DOD24: Mental Illness and Accountability

Transcript

This transcript was generated automatically and may contain errors — the audio is the record.

0:00:28 Tom: To Dear Old Dads, the podcast that's just getting into its own. I'm Tom Curry and I'm joined as always by Thomas Smith and Eli Bosnick. Hello, gentlemen. Oh.

0:00:38 Thomas: Heyo, how's it going, present, editing in mine from earlier fuck that I'm

0:00:40 Eli: Here, sure,

0:00:45 Tom: Are we, can we just just

0:00:49 Eli: I don't know what Thomas is talking about. This is one flowing take and Thomas didn't have a good one this time. I don't know

0:00:56 Thomas: Leaving all of that. Now that's all in the whole thing. The 10 seconds of silence present.

0:00:58 Eli: The whole false

0:00:58 Tom: Present Present. That's it, this is a, it's a two-man show, Eli. I hope you got it like 33 percent more fucking material prepared. Thanks,

0:01:01 Eli: Start

0:01:03 Thomas: But you guys, had that one classmate who did that. Right. I always did. Like even in shit town USA, there was that one nerd kid who was like, present. And you're just like, why, why are you doing that?

0:01:20 Tom: Yeah. Thanks. Awesome.

0:01:21 Thomas: Like who is that for?

0:01:20 Eli: Yeah yeah

0:01:22 Tom: Uh, What you're looking for, motherfucker, is here. You're here, it's it's it's the same asshole who grows up to discuss their vehicle. Uh, uh, I got out of a vehicle.

0:01:25 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah. You're Yeah, yeah.

0:01:34 Tom: You got out your car, you got into your fucking car, you asshole, that's what you did, you. You got out of your car.

0:01:36 Thomas: Yeah.

0:01:35 Eli: Car yeah Or people call it the Bends. They have a Mercedes Bends, they call it the Bends.

0:01:44 Tom: Oh, we'll take the Benz.

0:01:45 Eli: Yeah,

0:01:46 Thomas: I thought you were talking about the Radiohead album. I was like, am I not supposed to call it that? I love the Benz.

0:01:46 Eli: These Fucking

0:01:48 Tom: I thought it was that thing you get when you don't decompress.

0:01:50 Eli: Deep Sea Divers Bunch of a whiny-ass pussy can

0:01:55 Tom: I don't put that in my vehicle. It's in my vehicle.

0:01:57 Eli: I just say though Because this is a slight tangent, but as a class clown from day one, there is so much pressure on that first attendance, because you got to do something, you got come right out of the gate with something strong, you can't mess it up, you got to really crush it, and you know There's, yeah.

0:02:13 Thomas: That's yeah.

0:02:13 Tom: All summer, Eli's workshopping different responses to the fucking attendance record. No, absolutely. All right, get in the writer's room, guys. Get in the fucking writer's room. You got three months.

0:02:19 Eli: Yeah. Exactly. I went through different comedic phases. I went through a Lenny Bruce phase, right? I went through a Burbiglia phase where I would like tell a bunch of stories Oh, yeah.

0:02:31 Thomas: You had a puppet for one of them. Yeah. Puppet

0:02:33 Eli: Prop comedy, yeah. Many would say I'm still at prop comedy.

0:02:37 Tom: Oh,

0:02:33 Thomas: Terrorist character. Yeah, no, that's funny. I feel like this really says a lot about the difference between us as, I mean, I guess I'll quote-unquote say comedian for me, uh, but like I was absolutely class clown, but I, like, I did start slow, you know, I'd like let it, I'd let it simmer for a bit, you know, and then like part way through the year I'd start getting going, you know, just like be so disruptive you

0:02:58 Eli: Yeah.

0:02:59 Tom: Man, man, see where this is so funny because I, I figured out when did you guys figure out the class clown game? Now I'm really curious because I have an exact answer to this question. I'm curious what yours is. Did you guys figure out a moment where you're like, "Oh, I got this shit

0:03:00 Eli: That's the, yeah. If you're a good kid early, right.

0:03:13 Thomas: Know pretty early. Well, actually, I'm realizing now, because once again I always say it, but the tiny school thing is I actually, it, it depended on the audience. Like, I had to really read the room, because I would be, some classes would be be like, "Oh, these fucking hicks are not going to like my joke." But if I had enough of my like nerd friends that I liked who would get my jokes, then I could go after it a little bit. And I'm, I'm remembering most of my class clowns, clownery, chicanery, is now I'm realizing it was in high school when it was just like, "Oh, finally," like this, the smarter kids in shit town USA, you know? So the ones who hadn't committed any hate crimes in the, you know, lately, it actually divides up pretty evenly, uh weirdly enough, in my, my town it was this

0:03:40 Eli: Chicanery, please. Yeah.

0:03:55 Eli: Look to your left, look to you right, don't hate crime the person to your lift, yeah.

0:04:02 Thomas: Yep, and if you did, then you went to, you know, a different line of classes and, and then, like, so, because, so it was pared down more to people yeah

0:04:08 Tom: It's like hate crime tracking like, "Oh, I'm in the AP hate crime track, it's, uh, yeah.

0:04:10 Eli: Yeah yeah.

0:04:10 Thomas: Yeah." You have that mid semester report of like, hey, I'm gonna need you to but

0:04:15 Tom: You know when I get out of high school, I get actually three Stormfront credits, that's great, like it's just, you got got to earn those.

0:04:20 Eli: My you know My, my hate crimes were weighted, like they would give me a bat or something to try and keep up with the hate

0:04:22 Tom: Okay. Bro

0:04:23 Thomas: Yeah and the hate crimes in in California, they're not, you know, the ones in Texas, they count more on the national level in terms of hate crime points.

0:04:35 Tom: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah,

0:04:29 Eli: Right. Of course, obviously, yeah. That's

0:04:36 Tom: Right, yeah. You got to do all those hate crime extracurriculars if you want to be considered by the really good hate crime schools, you know.

0:04:41 Eli: The worst community disservice that project was always a whole thing, so

0:04:44 Thomas: Oh, it's funny because it's horrible and true. Is that like when, when the classes were like more of my, my you know, I really just would go off. I could, plus I had again, ADHD. So I wasn't like taking notes and like right following, you know, I was just there waiting to make a joke about anything. That's all I did.

0:05:04 Eli: Know. My exact answer, and that is because, um, it was one of my favorite teachers ever, Miss McLean, she was my social studies teacher in eighth grade, um, and in eighth great in New York State, who the fuck knows why, No Child Left Behind something, there were these mandatory citizenship training videos that we had to watch every Friday, uh, and they would take up her entire class period, and Miss Ms. McLean was just one of those incredible teachers, right? Who just like, everyone was like, "You got to get Ms. McLea," swear a blood oath on each first day of every month. And you might get Ms., but like, she was, she was so good that like everyone would do anything just to be in her block, because then you would end up with Ms. McLeain. Like, she was just so incredible, such a great teacher. And she hated these citizenship videos.

I now real, I, at the time I thought, cause they were boring, but I now realize because they were like barely disguised propaganda, propaganda meant for, you know, upper middle class white kids in upstate New York, so, you know, chew on that. So I don't know what happened, but fairly earlier in the year, I made some kind of joke from the back of the room while it was playing, and Miss McLean laughed really hard, and she was

0:05:05 Thomas: Oh, My god, yeah. Oh,

0:06:15 Eli: Like, "Eli, yeah, and she was like, "Eli, that's great, anytime you want to chime in, chime in." And I know this sounds, I know this sounds like a Paul McCartney sees a guitar in the window moment, but I swear it was, was true, every Friday, whenever we had to watch these movies, I would get to roast the movies from the back of my eighth grade social studies class, the

0:06:15 Thomas: You got the teacher, whoa.

0:06:36 Tom: Is fucking gam training, okay.

