210: Be Careful Where You Squat

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It began long ago, two young boys in an American town riding their bikes to school and Little League practice. Over the years, the boys became fast friends, united in their love for stories where things would go horribly wrong. Pour yourself a strong beverage and buckle up. You're in the Shallow End with Schnebly and toth. Episode number 210 of the Shallow End with Schnebly and Toth will not feature a story that I sent to Jethro this morning. And believe me when I tell you that we are doing you a favor. It involved Jethro as you know, a story about a woman who was arrested for theft from a Walmart, I believe. Yeah, she had gotten gone into a Walmart and taken a bottle, a screw top bottle of wine into the bathroom to drink it. So that's sort of like three strikes right there. Sure. Right. Yeah. And then in the process of getting arrested and booked, they discovered that, and I'm not going to be too graphic here, they discovered that she had figured out a way to smuggle another bottle of wine into, into the jail where she was being booked. Now let's, let's let the listeners imagination do the rest of the work there. Let's just say it was a, an issue for internal Affairs. Now my question is this, was this also a twist off or did she have to smuggle in the corkscrew? I assumed that because the first bottle that she stole and drank in the restroom was a, was a screw top that they would probably, you know, I do have to say a screw top bottle is very, very convenient. Sure it is. Especially when you're smuggling contraband. That's right. Don't. Don't ride your bikes on the roof. And don't smuggle bottles of wine into a jail where you're about to be booked. It's a good thing it wasn't a box of wine. There you go. More painful. Yeah, and more. More ripe for puns, too, it occurs to me. Let's just move along, shall we? I understand you have a story for us. I do, my friend. Hit me. Well, like the story we just talked about. There are moments in life when a person is forced to make a decision. It might not be a big decision. Not a should I move across the country kind of decision. Not I, should I tell her I love, love her kind of decision. Talking about those little tiny crossroads where your brain suggests something important, like. Like, yeah, just let the keys go. But for reasons science still cannot fully explain, another part of the brain says, no, today I fight. And that brings us to one of the greatest stories that's ever come out of Pennsylvania. Oh, love it. A story so deeply human and tragically optimistic that it deserves to be bronze sculpted outside every construction site in America. Now, this happened back in 2001, January. Okay. A man from Huntingdon Valley, Pennsylvania, was using the porta potty at a construction site, and he dropped his keys in the porta potty. Now, already, the universe has offered him a very clear ending to the story. Go get some more keys somewhere else. Yeah. Call aaa. Get your wife. Human civilization has systems in place for this type of problem. Right? We do not need to go porta potty diving to retrieve our keys. No. Why do I feel like this is going to go the opposite direction? Yeah. Well, he. He stared into the abyss, literally, and thought, I can still win this. Now I understand how he felt. I once had a pair of Ray Ban sunglasses. Okay. Not. Not cheap, you know? No. And I was at the Tucson Balloon Festival. Sure, sure. Yeah. And it was, you know, like five in the morning, and I'm out there to do a live broadcast, and had my sunglasses up on top of my head, as one does, because it was still kind of dark. And I go into a porta potty, and I look down, and there go my Ray Bans. No, no, no. And I made the executive decision at that point to just let it go. This is because you are a sane, moral, prince, prudent person. Also, I'm a little bit of a germaphobe. And according to reports, he climbed into the porta potty and attempt to Retrieve the keys. Now, I don't know for certain, but my guess would be that nobody has ever climbed into a porta potty and come out saying, you know what? Better than expected. That was a good decision. Nobody. Nobody has ever said that. Now, I'm wondering, would there be a situation where I would think, yeah, this is the thing to do to retrieve keys? I'm thinking, what would have to be on that key ring? That I would think, yeah, okay, this is important. Maybe a USB drive with Bitcoin on it. With a zillion dollars of Bitcoin? Maybe then, maybe. But I, for the life of me, off the top of my head, I can't come up with. With anything. Yeah. Now, this was January in Pennsylvania, but for those of us who have used porta potties in the summertime, it's like opening the tomb of an angry pharaoh. The smell alone can erase your childhood memories. Angry pharaoh. Yeah. And is there any other kind? No, they're all angry. They're dead, you know? Sure. This man was committed to the mission, though. And somewhere along the way, as one would expect, with a story on the shallow, and things went catastrophically wrong, he became trapped inside the unit. Okay, yeah, yeah. So he had. And this was a porta potty, so it's not like one of those stationary units at rest stops. This was a plastic porta potty. So. Right, right. You know, the container is only so deep. Was it like 40 gallons or something? So what he did is he decided he was going to just scooch down in there and fish around. Now, there is a point in every bad decision where optimism dies, and this is that point. He got. He got stuck in the porta potty for 45 minutes. He hollers for help. Right? 