Pushkin Khila Holt.

Welcome to the.

Studio, Jonathan Goldstein, Thank you for welcoming me to the studio.

Getting a little bit of sarcasm.

Thank you, Thank you for welcoming me.

Today, we're going to be listening to an episode that originally ran Oh boy, like what seven years ago?

We're in twenty seventeen.

I'm pretty sure, so, oh my eight years ago.

It's a fan favorite.

Yeah, and it's one of my favorites too.

There's something I still quote from it, which is I think she explains in the episode when she says Pearl, I still think of Pearl to this day.

Wow.

Rose has had an impact on me.

And I'm sure she's gonna have an impact on our listeners.

I'm sure she is.

Rose has an impact wherever she goes.

And if you stick around at the end of the episode, we're going to catch up with present day Rose and see where she is all these years later, what she's up to.

Enjoy everybody, But don't start licking your chops quite yet.

That's disgusting.

Who wants to do about chops before you start enjoying.

We are going to start off with a word from our sponsors.

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I noticed that we're not Facebook friends or not?

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I think didn't you try to Facebook friend me?

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You don't even friend me?

Then we're better than Facebook friends, we're real life friends.

No, that's worse than Facebook friends because no one knows we're friends.

Let's go to the internet right now.

Let's friend each other at the exact same.

Time each other, because I have to go to work right now.

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Ready hurtful from Dimlet Media.

I'm Jonathan Goldstein and this is Heavyweight.

Today's episode rose In nineteen sixty two, the Beatles had their first number one hit, Love Me Do.

A lesser known fact is that just months earlier, the band kicked out their original drummer, Pete Best.

The Beatles had their manager do the job.

The lads just don't want you in the band anymore, he said.

No.

Further explanation was given, but over the years different theories emerged.

Pete Best didn't have the right hair, Pete Best wasn't funny or artsy enough, he didn't dress right.

For a long time afterwards, Pete Best wondered why his old friends had kicked him out.

But he got married, started a family.

Obla de oh bla da, life went on.

That's what happens.

People get kicked out of bands, parties, jobs, and eventually they stopped searching for the reason why most people do anyway.

So I moved into my college dorm when I was seventeen.

I was an incoming freshman in the fall of two thousand and one.

This is Rose and the school she was entering was the University of North Florida, and it's like.

A beachy community.

I was like a cool surfer chick.

I dreve like an old Volvo that was covered in like band stickers.

Rose was a rebel, And if all the teen movies I'd watched during the mid eighties taught me anything about campus life, it was that rebels don't mix with popular kids, and at the University of North Florida.

Nobody was more popular than the sorority girls.

Well, you like walk through school and they're set up there and they're like along the sidewalks and they're like, are you interested in enjoying a sorority?

And I would just like blow by on my skateboard and be like no, I didn't think that I'd ever be affiliated with it.

With with with sorority life.

Yeah, with Greek life, with the sororities and the fraternities and like the cool kids and their pop callers, Like, I didn't think that was for me.

So the summer after my freshman year, I meet this dude and I start dating him, and he's in a fraternity and I'm making friends with all these people in the Greek community and I'm like, Oh, they're normal, they're not pretentious, they're not weird.

I started to dress like them, I started to act like them, and I wanted to be accepted.

And the fall of my junior year, I rushed and I got a bid from Alpha Kai and I joined.

Sorry, the name of the sorority.

Was, it's called Alpha chi Omega.

Alpha chi Omega.

And we were the Theta Sigma chapter Stata sigma chapter theta with the thh.

So it was the Theta sigma chapter of Alpha ky Omega, and it was at unf sororities.

It was a new and exciting world with such a rich history.

It turns out that Condoleeza, Rice Enron Whistleblow, or Sharon Watkins and Don Wells, who played Marianne on Gilligan's Island, were all members of Alpha Kai and had taken secret oaths to remain sisters for life.

I listened avidly as Rose explains what it means to be a part of Alpha chi Omega Theta sigma chapter.

We are classy ladies, We are sophisticated, We wear pearls, we know our manners.

You know, like that, did they use the word classy.

You're not being classy?

