DOD135: Some Softball Hardball

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 throwing softballs. I'm Tom Curry. I am joined as always by Thomas Smith and Eli Bosnick. Hello, gentlemen.

0:00:37 Thomas: That intro was a stop. Nice. I like it. That's met on so many levels.

0:00:40 Tom: Hey

0:00:39 Eli: Yeah, how dare you, our takes are such hardball takes, Tom. Between you not being able to see your exes, and my...

0:00:48 Tom: Not my fault they become transparent after I break up with them. That's their They should think about that different.

0:00:50 Eli: Exactly, that's true, they do... it's like a weird Invisible Man sequel made of your mental illness. But

0:00:59 Thomas: Speaking of mental illness, I'm trying so hard to have my first vacation, fellas. I I should share this with the audience and with you so that you can all ridicule me when I fail. Accountability, right? You tell someone something and then they just, yeah.

0:01:09 Eli: And then you don't do it, and then

0:01:17 Thomas: And then they make fun of you or something. Is that?

0:01:17 Eli: Right they try, and then your like, "No, actually, what happened?" Arlo has AIDS. Arlo HAS HIV. He has AIDS.

0:01:22 Tom: And

0:01:21 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah, exactly. There'll be a good reason. Oh, that's it. That's accountability. I'm trying so hard to like record stuff before we go so we can do this trip out to see you all. And yeah, Yeah. And so, and it's not going to work, but I'm trying. I just want everyone to know I'm doing my best, and even if it means I only work, like, half the entire time, that'll be an improvement from last year. I didn't even, I didn't even get to do anything. Yep.

0:01:34 Eli: The matrion pajama party. You're doing your best yeah.

0:01:48 Eli: Well, it's a huge improvement from last year year, basically. Thomas had two

0:01:53 Thomas: Yep. Stupid It

0:01:54 Eli: Activities, like there were two activities. Thomas was like, I'm gonna go to this dinner, and I'm gonna catch the plane home. Yeah.

0:02:00 Tom: Yeah.

0:02:00 Thomas: Sucked. Yeah, it was, uh, you know, it was a rough year. I don't remember why, but it was just a weird rough year all around.

0:02:04 Tom: I don't know what you had going on.

0:02:05 Thomas: Yeah.

0:02:05 Eli: I don't know what We can actually say that now. Someone stole your company. It's nice.

0:02:06 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah. And I had to, I had a work night and and day to be able to afford the absolute fucking crime that is attorney's peace, and everyone's all like, "Hey, whoa, you don't have to work that hard." That was the best thing. I don't blame anyone, I'm not mad, but everybody'd be like, "Whoa, hey, just don't, don't do that much work." I was like, "Yeah, yeah, sure." Yeah.

0:02:12 Eli: Yeah. Yeah.

0:02:29 Thomas: I'll just uh just do that.

0:02:28 Eli: I love that because we and not to not reject the sympathy of listeners because it's actually really lovely, but like when, when When we will obliquely reference working hard, I will often get an email or a message from someone being like, hey, I just want you to know that if there was one game a month, I would be totally fine with that. And we love your stuff and I want you be well. And I'm like, that is so amazingly sweet of you. My child eats all the weeks, unfortunately.

0:02:31 Thomas: Yeah. Totally. I know. Yeah. Yeah.

0:02:53 Eli: He eats every, he never skips a week of the eating. I would love him to stop. I told him, I told them fasting's good for you. But you know, he doesn't listen. He's four.

0:02:53 Tom: Know right. That's

0:03:02 Thomas: I think it's so good

0:03:03 Eli: What?

0:03:04 Thomas: Too, because, again, and I, your sentiment of it. I'm sure it all comes from a good place, but it's also funny because I think what people hear is they're like to them, look, people people, love our stuff, I'm Sure. But to them they're like, oh, this is just a fucking podcast though. Like you don't have to, you don' have to kill yourself over a podcast.

0:03:17 Eli: Do you, do you get on you joke around with your buddy, right? You chitter chatter, you pitter patter

0:03:24 Thomas: And from their perspective they're like, you could do one a year and yeah, whatever, like it's it's just a podcast.

0:03:25 Eli: Yeah. We get that from sympathetic listeners and heathen, right? My co-host, those are the two

0:03:36 Tom: It, this This I have to say though, this feels a lot like when you, Eli, are like, you should reorganize your life to sleep more. This feels very similar.

0:03:36 Eli: Yeah. Right.

0:03:44 Thomas: Well, Okay.

0:03:44 Tom: Like, okay, yeah. Sure, let me just reorganize.

0:03:44 Thomas: Okay. All Right.

0:03:46 Tom: Let

0:03:46 Eli: Will say if this podcast required electric shocks I would not do it. Fun fact, love hanging out with my bros, but if they were like, ah, now you got to use the Tase Mic 3000, I'd be like, oh, Eamon.

0:03:50 Thomas: I was gonna say

0:03:50 Tom: Yeah. Let me that's pick a kid to disappoint. That's, that's the way I'll do it. I'll draw straws and we'll be like, all right, you don't get taken care of this month I

0:04:02 Eli: There you go, you have at least two kids. I know in your heart of hearts you feel completely comfortable disappointing Tom. I don't.

0:04:09 Tom: Do not.

0:04:10 Eli: But you know, the only thing worse than what it's like to be Eammon in Tom's eyes, why, it's the auto ants The auto Addo adds, the forgotten fourth child with two stepkids in front of you. That's right. But you, you can remove the Addo ads from your life, much like Tom has disinherited Eamon from his will and his heart.

0:04:15 Tom: Oh I have done no such thing. I have done no such thing. We

0:04:33 Eli: Tom's words, not my own.

0:04:33 Tom: Literally that what is happening right now, if you ever listen to this, I have not disinherited you. Amen.

0:04:38 Eli: Too He told us secretly, EamON. He told Us. Anyways, patreon .com dear old dad's extended versions of every single episode when Tom decides to show up, along with bonus episodes on a monthly basis. Thomas trying to take a vacation this month. We're doing two today as Thomas boards a plane or whatever the case may be, so you're still going to get that bonus. All of it over at patreon.com/dearolddads.

0:04:43 Tom: It did no that is, he's starting shit. I

0:05:07 Thomas: Okay, so here's the thing. The dudes we got done with the last sports episode, and the dudes were like, hey, we can't get enough of those sports you keep talking. What are those sports? You keep talking about. We want to hear more. And so I was like, I guess. All right, fine. No, I just wanted to do a little sports update. And it's not a full sports episode, but it's a it's a topic that I know I think there's so much to talk about in all areas of, you know, our kids lives, not just sports, but sports is kind of the example that I have today. So first off, little update. Here is the strangest thing. Do you remember when in a fugue state, me or someone else signed us up for baseball and I did baseball with

0:05:15 Tom: Have

0:05:46 Eli: Most

0:05:46 Thomas: The kids? Weirdest thing.

0:05:46 Eli: Insane decision I've

0:05:48 Tom: No idea why he did that

0:05:49 Eli: Ever seen a person make.

0:05:50 Thomas: Hey, Eli, I agree. I don't remember what happened. I don' t remember.

0:05:54 Eli: Because I remember us talking about it And you being like, no, he signed the kids up for baseball. And I was like, Thomas, the other day you said, I forgot to drink water this week. And you were like, No, no. It's fine. They go. It's actually really nice. And I Was like, Cool. Five, four, three. And you Were like, The baseball has destroyed the vehicle.