45 minutes, Linds, that's a long, long time. You could watch half of Hunt for Red October during that. This reminds me of the line in Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald. Does anyone know where the love of God goes when the waves turn the minutes to hours? Yeah, and I'm also guessing that he probably locked the door to the portty. So, yeah, if somebody does hear his pleas for help, they can't even open. Get a supervisor with a master lock. No, I don't know. Yeah, he's trapped inside what can only be described as Satan's blueberry smoothie. Now, reports say that there were children playing in a nearby field and they finally heard cries. And it took a while because kids, you know, they're kids and they hear weird stuff all the time. Plus which, they're probably in the middle of a mean game of kickball or capture the flag or something, and, you know, we got stuff to do. We can't just run to an adjoining field because somebody's crying for help. But suddenly from the distance, help. And then again, please help me. And eventually they discovered that the voice was coming from inside the porta potty. And I would imagine at this point, every horror movie you've ever seen activates simultaneously. Because, you know, if you're 10 years old and a porta potty starts talking. Well, I'm not helping. I'm leaving. No, this is like something from it. Yeah, it is. All you need is a red balloon tied to the outside of the porta potty. So the kids went and told their parents, and the adults arrived and authorities were contacted. And then came probably the most humiliating sentence ever printed by the Associated Press. Quote, police had to demolish the toilet to free him. That means first responders had to stand around discussing tactical options for dismantling a porta potty facility, knowing full well that what's going to come spilling out. Yeah. Yeah. Is happening. It's not. It's not going to. Not going to be good. Yeah. According to the reports, in total, the poor guy had been marinating inside the muck for an hour and a half. Oh, dear God in heaven. And when they pull him out. Lynn's. Yeah, He. He was. He had taken off his pants and shoes before he went in. Well, okay. I guess he wanted to. Something dry to slip into when he got out. Sure. See, now that's. That's more forethought than I would have expected, but good on him. Studies suggest after 90 minutes inside a porta Potty, you don't leave the same person. No, it's not a rescue anymore. It's more of a spiritual transformation. I would think that's a reboot of your psyche. Yeah. You emerge with forbidden knowledge. Doctors later treated him for cuts and bruises. Yeah, he had cuts on him when he was standing in that dangerous. Yeah, Hepatitis or who knows what. Yeah, yeah. So they treated him for that. And they removed a toilet seat that was wedged around his hips. What seems to be the problem today? The guy's like, medically or emotionally? Because psychologically, I could go into this for days. I'm wondering if halfway through this ordeal, as he's wedged into this toilet seat, if part of him thought, note to self, Halloween costume idea. Well, you know, all of his family probably dressed up like a guy stuck in a. In a Porta Potty there's zero chance that this remained private. Oh, dear Lord. They're at like, a family barbecue years later, and there are friends there. And one. One new guest says, that's him, the porta potty guy, the keys, the key guy. And everybody starts asking questions, hey, did you really climb inside? How far did you get? And did you find your keys? Now, what was the most important key on that key ring, by the way? And that's the forgotten part of this tragedy. Nobody even talked about recovering the keys, Whatever. Whatever happened to it, because at some point during the rescue operation, the keys stopped mattering. Yeah. Once firefighters are sawing apart a chemical toilet while children watch in silence. You're no longer solving a transportation issue. You're creating folklore. I'm just wondering, you know, all of us in particular. I think boys at some point saw a fire truck go by and thought, I want to do that when I grow up. I want to be a