably have, like, 15 families at a time who would schedule me out and try and get me for their summer vacation. Were you with an agency?

Like, how did you cobble together that many clients? Great question. I traveled to Malawi, Africa. Every summer, I help run a nonprofit there. When I didn't have money, I threw it on the Internet.

Speaker C
I was like, hey, everyone, if you want me to dog sit or house sit for you, I would love to. It's gonna help me get overseas. So that really took off. I mean, everybody told their relatives and. Friends, word of mouth, classic marketing, right?

So this particular instance was seven months. So the family that I was house sitting for got a job in Europe, and I was like, that sounds really cool. Can I move in, though? I don't want to just come back and forth. And they're like, yeah, of course, move in.

So I moved in at the beginning of 2014, and the story takes place in June. Was it a nice house? Was it like a big upgrade from where you were living? Yes. What wasn't fun was mowing the lawn, but I got used to.

In Omaha, there's. The college World Series is in June. And so that kind of brings us to where this started. And I was a part of some young adults group through my church, and we were meeting regularly, and I showed up on Wednesday, and we had a speaker, and the speaker was a guy that was biking across the United States to all the major sporting events in an effort against human sex trafficking. Kind of abstract, but okay.

Yeah. And I don't remember at all why or how he was bringing awareness to it. Yeah. And then also just link to the sporting event. Interesting.

Monica
It's really interesting. Peculiar game plan, but alas. Yeah. Well, I've heard it can be pretty bad at sporting events. And are we calling just prostitution with adult sex trafficking?

Buck Henkley
I just wanna be clear on what do we even know? Did he mean minors being held captive? I believe it was minors. Specifically on IAD. That's where Omaha is.

Speaker C
So it's like a big road across the United States. So he shows up to our group and he does, like his whole spiel, and it's over. We're all standing outside, and someone is like, hey, where are you staying tonight? And he's like, oh, I can't. And we go, have you seen the weather?

Because it's like a tornado warning tonight. He's like, oh, I'll be fine. I'll be fine. And one of the guys is like, hey, someone should, like, host him. Oh, no, nobody volunteers until I volunteer.

Buck Henkley
Sure. We got this house. The person who says someone should host him has to be the one to host him, right? I agree. And I know who it was, and I would say he should have hosted.

Speaker C
So I was like, I've got beds. You're a complete stranger, but I'm sure it'll be great. So I give him the directions to the house, and I get there and he bikes over. So he's like, 30 minutes later. And I'm like, hey, your bed is downstairs in the basement.

There's laundry if you want to do your laundry. Feel free to take a shower. Make yourself at home. It's late. I have to go to bed.

I gotta work early in the morning. Were you hoping for a meet cute secretly? No, he wasn't attractive. Okay, got it. To me.

Monica
To someone. Yes. So I go upstairs, get ready for bed, and I lay down, and I immediately am like, what am I doing? This is really dumb. And so, in my fear of getting murdered, I text my older sister, who's twelve years older and much wiser than me, and I say, hey, this is what I did in case I don't make it.

Phoebe
Love you. Love the family. Oh, God. Got a rando in the basement, right? And she doesn't answer.

Speaker C
It's like, well, you know, here's to open. Wake up in the morning, and I get up super early. Cause I'm anxious because someone's in the house. I get ready for work, and I hear him leaving at, like, 06:00 a.m. feels really early.

And so I popped my head out and I was like, hey, are you leaving already? And he was like, yeah, thanks so much. And, like, b lines it to the door. Okay. And I was like, this is weird.

I just let you stay. So I follow him out because his bike is in the backyard behind the fence. I'm like, okay, well, thank you so much. Like, good luck. Thank you.

Yeah, like, you're doing such a good thing. And I wave him goodbye. And he was like, yeah, maybe I'll catch you down at a game. And I was like, maybe. And so, like, he bikes away, and I go, well, I didn't get murdered.

We're good. I go downstairs, I take the sheets off the bed, and it's like, everything's fine. And when I tell you I never thought of this kid again, I didn't. I was like, we're good. Yeah.

Two months go by, and I move out, and the family comes back. It was probably a week later. I get a text from the dad, let's call him Brad. And he's like, hey, Melannie, did you buy chain? Leave a pair of men's shorts and, like, an orange cut off tank shirt in the hamper.

And I immediately was like, no, I don't wear the color orange. There's no way that's me. And I was like, no. Do you think it could be your brother? Like, he came over and fixed something while you were gone?

Is it your son's? And he was like, no. You've just not thought it might be the bicyclist. It's not that you're covering. Totally forgot.

