Wild at Heart: Teen Tales of Adventure and Mischief

Reflecting back on the pranks, bad decisions, and hijinks of their younger years, Callie and Andrea come to the conclusion that they would’ve ended up in jail if they’d grown-up together. Now that the statute of limitation has passed and the police investigators have retired, it’s finally safe to share these hilarious stories.

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Read about Andrea’s incredible Costa Rica trek in her book, Crossing Bridges

This podcast is a part of the Bright Sighted Podcast Network. Learn more here.

Transcript

  • Andrea Wady 0:00
    Tell me Tell me about the story that you told me. I'm assuming you can't get arrested now.
  • Callie King 0:08
    So we started booking down through the woods sprinted out the driveway, get in the car, we got in the car had just pulled out and saw the firetruck coming in. And then after the fire truck a little while later, we've passed a police car also coming in.
  • Andrea Wady 0:27
    Jump in with both feet. Go Big. Follow your dreams
  • Callie King 0:31
    grab life by the reins.
  • Andrea Wady 0:33
    This is how we live. Where Kelly King and Andrea Wadey two horse trainers always looking for adventure and finding
  • Callie King 0:41
    it. Join us for stories of dangerous travels wild animals, new challenges, and in the end, always learning alongside our magnificent horses. So saddle up and follow along. You're listening to grab life by the reins.
  • Andrea Wady 1:08
    We live No way. We live our life live.
  • Callie King 1:13
    I do have something to tell you that. Because if we picked you up in that airport and that sweater, you know the first thing I saw it look like one of those little fuzzy caterpillars.
  • Andrea Wady 1:27
    Well, that's nice, isn't it? And that's how the America trip starts. Here comes my friend who looks like a fuzzy cat.
  • Callie King 1:35
    But that was after. Really it was after, I think at least two circles of the airport trying to locate Well,
  • Andrea Wady 1:43
    I'm sorry, but I was expecting you to walk into the lounge to collect us. I'm sat there like well should be here in a minute. You're like yeah, no, I'm driving around the perimeter of Do you know how big Philadelphia Airport is? Honestly,
  • Callie King 1:56
    it's really big. The American service for you?
  • Andrea Wady 1:59
    Yeah. I was expecting more. I'm famous. Don't you know? So I just had so much fun last night Callie introduced me to my first American firepit. And what they call shmore smore. Sure, small, if not plural,
  • Callie King 2:19
    as well. There's smores because you rarely eat one. True, but singular would be a more true.
  • Andrea Wady 2:27
    So I had the job of being Kelly's assistant. We had our clients all around the fire pit. And Kelly is one of these people who is so brilliant at teaching. But outside of her lessons, she mostly communicates with telepathy. You're just supposed to know what she wants. So she's like, are you ready? And she comes towards me with this slight prong that looks like heated up devil horns, waving a melted marshmallow at me showering Are you ready? I didn't know whether to open my mouth or burn my fingers. And then everyone else in this pot in the fire circle shouting at me and you're not ready. I'm like, ready for what? And I'm holding a piece of chocolate in my hands because someone said chocolate. You
  • Callie King 3:10
    already had your grimy hands in the chocolate bar. So I assumed that you were preparing for this more of what the hell's the graham cracker. Oh, home digestive digestive
  • Andrea Wady 3:23
    biscuits. It's the right thing to say. But I must admit they were tasty. They were tasty when I finally got one because she dropped the first one in the fire. The second one I wasn't ready so it melted off completely sad when you burnt
  • Callie King 3:39
    your butt. It tastes better with that little bit of carbon around the outside. Just a little black and a little crispy. Puts the right flavor into the store.
  • Andrea Wady 3:48
    That's what every man says at a barbecue. Everything tastes better burns. Oh, but we've had so much fun, haven't we? You
  • Callie King 3:56
    got the hang of it. I think by the fourth one. I could hold it steady. You would just come with the crackers.
