Ep. 285: "Praise Cannon"
Merlin: Hello.
Merlin: Hi, John.
Merlin: Hello.
Merlin: Hello.
Merlin: Oh, hello.
Merlin: Hello.
Merlin: Hi, John.
John: Hi, Merlin.
John: How's it going?
John: Oh, so super.
John: Hello.
John: Hello.
Merlin: Good morning.
Merlin: Hey, good morning.
Merlin: Oh, my God.
Merlin: I'm in a state, John.
Merlin: Tell me.
Merlin: You don't want to know.
John: Do you want to know?
John: I'm in a state.
John: You sound like a frog in a pot of water and someone is slowly turning up the heat.
Merlin: How even will I know when to jump out of this incorrect analogy?
John: I don't even know.
Merlin: It's heartbreaking.
Merlin: I need your advice.
Merlin: What's going on?
Merlin: It's a big week.
Merlin: How is this week different from other weeks?
John: This is the week that we leave a seat for Elijah.
Merlin: Mazel tov.
Merlin: John, this is one of those frantic weeks because it will require some solo parenting from me.
John: Oh, this is unusual and exciting.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Do you feel like this is in your wheelhouse?
Merlin: Is this something you can help me with?
John: Oh, yeah, absolutely.
John: You know, my daughter's mother left this morning at 4 a.m.
John: for a week.
John: Long business trip to your city, San Francisco.
Merlin: San Francisco.
Merlin: I'll wave to her from my office here atop Citra Tower.
John: Yeah, from your seven-sided lighthouse made of dreams.
Hey!
John: Hey!
John: But yes, so Mar... Mar... Mar... Margauder.
John: Margell... Margellon.
John: Margellosimo.
John: Margellon.
John: She's caused by chemtrails.
John: She and I are going to have a very fine week.
John: But, you know, I do have my mother in town, so she also is very helpful.
John: It's very seldom that I am...
John: In a situation where I'm looking at five days where there's just no respite.
John: Five days?
John: But I often am the only parent of record for four or five days.
Merlin: Listen, I don't want to make this the whole show, but I need some advice.
Merlin: Not vent.
Merlin: meant the wrong word no no not fans you know what it is it's an airing of failures i feel like it's important for me to periodically air my failures and let's be honest to show my vulnerabilities about something that i would like to think i'm good at and i'm not sure i'm really that good at let's just look at this as like a lower east side tenement alleyway and you're just putting that wet laundry out on a on a rope high above and
John: Good morning, Mrs. Spaghetti.
John: Where all your neighbors can see your drawers.
John: They call them pants in England.
John: Yeah, because that's the only way we have.
John: We don't have a washer and dryer.
John: We're not the future yet.
Merlin: I'm not a snork.
Merlin: No, you know what it is.
Merlin: Okay, so without getting into too much detail, my lady needs to do some business travel that will necessitate me being the sole parent for three nights.
Merlin: She is an important lady and she has stuff to do out there.
Merlin: She's a business lady.
Merlin: She has things to do.
Merlin: And but here's the funny part is like I will, first of all, there's just this whole like I was talking to you this morning about like potentially rescheduling because I'm at a fever pitch because there's the things you got to do before you do the things you're going to do.
Merlin: Yes, sir.
Merlin: You experience something that I call compression.
Merlin: You get compression.
Merlin: Suddenly, events take on a new kind of valence because they need to be done by a certain time.
Merlin: Your life becomes an existential rally.
Merlin: Now, for other people, this is not hard.
Merlin: I think other people are wired better than I, but I will have my daughter by myself for three nights, and that's going to mean some getting to school and some picking up.
Merlin: It involves making lunch, which is fraught.
Merlin: The thing I eventually want to get to, though, is I know you're not a big screen parent.
Merlin: I want to know how you handle the time, the long, long times when you're with the child.
Merlin: Because this is not a tenement in Brooklyn.
Merlin: You can't just send your kid off to play stickball.
Merlin: You know, you've got a helicopter over them.
Merlin: I'll take any advice you got.
Merlin: I'll get any observations you have.
Merlin: Philosophical, practical, anything that you can offer that will help me.
Merlin: And let's be honest, my daughter survived three days.
John: Yeah.
John: You know, if there were ever a case where I prepared a topic in advance or had even the slightest idea what we were going to talk about in the three and a half minutes between when I wake up and when I sit down here, compression is what I would have talked about today because I'm also feeling like every spare minute –
John: Filled now with something filled with some creamy Like vanilla pudding mmm It's not bad.
