DOD208: H.A.G.S.! KIT.!

Transcript

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

0:00:02 Clip: I'm the cool dad, that's my thing I know now what I can offer you that no one else can Complete and under-dependent I'm a man, I'm sensitive I need to feel loved, I need part of being a father that I enjoy

0:00:28 Tom: Welcome to Dear Old Dads, the podcast that's out for summer break! Woo -hoo!

0:00:34 Thomas: Oh, sweet, we don't have to podcast all summer? That's awesome.

0:00:36 Tom: We don't have to podcast all summer, we go broke! Yeah! Let him turn the lights off! Let's not eat food!

0:00:37 Thomas: What are we even doing here? We're gonna run through the sprinklers, woo! Yeah, not getting paid, yes!

0:00:44 Tom: Podcasting! That's how you... Yeah, summer break...

0:00:48 Thomas: I always love when everyone suggests, hey, you could just stop. Like, just, you don't need to do so many podcasts. Like, yeah. I don't, I don' need to make a living. I, you're right.

0:00:57 Tom: The audience will sometimes very generously be like, hey, we don't mind if you take a week off. And it's like, I don't get paid if I take... Like Cecil on Cog Dis, Cecil's going on vacation. Are you guys running into this? So it's like, all right, he's going to be gone. So I've got to like take time off my day job, like take vacation time off my day jump to drive over and bank shows for Cog Diss so that he can take a vacation because that's just, otherwise we don't get paid.

0:01:25 Tom: It's a hard way to make a living.

0:01:25 Thomas: I just think it'd be funny, like, in any, it's totally nice, but it would be funny. Just imagine folks who work a normal job if we were just like hey you're working hard you can take an unpaid like week off like just don't it'd be like what

0:01:37 Eli: Anyone who works in tech is used to that offer. They're actually very, it's called unlimited vacation days in the tech world. They don't pay you for them. And in some cases, the vacation is mandatory because it like sounds really good to be like, we have four weeks of mandatory vacation every year. And it's like, okay, is it paid? And they're like, yeah.

0:01:53 Tom: And then That's called being laid off. What?

0:02:03 Eli: So they'll like hire their own people. So I have a buddy who's going through this right now. She's insane. But it makes me so happy. Because it's just a perfect example of when internet jibber jabber meets real people trying to survive so he was laid off from his company and then hired immediately as a contractor for about time and a half what they were paying him so already duh but then on top of that back when he was working for them he had accrued a bunch of vacation days so as part of his severance they They were like, and even though you're fired and you start being a contract this time, you can use your paid vacation as the gap between that starting. So we'll still pay you like you were an employee here doing the thing, but they have a mandatory unpaid vacation. So before he starts his job at his job where he's now getting paid time and a half, he has to take three weeks of paid vacation, one of which will be unpaid because it's part of their mandatory unpaid paid vacation plan.

0:03:04 Tom: What?

0:03:05 Thomas: Very complicated I didn't follow any of

0:03:05 Tom: Lot you're using a lot of words that seem to contradict the other words I got an unpaid paid vacation I started

0:03:07 Thomas: This guys we lost all our listeners sorry I just checked the numbers they

0:03:10 Eli: Yeah exactly they've all gone from

0:03:13 Tom: Zoning out I'm tom curry I'm joined as always by thomas smith and eli bosnick hello hey is there anything worse than unpaid paid

0:03:14 Eli: The yeah but guys you know the as you were right there is where I was going and the only thing worse than an unpaid paid vacation why it's the auto ads an unpayed vacation from our podcasting entertainment product but you couldn't put an end to that vacation once and for all by heading over to patreon .com forward slash dear old dads That's where, for as little as a dollar an episode, you get a commercial -free extended version of every show. A little parenting episode at the end. We got a bonus episode every single month when the Smiths feel like releasing one. And you can get all that content over at patreon .com forward slash dear old dad's rip -on -tweet.

0:03:59 Tom: Vacation all

0:04:06 Ad: [Ad break 1 — ad music]

0:04:07 Tom: Right so I'm going to throw my uh fucking latest unhinged hot take out there and it is based upon yeah I

0:04:11 Thomas: Oh, great. Eli, you want to talk about whatever that bullshit was about the unpaid thing again?

0:04:16 Eli: Yeah.

0:04:16 Thomas: Never mind. Shut up, Tom. We got to.

0:04:19 Eli: Tom, before you jump in, because the people are clamoring. The people want to know.

0:04:19 Tom: Know yeah yeah yeah they want to

0:04:23 Eli: Curry watch. How is it? Three curry men. One house.

0:04:26 Thomas: Oh, yeah. One neck.

0:04:28 Eli: How's the adjustment going? How's it taking place?

0:04:28 Tom: Know yeah yeah so far so good we had uh this will be the real the real long stretch so we had a week with all four kids and then we had a week where you know axes had kids we had like a weekend rather where the our axes had the kids so we had the first week then the kids went off to their various axes for the weekend or my axe for the weekend and hailing's axe for the week and so now we've got two weeks we got two two weeks straight with all four kids. So far, everything's humming along. The only difficult spot in the house is that nobody eats the same thing. Like it's, meals are literally an impossibility.

0:05:04 Thomas: Because two of your kids eat everything and two eat nothing. So they don't eat the same thing.

0:05:09 Eli: It's like a logic puzzle,

0:05:10 Thomas: Exactly. Anti -matter and matter.

0:05:13 Tom: Yeah, right. So like Haley can only eat a handful of things still, like a small handful of meals. I think she's got maybe three meals that she can eat at this point. So, and those aren't things the kids are gonna wanna eat.

0:05:18 Eli: But she's just picky. That's not anything. She's just a real whiner.

0:05:23 Thomas: Yeah.

0:05:23 Tom: Yeah, that's, it's right.

0:05:25 Thomas: Tom's having to do a whole lot of like the goat and the grain and the

0:05:29 Eli: Yeah, exactly. I was going to say, it's like one of those logic puzzles. Yeah?

0:05:29 Thomas: Like canoe. It's weird. He's doing so much of it. Yeah. Yeah.

