DOD253: Maybe a Little Stitious

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 where one out of three of us doesn't have sick kids. I'm Tom Curry. I'm joined as always by Thomas Smith and Eli Bosnick. And I'm going to knock on wood here before Haley yells at me so she knows that I did that. Hello, gentlemen.

0:00:35 Thomas: Oh,

0:00:44 Eli: Whoa, whoa, whoa. Don't try and coax me away from that. Is Haley a woodknocker?

0:00:49 Tom: Oh my God, we got to stop everything and talk about superstition. It's the only thing I care about. It is the only I care about. This is all I can... So we went down this, just maybe like Like six weeks ago, we had done this like a long ass rabbit hole. Haley is really superstitious. She's got the knock on wood that throws salt over your shoulder that don't split the pole when you're walking, when you'RE holding hands. There's all these superstitions, none of which, none of which I knew until she and I got together, none of which.

So I'm saying stuff and she's giving me this fucking look and she'S like, knock on wood. I'm like, what are you talking about? Knock on wood, throwing salt, like not splitting the pole when you walk hands. So it turns out she's from the Hudson Valley area of New York.

I had no idea that, like, a lot of the superstitions that are a part of our area, and specifically a part her area, are Scottish superstitions that come from the Appalachian region, and the Appelation region is wildly superstitious. Like, you can't open the door at night if somebody knocks on the door, and like you You can't like whistle in the dark. And there's like a million of them. And like, I'm laughing. We're looking all of these up.

And Haley's like, I would never, if there was a circle of stones in the woods, she's like I would not I would like I never go in that circle. And I'm like, what are you talking about?

0:00:53 Thomas: Wow.

0:00:52 Eli: Yes! My dad was a wood knocker.

0:01:21 Thomas: What the fuck are you talking about? Yeah. Yeah.

0:02:03 Tom: There's like all of these things and like so many of them, she's just like internalized. And then the kids have internalized, and her mom was visiting at the same time we were having this conversation, and her mom has internalized, like, these superstitions are wildly unconscious. But like, Haley is an incredibly rational person who is like, yeah, we are not doing these things, like we are 100% just not going to do those things. I grew up not doing those things, we are NOT doing those things, like I am NOT whistling in the dark, like, it's a thing, it's all thing, and I think it's super regional. No

0:02:04 Thomas: Wow.

0:02:09 Eli: Yeah.

0:02:33 Thomas: What?

0:02:36 Eli: Okay. Are you allowed to whistle in the dark? That rules, because that's the kind of superstitious my dad was as well. Because look, if someone has a mild case of OCD or some kind of obsessive behavior and they need to do it in their own life, you're like, okay, that's sad. I wish you'd do a little bit of CBT about that. But you know what? Some people fuck kids, as my daddy used to say. But the notion when someone brings

0:02:40 Tom: Jesus

0:03:01 Thomas: Yeah,

0:02:59 Tom: Christ, I don't know how that it's always goes back to that

0:03:01 Eli: It to your door when it comes to your daughter, and someone's like, no, you don't break the salt circle, that's when you're like okay, that's that's true, yeah that's, I was gonna say though, was she superstitious before? It's not like she walked through a stone circle and then she

0:03:10 Thomas: Yeah. Maybe you guys should do the opposite of whatever you've been doing. Yeah, fucking A.

0:03:11 Tom: Well, here's the thing, in her defense, her luck has been very bad lately, like, so like right I think she's getting more superstitious right, yeah, and then everything fucking blew up, so like, yeah

0:03:28 Thomas: Yeah maybe spilling the

0:03:29 Eli: Should start walking through stone circles

0:03:29 Thomas: Salt is really good for your, yeah, exactly.

0:03:32 Tom: She's like, we are not tempting fate, and I'm like, all right, I mean, like, sure, fair enough, I'm not tempting fate, like, whatever we need to not do, I am not doing it I'll

0:03:46 Thomas: Yeah

0:03:41 Eli: She walks through his own circle and the fae folk are like, hold on, how often have you eaten? You're okay. Let me look at this chart here. Oh, God, Cipro. Yep, no, Cipero's bad.

0:03:50 Tom: Tell you what, yeah, if I broke a mirror, you know who I wouldn't tell? Fucking anybody that's who I wouldn't sell. Yes

0:03:55 Thomas: Yeah

0:03:55 Eli: Anybody in your house? Oh, my God, I just realized you're the worst person to be married to if you're superstitious, because 99% of superstitions are don't break that, and 99% of Tom interactions with the physical world are I don't squished it by accident.

0:04:01 Tom: Wait, no.

0:04:06 Thomas: Okay.

0:04:12 Tom: Yeah, well, there's so many too, we're looking them up, there's like, if you have a pocket knife, if you hand somebody your pocket knife, you have to be the one that closes it, whoever opens it has to close it, there's a fucking million little rules, like little, like, superstitious etiquette rules for the fucking unseen world, and so many of them come from that Appalachian region of the world world, where they are absolutely a real thing.

0:04:24 Thomas: Sorry.

