Thanksgiving Special!

Transcript

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

0:00:28 Tom: Dear Old Dads, the podcast that's unbuttoning its pants and leaning precariously back in its seat. I'm Tom Curry. I'm joined as always by Thomas Smith and Eli Bosnick, hello gentlemen.

0:00:38 Eli: Okay, I thought we weren't doing the sex episode this week, but then you throw an intro like that, Tom.

0:00:43 Tom: I said precariously, not predatorily,

0:00:47 Eli: All leans are precarious when you're as fat as I am, Tom! You become that bop 'em clown in a certain way.

0:00:54 Thomas: Well, sorry, Eli. The problem is I still have like 20 more tips on finding the clit as a 12 year old. I just need to get them out, you know? It's that time of the year? Oh,

0:01:00 Eli: Obviously, yes.

0:01:04 Tom: So it's... Thomas, Smith is going through his childhood drawings. Everybody else has like a house with like a little chimney smoke coming up, Thomas has anatomically accurate drawings

0:01:04 Thomas: God. Were the one who only had to have to suffer through drawings. I'm still, I'm STILL haunted by that. I know this is not the topic. Wait, oh no, this is the topic. Tell you what, hey, Thanksgiving special, how do you cope with going home and seeing family that once drew vivid description, like descriptive figures

0:01:19 Eli: Yeah, run strew genitals. How do you do it when they've never said I love you, but they have said labia majora? Tom, you want to lead us off on that one? No,

0:01:30 Thomas: Yeah I don't have any tips for that, that's the one benefit of my family, at least they're so prudish, I never had to deal with any of that.

0:01:47 Tom: Oh,

0:01:50 Eli: I know that some people in the group are creating a is Tom's dad Hitler thing, I'd like a third category, right?

0:01:55 Tom: No, he's not Hitler.

0:01:57 Eli: Where it's just weird.

0:01:58 Thomas: Is Tom's dad weird Hitler? Yeah.

0:02:02 Tom: Okay, I will, I will cop to my dad's weird, like, I will cop to my dad's an unusual cat for sure, for sure. So, but you know, it's funny, because, um, when we were kids, I'm gonna transition right out of my dad being Hitler. When we were kids, we would go up for Thanksgiving all the time, we have any local families. So we'd drive up to Michigan, about a three, three and a half hour drive. And we would see my dad's cousins. Um, they're the closest things we have to like local family. So he'd call them aunt and uncle. Cause they're, you know, contemporaries of my dad, and we'd go up and we'd do Thanksgiving. And I always used to love that Thanksgiving tradition. I thought like these were like my family, you knows, my aunts and uncles, it's aunt Diane, that's uncle Bob, you know, et cetera. And, uh, I remember when I was, it was like 2003, and three, and I bought my first house, and I was very excited.

0:02:02 Eli: Sure

0:02:50 Tom: I was a young man. I was in my twenties and uh, I was like, Oh, you know what? I'm going to, I'm going to invite everybody from Michigan, my family from Michigan to come to my house and I'll host Thanksgiving. And I invited everybody cause we're the, we're the guys that drove every year for 10, 15, 20 years, right?

0:03:06 Tom: Three and a half hours there and back, you Know, up and around the lake.

0:03:03 Thomas: Yeah oh god yeah yeah and you came bearing wooden turkeys yeah, now

0:03:10 Tom: Yeah. You know, we'd get stuck in the snow storms and shit around the lake. I don't know if you guys have have lake effect snow, you wouldn't have any lake effect snow, Thomas Smith. Or even know what those words mean, but it's it's that thing that's drying up, it's by you, it's the, it's the puddle now. And so I, I called everybody, and I was all excited, like, hey, I got my first house, I'd love to have you guys over, I'll cook, I'll host, you know, it'll be great. To a person they all declined, to a person they all, all declined, and I never, I told my dad though, I never went back to Thanksgiving again, not ever. I

0:03:05 Eli: Yeah

0:03:18 Thomas: We don't have water so yeah what's the lake part mean? What is that, like carry lake? I don't know, I got nothing. Yeah. Yeah

0:03:28 Eli: No

0:03:49 Thomas: Did your dad tear up and look at you and go, son, I've been waiting so long for you to have your first first I will never do this again in my fucking life cause

0:03:53 Tom: This was our moment, this was it

0:03:53 Eli: My boy son son, would you like to take this family portrait and throw it into the garbage for Papa?

0:04:03 Thomas: Along with this hand carved wooden turkey that I don't need now

0:04:08 Tom: But yeah, I so I don't have, I haven't seen my extended family for holiday gatherings since 2003, right

0:04:15 Thomas: Well, I was gonna say, I'm things are like a Game of Thrones-esque political nuclear Right? Like, oh, where's Thanksgiving going to be? Well, it's always at this one person's house and they have made it their whole life identity to host Thanksgiving or something. And if you even suggest anything change, you are actually killing them as a family member.

0:04:19 Eli: It's exactly, yeah. Mm -hmm. Mm -huh.

0:04:35 Thomas: You're actually, it is you committing a murder, right. I mean, is it just me?

0:04:37 Tom: It

0:04:35 Eli: Ha -ha -ha. No, 100%, 100%. Thanksgiving is at my Aunt Susan's house. I love it there, by the way. And every, by the way, we should say that the usurpers to the throne always fuck it up, right? There's never been someone who's been like, well, I'd really like to host this year, and everyone said yes and they said, oh, what fun, that was no fucking Coralline burns the turkey, realizes she only has eight chairs, her entire house for 34 fucking guests, she tells you about how much fun it's gonna be to sleep out in the backyard and we're like, well, let's never fucking do that again because

0:04:40 Tom: Is No, That's

0:04:45 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, God. The chairs. Yeah,

0:05:14 Eli: She stole your doll when you were eight. Look, the, the reason why Thanksgiving is fraught is because it's the one time of year where we gotta go, okay, so who's the best, which, which one of the siblings has actually got their shit together. It's Aunt Susan. It's Aunt Susan is the one who has her shit together, and she has the family that all lives in the same town. They all love her. She's got the giant house.

0:05:22 Thomas: Yeah, yeah.

0:05:36 Eli: She makes the giant meal. Right. And the rest of us, I bought a house this year. It didn't even occur to me for a second that I would host. I didn't invite people to come see it. I was like, yeah, you'll see it in the background of photos. You know what it's going to be. Books, mess, dirt, flies. You got it. You got the thing. Thing.

0:05:51 Tom: Books.

0:05:45 Thomas: OK. Yeah! If you've seen one cabinet open, you've seen them all.

0:05:52 Tom: Messenger. Flies.

0:05:54 Eli: I'll Send you a DVD box of Hoarders if you want to check out my house, but yeah. Of

0:05:59 Thomas: Yeah it's true. Actually, Now that I think about it, I think I'm going to defend the fact that we, I think what's happened is most of the time, I'm sure there's exceptions, but most of the time I think the whole family has kind of silently arrived at what is actually the best conclusion and any change to that is going to suck. Like, actually, I think that is kind of what's going on, but you, but you don't blame, how does, you know, how do you know when it's your time to retire as the Thanksgiving, you know, maybe, maybe my mom doesn't, you know, have that same quick couple steps she had in the uh in the old as on the old football field

0:06:14 Eli: Course Nope. Grandfathered in that you host in your prime and then you still get to host when the turkey is raw and your dementia means that the potatoes are burned to a crisp, it's the last, it's, we give it to you until your grave and then the next generation starts fighting about it

0:06:32 Thomas: Wow. Yeah.

