Jeremy gets an alarming call at 7am and learns that his mom has crashed her car into a lush river waterfall in the middle of a dry desert five hours away. What was she doing driving to the middle of nowhere at 2am in the morning? And how did she manage to find herself in a lush jungle oasis in the middle of a barren wasteland?
Jeremy gets an alarming call at 7am and learns that his mom has crashed her car into a lush river waterfall in the middle of a dry desert five hours away. What was she doing driving to the middle of nowhere at 2am in the morning? And how did she manage to find herself in a lush jungle oasis in the middle of a barren wasteland?
Hello. The story you're about to hear is true and the names have been changed if they're lucky. Welcome to tell that one story an anecdotal podcasts to brighten your day. I'm your cohost, Liz.
Jeremy:And I'm Jeremy.
Liz:Hey Jeremy.
Jeremy:Hey Liz.
Liz:So I've had some time to think about after our last episode, we talked about something very important and close to my heart, which is the Christmas Prince, film, genre that is finally getting the respect it deserves. And it is now in full bloom on Netflix and Amazon Prime.
Jeremy:You had me there cause I almost thought you're going to say that whole being in the emergency room, peeing on yourself. So I'm glad that. I'm glad that this isn't.
Liz:Yeah, no, it's not that it's better also. You don't have to reference the last episode in case someone isn't able to listen to it, because now they're like have some assumptions about me just from those words.
Jeremy:And what kind of situations you find yourself in?
Liz:Anyway.
Jeremy:More on this Princess Secret Princess Story movie genre.
Liz:Yeah, I did some research. I went to just kind of see how many Christmas prince movies are out there. And I updated the list that I have for 2020. So this is maybe a list of like 2017 to 2020.
Jeremy:Can I guess like, can, I guess how many there are, I honestly like a dozen, there cannot be more than a dozen.
Liz:Well, there are 20 in fact.
Jeremy:Twenty?
Liz:Twenty, two zero. So more than a dozen, more than a Baker's dozen a prince's dozen.
Jeremy:Almost a double dozen.
Liz:Almost a double dozen? If I looked harder, I'm sure I could make it two dozen.
Jeremy:There are twenty. Are all of these part of like Hallmark or are these.
Liz:Wait. Jeremy wait, listen, listen did you hear that? That was another Christmas Prince movie being made.
Jeremy:You could Literally start on the 5th of December and watch one every day,
Liz:Every day. And then on Christmas day you can unwrap the story. Okay. So I have, I've put these in I'm going to read through the titles because they're delightful and I have a couple of notes on some of these, but they're alphabetical.
Jeremy:How do you have that many titles?
Liz:Well, you'll see. Cause it, they're not very innovative. Some of these titles Hallmark is doing their good thing. They're like a Christmas movie machine that pumps out 12, 15 Christmas movies a year, and a few of them happen to have princes in them. So we start with the Christmas Carousel, which has a secret Prince in it, but uh, not in the title seems fine. Then we go to a Christmas in Royal fashion. She is working her way up in the fashion industry. You see that Royal fashion? Get it? Yeah. A Christmas Prince, A Christmas Prince: The Royal Baby, a Christmas Prince: The Royal Wedding. Now that's the series we had talked about how there were three movies that then made an appearance in the other movie. And so that's part of the Christmas Prince EU extended universe.
Jeremy:Wait, I need to say something about this. So there's this whole secret Prince universe, right? What'd you call it the EU?
Liz:The extended universe.
Jeremy:It's like S secret Prince SPEU. It makes me want to vomit.
Liz:No, it's the greatest it's like, yes. I like a warm hug of spewing.
Jeremy:Sorry for all those secret Prince fans out there
Liz:you are one and you don't know what you're secretly. So
Jeremy:I'm secretly a Secret Prince fan? Is that what you're saying?
Liz:You don't know yet, but you're already in too deep to get out. The call is coming from inside the house, and it's the secret Prince for Christmas! Okay. So I should say extended universe is more of like when there are novels that extend the universe from the film to Star Wars nerd out
Jeremy:Oh! I'm not doubting.