0:04:35 Thomas: What did that have to do with anything? I missed that connection. No, no, the Appellation, the Appallation thing.

0:04:38 Tom: Why carry a pocket knife every day? I've had a pocket knife in my pocket. Well, it's because where she's from. She's from the Hudson Valley area of New York. And so like, there's a lot of bleed over. There's a light. Yeah. The Appalachian mountain range runs through that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's a whole thing regionally.

0:04:46 Thomas: Oh, okay, I just don't know any of this because I'm, I'm a West Coast, whatever, I have no idea. Oh, okay, gotcha. I was like, did she, is she in Hillbilly Elegy? What are you talking about? What's going

0:04:56 Tom: I'm sure you're familiar with these, Eli, coming from that area. Yeah these are the thing. Yeah Yeah.

0:04:58 Eli: Yeah, yeah. So that's the funny thing about Appalachia is that it is literally a vein of the worst poverty in the country that just runs through the country. There's almost a social justice element to it, right? Because everybody, everywhere in America, no matter what level of privilege you have, you have to be like, I mean, I'm not Appalachian, if that's what you're wondering.

0:05:22 Eli: I don't have it significantly better better than the people of Appalachia.

0:05:22 Tom: I assume you're not superstitious at all, Thomas, I presume. Is Lydia? Would you know?

0:05:29 Thomas: On No, I know she would have had to either get, get rid of it or, uh, yeah,

0:05:39 Eli: I, I, so here, let me call my shot here. Let me call my shot Here. I would bet she doesn't have any of the fucking knock on wood traditions. But I would bet She has a bunch of theater kids stuff still stuck in there.

0:05:41 Tom: You had to get rid of it. Are there theater kid traditions?

0:05:52 Eli: Oh, yeah, you don't say Macbeth in a theater. Yep. You don't Say good luck.

0:05:55 Tom: Good luck. You don't say good luck, right?

0:05:58 Thomas: I don't think she cares about that stuff, to be honest with you. I don '—no,

0:06:01 Eli: Call her in the room right now. I'm going gonna say five minutes to curtain, and if she doesn't say thank you five, I'll, it's

0:06:03 Thomas: No, I'm fully—oh, she will say that. Yeah, no.

0:06:08 Tom: What is it?

0:06:08 Thomas: She'll say that that's not a superstition. That's just courtesy.

0:06:11 Eli: A superstition now, here in the year of our Lord 2026.

0:06:15 Thomas: Wait, what?

0:06:15 Tom: Wait, what is it, what the thing?

0:06:17 Eli: So when your stage manager comes in and says "five minutes to curtain," you say "thank u5." Everyone says it, and it's understood. You say that because you can't go, like, because if you said, maybe you were just really enjoying your sandwich, right?

0:06:21 Thomas: Thank you, five. Yeah. Yeah, I know. This is not a superstition. This is just how to run something.

0:06:34 Eli: But if you're a theater kid, or ever were a theater kid, whenever anyone in your life says "something minutes to blank," you go, "thank you, something minutes."

0:06:36 Tom: Huh.

0:06:44 Thomas: Yeah, that's just this is a good bit. This is funny.

0:06:47 Tom: Would you say goodluck, Thomas? Would say good look before a show?

0:06:50 Thomas: Oh, yeah. I don'T care about any of that shit. She might, I mean, she will do whatever to get along, you know, with people.

0:06:51 Tom: Okay.

0:06:54 Eli: What about, like, jinx talk? 'Cause I don't do jinx, I'm not superstitious, but I don't do jinx talk, like.

0:07:00 Thomas: What does that mean?

0:07:00 Tom: What do you mean, jinx talk? Like, describe it.

0:07:02 Eli: I'm not out here being like, "My kids so alive." Like, I am not doing that shit, okay?

0:07:07 Tom: Haley would refer to that as tempting fate.

0:07:08 Eli: Here's the thing, right? I'm not superstitious. My dad was hardcore superstitious and enforced superstition on others, right? Full Haley. If you said something Yankees-related, oh, wood was getting knocked. If he had to grab your hand and knock it for you, you were knocking wood if you said something about the Yankees. And I think where that is left over in me, there's only a certain amount of, like, bit I'm willing to do about how good it's going right, about the people that I care about. I'm like, "Hey, I don't know." Because here's the thing.

I've been wrong about so much shit. That's the other problem. So many people in the secular community, you were kind of right about everything. Then you read a couple of books and you were like, those are good words for the thing I'm right about. I was dead wrong about everything you could possibly imagine at one point in my life or another. So for me to be like, no, this time I'm nailing it. Like, I'm just going to, we're just going to keep it safe. I hedge my bets on everything. Everything that is a decision I made. I'm like, we'll see.

0:07:08 Thomas: Jesus.

0:07:23 Tom: I

0:07:37 Thomas: Ah, yeah. Yeah.