0:06:45 Thomas: It is like a like a a monarchy situation I think that is okay yeah maybe that's how it's supposed to be

0:06:49 Eli: Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah, and if you if you fuck with it, if you fuck with, you'll destroy that holiday. And I know because we used to do Thanksgiving and Christmas and my aunt Susan's, and then my father, God bless him, was like, "I can host," and his ADD was like, you can't and Christmas just got beaten to death on the front lawn, like American History X, it was horrifying, it was horrible, there were people getting hotels last minute on Christmas Eve, I don't even want to talk about it. It's like all of Tom's stories that he thinks are happy.

0:07:11 Tom: Oh.

0:07:22 Tom: My God. See?

0:07:00 Thomas: Yeah. Oh. My God. Yeah. Oh. Geez. Oh. No. No, no, it's not it's as bad as this. Still had loving family try to come and make an effort. It wasn't as bad. Is that?

0:07:27 Tom: Was it's Not so, yeah, I I will say though, like the difference is I can fucking host, I because I've been hosting a Friendsgiving, um, I've done every year with a few exceptions because of COVID and stuff, but um, I've been doing a Friendsgiving since, oh, something like that for about 20 years with a handful of exceptions, you know, like I said, I've been hosting a Friendsgiving, I can host a fucking baller Thanksgiving, a killer, like my cooking is a thousand times better than my fucking aunt Diane, like I had to go to my aunt Diane, teach her how to cook the fucking turkey so it wouldn't be this burnt to a crisp, like ass fucking cardboard turkey, like no, absolutely not like they're just they're missing out, they are missing out on a real Thanksgiving

0:07:36 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Jeez. Wow.

0:08:14 Eli: You're usurping the throne, Tom. Look, maybe the rebels would be better kings than the king, but we need the monarchy to stand.

0:08:20 Thomas: Yeah. I was going to say occasionally, you know, there's a revolution that works out, you know, occasionally, but most of the time, most of time just leaves a power vacuum and the whole country is destroyed for generations.

0:08:25 Tom: Right. Well,

0:08:25 Eli: Yeah. Les tassez moi.

0:08:33 Thomas: Generations, that's what usually happens.

0:08:33 Tom: Well, well, they'll never know because they didn't show up.

0:08:36 Eli: They'll never know because you've never spoken to them again, which is super chill and cool.

0:08:40 Tom: So, you know, what's funny, though, is that like I stopped going up there for holidays and ever said like, hey, we miss you having around. And nobody ever set anything.

0:08:43 Thomas: Oh, man. Yeah, they suck.

0:08:52 Tom: I stopped. I stopped showing up.

0:08:52 Thomas: Wait, are these literally the same wooden statue people?

0:08:55 Eli: Yes, They're the same.

0:08:56 Tom: Yeah.

0:08:56 Thomas: Same, oh, fuck these people.

0:08:57 Tom: Yeah.

0:08:56 Eli: Didn't say thank you for the thing? No, I I'm sorry, I would like to defend I would to defend the Michigan family because your family are the weirdos who go fucking Blackhawk Down the minute anything goes wrong. He was like, hey, do you remember how Uncle Hitler used to always bring us those things? Yeah, I think one year, you know, grandma fell, I think, think one year, like, while he was doing that I looked and grandma was falling and then he just silently walked out of the house. And do you remember he lit that small fire of wood right out on the porch, and whenever anyone tried to go out he sort of leaned his back against the door, wouldn't let us out there? I think that, and then, Tom, you remember him? Was 20 and wanted to host Thanksgiving, and we said no, so he never spoke to us again. I

0:08:58 Tom: That's what I mean. So I was like, you guys don't give a shit anyway.

0:09:45 Thomas: Oh,

0:09:45 Eli: Would be afraid to speak to you if you, you went that fucking Osama bin Laden living in the caves of Afghanistan, he'd call you and you'd be like, aha, you've fallen into my trap. And there'd be a click and a scream from upstairs.

0:09:45 Thomas: Wow. I'm not going to say Eli's definitely right, but.

0:10:02 Tom: I feel like all we did was just shine a light on the truth of our relationship, which is nobody really cared and nobody feels any sense of loss, you know what I mean? It's just like, uh, time didn't show up anymore. Should we get my- I don't even, we didn't even notice, like, that's fine, like we'll just do new traditions. Oh,

0:10:05 Thomas: Oh, well.

0:10:15 Eli: See, now Thanksgiving is very funny for me and my family, because the two people who care most about Thanksgiving are my Aunt Susan, who hosts exactly as Thomas said, and me, which is a very weird dynamic that, like, the adult children, ah, sometimes they come, sometimes they don't. Susan's kids, they try to make it every year, but sometimes they're busy, right? And every- there's all very low stakes, but if me and Susan aren't at Thanksgiving, we are like, well, that's it. I worked for a toy company for seven years and took off every Black Friday slash week before Thanksgiving, non -negotiably.

0:10:48 Tom: What?

0:10:53 Thomas: Oh, wow. That's not easy to do. Yeah.

0:10:56 Eli: I literally- the, the, like, fourth or fifth year I worked for that toy company, when the Germans were in charge, they were like, this is the biggest shopping day of the year, you need to be there, and I was like, I quit, and they were like, what? And I was like, I quit, I'm Michael Scott, I quit.

0:11:09 Eli: And they were like, okay, fine, you can have that week off. This is crazy, my manager, this very sweet little German lady, went and looked up Thanksgiving to see if it had religious, just, significance, because she just didn't understand why anyone would care so much. But yeah, that's my, that's mine hard line well,

0:11:19 Tom: I love

0:11:21 Thomas: Oh yeah that's awesome. Oh, good times well

0:11:26 Tom: Thanksgiving, it's the best holiday of the year, it's my absolute favorite holiday, the

0:11:30 Thomas: Also vegan, so like that, mean, I'll be honest, it takes a lot of the shine off of Thanksgiving for me going vegetarian. Like, I still can

0:11:37 Eli: Thomas, what if I told you that at Susan's, vegetarian Thanksgiving is the word of the day, so there is plenty for me to eat, the main course, a delicious nut loaf, that's a nut, you take, like, walnuts and mix it with breadcrumbs, oh, and here's another tradition, because I want to talk crazy traditions, this is my favorite tradition, the kids in a rotation get to choose the shape of the nut loaf every year, and my Uncle Larry, who makes the nut loaf, will make it into the shape of whatever they want, whatever animal they want, whatever yeah

0:11:46 Thomas: I come I

0:11:50 Tom: Fuck is a nut loaf, what the fuck isn't nut loaf?

0:11:55 Thomas: Again we're not doing the sex episode, we said we're doing a different, so

0:12:15 Tom: It's dick -shaped every year, a

0:12:17 Eli: Whatever

0:12:17 Tom: Hundred percent, it's just dick-shape

0:12:18 Eli: Oh no, it's usually because it only circles among the young kids, so, so it's usually whatever their favorite animal is, except one year.

0:12:25 Thomas: Wait, are you at the, the kid table with just Eli sitting at the kiddie table with the nut loaf, yeah

0:12:27 Eli: So here's the thing. I am literally still at the kids table despite being 35 because everyone has aged and no one has died. So there's no shoving around, right? There's no shifting a room. Except one year, one year Uncle Larry put his foot down and he chose the shape, and that was 2008, when our nut loaf was shaped like Barack Obama, he was a- he's a huge Obama supporter and, like, canvassed for him and everything, and was so happy when he won that he made a Barack Obama nut loaf, oh yeah, it's over, it's ever

0:12:40 Thomas: There's only one table here, I can't do, yeah, is this the kind of thing where if the photos show up of it one day, you're canceled. Yeah,

0:13:11 Eli: Forever, forever and ever, I'll leak my nudes to distract from the- they

0:13:11 Thomas: Yeah, well

0:13:17 Tom: I'm trying to think if we have any weird traditions other than just canceling each other. I think that's our- that's our family tradition, is just to cancel each other.

