DOD46: Wrestling with Kids Known and Unknown

Transcript

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

0:00:28 Tom: Welcome to Dear Old Dads, the podcast that's definitely your favorite. I'm Tom Curry. I'm joined as always by Thomas Smith and Eli Bosnick. Welcome back from vacation, gentlemen, and it was weird not to record this show for so long

0:00:39 Eli: I've come into the future here. I am. It was hey

0:00:49 Thomas: I just been here. I've I've been waiting. I been right here. Could record at any time. I don't know what you guys were doing.

0:00:50 Tom: Yeah Thomas Smith had just been hanging the line open for fucking five weeks. Like guys guys,

0:00:58 Thomas: Look at the timing on the call. It says 487 hours.

0:01:03 Eli: Just does say 487 hours? Yeah, that's true. Was your month- it was great it was awesome was it cool, was it great? Did it fucking rock?

0:01:11 Thomas: Yeah.

0:01:03 Tom: It yeah we've been a month before we? Yeah, What a great way to spend your- How I Spent My Summer Vacation, by Thomas Smith. I'd love to read this essay. This would be good one.

0:01:19 Eli: Obviously

0:01:20 Thomas: Yeah, yeah. It's been, yeah, it's been weird. You It know, the timing of all of everything is not amazing. For example, we just had to get Daisy fixed or spayed, I guess they call it. I don't know why you can't not call a spade a spay. Anyway, it, um, whatever they call it, they rip out, they took all the reproductive organs out, I think, they juggle them, put some of them back in, um and so that sucks because Daisy, uh, is a dog and dogs are not my favorite and cats are my favorite, and this is what we've been referring to, right, about the weird month that we had, it's just, yeah, yeah

0:01:36 Tom: See

0:01:54 Eli: Yeah, no, we're talking about you spaying your dog

0:01:55 Thomas: It's the Dog, yeah, and the thing about Daisy is because we thought we were getting out of the puppy phase of the, like, well, okay, I don't know shit about dogs, I thought we're mostly getting out out of the puppy phase because that's the worst, you know, they eat the whole house, all the thing, but like, I guess that goes on for, I don't know, 10 years, I don't know how long that takes for a dog to not be a fucking puppy, the funny thing, the reason I bring this up is when Daisy had her little procedure, she comes home and there's nothing funnier than the drugged up pet, like it is, really, and yeah

0:02:22 Eli: Yep

0:02:22 Tom: That's what I give my pets, my ketamine, just about every other week or so, just to kind of- it's just funny, you know, love love to watch him stagger around

0:02:25 Thomas: Yeah that's what I was getting at but

0:02:26 Eli: Tom actually signed his pets up for Mindbloom. They've got the little kit and the journal and everything.

0:02:31 Tom: Okay,

0:02:35 Thomas: When it happens with a cat, it's always so funny too because, like, with with our cat back in the day, this was, I don't know, fucking 10, 12 years ago. We thought our cat that we just got was going to die. And then he had to have a little thing. And so you're in this stressful thing, and then you bring the cat home and it's fucking hilarious. It's the best, it's the worst. It gets the best. They can't like, because they don't understand what's happening. They're all tired. They're walking around, they're bumping into stuff. You're like, wow. Cause cats are normally the agility that animals just naturally have that we don't is just, it's so it's something to behold. And dann you see a cat walk around like it's my old drunk drunk dad or something. You're just like, wow, I didn't know an animal could do that.

0:03:09 Eli: Yep

0:03:08 Tom: Can can we talk about the pet agility issue, because I just want to yell about that for a second. That is some unfair fucking bullshit. You can have a goddamn cat or a goddamn dog that does literally nothing its entire life, it eats too much, it's fucking fat, it just lays around all day, and then it sees like a fucking ladybug on the ceiling and it goes like- like Tony Hawk parkour bullshit all over your house.

0:03:10 Thomas: But sure,

0:03:34 Tom: And it's not, thank you.

0:03:33 Eli: Absolutely

0:03:31 Thomas: It goes crouching tiger, hidden dragon. Like it runs up the somehow like a tree branch that doesn't have any weight to it. You wouldn't think it's possible.

0:03:42 Tom: I work out diligently and my body's like, hey, you slept a little weird yesterday. So your entire body, like I break down at the, the human animal is the trashiest fucking animal. This machine breaks down at a drop of a fucking hat. If I don't change the oil every fucking 12 miles or whatever inside this goddamn thing, it's constant. But my cat, my cat would be like, I sleep 21 hours a day and I can do Olympic level free diving.

0:03:48 Eli: Yep.

0:04:11 Tom: I could do Olympic-level free diving, yes.

0:03:53 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah, you pull a laser pointer out And it'll go from unconscious to on the ceiling, walking upside down somehow in No time And

0:04:18 Tom: This is the part where Eli cannot possibly connect with us because he's got a pug, and so.

0:04:18 Eli: In Seconds My Pug Is An Athlete Please

0:04:23 Thomas: I thought You're Gonna say because because Eli's so athletic that he's Like I don't know what you're fucking talking about I've Gotten

0:04:28 Tom: Yeah, right, right.

0:04:26 Eli: I'm Very pet like in my sleep patterns. I agree, yeah. Well, my pug's an athlete. My pug goes boom, right up, sleeps 23 hours a day, but that last hour she's ready to go, she's rearing. Yep.

0:04:40 Tom: Oh,

0:04:42 Thomas: Got to the point where speaking about the human animal being so shitty, I no longer have uh the ability to look left or right. I've caught about 1.3 seconds of looking to my left to right before my neck's like, no, it's gone. It's over. Like it's just, it is. What the fuck is that? It just like goes out. I don't know what happened.

0:04:55 Eli: Yeah

0:04:55 Tom: Yeah. Can either of you guys touch your toes?

0:05:02 Thomas: Why would you want to actually,

0:05:03 Tom: I, I am like, I like it. This is like a joke in our house. So like in my house, like my wife used to do be a gymnast and she's dancer and all this. She's super flexible. My nanny, she met at the same dance studio. We'll like do yoga and shit in the house or whatever. I can't like reach my own seatbelt. I am fantastically in flex. I Can't, I can touch just below my knees. That's as far as is like, if I bend, my body is just like, yeah, I can stand it upright, and I can walk in generally a straight line, if, it's

0:05:36 Thomas: I hate to break it to you, Tom. You're actually really flexible. You just have T-Rex arms. I hate to bring it to your hammies are as flexible as they could be.

0:05:44 Eli: You Yeah. Yeah, this is this this is not funny, but it's true, I am flexible as shit because I do yoga. I can put my, yeah, I'm like a round little bendy boy.

0:05:47 Tom: Fucking ridiculous, Wait, are you really?

0:05:57 Eli: I'm I don't know, can you imagine if someone overfilled a Stretch Armstrong? That is what I am, like, because all I do is yoga, it's the only workout I do so I'm incredibly bendy.

0:05:52 Thomas: That is funny actually. Oh man, man, that's great. Oh man. So

0:06:06 Eli: I put my feet behind my head.

0:06:06 Thomas: You, you're, you can look

0:06:06 Tom: Oh, wait,

0:06:07 Thomas: Left and right and not lose your entire fucking neck muscles.

0:06:09 Eli: I look left and right, I can do, I can do a bridge, yeah.

0:06:11 Thomas: Jeez. Boy.

0:06:13 Tom: Can you reach your own seatbelt? Belt?

0:06:15 Eli: Well, I mean that, that, that's more of a circumference issue than anything, right?

