Ep. 156: "The Dumbest Guy I Ever Met"
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Merlin: Hello.
Merlin: Hi, John.
Merlin: Hi, Merlin.
Merlin: How's it going?
Merlin: Good.
Merlin: How are you?
Merlin: Woo!
Woo!
Merlin: You can see me fan myself like an old southern lady.
John: Is it hot down there in California?
Merlin: John Roderick, you are a caution.
Merlin: No, no.
Merlin: It's like every day.
Merlin: You could just take a Sharpie and write 51 on the iPhone screen.
Merlin: It's pretty much 51.
John: 51 degrees.
John: 51 degrees with the breeze off the ocean.
Merlin: Yep, yep, yep.
John: It's beautiful here in Seattle because, as you know, global warming, which is really climate change, let's be honest.
Merlin: It's climate change.
Merlin: We got to work on that.
John: It is turning Seattle into La Jolla, which is wonderful.
John: I love that name, La Jolla.
John: La Jolla, home of Dr. Seuss.
Hmm.
John: We're going to have a beautiful bay here that's going to have sea lions in it and there are going to be a lot of surfers who are very protective of their beach.
John: Locals only.
John: That's right.
John: So that's what's happening here and we're having a great time.
John: Property values are skyrocketing and we couldn't be more excited about it.
Merlin: Oh, my God.
Merlin: What a great time to be a Seattle-ician.
Merlin: Oh, my goodness.
Merlin: Just to administer you, we were worried we could work in a recording this week with the holidays and whatnot.
Merlin: You know what?
Merlin: You hit me on my burner.
Merlin: I said, what time and what do I wear?
Merlin: And that was 10 minutes ago.
John: Boom.
John: I was pulling into a parking lot.
John: And I was like, you know what's missing in my life?
John: You know what is missing right now is Merlin Mann.
John: Oh, man.
John: I need this show.
John: And I pinged you.
John: Ping.
John: You know, the thing is I've started to say, like, I'll ping you.
John: Why don't you ping me?
John: Ping, ping, ping, ping.
John: And it's surprising how many people get upset about the use of the word ping.
John: They don't like being intransitively pinged.
John: They do not want to ping.
John: They do not want to be pinged.
Merlin: Ping is nice in one way.
Merlin: Ping is nice because it exists without respect to how one pings.
Merlin: So that could be a call, could be an email, could be a text.
Merlin: And then it has the attendant problems of not having that specificity.
Merlin: But I'm not – geez, Louise, of all the –
John: stupid stuff that people say ping is far from my biggest right now well the reason i use ping not just because of its association with a with a very famous panda bear
John: But also because of... Tom Clancy.
John: One ping only, Master Li.
John: I finally saw that and I'm so glad.
John: One ping only.
John: It's like, yes, one ping only.
Merlin: Well, let me... May I ask a question?
Mm-hmm.
Merlin: Thank you.
Merlin: First time caller.
Merlin: In the process of going, we probably should get straight to the campaign.
Merlin: Oh, geez.
Merlin: Wow.
Merlin: Well, I don't know.
Merlin: We can save it for later.
Merlin: I have a lot to talk about.
Merlin: Save it for later.
Merlin: By the way, your Anthony Kiedis impersonation was impeccable.
Merlin: I think he does with his arms.
Merlin: That's just disturbing.
John: When you think about the... I mean, I sometimes try to put myself into Anthony Kiedis and see the world through those eyes.
John: And imagine the life that he led.
John: And I just – I feel so warm.
Merlin: Okay.
Merlin: I'm writing something down here.
Merlin: Okay.
John: But anyway, so you want to jump right in.
John: Go ahead.
Merlin: Well, I also want to out myself a little bit because for what I'm going to call the autumn of 1988 –
Merlin: I really liked the Red Hot Chili Peppers.
Merlin: Mother's milk.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: If you see me getting mighty, if you see me getting high.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: Knock me down.
Merlin: Knock me down.
John: I'm not bigger than life.
Merlin: I'm not bigger than life.
John: That was good shit.
Merlin: It was really good.
Merlin: It had the...
Merlin: The truck driver key change toward the end, but I don't mind that.
Merlin: I think they earned it.
John: Yeah, they did.
John: And, you know, that's one of the things about rock and roll, right?
John: A band comes up, you're like, this is interesting.
John: This is novel.
John: Who knows which direction white rap is going to go?
John: It could go a lot of ways.
John: And it seemed like this might be the way.
John: I mean, you know, funk and punk, they sound a lot alike.
Merlin: They are.
John: They're very similar in that sense.
John: Seemed like it might be the way to go.
John: I mean, I remember very distinctly in early 1991 telling everybody I knew that this like sludgy, dumb, heavy rock thing was really yesterday's news and what the music of the future was going to be was upbeat, jangly pop.
John: And I was correct, but it took 10 years of sludgy grunge to get to upbeat Jangly Pop.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: I mean, with the Red Hot Chili Peppers, it was such a weird thing because they were kind of their own thing for a while.
Merlin: They had the reputation for being naked and wearing socks on their Johnsons and stuff like that.
Merlin: And that record – Before Hillel died.
Merlin: Yeah, right.
Merlin: That's why he wants to be knocked down.
Yeah.
Merlin: I think.
Merlin: That was a shame.
Merlin: That was a shame.
Merlin: But we traveled out of town for the weekend.
Merlin: And in Sacramento, man, they've got a radio station there that I didn't even realize how much I wish we had here, which was like 101.1, I think.
Merlin: And it was – you know how a lot of the –
Merlin: more the urban and urban stations will have like the throwbacks you have like a disco weekend they had like it was all like 90s mostly 90s uh hip-hop and it was amazing good stuff and it was a lot of stuff that i was kind of tangentially aware of because my i i had peak hip-hop in probably 1989 or 90 where i was just it was like almost all i listened to was like that and pixies was like a dinosaur that's like all i listened to and
Merlin: But, you know, I wasn't, like, buying it.
Merlin: I think I bought the House of Pain cassette was, like, the last rap thing that I bought.
Merlin: But it was so crazy, though, because, like, song after song after song, a lot of these songs I had only heard sampled.
John: Yes.
Merlin: But stuff I hadn't heard in years, like the ching, ching, ching, ching, ching, ching, Dr. Dre and Snoop Dogg song, I got some
Merlin: pretty good song it is or like uh well uh far side i forgot about far side they were really good and what was what was the far side was killer there and there was a while where far side felt like that was the future the far side was going to be the future almost like picking up the mantle of de la soul and like you know what else oh you know what else to play in the uh the uh kanye west kanye west that gold digger song it's a great tune
John: Or the first Lauryn Hill solo record?
Merlin: That's a bona fide classic.
Merlin: Super classic.
Merlin: Funny part is, though, here's the funny part.
Merlin: So the signal starts fading.
Merlin: I'm like, you know, we flip around.
Merlin: As you drive, yeah.
Merlin: And you know what we heard?
Merlin: Everything, all the words about this particular band make me laugh.
Merlin: Marcy Playground came on.
Merlin: Oh, sure.
Merlin: And I guess I didn't realize when— Harvey Danger contemporaries.
Merlin: Yes, in the year that didn't exist, 1997.
Merlin: That's right.
Merlin: They had—do you remember their hit?
Merlin: I Want Candy, right?
Merlin: I smell sex and candy.
Merlin: Really, you do?
Merlin: It smells to me like you have a CD of Nirvana Unplugged is what you smell.
John: Yeah, I shared a shuttle bus ride with those guys one time from the hotel to the festival.
John: And I found them to be very smirky.
John: Oh, no.
John: I'm sorry to hear that.
John: Yeah, they were smirky.
Merlin: My only point being, it's funny how Madeline and I heard that song and we're like, you know, it really sounds kind of a lot like Nirvana.
Merlin: Like Nirvana Unplugged.
