Mike’s sleepy friend struggles with a sliding glass door. Nathan has to release the pressure while on a theme-park train. Zeke’s pet guinea pig meets an untimely end. Blair’s son makes a weird connection and Rachel’s future husband plays with fire on a farm.
Tons of fun, return of the Weekly Rewind segment. A classic Recap Song at the end and a peek at our Bonus Podcast, Stuff That Didn’t Fit on the Show. That Story Show: The Clean Comedy Storytelling Podcast!
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Full Transcript:
This is that story show where your hilarious real life stories get the audience they deserve. Hey, podcast people. I’m your host. My name is James Kennison.
And I am Jon Steinklauber. And this week on that story show, Mike’s sleepy friend struggles with a sliding glass door. Nathan has to release the pressure while on a theme park train.
What kind of pressure? I will get there. Zeke’s pet guinea pig meets an untimely end.
Oh man. Sorry. Blair’s son makes a weird connection. And Rachel’s future husband plays with fire on a farm.
Sounds fun. I can’t wait to get there. We always like to start with an opening story. This one’s called Sliding Door Struggle from Mike. We were at our summer cabin, which has sliding glass doors between the kitchen and living room. That’s weird. It’s a good place for them.
That’s very weird. There were several of us. It reminds me of my Triple White trailer actually. Because we also had sliding glass doors between the kitchen and the living room, but it was a spare living room, and the sliding glass doors were not supposed to be there anymore because it was supposed to just be an entryway into the house.
So yeah, I think you might need to, for some of our new listeners, it wasn’t an actual triple wide.
No, there was no such thing back then.
Yeah.
It was a double wide trailer, and mom decided we needed some extra bedrooms. So she bought a single wide that was about two decades older with orange shag, multicolored carpeting.
Oh yeah.
Like, like Ronald McDonald would love, and stuck those jokers together, cranked them up, and cut holes between them so we could walk through.
Yeah.
And yeah, I lived in the old one. I lived in the very back.
All to yourself, the extra trailer there?
Yeah, well, most of it was full of crap.
It was the storage room. Like the freezer, the chest freezer was in there, and a whole bunch of boxes and stuff. It was originally a TV room, but it just filled up with crap. I had a little path that I would walk through like a youngling in the woods. You know, I would leave breadcrumbs so I could find my way back to the bathroom. Yeah. I fell through the floor once because of the rain that came through. But anyway, yeah, there wasn’t supposed to be a glass sliding door. And it makes me wonder why there’s one in this story. But anyway, it was there.
There were several of us, so I’m sleeping on a mattress near the floor at that sliding door. One of my friends comes down from the second floor needing to pee. And he slams right into half of the sliding door that isn’t open. And he thought it was.
You know that.
So then he pulls the other half of the sliding door to the side, thinking that he’s now opened it, and again slams his face into the glass door that doesn’t move. Double whammy. So in his disoriented state, he tries to walk through the glass on the other side.
Oh, gee.
He now thinks it’s open since he’s closed both of the other sides. Yes. Another hit to the face. Boom. That’s the sound it makes, by the way, when you hit a glass sliding door. It’s just a nice boom.
And if it’s not a very well-hung door, it kind of rattles a little bit. So you get a “brrrr” in there. Yeah.
Yeah, there was no double-hung windows, no double panes with that argon gas between them. No, it was nothing. They were always getting misted up and stuff. But anyway, at that point, I got up to help him out the front door after wiping the tears from my eyes because of the hilarity, Mike. It’s always funny when it happens to somebody else.
I taught my kids something, and they have now thrown it back in my face. And that is, especially my son, because he used to do things that were funny. And I would say, “Jay, if it’s not funny to everyone, it’s not funny.” And so now I do stuff to annoy them, and I get a kick out of it and laugh. And they will say, “Dad, if it’s not funny to everybody, it’s not funny.” And I’m like, “Oh my gosh.” But it is so funny to me to get on their nerves. So freaking funny to get on my kids’ nerves.
It’s only fair too, right? I mean, you have to put up with all that crap that they gave you when they were born.
For instance, once I was just sitting on the bed reading a book and my son was sick. He had some sort of eye pus coming out of his eyes. Okay. This happened more than once, but it was like we would have to wet his eyes in the morning, like a baby bird.
