DOD117: When Kids Protect Parents

Transcript

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

0:00:28 Tom: To Dear Old Dads, the podcast that's absolutely sure the monsters under the bed are real. I'm Tom Curry, I'm joined as always by Thomas Smith and Eli Bosnick.

0:00:35 Thomas: Jeez. Wait, is this a spooktacular? What month is it?

0:00:39 Eli: Oh, Get ready, everybody. The perfect spooktacular. It's funny. We're going to talk about what we're going talk about, but Max has been encountering monsters for the first time because we are reading him Calvin and Hobbes right now. And Calvin and Hobbes just has a tremendous amount of talk about monsters in it. And so I always say like, oh, that's silly because we know monsters aren't real. And one of the things, one of things I'm proudest of as a parent is um we read Sheila Ray the Brave, which is about a mouse who gets afraid when she gets lost on her way home from school, um, of the things that she does when she's brave is she's confronting a monster and I say as part of that I say Sheila Rey says fear is the man killer, the wheeze, and so when, when we talked talk about that monsters aren't real, I say what does Sheila Ray the brave say and Max goes "feel your mind," and it's the best, it's because he says almost none of the words he just sort of lands it on the Louise, it's great, yeah.

0:01:34 Thomas: Yeah. Oh, that's awesome. Though Dune must be the best book ever, it must be, it must be the, that's what, that's from right, the fears of mind killer yeah it must be, there's no other reason you would try to make a billion movies about this goofy ass thing if it wasn't the best book to ever exist, they take it so seriously too, no I've never read it

0:01:49 Eli: It's from Dune the guy, it's like so yeah

0:01:59 Tom: Have read it it's in my opinion it's very much just fine

0:02:04 Thomas: Yeah that's

0:02:04 Eli: So that's the crazy thing is that I the

0:02:06 Tom: It's okie dokie, like I don't have anything bad to say but I'm like

0:02:11 Eli: Ideas in Dune fucking rock, the execution is I think like bottom quarter of sci-fi, right, don't get me wrong, Sandworms and Ahadib and Gom Jabbar and the Harkonnens, so much of that shit is awesome that's the thing is that he says it like someone who wasn't really paying attention to a game of Risk is describing the game three months later, like that's how all of Dune feels and I will say these new movies, which I have really enjoyed, they do a great job of being like, we'll just cut that and we'll put this here and you don't have to worry about that and I know that it says this happens but actually we're going to make it a whole sword fight so it'll be interesting. Like, they've done a

0:02:12 Thomas: So funny uh wow I'm so bored already just

0:02:38 Tom: Yeah so

0:02:54 Eli: Good job of zhuzhing it up.

0:02:56 Thomas: Have gotten the Dune ad campaign on my fucking algorithm, that's just like behind the scenes, the cast of Dune goofing off, that's like every it's so dumb, I can't think of a movie that it fits less, you know you're like yeah, I, I definitely want the, the cast of Dune, not in the like

0:03:04 Tom: I hate that shit, oh

0:03:04 Eli: Would love that shit! Oh! Then Dune him to do it with the lighthouse just, look at Pattinson! And Dafoe. Well,

0:03:17 Tom: One

0:03:14 Thomas: Yeah yeah exactly they're in their costumes that you're supposed to take seriously and they're just like goofing off, you're like, I already, I don't take this seriously like

0:03:23 Eli: They did that with my Moriarty guy, Andrew Scott, he was in like a very serious coming of age film and the TikToks were all like, what's your favorite flavor of ice cream, and they were like, this can't possibly promote the movie, and they were like, we assure you it does it does but gentlemen do you know the only thing worse than watching the parasocial computerized and algorithm to internet slowly drive your actors into meme ridden festers of the artists they once were, why, it's the auto ads, the personification of the algorithm coming for your enjoyment of a thing, but you can avoid that, you can listen to our voices and our voices alone over at patreon.com/dearolddads where you'll get a commercial free extended version of every episode when Tom feels like showing up

0:03:26 Thomas: Yeah yeah I saw that too yep oh god no fuck that I can't quit yeah

0:04:11 Tom: Miss

0:04:11 Eli: And let's Say let's Be Honest it's not a hundred percent, he has not earned his proverbial rest on this podcast, but you and he didn't rest and he has never rested since, which is why he needs to shock himself awake like a prisoner who deserves international relief from the UN you can have all those things over at patreon.com/dearolddads, patreon.org, Dear Old Dads, get with the win before you lose your mind, that's

0:04:11 Tom: I missed one time and I didn't rest

0:04:27 Thomas: Auto

0:04:42 Tom: Wait

0:04:42 Eli: Our new catchphrase I I don't know if you, auto

0:04:43 Tom: What the

0:04:43 Thomas: Ads are the mind killer yeah I don't know

0:04:44 Tom: Fuck was that I hated that

0:04:46 Eli: Ads are the mind killer. I'm testing out catchphrases. Look, we talk to the numbers people and what we need is catchphrase is Tom. Just try this one out and see how you like it. Just try it. Do you remember the thing I said? Cause I don t yeah.

0:04:47 Tom: Oh oh I don't like it okay no no I've already forgotten it, I hear that and my brain's like no delete it delete it

0:05:03 Thomas: That's a sign of a a good catchphrase. Yeah.

0:05:06 Eli: McDonald's, you know, uh, great. Now Ronald's going to hold my head underwater in a toilet somewhere. Use their song, sure.

0:05:07 Thomas: All right. Okay. Yeah,

0:05:19 Tom: So there's a quote I want to start this episode off with, so um, have you guys read, everybody's read Where the Wild Things Are, right, Maurice Sendak, it's like a classic children's book so yeah you're familiar with where the world is things are

0:05:27 Eli: In the night kitchen yeah

0:05:30 Thomas: I think so. Is that the one he's gets in? I feel like there's a little boat involved or something and there's like a bunch of monsters and then he's hungry. So it comes back. He's like, all right, fine. I'll be a kid. Is this something something like that. It's been 35 years. I don't know.

0:05:36 Eli: Yeah yeah oh

0:05:31 Tom: Yeah yeah this so it's not one that you read for your kids, it

0:05:46 Thomas: No. Um, Yeah. And it, isn't it pretty short and they made a whole movie about it. It isn't like a page or two, but

0:05:52 Tom: I know it's longer than a page or two but it's still a children's book, um, the movie, I, I mean the movie is fucking awesome, I think I don't know I loved the movie oh my god I

0:05:59 Eli: I didn't see it, no

0:05:57 Thomas: Really? Oh shit. Is it good for kids or is it like, no? Okay. That's yeah.

