DOD69: The Dentist

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 filling in all your cavities. I'm Tom Curry. I'm joined as always by Thomas Smith and Eli Bosnick. Hello, gentlemen.

0:00:38 Eli: Right. He made that one sexual by himself. We didn't, we didn't do a weird switcheroo on him that time. So, okay.

0:00:47 Thomas: Hello. I don't know. I just thought I'd say hello back. I didn't want to be rude.

0:00:48 Tom: All right.

0:00:52 Eli: I was like, God, Thomas is on a really bad delay this week, guys. This episode is going to fucking suck.

0:00:53 Thomas: Yeah.

0:00:55 Tom: Right. Yeah, all right. It wasn't my strongest intro, I'll admit that, but some acknowledgement that we're here, that we are starting the show would be good.

0:01:01 Eli: Anything? Thomas. No,

0:01:00 Thomas: Oh, no one. Yeah. Good day to you, Tom. How are you? I'm the co -host that cares.

0:01:07 Eli: Acknowledge his fun ass fucking joke.

0:01:14 Thomas: Right, hey, I'm gonna put this back in the front of the show. Trigger warning, Tom and Eli are gonna talk some disgusting tooth shit. I'm not even joking. I'll edit this in. Fuck, all right, brace yourselves, Jesus.

0:01:21 Eli: Yeah. Yeah.

0:01:19 Tom: I this episode, I think we're going to be talking a little bit about the dentist, which is great because I recently, I Think, what, last week, week before, I broke a tooth. And so right now, I'm working with a temporary crown. That's a joy.

0:01:38 Thomas: Oh, that's awful.

0:01:39 Tom: Temporary crown is great, because that way, anything that you eat that has a temperature of any sort, cold, hot, in between cold and hot.

0:01:46 Eli: Yep. Hot, normal.

0:01:46 Thomas: Yeah. Is there such a thing as not a temperature?

0:01:50 Tom: Not Yeah. If It was just not a temperature, it'd be fine, uh, makes the entire right hands, I've broken like probably five of my teeth, I grit my teeth real hard when I When I'm stressed, um, when I used to

0:01:50 Thomas: Yeah, it's like a neutral. Yeah. Oh, boy. And You don't have a, you know, stressful life at all, so I'm sure that doesn't really

0:02:05 Tom: But you know I'm a fucking weirdo dude, I, I grit my teeth or I'll clench, clench my jaw, um, I'm doing something, thing, just like if I'm like petting a dog, like it's just a weird, like my body's just like, we, like this, clench, clench, really hot, I'm like, why, I used to have to wear like a rubber mouth guard when I would lift weights because I, I broke a bunch of my front teeth just by clenching my jaw, so now I'm uh, I'm working with a temporary So I feel this moment is what I'm saying, guys, I feel this moment, yep.

0:02:19 Eli: Here's

0:02:23 Thomas: Jesus. Christ. Holy fuck, this is a whole okay.

0:02:32 Eli: The weird thing about a temporary crown, because I also have crowns, Tom, and permanent crown is like a perfect model of the tooth that used to be, that they somehow made out of like the memory of bad tasting play -doh, it's a genuine like miracle of modern science, but a temporary crown is a tooth as described by an English as a second language speaker, like, you know, these little men he hanged from face, like, I would like the science of perfection and temporary crown to have a middle ground that they do not have, because the entire week or so, and it's always a year, they're always like, great, well, we've taken those measurements, I'm gonna plug this Lego man into your face, and in seven to nine presidential, uh, we

0:02:36 Tom: Yes. Yeah. Man. Well,

0:03:01 Thomas: Yeah.

0:03:25 Eli: Will have the thing that you won't remember is a fake tooth anymore. It's

0:03:29 Thomas: Oh,

0:03:29 Tom: My have one other crown, Eli, and the, the other crown they did a root canal, they're not doing one on this one because it's fine, he just broke it, but like on the other one, did a root channel, I had, same thing, a temporary crown, I go back in and like they go, go to like fit the, you know, and it's like a $2,000 thing, right? It costs more than my first two cars. It's fucking ridiculous. It'S like one of the most expensive things I own to eat an apple, you know? And like, they go to put this thing on and the lady drops it down the back of my throat and I, and I cough.

0:03:44 Eli: Huge yeah

0:03:56 Thomas: Okay. Do we need a Trigger warning for this, is not, we can't, all, Christ.

0:04:00 Tom: Well, cough and like the tooth gets ejected thankfully out and like, yeah.

0:04:00 Thomas: Okay. I'm nice, can you let, call me when you're done with this, if you don't mind, fucking hell.

0:04:06 Eli: I

0:04:08 Tom: And I asked the lady, I was like, wait, cause it's $2 ,000. Right. I was looking at her and I'm like, what would have happened if I just like swallowed it? She looked at me like wide eyed. Cause I don't think she'd ever dropped one down in someone's gullet before. And she was just like, well, I don't know. And I was like I wouldn't have paid for it. I'll tell you that much, she's like, well, I'm glad we did, I was, there was this like moment where I was, was like, I almost ate two thousand dollars, I just almost like swallowed, unpleasantly, two thousand dollars.

0:04:27 Thomas: We've

0:04:37 Eli: Like, interested in the science of dentistry, not super interested, but it's the small talk I make with my dentist, and she said something really interesting once that I think about all the time, she, because we were talking about dentistry, and she was like, yeah, you know, the tricky thing about dentestry is you gotta do surgery, but everything has to be edible, and I don't just mean not poison, it has to be full-on edible because at any moment someone could eat anything you put in their mouth, and I was like, anything? And she was like, yeah, you know those little cotton swabs we put in your jaw, and I was like, yes, she was like, those aren't cotton, those are like a weird dissolving fiber, because you can't technically eat cotton. And I, I was like, huh.

0:04:56 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah.

0:05:13 Eli: Fun. Your

0:05:14 Thomas: Wow. You can't eat cotton. That's my takeaway. Did you, did you say like, oh yeah. And then you like grabbed a regular cotton ball.

0:05:21 Eli: Then I just rolled out a sleave of makeup wipes.

0:05:23 Tom: I think Eli's dentist is just making some shit up to him right now to make him feel better, like he's using asbestos and wires and just like, yeah, don't worry man, it's cotton candy, it's all good, it's it's fine

0:05:23 Eli: Sure I wondered what

0:05:29 Thomas: Well, I, I'm imagining next visit. It, he grabs

0:05:34 Eli: He was doing in my house

0:05:35 Thomas: The drill out of the dentist's hands, that's just edible, you're just like, it's no, it's like Willy Wonka, yeah that's my first thought too, he, like, starts eating the chair, no, we didn't, not the chair, like, when, no one's playing For the chair to go down your throat. I don't know about you weirdos, but I just don't like all that weird shit. No, don't get me wrong, I have bad- have I ever told my teeth story? My teeth storey is- it's nowhere near as disgusting as anything you just heard, which is, so that's why I'm fine telling it. Um, in college, for whatever stupid reason, I didn't take care of my teeth. Don't remember the details of it, but I feel like I just didn't brush, never flossed. I didn't know why, and I, my teeth looked fine. That's the thing. If they- they ever looked weird or like anything like that, I'm sure it would have motivated me to not, or to do that, you know, but they- they always looked fine. And if, you know, if it looks fine, I don't care, I'm not doing anything. And

0:05:40 Eli: Everything's chocolate, this is not the drill tastes like snozzberries, all right

0:06:27 Tom: Thank

0:06:27 Thomas: So I finally once I got a job, I graduated and got my first job. It was like slightly a real job. Was like, you know, I have dental insurance now from this job, which, you know, that'll cover up to like two percent of all possible expenses that I'm about to talk talk about.

0:06:42 Tom: Thank you dental insurance, is they're like, my company, I don't mean to cite, but my company's like, oh, our dental plan is great, it's very inexpensive, and I look, and indeed it is very inexpensive, which makes sense because it doesn't cover the gas to drive to the dentist, his office, like, it doesn't cover anything

0:06:43 Thomas: Yeah.

0:06:57 Thomas: Well, it is certainly not designed for people who are fucking grinding four teeth a day, lifting weights, just explode. It's definitely not designed for that. It is designed for.

