Best of Tom: Get to Know the Dads (DOD1)

Transcript

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

0:00:28 Tom: Welcome to Dear Old Dads, the podcast that tries to answer the question, what the hell did we get ourselves into? I'm Tom, and I'm joined by my co -hosts Thomas Smith and Eli Bosnick, and we're tough guys answering tough questions like, how much crying is too much crying? And when will my house stop smelling like this? Gentlemen, thank you for joining me for our inaugural episode.

0:00:48 Eli: Were talking about how much crying I'm doing, right? Just to be clear?

0:00:50 Thomas: Yeah. I had same question, by the way.

0:00:53 Tom: Just generally speaking, The act of parenting involves far more. I think I cried in totality more than all of my children put together. Like all dads on this, on this show, or we wouldn't be doing it. Um, tell me a little bit, um, your experience as a dad and growing up

0:01:02 Eli: Yeah.

0:01:02 Thomas: Oh, yeah. Yes. I got my first job as dad when I impregnated my wife. No. Yeah, I. So my dad, Cred, if Cred is anything you could call it, is I two kids, two beautiful children that are my life. Wife, Phoebe. And she's, let's And then Arlo is turning three very soon. Probably, He's almost three. I can't believe it. Phoebe is almost in kindergarten. It's unbelievable. You know what no one ever tells you is how fast it goes. I'm just kidding.

0:01:16 Eli: Yeah.

0:01:35 Tom: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

0:01:36 Thomas: That's the number one.

0:01:36 Tom: Somebody ought to mention that once in a while, man.

0:01:39 Thomas: No one tells you that. We're going to, that's part of the mission here. I want to tell you things that no one else will tell you. How fast It goes. Also, say goodbye to sleep. You're not going to hear it anywhere else.

0:01:48 Tom: Well, that's, I gotta write this shit down. Hang on a minute.

0:01:49 Thomas: Write it down.

0:01:50 Tom: It's uh no sleeping. Yeah.

0:01:50 Thomas: Say goodbye to asleep. What really motivates me parenting wise and what makes my story semi -interesting perhaps is that I was raised by a goblin. Like I was, I was raised by what I, what I think to be now, it's hard to diagnose other people who would never ever willingly consent to any sort of medical care. But, uh, I, was raised by what I believe is a covert narcissist. Um, like an actual, like for real nurse, not like, ah, that person is self -involved, but like an actually, you like, a psychologist would be like, oh God, that's a narcissist. You know, that kind of thing.

0:02:21 Tom: I like the I Like, I love, I love your view of psychologists, just like, "Oh God, this one."

0:02:21 Eli: Psychologists would be like, fuck Thomas's dad, am I right?

0:02:29 Tom: I I think instead it's more like, "Hey, boat payment, welcome back." What

0:02:23 Thomas: Exactly. Yeah. No, I think so So that,

0:02:33 Eli: Ooh. Gonna write a paper about this asshole.

0:02:37 Thomas: Yeah. Oh, my last, I don't know, 15 years of my life has been the process of recognizing what that was and what it caused. First in through my twenties, it was just like, oh, how do you be a person at all? That was like what I had to figure out, you then for after that phase, which you're never done with that phase, I don't think, but after that phrase was, "Oh, now I also have, in addition to being a person, I have to also be a dad." And, uh, I've come around, I've done, you know, like, hard labor, 15 years hard labor of just fucking introspection exactly in the minds of just what awfulness of my personality was caused by being raised by a covert narcissist.

Will tell you, coming around the other side of it, it's good story. It's story because I just think about it so much. And I think about what I want to be for my kids so much, and it has been, talk about crying, I cry more often than anything because of just get to phases in my kids' lives and I'll be like, "Oh, this, I can be a good dad here." Like, I get to do, like, just the privilege of being a good dad and genuinely enjoying it is, I, moves me to tears just thinking about it. Like

0:02:53 Eli: Mm -hmm.

0:03:07 Eli: In the therapy mines.

0:03:09 Tom: So To ask something though, real quick, out of curiosity, did you set out to become a dad? Like, was that an intentional process for you, or did you have whoopsie kids No.

0:03:53 Thomas: Did I use a condom? Or did I?

0:03:55 Tom: I mean, all my, my kids were accidents so I I didn't intend to become it. Oh yeah, I didn't want to be a dad. Yeah. Yeah, I was trying not to.

0:03:56 Eli: Yeah. When a

0:03:57 Thomas: Oh. Really? Oh. Wow. Oh. We should cover that in, in intros. Definitely. So that's a great basic question. Yes, we were trying to have kids. We should talk about trying to having kids at some point in that process, like year-long, whatever it took for us to have a kid.

0:04:14 Eli: Man and a woman love each other very much.

0:04:15 Thomas: No, genuinely, because I need to know. Can you guys teach me? Because I think I got lucky these two times. No, mine were intentional. Actually, you know what? I say that. The first one was intentional. Second one was sort of accidental, but like a welcome accident. Out we're pretty fertile over here in the Smith household. Didn't realize it.

0:04:22 Tom: What you, Eli? Did you seek to have Max?

0:04:38 Eli: Oh yeah, absolutely. Um, we, like, planned it out and then we had to push it back because there was a vacation, uh, and we, we, uh had met

0:04:47 Tom: That's the most fucking white privilege thing I've ever heard. We had a plan to push our child having back to...

0:04:50 Thomas: Yep. I laugh.

0:04:53 Tom: That's great.

0:04:48 Eli: Right it yeah there

0:04:53 Thomas: We literally are doing the same thing right now. That's right.

0:04:56 Eli: Is is there literally a way to alienate your audience more than, "But we were going to somewhere that had vineyards, and my wife wanted to drink, so it had to be pushed back. Please consider subscribing to my podcast." But yeah, no, we, we planned my son, and, uh, and then we, and, And then we quickly executed the plan to never have another one.

0:05:06 Thomas: Oh, yeah.

0:05:25 Eli: We are one and done. You know how they like famous movie stars will get like a tummy tuck on the way out of the cesarean?

0:05:23 Tom: So you guys then?

0:05:32 Thomas: Yeah, Yeah.

0:05:33 Eli: My wife would have given me a vasectomy on her way out. Out of the caesarean. It's like, hey, hop up here, chubs. Once they sew me up, just get in there and fucking wriggle a surgical instrument.

0:05:43 Thomas: Yeah. It OK if my husband just jumps on the table and gets his dick out? Can you do the thing? Whatever it is.

0:05:51 Eli: Can't be harder than what you just did to me.

0:05:53 Thomas: Yeah, no kidding. Eli, while we're on the topic of Eli, what's your give the rest of your dad story? Dad

0:05:59 Eli: So I am a father of one adorable two -year -old boy named Max. Uh, and I had pretty good parents. Um, know, mental illness runs in my family. I, Hey, trust me. I know that Tom's going next. So Hey, I'm going to be like, every time I got sick, they cared. Tom's gonna be like asshole.

0:06:06 Thomas: Braggy.

0:06:19 Eli: But yeah, no, my parents were typical Jewish. Jewish, you know, I was an only child until I was 16. Uh, I have a baby sister now, but I am a typical Jewish spoiled kid from upstate New York who could do no wrong in his parents' eyes. Had an incredible dad, uh, still have an incredible mom, and the ways in which that is boring

0:06:16 Thomas: You know, so Tom and I lied to you. The actual real reason for the show is we want to know why you are the way you are. And I think we're getting there.

0:06:48 Eli: It's, I'm telling you guys, there's a, somewhere in the middle of the hugs. There's no hugs on one end, there's all the hugs on the other, and you need, you need the right amount of hugs.

0:06:51 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah. So, Tom, when did you first get black lung as a kid working in the mines?

0:07:05 Tom: Well, it's funny because my, my experience is so different from you guys, both in terms of, of process into becoming a dad. My, I've got two biological kids and I've got two stepkids, so I, I'm a father and a stepfather, and those are very, very different, different experiences. Of my kids, my biological kids were surprises, to use, like, the, the nicer-sounding euphemism. So never sought, sat out to become a father. Like, it was something that I had, I'd actually always in my life, I decided I didn't want to be a dad very early in my life. I didn't want to have any kids. I din't wanna be a parent. I used to call all the kids dream thieves. So that was my, that was, that was the phrase that I used all the time, but you know, I clearly didn't take enough precautions to, to guard against actually having them. So, um, that's

0:07:53 Thomas: Like if you don't lock your car, they're going to steal your dreams, Tom. Like it's your fucking fault.

0:07:56 Tom: Just it. It's just, it's, it'S, it''s how that works. So yeah, I was, I wasn't, I obviously I wasn't as, as diligent as I should have been, um, not have kids, but I, and I ended up, I've got a 15-year-old, so my kids are older than than your kids by a shot. Yeah, got a, my oldest son is 15, my oldest stepson is turning, oh Jesus, he is 16. Um, then I've a stepdaughter who is 11, and then my youngest biological is, uh, seven now, seven.

So yeah, and then I grew up, uh, I grew up, my folks split, uh, my dad and my mom split when I was about two, and I lived with my mom and then my stepfather, uh, a while, and then, uh, in the middle of first grade I lived just with my dad and broke off connection with that other part of the family after a while. So my experience, my growing up with parents was primarily parented by my dad as a single parent. Um, uh, some, some turbulence and tumultuous shit in the, in the early informative years. So, um, my dad was a single dad working three jobs with two boys. So it

0:07:57 Eli: They do take your cum

0:08:08 Thomas: Then Eli. Yeah.