0:06:00 Tom: No no nope

0:06:03 Eli: It's porn

0:06:04 Tom: Nope. No, it's Spike Jonze. Spike Jonz is the director. So, you know, the director of like being John Malkovich and adaptation and her.

0:06:11 Thomas: Oh man. Now I want to watch it.

0:06:16 Tom: So yeah, where the wild things are, I think is, is outstanding. But it's dark. It'S pretty dark movie.

0:06:21 Eli: Oh. Speaking of dark kid movie, and I will get back, I promise. But speaking of darker movies, have you guys seen fucking what's a, what's "In the Dark" yet?

0:06:28 Thomas: What?

0:06:29 Eli: There's

0:06:24 Tom: Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Wait, what, what the hell did you just say?

0:06:30 Eli: This movie on Netflix, and a million people are shouting at their podcast players right now, but it's called like "Rip the and the Dark," and it's about fear and the necessity of death, you gotta check it out, guys. I mean, not me and Thomas, but normal humans should absolutely check

0:06:36 Tom: What? How could it be called that?

0:06:43 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah. I already, whatever that is, I already don't need it. Is it, but is it a kid's thing? Yeah.

0:06:49 Eli: Is, well, it looks like a kid's movie. There are certain moments in the movie where I'm like, I don't really want to, I, I will say this, if I had a kid who I could have long convert form conversations with, where like I sucked, and then, and he talked, and then I talked, there'd be a lot of things in that movie where I, as a non-theist, would not want to have that conversation. I feel like it's probably easier in households where they're like, no, and then Grandma's there, and Scruff Scruff is there. You gotta check it out. But it's a fucking great movie. It is a great, great movie, sorry. Maurice Sendak,

0:06:59 Thomas: You do You do have, okay, just Yeah, Yeah. And

0:07:18 Tom: Oh, gotcha. No,

0:07:25 Eli: You were saying, Tom.

0:07:25 Tom: Maurice Sendak. So he wrote Where the Wild Things Are in 1963. It's pretty much beloved children's classic book. I had it for my kids, read it to my kids when they were little. And there is a quote from that.

0:07:36 Thomas: He lived It, it's also your life.

0:07:40 Tom: Yeah, There right? There is an Maurice Sendik quote.

0:07:41 Eli: Were nice to Max.

0:07:45 Tom: It's just a snapping turtle pop -up book. Like, boom, pop -op.

0:07:48 Eli: Yeah. Yeah.

0:07:47 Thomas: Yeah. I was gonna say the snapping turtle, his mom's house was that, like, he went where the wild things were. Wow. Yeah.

0:07:54 Tom: There's a Maurice Sendak quote that I think is really, really something we got to talk about. And it goes this way. It says, "I remember my own childhood vividly. I knew terrible things, but I knew I mustn't let adults know. I knew it would scare them." And that's the quote. And a quote that I've been sitting with for a few weeks and thinking about for a few weeks. And I thought it'd be really worth talking about for this show.

And I'll tell you kind of how I interpret it and see where you guys go with it as well. But that rings so incredibly true for me, for the experience of being a kid. And there's this space and time as a kid where you start learning things and having experiences within the world that for many of us, we don't share those experiences, those feelings, those new learnings with the adults in our lives.

Because there's this sort of desire to protect the space of collective innocence between ourselves as kids and how our parents see us as kids. And I think there's this sort of intrinsic understanding that if we start letting our parents know about these things that we've endured or understood or matured into, that that might threaten that innocent space that we're all kind of living in the fiction of between parents and children. And to me, that's kind of very much part of what that quote speaks to.

And I think that that's both beautiful and dangerous. And I think the quote speaks to that beauty and that danger as well. And it's this real, it's this space I very much identify with when I look back at my own childhood, and like the experiences I had and the things that I matured into and the thing that I knew, and never said anything to the adults in my life about because, like, I didn't want them to know I knew about this stuff, I

0:09:38 Thomas: Yeah.

0:09:39 Tom: Didn't want them to know and see me as somebody who had matured into knowing this, because I was afraid that it would damage that, that space, that sort of sacred space that we had carved out together as parent and child, so I'm curious if that's how you read that same quote and what your thoughts are there and your experiences with that.

0:09:58 Thomas: I, I agree more, Tom, like, I, I, when you sent that, I was like, oh man, I had that, really, I, it hits, and and I'm glad because it, I think I pretty much interpret it the exact same way too. I think there's only a couple things I'd add to it, which is just, it is important, I think, as parents for us to realize that kids, do, our kids will try to protect us, like, they just will.

0:10:20 Tom: Yeah.

0:10:20 Thomas: It's in the same way. I don't know if it's exactly the same, but in the same way where, um, kids will try to parent you like, just like you're like, okay, Hey, you need to put the thing away. And then they're the kid. They don't know what's going on. So they're like, oh, okay. So I need to tell you to do that too. You know, and they start parenting you. It sort of, I think it's comes from a similar place when you're little, I don't think you have the wherewithal to fully understand that you're the kid and they're the adult, like it, like in your little kid brain.

0:10:21 Tom: Yeah.

0:10:36 Eli: Yeah.

0:10:45 Eli: That's just what they think human interaction is. I

0:10:48 Thomas: Yeah. And I, I can certainly, I, I told you in the chat, I couldn't remember. Know this resonates for me and that, but it's been too long and I can't remember what it resonates with, you know, but I'm like, oh, I know I've had this experience. Probably saw a dead body or something when I was a kid, who knows? Uh, just forgot about it. That would so be me.

0:11:06 Eli: Like that all of Thomas's mental illness are really textbook cases, right? Like, it's really convenient for any therapist listening. Oh, so I was having a Freudian blackout the other day. Okay, so he's just calling them that now, just calling him that

0:11:19 Thomas: I oh my god, can I tell you my biggest nightmares as a kid, and sort of as an adult, was that, like, something really terrible happened and I forgot about it. Like, I'd have, I have dreams where all of a sudden I remembered that I, like, murdered someone when I was a kid. It's the worst.

0:11:19 Eli: Yeah

0:11:34 Tom: Well, got to read those journals of your dad's. You've got to read the journals. It's all in there, Thomas.

