Best of Tom: How Do We Protect Our Kids From Bullies? (DOD3)

Transcript

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

0:00:27 Tom: Welcome to Dear Old Dads, the podcast that always clicks the barbecue tongs twice before it uses them. I'm joined by Thomas Smith and Eli Bosnick, and I'm Tom Curry. Gentlemen, good afternoon.

0:00:39 Thomas: Hi. What's up, dads? I think we could all, we could do a dad thing where it's like the dad noises as you try to get up from the sofa, like that's how we... Hey, hey, Tom, how's it going? Yeah.

0:00:49 Eli: I'm coming.

0:00:51 Tom: All Okay. As I think the only person over 40 on this podcast, fuck you. Okay. That's a legit response to any kind of physical movement.

0:00:58 Thomas: I know. I was saying the other day, it's it's a symmetrical sound. When you go down, you give the like, ah, yeah, you know? And then when you go up, you got to give like the reverse of that. You're like, you know, like to try to get up. Yeah.

0:01:05 Tom: True.

0:01:06 Eli: Yeah.

0:01:13 Tom: Have reached that age where there is no ability to move without some sort of exhalation. I don't even understand how I ever did it. I have no idea. I wake up and the whole thing hurts and doctors don't want to fix it anymore, that's kind of where I'm at

0:01:22 Thomas: Yeah.

0:01:18 Eli: Mm-hmm. Yeah. Out I'm I made a note of this the other day that I'm past the like time where something is hard and I go, "Oh, I should like get that in shape," and now I'm just like, "I guess I should take some Tylenol because that's gonna hurt later." My My mom was visiting this past weekend, which means my son sleeps in our attic, we have like a finished attic where we put him when mom visits, and which means like climbing upstairs and walking downstairs with him and I was just like, oh man, oh man, I I really wish you knew how to navigate stairs without hurting yourself. Come on, kid.

0:01:37 Thomas: Yeah.

0:01:56 Tom: Now be careful, if you end up having a second kid, you don't want children in the attic, it's whole thing, you don't just, don't even be flowers up there. It's a it's a problem. It's a problem. Hey, so this weekend I was hanging out with a friend of mine who I hadn't seen in a long time, he's stay-at-home dad, um, and I was actually telling him about this show and I asked him to give kind, kind of a listen to it, you know, in its early stages, and we're talking about a bunch of dad stuff, and then, you know, we kind of got very briefly on the subject of bullying, um, and that's a hot topic issue, I thought I'd bring it up to you guys, and I'm curious, just experientially, were you guys bullied or were you bullies, or do you have any experience in that sort of bullying realm?

0:02:03 Thomas: Well,

0:02:04 Eli: Yeah, exactly. It's a whole thing.

0:02:35 Thomas: I, you know, I need a minute before we get into the emotional, uh, session that we'll be talking about getting bullied ourselves, but, but I I also think that when it comes to our kids and bullies, this is an area where I genuinely don't know, like that's that's what's so interesting about to it to me because as someone who experienced some amount of bullying, uh, you folks are so lucky, I tell you, you did either of you, have no, I know Eli didn't, Tom, mom, did you, you had a similar ish upbringing, but you're not from a small town. You didn't have to go to a fucking shit kicker school full of conservative truck, Jeep Wrangler, fucking whatever, Brett Favre, you know, like, I don't know, just the gene commercials.

0:02:46 Eli: Yeah.

0:03:09 Tom: Brett Farve just we're just saying the names of things now fucking

0:03:13 Eli: I want the rest of this episode for just to be Thomas naming conservative things.

0:03:17 Tom: All their just all their fucking grandma's drink tab, fucking shitty okay now you're just okay.

0:03:22 Eli: Boiled peanuts oh

0:03:23 Thomas: God, pretty much any stereotype you could, you say about, and again, I'm from from California. So it's not like I was in Alaska or some shit in the D you know, but like, it's a shit kicker town I'm from. And so, and as a result, schools were very small. So there's just such a low rate of success in terms of like cool people you could find, you know, you're stuck with like the handful of dick

0:03:45 Tom: Well how small was your school like, what was your graduating high school school class, how many people

0:03:48 Thomas: Graduating high school class was like 200.

0:03:49 Tom: Yeah A thousand.

0:03:52 Eli: Wow, yeah.

0:03:54 Thomas: Hey, it might've been two 50.

0:03:55 Tom: There was a thousand in my graduating class.

0:03:55 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah. Okay. We comparing sizes now. Yeah. Okay.

0:03:57 Eli: We yeah it was, it was around that with mine as well, as like a thousand or fifteen hundred, something

0:03:59 Tom: Yeah, just for context yeah no that's

0:04:04 Thomas: High High school was like the good ending to this story. That was like, oh, my God, finally, there's some people here for me. But in middle school, in junior high, I often don't know what to call it because as another result of being a small town person, we just had a K through eight school. And like that was elementary school for me was K through eight. And people had like, I learned you fancy city folk had like, well, there's kindergarten, then there's pre-kindergarten, elementary, then there's like seven different schools to get through to that, is that what, what you guys did, right?

0:04:06 Tom: Oh shit uh Well, that's what I ended up doing, but I will say that I went to a bunch of different schools, so I went to school in New Jersey and Florida, Chicago, and then the Chicago suburbs before eighth grade and so in Chicago public schools it was K through eight.

0:04:46 Thomas: Oh okay so that's not like a crazy thing that, just my town had

0:04:50 Tom: Um, no. And I did, CPS, I, Chicago public school, I did that from first grade through fourth grade and then transferred to the suburbs in fifth grade because the high schools were dangerous where we were going to have to go. So my dad moved out to the suburbs to get out of the, so before we could get to the, to the high school, cause the high school we were going to go to was a dangerous school. I live near Midway Airport, which if you know the area, it's a

0:05:14 Thomas: So a lot of planes crash into the high school is that The

0:05:16 Tom: Lot of planes. It's a plane problem. Yeah, it's lot of just terrible takeoff and landing situation.

0:05:17 Thomas: Yeah, and The planes have guns too, the planes actually shoot well all

0:05:23 Tom: You wouldn't think they would point them downward as frequently. That but yeah, the neighborhood around airports is not generally desirable real estate, as you might imagine.

0:05:26 Eli: But they were there, yeah

0:05:28 Thomas: Yeah good point. All this is to say, um, having had some bad experiences, experiences, as much as you know, like I'm in on progressive parenting insofar as the science supports it, which it seems to, you know, we've talked about a lot of stuff before, I'm all in on that, I want to, I want to do better for my kids than, you know, past generations have, when it comes to bullying, that's the one area where I'm like, I don't know, man, I think if my kid gets bullied I'm gonna tell my kid to punch the bully in the face, I think that's honestly like and this is not out out of some, desire for blood and vengeance. I genuinely think that is the only way it gets fixed.

0:05:59 Tom: Are we not supposed to do that?

0:06:00 Eli: Oh See, now I am crazy, this is great, because I also don't know, but I'm crazy in a different direction, I'm worried about my crazy in a a different direction, I'm worried I'm gonna hit that kid's dad with my car because look, I I am not a violent person but I am no longer a part of culture, like whatever part of like social contract existed pre-2016 was shattered out the back of my skull when Trump was elected, so now I wear pug sweaters everywhere and like I'm, I'm never gonna tell my son, hey, you should punch the bully, but I I might punch the bully, and I like genuinely do not have a metric for how my brain is going to react in that scenario.

0:06:17 Thomas: That too, that too. Yeah.

0:06:47 Thomas: I too am very worried about that actually. Yeah.

0:06:49 Tom: So I actually almost did that. So my son was being bullied by a kid across the street. So there's this kid who's couple of years older than my kid. My kid was maybe, God, four through six. So he was pretty small. He was a little guy. And there was a kid across the street who was maybe eight or nine, which is a substantial difference in size and in boys. This kid was just, he was bullying the shit out of my kid. My kid would go over and he'd be like, yeah, come over and play. And he and another kid would just bully the shit out of And him. So my kid would come home and he'd be all upset about it.

0:07:18 Thomas: Jeez.

0:07:18 Tom: And so I just walked across the street and knocked on the door and his dad answered and I was like, all right, here's what happens, this stops or I'm gonna take you outside and every time my kid tells me that your kid bullied him I'm gonna kick the shit out of you, every single time, so I will take you outside, I'll drag you out of your fucking house, and I and I have, like this was not the right response.

0:07:30 Eli: Yes.

0:07:35 Thomas: That doesn't sound great, Tom. No,

0:07:37 Tom: This was a terrible response

0:07:38 Thomas: Yeah, Tom, Tom, that doesn't sound great. I don't know about that.

0:07:41 Tom: This was so this was a terrible response bonds but I I lost my fucking mind, like as soon as I found out it was happening I was like, "That little son of a bitch," and I just walked, I I lost it's a it's a stupid fucking thing to do and it's not like, zero out of ten, do not recommend, absolutely do not recommend, so ruin that relationship with the neighbor, ruin that like potential relationship between my kid and that kid, created more tension than it, than it was bad, it was a bad thing to do, it was a dumb bad thing to do, do worry about my kids getting bullied, but I used to worry too, like about my kids becoming bullies.

0:07:42 Eli: It sounds great to me. That's exactly what I picture myself doing.

0:08:20 Thomas: Yeah.

