DOD80: Tool Time with Tom and Thomas

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 hosted by Tools. I'm Tom Curry. I've joined as always by Thomas Smith and Eli Bosnick. Hello, gentlemen. Eli's big excitement for this topic bleeding through right from the intro.

0:00:34 Thomas: Hello

0:00:48 Eli: -hmm, the hammer is the bang -bang one, and the screwdriver is the other one, I

0:00:52 Thomas: He got all the two of the tools

0:00:59 Eli: Named them all, I can I, uh, welcome to Can I Name Tools, the newest podcast,

0:01:04 Thomas: Well, I covered all two of them, so I'm not sure what we're doing here after that. That's kind of,

0:01:07 Eli: What are you

0:01:07 Tom: That's it that's Okay, and a show, and a show, anyone got a parenting story? It

0:01:08 Thomas: Yeah.

0:01:08 Eli: Doing, here's, We talk about the weird meme of, like, handing your dad the wrong screwdriver, like dad's getting mad about it, dad's not caring about it, some dads care, but like no one in that meme ever acknowledges that it's because the screwdrivers are named entirely nothing to do with their shape and size, right? Philip said, "Oh, Philips head," right, like the cross, like Prince Philop, Well,

0:01:34 Thomas: Yeah, you're right. A flathead screwdriver is just nothing to do with what it's shaped like at all.

0:01:38 Eli: But Here's the thing, flat, right, you're like, "Okay, that that must be the single line one, right?" And it's like, no, no. Yeah, that one you get, right, but Phillip's head? What the fuck is a Phillip's Head?

0:01:50 Tom: Is Well,

0:01:43 Thomas: Yeah, it is. No, it isn't. It is. Yeah. It's not the flathead. That's all. As a kid, That was my first order of business. I look, I'm the person who can't fucking remember shit, but like, once I know there's a flathead one, then my brain is like, brilliant, then the other one is the other one, and that was it, because

0:02:04 Tom: The Kids that get this stuff in school a lot of now referred to it as like the plus and minus one. I've seen that. They're like, and it makes me fucking crazy because like I grew up with a dad, It

0:02:13 Thomas: Phillip's Would be rolling over in his fucking grave. Yeah.

0:02:15 Tom: Makes so so much sense. Like plus and minus actually makes more sense, right? But Like I grew up with a dad that was really really really, his hobby was home improvement and woodworking. He loves this stuff. He's very intensely capable, we'll talk about it in detail, he's like intensely capable. So I grew up like capability adjacent, so I know all the terminology. Like that's one thing I know I'm good at, like I know the fucking vocabulary, the terminology, I can talk shop when it comes to this shit, but like, I'm not good at it. But then like the kids are like, "Oh, I need a plus screwdriver." And I'm like, it's Phillip's. Don't know why I feel like I have to correct it, but I'm like, no, no.

0:02:18 Thomas: It actually does oh yeah

0:02:53 Tom: No, no it's Philip's.

0:02:54 Thomas: That would be I would correct that too and I couldn't help it, that's just that is that

0:02:57 Tom: I can't help it. I know it's stupid. Cause it's actually a better name for it. But it's like, God, if you go out into the world thinking it's plus and minus, it's not plus and mine. It's not, it' s like, not knowing a sports thing. You know what I mean? Like there's a certain amount of like man

0:03:06 Eli: I mean, yeah.

0:02:58 Thomas: Yeah yeah God forbid, Eli, can you imagine? Yeah.

0:03:14 Tom: I bet like that's something I want to talk, it's like there you get man cred from knowing like how to fix a toilet, you know what I mean? Like you get fan cred from being the guy that like can be like, yeah, I can help you put your deck together, you

0:03:17 Thomas: Yeah. Oh Here's what sucks about me. Am the worst combination of, I'm actually quite capable, but have the worst memory. So I couldn't name it. I actually could name probably like a few more tools than Eli, but I know what everything is. I just don't remember names for things because of my brain. So, thing happens with sports because I play fucking hockey and I watch every Sharks game. I fucking can't remember the names of the players after, you know, the season ends for like a week. And then I just am like, I don't remember.

And so I get minimum, I'm probably like maximum capable with minimum credit for it. You know? Cause like all the dudes care about, no, most of them only care about those things. They actually don't, can't play hockey. They can't, they don't know shit about the game or how it works, but they're good. Every dude but me is good at memorizing all the names of the players, all the coaches, the history. Oh yeah. Remember that 2008 team? It's like, like, fuck, do I? I don't know. I can't, I'll be honest. I don't remember. It's, it's always been the worst combination of maximum, like actual knowledge to minimum credit.

0:04:01 Tom: You can't talk the talk. Oh.

0:04:25 Eli: Yeah, what Thomas is saying is he would do a really good job of explaining to you why he didn't build the thing that I just hired someone on TaskRabbit to do. Like, oh my God, if I had actually done, I didn't, I did not do this thing, but if I did, let me tell you. Oh, you would have come, you could have come, you would have taken one look at this thing Eli paid this guy on TaskRabbit to do while he was jerking off and you would have been like, that is a man's man right there. That's a part of the people.

0:04:51 Thomas: Well, before I felt bad that I was going to make this entirely my stories of home improvement that I've done, my success stories, but now I don't feel bad, Eli. I'm just going to, the whole thing.

0:04:59 Eli: Yeah, exactly. Hey, I am ready for some success stories, Thomas. I'm ready to hear them.

0:05:05 Tom: What

0:05:04 Thomas: He's speaking to us from a prison of drywall that he accidentally encased himself into

0:05:08 Eli: I was going to say, yeah, I would love to hear about anyone's home improvement going right. Very fun, like related to this, to represent the many, many listeners out there who can't do fucking shit with their houses um OF THE FUNNIEST THINGS THAT COMES UP AS A PART OF THAT IS THAT HIRING PEOPLE TO DO MANUAL LABOR IS COMPLETELY UNLIKE HIRINGING SOMEONE TO DO ANYTHING FOR ANY OTHER JOB EVER LIKE CAN YOU IMAGINE YOU AND THEY DON'T SHOW UP AND AND NOT JUST NOT show up it is is expected that at least two or three of them will ghost you. And if you find one who won't ghost you, you have to be prepared to pay extra. Right. Cause I think, look, look, we're all aware of like the like capitalist sense of like, yeah, sometimes you pay more, sometimes You pay less, but truly like the talk among us non doers is like, okay, look I'm willing to pay quadruple

0:05:33 Tom: Yeah, because they don't fucking show up, they don't show up yes oh yeah yeah you're not wrong at at all

0:05:36 Thomas: Oh oh man

0:06:04 Tom: Okay

0:06:05 Eli: What it's worth, but he has to show up half the time. And

0:06:07 Thomas: It is funny that there is a rate that's not that like, why? What is the other thing you're paying for? I'll pay, yeah, 70 bucks. Um, does that include you showing up? No, okay.

0:06:09 Tom: Oh

0:06:19 Thomas: Then what why Why is that a part, like, what is this, the probabilistic, like services? Like, yeah, you're paying for a 40 % chance. There's actually a really complicated, like set of tables and numbers that they use to even charge their prices. It's complicated.

