Ep. 256: "Behind My Skis"
Merlin: This episode of Roderick on the Line is brought to you by Casper.
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Merlin: Hello.
Merlin: Hi, John.
John: Hi, Merlin.
John: How's it going?
John: Good.
John: Seems like it's been a long time since I've talked to you.
Merlin: I think it has been.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: August is complicated.
Merlin: Hmm.
Merlin: Oh, sorry.
Merlin: I'm a little bit behind my skis here.
Merlin: I got a not a late start.
Merlin: I just left the house late.
Merlin: I didn't time it well today.
John: Yeah, I see.
John: I see what you're saying.
Merlin: But I'm here.
Merlin: You were here before me.
Merlin: So, you know, you get a you get a badge today.
John: Well, I'm just, you know, I don't need your stinking badges.
John: Well, it's nice.
John: I mean, you probably put it in a box or something, right?
John: I do.
John: I have a box for badges.
Merlin: What are some other recent badges that you've gotten?
Merlin: It could be a major or minor award.
Merlin: Any kind of just being recognized.
Merlin: Have you gotten any ribbons or ribbons?
John: I do.
John: I have a recent ribbon.
John: My King Neptune came with a sash.
John: various sort of adornments, but also like a ribbon with a star on it that looks kind of like the type of metal you would get from the King of Belgium.
John: Oh, wow.
John: And it goes great on a blazer, and you can wear it without, you know, you show up to a party in a sash, and it's like...
Merlin: I've always loved that in older movies, especially.
Merlin: I'm thinking movies up through the 70s and the 80s, probably.
Merlin: But I'm thinking of going all the way back to something like maybe Duck Soup, where you've got somebody who's going to be a... How does one put this?
Merlin: It represents some primitive country.
Merlin: So whether that's a guy from Asia or Africa or whatever, I love the blending of something local, primitive, and tribal with something incredibly Western.
Merlin: So to be like a guy, like a cool Sufi turban guy, but with a suit jacket.
Merlin: I think that's a good look, especially for a villain.
Merlin: That's a great, great look.
Merlin: There's nothing wrong with adding some epaulettes and some ribbons to that and a little bit of an ornamental star.
John: Yeah, the colonial, like, sort of pompate jacket.
Merlin: Somebody who's like, you know, who's, let's say they're a member of the Commonwealth, what would you be?
Merlin: You're a subject?
John: A subject of the Commonwealth?
John: Yeah, what?
John: Who?
John: Yeah, I'm not...
John: It was... Yeah.
John: I'm a little bit behind my skis, too.
Merlin: Okay, okay.
Merlin: You could be like the grand mage of the duchy of Portlandia.
John: Portlandia.
Merlin: What's the matter?
Merlin: What happened?
Merlin: What did I do?
John: Did I lose you?
John: No, no.
John: I just... I'm...
John: I'm realizing I don't get enough sleep.
John: No, really?
John: I'm realizing it pretty strongly.
John: Pretty strongly right now, right in this very moment.
John: As I was setting up for the show, I was like, I'm fine, right?
John: Right?
John: I'm fine.
John: I've gotten enough sleep.
John: I've gotten enough sleep.
Merlin: I don't like to talk about the show on the show, but we should mention something to our listeners.
Merlin: May I mention something to our listeners?
Merlin: It's not surpassingly personal.
Merlin: For a very long time, I'm going to talk about the show on the show for a minute, because everything that's on the show is in the show.
Merlin: Okay?
Merlin: So here's the way this works.
Merlin: It's good.
Merlin: It's good.
Merlin: It's a little warm up.
Merlin: And I'm also breaking the other rule by addressing our listeners.
Merlin: You definitely never want to address them.
Merlin: I'm going to address them this one time.
Merlin: I'm donning my sash.
Merlin: Wow.
Merlin: And my Sufi blazer.
Merlin: For a very long time, John Roderick and I have recorded this program.
Merlin: Sometimes we reschedule, but pretty consistently every Monday at 10 a.m.
Merlin: Pacific time.
Merlin: Whatever you've got a saving or a non-saving daylight.
Merlin: We record at 10.
Merlin: And then I put up the show pretty quickly after that.
Merlin: You were doing the kinds of things one does toward the end of the summer, rejiggering your schedule, getting things straightened out.
Merlin: And you asked me something that I found shocking, given that we don't always start exactly at 10 for a variety of reasons.
Merlin: But you said to me that you wanted to start recording our program one hour earlier on Mondays at 9 a.m.
Merlin: Pacific time.
Merlin: And as is so often the case off air with you, I said...
Merlin: you sure you want to do that yeah you did you said exactly that that's kind of i said that about a couple things in the past and uh that was one of them i said you sure you want to do that and you were you were uh you weren't having it you were like yes this is the thing that i want to do i want to be a person who is who is up earlier you have things to do and this would help you conduct your life in a better way if we started recording the show earlier yeah and i said sure and you know what so far it's gone pretty well
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Now, here's the thing.
Merlin: Here's the other thing I want to address in you.
Merlin: I know what you're talking about, because most of the things, all the great shows in which I am involved, with the exception of the show with our friend John Syracuse, all the programs I do start recording usually 11, 10, 9 a.m.,
Merlin: And the thing is, all the great AMs.
Merlin: And I'll say to myself, I'll say, you know, you're fine.
Merlin: You're good.
Merlin: You've had a coffee.
Merlin: And then the time for talking mouth words starts.
Merlin: And I realize I'm not really ready.
Merlin: So I guess my question as I address in you is, did you regret the change?
Merlin: Would it have made any difference?
John: Do you feel like I do?
John: Mm-hmm.
John: Famous Todd Lundgren song?
John: Peter Frampton, but close enough.
John: No, it's Todd Lundgren.
John: Oh, Todd Lundgren.
John: He's that guy with the Sufi blazer.
John: Yeah, Todd Lundgren.
John: He's the one that wants you to work on Saturdays.
John: It wouldn't have made any difference if you really love me.
Merlin: I think I'm ahead of your skis today.
Merlin: So, you know, we could go back to 10.
Merlin: We could make it 11.
Merlin: We could do it at night.
Merlin: I had a big coffee, and now I'm having a Stewart's Fountain Classic orange and cream flavored soda.
John: I wish that I was so far into my day that an orange soda was even possible.
John: As you were talking, not that I wasn't really right on the rails of everything you were saying, but also I was like, when did I send my last text last night?
John: We talked at 9.05 Pacific time.
John: You and I did.
Merlin: I did my traditional reminding of the show.
John: Yeah, and it's great that you do that.
John: Is it great?
John: It's not annoying.
John: You still like it, right?
John: No, it's wonderful because it makes certain that we do that I know.
John: That we keep the skis on the rails.
John: That we keep the skis on the rails.
John: And so the last text I sent last night was at
John: 3.37 a.m.
John: What?
John: And then I got a text.
John: I'd already been up to pee at that point.
John: Yeah, I know.
John: 3.37.
John: I got a text from somebody at 3.43, but I was... So between 3.37 and 3.43 is when I...
John: finally lay my head down to sleep, because I did not receive the 3.43 text until this morning.
John: So 3.37, and then I woke up, so my phone plays across the universe now to wake me up.
Merlin: That's the Beatles version of that song.
John: Yeah, it's very nice.
John: It's a good way to start the day.
John: And that happened at 8.37, so that is 5.00.
John: Right?
John: Five hours.
John: It's good.
Merlin: It's good enough.
Merlin: It's, you know, if you round it, it's about five hours.
Merlin: One wakes in the night and doesn't know it.
Merlin: Oh, I know it, though.
Merlin: Unless one tracks one's sleep, as this one does.
Merlin: I'm Tossy Turney.
Merlin: You're Tossy Turney.
Merlin: You like that whole bed.
Merlin: You know, don't touch my feet.
John: Don't touch my feet.
John: Well, you know, it's funny.
John: It's funny because my daughter's mother...
John: Ariella was reading some old emails from between the two of us, she and I, that we wrote when she was pregnant.
John: And it was, you know, this was a pretty, pretty fraught time because we weren't, we were embarking on this journey to have a child together, but we weren't
John: Doing it in the context of like, well, now we're together, you know, you're pregnant and so we should get married or we're going to, you know, we're going to move in together or anything like this.
John: We were doing it.
John: We're making this decision to do this secular thing.
Merlin: I always thought of it as, I know this is not accurate, but it's almost like you guys were divorced without ever being married.
John: Yeah.
John: Later on, we joked that we were either the divorced couple that got along the best in the world, or we had a really, really dysfunctional marriage.
John: The most dysfunctional marriage is where you forgot to get married.
John: Right.
John: Or we're the best divorced couple that ever was.
John: So we were going into this like eyes wide open.
John: And of course, everybody...
John: was telling us that you couldn't do it.
John: You know, her people were just telling her every kind of story about how it wasn't going to work, how, you know, she was going to end up alone and destitute and raising the child on her own.
John: And, you know, that I was clearly shirking my responsibilities and that, you know, if she didn't have me tied to the ground with legal...
John: Requirements that I would just flitter off like some kind of drug addict rock person.
John: And worse, you know, worse things.
John: Just that it was all, you know, that for us to have a kid together under these conditions benefited me but not her.
John: I mean, they're just filling her head with... It's kind of anti-John propaganda.
John: Well, and just this generalized notion that you cannot bring a child into the world unless the two parents are...
John: absolutely tied to one another with leather straps and have promised each other every single... If you bring a child into the world having done nothing more than kneel on a pillow and say, I will love you forever in front of somebody with a robe on, then everybody's like, great, I believe it.
John: Nothing can rend these two asunder.
John: But if you bring a child into the world where you're like, we're going to do a really good job at this,
John: Everybody puts their hands on their hips and says, well, you never kneeled on a pillow.
John: How is it even possible?
John: Right.
Merlin: So she and I were saying... You can't go from a bobcat to a weebolo.
Merlin: You got to pass through being a wolf and a bear.
