Best of Tom: Family Vacations and the Snapping Turtle (DOD65)

Transcript

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

0:00:02 Clip: I'm the cool dad. That's my thing. I know now what I can offer you that no one else can. Complete and honor dependent. I'm a man. I'm sensitive. I need to feel loved. I need to be desired.

0:00:22 Clip: Telling is the only part of being a father that I enjoy.

0:00:28 Tom: Welcome to Dear Old Dads, the podcast that's only got two weeks of PTO and god damn it, we're not wasting them. I'm Tom Curry. I've joined as always by Thomas Smith and Eli Bosnick. Hello, gentlemen.

0:00:38 Eli: Yeah, I got socks with sandals on. I got my nose is all white from sunscreen and I will not be rubbing it in. Not even a little.

0:00:44 Tom: And that is very different than why Heath Enright's nose is all white when he's on vacation. So Eli, did you just get back from a vacation?

0:00:57 Eli: Permanently on the beach. Permanantly. Well, I so

0:01:02 Tom: Are you always on on vacation though, you take about like what, 25, 30 weeks a year, something like that, what's your schedule I

0:01:02 Eli: I'm technically That's true, yeah. No, that's what they say. I am I'm always off. But yeah, no, this is my like big big vacation of the year. I'm taking two weeks here. I take a week in January when I go on a trip and then I usually throw in another week somewhere in the year, but this is my big vacation for the year I'm off from all the shows except this one for two weeks. And we just got back from visiting my mom at her new house, which is amazing. And yeah, I was like, you know what we haven't talked about on this show yet, vacations. So there's a couple of topics that came up for me while I was thinking about sort of what to talk about in vacations, I've got one big question that comes up for my having a small kid that I'd love your guys's advice on, but I figure let's start with the history, did you guys take vacations growing up?

0:01:12 Tom: Know, he works so hard actually, oh yeah, yeah, we did. My dad was pretty good about, we did we did a family it was always a driving vacation

0:02:03 Thomas: Shame we didn't make Eli guest first. We should have made Eli guest. First. I

0:02:07 Tom: No we we did family vacations, we always had to go somewhere we could drive I don't think we ever took an airplane, but we took, we took lots of family vacrations, yeah, lots of them, yeah one a to hear? Yeah. Oh, where do we, we went, uh, we didn't go like, again, it was driving vacation. So we would go to like, uh, went we to Mammoth Cave, Kentucky, to go check out the cave. We went to St. Louis one year. I don't want to go to Six Flags. We went to Wisconsin Dells. We went up to the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. Um, we went several times to Minnesota, uh, to do some fishing at, like, resort. My dad's friend owned, spent like a week fishing at this place called Pine Lake up in, they're all called Pine

0:02:07 Eli: Where'd you go?

0:02:46 Tom: Like who cares up in minnesota

0:02:46 Thomas: I was kissing with like nine

0:02:46 Eli: I was gonna say, wait let me find that on my google maps, I am

0:02:47 Thomas: Pine lakes up here. Yeah. It's next to Springfield. Yeah,

0:02:48 Tom: There's a fucking million so yeah exactly yeah pine lake minnesota I live there yeah so we did stuff like that so it was always in in and around the midwest um the southeast uh we never got on an airplane anywhere that I can remember

0:03:03 Thomas: Eli, are you surprised by this news? I'm Like 60.

0:03:06 Eli: Seven percent surprised. Not totally. Surprised.

0:03:10 Thomas: Surprised. I just would have thought Tom's dad would be like, have we earned our vacation? No. Never, we've never earned our vacation.

0:03:15 Eli: Great question Yes.

0:03:18 Thomas: Work

0:03:18 Tom: My my dad will take time off like my dad and I he has a terrific work ethic we were just talking about that this week um because like no like I don't when I'm working on something and I won't hijack this but when i'M WORKING ON SOMETHING I DON'T LIKE TO TAKE BREAKS UNTIL I'M FINISHED WITH THE WHOLE JOB I HATE IT UM DAD IS A TAKE FIVE GUY MY DADA WORK FOR A COUPLE HOURS TAKE my dad will work for a couple hours take five I think that's a holdover from when he was a smoker so I think smokers if you ever work like do a project like work project with somebody who is or was a smokers they're just used to taking a 15 minute break every hour or so and like that

0:03:24 Thomas: Hard, play hard. Oh, for Sure. Yes. Uh,

0:03:56 Tom: Doesn't go away the

0:03:57 Thomas: Our Fucking capitalist hellscape. I swear to God, half the people who smoke only smoke because our capitalist hell scape was like, all right, we'll give you a break if you're gonna kill yourself with the cancer stick. Well, that's the only circumstances

0:04:10 Eli: I I've, I've always said, I spend way more money on food. Can I get a fucking snack break area? Just A bunch of construction guys standing around, I'm there with a hoagie. Yeah, I too am consuming to my detriment. No.

0:04:16 Tom: Cupcake break

0:04:25 Thomas: Also, like, I tried one of these patches, it doesn't work. There's a piece of bologna on his skin, he raises his shirt up. I can't quit Yeah, but

0:04:30 Eli: Gonna eat that

0:04:36 Tom: Yeah so but but dad is is a guy who who definitely worked very very hard but he was he would happily take time off so he took his two weeks he was a big proponent he got two weeks of vacation that's all he ever got in his life was two weeks vacation um he would take his two two weeks of vacation, at least one week, we would go on some kind of a family driving trip somewhere. When I was, I will say too, when I was 13, one of my very favorite memories with my dad is when I Was 13, him and his best friend, Jim, and my brother and myself, we did a week long backpacking and canoeing trip through the boundary waters of Minnesota and Canada, which is an incredible, I mean, it's an unbelievable, incredible thing to do. Like, it, it was, I, it was

0:05:14 Thomas: You're Just walking Though, you just, you walk, you

0:05:20 Tom: You, you ported your canoes, so You're You're

0:05:22 Thomas: Just, just kind of walking around, and there's no internet internet internet, or do they have really good internet there, or what, like, what is the thing

0:05:25 Tom: Paddling around more than you are walking It's It's You would not like it, Thomas Smith, but it is, it's breathtakingly beautiful in every direction, like in every moment you're always looking at something that you're kind of stunned at how beautiful it is, yeah.

0:05:39 Thomas: Like amazing Memes Or whatever, or like what the

0:05:41 Eli: Was it Yeah, sweet meme.

0:05:41 Tom: It's just 13

0:05:42 Eli: How old were you when you did that, Tom? 13?

0:05:45 Tom: I was 13, which was baller because, like, you had to carry these 70-pound packs and a canoe, so like it was like fairly arduous physical work, um, and my brother is a lot smaller than I am and was, um, and so like Bob's pack was a little lighter and it got redistributed, and yeah, we did it for, we did for seven full days, and it

0:06:06 Thomas: Shame. The shame That must have come with that. Oh,

0:06:08 Eli: Got

0:06:08 Tom: Awesome. He was just a little guy, we had a heart surgery when he was, uh, six or seven. So he always was small. He was on the small side.

0:06:12 Thomas: Okay, so your dad really Shamed

0:06:15 Tom: Never.

0:06:15 Thomas: Him for that? No, I'm just kidding.

0:06:17 Tom: Never once, but yeah, it was, it was a really great trip. Like, it was, so we did family vacations, we totally did. We did, we do family vacrations, and I have, I'm excited to do this episode because I have mixed memories of some of them being fun and many of them being really, really not fun.

0:06:35 Thomas: Eli I will not hijack the store, the, uh, the episode, but will you guess, guess my answer? What do you think? Okay.

0:06:41 Eli: Either, okay, one of two things: either never, like, never took a vacation because that was prime snake stabbing time. You can, when it's 110 and Angels Crack, California, that's when the meth lizards come out, and if we could stab a bucket full, dad could trade him in for a cheeseburger and he'd eat it on the front lawn.

0:06:58 Thomas: My dad was very lazy. Very lazy. That, that you're confusing my dad with Tom's dad. My dad wasn't very lazy. None of that.

0:07:09 Eli: I was I was making you stab the meth lizards and bring them to your dad in some Yeah, in some kind of tribute situation, and then he eats them in front of you or whatever. I don't, I, but I didn't know, so I'm either gonna go with nothing or, um, went to the same place every year but, like, without your dad. Like, my whole family my whole familie goes to, to Glass Shatter, Nevada, every year, uh, and Mom would pack us all in the car, and then right before she would go, Dad would siphon all the gas out of the tank and light the lawn on fire. I don't even know why he did it, but she would have

0:07:12 Thomas: He would Yeah. No. That's fair. Yep, you're right. You're right. Yep. Yep. Oh. That's a really good guess. Wow. Oh.

0:07:44 Eli: To push the car for the first six miles. And so those are my, my two guesses.

0:07:48 Thomas: Strong guesses. I just, just for fun, like a double or nothing. I'll give you a little hint because it's not, it's not those. Think, not literally so, but think McDonald's. What is that? What would, what would that tell you about this dynamic?

