Tracy
Appearances
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
Armchair Anonymous: Holiday Nightmare II
We ended up once everything opened up, we took the kids shopping.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
Armchair Anonymous: Holiday Nightmare II
Oh, okay. Maybe Irish sometimes.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
Armchair Anonymous: Holiday Nightmare II
Beautiful island on the east coast of the country.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
Armchair Anonymous: Holiday Nightmare II
Oh, yes. The new flying dog. They're big. Big boys. Wow. That was fantastic.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
Armchair Anonymous: Holiday Nightmare II
Oh, my head almost blew off my shoulder. When the kids were young, I used to always try to have Christmas Day at the house. Didn't want to disrupt them from their stuff. So my family would come over. So my older sister, my younger sister, we're all like little bit glam queens. And they showed up like just superstars. I'm still in an old T-shirt with mascara down my face. And they're like,
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
Armchair Anonymous: Holiday Nightmare II
what the heck is going on with you? I said, you're never going to believe what happened. This is the worst day ever. Well, not the worst day. This was just the worst situation. We threw out Christmas. Every year for about 10 years after that, at 4.30, I would run and just look for the gifts. Just get my eyes on them. Because I knew that everything's closing in about an hour.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
Armchair Anonymous: Holiday Nightmare II
If they're gone, I can hightail it to a Walmart or to a store and just buy something.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
Armchair Anonymous: Holiday Nightmare II
Oh, thank you for having me. Can I get my husband to come in and say hello?
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
Armchair Anonymous: Holiday Nightmare II
No, it's not. My girlfriends were trying to blame him. I said, no, I threw those down the stairs and should have tucked them away. The green garbage bag at the time was the downfall of that evening. That's for sure. It's been a fun story for a long, long time.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
Armchair Anonymous: Holiday Nightmare II
You as well. Thanks so much, guys.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
Armchair Anonymous: Holiday Nightmare II
Nice to meet you both as well. Well, thanks for taking my story. When you guys started Armchair Anonymous, I was like, man, I got a story.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
Armchair Anonymous: Holiday Nightmare II
So this is a Christmas story that happened about 20 years ago on Christmas Eve.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
Armchair Anonymous: Holiday Nightmare II
Yeah, so our children at the time, Daniel, he would have been about 13 and Abby would have been about 8 years.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
Armchair Anonymous: Holiday Nightmare II
I will be 56 tomorrow. Nice! Also, happy birthday. Thank you.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
Armchair Anonymous: Holiday Nightmare II
I'm having about 100 hot flashes now because I'm a bit nervous. Okay, that's all right. As the mom, the head shopper, my goal every Christmas when the kids were younger was to really have a great day. And it's not just about gifts, but a lot of it is about the gifts.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
Armchair Anonymous: Holiday Nightmare II
Yeah. And it's not about the quantity. It's just about making sure that they're getting what they put on their Santa list. So I'm in sales and at Christmas time, I'm super busy. So I always try to get everything done before we get into December. And I think it was like December 3rd. I hauled everything out and was going through everything. And we have to have the same amount per kid.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
Armchair Anonymous: Holiday Nightmare II
The Christmas spirit is happening in that bedroom as well as you get my drift here. So I'm making everything fits in the stockings appropriately and I'm making lists. Okay. Abby's done. Daniel needs a couple of things and it's getting late. It's 1230. So I tie everything up to make sure that I know where it is.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
Armchair Anonymous: Holiday Nightmare II
And went down two flights of stairs and we have this crawl space that no one goes in because we're frightened to death of the crawl space.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
Armchair Anonymous: Holiday Nightmare II
Oh, yeah. It's terrible. I threw them down over the stairs and I went, oh, no one's going down here tomorrow. I'll put it in the crawl space when the kids go to school. So let's go ahead to Christmas Eve that year. And we're having a great day, visiting family. And I'm having some wine. Sean's driving. Mom is partaking. Nothing serious, just having a couple of drinks.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
Armchair Anonymous: Holiday Nightmare II
And we said, okay, it's time to go home and get the kids straight away and read our stories and do our traditions. And myself and my husband, Sean, we sit on the couch. And it's actually an unbelievably beautiful evening. The snowflakes are coming down. We're just getting ready to have a cocktail.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
Armchair Anonymous: Holiday Nightmare II
This is not the norm. Usually it's just a gong show. And I'm a stress bag. Is everything okay? I got to cook a turkey tomorrow. Is that out? He looked at me and said, you are doing so good. I said, I know. This is great. So it's getting late. It's about 10-ish. And I said, let's get everything organized for under the tree. So that's done. And then we can just relax for an hour before we go to bed.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
Armchair Anonymous: Holiday Nightmare II
He said, all right, I'm going downstairs and getting everything organized. So I'm looking out the window and life is perfect and I'm just so happy with my family. I could hear him open up the crawl space. Then I heard him close the crawl space. Then he opened the other crawl space.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
Armchair Anonymous: Holiday Nightmare II
And when he opened the second crawl space and closed it and he went over to the third one, I just kind of like perked up. Yeah, yeah. And he called out, he said, Trace, where are the gifts? Yeah. And I was like, they're in the same place they always are. And I started to go downstairs.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
Armchair Anonymous: Holiday Nightmare II
And at that point, tent is thrown out, Coleman stoves, every piece of hockey equipment Daniel owned, every old toy that the kids had from growing up that you just throw in the back of that. Things are going everywhere. And I'm like, what the actual fuck? is going on here. Yeah. I said, it's right there. I know no one opens this door. The kids don't look there because they're terrified of it.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
Armchair Anonymous: Holiday Nightmare II
He's in the other crawl space. Then he's out in the garage and the garage door is opening and closing. We're not giving in to the panic, but it's just on the surface. And we start to go back to the night that I did all the gifts. And we realized when I threw them down over the stairs, the next day was garbage day. Oh.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
Armchair Anonymous: Holiday Nightmare II
So now it is 11 p.m. on Christmas Eve. And I'm just like, oh, yeah, what's open? What's open? What are we going to do? What are we going to do? And at that point, he actually started to cry. And I was like, oh, no, no, no. He was like, I threw the mountain. I said, well, I threw the down over the stairs.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
Armchair Anonymous: Holiday Nightmare II
I'm thinking I have to get up in the morning and tell those two little children, one who is the big believer of the Christmas spirit, that their parents are idiots and there was no Santa.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
Armchair Anonymous: Holiday Nightmare II
Yeah. Oh, my God. Listen, people have really bad shit going on in their lives. I'm going to tell you, this was the worst feeling I had in my life up to that point. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I got a bit of a hangover starting on top of it. I got a headache. I'm crying. Sean's freaking out. We're just like, we are the worst parents. And then Abby wakes up and goes, what's going on?
