Best of Tom: The Car Wash Fight Club (December 2022 Bonus)

Transcript

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

0:00:00 Thomas: Well, folks, here it is. This is, this is like the holy grail of dear old dads. Best of Tom number four is the December 30th, 2022 bonus. And if you've never heard this, and I guess statistically that's most of you. This is the car wash fight club. I've been also enjoying listening to these again, along with you to kind of prep on them and check them. And man, this is, this is one of the best episodes of anything I've ever been involved in. Just, it's just wild. I love this episode so much. It has some pretty good stuff from me and Eli as well. I mean, that's kind of the nature of the show. Pretty much every best of Tom has been a best of Eli and I think as well to some extent. But I'm not sure there's anything that beats the car wash fight club. This is, I'm still not over this. And so my dear, dear, dear old dads listeners, please enjoy a patron only bonus from December 30th, 2022. In which we learn about the infamous car wash fight club. You're welcome. It's so good.

0:01:30 Tom: Welcome to Dear Old Dads patron edition.

0:01:34 Thomas: Yeah. You don't have to do a thing for these. Yeah, nice.

0:01:36 Eli: That''s right. After dark, we

0:01:36 Tom: We don't have to do it. So I'm not, that's it. That's the, that's, that'S all you got. The patrons get a little, you know, a little more relaxed, a little bit more casual episode, a little more intimate episode.

0:01:45 Eli: Unbutton that top button on our pants for this recording.

0:01:47 Thomas: Wait, you guys wear pants to record? I mean, yeah, no, totally.

0:01:53 Eli: Hypothetical pants. We unbuttons our top button of our hypothetical pants.

0:01:56 Tom: It's a conceptual pants. It's a conceptual pan. So we're going to be answering some more cues from the Q&A that we got from November, because it's December and the end of it, and we're getting around to it.

0:02:09 Eli: As I'm concerned, these are hot, fresh

0:02:11 Tom: Is well, We have, just to be fair, we are going to have a lot of questions. We have about seven pages of them. We should be done with these. Let me do some quick math from our Dear Old Dads calculation. Calculation, carry the four, they give you nine, about 13 years we should finish these up in about 13 years give or take

0:02:12 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah we can, we can die and have our kids finish them. That'll be good.

0:02:31 Tom: I did, your kids are too young. I, my son Finn was in the car with me the other day and I don't remember how it came up, but this show came up and I asked him, because he knows about it, and I was like, have you ever listened to it? He said, yeah, I'm not a dad, it's, it's not really my thing. Like he has no interest in it at all. None at all. Like he's 16. And it's like, it's, it's like his dad talking about his he's like, Nah, he's like, I don't give a shit. He's like whatever. No hard pass. So he won't listen to any of my shows. He doesn't care about any of them.

0:02:56 Eli: It's his dad sorry dad you might talk about you and Mom's relationship and I have a that's a moral hard line for me

0:03:06 Tom: I don't want to hear it. No, no, No. We're not doing, not doing it. I learned from the best. All right.

0:03:14 Eli: I

0:03:15 Thomas: My default. Like, I would never assume that any of my family was going to listen to anything. That's so funny. The

0:03:20 Tom: My dad had a podcast about what it meant to him to be a parent and, like, what his thoughts around it were, I'd be like, yeah, I'm curious about that. Finn was curious about it and he listened to an episode or two, but then was just like, eh, that's not really my thing. Like, eh, which is fine. Like, I don't mind at all. Like, it doesn't bother me at all, but he's 16. He's not like, you know, a little guy or anything.

0:03:36 Thomas: Wow. Yeah, this would be pretty boring for a child.

0:03:46 Eli: Would be so, if my dad had done a podcast about what it was like to be my dad, I would have loved that shit. I would have been crazy for that

0:03:52 Tom: Right? Right? Might've gotten some answers, damn it.

0:03:56 Thomas: You know how my dad has these diaries I keep forgetting about? That's the same, but for this. I would probably be like, oh, he had a podcast.

0:03:57 Eli: I know that's crazy if

0:04:07 Thomas: I forget about it.

0:04:06 Tom: Don't you think like Arlo and Phoebe will listen to this show at some point? Do you?

0:04:08 Thomas: Oh, I have no idea how hopefully healthy, sane people would feel about a thing. That I don't know. I'm hoping if I can raise some, you know, not ruined children, maybe they would be interested. That'd be like, oh, my dad did a thing, maybe I will support him in some way. Yeah, no, I can't fathom it right now, but I, maybe.

0:04:24 Tom: Right. Right. Right.

0:04:29 Eli: I play my cards right maybe in you know 18 years they'll existence

0:04:30 Thomas: Yeah.

0:04:31 Tom: Maybe my kids will be interested in my existence if I'm not horrible. Yeah. Well.

0:04:34 Eli: Yes exactly look

0:04:33 Thomas: Yeah that's hey, it's nice having a low bar

0:04:36 Eli: Your kids don't have to be, they don't have to, laptop-trawling weirdos like me but you know, there is

0:04:38 Thomas: Yeah oh

0:04:44 Tom: All So let's take this question from Crawl the Swole Bold. Swole bold? I don't know. Whatever. Crawl. Aside from heavy contact sports like football, for obvious reasons, what extracurricular activity would you want most or least for your children to participate in?

0:04:59 Thomas: Extracurricular activity, or are we talking sports specifically? Okay.

0:04:59 Eli: Uh

0:05:03 Tom: Think any, I think any activity or sports, yeah.

0:05:03 Eli: Activity activity uh anything that's a pretend fight where my child loses, I would love for him to skip. Right? Boxing, karate, the other things that are also karate but they pretend aren't karate, like any of that. Oh, I just love to get, also, I just don't want to talk to the teachers. If you've ever spoken to a karate instructor, you've spoken to all of them. Like, I don't mean, and then the kid has this very weird, reverent relationship with this person, and you're like, oh, he lives in his parents' basement and sleeps on a bench press bench. Like, you, I need you to not admire this man. It's very important to me.

0:05:23 Thomas: Oh god yeah yeah Yeah. Oh, my God. That's, we could do a whole episode on that. That is like one of my, that is one of my biggest fears and things that I need to protect from is my kids having reverence for some fucking, let's be honest, dude, that's a piece of shit. But, you know, likes to make himself feel bigger by, you being like mean to kids or at least trying to be like that character to kids, you, you know, like who are those people?

0:06:05 Thomas: I know we've talked about this before, but I think about some of the teachers and coaches I had. And you think about them now, you're like, oh, you were a fucking loser piece of shit. Why did we think you were like so cool or so like scary or whatever?

0:06:04 Eli: Yeah or oh

0:06:16 Tom: So I, I would like my kids to, uh, I'll answer this kind of the opposite way. It would be wonderful if my kids would engage in any extracurricular activity at all. Uh Just one thing at all Even by fucking act, we have, we have enrolled the kids, kids in just about everything and, and tried to force them as much as you can. They're just fucking not interested in stuff. Like, stuff is not their thing. That's what it turns out. It is. They just, they don't like anything.

0:06:29 Thomas: Including breathing, thinking, eating.

0:06:46 Tom: They Just, if it's not stuff now, we're not doing stuff that they just not, they Don't want to do it. We've tried to get, uh, Aislinn into dance to try to get her into, I mean, multiple forms of dance. We tried to give her into art club. She's an amazing artist. She's like genuinely just a naturally gifted artist and she'll practice Just she won't, you know, not really interested in doing anything if it has a structure to it at all. None of the kids actually want to do anything that has any structure. So at this point, if they wanted to play fucking human wrecking ball, I'd be like, yeah, great.

0:06:45 Thomas: I'm not into stuff.

0:07:18 Eli: Finally.

0:07:18 Tom: Just fucking something.

0:07:18 Eli: Oh, Thank goodness. Daddy

0:07:19 Thomas: If they want to get into the squid games, you know like, yes, finally.

0:07:20 Eli: Gets to go to the

0:07:21 Tom: And fine. It's got the word game in it. It sounds good. I, you

0:07:23 Eli: Go Oh, competition. Daddy can root for you. Haley, put on a bird mask. We're going to go root for the kids.

0:07:30 Tom: Know, it's funny, though. I say that. But the truth is, I'm really fucking grateful. For the selfish part of me is intensely, intensely grateful that, despite my efforts, because I feel like they're the right efforts to make, that the kids don't want to do shit, because I don't want to, this shit. I don't want to spend my weekends, I don't, like, I just fucking hate it. I hate it so much. I don't want to spend my weekend driving to their fucking travel sports, volleyball, foosball games or fucking whatever. I don't want to DO it. I DON'T. I hate that shit. I DON'T want to spend my weekends, like, hanging out with other fucking, like, theater parents or journalism parents or what. I don't want to do it. I don'T want to DO it.

0:08:09 Thomas: Boy, first we alienate the snake people, and now the theater kids, we're out of we're out of listeners. Oh

0:08:13 Eli: Now the club. I was

0:08:15 Tom: So, am grateful that they're fucking lazy, is what I'm saying.

0:08:19 Thomas: Man

0:08:18 Eli: Was going to do the thing. I don't want to do any of the things, but I am so excited for Thomas to be that dad. Right? Cause one day Phoebe's going to be like, I'm going to join the volleyball club. And the next 19 episodes of all 200 of his podcasts are going to be like, I mean, it's a regular Reggie Jackson in here. You know what I'm saying? It's a real, it's like the 1922 Fighting Bears. You know What I'm Saying? So obviously we've got regionals and then there's semi regionals and pro regionals and then back regionals, front regionals. Upside down regionals and then There's the Chocolate Cake Supreme, which we got to travel to.

0:08:53 Thomas: There's so many regions more regions than you. Yeah.

0:08:54 Tom: Yes.