0:08:20 Tom: Because there is for every kid that gets bullied there's someone doing it and you never know who your kid's gonna turn into, you no.

0:08:24 Eli: Yeah.

0:08:26 Thomas: And things are complicated. Like often bullied kids are also bullies to other kids. You know, like it's not a clean, like my kid's the good kid that does whatever. And that's another thing I worry about is when you're about to go commit a felony, as Tom was about to do. Yes, I trust my kid. But do you trust your kid enough to commit a felony on their word?

0:08:33 Tom: Right right?

0:08:47 Thomas: Like maybe there's other stuff going on. I don't know.

0:08:49 Eli: Yeah, that would have been the worst if it turned out it was your kid's fault, you're just on top of some guy in his driveway and your kid's like, "Actually, I'm the one who stole the Nintendo," and you're like, "Well, now I feel silly." Hey

0:09:02 Thomas: You're holding up his dead body. Like, he's fine, though, right? Yes, I'm fine. Yeah.

0:09:05 Eli: You're trying to prop him back in his chair, look at you, you're doing great, let's let's put on some Dallas, huh, you like Dallas?

0:09:10 Thomas: Water under the bridge.

0:09:15 Tom: What?

0:09:16 Eli: So I mean I've talked about this on my shows and on Thomas's show, but later on in school, school, late middle school, high school, I was a bully, uh, not a physical bully but like an emotional bully, which meant that I just was like shitty to everybody but I was funny so I got away with it, um, you know, and I was, I was also like, my my high school had a drama department, oh god, in the ever If this show has a theme, it's "God, Eli is unlikable." My school had a drama department, and And I was in a lot of the musicals. So I had a lot of friends.

0:09:43 Thomas: Dead drama in high school. We actually had a decent drama. Quick, funny story. We had a really good theater facility. Facility and it's for the, I mean, kind of the funniest reason it's because in about 1990 fucking eight or something, uh, some asshole burned down the school burned down.

0:09:55 Eli: Yeah.

0:10:13 Eli: All right.

0:10:14 Thomas: Yeah. And it's actually kind of sad because they burned down the, the like old portion. There was like a really old timey building that we had. Uh, and I barely remember cause I was pretty small back in, this might've been actually early mid nineties. I can't remember, but, uh, I remember being in it a couple times, it was like the old timey school buildings and some kid burned it down. And so with the insurance money, the school actually built a really nice theater. And so that's the one thing that I did have and it got me into theater. And I gotta say, I'm thankful for that because I do love doing theater. So there you go.

0:10:47 Eli: Yeah. We had an amazing drama program. But

0:10:50 Thomas: And it wasn't because a redneck burned down your school that you had it? You just had one?

0:10:50 Eli: Like No, it was not. But we had like a fine arts school within my high school, which had an IB program, which was really, really wonderful.

0:10:55 Tom: Oh my God.

0:11:00 Eli: But what it meant is that the usual, like, cool kids are the football players and not cool kids are the drama kids thing sort of split into the drama kids had their own cool kids, their own section, because we kind of had our own school. And that facilitated what was a lot of me lashing out in pain. And look, I mean, the truth of the matter is I joke about this on my other shows because joking about it is a better and easier way to talk about it. The truth of the matter is I had undiagnosed mental illness and was good at talking like some people do different things when they feel, and I was just in a tremendous amount of psychic pain and wasn't old enough yet to be like, oh, this psychic pain is because my brain doesn't make these chemicals, so I don't need to lash out at the people around me.

Also, like, there wasn't like a fucking performance venue for a young roast kid, right? Like that is the joke that's always been the jokes that I do, um, I can tell you guys my roast origin story later, which is actually very nice, and it has to do with bullying, so it might be apropos to the episode, but like that's always been my sense of humor with my friends and obviously has facilitated a lot of cool, cool stuff, a lot of charity stuff. But like, if no one's playing and no one said go yet, it's just bullying. And that's sort of where I ended up in, God, in high school. No.

0:11:32 Thomas: Nah,

0:11:33 Tom: Right.

0:12:21 Tom: I've been on both sides of that equation and Thomas, I think you made the point. And think it's an, it's a, it's a good point, is that it's not always clear cut. Like you can be bullied and then be a bully at the same time. That's there. There's nothing mutually exclusive. Like you're just at the low end of the totem pole or you're just at the high end of the sort of bullying totem pole. Because I've been, I've been on all spectrums. I had a hard time, like, junior high and high school were not, they were not good years for me at all.

And my dad was extremely, extremely, extremely strict, strict, we'll talk about this, I'm sure, in other parts of the show. My dad's rules were very, very strict, and so in many ways I was a very isolated kid, so I didn't have a lot of social experiences, and so I found myself like really fucking socially awkward a lot, like deeply socially awkward, and I was also very heavy set, so, I was a heavy dude, and so in the 90s, when, when I was in, graduated you high school in '96.

0:13:14 Tom: So that was not a good time to be a heavy set, socially awkward kid for sure. So I I was bullied pretty good for a while in junior high. And then my first, really my first two years of high school, um, was a lot of bullying. Some of it was, was very physical. I got beat up a lot. Um, I got in fights. I didn't really shy away way from that confrontation either. So, um, for a while I tried the whole turn the other cheek and ignore the kid and it'll go away. They'll get bored. And that does not work. That's nonsense.

0:13:43 Thomas: Doesn't work.

0:13:43 Tom: What they do is they escalate it and then they bring their friends over and then their friends escalate it. And then they kick the shit out you for sport in front of everybody else, because you've demonstrated that you're an easy target. And, oh,

0:13:43 Eli: Right

0:13:46 Thomas: Yep. It's absolutely correct. If there's one thing I wanted to emphasize is that the bullshit picture you get from some of the fucking, I don't know, media, cartoons, whatever of the, well, if you just befriend the bully and find out what's going on with them, that's nothing.

0:14:04 Tom: Get the fuck out out of here right

0:14:05 Eli: Every time a group of improv improv adults came to your school and told you how to deal with bullies, they were lying.

0:14:12 Thomas: They were absolutely wrong, that is, as again, as progressive as I, I am on so many things, that is a lie, uh, it's not true. You can't just befriend your way out of bullying. It doesn't work like that.

0:14:12 Tom: Nope. No, Absolutely not. Then, and like, my life kind of did, like, a weird, like, like, Karate Kid montage thing because I, I was heavy set and I got tired of it and I got tired of being bullied and so I started running and I started lifting weights and I lost a ton of weight and I got in very, very good shape. It was a eye of the tiger thing, it was a whole thing. Yeah, and then all of a sudden, never gonna let you down.

0:14:41 Thomas: Oh, I thought we should get the Yeah. You're the best Sorry. End. Oh,

0:14:44 Eli: Yeah.

0:14:51 Tom: Then, you I was still mad though, like, I was an angry dude, and so then I went out looking for fights, I went out trying to fuck with people because I thought it was funny to fuck with people, and I had friends that would enable that, and so we did a lot of really mean, ill-advised, stupid stuff. And

0:15:07 Eli: That was also the behavior that had been modeled to you, what power was, right? Like, adult, you know, adult had stepped in and been like, true power is to lead others, young, young Tom, right? You would just, you would learn to the hard way what power was.

0:15:19 Thomas: It's found in a book. No,

0:15:09 Tom: Oh, Absolutely. What? I never told anybody anything. I would never tell my dad, I, if I got beat up, if I got whatever, I would lie about it. I'd make up a story. I never once mentioned it to any adult. I don't know how you guys grew up, but like, at least for me, in the, in the 90s, as a parent, a child of a single parent, like, like, that's not the role that we had, it's not the relationship we had. You didn't go to an adult to help you fix a problem, you went to other kids

0:15:23 Eli: Right.

0:15:40 Thomas: Not at all. I think we'll find that Eli went to his parents about every single thing that happened every day is what I'll guess. But no, Tom, I'm with you. There was no, because they just didn't fucking get it too. I mean, my parents, as we've discussed, were a little bit older than than your typical parent. So they're even for my age, they're even more out of touch. And it just felt like they had no fucking information for me. Like it just, just nothing, you know, like there's no, there's, I wasn't going to go and be like, Hey, what do I do about this? It's like, it would be some fucking nonsense answer that wouldn't do anything.

0:15:43 Tom: Right, yeah, I, right,

0:15:46 Eli: Yeah.

0:16:14 Tom: I was always convinced I'd be in trouble, so like, if I came to my dad with a problem, like, not, my, my dad's natural solution would be to figure out, like, how I was in trouble as a result of this problem, that I, so my, my dad my dad was my no, my, like, I was in trouble a lot, you know, I was grounded for a year and a half so Yeah, didn't, I did not go to my dad to help me solve problems.

0:16:16 Thomas: Hmm.

0:16:25 Thomas: One more point toward the secret Hitler theory. Yeah, no, same, absolutely same. That so And this is another component of my dad being shitty, was if I came to him about anything, or or in any discussion, it was always about, what's the way that you were wrong in it? You know, there was no, there was, I used to laugh at the idea, like, I couldn't even believe it, that other kids would have parents that would, like, come in and defend them, you like Eli apparently would, or like you get, like we would, I, it was it was

0:16:56 Tom: No, yeah, my dad was the same as yours, there yeah,

0:16:58 Thomas: Yeah, absolutely, a foreign concept to me. There's a lot, lot of stuff that I'm sure will come up where I would see it in movies growing up and be like, well, that's not how real parents do anything, right? Right, you, they don't, like, love their kids and do nice, right? That's not real. Fake Hollywood, there's a lot of that.

