S1 E9 - Breaking News: Us...Again!

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Judy, we've talked about a lifetime of Mayhem and the unluckiest kid and our last episode, just all these bizarre stories that can only happen to me and us and you. And some of this has uh followed us into adulthood. We've got more stories we're gonna share today. Some of them go back and some of them are from now.

SPEAKER_01 0:17

It's funny how sometimes everything we do ends up in the news. And for sure, Lifetime of Mayhem was really a lot about you, but it bled out to the rest of the family. It seemed how little it was would always end up in the newspaper or on the news.

SPEAKER_00 0:33

Dad puts up Christmas lights and Channel 10 comes over, and the next thing you know, our Christmas light displays on the 10 o'clock news. Every little thing that we do ends up being a little bit magnified or publicized, or and the bad stuff we just can't get away with. There's one other story from the week from hell, real quick, that I want to share with you that I forgot to tell on our last episode, and that is the beehive story where mom and I are in the backyard. This is the week where everything just went wrong. Mom and I got rear-ended, I hit the girl on the bike, all the fluids leaked out of the Porsche, we had a problem with the weed whacker. I still think I'm leaving something else out. But the beehive was another story that happened that exact same week. And normally that wouldn't be that big of a deal. Mom and I are in the backyard, and mom looks up and goes, What Donnie, what is that? And I look up there and it's this like perfect little thing. And I'm like, wow, what is what you know, and you know how I feel about bees? I think we hey, listen, we talked about getting knocked out running into a tree at Lake Metagoshi. So if Donnie sees a beehive, this is not a good thing. And and then immediately I'm like, oh my God, is that a beehive? And mom's like, oh yeah, Donnie, that that cooked house be a beehive. And I go, okay. And then my mom's like, Do you think you can take it down? And I'm like, oh no, no, this is not a this is not a Donnie takedown. So what does mom do? Mom calls, and dad's out of town. Mom calls the police department. 911, what's your emergency? We're having a beehive. Can you imagine the cops going, what? So anyway, a cop comes over. It was actually one of dad's friends, but he comes over and he takes down the beehive. However, because it got reported, along with the cops showing up, was a photographer for the My Nut Daily News. So, you know, again, beehive. That's is that a breaking news story? Well, it ended up making the front page of the My Nut Daily News. The next day, the beehive is on the front page of the newspaper. Judy, that's the kind of stuff that only happens to us.

SPEAKER_01 2:38

I do have another story about uh the newspaper. And you're right, it didn't have to be something, but only in North Dakota do beehives, other things, do the TV stations show up. But I'm in Grand Forks and somebody gives me a gift of these hideous, and it and they were hideous earmuffs that were like pink bunnies. And I'm like, and it is like freezing outside, totally, totally cold. So I put these bunny earmuffs on. I'm like, okay, I just got to walk to one class today, and it is so cold. I'm like, I'm nobody's gonna notice I have the earmuffs on. Well, I leave the dorm and all of a sudden somebody yells, nice muffs! I'm like, wow. I'm like, I am not even out of the door. 10 minutes. And then I'm over by the building that I'm supposed to be in. And some guy with a camera jumps out of his car, starts following me. So I start walking a little faster with my bunny ears. Sure enough, he starts snapping photos and he says, Hey, he goes, I'm here with the Grand Forks Herald. And I am on the front page of the newspaper with these stupid earmuffs that I didn't want anybody to see me in. And here it was, and then I had people whose moms in Minnesota were clipping it out. Oh, hey, we saw your friend. You know what I mean? On the front page of the newspaper. Embarrassing.

SPEAKER_00 3:55

Judy, the paparazzi following you around back in the day, and you end up on the front page of the Grand Forks. Yeah. So this is not only my knot, this ends up being statewide.