0:06:19 Eli: To no, no, that doesn't include me.

0:06:19 Tom: My god okay okay so speak to that a bit. My first house, I, god, I'm so fucking old, so I bought my first home in 2003, so like, I'm not a young guy. And I bought this 1940-something post-World War, like, ranch house in the suburbs, literally adjacent to this, one of the first suburbs ever built in America. So one of the first suburbs ever built with that concept in mind, um, to house people coming back from the war, was in Park Forest. I, I, I bought my first house in an adjacent town, which was built soon after, in Mattson, Illinois. And so this, so, is an old house, brick house. Um, and like the way they built him, it was like brick and then no insulation at all, and then drywall. And house needed just a ton of work, like a ton of work, and I remember showing my dad the house and he's like, you're gonna be a very busy man, and I'm like, yeah, and I was all excited.

0:06:34 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah.

0:07:20 Tom: I was so excited. So I'm like, I always wanted to be capable in the ways that my dad was always so very, very capable, and I figured that because I had spent years sort of handing him things and sanding things and cleaning up and helping him and doing stuff and, and being sort of like adjacent to this kind of work my whole life, I was like, I wait to learn how to get my hands dirty and be capable. But to speak to the point of like hiring, one of the things that house needed was it needed all the brickwork tuck pointed. And tuck pointing is the process where you grind out the old mortar in places where it's away, like, basically by the elements. You grind out the old mortar and then you squarp new mortar in there and thenyou make it look nice.

0:08:02 Thomas: That's not, he's, Eli, he is making it up. This is not, he is bullshitting us. This is a good prank of like, oh, he was doing the sports thing. Tom always had the sports things. Oh, they just got to play together, whatever it was, to stay healthy. And now he is doing that with tools. He knows he can just, because I don't remember the names of things and Eli never knew them. So he knows he could just make, you squib, you believe this, you plumb this, whatever, yeah.

0:08:04 Eli: That's the technical term, everybody.

0:08:24 Tom: So like, if you don't tuck point your house, this is what happens. And if you have a newer house, you don't need to do it. Right. But like a 50, 60 year old house, definitely needs some, some work on it. One day in the bedroom that was the nursery for Finn, I hear a sound in wall outside. And I was like, what the hell is that sound? And like, I walked over and I'm like, it sounds like something's vibrating in the wall. And I like put my hand on the Wall and you can it's it's warm. It's warm to the touch. And you can feel a sort of like heat in there. And I was like oh oh, oh, oh,

0:08:27 Thomas: That's why I always say, yeah, to scorpel my windblossoms, damn it!

0:08:58 Tom: I was like, there're fucking bees in the wall. That's a bad thing. I don't know much about this right now, but that's an objectively bad thing, bees.

0:09:03 Eli: Yeah.

0:09:01 Thomas: Oh, God. Now, I don't know history. Did they used to build them like that, though? Was it like we put...

0:09:10 Tom: They were structural bees. They were carpenter bees, Actually, so they do a lot of work around there it

0:09:12 Eli: No

0:09:11 Thomas: Yeah, you got brick, you gotta layer of bees, and then you got your drywall.

0:09:16 Eli: Better insulation than bees. No better. I say it all the time.

0:09:18 Tom: Bees yeah yeah so

0:09:18 Thomas: Yeah. That R20, those bees? Are they R20? They are. What's the rating on those?

0:09:22 Tom: So I have the bees killed by an exterminator because obviously I don't want a wall full of fucking bees, and I'm like, all right, well, that's gonna be horrible, I've got to deal with that. But then I realized, like, okay, I gotta have this house tuck pointed, and I hadn't done it in the first year or two that I own the house because it was expensive. So I start calling people, and seriously, I make like four consecutive appointments for people to come out and look at the house. And I just want to pay them money. Nobody shows up four people in a row that yeah, we'll be out there Tuesday. Nobody was out there. Tuesday, all the Tuesdays have since come and gone. I eventually just bought like squarping juice and I don't know how to fucking do tuck pointing. It's a whole process. You need grinders and it's a lot of work. I just filled in the cracks. Like my house looked like absolute baked dog shit because I was like, I can't not fix this problem because I'll just get goddamn bees in the nursery again.

0:09:55 Thomas: Is Wow. A New house, yeah, what

0:10:16 Tom: Like I can have this. So I, I actually sold that house years later, having never accomplished the task. The only task, mind you, that I wanted to actually hire people for to do in that house. Nobody showed up, like seriously, four consecutive, like, please come out and I'll give you a money, they, none Nobody showed, no, no.

0:09:51 Eli: Yep. Yep, yep.

0:10:34 Thomas: Interesting. I That was a new phenomenon. I really thought that was because of COVID. Well, it must be even worse now, because during COVID that was the whole thing, at least in California, was like, everybody was working from home, and so they're like, oh, I better do that home improvement, like fix up my office, do whatever. And so you literally, you can't get anyone, it's impossible, it's... Of me wants to just become, become that. I'm going to do that now because apparently there's none of them.

0:10:38 Tom: Well,

0:10:58 Eli: You beat me to it because the funniest thing is after you hire a contractor, right? Like, oh my god, like contractor a contractor must be like the best business in the universe and contractors are just like, yeah, man, go ahead. Fucking do it. Do it. No, I learned the skills, they're 200 year old skills, man. I didn't go to high school, go ahead, be a contractor.

0:11:06 Thomas: Yeah, we don't care.

0:11:16 Eli: And every time someone stands outside during the summer, we're just like, I guess, I'll just keep calling people on Yelp, I'll just, I didn't realize there was a, yeah.

0:11:21 Thomas: Nevermind. Yeah. Be the fair weather contractor. I only do perfect fair weather contracting.

0:11:29 Tom: You should actually call it fair Weather contracting.

0:11:31 Thomas: Yeah I'll still make the appointments by the way. They'll be like, can you come? I'll be like, oh, yeah, yeah. And then they'll be like, why didn't you show up? I'd be like dude, you thought I was gonna show up. That's on you, man. It's too hot.

0:11:31 Tom: Yeah, yes,

0:11:32 Eli: I would be great, but yeah, you just became a regular contractor, Thomas, you did it. The cycle is complete. You

0:11:42 Thomas: Yeah, Yeah, you're right. Sorry, I need to do a different thing. You're right, that's already taken.

0:11:46 Eli: Found it. Yeah, no, but it's, it's so, like, and weird that this, this world of access and reviews and, oh my god, Angie's List and Yelp and this and an eight million resources, the Home Depot, hire a pro source and this thing and that thing, like, in the world of so much technology, doing this very basic connect humans to other humans thing, the truth is the only real way you get a good craftsman to your home is a friend, is like, I've got a guy, right?

0:12:17 Thomas: Yeah.

0:12:18 Eli: I have gotten zero guys from the internet, the internet has provided me nothing ever in the history of ever, and the home inspector we hired for our five year inspection has found me like nine contractors. You've just been like, these guys will call you back, this guy's expensive, this guy will show up on time, and I was just like, oh my god, you have the the cheat code, like, sir, you should publish a book. I'll

0:12:18 Thomas: God, it's the one place. Yeah that sucks.