0:17:14 Eli: What's a birthday? These movies, these movies are weird. Meanwhile, Tom's like in the, in the, in the back, fighting a chair. And he's like, yeah, this movie's fucking stupid, that's why I'm taking this chair down a bank. So it's funny. I went to my, I did go to my parents about everything, and they were incredibly proactive in helping me about stuff, the, the problem came because, with my bullying, right, and I had a, I had a couple of incidents where, like, I was not in the wrong and my parents stepped in and they handled it incredibly well, um, but, like, with my bullying, the issue was often that, like, someone would say something mean, I would say something mean back, do a tight five, they would cry, and then I was in trouble.

0:17:42 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah.

0:18:00 Eli: Right, and then what, what happened is, like, I just stopped waiting for people to start, I would just go into my tight five on everybody, because it became the, the Eli is funny zeitgeist around my school became my thing, like, oh, Eli roasts everybody, and I, again, I roasted the popular kids, I roasted the unpopular kids, I didn't particularly have any friends, right? I had a couple of kids that I was, like, relatively, right,

0:18:16 Tom: Right, you, Still do, that you roast your friends all the time, you roast yeah, right, this is just how, like, I don't think you have any other way to interact with people, other than to roast them.

0:18:29 Thomas: Yeah.

0:18:30 Eli: Exactly. No, I don't. I don't know how to interact with normal humans. It sounds hard and boring. And so, like, that, that was hard for them to intervene in, because a lot of the time someone else would start it, and then when I was starting it, I was like, I was just joking around. And my parents were like, don't joke, don't make jokes, stop, you know, and the other thing was, like, often, you know, the extent of it wouldn't get, I wouldn't get told on, right, because the again, just my generation, the bullying that got, like, discouraged was physical bullying. So the chubby, be Jew with the glasses, you know, did a tight five on me as I went to lunch today, was hard to report. Right.

0:19:05 Thomas: Right. There

0:19:19 Eli: And it, um, and you know, not, not to weigh in on another vote for punching the bully in the face, but, like, one of the ways I learned to watch what I was saying is when I got absolutely obliterated by the nicest kid in my school.

0:19:19 Tom: Right,

0:19:33 Thomas: You go. There you go. I've heard you tell the story four times and I want to hear it again. Like it's, it's good every time.

0:19:35 Tom: Yeah,

0:19:36 Eli: Okay. So this is, and I tell this as a funny story, and people often are, like, oh, you think that's funny, and I'm like, no, tell it as a funny story because this is how I communicate stories, so, so, I have no other way, comedy is my way. So, uh, there was this kid in my school named DJ, who I will not announce his last name, I've told this story, like, six times, I've accidentally just doxed this human, who's still very, like, we're friends on Facebook, yeah, to this day, um, when we went to high school, his father passed away, and I would just rip on him for it mercilessly, constantly, and, like, about halfway through ninth grade, um, he took me aside, and I, I always, when I tell this story, I always reflect on, like, what an incredibly, like, amazing thing this was for a child to do. He

0:19:47 Thomas: Once again. Yeah. You have no other way of doing it, wow, so you're you're, it's an ongoing bullying situation to this day, you're still just does yeah,

0:20:24 Eli: Took me aside and he was like, hey, Eli, I know you're like a jokes guy, but I'm in a ton of pain and you have to stop making these jokes, you have to stop, it really hurts me, and, like, god, oh, what an amazing thing, and I was like, okay, man, sorry, I'm really sorry, and I came in the next day, um, and I was like, hey, DJ, I thought about what you said, um, I want you to have this, and I gave him a card, and he opened it, and it was a Father's Day card.

0:20:35 Thomas: You

0:20:45 Eli: But then here's the thing, he lost his mind and beat the ever-loving shit out of me. Now, I have to be clear, this was not a bully, this was not an athletic kid, he was one of those kids who just passed through the hallways of the high school being nice to everybody, buddy, doing fine, I think he's an accountant in my hometown now, he never got in a fight before or after, and he just, like, gorilla luggage test me, he was just like, his hair turned blonde and he floated off and there was fire all around his body and he just destroyed me, cracked, if you ever look at a picture of me, there's a chip in my front tooth, that's from DJ, DJ chipped that front tooth.

0:20:45 Tom: Oh,

0:21:13 Thomas: Know, You can fix that by Now I'm just saying, that's okay, you leave it as it, yeah, exactly, a scar that reminds you of your origins

0:21:28 Eli: Know, I could have fixed it, but I like it to remember him by and broke my nose and my blood was just everywhere. I, of course, am laughing. I've been beat up a few times at this point, so getting beat up isn't like a scary, horrible process anymore. I'm just like, oh, I did it again, here we are once again. So I'm laughing because the Dalai Lama is kicking the shit out of me right the sweetest kid is kicking the, a kid who up until that point was only known for his mom makes the best cookies at the bake sale, was just throwing me against the wall and fitting me into an air conditioner vent. So the gym teachers pull him off me, right. He has my blood all over him. They drag us down to the principal's office. Um, he is crying, I'm still hysterically laughing. So they think I'm crying. My father is a teacher at the middle school down the street, so

0:21:35 Thomas: Yeah Yeah. I feel

0:22:02 Tom: Oh, my God.

0:22:20 Eli: They call him in. Finally, when he gets there, I calm down enough to explain the story and everybody, the principal, my father, the teachers, the monitor, are like, Eli deserved this, DJ, here is a free sweatshirt from the school store because your shirt is covered in Eli's blood, Eli, you are suspended for two days, you should probably go to the hospital, and yeah

0:22:47 Thomas: Like that is an entirely, everything is good in that story. Like the way it ended up to me, that's all, I mean, you know, I obviously, hopefully it wouldn't hurt you too bad or anything, but like otherwise every reaction and everything ended up in that story in my mind. Yeah.

0:22:51 Tom: I know.

0:22:52 Eli: Yeah and the, the best part about this is that DJ, for the rest, because eventually, you know, they got us together and I was like, hey, this is not your fault at all, and he was like, I know, and I was like, great, good talk, can we go back to class now, but for the rest of high school, whenever I would see DJ, he would make this little fist gesture because he knew how funny it was.

I ran into, it's like six years ago now, I ran into him at the grocery store six years ago, and I was like, DJ, DJ, how you doing, man, and he did the little fist gesture, and I was like, yeah, I was like, introducing him to my wife, I was like, this is DJ, she was like, the guy who fucked you, I was like, this is the guy who fucked me up, yeah, but again, I like, I, I don't want to defend physical violence as a thing, but that was, wasn't necessarily that I got beat up, it was a moment of everyone being like, you are the bad guy. Um, and the part of the story that I don't tell is that on the drive to the hospital, as they were resetting my nose for For the fifth or sixth time.

It was genuinely one of the only times my father expressed like deep disappointment in who I was as a person. We had a genuine moment. And I don't remember exactly what he said, but he said something along the lines of like, this is not the man I am bringing you up to be. This is not who you will be. Right. I don't care what we have to do to you to stop you from being this kind of person in the world. But like this is over now. And it's true. It was a big thing um and uh shortly thereafter I had my first like I don't know if

0:23:42 Tom: Yes.

0:24:31 Eli: This is related. Shortly thereafter, I had my first major depressive episode, so I lost the ability to do anything but cry, so, but that helped with the bullying, they'd be like, here comes Mr. Jokes, and I'd be like, I can't breathe because of my pain, and they were like, that's a weird one, it was one of those Adult Swim jokes we haven't heard of yet, yeah.

0:24:53 Thomas: That's story, and thanks for, for sharing uh the unedited version of it too, because I do think it, it really bears a lot on, on this topic, um, because, like, yeah, I can imagine, if I were in the place of your dad in some similar situation, if I were, you know, for my kids, like, yeah, that, that's incredibly disappointing, like there, and I do think the upside of the, the limited upside of my shitty upbringing, maybe Tom's as well, is I, I do think you should obviously be in your kid's corner, but not, not pathologically in your kid's corner, like not, you know, like, not like no matter what you were in the right, that's bad, that's awful.

Being able to kind of be, uh, not entirely unbiased, but a somewhat unbiased source of saying like, hey, uh, no, you fucked up here, that's not son, this is not, this is not it. And I think it has a, and it clearly had a profound effect on you, Eli. And I think it's probably because of, of the credibility involved, you in your dad. And, I and think that's way the to be. I think it's a good, a good outcome there, even if it was a tough, tough road.

0:25:35 Tom: Yep.

0:25:51 Tom: So you had this like very like road to Damascus kind of experience that was like brought upon by this, event, that, that switched you over, did you, because I clearly you still roast people, but did you figure out how to take that down a notch, like, I mean, how do you, how do you watch that now because there's plenty of fucking adult bullies

0:26:09 Eli: I mean, what I deal with now, and the truth is I've just sort of modeled myself after my dad, which is that my dad was a mentor and a collector of people, um, that is what I do, and it's, it's weird to talk about this on a podcast because in, in our world and with you guys, that's not at all what I am, mentor would be like third from the bottom in lists of things that people say about me as my podcast persona, but most of my life is mentorship, like most of my day-to-day is mentoring young magicians, mentoring my students over at NYU, like that is, that is what I spend a tremendous amount of my time doing when I'm not doing this job, and and that is where I found a deeper, more real connection to people, people, um, and what I recognized is like there's always room for jokes if the, oh God, this is gonna sound so corny, but like there's always room for jokes if the love comes first, right, like if you've demonstrated to someone that you care about them extraordinarily, those, those jokes are no longer ways to hurt people, they're ways to make people feel included, ways to make people, um, know, feel happy, a great example of this is like one of my closest friends, uh, and my worst friend, right Right.

