Speaker 1: Pushkin.
Speaker 2: Hi, Hello, we're back again in the studio.
Speaker 3: Yes, and in your earbuds.
Speaker 4: Ye.
Speaker 3: Who do we have on the docket today?
Speaker 2: This one? Her name's Julia.
Speaker 3: Okay. This episode is the first one that I ever
Speaker 3: did with a stranger. Yeah, like someone that wasn't a
Speaker 3: friend or a family And it was a little scary.
Speaker 3: It was a little intimidating. Julia is a journalist and
Speaker 3: I needed to step up.
Speaker 2: It's a great episode.
Speaker 3: Partly because of Julia kept me on the straightened arrow.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 6: No, I was gonna say it's great, not because of us,
Speaker 6: because of Julia and spoiler alert, another woman we talked to,
Speaker 6: h if.
Speaker 3: You stick around. At the end of the episode, I
Speaker 3: talk again with Julia, and what was really very gratifying
Speaker 3: to me was how the episode really did have have
Speaker 3: an important impact on our life.
Speaker 2: All right, well, I'm looking forward to listening to this
Speaker 2: one again.
Speaker 3: Yes, let's both sit down. I'm already seated, and silence.
Speaker 3: Do you have any snacks?
Speaker 2: No, I can't eat a snack silently.
Speaker 1: It was a trick question.
Speaker 2: Oh did I pass? Yes?
Speaker 7: You did?
Speaker 2: Thank God?
Speaker 3: All right, and here we go. Oh but first we're
Speaker 3: gonna pay those bills. Gonna pay my automobills with a
Speaker 3: word from our sponsor. Hello, happy birthday, birthday girl. Are
Speaker 3: you going out for dinner tonight with Rick?
Speaker 4: What?
Speaker 7: It's not my birthday for another seven months?
Speaker 1: You hang on a second, hang.
Speaker 5: On, I'm hanging hanging out in traffic, So.
Speaker 7: That's perfect for you.
Speaker 3: According to my calendar alert, it is your birthday.
Speaker 4: Because I don't know how many times I'm gonna say
Speaker 4: it's not my birthday and how many times you're gonna
Speaker 4: repeat that it is my birthday. This year you didn't Actually,
Speaker 4: this year, you forgot.
Speaker 7: To call me on my birthday, not even an email, nothing.
Speaker 3: Okay, okay, what about that time you got me an
Speaker 3: ice cream cake for my birthday knowing I'm lactose sensitive.
Speaker 3: Do you remember the man at the roller ring kept
Speaker 3: on knocking on the bathroom door?
Speaker 4: That's good? Are you kidding me?
Speaker 3: From Gimblet Media, I'm Jonathan Goldstein and this is Heavyweight
Speaker 3: Today's episode. Julia. Julia is a journalist and she's endlessly
Speaker 3: curious about the world around her. Once on assignment for
Speaker 3: The New York Times, she investigated the benefits of bacteria
Speaker 3: and as a part of her research. She didn't bathe
Speaker 3: for a month. She's done political stories too, where she's
Speaker 3: kept after a source or a story for years, which
Speaker 3: is what makes her reluctance to seek out the answer
Speaker 3: to a question that's been dogging her for over two
Speaker 3: decades all the more curious.
Speaker 5: I think the story begins on a Monday. I'm pretty
Speaker 5: sure it's a Monday, and I was fourteen years old.
Speaker 3: This is Julia, and the question she can't stop thinking
Speaker 3: about revolves around a moment from her own life. It
Speaker 3: all began twenty one years ago in the eighth grade
Speaker 3: at one of the fanciest all girls schools in Montreal.
Speaker 5: I remember wearing my itchy green kilt.
Speaker 1: You have to wear a uniform there, Yes, okay, that's.
Speaker 5: Sort of a puke green uniform with a button down
Speaker 5: white shirt, and on Mondays we had to wear ties.