So he could open his eyes.
So he could open his freaking eyes. Yeah. And he was rubbing his hands on his eyes all the time. And I’m yawning, right? And he falls forward and shoves his hand all the way up to the elbow, down my freaking throat. I grabbed his elbow and pulled it back out. I got sicker than I’ve ever been in my life after that.
Really?
For like two weeks. I don’t know what his eye juice was, but it did not translate well to the throat, to the freaking trachea. Did not do well.
I think it was some sort of bogus eye juice that got in there. So, yeah, I had to put up with a few things. You know, the least we could do is laugh, or let your dad laugh at your expense.
That’s right, right. And you know, as that being your phrase, “If it’s not funny to everyone, it’s not funny.” What was your phrase you just said?
I don’t remember. If it’s not funny to everyone, it’s not funny.
Okay, so you’re completely out of that realm. That doesn’t apply to you.
Right. It’s a rule I made up for the situation. I mean, there’s lots of stuff that doesn’t have to be funny to everybody. Like, well, let’s just jump into it, shall we? Let’s do the weekly rewind.
What? All right. So here’s something funny that happened to me that wasn’t funny to everybody because it happened to me and it wasn’t funny to me. We were at a park because I go to parks now because my son runs cross country. And they do this at parks, and we walk around and we watch him go past. And then we walk to another area and we watch him go past.
Apparently this means a lot to him. And I yell. I don’t know what to yell. I hear other men yelling, “Put your knees up, lengthen your stride, you can catch him, you can catch him.” And I don’t know what any of that means. So I just go, “Go, Jay, go, go.” And there you go. That’s all I got. I got no advice. I’m not living vicariously through him, you know. And I know nothing about track and field or no cross country.
Cross country.
Cross country. So it’s running, except with vomiting.
And so he’s kind of relaying this to me. I’m like, my heart was broken, you know, right. And so, he wanted to get clarification. So, he got clarification, and she’s just like, “You know, you’re a nice guy, but I just don’t like you like that, and I kind of like somebody else.” Basically, I think that’s what it turned out to be. Then he was relaying that to me, and I was like, “She gave the cat back, but she kept the chocolate?” Yeah, she kept the chocolate.
Yeah, I’m like, “Keep the freaking cat, lady. I can’t return it. I’m not going back to that hell. What am I going to do with a cat?” Remember your stupid butt? Yeah, no.
So, you know, that was… what’s your name? Just the first name. I just drew a blank just now. Oh, it’s— I can’t say. I want to say her name’s… no, use a name. Give me a name.
Oh, OK. Her name is Sandy. Sandy, screw you. If you don’t like James, you’re the R word we’re not allowed to say anymore. Her name’s Lucy, wait, last night—
Man, she took his freaking wand. She knew what she was about. She just finally grew a freaking conscience is what it is. The cat was the straw that broke the cat and the camel’s back. Yeah, the porcelain cat. That’s what drove her over the edge.
I mean, maybe that was like a ring or something in her world. “I can’t receive this cat; it’s getting too serious.” In German culture, that’s a sign of a long-term relationship. Yeah, that’s nerd speak for “I want to have your babies,” you know? Or “I want you to have mine,” I guess. Anyway, I still don’t know how that works.
So, I am not sure what it means. But last night, we were sitting around the table having dinner, and we were recounting some stuff. And then her name came up, and I said, “So what about this?” And Amy said, “Oh, he’s totally over her.” And then I look over at him, and he’s like—
You need to help him get over her, because then he becomes a simp. Have you heard that phrase? I have, but I don’t know what it means. What is a simp? A simp is a guy that has been put in the friend zone but still is nice. Still does all the stuff to try to stay close to the girl, and it’s called simping, and it’s not healthy.
Oh, yeah. And I think we’ve all done it. I think we’ve all done it. Some winter in our life, we’ve simped, but that’s the name of it now. Now it has a title. It’s got a title.