Everyone's got like one terrible friend who you're like, why are you friends with that person? It's my friend Jason. And we call Jason Scrappy, which is a TV trope that means like the character on a TV show that nobody likes.

But like when we gave Jason that nickname and when Jason joined the group of magicians that I run in New York, he was all of sudden welcome into a community of magicians. And underneath that nickname was, hey, we're here to teach you like you've got a group of friends now, you. And yes, we are roasty. Yes, we all experience this when we hang out together.

0:27:02 Thomas: I

0:27:50 Eli: Yes, we are roasty, but there's a tremendous amount of affection there because we enjoy interacting on that level.

0:27:56 Tom: Thomas, did you, were you, were you bullied? Were you ever a bully? How did that go for you?

0:28:00 Thomas: I would never say I was a bully, but I would, I, I would imagine there would be other people who may have don't maybe describe me as that, but it's hard to separate that from like, you your standard friends joking around. So it's, it's a complicated thing. I was not at all a bully physically ever. Here's a weird thing too. I don't know, Tom, once again, I'm curious how our, how our dads line up on this, but one, massive one disservice I was done by my my dad, I think, was that my dad was so not physical at all that it just gave me no sense of any sort of physicality, any sort of like healthy physicality with anybody. And I think that's important for, young dudes, especially in our society. I don't know. I can't speak to what it's like to be a girl growing up, but you like, need a little bit, you know, know, you need a little of horseplay.

0:28:47 Thomas: You need a little of the whatever. And I had no sense of that. And also no sense of how to be physical in any sort of like fighting way at a young age. That changed in high school. But when I was in seventh grade was like my worst year. It was absolutely terrible. Seventh and eighth grade are among the worst experience. I don't think it'll ever get worse in my life than those years, honestly, like because it just was so, there's nowhere to go. That's the worst thing about this. I guess I'll call it bullying, but like it, when you're in a situation where you're, you're a small school and I was always stuck doing some shit I didn't want to do.

I had to, you know, my parents made me do a sport every single season, which oddly I did like that. Like I did like doing the the sport. The problem was the kids part, you know, like I wanted to be playing sports. I was good. I love sports. I was athletic, but I could not navigate my way around the interpersonal stuff because I wasn't, I wasn't mean. And it sounds weird to say, but like in a group of small kids, if it's a certain kind of group, you you either have to be just unbelievably likable. Like I think of some of the, some of the guys who were just like the cool kid, because they were just so fucking cool. You

0:29:30 Eli: Right. Mm-hmm.

0:29:55 Thomas: Know, like the good looking kid who was good on the basketball team. He didn't need to like, fucking be mean to anybody. He was just like, nicest could be a lover. I, even I love that guy. He was great. And he didn't bully me either. Like he was just a nice guy. Like that guy got to just be a nice guy, be good at basketball, be cool, whatever. But it's, it's kind of the, everybody else, you know, who's like, they got to figure out where they are. And I had not an ounce of cruelty in me. Other than unintentional, I I think I was unintentionally mean from time to time, but but not an ounce of intentional cruelty in me. And as a result, I got stuck in a tough dynamic where I think some people realize that, as you I think, Tom, you referenced at one point, like they at a certain point that was kind of picked up on that. I didn't have that in me. And so I started getting, you know, not physically bullied at first, but like, you know, just constant verbal bullying.

0:30:42 Thomas: And I couldn't, I was honestly, it breaks my heart now. It's almost talking like another person, like it's about another person because I was just such a like fundamentally wanted to get along and kind of make jokes and have fun kind of kid that I just couldn't, I could not deal with it. I was not equipped to deal with it in any way whatsoever. And then some weird shit happened, some really bizarre, stupid situation, kid shit involving like girls and stuff. And I got my ass kicked for that reason. And even it's the only time I've gotten my ass kicked, actually. And it was in seventh grade and it was a fundamental, profound effect on me. And I wouldn't really call that bullying per se, but there was bullying after that. After you get your ass kicked, then the fucking the bullying comes as you referenced them.

0:31:25 Tom: Yeah.

0:31:25 Thomas: And it was funny because even to this day, as was as I was in this shitty, stupid fucking bathroom where this fight was going to happen. I never at one moment was prepared to do any of that. I didn't think a fight was happening. I didn't know if I was like I was so clueless. I was so like out of it. And that's the funny thing about getting your ass kicked. I'm sure Eli can testify to you and Tommy did already. It really isn't that bad. Like, like assuming nobody, assuming nobody, like, you uses weapons or something, but like just getting my face punched in, I barely noticed because you kind of go out of body a little bit. And then all of a sudden my face was punched in and I never felt any pain, never fat, you know. And I obviously, you know, your mileage may vary, but it is interesting, like it's nothing. And the only point I make is it's almost zero percent the physical pain that is was that a problem for me anyway. I'll just speak for myself. It's everything that comes with it. You know, it's the embarrassment.

0:32:18 Tom: That's humiliating to get beat up.

0:32:19 Thomas: Yeah. It's, it's all that. And that was, I didn't get out of that until high school. Unfortunately, high school wasn't great or anything, but comparatively just getting to access to a bigger group of people and being able to kind of find my niche, you. And the only point I'll make about it is to this day, what, what needed to happen was if I had any physical, physical wherewithal, I needed to fight back and I needed to kick this kid's ass, or at least make a show of it, or at least kick another kid's ass who bullied me after the fact because they thought I was an easy target. I needed to do that. That would have been the only way to put a stop to it, honestly. There was no conversation that can do anything.

0:32:56 Eli: Or you needed an adult to empower you in a different way, which wasn't happening, right? Because of the time and place that we grew up.

0:33:03 Thomas: Well. What? Well. As the parenting question now when we're talking about How to raise our kids, what do you mean, Eli? What do you think would have, would have helped? What, what do you mean?

0:33:06 Eli: So. I want To say for us, I don't think anything would have helped because this language and, um, dynamic didn't exist. But if I think about it seriously, I think that parents are able to talk to each other and teachers now in ways that our parents probably, certainly your parents, weren't willing to slash able to.

0:33:31 Tom: Yeah. So bullying, I will say, because I've got kids all the way up through the middle of high school at this point. And bullying is is just it's taken so much more seriously by everybody involved. And I think I I think what really changed that is the recognition, not that being bullied sucks for the person being bullied because you might get beat up because you might get made fun of. But I think that people associate bullying with suicide and school shootings. And We have, I think, culturally gotten the message now that just letting the fucking Lord of the Flies-esque Wild West bullshit happen in the middle of the hallways and let people sort of rise to the occasion of their fucking social abuse is not actually a good way to, you create and foster healthy human beings.

0:33:42 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah.

0:33:58 Eli: They

0:34:20 Thomas: But also, what can you do about it? Because I genuinely don't believe the adults involved can do anything about it.

0:34:25 Tom: There's a zero tolerance. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I will, I will say like, there's very little bullying in the schools. Now the schools have a zero tolerance bullying program or policy.

0:34:34 Thomas: Well, that's a big claim. I mean,

0:34:36 Tom: So, well, I, it seems to work.

0:34:37 Eli: Just get expelled Yeah.

0:34:38 Tom: I mean, I talk to my kids about it all the time and I will tell you, I mean, again, four kids at, at four different levels, we've talked about it all the way through the middle of high school. Well, bullying is not what it used to be. Kids aren't getting bullied verbally because they have people they can go to. And then they call people in. They call guidance counselors in. And they suspend people. They take action. And they check to see who the instigators are.

0:35:01 Eli: The the bullying I didn't deserve, the one, the one incident of bullying I didn't deserve was just a kid, because like I had a big high school. I I was googling while, while we were talking about it. I right, exactly. I I was like, I had like 1300 kids in my school, and some of them were, different, you you ages and living different lives, and one kid just, like, didn't like the look of me once, was in a bad mood, and just started punching me for no reason. And like, my school understood that and expelled him, like, it was just like, "Hey, man, you're, you're fucking expelled." And he was gone. The problem was solved. I think there's a lot more of that these days. And I

0:35:04 Thomas: This is like Putin talking about the reason that Ukraine actually. There

0:35:37 Tom: Yeah,

0:35:37 Eli: Think that there's a lot more square, because the truth is, when we were young, and and again, this is not to blame you, Thomas, at all, but I think when we were young, there was never an option of your kids going to get expelled. Right. It was like, you know, two days. Right. But you had to like, you had to burn down the old building.

0:35:51 Thomas: Might have been, but we have to be very serious. Yeah. Yeah. No, that guy graduated with

0:35:56 Tom: Right.

0:35:58 Eli: You're right. You had to, you had to get us a new theater department, but like nowadays It's like, hey, if you make this building an unsafe place, you are gone. And I know this from college, the stuff that my college students, right. We, we hear the story. I, I, it hasn't happened to any of my students because I teach a very small and specific class, but I, I have been in the university when university students have been expelled for texting each other or emailing each other bitchy stuff. Like they, it is, it is a different and I hope better

0:35:58 Thomas: Honors. No, I'm just kidding. Yeah.