SPEAKER_01 4:04

One thing that I thought was also kind of interesting is it was really hard to leave North Dakota. You know, I went to college in Grand Forks for a part of the time I went to college in Bismarck. You know, and I was I was a baby when I left. Uh, you know, I was left Minot to go to Bismarck at 17. I had just turned 70, two months into 17 in the middle of the year, and uh then I go to Grand Forks. But it was so sad to leave, also kind of weird that I left North Dakota because I had no intentions of leaving. But that same car dealership that I worked for in Minot, the one where I had was driving with the owner's boat, zooming down Broadway. Yep, the boat all about me. I'm zooming down. I he asked me to deliver a car to Denver, which I would do from time to time. But this one was a red Corvette. And I'm like, oh, okay, I'll totally drive that red Corvette down to Denver and I'll apply for jobs while I'm there. Well, of course, I get the job and I'm I'm excited but nervous to leave home. Our dad came down to help the transition, help me move down there in my Honda Accord. I'm driving to work. Before I get in the car, my dad yells out, hey, drive careful, blah, blah, blah. And I'd never really driven on the freeway other than in Miami that one time, which wasn't a good thing for me. But I am driving on I-25. I'm driving down the road, smoking, reading the lady's bumper sticker in front of me. And all of a sudden, boom, I hit four cars on the freeway. I am on the traffic report. This is my first day going to work. And I thought I was all important, big job, whatever. Well, I wipe out four cars on the freeway. I get a ride to work in a tow truck two and a half hours late with my car strapped to the back.

SPEAKER_00 5:44

First day on the new job, you show up in a tow truck with your car strapped to the back. What did they think?

SPEAKER_01 5:50

Well, probably here comes bad news. Isn't there a time where you were in Minneapolis and you were applying for a job somewhere, and then the guy took out some scissors or something and wanted to take a hair sample?

SPEAKER_00 6:01

Yeah, this is Orlando. It wasn't in Minneapolis. I was in Orlando, and I was in between jobs, and I was going to take a security job for the time being. And not as a security guard, but as selling security systems. And I'm at the interview and I'm killing it, and everything's going fantastic. And I'm, I think I'm going to get the job offer right on the spot. And all of a sudden the guy goes, hang on a second. He comes back and he's got a little baggie and he's got scissors. And I'm like, what's this all about? And he goes, Hey, if you don't mind, I'm going to take a little hair sample. And I'm like, what? He goes, yeah, I'm just going to clip your hair a little bit in the back. And I'm like, for what? And he goes, drug test. I go, drug test. And then I'm kind of thinking, okay, what have I done recently? And again, you know, back in the day, partaking a little bit. Nothing bad, just, you know, a little bit of weed or marijuana or whatever. But, you know, that's going to show up in a drug test. And I guess they don't want you to sell security systems that if you've got, you know, weed in your system. So listen, the guy clipped it. He put it in the baggie. I left. I never contacted them again. They didn't contact me for probably obvious reasons. And that was the end of that job. That was kind of a little bit of a clue that the next job interview I went to, completely bald. I had no hair. They they're not. I'm kidding. That didn't. Hey, what are they? What are they going to do in that scenario? Wait for it to grow.

SPEAKER_01 7:19

And again, I know this is off topic in some times, and maybe it is on topic when it's the universe has other plans. I I think there was another job that you had, and it was in Minneapolis.

SPEAKER_00 7:31

Judy, I'm going to Brown Institute in Minneapolis and have to work, get a part-time job. Well, there's two jobs. One is Burger King for one night. And I go work at Burger King. And we had worked at Taco John's and mine up back in the day and food service, and we kind of ran the place. You and I were both crew leaders at the time. In Minneapolis, I'm at Burger King. I'm the low man on the totem pole, and I'm making hamburgers. And about halfway through the night, I'm like, oh my God, I can't do this. I had a break, and on your break, they give you a burger. So I had a little burger. And then after that, I'm like, okay, I can't do this job anymore. So I ended up quitting. However, the weird part about that on the back end is I had no shame because two weeks later, I went back to that Burger King and I said, Hey, where's my paycheck at? I never got a paycheck from you guys. Judy, I got a paycheck for like 12 bucks. Oh my God. But you know, back in the day, hey, so that's the first of two jobs in Minneapolis. That was one that lasted one night. The other one is there's a pizza place a couple of blocks from where I live. And first day I get on the job, it's like four o'clock in the afternoon. I'm going to school, 8 a.m. to noon. And then a job in the afternoon or in the evening or whatever. But I have to be at school at eight o'clock in the morning. So anyway, I get to this pizza place, first day on the job, four o'clock in the afternoon. And then, you know, I had no detail, but I said to the guy, what uh, what time? Uh how late am I working? And he goes, You're you're closing. I go, I'm closing. Okay, that's cool. What what time is closing? He's like, two. I go, two? Like two hours ago, two? And he goes, no, two in the morning. I go, two in the morning? I gotta go to school. And I'm like kind of thinking about it. And then I see a guy making a pizza, and this is gonna be my job, making some pizza and doing whatever. After a couple minutes, I'm literally half an hour on the job. I said to the guy, I go, hey, where's the where's the restroom at? And he goes, Oh, it's it's down the hall and and to the right. I'm like, okay. Well, I'm walking down the hall, and to the right is the restroom, to the left is an exit. And I thought, oh, okay. I walked out, down the hall, walked out the exit, walked home, and never showed up for that job again.