0:13:24 Eli: Were

0:13:25 Thomas: Couple you places to go for one, I want to know about this Friendsgiving, where, because you are friends with an insanely good chef, is that I, and but you're still the one cooking and hosting the Friendsgiving, I'm curious how that works.

0:13:33 Tom: Yes, yeah, yeah, it was my idea, so yeah, years, I mean years and years back, um, I just decided to do a Friendsgiving tradition, I just was like, I just come over, you know, it's like the weekend after, everyone's got like a long weekend, I'll try my hand at, at making Thanksgiving. I had not done it before, but it seemed like fun, and so I made a Thanksgiving and invited, like, you know, two other couples, um, over, and we had a real nice Thanksgiving. Then throughout the course of the years, it sometimes would be that me and Cecil, and then our other close friends circle, we would all kind of, we'd all get together and cook together, sometimes I would just do all the cooking, sometimes they'd come over, you know, and like help, like, kind of finish things off at the last, you know, hour or so, just when things get a little hairy when you've got, you know, eight or nine or ten dishes that are all kind of getting ready to come out. We've

0:13:38 Thomas: Uh, did

0:14:26 Tom: Done all kinds of different stuff, like I've done traditional Thanksgiving, but I've also done like German Thanksgiving, and I've done like old school wild game.

0:14:33 Thomas: They have native Americans, they massacred, how do they have Thanksgiving, I probably, they do actually, I'm sure, virtually

0:14:39 Tom: They do right, yeah, so and then the- then the tradition has grown, like, you know, I mean, with, with the introduction of like, you know, Hayley's friends, and and you, my friends, I think the last one that we did was in 2019, I think we did it in 2019, and there were probably 30 people over, and it was great, it was wonderful, it was for it was great, it's so much fun, like you're, you're running out of, like, places for people to sit, you don't have enough, you know, service for everybody, but it's just, it's great, you know, and you've got just this huge amount of dishes that are made, and then, you know, Haley and I now, like we kind of, we were competing for a little while to see who made the best this or that, because she loves to cook and I love to cook, and when we first got together it was like, I don't know that I want you in my kitchen, he's like, I don't know that I want you in my kitchen, you know, and so now,

0:14:39 Eli: Called Jews, Thomas, Jews.

0:14:40 Thomas: Yeah, wow,

0:14:58 Eli: Wow, that's awesome, again,

0:15:29 Tom: Now we've established, we've accomplished very firmly. Who's a, who's stuffing is the best. It is not mine, by the way, my, I lost badly.

0:15:29 Eli: This isn't the sex episode, Tom.

0:15:31 Thomas: Yeah, I

0:15:39 Eli: No, yeah,

0:15:40 Thomas: Was gonna say, did you, did you put, make your friends suffer through, like, all right it's- it's a blind test, you have to tell us which one's the best, and they're all just like white knuckling it, like, I don't know what. Oh, my God. Okay.

0:15:50 Tom: My kids, the kids, like

0:15:52 Thomas: Yeah. Kids have no chill. If you want to know the truth, you just ask kids.

0:15:52 Tom: My son was like, was like no fuck off dad.

0:15:56 Thomas: They'll just fucking tell you from the mouths of babes is one of the most true cliches.

0:15:56 Tom: Yeah.

0:15:56 Eli: Kids will tell you but You can sway if you got kid judges, you put chocolate chips in your stuffing and you're gonna fucking win.

0:16:02 Thomas: Oh, that's true. Yeah. There's just like a Snickers like sitting in the stuff. You know, I got to say, I'm going to introduce this suggestion to anyone who's going through like the attempted coup, the revolution, you know, the Thanksgiving revolution, rather than trying to like, "we'll be greeted as liberators" thing, you know, like just, just the full invasion takeover. Here's, here's what I think you should do. Maybe this, who knows how many people this applies to, but it kind of applied to us.

And I think it worked, separate the concept of the hosting, like physically hosting, from the cooking. So what we did is we eventually were like, "Hey, our mom is like just consensus, the best cook of the Thanksgiving stuff." And we all love her cooking and her bacon. Like we love it. It's the the best, nobody wants anything other than that really in the whole family, but the house is a piece of shit and we used to have just like a dead body who was pretending we weren't there, uh, so we didn't want to do that much anymore, so we kind of did that. Here's what we'll do, we'll host physically, my brother started hosting, but you know that means, you know, mom just come over, bring all the stuff, we'll provide all the time, you do the cooking there. So you're separating those duties, and I think it makes for like a soft transition of power, and eventually

0:16:06 Eli: Right yeah yes

0:17:14 Thomas: Yeah it's machiavellian. Eventually you're like, "oh maybe we'll cook this dish," "oh maybe," you know, and then, like, if you, let's say you're trying to do like a, you know, a a revolution over time, because maybe in your situation the food sucks or something, then you do a small, "oh, you're," you know, "we're hosting but you're still cooking," but hey, why don't we take care of the uh this dish, we'll just, we'll just grab that one for you, before you know it you replace the whole fucking thing and you're, you're, you're old. Yeah. And then you start beheading people. That's what you do.

0:17:14 Eli: And boom

0:17:15 Tom: Right that's

0:17:35 Eli: You're the monarch it's like a pope, yeah. You're doing the pope thing, which is like, okay fine, you're the king, but come over here for your religion, bam, I'm the king, I have my own city, everyone dresses weird, fuck a bunch of kids, uh, this is exactly This is brilliant, now, so this actually brings me, that's a perfect solution to a question that I had for Tom about friends thanksgiving and a solution you just offered, which is that, Thomas, that is the perfect way to deal with the bag of shit family member. Now, we, I, I should say, my grandfather took care of our bag of shit family member before I was born, literally before I was born, he beat him up on the front lawn of my aunt's house, and uh, Danny went and killed himself in a hotel room a couple years later as well, he should have, it was the best for everybody, but you had the baggy shit family member, was that the solution, is that everyone just went to your brothers and your dad was like, "I'm gonna be here creating voids with my personality," like, what was right?

0:17:41 Tom: That's good

0:17:51 Thomas: Don't use condoms. Divorce whoever you want. Yeah.

0:18:10 Thomas: Yeah, that became, I'm trying to remember the timeline because the one I've mentioned before, the time we all came up for Thanksgiving and he hid in his room and then went out and went golfing was the, that really was like this, just the final, like, all right, there's no fucking, this is ridiculous. Like we've all come here, driven from, you know, miles and miles, not super far, we didn't fly, not across the country, but like we all took our families, our kids or whatever, you know's, hundreds of miles at least. And he just didn't come out of his room. Just didn't coming out. And so I think after that, it then became one of those things where, as I've mentioned before, my mom perpetually would do the like, "Oh yeah, he's coming. We're going to come. We'll all going to..." cut. Yeah.