0:09:02 Thomas: Jesus.

0:09:03 Tom: Different than you guys by by a stretch, I think.

0:09:03 Thomas: Jesus. I want want to go on the record saying that being a single parent is actually not possible. No one's ever done it. I just, yeah.

0:09:09 Eli: Physically impossible. They're lying. They've murdered the spouse at some point, and just don't know how to break it to the rest of us. Angels

0:09:14 Thomas: Yeah. Or something. Or you also had a ghost helping raise you. There's no way one person could raise, that's not possible?

0:09:20 Eli: In the outfield. Christopher Lloyd was there, like, burping and changing diapers, no question. Uh, like, that we also have all the marriage combinations represented, right? Like, my parents were in a good marriage and sort of stayed married. Tom's parents were a bad marriage and got divorced and Thomas's parents were in bad marriage should stay together.

0:09:24 Thomas: Yeah. Something. It's gotta be.

0:09:37 Thomas: We're in a marriage. Yeah, we'RE In a marriage. Yeah, I was actually, that's exactly what I was going to say, because oftentimes if I talk about, you know, having somewhat of a weird upbringing, it's, it's weird because I have a, a mom who could be somewhat considered normal, like, like if you met her, you, you know, you'd be like, "Well, that's a human." Um, but like but my, uh she doesn't know what a podcast is. You kidding me. Yeah.

0:09:40 Eli: Yeah.

0:09:57 Tom: That's, oh, also hi, Thomas's mom.

0:10:00 Eli: She's not gonna read that. Yeah. We could give out out her cell phone number and she'd just be absolutely

0:10:05 Thomas: Yeah. More like hi, Eli's mom. Like that's that's who we know is going to be listening to the show. No, my dad died somewhat recently, probably never knowing what I did for a living, which is another story. But anyway, the point is they stay together, which it doesn't I don't know if that's better. You know, I don't know if it's, like, good that they stay. But my parents remained married until my dad did a year ago. So yeah, no, we've covered all the bases well.

0:10:12 Eli: She's a patron.

0:10:26 Eli: Future Interview segment: Thomas asks his mom, "Why did you stay married to my dad?" She's

0:10:42 Tom: Right.

0:10:42 Thomas: There's nothing else to do, really, I think is the answer to that.

0:10:43 Tom: Let's have her on the show. Come on, on the show. Welcome to the show, Mrs. Smith.

0:10:49 Eli: Actually been in the studio this whole time, everybody. She looks mad. My

0:10:51 Tom: Yeah. We're gonna bring her on stage. Come on out.

0:10:55 Thomas: Do You guys have some risk that your families are going to hear anything you say. That's a tough one. I don't know how you deal with that. I

0:11:01 Tom: There is Yeah.

0:11:00 Eli: Abs constantly. Every episode I've ever released, least of anything. Ever.

0:11:06 Thomas: That's incredible.

0:11:07 Eli: And with feedback. We

0:11:07 Thomas: There My God, Jesus Christ.

0:11:10 Tom: Is a zero percent chance that my dad, like, there is such a zero chance, it's, if you can have a negative likelihood that my dad would listen to this, that's I sent my dad a text message the other day. I said, "Hey, Dad, uh, the book that I've been working on finally released," and I sent him a link, and he didn't respond to it. He never would.

0:11:11 Thomas: Yeah. Oh.

0:11:29 Thomas: Is weird, because your dad sounds awesome to me. Like, everything else you've described seems heroic, but

0:11:33 Tom: My dad is a guy who gets things done. Um, my dad gets his jobs done. He fulfills all of his obligations. If my dad says he's going to be somewhere, he's gonna be there. If he says he's GOING TO BE THERE AT FIVE, he's GOINNA BE THERE at 4:50. He's never late. He's always on time. He's incredibly reliable. But he won't commit to something that he doesn't want to commit to. So my dad also won't, like, ever read anything I've written. He's not ever listened to any show I've ever produced, because I think, and he won' say why, he just, he just won't do it, and thinking is that if he listens and doesn't like it, he'll feel obligated to tell me that. He just doesn't listen, then he doesn't have any obligation to provide me any feedback. So zero-sum individual. So in everything that my dad does, every option is the nuclear option. Every answer is perfectly binary. So everything is very black and white. So if I tell him I wrote a book, he won't respond, because then he'll have to engage me about having written that book.

0:12:28 Eli: Said book

0:12:30 Thomas: Interesting. I get, oh my God, okay, four hours on this. Um, why, then, why the text? Why say, "Hey, Dad, I wrote a book"? I'm curious. Is

0:12:39 Tom: Cause I always, I always keep him in the loop. I've, I've always kept my dad in the hoop. You I think he's interested. Think He cares. I Think he wants to know. Just think that he needs to have some distance there in order. And this is the most like charitable. This is the charitable explanation I can offer. And I always try to read my dad as charitably as I can. Um, think my dad cares. Like, when Cecil and I were lucky enough to, like, go to Australia and do the show in Australia, um, Dad didn't ask, "Hey, how to go?" Or treated it like I was there for a vacation. Um, and that's just who he is. Like, it's just again, it's, it's a zero -sum thing. So I think he cares. I think he's, he wants to know that I wrote a book, but he does not want to feel pressured to have to read the book

0:12:52 Eli: His son

0:13:17 Thomas: It possible that we have the same dad, but you're just nicer. You're Like, my dad is a stand-up guy, not interested in anything I do. He's never talked to me, actually. Um, don't know, know that he loves me, but, uh, but I, I have to choose to think he does.

0:13:22 Tom: Look.

0:13:32 Thomas: Like I imagine he does

0:13:32 Eli: To Dear Old Dad, the podcast where we realize, realize Tom's dad kind of fucking sucks.

0:13:37 Tom: Well, Look, first of all, my

0:13:42 Thomas: Yeah.

0:13:42 Eli: This is an intervention, Tom. We never wanted to do a podcast.

0:13:44 Thomas: Yep.

0:13:44 Tom: No, no, it's it's my, you've got to understand, my point of comparison is my mom. So if I've got two parents I've gotten two parents, and I've, I've got to look to one of them to be stable and supportive. Otherwise, like, I've literally got nothing. But my dad will also tell me that he loves me. Like, my dad is not unaffectionate. My dad will hang up the phone and, you know, like...

0:13:49 Thomas: Ah, wow.

0:13:50 Eli: That's true.

0:14:05 Thomas: All right. Nevermind. We don't have the same. You just said two things that tell me we didn't have same dad phone and love. That was the two. Never once did my dad call me in mind.

0:14:07 Tom: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But, like. I have to call my dad. My dad won't call

0:14:15 Thomas: Oh, okay. That's the same though.

0:14:16 Tom: Me. Yeah.

0:14:17 Thomas: I I called my dad had couple times in the early 2000s, and then I never called him again, and so we didn't talk on the phone again from that point.

0:14:18 Tom: Dad... Won't call my mom. Mom.

0:14:28 Eli: You called him on 9-11 and you were like, hey, any chance you were in that tower? No. All right. Let you know next time I think you might be dead.

0:14:37 Thomas: Interesting.

0:14:35 Tom: So Yeah, curious, as, because you guys set out to become parents very intentionally. So did you think through these, did you think these thoughts through and think, "Okay, this is, this is my experience, um, of being parented, and I'm gonna have this conscious sort of moment of thinking about how I want to behave as a parent" before you, you know, decided to wives.

0:14:41 Thomas: Oh, yeah. Yeah.

0:14:59 Thomas: Go

0:14:59 Eli: I mean, you know, I'll never be as good a dad as my dad was, but that's okay. Like, I'm just, I'm going to be a great dad, but my dad was like a fucking Homeric hero of a human being. Like, when my father, my father was an English teacher in upstate New York, and when he died, the funeral home, the Chabad house where we held his thing, literally overflowed. Like the everyone in the city he lived in came because my dad was a hero to all the humans he met. So from a very young age, I've had a truly brilliant genius for a mother. My mom is a literary genius, um, like Lee Bennett Hopkins award winner, artist with a capital A. My father is a great man, and I'm like, sometimes I'm on, on the podcast and I'm like, Kevin Sorbo looks like a crunchy bar.

0:15:23 Thomas: Wow. Wow! Oh, this is fantastic.

0:15:50 Thomas: That is incredible. We also had the two most opposite dad deaths you could have. I Sometimes I toss around the idea of writing a book about my experiences, just hypothetically, and one possible name for it is "How to Die and Have Nobody Care," as which is like, my dad did everything possible to have nobody cared that he died, almost within reason. Like, he still had a family, but like, my dad died, nobody knew or cared except my siblings and my mom. That's interesting. It's the polar opposite funeral experience. I look like your dad dies, the whole, the town square, fucking, there's a bells going off, people stop work like

0:15:57 Eli: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

0:16:27 Tom: What?

0:16:26 Eli: The bells rang the school, they, his middle school, they took his chair and they put it in the center of the auditorium and it was just on the stage. It was

0:16:39 Tom: What?

0:16:40 Thomas: Like he's uh, Clint Eastwood at the DNC, RNC.