0:08:11 Tom: Do that now, but only when I'm talking to Haley, because, like, that's a tempting fate thing, and it kind of is hard for me to do, because it'd be like, hey, this thing's going great, I'm excited about it, I want to, like, be happy this thing's doing great. She's like, don't fucking talk about it or it

0:08:25 Eli: Do you want to do it here on the podcast? She can't stop you, Tom. Let's tempt some fate right now. Let's do it. Let's tempt the fuck out.

0:08:26 Thomas: Yeah. Wow.

0:08:26 Tom: Yeah, she looks at me like I'm the crazy one. She's like, why would you say that? And I'm like, because a good thing happened. I don't know, I'm, I think so. Yeah, no, I, I think it's fine. I think it's

0:08:37 Eli: Do it, Tom, this is your chance to have an affair. Have an emotional affair with fate right now. Talk about how alive Donovan is. Five straight minutes of how intact his eyeballs are.

0:08:47 Thomas: Wow.

0:08:45 Tom: Funny. Do you know how fucking uncomfortable she would be if I, no, I'm not doing that. I'm not doing, I would never want to make her uncomfortable.

0:08:56 Thomas: That is so weird.

0:08:58 Tom: Yeah, well,

0:08:58 Eli: So here's the compromise I think we should have as a show, because we're sort of three bears in it, right? Which is, this

0:09:03 Thomas: I think we are three bears in here. I literally will never care about a superstition in my life.

0:09:07 Eli: Is what I'm saying.

0:09:07 Thomas: No one can make me care about an superstition.

0:09:08 Tom: I don't care about the superstition, I just don't want to make my wife uncomfortable.

0:09:11 Eli: Yeah, exactly. So Tom, out of respect.

0:09:12 Thomas: Yeah, no, and I would fully make my wife uncomfortable. That's the three bears. If she was like, you got to do this time, I'd be like, no.

0:09:15 Eli: Yeah. You have to stop believing that silly thing you believe. That's what actually has to happen. But don't worry, I'm gonna help by not doing it. And then when you don't explode, you'll have to, I don't know, confront that or not. I don't really care. It's actually none of my business what you do.

0:09:24 Thomas: Yeah, that's.

0:09:27 Tom: Uncomfortable. Yeah.

0:09:34 Eli: I wish you the best, but this is why we're three bear, because you got Thomas on that end, you got Tom on the other end being like, I would never walk through a stones, because here's the thing, here's thing, this is a thing about Tom, and you take it or leave it, but this, this is true. If Tom is riding his little bike next week and he pulls off the path to not drink some water, whatever it is he's done, and he sees a stone circle and it's the way to get across the bridge. Nobody's around for a thousand miles. Tom is not walking through the stone circle.

0:09:34 Thomas: Yeah. Really?

0:09:51 Tom: Not not if I told Hayley I wouldn't do it.

0:10:07 Eli: Not walking through the stone circle, not saying it, not doing it. But even if she never found out, he's not walkingthroughthestonecircle. No way.

0:10:14 Thomas: I don't know about that. I feel like I feel Like he would do it on the slide.

0:10:17 Eli: No fucking shot.

0:10:17 Tom: Yeah, no.

0:10:19 Thomas: He would.

0:10:19 Eli: Not in a million years.

0:10:19 Tom: Because what if, I, no, I don't know. Like, that's just not how promises work. I can't do that. Like, like, yeah, well,

0:10:24 Eli: He said he wasn't going to walk through. He said that the God is real and that Jesus Christ is our Lord and Savior.

0:10:29 Thomas: Oh, wait, sorry. I missed it. You actively promised her even not in her presence. Since you wouldn't walk through his stones.

0:10:34 Tom: We were joking. No, we Were joking about it. Not that she's like, you can't fucking. I'm like, okay, well I will fucking walk through stone circles now. Like that's fine. Yeah. Yeah. There's no way.

0:10:39 Thomas: Okay, well, if he gave his word, yeah, I didn't know that. But I'm sure there's some other stuff. Like, if Tom spills salt by himself, he's not doing any fucking rituals. I'm just going to go ahead and say, yeah.

0:10:49 Tom: Yeah, that is true. So here's the problem. If she asked me to, I probably would say I would, but I'd forget a stone circle in the woods would be noticeable enough for me to be like, that's fucking weird.

0:10:55 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah. Plus, Haley set it up as a trap for you, so. Yeah.

0:11:02 Tom: Right? Yeah. Right. Previous me would probably have gone in and on purpose be like what's this stone circle here for?

0:11:03 Eli: You FaceTime. Yes, she's hiding in the bushes.

0:11:07 Thomas: Yeah. Start spinning around in the center of it. Yeah.

0:11:07 Eli: MTV cheaters, yeah.

0:11:08 Tom: Like, you know, like what the fuck is this? Right. Hey, I'm here! Hey! Hey!

0:11:15 Eli: Please, please, Fae folk. I'll give you my name. Time for the last time, no. Get out of the circle, man. We're trying to catch some battle. You're fucking it up. No, no, Pinkleston, stay away from him. He's going to get you sick. Oh, Pinkestons, oh. You gave Prickleston's abscess.

0:11:16 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Step.

