S2 E8 - Donny & Judy: Same Apple, Same Tree, Same Unhinged Energy

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Due to the old idiom and proverb, the apple doesn't fall far from the tree certainly applies to us. I think there's times we wish it didn't apply to us. I think there's other times we're we're proud that it applies to us.

SPEAKER_00 0:13

And more often, probably proud than not, but as far as a sense of humor and I want to say trying to get away with a few things here and there, we for sure got those apples. And I'm not gonna say crab apples, rotten apples, none of those, but yeah, a bite off of the old apple.

SPEAKER_01 0:28

And it's the pranks and the practical jokes that I think that we're gonna talk about today on the podcast. And we've got a lot of goofy stuff, and just some other stuff that happened in our work, our jobs, weird stuff. I think it all kind of plays together. In regards to the pranks and the practical jokes, our dad went along with our mom on a lot of that stuff, but he was not the instigator. It was our mom that was the brainchild behind all the crazy pranks and goofy stuff, and we've talked about a lot of that over the recent podcasts.

SPEAKER_00 0:56

And they also had even just their sense of humor is off the hook on some simple little things when it's not even a prank itself. And then, like you said, workplace things. Donnie, I don't know if that crazy crap happened to other people in the workplace or if it's just you and I that bring that to work. But we happen to work in places where there was just some freak show things that would happen.

SPEAKER_01 1:18

Judy, one of the things I did at one of my jobs, the Colorado Media School, it used to be the Ohio Center for Broadcasting. I was a teacher there, later the director of education, and did some pranks. I referenced it on one of our recent podcasts where we were eating the white powdered donuts, and I stuck my head into the placement director's office with powder all over my face and said, Hey, we're doing blow in the office. Do you want to come join us? And he almost fell out of his chair. One of the other things I did, I had a giant, I'm a DJ, obviously, and I have these giant speakers, a giant Mackey speaker that's almost as tall as I am. And for some reason, I wheeled it into the school one day using it for something, and I set it up in the hallway. So class is in session at the broadcast school, Judy. People are learning, it's quiet and they're being instructed, and lectures are going on, and I set up this giant speaker on the hallway. And this building, just for reference sake, this building is a cement building. A lot of it cement's echoey and the acoustics are a little bit funky. So I set up this giant speaker in the hallway, Judy. Then I went back to my office because I had it wired up to my laptop, and I cranked Highway to Hell, A C D C, where I came in with the one-on-a, and literally people started screaming. I could hear screams and people came running out about maybe a live concert had broken out right in the hallway at the school. Just something goofy, nothing major, but a strange sense of humor. And again, credit that back to mom.

SPEAKER_00 2:42

I don't know if you know the use of loud music as an interrogation method sometimes to get people to confess because they can't take it. And here you're doing it at the school that you're a teacher at. But I have to go back to the big speakers. And I know this is probably going to be off topic a little bit for today, but do you remember in the 80s having a stereo with like giant speakers was like a must? I mean, it was on the list for your apartment before you even had a bed in some cases. You had to get a big ass stereo with those speakers in it, like the rack system.

SPEAKER_01 3:16

The whole rack system had all the components in it, and you had the equalizer and you had the dual cassette deck, and then later the CD player, and maybe even a turntable. And then yeah, you're right. That went out to the giant speakers. That and a waterbed. And probably in that order, you get your sound system, and then later it's like, oh, okay, I can get a waterbed as well.

SPEAKER_00 3:35

Totally random that you say this, okay. But I have to say, so I had one of those weird that you could have those big speakers in apartments too. That was also kind of weird. I mean, because it's they're so loud. But I had a goldfish that lived on top of the speaker. So well, needless to say, the goldfish ended up committing suicide, you know, after a few years and dove out of there because of the vibration. Just a weird little thing talking to the speaker and the loud music. Kind of totally random thought when you said the waterbed, because I had one of those too. But I had a dream one night that I bought my goldfish and I was sleeping in my waterbed, but I bought my goldfish a paper shredder, which is a weird gift to put in the goldfish bowl. But I'm walking with this goldfish bowl in the paper shredder, and I must have moved in the night on my waterbed because the fish went through the paper shredder. So anyway, so totally bizarre and random that you bring up a waterbed.