0:07:00 Eli: Yeah yeah

0:07:03 Tom: I'm just a very tense man, Thomas right

0:07:08 Eli: Yeah

0:07:08 Thomas: Yeah, God damn, it's designed for, you know, like needing to clean about three teeth a year, you know, and then it's like, OK, we've covered that and then anything more. They're like, well, that's going to be one hundred dollars per, you know, per thing. And so I didn't have any, you You know, this was, to me, this job paid a billion dollars, but in real life, because this was 2008, right after the crash, it paid, you know, like, I don't know, 30 ,000 fucking four, something, nothing. Like it was, it felt like a billion to me. But it was really not.

And, I was like, all right, since I have some money time to do this, I go in and I could just, I, my teeth at this point were like, it wasn't, I had some temperature issues, you know? And they're sensitive to the, to the hot, cold time. You know what I'm talking about. So I was like, pretty sure by this point I had wised up and been like, all right, I bet, I better have some cavities, like I sure, I, I had my wild, not taking care of my teeth years in college, and so I, uh, we're going to the, do the x-ray thing, you know, and they do the x-ray, and then they do the thing where the dentist comes in and he ticks off a bunch of random numbers and letters about your teeth, you know?

0:07:19 Eli: Yeah

0:07:36 Tom: Oh yeah

0:08:12 Eli: Gum

0:08:12 Thomas: Oh, M O D X one five dex machina, 10 10 90 yeah and and then, and there's this whole teeth language that I like to, you try to learn on the fly, um, as they're doing it, you know, the whole teeth language, and I joked, I was like, there's gonna be like 20 of these fucking things, and he laughed, he's like, yeah, and then as he gets going, he go, I see his demeanor go from Like laughing, like, "Oh," to like, um, um. Okay. Yep. Another one here. Yeah.

0:08:16 Eli: Depth yeah yeah

0:08:44 Thomas: And yeah,

0:08:33 Tom: 18 19 sir we're gonna have to remove your whole face, we're going to have to have a facectomy at the end of this, yeah, this

0:08:46 Thomas: I don't remember the exact number. It was something between 19 and 21. It was possibly 19. And they're like, well, it'll be, you know, a hundred dollars a tooth, or you can get like the silver ones. And that's like free. And I was literally doing the calculation of like, do I have to get silver in my teeth? Like, Like, what year is it? Do I have to seriously look like one of the goblins from Lord of the Rings? Like, just have the silver on my teeth?

0:09:15 Tom: Is the episode where we learned Thomas has a grill, so that's cool

0:09:17 Thomas: Yeah.

0:09:18 Eli: Exactly but not on purpose a sad grill

0:09:18 Tom: Yeah Yeah.

0:09:20 Thomas: Yeah. No, so I had to, like, slowly do a plan of how many teeth I could fix and how many I could afford. So that's, yeah, that's my teeth story. But now they're all fine.

0:09:22 Eli: No

0:09:27 Tom: Well, I told you guys about my, my wisdom teeth coming out, right? I tell the story on the wisdom teeth. No.

0:09:31 Thomas: Oh, God.

0:09:33 Eli: Oh, Oh, Can I guess Can I guess? Your dad tied your face to the back of his car and drove around the block until they were out. No, your mom sold them on the internet to a guy named Mr. Squish. And you had to go to an abandoned summer camp where he could hunt you down.

0:09:33 Thomas: Did you just chomp them right out and swallow them? Oh, yeah.

0:09:38 Tom: No.

0:09:51 Tom: Well do you, do you guys have your wisdom teeth?

0:09:56 Eli: What?

0:09:55 Thomas: No, I had to get mine out.

0:09:56 Eli: No, I got them out at a doctor's

0:09:57 Tom: Yeah. Almost like everybody.

0:09:58 Eli: Office.

0:09:58 Thomas: Well, but I let mine grow in. That's part of the problem in college. Now I'm remembering. That's why my teeth, part of the reason they suck so bad is I let my wisdom teeth grow in. My jaw was killing me. It crowds everything out. You don't have any room for anything. Who invented these fucking things?

0:09:58 Eli: I

0:09:58 Tom: So yeah. Yeah. These are these are a fucking sick joke. It's like they're obviously a British invention. You can tell immediately that they're just an invention by the British to like turn your teeth into just snaggle face. That's all they're for.

0:10:13 Thomas: Yeah.

0:10:21 Eli: Like- How the story has changed for Thomas. He was like, yeah, no, I wasn't brushing, but, you know, I, they looked fine. And then so far he's like, well, I couldn't eat anything that was warmer than soup. And also my jaw was in terrifying pain. One of my center teeth popped out and screamed, I'm free. Like-

0:10:34 Thomas: I did forget about that part.

0:10:39 Tom: So similar to you, Thomas. Like I was pretty broke. I was 18 years old and my wisdom teeth came in and I didn't have any fucking money. You know, like, I'm just like, I'm a college kid. It's my freshman year in college. My jaw starts hurting pretty bad. And I'm like, oh, fuck. So I go to the dentist and I don't remember if I had insurance or not at the time. And my dad owned a small business.

So he didn't, he wasn't able to insure us once we turned 18 because Obamacare wasn't a thing yet. So you couldn't just like be on your parents' insurance, like infinitely. And so it was governed state by state. And I just, for a while, I didn't have insurance. To the dentist and they're like, well, yeah, you got four wisdom teeth and, you know, there's some infection over here because they're breaking through and all this problem. He's like, so they got to come out.

And he's like we really think you should be put under for it, but it's going to cost like whatever it's going to cause. I think it was like $900 extra or something to put you to sleep while we take them out. Or we can just do Novocaine and then just pop the four teeth out.

0:11:36 Tom: But he's going, it's gonna be fairly uncomfortable, but we can probably keep you. And I said, well, I don't have $900. So let's just do this thing Novocaine style and I'll just, I'll just, you know, deal with it.

0:11:36 Thomas: Jesus Christ.

0:11:47 Thomas: Can God, you imagine non -American listeners right now? As Tom tells the story. So what we do is if you don't have enough money, we actually just torture you here. We just, that's what we doing.

0:11:50 Tom: Freaking out. Yeah. Yeah. You decide how much

0:11:56 Thomas: That's what you do. Yeah.

0:11:56 Tom: Pain you're willing to endure.

0:11:57 Thomas: And some poor Europeans like, I don't know if they're serious or like, is this a whole, is this abit?

0:11:57 Tom: Right. Yeah.

0:11:50 Eli: This is A weird bit gentlemen, love the podcast. Unfortunately Unfortunately, the bit about going to the torture dentist ran a bit too long for me this week. Love, Higelby Shathbottom.

0:12:03 Thomas: Yeah.

0:12:13 Tom: Well, on the left side, everything went fine. They pull the two teeth out. It's uncomfortable, but it's just pressure. You know, it's not a big deal. On the right side, he puts the tool in and I immediately feel it and I'm like, I'm like, whoa, whoa, whoa, you know, I can, I can feel that. He's like, oh, okay. So he puts more Novocaine in and he comes back like ten minutes later, after it's supposed to have worked, and he puts a tool on, I'm not sure if it's like, I think you can still feel that, and he's like, no, there's no way you can feel that, you're just nervous, and he grips the tooth and he pops the tooth out of there and I jump out of the chair and I yell because I definitely did in fact feel that. And then no shit

0:12:43 Thomas: Oh, really? That him just convincing you that pain wasn't real didn't work? Weird.

0:12:44 Tom: Yep yeah hey and then no shit, this fucking oral, so he put his hand on my chest and pushes me back down, he says, "Settle down, tiger," and he grabs the other one and pops it out of there and I'm just laying there in this chair and I'm panting like crazy, right? And he leaves, he's like, we're not gonna, like, we're not gonna sew him up because these, you know, the uh, he had a lot of infection, we want to give it a chance to, like, whatever, and I'm laying there and I'm just panting

0:12:47 Thomas: Oh my God. Jesus. I would have killed that man.

0:13:09 Thomas: Oh, I thought it was like punishment for being such a pain in the ass. I'm not sewing this asshole up. He tends to like yell when he's in massive pain. I just don't like that. I'm a bad patient.

0:13:12 Tom: It was but then I Just

0:13:12 Eli: Because you got out of the chair. Yeah. I don't want to blame the victim here, Tom, but you were like, hey, I can still feel that. And he was like, no, you can't. And you were, like, I'm not. No, I. Can't. Away. You. Go.

0:13:30 Tom: Hey, and so, like, a few minutes, I'm late, I'm like, I'm shocked by this whole experience, and, like, I kind of, it's hard to explain, but I'm just kind of like glassy eyed and like panting and like trying to get myself calmed down, and the nurse comes in and she's like, "The doctor wanted me to apologize, uh, review of your like x-rays or whatever, you know, you had a lot of infection, and so the novocaine may have run down a channel of infection instead of getting to the nerve." And I was just like, you're fucking thankful, like.

