← Snap Judgment
Snap Judgment
The Last Thing on the List
00:49:10
Standup comic Cassandra Dee struggles with depression. She jokes about it in her standup comedy but isn’t sure if she can pull it off. She jokes about the kids that bullied her growing up, the bad dates, the suicide ideations, the failed therapy sessions. The audience laughs, but she wonders… has she gone too far?
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- [00:03]
Glen Washington
Snap Studios Ever heard a podcast that made you say, wow, they really said that? Risk is the show where people tell true stories they never thought they'd dare to share. Listeners say the show makes them burst out laughing and crying. Good crying. Some say it saved their lives. Surprising honesty, the most jaw dropping moments that are stranger than fiction. Think you've heard it all? Wait till you hear Risk. Available on the Odysee app or wherever you get your podcasts.
- [00:38]
Audie Cornish
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- [01:40]
Glen Washington
You know, I feel lucky, so lucky in getting to share stories about my personal life here with you. Because spinning these tales into stories, walking this tightrope, it forces me to really examine what went down. What happened? What did I do right? What did I do wrong? It's picking at scabs that otherwise I would leave to fester. And all artists use their lives as the building bricks of their art. But I think comics comedians, they live closest to the truth. Because nothing's ever funnier than what actually happened. And the hardest person to laugh at is always yourself. So today, the deepest dive of all, we are so proud to present the last thing on the list. My name is Glen Washington. Believe me when I say sometimes the applause is all you have when you're listening the snap judgment. Now today's story takes us deep into the life of a professional stand up comedian. And of course that means humor. The very best comedians bring their whole selves to the stage. And after years of struggling with their own depression, years of avoiding the alpha in the room, Cassandra Deeb decides to name her demon and even start telling jokes about it. And I want to be clear that though this is a beautiful story, A story about finding hope for one of the funniest persons I know, Listeners should be advised it also discusses suicidal ideation. Cassandra's story comes from our friends at the love and radio podcast, Snap judgment.
- [03:52]
Cassandra D
You grow up, you think your family is normal. Then there's a point when you realize they're not normal. Then there's, like, another point when you realize that not normal is normal. I remember I was at the point when I was like, no. Yelling all the time, screaming on, this is not normal. None of this is normal. And then roseanne came on, and I was like, okay, we're kind of normal. We're like fat white trash screaming at each other. Yeah, I'm calling you fat. Well, if that ain't the big fat pot calling the colonel black. If we'll give you a primetime show about it. We're not like the complete weirdos that I thought we were. I don't know. Like, it's not like I believe there's any, like, lack of representation of white people on television, but it did feel like this was the first time that I had a specific type of person looking back at me. Want to make it clear? Not a roseanne fan anymore, But I feel great, probably because I got blazed before I came out here. Thank you. I should clarify that's what I call wearing a blazer. If you've never seen me do comedy before, Just so you can better understand what my vibe is like, the first time I went to headline a show, the booker was like, how much time can you do? And I was like, about 45 minutes. He was like, nothing dirty. And I was like, okay, about 40 minutes. And then he was like, nothing sad. I was like, I have one joke. It's about my blazer. I have always loved comedy. I dated one guy who said that if I broke up with him, that he would kill himself. And I broke up with him, but he's not dead yet. When I was in high school, my friends and I were obsessed with Margaret Cho. Kind of want to call him up and go, you know, what's the deal? I thought we had an agreement. I love Wanda Sykes. I don't want no dolphin shit on me. Mitch Hedberg. I like rice. Rice is great when you're hungry and you want 2,000 of something. I'm a person who has been made fun of my whole life for what I look like. So getting on stage in front of a bunch of people kind of seems stupid. So I always Wanted to write funny things for other people to say. I would write screenplays and pilots and things like that, and I would submit them to things. But the only way to actually, like, get feedback on whether or not something you're saying is funny is to, like, say it to people. So I basically forced myself to do stand up. Honestly, dating as a fat woman is basically like going out to eat at a restaurant if you're on a gluten free diet, all right, it's like we have options. There are just fewer of them and a lot of them are gross. Let me explain what I mean by that. When I look at my phone again, I will have a match on Tinder and he will have a sword in his profile picture. What do I do to match with someone who doesn't own a cloak? Can anyone tell me? A couple years ago, I started dating women too, and I put them in the app. So I was like, are there gonna be girls with swords? Is that a kind of person? I haven't found one yet, but I have found a girl equivalent of guys with swords. Anybody want to guess what is in these profile pictures? I'm sorry, I heard someone say something. Can you say that louder?