SPEAKER_01 4:36

What was the name of your goldfish? Goldie? Judy, weirdly, we had a goldfish named Goldie. What our goldfish, unlike yours, did not commit suicide. Our goldfish was in a good space, loved his life. Unlike yours, that was sitting on top of the speaker.

SPEAKER_00 4:52

Sadly, it was a few, like probably a week before I noticed that Goldie committed suicide and found up behind the speaker.

SPEAKER_01 5:02

Oh my god. Our goldfish, Judy, lived for years. We had our goldfish, I'm gonna say for five or six years. They don't know what the life expectancy of a goldfish is. This thing lived for years. But the weird thing is, and again, his name was Goldie, just like yours. Maybe that's a common name to go with goldfish. Our goldfish lost his color. So he turned white. All of a sudden he was albino goldfish. And we called him Whitey. No, I'm kidding. We we didn't do that. But imagine when Whitey finally died, and normally, you know, with the kids around, you can replace a goldfish and just go buy a new one and pass him off as the old one. I'm in the pet store saying, Do you have any white? Do you have any albino goldfish? And they're like, No. And I'm like, okay, kids are gonna cry.

SPEAKER_00 5:47

Well, you could have told them the color came back. This isn't a joke. This wasn't a practical joke. This was sadly a true story. But my mom and dad had an extravagant or mom and dad had an extravagant aquarium for a while. And in that aquarium, they had lots of fish. You know, it's a hassle to take care of that. Probably doesn't bode well for the new puppy that they just got. But my mom called one day and she's like Decent Al Tote. And I what? I didn't have any idea what she was talking about. And she says that, she repeats it again, Decent Al Tote. Which the translation of that is they're all dead. So she was over the fish in the aquarium and whoosh, down the toilet they went, end of the fish. So not funny, but funny.

SPEAKER_01 6:32

My memory of their aquarium is dad having to clean that out every Saturday morning, and you kind of wanted to stay away from that process because he was grumpy. It looked like a process, it wasn't easy. You know, his catchphrase or his saying, huh?

SPEAKER_00 6:46

Damn it, I gotta clean this Eppin Bowl out.

SPEAKER_01 6:49

We heard that every Saturday. Maybe there was some kind of reason why one day all the fish were dead.

SPEAKER_00 6:54

Exactly right.

SPEAKER_01 6:56

Back to practical jokes. One more quick one that I did at another job that I had. We did a toy drive, and it was communicated to everybody to bring in an unwrapped toy to donate to whoever or whatever. And I drew out, and you drew, and then you had to bring in that present, but I drew out of the hat to bring in a bike helmet. And I thought, oh, okay, I can go get a bike helmet. So I went to the store, Target or wherever, and bought a bike helmet, brand new, in a box. It's got the framing of the brand new box, and you can see the helmet inside. Ironically, Crystal, my oldest, had the exact same bike helmet in our garage. So a couple of years later, still the exact same helmet. Well, I thought it would be funny if I took this unwrapped toy and took out the new helmet and put in crystals that just had been like looks like Crystal had landed on her head about 20 times.

SPEAKER_00 7:44

I was gonna ask, what the hell happened to her?

SPEAKER_01 7:47

This thing was racked off. It looked terrible. It had the same logos and all that as the new one. So I took that out and put it in the box as that was my brand new unwrapped toy. I put it on the lady's desk as, hey, here's my contribution. And then I think I even sent her an email and just said, because she wasn't there when I dropped it off. I even sent her an email and just says, Hey, I left my unwrapped toy on your desk. Judy, hours went by, and I think there was like all kinds of like discussions going on in the back room. In the break room. Did did Donnie really do you think we should say so? And they were scared to kind of bring it up to me. And then finally I just walked back there and said, Did you guys get my? And they all kind of looked at me weird. And it was a group of girls. And then behind me, I whipped out the brand new bike helmet. Just kidding, guys. Quit getting into a major panic because I brought in a used bike helmet.