0:13:55 Thomas: Jesus.

0:13:55 Tom: So I, I would not recommend

0:13:56 Thomas: Why do we start any story with Tom? Because he's going to be like, oh, I have that same story, except it's medieval horrors beyond your comprehension. I'm like, Oh yeah, that's right. I didn't have Tom's life.

0:14:05 Eli: Yeah. All. All of Tom's Stories should have black and white photos. To them, all of them, I

0:14:13 Tom: But I, I still was never nervous about the dentist. I had the only one bad experience, most of mine were good. Like, I don't know if you guys have dental phobia, my wife has a serious dental phobia, and I, I mean I had one bad experience but I was like everything else is fine, like I've fallen asleep in the dentist chair before. Oh,

0:14:24 Thomas: Oh, I mean, I fucking hate it, but

0:14:24 Eli: Don't I've had a I've had a ton of bad dental experiences. I had a botched root canal that had to be redone with money I didn't have. I had my wisdom teeth were pulled out by hand, um, there wasn't even like go to sleep gas offered, they were just like, "Come here, buddy boy," and whopped them out by hand. So yeah, I've had a tremendous amount of bad dental experience, but yeah, I just, I, I don't, I don't mind it. What I learned, and I cannot recommend this enough, I feel like I might have said this on our show already, but this is the fucking, like, if I have a good piece of advice to offer in this world. Wow, now I'm getting depressed by my intro to my advice. But now, if I have one thing worth listening to, to say, I get cleanings every three months instead of every six, and when that started happening, I have never had a cavity ever again. I

0:14:35 Tom: Oh Oh

0:15:02 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, did I got to a position in my life where it wasn't life or death if I had to pay a hundred dollars, you know, then I was like, wait, why am I doing, when am I next cleaning? She's like, oh, well, you know once a year, you be good to do every two. I was, like can I do it like every day? Like what's the limit? What's the upper limit on this? Cause I, cause yeah, the cleaning, it's not super fun, but it's so it's, you know, it's fine. And like you say, if you do it a lot, then it's really no big deal. Like the scrapey stuff, when you haven't gotten a cleaning in a while, not going to lie, the scrapely stuff does suck. Like I, I hate that like scraping on teeth sensation, you Know, but like when you do a lot totally fine.

So I was like, could I do it? Like, I don't know, every month she's like, nah, you don't have to do that. It'll cost too much money. I was like, how much will it cost? Well, you know, it's like a hundred dollars. I was, like, yeah, fuck. Okay, it is a hundred dollars. I can do that now. Like, inflation,

0:15:36 Tom: Right Right

0:16:08 Thomas: Like the world we live in, a hundred dollars is not a big deal for once a month or once every whatever. Best advice ever. And the thing, thing I was going to bring up, Tom, is we got, both Lydia and I got Invisalign, and not only does it fix you, the alignment of your teeth, which mine weren't like terrible, but but definitely once they do that simulation it's like, oh yeah, that's way better, but now I got, I have a teeth guard with a special thing to protect because I grind my teeth in my sleep too, and I hate that feeling, and I am the kind of person who they always ask me, like, you've been wearing your retainer, you've been wearing, I'm like, yes, I literally would never in my life ever not wear my retainer, because once I get something into a ritual like that, I do, I do it, it every single day.

It's not like, oh, 80%. It's like, no, literally 100% of the time I will put it on, and it protects me from the teeth grinding. It has changed my life. It is so great. I don't have the headaches as much. I have never broken any teeth. That sounds horrible, but it

0:16:32 Tom: Well

0:17:00 Thomas: Is a little too late for you, Tom, but you should try it.

0:17:00 Tom: Yeah Yeah, I I I should, well, the, the thing is that I, I clench, I don't grind. So it's, it's a different solution. So, um, and I do it, I do it while I'm awake. So I do When I'm stressed out, I just like, I walk around with a clenched jaw. Like it's, it's bad enough that like, when I have to get dental work, they have to put one of those wedges in my mouth because my jaw has developed like such a strong muscle on the side that it occludes their vision on the side. So they have push the muscle, 'cause I've been been doing this I've

0:17:12 Thomas: Oh, okay. Yeah. Yeah,

0:17:31 Eli: Jaw's bicep is too big to see past

0:17:35 Tom: Been doing this since I was a kid, I just clench, I'm like, when I'm stressed out, I just clench so yeah yeah, but Hayley has the same thing. You're talking about, and, you know, the thing is too, like, there's a ton of scams in dentistry, like dentistry is one of those industries that is like, and it's well known, like, it is rife with a lot of like unnecessary work, um, that's something you have to be careful of too, because you go from one dentist to the next and you can get wildly divergent opinions

0:17:36 Thomas: I kind of do too, too, actually, yeah, I don't think I do as bad, yeah.

0:18:01 Thomas: I do always worry about that, and then I realize that's something like, I just don't, I can't worry about this, you know what I mean, like it's something I don't, I don't have the ability to do anything about it, really, I'm not going to try out seven different dentists, so I've just submitted myself to the will of big dentists. I don't t know, whatever.

0:18:03 Tom: Yeah.

0:18:18 Thomas: Well the only thing worse than the dentist drill driller, maybe fucking, now that I've heard Tom's stories, the drill isn't even top like 10 new fears about dentistry, is Eli's favorite thing in the world.

0:18:16 Eli: Of big D, big D, finally carried away. Yeah, so auto ads, the, which I think of as a very special kind of torture for our audience, um, we're sorry that those exist, but unfortunately, and I'm not naming names, one of us just keeps having kids, so we have to feed them, we have to feed them. We're like, me and Tom are like Lucy and Ethel, just desperately stuffing auto ads into our mouth as Thomas gives birth to yet another other baby, um, but if you want to avoid the auto ads and pay for Thomas's vasectomy, you can sign up to be a patron over at patreon.com/dearolddads, all spelled out, for as little as a dollar you get an extra long version of every single episode with a parenting story at the end of it, you also get monthly bonus episodes, and you get access to our awesome patron community, where not one, but six people have already met the love of their life, head on over to patreon.com/dearolddads and sign up today, do it, or Thomas will have another baby. Yep.

0:19:33 Thomas: I think we're just paying for Tom's new teeth. I think we got to buy him. It goes through like four or five a day.

0:19:37 Tom: Someone's got you. The insurance isn't covering it.

0:19:39 Thomas: Yeah.

0:19:36 Eli: Sure, new House Thomas's teeth, my poor credit card decisions. Yes.

0:19:46 Thomas: The dentistry talk, it's actually it's it's kind of good that we talked about the horrors that is dentistry, because that does help set up the story a bit. The other day, I had to take Phoebe to the dentist. She's so we took her. We have the kid dentist and I love all the kid stuff that I never had. I just had like, you know, like a Cold War era Russian, you trying to get information out of me as a kid dentist like the worst kind ever and the kids they get the like surf side dental and it's got like ocean stuff and like shark tank and like the it's a got all this stuff.

It's you know like them going to the dentist is eight times more fun than anything like anything good. I got to do as a good and so it's been great. I actually love it. They're super nice, and I didn't think kids' teeth needed anything forever. I don't, do you have a memory of, like, my earliest memory of the dentist, and that's not anything because I don't know how early I remember, but I don't remember it being like pre -kindergarten. Do you guys?

0:20:09 Eli: Of course yeah yeah no

0:20:24 Tom: Yeah.

0:20:41 Eli: This is this is a big generational divide thing where like you were nine the first our generation was nine The first time we went to the dentist and you just went you just went to the dentist there was no child dent for what they

0:20:47 Thomas: Yeah. Okay,

0:20:54 Tom: Yes. Yes, there was no pediatric dentist when I was a kid.

0:20:56 Eli: Just Bungee cord you into the chair and go to fucking they're like

0:21:00 Thomas: So this is something that even you dealt with, so it wasn't, this isn't just a Thomas Smith small -town horrors. Okay. There wasn't another dentist. By the way, that's something maybe you guys didn't have to deal with. There was just one dentist. Like they're like the whole town. We would have had to drive over to a new town.

0:21:01 Eli: Yes no this This is all of us.

0:21:16 Eli: Of course. Why would you have a second dentist in your town? Yeah, that would be insane. What are they going to do? Fight to the death for the nine customers?