Speaker 5: We also had bloomers.
Speaker 1: I don't think I ever understood what bloomers were.
Speaker 5: It was just sort of like a balloon with holes
Speaker 5: in the bottom.
Speaker 1: And were they ruffled?
Speaker 3: No, cursed with a lifelong inability to distinguish between bloomers, couloats, pantelats, pantaloons, drawers,
Speaker 3: and even knickerbockers. I was glad for the opportunity to
Speaker 3: finally sort it all out, but that's not why we're here.
Speaker 3: So after about fifteen minutes of inquiry, I was ready
Speaker 3: to move on. Okay, sorry, yes, I'll go go on.
Speaker 5: As I left morning assembly on Monday and walked into homeroom,
Speaker 5: I looked for my desk and I stopped and looked around,
Speaker 5: and it was missing. My desk was gone, and that
Speaker 5: was where it started.
Speaker 3: The desk had been hidden by her classmates, and that
Speaker 3: was just the beginning. Without warning, the girl she'd been
Speaker 3: friends with since third grade completely froze her out, and
Speaker 3: Julia had no clue why. To top it off, her
Speaker 3: best friend was the ringleader.
Speaker 5: The girl who used to be my best friend. I
Speaker 5: guess we can give her a name. Let's call her Jane.
Speaker 5: It was just strange knowing that she and I had
Speaker 5: hung out at my house and all of the secrets
Speaker 5: music exchange and all of the fun we'd had, and
Speaker 5: then seeing how she was being now it just it
Speaker 5: was a bit surreal.
Speaker 3: But yeah, then let's started happening. Was every time she
Speaker 3: walked into the classroom, Julia noticed that the girls would
Speaker 3: drop what they were doing and study her. If she
Speaker 3: so much as scratched her nose or sniffled, they'd furiously
Speaker 3: take notes. It seemed like everyone was collaborating on some
Speaker 3: big project that she knew nothing about. The notes were
Speaker 3: collected by Jane, who buried them in her desk. The
Speaker 3: girls kept at it day after day until finally Julia
Speaker 3: reached her breaking point. She gathered up her courage, and,
Speaker 3: like the good reporter she'd eventually become, decided to investigate.
Speaker 5: I eventually snuck into homeroom one day during recess. It
Speaker 5: was empty, and I searched Jane's desk, and there at
Speaker 5: the bottom I found a nicely bound document with a
Speaker 5: cover page. And I picked it up and read it,
Speaker 5: and it said one hundred reasons why we hate you
Speaker 5: in my memory. This document I'm holding is one hundred
Speaker 5: pages long, but I'm sure it was only ten. And
Speaker 5: I opened it and inside I read about myself. Everything
Speaker 5: was something about me that they hated. I hate the
Speaker 5: way she walks, I hate the sound of her voice,
Speaker 5: I hate her face.
Speaker 3: After that, Julia started skipping school. Eventually, she told her
Speaker 3: parents what was going on, and they contacted the administration,
Speaker 3: but the bullying continued. Ultimately, her parents decided that the
Speaker 3: only solution was to send her to a new school,
Speaker 3: but Julia still had a few weeks left at the
Speaker 3: old one.
Speaker 5: I became a double agent. I pretended that I was
Speaker 5: coming back the following year, and I didn't tell anyone
Speaker 5: I was changing schools because I had no friends left
Speaker 5: to tell.
Speaker 3: The school year ended and her new life began, But
Speaker 3: because her new school was so close to the old one,
Speaker 3: Julia lived in constant fear that her old life would
Speaker 3: find her. Every day, she'd map her route to and
Speaker 3: from school, carefully avoiding the streets her old friends lived on,
Speaker 3: the coffee shops they hung out at, and for the
Speaker 3: most part, it worked. For those first few weeks at
Speaker 3: her new school, she managed to hide in plain sight.
Speaker 3: She was starting to feel like things would be okay.
