More Embarrassing Stories!
November 22, 2022
Amanda Doyle:
Bonanza.
Abby Wambach:
Yes. “Bonanza,” she said.
Amanda Doyle:
Bonanza. Apripo of nothing.
Glennon Doyle:
All right. We’re starting with that. I don’t understand it, but welcome to We Can Do Hard Things, Apripo Of Nothing.
Amanda Doyle:
Bonanza.
Glennon Doyle:
I don’t know. I don’t know. We are probably feeling weird because today we are doing an encore presentation of Mortifying Stories.
Abby Wambach:
Yes.
Glennon Doyle:
If you haven’t listened to the first episode of Mortifying Stories, you’re going to need to go back. That episode has changed my life in unfortunate ways, which is that people used to stop me and say a myriad of beautiful things, but now they just tell me about the story where they shit themselves.
Abby Wambach:
Yes.
Glennon Doyle:
On the street. They didn’t shit themselves on the street, they’ve stopped me on the street and tell me this. Well, some of them did. So it’s been kind of fantastic and unifying, right?
Abby Wambach:
Yeah.
Glennon Doyle:
That brought people together. So we’re going to do it again. We’re going to spend the next hour telling you even more and hearing more from our Pod Squad about their most humiliating, embarrassing, mortifying moments. And we hope that it will bring us together in joy once again.
Abby Wambach:
I’m excited.
Amanda Doyle:
And also for a higher good. If you’re feeling guilty, like this is watching trash TV, think of it of doing the incredibly vital work of normalizing the human experience. And we are also taking the step of having the LOL belly laughs which are vital for our health. So this is basically like a yoga class and a therapy. You’re welcome.
Glennon Doyle:
That’s right.
Abby Wambach:
I love it. We’re self helping.
Glennon Doyle:
Yeah. Is it okay if I just tell you a couple more I’ve thought of?
Abby Wambach:
Oh, we’re doing you. You have more embarrassing stories. I love this.
Amanda Doyle:
I do too.
Glennon Doyle:
Well, good.
Amanda Doyle:
Three of them.
Glennon Doyle:
You have three?
Amanda Doyle:
Yeah.
Abby Wambach:
You guys, I unloaded all my good stuff.
Amanda Doyle:
I have a never-ending supply. My cup ‘runneth over with mortifying story.
Abby Wambach:
Oh, this is good. Okay.
Glennon Doyle:
Well the first story I want to tell is about my Aunt Judy. So in my family-
Abby Wambach:
Hi, Aunt Judy.
Glennon Doyle:
Hi, Aunt Judy. We have a problem with kitchens, especially my mom’s side of the family. I don’t know what happened to us, but nothing goes well there. We don’t know how to cook. It just wasn’t in our jeans or something. And so it never has been passed down the way it’s been passed down in other families. And so what I think that people don’t understand who know how to cook, is that they have a schema in their brains that gets activated when they walk into the kitchen, or they pick up a recipe.
Abby Wambach:
What’s a schema.
Glennon Doyle:
It’s like background information.
Abby Wambach:
Okay.
Glennon Doyle:
So what people say is, “Why don’t you know how to cook? It’s just reading directions.” And what I say is, “Well, when I pick up the directions and they say ‘mince and dice and julienne,’ I’m just like I don’t know what all of that means.” So what I’m saying is we don’t have it in our family. We don’t have the background knowledge. So Aunt Judy has never cooked a thing in her life. One day she decides she’s going to cook for this big thing that-
Amanda Doyle:
Bonanza
Glennon Doyle:
The Goddamn family has to go to. This is what Judy would say, “The family has to go, they’re supposed to bring a cake, because God damn life.” So she tells my cousin Karen, who’s like eight at the time, to run to grandma’s house to get the ingredients. Cause of course she wouldn’t go to the store. So Karen has to run to grandmas house.
Amanda Doyle:
Grab whatever you can at grandma’s house. But luckily grandma has bologna and tomatoes that, so you’re not going to have a lot of luck over there.
Abby Wambach:
Oh, I love bologna.
Glennon Doyle:
So she goes to grandma’s house. Grandma doesn’t have any of the stuff. So she comes back, she says, “No, I actually have to go to the store.” My aunt gives her the money. She goes down to the local store, she buys whatever you need to make a cake. She comes back and Judy’s already pissed off, she’s in the kitchen, she’s got the things all laid out. She mixes the thing, she does whatever. She adds the egg. She’s stirring, stirring, stirring, stir, stirring in the pan. And then she looks at the box, because of course she’s just making it from a box. She looks at the box and she says, “God dammit, where’s the tape?” And Karen says, “Tape?”
Glennon Doyle:
And Judy says, “Yes. How the hell I’m supposed to make a cake, but there’s no tape. There’s no tape. Karen, go find some tape.” Karen looks all over the house for tape. She comes back, she says, “We don’t have any tape. What kind of tape?” “Scotch tape, whatever tape.” Karen runs back to my grandma’s house, finds a big thing of masking tape. That’s all she has. Runs back to Judy’s house. Judy’s standing in front of the counter cursing. Karen says, “I’ve got the tape, I’ve got the tape.” So my Aunt Judy takes the tape from my cousin Karen, and begins to tape the pan down to the counter.
Amanda Doyle:
Against the counter?
Glennon Doyle:
Against the counter. So she’s covering it, covering it, making it turns into this tent. It looks like a tent of covered tape. And then Karen and Judy sit in front of the counter and just stare at this conglomeration now, because it’s just a mound of tape. You can’t even see the cake anymore. And so Judy goes, “Well, what the hell now? What the hell are we supposed to do now?” So little Karen takes the box and then she looks at her mom and she’s backing out of the kitchen. And she goes, “Mom, it says, tap the cake on the counter.” And then she runs out of the kitchen. “Tap the cake on the counter.” Not masking tape the cake on the counter. And that has now become family lore.