0:21:19 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah, in case he gets sick, I guess. Yeah, I mean, there's not a lot of teeth there anyway. So it's,

0:21:28 Eli: I was going to say, and the meth makes the whole problem kind of moot.

0:21:30 Thomas: Yeah,

0:21:30 Tom: I Do remember going to the dentist. Now, I do remember going to the dentist when I moved in with my dad, and that was in first grade. So, I do remember going Yeah. About About six Years old, yeah. I don't Remember ever Going To the Dentist with My mom, yeah.

0:21:38 Thomas: Exactly. Not pre -kindergarten though. Yeah totally. That's when I kind of, exactly, Exactly. I kind of remember around school time, some point. Um, like these kids I'm taking them, I mentioned like, Oh, taking Arlo, you know, whenever that was a couple of years ago. And I was like, what? He has like four teeth. Do I? And she's like, yeah, they recommend already taking them. I was Like, all right. I mean, whatever, I guess. I don't know what they're going to do with their little, I think of their little baby teeth is like, they're not even, you know, they're like styrofoam. They're not even real.

0:21:43 Tom: Right. Mm -hmm.

0:22:05 Thomas: You know, they're just little inserts that they do. You think of those as real teeth. They're going to get rid of them. They're going to grow in their real teeth, but yeah.

0:22:10 Eli: Practice teeth. Exactly.

0:22:05 Tom: Well But But, you know, that's why I said, like, there's a lot of scams in dentistry because, because I, I took, and I actually, I have had bad experiences at pediatric dentists, particularly, like, both of my boys when they were little. They went to a dentist that absolutely had, like, oh, they need caps and they need all this crazy amount of work, like thousands of dollars and all this extensive work on their baby teeth, like on their little little guy teeth. Teeth. And I didn't know any better because I'd never heard of like how scammy dentistry is an industry can be. I just assumed it was like, well, that you go to the dentist, they say to do it, you just do it. You know, I never thought about it before. And so like with Finn and then through Eamon's mom, Eamon, they both have had extensive dental work done on their baby teeth.

And like now we go to this dentist, like are my my I don't know what to call it, like my live -in family, like Haley and Aislinn and Donovan and myself, we all go to this dentist, and his whole thing is like, yeah, we're just not going to mess with stuff if it's okay. We're just going to do the least of those. The more you start drilling into stuff, the more damage you do to the teeth, we don't mess with the stuff unless

0:22:37 Thomas: Yeah.

0:23:20 Tom: It's required to do it.

0:23:20 Thomas: I hope this guy's not actually a dentist. I always just found like he's found a business model. That's exactly people like Tom where they come in. Yeah, I mean, it's killing me. It bleeds every night, but like it's fine. And he's like, you know, let's not mess with it. Let's not every single time he dresses up like a dentist, right?

0:23:29 Tom: He's, no, great. I will say, Haley found him. He graduated at the top of his class at whatever the most prestigious dental school is. He's awesome. But he's like, yeah, there's a lot of people who just do a lot of unnecessary work. And like, he's Like, I just don't believe in that philosophically of doing unnecessary work is I gonna, it's not harmful to put a cap on a baby tooth. He's like but if it's coming out next year, it probably fine. You know, and but like, if you were to look at like, and I know we'll talk about this, but like getting Finn to get that work done when he was God, man, I don't know, six or seven, and like, the panic and the fear and like Like, the whole thing was just so intense, and I so deeply, deeply regret doing it. Like, crazy.

0:23:53 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah. Well, There we go. Well, I can't speak, I don't know, uh, if I would say it's scammy per se. I do know that that, like, like, I don't, I don't want to have that conversation because I'm not prepared to. I just know that like if you talk to different dentists, they may, you know, one may say that's a cavity and the other may say yeah, we can keep an eye on it. That's all I know. And, and I, again, I just don't, fucking, I can't deal with that.

There's too many things in in my life. I have to just take the word of the dentist. And so I took Phoebe and she has some cavities. Here's the thing, Arlo, his teeth are massively far apart. He has these giant gaps. And it's funny because I thought it was, must've been from Lydia's family. And I then my mom showed me a picture of me and it's literally identical to me. Like, I guess as a kid, I had massive gaps in my teeth with my baby teeth.

But then once my real teeth came in, I didn't have any gaps. Kind of weird how that works. But anyway, so Arlo has these big gaps and it turns out that's fucking great. Like nothing, no food gets stuck in there, you know, like we should have only every other tooth really, that's what we should do, we shouldn't, you know, pull out half of them because

0:25:18 Thomas: There's no we try to floss him and it's there, it's not actually flossing, you're just putting floss on

0:25:17 Tom: Write your congressman.

0:25:23 Eli: You're just gently laying a string on a pad of flash. Yeah.

0:25:24 Thomas: Yeah but it's perfect, his teeth are in perfect shape because of that. You don't, you want the big gaps, apparently. Phoebe, opposite, hers are all crowded, and she's got, they, according to them, I don't know, Tom will say, who knows if it's real, but some, some cavities. And I had the reaction that you had, which is, I, are just baby teeth, right? Do we really, how much do we have to worry about this? She said, well, these particular teeth, they don't all come out at once is the problem. You know, like the baby teeth go out in phases, and specifically like some molars or like some of the, you know, some of those, they stay in for a while, you know, so she'll have baby teeth. She could have those that have cavities and grow her adult teeth around them, you know, and like that could cause, you know, tooth decay everywhere, kind of. That's the pitch that I've been given.

0:26:09 Tom: Very much heard the same thing. And I'm not trying to impugn. I don't know that we were, like, scammed or whatever. I heard the samething. Thing. Like you don't want anything in there that's like, you know, got rotting or what, you know, like that, that sort of thing. I just am, I, I find these different approaches so radically different that I'm like, I don't know, man, like one of them cost me many thousands of dollars and the other one didn't and so like I'm like I don't know man, like if it's a tooth that I think was gonna pop out in the next year, if it's like a 12 year molar, like let's get that thing taken care of. If it's like a fucking front wiggler, like I'm sorry man, we're tying that thing to a bottle rocket and shooting to the sun, right?

0:26:17 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah, yeah. No, I hear you.

0:26:41 Thomas: For sure. And so, she had her, apparently had to have, okay, I thought it it was two appointments. This'll be semi -important later. And she had her first one, got a couple teeth done. I had some massive amount of work thing I had to do. So Lydia took her and apparently went okay. I, you, was pretty impressed. She had the teeth done, she had the cavities filled, went okay, and it wasn't easy or anything because Lydia was like, all right, you're doing the next one.

I was like, yeah, absolutely. I can't believe you did did that. That's amazing. And so I was signed up for appointment number two and I take her and now she knows what it is, though. Like now she knows, she'd already, you know, just going to the dentist was fine, cause, you know, they, yeah, they poke your teeth a little bit, but she got through it. But now that she's on the second of filling cavities appointments, it was not going well.

Like from the get -go it was awful and she was losing it. And this fucking lady, man, this was was so hard because I know, I know Phoebster, like I know how she is, you, this lady, this who was not the dentist I think but the, like, you know, whatever the person, the wrangler, the kid, they probably have like special kid versions of this, the handler, she was just being really intense with Phoebe, like she was trying to calm Phoeby down by like really being in her face and being

0:28:02 Eli: Yeah.

0:28:02 Thomas: Like you need

0:28:03 Eli: She did the colloquy of fear with her.

0:28:03 Thomas: Yeah was like okay, can you fucking, but how do you tell some lady at the dentist like hey can you fuckin, not, for all I know this is just her personality disorder, like she just was really, you know, she was like really in her face a lot, and I just wanted to tell her like hey don't, that's not gonna work, you're making it worse, like you're getting in her case, she would rather, like, a nice gentle approach, you're just making her more scared, you, you know? But I, I didn't know if I was like, I don't know if I can say that. Like, it feels weird, you know, like I don't want to, you I don't know. Would you have said something?

0:28:23 Eli: Stop. Stop it.

0:28:30 Tom: Yeah

0:28:36 Eli: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, because it's a hard... Well, when you're finished with this, I'll tell you what happened with Max recently, but it is always hard to be like, have better bedside manner. But, uh...

0:28:46 Tom: Right

0:28:45 Thomas: Yeah, exactly. Like if, if they could do it, they probably would already. So it's probably like a fucking personality thing. So then I get, I dont want to be like, Hey, can you be a different person? Because I don't like this person. This person sucks.