We should name the bicyclist. Let's call him John. A week later. Brad again. Hey, Melanie.

We found this grungy old wallet. It's empty, but we found it in such a random spot downstairs. Like in the cleaning supplies. Do you know whose that is? And I was like, no, honestly, that's really weird.

Again, do you think it's like your son's or your son's friend? I'm as confused as you are. Then another week goes by, and this is where he gets serious. He's like, hey, I just went downstairs to get out a pair of Chuck Taylor's that I had gotten for Christmas that I specifically put in the box deep in the basement under the steps. I got it out knowing that I want a fresh pair of shoes after being away overseas for seven months.

And inside the box are used old Chuck Taylor's. Where are my shoes? And who has been in this house? Oh, my God. His tone has changed.

I was like, oh, my God. I fucked up. And you were. At this point, you now realize all this. I know, okay?

It's all coming back to me. And I was like, oh, I don't even know how to tell you this. I let a complete stranger sleep in your basement. Yeah. And he was livid.

His wife was like, I'm so glad you're alive. But also, that was dumb. And I was like, I know. I feel very stupid. And you'd think it ends there.

Monica
Oh, no. So Brad is, like, kind of fired up. So he's like, give me his name. Give me the organization. I'm gonna find him.

Speaker C
I didn't even have his last name, just a first name. And this organization, I don't know if it was real. His foundation as a sex trafficking warrior. Out on a bicycle connected to the sporting community. When you say it, it really sounds even worse.

And so I give him the info, and he finds him on Instagram and Facebook. Oh, wow. In the Instagram photos, he is wearing these. Chuck Taylor. Sure.

And he is wearing clothing that belong to Brad. And he is wearing accessories that we hadn't even clocked as missing. Oh, boy. So this guy, ransack. Yeah, he revamped his whole wardrobe, but everything looked normal.

Monica
Like, it didn't look disheveled or anything when you look. Wow. This is so out of my character. I was, like, meticulous about their house because I wanted it to look exactly the way it looked when I got there. And so things were not out of order.

Speaker C
And I even went down that morning. Everything was fine. So he finds all this stuff and he's starts writing it down. And he has calculated that this guy John stole probably $500 worth of stuff from his house. I'm just feeling even worse.

And the guilt is just escalating. So he messages him and he's like, hey, man, I know what you did. I need all my stuff sent back or I need dollar 500. And John ignores him, doesn't answer that. Just kind of like adds fuel to the fire.

So Brad's like, okay, well, let's do some more research. And he finds other families that this guy stayed with. Oh, wow. So he starts reaching out and is like, did this guy stay with you? Has anything gone missing?

Like starts all these conversations with families and then he goes back and he says, hey, john, I've been in contact with these people where you stayed. We're all aware of what you're doing. You need to come forward. And he doesn't. He's ignoring it.

It takes Brad threatening John with the organization. He's like, I'm going to reach out to your organization and tell whoever you're working for that this is what you're doing and it's wrong. Finally he gets the hint and he is apologizing. But we kind of give up because there's no money, there's nothing getting sent back. And I'm like, hey, I'll give you $500.

I feel awful. How can I rectify this? Brad's like, no, that's not the point. And lo and behold, months go by and John Venmo's Brad, $500. No way.

Buck Henkley
Did not see that coming. None of us did. This is like good family. Brad's like, if you would have needed those shoes, you could have said, hey, Melannie, I really need a new pair of shoes. She would have messaged me and I would have said, give them away.

Speaker C
Sure, it all worked out in the end. Were rightly so. Very angry with me. Well, hold on. Rightly so.

Buck Henkley
So Brad, sure, he's a wonderful guy, but also, my God, let go of the all stars. You have made so much work for yourself. I know, I agree. And you got $500 and the guy's still the same person. And you're feeling bad, you're ruminating on it and grumpy.

I mean, that's a lot of power to give. He made himself a much bigger victim by his reaction, probably. Anyways, they couldn't have been too mad at me because they had me back a year and a half later to do another seven month stint where I saved their house from a fire. An electrical fire started. Oh, my God.

Speaker C
Their basement flooded three times. So then I took care of that. We weathered a historically bad hailstorm that totaled their car. Oh, took care of that. That year they had three bats, and one of them was in the room I woke up in, so I had to get tested for rabies, so we're even.

Monica
Oh, my God. Oh, wow. This was karma going like, you want some real problems. I know, but she had to deal with all of them. Yeah, that's true.