0:06:18 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah, but so the dog comes home and she's fucking drugged out and it's the best. I was like, Oh, I could, if the dog was this, I, that'd be great. I'd be be fucking fantastic. I need an old, I need 120 year old dog. I need the dog. You know, that, um, it's like that Tibetan monk you'll see the picture of where his arm is like grossly stuck upright.

0:06:22 Tom: Yeah. Oh.

0:06:42 Thomas: That's like, they're like, he's holding his arm. No, he's not holding his bones obviously dislocated. And it's just fucking sick. I mean, I don't know. I don't know. I need that, but for a dog, I maybe skip the paw thing. I don't know. That might be cute. Oh no. I'll turn into that guy who made his dog do the Hitler salute and then got, taken for some money.

0:06:41 Eli: Sure, yeah, stuck in the, yeah, got canceled Yeah.

0:06:56 Thomas: Yeah. Um, no, I needed, yeah, just an an old dog that'll just sit with me or sleep with me. That's what I need. And so I'm thinking, all right, well, we've got a week's you worth of drugs, I think, because of this procedure. Day fucking two, she is back to normal. We give her the drugs, she ignores it. It's like she's a fucking alien in a human body when they try to do that in the movies, and they're like, well, I don't understand, I'm giving it a hundred cc's of the thing, it just doesn't matter. It is like that, she's just a normal dog again, but she's fucking has her organs coming out, so now it's the worst because, like, she can't go on a walk and run around, she's not allowed to, but she also has exactly the amount of energy that she had, somehow, and possibly through the medication, so yeah, that's why my whole, that's why we took this month off, it's been fucking horrible.

0:06:56 Tom: Is your dog wearing the cone of shame?

0:07:41 Thomas: Yep. Yep, she's, it's eaten half of it, um, I'm not, I wish I was joking, she's eating half of, we have to, like, like, but it's getting more and less and less of a cone, more and more of a, I don't know, a half a cone. What's it?

0:07:47 Eli: More of the collar yeah. Eventually it's just a collar and

0:07:55 Thomas: Yeah. Yep.

0:07:58 Tom: I had a kitten, our kitten had a little procedure done, and when he came home, he had the little cone on for like an hour. I couldn't make him keep it on. He was, I was going to put it back on if he fussed with himself, but like, he he left himself alone, but like, it was the fun, he couldn't figure out where he started and stopped, so he would like run and try to like go under shit like cats do and just bang into it oh it was hilarious but I started to feel bad for him after just a few minutes.

0:08:19 Eli: Then it would just boom yep yeah I know, it's the best, what

0:08:22 Thomas: And they'll try it a hundred times. The, I guess that's the other side of the coin. Yes, our bodies are all complete bullshit, except Eli, who's just flexible as could be perfect, perfect specimen of a man.

0:08:34 Tom: That's nonsense, I hate him for that

0:08:36 Eli: Can I say I'm a beautifully steamed walnut.

0:08:37 Tom: Yeah,

0:08:39 Thomas: Because the cats will try to get through the thing with the thing thing forever, like they'll just do it for the rest of their lives, like, I don't understand, I should be able to go under this thing but I can't, so let's see, you know, I guess you win some, you lose some.

0:08:44 Eli: Obviously

0:08:50 Tom: I got, now I'm curious, and this has nothing to do with what we want to talk about, but like, do you guys do the pet parent thing in your home? You guys like refer to yourselves as like pet moms and pet dads, like, do you, you know, that I Eli, that was an easy one for you because like I mean, you're yeah, Madge has a better life than Max, I think, yeah, yeah, you

0:09:04 Thomas: Absolutely not not only

0:09:03 Eli: Yes yes yeah I was gonna say gimme then most humans, yeah, Max too. You're

0:09:14 Thomas: Do I not refer to myself as a dog dad or whatever. I still try, just, just for me, I still try to talk as though I don't have a dog, like, I'm still not even, oh yeah, yeah, like, wow, we, the dog, yeah, yeah.

0:09:26 Tom: Just won't accept the dog into your household, this

0:09:28 Thomas: We, we live with a dog, but look,

0:09:25 Eli: No,

0:09:29 Tom: Is going to be great for our favorites conversation because dog

0:09:31 Eli: No,

0:09:32 Thomas: Daisy's in between jobs. She'll be, she's just staying with us for a little bit. As soon as she fucking, no, please. I'm not, come on. I have, I'm that mean to the dog. I've still a human. Come on, man.

0:09:37 Eli: Gets it, his dad talked about him the same way. You know you don't make the dog build tile floors.

0:09:47 Tom: Oh, one time it was an entryway, it was in a hole.

0:09:49 Thomas: No, I've no pet. I pet The dog and give her some love, you know, come on, boy.

0:09:53 Eli: The dog throws up, you'd notice and or care.

0:09:59 Tom: He noticed, he just, you know, from a distance.

0:09:59 Thomas: I I had another story I want to tell, like, we got so many fucking things, let me know if you guys have any any updates too, but, like, just this morning, um, I had a big one that, know, I, I've kind of mentioned before, but so the kids were off for a week for some fucking kindergarten, have we done this bit, because my brother's been joking about this with me forever, because his kids are older and he's been going through this, school doesn't exist anymore, there's like 87 weeks off out of the year, you know, like they do I don't know, it's gone, it's yeah, it's nothing in is it just, this is one of those walking both ways in the fucking snow, but, like, in my day, you went to school almost all the time, you

0:10:02 Tom: Oh, yeah, well, school school's bullshit, there's 180 days, it's less than half of the fucking year, yeah,

0:10:30 Eli: Yeah, every

0:10:37 Thomas: Got, like, yeah, yeah,

0:10:38 Eli: Day you got two snow days a year and they were miracles, you turned on the radio at 6:30 in the morning and the guy would be like, so here are the schools that are canceled, and you'd be desperately listening for your, screen be listing school districts in Ajupajan, for some reason, nowadays they're like, ah, it's the day before the day after Labor Day, so fucking kid, here's

0:10:48 Thomas: Yeah, yep, yeah, we'd I think We we got two weeks for, you we called it Christmas vacation, but you know now it's winter break or whatever, which is good. I think that's a good change. And, and then we get spring break was a week. And that was the extent of all the fucking, we got, you know, a day here and there, but these kids, if it's fucking tree day is the one they always joke about. Nothing wrong with Arbor Day. If it's anything day, they're like, well, yeah, they have. So they have that week off. And then actually it's going to go through Monday too, because we're still celebrating tree day or whatever the hell it is. I don't, is it budget reasons? What happened?

0:11:35 Tom: Yeah. I don't know that they've reduced it by statute in Illinois. It's always been the same number of total calendar days in school. But yeah, it's by it's my law. It has to be 100 exactly 180 days and they don't do 181. They do 180. Natey, so So like if you get a, if you get a snow day, they actually have to tack a day on at the end of the year, or they like use the snow bank, so they have a bank days, so they say like, we're gonna get off here in Illinois. They say like, okay, your last day of school is May 26th, unless you have snow days right?

0:11:35 Eli: Knows

0:11:41 Thomas: Really? Okay. I Don't think we have that. Huh? Oh my, wow. Jeez.

0:12:03 Thomas: Your last easy day was yesterday. No, that's

0:12:05 Eli: Yep.

0:12:05 Tom: But Here's the bullshit that they've started doing since the pandemic, and it makes me absolutely fucking nuts. In the fucking junior high and high school level, they'll, they'll say like, Wednesdays are teacher meeting days. So there is no instruction. They did this for three years. There's just no instruction at all on Wednesdays. Students just go down, log into the computer and say that you attended, and then do homework or whatever you want to fucking do all day.