Amanda Doyle:
Yes.
Amanda Doyle:
Yeah. That’s what you don’t have a schema, then taping the cake to the counter doesn’t sound any more unusual than folding something into the cake.
Glennon Doyle:
You fold, why the hell not masking tape the cake to the counter. Do you want to do one Sisi, because I have a couple more.
Amanda Doyle:
I just remembered in high school I had this huge crush on this guy named Mike Spalding, and he was the coolest guy and I really, really liked him. And one time he just randomly stopped by our house and I was like, “Oh my God, this is so awesome.” So he opens the door, he comes in, my mom’s like “Mike’s here.” He walks in the living room and unfortunately for me, I’m sitting on the floor of the living room stuffing pennies.
Glennon Doyle:
Yes.
Amanda Doyle:
You know those penny rolls, the paper penny rolls?
Glennon Doyle:
Yes. Why did we always have to do that?
Amanda Doyle:
I don’t know. We didn’t always do it. It was like once a year the whole coin jar would fill up and you’d have stuffed pennies. And he came and he was so funny. He kind of made a funny joke about, “Oh, stuffing pennies.” It’s like whatever, it’s odd to walk into someone’s house and see them sitting within 400,000 pennies. Then I still have a crush on him. He still doesn’t like me very much, but he likes me enough to stop by another time, like five months later. He comes in the house and I’m sitting on the living room for stuffing pennies again, for the second time in five months that I’ve done it. But both times he stopped by my house. Sitting on the flooring stuffing pennies. It was so embarrassing, because I had to be like, “I don’t always stuff pennies. It’s not like I’m always just sitting around stuffing pennies.”
Abby Wambach:
He’s like, “Sure. Sure Doyle.”
Amanda Doyle:
Anyway, that was funny.
Glennon Doyle:
Oh, I love that.
Amanda Doyle:
I also remembered in college I was in a sorority, which is kind of funny when you think about that. I was a gender studies major in a sorority, but I was. And I had a boyfriend who flew in for the event and I would get so excited for these big dances that I would be over-served. And I was over-served for this, and this was in the era of, not tights, but what were they called? Nylons.
Glennon Doyle:
Yes.
Amanda Doyle:
You would wear nylons.
Glennon Doyle:
Weird.
Amanda Doyle:
And I would always wear nylons, but I would not wear underwear because you could see. Because what’s the point of underwear if you have nylons on, right?
Abby Wambach:
Totally.
Amanda Doyle:
And you can see it on your dress. Anyway, we get back the pictures, the big pictures of everyone in the group that is like, okay. And so they put these up in the house, in the sorority house. And there’s the huge pictures of everyone in the sorority, everyone at the dance. And we were the first year, the youngest kids. And so we all were kneeling in the front row, except I was kneeling with my legs apart in my dress.
Glennon Doyle:
Oh my god. In
Abby Wambach:
Oh my god.
Amanda Doyle:
With my no underwear on. And so the picture, which is everyone’s favorite picture, people live for this, to see everyone in the picture. Except the entire pictures in the house. And then on me, in my crotch is a sticker heart, that the people have had to put over my vulva on the picture because everybody wants to hang the picture so they can see themselves. But it’s me in the front with a big red heart sticker over my vulva, so I’m not flashing everyone who walks by in the house.
Glennon Doyle:
Is there any way to get a copy?
Amanda Doyle:
Someone probably has it. If you’re listening to this, please don’t post that picture.
Glennon Doyle:
That’s so good.
Abby Wambach:
Oh, my gosh. I have kind of an embarrassing story that happened to me in high school. One of my dear friends, and she was a teammate of mine, she was a junior when I was in eighth grade, senior when I was a freshman. I was always on the varsity soccer team. One of the very first weeks of practice, she comes up to me and says, “All right, so you’re the youngest of a family, I am too. I never got taught stuff. So here’s the deal. Before you come to school, you got to brush your teeth. And every night after practice you got to take a shower.”
Glennon Doyle:
Oh, honey. She’s telling you, you stunk?
Abby Wambach:
And I was like, “Oh, okay. And you got to wear deodorant. It’s just one of those things.”
Amanda Doyle:
You didn’t have a schema for hygiene.
Abby Wambach:
No. “You’ve been stinking and we’re all in close proximity. And then you get into a car, the whole shebang.” So I was in eighth grade when I first learned that I needed to brush my teeth every morning, brush my hair she also said, wear deodorant, and shower after practice every day.
Glennon Doyle:
Bless her heart and your heart. Did you feel embarrassed?
Abby Wambach:
Yeah, it was so embarrassing. And then I think I went the other way and I was like, “Oh, that’s how I like it.”
Amanda Doyle:
“I’m doing a thing here, this is my brand.”
Abby Wambach:
I’m doing it on purpose. But now I think I’m super sensitive.
Glennon Doyle:
Is that why you always smell so good and you put on all the things?
Abby Wambach:
Yeah. Because I’m like, “Do I smell bad? Do you smell anything?”
Amanda Doyle:
Those things traumatize you I think a little bit.
Abby Wambach:
Yeah. And also, I’ve also had a lot of teammates that have also had this problem for whatever reason. And people come to me as the leader captain of the team and they’re like, “We got to talk to so and so.”
Amanda Doyle:
Tell Liz she smells like shit. Is that part of your job as captain?
