DOD111: Eli Plots A Murder

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 going to commit a murder. I'm Tom Curry. I'm joined as always by Thomas Smith and Eli Bosnick.

0:00:33 Thomas: Oh, wow.

0:00:37 Eli: That's right, Tom. Right. I am going to commit a murder. A little bit of a tangent for the podcast, I know you've been coming here for humorous dad content. Well, not anymore! We're a true crime podcast. Who did it? Me. I did the murder that you're learning about in the future, because I'm going to commit a murder most foul. Listen to this story, I have to tell you. Okay.

0:01:03 Thomas: Also, I'm here, hi, but fuck me, I guess. I dunno, yeah, okay. No, I do want to hear about the murder.

0:01:10 Eli: Thomas, how are you going to commit a murderer in the next couple of hours? Should someone stop

0:01:13 Thomas: Probably, you know what, probably not before yours, so you go ahead first. Yeah, well,

0:01:15 Eli: Thank you. Yeah, I'm

0:01:16 Tom: Oh wait, you got a time limit on it? We got to do it in the next couple of hours? Because I just thought this was like a general...

0:01:20 Thomas: Just in priority For the story he's saying. So, like, next it's a next murder kind of wins rule. You know, like,

0:01:23 Tom: Okay, alright. Right. Alright, I just don't want to get out of the... You know, I don't wanna be taken out of The Running, that's all.

0:01:27 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah. Oh, Yeah.

0:01:29 Eli: Murder. She dibs. Yeah, I take a number. So I uh, on vacation this past weekend, as listeners to God Awful Movies well no, I was not on the last God Awful Movie because I, I was on vacation. Every year, me and my closest friends go to a magic convention. That's right, the MagiFest, if you will, in Columbus, Ohio. Beautiful Columbus, Iowa. City to the stars. And while I was gone, I parked my vehicle around the corner of my house, in front of my neighbor's house. Now, something that I did not realize is that my city has a law that if someone calls and reports car as abandoned, if you do not move it within 48 hours, they tow your car. So

0:01:31 Thomas: Oh,

0:01:34 Tom: Yeah.

0:02:16 Thomas: My god, as

0:02:19 Tom: Excuse me, what? You could just prank everybody's car that's on the street.

0:02:23 Eli: They don't

0:02:23 Thomas: Long as they're gonna leave it for 48 Hours?

0:02:24 Eli: Move within 48 hours. So I parked my car in front my neighbor's house last Wednesday, and when I got back on Sunday, like many days later, that is, my car had been towed. My car was towed 72 hours I mean, I was parked in front of my neighbor's house for one day before they reported it as abandoned, and got the car towed. So this morning, because it's not open on Saturdays and Sundays, it's only open Monday to Friday. So, this morning I went and got my car. Would you gentlemen like to take a guess at how

0:02:25 Thomas: Yeah, wow, oh. God. Oh My fucking god. Oh.

0:03:03 Eli: How much it cost me to get my car back.

0:03:04 Tom: Eighteen hundred dollars.

0:03:06 Thomas: My God, this has happened to me once, and they charge you by the time, obviously, and then they do the shit you're saying, where they don't let you pick it up because they're closed, but then, you know, you're still paying for that, because yeah, it is the fucking worst. And so you said it was towed 7200, uh, let's see, I'm doing some math quick, uh, oh, can I do one dollar to do the Price Is Right thing from so Tom did Tom said eighteen hundred dollars, wow.

0:03:11 Eli: They sure do.

0:03:26 Eli: Ooh, yes. Well, then you would be the victor. Four hundred and sixty two dollars. Four hundred and seventy two dollars to get my car. Ladies and gentlemen, for parking in front of my neighbor's house. And I spoke to the police. I called the bureau. I called everything. Not only is there nothing I can do, right? Can't get the money back. There's absolutely nothing I could do. It is the law in my city that when you put your car in a place for 48 hours, they come, they chalk the back tires, and if it hasn't moved in 48 hours they just count it and tow it away, right? Only can I not do that, I can't take my neighbor to court because they were just enforcing the law. They're allowed to call and report a car is abandoned. There's nothing illegal about it and they did it anonymously.

0:03:35 Tom: Jesus Christ.

0:03:40 Thomas: Oh, absolutely not yeah Yeah.

0:04:00 Thomas: Unbelievable. Yeah. Yeah. So

0:04:13 Eli: So would you like to hear what I did?

0:04:17 Thomas: If they did anonymously, how do you, do you know who it was, or no, or how did you know? Okay. Do you just assume it was a neighbor, or God,

0:04:22 Eli: Don't. I don't know exactly who it was, so this is yeah

0:04:27 Tom: Mean, so, is the lesson, is the takeaway here, is to just go park at the airport for a 10 percent discount off of that fee, or?

0:04:33 Eli: For real, yeah, just go park, you know, in in Midtown Manhattan for a little while, and really?

0:04:37 Thomas: We finally reached the point in our lives where that's what we do when we get, when Lydia and I travel together, no, actually, no matter what, because the airport's such a long drive and it's such pain otherwise, that, like, we, I just go park in the long-term parking and fucking fly away and come back it's the weirdest thing.

0:04:52 Thomas: Well, back, you've been a poor, like, I have, right? I mean, back, like, it's just like unheard idea of paying, uh, paying

0:04:37 Eli: Oh, nice oh

0:04:51 Tom: Oh, that's yeah. What else? What other option is there? Like.

0:04:58 Eli: He

0:05:01 Tom: Oh, you get a buddy to drive you or whatever?

0:05:02 Thomas: A physical space to contain the matter that is my vehicle was so anathema to me as a poor kid from, the from not a city, I didn't know, what paid parking, what, I'm not even joking, I didn't know what it was until probably I was 1920 you know, like, it, it just didn't exist.

0:05:03 Tom: Yeah. Yeah.

0:05:19 Eli: Thought those meters were take a penny, leave a penny jars, and you just never figured out how to yep

0:05:24 Tom: Right.

0:05:22 Thomas: What do I mean? Those meters, there weren't any meters for me to think about. There was no, no, I was familiar from like movies or whatever, but like, yeah, I just, but now I've reached the point in my life where it's like the idea of getting an Uber for fucking 400 years, or like asking a family member and bothering them to be like, yeah, can you, can't pick me up at the fucking airport? Or it's more often the drop off. Yeah. Can you drop me off? It's like four fucking AM that I got to go. Can I trouble you a family member who also has kids to, I'm just like, nope, I now accept that as part of the travel cost, and it's just, I just think of it as part of the ticket, and I'm yeah

0:05:47 Eli: Oh

0:05:53 Tom: Yeah, it's baked in for me. Because the airport for me is also so far away. It just feels like such a fucking ask to have somebody pick you up at the airport. It's a three or four hour ask for me,

0:05:55 Thomas: Yeah yeah it's

0:06:04 Eli: Yeah here's the thing, right, are two things that when we all hit 35, you don't get to to ask anymore. And they're moving and airport trips, right?

0:06:04 Thomas: A yeah

0:06:12 Eli: Cause Right. When you were below 30, when you're 34 and your buddy's like, Hey, I'm moving into a new apartment. I'll have beer and pizza. You're like, heck yeah. The day you turn 35, someone's like beer and pizza, you're like, get the fuck out of here, out of here. I'm not ruining my back for a month and a half getting your poster of the Joker up 17 flights of stairs because you couldn't tell your ex-girlfriend you loved her. We're not doing this, same

0:06:12 Thomas: I'd yeah say like 30 actually, I think, I think we should, yeah, yeah Yeah.