0:07:53 Eli: You went to you

0:08:01 Tom: That You went to the play place, and that was your vacation? Just

0:08:04 Thomas: No, not literally, not literary McDonald's, but think about, oh,

0:08:06 Eli: You went to Uh,

0:08:08 Tom: Cheapest shittiest possible, uh, vacation.

0:08:10 Eli: You went to, like, Six

0:08:11 Tom: Lowest quality possible.

0:08:12 Eli: Flags Wyoming. Uh,

0:08:13 Thomas: Sorry, you didn't get it. What I was going for was if was a thing my dad liked, then we would do that one thing and that thing only. And that was what we did. Our Our vacations, we did go on a vacation. There was a few years where I think we did it once a year. I could not tell you how many times, maybe three, four, where we did it once in a year, and truthfully, actually, these are some of the happiest memories, but we would drive down to L.A. for a Dodgers game.

0:08:42 Thomas: That vacation, but we'd also visit my mom's, I know if I've mentioned it before, but I, but I'm upset, that um, I never was an adult when, when this man was alive. Um, because my great uncle, so my mom's, what is that? My mom's mom's brother. I don'T fucking know family, anything, something like that. He was a super cool dude and he was an atheist apparently. And he was like the only atheist. I mean, my dad was too, but he, you know, he didn't give a shit about anything. So it wasn't like interesting. He wasn't an atheist in an interesting way.

0:08:42 Eli: Grave Right. He was just jealous of God. It wasn't really an issue. Interesting.

0:09:14 Thomas: He was just like, Ah, whatever. And this, this guy, but he was really cool. And he would argue with my idiot religious family and he would, he, uh, he served in Vietnam, but then he, oh shit, he might've served in World War II actually. I don't remember. But then he got, rheumatoid, um, arthritis and was, what, uh, that can do apparently to a body is just truly terrible. He was just, you not move at all in a wheelchair, all his, you know, bones and all that. Like it's, it's a, it's kind of, it's a good reason to not be religious actually, now that I think about it. Good, but he was super cool and we would visit him and go to the Dodgers game once a year for most years actually, and I loved it, but that was it, that's the only thing we got, nothing else it

0:09:51 Eli: But it, but it was, but it was a happy memory for you. It's not it's not a

0:09:53 Thomas: Was actually yeah it was a happy, happy memory. Well, if you remember at the time, most of my childhood was Zappy memory until, like, later when you're like, oh, that wasn't, that wasn't great.

0:10:03 Eli: The Post hoc memory. It's only these fucking comparisons to modern day that's ruining for you. Was there a particular tradition around Dodger Stadium? Like, would you always go to the same restaurant, stay in the same hotel or no? No. None of that.

0:10:17 Thomas: Same. You mean the same

0:10:18 Eli: Make I was gonna say

0:10:18 Thomas: McDonald's? Yeah. We might honestly, we honest to God, I bet you he had McDonald's is picked out along, you know, the five, as he would say, as an LA person. And, and, you Know, I'm not going to fault him for that. That cause I, I do that with Taco Bell. I have the Taco Bells that are good. And the ones that aren't. And I keep a map of those. So you know what?

0:10:38 Thomas: I'm not going to fault the guy for that. Yeah.

0:10:38 Eli: In your heart On a hard drive.

0:10:42 Thomas: Yeah, I saved it. And then when it when it fails, I just go out there and I'm like, there's something about this Taco Bell. I pick up the dirt. I'm like, yes, truly, this is good Taco Bell, we will make our lives.

0:10:43 Eli: Which you have not bothered to back up until Lydia shut the fuck up. I'm trying to figure out what I know about what one part of my brain knows about this Taco Bell that this part of my brain does not. Like Will Graham trying to, to lock down Hannibal. All right. And yeah, of course my family went on vacation. We went to, we went on a bunch of vacations, but the one that we went to every year was we would go down to Orlando, uh, visit my mom's parents. Uh, my mom, his dad, uh. It took the money from selling his tool business, which is in a whole story unto itself and invested it in Disney stock when Disney stock, I think opened, like I think he bought the first available shares of Disney stock. Uh, Uh, and then that came, if you bought a certain amount at the time, it came with passes came with like, yeah, you got to fuck Mickey Mouse in front of his family. Uh, no, but you got, like, year-long passes. So we would go down and we would do Disneyland. We would do, uh, we would do Ripley's Believe It or Not, which I did not realize was not a major theme attraction until I was an adult, right? Like, I would always just be like, oh man, we would do Sea World and Universal Studios and Ripley's Believe It or Not, and people would be like, what? What is that last

0:11:45 Thomas: Mickey Mouse. Oh, yeah.

0:12:11 Eli: One and I'd be like a Museum of oddities. It's just, uh, it was this con man who traveled around the country making up stuff, and, uh, he had a little corner of the newspaper and he made so much money that he made a bunch of fake museum exhibits and put them in Orlando in a fake upside down house, and everyone's like, what? Thank you

0:12:10 Thomas: Yeah, I don't know what that is, really.

0:12:28 Tom: I have been there, Eli, and I do know exactly what you're talking, I just want to let it kind of fade out for a second so you felt uncomfortable, but yeah, I've absolutely been to the Ripley's Believe It or Not in Orlando, and I would fucking go back, and also I would now want all of the Ripleys Believe It or Not on DVD. That's like a life goal for me that I need to have now. Yes.

0:12:45 Eli: Of course. They're incredible because they are pathological, childlike lying, right? That's really important, right? Is that nothing at Ripley's Believe It or Not as an adult, which is weird, because I went with adults every year, and no adult ever went, hey man, you know this is all like, like, what would the world be like if this was true? This is the stomach They would be like, here's the world's smallest man, he stayed a baby forever, and I'd just be like, yep, that's in my brain. I'm five, right?

0:13:13 Thomas: That's real. Yeah.

0:13:14 Eli: And So my life, my brain is full of Ripley's Believe It or Not isms. And

0:13:18 Thomas: This explains a lot. This really does.

0:13:20 Tom: This does. This, this is, did you also go to the Museum of Yik-Yaks is that also a sex dungeon?

0:13:20 Eli: I was gonna say the first Yik Yak was The fucking Ripley's Believe It or Not. I remember one specifically is, and I wasn't allowed to go here until I was older, but in the very basement of Ripley's Believe It or Not they have Madam Tussauds has made a, uh, a re, a recreation, pretty much a recreation of the Spanish Inquisition of all the tortures that went on there. Yes. And Like, you have to be 13 or older, and I remember going when I was 13 and being like so horrified and freaked out and all that stuff, and I went as an adult because, because there's a New York City one now, and they have a bunch of the same exhibits. I went in as an adult, and they were like, the butthole scratcher. This thing would shoot you through space, and then when you landed on the moon, there would be an alien. He'd kick you in the nuts until you weren't Jewish anymore. And I was like, oh, man. I hate that I have Google on my phone, and none of this is real.

0:13:49 Thomas: I hate that. Yeah,

0:14:20 Eli: Oh.

0:14:20 Thomas: Aren't Jews real.

0:14:21 Eli: So, yeah, that's what we did for vacation. The hallmark of our vacation, and I've talked about this before, but because my mom has seasonal affective disorder, starting when I was three or four, my mom was gone for a month every year. Um, was very, very hard. When I was little Yeah.

0:14:37 Thomas: A vacation of sorts.

0:14:40 Eli: A vacation for me, exactly. Uh, who doesn't need one? Um, and so oftentimes the trip down to Florida would be reuniting with my mom too, so that's also like a big part of my, my vacation memories is.

0:14:53 Tom: I had, I had a lot of Florida trips that were reunites with my mom too. Yeah, probably very similar.

0:14:59 Eli: Now, did you guys do the monkey funeral before dinner or did you do an after?

0:15:02 Thomas: We went to the monkey graveyard the tomb

0:15:03 Tom: I I I will, I will promise this I will promise this, guys, for patrons, I will tell, this is a great episode to do it for patrons, I will tell the story of the most insane trip or visit that I had with my mom in Florida that, it you guys, you guys are gonna, it, this is like Car Wash Fight Club level insane. So You'll love it.

0:15:07 Thomas: Of the unknown monkey. Oh, Wow. Wow. That's Wow. Okay.

0:15:27 Tom: So I'll tell that as the, as the patron bonus story, so I don't want to hijack you, Eli, like, but go on. I just, I made a note of it. I made a note. So 34

0:15:32 Eli: And hey, while and while we're speaking about it, by the way, that's not the only benefit to being a patron. Have you noticed us get interrupted by a weird ad localized lies to your area? Well, you can stop those by signing up at patreon.com/dearolddads. You can add-free versions every episode, bonus stories like whatever hell has awaiting us at the end of this episode, and a monthly bonus. This month we made fun of a Facebook post about what to teach your son there was There was a lot of handshake based advice not Not a lot, lot of advice not to rape people. So yeah, you're, uh, sign up, patreon.com/dearolddads. But okay, so about the vacations of the past, I think we've covered those. My question is the vacrations of the present: have you taken a vacation with your families yet? What are they like? And then of course, I think I'll wrap everything up by presenting you gentlemen with the, uh, the conundrum that I'm currently in when it comes to vacations, families

0:16:02 Thomas: It's so great Yeah. Oh

0:16:04 Tom: Random rules. Oh, well, I've got three answers to that. Cause I've had three different family orientations.