0:05:33 Eli: If you leave Finn with Donovan, yeah,

0:05:34 Thomas: You have to take Aislinn back with you with. Yeah, exactly.

0:05:36 Eli: Finn will eat Aislinn.

0:05:43 Tom: Meals, I will say, are kind of a logistical mess. And to a large degree, the kids are sort of we're sort of buying things the kids can kind of make themselves for the most part, because we just literally cannot do family dinner. It's not possible. The entire like Haley can't eat most things. Donovan and Aislinn won't eat a lot of things either because the ARFID Finn and Eamon will eat literally anything because they're like me. They're just like, I don't know, if it vaguely resembles food. Right.

0:05:53 Thomas: Man. Yeah, they're the free bingo space of the meal planning.

0:06:12 Tom: So the food situation, we got to work on.

0:06:14 Thomas: Today we have a lunch that works. They're eating. Oh, wow. They're already done.

0:06:19 Eli: You'd think that would make it easier, but because you have to prep around the people who have specific needs, The people who don't are often like, well, I'd like to have like a proper meal. And you're like, so a handful of graham crackers isn't good enough for you now.

0:06:31 Tom: Yeah, it is. It is actually weirdly difficult. Yeah. So we've got like, uh, I have a soup. I don' t know if either of you guys are this way, but like for me, it's not even important if I like the food to whether I'm going to eat the food. That's not Even like an important part of the equation.

0:06:31 Thomas: Shut up and eat your lunch. What about second lunch miss sorry I don't know yeah

0:06:49 Tom: If I'm hungry, it' s like, well, you don' l like that. It' s Like, well but I'm Hungry. I'm gonna eat. What it's like it doesn't taste good it's overcooked it's burnt like none of those things are even important it's not like yeah I'll just fucking eat something I don't like if I'm hungry I don' t understand the idea of being hungry but not eating because you don't like what's available my brain doesn't get there my brain's like yeah if it won't poison me today I'll eat plenty of it doesn'

0:07:14 Thomas: Even a longer term poisoning is fine yeah

0:07:18 Tom: T matter you're not wrong like it does' t like it's not even like do you like that like chewing I don'' t know it doesn'' t matter

0:07:21 Thomas: Do you want to eat this bowl of e coli yeah should probably take like at least 24 hours to get to

0:07:27 Tom: I said, so like, it's hard for me to understand picky eaters because I'm so the extreme other way. Right. Where it's like, yeah, if I'm hungry, I'll eat whatever isn't nailed down until I'm not hungry. And then that's fine. Like yesterday I was hungry. I just ate a bag of carrots. I was like, okay, I'm going to eat a pound of carrots. Like it's no big deal. Then I won't be hungry anymore. Cause I ate a poundof carrots, you know, like, did I want to eat a pound? No, but there was a bagof carrots and I could just open it and eat it. And then I wasn't hungry anymore and it solves the problem.

0:07:52 Eli: You didn't even dip it in anything. It was just raw dog and carrot, like a horse.

0:07:54 Thomas: Me jesus okay that's something

0:07:56 Tom: I had some like tuna salad and And like, I use the carrots to eat the tuna salad.

0:08:00 Eli: That's better. That's bitter.

0:08:01 Thomas: Yeah just the carrots is too yeah sorry

0:08:02 Eli: I was just picturing you horking. Yeah, that's too tragic.

0:08:05 Tom: Yeah, but I'll do that sometimes too.

0:08:06 Thomas: To me my stomach is like that's I have to have at least some different, like, I don't know, food groups, I guess, might be the way. I can't have all fiber. Like, if I just eat fiber, my stomach explodes.

0:08:17 Eli: See, if I plate a single, like, pretzel stick, as long as I plate it, sit down, get to eat it at the table, and don't have to have it on the go, my stomach is like, you had dinner. We did it. But if I eat an entire roast chicken while on the move, didn't count. Did not count.

0:08:35 Thomas: Interesting.

0:08:35 Eli: It's not part of it.

0:08:36 Tom: When it comes to meals, yes, if you're standing or moving, that's a snack. The volume doesn't matter.

0:08:42 Eli: Does not matter.

0:08:42 Tom: Standing and moving, that's 100%.

0:08:44 Thomas: That's why Tom has that recumbent bicycle underneath the dining table that he does. He's always cycling like a little lad as he's eating.

0:08:48 Eli: Exactly. Never counts. Mm -hmm. Bling!

0:08:52 Tom: But yeah, other than the food stuff, I think everything is working out great. And the foodstuff is not causing problems. So we're all kind of beginning to settle into a rhythm. But I want to say that's only possible, I I think, because this getting to our topic of summer break. Well, yeah, that is true. That is absolutely true.

0:08:59 Thomas: That's awesome. Patreon .com slash... Oh, no. Dear Old Dads. Sorry. All right, I thought that was another pitch.

0:09:12 Tom: It's only possible because it's summer break right now. And we've got two out of the four kids going to camp. We wake up in the morning. We've got a morning routine. I've got the older kids on a morning protein. Summer break is a fucking nightmare and it should be goddamn canceled. The kids do not need it is bad for kids to have three full months, a quarter quarter of the year of completely unstructured time to just run rampant. The first thing we do when it's summer break is we immediately replace the structure of school with the structure of something that we then have to pay out of our own fucking pocket to do,

0:09:51 Thomas: Oh, nice. Damn. What do you got I'm training for?

0:09:51 Eli: Right.

0:09:51 Tom: Which is a huge privilege that we have that most people don't have. I recognize that. They don't have full -time jobs and three podcasts, and they're not as fortunate as I am. So, like, because I'll tell you what, like the older kids that don't have that, they have structure because I've put structure into place for them. Like, so like Donovan and Finn, they get up every morning. Donovan drives the younger kids to camp. Finn picks them up from camp in the afternoon. I get Finn up with Donovan. And then as soon as Donovan gets back, they both have to do a workout together. That gets them up in the morning. It gives some structure to their day. Make sure that they eat something. Then because otherwise they get the fucking morbs man they get the fucking more because everybody gets fucking sad they stay up till 5 a .m. they sleep until 2 in the afternoon they

0:10:36 Thomas: Morbs? That movie I had to do with God Awful Movies? It's Morbin time? Is that what they get?