0:06:43 Eli: With the airport any any airport related just all Uber now. Here's the complication that comes up for me and Anna, and then I'll get back to my vengeance, my which of course includes a murder, uh, but here'sthecomplicationthatcomesupformeananna Anna, ever since she got pregnant, like when she got pregnant, her car sickness got so bad, right? But then she had our son, obviously. He made it. He mad it to the outside. He escaped, much like the Great Escape. But her car sickness continues to this day, which means Anna cannot ride in a car that she is not driving for more than, I would say, 10 or 15 minutes.

0:06:43 Thomas: Let's call Heath out.

0:06:52 Thomas: Yeah. Oh, yeah.

0:07:19 Eli: So Anna almost always has to drive.

0:07:20 Thomas: I I also would tell you that if I'd ever driven with you. Yeah.

0:07:24 Eli: You think, you think she's just running along, con yeah.

0:07:26 Tom: Eli. I have car sickness also.

0:07:27 Thomas: Yeah.

0:07:29 Eli: Okay, it's all coming together, it's all coming to go.

0:07:32 Tom: Everybody's got car sickness all of a sudden, what's going on?

0:07:34 Thomas: Yeah. We going to drive a van during a trip and we all have like fake puke in a bladder, like in our in our jacket. Oh, shit. We can't all do this.

0:07:40 Eli: Yeah.

0:07:43 Tom: If Eli's driving, it doesn't have to be fake, you'll get jostled right out of you.

0:07:48 Thomas: Yeah.

0:07:47 Eli: Who's your fake puke guy, cuz I'm, my guy's really overcharging me and I feel like I could just, you know, you could just go eat a sandwich from 7-Eleven, make my own, you know, his- these prices are getting crazy. No, so my- obviously immediately turned to vengeance. Vengeance, murder, and haberdashery, right? But how do you get vengeance on an anonymous criminal? Well, I'll tell you. I wrote my first passive-aggressive neighbor note.

0:07:50 Thomas: Yeah. Good.

0:08:19 Tom: Oh.

0:08:19 Eli: That's right. It's a time and a rite of passage for each man, woman, child, and non-binary identifying person. For all people of all gender identities, write their passive aggressive neighbor notes, and this was my very first. Now, to be fair, mine was heavily edited by Anna, for

0:08:20 Tom: Oh.

0:08:38 Thomas: Yeah, I was gonna say, like, genuinely, I- I know jokes, haha, Eli, but like, no, that would be a threat to your safety if You let

0:08:44 Eli: No, the the original graph did include many crimes, many- like, I think just a cop seeing me with that piece of paper in my hand would be right and obligated to arrest me and put me away for so

0:08:58 Thomas: Did you put the note like, is it a Facebook thing? Is Oh.

0:09:00 Eli: I'm getting I'm getting there Oh.

0:09:01 Thomas: I'm sorry, I apologize, he's going, oh.

0:09:02 Eli: Not, not on Facebook, Facebook, oh no, no, no, not at all, no, Thomas, this is the note I wrote. I wrote, "Hello neighbors, sorry to bother you, but I parked my car in this area last Wednesday. Imagine my surprise when I came back to find that one of my neighbors had reported it as abandoned. Imagine my further surprise when I retrieved my car this morning for a $462 towing charge. If you are the friendly neighbor who reported my car as abandoned, please call me at this number. I would like to speak with you.

0:09:30 Tom: My God. This is so passive-aggressive.

0:09:43 Eli: And then I put those flyers, which I had printed out under the windshield wiper of every car and into the mailbox of every mailbox.

0:09:48 Thomas: My God. Yeah.

0:09:55 Tom: I Love this.

0:09:56 Eli: I'm going to say for a surrounding eight and a half blocks, because look, I

0:10:03 Tom: And many phone calls did you get?

0:10:07 Thomas: Wow.

0:10:07 Eli: Who I know, no phone calls yet. Cause here's the thing. I know The person who reported my car is abandoned as like a bitchy way to like, yeah, that's my parking spot. I Know they're not going going to call me, right? Because they know what I would like to talk to you means. They know it's the introduction to this podcast, but they also will know they'll come out of their house, right? They'll get in their car. They'll see my little flyer, right. And then they'll look up the block and they'll see every other car on the block also has a flyer. They're going to see the flyers in the mailboxes. They see the fliers stuck in the doors of the houses all around them, and all of those people know they didn't report my car as abandoned. And let's be honest, if you're the guy who reports other people's cars as abandoned, everyone in the neighborhood knows who you are. So he will know in his heart, in his deepest heart, that everyone in the neighborhood knows what a jerk he is, and one of them might tell me. I

0:10:09 Tom: Yet? He's still holding out hope.

0:10:10 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah. Oh.

0:11:06 Thomas: Okay. Okay. You're

0:11:06 Tom: Oh. You think he's gonna get ratted out, are

0:11:08 Thomas: Gonna get it, yeah, an informant. They

0:11:09 Eli: I think I'm

0:11:10 Tom: You tight with your neighbors, I mean, obviously not one of them, at the very least? Okay.

0:11:16 Eli: Gonna, not a particularly friendly neighborhood I live in here in the suburbs, everybody is just kind of doing their own thing, but now we're gonna be united, we're going to be united over a jerk who reported my car is abandoned, and we're all gonna rise up against them together, and that's my word, tale, murder.

0:11:38 Thomas: Imagining they're gonna getting together and stab him like Caesar, or

0:11:41 Eli: On the Orient express, yes. That's gonna be my second time when people are like, "Hey, I think it's Joe Johnson over on 444 Mayberry Avenue," I'm just gonna write M-O-O-E, question mark, and they're gonna be like, "Murder on the Orient Express," yeah, and then they're just gonna send me a wink, winky face, winky emoji, it's

0:11:41 Tom: Yeah. Yeah. I

0:11:42 Thomas: Yeah, or that, yeah, too, yeah, I

0:11:56 Tom: Hope this happens for you, this will not happen for you, but was good exercise, this was a nice walk.

0:12:06 Thomas: Was good, Tom.

0:12:06 Tom: Around the eight and a half block exercise signs, this is it

0:12:06 Eli: I went on a nice little walk

0:12:08 Thomas: Found a way somehow to comment on this insane behavior. Good job, Tom. That was a writing exercise. Eli, you journaled. Good

0:12:19 Eli: I journaled, I got to write a note, I

0:12:21 Tom: Because Like, I'm gonna be honest, man, if I was the jerk that did that and I got your letter, I would show it to all of my friends, I'd be like, "I got that fucker, look how much I got under his skin." I would hunt for your car, that's

0:12:21 Eli: Oh. Yeah.

0:12:21 Thomas: Job. I'd do it again. Oh, yeah. No, you know, it's just some fucking asshole, person who I was going to say when you said you put it on the windshield, I was like, I bet you that person doesn't drive. And then you're like, "OK, yeah, no, that'll work." You thought of that too?

0:12:42 Eli: No.

0:12:42 Thomas: Yeah, somebody like hates cars in general, or some shit

0:12:44 Tom: Just some property Karen, man, that's like I've seen like these property Karens.