Brad probably feels like that. Like this is karma. For the last time, Melanie. Oh, okay. He may.

Speaker C
I doubt it. Melanie. Oh, wow. Well, you're so sweet. That's the headline of the story.

Monica
And trusting. I'm too trusting. And you didn't have to feel as guilty as you did. I agree. You should not feel guilty about this.

This is all Brad's fault. You just go like, yeah, this shit happened and everyone's alive. I understand. He felt violated. He didn't know how to handle it.

Speaker C
Yeah, that's a fair assessment. But it all worked out. Melannie, you're delightful. I kind of want you to house it for us. Me, too.

Anytime. I have traveled far and wide. Oh, my God. This is great. Wonderful.

Buck Henkley
Well, lovely meeting you. Thanks for telling us that story. Nice to meet you guys, too. Oh, sweetie, of course you'd let her watch your house.

What is it? Just trying not to be so mad. If Brad was my husband, I would be like, she feels so bad. You have to stop this. Sure.

Monica
Like, I think I'm divorcing you. Right? Ready? For Brad. His terrible whole sitting story is when he let someone and his Chuck Taylors were gone.

Buck Henkley
Tyler? Hi. Yes. How you doing? I'm doing really well.

Tyler
It's really great to meet you right now. Yeah. Where are you at? I'm in Palatine, Illinois, right next to. Where I grew up.

Buck Henkley
Oh, Robbie, Rob said. That's right where he grew up. Neighbors. I went to high school at Fremd, where? Friend.

Frem. Friend. Do you know Frem to high school? I don't think I have even passed that one. Okay.

Did you move here as an adult? Once I married my wife, we moved to Palatine, Illinois. Neighbor. To wabiwab. Yeah.

Maybe one day you'll have children that'll end up going to friend. Bad, terrible name. Yeah, it's like, is it friend? But did they misspell last name? William Friend?

It's terrible. How did you spell that? Wabi. Wab. F r e m d.

Tyler
Fuck that. Terrible. Okay, Tyler, please. You have a house sitting story for us? Yes, I do.

So this takes place in Sugar Grove, Illinois. That's really close to Naperville, Illinois, if you're familiar with that. I know it very well. Bob Odenkirk's from there. Perfect.

So Sugar Grove's just 15 minutes west. I was asked to watch my best friend's family's house, and I was also to watch their family dog while they were gone. They would be gone for a full week. I've watched their house quite a few times, so there was nothing new about this. And the first few days went completely fine.

And it was Thursday night that things went a little bit different. I went to sleep with movie on. It was late, and it was approximately 02:00 a.m. i had woken up and to explain a little bit of the layout of the house, it is an open concept living room, and it's a conjoined dining room and kitchen. And I had the dog with me on the couch.

So I wake up, and I see that the dog is kind of going crazy. She's just a small shih tzu. She's barking up a staircase. And I just slowly turn around, and there is just glass shrapnel all over the ground of the dining room. There's dishware all over.

I look at the appliances in the kitchen, and where the dishwasher is, it's just pulverized. The door is, like, off the hinge. Oh, my God. Hold on. We were just handed photos of the scene.

Buck Henkley
I don't think the listener can even imagine the amount of destruction. Oh, my God. That has happened in this kitchen. And I'm immediately curious how the fuck you slept through whatever happened. It's like a demo.

Monica
It feels like it was. Yes. They were demoing the kitchen. Oh, my God. Okay, wait.

Buck Henkley
Okay, so the dog's freaking out. You look over. There's shit everywhere. I'm trying to comprehend what I'm seeing. I had come from a very deep sleep, and I did kind of sleep through whatever the initial noise was.

Tyler
And I'm looking at the kitchen, and I'm thinking to myself, what caused this? I smell some gas in the air. Maybe there was an earthquake that came through because I could hear some rumblings going on. Yeah, that's what it looks like. Well, like a 9.6.

Monica
Yeah. I can't really think very well, but at the same time, I'm like, I gotta call my friend Tim. I give him a call. They're in New Jersey. Hold on a second.

Buck Henkley
Tyler, what on earth are you gonna tell them? But Tim's the friend. Yeah. Okay. Yep.

Looking at these pictures again. We're gonna have to somehow post them or something. There's no explanation. You gotta have an explanation before you call Tim. Right?

Tyler
So that's the part that is really funny. This voicemail that I left because they're in New Jersey, so they're definitely asleep at this time. And I'm like, hey, Tim, I hope that your vacation's going well. Things are getting weird here, so if you can give me a call back, that would be great. Thanks.