0:10:42 Eli: Truly, that's what it is, yeah. Mm -hm. It's morbid time

0:10:45 Tom: Get all fucking sad like because it's fucking depressing to not have purpose you

0:10:48 Thomas: Oh, yeah, no kidding. Yeah.

0:10:49 Eli: Yeah and so their social circle ends up just being their worst friends too because if you let them do the five in the morning 2 p .m schedule all the kids who have healthy balance and like things in their lives they don't ever talk to those kids or see those kids because those kids go to bed at 10 and wake up to do their like horse riding camp or whatever the fuck they're doing

0:11:09 Tom: Know

0:11:09 Thomas: Who the fuck are those nerds?

0:11:10 Tom: Nerds yeah

0:11:12 Eli: At the end of the summer they're like hey can chunk come over his dad got got hit by a car, and you're like, ah, fuck. We replaced all your friends with negligence. Aw, man.

0:11:18 Tom: Yeah day

0:11:22 Thomas: Can I ask what this is I'm gonna ask a dumb question what is camp because over here maybe it exists or maybe there's some like the only things I've ever found here I think this is a thing that the poor smiths never did or it's a regional thing but the only thing I find here is like well if you pay us five thousand dollars we'll take your kid for three days and I'm like Like, I don't, what is this camp that you're doing? What is it?

0:11:29 Tom: Camp

0:11:44 Eli: So these are day camps. You're talking about a sleepaway camp.

0:11:47 Thomas: I don'T KNOW WHAT ANYONE'S TALKING ABOUT.

0:11:50 Tom: Yeah. So park districts by us have day camp.

0:11:53 Thomas: Day camp.

0:11:53 Tom: You drop the kid off in the morning. You pick them up in the afternoon. So the drop off out here is like, I think, 845 and they get picked up around 345.

0:12:02 Thomas: That rules.

0:12:02 Tom: Yeah. And it's awesome. They spend the day out here like it's a place called Blackberry Farms. It's run by the park district and it's literally across the street from a they make a pick. It'S literally across the street FROM like a beautiful pool with like water slides and a lazy river. There'S animals on the farm there's rides they get to look at it see the other kids having fun fucking day camp out here fucking rules it's great it is not cheap it's

0:12:10 Thomas: Child labor. They make them pick, and then they, yeah, okay. They don't get to go on any of that. It's across the street from that, but they get to look at it. That's great. Yeah. Maybe we have that, and I don' t know about that. Okay. We do. We do, yeah. Yeah, well, we did the, yeah, the sports through there a little bit back in the day that Eli made fun of me for. Look, let's not bring that up again.

0:12:32 Tom: Probably through your park district do you ever look at your park District offerings yeah well I mean Eli is convinced that the park districts are poverty -ridden hellscapes no

0:12:44 Eli: They're the worst. Yeah, no, it's a nightmare.

0:12:46 Tom: I would like I'm gonna send you pictures of this camp it's fucking beautiful I would have given my fucking left left arm to go to this camp. When I was a kid, I went to Chicago public school, like CPS day camp, which was just, everybody was outside. That was it. Child protective services.

0:13:00 Thomas: It's bad that it has the same initials as Child Protective Services. I feel like that's, that's bound to be a misunderstanding. Yeah.

0:13:03 Eli: Tom, are you sure they didn't, like, you didn't see a sign once as a kid to the building that came and picked you up in Chicago

0:13:12 Thomas: And your mom was like, oh, it's, it'd be a good idea. It's, let me see, camping, public. Oh, man.

0:13:13 Tom: Camp.

0:13:16 Eli: Public School? Hey, that works. And the monkey was like, good one, Diane. And she was like, thank you.

0:13:24 Tom: Camp for poor students. What? What?

0:13:25 Eli: What say we get a little 10 a .m. whiskey, huh? Mommy earned a treat.

0:13:31 Tom: Yeah. Fucking camp out here is fucking baller. But I do look at the kids and I'm like, God, this is not like, there's this huge amount of like educational loss that takes place over the course of three months. And educators are so aware of this, that raising my hand, having gone to school to be an educator, you have to be taught on how to manage educational loss at the beginning of the school year.

0:13:54 Tom: It's a whole thing where you're like, we're going to give everybody three months off. Then they're going forget a big chunk of what they learned. And then we're We're going to start over and reteach them the shit we already taught them. What? What is any of this?

0:14:03 Eli: And whenever you bring up this is a problem, the like counterpoint that people make is one, teachers deserve paid summers off. And like, hell yeah, baby, everyone deserves paid three months off. Like I'm I'm in favor of that. I just think that maybe we don't all do it at the same time. You know what I'm saying? Like Europeans have managed to figure this out without everyone taking the same vacation at the time. Time but then the second thing which I think is so funny is people will be like yeah but kids hate school and you're like oh should we fix that problem then rather than just stopping the torture for three months so they can catch their emotional and psychological breath

0:14:42 Tom: Well, also, like, nothing makes you hate something more than a long stretch of not having to do it, right? If you're just doing something every day and it's the norm, then it's just what you do today.

0:14:53 Thomas: To be fair this might be a tom thing yeah if you just have crippling pain in your neck every day just becomes part of the background hum of your

0:14:59 Tom: Wait, you give a kid three fucking months off and you're like, okay, well, get back to sitting on a dead desk. Like, you could not do that. That, what you could do instead is say, hey, maybe we don't have to go to school for seven hours a day. We could go to School every day for four and a half hours. So it wasn't quite so tedious or wasn't so difficult. Or you could go To School four days, there's a million ways to restructure this. Yeah, man, like

0:15:03 Thomas: Life yeah especially for little kids school should just be mostly playground like for all day and then like a couple of tries at learning and then and quit yeah

0:15:27 Tom: As a parent, especially having grown up with like a single parent, as a parents, it is a logistical nightmare to you. Because like, people be like, Oh, well, school isn't a daycare. Well, I mean, it kind of fucking is actually, like it is anybody

0:15:37 Thomas: It absolutely is what the fuck are you talking who said what idiot said that

0:15:41 Tom: Who says that is like you're literally wrong you're bringing your kids to a place where now other adults are legally responsible for their welfare

0:15:51 Thomas: There's no option that like well maybe I just don't work today and just have the kid it's like what are you what country do you think we're in it's very weird I don't understand the assumptions that school makes about adults I don'T know I think it's still based on like the 50s like housewife thing

0:16:06 Eli: It's all based on the 50s housewife model right it is based on on the idea that a family is supported by one income and one and a half full -time child care givers right which is that one person is just a full -term child care giver and that the other person is a half -time caregiver

0:16:15 Thomas: Right yeah yeah that's it pretty much is alice yeah from the brady bunch she's He's like, yeah, I mean, oh, sorry. I thought you meant the additional help that you have. No, the dad's a zero time in this model, I think.