0:12:45 Thomas: Yeah. Exactly. No.

0:12:46 Eli: No. It's it's a- a property care and it's, look, there's no way this person ever calls me, ever even once, but would you guys like to hear, because I made backup plans, because I am nefarious, here's

0:12:48 Tom: Yeah, right. No, no, no. No. Yeah.

0:12:51 Thomas: No. I mean, should you- is, you know, like for

0:12:59 Tom: Is this legal on the show? Like, should we?

0:13:00 Thomas: Defense later? Do you want to give us your mens rea, or you're

0:13:02 Eli: I technically this is Yeah, I'm gonna give you my menstruation, because here's the thing, this is entrapment, but I'm not a cop, so I'm allowed to do it, I think. So here's the thing, New Jersey is a, yeah, exactly, New Jersey is a one-way recording state, which means I can record someone, um, hey, in case you're wondering, by the way, if you're ever like in a legal thing, always make sure you know which kind of recording state you're in, um, and the only actually free call recorder, because gosh, I did so much research on it, it's from Rev, the people who do the transcriptions and stuff, Rev have a free call record, it works really good, highly recommend their app, it's awesome.

So if this person does call me and they're like, "Hi, I'm the guy who reported your car," I'm going to be like, "Oh, I's so sorry, can I call you back?" I'm gonna call him on my call recorder, right, then I'm gunna be like, "Yeah, no, I just wanted to check." And they're gunna be like, "You can't park in front of someone else's house like that." And I'm like, "Absolutely, let me ask you a question, did you actually think my car was abandoned?" And no one remembers that we're in a one -party recording state. So he's gunna, like, "No, but it's rude of you to blah." And then, I am gonna go to the police station and report him for

0:13:15 Thomas: Gonna leave a bait card, oh. For

0:14:10 Eli: Filing a false police report, and he's gonna go to jail for three to five years, and I'll be like who pranked the prankiest prank now, Mr. Crankums, oh, the law is a corrupt series of strictures that shouldn't be used that way, oh, look at that, we both own books, we both did it, or I will literally, and this I will do from the bottom of my heart, if this person gives me their address and I know where they live, I will report their car abandoned every

0:14:10 Thomas: Lying Yeah. Yeah.

0:14:10 Tom: This is adorable. This is the most adorable thing I've ever heard.

0:14:35 Thomas: There's more. Okay. Every

0:14:41 Eli: Day for the rest of my life for the arrest, they will change they'll

0:14:41 Thomas: Day forever. Yeah. Utilizing a series of ways to call without being tracked, I assume. Like just,

0:14:46 Tom: There put

0:14:47 Eli: Change the laws

0:14:47 Thomas: Yeah.

0:14:47 Tom: It just put an Apple tag on, on his car, so you always know where it's at, and just constantly constantly be reporting it, yeah.

0:14:50 Thomas: Hmm. Yeah.

0:14:51 Eli: Yep. Just constantly calling, reported abandoned, he'll leave in terror, he'll be like parking in underground areas, switching cars, buying a lease, and then switching cars every couple of months, till he's banned.

0:15:02 Thomas: Hey, buddy. You know how you have that classic bit that's not a bit, it's actually just a true observation, that Tom will be telling a story about his childhood and he'll think it's funny, and then look up and everyone's crying and staring at him funny, um, I think we found your version of that, just, just FYI.

0:15:03 Eli: Yep.

0:15:13 Eli: Disagree. Disagree, my legion of perverts, the same ones who stand by me in my journey to OnlyFans are also gonna stand by my, in my car prank, I know that they are united behind me, even now, in my journey to commit a murder, this

0:15:22 Thomas: Oh.

0:15:31 Thomas: Man. Yeah.

0:15:38 Tom: You to one-way record when you talk to the police about this, and they're like, "Yeah, that law is passed as a revenue generation for the city, we don't care at all."

0:15:45 Thomas: We encourage false reports actually, yeah.

0:15:45 Eli: I I called the cops and I was like, hey, can I like leave this note around? 'Cause I actually don't want to commit a crime and go to like, have anything happen. I have, my family needs me. So I called and he was so great. He was like I mean, you can put it wherever you want to put it. As long as it's not advertisement. And as long as you're not harassing anybody by name really I recommend you let this go. And it was just, again, it wasn't legal advice. It was just a human being, being like, I, if you just wait a couple of days you won't be mad anymore and it's just you have one life to live and maybe you don't spend it being mad about things

0:15:54 Thomas: Yeah, yeah.

0:16:10 Thomas: Coming

0:16:15 Tom: Right. Right.

0:16:17 Thomas: From a police officer too he was it from me. I shot an unarmed suspect yesterday and uh, I yeah, I wouldn't say I regret it, but like, it, you know, weighs on you a little yeah

0:16:24 Eli: But I've put that behind me and it, so much, I feel so much healthier now. Yeah, no, but it was, um, it was a good, it's a good moment. Vengeance shall be, be mine, it's

0:16:40 Thomas: I do want to say, um, patreon.com/dearolddads, we just released the January bonus. Everyone, so in addition to not hearing the ads, of course, um, can hear that fantastic bonus, uh, for January and every single month we will have one. Even if Tom only participates by making painful of pain that his balls are being shocked, um, he's still asleep in his chair, but one way or the other, he's still there. He technically counts, he was still there, he was. So, yeah. Check that out.

0:17:00 Eli: True that's right, yeah and let me, let me tease you all. I told a great joke on this month's bonus episode, and Tom and Thomas, not just didn't react, like, didn't hear it, was Lovecraftian, they were like tentacles, they had no sense that a joke had finished. I've never been, I want Thomas, I'm asking you now

0:17:08 Thomas: No not since that one Scotland uh, show you had, what was, was you guys haven't not

0:17:28 Tom: Then Edinburgh.

0:17:25 Eli: Oh god the Edinburgh show yeah no the Ednburgh crowd would have booed to you at the end of that joke, they would have been like, come on gentlemen, be a little more generous with your laughs, why don't you? You're making it awkward. Flawless Scottish Accent, in case anyone's wondering, yeah.

0:17:30 Tom: Oh, the Edinburgh show, Live in Infamy.

0:17:33 Thomas: Bad

0:17:47 Tom: All

0:17:49 Thomas: Not bad, right? So I have a very similar story, um, in that I've been trying to get Phoebe and Arlo to learn to ice skate. No, it's not at all similar. So, I didn't know how to transition.

0:17:58 Eli: What and if they don't, I'm gonna murder them.

0:17:59 Thomas: Yeah. No this, so it's been, uh, it's actually been a while now. It's been probably month and a half, two months. And I just wanted to say, you know, I've talked about some of the challenges I've had with really both the kids in different ways. You know, there was the soccer stuff with Arlo that was, you in retrospect, but also, you know a little bit tough, like them to try things and there's this balance of and we've talked About before, but I still will constantly want want to make sure I'm doing the right thing on here. I could, I never, um, enough like advice and discussion on this because I genuinely don't know how much to push my kids to do fucking anything. I don't, I don't know. And so, uh, I wanted them to learn to do, uh ice skating at least for fun for a little bit. Um, the off chance that maybe one day one of them wants to play hockey with me. I'm just taking a, taking a risk, like give it a chance.