Yeah?

Absolutely.

And they had like all these weird acronyms, like if someone came up to you and whispered in your ear pearl, it was like the acronym for pearl, pearl, please engage in acts resembling a lady.

So if someone says pearl in your that would mean you would begin.

To It would mean like, let's say I'm doing a keg stand at a party and another sister is there.

Instead of being like, young lady, get down, write this instant, because that's causing a scene.

Now you're causing attention.

Instead, she's supposed to tap me on the shoulder and whisper in my ear pearl, and then I'm supposed to be like, oh, you're right, thank you for reminding me.

Rose took on new hobbies, scrap booking with her sorority sisters, building floats for the homecoming parade, and dressing head to toe in scarlet red and olive green the Alpha Kaya Omega colors.

And while she'd never seen herself being cut out for all of this sorority stuff, the crazy thing was it actually made her really happy.

I was a gong ho, like I'm a participator.

I got really into it and just walking around school now all of a sudden, like you know everybody, and everybody knows you, and now you're in on the inside jokes, like I felt like I belonged, Like I went from being like a disgruntled outsider to being like the bubbly participant.

Rose and her sorority sisters did everything together, beach trips, watching The Bachelor.

One weekend, they all ran a campus charity race together, but afterwards something felt a miss.

And I remember thinking like, man, I feel really tired after that five K and I'm having a lot of trouble sleeping and I keep sweating through my sheets at night.

Rose also noticed that her neck was swollen.

She was feeling achy and fatigued.

After a few weeks, she went to see a doctor.

And I said, could you take a look at my neck, like, I don't think something's right.

And the nurse practitioner who was treating me that day just like looked at me in horror and was like, you have to go to radiation right now.

And I was like, I have to make an appointment, and she was like, no, I'm calling the second floor and you're gonna go get a CT scan right now.

So it was crazy.

They called it nodular sclerosing Hodgkins lymphoma.

I had huge, pronounced lymph notes all over my body.

You could take one look at me and it looked like my neck and chest were just full of golf balls, like something was wrong.

By the time we started testing and staging, I mean I was a stage three.

This is like big cake cancer, This is like shave your head, Rose, like you've got real cancer.

So I think around May I started chemo.

Rose dropped out of her classes and quit her extracurriculars.

Her days filled up with doctor's appointments and chemotherapy.

The one bright note throughout was the support she got from her sorority sisters.

They took her to concerts in Jacksonville Jaguar football games, they sold hot pink ribbons in the quad and raised thousands of dollars for Rose's treatment.

Alpha Kai took care of Rose, and Rose was dedicated to Alpha Kai.

She was on the executive board in charge of recruiting new members, and even through her cancer, she kept up with her work.

And new girls are coming through and they have to decide which sorority they want to join.

And now Alpha Kai has like one hell of a tale to tell.

Now we're not just a regular sorority.

We're the sorority with the cancer girl, and we're saving her life.

And that was something that they led with.

That was actually something that was made explicit.

Oh, I got up there with my bald head and gave a speech and cried every time about how my sisters were saving my life.

Rose was lucky by the spring of her senior year, her cancer went into remission for the first time in more than a year.

She felt like a normal college kid.

I just had a lot of fun that sematter.

My hair's starting to grow back, I'm starting to get my energy back.

I'm starting to feel like a normal person.

And like, now I'm not just going to a party to like, you know, make sure I'm getting out of the house, like now I want to party, Like now I want to have fun.

So I did.

I felt like I deserved it.

Then one night, after being cancer free for five months, Rose went to Alpha Kai's weekly meeting, which met in an old auditorium on campus.

And I come to the meeting and they're like, hey, Rose, can you stay after We need to talk to you.

So they clear everybody out and now it's just like five or six women and me, and they're like all right, Rose, Like this is gonna be tough.

We're gonna have to ask you to resign.

And I was like, excuse me, Yeah, we're gonna have to ask you to resign.

And I thought they meant from my position, my officer position.

I'm like, you're asking me to step down as VP recruitment, Like the new girls love me.

I'm great with the new girls.