0:16:27 Eli: No I bet that that's a part of it too right the nanny structure right but even our familial structure is built around the idea of a family that's dad comes home and gives mom a break right that's also built into the system and it's just all all it's all complete

0:16:38 Tom: It is total nonsense what makes me crazy about the summer break model is it's it's just objectively bad for everybody it's bad for adults right like trying to like scramble and find temporary daycare you only need it for three months and then oh but sometimes I also need it for this weird christmas break season and also I need it für like spring break time it's fucking really obnoxiously difficult to build a life around

0:16:57 Eli: Nonsense right I

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0:17:11 Eli: Want to speak to another argument that you hear a lot when you bring this up which is that people will be like well I loved summer camp and like don't get me wrong max is going to a super cool private camp that isn't based out of the fucking sewage department like tom's kids are he's going he's gonna like a super Cool Camp with kids with his needs that's gonna work on his education stuff they've got kindergarten prep it's gonna be be amazing

0:17:31 Tom: This don't shit on sewage camp I fucking love sewage

0:17:32 Eli: He can do that because of financial privilege right a system that benefits people with financial privilege that's worse that's a worse thing than if because a lot of the time people will be like oh no I loved camp I love sleep away camp or my kids are having a great time and like don't get me wrong I am so happy for you I love that for you I love that for your kids I know how wonderful that can be I had a bunch of wonderful experiences Over the summer. But if you have set up a system where you once again stratospherically divide the social levels of wealth, that is not a good system to keep in place. Yeah. Mm hmm.

0:17:34 Tom: Cam right yeah it is well and there's nothing that says you get that it has to be an all or nothing process either where there's just no no time off in the summer and fuck you. You can't take a, you know, a family vacation or like whatever. Like you could have a rational amount of time off, but fully a quarter of the year, fully a corner of the summer, a quarter, a half of the winter, a year, a week, a month, quarter of a year in a single chunk.

0:18:16 Thomas: Yeah. Who the hell came up with that? What was the deal there? Is that farming season? I feel like.

0:18:31 Tom: I like, I don't know if it's just like a hold over from farming or if it is a holdover from like, Hey, we don't have air conditioning and students will die in here or some combination thereof. I don' t know, but like I fucking, I hate summer. I watch my older kids especially. Last year, Donovan didn't have, and Finn wasn't living here, so I can't really speak to it as clearly, but Donovan did not have a summer job and he was not taking any summer classes. Both of the older boys will also be taking one summer class through the local community college this summer. But he did not anything to structure his time. So what he had was three months to just do with as he saw fit. I remember my first year out of college I had a work from home job and I had no supervision whatsoever and like with no supervision and this was as a 22 year old you know quasi grown man I just fucked off all day until I quit that job because I was bad at managing my own time and we're asking like young people donovan got kind of bummed out kind of severely bummed down we had to stop and be like okay next year we have to structure things differently and so like I know it sounds kind of like military over here it's not It's all for their benefit. Like, I get everybody up in the morning. I get them moving. I get sunshine. I give them activities and, like, mild chores. But, like. Absent any purpose. Absent. Any, like structure. Any reason to differentiate Tuesday from Wednesday. That's not a good place for people mentally. It's not good for them. Right. Yeah. Were you really? Oh.

0:19:44 Eli: Scott, work means freedom right above the door. It's very nice.

0:19:59 Eli: And you spoke to something really important there, Tom, which is when you were an older kid, when we were growing up, the answer to that was a summer job. You would get a kid -centric job that probably only existed in the summer, where you were underpaid and undertrained, but everybody kind of got it. The outdoor kids, they were like lifeguards and peewee coaches, indoor kids like me, movie theater ushers, right? You got stoned in the back, you ate a lot of movie theater popcorn, and everybody sort of knew the deal. But as we always talk about on this show, since capitalism has broken all of these systems, those jobs, it became beneficial to have someone doing those jobs year round. And because of the stratifying of wealth, people are now willing to accept those jobs as careers without the raise in pay that would make it a viable way to survive. So now there aren't summer jobs or if there are summer jobs you're taking a career away from someone who needs to feed their children or feed their family or they need to rip you off by the way they pay you because it's the way that they're able to like sustain themselves as a business so even that like fun system that used to be a part of that sort of teen tween years before you went off on your own has been sort of corrupted and ruined my first job the first job I had when I I was 15 years old, I went and got working papers from the state, is I was the dancing Quiznos cup at Quiznos. Yep. I stood either out front of or in the window, if it was hot, of Quiznos and just danced around to techno music as a cup for like $13 an hour. And it ruled.

0:21:37 Eli: Yeah, because I was just making money and dancing around to my favorite music, right? And everybody understood this didn't need to be a job. Everybody understood this Didn't Need to Be Like a Career. I wasn't, please, that's 100 % what my job is at this point. There's so little difference between the Quiznos Cup and where I am now.

0:21:46 Thomas: Patreon goal, make this Eli's job again, please.

0:21:55 Thomas: Yeah, the costume is a little more revealing than it used to be, but...

0:21:57 Eli: Right. It's a little more revealing, but other than that, it's the same. But like, again, when I talk to young people today about what my starter jobs were or what my summer jobs were, or what that experience of early employment was like, it just night and day. It just, those opportunities do not exist anymore. Yeah, exactly.