Speaker 3: But then one day after school, Julia was upstairs in
Speaker 3: the den doing homework and the doorbell rang. She went
Speaker 3: to her parents' bedroom window and looked down at the
Speaker 3: doorstep and saw standing there her former best friend Jane,
Speaker 3: along with a few of her old classmates.
Speaker 5: I hit the ground as if someone was shelling the
Speaker 5: second floor windows. I was in a state of total panic,
Speaker 5: and I saw them in my mind's eye there on
Speaker 5: the front steps, waiting for someone to answer the door.
Speaker 5: And I was just on the ground, trying to breathe,
Speaker 5: and they rang the doorbell again and I waited.
Speaker 3: Eventually they left. And this is the moment that Julia
Speaker 3: has fixated on for over twenty years. Why had the
Speaker 3: girls shown up at her door? And what did they want?
Speaker 3: Maybe they'd shown up to bully her, but maybe they'd
Speaker 3: had a change of heart, realized how mean they'd been
Speaker 3: and were there to apologize. Whatever the case, Julia was
Speaker 3: too scared to open the door and find out, and
Speaker 3: that decision to not go downstairs and face the girls
Speaker 3: who tormented her still haunts Julia. Even listening to her
Speaker 3: talk about it all these years later, it still feels raw.
Speaker 5: I'm thirty five now, and that day has become one
Speaker 5: of my only regrets because the memory of my weakness
Speaker 5: sometimes supersedes all of the strong things I've done since then,
Speaker 5: and it makes me feel weak.
Speaker 1: Even though you were you were just a child, I
Speaker 1: was fourteen.
Speaker 5: I think it's the memory of that fear still somewhere
Speaker 5: in my physiology. It makes me fearful when I think
Speaker 5: of it, I just wish i'd gone down there. I
Speaker 5: wish I'd had the guts.
Speaker 3: What do you think has stopped you up until now
Speaker 3: from just using the question, you know, like just finding
Speaker 3: the girls and just asking them why they were there
Speaker 3: that day.
Speaker 5: I'm afraid to find out what I did to bring
Speaker 5: on the bullying, because it's very possible that I was bad.
Speaker 5: I think, deep down I don't really know what was wrong.
Speaker 5: I don't know what was wrong with me, and I
Speaker 5: don't want to know what.
Speaker 8: Was wrong with me.
Speaker 3: I mean, it feels like you're being really hard on yourself,
Speaker 3: or being hard on this little kid basically, you know, like,
Speaker 3: do you look at photographs of yourself at that age?
Speaker 7: I try not too well.
Speaker 3: I think it'd be surprised by like I mean, I
Speaker 3: have memories of being that age where I thought like
Speaker 3: I was at weddings and I thought I was like
Speaker 3: flirting with adult women and stuff like that. And I
Speaker 3: look at pictures of myself and I look like a
Speaker 3: cabbage patch doll.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 5: I think I probably looked like the tin men because
Speaker 5: I had a full set of braces. And then after
Speaker 5: I graduated from my braces. I immediately went to headgear
Speaker 5: neck gear combo. I don't know if you've ever had that.
Speaker 1: But I've only seen them on TV sitcoms.
Speaker 5: So combine that with my glasses. It was a sad
Speaker 5: state of affairs.
Speaker 3: As soon as she graduated high school, Julia left Montreal
Speaker 3: for good.
Speaker 5: Depending on how you know the outcome of that conversation,
Speaker 5: I might have chosen not to leave Montreal. When I'm
Speaker 5: in Montreal once a year, I avoid the neighborhood I
Speaker 5: grew up in where all of this went down for
Speaker 5: the most part, and those girls are long gone. I mean,
Speaker 5: we're all grown ass women now with careers and jobs
Speaker 5: and kids. And here I am avoiding friends of friends
Speaker 5: on Facebook because I don't want any of those girls
Speaker 5: to know what's going on with my life.