Why I've got this marketing on lock And they're like, oh, no, no, no, we want you to resign from the organization.

We want you to resign from Alpha Kai and I lost it.

It's like you know that feeling when someone's breaking up with you, and like you get that cold feeling in your chest and you know that someone's about to look at you and say, like this isn't working.

Yeah.

It was like that times one hundred, Like now a hundred of my friends were all breaking up with me in a very methodical way, and I didn't see it coming, and I just kept saying, why, what do you mean you want me out?

And this is when they just all of a sudden, it was like these women I'd known for years, they were strangers and there was no compassion, there was no kindness.

It was you know what you did, Rose, you know what you did?

And I was like, no, no, you have to tell me what did I do?

Did something bad happen?

Rose?

We're not getting into it.

You know what you did?

And I'm just like, no, no, I don't know what I did.

And at this point I am so distraught.

I think I'm like hyperventilating and crying.

I think I'm ugly crying.

I think like snaw is just bubbling out of my nose and I don't have the wherewithal to demand answers.

And I'm like, so that's it, We're done here.

You want me out?

And they're like, yeah, as of tonight, you are no longer affiliated with Alpha Kyomega.

She was getting straight a's, she was on the student council, She never done anything illegal, but Rose was out and no one would tell her why.

No one has ever told me?

And did you ever pursue it further?

God, yes, for years?

Like, hey guys, it's been five years since we graduated college.

I know this is kind of weird, but I still think about it.

Does anyone want to tell me?

I've like done the thing on Facebook where I've like made the big Facebook post where I'm like, all right, does everyone remember when Rose got kicked out Alpha Kai, Like if you or anyone you know has any information, like I'm still dying to know.

And then like dozens of my friends are like, oh, I'm following this post.

What was it?

What was it?

And still to this day, no answers and like you're racking your brain.

I'm like, did I get black out drunk and sleep with someone's boyfriend?

Did you ever see any other of the sisters get kicked out?

No?

No?

And that's the thing is like, okay, let's not mince words here, like was Rosea party girl?

Yes?

Were there girls who were way worse than me?

Absolutely?

And did they get kicked out?

Never?

Does Rose refer to herself in the third person?

Yes?

Does you present the puzzling riddle?

Absolutely?

And with Jonathan quit before solving it.

Never.

Rose's college memories have all been tainted by that one day twelve years ago, But her ex sorority sisters are now adult women in their thirties.

They had to be past the college drama.

So after Rose and I part I begin reaching out to them for their help.

Hey, Amanda, this is Jonathan Goldstein.

I've been trying to get in touch Anita.

I was trying to reach you there.

Zoe, this is Jonathan Goldstein.

We'll speak soon, Claire.

I phone them in their cars.

Hi, Hey, I want to say I've got my daughter walking into ballet class.

Short.

No, of course, I phone them in their homes.

Do you have a minute to speak.

I do, I have a toddler.

To say, you know, oh yeah, no, that's fine, hy on.

Sugar, because she just stole the bag of jellying.

But yes, no, I cannot pick you up.

I'm not picking you up.

No, I'm sorry.

But not one of Rosa's ex sorority sisters can tell me why she'd been kicked out.

Some say they don't remember, it was so long ago.

Others say they never knew why.

There were nearly one hundred women in Alpha Kai, but only a handful had been in the room when Rose was kicked out.

One of these women was named Amber.

When I phone her, she's busy but tells me to call back, So a few days later I do, Hey, Amber, this is Jonathan Goldstein.

I think we spoke briefly some time ago.

Hello.

I call back, and Amber apologizes for our being disconnected, but when I ask her why Rose was kicked out again, the line goes dead.

This is odd odter Still is a conversation with an Alpha Kai sister a year younger than Rose.

She says she inherited all the disciplinary documents from Rose's year, but that one file was missing, the one detailing why Rose had been kicked out.

Things were beginning to feel Kolludi.

Hello, oh hey Rose, Hi.

I call Rose to update her, but it seems she's already gotten wind of my doings.

So I think you must have been reaching out to a bunch of different members of Alpha Kai.

Word had started getting around on Facebook about some guy snooping around on Rose's behalf.