0:16:45 Eli: That people could come and worship at the shrine of David Bosnick. Yeah.

0:16:47 Thomas: What? The fuck, that is amazing. I want to go back and answer Tom's question, because one thing that I, again, really motivates me to both be a dad and to do this podcast is, I will say unabashedly, I fucking love having kids. I love it. And the reason, Tom, the reason I went into it, I've always known that I wanted to have kids, like my whole life. I've, I'm always known that I've never, never been in doubt. It was just a question of when. And I had always imagined that I would wait a really long time and be one of those, like, crusty 80-year-old dads that, like, like somehow find someone young enough to, like, get pregnant.

But fortunately, I didn't do that, go that route. Because I also wanted to try to live my life and do my shit, you as you say, they are dream thieves. But I always knew I wanted to be a dad. And the, the main reasons I went into it with that full knowing, enthusiastic, whatever, is I think the human, human brain is the most interesting object in our universe. And being a parent means you get to, like, share in the development of the most interesting thing that there is in the universe. I genuinely

0:17:48 Eli: Yeah.

0:17:49 Thomas: Believe that. Like you get the kids go from nothing. They go from having no experience, no anything to figuring it out, to like learn, becoming a person, having a personality, having thought, having inner monologue. I, I had a story with Phoebe recently where I like, got to get an insight into her developing that inner monologue more and like thinking to herself. It's incredible. It's remarkable. I love it.

0:18:15 Eli: Yeah, them learn and grow, and falling in love with your children is there is something so beautiful and should be written about by someone better with words than me about the idea that this, like, like, yeah, sure, legitimately, she wrote a chat book of poems about it.

0:18:21 Thomas: Ah, it's the best. Your mom. Okay.

0:18:33 Eli: It's great, but like someone better than me should talk about the idea that, like, this incredibly universal experience to humanity is in many ways one of the best human experiences.

0:18:33 Thomas: Also, I got to check it out.

0:18:44 Thomas: Yeah. That's the other funny thing about it, is because I go around my life every day with these kids, I swear to God, I am like the guy who took LSD at a concert for the first time or something, and I'm just like, are you fucking seeing this? I'm raising a kid, they're, they're like thinking for themselves. Is nobody seeing this? Oh my god. And everybody around me also has kids, and it's like, fucking, uh, anyway, pick up my kids today and they just, I don't, that can't really be true, that's got to be an uncharitable look by me, but like, sometimes that's what it feels like. There's a lot of people I see in the world, it makes me really sad, that that seem, seem like kids happen to them and they, you, I don't know. I just,

0:18:58 Eli: Yeah.

0:19:25 Eli: No, the, the expression I use all the time is that it's like if the only thing people told you about blowjobs is that your, your dick gets wet and it sucks.

0:19:35 Thomas: Okay. Not, not the same analogy I would have used, but that's sure. Your kids are like blowjobs. I get it. Yeah. Kind

0:19:43 Tom: Funny because I can I relate can and and I'm in a different place Because I remember with my oldest son, Finn, and, remember that honeymoon period, which feels so like any other honeymoon period of falling in love. It's intense, and it's very real, and It's just this period of joy. And I think with kids, especially your first kid, it lasts kind of a really long time. And I think it lasts a really long time because kids are constantly changing and it's it's new it's knew all the time it's new, and different and exciting ways, and you're like, like, your point is very well taken, it's like, holy shit, did you just see that?

I, I'm in a different space though, because my kids are spaced, so first kid is spaced seven years from, from my second kid, so they were, are far, they're, they're spaced far apart, um, got step kids and so at some point there's... there's an overwhelming nature to just the level of responsibility of it all, and there's a lot less of that, uh, newness, that exciting, unique moment where you're like, "Wow, I, I mean, I'm doing this thing for the first time," like, "Fuck, i'mdoing this for the fourth time, I have, fuck," and there, and, and, and I just want to be real about that. There to it that is not new anymore. And just like, all right, at least some people. So I understand the other side of it.

0:19:47 Thomas: Hmm. Yeah, can and I was on the receiving end of that. How many siblings did you guys have? Eli, yeah.

0:21:07 Eli: Child until I was 16 and now I have a younger sister.

0:21:10 Thomas: I was the third of four and I got, my parents were already, I wouldn't say apathetic exactly, but like the biggest thing that I think in my own version of my story was maybe the worst influence on me. And like the thing that, that hurt me the most as a kid was having parents who just, everything was a burden to them. Like every, especially my dad. My very existence was a trouble, like was just a problem constantly. And it got even worse as the kids went on. So like my brother, my brother's the oldest. I think he got a good dose of like, oh, okay. We kind of are excited you're here. That's nice. Like you're the first kid, you know, by the time you get down to me and my little sister, it's just like, fucking go to school, do it. It's just fuck, get out of the way. Yeah.

0:21:53 Thomas: You know? And yeah, God, God, you have to eat again.

0:21:46 Eli: Yeah. Another diaper? I just gave you one this morning.

0:22:00 Thomas: It's that's a, be careful with that is all I'm saying.

0:22:02 Tom: I have a brother who is 16 months older than myself. So that's it. At one point when I was younger, I had two stepsisters and two stepbrothers, um, I, I did not, I haven't seen them since I was six. So once I, once we moved away from my step, my, we never were in touch with them again, so, so it's just me and my brother and my dad. So my, my dad didn't share care that same, like, we were just trying to get through the next moment. So everybody, like my dad had a very, like, look, a family as a team, and on a team everybody's got to pull their weight, and we got to get this, these things done, and was a very, very, uh, unromantic kind of a childhood, like a very unromatic growing up

0:22:07 Thomas: Oh, Oh Yeah, for sure. Me

0:22:41 Tom: So it wasn't a bad growing up though, like we were, it was a very capable, focused kind of growing up.

0:22:41 Thomas: Too.

0:22:48 Eli: So, again, I think it's really interesting to differentiate the three experiences because Thomas grew up with this sense of being a burden. You grew up in this sense. You grew with this sens of being at team. And I grew up with a sense of, like, my dad takes care of everything, does everything for me, like, you know, I'm sitting there at six years old and I'm like, "Daddy, I want a snack," and he's like, "What kind of snack? I'll bring you a bunch of different snacks and you can choose." Boy, oh, what do you want? You know, like, constantly, you know, there, we would joke when I was a kid about, like, me and my mom sending my dad off to the store in the middle of the night because we didn't have the kind of ice we wanted, and he would happily go and, and never made us feel like burdens, right? It was the joy of his life, and that, I get, like, that is something I very much inherited, is this notion of, like, taking deep and abiding joy in serving the people I love.

0:23:22 Thomas: Jesus Christ.

0:23:38 Thomas: Well, I'm glad that it doesn't take the trauma of living that to appreciate it. That makes me feel better. Cause some, days I do think like, man, is it an asset as a dad that I had these bad bad experiences because I will tell you every single fucking day. I know, Tom, feel free to say, you know, it's still honeymoon period. It is. And also young kids. It's just a different relationship.

0:23:59 Tom: I didn't mean to be dismissive with that comment though.

0:24:00 Eli: Yeah,

0:24:01 Thomas: No, no, no. Totally. It's a different thing. It's not just a relationship with the young kids, like it just, as you say, they change and, uh, I I, very aware of it's that. And also kind of sad because it's are phases, they changed so quickly that there are stages that are almost a different person. And it is like this constant process of, wow, I have a new kid, but also like, ah, the old one's gone. You know, it's just it's really heartbreaking, but also joyous, sad thingy. Again, just mostly crying.

Anyway, the point I make is every single day, every do everything can to make my kids feel like I am happy that they are in the world. And I doesn't mean I'm over the top, like, you know, Eli's dad, like running to the store to get them whatever. It's not that it's it's It's just like the feeling like the toward them, like the the attitude toward them when they ask when me something, when they need me like tell you the difference between what I was met with. If I ever tried to bother my dad versus what my kids are met with,

0:24:02 Tom: Yeah. Oh, that brings up a question I want to ask both of you guys, because I think, think about this all the time, and I think my, my take on this might be really different than you guys, but if you thought about, like, and I mean really put words to it, have you thought about what is the goal of being a father, like what is that, what is that enterprise aimed at accomplishing? Oh,

0:25:02 Thomas: It's Hmm. Hmm.

0:25:13 Eli: Sure. I think about that all the time. Um, I think, think we've shifted generational goals in a way that might be really interesting for us three to talk about, which is our parents' goal and their parents' goal was, you should have it better than we had it, right? The chances are, at least among Jews, that you're only two or three generations away from immigrants, and with immigrants it's almost always like, let's get established, let's get you educated. That's the parenting goal, right? I want you to have it better. That was definitely my grandparents' goal, was like, just have it better then we have it, because we are poor and it sucks here.

And then for my parents' goal, it was like, okay, we are, we benefited from that, right? We have now safely entered the middle class, and obviously I'm speaking from a position of privilege, but like, we have no safety, we have not safely entered the middle -class I want you to be able to stay the middleclass and also have dreams, pursue your dreams. And so that's the parenting that I think I'm in now, where it's like it's, it's not just about having it better or being able to survive. It's like, I want you to find what you love and do that for the rest of your life. I want to make it as easy as possible for you to do what you love.