Speaker 3: Do you feel like, had you answered the door and
Speaker 3: they had apologized to you, that that would have changed
Speaker 3: your life in some way, that it would have changed
Speaker 3: your relationship with your past and the city and these friends.
Speaker 5: I think it might have, but I'll never know what
Speaker 5: they wanted to say to me because I didn't answer
Speaker 5: the door.
Speaker 3: It's scary to return to the moment you've spent your
Speaker 3: whole life running from. So when I gently suggest that
Speaker 3: you try to find out why they were at the
Speaker 3: door that day, Julius suggests that maybe the past to
Speaker 3: just stay in the past.
Speaker 5: You know, we move on with our lives. We you know,
Speaker 5: we move on, and it's another thing to open up.
Speaker 5: You know that Pandora's Box.
Speaker 3: Again, even the language that you're using about fear of
Speaker 3: opening up that Pandora's box, it is so similar to
Speaker 3: the language that you used and describe like fear of
Speaker 3: opening that door.
Speaker 5: So what you're saying is I should really just finish
Speaker 5: the job.
Speaker 1: I think so.
Speaker 3: After the break opening Pandora's Box, in spite of her
Speaker 3: initial trepidation, once Julia decided to find out why the
Speaker 3: girls came to her door that day, she was all in.
Speaker 3: Watching her take it on was impressive. Julia went back
Speaker 3: to Montreal and reached out to her former best friend Jane,
Speaker 3: who agreed to meet with her but said she didn't
Speaker 3: remember anything. And so, for the first time since eighth grade,
Speaker 3: Julia returned to her former school to go through the
Speaker 3: yearbook and find the names of her old classmates, and
Speaker 3: then she started searching.
Speaker 5: I reached out to probably twelve girls from from my grade. Yeah,
Speaker 5: and in my worst moments, I imagine that none of
Speaker 5: them were going to write back, and it was sort
Speaker 5: of going to feel like, you know, I was on
Speaker 5: the outside of the group again, you know, and that
Speaker 5: the social dynamics I remembered from the eighth grade were
Speaker 5: still in play and all that. But then the responses
Speaker 5: started to trickle in.
Speaker 4: Hello, Hello, Hello, Yeah, this is Julia.
Speaker 3: Julia logged hours and hours of interviews school.
Speaker 5: And rang my doorbell. I thought you might have been
Speaker 5: one of them. I don't think so. Do you remember
Speaker 5: anything about that?
Speaker 6: Was I there?
Speaker 4: No? Oh boy, I don't remember much about high school.
Speaker 5: I remember one time you were hiding in.
Speaker 3: A bathroom stall, But just like Jane, not a single
Speaker 3: person said they could remember showing up at her door
Speaker 3: that day.
Speaker 4: Oh yeah, Well, I honestly don't remember doing that.
Speaker 2: I don't.
Speaker 1: I don't, I don't.
Speaker 4: I'm sorry, I don't. I don't remember anything. I just
Speaker 4: don't remember it. Promise you I have no recollection of this.
Speaker 4: I'm sorry.
Speaker 8: Sorry, sorry.
Speaker 3: Well, what each of them did remember was their own pain.
Speaker 3: There'd been a lot of bullying that year, and no
Speaker 3: one felt safe. Julia heard about one girl who'd found
Speaker 3: her desk filled with meticulously cut out images from porn magazines.
Speaker 1: Another girl remembered someone spreading rumors.
Speaker 3: That she had aids. I hated that place, said one.
Speaker 3: It's all a big fog of chaos, said another, a
Speaker 3: dark cloud over the class. You never knew who you
Speaker 3: could trust. We were awful, awful little girls. The more
Speaker 3: Julia heard about it, it started to sound like a
Speaker 3: Stephen King novel, and not one of those cutesy ones
Speaker 3: about clowns or talk cars. In almost every conversation, one
Speaker 3: name kept coming up as the person who had it
Speaker 3: the worst. Even Julia acknowledged it. The name was Sarah Taba.