John: Precisely.
John: So we're sending these emails back and forth, and the thing was that she and I had known each other a long time, but we didn't really know each other.
John: How do you ever really know each other?
John: Oh, do we ever really know anybody, John?
John: You know what I mean?
John: We didn't really know each other.
John: We'd been playing in the town for a long time, and it was like, hey, downtown.
John: Yeah, what's up, downtown?
John: You know, pow, patoo-too-too, finger guns.
John: But that's not how you...
John: you raise a child either.
John: You can't just finger gun a child into adulthood.
John: As much as I would have liked to have tried.
John: So she's rereading all these emails, which I have not reread, where she and I were negotiating and hammering out just the basic principles of how we were going to do this.
John: You know, like
John: Like, how do I know I can count on you?
John: How do I know I can count on you?
Merlin: Well, and I mean, just to highlight, if you don't have the... I don't know, this is not always a real thing, but there's always the implicit things of having already been married.
Merlin: Like, you know, who pays the rent and all that kind of stuff.
Merlin: And basic division of labor, whether you formally or informally talked about it.
Merlin: But you had to make this to cut this from whole cloth.
John: Yeah, we did.
John: And we had to...
John: One thing that Ariella said was we spent so much time arguing about all the wrong things.
John: Or not the wrong things, but just things that it turns out didn't matter at all.
John: I remember she came to me and she was like, I read a thing that says you need a million dollars to raise a child.
John: And I said, not all at once.
John: You don't need it all at once.
John: You don't need it to start.
John: She was like, but where are we ever going to get a million dollars to raise this child?
John: I was like, honestly, I think we've got to start somewhere before that.
Merlin: Henry Ford discovered this over a century ago.
Merlin: If you expect somebody to buy a car with one payment, that's not going to work.
Merlin: You need to go have your GMAC, the Ford version of that.
Merlin: And that's much like having a child.
Merlin: It lets you make installments on the child.
John: That's right.
John: I said to her, look, we can get a good interest rate on this baby.
John: Like, we'll figure that out, right?
John: Put a new roof on the child.
John: We had to decide, because we were not married, we had to decide what last name the child was going to get.
John: We had to decide a lot of things, and we had nine months, or let's say eight months, in which to go from
John: A relationship where we were, you know, essentially just coquettish with each other for a long time to a thing where like we trusted each other, could rely on each other and and actually had like a plan.
John: And we had to build that within a world where everybody we knew, I mean, the best response we got from our friends was, well.
John: You sure you want to do that?
John: I guess.
John: I mean, wait and see, I guess.
John: I mean, that was the best.
John: And really, really well-meaning people, a lot of whom are now divorced, were telling us that there's no way that it's going to work like this and that we needed to get real, you know.
John: Um, but I, she, she reminded me at one point I was like, I sent her an email or she was saying like, you know, look, I'm, I'm pregnant and I need, you know, I need like to feel comforted and you are being very, um, formal with me.
John: And I, and, you know, and I appreciate the formality is necessary, but I like need this comforting.
Um,
John: I wrote this thing about like, well, listen, I don't like anybody.
John: I don't like anybody touching my feet.
John: Do you understand?
John: It's very important that we're going to make this work.
John: It's very important.
John: If we're going to make this work, we're going to make this child that nobody touch my feet in the night.
John: Yeah.
John: And that, you know, and it's, I get very warm and I really tear up a bed and it's just, it's very, you know, I just need to,
John: I need to make it clear that I don't really like to be touched.
John: And she was recounting this to me.
John: I didn't go back and read it.
John: But I remember for a long time, this idea that I had discovered that I could say, I don't want you to touch me when I'm sleeping.
John: I remember that being like a huge revelation to me because I had always been miserable sharing a bed with people.
John: And I had discovered this, like, oh, wait, after I go to sleep, like, I don't want to be spooned.
John: I don't want to be nuzzled.
John: Like, I just want to be alone.
John: Leave me alone.
John: It's sleeping time.
John: It's sleeping time.
John: I want to go sleep on my side of the bed.
John: And it was just, it was always a relationship problem.
John: Well, so she's telling me this story, or she's telling me about this email.
John: And I'm laughing and laughing and laughing.
John: Because...
John: Then I had a child.
John: And...
John: When you have a child, at least in my case, there is one person in the world at least that you do not mind if they touch you.
John: Right?
John: Like my little girl.
John: Enjoy it while you can.
John: Right?
John: And I'm sure there will be a time when she's like... Every single time.
Merlin: Every single time she's bugging me.
Merlin: It's 8.32.
Merlin: It's already 32 minutes past bedtime.
Merlin: And she comes out and just wants to hug me and kind of just...
Merlin: hang out for a minute and i'm thinking i want to watch my game of thrones and it's 32 minutes past bedtime and i try to always catch myself and go you ding-a-ling yeah right you know what it's okay that it's 32 minutes past bedtime you get to pause game of thrones and and your daughter wants to like you for a minute do you have any idea how much you're
Merlin: So despite all of those negotiations and your co-coquette working all this out, there is a person in your life now who touches your feet, etc.
Merlin: I mean, in a larger sense of the phrase.
John: Yeah, and I think has changed, a lot has changed about me in the last five years, and
John: And I absolutely remember when some of these notions about myself, right?
John: The introversion and the sense that I needed this bubble around me and that it was okay to ask for it.
John: And that it was not just okay to ask for it, but I was okay.
John: Even even needing it.
John: Right.
John: Like it was OK to need it.
John: And.
John: Setting those setting up those boundaries around myself so that I wasn't always feeling both intruded upon and also that I was a bad person for feeling intruded upon.
John: Like, that was the terrible part of, that was the source of so much loneliness in my life over the years, was not just that I felt infringed upon by everybody, but also that I felt like that was what made me despicable.
John: Because why couldn't I just accept love?
John: Or why couldn't I just accept touch?
John: These are simple things.
Merlin: Or why couldn't you just learn to feel good about the broken way you are?
Merlin: I think you're describing something that's very important to me, which is a bad feeling about a bad feeling.
Merlin: It's one thing to feel that bad feeling, another thing to have a bad feeling about how you are.
Merlin: Isn't it kind of a terrible tug-of-war?
Merlin: Either why can't I be a good person or why can't I be okay with how I actually am?
John: Well, it took me a long time even to get to the place where I felt like, oh, learning to be okay with this is a thing I can even do, right?
John: Because I didn't want to be in the land of broken toys.
John: I believed because I do believe in love, right?
John: I mean, I am romantic or I am a romantic.
John: And so what, you know, but more than that even, you know, this is happening, this isn't a thing where my, where this is a thing I was navigating with the larger world, right?
John: I wasn't out in the world saying, why doesn't the world accept me?
John: This was always happening within the absolute smallest confines of a relationship between me and a lover who was saying, you know,
John: Here I am.
John: Here's what I have to give.
John: And I was like, great, don't touch my feet.
John: And that's it.
John: That's such an incredibly small personal space to because out in the world, I didn't have any adjustment, you know, visible adjustment issues.
John: I wasn't asking anybody to make any accommodation for me.
John: But in this, you know, as the as the room got smaller and smaller, I was more and more like this is my pillow and this is my underwear drawer.
John: And this is my these are the hairs on the back of my hand and they can't be stimulated.
John: And so I couldn't ever be like and I'm OK with me.
John: Because the person that I was saying all this to was the one that was standing there like, all I want is to hug you.
John: Right.
John: And I was like, I'm okay with me.
John: But I did get to that place sort of right around this same period.
John: Like, you know, I am sorry that you are pregnant and that you are scared because you're not married.
John: And we are trying to navigate.
John: We are trying to right out.
John: We're trying to write a new constitution for a thing that doesn't have very many antecedents.
John: We can't think of any mentors or peers we might have here.
John: We're reinventing the wheel.
John: And your thing that you're saying you need is that I demonstrate my here-ness by actually being like here holding you.
John: And I'm saying don't touch my feet.
John: Mm-hmm.
John: Because that's very important to me.
John: And I had to also in that moment be like, but it's really important that I hold this woman who is pregnant and terrifying.
John: Right.
John: And now I look back.
John: She and I both look back and laugh because, you know, the experience of building this family was.
John: It's not just that I can hold my daughter.
John: My daughter brought the ability for me to feel uncomplicated about being touched, I guess.
John: Like, she...
John: She's been a part of that process for me.
John: Now I can... I mean, I still don't want people coming in and touching my feet while I'm sleeping.
John: You have your preferences.
John: Yeah, I mean, don't just come put your mouth on my toes or something.
Merlin: Oh, dear me, no.
Merlin: Oh, what are you, Pekingese?
Merlin: No.
Merlin: Stop it.
Merlin: No, not everybody can do that.
Merlin: Just because it's tolerated with one person does not mean that everybody gets to do it.
John: Right.
John: But it's funny that I made such a... Because at the time, not having had a kid yet, you think certain things are so important.
John: I'm going to a baby shower later today.
John: And they're wonderful people.
John: They're very good friends.
John: They're excited about their baby.
John: The baby is coming soon.
John: And they had a thing on their baby shower thing that said...
John: You know, we don't want you to... Don't worry about gifts, but if you insist, here's a link to a list of gifts.
John: And I went on just reading down this list of gifts that had obviously been compiled by a large group of people who were like, you're going to need this.
John: You're definitely going to need a linen...
Merlin: It's a good chance to cover some bases.
Merlin: You can ask for, and if it's people who are already parents, they'll get this, a lot of the stuff you're going to need a lot of.
Merlin: Wouldn't be bad to get diapers, but definitely some onesies and stuff.
Merlin: Then there's some stuff that you just know you're going to need, like maybe a nice changing table.
Merlin: And then you've got the stuff where you shoot for the stars, right?
Merlin: Where you might say, oh, I want this $700 baby carriage.
Merlin: Because if somebody wants to get that, sure, I'll take it.
John: Right.
John: But this is a group.