- [08:16]
Caitlyn Gill
Horses.
- [08:17]
Cassandra D
Horses. Horses. It is horses. My family didn't talk about stuff. We weren't very good at communicating. Everyone just kind of had bottled up anger that would eventually, like, come out in screaming. I remember one time my brother, we were arguing about something and he went into the kitchen to get a snack, and he came back out and his snack was eating a can of Chef Boyardee raviolis out of the can, uncooked with a spoon. I'm pretty sure that's what he was eating at the time. And he was getting ready to yell at me. I just started basically roasting him, like, congratulations. And he was like, wait, what for? And it was like for providing the sounds for when the dinosaurs are eating each other in Jurassic Park. We live in a house. Why are you eating what you would eat if you were a train car hobo? He was laughing so hard he had to go spit out his food. And he kind of forgot that he was going to beat me up, you know, I'm sure he beat me up like the next day or two days later. But, like, that day, it just didn't happen. I don't know if my brother has ever finished a book that's not about Star Wars. We were very, very different. And I feel like being funny is one of the only things that ever connected us. Like a time that we were speaking the same language. I remember in, like, second grade learning that someday the sun was gonna explode and just going home and, like, staring out my window and, like, being sad about it. Like, I've just always been sad about everything. I was bullied a lot as a kid by both boys and girls. And I learned something from that, which is if bullying were a professional sport, girls bullying would be the one we watched on television. They're not meaner. They're just really in it for the love of the game. Let me give you an example. I was bullied by a boy in middle school. He leaned over to me in the middle of class and whispered, you have more rolls than Gino's Bakery. Barely faced me. Just leaned back and whispered, geno's doesn't sell rolls. They lick cakes and pies and stuff. The cream donut is delicious. At that point, I wasn't being bullied, but I just had, like, different Yelp reviews. That same year, a girl leaned over to me and whispered something I thought about every day for years. A girl leaned over to me in the middle of seventh grade science and said, no one is ever going to love you. That's better. I became known for telling dark jokes. I became known as comedian who talked about depression and suicide and mental health and hard things that maybe don't seem inherently funny at first. I remember telling another really dark joke. I told it in Boston at this restaurant where people did not want to be at a comedy show. There was literally a family scene celebrating. One of their kids was moving to, like, California or something, and they were having, like, a going away dinner. They did not care. But as I'm telling this story, they just, like, stopped. And there's a mom who had been, like, grimacing at me all night when I told these dark jokes. I really expected this lady to get mad, and she just started laughing so much that she was, like, knocking stuff off the table. She was just some woman who just wanted to eat pasta with her son before she never sees him again. I don't think I went into this trying to make people laugh at dark things. Like, I don't think that was originally the plan, but I do really love making someone laugh at something they don't want to laugh at. After years of trying different antidepressants, I ended up on Prozac, a children's dose of Prozac. And it solved everything. And it was really cool. Except it started to make me gain weight. Not all of it. I was already fat before. Just to be clear, it wasn't like the gum from Willy Wonka. But still, I was like, I should find out if this is okay. So I went to the doctor and I was like, hey, is it safe for me to keep taking this medicine even though I'm gaining weight? And he said, let's run some tests. And it did. He sat me down. He was like, I'm 100% sure that you should keep taking this medicine. I said, that's great. Is it my blood pressure? He's like, no. Is it my cholesterol? He's like, no. I was like, what is it? Why should I keep taking this medicine even though I'm gaining weight? And he looks at me and he says, it's because you have a twinkle in your eye. Now. I got diagnosed as jolly.