0:06:33 Thomas: Wow. Look I am very high up in my Eli Bosnick lore, so I also know your other origin story, is this like, there's been a different Superman or Spider-Mans, and they have the different origin, because there's famously, and I don't know if you've told it on this show, the roast the Camp camp story.

0:06:54 Eli: Story, yeah. I, yeah.

0:06:55 Thomas: Yeah. What, where's the timing of that? Like, is that before this or after this?

0:06:56 Eli: This Is before the the roast abilities, the Magneto roast abilities,

0:07:02 Thomas: Oh, that's a separate power that you do. Okay.

0:07:03 Eli: Yeah. Those are, yeah, those, those are separate, and those are the summer of fifth grade going into sixth.

0:07:10 Tom: So I had, my had a huge difference between fifth and sixth grade, so fifth grade, I think I mentioned on the show before, fifth grade was a transition year for me, it was a struggle year, sixth grade wasn't shaping up to be any better until I realized that, like, we had this like hyper, hyper reactionary teacher, I can't remember her fucking name, but she was one of those teachers that like when you'd smart off in class, and when you'd like crack wise in class, she would get like angry, and red-faced, and like, all the veins in her entire body would like pop out, like she was the fucking like, like a furious Irish red hulk, just like, and I was like, "Holy shit, that's amazing," and this, the the kids fucking loved it, they absolutely loved it, uh, Mrs. Fisher, that was her goddamn name, god, I hope she's still alive, so like she always seemed like she was like on the verge of just like popping every blood vessel in her body, and I, I was like, I had this moment of realization where I was like, "All right, nobody in this school knows me, I'm not making any friends, but, but I think I can make this woman explode," and

0:07:36 Thomas: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

0:07:38 Eli: Mm. Yep. Yep.

0:08:16 Tom: If I make this woman explode, people will love me. I didn't make any friends, I will say I didn't make any friends, but I 100% stopped getting like teased and harassed and bullied, because like I was still socially awkward, I was still struggling to connect with people, but I was fucking funny, and I would just like needle the fuck out of this teacher. But then there was a separate moment in seventh grade, and I remember the class where it happened. It was Mr. Zubrow's English class, and it was early in the year, and I realized I had gotten my audience all wrong. I was playing to the kids in sixth grade, right? So I was, I was paying to the children, but what I realized in seventh grader is if I could play to the teacher, just like your moment, Eli, if I can get the teacher to laugh, and this is, this is something I've thought about my whole life.

If you can get whoever's in charge to laugh, half you can do whatever the fuck you want forever. No, there is, I actually believe, I'm 44, I believe there is no limit to that power if you

0:09:14 Tom: Can get whoever is in charge right you, can you can invade an entire country and if someone's giggling about it they're like yeah all right that was a good one that was good yeah it.

0:09:14 Thomas: If you get the president to laugh. Yeah yeah. That's like not untrue. Unfortunately, that

0:09:25 Eli: Yeah.

0:09:25 Tom: Still works For me, I do it in my, I do, what, all the time, all the the time constantly.

0:09:26 Thomas: That's funny.

0:09:30 Tom: This is part of my life. Oh,

0:09:30 Thomas: Cause I don't think I had as cool teachers. I'm trying to think there's maybe like a couple where I could for the teacher more, but it was that I didn't have those school teachers. You there were the ones where you're like, all right, you can't really mouth off in this class. Cause they're so fucking not, you know, they're, they'RE more fascist, like the teachers or there, but One time this, this person, in retrospect she was clearly a lesbian in a small town, probably had a chip on her shoulder about it, I get it. As a kid I didn't understand any of these things, but she just had a tip on her shoulders, like she just did. And I, there's one thing I did, it was like, I honestly, this, it took me by total surprise.

I wasn't even trying to be like an asshole in this particular moment, normally I was, but she wrote down, uh, on the board for us, for like a quiz, you know, and kind of thing where she writes down the fucking thing and then we silently do the quiz.

And I, like, part way into that, when I, when I got to one of the questions, you know, it's been 10 minutes of silent writing, I noticed, uh, something, and so I went up and just erased an inappropriate apostrophe, you know, there was like "it's" or something on one of those.

0:09:46 Tom: Did

0:09:47 Eli: Sure. Yep. Mm -hmm. Ha

0:10:35 Thomas: Where it was like, I'm like, I honestly did nothing. I wasn't even trying to be an asshole. I was just like, oh, I'm just gonna go fix that real quick. And she fucking kicked me out of the class. It was such an extreme reaction.

0:10:35 Eli: -ha -ha.

0:10:44 Eli: Ha -he -he.

0:10:47 Thomas: I was like, what, what is happening to me right now? I don't even understand. Like, she was like go to the office right now. And I was like, What the, it was just a home. I go. Okay.

0:10:46 Tom: Did you guys zin your parents at all? Did you were your parents like appropriate targets in your household?

0:11:00 Thomas: And I I think, you know, the answer of that.

0:11:02 Eli: Ha

0:11:01 Tom: Yeah, you, Thomas, The fact that you're alive and doing this podcast and not buried next to your dog is actually evidence that this is a question just for Eli.

0:11:02 Eli: -ho -ha! Go dig a hole where your brother and the dog used to live.

0:11:14 Thomas: It's no dig a separate hole. I'll know if you did the same one. I'll know it.

0:11:15 Tom: Oh,

0:11:16 Eli: No, say, yeah. Yeah, I'm already mad that you haven't dug a separate hole.

0:11:17 Thomas: No, there was, no, it was non-stop making fun of my mom and never ever making fun of my dad was obviously the answer to that well my dad set the horrible example of always being shitty to our mom all the time, like in in jokey ways, like, it's, don't get me wrong, it's probably where I got a lot of my humor because he was fucking hilarious about it, but he would just like make these jokes, and he had us all on the side of like, man, this person can't take a joke. But, and they, they weren't like super mean or anything. They were just constant, you know. And it's like any person is gonna get tired of constant little jokes about them in a matter of days, but this was like a, you know, decades. Yeah.

0:11:24 Tom: So you did sing your mom? What,

0:11:57 Eli: Yeah.

0:11:57 Tom: About you, Eli?

0:11:58 Eli: It depended. Obviously, my dad adored my mom, thought no jokes about her were funny. So you got to be very careful. My parents really enjoyed impersonations. That was tended to be how I could zing them. But one time I did too good an impersonation of my dad. He was mad at me for like two days. And like, he knew it was a good bit, and I knew it was a little bit, but it was just a little too, it was a little to far, it was little too hard, so, yeah.

0:12:16 Thomas: Oh, man.

0:12:30 Eli: It depends. You had to keep the thing. Also, you gotta remember my dad was super religious, so my dad hated atheism jokes.

0:12:29 Thomas: That's great. Oh,

0:12:38 Eli: Right.

0:12:36 Thomas: Weird Wow.

0:12:38 Eli: He, yeah, no, when Anna and I were first together, we wrote this like silly song called "If You Want to Make a Good Person Do Bad Things." Things, um, we put it on our Facebook, and he wrote me this like very, fire, and I mean as fire and brimstone as a Jew can be, very fire in brimestone email about like, you know, I, you know, I can't believe that you know you would do this in public where people would think I raised you that way. It was very strange. Yeah.

0:12:38 Tom: Oh, Oh, smoke and lava rocks. Whoa.

0:13:05 Eli: Yeah. It was very strange.

0:13:04 Thomas: Holy Shit, what,

0:13:06 Tom: And we're like, dad, this is how I make a living. It's like a whole thing.

0:13:08 Eli: Yeah. No, I wasn't making my living that way yet. He by the time he had, right before he passed away, I had introduced him to Sam Harris, who he really liked, um, early Sam Harris in relax, everyone, listening in the year 2022.

0:13:12 Tom: Oh, okay.