0:19:20 Thomas: Nick and I we'll come, we'll be there, and we just every time, we had to be like, why, who is this for, who is this because, every time what happens

0:19:20 Eli: Yeah just

0:19:21 Tom: Yeah

0:19:27 Eli: Sitting out a plate for him, like, "Elijah, just like, oh, and this is the wine he's gonna drink, mom." Yeah. The

0:19:27 Thomas: Yeah well like Elijah, we were that certain that no one was actually going to be there, like, it was that level, so we didn't have to bother with it because we're just like, "yeah okay, okay, skip to the part where he didn't come," and you come up with some like excuse, that whatever, it just was, it felt like year, like two years of that minimum, I don't even even know how long it was, every single holiday, "yeah, we'll be there, Nick and I." "Yeah, really? Dad's gonna come?" "Yeah, oh yeah, he's okay, he said, he said, his planet." "Oh he's not here. What happened?" "Oh, you know, he can't see too good." Every time, that was the, "he can't see," that

0:19:35 Tom: What

0:20:06 Eli: Front

0:20:06 Thomas: Was yeah I know like I was like, "I know look he had a stroke," "in the," in "the macular degeneration," whatever, the diabetes thing, so he couldn't see that well, but like, there's such a thing as, you know, blind family members who still participate, like that doesn't ruin your ability to be a family member. Like, "I can't see too good," but it was just her go -to Yeah.

0:20:07 Eli: Door, yeah. Yeah pretty

0:20:09 Tom: Yeah I was gonna say like yeah I can't see myself showing up you know so So, right.

0:20:30 Eli: Like when

0:20:29 Thomas: Yeah maybe it was an elaborate dad joke, like that, I don't know. Yeah.

0:20:34 Eli: Like when people stop bringing their old dog over. It's like, "oh my gosh, where's Mitzi? She's not, you know, she needs a pill every three hours now, so we have a, we have an neighbor watcher," and you know, we just, we hope someday that she forgets. That's basically our policy. That was the policy. Now Tom, my question about Friendsgiving, because I made the mistake of hosting a Friendsgiving once and only once. I'll absolutely never fucking do it it again.

0:20:46 Thomas: Oh

0:20:52 Tom: Yeah. What?

0:20:59 Eli: I will tell you why, first of all, Tom, you have to remember a very important thing that is true of me that apparently is true of no one else in the world, my friends absolutely fucking suck, most of them are the fucking worst, but this was the experience I had at Friendsgiving. I invited my closest friends in the world for a Friendsgiving, everyone was going to bring a dish, and someone brought a stranger, did you so

0:20:59 Tom: Why? Okay.

0:21:14 Tom: What

0:21:26 Thomas: Oh

0:21:27 Tom: Do you mean they brought a stranger to your home for Friendsgiving?

0:21:29 Eli: My buddy, yes. My buddy was dating someone who we had never met before, they had been dating for a month and a half, and I opened the door and he was standing next to her, and I was just like, "what, come on," a total stranger, did you

0:21:47 Thomas: That's a borderline okay, I'm curious what the consensus

0:21:54 Tom: I don't know that I would be that upset by that. Like, if somebody's dating.

0:21:55 Thomas: Yeah okay yeah normal normal Thanksgiving. Yes. You don't just plop into normal family Thanksgiving with a new person that no one's ever heard of. I feel like that's, that's a tough, that's a tough call. That's a people don't.

0:22:07 Tom: How long have they been dating again? I'm sorry.

0:22:08 Thomas: But a Friendsgiving, a Friendsgiving,

0:22:11 Tom: It's not a long time.

0:22:08 Eli: Month and a half

0:22:11 Thomas: Though, there's no, you know, official Friendsgiving etiquette, I don't think, is there?

0:22:17 Tom: How big was the crowd? Oh, I wouldn't do it then. If it's a bigger crowd if it'S a bigger okay so I think the rule should be the more intimate of a gathering it is the less you should fucking show up with randos I

0:22:18 Eli: If they can blend 15 you get one stranger, 30 you get two are

0:22:31 Thomas: Holy shit. What is the most people I've ever had in my house is like three and a half. I don'T know what the hell you guys are talking about.

0:22:38 Eli: You counting Scomber?

0:22:39 Thomas: That'S That's counting me and the kids. Yeah.

0:22:32 Tom: Think that seems reasonable

0:22:39 Eli: It Feels like You're counting Scomber Right now.

0:22:44 Thomas: Yeah, I'm excited for Republicans to take over so then I could start counting my, you know, our fetus as one of my friends and that increases my count a little bit.

0:22:48 Eli: Exactly. I, here's the thing about me, and you guys know this, I am an acquired taste, so you can't just bring a stranger to friends. I have to be a different person for a while when I First meet Someone. They Just, you can't, they can't get raw dog, dog full brunt Eli.

0:23:06 Thomas: I see. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, It's tough with a mixed audience, too, because you've got the people that you're like, all right, this is I'm you know, I got to be full Eli with these people, but I can only point one percent Eli with those people. You're all fucked up.

0:23:12 Eli: Yeah.

0:23:13 Tom: So you

0:23:21 Eli: I have my best friends in the world, so I'm talking to them and then I turned to you, I would call her Jesanthepus. I turned to Jesantepus and I'm like, and how is work? What, you work, do You like normal Work up And down Stairs Sure.

0:23:33 Thomas: Yeah, how About The Weather Uh Fuck

0:23:35 Tom: Now probably have a really strong urge knowing you pretty well like you Probably have a Really strong urge to be like that kind of host that's constantly engaging that new person because they're new I would not feel that no see I think that's that's part of where you and I differ too is that like yeah welcome to my house to get you food get you a drink introduce you around and then yeah you're on your own like you know here's 15 20 people make friends with one or two of them. I don't know, like, I'm here to circulate with the people I invited. Like, I'm not here to circulate around and chat with people I did not invite to this party. I don't spend my time as the host worrying over much about people I don't know

0:24:04 Eli: Uh I Feel Sucked to that person because I love everyone, everyone in the room knows I love them, and I love them, and then there's a stranger there who I'm just like, don't be weird, don't make them afraid, just say, what is normal, hands, hands, happy, is it your birthday, like, just make them feel normal. Absolutely.

0:24:38 Thomas: Yeah, I Feel like Etiquette Wise, you gotta at least run this by the host, right? Don't you think, I feel that's, look Communication

0:24:38 Tom: YEAH SEE I YEAH you can't just show up with a guest that's fucking weird

0:24:45 Thomas: Is Key. Hey, do you mind if I bring this person no one's ever heard of? No, but then, I mean, would you, Eli, would you're the kind of person who would have been been like, no, don't do it. But most people.

0:24:54 Eli: Would Have said no to this friend, because it's also my worst friend is the one Who brought her, my absolute worst friend who is the worst person I know, if, because he knew if he asked me I would, would have been like, absolutely not, you can't bring a fucking stranger to friends. Oh, what's the prefix for the giving, is it friends? Oh, and am I friends with her? No, I'm not fucking friends with her. All this brings me to my next Question, and this is very important to my family, but maybe doesn't matter to other families at all, do you guys play board games at Thanksgiving? Because I'm told it's not just my family that the board game gets pretty intense around this fine nation.

0:24:58 Thomas: Yeah.

0:25:16 Tom: Uh no no

0:25:34 Eli: Nope, nope. Okay, just

0:25:35 Tom: No I

0:25:37 Thomas: Don't even to this day, Tom, you're not a, you don' t like sports.

0:25:40 Tom: Don't I think I own a board game

0:25:42 Thomas: Yeah, you' re not a video game. You' re just not a gamer.