Liz:The Marvel universe. It's the
Jeremy:MCU, yeah
Liz:MCU cinematic universe. So it's like the Christmas Prince universe, cinematic universe we'll work on that. Yeah. So those three titles, Christmas Prince are part of the Netflix Christmas Prince Cinematic Universe. Then we have a Prince for Christmas. A Princess for Christmas,
Jeremy:Are those part of the same universe or are those not, they're not cousins, cousins that just want to be secret royalty.
Liz:No, not that I know of. But maybe it sounds like you might have an idea.
Jeremy:I think you and I could build this. This could be a whole franchise that we can create. Yes. It's like a whole family of secrets. Right. And it takes place in Russia. There's one in Spain.
Liz:All the way to the top!
Jeremy:Genovia. Right. Isn't it? Yeah.
Liz:Well, that's that's the other thing is, I can break down the themes and the tropes in these films. So one is like a bunch of made up countries.
Jeremy:Yes!
Liz:Cause you don't want you, when you said Spain, I thought you said space and I was suddenly very interested in your take on the Christmas Prince franchise, Prince for Christmas and Princess for Christmas, A Royal Christmas, a Royal New Year's Eve. Ah, see now is it Christmas, but it kind of is a Royal Winter, A Winter Princess. Now we're back to Christmas. Christmas at the Palace, Christmas with a Prince. Okay.
Jeremy:Are these all secret princes or princesses?
Liz:They're not secret. So I have already confused you with the word secret.
Jeremy:I know, I thought this was all about hidden identities.
Liz:No, no, no. There's a few of those within this. It's a sub genre within the genre, the genre, we're talking about it as A Christmas Prince genre
Jeremy:And he could be known. Yes, or she could be known too.
Liz:Yeah, exactly. Or a long lost relative is related to oh, it turns out that, yeah. Oh my gosh. Okay.
Jeremy:What greater gift is there than like finding somebody who's dead rich and owns a country? I mean, doesn't everybody want that?
Liz:Well that says a lot about you and your priorities. Like I said, secretly obsessed? Uh,
Jeremy:Me? No..
Liz:Yeah. Cause there's also a bunch of prince or Secret Prince romance films that aren't around Christmas. So I didn't even count those. These are only specifically royalty, Christmas. 20 films! Royalty at Christmas. Okay. So we have Christmas at the Palace, Christmas with a Prince. Now this film super low budget delightful, but that brings me to just his giant white belt and his costume at the end of the movie, because every Christmas Prince film at the end, he asked some sort of formal regalia that it usually.
Jeremy:Some ceremony. Yes.
Liz:Yeah, like he's got some metals and like some tassels and a belt. And this one, it looks like someone stole a belt from 1985 and it is bright white, and it is the most distracting thing to me and I, other people haven't necessarily mentioned it. So maybe it's just my own thing, but just enjoy that film for the belt itself.
Jeremy:It just occurred to me. You have watched all these movies, haven't you?
Liz:No, I have not. I've watched mos...- some of them. No I had
Jeremy:How many out of the 20 have you watched?
Liz:Okay. I didn't do that math yet. I will have to they all kind of blur together, so I'm going to have to look back at the covers. I just have the name, but now I'm determined to watch all of them, just to have that merit badge for the Girl Scouts sash that I have.
Jeremy:The Christmas Prince merit badge you can just show everybody you've done it.
Liz:She did it. She's single at Christmas ladies and gentlemen, she did it. She watched all of them Christmas Prince movies. Am I a princess yet? Do I get my own crown if I watch them all. No you don't. From what I can tell, Oh, speaking of Crown for Prince for Crown for Christmas. No, there's no"A" Crown for Christmas.
Jeremy:Ooh,
Liz:My crinsmus Prince my crinns... I'm saying Christmas too much My Christmas Prince. Different from Christmas Prince or a Christmas Prince. My Christmas Prince.
Jeremy:This should just be a word jumble of Christmas, prince royalty, crown, castle, princess, royal palace. And then how many different permutations of those words can we make? There's our title!