0:22:14 Tom: They don't exist it's so hard for the boys to they tried to find summer jobs I tried to help them find summer I don't know how hard they looked but they didn't do nothing they filled out applications and shit online and

0:22:41 Thomas: Well, because you need another

0:22:42 Tom: Nothing like not a fucking peep not a callback fucking nothing they weren't able to get summer jobs like I said they're going to take a summer class I'm making sure that they're up and moving and moving their bodies and eating food and doing into things to take care of themselves here in the mornings well I know

0:22:42 Thomas: Thing to do, Tom. You need another fucking thing in your life.

0:22:45 Tom: Man but like I worry because you know the other side of the coin like I remember growing up with a single parent and summertime was a fucking free -for -all man school was out I was a teenager dad was at work until 6 30 which means from the time I woke up to the time 6 30 rolled around and dad was home I just did whatever the fuck I wanted to do I went where I wanted to do, I did whatever kind of fucking trouble I could get into,

0:23:13 Thomas: Fought whatever car wash fight he wanted to fight.

0:23:14 Eli: Yeah. Yeah. And it was never good. It was never good. I don't have a single summer memory that isn't accompanied by, okay, but this one time, and whenever you ask someone who's like nostalgic for those summers, if you just let them talk, they'll be like, okay. So let me tell you about the ice cream van. And you're like, there it is.

0:23:15 Tom: Yeah but like you know no, no,

0:23:32 Eli: There's that other shoe. We found it.

0:23:32 Tom: Yes people will tell you stories about when they grew up and then they're like laughing and they're fun and funny stories and you're like would you want your son or daughter to have that same experience and they'll be like no no because like even when it turns out well a lot of times what you recognize is how how close you came to something turning out really badly. Like the, the reason you're telling it as a funny story is because it just, you just got lucky, right? There's like a million times I was like, let's jump off that bridge and do a fucking body of water. We don't know how deep it is. We literally did this. I remember my buddy Jake and I, he's like, oh, we used to come down here. We'll go swimming. I'm like, okay, cool. We go on this bridge and he's Like, all right, we're just going to jump off. And he jumps off and I'm Like, cool, and

0:23:53 Eli: 100%. Yeah. Mm -hmm.

0:24:12 Thomas: Jesus Christ, this is my nightmare as a parent.

0:24:15 Tom: I jump off and And I get in, we come up, and I'm laughing. I'm like, that was fucking awesome. Like, how deep is this water? He's like, I don't know, man. And I'm, like, wait, what?

0:24:23 Thomas: Oh my fucking God.

0:24:24 Tom: Wait, what, I just figured he knew, because he jumped first, yeah.

0:24:26 Thomas: Oh, my fucking God.

0:24:23 Eli: Did you at least wait for him to come to the surface before you jump or do you one two three I think you one two three didn't yeah

0:24:32 Tom: I don'T think I did, man, I DON'T think I did.

0:24:35 Eli: You hate to see it

0:24:35 Tom: Like, we did a million things like this, because we were teenagers that were unsupervised, and we didn't have a sense of our own mortality.

0:24:41 Thomas: I'm glad my kids are scared of everything. You know, there's actually an upside.

0:24:45 Eli: Dude the drugs you want to talk about late teen years the drug there's no I own my home and if someone was like hey do you want to do drugs in the amounts and in the ways and with the purchase decisions that you did drugs from the age of 15 to 19 I would be like get off my property or I'll kill you and say you were trespassing say

0:25:08 Tom: So, I didn't do drugs when I was a teenager, but Haley did drugs, and she'll tell me stories, and, like no bullshit, I don' t know if this ever happens to you guys. She tells me stories and I'm afraid for her retroactively. Yeah.

0:25:18 Eli: Yes you're worried she's gonna fade out of the photo yeah

0:25:20 Thomas: That was me when you told the story about jumping off a bridge just then, Tom.

0:25:23 Tom: I like it happens all the time.

0:25:25 Thomas: Did it happen to you? Yes, right, five seconds ago.

0:25:29 Eli: The amount of pills that someone handed me that I just took

0:25:35 Thomas: Man, I lived such a different life.

0:25:35 Eli: Truly uncounted I do not know how many times that happened

0:25:38 Tom: I didn't

0:25:38 Thomas: My life was so different from you guys.

0:25:39 Eli: That someone handed me a pill and I was like will it get me high and they were like welcome to the jungle and I Was like all right tom

0:25:43 Thomas: Ha, ha, ha. Ha, ho, ho. Ha, poof.

0:25:49 Tom: Do drugs at all as a kid. I Didn't drink at all. As a kid, the first time I drank beer with friends was after my high school graduation. My buddy got like a handful of ice house beers. We drank them in his basement. And I was like, that's kind of lame. And that I was in. So like that stuff I didn't do. All the other crazy, stupid shit. One, I did all the same shit. I just did it sober.

0:25:57 Eli: Voice yeah

0:26:08 Tom: Like I did it all the stupid, dumb shit. And I was like, perfectly sober. Let's do that.

0:26:08 Eli: Yeah come on cm punk bring it on

0:26:13 Tom: I didn'T even have the excuse. Yeah. I DIDN'T even HAVE the excuse!

0:26:18 Eli: Have we told the fact that that you used to fist fight CM Punk

0:26:22 Tom: No, I didn't. I wrestled with him.

0:26:22 Eli: On this show, or do I just repeat it like the religion it is to me? Okay.

0:26:25 Tom: I wrested. We told that story. We TOLD that story, yeah. I'm 99 % sure, yeah no and I

0:26:29 Eli: I just need to remind, I feel like I'm an old person who has to tell you about wooden escalators. Whenever, whenever we start to talk about your life, I have to talk to you. I have talk about CM Punk. Sure. Yeah. If you're listening, Mr. Punk, Mr.