0:11:36 Eli: Gotta read the journals that's

0:11:34 Thomas: Oh it's the worst yeah no I thought it's it's more no it's It's more just exactly Eli's version of me. Like, my memory is my thing that I'm most scared of. Like, I'm, I'm more scared that there's something super important that my brain's just like, you don't need that.

0:11:39 Eli: Why he won't read them um,

0:11:40 Tom: I know.

0:11:51 Thomas: But anyway, yeah.

0:11:51 Eli: No, that's okay. We're going to put this with the cord to the hard drive and together I'll always remember.

0:11:55 Thomas: And there's a, there's body and a quarter of the hard drive in the same drawer. And that's where they live. To, The so yeah, I think we need to recognize that that will happen. It's actually very important because kids, will withhold stuff because they're protecting you and in a real way. And I think this is important. It's not, I don't think it's because anyone's doing anything wrong. I don't, I, I think it's a pretty normal thing. It's not like, "Oh, I can't trust my parent." It's more the other, only other wrinkle I was going to add is I think it's because of this, like, you say, it's this innocent environment we create. Like we, we only want those joyful interactions with our kids.

And it does create a bit of a fiction, you know, it does create a bit of a like, okay, well, this isn't the real world, and so therefore they have this feeling that if they introduce any you into this innocent world, that's going to ruin it. And I don't know if there's a solution to that, really, other than like trying to talk a little more real with them in the right appropriate times. I don't know.

0:12:07 Eli: Yes.

0:12:09 Tom: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah,

0:12:51 Eli: It reminds me of something that I read, and I think I've talked about it on this show, but something that I read in the book Raising Toddlers, uh, her section about nightmares.

And what's really interesting is for kids who are verbal very early, right, they are able to glean about kids' first nightmares, at least the ones who are able to express them, is that usually what their nightmares are about are about their own emotions, that they're starting to experience sadness, anger, recognizing that there is another person in the parent, you and the parent aren't the same person, and that you have big feelings sometimes, and it might be possible for other people to have those big feelings about you.

And that very early nightmares are often mommy and and daddy being really sad, mommy and daddy being really mad, right, because the notion is, I am feeling these things, what if they also feel these things? And I think that protective environment that you're talking about, Thomas, right, something that we create with the best of intentions, right, because we tell our kids, you're my baby, I love you so much, you're perfect, blah, blah, blah.

And I think as the imperfections of the world intrude in on their lives, they don't feel like they can bring those things to us because, because as, as we mean well and as much as we want to be there for our kids, I think sometimes we accidentally reinforce for them that this is only the zone where happy things happen.

0:14:12 Thomas: Yeah.

0:14:12 Eli: This is only The Zone where they are happy and loved and safe. So why would you bring in something scary from school or something sad from school to this space?

0:14:13 Thomas: One More little wrinkle to it, I think, that environment also might create, and again, it's kids, so their brains, you know, they're fully wrinkled, as Eli likes to say. But I think it also creates a feeling that, well, this environment is so idealistic that there's no way they could know about these things. Like, that I'm going to, like, they must just not know. Like this must be something that my parents have never come across kind of thing. And like, I need to protect their innocence because it this feeling of like, well, some things in the world are so shitty that it's like, there's no way that's compatible with the happy parental environment. Therefore, I must continue to my protect naive parents from it. You know?

0:14:39 Eli: Right.

0:14:58 Tom: I think is really interesting is that at least in my personal experience, this doesn't change fundamentally that much, even as kids get older and older and older. And I'll give you like a lighthearted example. And then I'll give you some really weird moments from my life that I, yeah,

0:15:12 Eli: Trigger warning. Tom thinks this is a Lighthearted example, everybody. Buddy. Well.

0:15:13 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah. You

0:15:16 Tom: Actually There should be a trigger warning before second one. So the first one is lighthearted. So I used, I think I told the story before when I was a teenager, I would sneak out of my house all the time. My dad would go to sleep. My buddy would page me, et cetera, etetera. I'd sneak out. My, my dad still, I'm 46 years old next month. My dad's still doesn't know this.

And I would go to my grave fighting to make sure he never knows that because my dad has an idea in his head about all the work that he did to protect me and to keep me safe and to make certain that was like why he was as strict as he was, because he knew he was a single dad raising two teenage boys without a lot of oversight.

And for me to like let him find out that I was out all hours of the night, five days a week off to whatever fuckery I was up to, like, does he need to know that? You know, that would just hurt him. I know my dad. He would feel like, fuck, all these years I thought I had done well.

0:16:09 Thomas: Don't don't think there's any chance he'd be like, oh, I knew. You don'T think there'S any chance?

0:16:14 Tom: Zero Percent chance. No, zero. I think it would genuinely hurt him and I think that would hurt the space that we have together now even. For him to find that out, it wouldn't hurt him, like it wouldn't like irreparably damage our relationship as two adults, but I think like for him to find that information out would do no good, And only do harm.

0:16:15 Thomas: Okay. Yeah. Yeah.

0:16:35 Tom: It would Just make him Hurt.

0:16:36 Thomas: Yeah.

0:16:36 Eli: And Funnily enough, now looking at it from the parent side of things, right, you had the ability to know whether or not Finn was sneaking out to do dangerous things. You want that knowledge, right? The, the part that is most Painful is Not the disobedience, it's like, no, I wanted to be there to protect you, To help you, to talk Through this, like, that's, that's the protection. There is like, even as a parent, where you realize you absolutely with deepest certainty would want to know whatever is going on with your kids at the very least. So you can kill somebody with a shovel, right, still, as a child are like, yeah, but my stuff, I don't want to pass along. Like I know as a parent, I would want To know, but also cause I feel that with my mom, I feel That with my, my parents as well, which is like, ah, there are things my mom doesn't need to, I don't need to go into this. I don't care.

0:16:48 Tom: Yeah. Yes. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Right. Yeah.

0:17:24 Eli: That's fine. I turned out. All right. That turned out. Is that okay? Like, I do the weird, like, Tom, you know, falling down a set of stairs thing where you're like, it's not that bad. It's not the best. It's all right. The turtle didn't catch me. It's fine.

0:17:28 Tom: I Can Set my Own arm. It's not A big deal. So, like, when I was, and this one may be trigger warning for people that have, you, concerns around like children And weird Sex stuff. So, No, this is like a weird, but like when I was a kid, um, this was before fifth grade, so somewhere Around third or fourth Grade, I

0:17:44 Thomas: Snapping turtles. Oh, okay. Oh, I wait. It's not the guy that your mom.