0:18:54 Tom: Yeah, sure.

0:18:55 Eli: Oh that's what, I gotta admit, I was like, why the fuck does Thomas care if his kids there it is.

0:18:55 Tom: It's a swing.

0:19:01 Eli: We found it.

0:18:55 Thomas: Oh God, it would be be so fucking fun. Are you kidding? I would, oh, it's, look, I, maybe you think that's dumb, but I'm taking that, first of all, it's a fine thing, thing to do anyway, and Phoebe might want to do figure skating or some shit. But like, the percent chance, if any of my kids, any of them, Phoeba included, the slightest interest in hockey, I would do whatever the opposite of Cats in the Cradle is. It would be, it would be cats in the cradle, but it would be Phoebe toward me. I'd be like, hey, do you, do go throw the puck around? Can we go do whatever? And then she'd be, like, ah, and I'd feel like cats in a cradle, that would be the opposite way, you know, from the beginning.

0:19:34 Eli: See, now, I was picturing your competitiveness accidentally getting in the way and you just cross -checking Arlo against the boards.

0:19:39 Thomas: Yeah, just smash her. Better keep your head up! That's how, fucking, that's how you skate with your head. Keep your head

0:19:46 Tom: They're just baby teeth that came out. Why are you crying? Get up.

0:19:50 Eli: So I got banned. I got banned from the Hockey League again. I've actually brought Arlo on the pod to explain why this fight was his fault.

0:19:58 Thomas: Did I fight my own kid? Yes, I did. I did. Were we on the same team? Yes. Yes. Also,

0:20:03 Tom: Well, I wouldn't call it a fight. It's a lot smaller than me.

0:20:04 Thomas: Yeah,

0:20:04 Eli: Also, yes, yeah. He wouldn't let go of my arm. He wouldn'T let go my arm because we were holding hands.

0:20:06 Thomas: But The Ref Yeah, yeah.

0:20:13 Eli: All

0:20:13 Thomas: No, but like, genuinely, that, if God, it is one of those things where, you know, we all have our interests in life. If I could like fucking just pass a puck with my kid probably for four hours, and I would love every minute of it. And then the off chance that that is something they would like to do a single time in my lifetime, I'm just, you know, I've been taking that, you know, a little a little roll of the dice to see if that happens. That's the main reason that I wanted to do it.

0:20:40 Tom: Well, just did the AMA thing, and there's actually a great question that I think relates to your question. It's, if you see your kids stagnating and you know they're capable of doing better for themselves, would you or how hard would you push them to grow? And that's a question from a listener, and it feels very similar. Like your impetus is maybe like, hey, I want to do this thing and share this experience. But broadly speaking, I think that that's like a really great question that I know everybody kind of wrestles with at some point.

0:20:53 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah, right.

0:21:05 Thomas: And Tom, you always make the point and I always agree with you. I'm sure we both always agree with you, which is like you got to know your kids and the different approach per kid, you 100%, I think most every parent probably of more than one kid at least recognizes like how different they are. And you really do need to tailor your parenting to your kid. And for example, with Phoebe, I, we have to take a different approach where every single time, every single times we suggest doing anything to Phoebe ever, if it's a new thing, she will say, no, I don't want to do that. I don't want to do that every, every, time.

0:21:38 Tom: Yeah.

0:21:39 Eli: Right. Do you want to go to the candy gumdrop forest? No.

0:21:42 Thomas: Yeah, no. Cause she, she clearly has some sort of anxiety anxiety issues with new experience. She's, she's been like this since day one. She you could tell when she was an infant that she was like that. It's crazy. I never, again, I, this was so surprising to me as a parent. I really wouldn't have thought that that's necessarily how it goes. And how she is. And so if I took the approach of, you know, well, you should never force your kid to do something they don't want to do. You should, whatever. She would never do do a thing like it would be, there's no way that that could be the answer, you know? And, and I don't, I don't want to gaslight or it's hard. That's, that's the hard part because really what I want to say is, oh, isn't it weird how you say that every single fucking time and then we do it and it's fine every fucking time. No, I want it.

0:21:43 Eli: Right. Yeah.

0:21:45 Tom: OK, but wait a minute.

0:22:24 Thomas: Good.

0:22:25 Tom: You can do I think you can do that in a way that's fair. Like I think that that's because you do have to draw their attention to the distance between how they felt at the beginning and how they built the end. And I I think think if you can do that in a gentle way that you can slowly build up some like lessening of that anxiety that like, hey, you know, we have these experiences and like I know you always get anxious about them. But at the end of the day, remember this time and you were anxious and you had a great time and this time and you didn't want to do it and you didn't have a great time and this is really the same. And I know you're going to feel differently and it's OK to feel differently as we go in and start it. But I need you to trust that like just like those other twelve and a half times. Maybe you don't yell it at them like that but like I feel your pain.

0:22:27 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah, Mm-hmm. Mm -hmm, yeah.

0:23:06 Tom: Like is going to be the same you're going to enjoy it I I think you can, it's not gaslighting to show them the distance.

0:23:06 Eli: I threw

0:23:11 Thomas: Oh yeah. No, yeah, I, I try to do that and I just would, I like to note that not once Has there ever been the slightest bit of a hint of any progress when I do that? But I'll, but I'll continue to do it. But but it's true because you know what I don't want to do? What I really genuinely don't wanna do is I don'T want to be the dad or the parent that's like, you know, their kid's like, fucking, I donT want to DO baseball. And you're like, YOU'RE DOING IT, KID. You come from a generation of, you KNOW, baseball player.

Your grandpa played baseball. You DON'T want TO be some sort of slur. You know, like, it's like I DON'T WANT to be THE forcing the kid to do the thing that that they don't want to do because I have some idea of what I want them to be. That's not what they want to be, don't wanna do that. But it does put you to the test when every single time you suggest something, your kid has that reaction. And so it's clearly not born of like a legitimate way of doing this. Like it's born of in

0:23:21 Eli: My

0:23:35 Tom: Yeah, yeah, and

0:24:05 Thomas: The moment, she hears a that's thing new and she's scared. She's scared every time and she will be scared every single time and unfortunately, she's gonna have to get through it somewhat. So it makes it hard to know, like, man, I hope I'm doing that right. I hope this isn't a thing, you know, I, I have to just assume that like, I'll know when she genuinely is, is unhappy. It'll be more persistent probably. And, and that's probably what it is. Hopefully it'll be that easy because most often she, you after a few, one or two times she, she adapts most often.

0:24:34 Tom: Look, we push kids all the time, right? Like we're always put like, like we push kids. If kids had their way, they would eat nothing but ice cream and never go to school, right? I mean, you know what I'm saying? So like we are always pushing kids to do things that are good for them so that they don't stagnate, so that they don't just sit and just have nothing but screen time and suites for their entire lives. And there's a place for screen time in suites and relaxing and taking it easy.

And then there's the time where you have to be like, alright, you've got to get up, you've gotta go to school, you gotta do this. And I don't think that other activities really are that much different, except for that school you have to do for a whole variety of reasons, legal reasons and others. But you've GOT to push kids to do other stuff. They're not going to find it on their own. They're not going to like open up the park district catalog and go through and be like, oh, like I think I actually would enjoy this, know, you field hockey, or like I would like to try lacrosse or like whatever it is, right?

