Hello.Hi. Hi, I'm just out for a walk.What do I owe the pleasure?
I have a story and I thought that you in particular might be interested in it because it takes place in Canada.
It does create a special, my ears perk up a little.
I hear Canada, yeah.It's like my mouth starts to salivate.
In fact, it's not just about Canada, but it's about going to school in Canada, which you did.
Yeah, I did.I was schooled in Canada.I went through French immersion. all the way from kindergarten up until 11th grade.
Could you introduce the show in French?
Oh boy, that's a lot to ask.What's the name of the episode?
Bonjour.L'installation aujourd'hui, ça c'est Locke.Je vous souhaite une bonne écoute.
That's beautiful.And there are the sounds of sirens to ring us in.
Yeah, the sirens of good narrative storytelling.Watch out, everybody.
I'm Kalila Holt, and this is Heavyweight.Today's Heavyweight Short, Locke.Right after the break.
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Hi, is this Lachlan?Hello, can you hear me?
Despite his lack of confirmation, this is indeed Lachlan, or Lach for short.Hi, it's Khalilah calling, how are you?Oh, hi, how are you? Locke is 20 years old.
When I ask him what he does, he says he plants trees, but also he's traveling, but also he's kind of a student.He's a disorienting person to talk to.Like, despite the fact that we exchanged multiple emails setting up this call.
I'll be honest, I did forget the note's name, but yeah.
And in fact, it's Locke's questionable memory that we're here to talk about today, because he's come to me with an improbable story, something he recalls vividly, but that no one else believes actually happened.
In revisiting this memory, Locke hopes to expose an injustice, to unseat a tyrant, to confront a nemesis he's obsessed over since he was just five years old.
Madame Nicole, Locke's kindergarten French immersion teacher.
She wore, like, mean-looking glasses, and she kind of scowled all the time.
Locke describes her as an exact double of Edna Mode from The Incredibles.
That's exactly what she looks like.Really tiny, short black hair cut off really sharply, like a 90-degree angle. and she would just kind of walk around and do mean shit all the time.
But what set her apart from your garden-variety evil French teacher was one particular habit.According to Locke, Madame Nicole was a thief, a cheese thief.Madame Nicole stole cheese from her five-year-old students.
Sometimes I would just walk into class, and it was before she'd start the lesson, It was just like, oh, do you have cheese today?And I'd say, yeah.So she'd take it.
You kind of never see, like sometimes if I was in trouble and she would like, it would be a punishment.She'd like take my cheese as punishment, but it's hardly a punishment because she was going to do it anyway.She didn't even refrigerate it.
She would put it in this cabinet, like in a little wooden cabinet, and it had a padlock on it. Like, as if I was gonna try to steal my cheese back.
Can you believe that?I can't really believe it.It seems made up.Like something a cartoon villain would do.
I know how it sounds, believe me.Like, it's pretty ridiculous.But that's the problem, because I've told so many people and they just laugh it off.Like, I'm running a crew for a firefighter this season.
Fighting forest fires being another of Locke's many pursuits.
So, like, I have to build some sort of credibility with my crew members.And the first time I met a bunch of my crew members, I told them this cheese story.And they all started laughing and saying, like, oh, come on, it's bullshit.
But now all these people who are about to work for me, the only thing they know about me is that I have this, like, totally false cheese story.
So for Locke, the frustration isn't simply that this happened, but that no one believes that it happened.Locke has lost not only his cheese, but his credibility.
Because the joy of sharing an unbelievable story lies in ultimately convincing your audience that it's true.When you're done, you want them to think, wow, how completely wild.Not, this man is a total liar.
I would just like to be able to tell the story that people believe in. some sort of validation that I'm not completely insane would be cool.
And so, Locke wants me to obtain a confession from the thief herself, to prove that this really went on.And what's more, he wants me to find out why it went on.
Because I don't think there's anyone in the world that is that big of a fan of cheese.That, you know, like, you're risking your career.Well, I don't know if it's worth firing over, but, you know, she's risking getting in trouble for this.
Like, I just don't get it.I just don't understand at all what was going on there.
Before I get to what was going on there, I want some reassurance that anything was going on at all.Because if Locke can't even remember scheduling a phone call last week, what are the chances he accurately recalls something from when he was five?
