Bright Lights, Big Sleepy

It's night and it's dark. It's so dark. There's no urban light pollution here, no street lamps, no giant neon sides advertising an oasis for truckers. This is the Teton Pass in Wyoming. It's a challenging road to drive. It's often closed in wintertime due to the heavy risk of avalanche. It's a lonely, isolated, twisting stretch of highway. You would never want to run out of gas here. You would dread a flat tire. You could drive miles and miles and never see another car. So, what is that blinding bright light that's just ahead?

Today on this episode of True Weird Stuff, I'm going to tell you a little story about something that happened in my family back in the late 1970s in Wyoming. So, we were very, very, very poor and my parents were struggling. They were struggling as parents. They were struggling in their marriage. They were struggling financially and we didn't have any family out west. We picked up and moved from South Philly because my daddy wanted to be a cowboy, which is your first clue that someone right with my daddy. But there we are. We're out in Wyoming and we're going to be cowboys or whatever. But things are tight and it's almost Christmas time and there's nothing. My parents have nothing. No plan. They don't have a dollar. So, they decide that they're going to chuck us into the Malibu and we're going to drive across the United States. We're going to have Christmas with our family back east. And that's what we did and it was great. It was magical. It's one of my best memories. But eventually, it came time to head back home. And so, back into the Malibu we go. We make the drive west. It's about 2,200 miles. And there's no money for hotels or restaurants or anything like that. So, my mom and dad would chain smoke, slug coffee down, chew on no-dose pills, and swap turns at the steering wheel. And we would be able to get back in a day, maybe two days, two days and change. And my brothers, I have two brothers, my older brother and my younger brother, we would be crammed into the backseat. I always had to sit in the middle, which was awful and a whole nightmare. And at this point, I'm in fourth grade. So, you're like nine years old in fourth grade. So, these memories, up until point, are pretty clear for me, Max. You know, it's not like I was a baby and I'm remembering this. Fourth grade, you know, you remember some stuff in fourth grade. And the drive from the East Coast back home to Wyoming was uneventful. You know, my brothers and I poked and pinched and prodded each other. And we got yelled at a lot. And occasionally a hand would reach around back and try to smack one of us. My parents smoked and argued and listened to Johnny Cash on the 8-track. And we get to the Wyoming state line. And my father decides that we're going to go through the Teton Pass, which is dicey. You know, all year round, it's a really challenging road. I mean, you know, you hit some real elevation. You're going, kind of twisting and turning. I'd be scared to drive it at night. Even now, it would make me uneasy. But, you know, my father was a badass. So, he decides to take the pass because it's a shortcut. And he's taking the shortcut because gas is expensive and my parents have limited money to pay for it. So, if they can shave some miles off of a trip, they're going to do it, even if it involves going through the pass at night. And I remember sitting in the backseat and listening to my mom and dad discuss this itinerary.

You know, is the pass open? It had been a relatively mild winter, I guess, that year. And my father, you know, the cowboy, at least he knew what the freaking weather was. And he said he knew the roads were open. And that, you know, might be a little dicey in parts, but he knew his way and it would be a shortcut. And we would come out of the Teton Pass right into Jackson Hole, jump on the road to the Snake River Canyon and be home in Star Valley, probably two hours sooner than if we'd gone the other way. And definitely a little savings on gas. So, I'm in the backseat and listening to this. And as a child, like I had raging anxiety, kind of like I do as an adult, except I was smaller then. And of course I had raging anxiety. I grew up in a violent, chaotic house where people were always angry and unpredictable. There was, it was never clear if we were going to have food, you know. So, of course I'm going to have, I'm wired to be anxious. Of course I'm going to have anxiety. And as soon as I heard my parents discussing going home through the pass, every cell in my anxious little nine-year-old body went on the DEFCON 5 level alert. Because I was scared of the pass. I was scared of those twisty, turny roads. I was scared of snow and ice and an elk maybe crossing on the road in front of our car and we would have an accident. I was afraid of breaking down in the middle of nowhere and no one could come help us. And of course, cell phones had not yet been invented. So, now I am wide awake as my father takes the turn and we head into Teton Pass.

