“Is suicide ever the rational choice?”

Kolby, Jeremy, and Jessica discuss the ethics in the historical short story, “The Alpha-Dye Shirt Factory” by Tyler W. Kurt.

Transcript (By: Transcriptions Fast)

The Alpha-Dye Shirt Factory

Kolby: Hi. Welcome to After Dinner Conversation, short stories for long discussions. You are listening to myself, Kolby, as well as…

Jeremy: Jeremy.

Jessica: And Jessica.

Kolby: We are doing what we do every week, we’re doing podcasts about stories from the website Afterdinnerconversation.com. You can download these stories on Amazon, you can listen to our podcast wherever Amazon is played, as well as YouTube so you can watch it, maybe you’re watching right now. And if you’re enjoying this, please “like” or “subscribe”. It allows us to continue doing what we love. We have a heck of a good time, as you can probably tell if you’ve listened to other episodes, doing these. And the whole point of this is to encourage sort of intelligent adult conversation, adult-ish conversation about interesting ethical topics. And if you’ve got a story you’d like to submit and you think “oh, that was great”, just go to our website afterdinnerconversation.com and submit it. One of us will read it, probably me, and assuming that we like it, it’ll get published and maybe we’ll be discussing it because that’s all the stuff that we get is stuff that people have sent us that we like and we’re like, “oh yeah, we can totally talk about that”, and talk about the Hobson’s choice of it as it was last week. We are once again, for the tenth time now, this is our 10th episode, in La Gattara. I have finally learned how to say it by the 10th episode. Where they have cats that are available…

Jeremy: …for adoption.

Kolby: …for adoption. So, if you hear screeching in the background, that is probably the cats letting us know that they are having a good time. Having a little cat party. If you don’t want to adopt a cat, but you just want to come visit cats because you like having stuff on countertops at home, you can just pay $10 and come sit with the cats. It reminds me of the joke where the cat walks into the bar, and the cat says “I’ve had a really bad day, can I have a drink?” And the bartender put its it up there, and the cat goes...

(Kolby knocks water bottle off the table)

(laughter)

Kolby: “Pour me another.” And just knocks it off the countertop. I think that a great cat joke.

Jessica: That was a good cat joke.

Kolby: There are very few solid cat jokes.

Jessica: It was purrrfect.

(laughter)

Kolby: Purrrrfect, yeah. So, the story we’re talking about today…

Jeremy: Please stop.

Kolby: You’re not a dad, you don’t get to tell dad jokes.

Jessica: Oh, darn it.

Kolby: … is“Alpha-Dye Shirt Factory” by Tyler Kurt. Jessica drew the short straw so she gets to do the honors. For obviously, ideally you should have read the story beforehand but we know not everyone does, so Jessica is going to get you up to speed.

Jessica: I will say, you should read this story beforehand, but you don’t have too. I feel like our ethical and moral discussions tend to be so broad that you don’t need to read the story to listen, but I would recommend that people go and listen.

Kolby: I will be the first to say I’ve listened to “Car Talk” for years and not once have I worked on a car.

(laughter)

Jessica: I mean, point. Point. Alright. So “The Alpha-Dye Shirt Factory”, the narrator is Mary, and she works at the Alpha-Dye shift factory as a seamstress. The story opens where she is working and her friend Maria asked her to come into the bathroom and there’s this whole backstory about the rules of working in the factory and how many minutes they get for a bathroom break and how you can time it so you can talk to somebody. And as somebody who worked at a call-center once, very similar roles.

(laugher)

Jeremy: Absolutely.

Jessica: And Maria tells Mary that she’s engaged. And it’s against the rules to be engaged at the shift factory which is again, not the call center rules, but you know.

Kolby: This is probably earlier than you were at the call center.

Jessica: Probably. Let’s not date me.

(laughter)

Jessica: And so, Maria tells her that she got engaged and Mary is very happy for her and then they smell smoke. And that is really kind of the setup.

Kolby: When they come out of the bathroom, I think it is?