0:13:13 Thomas: Hell, how did you get through that whole thing, uh, and He, I was gonna say your Your Dad had the good fortune to not be around for later Sam Harris

0:13:28 Eli: Right. Yeah. Yeah. He, like all of us, wish got to die before later Sam, but no, I introduced him him to Sam Harris because the only atheists he had really been introduced to were, um, who he didn't really understand, because Dawkins always or at the time took a scientific angle, and Hitchens, who he positively hated, because the only familiarity he had with Hitchens was Hitchens defending the Iraq War, right? Like that was the only times he had ever seen him up to that point, so he was like, is this the Irraq War guy? And I was like, yeah, but he's he's really well spoken about this other stuff, and he was like, fuck that dude. But yeah, he really liked Harris. Um, we were reading a rap, actually, when he died, we were leading a Rabbi Wolpe apologetics book together and sort of talking back and forth over

0:13:45 Thomas: Yeah Oh, Interesting. Ah, yeah Yeah.

0:13:57 Tom: Oh, gotcha.

0:14:18 Tom: Oh,

0:14:18 Eli: It again. He just, like my father, which, this is should be its whole own episode, but basically my father could not believe how lucky he was, right? He He married the love of his life. He had, in his opinion, the two best kids. And he could not take credit for that. He couldn't. Because he also, simultaneously, because of his mental illness and just the way the cards had fallen out, he also thought of himself as a tremendous failure.

0:14:19 Tom: Wow.

0:14:30 Thomas: Oh, yeah. Yeah.

0:14:49 Tom: What? Your dad sounds like spectacularly accomplished and well -loved.

0:14:52 Thomas: Me. I mean, yeah, the

0:14:50 Eli: Yeah. Yeah, but he didn't know it. He really didn't. He didn't even know it the way he talked about himself. He, you know, he wanted to be a playwright, and he never really got his plays written. He wanted to be a professional athlete when he was young, and they didn't end up doing that. And then, you know, He just, he owned a business that stopped existing at a certain point. And it's just, he never had that outside perspective for what, a tremendous person he was.

0:15:19 Tom: Don't. You wish people like that could like, and I know it's fucking bullshit, but don't you wish like that all the time, right.

0:15:26 Eli: So, My my god, yes, absolutely, right.

0:15:29 Thomas: Universe simulation should grant cool people like your dad. Like, all right, there's nothing in his atheism, but we'll give you like, you know, we'll get 15 minutes, you now, like, OK, just somehow.

0:15:38 Eli: Plus

0:15:38 Tom: Yeah. Here, You get 72 hours so we can like prep your fucking body, and then you can show up and see that everybody loved you, and then you can be like, oh, great, and then your out of existence, just wink out, and you're like, like that. Was nice that was that's a good way to go out

0:15:40 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah. But I feel like actually it's the thing, Tom, where actually everybody should get this because my dad is like, well, then

0:15:54 Eli: I was gonna say it's a perfect punishment for Thomas's dad.

0:15:57 Thomas: My dad sees the blank white like expanse of the Matrix loading room and he's like, what is this? And it's like, this is all the people who gave a shit. Oh, okay.

0:16:06 Eli: And now you will bathe in the pool of tears shed for you. Oh, shit, that's just a stone basin. Fuck. Um, I don't, do you want to sit in there for a little bit? It's uh, it is completely dry.

0:16:15 Thomas: And then my dad would solve it by never talking to God again or whatever, and then he'd be like, I thought, honestly, he'd be like, well, I'm not talking to you, okay?

0:16:19 Tom: I think

0:16:27 Eli: God, God comes down. Thomas, can you, um, is there, he's just, it's a lot to be around, and I think he's got his own issues, but it's just, he's really bringing the mood of heaven down

0:16:31 Thomas: Would you mind if I just give him a separate universe to just himself yes that would be perfect.

0:16:40 Eli: Could I could I bring him back as like a cat or something, and that you will just hold on to, interesting.

0:16:47 Tom: You guys will probably be surprised, but my dad was a great sport about being the subject of a zinger, like my dad Yeah.

0:16:52 Thomas: Wow. Okay. What?

0:16:54 Tom: My dad was a good sport about it, like when, and I would always play the audience for me, I would never ever zing my dad, just in day-to-day, like regular life, although my dad is also, I will tell you, my dad as clever as shit, and he's witty, and so, like, if you're gonna come out, I'm like, he's gonna come at you just as hard, like, he doesn't give a shit that you're in fifth grade, like, he's just like, boom, I'll fucking, you hit me, I'll hit you back, but like, he was, he's clever and he's witty and he's funny, but like, it was just dad and like Bob and my brother and I, so like, there's kind of no audience, there's like no joy in that, there's like no one to like crack

0:16:54 Eli: That's

0:17:27 Tom: Up, but once a week once a week, my dad's girlfriend, basically, like my stepmom she would come, and it was like, it was like the fucking lights would go on, yeah, and I would just like I would just be like boom boom boom, I just be coming at the whole time, we were to go on vacations together, and like, to his credit, that man was a great sport about it, I got in in trouble for a lot of shit growing up, I never once got in trouble for a zinger, for my dad, like no matter how many of them or how like incisive they were, yeah.

0:17:29 Thomas: The fuck is what are you talking about, you do

0:17:34 Eli: Right yeah night at the Apollo mm

0:17:58 Thomas: So interesting like I'm trying to think because it's not that we couldn't ever joke about my dad, it's just like, it, I think we all just in internalized like what the lines were, in a way that, you know, and just never went after, but I'm so surprised to hear you say that you didn't care about like that, because, I, me and my dad, like, I love trying to make my dad laugh and him making me laugh, and like, if there was one other sibling there too, it was even better, we would just laugh, that's the great contradiction here, and I think I've said it before, but we would just be laughing our asses off like the whole time, he was so funny, like, at any of these family gatherings, the problem was that, also, that humor was, you, to avoid any sort of real dialogue about anything at any time, so like, that's why it was kind of constant, but it was fucking funny.

0:18:12 Eli: -hmm, right.

0:18:46 Tom: It was distracting, it was distraction, yeah. Yeah.

0:18:48 Thomas: Like I would, I would really enjoy, back before we kind of fell out, like my brother and I and him, it was like, it was the jokes were really good, and then, oh my god, I should tell you guys this real quick, one of the reasons for the ultimate falling out, like one of the contributors, you know, because, 'cause it's a million things with family, there's a period of like, yeah, okay, he sucks, but we'll still go fucking home and see him and whatever, one of the, the things that turn that into like, all right, fuck this guy, we're just kind of done with this, is we spent, as being the target of his jokes in ways that were sometimes totally fine, sometimes, you know, a little bit, not fine, but fucking ubiquitous.

0:18:49 Tom: Sometimes involved a shovel and a dead dog. And the whole thing t -shirts get made out of it I

0:19:27 Eli: We're

0:19:27 Thomas: No, no, but, but some, but ubiquitous, but like, as as I said, anything, anything like that, you're going to, is going to wear on you, of course. And then he had a stroke in 2007 and he almost died. And that is a whole weird thing that like weird phase of stuff that would be interesting to get into sometime. But he, he changed temporarily. Like he did actually do, you know, maybe he went and saw God, God sent him back. And so he was different for like, you Know, a little bit and was like, nah, nevermind.

0:19:56 Eli: At 10 minutes, sure, yeah.

0:19:59 Thomas: I'm that whole morning of like the finest Turkey you have, tiny Tim. And then like by three o'clock, he's like, all right, fuck this. Get back to work. Everybody like,

0:20:07 Tom: Can't sustain this, this is like, after four hours I gotta call a doctor if I'm still nice, are you kidding me?

0:20:13 Eli: Of course

0:20:14 Thomas: So he, because of the stroke, he stopped being able to, he couldn't see very well. He apparently must've had some problem understanding us again. This is all stuff, stuff he can't really express very well, or like we wouldn't know how real it was, because what would happen is my dad would not come to something, namely everything ever.

0:20:36 Tom: Yeah.