0:08:57 Eli: Like Thomas is so going to be That Dad in whatever his children, like, I want to sit Phoebe and Arlo and Scombert down and be like, "Hey, kids, how you doing? I know people can get this fat, it's weird, I know it's scary for me too. Here's the thing: you guys need to pick, right? Because this, your dad is gonna love this long after you've forgotten about it. Okay, so just really, I really need you to buckle it. Phoeba, you especially, Arlo, not so much. I really need you guys to focus on what it is you choose as your extracurricular activity."

0:09:26 Thomas: I feel I feel so bad because so I this was almost a story time but it's not probably interesting enough. I got to have my first experience, this is gonna sound weird and, and I don't know, maybe this will sound bad, but, like, I don't mean this in a negative way for Phoebe, but because Phoebe is so, you know, anxious, scared of stuff, which I was too, I was the shy kid. No, don't, you know, I get it. Totally, totally understandable. I, every single public performance that we've ever gotten, recital, you know, the kids, the, youknow, the daycare is doing a little song and whatever, we just have to watch while Phoebe shrinks into the back and can't do that.

Even though we hear her do it at home and she nails she's a hundred percent perfect, but then she goes to the performance, she's too scared. I totally get it, that's from me, I was that, that was exactly how I was. But, you know, so it's, but it's always a little sad because we're like, oh, we've heard you do this so well at home and then you can't, you just freeze up and can't do it in front of people. I got to have my first experience of getting to see a kid do a thing. We had Arlo, I didn't even know about this, it was like a kind of caught us by surprise, guys, Arlo's new school, you know, the one that tried to kill him. Um, they, you know, did I lose you guys or is that not

0:09:27 Eli: But Yeah. No.

0:10:36 Tom: Yeah,

0:10:36 Thomas: Funny? Is that it?

0:10:36 Tom: No, murder high. Yeah, Murder hi. High Yeah. No, yeah, we, we got you We got you. Yeah, yeah, The Sun The Sun Butter Academy

0:10:37 Eli: No, no, I mean,

0:10:38 Thomas: Yeah. Uh, I was going to make sure Zencaster didn't reset. Usually my kid being attempted murder just gets you guys rolling. I don't know. Um, yeah.

0:10:42 Tom: Right. No, Butter Academy, go on, yeah.

0:10:50 Thomas: And so they put on a Christmas recital and I was, I think, again, we're maxed out. We got scombert, due date. Lydia's trying to make Christmas happen with being ready for a scomber at any day. So we're tactic over here and we put it on the calendar. It's like, oh, this is Zarlo's recital. I was like, okay, whatever.

0:11:07 Eli: Be real, it's Arlo, you know what I'm saying? It's not it's not Phoebe's recital.

0:11:09 Tom: Oh,

0:11:09 Thomas: No, no. Well, I thought it was going to be like, oh, it'll be in his classroom and they'll sing a song and whatever. You know, that's what I just thought it Was nothing because we weren't really paying attention to it. And then we find out like, oh, no, it's so it's after school. I was like oh it's after school and I'm like where is it it's not at the school she's like no it's at this community center we go and it's like fucking a million people somehow this school that has I don't know it has like a hundred kids maybe somehow I don'T KNOW HOW IT HAS THAT MANY IT SEEMS SO SMALL BUT THEN YOU THINK OF A HUNDRED KIDS BRINGING THEIR WHOLE FAMILIES IT WAS LIKE A FUCKING IT WAS Like A PATRIOTS GAME LIKE IT WAS JUST CRAZY IT WAS UNBELIEVABLE HOW MANY PEOPLE were there and each little class did their little song. Like it was really cute. They each had like, you know, their, their moment of like, okay, this class is going to do two songs and they start with the babies.

0:11:11 Tom: Yeah, Okay.

0:11:59 Tom: But are you gonna, are you going to be the parent or are you the parent who's like, oh, this is great, or you the one who's real and I was like, I don't care about any of these kids until mine's on on stage, and you just, I

0:12:10 Thomas: I know you do have to kind of fake it.

0:12:11 Tom: I go to those things, and I'm like, I can't watch you fucking p... I don't know you people. You're bad at singing. I don't want to see you sing like none of you are any good at this. Like, I want to see my kid be bad at singing and then leave. That's what I want to do like it

0:12:17 Thomas: I was, it was remarkable. I feel like people did a good job of at least feigning interest in other people's kids, which is nice. Cause you want the atmosphere for your kid.

0:12:29 Tom: Is. Yeah, right.

0:12:29 Thomas: You know, you don't want your kid to feel like no one gave a shit, so but you do have to do it. You're like, oh, yeah. And you know, Lydia is probably genuinely like, oh, so cute. I'm like, yeah, other people's kids. No It's fine.

0:12:32 Tom: Right.

0:12:39 Eli: Oh I I am, I'm... Anna knows exactly what to do. She puts me in the back corner as far away from people as possible because she has at most 10 seconds before I start roasting what I'm watching out loud. Like, we were like, oh, I enjoy your pod... No, that podcast is just a section of my life caught on tape. All my life, I am roasting all things I'm launching at all times.

0:12:40 Thomas: Yeah. Oh Oh And I have combined with the me hearing stuff that no one else hears. So of course they're doing the, like, playing the, um, you know, fucking, I almost said iPod. It's not, it's like that, that dates me, putting, plugging the phone into the Bluetooth speaker system of the whatever Yes. So they're playing, they're playing the backing tracks, because again, especially, you know, the babies aren't doing anything. They just have the teachers, like, holding them and they're cute, and that was actually super fucking cute. They just dressed them up and, like, moved them around a little bit. That was great. But then as they get older, they start kind of singing and they, for "Jingle Bells," they exactly got on the opposite of what the track was. So the, the backing track, cause the song's so fucking simple. It's all the same chords basically. And the backing tract had a little melody, uh, in the top. It was, it was pretty faint, but obviously I can hear it, cause I can't not hear everything. It Was like,

0:13:16 Eli: The Victrola.

0:13:56 Eli: Oh,

0:13:56 Thomas: Just overscoring, you know, just a little bit like very faint. And they started the song on that, but saying jingle bells, jingle bells.

0:14:03 Eli: No!

0:14:04 Thomas: And so they were singing and the way it worked out, just math-wise, it was fucking hilarious, because apparently those sections are identical lengths, so they exactly were on the opposite section the entire song. It was like "Jingle Bells" was done and then "Dashing Through the Snow" was in the background, perfectly opposite the whole time. I was dying. And of course I asked Lydia and she's like, what are you talking about? I don't hear that at all. Nobody can hear anything. I'm the only one with fucking ears in the world. It's the the weirdest thing

0:14:32 Eli: This is what Thomas screamed at everyone in the audience instance he was being taken out by You guys don't hear that? You don't hear that?

0:14:33 Thomas: Yeah. You heard there's literally a record scratch, because the lady was like, oh, wait, I have a record stretch on my phone, I can do that. I can play the record scratch sound and the sound of the mic reverb to make it more awkward for Thomas. What, he's like, can anybody hear it? You know? And so, uh, we get to Arlo and we've noticed he's been kind of practicing his little songs. That's a super cute thing about young kids that I'm sure you'll have, Eli, lie, is you'll notice at home, they start to, you know, they're singing songs. You're like, what is that? And something they're working on in school, you know, and he gets up there and I'll be fucking damned if this kid isn't the best kid in the goddamn class. It was awesome. He's doing

0:14:41 Tom: Remember,

0:15:17 Eli: Amazing.

0:15:17 Thomas: This. Yeah, he's doing, which is nothing. That's not saying anything. They're tiny kids. He was saying, no,

0:15:23 Tom: Arlo, though, remember what your dad just said, that's nothing, okay?

0:15:25 Thomas: He is awesome. They're doing "One Little, Two Little, Three Little L" or something like that. And they had to do their fingers. Oh my god, it was so fucking funny. They had to do one through ten on their fingers during the song, you know, and Arlo does it solid until, like, he gets lost eventually and you see his fingers just going nuts, like he's just doing every different, trying to, like, his little brain is trying to figure out what number he's on, like, fucking, ah, seven, and also saying the words. And then there's another hand motion that was like the elves are using a hammer to, like, make toys, and he was the only kid doing the hammer motion. It was just so weird to be like, oh, my kid's the, the one doing the thing, right? That is, wow, that's super cool.

0:16:02 Tom: But to be fair, if I had to do the one little, too little, and I had do hand motions and singing the same, I would fucking panic. I would be like, look, I can do one or the other, but I'm not doing both. That's not don't ask me to, no just

0:16:11 Eli: Yeah.

0:16:06 Thomas: That's true picture the the class and there's an adult Tom who's the worst at doing it, like

0:16:17 Eli: And there's always that one kid who just bursts into tears the minute it's time for the activity. Yep.

0:16:22 Thomas: Yep. Oh, Yep. That Every single, every single class, because again, they brought them up one by one with their teachers, every class has that one kid, and I was so worried that I was, that's, you know, because historically, that's been our kid a lot. Phoebe doesn't usually have a crying fit, but we're always worried she's going to be that kid. And it's funny how in every class, there's one. There's one kid that the minute they go on stage.

0:16:44 Eli: And you judge him so hard, you judge him so far because the parents do that. The parents do that. Look around like, oh, I'm sure it'll be fine. And it's like, yeah, no, this isn't a sign of anything. It's all gonna work out. Yeah, don't read into this at all. Every child on the stage is fine and Yurkin is hysterically sobbing. What a good omen This is for this child's life.

0:16:48 Thomas: Oh, I don't.