Liz:Once upon a Holiday, which is like now it's not just Christmas. It's holiday One Royal holiday, Royal Christmas Ball. And then of course the Princess Switch and the Princess Switched 2: Switched Again.
Jeremy:Wait, is that all 20? Was that 20 of them?
Liz:Yep.
Jeremy:So how many of those exist with sequels versus standalone?
Liz:I think only Oh, I missed one. The Christmas Prince, Chris Christmas with a Prince has a sequel it's like Becoming Royal. I didn't know. I don't know if that one's actually at Christmas though. So of these, I think three of them, the Christmas Prince Trilogy. And as part of that universe, we now know the Princess Switch. And then Crins Crinsmus, Christmas, Christmas with the Prince, the guy with the belt, they have a sequel and I have not watched it and I have not watched.
Jeremy:Because the belt is just too distracting. You couldn't?
Liz:Well, I want, I wanted to. Here's the thing, Jeremy, every time I try and buy it, they will not let me, I go to Prime and they're like not available in your country. And I'm like, I can see the picture I'm clicking on it. I'm trying to give you money. Is it because I'm in the app then I go to the website. No, I mean, I don't put too much work into it, but I haven't yet been able to find a way to watch this film.
Jeremy:The fact that you want to buy it is killing me and fact that you tried to buy it multiple times.
Liz:They won't let me.
Jeremy:Which one is this? This is the Prince for Christmas, or what's the big white belt one.
Liz:Christmas with a Prince
Jeremy:Christmas with a Prince. Is that the Prince you want to be with?
Liz:Nope. Not at all He, it looks like he's probably like 50 trying to play late twenties.
Jeremy:Oh get out.
Liz:He's super buff though. Do I need to share my screen all of a sudden? So he's super buff, just like I just plastered with my wallpaper. Yeah. He's trying to play like late twenties, thirties. He dyed his hair. He's super buff because I think he like works out like that's his other job, I guess. But he has a delightful one of those, cause this is another, I'm trying to work on my Christmas Prince drinking game. And one of them is accent switching. So he, he at the beginning of the movie is trying to be like European, British, but like in and out of that accent, like five minutes and he's given up and then like, Oh right. And he talks to his father character cause daddy issues is also another
Jeremy:thing in these movies.
Liz:Yeah. Yeah. So it's like drink daddy issues. And so like talks to dad who is an actor who's actually British. Oh, right. I'm supposed to be British. Now I'm going to parrot, your accent and have that accent now, which I'm sure is great for that actor. Like, Oh, who am I talking to now? My American son or my British son?
Jeremy:That's why he as his issues.
Liz:So he goes in and out of his accent so much that I was like, wait, what? Wait. So. Oh my gosh. Anyway, so I have to send you a link to that one. That one's a, I believe on Netflix, Christmas with a Prince there. It's great. She's a doctor. Her brother went to school with this Prince. He broke his leg, so he has to stay somewhere. So they decide to put him in the children's hospital ward that she's in, because of course you do that. You put a prince the cancer ward. And they let him do this because he's donating money to the hospital, which again is like breaking so many rules. I watched this with my my nurse sister for her to be like, this is not how medical works. This is breaking so many. This is illogical. THat would not be allowed.
Jeremy:Wait, is he, is he like a hard gruff guy too? And then all of a sudden he's around these kids and then he softens up or no? Like, is he a jerk?
Liz:Maybe. They try, he's kind of a jerk. He's kind of full of himself and his Instagram.
Jeremy:hmmm.
Liz:Jeremy.
Jeremy:Why are you looking at me like that?
Liz:This is an intervention,
Jeremy:I am so. ha ha ha. Surprised. This whole podcast was a ruise!
Liz:This whole podcast was a ruise so I can talk to you about your instagram.
Jeremy:Two episodes in! Yes! Yeah. Everybody pops up on the zoom call, my mom, my brother.
Liz:Everyone. That was my experience when I got laid off. At some point, I'll have to tell you that great story of where I'm having a one-on-one and all of a sudden, a bunch of people jumped in. And then I realized all three people who crashed our call from HR. And I'm like, Oh yeah, no. I was like, what the fu oh, that, you know, that makes sense.