So, Max, my deeply weird director and partner in crime on True Weird Stuff, is one of those people that other people tell things to. They confess to him. They reveal to him. They share stories and truths and experience with him. And he has a lot of experience in listening to people describe events that would seem unbelievable to a lot of folks.

Is that fair to say, Max? Yes. Yeah. So, when a person tells you a story that just sounds like some kind of crazy made up, how do you rattle that around in your brain to make sense of it? Hmm. It depends. It depends on who's telling it. But I always look for details. I always look to somebody have good details about what has happened. And then to me, that means that there's a little bit more credibility to the story.

I mean, sometimes a person will tell you something that is so unbelievable. And if you're honest with yourself, it's unbelievable because you don't want it to be true. You don't want to think you live in a world where things like that happen. And I'm not just talking about spooky things or mysterious things, supernatural things. You don't want to believe you live in a world where one human being can be so utterly cruel to another human being, or where a person can be so reckless and self-destructive that they burn it all down. Like a lot of times, I think we push back on certain stories, not because we're unwilling to believe they're true, but because we don't want them to be true. And this might be one of those stories for you. And all I can tell you is, it happened. And I'm going to share it exactly as I remember it.

And I'll just cut to the chase and tell you that at the end of this, I'm not going to have any more answers than you are. But it really happened. So there we are, it's nighttime, and we're in the past and we're climbing. And there's a lot of switchback action. You know, when you're climbing through a mountain pass, you go up and then you go over and you go up and you go over and it's super easy to get carsick. And as a child, I was prone to motion sickness. I still am. So I had to be, I had to be really careful and follow all of the rules that my mom had laid down. Look out the front window of the car. Stay pick an object on the horizon and stay focused on it. Crack the window a little bit. So fresh air comes in. Take deep breaths. Try to focus on what you're looking at and the feeling of the fresh air. Don't think about how you're getting queasy and whatever you do. Don't look down. Don't look around. Don't fidget. Just focus on that horizon and feel that cold air on your face. And for people who have never driven in this part of the country, they don't have guardrails. They just have the cliff. And then occasionally they'll have a sign that says, think. And that is your protection from the cliff. I mean, it is it is spooky to drive under the best of conditions. How the West was one, you know, and if you and if you say anything to a Westerner, like, hey, how about maybe some guardrails in the streetlight? They're like, you're weak. Go back. So I am. I and the switchbacks and we're climbing and it's cold and it's dark. It's a beautiful kind of dark. There are more stars in the sky than city people can even dream of when you're in a wild place with on a clear night with no light pollution. Oh, my gosh. It's easy to believe in a lot of things because the things you can see in the sky shooting stars and and you can actually make out if you know your astronomy, you know, you can make out some of the planets and stuff. It's just breathtaking. Right. Breathtaking. And we're driving and I'm listening to my parents talk and they're talking in those low voices that people do when they're driving at night and they think the kids are sleeping in the backseat. They're talking about how much gas they have left and how much longer the ride is going to be. And and, you know, we're pretty sure that the pass up ahead is not going to be closed because then we're going to have to double back and then we're screwed because we do not have enough gas to double back. And suddenly, way up ahead on the road is this incredibly bright light. And my mother said, George, that was my father's name. George, what is that? Is that like a police car, an ambulance? My father said, maybe there's been a wreck, you know, some in his usual colorful ways. And and the light is bright. It's so bright. And right now I can close my eyes and I can see the silhouettes of my parents, my mom's fluffy hair illuminated by that bright, bright light. And my father slows down and he's going to stop. He's so pissed off because the car is not properly registered and doesn't have insurance because that's how we rolled back in the day as wrenches. We were always on the wrong side of the law. And my father is sideways now in the mother and I don't know where I get the drama from me saying to my mother, Jesus Christ, Franny, they're gonna arrest me and take me to jail. And then what are we gonna do? And I bet my mom deep down inside was like, Oh, please, God, let it be said to arrest him and take him to jail. But he was just

