Stuff You Should Know - SYSK Selects: How Sleepwalking Works
Episode Date: August 24, 2019Sleep behaviors are pretty fascinating. Some people snore, some grind their teeth -- and some take a little stroll, or perhaps a drive. In this classic episode, Josh and Chuck investigate how sleepwal...king, or somnambulism, works. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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On the podcast, Hey Dude, the 90s called,
David Lasher and Christine Taylor,
stars of the cult classic show, Hey Dude,
bring you back to the days of slip dresses
and choker necklaces.
We're gonna use Hey Dude as our jumping off point,
but we are going to unpack and dive back
into the decade of the 90s.
We lived it, and now we're calling on all of our friends
to come back and relive it.
Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s called
on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you get your podcasts.
Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast,
Frosted Tips with Lance Bass.
Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass
and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation?
If you do, you've come to the right place
because I'm here to help.
And a different hot, sexy teen crush boy bander
each week to guide you through life.
Tell everybody, ya everybody, about my new podcast
and make sure to listen so we'll never, ever have to say.
Bye, bye, bye.
Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass
on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to podcasts.
Good morning, everyone.
I hope you had a restful Friday night sleep
so you can listen to your Saturday select episode
on sleepwalking.
I myself was a bit of a sleepwalker when I was younger,
and I talk about it in this very episode
from August 24th, 2010.
Welcome to Step You Should Know,
a production of iHeartRadio's How Stuff Works.
Hey, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Josh Clark.
There's Charles W. Chuck Bryant.
That makes this stuff you should know.
The late night edition.
It's late.
How's it going, Chuck?
Great, awesome.
Couldn't be better, how are you?
Same, just the same.
So, Chuck, I got a story for you.
Let's hear it.
Back in 1845, in a little town called Weymouth, Massachusetts,
although in Massachusetts, they probably pronounced it
in some radically different way than it would be spelled.
Weemouth.
Weymouth, or Worcester, or something weird like that.
There was a woman named Maria Ann Bickford,
and she was a prostitute,
and she was discovered on October 27th of that year,
murdered, and brutally murdered, actually.
And it was quickly traced back to a guy
by the name of Albert Terrell.
Jack the Ripper?
No, but it was Ripper-esque.
Her head was severed, or almost completely severed.
Yeah, and it was with the knife.
But the reason everybody knew it was Albert Terrell
was because that was her boyfriend.
And he had left his wife for her.
He was a wealthy guy in Massachusetts,
and he left his wife to be with Maria Ann Bickford.
And he wanted her to quit the job, I guess you could call it.
I would say that, too.
Well, she didn't.
She liked having an income,
because she didn't have to depend on any man
for whatever she wanted.
And she refused.
Which is ironic, though,
because she was depending on men.
Yeah, yeah, that is very ironic.
She ultimately died, was murdered,
and it was Albert Terrell who admitted to doing it.
But he was sleepwalking, he said.
It was a pretty thin case,
but he was ultimately acquitted,
even though he had set three fires in the brothel
in an obvious attempt to cover up what he'd done
while he was still supposedly sleepwalking.
But the jury bought it.
And one of the reasons they bought it was
because it was a jury of wealthy white men
who weren't about to put one of their own behind bars
as big of a crook as he was.
But secondly, because in 1845,
we didn't really understand sleepwalking.
We didn't understand what people were capable of.
We didn't understand how sleepwalking worked.
And I know you sent me an article as recently
as a month or so ago,
a guy in Arizona was acquitted of sexual assault
because he was sleepwalking, right?
Yeah, it was Illinois, but that was today,
the news articles from today.
Wow, even better, even more recent,
which makes my point even more thorough,
which is we don't understand sleepwalking
too terribly much more than we did in 1845,
as far as explaining why it happens, right?
Absolutely.
But there are some really interesting aspects
of this sleep disorder, which is called parasomnia, right?
Yes, that's one of many,
but it's called somnambulism specifically, sleepwalking is.
Not to be confused with botulism.
No, not at all.
And there's an official definition
if you wanna look in a mental health professional handbook.
The DSM-4?
Yes, you leave your bed while you're sleeping
and others find it difficult to wake you
when you're sleepwalking.
You can't remember what happened afterward.
You're confused when you wake up.
You aren't suffering from dementia
or anything else physical.
That's a big one.