Jeremy:We need to start this. We need to start this podcast.
Liz:Oh, Oh yeah. You're right. Exactly. Now, speaking of seamless transition, Jeremy, did you have a story that you wanted to tell me about a time where you may have felt or not felt like a Christmas prince?
Jeremy:No, no, I did not. But what I do have is a story about me and my mom and this takes place about 10 years ago. And it starts with this frantic phone call that I get from my brother. And he's like, Hey, wake up and mind you it's around seven o'clock in the morning.
Liz:Oh, wow.
Jeremy:Right.
Liz:Like in the middle of the week, is it on the weekend?
Jeremy:Yeah It's like a Wednesday. You know, so, my family, really isn't Hey, let's just call and chat. call it 7:00 AM is a thing,
Liz:Right. Yeah. Like usually you have to schedule a call a week in advance, send two follow-up emails and the text reminder.
Jeremy:Right!
Liz:And then, right!
Jeremy:Especially with this brother,
Liz:what's your brother's name?
Jeremy:I can't say that on this podcast.
Liz:How about the human torch?
Jeremy:Torch, we'll just call him Torch,
Liz:Ok. Let's call it. Let's call him the human torch. You can call him torch if you want. So your brother, the human torch, who sometimes is on fire. Oh, calls you at 7:00 AM. Okay.
Jeremy:Calls me 7:00 AM. And he's like, Hey mom got in a crazy wreck and I don't think she's okay. She called me, she left me a voicemail and she's delirious and she ran into some Oasis and it's crashed into a waterfall.
Liz:Wait. Yeah. She ran into an Oasis. Yeah. Okay. When I hear Oasis, I think desert, like, was your mom on vacation? She's just like in the Seattle area,
Jeremy:Ok, this is what's messed up. He got the call from the authorities who had my mom in the hospital in Omak. For people who don't know the area here, that is five hours away from anything It is Nowheresville so my brother got a call at 7:00 AM and then he realized he looked at his voicemail and he actually had a call from her at 5:30 AM. And this is where yeah. And this is where he gets the Oasis and the waterfall thing. Right? So the authorities say,
Liz:wait, sorry. So he has a voicemail that says I'm in an Oasis.
Jeremy:My mom is delirious
Liz:and ran into an Oasis. Maybe she's the only one who could see the world as it is. She found the one Oasis in the Washington in the desert.
Jeremy:Yeah. So he plays back this voicemail for me. And she's been knocked out or whatever. Like it's real, it's real.
Liz:We should start the story with saying she's okay. She's alive, recovered
Jeremy:My mom is the toughest woman you will ever meet. And she probably should have died there as well as a couple other times. And she had a full recovery and had nothing wrong with her. Yeah.
Liz:You heard it here, ladies and gentlemen, Jeremy said, his mom should've died.
Jeremy:Don't say that! She probably would've said that too,
Liz:okay.
Jeremy:this story isn't about my mom being alive. This story is about the mystery of what the heck happened.
Liz:Solving the mystery of the mom.
Jeremy:Yeah,
Liz:that's good.
Jeremy:She's like I ran into this Oasis and I hit this waterfall and I need help. I don't know where I am, and my brother's like, what the heck? You know, when he's listening, I can go. So he's telling me, you need to get in the car and you need to go get her. Cause.
Liz:So torch is,like, go save mom,
Jeremy:Yeah, you need to go get her. And so, I jumped in the minivan. call my boss take work off. I head on over there.
Liz:You are so cool in your minivan!
Jeremy:I know I'm all like cruising in a minivan,
Liz:okay. I'm going to save the day,
Jeremy:leave the kids at home. You know, we're going to just do this. So I get in it. What I don't do is look at the gas at all.
Liz:Oh no. If only there was a gas Oasis, right? Like you are now looking for gas. I do. I don't want to derail you, but I do have questions about the voicemail.
Jeremy:Okay. Well, let's, let's pause. What's the, what's the question?
Liz:Sorry. So going back to the voicemail. Your brother said, your mom called him and she's at an oasis which okay, desert, Palm trees.