- [14:25]
Glen Washington
When we return, Cassandra's comedy takes off, but everything else starts to go wrong. Snap Judgment.
- [14:45]
Audie Cornish
This week on the Assignment with Me, Audie Cornish. Joshua Coleman is a psychologist with a very specific therapy focus people who cut ties with their family.
- [14:57]
Cassandra D
It's a very tragic moment that we're in.
- [14:59]
Audie Cornish
Why some people are putting politics over family and what to do if you find yourself on either side of an estrangement. Listen to the Assignment with Me, Audie Cornish. Streaming now on your favorite podcast app.
- [15:15]
Glen Washington
Snap Judgment is brought to you by Progressive Insurance. Do you ever think about switching insurance companies to see if you could save some cash? Progressive makes it easy to see if you could save when you bundle your home and auto policies. Try it@progressive.com Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and affiliates. Potential savings will vary. Not available in all states. Welcome back to Snap Judgment. When last we left, Cassandra was starting to find her groove as a comedian even while battling her own demons. And I want to remind you that this story addresses suicidal ideation. So listeners should take care because even though Cassandra can joke about her struggles, that absolutely does not mean those struggles go away. Snap Judgment.
- [16:11]
Cassandra D
I've been on and off antidepressants since I was 17, but I had had a few years, probably around the time that I started doing comedy, that it just didn't seem that they were worth the side effects. There's only one antidepressant that doesn't cause weight gain and can sometimes even lead to weight loss. And I was like, yes, give me that. I started taking it. I just ended up ruminating. And then the next day, rumination is worse. I was driving and an ambulance came up behind me. So I moved over to the right and. And then the ambulance passed and I went to pull back out a middle aged man who definitely has no Other love in his life aside from this white Corvette, decided to try to pass me instead of being like a normal human. And, like, everyone comes out after the ambulance in, like, order. I was, like, enraged and, like, just, like, honked my horn and, like, screamed at him. We ended up stopped at a light together, got out of his car, and he came over and opened my door. He called me, like, irresponsible or spoiled or something. I was frozen in that moment because I was actually terrified. But after he drove off, I could not stop being angry about that. Every second for, like, 24 hours, I just. My whole body is clenched and I'm just like grinding my teeth and just thinking of all the things I should have screamed at him. And I, like, can't get past it. I'm just like, how do I find him? Do I just drive around looking for a white Corvette? Like, how do I make sure that this person experiences justice? It was like, destroying me and I couldn't get away from it. And it's like, that's not normal. The next day is worse and the next day is worse. And then by the end of that week, I was texting all of my friends that I was going to kill myself. I wanted to hurt myself and I wanted to make them feel bad. Like, it was just anger. My brain was not letting me calm down. I had this thought about killing myself in my childhood bedroom because I was living with my parents and having them find my body. And I thought, how can I make this look like an accident so that they don't know that I did this to myself? And I remember having this thought about, okay, but what if it didn't look like an accident and I just accidentally framed them for murder. I left. I got out of bed and I got a notebook and I wrote it down. And I kind of just like crafted this whole bit. Then I started thinking about the side effects of the medicine and how I. Like, in the three weeks or whatever that I was on it, I lost like £15. And then I started thinking about that. And then I wrote this other joke. I tried to make an appointment with a therapist. The first time I tried to go to a therapist, it was really, really, really rough because I had just been suicidal and I went to the doctor. I remember very clearly. I made an appointment for 3 o'clock on a Tuesday, and I got there at 2:45 and I sat there and I was like, I don't know how to explain to this person, this complete stranger, how no matter what's going on in my life, no matter how other people are treating me, no matter what, I feel alone and left out. And I can't matter to another human being. As I was sitting in that waiting room, I realized something really important that changed my life. I realized that it was 3:30 and my therapist had never shown up. She sent me a text message later and was like, hey, I'm really sorry I missed your appointment. When do you want to reschedule? And I sent her a text message back that said, this Cassandra's friend, she killed herself. I was no longer in that headspace, but my brain was still kind of like, okay, well, you think this is funny? You think it is funny that you tried for the first time in your adult life to have a therapist and they forgot about you? You find that hilarious? It was like this door had opened. If you did not like that, you're not gonna like where this is headed. I've spent so much of my life with people telling me there's like something wrong with me and just kind of like being like me against everybody else. These people are on my side. We're in this together. I think I had the best possible trajectory that a 30something fat lady from Delco with low self esteem and severe mental health problems could have. I became one of the most booked people in the city of Philadelphia. And then I got into like the Boston Comedy Festival. It's like people aren't usually happy to see me. Every time I went on stage, I would come home and I would have a bunch of Facebook requests from comics and I would have some DMs asking me to be on shows. I was having a lot of fun and getting like a lot of time to do comedy. It was pretty awesome.