0:06:13 Thomas: You counted down like a hypnotist or whatever and then you're like, and wake up. What? Baseball? Fucking Jesus Christ.

0:06:16 Eli: Right. Yeah.

0:06:18 Tom: But the kids had like a natural predisposition toward baseball that you simply had to respond to, though, right? I mean, they were like they were begging you, there, their arms around your legs, you were dragging them around, and they were beggin' you, "Papa, papa, please sign us up for the baseball, papa." You had no choice. I I get it. You

0:06:26 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

0:06:38 Eli: Your children Are running into the school building, like Indiana Jones trying not to get crushed by a lowering stone door, and you were like, "You know what these kids need? Extracurricular activities."

0:06:49 Tom: Know the Smith family needs another scheduled activity. We're really good at timelines and schedules, the

0:06:53 Eli: Yes. Exactly.

0:06:50 Thomas: Well, Yeah. Here's the fun. Here's a funny thing, which is that it turned out to be so fucking great. It and even like partway through the season, I was like, oh, word. Fuck. This sucks. And then by the time it ended, both Lydia and I were like, well, Lydia came to me. She's like, I love this so much. Like, she's like, I loved baseball. I loved being out. She's not a sports person. She didn't even understand how a pickle worked. Remember? Famously. And she was like, this was the best.

0:07:21 Tom: Pickle that's that's the cucumber right in this in the brine.

0:07:22 Eli: Yeah. That's a cucumber you put

0:07:24 Tom: Delicious.

0:07:24 Eli: It in the salt water and then it tastes different.

0:07:24 Thomas: It's that part of it. It's

0:07:26 Eli: Yeah. Crying

0:07:25 Tom: Yeah. Delicious. Little

0:07:26 Thomas: Just that part OF the game where they do that.

0:07:27 Tom: Dill in there. Yeah. Outstanding, outstanding.

0:07:30 Thomas: Oh, my God, it was so fun. The kids fucking loved it eventually. Like, yeah. And Phoebe is, you know, she doesn't like anything for the first few times, of course. But, like, the kids loved it. They grew as, uh, people. Phoebe started with hitting, uh, the ball and then crying, and then going from that to she, yeah crying the whole time.

0:07:30 Tom: Now

0:07:50 Eli: And then hitting the ball. Yeah. I

0:07:52 Tom: She's rushing the mound. Like

0:07:53 Thomas: No, no, she, okay, phoe be literally, uh, the best hitter in the entire fucking world at the end. She hit every time. She She went, the last, like, three games.

0:07:54 Eli: Really appreciate that. Ending in world, Thomas, because I was steeling myself when a parent is like, like, "My five-year-old is great at sports," and you gotta be like, "I bet, real propensity for it." Counting down the moments till this sentence. But world I can deal with. I'm like, fuck yeah, the original Babe Ruth, Phoebe Smith, everybody. Get her out there.

0:08:21 Thomas: Yeah, yeah. But no, compared, she got a hit. She's like Ichiro. Oh, darn it. Sorry. Do you know who Ichiro is?

0:08:24 Tom: Oh Yeah. Ichiro. I don't know, I was thinking Ichiro myself.

0:08:30 Eli: Which one is she in Bible Black? We have different anime rooms.

0:08:33 Thomas: So, like Ichirou is one of the best hitters of all time, but he a power hitter. He was, you know, a smaller gentleman who was incredibly fast and got like mainly little base hits by, you Know, hitting the ball to a little gap and beating them out to first. Now, Phoebe still can't hurry. My kids, if,

0:08:34 Tom: How many points do you get for first base, not

0:08:53 Eli: Yeah. Well, one, obviously. Two for toothpaste, and third for three -base.

0:08:55 Tom: Oh, that was a silly question. That's one it's one

0:08:56 Thomas: Is it over bra or under bra? Well, anyway, um, Phoebe still can't hurry. My kids still don't understand what actually hurrying is. I don't know why that's a weird thing. That's just me. But she would hit the ball every time she would

0:08:58 Eli: Yeah.

0:09:07 Eli: Maybe Maybe if they closed the door to the base in her face, she'd remember. Remember, vagina.

0:09:09 Thomas: Yeah, yeah. I don't still think she doesn't get it, but she got a hit. I would say the last, like, three games, every single at-bat, and then, like, like, it was crazy, she was hitting it every time. Arlo struggling a little but still having fun, and they grew, they, they all these different things they would never do, and we had such a good time, and now we miss it. And then, okay, so I was thinking, here's, here's what I want to talk about today. So, so I was thinking, all right, the kids want to do more baseball. It's crazy. And I want them. I'm in. I want the kids to do it. I want to get them to do some more baseball, it's so fun. They have all the stuff, and they like hitting the ball at least, until they get bored of that, like, yeah, let's do it, and wait a minute, Phoebe hits age eventually where they decide, hey, sorry, girl, you don't get to do the actual sport anymore, sorry. All right, yeah.

0:09:54 Eli: Ball Yeah.

0:09:55 Thomas: We, and I completely forgot about this and will be a certain age, I don't know what it is, it's probably in a couple years, where just decide like, well, girls have, like, a weird giant ass watermelon ball they use. And the worst thing is the pitching. The worst things is the pitch. And this sucks because this is going to come across like I'm just hating women's sports. It's definitely not that. I just don't understand why, like, now that it's been made into the sport that it is, I don't want to be bashing softball, you as women play it now and whatever, but the idea, just from scratch, from nothing, like, oh hey, girls have to do a different version of this, and they throw underhand and they spin their arm around in a whole circle, and that's how they pit. Do you guys even know this

0:09:57 Tom: Yeah.

0:10:37 Eli: No.

0:10:38 Tom: I've seen it. Yeah, him.

0:10:38 Eli: So there's actually a real reason for this, and, uh, it's interesting because, um, overhand pitch, it strengthens different muscles. Uh, the underhand pitch, uh, your fingering another woman muscles, which is really what softball is there to teach you is that you are a woman who loves other women, and there's sort of like a matchmaking element in the teams, and then the pitching sort of improves your sexual prowess if you will, and stardom

0:10:51 Thomas: Jeez.

0:11:03 Thomas: I don't think Eli's seen the pitching. I think it's a good joke, but I don't think he's seen the pitching doing

0:11:05 Tom: I'm not sure he's really responding.

0:11:07 Eli: Do you guys not finger like that? Do you guess not run your hand in a whole circle and run across the room as fast as you can try and line

0:11:11 Thomas: A full your arm slap

0:11:13 Tom: That that like the triple arm wind up is a little bit of a, it's a little much, it's a little intimidating Yeah.

0:11:15 Thomas: Them as hard as you can yeah

0:11:19 Tom: Thomas.

0:11:18 Eli: It's like a quick time event. Is that not how you guys are doing it? I love softball also

0:11:20 Thomas: Oh man interesting

0:11:22 Tom: I will say though that I looked this up out of curiosity the other day. Though, softball pitching, just, I obviously we got to talk about the sexism in sports, but I will say softball pitching is nowhere near as damaging on the arm as the overhand baseball pitching. So it is safer, it is significantly safer.

0:11:37 Eli: Have you ever been to a softball game? They rule.

0:11:38 Thomas: Oh I lived at them as kids.

0:11:40 Eli: Yeah. Softball games are so much better than baseball games. A

0:11:41 Thomas: No, What kind of softball games, you're not talking adult softball?