  • Andrea Wady 4:02
    Oh, it's ready. We would like a production line. Yeah. There's something about being outside though. Isn't there? Like outside, watching the stars? Round of fire? Sharing stories. I mean, it was hilarious. Tell me Callie about the story that you told me. I'm assuming you can't get arrested now to do with paper bags and your neighbors.
  • Callie King 4:26
    throw you under the bus. Well, I can't be around fire without this one it coming back into my mind. So when I was about 16 We were all in four h this is what four H kids do. My whole group of friends and I thought that it would be really fun to take a paper bag, fill it with horse poop. Put some gasoline on it so that it would burn well, because we knew about fire and put it on our friend's porch and light it on fire. We thought it would be hilarious We pictured she would come out she would kick it she would get horse poop all over but instead what happened is we use a rather large bag. So that meant that the flames went rather high. And
  • Andrea Wady 5:13
    most of your houses a wooden have wooden porches. Yeah, we didn't think that far no clearly.
  • Callie King 5:21
    So we, we ran up we put this thing on we got it lit, we ran back in the woods were all the three of us. Were all there crouched in the woods watching, laughing hysterically, like Silent laughing
  • Andrea Wady 5:34
    How big was the fire at this point?
  • Callie King 5:36
    It was like 18 inches high. wasn't super high, but it wasn't the kind of fire that you would just kick. No. And I think we also failed because we use dry horse poop, which is a bit flammable as well. People
  • Andrea Wady 5:48
    are making firebricks out of horse poo. So that stuff goes because that ship flies.
  • Callie King 5:55
    So we were sitting there we were waiting and waiting and waiting. And finally, our laughter started to die down because I think it I had this one friend Emily, who she was. She was the smart one between the series was the one that finally saw you this has gotten a little long. This isn't filling system. I think we need to get out of here. Because we'd parked our car at the end of the driveway was like a long driveway going up into this friend's house. So we started booking down through the woods sprinted out the driveway, get in the car, we got in the car had just pulled out and saw the firetruck coming in. And then after the firetruck A little while later, we passed a police car also coming in. So
  • Callie King 6:48
    Realistically when at midnight, you look at your front porch, and there's a rather large fire burning on your porch. That's
  • Andrea Wady 6:55
    intentionally been put there. That is going to make you shoot yourself. Yeah, to be fair,
  • Callie King 7:00
    the things that you don't consider when you're 16 years old.
  • Andrea Wady 7:03
    I mean, the plan was solid. I think however, you maybe didn't anticipate the results. Did you get in trouble?
  • Callie King 7:13
    Well, you know, we stayed silent for about a week
  • Andrea Wady 7:18
    nice fessing up then was a me. It was Emily.
  • Callie King 7:24
    And then I don't remember who was the first to break? It was not me. But someone Someone broke to their parents. And then it went around to all of Oh, of
  • Andrea Wady 7:34
    course it did. All hell broke loose. We
  • Callie King 7:36
    all had to go make our confession, not the walk of shame. The walk of shame, the phone call of shame, actually, I think is how it went down.
  • Andrea Wady 7:47
    How did they receive that? Did they make you like really squirm?
  • Callie King 7:52
    You know, they received it very graciously. They gave us what we were do, which was, you know, the guilt was due. But they Yeah, they took a graciously but the friendship was forever changed.
  • Andrea Wady 8:07
    Yeah, yeah. They're like, No, they are, the weirdos do not go around with those lost children. I have a funny fire story that I've just remembered. In England, we have a thing called Boxing Day. And it's not the day you will punch the crap out of each other. It's the day after Christmas. It's called Boxing Day. And we would do to go off to a family gathering. And we lived in the countryside, and we had a multi fuel stove. Like that was our heating. And we used to put these coal things on there. And anyway, we had to change it cheap. Take the ashes out and we had a wooden fence that went right around our garden. So Chris was pulling out the ashes. Oh, no, it was me. It was my fault. Actually. I pulled out the ashes and I threw them on the ash pile. But as usual, I was rushing, not really paying attention in my pajamas, not ready to go yet. Run out with the ashes. Throw them on, walk away, come out with some more and realize the fence was on fire. And it was going and we had pine trees all around our place. So there's all like the pine needles and they go
  • Callie King 9:19
    up quick. They go up quick. You have a little old Christmas tree. Yeah, they go up real quick.