SPEAKER_00 8:37

Some people don't have a sense of humor either. So I mean, we find that funny. That's almost like putting that raw angle in the Halloween candy. That's the apple, I guess, that you got from mom that not falling far from the tree. Since I'm talking about Halloween, Dory, the person you dated for a long time, was a good friend of mine when we were young. We always would celebrate my birthday on Halloween. And uh, and this is like in the, I don't know, 1970s. The cone heads were really popular at that time. And from Saturday Night Live. And I remember there were, and it's cold then North Dakota, and the cone heads are driving in a convertible with the top down. And there was four of them in there. And we're like, oh my god, is that like the coolest thing ever? This isn't going to be where the prank comes in. This is just kind of a funny thing that we saw because later that night we saw them and they had gotten egged. So their little cone heads were totally dripped with eggs. Somebody had egged them. Dory, the instigator that she is, said we went up to a couple little kids or one little kid trick-or-treating a lone wolf with a pillow, a pillowcase full of candy. And Dory's like, hey, I want to show you a trick. The kid's like, okay. She's like, Well, you're gonna have to set your candy bag down and uh put your hands up in the air. Well, before I could even see what the hell was going on, whoosh, Dory grabs that kid's candy and is running. Come on, come on. And I'm like, Oh my god, let's start running after her. You know what I mean? Poor kid.

SPEAKER_01 9:58

I shouldn't even tell you the story. It reminded me, and I'm gonna have just come out and say it because again, there were some evil years back in high school, but I remember driving around with a couple of guys, and we saw a kid walking down Broadway with a pizza that he probably just got and was bringing home to the family. And it was a kid, you know, it was like, I don't know, twelve 12, 13. This wasn't Halloween, this was every day, Tuesday. You were just hungry? Yeah, somebody got a pizza, and we went up and freaking Oh my goodness. It's terrible to say. And I wasn't the instigator of it. It was one of the guys that I was with, so I'm gonna blame it on that guy. But I remember we went up and stole that kid's pizza and then just took off. Kind of a shame to share that story, but with Dory stealing the candy, which is less shameful, I thought I'd share.

SPEAKER_00 10:43

I have to say, sometimes karma is karma and something comes back to you penfold. I had a job early in my career and I thought somebody was gonna pull a prank on me. So the phone in my office rings and I go get it. And it's like, this is the so-and-so county sheriff's department, and we have a warrant out for your arrest. I'm like, if you, you blah blah blah piece of shit. Don't have a warrant out for my arrest. I know you guys are pulling a joke on me, blah, blah, blah. And I am just going nuts because I think it's a prank. Man, this is really the Arapaho County Sheriff's Office, and we have a warrant out for your arrest. And we're gonna come arrest you on this date if you don't come. And apparently I had a citation out there that I had no idea about. Yeah, they were gonna come and and get me. Anyway, that's my bad Judy Carva of being an accomplice to the Halloween candy theft later in life. What the citation was for. And it was so stupid. And it wasn't stupid citation. It was stupid that I got a citation within like two minutes of something. A friend of mine got a motorcycle and said, Oh, do you know how to ride a motorcycle? And I said, Oh, totally. I had them as a kid. Can you teach me? And I'm like, sure. I said, hop on. And I'm like, this is what you boom got pulled over within two minutes and got cited for no eye protection, no license within two minutes. A citation. Talk about some bad luck.

SPEAKER_01 12:06

Judy, another job story I got to share with you. I'm working at a company, a telecommunications company in Denver, pretty brand new company. I think it was a startup. It had only been around for a couple of years, and I'm a sales rep for them. And one day we get win that we're gonna have a big dinner at Sullivan Steakhouse. And there's probably 20 of us there, and spouses and friends, and we're all ordering steaks. And I remember the general manager had ordered a couple of bottles of wine. I think it was several hundred dollars of wine. And I remember kind of thinking to myself at this dinner, going, Wow, can the company afford this? I wonder how much this costs. I think I even said something to one of my buddies, and he said, Ah, don't worry about it. The company's got money. We all had company credit cards, we had laptops, all that kind of stuff. Well, the next day we get into the office and there's an email that says, Hey, everybody meet us in the conference room and bring your laptop. And we thought, hmm, what's this?