0:16:40 Eli: Yeah, I was gonna say I

0:16:42 Tom: So I did take one family trip yet. One straight up family vacation, um, just Finn and my accent was horrible. It was just, it was was a trip of pure misery.

0:16:54 Thomas: I know, it's that's unpleasant. Can you just give us something that, like, distills that, like, what is, what is that exactly you know what, what I mean?

0:16:56 Tom: Well, I, it, It does go to something I want to talk about with vacations in general, which is that vacation takes everybody out of their rhythm and comfort zone and their natural sort of like, like, just how they're used to interacting with their day and all the people in it. And then it squishes everybody into an airplane or a car and then you all were a hotel room and then you're in a new place and you're all trying to problem solve stuff and everybody's trying to find out who's in charge during this week of and so it's like I really do think in many ways vacations are custom designed to stress test a family which which is really funny But

0:17:34 Thomas: That doesn't seem like what they're supposed to be doing, you know

0:17:38 Tom: But that has always been my experience, like my dad and Lynn they never fought, guys, I in 40 some years I I never saw them so much as argue, but they would bicker only on vacation because they had a system about how they interacted. And then like they were on vacation and then, you know, like Lynn's used to being in charge in her life in these ways. And my dad used to being charged in his life in these ways, but then you're on vacation. And nobody's sure kind of who's the boss.

0:18:05 Thomas: They're like we've never spent more than one day out of two months together

0:18:08 Eli: Gonna say They had to spend two days in a row next to each other

0:18:09 Thomas: Well we shook hands Now

0:18:10 Tom: Cross Yeah this

0:18:11 Thomas: I don't know what to do. Yeah, well

0:18:12 Tom: And then I I took when it was just me, um, I took my boys on a vacation for a week to California. We went to Legoland, um, Eamon was about two, Finn would have been about 10, give give or take somewhere. I forgot their age difference around there. And that was way fucking easier. Like it was just me and the two boys and it was pleasant and easy. And like, we had a great time. Like that was just way easier. There was just less people for me to take care of.

0:18:42 Thomas: You know, but also that's a, that's a dictatorship, which I actually think, I think you want that form of government in a vacation, you know, like there is a weird, I don't know this from my experience because I did live in a dictatorship. But when I went on vacation with my, uh, my girlfriend at the time, my high school girlfriend, like I witnessed a few like, you know, here, oh, this is what like a normal family does. And there are elements of it. That's really funny. There is a beard. I don't want to say a power struggle but kind of there's like a, you know, like different, especially when it's like an extended family thing, like different different elements of the family kind of want to show like, no, I'm in charge of this thing, I can do this and it's like it was really funny to me because it was like, oh okay, yeah, you all you all have some politics that I don't know about that's like really, I don't, you know, there's no context for me. Oh fucking that guy's gonna handle the drinks, oh great, he's, they had all this shared this politics that I knew nothing about. Yeah

0:18:49 Tom: It is better. Yeah. And then Haley and I, when we decided to have the kids meet, when we were going to move in together, the way that we did that, so we did a bunch of reading on how you do this and like you don't want the kids to meet each other in anyone's territory Right, so you want them to meet it's

0:19:48 Eli: Want to lock them in separate rooms and let him get used to the smell

0:19:51 Thomas: Separate separate car washes, you get in one car wash

0:19:53 Tom: A, it's different Thunderdome, you got to get a neutral Thunderdrome, so we we actually decided that the Thunderdome we would have the kids meet in. I rented a house in St. Louis and we went to the zoo, we went the City Museum, we went a bunch bunch of places, um, and that was that was a very interesting week, um, because not only was it a family vacation but it was our first time with all six of us interacting together as a family, um, then it was also 155 ,000 degrees out every day with just blanket wet humidity so it was like, hey, uh, why don't you try all the time not to be really angry just by waking up and being in in this heat. Yeah.

0:20:33 Tom: So, but we actually had a great time and it was in, I got, I would just not to be a schmaltz, but I came back from that vacation, um, on a Sunday and on Monday I bought an engagement ring that I then put in a safe. So cause I knew right away, I was like, that was, that was life changing.

0:20:31 Thomas: Impossible God Then

0:20:49 Tom: Like I knew it. Yeah, yeah, very much so.

0:20:45 Eli: The test was passed

0:20:51 Thomas: You lost the combination to that safe and we're like, okay, where would I put this, what

0:20:55 Eli: What would Tom set the combination to

0:20:57 Thomas: Would Tom do. Oh

0:20:56 Tom: So what would, yeah. Hey, you're not actually wrong.

0:20:59 Thomas: I put it in a bigger safe that

0:21:01 Tom: Yeah. If you're not actually right. You're not wrong, guys. If I don't know a password, I'll be like, what would I set a password to be?

0:21:07 Thomas: Oh, I think a lot of people do that though that's more of a common and

0:21:10 Tom: So those are the trips that we've been on. We haven't been on a full family vacation since then.

0:21:16 Eli: Are you excited to take another one because I, one of the things that I know that you and Hayley did, um, before she got sick was you and Hayley traveled quite a bit and me and Anna travel independently quite a bit. So are you looking forward to family vacations or is it more like I'm excited to get back to the me and Haley kind of travel? Like, where are you at with that?

0:21:16 Thomas: Interesting.

0:21:37 Tom: Yeah so I have complicated complicated feelings on this, which I, so what I absolutely do want to always make sure to set aside as my priority. Um, Haley and I taking trips places to make sure that we are always connected as a couple. I think that that's, we've talking about this before. I Think that that is of utmost importance. And I would like to do more vacation vacation type stuff. I think with the kids and the age ranges that they're at from like eight to 17, it's tough.

0:22:07 Tom: Um, but I'd like to do stuff like renting a house by the lake for a week, but you know, and, and this is something I was thinking about ahead of this record as a guy who has a full -time job with a very, very limited amount of time off from that job. Right. So like, I don't want to bitch cause I know most people have it worse than I do, but I get three weeks of paid vacation. So it's not a ton of paid vacation. And So that's the maximum amount of time I can take off in a year. And if I'm going to take timeoff, I also have to bank podcasting, right?

0:22:44 Thomas: Yeah.

0:22:44 Tom: So if I're going to be gone for a week, I have to then work extra hard to get ready to be going for my real job. Then I I have to work extra hard to be ready to be gone for my podcast jobs. So leading up to vacation is actually a lot of work. And then, and then for me to be on vacation is to be frank, not relaxing for me. If I'm with the kids, it's a lot more work. Um, so being on vacation with the kids sounds like a really stressful, expensive way to spend what little time I have off of work, Like, it's actually really tough for me to make that calculus and say, yeah, I get 15 days off of work. Let me take a third of that time and dump buckets of money into being stressed beforehand, stressed during, and then come back to actually catching up on the stress that I missed from being gone. On. So it's really, that's a tough, like I do want to do it, but I want to do it exclusively altruistically because I think the kids should have those memories.

0:23:47 Tom: But if you ask me as Tom, do I want to do that? I would rather, I would actually rather put cigarettes out of my hands. Like, like it sounds so deeply unpleasant, but I will do it as a sacrifice.

0:23:58 Thomas: I've talked about that a lot because that's how most things were for me like forever like, oh, we're going to like go to a place to eat. Okay, I'll do this this as a service to humans. Like I don't want to, but over the course of time, I started liking some of those things. So, you know, like it is good. I think it's good to make yourself do stuff. Not saying that that will always happen, but like, you yourself, do that stuff for your family or for others. And, you over time, you might start liking some of things.

0:24:24 Tom: And the bougiest thing in the world, and I can't even believe I'm going to say it out loud, is if I do that, I will absolutely take my nanny with me, because if I don't, I won't have a moment's peace with four kids ranged eight from 17. I won't have one moment of peace. So I would, I would absolutely also just be like, fuck it, I'm taking the nanny like

0:24:42 Eli: You're just going to.

0:24:43 Thomas: This is an innovation I haven't unlocked yet that I definitely need to, I need to figure this out. How do you find somebody I just how do you trust somebody I don't know. Yeah.

0:24:43 Tom: She's coming with, oh it's it's like it's The best you don't do. I will say, our nanny is part of our family at this point, like she is just in fact, Hayley and I were talking yesterday. Like, Hayley's like, I wouldn't care if she just lived here. And I'm like, I don't like overnight guests. And I was really thinking about it after our conversation. I was like, yeah, I know that I'd actually care. Like she doesn't actually, cause my instinctively, I just don't like overnight ghosts. I don'T want anyone staying overnight, but

0:24:56 Eli: 100%.

0:25:05 Thomas: She's right there like you're not acknowledging, guys, I have my own family, I want to forgot she was in the room I think she should live here and adopt our kids. No, I want to go home. Yeah.

0:25:16 Tom: If she just lived here, I'd be like, yeah, it's just one of the kids.