0:11:46 Eli: High school No.

0:11:47 Thomas: High school. Hmm.

0:11:48 Eli: High school, yeah. Any kind of softball, even a professional softball game, which, yes, I have been to professional ones. Any female-dominated sport, the vibes are so fucking better. Nope.

0:11:50 Thomas: Wow. Oh. For sure, but that would be true if, if they were playing real baseball. Like, that's my argument. Like, why are we okay? And if it's true that there's some fucking reason for this that makes sense other than ladies need to sport different, than fine. But like, it's weird that I have to tell my kids, because right now my kids get to play the same game, which is not baseball, admittedly, but it's, it's something like pretending to play baseball. No, it's just weird that, that in, in like a year It'll be like, like, yeah, no, sorry, Phoebe

0:12:03 Eli: Yeah.

0:12:20 Eli: It's not like she's missing out on her chance at the fucking major your stomach just after she broke 100 miles per hour. Damn it. Different

0:12:30 Thomas: Has to do a different thing, like, she has to do a whole different, bats, different different gloves, different ball, different everything, it's just weird, yeah.

0:12:37 Eli: Sexuality it's the best. Why are you not seeing the upsides of this? It's the best. Hey, uh Arlo, if you want to keep doing this at a certain point, uh, a psychopath whose entire life is this, who calls himself a gym teacher, will scream at you about it every day for the rest of your life. Phoebe, if you want to make some lifelong friends and go to college for free, you can do this one over here, but um you gotta pitch underhanded so I don't know. Weigh those weigh those scales. Hockey too, I mean, I don't know anything about women's hockey.

0:12:54 Thomas: Oh, I know, I want her to play hockey, though, and, and you know the

0:13:00 Tom: It's not wrong. Well,

0:13:07 Thomas: Thing about hockey, they don't use a giant puck, and then have, like a different way of hitting it, and they just use the same hockey shit, They just get to play hockey with the hockey shit that we, that hockey players use. I don't get why this one sport would be different.

0:13:09 Eli: Do they have to hockey underhanded 30

0:13:20 Tom: There's another sport too though, but, uh, I did look this up, buddy. I was trying to figure this out when you, when you brought it up on the, on thread that we use to kind of talk about show topics. I was like, why is that? I don't know. Is there, like, a, a reason for this? And it seems like the reason may be historical. Um, it actually goes back, if my cursory 15 minutes' worth of reading is right, it sounds like it's, it sounds like essentially during World War II they didn't have enough men to field baseball teams League of their own right?

0:13:40 Eli: More minutes than I did, Tom, then

0:13:48 Thomas: League of their own. Yeah. We've all seen league of their

0:13:50 Tom: League of her own Yep. They did. And, and essentially, like, men came back and they were like, well, we can't have women playing quality baseball.

0:13:50 Thomas: On. Yeah. And women played fucking real baseball. Yeah. No, the fuck you aren't.

0:13:59 Tom: Yeah. So they're like, we can have women play quality baseball that we actually have, like, people will want to watch, so we'll actually change the sport to this lesser different thing and they created softball for women to play, so they would not be able to compete in the, in the majors.

0:14:07 Thomas: I knew it.

0:14:13 Eli: Along came a pitcher named Caitlin Clark who changed the whole thing for everybody. That's a sports joke.

0:14:23 Thomas: Yeah,

0:14:22 Tom: But I was thinking about this too. Because I was like, what there's some sports that women are just essentially locked out of, and that there is no, like, female equivalent. Like, there's no female football team right?

0:14:24 Thomas: It is. It's a good sports show. Yeah. Football. Yeah. Yeah,

0:14:32 Tom: There's, no, there are. I don't know that women are allowed to compete or compete in wrestling. I don't think there's like women's wrestling, but that's weird though, right? Like why wouldn't they compete in their own like because they we sex segregate other sports. It's weird not to sex segregating wrestling and have women's wrestling.

0:14:24 Eli: Yeah. Female swimming sign

0:14:38 Thomas: They compete. So in high school, they'll wrestle with the boys. Actually, I wrestled a girl in a tournament. It was the weirdest thing ever. Oh, it was weird. Yeah. But it's it is those ones where there's not enough interest or whatever. Like, I don't I guess I don' t want to phrase it that way, but like there's not enough other girls participating. Same Same with football. So football.

0:15:03 Eli: Up you just just automatically take states.

0:15:03 Tom: Well, definitely not going to be like enough girls participating in something if we don't have an avenue for them to participate other than for them to like wrestle grown boys, right? Like that's like

0:15:14 Thomas: Yeah, But you need a team. And it's, I mean, a lot of schools will struggle to have a boys team and you can't have a team of, like, two girls that's not a wrestling team

0:15:22 Tom: Yeah No I know but it's also like a cart and horse. It's like the problem is cyclical in a Like, you can never fix that problem or generate that interest if, like, you have to wrestle boys because the likelihood of success there is just so low.

0:15:24 Thomas: Yeah Yeah Fair No, totally Totally Yeah, yeah, and I want to be clear, that was when I was in high school. I have seen, I'll see headlines of, like, I think there's some amount of girls wrestling, maybe. Uh, I don't, I don' know, this was, you know, 20 whatever years ago

0:15:46 Eli: I have a bunch of videos of it if you're interested. I don't know what you... You guys are like, it's not enough out there. Trust me. I have whole subscriptions in my life.

0:15:49 Tom: I think that's a little different

0:15:46 Thomas: Yeah Yeah Okay I'd be, I'd interested Oh Okay get some You got some game film, huh? Get some Yeah Do you want to draw the X's, his nose and only

0:15:56 Eli: Yeah, I got a lot. Now, it is different, much like softball and baseball. So I guess in regular wrestling, and you did this in high school, Thomas, you don't do it in a kiddie pool full of lube, right? When

0:16:07 Thomas: Some some events only some events. Yeah

0:16:12 Eli: Okay, okay! Okay, so it's less different than I thought it was. Okay, that makes sense.

0:16:13 Thomas: Yeah

0:16:14 Tom: I mean Eli what do you think the singlet is for? I mean, it's, yeah

0:16:17 Eli: Certainly what my singlet was for.

0:16:17 Thomas: Right

0:16:20 Tom: And then I was thinking also about gymnastics. The events in gymnastics are sex segregated, so the men don't do the same thing as the women. The women don't doing the same thing as the men in gymnastics, so there are some lanes of division

0:16:28 Thomas: What

0:16:30 Eli: And that one lady doesn't do the same flips as everybody else in the world. What's her name? She's the best gymnast in the World. Biles.

0:16:35 Tom: What's that Simone Biles well

0:16:39 Eli: And they made a bunch of the shit she can do illegal. They were like, hey, Simone, nobody else can do that.

0:16:36 Thomas: Yeah Simone Biles she just won something today but

0:16:45 Eli: You have to stop. Four flips only.

0:16:45 Tom: Yeah right yeah Good, and it's unfair to the people that aren't as good.

0:16:51 Thomas: They do still have the different events, so, like the men prioritize you stuff that seems more fucking manly, and then the women have more of the dancey stuff. I'm not an expert but

0:17:00 Eli: Which is so fucking

0:16:53 Tom: They do, yeah. Well, men do a lot of the upper body strength stuff, like rings, pommel horse. There's some shared events, but are shared events.

0:17:01 Eli: Funny. Yeah. Gymkata.

