Wild by Necessity | When Female Friendship Meets Rebellion

0:00 Jennifer: Hey there, I'm Jennifer. And I'm Jackie. And welcome to Slightly Unsupervised. We're best friends, business partners, and the chaos behind bestimony, a ceremony we created to celebrate the kind of soulmates who don't come with a marriage license.

0:11 Jackie: This podcast is all about that friendship energy, the deep stuff, the messy stuff, and the laugh to you snort stuff.

0:15 Jennifer: So whether you're driving, folding laundry, or hiding in your car for some peace and quiet, you're in good company.

0:20 Jackie: Let's get slightly unsupervised.

0:22 Jennifer: Today's episode, Wild by Necessity: How too Much Responsibility Made Us Rebellious. We weren't bad. We were tired. And being wild was our way out. Welcome back to Slightly Unsupervised, the podcast where we unpack the real stuff that kind of shaped us, scarred us, and somehow made us stronger. Today today's episode is for the girls who were expected to carry one everyone else's mess and still smile. The girls who became the woman with an edge, fire, and a little wild streak. Not because we were reckless, but because we were exhausted.

0:51 Jennifer: And this one is a really good one for Jackie and I because if you've listened to any of our podcasts, we were a tad bit wild. Um that's how we became friends. That's how we found each other. Like we had said before our podcast, Jackie and I were friends for a lot of a long time, but we weren't like best friends. And then we started riding the bus together, and then we found each other, and then we stole my mom's car and we went out, and it just got wild after that. And I think that we bonded with that.

1:20 Jackie: So I think we should uh start with the way we carry. So growing up was responsible for our siblings, parents' emotions, the house.

1:29 Jennifer: Yeah, that's you. Jackie's the oldest of her siblings, and her parents worked full time. And not only was Jackie from outside perspective in, was responsible for her brothers and to make sure the house was always clean and ready to go. Even the grandmother, I know there was a time when we had Jackie's grandma that we were watching over. Um we were probably what 16? We drove, right? So we were 16 years old. Right.

1:55 Jackie: We had to meet she had cancer, and I had to drive her down to her uh chemos.

2:02 Jennifer: Her chemos, but then we had her all the time. Like grandma was our yeah, well, we wouldn't take her to work and bring her home. Yeah, like I remember it was there. Like grandma was with us a lot. Like we spent a lot of time with your grandma.

2:13 Jackie: Mom and dad went on a trip. Grandma was there for a party. Grandma was fun. And that was sad. And then I had to take care of my grandma uh to a point where uh she came home and I had to I was her nurse, and uh, no one pressured me to do it. I want to do it because I'm uh one that a caregiver love to take care of people that are. Well, you had been grazed to take care of everybody. Right. I was I my brothers, I was made sure if my parents came home from work, the house had to be perfect so I could go do what I wanted to do.

2:40 Jackie: Yeah, you know, all the chores had to be done. And and my brothers were boys, they're younger, of course. To them, it was no big deal. They didn't care. Right. Me, I wanted to be out of the house, be with my friends. If things weren't right, I wasn't able to do that. That's probably part of my problem now. Everything has to be perfect. Right. Because I feel like if they were happy, then everything was good and happy. Right. So that's like if my h if everything's done and good, that everybody around me should be happy now, right?

3:04 Jennifer: Right. So if I if I do what I'm supposed to do and make sure everything does everything, like you can be happy. All of us lie. But isn't that the weight of the responsibility? It all fell on you. Because I was in the house when those things were happening um over there with you. And it's like your brothers are just hanging out, doing whatever, they don't really care because they don't really want to go out with their friends. They're a little too they're younger than us, a little bit. And then mom and dad are coming home, and it's like this chaos is happening, and you're running around trying to just make sure everything is perfect.

3:30 Jennifer: Because when your mom and dad come in the house, you're like smiling, like, hi, welcome home. And they're like, come in. So I was definitely part of that, and the responsibility definitely fell on you for sure. Um, in that in that regard, you were the one. And not that I knew that that was the responsibility growing up with I didn't know that was just your role.

3:47 Jackie: We became adults, yeah. And then we realized like I don't think back then I thought it was any different. I grew up with it, that's what I was supposed to do. Right, right. If something happened at one point, we had to take in my my cousin's children because of a situation which was not good at all. It was tear-jerking, everything that happened. And I was the one that stayed home and watched the kids because my parents had to work, and I still it was great that they took them in and wanted to save and do everything.