Speaker E
Bye. Oh, my God. It's like a poltergeist. Okay. I smell gas.

Tyler
Oh, no. Did I leave the oven on? Did I blow up the oven and destroy the kitchen? But a moment later, I hear a knock at the door. A little unsettling.

Cause it's really early. And I just make my way to the door, and I'm like, oh, it's a neighbor. They're probably checking. They probably heard the explosion. I open the door, and I can see his face is a little concerned.

He's like, hey, you know that there's a car in your house right now? And I'm like, what do you mean? Like a car went through your house?

Buck Henkley
Give me that other picture. Oh, my God. Oh, my God. Leah, look in the garage. There's a fucking car buried in the corner.

Okay. Okay. Immediately, I just go like, man, that is so much better. I thought I blew up the kitchen. This is way better.

Tyler
He's like, no, no, it's a car through your garage. And so we can see that the. The red and blue lights are coming into the subdivision. I go inside, I grab a shirt. I grab the dog, and I wait for the ambulance to approach.

The fire chief comes to me, and he's like, are you all right? Is everything fine? I'm like, well, things are damaged in there, but I'm fine. He's like, we gotta make sure that the house isn't compromised in any way. So he goes in, and as I'm standing outside, another neighbor comes over to me, and he's like, hey, are you the homeowner?

I'm like, no, I'm actually just house sitting. And he's like, well, I'm the one that called 911. I was awake at the time of the collision. So I ran outside, and I can see that there's a young guy coming out of the wall of the home. And he looks like he's about to run.

And so I tell him, stop right there. We need to wait for the cops. To come. And moments later, my buddy Tim finally gives me a call back. And this is where I finally get a chance to go around the house and check the damage.

As we put it together later, what the driver did was he came from the entrance of the subdivision. It's a curved road, and it goes into a straight. Instead of taking that straight, he went through the curve. He went over an empty grass lot, and he went over a curb, a road, another curb, up into the yard and through the bushes and nailed the one car garage that's attached to the. So he blew through the side of the garage.

Buck Henkley
Not the garage. Yes. Oh, my fucking God. Right? Yeah.

Like, right. There's a hole behind that bush. Okay. He made it through that first wall, and he obliterated all the tools that are in there. That was mostly what the garage was used for.

Monica
Climbed out of the wall. The car stops its impact at the final wall, which is the shared wall between the kitchen and that garage. So that destroyed the oven and threw all that trout through the kitchen. I can't believe you did not wake up. How on earth, Tyler, did you not wake up?

A car literally drove through a house. That's a joke. You'd say to your partner, like, you sleep so deep a fucking truck could run through here and you wouldn't even wake up. I even wonder if the dog hadn't been barking, if you would have just woke up the next day. I usually tell the story as I had the movie up very loud.

Tyler
There was an action movie going on. Okay. Watching die hard. God. Wow.

Speaker E
Wow. Holy Fuck. The fire chief comes back out. He's like, hey, do you have anywhere you can stay for the night? And I'm like, no.

Tyler
The dog's got all her stuff in there, so I gotta stay here. He's like, okay, that's fine if you're fine with a hole in the house. We cut the gas, so that should be fine for tonight at least. The next morning comes. He did inform me that an inspector would be coming in to check the house to see how it was compromised.

The inspector comes, he goes down into the basement. He comes back upstairs, and he's like, we're going to wait for the homeowner so I can speak to him and go through all the insurance stuff that needs to be done. And so he leaves. About a couple hours later, Tim's dad finally arrives. They have cut their trip short, obviously, to come deal with this.

Yep. He actually came back by himself. He left the rest of the family in New Jersey to finish the vacation. He just wanted to get a jump on all of the insurance stuff. And he was just so overwhelmed.

He comes in, and he's so happy that I'm fine. I was sleeping on the couch. Yeah, he was going another 30 miles an hour. Still wouldn't have woke up. The shrapnel definitely hit the back of the couch.

So he was just so happy that everything was fine on my end. But as we're reminiscing, he's like, do you smell some gas? I'm like, they said they cut the gas. We go outside, and there were many people that day just driving by, looking at the hole in the house. So the police officer was there.

We flag him down, and we're like, hey, we smell some gas. Right away, he calls the fire department. The fire department that was there earlier in the morning, they come back, they check, and they see that the inspector that was there, he had thought that the gas was still on, so he turned it off. But he really just turned it back on. Oopsies.