Quickly, a consensus was reached shut this guy out.

Just the way that some of the girls were replying in the thread, it just felt like twelve years hadn't even passed.

And how do you mean?

It was just like immediately this whole group dynamic took place, and all of a sudden, instead of people acting like mature adults who are in their thirties, it was this whole like mom mentality of this is sketchy, we shouldn't respond.

And then everyone just started to follow in line and be like, yeah it was sketchy.

Yeah, I'm not gonna call them.

Yeah, Okay, we're gonna We're gonna have to go over their heads.

How Alpha ky Omega Headquarters This is season.

The Alpha Kai Omega National Headquarters is a large brick building at the end of a long tree lined cool de sac in Indianapolis, Indiana.

It oversees all Alpha ky Omega sororities across the country.

Anytime a sorority kicks someone out, it has to file a report with headquarters.

I asked Susan, the receptionist, if there might be documents that explain Rose's termination.

Okay, yes, I'm sure there are.

Okay, great?

And in your experience, is this something that comes up sometimes where people want to know why they might have been kicked out of a so or Is this unconnon?

I would think most people would know why?

Yeah, what happened in her case?

This?

This is a.

Woman by the name of Rose Shapiro.

And how do you spell her last name Shapiro?

I think it's must be spelled s h A s H no s h A P s and Peter I R O H.

Are you yeah?

I did find her in here?

Oh?

Okay?

Does it?

Does it say anything with alongside her name?

I'm just looking at a status So you're.

So then there is some information alongside her name.

I'm not gonna because I mean, I can't say anything about this.

Remember, I wouldn't know her at all.

And you know, and you're an outsider, you're not the member.

Would if Rose Shapiro were to call you herself, would she be able to find out the information?

I would think so sure.

Mm hm, Well we'll just have to see.

After the break, a couple of outsiders try to get some inside information.

Hey, Rose, Yes, Hi, Hi, how's.

It going good?

You ready to get some answers?

I tell Rose about my call with Susan the receptionist, and we hatch a plan for contacting headquarters.

I think I'll call it and connect you and I'll just be quiet.

All right, let's call.

I'm ready.

I'm ready for this.

Okay, I'm gonna call right now, Alpha Kyle Mega Headquarters this season.

Hi, Susan, my name is Rose.

And lying on my stomach on the floor of the darkened studio, I finally feel like a real life popular girl as I play with the phone cord and silently nibble from a pan of brownies.

Rose explains what happened.

Was ejected from Alpha Kai.

I was a member of Alpha ky Omega that Saya Sigma chapter.

Okay, and what's your name?

Rose Shapiro?

Okay, all right, I'm gonna give you the Mendy tar water.

Okay, before you transfer, I did have just one more question for you.

Is there any way that you can just tell from a general perspective if I'm considered as a member in good standing or as a former member?

Is there even is there anyone?

Yeah?

I think it's I think it says that you're not in good standing.

I wish I could help you, but I don't know that obviously.

Here Mendy is out this afternoon, but she's working tomorrow.

Why don't we leave a message with Mendy.

Sure, yeah, I think you should do that.

Rose leaves a message with this Mendy tar Water.

When she doesn't hear back.

After a week, we call again.

Over the next month, we keep calling with Rose leaving voicemails and me scraping weeks old brownie crust from the pan while listening in for emotionals.

Okay, you're on Rose at the tone, Please record your message, Hei, Mandy, my name.

Is Rose Susan.

The receptionist passes her off to other people at headquarters.

Someone named Gina.

Let's try Gina.

Hold on.

Then someone named Eliza Eliza Paine is not available to take your call.

Please leave a message after the tone.

Hi Eliza, this is Rose Shapiro.

Trying you again.

One morning, we phone, only to discover that Susan, the receptionist, has been disappeared, possibly for saying too much.

O Comega headquarters.

This is Cynthia or.

Susan had the day off.

Hi Cynthia.

My name is Rose Shapiro and I'm a former member.

Cynthia.

She sent Rose right back to Mendy Tarwater.

Hi, Miny, this is Rose Shapiro.

I'm the member.