They're not going to do that stuff, but you expose them to enough things often enough your likelihood of finding something that they enjoy is higher. We will, I will say, I feel your pain. Aislinn is an immensely talented young lady. She has a terrific singing voice. She She is wildly gifted in terms of like, like she could just pick up anything, like physically, like the day she wanted to learn to ride a bike. She got on a bike and just rode a bike.

It's amazing, like she got on like one of those hoverboard things, we look at it, for she never fell off it even a single time. She's like, oh, it works like this. She stood on and went. Put her in dance class, she immediately gets like invited to the next level dance class.

0:24:36 Thomas: Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Wow.

0:26:03 Tom: But she hates all of it, she hates all of it. She won't do any of it. We've tried everything and she won't do it. But mean you don't try. It doesn't mean you keep offering her the opportunities and keep pushing and keep enrolling people in things. Because all of that said, Finn was the same way and he had to find his thing and he's found his thing with weightlifting and such. Donovan was the sam way, we enrolled him in a bunch of stuff and he found his too, and it also happens to be in weightlifting and such because I think he just gets, they, they're into it, they weren't into it five years ago though, like Finn was little, I tried to drag him to crossfit with me all the time and he hated it and didn't want to go and didn't play, so some of it is just kind of

0:26:04 Thomas: Oh yeah. Yeah. Well,

0:26:42 Tom: What they mature into. You know, yeah, right.

0:26:43 Eli: Back out. I read a bunch of articles online that this isn't healthy.

0:26:45 Thomas: Have a herniated disc. Yeah.

0:26:46 Tom: I Blew out both my shoulders and I'm six, yeah, right, no, but

0:26:50 Eli: Feels real culty, dad. I don't want to do it.

0:26:51 Tom: I'm just saying, like, it takes time and I think, I think you're right to push and I think you're right to like push past that

0:26:59 Thomas: Well, you may be forgetting that we do podcast with one Eli Bosnick and one of the early episodes that we did. Eli doesn't want to push his kid to do anything and wants his kid to just eat figs for his whole life.

0:27:09 Eli: Hammock and figs. And can I say, having a neuro -spicy child, let me say, because I was just sitting back here while you normos, normos that's what we call you, were talking about trying to motivate your child. Have you seen my son when a puzzle is in the room? No motivation required, ladies and gents. People always talk about like, oh my god, you know, when I struggle with the, not when it comes to motivation. When your kid has a special interest, you're just like, oh, what am I going to do? What am I gonna do to motivate my kid forward? I'm gonna buy him every

0:27:10 Thomas: Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Ooh, Arlo 2. Aww.

0:27:42 Thomas: Yeah,

0:27:43 Eli: Puzzle off the shelf by the way, puzzles a dollar, it fucking rules it's the best

0:27:43 Thomas: Every puzzle in the world. Yeah, it's awesome. Oh, Eli, do you know there is an app where not only it has puzzles, works pretty well, you can use your own pictures to make puzzles on the app, and the kids have found that hilarious. That's also been very fun. Now, we are one step closer, Eli, to uh Max and Arlo being a couple, uh, as has been our goal for forever. Arlo and Max, get them in a room, we'll never see them again, they'll just be doing puzzles

0:27:49 Eli: Uh

0:27:49 Tom: Do

0:28:06 Eli: Doing puzzles together and never see them again right, they'll have been a wedding, we weren't invited, they didn't think it was necessary, and then they're just puzzling. I don't know that that's a category of gay man, but I hope it is, that there's just like gay couples who are just like, we're the, we're in the, what's, hey Thomas, what's a good uh slash puzzle pun piecing

0:28:13 Thomas: Yeah I hope it is yeah I don't like puns I hate puns, why am I the edging edge piece, I donno, yeah, I got another let's call Heath

0:28:33 Eli: Together, missing peace, peaceness, I don't know, they'll come up with a fun edge but there you go, yeah, there's a fun, they'll come up with a fun nickname for their team, yeah, exactly, can we do a, we'll do a phone a friend just to get a good, a positive puzzle in there, but yeah, um, Max fucking loves puzzles and so it's super easy to motivate It's funny, Thomas, when you said, you said gaslight, like, I don't want to gaslight her, and I know what you meant, you meantyou don'twanttoinvalidateheremotions and experiences, but I thought what youmeant was like, I don't wanna walk in and be like, no, what are you talking about, you already agreed to go to the ski lesson, yeah

0:28:47 Thomas: Yeah have that issue, it's a, you know, it's a little tough, Arlo is different, you know, we're more in the Max category with that where it's like he, he's a wild card, we don't know, you know, like he doesn't have the anxieties, usually he has a little bit, you know, probably like more in the normal kid range, anxiety of stuff, but, or I don't know, or not, it's he's unpredictable with that stuff, but he'll just decide like, nah, I don't like this, and then it's over.

So at least with him, I don't, you know, it's like I think it's a little easier to feel like we're, we're able to know, assess what he wants and needs and and do it, whereas with Phoebe, because we know her first response will be be, you, I mean, it's a, it's a fucking lie basically. Her first response is I will die if you make me do that at all. And, and we know we can't use that to judge it because it's a fear anxiety response that doesn't turn out to be true almost ever, you anyway we the skate class.

It's, you know, pretty short. Yeah. Not too many weeks. It's a one night a week. And go there and they're both, they're. So they were afraid for different reasons. Phoebe was doing her. It's a new thing. She can't possibly do it thing. And Arlo, once he gets an idea in his head about how a thing works, you can't convince him otherwise. So like he decided it was, and it's not irrational at all. He decided like, well, that's too hard and I'm going to fall and it'll hurt. Totally rational feeling. But I was like, no, buddy, we got

0:29:49 Eli: Exactly fair

0:30:30 Thomas: You every pad in the world. Like all he's full on padded to the gills.

0:30:35 Eli: You're in a sumo suit of pads, right now, my man

0:30:36 Thomas: Yeah. There's I could throw you off a cliff yeah, and you will not feel an ounce of pain

0:30:37 Tom: He's in one of those Zorb bubbles just

0:30:38 Eli: Uncle Tom is gonna do a weird CrossFit move and throw you to the ground as hard as he can, you will not notice

0:30:47 Thomas: And what, one of the funny little ones too I had to do with Phoebe was, no, I'm afraid that the ice will break and I'll fall in and I had it, done like, you, you know, ice is like a fucking half an inch, like there's no it's just a floor under that, there's nothing yeah

0:30:53 Eli: There's no, there's nothing there, you that meth head standing on that Zamboni over there just waiting for his chance to do more meth, he made the ice and they, he didn't do a lot of it, oh

0:31:05 Thomas: Her mind when when I tell you, like, her little kid mind trying to process that was impossible, she was, I could see it in her brain like steam coming out of her ears, the idea because every movie and show you've ever seen as a kid is the ice is there and if you break it's a ocean you know yeah or something

0:31:07 Tom: Yeah.

0:31:21 Tom: There's A pond Underneath it, right? Yeah.

0:31:23 Eli: Yeah the how old were you guys the first time you walked on ice and another adult had to be like, oh no, this ice is thick and fine, we, we can drive cars across it, and you were like, yeah, and that's what they say in the, the beginning of every movie, and then my best friend who is also a dog has to rescue me, so I will be keeping my golden retriever named Lucky close by, thank you very much, hey

0:31:23 Tom: Yeah.