4:13 Jackie: But I'm the one that had to deal with the emotions of the kids at home. And I wasn't even I I was maybe sixteen, fifteen at that time. I didn't even drive back then. I was young, and that was the beginning. That's even before grandma came along.

4:26 Jennifer: So you had you had the cousins that came that stayed with you, and you had your brothers you had to deal with, which I still say that you were the primary caretaker of those two. And then you had grandma, you were a primary caretaker. Becky, you're 16 years, 15 and 16 years old. That's a lot of responsibility. And no wonder you're an amazing mother because you were primed to be the responsible, take care of everything person in your life. That that was your role. You played that role very well.

4:54 Jackie: And back then I didn't know any different. You didn't know any different. And I did want to help. Of course, that was sure in my blood or whatever. I want to be helpful and wanted to help. But as I got older, I'm like, that's why when I got out, I wanted to.

5:06 Jennifer: Well, that's probably like when I came along, we're probably like, holy crap, let's go. Are we breaking free tonight? Yes, we are. And I came over and you know, stole my mom's car and picked you up, and and that didn't happen once or twice. That happened quite often. So I think that's that's the truth. And in your case, especially the responsibility on you. I had the responsibility myself. Mine was a little different. Mine was more like my brother was off me and my brother working, and he was a little older than me.

5:34 Jennifer: So he was technically responsible for me, but he, you know, he ran his own life and he was a little older. So I was a lot of my time spent home by myself taking care of just you know, my selfish. Yeah.

5:46 Jackie: For me looking back at that, he was very about himself. Right. Very yeah, yeah. My brother used to make us pay. Not like like my husband talks about his sisters, where he was always brought up and told, you take care of your sisters, right? They come first. Right. And so he had that where I gotta take care of my sister. I made sure, like, if it's something wrong, you gotta go be there for my sisters. Right. Yeah. My brother was more like torture us. Yes.

6:09 Jennifer: So my brother's listening to this, that's the concept of it. Everybody thought you were just sort of mean to all of us, which he was. But it definitely the weight we carried. It wasn't a light, like we've said, we grew up in an environment. I grew up in an environment where we didn't have, I didn't have two parents. So there's always that extra responsibility growing up. You know, it's a weight that we carried, and your childhood kind of gets cut short by the caretaking, which for sure is you, for sure is you, a lot of responsibility to be on.

6:33 Jennifer: Again, it probably didn't hurt you in the fact that you were just a spectacular mom, um, because that was really a role that you were primed to play because you had been doing it for so long. And I don't know, you know, I've seen one of your brothers in the last few years or whatever, we reminisced about it. Um, he had a friend there um that was had been in that environment, another friend of theirs that had seen it as well. And I was going on about how Jackie was responsible for everything. And your brother's like, Well, I don't know if we remember that way.

7:02 Jennifer: And his friends, like, yeah, that's exactly what was going on. I'm like, Yeah. Yeah, because your brothers probably didn't even recognize it because it'd been going on for so long.

7:10 Jackie: Like I said, it was normal for them. It was normal for them. They didn't know any different. We don't we're looking at other people and saying, Oh, that's how it should be. Everybody back then in the 80s, it wasn't like that. Everybody just lived in their house and didn't worry about everybody else. Right, right. Just that whatever was happening in your house was normal. Right.

7:25 Jennifer: Well, because the 80s yeah, the 80s children in general were un we were not unsupervised. Like we didn't, we we really were called to take care of ourselves on almost yeah, to begin with. It was like I said, it wasn't like it was a weird thing because everybody was in the same boat. Was like, you know, the weird thing was when you had too much parenting. Right. That was the weird one.

7:45 Jackie: Or you had those TV channel families. Yeah, what's wrong with that? That looks very too perfect. So it's gonna go along behind that with those stars.

7:57 Jennifer: Yeah, exactly. But we definitely, the oddity was not your parents weren't home. The oddity was your mom's home all day with you? How are we gonna get out and about with that situation? This this puts a wrench in our plant. Your mom cooks dinner every night. Oh my god. Listen, we're not kidding you. The Gen Xers are right. All that stuff did happen. You know, you're 12 and carrying the weight of a 40-year-old, is like something's gonna break a burst, which is probably when we pop when I popped into your life was like, you know, let's let's break out of this.