John: It's just full.
Merlin: Let's let somebody spray that in all the available areas putting now mm-hmm Just it's full of vanilla pudding.
John: I don't even like vanilla pudding, but you are in a situation.
John: Oh, that's so you know because because you hit the nail on the head already and
John: Being a parent is just to feel like you're failing at it all the time.
John: At least that's how I feel.
John: I used to think that that would go away.
John: I think mainly before I was a parent, I thought that feeling would eventually go away.
John: Yeah, no, it doesn't.
John: At least not for me.
John: I keep thinking it's going to go away, too.
John: But every day it's a new thing where it's like, oh, boy, I didn't do a very good job.
Merlin: And I'm constantly realizing I'm too late on things.
Merlin: Mm-hmm.
Merlin: You know, whether that's something like I should have ordered turkey breast for sandwiches tomorrow, because, oh, guess what?
Merlin: I forgot.
Merlin: There's a field trip on Wednesday morning, and it has to be a packable lunch with nothing plastic.
Merlin: You understand?
Merlin: Now, I am playing a horrible Milton Bradley board game of many other people's design at this point.
Merlin: You've got to practice the ukulele.
Merlin: Oh, by the way, they're getting extra homework now because it's fifth grade next year, which is a real grade.
Merlin: So now they're getting more homework.
Merlin: They've doubled the math.
Merlin: They've doubled the reading log.
Merlin: You've still got to do all of that.
John: I love how they do that, where they're like, next year is real school, so we're going to pile on a bunch of real school stuff now.
John: I was hearing that as a senior.
John: I was still hearing that.
John: In order to get you ready for next year.
John: And it's like, what do you mean?
John: What were you doing before?
John: Yeah.
John: Well, we're just doing it now then instead of then.
John: Oh, yeah, we got to do it now instead of, you know, like I told you, didn't I, that I got a failing grade in seventh grade advanced English because the teacher said in high school they don't use pencils.
John: I hate this story.
John: I hate this story so much.
John: In high school they don't use pencils, so we have to start using pens.
John: We have to start learning to use pens.
John: And I just never had a pen.
John: I mean, you know, they would buy me pens, but I would lose them.
John: All I had was pencils.
John: I just wanted to work in pencil.
John: It was fine.
John: And the teacher said that she would no longer accept anything written in pencil.
Merlin: It's got to be in blue or blue-black ink.
John: It's all they accept.
John: It would be an automatic zero.
John: And so I continued to do my work through the entire year, page after page of English assignment, which she continued to mark zero.
John: Oh, God.
John: Because she was preparing me for high school.
Merlin: Isn't that nice the way she did that?
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: she sure did you're bringing in another angle i'm going to interrupt you but the other angle of this is like all the secret double probation rules we're like you know there's i don't know if you get this yet with her work but there's a lot of assignments we get we're in addition to not understanding the way that they're teaching math now that's okay i know it's a better way i'm learning but in addition to that there's like it's sometimes difficult to tell to to quote glengarry glenn ross you know what is this in service of
Merlin: if if are we testing handwriting are we testing creativity are we testing following the directions because i would counsel to do all these things real differently but it's real weird when it comes down to like well it kind of doesn't matter what you did if you didn't use ink like i guess yeah that's that's a rule yeah what are we what are we teaching oh we're teaching we're teaching this child not to
Merlin: believe that adults have have any knowledge yeah i think we teach adults don't really have perspective or understand context they understand uh could the creation of compliance now is there not hot lunch at your school yes there is but we're also um well she's got compression too their entire lunch period is 20 minutes
Whoa.
Merlin: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Merlin: So it's already staggered to where, like, I think two grades at a time, the kids go to lunch.
Merlin: The littlest kids go first, then the next group, and then my daughter's in the third group.
Merlin: And most of the groups have 25 minutes.
Merlin: She's got 20 minutes.
Merlin: And so, like, if you go through the lines, it's boring.
Merlin: But if you go through the line and everything, that really cuts into your eating time, your shuck and jive time.
Merlin: You know what I mean?
John: It sounds like a prison problem.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Well, again, I understand that we're all playing a different tile game, a different puzzle game.
Merlin: This is what makes adulthood complicated, is everybody has a different puzzle game.
Merlin: And that's an imperfect analogy.
Merlin: But there's not a single person out there that's like, hey, hey, five by five, everything's going great.