0:20:36 Thomas: Like he already did, he already didn't come to most everything, but there would be things where my mom, we spent fucking 10 years of this phase of my mom saying, oh yeah, uh, the birthday party, you know, whatever, Phoebe's birthday, I don't even know if it was that, but something like that, where it's like, oh yeah, we'll, we'll be down, both of, you know, dad and I will be down, and every single time, she would just show up by herself, and we'd have to hear some fucking excuse every, oh, he's not, he can't see too well, so he's never, this was 10 years ago, like every single family thing, it was like, he, you know, he just, he having a trouble with his eyes, like, what any other human, Eli's dad, your dad would have been like, okay, so I'm having trouble with my eyes, I'll just go sit with the family and like be with them, but

0:20:38 Tom: My dad still would have driven, there, are you kidding me? He

0:21:21 Thomas: Somehow

0:21:21 Tom: Just opened the fucking driver's side door and like hold his hand out and just be like, I'll feel the pavement, it'll be fine.

0:21:23 Eli: Right

0:21:26 Thomas: Yeah this was always an excuse for my dad, and sorry for long, to get to the point, but what was really frustrating and put us over the edge was there was a time where he came down, he actually came down, and by he, I mean my mom came, and he had to go, like he would never do anything by himself, it was always like, if he was willing to tag along with my mom to come to something, and he came to one, to my brother, when we first started playing hockey, he came to one of our games, they came to one of my games, it was actually really cool, it was like a weird, like, oh, for a minute we get to be like kids again, you know, like the parents come into a game, and we made some jokes afterward, you know, my brother and I, like, we were joking the normal good times Smith family joking, every, at everybody's expense basically, and he, like, apparently couldn't keep up with it or felt like he, he was the target of it, and so he just fucking peaced out from there on out, like, spending decades of ridiculing us at all times, he felt like he couldn't, he was maybe the target once in like 2012 or whatever it was, and from then on out, we literally would go to Thanksgiving, this was the ultimate deal breaker, I don't know, I'm getting into this now, but like we went to Thanksgiving, the last Thanksgiving we went to and he was alive at my mom's house, and he stayed in his room, the entire time, and didn't

0:21:27 Tom: Oh

0:21:44 Eli: Now

0:22:45 Thomas: Come out for Thanksgiving.

0:22:47 Tom: So He missed stuffing? Like, that's a level of dedication to your churlishness that I can't, like, I don't care who's out there, I, there's stuffing, there's stuffings and cranberry sauce and like, whatever, like, you can come down there and put fucking cigarette butts out of my eyes, like, I'm like, there's stuffing, it's fine.

0:23:02 Eli: Now when that falling out happened, was, was there like, was there a moment with him where you were like, hey, just

0:23:07 Thomas: Oh no, this is all, it's always through my mom or nothing. You know, that's, that'S, I've never even talked to him actually.

0:23:08 Eli: No. Right.

0:23:16 Thomas: No, I 'VE NEVER TALKED TO HIM. HE'S ALWAYS AN INTERPRETER. No, I,

0:23:17 Tom: Mom, would you please tell dad to pass the... oh, he's not here. Actually, no.

0:23:20 Thomas: I, yeah.

0:23:21 Tom: Never mind.

0:23:22 Thomas: Uh,

0:23:22 Eli: Now, your mom is still alive. I know that some of the right wing bat shittery and the right wing bat Shittery in the family makes it hard to communicate. But have you ever sat down to talk to your mom about this to be like, hey, he sucked. What are your thoughts?

0:23:38 Thomas: So we did, we actually did when he was still alive because we, there was a point where we just got so tired of the excuses. And, and also, you know, we both, my brother and I, I say we, it was my brother and I, my sister's kind of still, I don't know how they felt about him. They still had a relationship with him. It was a whole different thing. And they, they actually lived nearby. So it was kind of different, but my brother and I live, don't live nearby. Um, mean within like an hour and a half drive. So it wasn't like that far away, but anyway, we also wanted my mom to just stop fucking bothering with the excuses, you know, like, cause there'd be a thing she would build. Oh, he's going to come. He'll come to this thing. We'll get, and we're just like, all right, just Who is that for? Like, we know he's not coming every time and you have to go through this.

0:23:57 Eli: Hmm. Right. Right.

0:24:20 Thomas: And It really was. And

0:24:18 Tom: It's probably for her It probably was for her so she didn't feel like, like a fucking bad parent, right?

0:24:26 Thomas: That's, and she kind of, in some ways, what ultimately makes it tough to communicate, to kind of answer the question, is she never really operated in that reality. You know, like there's a part of her that was always not quite in that reality. She wasn't a person who was able to say, oh, yeah, I've made this excuse 487 consecutive times, I better not bother. She would just still do it again. And it's just, for me, as a very like logical person, it made it really hard to still communicate with her because I'm like, I can't, I can't be in. I can't do that. I don't know. I just have a hard time. Good.

0:24:57 Eli: Yeah. I actually, I, it's so important that you point that out, because one of the most damaging things people can do is not necessarily be the abuser, but apologize for the abuser. Right. And one of the things that I, I love that you talk about on the show, and that you're talking about a little bit now, is that sort of that severing of the relationship, how important that is, how healthy that is, um, because, because it's not in culture right now, right? It's just like you put up with the abuse until the abuser dies and then you like make up three lies about times they were nice, right?

0:25:08 Thomas: Yes. Yes. That's exactly right. Right. And was a time when things I think were pretty bad. And, and my mom was again, having to try to deal with like end of life care, essentially for my dad, eventually somehow, through wrangling of money and whatever, I think she got him or figured it out, how to like hire somebody to just fucking be that end of life care. This is actually impossible to take care of a human who's dying, let alone when you're also very old yourself, you know, like that's a, that is kind of like a tough thing that our whole society has to deal with is like, a lot of our health care plans in the United States is get old and then die, and and have no medical coverage for all this stuff that's like intensely expensive and difficult.

0:26:11 Eli: Absolutely. Yeah.

0:26:12 Tom: Well, We're supposed to die very quickly and without fuss, I know.

0:26:13 Thomas: And we don't Yeah, we gotta die quicker, everybody do it, snappy.

0:26:15 Tom: Yeah. Yeah. That's It's, it, right?

0:26:18 Thomas: Be here. Let's hire Tom's dad to put us in the trash can when we're done. Just that we're all set a date for Tom's dad to come, just throw us in the bin. But

0:26:18 Tom: Yeah, we're So

0:26:27 Eli: He'll put a brick on us so we settle to the bottom and fit really well.

0:26:29 Tom: Can I but hold on a second, because I, I want to, and I'm not pushing back, I just want to understand, like, your take on it, is it, do you consider it abusive to not attend these events? Like, is that abusive? I'm not saying your dad wasn't, wasn't problematic in other ways, but I just, like, just to Eli's language, like, I don't know, man, that doesn't feel abusive to me. I, I think it feels shitty.

0:26:32 Thomas: Um, I did well.

0:26:53 Tom: No.

0:26:53 Thomas: I didn't call that abusive.

0:26:54 Tom: I know you didn't, but then Eli kind of jumped in and insinuated it, so I just am curious what your thought is, yeah.

0:27:00 Thomas: Part of the overall thing, you know, like, he, I, I don't, I still struggle to say he was abusive per se. Like, he was very emotionally abusive, let's say that, like, that's, that seems like pretty unambiguous. Are we all on board with that based on what you've known, like is that reasonable?

0:27:16 Eli: Yeah. Well, I mean, look, I'm 100 on the abuse, I have I have charts and graphs of abuse.

0:27:17 Tom: Yeah. I think I think Eli, yeah, right, Yeah.