- [22:02]
Unnamed Interviewer
So then the pandemic hits. What happened?
- [22:07]
Cassandra D
I felt very much at the beginning of the pandemic that it was meant to hurt me. All of the shows that I'm scheduled for, including my album recording, canceled. I'm immunocompromised and I live with my parents, who are older. My dad has Ms. And I just really did not have the option of getting Covid. Didn't even think of leaving the house. The second the lockdown started, my brain was just like, okay, this is it. I am in this room now.
- [22:35]
Unnamed Interviewer
What happened on April 3rd where you felt you lost your mind?
- [22:41]
Cassandra D
I was absolutely miserable, sitting in my room, ruminating, thinking horrible thoughts over and over again. And I was just like, I just want this to stop.
- [22:50]
Unnamed Interviewer
Why do you point to that day as the day that it kind of.
- [22:53]
Cassandra D
Slipped off the edge that's just the day where I was like, I. I decided I was gonna kill myself. For most of my life, I wasn't actually, like planning to kill myself, but I didn't think a lot about it. Like, every time I would write a to do list, I would put kill yourself on there. But I know I wasn't that serious because it was never the last thing on the list.
- [23:24]
Unnamed Interviewer
So on that day, was it the last thing?
- [23:27]
Cassandra D
It was probably the only thing. So I went on Amazon. I searched for, and I thought about, like, adding other stuff to the cart. But I was like, that might delay it because they might do that thing where they're like, do you want it all in one box? I looked for a good deal. I ended up with 12 of these things. I ended up with an entire package of stuff to kill myself because of the savings at the time when I remember looking at it and there was a note at the top of Amazon. I don't know if everyone remembers this. They were prioritizing essential goods. Anything that people needed to live, they moved mine to the bottom of the list. We'll still give it to you because we don't care that much, but we will take our time with it. So, like, my brain goes, okay, now that's settled. Like when you submit your taxes and you're like, all right, it's done. I could relax and go do other things. Like the moment when you feel like a constant, constant pain is going to be over. When I am depressed, I don't believe that people will care if I die. I don't believe that they will miss me. But I did believe that they could feel responsible and that could mess up their lives. Maybe I can just live through this a little longer. I'm not resilient enough to deal with all of this, but maybe I'm resilient enough to make it like a month. So I was like, maybe this isn't the only option. I've tried every antidepressant. I started when I was 17 years old. So this is like over 20 years of antidepressants. And I was like, let me try one more time. I emailed my doctor. He sent out a prescription immediately to the CVS down the street from my house for a 30 day supply of some SSRI. And then I got an email notification from CVS right after I got a notification on my phone from the Amazon app that said the stuff was going to be delayed. Then got an email from CVS saying that the antidepressant had been picked up by the US Postal Service. I was like, wait a minute. Maybe I'll actually get the antidepressant before I get the stuff. That's when I realized that this might be a race. My brain may have been like, I'm gonna kill myself. I'm gonna kill myself. I'm gonna kill myself. And then at some point, it was like, what if we just do whatever gets here first? I'm gonna let the universe decide what I should do. The stuff gets here first, I'm gonna kill myself. If the antidepressants get here first, I'm gonna take them, and I'm going to try to get better. And that was the game. Big, mighty Amazon and the tiny little U.S. postal Service are now racing things towards my house that will have very opposite intentions. Antidepressants are coming from 0.7 miles from my house. So close. The stuff is coming from South Carolina to suburban Philadelphia. For some reason, one of the maps I was looking at actually showed the Mason Dixon Line. And I was like, the stuff has to cross the Mason Dixon Line like a disgraced Confederate soldier. The other one has to cross, like, one busy street. Amazon has all these giant trucks. Its whole business model is being as efficient as possible to the point that it disregards human safety. The US Postal Service is the same thing that used to use horses. A guy named Dennis just walks your things to you in shorts. That's the, like, teams here. It's David versus Goliath. And figuring it out and watching it became kind of fun.