Jeremy: They hear commotion, they come out of the bathroom.

Jessica: Yeah. And the smoke is coming up from the…

Jeremy: … first floor, they are on the second floor.

Jessica: … the first floor. Yeah. The first floor is clearly on fire and the smoke is coming up through the floor boards. She mentions the fire escape and the fire escape being just rusty and people start pouring out into the fire escape. The fire escape collapses and…

Kolby: She watches the people on the fire escape fall to their death.

Jessica: Yeah. And then the floor falls out. So….

Kolby: It’s a wooden floor, I think?

Jeremy: Yeah.

Kolby: Like, old-timey.

Jessica: Yep. And so, old-timey, I have a wooden floor.

Kolby: But you’re not in a 6-story building with wooden floors.

Jessica: This is true.

Kolby: Maybe they do, I have no idea.

Jessica: And so, the floor falls out and then she spends the rest of the story trying to determine first, if she’s going to try to escape and then knowing she’s not going to escape and trying to decide if she would rather be burnt alive or, first she tries to do smoke inhalation, she tries to kill herself by falling asleep because of smoke inhalation. Her body rejects that, she’s coughing, and then she tries to go to the window and she decides to throw herself out the window.

Jeremy: Apparently, not on the second story, they are much higher in the building.

Jessica: Yeah, sorry.

Kolby: 7th-story. She’s on the 7th-story. So, probably fatal.

Jessica: Yea, so probably fatal although she is the narrator, I will say, we don’t get anything that says that she’s not. She seems to be telling the story because she says, “My name is Mary.” This is not…

Kolby: Oh, that’s a good point.

Jessica: So, we don’t really know the fate of her except that she chooses to jump out the window because she’d rather die from falling then from…

Jeremy: …being burnt alive.

Jessica: …being burnt alive. And that is our…

Kolby: Another cheery story.

Jessica: Another cheery story.

Kolby: Thurman last week was a cheery story. We need a story about just like two cats walk into a bar.

(laughter)

Jesica: I don’t think there’s a lot of ethical/moral complications with that but, we can maybe….

Kolby: It is if you’re a dog bartender.

Jessica: If you are a writer out there and you would like to write a dog bartender…

Jeremy: …Cat dilemma story.

Jessica: …cat dilemma story.

Kolby: I can’t serve those cats, against my ethics.

Jessica: Alright. So, let’s start out our conversation. Kolby, what’d you think?

Kolby: So, uh, so first off I think it’s a direct mirror of, um, what’s it called, the Triangle Shirt Factory, the Triangle Shirtwaist Coast Factories, so I assume it took place late 1800s early 1900s, certainly before there were a ton of OSHA regulations. And so, this story is roughly true in that there was a shirt factory that caught on fire and…

Jessica: There are still shirt factories.

Kolby: Yeah, well, not in America, but yes. And because there were no regulations many of the people died. Many of them jumped out of windows. Many of them jumped down the elevator shaft. You know. It’s a horrible… I guess that good part that came out of that is because it was such headline news, we got a lot of our safety regulations for high-rises and stuff out of it so that it would be harder to happen in the future. What did I think of it? Honestly, it struck… I’m reading it and I’m thinking, “it’s a story, it’s a story, oh, you know, it’s a sad story” and then I got to the questions, and it started talking about, I think, suicide or depression or all those sort of things, and then I was like, “oh, it’s not a story about a fire in a factory. It’s a story about the choices that you make that are logical choices internally but could be illogical choices to somebody looking externally.”

Jessica: Mmmm. Give me an example.