John: So these two are members of a pretty close-knit group of friends.
John: Let's call it between 15 and 20 people that have all coupled up recently.
John: They're all in their early 40s.
John: And this is this couple is really the first one, the first couple to have a new baby.
John: Right.
John: I mean, you know, Ari and I, our daughter is six and a half now.
John: And when that happened, all of these all of these people were in brand new relationships or are going through their first divorce or whatever.
John: But now they have a solid little gang.
John: And this couple is the first one to have a baby.
John: And so their baby list that they linked to has all that stuff, right?
John: You're going to need diapers.
John: You should get some onesies.
John: And look, there's the $700 carriage.
John: All that stuff makes sense.
John: But because none of their friends have babies yet, but all of them are...
John: I'm watching this group and ready to have like 15 babies arrive in the next year and a half because that's where they're all at yeah There's all that stuff on this list like like
John: Baby wipe warmer caddy.
John: Baby wipe warmer caddy.
John: Right.
John: Baby carriage, baby wipe warmer caddy sidecar.
John: Like this crazy stuff where you're like, whoa, whoa, whoa, let me just break it down for you.
John: You don't need that.
John: Honestly, you don't need it.
John: You want to take that off because somebody's going to buy that for you and then you're going to have it and you're going to feel like you need to use it.
John: And you're going to walk around like...
John: Basically like Chewbacca carrying 3PO on his back and pushing a stroller.
John: With a wipe warmer on it.
John: With a wipe warmer on it.
John: Because look, you got enough problems just getting a baby from place to place.
John: If you end up being one of those couples that's like a camp train...
John: That's leaving Stalingrad.
John: I remember that feeling, that feeling.
John: Oh, my God.
John: Because somebody told you that you need a, you know, you need a like a linen baby stroller cover.
John: to keep the sunlight out of baby's eyes.
John: But you don't want to get that.
John: Don't get that cotton stuff.
John: No, no, no.
John: It's got to be linen because it needs to filter the sunlight so that baby can hear the Mozart better.
John: Can you believe the way we were raised?
John: You and me?
John: Can you believe that?
John: We never got, but we didn't get linen.
John: We didn't know from linen.
John: It was like, here, hold my cigarette, kid.
John: The first thing you need to learn, kid.
John: How to mix a Bloody Mary.
John: Right.
John: anyway so it's funny i want to go back and read those things but it happens it happens all the time and i and i and i feel like i feel like part of the victory that we have achieved maybe our generation and it feels like a strange victory but we kind of led the charge was this victory of
John: of the, um, of carving out the space to be who you are.
John: That is, that's not just free to be you and me, but you know, like the small spaces of being who you are.
John: And, but like Ari and I still, our daughter is six and a half and we still are a team and
John: And we still don't have any peers.
John: Oh, I see, I see.
John: We still don't know any couple who has done it the way we've done it.
John: We don't have anyone to mentor because we don't know anybody who's trying to do it the way we did it.
John: Everybody we know that has a kid is either in a happy marriage, in an unhappy marriage that's pretending to be happy,
John: in an unhappy marriage that is done pretending, or in a marriage in dissolution that is either trying to be civil, not trying to be civil, or long past that.
John: No one is just like, yeah, we decided to have a child together, and we're people of goodwill and smart, and we agreed that we were going to have a lot of fights about stuff in the course of time, as you do.
John: But
Merlin: That it was never going to be, we were never going to lose sight of the fact that we were doing this intentionally and in the spirit of like... You kind of always knew that it was, well, I don't want to speak for you, but maybe one way to look at it is like, it'll be safe if we always regard this as a precarious experiment rather than a done deal.
John: Hmm.
John: Right, and that was, I think, what I perceived... But you know what I mean?
Merlin: Not treating it like a done and settled sort of issue.
Merlin: This is a work in progress.
John: Well, and that was the advantage it had, right?
John: Because all these things that you're saying about, which I think are absolutely true, you get married, and so you've already worked out how the rent gets paid and all that stuff.
John: But in getting married, you also take all of your...
John: unspoken expectations and all of the templates that you've been carrying around like a maester's chain jangling around your neck about like, oh, well, when I get married, my spouse is going to be like this and our marriage is going to be like this and we're going to live like this and his or my goals are going to be the same exactly and all this stuff that you'd never really address formally.
John: Mm-hmm.
John: that goes into like, now we're married.
John: In the case of Ariella and myself, we didn't have
John: We didn't have that luxury, so we had to be very specific about all that stuff.
John: Right, right, right.
John: And so we didn't then later, five years later, encounter these moments where it was like, wait a minute.
John: I thought you were paying the rent.
John: Yeah, or like, you always knew I wanted to live in Berlin.
John: Right.
John: And it's like, what are you talking about?
John: You said something about Berlin once five years ago.
John: Well...
John: That was me saying that one day I was going to move there.
John: You know, like we didn't have to we don't have that problem now because we have been forced to be extremely on top of all that stuff.
John: And, you know, our relationship is stronger now than ever.
John: And I don't see anything.
John: I don't see it.
John: being in jeopardy right i mean this last year and a half i was in this long relationship and and it jeopardized my relationship with ari but in the end um in the end like it was the relationship with ari and and our daughter that was the that was the thing that was most important to me no that wasn't a thing i was ever going to sacrifice and you know we grew up i'm sure you knew lots of people like this i know i did
John: parents who got divorced and One of them took the kid somewhere else mm-hmm or dad saw you on weekends or on alternate weekends or on alternate months or something and Like I think I've probably talked to you about this before but like when my mom left my dad we were living in Alaska and she basically like threw some stuff in a suitcase and moved to Seattle and
John: moved back to Seattle.
John: And, you know, my dad was from Seattle.
John: He'd lived his entire life in Seattle.
John: He'd been living in Anchorage for two years.
John: And yet when my mom left him and moved back to Seattle, my dad stayed in Anchorage.
John: Like, I like it here.
John: Good things are happening up here.
John: And I never questioned it as a kid because you don't know enough to know what your parents, what they do just seems like reasonable.
John: But after I had a kid, I was like, wait a minute.
John: He didn't have anything going on in Anchorage.
John: Why didn't he just move back to Seattle too?
John: And it was the one thing I wish I could talk to him about now and just say, what was the logic there?
John: Like you living in Alaska and mom living in Seattle made our lives growing up really complicated.
John: And if you had just said, well, you know, I'm moving back to Seattle because I'm getting a divorce and she wants to live down there.
John: And I guess I'm just going to bite the bullet or whatever on behalf of my kids.
John: I just can't.
John: You know, it's a conversation I would love to have with them.
John: I don't know.
Yeah.
Merlin: So you like doing the show at nine?
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Merlin: Did we get off track there?
Merlin: No, no.
Merlin: No, we put the track on the skis this time, buddy.
Merlin: Finish my orange soda.
Merlin: Sometimes, sometimes when that happens and there is a split and one person takes the child, this is not a reflection on any given couple or parent.
Merlin: Sometimes it's an offensive maneuver.
Merlin: To say, I'm going to take Little Rover, and we are going to move to Maine.
Merlin: And the other person might say, well, why would you want to move to Maine?
Merlin: And the other person says, don't you know I've always wanted to move?
Merlin: No.
Merlin: But then that does put the...
Merlin: the other partner in a strange position.
Merlin: Because what they do or don't do will still have ramifications and everybody's life changes.
Merlin: Like, does the offensive parent want them to come there?
Merlin: Are they trying to get away from that person?
Merlin: Even when they know that's at the expense of that other person being able to see the child.
Merlin: I think that's complicated business.
John: Yeah.
John: There's a lot of things that are complicated.
John: That's true.
Merlin: Wait, does school start for you?
John: No.
John: And it's a constant source of confusion to me how school anywhere can start before September 5th.
John: Yes.
John: I totally agree.
John: School shouldn't start before September 5th, and it should be out by June 14th at the latest.
Merlin: It's one of those things that just messes with your head.
Merlin: You know, like when they changed daylight saving time, you know, that screwed up a lot of stuff in my brain and in the world.
Merlin: But when they started having school start before Labor Day, that is really weird.
John: I don't get it.
John: What is the point of it?
John: Yeah.
John: I mean, I see that from the standpoint of government, and I'm sure this is true of you in California, too, to some degree.
John: But my understanding is that the schools are funded through this complicated formula where they count the number of attendances of
John: And then they apply for money based on how many kids attended how many days.
John: And if they have absences or if they have snow days or other unforeseen days when the kids aren't there, then they lose money.
John: And they need that money.
John: They need that money for basic services, and they're kind of stuck in this thing where it's like, well, it costs money to keep the doors open, but we don't have the money to do that, so we have to keep the doors open.
John: We have to keep having more school days in order to have the funding to have school.
John: So that, you know, at least in Seattle, our school has this, what I think is kind of a crazy attendance policy.
John: where a parent who's going to Washington D.C.
John: for a week and wants to take their kid to Washington D.C.
Merlin: That's sounding very familiar.
John: Yeah, right.
John: It's actually coming up.
John: It's actually coming up.
John: We're going to Washington, D.C.
John: this month.
Merlin: Well, if you went to school here, you could expect a nasty letter and a threat of arrest.
Merlin: Yeah, right.
Merlin: A threat of prosecution, basically.
Merlin: They lose something like—I don't know if this is right.
Merlin: I feel like I heard something like $100 a day.
Merlin: But all I know is that the corollary of what you described is true.
Merlin: I don't know exactly how the funding gets there, but I do know that there are three things we learn about and are reminded of—
Merlin: Pretty much every day.
Merlin: Right.
John: Which is that by the school.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Oh, yeah.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: I mean, you know, school starts promptly at seven fifty.
Merlin: Do not be late.
Merlin: There's no reason to be late.
Merlin: If you're going to drive to school, please use stop, drop and go, because otherwise it's chaos and our neighbors hate us and children might die because you're driving around in the streets.
Merlin: And the other one is you must go to school.