I don't wanna go around falsely accusing this elderly French-Canadian woman of larceny.So I ask Locke if he's still in touch with anyone else from that class who might be able to corroborate his memories.
Yeah, I have a few friends.One of them, though, is a notorious liar.But then, my other friend, he's a pretty reliable guy.
I start with Locke's liar friend, who rustles the phone around, as liars are wont to do, and then hangs up on me.But Locke's other friend, Colin, reliable as build, schedules a time to talk.
I've known Locke since the class that we're actually talking about.And I always thought he was so weird because he would eat the whole apple, including the core.This was his kid in kindergarten.
And that's just like kind of his like personality is kind of like hardcore, like after he finished an apple, there was just nothing left.
In other words, Locke's a guy who never gives up on some things, like apples or bringing cheese thieves to justice.
He kind of commits to like weird things, like he has a hard time committing to university, but he's like so committed to getting to the bottom of the story with them, Nicole.
But on that front... I know Locke has these stories about her stealing cheese, and I can't confirm or deny that.
Colin has no memory of any cheese stealing.What's more, his sister was also in Madame Nicole's class and she doesn't remember it either.
Like honestly, I wanna say it didn't happen, but you can also tell that he's like frustrated by the fact that I don't remember.
Knowing Locke, Colin says, it's all too likely the story is something he invented and then convinced himself was true.
I'm not altogether surprised by this turn of events, but I am disappointed that the kindergarten cheese burglar seems to be no more than a myth.And like a terrier on the scent of some buried brie, I can't help but dig a little more.
As it turns out, there are two other people who were students of Madame Nicole, Locke's older brothers.So I set up some time with his middle brother, Finn.Hello?Hi, Finn.This is Finn.
Oh!Sorry, I completely forgot.
A family trade, I guess.Finn backs up Colin's characterization of his brother as an untrustworthy fabulist.
Locke's like a fantasy liar.Like, Locke believes the things he's lying about a lot of the time.If I were you getting a call from Locke and Locke only, I would hang up and move on.
Speaking with Finn, it seems increasingly foolish for me to put any stock in Locke's barrel of lies.Still, like a terrier with a metalworking apprenticeship, I forge ahead.When I say Madame Nicole, what are your associations?
So immediately it's cheese.We'd all take out our sacks and she would like, ooh, fromage, and come in and like grab one from somebody and then put it in her little Tupperware and go back to her desk.
— So Finn, like Locke, remembers the thievery, which means Madame Nicole had been stealing cheese for years before Locke even came on the scene.
— It's so weird, but it's true.That's the weirdest part of it all.
— I also speak with Locke's oldest brother, Owen.
— I love cheese.My mom knew that.I'm, like, a cheese fanatic.
Owen backs up Locke's story, too.He tells me in kindergarten, he used to save his precious cheese for last, making its cruel theft all the more painful.
The clearest memory is probably of the first time it happened.And it was a Babybel, you know, this red beacon in my lunchbox.And so just out it goes.And she said, merci.
For our Anglophone listeners, merci is the French word for thank you. And with that, I'm ready to get a confession from the voleur herself.Or voleuse, I guess, would be the feminine.I haven't taken French in a long time.
I'm ready to approche Madame Nicole.If only I can find her. When you're looking for something you've lost, people always tell you to retrace your steps.So I retraced Locke's steps back to his old school.
If you need to speak to someone in the main office, please press zero.To find out if Madame Nicole might still be teaching there.No, she's not here.She's retired.Okay.Do you happen to have any contact info for her?
If you sent me something, I could send it to her. And so I find myself composing a delicate email, something vague and accusation-less enough not to scare off Madame Nicole.There's an old student of yours, I say.
He still thinks about you all the time.He wants to confirm a memory.But maybe I'm not delicate enough because weeks go by and I never hear back.The thief is on the lam.
If Madame Nicole likes cheese half as much as Locke remembers, surely she must be getting her fix somewhere.So with no other leads on how to find her, I try the only thing I can think of.
I look up every cheese shop within a 10-mile radius of Locke's old school and start calling.She was described to me as Edna Mode from The Incredibles, if you've seen that movie. — I'm sorry?You're asking about a specific customer?
— Small, big, like, glasses.
— Unfortunately, no.— Thank you for calling, and have a graceful day.
— I do learn, though, that Madame Nicole isn't the only burglar out there.She's actually part of a grand tradition of cheese theft.