0:17:01 Thomas: Yeah Yeah which is like whatever Yeah, I don't know. I Yes

0:17:09 Tom: But there are different events as well. And so, like, men don't do balance beam, for example. Women do balance team. Men don't two balance beam. Yeah. So there's some stuff that only women do. There's something stuff only men do.

0:17:09 Eli: Your dick dick throws it

0:17:18 Tom: So there are some other lanes, I guess, sex segregated lanes.

0:17:10 Thomas: Yes really Oh Wow, they

0:17:18 Eli: Off, it's impossible. Yeah obviously

0:17:21 Thomas: Do vault with the dick, but Yeah. Yeah, it's just weird. Look, I don't know, I'm not here, I'm, I'm not coming out strong with some thesis about softball. All I want to tell you is my experience as a regular dad who's likes sports, is my kids were having fun, they play on the same team, and now, granted, that would end anyway because their ages are different, but when they're super small, no one cares, and then, um, know in like a year or two it's then I was deciding like, well, should I try to get her started on softball now, like to get, because every the skills she's learning for baseball, I won't say all of them, but like a lot of the things she's learned about baseball, they're quite different with softball.

Like, she's gonna have to throw a bit differently. It's a, you know, it's just like not a huge deal, but, like, do I try to get started with that big-ass weird ball they use? And it just was a weird feeling of, like, why? Why does this have to be? Why can't they just play baseball? Why can't we have baseball for women? I don't know.

0:17:22 Tom: Yeah. Right.

0:17:23 Eli: Right. Right.

0:18:11 Tom: What I think the larger issue, like I'm not trying to distract either if I'm just pointing out that I was thinking about this and I noticed some things, but like, I think, think the larger issue is that we do, socially and familially, we do tend to like decide for boys and for girls what lanes are sort of gender appropriate for them to pursue, and then like have entire systems that just also are just like, "Yeah, you just, you're not really going to be able to do that if you're this, this sex or that sex, right?" Like, this is, this is going to be not in your ballpark. You literally not in your ballpark.

0:18:16 Thomas: No, yeah, totally. Yeah.

0:18:44 Eli: And it's also because those things are already so hard and so cumbersome to be a part of that even if you do want to make a stand, and I know this because in my high school there was a girl wrestler, and it was just like a huge fucking deal for her family to make this happen, right? Systems not only sort of make you go with the flow because it's easier to sign up that way, which is a huge part of parenting, but like, the fact that you have to take this already incredibly cumbersome activity and be like, "Hey, I would like to do a bunch of meetings and hard things to do us slightly different." Right, it's not like you just check baseball or softball on a form, right?

0:18:44 Thomas: Wow. Huh? Yeah. Yeah. Right. There

0:19:20 Eli: Have to make a fuss, right?

0:19:20 Thomas: Needs to be the infrastructure and stuff.

0:19:22 Eli: Yeah. Exactly, yeah, so that's part of what leads into it.

0:19:22 Thomas: Yeah. No, totally, and that's why it won't, softball you is a fucking division. Do they have it in the Olympics by now? Like, it's a major established sport for women, and I'm, don'T want to take away from that. It just it sucks that it went that way, probably because after the war, they're like, well, if they throw a normal baseball, it will hurt their vaginas. So we can't do that.

0:19:43 Eli: Right.

0:19:43 Thomas: And like, I wouldn't be surprised if it's some bullshit like that.

0:19:44 Eli: Yeah.

0:19:44 Tom: And It's so funny because it's actually hurts men's egos, right? It's like it's like we're just like, "It'll hurt their vaginas," and we're like and by their vaginas what we really mean is our egos.

0:19:46 Thomas: Yeah. Oh, yeah, that's right. Yeah, that makes sense.

0:19:47 Eli: It's yeah Yeah. Our feelings. Yeah. Yeah, no, it's not a denigration of softball at all. Like, again, softball is in a million ways superior to baseball, right? Like I would if Max were interested in sports, I would say no. But assuming in a universe where I wouldn't say no, which is hard for me to fathom because you have to get into one of those weird universes where the sky is red. Right.

0:19:52 Thomas: Yeah.

0:20:06 Tom: Right.

0:20:11 Thomas: Triangles are circles. Yeah, exactly.

0:20:13 Eli: Exactly. But assuming we're in a university where we don't say, no. Right. I would prefer him to be in a softball environment because they are like every woman. Woman dominated sport environment is so much more healthy, so much more, you positive does all the things that sports says it does, but actually you're in a weird, like white supremacy cult. Like when you actually talk to people who have played women's sports actively, all of those environments exist because they're dominated by women. So, yeah, I mean, I, will be a better thing, but that moment, right. That you're talking about that moment of discomfort for you. And more importantly, that moment of discomfort for Phoebe, right, where I assume for one of the first times in her life, they'll be like, oh, you do this other thing because you're a girl. Right.

0:20:53 Thomas: Yeah.

0:20:53 Tom: Yeah.

0:20:53 Eli: It's just weird. It'S just a weird moment of othering. And like, you know, it's something that Cornel West talks about this really well. He talks about racial narratives. Right? About like, it doesn't necessarily need to be malicious for there to be the moment where you're othered, right? Like you can just be like, oh, you're supposed to go over there. Or this is the thing that your people usually do be that sex, gender, race, whatever it might be. And it's just that little moment where, again, she's going to be like five, six years old, right. Seven years old. Maybe the first time that someone's going to say like, hey, the life path is different for women and that othering, even when it's towards a positive thing like softball, which is going to ruin when she gets to get her first girlfriend, all that good stuff like that other ring does

0:20:54 Thomas: Yeah, it is.

0:20:54 Tom: Yeah.

0:21:05 Thomas: Mm hmm. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, for sure.

0:21:35 Eli: Make a difference in kids' mindsets, right? Is a normal, which is the white straight male path. And then everyone else gets picked off along the way and told, well, yeah, no, we've got a version of that for you.

0:21:44 Thomas: Mm hmm. I'll just keep her in hockey.

0:21:49 Tom: And Glad we're doing this episode too because I saw some feedback

0:21:51 Eli: I'm not, Tom. I hate it. No.

0:21:52 Tom: No.

0:21:56 Thomas: I do want to know before we move on. Now, there are lots of issues in women's sports. Just FYI, like it's it's also has that also

0:22:00 Eli: Actually they're all perfect. I didn't know if you know that wrong

0:22:03 Thomas: Has a lot of issues. But go ahead, Tom. Sorry.

0:22:04 Eli: Thomas

0:22:05 Tom: No, I just, I wanted to say, like, I, I'm glad we're doing this episode because I did see some feedback a few weeks back on, I think, Patreon that called me out for, um, about the opportunities that I offer to my kids in ways that were specifically sex segregated, and I, I thought a lot about that feedback because I was like, do I do that? Because if I do that I want to fix it.