Merlin: Nirvana Unplugged specifically.
Merlin: And we're like, God, when was this?
Merlin: What is this, like 93, 94?
Merlin: 97.
Merlin: 97.
Merlin: The year that didn't exist.
Merlin: The year that didn't exist.
Merlin: That was still happening.
Merlin: Yeah.
Yeah.
Merlin: It was not nearly as fresh as Dr. Dre impugning that you not forget about him.
John: Well, I mean...
John: I'm actually literally having a music stroke right now.
Merlin: Well, I just said impune when I meant importune.
Merlin: I'm not sure I'm much better.
Merlin: I think I popped the stack on my thesaurus a little bit.
John: Well, because ever since you mentioned it, I've been just sitting here with the constant repeat of, those who break the law go straight to the house of pain.
John: It's just been shouting in my head.
John: I don't remember having earmarked such a loud little place in my brain for that to be stored.
Merlin: It's like the Sarlacc.
Merlin: The Sarlacc eats you and then like digests you like over like a thousand years, 5,000 years.
Merlin: Like there are these little people that the Sarlacc of my mind ate that I've completely forgotten were being digested.
Merlin: And then suddenly it comes popping up and you go, oh my God, it's just, it's like you're there again.
John: I had one of those this morning as I was coming into town.
John: I saw under a bridge there was a homeless person had built a little sort of enclosure for themselves out of tarps and bags and shopping carts and so forth.
John: And they had a bicycle chained to the handle of one of the carts that was supporting their pretty elaborate housing construction.
John: And the bicycle was...
John: a very old specialized that was a bike i had once owned and as i drove past i just caught a glimpse of this bike and i suddenly had this flashback to 1987. it was early days of mountain bikes and i wanted to buy a mountain bike
John: But I didn't have any money.
John: So I had a friend who had a friend who had a cabin up at Big Lake in Alaska, which is quite a ways from Anchorage up to Big Lake.
John: Big Lake was where all the rich kids, their dads all had cabins on Big Lake and you could fly up there in a float plane or you could drive up there and...
John: It was one of the few lakes you could drive to, right?
John: Most lakes you couldn't, but Big Lake was accessible.
John: And it was where the jet skiing happened and the water skiing and so forth.
John: So I drive up to Big Lake with my friend Sheffer.
John: Sheffer knows a guy who's got a mountain bike for sale.
John: And I get up there and it's this specialized...
John: which was not properly a mountain bike, but it was one of those early bikes.
Merlin: I remember being a pretty not cheap and pretty hardy road bike.
John: Well, so this had stand-up handlebars.
John: It was built to look like a mountain bike.
John: But it was a very upright riding position.
John: And I think it was before – I don't know if you remember this, but early days of mountain biking, there was a lot of question about what the frame geometry was going to eventually look like for mountain bikes.
John: There was some argument that you spend more time riding uphill than down.
John: So the frame geometry should reflect a riding position that was like level if you were climbing.
Yeah.
John: And there was a lot of different radical design ideas in early mountain bikes before it all kind of settled down to, to the overall general frame.
John: And this was like, this was actually probably best described as a dad bike, but to my mid eighties eyes, it looked like a mountain bike because it had these cues, these visual cues, the, the straight handlebars, the knobby tires and,
John: The few other things, you know, Shimano components, all these things that I was excited about.
John: And so the guy only wanted a hundred bucks for it because he had bought himself a proper mountain bike.
John: And this was just a bike for riding around town, but I didn't know the difference.
John: And I remember buying – but anyway, the first thing we did before any of the negotiation, before any transaction happened, the first thing we did was we all smoked a ton of pot.
John: And then we were all really baked.
John: And this was at an age – I mean I was always very strongly affected by pot.
John: And I would get so stoned –
John: that I could not function in any right way.
John: I would become incapacitated by being too high.
John: I hate that.
John: We got stoned, and then we're negotiating a transaction, which I could not handle my half of it.
John: And then he said, you know, like, here's the bike.
John: It's 100 bucks.
John: And I was like, duh, duh, duh.
John: And he said, do you want to take it for a test ride?
John: And I was like, you know, yes.
John: And I got on the bike.
John: And not understanding how mountain bikes worked, not ever having been on one, I assumed that you could just drive anywhere on it.
John: And so I rode 15 feet up the road, off the road into the ditch, into what was four feet of standing tractor mud.
What?
John: And in my mind's eye, I saw myself floating across the top of this tractor.
John: You sound like a meme.
John: Is it as bad as it sounded?
John: It's worse.
John: On top of my new super mountain bike, I was just going to like go through this stuff, just floating on top of it like a superstar.
John: And I went right into this tractor mud.
John: endowed over the handlebars just into the mud so that you could only see the tips of my shoes and the end of my nose.
John: And you have to know that these guys up at Big Lake, they were like true Alaskan mountain bike bro, like water ski dudes.
John: And Sheffer was too.
John: You know, they all had Birkenstocks.
John: They all...
John: knew about all this stuff, right?
John: And so I'm already, I'm already repping that I can't hold my weed because I'm too baked and everybody can tell I'm too baked and I don't know anything about mountain bikes and then I go over the handlebars into them.
John: I just, I rode down the hill into a thing where any normal sensible person would have looked and said, what are you doing, dude?
John: Don't go down.
John: What do you think?
John: And then just splat, right?
John: And they're,
John: It's not that they're trying not to laugh.
John: It's so stupid it isn't even funny.
John: It's not that they're laughing.
John: They are seriously like, what is wrong with this person?
John: And then they get me out of the mud.
John: They clean me off.
Merlin: I'll take it.
John: And then they said, somehow we're all standing around, right?
John: And we're going to go, I think, although now I'm wet and cold, we're going to go out on their boat.
John: for a minute and somehow I screw up their boat like I got in the boat wrong I sat in the driver's seat and turned on the engine there wasn't any gas in it or suddenly the boat motor is smoking and everybody's yelling at me
John: and i don't i'm not proud of my performance that day and i remember that i remember these guys looking at me and like one of them saying like you're like the dumbest guy i've ever met and what's amazing about it is that those guys are still alive probably they're no older than i am they're in the world somewhere
John: These two guys in their mid-40s, probably living in Alaska, and if my name comes up in conversation, those two guys have one really fantastic story about what an idiot I am.
John: And they're not wrong.
John: I am, in that respect, the dumbest guy either of those two guys has ever met.
Wow.
John: So that was my little like, I'm glad to know that I stored that whole very hazy story somewhere in my head to come out at the suggestion of this specialized bike that I caught out of the corner of my eye.
Merlin: Oh, and that all just came flashing back.
John: It all just the entire thing.
John: And I think I'm confusing it with another time that Peter Nosek and I went up to Big Lake.
John: And also got into trouble.
John: Pretty much every time I went to Big Lake, I got in trouble with somebody.
John: And I realized I needed to just stop going to Big Lake.
John: That was not ever going to be my scene.
John: I went to a party at a cabin one time at Big Lake, and I showed up, and they were all the people that had gone to my high school, but they were all the beautiful ones.
John: And for whatever reason, that day, for some other reason, I'm not sure why, but I chose to wear a tuxedo.
John: And I showed up at this lake cabin where everyone else is in bikinis and jams.
John: You remember jams?
Merlin: Of course I do.
John: Yeah.
John: Everybody's in jams and bikinis and they're all jumping off the dock and they're all like jet skiing and having sex with each other.
Merlin: They're in an Alaskan version of like beach blanket bingo and you're in the rat pack.
John: And I'm there and I'm probably 25 pounds over my normal weight and I'm wearing a brown tuxedo.
John: Yeah.
John: And I had long hair.
John: And it was just like people were walking.
John: You sound like Brian Wilson.
John: I looked like Brian Wilson.
John: But I didn't have the good sense to either stay in the car or drive back to the town or whatever.