SPEAKER_00 12:57

Never a good sign.

SPEAKER_01 12:58

Never a good sign. No, we all show up in the conference room and we're on a conference call, and somebody on the conference call says, Hey, listen, sorry to let you guys know, we're gonna be laying off people today. We're not as profitable as we thought, and we're gonna have to lay off people. And here's what we're gonna do is we're gonna have everybody go back to your cubicle and wait to be notified to see if you've been laid off or not. And I thought, wow, that's really a bizarre way of being notified. You're not being called into your boss's office or you know, called in private. You're basically just sitting in your cubicle and then waiting for the phone to ring. Yeah, yeah, waiting for that. Well, and I don't know if it was a tap on the shoulder or if it was an actual phone call, but Judy, I vividly remember sitting in my cubicle and hearing people crying. I'd be like, and you'd hear it like I'm like, oh my God, somebody just got laid. And then it would get closer and closer. And all of a sudden, it's like, oh my god, that's that's just across the wall for me. And I made it through. I made it through. Nobody tapped on my shoulder, nobody called me. I just sat there for a little bit going, wow, the Grim Reaper is not coming to Donnie's cube. However, back end of that story, a month later, same thing happened. Did not make the cut, got let go.

SPEAKER_00 14:14

Sounds like that dinner was the last supper.

unknown 14:18

Right?

SPEAKER_00 14:19

It's just funny. Well, one thing, and this wasn't like a you're getting laid off story, but it was I was sent on a business trip, you know, back east somewhere. And I it was late. I was flying into Connecticut, and it's not a place where I typically would go. And it was really late at night. And they would they were gonna send a car service to come pick me up. And I was like, you know, not like anybody fancy or anything like that where they'd send a car service, but they were sending a car service. So anyway, I see this car come by and it's it has the company name on it. And I'm like, Hey, are you here for me? And they're like, No. And I'm supposed to go to some like training program, like with all the things to develop, people, whatever. The guy's like, Nope, I'm here for so-and-so, and I'm like, Okay. Well, I see him come around, my car's not here, it's not anywhere. And I'm like, Okay, where the hell is my car? Here he comes again, I knock on the door. I'm like, Are you sure you're not supposed to be here for me? And he's like, I'm telling you, this is who I'm here for. Well, the third time he comes around, I said, Listen, I work at that company, the guy you're talking about doesn't exist. You're my car, you're taking me. And I'm like, I get the car, no big deal. I got my hour right. So it's like an hour to where I'm supposed to go. So then the next morning, and there's like probably 200 people in full, you know, tables of 10, whatever. So here comes this guy, some executive, vice president, like some top dog comes in. We're all talking at the table, blah, blah, blah. And you know, how are you? How was your flight? He's like, Oh my god, he goes, I got in so late, somebody took my damn car.

unknown 15:47

And I'm like, What?

SPEAKER_00 15:51

I'm like, what are the odds of 100 people that I'm sitting at the same table from the guy? And then people are like, Well, did you tell him? And I'm like, Well, God no, maybe I'm not gonna say anything. He was really important. I was a nobody.

SPEAKER_01 16:03

Judy, I had a job where, again, this is a telecommunications company and just something bizarre where again the company may be mismanaged or just a bizarre company, and I'm not gonna mention their name. I think they got bought by somebody else, but working at the company and they're trying to get rid of one of my coworkers. They're trying to make life miserable for this guy, and he won't go away. He's not one of these guys that gives up. So whatever they put on his plate, he's gonna deal with. Well, the last draw is they actually took this guy, Judy, his name is Peter, and they stuck him in a closet. They moved his office. We all had cubicles. They actually physically moved his office like into a closet, and not a big closet. This is like a small closet where you can barely get a desk and a chair.