0:11:37 Eli: But gentlemen, do you know the only thing worse than the enforced tyranny of superstition that our sweet, sweet Tomifer lives under? Why? It's the auto ads. You better spin around and step on your crack, because otherwise the auto adds will be right back at patreon.com. I don't fucking know.

0:11:52 Thomas: On your own crack, that sounds

0:11:53 Tom: What is that? No, I don't know what that is.

0:11:56 Eli: Patreon .com forward slash dear old dads. You get a commercial free version of the show. And we promise, we swear to never walk through a stone circle in the woods, but only for our high level patrons. You got to really earn it. If you're the high level patrons, oh

0:11:58 Thomas: Hard.

0:12:07 Tom: No

0:12:11 Thomas: Yeah, see, I'm not doing that just because I don't have any interest in the stone circle, but it has nothing, no, no other reason.

0:12:17 Eli: Put some, put some hockey on the other side of the stone circle.

0:12:17 Tom: Other reason.

0:12:17 Thomas: You know, I see it, I see a stone circle, I'm like, don't care about that, it's nothing. Some, some idiot made a stone circle, some moron made it. They're just doing weird stuff, who cares? That's

0:12:21 Eli: None of that business, not, not, it's just too busy to walk through stone circles.

0:12:28 Eli: That's right, over at patreon.com forward slash dear old dads, like the Fae folk into Tom's teeth. Rip into it. That's how the Fae folk get you. I

0:12:49 Ad: [Ad break 1 — ad music]

0:12:51 Eli: Think for patron bonus content, Thomas should have to say how not molested his kids are.

0:12:56 Thomas: Nothing.

0:12:57 Tom: This, uh, this is an email from Holy Guacamole, which I love that Patreon name.

0:13:01 Thomas: What? Oh, the superstition thing. Sorry. Okay, I was already, I was like, what? What is that joke? Joke.

0:13:04 Tom: Hey, he's back.

0:13:06 Eli: Hey, Thomas, I need you to remain conscious in between sentences.

0:13:10 Thomas: No, I don't know what the, I instantly forgot about the dumb superstition thing. It's dumb. I don'T do it. I DON'T care. Anyway, my kids are very not molested. They are a hundred percent doing great. Well, I'm not going to say that. Who knows? I got to, no, I'M NOT GOING TO SAY THAT BECAUSE I DON'T KNOW IF IT'S TRUE. I GOT TO PROTECT THEM. EVER VIGILANT.

0:13:22 Tom: Everybody, there, they are now.

0:13:18 Eli: Say never. They would never get molested. See?

0:13:31 Tom: All right, from Holy Guacamole. Hello, gentlemen. I'd like to get the three bears' takes on a low-stakes parenting situation that has come up. My wife and I will have this sorted, but I thought it would be interesting to hear some other viewpoints. I have three daughters, eighth-grade twins, and a fourth-grader. This is about a friend of the fourth-grade. I'll call that kid Kyle.

0:13:48 Eli: Twins. Nice.

0:13:48 Tom: Kyle moved to the area a year and a half ago, lives about a half mile away. We're in a fairly rural area, so he's at our bus stop for school. Since he didn't have any friends when he first moved here, his mom invited us to his birthday party last year. The party was pretty chaotic, which matches the vibe of mom, who appears to struggle with managing time and activities and being places.

I've driven him home several times and she wasn't there to pick him up from the bus, have picked him up to get him onto the bus. I've drove him to school when she missed getting him to the bus stop and didn't text me in time to get them. His home life seems like a discordant clusterfuck, not necessarily abusive, but more of a benign neglect. Benign is wrong there.

Kyle has two younger siblings, and his dad seems a piece of shit that can't be bothered to be a father. POS dad now has a restraining order for some reason and is not in the house. I think this figures into what Kyle's mom has to shoulder. We went to Kyle's birthday party again a few weeks ago. It was very similar to last year. Mayhem. I spent an hour driving around to find their dog who got out, ran off at night in the fog. My wife stayed at the party. We're not going to leave our daughter alone in that house because we don't have confidence that things will stay under control control, nor do we know whether POS dad has guns or samurai swords or something in the house the kids could access.

0:14:55 Thomas: Oof.

0:14:55 Tom: So here's the issue. For Christmas this year, Kyle got an electric scooter. We found this out when he showed up at our house in the middle of the day. We let him stay for about a half an hour, then I took him home. We're in a rural area. The road you have to take between our houses has people driving about 60 with no sidewalks and no bike lanes, and Kyle wanted to ride home on the scooter, but I insisted on driving. Kyle's now showed up three more times in the past week week, once without having worn his helmet.

I told him he needs to wear the helmet when he's on his scooter, and he has been wearing it since. I also told him I don't think he should ride on the big road between our houses because how fast people drive, but he has still shown up. We think he might be trying to get some respite from the chaos of his house, and He knows where we live, so he's just popping by. He's a nice kid. He is doing well in school.

He has been getting recognition at school ceremonies, and we don't want to cut him off from a chill place if he needs it. However, we also have things that we need to take care of, so there needs to always always be boundaries in place. We're not always home and don't want him wandering onto our property in case of injuries. What are your thoughts? Really.