0:12:18 Tom: Yes, yep, yep, yep, you gotta have a guy.

0:12:29 Thomas: Oh, good point. Yeah. Yeah sorry. Are you a wizard? Like are you a literal sage? How do you know this? That sucks because that's the one thing I hate is having a guy. I want to just, the internet should tell me who's a guy and then that's can all have a guy if we want. But no, we're still on the have a guys system with this bullshit.

0:12:57 Tom: So Eli, is there anything worse than contractors not showing up to your house to actually quote you or do the goddamn work?

0:13:03 Eli: And of course that would be the auto ads, Tom, the one thing that shows up every 26 seconds on this podcast, honestly, we've been talking for like 10 minutes, which means they've already heard 10 auto ads, Tom, according to my statistics, or at least how they play for me, they've heard 15 auto ads in the 10 minutes of podcasting we've provided them. But hey, podcast listener, if you'd like to know what it's like to listen to a podcast from beginning to end, that's physically possible, I know it's true, but it is physically possible, by heading over to patreon.com/DearOldDads for as little as a dollar, you get a commercial-free version of every show, but not just commercial free, there's a little extra parenting story at the end of every episode, isn't that cool? Yes, it is cool, correct. Patreon

0:13:07 Thomas: They always show up.

0:13:11 Tom: Old faithful

0:13:56 Eli: .com forward slash Dear Old Dads mm

0:13:56 Tom: So I Another quick story, this is a, another elder statesman story, but like, it, it probably was 2006, 2007 when this happened, but my had a very, very good friend who hired a guy just off the internet and hired him to put an addition on his house. And the guy showed up and he quoted me, and this is like an object lesson, he quoted me exceptionally excellent price, like way better than everybody else had quoted. That's a huge giant fucking no, no red flag, right?

0:14:21 Thomas: Red flag. Yeah.

0:14:23 Tom: Like, But he was a young guy. We're all young guys in our first homes. We don't know anything, and so he paid him and he fucking paid this guy up front and this guy showed up to put an addition of, this is how big the price, it's a full addition with a kitchen, like a huge fucking addition to his house. He showed up, he did about half the work, he knocked down the walls, he reframed out new the space on the outside, he put the insulation and the Tyvek up, he roughed out the kitchen, and then that motherfucking guy disappeared forever.

0:14:23 Eli: -hmm yep

0:14:30 Thomas: Yeah, nice.

0:14:52 Tom: He just never came back, never answered. They even left a bunch of tools there. Contractors, also, they'll just leave tools. This has happened to me in commercial sites for my work where they just like leave tools, and then you call them up and they're like, "Yeah, I'll come get it on Wednesday," and then they never show back up, and then you just have like an industrial compressor for some reason now, like Cecil and I, we showed up, and by this time he and I had done a lot of work on our respective houses. So when Cecil bought his first house, it was a fixer-upper.

When I bought my first house, it was a fixer-upper. And we kind of traded back and forth weekends. So one weekend I'd go to his house and, you know, we'd work at his house. And then another weekend we'd look at my house, or maybe we'd worked three or four weeks at his, depending on the project, or maybe five or six at mine, because it was a little weighted in my favor on mine. And so we did a lot of work together. He and I did a lot of like home improvement work together, like rehabbing

0:15:12 Thomas: Love it.

0:15:12 Eli: That's mine now

0:15:43 Tom: Two beat up old houses, but like this guy Chuck, his house was basically like in complete disarray, and he called us. He's like, "Guy, you help?" And we're like, "Well, we don't know what we're doing, but we're willing to try." And we showed up, and this is like pre the ubiquity of smartphones and YouTube.

0:15:43 Thomas: That's fun.

0:15:59 Thomas: Oh, Yeah.

0:15:59 Tom: Right, so we showed up and taught ourselves do

0:16:00 Thomas: How the fuck did anyone do anything back then, what'd you get, a book? Tom, oh.

0:16:04 Tom: We We had books, we had, we seriously, we showed ourselves how to hang cabinets, how to put in countertops, drill the hole for the sink, and all that. We learned how to like put up siding. We had to side his whole house. We'd never done, we had never done any of this, and we had nobody to show us. So the work, and this is emblematic of so much of the work that I've done. I finished a basement, I redone kitchens and bathrooms to the studs. But I will tell you that that all of the work that I do is C+.

0:16:06 Thomas: Wow. Yeah, yeah.

0:16:33 Tom: Like if you walked in, you'd be like, that's a C+. Like that's all that is. Like, is it done? Yes. Is it structurally sound? Absolutely.

0:16:33 Thomas: But Sometimes Sometimes you just need that course credit in order to keep playing sports or something. I don't know.

0:16:43 Tom: It's always wanted to be the A -plus craftsman that my dad so effortlessly was and is. And I am a C -plus, B -minus on a good day with a strong downwind kind of a craftsman. It's like, yeah, it doesn't leak, fake, it won't fall apart, the lights turn on and off, like everything is there, but like, does it look professional? It never ever looks professional when I'm done. It always, and I'm always like trying to be the guy, I'm like, because I'm almost like, okay, I'm a rush through it guy, I know who I am, I'ma rush through a guy. I am not gonna be the rush through guy, and I do the work, and I am gonna be meticulous, I am going to be thoughtful, and I, like, fucking, it still looks like shit. It

0:16:55 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah.

0:17:25 Thomas: There, I do like that about that stuff. There are just lots of little tips and tricks that you pick up, just the guys who've done, done it forever and ever. And it like, it really does make a difference. Like you, I truly believe you can YouTube yourself into doing anything, but like, like you said, it's not going to be an A plus. Like it's pretty hard to do that. You have to know all these, like, you have to know and remember and situationally apply them properly. Like all these different little techniques. I think it's really cool. I wish I could learn all that, but it's a lot to learn.

0:17:41 Tom: No.

0:17:51 Tom: You got to have these wildly specialized tools to lot of the work. A and it's cheaper, doesn't take into account the enormous fucking investments you have to have in the tools to the work, because to do any kind meaningful amount of rehab or big project home improvement, you're looking at investments of many thousands of dollars just in the tools that you need to do the project.

0:17:54 Thomas: Yeah. Well, Oh.

0:18:20 Tom: And those tools are additive. You have to factor that shit in.

0:18:24 Thomas: Oh, okay, that's interesting, interesting one maybe. Thing I was going to say was my, uh, did murder us for leaving the tools out, uh, all the time, which fair enough, but like, also we had bullshit tools that were from the fucking gold rush period, you know, that was, they were terrible, and I grew up thinking like, well, yeah, he was so mad about that, and we never ever got new ones, that must be because, you know, a hammer's like $20,000, and a, you know, uh, a pickaxe, that's gotta be a hundred thousand dollars. No way you could ever give it that way. Nope. It's a free actually.