0:12:07 Thomas: Tom's dad.

0:12:33 Thomas: Wow.

0:12:33 Tom: And so my kid would just wake up, go downstairs because we had a separate computer downstairs for them to do school in when they were doing work from home school. They go downstairs. They'd say, oh, I logged in. Then you just walk upstairs and go back to bed. And that counted as one of his 180 days of fucking school. That actually fucking counted as a goddamn school day. As if that was like meaningful, valuable education. They're just like, yeah, well, we just have meetings today. So I guess we're just not going to teach literally 20% of the school year. If you

0:13:00 Thomas: Yeah. Meetings about how how to get more days off. Yeah. So she week, Phoebe had a weak off of kindergarten, which means kindergarten is currently for me because of the setup, the only time constraint, as I've talked about Arlo, he can go to his, you know, his school anytime. Cause basically daycare and Phoebe's like, she has the after kindergarten daycare care because kindergarten is only till, I don't know, fucking 12 noon or something. And so, but that can, she can go anytime to that.

So we had a week of like, you know, laissez faire, you know, let's get up and go a little whenever we want. And then I don'T, I wouldn't, I can't even blame this on the kids. Somehow when you do that for a week, I've lost all ability to do the other thing that I figured out doing for months. You know, like I was like, Oh, I have to get up and get her to school by eight. Fuck. It was like rediscovering a new. And And so I was trying to do that. I was up a little late, but I was like, all right, I think I got this still. And I go to, I have to get Arlo dressed. We kind of split the labor a little bit. I go get Arlo dressed and he was downstairs. So Lydia was like I'll bring him some clothes. He doesn't have any clothes.

So I go, I reach in and Arlo has a thing about his shirts. And I have, I don't know if I've talked about it on here. He's got a bit of a thing About his shirts, I Don't know, you know, we're kind of letting it develop, letting it breathe. I have no idea how big a thing it is, but he just won't wear certain shirts, but also Also, he kind of has like he's he's, you know, he's said sometimes he'll be like, I'm not wearing that.

And eventually he does wear it. So it's you know. It's not 100 percent clear. So I grab it looks like, you know, laundry is a little behind. I go and grab him shirts.

0:13:45 Eli: Yep.

0:14:31 Thomas: I'm like, all right, because he always hates his shirts. I'm gonna grab two. I'll grab two shirts. I'll say sometimes you can trick him with the choice. You can be like buddy. You want this one or this one? You know, it's the way you go. I go downstairs. I'm like, buddy, you want this one or this one and he's like, no, I'd neither of those. I don't want.

0:14:46 Thomas: I was like, buddy, come on. I gave you a choice. They're both very reasonable shirts. There's nothing wrong with them. And look, again, we've talked about clothing thing. The I want him to have a choice. I don't want to make him do stuff. But as always, when it's fucking 837 and I have to get Phoebe to school at 840 and, you know, like I'm like, buddy, I'm sorry this this time you got to do it. And I started wrestling the shirt onto him thinking like, all right, he'll just, you know, he's going to do this. He'll give up. Nope. He fought like I was murdering him. I did, I did.

0:14:46 Tom: Ha ha ha ha.

0:15:16 Eli: Yeah.

0:15:16 Thomas: It was the thing Eli always talks about where like, I don't know what's appropriate here. Can I, I mean, I guess I shouldn't be doing this at all, but like she has to go to school. And so I wrestled a shirt onto him thinking like, all right, buddy, what, don't worry. You won't have to wear it again. You know, I was trying to make deals with him. Nope. He lost it. He became the Hulk. He just shredded off for both of them. I did the first one. I was like, oh, maybe I can trick him by saying, all right, you're right.

We won't wear that one. Here's the the other one. I probably, nope, won't do it, won't wear either fucking shirt. And don't know what to do because, you when laundry day is laundry day and we don't have the shirts he wants, it's like, dude, you got to wear a shirt. But at the same time I want to, you know, not make him do that stuff.

And so what we had to do was literally, I had to take them separately because he had such a fit, I was like, all right, buddy, I guess, you know, fine, I'll just take Phoebe now and come back. What, what, what are we doing here, do? Is there any amount, because there is a shirt, there are a couple shirts he

0:15:17 Tom: Yep. Uh-huh.

0:16:06 Thomas: Refused and then he likes them now, so like, how do you know how much to fucking push that? I have no idea. Yeah.

0:16:12 Eli: No, it's impossible. And the problem is, like, one of the things that's hardest about being a parent is that you so desperately want help, and people want to help you, so they will tell you what worked for them, but that's like being, like, when I roll a dice, it's a four, so if you want a four, all you do is roll a dice.

0:16:26 Thomas: Yeah. Did You Try

0:16:23 Tom: That's Exactly. That's exactly The right analogy, Eli.

0:16:30 Thomas: Rolling a four. Yeah. That is a great

0:16:31 Tom: Yeah.

0:16:32 Eli: Have You tried rolling the dice because in my experience it's before, and it's like, yeah, some kids you got to be a hard-ass, you got to be like, it's weird, fucking shirt down, USA kid, you're coming with me, right? They, we know one thing about kids We know what they, about kids, and it, that you're not supposed to hit them. And everything else is like, you sure want to hit them, don't you? That's every other thing. How much should you make them eat? How much did you make them try? How little, how much, how often should they try new foods? Is it a normal developmental thing? Is your kid gonna pee into jars and throw them out the windows of the house that you live with him, him, at the age of 40? We don't know. Nobody knows. But all you know know is that you're in, an everything's an emergency, you're

0:16:42 Thomas: Your last easy shirt was yesterday.

0:16:56 Thomas: Yeah.

0:17:15 Eli: In a constant state of panic and fear for, I, so far, three years and counting in my case.

0:17:25 Tom: My favorite is the, when, when you mention that you're having like this problem or that problem with a kid, and you'll get this little gem, oh, I never had that, my kid was perfect with it. And and you're like, cool, yeah, no, that was very helpful.

0:17:33 Thomas: I just Rolled at four. You see Yeah, did you did you try it, yeah.

0:17:39 Tom: Very valuable. Yeah, oh, you had no fucking, why would you bring that up? Why the fuck would you brings that up. Oh, you know what, actually, I'm struggling really hard to pay the rent. Oh, it's funny, I just won the lottery last night. Anyway, similar stories, similar story.

0:17:53 Thomas: Yeah. How much do you guys wrassle your kids, how, just day-to-day in terms of getting them dressed, like I

0:17:58 Eli: You all the time? Oh, I thought you meant fun wrestling, you mean how often do I battle my son right

0:18:04 Thomas: No, I mean, I yeah, as in you've not like fight, but like just the casual, what the point I want to make is the line gets fuzzy because with, with my kids, they're always just lagging behind everything. And so there's, oh, come on, get ready. Oh, come On. And then I just am like, all right, I will help you into your fucking clothes, even though you're old enough to do this. I've seen you do it. But then I start, you know, I start getting them in there, but then the line gets it's pretty blurry between like, wait, am I just, is this bad? I'm just like putting them in clothes at a certain point. I don't know how much of that is like, oh yeah, you're just helping your kid get dressed. Cause they don't.

0:18:35 Eli: That's That's totally fine. That's a hundred percent. As long as, yeah, you just got, sometimes you just gotta zip them into whatever the thing is.

0:18:39 Thomas: Yeah. Huh? Fine. Okay. Okay,

0:18:39 Tom: You can just do that, yeah, yeah, as long as you're not using like joint locks or some shit, you know, like okay,

0:18:47 Eli: Yeah.