- [27:23]
Unnamed Interviewer
But you were serious about it, even though you were laughing.
- [27:26]
Cassandra D
I was 100% sure that I was gonna do whatever got there first.
- [27:29]
Unnamed Interviewer
Do you start to root for one side or the other?
- [27:32]
Cassandra D
I was at least kind of at that point rooting, like, a little bit, maybe for the antidepressants. That was my horse in this race. Rooting for myself feels unnatural. It was so much easier to root for the post office. They're just adorable. I probably had just enough time to start to imagine a better life when I got a push notification from the Amazon app that the stuff had shipped from South Carolina. And I get an Apple News notification for a story about Trump rejecting a bailout of the U.S. postal Service. And then the next day, I get a notification from Amazon that the stuff is out for delivery. When I got the notification, I actually, like, went back to feeling relief because, like, the game's about to be over. A couple hours later, I got a notification that said it had been delivered. At that point, I was up in my bedroom, and I kind of had that, like, feeling when you get something delivered and you're like, oh, my thing is here. I came down the stairs, and my mom was holding the package from Amazon. And I'm just thinking, like, what can I pretend this is? And she's starting to open it. She's got, like, the corner open. Fortunately, despite the fact that there are, like, 18 tools around her living room that can be used for this, my mom opens boxes with her house keys. I had some time to get it out of her hands before she opened in. And at first I was, like, panicked, because, like, I think deep down, probably a lot of the time, people want to be stopped, but there's just something, like, embarrassing about people knowing that you're in that bad shape. My mom knows that I have mental health problems. She's heard my jokes about me killing myself. Like, she knows, but I don't want her to know at that time. I feel like if I saw my mom's reaction to knowing that I want to kill myself, like, if I actually saw how much that hurt her, I would never be able to do it. So I did not want her to know. So I take the package with the stuff in it up to my bedroom, I sit down at my desk, and I immediately open it up. I was thinking about where to go, how to do it so that, like, my parents or, like, a random child don't find my body. Then I started thinking, I wonder how long it's going to take. Like, am I gonna be dead for a week before these antidepressants show up? Like, how is that gonna work? I don't know. I'm still interested in this story. I'm still interested in the outcome of this. Still interested in picturing Dennis stopping at the Dunkin Donuts in between the CVS and my house and dropping the antidepressants on the ground and not realizing it. My brain thought about the rest of the story. Getting outside of a repetitive circle of thinking. It was any different thought other than the rumination. I kind of realized that, like, I had started this in a certain headspace, and I just wasn't quite in that headspace anymore. I did not have the same drive that I had had six days ago. I did not kill myself. Spoiler alert. Yeah. I did not kill myself. I didn't try to kill myself. I didn't throw away the stuff. I just put it away. Really all I decided was that I didn't have to do it right now and I could try some other stuff first. And so I was like, let me try One more antidepressant, which didn't work.
- [31:41]
Unnamed Interviewer
So what we wanted to do, if this is cool with you, is you sent me that set. This was a bit that you were working on that had some, like, where you introduced it by saying, like, now you all want to hear some sad jokes or something?