  • Andrea Wady 9:23
    They go. Those buggers burn. So I was like, oh, no, oh, no. Oh, no. So I ran back in and said to Chris, the fence is on fire. So he's coming out and he's trying to put it out and he yells back. I hate to say it but we're going to need the fire brigade. So okay. So I ran the fire brigade. And they come quick in England, but then they did anyway. Chris is out. Chris is out there trying to bash down the flames and all that I'm inside. Aware that I'm in my pajamas and all the firemen are coming and they're probably quite hot. So I'm sorry. screw the fire. I'm getting changed I'm just getting water quickly getting changed and I came out with a saucepan full of water completely changed and my hair brushed and he just slipped over the news just Are you kidding me and with that the fire brigade came into the gate is never let me live it down. He said Don't ever let me be in a house fire golf a bit with you.
  • Callie King 10:28
    So was there? Was there anyone that had you not been with Chris? You might have gotten a day.
  • Andrea Wady 10:34
    Maybe there was two I went to school with I think all firemen a heart. There's just something about that isn't that?
  • Callie King 10:42
    I don't know why we didn't consider that. We probably could have played it. We could have turned around and came in behind that. Just stopping in for a visit. We saw this coming up. I thought there might be a problem at your house
  • Andrea Wady 11:02
    is too funny.
  • Callie King 11:03
    Yet another limitation of 16 year old minds? Yeah.
  • Andrea Wady 11:06
    Yeah, you obviously didn't quite get that together. Brilliant. lovin.
  • Callie King 11:11
    So we're here. We're recording this in what? What was my childhood bedroom, actually, because we're back here at the farm, and I lived in the basement. So there's no windows, just a very small window well, and the lighting is terrible. It's kind of this white. What did you say did an insurance office was like an
  • Andrea Wady 11:34
    insurance office with like the yellowing, plastic light things. And they
  • Callie King 11:38
    don't all work. So it creates this really weird shadowing effect all around the room.
  • Andrea Wady 11:42
    I'm gonna be honest, the first time I came here, and we were filming my online course. And you said you're going to stay in the basement at Caitlin's. I was like, Okay, no problem. I got to the kitchen and then there's like this freaky trapdoor thing. And down I go. I was so scared. I was so scared. We don't have basements in England, we don't have this whole thing. And honestly, it is just like something out of a horror movie where you come down these creaky wooden stairs into this basement and I'm like, How well do I actually know these people? Like am I going to be kept down here for the next five years It freaked me out. And when I'd come in at night, I'd have to get down the stairs and then across to this bedroom through this, like shady sketchy I'm gonna die area of the basement. It's horrendous. But
  • Callie King 12:38
    you got to describe this trapdoor because this trap doors are very common in houses these days wondering
  • Andrea Wady 12:42
    Oh, who needs a bloody trapdoor? Oh my God. Let me just live my trapdoor. And I point out there's two. You've got one in the bedroom bit and one out in the other freaky bit.
  • Callie King 12:56
    But you need multiple escapes.
  • Andrea Wady 12:58
    Oh, now I can't sleep tonight. This
  • Callie King 13:01
    trapdoor it's not just a normal trapdoor because the thing is smoosh bolts from the outside. You lifted it. Have you had to open it? Yeah. You got to really put your back so she
  • Andrea Wady 13:11
    can't shut it. I'm like no way are you shutting that trapdoor with me downstairs
  • Callie King 13:14
    or you can open it from the inside, it weighs so much. It's very you can't push it up, you got to start, you grab the little brass handle, and you got to get into a good squat. And then you just got to put your back into it, heat it up, and then it's got a chain that wraps around that breath. So
  • Andrea Wady 13:28
    the love of God, I'm going to the Holiday Inn I'm not staying here anymore.