8:29 Jennifer: Like anything's gotta be funner than taking care of all these people all the time. And people called it wild, I guess. I I think that we were rebellious is a better word for our us. And not in a bad way, but just in a freedom, like just to rebel against some of the constraints put upon us to be, you know, all these things or take care of all this stuff, and that we just wanted to be kids, right?

8:51 Jackie: And I always felt like I mean my parents are still together, they love each other better than I ever remember at this point. So I'm so glad they said, but I remember the there was they fought a lot, right? And I always felt like I said, I always like put that on me too, like wanted to make everything perfect so that they wouldn't fight, the dad wouldn't get mad at mom, and you know, so if I made everything perfect, right? It wouldn't be any fighting between them either. Right. So it was like trying to fix them all.

9:17 Jackie: Fix them, fix your brothers, fix grandma, take care of the cousins. Can you imagine? That's just I've been looking back at my never wanted that to my kids. That's why I didn't want divorce. That's like I'd get quiet when my ex would start getting mad at me or something. I'd just get quiet and go into tears, but try not to because I didn't want my kids to feel like they had to take care of it. Right.

9:35 Jennifer: And you were just used to you were using you were used to shoving your feelings down to make everybody happy around you.

9:42 Jackie: Right. And so what I would do, I take it all out.

9:47 Jennifer: That's no one's else's fault but mine. But I don't think so. I think we found freedom. We found it like it sounds like we were wild, and we were wild. I mean, there were we had other friends and maybe we weren't as wild as we were, but I think there were some that were even more wild than us. There was, but we were free. Like we it was an outlet, right? Our friendship was an outlet to get to get out of the life we had been subjected to. It was an outlet to go be free and enjoy ourselves. And I'm gonna be honest, Jack, we had a good time.

10:17 Jennifer: Yeah, and we lived.

10:19 unknown: We're here.

10:20 Jennifer: Yes. So when we snapped the why behind the wild year, sneaking out and pushing the boundaries and testing the limits, like we've just been telling you that the pie when you pile too much pressure onto a group of children, you're gonna probably find out that we uh definitely pushed boundaries and we did sneak out. I mean, you're not gonna let me go out tonight, mom, and I'm going to bed, I'll see you in the morning, and then out my window, down the side of my house, and somebody picked me up, or I'd just take the car and off I'd go, test the limits.

10:48 Jennifer: One time, this is a cute story, but my mom had a she actually let me go out that night, but she had a little black Honda Civic, no, not Honda Civic, what was that? A CRX. A little black CRX. It was real cute, it was real popular in those days and days. It was like a little, yeah, a little, it was like a little sports car. It was cute. Everybody wanted to drive it, we wanted to be in it. And so she let me go out one night and I had to rush home. I think we had to be home at midnight. I'm pretty sure that was our curfew.

11:09 Jennifer: But, anyways, I was driving her little black Porsche, and some for some reason, somebody spilled black or orange fluorescent paint all over the highway. And I rolled over the top of it coming home. And then I got back home and I went to bed. I parked her car and went to bed. And it was like one of the rare times she probably let me even take that car out because it was so cute. And um, anyways, she got up in the morning and she's like, You get up, you got orange paint all over the side of my car.

11:32 Jennifer: Because you know, when you roll over something and it sprays up the sides. So I was like, she goes, You need to get that orange paint off my car today. So, you know, I'm all of like 16 years old, probably. And I'm like, Okay. And you know, my mom was a my the one thing, and I think you got this from my mom is that obsessive cleaning, like it's an OCD thing or something. We would get you had to I'd help you do your cleaning so we could go do something. We could do something, yeah. Like I was held captive to be my mother's all the chores were done.

12:00 Jennifer: Yeah, all the chores are done. Yeah, like cleaning. So I'm like, can you come over? And Jackie would come over and we do all my chores so that we could go. She was very particular, which is you're very particular now, too. I know. My mom isn't very particular, just had to be clean, but you know what I mean? Yeah, like it got so bad at my house when you got up off the couch, you had to take turn around and take the pillows and fluff them back up. You couldn't just get off the couch, like you had to present the couch back into its perfect state in order to get off of it.

12:28 Jackie: So okay, so people now are gonna say that I got that from your mom because I think you got it.