SPEAKER_01 9:37

You were supposed to be the generation that's supposed to have the good work ethic too, I guess. That wasn't start off strong.

SPEAKER_00 9:43

Yeah, oh, the the bad work ethic that you see nowadays kind of started with us or started with me back in the day, just blowing up jobs and like, oh no, I don't like this job, and they're just walking out the door.

SPEAKER_01 9:54

I wanted to tell one of the stories about our dad. And I always talk about him being a policeman, and he was really, you know, a very well-known uh policeman. But before his career really took off, he started as a patrolman. And one of his first jobs was to guard these antique airplanes. The planes are parked down there. He's in his patrol car. Well, I don't know why he gets out of his patrol car at one point, but he's talking to somebody. So he's out uh uh of his vehicle, and then somebody says, Hey, isn't that your car? Rolling. So his car is zooming backwards. His car goes zooming down a little bit of an incline and hits one of the planes he was supposed to be protecting. Damages the plane, damages the police car. I don't know if that ended up being in the news, in the newspaper, too, but that was another thing, and it started off kind of early with him.

SPEAKER_00 10:49

One other story about dad. Again, he's a patrolman. One night he's getting ready to head out on patrol, and he's going out to his car and he's making sure everything's set up right, and he's got the shotgun, the police shotgun. I think he just ended up throwing it into the police car. It was loaded and cocked, and it went off. Boom! This massive boom, and it blows out the back window of the police car. Meanwhile, all these cops think Obama just went off, and they're running out of the mine up police department going, What the hell happened? And here's, you know, dad, probably just a couple months into his job, had thrown the shotgun into the car, blew out the window. Luckily, again, all's well it ends well.

SPEAKER_01 11:32

I think you had another story that you were gonna share.

SPEAKER_00 11:36

A couple of quick smoking stories, just always got in trouble. Again, this is the bad luck. The universe had other plans, bad stuff that happened. Well, anyway, again, I'm smoking and I'm playing sports. Not a great combination. Well, I'm up at Burger King, and that was the hangout back in the day, back in high school, and I'm smoking a cigarette in Burger King, because back then you could smoke inside. And in walks the My Nut High swim coach. And I don't even know the guy. I didn't swim, I wasn't on the swim team, but he apparently knows me. Didn't think anything of it until I get notified by the school, like the next week, that hey, one of the coaches saw you smoking. We're gonna have to suspend you from sports for six weeks. And we're gonna send a letter to the house. Oh my God, are you kidding me? So anyway, now I have to intercept the letter at the house so the folks don't see it. You know how mom and dad are about getting the mail. Somehow I caught that letter. Well, anyway, I'm playing on the basketball team. This is like, I don't know, ninth or tenth grade. I'm working out with the basketball team for a couple weeks, and then my six week suspension goes into effect. And I remember dad at the time going, Hey, when's your first game? And I'm like, Oh, yeah, it's it's it's coming up pretty soon, dad. And a couple weeks later, yeah, when's your first game? Well, this went on for about a month and a half.

SPEAKER_01 12:49

Were you even practicing, or did they not ban you from that? Because I'm like, where did you pretend to go for two hours every day?