0:17:53 Tom: No.

0:17:54 Thomas: Okay. There's a lot of potential predators.

0:17:54 Eli: No, no, it is. It's the mom sacrificing

0:17:54 Tom: No. This Is no. No. No, this

0:17:57 Eli: Him to a pervert at summer camp.

0:17:58 Thomas: Yeah. Sorry, Tom.

0:18:02 Eli: Stop jumping ahead of Tom's trauma, please. Rude. Interrupter.

0:18:02 Thomas: Mixed up my perverts. Yeah.

0:18:01 Tom: That that's all right, so, um, So a couple of times in my life, but like the earliest was when I wasn't, maybe third or fourth grade, I don't remember which, somewhere around that age though. My dad hired a young lady to be the babysitter, and this young lady was, maybe I don't know, I'm gonna guess, because you know, I was a little kid, so kids seem older than you, but she was somewhere in like early high school, right? Early high school, maybe late middle school.

And when she would come over and babysit, and she did somewhat regular, she'd come over and babysit at night, she would go and she found my dad's Penthouse letters, that was, my dad had a couple of magazines of Penthouse letters, and then she would sit us on the bed and she would goes through them with us and read to us the stories from Penthouse house letters. We're eight, right? We're eight, nine years old, something like that. And like it was this weird, very wildly inappropriate, sexualized moment, right? And then she would also make prank calls, and she would try to find men that would get on the phone, and then she would prank call them and do all this like sexual, very overtly

0:18:35 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah.

0:18:52 Eli: Right.

0:19:04 Tom: Sexualized talk.

0:19:04 Thomas: Jesus Christ. Nice.

0:19:05 Tom: And my brother and I would get on the other end of the phone, and we thought this was hilarious, right? But, but as this was going on, we're learning all of this really inappropriate, hyper sexualized stuff. And she did it every time she came over to babysit. Like this was like a routine, like we wait for dad to drive off, and then she would go and like find whatever she could find that my dad had squirreled away. And like she would read this stuff and like she clearly was like getting off on this whole thing, but she was also like weirdly getting off and sharing it. There's no world where

0:19:05 Thomas: This is very disturbing. Yeah, yeah.

0:19:36 Tom: I like, I said, trigger warning in front of it, I hope. Like, like there's no world where I would ever want my dad to know about that, and he never knew about that, and I would never tell him about that, and it's it's not because I was trying to protect her, right.

0:19:37 Thomas: For sure, yeah, no. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

0:19:49 Tom: But that'sthe meat of that Sendak quote, right? Is that as kids we experience parts of the world that we absolutely are protecting our parents from knowing we know about, and instinctively do that. I'm second, third, fourth grade, somewhere in that zone. Again, it's hard for me to pinpoint that space. I just knew where I was living at the time, so I don't have a good referent for the timeline. He eventually fired her, incidentally, because one of us was in charge. My brother and I would be in charge of looking out through the front window to see his car, and then we'd run. That was like, she had one of of us like on lookout, and like he saw her little face in the behind the curtains, and he fired her because he was like, they're supposed to be in bed, you know, they're not in bed or whatever, but

0:19:45 Eli: But as a parent, mm -hmm, yeah, yeah.

0:20:34 Tom: I mean, this went on for six, eight, nine months, you know, went on für kind of a long time, so there was no world where I would have told my dad what was going on, even though I absolutely knew something about this was inappropriate, right? We knew this was clandestine, we knew this was furtive, at the, the very least we knew dad wasn't allowed to know about it, and we hold those secrets. Kids do this shit all of the time, all the time, we hold these secrets, and that is a sort of quasi-dangerous secret for me to have held, right? Like that was not good behavior, and I am keenly aware there's no way my kids don't have that same experience, because

0:20:42 Eli: Mm -hm. Of course. Yeah. Dude,

0:21:14 Tom: This and not going to be exactly the same, right? There are things I don't know about my son Finnegan, deep and important experiences that he's had that he is hiding from me to protect me. That's this like weird thing to know, that like, if this resonates for me and everybody I've ever talked to about this idea, then that also is almost certainly true about my own relationship with my son and my other kids, that they have had experiences and moments of their lives that may, may be like fantastically and wildly inappropriate. And I actually had another babysitter when I was maybe sixth grade who would teach us to shoplift, she would take us to the stores and she would teach us how to shoplift, and he tried man, I had a lot of weird babysitters, man.

0:21:51 Thomas: Where's your dad getting these babysitters like he's like yeah Okay.

0:21:56 Eli: Fagan babysitter services was such, they were so affordable. You have no idea.

0:22:00 Tom: Dude, thing is, like, there was no such thing as care.com back then, there was, there's no like, you just got word of mouth from other people is like how everything was found, you know?

0:22:09 Thomas: Whose mouths was the local penitentiary, like who the fuck

0:22:14 Tom: Yeah.

0:22:14 Eli: The people who were willing to talk to Tom's dad, Thomas, pay attention.

0:22:15 Thomas: Yeah that's a good point, Jesus.

0:22:17 Tom: Yeah. And this, this other lady would take us, like, lady, like she was also a teenager, she would take me to her boyfriend's house and like sit us in front of the TV while she'd go bang her boyfriend in the other room, and then she'd come out and talk to us about it, like she would tell us about it, like in explicit detail.

0:22:25 Thomas: Christ. What

0:22:34 Tom: Yeah. She also found one of my dad's, my dad had a sex tape of himself, um, with his partner, and she watched it, um, and told us about it. Like, so just, I've had wildly in like inappropriate experiences and never would I tell my dad about these things, and I was not trying to protect these ladies, like these women, I didn't give a shit about them, you know.

0:22:32 Thomas: In the world okay no just like oh my god what in the world Tom what the fuck, Jesus. Christ. Christ.

0:22:34 Eli: Yeah, that's okay. One second. Your dad. First of all, Tom, I need, I mean, here's what I need to be true in the universe. I need that teenager to be lying because there's no spot in the Tetris of your dad for, Lynn, what do you say we film it tonight, huh? You want to hop up on the old hobby horse?