12:36 Jackie: The cushions over just so they always look like new. Yeah. It makes your couch last longer.

12:41 Jennifer: It does. But anyways, back to this orange paint story. Let me finish it because we get off track. Sorry, we're best friends. We can go sidebar a lot. But this orange paint, she told me to get it off. So what did I do? I went to the I went to the sink, got underneath her. Let's see, there's comet. There's how would I get it off of something? And you know, probably I tried to wipe it and it didn't come off. So I was like, oh, I'm gonna have to scrub that off. So I got out the comet. I don't I think I got the comet and uh uh one of those SOS pads, which is like to clean your pad.

13:10 Jennifer: They used to have like uh some kind of cleaning in them, but you it was like a scouring pouch. Yeah, but it was like a scouring. Like you scrubbed your pots at it. Yeah, pots and pans with it. And I did get that orange paint off of my mom's car. I want to tell you. I did scrub it all over. Oh, I destroyed her car. All of it, all of the side of it. It took off the paint, it took off the the you know, the coating they put over it that keeps your paint shiny. Like yeah, I ruined my mom's car. Yeah, I think I got in a lot of trouble for that.

13:40 Jennifer: But that's what you get when you tell a 16-year-old to do something without any direction. And, you know, I feel bad about it, and you know, I'm sure my mom will never forgive me for that, but she did tell me to get it off, and I got it off though.

13:53 Jackie: Probably should have given her the products to do that job.

13:56 Jennifer: Yeah, like give me some direct. It was ruined anyways. I don't know how you would have got it off otherwise, but anyway, so um so we weren't trying to ruin our lives, we were just trying to feel alive, and that's true. We just said that. Like we needed we needed some joy in the middle of all of the responsibility.

14:13 Jackie: I think because when I was out of like I I have to admit, at times I felt stressful when I was home. True because I was feeling like I had to do all these things. You couldn't rest. Right. And I think when we would get out, it was just like, I haven't I don't have to be anywhere, do anything, let's just go. Let's just go, yeah. And we we would do that. Yeah. Let's talk about we'd leave in the morning, why truck? Drive to the beach. We're supposed to be going to school. We were feeling alive. We were feeling alive.

14:42 Jackie: All of a sudden the truck stopped. It's going down the freeway. Well, it didn't stop, it wouldn't it turn off.

14:48 Jennifer: No, it made some noise in and then the engine stopped.

14:51 Jackie: And we were co hosting the fast lane, and I got all of over, all the way over to the slow lane. Then yeah, to the edge of the thing. And we had froze my engine in my truck.

15:01 Jennifer: Yeah, we popped we froze the engine.

15:03 Jackie: So we had to find a friend to tow it back up to the mountains and put it on the side of the road to act like we were coming home from school. And that's what they did. But you know what? We did it. It was fun. It's so weird because they've been talking about it. We really stressed out. No.

15:19 Jennifer: We're like, oh well, we're not gonna be today now, but we get the truck back up there. Which doesn't sound like a big deal to y'all, but we lived up a mountain. Like we didn't just drag it back 20 20 minutes back to our house. We drove it like an hour and a half back to where we lived up a mountain. And then we had we were so smart that we even had to turn the truck because we put it on the side of the road, like it's broken down, but we had to drive it past where we were gonna drop it off, turn around and go back down so it was heading the right way.

15:46 Jennifer: Because otherwise it would look weird. Yeah, it would look weird if we were heading up instead of down. So then, yeah. So then we called, we're like, something's wrong with the car. We were very smart. I'm feeling alive. Yes, I'm feeling alive. It's like, I'm sure we probably went over that story a hundred times about so this is what happened. But and Jackie and I were very good at covering for each other, probably because we talked about our plans so many times about things if we got in trouble or something.

16:12 Jennifer: So we we could get in trouble on the spot and we could then make up a story.

16:18 Jennifer: We did, but then we would kind of get caught sometimes in the middle of it and was like, we need to now tell a lie, and like the other one needs to back the other one, but then we would do it. We would all like live on because we had enough storytelling about how we were gonna cover up this problem that we got really good at covering up our problems. We we like just to go have fun with each other and hang out with our friends and stuff. That was not a boy. No, because all our we didn't escape to go hang out with boys, we escaped to hang out with each other.