John: I walked right down on the dock.
John: And so I'm standing on the dock.
John: I'm standing on the dock.
John: It's an Abercrombie and Fitch ad all around me.
John: And it was one of those things.
John: This used to be true all the time.
John: My mere presence in the scene.
John: bummed everyone else out.
John: Oh, come on.
John: Really?
John: My mere presence there made sure that no one was going to have sex that afternoon because everybody suddenly lost the mood.
John: And so, you know, like all the dude bros were looking at me like, dude, just like get out of here or something like just go.
John: I don't know.
John: Go for a walk down the dirt road or something.
John: And I'm like, what do you mean?
John: Oh, and I was also smoking
John: And probably like drinking whiskey out of a milk bottle.
John: Everything about me was meant for another place and probably a place that did not exist.
John: Maybe a place that would never exist.
John: oh god it's so brutal all i had to do was just see this this bicycle on the street today and it's all there it's all waiting for me and there's nobody there who would kind of pull you aside and go you know you need to a couple of these interesting affectations and things you might want to just maybe leave those on the counter next time nobody could nobody could because because there wasn't a single other person at the party i mean my friend peter loved to take me places where he could turn me loose like
John: the elephant man he he he loved he loved you know peter was always peter was was he had a good sense of what to do how to handle himself he was not like ever the chicest person but he knew how to be at any party and seem like he belonged there all right um and but peter loved to roll me into places and turn me loose and it was and and people at the party would be like
John: Who invited this gorilla?
John: And Peter was happy to claim responsibility but somehow was able also to disavow all my crimes.
John: So he could take credit for having brought this monster to the party.
John: But I mean he got chased out of a lot of parties too.
John: as my chaperone.
Merlin: But it's also, it's different to, I don't know.
Merlin: Maybe it's a different kind of thing, but I feel like there's this certain kind of feeling where, and I mean, I had, especially when I was like junior high and some high school, I was so freaking weird.
Merlin: Because I kind of wanted to be weird, but I didn't realize that the look I was coming up with wasn't really pulled together too well.
Merlin: And it combined too many disparate elements.
Merlin: I always felt like I never quite knew how to comb my hair to make it look like other people's hair.
Merlin: Even when I wore theoretically the same kinds of clothes as other people, it didn't look right.
Merlin: I still looked like me.
Merlin: I would kill for that ability to just be an average person at an event.
Merlin: And not feel like a bizarre social experiment.
John: Me too.
John: And particularly when young people started to make out with each other and want to go make out with each other and want to go have sex with each other.
John: I had a perverse pride in being the...
John: the last man standing right you're in a you're in a room and everybody goes off into the into the dark back corners it's like you won the saddest game of musical chairs yeah and i'm sitting out there you know i'm sitting out there going through the their parents jazz lps going wow this is a very rare record
John: This is an extremely rare album.
John: We heard you, John.
John: Hello?
John: We heard you.
John: Hello?
John: And it never felt... Because then when I started to hang out with weirdos, I hoped that the weirdos would...
John: That I'd found my people.
John: But of course, that's not true either.
Merlin: There's still an ethos and a methodology even to being a weirdo.
Merlin: Like being a weirdo in the right way.
John: Yeah.
John: And the weirdos want to go make out with each other.
John: And I desperately wanted to go make out with somebody.
John: I just did not know how to affect that.
Merlin: I never felt like I had any access to that.
Merlin: I mean, people who would just meet at a party and make out and then go their separate ways.
Merlin: I mean, I might as well have like wanted to sprout wings.
Merlin: That seems so foreign to me.
John: Yeah.
John: Yeah.
John: Particularly when you could be arguing about LBJ in the – well, and a lot of times arguing about LBJ in the mirror –
John: because you couldn't find anybody else to argue about LBJ with you.
John: And the few times when I would be at a party, there would be an attractive woman there.
John: We would start talking.
John: We would start talking about LBJ.
John: She would be really smart on the topic of LBJ.
John: that made it somehow even worse.
John: I would have to throw myself off the balcony to get away from this fascinating, charming woman who wanted to talk about LBJ with me.
Merlin: In that case, you might have just been like a temporary safe harbor at the party.
Merlin: Like somebody she could talk to and not feel hassled or not feel, you know.
John: Well, no, she had finally found someone to talk to about LBJ too.
John: Oh my God, that makes it more tragic.
John: And all the more tragic that then I had to run out.
John: And as I was running out,
John: The last decision I made as I was running out of the house was to steal everybody's shoes.
John: I never even just ran out.
John: I also took everybody's shoes and then was remembered for the rest of the year as that fucking guy who...
John: Who stole everybody's shoes at the party.
John: The fat guy in a brown tuxedo who stole everybody's shoes.
John: He was talking to that other weird girl for a long time.
John: And then he stole everybody's shoes, including hers.
John: And didn't do anything with them.
John: Just put them in the trunk of his car and drove around with them for a year.
John: I have to say that it's because I went to kindergarten when I was four.
John: And if I had waited a year...
John: Maybe my whole life would be different.
John: Maybe I would have been so much better if I had just spent that extra year being a kid.
Merlin: You may be kidding, but I think about that a lot.
Merlin: And it was instrumental in our decision to have our kid hold back.
Merlin: We redshirted her for a year.
John: I am powerfully not kidding.
John: I feel like if I had been...
John: Because there were kids.
John: I mean, I had a good friend in high school who was in 11th grade when I was in 12th grade, and he and I had the exact same birthday.
John: And he was Rico Suave in his own grade.
John: And I was – I mean, by senior year, I had figured out a way to be part of the culture and part of the class and to be somebody who mattered.
John: But I was not ever –
Merlin: mature enough to to play the reindeer games you know what i mean oh i do and but you think about like even just like a normal i think about i've told you before i think i really see this in fifth graders at my kids school because it's you know it's kindergarten to fifth grade and the thing is the the standard deviation on maturity in fifth graders is nothing short of mind-boggling
Merlin: There are a couple guys, but especially there are these three girls who are obviously in charge of the school.
Merlin: And two of these girls are taller than I am, and they look about 16, and they're in fifth grade.
Merlin: And then, of course, there are a lot of kids that are just random kids with boogers, and then there are some fifth graders...
Merlin: My daughter is taller than, and she's in first grade.
Merlin: So you think about that, just even taking that into account.
Merlin: But then imagine adding or subtracting a year from that, and you can see how completely bananas that can get.
John: So bananas.
Merlin: If it weighs against you, the funny thing is, my kid, this is her last week of school.
Merlin: She's ending first grade this week, and this is her fifth year of being in school, which I sometimes think about, and I think how strange and different that is than when I was a kid, where she had three years of preschool.
Merlin: We had her do a graduate year in preschool, and that was the year we said, hey, we love this place.
Merlin: We really like this place.
Merlin: She was kind of shy, and we thought –
Merlin: My wife started school on the early side.
Merlin: I started school on the late side.
Merlin: And we both agreed that I had the better deal.
Merlin: Everybody I know who started later – and I think there's a thing today of like, oh, you should push your kid harder.
Merlin: Put your tiny little four-year-old in kindergarten.
Merlin: Whatever.
Merlin: That's everybody's personal choice.
Merlin: Like if your kid can read really well and they're four, it seems like a no-brainer.
Merlin: Don't hold them back.
Merlin: But I think about that now.
Merlin: And like it's – like when I was a kid –
Merlin: I mean, let's be honest.
Merlin: You stayed at home with your mom mostly or with a family member.
Merlin: I did not know that many kids who weren't Catholic that went to school before kindergarten.
Merlin: Almost all the Catholic kids went to preschool or nursery school as they called it then.
Merlin: But I mean, so I mean, now I think about, oh, my God, it's no wonder I was such a weirdo.
Merlin: I was at home with my mom all day.