0:26:08 Thomas: Hmm. Yeah,

0:26:28 Tom: No, okay, so I'm, I'm making a note on that, because we could do a whole episode on how much safety net to provide kids, sex

0:26:31 Thomas: I think I had an episode topic for that written down as well, which is just like, what prompt I had actually was, what Do you want your kids to do when they grow up? Know, And not that you're in control of it. But like, what would you what would your preference be kind of the topic? And we can do that sometime too. Because I think it's really related. Like, what did we want for our kids?

0:26:51 Thomas: You is the aspiration. You have the safety goal, and then you have the, you know, like the safety school, and then the, yeah, reach school. It is that kind of thing.

0:26:50 Tom: Worker it's yeah

0:27:00 Eli: Reach around school.

0:27:00 Tom: I asked you guys because I know precisely the answer that I have, because I think about this all the time, like, I think all the Time, like, my hope is that I will have turned into to the world kids that at the end of the day, because most of all of our lives we will spend as adults, which means most of the relationship that we have with our parents will be an adult relationship, adult to adult.

0:27:25 Thomas: Yeah.

0:27:25 Tom: So this moment that we Have, and I know like the joke is like it goes so fast, but it's the tiniest fragment of the Relationship that we'll have with Our kids. Most of Our kids, most of The Relationship we'll Have with Our Kids will be An adult to Adult adult relationship. I think like, I would like it if my kids loved me and liked me, I don't require that. And ideally I Would like it. If I love and like my kids, but what I want the goal of, of being a father to me is to turn out into the world, capable, independent, healthy adults.

0:27:57 Thomas: Yeah.

0:27:58 Tom: And if, I if, have a relationship with that, that's good. And so like, that is cool. And And if I don't, then I'll mourn that and I'll move on.

0:28:05 Thomas: You're totally right that the relationship we have with our kids is small by percentage when they're young, I don't think that's the case. I think that it just creates an indelible and irreversible dynamic that you can't just reset. It's not as though you get to have one kind of relationship when you're there, a kid. And then you're like, OK, well, that's done. Reset. It'll always be there no matter. So and I'm not this is not pointed at you, Tom, but like for the shitty parents like my dad, there's... there's never going to be a reset. There's never a time when it's like, well OK, you've you know, you fucked me up or whatever it is like, you know.

0:28:17 Eli: Yeah.

0:28:37 Thomas: You weren't very good.

0:28:36 Eli: He couldn't have come to you four years ago and been like, let's get a beer.

0:28:40 Thomas: I know that would require him being a different human being like he just it was incapable. Yeah, you don't. I think that will always create a mark. I also think that it's interesting. Was just going to bring up similar to how Eli talked about the different generations and kind of their goals. I was going to bringing up a similar thing in that I think a lot of, you boomer parents are like there's... there's the generational thing that's not as stark as like if you're children of immigrants, I don't think.

But there was the feeling of like long ago, it you was like, OK, I need to be an asshole as a parent because you got to be ready for the real world. Like that was the prevailing kind of wisdom. Like, I got to Be Hard On You. You know, It Doesn't Matter What That Does To Our Relationship Because You Got To Be Ready For The Real World. And I'm really glad that I don't think as many people subscribe to that anymore because I just kind of think it's bullshit. Like we don't you need to Be An Asshole To Raise Kids That Are, You Independent And Competent. Um,

0:28:41 Tom: No?

0:29:33 Tom: And all the research shows that that's actually, like, it does more harm than

0:29:36 Thomas: Yeah.

0:29:36 Tom: Good. It thwarts those goals rather than creates those outcomes, too.

0:29:38 Thomas: Yeah. So if, if I were to answer my goal, I think I used to think exactly like you, Tom, before I had kids, for whatever reason. And then once I had children, maybe it will shift back. Like after, after kind of the honeymoon phase of young kids, it's entirely possible my attitude will go back to yours, because I used thought of it in that way. I was like, well, look, being a kid is a temporary inconvenience, you know, like you're being a kit is just a path on the way to being a person, and you are raising a person, and then they'll be a person.

You do, I do strongly believe that as a parent you have, you have a moral obligation to let your kids be themselves and to realize that what ultimately it's their fucking life, like you can't, you know, so I very much relate to that portion of, of what you talked about there, Tom, of like, well, you know, I hope we have a relationship, I hope da-da-da, but you know, if they go their own way, if they, whatever. But once I had kids, I realized that, like, I, I feel like my primary goal right now is to provide them with what my best views of a good environment to grow up in is. And that is, one, to me, which is filled with love and filled with parents that want to be in their lives and want to not. It's not the same as like, oh, I'm being friends with my kids.

Like, it's not, it's not the shame of that, but being interested in and caring about their lives and being a part of their life, it, that shifted to where that is actually a major goal of mine. And what's interesting about that for me is I have absolutely zero fucking model for that. So every day I'll come across some interaction, like Eli with his mom or something. I'm like, you can just do that. Like, you can just talk, talk to your mom, like, all the time. And it's, it's genuinely, I'm an alien and I'm studying, like, human beings, you know, or I'm like, you just talk to your parents like that? Style that works. And it's, I've kind of discovering what that can be for me. And it's, it's interesting.

0:31:29 Tom: Want to clarify real quick. So in my goals, like, you know, one of the goals is healthy. And I would include in there emotionally healthy, you, so I don't think you can do that really well if you're not connected to your kids and providing them with a sense of real love and safety. So I think if you don't provide them both love and safety, you're probably not going to turn out healthy adults. It's almost certainly not going to be the case. I mean, you might get lucky. I think you might gets lucky, But it's likely that that's going to happen. I think that's kind of built into my qualifier. But I think all the time, my job isn't to make them happy. Happy, that's great. I want them to be happy, but I want him to be capable and healthy and independent more than I want to be. And I'm okay with a certain amount of discomfort and unhappiness in order to achieve that result, right?

0:31:36 Thomas: Sure. Mm hmm. Yeah, totally.

0:32:20 Thomas: Absolutely. Important distinction. I would, I want to do everything I can within my power, which I don't know how much that is. You know, we can talk about that later on. Like, I don't know how much is in our power as parents. I don't know. But I want do everything that I can to try to make them the kind of people who could be happy. That's how I think of it. Because, that didn't happen for me. Like, I, that you need That architecture, you, a way to really fuck up that architecture, to make it so that you, people are almost incapable of being happy, and I don't want to do that.

0:32:39 Tom: Well, What

0:32:40 Eli: Yeah. Yeah.

0:32:48 Tom: About you, Eli, do you have, like, goals?

0:32:50 Eli: I, a little, uh, you know, like I said, about, like, helping him find himself and be happy, who that is. It's really interesting because I had an upbringing that I think is really interesting. My dad talked about his upbringing with a tremendous amount of self-awareness. He had a very tough dad who actually sounds a little bit like yours, Tom, in that, like, Like, he went to work, he did the job, the family was a team. He was not incredibly overly affectionate. You know, the story my father always liked to tell about his dad is that when he was, like, 15 or 16, he asked his dad if he loved him. And his dad said, "What are you, bored?"

0:33:25 Thomas: Oh.

0:33:25 Tom: Okay. My dad is more affectionate than that, like, by

0:33:29 Thomas: My dad would have given any, my dad probably would have not answered it or given an answer like that. I'm I'm not Joe. Yeah, he would have, like, left the room, like, what the the fuck?

0:33:31 Tom: Yeah. Oh, No.

0:33:36 Eli: But, like... I can't recall, Senator.

0:33:41 Tom: No, my my dad isn't, my dad has affection, I will say. Like, I don't want to paint the wrong picture. My doesn't study in contrast in some ways, but But when I moved in with my dad in in the middle of first grade, you know, you're six years old, six and a half years old, February, yeah, my dad was very quick to say, if you ever want a hug, you can come to me and you can have a hug.

0:33:47 Thomas: He's, uh, Oh.

0:33:57 Tom: And and I and and Like, but he, you know, he's not the biggest initiator. He will absolutely reciprocate. Um,

0:33:56 Thomas: My God, that makes all the difference honestly, right? Can I juste say, do you guys watch Succession by chance?

0:34:07 Tom: I've not seen It, no.

0:34:07 Eli: No. Know

0:34:08 Thomas: Oh God. Damn. It, Heath. Anyone who watches Succession, the the main dad that's like, you kind of know the concept, right? It's like the fucking media Baron, yeah. He is painted as, like, he's the narcissist that they all have to, like, try to figure out, and he plays the kids against each other and all that, and he generally looked at as, like, that's a, you know, shitty dad thing to do, like, that's an evil dad, and he is, he's a narcissist. And then there will be a scene where he'll be talking to his kid or something, like, you know, "I love you, son, but," and I'm like, well, better than than my dad.

0:34:08 Eli: He does Rob Cox

0:34:35 Thomas: Right there, just already, like,

0:34:35 Eli: Thomas watches Succession for parenting tips, yeah.

0:34:40 Thomas: It, yeah, exactly. Well, what's so funny is, I don't know if the people who write it, if they don't, no, genuinely how shitty a narcissist dad would actually be, or if my dad was just particularly shit, you know what I mean? Like, I don't know which is true.

0:34:54 Eli: He broke the scale of shittiness.

0:34:56 Thomas: Yeah.