assuming this is a cop. This is a Wyoming State Trooper roadblock up ahead. And he's he's in deep shit. Because he got no registration. He got no insurance. I'm not even sure if he had a valid driver's license now that I think about it. And so the car slows down. And now anxious me in the backseat. Mommy, are we in trouble? Mommy, what's gonna happen? Are they what's gonna are they going to take you away? You know, all the things that go through a nine year old's head. And my mother says, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh. It's gonna be fine. It's gonna be fine. Go to sleep. Go to sleep. My God, we're driving into a State Trooper roadblock and they're gonna take my father away, which I have to also admit I would not be about but still, you know, we're stranded in the town pass at like, whatever time of night it was. And the car is slowing down, slowing down, slowing down. And the light is now filling the car. I can see my brother Mark sleeping next to me with his head on the passenger side, backseat window. I can see my brother George who's also asleep. There all the crap and stuff and nonsense that we had in the backseat with us. Everything is lit. The light is coming through and illuminating making my mother's hair into this beautiful auburn halo. And that is the last thing I remember for a long, long time.

The next memory that I have of that trip, we are pulling down the gravel road that leads to the little house that we rented in Star Valley at that time. And I'm no longer in the And my memory begins with me pulling on what do you call that the thing that locks the back door, that little like stick while pulling it up, and I'm pushing it down, pulling it up, and I'm And the doors open, and we are all dead. And my mother is shoving us through the front door of the house, shoving us we staggered into the front door of the house. So sick and slept and sleeping probably an entire day. And then the next thing I remember is my mother telling me, you're fine, we're all fine. We just had a little touch of carbon monoxide poisoning. And, and I was like, we have poisoning. And my mother said, we're fine. Everything's fine. It's an old car. Now, I'm nine years old. And I have anxiety. And I'm also in the gifted program at school. And I bloody well know what carbon monoxide is. And I know what carbon monoxide poisoning is. And I'm really confused as to why everyone in my family is behaving so spacey. Like, what do you mean we have carbon monoxide poisoning? Are we going to die? My mother's like, don't be sherry. Everything's fine. Well, what about the car? We have to get the car fixed. If the car has carbon monoxide poisoning, we can never drive it again. Right? We can't drive a car that could kill us. And my father. Oh, Sarah Bernhardt belongs on stage on Broadway. I'm looking around at these people. And my brothers, of course, no interest whatsoever and joining my team, Max.

They never did. They always sided against me. I was the dramatic one. I was the kooky one. I was the one with the wild out of control, daydreamy imagination. But I'm like, we I don't remember anything after the car stopped in the past. How did we get home? Father's like, we drove. Well, do you remember driving? He's like, why do you ask me these questions? And my mother's like, Sheri, because now I'm pissing him off. And in my in our family, we had one mission and one mission only. And that was to piss him off. And we were all still sick. Like nauseous, sick, weak and shaky and sleepy. Oh my god, I don't think I've ever been so sleepy in my life. And I asked again, when are we taking the car? Are we going to take the car to Jorgensen's? Jorgensen's was the garage in town. I lived in a little town with population 496 or something. And there was one gas station, it was a Conoco. And a guy named Dick Jorgensen owned it. He did auto repairs there. And fun fact and aside, my mother ended up divorcing my father and marrying Dick Jorgensen's brother, Ted, who I came to love as my stepfather. But that's all way in the future. So I say to my mom, are you going to take the car to Jorgensen's so that they can fix it? And my mom is like, you need to stop with the car. But the car has carbon monoxide poisoning. We can't drive the car anymore. And my mother said that is enough. I don't want to hear another word.

About the car. And they never took the car to be fixed. And they continued to drive it. And guess what never happened again. Carbon monoxide poisoning. So I lived with this. I lived with this memory, which is so strange. Because the last thing I remember was the car stopping at the light, but then there's something else that I can't quite reach. And then I'm pulling the lock on the door repeatedly, as we come down the gravel driveway. And I can still see the color of the sky and feel that lock between my fingers and hear the gravel. And I remember what it looked like to pull up in front of our house. And I remember being so sick. I remember being so sleepy that it was like, well, the closest thing I can remember is much, much later, when I had anesthesia for the first time, how the anesthesiologist says, Okay, I want you to count backward from 10 1098. And then you wake up in a different room. That's what the memory is like. And I held it and I lived with it. And I could not really ask my mom about it. Because she left when I was 12. And I didn't see her again till I was 28. And my father was insane, and addicted to crank, which is meth and crack. I couldn't really talk to him about it. So one day, not all that long ago, I called my older brother at work. And I said, Can I ask you a question? He's like, Yeah, sure. What is it? I said, Do you remember that time we drove home from having Christmas? And, and there wasn't enough money for gas. And mom and dad decided to come through the pass to save some distance. And my brother goes, I mean, yeah, I guess. Now, my brother is almost five years older than I am. So I'm nine. He's 14. You guys. He's 13 going on 14. So his memories should be pretty clear. Right?