0:26:37 Tom: Want to be clear cm punk as a teenager would have beat my teenager ass that dude was a tough motherfucker as a teenage like respect to that guy as a teen he was

0:26:48 Eli: Punk, is it Mr. Punk? Can we call him CM? Were you on a first name basis? Charles Murray Punk. Same Charles Murray. That's what people don't know. This is actually, he also he is the wrestler and he also rubbed the bell curve

0:26:49 Tom: Tough it's uh phil is how I knew him I knew miss phil yeah I knew his brother better than I knew him so god this whole summer thing is not good we should get we got to get rid of this thing we gotta do

0:27:07 Eli: So obviously there is one good thing about summers and this is what I want to bring us to next which is the summer vacation gentlemen do you have a summer vacation planned with your family obviously we'll report when it happens but do you have

0:27:20 Thomas: I didn't get to talk about my summers,

0:27:22 Tom: Something yeah I'm gonna hear about your

0:27:22 Eli: Vacation oh talk about your summer yeah get in

0:27:22 Thomas: But okay. I don't know what you guys, what lives you guys lived. So I guess there was some benefit to living in the middle of fucking nowhere and not having the ability to drive. I was just on an open air prison, so I couldn't really get to much trouble but also I will say the benefit of my dad you know because he didn't work was summer to me was always like this infinite possibilities until the day it started and then nothing was a possibility you know like I always look forward to it like oh man this is gonna be so awesome I'm gonna get to play video games all the time and like day one my dad would have a bunch of fucking work for us you know it'd be it would be fucking firewood dude you know how much fucking firewood look I know some people had it harder than me but this was not chores like I wish this This was chores. This was hard fucking labor, dude. This was carrying firewood and chopping firewood and carrying up fucking hills that you wouldn't even fucking believe. Because I lived on a goddamn mountain. The whole thing, we lived on the top of the hill and all the firewood was not on the tip of the mountain.

0:27:51 Tom: Summers oh we had chores yeah

0:28:24 Thomas: And we had to carry it up the fucking hill from a mile. God, it was the worst. It was the worse.

0:28:28 Tom: Did your dad do that because the work just needed to be done he was too lazy to do it himself or or did he do it to keep you out of

0:28:31 Thomas: Oh no, he was not lazy when it came to this. When it cameto this stuff, he wasn't lazy. He was a very taskmaster. He was, you know, it was, and it was summer was the time we needed to do it for some reason. I don't remember why though, because it's the most hot. Yeah. Yeah. You do have to have the wood ready for the whatever. And I guess he did need our help, uh, somewhat.

0:28:35 Tom: Trouble okay there's just work that needs to be done it's got a season that would for winter time or whatever right did

0:28:54 Thomas: That's all the heat I had.

0:28:56 Tom: You guys really use wood to heat your house like what like fucking shit what

0:28:57 Thomas: First off, it's not, it wasn't very cold. So that's part of it, you Know? Yeah.

0:29:00 Tom: Oh yeah I forget that you're in

0:29:02 Thomas: I mean, uh yeah, I mean I grew up 1300 feet elevation. So a little bit, you KNOW, it did snow occasionally, maybe once a year, got a little bit of snow. So it wasn'T, it WASN'T Sacramento. It's in the foothills a bit, but yeah, no, it wasn't very cold, but that's the only heat we had. Dude, we had this tiny pathetic wood burning stove that would keep about 0 .6 of a room warm.

0:29:02 Tom: Sacramento area yeah okay

0:29:22 Thomas: And then the rest of the house was freezing. And I say freezing, it was cold, I guess relative to you Chicago person, you know, it Was like the place where we hung out, like the converted fucking old garage that the kids hung out in was just ice. And we just would have a bunch of of blankets and I would pay a million dollars to return to that time and place right now like it was the best it was just kids freezing to death playing nintendo there's nothing better it's the best I love it no matter how stupid and shitty your childhood was it's like yeah but I didn't have to worry about bills so it was it was like so much better well

0:29:48 Tom: Damn god damn I like yeah right yeah

0:29:57 Eli: I like wait did you guys like being a kid better than being an adult I fucking love being an idol I hated being a child

0:30:04 Thomas: It's not I don't I don't know about when in the time it's always about looking back and thinking like oh man back then I didn'T have to WORRY about this or I DIDN'T have TO WORRY ABOUT

0:30:10 Eli: Oh even Even looking back, no, I'll take

0:30:11 Tom: There yeah I wouldn't I wouldn'T be a kid again

0:30:14 Thomas: That oh man

0:30:14 Eli: Bills all day, every fucking day, man.

0:30:15 Tom: No yeah I didn'T like being a

0:30:16 Thomas: Good for you guys Guys, that's nice. I hated being a kid. It's still better than now.

0:30:21 Eli: Oh God. Just the, just

0:30:23 Thomas: I'm just kidding.

0:30:24 Eli: The mastery I have over my own brain, because again, just to be a young, mentally ill person, especially in the sort of pre therapy, chit chat times, you just sucked, right?

0:30:26 Thomas: Yeah, fair. Yeah, that is fair.

0:30:35 Eli: You were just like, why am I so bad at existing? And now I'm just so, I'm like, you ever see those movies where there's like a karate master and they all, they all attack him at once. And he's like, but that's how good I am at fighting depression at 38 years old is I'm just like, oh, this trick again. Depression. I remember when you tried that the first time when I was 11. Plus, like I do whatever I want. Right. Like I have a job, but like.

0:30:59 Thomas: Yeah. It is objectively better in every way. There is no argument there. It is just a nostalgia thing. And it is a feeling that... Am I the only one who has this? There is a feel that I have that it is not real. But it is nostalgia for a thing that could never happen again. Which is, I don't know about fucking politics. I don't know about climate change. I don't know about bills. I don't know about anything. I just know about what's the next Nintendo game I get to play and that's all that's literally like your life just revolved around

0:31:27 Eli: You'd like to be 90 percent of the country.

0:31:31 Tom: Kid yeah

0:31:31 Thomas: Yeah, yeah, do you know what I mean like it's not I literally was objectively worse in every way It's just that feeling of like not feeling fucking bummed out all the time by that kind of stuff is a place that we can never return to.

0:31:43 Tom: I guess I didn't I didn't I don't feel like

0:31:45 Thomas: Well you were fighting monkeys and you were

0:31:47 Tom: Yeah, I didn't like Being a kid, like I didn't like Like, yeah.