0:25:42 Tom: Yeah I think we own we own one board game that I'm aware of that we bought we bought pandemic the board game at the beginning of the pandemic thinking it would be a spot of ironic fun and then it felt kind of weird and we we played it it twice and put it back fun

0:25:56 Eli: Know, is

0:25:57 Thomas: Tom' s not very fun. I' ll be honest. Not very fun is not the word. Look, Tom has a lot of of great qualities, you don't go to Tom, no but none of the friends or the family, children are thinking, yeah, we're going to, we're coming to the Currys yeah, I can't wait, no, no, um, hated that my dad never participated in anything with, like, I could count, I think I, we talked about this before, the couple of times he participated in any games back in the day was, was like amazing to me because it was, it just never happened, um play a few games, we played a few things here and there, mainly driven by my brother, but then once my brother, uh, had kids, he just, he just has no bandwidth for anything, so it's kind of

0:25:59 Eli: Think

0:26:04 Tom: Is not one of them we're going to tom's house like reindeer or otherwise that

0:26:41 Eli: Thanksgiving

0:26:41 Thomas: Sucks, kind of, it's a big bummer, we just we just do nothing. I don't even know what we're doing this year, plus we have a scumbag coming in a month, so I, we have not given a thought to this, I don't even know when. When is it? Is that why we're doing the Thanksgiving episode?

0:26:43 Tom: Is a bummer

0:26:55 Thomas: Is it? Hold on. Does this come out?

0:26:55 Tom: You are in trouble yeah

0:26:59 Eli: It's In uh, it's been three days, you might want to gas up the car there, Thomas.

0:27:03 Tom: You know stock up on cranberry sauce you you know, do what you got to do.

0:27:04 Thomas: I want to just change into a family or like go like is anyone accepting new family members that you don't know?

0:27:13 Eli: You Can Come to mine, mine's the best place in the world

0:27:15 Tom: Come on over and bring some board games. It turns out we're not any fun over here, you know?

0:27:16 Thomas: I love I love. I love playing board games. But here's the thing. Here's the things. Here's what kills me. And Eli, you know this about about me. I'm perfectly happy to be ridiculed about this, I am supremely competitive in a night, in a nice way, I like playing competitive things, so if anybody ever busts out the game that's just pure chance, I jump off a building, I can't, that like one of my old girlfriends, like family, they only played games that were just pure chance, crap, just luck, like you, I can even even Yahtzee, you have some strategy of how you pick, like I could I could fuck with Yahtzee, I can, you know there's numbers in Yahtsee, I can, I can have fun with that, no, I don't even fucking remember, it just stuff where it's like a purely luck based thing and I'm just like I I have no interest in, I cannot tell you how little interest I have in us all just seeing who the universe picks for the, like, it's nothing, that's not anything.

0:27:47 Tom: Like what? Like, like Yahtzee?

0:27:50 Eli: Yahtzee, sorry shoots and ladders Candyland

0:28:06 Tom: Pull and pray?

0:28:18 Eli: Thomas, I've got great news, because you know who else feels exactly that way? My cousin Josh, who is in charge of the board games in Cleveland, there is no chance in our board games, no chance, it is pure strategy, and you just play harder, harder and harder, and more strategic games as the dumber members of the family.

0:28:23 Thomas: Here we go oh all right I'm coming over I'm

0:28:35 Tom: What, what games do you guys play? Wait a minute. Now I'm fat. Like I, we don't see, we do this weird thing. Like, well, we would, we gather together and we'll, we'll just talk to each other. And then, then that's kind of what we, yeah well it's fine, like, we friends giving it's great, and then, you know, it used to be fine up in Michigan, but I don't know, it probably still is, but what, so what games do you guys play

0:28:40 Thomas: Russian roulette no I'm just kidding oh that's horrible oh

0:28:43 Eli: So, seems like they're having a, you should show up this year with absolutely no warning and without acknowledging that you haven't been there in 19 years.

0:29:04 Thomas: My god that would be so funny and

0:29:04 Tom: Yeah I mean they haven't even met Hayley, like, you know they, they don't have any idea, yeah

0:29:07 Thomas: Also buy like 400 wooden carvings and be like, oh, you haven't come and gotten these for Christmas

0:29:14 Eli: Gotten them. I've been hosting every year. I have thrown out a turkey every year and you know what I realized this year? You guys haven't be getting the invitations. Congratulations, get in here, Uncle Rich, love you, do you still love dogs, you were six, okay, so you've sort of grown into more than that now, okay, I get it so

0:29:14 Thomas: Yeah yeah

0:29:31 Tom: But yes so what do you guys play like

0:29:33 Thomas: Well Eli as a person is the new board game person, but you're saying someone else is in charge, so I guess I don't know yeah

0:29:39 Eli: Else is in charge and it's very rare that we introduce new board games, that is usually end of the night, me and Josh pulling out, you know, the deep cuts right this is I got the German edition of this Reiner or Kinesia game, and me and him are going to play it while the rest of the family's asleep, but no, so we start with something that everyone plays, Boggle, here's the great news, everybody can play Boggle, kids get two letter words, my grandma Betty, rest her soul, was also allowed two letter words until the day she died, everybody plays Boggle, right, when you're bored of, right, easy to explain

0:29:40 Thomas: Oh heaven you're yeah you're one experimental for the for the year that's fine

0:30:14 Tom: Two

0:30:14 Eli: Fun word game, right, and then everyone sort of drifts away from that, we do something, something lightly strategic, right? This is where we whittle down from the, you know, because there's, exactly, because there's 40 people eating, right, would say there's 35 playing Boggle, 34 playing Boggle. Right. Then board games limits down to 12, right.

0:30:15 Tom: Letter words

0:30:23 Thomas: So it separates the men from the boys

0:30:39 Eli: That's where the nerds, just the nerd's, right and the cool family, right, because some of my family is cool, they're social, they go in the other room and talk, like grown -ups right, they talk and they drink and they share cigars or whatever, I don't know what grown-ups do, I'm playing board games the 12, yeah

0:30:39 Thomas: Mm -hmm yeah oh

0:30:54 Tom: Wait

0:30:49 Thomas: That's perfect yeah invest in the stock market I don't know, whatever they do, pay their mortgages together Tom

0:30:58 Eli: Exactly, oh

0:30:56 Tom: A minute I do do 12 can 12 people, people play one board game? Have, I'm literally had no idea. I'm 12

0:31:03 Eli: Yeah

0:31:06 Thomas: Have you ever seen a game, yeah

0:31:08 Eli: No this is the thing, because I am now realizing

0:31:08 Tom: People. Seems like a lot of people to play a board game.

0:31:13 Eli: This is what I'm now realizing, because me and Thomas go to conventions, and you don't go to convictions, I'm just in my memory always inserting you into the endless rounds of code names that Thomas and Heath have had us play so

0:31:21 Thomas: Yeah right we mentally and it's a sign of our love for you, Tom, we just, we just mentally both write you into our delightful conference memories of gaming

0:31:34 Tom: How have I done? Have I done well at these games? Am I doing okay?

0:31:34 Thomas: Um oh boy I

0:31:37 Eli: You're a delighted code, I think, Tom, at code names would be an absolute blast, no

0:31:42 Tom: I ever tell you guys about the time I had to learn to play poker for work?

0:31:46 Thomas: Don't know how to play, come on

0:31:48 Tom: Okay. Let me tell you this. Let Me Tell You This So You'll Love This Story. This is a great story. So at the company I was at before I, I had to play. So we, we used to do this. It was a terrible company full of assholes. And we used to do this thing once a year where they called it the Winter Summit, but it was really just like all the management types and the salespeople and the ownership would go up to this resort in Wisconsin. And then you'd spend three days just drinking and smoking cigars and playing poker. And then for some, something, something that was work. I don't why and it was mandatory, you absolutely you had to

0:31:48 Eli: He does now Oh.

0:31:50 Thomas: Man man. So we, geez, was it all men? Were there any women that That strikes me as like a very sexist situation.

0:32:22 Tom: Do it. It was 90 percent, there any

0:32:29 Thomas: Cause you also have the golf thing you've talked about too. Like this is just an old timey fifties company.