0:34:57 Tom: Right. They can all be true, like, they like, you can have them all. It's It's fine.

0:34:59 Thomas: Oh, It's true. Yeah.

0:34:57 Eli: Uh, But yeah, because of my dad's upbringing, um, that, like, you gotta be a man, you gotta be tough, right? You know, keep your, another story he used to love to tell is that his dad dropped him off at college. So the only college my father got into was East Carolina University, um, Bullock's alma mater, um. Dad had explained to him starting since forever, we don't have the money to send you to college, we didn't have the money to send you to middle school, let alone to college, so you got to get a full ride.

He goes to ECU, uh, saves up and does, like, paper boy shit and, like, crazy chores all summer for his plane ticket to get to college. There is no plan for him to come back ever again until there is more income. And so he's standing there with his father for what, he, for what might be the last time or, uh, certainly the last time in a while, and my grandpa George turns to him and goes, "Keep your nose clean," and just turns around and fucking walks away. "Keep your knows clean" was his idea. And so my dad absolutely wanted to, much like Thomas has talked about, wanted to break that pattern, so he was

0:35:07 Thomas: Wow.

0:36:08 Eli: Incredibly affectionate, incredibly supportive, um, and also connected with me on on a level of, like, deep emotion and philosophy, was deeply interested in what I thought and wanted to talk to me about big ideas. Um, know, wanted to read with me, was incredibly incredibly snuggly. Um, one of my one of mine

0:36:08 Thomas: Holy shit. Ah, This is incredible this is your dad is the dad I want to be. I, like, I had a worse version of your dad's dad, and that now I want to become your dad, not that I could ever be so lucky, but, like, Like, that's genuinely interesting. Like, I'm a generation behind you. So wait, does that mean my kids are going to be Eli? Fuck, all right, never mind.

0:36:31 Eli: Yeah. No. Yeah.

0:36:45 Eli: Oh, that would be so fucking great.

0:36:52 Thomas: Yeah, Arlo is definitely a little Eli. I'm pretty sure he's on the way.

0:36:55 Eli: Oh, damn. I'm sorry to hear that, but I've got some great medications to recommend.

0:37:03 Eli: Yeah, but but coming as the next generation afterwards as as having not just a good dad dad but a great dad, a genuinely great dad, um, pass that along. And, you know, I think so much of parenting, and I hear this from both you guys, is, like, I want to fix what my parents didn't provide. I wanted to be there where my parents couldn't be there. I have these very set goals. And for me it's like, oh man, I guess I gotta keep the streak alive, huh? We're doing, we're batting in a thousand so far.

0:37:32 Thomas: Yeah, if anything, the people after the fucking Dust Bowl, they had it easiest, you know, in terms of expectations. Expectations, it's just like, as long as you have clothes on your back and and those clothes could be made out of flower sacks, you know, like do we

0:37:33 Eli: Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. Just don't say, keep your nose clean, right?

0:37:50 Tom: All Much do you know about your dad's, like, how much you know about your daddy's life and who he was and how he grew up, and, like, I'm, I'm very curious about this. Yeah.

0:37:56 Thomas: Eli has told about his dad already is as much or more information than I have about the entirety of my dad's life.

0:38:03 Tom: I, it's, it's funny because I don't know know much about my dad either. I mean, I have a handful of the same stories that are sort of retold and reworn. Um, I don't know his religious beliefs. I don't know his political convictions.

0:38:16 Thomas: Whoa, what?

0:38:16 Tom: I DON'T know. Uh, think he was married a couple of times. I know that he was married twice, but the woman that he's been with, my dad's been with the same woman for 40 some years. They don't live together and they never have.

0:38:22 Eli: He's married to my mom at one point, sounds

0:38:25 Thomas: What

0:38:32 Tom: And I think But I'm not sure. I think that he may have been married to her at one point, divorced, but I don't know well

0:38:33 Thomas: The? Yeah.

0:38:33 Eli: Good. Sounds tight.

0:38:40 Thomas: They, but they stayed together. Like, uh, that's interesting.

0:38:42 Tom: I think, I think they were married before he married my mom. I'm not 100. That's the thing is I have no detail at all, and I have no idea how he met this woman that she's been in my life for 40 years, 40 out of my 43 years. I have no idea how they met. It's never been to her home. I, dad is very private with his, with personal life, and with his story of growing up, and I'm curious. It sounds, Thomas, like you've had, you have a very similar experience. You don't know much about your dad. What

0:38:46 Thomas: Oh yeah. Oh man. Incredible. Huh? I think it might be for different reasons though. I my siblings, especially my older siblings know quite a bit about my family. I think that for me, it was a, there was a when my mom's mom died, I was about nine or 10. So my grandma died, essentially. Was a big rift between my mom, like they fought over the estate and shit like that. So that that that I didn't have any relationship with my mom brothers. Like, my older siblings kind of did, and I think they learned maybe more about the family from that and and also they had the wherewithal like my brother is like, I know somehow more in contact with them now for some reason, I don't really know why.

I think maybe because they had a connection because he's older, you know, like they spent more time together anyway. Um, and then I think the only other reason is partially my personality and also, uh, know how Eli was describing his, his relationship with his dad that sounded fucking awesome where it's like, his dad was interested in his thoughts and was da-da-da. I really feel like was I raised in such a way by my parents that I didn't wasn't look at myself as somebody who could just ask my dad like, hey, where are you from?

Or anything. I don't know how to describe it, but it just never would have come up. My dad told me some stuff, but I also don't have that good of a memory for that kind of thing. I know very little. I think, I think I actually could also ask my family. Maybe I will. I think my dad had a weird thing where his dad was like, he, my dad was the second family. Like, I think my dad's dad, here's another funny thing. My dad's generations are super spread out. My dad, dad was born in like 1892. I'm not even joking.

0:40:42 Tom: Wait.

0:40:42 Thomas: Yep. 1945.

0:40:43 Tom: How, what, what year was your dad born? 47 for mine. Okay.

0:40:47 Thomas: Yeah.

0:40:48 Eli: What?

0:40:48 Tom: All

0:40:48 Thomas: I have, I had kind of weird old parents.

0:40:48 Tom: Right. Eli, when was your mom and dad born? Okay.

0:40:52 Eli: My Mom is 70, 52.

0:40:55 Thomas: So 52 ish.

0:40:55 Tom: Yeah.

0:40:56 Eli: Yeah. 52. 50.

0:40:57 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah. My parents are a little old, little, little old for, so that was interesting too. I think I'm going to, I'm gonna ask now that if that's come up, I think my dad's dad was like, had another family.

0:40:58 Eli: Yeah. I

0:40:58 Tom: So Only five years different than my dad. Yeah.

0:41:08 Eli: Gotta look my mom up on Wikipedia. Media

0:41:13 Thomas: I'm going to look my parents up on no one gives a fuck about anything my parents ever did. Dot com.

0:41:15 Eli: 1955 is when my mom was born. Yeah.

0:41:19 Thomas: 1955

0:41:19 Tom: I, you Seriously, looked your mom up on Wikipedia? Fucking

0:41:21 Thomas: To figure out what year she was born. That's that's interesting.

0:41:22 Eli: Yeah. Yeah.

0:41:24 Tom: Hell. Oh.

0:41:25 Thomas: That's funny. So weird weird, situation. I believe that my so my dad was raised in L.A., born, raised in LA. And I think that his dad had them as a second family and then like wasn't around or something. It's something fucking weird like that. I have to ask. But anyway, that's, that's like all I know. I know almost nothing. Nothing. My parents married pretty old. I think they had both been with other people. Oh, I found out my mom had been married fucking twice. My mom has an awesome story, but is incapable of like sharing it. Well, like she can't, focus she on like a, it's hard to explain. She she's not good at any sort of real conversation.

He is really like you just doesn't want to talk about it. She just doesn't. So we've kind of learned some weird stuff. But my mom was a classical guitar player in the 60s and was like a hippie and was fucking my mom saw Jimi Hendrix burn his guitar on stage. She did all the cool 60s stuff. Yeah, she She didn't mention that from time to time because, you know, that's like a quick like, oh, yeah, I saw Jim. She also saw The Doors. She saw, yeah, Joplin, lots. Because she was in, I think, San Francisco. And so she would see, there's that famous, is the Fillmore? There's a famous venue there. I can't remember

0:42:32 Eli: Fillmore.

0:42:32 Thomas: That people came through that she saw a lot of these people. And she traveled in the 60s as a hippie. And it's one of the most depressing things is she went from that to, I News fucking asshole like in this time. Isn't that depressing?

0:42:33 Eli: No,

0:42:48 Thomas: It's a huge bummer. But anyway, so I know a little bit more about my mom, almost nothing about my dad to answer your question.

0:42:53 Eli: That's So, as will surprise no one, I know everything about my parents. My parents told me all about their lives, but constantly told me stories from his childhood and from what it was like to be a teen and and that was my dad was a great storyteller. Like one of the things that I I am very proud to have inherited from him is like the stories my dad had about his dad and growing up and all sorts of stuff. It was so, my dad was such a consummate storyteller that when I was little, he would tell me these stories about his best friend in elementary school, Bert the monkey. Bert, I get a Bert the monkey's story every night before bed. Bert, the monkey hijacks a cruise ship. Bert the monkey joins Al Qaeda, you know, whatever the fuck my dad thought of

0:42:56 Thomas: Yeah, and we could probably buy a biography of them.