Kolby: So, and this is just my own personal opinion but I guess everything that is personal is your personal opinion, but I think there is an assumption that people that commit suicide are taking a coward’s way out or they are somehow being selfish or disrespectful or whatever. And I think, having been a person who went through years of depression, I think it’s easy to say as an outsider looking it, it’s harder when you’re in that situation and you feel like this is as good as it gets and it will never get good again. And so, it is a little bit like the situation of, “Do I just want to burn alive forever or do I want to end the burning?” And in that sense, I think, I’m not condoning suicide of course, but I think it becomes a rational choice to that person based on their perspective. And so, I think, to belittle that choice by saying that it is cowardly or cheap or you’re a quitter or whatever, I think is disrespectful to that choice. I certainly think that suicide is not a great idea and I certainly think that your choice it’s selfish in that the people who love you will miss you, and you’re choosing to end your own pain at the cost of others people’s pain. Like, I want to end my pain and therefor I’m going to put pain on my mom or my dad or my friends or my kids or whoever loves me because my pain is more important than the pain I’m going to cause them.

Jeremy: Right, I can see that.

Kolby: But I do understand how a person who feels like nobody would miss them or that nobody would be sad about their loss, would see it as a rational choice. Yeah. I mean, I’ll give you an example that came up and then I’ll shut up so we can talk about other and you guys can chime in. In like, 85- or 90-years old Kurt Vonnegut committed suicide. He’d been depressed his whole life, he was just clinically depressed, and it shows up in his writing. And I remember when I first heard I was really crushed by this because he’s a writer I really admire and I was like, “You understand, even if you just wrote doodles on napkins, you would be adding to the sum of humanity, because you are that amazing.” But then, I have to remind myself, “He’s stuck it out for 85 years or 90 years or however old he was, he gave us 15 books that are all astounding. I guess you’re allowed to be done.” And Gordon Ramsay I think committed suicide?

Jessica: No, no, no. Not Gordon Ramsey. Anthony Bourdain. Geez louise.

Kolby: I mean, you hear about famous people that have committed suicide and you’re like, “You have everything.”

Jeremy: Robin Williams.

Kolby: Robin Williams is a great example, right? And I think, it’s easy to be angry until you have been in that situation.

Jessica: And I think it’s easy to be…. I think… I think things mitigate people taking their own life. Right? So, a lot of times, as a society, right? So, if somebody has been diagnosed with Parkinson’s, which is what I believe Robin Williams was diagnosed with when he decided to take his own life, when somebody has been diagnosed with a terminal disease, we are much more accepting as a society of something that…

Jeremy: Again, this is a way out of that pain.

Jessica: Right, this is a way out of that pain. And we… that is a logical step for society.

Kolby: Although sometimes in a legal step, to have doctor assisted suicide. Or commit suicide is illegal although I don’t know how you ticket the person afterwards their dead or whatever.

Jessica: Right. But I think we as a society are okay with that but if it’s depression, if it’s a mental illness, we have a lot harder time with that because, A) as a society we do a terrible job of admitting that mental illness is an…

Jeremy: An illness.

Kolby: You want to be like, “just try harder.”

Jessica: Right. Like, “Go outside.” And we have a hard time with the idea that, we want to fix that because it is a mental illness. We think that medicine can be in charge of fixing…

Kolby: A broken bone or whatever…

Jessica: Or a disease, and if they fail, we’re okay, that legitimizes that person taking their own life but with a mental illness, we don’t think that it’s something that necessarily medicine can solve because it not always is, it’s not something can be solved.

Kolby: It’s much more complicated problem.

Jeremy: And as a society we think that it is something you can pull yourself out of.

Jessica: You can pull yourself out of, you’re not trying hard enough, or sometimes I think society does take the blame in like, “Yes it’s bad and we should try harder to save you.” Which I think is something that I don’t necessarily think is … there is definitely cause and effect of, you know, ostracizing people or making depression something that is ostracizable. But I don’t think that necessarily, “If we were just nicer to one another, people would not be depressed.” That’s not a thing.

Kolby: Right. And that’s one of my frustrations with, I mean, when I was going through a long bout of depression, one of the things that was frustrating to me is people say, “Well you don’t seem depressed.”

Jessica: Right.