0:18:46 Thomas: Well that's where this, this, this drew the line. This, you know, cause I've started doing that. I was like, I'll get them in the thing. And you know, there's always a little bit of resistance, even just playfully, because you're trying to get them dressed and they want to read their book or play with their toy or whatever, and you're like, come on, you gotta put that down, you gotta, fucking, you know, like, there's always, you're always fighting a little. And so when it crosses that line into like, no, he's genuinely putting up like an effort to try to fight me, it's a little, it's, it's, you're, it's hard to know, like, exactly when that is. You're like, oh shit, I gotta not do that. Did I just like really do something wrong with my kid? I don't know.

0:19:19 Eli: Max has started to mock me because I am naturally a very angry person. And so I need to, I, so I will say things out loud, which is something I've worked on. I'll be like gentle with the baby when I'm putting him into stuff. If I'm feeling a little frustration, I will save that.

0:19:23 Tom: Don't Drown the baby.

0:19:35 Eli: Right. Right, I, I have to be, because My natural instinct is just to put my son in a full nelson until he's willing to wear a shirt. And so I'll be like, so now if I will start to put Max in a thing, he'll be like, Joe will baby, Joe baby.

0:19:35 Tom: Eli loves the baby. Don't drowned the

0:19:51 Thomas: Can I Say, Eli, you're gonna make a great poltergeist. You know, you're gonna be an amazing, like, in an old house somewhere, don't drown the baby, you can't drown, you're good, people are gonna lose their fucking minds. You'd be a perfect ghost, can't tell you, what can you put on, like, an 1800s dress when you die? Or we can, we do that when you die it's

0:19:51 Eli: Yep.

0:20:09 Tom: Way

0:20:08 Eli: Way ahead of you way yep no, I don't even need to wait. I just, now I walk around the house in a, a nightcap and and tattered rags, just in case perfect.

0:20:15 Thomas: Gonna be incredible. I'd be terrified. It's

0:20:11 Tom: Ahead of You can We also talk about how frustrating it is to have to wrestle your kids to do something, because you have to use exactly the right amount of force, because they will fight back, and so you have to overpower them, but you have to, like, measure out exactly how much energy, because it's not like wrestling a real person. You're like, okay, you're very delicate, like, you'll break at this, but they're also pushing back, like, okay, I have to wrestle you with, if you're using six pounds of fucking energy here, I've got to use six and a quarter pounds of energy because your bones will just goddamn snap if I actually wrestle you.

0:20:24 Thomas: Yeah, it's non-stop. Yep, yeah,

0:20:26 Eli: Yeah, right, yeah, and

0:20:49 Thomas: You Gotta to know your carry points too, you, this part, I can carry that, like, I can hang on to this part of them, but like this other part, you don't want to, you know, you got to know all the precise, like, handles of your kid to where you can actually apply force and not hurt them. Oh,

0:21:04 Eli: If you've ever done this, if you have like a constant wrestle point, like the shirt, or in my case it's changing Max's diaper, he's just decided, I don't know when he decided this, I think it was a couple months ago, he was like, when it's diaper changing time, it's kicking time, that's when I kick, I'm gonna kick, kick, I'm going to do a backbend. I'm gonna bridge, kick, kick. But here's the thing, if you've ever had one of those situations and then watched your child not do that with another person, there is no greater betrayal in the world. I went to go pick him up the other day for preschool, and the teacher was changing his diaper and he was just lying there like chatting. She was like, oh yeah, we're going to play. And I was so, I could have walked in on, like, a Victorian murder taking place and I would have been less, I was like, how dare you, and sure enough that day when I started to change the diaper, I was like, come on, Pam changed your diaper, you're just lying there, what are you doing?

0:21:16 Thomas: Yep, yep, yep, so then I'm like, all right, well, here's what we're gonna do, just get rid of all the shirts, because when, so then I started feeling bad, like, after, after I took Phoebe me to school, you know, as I was like, oh man, I think I wrestled him too hard. That was, you know, that's not good. And

0:22:12 Tom: His arm his shoulders dislocated as you're bringing him in, he's got a black eye, but his shirt's on. Have you

0:22:15 Eli: Yes,

0:22:17 Thomas: But yeah, but, but it's, it's even worse for your conscience. It's the opposite. I come home and he's like, Hey dad. And he's like all happy. I'm like, that'S worse somehow. Like, I'm like, you'd know, you should be a little upset with me. Cause I tried to make you wear a shirt and you acted like you were possessed by the devil. Like that must've, that must

0:22:35 Tom: Guys had to take your kids in for dental work yet, like,

0:22:35 Thomas: Yeah, they haven't had to get anything bad, so it's all been pretty much fine. No, no, they're too young.

0:22:38 Eli: No, yeah,

0:22:40 Tom: Dental work though, like, like, oh, that's exciting, that Work is like, Finn needed dental work, yeah, like his his teeth were just all fucked up and so like I had to take him to this pediatric dentist and like, yeah, we gotta like do like three fillings and a cap and like all this shit, and Finn was just not having it, he was maybe six and he was like biting and like flailing and like he was not interested in drills and fucking novocaine shots and all of that nonsense, and so like I had to, they're like, all right, you're gonna have to hold him down, and so I had to like get in and like put my body on top of his body and hold his head in my hands while he

0:22:44 Eli: What Why?

0:23:21 Tom: Like flipped shit, oh.

0:23:22 Thomas: Yeah.

0:23:22 Eli: Why?

0:23:22 Tom: Oh, it's a whole fucking thing, man.

0:23:23 Thomas: Yeah.

0:23:23 Eli: Didn't They just knock him out? Oh.

0:23:25 Thomas: You don't want to do that.

0:23:26 Tom: Sedation dentistry for little kids is they don't just knock out little kids cause it's inconvenient. Like, like giving kids.

0:23:31 Thomas: Yeah, this was my problem with the stitches, remember? Arlo's stitches story. Same thing.

0:23:33 Tom: Yeah. Yeah, you can't just knock kids unconscious cause like the giggles, you know? So like they'll try pretty hard not to do sedation dentestry for little children. So yeah, that's exciting. Cause then you have to like literally hold down your panicked child with the force of your body weight

0:23:51 Thomas: Joke. Yeah. It's not a joke to say that being a wrestler in high school has actually served me pretty well as a dad. Like there's all these times where I'm like, yeah, I'll just, I wasn't even when I, when the doctor says like, you hold them, I'm actually relieved. I'm Like, oh, okay, good. I can, I can do that. You know, like I can.

0:23:56 Tom: Figure

0:23:57 Eli: Yeah for sure

0:24:06 Thomas: Yeah, I

0:24:04 Tom: Four leg lock boom there we go and he's he's tapping he's tapping doc I think we got him

0:24:06 Eli: Yeah exactly two

0:24:09 Thomas: Yeah and but I know how to do it so it won't hurt him. You Know, like, I just hold them I'm going to be totally fine. So I says, I says to Lydia, I says, yeah, why?

0:24:16 Eli: Points for slamming

0:24:14 Tom: Now when you're coming off the top rope that's when it gets exciting that's yeah

0:24:22 Thomas: Yeah. I teched him for anyone who knows what that is.