0:25:16 Eli: Our nanny Our nannie is so a part of our family that we have a family text thread for photos of Max, and she's on it, like why would she not be well At one she takes a bunch of the photo, but also just like, why would she not be also like, I think this is peculiar to our situation, but like, I don't know about you, Tom, we've had our nannie Kirsten, who's incredible, since Max was nine nine months old, so like, I don't know many people we've spent more time with than our nanny at this point. Maybe Max but

0:25:30 Thomas: Well, she's the one taking all the photos. Yeah, yeah. Boy, that's a topic for another day. Like, but also someday maybe she wants a a different job. And then it's like, all right, this person has been in your life forever. Isn't that?

0:26:03 Eli: I will be calling that job and telling them she's a child molester. I'm afraid, I'm worried that she cannot do that. There's been a, there have actually been a couple of opportunities where, like, I've been like, oh, this is a good opportunity for Kirsten. And I've been like, you have to be a good person. And I've like made the call or been like, oh, let me see if I can introduce you or make a call for the, and I'm never not done it, but there's always been a voice in my head that's been like no there, take her away! And I'm like no human being, separate from your child.

0:26:34 Thomas: That's a lot of the voice in your head.

0:26:37 Tom: Would sabotage Olivia's success at every turn to not lose her like I, whatever, I'd hire a private detective to ruin her life so she doesn't quit much

0:26:46 Eli: Ha Uh, but yeah, vacation with a nanny or a vacation that has, was

0:26:50 Thomas: This last episode before we got canceled was super cool. I just didn't want to say, no,

0:26:53 Eli: I liked

0:26:53 Tom: I know I'm not I would never do that guys

0:26:54 Eli: It. Yeah, I enjoyed it. How, yeah. No, vacation with the nanny. Awesome stuff. Or vacation with child care built in. Awesome stuff, but Tom, I will tell you, that conundrum leads me exactly into my conundum. Conundrum, which is that I love vacationing with my son, uh, just went on a lovely one, like I said, we went and visited grandma, but this is the dynamic that pops up between me and Anna when we're on vacation that I wanted to discuss with you guys. And I want to say, usually when I bring up a problem on this show, it's because I've kind of got a theory, right? I'm like, you know, they say it's hard not to get your dick stuck in the silverware drawer, but what you gotta do is lube, but before you go in to make the sandwich, right? But I really don't have a solution for this, because this is what happens, right? I know what bag of shits dads do, right? Which is, if I was a bag of shit dad, we drive to vacation, I would go golfing, I would relax and have a vacation, and my wife would be stuck

0:27:50 Eli: On child care duty the entire time, so she doesn't get a vacation. So, because I'm not a bag of shit, I'm like, great, let me support you. And so what we end up doing is sort of taking turns, turns taking vacation. Now which

0:27:51 Thomas: Playing golf, and you're both like, we don't play golf, this sucks, bad idea.

0:28:07 Eli: Is, admittedly, right? Like, the problem is partly Max is so young, and Max has his own set of, like, challenges with, aside from his own age, which, like, needs special care and attention that I imagine he won't need when he's like six or seven or eight, right? But right now, when we vacation with our son, we sort of take turns having vacations, which means I don't get to enjoy a vacation with my favorite person to vacation with. Yeah.

0:28:35 Tom: Yep. Dude, that's fucking horrible. I like when not to do this too much. But when my ex and I vacation, we did, we actually took, like, a, like, a four day trip to Wisconsin Dells, and Wisconsin Dills is like a bunch of, like, water parks and theme parks and stuff, and we're in this, like, a hotel room thing. Um, then the hotel had, like, great big water park inside the hotel, not in the room, hotel room, but in the hotel, right? So this huge, like, indoor water park thing going on, and, like, she just bailed. Like, she's like, yeah, I'm going back to the room, and I was like, wait, what? And, like, just the whole day and the whole vacation, I was just like, wait, what? And it's just like, you can, if you're not, like, if you and your partner don't communicate really well ahead of time and have, like, I think good expectations on how you're going to spend your time together, like, you can find yourself, like, spending your vacation just doing, like, extra difficult childcare, like childcare, but like childcare on steroids, because it's not in your home and it's in this uncomfortable space and none of your things are there and everything is more difficult. And I, I hated it so much. It was like, okay, cool. So I guess I'm at the water park for four days with a kid by myself. Like

0:29:47 Tom: That's awesome. That's how, and like, this is my time off of work when I'm, and when I've done with this, I get to go back to my 60 hour a week job. That's, that's what I get out of this. I get too. It fucking sucks, dude. I, you that's, that's why I say like Haley and I always our priority is a vacation for us first and then a vacation for the kids.

0:30:05 Thomas: This Is where the old T. Smith selfishness, not a bad thing, because I would never abide a vacation like that. I would just be like, well, that's not happening, that's fucking stupid. I'm not doing that. I also, of course, you need to pair the T. Smith selfishness with the just mentally, like, doing that work. So I think we, yeah, we, I think you got to communicate and really make sure you're setting an agenda that, that you both like, that works out. Because, yeah, I think I do think a little bit of a little bit of that selfishness, though, not the worst thing, though. When you're like, well, that's not an acceptable outcome. So then you figure out a better thing, right? Don't you think? No.

0:30:42 Tom: Oh, absolutely.

0:30:43 Eli: It's weird, I was caught, because this past weekend was a great example, and I want to point out, like, I had such a lovely time visiting Mom house, beautiful beach everywhere, Max had a blast, Anna had a wonderful, but, like, I don't know about you guys, but I often find myself myself exhausted by communication in those situations, right? Because Anna and I are very good communicators, right? Like, strangers see us communicating and we'll be like, wow, you guys are great communicators, and that's wonderful and means that there aren't big problems, but it does often mean that she and I have to do fucking I messages in the middle of a fucking shop, right? And I'm just like, oh, there's a lot of a lot effort going into making sure this vacation goes smoothly, you know, know what I'm saying? Like, there's a lot of, like, oh, let me hear, no, let me get out my emotional reserve tools and make sure we're all on the same page and connect and be real and be honest, and, like, the, the urge to be a bag one urge to be a bag of shit is there, also urge to be a martyr is there. Just be like, you know what, you have a nice vacation, I'll sit here while our son dumps

0:31:51 Eli: Sand hand onto my foot. No, I don't know. I was there during vacation and I was like, don't know if you guys have had this experience where I was like, I'm not doing it good, I'm supposed to be doing it good, and I would, like, I had this weird, I have these very weird meta moments, right? Because I am overworked, I am overtired, there's sort of this background hum to my life and relationship of, like, you can't keep doing this forever, and I'm just like, motherfucking watch me. But, like, but sometimes the dam cracks and we've got to be like, oh, that was was weird. Let's not do anything about that. So we just, and so during this vacation, I was like, relax. Have you ever been, here's a great example. Maybe it's this. You ever been at a massage and it doesn't feel that good, right? You're getting a massage and it's just okay.

0:32:45 Thomas: That'S a great analogy.

0:32:47 Eli: And you're on the table going, relax, relax. Oh, my body feels so good, but they're just not doing it right. They're spending too much time doing that up and down sweepy thing, and you're just like, don't do that. Stop focusing on the area around either side of my spine and get this thing or that thing or whatever you know, whatever your case may be, that I found myself doing that on vacation. Uh, I want to be good at enjoying the things, because one of the things that has come up, and this really has come up in the last year or so, is I have resting, like, looking into the eyes of Cthulhu face, right? So much so that now Anna will be like, are you okay? And I will be sitting there being like, this is nice, I'm enjoying this beach, and then I'll be like, you okay? And a picture, great example of this is my mom took all these amazing pictures of my son at the beach, my son trying his first lobster roll, and in the back I look like I'm being read live the number of Ukrainian, like, fucking casualties from Molidor, right? They're just like, and also the Vorshensky family is... I just look, I look like I'm doing the math on the Zyklon B gas for Auschwitz at all times. And it's gotten to the point now where I'm like, one, I know it worries Anna, but two, I'm like, be happy, do it now, you

0:34:09 Eli: Have to be happy when you're on a beach. Yes.

0:34:09 Tom: WELL, YEAH But, but okay, but here's the thing, I totally fucking relate to that, and I will add to it, like I'll take your exactly what you said, and I'll fucking add one to it. Like, it's very tough to live 50 fucking weeks out of the year under, like, a lot of time stress, right? Like living constantly under some, like, minute by minute, how do I spend, you know, what's going on at three o'clock, what time is it now, it's 2:32, I got 28 minutes, I finished this up, that gives me two hours to do some writing before it's time to get on the next record, do a thing, then I can make some debt, so you're doing and that, and then it's like, you're on vacation, relax, and you're like fucking, but how, what do you mean like

0:34:50 Thomas: What's my deadline on relaxing when does that do, when do I turn that in, I've

0:34:52 Tom: Like I can't, I can not keep track of time, it takes me, it takes me days and days of the vacation to settle into a rhythm of I'm allowed to settle into a, it's because I, because I could, you spend 50 fucking whatever weeks out of the year under this, like, constant time management where the clicking of the talk in your, your head. Yeah.

0:35:16 Thomas: Got a way to solve this for you guys. I've been trying to realize why I don't relate to this at all, and I realize it's because I don't take vacations. I just do the podcasts from the vacation. I'm not joking. And I was thinking this was really unhealthy.

0:35:28 Tom: You, you bring your work on vacation.