Merlin: Everybody out there is struggling with something.
Merlin: There's resource.
Merlin: constraints at the school like okay so what's lunch well lunch is partly like who's going to supervise them because lawsuits and like time constraints and all that stuff so I think that she prefers the packed lunch with my which my wonderful wonderful wife makes for her most most mornings
Merlin: And she makes a nice little meal in a little bento box, and there's edamame, or there's raspberries, or there's carrots.
Merlin: And she has this internal barometer for how to make a dignified lunch.
John: But I feel like, like you were saying before, a lot of what you're trying to deal with now is like, what kind of groundwork have you laid?
John: And my sense – like I don't – I do not have like a complete picture of the inner life of the – of your family and your home there.
John: But my sense is that you do not like to disappoint your wife and daughter.
John: And so she's accustomed to this kind of lunch, and you want to maintain that consistency.
John: Whereas in my family, I laid the groundwork right at the beginning that I was going to consistently disappoint everyone.
John: You set an expectation.
John: I set an expectation that Daddy is going to always... Sometimes Daddy disappoints.
John: Sometimes Daddy shows up to school in his pajamas.
John: Sometimes Daddy's missing a tooth on photo day.
John: Sometimes your lunch is just raisins.
Merlin: Just a box?
Merlin: Do you take them out of the box or it's just a raisin that says M on it?
John: No, it's like six little boxes of raisins.
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John: And sometimes you get hot lunch.
John: Daddy says, hey, today, why don't you get hot lunch?
John: And if her response is, I don't like hot lunch, Daddy says, well, I didn't like the irony wars of the 90s, but I lived through them.
Merlin: Right, right.
Merlin: My frequent response is like, she'll say like, oh, I want to have a packed lunch with a bespoke turkey sandwich.
Merlin: And my response is usually, yeah, well, I want to be tall.
Merlin: Get used to it.
Merlin: Yeah, so you have to just... To answer your question, though, yes, not only do I want to meet, get somewhere near the bar of what my desperately competent wife is able to do,
Merlin: But like I'd like it to also be I'd like it to be fun.
Merlin: And then worst of all, I want it to not be stressful, which is one of the hardest parts for me is I really try to minimize unnecessary stress because there's baseline stress just because you got to do hair and socks and everything and toothbrush and to get out of the house.
Merlin: But like that's that's the other part of it.
Merlin: So I feel like I've probably set an unreasonable bar for myself.
Merlin: And that's that causes more of this anxiety in me.
John: Yeah, yeah.
John: I mean, the thing is, A, she's fine, and B, she'll be fine, whatever, however the week goes.
John: Yeah, kids bounce.
John: But also, like, you know, she is a little girl who likes an adventure and a plan, you know, like a, you know, she's into, I mean, you know, none of them like adventure in that if you're like, let's try something new, they don't want to.
John: Right.
John: But I think if you go to her and say, Mama's out of town.
John: We need to really partner up on this.
John: And that's going to involve you helping Daddy as much as it is Daddy helping you.
John: Interesting.
John: So we make it something we need to work on together.
John: Well, yeah, it's like a project.
John: And also, you're relying on her.
John: She's your partner.
John: She's your main partner in this.
John: And so...
John: You know, like you raise your eye.
John: It's like I'm noticing with my little girl that all the things that I made the mistake of calling chores, like clean up your room and, you know, chores.
John: I already at seven years old just get these huge eye rolls and these long sighs.
John: And then I go in an hour later and she's sitting in the middle, sitting, you know, cross-legged on the floor in the middle of her mess.
John: Just sort of reading an Archie.
John: I'm like, where did you even get an Archie?
Merlin: Because somehow you perhaps unintentionally set that up as a negative thing.
John: It's a chore.
John: It's right there in the name.
John: Right there in the name.
John: But I've lately started to say those things like...
John: Well, not long ago, like I was cooking.
John: Her mom was in there, you know, chopping and stuff.
John: And she's standing in the doorway just kind of watching.
John: And I said, hey, set the table.
John: And she got this look of like, uh, how?
John: And I said, well, you know what a table looks like when it's set.
John: And you know what it looks like now.
John: So do I'll put all the things on the table that aren't on it now.
John: And she was like, ah, and she walked around the kitchen kind of just like.
John: Right.
John: Like she'd never seen the kitchen before.
John: Yeah.
John: Opening drawers and wondering like what, you know, like she said at one point, like, like you mean like drinking glasses?
