Child's Play

0:04 To the restless, the insomniacs, the stressed out, the worried, and the board. This is for you. Welcome to Anxiety Addicts Bedtime Stories, an original podcast by Joe Newman and Morgan Walsh, serving up hot, mostly true, twenty minute stories to turn off your brain and turn on your ram. The stories come from all over the Internet, whispered late at parties and from you to the bs inbox. But your secrets are safe here. All names have been changed to protect the guilty. So please sit back, relax, and send us your stories at the link in the show notes and sweet Dreams.

0:53 Do you guys remember those refrigerator quote magnets that you'd find in the nineties and like some little Chinsey store and it would be like believe in yourself and there's no how hi you can go and shit like that. And I was thinking about this one today while I was procrastinating that it was like, love what you do and you'll never work another day in your life. And I was like, I love what I do and it still feels like work. And I was procrastinating all morning coming and I don't like my hair like this. I don't like I'm kind of overlooking at myself. I think is the truth of the matter. You know, maybe you don't know this, but I was an actress, a struggling actress, a trying to be an actress. I stopped quite a few years ago, which is a good thing, because my time was up. In fact, you could argue that my time never happened, but there you go. And then Morgan and I started telling these stories. So, if you're new to this weird little corner of the Internet, welcome to Anxiety Addicts bedtime stories where we take stories from all over the world and our inbox and weird viral stories.

2:00 Things that are funny or embarrassing, are ridiculous or horrible, but we give them a happy ending as a way to help you turn off your brain and sort of disengage from reality. Because Reality Bites. If you need to go back and find a great movie, Reality Bites is still a great movie. And we watched Don't Tell Mom the Babysitter's Dead last night, and that is also still a great movie. Massive shout out to Christina Applegate and the woman who played Rose so good. Underrated. This is a story that has a little bit of nineties nostalgia or a lot. I think maybe the movie came out in eighty nine, eighty six, and it is about a boy who Psyche was shaped by the movie Child's Play.

2:41 Remember Chucky, the crazy, freaky doll that haunted all of our nightmares that one. So sit back, relax, unplug. I hope you like the story. I think it's hilarious. Morgan and I wondered at one point if it made the dad sound like he didn't love the sun, but we actually decided he was just the best dad out there and that we could all take some parenting advice from this guy. So I hope you enjoy this one. It's called Child's Play. Gary had enough with the late night horseshit because in Gary's life he dealt with literal horseshit in the mornings. The late nights involved his children, one child in particular, it hadn't been days or weeks or season's girl, that had been years, and those years felt like they were taken a toll on the youthful vibe that he was regularly complimented on, and that annoyed Gary because he liked being complimented. He also liked feeling young, and he wasn't blaming the calendar or the sun spots he was blaming Joey. Joey was the youngest son in the most trouble, especially after the sun went down. Gary should have known. The night that Joey was born, he'd had two cows calve and the windstorm blew out the power.

3:53 Any farmer will tell you that a night with screaming bow vines isn't the most relaxing welcome into the world. Joey was a smart and precocious child. Gary didn't mind either of those things. Joey was into building projects with the bits and bobs you found around the farm. Often those projects were admittedly well made booby traps. Joey would hide behind the couch and laugh his ass off at any and every family member who walked into his contraption. Surprisingly, Gary didn't mind this. He didn't mind the elaborate stories that Joey would tell at the dinner table, or the fact that his youngest son regularly left the chicken gate open. No, Gary was pretty chill with all of this. What really ruffled his feathers was the fact that his eight year old kid would not fucking go to bed. How is he not tired? Gary would drawl to his wife as he clicked off the TV, the pitter pattering at footsteps audible to everyone awake in the creaky house. Your turn, Sandra would reply. She insisted that she was done mothering at eight pm and that everyone in the Fetterhorn house better have their yah yahs out then, because she wasn't gonna deal with it. This made the seven pm hour absolute chaos, but Sandra held firm and the family learned to respect that one very important boundary. She usually ignored the insanity and spent all sixty seconds of seven point fifty nine pm smiling at the kitchen wall clock. Gary would make a lot of noise pulling his solid body off the springy couch after stroking a strawberry blonde beard.