0:22:07 Eli: Hates women

0:22:21 Thomas: What? I don't even remember. What would that refer

0:22:26 Tom: I don't know there was no specific referent in there. Um, I really did rack my brain because I'm like, shit, if I'm doing that unconsciously, or I don't think it would be consciously, if I'm doing that unconsciously, I really want to know about that. And I honestly couldn't come up with anything that that me, knowing my family and who they are as people, felt like it was me sort of railroading them into sex segregated stuff. I have offered, for example, the only thing I can think of is like I've talked about like trying to get Aisland to do dance, for example. Um

0:22:26 Thomas: To, Tom? I don'T even remember the

0:22:56 Eli: Right, you want to tape two guns to each of her arms at all times, but I don't think I don't think that's an activity you're offering, so much as it's, um, your mental illness

0:23:02 Tom: But I Yeah. That's that's just the world she's living, but like you offered know her dance because her mom dances and she idolizes her mom, so it has really nothing to do so much with trying to narrow her into sex segregated lanes, um, much as it is like she is a mini me of her mom. Her mom has been a dancer her whole life and And so she idolizes that. We thought that might actually drive interest. It turned out it didn't drive interest

0:23:04 Eli: Okay.

0:23:27 Eli: Now I'm picturing Finn, who, podcast listener, so you know how funny this image is, looks, uh, almost almost identical to Tom, both in body and head shape, doing like amazing pole dancing moves, right? Just like 360 degree spins back arched tribal tattoos down his front.

0:23:36 Thomas: Bolts,

0:23:42 Tom: That would be fucking amazing.

0:23:44 Thomas: The bolts just buckling, you know, just like, yeah, just just like, yeah, that'd

0:23:45 Eli: Yeah.

0:23:46 Tom: Yeah. Right. The, the, the whole house just shaking as he like spins around it. Yeah. So, but, but I think that he does,

0:23:53 Eli: Wrecking ball playing at top volume.

0:23:58 Thomas: Be awesome. Actually. Unironically, I actually, that would be cool. I would like that.

0:24:01 Eli: Yeah.

0:24:01 Tom: I, you but I bet I will say like, Like, you're not all that far off. We worked out together last week. He came over Monday morning. We went down to the basement, worked out. I'm like, all right, man, put some music on. He put some música on. Two or three songs in, I kind of notice, and I look up, and I walk over to his Spotify playlist, and it's a playlist called White Girl Bangers. That's what he decided.

0:24:22 Tom: He also works out to a playlist on Spotify called Divorced Dad Rock, which cracks me up.

0:24:20 Eli: Hell yeah. Hell yeah,

0:24:23 Thomas: That's awesome. No, maybe he was, I thought both those things appealed to you.

0:24:30 Eli: I I think he was just trying to reach across the aisle there. T -Dog you,

0:24:32 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah. He was like, ah, what, What is my dad like? Well, divorce dad, rock and white girl, whatever. You just said, yeah.

0:24:39 Eli: You tell

0:24:38 Tom: He's got all these crazy Yeah. White girl bangers.

0:24:40 Thomas: Yeah.

0:24:40 Eli: Me your max that you listen to fight song and tell me your your one rep max doesn'T go up 150%. I I can deadlift a house while I am listening to fight song. I can't usually do the bar. If you play a song at loud enough volume, I will deadlift my home.

0:24:46 Thomas: That's objectively good workout music. Yeah.

0:24:58 Tom: I left, left in the mornings to audiobooks or news podcasts. I

0:25:01 Eli: That's insane. That's the worst. Of

0:25:03 Thomas: Which

0:25:03 Tom: Never live to music. I never, ever do it. I never lived to music, but to just like kind of back up what you were saying though, Eli, is that, like, so much of this, that's why I brought up, like, calling myself out, because if I'm doing it unconsciously, like, then fucking shame on me for doing it. Um, like, so much of those sort of, like, lanes that get established, we're entirely unaware of, you know what I mean? They're just, like, we sort of, like, build into what we expect from boys and from girls. We build into our own lives the same sort of social expectations. It's why, like, if it's, you're on the cheerleading, leading team, is a guy, like, you're not gay, you're an absolute, like, tiny minority, right? There are not just, like, sex segregation, but there's, like, heteronormative segregations into certain sports that we just sort of implicitly understand, and by understanding them, build them into our cultural narrative and enforce them.

0:25:46 Eli: Course.

0:25:54 Thomas: So funny, because that, that kind of takes away any argument that's like, well, biologically, you know, because, like, no, these are still men, they're gay men. If they're doing a certain sports, like there's nothing biological about, like, their body that would change what they do. Ew.

0:26:01 Tom: Right. Yeah. Yeah.

0:26:03 Eli: I, you Guys ever notice yourself doing it? And then because we're not assholes, you have to be like, shit, I did it. I'll give you a great example. So yesterday was Max's birthday party. He's got a little friend. His little friend wore a shirt with ruffle sleeves. Male-identifying child wore little ruffle sleeves, and my this Yeah, those little, like, uh, ruffles they had.

0:26:13 Thomas: Yeah.

0:26:14 Tom: Yeah.

0:26:24 Thomas: Rough sleeve. Sorry. What is that? Ruffles.

0:26:28 Eli: Like little ruffles on them, right?

0:26:28 Thomas: Oh, okay. Gotcha.

0:26:29 Eli: It's just a cute shirt. He's a four -year-old child. There's nothing, there's nothing wrong with it, but my head, I was like, gay that that child is wearing a gay, gay shirt. And obviously, look, it's, we were growing up where an adult would come over and be like, hey kid, you know you're wearing a gay shirt, right? I helped today, right? And then walk the fuck away. But, like, even finding myself go, okay, sure, and then being like, hey man, do you want to go to therapy forever, right? That, that's my first impulse, right?

0:26:29 Thomas: Sure. Yeah, yeah. It's ruffles! I know.

0:26:47 Thomas: Yeah yeah.

0:26:57 Thomas: By By the way, if did that, they would have been the hero. The adult in our time would have just called you gay and been like, but if someone Someone was like, hey, just to inform you, you're wearing a gay shirt. We'd be like, you are a hero. Thank you.

0:27:04 Eli: Would have just bullied you. Yes, no, I'm adult

0:27:11 Thomas: You're progressive for your time.

0:27:11 Eli: Who just, I'M JUST OTHERIZING YOU. I'M NOT ACTIVELY VICTIMIZING YOU, THIS IS MY FIGHT SONG, as he walks away. But, all the time. Like, like this isn't stuff that I act on, but it is so trained into me from society and culture that I'm like, I'll give another great example, right? Right. So Max has this little girl whenever they go into school, little runs up and hold Max's hand. And she's like, Max, hold my hand. He's going to school. And it's so cute. And I'm like, that's adorable. Look at them little friends. The other day, a little boy runs up to Max and is like, Lex, hold by hand as we go into the school. And again, entirely inside my head, I was like, weird, nuts, weird. Why is that kid want to hold my kid's hand?

0:27:14 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah.

0:27:18 Tom: Right.

0:27:55 Thomas: It sucks.

0:27:56 Eli: I have been so brainwashed by living through the 80s and 90s that my brain was like, someday she might fuck your kid, that's why it's okay. That's what it is, right? Tom's

0:27:56 Tom: Jesus Christ.

0:28:04 Thomas: No, true. It's no, it's all it's the ingrained sexism and homophobia. One hundred percent. It'd be it'd being a show where we don't pretend that we don' have any of that, of course we do, like, we were raised in the time and place we were raised in, like, that's we say it all the time

0:28:06 Tom: Yeah. Yeah, that is not even remotely true.

0:28:19 Eli: A vicious racist. We say it all the time we say, and we, we try to prevent him from expressing those opinions on the air But I mean, do we ever release the skull shape episode or do we just because

0:28:25 Tom: Jesus Jesus Christ, what did I do to you today? So I don't love my son, and I'm a vicious racist.