SPEAKER_00 16:47

It's like that show, you know, with the guy with the stapler or whatever, where they shove him in some basement closet. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 16:53

So this guy's stuck in a closet, and I remember he comes up to me one day and he goes, God, this is just terrible. I'm not gonna quit. He was actually filing a complaint with the National Labor Relations Board, the NLRB. And he asked me flat out one day, Will you testify on my behalf? And my first thought he's in the closet? Judy, usually people come out of the closet. This guy was going in the closet.

SPEAKER_00 17:15

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 17:16

So weird. My first thought was, yeah, I'll testify for you. And then I kind of thought and thought out past just the immediate thought of that and thought, huh, I could get fired, or maybe I could get in trouble for doing this. So Judy, I drove down and met with the National Labor Relations Board. And the first thing I asked the guy is, hey, listen, if I testify for this guy on Peter's behalf, am I in any danger? Is there jeopardy of me losing my job? And the guy goes, Oh, they wouldn't dare do that. He goes, if they did that, that's retaliation, and we'll file a complaint on your behalf. So I thought, oh, okay, I'm golden. I basically decided that, yeah, I'm going to testify for this guy and risk it. Well, I did. Well, the next week, Judy, I show up to my job and weirdly, they fired me and they came up with a different excuse. And they said something like, low sales numbers, or and I hadn't been put on any warning plans. I'm not on a warning, I'm not on a pip or anything like that. They just flat out fired me. I called a guy down at the NLRB and I said, Hey, listen, what you told me wasn't going to happen just happened. He goes, What? I go, I got fired. He goes, get down here right now. And I literally drove downtown Denver to the NLRB office, met with the guy. He filed a complaint on my behalf. They got an attorney for me, and we ended up suing the company. And I'm not allowed to talk about it because of NDA or whatever involved with it. At the end of the day, and again, I'm not mentioning the company, but at the end of the day, I won my suit and I won a chunk of money because they wrongly fired me for testifying about the guy that got stuck in the closet.

SPEAKER_00 18:48

I have to say, and this isn't like a job situation here, what I was going to talk about. I I was going to actually go back to I was actually going to go back to mom and dad for a second. I was with our mom and dad in Vale, Colorado. And they had a little dog named Tiger. All of a sudden, Teger is like, I think I need to poop right here. He's the pooper. And mom was holding him on the leash. Well, she's horrified, like embarrassed that in this nice little downtown city center vale, her dog is gonna go to the bathroom. She drops the leash and just walks away like she doesn't know the dog. And then her dad looks at her and he's like, Hey lady. He yells, Hey lady, you forgot your dog. So now everybody's like, whoosh, looking at her. So the very thing she tried to avoid, everybody's all of a sudden just laughing their asses off, looking at her, and she comes back all red faced to the dog.

SPEAKER_01 19:39

Judy, very reminiscent of me dropping my pants and pooping in the mall when I was like two years old. Similar story. I'm with mom and dad, and mom starts walking away from me. The only difference is dad didn't yell out, hey lady, at that time. But again, mom, a creature of habit, you know, if somebody's taking a public poop, she wants nothing to do with it and starts wandering away. So I just had to throw that in there.

SPEAKER_00 20:03

I just read an article not too long ago or saw a video of a kid that was doing that at Lowe's because he saw a toilet and he thought that that's what that was for, which actually made me think of you, but I don't think you pooped in an actual toilet.

SPEAKER_01 20:15

No, it was in the middle of the mall. It was right in just right smack in the middle of the mall. I think there was like a barber shop there on one side and a store on the other. And I'm just all of a sudden I had to go. And I and there's a bathroom like 20 feet away, but I wasn't waiting. I just pulled my pants down and started taking a dump right there. Mom says, I don't know this kid, and walks away.