16:45 Jackie: That was fun, yeah. Because uh when I this is what I always say everyone, because most of you are the ones that got boy start dating earlier, but it was like as soon as someone got a boyfriend, it was just like, okay, so you can't go out Friday night with us, right? You're not gonna meet us at this party, right? No, it wasn't like that anymore. So it was just like I didn't want a boyfriend, I want to hang out with my girlfriend.

17:05 Jennifer: I know, right? It was funner to hang out with your friends than uh be tied down to a boyfriend. And we just lived in a really at least Jackie and I thought it was a really fun place. So we just had a good time. So no one's ever gonna take that away from us. But ultimately, if you really look at the way we behaved, we were really just escaping. We were really just having bad kids. We weren't bad kids.

17:25 Jennifer: No, we didn't hurt anybody, but we were not now looking back, we should give ourselves grace. We were just we were just looking for that amount of fun just to have some fun for although life had piled up on top of us at that point.

17:37 Jackie: So why our friendship was a lifetime finding a kindred kindred spirit who also felt the pressure, and we both felt pressure. Yeah, because that's right.

17:50 Jackie: She was gone though. Michelle was gone, that's what I'm saying, but didn't have that where like you had the single parents and I had the parents that kind of yeah, I was there, but right the parents were there.

17:59 Jennifer: Right, right, right. Yeah, yeah. So maybe that was what like we said that it was like we found in each other something that we both needed. So yeah, for sure. And then becoming the soft place for each other that we know we never knew we needed. Isn't that she got older? Yeah, yeah.

18:15 Jackie: Isn't it weird?

18:16 Jennifer: Yeah, like thank God you came along. Like, and thank God you came along. I'm gonna say that too, because you were not, you could have been anything, you could have been, and it could have gone either way. You could have been a drug addict, you could have been a crazy boy thing, like you could have been a lot of things, and and vice versa. We could have been really bad influences on each other, but we were both really good kids. Like it wasn't like some like weird thing, other than you know, we were a little crazy with stealing cars, but that's you know, was it like if you talk to our teachers or anything?

18:46 Jackie: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, we were good school, we were good students, ASB, we did all that kind of stuff. Pardon that was in the yearbook, like still work in the yearbook, you know, to finish things because we were on a deadline, and even though we were a little bit well on the wild side.

19:00 Jennifer: Yeah, but if I was like a drug addict and you came around and was like, Oh, okay, well, you do this, like it could have very well gone bad for either one of us. Both of us were not like that. So it was at least like, you know, if we're gonna find this crazy person to go do stuff with, at least we were our kind of crazy, which was very kind of innocent crazy. Right. We were really out doing drugs. Yeah, we were yeah, like if you, you know, in particular, just pay attention to your kids' friends because they do have great influence over them.

19:27 Jennifer: And if, you know, somebody should just be thankful that we found each other and that we didn't find somebody really bad to hang out with and really cause problems for us. So I think that's a good thing.

19:37 Jackie: So and learn that joy, that spongy were also survival.

19:41 Jennifer: That's right.

19:42 Jackie: That was us.

19:42 Jennifer: That's what we say. We're giving ourselves grace now because of it. We were wild, we were wild, but we were wild together, and uh it made all the difference. So probably when you find your sole wild mate in life that you can really I like I said, we had a good time. No one's ever gonna take that from us. That I wouldn't give those years back. Would you? No, no, no, I wouldn't either.

20:05 Jackie: No, I always think about that. I wouldn't change a thing.

20:08 Jennifer: No, they made us who we are, they made us, you know, years later, we're 40 years later, and we're podcasting about it, talking about it. But we got those years, we got that time again.

20:19 Jackie: Sure. We did we even though we were wild you guys, we did learn from this. We did, but we also got we also learned that when we were parents, if our kids thought they were gonna get away with stuff, so good luck with that.

20:29 Jennifer: I oh I know. I literally braced myself when my son, my son went to high school. I'm like, this is it, this is when it starts. I'm like, get the keys in my bedroom, he can't get them all. Like, I all the things I had did, I was prepared for my son to do. I thought that he was a perfect angel, but it was nothing, nothing compared to what we were. And I think that's just the time, the change in time. They weren't, they're not as wild anymore. Like, there's a lot more kids are a lot more uh behave. I don't know if they behave, they don't even like really go out.