Yeah, so don’t let your son be a simp. I mean, we just called dudes like that losers. Yeah, but you can’t do that today. You have to make up new words, you know? Yeah. Is it like short for something? I think so. But like simple? I don’t know. I don’t know. My son told me at one point that it’s like how “sus” is short for suspicious, you know? So it’s short for something, but I don’t know. I don’t know these kids today and their words. Yeah, and their “Riz” and all the whatever.
Charisma! That’s what that is— charisma. I do that, yeah. Anyway, we got a review brought to you by podgagement.com. Five stars, funniest show ever. I got a drink, actually.
Oh, here. I got some right here if you want.
Thanks, man. All right. I love this show. I’ve only been listening for two months. Well, you’re about to have your mind changed. That’s the peak. I just want to let you know, that’s as good as it gets right there. About the two-to-three-month mark. After that, you’re going to get sick of us, but it’s so amazing. I loved it. I hope to grow up with this show and love it as I get older. Well, when you turn 20, you’re going to find Kill Tony and you’re going to start listening to that instead. Oh. It’s this very famous podcast with all these gritty comedians. And OK, but we lose people in their 20s. And then they come back in their 30s and they’re like, “You’re still podcasting? You guys are still around?” He says, “I’m 14 at the moment. I’ve been recommending this show to everyone.”
Oh, thank you.
Everyone I know. So I hope they start listening because this is the best show. I love it. It’s clean comedy and you guys are Christian, too. That’s a big plus for me. Well, not for us. I don’t like being a Christian all the time.
That’s what makes you a Christian— because you’re honest about it.
Yeah. The girl who broke her closet laughing at the podcast. I made fun of her name last week. Yeah.
Yeah. Well, did she write this before or after you made fun of her name?
Probably at the same time. They can update their reviews anytime, though. And I get a fresh copy of it thanks to podgagement.com, actually. So you can leave us a review on iTunes or Spotify. It makes us really happy, and it really helps the show. Every now and then, we read them on the show. Go to review.thatstorieshow.com because you can review us on Spotify or iTunes or anywhere else that’ll take a review. Let’s do some feature stories.
Let me tell y’all stories. Let me tell y’all stories.
All right, this is from Nathan from Spokane. Wah wah. Yeah. “Hey, James and John—”
Isn’t that how they used to castrate bulls? They just put rubber bands around their stuff and let it fall off? Yeah.
Anyway, I never practiced that. I don’t know.
I don’t know. Anyway, this one’s called Anybody that’s Still Listening. This one’s called Cutie’s Conundrum. It’s from Zeke Bettler from Jacksonville, Florida. I assume. Hey, there’s a few Jacksonvilles, but I’m going to say he’s from Florida. My old stomping grounds.
There’s a Jacksonville in Georgia, too.
Oh, really?
Yeah, it’s only got less than 300 people.
But it’s there. So this is going to be a short story, but I think it’ll be funny enough. So about a year and a half ago, I had a guinea pig. Guinea pigs are easy enough to take care of. We live in the country, so we kept them outside in a cage. We had a big gas grill… I mean, a tough shed… I mean, a big cage. Man, lots of callbacks there. Nice. This cage was strong enough to hold out any animal that wanted in. So 1 morning I woke up to my younger sister shaking me.
“Zeke, Zeke, Zeke!” I groggily replied, “Why?” Because he’s from Jacksonville, so he talks like that. “Well,” she said, “Cutie is gone.”
“What? She’s not in her cage.”
“What do you mean she’s not in the cage?” Later that day, we checked the cameras and guess what? Oh, a bear ate her. Literally, a bear. A bear ate her. Love the show and hope this makes it on the show. Zeke from Jacksonville. I don’t know. Whoa, a bear? Eat your guinea pig? Poor Cutie got eaten.
Cutie… you know those little oranges you get?
Yeah, Cutie oranges, they’re easier to peel.
Yeah.
Yeah. You just eat the whole thing. Yeah. But Cutie, I mean, hopefully Cutie didn’t get peeled before she got eaten. I saw a video the other day where — no, you didn’t — no, I did. Where a bear took a salmon and he bit off near its head and peeled its skin off while it was still alive. He ate the fish. And it was talking about the reality of nature and how wicked they are. And I was like, Oh, I’m not sure I want to see this, you know, but I couldn’t stop watching. So maybe Zeke’s Cutie might have gotten peeled too, is all I’m saying.