0:22:59 Thomas: Yeah. No I agree I couldn't agree more yeah

0:23:06 Tom: My yeah I I you guys you guys have a wildly inaccurate, accurate view of my dad. My dad's just a regular guy. Like he's a, I don't know why, like he's just a regular guide. Like, he's not like, uh,

0:23:21 Eli: Maybe I'm the, look, maybe I'm The Prude here at Old Dear Old Dads, but I feel like filming yourself fucking in those days, in those, when everyone wasn't walking around, You had to go down to Blockbuster

0:23:22 Thomas: I guess yeah that took a film crew that took technology like

0:23:32 Tom: It took a camcorder, man. It took a camp corner.

0:23:36 Thomas: A yeah

0:23:36 Eli: And rent one. You couldn't afford to buy it. You had rent one, get the tape.

0:23:37 Thomas: Yeah we

0:23:40 Tom: Your, your family didn't have like a cam quarter for Christmas videos. It's, it's not any more complicated than put the cam quarter on a shelf.

0:23:43 Thomas: Did and god I just this

0:23:45 Eli: If you're implying that my parents filmed themselves while they had sex, how

0:23:50 Tom: Your parents, you, your mom has video of her fucking your dad a hundred percent.

0:23:53 Eli: Dare they? How dare they. Absolutely not. Absolutely

0:23:56 Thomas: Is so Uncomfortable. Comfortable is why I don't want to read the journals. Maybe there's going to be diagrams.

0:23:57 Eli: Not, yeah. It's just all fuck stuff. That would be so good. That would be that'd be the series finale of dear old dance

0:24:02 Thomas: Could be. Why would I want that? What's the upside? Not reading the diaries. Yeah.

0:24:07 Tom: But but He's got pictures and diagrams and exhibit A's and shit

0:24:09 Eli: Yeah

0:24:08 Thomas: Yeah, oh god. One of my favorite jokes in all of anything is Big Lebowski when he goes over and does the like notepad, you know? When the guy's on the phone, he does the detective thing of like scratching the notepad to find out what he was writing, and it's just a big picture of a dick and it's like that would be that it would be like, "Yes, we finally cracked the diaries. Here, go. My gosh, just dicks."

0:24:25 Eli: Yeah we hit 11,000 patrons or whatever it is, that some sarcastic not number that Thomas put up. And then he's just like, "Today we tried the dance of the seven scarves. First me, and then or any, just Thomas lights it on fire. It's like, "All right, everybody I guess I'm into music after all, you gotta

0:24:31 Thomas: It's uh yeah yeah there weren't diaries, yeah turns out

0:24:49 Tom: I don't care at all that my dad had a sex date, like he and also, to his credit, he kept it in a locked safe that she broke into, like she Found the key to his safe and broke into his safe she found the key like she found a key so like it

0:24:55 Thomas: Cracked a safe did what yeah

0:24:59 Eli: Stop kidding your babysitters for motions, 11. I've said this so many times

0:25:02 Tom: Was no this

0:25:02 Thomas: I know what is this part of me thinks this could be made up, maybe there's some like more serious trauma, maybe something even worse happened that Tom's brain is covering for. You know, he's just like invented

0:25:12 Eli: It's covering yeah

0:25:07 Tom: Is not made up it's covering up but but what, what I new at that age too was for some reason this needed to be kept secret, and I don't think I was right to keep it secret, right, but your your kid brain tells you that you should not tell, right, that you can't tell, that something, something will change about your relationship with your parent if you know this thing about them, or they, or they find out this really like weird thing about you. And I think that it often revolves around our understandings of sex and violence that we

0:25:13 Thomas: Yeah mm -hmm Eli

0:25:20 Eli: Right yes

0:25:44 Tom: Understand, like, we should, we've come to understand part of the world that we're not supposed to know, and then when we come to understand that part of the world, we have to hide it from our parents and and I, I think the desire to do that is to preserve that sacred space, so because I think kids are afraid that you'll look at them differently, or that that'll change that relationship, or they'll see you as like I don't know, like, having matured or precocious or something. I'm not like putting my finger right on it, but it is, it is like this universal thing where it's like, knew, like as a kid, there was no, nobody could have pulled my teeth out with pliers hard enough for me to have told, and not because I I had any like loyalty or affection for these babysitters, I did not, but because like I didn't want dad to know that about me, right like learning that about me would have felt wrong. I'm

0:25:54 Eli: Mm-hmm yeah yeah, I the hope, right, that being a truly universal experience, except for me, I will say that, like, I did not when you, one of the things that I wanted to do this episode, one of the reasons that I want to do that, do this episode, is it resonated so hard with you guys, and not necessarily that hard with me. Like, I definitely understand it and I can listen to your stories and and and empathize, but I didn't have that experience as a kid.

So I think one of the questions that we can ask ourselves, because I don't think it's a bygone conclusion, is like how do we create as safe a space as possible, understanding that our kids will have some secrets, right, that there's nothing we can do to prevent them from having any secrets from us, but how can we create a space as parents where they will come to us about stuff like that.

Because I like to think, and Tom, I really think it's true, that like if Finn were in any of the situations that you just described, he would know he could come to you, right, because of the environment that you have created, in the environment you and Hayley have created for Donovan and Aislinn and and the whole fam. There, they're like, I to think that's true, but do you think I'm kidding myself? Do we think the secrets and the, so

0:27:40 Tom: Certain that Finn would keep secrets from me if they related to his relationship with his mom, as a as full-time custodial parent, there are a hundred percent things that I know that that have gone on in his home day to day that he would hide from me. I

0:27:56 Thomas: I so baffled at this because I thought, I, there was a um, definite depression-brain component to this that was why at first I thought it was going to be more you and I resonating. Like, there's no sense in which you felt like, okay, I'm having these thoughts that are so shitty or dark that I just, I cannot put those on my parents

0:28:13 Tom: Oh, that's an interest. Yeah. That's less experiential outside external and more experiential internal, but it is the same. Yeah,

0:28:16 Thomas: But it's the same I, it's I, yeah Yeah.

0:28:19 Eli: My family was very open. I gotta remember my mom grew up with depression, so we talked about it all So was that, never the issue. Honestly, the secret keeping didn't, funnily enough, didn't start until college when I got really ashamed of my behavior. And as an adult looking back, one, it was largely about sex stuff. But two, it Was that I knew I was being mistreated and didn't have language for that as a young man, right?

0:28:24 Thomas: Hmm yeah yeah

0:28:48 Eli: Like, I didn't understand that I was in unhealthy relationships because grownups were having sex with me.