Abby Wambach:
This is a toughie. This is a toughie. So you go through a process of modeling. You get into the locker room and everybody’s like, “Everybody has to shower. Everybody’s got to shower right now. Let’s all take showers.” Try to get people into the mindset.
Glennon Doyle:
Yeah. That’s good. Well, you smell really good now, babe.
Abby Wambach:
Thank you.
Glennon Doyle:
I was thinking back, sister, do you remember 10 years ago or something? I had seen some situation in a magazine or online where a woman was being photoshopped. So she posed for something and then with no knowledge of her own, they just photoshopped her up and put her on the cover. And she was so pissed. So then I got so pissed about women and photoshopping and all of the things. So I wrote this manifesto.
Amanda Doyle:
It was like an op ed or something?
Glennon Doyle:
Yes. But it was about how, “You will never Photoshop me in any situation. Women do not need to be made more palatable to whomever with your fancy machines. And I will appear in periodicals and media exactly the way I am.” And it was this entire thing. And I sent it to sister, and then she didn’t call me. And I was like, “What the hell?” So I call her and I was like, “Did you get my Photoshop manifesto?” And she was like, “I did.” And I was like, “Well, what do you think?” And she was like, “It’s well written.” And then didn’t say anything else. And I was like, “Well, okay, so what’s the plan?” She goes, “Well Glenn, no one’s ever asked you to be in a magazine or anything. Do you want me to save this just in case someone ever asks to take a picture of you? What is this for?” Apripo of nothing.
Abby Wambach:
It’s bonanza.
Amanda Doyle:
It was like, to whom it may concern. And I was like, “No one is concerned. No one has asked you to appear in their periodical, but if and when they do, I’ll make well sure if they want to use a photograph in said non-periodical, they will not Photoshop it.”
Glennon Doyle:
Oh, my God. It’s so embarrassing.
Glennon Doyle:
Okay, so one more of it’s kind of like that picture it. Sister and I are on the road. I have an event, I think we were in Charleston, South Carolina or something. And we were staying at a hotel next door to the event that I was speaking at. And so the hotel was a buzz, a buzz, a buzz, a buzz, a buzz, a bonanza of women who many of whom were going to the event. So I come down to the lobby, getting ready to go over to the event. And I’m standing next to this group of women and they look… Do you know where I’m going? They kind of look over at me. In my mind I’m registering these people are going to the event.
Amanda Doyle:
You’re registering, maybe these people want to put me in a periodical.
Glennon Doyle:
Yeah, exactly. Are they photoshopping me with their eyeballs. So one of them comes over to me. And so I turn to look at her and she says, “Would you take a picture?” And then gestures back to her group. So I, in my ever so humble, generous spirit say, “Of course, of course.”
Amanda Doyle:
And gives me the phone.
Glennon Doyle:
So I hand my sister the phone and I walk over to the group of women, I snuggle myself in the middle of their line. There’s like six of them. So I get into the center of them, I put my arms around their waists. I smile at my sister who has the camera. My sister is shaking with laughter, takes the picture. And then I notice that the women are just being weird. They’re just being weird. They’re not smiling or excited. And one of the women turns to me in the line and she goes like this. She goes, “That was weird. Could you take a picture of us?” She had no freaking idea who I was. She just wanted a picture of her friends. And I got in the middle of their picture and squeezed them like they were my best friends.
Abby Wambach:
I would love to have that photo of all of them going like…
Glennon Doyle:
And I just had to walk away. I just walked away. And then sister got her shit together and took a picture of the women by themselves, because she knew what was going on the entire time and just let me go through this charade bonanza.
Abby Wambach:
I love that.
Amanda Doyle:
Somewhere that picture exists with all seven of you, but you have a heart-shaped sticker of your face so they can block you out.
Glennon Doyle:
If anyone asks me for a picture now, I always say, “Of me?” Because I’m so scared.
Amanda Doyle:
It’s a good test.
Glennon Doyle:
Yes. Yes.
Amanda Doyle:
A good test.
Glennon Doyle:
I’m so scared that they don’t mean it.
Amanda Doyle:
That was weird.
Glennon Doyle:
That was weird. So let’s hear from Meredith.
Meredith:
Hi, this is Meredith. My embarrassing story was coming back into the U.S with my Australian partner. And he was going into one line for foreigners and I was going into my line. In Philadelphia and we get there and the TSA agent says to, I had my passport in hand, there was a scanner. And he said, “Face down on the scanner and pointed to it.” And I just slowly tipped my head down, putting my face on the scanner. But you guys, he meant my passport. He didn’t mean my face. And he just looked at me like, “Oh god.” But he looked like he’d seen it before, like I wasn’t the first mega idiot. And then I joined back up with my partner and actually just kept this little moment to myself. But I told him, I shared that humiliated moment where I put my face down on the scanner,, not the face down of my passport. And I told him, and he loves that story more than anything and won’t let me live it down. Bye.
Abby Wambach:
It’s so good.
Amanda Doyle:
Face down and she put her face to the scanner. That reminds me of the passport. Okay, this is what I need the Pod Squad to understand. We were trying to renew Glennon’s passport. And so I texted her one day and I said, I need a picture of your passport. I have to get that to get the information off of it.” And she says, “Okay.” And she texts me back a picture of her passport. Except she has sent me just the front.
Abby Wambach:
The closed front.
Amanda Doyle:
The blue front of the passport where it just says passport. She’s like, “Here it is.” And I’m like, “Thanks.” When I said picture of your passport, she just sent me a picture of the blue cover. As if there was anything that anyone was going to do with the cover of a passport. I was like, “Thanks. That also looks like my passport.
Glennon Doyle:
I think that I thought I was just being tested, because I thought you were asking me to prove that I had gotten my passport.