I’m saying I was going to give my condolences to the kids who lost their — oh, and I just made it worse.
But no, I was going to say, for a bear to grace your yard… yeah, it was like a gift. Sure, somehow. I hope Cutie didn’t suffer.
Well, you know, it’s like when they strung the lady up in King Kong. They were trying to feed her to King Kong, right? To satisfy him, to satiate him, give them time away, you know? Maybe good weather. Maybe don’t take our women, you know, something like that. So, we’ll give you this Hollywood starlet instead. So maybe that bear was a wild bear. Maybe a cocaine bear.
Perhaps. Right, based on the best-selling documentary.
Yeah.
And documentary. So maybe Cutie saved their lives, you know? Can we give Cutie that? Maybe her sacrifice kept Zeke and his sister alive.
Yes. Yes.
All right.
I’m going to say that.
I feel better about that.
That’s the retail.
I do too.
That’s not the retail.
The retail harp got a little urban or something.
Oh my gosh. That’s the rewind-the-week sound. I’ll try to put it in later. Anyway, this is called Bathroom Brainwave by Blair from Atlanta, Indiana. Speaking of towns that are in other states…
That’s right. There’s only 1 Atlanta. And did you know that Atlanta used to be named Atlanta Pacifica?
Really? I did not know that.
Yes, because you were supposed to be able to get from Atlanta to the Pacific through Atlanta. Yeah, look it up sometime. I know random weird stuff. So anyway, when my son was 4 years old, I put him to bed. It was several hours later when I went downstairs to lock up for the night and I caught him in the bathroom, getting a drink of water. Out of bed and you’re not supposed to be.
You’re going to get the rubber band. Sorry.
Somehow that was worse than everything else I said. Oh, sorry. I don’t know what I said.
I hated it out or something. I don’t want to sound like a terrible person. I caught him in the bathroom. I gently scolded him for being out of bed and explained that the more water he drank, the more he would have to pee. And I taught him a trick I learned as a child to keep yourself from wetting the bed. You take this rubber band, see? You double it up like a ponytail, see? And — oh, okay. There was a dramatic pause, and I could tell his brain gears were working. After the pause, he turned to me, matter of fact, and said, “Hey, Dad, if I eat glass, would I have scratchy poop?”
To this day, we’re not sure why that thought occurred to him, but I suppose it’s true. You would have scratchy poop. I think you’d die well before you got the poop out. But it’s always good to hear you guys keeping the rest of us laughing. Hope this makes it on the show. Never mind. Never mind, he said. He gave up hope it makes it. Never mind.
Okay, I should’ve made it. Shouldn’t. I’ll take my belt back. Dadgummit.
Yeah, that was Blair from Atlanta, Indiana.
Kids in Indiana. Kids say the most random things.
They sure do.
But I know what he was thinking about. He was thinking about his drink of water. Yeah. And he was like, it makes you have to pee more. What if I eat glass randomly? It’s logical. It’s a logical step. If you’re 4 years old, you’ve been thinking about experimenting with glass. You don’t know what the kids are into. Maybe glass is the name of some drug 4-year-olds are into. I don’t know. Oh, speaking of drugs, oh my gosh. Okay, I know we didn’t do a news nugget today. I hope you noticed we replaced it. So we drop a news nugget, but I saw a piece of news this week where kids were going home with what they called sleepy stickers on their arms. The freaking woman, the wife, the mom took the sleepy sticker — this is what the kids call it — to the lab. And it had all these herbs and stuff in it, but it had — what’s that active natural ingredient that makes you sleepy?
Melatonin.
It had melatonin in it. She was slapping them on these kids so they’d go to freaking sleep, so she could, I don’t know, smoke a cigarette or write something naughty on the chalkboard or flirt with the vice principal. I don’t know what teachers do these days.
She’s drugging the kids, dude. Giving them sleepy stickers.
Super good boy, you can sleep. You get two sleepy stickers!
Of course, the guy that reported said, “This is why you need to homeschool your kids, America.” And I’m like, come on now. That was 1 lady. Yeah, homeschool your kids. If you can, more power to you. Do it. I’m pro all of that. But unless you’re in that kid’s class, that lady’s class, I don’t think you have a lot to worry about with sleepy stickers.