0:42:56 Tom: Okay. I

0:43:36 Eli: That night. But he would he would tell these real. Yeah, it was weird that Burt the monkey was a hardcore Islamic extremist, and I don't know why Dad included

0:43:36 Thomas: That's a weird story to tell. Munger was ahead of his time, we'll say. Oh,

0:43:45 Tom: Got a monkey story when you're done with that, that story.

0:43:45 Eli: No, So he would say, he would tells me these stories, but they were all based on reality and they were based on his childhood, not all of which was happy. But

0:43:56 Thomas: Is this like a big fish situation?

0:43:58 Eli: It, it was a lot like Big Fish, actually. There's a reason why I have seen that movie more times than any other film. But yeah, um, would tell me these stories and it was so ingrained, my dad's stories was so engrained in me that I was like genuinely 16 when I was walking around one day and I was like, I wonder how Burt the monkey's doing, and then I was like, wait a minute, Burt, the monkey. Yeah.

0:44:04 Thomas: Situation

0:44:15 Tom: Well, My I also have a parental monkey story. My mom had a small monkey, uh, don't know what kind, uh, I think monkeys are fucking terrifying in, in person, so a small, terrifying monkey named Gilligan, uh, that would sit on her shoulder, and my mom was a, uh, well, I assume still is, I haven't seen her in 20-some years, but my mom is a, is an alcoholic. She's buried two husbands for liver failure. And she buried that monkey for the same thing. So the monkey would sit on her shoulder and she would drink and she would give the monkey a drink and she would drink and give the Monkey a drink. And the monkey eventually became an alcoholic and like sit On her shoulder. And She Would get drunk and the monkey Would get drunk. But monkeys have livers the size of like a fucking garbanzo bean or something.

0:44:21 Thomas: That you Oh yeah. Oh my God. Jesus.

0:45:04 Tom: So the poor fucking monkey died of cirrhosis. I

0:45:08 Thomas: Oh my God, I

0:45:10 Eli: I Like, can I just say, I like my monkey story better.

0:45:13 Tom: Think mine's hilarious though.

0:45:14 Thomas: Think is your monkey like a drunk stepdad? Did you have a drunk monkey stepdad kind of?

0:45:19 Tom: I had a drunk stepdad too, at one point, but yeah, that

0:45:22 Eli: There we go

0:45:21 Thomas: Oh, okay. Has that merged with your memory? And was that actually the monkey is what I'm wondering. Well, we find out like in order to protect yourself, your your psychic protected itself by By creating a monkey store, like fake backstory.

0:45:26 Tom: Monkey was six foot one.

0:45:32 Eli: Yeah. Yeah. Tom's living the hike. I can't tell you, I didn't have to kill me. Um, it's interesting too, we mentioned families, you guys aren't. I have a huge extended family who I see multiple times a year. My, my dad's family, we all, we all get together and everyone. So this is always fun to tell people: I am the failure of my family because my family are all geniuses. My aunt, who hosts us every year, literally wrote the book on teaching gifted children and still lectures all over the place. She just finished the fifth edition of that book. Her daughter, my older cousin, is a robot surgeon, was for the Cleveland Clinic now.

0:45:50 Thomas: Wow. Ah, wow.

0:46:21 Thomas: I didn't

0:46:22 Eli: She's head of. Yeah.

0:46:22 Thomas: Know they needed surgery. Do robots

0:46:24 Eli: She's She does surgery with robots, or as a robot, I don't know. And then her brother designed one of the top computer science programs from the ground up, and, and I'm like, sometimes Kevin Sorbo looks like a crunch bar, but we see each other.

0:46:24 Thomas: Need surgery? Oh, that

0:46:24 Tom: What

0:46:37 Thomas: Is nuts.

0:46:41 Eli: We adore each other and we see each other multiple times a year, we get, we do Thanksgiving. Everyone goes to my aunt's for Thanksgiving, and then for Buddha's birthday, because her and her husband are lay Buddhists, we go for Budda's birthday to this beautiful place in Rochester where they do religious stuff, but there's the Sleeping Sage and there's all this fun stuff for the kids and the fan, and we play board games. It's really nice. This welcome back to Eli Alienates the Fucking audience. Audience. Yeah.

0:46:41 Thomas: Oh

0:46:41 Tom: It's

0:46:59 Thomas: Man. Sounds so nice. You No,

0:47:05 Tom: So funny because I don't know if that sounds nice or not. I can't relate to that at all. Like, there's I, this has always been how I've grown up and it's not felt like a bad thing at all. I like having a fully independent distance from my family. Like, people, I tell stories all the time about, like, you know, their family, like you unpleasantly upon their decisions and like nobody does that.

0:47:12 Thomas: Oh yeah. Me neither.

0:47:31 Tom: Like, like, no, there's no there's not. There's literally zero percent of that.

0:47:30 Thomas: Oh yeah, yeah, Yeah. Well, More insane dad stories, um, grandmother, my dad's mom lived on our property at some point in our lives, and then my dad, like, kicked her out or something, and then there's some story of, and in mind, I'm also from a tiny shit town, that's important actually, to when you're from the country versus like a city, it's just things are different in certain ways. Um, so like when I say like my, my dad's mom live a mile away from us, that, that means she's, there's nothing else there, like she's There because of us, and at a certain point my dad told the story of how there was some interaction, something like my dad was going to give her a ride or something, and my dad, mom, like, there some miscommunication.

It is the dumbest story in the world. The only reason I'm bringing it up is that was how my dad told the story of that's the last time he ever talked to his mom. Just, he just, she lived a mile away from us. And he just, because of some dumb thing that I don't remember, I could ask my mom for the story. He was just like, well, I'm done with this. And then he never talked to her again, literally never talked her again. I out she died because someone else told me some and by, by someone else, I mean, my

0:48:48 Thomas: Friend's mom was like, hey, did your grandma die? Like at school, like a fucking fourth, fifth grade, something like that. She's like, and I was like what? What are you talking about? She's, like, yeah, I think your grandma died. I was, like I don't know what you're talking, like literally what you're, talking about. She, like yeah, I have a friend who does meals on wheels and that a thing you guys know about? Is that a, that's a national Program.

0:48:47 Tom: That's terrible.

0:48:57 Tom: Oh, yeah, yeah. Yeah.

0:49:08 Eli: Mills On wheels. Yeah.

0:49:09 Thomas: Yeah, his does Meals on Wheels and, uh, she, I think she, uh, did that for your grandma, and she's dead. Yeah.

0:49:09 Tom: Uh huh. She doesn't need the meals.

0:49:16 Thomas: And I was like, that is insane, what are you talking about? I think I started crying, and then this friend just left, which was funny. Like, this friend's mom, I, I have a memory of it of, like, she just realized what she did and was like, I had bye, you know, I'm getting the fuck out of here, and

0:49:16 Eli: Yelled.

0:49:29 Eli: Got him and then left the room. Didn't

0:49:33 Tom: Did

0:49:33 Thomas: You don't want to know another funny thing. I didn't mention that to my parents. I never said, hey, my friend's mom said my grandma died, is that true? Didn't say a thing. Didn't say a single thing. Just Nope, just to give you, I'm trying to, like, give you a picture of what, what this insane upbringing was.

0:49:42 Eli: Come up. Yeah.

0:49:48 Tom: And so obviously.

0:49:48 Eli: It seems slightly worse than Harry Potter played the Dursleys, like I feel like the Duresleys would be like, you should call child services. Do you want to be in the closet with my nephew? This is fucked up, Razor.

0:49:50 Tom: Yeah. Yeah. And so

0:49:52 Thomas: Like, the So Why I brought that up. And the reason I brought that up is to give the indication of how, like my family, there's one thing my family has that I think is a slight advantage. And it's similar to what Tom was describing.

0:50:14 Eli: Sharp teeth.

0:50:16 Thomas: Yes. Which is the ability to cut people the fuck out of our lives, which serves well. Sometimes we have it too much. My family's terrible at that because they're, they're on a hair trigger, but I see people online who are like, fucking my racist, Trump loving uncle, um, did a hate crime against my black fiance and we're going to his house for Thanksgiving. I was like, what are you, what are talking about?

0:50:41 Tom: Yeah.

0:50:41 Thomas: Just leave, like kill that person. Just never, they're out of your life. You know, like for me, I have no sense of obligation to some family member that I, you know, cause I don't have that. So there is a portion of that that I think is pretty healthy.

0:50:42 Eli: Yeah.

0:50:55 Tom: I have a small, I just have a small family, and they're not, none of them are local. So like none of my extended family are local. My mom lived out on the West Coast. I think she's in Panama now, but I'm not sure. My grandparents lived out that way. I never met my paternal grandparents, they deceased before I really knew them. At dad, like, to give you a sense, like, my dad does not offer his opinion once, once I left the house. My dad has a very strict, and when my dad sets a policy in his head, it's, he never varies from it, right? So like once my dad makes a rule or a decision, like that rule is it's, it like, it's fucking written in stone, like it it's absolutely carved That's

0:51:27 Eli: His head Judge Tom's Dad. Clack Clack. It's

0:51:29 Thomas: Yeah. I liked that one of the first rules he made was, I'm never listening to my son's fucking podcast. Fuck that.