0:28:47 Tom: Yeah,

0:28:54 Thomas: Well has to be part of it, has the heartbreak of like you don't want your parents to know that because it would make them sad, right? I can definitely relate to that yeah and what's so scary about this is I don't think there's it to, I answer your question, Eli, I mean, I truly don't know, like, if you're describing your experience accurately, then it does seem like it's at least possible that you wouldn't feel like you had any of these things, at least up until and so maybe it's possible. But I think what's important here is that I really, really believe that this is not a result of bad parenting. It's not. It's not a result of them thinking they're not safe or they can't talk. It almost can be a result of good parenting. You've created

0:29:00 Eli: Right yeah that's a huge part of it, yeah, absolutely I oh

0:29:31 Tom: Right.

0:29:33 Thomas: Such a beautiful, loving environment that they're like, like, this is too pure, you, I don't want to ruin this thing. You know, like, and I think it has a lot to do with the mental health of the children. I think, want to speak too much for Lydia, but I think she has some of these same feelings where there's feeling of protecting your image in a certain way that I think can come with some of, you illnesses that, t, know, I, that it's all under your control as a parent at all, you know, yeah

0:29:57 Eli: Yeah, and I think that's really good correction too, because I, I don't want to seem like I'm expressing like, yeah, well, if you're just a good enough dad they'll always tell you when inappropriate stuff happens yeah um, because while that is definitely true of Tom's dad, who we have agreed is Hitler, like there there's I I think it's, I think it's true of every parent, right, and I, I think we need those extra, right? It's like, okay, cool. Like if this can be a result of good parenting and bad parenting, right, if the level of parenting you're doing might not necessarily affect this thing, what's the backup tool? Like, what do you do for your kids, right. One things that I've been struggling with is a great, great example is so Max on weekends now goes to his babysitter's house, right

0:30:05 Tom: Yeah he is. God damn it. It's a good dad.

0:30:05 Thomas: Yeah wow yeah

0:30:40 Eli: Goes to his nanny's house. And it is amazing, amazing, he adores it there, they treat him like, they spoil him so much because we were like, hey, we don't want you paying for like all the food and stuff, like please let us reimburse you for the groceries, and they will send, and the the way they are absolutely treating this boy, right, and we see pictures of him all snuggled up and watching this, and we're doing that, it's amazing, it's wonderful, but he's, I'm not watching, right, I'm not watching, and Anna's not watching. And and there is a part of me that whenever my son is not in my house, I'm like, camera. Like, I know I know.

0:31:13 Thomas: And they're like, oh wait, that would be an actual crime to plant a cat, it's

0:31:17 Eli: I'm joking. It is it is for sure. He's a crime one way recording state, but it doesn't matter for sure as he's a crime. And I and absolutely I trust Max's nanny to care about him and his safety and protection as much. But I'm also in the post-kidnapping-slash-molestation-panic era, where I'm just like, I have heard so many stories that began with, I used to go to this place, that my head is like, but the other places are where bad things happen.

0:31:25 Thomas: Like he looked it up but hmm yeah well fortunately Tom's dad took all of the horrendous babysitters, there's none left, you know, I think he he worked his way through all of them. Yeah.

0:31:52 Tom: There's the outset they're all

0:31:52 Eli: Yes, it's true, to be fair. They were all used up. They were always used up on top. Uh, but like,

0:31:57 Thomas: Tom is Christ -like figure took it all for the slings and arrows of weird fucking sex stuff that the babysitters did.

0:32:03 Tom: They weird

0:32:06 Eli: Ictharius, do I still nail this wrist? He's got a shock bracelet on and I feel like nailing it is kind of, yeah.

0:32:11 Thomas: Do I take it off before I knew it?

0:32:13 Tom: He stopped snoring that's all that happened we pounded the nail in

0:32:14 Thomas: Okay.

0:32:17 Eli: My question is like, is something we can do about this or

0:32:20 Thomas: Gosh, I think about it so much because for biggest worry, one of the things that is hardest for me as a parent is there are things about the world that affect me very deeply and in my worry is I have a feeling that when our kids get old enough to discover more truths about about the world that there's this going to be this feeling of betrayal or something. There's going to me this feeling like, you this is the world like and you guys were just kind of carrying on like everything's great in our little happy house. You know, do you have that fear? I just have that fear that like maybe it's unwarranted, but it just I just know that the minute I started learning about stuff and I'm not even talking about, you current stuff, just like history, just whatever. I remember being in middle school and just learning about history and just being like, this is horrible. Like, I can't, I can't do this. Like,

0:33:03 Eli: I think it's a very real concern. And I think it also, your, your outlook gets passed on. And I parents were very real with her about some scary things about the world very young. And it's still very hard for her to have good, healthy conversations about those fears, right? Because they sort of went the other way, right, which is, like – we want to tell it to you straight and like when you're young you're not ready to have it told to you straight, right? And And I think there's a lot of people out there that are like, how could the truth be bad? But I, I'm, I live with someone who lives with the consequences of that, so it's it's it's worse. It's not just a secret, it's also a delicate balance, right?

0:33:30 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah.

0:33:43 Tom: Yeah. Yeah, I think the whole, you know, talk to your kids about everything approach, especially when they're young, is just an objectively terrible thing to do. And I know people that do that, and that is their approach is they'll tell their kids all the unvarnished truths about their own personal struggles, mental illness, with the world, that bills need to be paid, just everything. Their kids are just sort of treated in that sort of peer space. Think that's horrifying. I mean, I don't think it's horrifying, but that is horrifying, and it is objectively bad. It should not be done. That's a that's a bad way to teach the kids, you

0:34:16 Thomas: Yeah, me ask you this, Tom. What do you thing about the idea of the, of that, creating an environment where you've let in enough reality to where your kids aren't going to feel like they can't tell you stuff because it'll pierce this like fake, idealized world you're in? You know what I mean? Is there balance

0:34:38 Tom: Pierce the veil, so to speak. Yeah, this I is a space where I'm not sure that there is a solution, because part of me thinks that this is also just because it's so almost universal. I do wonder if it's not also just developmentally appropriate, or developmentally just part of our maturation process, to experience things. And part of the independence of experience is learning how to house certain experiences ourselves. Ourselves, now, we don't want them to house deeply traumatic experiences, and that's the difficulty.

0:34:40 Thomas: Yeah, Mm. -hmm. Exactly. Like your, like, Babysitters, exactly. Yeah.

0:35:11 Eli: Yeah.