  • Callie King 13:36
    I have a very memorable story of being in here. I remembered as soon as I came down. So my bed used to be here, like against this wall the other way. And I was this is probably like 17 So this would be a little bit after I was a bit more matured after the incident. The poop incident route not much by much. And it was early in the morning. And I was sleeping. And my parents used to travel a lot. So from the time I was about 15 I would have long stretches of time that I was just I had the place to myself because my parents were out they were
  • Andrea Wady 14:14
    home alone at 15 Yes potentially illegal just say what okay, you survived in your basement with your trap door. What if afford a conventional upbringing
  • Callie King 14:27
    rules in Pennsylvania a bit different clearly. So so my parents were gone. And early in the morning I woke up to the door opening not the trapdoor, the trapdoor I had left open because I had come down the night before when you would be able to get out. I heard the front door opening. And I lay there in bed for a moment thinking that maybe it was just my imagination. And then I heard footsteps coming
  • Andrea Wady 15:00
    Oh my God, because
  • Callie King 15:01
    you know, you stay now here you can really hear
  • Andrea Wady 15:03
    Yeah, we're staying here and not at night. I can tell you that.
  • Callie King 15:09
    So I heard these footsteps coming across. And for a few moments, I froze. And then I started thinking, What should I do? I need to be able to defend myself when whoever, because it seemed like they were on a mission. They weren't just like creeping around the house. They were headed straight towards the trapdoor. You could tell by the direction of the steps. So I was looking around my heart rates gone up, and I, you're in you're in America now. So you should be familiar with Jack Daniels whiskey. Yeah. So you know the big bottles. It's like a gallon. Yeah. Of jacked Yeah. Oh, yeah. If you tweeted someone with that it would hurt. So I had one of those. Yeah. And it was almost full.
  • Andrea Wady 15:48
    So donut 15. Clearly not in England.
  • Callie King 15:53
    I think it was a new bottle. So I thought okay, this is the most suitable weapon that I have. So I got up because I was over there by this door. And I stood here with my bottle. She's currently
  • Andrea Wady 16:07
    squatting against the wall looking like she's playing imaginary baseball.
  • Callie King 16:12
    I figured that as soon as they would throw up in the door. I would bash whoever it was on the head. I would be okay. You just
  • Andrea Wady 16:18
    killed them. Maybe oh my god, is there a dead body? I
  • Callie King 16:23
    wonder what the steak was. I heard I heard them coming down the stairs. And then I had another insight that maybe it would be better if I pretended I was still sleeping in my bed. Hope that and then I would have the opportunity to see who it was in the moment before I thrashed them with the bottle. So I wait I gotta wait it under the covers. I had my bottle ready to go. And I heard the person coming across there down the stairs across door open. And in walks my boyfriend at the time. Oh my god, but like actually very new boyfriend. I think we had. We had been teething maybe a few weeks. And he was kind enough that he had come over and brought milk. Oh, because the evening before I didn't have any milk in the fridge. Oh. And luckily, I had pulled down the cover. And I saw who it was. And I saw
  • Andrea Wady 17:25
    his parents know he's missing. Yeah. Did they ever find him again? I could. I don't know how you did it. home by yourself at like 15 in a basement. Oh, it was 500 I'm sure it was I know. I wouldn't have liked to autoCrat myself. We
  • Callie King 17:45
    had good parties. I thought that wasn't even the highlight for me though because I love being alone. So being able to live alone and just to go play with my horses. I mean, there's that I can bring the Go back inside because she had been exiled to the barn before you lived
  • Andrea Wady 18:04
    with your goat in the house at 15. I mean, Child Protective Services would come in in 2023. carting you off. We found this little girl who had to open a trap door to get to her bed, but she was with her goat with me. There's nothing weird about that. Callie really totally normal.