- [31:54]
Cassandra D
All right, I'll clap if you want some sad jokes. Oh, my God. Thank you so much. All right, so clap it up. It's never happened to you. Has anyone else ever had to, like, buy a bunch of new sex toys? Because you threw away all of your sex toys when you were planning to kill yourself? Cause you didn't want whoever went through your stuff to find them. So no one else has a new sex toy budget line in their Mint app?
- [32:32]
Caitlyn Gill
Just me.
- [32:35]
Cassandra D
I was suicidal recently. And so first, let me just tell you that, like, I'm okay now. I'm working on it.
- [32:42]
Caitlyn Gill
How is that to listen to?
- [32:44]
Cassandra D
Like, that's about very real things. And my reaction, like, the things that were, like, kind of, like, hitting me as I was listening to it, weren't the emotional things. They were the comedy things my brain is hearing where the comedy could be better. It starts as something that's, like, very emotional and real, but telling it over and over again. It's like that I become kind of desensitized to my own experiences, and it no longer makes me feel the emotion. It's just about the joke. How do you feel like that set went at the time? I remember it was like a little brewery in South Philly. And I remember just being like, okay, this is just getting a gauge for if these jokes will work. They don't have to laugh hysterically. It doesn't have to be the best set ever. But, like, are any of these things worth working on and trying to make better? Ultimately, the darker it is, I feel like the bigger the payoff has to be. But when I first tell it, it doesn't have to be the biggest payoff. And honestly, like, the worst thing that ever happened to me got a huge laugh. And. And I was proud of the joke. It would absolutely be worth it to me. When I first made the shift to start telling mental health jokes, I felt better. It opened me up to start doing therapy. It did destigmatize suicide for people who hear my jokes. But the more I normalize talking about it on stage, the more it kind of, like, seeps into the rest of my life. I got to a point where talking about killing myself had become so desensitized that now I'm like, sitting in traffic and it's like, oh, if this doesn't start moving, I'm gonna kill myself. Are you still performing these kind of jokes right now? Right now where I am is that I have decided for the time being to not tell any jokes about suicide or my mental health. Got to the point where I was like, I have to stop talking about this to try to stop feeling like I want to do it, if that makes sense. I don't really know where, like, the line is of, like, this is helpful to talk about this mental health thing, and this is harmful to keep talking about this thing or thinking about this thing over and over again. I do want to still be able to talk about mental health stuff, but how do I make it so that's not all that I think about and talk about on stage or off stage to the point where I'm just obsessed with my own depression. My therapist and I were talking, and she said something like, the best way to stop being suicidal is to, like, take it off the table as an option if you want to quit drinking. It's easier to do if you don't have alcohol in your house, especially now that it's in your toolbox of solutions for literally every problem in your life because it's become so minimized. How do I share who I am without the mental health stuff? Like, who else am I?
- [36:13]
Unnamed Interviewer
I don't know if I've told you this, but I talked to a friend of mine who's a producer, and we were just, like, talking about the story she related to me, that she had done a story that was pretty, like, involved with someone who ended up killing herself after they had finished the story, and it, like, fucked her up. What she kind of, like, said to me, in so many words, is, like, if Cassandra kills herself, how are you going to feel about this being in the world? That gave me pause. I'm thrilled that we're sitting here together, but I was thinking about the possibility of that not. And, like, as I checked in with you, you were in different places over that year. For me, I kind of came to this place where, like, it just felt to me, like, why shouldn't you be allowed to share this experience? That's what I felt when I, like, first listened to, like, your jokes. Why does this corner of human experience have to be so nuclear? Why do we have to, like, fence it off? I mean, I understand this, like, safety things. I've thought a lot about it and heard different people say things. But my kind of feeling is, like, it seems good and useful to me.
- [37:29]
Cassandra D
I can't control how anyone receives my comedy in any way, whether today or a day after I kill myself. Though I do hope that when someone hears my jokes about killing myself, I do hope it makes them laugh. I hope it makes them feel like My friends don't talk about this. My friends don't struggle with their mental health, but other people do.