Amanda Doyle:
Well, that wouldn’t have proved it, because that could’ve been anyone’s passport.
Glennon Doyle:
Okay.
Abby Wambach:
To go back to what Meredith and the TSA agent, I will say there’s two things that really freak me out. Customs and DMVs.
Glennon Doyle:
Oh my god, Abby loses her damn mind.
Abby Wambach:
There’s something about not being able to drive and not being able to get back or into a country, that I actually lose part of my consciousness.
Glennon Doyle:
Yeah, it’s scary.
Abby Wambach:
I freak out. Tish saw it the other day because she was getting her license at the DMV. And I was running around and I have all the documents because clearly we just found out that Glennon is not the document person in our family. And Tish was kind of rattled because she never sees me in this. TSAs, customs.
Glennon Doyle:
We lose your mind. We lose our minds. We panic. We panic.
Amanda Doyle:
It’s a major power differential.
Amanda Doyle:
And it’s also like the Wild West. They can say whatever they want. There’s no grievance process, there’s no escalating. The DMV could be like, “I’m sorry, I’m confiscating this license and you’ll never drive a motor vehicle again. And then the rest of your life you’re trying to fight it.
Glennon Doyle:
Yes. And it’s because you were in the wrong line.
Amanda Doyle:
Yeah.
Glennon Doyle:
I just saw a tweet the other day that was the funniest thing on earth that someone said. “The DMV is like, ‘did you bring the Declaration of Independence though?” There’s so many documents.
Abby Wambach:
Listen, you have to bring the whole thing. And then they’re like, “You don’t have it so you have to come back.” And you’re like, “I can’t take off of work, my kids are busy.”
Glennon Doyle:
Okay, let’s hear from, I don’t know who this next person is.
Anon:
Hi, Abby and Glennon and Sister. My mortifying story is when I was 19, I was dating this hippy, long-haired man who was also 19. He was not a man. But he was at his family’s home and his parents were throwing a big party. They were the type of rich parents that let underage kids drink. And so we were very drunk and he had the lower basement part of the house. We were drinking and hanging out and it was probably time to go to bed. I went to go to sleep and somehow managed to go upstairs. And his mother looked a lot like him and was in bed naked. And I crawled in bed naked with his mother and laid there for the rest of the night, not knowing that it was not him. And so the next morning I woke up and I spanked her on the bottom and said, “Noah, what are you doing?” And she turned around and said, “I’m not Noah, I’m his mom.”
Glennon Doyle:
Oh, my God.
Amanda Doyle:
My favorite part of that story was the way she tried to justify it.
Glennon Doyle:
Yes.
Amanda Doyle:
He looks a lot like his mom.
Glennon Doyle:
Exactly. Come on.
Amanda Doyle:
Anyone could’ve made that mistake, even if they weren’t 19 and plastered. You too would’ve jumped in bed with Noah’s mom.
Glennon Doyle:
It often happens when people have looked like their parents. You find yourself sleeping with them.
Abby Wambach:
When I was growing up, one of my cousins, it was like just after college party time in my family’s household. She fell asleep and went to go to the bathroom. And this is an older house that I grew up in, and so there’s one bathroom that served five bedrooms upstairs. And so the bathroom was to the right. She was so drunk that she took a left into my parents’ bedroom and sat at the end of my parents’ bed, pulled her pants down.
Glennon Doyle:
No.
Abby Wambach:
Yeah. And my mom was like, “Joanne, Joanne, what are you doing?” And Joanne says, “Why are you in the bathroom?” And so then she was so drunk she couldn’t find her way out because she was so disoriented. I don’t know what happened after that, but that’s family lore in my family.
Amanda Doyle:
Who hasn’t done that? Who hasn’t done that?
Glennon Doyle:
Who hasn’t peed in their parents’ bedroom? I don’t think I’ve even done that.
Amanda Doyle:
No, but I mean when you think it’s the bathroom and it’s not.
Abby Wambach:
You’re like in the closet, you’re like, “The bathroom is so different than I remember.”
Glennon Doyle:
That’s not mortifying. That’s just human nature.
Amanda Doyle:
Exactly.
Glennon Doyle:
So I just thought of this story when you were talking about the sorority thing. So there was this one situation that my friend told me about. It was a group of women that were living together and it was in college. You remember in college or in communal living where one person flushes and all of the hot water would go away. So everyone in the shower, the same thing would freeze.
Amanda Doyle:
Yes. That’s still the story of my house.
Glennon Doyle:
So because of this, there was a sign in the stall that said, don’t forget to yell, “Flush.” Because that way people who were in the shower could step away from the water. But this one girl, I don’t know if she’s drinking or if she misunderstood the sign. So she peed and then she stood up and then she kept saying to the toilet, “Flush, flush.” She thought that the sign meant that the toilet was voice activated and you had to flush at it until it flushed.
Abby Wambach:
She thinks it’s 2025.
Glennon Doyle:
That’s really good. She thinks it’s 2025. Okay, let’s hear from Terry.
Terry:
Hi, this is Terry. Back in 2001, Raleigh, North Carolina, just had a baby, in the hospital. And back then the preacher came to the hospital to welcome the baby. And I was asleep and my mom had come in. And the preacher came to the door. Of course my mom woke me up, “The preacher’s here.” So kind of woke up. I was worried that my boobs were going to hang out on my nursing gown. So I was getting that all situated. Anyway, he came in, he apologized he woke me up, I said, “No, no, it’s fine, it’s fine.” And he said a prayer over our family. And he went down, I guess, to kiss my forehead. And I thought he was going to kiss me. So I puckered up and I kissed him on the lips.
Glennon Doyle:
No.