Kolby: And I’m like, “No, you don’t understand that depression isn’t sadness. It’s a totally different thing.” Like, I can be on a jet-ski and be depressed. It’s got nothing to do with if you’re smiling, it’s just this thing that just sits on you. And I don’t know how that… I don’t know…

Jeremy: … how to describe it to somebody who hasn’t experienced it.

Kolby: Yeah, who hasn’t experienced it. And it’s like, “No, I can be happy and be depressed. They are not the same thing.” The people that say, “Well, the last time I saw him he seemed fine.”

Jessica: Right.

Kolby: No, you’re totally missing that point of what depression is, or clinical depression is in that sense, right?

Jessica: Right.

Kolby: Wow, that’s a mood killer.

(laughter)

Kolby: So, one of the things that I thought… one of the questions I thought was interesting for me is what if she had been wrong? Because that goes back to the issue of depression, right? It feels like it’s forever, it feels like you can’t get out of the building, but it’s possible. Two-minutes later is when the fire truck with the longer ladder shows up. And so, do you have a, sort of, obligation to life to take the burn in the hopes that better fire truck shows up, or are you allowed to help yourself?

Jeremy: Again, I think that comes back down to really, the pain that you’re feeling. At some point, in this metaphor, you’re deciding, and I don’t think….

Kolby: When you’ve had enough.

Jeremy: Right, this is as much as you can take, and you know, I don’t think that matters if two minutes later. The fire truck is just late.

Jessica: I think it’s interesting at the end of the story, she talks about when she’s deciding to jump, one of the things she says is “Don’t aim for a body”.

Jeremy: “Don’t try to take anybody down with me.”

Jessica: And I was like, “No, no, aim for a body.” And then it becomes this question, do you…

Kolby: “Aim for the most expensive car I can find. “

(laughter)

Kolby: That’s what I’d do. I’d take out a rich person’s insurance coverage with it.

Jessica: I was like, “Land on something soft, that could be another person.”

Kolby: Right?

(laughter)

Kolby: You look plump.

Jessica: Right, exactly. And so, then it becomes this idea of, do I die and know that death is certain, right? Do I take this way out and know that death is certain, or do I aim for a big old pile of people and hope that I’m just…

Jeremy: That it breaks my fall.

Jessica: …I’m thoroughly maimed but recoverable. And so, then it’s, “I can either have an agonizing maybe death, or agonizing and then recovery and then living with those injuries.” Which is a very interesting, when we’re paralleling it to something like a terminal illness or depression… do I end it now and know that it’s over, or do I continue to suffer and hope that either I get better or I also die, and it’s the same outcome, it’s just….

Kolby: But I died fighting, I died fighting in pain.

Jeremy: Or do I go through all this chemotherapy and radiation treatment?

Kolby: That was one of my mom’s decision, when she was diagnosed, she was diagnosed with breast cancer and bone cancer at the same time, and she was like “I don’t want chemo. I was a nurse for 35 years, I know chemo does to people, I know that I’m 70 years old, I don’t want to spend a couple of miserable years to get 5 more, and I’m a two-pack a day smoker.”

Jeremy: Huge lifestyle change.

Kolby: Yea, she was never going to quit smoking. So, she decided, “I’m good. Like, I’m good” and maybe if she was 40 I’d be more upset with her, but I guess at 70 I’m less upset. I don’t know. One of the true things that came out, because I researched this…

(laguther)

Jessica: What? That is Jeremy’s role.

Kolby: I’m sorry.

Jessica: He’s the researcher.

Kolby: I’ve been researching. One of the things that, there are a couple of people who survived on the top floors of the shift factory fire and it’s interesting the way some of them, in the sense that they tried. They simply tried. One of the women slid down “Matrix” style, slid down the wire in the elevator shaft until she burned all of the skin to the bones of her hands and she had to let go, and then she dropped the last 3 or 4 stories. But so many people had fallen down the elevator shaft first, that the pile of bodies, she’d landed on the pile of bodies, she knocked herself unconscious, when they later were pulling all the bodies out, she was…

Jeremy: … she was still alive.