0:24:25 Eli: No if you fall if you follow if

0:24:27 Thomas: Yeah,

0:24:26 Tom: All right I'll hold him but I don't I don't see a turnbuckle anywhere in this office, so I'm not sure. Hums. But

0:24:29 Eli: You fall holding him. They can't take the point. You gotta fall holding it's not a throw, you gotta follow holding him

0:24:33 Tom: Yeah

0:24:34 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah, and so I was like, all right, I'm fucking done with this. I tell Lydia, why don't just get rid of all the shirts that are, that like he has, a drawer full of of shirts, and seemingly 80 of them. He's gonna murder me if I try to put them in. So like, let's just be done with I don't want to. I thought about, you know what we've talked about, and it's like, yeah, he should get to fucking just wear what he wants. So.

And so I came home and I was like, no, OK, before we even go to school, Arlo, come here and let's go through the shirts and you tell me which ones you like and which ones you don't like. You never have to wear them again. And the only problem is it's every shirt. So, but it was really fascinating. I almost wish I recorded it, because he has, there's always a reason, like he has. That's what I've said about, at least, my kids. Like, there's always a reason. It's really interesting. Interesting, uh, you know, it's not just like, like he can't really articulate it, but there's definitely a reason. So some of them, it was like there was one that was like the Hogwarts school crest, you know, and he loved Harry Potter, and I was like, what's wrong with this

0:25:10 Eli: But

0:25:33 Thomas: One, buddy yeah exactly, he was like, fuck that TURF, I'm not doing that. I was like, oh yeah, you're right. Yeah, sorry. No, he, uh, it, it's a gray shirt and the, and the crest is like, I don't know how to describe it, but I tried to, once I had him calm, he finally would tell me what's wrong with him. In the moment when I'm trying to get him to put on one of these shirts, he will not fucking talk. He's a Russian goddamn asset. He will not talk. I'm like, buddy, just tell me why you don't like the shirt. That's all I'm asking. I'll, I'll let you not wear it. If you give me a single sentence as to why you Don't like it. I don't Like it. You know, but

0:25:33 Eli: He's a, but he's the trans ally, so he refused to wear the shirt sure

0:26:02 Tom: Oh god

0:26:11 Thomas: Once we, I got him in this situation where I'd already, we'd already caved and he was wearing a shirt, the one shirt he liked that was left. I was like, buddy, it's okay. Just tell me it's all right. If you tell me you don't like him, we'll put him away. And he actually did for every single one. He had some sort of reason. It wasn't super articulate, but for the Hogwarts one, it was funny because he was like it looks like an elephant. I'm like, it looks like an Elephant. I said, yeah, it is a gray shirt, I guess.

All right. Okay. You don't like that gray shirt. And then there was one where there's just a couple I remember that were interesting. There was one were it was a dinosaur. He fucking this kid loves dinosaurs. I have a story for after the thing about him loving dinosaurs. And I'm like, dude, look at this shirt. It's a dinosaur. Not only is it a dinosaur, it's a T-Rex, your favorite dinosaur. Not only is it a T-Rex, the T-Rex is wearing sunglasses and the sunglasses flap down. They're like, you know, like a little extra piece of like fabric, you know? And so like

0:26:11 Tom: I hate that what oh

0:27:00 Eli: Yeah

0:27:00 Thomas: You flap the sunglasses up and down on the T-rex. I was like, buddy, you can't not like the shirt. There's no way. And he says, my friend has that shirt too. I was like, ah, fucking God damn it. And that's that's a pretty distinctive shirt. You know, he was like, yeah, I don't like to wear it. Cause my friend, whatever his name wears it. And I was like. All right. Yeah. I can't really argue with you. You don't know. Like it's a, if maybe he had it first, I dunno. That's yeah. Okay. You don't want to wear that shirt. And so that was like seven shirts. And now I'm saying, all right, let's just go to the store together and you just fucking tell me what you like and don't like. And the only thing I have to hope is that that will actually be true.

0:27:01 Eli: Yeah.

0:27:09 Tom: My god oh man good

0:27:38 Thomas: Like if he, if he tells me he likes something in the store

0:27:40 Tom: Luck with that That's,

0:27:39 Eli: Nope. Thomas, look me in my eyes. Look me in my eyes absolutely.

0:27:41 Tom: It's not going to work.

0:27:44 Eli: They're totally different. The answers and credentials all change tomorrow.

0:27:41 Thomas: Yeah yeah yeah well

0:27:49 Tom: Yep. Yeah, what's going to happen though too, Thomas, is you're going to go to a store that his little fucking buddy from preschool also goes to. And he's gonna show up and he's gonna have his goddamn Hogwarts shirt or whatever. And then he's gonna show up and little Steven down the road is going to wear the same shirt.

0:27:53 Thomas: Yeah he'll want to shove it, Hot Topic uh, so that was my day. How are you guys doing how was your month, I anybody have any news? Anybody doing anything?

0:28:07 Tom: You're gonna have to take him to the goddamn thrift store or something to get some like original shit.

0:28:14 Eli: Just wrestling shirts onto your child. I

0:28:21 Thomas: Anything happen?

0:28:22 Eli: Got COVID. I get better.

0:28:24 Tom: Yeah, how was your COVID? Your COVID wasn't bad, right?

0:28:26 Eli: It wasn't bad. It wasn't that they gave me the fat guy antivirals. I was saying this to Noah and Heath privately, but like I've I've never felt so spoiled as I did during COVID, not just because I got to isolate and Anna took amazing care of me and did like ninety nine point nine nine percent of the child care while I had COVID because I I isolated so hard she and Max didn't get it. That's how hard I was isolating.

0:28:49 Tom: Yeah, that's great.

0:28:50 Eli: But that meant that she did just all the work and like literally brought me food to the room that I was sitting in and all that stuff. But I also I also felt spoiled just because like I never saw anyone die of milk leg, you know. So while I'm aware that the vaccinations I have against tuberculosis and milk leg and stuff like that are miracles, I'm not viscerally aware of them, but I was alive and an adult when COVID was killing a lot of people, and now they're like, oh, don't worry, there's a miracle shot that makes it not a big deal. And then there's a miracle booster that makes it even less of a big deal, and then they were like, hey, you're coughing pretty hard, fatty, why don't you come on down to CVS and get some free antivirals medication.

0:29:12 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah.

0:29:29 Tom: Yeah.

0:29:32 Thomas: But I can touch my toes. I can't touch my toe so well, though.

0:29:33 Eli: Yeah. Yeah. They gave me free antiviral medication and they were like, well, now it's just the sniffles. We've taken this thing that you watched like fill up New York hospitals and the fucking open tents filled with dead bodies in Central Park. Now you just sit there with the sniffles and play The Binding of Isaac for, you know, five straight days in a row. So I felt I felt very spoiled by that, I did, but I also I missed my family a ton. Like it was really, really hard not to see Max, especially because he would often wander up to the room and sort of like gently bang at the partition and say like, "daddy," and I would have to be like, like huddled down so that he he couldn't see me so that he wouldn't get sad, yeah.

0:29:45 Thomas: Yeah.

0:30:16 Tom: Daddy's disgusting now. Don't

0:30:17 Eli: Daddy daddy has a modern plague. No, um, so yeah.

0:30:22 Thomas: Boy,

0:30:18 Tom: Come in here. Yeah, well, Donovan's got it now. So we just found out yesterday that Donovan has COVID and he is isolated exclusively to his bedroom. He can't leave his bedroom. Like I'll leave stuff outside his door and then text him to give him the okay to open his door when no one's in the hallway. I've taken a bathroom and disinfected it and that's his bathroom and no one else is allowed to use that bathroom until he's COVID negative. We made it three years without it and I'm trying to make it four and I'll try to make a five, you know, if I can, I'm I'm I'm not convinced that we won't get it.