So my, um, maybe I'm doing different jobs than you, Tom. It could be you're doing more specialized stuff, but like my biggest revelation of adulthood and the thing that's honestly, it's gonna, it's gonna get me into some trouble is how cheap these fucking tools are because I can't help it. I genuinely just love having tools. And so I'll go, I'll be, I'm excited when I get a new project. I'm like, I want to look up every fucking conceivable tool a human could use for this. And I'm going to buy every single one of them. Will I ever use them again after this project? We'll see. Don't know. Don't care. I like having tools. It's just, it's like collecting

0:18:56 Tom: I like

0:18:58 Eli: Yep

0:19:28 Tom: Having tools

0:19:29 Thomas: Legos or something.

0:19:29 Tom: Too. Yeah.

0:19:30 Thomas: It's other people collect things. I fucking love it. Cause there's going to be that time, Tom, there will be that time, that magical time where I'm like something broke and I need this tool. And I've just saved myself 10 minutes of driving. Store. Cause I, cause I already maybe have it. Oh, that's pretty pathetic, but no, I love them.

0:19:30 Tom: Yeah.

0:19:46 Tom: So I've gotten to the point where I've started giving away some of the tools that I look at and I'm like, I tile saw anymore. Like I have a saw, like a wet saw with a diamond blade to cut tile because I used to do a lot of tile work. Like, I did entryways and bathrooms and kitchens and all that stuff, backsplash. I had to do all that stuff. So like, it made sense for me to buy this tile saw. And I finished all those projects many, many, many years ago.

And I have now moved like four times and I've moved like this fucking tile salt with a stand and all that stuff. And I'm like, yes, just this past year when I moved into this house, I was like, I'm not doing tile work again. Like I'm just not if I need tile work done, I I'm never going to be the guy that spends that time. But I'll give you an example of in like my mind, the classic, the right tool makes life so much better situation, Thomas. So have you got to like run any like plumbing lines? Like if you had to like, run a new plumbing

0:19:52 Thomas: Pay it forward.

0:20:13 Thomas: Yeah.

0:20:37 Thomas: Not,

0:20:37 Tom: Line or like tee off of an existing line.

0:20:38 Thomas: Not, no, not a new plumbing line. I've only tinkered with existing bullshit plumbing. By the way we did, the only reason Eli agreed to do this one is that he could catch up on sleep from, from the weekend.

0:20:42 Tom: So like doing his homework I'm at work right now or something.

0:20:48 Eli: I'm playing I'm actually on my PlayStation 5 full volume I don't know if you guys can hear and I'm just watching the cut scenes from God of War I'm not even I'm I'm not even playing at this point.

0:20:58 Tom: Try to play. Very briefly, like if you have a house that's a newer house, your house probably has copper pipes. Older houses may have, like my first house had galvanized steel. Galvanized Steel is like Mario Brothers, right? It all is sold in preset lengths.

0:21:12 Eli: You can jump into it.

0:21:14 Tom: You could jump into them.

0:21:13 Thomas: Yeah, And there's mushrooms and a

0:21:15 Tom: There's actual like flowers that try to bite you coming out of it. Yeah. Him but they screw together, so like, that's the thing. It's like galvanized steel screws together like gas pipe does. And like copper pipe, is cut it to length, but like if you're me and it's 2003 and you're doing this work, you're trying to uh when you join two pieces of copper pipe you have to solder it together right you're barely alive in this one universe but like you have to solder the

0:21:15 Thomas: Lot of killer plants yeah

0:21:18 Eli: Yeah, no, you got to be careful with the killer plans.

0:21:24 Thomas: Right

0:21:33 Eli: Over 9-11.

0:21:36 Thomas: Trying to recover from snapping turtle wounds and yeah

0:21:47 Tom: Pipe together. So you have to like, you have to make sure that it's dry. You have to drain all the water out. Make sure it's dried. Then you have dry fit it. Then a process of like sanding it so that it scored properly. And then you heat it up and you have heat it up to exactly the right temperature. If it's too hot it won't work. If its too cold it won' work. And then the solder will sort of suck into the joint and then hold the joint. It's a fucking skill that you like only learn by doing it over and over and over again. And it's the skill that fucking sucks to learn. It sucks so, so bad. Cause sometimes you're like doing plumbing, like underneath the three quarter stairwell and the heat from the blow torch is like setting the stud next to the fucking like valve that you're working on. Like literally on fires, you're squirting down the fucking studs with waters, you know, sit your house on fire.

0:21:48 Thomas: Yeah yeah Eli is that two player that game you're playing, I don't understand all these terms either

0:22:30 Eli: Do you want to get in this, Thomas?

0:22:31 Thomas: Yeah

0:22:32 Tom: But, but here's the thing. But now I had a plumber out not that long ago. So I had plumber up not that long ago and I'm expecting this guy.

0:22:37 Eli: You better fuck this plumber, Tom. Just so

0:22:39 Tom: I wanted to Eli.

0:22:39 Eli: You know, for me, you better

0:22:40 Tom: I I wanted to fuck this plumber. He comes out and I was, I was waiting for him to like, get out the blowtorch. I'm like, ha ha, this is going to suck. And comes out, he's got this this tool that just compresses the fitting with like 18,000 pounds of pressure.

0:22:40 Eli: Fuck this plumer.

0:22:52 Thomas: No, man.

0:22:53 Tom: And it like immediately works.

0:22:53 Thomas: Oh, man.

0:22:55 Tom: Never, ever. And I was like, that's the great, I always got to go out and buy one. I don't even need one. I was he's says to me, no shit. It's $4,000. It is a $4,000 tool. And I was like in my mind I'm like, I don't need it, but because I was like those kind of tools when you're doing like major home renovations, like, backbreakingly expensive. They really are. And you either buy the the cheaper tools and work way way harder and have like no access to the skills to build that, like, like, and you fuck up and you make mistakes, you have to redo it, or like you buy the super specialized shit that's way better, but it's like, like, that's just so expensive. It's out of reach, or like, adds a crazy amount of cost to your project.

0:22:56 Thomas: Yeah, yeah, yeah, I would too, that's worth it, though. Yeah, yeah, that's a lot. Oh,

0:23:36 Eli: Right,

0:23:36 Tom: Tool is like genuinely, it's an amazing tool. And he's like, yeah, you like nobody sweats copper anymore. That's in plumbing. He's like that's old school. You know, like they don't have you do it anymore.

0:23:46 Thomas: Their tagline better be, don't sweat it. That should be their tagline, fucking marketing campaign for these guys.

0:23:50 Eli: Sweat it. Oh, nice. Well, it's funny, because so much of the, like, also equate to just everything, right? The Terry Pratchett the workman's boots metaphor of like, yeah, no, if you can afford the five gold boots, they last you way longer than the pairs of two gold boots, and that's true of tools. But it's also true of, like, tech stuff, right? Like, people will look at my code on the prank websites I make for Marsh, and they're like, oh, it's pretty good code. And I'm like, nope, that's GitHub's code. That is me having access to a thing that you pay for and then just copying it and putting

0:23:52 Thomas: Right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yep, that's

0:24:03 Tom: Yes.