Merlin: and playing my own little personal reindeer games and talking into the mirror about LBJ.
Merlin: And then, hey, here I am.
Merlin: And I was a good reader and stuff.
Merlin: Like I was a smart kid, but I show up in fifth grade and I was like, you know, I remember just feeling like everybody here, I've said this before also, but I really feel like everybody here got a manual that I didn't get.
Merlin: I have no idea how to conduct myself with these other kids.
Merlin: I have no idea how to scrap for status, even in kindergarten.
Merlin: And now, I mean, it's weird because, I mean, the truth is that those three years of school were a really good thing for my kid because she showed up in kindergarten and she kind of already knew like how a day goes.
Merlin: It seems like it seems I mean, I'm not criticizing, but like that's I mean, I don't know.
Merlin: I feel like I could have used that.
Merlin: I really could have used a remedial course on how to be a little kid.
Merlin: And that would have that would help for the beginning.
John: My God.
John: Yeah.
John: A remedial course and how to be a little kid.
John: I think I still would have benefited from it my second year in college.
Merlin: Oh, well, you know, the thing is, you're kind of by the time I'm these are broad numbers here, but I think by the time if you've got a relatively stable home life.
Merlin: And like a relatively, you know, stable, normal public school.
Merlin: I think by third or fourth grade, most kids know how stuff should work.
Merlin: Like you pick up an awful lot when you're a little kid.
Merlin: And if you choose to do something different from what's expected of you, you do so with full knowledge of what the consequences or, you know.
Merlin: ups or downs of that are but i think there's a latent period where you get you just get so goofy for a while and then maybe you come back and maybe like oh you know sophomore year of high school like i kind of got it together or whatever like every kid's different but you're totally right second year of college is a bloodbath
John: I feel like my sophomore year in high school was the first one where I started to kind of get it together.
John: But I remember in grade school, there were two kids.
John: One when I was in grade school in Seattle, like fourth grade.
John: And he was small, but the girls loved him.
John: And he was quiet and smooth and cool.
John: He was like the kid in Bad News Bears that drove the motorcycle.
John: He wasn't bad.
John: He wasn't good.
John: He was cool in fourth grade.
John: And I was big even then and loud even then.
John: And I remember going over to his house a couple of times.
John: He was nice to me.
John: But there was cool in him that was never going to rub off on me.
John: And he was comfortable in it.
John: He was comfortable with fourth grade girls, but he wasn't playing with them.
John: He wasn't playing house with them.
John: He was already cool enough that they had crushes on him.
John: A whole different concept.
Merlin: But it sounds like he's got a certain kind of surprising amount of agency.
Merlin: Yeah.
John: He talked to his parents.
John: I'm not sure if he called his parents by their first names, but it felt like that in his home.
John: And he was just self-possessed in a way that I wouldn't be for decades.
John: And then when I moved to Alaska, there was another...
John: He was very small compared to me.
John: And, you know, like his name was Brian Namany.
John: And Lori Basler loved Brian Namany.
John: And I loved Lori Basler.
John: And there was this terrible, it caused me to not like Brian Namany anymore.
John: Even though Brian Nemony was perfectly good to me and made no, he made no overture to Lori Basler.
John: He just was himself cool and small and blonde and had long straight hair parted in the middle that he combed with a goody comb.
John: And he was good at roller skating.
John: But he was just, he didn't, he wasn't pushy.
John: He was just cool.
John: And I couldn't understand.
John: I mean, I could very much understand what Lori Basler saw in him.
John: I couldn't understand how to make myself be different.
John: And the girl who liked me was Chris Fayette.
John: And Chris Fayette had headgear and big freckles.
John: And when I think about it now, I should have just loved Chris Fayette.
John: That would have made everything so much better for me in my life.
John: But I couldn't love Chris Fayette.
John: I had to love Lori Basler.
Merlin: Lori Basler has a very crushable name.
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Merlin: Squarespace.
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Merlin: Lori Bazler.
Merlin: Like me and Carrie Colomer.
Merlin: Isn't that a crushable name?
Merlin: Carrie Colomer.
Merlin: Yeah, she had a twin sister, Sherry.
Merlin: Sherry and Carrie Colomer.
John: Carrie and Sherry Colomer.
Merlin: C-A-R-I.
John: Oh, my God.
Merlin: You don't even know how many times I wrote the name Carrie Colomer over and over.
Merlin: I can only imagine.
Merlin: I feel like I got this close, like this close.
Merlin: But I just I don't I wasn't in I wasn't in her league.
Merlin: And, you know, and the thing is, what we're describing partly is you have this you get this certain stink on you.
Merlin: Maybe not in the literal sense, but there's a certain kind of like when you talk about cool, like, you know, who's the paragon of cool?
Merlin: Maybe Miles Davis.
Merlin: Like, what is cool?
Merlin: Cool is, like you say, agency being self-possessed.
Merlin: And it's not – the thing is acting like a hipster doofus who's really negative about everything is a kind of a reflection or shadow of cool.
Merlin: But the real cool is somebody who's their own person.
Merlin: To me, that's what cool is.
Merlin: I mean Captain Beefheart is cool in his way.
Merlin: There's a lot of people who are really cool.
Merlin: But I mean like the thing is –
John: That's right, the mascara snake.
John: It's just that that kind of cool in fifth grade.
Merlin: That's why I still refuse to put on headphones when I record.
Merlin: I just listen to the vibrations.
Merlin: But here's the thing.
Merlin: What I'm trying to get at is that in my parlance, I spent so many years trying to solve the wrong problem.
Merlin: The problem that I wanted to solve was why can't I make girls like me?
Merlin: Or, like, you know, it starts out as simple as, like, why aren't all girls into me?
Merlin: Like, I, you know, I have lots of trading cards and I'm really cool.
Merlin: But then that becomes this more, like, functional, like, how do I get girls to like me?
Merlin: Which is, like, in so many ways, like, a horrible, it's an understandable question, but it's not the right question.
Merlin: Like, the right question, which would never occur to me for many years, was, like, how do I become a more interesting version of myself?
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: How do I actually increase my – now I sound like I'm in the seduction community.
Merlin: How do I increase my value, I guess?
Merlin: But you know what I'm saying?
Merlin: What you really learn – You've got to neg people.
Merlin: Even if you're working with a six and you don't have a wingman, you really want to get in there and neg.
Merlin: You're learning.
Merlin: You're learning, John.
Merlin: Neg them.
John: I think in my case, the thing that I needed to learn and the thing that I still – my whole life I needed to learn was just shh.
John: Oh, God.
John: Leave it.
John: Leave it.
John: And I just needed to learn that when I was four, when I was 14, when I was 40.
John: If I could have just ever, ever, ever managed to just shush, shush, shush, shush.
John: Everything would have been fine.
John: I just couldn't.
John: I didn't have any shushing.
Merlin: I had a very wise partner at one point.
Merlin: And she said something about makeup.
Merlin: She said, here's the thing.
Merlin: Take out all the makeup you want to use, put it on the counter, and then put half of it away.
Merlin: And that's how much makeup you should use.
Merlin: right and that goes for so many things in the physical world that goes for hair gel that goes for alcohol that goes for so many things take out all you think you want and then put away half and just use that half and stick with it and like that is so true like in life you know like because part of it is like when you go when you go to a party like you can you can have the brown tuxedo or you can have the milk bottle full of whiskey or you can steal the shoes
Merlin: But you don't want to be a carny, right?
Merlin: Right?
Merlin: Some of it is, like, you're right, though.
Merlin: Simmer it down, you know?
Merlin: Just slow your roll a little bit.
Merlin: And, like, you don't, like, I'm talking to me now, like, you don't have to tell them everything you know about the making of Tommy.
Merlin: Let's keep some of that for later.
Merlin: You don't have to talk about everything you know about Tom Seaver.