SPEAKER_00 12:55

Oh, Judy, they let you practice. That's kind of the punishment part of it is you still get to practice. You just don't get to play. Kind of the funny end of that story is that I'm practicing for like months before I ever get to play a game. And dad's like, wow, you know, the season's really starting late this year. Another smoking story, always got caught smoking one time, and I don't even know why I tried to pull this off. And dad smoked, so maybe you think that they're not gonna smell it. Mom didn't smoke, so she's got the nose that can, you know, smell anything. Well, in our basement, the living room, they had a little TV room down in the basement. My bedroom was in the basement. And I thought, oh, okay, I'm gonna have a cigarette. So I got up and I think I had one of those basement windows, and I got right up there and I'm smoking, and I'm thinking, okay, I'm getting away with this. Well, my problem was I ended up about 10 minutes later opening up the bedroom door, and then everything that leaked in there wafted out into the living room, the basement living room. Mom and dad smelled it, and all of a sudden dad's like, hmm, what's going on? And I could see him getting up. I run up the stairs, and like a minute later, he comes up and he goes, Were you just smoking downstairs? And I'm like, Yeah. And he goes, or dad, dad, damn it. What are what are you doing? And I'm just like, and then again, another grounding session. So one more smoking story, driving through Roosevelt Park on my bike. This is when I still had my bike. It hadn't been stolen yet, and I hadn't crushed it yet running into a car. So still had the bike. It's the 4th of July. Got firecrackers, smoking a cigarette, riding the 10 speed through the park. The park's packed. Fourth of July, my not Roosevelt Park. This is like a hub of activity. It's one of the major events going on in my not. Well, I'm riding around the park lighting firecrackers off my cigarette. Throwing them, boom, they explode. Fun. Illegal, fun, having, you know, a good time. I'm doing all kinds of illegal stuff. I'm smoking, underage, I'm throwing firecrackers, I'm lapping my ass off. Well, one of the times I'm trying to light a firecracker, it doesn't light. I'm like, okay, so anyway, put my hands back on the handlebar. Unbeknownst to me, it was lit. Judy, that firecracker was lit. So anyway, I'm driving and all of a sudden, boom! And I was like, oh my God, did I just blow off? Did I just blow? Oh, no, I didn't. I didn't.

SPEAKER_01 15:12

Well, people could have thought you were shot. Did you crash your bike?

SPEAKER_00 15:14

I immediately kind of ran off the road and jumped off the bike. And because again, the 4th of July activities, there's an ambulance in the park. I go riding my bike over to the ambulance going, Firecracker went off in my pike. Oh my goodness. And again, thank God everything was attached. But I go to the ambulance guy and I have a big already blood blister. They treat it. And you know, one of the guys says, How'd that happen? And I was like, I didn't tell him about the cigarettes, but I just said, Oh yeah, firecracker went off in my hand. He's like, Yeah, that happens every year. You got to be careful about that.

SPEAKER_01 15:44

I remember driving, had my learner's permit, and I'm driving to Central Campus and dad's sitting beside me. He said something and it made me think of this. It was the goddamn it, because it's coming up. But anyway, I'm driving, uh, concentrating on the road or whatever. My dad is sitting right beside me. All of a sudden I hear, God damn it, and I'm like, what did I do? What did I do? I look up and there you are in your Le Mans with a cigarette hanging out of your mouth, driving the opposite direction away from school. God damn it. There goes Donnie and he's bathing smoking, and he's doing this and that. He's supposed to have his ass at school, blah, blah, blah. And I'm like, let me get right around the corner. You know, let me get to school. But yeah, that was you got busted at everything. I mean, what were the odds that we would be passing right by?

SPEAKER_00 16:34

Going up the same hill where you guys spotted me leaving Magic City campus, and I think I have a buddy with me, and there's a Burger King bag or some garbage in the car or McDonald's bag or whatever it is. And I'm like, you know, back in the day, I just, and again, don't emulate us, but back in the day, I just threw the bag out the window. I'm like, oh, okay, it'll, you know, hey, it's part of Earth. You know, it's just threw it out the window. Didn't think anything of it. Well, a couple hours later, I get home and I'm hanging out at home. And dad rolls up in his police car. And he's like, hey, what were you doing a couple hours ago? And I'm like, uh, I don't know. I was at school. And he goes, Were you driving after school? And I go, yeah. And he goes, where? I go, uh, up the hill. And he goes, Did you litter? Did you throw a bag out the window? And I go, uh, yeah. How did you know about that? And he goes, Somebody behind you wrote down your license plate, called the police. It got reported. And of course, dad's sitting at his desk, and all of a sudden, here comes this police report about somebody littering, throwing garbage out the window, and it's his son. The car is registered to the family or to me or whoever. And dad and I have the same name. Again, can't get away with anything.