Terry:
Really right there in front of my mom, I kissed the preacher on the lips. And my mom was like, “What did you do?” And I said, “I thought he was coming for kiss. I didn’t know.” So anyway, so I kissed our preacher on the lips in front of my family at the hospital. The baby one day old.
Glennon Doyle:
Oh, my God. That’s beautiful, Terry. Oh God, how awkward.
Abby Wambach:
It’s so awkward. And just like, “He was coming in and I just went for it.”
Glennon Doyle:
Sister, remember when our first big huge meeting with all of the fancy people in New York. And they were on that big Zoom or something. And when we were leaving the meeting, I said, “Okay, bye. I love you.”
Amanda Doyle:
Yeah, that was really awkward.
Glennon Doyle:
Yeah.
Amanda Doyle:
Because we had just met them five minutes before. It’s not like a team we had worked for. And it was a dude.
Glennon Doyle:
And it was dudes.
Amanda Doyle:
And we didn’t even end up working with him.
Glennon Doyle:
Which we could probably guess why.
Amanda Doyle:
Apripo of nothing.
Abby Wambach:
Bonanza.
Amanda Doyle:
“Okay, bye. I love you.”
Abby Wambach:
I do that so often because when I get off the phone with the kids every time, it’s like, “Okay, love you, bye.”
Glennon Doyle:
I know.
Abby Wambach:
And so I’m on the phone with some Joe Schmo and I’m like, Okay, I love you.”
Amanda Doyle:
From Verizon. And you’re like, “Love you, bye.”
Abby Wambach:
So weird.
Glennon Doyle:
All right, let’s hear from Shannon.
Shannon:
My name’s Shannon. When I was a sophomore in high school, I had a little boyfriend that I was very promiscuous with. And we were being teenagers, hooking up on the couch, watching a movie air quote. And I thought my parents had gone to sleep. Well, all of a sudden my boyfriend is on the floor underneath the blanket doing things, and I hear rustling in the kitchen. And I turn around and my dad is standing there and I don’t know what to do. I’m trying not to enjoy what is happening. So I start kicking my boyfriend and screaming, “Did you find the remote? Hurry up and find the remote.”
Glennon Doyle:
Yes.
Abby Wambach:
Quick thinking.
Shannon:
Yeah. I’m still mortified telling this story 10 years later.
Glennon Doyle:
Shannon is a genius. That was genius. Sometimes you just got to say something that makes it plausible for everyone to pretend that’s what was happening.
Amanda Doyle:
Exactly. That Dad was like, “That’s exactly what Shannon’s doing. What a helpful boyfriend she had.”
Glennon Doyle:
Yes. Yes.
Amanda Doyle:
“Always looking to find the remote.”
Abby Wambach:
I have a hilarious story that I have to leave anonymous because it’s so funny. One of my friends was hooking up with somebody on a rug. And you know there’s like a sexual maneuver where you pull somebody closer to you with their knees, you pull them closer to you. Well, she was on a rug and she was naked. And the rug, it was like a shag rug.
Glennon Doyle:
Okay.
Amanda Doyle:
Apripo of everything. They were shagging on a rug, so it was a shag rug. You see what we did there?
Abby Wambach:
And so she ends up in the hospital, because the threads of the shag get stuck and get embedded into her vagina?
Glennon Doyle:
No, no.
Amanda Doyle:
No.
Abby Wambach:
And it blows up.
Glennon Doyle:
No.
Abby Wambach:
Yes.
Amanda Doyle:
Wait, the shag expands?
Abby Wambach:
No. So her vagina swelled up.
Glennon Doyle:
From the shag rug fibers?
Abby Wambach:
Yes.
Amanda Doyle:
Are you sure it wasn’t something else?
Abby Wambach:
They had to go in there and pull out the little shag fibers when she got to the hospital.
Amanda Doyle:
Do you think that’s how it’s got it’s name, the rug?
Glennon Doyle:
The shag rug?
Abby Wambach:
I don’t know.
Glennon Doyle:
Oh my God.
Okay, how about the next person?
Anon 2:
Hey, Glennon, Abby, and Sister. So there’s a thing at the University of Florida, and it’s called Gator Growl. And it’s like a little bar hop. And then you take the bus back home. So I did the whole concentrating really hard to not miss my stop whole thing. And the whole time this guy that I was seeing is texting me like, “Hey, come over. Hey, come over.” And I was like, “Yeah, yeah. He’s like, you can just get an Uber.” I was like, “Yeah, yeah, I can do that.” I’ve never ordered an Uber before, ever. This is like 2014, Uber just got to Gainesville. We’re real excited. So I go to order an Uber and I’m like, “It’s not working. I don’t know what’s happening. I put in my name, I put in my address and the address wouldn’t go.”
Well, the next day come to find out I get a call and it’s like, “Hey.” And I’m like, “Hi.” And they’re like, “Thanks so much for applying for a job with Uber. We can’t wait to hear more about what you’ are as a driver, why you want to work for us.” And I was like, “Fuck.” I applied for a fucking job, I did not own a car. And that is my mortifying story. Thanks. Oh, by the way, I was graduating with my master’s degree that day.
Abby Wambach:
I will say this.
Glennon Doyle:
Oh, she accidentally applied for a job.
Abby Wambach:
Yes. I will say this though. There are some apps that are hard to navigate.
Glennon Doyle:
They’re all hard.
Amanda Doyle:
Yeah.
Abby Wambach:
And you’re like, I don’t understand how to do this. Also, I went to the University of Florida, so go Gators.
Glennon Doyle:
Go Gators. Go Gators. Oh that’s good. All right, Kristin.