Speaker 3: Sarah had the misfortune of being the only eighth grader
Speaker 3: who was slightly overweight, and as such she was always
Speaker 3: kept at a distance in high school. I was also
Speaker 3: someone who existed on the margins, so I understand how
Speaker 3: oftentimes kids like me, kids like Sarah Taba, become the
Speaker 3: eyes and ears of the school, fidgety, uncomfortable witnesses forced
Speaker 3: to watch from the wings. I'm reminded of this all
Speaker 3: the time with the friends I went to high school
Speaker 3: with who were more popular than me. Remember the time
Speaker 3: Robert Siolick wore a three piece suit to school? I
Speaker 3: ask the time Madame Reber slammed the classroom door so
Speaker 3: hard the clock fell off the wall, the day Sharon
Speaker 3: Wiener got suspended for leaving the schoolyard during recess. Of
Speaker 3: course they don't they living their lives. But I was
Speaker 3: on the sidelines taking it all in, remembering.
Speaker 4: Hi, Sarah, Hi, it's been a really long time.
Speaker 5: Yeah, yes it has.
Speaker 3: Having all these conversations made Julia think about Sarah and
Speaker 3: what she might remember. But when she asked her if
Speaker 3: she had any recollection about the day those girls showed
Speaker 3: up at her door, Sarah couldn't remember anything.
Speaker 4: The first thing I thought of when he said a
Speaker 4: group of girls right in the doorbelt, I immediately thought
Speaker 4: it would be a bad experience, Like it wasn't people
Speaker 4: coming looking for you to be like we miss you?
Speaker 4: Where are you?
Speaker 5: Yeah?
Speaker 4: Grade eight was a bad year at that girl. Either
Speaker 4: you were being bullied and picked on, or you had
Speaker 4: to turn around and become the bully.
Speaker 5: Yeah, there's something toxic, something dark.
Speaker 4: I think normal bullying. If there's such a thing as
Speaker 4: normal bullying, you can identify the perpetrator and the victim
Speaker 4: and the like. But it was just so pervasive.
Speaker 5: Do you remember the day that you realize that I
Speaker 5: was gone.
Speaker 4: I don't, actually, no, I remember feeling like you were
Speaker 4: just sad all the time.
Speaker 5: I remember you being sad too. Yeah. One thing I
Speaker 5: remember people would call you tubby taba.
Speaker 4: Doesn't surprise me. Yeah, I remember a lot of stuff
Speaker 4: like that. I can't help but think that our grades
Speaker 4: behavior had impacts on the staff. What do you mean, well,
Speaker 4: I actually I'm assuming you knew this, but maybe you didn't.
Speaker 4: But Miss McDonald killed herself the following year. Yeah.
Speaker 3: Mss McDonald was Julia's favorite teacher and Sarah's too. Miss
Speaker 3: McDonald had gone to the school as a student and
Speaker 3: later returned to teach biology. She was the fun teacher
Speaker 3: who wore frog earrings.
Speaker 5: You think that there was something to do with what
Speaker 5: was happening in the school that caused her to commit suicide.
Speaker 4: I think it had a role in her depression. She
Speaker 4: left right in the end of our grade eight year.
Speaker 4: She because what I knew of her and with her school,
Speaker 4: it was her passion. She was an old girl. She
Speaker 4: was there teaching. She wanted to instill this love of
Speaker 4: animals and biology and all of us, and we were
Speaker 4: a bunch of brats. I remember there being a lot
Speaker 4: of associations between that pig that she had on top
Speaker 4: of her TV and her a lot of comments about
Speaker 4: her way. Yeah, had an impact.
Speaker 3: Ms McDonald had been hospitalized over the summer, and when
Speaker 3: she came back in the fall, she was no longer
Speaker 3: the biology teacher, but a substitute. The last period of
Speaker 3: the last day she taught before she killed herself was
Speaker 3: a class called Personal and Religious Education. The students considered
Speaker 3: the class a joke. Sarah was there that day and.