0:24:23 Eli: It out there and then getting the credit for it right.

0:24:24 Thomas: All coding, though. Everybody's doing that, actually. Even fucking Bill Gates, he's doing, back in when he invented Windows, GitHub.

0:24:29 Eli: Right. But it, it's a fitting metaphor, right? Because when, when they teach you to code, they don't go, all right, here's a coding exercise. Google Go that three times and then, and then be like, motherfucker, it didn't show up on Google. So then go to GitHub and find, no, they're like, here you go, fucking hard code it and miss a comma and spend nine hours of your life, you know, contemplating if you could find and somehow kill the creator of the Python coding language. But I think tools very, very much fit into that same thing.

And it also, like, it's one of those very interesting things where the craftsman hasn't been replaced yet, which is really interesting. Like, there are still such things as good and bad plumbers. There are good and bad, uh, contractors, right? And it's, it's such a fascinating thing because so much of what we do is just getting the job done at this point, right. It is just either the work is done or not done in the like digital age, um, so that that craftsman, that very real feelable, experienceable level of quality, is, is such an interesting phenomenon. Oh,

0:24:38 Thomas: Google that and

0:24:42 Tom: Yes.

0:24:52 Thomas: Okay, but we got to talk about the masculinity point, because right now we're just doing tool talk, which I, is fun, and I will do it all day, but I feel like the dear old dad's audience, audience, may want to, because I wonder, do you think about, oh

0:25:42 Eli: So fun. Also, I'm gonna drown myself in my water glass if you talk about tools for much longer, just so you know, there's gonna be a bubbling.

0:25:49 Tom: All right. I'm sorry.

0:25:50 Thomas: No, I'm still going to find a way, but it needs to be within a masculinity discussion. No, I have this experience every time where I go to the hardware store and I just walk through it. I just, I love it. It's like a Zen experience to me in a way. Like I just I something so satisfying about the tool for every job, you know, there's like oh yeah, that thing does that shit and that thing does that perfectly. I, it's, I just love it. And I don't tie it to like, oh, I'm a man with tools, you know, like, like I have zero of that. In fact, I hate all that. And I don'T ever want anyone to think I'm that like, you know what I mean? I, I, but it's still, it's like one of those things where I still like and have an appreciation for it. And it's one of Those quote unquote masculine things that I think is nice.

0:25:51 Eli: Yeah,

0:26:36 Thomas: And view, it can be, like, yeah, there's no reason I can't just go and enjoy tools, but I also don't have to pretend it's some extension of my manhood, you know.

0:26:43 Tom: Yeah.

0:26:44 Eli: Mean, well, it, it reminds me of what Tom said early in the show. You know, Tom, one of the very first episodes we had, Tom said that he defines masculinity as competence, right? And I thought that was such an interesting thing to look at it, and it feels like maybe you're making some of those same connections as you, uh, stroll the aisles of Home Depot.

0:26:44 Thomas: Yeah, I,

0:26:44 Tom: Yeah.

0:27:01 Thomas: Thought, I also said that, I'll have to go back in the record. I think, yeah, I've always said that too. It's great, it's, you want to be competent, that's the thing you want. But then it's alienating calling it masculinity a little bit because then it's like, what, women can't be competent? But I don't know, I

0:27:15 Tom: I think, and I, not to sidetrack too far, but, like, I do think that there's a problem where we sort of like that women like should not like masculine traits, or men should not inhabit feminine traits. I can be masculine and still available to women. So right, like, I do want to give that to the audience so they hear that, by calling something like masculine, I don't think we're necessarily saying that, like, is exclusively the sort of like domain of men. But like for me, I walked through the Home Depot, and what I feel a lot of times is the gulf or the distance that I've always wanted to cover, like my dad, who I looked up to in a lot of ways growing up and still look up to, and in specifically in these competence ways, like just don't have it in me to be as competent as my dad with home improvement and woodworking and those kind of, like, like my dad built a two -story deck like

0:28:06 Thomas: Just don't have, have fucking time, man, I don't have time, so

0:28:09 Tom: But I don't have the competence. Like, I have a hard time making mental images. My dad, for example, my dad build by himself, with the help of two 13 year old boys, he'll pick something up once in a while but that's it. He, he built just alone a two-story deck on the back of our house. Like he knocked down the old deck and just built a deck and he, he just pictured it in his mind. He a sketched out on piece of paper like a handful of sketches, and then he just was like, okay, and then he could just go out and just build this stuff. Or like when he's doing woodworking, he'll just be like, oh, I should just build a quick jig that will help me make this repetitively. And he'll just quick whip up like a jig and then he's got like this, like, custom tool built in order to like make these sort of like templates to do these repetitious tasks

0:28:30 Thomas: Really? Yeah, because I, I do a drawing, but mine has like flames, and then there's turrets, and I'm like I don't think I can make yeah, I'm not sure I can make all that. I, wait, I'm just realizing, do you guys know, did I tell you that my dad was a carpenter? Did

0:28:59 Tom: It's Trogdor it's got the arm out the side no I didn't know he was a carpenter.

0:29:08 Eli: I thought he just sat at home giving you bad self-esteem. I

0:29:09 Tom: No,

0:29:12 Thomas: That's, that was his main occupation later in life, but he, no, he built our whole house. He literally built, yeah, he built houses and was sort of like self-taught. It's kind of, it's weird, my dad and I are somewhat similar, except he didn't have ADHD, so that makes all the difference in the world. So, like, he could self-teach and kind of retain that knowledge, you know, a little better, probably, than I can. And, did, Tom, it's, there's a lot of commonality, um, I, I don't think my dad was anything like a craftsman. You know, he wasn't like, think he would have been as skilled, you, as your dad, but he could beat up your dad. No, I'm just kidding. He definitely could not beat up any dad and he never would. Yeah. He couldn't beat up Your dad now if he were alive, actually. He'd still.

0:29:17 Tom: Oh. Shit.

0:29:45 Tom: He definitely could

0:29:51 Eli: Mean, if your dad was his kid, he would do some pretty major damage. Let me assure you, I actually

0:29:52 Tom: I mean my needs a special chair to stand up, he's, he's pretty easy, he'd topple him over like a turtle. So, oh, yeah,

0:30:00 Thomas: But. But So I had that feeling, too, of like my dad had all these tools in the garage and they're all. All. And then he, but once he stopped, he just fucking stopped, you know? And I there was one time where the dog's house, like he had built this dog house for our first dog that was like fucking from the same materials he built our house. And he might've done it at the same time.

And so it was kind of funny to have this, like, it's like the leavings of the, you're baking some cookies and you got some extra cookie dough. He's done that. And it's a little house that has the same shingles, the same, everything, same wood. And It was cool. But then eventually it wore out like fucking 20 years later or something. And so he was going to repair it. And it was this one time where I was like, this is so cool. I was the perfect age.

Know, So 10, 11, maybe 12. I don't know. And, it was like holy shit. Is he, are we doing a dad son thing? Like is he, we're going to come out here. He's going to tell me what to do. I'm going to hammer some fucking shit or whatever. And I probably it out of my memory from being being so like, just disappointed about it. But I remember we started that and I did like, he had me do like one thing.