0:35:30 Thomas: Yeah, I was think it was really unhealthy. But after you guys described this, I'm thinking maybe this might be the solution for you guys. Like, because if you still have like, oh, okay, what I'll do is, oh knows like, all right, we'll leave this day where she'll plan something for herself or not the whole day even like, you know, this couple hours she'll plan something herself. Thomas gets his work done, does the thing. And then it still gives you that sense of like, alright, did did that for that day. And then the rest of the day and the rest of the other days of the trip in between recordings, it's like that's true vacation because you're like, yeah, I know I got got the stuff done. I don't know. I used to I was I was thinking that was really bad. But the more you guys talk, I'm like, oh, man, that's good. I don't know.

0:36:10 Tom: I'll tell you, I can do it. Like if, if Haley and I are on a trip, just her and I, I can if we're on a trip with the kids, I can't

0:36:18 Thomas: Yeah, that' s the thing.

0:36:17 Eli: Baby. Yeah. It's all about the kids, yeah. Let me be clear when Anna and I are at a live show, I'm fucking smooth jazz, baby. She turns around, my hair is 18 inches longer, right? I'm breathing even through my nose for the first time in decades fucking my Yes, I'm wearing nothing but a bathrobe, just balls of swinging. I'm fucking rocking and rolling.

0:36:22 Thomas: Ja. Your shirt is silk for some reason. Yeah, that's No,

0:36:42 Eli: When it's just me and Anna all

0:36:42 Thomas: That's important that's important clarification. I'm realizing I don't think we've taken the kids, I've, we took Phoebe on a few trips. I don't, we haven't done like a family vacation yet, so that's why. Yeah, I don't know. I got nothing never mind, yeah.

0:36:53 Eli: Well, then shut the fuck up, yeah, and

0:36:57 Thomas: Oh, man.

0:36:53 Tom: So I will say too, like I also have, and this has been important for me in all, all areas of my life. Like, but vacation is part of it too. But like, this really took me like a lot of time and it really took until again, another thing, like, I just, I learned with with Haley like no forced fun I don't care if you bought tickets for something and they were expensive I don'T care if YOU HAVE SOMETHING ON YOUR AGENDA like if I am on vacation the intention of vacation is to have a good time and so I have adopted a no forced fund policy that has been honestly for me life -changing because otherwise I'm the guy who's like no at three o'clock on on Tuesday, we're going to go fucking swim with the dolphins, and, right, and I bought the tickets for it, but I also have a stress, because, like, and I bought theickets for it and you said we were going to do it, and we're gonna do it and then Tuesday rolls around and it's noon and, like somebody's got an upset stomach or something and you're like, okay, but what we're to do is we're gonna fucking throw up right now, get it all out of your system, get the goddamn car, because that's how my dad was, my dad, was, like we're

0:37:41 Thomas: You got to optimize your fun you're like, oh fuck, how do I do? Yeah. Okay.

0:38:01 Tom: On an agenda on vacation, right?

0:38:02 Thomas: There we go Yeah. I

0:38:03 Tom: Like, 6 a.m. you wake wake up, 7 a.m. we're dressed, we got a continental breakfast downstairs in the hotel lobby, then we're going to go over to fucking, you know, six know Flags Great America. We want to be there before noon, that way we could be there before the sun. We're gonna ride some rides, then we're gonna have, like, and you're like, and we're gonna be there for 12 hours because it costs us 875 dollars to get in this fucking place. Yeah.

0:38:21 Thomas: You also have the feeling of, okay, the amount of fun better be proportional to the expense, if you're Like, and, and that means, like, maybe there's some bullshit thing where you're like, okay, we'll do this for an hour before the big thing, and it turns out that's actually super fun, but it's like free, and then you're like, no, but that was free, we got to go have the fun thing that we paid for, because, yeah. Yeah. When

0:38:42 Tom: And Now I've just just throw all that away. No forced fun. And, yep, so like if Haley and I are alone on vacation and, like, we're just like, fuck, we overslept. Did you have fun? Yeah, it was great. We'll be like, all right, we just we just missed the fucking, you know, horseback ride or whatever the fuck thing we had planned, and I'll be like, well, I didn't miss it because I was actually doing something I enjoyed. And I've just reframed that, and it has taken a lot of the, like, planning stress that, that serves me very well in all the rest rest of my life, right? That planning stress is adaptive 52 weeks or 50 weeks out of the year, and then all of a sudden it's like maladaptive for this one moment.

0:39:18 Tom: And I get the same thing as you, Eli, where Haley will be like, hey, relax. She'll be like, I don't know if this happens to you, but, like, we hold hands in the car while we drive, and, like, she'll, like, hey, you're squeezing my hand really hard, and

0:39:30 Eli: Up

0:39:30 Thomas: She this point she has to have a dummy hand for Tom, like a fake one. Oh, that crushed another hand. Good thing we came up with this dummy system. Yeah, well,

0:39:33 Tom: It's so hard to snap out of that. Like, to live in that space that's adaptive for all of that, and then be like, "Hey, now you can relax," and it's like, look, it's not a switch. There's no switch inside you, reach in and flip, called "stop thinking about all this shit." That, like, the reason we survive every day, right?

0:39:53 Thomas: Man. I am really trying to figure out what my relationship to what you're saying is. Part of it could be now, now I'm realizing when you say that, Tom, I no turning off my brain of thinking of all the stuff all the time. So I've adapted to fun I have ever is still with that swarm of bullshit. So I think I, I think that doesn't preclude the having fun and feeling, quote unquote, relaxed, you like if we see different colors, I have a thing that my brain calls being relaxed.

0:40:14 Eli: Thomas has just never tried to relax, so he doesn't know how difficult it is, that

0:40:25 Thomas: But it's not, it's not what you guys, yeah.

0:40:25 Eli: But it's not what if my relaxed is, yeah, I just back to the, the thing that, like, kids versus not kids, because I, I totally get that Tom is like, I feel a tremendous amount of guilt in the moments with Max where I take him on vacation and I'm not relaxed or I'm not necessarily having a good time, right? Where I'm like, god damn it, like, my kid's gonna remember. I see him forming, you know, there's this picture and I shared it on Facebook. There's a picture of me and Max, uh, vacation this past weekend, and I again look like I'm counting the corpses at Dachau, but also Max does too a little bit. Like, he's got this real furrowed brow and he's just eating french fries, and I'm like, this kid's learning this shit from you, man, right?

0:41:08 Thomas: Yeah.

0:41:08 Eli: Like my, my son is looking at his dad and he's being like, when we're on vacation our shoulders are on our ears the whole time and we're just cracking our knuckles unconsciously through the whole thing. I wanna to I want to be that's

0:41:20 Thomas: I want to, I think you're overthinking that, man. I think toddlers frequently are just, oh, there's a bug. I am concerned about that bug, and that, you know, yeah, like, hmm, hmm.

0:41:28 Eli: That's for sure but like I I want to be as joyful around my son in those moments as I am around my wife, because like, again, totally relating to what Tom said, like when Anna and I travel together it's a different ball game, because we, Anna always comes to live shows with me whenever physically possible. Anna comes to live show, and when we show up in a city a day ahead on a live show, we'll just wander, right? And I'll just be like, use your, because Anna's got amazing good, uh, instincts when it comes to restaurants, so she'll be like, that place looks like it's good but it's actually gonna be shitty, that one around the corner, that's the one we're going to. And she just leads the way and we go there and it's a fucking blast. But then we get to a vacation with my son, who I also adore, and I'm like, great, he's room 71 degrees, 71 degrees. Anna and I'm just, I'm like, how do I shoot that guy in the back of the head for a week, you know, I think maybe I just shoot me in the front of the head

0:42:17 Thomas: I don't know. Yeah, I think

0:42:26 Eli: And I get him too, yeah.

0:42:26 Thomas: That's probably probably where we go there. Yeah.

0:42:29 Tom: Eli, when you're on vacation, can you lose track of time? Yeah, I can't either. I

0:42:34 Thomas: I can lose track of time anytime. Any ready? Go lose track of time. Done. Lost track. I don't know what time it is. I never know what type of time it was.

0:42:41 Tom: So I want to know, I, I want to know if you, if, if you do this, Eli, or, or you, Thomas, when you're on vacation. When I'm on vacation, let's say I arrive at my destination and it's a Saturday. In my head I'll be like, like, oh this is great, it's Saturdays, I've got the whole vacation in front of me, I got six days in front of, and then by Saturday night I'm like, oh fuck, fucking first day is almost over and I've got and I'm, I I just, I'm, and by, like, Wednesday, if we're leaving the next Saturday, by Wednesday, I'm like this whole fucking vacation's over I've, you know, I, I may as well just, I just, I should just hang myself in the hotel room. It's all over, it's done. I might, by Thursday I'm home already in my And I have to constantly reel myself back from that.

0:42:57 Thomas: Is. Hmm. It's over. Yeah, I totally, I do actually do that. Yeah off Wednesday. You're done. Forget about it. It is over. Okay.