I'm not convinced I won't turn, you know, test positive tomorrow. I think I mentioned this to you guys, I actually have like a work event that's going to have 300-plus people from all over the Midwest gathering together in a big hotel room tomorrow, so I actually, in a hotel like conference center, so, I'm Like, it's like a super spreader event, that's exactly what that is, like if you couldn't, you actually couldn't engineer something, they're they're all salespeople too. So their job is to go out and shake hands and get COVID. So,

0:30:53 Thomas: Well, that'S good. Yeah.

0:31:10 Thomas: Yeesh.

0:31:22 Tom: Um,

0:31:22 Eli: I went to a bunch of huge events totally Covet free. Like I went into the the Olympics of Magic with however many thousand people of it, totally fine. The minute I stepped across the the threshold of a middle school, I got COVID, right? I did three years completely COVID-free. I like stood at the front door of the middle school where I was substitute teaching and they were like, you tested positive, you tested positive by standing this close to the door because these

0:31:36 Thomas: Yeah.

0:31:47 Tom: Yeah, yeah, they

0:31:47 Thomas: Like the metal detector just goes off and it's like, yeah IT'S COVID.

0:31:50 Eli: Children just cough directly into my eyeballs that was what I just all

0:31:53 Thomas: Yeah.

0:31:53 Tom: Fuck it. They'll spit right in your fucking mouth at that age. They don't care at all. I'm amazed. I've got four kids in four different schools and then I work not all the time. I work about 10% of my job. I work outside the house and none of us have have gotten COVID yet. Until yesterday, I've been shocked that we've been able to avoid it so far, but I, even when our nanny got COVID, was, she came in, she started feeling sick halfway through the day, she took a test while she was at our place, she tested positive, we sent her home, nobody here got it. So I, I feel like maybe we can just isolate this to Donovan. I'm hoping we'll find out in the next week or two.

0:31:54 Eli: Right

0:31:55 Thomas: They really will. So, kids aside, maybe we're just weird and gross and bad, but if it was just Lydia and I, we, my thinking would be, well, she has it, I probably already have it, so I would just never, or for me is, wouldn't be worth, like, not being together, just some marginal amount of chance that I don't get it, I would not bother. But am I, am I a Trumper? Am I Republican now? Is that, is that what you're telling me? Should I,

0:32:53 Tom: You're MAGA now? No, I think, I think it depends on your situation, you, I will say, like, my worry personally is like getting that long COVID shit, like, that's the thing that scares me. Like, I don't really, like, I don't have any worry on my end at my age, I've got, I have literally every shot that's available in America, I've had, like, I've cheated the system to get more shots. So I have, I've had every shot that has been approved for use in the United States.

0:33:01 Thomas: Yeah. Oh, I love them. Yeah.

0:33:18 Eli: To that heaven he's got the Russian one

0:33:21 Tom: So yeah but like

0:33:19 Thomas: Yeah. Aside, this made me even, I was already pro vaccine, obviously, but this made be even more like, oh, I'll get the flu vaccine the minute it's ready. Like, give me that. Even though I hate it. I, the flu vaccination, I hate the flu. I hate vaccine, really hits me hard for some reason. I actually really dislike it. But you know, I would get it, but you know, like back in there, I just kind of, I'd forget or wouldn't, you wouldn't prioritize it. Now I'm like, oh, I can get miracle medicine that might save, you know, probably some old guy's life. Did they vote for Trump or not? No, no, I'll just pretend I'll pretend it's like a delightful old person. Yeah, why not, why not just get a shot? It's temporary inconvenience to do miracle science. Even though the flu shot is our worst shot that we have, like, it's our worst vaccine, it's still life-saving.

0:33:33 Tom: Oh same

0:33:49 Eli: We do and once you have kids, and especially if you have kids who are wild about shots, which I know you have one who's wild about shots and one who decides afterwards how he felt about shots, there's some pride in being like, didn't hurt at all, just so you know, full-grown adult wasn't crying at all in the waiting room, in case you were worried, it, it wasn't, uh, just a very simple, like, you want to bring your kid in with you to be like, okay, you see this? This is what it's supposed to be, all right?

0:34:16 Thomas: Yeah

0:34:20 Tom: Wait you can get a shot without crying?

0:34:27 Eli: Well, no, I'm crying for other reasons. It's just not related to the shot.

0:34:31 Tom: I desperately do not want Haley to get COVID, like, I care about that. I do not want her to get covered. I don't actually give much of a shit if she gives me COVID, so it depends on the directionality right, and I don't want her to get cold because she's got some health worries, so, like, at the moment her getting COVID would be a bigger deal than if I got COVID, so like I would consider isolating in the reverse if she, if she got COVID, wouldn't give a shit

0:34:42 Eli: Yeah, I felt the same thing.

0:34:34 Thomas: There's Yeah. Right. Totally. Right, yeah, that factor? Yeah, that was just my no risk factor privilege speaking, actually. I think we're, as, uh, as unlucky as we've been in other areas, we, I'm sorry, I forgot we don't have any risk factors, my bad.

0:35:02 Eli: Thank you, Thomas. I accept your apology. I have so many complicating factors. They, like fired the Paxlovid out of a cannon at me. Mean when my test turned negative, it actually morphed, like a little, like anima transformer, into a pax and pax a little bit. And it was like, take it, you fat ass medic who's sad. Do you know that being sad is a risk factor for COVID, uh, Yeah, I talked my doctor about it. I was like, uh, why is depression one of them? And he was like, oh, um, depressed people, like their bodies don't fight as hard against disease. And I was like, man, that fucking sucks, doc.

0:35:10 Thomas: You Really

0:35:26 Tom: You Serious?

0:35:29 Thomas: I

0:35:41 Eli: I really did. I didn't know that. I wish I didn't know that. My fucking cells are also sad boys, just floating around being like, oh, bother, here comes another virus

0:35:49 Thomas: You're Telling me my white blood cells are also sad, they're just fucking moping around, I can't get out of white blood cell bed, there's a fucking, ah, I

0:35:53 Eli: Yeah. Apparently Yeah, I'm gonna watch episode three of The Last of Us again, damn it, white blood cells

0:36:02 Thomas: Yeah.

0:36:03 Tom: Doctor, is my doctor was, I actually, because I have this work event on Tuesday, and I'm fairly certain that that's a super spreader event. My thought process was like, I should get that Paxlovid before I get COVID, so the minute I pop positive, I can start taking it, not have a day's weight. And so I called him. I just, I just messaged my doctor and was like, yeah, I tested positive for COVID, my BMI is over 30. So, and he's like, yeah, great. And like my BMI is over 39, because I'm obese.

0:36:28 Thomas: I was going to say, but because BMI is a fucking worthless piece of shit metric. So maybe I could say I'm obese, actually. Because I'm pretty sure BMI thinks I'm obesity.

0:36:33 Tom: Yeah. Yeah, Yeah I'm suit like I'm comfort like according to BMI. I am very comfortably obese. I'm not anywhere near even being overweight.

0:36:41 Thomas: Yeah. So dumb.

0:36:43 Eli: See. I'm uncomfortably obese according to the BMI and that's a pretty accurate measurement detriment, they don't ask me to touch my toes. I wish they would. The

0:36:47 Tom: Like Like, there's, so I was just, like, he's cool like that, though. He's just like, yeah, sure, no problem. And, like I had it, and I picked it up from CVS, and it's sitting in my cabinet. And I'm just like cool, the minute I test positive, and I'm glad I did it now, cuz I got a fucking kid in the house with COVID.

0:36:53 Thomas: Nice. Nice.