0:15:52 Eli: So I wonder if, which end of the bears I am at. I am at abandon the strange child end of the spectrum.

0:16:01 Tom: Interesting. Talk to me about this. Like, so just, like, cut this fucking kid off from your family?

0:16:01 Eli: Yes.

0:16:02 Thomas: Abandoned? How are you gonna do

0:16:06 Eli: Completely. Here's the thing. That kid is in a Lifetime movie. He's in a sad movie. You know what happens to the other families in a Lifetime movie? Bad shit. Bad shit happens to everybody who's in a sad move movie. You need to stay the fuck away. Look, if you and your wife were single and didn't have kids and you weren't taking care of your own family, right, it's just you and your wife, Kyle wants to come by on his electric scooter, that's a happy movie. You play catch, and one day you're like, Kyle, it's not your fault, and he's like, hey, you're my dad now. You want to do a fucking Blind Side. Do a Blind Side. I hope Kyle's the same race as you, right? That's pretty problematic. Point is, you want a

0:16:11 Tom: That's True, it's

0:16:42 Eli: New Blind Side to a blindside right now. Kyle is gonna bring the dress. Kyle has a dad who has a restraining order against him, and he is going to come to your house. Do you think he's going to react well to any scenario where you disagree? You're bringing a restraining order dad into your house, where you're like, oh, I don't know, that episode of Blue, he was a little too sad to watch. Uh -uh kyle's in a sad movie Kyle's over there in a sad movie. There's lots of things that are sad in the universe. They're not your responsibility. Fucking vote Democrat, right? Right.

0:16:42 Tom: A really problematic movie. Me.

0:17:18 Tom: Yeah,

0:17:18 Eli: It is not your obligation to save Kyle.

0:17:21 Tom: I'm kind of on the same train to some degree. Like I think, yeah, this is tough. The reason I'm on your train, Eli, is that the kids don't sound like they're friends. I think this equation changes if the kids are really close. And I think that's a good thing.

I mean, this happens a lot where there's some kid who your kid makes friends with and they become close with with, and that kid's parenting situation or home life or whatever is shit, and it happens a lot, and people end up sort of finding a sort of second home or a home away from home or a more stable home environment, and then they can kind of bond into that family, and then if they're a good kid and there's not these other complicating factors, everybody can kind of win. I don't think that there's anything wrong with that. And maybe I'm biased to some degree because when I was a kid, I know I mentioned this before, but like, for a long, long time, I, I did a little bit of, like, home shopping myself. Like, I always wanted a mom, you know, like growing up, and like, obviously didn't have a mom, and so like, I would always bond with my friend's moms, and I would get invited to their

0:18:24 Tom: Christmases.

0:18:25 Thomas: That Huh. Banged all of them.

0:18:25 Tom: And you know, be kind of taken in as part of the family, but it happens all the time. Like everybody growing up has that friend or knows that friend that, like, yeah, they sleep over, like, three nights a week, and you know, they're really kind of part of a family. It's like, yeah, it's because their fucking home life, life sucks.

0:18:28 Eli: That

0:18:42 Tom: I think if these kids seemed really close, which you do not get from this email, they seemed really closed. I think the equation changes. It sounds like this kid is just popping by because they're fucking like, yeah, it sucks to be me every day that I wake up. I just want to be somewhere else. And like, there is a level of chaos.

0:18:41 Thomas: Yeah, was That you, Tom, or was that, sorry, just clarify, that was Tom?

0:19:00 Eli: Was Tom. Yeah, that was also Tom. But that's the thing. That's him today, too. That's he also does that as he drives through the neighborhood on his bike. He's just, oh, if anyone wants to be my

0:19:01 Tom: I was just sorry. That was an aside. That was in a side. Yeah.

0:19:09 Eli: Mom, I'm just kind of starting over. So here's the think. Right. Here's where I want to I want to pull back my point slightly, which is if you have a kid in a non -dangerous situation, a kid who just like has less money than you or is less less lucky, or is just like a little hectic, having a harder time. I assume that I am that for all of my parenting friends. They're like, oh, here come the Bosnics. He's not wearing shoes again. They were talking about me, not Max.

0:19:09 Thomas: Okay. Yeah.

0:19:35 Eli: I assumed that there must be an element of that about how much shit I have together versus my friend parents who are all way, way better parents than me. But if there's danger involved, if there're restraining orders involved, That's somebody else's movie, baby. Yeah.

0:19:48 Thomas: Yeah. Hmm.

0:19:36 Tom: Yeah. Yep. I think that's the key, right? I think that it's entirely laudable and I think it's okay and I think it could be great to sort of take in strays, so to speak. That kid who needs somebody, needs some stability, needs some love, needs a place to go that is like a respite. Yeah, come on, man, you're invited over for Christmas. Be here for Thanksgiving. You're buddies with my kid. Yes, like you're part of my family. I understand that arms wide sort of stuff.