0:35:11 Tom: Yeah, no, look, I, I fully admit, like, huge parts of my life I look back on and I'm like, I don't even have language for them other than like, "That was weird," and I don't really know how to say things more. I, I don't really have good language for them beyond just being like, "I had a weird moment," and, like, it's, I don't, not a weird moment, like, it's, that's not the right language for it. I know that I, and and I recognize, like, these are things I should not have housed exposed, but

0:35:28 Eli: Right. But it's in its box, right? Like, I, I deal with that as well as, will, I often use the term "not cash money," and I used it once with a therapist, and he was like, "Hey, what?" And I was like, "Oh, it's just, um, just a thing I do when I talk about that stuff," and He was like, "But what if you didn't though?" And I was like, "I don't know," but I've been doing it for like two decades.

0:35:38 Tom: Right. Yeah. Yeah, yeah.

0:35:50 Thomas: Yeah. God.

0:35:52 Eli: So why don't we not do it, huh? I think

0:35:55 Tom: You'll hear me say like, yeah, I don't feel like that was ideal. I'll just say that all the time. Like, that was less than ideal, but

0:35:58 Thomas: I know Yeah. Imagine a therapist with Tom on that, like, God, he's gonna have to get a whole translation, like a dictionary

0:36:04 Eli: Do they quit or are they, like, "We're doing this every day, seven days a week"?

0:36:05 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah.

0:36:08 Tom: I also, and I this is, this may be like a little controversial, but I am also very leery of pathologizing traumatic experiences that have been handled. I for the wear. I don't feel like I carry anything that has hurt me deeply from these experiences. They may have hurt other people. I'm not saying that they didn't hurt me. But what I'm saying is like I don't feel that way. I've never felt that way. They felt like it deeply inappropriate at the time. They also felt titillating at the time, for sure, in many ways, both like overt sexuality that was being exposed, but also the hiding and the sneaking and like all that's fun as a kid.

I Like know that that could have led to me being very physically unsafe. It didn't. I'm glad for that, but it didn't, and I don't feel worse for the wear. And I'm also very leery of, not after the fact, externally pathologizing an experience that has been sort of locked away and put to bed and doesn't feel to me in any way like it has hurt me. So I think that's a tendency some people have, to do, is be like, "Oh, that was trauma. You've been traumatized. You must carry some trauma from it." It's like, well, I think sometimes bad things happen, and we're like, sometimes you're OK with

0:36:48 Eli: Yeah. Yeah.

0:37:19 Tom: Some of them. Sometimes you're not OK with others. But I don't want to externally after the fat do that. And I'm conscious of that, too.

0:37:19 Eli: And And how do we validate things that did traumatize other people that didn't traumatize us? Right, so that, that's again, experiences that I share that were not cash money that I think a lot of people would take with them and carry with them with tremendous weight, and I don't, particularly, and that's largely because of privilege, and I got lucky, and a million different resources were at my disposal, right? But, like, one of the conversations that we want to be able to have as parents that I think is really important to have, his parents, is like, "Hey, these, these bad things happen, and bad things affect different people differently." And how do we hold people who carried away great harm? In... know the words. So sorry, I'm stuck because I'm reading a Quaker book right now, and the way they express empathy is they say, "Holding you in the light." And so I almost said, "How do we hold those people in the light?" So if someone could come to my house and punch me

0:37:29 Tom: Right.

0:37:40 Tom: Same. Yeah.

0:38:17 Thomas: Well

0:38:17 Eli: In the throat until I die. But, like, how do we respect that person's experience while also speaking to the truth of our own, so that our kids can do the same thing?

0:38:18 Tom: Yeah, and say, like, I don't think it was traumatic in any way, but I have found out with the kids that, like, Donovan had a whole-ass relationship, that relationship. It was a whole-ass relationship that I only found out about after he had his teeth pulled and he was high on ketamine coming out of the anesthesia. And I don't think he held that back because it was bad for him. But when we talked about it, I was like, "Holy shit." The reason he got out of it is this person had some serious mental health issues, and he didn't feel like he could adequately be in a relationship and address them. And this was like a whole thing that he went through. And that kid tells us, we thought, everything.

0:38:45 Eli: Mm-hmm. Right.

0:39:04 Tom: And then he'll just casually drop something, and sat with that for a while, and I thought about that in relation to this episode as well, that, like, that's okay.

I, do I think that we have done as parents the best job we can possibly do with real intention, to create an environment where they can, they can feel like they can talk to us, they can feel like we will love them in return for whatever they say, that on their side, and that I have to also know as a parent that, like, I'm just not going to find out about a lot of shit, and that's just going to be something that's probably true, and that will probably be true throughout the entire, not just for my kids when they're young, but as my kids get older, there's lots of shit, like, as a grown-up, you, like, at some point you stop going to your parents for advice, and maybe you shouldn't, be, maybe your parents are exactly who you should be going to for advice, and, and we don't always do that, sometimes we do and sometimes we don't, but it is this like weird fiction that we're all trying to preserve, and I'm not convinced that that fiction is bad.

I think that that friction is like a place we can retreat into, and even if we know in the back of our mind that it's false, it's safe, and

0:40:13 Eli: Right.

0:40:13 Tom: I don't think that, like, we gain as much as we maybe stand to lose by blowing that up outside of extreme circumstances. I do think that there are extreme circumstances where preserving that fiction can be very dangerous. Um, I love that fiction. You know what I mean? Like, I don't ever want my dad to find out, I have, my dad ever listened to this episode of the show, I would be genuinely, I would, I would just endlessly apologize. No, I have, I've never told him about this show intentionally so that I feel like I can speak on this show. Uh, I would never tell him about this show because, like, I don't ever want him to find out about that, because he was doing his best, he didn't give it, you know, we weren't sitting with a babysitter so my dad could go out drinking with his buddies, it was so we could work late, you know.

0:40:36 Thomas: You're in luck, Tom. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly

0:40:39 Eli: Ha -ha!

0:40:58 Thomas: And film sex tapes, apparently. But yeah, I think if we were all to...

0:40:59 Eli: Well, Phil's sex taste, right? Probably had a lot of room -sized props he had to incorporate, so...

0:41:05 Thomas: I think the ideal, correct me if I'm wrong, but I feel like we would all agree the ideal if it were achievable would be both having that sacred environment, but also your kid knowing that you love them so much that none of these things actually violate that sacred environment. Right?

0:41:20 Tom: If that's possible, yeah.