Speaker 4: The grade was just running around and doing everything they
Speaker 4: weren't supposed to do in the classroom. She tried to
Speaker 4: get people to calm down and sit down and pay
Speaker 4: attention and like, I wasn't even trying to teach us anything.
Speaker 4: I don't even know if there was any material to
Speaker 4: cover that day. And then we showed up at school
Speaker 4: Monday morning to find out that she killed herself for
Speaker 4: the weekend.
Speaker 5: Oh my god.
Speaker 4: She was my role model. She was the person who
Speaker 4: survived the school despite not being the stereotypical prefect or
Speaker 4: perfect girl. She was just this wonderful, round woman who
Speaker 4: rejuvenated life and as an overweight teenager. For me, that
Speaker 4: was like, okay, so you don't have to be perfect
Speaker 4: to achieve anything. She was my role model who the
Speaker 4: next year killed herself and like shattered all my dreams
Speaker 4: that you can go about living your life the way
Speaker 4: you're living your life in this environment and succeed, which
Speaker 4: made me want to completely change my body. The only
Speaker 4: way that I was going to get through this school
Speaker 4: was to lose a bunch of way to gain the
Speaker 4: respect of these people that have basically disliked me since
Speaker 4: I was eleven, and I did it.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I've been really over the years. I wondered about you,
Speaker 5: and then when I looked you up on Facebook, I
Speaker 5: saw pictures of you and I clicked right by them.
Speaker 5: I thought, oh, I have the wrong person. Yeah, because
Speaker 5: you didn't look like yourself, right, So I mean you
Speaker 5: didn't you just stopped eating it sounds like.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, in tenth grade, tenth through eleventh grade, and
Speaker 4: then basically destroyed myself in the process because it's an
Speaker 4: illness that I've been battling for the last twenty years.
Speaker 4: It's amazing what your childhood experiences can push you to
Speaker 4: do so that I definitely remember because that's how I
Speaker 4: ended up in the situation. I am now I'm actually
Speaker 4: talking to you from outside of a clinic for treating
Speaker 4: eating disorders.
Speaker 5: So I'm really sorry, Sarah.
Speaker 4: It's not your fault. That's the just a sad reality
Speaker 4: of all of this.
Speaker 5: It's like, yeah, please picture you know, my nerdy looking
Speaker 5: fourteen year old self giving you a big hug.
Speaker 4: Oh thanks. I actually do have to let you go
Speaker 4: because we have to have lunch now, but it was
Speaker 4: nice to speak, confute and do keep in touch.
Speaker 3: The conversation had left Julia feeling devastated. The scale of
Speaker 3: her own pain had been altered in the face of Sarah's.
Speaker 3: Later that night, I couldn't stop thinking about Julia and
Speaker 3: Sarah's conversation, and as I turned it around in my head,
Speaker 3: a theory began to form. Miss McDonald had died around
Speaker 3: the start of the school year. Wasn't it possible that
Speaker 3: those girls had shown up at Julia's door to let
Speaker 3: her know. Maybe they'd been worried about the way Julia
Speaker 3: had just disappeared from their school and feared the worst.
Speaker 3: Wasn't it possible the girls had meant good that day
Speaker 3: that they came to the door, and if so, wouldn't
Speaker 3: knowing that changed the way Julia felt about the past
Speaker 3: twenty years and maybe even changed the way she saw herself.
Speaker 3: So I took this last task upon myself. Hey is
Speaker 3: this Christine? He Hey Jennifer, this is I found up
Speaker 3: all the people Julia had already spoken with, and I
Speaker 3: ran my theory by them.
Speaker 4: To be honest, I would love to believe that's what
Speaker 4: their intentions were.
Speaker 3: I can't be sure about anything.