Merlin: Like, let it, you know, let's sit on that and you'll have more to talk about next time.
John: Yeah.
John: Yeah.
John: For me, I think it was, well, obviously I do not, I do not look like an Abercrombie and Fitch model.
John: And so I'd better wear this brown tuxedo because that is a very, very good armor.
John: Uh, it's super armor against anybody ever wanting me to take off my clothes and jump in the water.
Yeah.
John: And I also hate being in a brown tuxedo at a swimming party.
John: So I had better be drinking whiskey in copious amounts.
John: But I'm not just going to stand around drinking whiskey.
John: I'm going to drink whiskey out of a milk bottle because fuck the world.
Yeah.
John: And then I'm going to steal everybody's shoes because I'm really in pain.
John: I'm in a lot of pain.
John: And all I can think of to do is steal their shoes because I can't fight them all.
Merlin: There's a...
Merlin: A distinction that lots of people make in different ways, and I know I really differ from a lot of my good, smart friends in this one way, but I've come to feel that one distinction between being a geek and being a nerd, it may have to do with topic, but I think it has to do with degree and self-awareness in some ways.
Merlin: Like and, you know, not that it's an important distinction, but in my head, it's one thing to be a geek about something like you're kind of a geek about LBJ.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: You could be a geek about Tom Seaver.
Merlin: Like you're somebody who has maybe like even like a surpassingly high level of interest, expertise and knowledge, but especially interest about that thing.
Merlin: But, you know, you really want to talk about it.
Merlin: But that by itself doesn't make you a nerd.
Merlin: I think what makes you a nerd in the negative connotation is that having an insensitivity to how much other people care about your geeky topic.
Merlin: And that's the part where you go from being – and you come up with any kind of disparaging name you want.
Merlin: But it's one thing to be really into stamp collecting and nobody ever finds out.
Merlin: And it's another thing to –
Merlin: buttonhole somebody at a party and tell them about, you know, every kind of stamp that you've ever seen and what it's called and correct them when they get something wrong and all that kind of stuff.
Merlin: And it's really, I think it can be very difficult.
Merlin: I don't know if you see any of yourself in that, but that's definitely what's true for me.
Merlin: And as a fellow digger in, John Roderick, you might appreciate, I think part of it is like when you get pushback from somebody, your inclination is not to go, oh, that's a good note.
Merlin: I should leave it.
Merlin: It's more like you dig in even further.
Merlin: You haven't made your case yet.
Merlin: That's what I do.
Merlin: I'm sorry, I probably didn't explain this well.
Merlin: Let me really explain the Tom Seaver situation to you.
Merlin: And that's when you become a nuisance because you're insensitive to what else is happening in the room.
Merlin: And now you're no longer self-possessed.
Merlin: Now you're just a weirdo.
John: You know, years later...
John: Or maybe it was years earlier.
John: I don't remember.
John: I'm getting confused now.
John: But no, it was about the same time.
John: Wait a minute.
Merlin: What are we talking about here?
Merlin: We're talking about like late 80s?
Merlin: Late 80s.
Merlin: Okay.
John: I was downtown in Anchorage.
John: On a beautiful summer day.
John: And so you have just this proliferation of flowers.
John: And because the sun is up all day, like flowers just go crazy.
John: And so I was downtown.
John: I was walking on 4th Avenue, right by the 4th Avenue Theater, right in the center of town.
John: And I bumped into some friends and I'm standing and talking to them.
John: A little group of people gathered there, and we're all out of high school now.
John: We're in college, and we feel like the young people who are the next generation of young folks.
John: And this girl that went to a different school, but whom I'd met at debate competitions, she went to Diamond High School.
John: Her name was Debbie.
John: And she was the star of the Diamond debate team.
John: And she comes along and we're all standing there and chatting with one another.
John: And she was with a friend of a friend.
John: And so, you know, we're a group of people in our, I mean, we're probably 20, right?
John: And Debbie Smith and I start talking and we break off from the rest of the group.
John: And Debbie Smith is half – she is half Japanese and very, very, very, very smart person that I had always been impressed with her at debate meets.
John: She was like very together.
John: And I was very unimpressive at debate meets because I debated kind of like I talk to you now, which is to say with no preparation.
John: Uh, but I understood Robert's rules of order, but beyond that, I believed that I could debate any topic just on the, you know, like flip a coin and go style.
John: Uh, Debbie was very prepared and she and I like wandered off from this group and pretty soon we had arranged to go on a date and
John: And we went on a date to see the movie Born on the Fourth of July.
John: So whenever that movie came out, that is when this is happening.
Merlin: Yeah, it feels like 1988 or so.
John: Somewhere around there.
John: Yeah.
John: And then we had a good time on the date and we went on a second date.
John: And the entire time I'm thinking, what is going on here?
John: Debbie Smith is one of the very, very popular together people.
John: And then I realized that she went to Diamond, so she didn't know anything about me.
John: And somehow, to her, I seemed like one of the good people.
John: I seemed like one of the Abercrombie and Fitch people, maybe?
John: It was very confusing.
John: But I really enjoyed her.
John: I was just overthinking it.
John: This is one of those moments where somebody should have just said, shh, just be with Debbie Smith.
Merlin: Because as much as you're aware that it's a fresh start, you're also still kind of mentally recalibrating, like, don't screw this up like you've screwed this up before.
John: Don't screw this up.
John: You're going to screw this up.
John: And then she and I liked each other, and we made out, and we made out again.
John: And then it was wonderful.
John: And this was happening in the summer, so what could be better?
John: And then she invited me to a party at her house.
John: And I was like, I can't wait.
John: Of course I'll come to the party.
John: And I came to the party, and I believe that I probably wore a bow tie because it was a party.
John: And I was a person who understood that if you were invited to a party, you wear a bow tie at this time.
John: And I showed up and all of the fashionable people were there.
John: And when I arrived, it was clear that none of them realized that I knew Debbie Smith.
John: There was no reason I would have known her.
John: And so, honestly, I got out of my car and I bumped into a guy I'd known for years and he had a look on his face and then said, just, he blurted out, like, what are you doing here?
John: Like, how did you get in here?
Yeah.
John: And I was like, and I'm thinking to myself, I'm Debbie's boyfriend or like close to it.
John: And so I had this strange feeling of like, I belong here more than all of these other people, but at the same time, I don't.
John: And she was really glad to see me and came over.
John: And I'm standing there and everyone is staring at me like, why is he here?
John: Why is she being affectionate to him?
John: All of this is wrong.
John: And so I started drinking.
John: Oh, no.
John: Because –
John: It was all I understood to do.
John: Even though she was being cool with you, you were really uncomfortable.
John: She was great.
John: I was really uncomfortable standing there because I knew all of her friends and I knew them to be people who understood that I did not belong there.
John: And they were like trying to communicate to her like, what is he doing?
John: Why are you with him?
John: Stop it.
John: And I mean, I'm seeing all this.
John: I'm not imagining it.
John: And she's like, what are you talking about?
John: He's great.
John: He knows all about LBJ.
John: And I knew that she was good and that the connection that we had could have survived this because she was growing out of that crowd anyway.
John: She was headed off on her own path.
John: We were all headed on our own path.
John: This was all old stuff.
John: stuff that we were capable of shedding.
John: But I started to get drunk because I was terrified.
Merlin: And was this already at a point when you were – you said from the beginning you were cognizant that there was never going to be a one beer night for you.
John: Oh, no.
John: And in a situation like this where it was just like, you know, I'm going to show everybody.
John: and I got drunk and at a certain point, you know, drunk, I was like, I confronted Debbie and said, did you just invite me here to, to, uh, to embarrass me?
John: She was like, what are you talking about?
John: She had no idea my history with all these people.
John: And because she sort of moved in that circle effortlessly, she didn't understand.