And then he just, I think he was just like, ah, it's too hard to teach a kid to do anything essentially. And just did it like, it was so sad. I think I was too young to fully like comprehend how fucking shitty this was really. But I don't know that I expressed that I was looking forward to it or anything, but it was something where I thought I I was like going to get to do some building stuff with my dad.

And that was the perfect basically sign for the rest of how that would go with my dad, where it's like he had all this knowledge. And I would sometimes ask him how to do stuff because I thought, you know, if he has all this fucking knowledge, he hasn't used it in 100 years. It might want to, you know, like he might wanna teach me something. But he had this it his horrible self -esteem, you know, that he like couldn't put himself in that position.

You know, like he couldn't put himself in the position of like, oh, I'm going to teach you something. So it's like it all had to be deprecated, deprecate, depregate. Oh, no. Yeah. And then, you know, you should just do that. And if you don't, you're like, you couldn't even his wouldn't allow him to do that, you You know, so it was always, it was always this like thing where I feel similar to you, Tom, but probably for different reasons. And that sucks because it would have been really nice.

0:32:08 Eli: Think it's a pretty typical experience of toxic, that like, having a father figure or even an older male figure who was like really good at a thing but did not have the character to pass that on, like, I have several friends who have similar situations, right, where their dad was like a brilliant musician, or their their dad was brilliant at this thing, that thing, the other thing, and just never bothered to pass it along. I mean, without telling anyone's name or saying something out of turn, one of the people I went to NYU with was a very, very famous and very, very good actor's daughter. Was really good, and everybody knew it. And I remember her once telling me, like, yeah, no, we've never talked about acting, expecting, and I was like, never. And was like, yeah, no, he doesn't really like to talk about it. Like, I worked on some stuff with him, like, early when I was doing high school plays, and he would get really impatient and just, you know, sort of like, didn't, didn't really want to take the time to explain it to me, like.

0:32:53 Thomas: That's insane.

0:33:08 Thomas: Yeah.

0:33:08 Eli: So, you know, I try to do some of the stuff I've seen him do, and I'm just like, fucking yikes, because when I compare that with my own experience, right, of having such a positive masculine figure who would teach me stuff he didn't know, right, my dad was ready, he was.

0:33:22 Thomas: Made up some like rabbinical scholar. What was that?

0:33:26 Eli: My mom did it, right? He made up a whole part of Judaism. Which turned out to be fucking fake, right? Like, that that dad was.

0:33:29 Thomas: Yeah.

0:33:33 Eli: So ready to teach, he didn't, it didn't require. Reality to have that knowledge in it. He was ready to go.

0:33:35 Thomas: Uh.

0:33:38 Tom: But. He. Was literally a teacher, too. Right, so.

0:33:38 Eli: Yeah. He.

0:33:40 Thomas: Yeah. I.

0:33:41 Eli: Was.

0:33:41 Tom: Like. So don't want to get too blamey about people not being good teachers. And maybe that's just because I'm feeling the pressure right now of teaching my kids how to do stuff that, to me, has a naturally good at it element, right? Right. So like I think about my dad and my dad and I are just really wildly different people. And he forms these like big mental pictures in his head and he can hold them and he could sort of imagine how things go together. And I form virtually no mental pictures in my head. I can't close my eyes and picture you, Eli. I brain just doesn't do that. So like there's a gulf there that no like amount of teaching can sort of like, right. That can, that can kind of bridge that, or at least not teaching that he should just know how to do. And like your dad is a teacher.

0:34:24 Eli: Just.

0:34:24 Tom: He's literally skilled and trained in how to get information from one fucking head to another head. And I think that's a big part of it too. I know some people just don't do it. They don't do it on purpose. I Know that's your point. But like, I also want to just pause and acknowledge that like someone how to Do something like sometimes when I'm teaching the kids to drive, I just want to be like, just be better at driving. Just be better at it, you know?

0:34:45 Eli: Do. Do. It. Do it, please, now, now. To be the doing, yeah, and I, I really do, I Tom, I think you're actually spot on, which is that I think the vast, vast majority of the time it is that people who are good at things are frustrated by their inability to teach it, um, and if we're talking about positive masculinity, right, like one of the things that I think, and this is true of all parenting, but also teaching, as a parent is like empathy to a mind that does not know the things you know or understand the things you understand is such a learned and difficult skill, right, especially when you're dealing with like me and Thomas are dealing with really little kids now, but like it's easy to forget that when you're dealing with a fluent and English teenager, right, because.

0:34:49 Tom: Yeah. Mm-hmm.

0:35:28 Eli: You, teenager, they're like, hey, pick up that thing and then put it over there, and they're like, got it, total manual function, right, but then they get in the car and you've got to remember like, ah shit, right, you are still very childlike in. A lot of ways, I need to go back to toddler mode. Where I was like, make a crabby claw and signal, god damn it, no.

0:35:39 Tom: Yeah, Thomas,

0:35:48 Thomas: I had the same thought as Tom, actually, exact only another angle I'll add is I just found it interesting that, uh, put it in the toxic masculinity frame, because maybe topic for a later time or something, but I actually am really curious if that's how you guys, just from I guess my storytelling, view my dad, because I don't view my data as toxic male at all, except for if you want to call the strategic incompetence stuff toxic masculinity, I, I think that's totally valid, but his, he shit was so based on his psychological bullshit that his horrible self-esteem, you know, that he is just totally crushed.

So he couldn't inhabit those spaces of like, oh, I'm a teacher, I will teach. But I completely agree that teaching is a specific skill. And I think that there are a lot of reasons why teachers, why people can't teach. Like, able to remember what it's like to not know what that was is a skill, or it's something you have to like learn how to do specifically and have the patience for.

So I wouldn't say that just because you are good at something, you ought to be able to teach it to your kids, just otherwise you're like a bad dad, dad, or something.

0:36:51 Eli: No.

0:36:51 Thomas: But do

0:36:52 Eli: I think I teaching something and not being able to teach something are, are very different things, and where you're good at that and where you're not, like, again, I, I took a lot, lot of lessons, I had a lot of coaches and teachers and tutors and stuff, because my dad knew where he was strong as a teacher and where he was not, um, for example, and again, I, I mentioned this a couple episodes ago, but like, Tom, you and I have such similar stories when it comes to math, right, which is that we both had this turning moment where all of a sudden math was hard, and we were both bright kids where school was basically you just show up, you listen to the teacher, and then you remember the things the teacher says and put them down on your homework, and everyone tells you you're smart, and it goes great, and then in sixth grad, in this subject that just stopped happening, um, in my case, I freaked out about it, and my parents sort of taught me how to navigate my own limitations, and in your case, it sounds like your dad was just sort of like, I'm gonna juice the fucking mathematician out of this skin, I will squeeze him until algebra comes out, but like I remember very clearly in the early days of math going wrong, right, and me just not getting it, both of my parents having moments because they could both do the math, when I was bad at math, uh, because I got bad at meth real early, they were like, come on, man, it's addition, uh, they both hit the wall of like, oh, we we do not have the skill set to teach him math, and that's where it started, sort of like, the tutor festival.