0:28:33 Thomas: But here's

0:28:33 Eli: Of his race. Tom refers to Eamon as the most Irish of his children, and I don't know what that means. I have asked him not to explain it several times. I know he has a chart, he always reaches back to get it. And I say I don' t want to see it

0:28:37 Tom: Wow. Okay, I have a lot of charts, though, to be fair.

0:28:49 Thomas: Having you boys and a girl for now that I know of, you know, um

0:28:54 Eli: Oh God.

0:28:54 Thomas: No.

0:28:54 Eli: Damn it, Thomas, this is what he did before. Remy, everybody.

0:28:57 Thomas: Until one of them transitions, until one transitions. I wasn't saying I was gonna have another kid, although, you know, you never know. I'm just, I haven't gotten the vasectomy so can

0:29:05 Tom: I mean, you can know for sure, though. Like, there's...

0:29:06 Eli: I'm doing it while you're here at Matreon, you're going to wake up and me and Richard Seaman are going to be standing over you.

0:29:07 Thomas: You No. No. Not Richard Stephen, anyone else, anyone else, I know.

0:29:15 Eli: To be fair, me and Richard Seaman are equally good at vasectomies.

0:29:19 Thomas: But here's The thing. What you notice is how easy and quickly it happens without you, A, consciously doing it and maybe even without you doing it much at all. It's just in the atmosphere. Like every single movie they watch, every single show they watch absolutely has all these things reinforced. The colors. Oh, the girl superhero is pink one with the curvy blah. And the boys are the one, the first of all, they're usually the main one, uh, unless they're watching that horrible fucking show that everyone in the world, apparently, what was that one?

0:29:19 Eli: Wow.

0:29:20 Tom: Yeah. Yeah.

0:29:54 Eli: Lady

0:29:54 Thomas: The ladybug one where I was like, they are watching this obscure thing that makes no sense. And I hate, and the truly the world emailed us like the, it was like at at the world .com. It was like yeah, there's a domain for everyone except the three of you. Um, fuck Thomas is what they said.

0:29:57 Tom: Coming.

0:29:55 Eli: But again wow Thomas why haven't you learned this cat boy and ladybug yeah yeah they got together with the supernatural fans to take us down. A pain. Side note, uh, do you guys know about PJ Masks? So The main one the Robin of that. His name is Cat Boy and I laugh at it every time and must be so confused because he's always like, I'm Cat Boy, I'm like, Gayness Gecko.

0:30:15 Tom: Yeah. Uh. -huh.

0:30:20 Thomas: Yeah. That one too. God. Oh. Cat Boy, yeah. Oh That one was so funny because when Arlo's speech was still, he's getting a bit better, but when Arla's speech were still not quite, you know, there, they were obsessed with PJ Masks and he would go through the whole intro, tap boy, Alette, and he'd have all the other ones and he had his weird ways of saying each one and he could do, like, the whole, like, like routine. Yeah. Detto. Yeah, it was perfect because the show had like four names that he would fuck up perfectly or whatever. Top Boy, Alette, Detto, and we're just like, this is the best.

0:31:00 Eli: It rules Tom, side note, Gecko, uh, gets super strength because geckos are lame, and it's the funniest thing ever because every time he has super strength they're like, lizard muscles. And And it's like, hey, hey. Hey, PJ Masks. You don't have to lie to me. Okay? You kid's going to walk around his life being like, watch out. That lizard's pretty strong. Nope.

0:31:20 Thomas: Have you seen the ones that do the pushups though? Those ones fucking rule.

0:31:24 Tom: Jacked.

0:31:24 Thomas: Have you ever seen those?

0:31:24 Tom: Fucking lizards

0:31:24 Eli: I have not seen a lizard do a push -up.

0:31:25 Tom: Rucking around. Yeah, I

0:31:25 Thomas: No. Was on a hike one time. Uh, the one time in my life I've gone on a height cause it's so boring.

0:31:31 Tom: Would say I already don't believe

0:31:32 Thomas: Yeah I'm so bored. It was, but I'm bored. Tom, I'm bored just talking about it.

0:31:32 Tom: You. Yeah.

0:31:34 Eli: I wrote lizard doing and lizard doing push -ups immediately filled in.

0:31:39 Tom: Did

0:31:40 Thomas: Yeah, cause They do this, so there's lizards who do this. I don't know if it's mating or just fucking working out.

0:31:44 Tom: You bring your laptop on the hike because I'm, I can't even imagine this not being the case.

0:31:46 Thomas: I for the life of me. I can't remember what this was. I may have been a hostage or something and I've just blocked it out of my memory. I

0:31:51 Eli: I think it was part of the lawsuit. Based on how many absurd things we went through.

0:31:53 Thomas: May have been kidnapped. No, this was this is like decades ago or whatever. This is a long time ago and there was a particular rock where they all hung out cause, you know, cold-blooded, they got on the heat rock and they just do push -ups. It's fucking, they look exactly like Tom, actually. They do pushups, they make hard eye contact and they're like, yeah, fucking fight me, bro.

0:31:58 Eli: Yeah. Lawsuit. Don't get Tom started. They're racist.

0:32:14 Thomas: Fight me bruh, yeah.

0:32:12 Tom: Are they listening to news podcasts and audiobooks?

0:32:16 Thomas: Joe listening to Joe Rogan, and they like, fight me, broke, yeah, I'm the strongest fucking lizard in the world, I'm an alpha lizard, I'm gonna hopefully see all these others are beta lizards and, but they're all saying that

0:32:27 Eli: Sorry, I'm not contributing. I'm trying to think of a lizard slash news podcast pun, and it's taking 100% of my brain space.

0:32:29 Thomas: That's That's tough.

0:32:33 Eli: Do you guys mind if we sit here in silence for like 75 minutes while I come up with one.

0:32:34 Thomas: Yeah.

0:32:36 Tom: I just let it, let it percolate. Yeah. So does, does Phoebe know that she's going to have to leave baseball or yeah.

0:32:42 Thomas: Not yet. I don't know

0:32:44 Tom: And you don't know how many years she's got, right. It's probably several years.

0:32:44 Thomas: If I'll bother. Yeah. It's

0:32:45 Eli: What's What's on Gecko? What's on Gecko?

0:32:51 Thomas: Not That's what, oh.

0:32:52 Eli: What's undeck is the Chicago Public News Radio. I'm You gonna keep working on it? You guys do your thing, I'm all good.

0:32:51 Tom: So Phoebe doesn't know yet.

0:32:54 Thomas: Okay. Yeah, all right. No, because you know, who knows how long she'll want to play. We'll do one more, more you, one more season, and then we'll see if she wants to do softball. But then, know, inevitably what'll happen is she'll, if she has little friends who do it, and then she'll be like, yeah, softball is great, and then it'll be like, yep, that's how we do it. Like, society figures it out, you know, they pretty much figure it out.

0:33:19 Eli: Know what.

0:33:20 Thomas: Peer

0:33:20 Tom: Yeah, well the society figures it out in the sense that like eventually girls figure out that they're like second class citizens in America. That says That's honestly what they like. They start to internalize all the different ways that life is different for them. And they're like, yeah, this tracks, too. Let me just put this in the bucket of, like, unfair bullshit.