In the end, after months of phone calls, Rose finally hears back from Alpha coy Omega headquarters.

They pass along a single document, a letter did April twenty first, two thousand and five.

The letter is brief, plainly stating that Rose Shapiro resigned from Alpha Kyomega of her own accord.

They have no other information to share.

We know now definitely that the only way that we're going to get anywhere with this is actually by finding a sorority girl who was there and willing to talk.

Ah.

Rose's confidence in me was waning.

While she used to drop everything for one of my updates, now she was sounding bored and distracted.

What are you doing right now?

I'm cutting potatoes, Yeah, I'm cutting potatoes.

I'm about to make some mashed potatoes.

Okay, but the cut the chopping might not be so great.

Recorded fine, my calls were becoming a nuisance.

Rose, What are you cleaning out your fridge?

Oh?

I'm done.

I was starting to feel done too.

I had nothing.

But a couple of weeks later, I get a call from one of Rose's ex sorority sisters, a woman named Tricia.

Initially, Tricia hadn't been willing to talk, but over the months she thought about it and had a change of heart.

I call Rose to share with her our good fortune.

As soon as you finished scrubbing all your cookie pants, I'm.

Not scrubbing any pants, and I'm not chopping any potatoes.

All right.

So Tricia wasn't just any old sorority sister.

She was one of the six girls in the room who kicked Rose out of Alpha Kai.

And not only that, Tricia and Rose joined Alpha Kai around the same time, and people saw them as partners in crime, goofing at parties, singing show tunes.

Only they knew she was someone Rose at legitimately liked and trusted.

I explained to Rose that since Tricia was the only person willing to speak to us, she might be our last chance to get an answer, So during the conversation, we'd need to tread lightly, and I sense that treading lightly might not be Rose's strongest suit.

The situation required coaxing, possibly even some cajoling, and caution, plenty of caution.

We would need the perfect moment for Rose to spring the question that's been gnawing at her for years?

Why did you kick me out?

So I decide that a code word is in order, a word I can use to signal to Rose that the time is right.

I have plenty of experience with code words.

Dinner party going too late and I want people out of my home.

Medicine balls, I'll say to the misses, and she'll produce a CD of my old spoken word band mattress shopping and need to communicate my bottom line while avoiding the prying ears of predatory mattress salesman.

Medicine balls, I'll say, So, every situation requires its own special code word, and the hours I'd spend crafting this one had been well worth it.

Okay, what's the code We're going.

To be so okay?

So I I was thinking maybe medicine balls.

No, that's so awkward to insert into the conversations.

Yeah, I scrambled together my list of Plan B code words toilet bowl, toilet plunger, turkey, toilet, ou de toilette.

That's very Canadian about How about if I were to say without a do or a don't?

Is that something that people say, Oh, I'd say.

Well, for the better part of an hour, Rose and I bat around ideas.

Yes, we have no tomatoes, boy, or my dog's barking.

Some people call me Maurice.

Finally Rose is satisfied.

How about I say, and so it goes.

That's what I'll show and so it goes, and so it goes.

Okay, I'm writing that down.

So that's gonna be our code word.

Okay, So when I say and so it goes, you're gonna say, you know, Tricia, like what just what happened?

We had a plan, we had a code word.

It was time for another word from our sponsors.

Hello, Hey, Tricia, Hey, so I have I have Rose on the on the line.

I think you guys can hear each other.

Rose.

Hi.

Hi.

It's been years since they've spoken, So Rose and Tricia catch up, but mostly they reminisce about homecoming, the big talent show how they were both awarded Best New Sorority Member, and they were like, we've.

Never done this before, but here you go.

Oh my god, I totally forgot about that.

We did die for best New Member.

Yeah.

The conversation eventually turns to Roses cancer going into remission, and that's when their memories diverge.

According to Tricia, after Rose was diagnosed as cancer free, she became a different person and started to veer onto what Tricia calls a bad past.

I think you got angry, and not at certain people, but just that like the situation at life.

You know, I don't necessarily remember like an anger reaction.

It's not like you were like pushing people down or plunging them in the face.