0:43:05 Eli: First day's over Yep. You're home. I

0:43:25 Thomas: Tom. This this is leaning me back toward take your work on your vacation. Cause that the feeling of not like I I I'm, I'm like 70 % hold on, but maybe it would be better. Listen to hear me out. Hear me out I think that comes from the idea that like, all right, I work my fucking ass off 50 weeks of the year. This is it. This Is my time that I get to not work. And that puts so much pressure on it. That puts So many, 'cause like the minute it's not good, you're like, "Fuck, this was my year. Year. God, whole year. I got to wait another year." But like, if you're like me and you're literally always working until you had a very bizarrely legally mandated vacation one time in your life a few months ago, that was totally disoriented. Other, other than that, I've never taken an actual vacation from work ever. And like,

0:43:32 Tom: I don't want that so much. Yeah.

0:44:11 Thomas: Honestly, it,

0:44:11 Tom: Not even when you worked for the state? That's

0:44:12 Thomas: I was always podcasting when I worked for the state. So I would, I would take a vacation and I would still podcast, but I wouldn't be making like much money for it. So it was even worse. I was doing like, I'm doing a bunch of of free labor for nothing but but I'll me, I was there with you. I was all ready for, "This is a terrible idea and I'm an idiot." But the more you guys talk, I'm like, "I don't know, man, it solves a lot of these issues because you don't put so much pressure on that time."

0:44:23 Eli: Sucks

0:44:36 Tom: You know what? You know what helps? I'll tell you what helps me is, is again, the no forced fun thing helps, but the time pressure thing, the other thing that helps is to go places where your phone doesn't work very well. So when I was not, not at this job that I have now, but the job that I had before I worked, my routine week would be 60 hours. A big week might be 80 hours plus. So I worked at least 12 hours a day. And then I always worked Saturday and I was just, I worked a lot at that last year and it was very high stress. And I had a Blackberry that constantly This is old school, right?

0:44:41 Eli: Drugs. I

0:44:47 Thomas: I hate that.

0:44:49 Eli: Was gonna say Jesus no

0:45:11 Tom: I'm fucking old.

0:45:10 Thomas: God, what are you, 70? Jesus

0:45:12 Tom: I know.

0:45:12 Thomas: Fucking Christ.

0:45:13 Tom: And the thing would go off. It'll go off, it will go off and it would never stop fucking ringing and beeping and fucking buzzing and vibrating everything. So, and I would go up to Michigan with the guys like Cecil and some other friends of ours. And we would go to my uncle's hunting land. We took a long weekend trip. We did it like 12 years in a row and we would just go shooting. We'd shoot clay pigeons, trap and skeet shooting. It's a lot of fun. And I would always bring my old BlackBerry. So every year I got a a new Blackberry from the company and I would bring my old Blackberry and I'd put it in one of the clay pigeon throwers and I would launch it into the air and I shoot it into smithereens because I was finally in a place where I could allow myself to be not responsible to other people and not responsive to other people. And when Haley and I traveled to Belize, my phone just didn't work at all. It was a piece of trash. You, you didn't do anything. Your phone was just a thing that you didn't even, there was not even a reason to have it in your pocket except for to take pictures. It was just a camera. And I loved it. I loved it so much. And when we've traveled to places where the time zone is such that I can't be meaningfully responsive or the service is bad, that's my favorite. That is my absolute favorite because in that space I get to say like, hey, I'm not in charge. I can't, I get to, I get to not be in charge for seven days or five days or whatever the time period is. And it's out of my hands. And that, that to me has been the best vacations I've ever taken. We went to London. I didn't feel that way. When we went, when I went to QED, I didn't feel that. When I went to Ireland, I didn't feel that way. In Australia, I felt that way because it's 26 hours different. And

0:46:49 Tom: So by the time I saw a message, like the problem had already solved itself or someone else had to solve it for work. So I would recommend that I would would recommend being in spaces where your phone just doesn't work.

0:47:01 Thomas: This very must depends on nature of work. My advice does not apply to, or it wasn't advice, but like my point doesn't apply to most people. You get, most people can't really like bring their work on their vacation and still function. I have a weird job, but but your line of work, you're not talking about, the work you need a vacation from isn't really, if I'm hearing you right, isn't realmente the podcasting. It's more your other job.

0:47:24 Thomas: And your other job is people needing you. People, oh, Tom, what do I do about this? Tom, blah, blah. And that's a very different, I think it totally changes the calculus. I think you're right. Right. Because because for me, my project based work is like I get I'm way better if it's like, oh, I can finish this little piece. This is an episode. I can finished that, post it and then close my laptop and let's let's go to the restaurant. And that's a much different experience than a bunch of people need me all the time kind of thing. Then you're fucked.

0:47:54 Eli: If it's both, Thomas What do you do?

0:47:56 Thomas: Then he should just just you're fuck.

0:47:57 Eli: I have a prediction. We gotta wrap up because we're getting towards the end, but I have an episode, and one of us will have an absolutely batshit insane opinion, but we can't be like, "No, we're not ending the episode until you acknowledge that your exes exist." Right? So we just sort of go like, "All right, here's a dad joke. I would like to postulate that this is the only episode we've done where all three of us are insane, and all the listeners are going to be like, 'Like, you guys are fucking crazy.' Go to a therapist.

0:48:26 Thomas: I think so. I think that's right. I think that is correct.

0:48:36 Eli: Do you know that if you own four koi fish, the last one is fake to protect the others? If you've got an A, B, and C koi, you always need a decoy.

0:48:49 Thomas: Too transparent. You know, you had the good graces and now you lost it. That joke sucked. Fuck that.

0:48:55 Eli: You hate to see it.

0:48:58 Tom: All right. I would tell the story. I I alluded to this story before. So So told when the story for the patrons about the time I walked in on a group sex thing, and this is that same week, this vacation, guys, was the fucking craziest.

0:49:09 Thomas: Oh fuck. Please tell me the monkey wasn't involved. Please, Tell me the Monkey, it wasn't them involved, please tell me

0:49:15 Tom: So the monkey was not involved. No, monkey was non -involved. So my mom was for a while, I think I mentioned, but for new patrons, my mom for was for awhile, uh, with a friend. She was living with woman named Marissa and I don't know what their relationship was, She was purported to be a friend, but they did not seem in any way friendly. And this was because my mom, she So she had a big drinking problem. She did work, but she didn't have a home that she could call her own. But she did send for my brother and I to come down and spend a week with her. And we came down and we were going to spend a weak in Florida with my mom in and around the Tampa area. I don't know exactly where, cause I was, I was maybe 11, 12, something like that. I don'T know exactly how old I was. Um, we go down there and, you know, she's like, okay, this is Marissa, this is her house. And then she starts showing us around this house, guys, this fucking vacation was fucking unbelievable. I can't even believe I lived through this vacation, genuinely survived, physically survived this vacation. So we're down there. And my mom's like, okay, I'm gonna, I gotta work during the week, but on, you know, in the evenings and weekends we'll be able to, to spend time together, you know? And at this point we were still very much attached to our mom, like we still, like, had a lot of, like, warm feelings. We're very excited to be there, um, didn't really understand because we're a little, like, the extent of the, of the weirdness around her. So I didn't really know how weird this was until many, many years later, like a lot of things in my life. So she's like, she's showing us around this house, and the house sits on a pretty nice chunk of property in the middle of fucking nowhere, Florida. But nowhere Florada is different than nowhere other places, right? Because nowhere Florida is swampy

0:50:50 Tom: And wild and full of, like, gators and shit. So I swear to God she says this. She's like, okay, so there's a lake and we're gonna walk over to the lake and I'm gonna show you guys the lake. Um, I need you if you're gonna go to the lake and go swimming while I'm gone, while I am at work, uh, there are is a pack of wild dogs that lives in the forest. And so and she points and there's like

0:50:51 Eli: Gators and fucking... Jesus!

0:51:12 Thomas: You need those dogs to fight off the gators. So befriend them. On the way.

0:51:16 Tom: Dude, for there's gators in this story there

0:51:18 Thomas: Yeah, there be gators and That's, yeah.

0:51:18 Tom: Will be. Here's the thing, Thomas, there are, there are alligators in the story in addition to wild dogs. Yeah.

0:51:23 Tom: It's for real. So, so she's like, all right, so what you got to do is, if you, before you walk outside, she's, because the dogs are really very vicious, so she's like, so you got to look out the window, and if you see any of the wild dogs, you got to wait until they're back in the woods like, and before you walk

0:51:41 Thomas: And say an incantation. And then they did fucking

0:51:43 Tom: Yeah. No, everything about this is insane, like none of this safety procedures and so she is like, so don't go into the, like, you guys can go in the backyard because you have to go through this yard and take this, like, maybe, maybe 15, 20 minute walk to get to this lake, right? Um, and the lake, you could go fishing, there was a pier, you could jump off the pier and go swimming. There were there were you

0:51:45 Eli: It means they done broke the salt circle, boys.

0:51:48 Thomas: Get eaten by an alligator. All

0:52:06 Eli: Get attacked by a wild dog.

0:52:06 Thomas: Kinds of stuff. Yeah. Dog.