0:28:49 Eli: Right.

0:28:59 Tom: I You can give feedback though and say, hey, you know, I, I just want to give you a heads up. I think like, so, you know, Finn's gonna respond a little better to a quieter approach, um, you know, just I think that that's, we'll do that with, with teachers, doctors, whatever, yeah, yeah, oh, no, I know, Yeah, it's not a crew, you're just asking, like, do you think you could, you could But yeah, I think you can like I would, if possible, do it ahead.

0:29:07 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah. Well, this was, yeah. If I ever went in again, in, then yeah, I would, but this all came at me in five seconds, you know, and I hadn't been there. Yeah. Yeah. Right. Right, right. So you do it like ahead of time, maybe next Yeah,

0:29:21 Eli: Yeah.

0:29:23 Tom: But even in the moment, if you if you're watching it kind of spiral out, I think you Can possibly say, hey, just a heads up, you know, I think he'll he'll just respond a little bit better to you with an approach that's softer, or that's whatever. If you kind of make it about like how you're going to make their day today a little Bit easier.

0:29:23 Thomas: Right, yeah.

0:29:39 Tom: People accept that as not a criticism, but like a tip.

0:29:42 Thomas: That's a good call.

0:29:43 Eli: Yeah, uh, pro tip, if you could marry Anna Bosnick, you actually never have to worry about that because if anyone's even a little shitty, she who has no read of any situation whatsoever, will be like, "Hey, you seem kind of shitty right now, you're being shitty, do you feel that you're shitty here?" I've I've taken this sharpie market and I'm writing "shitty" against the wall of your office, does this, is this tracking for you?

0:29:58 Thomas: Yeah! Yeah, I mean, I'm, I am a little bit that. Yeah,

0:30:09 Eli: I'm underlining it, I'm underlying it, yeah.

0:30:09 Thomas: It's not. I will. I will say stuff. It's not, you know, it was on the, it, the problem is with everything. It was kind of on the borderline, you know, like I, I kept thinking like, ah, it'S almost enough, but like, she was still nice. You know, she WAS really nice, but she was just getting really intense. It was like she was a fucking, you know Peewee football coach or something. She was just kidding really in her face. And I was just like, I don't, I don't think Phoebe likes this anyway, but it all happened so fast. I was, I I kept doing the calculations of like, okay, maybe if we take a break, you know, if she's going to like take a brake, I'll talk to her then.

0:30:20 Tom: Right. Yeah. Yeah.

0:30:42 Thomas: So I kind of let it go for the moment. I kind of tried to hint, like, "Oh, she," you know, say little things, but next happened is Phoebe just wouldn't do it. And, um, I was, we were trying everything. She was like, "Can you get down there?" And, and, and it was like, "I'll do whatever," I was holding her hand, I'll try to calm her down, I was trying to talk to her, I'm trying to reason with her. And she just wouldn, she was just freaked out. She, "I don't want to do this. I don't want to do this," you wouldn't do it and she's, you know, it wasn't like a horrible meltdown yet, like, it was, I was like, "All right, um, can, can we take a break," kind of thing. Also, you know, they use laughing gas with kids, did you know this? Yeah.

0:30:41 Eli: They

0:31:09 Tom: Yeah. Oh.

0:31:17 Eli: Do bam.

0:31:17 Tom: Yeah. Finn had it and it, it either works or it makes them panic more, it made Finn panic more, we had to stop the laughing gas because like some kids respond to feeling weird and with anxiety, and so Finn does it Finn is a guy that, yeah.

0:31:18 Eli: Didn't Smoke enough

0:31:32 Thomas: That's a good bet for Febster Yeah.

0:31:34 Tom: If, if, like, it, it might be similar, like Finn, the laughing gas made it like tenfold worse because now he felt scared and a little out of control. And that just ramped up his fear response to it. So I learned after the first couple of tries with laughing gas that like that's just a no go situation at all.

0:31:38 Thomas: Yeah. Oh. Geez. Okay. Okay. That I'll keep an eye on that because we weren't sure, it might have have been that she just wasn't getting it in, like, you can't, it's weird, the things you just think should be easy to get a kid to do. And then you're like, "Oh no, that's actually fucking impossible." I can't do it. You know, like, Hey, can you just breathe? Cause obviously they don't hook it up. So all they breathe is that, or they die. They, it has to be a thing where they do. I can'T remember what it is, but somehow they have to do it like the kid has to breathe just through their nose or something.

And they just, I don't think she was doing it. And, you know, like they couldn't get her to do It no matter how many times we explained it's either that, Or it honestly could be what you're saying, Tom, because she's exactly the kid that would would be like that, I feel like. So maybe that was it. But either way, freaking out, freaking it out. And so we're going to take a look like a pause. I was like, yeah, just give us a second. And I was trying to get it to work. You know, I was try to talk to her. I thought I kind of talked her into it. Got the movie. God, the shit the kids have. They have the movie above them.

0:31:56 Tom: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

0:32:49 Eli: I'm

0:32:50 Thomas: You know like God, I would have killed for that as a kid. Um, then, um, they try for like five more seconds and then they're like, all right, we're not doing it. And I was like, wait, we'll start. What? Like, yeah, no, we'RE not, weRE not doing IT. I was lik, what? Oh, you, I, that's an option. You just don't, you'RE not going to do it. They're like yeah, no, WE'RE not gonna fucking, force your kid to do something they don't want to do. I WAS like, yeah.

0:33:12 Eli: Not gonna gonna fist fight your kid

0:33:13 Thomas: I WAS like, I mean, mean, I hear you say those words and that makes logical sense. Like, yeah, you're not going to literally strap my kid down and make her do something. I just, it came kind of out of nowhere for me. I was like, oh, I thought we were going to try for like another hour, you know, and I'm sure they got a lot of patience to get in and take their money, you but it I, was a weird feeling where I didn't know how to react in that moment. Cause that is nothing that I've ever had any experience with. Like I, do you, now, Tom, if you went to the dentist and your dad, and they

0:33:13 Tom: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

0:33:13 Eli: Again

0:33:45 Thomas: Were like, we need your kid to stop wriggling or something, your dad would just make it happen. Or you would, you know, like there wasn't the option of getting out of it, you know?

0:33:53 Eli: They wouldn't even give me a flavor of tooth coating that didn't make me throw up. I went to the dentist every year as a kid, and they'd be like, by the way, they don't do this anymore, so younger people, this is a fucking insane story I'm about to tell you, but Tom will assure you that this is real. They used to take a mouth guard and fill it with cum. Sometimes it was coconut flavored cum, sometimes it was bubblegum flavored cum. And then you would sit there for nine and a half hours with the cum in your mouth, begging God to kill you.

Now here's the thing. The Coconut flavored one was terrible, right? It's horrible. I wouldn't wish it on anyone who could tell me it extended my life by 30 years, and I still wouldn't have done it, but the Bubblegum one instantly made me throw up every time it touched my tongue And from and From the age of 6 to 17, every time I went there, I was like, hey, um, don't give me the bubble gum flavor or I will throw up. And this fucking ex-meth addict would just be like, yeah, whatever kid. And I'd be like, and she'd be like, ah, you

0:34:14 Tom: Yes.

0:34:19 Thomas: Yes. Wow. Oh, wow. That's so funny. Oh

0:34:26 Tom: Dude.

0:34:38 Tom: Fucking Yeah. Because It's Horrible, horrible

0:35:03 Eli: Weren't kidding. And And I'd be like, I sure wasn't. And she'd be like, all right, well, I got a sweatshirt with our dental practice's name on it that you're gonna go home in again

0:35:11 Thomas: My God. You're like, don't you want to make a note in the patient file? Nah, next time, same thing.

0:35:12 Eli: Yeah.

0:35:12 Tom: Yeah. God. I I fucking remember that shit. That was like, like for me, I think they used like green apple, and it was it was just Staggeringly Staggeringly sour, so that, like, not only do you have this like there's these like fucking dental cups full of fucking green apple jizz in your mouth, but now they're sour, so you're salivating like you have rabies, you're like, you're just like pouring fucking saliva just dripping all over your shit, just like, and then they're like, are Are you doing okay?

0:35:20 Thomas: Oh. Yeah. I remember that one. Wow. Oh.

0:35:34 Eli: Yep.

0:35:38 Thomas: Yeah, okay.

0:35:46 Tom: Horrible. Horrible?