20:59 Jennifer: Like 16. This is a great story. Jackie and I got our driver's license the same day. Like as soon as you could turn 16.

21:08 Jennifer: We are yeah, we have the exact same license number, except for the last three numbers, or the numbers are different because those three numbers between the time I got mine and she got hers was like 300 people different. So that must be the day that they gave those license numbers out. 300 people different that day, because it's probably the whole state of California. So we have the exact same driver's license number because we got our driver's license the exact same day. And I was coming down the no, I was going back up the hill, and you were coming down.

21:36 Jennifer: Yeah, I'm like, Did you pass? Did you pass? And then and then you got a car, and then off we went. So that was good that you got a car because I didn't get a car, mom. Anyways, let you use your cars. Yeah, and then it got paid on it, and then was that whole problem. So, anyways, um, we want to reframe the world Wild a little bit and take back the narrative because Wild wasn't careless, it was courageous. And honestly, look at what we're doing, like sitting here. Right now, what are we doing?

22:01 Jackie: We're podcasting, and we're telling all of our secrets that only our best friends know.

22:05 Jennifer: But what a set of actual courage it takes for us to pick up mics and just decide we're gonna be podcasters on a whim and then do it. And then like I've said, you're better at this, you've got this going. You've pulling me along. I'm like, come on, just like we are like, come on, you can do this. I know. I'll say that. I'm pretty ballsy, and I always have said that, but it doesn't matter. If you're gonna find somebody that like find the person will come do this with you, right? You're like calling Jackie.

22:33 Jennifer: And I'm super thankful for you because you do kind of just join in in my crazy ideas. But those like have been going on for years. Like all the and it wasn't always my crazy ideas. Sometimes it was your crazy ideas, and I went with you. Currently it's my crazy ideas, but you know, whatever. So and it's like just a form of healing, reclaiming space, learning boundaries, and we're wildies, but uh, we are very unapologetic and untamed and unbothered by it all. Like we'll own it. We own it now, especially because the kids have grown our kids have grown up and we don't have to hide our secrets anymore.

23:03 Jennifer: Yeah, we don't have to worry about our kids being uh at this point.

23:07 Jackie: I think they listen to some and some they're just like it goes over their head. They're like, what? Really you did that? Oh, okay. It's really nothing to them. I know, right? So all right. Well, everyone, it is now time for rapid fire besty questions. So, what's something wild you did that you know now understand deeply? Something we did we now understand. Probably just the wildness?

23:30 Jennifer: Yeah, I think we've just been talking about it. That we are we we did it as an outlet for had we not had each other, like can you imagine? I don't know where that that could have just been a bad news for everybody. So the wildness that we understand deeply now is that it was we were put into each other's life at that moment, at that time, for those reasons because we needed each other to get rid of some of that probably pent-up frustration, anger, whatever, and that it turned into wild, but it really was a release for both of us, and that we probably saved each other from whatever could have happened if we hadn't found each other.

24:05 Jackie: You know, and the more I think back to, and there was never any judgment about it.

24:08 Jennifer: Yeah.

24:09 Jackie: Like we didn't like say, Oh, should we probably shouldn't do this? We never talk, even when we talk about it now, it's just like when you think about some of the things that we did, oh we're thinking. But and then did should like, did you think I should be doing it? We never ever thought that way. Like it was always like, Yeah, let's do it. Let's just do it. At least do that now.

24:29 Jennifer: That's true.

24:29 Jackie: Yeah.

24:30 Jennifer: So who was the who was with you during the most out-of-character each other? Like we are the ones that probably did. I don't know, Michelle's probably a little crazy for a while too, but she moved. So um, yeah. So I think from a standpoint of just being that most out-of-moment characters, it was definitely you and I.

24:47 Jackie: Um And I would say we had a lot of those too when after you had um Taylor down our apartment. Yeah. I would say those are some characters.

24:55 Jennifer: Yeah, yeah. There were some few nights that were a little wild over there too. But we were doing our job still. Yeah, we worked. I was raised in a child worked. Yeah, like it was, you know, we could go to babysitter, whatever. It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter when you have a child, and I'll give grace to anybody, because I would never be judgy for anybody's imam yan is like, I need to drop this kid to somebody and let me be a kid again for a little bit. You have to. If you don't do it, you're not really actually developing as a human.