Kristin:
Hi, my name is Kristin. So I was in grad school at a fairly small university that didn’t have a robust program yet for the degree I was getting. And so we did teleconferencing classes. And I was in the program with my boyfriend. And so we were the only two people taking the class at our university. So one time we were in this room and we were fairly new to dating and it was fun. And so we’re all set up waiting for the class to start. we’re at the conference in and muted or so I thought. So I turned to him at one point and I said, “You know, I could blow you under this table and no one would know.” Which never in my life have I said before or after or done. And all we hear is, “Merced, could you please turn your mics off.” And we both died a little bit that day. But we’re still together two kids later, so sometimes mortification brings you closer together.
Glennon Doyle:
Oh, honey. Oh, god. Do you know what that reminds me of?
Abby Wambach:
What?
Glennon Doyle:
All right. Sister, do you remember? Of course you do, because it’s probably etched in your soul forever. But when Abby and I were falling in love and we were trying to do things methodically in terms of going public.
Abby Wambach:
No, you were not.
Glennon Doyle:
Okay, well you were trying to do things.
Amanda Doyle:
Yes.
Glennon Doyle:
Okay. We were nothing but just drunken love. I don’t know why I did that. I still to this day do not know why I did this. But we were on a tour and I was in charge of all of these things. And so my publisher sent me the bios for all the people who were going to be speaking at one of the nights. You were going to be speaking at one of the nights. So your bio was in the list of bios. I, for some effing reason, as a joke. I think you were there with me or something at the computer probably, because we were attached at the hip. I took your bio and took out half of the paragraph and added my own spin to it. So it was like, “Abby Wambach, Fifa World Player of the Year, Olympian, blah blah, blah. Hottest human in the universe. I want to marry her, I want to sleep with her, I want blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.” Just this funny thing. And then showed it to you and then I fucking sent it to the publishing team.
Abby Wambach:
You forgot to delete that part.
Glennon Doyle:
To my entire publishing team. I sent it.
Abby Wambach:
Yeah.
Glennon Doyle:
So I press send.
Abby Wambach:
How did you find out?
Glennon Doyle:
Well, I freeze and I don’t move. I’m just staring at the computer. And then if you remember this, we were in the little office in my old house.
Abby Wambach:
Uh-huh.
Glennon Doyle:
I just crumble to the ground. I just lay on the floor and then the phone rings within seconds. And it’s Sister and she’s just like, “What the absolute fuck?” We have been working so hard to do this right. And then you sent a porn paragraph to our entire team.” So then I had no words. So then I think we sent another email that was like, “Whatever you do, don’t open the previous email.”
Amanda Doyle:
Yeah, that works well. It’s like, “Everyone has disregarded your email, until you send an email that says, “Disregard prior email.” At which point everyone goes back to look at prior email.
Glennon Doyle:
Exactly. Have we talked to Whitney about this? Whitney’s my editor, who’s been through low so many things with me. Actually one more Whitney story. Whitney Frick, I love you. Whitney Frick has been with me since the very, very, very beginning. On my first tour.
Abby Wambach:
For Carry On, Warrior, your first tour.
Glennon Doyle:
For Carry On, Warrior, I went to New York City. I didn’t know what fuck I was doing at all. Somebody said, “Just be camera ready. Just be TV ready.” TV ready, as if that meant things to me. I was watching a lot of Real Housewives back then, right? That’s what I did. That was my TV. So to me, to be TV ready meant you had four pounds of Botox, you had 60 pounds of makeup. You had eyelashes out to your, you had extensions in your hair, you had huge boobs. I just made myself into a real housewife. Okay?
Abby Wambach:
Mm-hmm.
Glennon Doyle:
Part of my Real Housewife outfit was these chicken cutlets that I used to stuff in my bra.
Amanda Doyle:
Okay. So they were not actual chicken cutlets, but you all know what we’re talking about. Those silicone little packets that look like chicken cutlets.
Glennon Doyle:
Right. So I went to New York City, did the Today Show, did an entire segment about how we should all show up as ourselves vulnerably and be real. And I did that in my entire Real Housewife, with my fake boobs.
Amanda Doyle:
And by real, I mean real housewives.
Glennon Doyle:
Yes. I could not move my face. And I was like, we need to embrace who we are. That’s fine. I can’t even think about it. Then I flew to the next place and I forgot my chicken cutlet boobs in my drawer.
Abby Wambach:
At the hotel?
Glennon Doyle:
At the hotel. Which I was like, “How am I going to be TV ready without my boobs? So I had to call Whitney, who barely knew me at the time. And I was like, fancy New York editor, “I just need you to go back to the hotel and just get my boobs, and I just need you to send them to me at my next hotel.” So she, Whitney, as one of her very first acts of love, delivered my boobs to the next hotel.
Amanda Doyle:
Yes she did.
Glennon Doyle:
Yeah.
Amanda Doyle:
She had to overnight them to Chicago or something.
Glennon Doyle:
Okay, let’s move on.
Gee:
My name is Giege, and I wanted to call about a prosthetic penis story.
Glennon Doyle:
Yeah, you do.
Gee:
So basically, I was in a house with me and my partner and two of our friends who were together. And long story short, after we had sex with our prosthetic penis, I went in the shower to wash it. And I don’t know where my brain was, but I washed it and then it could stick to the shower wall. So I stuck it to the wall so I could wash myself. And then I forgot that I had stuck it to the wall and I left the shower. So a few minutes later, our other friends went to take a shower. And we were all hanging out in the living room and we heard a scream and she said, “Who left their dick in the shower?” And turns out she doesn’t see very well in the shower. And she went in and it hit her in the head. And that was definitely a mortifying story that, thank God I was with my queer friends who understood the situation better. But I thought you guys might enjoy that.