0:27:17 Thomas: Yeah. If if he was a human who had some legitimate reason to not go to these things, or way to like handle it in a way that, you know, like, I'm not saying de facto if someone doesn't come to a thing that's abusive, but like, it's part of the overall package of, once things could no longer be on his fucking terms, once he was slightly behind in the conversation, he was, is willing to just be out. Can you believe that, Tom? I know you probably, this is probably touching a nerve because your dad doesn't go to anything, but like, can you imagine being a person who the minute you're just slightly behind in the conversation, cause you've had a stroke or whatever, and you can't be like, and You feel like maybe you're the target of stuff or something. You literally will just not come out of your room when your whole family come dry, makes the journey to your house for Thanksgiving.

0:27:23 Tom: No, no, it's not touching a nerve. At all. I'm just yeah, yeah,

0:27:52 Eli: Oh,

0:28:10 Tom: No, yes.

0:28:10 Thomas: You just hide in your room. He, know what he did that day? He went golfing that day. He, he was, I think, or, or yeah, like he hid in his room from us, went golfING at some point during the preseason. I don't remember which day it was. It was like day before the day after.

0:28:18 Tom: You know, that's that's problematic, did he golf with other people, or golf solo? He

0:28:27 Thomas: No, he doesn't. He doesn't golf with other people.

0:28:29 Tom: Golfed solo. I, you know, I guess, I I guess the only thing that, like, I do want to lie, and I'm not saying this is true for your dad, but I just want to like pause and sort of like make sure that there's space for in the conversation generally, because I know, like, how our audience works, is like, I also want to say, like, mental, people with like mental health problems and like traumatic brain injuries due to stroke, et cetera, like they're, shouldn't hold, people that have had, you know, that have like serious issues with their health, be it mental or physical or traumatic brain injuries due to stroke, they can't be held to the same standard as people who aren't struggling sort with those same problems. I, I, I can imagine, I'm not saying this is true of your dad specifically.

0:28:30 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah, sure.

0:29:09 Thomas: No he

0:29:10 Tom: So I'm sort of, I'm taking a step back from the specifics, just to kind of put that out there, that where, where I'm pushing back or where I feel like reactionary to, is like, I, that there are times in people's lives where they cannot be, be as engaged, and those times in their lives might last years, and they just can't do it, right?

0:29:10 Thomas: Made a full recovery, but yeah, sure, yeah.

0:29:25 Thomas: Yeah. Set aside the childhood emotional abuse for a second, because I fully agree with you.

0:29:34 Tom: And I that's why I say I'm stepping away from your dad a little bit.

0:29:35 Thomas: Yeah, no, no. Yeah. I'm stipulating like set that aside. What?

0:29:36 Tom: Yeah. Yeah.

0:29:38 Eli: I want to jump in, then, maybe this is a whole different episode. I want to jump in and say that I completely disagree about that, especially when it comes to mental illness, but go ahead. Don't

0:29:44 Thomas: Well, let me make this quick statement, Eli, and then I want to hear your take, because, Tom, I see where you're coming from. The key, and I know I'm coming back to it, I could very much see a set of facts where I would be fully on board. And it's like, yeah, if someone has a disability, and honestly, my dad did, he was was agoraphobic, like he had a disability, but we fucking bent our entire lives around that disability of his non-stop and he reached a point where he, he was like, that's also, I also, fuck you. And I'm not talking, like, he, again, he stayed, we would come to him all the time, everything in our lives revolved around working around his disability.

And then the key factor that, like, and I, again, I, I don't even know if I would call it abusive, but it's just something that is, it's behavior that is worthy of your kids saying, all right, fuck off.

That's, what I don't know, I won't say abuse or whatever, but like, when you get to the point where you have this disability and you are unable in any way to communicate to your family, who you love you or at least want your affection or something, that the problem isn't that, the the problem is their disability.

If you have no way to say, hey, I'm sorry, I just, you know, mentally, I can't do this, then I'm sorry, like, you're, what you're not, what you're doing is the same as just leaving, like what he did. He never said thing one about any of this. Any of my versions of why he did anything ever is from my mom. Like, not one time was any of these discussed.

Like, in terms of his ability to communicate, we not one time ever, in that decade and a half or whatever it was, talked about this at all. It was always just the secondhand excuses from my

0:29:47 Eli: Yeah. Yeah.

0:30:02 Tom: Yeah,

0:31:26 Thomas: Mom. I'm guessing at a lot of this stuff.

0:31:27 Eli: And also guess he never actually got a diagnosis for any of this.

0:31:31 Thomas: No, he couldn't go to the doctor.

0:31:32 Eli: Right. So, and I am a big, big advocate of this, and I know this isn't necessarily popular to say right now, but if you are not diagnosed with a doctor for a mental illness, you especially do not get to tell me about why your mental illness is the excuse for your behavior, right? I know it's hard to see a doctor. I know that there are differences in privilege and differences in resources, but you do not gets to decide you're you're diabetic and you do not get to decide that you are agoraphobic, especially if you then go golfing. Right. That's a very selective agorophobia. Yeah. I mean, so

0:32:02 Thomas: Yeah, it's it's yeah, it'S like social whatever like he was able to go.

0:32:03 Eli: Right. Social anxiety, whatever.

0:32:04 Tom: Yeah.

0:32:06 Thomas: He had worked it out, like, just to clarify, he had worked it out so he barely had to talk to anyone on the court. Like he would go later so that nobody was around and he could just go by himself.

0:32:15 Eli: Midnight golfing?

0:32:17 Thomas: He very consistently was, was very, um, I don't know if agoraphobic is the right word, but like, yeah, like not, able to interact with people.

0:32:25 Eli: Mean.

0:32:16 Tom: See, and I guess that's what I'm saying, like, that level of like, yeah, yeah, and I like that seems demonstrative to me, at the very least, of some kind of, like, pathology. And I'm not trying to diagnose the man, I've never met. I'm getting stories secondhand. But if you're organizing your entire life, including your leisure time, in a way that to the greatest degree possible minimizes contact with other human beings, that's somebody who... Excuse. I think there's a difference, and I want to make this clear. And, and I've actually written about this, too. Like, I think there's a really big difference between excuses and reasons.

0:32:30 Thomas: Absolutely. Of course. Yeah.

0:33:00 Tom: And I want to make clear that what I'm saying is I think that there are real reasons that make sense from what you're saying that do not necessarily excuse that behavior, but that provide context to where it's like, yeah, that behavior is actually for irrationality, like that, that's what this mental illness is, right? It's irrational. It's in keeping.

It's actually entirely expected and reasonable and in keeping with this – like hate is – and I guess the nerve that it's touching is like, I an overall tendency to hold parents to an ideal or a standard that exceeds the reality of their actual humanity, and that we can't do that, that just because kids need more from us doesn't mean – and we've talked about this, about reasons I think people shouldn't have kids, kids need more from us than some of us can provide.

That's just true. Now you're in a place, now you're in a fucking quandary where it's like, yeah, all right, the kids need more, they deserve more, those things are true, but they live in a bucket, which is separate from, but I just can't do it. I am a human being who can't do it. And in all these other areas of my my life, I am unable to perform in these sort of like quote-unquote normalized ways. It means you failed your kids, but, like, don't think we can expect more from people than what they can actually do. Yeah.

0:33:19 Thomas: Yeah, right.

0:34:23 Eli: Oh, I have so many thoughts on this. So the first thing I want to talk about is because I had sort of the opposite situation with my mom. So I haven't talked about this on this show yet, but my mom has terrible, crippling, life -threatening depression and has since she was literally a child. She's been inpatient care multiple times throughout my life. And she was, I would say from the age of three until around seven or eight or so, she was at least one or two, maybe even three months a year, bedridden with depression. Depression, right?

And this is, I'm born in 87. So this is there are two antidepressants on the market, right. One of them is like heroin, or whatever the case may be. And I watched her heroically, heroically struggle to Still be a mom through illness. The example that I give is this, and people don't like to hear it, but the truth of the matter is I am short-sighted, right? Cannot see the road without my glasses. If I get into the car not wearing my glasses, I'm endangering my kid. It doesn't matter why I can't see the road, right? Is my obligation. It is my obligation to put on my glasses, right?