0:33:26 Thomas: That's what I mean. Yeah,

0:33:35 Eli: I realized as we were talking about this, because I was like, oh man, Max doesn't do any activities, but you know what I realized? All of his activities are neuro spicy activities, like speech class and OT and shit. And that's how I talk to other neuro spice parents. I'm like, oh my god, you gotta go to Montclair speech. No, no, no, Mrs. Harmony is the best trust me. I'm a sports dad standing out the gate, knuckles through the fence, come on, pronounce your T's, pronounce your teeth, pronounce your D's.

0:33:55 Thomas: Yeah.

0:34:00 Tom: What?

0:34:03 Thomas: You and me both, man,

0:34:05 Eli: W sounds bones.

0:34:07 Tom: Dude, all of my kids did speech therapy and OT as well. So, like I feel. Well, no, I don't think Aislinn did, actually.

0:34:13 Eli: Well, that's what I was going to say. It was weird that you didn't let Aislinn do it because women should be silent.

0:34:17 Thomas: Because she's a girl. Yeah.

0:34:19 Eli: That was your words, not mine.

0:34:16 Tom: Oh, no. She did do speech theory. Speech therapy. I'm Totally wrong. Wrong, no

0:34:21 Eli: Thank you, Thomas.

0:34:21 Tom: Aislinn did do speech therapy

0:34:22 Eli: Thank you.

0:34:22 Tom: I'm wrong, I just wasn't, yeah, I, but I like all of the kids did, yeah, early intervention at point in their lives, and all of them have had IEPs and 504s, so I fucking totally get that. Well,

0:34:34 Thomas: Remy's just not going to fucking talk, by the way. He's just decided, no, not going gonna do it.

0:34:37 Eli: No. To be fair, he tried screaming and you guys didn't like that.

0:34:38 Thomas: Yeah.

0:34:38 Tom: How old is he now? Yeah. You guys just complain. Complain about it.

0:34:42 Thomas: Not a fan, he's gotten a little bit better about that, yeah.

0:34:43 Eli: And do it at a lower volume? That doesn't make

0:34:45 Thomas: We did we did the, um, so on on your guys's advice, or probably Lydia would have done this anyway because she's a good parent, but like we did the I.E.P., a, what is it? Yeah, and we met with the principal because he's fine going to kindergarten next year. He's graduated his, uh, and he was sick so he didn't get to do graduation. That was really frustrating, um, one day that there was graduation, it was going to be super cute. He had barfed the day before and then was fine. So we're like, maybe it's a food poisoning. Can you wear like a hundred masks and just stand off to the side? And they're like no. We're like okay, that's fair.

0:34:45 Eli: Any sense. That's crazy.

0:34:56 Tom: IEP.

0:35:01 Eli: Fuck yeah.

0:35:21 Eli: That's how

0:35:22 Thomas: So he missed his whole, yeah, he missed this whole graduation. So that was a bummer. But, um, we start, we're starting him in the, in the school district. And so we had the meeting with the principal and it's really cool. Uh, It's, it'S awesome how many more resources, you know, kids have these days.

0:35:22 Eli: You make a serial killer Oh,

0:35:34 Thomas: Anyways, kids.

0:35:33 Eli: Dude, it's so so my buddy is dealing with this right now. He's got some shitty school shit going on and if you, if you have a neurotypical kid and something's going on, they're just like, fuck you. But because IEP is all law shit, they're like, oh, what happened? He dropped his snack. Well, if you see in his IEP, we can actually write a sentence that says, and if he ever drops his snack, the principal will pick it up personally and make sure that it is gently fed to him at 2 p.m. and 7 p.m. Like, know I that the, and look, I also know that people have had horrible experiences with that, but can I I argue this to the parents out there who've had that? You don't look half as crazy as I do. So maybe you should look like a danger to yourself and others. Maybe your kids would get a

0:35:39 Thomas: No. Yeah, it's kind of true. Hmm.

0:36:17 Tom: Right.

0:36:17 Eli: Little more on their IEPs. But yeah, the stuff that's written in this year, we did his year-end wrap-up IEP meeting and we were like, yeah, so he's got the, you know, we'll get him an aid full-time. And I was like, oh, nice. And then he didn't want want to do nap time and they were like, that's okay, he used to go watch TV and so Max just fucking sits in a Barca Lounger while the other kids are lying there in sleep prison

0:36:30 Thomas: Jeez. Yeah. Well, it's so funny because all Arlo needs is he needs speech therapy. And I think that's pretty much it. I mean, everything else he's getting, we're going to keep an eye on it, but like he's doing great. But his specific speech is, you kind of not not there on some things, but other things, she said it was still age appropriate. It's just like, you know, Phoebe was so good at it that we thought he was behind, you know, but um, it was so funny because all he needs are these two little sounds, like be like four sounds, and because of that we have a whole IEP plan and a thing and an infrastructure and a person, when it's like, yeah, it's he just just needs help with these two sounds, they're like, nope, you're signing an entire plan, we have a whole thing, we've got an employee, we've gotta schedule, we gotta build out the schedule, and we're like, jesus, all right, that's awesome. That's how it goes now

0:36:56 Eli: Sure, oh

0:37:20 Tom: That is awesome. I will say, I know I mentioned this earlier, that Eamon has reading at the beginning of the year was essentially non-existent. He entered third grade with his reading level was emerging kindergarten. And we just had a email back and forth with his IEP coordinator. His reading is now up to grade level, so in one year he moved from emerging kindergarten to third grade. Yeah, he's he now reads at a third grade level, he reads at grade level, so they adjusted his IEP standard accordingly, but still pretty far behind in math, but that's okay, you know, reading is such a deeply fundamental skill that like so

0:37:38 Thomas: Nice. Wow, one year holy shit Nice.

0:37:38 Eli: Fuck yeah. And

0:37:57 Thomas: Yeah, yeah. I love

0:37:58 Eli: Math is stupid and boring Yeah. I say that all the time

0:37:59 Tom: Yeah.

0:37:59 Thomas: Math but reading is more you'd rather, if I had to choose one, I'd be like, yeah. Yeah. Reading helps so many other things.

0:38:00 Tom: When I

0:38:03 Eli: I did have to choose one. I did. Oh,

0:38:05 Tom: He can't engage like worksheets and other things that that are math related until he can read because he can even read the instructions, or, you know, so. But those IEPs, I just want to, like, chime in, like those IEPs, they can, like, they can absolutely catapult your kid there. They can be the difference between absolute struggle, which is what we all grew up with, like children of the 80s. Like, there's no fucking IEP in the '80s, not that I'm aware of. Like, I moved in with my dad, I couldn't fucking read, I was in first grade, like

0:38:10 Thomas: Right. Exactly. Yeah.

0:38:21 Eli: Yeah. So great Oh, Absolutely. Not, are you in the 80s?

0:38:35 Tom: Like it, what was I, 1984, 1985, when I was first grade, give or take, when I moved in with my dad, I couldn't read anything, you know. I'd gone to school and they sent me to school, you know, thinking that I had, you know, cognitive delays, so they weren't even trying to teach me shit

0:38:48 Eli: Monkey handling skills, on the other hand, off the charts.

0:38:48 Tom: Yeah.

0:38:50 Thomas: Yeah, like can you do the sign language? Oh yeah, you can sign with the monkey, but

0:38:54 Tom: Couldn't write my fucking name. I was in the middle of first grade, I didn't know the alphabet, I couldn't write my name. They weren't even trying to teach me that shit. And there was no IEPs. They just throw you in and they're just like, well, he'll sink or he'll swim, it's 1984, fuck you, kid. And it's so much better now. It's soo much better.