But yeah, it stops as soon as there's that get fucking danger involved. It's one thing to go looking for someone's dog because they don't have their fucking act together, and it's like, all right, well, I mean, like, let's go help them out. Like, you should have your fucking act altogether, but you don't, so let's, we're gonna go help. There's some chaos. Let's kind of be a place where it's a calm in the storm. I get that. But yeah, man, when there's danger, it's not, man, we can't be friends. And we've had, we've got a situation like that. I think I told the story on the show. We had a situation where Acelyn had a friend that we, we strongly suspected was a dangerous situation. Turns out, by the way, we were 100 % right and the police agree now.

0:20:56 Tom: So like, we strongly expected that there was like some problems and that that family was a danger and we're like, yeah, that person can't be your friend anymore. You can't have that person in your life. And that really sucks for that other person. But like, not everybody can be my responsibility. I can't let you get hurt in order to be nice to somebody else. I can'T let that happen. And that's not how my locus of control and responsibility works.

0:20:55 Thomas: So

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0:21:26 Thomas: What, what do they have to do? They have to be like, go on, get

0:21:29 Tom: What would you do, Thomas? Like, what's your take on it? I'm curious where you would land on it. Or did you grow up knowing anyone like this?

0:21:34 Thomas: I think you guys are pretty much solid. I wouldn't, I think that if it's somebody who, and just like you, Tom, I can relate when you grew up where your parents like just didn't fucking give you anything. And, you know, I, sure, I had enough to survive. I'm not saying I was, like, you know, starving or something, but like in terms of toys, in terms of whatever. Yeah.

0:21:54 Tom: We ate the snakes in the snake cave. It was fine. Yeah.

0:21:55 Eli: Exactly, and all the snake you could eat

0:21:56 Thomas: Yeah, the snakes and I ate bountifully from the, we all shared mice, you know, it was, it Was great.

0:22:04 Eli: Thomas, your mom sucks, and I really need you to confront that. She's doing her best, Adolf.

0:22:14 Thomas: So I could understand the, like, I clung to my friends as much as possible. But I had the complication of, I was still dependent on my parents to take me anywhere. I wish, dude, if I had anywhere walking distance, oh my God. Oh my God, I would have lived there. I would've fucking lived there, and I don't know that my parents would, well, Well, no, my parents were pretty protective, so they probably would have cared. But if it was somebody they liked, I think the convenience would have won out for them. If it was like, oh, yeah, OK, go over there. Like they just whatever was less work for them, like they just wanted to be doing. They just, you know, not doing this.

But I think I'm with you guys that like the moment it seems like a dangerous thing. That's kind of a different story. I'm happy. I'm excited to be a possible, you Know, resource and help to anyone who might need it. I'm excited for that because my parents would have been doing the thing where they're constantly like keeping a tally or something or like, oh, this person's imposing too much or whatever. And I'd be like, no, I don't give a shit. People can impose all they want.

But if it is like an actual danger scenario, then, yeah, I think I'm with you guys. I'm just wondering, what does this person do? Are they going to have to, like, tell the kid, like go on, get like how they're going to.

0:22:29 Tom: Yeah, yeah.

0:23:23 Eli: Hisler. So there's a big highway, which, by the way, is how the sad movie ends, podcast listeners. Don't, this is gonna work itself out in payroll. There's big, like, highway where everyone goes 70 miles an an hour, and this kid takes his only object, his only possession, his little Tom electric scooter, and he's, he's like, I'd like to go somewhere where the yelling stops, and he rides it out into the fucking oncoming traffic. And this person who is kind and full of gentleness was like, you're not even wearing a helmet, man. What act of the movie do you think you're in? He's the first one is like, you're, you're the third act.

0:23:41 Tom: Yeah, I think like the kids just like showing up randomly and unannounced, which is so funny because like, that's our whole lives. Maybe I'm speaking for myself, but like when I was a kid, you just showed up. Like, that's how you hung out with your friends. Like you just got on your bike and you rode over to your friend's house and you rang the doorbell and you were like, yeah, I wanted to see if my buddy was home. And if they were home, you hung out. And if they weren't home, you just were like aah, shit's happening. Hey, get back on your bike and go back. You know? That's like, but now that's not a thing. So I get that. It's just funny. The little, yeah. So yeah. I think you've got to talk to that kid and say, "Hey, you can't come over here unannounced. Like, I'm sorry. We can set up, like, I don't want to use the word play date because I think it's annoying, like..."

0:24:25 Thomas: The little lad bike was trying to get back to his childhood.

0:24:36 Thomas: You can announce it so I can say no.

0:24:39 Eli: Yeah.

0:24:41 Tom: I'd be willing to maybe set up a play date, but like probably not, you know? And then it's also like you've got to have an awkward conversation now with your fourth grade kid about why this person is probably not a good and safe friend for you to have. And that sucks because that's like what, a nine-year-old? And we had to do that with a's and we to tell her are like, "Yeah, you know what, like you can't go to her house. Like you can't come to your friend's house. Like your friend for a little while can come here. I'll do the driving.