0:17:05 Thomas: What a good omen, yeah. Yeah, but

0:17:07 Eli: You mean the first time they're asked to do a thing in public it went terribly wrong? No, I'm sure that's not presaging anything. Just keep looking around in a circle. Oh,

0:17:15 Thomas: It's so fiendish again. It's so fucking fiendish because it's, it's evil. It's as though you're in a group all together and a witch fucking doctor in the old times is going to read, like, some divination fucking animal entrails. And that says, oh no, you guys fucking suck. And like, just out of note, cause you have no idea. You have no ideia until you're there what your kid is going to do in that situation. And whatever they do, there's no fucking way you can trace it to you either, or to, like, anything you did, you know, you're just like, what did I do that would lead this kid to do this either way? It's just fundamental to the kid, it really is.

0:17:42 Tom: No Right. Yep.

0:17:47 Eli: I I knew Oh, Yeah. I knew Are you kidding? My son is the non-participating kid. You know how there's one, there's always the crying kid, but then there's also the kid who's just building the tent at the side, right? If the teacher does not have them in a full fucking Nelson, they're making a Spanish omelet at the foot of the stage. That's my boy. And he took the minute they started to do that, oh, Hanukkah, he took off in an opposite direction and started to fucking make himself a pair of pants out of birch leaves, and I was like, yep, there he is doing

0:17:57 Thomas: And So Yeah. Yep. Yeah. But

0:18:09 Tom: Yep.

0:18:28 Eli: His own fucking thing.

0:18:28 Tom: Doing his thing, but

0:18:30 Thomas: It's such a, it's such a horror. It's a weird Orwellian fucking nightmare of we've all gathered together to, to see the, read the tea leaves of your fate with your child, because you're right. There's the one crying kid and the parents are like, fuck, what, what did we do? What do we do to deserve this? Were we?

0:18:48 Tom: But here's what we've done is we've taken almost everybody's, like, the number one fear in America is public speaking, right? And like, if you said to, like, if I gathered 25 adults, adults together in a room. And I said, guess what, guys, uh, we're all going to get up on stage in front of the people that love us the most. And we're going to sing songs to them. And they're all going look at you while you do that. And none of us would do it.

0:18:54 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah. More than one of them would break into tears. More

0:19:13 Tom: None of us Would do it right.

0:19:13 Thomas: More than one of them would be crying. More than...

0:19:15 Tom: Well, I I'd

0:19:15 Thomas: The kids are actually better at it.

0:19:17 Tom: Be making the birch leaves out of pants. I would have a hundred. I'd Be like, no, a thousand. I had to years ago, there was a work event and I got dragged up on stage in this work event. There's maybe 300 people, most of which are like work for me, right? There's all these people. I get dragged up on stage and I am forced to karaoke with a live band in front of all these people I work with.

0:19:19 Thomas: Yeah. Oof.

0:19:20 Eli: Yes. Yes.

0:19:39 Thomas: No!

0:19:40 Tom: Not one, but two consecutive songs. I sing Two songs. I sing so poorly, just to give you some reference, that in my own car when I am alone, I will not sing to myself for fear of hearing my own voice and being turned off by the music things that are coming out of my... yeah.

0:19:40 Eli: Yes.

0:19:41 Thomas: No! Two... No!

0:19:58 Thomas: And never wanting to listen to music again. Yeah.

0:20:00 Tom: I'll just, it'll ruin It's like knitting needles in my own ears to hear my voice sing. It's that bad. I had to sing these two. It's, it was, I'm embarrassed by, almost, I would rather have taken my dick out in front of everybody and been like, "Here it is," to just like point and laugh. It was the worst. So like it is amazing that we do this to kids and then, and, and they do as well as they do. It's like the worst. Maybe that's why we all have this fear of just public speaking, because we traumatize them when they're in kindergarten with this shit.

0:20:11 Thomas: Yeah.

0:20:14 Eli: Oh. That's amazing. Yep.

0:20:23 Thomas: Well, here's... No, here is... Here is what it is. This is... Look, I know I just have these theories and you're never going to convince me differently. It's a hundred percent related to how oblivious you are or not. I've always been the overthinking kid and Phoebe is the overthanking kid. And so she's a 100% aware of every fucking person in that room and what they're looking at and what their doing. So she freezes up like any rational human would in that situation. Cause that's really scary. Arlo has no idea where he is or what day it is. So he's just like, Oh yeah.

0:20:57 Tom: Right.

0:20:58 Thomas: Oh, I hear the elf song music. One little, two little. And And so like, that's fine. Like it takes all types of people, you know, like, and, and whatever each kid, every different type can kind of learn to cope with how they are. And that's, you Know, that'S what I have to do for live shows. I have a, I have panic problem with, with being in front of everybody. Mine's funny too, because my intense panic is so stupid that it could be, I could be in a classroom in college with like eight people. And if my name is said, I'm like, Oh, like heart attack. Cause I have two, I feel like attention is put on me. God is the worst. First, um, like you can learn to cope with it, but as a kid you can't. You don't know what the fuck's going on, you know? And so it's funny that, like, Phoebe, who is this remarkable mind, you know, who's just, she's just, he's just so interesting, she's so brilliant, she's interesting, people don't ever get to see it because the minute attention is on her, she's scared of it, you know? It's

0:21:28 Eli: Yeah.

0:21:50 Tom: Right. Right.

0:21:50 Thomas: Kind, but She will. Someday.

0:21:52 Eli: I like that our kid, I like that our kids represent the spectrum, in my case literally, of that though. Because, right, there's... there's Phoebe who's overthinking, there's Arlo who's not overthinking and nailing it, and then there's my son who's not aware of anyone or anything. Like, he doesn't even know he's on stage, he's just on a wooden floor and it's time for him to practice front somersaults. We'll do whatever the fuck he wants. It's, I think, let me throw this out there because Tom's right, we do do this to the children, but it's so that we can discover the future stars, right? Because baby Eli was up there, right, riffing, right? I had a guitar, I was playing some bass, doing a cartwheel, maybe a backflip or two, and that gave people a chance to say, okay, Ned, that will just pay, that child will be paid attention to for a living, and the rest of these children will have, you know, normal happy happy lives. And we just won't put them in front of, uh, in front of too many people, blood

0:22:08 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah.

0:22:44 Tom: I had when I was, when I was in maybe third or fourth grade. So you're, what, eight or nine, somewhere around there. I had gotten selected to be Tom the Turkey in the Thanksgiving thing at the Chicago Public School. So there's like a big, you know, fucking pageant. I think it was the 80s still pageants. And so they wanted me to be the turkey, and I didn't want to be anything in this production of the fucking Thanksgiving times or whatever.

I wanted to play no part, and I got selected to be the turkey, which is like the main part in this thing, and they made me, they, they got a sweater and they filled it full of like, uh, feathers, feathers hanging from the sweater, and then they put this fucking cardboard beak on my face, and then they made me wear these like red tights and it was the most humiliating outfit that you could possibly imagine. There is a photo, I think I have the photo. There is a photo of me standing, looking, and I love this photo. It's like one of the few photos I have of me at all as a kid, and I look as dejected as I felt

0:23:28 Eli: Yes.

0:23:36 Thomas: Oh my God.

0:23:37 Eli: I would have loved that.

0:23:55 Tom: And I remember that

0:23:56 Eli: Yes.

0:23:55 Thomas: Why isn't this our cover art? This could easily be our cover art.

0:23:58 Tom: It is so atrociously bad, but I remember in this third or fourth grade I was like, I don't want to do this. I really don't wanna wear these fucking tights in front of everybody. I really don't wanted a stupid fucking sweater. And they were like, no, you gotta do it, you gotta do it. So they dressed me up in this thing and I just walked out on the stage and I just stood there and I just waited for it to be over and I refused to do it. I was just like, I'll just stand here, that's fine. Like, you underestimate my desire to do that and please you. Like, I just walked out of the stage, stared at the crowd, and the crowd is laughing and I'm like, humiliated. I'm like, great, all right, this will end and I'll walk back to the other side this

0:24:35 Eli: It's fine, I'm growing, I'm growing colder and colder in my heart by the moment I could watch you all burn. See now, my, I had the exact opposite experience because my first performance as a kid, I was such a fucking little attention whore that they were like, hey, we're going to put... And my mom loves to tell this story. The kid's play was called Whack-A-Doo Zoo. And what it was is the teacher is like, hello, I'm the crazy professor. And we're gonna visit all these animals. And you'd go and these fucking children would come out and go, the cow says moo. The cow says boo. The cow, the cows, the cows says moo moo. And then they walk off, right? But the teacher's supposed to be the crazy professor, except my teacher had social anxiety, so I in third grade was the teacher part and everyone else was the cow

0:24:40 Tom: Is good

0:25:26 Thomas: Wow.

0:25:26 Eli: Says moo part Yeah, I got a musical number and everything. I loved it.

0:25:27 Thomas: The question was what we have our kids do. I'm realizing. Um, yeah, I know I've said it before. I'm, I'm excited for them to do anything. I, it sucks that the littlest kids sports are the boringest sports. That's what I fucking lament. Cause I, I fucked soccer is so boring, man. It's so, it's such a bad sport.

0:25:33 Eli: Yeah. Fun.

0:25:48 Thomas: I know we're just coming off the world cup and yeah, actually that game was, was pretty exciting. I get it. But like, it was, it wasn't, it didn't, I don't know. It's a shit sport.

0:25:46 Tom: Oh, it's the worst would

0:25:53 Eli: Fact, all sports equally boring.

0:25:55 Thomas: No, it'S just not true.

0:25:55 Eli: Equally boring. Yeah.

0:25:57 Thomas: It's just not truth.

0:25:58 Tom: You let your kids play hockey?

0:25:59 Thomas: Oh yeah. I want, I would love. So actually, the reason I got on to that tangent was I don't know how much I should push Phoebe into sports, if at all. And by push, I mean just even kind of gently, you know, I'm not going to make anyone do anything. But like I've said this before, the things that I love the most, I didn't necessarily want to do as a kid. You know, like I didn't like the whether it's the public speaking, whether it's the sports that I was too shy to do.