And the truth of the matter is there are way too too many mentally ill people out there who just never put on their glasses, right. If someone has gone to therapy and is on medication and is doing the work and still can't, I'm 100 with you, Tom, I really am, because I, I reach those limitations, right?

There are days where I, because I have the the same depression as my mom, I just have the privilege of a parent who knew what depression was and doctors to take care of me and all that stuff. But there are still days where I cannot rise to the task of parenting, but I do all the work ahead of time.

What I hear more often than not, right, is someone who has done none of the work, none of the struggle, none of this self-healing that needs to be done. They have not put on the glasses, but they would like a pass because their brain is allegedly broken.

0:35:06 Tom: No I hate this already yeah Okay, but I I feel like that is. By the way, we're going to talk about the friend zone in this episode. But I feel like what you've just described is the mental illness version of bootstraps. And I just want to say that out loud.

0:36:35 Eli: And it is, it 100% is. Yeah.

0:36:47 Tom: What you're saying is, because I knew people who were intensely privileged, myself included, that could do it, everybody else should do it because it is their moral obligation to do it. I agree, by the way, that it's your moral obligation to do it. I just think that it is a moral obligation that many people cannot rationally be expected to discharge, since irrationality is the hallmark of this mental illness.

0:36:58 Eli: I'm

0:37:12 Tom: And that those people shouldn't have kids.

0:37:12 Thomas: But you said yourself, you said herself that it's a not an excuse. You already said that. Like, what do you, what what do you think is the behavior? I'm not trying to imprison my dad. Like I just, if you have a disability that makes you horrible, um, then people might not want to talk to you. Like that's the, you know, it's, I,

0:37:19 Tom: Right? Yeah. But I think that that's, yeah,

0:37:35 Eli: And deeply important to remember, you are still horrible. Right. There's... there's always this thing that we do. Right, and I'm happy to talk about the bootstraps thing. There's always this thing where we do where we go, yeah, but you know, my depression makes me do this. My anxiety makes me do this, uh, your anxiety does inside is not a real movie. You are your brain. You are your illness. You are the fact that you can't see long distances. So if your mental illness makes you do shitty stuff, you are shitty, right? And when you yeah, and when

0:37:39 Thomas: Yeah. Oh, that's

0:38:08 Tom: I completely agree with that. So I'm not fighting on you at that.

0:38:10 Thomas: Funny. Cause that, I kind of

0:38:11 Tom: Yeah. Yeah, no, I think, no

0:38:13 Eli: You Right.

0:38:11 Thomas: Disagree with philosophically. I think there are cases where you can reasonably say like, that wasn't the person, Like someone, you doesn't have the fucking money to pay for the meds that for their bipolar or is it that

0:38:24 Eli: But I'm not but I'm not talking about lack of resources to pay for. Right. I'm saying are you doing the work

0:38:29 Thomas: No, I know. But that is logically the same thing. If somebody does a shitty thing and there actually is a good reason for it, because maybe they didn't get the meds they needed for some legitimate reason. In that case, they aren't just the product of what they did. So like I I think philosophically there are plenty of cases where you could say like, all right, you can't really you shouldn't hold that person responsible for something.

0:38:50 Eli: That That's sort of a side. I'll talk about that in a second, because that's that's a side point. But I do, I do want to stay on this sort of bootstraps thing, right? Because it, it really, it has been vital and life saving to me, right? Take responsibility for my illness, never let up, never let go, never consign myself, never shrug my shoulders, and to own and this is where I think you and I disagree, tom to own the fact that when I fail, I have failed, right? It's you know

0:39:20 Tom: I don't think we disagree. At all there. Yeah. I don't think we disagree at all here.

0:39:23 Thomas: Yeah, everybody agrees you failed. And Eli, it's it's all we can all for

0:39:25 Eli: Yeah

0:39:25 Tom: Yeah, no, I, I think so. So I think the distinction that I'm trying to draw and, and I may be doing it very clumsily, so I apologize because I almost am certainly drawing it and doing it clumsily is I think there is a distinction between the experience of the person interacting with someone who has mental illness, right? So if I'm interacting with Thomas's dad and Thomas's dad has some severe mental illness.

0:39:51 Tom: And they do not behave in ways that are loving, empathetic, and kind to me. Then as the person experiencing that, I have every reason in the world to say, that's somebody that doesn't belong in my life. That's somebody who can't be a positive force in my life. That's somebody that I need to back away from and not interact with. I think that that's entirely normal and good and reasonable. And we, we should do that because it's self-protective.

And I think that there's zero argument for me there whatsoever. But I think the second side to that is we also cannot reasonably expect that somebody who is in the throes of irrationality behave rationally. So those things don't come into conflict with each other. What you can say is, look, reasonably, I should should not expect my dad to be a reasonable person. My dad is an irrational person in the throes of mental illness. He has no control over them.

As a result, I have no need to interact with him. He cannot be a positive force in my life. He cannot offer to me what I need, but I don't need to be mad about it. I don't need to judge it except for to recognize and say, look, this, this person isn't good enough to perform the role of parenting for me, and

0:41:14 Tom: They aren't good enough because they have this disability that makes them unable to discharge the duties of their responsibility as parent. And I think that those things don't need to live in conflict with one another.

0:41:14 Eli: We would yeah we, the, the metaphor I love is we would put tornadoes in jail if we could, right? When a tornado sweeps through town, we're like, that's a bad tornado. That's a fuck you tornado. You're an evil tornado, right? We're just like, hey, here, here's a natural phenomenon. Here's a, a conglomeration of natural events that turned out to be harmful. So we need to do the things that minimize that harm. But the, the angle that I'm talking about is sometimes you are the tornado, Right? I am the tornado and you're

0:41:47 Tom: Right. Well, and that's The internal judgment, right? So I'm kind of drawing that, and I'll let you get, I'm trying to draw on that distinction between how we respond externally to someone in our lives that has, you know, a responsibility to us they cannot properly discharge because they're unwell, versus being the unwell person and deciding what level of culpability you have to those responsibilities. I think those are different calculus. I, really do. No.

0:42:23 Eli: You're absolutely right. 100%.

0:42:25 Thomas: I think what Tom's trying to say is he's tired of me complaining about my dad. But the show would go away if I weren't able to. I think that Tom philosophically, I think there's just a few holes in what you're saying. I think the broad strokes, there are ways I can agree. But also things don't neatly divide into X behavior is rational. Therefore we can have expectations from people or on the other hand, they're not rational and we can't have expectations for them. I mean, if you go down that road of what we can expect people to do, the truth is you get toward determinism. There's no free will. You can't expect anything from anyone. There There's a clean line between this is something someone has free will about. And this is Something they don't, that just doesn't exist. This. So like, there are ways that we as people have expectations about people. And I think you're right that the healthy thing to do and part of like my trying to recover in a way. I think you should also allow that, different you traumas affect people differently as well.

0:42:28 Eli: Yeah.

0:42:28 Tom: I'm not no, no no, yeah I'm trying to be judgmental about you, Thomas. I'm sorry if it it came across that way.

0:43:20 Thomas: I get it. I just, I think there's going to be maybe a lot of people that, that didn't react well to one of the sentences in there, um, that I'm kind of reacting to. And so I want to, I make sure I'm putting my view out there because I think it is the healthy goal to want to be able to say, all right, this person has, whatever, you the reason, it doesn't even matter. Like I, like honestly, philosophically it doesn't really matter whether you can assign a name of an illness to it or not. Like it really doesn't, like, are subject to the fucking whims of the universe one way or the other, you know, like either either he had some disability or something in his experience in his upbringing, in his whatever, and there there isn't a clean line.

0:43:59 Tom: Yeah.