SPEAKER_01 17:44

It was you. It was you that made the Indian cry in the commercial. The Indian was on the side of the road and called 911.

SPEAKER_00 17:53

Hey, one other, and again, I've learned my lesson. I'm not like that at all anymore. But one quick funny story. Um, years later, I'm at Garden of the Gods with my kids. We're having a picnic at Garden of the Gods down near Colorado Springs, and we're having our lunch and we're eating our lunch, and the kids are all little. At the end of lunch, I looked at them and we had packed up everything. And at the end of lunch, I looked at him and I said, You know what's what's great about the great outdoors? And everybody's like, What? What, Dad? I go, You can just leave your trash. I threw, I threw the bag over my shoulder and I just started walking. It was a joke. I just started walking away. My kids started screaming. They're like, you know, just you know, that hey, you can leave your trash outside. You know, it'll blow away or decompose or whatever. And I just, you know, kind of threw it away. And oh my God. It was like I murdered somebody.

SPEAKER_01 18:38

But didn't you do this other kind of goofy thing with your kids when you were driving with one of them, and then you pretended to have some kind of medical, some kind of medical issue when they weren't, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 18:50

I I would just mess with the kids all the time. I'd have the kids with me, and usually it was just one. You know, I'd have Katerina or Cassie or somebody with me, and I'd be driving down like the two-way street, and we'd be driving, and the speed limit's like 45. And then Cassie'd be, she's old enough to be in the front seat, and all of a sudden I just go, Wow, I don't, I don't feel, I don't feel that. Take the wheel. And then I just pretend like I I just pretend like I'm unconscious, and all of a sudden Cassie's screaming, like leaning over, and then I pop up and go, I'm just kidding, you know, and just a brief moment of like, what the hell?

SPEAKER_01 19:23

Was Jesus take the wheel playing on the radio? Was that your inspiration? Cassie, take the wheel! That's gonna pass out. Well, I know we just got done talking about a lot of the car things that happened, kind of the silly things you did littering, litter bug, whatever. You had some other disastrous things that happened.

SPEAKER_00 19:40

Just well, mom and dad were out of town. And most of my other stories are always like smoking related or, you know, some kind of bad element that is involved in it. And this one kind of the same way mom and dad are out of town. I was left, we had a pool in our backyard. We've talked about that. I was left in charge of cleaning the pool. So once a week, I did folks out of town for, I don't know, a week or 10 days. So in that span, I have to clean the pool. Well, part of the pool cleaning process is you turn on the filter and some of the water drains out, you know, maybe four or five inches, and then you fill it up again, and you're filtering the water and basically sucking and vacuuming the bottom of the pool and getting it clean. Well, I was doing that, and I hit that filter thing where the water's kind of draining out, and it actually comes out of the front of the house on the side of the driveway. Actually, it looked like an oil leak or something. If somebody spewed it in fact, I think somebody walked by one time and knocked on the door and said, You guys have a water leak, and it was actually us draining water out of the pool. Well, I'm draining water out of the pool. I'm sitting on the patio just around the corner from the pool, so I can't see the pool. And I think maybe Judy, because again, back in the day, I had smoked a little bit of weed, and I'm just sitting there, deep thoughts with Donnie. I'm looking up at clouds and cloud formations. You're so fluffy. Wow. Is that is that the stay-free marshmallow man? Whatever. You know, I'm just kind of zoning out. Well, Judy, literally, after about a half an hour, I'm like, oh, wait, I'm cleaning the pool. I run over, and almost all of the water had drained out of the pool. And not that big of a deal except for the sides. What keeps those sides up, an in-ground pool, still, what keeps those sides up is the water pressure. So I had this just massive fear that, oh my God, the side of the pool is gonna collapse. This is gonna be the end of the world for Donnie. Well, didn't happen. I get the hose and I start putting water. I had to fill the pool up for hours and hours and hours with water out of the garden hose to get it back up to the level that it needed to be at. Well, the second part of that was I never got busted on the back end, with dad probably wondering about a month later, going, What the hell? Why do we have a $200 water bill?

SPEAKER_01 21:53

Yeah, exactly. Because that that for sure would have been a thing.

SPEAKER_00 21:56

I would have just blamed it on our other sister and said, Oh, look, they're gonna Long shower.