So, I feel like we need to put in a — not a disclaimer — but like a “The More You Know” kind of thing.
So…
Glass shouldn’t be eaten under any circumstances.
Don’t put any stickers on you if you don’t know where they came from, and if they came from a teacher you maybe don’t trust, definitely don’t put the stickers on.
Rubber bands are not for helping you not go to the bathroom.
That’s right.
There we go. We said it. That’s the most important lesson of the day. If there’s a moral to take away from this show, it’s that you shouldn’t put a rubber band on your little man. All right.
This is called Explosive Experiment from Rachel in Iowa. My husband grew up on a farm, and he’s told me so many stories of mischief, foolishness, and danger that I’m amazed that my man is still alive. This is 1 of my favorites. When he was 15 or 16, he and his friend were out in his dad’s shop devising ways to make his old remote control pickup more fun.
Remote control pickup?
Yeah. So they found some carpet tack strips and screwed them all over the exterior of the truck. But of course, this wasn’t enough to make the remote control cool. It needed fire. That’s right. Disclaimer: Don’t play with fire. Fire is very fun to play with, okay? Just be safe. Don’t play with fire.
But yeah, you have to —
Fire is a lot of fun, but don’t play with fire, okay? Don’t play with fire. Don’t even make fun of fire.
Yeah. Don’t light things on fire. Do not diss it. Like, run away from fire. I’ve been burned so many times.
It’s 4 of them too, so it definitely was one of the better ones. My husband, standing over the flaming tacked-out truck surrounded by patchy trails of fire, looked at his father innocently and said, “What?” Of course you would say that. “What do I do? What do I do? I didn’t hear anything. My shirt’s blown up. Three windows blasted out of the house. A little bit of fire. Do nothing. You think I did this? What? Yeah, Chad. My shirt’s on fire. So what? I didn’t prove anything. You can’t beat me.”
“Oh, yes, you can. Thank you, Rachel. You had to catch me first. I’m pretty sure that I almost blasted. That’s so dangerous.”
It’s so dangerous. OK, so never do that. Here’s something else you should never do with fire. In my— in my one part of the trailer, my single-wide trailer—part of the triple-wide trailer. Yeah, I had my own bathroom. And it was pretty big because it was meant to be the bathroom for the home. Right?
It was that trailer’s bathroom. It was the whole bathroom. It had a cup dispenser stuck up next to the mirror for your mouthwash, for the little mouthwash cups. Now those were long gone. My mother was never going to replace them. We were, you know, I don’t know if we were poor or trashy or both, but we never had. We shared the same spit cup for years before we realized that we were all using the same spit cup to rinse our mouth out. I thought that was my spit cup.
Yeah, so we weren’t raised right. But anyway, I used to take Aqua Net—my bad. I think Final Net was the offshoot—but Aqua Net hairspray. And I would spray it up into this plastic reservoir. And then I would take a stick lighter and I’d light it and it would go, and it would just burn up inside. And I did that over and over and over inside of a matchstick-built single-wide trailer.
Right. I’m lucky to be alive. So when I say don’t play with fire, but it’s fun, but don’t—I mean both of them—but I mean don’t do it more. Be smart. Be smart. Be very smart. Don’t light matches in the house. Do not go in the closet. Do not lock the freaking door. Do not play with fire. It’s very stupid.
Yeah. But that’s what I did. And you were one of the lucky ones.
Yeah, I was. Yes. But then I made a potato gun. Oh, jeez. He used that Aqua Net and that Joker, and I used this striker. I got a striker and wired that Joker in there. And we were like, how much do we spray in? We’re like, I don’t know, but we had the wadding. We had the potato down in there. We’re like, we’ll take it out back and try it. We’ll spray it for 6 seconds. One, two, three, four, five, six.
We screwed the cap on, took that Coleman lighter and went click. Boom! We were building it actually to launch t-shirts out into the audience at an event. So we had a t-shirt. Yes, this was grown-up. This was as a grown-up—full-grown grown-up. So what we actually had done had—we had not put a potato in there. We had duct-taped a plastic-wrapped t-shirt. And we’re like, we’ll just see how far this goes. We only have to go about 20 feet, 20–30 feet. Dude, that thing went up in the sky and never saw it come down.