0:32:29 Tom: Women there was there a woman there yeah, this is like, yeah, this is very like, it's a very conservative industry, like it is a very, very conservative old school industry, I think that maybe one year there was a woman, but no, typically it's all guys. So sorry, so we'd go up and, you know, we'd play, we'd play poker. Except for the first year I got invited, I was like, I was told I was going to have to play poker, to bring some money, you know, that's what we're going to do. So I was like, oh shit. Well, one, I don't have any, like, I got like a hundred bucks extra cash. I kind of broke at the time. So, I scraped a hundred bucks together and I'm like, all right, well, I hope it's not going to cost more than a hundred dollars. And then I forgot about it because I was busy doing other shit and I got in the car to drive to Wisconsin. It's a two-hour drive and I was like, fuck, I never learned to play poker. So, I put a podcast on about how to play poker for beginners.

0:32:37 Thomas: Yeah. Oh my God.

0:33:04 Eli: Boy. Yeah.

0:33:17 Thomas: And you're, are you talking Texas Hold 'em? You better be talking Texas hold 'em, right? Yeah. Yeah.

0:33:17 Tom: Yeah. Texas hold 'em. And so I'm, I listened to the podcast and then I listened to a few other follow-up episodes on the way up and I'm like, okay, this seems pretty straightforward. And so then I drive up there and then everybody's kind of gathered around these tables in the lobby of this like big resort that everybody's in. And so we're in there and I get, I get a couple of drinks, I'm, okay, let me get you guys the next round.

And I go up and I get drinks and I stand there and then I just watch people play so I can get kind of the feel for, like, okay, it passes from this side to this side and then the dealing changes and I'm like, okay, I think I understand this game, but I don't really, I've never fucking sat down and played the game before. So like, all right, you know, sit down, Curry, we're dealing you. And I'll go, okay, all right, fine.

So I, I get my chips or fucking whatever and I get my cards and I start playing and I kind of know what I'm doing a little bit from like listen but I

0:33:20 Thomas: Oh,

0:34:05 Tom: Also am not good. I don't have a strategy, I have no idea what to do. So I'm playing, but I'm winning like fucking crazy because they have no idea what, what the fuck to expect from me.

0:34:11 Thomas: Yeah, of course. It's what always happens. Yep.

0:34:14 Tom: I'm just like a random number generator sitting at the table.

0:34:14 Eli: It's

0:34:15 Thomas: Yep, it's impossible. Yeah. It's the hardest thing to play against. Can't be done.

0:34:20 Tom: So I'm playing and I get all the way down. No shit. I get all the down to just me and the one guy who's one of the owners of the company. And he looks at me, he's like, you want to split the pot? And I was like, hell yeah.

0:34:27 Thomas: Playing heads up. Do I?

0:34:31 Tom: And we split the pot. And I Was like, I walked out with like a thousand dollars.

0:34:34 Thomas: Oh, that is the best possible outcome too because you split with the big like head of the company. That's amazing. That's perfect.

0:34:40 Tom: Yeah. Everybody thought like I, I, like I played like this awesome game night of poker and I literally had no idea what I was doing at all at all there were so many times I realized in retrospect that I was like I had nothing, I had less than nothing and would like pull the pot be like yep this

0:34:49 Thomas: That is amazing. It is impossible to play again. It it's it's a possible.

0:34:59 Eli: Great that I almost killed Heath at my bachelor party because of that because at my bachelor party I was like, look, I want to play two things, I want to play Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes with my friends because that is hell for anyone who's ever had terrible friends Keep Talking Nobody Exposes, literally a game about communication and instructions so one person gets an instruction booklet and the other person is literally diffusing a bomb on their computer but it's a very complicated process that you can only do with the instruction booklet and the other person can't see the computer, yeah and so Thomas

0:35:12 Thomas: I don't know what that is oh oh I love this, okay

0:35:32 Tom: Sounds fun, this sounds fine I would play this

0:35:34 Thomas: But this sounds like Anna would hate this like am I okay

0:35:35 Tom: Yeah

0:35:37 Eli: Yes she does again the perfect combination right because you've also met my friend Rachel, Tom, you've met my friends Rachel, imagine my friend Rachel playing that game with Anna, that's what I'm talking about, so I wanted

0:35:39 Thomas: Yep yep oh I'm coming to your fucking Thanksgiving, I'm fucking coming god damn it, cancel everything

0:35:50 Eli: Yep I Keep Talking Nobody Explodes and I also wanted Heath to have to play poker with my friends because Because he was, look, short of lighting him on fire and then freezing him in time, I don't think I've ever caused Heath more pain than when four of my friends went all in on the second hand he played with them. He was just like, okay, I don't think they should all be going, where am I?

0:36:19 Eli: And then of course, you know, it was a guy being like, I was bluffing. And he was like, what, why would you go?

0:36:09 Thomas: Oh god

0:36:20 Tom: Well why would you tell anybody either like that's oh my

0:36:27 Thomas: Oh that's the worst, here's

0:36:27 Eli: No. Excited to play Codenames with Tom. I would love to play. And Crokinole, he's

0:36:33 Tom: Don't even know what it is, I have no, I don'T HAVE ANY idea what this is

0:36:34 Eli: Going to break Crokidole, which is very exciting.

0:36:36 Thomas: Yeah, we're not using my board if we play with Tom.

0:36:38 Eli: No, we got to rent a board for the time we play Crokitole.

0:36:40 Tom: What? Is

0:36:40 Thomas: Yeah, rent a, we got to rent a board with an insurance policy.

0:36:41 Tom: Crokinole? Why would I break Is it Oh, is it a delicate game? Is that, oh,

0:36:46 Thomas: It's a, yeah.

0:36:46 Eli: Yeah, it's a flicking game where you like flick little discs around, very accurately, or in your case where you fire a disc through my throat like the JFK assassination again.

0:36:59 Thomas: Oh,

0:36:52 Tom: I'm very accurate have a delicate touch. I am. I don't know what you guys are talking about. I'm

0:36:59 Thomas: Okay, okay, you

0:37:00 Eli: Tom, we're not doing the sex episode, it's

0:37:04 Tom: I do not have a delegate touch We

0:37:05 Thomas: You play zero games. How would you know? I don't know, uh,

0:37:10 Eli: I'm having such a sad image of you playing Pandemic, because I've played Pandemic. Pandemic is one, one of the hardest cooperative games in the world and two, incredibly frustrating and finicky and punishes you, uh, at the part where you are the, the worst at it, right? Because the worse you do in the game, the worse you do, the outbreaks become more and more common, so you just watch things fall apart in front of you. Like, I do not recommend pandemic to beginners by any way. It.

0:37:34 Tom: Yes. I like We bought it, like I said, I said we bought it on a lark. Like the pandemic had just begun, things were in lockdown, we couldn't go out on a date night or anything, and so I was like, oh, we'll, we'll get a board game. Oh, we'll, this pandemic game. I brought it home and like we, we played it with the kids, Haley, myself, our nanny. And then I think the older kids played it with us. And so they're like 13 or whatever. And then it was all over. And like the outbreak had spread and we'd lost. And I was just like, this doesn't feel good. I don't know.

0:38:07 Eli: Doesn't it does not feel good. That's, that's why you need to get you need be in on a 2am Thomas Heath opposite teams round of Codenames blackout drunk, blackout drunk, Heath, Heath, having a wild theory about something from your childhood that may associate the words claw, hammer, and wet balloon. Yes, it's

0:38:10 Tom: It's March of 2020. This feels bad right now.