Merlin: This is nothing that we are going to debate.
Merlin: And here's the bottom line.
Merlin: The bottom line is that every day you're absent, this school loses money.
Merlin: And if your kid is out for a week of Washington, that's actually very costly for the school.
Merlin: And then we have to threaten you because there is some kind of an accounting at some point about exactly what you described and like where the absence and attendance numbers, what they were, I guess, estimated to be.
John: And I don't know why we decided that's how we needed to fund the schools.
John: I mean, I don't, we decided it at some point, obviously the, the,
John: The schools are the classic thing where there are a lot of people that don't have kids.
John: And in the current American mindset, if you don't have a kid,
John: then why the hell should you pay for the schools?
John: Right, that's the Florida approach, yeah.
John: Yeah, and it's become the American approach.
John: I paid for schools back in Pennsylvania.
John: Why would I do it again?
John: Yeah, I paid for schools when my mom paid for schools for me, but I don't have a kid, or I don't, you know, or whatever.
John: Like, the idea that we don't think collectively about ourselves anymore, and that we don't look at taxes as a way of affecting collective improvement, but that everyone is...
John: out for themselves at all times, suspicious of all government.
Merlin: It feels like the kind of thing where you would, I mean, I would not want to point at a particular party, but it feels like one of those things where you go, yeah, of course we've got to fund the schools, but we also have to find some way to make it drudgery.
Merlin: Where, you know, in the same way, like, you know, my feelings on things like reading logs, which was just driving me crazy.
Merlin: The whole like, oh, prove you read, you know, okay.
Merlin: You know, it's like, why don't you take something my kid loves and turn it into something she can feel guilty about not doing, even though she's doing it, but she didn't do the log right.
Merlin: Same here.
Merlin: I mean, like, there's all these things where you're like, it's one of those, like, all right, you just used one of your monkey paw wishes, and you want money, but guess how this is going to work?
John: You should have been more specific with your genie.
John: I'm glad that your school district voice is Bob Odenkirk.
John: Well, technically, that would be this voice.
John: That would be the atoynee.
John: but but yeah you feel so terrible for the schools you want them to have resources and do the job that they do well but the way that the way that it works out where it's like well school goes to july 5th now and it starts again august 15th because we had a couple of snow days yeah and you're like what are we doing to ourselves like we're we are we're doing we're doing a bad job in in
John: pursuit of doing a good job.
John: My daughter's school is in a neighborhood that is very close to the university.
John: And it's the classic example of a Seattle school where the additional services that are not provided for by the school district, by which I mean music lessons, art lessons, interesting P.E.,
John: interesting after-school activities, supplies, all those things are paid for by a PTA.
John: And the PTA is able to pay for those things because this neighborhood is situated very close to Microsoft and Amazon and et cetera, et cetera.
John: And so the PTA has an auction for
John: And the PTA sponsors a dance.
John: And the PTA sends you 700 emails a year.
John: The auction's coming up.
John: I don't know if you're aware.
John: I know.
John: I know.
John: You need to get two tickets to the Under the Sea Ball.
John: They're only $250 each.
John: It's going to be so much fun.
John: The Under the Sea Ball is going to be so much fun.
John: But as a result of that, her school can hire an art teacher who is a bona fide artist and a wonderful woman who really inspires the kids and gives them incredibly enriching artistic activities.
John: And like she is a jewel.
John: And she is paid for entirely by this extra district organization, basically rich parents.
John: And so my daughter's school has a high rating on Yelp.
John: It's got a five out of five stars.
John: And there are other schools in the school district that don't have any arts education.
John: Because their PTA has no ability to lay hands on that kind of resource, on those resources.
John: And that is the inequity that's like baked into the Seattle School District, which is crazy to think that a city as liberal and progressive and rich as Seattle should have that be the system.
John: And it's a system that like recapitulates itself every day because when 40-year-olds decide that they're going to move out of downtown.
John: They read Yelp.
John: Well, and they have to decide where they're going to buy their house based on how many stars their school has.
John: And if your neighborhood has three-star school, let alone a 1.4-star school, you have no idea what that means.
John: You haven't been to the school.
John: You haven't talked to the teachers.
John: You haven't toured the campus.
John: You're looking at it online.
John: And it's like, well, I can't move into that neighborhood.
John: So it just perpetuates this idea that, like, well, you've got to move up north into one of these bedroom communities where the schools are good and all these neighborhoods that are awesome neighborhoods down here, but their school districts don't have good stars.
John: You know, we can't even begin to look at an affordable house down there because... There's a reason it's affordable.
John: There's a reason it's affordable, and it's because when your kid gets to school, they're given a mop bucket and a piece of dry black bread.
John: Mm-hmm.
John: You know, and they are sent to learn by cleaning out the toilets at the prison.
John: Mm-hmm.
John: It's like, I don't really, I think that all the schools here are probably, I mean, I don't know.
John: I don't know.
John: So part of it is, should you trust the stars?
Merlin: You never trust the stars.
Merlin: Go eat for yourself.
Merlin: Try something different every time.
John: But I don't know, how is it down there?
John: How is it in San Francisco?
John: Is it a similar situation?
Merlin: Yeah, it's gotten way, way better.
Merlin: It was a...
Merlin: a liberal dystopia at one point where the system that was in place not long before my kid went to school really felt like it was invented by young liberals who don't have kids.
Merlin: People basically like college sophomores because it was...
Merlin: What it came down to was not even a lottery.
Merlin: It could be fairly random where your kid went to school.
Merlin: In this town so many people move to, so they won't need to own a car, for example, your kid might be on the opposite diagonal of town from where you live.
Merlin: Based on?
Merlin: I think based on like something fairly random that I mean, I think takes into account things like diversity, but it was a it was basically a crapshoot.
Merlin: I mean, I had a friend who lived in DuBose Triangle, whose kid went to elementary school in North Beach.
Merlin: No, and didn't own a car.
Merlin: So he took his kid that, that ride, I guess what, maybe a five film or I'm not sure.
Merlin: Take your kid that ride on the bus.
Merlin: And then you come back and then you go to work.
John: How long of a trip is that?
Merlin: Oh, it depends.
Merlin: But like I would allow for round trip.
Merlin: I'd allow an hour and a half.
Merlin: Yeah, that's crazy, right?
Merlin: I mean, yay, San Francisco.
Merlin: Well, it is way better.
Merlin: And so the way it works now is, of course, there's paperwork and you have to like to talk to people about this and be a fretful hen for several years before your kid even matters.
Merlin: But when you're ready, you say, like, what school you want your kid to go to?
Merlin: And you get, I think, up to three choices, something like this.
Merlin: Don't quote me.
Merlin: But long story short, the way it works now is mostly if you're asking for a normal school that's near your house.
Merlin: there's a pretty good chance you'll get it.
Merlin: If that child already had an older sibling in that school, you're pretty much, I think, guaranteed, especially if they're still there.
Merlin: You're pretty much guaranteed to be grandfathered in, in terms of eligibility.
Merlin: As I understand it, there are distinctions.
Merlin: One distinction is that it's my understanding that every class of school, elementary, middle, and high school, but I know this is true of my daughter's school, there are different schools that attend to the needs of various types of kids.
Merlin: And that gets broken out by kind of specialty that that school will deal with.
Merlin: So it could be kids who are developmentally disabled.
Merlin: It could be kids with emotional issues.
Merlin: It could be kids with physical disabilities.
Merlin: It's a way of saying, hey, you can go to whatever school you want, but if you want the one where we've really put the resources to help you out, this is the one to go to.
Merlin: which i think you know makes some sense if there's limited funds i guess that makes sense yeah and then like if you want to go to like a really good high school then i think it is very competitive like a public high school if you want to go to um what's the one here in town what's the big high school in san francisco
Merlin: Lowell if you want to go to Lowell which is the best high school in San Francisco and everyone says so then it's a little more you know a little more tricky like just just because you live by the mall doesn't mean you're gonna get into Lowell did you go to the best high school in your town
John: Arguably, yes.
John: I think so.
Merlin: And what made it the best high school in your town?
Merlin: One thing was, I think it got a lot of resources.
Merlin: So it was the school that had... So the old high school became the junior high.
Merlin: My high school was built, I think, in the 60s.
Merlin: Then way north of town, out in the middle of nowhere, they built a high school a little later...
Merlin: And then the junior high that I went to, uh, and starting in the eighties turned into a high school.
Merlin: So there were three high schools at the time I went to high school and I think ours, it was the, it was the, the, it was a comprehensive high school.
Merlin: So it had vocational stuff.
Merlin: Uh, it had like the full battery of available things and it was, it was huge.
Merlin: There was over 2000 kids at my high school, 666 kids.
Merlin: Nice.
Merlin: Entered my freshman year.
Merlin: And I think there was something like 500 graduates.
Yeah.
John: And if you think back at your time there, can you, with the wisdom of time, see where those resources were allocated in a way that benefited you?
Merlin: No.
John: I mean, did the resources that that school have, did it hire...
John: a higher caliber of teacher, one of whom had a profound effect on your life?
Merlin: Oh, I mean, I really like some of my teachers a lot.
Merlin: I don't think so.
Merlin: I mean, first of all, this is, whatever, over 30 years ago, so my memory's spotty.
Merlin: But no, I went to golf, and golf had certain things.
Merlin: Hudson had certain things.
Merlin: Everybody had football.
Merlin: Everybody had band.
Merlin: I don't think there was any one of them that was distinctly the less good school.
Merlin: Hudson had a better football team than we did.
Merlin: But I'm trying to think of this.
Merlin: And so let's go look up comprehensive high school.
Merlin: So, like, you know, the band stuff I did, it seemed like, okay, well-funded.
Merlin: Of course, we had to do, you know, self-snickers bars and stuff.
Merlin: Comprehensive high schools are the most popular form of public high schools compared to the common practice.
Merlin: High schools specialize in university prep school academic preparation.
Merlin: We did have AP.