And it impairs your social life or work life or your life.
And that's for straight up sleepwalking.
Yeah.
There are, sleepwalking can be a symptom of things
like dementia or Parkinson's or something like that,
but that's kind of significant.
And you should think that it's found in the DSM-4,
which is the psychological Bible, right?
So it's considered a disorder of arousal,
I think is what it's called, right?
Yes.
So Chuck, while you're sleeping,
when does this occur?
When does it take place?
If you're an adult, or actually kids too, I think,
it occurs in the first third of your sleep,
which is the non-REM sleep,
which is when your body is,
you're in your deepest state of sleep,
but your body is kind of awake.
So you're tossing and turning a lot,
but your brain is shut down.
So it's sort of the opposite of REM sleep.
Right, you've got non-REM and REM sleep, right?
And usually sleepwalking occurs during the deepest part,
which is what I think phase three or four,
or possibly three and four,
when, as Katie Lambert, who wrote this article, put it,
with REM sleep, your brain's active,
but your body's not.
With non-REM sleep, which is when sleepwalking occurs,
your brain is just dead to the world,
but your body's still moving around.
Yes.
Which accounts for sleepwalking, right?
Perfect recap.
Thanks a lot.
And your brain is also resistant to arousal
when you're asleep, so that explains why
it's hard to wake somebody up when they're sleepwalking.
But it's not dangerous necessarily.
No, and that's a question that we should probably
just go ahead and answer.
Should you wake a sleepwalker?
You've heard warnings against that kind of thing,
I think, on everything from the Brady Bunch
to Hawaii Five-O, let's say.
Okay.
Myth.
Yes.
You can wake a sleepwalker,
but the rule I put in is wake a sleepwalker
like you would want to be waking just from bed.
Don't go shaking them or anything.
You wouldn't do that to somebody
laying in bed asleep either.
They'll probably have a heart attack,
so be gentle and try and guide them back to the bed.
If they wake up, that's fine,
but it's not like a danger.
They're not gonna have a heart attack if they
and die if they're awake from sleepwalking.
No, but you could arouse their startle response,
and they are gonna be confused
and not know what's going on.
That's, like you said, one of the symptoms of sleepwalking.
But if you do manage to get the sleepwalker back to bed
and they lie back down, that's it.
You can pretty much rest assured
that there's not gonna be another incident like that,
because most people's sleepwalk only wants per night,
interestingly.
That's what they say.
And 30 seconds to a half hour,
I've heard it even longer than that,
because it very much depends on what's going on,
or maybe what you feel like you have to get done
while you're walking around in your sleep.
You're gonna be sort of zombified,
but you're not gonna be walking around
with your arms out in front of you, like in the movies.
That's a bunch of bunk.
And you're probably gonna be pretty clumsy,
but you can still perform activities,
which is kind of the weird thing about it.
One of the weird things about it.
Right, you just perform them clumsily.
Or you oddly, I guess, is another way to put it.
Yeah.
And sleepwalking is one of these,
it's a hilarious disorder, really,
because it's not generally that dangerous,
or it doesn't have to be that dangerous,
although it can put you in dangerous situations.
And people have been hurt in sleepwalking,
but the idea of just interacting with somebody
with a glassy-eyed look on their face
who's clumsily playing the guitar,
that's a funny disorder.
It's funnier than cancer.
I never had the chance.
I haven't either.
I've never been much of a sleepwalker.
I don't think I've ever sleepwalked.
Oh, I've sleepwalked,
but I've never interacted with someone who was sleepwalking.
Gotcha.
So yeah, I've done it myself, though.
It's good, it's a lot of fun.
But it's one of these conditions
where we have all this evidence and all this data,
we just haven't been able to fully put it together
to figure it out once and for all,
which makes for a better podcast for us, right?
A little bit more data that we have on it, Chuck,
is that sleepwalking tends to run in families.
Children sleepwalk more than adults by far.
Yeah, you're 10 times more likely if you have a family member
who has sleptwalked to be a sleepwalker yourself.
So is it sleptwalked or sleepwalked?
No, no, no.
Sleptwalk?
Sure, that sounds good to me.
We'll just call it SW past tense.
It more often is found in kids, obviously.
It's something you usually outgrow.
More often, identical twins,
which I thought was pretty interesting.
Yeah, well, gene expression and all.