0:52:07 Tom: Get you get eaten by alligators and So, but you had to walk through this, like, no man's land of like wilderness that was like fully, like a pack of wild fucking dogs that we were supposed to just, like, look out the window, and if they were hidden, we, the assumption was, oh, they just won't come out and attack you.

0:52:13 Thomas: Infested wilderness wilderness by

0:52:15 Eli: Dog infested wilderness, yeah. Yeah, obviously.

0:52:27 Thomas: Whole time When Tom's saying we, I'm imagining Tom, Bob, and the monkey with, like, a backpack and a hat the whole time, like the, like the kid from Indiana Jones or something, or Goonies, like as

0:52:32 Tom: But like We're little kids, so we don't think twice about this. We're like, in my mind I'm like, awesome, there's a lake nearby, we can go swimming and fishing and like as

0:52:47 Thomas: Long as we don't get eaten by the dogs. I have

0:52:49 Tom: Long as on the way. So we don't. So okay, so rule number one on this vacation is, like, when Mom's gone, you're not allowed inside the house, right? We already talked about that because there might be an orgy. Rule Rule number two is, OK, if you, if do want to walk to the lake, you've got to check the woods to make sure you don't see a pack of wild dogs, because if you do, you got to, like, wait out the dogs, like, in this fucking detente situation that I guess she's setting up. Right.

0:53:15 Eli: Between a dog and a hard place.

0:53:17 Thomas: Have to offer a dead body like in sack sacrifice for them to

0:53:21 Tom: And then so then we walk tothe lake and we get to the Lake and it's a Florida lake. So it'sa wild lake. Right. And there are alligators in this lake. Like there's just alligators in every natural body of water.

0:53:30 Thomas: Not I'm nodding along, but what The, it's a Florida lake, so it's a what, what, what is, and I

0:53:34 Eli: It's a Florida lake, so it's, yeah, that's, hey, Tom, you know you're like, I say crazy things, I don't realize they're crazy. Not all lakes in Florida are wild. No

0:53:43 Thomas: Don't. What's a wild lake? I don's, that different than a

0:53:44 Tom: Man, like, well, like as opposed to a man -made lake, as opposed to like a reservoir or like a, like a retention pond. But even those will often have alligaters in them, but pretty much it's a guarantee that a wild lake will have alligators in it. Like that's pretty much in Florida. It's pretty sure that's true. It's a pretty much a guarantee. And that was true of this lake. So we get to the lake and there is indeed a pier dock thing, and like there is like and there are alligators visible there Are no, guys, I'm not even fucking around, there is a big lake, but like she's like, okay, you can see them out there, she's like those are the alligator and this

0:53:48 Thomas: I see. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. There's a big gator bite shaped hole in it. Oh, okay. No. Man, we believe you

0:54:20 Tom: Is her rule you're gonna love this rule, she says, she said, okay, so obviously if you see alligaters, don't go in the water. That was the rule that

0:54:20 Eli: We move. Oh, that was it, that was the whole rule. What?

0:54:30 Thomas: That's There's no more after that

0:54:30 Tom: That was the rule. That's why there's that pregnant pause. So what

0:54:32 Thomas: If you see dogs, don't not go in the water. If you see dog and alligators, then

0:54:38 Eli: If I see Dogs and gators, well,

0:54:40 Tom: The dogs are swimming with the gators? We know there's alligators in the lake and we know that alligaters go under the water. So if the alligatures are under the water, we're allowed to swim in that water. But in her mind, so Here's what we did to solve the problem. My brother and I would go out to the lake and it was hot and we wanted to swim and if we saw alligators we would throw rocks at them until they went underwater And

0:54:54 Thomas: There's how

0:55:07 Eli: Until they left, yeah. Until they were mad.

0:55:08 Thomas: Are you alive? How are you alive?

0:55:10 Eli: This is why this is, is why you can't feel too bad when you hear about a kid dying.

0:55:10 Tom: Then We would go swimming We

0:55:14 Eli: Right? When you see a thing that's like "child eaten by...", it probably was a Tom situation and nature was working itself out, you know what I'm saying?

0:55:11 Thomas: I

0:55:20 Tom: All That's the thing is that we, like, other kids would show up and we'd be like, "others, gators", and weed all throw rocks with the alligaters until the alli gators would go under the water and then would all jump off the pier and fuck, fuck around and go swimming.

0:55:34 Thomas: Just I love This idea that, like, well, you see, alligator etiquette dictates that when they are hungry, they will, with one alligator pinky and their head go above the water slightly to indicate, "I will eat you if you come in here." If they're not there, then of course it would be a faux pas for them to, uh still

0:55:49 Eli: They're they're terrified of cancel culture. So if you hit them with a rock.

0:55:53 Tom: It's Like, this is an ambush predator. Its method of taking prey is to not be seen and then to wait.

0:56:01 Thomas: I almost think the opposite advice would be better if you see it.

0:56:04 Eli: Would have been better.

0:56:05 Thomas: That's fine, like because that probably means it's not trying to be hidden.

0:56:05 Eli: Get in the water if you don't. Right.

0:56:05 Tom: But There's also like Essentially an, in, like, the other thing is, like, it's not like somebody counted all the gators that could be in the lake and then you'd be like, "Okay, so there's five gators." Oh,

0:56:15 Thomas: Like NOT it's

0:56:16 Eli: Take take alligator attendance. Attendance.

0:56:18 Thomas: Not a binary gator day of, like, this is a "gators in the water" day. Yeah.

0:56:23 Tom: No, like, some other gator tries to come in the, the water, like, "Oh, and I'm sorry, Charlie, we're full over here. There's a five gator lake and we're already at five

0:56:27 Eli: Sorry, we're all full up and they already threw rocks at us. And you know what that means. It means they're safe for the rest of the day. They're safe For the rest of the exactly. Hey, have you seen those dogs that run around the woods here? That's fucked up, right?

0:56:37 Thomas: At

0:56:41 Tom: So, so I've established the context of this, of this whole thing. So then my mom goes to work, you know, and she spends her days, you know, Monday through Friday doing her work thing, and my brother and I are left to our own devices in a town we don't know, in a house we're not allowed in, by a lake full of alligators, near a set of woods full of wild dogs to entertain, entertain ourselves for 40 hours.

0:57:00 Eli: And the hole in the bog and the dog down in the burial. Yeah, no, to be

0:57:05 Tom: And so, but, but in the evening, my mom, true to her word, my, in the evening and weekend, my mum would spend time with us, but my mum was drunk. She just was drunk immediately. I, she came home from work and she started drinking.

0:57:14 Thomas: This point I'm not sure I blame her. I honestly, like, I might have a drink or two if it's like, yep.

0:57:16 Tom: Her life was not a good life. Yeah,

0:57:18 Thomas: Don't, if the gators, oh, fuck my life, God. Damn. It

0:57:21 Eli: Fair, She was living inside Pitfall. But yeah, so she's drunk.

0:57:25 Tom: So we go down to the lake together. We're all going to go fishing. So it's, it's in the Evening. It's like sunset or whatever. My brother and my mum and I, we go go down to the lake and we're going to go fishing. And my mom is just off her ass. Right. And so she's like, she sees some alligators out, you know, in the lake. And she says, Oh, I got an idea. I'm going to catch an alligator.

0:57:46 Tom: Get me all the Wrigley stuff you can find.

0:57:46 Thomas: I like that I was predicting a hellish end to this story and I was wrong because I was not creative enough, I was, was not thinking.

0:57:54 Tom: So, so she gets, so she says catch all the Wrigley stuff. You can find, and so my brother and I very, you know, 11, 12 years old, very eagerly catch all little frogs and all the little, you you know, lizards and things that we can find. And she sticks this writhing mass of amphibian humanity and lizard humanity on this hook. And She's got this like massive schmutz on this hook. It just a fish dude. This is like a bluegill fishing rod, Right? This is just like a fit like it's just like the Walmart fishing rod and she tosses this thing out. She cast it out right next to this alligator and it hits the water and the alligator goes down under the water. And a few seconds later something like, wham, something like nails her rod and reel, and so she's like all excited, and we're jumping up and down like, yeah, Mom caught an alligator, because we're like 12 So we think, no, like, just trust, right? Because you're like 11 or 12 years old, you just trust. You're my fucking mom, she's got a plan, right? She's gotta plan, otherwise why would she catch an alligator? That would be insane. And so he's like reeling and fighting and like reel this thing in and then like bounding up on the shore, isn't an alligator but it's this fucking enormous alligator snapping turtle, right? And I don't know if you've ever

0:58:17 Thomas: For a gator fishing rod? Wow. It's a shark. Whoa.

0:59:11 Tom: Seen one of these things, but they're fucking huge. They're abs and they're like prehistoric looking and they're terrifying, and this thing has got this fucking hook in its mouth and it's fucking very unhappy, and she'd reeled it in and she looks, it takes one look at that thing, screams, throws the rod and real at it, turns around and without a second glance at my brother and I just runs, just runs away And my brother, my brother I know this thing was not like this thing was not going to like come eat us, right? But like it was just pissed that it got caught, but I do love

0:59:39 Thomas: How do you know? I'm sorry. What judgment? How are you making that judgment? I looked him in the eye. He looked like a good guy. We had an understanding.