Jeremy:I crashed into an Oasis.
Liz:Which, So
Jeremy:And into a waterfall,
Liz:Into a waterfall. So waterfall was the one that I forgot to note about. So into an oasis like it's so specific
Jeremy:I know
Liz:into a waterfall.
Jeremy:What is going on? And she's in the middle of
Liz:were those the words that she used.
Jeremy:Yes.
Liz:So she, and this was the voicemail. So by the time that your brother connected with your mom, she has been saved, rescued from the Oasis
Jeremy:Yes
Liz:And is with, at a hospital. And now you're jumping in the van to go to the hospital.
Jeremy:To go get her. And what I forgot to mention too is she's 20 feet.
Liz:Is 20 feet tall, your mom is so tall.
Jeremy:No She is in a 20 foot ditch in an Oasis into a waterfall.
Liz:Did she say she was in a 20 foot ditch? Okay. So she's like there's a ditch in this oasis,
Jeremy:And I can't get out.
Liz:This oasis it sucks. Please help me get out of what, who puts this ditch here in this Oasis. Okay.
Jeremy:Yep. And then her phone went dead. Okay. Yeah.
Liz:Oh, her phone died.
Jeremy:Yeah. And then her phone died.
Liz:What's so dramatic. I'm really glad that I know that your mom's still alive or otherwise the story would be horrifying.
Jeremy:I know
Liz:Okay. So then you have hopped in the car, sorry. I'm totally derailing everything.
Jeremy:I get in the minivan.It's not a car, It's a minivan.
Liz:I'm sorry, your van. That's not a full van, but it is mini and then you forgot about the gas.
Jeremy:Yeah, I'm climbing. So on the way to Omak for people who may not know where this. Lives at the topography of our area, you have to go through a mountain range to get there. Right. And So I'm climbing Snoqualmie, up to Snoqualmie pass to go over the mountain, which is only, 90 minutes or, an hour and 90 minutes into the drive and that's when I realize I'm running out of gas and it's not I'm right at E I'm, under E
Liz:No, you're so bad at this because you know what takes the most gas is. Trying to go up a Hill in the mountain range when you're a minivan.
Jeremy:Thank you. Thank you for telling me that now. But I was so adrenaline, rushed. I was like, I'm gonna, I need to solve this. What the heck's going on? is my mom okay? How did she end up like in a waterfall and there's no waterfalls over there and she's
Liz:Right. And there was a mystery to be solved.
Jeremy:There was a mystery.
Liz:Action needs to happen. You got up, you ripped your shirt, open,
Jeremy:I did
Liz:and like had a Superman shirt under it, and then went to the minivan and forgot to gas, okay.
Jeremy:So I get to the top of the mountain I'm freaking out, but I'm like, Oh, there's totally a gas station up there.
Liz:Yes from the oil tanker that okay.
Jeremy:There is No gas station up there. So I'm crapping my pants because I think I'm going to get stuck and I don't have any cell phone reception back then there wasn't as much cell phone coverage as we have now. So I'm staring at my cell phone thinking, Oh my gosh, I can't even make a phone call. I'm staring at my gas. You know, I've got none. And I was praying. I was like, Oh my gosh, God, I've got to make it at the bottom of this Hill to a gas station.
Liz:Oh, my god! so were you just in neutral just hoping not to die?
Jeremy:I coasted in neutral down that whole mountain and I barely rolled into the first gas station. The moment I got to the top of that mountain. I turned it in to neutral and I just coasted. It was like the grace of God. I made it to that gas station.
Liz:The Oasis that was the gas station that saved you.
Jeremy:That was my oasis! take that!
Liz:The waterfall was the gasoline.
Jeremy:Just pouring into my van.
Liz:Okay.
Jeremy:So I get, I get full of gas.
Liz:So this, this must be what it was like on the Oregon trail. I'm sure. They're like, ah, I'm gonna run out of gas and I've got dysentery. Just coast, right in. Woo.