0:36:29 Thomas: Wow.

0:36:29 Eli: World now.

0:36:30 Thomas: I don't know. Is it? I mean, that, strikes that, me as overly punitive the other way. You say the problem solved. What does that kid do? What the fuck is the expelled kid doing now? They just don't get an education.

0:36:38 Tom: Expelled kids usually go To a behavioral school. School. So what, you know what happens, at least out out here, because I, my, the kid who bullied me the most aggressively my freshman year, he did get expelled, um, after an incident, uh, where he kicked the shit out of me in locker room for the too manyth time, um, but he got expelled, but doesn't mean he doesn't go to school, they still have to provide an education for him, so kids like that go to a school that's segregated for people with behavioral disorders or behavioral problems, problems, they do get moved to a school with like a way higher student, or lower student to teacher ratio, people who are more adept at handling like the issues that usually come with and create bullying, you know, because bullying doesn't usually arise exclusively inorganically from like good situations, you know what I mean, a lot of times it it arises from People who Have

0:36:40 Thomas: Yeah.

0:37:24 Thomas: So what you're saying is if we get to know the bully, find out what's going on at home, that

0:37:24 Tom: No, You can't Kick them the fuck out and make the adults deal With them, you know. And and create consequences, they also have, they've also created with the, in the schools, um, the students aren't tolerant of bullies either anymore and

0:37:29 Eli: Yeah. Yeah.

0:37:38 Thomas: Would be the big difference. That would be what I would actually matter.

0:37:40 Eli: Yeah.

0:37:40 Tom: And And That is a big deal, and that's because, from from the very beginning there there is a lot of anti-bullying advocacy that the schools have have recognized and have done, and so like if you're a bully, like that makes you the pariah, that makes You the outcast. Now that makes you the shithead.

0:37:55 Eli: Yeah.

0:37:56 Thomas: I that's amazing that that cultural shift happened because Cause we, we had some of the same shit, you know, we'd have that, we'd have the stuff where the adults or the, you know, the shitty video from the eighties that tells you don't bully. And then, but nobody cares. Like the kids are just like, oh yeah, that's the idiot adults telling us it doesn't, know, that doesn't have any impact, yeah.

0:37:59 Tom: Yeah.

0:38:17 Eli: It's better and more pervasive now, I think, because For us it Was just, just like two 40 year olds being like, "Hey, Emerson, I'm going to kick your butt at the flagpole after school." And then the health teacher was asleep, so you changed it to fucking the Spice Channel. And now it's like it's much more comprehensive and real thing. A mine buddy is a guidance counselor at a last chance high school, which means if in Brooklyn, New York, if you've been kicked out of two other high schools, you go to her high school. And it's exactly the situation that Tom was saying. And she said that it is fascinating to watch these kids who were bad, if not the worst kid in two other schools, make incredible transformations once the adults around them are aware of what's going on and what they need, what services they need. She's just got some, you incredibly heartwarming stories about where her kids have come from and where they ended up.

0:38:19 Tom: I Yeah.

0:38:30 Thomas: Well,

0:38:33 Tom: It

0:39:11 Thomas: This is an enormous surprise. Because like, honestly, the a teacher just made things worse back in back in our day. And I'm I'm still a little skeptical that this is like fixed, but it would be good if it is Hitler.

0:39:17 Eli: Right. Yeah. Absolutely.

0:39:18 Tom: It Totally Did I, I Totally Agree with You, yeah. I think it's much, much better than it was, and and again, I, I mean it's it's funny because, remember, I remember the moment when I decided like I should make some adjustments here, and and I'm going to turn out to be a fucking legitimately terrible person. I, I, I was, I was about 17, I had, and I'm curious what you guys feel about this too, because, um, there's an enormous impact that your social circle has on, um, your sort of tolerance for being bullied and bullying. And so I had a super toxic friendship with a guy, uh, in high school, and sort of, we sort of like fed off each other, like he and I had some real, we had like a real fucked up, very aggressive, um, frenemies kind of dynamic, and we had this sort of slow motion falling out over the course of a summer.

0:40:10 Tom: And then I found myself my senior year of high school without any social circle of any kind at all. And again, my dad kept me very isolated. So I had be home, but I had a 6 p.m. curfew every day. I wasn't allowed to be in any kind of sports or extracurricular activities. So I was a very socially isolated kid. And that's part of what made me so angry. So it's part of of why I was like, I lashed out as much as I did. But I remember, I remember that moment where I was like, I gotta, I gotta not be friends with these people anymore.

0:40:27 Thomas: Dad, I hear you.

0:40:32 Eli: Yeah. Yeah.

0:40:42 Tom: I gotta find different people in my life, like I'm at a place where, and I stopped trying to have any kind of social interaction through the, my last year of high school, I didn't, I didn't interact with anybody really after school or before school, a little bit of like friendly stuff during the day, but nothing, nothing substantial, and I just realized I had get my fucking life in order or I was going to end up, I up being a fucking bully for the rest of my life, like there's a, there's a path for bullies, you know, where you're selling insurance at some point and you're just a fucking shithead, so I I remember that, and I remember how important realizing that social element was.

0:41:13 Eli: Yeah.

0:41:18 Thomas: Well, or by the way, the bullies go on to have great lives and it doesn't affect them in any way negatively. And they're actually fine because they're like that also happens because we live in an unjust world.

0:41:27 Tom: That does, I know, I'm just but I Don't Know, man Like There's got To be, there's

0:41:30 Thomas: World.

0:41:30 Tom: Got to be a moment where, like, where you change out of that, because if you solve your problems by intimidating people, that, I don't know, man, I don't see I don't see that at the very highest levels of success, like the highest, the highest levels of success, people don't do that.

0:41:38 Thomas: Yeah. Bullies, get to do the thing where they're like, yeah, no, I was kind of shitty, but, you know, grew out of it. And then like some of the people they bully don't get to move on in that way, you know, often.

0:41:54 Tom: Very True, yeah.

0:41:55 Thomas: And that's what I mean by that.

0:41:56 Eli: And you know the the sort of second part of my transformation away from being a bully, or at least interacting with people in only that way, because I had some people who just like always liked it, they were like, "Ah, you got jokes," um, but like the the second half of that was that someone from my high school told me how badly I had affected them, um, when I was actually in college, um, I like reached out to them, like, "Hey, how's college going?" And they were like, "Hey, just so you know, you were this incredible force for bad in my life," and that, that was incredibly transformative because I was not aware that I was hurting people unless they, you know, punched me or cried or you did, know, signaled to me that I'd gone too far. And so knowing that I'd caused that pain for people was, was very transformative.

0:42:45 Eli: Um, it also meant, and I still struggle with this a lot, is that like a big issue that I still have is trusting people to be adults with me. Right. A lot of the people in my life that I take care of or mentor will sort of forever be my babies, right. And I'm sure you guys have heard me refer to the magic group that I run, my babies, or my students as my babies. And so one of, one of the harder things that, again, that I still struggle with today is like, of people as my equal, especially if I have had to take care of them for a big part of our friendship. Relying on people, trusting other people to carry their weight as opposed to just like, I'll do it all.

0:43:31 Eli: Um, in a lot of ways I think a lot of, you know, not to get too meta, and certainly not to defend bullies or myself, I think a lot of bullies transform pushing other people away with hostility into pushing people away in different ways, and that's, that's something I, again, I still deal with.

0:43:48 Tom: To bring it kind of all the way back, because now, because I, I actually, I have thought about this topic a lot, and actually it's one of my blog topics so that I intend to write about, so it's on my list. So as dads, I'm curious if you have thought about how to create a situation where your kid does not end up being bullied, or if they do, how you'll interact better with it than threatening the neighbor dad?

0:44:11 Tom: Or how do you make sure that they're not going to turn into a bully? Because I've thought about this, and I kind of have a plan, I'm curious what your guys' thoughts are, like how do you parent through this now, like

0:44:11 Eli: I'm

0:44:23 Thomas: Yeah, that's exactly what I was left wondering after this, because I really, I don't know, I mean, I don't know what to think, I guess I'll have to try to, like, whatever school my kids are at, I'll have to try to gauge what's going on there, if what you guys say is true, I, I didn't feel like you could possibly manage this in as rosy a way as you guys are painting it out to be, so now I'm genuinely confused, I don't know what to do. So what do you think? You know, how are you worried about, like, Eli? Because you still have a child even younger than mine, you, what are you doing, are you hoping your kid is going to be able to defend himself, or are you more worried about Max being the bully? Yeah, you

0:44:58 Eli: Not really worried about Max being the bully, he's a, he's a very, very sensitive and very, very, very quiet kid right now, right now, very quiet. Um, so, you know, you gotta speak before you can bully anybody. So, well, you know, first things first. Um, but yeah, one of the things that he has and not that I didn't have this, but his mother is so gentle and so kind and so sweet and so loving and has demonstrated empathy, demonstrates empathy so so well. He is surrounded by people who demonstrate empathy so well, um, that I think that'll be very useful for him when it comes to not being a bully. Um, one of the things that I think is really important is an attitude towards school of like, Hey, this is one option, right? My wife is unschooled. So my wife is entirely self-educated all the way up till college. Um, she never sat in a classroom until her senior

0:45:07 Thomas: What

0:45:50 Eli: Year of high school when she she took her GED.