Right. I said, Do you remember? Do you remember how they were debating whether or not the roads would be open or closed? And that we were taking a chance by doing it, but that dad thought it was a gamble worth taking? And my brother said, Yeah, but he was always ready to risk his family. A few bucks. So do you remember, there was some sort of roadblock? Like maybe it was the state troopers, maybe there'd been an accident. And he goes, kind of? I said, And do you remember how the next thing that happened was we were home and we were all so so so sick. And mom said it was carbon monoxide from the car. But then they never got the car fixed. And we weren't allowed to ever bring it up. And Mark goes, Sheri, there were so many terrible things that happened to me at that age, that if I remembered all of them, I wouldn't be able to function. I was like, But you don't. Don't you remember? Don't you remember how bright the light was? And then we were just home and we were sick. And my brother said, I don't like this.

I was like, Well, okay, I mean, maybe I'm misremembering it. Maybe, maybe I'm getting multiple events confused in the same trip. And it probably was exactly like I thought it was like, there was a Wyoming state trooper roadblock. And maybe it went on for a really long time. And dad talked his way out of not having registration and insurance. And then I fell asleep. And maybe I was so upset from being so scared and anxious that I slept really, really hard. And then the next thing I did, I woke up and we were almost home. And maybe we did have carbon monoxide poisoning, because the whole family was so sick. And we all slept for like a whole day. And and maybe they never took the car to get fixed. Because maybe whatever made the carbon monoxide leak happen fixed itself somehow. And my brother said, I don't know why you like living in these past stories, because none of them were good. And I told him I loved him when we got off the phone. I sat there for a while, Max. And you know what? I just don't know.

He had a long period of lost time, that's for sure. And it wasn't, you know, it wasn't just me. And I, I don't know how we got, you guys, where we stopped in the past, to where my next memory is, is not just an extraordinary distance in terms of miles. My parents drove through the Snake River Canyon, which connects Jackson Hole to Star Valley. And that is one of the most terrifying drives, especially to do in the dark. And you want to talk about no guardrails. I mean, to this day, when I go back out west, you know, I'm like, I'm in the fetal position in the passenger seat while we drive through the canyon. I've never liked that drive. Somehow we got from a roadblock to our front door. And I was in a different position in the car. And how do you account for how sick we all were? How do you account for how sleepy we all were? It wasn't just me. It was all five of us. So I don't know what happened. And I don't know what didn't happen. But I know this. This kind of thing happens to people all the time. There are people all around you. Where are you listening to this right now? Do you have earbuds in? Are you in an airport? Are you sitting in a food court at the mall having a Chipotle? Are you walking through your neighborhood? Do you know how many people around you have had experiences like this that they can't explain? And because they can't explain them, they're afraid to talk about them. Because most people, unlike me and say, Max, probably you listening. They don't want anybody to think there's something strange.

about them. They don't want anyone to think that they're a liar. But all around you, people are carrying unimaginably strange stories inside of them that they can't make sense of. And that is awesome. Because do you really want to live in a world where everything can be known? Do you really want to live in a world where there is no hope of mystery or an enigma?

Even though to be on the experience side of an incident like this, it leaves you with something that you carry around forever. A small, hard, cold thing that you carry around in the pit of your stomach that you're never fully sure is unknown because it's unknowable. Or because you're too scared to crack it open and have another look.

Next time on True Weird Stuff, you think your DNA is 100% you. But what if inside your body, there are two? Vanishing Twin Syndrome and DNA next time on True Weird Stuff. Transcribed by https://otter.ai Edited by https://otter.ai