We walked around to the other side of the block. We snuck in people’s backyards because I’m like, it’s got our church’s name on the front of the shirt. They’re going to find me. Some Sherlock Holmes is going to come along with every freaking clue in the world leading right to the children’s pastor.
Yeah. Your fingerprints were all over that.
We built 2 of them, dude. And I painted them red and black, and we got it down. It was only supposed to be about a second and a half, and it was just enough to go—and you shot it out to the audience. Oh, dude. Of course we did.
Oh man. We shot them things out to a room full of thousands of people. Thousands of people.
Man.
Thoom. Thoom. Oh, so satisfying. We never—they arched. I mean, we got up into the overflow, the nosebleeds, everything. It was great, dude.
So that’s awesome.
I didn’t know that there was an air-powered option.
Yeah, I just heard about the Georgia version, and we used, you know, fire. So we used Aqua Net, and I don’t think you can find that stuff anymore. So good, good going. Good thing, ’cause I use a lot of it legitimately too and probably would have gone on fire very easily.
So anyway, we got stickers, key chains, hats, all available at merch.thatstorieshow.com. We’ve added some new stuff, so I’d like you to go check it out. But if you get a sticker, a key chain, or a hat, they come from my house.
Oh, we got to have your fingerprints all over.
That’s right. That’s right. So you can assume that there will be extras when you buy stuff directly from me. I throw in secret stuff.
Oh, but the T-shirts and stuff have to come from a company, but I collected it all together. Merch.thatstorieshow.com, and you can check out all our merch through that website.
We have a wedding-themed show coming up November 21st, dudes. You guys have not let me down. We’ve got so many great wedding stories, but we can always use some more. So if you’ve been waiting, you don’t need to wait too much more because I’m about to sit down and just do some show notes and slap the end on that show.
And if we have to do 2 shows’ worth, we’ll do it. Remember when we did—
We can do a part 2, yes.
Remember when we did Dates and Mates, and we had 2 shows’ worth of content? We did it, man—part 1 and part 2. We’ll do it. So keep sending in those wedding stories. Just go to thatstoryshow.com, commit, click, commit, yeah, submit a story, and you’ll get there, okay?
We want to thank our podcast listeners, our supporting listeners, because it’s possible because of our listeners on Patreon. Support listeners get ad-free listening, swag, and a weekly bonus podcast called Stuff That Wouldn’t Fit on the Show. We’re going to record it right after this. It’s good stuff.
Try it out free for 7 days at support.thatstorieshow.com. We’d like to thank Monique Barber. We read her story today. She is a new patron in the last 30 days. Thanks to our producers, James Spengler, Kerry Wright, and Christopher Tynan.
Guys and girls, that is it. It is time for us to get out of here. Do you have a funny life story that you’d like featured on the episode? I’m sure you do. Submit your story at thatstorieshow.com, where you can type it or talk it. And while you’re there, join our mailing list for the latest updates.
Please take a moment to leave a review on iTunes or Spotify. And remember, when something weird, annoying, embarrassing, or painful happens to you, don’t get stressed, don’t get depressed, don’t play with fire. Just think, “Hey, this belongs on That Story Show.” We’ll see you guys next week. Peace.
Bye.
All right. Here we go. What you got? I’ll pee a tiny bit, but then I’ll quit. I’ll wait until it dries up and then I’ll do it again. The only trouble with my genius plan is once it’s out, you can’t put it back again.
I saw a bear the other day with a smile on his face. He was licking his lips. He was loving the taste. He was using his claws to pick out little bits of cutie flesh. Oh, fresh, oh yes, your little pet was the best.
So now we’re 15 years old, and we live on a farm. We got nothing else to do, so we’re making a bomb. Little truck is stuck up burning, so we’re thinking about learning. A balloon into a boom. Wake my dad, I’m sure he’s yearning to be awakened by a quake. And windows broken by this teen. For everyone, he’ll be my bum for using ox-acetylene. Ah.
Oh, man. I hate the part where I can’t breathe.
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