Merlin: We had advanced placement.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Did you take AP?
Merlin: No, no, I was not up to that.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Um, I hung out with a lot of the kids, especially the Venn diagram of AP kids that were in band.
Merlin: That was a lot of my friends.
Merlin: Um, sexy, sexy crowd.
Merlin: Um,
Merlin: I'm trying to think the answer to your question, though.
Merlin: I mean, certainly my life has been hugely shaped by teachers and professors at various points.
Merlin: But, I mean, I don't think they had, like, what, a Cornel West.
Merlin: I don't think they had, like, Carl Sagan.
Merlin: I don't think they had, like, you know...
Merlin: I don't think there was anybody there who was world famous or anything.
John: Well, and that's what I mean.
John: And this is my reply when people in Seattle talk about... Sorry, I didn't mean to derail that.
John: Oh, not at all.
John: No, you were answering the question, I think, pretty well, which is that is there anywhere you can point to in your schooling where...
John: The advantages that you took from school were the result of decisions that were being made at the school district level rather than just luck of the draw in what teacher you got, who you met, where you happened to be standing on any given day.
Merlin: You know what?
Merlin: I'm going to answer that in an even deeper way than you asked, which is to say one truism, something I feel like has been true no matter where I went.
Merlin: Any school that I was involved with, whether that was in Ohio or in Florida or in California, there's one thing that's true, which is like, I'll bet you dimes of donuts, no matter what edifice you're in, no matter what, then further to that, what grade they're attending.
Merlin: I bet you there's still going to be, like, let's say there's, I don't know, arguably, let's say for this particular grade level, there's six teachers up through middle school, let's say, right?
Merlin: You know, if you put those, however you wanted to do it, rank them on some kind of a curve, I bet there's going to be one that's clearly better than the others and one or two who are clearly worse than the others.
John: Yeah.
Merlin: What am I saying?
Merlin: I'm saying no matter where you live, no matter how much you pay for your house, no matter what school you go to, there's still a chance that at the very nicest school you go to, you're going to have you're going to get matched to a teacher that for whatever reason was not a good match to your kid.
Merlin: And I'm also going to tell you, you go to the quote unquote lowest star school in town.
Merlin: There's somebody in that building that could change your kid's life and they just might get that person.
Merlin: You can see this at McDonald's.
Merlin: You can see this at the DMV.
Merlin: You see this anywhere you go where you, as I've said before, you meet an angel.
Merlin: You meet somebody who's just amazing.
Merlin: My first grade teacher was like that.
Merlin: We were in an outbuilding.
Merlin: We were in like a mobile home because our school was growing.
Merlin: And she's the best teacher I ever had in my life.
Merlin: She, I mean, when my father was very, very ill, she was like having me over to their house.
Merlin: She had a birthday party for me when I was seven.
Merlin: I mean, at her house.
Merlin: She had us over for dinner at her house and gave me a hamburger candle.
Merlin: I'll never forget.
Merlin: There's no need for that.
Merlin: Shirley Jackson, there's no need for you to do that.
Merlin: You never needed to do that.
Merlin: That's amazing.
Merlin: But anyway, so that's the problem.
Merlin: Like, okay, you did it.
Merlin: You did everything right.
Merlin: Like, you crossed all the right palms.
Merlin: You filled out all the right forms, and now you're going to the five-star school.
Merlin: Like, there is still a chance that that is not a good match for your kid, and there's probably not even a way for you to know that.
John: Not even a chance.
John: I mean, there's every likelihood that they're going to get a teacher that...
John: rubs them the wrong way or that whatever they're not they don't thrive in that environment maybe great teachers maybe great teachers having a bad year it happens to everybody i had mrs langford for second grade i loved mrs langford mrs langford is where i got cinnamon toast the guinea pig my sister had mrs langford three years later they battled the entire year they my sister hated mrs langford
John: Wow.
John: How do you account for that?
John: My mom, who had known Mrs. Lankford.
Merlin: She was probably begging, begging, please, Susan, take Mrs. Lankford, please take Susan, take her.
John: Well, and the thing is, because I got along great with Mrs. Lankford, my mom and she didn't have that much interaction.
John: Mrs. Lankford was just another teacher at the school as far as she was concerned.
Merlin: Yesterday, so this is real quick, but one of my daughter's best friends, her mom has a big job at the PTA, and her grandmother also works heavily this year with the PTA.
Merlin: And they were setting up for first day of school.
Merlin: They do this thing called Kiss and Cry, where after you've said goodbye to your kindergartner, you can come and have a cup of coffee.
Merlin: And they were running that at 7.30 in the morning.
Merlin: But anyway, my friend's, Ellie's friend's grandmother said...
Merlin: You know, I think my kids used to just get on a bus and go to school.
Merlin: Like I pick my daughter up every day.
Merlin: I talk to people every day.
Merlin: I go through lost and found every day.
Merlin: Like it's just part of mine.
Merlin: And she's like, she's like something, it's just something like, like I would go to my kid's school like twice a year.
Merlin: I wouldn't even step in the doors of my kid's school.
Merlin: I got them onto the bus and then they came home off the bus later.
Merlin: Totally, totally different world.
Merlin: You didn't used to sit there and check your email every day to find out how things are going or get photos from the field trip.
Merlin: That just didn't happen.
Merlin: You got a yearbook and you got four report cards.
John: Thank you for your service.
John: Well, you know, my mom had another layer of insulation because she had to be at work at the crack of dawn, right?
John: So she took me to the babysitter in the morning.
John: The babysitter sent us to the bus.
John: The bus took us to the school.
John: At the end of school, we took the bus back to the neighborhood of
John: Walked slowly to the babysitters where we were until six thirty at night when mom came to get us.
John: So it was, you know, my mom said one time these freaking bake sales like I will just give them fifty dollars.
John: I don't want to go to a bake sale and buy a $10 cake five times a year.
John: I'll just give you $50.
John: Nobody has to bake a cake.
John: Yeah, that's not how it works.
John: But it's not how it works.
John: It's very important that you be nominally involved.
John: But, you know, for you, for the two of us, right?
John: People, I think, admire you, admire me, because we have managed to make a life for ourselves today.
John: by accident, largely, but also by virtue of, you know, sort of myriad talents and luck and good fortune, but also trying things, testing things out.
John: It's so nice of us to pay ourselves these compliments.
John: I'm really, I'm actually very happy to hear this.
John: I'm paying you these compliments.
John: I don't hear you paying me any compliments, but that's typical.
John: Well, you have dignity issues.
John: But we didn't succeed.
John: in any sense that could have been predicted in 1975 or in 1985 or in 1995, right?
John: There's nothing that you and I are doing right now that we can directly tie to having gone to a good elementary school.
Merlin: You know what, little John, I could really see you in, I don't know what year, sometime in the 2000s, I could really see you being paid by an internet mattress company to talk about your relationship with me.
Merlin: I can really see that.
John: Yeah, right.
Merlin: I imagine... Whatever medium that is, I could see that.
John: If the PTA gets a little bit more funding so that an astronomer can come into you and talk to you about space, that's one day going to lead to a situation where once every 10 years you put out an album, maybe.
Merlin: We put the nicer water fountains.
John: In your school.
John: Yeah.
John: Yeah.
John: But I, but I, so I, so I, I know that isn't, again, it's sort of like the, like the child rearing thing.
John: It's not a thing you can plan for, but it's also, it's also a thing that you can relax about too.
John: It's, it's so difficult to know because I get asked to talk to kids, you know, high school kids a lot.
John: And I always want to say things to them that are probably going to have the teacher say like, okay, everybody get on the bus.
John: Like, session's over.
John: Because what I want to say is like, don't go to college right away.
John: Don't, you know, don't care so much about your future.
John: It isn't how you make yourself.
John: It isn't how you make your future to care so much about it.
John: Like, it will happen.
John: You have no say in it.
John: Your future's coming.
John: And whether or not you get into the good high school in San Francisco, like the pain and suffering that you put yourself through, that you put your family through, the agonizing, the hour and a half long commute, the self-flagellating, the missed opportunities, the trips to Washington, D.C.
John: that you don't take.
John: In order to do these things that seem to be assuring that you're going to be on a path where, you know...
John: You may not be doing all the right things, but you're trying to avoid doing the wrong things.
John: And what you're doing is not doing some of the things that you need.
John: Not going to Washington, D.C., which is a thing that you need to do.
John: But how do you communicate that to people?
Merlin: You're saying how do you tell the school you don't want your feet touched?
John: Yeah.
John: How do you tell yourself that you can send your kid confidently?
John: to a two and a half star school and know that they're going to get a good education, they're going to be fine, that having them at the school is good for the school, that having
John: Having your kid go to the school that's in their own neighborhood is good for the mental health of everybody involved.
Merlin: Well, I'm going to say something that could get me in just a whole lot of trouble, which is that I think a lot of people who have a good heart.
Merlin: But who would primarily like you to see them as supporting their child's future are really just ridiculously competitive.
Merlin: And that's one way it gets worked out.
Merlin: Luckily, maybe that's probably a good direction.
Merlin: It's not like there's a competition for having the most terrible kid.
Merlin: But in that case, maybe that's a good thing.
Merlin: That'll benefit everybody.
Merlin: But I think a lot of people do that just because they're competitive.
Merlin: I think some people go to the DMV at six because they want to be the first in line.
Merlin: They want to win the DMV.
Merlin: I think some people buy lottery tickets because they want to be the one.
Merlin: They could use the money, but they'd really love to be the person who won.
Merlin: I think that's more common than most people want to admit.
John: Who puts Yelp reviews of their school?
John: I mean, I don't know who does Yelp reviews of Vietnamese restaurants either.
Merlin: Two kinds of people.
Merlin: For a school in particular, this is less true, I think, for most businesses on Yelp.
Merlin: But wherever you are, well, first it's confirmation bias, like, I guess, a form of that, where you're going to go and give your own school five stars, right?