Jeremy:I always died of dysentery. I Hated that. I hate that game. I always hated that game. So I get back in. I've got enough gas. I'm going to make this. We're going to get there before sundown. I'm going to find out what's going on, but going through that whole Eastern Washington area. There's nothing out there, nothing. And there was nothing green. It's farmland and stuff, but there was no farm going on. I don't know what season it was, but it was all dead.
Liz:So it was like the reverse of when Dorothy comes to the wizard of a land of Oz and everything turns in color, it was like you walked through and it was all the color was that yeah.
Jeremy:Death Valley. Absolute death Valley.
Liz:Oh man.
Jeremy:And what I never keyed in on, is this is the other thing about my mom. This is why she is tough as nails. She called my brother and left a voicemail at 5:30 AM. She got in a wreck and she left her house, which is over here, five hours away to get to that job in the morning. She left Seattle between midnight and 2:00 AM in the morning for that drive. That is my mom for a job.
Liz:There's I have some notes. Isn't there a commute like that?
Jeremy:Yeah.
Liz:Oh, wow.
Jeremy:Because She was subbing, like she's a sub and she does occupational therapy So, you know, that's where I was like, what the heck is she doing? In Omak at 5:30 AM, five hours away from home. She should be in bed. Right. Or watching stories or something like she should not be getting up. Okay.
Liz:That's True. But I just, when you say it like that, it reminds me of one of those books where they're like, we have found an artifact of a submarine from world war II that has appeared in a field in Wisconsin. It's like, what is it that even gets there? What's the historical. Yeah. Yeah.
Jeremy:How did my mom get in and Oasis at 5:30 AM in the morning,
Liz:Five hours away from anything.
Jeremy:Five hours away from anything. So I've gotten my total Sherlock Holmes hat on the whole ride I'm going to find out this mystery and everybody at home knows i'm doing this mystery.
Liz:You should have remembered to put that on before you forgot your gas.
Jeremy:Then I would have remembered
Liz:you would have been like, Oh, the clues say, perhaps I should get gas. So now that you've gotten gas, you're like, Oh my hat, put it on. Ha ha
Jeremy:Do you want to know the end or not?
Liz:I do. I do. Okay. Kind of. Yes.
Jeremy:I'm trying to figure out what's going on. I can't piece it together because there's nowhere in this whole place where there's any green. There is no green. So if there's no green, there could not be any water and there's no rivers or anything. I'm like, screw this. I'm going to get my mom gonna make sure she's okay. I go to the hospital, I pick her up. She's totally bruised up and everything. I mean the poor thing, but she's wicked strong. Right. And so she's just, I can do this. I'll be fine. I'm gonna walk, I'm gonna walk to the car, you know?
Liz:Did she seem like She was more aware than in the previous voicemail. Okay. So she was now it's to the point where she was annoyed and probably embarrassed and being like, whatever, like if that's what my parents would have been like.
Jeremy:Yeah. She was back in her normal mental state. She might've been fatigued and tired, but that was more just like physical. So she was like, let's go, I'm hungry. Let's get some clam chowder.
Liz:I was like, what do you do after you leave in Oasis? What are you hungry for?
Jeremy:That's my mom. She wants seafood.
Liz:She wanted clam chowder? Is that actually what she no I thought you were just making it up like, literally, she was like, I survived a car accident in an Oasis and i want clam chowder.
Jeremy:And crab cakes. And I'm like, mom, we're in Eastern Washington. There's no water around here. We probably should not eat crab cakes around here. This is Not the place to get fresh. Alaskan. Yes, we don't get Alaskan, salmon here that's just not going to happen.
Liz:Yeah, fresh Dungeness crab
Jeremy:Or, or lobster. I want lobster. You know, she loves lobster. Ok.
Liz:I love lobster, I love lamp. Sorry. So continue after you. So now you've got you have your next mission is a clam chowder mission.
Jeremy:Get her fed. And so we get in the car and we head back and I realized like 45 minutes away from the hospital, I'm like, no way, I'm not leaving this place until I find out what's going on this is going to kill me for the rest of my life. If i do not find this spot.
Liz:Where is this Oasis? This waterfall. I mean, At the very least you need to see the green swimming, the waterfall to learn of the day that their grandmother survived.