And I think they said adults 2.5 to 4% of adults sleepwalk
and they're almost always adults
who sleptwalked as children.
And if you start sleepwalking for the first time
as an adult, you might wanna get that checked out.
You definitely wanna get that checked out
because, again, it can be a symptom of another problem
like Parkinson's, Alzheimer's, severe stress,
I think, has been associated with it,
not just in children or not adults, but children too.
Which I was kind of like, if you have a child
who's suffering from sleepwalking and it's stress related,
what are you doing to your poor kid
to where the kid's suffering from such stress
that he's running around at night?
Absolutely.
I wonder what I was stressed about.
I don't know, man.
I find it odd that you haven't asked me about sleepwalking yet,
even though I've said three times that I've sleptwalked.
I'm trying to drum up the tension.
They used to think that it was like an epileptic thing
or hysteria.
Well, it still is associated with epilepsy, actually.
Hysteria's kind of out the window, though.
Yeah.
They still think it's caused by epilepsy, though.
It's associated with it, still, yeah.
Did not know that.
Yeah.
We should change this article.
And like you said, no one knows exactly why it's happening,
but they can just say kind of what goes on
when it does happen.
Right, right.
We have all this information that hasn't been fully
put together, which, again, I find fascinating.
Yeah, absolutely.
So, Chuck, what are some of the, I guess,
competing theories for why we sleepwalk?
Well, a lot of people think it's just like you're
in a transition stage between being awake and being asleep.
So if you've got a dead brain, well, not dead,
if you've got a very sleepy brain and a very wired body,
you could potentially get triggered.
They think, a lot of times, I saw this one study
where they took 10 sleepwalkers and they kept them awake
for more than 24 hours and then allowed them to sleep,
and they found that a buzzer going off 100%,
all 10 people got up and sleptwalked
when they heard this buzzer.
Weird.
After sleep deprivation, and before,
during just regular sleep, three out of 10
were triggered by the buzzer.
So they think that any noise, like a dog barking outside,
could wake you up, wake your body up,
and send you doing whatever.
Good to know.
Yeah.
And sleep deprivation is a magic term
as far as sleepwalking goes.
They found that sleepwalking increases dramatically
in studies when they're sleep deprived,
when the person's sleep deprived first.
And they recommend also that if your kid is sleepwalking,
you should not only decrease their stress somehow,
maybe let them give up the trumpet if they really hate it.
Right.
But also to get them on like a regular sleep schedule too,
that that could be part of it as well,
that they may just be sleep deprived and stressed out.
Yeah, adults too.
For little kids.
For show.
Another theory with the kids is that there's all kinds
of crazy hormones being shot about the body
during the night, and that that may disrupt the kid.
And that's why that would explain why it tapers off
after puberty.
Yes.
Have you ever like done something, say driving,
or walking, or doing anything where you realized
you got somewhere and you hadn't been paying attention,
you didn't really, it wasn't like you were blacked out
or you were drunk or impaired or anything,
but you were just distracted or doing something else.
Daydreaming, absolutely.
So I would imagine that that has a lot to do
with how we could possibly sleepwalk.
It's like maybe more basic part of our brain is activated.
Right.
Like the brainstem, what that controls,
like breathing, walking, that kind of stuff, correct?
Right.
So maybe it's all brainstem.
Makes sense to me.
People have actually killed people in their sleep.
Like you said, the first guy, there was someone else who,
and it kind of depends on the case from what I've seen.
Some of them get acquitted, some of them get convicted.
One guy stabbed his wife 45 times and he was convicted.
Another guy murdered his father and he was acquitted,
so I guess it's sort of a crapshoot.
There hasn't been any, you can't go to a law book
and say, well, we have the sleepwalking defense.
Right.
Like the insanity plea.
No, but I think that you could probably find
the same state witness or defense witness
in the acquittals or convictions.
I bet there's some like great professional witness out there
who can convince any jury that actually,
if you're sleepwalking, you can't possibly
know what you're doing.
Right.
Well, the guy from Illinois last week that was acquitted
was, I think they prove that he had a long history
of sleepwalking and this was some friend of his.
He like went out drinking with her
and slept, crashed on her couch and then he said,
he woke up to some guy punching him in the face
and she said, that guy was the guy I called
because you were assaulting me in my sleep.
Right.
And he was like, I didn't mean it.