0:31:23 Thomas: Yeah

0:31:41 Tom: Did I tell the story about when I fell through the ice on the show before?

0:31:44 Thomas: Oh of course there would be that story, yeah

0:31:48 Tom: OK, so this is just, it's a very quick one. So I'm obviously fine. But like my, was a creek that ran behind our house. So where I lived with my dad, there was my house. Then behind the house was a cornfield. And then about maybe a mile or so into the middle of the cornfield were some trees and were surrounding this creek. Right. So there's this natural creek that run through it. And there's like a little bit of forest around on both sides of the creek.

And so what we would do every winter, my brother and I, little kids, we'd go walk through the empty cornfield in the wintertime. It was cold. And we'd go to the creek and we'd fuck around in the woods. And then we'd go creek walking. So we thought the ice was thick enough, and you'd walk on the creek, and it was a cool way to walk through and not have to walk through the wooded part and have just fun and fuck around.

So my brother and I are walking through, and I'm maybe, I don't know, 9, 10, somewhere around there, and like I fall through the ice and I fall into the creek, and only up to about my chest or so, so it wasn't terribly deep where I fell, thankfully, but then like I go to try to get out and like I'm just a little kid, I'm so trying to push on the ice AND I CAN'T REALLY PUSH ON THE ICE AND THE ICE IS KIND OF BREAKING AND MY BROTHER IS AN IDIOT KID WHO'S JUST A YEAR OLDER THAN ME SO HE RUNS OVER TO WHERE I'M AT, HE FALLS THROUGH THE ICE, SO NOW WE'RE JUST BOTH STANDING IN A FUCKING CREEK LIKE UP TO OUR DUMB CHEST LIKE WITH ALL THIS LIKE FREEZING WATER AND LIKE TRYING TO like break the ice and get ourselves over to the bank, and which we eventually do when we clamber up the bank.

And we walk a mile back, like wintertime, buck ass cold. We walk a mile back through the, uh, cornfield to get back to my dad's house, and we are just like soaked, and we've got like ice forming on the outside of all of our clothes. Our, like, our, our hands are like that, like hot red when they get like deeply cold, like right before you get like frostbite and go full Shackleton. It was like craziest, coldest, most dangerous moment of like my childhood. Well, maybe not the most, but

0:33:40 Tom: Like one of the most dangerous moments of my childhood that I remember is still the coldest I've ever been.

0:33:40 Thomas: That's a hoof yeah

0:33:41 Eli: Hey Tom, hey, how, earlier in the episode Thomas said sometimes you tell stories on our podcast and you think they're funny but they're actually real sad no I never fell through the ice because I'm not living in Bridge to Terabithia, Tom

0:33:55 Tom: It's not sad. I I made a mistake as a kid. You never fell through the ice because you were unsupervised for hours.

0:34:01 Thomas: I made the mistake of being unsupervised for hours at a time, an incredibly dangerous scenario, that's on me, that's my mistake, steak, says Tom. Yeah. After all, I was six.

0:34:12 Tom: Everybody and all the kids played back there

0:34:15 Thomas: Come on. I should know better.

0:34:16 Eli: And I'm an idiot, right? So I'm like, I can't get out of this water. I'm in danger. I'm so scared. My brother tries to save me, but he fails like an idiot. I still give him shit about it. Every time I see him, I'm, like, oh, don't come near me. We might both be paralyzed by the tremendous danger we're in. Oh, not a single therapist was seen.

0:34:34 Thomas: No. And I was never around ice as a kid because we didn't have it.

0:34:45 Eli: Couldn't afford it, couldn't afford it. In angels Camp California. No, only in the McDonald's machine, and that would have cost your dad soda, and he was not gonna spend, he was not gonna waste good soda real estate on ice. You could just run around in the backyard with it until it chilled out naturally at midnight, bury it under the dog, and the dog's ghost will chill it with its presence. Yeah.

0:34:46 Tom: There's no yeah

0:34:46 Thomas: Couldn't afford it. Yeah, so One thing that happened, and this is an example of kids that just, my kids, one or the other, um, it's, but one of those things where it's like hilarious but, uh, also frustrating, which is, I have seen the people do the, the skate, so the every rink is like this, they've got the family skate, whatever ice skating thing where everyone is on the fucking ice and it's a massive you conglomerate of humanity of mainly high school kids on an awkward date kind of thing or birthday parties.

They completely ruin the ice and then they barely Zamboni it and we play hockey afterwards on it. It's how it works. We break all our ankles on the shit ice because of skating in a circle. And so I saw that what they do for that is they have these buckets.

They have a shit ton of buckets, that what you do is you stack them up if you've never skated and you use them as like, you know, it's like a support, like you hold it in front of you. And that's how they, you skate with kids or whatever and make it so you're not going to fall. So in order to alleviate their fears, you. Now, I was telling them about that, or maybe even it was Lydia, I don't remember.

And we're like, yeah, you got the buckets, you got the pockets, it's fine, it'll be totally fine. We get to the class and we look at the class and it's like, oh fuck, they don't do buckets in the class. I don't know why. It's like not how they do it for this particular thing. Maybe it's the way they want to teach them. So not a single bucket on the entire rink of 800 classes, not one bucket.

But us idiots have told our kids that that's how they deal with it. They do it like, oh, they'll give you a bucket. And no matter how much of like, oh, well, look, we were actually wrong, I guess they'll do it some other way, does, there's no amount of that that could possibly convince Arlo, especially, that that wasn't what we were doing. Like, it's just so that for the rest of his life he would think that we're doing, you know, that's how you do it.

So to the point where the teachers had to just get them buckets, like, all right, your asshole kids will be the two kids with buckets on the entire rink anywhere, and you have to think about what you did.

0:36:58 Eli: You're the, the bucket family now. Just the, oh here come the bucket it's the buckets, but it's the bucket people, it's the bucket people, the dad's not even wearing shoes, he forgot to wear shoes incorrect.

0:36:59 Thomas: Yeah. Oh, look at them it's the fucking buckets So that was the first thing and The other thing was, uh, Phoebe was, um, really scared, barely doing it, Arlo, god, Arlo's so funny, he wasn't, he, he treated skating like, like something was wrong, like, you, you know, like Phoebe was like, all right, this is a little weird, I can't quite do it. And brain Arlo's is like, this is an emergency, like, I'm, yeah, not how physics should be.

0:37:28 Eli: False father, this surface is not

0:37:32 Thomas: And so he's just doing nothing.

0:37:33 Eli: Adapted for feet, come help me spread some gravel and some salt on this terrible mistake we will make running in this circle much easier for all who come after us.

0:37:37 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah. And Once again, I'm always, this has always been my dream. It's my kid. And so amazing that no matter what the situation is, it is always like, what are the odds? It's not one time will it be, oh look, someone else's kid is having a hard time and having to do something that not the other kids are having to, no, that's always my kid, so my Kids literally much, or you know it depends, they switch off, a little Arlo. The, I don't know why, but the way his, he has like somehow accumulated two dedicated full-time staff now, like he just something about the way he is with, through no intervention of mine or anything, he, the coach was helping him, you know, I think he just was like, "Well, that's all I want. I don't want to do this on my own." And couldn't like leave him.