Kolby: She was lined up with the bodies on the sidewalk and woke up and was like, “I’m not dead.” And just had a concussion and burnt hands. And that was the thing. And another woman who jumped out of one of the top stories, she jumped out for the flagpole that hangs out of the 3rd story of the building, and grabbed it and it snapped off and it slid off and snapped off and it slowed her down enough that she broke her legs and lived.

Jessica: Wow.

Kolby: Yeah.

Jessica: That’s incredible.

Jeremy: That’s rough.

Kolby: Yeah. I mean, and those are, I think, in some ways those are the things we make movies of and the heroes we have are the people who have every reason to stop trying and try anyways.

Jeremy: And keep going.

Jessica: Yeah.

Kolby: Because we somehow view that as heroic.

Jessica: We definitely view that has heroic. And to some point it is heroic. That’s a lot of tenacity.

Jeremy: No chance, but no choice.

Kolby: Right.

Jessica: Right. And…

Jeremy: I imagine you hear that a lot from military veterans too who get awards.

Jeremy: Yeah, definitely.

Kolby: They were like, “No, they were shooting at me, I shot back, it just so happens, like, you know, this was the best of a bad situation.”

Jeremy: Right.

Jessica: Yeah. I think absolutely that’s true. I think it’s interesting if you read any holocaust survivor stories, like the amount…

Kolby: We were just talking about “Night” a couple of days ago.

Jessica: Oh yea?

Kolby: Jeremy and I were.

Jessica: I love that book.

Kolby: I think it should be mandatory reading. But in that book and a lot of the holocaust stories, the will to live somehow exceeds the bodies will to live, right? The people who lived and died, it was almost this mental desire to not die at the level of starvation and exhaustion.

Jessica: Well, I will also say that the people that died also had that same mental…

Kolby: Oh, sure, sure.

Jessica: It just didn’t work.

Kolby: It just didn’t work for them, that’s very possible.

Jessica: And I think a lot of people...

Kolby: People got sent to the long marches and things.

Jessica: Yea. I think a lot of it is chance. I think a lot of it, this person had “X” percent more body fat when they arrived and therefor, they could survive.

Jeremy: Slightly better conditions.

Kolby: Had better shoes and whatever.

Jessica: Exactly. But, like, the mental tenacity it takes to get through a situation like that, like every time I ready a survivor story, I’m just like, “And here’s the part where I die.”

(laughter)

Kolby: Right?

Jessica: Because I’m exhausted reading it, I can’t imagine….

Jeremy: … having to live through something like that.

Jessica: No.

Kolby: This is the part where I’m like, “I’m good, like, I’m good.”

Jessica: And then, for a lot of Holocaust survivors or survivors of lots of situations, there’s that survivor’s guilt, right? The chance, whatever the chance was, the shoes, the, you know, the extra body fat or whatever it was that allowed them to survive, was not because they were a better person. There wasn’t a worthiness about…

Kolby: They were just standing at the right place at the right time.

Jessica: Exactly. And so, it then it becomes “it was just chance...”

Jeremy: It was just luck.

Jessica: “…It was a chance that I survived and now I feel terrible that that chance was me.”

Kolby: So, do you feel like a person who either has a terminal illness or is clinically depressed, do you think they have an obligation to pursue that chance?

Jessica: No. Absolutely not.

Kolby: You’re willing to give people a pass on being a quitter?

Jessica: Absolutely going to give people a pass.

Jeremy: Because it’s their choice. Again, do you want to go through the chemotherapy, do you want to go through the potential pain for the potential good outcome? And some people just don’t want to make that choice.

Kolby: So my sister and I have a running, it’s a joke but it’s not a joke, in that someday one of us is going to go with the other one to the hospital, to the doctor, and the doctor is going to be like, “I’ve got some news and you got whatever whatever, you’ve got 3 weeks to live”, whatever the case may be, and we have an understanding that what’s going to happen is this: We’re going to walk about of the room, and my sister’s going to say, “So what did the doctor say?” And I’m going to tell her, “He said you’re going to be fine.” And then, she’s like, “Oh good.” “It’s just a heart palpitation, you just need to drink less Pepsi.” And then as we pass the dumpster, baseball bat to the back of the head.