5:27 This was his move whenever he needed a minute. It looks like he was thinking. He was often just delaying moving his body. That happens when your day starts at four thirty am because the fence came down in the storm, or because the frost came over the corn when it wasn't supposed to do, or two cows gave birth within the same hour, or the multitude of things that could go wrong on one hundred acres in Iowa in the early two thousands. Gary's callous hands stroked the red hair that grew artfully out of his chin. He had quite the look. Gary might spend the majority of his day and his plaid shirts and worn out car hard overalls, but the second he was home or out on the town, it was always an outfit that a street fashion photographer would salivate over. It was often some version of a Canadian taxedo that being denim on denhim, but it worked for him in a way that it didn't for most people.

6:19 There was something about his choice of blues that made people do an appreciative double take. Or maybe it was his mullet. His hair coat was so extreme that it was the sort of farmer's version of the Rachel. Everyone loved it. Few could pull it off as well as the original. There was definitely something about Gary. But Gary, a confident cowboy or not, was really sick of getting his kid to beet he finished stroke in his beard, he could hear Joey's breathing from behind the couch. In Gary's experience, his children all inherited his self assuredness, whether they deserved it or not. Joey thought he was a hell of a lot sneakier than he actually was. Joe wee yee. The way Gary said the name gave it three syllables. He heard, Joey duck to the floor. Gary mused momentarily that this kid was aging him in a way that the others were not. These knights of sleep refusal made him wonder what the heck was going on in this kid's brain. When the sky turned dark, he seemed to get more energy and made Gary wish there were some kind of nighttime farm chores appropriate for a third grader. There weren't many. We ain't doing this again.

7:34 Come on, kid, I don't care if you sleep, Just stay in your damn bed or even just the damn bedroom. The damn bedroom had everything a kid could possibly want to sleep and also to be awakened. Joey, as we know, was the baby of the family, and he milked that position every chance he got. The number of toys couldn't fit in the closet even on his most organized day, and his bed was a sea of stuffed animalst purchased at every county fair and also basically every time his mother had to go to the local Kroger, which was often a redheaded doll sat in the prime location above his dresser. Gary had won that one for Joey. In the fair grag where he had to hit the hammer and watch the ball float up to gauge your strength, Gary won the biggest prize every single year without fail.

8:24 Maybe Sandra and Gary had lost their edge with their youngest because he was somehow not falling into line like his siblings had before him. I just can't sleep. Joey threw down the statement so matter of factly that it sounded like he just graduated with his JD. Gary turned to face his youngest son. You can because it's bedtime. He tried to find soul energy to make a serious face. I can't because I'm not tired. Joey had plenty of energy, and his face showed it. You can lie there. I can't. My body will let me. Gary sighed like a plow horse being pushed out of the shade. He wasn't in the mood to debate. He wanted to unbutton the top of his jeans, make some popcorn, and watch the Hawkeyes game. Unfortunately, it was eighth nine and Sandra was nowhere to be seen.

9:18 Let's just try. Gary hoisted himself up off the couch and found himself forty five minutes later in the cluttered bedroom, his voice now hoarse from reading three entire chapters of Harry Potter out loud. There were just so many damn characters. He couldn't keep them all straight. Now his brain and his body were dead tired, and the football game was nearly over. Gary extracted himself from the tangle of Joey's limbs. Good Night, son, I don't care what you do, but stay in bed. Joey nodded, and Gary would have sworn that his son's eyelids looked heavy. He nodded to himself, Damn, he was a good dad. Gary patted into the living room and settled back down on the couch. The first movie that popped up when he hit the remote got his attention. Gary had always liked horror movies, and he hadn't seen this one in years. It was a classic.