0:51:38 Tom: It, I'm done, I'm not. Yeah, I remember telling him about it. He's like, it's not something I would do, and, like, I told him, like, oh, you can listen. He's like, that's not something I would do. But it's

0:51:43 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, man.

0:51:45 Eli: Not something I would. What does that even mean? How do you not have follow -ups

0:51:46 Thomas: Oh,

0:51:47 Tom: Just like it just not on the list of things like that, that's not what he would do. Yeah.

0:51:51 Thomas: Relate to that's so hard, except I would never. I've already internalized that so much that I would not even broach the subject. I'm like one asshole level.

0:51:58 Tom: I thought It was funny though, like, I laughed, I remember what he told, told me, and I laughed. I was like, yeah, I didn't think so. And then we just, like, it was, it, like, it's fine. Like, I don't, it, it made me laugh. I thought it was funny. It's like, that's not something I would do. And I was, and I thought, like, no, it's not something you would do, like, like I can't picture my dad sitting and listening to a podcast. It'S a farcical notion.

0:52:00 Thomas: Yeah, oh, Man, you know what I think might be one small difference, because we, we, I am, it's stuff you say about your dad really in some ways lines up with mine, except I think my dad was just more unpleasant. So

0:52:28 Tom: My dad's not even remotely unpleasant. He's very loving. Like

0:52:31 Thomas: Cause, so like early on, if interactions, you, you picture how this develops, this dynamic develops over time. Early on in my life, I think I would get the negative. If I tried to do something like that or whatever, the five-year-old version of that would be like, yeah, I made a podcast. Now I would get this really negative kind of feedback, in this negative emotional experience, to the point where I would never even fucking try to say something like, hey, check out my pug. And never, not a single time did I once think about, no, sell

0:52:57 Tom: We got to sell it a little better than that too, Thomas. Like, you know, you got to really like bring a little energy to it, maybe jazz hands.

0:53:02 Thomas: Something to my dad. Oh, my God. Yeah, no. This is, that's the difference.

0:53:08 Tom: Because dad's my rules were all, they were completely binary. So as soon as I left the house, he had a rule. He didn't ever say it was the rule, but I just realized over time that it was, that he was never going to offer advice unless asked on anything at all. You tell dad what's going on in your life and he's interested but would never opine on it, and I grown, you know, I mean, that's been the way it's been for, I don't know, I moved out when I was 22, so it's been that way for 21 years, and I like it, like It's, I think that's kind of fucking great to be honest. It's like, I make bad decisions and nobody gives me shit. I make good decisions, I don't have to worry about, like, whether or not those decisions feel validated by anyone other than the people that are involved in them, yeah.

0:53:36 Thomas: Hmm.

0:53:48 Eli: You're like an emotional Robinson Caruso, just walking

0:53:52 Tom: Well, I just I I will tell you though, when When I decided to get divorced and I left my house, I called my dad to tell him, and I was, it was for the, it was the first time I ever felt nervous telling my dad a decision that I'd made because I had literally no idea what his thoughts might be. So I was like, shit, like, might not go well. He, like, could look at this really negatively. And he was incredibly supportive. He was immediately and incredibly overwhelmingly supportive. And, and it turns out he did have opinions that he had held for, you know, 20 years and just never shared them. So

0:53:52 Eli: Around your island, my coconuts Yeah.

0:54:30 Thomas: Oh,

0:54:30 Tom: Yeah. But yeah, that's just, and there's a, there's I see those same stories that you mentioned, Thomas, like, oh, like this negative shitty person, like keeps like intervening in my life. It's like, I don't have that. I do not have any of that.

0:54:34 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah.

0:54:46 Thomas: Yeah. Is a balance. Somewhere in the middle of all this, there's a good way to be, I think.

0:54:50 Eli: It's funny, my close as my family is, my grandfather, keep your nose clean, had a shitty brother, um, he cut off, um, that's the only cutting off that's happened on that side. But yeah, literally he just, like, he had a shitty brother who tried to kiss my aunt on the mouth.

0:55:05 Tom: What? What?

0:55:06 Eli: Yeah, to guess my aunt when she was like 17, and he just beat the shit out of him on the the front lawn and was like, the next time I see you better be never. And he just died, Danny Bosnick, just died in a shitty hotel somewhere, and he didn't go to, he was like, I don't know that fucking guy, who are you talking about? Yeah.

0:55:05 Thomas: Oh, Oh, that's the best. Wow. That's amazing. You know how it's like the fucking angel gets its wings if you, whatever the bullshit that is? Every time I hear somebody cut out a toxic family member, I just, I thrive on it. Just don't, just don't. Just do it. It's so easy. But it's probably not easy for them. Because it's a sign of like my unhealthy mentality that I could be like, I could just never talk to my mom again tomorrow.

0:55:46 Thomas: And it wouldn't, it wouldn'T affect me very much.

0:55:48 Tom: Yeah, nothing would change.

0:55:49 Thomas: No. Yeah. I mean, I love my mom. I think, I don't know. I, I, I think I love mom, but I, uh, I will say this, all the good memories of my childhood are my mom putting an effort. I don't want to sell my mom short. She was the only one who worked. My dad was a fucking lazy piece of shit, who did, you know, on a country, you, acre in the woods essentially. So there's a lot of house shit he had to do, you know, but like he didn't work, and so she was a, you know, the only one working, taught high school, uh, still found the wherewithal to, like, do a lot of the things that still make a childhood fun in some ways. And so I do still have that, and I, I shouldn't sell my mom short on that front, like she

0:55:45 Eli: Well,

0:56:29 Tom: No,

0:56:29 Thomas: Really did do a heroic effort for that

0:56:30 Tom: That's huge stuff. That's big stuff.

0:56:30 Eli: So this A huge part of my, the joy of having a child has been sharing that with my mother. Is that something that you guys have? I mean, I know you're not your, your mom, but, like, do your parents do dote on your children as their grandchildren? If If my mom doesn't get a FaceTime from my son once a day, she will send us a text message being like, I miss Max, and like She adored, she adores him. She comes once a month or twice a month sometimes just to see him and help take care, like, oh, when we first had him she was the only child care we had for the first six or seven months because he's a covet baby, so I mean Yeah, that's such a huge, a huge percentage of my parenting experience, and a lot of my parent joy has been my mother's absolute adoration of Max.

0:56:46 Tom: No. My,

0:56:52 Thomas: Wow. Oh, That's sweet oh Yeah. That's Awesome. I

0:57:22 Tom: Dad didn't like my first, my oldest son, um, at all. Yeah. He didn't.

0:57:26 Eli: What? That's a child judge

0:57:28 Tom: Yeah. He didn's gay.

0:57:28 Thomas: Just it's just like, fuck that guy, I don't like him, try again. You know, see me uh, if you have another one

0:57:32 Tom: Yeah. He didn' Yeah.

0:57:33 Eli: Tom's dad clack clack well

0:57:34 Tom: He didn'd like him. He'll still, he'll still talk about it. Like he'll, he'd still talk to him. He'd still, still talk, he didn't talk about, he, he thought he thought Finn, uh, Finn was afraid of my dad. My dad's not a scary guy, but my dad is, but

0:57:41 Thomas: I think we had the same dad well it sounds like you should have been if your dad's like, I, I don't care for that one. I don't fucking like IT.

0:57:48 Tom: Yeah.

0:57:50 Eli: Fuck you too infant cool

0:57:52 Tom: But Yeah, I think, you know, yeah, my dad loved my, my brother had a kid. So my brother, uh, had a child and, and their financial circumstances were very poor. Um, and so for a while I bought a house and I built an apartment in it and my brother moved into that house. Um, and so my brother and his little family was living in my house and my basement in the apartment that my dad and I built, and dad helped to raise my niece, and he was very, very, very close with her. When Finn came along was like a little bit of a nervous kid and a little bit of a nervous baby, and so when my dad would go to reach for Finn, Finn would cry or otherwise be like standoffish, and my dad was like, yeah, your son doesn't like me, and he just then, then my dad didn't like him back. And so there, there was no connection, and there remains, it's been 15 years. There was no connection between but

0:58:42 Thomas: That's heartbreaking.

0:58:39 Eli: Would it help if Finn beat up your dad on a bridge? I think that's usually what happens in movies.

0:58:47 Tom: I don't think Finn cares. Like my dad is not like, there's not an expectation to have grandparents as part of your life.

0:58:48 Eli: Yeah.

0:58:54 Thomas: Yeah. That's a big theme.

0:58:58 Tom: Have that experience, and I don't think, it's, yeah, it's funny because I see Haley's parents sometimes. They'll mail, they'll gift bags or like care packages and stuff. They'll mail stuff just like randomly to Haley and, like, to the kids. Every time one of them comes in the mail, it fucking blows my mind. It absolutely, like, because there's not an occasion attached to it. There's not, like, any, any reason for it, and they just are like, thinking of you, thought I'd send you a card. Like, I don't, I, that shit is astonishing to me. I can't even imagine my dad doing that. I can't imagine it.

0:59:33 Eli: My mom buys shit for Max constant, constantly, just it's a never-ending array of packages and books, and Noah and Lucinda to buy my son stuff because they bought him a ball pit, which is, which occasionally is just all of my living room for, like a week and a half.