  • Callie King 18:23
    There's probably a reason I didn't have many friends in high school.
  • Andrea Wady 18:27
    You're not going home to play with her. Good Lord. But I did have Matilda. So did the goat
  • Callie King 18:35
    and the relationship with a with Ben who almost got smashed by the whiskey bottle was 11 years. So I had some strong relations. Yeah, you
  • Andrea Wady 18:44
    do and you still do. I value our friendship endlessly. No laughter but I'm not staying another night in this bloody basement.
  • Callie King 18:55
    Well, you got to trapdoors and a window well to escape.
  • Andrea Wady 18:57
    I'm gonna get out that tiny little sliver of a window when
  • Callie King 19:01
    my parents were home that's how I got
  • Andrea Wady 19:06
    Okay, so I'm looking guys, this isn't a window it's like an air vent. It's an air vent. The
  • Callie King 19:12
    window itself time it was easy but it was the window well has that metal thing around it. So it was really a squeezed because then the Deco is right over top. So it was really a squeezed to go over top of the metal and under the deck
  • Andrea Wady 19:25
    So you go out the air vent so in your basement this is just paint the picture so you've got the trapdoor you can't open. Your parents have locked you down here while they've gone off traveling around the world. And then you crawl out through an air vent and shimmy underneath the patio to get out and play with your goat. That That pretty much sums it up while swinging Jack Daniels.
  • Callie King 19:45
    Actually I think I used that. That escape I used mostly to go and to escape in the middle of the night and to sit on my grandfather's horse is stable because I wasn't allowed to ride And I didn't have. This was before I had my own horses. And I wasn't allowed to ride my grandfather's horse. He had a buggy horse. My grandfather was Amish. So he had him in a stall. And he told me that he wasn't trained to be ridden that he was only trained to pull the buggy. But I didn't believe him, of course. So I went over and I took one of those little ankle weights that you wrap around your foot, like kick in the air. I took one of those, and I sat it on his back. And he didn't realize, so I thought, well, that proves he's trained to be rid and he'll be fine.
  • Andrea Wady 20:33
    So I caught up on what could possibly go wrong. Shot in a stall, getting on a horse that's never been ridden.
  • Callie King 20:43
    I have always loved being a teacher. When I was a little kid, I would make these different lectures and classes on obscure topics like equine diseases, and lameness. And we're here Andrea and I are connected because of horse class. And horse class is my educational company, and a community of horse people from countries all around the world that are united by wanting to be the best that we can for ourselves and for our horses. And we publish free videos, free resources and premium courses, in writing tips in horse training, information and inspiration, and also how to take the best possible care of your horse. If you want to learn more, check out our website, horse class.com. We've got the link in the show notes.
  • Andrea Wady 21:42
    Getting on a horse that's never been ridden. We used to do that as kids actually we in in Cornwall, we used to, I didn't have my own pony to begin with. And we'd find horses in fields and encouraged them to come over to the hedges with carrots. And then just launch ourselves in the general direction of their back. We had no idea if they were like highly strong. You know, you see the kids now they're coming out. And I'm not saying there's anything wrong with this. But you know, they've got their air vests in their helmets, and they're just, you know, all the insurance forms are signed. We literally were in flip flops, shorts and a T shirt and we'd be like, Come here, come here bringing him get him to come over with carrots and literally just jump on no saddle, no bridle. And actually I did get knocked out. To be fair, it didn't. The success rate was not that high.
  • Callie King 22:35
    I was gonna ask that what was the success rate?
  • Andrea Wady 22:38
    Go with 5050
  • Callie King 22:40
    That's good.
  • Andrea Wady 22:41
    I thought it was quite good. What did you consider a success? Staying on?