Merlin: I mean, it's like a self-link.
Merlin: You would go and do that.
Merlin: The other kind is, like, you're mad that Mrs. Crabapple sent you a letter about, you know, going out of town for a week, and so you give them one star.
Merlin: And say that they don't communicate well with... I didn't do that.
Merlin: But you know what I'm saying?
John: Poor Mrs. Crabapple.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: I mean, Jesus Christ, look at it with something as insignificant as a meal at a restaurant.
Merlin: Not to say that food is not important.
Merlin: But think about all the times, you know, if you ever did look at Yelp, if you were just desperate and were somewhere and were like, which one?
Merlin: I mean, I look at, we're driving through, you know, Central California and I'm picking out which Popeyes I want to go to.
Merlin: Because I'm going to make my wife take me to Popeyes because it's a trip and I get a special.
John: And there are multiple Popeyes?
Merlin: There are multiples Popeyes in various places.
John: No, wait a minute.
John: Just to rewind a little bit.
John: When you're on a trip with your wife, you get...
John: She gives you a coupon for one special Merlin meal.
John: You get to have Popeyes.
Merlin: I don't always utilize it because I know it's not good for me, but I am discouraged by my family from eating terrible food.
Merlin: And I am no longer...
Merlin: Like I used to be used to be my band.
Merlin: I had a band in Tallahassee called Three Piece Spicy White Meat because we were right across the street from Popeyes and I ate Popeyes before every band practice.
Merlin: Wow.
Merlin: I mean, Popeyes used to be a big part of my life.
Merlin: And I had Popeyes at my baccalaureate defense.
Merlin: Really?
Merlin: Actually, my mom did.
Merlin: She bought a couple boxes of chicken.
Merlin: Some people were there just for the chicken, right?
Merlin: Yeah, yeah.
John: I see that.
Merlin: Some come for the chicken, stay for the Horkheimer and Adorno.
Merlin: Uh-huh.
Merlin: So I do get that, my point being.
Merlin: And so I'll go look on the map, and I zoom in, and I say, Papa, show me Papa's on the route.
Merlin: And there'll be different ratings for the Popeyes five miles apart.
Merlin: And you know why?
Merlin: Well, maybe some are definitely better.
Merlin: As with any fast food place, some are actually legitimately better branches of that.
Merlin: And you learn that.
Merlin: That's the good 7-Eleven.
Merlin: That's the one good Burger King.
Merlin: Whatever.
Merlin: But you know why?
Merlin: Because, you know, enough people came in and said, I didn't like the attitude of that lady at the counter.
Merlin: Or one time, you know, you spoiled my, the noodles were soggy at my bridal party.
Merlin: Boo, everybody leave a bad review.
Merlin: Right?
Merlin: And you get like a blanket party.
John: Yeah, you get a little bit of a black mirror situation.
Merlin: A little black mirror situation.
Merlin: So something as stupid as a box of fried bird.
Merlin: And that happens.
Merlin: Imagine what that's like with something as, in my estimation, important as the school that your kid goes to for up to six years.
John: Yeah.
John: Yeah.
John: I...
John: I don't know the solution.
Merlin: No, I don't either.
Merlin: But, you know, I'll tell you one thing you could do is, I mean, this is a very old fashioned thing to do.
Merlin: But whenever I'm not sure what to do or think about something, I want to talk to somebody.
Merlin: Sometimes that's where, like, I think I have some idea about this new domain of my life and work, how that would be.
Merlin: right like maybe i decide i want to get in shape well i could just like spend all my time looking for gems but like i could talk to somebody who's like uh like a friend of mine and like find out what they do my daughter is considering a musical instrument she tells me she's already decided the instrument she wants to play i get a little antsy i i can't reveal it yet but i'm gonna i'm antsy about it because she's never mentioned hearing this instrument this is how my brain works she's never mentioned hearing this instrument and going oh i like that sound
Merlin: There are many other instruments that she has mentioned.
Merlin: I think she likes the form factor and the way you look when you play this thing.
Merlin: But she's never played one.
John: Well, it's not the clarinet, then.
Merlin: Well, so I find myself saying, like, it would be so great if there was a way not to learn every instrument...
Merlin: But to have all these instruments on a table and be able to hold it and see it and feel it and hear the noise that it makes, have a live demonstration by somebody talented, various people talented.
Merlin: You know what I'm saying?
Merlin: I know that doesn't happen in schools like it used to.
Merlin: We used to get concerts all the time.
Merlin: But in this case, somebody would say, this is what an alto sax sounds like.
Merlin: And you play something typical of an alto sax, right?
John: Et cetera.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: I would go to the school.
Merlin: I would talk to people who go to the school.
Merlin: And I would ask one of my clever questions.
Merlin: You could meet the principal, but I think it'd be better to meet parents of somebody who's been there for at least two years.
Merlin: And I would say, what's the best thing about this and what's the second worst thing?
John: But you know, what that does is it points out how difficult it is to really feel like you have peers.
John: Because
John: At my daughter's school, there's a teacher that everybody loves.
John: And my experience of this teacher is that she doesn't work for me.
John: And it's because she doesn't seem to really, she seems to just be sort of phoning it in and everybody else is sort of fine with that.
John: There's a lot of this confirmation bias that you're talking about where it's like, we go to the best school in town, so our teachers are the best.
John: And this teacher who's phoning it in is phoning it in the best.
John: And I just feel like a young teacher somewhere who's really trying real hard or a teacher that has some creative ideas, even if that teacher is fumbling,
John: Right.
John: Right.
John: Right.
John: Right.
John: Right.
John: struggling a little, you know, like working hard to figure their thing out.
John: But that is going to produce a Yelp review...
Merlin: that's like well the teacher doesn't or it's just you know that's the type of teacher that gets assigned to a school that is struggling all i'm saying is like you could weasel your way in i i know this is true at our school and at other schools around here but there's almost always somebody there who's who's a volunteer a parent usually but a volunteer who in some form or fashion deals with people who don't go to school here yet
Merlin: So there's usually a committee of people who help with people who are going to check out kindergarten before they arrive here.
Merlin: There's people like that.
Merlin: There are people at our school, every grade has at least one person who's just the liaison to new students and their families to help them acclimate.
Merlin: That person, there must be a person like that at a school that you could go talk to.
Merlin: Who would be happy to like, then once you talk to them, now you can, you got an inroad to meeting other people who tell you the real story.
John: But I think the challenge, uh, the challenge there is that people, a lot of people I know are making decisions about where they're going to move because you get to be 40.
John: You want to have a kid.
John: You can't live in Seattle anymore.
John: Basically.
John: It's too expensive, right?
John: You're living in a one bedroom apartment.
John: Now you have a kid and
John: You can't keep living in a one-bedroom apartment.
John: But you can't move anywhere else in town to anything better than a one-bedroom apartment.
John: And so you have to move to one of the outlying neighborhoods where the schools are.
John: And you're trying to make this decision.
John: We want to get a nice house.
John: We want walkable streets.
John: We want good schools.
John: And I don't know how many people have the...
John: I would not have the ability, I don't think, to go out to all the outlying schools and pick one that I liked and then start making decisions about where I was going to move based on that.
John: And so I hear time and time again, like, well, we found this great house.
John: It's in this great neighborhood.
John: I really like it there, but the schools are bad, so we can't.
John: And it's like, wow, that's a great neighborhood, a great house that you like.
John: Everything about it, it's close to town.
John: It's affordable, but the schools are bad, you say.
Merlin: All it takes is enough people repeating those words because they heard it from somebody else, and now those schools are bad.
Merlin: They will become bad.
Merlin: It's like naming your kid Jeeves.
John: It's destiny.
John: Yeah.
John: Yeah, those kids are bad.
John: It's like naming your kid Jeeves.
John: Don't name your kid Jeeves is the lesson there.
Merlin: Oh, that's not... How much do you know about that school?
John: Right?
John: Right, right.
John: Oh, I've heard from several people.
John: Oh, you know, like, did you look online at the ratings of that school?
Merlin: No, you don't want to go to Joe's.
Merlin: You want to go to original Joe's.
Merlin: They're not...
Merlin: Original, original Joe's.
Merlin: This isn't the good Popeye's.
Merlin: No, no, this is the bad cheesesteak pizza.
Merlin: Oh, you're in Chicago.
Merlin: Oh, you've got to go to Prime Meal, Prime Evil Joe's.
Merlin: It has the best deep dish Philly cheesesteaks.
John: But you and I are always saying things essentially like saying, well, don't, you know,
John: Don't dress your cat in an apron.
John: It's definitely not out of character for me when a friend is saying, oh, we'd love to live down there in this beautiful home on the edge of a park next to this great old neighborhood, but
John: We can't because the schools are bad.
John: So we're moving somewhere where it's an hour and 45 minute long commute.
John: And it's in character for me to go, well, that doesn't sound smart.
John: Why don't you just ignore the fact that the schools are supposedly bad and go send your kid there and do your part to make that school better or just count on the fact that, like,
John: There's a 99% chance that your kid's teacher is going to be great and your kid is going to have a great time there.
Merlin: Not to be a dick, but how much are you going to put into that?
Merlin: Are you really just surfing for the highest quality nanny in town or are you finding a place that you can invest in?
Merlin: I think you went to a co-op preschool, right?
Merlin: Uh, I did.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: So we've, I mean, your kid, I mean, my kid did.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: So same here.
Merlin: And that was a lot of, it was a lot of work, but it was understood that everybody there had to do that work.
Merlin: Tell you what's pretty different.
Merlin: Third, fourth grade is there's a couple of people that think everything needs to get done and they'll do it.
Merlin: And then a lot of other people who think everything needs to get done.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: Because they picked the good school and now just go take care of that for me.
John: And I think that's a big part of it.
John: Right.
John: You you you get the good school and then your work here is done.
John: You have done that.
John: You've you've you did the right thing.
John: You just drive an hour and a half for work every day.
John: Yeah.