You can get in a car with her parents. You can go to our house." And like, it's awkward. It's fucking super There's no nice way to say it. I will also kind of expand the idea of danger that I think it's fair, not required. I don't think it is like morally required, but I think it's fair too to sort of expand the ideas of what's dangerous to a level of chaos that disrupts your kid's life and success and focus and attention. Like, some people just are raised in environments and have a level of chaos and, like, uncertainty and just constant fucking drama that your kid can get sucked into and

0:25:14 Thomas: Yeah.

0:25:48 Eli: Yeah.

0:25:48 Tom: End up being a caretaker at too young of an age, which sets up a dynamic that they do not want to be in, that is not healthy and safe for them, that your kids can like, they're scholastic and academic and other achievements may be affected by their, like, constant attention being poured into somebody else's problems. It's okay to be like, yeah, we're not doing that.

0:26:08 Eli: Yeah.

0:26:08 Tom: I think you can, but you've got to closely monitor.

0:26:07 Thomas: No,

0:26:11 Eli: I'll hopefully not speak out of term, but I will say that my sister has always been an adopter of misfit children from, like, the time she was old enough to make friends. Every friend she brought over was someone who was at the very least less lucky than us, and what it meant is that we ended up having a lot of extremely adult conversations extremely quickly, and she did not understand why we did not want to get involved in her friends' lives. So we had lots of conversations about divorce and cheating and drug use, right?

Like, because the other thing is, this kid has had a lot of bad things normalized, a lot of bad behaviors, a lot of loose behaviors, discipline stuff that you don't agree with. That's all been normalized for them, so that when your kid talks to them and says, "Yeah, I'm not allowed to watch TV after eight," it's like, "Why?" "Because it's getting in the way of heroin time." Like, there you have. Be aware that if someone is being misparented, they are carrying that information to your kid in the same way that we hope our kid is carrying it to another.

0:26:52 Tom: That, yeah The problem is, like, all of that drama stuff is really exciting. Like, all that drama staff that you were just talking about, people love that shit, right? That's the tea, that's the gossip, that's interesting. It's new emotional input. As adults, we like that shit, like, whether we're willing to admit it or not as adults. That's why we like it. That's the reason reality TV is even a thing, right? So like, we love that kind of, like, emotional input as people. I wasn't counting the robots. I wasn't the robot, the, I'm sorry, forgive me. I was, yeah, the robot people are set aside. But like, you know, it's, it's exciting, and it's exciting for kids too, and also these are going to be a lot of new situations that kids have never navigated

0:27:38 Thomas: Not me. I don't care. Don't watch it. Stop saying we. I don't like any of that. I don't watch reality TV. Okay. Thank you. Thank you, uninterested.

0:28:02 Thomas: Wait, what was the age on this?

0:28:02 Tom: Before that adds to the excite, fourth grade.

0:28:05 Thomas: Yeah, I think that's a little young to be giving a shit. They're probably just oblivious, don't you think?

0:28:09 Tom: But I think, like, beyond this specific instance. This is something that happens all the time, you know, and like we'll continue, and it's something I think as parents we have to be really aware of. Like, that chaotic kid, I am very sympathetic. I am intensely sympathetic to that kid that lives in chaos. And I don't think that if you, I don't, I'm not saying thing just fucking abandon all of those kids. I'm really not saying that. Those kids really, if they can have a stable second place in their home, in their lives, I think it can be really good for everybody. But I think you've got to keep your fucking eye on that shit because it can quickly spiral out of control and then have downstream effects on your kids, and that's your first area of responsibility at the end of the day. That's it. Like, you can't be responsible for fucking everybody who lives near you.

0:28:11 Thomas: Sure, yeah, sure.

0:28:54 Tom: That's just not possible.

0:28:56 Eli: And More importantly, you're dealing with your own kid and that influence will affect your own kids. If you are in a position where your life is settled enough, right? So, for example, if you had an adult child who was like 18 or 19 and they had sort of settled into their groove and were making their own decisions. And then you had a younger child who came by who you sort of wanted to step in and do that sort of pseudo parenting with. Awesome. I think that's an amazing thing to do. But I also like that's not what's going to happen. This person is going to influence your kid. They're going to influenced your parenting. And more importantly, for all the time this kid gets to spend at your house, this child's parents will also feel entitled to parent your kids.

0:29:35 Thomas: Sure.

0:29:35 Eli: It's, I mean, I'll give you a great example, right? I love my parent friends. I love my parent friends. Every single one of my parent friends and I have had the nobody ever gets to hit Max conversation. Every single one. Because there's no risk. There's no awkward moment that I'm not willing to have. That someone goes, "Oh, well, we hitting this family?" I think Kyle's parents probably hit. What if your kid's over there sometime and Kyle's fucking getting into the raccoon feed, or whatever it is they have over there, and the mom or dad decides that your kid needs a whooping because they were there too.