0:38:17 Thomas: Yeah, yeah, we're we're actually, very bad together, Heath and I, it doesn't work out. But it's still fun, still fun trying. I, my favorite thing that's

0:38:39 Eli: A, it's amazing to watch people who are good and bad at Codenames, you know, who is remarkably terrible at code games in the funnest possible way to watch? Andrew, Bethesda, Torres, and Andrew will sit there and be like, look, it's very, very obvious. The 16th century Archduke Ferdinand the third called his momentum, or I hammer wet bag, this is what he's referencing, I can't possibly imagine what else it could be, is this. And it's never that. It's beautiful. It's beautiful.

0:38:43 Thomas: The best,

0:38:50 Tom: Really?

0:39:11 Thomas: Yeah. I, I, you know, another thing I wonder if families can relate to this, if you're the competitive family and I was the competitive family, I feel like that's a pretty broad family trend. I'm curious about, I wonder if anybody, damn it, Lindsay Osterman, where are you? She's not on the show. I wonder if anybody's studied this. I want to do a study of this. I feel like the competitive dynamic is a family dynamic. I think you're either a competitive family or not a competitive family for the most part, broadly speaking, of course, Not 100 percent. And I bet you it has something to do with the fucking family dynamic, like in our family where we're all starved for any attention and affection. The only thing we could do is compete with each other to try to see who deserved it more. You know, that's all we could have. So we're the most competitive family. And then if like the competitive family and the non -competitive family, they don't mix.

0:39:11 Eli: Oh,

0:40:01 Thomas: Like if you know, someone brings a girlfriend or someone brings the family, it's, it doesn't mix. My favorite thing is when you've whittled it down, maybe in a gathering, to like the competitive people, but then there's like one hanger on who's like, just wants to kind of hang out, and you're, you love the person, nothing against the person, but like they're the one remaining in the group that's playing games that's not competitive, and you're like, do we

0:40:23 Eli: And they just keep suggesting Apples to Apples. And you're like, hey, Christine, if you don't stop suggesting Apples Apples, I am going gonna stab you in the throat. I'm gonna murder you in real life,

0:40:30 Thomas: Yeah, or you're like you're like trying to play the competitive games, but not. Like, you're like, okay, whose team are they on? Oh, god, okay, uh, you be on this team. You know, it's like you, you just want to do the cutthroat fucking competition with each other, but there's one delightful human being who you don't want to expose that to, but you also don't wanna like insult them by saying like, you, uh, you, we need to, uh, oh, yeah, will

0:40:52 Eli: You don't really have what it takes for this, if you wanna, also there's the people who hate hidden role games and don't understand them, so you can't play them, them right, if you've ever tried to play Werewolf with someone for whom that just doesn't register, and they're like, well, how do we know who the real werewolf is, and you're like, oh, you, you talk and you accuse people and sort of like a fun social dynamic, but who is the werewolf, no, this is, you're describing the experience of the game.

0:41:16 Thomas: They be wearing fur. Will they, well, I know by the claws that come out of them. No.

0:41:22 Eli: I'm the werewolf, okay, well,

0:41:23 Tom: Now, can we play this game on a full moon? Does that, is that, make it kind of give it away, or

0:41:29 Eli: So the big question that a lot of our listeners have, and I think this actually made it into the Q&A, uh, sort of how to deal with toxic family, uh, and I thing we sort of have three, we've sort of touched on it, but advice, thoughts, toxic family, leave,

0:41:45 Thomas: Think it's so contextual.

0:41:45 Tom: I I will, I will, I don't have, I'm lucky enough, as much as, much as I joke about, about cutting people off, I, like what and I actually, actually do it, but, but I don't have any real toxic family. Like, I don't have that, like, shitty Republican conservative death.

0:41:57 Thomas: Yeah, man. I don't have any. After I stopped talking to most of my family, I found I don'T have any toxic family.

0:42:05 Tom: You winnow it down. You winnow it right down, Thomas Smith. You winnew it down, that's

0:42:08 Thomas: It's like Henry VIII is like, you know, I don't have any bad wives that I can think of. They're all, all

0:42:15 Tom: Exactly right.

0:42:13 Eli: I I get along with all of my living exes

0:42:16 Thomas: Of them, yeah.

0:42:18 Tom: It's exactly, right. I got, no, actually, you're right. I don't know if any of them turned out to be, like, Trumpian, toxic, shitty, conservative assholes. Because I didn't, you know, if they didn't serve a purpose in my life, they didn't stick around long enough. I'd just get rid of them.

0:42:26 Thomas: Oh, God. Yeah. It is so, it is so contextual. It's, it matters who it is, what it is. And I found I, it's hard for me to give advice because I, you know, there's some variables involved here. How much do you fucking give a shit about being part of the family? And some people apparently do. So like, I can't really give advice, especially if maybe you're like, you know, a queer fan, the one queer family member, and you're stuck in this like shitty conservative family. My answer would just be, oh, just leave. Like never talk to them again.

Again, but I, it doesn't work like a lot of people for what, I don't know what this part of your brain is. I don't have it, but people have the part of their brain, but where they're like, but it's, but it's my mom, but as my grandpa, it's mine, whatever. And I need to, you know, that's family. It's important. So I can't really give advice on that other than just like the world actually doesn't end. If you just leave your family, like the Tom, Tom is a great example. Just one time. The, uh, the

0:43:01 Tom: Yes.

0:43:26 Thomas: Invitations don't go out.

0:43:26 Eli: Yeah, they didn't even have to be homophobes

0:43:27 Thomas: No, they

0:43:28 Eli: Or anything. They were just like, oh, it's a little bit long of a drive and he was like, what's that you died click

0:43:30 Thomas: Just wanted to save on gas money Yeah, yeah.

0:43:29 Tom: Yep. You know what? Wasn't long for me for 20 years, so, you know, please.

0:43:35 Eli: Yeah.

0:43:36 Thomas: That's fair, that's fair. No, I agree with that. Cutting off, by the way, fuck that. If people aren't going to make the effort that you made one time, um, so, like, that's my advice, is like, maybe start the mental process of realizing your family doesn't actually fucking matter at all, beyond, like, beyond the, and I mean this, like, beyond the actual connection you have. So there's plenty of family that you may have great connection with, and they matter because, because that you have that connection. They are a good person. They love you. That's what matters, not some arbitrary association that happened by accident of your birth that makes it such that you have to listen to someone spout QAnon shit through Thanksgiving and not respect, like, your personal identity or your, you know, like, that doesn't, to me, that doesn't exist. And I get that that's a hard place to get to, I think, for some people, but I don't know. My only advice is start that process and realize, realize what you want out of it.

Like, are there family members who are on that edge of, like, yeah, maybe you have some problems with them, but maybe you think they can learn, they can change. And people do learn and change. Like, it's worth giving people some room for that. Or maybe they're not so important to you that it doesn't affect you that much when they're shitty, you know?

So, like, maybe for the sake of some other family that you really like, you can put up with someone who, like, all right, this person fucking sucks, but I don't care about help them. I'll just put up with them to be around the people I do care about. I think it's

0:43:41 Tom: Yeah. One time.

0:44:11 Tom: Yes.

0:44:57 Thomas: About making those calculations as best you can for you and the situation you find yourself in.

0:45:03 Eli: So we actually get this question all the time on Scathing, especially this time of year. We will get, I would say, three or four of the exact same email. And the tricky part often is not, um, I am this thing, everyone in the family knows it and they hate me and they treat me like shit. It is, I'm in the closet about this thing that I think might make my family hate me. And we have these wonderful relationships. They're so kind to me. They're so sweet to me, I love them so much, I'm afraid to reveal myself to them because they might hate me and it's it's

0:45:07 Thomas: Hmm. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah, that's tricky. Yeah mm

0:45:36 Tom: That is very tricky.