John: And I was like, well, asked and answered.
John: And, you know, and I'm cooking like I don't have a like stuff's burning and stuff.
John: Well, so she went over and she put some combination of things on the table that basically that were the things that she could reach and the things that she thought of, like there were three pepper shakers or whatever she was going around.
John: And, but she got some, she managed to put some table settings and, you know, kind of with me over my shoulder, like
John: Everybody needs a spoon, not just you.
John: And, and she was just like, and it wasn't even a case of like, she was proud because I didn't, I didn't really over praise.
John: I just was like, good.
John: All right.
John: Good.
John: Yeah.
John: Now we need napkins.
John: And because I was also doing something and her mom was also doing something.
John: So when we all came together, it felt like, well, we all did something to be here and not.
John: It wasn't a thing like kind of we normally do where I turn the praise cannon on her.
John: I'm like, oh, my God, you didn't end up fucking putting chocolate on everything like you're a genius.
John: It was just like, all right.
Merlin: So the other day... It's almost like a first round of AI.
Merlin: You're like, oh, you got it kind of right.
Merlin: That's not totally wrong.
John: Yeah, good job.
John: Praise Cannon.
John: But the other day I'm in the kitchen and the dishwasher beeps and she says, what do you do?
John: You know, like it's done washing.
John: And she's like, well, what, what, you know, what was that?
John: What happens now?
John: And I said, I opened the dishwasher and, you know, emptying the dishwasher is super complicated.
John: But I was like, here, put the silverware away.
John: And so she takes a little silverware basket out and just, you know, kind of every single, every single implement was a new puzzle.
John: Like, okay, forks go here, but where does this fork go?
John: Well, that also goes there.
John: Oh.
Merlin: I see this all the time.
Merlin: My daughter can make a multi-acre palace in Minecraft, but she still doesn't understand that that one's compost.
Merlin: You know what I mean?
Merlin: Seriously, there's some areas where they encode so well with certain things that they are motivated about, but there's other kinds of things where you're like, honey, are you okay?
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Did you hurt your head?
Merlin: You know, we always have forks.
Merlin: You know, you got to put socks on every day.
John: Well, what was crazy was because I, again, I was not monitoring her.
John: Not that she could tell, right?
John: I was looking at her out of the corner of my eye, but I was not like helping because I was emptying the other part of the dishwasher, the stuff that she couldn't reach.
Merlin: Like the complicated, heavy shelf stuff.
John: Yeah, and she can't get something up on a high shelf, you know.
John: But so she's just puttering away at her own time trying to figure out like, you know, and she'd hold stuff up like, where does this go?
John: And I'm like, ah, right, that goes over here.
John: And so at the end, when the dishwasher was empty, she said, now can we load it?
John: And I was like, now can we load it?
John: I have never once in my life loaded a dishwasher immediately after emptying it.
John: Right.
John: Sure, we can load it.
John: And she started putting the silverware in the dirty silverware in the baskets, in the bastics.
John: In bastics.
John: By type, all the forks go here.
John: Oh, I like that.
John: I like that fine.
John: All the knives.
John: Well, that's not how I do it.
John: She was not coached to do this.
Merlin: I think there's another influence at play there.
Merlin: I'm watching her do this.
John: I think there's a couple other people in your life that like the forks to be in the plastic together.
John: They do.
John: That's exactly right.
John: And this was like one of those weird...
John: Like broadcasting of a thing, you know, like that I had never seen before.
John: I see her organize things all the time, but like, oh, all the forks go together, do they?
John: Because she had just unloaded a dishwasher three minutes before that was not organized that way.
John: So she was taking it.
John: She was taking over how it's going to get done.
John: Wow.
John: And this is a long conversation slash argument within the Jonathan Colton, Christine Connor family.
John: Oh, really?
Yeah.
John: Christine believes that that's how the dishes should be done.
John: All the forks go together and all the spoons go together.
John: Jonathan argues...
John: that the spoons then all nest against one another and don't get clean in between.
Merlin: OCD is too strong a term, but it's two different wackadoo theories about why it needs to be a certain way.
John: Yeah, and I've been friends with that family for a long time, and you would be surprised the number of times that this comes up sitting around the
John: Sitting around the table?
John: I would not.
Merlin: In the morning?
Merlin: I would not.
Merlin: There are any variety of things that I still find incredibly perplexing from a logical standpoint that I don't bring up in the interest of sanity and peace.