(laughter)

Kolby: Throw her in the dumpster. So that her last thought is…

Jeremy: …she’s going to be fine.

Kolby: “It’s fine. It’s going to be fine.” Like, you don’t need those 3 weeks or worrying about it. And by the way, just to be clear, she has a standing order for me as well.

(laughter)

Kolby: But I’ve also made clear to her like, pneumonia does not count.

(laughter)

Jeremy: So, here’s the list.

Kolby: Shingles, I’m probably… it needs to be like.

Jeremy: So, you have to clarify it for her.

Jessica: I mean, like, there’s so many reasons to hit Kolby with a baseball bat.

(laughter)

Kolby: But we’ve had that discussion.

Jessica: “I have a freckle that’s discolored” Oh, Kolby gets a baseball bat.

(laughter)

Kolby: “You’re going to be fine. Let’s walk past this dumpster.” Yeah, but we’ve had that discussion.

Jeremy: “I’m going to take you out to this cornfield”

Kolby: Right. But we’ve had that discussion of like, “Look, if I waiver in the last weeks, don’t let me waiver because I don’t want to be that kind of burden on other people. I don’t want to have you have that memory of me, all those sorts of things.”

Jessica: So, my mom is a hospice nurse and so…

Kolby: Man, she is like an angel.

Jeremy: She is.

Jessica: I mean, an angel, she is the best mom in the world too. But she is very much of the, “I don’t want to linger, she’s a DNR, if there’s something that bad, I don’t want tube feedings, anything like that.” We’re very clear on all of those instructions, Mom.

(laughter)

Jessica: However, I am the opposite, right? I absolutely want to linger. I want to linger and linger… I want people to curse my lingering as long as I am…

Kolby: You want somebody to be sponge bathing you for weeks before you go.

Jessica: Right. But, just to be clear, I have to be conscious and I have to be of right mind. And…

(Kolby gives sideways look)

Jessica: Shut up. I am of right mind now.

(Laughter)

Jessica: Shut up Kolby.

Kolby: That look of mine said it all.

Jessica: Yes, it did.

(Laughter)

Kolby: You read a little too much Dylan Thomas is what I think. You’re all about not going gentle into that good night.

Jessica: I absolutely won’t go gently. Mostly because I probably a big part of it, is just a fear of death. I’m a very existentialist person and so this idea that in my final moments, I’ll say something super profound and it’ll make it all worthwhile or whatever. But I want every single ounce of life. I want every moment to be sucked up. I don’t want to go suddenly. I kind of want to know I’m going to go because I can’t imagine, like the suddenness, it upsets me so much to think, I could walk out the door and get hit by a train and that would be the end and I wouldn’t even know it was coming.

Kolby: And three witches would be hackling over it. Three witches would be hackling over it from like 2 weeks ago.

(laughter)

Jessica: That’s so true.

Jeremy: And yet you lived in front of a train track for years.

Jessica: For years.

(Laughter)

Jessica: For years. Those things don’t derail. I knew it was coming.

Kolby: Jeremy, you’ve been pretty quiet on this one. Do you have thoughts? What would be your opinion on all of this?

Jeremy: You guys kind of said it all.

Jessica: Are we baseball batting you? I just need to know.

Kolby: I need to know.

Jessica: I need to know.

Kolby: I’m actually, I’m going to use one of those little baseball bats.

(laughter)

Kolby: …that you get from the toy store so I have to do it like 9 or 10 times.

(laughter)

Kolby: Like, wack wack.

Jessica: So, you’ll know it’s coming.

Kolby: Yeah, you’ll know it’s coming. No, don’t worry, I’ll use aluminum.

Jessica: Are you a baseball bat or are you a lingerer?