Jeremy:Right? The one place where I will come back and show generations, this is the place. Where your grandmother conquered,
Liz:this is the entrance to Narnia. Ahhhhh.
Jeremy:Or maybe where she made a silly mistake and veered off the road.
Liz:Right? Yeah. But still like this hidden oasis nobody knew about, she found she is the chosen one.
Jeremy:She is the chosen one!
Liz:Her, she
Jeremy:does that make me something special since I am her son?
Liz:Yes. Son of clam chowder woman. You been called and summoned to the Oasis, come on this adventure with me Aslan.
Jeremy:Stop
Liz:So I'm really building this up. My expectation. Now, is that when you find this Oasis, there's like Aslan is going to be there with Tumbness and they're like, come join us, Jeremy.
Jeremy:Right. It'll be like a never ending party where nobody ages. So I literally turned the car around. I'm not doing this. I can't do this. And this happened, there was no turn off spot. I Jack knifed, did at five point turn. And my mom's like, what are you doing? I'm like, mom, I can not leave this place until I find out where this happened cause I was like this, it was beyond here. Right. And she's like, yeah, it was way sooner. So I get in the car. I backtrack, I head back to the hotel on the highway and not five miles away from her destination, less than five miles. It might even be like one mile. I remember thinking like, mom, you were there when this happened, like you were where you were supposed to be.
Liz:So she drove five and a half hours. From the city to nowhere and then decided to like, Oasis, well maybe the oasis popped up right there.
Jeremy:So the reason why you missed it is because if you looked straight, the Oasis was down eye level. It literally was 20 feet down. It was a ditch.
Liz:Oh my gosh. It was that's why no one could see the oasis.
Jeremy:That's why no one could see it. So there was this S curve of the road, right? A small one. And she, her back right wheel caught the edge of the pavement. And there was a three inch dip, cause this is like desert area. And then she tried to compensate by steering the wheel left and then the road jerked to the right, for the S And then back over. And she popped over the middle of the S and the curve and went. Face down into that 20 foot ditch.
Liz:I'm glad there was a ditch.
Jeremy:There was all of this lush greenery and I kid you not this ditch and this area, maybe 30 feet wide and maybe 20 or twenty-five feet deep. I went over and I walked over because we found it. She's like, this is, this is where it happened. And I'm like, you can remember that. You can't even remember my name, mom
Liz:Remember this? My first born child, the ditch. My favorite son.
Jeremy:Where's my chowder. And so I literally get out of the car I'm like get out of the car. We're going to go see this. We walk over there and I, I stared down into this huge ditch and there is a car shaped hole that is, I'm not kidding you. I cannot make this up. There's a car shaped hole where the trees and the overgrowth had slowed her down. Cause this is a 50 mile an hour highway.
Liz:She was my aunt by the Oasis
Jeremy:The tree branches and the foliage of the Oasis caught her
Liz:Mr. Tumness Caught your mom. Let's call your mom, call your mom Nancy, Nancy. They're like, come to us, Nancy. We have you
Jeremy:wait here. You're going to be okay. And I actually stepped into the, I went about maybe five feet down the ditch, but it was super Steep and. Lo and behold, there's a waterfall in the back of it because
Liz:literally green and waterfall.
Jeremy:And there's a waterfall. And there's a whole pile of water on the bottom because it's a drain out ditch. It's an actual irrigation drain out area. That's under ground and it runs off. And so you wouldn't see it. This is what's so crazy. Like you wouldn't see it, but that's where her car was. And the tow truck had pulled her out. And so you could kind of walk down there and it was like a river down there on the bottom. So she had literally cascaded into this river and hit right below the drainage. And it was pouring on her car. That's what was happening.
Liz:So she heard this waterfall on her car. So she was like. I'm in an oasis. like there's green. Yeah. I just, I just, I just.
Jeremy:The whole time i thought my mom was crazy and I was like, I had to find out how crazy she really is. Or if this is real.
Liz:And it was, she found herself in an oasis. It's like, she was like, yeah, I'm coming Aslan. And just like woooh! Crash. Narnia!