Speaker 4: I can't say yeah, sure, that's it because I don't
Speaker 4: have a memory of it.
Speaker 1: Okay, well, thank.
Speaker 4: You, bye, all right, you have a great night. Okay,
Speaker 4: bye bye bye.
Speaker 1: Okay, okay, okay, take it easy.
Speaker 4: Hi, bye bye.
Speaker 1: There was there's only one thing left for me to do.
Speaker 3: I just feel like I'm at a loss, Like this
Speaker 3: whole thing started off as me encouraging you to give
Speaker 3: it a try and that it might be helpful in
Speaker 3: some way, and I don't feel like I brought you
Speaker 3: any closer to knowing what happened at the door that day.
Speaker 5: And I just if there's one of us who's disappointed,
Speaker 5: it certainly isn't me. I don't know whether I was
Speaker 5: emotionally equipped to open the door as a fourteen year old,
Speaker 5: But to me, the important part is is that I
Speaker 5: opened the door. Now, I couldn't have I couldn't have
Speaker 5: confronted that if I hadn't literally done what we decided
Speaker 5: we were going to do, if I hadn't had these
Speaker 5: phone calls and ask these hard questions. And I've forgiven
Speaker 5: that little girl for being so frightened. I was so ashamed,
Speaker 5: I was so regretful, And I don't blame myself for
Speaker 5: being afraid. Then I had every right to be. It
Speaker 5: wasn't rational. And so I think the biggest challenge for
Speaker 5: me and all of this was to allow myself to
Speaker 5: slip back into that fourteen year old girl's skin and say, look,
Speaker 5: you know, I get it. It's okay, you know, it's okay.
Speaker 5: I'm proud of who I was. Then It's been a
Speaker 5: long time since I could say.
Speaker 9: That, and you feel like that's happened like that, that's
Speaker 9: how and in this process, yeah, I do, Well that
Speaker 9: makes me feel better.
Speaker 5: Well, I'm happy to make you feel.
Speaker 7: Better, Jonathan, I might ding dong, I'm ding dong.
Speaker 5: Is this the part where I rewrite history and answer
Speaker 5: the door. That's right, ding dong, Okay, I'm answering the door.
Speaker 5: Open the door.
Speaker 1: What happened to you?
Speaker 5: I change schools?
Speaker 8: And you know why, Now.
Speaker 5: That the fernitures returning to it's goodwill home, now that
Speaker 5: the last month's rent is scheming.
Speaker 4: With the damage to poss take this moment to do so.
Speaker 5: If we meant it, if we talked.
Speaker 8: We felt around for far too.
Speaker 5: From things that accidentally.
Speaker 3: Uh, Julia, Hi, how are you? It's a it has
Speaker 3: been ten years? Yeah, ten years. Have you listened to
Speaker 3: the episode recently.
Speaker 5: After you reached out? I listened to around my neighborhood,
Speaker 5: and you know, hearing myself be scared on the recording
Speaker 5: made me scared again, and then hearing myself be triumphant
Speaker 5: made me feel made me feel fully grown all over again.
Speaker 5: And it was it was cool. It was it was
Speaker 5: a really special thing to be able to collaborate with
Speaker 5: you on that.
Speaker 3: And you feel like it changed something for you.
Speaker 5: I think it changed a lot of things for me.
Speaker 5: For one thing, it gave me permission to reimagine myself
Speaker 5: as a player in my own life. I didn't have
Speaker 5: to be the girl that things were done too. I
Speaker 5: could be the woman who could choose to do things,
Speaker 5: and it gave me the opportunity to rethink my relationship
Speaker 5: with Montreal, and all of that felt like such an
Speaker 5: unlock stemming from our time together. Yours of line, Jonathan.
Speaker 3: That's really nice. Did any of the of the girls
Speaker 3: who showed up at your door that day did you?
Speaker 3: Did they ever reach out? Did you learn anything more
Speaker 3: about that actual incident?