To me, I think that what I perceived was like partying with frattorney, like drinking a lot, like Yolo lifestyle, but also with like two big metal fingers up.

That's just like yo, no one's gonna tell me what to do or how to live my life.

I just have a perception of myself that's like, oh I be cancer, Like all bets are off, man, Like now I get to do what I want, like I did my time, Like now I'm like like if I want to be drunk on a Tuesday, I deserve to be drunk on a Tuesday, because hey, I just beat cancer.

Like like I think was there was you were.

Separating, the conversation was taking a turn from happy reminiscence to battling perceptions of the past.

Before things could escalate any further, something needed to be said.

I think and and so and so it goes.

I think that.

Just Rose got the memo and was back on point.

I think for me, Trish, and like, I don't know if you can understand this part of it getting kicked out, like I had no idea was coming.

Yeah, I'm sorry, And I sincerely wish that I could give you like a list of like this is what it was, this is what it was, this is what it was.

I honestly like, can't.

I can't became a common refrain.

Rose would ask why she'd been kicked out, and Tricia would say she wants to tell Rose, but she just can't.

I can't talk about it, can't get into it.

Like I wish I could give you a specific sentence of like at this Monty who said this, does that make sense?

Like I don't know it.

Wasn't making sense to me, and I worried that it wasn't making sense to Rose either, So I try to clarify literally, like, I'm not sure whether it's a matter of like you do know, but you feel an obligation to kind of hold the secrets of the story all these years later, Do you know what I mean?

Or yeah, no, I I and and maybe like I would say.

No, like was there some kind of oath or something like that, or was it because you don't remember.

Well, any CR meeting was like you're under oath.

Everything that happens in here stays in here.

And so there was a confidentiality, a big confidentiality piece to those meetings.

I get the feeling that Tricia and the rest of her sisters still feel some obligation to protect the secrets and reputation of an organization they joined in their twenties.

This is I think the hardest thing was to think of the health of the chapter as a whole, and how maintaining the health of the whole thing sometimes hurts like one or two people.

By the end of the call, Rose had become uncharacteristically quiet.

So after we all say our goodbyes, I check back in with her about how she felt the call went.

I think it sounds like she has some memories, but she's not sure where she picked them up or who she's betraying.

If she talked about them, She's always going to believe and everyone else in that room is always going to believe that there was something about my behavior that was unbecoming to the image of the sorority.

And I mean, she almost called me a cancer.

She almost said like for the health of the organization, I had to be removed.

I don't think Truce is a bad person.

I really enjoyed reconnecting with her.

I think she's a cool girl.

But ultimately, what I got from her is that she doesn't think kicking me out with a mistake.

For the next few weeks, I try to find someone, anyone who might know why Rose was kicked out.

I phone people in the alumni office, in student relations, people who weren't even in Rose's sorority, just on the long shot they might have heard something.

And then one day I get a call back from Rick.

Rick was Rose's college boyfriend.

They dated all through her illness, and when we eventually spoke, there was something he told me that seemed too strange to be a coincidence.

Hey, Hi, how are you?

Oh shit, I have to like drive through the bank.

Drive through right now, real quick.

Always a lot going on.

After Rose is done with her personal banking, I tell her the news.

I phoned up Rick.

Okay, and one of the things though, that he shared with me and I wonder, I mean, I feel like you must know this though we've not ever talked about it, is the fact that he was also kicked out of his fraternity.

Holy shit, wait what yeah?

Like at the time, he was also kicked out of his fraternity.

Of k kicked out Rick neatering ouse.

Yeah.

Rick was kicked out of his fraternity around the same time as Rose was kicked out of Alpha Kai.

Just like Rose, Rick had been the only person kicked out in years, and he never got an answer as to why.

But unlike Rose, Rick has a theory about it, one that explains why both of them got kicked out.

I suggest to Rose that maybe it'd be a good idea for her and Rick to talk.

Yeah, we should make that happen.

Hey, Jonathan, how are you good.

I've got Rose here on the other line.

Can you guys hear each other?

Hi, I can hear Rick, Hey, how are you?

Rick's now a contractor.