0:35:46 Thomas: This is so funny. This was the best part of the dentist for me. Yeah.

0:35:51 Tom: What?

0:35:52 Thomas: I don't know why, like, maybe my dentist had better flavors, or I was just more deprived as a kid, but I I'd be like

0:35:53 Tom: What? This

0:35:53 Eli: You such a sad you had so little candy he was like

0:35:58 Thomas: Yeah.

0:35:58 Tom: Is the episode where we learn that Thomas loves bubblegum cum. That's it. Bubblegum gum is his thing.

0:36:00 Thomas: The bubble gum was good I like the Bubble bubble gum. I feel like there's maybe some black cherry, maybe. I don't know. It was good every time. I was like, I don't even know. I have too many good choices. I don't know what to pick. That was the hard part of the dentist. How do I pick? And so they don't do the thing full of jizz anymore. I keep waiting for that. And I thought it was just because my kids were too young.

0:36:13 Tom: Oh. Oh. Oh. No, they

0:36:14 Eli: Oh. I'm okay with it Nope. No. Thing because

0:36:23 Tom: Don't do it anymore. They've got less horrifying methods now.

0:36:26 Thomas: Okay.

0:36:23 Eli: I know are you Ready for this? Because I asked the dentist, because I am, there, I'm very, very conservative about this kind of stuff. And I'll talk about Max's three-year-old appointment, which just happened in a couple of minutes. But I was like, hey, jar full of jizz, we're not doing that. Like, I've looked it up. I know what it is.

0:36:26 Tom: Yeah.

0:36:41 Eli: We're Not Doing Jar Full of Jizz.

0:36:40 Tom: They looked at you like, yeah, okay.

0:36:43 Eli: And she was like. Oh, we haven't done jar full. It was like that fucking end of the scary story. Like she hasn't been here for 20 years. She was like we haven'T done jar for jizz in forever.

0:36:51 Thomas: My God. Jar full of jizz hasn't worked here since 1930.

0:36:55 Eli: Yeah. And I was, like, what? Why? Why and she was like, oh, because there's, um, there's proper fluoridization in the water now and I was like, wait a second, what and she was like, yeah, no, they, like, got the amount of fluoride in the water correct.

0:37:02 Thomas: Yeah. It's a miracle. Fluoride is

0:37:09 Eli: Everywhere.

0:37:03 Tom: Uh,

0:37:09 Thomas: A miracle fucking thing is my understanding.

0:37:12 Tom: Yeah, if you want the government to control your mind,

0:37:13 Thomas: Yeah, it does nothing but amazing, perfect things. And so naturally people have to be like, it's the lizard people. And then we don't get to have the nice things. Yeah okay. But they still do the fluoride.

0:37:21 Eli: Now it's killing you. Yeah, but yeah, it's in the fucking water. Water.

0:37:25 Thomas: They ask me every every time. Do you want me to just, now they have like some jizz and paste. Do they do that with you? I, they have a little, I like that.

0:37:31 Eli: No, my florum

0:37:31 Tom: Yeah. Yeah, they like paint it and then they like

0:37:33 Thomas: Yeah. They'll paint. They're like, let me paint my masterpiece of jizz on your, on your teeth. And I'm

0:37:34 Tom: Yeah, uh -huh. Oh,

0:37:36 Eli: No, I they've seen my teeth and they're like, we get it.

0:37:39 Tom: God.

0:37:41 Thomas: I'm like, yeah, sure. They'RE like, Hey, it'll be 20 bucks. I'm Like fucking A. Yeah, give me that's all. Give me that jizz. Oh yeah. All over.

0:37:48 Eli: Maybe they can tell, like, in your permanent record they were like, loves the black cherry, and you were like, oh, okay, we're gonna do, you want more of that jizz that we had when you were a kid because we got vats of it, like, we made it and then we stopped but there was a, there was an in and it does not go bad but

0:38:01 Thomas: Yeah, Yeah, they're like, here's what we did, we kind of dehydrated, dehydrated it a little to make it seem like a different thing, like it's just a little thicker and pastier it's still just

0:38:09 Eli: It's it's the same jizz, we just we just put it on a brush.

0:38:11 Thomas: No, I love it, I do that every time, and now they're like, and now it's fucking, talk about scientific miracles, now they are like, yeah, you can eat, you can ate right away. I'm like, what, that's not how how could I eat

0:38:12 Eli: Yeah. Oh,

0:38:19 Tom: Yes, you couldn't eat for, like, you know, 46 weeks or something after that, yeah.

0:38:21 Eli: Man. Mm. -hmm.

0:38:22 Thomas: A year. Yeah.

0:38:24 Tom: It was, was fucking ridiculous, you had to, like, cross the fucking desert with Noah or some shit before you could eat a sandwich again, after they painted your teeth with that fucking green apple jizz, now they're just like, yeah, have a fucking food, whatever. They don't care at all, you're

0:38:34 Eli: Yeah. Go live your

0:38:25 Thomas: Yeah, yep. Yeah and now they'll give you the warning. I love this warning.

0:38:35 Eli: Best life, you.

0:38:36 Thomas: It'll be one in the afternoon when I'm getting my dental thing done. They'll be like, yeah, you can eat. I ask every time because I think it's fake every time. So I can eat with it. Yep, go ahead and eat. Oh, don't brush and floss your teeth for like eight hours. I'm like, yeah, I wasn't going to accidentally brush it like in

0:38:50 Eli: Got it you just brushed and flossed my teeth.

0:38:52 Tom: Like, hey, listen, I'm not here because I brush and floss a lot, all right.

0:38:53 Eli: Yeah. So

0:38:53 Thomas: The middle of the day. How do you think I got here? Yeah. So they said, we'RE not doing IT. And I, it took me a while. I didn't know how to process that. I literally was, I'm not joking. I was stunned. I was like, I, I don't, so we'RE NOT really? Like, is that, I DON'T, and I was just silent. I didn'T know what to do. And she was like,"Oh, maybe if you bring her back in the morning," you know?

And I was, like, all right, it'S not gonna fucking, she had, the same lady who was this intense talk in your face person had to tell me 14 times, well, if try for a morning appointment. I was like that, what the fuck is that going to do? My Phoebe is Phoebe all the time. There's no not time that she's, you know, she just is Phoebe. She's too smart. She remembers everything. She figured this out. She has gotten me with the vaccinations.

Like I'll say that, I'll give the most obscure roundabout language for like, oh, we're getting some medicine from a clinician. And she'll be like, is it a shot? And they're like, fuck, how'd you know?

0:39:50 Thomas: You know, every time she just knows. And so I'm telling her like, yeah, that's not going to, I don't, I was trying to get her to, can you try again? Cause like, I don't know. Nothing's going to change. You know? Like there's not gonna be a different thing ever. I was telling her, I Was trying to tell the dentist lady or whatever, the fucking handler. I was like, well, if it doesn't work now, it's not not going to work for, I don't know, a couple of years. Like I can't even, I don't even know. And she was like, all right, we'll just not do it. And I was like, what, how, what? Where am I? What is this? How is, how is that an option this whole time? And so we just didn't do it and it was the, it was the most, I'll

0:39:50 Eli: Well,

0:40:25 Tom: Yeah,

0:40:25 Thomas: Tell you, I've talked to you about having to process my feelings and not, you, was hard. This was a hard one because I, everything in my bones was telling me you need to yell at your kid because she could not do a thing that as a kid you would not have an option to not do, like, it would just be you just fucking do it, it's the dentist, any sort of medical care, that's the one place where I'm like, all right, well, I still need to make my kids do that because it's medical care but this yeah I was just see here's

0:40:25 Tom: That's awesome. Yeah.

0:40:42 Tom: Man, yep. Yep. I did this Thomas, yeah. I this was me, 10 years, this was, was me, you know, 10 years ago, yes. 100.

0:40:57 Thomas: What I did I just, I stewed, I just think, I mean, I, I, I'll be honest, I'm sure I wasn't like amazing to Phoebe in those moments, like, I was, like, pretty upset, but I, I was like, maybe if I just don't talk for as long as it takes for me to not, like, me to process what's happening, you know, like I just was like trying to tell myself, I was like, it's okay. She can't do it. She can'T do it, she's a kid. She canT do it hmm.

0:40:57 Tom: Right. Yeah,

0:41:12 Eli: And and and the pro pancha kicks in right where you're like, well, she can't do this, next time we go in to have a shot she's gonna a freak, like, she's learned that if she freaks out enough she won't do this and that means that someday if I ever take

0:41:27 Tom: Yeah.