Merlin: Yeah, it's hilarious.
Merlin: And I know I'm just as guilty.
Merlin: I know there are things that I do that make no sense to anybody else in the house.
Merlin: Either seems too tightly wound or way too chaotic or just unknowable.
Merlin: Why would you not always do that thing after you do this thing?
Merlin: It just follows logically.
John: Well, in this case, I sent a text to Jonathan Christine saying, Oh, guess what?
John: Guess who's on team Christine?
John: And immediately it precipitated a text argument between husband and wife.
John: I don't even, I don't know.
John: They could be sitting on the couch together.
John: I don't know whether they were in separate towns or whatever, but you know, Christine said,
John: She's a genius.
John: It's the only right way to do it.
John: And Jonathan immediately texted, this is, you know, she is wrong.
John: She's history's greatest monster.
John: She is wrong, as everyone who practices this abomination is wrong.
John: I never thought about the nesting thing.
John: That's an interesting POV.
John: Well, you know, he's got an interesting POV on things.
Merlin: They're going to nest.
Merlin: The spoons are going to nest.
Merlin: This is also the way I say, again, OCD, I know that's a specific kind of thing, but there are some kinds of people that say, oh, that person's so tightly wound.
Merlin: They're anal because they need everything to be in a row.
Merlin: And there's other people who have a different flavor of that where they can't stand stuff being in a row.
Merlin: There's some kind of people that want everything to be even numbers and so many people who it has to be odd numbers.
Merlin: And it feels like an opposite when it's really, I think, a very similar thing.
John: Well, you know, in my kitchen, there are no matching plates, cups, or glasses.
John: Every plate has to be a different plate.
John: That's eclectic.
John: Well, it's just, like, in my mom's house, everything had to match.
John: And I cannot have everything match.
Merlin: And probably I'm guessing an equal number?
Merlin: Like, there's this many salad forks, there's this many small plates, that kind of thing?
John: All done just exactly.
John: perfectly and i think if if you broke a small plate then the whole set of plates would go and a new set of plates would arrive whoa um because like you know you don't want you don't want four of everything and three of the world in our own ways but my house is all every everything is is individual and partly it's that i like going to thrift stores and finding things and i find a thing and i'm like here's a new one
John: But now, the idea of having even, I mean, two plates matching would be even worse than all plates matching.
John: I totally get that.
John: Yeah.
John: Because now you look careless.
Merlin: You just look like, where'd you get, oh, two plates?
Merlin: Now you look like a rube.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Before you looked like an eccentric, now you look like a rube.
John: But...
John: The argument about the silverware, because again, believe me, I've heard it a hundred times.
John: We're going to call this Team Christine and Team Jonathan.
John: Christine says it makes it easier when the dishes are done to just reach in, grab them all, and put them away.
John: It makes it easier.
John: Jonathan counters by saying, you've got to sort them at one point, either before or after.
John: So...
John: it's not any easier.
John: You're just, you're just doing the hard work one at a time when you put them in, sorting them into their proper Bastic instead of just throwing them in there and saving precious seconds.
John: So it's like, it's like two waves of just like a view of the world and of time.
John: And now my own daughter has just instinctively exhibited a,
John: a preference here and I cannot intervene because this is what my mom did to me I would she would say help me load the dishwasher I would do it some way let's say I would do it team Christine style and then she would come along go oh but here's how we do it and she would then redo it team Jonathan or whatever it would be the opposite obviously whatever you did you're doing it wrong and so I can't do I cannot intervene in my own
John: child's world in this way she's putting the silverware in and there's no way i'm gonna at that point say oh but nesting i try to i try to catch myself because at least she's doing it yeah oh yeah is that too much praise canon because because i think i agree i'd rather see her do it in a kind of half-assed searching sort of way than like not at all
John: Absolutely.
John: And I would I'll live with some spoons that are slightly tarnished if it means that she thinks that that loading the dishwasher is one of the it's not a chore.
John: It's just one of the things that she does as part of our group effort, like our tribe.
John: Right.
John: Because she starts she wants some tribal responsibilities.
John: And I think part of it was several weeks ago.
John: My mom and her mom were complaining about her, that she was being intransigent.
John: She was just fighting everything and passive fighting.
John: A lot of it is, is active fighting.
John: And some of it is just like,
John: Okay, get your shoes on.
John: Okay.
John: She's, as they say, slow walking it.
John: Slow walking.