And so from my perspective, I want to just be passive and say, well, you don't like this. Don't ever do it, you know, because that I would be really sad if I hadn't ever done some of these things that I didn't want to do at the time that now are like my favorite things, you know, but I think with Phoebe's nerves with her anxiety, I think it's going to be pretty hard to get her to do anything like sports. I don'T know that she has the mindset for it.

I would love her to try hockey because if you fucking if you're a girl and you're good at hockey, it's fucking you could go to college for it. You could. It's awesome. There's not as much competition yet because it's still building, you like the female U.S. hockey team fucking rules like it'd be cool. Just any of that stuff would be awesome to like if you were that good to kind of get that opportunity. And I would lover to try it, but I just don't think she has the mindset for it, but I don't know how much I should even try. You know, I have no idea.

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

0:27:18 Thomas: Where's Arlo? He might do it.

0:27:18 Tom: I think you'll be able to feel that out, you'll feel that.

0:27:20 Thomas: Yeah.

0:27:20 Eli: You gotta sit her down and you gotta be like, look, Phoebe, I want want you to look out over all those opposing players. Each and every one of them is baby Arlo. And she'll just get out there, she's checking people high sticking, stabbing people

0:27:28 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah. No, she'll just be telling them all what the game they're playing is. No! No, you're supposed to put the puck over here. No, the puck is actually a biscuit, and we're eating it. It's a cake, and no! Arlo! No! Ar - That's every day. Every day. Arlo, no! And the way that they go, kids go to an infinite scream instantly is so funny. They go from zero to Arloooo! You know, and you're just like Like what?

0:27:54 Eli: Right.

0:27:54 Thomas: It's because he's not playing bake the cake properly or something, you know?

0:27:57 Eli: It's a torture chain, right, because they can. Someone was standing in Max's way today as we were walking into preschool, and he was just like, well, I'm never coming back here. I'm ever coming back, I have completely abandoned this. I don't want to see these people, they're all dead to me. There's a child slightly in front of me as I want to walk in the door. Yeah, I, I think, see, here's the thing, I think every kind of kid has a thing that's great, that for them, right? Like so I don't know what Max is going to be, but I have the opposite plan, which is like, I'm just going to force him to do a million things and then quit the second he wants to quit, right?

So we're just doing all the cup stacking. You're in, you're on the chess club and the puzzle club, because once you find the thing, right, then you just get to settle in, right? Like, I, I don, I think it was much harder to be other children than it was me, right? I was three and I was like, I want want people to pay attention to me while I'm on stage, and they were like, cool, all right, we're all settled. And everyone else was like, oh, what colleges am I gonna go to? And I was like, where's the pay attention college? And they were like, okay, well, one of the, then

0:28:09 Tom: I love this kid.

0:28:13 Thomas: Yeah.

0:29:06 Eli: I got out of college and everyone was like, Oh, what job I'm gonna do? And I was like, pay attention to me. And people just paid attention to me. And I want that for Max. I want him to have that sense of purpose and meaning and directionality, you

0:29:18 Thomas: What if that thing is something that you don't, that they don't latch onto immediately? Know, like I don't know. Like that's what I'm a little bit conflicted about is what if you do the cup stacking is like, ah, I hate this. And then it turns out that was actually the thing, but he just initially had a bit of of an aversion to the Cups. He was going to be the fucking World Cup stacking champion. And he never knew.

0:29:19 Tom: But None of my kids have that. Yeah.

0:29:39 Tom: But you can't know.

0:29:39 Thomas: You can't know.

0:29:40 Tom: Yeah.

0:29:40 Eli: Well, The the good news is if they're going to be great at anything, they start at me and Thomas's kids' age, right? No one who was like, I was 21 when I started the violin and I'm the grand, no, no, you weren't. No, you fucking weren't. You were three when you started the violent, if you were great. So now it's like, hey, is my kid gonna be great at anything? And look, most of the time you don't hit that lotto, because that is a lotto right? Right. The kid just picks up a thing.

0:29:40 Tom: That's the thing. Yeah, you can'. I don't Right.

0:30:02 Thomas: Yeah, no, that's not what the... You're right when it comes to the best in the world at stuff. But I started hockey when I was 20 fucking four.

0:30:11 Eli: Yeah, no, people enjoy stuff. But this is the age where.

0:30:15 Thomas: Yeah, that is what I mean. Like their passion.

0:30:17 Eli: Right. This is the stage where we just get to discover, like, hey, are you the greatest in the world at this thing? Right. I have I have a friend whose kid is is has at least has the potential to be that with magic. And so it was like, Hey, my kid's been learning card tricks. I think you might be really good. And I was like OK, I'm going to watch your kid do a shitty card trick. And he's five years old and he was amazing. And I was like, oh shit, no, you hit the lotto. Okay, cool.

0:30:22 Thomas: Yeah. Wow. That is awesome.

0:30:23 Tom: I

0:30:41 Eli: Here's the, I don't know shit. Here, I'm going to teach you. I'm gonna introduce you to this guy. And I introduced him to one of my teachers and my teacher was like oh fuck yeah, no he's really good. We're going to start dicking this seriously. And this is a fun, exciting time. And look, like I said most people don't hit the lottery, right? Most of the time I'm just going to be sitting there while Max gnaws on the back end of his violin. I'm like, daddy's so proud of you, sweetie. I love it. Love you no matter what, forever and ever. I don't feel bad on the inside. I love, I like this. I like how you turned out. This was the goal all along. But yeah, if you do hit that lotto, everything forever gets easy, right?

0:30:56 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

0:31:01 Tom: We

0:31:19 Eli: You don't ever

0:31:16 Thomas: Well, now I love this. Now I love this concept of throwing more and more obscure things at your kid every, like, day. A sword! Are you getting sword play? Just fucking, I don't know, darts.

0:31:19 Eli: Yeah. Yeah.

0:31:29 Tom: Tried that with our kids, like fencing, dodgeball, soccer, uh, basketball. We've tried, and our kids, I will say, like, be prepared too that, like, some kids just, like, I know, like you say, Eli, like, every kid has their thing, and though, but some kids, don't, man, they just don't like. Some I love hanging out and, like, when I, when I was a kid, I didn't really get to do stuff, but I don't know that I would have, like, found a passion at all. I maybe I would have, maybe I wouldn't have, I don't know, but I know that I grew up with a lot of kids that didn't have one either. Like, most of the kids that I was hanging out with, they didn't do shit after school except for hang out with me. Like, so I don't know, I think there's a lot of kids that are just like, "Yeah, I'm just kind of not into stuff. Like, I want to go home and watch TV or play video games or

0:31:47 Eli: No. I agree. I say Most kids don't. Yeah. I would Yeah. Most people most

0:32:18 Tom: Whatever.

0:32:18 Thomas: Yeah.

0:32:19 Eli: People just want to go home and watch TV and play video games. And so, not to get into the, not to get into the Pixar movies because I, oh, which reminds me, side note, um, I was talking to Anna about all the things that make me cry, and she and I have started a note, um, on my phone of the absurd things that make Eli cry. So that's for a future pop quiz for you guys. Uh, we have that but again, not to get into Pixar, Pixar, when you've

0:32:39 Thomas: It's nice that you have a sense of humor about it. I'm not doing that at all because I will be.

0:32:44 Eli: Been, you wait until you've been depressed as long as I have there, Thomas. Once you've got the crying janks for 10 years or so, you get a real sense of humor. I'm like one of those lifers in prison. Here's the best place to hide your ramen noodles so nobody fucks them. Trust me. So not to get into Pixar territory, but I watched that movie, Soul. You guys seen that movie? Yeah.

0:33:05 Thomas: Oh yeah. That's a weird one.

0:33:05 Tom: No, uh, uh, Yep.

0:33:07 Eli: It's a really good, it was really good for me And really important for me because the movie's point that I highly recommend is like, hey, the point of life is just to have a happy life. That's it. That's the whole, there's no, you know, grant, because it's basically about a guy who dies and he's like, Hey, I can't die. I didn't achieve my grand purpose.

0:33:10 Thomas: Oh, interesting.

0:33:20 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah, yeah.

0:33:27 Eli: And what he realizes is you don't have a grand purpose, your grand purpose is to have a nice life. And that, as someone who has had a grand purpose since they were three years old, has been something really important for me to learn. I didn't learn it on time for my sister. And so when she was little, we were like, "What are your dreams?" And she was like, "I just want her, just let me have a nice life." And we were like, "No, no nice life unless you have dreams. The only way to have a nice life is to achieve your dreams."

0:33:56 Eli: And so one of the things that's very important to me is to be okay with Max not necessarily having having those big goals and dreams like I did, and getting my head around, like, the point of life is to have a happy life and enjoy yourself because there is no scoreboard. Now, am I ever going to realize that for myself, as my therapist asks me? No, no, those rivers are running far too deep, but that's OK. We're going to fix the trauma with the chill, right? It's about less trauma as the generations go down.

0:33:56 Thomas: Nope,

0:34:03 Tom: Yeah,

0:34:16 Thomas: Man.

0:34:18 Tom: Nope. Nope.

0:34:28 Thomas: God, that is, there's a lot there. I really don't know how think I have to be, and I think we all have to obviously be okay with that eventuality of our kids just not not being into anything, but I don't think I can actually handle it. I think I can just do my best to pretend because I don't know for whatever reason, like this is my pathology. Like I' ve always just had it in my mind that anything I try to do, I just have to be really good at. Like there' s no other option. Like another way. And it's, it's unhealthy.

0:35:03 Eli: I hear you 100 yeah all we have to do look we're never getting the poison out of our system let's not be idiots right all we gotta do is not pass the poison on right you looked at your dad you're like oh that guy fucking sucks I'm not gonna do any of that and that's just one more poison we gotta not pass on to our kids

0:35:09 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah, yeah.