fireman. And how many kids were watching these firefighters with this, you know, the skill, saw the sawzall taking apart this porta Potty and thinking, note to self, check firefighter off the career list. That's. That's enough. I've seen enough. So what is the shallow end message here? Maybe it's about pride. Maybe it's about knowing when to walk away. And maybe it's simply understanding that there are certain objects humanity was never meant to retrieve. Sometimes the universe charges a replacement fee and you just pay it. That's the way it goes. Make good decisions, as we say. This information came from the Gainesville, Florida sun and the Associated Press. Honest to goodness, no mention of anyone retrieving the keys. None. The whole impetus that starts this. This story. Yeah, he. He went through all that and didn't get his keys back. I guess at some point it becomes literally and metaphorically a sunk cost. Yeah. The email address is lifeguard. Shallowandpodcast.com Samantha writes. Hi there, friends. I wanted to send you a brief message sharing my shallow end moment. Fifteen years ago, when I was a newly graduated high school student traveling abroad in the Northern Lake District of England. I was spending a semester serving a local church there, and I had free time one lovely sunny day, so I decided to go for a walk on one of the public footpaths. A side note about me, I love walking outside, but I do not like the outside to touch anything but the bottom of my shoes. I am not, as one says, outdoorsy in quotes. I enjoy being outside, observing nature and soaking in sunshine, but I don't actually want to touch nature. I think they refer to that as boy in the bubble syndrome. I was just thinking that same thing. I think that's exactly right. Any who's all on my walk, I was a ways into it, about a mile or two through the countryside, in a secluded area with no houses or other people in sight when nature called. And as my English friends would say, I found myself, quote, bursting for a wee. Unquote. Oh, I'm. I'm using that. I am so stealing that. I've never heard that before, but I love it. So I decided better squat quick, trying to be ever so rustic, and move along. When in Rome, I thought I did my business, pulled my pants up and carried on my walk. When both of my inner thighs started to sting, they were growing ever so uncomfortable. I was confused, internally panicking and in pain. Turns out I had squatted to pee on a patch of stinging nettles. Oh, no. A plant my 18 year old, very suburban New Jersey girl self had never heard of. I only knew what it was after asking a friend, what in the heck could have happened? I don't even remember what I did for relief or how long my legs burned. But I clearly lived to tell the tale. Yeah, appreciate all your hard work sharing tales of stupidity. Remember, be careful where you squat, Samantha. Upstate New York. Samantha, thank you so much for not only being willing to share that story, but. But for giving JG and I a new expression. Bursting for a wee. Right? Right. And also adding the caveat to make good choices. Don't ride your bikes on the roof, and be careful where you squat. Yeah. Stinging nettles. I actually had to. I had to look that up. And I thought, holy moly. I'm glad that Samantha made it through. Mm. You're in the shallow end with Schnebly and Toth. I got a story for you, my friend. Well, please regale us. Would yous like to hear it? I'm sitting here all at Twitter. Mine involves a couple of different things. We're gonna start off with bartenders. Because as you know, jg, you can't live with them and you can't drink without them. They separate us from our sweet nectar of life. And as our motor skills and rational thinking become more fleeting with each fireball shot or whatever, sometimes we think they are out to ruin us. At least that's the case for this one subject of our story. There are some nights where a man should just quietly accept defeat, drink a glass of water, maybe take some aspirin, go to bed. But this JG is Not one of those nights. This was a night that our protagonist, Philip Poisson. Yay. I hope I'm pronouncing that correctly. Declared war on mathematics, bartenders, and the entire emergency response system of Northern Idaho. That's. That's a. That's a full night. It is. It is. Now, first of all, if your last name sounds like a French seafood dish, you're already starting life at a disadvantage in a bar fight. Who started this? Poissonier. And that's where I hear Fraser Crane say, that's not a man. That's a salmon recipe. This all began at a place called Club Tequila. This was several years ago, and to me, Club Tequila sounds less like a nightclub and more like a place where divorce papers are signed to a DJ remix of Sweet Caroline. Do you remember the. The bar that was in Elkon Mall for a while? I think it was technically a Mexican restaurant, but one of the best names I'd ever seen