0:45:38 Eli: Really tricky, and, you know, I, I will say, we, we often get this question in the form of atheism, um, just because that's the Scathing Atheist is the podcast um, and I tell people all the time, you fucking lie, lie, your goddamn, no one is keeping score, I can't speak to, like, queerness or anything that has to do with, like, your inherent being, and please don't confuse those two pieces of advice. But when it comes to just whether or not their imaginary friend is real, fuck yeah, your imaginary friend is real, Grandma. Let's play some Boggle, because no one's keeping score. Right? And, you know, you can just

0:45:46 Thomas: -hmm.

0:46:09 Thomas: Wait, are we not keeping score for Boggle? I'm not playing then. We're going okay.

0:46:11 Eli: Oh, oh no. We're keeping score for Boggle. We're

0:46:14 Thomas: Okay, we got let's not go crazy.

0:46:14 Eli: Not keeping score for how many gods there are,

0:46:16 Thomas: We're keeping score. I got you. Okay. I'm coming. Common. I'm back.

0:46:16 Eli: Because, yeah. No, we won the god game for a while.

0:46:19 Tom: Can I get the two -letter words, too? Can I Get In On That Grandma Shit? I want some two - letter words.

0:46:22 Eli: You and Grandma Benny?

0:46:22 Thomas: No, you only get seven letter words because you have a degree.

0:46:27 Eli: Oh, no. Are you kidding? Tom would get absolutely hosed at Boggle in my house? In my house with the authors and the geniuses, Tom, I'm, Me and grandma are just sitting there begging for more one-letter words, hoping for more vowels of anything. But yeah, so that my, my advice would be that if it is, if it has a part of yourself that does not feel like a deep betrayal to, uh, let go of, and you do have those good relationships, have those relationships. Um, and when it comes to like politics and stuff, I mean, I guess it depends on how how passionate you are about those issues and what those issues are. Um, family all agrees on politics, right? They're they're Zen Buddhists and smart, and so like we're all lefty left leftersons. So you know, I, if anything, I'm the one who is usually wrong about, and not like a right wing, but they'll just be like, well, you heard about the deficit crisis in Denmark, and

0:46:27 Tom: Oh. I would get destroyed.

0:47:21 Eli: I'll be like, that is the one that has Amsterdam, right, where you can buy the free weed. And they're like, oh, okay, you have to go back into the board game room. I don't know how you got into the scotch room.

0:47:27 Tom: Yeah

0:47:27 Thomas: I That distinction is really key, and it's really important to emphasize it. It's how much does this matter to your identity? Because something like, you know, a queer identity, play that forward. How maybe long now you can pull off being closeted, well, maybe later you have a partner and the partner is like, oh, am I just coming and pretending I'm what, your friend? You know, like that can't, I don't think that's very sustainable. But something like, all right, you know, atheism or some political thing, I think it's totally fine. I agree with you wholeheartedly, Eli. It's only fine to make that calculation of how much does this really fucking matter. It's time a year so I can have some, you pleasant time and turkey or whatever with family, versus, you, if it is a core identity thing and you, you're not gonna hide your partner, yourself, or your whatever, totally different story. Uh,

0:48:18 Tom: Also would just add, like, I understand too that there's a lot of people who are financially dependent on family and I I would throw out there that if you're financially, or you know, like housing dependent on famil, they just fucking play along like It sucks.

0:48:24 Thomas: Yep, yep. Yeah

0:48:24 Eli: Mhm. Mhm.

0:48:32 Thomas: Unfortunately. Yeah.

0:48:33 Tom: It sucks. Super bad, but it's one of those moments where I would say you've got to just take the reality of who you are and put it on the fucking back burner and play act and lie in order to stay safe and stay housed and stay all of those things that you need until you get to a point where you're independent enough to make those determinations for yourself. But I do want to acknowledge too that I get it, because I know that some people are just really deeply financially and otherwise dependent on family.

0:48:34 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah of course Yeah.

0:49:05 Tom: And when that happens, I mean, my advice genuinely is don't rock the fucking horrible, horrible boat. You're not going to get anything out of it. Don't, I think anybody's gone to Thanksgiving and like rocked the boat and changed minds. I really don't. I really, truly don't believe that that happens. Maybe that makes me a cynic. But if it's just going to cause strife and put you at a place where you're in danger of losing your housing or in danger of losing, you access to your education or whatever, and just be like, yeah, all right, I can fucking play act with these dipshits. That's fine. Because you'll have to play act so many other times in your life. Life, just put on the fucking smile, realize these people are assholes, tell them what they want to hear, eat your pumpkin pie, and then you show them with up with your own independence later when you can cut them off at a later date. It's

0:49:12 Thomas: Yeah.

0:49:52 Thomas: It's it's not any different than just having to stay in a shitty job because you need to fucking live, you know? It's like, yeah, it's, it, it's no one should ever be judged for prioritizing their safety in the face of some like lofty ideal of truth or honesty. That doesn't fuck that. Like maintain your personal safety there. You should not feel bad for that.

0:49:58 Tom: Exactly the same yeah no

0:50:12 Eli: Which reminds me of a happy story, and I won't say this person's name because I didn't get permission, but we have a listener, and Thomas, you know this person as well, who is a trans man who has had a shitty transphobic dad for years who has sort of kept them under the thumb. And this year their dad died, awesome, um, this year they're having their first queer, um, giving, queer friends giving, in the house that they're about to sell that they promised their dad on his deathbed they wouldn't sell. Um, And it makes me so happy. Like, I would love, but Just like, I know you're out there, I know I'm so proud of you for selling your shitty dad's house and keeping that money. Fuck him.

0:50:42 Tom: Oh.

0:50:46 Thomas: Yeah. Fuck. Yeah.

0:50:54 Eli: I'm so happy that that is the end of your rainbow and that you don't have to deal with that anymore. It on fire. I buy it and light it on Fire for you if I could. But it's a really nice house, so you get to be rich now. Upgrade your plate you're on pledge. Gentlemen. On that note, before we go, an important Thanksgiving-themed question. What smells best at Thanksgiving dinner? Nose.

0:51:01 Tom: God.

0:51:28 Tom: Oh. That's atrocious, precious you're

0:51:28 Thomas: That's just, uh, that's a real downgrade from the, you Know, we've seen some quality dad jokes that's just that yeah yeah uh

0:51:35 Eli: It needed thanksgiving themes

0:51:38 Tom: So half-assed, that was a stepdad joke, we

0:51:43 Thomas: That's all the time we have. I did want to jump in to tell you, this was one of those episodes, we do a bonus story every episode for patrons. This one was like 20 minutes, I want to say, 25 minutes. It was like an extra half an episode. So you should definitely go to patreon.com/dearolddads. If you want to get a ton of bonus extra stuff, if you can't get enough DILF enough in your life. And we have a cool monthly bonus coming out, and as always patrons are a week ahead, that's one, sometimes two episodes ahead, all good reasons to go to patreon.com/dearolddads to support the show, get the bonus stuff. And as always, if you can't do that, that's a okay, we would love it if you would tell somebody about this show, if you would share it with another parent, anybody really, anybody you think might like it, because that's, that's really the only way to get your podcast out there these days.

0:52:30 Thomas: Word of mouth. People have been Sharing it and that's so cool. We see stuff about that all the time. Keep it up. We appreciate you so much and we'll see you next time.

0:52:42 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.