25:24 Jennifer: Like, you know, I will never be judgy for people that have it because I've been there, done that, and that's a rough job. So the fact we actually got through that too. I needed it. I need to release. Can you imagine all that responsibility piled on top of you?

25:34 Jackie: So it's not just that part, because we were still getting when we were eight when we moved in together, we were 18.

25:39 Jennifer: Yeah. First first place we lived in, our first apartment. Our first apartment, yeah, with our friend Andy. And there's three of us. Yeah. And we we had fun there too. Yeah. It was a fun time.

25:48 Jackie: So it was release also. It was it was we had a different release at that point. Yeah. And we had a lot of people that helped. Yeah. I paid my parents watching um Taylor for you, and we had friends, the one that you had talked about that showed you how to be a mother. Yes. She was always always like, if you asked her, she was a jump on it.

26:06 Jennifer: I was just talking to Andy about that actually, because um we were talking about she's like, when I was talking about her in one of the other episodes, and she's like, You were talking about so-and-so. And I was like, Yeah, and she's like, I go, she would just show up at my work. She's like, Where's the baby? And I'm like, baby's at the baby. She's like, I'm going to get the baby. I'll see you this weekend. Come get the baby this weekend. Like, she popped into my life. It's such a very important part of my life, and I always be grateful.

26:27 Jennifer: I always love her so much because it's like an angel dropped out of heaven. It was like her entire joy was having being around a baby. She loved babies, and I was young at it and knew at it and didn't really understand what was going on. Like, I needed somebody to kind of guide me there. And she just happened to drop into my life, boom, right there, and was such a blessing.

26:46 Jackie: And she still is, people have her own children, she's adopt child adopt children now. She's Jen was not releasing it and him to anybody. I mean, yeah, she couldn't ask for a better person.

26:57 Jennifer: I couldn't, yeah, for sure. And like came out of nowhere. Like all of a sudden wasn't my life, and then was totally my life, and then just so supportive, so loving. Like super, super grateful for her.

27:07 Jackie: Okay. Yeah. If you could say one thing to the girl that when you were 16, what would it be?

27:12 Jennifer: So when I was 16, what would I tell myself? I would say go have fun because it's about to end. The responsibility is about to pile up real heavy on you. So you know what? Enjoy these next few years and really suck it in. And you girls just keep going having some fun.

27:26 Jackie: Don't grow up. Yeah, this is a last. Yeah. And my parents used to say that don't try to grow up so fast. Right. Well, yeah, but you put me in this situation too. To grow up fast. Yeah. So I used to tell that to my kids, but I let my kids be kids. Good. So it was I didn't contradict what I was saying. I don't do you know, I do everything for them so that they could just go be kids.

27:47 Jennifer: Right, right.

27:47 Jackie: Don't put any of this on you. Right. My divorce, don't put this on you, as being your dad. Right. This type of situation. Just have fun. Just have fun.

27:55 Jennifer: Go be kids, because it's over. I got two Christmases. You get all this. Yeah, yeah. Like add a spin to it. Yeah. Spin to it a little bit.

28:02 Jackie: All right. So the next part is tag your wild or die.

28:07 Jennifer: The one that made you rebellious and feel free. Yes. Go tag 'em because this is a podcast that, especially if you were a rebellious kid and you feel like maybe you were it was something bad. Definitely go tag your wild wild and ride die person because you know, one, you weren't the only ones. And two, um, we're telling you that part of it was probably a really good outlet for you.

28:30 Jackie: So I'd say uh if you've ever been judged for your wildness, remind them it wasn't rebellion, it was release. That's our final little say on this one. That's what we're saying to it.

28:41 Jennifer: All right, if this episode hit you in the fills or made you feel way or made you laugh way too hard, we consider that a win.

28:46 Jackie: Be sure to subscribe, leave a review, and share it with your ride or die. And when you're ready to make your friendship official, book your pestimony at rhinestoneweddingchapel.com.

28:54 Jennifer: Because the best love is love stories, don't always come with the ring.

29:11 Song: We stick together at or die to the moon, and no amount of space could ever come between us two. Reuniting's like we never been apart, and every single time we're out of iron heart to heart.

29:39 Song: There's not enough words to describe what you made a make.

29:53 Song: I'll bottom bacon.

31:37 Song: Loyalty, you and me trust that loyalty.