0:45:53 Thomas: We're Gonna need to do 10 episodes on that. Wow.

0:45:54 Eli: Yeah, no, she's, she's unschooled. She, she educated herself at the library. Her parents started to read and write, I think. But then after that, she literally would just like go to the library and learn what she wanted to learn until it was time for her to get a GED. So she could go to high school and like study, took an SAT book, studied that, got great scores on SAT, ended up going.

So like one of the things that I bring to my son that was definitely not an option is like hey if school's not working out for him you don't have to fucking do it right like if one of the genuine solutions I have if Max is ever bullied is like yeah we're not doing that right like if the school fixes it great but if they don't I'm just gonna be like tight you know who loves you me and mom let's fuck it we'll do it Here we'll do it at home and I know a couple of friends who have actually been through that experience who had a kid who was getting getting bullied in school.

And they were just like, nah, this is not the social relationship we want this kid to have. And they, they made friends through their activities. You know, they do music or whatever at the school sports or whatever at the school, but they are, they are unschooled or homeschooled for that very reason. So that that's definitely something I bring, which is that I have, I have no major commitments to any education system for any amount of time, right? Like I'm psyched for it. I hope he has a good time in school, but if he doesn't great, great. We don't have to do that.

0:46:36 Thomas: Yeah.

0:47:12 Tom: Yeah, never I would never consider pulling my kids out of the, I mean I guess I would, I would, I would transfer them, I'd buy a house in a different district, I would move them to a private school, but I can't imagine trying to take on the task of educating one or all of the kids that, just for me, that's just like, I just, I shudder to think of my inability to do that and do that well, I just, don't like, bully for you, I just, like on my mind I'm like, fuck that, I, I don't, I am not qualified, and I went to school to teach, and I, I'm, I recognize, like, I am, I am not qualified whatsoever to do that.

0:47:14 Thomas: I mean Yeah, that's Interesting.

0:47:48 Tom: No.

0:47:48 Thomas: Yeah, because it's also so opposed to what I imagine is also Tom's upbringing, which, which was the world is there and it's my job to fucking figure it out, you know, there was no, very much no, and in any way no sense that my parents were going to change the reality of the situation in any way You Know, like my, you know, from a young age, you know, my parents said like if you go to college you can still live here, if not, you, you, you are out of the house. Like you don't, it wouldn't have mattered if I was like homeless. They would have, I wouldn't have been allowed in the house one minute after graduating high school or college.

0:48:08 Tom: Yeah. No. No.

0:48:27 Tom: I'll tell you a funny story, my, my dad always used to say, now I, I think because of the way it played out, I think my dad was, was saying this sort of in a, a warning sense, like don't get in trouble, my dad always used to say if you ever get arrested don't call me, I think he was saying that to mean don't fucking get arrested stupid, but My brother, when my brother was like 20 something, my brother got arrested, my brother, I don't want to tell his whole story because it's his and not mine, so my brother was up in Wisconsin, we live, live in Illinois. He was up in Wisconsin. He was at a party. And he got arrested on a felony.

0:49:05 Tom: And it Was kind of a misunderstanding, kind of not. It should have been something he got help with to get a better resolution than what he got. But my brother, all our lives had internalized, if you ever get arrested, don't call me. So my brother sat in jail and didn't call anyone rather than reach out and ask for help. And my dad, I thought was going to have of a third heart attack trying to find my brother and eventually tracked him down sitting in this jail almost a month later, you know, up in the middle of rural Wisconsin. And he said, why the hell didn't you call me and tell me where you were? We were worried sick.

0:48:47 Thomas: Yeah. Oh, wow.

0:49:40 Tom: And my brother said, Well, he always said, if you ever get arrested, don't call me. And so like, I think about that, and it actually dovetails back to this, this point nicely, because like, I think about about that all the time, that, and I tell the kids, like, if you're in trouble, fucking call me.

0:49:40 Thomas: This is a good lesson.

0:49:55 Eli: Yep.

0:49:55 Tom: Like, if you're in trouble, call me. The same is true for the bullying, because I've thought about, like, I'm worried about my kids in general being bullied. I don't worry about them becoming bullies, because of how they happened to turn out, but I, I did worry about that, and I, I, I think that to avoid somebody turning into a bully, you've got to resolve conflict in front of your kids in ways that do not top the other person. You've got to show them that conflict can be resolved without somebody being a winner and somebody else being a loser. You've got to be able to show conflict resolution that is not hierarchical, but that is solutions-based and based in love and empathy, and and you've got to show them that conflict and resolve that, like, openly

0:49:57 Thomas: Yeah, man.

0:50:45 Tom: And share that I

0:50:45 Thomas: This is, well, this is a rose colored world. I agree, but

0:50:48 Tom: Think but how else do you propose to teach your kid not to be a bully?

0:50:50 Thomas: Well, Yeah, that's a setting that aside, because I do, agree with that like, because your kid has control over that for the most part, um, yeah, well,

0:50:59 Tom: So there's two, two problems to solve, and I'm trying to make them discrete problems. Yeah,

0:51:02 Thomas: I guess. And I don't know what your guys's experience is, and again, because Eli was raised with a silver spoon, I don't know if Eli ever had to be in a place where this would have been a problem, but, like, there are multiple times in my life where I've had to be in situations as a kid, and even sometimes as an adult, they're not often, maybe more as, like, a young adult, where those rules don't apply. You, I had to work in construction for a year. Those don't, rules don't apply. You, if some dude in your shit town you're working construction with is being an asshole to you, you don't, there's no way to tell. There's

0:51:36 Tom: No, that's true. I guess I was thinking of it in terms of, like, kids in school, but yeah, yeah,

0:51:39 Thomas: Okay. And also for me, and maybe this is bad. This is why it's so crucially important. Uh, and I'm, I'm genuinely confused as if, if we live in a better world now, that's great. But as a kid in sports, in where I wrestled in high school, in that wrestling room, there's no fucking where to go. You, you had to deal with it there, and you weren't using, conflict resolution, resolution methods that, like, that I want my kid to still have. That's the thing, like, I, I fully agree with your philosophy there, Tom, of how to raise them, and I absolutely am going to do that, and that's what I plan to do, but my work, I guess my, my remaining worry is will they be as completely unequipped to deal with those situations as I was, where you just, you don't, it's there. Lord of the Flies ask, you don't have, there isn't the thing where you get to, like, have a heart-to-heart with somebody and resolve a conflict.

0:52:23 Eli: I really do think it is a better world. And I say this just based on my sister, right? I'm 15 years older than my sister. So I got to watch what my sister has gone through and what school has been like for her. And it's just, it's night and day. It is genuinely a different world now for kids. And that those skills are more encouraged. It's funny when I hear you talk about it, Thomas, um, you talk about bullying in a lot of the way that I talk about mental illness, which is like, nobody's going to be there for you. And there's no meds that work. You just got to fucking squeeze your butt cheeks together and to not be sad. And then someday they'll find a pill that works. And like one of the really hard realizations I've had to make is like, it is a better world now than I grew up in. And a lot of the like golden rules that I took, a lot of the lessons that I learned from my pain don't need to be learned anymore because it's a better, fairer, kinder world.

0:52:35 Tom: Yeah,

0:53:20 Thomas: God, I, okay, I don't know, sure, man, the

0:53:21 Tom: I I, I would echo that. I think that with, I've got, yeah, Thomas.

0:53:24 Eli: Love that Thomas is just like, yeah, whatever, checker after golf gesture.

0:53:27 Tom: No,

0:53:27 Thomas: The guy, the guy who led this show off with, I don't live in society anymore, after 2016 we don't even have a fucking society. More, it's a better world, sunshine, fucking rainbows, kids are amazing to each other. I just don't, I honestly, I don't believe it, but maybe maybe you're right.

0:53:27 Tom: Man.

0:53:41 Tom: Yeah. Well, I don't 100% believe it. I think it's better. I don't think that it's gone. I think bullying, and I do want to draw the distinction. So the conflict resolution stuff, I don't think has any relationship. I want to be really clear. I don't think it has any relationship to avoid being bullied. I was talking about avoiding becoming the bully, So right? You got to solve for both problems. It has literally no relationship to avoiding being bullied. So I don't want to pretend that it does.

I think to the extent that it's possible to create an open and supportive dialogue with your kids so that they can report back to you that they are being bullied, and then you can intervene, I think there are much better sort interventional strategies now that exist that are multidisciplinary and that involve many more of the partners in the school system. But outside the school system, and also just, you're not going to have a kid necessarily who wants to tell you everything. I'll tell you what, I've got one of my four kids that she won't tell me anything at all about her life, even the most mundane, consequenceless details of her existence.

0:53:46 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah.

0:54:50 Tom: She does not share. It's just who she is. I am certain that if something was going on in her life, she would handle it herself and not share it. So no matter how open you are, that's some of that is just personality of the kids. Like, some kids are just like, I'm gonna solve this shit on my own, I'm not gonna share. And I do think that you've, you've got to open up a dialogue, too, and this is maybe, this is regressive, called, look, try to avoid, avoid conflict, but if you can't, should be able to handle it as best you can. I don't think there's anything, and Thomas, I think this comes back to your point and my experience too. I don't want my kids starting fights. I don't think my kids are well-equipped to engage physically in fights, just knowing who they are, but I don't want them to be, hate to say it, I don't want them to just be pushover victims of somebody's

0:55:01 Thomas: Yeah. Exactly.