0:38:15 Eli: Until we eventually found someone who could explain math to me. But like it was. Like it wasn't. And they also had to recognize like, hey, those tutors aren't good for you, because I liked them as people. Right. They would be like older teenagers or college students. And I'd be like, they're cool. Yeah. No, I love working with them. And they'd be Like, but are you learning math, though? And I would be Like no. No.

0:38:15 Thomas: You have

0:38:39 Tom: I mentioned before, when I'm at the Home Depot, I feel this gulf between my capability as a C student of like the home improvements, and then what I perceive in that store, is everybody else in that story is my dad, they're an A, and. I know that that's not true, right, but I walked through that store and I'm like, I'm fucking poser.

0:38:50 Thomas: Yeah. Yep.

0:38:54 Tom: Ass motherfucking. Faker piece of shit, even. Though I've done an enormous amount of work.

0:38:55 Thomas: Yep. That guy's Got a two by four, he must be a fucking god damn. It, he's. Oh.

0:38:59 Tom: Right. Yeah. Oh. He's sighting down.

0:39:04 Thomas: Man.

0:39:04 Tom: The side of the two by four, he knows, he's looking for straight, he knows.

0:39:06 Thomas: Genius.

0:39:06 Tom: What, but like, like I know that I've done a lot more work than a lot of people, but I also know I've not done it well in all cases, and that like, feel that gulf, but I want to ask you guys this question too, because this is a shitty part of me that I know is shitty, and I'm going to say it out loud anyway, I, yesterday, was, we're working on like a dresser project, so of the things that we have to do for this dresser is drill some holes for the hardware to go with the dresser, and Hayley is like, I've done this a million times, I know how to do it, and she gets out the ruler, figures out the center lines and everything, and figures where the hardware and the dresser should go, and I was watching her do it, and I was realizing that I felt a bit little of embarrassment that she was better.

0:39:45 Thomas: Turn.

0:39:45 Tom: At this than I was. And when I'm in my house doing something, Haley is better. I just am going to say it. She is better at some of this sort of home improvement -y tasks, right?

0:39:58 Thomas: In. Your.

0:39:59 Tom: Right. She is much more.

0:39:59 Thomas: Man. Card. Tom, you're off the show.

0:40:02 Eli: Got to

0:40:03 Tom: She's She's much better because she's a much more careful, more organized, more detail oriented person than I am. I am a get it done. It's done. Move on. It's done. I do. Like, does it look good? I don't know what looks good. It's done. I have something else to do. And I have a hard time getting out of that mindset. And she is a very meticulous, thoughtful worker. Worker, and so there are things she's better at, but I am embarrassed, I will just say it, I'm embarrassed at the idea that there's anything I can't do.

And I feel, I do feel like there's a sense of, like, my masculinity that's threatened by the idea, like, if Hayley were to be like, do that, let's call somebody to do it, like, if I want to call someone to do it, if Haylee were to, like, be like, you shouldn't do that, you should call someone, want to do it, even though she's probably saying that because she wants to spare me the hassle and time, there's a part of me that's like, but now she doesn't see me capable as, and there's a tiny part of that, like, real tight inside about that, you know what I mean, that feels like a little, like

0:40:05 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah.

0:40:59 Eli: Earn your rest.

0:41:01 Tom: Wonder si you have any sense of that at all, either, the, the two of you, like, you feel that, like, but this is work I should do, like, I specifically

0:41:10 Eli: Standup joke about it. I would say I hate going to Home Depot because I'm always reminded of the stuff I can't do. So whenever I'm talking to the guys who work there, I have to brag about the stuff. I can do that. They can. I'll be like, oh, so I need a two by four for that. Did I love graduating high school. Let me tell you. Oh, so great. No DUIs on my record. Like, that was my joke about it. So yeah, no, it's definitely a thing. And I think that comes along with a lot of the ways I don't fit into masculinity. And, I think I've talked about this on the show before, but, way that I eventually figured out my way around that discomfort was to, like, wildly reject it in the opposite direction.

Sort of a, you can't make fun of me if I make fun of me, right, can't like not my outfit if it's pajama pants and a sassy t-shirt, right, as opposed to just, like, trying to dress smart and occasionally not feeling great about my body, or, like, you can't make fun of me for being incompetent if I hire a guy on TaskRabbit to hang picture frames, right, no one ever goes, that's crooked, or if they do, I go, yeah, well, you, you know, that guy I hired on TaskRabbit, he, uh, he only got one star. So

0:41:23 Thomas: You Sidestep

0:42:15 Eli: We agree

0:42:16 Thomas: It by dressing like the Monopoly Man and being like, I don't have time, time is money. I don't have time to do it. And then it's like, yeah, sidestep the issue.

0:42:21 Eli: Right.

0:42:22 Tom: Does That Intersect though with you and Anna, or, like, does it intersect at all with Thomas, with you and Lydia, do you have any, like If

0:42:23 Thomas: Yeah. Ooh, I would love to talk about this.

0:42:29 Tom: She Were to, like, bust out the hammer and Drill or, like Like, what

0:42:31 Eli: No, that's great. Are you kidding? I love, so my wife is wildly competent and also handy and crafty. So it's awesome. Like for me, it's great because she is the only person I feel like I can be, uh with my enthusiasm with, without worrying about the judgment coming from from her, right? Because she a person who I can like trust with my real self. So when Anna is like, I'll hang the picture frames of like, nice, excellent. I'll give you a great example. And this would probably curdle your blood. I don't do any of the bugs in the house, right. When we got together, I was like, just so you know, I don't like bugs. I think they're going to fly in my ears. You're going do all the bugs forever. If a burglar comes in, I 'LL beat him to death with my bare, their hands, I don't care, a Little Bit Mouse

0:42:57 Thomas: Oh man.

0:43:18 Thomas: I can't wait. Anna's on vacation. Eli goes to Home Depot. Hey, does anyone, can someone, there's a bug.