0:39:07 Eli: Yep. So know, the thing that really makes the clincher for the IEP, and this they explain it to you and everything, is that there's a thing at the very bottom of the IAP that says, and hey, if we don't do any of this, you can sue us and we have to pay for your lawyer, and as people who have since recently experienced the legal, I now understand why everybody is so attentive to IAPs.

0:39:21 Thomas: Sue us Yep. Yep. Yep. Yeah. Jesus. Yeah.

0:39:31 Eli: You can sue us and we will pay for you to do that is the, any, that was amended to anything in my life, I would get six -pack abs if it was like, get six pack abs or we can sue you and you have to pay for it.

0:39:31 Thomas: Yeah. Oh, man oh maybe we should do that somehow new workout app is sign away your legal, what's the word, indemnification the workout app, yeah. But anyway, to return to the the boys and girls thing, like, so I'm realizing in an interesting way, you gents don't have the exact same experience where you have like, you know, two kids close in age, one a boy, one, a girl, that, know, where you're seeing like these splits in real time.

0:39:49 Eli: Yeah, match is nine, so there's a pretty big difference.

0:40:08 Tom: No.

0:40:11 Thomas: And so it's like, it's weird to have these splits in real -time where it's like they're doing the same thing, you know, because they're close in age and then they literally like, okay, now off and the default, as As you said, Tom, the default is the male experience. And then, oh, you know, the girls, they'll have some stuff that's like that. I mean, it's better obviously now than it was, but I don't know how to think about it. I guess I'm just curious from listeners, maybe they can chime in. I hope people understand that none of this is to denigrate softball and other women's sports that they have developed an world and ecosystem. System. And it's, I'm sure, you know, it's just crazy that to think about the concept of that for softball to me.

0:40:52 Eli: Counterpoint, if you want to balance out the experiences, sign them both up for Cub Scouts, now and then when they split off genders, they'll be like, Phoebe, you get to be part of this multinational charity organization that has, like, vice presidents and incredible people as its former members. Um, if you wanna stay with the fascists, uh, don't tell them anyone in your family doesn't believe in God or

0:41:12 Tom: Wait a minute can

0:41:10 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah, wait,

0:41:14 Eli: Uh

0:41:14 Tom: Girls be part of the Cub Scouts now? No yeah

0:41:16 Thomas: I think you've said the opposite, isn't it? Girl Scouts is the good one. And then Boy Scouts, what's

0:41:21 Eli: Girl Scouts is the good one was the, was the thrust rest of that bit

0:41:23 Thomas: Cub

0:41:23 Tom: I think that's what he cub Scout is a is boy Scouts yeah in

0:41:24 Eli: Oh, Okay, start

0:41:24 Thomas: Scouts? Cub Scots is Boy Scots, right? I think you said I think you said that in Girl Scouts

0:41:28 Eli: Them both out in the non-gendered Scouts in the Girl Scouts, right? And then

0:41:30 Tom: Scouting well

0:41:30 Thomas: Yeah Oh, they did they change it to Scouts now, just like, okay

0:41:32 Eli: Yeah. I was just doing a bit I was doing a bet that's it

0:41:34 Tom: Boy, no. Scouts are still sex segregated, and so are the Girl Scouts. I just didn't

0:41:38 Thomas: A good bit. I just like, genuinely, what is the word? Do they still call it Girl Scouse, because that's the better organization, or did they rename it that's what I said. Yeah, so they renamed his Scouts. Okay.

0:41:38 Eli: No,

0:41:38 Tom: Get it. Oh,

0:41:45 Eli: It's called the Scouts. I think Yeah.

0:41:49 Thomas: So Eli, I will edit out Cub before your joke, and you just said Scouts and it was fantastic.

0:41:49 Tom: I didn't know that.

0:41:51 Eli: Right. There you go, and it's perfect as you nailed it. Thank you.

0:41:55 Thomas: Ha, Eli, amazing joke. Ha, ha, ha.

0:41:57 Eli: Oh, I am the heart and and soul of this podcast

0:41:59 Thomas: Yeah. Arlo, if you'd like to do Boy Scouts, no, I'm not going to let you near those people alone. So, no.

0:42:01 Tom: Huh?

0:42:01 Eli: All right. No, because they teach you to throw a hatchet before they teach you first aid. They get you molested and cover it up. Yeah.

0:42:11 Thomas: Yeah, best case is they teach you fascism. Worst case is some sort of horrible abuse. Yeah.

0:42:16 Tom: Either of you guys in those scouts at all?

0:42:17 Thomas: No, God,

0:42:18 Eli: Of course not Are you kidding?

0:42:18 Thomas: No, no

0:42:19 Tom: Oh, I was in scouts for a couple of years.

0:42:20 Thomas: Of course not for different reasons, though, for Eli and I.

0:42:21 Tom: Yeah.

0:42:23 Eli: Yeah. Yeah. That's

0:42:24 Tom: I got kicked out of the cub scouts. I like you do like a tiger scouts, cub sc outs, we blows. Then you do boy scouts that's like the track.

0:42:30 Thomas: Wee blows?

0:42:31 Tom: And then you do Eagle scout.

0:42:32 Eli: How you get your kid molested. It literally is called we blow

0:42:33 Tom: Yeah, I don't know why they call it. We blows like that's terrible. Yeah. But it's W E B b -e -l -o -s I I don't know where it comes from, but yeah, I like into that one, and my dad was actually the scout leader for a few years, and, like, I got kicked out eventually, but yeah, it was

0:42:34 Eli: Yeah. Yeah. Your

0:42:36 Thomas: Is that an animal or something? A Wee. Blow. Yeah.

0:42:47 Eli: Dad kicked you out, Tom? I, I hate you, and I like your brother.

0:42:50 Tom: No.

0:42:50 Eli: Jokes.

0:42:50 Tom: It's No.

0:42:48 Thomas: This Fucking kid. Won't tile the bathroom.

0:42:53 Tom: Yeah, he actually got mad because he wasn't taking it seriously. I would go to Cub Scouts to just screw around, and I wouldn't do this stuff like, I would just screw round and make jokes, and, like, he's like, "If you're not gonna take it seriously, I'm not gonna spend my weekends doing this." And I was like, "Well, I'm now gonna take seriously." So we should spend our weekends differently.

0:42:54 Thomas: Oh.

0:43:05 Eli: On him now now you make money

0:43:05 Thomas: So He didn't keep doing It. Okay, I assumed he was gonna keep doing it like with other kids just

0:43:07 Tom: No. Uh -uh No.

0:43:07 Eli: Yeah. Yeah. Obviously. That's what I assumed.

0:43:11 Thomas: Yeah.

0:43:12 Tom: No.

0:43:12 Eli: As well all

0:43:12 Tom: No. He got, he got, he got grouchy about it.

0:43:20 Eli: Right, gentlemen, before we go, snail goes into a Ferrari dealership and says, "Give me the fastest car you have," and they say, "Well, well, sir, that's the S900, uh, 200 goes miles per hour, uh, and zero to 103 seconds." The snail goes, "Yeah, but, but will you paint a big S on it for me?" And he said, "I mean, we could paint a big S on it for you, but why do you want that?" He says, "Because, because when I drive by, I want people to say, 'Look at that S car go.'"

0:43:46 Tom: Oh my god. All

0:43:49 Thomas: Oh boy. Okay.

0:43:55 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.

0:44:35 Eli: Off dicks by accident, I