0:55:39 Eli: Victims. Yeah. You don't want them to be victims. Yeah.

0:55:40 Tom: Bullshit.

0:55:41 Thomas: That's the point I'm exactly driving at. Like, and, and, and maybe it's unnecessary. Maybe years from now, this'll be like, oh, fucking grandpa Thomas with his old timey, we must've been in world war two or something, yeah, I intend to raise, especially at, look, I don't know how to raise is Phoebe to, like, I just don't know the dynamics of of, like, I just think it's so different, and I don't know other than just trying to model the kindness and the good virtues that I want someone to have, I don't know what to do there, but for, for my boy, I want him to be competent if something's happening, and he would need to, like, shut a bully up. Like, I want him to be physically, like, versed in the language of, all right, like, you need to shut the fuck up now, rather than completely inept, as I was at that time.

0:55:41 Tom: Yeah, yeah, no, I tell the kids, you don't have to put up with any bullshit. Yeah, I couldn't agree with that more. Became, I somewhat competent through a series of of unpleasant experiences. It would have been better had I had some help with that. And it's so funny, though, because, because, Thomas, in my head, this is important to me because of how I grew up. But I will tell you that I've had these conversations with the kids, and they are 15 and 16 now, and they have absolutely, they look at me like I'm made out of fucking moon rocks, when I try to tell them, like, hey, you know, if you ever want to go downstairs and, like, I can show you kind of how to, you know, if something escalates, they're like, what the fuck are you talking about?

0:56:54 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah, no, maybe that's what will happen. Well, I'll tell you, honestly, though, and again, maybe this is because of the uniquely weird way I was raised. I don't mean I'm going to Mr. Miyagi my kids from a young age and, you know, like do all that. I just mean I'm going to wrestle with the boy. And I already do anyway because it's so fucking fun. Like we just like topple all over each other all the time. It's the best. I had none of that. I had zero of that. And it's a huge regret of mine. It just doesn't, I don't, I think it's bad for you. Think I it's bad to be raised very hands-off. I really do.

0:57:13 Tom: No, I know, but. Right.

0:57:33 Thomas: There you go.

0:57:31 Eli: Yeah. Dad roughhoused with me all the time, and I roughhoused with my son. One of the things that I'm better at, because it didn't exist when my dad roughhousing was with me, is consent, so I will pause with my son, and I'll be like, is this okay? And he gets a couple steps from me and does the more gesture, which means he wants me to tickle him some more, and I tickle him some more, and then I tickle him. Stop.

0:57:42 Thomas: Yep. Yep. Yep. Totally. We got to do an episode on that, by the way, I'm like

0:57:52 Eli: Right, and then he stands up and walks away, and then does the more gesture. I mean, my son will be tickled all afternoon, given the joy. He loves to roughhouse and wrestle around. For me, it's very interesting. My father, and we talked about this in the Lost section, so this hasn't actually appeared on the show. My father was naturally a very violent person and was very good at controlling it. Um, and very early in my life he was like, do you want to learn how to do this. But watching him do violence, I recognized really early that like I did not have that in me. Um, and so the way that I didn't get bullied was I was just like, it's funny, I was just like, yeah, I mean, if I get beat up, I get beat up, right. Like I never was like, I know how to handle myself in a fight. I was always, he's like, I have a nose that's been broken several times. How much worse can it get. Uh, but

0:57:52 Thomas: Yeah yep he I

0:58:45 Eli: That that was really interesting, and watching him, especially as I got older, watching him get better and better about that and learn, learn to control that angry part of himself, I think was a really important part of how I thought about violence, because, and again, this is a whole episode, like talking about machismo and are you really a man if you're not capable of violence, and like my hero being, so my hero and my dad who I adored, being so capable of violence, tied that in for me so deeply that it was very, very hard for me to separate those things.

I always knew I wasn't capable of it, but it was very hard for me not to be ashamed of it until I was much, much older. Her, and again, and we'll talk again, credit to Dave Buzz, he talked to me about it. Right, I was like, hey, I feel like a big, you wuss because I never want to fight. Right, I always feel like I'm a coward. And his guidance and on that, him being, to be willing, vulnerable and talk about that was, was huge in how I think about violence, still.

0:59:45 Thomas: Can't wait to talk to my fucking kids, and Tom, and as you say, who knows personality, they're wise, you never know, like I can, I can actually imagine Phoebe being somebody who, to share, but also she is so, so self-conscious in a way, from day one she's been the most self-conscious, a little bit neurotic in that way, that I could imagine her just not wanting to tell us stuff because of like not wanting to be embarrassed or not wanting to feel judged.

It's amazing, but I can't wait to try to, at least, you be the other end of that and not only talk to my kids, but make sure, one thing that that I absolutely trying, trying consciously to not do, like my parents did, was don't find every opportunity to make them feel like a fucking idiot for whatever their struggle is, whatever they were going through, not to belittle what it was not to be like, yeah, I was just a kid who gives a shit, you know, like, like to, to a kid, that's their whole world. Like that's the only thing that matters. And hopefully by not doing any of those negative things, um, it will at least encourage that option to be there for them to like, tell you me about their day. Like I want to, I want to, you

0:59:49 Eli: Mm-hmm, mm-hmm, mm-hmm, yeah.

0:59:50 Tom: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

1:00:49 Thomas: Know, I want to talk to them. I can't wait.

1:00:50 Tom: Well, how successful you are is going to depend so much on those kids. I, I really you I think about the roughhousing thing you were talking about, and again, it's, it's funny, I've, because got four very discreet experiences, I will tell you, like the oldest boy in this house, my, my stepson Donovan, I've been in his life now for five, almost six years, and I have never, and so he's 16, but he was 10, you know, and like we roughhoused maybe once or twice, he's just not into it, the other kids will like all come attack me, like the other kids will all swarm me and it'll be like a whole like fucking, you Wrestlemania Royale thing occasionally, and you know, I'm very careful with him, I'll pick him up and set him down and pick the other one up, set him down, we roughhoused like once, um, which is funny, actually, and when I've tried to roughhouse with him what he does is he curls, he drops to the ground and curls into a ball, which is the, he's literally just, he's just like, I'll like, I'll go to like, he'll like do like a little thing and I'll like go to like, very gently, because he's very small, so he's like, taller than I am, he's like 5'10", and he weighs 100, maybe

1:00:54 Thomas: Absolutely. Yeah, So he does, he does George Michael from Arrested Development. He does that.

1:01:54 Tom: 105 pounds. Right. Right. So he's so little, and so, like, I'll very, I'm always very gentle, but I'll grab him and then he'll just, he'll go completely limp and just fall to the ground.

1:01:54 Thomas: Oh yeah. Kids are so fricking skinny. It's funny.

1:02:06 Eli: Like a cat that doesn't want to move.

1:02:08 Thomas: Yeah.

1:02:06 Tom: Yeah. Yeah, and my, and my, my other boy, my Finnegan, he's a year younger, and he's, the he's just the polar opposite, so he's More like I was when I was his age, so he's, he's a fairly heavy dude, he actually outweighs me by a, a bit, and he's about my height, and just a few years ago I remember like the two of them decided they were going to wrestle me, the only time I wrestled with Donovan, roughhouse, and Donovan ran after me and he jumped in the air, and he's so little, I caught him and I tucked him behind my back, and I just held him behind my back with my one arm, and then I just wrestled my son with my, my other arm, and he just squirmed as he, like, was tucked back behind me, and I, it's funny because their tolerance and their interest level, and even that kind of sort of horseplay, which I recognize that horseplay is, is developmentally, it's, it's sort of preparing you for that physicality if necessary, but some kids they just have such a different tolerance or interest

1:02:15 Thomas: Yeah, Yeah. Absolutely. It would be interesting, like if we somehow had the data from Mirror Universe, if you were raising him from zero, like would it be different or maybe not? Like maybe it would be exactly the same. That's one thing that really has been interesting in having more than one kid, which is seeing like how fucking different they are from day one.

1:03:10 Tom: In it. Right. Right.

1:03:22 Thomas: One, like day one, it's unbelievable. It really puts some stuff into perspective. Um, and so I totally, yeah, take that on board. I'm very willing to go with how my kids are in these ways. I'll tell you, Arlo is such a natural wrestler. He's been from young age. He just, he naturally does like, and mind you, I don't know if I mentioned it, but like things turned around for me physically because I, took up wrestling in high school and actually got got really good at it and was, pretty competitive at it. I'll tell you from my experience, Arlo, if he wants to, I have no idea if he wants to, he is built for wrestling. Like he could be a fucking champion wrestler. He has no legs. That's that's step one. No legs at very large, wide, broad back. He's exactly the dude that I hated to wrestle because you can't, you can't get those. You can't take them down because you're trying to get their legs, but they don't have any legs. All their weight is up top.

1:03:22 Tom: Day one, man. Yep. Really?

1:04:10 Eli: Move.