- [38:31]
Glen Washington
Thank you, thank you, thank you to Cassandra D for sharing her story. Cassandra's comedy special Uncle Earth is available for free on YouTube from Helium Comedy Studios. You can find her on Instagram @thecassandra. D that's D E E the story was produced by Justin Kraymond with Anna Adlerstein for the Love and Radio Podcast. The Love and Radio podcast is like family to snap. The host, Nick Vander Kolk used to work here. Anna Adlerstein used to work here. In fact, Love and Radio's episode called the World Tomorrow is what can hear my story about growing up in a white supremacist doomsday cult. Their stories are intense, strange, unlike anything in podcasting. They are launching their 10th season later this year. I can't wait to listen. Special thanks to Avia DeKornfeld for her help on this story. Huge thanks as well to Brent Wein at the American foundation for Suicide Prevention. Brett wrote the following which he asked us to pass on. He wrote, I think this story gets across the feeling of ambivalence that people so often experience in the middle of a suicidal crisis. And it demonstrates how getting someone through that intense stage of possible action by temporarily removing access to lethal means is life saving. Research shows that in most cases the person does not simply find another way. They survive, they get help. Suicide is a leading cause of death in the US but it is often preventable. Help is available. If you or a loved one is in crisis, please reach out to the 988 suicide crisis lifeline. At 988 you can learn more about suicide, suicide healing and connect locally with others whose lives have been affected by suicide to the American foundation for suicide prevention@afsp.org that piece is produced by Justin Krayman, Anna Adlerstein and Nick Van Der Kolk. Now after this short break, Snap is hopping in a getaway car and putting the pedal to the metal. Stay tuned. Welcome back to Snap Judgment. My name is Glenn Washington and now we've saved you the very best seat at the Power center in Ann Arbor, Michigan for Snap Judgment Live. And meet one of the hardest working women in comedy, Caitlyn Gill.
- [41:44]
Caitlyn Gill
When I was young, it's not that I was big boned, it's just that I had delicious emotions. I think it all started at church. It was never my scene and I was always nervous, but every week they had this big huge box of donuts. At some point I realized that if you are always holding half of a donut, it always looks like you're on your your first donut. Even if you're on your seventh donut. It must have been a trick I learned from watching my grandpa drink scotch. It was all just baby fat until I wasn't a baby anymore. All of a sudden I was in high school where there are dates and dresses and dances and all sorts of other tortures that designed for the obese and the insecure. By the time I stopped trying, I had asked 13 boys to dances and heard 13 nos. That's a baker's dozen. I was sad because I was fat and I was fat because I was sad. Now, through all this, I did manage to make some great friends. And those friends and I decided that the end of our sophomore year of high school was going to be something worth celebrating. We were going to get tickets to the biggest concert event of the summer. Live 105's BFD. BFD. The concert so epic they almost swear about it on the radio. We all know what that F stands for. We went to the concert and it was amazing. We saw Erasure and we saw the Squirrel Nut Zippers and we saw Blur and we saw the Cure. It was a very big deal for the 90s. After the concert, we all left the arena, went into the parking lot and stuffed ourselves into my best friend's minivan. So full now somebody had to sit on the floor as we were leaving. The traffic was crazy and everybody was hungry. So we decided to stop at a Taco Bell. Now this decision was also made by half of the gazillion people we were just at a concert with. So the drive through line was a little bit long. We all got out of the van and were just milling around in the parking lot. And when it was time to get back in, it was declared that the first to arrive back at the van would get to sit shotgun and the last would have to sit on the floor. This resulted in a sprint, which predictably, I lost. Of course I lost a sprint. I was stuck in a beef loaf of a body. It didn't sprint anywhere. And of course I couldn't spend a full day without feeling like a Fatty mcfat Fat. I always felt like my body kept me away from other people. This Time, I literally didn't have a seat. I sat there with my sad butt on the floor of the van, sliding door open, my sad feet on the sad