The Wrong Adam
One ring, lost then returned by a stranger who somehow knew his name. A ten-minute field interview recorded from a moving rental car during Grey's bachelor party.
A ten-minute interview recorded from a moving rental car during Grey's bachelor party. Blade hosts. Adam Lavigne answers — no relation to Avril. Over the course of the recording Adam reports one lost wedding band, one improbable recovery, one lost wallet, and zero lessons learned.
Four people in one car. Three of them talk.
Roles as they appear in the log below.
Ryan Scanlan
Driving
Statement given
No statement
Driver status at time of collection
Before anything else could be established, the record had to address what happened at the intersection.
Adam, how do you feel today?
Good.
Earlier you mentioned something about not being able to execute a three-point turn. We did see an emotional side come out of you that was a little shocking. Any comment?
I didn't do that. That wasn't like that.
Adam's a great guy, and he's been driving all week, and he's been doing great. But I will say he did have a little freak-out about a three-point turn. I thought he had room and he thought he didn't. Then he drove the wrong way down the road for about a mile before he decided to whip it around. When he finally did, the car bottomed out.
Adam's account and Alex's account do not agree. No further reconciliation was attempted.
Reported loss of one wedding band
Recently married. Two days from departure. One item off the finger and gone.
Congratulations, by the way, on the recent engagement and marriage. But there was another kind of — I guess you'd call it a lost item, or a whoopsie-doo. Anything you want to say about that?
Before I came on this trip I was getting ready to leave, and I lost my wedding ring at a really crucial time. I had two days left before I was coming to Puerto Rico with my friends, three of which are in the car right now.
So this is the wedding band that belonged to you.
My wedding band. It was on my finger, and it slipped off, and I lost it, and I was fully devastated. Just incredibly sad.
Were you aware in the moment that the ring had been lost? Do you know specifically when that happened?
I was aware it was lost when I was sad.
And how much longer did it take you to become sad from this?
It was immediate. As soon as I lost it, I was sad.
For the listeners at home, what we're trying to piece together is what came first — losing the ring, or the sadness.
Okay. So — I went rock climbing. When I climb, I put my ring on my keychain, on the carabiner for my keys. When I got back to my apartment I clipped my keys onto my pants, and the ring slipped off and fell right there at the entrance. I didn't know that at the time. I spent about four hours retracing my steps looking for it, and ultimately gave up.
And how did your wife take it?
She was super cool about it. She was like, it's just a ring. It's a symbolic thing. It isn't actually what we have together. We still have each other, we don't need the ring. And I was like, you're the best. And then she was like, let's get a pizza. And I was like, that sounds pretty good. That might fix this a little bit.
Elsewhere in the recording Adam notes, unprompted and on the record, that he deals with mild depression, and Blade says the same is true for several people in the car. It passes in about ten seconds and the conversation moves on. It is kept here because it happened, and because the group treated it as an ordinary thing to say out loud.
The envelope was addressed to a different Adam
The ring came back before the pizza did. It came back in a manila envelope with Adam's first name on it, handwritten, which nobody in the building had any way of knowing.
We were leaving the apartment and I go to look at the mail that's piled up where we get our packages. My wife goes, there's an envelope with your name on it. And I'm like, there are other people named Adam in the world. Then I look at it, and it's my name written ornately on this manila envelope. Just Adam. I flip it over and there's a woman's name on the back, and it says thanks.
So I'm feeling the envelope, and it feels like my wedding ring. Exactly the same size. I rip it open, because I'm not wasting any time at this point — I'm not ██████fucking around. And inside there's a little jewelry bag with my wedding ring in it.
How does anyone know your name?
That's the thing. We were dumbfounded. Nobody knew I'd lost it, and the ring isn't engraved. So I go find another piece of mail with her name and apartment number on it, and I say, let's go knock on her door and get to the bottom of this.
She opens the door slowly, peeking around the side. I go, hey, my name's Adam, you returned my ring, thank you so much, I was devastated. And she says — your name's Adam? And I say yeah. And she says, you're not going to believe this.
She'd called the apartment complex. They told her not to send a building-wide email, because someone would falsely claim it — just put it in an envelope and we'll come get it. And the guy she was talking to at the front office was named Adam. That's whose name was on the envelope.
Let the record show that my jaw physically dropped there.
Screening questionnaire
Administered immediately after the recovery account. Responses recorded as given.
Do you believe in free will?
Do you believe in cosmic alignment?
Is randomness driven by more than simply randomness?
“I usually think things are just happening, and it's kind of chaotic, and there's no particular reason why good things happen to certain people and not others. I think I just got kind of lucky.”
Second incident, two days later
Blade attempted to close the interview on a note about carelessness. Adam volunteered additional material.
Thank you for sharing your story. Hopefully next time you've learned your lesson about carelessness and—
I lost my wallet two days later.
I have this pair of pants where the whole wallet pocket is ripped out. And I still wear them, because I really like the pants. So I'm out running errands, I put my wallet in that pocket, and it ███████fucking fell out somewhere. I'm driving home, about to get gas, and I realize it. No ID, no credit card, no vaccination card. This is right before the Puerto Rico trip. I would have been totally ██████fucked.
So I backtrack twenty minutes to where I'd been, and my wallet is sitting in the middle of the road. It had been run over multiple times.
It's good to know there are still good people out there who'll leave a perfectly good wallet untouched.
Findings and disposition
Summary of the record as collected. No follow-up appointment was scheduled.
Wedding band
Recovered · intactWallet
Recovered · run overMarriage
Never in questionThree-point turn
Not completedLessons learned
00Recommended action
Sew the pocketNotes on the record
- Blade announces this as episode six at the start and episode five at the end. Both are on the tape. Left unresolved.
- Adam Lavigne is not related to Avril Lavigne. Blade's on-record position is that he is “a way better guy.”
- Recording took place while the vehicle was in motion. A U-turn became necessary partway through Section 03 and is audible on the tape.
- Rob was present throughout and does not appear in the record.
- Transcript lightly cleaned for readability. Quotes are substantially as spoken.