John: And and and that's exactly right.
John: You know, the.
John: The idea that you can make your kid's school good just by going by there every day and standing around at the drop and cry or whatever you were talking about.
Merlin: But, you know, you can show up for duty when it's, you know, stop, drop and go week or you can chaperone a field trip, which I do a lot of.
John: Oh, my God.
Merlin: So do I. Yeah, I always feel like kind of the odd man out with it.
Merlin: But like it makes me very, very tired.
Merlin: Oh, there's one time we went to a children's movie festival at the Kabuki.
Merlin: And you know where we live.
Merlin: And it was somebody's idea that not only would we take three classes of kids.
Merlin: Okay, let's get all the parts of this.
Merlin: We're going to take three classes of kids.
Merlin: All the same age?
Merlin: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Merlin: This is all second graders.
Merlin: And we're going to take the bus.
Merlin: We're not going to take the streetcar.
Merlin: We're going to take the bus.
Merlin: That's fun.
Merlin: Did I mention that there's also a transfer?
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: oh boy how many how many classes of kids again yeah three classes of kids so you got about 75 kids uh you've got as many parents as who showed up and this becomes important to the story in a little bit how many kids can you fit on a bus uh you might have to break them up or you get in real tight and uh boy nobody likes that but that's a lot of what happens when you do that but yeah we did it took us about an hour and a half each way in the rain literally in the rain
Merlin: And a couple of parents just didn't show up that had volunteered.
Merlin: And you have no idea what you put on to a 48-year-old man chaperoning children on a public bus with a transfer.
Merlin: We're transferring on frickin' Park Presidio.
Merlin: Like, it's busy.
Merlin: Like, it's, you know...
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: So like when two people just skate and don't show up and there's like two to take care of those 26 kids plus the teacher and then maybe the para.
Merlin: Well, you know, I'm sure that's a long day for daddy.
Merlin: I'm sure that they were busy, Merlin.
Merlin: That's a good school.
Merlin: It's a very good school.
Merlin: So they don't need to help.
John: The more I think about that, the angrier it makes me.
John: They had an important meeting or they had something to do that day that they couldn't have foreseen.
John: Yeah, well, you know.
John: They couldn't say, you know, until the very last minute.
John: Making texts, tech and makes.
John: Yep, yep.
John: I love going on the field trips.
John: I love the sound of like 200 six-year-olds.
John: I love the sound of their little voices.
John: I love what they think is the right way to get into a line.
John: You know, they're lovely, lovely little children and
John: And it's my pleasure.
John: It's my privilege to be there.
Merlin: You know, but if I can just be that particular guy, one thing I will say, and I want to underscore this because I think this is fucking important, is that it is unfair.
Merlin: And think all the things you want about all the various things about how this is all complicated bullshit for white people.
Merlin: But here's the thing.
Merlin: Like, if you want your kid to go to a good school, make it the place where you're going to help out at least a little bit.
Merlin: I'm not even saying you have to be that person who shows up to set up and clean up and do whatever.
Merlin: You don't even have to be that person.
Merlin: You could even just be the person who helps out a little bit at the auction.
Merlin: But you know what?
Merlin: Even below that, come in the school, talk to people, introduce yourself, meet the librarian.
Merlin: This will come in handy because your child will lose a book and you're eventually going to be in Dutch with the librarian.
Merlin: That's just practical.
Merlin: But, like, learn about the other kids and parents and teachers at the school.
Merlin: Like, don't just show up and make a beeline in and out.
Merlin: Treat it like it's a place you care about.
Merlin: I'm sorry.
Merlin: I don't mean to be emotional about this, but, like, it is really frustrating because I do feel like this might be a caricature, but I do feel frustrated that my sense is a lot of the people...
Merlin: The largest cohort of people with super high expectations also Venn diagrams nicely with the cohort of people who do fuck all to help out.
Merlin: And that makes me mad in the same way that made me mad in my early 20s when people came to parties and said they were bored.
Merlin: Well, you know what?
Merlin: There's one great way this party could be less boring.
Merlin: You could either fucking leave or you can help.
Merlin: You could bring ice.
Merlin: You could bring beer.
Merlin: And no, we don't want to play your tape, Todd.
Merlin: But you could help out.
Merlin: That's all I'm saying.
Merlin: Why did you want to play Todd's tape?
Merlin: Todd always puts too much fucking reggae on there.
Merlin: Oh, my God.
Merlin: Like, a little bit of reggae, and everybody's loving it.
Merlin: Dun, dun, dun, dun.
Merlin: Dun, dun, dun, dun.
Merlin: I hope you like a jamming, too.
Merlin: One time my friend Michael made a mixtape that was all P-Funk and Wire.
Merlin: I think he wanted to provoke people, and it was also his two favorite bands at the time, but it's really hard to go from Up on the Downstroke to Field Day for Sundays.
Merlin: The ladies are not dancing to that.
Merlin: No, no, it's like record scratch.
Merlin: Screech!
Merlin: Anyway, I got a little emotional about that, but that's frustrating to me.
Merlin: You know what it is?
Merlin: It's frustrating that they're not helping.
Merlin: It's frustrating that they're adding workload to people who already have plenty of workload.
Merlin: B-fucking-leave-me.
Merlin: But it also just frustrates me that you wouldn't have the presence of mind to think, what is one really obvious way that this school could be made better?
Merlin: And most people think that means you should write a letter.
Merlin: Instead of saying, you know what, drop by and pick up a broom.
Merlin: If you ask somebody for a broom, they'll find you a broom.
Merlin: There is so much stuff that needs to be done at that school that hasn't been done in years because there's just not enough people.
Merlin: However we got here, that's just how life is.
Merlin: But you've got to pitch in.
John: Yeah, and I do feel that there's this tendency, certainly in these schools that have five-star ratings, for people to feel like it is – yeah, it's a private school in that case.
John: It's like a –
John: They're rich schools, and so rich people get to act rich there.
John: Yeah.
John: Have the nanny drop off the kid and pick up the kid.
John: Have your chauffeur go over who happens to be named Jeeves, which is no accident.
John: Oh, see.
John: Don't name your kid Jeeves.
John: Don't name your kid Jeeves.
John: They'll end up being a chauffeur.
John: That's what you're saying.
Merlin: You want to keep doing the show at nine, you think?
Merlin: uh it's real hard to i think i think we should stick with it i think this is good you got the school year starting this is going to be good yeah yeah yeah now now the thing is we usually record on mondays we had to reschedge because it's august and everything is chaos do you usually get a better worse or more or less the same night o sleep sunday night into monday morning how's your sleep on most sunday nights compared to the other nights
John: Well, this is, again, another thing in the category of things that I do not measure or record.
John: All just kind of runs together.
John: Yeah, like I don't know often that it is Sunday or Monday, for instance.
Merlin: Oh, I see.
Merlin: You took it and you turned it.
Merlin: You're going up a higher level to like, how would I even know if I don't even know what day it is even?
John: Well, yeah, and like you were saying,
John: Well, I like these coffees.
John: I don't like those coffees.
John: And I was like, I just get a different coffee every time.
John: Yep.
John: And I never...
John: I get it.
Merlin: I get it.
John: The dots.
John: And it's the same kind of with the like, oh, I didn't sleep very well last night.
John: Oh, is it because it was Sunday?
John: Boy, I don't know.
John: And partly maybe it's because I don't keep a sleep diary or something.
Merlin: No, I understand.
Merlin: I understand.
Merlin: I didn't get as much as I would like.
Merlin: Last night I had six hours and 38 minutes.
Merlin: That's a lot.
Merlin: Not for me.
John: Six hours and 38 minutes.
Merlin: My average is seven hours, 10 minutes this week.
Merlin: Last week, seven hours, five minutes.
Merlin: I try really hard to be asleep.
Merlin: This is so interesting.
Merlin: This is one thing I talk about on every podcast I do, and I know people love it.
John: Is that right?
Merlin: Oh, yes.
Merlin: And when I see every podcast I do, I mean, it'll come up every time I talk how my sleep is going.
John: How many podcasts do you do now?
John: All of them.
John: Yeah, but is it like four or six?
John: Something like that.
John: Between four and six?
John: No, it's like four.
John: Four.
John: Four podcasts.
John: You're on one of them.
Merlin: Four podcasts.
Merlin: Yeah, you're on one of them.
Merlin: And so I try really hard to be asleep before 11.
Merlin: I rarely make that.
Merlin: And I try really hard to be up before 7.
Merlin: So in an ideal world, I would go to bed at 10.30 and get up at 6.30.
Merlin: Wow.
Merlin: But that's hard for me to do because I like to watch TV at night.
Merlin: And then I like to sleep a little in the morning.
Merlin: But I also want to be helpful in the morning.
Merlin: And it's my job to brush hair.
Merlin: And I have to make a note to put in her lunch.
Merlin: And there's the things that I have to do that I choose to do.
John: Choose them I do.
John: What's the what is the current brush hair situation there?
Merlin: Oh, boy.
Merlin: Let me send you a recent photo.
Merlin: Her hair is pretty long.
Merlin: And over the summer, you know, you were not quite as exactly dogged about you will take a shower and wash your hair every single night.
Merlin: Sometimes you're like just vacationing and you got home at nine o'clock and that's not going to happen tonight.
Merlin: And like, sure.
Merlin: I, I'm a huge advocate for we need to, she, that her hair must be brushed somehow twice to three times a day.
Merlin: And if you don't, and no, no, I mean the full deal, like all the way through you get out any of those little knots and whatnot.
Merlin: Cause I'll tell you, if you only do it in the morning,
Merlin: every morning yeah so that's my job my job is i get started i get the big stuff i'd get most of the grander patterns but there's two like mini knots on the side my wife specializes in so she comes in and does the finishing work and if there's a braid a side braid a french braid she will do that whereas i'm only in a position to offer uh headgear it's a little bit of a division a nice division of labor where your wife does the technical work
John: And you do kind of the heavy lifting.