for Tequila Mockingbird. Tequila Mockingbird, yeah, I remember that. Yeah, that goes back. One of the best names for a bar ever. It was at the height of that weird trend, at least in the southwest part of America, to combine Mexican and Irish. Like there was a chain, remember? There was. There was Carlos. Carlos Murphy's, Carlos Murphy's, Butch o'. Leary's. I guess that doesn't really quite fit, but I kind of lumped those two together. Yeah, it was weird. Tequila Mockingbird, though. I remember there. Yeah, that was. That was a cool place. It was a cool name. A cool place. I also always, as a kid growing up with just a rudimentary knowledge of Spanish, I couldn't figure out how El con the with until someone explained to me that Khan was short for Conquistador, and it had been originally the El Conquistor, but it just got short. Just thought it was a con. Like to be ripped off the con. And based on some of the prices, I wasn't wrong. Also, just a quick caveat here with the Tequila Mockingbird restaurant slash bar at Elkon Mall in Tucson, Arizona. Generally, I shy away from eating chimichangas in a restaurant next to a Gap, but in this particular location, you. You made several exceptions to that rule. Strictly based on the name. Sure, sure, I get it. Well, back to our story about Mr. Poissonnier. Philip had apparently been enjoying himself not just a little, but tremendously. And by enjoying himself, I mean he apparently drank not eight, not nine, but ten beers with the kind of determination usually reserved for lumberjacks trying to escape becoming blizzard. Of course, witnesses later said the man was absolutely intoxicated, which sort of feels unnecessary at this point in the story. I mean, a guy drinks 10 beers at a place called Club Tequila. We don't exactly need Sherlock Holmes on the case. And Indeed, at precisely 1:13am Philip got kicked out of the bar. The head bartender said, hey, you know, pal, by law, I can't serve you anymore. You're clearly intoxicated. You need to take off. Good for him. Now, most people, after being removed from a bar, experience one of two emotions that would be either shame or hunger for tacos. To your point. But Philip experienced a third emotion, which was accounting fury. Because as police escorted him outside, his brain suddenly activated like a malfunctioning calculator from the year 1987. I hate when that happens. Don't you, though? He says to the cops, wait a minute. You know, they're actually walking him out to a car, and he looks at his receipt. $30 for 10 beers. And he believes that he has become the victim of a financial crime. Three bucks a beer, I don't think. Bucks a beer. Yeah, that. To me, that seems. I believe this was 2015. That seems actually pretty, you know, pretty reasonable. Now, here's the interesting part of the story to me, and actually, it led me to do a little bit of research, because instead of committing the unpardonable sin of getting behind the wheel of the car that he drove there and driving home drunk off his. Off his butt, right, the police officers there actually gave him a courtesy ride home. And apparently, Jethro, this is a thing. And it depends, because I spoke with my buddy up the street who was retired lapd, about policy, and he said it varies from. From city to city, town to town. Some police departments are absolutely firm in the fact that they are not a taxi service. Others, though, like these fine folks in Idaho, decide, yeah, this is kind of a community service because it's preferable for us to give them a free ride home rather than, you know, getting called to an accident where we're scraping them off a mailbox, right? A bit down. A bit down the road. That is so Idaho. Isn't it, though? Doesn't it make you want to move? Damn it. Well, it's a kindness. And in this particular case, the police department sees it as a community service. But it's not Uber. You don't get to rate the officer afterward. You know, with five stars, you. You cannot request a quiet preferred, and you absolutely cannot lean forward from the back seat and say, quote, hey, buddy, can we swing back by Club Tequila? Because I think that bartender really ripped me off. But this is Philip and he's not having it. His brain was already convinced that he had been wronged and society owed him, you know, something to be. To be fixed, to get him, to get him his money back. Now the officer drops Philip off, and fortunately, Philip was able to direct him to his house and not say, yeah, maybe try this street. I don't know. It looks sort of familiar. It's. It's the one with the houses. It's. I've got a yard out front and there's a driveway where my car would normally be. Just look for my car. Wait, no, I left it. Wait a minute. Where can we. Where's my car? Philip gets home and he makes the worst decision that a drunk person can make besides texting an ex or buying a jet ski on Craigslist. What does Philip do? He goes inside, he picks up the phone, Eddie calls. Wait for it. 91 1. Oh no. Not once, not twice. 