John: She didn't see them as, uh,
John: as exclusive she didn't see them as people who would shun somebody for being fat or for being a nerd or for stealing their shoes or wearing a bow tie or wearing a bow tie like she she thought that the bow tie was charming she didn't understand that they saw it as a further example of how i did not understand how to fit in and was never going to and
John: And and the whole thing just the whole thing just turned into a disaster.
John: And, you know, and Debbie wanted she wanted us to go to get get away from those people and let's go upstairs and let's just and I was and I had I had so much baggage.
John: I was the one that turned it into a scene between us about how I was never going to be somebody that she would like.
John: And she was like, I'm not asking you to be anything.
John: And it was just terrible.
John: All this because I saw that stupid bicycle under an overpass today.
John: Now I'm reliving 1988, the last year I would ever want to relive.
John: I did so much stupid shit in 1988.
John: Oh, if I could, let's see, if I could erase three years.
Merlin: Should they be contiguous?
John: No, I think you could erase three years out of your life.
John: Any three years, go.
Merlin: Oh, man, that's a good one.
Merlin: Well, I'm not going to weasel word this.
Merlin: I made a lot of terrible decisions in 1988.
Merlin: I tried to level up as a grown-up in a lot of ways that year and failed colossally in ways that I didn't actually learn much from.
Merlin: People always want you to learn from your mistakes.
Merlin: I think that's a lot of hagiography.
Merlin: I was just dumb.
Merlin: I was just really dumb.
Merlin: Okay, now you pick one.
Merlin: I'll think of another one.
John: Let's see.
John: 88?
John: 7, right, 87, 88, 88, 89.
John: So I can't think of a better year to a race than 1988.
John: If I could have a do-over, 1988 would be a really good year to do over.
John: And, you know, for my second choice, I kind of feel like
John: You know, maybe 2008.
Merlin: Oh, is that a buy year for you?
John: Yeah, it was just like a year that I feel like I could have done so much more in 2008.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: I'm going to take – I was going to say 79.
Merlin: I think I'm going to go with 1980 and maybe 2009 where I don't want to erase it, but I wish I could get a do-over on this.
John: Yeah.
John: Maybe what I'm thinking 2008, it's actually 2009 is what I'm talking about.
John: But I feel like we should agree on three years.
John: Oh, yeah.
John: I feel like there's strength in numbers.
John: So 88, 2009, and then we have to pick one more year.
John: Why 1980?
John: Yeah.
Merlin: 1980 was more – I was more a victim of circumstance in 1980.
Merlin: But that's the – 79 is when my mom remarried.
Merlin: I mean, my mom was making the best decision she could.
Merlin: She remarried this guy who turned out to be awful.
Merlin: And we moved to Florida from Ohio.
Merlin: So, you know, I – and I went to military school.
Merlin: A lot of the pop music was cocaine-y.
Merlin: A lot of it very memorable.
Merlin: You get your Hall & Oates and stuff.
Merlin: But 1980 for me was a very tough –
Merlin: I mean, it was the year without a clutch.
Merlin: I mean, it just felt like all the gears were grinding so hard.
Merlin: If everything in my life had been perfect, you know, and like I was, if everything had supported the kind of person I needed to be, it still would have been a hard year because I was 13.
Merlin: But given what I was up against, it's the year I kind of gave up on life in a lot of ways, in a way that would dog me definitely through high school.
Merlin: That I really feel like I didn't, I never completely came out of it, but I didn't really come out of it really until like I went to college.
Merlin: Where I was kind of forced to like reboot.
Merlin: And I did have that fresh opportunity to be like, you know, and it helps that I went to a school where it was okay to be a weirdo.
Merlin: Where actually I was not a weirdo.
Merlin: I was a pretty, you know, straight normal kid.
Merlin: But that was, anyway, that's my 1980s.
John: You know, if you said the 80-81 school year, 1980 starting in September.
Merlin: I have no affection or attachment to that at all.
Merlin: I could join you for 80-81.
John: Let's do 80-81.
John: Let's do September to September, 80-81.
John: And then I'm with you 100%.
John: That was 7th grade.
John: And 7th grade was no, oh, oh, good.
John: Yeah.
Merlin: No.
Merlin: I'm pleased to see some interest in uptake in our thought technology around junior high concierge services.
Merlin: Uh-huh.
Merlin: Uh-huh.
Merlin: There's an opportunity there.
John: You know, and all of this, it feels like when I talk about a do-over, I'm very curious to know whether that do-over would be, if we're going to allow it, if we're going to appeal to the parole board.
John: Yeah.
John: And say, do over on 80-81 school year.
John: Are they going to say, okay, it's just alternate universe, John and Merlin.
John: It's still your dumb seventh grade brain.
John: We're just going to set you in motion like 30 seconds later.
John: So it's a completely different...
Merlin: But yeah, you made a crack about this on Twitter the other day about wishing you could go back with all the stuff you know now.
John: Yeah, right.
John: I mean, that's the thing.
John: If I could go back and be my own concierge and every week have a sit down with myself and say, listen.
Merlin: I don't think we can allow that.
Merlin: I think it's a reset of the timeline.
Merlin: Reset of the timeline or can you actually go back and inhabit your earlier self?
Merlin: I don't think so.
Merlin: Well, here's the thing.
Merlin: I think you have to go back with the same knowledge and stuff that you had at the time.
Merlin: I think maybe you get to inhabit like an African-American janitor who gets to give you wisdom sometimes.
John: Oh, you're saying that there's a Morgan Freeman character?
Merlin: Yes.
Merlin: Let me put it to you this way, John.
Merlin: What if, what if in the timeline that actually that we know of that already existed, what if you already had gone back there and you just didn't listen to Morgan Freeman because you thought you had it all wired?
John: Well, here's the problem.
Merlin: Would you know if you were Morgan Freeman back then?
John: I know for a fact that no Morgan Freeman ever deigned to give me advice.
John: I was starved for adult advice.
John: Maybe you should leave the bow tie at home.
John: Every single God character in my story was busy talking to another kid.
John: Because I'm walking by in a brown tuxedo and they're telling somebody to improve their golf swing in a completely different episode.
John: No one ever stopped me.
John: And the teachers that I had that were good, they didn't understand – I mean a lot of them were younger teachers who –
John: who felt like the way they needed to approach me and, and deal with me was to, how do I put this?
John: Like I was so precocious that, that, that the adult response was often like, you think you're pretty cool, don't you?
Merlin: Oh, you like, you were, you were like a, they were like a little dog and you're like a rat.
Merlin: You were like threatening to them.
John: Yeah, yeah.
John: And their best, you know, they had the best intentions, which was to say, things aren't what you think they are.
John: You know, the world isn't like you think it is.
John: But the way that they approached me was always in that tone of like...
John: Hey, Mr. Cool, why don't you sit down and listen once in a while and stop being, you know, like it was very, they were trying to be teens.
John: You know, they were trying to communicate with me.
John: I remember, this is going to sound terrible, but I had a high school teacher who pulled me aside.
John: I may have told you about this.
John: A high school teacher who pulled me aside and said, I was in the teacher's lounge the other day and we were talking about you.
John: And I was like, really?
John: Saying what?
John: And he said, well, you know, I was talking to the shop teacher about you and we both agreed that you probably get a lot of tail.
John: Am I right?
John: Whoa, whoa.
John: And I was a virgin.
John: And...
John: Yet, my response was, well, I mean, you know, I'm not one to talk out of school.
John: And he said, that's what I thought.
John: That's what I thought.
John: Am I right?
John: Am I right?
John: That's so weird.
John: And I was like, totally.
John: I mean, you know, yes.
John: And also, and also, and he was trying to make a connection with me.
John: But he had read my bluster and this was true of I think a lot of people at my school had read my bluster and my confidence and the fact that I did have a lot of
John: that I was a kid that teachers were talking about in the teacher's lounge.