Speaker 5: I never learned anything about the incident. It remains a mystery.
Speaker 5: But I did get out of the blue. A couple
Speaker 5: of days after the episode aired, a voicemail from one
Speaker 5: of the girls in my grade, not one of the
Speaker 5: main girls who made the Julia book, but she called
Speaker 5: and left a sobbing voicemail, and then I called her
Speaker 5: back right away. I actually don't know how she got
Speaker 5: my number. I called her back right away and we
Speaker 5: had a very heartfelt conversation.
Speaker 3: That's so nice that it generated all of this. Did
Speaker 3: you ever speak with Sarah tab again?
Speaker 5: I just reached out to her the other day, Huh.
Speaker 5: I was inspired to reach out to her by you
Speaker 5: reaching out to me and re listening to my episode.
Speaker 5: But it's really our episode. Sarah's and mine, and I
Speaker 5: think it's okay for me to share that Sarah Taba
Speaker 5: is thriving.
Speaker 3: Oh that's so good to hear, I know. I know,
Speaker 3: so you think you might see her?
Speaker 5: Oh yeah, we made plans for me to hang out
Speaker 5: with her next time I'm in Montreal.
Speaker 3: You're not moving back to Montreal, are you.
Speaker 5: I am kind of moving back. So the big headline
Speaker 5: is that I really fell in love with my hometown,
Speaker 5: and I've been spending my summer's there getting to know
Speaker 5: a new version of I'm sure all, getting to know
Speaker 5: a new version of who I can be there. And
Speaker 5: I fell in love with a wonderful man, and he
Speaker 5: and I are talking about buying a condo in Montreal.
Speaker 3: You know, I've lived a lot of different places over
Speaker 3: the past years, but I'm always a little jealous of
Speaker 3: my friends who remained in Montreal and have a cool
Speaker 3: life there and have grown roots. And I'm envious of you,
Speaker 3: you know. Hearing that you're moving back like that, I
Speaker 3: think that's really cool.
Speaker 5: You know, we're not talking about spending winters there. Let's
Speaker 5: just be clear.
Speaker 3: Well, sincerely, I mean, if I am there for more
Speaker 3: than a couple of days you'll ye'll hear from me sincerely,
Speaker 3: that would be a joy. Thanks to everyone who originally
Speaker 3: put this episode together. Will be back in one week's time,
Speaker 3: that's right on Puny Little Week with something very special,
Speaker 3: a very special treat. If you will, Uh, can I
Speaker 3: say khluila? Will you allow me? Yeah?
Speaker 2: You can.
Speaker 3: This is going to be unbelievable. People are going to
Speaker 3: think that we're doing some kind of bit right now,
Speaker 3: but you and I are going to be featured on
Speaker 3: a children's podcast.
Speaker 6: We're going to be debating, We're going to.
Speaker 3: Try to take each other to the mat, knock each
Speaker 3: other out. Uh. And also, boy, we have a lot
Speaker 3: to talk about as well. We have our newsletter. What's
Speaker 3: your favorite thing about our newsletter?
Speaker 6: I like to know what's on everyone's mind. Like stuff
Speaker 6: comes up in the newsletter, things we've enjoyed or been
Speaker 6: thinking about that we're not necessarily even talking about one
Speaker 6: on one.
Speaker 3: No, No, you find out things about me. Yeah, I
Speaker 3: find out things about you and Stevie.
Speaker 1: Sometimes I'm shocked.
Speaker 3: You know what? My favorite thing about the newsletter is
Speaker 3: that it's the it's on the Internet. I don't have
Speaker 3: to get paper cuts opening up an envelope that comes
Speaker 3: to my door. People have to know my business, so
Speaker 3: I ask you, one and all to please subscribe to
Speaker 3: that newsletter, which I don't know if I mentioned, is
Speaker 3: completely free and you can find it at patreon dot com.
Speaker 3: Slash Heavyweight