0:35:10 Tom: Yeah.

0:35:22 Thomas: Well, it depends though, because like, it's also my way of having fun with stuff. Like it's not always toxic. It's all, it'S often really fun and rewarding. So it's hard. That's a lot of the things in this show for me is like, how do I find the fucking line of what's actually appropriate? How do I find that, that border between, well, I'm going to, I should encourage them and push them a little, but not too much. And I don't know what that is for like every single thing, you know?

0:35:39 Tom: Yeah.

0:35:49 Tom: I will say, like, it's been difficult for me. I can feel you there, Thomas, and because, like, as somebody who doesn't know how to not be ambitious, like, I don't know how to, like, doesn't make sense to me to be like, "Yeah, I'm gonna start, uh, I don't know, like, riding a bike," and be like, "Well, okay," but I immediately, I want to be good at it and then I want want to be, then

0:35:59 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah. You have to do all the fucking things you got to be.

0:36:08 Tom: I want to be like, as, and then like when I meet somebody that's better at it than I am, I get like, okay, well, now I've got more to learn and I gotta fit. Like, I can't not be good at stuff because like, why would I bother doing something? If I, like, I, the point of it is the difficulty of the work and the achieving of goals and the, you know, I realize that that's for me.

0:36:17 Thomas: Yep. Yep, yep.

0:36:30 Tom: And I see my, yeah, yeah.

0:36:30 Thomas: Also, but hold on, let me get, let me, let us defend us a little bit, Tom. I really take pleasure. One of my biggest pleasures in life is getting into a random thing. And this is somewhat ADD related to, too, I think getting into a random thing, doing going through a research spiral and and just recognizing that there's a whole world, whatever thing you choose. There's a full world out there of people who figured out the best fucking ways to do it. And like, it's just I love it.

0:36:57 Eli: Yes there that subreddit exists always it's so good

0:37:01 Thomas: Yeah.

0:36:59 Tom: Oh, okay. So, all right. So that's, that's the place where you and I depart. I hate that shit. I want to get into something and immediately just start physically doing it. Or I'm not interested anymore. Like if I have to.

0:37:11 Thomas: No, no, that's not a that's a contradiction to me. That's not contradiction. So like, let's take the and it actually makes it this is going to sound like a huge I'm a huge dick. Like it makes it hard to like do anything with friends because let's say all our friends, you know, let's a group of friends is like, oh, we love fucking tennis now. And I'll be like, that's great. I fucking love tennis. You know what I'm going to do? I'm gonna play tennis and I'm just going to look up the best way to do it. Like I'll just look up. Okay, here's how this technique should be. Here's how they should be and then I get really good at it. But other people seem to be like no, we were just going like hit the ball and I like but that what I do. Oh,

0:37:14 Tom: Okay.

0:37:46 Eli: Yeah if you've if you ever suggested not keeping score at anything around thomas you understand truly it's it's wonderful because when when we do matreon every year which tom I hope you come to one of these years uh and heath go golfing and it's a great time because they both take it equally seriously they have a blast and there's always like a oh are you guys gonna come golfing and thomas will always be like yeah I mean like it's a good time it's just you know you take it seriously obviously like we're just it's fun it's it's a fun relaxing time that we take very seriously and we keep score on and everyone tries their best so assuming that we're all gonna do that you could maybe come but just know that we are all gonna take it seriously oh so

0:38:09 Thomas: That's

0:38:29 Tom: We're

0:38:30 Thomas: Not really true. I take it intensely seriously for me. Golf is a solo sport.

0:38:34 Eli: I'll I'll come next year and we just won't keep score we'll just uh we'll do whatever

0:38:37 Thomas: No, I will keep. I do it for me, I'll keep score. I don't give a shit about your score. You suck. Why would I care?

0:38:43 Eli: You want I'm like my I'm like my son during the fucking hanukkah sing -along just just hitting a ball into the dust over and over again yeah buddy you're doing it good for you look at you over

0:38:56 Tom: Have had to definitely reconcile, like, my kids are just not like, I kind of the only person that, I mean, they're not into things, I guess. The other thing is that, and you'll, you'll encounter this maybe, is that they'll get into things that you just can't be a part of or that you don't care about, you know, so like yeah well like, really solitary stuff, like masturbating, you know, but, but no, like my my stepson is I mean, he loves to sit at his computer and he writes he builds games. He writes programs.

0:39:12 Thomas: Hmm. Masturbating. Got it. Yeah. Jacking off constantly. Yeah. Yeah.

0:39:28 Tom: He makes music.

0:39:28 Thomas: Oh, that's awesome.

0:39:29 Tom: He's into stuff. So I don't want to make it sound like they're not into stuff he's into. Stuff, but it's really solitary stuff. Really like his own world. Like he kind of puts himself in his cave and does that stuff.

0:39:35 Thomas: Yeah. You know that little comic Eli? That's like, are you winning son? I fucking love that. I thought, I know it's often like there's different punchlines people do with it, but I find that to be so heartwarming Tom. Like in my, like if that happens for me, I, I would love to be the, are YOU winning son or daughter or whatever dad.

0:39:56 Tom: I don'T know the meme or whatever.

0:39:57 Thomas: Oh it's, it's basically just like a kid's play. It's one one of those like badly drawn line cartoon things. And it's like a kid's playing computer games and the dad just comes in. It's like, are you winning son? I don't even remember what the real ending is to it. I just know there's because there's always, you know, the iterations. Do you know Eli?

0:40:13 Eli: So it's it's always a way for a community to sort of make fun of itself so he comes in and he's like you went inside and he'S LIKE WELL DAD NOW THAT I'M PLAYING LEAGUE OF LEGENDS AT THE PLATINUM LEVEL I'M TRYING TO GET BETTER AT YOU KNOW JUNGLING WITH UH WITH MALPHITE AND SO YOU KNOW MALPHite'S REALLY BEEN OPED THIS SEASON AND THEN HE GOES AND THAN THE PUNCHLINE IS ALWAYS LIKE WELL HAVE FUN SON BECAUSE HE JUST WHATEVER THE FUCK HIS SON JUST SAID HE'S LIKE ALL RIGHT SEEMS LIKE YOU'RE you're having a good time

0:40:23 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah. But I like, I actually, it's funny. I take the heartwarming side of that. So like Tom, in your situation, if that happens for me with my kids, I want to be like, you don't know. Are you winning? Like whatever the game is, even if I can't understand what you're coding or what your whatever. I just want to be like, Hey, can I, I don't know. Can I look at it and be like cool that I'm proud of that? You know, like I, like that even if I can't understand it.

0:40:38 Tom: Right.

0:40:53 Eli: Yeah

0:40:55 Tom: When I yeah, I definitely try to do that. It's just that it's just, it's the, um, kids have all like, I guess, gravitated toward things that are, they're really like disorganized in the sense that like they're, they're singular focus. They're not part of a team. They're part of an extracurricular moment after school. There's no coach or mentorship there. So it can make it, those things actually create a structure for parents to, um. Figure out how to be a part. Like if your kid's into soccer, you don't have to know shit about soccer. You'll fucking learn it.

You'll show up at the games, there'll be a coach, they'll call a foul, there'll be a parent next to you to tell you about it. The game will teach itself to you. When your kids are into stuff that is like really beyond your scope of interest or talent or ability or knowledge, and it's a really solitary activity, it can be really difficult to meaningfully engage it with your kids, because you're just like, "What you doing?" It's like, "Well, I'm teaching myself myself super Java Python, so I can write a Roblox video board system game," and I'm just like, "Fucking what? What?"

0:40:58 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah,

0:41:47 Eli: It's yeah that's

0:41:58 Thomas: Yeah. I

0:41:59 Tom: Do you say okay. Great.

0:41:59 Thomas: Will, I will totally get into that.

0:42:00 Tom: Right. Yeah.

0:42:02 Eli: The thing is thomas is gonna be like oh he'll be like oh that sounds good

0:42:03 Thomas: Yeah I will. I'll be like I now am the top programmer in this Roblox thing that I didn't know existed five days ago.

0:42:06 Eli: Yeah he'll leave the room and the next morning arlo will be shaken awake where his dad is like hey son I noticed you were using c plus plus and if you don't move up to python daddy's gonna abandon you by the way I'm the top of the roblox thing it's like

0:42:22 Tom: No.

0:42:24 Thomas: Oh, I'm going to ruin so many things for my poor children. Oh

0:42:27 Eli: I compare it to when someone watches you edit I don't know if you guys I tom I know you don't edit but thomas I know your head at all have you ever had someone who doesn't know about editing watch you at the be like do you mind if I watch and be like yeah and they'll be like so what's going on you'll be okay well this is this and this is that you've got a spiel for the first two minutes or so and then you're like okay and you you start to do it and they're like what are are you doing now and you're like more of that thing I told you I was doing I'm just doing i'M DOING EXACT EXACT SAME ACTIVITY BUT NOW I'M JUST DOING IT HOW LONG ARE YOU DOING IT FOR NINE HOURS NINE MILLION HOUR FOREVER I 'LL DO IT FOREVER AND EVER UM THEN YOU 'LL DO SOMETHING NEW AND THEY 'LL BE LIKE OH WHAT'S THAT AND YOU 'VE BEEN IT'S TOO I ACTUALLY CAN'T EXPLAIN IT TO YOU BECAUSE I 'L DIE I JUST REALIZED RIGHT THIS VERY SECOND THAT IF I HAVE TO EXPRAIN THIS VERY IN -DEPTH THING YOU DON'T ACTUALY CARE ABOUT I 'II DIE I 'I 'LL EXPLODE

0:42:31 Thomas: Boy. Yeah. Oh, for fucking ever. Yeah, yep, yep.