John: He had read all that incorrectly, which is to say he read it as I was projecting it rather than seeing through it.
John: And so he wanted to be my pal and
John: And yet in that moment, I couldn't have felt more estranged from him because now I am conscious of adults seeing me as a player.
John: And I was desperate at that time for somebody to put their arm around my shoulder and say,
John: You're a virgin, right?
John: Cool.
John: So just cool it.
John: It's fine.
John: It's good to be a virgin still.
John: And you can do that and just be fine.
John: And it's not that I walked around school...
John: uh claiming that i wasn't right it was just that i had you know i was my dad introduced me to this concept when i was really young big man on campus and my dad was like are you a big man on campus and i was like bmoc and i was like i don't know what does that even mean and he was like big man on campus you know big man you're the big guy you're the guy on campus the big guy the one the you know bmoc and i was like i guess i'll be
John: I guess.
John: Is that the expectation?
John: You know, like the expectation was that I, yeah, I guess that I'd be the BMOC.
John: And so I was.
John: But anyway, so that relationship, and I had that kind of relationship with several teachers who were like, who recognized that I was flailing.
John: But what they saw was what I was projecting and not what I was.
John: And there was never that character that came into the script that was like, hey, I see what you really are.
John: And it's fine.
John: Because – and that was one of the ways – one of the primary reasons I didn't trust adults.
John: They didn't seem to be any smarter than kids.
Merlin: You're making me feel like I'm realizing something here.
Merlin: Something I'm really, really, really starting to get with my kid that I suspect goes to what you're talking about.
Merlin: I think it goes to stuff I've thought about in the past.
Merlin: Kids of all kinds, younger than adult aged people –
Merlin: if there's one thing most all of them have in common from a fairly early age, it's that they're very resistant to a frontal attack.
Merlin: You know what I mean?
Merlin: So going at somebody head-to-head, like trying to confront a kid at one extreme end, confronting a kid on a lie, they're mostly going to say, no, I didn't do that, right?
Merlin: Or in this case, you know, for me, like stuff like I actually will sometimes like –
Merlin: I'm trying to turbo to the solution way too early.
Merlin: So I will try to encourage my child to talk about how she feels about things.
Merlin: That is the last thing in the world that she wants to do.
Merlin: And in your case, what you're describing here is, like, you know, they have this, like, first question that they're going to ask you.
Merlin: Like, whether that's about whether you're getting any pussy or...
Merlin: so bizarre or, or whatever, but they come at it.
Merlin: It's the, it's too on the nose.
Merlin: It's too, it really is the, the, the reaction gift for this would be some guy walking in and taking off his jacket with the patches on the elbows and turning the seat around backwards.
Merlin: So you can have a rap session.
Merlin: You just, you see that coming a mile off when you're a kid.
Merlin: And I think your defenses really pop up when that happens, when there is a question that you really want to be asked, but it's, it's not the question that they're asking.
Merlin: Do you know what I mean?
John: Yeah.
Yeah.
John: The thing that I heard the most from the two teachers that I respected the most was...
John: and they both said it to me over and over and they were friends with each other and they were, you know, guys in their thirties who were well read.
John: They were the English teachers and so forth.
John: And the thing I heard the most from them was, Roderick, you're such an asshole.
John: And I felt a lot of pride in,
John: in the fact that these two teachers basically would talk to me that way, like a, like sort of a peer, you're such an asshole.
John: And they meant it to be kind of encouraging, um, in the sense of like, you're, you're growing up now.
John: You're not a brat.
John: You're an asshole.
Um,
John: But what it ultimately was was, you know, it confirmed in me
John: all these things that I was the most afraid of.
John: I didn't want to be an asshole.
John: I wasn't even trying to be an asshole.
John: I was trying to, um, I was trying to be funny or I was trying to be smart or I was trying to be, you know, I was trying to be cool and asshole was, um, I don't think that's on anybody's list of, of ambitions.
Um,
John: And what I wish that either one of those guys had done was to say, hey, look, this game we're playing, this thing that you're in, this school, these people, like this is small beer.
John: Life is actually not anything like this.
John: Right, right, right.
John: There is a place for you in the world.
John: And if anybody had ever said that, like, there's no place for you here, clearly, but there is a place for you in the world, I would have...
John: I would have borne everything with so much more calm.
John: And the panic was just this feeling of like there's no place for me here and I don't see any place for me in my parents' world.
John: I don't see any place for me in the world of the newspaper except –
John: except Satch Carlson every once in a while writes a column for the Anchorage Daily News.
John: And I feel like I could see myself in his column every once in a while.
John: I mean, there is light out there somewhere.
Yeah.
Merlin: Yeah, I probably wasn't putting that well.
Merlin: What I was trying to get, though, is when you go at somebody and you're going to be helpful, right?
Merlin: You go in, you're going to be helpful.
Merlin: You're going to come in and you're going to say the thing that needs to be said and shake somebody up.
Merlin: And the problem is that...
Merlin: What they don't take fully into account is that you are much more – maybe I'm being dismissive.
Merlin: But I think you kids are so much more vulnerable and they're so vulnerable and they know that they're vulnerable.
Merlin: And the very last thing in the world that they're going to do is going to be break down whatever shoddy defenses they have on that vulnerability.
Merlin: Okay.
Merlin: Okay.
Merlin: And so you kind of you I mean, I know this sounds like an after school special, but you kind of need to not it's like almost like treat the kid like a cat.
Merlin: Like just don't go up and flip it over and start rubbing its tummy.
Merlin: You got to go real slow.
Merlin: And you've got to just spend some time with that person until that you have credibility with them where, you know, maybe you should learn a little bit more about who they are as a person before you come dive bombing in with a solution, because that's just going to be more off putting.
Merlin: And then on top of it all, calling somebody an asshole.
Merlin: An asshole is not what you call somebody that you want to reform.
Merlin: It's what you want to call somebody who's a lost cause.
John: Well, and that is exactly – you hit the nail on the head.
John: That is what they were communicating to me.
John: Like we can't reach you.
John: You're going to – and it was – Any effort would be wasted.
John: But it was admiring.
John: This was the crazy thing.
John: It was admiring.
John: Like you are going to – like what they were saying was you are already –
John: On a trajectory far away from here.
John: But and so all they could say was asshole as they were kicking me out the door.
John: And there was a 50 50 there was a 50 percent chance that that trajectory was going to go right through juvenile hall right into jail.
John: And I don't think they wanted to be wrong and say, you've got a bright future and then I end up in jail.
Merlin: Well, it's kind of almost like their way of saying kudos.
Merlin: Like you wanted to screw it up and you screwed it up real good.
Merlin: Yeah.
John: But what you are saying, I mean, I'm in a very interesting place with my daughter right now, which is that she...
John: when, when I push her a little bit too much to, to, to sound out a word or to try to climb over the wall herself or to, you know, whenever I say, you know, try again.
John: If I say try again three times, she surrenders and she,
John: And we get caught in a dynamic where I say, well, I mean, you can't just quit.
John: We have to try again.
John: There's nothing wrong with trying again.
John: There's nothing wrong with trying and not succeeding.
John: But it's important to try multiple times.
John: And she says, no, I can't.
John: I can't do it.
John: And gets very emotional.
Yeah.
John: And I'm thinking back to my own relationship with my dad, who in those situations would get mad and would say, God damn it, get up and do it again.
John: And I don't want to be there.
John: And I do do this thing that you're saying where I'm like, let's talk about your feelings here.
John: And she's just like, fuck you.
Merlin: I feel like a process server when I do that.
Merlin: The reaction is so negative.
Merlin: Talk about my feelings.
John: Go to hell.
John: And eventually what we end up doing is sometimes we just sit on the sidewalk for 30 minutes not trying, not...
John: you know, and crying and not succeeding.
John: And my parenting is not succeeding.