Right.
And they said, okay.
Yeah, it took him like a couple of hours
or something to decide the jury.
Yeah, that was really fast.
I thought so too.
That's what I'm saying.
There has to have been somebody who convinced them
and just laid it all out for him
because it's not like the average juror
knows a lot about sleepwalking.
It's all, you know, the cabinet of Dr. Calgary or.
Right.
Again, the Brady Bunch.
Yeah, who was that?
I don't remember.
I just remember there was a sleepwalking episode
that seems like I could be making enough.
You talked about injury and I saw a study in England
that 11% of people that responded,
sleepwalkers said they have been injured
and it's usually like bruising or cuts,
but I think 11% of that 11% actually broke bones.
Wow.
Which is not a happy way to wake up.
I wouldn't think.
No, it's not.
The
The
of slipdresses and choker necklaces.
We're going to use Hey Dude as our jumping off point,
but we are going to unpack and dive back
into the decade of the 90s.
We lived it, and now we're calling on all of our friends
to come back and relive it.
It's a podcast packed with interviews, co-stars,
friends, and nonstop references to the best decade ever.
Do you remember going to Blockbuster?
Do you remember Nintendo 64?
Do you remember getting Frosted Tips?
Was that a cereal?
No, it was hair.
Do you remember AOL Instant Messenger
and the dial-up sound like poltergeist?
So leave a code on your best friend's beeper,
because you'll want to be there
when the nostalgia starts flowing.
Each episode will rival the feeling
of taking out the cartridge from your Game Boy,
blowing on it and popping it back in
as we take you back to the 90s.
Listen to, Hey Dude, the 90s called
on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you get your podcasts.
Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast,
Frosted Tips with Lance Bass.
The hardest thing can be knowing who to turn to
when questions arise or times get tough
or you're at the end of the road.
Ah, okay, I see what you're doing.
Do you ever think to yourself,
what advice would Lance Bass
and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation?
If you do, you've come to the right place
because I'm here to help.
This, I promise you.
Oh God.
Seriously, I swear.
And you won't have to send an SOS
because I'll be there for you.
Oh man.
And so my husband, Michael.
Um, hey, that's me.
Yep, we know that, Michael.
And a different hot, sexy, teen crush boy bander
each week to guide you through life step by step.
Oh, not another one.
Kids, relationships, life in general can get messy.
You may be thinking, this is the story of my life.
Just stop now.
If so, tell everybody, yeah, everybody
about my new podcast and make sure to listen
so we'll never, ever have to say bye, bye, bye.
Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass
on the iHeart Radio App, Apple Podcast
or wherever you listen to podcasts.
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Chuck, sleepwalking is not the only parasomnia.
Remember we called it parasomnia?
Yeah.
It's a sleep disorder.
There are other parasomnias.
And the first that I think we should talk about
is called some nambulistic sexual behavior.
Sleep sex.
Explicably abbreviated as SBS. Yeah, that's weird. I wonder what the B stands for. I guess that's part of the ballistic
Maybe that's the Spanish
The Spanish abbreviation perhaps some nambulistic behavior sex you out. Yeah, so sleep sex or sex somnia is
I like Katie says in here. It's pretty much what you think it's being asleep in the middle of the night and
Either you know masturbating or doing something to whoever is nearby, right sexually. Yes
and again that can lead you to an assault conviction or
You could wake up very happy depending on the situation. Yeah, right? I guess so and then of course
There's the very very famous sleep eating which one generally associates these days with the sleep aid Ambien
Right. Yeah eating all kinds of crazy things with Ambien like cigarettes and raw meat
I think we've talked about it before it seems like yeah, we've talked about it. Kristen Konger wrote an article on it and
apparently the chemical
Zolpidim in Ambien like crosses the eating and the sleeping wires in like one in a thousand people and they don't know why
But I also found another stat that said one in one percent of people have sleep eating disorders anyway
So I can't you know
Well, there's reports of people who have been on Ambien and then switched to another similar drug
And it said that it all went away. They're sleep eating abnormal sleep behavior
and then there was the first case of
Well the first documented case of a woman who is on Ambien
Who sleep emailed and I can't stand the
The term the media gave it but Z mailing with three Z awful. Yeah, it's completely awful
Yeah, that was pretty cool because she emailed she fired up her computer in the middle of the night
Logged in to the internet onto the internet. She had to use her password to use her password and
Sent several emails that apparently were a random mix of upper and lower cases and they were written in some strange language
Although when I read the first email it didn't seem very strange to me at all
No, it said
This is a quote come tomorrow and sort this hellhole out
Dinner and drinks 4 p.m. Bring wine and caviar only that seems like a very normal email to me
Right. I've sent that same very same email before what about the second one?