SPEAKER_00 20:34

The other thing, you know, when we were talking about the big speakers, I remember she wanted to go with me when I was buying the stereo system. Mom was a great negotiator, could get you a great deal on anything. Well, I'm sitting there looking at it. I'm there with one of my friends, and mom says to the salesman, Judy and her, you know, I have to preface, she's German and her English language and understanding of the words isn't that great. So she says, Judy and her friend are buying a condom together. And I'm like, what? I'm like, no, we're not. We're buying a condo, a condo, not condom, not condom. And then she says, as we're leaving, come on, schlott. Maybe mom thought condominium. And it's a condom. I think that's exactly what she was trying to do. The ultimate prank that they pulled on some of our friends. Our friend had this like racing suit by a famous race car driver. We were in Vegas and they had gone, you know, previously to like pawn stars to try to sell that suit. And that show they they were actually on that show. So my mom and dad called, because they we had been talking about that racing suit, called them and said, and it was my dad doing the impersonation, but that he was from like the North Dakota Historical Society. They wanted to purchase that suit for like $10,000 so they could put it in their museum or whatever that they had, and if they would be interested in selling. And this is in Vegas. And to tell somebody that you're gonna get $10,000 in Vegas is kind of a crazy thing. So these people always run into them. First thing as soon as they get the they're like, you're not gonna believe it. We got an offer for $10,000 for this suit, and they're all excited. And then we're like, God, Julie, tell them. You know what I mean? Because something bad could happen. They'd already put it all over Facebook. They had put it everywhere that they are selling this suit for 10 grand. So anyway, we're like, oh my God, it's gonna be it's gonna be bad news if they think because they'll blow 10 grand. We ended up telling them. Yeah, I'm gonna say they didn't have a very good sense of humor after that, because they were kind of pissed, because they were all excited and told everybody, but it was totally funny. They were all in. That was wasn't the weirdest thing on that trip. The weirdest thing was uh like three other people got roofied on that trip.

SPEAKER_01 22:46

Wow. Well, we'll save that for a future podcast. Because I've got a roofie story as well from Orlando, and it involves a dog and a pizza. And we'll tease it, we'll leave it at that.

SPEAKER_00 22:57

So if you haven't had a chance to follow us on either TikTok, Facebook, or Instagram, now's the time to do that. And then like and subscribe to us on YouTube. And if you want to reach out to us directly, please reach out to us at hello at stories from the middle of nowhere.com. Send us picks, whatever you got going on. We love picks, certain kind of picks.

SPEAKER_01 23:17

Yeah, not all picks. We purposely don't have a phone number to call because what?

SPEAKER_00 23:22

We do not want the heavy breathers. We don't want, you know, listen, bad things happen. We just don't answer those calls.

SPEAKER_01 23:28

Hey, we don't want mom calling in and breathing heavy and then going, Donnie. Judy, one more quick prank story involving mom. This might be a classic story and a little risque as well, but mom and dad are living in North Dakota at the time, going out to lunch or shopping or running errands or doing whatever, and they stop in for lunch at a restaurant. And there's a sign out front of the restaurant on the steps with one of those chalkboard signs, and it has a lunch special. So it's sandwich and soup for $4.99 today or whatever the lunch special is. So mom and dad go inside. I can see you laughing already. Mom and dad go inside and eat and get lunch. Well, on the way out, they thought it would be a cool prank to erase that lunch special. The chalk's out there, by the way, for the chalk board and the lunch special. Huge mistake. Take the chalk. Huge mistake to leave that chalk out because mom and dad got the idea to write their own message on that board. So what they wrote on there, Judy, and I kid you not, today's lunch special, free blowjobs. They put the sign back out and then they ran to their car and drove away. So I can't imagine how many people for the next little while came up and read that sign and were just like, oh my God, that's classic mom.

SPEAKER_00 24:45

Totally. Well, we have some really good episodes coming up. And I'm excited. We're talking about when we go to games, some of the nonsense that happens, the unexpected things, always dangerous traveling with Donnie. So more to come. Tune in to our next episode.