And so he just like, Arlo just all of a sudden subcontracted to have like a private coach by himself, you know? So I'm like, always my kid. So there's no other kid that somehow just got a private, one-on-one goddamn coach from this. And so the first week happens, this first lesson, and it's kind of what I'm describing.

And it was just like, "Oh, God, this is not." Well, we paid some amount of money to do this and this will just be a zero, there's no fucking way. And, you know, I was a little sad that it didn't even get going at all, like zero. I was like, "Okay, that's a little sad, but what can you do, we tried." Um, we go next week, you know, just to see.

And I honestly was prepared to just go there and have them be like, "No," and just leave, you know, like I just like, "All right." And to their immense credit, especially Phoebe, they, they rose up to it slightly. Like they, they did it a little bit. And I was like, very genuinely surprised to the point where Phoebe, Phoebe was like making a little progress.

And it's like, "Oh, this is," and I just wanted to say like, I'm so proud of them, 'cause it was genuinely so scary and tough for them to do, but they started doing a little bit of the drills that they're supposed to do. You rarely could be called that, but you know, they were, they were making an effort and, and I was just so unbelievably proud of that. I wrote, wrote it down and wanted, wanted to make sure I mentioned on the show. And then, you know, of the way we've done shows, that's actually been a while. So I had that note to tell

0:37:44 Eli: Yeah.

0:38:00 Tom: It's always Arlo.

0:39:42 Tom: Okay.

0:39:42 Thomas: The story, but it's only, it's only gotten better in a lot of ways. Like I'm, I'm genuinely just so proud for how, how much they, you know, have managed with something that is really scary and unnatural for them. What surprised me to no end is I would have predicted that Arlo's general fearlessness, because he is just not scared of things that most kids are scared of.

I would would have thought that that would have like, you know, if I was putting money on which one of my kids was going to be able to skate at all, it would have been like, yeah, Arlo will figure it out because of that reason. But something about it, he just doesn't quite like, like his brain is just, he's not unhappy, but like he just something about skating doesn't click for him.

So he's barely, you know, he made a little progress in the six weeks or whatever, but not really. Whereas Phoebe, I think genuinely, I think she's engaged her mind and trying to get get better. And she's skating she's a little bit. I'm just like so unbelievably proud. And of course the, the class the other day, actually, we're like, well, this is the last session. And guys pass, they're excited. They do little tests like limbo, which was hilarious. They have to like make sure they skate, they can skate under a thing, you know, a little test they do to

0:40:44 Tom: Yeah.

0:40:45 Thomas: Make sure they're making some progress.

0:40:45 Tom: That's cool.

0:40:46 Thomas: Arlo nailed it. He can barely move, but he somehow like just, just, oh my God, I forgot to say this. In one of the early lessons, God, I wish you guys could have seen this. Arlo, in, when he decided that like, no, this is just not, real. Not I'm not doing this. At one point he just falls, which they fell, they fall a million times. And he just decided like, this is now what I'm doing. And just started crawling everywhere. Just like, like almost like rowing with his arms, you know, like, oh, I can just do this. Hey dad, essentially dad, I found a way to not have to use the skates. Yeah.

0:41:09 Eli: Amazing. I Solved it, I Solved it, I

0:41:11 Tom: I would do that. I'd be like, no, I don't know if you guys notice, but you can just scoot around on this stuff, it's, it's slick without your yeah, you

0:41:22 Thomas: Yeah

0:41:22 Eli: Know, it was really important for you, for me to get around in a circle on this ice, but I figured it out, we're all gonna do our own things. Any

0:41:29 Tom: Don't even have to wear the knives on your, your shoes, it's fine.

0:41:31 Eli: Chance I can borrow the Zamboni from the meth addict, he looks distracted.

0:41:32 Tom: No.

0:41:36 Thomas: And He Just, yeah, he's like, all right, I'm done with the lesson, just like a, like a seal on an iceberg, you know, just like kind of getting over toward the thing, um, he actually was amazing at the limbo thing, but he still was barely moving, like he'd go two miles an hour if, if that, and just kind of scoot, but he got down, so he passed that with flying colors. Anyway, point is, they did, you know, learned enough stuff that the teachers are like, yeah, they, they could both move on if they want to the next thing, which is a lot, how a lot of these kids' bullshit works. It's how the swimming one worked too. We tell them, like, yeah, no, that was, that was the last one. And then there's another level that you can, you know, we can kind of sign you up for that. And of course, Phoebe's like, no.

0:42:14 Thomas: No, I can't do that. No, you're just like, oh, this again. Fuck. But that's one of those ones where I'm like, I, I don't know. I mean, should I take the fact that she's experienced it now doesn't want to do it as real, or once again, now this is an unknown? Oh, what was the teacher? Where is it? You know, like, no, you think, no, Tom, you solid, solid.

0:42:13 Eli: Just

0:42:16 Tom: No.

0:42:33 Tom: Keep pushing her a little bit, like, I mean, if her first inclination is always to say no, but The follow-up is always be to like, all right, you know, in retrospect, I had a good time, right? Like I'm just not gonna phrase it that way. But if that's really what happens, then absolutely not, man. I mean, like, like you've got to, I think with a kid like that, you've got to be a little more cushy than you might with somebody who, I don't know how to say this, you would take a little more seriously, right? So like if you've got a kid that almost never says no, is generally agreeable, and they're like, look, I like most shit, but this isn't for me. All right, fine. We'll find something else for you. But I think if you're got somebody who's like, you know, they're reflexively saying no to everything, kind of have to tell rather than ask for a

0:42:33 Thomas: No. Yeah. Always.

0:43:16 Thomas: Yeah,

0:43:16 Tom: While. Especially maybe at this age. You know, I mean, if the if the fear and the anxiety ramps up to the point where it really feels problematic, then know your kid, you know, obviously. But like, I means, what do you think? What are you going to do? Are you goingto push?

0:43:31 Thomas: I think we're going to just do it. And honestly, I've gotten to the point and I just need to get Lydia on the same page where I don't really think we should even tell her. Like we should just, you know, like because honestly what is the point, yeah, really. And if she doesn't like a thing, we won't make her do it, but there's, know her, there's no function to telling her, hey, in a amount of time that's more than like an hour. So it's nothing to your kid brain. Like if I tell you a week as as a six-year-old that's what, is it doing to for her Yeah, it's not helpful. It doesn't do anything. She's not like, we tell her about a thing like, like this, and she's like mentally preparing in a good, healthy way. Like, oh, I got to be, no, it's just developing a bunch of fear and anxiety that doesn't end up mattering, or all it does is cause her discomfort. Really, if we just took her to the thing, it would be way better.

And so I would have just not told her, but since, you know, the cat was out of the bag, I think we did sign them up and we're going to try at least, at least one more class and see kind of how it goes. And Arlo's, Arlo, I have a hard time judging because he's also, he'll say like, I don't want to do that. And then he, he also just, when you put him in front of something, he'll start doing it. You know, it's weird.

It's, wish I had a better, firmer idea of like, do they benefit from this? Should they keep doing it? But we can also kind of do it ad hoc, kind of like, all right, it's only six weeks at a time. I think we'll do another six weeks. And by the way, if they don't want to do it, we can always just not, not even finished the course.

0:43:41 Tom: Yeah. Yeah.

0:43:41 Eli: Surprise. Her

0:43:58 Tom: It's not. Yeah, right.