0:43:12 Eli: INTO A MILLION pieces yeah

0:43:13 Thomas: Yep. That's Oh for real. I I, didn't realize how much there was to editing until I started trying to train somebody and it was actually kind of, it was kind of nice. I realized like, oh shit, I, there's a lot of, I just invented like a whole technique. Like there's so much I I just invented, I

0:43:28 Eli: Get too like inside baseball about editing but the other thing is and I believe this this is true of every podcaster and editor every editor the only things you need to know are the things they know no editor will be like yeah no there's a lot of stuff I could be doing that I'm not every editor no matter what level will be yeah oh yeah you could do that but it doesn't matter they can't hear it they can no matter right there's there are grammy award award -winning editors who are like you have to take out every pop and hiss and then there's me on fucking audacity being like it's honestly fine if they hear a cough if someone drinks an entire bottle of soda in the background of your podcast it's really not a big deal you gotta trust me on that guys

0:43:46 Thomas: Yeah, That's fair. That'S fair. Yeah.

0:44:06 Thomas: Yeah it is an art though. It's actually true. Like, it's just, it's funny how much room there is for different technique and different, like, expression of what it is. I was just realizing though, I cause we're, we're theater kid. Well, not, I shouldn't say that, theater kid, I didnT get to do anything as a kid, I, I, uh, became a theater person once I was able to just do things myself and think a good marriage of theater and sports might, as much as I hate it, might end up being soccer, because the point, as far as I can gather from the World Cup, is to just be the best at pretending someone murdered you when nothing actually happened to you at all. God, I fucking hate it so much.

0:44:37 Eli: And can I say my son does have a natural gift for pretending every injury is grievous and terrible this might be his calling uh

0:44:42 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah. Oh, God. Speaking

0:44:50 Tom: Is Anything you wouldn't let your kids do?

0:44:51 Eli: Football he will never play football no

0:44:53 Tom: Yeah. What about wrestling or soccer or hockey? Those are pretty head sports, aren't they?

0:44:54 Thomas: Oh, Wrestling's Wrestling No.

0:45:00 Tom: Aren't they like...

0:45:00 Thomas: Not wrestling. Wrestling is not a head

0:45:02 Tom: No? Oh.

0:45:02 Thomas: No, no.

0:45:02 Tom: Oh, I thought it was.

0:45:03 Eli: You you can fuck up your ears the really bad one but you

0:45:04 Thomas: Yes. They will have to wear their headgear. Do not let your kid ever wrestle without headgear. 100%, yeah.

0:45:08 Tom: Yeah, you get that cauliflower ear. Yeah.

0:45:08 Eli: Gotta yeah Yeah. Yeah, no, I mean, I could be talked into anything but football. Football will be a hard line. He'll get a made -for -TV movie about me being like, no son of mine's gonna have dementia when he's 27.

0:45:27 Thomas: That's a tough one, and that sucks because I

0:45:29 Tom: Any of the fighting sports, obviously, then.

0:45:31 Thomas: Love I would love to, to have, like, a kid who's a quarterback or something. 'Cause I just fucking, I think the sport is so interesting and, and is the, especially that position is so cerebral. Like, I would love to, I fucking love throwing and catching a football, but I'm, I'm with you. I don't think it's, moral. I, I don't think you can do it. You know, I, ah, football is just too.

0:45:31 Tom: Yeah.

0:45:52 Eli: Nah, he ain't really. You shouldn't do it to your own kid, right? Because it's like if playing the lottery, they had to hit you in the head with a hammer every time you bought a ticket. Right? Right, you're not gonna win But that hammer is definitely doing something.

0:45:54 Thomas: Yeah.

0:46:03 Thomas: No. Yeah.

0:46:06 Eli: Sorry.

0:46:08 Thomas: So I don't think I could let him play.

0:46:10 Tom: Can't think of anything else I would say no to.

0:46:12 Thomas: Yeah. Cliff jumping? I don't know. What else do they let kids do that's dangerous? Besides,

0:46:16 Eli: A kid version of everything dangerous. There's, like, it's fucking, they're bringing kids into, yeah. There's, first of all, there's martial arts, which is so fucking crazy, right? Like, the last people equipped to learn any kind of real fighting are the people who do the most of it, which is so weird. And I know that 99 % of martial arts are just weird jumping jacks, but Like the, the idea, the idea that you're teaching a, but the idea that any, anybody would teach a child Brazilian Jiu Jitsu, let alone give access to a child. Have you met a person who does Brazilian Jitsu? They're

0:46:21 Thomas: MMA No. Yeah. It is weird jumping what that's

0:46:41 Tom: That's a great, that's a great explanation. Oh, it's perfect.

0:46:56 Tom: Oh,

0:46:57 Eli: All fucking nuts. Like, yeah, yeah.

0:46:57 Tom: Yeah.

0:47:00 Thomas: Okay. That, that's true, like, anyone who's actually good at it or does it a lot. Yeah. No, that's truth. Well,

0:47:04 Tom: Yeah.

0:47:05 Eli: Every single person who is good at Brazilian Jujitsu, you make it about two sentences is, and they're like, Like, well, you know, my blood is actually made out of Rumble Stiltskin's blood. And you're like, oh, okay. Well, I know how good you are at wrestling people to the ground, so I'm going to go ahead and put three feet between us.

0:47:23 Thomas: That sucks, because, yeah, jiu-jitsu is the best of of them, and that's one that I have done, and I would, I think it would be cool to get my kids into that. It's also the best if you were worried about bullying and wanted your kid to actually be able to defend themselves. It is the best one because that the fight. You

0:47:41 Eli: No, but I don't want my kid. See, the thing is, like, you got to look at the end result, right? I don'T want my kids to end up a Brazilian jiu -jitsu person. And you roll those dice on your kid coming home one day with a jar of Omega Brain and lecturing you for 24 minutes. Like, you know, you got to consider the risks, Thomas.

0:47:50 Tom: Yeah.

0:47:58 Thomas: Yeah. Is fair. That's fair. I don't know. I feel that way about most things, though. The hockey player isn't that much better. I just have to play hockey and then not really socialize with any of the people that play hockey, you know, that's just that's how I guess that's all I view all of life, so this isn't really much different. Do you want to, like, try to do one more question? Oh,

0:48:14 Eli: Yeah, that's fair. Makes sense. Yeah, let's do one more question.

0:48:23 Tom: Right. So this question comes from Jason Bunnell. He wants us to talk about how role models are chosen, if at all. And this is an interesting one, because I know that I've helped my kids choose their own role models. I think they choose role models of their own. I'm not, I'm not sure if I'm missing the boat on this.

0:48:40 Thomas: What Is a role model? Is that real? Think back to when you were kids. What would that be for you?

0:48:46 Eli: Mean, for me, it was my dad.

0:48:47 Thomas: Oh yeah. Okay. I forgot. Okay, pretend you didn't have a a real dad.

0:48:49 Tom: Yeah. Okay. Well, all right, let's let's say, yeah, I

0:48:50 Thomas: Yeah. Well, I guess my dad was mine too.

0:48:52 Eli: Was your dad not your role model,

0:48:52 Tom: Yeah.

0:48:54 Thomas: Yeah, no, actually he was. No, he was actually my dad. He was my role model. So that's yeah.

0:48:54 Eli: Tom? Yeah. And that's what I was, that's what I was going to contribute to this, is that I think one of the things that you need to grapple with as a parent is, until they're an adult and they figured out how you fucked up, you are the first role model. You are the superstar. You are so cool. Um, I forget what book I read this in, but someone talked about the fact that, like, um, children love their, this sounds like such an obvious these things to say, but, like, your children love you, like, and it's hard for us to remember, because they're like, "Graham cracker," and then they walk out of the room and you're just like, "Oh, we can't fuck it."

But they love you, and they think you're the coolest person, they think your the funniest person, you are their first role model, and so What are you modeling, right? And that's something that's very hard for me sometimes, because there are, there are things about myself that I, I have come to accept after a really long time that I don't necessarily want to model for Max. Obviously, um, mental health being one, we did two episodes on that, but, like, physical fitness, right? Like, all, all things considered, much as I have learned to love my own body, I don't want Max to treat his body like I treat my body, and, like, I don't want Max to see, I very aware.

We, we have very healthy food stuff with Max. He's a picky eater, um, and, and he also has some sensory stuff that makes it very hard for him to try new foods, and we got him working with an OT and a speech therapist and a feeding therapist who all do healthy, wonderful ways for him. At the same time, I do not want him to model the way that I eat, right? So it's, it is, I have to walk that line very carefully. Um, that's not the only thing. Like, there's a lot of stuff in my life that I don't want, I don't want Max to work as hard as I work, right? I don't want Max to work at all.

0:49:07 Thomas: Yeah yeah yeah yeah man yeah.

0:49:32 Tom: Yeah.

0:50:34 Thomas: Hashtag

0:50:34 Eli: I want him to be in a right I want to be fake life but like if max discovers his great and abiding passion I don'T want him TO WORK AS HARD AS I work I DON'T WANT HIM TO WOR K THE HOURS I WORK I DONT WANT him TO BE UNDER THE PRESSURE THAT i'M UNDER WHATEVER IT IS HE LOVES I WANT TO SIT HIM DOWN AND BE LIKE HEY JUST SO YOU KNOW THIS IS NOT GOOD it never

0:50:34 Thomas: Fig life, baby.

0:50:36 Tom: Yeah.

0:50:54 Tom: I have thought about that in the sense that, like, there, there are things about same, like, there are, there are parts of, of my life. I don't want for my kids. There's lots of parts of my life that I don't want for my kids, and I do wonder how much, like, sitting them down and saying, "Don't be like me," while I'm busy being like me.

0:51:14 Thomas: Yeah, exactly.