0:41:22 Eli: Know some people don't like it when I say this, and... And every time, I'm a little bit Roger Rabbit over here.

0:41:26 Tom: This is the surveillance state

0:41:30 Thomas: No, that's not what I'm saying. Eli, like, that's not what I'm saying. I don't, I don'T want to just know the stuff I want. I would, I think the ideal is that your kid would tell you because they know it's fine. That would be the ideal. That doesn't involve.

0:41:37 Tom: Yeah yeah but you know, like, part of it is your kids are just going to be like, I fucking handled It like, I remember feeling that way when I was a kid, be like, yeah, I got this, I got this on lock, like I don't, cool, but

0:41:43 Eli: Sure. I don't know. There's some things. But I didn't handle it. I didn' I didn', I,

0:41:53 Tom: I was wrong, yeah

0:41:56 Thomas: And I had a lots of toxic independence, still have a lot toxic independence. And that was, I had that same attitude, exact same attitude. Tom, God knows what I handled and I put away and I have a bad bad memory. So I don't even know, like God knows.

0:41:58 Tom: Yeah for sure, yeah no, you're right yeah it's all in those journals. It's in the it's in the snake cave

0:42:10 Eli: Dead people, the dead person with the, oh,

0:42:10 Thomas: No, no, it's not. It's no, Tom, it's not. It's stuff that I handled that I would never tell my parents, you know? And it's like, I don't know. And I recognize now that that's not good. Like it's NOT, it might feel like you're being tough or something, but it's really not good, it' think it's ideal. I would like Like my kids did not feel like that.

0:42:16 Tom: Right that's right right there

0:42:27 Eli: Yeah,

0:42:28 Tom: We go, I love the language it's not ideal

0:42:30 Thomas: Yeah.

0:42:29 Eli: I mean, I have, and Tom, you've talked about this and told some of these stories on air, but, like, I have stories that were not good, good experiences that I was like, but I came out the other side and I just have to say I didn't, I did not just, it didn't kill me, it didn't kill me, but it also really could have, like, really could of but

0:42:45 Thomas: Yeah.

0:42:48 Tom: Yeah right

0:42:54 Thomas: Imagine Tom's therapist being like, yeah, I mean, you know, you'd be surprised. I've heard of some people that shock their balls to wake themselves up up and you'd be like, wow, they think they don't have any trauma. And Tom's like, Yeah, slowly backs out of room.

0:43:05 Eli: Totally why are you getting up? Nothing, nothing. Why are, are you moving the couch in front of the door? Nobody could know. Um, it's because, here's, here's where I'm torn, and I'm not going to say the surveillance state thing again. I'm not going say, I'm going to talk about other stuff. Here's where I'm torn, right? When I, I want it so bad. Just think about it. It's like the monogamy stuff, just think, think about it until you realize that there is

0:43:06 Thomas: Yeah.

0:43:29 Thomas: Please don't sally the monogamy stuff with this talk.

0:43:36 Eli: A part of me that's like, OK, yeah, I have stuff that I'm like, I was fine and I now know I'm not fine. And the thought of the smallest, tiniest thing along those lines happening to Max makes me feel nation-destroyingly crazy. Like, if an angel came down and was like, Max will have no bad secrets like that, but we'll destroy Botswana, I'd be like, how many people are in Botswana?

0:43:55 Thomas: Yeah.

0:44:11 Thomas: Know this is going to be Phoebe. I already know it. I mean, she already gets she already she already keeps stuff from us because I mean we're still evaluating or whatever, but I do think it's an OCD thing. I think she has the same reason she gets instantly so is not doesn't describe it. Like she gets hysterical at the drop of a hat if like a button isn't working on her sweater. I think he has these, she has these very rigid ideas of who she is and what she is. And I know that if something happens that maybe violates that for her in a way that you felt we shouldn't know or would change our idea of her.

0:44:14 Tom: Yeah. Yeah.

0:44:44 Eli: Or that someone told her that she was not allowed to tell her they would do that.

0:44:47 Thomas: Maybe yeah I I think this will be her, I'm very worried because get hurt and and we'll be like, oh, what's wrong, she'll go, I don't want to tell you, like she already does that she's done that for a really long time Yeah.

0:44:55 Eli: Mm -hmm. Yeah.

0:44:54 Tom: Yeah. So So yeah, look, I I want to touch on that because like I think that a giant piece of that is innate, it's the nature nurture, like I feel like the nurture is not the problem there Right, in our household I know like not every kid in the same household goes up with the the same experiences. I totally get that. But like, I don't think it's so different from kid to kid in our household. And some kids just, you can tell from when they're very young that they are less Communicative. They hold more things privately. They don't want to share as much. And other kids are open books. Finn was an absolute open book to me. And he continues to be for the most part an open book to me if I, you know, really want to have a real meaningful conversation with him. Amen is locked down like motherfucking Fort Knox all the time, like kid won't tell me shit about shit, I can go fuck myself sideways if I want to learn something about his life or about how he feels, that seems to be just who

0:45:07 Eli: Yeah.

0:45:21 Thomas: For sure yeah yeah

0:45:54 Tom: He is, and I honestly, Aislinn's similar, not as much as Eamon, but there's a vast gulf between Aisling and Donovan in terms of their innate openness. And so part of me is like, I'm not sure that we can build an environment that's more nurturing or more loving and that that will create an openness that doesn't exist within the person innately. Does that make sense?

0:46:18 Eli: Yeah. All

0:46:13 Thomas: Totally agree, yeah I couldn't agree more, I I'm, I right on the same page, I I really worry that a lot of that is, I think hopefully we can control some of it, but yeah, I mean, Phoebe's been Phoebe the minute she she was born, it's crazy it's just So crazy, yeah

0:46:28 Tom: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. As soon as you have kids, like when you have the first kid, you're like, OK, cool. This is how I parent and this is how they turn out as a result of that parenting. And then you have a second one. You're like. Well, none of that was true. Just they're just different. You know, they're Just fucking so different. Yeah, I

0:46:42 Thomas: Yep Oh

0:46:51 Eli: Right, gentlemen, surveillance date. Gentlemen, before we go, why is it hard for a communist to tell a joke? Because it's not funny until everyone gets it, I

0:47:00 Tom: Need

0:47:02 Thomas: Man

0:47:10 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.

0:47:51 Eli: Your mind, and it's would love that shit! Oh!

0:47:53 Tom: I hate that shit oh