Amanda Doyle:
If I had a quarter for every time we hit in the head a dick in a shower, I would have 4 cents.
Glennon Doyle:
Can we please, please title this episode, “Who left their dick in the shower?”
Amanda Doyle:
So good.
Glennon Doyle:
Gee, you were right. We did enjoy it up.
Amanda Doyle:
That was amazing.
Abby Wambach:
I just want to say, I didn’t know that you could get a prosthetic penis or dildo to stick on the shower wall.
Glennon Doyle:
Well, for sure, we’re Googling that after this recording.
Amanda Doyle:
Yeah, you definitely can. There’s all kinds of structures, right? But do you hook it on the wall?
Amanda Doyle:
No.
Abby Wambach:
Is it suction?
Amanda Doyle:
It’s a suction cup situation.
Abby Wambach:
I see, I see.
Glennon Doyle:
Oh, my god. I just a thing remember something. Oh my god. Okay. Do you remember, Abby Wambach, when I was doing a speech in Kansas City? And there was so many people in the audience and it was at a church.
Amanda Doyle:
Oh yes, I know what you’re going to say.
Glennon Doyle:
And I was in the middle of an impassioned plea. I was trying to get everybody galvanized and fired up. And so I was trying to say, “What we all do is we continue to put our fists in the air, or something.”
Abby Wambach:
I don’t remember this.
Amanda Doyle:
I remember it.
Glennon Doyle:
But you will in a minute. But what I said to the entire audience was, “What we do is we continue fisting.”
Abby Wambach:
Oh yeah.
Glennon Doyle:
And then I launched my fist into the air. “We continue fisting.” And the entire crowd went silent.
Amanda Doyle:
It was in a church too.
Glennon Doyle:
In a church. And then burst into tears laughing. And the most embarrassing part was, I had no idea what they were laughing at. Because I didn’t know what fisting was because I was so new. Do you remember that?
Abby Wambach:
Yeah.
Glennon Doyle:
Okay, sorry. Carry on. How about Jocelyn?
Jocelyn:
Hey, my name is Jocelyn and I’m just responding to the podcast. Literally a small girl coming out with my mom and aunt from Chucky Cheese. We get into the car, we’re all ready to go. My mom is having trouble getting the car started. And my Aunt Fran, God lover, is eating peanuts off the dashboard. Suddenly goes, “I can’t remember these peas being here.” Turns out my mom and my aunt. They have now put all of the children in the wrong car. Everybody starts screaming, trying to get out of the car really quickly. And all your stories today brought that story back to me. And I just remember my aunt saying, “I don’t remember these peanuts on the dashboard.”
Amanda Doyle:
You know what? I really appreciate Aunt Fran. I love someone who sees a bunch of peanuts on a dashboard and is like. “Yum. Peanuts on the dashboard.” And begins eating them and then later who says, “Huh, I don’t remember these peanuts on the dashboard or else I would’ve eaten them on the way to Chucky Cheese.”
Glennon Doyle:
Do you remember when mom was following grandma, grandma Alice in the car. And she pulled up and they were trying to get into a parking lot. And you know how the parking lots have those rails when you get close enough they open but you can’t like go through them?
Amanda Doyle:
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. So their entrances, the arms go up and the arms go down.
Glennon Doyle:
Yeah. So my grandma saw the sign on the rails that said, “Pull up. Pull up.” And so my mom found my grandma, her car was parked in front of the rails, and she was standing trying to pull up-
Abby Wambach:
The gate?
Glennon Doyle:
Pull up the rails.
Abby Wambach:
Yeah.
Amanda Doyle:
She was pulling the arm up because she thought that’s what it meant.
Glennon Doyle:
Yeah.
Amanda Doyle:
And you had to pull it up and then it would be, yes, that’s right.
Glennon Doyle:
Pull up to-
Amanda Doyle:
Poor grandma and her car. Remember how she would drive? She lived in the same town for 50 years. She would go to four places. To church, to the mall, to the bowling alley, and to the golf course. Notice there was no grocery store in there.
Abby Wambach:
No.
Amanda Doyle:
Please see aforementioned bologna and tomatoes. But she would go church, mall, golf course, bowling alley. So one day she has to go to the mall, and we’re getting in the car. The mall’s probably 25 minutes away. We get 10 minutes on the road. And she’s like, “Dammit, I made the wrong turn.” So she turns around and drives all the way back to the house. And then she pulls in and she pulls out again. And we’re like, Grandma, what?” And she’s like, oh, I only know how to get from the house to the mall. If I make a wrong turn, I have to back to the house and start over.
Glennon Doyle:
Do you understand how much. I just, I feel so seen by that story. So much just feels genetic.
Glennon Doyle:
Okay, so how about, let’s hear from Hannah.
Hannah:
This is Hannah. So I was in high school at the time, and I was at a Mexican restaurant. And you know how you don’t really want to be the person that’s butchering a word that’s not in English. You try to be a little respectful, give it your best effort. And so I was really gearing up to be like, I’m going to say the Spanish word. I’m going to try. And so when the waiter came, I said, “I would like a taco platte.” And then she said, “Do you mean a taco plate?” And that’s when I realized that it wasn’t in Spanish, it was just plate. And platte isn’t correct either. So I had to say, “Yes, a taco plate.” But at this point my brother and my sister had heard and were just dying laughing. And it was just mortifying. I probably thought about this for once a week for the last 15 years.
Glennon Doyle:
Yeah.
Abby Wambach:
A taco platte. Of course it’s that.