0:59:46 Tom: Yeah.

0:59:47 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah. Oh, man. That's going to be a recurring segment. The shit that you shouldn't get your kid or your friend's kids.

0:59:50 Tom: And then, oh most of the shit. God.

0:59:58 Thomas: Yeah. Mom is incredibly loving with my kids, but only sees them like once a year, you know, but like part of that is COVID and part of that is honestly the bullshit politics, you, hard to want to be in contact with part of a significant chunk of my family now because they're just died-in-the-wool conservatives who won't get the vaccine, you, just like, that really does make it tough stuff. But apart from that, like, if COVID had never happened, if Trump had never happened, I think I would, you know, I love being around my mom for things. My mom always did the best Thanksgiving, the best kind of Christmas stuff. And so I would love to have that in my life still, if that were possible. And my mom would be very great with my kids, but they just don't, it just doesn't come up that often for those reasons. And also my mom has a lot of grandkids at this point, like,

0:59:54 Eli: Yeah

1:00:47 Tom: I think my sense that I get for my dad is, is always been, 'cause I don't know that he's ever, I, he doesn't have any real connection with my, my youngest who's seven at all. I mean, no connection whatsoever, but I think my dad has done having kids and raising kids. You, I just, I think that's the feeling that I have gotten is that I did my time. I, I raised my kids. I don't want to raise yours. And so that's, there's not like a strong, I mean, mean, like, we get together on Christmas and he gives him all a hug and tells him he loves him and get some presents and he's very generous and he's, they've been generous with, like, together, uh, some, you, college savings for the, for the boys. I mean, he's not ungenerous, but I just don't think in terms of how he wants to spend his time. Dad's not a doting, he wasn't a doting dad, he's not going to be a doting grandfather, father, like

1:00:59 Thomas: Just like did his time. And he's like, yeah.

1:01:27 Eli: The end of the first episod conversation is, is literally Tom going, "and so he just, he just never did it," and I was like, I almost put a fart noise end of the, end, I think and that's enough of that, I'll be fine, I mean, it might, but That's, that's how the show went.

1:01:40 Thomas: You want some, like, a tiny transition music to go there to soften the transition? Or just it won't sound like we don't give a fuck about whatever Tom said.

1:01:53 Eli: Man you

1:01:52 Tom: Just leave me hanging in space face.

1:01:55 Thomas: All right, shut your face, and now if, before we pre

1:01:58 Eli: Want to talk about pre-recorded, that sounds really sad, you guys. All right, well, that's

1:02:05 Thomas: -record, canned. Wow, you guys' childhood sucked anyway. I

1:02:10 Eli: It sounds really awful, your parents should have had more money.

1:02:17 Tom: They really should have.

1:02:18 Thomas: Want to put all that in the show. Okay.

1:02:26 Eli: We go. Important question: why did the astronaut feel claustrophobic? Because he needed some space.

1:02:33 Tom: Ah, Jesus.

1:02:35 Thomas: So it's not because he's in a tiny space shuttle that definitely, like, you don't need another reason.

1:02:41 Tom: Eli, that's literally a bad joke.

1:02:42 Thomas: He, boo.

1:02:46 Clip: If you're hearing this, that means you're a patron and you're also incredibly good looking, so thanks for supporting the show and enjoy this extra dad story of the week.

1:02:54 Eli: And got a parenting story you'd like to leave us with this week?

1:02:57 Tom: Have a bit of an observation. So, my 16 year old son, I'm teaching him to drive. So in Illinois, you've got to take your kid out and you've gotta do 50 hours of driving instruction with him. Which, at first I thought this is great. This makes a lot of sense before he gets his license, he's gonna have all this experience. Uh, did I not stop to think that that wastes 50 hours of my life going in very slow circles around a church parking lot. Um, it's the, you know, what's really a funny thing is that you can know how to drive and have absolutely no fucking idea how to teach someone to drive. Like, no idea at all. It's like

1:03:06 Thomas: Wow. Wow, 50 hours.

1:03:37 Thomas: Click,

1:03:37 Tom: Teaching somebody to make just mechanics of teaching somebody else how to do something that you've committed to muscle memory 25 years ago is an extent with no prep and with no expect. Just all of a sudden you just get in a car and you're in the wrong side of it. You're in the passenger seat and they don't know what they're doing and this thing's expensive and you're like, okay, nice, we're gonna make a right hand turn into a parking space and they do it wrong and you're like, well, that was just wrong, do it better I

1:03:38 Thomas: Click the go button. No, that's not it. No.

1:04:07 Eli: Do it the right way, or

1:04:07 Thomas: Bad.

1:04:10 Tom: I have I

1:04:10 Eli: We'll die.

1:04:10 Thomas: Did you spray him with water or something? Yeah. What do you do?

1:04:13 Tom: Have a rolled up newspaper I'm swatting him with. He parked bad, I got out of the car, I rubbed his nose in the spot where he was supposed to park it. Fuck, it is so much harder than I thought it would be, so much much harder, and he, you know, he asked me like, well, we drive around this parking lot, you know, in this big, like, mega church nearby on a weekday, was no one there, and we're going through it and I'm figuring out how to teach him but he's looking to me for guidance like I'm an expert in the teaching part of driving and so it's, there's an enormous amount of, like, I am sweating and he's fucking sweating, it's a nightmare just

1:04:24 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah. You're like, okay, you see that thing? That's a circle. No, it's an oval. Is it a spheroid? I don't, that thing in front of you, that thing,

1:04:53 Tom: Fuck it is so much harder than you think. We finish this thing up and And he's like, well, all right, can I drive home like through the residential street? And I, I could not have more sharply yelped out the word no.

1:05:09 Tom: And I felt so bad because he just wants to learn to drive. But I'm just like, I love my car. No. What? Are you serious? You drive in this parking lot forever, forever until they build self -driving cars that are worth a damn. Use this. We may not even go home. We're just going to live in this barking lot.

1:05:21 Thomas: This is where you live now. Yeah.

1:05:26 Eli: We're on the road. We're doing that now. What's that road where the guy's trying to cross the country with his son post-apocalypse the Road, yeah, we're the road now, that's the, we're The Road.

1:05:32 Tom: The road, yeah. Oh.

1:05:35 Thomas: Yeah. Would It surprise you, gentlemen, to learn that my parents did not allow us to drive until we were 18 for

1:05:41 Tom: Yeah. I got, I got a driving story on that too. Like

1:05:41 Eli: So

1:05:44 Thomas: A lot of these reasons. There, there's no fucking way they're putting 50 hours of their time into that.

1:05:51 Tom: Now I want to tell this story. My, my buddy's mom had to teach me to drive because my dad, my dad was like, "Well, you're not driving my car." He's like, "I drive my car," and it was like, that's, I've never driven a car of my dad's, except for a handful of hours when I was about 32 years old on a trip to Canada. I've never driven a car he's owned. I bought my first car at 18 from my buddy's mom, who took me to the commuter parking lot of the train station. It was a stick shift, and so I had to learn how to drive, and I learned how to ride stick, and I didn't learn it from Karen, from my, my best friend's mom at the time, because my dad's like, "Well, I'm not teaching you to drive my car. If you, you crash it, I have no car," and I was just like Well, I got it.

1:06:07 Thomas: So is that where you learned the

1:06:31 Eli: That's fair.

1:06:31 Tom: I got Yeah. It

1:06:31 Eli: All

1:06:31 Thomas: Rolled up newspaper trick? Did she beat you over the head with that when you didn't? Yeah.

1:06:34 Tom: She did. She did. All

1:06:39 Clip: Want to meet sexy DILFs in your area? Email the dads at DearOldDads.com or, better yet, send us a message on Patreon. You can follow us on all social media by checking the links in the show notes. And if you need more podcasts in your life, you can find Tom on Cognitive Dissonance, Thomas on Serious Inquiries Only, and Eli on Godawful Movies and all the Puzzle in the Thunderstorm shows. Dear Old Dads is edited and produced by my favorite DILF, Tom Smith, who also wrote and recorded the intro music, which is used with his permission. This podcast is a production of Daddy Issues LLC. Copyright 2022. All rights reserved.

1:07:18 Thomas: We pretending we have listeners before we went on, or what? Why don't you just ask the question? I don't understand. Okay, it's just just

1:07:25 Tom: Don't don't say it's a listener because that would be awkward if we

1:07:26 Thomas: Yeah.

1:07:26 Eli: Can you live in the fact can you live in The Fiction, you assholes. Just live in the fiction for a second for a second. Live in the fiction.

1:07:29 Tom: Actually You

1:07:29 Thomas: But it's unnecessary. Why do we need

1:07:33 Tom: Should introduce it like, like as if we do have a fake listener that, that like preemptively listened to the what

1:07:36 Eli: Liz Rosenberg asks she's

1:07:38 Thomas: Oh. We could come up we could. Okay, that's good, actually. I do. I do.

1:07:43 Eli: On the Zencaster call. I don't know how she got your family's. My entire family listens to my, like, my aunts, my uncles, my cousins. Yeah, I have a huge huge, incredibly close family. Oh.

1:07:44 Thomas: Oh. My God. I don't talk to any of those people. I've seen, I had an uncle, I donno, I have

1:07:50 Tom: Oh.

1:08:00 Tom: I see, Thomas.