John: And I see all kinds of parents who, you know, whose, whose philosophy is, well, she doesn't want to do it.
John: Then, then move on, get an ice cream cone.
John: And, you know, and I don't, I, and I don't often admire the results of that style of parenting.
Yeah.
John: And so I'm absolutely at an impasse and I'm very moved by your insight into the fact that she knows what her vulnerabilities are and she knows that those are the last things that she wants to reveal.
John: Like that feels very native to me.
John: that your vulnerabilities are not what you want to probe, not the things you, and to surrender in those moments as she does is very defensive against failure, obviously, but also defensive against, um, against my involvement with,
John: And, you know, she's such a small baby still that all of this is, I mean, she's not strategizing it.
John: It's just coming out this way.
John: But I feel like I really want to try and not carve big ruts in the ground.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: And yes, and I mean this is a huge process for me that I struggle with all the time.
Merlin: But if you think about how often with us, with anybody, but especially with a little kid, what – so you get crying.
Merlin: And what is crying?
Merlin: Crying is surrender.
Merlin: Crying is when you kind of have something that's so emotional that you have like a buffer overrun or whatever.
Merlin: Like there's just too much stuff here and you kind of – I don't want to say give up, but you know what I mean.
Merlin: It's like you've kind of emotionally reached the end of your rope and that's how it comes out.
Merlin: But what is the emotion that so frequently precedes crying?
Merlin: It's anger.
Merlin: Like think about how – at least in our case at our house, like crying is almost always preceded with anger.
Merlin: And I think a lot of times that anger is unconsciously, like unknowingly worrying about that vulnerability that you have.
Merlin: Like for you and me, we'll try again to do this thing.
Merlin: Well, you know they're not going to die even if they fall, but they don't.
Merlin: But they're also – as I think agreeing, the vulnerability part is there.
Merlin: The improbable upside-down approach that I'm trying to really think about, and I do not have a handle on this yet, whether it's for my daughter or for anybody to junior high or anybody else, is that I do really feel like very few things are successful in the long run when they're based on fear and depleting security.
Merlin: Like that can be when you're a grownup, like there's stuff you got to do and you go, wow, I better take care of this.
Merlin: Like you have the equipment to deal with that, but especially when you're younger and you have all those vulnerabilities that you're acutely aware of, like I just try to avoid anything that even unintentionally becomes less secure rather than more secure.
Merlin: Cause I feel like I'm being supportive when I say, hey, you know, you can do this or I, you know, I, but what I'm really doing is kind of making it about me and I'm kind of making, you know, and I'm like, here's my expectations for what you can do.
Merlin: When like what you described, like sitting on the sidewalk, that's the thing to do.
Merlin: And it's the hardest thing in the world.
Merlin: Again, right?
Merlin: There's this time we've got to go like, you know what?
Merlin: I, all of my words are not going to do anything to add to this.
Merlin: And in a way I'm probably not, I'm not aware of, I am making this more perilous because now she sees me being nervous and trying to make her feel better.
Merlin: Why is he doing that?
Merlin: Well, I must've done something wrong or something's bad.
Merlin: You know what I mean?
Merlin: It's like our reactions to how people do stuff in the world ends up having a much huger impact than what we think or what we believe or even what we say.
Merlin: You know what I mean?
Merlin: It's how we act is what the supportiveness sometimes is to just let them, you know, you don't want your kid to turn into an idiot or an asshole.
Merlin: But I think about things I said to her that I thought were very inspiring.
Merlin: And now I really regret it.
Merlin: I've said things in the past like, I know you can be a better person than this.
Merlin: And I think, oh my gosh, what a horrible thing to say.
Merlin: I'm trying to say I really do believe in you and I know you're a good person.
Merlin: Because to me, that's a question I ask myself.
Merlin: Is this the person that I want to be?
Merlin: Well, I'm a grown man.
Merlin: That's a good question for me to ask myself.
Merlin: Not a great question.
Merlin: It feels supportive, but it's not.
John: Yeah.
John: Yeah.
John: And I...
John: I don't know how much my parents recognized themselves in me.
John: It didn't seem to me like they did recognize themselves very much in me until maybe later.
John: Um, and I,
John: And watching Marlo, I'm trying not to recognize myself in her because I don't want to put my own struggles on her.
John: And I don't want to see her struggles as extensions of mine or recapitulations of some family line.
Merlin: So hard not to do.
John: It's hard not to do.
John: And so I'm just watching her and saying like, what –
John: are you gonna, what are you gonna struggle with?
John: And, um,
John: And I also want her to stop yelling in restaurants about stuff, about her poop.
John: So there are things, there are certain things where I just say... Concrete goals.
John: Where I just say, no, you do not yell about poop in a Mexican restaurant.
John: But beyond that, do I care if she's a soccer player or not?
John: No.
No.
John: Do I want her to learn that if she tries something and it doesn't work that someone else will step in and do it for her?
John: No.
John: Do I want her to learn that if she tries something and it doesn't work, everything comes to a screeching halt and everybody stares at her until she figures it out?
John: No.
John: So, you know, but I've never helped somebody learn how to do things like this before, you know?
Merlin: Somebody who's not a peer.
Merlin: She's from another planet.
Merlin: Her skill set is real different than ours.
John: I'm not teaching her to drive.
John: I'm teaching her not to eat glass.
John: And I don't want to fill her little heart with fear.
John: And I don't want to make her embarrassed about herself.
John: And so far...
John: so far we're doing a great job.
John: Her mother and I are, I feel like we're, we're doing good, but this is a new, this is a new world where she is asserting herself.
John: And the only way she, the only power she has is the power to, um, you know, it's not the only power, but it's very interesting to watch her learn that she has the power to not do something.
Um,
John: Or the power to not... Like the power to not try.
John: Especially if she knows it drives you crazy.
John: It's a huge power.
John: And I used the power to not try...
John: That was one of my major powers in my family, the power to not try.
John: That's your superpower.
John: It was my superpower.
John: And the power to not try is incredibly frustrating for people, for other people, because it isn't that you're trying and fucking up.
John: It is that you just aren't even willing to try.
John: And that...
John: drove my, my own people to distraction and it caused me so much additional pain and suffering in my own life over and above the pain and suffering of just failing at something.
John: And I don't want, I don't want her to have to, to endure that the same way I did.
John: Um,
John: but I have to, you know, I have to step back and say, she's not reliving your life.
John: She's not, you know, she had her, her challenges are different.
John: So I, uh,
John: I sit and talk to her, but I'm going to start doing that now with this other understanding that no one in their right mind, and particularly not a four-year-old, is going to be unguarded about the things that she knows are her greatest vulnerabilities.
John: And that makes so much sense when you say it.
John: But of course, that's not your expectation, right?
John: I mean, I would think...
John: So much parenting advice is predicated on the idea that your child is an open book and that they're going to just – they're going to talk about their fucking feelings.
John: The worst thing in the world.
Merlin: I feel like such a – such a total failure at that.
Merlin: I thought – maybe I just watched too many TV shows.
Merlin: I really thought it was going to be something where I rap lightly on the door and stick my hand and I go, hey, do you want to talk?
Yeah.
John: Hey, sweetie.
John: You know, the way for us to establish really good communications between father and daughter, just to start talking about your feelings when you're four.
Merlin: Yeah, you know, I was thinking maybe I'd come into your room, which is the only place where you feel really safe from the rest of the world, and I'd come in and confront you about your vulnerabilities and see what I can do to pitch in.
Merlin: Just sit on the edge of your bed and... Just rap.
John: You know what?
John: I'll just be a friendly ear.
John: Yeah.
John: While you talk about all of the... And you know what?
John: Maybe even I'll make some suggestions.
John: Maybe I'll tell you a little bit about how I'm broken inside.
John: Oh, God.
Merlin: Good talk, honey.
John: Good talk.
John: Worst.