Kolby: Are you a lingerer?

Jeremy: I don’t know. I’ll have to think about that.

Jessica: What do you mean you’ve never thought about that?

Jeremy: I’ve never thought about that.

Kolby: What about if you were the lady in the story? Would you jump?

Jeremy: Oh yeah, definitely jump.

Kolby: You would’ve been a jumper?

Jeremy: Oh yeah. Fire is one of the worst ways to die. Burning in a fire is one of the worst ways to die.

Kolby: I’ve read from fire survivors, people that are like 70-80% burned that they have said years later, even now that I have lived through it, I would still have preferred to have died.

Jessica: Wow.

Kolby: Even now knowing that they’re now going to live a long-fulfilled life.

Jessica: Wow, that’s incredible.

Kolby: Because it’s just a painful way to go. Which also makes me, and I didn’t think about this when I was reading the story, it also makes me think mad props for like the monks during Vietnam War.

Jeremy: Holy crap, right?

Kolby: And the ones who light themselves on fire with gasoline and they just, not a peep.

Jessica: Right.

Kolby: Just right up to the moment they are dead, like man, I don’t have that kind of conviction for anything. I wish I did.

Jessica: Step on a nail and I’m going a screaming banshee.

(laughter)

Jessica: Yeah.

Jeremy: Yeah, definitely jump.

Kolby: We need a cheerier story for next week.

Jeremy: I know, right? What is our story…

Kolby: 2 cats walk into a bar; dog won’t serve them.

(laughter)

Jessica: If you’re that writer, please write about 2 cats that walk into a bar.

Kolby: So, you have been, we still haven’t gotten a copy, a narrative copy of the….

Jeremy: The trolly problem.

Kolby: The trolly problem. It’s coming, thought, I’m sure. You’ve been listening to After Dinner Conversation, short stories for long conversations, with myself Kolby and Jessica and Jeremy. We always have, maybe not this week, but we normally always have a great time discussing our stories and heckling each other. This was a little bit of a sad one but a good one. A worthy discussion. If you’ve got a story you’d like to submit, feel free to email it to After Dinner Conversation. If you enjoyed this conversation in the sense that you found it fulfilling, not in the sense that you found it fun, then “like” and “subscribe”. It means a lot to us. If you’re in the Tempe area, come by La Gattara to adopt a cat or pay a couple of bucks to at least hang out with a cat.

Jessica: They are so cute.

Kolby: See, we didn’t even think about that, that cats would’ve survived.

Jeremy: We need another camera on all the cats.

Jessica: The cats would’ve survived.

Kolby: Cats can survive 7-foot drops because they sprawl out and they become like a cat-a-chute.

(Laughter)

Jeremy: Cat-a-chute?

Kolby: And they’re fine. Yeah. “like” and “subscribe”, submit stuff, download these on Amazon and thank you for joining us again. Next weeks story will be 2 cats walk into a bar. Wait, that’s not it. What will it be Jeremy?

Jeremy: “Rainbow People of the Glittering Glams”.

Kolby: I love this story. I know you thought it was.

Jeremy: It’s a good story. It’s just long.

Kolby: It was just long.

Jessica: I loved it.

Kolby: I feel like it wasn’t long and wasted. It was actually long and like, solid.

Jessica: Yep.

Kolby: Yeah, 3 Kingdon Warfs?

Jeremy: I don’t know what the word is.

Kolby: Warns. There’s no F there. Three kingdom wards, people who protect the kingdom, are sent to investigate the reclusive rainbow people of the shifting desert. And I really, honestly, if you submit a story called “Rainbow People of the Glittering Glade”, you pretty much automatically get published, I think.

Jessica: I was the opposite. I saw the title and was like, “Nope…”

Kolby: So pretentious.

Jessica: “… nope, that’s a big nope from me.” I was wrong guys.

Kolby: You were wrong.

Jessica: It was delightful.

Kolby: Thank you for joining us. We will see you at the next one. Bye.

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