0:51:14 Tom: It has any effect. I don't know that you can, like, countermand evidence with words, you know? And so I am, I am aware all the time. I think about, you know, I do think about it, like, I, I should set an, an example. I try, I try to think about what kind of example I do set, and there are parts, like, like to your point, Eli, like, I would, I want the kids to work as hard as I've worked in my life? No, I do not want that for them. I don't want them to say of the same educational experience that I had in, in my life either.

There's... there's big parts of my life I would like them to not replicate, for sure, but I'm, I'm super conscious that they fucking see it, you know, that they absolutely see it, and that to some, some degree, Eli, you and the same, you're going to be in the same boat. They see it and they see the results that it yields, right? You work as hard as you work and you support your family and you work as hard as your work and your son has everything he needs. And as he gets older, he will internalize, like, well, yeah, if I

0:51:48 Eli: Right

0:52:14 Tom: Want the same things.

0:52:13 Thomas: He's not gonna be like, yeah, you think these figs grow on trees?

0:52:16 Eli: Okay

0:52:17 Tom: Yeah. But he, my, I, like, I will say like my kids are getting to the point where they all want jobs. Like they want jobs, they're They're starting to understand that work, like really, truly understand in a personal way that that work is how you get the things that you want, the discretionary things that you want. And I am conscious that my relationship with work has been often unhealthy. And so that's that's something I do worry about. And I know I can't just say, don't do what I do, but also, you still doing it.

0:52:46 Thomas: Boy.

0:52:46 Eli: Daddy can't get out of the sinkhole but you kids have like you know a great example of it you brought up jobs right and this might be its own episode but like a lot of the ways that I learned about labor my children don't need to right like the shitty jobs with the abusive boss. Max doesn't ever need that.

0:52:46 Thomas: Yeah.

0:53:05 Thomas: What?

0:53:05 Eli: I don't think that's a valuable experience, right? It taught me a lot. It made me well in a lot of ways. It may be stronger in a lot of way. But my son never needs to work minimum wage and be told like you can't, you have to work on Christmas or whatever horrible thing that I was doing. And one of the things that's interesting is being on TikTok and seeing Gen Z have this conversation among among themselves and recognize like, wait, these jobs we have been assigned because we are not adults yet are not worth our time. They are not worthy. They're not worth their labor. Right. Like there are jobs that are underpaid and overworked and watching this new younger working class. Cause they are, they are quickly rising to the age where they sure,

0:53:07 Tom: Right.

0:53:48 Thomas: Well, That's, that's It, I was just gonna ask you, doesn't it feel, one of the moral quandaries I've, I have, and I think we've kind of touched on in the show a bit, is I am uncomfortable with this idea that, like, there are things that my kids are too good to ever have to experience. And yet those things are the backbone of our fucking society. Doesn't that feel shitty to be like, no, no you. And, and I don't think there's anything we can really do beyond recognize as a fucking society and work toward the fact that these things should just be paid good wages. Like that's just what it should be. There just should be, that's really the only way to fix it. Like the, those jobs you're talking about.

0:54:21 Tom: Right.

0:54:08 Eli: Yeah right, Phoebe doesn't need to pick fruit, but she does need to understand that the people who pick fruit should be paid well and have healthcare.

0:54:32 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah, don't

0:54:34 Tom: Did I ever tell you guys? Show or told you at all, did I ever tell you about the, my very first job at a car wash, the Fistfight car wash. Oh, of like, like an unhealthy relationship with work, like based on role models, like my dad, like I've mentioned before, like my dad's the hardest working man I've ever met in my life.

0:54:40 Eli: No.

0:54:43 Thomas: Think so. So can But well, hold on. He also has a great healthy attitude of if you look at me wrong, I'll quit and kill God, which is actually pretty fucking healthy.

0:54:57 Eli: I can't kill God, that's true.

0:55:00 Tom: I But. So but, as far as I know, he said four jobs his whole life. Like he does not, like he's just, he's just the, he's the hardest working man I've ever known. And so when I was 16, about 16, 15, 16, my dad got me a job. So my dad had a sign company and he made signs for this car wash called Prime Car Care. They don't exist anymore. Called Prime Care Care in Frankfurt, where I used to live. And so he got me a job at Prime Car Care and he said, all right, you're gonna show up to work and you're starting work on Saturday or whatever it was. And I was excited because I had wanted a job. I was like, great, awesome. So I get there and this place was fucking bedlam.

It was absolute bedlam. So he gets me this job, it is full of people straight out of juvie. It is full of actual felons that were like on work release. There was a guy who would deal drugs, like if you, it was one, one of those, uh, car washes, dude, it's fucking nuts. So like, like was one of those car washes where you don't stay in the car, right? So you go, you get out of your car and go in the building. But if you stayed in your car and flashed your lights, then one of the dudes would come to your window when he's inside the wash and he'd sell you drugs through your window. And so, and this, and like my first day, I'm like, what in the shit is fucking happening? I'm 15

0:55:38 Thomas: Wow. Oh, yeah. It's also Walter White's car wash. And he's like money laundering was

0:56:13 Tom: Years old.

0:56:13 Thomas: That in the manual as an employee on onboarding. Oh,

0:56:15 Tom: It's so also had a detailing base. So like you bring your car and have a detail, but most more often than not, nobody had their car in the detail bay. And so what some of the older kids and some of them, like early 20-somethings, would do is they would put whoever in the detail bay and then you would fight and they would bet on you. And so you'd fight for fucking money. So one of my first work experiences was getting Thrown Getting it's, it's fucking nuts, man. I, I'm, I'm 15. I mean, I've got this job, I get pushed into the detail bay and there's some other fucking 15, 16-year-old kid in the detail bay and everybody around and they're fucking, fight, fight, fight, and we have to fight and people are betting on who's gonna win. And then, so this job, yeah so

0:56:41 Thomas: This Moss Eisley, uh, fucking, he still has, by the way, possum blood on him or whatever. He's doing the shh thing as he lowers the knife into this poor guy. This is where we're gonna find out Tom murdered a guy. This is, yeah. Hold

0:57:12 Eli: Yep. I

0:57:09 Tom: This I I, I did not always win at all. Like, I was 15, I was fighting kids that were older than I was and stronger than I wasn't Well,

0:57:19 Eli: Didn't always win but

0:57:18 Thomas: On so you became a fight. You, you have a chapter of your life where you Jesus.

0:57:23 Tom: I had to fight in this stupid detail bay. I probably got in 10 fights in this detail bay, like that I had no beef with anybody.

0:57:27 Thomas: What? The what?

0:57:30 Tom: Buddy. You just get, you would just, you

0:57:30 Eli: He only fought when they took off his special collar, right? And then he would use his duct tape to fix his bag, his only friend I'm

0:57:36 Thomas: The fuck Oh,

0:57:38 Tom: Would just get pushed in there. The other guys were bigger and there were more of them and they would just grab you and they would push you into this room and then everybody would just, and you, fuck. It was the craziest fucking job ever.

0:57:40 Thomas: My God, that is Wow. What?

0:57:51 Tom: And I was so afraid to tell my dad because he had gotten me this job and I was like, I don't want to tell my Dad what's going on because he's going to be mad and I want to quit this fucking job. I'm tired of getting beaten eaten up at work or having to beat people up at work. This is fucked up.

0:58:06 Thomas: The

0:58:06 Eli: Tired of the, the underground fighting ring I've been forced into. And Tom, can I tell you, I wish, I wish I could say to you, Tom, what a foolish thought that was. Your dad wouldn't be disappointed, but there's a pretty good chance your dad would have been like, you think I've never been pushed into an underground fighting rink at my job?

0:58:20 Tom: I think he would have been appalled. I think

0:58:26 Eli: Why do you think we left that church?

0:58:26 Tom: Looking back he would've been appalled.

0:58:29 Eli: I was finally defeated by Mr.

0:58:32 Thomas: Fuck.

0:58:32 Eli: McGillicuddy's son.

0:58:33 Thomas: Yeah.

0:58:33 Tom: It was, so I go to work one day and the place is, and I ride my bike to this place right, so it's a few miles, I ride by bike to work one day, and the place has just closed down. There's a sign on the door, closed until further notice. And I was so relieved, but I was like, well, that's my job. So I would keep going back, like every Saturday. And like two months later, I go back and it's reopened. It's open under a different name. And they're like, what are you doing here? I'm like, I think I still work here, but I'm not really sure. Like, it turns out that the management, like day, like the manager and the assistant manager, robbed the place themselves. They stole all the money, all the money out of the safe,

0:58:33 Thomas: Yeah. Oh. Sure. Yeah. A

0:59:10 Tom: The fucking pagers and everything, and they just peaced out because, I don't know, they were the kind of fucking delinquent assholes who were running drugs out of the fucking dry car wash.

0:59:19 Thomas: Drug Den.

0:59:20 Tom: And a fighting ring.

0:59:20 Eli: Child fighting running, yeah.

0:59:21 Tom: Yeah.

0:59:21 Eli: Yeah.

0:59:20 Thomas: Fight Ultimate Fighter. Fighting, yeah. What was there there any human trafficking going on, or no? First thing.

0:59:21 Eli: Yeah. Also

0:59:23 Tom: Yeah. And they gave me my job back under the new manager. The new new manager gave me my job back. I was last I was so happy. I was like, god, nobody fights here now. This is just a car wash. This is way better.

0:59:30 Thomas: Tom, does is deck him? He's like, wait, well, that's what we used to do. Yeah. Yeah.

0:59:38 Eli: I'm, I'm picturing Tom. It's his first day. They've hired new staff and Tom's like, all right. Uh, so do you want me to introduce people to the fighting ring or Tom? We're not doing that. Well, then how are we going to detail the cards? How would I understand?

0:59:45 Tom: What?

0:59:46 Thomas: Instantly takes his shirt off. This is, I, this, I'm sorry, this is fucking, this is a new record for Dear Old Dads. This is, uh, Tom, what? Yeah.

0:59:52 Eli: Okay.