Merlin: Oh, geez.
Merlin: She does all the lifting of all kinds.
John: I mean, I'm talking about in the hair.
Merlin: Oh, with the hair, she cares more and she's better, so she'll always win that one.
Merlin: Oh, I see.
Merlin: Here's a photograph.
Merlin: That's her this morning after the braid.
Merlin: She's got some cool sparkly pants and unicorn shoes.
John: You know, I'm much more in the... Much more in the...
Merlin: like let it ride family of um how's her hair doing but i'm the only one like somebody who doesn't have to comb it out when it gets bad no i do i'm the only one that i'm the only one that she will uh let really because i feel like it's not only like i want my daughter to not not look like a dickens character it's also just self-preservation it's not competition it's more like holy shit if i have to deal with this tomorrow and not tonight
Merlin: Oh, brother.
Merlin: So you let it ride.
John: Yeah, look at all of her hair.
John: Wow.
John: Nice braid.
John: Yeah, look at the shoes.
John: Well, so those are great.
John: So the thing is that my little girl is still, I'm still able to bathe her where I'm guessing you are not bathing your daughter anymore.
John: And she brings the iPad in.
Merlin: She was listening to Clint Eastwood by the gorillas last night while she took her own shower.
John: Yeah, that's so, you know, Marlo is sick.
John: She still like gets her hair shampooed by somebody.
Merlin: You got a little bucket.
Merlin: You got a little hand bucket in there.
John: No, I have a but I do have a very good elaborate sort of.
John: Hair conditioning regimen.
John: Oh, I love this.
John: That's big in our house.
John: Very long hair.
John: She has your fine hair, right?
John: She has thick, fine hair.
John: Lots of fine hair.
John: Lots and lots of fine hair.
John: Okay.
John: And it gets tangled, but what I do is I do this whole, then we put the conditioner in, then we brush it for a long time.
John: I wish I could get away with that.
John: I would kill to get away with that every night.
John: As a part of putting the conditioner in.
John: Oh my God, it would make everything so much better.
John: So you're just combing, and then I'll get down to a finer and finer toothed comb until I'm combing through it like it is corn silk.
John: And it has so much conditioner in it now that it's just like,
John: It's like one of those 70s TV commercials where she moves and her hair just moves in slow motion.
Merlin: I'm sitting here fantasizing about it.
Merlin: Oh, my God.
Merlin: The brush must just go right through it.
Merlin: It does.
John: And so she's in the bathtub.
John: She's playing with her toys.
John: She's not even aware her hair is being brushed because it just feels like this sort of... Now you're just bragging.
John: We have to get to that point.
Merlin: Do you know my daughter washes her hands when she gets home without being asked?
Merlin: Did I mention that out loud?
John: I'm sorry.
Merlin: Did it sound like I was bragging?
Merlin: That must have taken a long time.
Merlin: My daughter reads almost a book a day.
Merlin: Did I say that out loud?
Merlin: Oh my gosh, it's so weird that I would say that out loud.
Merlin: Sometimes two books a day.
Merlin: Did you put electrodes somewhere on the floor where it shocked her?
Merlin: No, I just said, God answered my one prayer.
Merlin: Well, technically 1.5, two prayers.
Merlin: I hope she likes music, but I really hope she likes reading.
Merlin: Please, God, let her read.
Merlin: I don't care if she's a terrible, large adult son.
Merlin: I don't care how she turns out as long as she likes to read.
Merlin: And it's like, I will... That is... I don't care if she... Don't tell my wife this.
Merlin: I don't care if she never kicks a ball in her life.
Merlin: If she keeps reading like this, I'm going to be so happy.
John: Well, this thing about the hair actually is a problem, even within my own family, because one other... I mean, like my mom...
John: Her policy is sit in the goddamn chair.
John: I'm going to brush your hair.
John: She doesn't even hold the top.
John: Mom is good at it.
John: She she she knows how not to hurt her, but she's also not.
John: like brooking any any you know like sassafras yeah no she's not gonna brook any sassafras your hair is gonna get brushed here's what's not gonna happen you you leave here without your hair brushed here's what's also not gonna happen you yell at me while i'm brushing your hair so you can see i'm eliminating some of these possibilities uh but if i if her mom picks up a brush across the room she'll start to cry
John: and so it's really oh that must hurt her feelings it does and it's a real issue because i'm in there like just luxuriating through this silken silken slow motion hair and uh you know and she's not even she doesn't put up a fuss at all because because it's the conditioner the conditioner is the secret ingredient but she will not allow others i know how this is
John: Yeah.
John: It's weird.
John: It's so strange.
John: It is a little braggy, I have to admit.
Merlin: Oh, no, no.
Merlin: But you know what?
Merlin: Good for you.
Merlin: It's a gift.
Merlin: Yeah.
John: Oh, my God.
Merlin: Good for you.
Merlin: Good for both of us.
Merlin: You know what?
Merlin: We're all good looking guys.
Merlin: We just got our parade.
Merlin: she took simarillion to school the other day that's not readable you can't read that when you're 50 i know i think it's a prank i bought it for her and just said because they're still reading lord of the rings it's a very very large books um i it is a very very large book it's a very large books well they have i got the edition first i got them an edition that i thought because they wanted to read the hobbit and they wanted to do lord of the rings
Merlin: And so I got this, like, Amazon Prime, right?
Merlin: I got this little box set.
Merlin: But little shitty fucking letters, like a cheap Bible.
Merlin: Cheap, like, cheap, like, skinny paper and little tiny letters.
Merlin: Like, be careful.
Merlin: Before you buy a complete Sherlock Holmes, like, you know, full, if that thing's not huge, it's going to be hard to read.
Merlin: That's what I learned.
Merlin: Uh-huh.
Merlin: So then I thought, so they're reading The Lord of the Rings.
Merlin: I got them a bigger edition.
Merlin: It's got bigger letters and nicer paper.
Merlin: And I thought, I'm just going to get this similarly, and I'm just going to put it here.
Merlin: I'm not going to fucking read it.
Merlin: No way.
Merlin: I don't even like looking at it.
Merlin: No, thank you.
Merlin: Yeah, exactly.
Merlin: So I'll just leave it here, though, because they're very into this.
Merlin: Like, we sit and watch these movies, and I'm like, which one is Serdingus of Doomplace?
Merlin: And they're like, shut up, Dad.
Merlin: It's not even a joke.
Merlin: Like, you don't know the story.
Merlin: Don't even...
Merlin: My family becomes like John Syracuse.
Merlin: They're like, you don't even know what to make fun of when you're watching this, you idiot.
Merlin: But you know what to make fun of.
Merlin: Yeah.
John: We'll let her watch some of The Matrix.
John: Oh, I don't know if I would go there, but she's a sophisticated gal.
John: She's nice.
John: She's almost 10.
John: Yeah, she's sophisticated.
Merlin: It's better than you think.
Merlin: It's really, I mean, in terms of, like, there's some stuff.
Merlin: Mostly it's creepy.
Merlin: It's just real creepy, but she loved it.
John: Yeah, I bet.
Merlin: I bet.
Merlin: I had to point out that that was Elrond, but, like, she's mostly got it.
John: Oh, it is Elrond.
John: Mr. Anderson...
John: She didn't see that initially?
Merlin: Grok the Agent Smith was Elrod.
John: Oh, you know what?
Merlin: Maybe I didn't either.
Merlin: That's my game.
Merlin: You know you have an old man in your car when you're going down the street and he just reads all the signs.
Merlin: Remember this phenomenon?
John: Well, I was talking to my kid the other day as we were driving along, and she was reading the signs, and I was like, you know that's a thing, right?
John: That's an old man thing.
John: That's a thing that little old men do where they read every single one.
Merlin: I thought it was a joke, but it's true.
Merlin: I'll be driving along, and I'll go, huh, huh.
Merlin: Axis Ajax Monuments.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Kentucky Fried Chicken.
Yeah.
Merlin: There's a truck stop up here.
Merlin: Oh, we're watching this Nanny McPhee movie.
Merlin: We had a sleepover, and our guest wanted to watch Nanny McPhee.
Merlin: And we were watching, and I go, huh!
Merlin: I was like, look at that.
Merlin: That's the gal from Harry Potter.
Merlin: That's Professor Trelawney.
Merlin: Professor Trelawney.
Merlin: She's wearing a lot.
Merlin: And look at that.
Merlin: That's Professor Umbridge, you know, from the Ministry of Magic.
Merlin: She's playing the cook in this.
Merlin: And they're like, Dad, just close IMDb.
Merlin: Like, stop talking.
Okay.
John: I really like that Jimmy Stewart comes out of you a little bit.
Merlin: If not in...
Merlin: impersonation very much in like comportment you know no no no no i'm pretty sure i put my pants here why do people keep moving my pants and my coins now i'm turning now i'm turning into a southern belt i just love that tan tan all right uh you know uh i think we should keep going at nine i think we should stick with it i know it's a pilot program but what do you think should we keep with it
John: I don't think that it's a question of 9 or 10 because I think if it was at 10, I would have stayed up another hour.
John: It's not that it's too early.
John: It's just that I need to figure out a different way to live.
John: Do you want to move it to 8?
John: What if we did it at 6?
John: Then both of us would get a good start to our day.
Merlin: You're saying what if we were both mutually inconvenienced?
Merlin: What if we do it at 5.30 a.m.
John: ?
John: You know, what if we did it at 5.30 p.m.?
John: That would be really inconvenient.
Merlin: Oh, yeah, that would suck.
Merlin: Oh, that would be extremely inconvenient.
Merlin: Oh, no, that would be terrible.
Merlin: I don't think I'd be able to do that.
Merlin: 4.45 to 5.30?
Merlin: That's not a time that I book stuff.
John: What about that?
John: That's perfect.
John: Let's do it.
John: What if we really fucked ourselves up, right?
Merlin: I don't understand why you don't go out more.
Fuck it.