When I reach him, he's sitting in his idling truck at a construction site.

Not long after their breakup, Rose graduated and moved out of Florida.

The two haven't spoken in years, and this is the first time they've talked about and kicked out.

Right away, they start trading stories.

Mine was just a phone call, and it was a phone call from one of our brothers that was founding father, Chaz, and just basically said, hey, you're you're done here.

That is so insane.

You were like the responsible one.

That's so insane.

Oh my god, I don't know.

Before they get to Rick's theory, the two of them talk about old times, eventually winding their way back to the days when they were a couple.

When Rose was diagnosed with cancer, Rick actually moved her into his apartment.

He drove her to doctor's appointments, cooked her meals.

After the pink ribbons had been sold and the fundraising had ended, Rick was the one waiting at home to look after her at her most sick and vulnerable.

Do you remember being were you scared at any point?

Rick?

Like, do you fear that like Rose was gonna die.

Of course.

I mean, you hear the word cancer and that that's obviously one of the things that you're going to think about.

You know, we had been dating for a little bit, but it wasn't a great length of time before this even happened.

So you know, you take those feelings that you have for somebody and I mean, you're still developing a relationship and then all of a sudden I go through and like, hey, you know you have cancer.

So yeah, I mean the entire process is terrifying.

It's terrifying.

And I was like bald and my skin was turning gray, and like there he was like going to functions with me and being my boyfriend.

And I remember one time, I'm in the middle of chemo.

I am bald, I'm like not doing well, and we go down to Daytona to watch the NASCAR event because it's right around my birthday.

It's the beginning of July.

And then this freak thunderstorm comes out of nowhere and the temperature dropped like a crazy amount.

It downpours, We get completely soaked, and now there's like chemo, Rose is freezing.

I have no immune system I'm just like teeth chattering.

And so Rick took me over to the vendor area and he bought me this like had to tell windbreaker outfit of Darryl Earnhardt, juice.

Do you remember that?

I do you look?

You look like you pretty much belong.

With that fan base.

I looked like a twelve year old boy who was sitting in the bleachers with like his older brother's cool friend.

In spite of all they'd been through.

Pretty quickly, after her cancer went into remission, Rose broke up with Rick, and although Rick was sad, he understood it.

Rose needed to have some time to be able to go and experience life.

And so when that took place, her and I split, and a.

Lot of people are like, oh, well, you know you split because oh, she's in remission and it needs to go and kind of live her life.

Well that's kind of a shit way of doing it, because I mean, hell, didn't you take care of her?

Yeah, But I mean she's got she's got to figure herself out.

We both got it, but we got it, and nobody else really understood.

Which brings us to Rick's theory.

Rick says that after he and Rose broke up, people took sides.

Rick's friends were mad at Rose and Rose's friends were mad at Rick, and each side started rumors about the other, and in that fog of rumors, both of their good names were ruined.

It was like the breakup version of the Gift of the Magi.

And as they talk, something in Rick's theory seems to click for Rose.

Absolutely, that theory has never crossed my mind, Like I am sure someone who felt close to Rick and thought that maybe I had done him wrong or something could have gotten blown out of proportion by people who felt like defensive or protective on either side of that equation.

Absolutely, I mean I remember, you know, people coming up to me that were, I mean not even friends of mine, going oh hey, I heard you and Rose split up, and I heard she was cheating on you for two years.

Her was cheating on you for you know, the two months before y'all split with another guy from PI Cap You remember Trip, Oh yeah, he was the one kick comes by my apartment one time.

He's like, oh man, I walked into her apartment.

She was having sex with some dude on the stairs, on the.

Stairs, on the stairs.

These rumors confirmed what a lot of Ros's sorority sisters were beginning to think about her after her cancer went into remission, that she was too wild, too much of a partier.

But how do you kick out a poor, innocent cancer survivor from your sorority.

It's a lot easier if she's not so poor and innocent, if she betrayed the loving boyfriend who saw her through her illness.

These rumors must have been just what the sorority had been waiting for.

It gave them the moral high ground to get rid of her.