0:31:48 Thomas: Fine, yeah, I didn't either. I—let me—I didn't

0:31:51 Eli: There's no question that Tom's childhood was worse than whatever influx of news we are currently experiencing.

0:31:57 Thomas: Either, yeah.

0:31:59 Tom: Yeah, I didn't like being a kid. I didn't like the sense of being out of control all the time and, like, having no ownership over, like...

0:32:05 Thomas: I didn't know any different, though

0:32:07 Tom: Yeah, just, I hated that. I couldn't wait to grow up. When I was, like—I remember when I was 14. I happened to be in my dad's room, and I looked around, and I realized, like,"Man, my dad's bedroom looks so much different than my bedroom." Like, my bedroom has all these, like toys and kid stuff, and this isn't how, like adults— I want to be an adult. I'm tired of being a kid. And I went into my bedroom and I got rid of all my toys and everything that I thought an adult wouldn't have. And I put all that shit in boxes and threw it all out. I was 14. I was, I remember doing it.

0:32:23 Thomas: Oh my God, Jesus Christ, Tom. He was seven

0:32:36 Eli: So for those of you who follow along for parenting advice that's where Tom's dad should have interfered and been like no you still are a child but tom's tab was like finally something to make more tiles out of throw your Throw the teddy bear in there.

0:32:42 Thomas: Everybody, yeah. Bought him a suit, yeah.

0:32:49 Tom: I think he just thought I redecorated. I don't think he ever thought of it. I don't think he ever, I didn't tell him I was doing it,

0:32:53 Eli: He actually never went into your room so he didn't know you'd thrown it away

0:32:56 Thomas: Not until Tom's stepmom would do the fucking

0:33:00 Tom: Yeah, that shit did happen. That was not great.

0:33:00 Thomas: Searches

0:33:01 Eli: That's Right, hey, I noticed this room was easier to flip this week. You might want to talk to him about it check behind the

0:33:04 Tom: A lot less stuff. Yeah. I

0:33:13 Ad: [Ad break 3 — ad music]

0:33:14 Tom: Don't know if your parents ever did this stuff over the summer, but like, you know, again, my dad being a single dad, he got kind of creative about how to like occupy our time. And I told before, like he would go away to work and we'd be on our own because until we'd go with other households and stuff and like have like essentially a babysitter we stayed with when we were little. But then by the time we were like teenagers, we were just in the house by ourself. And my dad was, I think, very aware that like a lot of unstructured, unsupervised time is not good for teenage boys or anybody. Buddy. And so he would give us chores. Like what I think of as like long form chores, like chores that would take like a long time or multiple days. But then we also had homework. Awesome. My dad would make us do book reports every week.

0:33:54 Thomas: Jesus, Jesus.

0:33:54 Tom: So every week we had to read a book and write a book report. And so like you had stuff to do and I resented it so much at the time. Oh yeah. A hundred percent. We did it.

0:34:01 Thomas: And you guys actually did that yeah because you wouldn't wow

0:34:04 Tom: Yeah. If you, if I didn't do the book report, then I would be in all kinds of hell. I didn't want to catch all kinds of hell I was no I'm not I'm not gonna get ground I'm Not gonna get grief and grounded but like it's I hated it as a kid because I was like I don't want to fucking write a book report but also you know I got really good at writing you know it's never been a bad thing to become really fucking good at

0:34:10 Thomas: Yeah good for your dad man good for your dead yeah hmm car wash fighting oh writing sorry yeah can

0:34:25 Eli: Posters writing

0:34:26 Tom: Writing yeah you know like if you're really adept at reading and writing like really adept at it not just like passable at it there's a life you can build with that shit I look at that and I'm like that shit's a Gift, no.

0:34:36 Eli: 100. Yeah, no, it's—yeah.

0:34:37 Thomas: Become a podcaster Sorry, sorry to insult you in that way. You can be good— yeah do you think he does a lot of creative writing in his job or is it just the business he writing

0:34:44 Tom: I, yeah. A lot

0:34:45 Eli: Tom's hobby is a podcast, Thomas. Oh, I think he does a lot of creative writing in his job. Let me explain why your house is not there anymore. To be or not to be your house anymore.

0:34:54 Tom: Of creative in my day job I do a lot of creative your home has shuffled off the mortal coil it says according to our documents

0:34:58 Thomas: Me yeah I'm realizing that since my mom was a teacher I didn't really have the same experience that you guys had my mom was like home so I just didn't have any of this it's

0:35:19 Eli: Well, my parents were both teachers too, so I had the same situation, yeah.

0:35:21 Thomas: Interesting. Oh, how are you doing all the drugs then

0:35:23 Eli: Because we were just allowed to do whatever we wanted. So there would be a camp. Camp would be a certain amount of weeks. And then there would be a vacation for a certain amount of weeks. Weeks but then there would be like a week or two in between especially when we got older when camp just wasn't an option anymore because I would do shows there was a summer theater program that was my version of camp and I did that all the way through high school but there would be a week or two where I would just be like I'm gonna go make bad decisions my parents would be like please don't and I'd be like oh what's this right it's just a there was just you know it was the go run around and play outside and especially because I had girlfriends at the time I had an an established friend group. Like, at a certain point, that kind of watching your kids feels like a drag. And so, again, like, not when I was, you know, 9, 10, 11 years old, but by the time I was 16, 17, my friends had driver's licenses and all that stuff. Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah! Bad decision town. Population me. Yep.

0:35:29 Thomas: Drug camp. But enough

0:35:52 Tom: Man By the time I was 15, 16, I had—I had a little bit of money in my pocket not enough but not enough to like fuck around, you know, we had enough to like go out and go to Denny's or whatever, you know, yeah.

0:36:26 Thomas: To find out. No, I'm just kidding. Yeah.

0:36:28 Eli: Enough to get in trouble, not enough to benefit you in any way. Yeah, exactly. Mm-hmm.

0:36:32 Tom: Not enough to get you out of trouble is the problem. You had enough to get in trouble and not enough to get out. It was late teen years were like, I don't know if I even count that as being a kid like late teen years, probably senior year to I

0:36:41 Thomas: Well, especially Mr. fucking Lord Business over here, getting rid of all his toys and turned them into, I don't know what,

0:36:48 Tom: Just got rid of them.