0:43:59 Thomas: There, I think it's a spectrum. Of things. And so the healthy thing to do in therapy, which is, you know, like something that I would encourage everybody who has anything like this to do, is to try to get, there is to try to get to the point where you can cleanly say, all right, I just need to accept that this is what happened. And every therapist I've ever had told me that. And it's something I already knew anyway, which cause I was conflicted toward the end, dad's life.

I was a little conflicted about whether or not I should try to see him or do anything. And like, one therapist who I don't think was ultimately very good, but I don't see her anymore, but I think she was pretty right about this. Her approach tended to be, you, you getting out of this, like if you would get something out of this, if you personally would get something out trying to talk to your dad in these waning days, or do you know, like, then do it.

If not, don't, because because of the fact that like he has an illness, he's done these things, you have to accept it. Acceptance is the goal. I think it's a little tough to just say that that's where everybody should instantly be because there are ways that trauma that kind of gets into people, especially when they're raised with it, when they are, you know, as kids, like there are are ways that it's, it's not so simple as cleanly cutting it off and saying, oh, that person just sucks, I'm fine now, you know?

0:44:00 Tom: Yeah.

0:45:10 Tom: And I I'm sorry if I insinuated that, I certainly, I didn't mean to insinuate, I guess I was, but you know, I mean, I can, I can sort of identify, my mom was a an abusive alcoholic with mental illness, and I lived with her for a long time, and she was a terribly negative influence on my life until my early 20s. So you know, I mean, like emotionally and physically abusive, and just, I mean, she was a fucking nightmare. But I don't, I mean, I will say like, I, I've, I've thought about this to to, and I personally, and everybody can land where they need to land, it's just a show about about us, but like, I have, I harbor absolutely no ill will, none whatsoever, to my mom. Like I think she's a bad person, but that's got nothing to do with me. Mean, I really feel this way after after years of thinking about it, and again, I agree with you, it can take a long time to get through it, but it's got nothing to do with me, right.

0:46:02 Thomas: I, agree with that being the goal. I think there's also the fact that like, you, you got a lot out from your dad. Like you got a time where your dad took over and who knows, Tom, you may just be made of sterner stuff. Like honestly, this is

0:46:06 Tom: Right. No.

0:46:19 Tom: And I'm not trying to say that because that's some that's I'm like

0:46:20 Thomas: No, no, but like, it also echoes Your very point. Like, some people may be be able to absorb certain traumas and not give a shit, more than others, like that may be another just difference among people. You, your same logic, it's like you different ways that people have responded to their trauma in this very way, right? No?

0:46:21 Tom: Yeah.

0:46:38 Tom: And I don't mean to invalidate any of them, like so if I, if I came across that way, I just want to make sure that, that because that's not my goal. It's it's really, that was not the goal of my thing. I just, I guess I feel like, like we we've got to give people like, I think that we give people grace as people that we don't give them as parents.

0:46:56 Eli: Interesting because I was going to point it out, and then Tom, you actually brought it up, which is that we all had this figure in our life, probably with mental illness. Again, Thomas's dad never got diagnosed. I assume Tom's mom never got diagnosed, And The way we have been affected by that is very different, the way we've moved through that, um, the burden that we carry with that, right? So like a great example is like I had a parent who fought that mental illness, still had some bad times, right? It was very hard as a child to watch my mom, like, sobbing with hysterical crying on mornings when I was like four or five years old, right?

But it also was incredibly inspiring to spend a childhood where she couldn't get out of bed, playing playing amazing pretend games she would make up for us, or fun scavenger hunts she would write for me to do. Like watching her struggle against that, and part of which, and I'll admit it's not always healthy, part of what I carried away from that is a bootstrap mentality that is unflinching, right? And as Tom just pointed out, like sometimes it's super unhealthy in me, right?

Sometimes my brain needs a break, sometimes I need to accept, hey man, you know, you have a disability, you need to let that, and I'm I'm like, must crawl over the broken glass because mom did. So I actually think that these three views of mental illness are so essential because the people listening to this will have had variations on these themselves and will hear in all of our answers, right? Not just, oh, I think Thomas is right or Eli or Tom.

I think we'll hear in all of our answers things to consider themselves and things that they want to do to make themselves better parents. So I, it's part of why I was so excited to do this show is because I think, I think that meat is something that we truly bring to the space that that no expert could. And I'm I'm rare to say we're experts in anything except, you know, Andrew Dice or whatever, that

0:47:09 Tom: I have no idea.

0:48:56 Thomas: Yeah.

0:48:56 Eli: Fucking massage's name is, right, out, not you know, Minecraft, and you know how to use the marquee tool in a dog, but like, I, I think that is truly something that we bring to this show, uh, that no one else will.

0:49:09 Thomas: Think that, like, what's really important is the everything else, Tom, like, like I, and I think we're, we're both bringing our own baggage to the conversation, and we're trying to talk in generalities, you know, about like, oh, someone with a mental illness, and like, in the back of my mind, my dad didn't just have a mental ill, like my dad had a lot of things that coalesced into, um, literally, he was a narcissist, like literal, you know, that he would never have had a diagnosis because he thought therapy was for other people.

He you know, he went to his grave probably thinking he was fucking fine, everybody else, now I don't know how aware he was, I think he, my mom suggests that he was somewhat aware of, you know, of some of his disability, but he could never ever admit it to us, and that's the key. I imagine that Eli with his mom never had the feeling that his mom didn't give a shit, or net, like I imagine his mom ever showed him that she wasn't willing to at all prioritize him or have have a conversation, you know, like my dad just sucked, man, he just

0:49:28 Tom: Yeah. Right. Yeah.

0:50:09 Thomas: Sucked real bad he went to his grave never having called me and never having said I love you.

0:50:10 Tom: And, and And that's, and that Thomas, your, your of the connection to somebody with mental illness, I 100% do genuinely and personally identify with, and it is horrible and you do not get what you need from that relationship, and that relationship is fraught with nothing but like absence and it ist

0:50:34 Thomas: Apologies Tom I just thought of something I want to get your take on it, like, right away. You, if, like, one major difference and problem here is like your mom sounds like such a man, forgive me, but like she sounds like such a nightmare that like there no part of that that it all ever resembled anything healthy, healthy, whereas my dad, for especially, uh, through the 90s, was pretty good at faking like he was a person. And so in a weird way, it were able to have like no expectations from your mom, but my dad, like, he, he, by all appearances, he was able to do it for a while and to like play, be almost like Dexter or some shit, like get along with society, and so that almost made it worse because it's like you're living in a thing where you think it should be one thing and then you find out it's not, you know, yeah no

0:50:36 Tom: Yeah right

0:51:12 Eli: Guys

0:51:19 Tom: Well and then that rug gets pulled out from under you, right like that rug, that, that emotional safety net gets like fucking yoinked away, way, you know, moments, and, and granted, Thomas, my, my experiences with my mom were formative then sporadic, right, so, like, I'm not trying to, they, they, you know

0:51:38 Thomas: You really don't have to work, you know, like, I, I, we're we're all on the same page, it's cool I

0:51:39 Tom: Yeah they were they they were formative and, but but sporadic, but I guess, like, what, what I would say too is like what's funny is that I feel extremely strongly, more so I think than you, you guys do that, like, I want to make sure my position is clear. I don't think any of this abdicates our responsibility to our kids. So I just want to makes sure that I'm extraordinarily clear about that. I think that our responsibility to our kid, and to everybody in our lives, is not changed or lessened in any way by our ability to discharge that responsibility, right? Right. So, and whatever hampers our ability to discharge that responsibility simply means that we did not properly discharge that responsibility.

The amount of grace that we offer to somebody who's unable to discharge that responsibility varies depending on the type of relationship it is and the place in our lives that we're at when we're able to, when we have to sort of navigate that lack of discharge of responsibility. But this comes back to something we said before, and I know I'll get pilloried on this, but I strongly believe that if you're in that position, you should not be having children.

Strongly believe that any amount of self -reflection and that's the level of personal responsibility on my side that I can't get away from, that you have reason to suspect that you will be unable to discharge those responsibilities, you should not undertake those responsibilities to fucking start with, you just shouldn't.