So while Rose's sorority sisters thought her cancer recovery had changed her, Rick saw the experience as having changed her back to the person she'd been before joining Alpha Kai.

So when she started getting into Alpha Kai, I'm like, what, Thank Really, you're.

Gonna You're gonna go that route because that's that's not her.

Rose.

Are you a Beatles fan?

Yes?

Rose had never heard the story of Pete Best.

So I explain how he was kicked out of the Beatles.

I tell her about all the different theories I'd heard for why he was kicked out, the hair, the style.

But how lately, looking at old photos of the band with Pete Best hunched in the background.

It all seems a lot simpler when you look at the old photographs of those guys of the Beatles with Pete Best altogether, Like he just doesn't look like a Beatle, you know, And in the final analysis, it's sort of like, why was he kicked out of the Beatles just because he just kind of didn't seem like a Beatle.

I get the analogy you're driving at here, and I think you're right, Like, ultimately, I just wasn't an alpha kai.

I just wasn't like them.

And I can't necessarily put into words or a definition what made them similar and made me different, But I just know that I was different.

Rose.

Have you ever considered, like, had you not gotten cancer, that maybe they would have forced you out earlier?

God?

Probably.

I think I was doing a really good job of trying to assimilate early on, and I was like, oh, my best behavior, but I think that like the real me just kept like cracking out, and then once once after going through the whole cancer thing, then it's like, uh, let's not put on airs anymore.

Like I am who I am, and I was trying really hard to like cram myself into that mold, and it just wasn't fitting, Like it just wasn't working.

Yeah, Like I think, like in having spoken to quite a few of your old sorority sisters, I mean none of them sound like you.

No, and I mean that.

I mean that in a nice way.

No, I'm totally down with that.

Like I'm a fucking maniac and that's who I am, and I've come to fully embrace that right now, Like I'm really cool with who I am.

Well you know, I'm I'm I'm uh, I'm cool with who you are.

Also, thank you.

Years after getting kicked out of the Beatles, Pete Best said he was still hopeful that maybe one day he'd find out why.

Maybe I'll run into Paul, he said, and we can talk about it.

If decades from now, Rose should run into one of her sorority sisters, I hope she won't need to talk about anything other than the weather or what she's making for supper, and then she could say or goodbyes and get back to chopping, banking and basically being the maniac that she is.

Now that the furnitures returned to it's goodwill, Now that the last month's rent is scheming with.

The damage to po take this moment to sell.

If we meant it, if we talk, we felt around for far.

From things that accidentally.

Rose.

Yes, Hi, Hi, there's a siren going back.

I know there's always there's always so much going on in your life.

Let me start with the question that probably everyone is curious about.

Have you, in the intervening years have you run into any of your sorority sisters.

No.

It was kind of a secret wish, like maybe someone will hear the podcast and they'll finally fess up to what was going on.

Yeah, but I haven't like bumped into one in town who told me like, oh, this is what happened.

It was also uh, as the kids would say, sus it's a it's.

A very insular world.

And I think the biggest takeaway I have from that whole sorority debacle is that, for whatever reason, I didn't assimilate, And instead of being frustrated by that, I've now kind of carried it like a badge of honor.

I'm not putting any energy trying to fit a square peg into a round hoole these days.

Do you feel as though you've put something to rest?

Oh?

Yeah, yeah, it feels it feels very far away.

Now, what do you think that owes to maturity?

Distance?

Time?

Time is the great interlock?

Hutter?

Absolutely, I could have just stayed out of the way, basically, and just let nature take its course, and it would have been just as successful.

I would have got here on my own.

What are you drinking there?

Some mint tea little herbal tea in the afternoon.

Wow, you've really become so mature.

Yeah, I've mellowed out a lot.

Yeah.

Hey, can I ask you a question?

Does Rose still refer to herself and the third person.

Jonathan?

Not as much?

Not as much.

I gotta admit I should bring it back.

Rose should Yeah?

Rose likes this suggestion.

There we go.

How did that feel?

Uh?

A little uncomfortable?

Yeah.

Thanks to everyone who helped put this episode together.

We'll be back next week with another Encore presentation and along with it, another update from our guest.