There's some issues with Parmigiano-Reggiano, like wheels of Parm, because you're looking at like a thousand bucks a wheel, right?A lot of theft in the past, you know, you hear the stories.
I have not heard the stories, but by now I'm all in.So when I get off the phone, I go looking for them.
According to a report from the Consortio del Formaggio Parmigiano-Reggiano, $3 million worth of Parmesan cheese is stolen every year in Italy alone.Time Magazine says cheese in general is actually the most stolen food in the world.
And after my first 14 YouTube videos on the subject, I let autoplay, like Jesus, take the wheel.
Right now, police are looking for 20,000 pounds of stolen cheese.
This teen's in trouble with police... There are still some holes in this case, but detectives say they have stringed all the evidence together.
holes in this case, say cheese.It seems like it's physically impossible for anyone reporting on cheese theft to do so without making some terrible pun.
And as someone reporting on this topic myself, I feel an obligation to my fellow journalists to join the cheese pun fray. But jokes like that are just really not my thing.
I'd find it physically uncomfortable to, for example, characterize Madame Nicole as a monster or to say that I hope to close the queso.
It makes me want to throw up to think of asking something like, did you have an accomplice or did you work Prove alone?You wouldn't catch me dead referring to all that cheese sitting in a locked cabinet as a feta compli.
I'm finally saved from the depths of my despair and cheese video induced madness by two critical pieces of information.The first comes from Locke's family.They find an old report card from that time and on it is Madame Nicole's full name.
The second comes from my network of spies on the street, courtesy of Locke's honest friend, Colin.
I was talking to my mom and she said she might've spotted her in like our neighborhood.
She was walking near this big apartment building, Colin says.Maybe she lives there?And when I look up Madame Nicole's name together with the address he gave me, I find a phone number.Hello?
Hey, Locke.Hey, is this Goliath?It is.Oh.The oh of a man who forgot he'd scheduled something.It's been a while since Locke and I last spoke.First, he was working in Panama for a month and a half, and then he was deep in the Canadian wilderness.
So I've been eagerly waiting to tell him how I finally got a hold of Madame Nicole. When I caught her at home, Madame Nicole told me she didn't want to be interviewed for a podcast.She's a private person, she said.
And on top of that, she's not a technological person.She, quote, hates all the machines.She doesn't have a computer or a cell phone.I imagine even hearing the word podcast gave her the feeling of a demon entering her home.
She told me that she would, however, be happy to talk to Locke, and for him to relay the conversation back to me.So I am wondering if you would call her and then tell me what happened after the fact.
This is not the reaction I was expecting.I thought Locke would be over the moon to hear this news, but he sounds, if anything, under the moon.
So, kind of the reason that I approached you guys was because I thought it was cool how, like, you'd act as the interlocutor and sort of just, like, manage the situation.So, one person doesn't have to actually... Sure.
So... I... Jeez.Yeah, that's... Hmm.
It's like locks reduced to a scared five-year-old kid again, afraid of getting in trouble with the teacher.So I offer a security blanket, an idea Madame Nicole has agreed to as well.
We could have Mona, who's one of the other producers, listen in on the call if you need help figuring out what to say.Hmm.
Selfishly, I also want Mona there as an insurance policy, someone who can rat on Locke if he slips into one of his fantasy lies.
Locke and I agree to figure out the details in the coming days, but the coming days go by, and then the days that come after that, and Locke doesn't respond to any of my messages.
When he finally does get in touch, it's with an email that says, a dog ate my phone, I think. I'm starting to see why Locke has had conflict with his teachers.
But after several more weeks of excuse-making, Locke admits that he'll be free one afternoon for a phone call.So Mona and I dial.
Locke, hey, this is Mona from Heavyweight.
I'm here with Khalilah.Hello.Hello. This time, we catch him waiting in line for his order at a Tim Hortons.For our Anglophone listeners, that's Canada's off-brand version of Dunkin' Donuts.
Yeah, sorry, I totally mixed up the day off that I had.But yeah, what are we doing?What's the plan here?
The plan, we remind him, is to call Madame Nicole.
Wait, sorry, do you mean today we'll give her a call?
I hang up and cross my fingers while Locke and Mona phone.They'll report back afterwards.For a long half hour, I sit on the floor, wondering what could be going on.And after speaking with Madame Nicole, Locke and Mona call me back.