0:52:02 Thomas: Think it's literally the catch-22 though, like, if you think you're too crazy to go on these missions, then you are, the, you know, like, you, I think that applies, I think the reason that we, we've kind of gone back and forth on that, and I actually want to do that, Tom, on something else, I have a lot of thoughts still on the, like, like, should you have kids? But like, I don't think that, yeah, yeah.

0:53:25 Tom: The thoughts on the friend zone

0:53:30 Eli: We got two minutes, let's do it real quick uh people don't owe you sex

0:53:32 Thomas: I want, yeah no,

0:53:31 Tom: And I know I'm gonna get like a million fucking emails about this from people and I know it, but right

0:53:38 Thomas: No, no. I really want to ask Eli real quick though. What your mom's openness about this Eli?

0:53:44 Eli: Totally open, so that, that was something I was going to bring up as well is that, like, it made clear to me that it was never my fault, uh it was made

0:53:45 Thomas: Yeah. Exactly. God. What if she gaslit you into thinking it was was constantly your fault and she didn't have a problem. And yes.

0:53:55 Tom: Yeah that's oh

0:53:52 Eli: Right exactly if or or worse. If my dad had been like, well, you know, you made Mom awful sad when you knocked over your block tower this morning, but, like, that, that appears to be what Thomas went through a lot, you know, and I was going to say that one of the major differences, I think, between the two of you, and I say this is an outside observer, um, so, you know, what the fuck do I know, but is, like, as much as we poke fun at Tom's dad, Tom's dad was like potato salad, gotta get him out of there, and just, like, Caiman was like no more of the monkey lady and got you away, whereas it, it feels like to this day Thomas's mom is

0:54:01 Tom: My god right right

0:54:07 Thomas: Yeah. Oh

0:54:33 Eli: Like, well, you know, if you go through the puzzle maybe I'll tell you what your father said on your 18th birthday

0:54:37 Thomas: I meant to say this real quick, Eli. She, I, cause I started that story, and because we, we, we tend to talk, of three of us, that we got lost. She, so, for a while I did, I actually sent her the link of, like, when somebody finally told me, hey, I think your dad has this disorder. And, again, again, it's, you don't want to diagnose people from afar, but literally that was the only option. Like, there's no other fucking, he wasn't ever going to get a diagnosis.

Someone sent me a thing. There's the covert narcissist and the overt narcissist. And actually, seeing Trump had a big part in that. Like, seeing how there was a certain logic to Trump that made sense. And he's the overt narcissist. You know, my dad would never have claimed that he did things he didn't or exaggerated whatever. He's a covert narcissist. He doesn't like build up himself in any way.

Um, but, but there's other, I want, we're out of time, I won't get into it, but it's really interesting when somebody sent me that, uh, was a description that just really fucking fit. In the midst of this, I sent it to my mom, and she, and again, one of the problems with my mom is you can't ever know what the fuck she thinks on anything because she'll tell anybody what they want to hear in any given moment.

0:55:40 Thomas: Um, and she, but she seemed receptive to it, and, again, I, that's why I was mentioning the end of life care, it may have been she was just kind of fed up, you know, and finally was, was able to see it. And then the reason I bring this up, now, after he died, that all fucking went away and she's rewritten the history, you know, and it's like, oh, he was always so fine. He was fine. You know? And so it's, it's even, yeah, yeah. It's that kind of thing.

0:55:40 Eli: Sure you were always harder on him than you needed to be, right, enablers of abusers are, um, abuse victims themselves, but they can be just as insidious in a lot of ways, anyways

0:56:11 Thomas: And I understand it from her too, because for her, she would have to justify her entire life that she did, you knows, to her, the truth of, oh, I was married to a shitty guy who kind of of messed up my kids, that's a hard thing for anyone to deal with, and it's easier for her to just pretend that didn't exist, yeah

0:56:18 Tom: Right yeah yeah and I, and I guess I would end it on my side by saying, like, I am, um, like, in my head, I am always wary of casting, and this is not to you, Thomas, specifically, but, like, I am always personally very, very wary of casting anyone in a villainous role because I think that the, the reality of the human experience is just so much more complex than that. I think, like, when we, when we see people in these, and not you, Thomass, but, like, generally speaking, I think think there is a tendency to cartoonishly villainize those people who have hurt us rather than understand that the world is full of a lot of really genuinely hurt and broken people who are unwell, and their sperm and eggs work just as well as everybody else's. And a lot of people end up with parents that feel villainous when they are both villainous to us and tragic, tragic in and of themselves

0:57:31 Thomas: And I would argue there's room for all of that, I agree and there's To be like and that person is a fucking villain I think there's room for al of these views personally, yeah

0:57:37 Eli: Yeah all

0:57:31 Tom: Yeah. I, I'm trying to create space for both of those my phrasing yeah yeah well, I to mean, piggyback on that, absolutely right, when we write our own narrative about who we are, we are always writing stories of villains and heroes, we absolutely are, but I think that if we were to write someone else's biography, we may cast them in a different light, and both, both those stories can be true.

0:57:57 Thomas: Let

0:57:59 Eli: Gentlemen, excellent stuff. I think we've covered the friend zone. Tom, I don't know what your intro is gonna be for the next episode where you desperately try to come up with a friend zone intro where we talk about the friend end zone.

0:58:11 Thomas: There's every Jot and tittle of the friends that let it b said that we've covered every angle of it. There's not a single sentence more that we could possibly say about it. I

0:58:18 Eli: Alright, before we go, I have a very, very important question. What is Forrest Gump's password? 1 -Forrest -1.

0:58:41 Thomas: Almost got there. I was like, just about to say it. Oh man. All right, folks, that's all the time we have. I'm going to give you the plugs again, because for one, this bonus story in this episode was, if I may say so, very funny, very excellent. It was a chivalry update, and it involves photo as well, photo evidence. So get on the Patreon, you would have heard that already. It's really funny stuff. Also, this is one of those moments where normally patrons are one episode.

But I got to tell you, they are currently two episodes ahead because we released A Spook Dadular, and patrons already have gotten their hands on that. So if you pledge right now, patreon.com/dearolddads, you've got two episodes to listen to pending and they're really good stuff. Not mention all the monthly bonuses that we do, you can catch up on all those. Another one is incoming very soon.

For all those reasons, I think you should become a patron at patreon.com/dearolddads, but if you can't, of course, that is a -okay we get it, times are tough, inflation, etc, all that. We love having you as a listener, and you know, please tell a friend about the show. In this day and age, that's the the only way to get your podcast out there, because because there are truly so many. So please tell somebody about the show. Give them an episode recommendation. Thanks so much for listening. We'll see you next time.

1:00:04 Clip: Want to meet sexy DILFs in your area? Email the dads at DearOldDads.com or, better yet, send us a message on Patreon. You can follow us on all social media by checking the links in the show notes. And if you need more podcasts in your life, you can find Tom on Cognitive Dissonance, Thomas on Serious Inquiries Only, and Eli on Godawful Movies and all the Puzzle in the Thunderstorm shows. Dear Old Dads is edited and produced by my favorite DILF, Tom Smith, who also wrote and recorded the intro music, which is used with his permission. This podcast is a production of Daddy Issues LLC. Copyright 2022. All rights reserved.

1:00:43 Eli: Are you, what leisurely activities will you be doing as you slack off four days in a row? I

1:00:49 Tom: Don't want you're gonna make fun I'm gonna ride my bike

1:00:53 Eli: Okay, I'll tell you the reason I set that up is because I was so certain you were going to tell me some hellish activity, like, no, we're driving up to a specialist in, on the Moon, he actually has an office on the Moon, but You're not allowed to wear a space suit, so you gotta hold your breath. I'm excited you're riding your bike, that's awesome. Oh.

1:01:05 Thomas: I'm