0:36:49 Eli: Selling them for scrap!

0:36:49 Tom: I threw them out. I just threw all that shit out. I just was like, nah, I don't like it because again, like for me being a kid was not good like being a kid. I didn't have like a very good experience being a kid

0:36:53 Thomas: Sad life.

0:36:58 Eli: Yeah, to be fair, if we had Tom's childhood, I would also want to throw all of it in the garbage.

0:37:01 Tom: So, yeah, it just—it seemed like, well, the faster I grow up, the faster I'm out of—

0:37:06 Thomas: You just needed a Nintendo 64 in your life, Tom.

0:37:10 Tom: This, I know, I know.

0:37:10 Thomas: That's all you needed. God, it was the best.

0:37:11 Eli: I had—I had one of—

0:37:13 Tom: I'd have had a GoldenEye existence

0:37:13 Thomas: The best. Yeah? Nice.

0:37:13 Eli: Those do you guys remember and maybe this is this is just me do you guys remember when you discovered pirating

0:37:21 Thomas: Oh, that's what Tom is. Tom? Well, Well, back for Tom, it was literal piracy. It was actually, Tom's like, yeah, you know, the fucking tricorder hat,

0:37:24 Eli: Right no you

0:37:25 Tom: So fuck you so when bluebeard and I were sailing the seas and

0:37:29 Eli: Tom's Spanish Armada yeah exactly

0:37:29 Thomas: Whatever. The doubloons that I got my hands on in summer. It was just fucking.

0:37:33 Tom: So let me give you some tips on scurvy now scurvy can really ruin your vacation how

0:37:38 Eli: Yeah steed bonnet was really nice in person no but I remember—because I remember it was a summer the first time I learned because my first piracy now a lot of us our first piracy was music, right? Because of Napster and LimeWire.

0:37:54 Thomas: Also, bandwidth. There wasn't much else. I mean, it took an hour to download a song.

0:37:57 Eli: Yeah, exactly. So you couldn't really download much. My first piracy was video games.

0:38:03 Thomas: How?

0:38:05 Eli: So I learned, I want to say I was like 15 or 16. So, I'd already done quite a bit of coding and I was on like some chat forums. Now, chat forums again is this is so hard to explain to young people um imagine you're stuck in a room and two of the people in the three-person room are literally nazis but they're also interested in the tv show that you're in the room to talk about so they're gonna be like white power but they're all gonna be in episode 16 buffy did this so it's a really weird mix so I'm on this chat room and I'm doing like coding stuff and we're talking about backup hard drives and this is where I learned for the first time about like ripping roms from games and the PlayStation was the PlayStation 2 specifically had a incredibly easy to access hard drive port so it literally would just open up the playstation 2 and it was right there for you you could just put it and they meant it for external storage because they were planning that system to last a lot longer than it does it's actually an interesting story from sort of video game history, but what it meant was all you needed was a ROM ripping program, which was incredibly easy to find and put onto a PlayStation and then any kind of external storage. So what I would do is I would rent PlayStation two games from Hollywood video or video King or blockbuster, whatever it is, I would rip them to my PlayStation. And then instead, cause I don't know about you guys. I had like three video games for every system I ever had. Cause we just didn't have money to keep buying games. I knew the ins and outs of Tony Hawk Pro Skater. I had a small religion dedicated to Final Fantasy X, but now, all of a sudden, instead of having one or two games, I had 10 games. Then, I remember this so specifically, someone was like, hey, mail me your hard drive and I'll put everything that I have on it. Yes, that's a terrible idea.

0:39:39 Thomas: Yep. Yep. Yep. Oh, wow, he picked a good one. Jesus, that was a fucking great game.

0:40:05 Thomas: That was Eli's first experience with child porn.

0:40:08 Tom: This is not gonna go—

0:40:09 Eli: It worked out awesome. So I got it back in the mail a couple of weeks later and it was loaded up with 150 PlayStation games. And I remember just being like, stealing this stuff is amazing.

0:40:16 Thomas: Jesus.

0:40:22 Eli: So, yeah, That was one of my summers—just like discovering piracy.

0:40:23 Tom: Well Jesus Christ, no. I—I just looked it up Napster started in 1999 So I was like that was my senior year of I graduated

0:40:35 Eli: You wanted to take a Napster.

0:40:35 Tom: College in 2000 and limewire started in 2000 the year I graduated college so I remember going to visit my ex-brother-in-law who is a couple years younger at his dorm down in Bradley and they had Napster and they were like streaming shit. And I was like, what the fuck is this? This is way better than CDs, like towers and towers of fucking CDs. Cause they were the first time I ever saw people like playing music from their computer in an organized way. And it was fucking awesome. But yeah, it was like I was already out of college by the time that happened. So yeah, no, that was not my summer. I was not like we stole shit the old fashioned way. We went places and we stole it. That's true.

0:40:47 Thomas: Oh, ruled, yeah.

0:41:03 Eli: Mm-hmm. Yeah. Good times. Why am I just running? Yeah. Yeah, with our good friend Steed Bonnet.

0:41:21 Tom: Like we would go to fucking Disc Replay and steal discs from Disc Replay.

0:41:24 Eli: Oh, yeah, good times.

0:41:27 Clip: DEAR OLD DADS

0:41:33 Eli: All right, gentlemen, before we go, my wife told me I have to stop impersonating a flamingo, but it's okay, I put my foot down.

0:41:42 Tom: Jesus fucking Christ. Jesus Christ.

0:41:44 Thomas: Shut

0:42:33 Tom: Did I want to eat a pound of carrots? No, but there was a bag of carrots and I could just open it and eat it.

0:42:38 Thomas: Up and eat your wrench.

0:42:40 Eli: And the monkey was like, good one, Diane, and she was like thank you, mommy earned a treat.

0:42:49 Thomas: Jesus Christ, Tom.

0:42:51 Eli: You wanted to take a napster.

0:42:54 Thomas: Kids, freeze into death playing Nintendo. There's nothing better. It's the best.