0:41:26 Thomas: Yes. Yeah, that all that's the main issue. I want to talk to you guys about am I just teaching her like, okay, if you make a big enough deal now, you don't have to do a thing. I'll say as much as my parents, you now have their issues. They I think they did they were like the fucking NRA where they're like, well, if we allow allow a single gun law, then the whole thing is over.

0:41:29 Eli: Tweeted

0:41:43 Tom: I know, yeah.

0:41:44 Thomas: And so they're like, well, if we ever allow our kids to complain and win, well, that's the end of it. So we never won a single time. I remember there was one time in my life where I cried to get my way out of something and it was only because it was just my mom, and it was one time. And that's the only time it ever worked. And otherwise, and so, like, I really had a hard time dealing with of this. I tried, I feel like I was shitty to Phoebe a little bit and I, I feel so bad. Um, you know, I just don't think I was like very, yeah, yeah. I'm sure I just was not, you know, like, I'm sure I wasn't being like kind and loving in that moment.

I was just like, we have to do that. We got to, you don't understand you have to do it. And then I, so I got a getter in the car. I, my brain after being a little shitty was like, you know, you need to just call a detour or whatever, call a truce with your your brain for like 10 minutes. I, like, maybe this will help if people have these issues. I was, like, let me just call a truce with my brain for 10 minutes, I'm just gonna drive, I'm gonna not really say much, uh, I knew, like, I knew the information, my brain was like, here's the information, she's a fucking kid, if she can't do anything it's your fault or the dentist, it's not her, you know,

0:42:11 Eli: Mean shit about her

0:42:16 Tom: Yeah. Man. Yeah.

0:42:53 Tom: Yeah,

0:42:54 Thomas: She's five and but like you're, oh my god, when you've been raised the the way I have, that was hard. I was like, this was one of those things where I was like, well, the dentist is not optional. Like you have to do it. And so I drove in silence for for about, you know, five, 10 minutes and then I finally, I felt my brain just like, okay, I settled with that information. Like I got, I that and then I just was like all right, I better fucking make it up to her. And I just was, like, I, know, I apologize like Phoebe. I was like sorry I was, you ,know, it wasn't super nice earlier.

Don't have to do it, you maybe when you're a little bigger, like maybe when You're a Little Older we'll Find a Way for Now, You Know, I Hope Your Teeth Don't Hurt Because They Say You Have Cavities So Just Be Careful But You Know I Was Trying To Set Up Like This Is Ultimately You That's A Hard Thing To Explain Like This Is For Your Own Good, You Knows Like If Your Teeth Hurt Like It's Because Of This Like I Wasn't Trying To Hurt Her With It. I Was Trying to Tell Her Like That's Why This Is Like We're Trying To Prevent Your TeETH From Hurting And So If That Happens Then Like It'S Probably Because of this but we'll deal with it and uh you know I got there but it was boy that was hard yeah

0:42:55 Eli: Right. Right. Right.

0:43:03 Tom: Yeah, and I it's feel exactly the same, like, all of that, I feel all of of that and, like, I think that's a really tough line to walk, like, when you've got something that does genuinely have to be done, some shit can you put it off, yeah, you can put some shit off, other stuff you can't really put off, like, I've, you know, it's like we talked about, like, with getting the kids, like, their vaccinations, like, no kids excited to go get a goddamn vaccination, none of them want to do that but like, I am not going to be like, well, just because you're afraid, um, that sucks, but it's just because your afraid doesn't mean I'm going to let you get it mumps because that's The calculus here.

0:44:02 Thomas: Yeah yeah you

0:44:26 Tom: And it's and like I and I and I wish I had handled this different, but I just want to like because this was 10 years ago and I think I've learned a lot as a parent. But like when Finn had all that crazy amount of dental work done, so he had, you know, he had drilled out cavities and fillings and caps and all kinds of things. He went to the dentist five or six times in a row and several of the visits were unsuccessful. So he would bite and thrash and scream and And I would push and hold him with my body weight into the chair. And Like, I wish deeply that I hadn't done that, right? Because I don't think in retrospect that the value of getting that work done exceeded or was up to the standard of the response I had to engage

0:44:24 Thomas: 100 % oof

0:44:25 Eli: Yep. Sucks to fucking suck. Yep.

0:44:48 Thomas: Yikes yeah yeah yeah

0:45:11 Tom: In order to get that done. But then, man, there's other shit. Like, I remember getting hit in the head with a baseball bat when I was a kid. And I got stitches on the back of my head and I had to be held down to get stitched. And I 100 percent think that that's the right thing to have done. And it's it fucking sucks. Right. Because some stuff, the kids, you have to take it into consideration. You don't want to create a phobia. You don'T want to engage a like, of if I freak out enough, I get to not do important shit. Right. And you can't sell them exclusively like when it's really scary to a small person like that isn't a rational thinker. It's really hard to sell them on like why this downstream

0:45:11 Thomas: There there yeah there's other shit where you have too yep yep yes yeah yeah long term

0:45:56 Tom: Effect.

0:45:56 Thomas: They can't do it yeah there is no way it's it's impossible for them.

0:45:59 Eli: And you

0:45:57 Tom: Right. Yeah. So like I just want to like be there and sympathize with that, because there, sometimes the answer is you have to be a little bit unkind or strict or harsh. I wish I hadn't done what I had done, which is to literally put my body weight on my kid and hold him in place to get that work done.

0:46:14 Thomas: Well, but if it was a different medical procedure, that's

0:46:17 Tom: And that's what I'm saying.

0:46:17 Thomas: Fine. Like now that you say it, that really caused the issue is that different category. I thought we were in a category of thing where that it was not optional.

0:46:18 Tom: Yeah. Yeah.

0:46:26 Eli: We're in the must category.

0:46:26 Thomas: Yeah. And so I used a lot of that language and you don't want to fucking blow your load on that as a parent. You don't wanna be like, oh, I'm giving you the, what we have to 100%. You can't get out of it. And then the doctor, the dentist is like, like, well, we're not doing this. And I'm like, what the, okay. I kind of blew a lot of my, you know, credibility as a dad.

0:46:26 Tom: Right. Right. Yep. Yep. Yes.

0:46:27 Eli: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. No.

0:46:44 Thomas: So that was part of it.

0:46:45 Tom: Yep.

0:46:45 Eli: I- I- I care about this very much. Something I say to Anna all the time is like, like, no, boundaries, right? Like, I am totally fine, or sorry, boundaries or lines, right, so like a boundary in our house is like a preference, right. My son likes to run his fingernails down the aluminum siding, a sound I cannot stand, but it's not a line, it's a boundary, so I'll be like, Max, don't do that, and he does a big old smile, and he's like, I'm doing this to bother daddy, but the truth of the matter is, that's not aligned, that's no bad behavior, that's non -safe behavior, behavior, he's just a three-year-old asshole, so I've got to be like, all right, well, fuck you, men, and then walk out of the room, that's my job, but when a line is set, and this is something that Anna and I have communicated with a lot, which is like, when a line is set, that line is immovable, um, we we had a situation almost exactly like that at the dentist, but luckily, again, I cannot recommend marrying my wife enough. Um, Anna has

0:47:04 Thomas: Oof. Yeah. Yeah, yeah.

0:47:07 Tom: Yeah. Nope.

0:47:19 Tom: Right. Right.

0:47:36 Thomas: And it has to be.

0:47:44 Eli: No sense.

0:47:45 Thomas: All right. I will. Fine.

0:47:46 Eli: Thank you. Anna has no sense of authority for anybody.

0:47:46 Thomas: Okay. Same.

0:47:50 Eli: Like the president could walk in and she'd be like, one second. I mean, right. Like, so the dentist, we take Max to his three -year -old appointment, right. And we've done it every year since he was one. Cause that's what, what to expect told us to do once a year when he's one, he starts getting cleanings when he six. So I was like, great, great. Got it. Take him in when he's one. She was like, yep, I'm just going to take a look. And our dentist is fucking amazing. So she was like can I see you in your mouth? And he was like wah! And she was, like, I saw everything I needed to see.

0:48:17 Eli: Fuck off. I'll see you next year. Two years old, she was ,like, hey, can I seen in your month? He was ,like, wah! She was, like, saw everything any year to see this year. He's got a little bit of training, little bit training. Thanks to one Daniel Tiger because Daniel Tiger goes to the dentist and And Daniel Tiger does a big tiger roar, which is opening your mouth.