0:44:52 Tom: Right. It's like you can't like quit at any time. Like if you really feel like she's taken damage from it, then you can bail from it.

0:44:53 Thomas: So yeah, no, no. Yeah. She's not. It's just that first class or two. And maybe sometimes it might be two classes, you know, she has to get used to something.

0:44:59 Tom: Right? But You talked to her about, like, just this in general when it's not attached to something? A thing, in other words, if you said like, hey, like, can we talk about trying new things just as its own thing to talk about? Have you, have you tried that at all?

0:45:15 Thomas: Yeah, And I know you've gone through the process of having young kids, but it really is, if you don't have a four, five, six year old, it's amazing, amazing, um, how much. Talking to them doesn't work and works, you know what I mean? Like, you, I could say like, Phoebe, let's talk about, uh, when you don't want to do things, and it's, she's processing it, or maybe she's not even in the world of the conversation you're having.

It's hard to tell, you know, it's just little kids, like, um, I've tried, um, especially, like, there have been some times I think I've shared where Phoebe has given us little, little kind of windows into her mental health challenges. And it's like so heartbreaking and sad, you know?

Was one, gosh, recently where she was like, she was really bothered by something, you, that's the challenge we're having with her now, which is if she gets frustrated in ways, like, it's constantly a question of, yes, kids get frustrated, yes, kids can have outbursts, but like, what's, what's within normal and what's not.

And Phoebe will go from zero to a absolute scream fit the second, like, a button doesn't work, you know, like, like on a, on a sweater or something, like it's often, often clothed related, clothing related, probably because it's like on her body, so it feels more frustrating to her or something, but, but she goes from zero to, to Eli, if somebody reported his car,

0:45:15 Tom: Yeah. Right.

0:46:32 Thomas: You know, uh, abandoned, she has from zero to that in seconds. Like almost comical where she could be talking to you normally and then she can't button her sweater and it's like someone died. She's screeching. So she's got issues with something, maybe OCD, maybe something we'll see. But one time, you know, we've asked her about that and the way she put it was just like so heartbreaking where, you knows, she's trying to make sense of it in her little mind.

And she's like, my, my brain won't let me not do it or something, you know, in a way that was, was really interesting. And so we've had a few conversations like that. And I, and what I try to do, and I hope this is helpful as I really, with the anxiety stuff, I just try to tell her how much experience I've had with it. And in a way that hopefully makes her feel better. But I'm like, yeah, no, I, I often get that feeling.

You know, I get a bad feeling in my chest. That's what I really get. Like I get this awful feeling in my chest. It frankly feels like I'm dying, but I don't go into it too much, but I'm like, like, yeah, no, I get

0:47:30 Thomas: That, you know.

0:47:30 Eli: It's just sort of a crushing pressure. And it feels like it's never going to end, but then it leaves these after. Why are you crying, Daddy's talking right now. And there's these aftershocks, right? These are the ones that sort of go with you months or years later.

0:47:33 Thomas: Oh, yeah. Yeah. Genuinely feels like a heart attack. Like genuinely feels like I'm dying of a heart attack.

0:47:43 Eli: And what's funny is, it can cause a heart attack, a lot.

0:47:47 Thomas: I might drop down at any minute. Why are you crying?

0:47:50 Tom: Do you know, what, a heart attack is, Phoebe,

0:47:51 Thomas: Why?

0:47:51 Tom: That's where your heart starts to die a little bit. It dies a little then, and it never gets all the way better after that it's

0:47:51 Thomas: Yeah.

0:47:53 Eli: Yeah. Oh, and people have them for all sorts of reasons. Young people, old people, you never know when it's going to come for you.

0:47:57 Thomas: At any time. Yeah. Healthy, not healthy. Yeah. No, but I do try to relate to her, like, yeah, yeah, often, you know, I feel scared in ways that's not really, you, it's kind of like not quite what I end up feeling when I do it, you're just trying to put it in ways that maybe will help show her that, like, this, the thing she's going through is a normal thing, that also, even if it's not quite normal, even if it's out of the normal range, is a thing that she should feel okay needing help with.

That's what I've really tried to emphasize, no idea if I've done it perfectly, but I, the thing that my parents did fucking horribly, which is make it seem like anything wrong with me at all was, instead of being like a thing that we should find a solution for and get help for, was an absolute personal failing.

And I just want to go as hard as I can the other way to be like, yeah, if, you know, let's keep an eye on this, if you need help, if you need to talk to somebody, maybe, if you, you actually asked me before, cause sometimes she'll be in the, the, you know, in my morning routine, and I take, I, some medications every day for, you know, mental health reasons, and she's asked me, I'll be like, oh, that's because often they'll ask if they can have some, I'm like, no, Jesus Christ, no, and, um, uh, she's like, why?

I'm like, well, you don't know, it's a grownup thing that I take for, for my brain. It's kind of like, uh, try to link it a little bit to sometimes what she's mentioned to me, and cause we've talked about her, therapy is that, yeah, it's for like a doctor, but for your brain. And I go, yeah, it's medication, but for my brain. And, and one time she did say like, "I think I need that, can I have that?" You know?

And it's like, at, like, that the idea is normalized for her, where for her, in that moment, that was like, "Oh good, this, this might help me." It wasn't stigmatized as like, "Oh, I'm a failure if I have this problem." And what can we do about it?

It was like, like, you know, obviously I said like, "No, you know, well, someday if a doctor says maybe," but we can't, you know, obviously, but I like the idea that she's already not coming at it from a personal failing feeling, from, from a

0:49:52 Eli: Yeah.

0:49:52 Thomas: Stigmatized personal failing, and that applies not just to medication, but to therapy and all those kinds of things.

0:49:57 Eli: And, well, you know, it's funny, my dad, while he was alive, never once told me he had ADD. I did not find out he was on medication for his ADD until after he passed away. Now it's interesting. My parents have made the point about this, which is the second my dad admitted to me, I think at any age, but definitely when I was a kid that he had ADHD, I would have been like, I have ADD, me and my daddy have ADD together.

0:50:05 Thomas: Hmm. Wow.

0:50:22 Tom: Sure.

0:50:22 Eli: Heather. We both have ADD. We should have the same. We get matching pill cases for our ADD that we have. That's ADD we have, ADD. But the, the downside to that is that I was wildly resistant to getting on medication, right? I've talked about this journey on the air before, while resistant, had a lot of really bad times because of it. And I know for a fucking fact, if my dad had just been like, "Oh, I'm on neuropharmaceuticals," I would've been like, "Oh yeah, no, so can I get two of those and one of these and six of those and four of these," so, you know, I, I think you're creating a really, um, environment where she'll feel safe getting that help if and when she needs it.

0:50:23 Tom: Right.

0:50:29 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah.

0:50:49 Tom: All

0:51:07 Eli: Gentlemen, before we go, you gotta hand it to blind prostitutes.

0:51:18 Tom: I like that a lot.

0:51:18 Thomas: Was a good enough laugh for you Eli did you get what you need

0:51:21 Eli: Yeah. No, thank you. Thank you for the fucking, yes, for the fucking acknowledgement that I spent minutes searching for that joke for you, it's more than Tom spends on this entire podcast for a year, let

0:51:33 Thomas: I

0:51:38 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.

0:52:17 Eli: Making it awkward, flawless.