Yeah, one said what the yeah a dot dot dot
I think but it was the mix of all caps in lower case that really just kind of that had to be a little off-putting to see
That it looks like brain damage. Yeah, you know
It's like brain damage in text form. She's probably seen a doctor by this point
I would say yeah, although she was on Ambien, right? Yeah, okay. Well, that probably explains that zolp it
Um, like you said and then also this week very sadly a guy fell
He basically walked off of his third story
hotel room in Mallorca and
Just like broke a leg and hit his head too and hit his head and his girlfriend
Just like this she woke up to find her boyfriend had gone out the window. Yeah
awful
That's more than a bruise my friend and if you like connecting podcasts, there was a guy
in England in Hartlepool, right? Yeah, and on
Holy Island at the Crown and anchor on Holy Island off north the Northumberland coast
He woke up in quicksand actually he sleep he sleep he drank too much
But then he's he sleepwalked he sw past tensed
Into the marshland and found himself
Waking up in the in sinking in quicksand or yeah trapped in quicksand crazy and the guy was smart enough to know that you
Stop struggling and lie flat
And you listen was a fan wouldn't that be something it's possible Chuck because this just happened, right?
It was on August 11th. I wonder so a sleepwalker Stephen Rook if you listen to this podcast
Let us know if we saved your life and put the bottle down. Yeah mistakes. Yeah
Well, he said he did he said he spent the next day in bed and
He was avoiding alcohol for a long time and wants to thank everyone a friend said yeah
He'll be back on the sauce this weekend. I've said that before too. Yeah, my uncle actually it was a famous sleepwalker in my family he
My uncle Steve who you know as the guy who's helped us out before with some stuff the guy we bought Scotch for aka
Oh, yeah
he had a few incidences when he was young and
One time they found tracks in the snow leading from his house. So he went apparently he said he went outside see if it was snowing
Another time he fell asleep on the couch after school
Got up and ate dinner and then later on woke up and said hey, what's for dinner tonight?
And they're like, well, you just had scallops and
Another time scallops that's what he said. Well, I asked him today
And then another time he was going to the store with my grandfather
And he fell asleep in the car on the way to the store and then woke up like in the shop that they were going to like at the counter
Paying for something weird. What was he buying? I think he said tickets to like a Danny Thomas
Benefit show or something. It's like the early 60s. Yeah, I think pretty much everybody was sleepwalking in that line
Yeah, that's a hot ticket in Memphis. So back in the day. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Oh, yeah, and I used to sleepwalk
All right, let's hear. Well a couple of times I'd gotten up and just gone out to my
We had a split level so I'd go out to the banister overlooking our den and just start yelling things and
And
Another time. I specifically remember I got up. I mean, I remember after it obviously I
Got up and I got ready for school and took a shower and got dressed and then I woke up the next morning
I was like that was weird. I must have dreamt that and I saw like the wet towel and my clothes on the floor
You look down you had your saddle shoes on you're like
I was like clutching shampoo
So I don't sleepwalk anymore though. I sleep talk though. Do you? Oh, yeah, I do too. So does Emily
I think a lot of people sleep talk
Yeah, that's no big deal. Yeah, what do you say in your sleep?
Yumi actually likes to use her iPhone to record me sleep talking
Yeah, and she loves to share it with everybody who will listen
I've never heard has actually emailed the sound clips to people before but there's this one of me like just muttering and all of a
sudden I go
Tootsie roll pop and then that was it. I have no idea why why am I not on that email? That's disappointing
I don't know. I'm sure I could get it for you.
On the podcast Hey Dude the 90s called David Lasher and Christine Taylor stars of the cult classic show
Hey Dude bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces
We're gonna use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s
We lived it and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it
It's a podcast packed with interviews co-stars friends and non-stop references to the best decade ever
Do you remember going to blockbuster? Do you remember Nintendo 64?