1:04:10 Thomas: It's a, he, he, I'm telling you, could be a champion if he wants to, or he won't do anything like that. We'll see either way. It'll be fun to find but out,

1:04:16 Eli: I,

1:04:17 Tom: It's funny. Very briefest, I told you my dad didn't let me do extracurriculars or sports. So my dad was very strict about that. So there was no, he was strict about everything. I don't know why I even said that, but there was no question about it. I wasn't allowed to do it. It wasn't going to happen. So, but I wanted to do these things. And so I joined, I was allowed to stay after school until the activity bus. So I was allowed to stay after school and work out in the weight room. But then the four o'clock activity bus, I had to be on that activity bus. But I joined the wrestling team and I loved it. And I didn't tell my dad about it. So I joined the wrestling team my junior year, all sneaky. And I would go and I would work out with the wrestlers and I would like train with the wrestlers and I loved it. And I got all the way up until the first meet and the meet was in the evening and I hadn't planned ahead because I was 16 and

1:04:30 Thomas: The trains ran on time.

1:04:51 Thomas: Oh man.

1:05:03 Tom: I was like, I can't go to the meet and the coach was like, what, what are you talking about? I was like, well, like I'm actually not allowed to be on the wrestling team. I was like, my dad's gonna, and he looked at me like I was fucking crazy and incidentally, he's the brother of Rudy from the movie Rudy, so my coach was Coach Rudiger, which is Rudy Rudiger, and he looked at me and he's like, what do you mean you're not allowed to be on this team? And I was like, yeah, I, I just needed, I just, I just wanted to work out with people, like, I was just kind of, I'm just like, I'm just lonely and I want something to do.

1:05:05 Thomas: Oh, what a story. Oh my God. You Wow.

1:05:31 Thomas: Wow, wow, so what happened, like, I must

1:05:33 Tom: What

1:05:34 Thomas: Know, I,

1:05:31 Eli: He went home. What do you think happened?

1:05:35 Tom: No,

1:05:36 Thomas: What no, you, was he, like, let me, I'm gonna call your Hitler dad, or were you, wow, oh, man, that's so brutal, oh, that's so sad,

1:05:39 Tom: He kicked me off. He said, he said, if you're not allowed to be on the team, he's like, you can't work out with us anymore and I was like I just because I was like, can I just work out? I just want, can I work out and I'll wrestle with you guys and do the training and I just won't go to the meets. And he's like, that's not, he was really really sweet about it actually, but he's like, he's like, that's not how teams work and I can't do something your dad wouldn't let me do, you know, like, he can't do that, like, like, he would get in shit.

1:06:02 Tom: You know it does. So then I was just like, I would like go to the weight room when they're in the weight room and I'd be like, hey guys. They'd be like, you're not, you're not part of the team like what?

1:05:55 Thomas: Yeah, oh, man, that sucks, oh, totally, yeah, but, like, that also, that sucks, Aw, poor Tom. Face against the glass, you know, just like.

1:06:12 Eli: Just gently running your tongue up and and down. So I also joined the wrestling team because my dad was a wrestler state champ when he was young. Uh, and I wanted to be my dad. So I joined the wrestling team and I loved practice and I love rest. I love the technique of it and the physicality of it. And whenever we would go to a match, I would have what I now know is a panic attack.

1:06:14 Tom: Oh.

1:06:22 Thomas: Nice.

1:06:39 Eli: And be absolutely unable to a wrestle. Now I forbid my father from watching me wrestle. I was like, dad, you can't come, I'm gonna be too nervous. He was like, I'm proud of you no matter what. And I was like, no, you won't, you have to not come. And so I, he didn't come to the first one, and I sat in the locker room, and then the wrestling match started, and they blew the whistle, and like, you know, a a chair was set down next to me and I fell down on my back and I was like, thank God it's over. Oh,

1:06:37 Tom: No

1:06:38 Thomas: Oh, me too. We could talk about that. Yeah. Oh, my God. I could talk for hours about this.

1:07:08 Thomas: Yeah.

1:07:08 Eli: Thanks sweet lord it's over, over, it's over, it's over, and then he snuck into the second one, he snuck into the second one. He was like, I won't come. He snuck into the second one and very obviously saw what was happening, and I was, you know, I was like hysterically weeping that my father had saw me lose. Right, like, now he was gonna, in my head, he was gonna like rip off a shoulder patch that wasn't there and be like, like, the name Bosnick no longer applies to you. And of course, he was like, hey, you don't have to fucking do this, man. You seem like you hate this. And I was like, I really hate this.

Can we please stop? And he was like, yeah, do you want to do the musical theater program this summer? And I was like, yes, please. They're doing Les Mis. And I really like Les Mis. I want to play Tenardier. And that was it. And I will tell you that one of the amazing things about my dad is he cheered for me without flinching in what I was excited for forever. To the extent that when I did my first high school musical, famously in my family, we used to make fun of him for this all the time. When I finished the first number, my dad reacted like sports because he'd never been to any.

1:07:15 Thomas: Oh. Yeah.

1:08:23 Eli: So my dad was like, yeah boy, oh, in this theater of, in this musical theater, theater of, like, Binghamton High School, where everyone else was like, yes, musicals, and we used to joke that like dad would, was going to show up to my musicals with a foam finger, but like, there was, there was no one more supportive and he never, you know, the people around him would be like, oh, Dave, you know, this one's not, not sporting. He never flinched. And one of the things that I'm so grateful for that I absolutely want to take forward into my son is even if he was ashamed of me, and I can't imagine that there wasn't at least a moment where he was like, Jesus, what half of that DNA got ruined? But like, he never blinked. There was never a moment where he showed me he was anything but super duper proud out of me, even, even when I, when I was trying, right, when I, when I was kind and and doing things that I cared about, there was no bigger cheerleader for

1:08:43 Thomas: Oh, man.

1:09:22 Eli: Me.

1:09:22 Thomas: We have gone on too long. But someday I need to tell the polar opposite of that story. It be more apropos and more polar opposite, just FYI. But that is super sweet. I can't wait to try to be that for my kids. I think as usual, we've got the same kind of takeaways like, Tom's dad is Hitler. Eli, why aren't you a better person?

1:09:42 Thomas: And I'm a sad sack, I think. You guys can decide what my normal thing is. But like, I think we pretty much stayed on brand.

1:09:40 Tom: Oh god damn it, my dad was worried about my academics, it's

1:09:50 Eli: This Twitter poll gets darker and darker every week. We're gonna release all five of these episodes simultaneously and people are gonna be like, we fucking hate you now. We're gonna be like, okay, hey, this podcast was a poor choice. All right.

1:09:52 Tom: God damn it, shit.

1:10:10 Eli: Before we go, important question. What do you call a fish with no eyes? A fish.

1:10:17 Tom: Oh, oh.

1:10:18 Thomas: I'm only laughing. I hate dad jokes, but I'm only laughing at that one because that's actually what Phoebe called fish somehow. It was weird. She would somehow not the pronounce I. It would just be, fish, can I have some fish? And I thought it was the cutest thing.

1:10:19 Tom: Yeah.

1:10:30 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.

1:10:38 Thomas: This is one that I can't believe I didn't tell. It's story number one. It's one of my favorites of all time. This is, uh, and those who know me, I think hopefully should know that I, don't I make anything up. I'll exaggerate a number, but you'll know, I'll say like a zillion, you know, like this is fucking word for word truth. And it's the funniest thing that's ever happened. I died for like a week.

So one day I was playing with Phoebe and, uh, one delightful thing about kids, although I hope I don't find out this is just my children is, uh, they'll just let farts rip, you know, Like, and it's amazing that the farting that a kid can do, I'm actually, it's impressive how loud it can be for their size. You know, somehow it's the same, they're working with the same instrument as us somehow. I don't know how, but it's amazing. And, and I love it because when kids are super young, you know, like one to two, they're not aware of any of that. They're not embarrassed about any of it. They just like, Oh, don't even notice. They'll just keep going.

They don't even react to it until we kind of teach them that it's funny, which I think is another interesting topic because I can't not laugh at it. It's the fucking funniest thing in the world. And so one day, just playing around with Phoebe, Phoebe lets one rip. I laugh about it because it's hilarious. I can't help it. And then I just was curious. So I asked her, I like, hey, Phoebe, do you fart at school? You know, at daycare.

I was like, do you fart at school? And she was like, oh, sometimes. And then I was like, I don't know why, but it just occurred to me to ask. I was like, do the other kids fart at school? And then Phoebe proceeded to, and I swear Where to fucking God,

1:11:13 Tom: She

1:11:16 Eli: Sure. Yep.

1:12:06 Thomas: With no hesitation, a list of who the farters were and the non-farters were in school. She's like, well, he does such and such, such and such, which was impressive for a kid to even do this. Like a young kid to be able to rattle off which kids are in her class is tough. But she rattles off and she knows this was, no, no hesitation. She knew this person was a farter, this person was a farter. And some other kids who I don't, I guess they're fucking too good for me. They're not, there's some other non-farter kids and I fucking died. It was the funniest thing. No hesitation. It was like, I was asking her what color the sky was. It was unbelievable. So yeah, she, uh, she kept track

1:12:23 Tom: Has Spent Some time With this issue All

1:12:45 Eli: Who's

1:12:45 Thomas: Apparently or just, yeah, exactly.

1:12:45 Eli: In the green reading group? Who's in the blue greeting group? And who are the farters and non-farters? Of course. All

1:12:51 Thomas: Oh God. I'll never forget. It's so funny. Ah, kids.

1:13:00 Clip: Wanna meet sexy dilfs in your area? Email thedads at dearoldads.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 Law'd Awful Movies and all the Puzzle and 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.