0:48:41 Tom: Smart, smart.

0:48:41 Eli: And Max pretty fucking psyched to, we brush his teeth like crazy, but Max was pretty fucking psyched, to show off his tiger roar. So it's like, you want to show her your big tiger? She

0:48:17 Thomas: Yeah yeah. Ah, that's how we're going to get Arlo. Yeah but ha.

0:48:51 Eli: Was like, and he does a roar. And she was like yep, everything looks pretty good. And she kind of holds his mouth open for a second, which he was not a fan of. He was like. Like, ah, he was mid bit. And then this woman just stuck her fingers in his mouth and he was like, ah, that's not what happens during the fucking tiger roar.

0:49:10 Eli: This is the great thing about being married to Anna. She pulls out one of her spiky hooks and like, we are not constraining my son nearly enough for a spikie hook to be involved in the process. Right? So immediately Anna just puts her body in between them and is like, hey, hey, what's going on? I'm spiky hooks, how we doing, flick, uh, and she's like, oh, I was, he's got like a little bit of plaque near the gum line, I was thinking I could get that, and she was like, nah, any description that starts with little bit, uh, no, we're good, we're just gonna brush it. And again, to our dentist's credit, she was like, yeah, no, all right, if he's not feeling it, and we're fucking off. We fucking went, uh, Token, there are sometimes medical procedures, right, like when he got his ear tubes, right, where he just, like, like did not want things to happen.

0:49:00 Thomas: Ha ha ha ha. Ha ha, ha ha, ha ha... Ha ha... Ha Ha ha -ha -ha! Oh, yeah. Yeah.

0:49:56 Eli: And, but again, because we sort of had that policy of lines versus boundaries and it had those conversations ahead of time, uh, we were just like, yeah, man, sucks to fucking suck. As I say, you know, we were like, cause he really didn't want to put the mask on, the little anesthesia mask. He started to freak out. And the anesthesiologist, who tried to take my baby from me, but I would not, but Anna would not let him, uh, looked at me like, what do we do in this situation? And I gave him the like, fucking do it to it gesture, and he was like, oh, okay, cool, put the mask on my kid, blam out like a light, I was like, there you go, we'll talk about it in therapy, kiddo

0:50:06 Tom: Yeah yep

0:50:23 Thomas: Ha ha.. Ha ha....

0:50:26 Tom: Well and like Thomas like, I want to address something like you brought up, because I think it's important, it's like, it, I grew up feeling the same way, right, which is like, if the kids, and and if, and if this isn't you then correct me, but like I grew up with this idea that like if you give an inch they'll take a mile, you can't let them, like, if we set a precedent, if the kid can decide what they're going to do, then you've lost the ability to sort of have any kind of like control over the things that ultimately are going to matter when they're serious.

And what I've come to understand over the last, you know, 16, 17 years, is like, you fucking cross that bridge when it's the actual bridge you're crossing, like you don't have, but I didn't understand that in the beginning, because I grew up with like a much more authoritarian top-down kind of idea about about parenting. And so I was like, oh yeah, like if I, if I let them get away with this, then when it's really important, they won't do the other thing. And it's like, well, now what I've come to understand is like, yeah, man, like if he needs chemo, then I'll deal with him needing chemo for real.

0:50:30 Thomas: Ha ha..... Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

0:51:27 Eli: Absolutely

0:51:27 Tom: You know?

0:51:27 Thomas: I'll wrestle that cancer kid into his fucking chair.

0:51:28 Tom: Yeah. There's no chance that like, not going to happen, but there's also a chance that that might never happen. And I don't need to create all these fucking micro traumas along the way in order to teach him a lesson called I can overpower you and make you do what I want you know what I mean, that's Like, but I didn't understand that when I was a new parent, because, like I like, a lot of parents, I grew up, you know, being with this idea that, like, well, your kids should do what you say when you tell them to do it, because I know better for them, what's, what, this, the ultimate goal here is the goal is like, I want your teeth to be, you, you know, healthy. I want you to be healthy. I want to be safe. I'm just trying to keep you fucking safe, you know?

0:51:36 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah, for sure. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

0:52:09 Tom: But like I've come to understand that like there's a lot more give that you can give to your kids that you don't have. You can just back off of a lot of shit. And then when something is actually important, then you're like, all right, well this one's fucking important. And now I'm going to, you know, now I will hold you down. Now we'll get it done. But like, you don't have to create these sort of like arbitrary standards that sort of pre-exist before for an emergency in order to deal better with emergencies.

0:52:18 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah.

0:52:36 Thomas: That's Totally. It, I mean, it's, it's a lot of, for my parents, you know, a lot of it is just the comfort of them never having to like deal with us, you know, so like having that authoritarian you know, just

0:52:36 Tom: Right. Right.

0:52:37 Eli: Yeah.

0:52:48 Eli: Right, nothing is up for discussion, so you don't have to worry about what's up for discussion.

0:52:49 Thomas: Yeah it makes it a lot easier. Yeah. Exactly. We know, I mean, we didn't even, we knew better than to even ask, you know, like that's, and that, sure, that's easier as a parent, but it's miserable and it's sad. Like I'm, and you know, and the result is honestly, our kids are not fucking listening to us at all. So that's the, that's what's happening. But like, all right. I mean, if that's, ifthat means they're like healthier as people, then fucking all right

0:53:07 Tom: Right.

0:52:52 Eli: Yeah. Right. And It's also really important to remember that like the, because, 'Cause that, that is a big thing that I think older generations often prove is they're like, well, you would have never behaved like that. And I'm like, yeah, but like I go to therapy three times a week and my pillbox is bigger than yours. Like maybe you didn't do an awesome job. I know I sat quietly during the schmink de mink, but I think maybe you might've fucked me up a little mom and dad. Whereas what's really interesting is I have now, I now teach not kids as young as ours, obviously, because I have kids as young as ours, but I teach kids who have been raised without those standards.

And the truth of the matter is they do behave. Those are just developmental stages, right? All two and three-year-olds are like X and all five and six-year-olds are like X. The only difference is that when they roll around and hit that eight-year-old, they don't have a bunch of weird fights they had with an adult, right. Like something that's been really hard to explain to Anna because she had, you know, amazing parents and I had amazing parents, but like that a lot of people remember their childhood as a series of screaming matches with their

0:53:29 Tom: Yep. Yes. Oh,

0:53:32 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, yeah.

0:54:24 Eli: Parents, right? But like it was a big fight a lot at the time, and it's it's just, it doesn't have to be that way, it's a really, it's really hard, it's hard to get our grips on it. It doesn't have to be that way.

0:54:26 Thomas: Boy,

0:54:28 Tom: Yeah,

0:54:35 Thomas: I, you had me until then. I, I would have said that a hundred percent until like a few months ago. And now these kids just don't, I've been a topic for another show. I don't know what to do. They just don't fucking listen to anything. And so it does end up being a fight, but I don't know. Maybe that's just, they're five and four. I don't think that'll have to be how it is forever. Hopefully, I don't know. We'll see. More to be continued.

0:54:59 Eli: Can I recommend a verbal delay? Because no arguments, no arguments for Maggie. Really, truly never. He'll just go, even

0:55:05 Thomas: It really is. I mean, I don'' T want to pull the thing, but Like having one is just a lot different than that. They just, what happens is, they get in their own little world.

0:55:07 Eli: A little question mark. I don't want to pull the thing, but I'm actually a great parent. So I don't know if that's, have you considered that I'm just like a super good parent?

0:55:19 Thomas: Yeah, they get their own little world of playing and horseplay, and you just, they don't even hear you, they're like, it's just, it's unreal. Anyway, we'll figure that out later.

0:55:20 Tom: Yeah. Should We should revisit that because I've got some some things, maybe that might help, at some point. So.

0:55:30 Thomas: Yeah.

0:55:32 Eli: Yeah. Called bungee cords.

0:55:32 Thomas: Nice. Fuck, do I have to go behind the paywall? How did I get those now, Tom?

0:55:35 Tom: Well,

0:55:36 Eli: They're part of Tom's class. You got to pay the $99 .99. One more question before we go. A lot of people have asked me if I'm gonna make a joke about the billionaires on the submarine this week, but I would never sink so low.

0:55:38 Tom: Just I hope

0:55:39 Thomas: Yeah, God damn, I Not dignifying that.

0:56:03 Eli: All

0:56:03 Thomas: Does

0:56:07 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.