Jeremy:Take me now, take me now!
Liz:Narnia!
Jeremy:I'm ready.
Liz:You're Mom's being crazy. She doesn't know he's talking about like, Oh this is an actual Oasis. There's a waterfall. There's greenery. There's a river. There's Mr. Tummus. It's the whole thing. Wow. I'm so glad you went back and you like disregarded your mom's health and when she and her need to eat and you went back and you found this Oasis, So that I did not expect it. So then when you were able to return to tell your siblings of this great journey,
Jeremy:But, before I returned, we got clam chowder. Mom gets clam chatter when she wants it and a root beer float. And if they don't serve Root Beer floats, as long as they serve root beer and ice cream.
Liz:Shut up.
Jeremy:You can make a root beer float.
Liz:Did you make the float yourself?
Jeremy:She'll do that. where we all face palm, because we will try to talk her out of this. But nothing will get in the way of Nancy and her root beer float
Liz:and her root beer float. It's not, it's no longer about the root beer float. It's about the principle of no, you have a root beer float. Don't you lie to me. Do you have the components?
Jeremy:Do you have clams? Do you have sauce? You have clam chowder.
Liz:I think, I think maybe clam chowder is different, but I could see how that kind of would go in the same. So I just want this to be a journey. The story of this, being your mom, searching for the perfect cup of clam chowder, and she drives five and a half hours in a wrong direction, away from the ocean. And then finds this map. That's like, there's an Oasis here that leads to the best cup of clam chowder.
Jeremy:To narnia where there's enough clam chowder for everyone.
Liz:Charge! Like one of those action clips of a car, where it's flying through the air it's wheels. It's wheels are flying off and then it lands in the ditch
Jeremy:Of clam chowder
Liz:and then. And then the prophecy foretold told that it would be the best clam chowder and it was because she didn't die. She survived and the first clam chowder you have after almost dying is the best clam chowder. Wow. So do you have like a tracker on your mom now?
Jeremy:Whole other story
Liz:story for another time. Oh my goodness. I love it because if you had not gone there, You could have never found that spot. Cause you couldn't see over it over the road.
Jeremy:No, no you were, if you blinked, you would have missed it. If you weren't staring right at it and stopped, I was even looking for it and I couldn't find it. That's how crazy it was.
Liz:That's a, it's a great story to remind us when we think our moms are talking nonsense that sometimes there might be an Oasis in the middle of the desert with a waterfall.
Jeremy:That they're crashed into
Liz:That they're crashed into. Wow. All right. Sorry, Nancy. You were right.
Jeremy:Okay. That was a story for this week. Do we do morals of the story? So what's the moral this story?
Liz:Oh, right. The moral of the story is clam chowder.
Jeremy:Some people will do anything for clam chowder so don't get in their way.
Liz:Yeah. And also apparently Narnia has a lot of clam chowder as we've learned. No. Oh, I don't like clam chowder enough for that to make me feel. Can we also have a secret Christmas Prince in Narnia as well as clam chowder. So I feel like I'd want to go to there. The clam chowder isn't doing it for me So thank you for listening to our podcast about awesome, embarrassing stories about Jeremy's mom, Nancy. and his brother And their adventures in Narnia or towards Narnia. I appreciate you sharing that story with me. I will never be able to look at Nancy the same. Now that I know that she knows the way to Narnia We hope you've enjoyed listening as much as we have enjoyed telling dumb stories and, uh, remember to
Jeremy:go make some stories,
Liz:make some stories.
Jeremy:And Thank you for listening.
Liz:Thank you. Bye bye. Bye bye. I'm so glad you went back and you disregarded your mom's health and when she and her need to eat and you went back and you found this Oasis,
Jeremy:I have never been more proud of any other moment in my life in that one.
Liz:That's amazing. Cause I would be wondering what we would scholars you. Yep. I mean, you have two children, but it's fine.
Jeremy:Don't let my kids hear that.I have never regretted that moment my entire life.
Liz:I am most proud of this and will always be no matter what happens. Sorry, kids,
Jeremy:Love you,
Liz:Meh. He loves his children very much.