0:37:06 Eli: Lady gave me the wrong directions for the medication. That was the one bad experience I had. Yeah, I was like, because it was like two in the morning, one at night. And by the way, when you open the box, the actual pills are labeled with like a smiley face and a nighttime face, like it's super duper easy what to do, but I was like, oh, this is a little confusing. Sorry, when do I take this? And this pharmacist, or whatever, person behind the counter at the pharmacy, was like, yeah, you take two today and then two tomorrow. And I was like, I don't think that's true. It was not true. No.

0:37:09 Tom: What?

0:37:20 Thomas: Oh, weird.

0:37:35 Thomas: Wow. I had another little miscellamous thing I wanted to share. Um, I think this is a good time for it given this is a you'll catch up episode. So, this wasn't like this month, but, but not too long ago, like shortly before the news happened. I went to a kid's birthday party and I wanted to share something and get you guys' take on it. So do you guys have over there something called Wacky Tacky? Is that a thing you guys had?

0:37:57 Tom: No, what?

0:37:57 Eli: Yeah.

0:37:58 Thomas: I I, maybe it's just a franchise over here. I have no idea. I've never, I had not heard of it until kids' birthday parties, but what we have over here apparently It's like A Place You Can Go. It's usually, again, sort of like how that church I talked about was inappropriately in like an office park, you know, like that kind of... It's that, that, but for a kid's kind of jungle Jimmy place, you know, so you'll go to just a place that's like a strip mall business thing. And then inside someone has converted one of it to a big old, think like a, a really cool McDonald's play place type thing.

0:37:58 Tom: No.

0:38:26 Eli: Indoor playgrounds. We got those. We don't, they're not called Wacky Tacky. But we have them.

0:38:27 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah, it's just a, yeah, it was just a brand over here, I guess that's apparently really popular. And So like a thing that happens with kids and parents over here is like, oh yeah, it's a Wacky Taggy birthday party. Like that's just like, oh, okay, we know what we're in for. And and so I take the kids, um, it was super cool. It was Phoebe's friend, but they were like, yeah, Arlo's cool to come. That's always fun when they're little and they can all go. And we go in there, they they've rented out, you know, the whole, the whole jungle Jimmy thing.

I was like, this is pretty cool. And then I'm gauging like how much do I do in here. Like, how much, I don't know if this is, this equipment like rated for me or whatever. So I was was just gonna, you know, hands off. I was like, gonna try to get some work done.

Um, and then I saw this other dad, it's actually, by the way, um, to link the universes, this is the same girl who had the alarming stories about her house being on fire and her, yeah, she's

0:38:30 Eli: Yeah. Sure. Yeah, yeah.

0:38:32 Tom: Yeah. Oh, yeah?

0:39:15 Thomas: Really cool, though. And I really, um, actually really like, uh, her dad seems to be super nice from what I can tell. Who the fuck knows about anybody, but, uh, because I was taking this hands-off approach, you know, because it's a little girl's birthday party and I'm an adult, I was like, hey, I'm not gonna go fucking play with him.

But then I see this guy, he's in there, he's got his shoes off, he's like, no, you're supposed to, adults are supposed to come in and play, you can come play. I was like, what, really? I mean, I feel like I'm gonna break everything in there. And he's like, no, no, it's all, it's all safe for you. I was like, all right, well, I love fucking playing with my kids, like I'll come, I'll come in.

And, you know, they got these things that's like these little, um, I don't love it, because I'm kind of like Eli's mom and that I don't want any play with guns, but like they have these, these little Nerf ball kind pneumatic little gun things where you like, there's one little room where you can go in there and then everybody tries to hit you with, pelt you with the balls, you know, you run

0:40:01 Thomas: Around, it's, it's fine, it's a little, it makes me a little nervous and I'm like, I don't want them to be cheering for, like, yeah, shoot that, get him, leave, shut him down, hit him in the head, you know, I don't like that, but, but whatever, it's fun. And so I'm thinking, I go in there, I'm allowed to go in their, I have Arlo, who's not really part of the birthday party, party anyway, and

0:40:10 Eli: Yeah.

0:40:20 Tom: It is weird that they decorate that room like a school, though. Like, I think that's a little off.

0:40:22 Thomas: Oh. Boo.

0:40:24 Tom: That's tacky. That's Tacky.

0:40:26 Thomas: Oh.

0:40:24 Eli: No. That's straight it's where they learn, Tom. It's important, yeah.

0:40:28 Thomas: And so I'm like, all right, I'll just, I'll come and play with my kids whatever. And then I, so I's playing with my kid, I'm crawling around, and again, it's fucking not very comfortable tiny in there, but I'm crawling around, I'm amazed, I feel like I'm gonna be in a section of a slide and it's just gonna collapse and I will be stuck there like an idiot and then everybody in the whole building will be like, why did you go in there, you're an adult, what are you told me, he told me, and also I asked an employee just make sure, and they're like, yeah, you can go in there, but like, I know that's what's gonna happen, like they'll be like, that guy didn't work here, that guy, you asked, he doesn't work, it was a joke, he said yeah you thought you could fit in this slide, you fucking big old dummy.

That's what I'm afraid is gonna happen all times I'm gonna break something and hurt a kid or something. But no, I'm playing around and then hear like a haunting shrill sound from behind me, like, like I'm in a horror movie, and you remember when we watched the vampire movie for Gam, Eli?

0:40:52 Eli: Yeah.

0:41:03 Tom: He's just some guy.

0:41:05 Eli: Morbius.

0:41:25 Eli: Obviously.

0:41:25 Thomas: Morbius, remember that hospital scene? It was like that. It was, like, the lights were flashing. I'm with Phoebe and Arlo. I mean, what's happening? You know, the light from hearing noise. A fucking gaggle of, like, carnivore predator little girls comes over. I'm not even joking. They run down the little tunnel and they just, led by the girl whose birthday it was, they just fucking tackle me. Like this girl, this is the weirdest thing, so I'm sitting here playing with my own kids and this girl just tackles me, like, just full-on, like, like I, like I know her, I don't know what the fuck this is, like I've talked to her like once, she tacklesme like I'm not only her dad, but like a really good dad, like the, like the typical, like commercial with the, with the golden retriever in the dad, like that. And I, I am, I, this is what I want to get you guys to take on, I freeze, freeze in that moment.

0:41:25 Eli: Yeah.

0:42:14 Thomas: I'm like, I, this is someone else's little girl. I don't want to wrestle. Like, I just don't, I don't want to do it. Like I don't want to do anything physical with anyone else's kid, but she has initiated, she has tackled, like literally, I can't even tell you how aggressive, 10 times more aggressive than either of my kids are with anything. She just runs, knocks me over like I'm a bowling pin and starts wrestling me. And I'm like, I don't know what to do. I'm just like, okay. I didn't want to move at all. I didn't want to like, look like I'm wrestling someone else's kid, you know, yeah.

0:42:43 Eli: Obviously. Yeah, the key there, the key, the emergency in that scenario is for everyone to be like, well, that adult is not wrestling that child back, whatever. If that child wants to fucking curb stop, you, you just take it, because you just you just, yeah, you gotta you just gotta

0:42:54 Thomas: Yeah. Yep. Yep. Yep. That's

0:42:56 Tom: Yeah, that's it. You got to starfish out, man. That's all you got to do. It's all your job.

0:43:02 Thomas: What I did.

0:43:03 Tom: That's what you can do. Starfish. Splay your arms. Splay you legs. Splay yo fingers. Everything's out. Just go.