1:00:01 Eli: Oh, I feel like I could have get seat now. I, you know, my standing, I'm very proud of my standing theory that you, you can never see the end of Tom's stories coming. And let me just say, nailed it. Tom, never seen a child fighting ring, drug slash duck dealing

1:00:14 Tom: Your first job. Like, you didn't have a, you didn't have a fight in the detail bay for

1:00:14 Eli: Yeah. No.

1:00:16 Thomas: I I mean I I previously used to think of the job that I had in construction work as particularly traumatic because it fucking sucked. And it was a lot of like verbal abuse. And, you know, this is a bunch of fucking meth head people in the red country of, you know, our our great land who are now Trump voters, obviously. And I thought of that as a pretty traumatic time. And I hate it. And now you've just said that. And I'm like, never mind, that mine was actually fine.

1:00:18 Tom: No.

1:00:44 Thomas: That was I know that's not supposed to be true. That you're like, well, your trauma was worse. So I didn't go in, but yours was so bad in this case that you actually cured me of my trauma.

1:00:43 Tom: One, it was No. It was

1:00:53 Eli: Yep.

1:00:54 Thomas: I no longer.

1:00:54 Eli: And actually

1:00:55 Tom: Super fucked up. I was like, it was a suit, I would, I was so afraid to go to that job, like, I was really afraid when I would go to, to that job.

1:01:00 Thomas: Yeah. You were

1:00:55 Eli: Yeah you were in a child fighting ring. Tom, that's normal. Yeah, you Were in the plot of

1:01:02 Tom: Yeah. Well, it was

1:01:02 Thomas: In a, I love that. Tom's like, no, you don't understand. I didn'T particularly care for this. You're like. Yeah, man. Weird.

1:01:09 Eli: No, either. Tom's like, no, no, there's a shameful side to this, which is that I didn't want to be in the plot of several B action movies as a 15-year- old child. You

1:01:21 Thomas: I DIDN'T want to have Jean -Claude Van Damme base his movies on me. Actually, I didn't want that. What the fuck?

1:01:22 Tom: It was fucking it was horrible.

1:01:27 Eli: Ever thought about the fact that you lived several Netflix documentaries, like several different Netflix? You should have your own category on Netflix, let alone your own documentary. No,

1:01:31 Thomas: Jesus.

1:01:39 Tom: Well, I'm at least comforted with the fact that there's at least a dozen other people with that same story somewhere out there in the world. When I we I fought them. I literally fought them, like, I know who they were like

1:01:45 Eli: They're all dead. Tom, no, No, no,

1:01:43 Thomas: No, there's not. Well, okay. Just the, literally the people there. Yeah. Hey, if you're listening and you fought Tom, can you please contact us?

1:01:52 Tom: Yeah.

1:01:50 Eli: But they're all dead. Nope. They're all gone. They all overdosed on fentanyl.

1:01:55 Tom: They're Probably some of them are dead. For sure.

1:01:57 Eli: Yeah. They all got the first batch of fentanyll because they, unlike you, did not consider that a bad summer. Tom was like, yeah, no. Not the best first job. And everyone else was like heroin, please. Tom, I know this isn't what happened, but when you say dealing the drugs in the drive, I'm picturing, like, all the soap going, and the guy's like, so that would be one marijuana. Ah, God, that little spitty thing got me right in the eye.

1:01:53 Thomas: Oh, that's probably true. Ouch. Jesus Christ. That is horrible.

1:02:21 Tom: Hot. Wax. Hot wax.

1:02:27 Thomas: Oh

1:02:28 Eli: I was going to give you some crack, but then you ordered that undercarriage sprain and knocked me off my feet.

1:02:32 Thomas: My God. I had a whole thing I wanted to talk about and now I'm just like, Like I don't even, I'll hold it. Let's hold it because this is Jesus fucking Christ, Tom. That is, that's

1:02:39 Tom: First jobs everyone's got a bad first job. It's a first for the first job

1:02:47 Thomas: Horrible. Like that's Jesus

1:02:48 Eli: No, no, mine, No. Mine was similar. I was at Quiznos, and I didn't enjoy it very much to make the sandwiches. I remember, yeah, it was pretty tough. Um, Thomas, did you, did you hear my thing about not enjoying making the sandwiches because I also, I had one too, the sandwiches it was a little and

1:03:01 Thomas: Christ. I don'T even, I can't even. Yeah. Yeah. That's, that'S hard. That's really hard for

1:03:09 Tom: Well and you guys had terrible commercials, so we, I mean, that's, yeah, so, but yeah, that was but I was, I was nervous to tell my dad. I never told my dad about it. I would, I would tell him like, because I would get bruises and stuff, black eyes, and yeah, I mean, like, it didn't, like you, like a fight is a fight like you don't come home

1:03:10 Thomas: You. Yeah. Jesus.

1:03:15 Eli: Then car

1:03:24 Thomas: Oh, that, that it's just that car. Really? It.

1:03:26 Tom: No

1:03:27 Eli: Wash it got a car wash black guy then and

1:03:28 Thomas: Yeah. Oh

1:03:30 Tom: I, I would told, I, I told him like I stumbled into one of the, uh, uh, rollers, you know, those like felt rollers and stuff. I'd be like, Oh yeah.

1:03:34 Thomas: My God. God.

1:03:37 Tom: Like I'd hit by one of the rollers. Well, those rollers will fuck you up. Yeah.

1:03:37 Eli: He believed you

1:03:41 Thomas: You know why, why he believed him? Because no one's ever been in a child fighting ring in a car wash before. He wasn't like, Hmm, Tom, I'm skeptical of this claim. Are you in a child car fucking fighting ring car wash drug deal thing? No one would think that.

1:03:51 Tom: Yeah, right.

1:03:56 Eli: Thomas, Thomas, if Arlo comes back from his first job and he has a black eye, you are going to show up with a fucking team of forensic investigators, and that it doesn't matter if he gets hit by the roller, they're gonna, you're gonna be like, "Great, I'm gonna buy that roll, I bought that, I bought the roller, and we're gonna fit, Daddy fixed the system, I rebuilt this car wash while he were asleep," and Tom's dad was just like, "Yeah, well, what you gotta do sometimes, the roller, I get it

1:04:03 Tom: You got to ask questions, but that was the thing is like, I didn't, I never told my dad anytime I was in trouble or anytime something was wrong. I just, I like, and you just didn't do it as a kid. Like you just Didn't do It.

1:04:29 Thomas: Yeah, no, I, I would have been the same way. Honestly, I wouldn't have told if I had that situation, I don't think I would've told really.

1:04:33 Tom: Yeah It just seemed like my problem

1:04:37 Thomas: Well, no.

1:04:37 Tom: To solve. It didn't seem like I don't know. It seemed

1:04:40 Thomas: I take that. Hold on.

1:04:40 Tom: Like I was in trouble,

1:04:40 Thomas: Hold hold on. I just said that I, there was a line. Like if I was involved in, yes, the line, I'm realizing the line. Now I could have, I would have taken a, no, don't get me wrong. I would have taken an abuse. Like it's unhealthy. The amount of abuse I would've not told anybody about, but being in a child fighting ring, I think I would Have mentioned to my dad and been like, I'm not doing this job. This is fucking crazy.

1:04:41 Tom: You know,

1:04:45 Eli: Was The line before a child fighting ring, Thomas? Because I like to think that it was Okay.

1:04:49 Tom: You make it sound so, yeah, but

1:05:05 Thomas: And he would have been like that's nuts.

1:05:05 Tom: See, it seems crazier as a grownup than it seemed. The thing is when I was 15 or 16, it's, it, it just seemed scary. I don'T know, but it didn't seem like you don't have perspective. Like you get in fistfights as a teenager.

1:05:08 Thomas: No, No, that would have seemed pretty fucking crazy at any time, Tom. Yeah. Fuck, man.

1:05:21 Tom: I DON'T know. IT just didn't feel the same. It seems insane now, but it didn't seem insane at the time.

1:05:20 Eli: To be fair to be fair to Tom to

1:05:24 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah. No, I get you.

1:05:27 Eli: Be fair to Tom, he was in the monkeyverse, right? So like, for Tom, Tom's level of normalcy is wildly different certainly is a child than ours was. No, no, he's not. Man, have you been paying to our this this the rejected title for this show was "Tom's Not Okay, Neither Is Thomas, Eli Seems Fine."

1:05:29 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Jesus Christ. Are you okay, man? Are you? Man, geez. I

1:05:34 Tom: It

1:05:53 Thomas: Am now. I'm actually cured. This is cured. I cannot believe how bad this was, Tom, like I'm going to have to go reexamine my life because I don't know who

1:06:03 Tom: A that was a, it was, it was a terrible, I probably worked there for five or six months. Yeah, I probably only work there for five or six months all told.

1:06:05 Thomas: I am anymore. Fuck.

1:06:11 Eli: We'll leave it on that note of Tom, the camera pans away as Jet Li is released into the ring with 15-year-old Tom and I'm sitting there.

1:06:18 Tom: Yeah.

1:06:21 Thomas: Do you have like an enemy out there, Tom? Is there a guy who's like, you know, in Kill Bill? I love that movie.

1:06:23 Eli: Yeah. A rival.

1:06:28 Thomas: Yeah, there's going to be somebody's kid of somebody you actually murdered back then.

1:06:30 Tom: It's gonna show up.

1:06:34 Thomas: Yeah, who's been working on car wash -related combat this whole time.

1:06:28 Eli: A rival. Just

1:06:34 Tom: Yeah.

1:06:41 Thomas: Wait literally wax on wax off all right

1:06:39 Eli: Dodging brushes and under rollers. Yeah. Treadmill.

1:06:52 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.

1:07:30 Eli: Running on the treadmill that makes up the thing that carries the car forward. Yeah, it's all coming together.