12 times, he calls the 91 1. Oh my God. At this point, you're not really reporting an emergency anymore. You're starting your own podcast. The first call. Drunk dialing nine one one. Who. The first call was apparently the most polite and at the same time the most insane. He is quoted as having said to the 911 operator who said, you know, 911, what's your emergency? He says, I need some help immediately. I have overpaid for Coors Light. The dispatcher says, I'm sorry, sir, are you injured? Yes, emotionally. Seven minutes later he calls back and says, I'm just checking on the status of my beer investigation. My beer investigation. Meanwhile, actual police officers are in the area responding to a 911 report of a possible prowler. Now imagine Jethro being that homeowner. There's a shadowy figure outside my house. Can you send the police? And the dispatcher has to say, well, we could, but unfortunately all our available officers are tied up into somebody who thinks they've been charged too much for beer. Uh huh. Core is light, no doubt. According to reports, Philip's calls became increasingly unhinged. At one point, he would just call 911 and hang up. Three times he just called and held the phone up to a radio, playing songs he liked. That's nice. Nobody knows why. Maybe he thought the dispatcher would like some mood music. Maybe he thought he was helping to create an atmosphere. We don't know. But the best part of this series of terrible decisions was when Philip is suddenly realizing that this is just not working. And the dispatcher in this particular case was female. And she answers, you know, for like the 10th or 11th time. 9, 1, 1, what's your emergency? And Philip loses it and says, you know what? You're just like my ex wife. And hangs up. Probably made sense to him at the time. I'm sure it made total sense. An unbelievable insult to yell at emergency personnel. Still, he believed he was the victim because drunk math. As you know, Jethro, not from personal experience, but just from stories you've read. Drunk math is incredible. It always works like this. Ten beers. Times, I don't know. Beer numbers carry. The Coors Light. Bartender owes me $17. Finally, the police think, okay, let's. Let's see if. If this guy's actually got some. Some legitimate complaints. So they go to the bartender at Club Tequila, which is, not surprisingly, just about to close because it's 2am and the bartender goes, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, I remember him well. And goes to the cash register and finds the receipt and prints out a brand new receipt for the cops, which shows 10 beers, $30, 3 bucks a beer. That's it. Wow. First of all, he knocked back 10 silver bullets. If I was only charged 30 bucks. Wait, it was Coors. Like, no, he was overcharged. No. Yeah, maybe so maybe. I have a friend who says when it comes to American beer, he rehydrates with that. Okay, yeah, that's sort of. That's tangential to. Wasn't it Archie Bunker who said, you don't buy beer, you just rent it? You can only rent it? Yeah, well, the Post Falls, Idaho, police captain, Pat Knight said what you and I have have said for years in doing this podcast, Jethro, which is some people need to make better decisions. The consequences for Mr. Poissonier for calling 911 and misusing 911 services are potentially serious. Even though it's considered a misdemeanor citation, the consequences in this case could have been a $1,000 fine and even a year in jail. Or both. Wow. So the lesson. Pay your tab, behave properly, and it will probably cost you less at the end of the night. Also, be careful where you squat. You forgot that. That's true. That's true. Be aware of those nettles. Those stinging nettles. I got this from the Northwest Florida Daily News, ABC 7, Los Angeles, and Time magazine. Don't ride your bikes on the roof. And maybe. Maybe two beers is enough. I. We're not judgy here, but no, maybe just throwing that out as a suggestion. Lifeguard@shallow endpodcast.com you can hit us up there. We always love hearing from you. It, I don't know, makes it feel like it's kind of an exclusive little club. It is an exclusive little club and we truly appreciate those of you who take the time to write in and you're willing to share like Samantha was a story that was embarrassing but provides us all a good laugh and reminds us that we all have the commonality of having done dumb things and it helps us all to remember to make good choices because your life and your nettles might depend on it. So concludes another episode of the Shallow End with Schnebly and Toph. We thank you for listening. Oh be a dear would you please subscribe to this podcast, give these boys a five star rating and think of something nice to say even if you have to make something up. And visit us online@shallow endpodcast.com okay, gotta go.