SPEAKER_01 22:01

Well, they used to bitch about that all the time. Anyway. So that's that's actually true because I know you actually would steal her car when she was in the bathroom.

SPEAKER_00 22:12

Yeah, yeah. She got the she got a lot of the brunt of the goofy stuff we did. You know, poor her.

SPEAKER_01 22:18

Back to the universe had other plans. One of the things, and this was as I was a little older, and this wasn't in North Dakota. This was actually in another nowhere, middle of nowhere place in the Mojave Desert, which is Lake Havasu City. I I had a house there. And I know you alluded to part of this in one of our last episodes, what happened to our pickup, and my pickup got stolen. But I had a house that was like a second house. So I wasn't always there. And I had hired this, these painters, and they seemed like really nice people. And did I do a background check on the painters? No, I didn't. But they seemed like a little grandma and grandpa company. You know, I was getting a nice deal, going to get the whole inside of the house painted. They would do everything. Well, somebody called me and said, Do you come down and take your truck? And uh, because I always had a vehicle and it was a really nice, loaded up Ford F-150. And Judy, did you take your truck? I said, What do you mean? He said, It's not in the drive, it's not in the garage. And I said, What do you mean it's not in the garage? He goes, Did did you loan it to the painters or did you come down and no, no, I didn't do any of that. I pull up my security camera, which I see somebody staring at the security camera before the snow on the screen arrives. Okay, well, I guess that's the guy that unplugged it. Anyway, then the guy that was checking on the house or whatever called me back a little while later. He goes, I saw your truck driving down the road in Lake Havasu. So I obviously called the police, and it's not a big deal, but I'm telling my mom and dad, and my dad's like, well, let's go down there. And uh he goes, We'll take care of those painters or whatever. So he loads up his gun. We drive straight through the night to go and uh see what happened. Oh, yeah, like we're gonna go hunt them down. But I had another little issue. So they also stole a brand new TV that I had, uh just a state-of-the-art TV that I had gotten, stole that, but the house was halfway being done, being painted. It yeah, so I have a dilemma. My truck's missing, my TV's missing, and I have half my house painted, right? And I have to go get somebody else. So this is going to be a really expensive ordeal. But anyway, we get down there, and on the way down, the person that checks on my house, he goes, Hey, he goes, you know those people that you hired for your house? He goes, you know, they were on the front page of the newspaper. And I said, What? He goes, Yeah. He goes, they're like math dealers, weapons dealers, all this stuff. That's who I had in my house. He goes, and one of them was like a child molester. And I said, What? These are the people that were inside my house painting my house. Well, one of those guys stole the car, ends up driving it to Las Vegas, totals it, injures some girl with the car. And they think, by the way, so the police call me and they're like, hey, we have your vehicle, but they don't tell me that my vehicle is totaled. I have no clue. So I leave Lake Havasu City, I drive to Las Vegas with my dad. And he's like 70 in his mid-70s, and he's sneaking around the back part of this little tow yard or whatever. And he comes out and he's just shaking his head. And I said, What? He's and he goes, It's your car's totaled, totaled. And I said, What? He's like, Yeah, it's totaled. So anyway, they tow my car right around the front. It's undrivable. I mean, it is smashed. But I opened the door to the car. There is the phone, the cell phone of your phone? The guy that stole the car. You know what else is in the car?

SPEAKER_00 25:43

A GoPro.

SPEAKER_01 25:44

Yep. That's exactly what. So these morons are driving around and then they wham and they wrecked the car. Yeah, they have a Go Cab which went flying off. It was in the back seat. So they just took off running.

SPEAKER_00 25:54

Well, then weren't they videotaping themselves and all kinds of stuff? So this is like laying, just giving up evidence for the cops later to look at, going, hey, look at us, joy riders.

SPEAKER_01 26:04

Yes. Again, this is, and I'm like, it's a sleepy little town. And it's, I'm like, the neighbors can hear anything, but they don't hear the brmm and the truck taken off in the middle of the night and somebody totaling it. That's not the end of the story. A couple weeks later, the police department calls me and said, Yeah, he goes, there was a girl that was injured and they're taking legal action against you. I said, What for? Well, you loaned your car to this guy. And I'm like, totally had to prove. And that's where that go cam and all those things kind of came in handy. But it's crazy. The universe had totally different plans that day.