Buck Henkley
That's a mistake that shouldn't really be able to be made, because a gas line, if the thing's in line with the gas pipe, it's on, and if it's perpendicular, it's off. That's how they're made. Yeah. I was in my mid twenties, so I didn't know how any of that really worked. We have learned a week later about what happened to the driver.

Tyler
The driver's blood alcohol level was twice the legal limit, and he had cocaine in his system. Oh, he should have been more alert. Should've seen that curve coming. They found a scale in his car, and they had said that he was probably connected to some of the local drug dealing around the area. He actually lived just a few doors down.

That is probably where he would have ran off to, but he did not have a great time that evening. Oh, wow. So he got arrested. Yeah. Oh, boy.

Buck Henkley
Well, hopefully he ended up in treatment. That's a pretty good low. It's a good story in an AA meeting. Did you get eyes on him that night? I saw the kid just sitting there on the curb, and the cops were over him, just watching him.

Tyler
So he was fine from what I could see. What I learned later on was I heard rumbling happening what I thought was an earthquake. That was actually the kid trying to. Get reversed out of, for sure. Yeah.

Buck Henkley
You gotta get out of there. Yeah. My God. Let's go. Wow.

Are we allowed to post those pictures? Do you think the homeowner would be fine with that? Yeah. Yeah, I think we gotta post those. I don't think anyone would realize how insanely damaging this event is.

How funny, though, you're trying to make exploding. Trying to make sense of the kitchen that literally just self detonated. I'm really sad we didn't have the voicemail. We kept that voicemail that I had left to my buddy Tim for about a year or two, but when he changed phones, he forgot to keep it. Damn it.

Tyler
We listened to it so many times, and every time it's just like something weird is going on. I can't comprehend what I'm seeing, but it's not good. I'm so glad I saw it in the order I did, too. This great. Oh, Tyler, that's a fucking.

Buck Henkley
That was a home run of a story. Yeah, man. All the drawers are thrown out. The island's been shoved forward. But it would be so confusing.

Monica
Cause it's not like a robbery. There is no way to piece together what could have possibly. Your explanation was smart, which is like, oh, there was a gas explosion. It does look like everything exploded off the wall. And that far wall is where the oven is, so it's gone.

Tyler
I can't even tell that it's an oven anymore. And I classically do leave an oven on once in a while, and my wife finds that. So it wouldn't be beyond me to do that. The oven is gone. It's nowhere.

Monica
I love that you were relieved that it was a card, that. Oh, I would have been too. Me, too. That wasn't my fault. Oh, thank God.

Buck Henkley
Just a car drove through the house. What a blessing. Very Stephanie Tanner from full house. She drove the car through the home. Into the home.

Speaker C
Yeah. On coke and drunk? No, unfortunately. Just childish, old fashioned way. Yeah.

Buck Henkley
Oh, well, Tyler, thank you so much for sharing that story with us. That was great. Of course, if you wouldn't mind, I would love to give a shout out to my wife. She was the original armchair that got me into listening to you all a couple years ago. She was listening for this prompt specifically.

Tyler
I said, if there is a house sitting, I will submit it and I will try to tell it. And what's her name? Her name is Zoar. Well, thank you, Zoar, for turning Tyler onto the show, and I'm so delighted you guys. Listen, thank you so much for listening to the story.

I appreciate it. All right, take care, brother. Thank you. Oh, that was a great way to end. No kidding.

Monica
Loved that. Really got me. Yeah. Really. These pictures.

Buck Henkley
That fucking car just buried sideways in the garage. You're having a hard time understanding that because it looks. Cause you're seeing this car. Well, no, but you don't see the hole. So it looks like that was a car in the garage that somehow turned on and went sideways and parked sideways.

Monica
Yeah. And you know, this garage is only like 10ft wide. Exactly. And there's a whole car in there. Yeah.

I couldn't comprehend that. I was not seeing the bumper sticking out of the kitchen wall in these other photos. Yeah. Oh yeah, that fucking oven is gone. Oh, funny.

Yeah, we'll definitely post that. All right. Oh, that was a blast. Fun. I love you.

Love you. Do you wanna sing a tune or something? We have a theme song. Oh, okay, great. We don't have a theme song for this new show, so here I go, go, go.

Buck Henkley
We're gonna ask some random questions and with the help of armchairs, we'll get some suggestions on the fly rhyme, fish on the fire rind dish. Enjoy.

Armchair Anonymous: House Sitting

Primary Topic

Episode Summary

Main Takeaways

Episode Chapters

1: Introduction

2: Phoebe's Story

3: Reflections

Actionable Advice

About This Episode

People

Content Warnings:

Transcript