Glennon Doyle:
Remember when you walked into the department store in Florida and very famously said to the lady behind the desk, “We’re looking for the brand Fromay. Do you have any Fromay? And she pointed and she goes, do you mean Frame jeans?
Abby Wambach:
I was like, “Yep, that’s exactly what I mean.”
Amanda Doyle:
Frame. Let’s hear from Singh.
Singh:
Hi, friends. My name is Singh. This is a story about, I was a teenager. I grew up in Denver, Colorado, I don’t know, about 15 of my closest friends and I all went to Red Rocks to see a concert. It was amazing. And shirts are off and the sun is out. And my friend is sitting in front of me. And he, I can tell, has one of the most satisfying back peels from a sunburn you have ever seen. I can’t help myself. And eventually an impulse comes to me and I reach over and I grab it. And I remember it was from his left shoulder. And I started, I think I only have one hand on this point. But the most satisfying sheet of skin came off in my hand. And then my friend turned around and it was not my friend. This was just some guy looking at the woman who peeled his back. And the only thing that I could think of to tell him was, I’m sorry, I thought you were someone else.
Abby Wambach:
Oh, my God. Imagine.
Glennon Doyle:
And it was not my friend
Abby Wambach:
Peeling the skin off of some stranger’s back.
Glennon Doyle:
And what is this? What is this? Some people are so into this stuff with other people’s bodies. Abby and I have a major, I have to call marriage on it. She wants me to pop her zits.
Amanda Doyle:
Oh my God, I can’t believe you don’t want to pop people’s zits. It’s irresistible.
Abby Wambach:
I know. Especially the ones I get on the back from where my sports bra is and it’s sweaty.
Glennon Doyle:
No.
Abby Wambach:
And I get them and I can’t reach.
Glennon Doyle:
No.
Abby Wambach:
And I’m like, “I just need your help.” And she’s like, “No, I call marriage.”
Glennon Doyle:
It’s a boundary. It’s a boundary for me. I say to her, “I need you to help me. I need you to help me not be completely grossed out.” All right, let’s hear it from Jeanie.
Jeanie:
Hello lovelies. My name is Jeanie. I am a French teacher at an elementary school here in Canada. And in my fifties I seem to no longer be able to hold my pee very long. So I went into the bathroom and thought I had locked the door and was doing my business sitting on the toilet, when I heard the kindergartens coming through in the hallway, all 30 of them. And you know how kindergartens touch everything. So they must have touched the little handle that says open. And the door slowly opens, ever so slowly.
Abby Wambach:
She’s still on the toilet.
Meredith:
And I can now, I’m in full view as it opens to all the kindergartens coming through sitting on the toilet. I don’t know what to do because I can’t get up to close the door. And I decide I can just sit there and be kind and wait. So I wait for all of them coming by ever so slowly, as they all said, “Bonjour madame.” And the sweetest part is that these three and four year olds are so untainted that they did not think it a big deal whatsoever. It was just a teacher sitting on a toilet and an opportunity to say bonjour madame.
Amanda Doyle:
I love that she just sat and was like, “Well, out of all of my options. My best one is just wave to the children walking by.”
Abby Wambach:
Because she’s stuck. She can’t get up, because she’s mid-pee and it’s impossible to stop midstream.
Glennon Doyle:
How great? Because the kids don’t even know yet that, that’s a big mortifying moment. Maybe she made peeing a little less of a future mortifying moment for those babies.
Abby Wambach:
If anybody ever walks in on me while I’m on the toilet for the rest of my life, I will just say bonjour madame.
Glennon Doyle:
Bonjour madame is our new prosthetic penis.
Amanda Doyle:
Yes.
Amanda Doyle:
Bonjour madame, may have a taco platte?
Glennon Doyle:
And who put a dick in the shower?
Abby Wambach:
Bonanza.
Glennon Doyle:
So what I would like to say to the Pod Squad is thank you for spending this hour with us.
Abby Wambach:
Yeah.
Glennon Doyle:
Don’t forget this week before we meet again, that when things get hard we can do hard things.
Amanda Doyle:
And we want to do a holiday edition of embarrassing stories. Let’s do that. So maybe embarrassing stories, maybe beautiful stories, your best holiday stories. Send them. They can be also your worst holiday stories. But anything brutal, beautiful, brutiful, as G Bird says, or hilarious, send it to us. Call us and tell us about it at 747-200-5307. That’s 747-200-5307.
Glennon Doyle:
I’m excited about this. Okay. So you know how really good holidays are a good holiday, and then really bad holidays are a good story. It’s like that. So just think of the moment that you have with your family that you remember the most. Can be because it sucked or can be because it was beautiful. And send them our way. We’re just going to get through the holidays this year by sharing the stories that makes us pee in our pants a little bit and feel less alone. Well, everything makes me pee in my pants because three children.
Amanda Doyle:
Everything makes me pee in my pants. Just call and sneeze and that’ll make me pee in my pants. Also, please try to get it in about under two minutes so that we can actually play it. We listen to all of it. But we can only play the ones that aren’t 35 minutes long.
Glennon Doyle:
You all, you just call us and then you just leave the phone on all evening. You just talk to us for hours. It’s so amazing.
Abby Wambach:
It’s our favorite to listen to those voicemails.
Glennon Doyle:
It’s our favorite. But for these, two minutes please. Two minutes please. Okay. We love you, Pod Squad. We’ll see you next time. Bye.
Amanda Doyle:
Bye.
Glennon Doyle:
We Can Do Hard Things is produced in partnership with Cadence13 studios. Be sure to rate, review and follow the show on Apple Podcasts, Odyssey or wherever you get your podcasts. Especially be sure to rate and review the podcast if you really liked it. If you didn’t, don’t worry about it. It’s fine.