I'm dying to know what happened.It was amazing.Locke tells me how Madame Nicole responded to his accusation right away.And she told him, incredibly, yes. she absolutely stole children's cheese.
Okay, I'm rattled right now.
According to Madame Nicole, the thievery was a teaching tool.
She was really like drilling in the fact that she wanted us to know the word fromage.And she claims that everybody knows the word fromage now, so it obviously worked.
While I can appreciate Madame Nicole's willingness to try out-of-the-box teaching methods, fromage does not, to me, seem like that hard of a word to learn.There had to be something else behind it.And it turns out, there was.
She said that she knew the kids were getting mad when she would do it, when she would steal the cheese, and she just thought the looks on their faces were so funny.That's why she kept doing it.
They looked stunned, she told Locke, like they'd just been slapped.It was, in her words, fantastique.
Like, in that way, you could kind of perceive it as, well, she's a little crazy because she's getting a kick out of devastating these kids.But at the end of the day, it was just hilarious.
So it was just like a running joke with herself?
A joke that made an impression. All these years later, Locke likely wouldn't even remember Madame Nicole were it not for these cheese shenanigans.So maybe her teaching tool worked after all.
Maybe she understood that you tend to remember the negative over the positive.Maybe she needed to keep things lively for herself to be able to pass that energy on to the kids.Or maybe she just saw an easy way to get her hands on some free cheese.
Like she was adamant about how much she liked cheese, that's for sure. We weren't wrong on that front.
And she says that the parents, they knew about it and they also thought it was funny.So at Christmas, at the end of the year, she would get gifts of like wheels and wheels of cheese from the parents.
So clearly everybody else thought it was funny except for the kids.
Yeah, I think those are the highlights.How does it feel to have this confirmed directly from her mouth?
It's cool.Is this cool?I don't know.It feels weird to say that it's over, but the story is complete now.I actually know what happened.
Locke did fantasize some of the specific details.Madame Nicole said there was no locked cabinet, she'd eat the cheese right away, and she never thieved as a punitive measure.But he was right about the basic truth.
Indeed, he had a kindergarten teacher who routinely stole her students' cheese.And next time he tells this story, if anyone thinks this man is a total liar, he can point to this episode as proof of the whole thing.
Her voice is exactly how I imagined, but the tone is not.She's so friendly.
Yeah, she did.And my brothers, too.I was telling her where they had ended up.She seemed to take a real genuine pleasure and joy out of knowing that some of her students are having success. And really, it turns out she's just a genuinely great person.
I couldn't have been more wrong about her.
Yeah, your opinion really did a 180.
Yeah, it really did.I want to redact all the terrible things I might have said in the past.She's great.
The cartoon villain of Locke's memories has melted into a real person.Speaking with her all these years later, he's able to see his old teacher not the way a five-year-old would, but as another adult.
Like, now that I'm more mature, I see that this is all actually really funny.And if I were a kindergarten teacher, I'd probably be doing similar things.
And in fact, Locke may be doing similar things pretty soon, because he tells me he's getting tired of his vagabond lifestyle, that he's ready to put down some roots.He's thinking about becoming a teacher.
And if he does, he wants to be the fun kind, the kind that keeps his students guessing, the teacher they'll remember for years down the road.
Now that the furniture's returning to its goodwill home Now that the last month's rent is scheming with the damage deposit Take this moment to decide If we meant it, if we tried Or felt around for far too much From things that accidentally touched
This heavyweight short was produced by Phoebe Flanagan, Mohini Madgaukar, and me, Kalilah Holt, along with Jonathan Goldstein.Our supervising producer is Stevie Lane.
Special thanks to Pierce Cinghy, Wendy Zuckerman, and extra special thanks to Locke's mom, Dawn.Editorial guidance from Emily Condon.Bobby Lord mixed the episode with original music by Christine Fellows, John K. Sampson,
Blue Dot Sessions, Sean Jacoby, and Bobby Lord.Additional music credits can be found on our website, gimletmedia.com slash heavyweight.Our theme song is by The Weaker Thans, courtesy of Epitaph Records.
Follow us on Twitter at heavyweight, on Instagram at heavyweightpodcast, or email us at our new address, heavyweightshow at gmail.com.We'll be back next week with our last episode of the season.
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