  • Callie King 22:45
    For how long? Eight seconds.
  • Andrea Wady 22:49
    A bit longer. No longer no like, like, start to finish I had high high hopes start to finish several times bucked off one time knocked out one time scraped down a wall that hurt. The hedge that I'd use to try and climb on I got on the horse was so mad. And he just ran my leg straight down and our walls they call them Cornerstone hedges. And they're like stacked stone that hurt like buggery that did. And that's probably not a politically correct term. But it's something that we use in England a lot, but not the actual literal meaning. Obviously, we can edit this outright. And but there was this one horse that I used to get on and she was really sweet. She'd give me a little ride around the field. And she was cute. But yeah, we never got caught. No one ever saw us. I'm not sure anyone really cared. Our parents never knew where we were. I mean, I was teasing you about being home alone. But I mean, you were home alone for weeks on end. But we'd be out all day, and we'd literally go miles and miles and miles and we always thought no one knows where I where we are. But we did you know the milkman would head on down through the villages. And by the time he got to our village had so I've seen the kids, they're like eight miles away with, you know, a dog on a piece of string and off they go. We had so much freedom. I'm so glad we grew up when we did. Yeah. Because in this day and age, Callie, if you've put horse poo in a big bag and set fire to it on a torch, you'd be in juvie.
  • Callie King 24:21
    Probably not if you don't get caught. That's
  • Andrea Wady 24:24
    the truth of it and you didn't Fess up.
  • Callie King 24:27
    That's the truth. Yeah, I can relate to being very grateful for for growing up with a childhood that had a lot of freedoms. Like I remember. I remember putting Matilda in my backpack. She was a pygmy goat. So she was really small, especially when she was
  • Andrea Wady 24:43
    a baby. That was a big backpack. You're quite tiny so so
  • Callie King 24:47
    put Matilda backpack with her head and she liked her feet out. So she would be like this in the backpack. I would put it on and then I would ride my bicycle out because my grandmother lived three miles from from our house. Hear, so I would bicycle over there and hang out at Grandma's house, and then I would bicycle back and then when Matilda got too big to go in the backpack, then she would just run beside me on the bicycle and we'd go over and, and come back. And it really it was that's a Dilek Yeah, I really I really value having that. I wouldn't
  • Andrea Wady 25:20
    want to be growing up now. When I think of the crazy stuff that I've done that would have been on social media. It wouldn't have been good. It probably
  • Callie King 25:28
    would have ruined this podcast it probably would have people would have searched your name and seen all that.
  • Andrea Wady 25:32
    Trying to think what's out there now. Now I'm worried you are listening to the grab the reins podcast with Andrea Wadey
  • Callie King 25:41
    and Kelly King.
  • Andrea Wady 25:43
    Welcome aboard.
  • Callie King 25:44
    Wait, does it grab the reins?
  • Andrea Wady 25:47
    We have no idea what the
  • Callie King 25:50
    podcast name is.
  • Andrea Wady 25:54
    Grab life by the reins or did I say
  • Callie King 25:56
    grab the rain?
  • Andrea Wady 26:00
    Swire ride bridle US Marine you are listening to the grab life by the reins podcast with Andrea Wadey and Kelly King. Welcome aboard.
  • Callie King 26:11
    Let's ride.
  • Andrea Wady 26:12
    Yeah, ha okay. Oh yeah, cuz Xiao Chica Ching Ching, ring a ding ding okay, this poor editor's like can I couldn't get a drink now. Oh my God. What a crack up. What a pair. That was so fun. Saddle up we ride it dawn. I've always wanted
  • Callie King 26:49
    Thank you for listening to grab life by the reins. If you want to see ridiculous photos from our adventures, be the first to know when we release new episodes and be a part of war shenanigans. Join our email family at grab life by the reins.com.
  • Andrea Wady 27:06
    We'll see you in the next program.

This podcast is a part of the Bright Sighted Podcast Network. Learn more here.