0:43:03 Thomas: Okay. Yep. Yep. I'm glad we're on the same page, because I, then I started, as I was starfishing out and being like, I don't, this is, I'm not here, I can't do this, part of me was like, am I being weird? Am am I the weird one?

0:43:18 Eli: Thomas dissociating in the middle of a ball pit and chucky fucking all around me are a million faces you

0:43:22 Thomas: No, it wasn't that bad. It was, it was like, no, it's more Like, all right. I'm trying to like talk to my kids. Like maybe Phoebe will start wrestling with her so that I don't, you know, like, like all right, cool kids. I'm just staying there. And so, but then I'm like, am I being weird? Like, am I, is it, is, is that the weird thing? To do that? Is it normal to just be like, yeah, we're having a wrestle. No, that can't be normal. Like I always play it safe and I was like yeah I'm not gonna I don't want to accidentally wrestle someone else's kid too hard

0:43:28 Tom: Oh.

0:43:50 Tom: You don't want to wrestle a strange little girl, that's not what you want when you were at the fucking Chris Hansen birthday party, that's not what your, are you fucking kidding me

0:43:53 Thomas: No, no.

0:43:53 Eli: Don't want to wrestle a stranger's child. Look here's what's super simple, I always think, what do I want an adult to do if my child ever interacted with them. And I want them to starfish and I want them to just let my son walk around on top of them or whatever It is. Now, again, I am so spoiled in this scenario because whenever that party happens, my son always does the same thing. He wants to run his hand along the outside of the building as he runs around in a circle around all the kids are screaming. Oh, you took the I don't want it. You're not. My My son's just, like, doing laps, just touching.

0:44:00 Tom: Yeah

0:44:04 Thomas: Right right yep yeah you're right Yep.

0:44:11 Tom: You.

0:44:35 Eli: Oh, oh, someone's in my way. Going around. All right. It's the best. It's best. I'm just doing fat guy laps behind him.

0:44:41 Thomas: Yeah. But wait till someone else's kid wrestles

0:44:42 Tom: Do By By You guys, do they have, uh, in the fall, do they have pumpkin farms that have like the big hay, hay stack obstacle course tower things?

0:44:44 Thomas: You.

0:44:53 Tom: These are the worst things ever invented your kids are little, if you've not, don't take them there, I have nothing I used to take Finn all the time when he was little, I used take Fin like every weekend that the pumpkin farm was open, I would take him to the pumpkin farm, he and I, every Saturday or Sunday, whatever, I, he and I would go and we just had the two of them, the two kids, the one kid, was just the two of us, and we'd go and I'd take, he loved this, this hay bale thing, and they'd stack these fucking hay bales up super high, and they'd make all these like tunnels of hay bales shit for the kids, and then there would be this like throng of children, and they're all running, and they're on top of and jumping and in these fucking hey tunnels and shit, and no matter how diligent you are, you will lose your child in a hay tunnel for sure.

So Finn goes in a hey tunnel thing, and then the other kids that I saw him go in with, and maybe six, seven, like they come out of the hate. Well, he doesn't come out and

0:44:52 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah, because then they'll want to go.

0:44:53 Eli: Yes, of course.

0:45:20 Thomas: So itchy.

0:45:51 Thomas: Yep.

0:45:51 Tom: Time starts ticking and time started ticking and I start panicking. And so I'm like, Oh, I got to go down in the fucking hay tunnel and get them. I can't fit in the hay tunnel. They made the hay tunnel. I literally can't get my shoulders through the hay tongue.

0:46:02 Thomas: So this is a kid trap then. It's like you trap a rodent that you're trying. This is a, it's

0:46:06 Eli: Yeah, exactly. It's like, you know.

0:46:07 Tom: It's like, like

0:46:08 Thomas: Not big enough for you to get them, but it's big enough for them to go in and not be able to get out.

0:46:08 Tom: 18 inches or something like for them to get through. It it's, it's your worst nightmare and it's It's fucking screaming kids, and nobody knows your kid's missing. It's completely unsupervised by personnel, and I'm like, my kid's just gone. Somebody snatched him. He came out, and somebody grabbed him, and it's been like 10 or 15 minutes of no sight of my kid since he disappeared. I'm absolutely in a fucking panic. I'm just about to walk over, and like I'm climbing on these fucking hay bales and shit. I'm just in an absolute panic, and I'm at the very top of the fucking hay bale. There's some kids standing next to me, and this all happens in the same day, in the same moment. This is why I'll never go back to this thing. I look, and Finn pops his fucking head up out of this thing like a gopher from his burrow.

And I look at him. I'm like, you, don't move. And he's like, and now he thinks he's in trouble, right? But I'm in a panic. I'm Like, you aren't moving. I will stop you with my voice. And as I do that, some mom is calling the kid who's standing next to me. Now, I'm on the very top of the hay barrel or the hay structure, right? This thing's got to be, I don't want to exaggerate, but it's maybe 15 feet in the air, like

0:46:13 Thomas: Yeah, okay. That's a nightmare. Yeah. Oh, that's eternity.

0:47:18 Thomas: Yikes.

0:47:19 Tom: 15 feet piled high. So it's actually pretty high. The floor, remind you, is concrete, right, so this is just like a concrete floor. It has hay that has, like, been strewn about upon the floor, but It does not have, like inches of hay. It's just like random hay across the concrete. So,

0:47:28 Thomas: Right. So that's great because it won't protect from anything, but it'll make it look like maybe you can fall and it's okay. Yeah.

0:47:41 Tom: This Kid next to me, so I'm in this like heart-pounding panic, I just find Finn, he popped his fucking gopher head up, I stop him with my words, the mom yells, "You know, Justin, get down here," whatever, the kid standing right next to me, and that kid, no shit, just without a second's thought jumps, And his legs snapped with like a sound, like breaking Lumber when He hit the ground, and I, and he, I'm like, I would, it was the worst day at The goddamn Pumpkin farm that I had, could it, I just like, I I bounced down like, like fucking Cubert, you know, like down this fucking hay thing, I grabbed Finn, I'm like, we are never, he's, and he is, told, I am freaked out, we're never coming back to the goddamn Pumpkin Firm, like I absolutely lost it, adults like surrounded this kid, he started started screaming, I'm like, fuck it, they're in charge of this shit, we're out, dude, like we gotta go.

0:47:57 Thomas: Ooh. No. I hate that. Wow.

0:48:26 Thomas: Jesus.

0:48:37 Eli: I when a child hurts itself around you, I wish I had better instincts, but whenever a child hurts itself around me, my immediate thing is, I didn't do that! I didn' do that, and some

0:48:45 Tom: Yes,

0:48:45 Thomas: Yeah, I know. I thought that was going to be the story. You just see Tom, everybody sees a crumpled kid on the floor and then they all point up like in a movie and go, whoa. And they look up and it was just Tom right there with his hand arm out. And then that, that was how Tom was, uh, hanged. Yeah

0:48:56 Eli: Yep, towering over the joke

0:48:55 Tom: Yeah. Just and It was horrible. It was the worst, ill, it was just, it was, it was wild.

0:49:03 Thomas: Oh, my. I thought it was goingto get dark and then you're going to hear a ghost saying, don't drown the baby. We don't round the bed in an old dress.

0:49:12 Eli: Alright, gentlemen now that we're all caught up before we go, important question why do you never make meringue on MasterChef Australia? Because Australians always boo meringue

0:49:35 Tom: Oh, that was rough, that was tough.

0:49:38 Thomas: Oh boy. That's a lot of effort for very little joke, but I like it.

0:49:47 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 and 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.

0:50:26 Tom: Drown the baby, Eli loves the baby, don't drowned the