0:43:24 Eli: Would Absolutely, if There was a TaskRabbit for spiders, I'd do it every day, every fucking day. But yeah, in later year, when Anna was pregnant, she was like, seriously, and I was like, yes, what, what about you, will do all the bugs, do you not understand I'll get you out of your wheelchair, ma'am, I don't do the bugs, Thomas

0:43:26 Tom: About,

0:43:49 Thomas: Oh man, that's awesome, oh Tom, your story made me thing of a lot of things, um, of them is where I can relate the most is when Lydia says, like, we should hire someone, but I know Lydia and I know that that's based on, she knows just nothing about any of it, and so, like, it'll be a thing that I'm like, no, I know, I know how to do this, though, like, she doesn't have the information that I do, or don't know how to do it, she's just so used to, you hire somebody, that that's her go -to and minute I express any sort of, like, I'm working on something, but I come up to a challenge, you just be like, oh man, I, so I was taking the thing apart and it has the, and she'll be like, oh, so we hire someone, I'm like, fucking no, like, I'm still, come on, should I not tell you if there's, like, a part of it, that's a challenge, that's what I like, I like when it's like, oh, I got to figure this thing out, and I, I know better than to take any offense at it, but of course I'm a prickly asshole, so sometimes my first reaction is to be offended, and then I'm like, yeah, never mind, I forget she's just very, like, cautious, and she's, she's kind of a worrier about stuff, you know, so, like, the minute something like that seems like it's not going well, or something, it's, I think she's afraid the house is gonna fall over, and it's everything's gonna be ruined, and so her, her reaction is always, let's just hire somebody, and anytime I, like, I wish Lydia were good at any that stuff, she has done a few things here and there, um, few hardware related things, but I wanted to say that I, I would be very curious how I would react in that moment, if there was something that was like a Tim, the tool man, Taylor moment, and she was like, oh, I got this, and she's better than I was, I mean, I want to say that I bet I would love it, like, but I don't know that I can claim that because I have no idea what that would be like, because we're pretty stereotypical in our, you, division of labor, um, yeah, and the other funny thing, the last funny thing I thought of is just whenever I'm trying to either, I don't, I wouldn't say I, like, try to teach Lydia stuff, you know, because I'll just do it, but, like, if I'm, if I need her to help me with something, or if she started something on her own, she also is, because of kind of this just caution and overall that kind of mentality, if it's anything that requires force, which is a lot of stuff, in, you know, building

0:45:52 Tom: Sure.

0:45:52 Thomas: Whatever Whatever. She'll say, like, it's, you can't do it, or it's not, can't be done, I don't know what's happening, and it's because she is so scared to apply any real force to anything. So there's, there's a lot of times where she's just been like, hey, we need to call someone, or we need whatever, and I just go over and it's like, no, you just got to, you know, you're just got to give a little bit to it, you which have to know when you can do that too. And that's a skill.

0:45:53 Tom: Yeah. Right. Oh yes, you do.

0:46:15 Thomas: Yeah.

0:46:16 Eli: I was gonna say, you are telling the exact wrong person. On the, the, the, I have seen Tom and then like state agencies have to get involved, Thomas. Tom had a security door on his old studio that he destroyed. The landlord of the building was like, "Hey, guys, someone tried to break in last night," and Tom was like, "Yep, yep, somebody tried to break in. That's what happened."

0:46:17 Tom: Yeah. Oh, yeah, yeah.

0:46:47 Eli: You don't have cameras, do you? And he was like, no, no we don't. But it's obvious they took a crowbar and he was, like, yep, a big old crowbar.

0:46:47 Tom: Well, okay.

0:46:54 Thomas: He spits out some of the steel. Yep. Nope. There's definitely a burglar.

0:46:59 Eli: Get you one of those push and pull signs next time so that it's clear to any crowbars.

0:47:05 Thomas: Oh,

0:47:06 Tom: Cecil told me that door was stuck, he told me the door was stuck and I was going to have to pull hard to open the door, so he texted me ahead of time. In my defense, the door was janky and so he's like, "You're going to have to pulled hard, the door is stuck." And so, like, I went to pull it and the door was like stuck, stuck, and then the door became unstuck, but then it was broken because I

0:47:25 Thomas: Tom goes up to a bank vault. Yeah. You just got to pull it. Rips it out the hinges.

0:47:29 Eli: And I can't emphasize this enough, podcast listener, I've been through that door. It was like how jewelers keep you from leaving with their uncut diamonds. It keeps Adam Sandler inside your business. Like, this is not, this is NOT an apartment door, this was a business security vessel vessel

0:47:37 Thomas: Yeah.

0:47:43 Tom: That is Cecil's

0:47:48 Thomas: It's amazing how much you can damage stuff when you put like a Tom level force to it, you know, you really can do a lot of damage. I, I will, was bad at that too, not for the same, like, I wasn't just a fucking animal, you monster, like Tom, but I had this like mental idea that there was no such thing as too tight for like a screw or a, you know it's like, in my mind, I had this like really platonic ideal of like, well, you how it should work is if you tighten it as hard as you possibly fucking can, that must only be better. Like there's no way. And so I've ruined quite a few things where it's like, okay, hand tighten, you know? And then I'm like, oh, I'm going to wrench this fucker. It's going to be so secure. I had to learn that. That was more of a kid version of me, but I still occasionally mess that up where I'm

0:47:49 Eli: Yeah yeah

0:47:50 Tom: Favorite story most yeah oh yep yep yeah same yeah

0:48:30 Thomas: Like, Like, just autopilot. I'm like, oh, fuck, I already, that's, like, it'll be like, oh, I bent like metal plating that's not supposed to look like shit. You know, it's really easy to do.

0:48:37 Tom: You could crack a toilet real easy doing that too, like like if you're if you're bolting the toilet down but

0:48:40 Thomas: Oh, finally, Eli can relate to us.

0:48:40 Eli: No oh no, no, no, I've never, never cracked anything. I'll tell you what happens, and I know I've told this story before, there have been truly dozens of times in my life where I'm like, "Hey, I'm locked in here," and then someone comes in and they're like, "Push it open," and I'm like, "Oh, all right." And here's the difference, right, most people would be like, "Oh my gosh, I'm so sorry," they'd be embarrassed, and I'm like, "Hey, just so you know, things shouldn't be difficult ever," and then I flip them a nickel and walk out by the way, the entire time I was in here, didn't flush, so good luck with that. All

0:49:12 Tom: I

0:49:16 Thomas: Oh, it, the last point I want to make is how hard it is to teach someone when you forget, especially if you've gotten really good at it, you forget like the basic levels. And a parent is a really interesting thing of that because it's that with everything, like, literally, you think, "Hey, I can just tell my kid, yeah, wipe your ass, like, put the, see the paper, you put in your hand, and it goes where your ass is," and the ways they can mess that up is then you learn like, oh, you can't ask them to do anything, like, you get anything, like, "Hey, catch this," they're like, "I don't know what the concept of catching is," it's all that stuff. It reminds me of what was the skit where the guy was trying to open the door and you're explaining how to open the door on the other side of it, was a Citation Needed skit I think I texted you about it, god yeah, that was my favorite skit you guys did on that yeah so and And it's like, it just always reminds me, like, when you're trying to tell your kid,

0:49:40 Eli: Oh yes uh I'm Henry make pull it towards Henry, I'm Henry

0:50:00 Tom: Henry, yeah, uh-huh, yep puppet hands make

0:50:11 Thomas: Yeah, yeah, yeah. The puppet eats the door. It was like, that eats the doorknob. And it just, that's so what it's, like. When you try to explain anything to your kid. You're like, oh, I didn't even think that you could get it wrong in that way. Oh, my God. It's so hard.

0:50:11 Tom: Puppet hands

0:50:30 Eli: Before we go, I accidentally ordered a bulk lot of 12 pencil sharpeners for a dollar from the stationary store. I was going to return them, but then I thought, but think of the shavings, do

0:50:45 Tom: I've

0:50:48 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.

0:51:27 Thomas: To scorpel my windblossoms, damn it!