10:14 As the face of the killer doll filled the screen, Gary smiled to himself, pulled up a plaid blanket, and was ready to zone out to Chucky in the nineteen eighty eight film Child's Play. He'd been watching it for what seemed like thirty two seconds when he heard a familiar rustling sound behind the couch. God, damn it, Joey, that better not be you. But as any parent knows, when they utter that phrase, ninety nine percent of the time, it is in fact your child, and you have to do something about it, especially if you can't find Sandra because she snuck off into town with her friends from Margeritas at Lady's Bingo night at the Elks Club. So for the second time that evening, Gary hoisted his weary bones and tired voice off the couch, trudged into his son's room and tucked him in again. Good night, Joey, I love you. I stay in your damn bet. It was nine twenty. How was this kid still awake? Poor Gary didn't have much time to ponder that idea. He was zonked. He closed the door of Joey's room and dropped and took us back on the couch. This time, it was more like three minutes before he heard the pitter patter of relentless feet. Joey, Dad, just one more story.

11:34 I think Harry Potter's gonna give me nightmares. Get in a bed or I'll give you nightmares. It was an empty threat, and everyone in the Feederhorn house knew it. Gary was a gentle and very well dressed giant. He got up once again, threw the blankets over his son, tripped on a stuffed animal snake, almost threw his back out, said a string of words you'd have to repent for in church, and finally limped out of Joey's room. This time, he decided to stop in the kitchen for a well deserved beer. Rookie mistake. As he lowered himself back onto his preferred movie watching spot, he saw a lump move under the plaid blanket Joey. This time, Joey scurried like a mouse, being chased back into his room. Gary was too tired to be angry. He shook his head to himself.

12:23 This happened almost every night. Joey could not go to bed. It was like he was wired differently than the farmer's in his bloodline. Nighttime woke up naturally. It was either that or as he was stealing coffee from the kitchen at seven pm. Whatever the reason, Gary could not argue with the fact that this kid had an opposite circadian rhythm. Of everyone else in the household, but regardless of what was happening in the kid's brain, this bedtime bullshit had to be broken. The cold beer slashing down Gary's throat was as refreshing as jumping into a lake on a blazing hot summer day. It was exactly what he needed. The bubbles floated right up to his brain as the underscore of the movie told him that someone was about to get stabbed in the neck by a demonically possessed doll.

13:08 Right as the music reached a crescendo, Gary heard another noise. It might have startled him a bit, but he would never admit it. It was a noise in his house, a noise he did not want to hear, a sound he was dreading it was Joey. Gary felt ready to jump off the couch in a rage, but he stopped himself. He told his kid every which way to get his butt back into bed, and there was nothing that he could get him to do to listen. So maybe scaring the shit out of him wasn't world's worst idea. So Gary sighed, drank his beer, and focused his attention on the brilliantly directed movie on TBS that night. Gary ignored the fact that his eight year old had placed himself stealthily beside the sofa, and stayed up for two and a half hours past his bedtime, watching the version of Child's Play, complete with ad breaks for products like insurance and Athlete's foot. He heard his son get up once and thought he might have heard something thrown into the trash.

14:11 No matter, it was Gary time now and nothing was going to interrupt his peace. Gary drank two beers, enjoyed the movie, and then used his achy body to carry a sleeping Joey back to a stuffy infested bed. He moved a few toys off the floor to clear a path to the door, and without thinking anything of it, took Joey's My Buddy doll out of the waste paper basket and placed on the armchair next to Joey's bed. He made a mental note to tell Joey not to just throw toys away when he picked up his room kids these days, and then he went to sleep. The next morning, Sandra noticed things were a bit weird in the fetter Horn house. First of all, there wasn't their youngest child sloppily mixing together three different kinds of breakfast cereal at the kitchen table. This was unusual. Second, there was one lass toy in Joey's cluttered bedroom. Unsurprisingly, it was redheaded doll. Gary had already been at work for three hours before a cell phone rang, with an upset Sandra on one end and a screaming Joey in the background.