0:59:55 Eli: He that shoulder shrug from the Flintstones cartoons Hey

0:59:57 Tom: And so just we all just other three like she's drunk

0:59:58 Thomas: I looked at the turtle and it was like, yeah, I can't believe your mom is that shitty. I, I was gonna eat you, but I can at this point, like, it'd just be so sad

1:00:06 Eli: Turtle vomits out CPS fake paperwork. Work, please sign that I'm a snapping turtle. Yep.

1:00:10 Tom: Well, so Drunk-ass mom just is is just booking it, like she's not looking back at all. She fucking books it all the way back to the house. She's just like tearing Ass through the fucking dog-infested woods, you know, past Alligator Candy Lane or whatever. And like my brother and I just like look at each other like, the fuck do we do, you know? And then we start running, and so we just run away, and like that was just like one evening, just one evening of this week -long trip

1:00:21 Thomas: Jesus. Did

1:00:39 Eli: Tom

1:00:39 Thomas: You guys ever talk about it on the rest of the trip? Did you and your mom ever exchange words?

1:00:43 Tom: It didn't even. That's the thing, is we thought it was awesome because We're like 11, right? So like you're in like fifth grade, you're like, dude, Mom almost caught a snapping turtle, and then you're just like

1:00:48 Thomas: And then abandon us to certain death is the part you don't tell. Yeah, yep.

1:00:54 Tom: Right, it's a, because It's the part you don't think about because like you've said like Like, kids will normalize anything. And so, like, in my mind until my 30s, until I met Haley, guys, this was a funny story. This was like, oh, let me tell you about a time my mom caught a snapping turtle. And I'm like, and then she ran away. And Haley's like, what, she just left you? And I was like. Yeah, I guess she did. I guess.

1:01:18 Thomas: You don't understand in a funny way, though

1:01:18 Eli: That's this that's

1:01:19 Tom: But, You know, it was, she did, like, a funny, like, spinner legs in the air first before she came down. And then, you know, so

1:01:27 Eli: That the second, she just left you. Their tragedy story, the fire was the first one. This is the second. She just, you, their store. This one person should have one of these in their life, Tom one ever

1:01:39 Thomas: We Here's the scary thing about that. If that first runaway story didn't tell him the second one was bad, who knows how many more there are? There could be any number of these that he still hasn't told yet in front of someone. No

1:01:47 Tom: Well one One more quick vacation almost dying in Florida with my mom's story, and then I'll, and then on Patrons I'll let you guys go. But we were, she had, my mom had rented a, uh, hotel and she was like, oh, I've got this great resort, you know. She always tried to like convince us she was back up on her feet, you know, and she never was. And so she's like, oh, you know, when you, you guys come out here this year, I've got, we've got a resort. It's right at the beach, you can go swimming and fishing, and it's going to be so much fun. We're going to spend a week at this resort on the beach, and that sounds really nice. But it's like, when we get there, it's a resort, but like it didn't have a beach. So the beach was a non-swimmable beach, which means that like it doesn't have sand and it is wild and it doesn't like slope, it just drops off and it's full of coral and rocks. And so like when we got there, the resort owner was like, yeah, this is actually like not a swimming beach, like you can fish off the pier if you want, but you can't really go in the water. He's like, the water over here is like really deep and it's full of like all kinds of wildlife. He's really like, people come here to like go like, uh, spearfishing and like skin diving and stuff and like, you know, scuba diving. It's not really a place for kids. And he told us that like right in front front of my mom, he's like, this isn't really a place for kids. My mom was like, oh fuck it, we're here, let's spend a week here. And we're like, cool. And he's looking the like the what little beach sand there is has full of sand fleas, so there's just like, it kind of sucks, like there's like little biting fleas in the sand that like you just, it's gonna suck like real bad. And then he's like, oh, and there's also a guy and like, I'm gonna make it up because I don't remember what it was like, room 4A or something, right? Because this is like one of those Florida hotels where it's like, like all like one level, like, guys know what I'm talking about, like a

1:03:32 Tom: Shitty Florida motel it's like it's all one level every unit has its own door

1:03:35 Eli: Saw in the

1:03:34 Thomas: I've seen horror movies where Yeah Okay Yeah if I picture a murder then Yes I know what you're talking about. Yeah

1:03:36 Eli: Florida project the very sad movie based on your life Yeah

1:03:40 Tom: Exactly. And so, so we were, we're like, okay, well, we can't really swim on the beach, and the beach itself sucks to be on because there's sand fleas, but I guess we can swim off the pier, like trying to make like lemonade out of this. It's like also, but there's this guy like in 4E, and he's a really creepy weird dude. He comes here every year, don't trust him and don't spend time with him is what he tells

1:03:59 Thomas: I'm sorry who is telling the proprietor of the establishment is telling you this. Oh

1:04:04 Tom: And I, I remember this like I don't remember his exact words he's

1:04:06 Thomas: We got a pedophile murder that like our hands are tied for some reason we got

1:04:09 Tom: Like he's a real creepy dude, don't, don't be alone with him

1:04:12 Thomas: Look if I turn down the business of this pedophile murderer, I, it's what am I gonna do, turn everybody down? I won't have any money, it'll be gone

1:04:19 Tom: And like Long story short, like at that time in my life, I was convinced I wanted to be a marine biologist. I used to read like these scuba magazines and stuff. I was like totally into all this like stuff, so I was actually pretty excited to meet somebody that was like a scuba diver, right? And so this creepy guy, I meet him one day, but I don't know he's the creepy guy from 4E. He's just a guy who like one day like put on scuba shit and like walked into the ocean, right? And I was like, that's awesome, that's like hero shit. And so then I go up to him and try to make friends with him, and it turns out he's the creepy guy in 4E, and he brings me back to his room, and he like, he doesn't rate me, guys, he bringsme back to his room and he loads up but he does load up his spear gun and point it at my chest with a spear gun loaded and He's Like, and so then, yeah, man, and he's like, "Like, and so like, if you were a fish, all I'd have to do is flip this little thing and the spirit goes straight through you." And I was like, awesome.

1:04:59 Eli: Thank you for that little insertion I appreciate that, Tom. Story

1:05:06 Thomas: What? I'm so sorry What?

1:05:19 Tom: Like, nobody knew because I was totally unsupervised all day.

1:05:20 Thomas: Super super cool. It's Awesome. It's crazy. Yeah.

1:05:24 Tom: Yeah, I was. Totally. Because the thing is, like, my mom was so drunk. I was completely unsupervised. My brother and I were totally unssupervised all day. So I look back at that story and like, at that time, I was like, oh, man, I met this really cool scuba diver, and I'm like, no, I I met a guy who like basically pointed a loaded gun at me in a hotel room when I was unsupervised against the advice. It was like, I should, that, that could have ended very badly. Like that could have ended like a fucking episode of Case Files or like Forensic Files or something. And like, that was just like my vacation with mom, you know, like, Hey, guy pointed

1:05:55 Eli: You know, Tom,

1:06:01 Tom: A gun at my chest. Neat.

1:06:02 Eli: Tom, are you aware of the, uh, the screenwriting expression "shave the dark chocolate"? So when someone brings you a script with too much, like, darkness in it, um, the, the, like, it's too dark and you're gonna lose the audience. You say, like, I need you to shave the dark chocolate a little bit.

1:06:09 Thomas: Mean either actually what is that? Oh. I was having a similar thought, but in different terms. Tom, if we're gonna monetize this absolutely hellish upbringing you had, we shouldn't do two stories at once. We should spread it out a little bit.

1:06:30 Eli: I'd say we should have saved it as a comment. I need to I need You to shave the dark chocolate, and he needs you to save the dark chocolat it

1:06:33 Tom: There's There's plenty more but it

1:06:32 Thomas: Save the dark chocolate yeah, for later and it to go against everything I just said, Tom. I have to run something by you, um, and I actually mean this in seriousness, and I'm scared to say this, but, um, think it's possible your mom, or at least her friend, was a sex worker, and that's where you were staying, because you're like, oh, she was this friend that she wasn't really her friend. My mom was homeless, by the way, and, um, when she left, she's like, don't go in. And there was a weird, like, just a spontaneous orgy happening. Yeah, I think

1:06:38 Tom: Was a vacation story it was it made sense to me Okay. Okay. Yeah.

1:06:40 Eli: Is no fun

1:06:57 Tom: Maybe. Yeah, no. Maybe. Yeah. Maybe.

1:07:11 Thomas: That, that could have, could have been, could have been what's going on there.

1:07:11 Tom: That Might be the case, yeah. You know what? You. You know, I never thought about that. Yeah. Very possibly.

1:07:15 Eli: Did the monkey ever make gestures that you didn't understand but now can

1:07:21 Thomas: He wouldn't remember because it didn't make sense to him, you know? Oh,

1:07:23 Eli: Tell did you ever ask, like, where are the, the monkey, monkey's maracas, he's always trying to shake maracas, like, do you remember saying that as a kid? Okay, stop.

1:07:30 Tom: Stopping there.

1:07:38 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.

1:08:17 Thomas: Would have been actually funnier if you're like, yeah it's a one two and a three koi. Just to just to like totally fuck with us. No,