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
Armchair Anonymous: Holiday Nightmare II
My Santa's here and you guys are awake. And I'm like, just go back to sleep. And there's no cell phone. So I'm not texting my girlfriend and going, help. It's getting late. I called my mom. My mom had just been recently retired. So she would like tinker around in stores and that little gift shops and secondhand stores. She said, okay, I'm on my way. And she brought this box.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
Armchair Anonymous: Holiday Nightmare II
I mean, I looked in it and there was comics from 1982. Oh my God. Okay, that'll do.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
Armchair Anonymous: Holiday Nightmare II
Sister and husband and two kids were living overseas in Qatar, and they were home for Christmas. And she's really super organized, so I knew she'd have some stuff in a tickle trunk somewhere. She said, I got some goodies. We're going to come over. I was getting so late, and we took all the stuff they had and started poking it in stockings and unwrapping stuff.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
Armchair Anonymous: Holiday Nightmare II
And there was gifts that Sean's family, they live in Calgary, they sent to us, and I started unwrapping those saying, could we use some of this?
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
Armchair Anonymous: Holiday Nightmare II
Yeah. So now it's two o'clock in the morning. I am a broken, destroyed human.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
Armchair Anonymous: Holiday Nightmare II
We just go to bed. Sean goes, I don't know. This is going to be bad. I'm like, we're idiots. Couple hours later, Abby wakes up and she's super excited. She has no idea what's going on. And she goes into Daniel's room and gets him up. The rules are you're not allowed to go downstairs. Mom and dad have to go down, get the video camera going. Like it's the old fashioned video camera.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
Armchair Anonymous: Holiday Nightmare II
There's no phone. Me and Sean aren't even speaking to each other. We're just looking around going, this is so bad. Come downstairs and they start going through their stuff. And because Daniel, I still had to get him a couple of things. He did okay.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
Armchair Anonymous: Holiday Nightmare II
Sean's sister Trudy had a camera with an SD card. That was a gift he wanted. And at the time, this is when brand names like Nike and West 49, the skateboard clothes was good. And it was expensive. And he had asked for this specific sweatshirt. It wasn't there. Oh, no. Anyway, Abby's going through her stocking.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
Armchair Anonymous: Holiday Nightmare II
So she's this little eight-year-old girl that the spirit of Christmas is alive and well inside of her. And she's digging her hands into everything. And everything she takes out, she looks at it with this little look on her face like, what did Santa bring me? And then smiles and lays it down. And she goes through everything. She takes out the comic books, covers off it.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
Armchair Anonymous: Holiday Nightmare II
I'm like, how did I put that one in there? 1979, I'm sure. And she's just like, oh, wow. I am just shell shocked.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
Armchair Anonymous: Holiday Nightmare II
the bottom of the stocking she hauls out this little clear cylinder package and it's all filled with gold like gold chain i don't know what it is she goes mommy what is this i said let's just open this up so we open up i don't know what it is as it opens up it unfolds into like a cleopatra costume headdress oh fun that's great it's like a chain mail hat Absolutely. So I put it on her little face.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
Armchair Anonymous: Holiday Nightmare II
Some of her teeth are adult teeth. Some are little baby teeth. She's got this weird old crooked smile. She puts this thing on. It goes over one eye and she looks at me and she goes, mommy, my princess. And I remember thinking that sweet little child does not care. Yeah. She doesn't know. Yeah.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
Armchair Anonymous: Holiday Nightmare II
And I just remember looking at her and my heart just soared. And I went, baby, it is beautiful. You are Santa's little princess.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
Armchair Anonymous: Holiday Nightmare II
And just thinking, oh, my goodness, did we pull this? Anyway, I took Daniel aside. He was older. And I said, buddy, I am so sorry. He said, mom, I got everything I wanted. This is great. And we kind of just went, oh, my goodness, we pulled this off. Daniel knew, but he kind of just parked it in his memory.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
Armchair Anonymous: Holiday Nightmare II
And quite a few years later, I've said to the kids, do you not remember that crazy Christmas? And they were, no, no idea. That's hard.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
Armchair Anonymous: Holiday Nightmare II
It was the worst feeling ever. I thought I'm going to get up in the morning and tell that sweet little eight year old that there's no Santa. And that crushed me.