15:09 You let him watch, Chucky. He's burying the doll in the backyard as we speak, he said. It jumped out of the trash. Gary hung up, shook his head, and turned his bailer back through the endless field. There was a lot of hay to bail. It wasn't the most brain consuming process, however, and he let his mind wander back to the movie. Maybe, just maybe Joey had learned his lesson. Well, he had not. That night, after putting his youngest to bed six times total, Gary stroked his beard and entertained a slightly unhinged thought. He done a lot of strange things as a lifelong farmer and father for but he'd never dug up a grave before. Funnily enough, that's what he found himself doing at nine pm on a Thursday, in his backyard and bent in Iowa. It didn't take much. Joey wasn't the most thorough of children.

16:00 The grave was about four and a half inches deep and poorly covered. That's how Joey's My Buddy doll got from the back yard dirt nap to being placed back in the arm chair next to his bed. It's alive again. The following morning, Gary's cell phone rang. Sandra was hootin and hollerin while Joey wailed in the background. Gary shook his head, hung up the phone, and went back to flippin' bales. That night, after nine attempts to get Joey to sleep, Gary stroked his beard and went out to the yard. As he'd heard from his older children, there was indeed a burn pile in the big pit the family used for bonfires. And in that pit, admittedly disfigured but not utterly incinerated, was my Buddy. Gary could not help but chuckle out loud. Poor Joey had tried to light the damn doll on fire, but it didn't matter.

16:52 He still hadn't learned his lesson. He was not going asleep this time. He decided to place the burnt remains of the doll in the armchair and the next morning, the bone chilling whale that erupted from Joey's room was no surprise to anyone. It whoat die let me speak to him, drawed Gary when the expected phone call came from Sandra. He was driving his tractor, listening to the new Kenny Chesney album and was finding life to be quite peaceful. At the moment, he thought he could talk some sense into his son, Joey, Buddy, maybe this thing will stop haunting you if you just go to sleep when we tell you to. This suggestion did not go over well, and it didn't work. It took two hours to get Joey to sleep that night, and another thirty for Gary to find the kitchen shears missing and the doll cut up in a six pieces, shoved between the fridge and the garbage can. With the last ounce of his mental energy, Gary had the idea to pull out the duct tape and perform a little reconstructive surgery. My buddy found his way back into the armchair again. Now you might thinking that the usual ending to an anxiety attic story would be Joey learning his lesson and being afraid at all is for the rest of his life, But now go to bed when his parents told him to. No, that's not what happened, because Joey told this story on TikTok while Gary, obviously addressed to the cowboy nines, was sitting in the kitchen behind him and Dad tell them

18:25 who really got the shit under the stick? Gary looks up from peeling his pistachios and looks at the camera. Well, I reckon it was me? And why is that? Prompts the now twenty something year old Joey, who looks way too normal for a guy who had every reason to believe that he grew up living with a demonic doll because he started sleeping in bed with me every dang night. And for how long did that last? Pushes Joey, channeling his full Ryan Seacrest. Five years, maybe longer, every damn nut. Then Joey points to the camera to a forty something year old blonde woman also sitting at the kitchen table.

19:07 Her blue eyes are the size of Checky's, her mouth is a gaatee, her tan face aghast, and she's staring in utter disbelief at Gary. Joey can't control his laughter. And how do you feel about that? Younger stepmother? That's the guy you married, and the video cuts out with another yell. Younger stepmother does not like this story, but Gary just chuckles, well you sleep now, don't you, and Joey just shakes his head, making eye contact with the camera barely. Child's play the nineties gift that keeps on giving. Technically eighty eight, but it's all the same idea you guys. If you like this story, there are so many more wherever you get your podcasts, Please like, subscribe, rate, and if you want to spend two seconds and give us a review, we would love that. And from us to you, like always, Sweet Dreams.

20:17 Thanks for listening to anxiety addicts bedtime stories. We're here to help you take your mind off whatever is making you spiral by listening to a story about someone else's hilarious or mortifying experience, and we know you have your own. Please DM or email your stories of bad decisions, miscommunications and Murphy's law. Your support helps us keep doing what we love and don't forget to like, rate and subscribe, and as always, Sweet Dreams. This episode was written and recorded by Joe Newman, with editing and sound designed by Morgan Walsh.