Do you remember getting frosted tips? Was that a cereal? No, it was hair
Do you remember AOL instant messenger and the dial-up sound like poltergeist? So leave a code on your best friend's beeper
Because you'll want to be there when the nostalgia starts flowing
Each episode will rival the feeling of taking out the cartridge from your Game Boy
Blowing on it and popping it back in as we take you back to the 90s
Listen to Hey Dude the 90s called on the iHeart radio app ample podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts
Hey, I'm Lance Bass host of the new iHeart podcast frosted tips with Lance Bass
The hardest thing can be knowing who to turn to when questions arise or times get tough
Or you're at the end of the road. Ah, okay. I see what you're doing
Do you ever think to yourself? What advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation?
If you do you've come to the right place because I'm here to help this. I promise you. Oh god
Seriously, I swear and you won't have to send an sos because I'll be there for you
And so my husband Michael um, hey, that's me
Yep, we know that Michael and a different hot sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life step by step
Oh, not another one. Uh-huh kids relationships life in general can get messy
You may be thinking this is the story of my life. Just stop now. If so tell everybody you everybody
About my new podcast and make sure to listen
So we'll never ever have to say bye bye bye
Listen to frosted tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app apple podcast or wherever you listen to podcasts
Lastly Chuck there's one a point that I found
Fascinating which is people have always thought and still probably think because we're dumb that um
You act out your dreams while you're sleepwalking not true. Yeah, the point that Katie Lambert makes is your brain's not really active
It's it's in this low delta wave that you couldn't possibly be dreaming in so you're not actually acting out your dreams
But there is a disorder called REM sleep disorder where you actually are acting out your dreams, right?
It's the it's a sleepwalking that occurs in that in that phase of sleep the REM phase
Right where your brain's active, but your body's not supposed to be right
So you are really wound up if you have REM sleep disorder. You really need to give up the trumpet immediately
Yeah, that's when you like wake up in your uh, you're dreaming that you're you know cutting uh wood for the fire
And you're like chopping your wife's leg with your hand right exactly and she goes. What are you doing?
That's not what she's saying. I say i'm cutting wood, babe. You say i'm correcting you
All right. Well, that's it for sleepwalking. Um, I can virtually guarantee you guys
We'll email us your sleepwalking story. So please do if you want to learn more about sleepwalking and read a page
That didn't make it into this podcast
Yeah, at all
About sleepwalking and the organically did not make it in
I guess you could call it organic
Well, we didn't say let's not include that
Just go ahead and type in sleepwalking. That's one word or try sw
past tense and see what happens
Um into the handy search bar at house to force dot com and I said I wasn't going to use handy anymore
Either way this we've arrived at listener mail. That's right
Josh gonna call this uh pot growing granny and this is from k.m
That's cryptic. Yeah, it is
Uh, hi guys, I literally just finished listening to your how grow houses work and I couldn't resist sending you the story
My grandmother has always been a avid gardener and avid gardener
She was very interested in pretty plants and had learned at some point that marijuana was a very beautiful plant
Uh, so she decided she wanted to grow some just for the sole purpose of seeing what it looked like firsthand
Now where would a middle age woman in eastern pennsylvania get seeds to grow pot from my college age mother, of course
My mom though was not a smoker by any means
So when she asked to find she was asked to find pot seeds
She of course pawned the task off to to her frat brother a frat member boyfriend
Who later would become my father?
My father was also not a smoker, but he had a frat brother
That was known to partake in this particular lifestyle
And he has always only been known as bob o and my family, which I think is pretty cryptic
So bob o got him some seeds for the grandmother. She planted him began growing pot in her yard
Uh to the dismay of my grandfather who was good friends with the chief of police and the mayor
Well, uh, the plants grew beautifully in the open air of my grandmother's garden
They live pretty close to the center of the city and as far as I know there was no attempt to obscure them from being seen
Uh, the plug was pulled though when my grandfather
Decided that come winter
The uh, well the grandmother said we got to bring him inside this winter and granddad says no
We're not bringing those inside. So they went through the compost pile
Or that's what that's what the kid was told and her glaucoma got much worse. All right. Yeah
Well, thanks for that. Who wrote that k.m. k.m. Thank you k.m for your cryptic email. We appreciate that one
Um, if you have a story about your grandmother breaking the law
We want to hear it. Uh, send it in an email to stuffpodcast at howstuffworks.com
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