pavement. And that's when the van started moving. Now, what happened next only took about a second, but I had a lot of time to think about it. Hmm, the van's moving. I should probably lift up my legs. Gee, you know, now that the van's moving, it seems a lot harder to lift up my legs. Hey, I never noticed how close that tire was to my legs. Oh, my God, my legs. The van sucked my right leg right under the tire. I flopped out of the van, and I landed on my back. I looked down to assess the situation, and I could see that my right knee had been bent so that my foot was touching my hip, but my toes were pointing right at the sky. I realized this wasn't my only immediate concern when my gaze continued downward to discover that the minivan had come to rest on my left leg. My best friend got out of the car, whined all the way around. See what happened? And stopped short when he saw me. I looked up at him and I said, my leg is broken. Please move your car. He ran all the way back around. He climbed back in the van, he restarted it, and he pulled it off my leg. The pain I was in was otherworldly. I had not experienced anything like it before, and I have not since. I was in shock, and the shock was making me twitch, and every twitch would just send cramps down the damaged meat in my leg and the way it was bent. There was no fixing anything until we got to a hospital, which meant that a fireman had to stand above me and use his bare hands to bend a metal leg brace to accommodate the new curve in my leg. You know, even when you're laying on the ground grievously injured, there really is something about a man in uniform. The rest of the night gets a little fuzzy. I remember learning that morphine is a hell of a drug. It turns out that my leg wasn't broken, but my kneecap had gone from the front of my leg to the back of my leg. A doctor and a few orderlies took a running start and yanked my leg back into place. They braced me up, and they sent me home. The next morning, when I woke up, I would have given anything to have my body back the way it was the day before, when I hated it, and I have never hated my body again. I also quickly learned that crutching is a great core word. Vicodin is an appetite suppressant. And physical therapists are very serious about their work. I lost all the weight I didn't need to carry anymore. I should make it clear that I do not endorse getting hit by a minivan as a weight loss plan. I lost 30 pounds in 10 days. That's not Weight Watchers. That's when doctors start watching your kid. But as terrible and painful as getting run over by a minivan was, I would not change a single thing about what happened that day. That was the event in my life that revealed my beauty to myself. It's the beauty we all share. It's the beauty of these bodies. As a bonus, it turns out that getting run over by a minivan in a Taco Bell parking lot after a concert makes a pretty good story. It's a story that when I came back to school the next year, people asked me to tell over and over and over again. And I figured out that they liked it better when it was funny. And I really, really loved making them laugh. That was half my life ago. Today I'm a stand up comedian. I'd like to close tonight with by responding to what I think must be the best senior quote penned in any yearbook anywhere, ever. Dear Caitlin, sorry we ran you over. Apologies accepted. Thank you so much.
- [50:00]
Glen Washington
Thank you, thank you, thank you, Caitlyn Gill. The music for that piece was written by Alex Mandel and performed live by the Snap Judgment players, Alex Mandel, Tim Frick, and David Brandt. Yes, the Snap Judgment storytelling podcast awaits your ears each and every week wherever you get your podcast for free. KQED in San Francisco is where Snap producers have our weekly water gun fight. Because in the end, there can be only one. Snap is brought to you by the team that hears color and sees sound. Except, of course, for the uber rooster, Mr. Mark Rischic. Now there's Nancy Lopez, Pat Mercedes Miller, Anna Sussman, Renzo Goriot, John Facil, Shayna Shealy, Teo da Cott, Flo Wylie, Bo Walsh, David Exame, Marissa Dodge, and Regina Bediaco. My name is Glenn Washington and this is not the news. No way is this the news. In fact, you could trade a toothpick for a toothbrush, a toothbrush for a hammer, a hammer for a piece of slate, the slate for a shack, the shack for a boat, the boat for that big sack of cash you bet on the ponies. And yes, yes, could tell this whole story to the nice officer at your IRS detention cell and you would still, still not be as far away from the news. As this is, but this is prime.