0:29:52 Tom: Yeah. Yeah,

0:30:16 Ad: [Ad break 3 — ad music]

0:30:18 Tom: There's a level of chaos that breeds chaos that you can sort of extrapolate out to right where it's like, all right, this is the what I see is the tip of the iceberg. You do have to kind of, I think, recognize that that is likely not entirely not 100 percent gospel true, but like, you know, if you see all if you see if you the fucking tip ofthe iceberg under the surface. Right.

Like, so there's, there's a level of chaos that is probably taking place as well that, like, you're not privy to, that is the secret sort of chaos. And you're like, I don't know what's involved there. I don't know. But like, I know that none of that is good for my family, and I have an obligation to do things that are good for my family. It's a really hard spot.

And we've gotten emails, and I've seen stuff from other listeners where they're like, "Yeah, I am the sort of, like, de facto or informal formal sort of foster family for this other kid that's friends with my kid, and they needed a place, and now they live with us." You hear that story all the time where somebody is like, "Oh yeah, like, now they live with us." And it's like, yeah, look, I think that's

0:31:12 Eli: Yeah.

0:31:17 Tom: Great, but the amount of, I just want to be super clear, like, the amount work it takes for you as the parent to parent through that and make sure that it doesn't bleed out and negatively affect your family and your kids and everything thing is high. The amount of attention, the amount of, like, interference you might have to run with the chaos parents, etc. Like, it's a lot of work, and not everybody has the time and energy to be able to do that, to do it well. Oh,

0:31:18 Eli: Yeah.

0:31:38 Eli: And I want to be very clear, if you do that, I think you're a saint, right?

0:31:46 Thomas: Yeah.

0:31:47 Tom: Same.

0:31:47 Eli: Like, I think that's incredible. I think it's such an incredibly wonderful thing if that is something you choose to do, right? I also think Doctors Without Borders is really admirable, you know? Who doesn't drive by my house on an electric scooter every couple of days, the fucking kids being helped by Doctors Without Borders, right? You get to make those choices for you. And this is what I was going to bring up. My dad was a mentor to a lot of lost souls. Sometimes it was people in trouble. Sometimes there's people who just need mentorship, but like my dad always had a workout buddy. The way my dad would, would mentor young men is that they would become his workout buddy. Had his whole gym, and they would go work out together, and sort of the guise of mentorship for my dad was always working out. But it never ever crossed over into our family, even when those people had troubles, right? And they very often did. Even they often had, like, their own life situations and stuff, but it ever got brought to our door to my house, and that's very important.

0:32:44 Tom: Yeah, right. Yeah, and I'm sure he had to be very conscious of that and careful about that, and there were probably times he had to cut mentors or mentees out of that relationship if he thought it was going to bleed into the family, it's it's tough. Haley's had friends when she was in, like, high school and beyond that have gone through tough times, that have lived with her because their their life was was chaotic and, you know, not great, not cash money. It's a very common story. Like, I know lots of people who either did this, they were the person living with another family for a while, or they had other kids living with them. I think that shit is fucking awesome. I just look at it now as a parent and I'm like, "Like, I don't have time to do that." Well, like the amount of energy that would take to do that well and to make sure everybody was like safe, like psychologically, physically, emotionally, scholastically, et cetera. Like that's a lot.

0:32:59 Eli: Yeah.

0:33:39 Thomas: What's good is those kids usually just don't need much. They just need to not be fucked with, like, often. It's like, oh, here's a place where I can go, probably have some food or something and also not be fucking yelled at or fucked with. Yeah, Tom.

0:33:45 Tom: Yeah, right.

0:33:51 Eli: Speaking as a former one, honestly, I'm not gonna make no trouble, I promise.

0:33:55 Tom: Yeah.

0:33:55 Thomas: I'll be no trouble, I'll be no trouble at

0:33:56 Eli: Honestly,

0:33:57 Tom: Come on by. Come on. Bye, Thomas. I just need you to do your own dishes. That's the only ask I've got at this point.

0:34:01 Eli: I don't know why his name is Snakeolf Hisler. I don't know. I didn't name him. That's how he introduced himself to me.

0:34:05 Thomas: All can Can Hissler come? Can he? Can I bring Adolf Hissler?

0:34:15 Clip: DEAR OLD DADS

0:34:21 Eli: All right, gentlemen. Before we go, I got a handjob from a blind woman once. She told me, this is the biggest cock I've ever come across, but she was pulling my leg.

0:34:35 Tom: That's good I like that

0:34:35 Thomas: Man, he's all switched to the, like, after dark version now. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. No, yeah I hear you. I'm with you. I wasn't, I wasn't complaining.

0:34:38 Tom: I like it. I like it's got a little bluey that's a good that's gonna I'm down with

0:34:39 Eli: No, no, no. These aren' t boomer. These aren't boomer, these are just slightly blue. They're still puns.

0:35:33 Tom: It hey I'm here

0:35:36 Eli: You better spin around and step on your crack. Because otherwise, the auto ads will be right back.

0:35:42 Thomas: Is it my mic? So you don't... Yeah. Ah, it molested my kid!

0:35:43 Eli: Turns around and there's a Babadook molesting his kids.

0:35:49 Eli: Oh, here come the Bosnics. He's not wearing shoes again.