John: That's right.
John: And so, of course, in our family dynamic, all the grown-ups come to me and are like, this has got to stop.
John: I'm like, I'm not seven.
John: They're like, well, fix it.
John: Mm-hmm.
John: And so we sat down and had a, had a, we went to the, to the gas station mini mart that sells fried chicken.
John: And I was like, what's going on?
John: And she did all the little kid, you know, like try to weasel out of the conversation moves like man, nothing.
John: Or she even went as far as to say, I don't want to talk about it.
John: Really?
John: She didn't open with a, what are you talking about?
John: I think she might have done that.
John: What are you talking about?
John: What?
John: Huh?
John: Huh?
John: And then she did some of that, like, you know, like, look over here.
John: It's a bikini girl.
John: And I'm like, no, I know all of these, sweetie.
John: We're going to have to talk about this.
John: And she was like, ah.
John: And then she did a thing I didn't expect, which was she said, well, you know, ever since I turned seven, everything's so hard.
John: Oh, I was like, what's hard?
John: Like everything's hard.
John: And she was like, yeah, I mean, at school, like I don't have any friends.
John: And she's like really like laid out this whole thing.
John: inner life i'm so impressed that i recognized as being like a seven-year-old who has a who's having a complicated emotional experience of things and doesn't want to talk about it yeah and so i was like oh shit okay you know lay it on me and so she just started
John: just going down the list of all the things that ever since she turned seven had gone sideways.
John: And, you know, I listened and I was like, ah, boy, there's really like everything here is just normal.
John: It's the kind of like stuff.
John: It's the normal stuff that makes you
Merlin: Realize that being alive is hard, but we've been around long enough to know that that's normal and she's That's a fresh.
Merlin: That's a fresh hell for her.
John: Yeah, she's like no one would play with me on the playground I'm like, yeah, well But I don't want to say that's normal.
John: Mm-hmm.
John: I don't want to say that's weird because all those things establish some kind of I don't know like some kind of relationship between us I guess and
John: is what it establishes where if I, if I say everything is normal, then she starts to feel like, well, why are we talking then?
John: If it's all normal, like leave me alone.
John: And if I, you know, if I get too much down into the seven year old weeds of saying like, Oh baby, Oh, you know, like emotionally over identifying with her, then what, what good am I?
John: You know, I'm just like,
John: I'm just another seven-year-old having the same experiences.
John: So anyway, I didn't do anything.
John: I just listened to her.
John: And oddly, I mean, I guess not oddly, because this wasn't a scheme, right?
John: This wasn't something I read in a book.
John: I was just at a loss of what to say.
John: But now she talks to me in a way that she doesn't talk to the other two.
John: Wow.
John: I hope you're aware that that's not necessarily normal.
Merlin: I mean, that's good.
Merlin: It's very good.
Merlin: That's hard to wangle in my experience and the experience of other people I talk to.
John: Yeah, and so I'm just... And so what I haven't... It's a grave responsibility for you, though, huh?
John: It is.
John: And it's very difficult for somebody like me to not try to solve problems.
John: Yep.
John: And so I just sit and I'm like, wow, okay.
Merlin: I find that to be true for about 49% of the population.
Yeah.
Merlin: Right?
Merlin: I mean, isn't that kind of an M.O.?
Merlin: Let me stop you right there and tell you how you can fix this.
John: Yeah, but you know, in my family, it's the opposite, right?
John: My mom cannot listen to you talk without trying to solve your problem.
John: And she's just like, let me solve the problem.
John: And if you're like, I kind of am just venting.
John: She's like, well, fucking go outside then.
John: Right.
John: We talked about this with her and Susan.
John: Yeah.
John: And she's like that with everybody.
Yeah.
John: But it, so in this case, but you know, I'm not like trying to solve it for her.
John: I'm just like, Oh, let me give you some guidance.
John: Right.
John: But I, but I'm not doing that.
John: I'm just like,
John: And part of it is really founded in total confusion about what anyone would say.
John: Like, what do you say to a seven-year-old girl whose best friends are playing with each other and don't want her to play?
Merlin: Well, to me, in that instance, there's so many conflicting things.
Merlin: I feel like I can say this without being too personal, but I feel like there's so many conflicting things in a moment like that where when I do get the rare chance to actually talk about, like, you know...
Merlin: something's not right, whatever that is, and we get to talk about it.
Merlin: On the one hand, yeah, sure, there's this part of me that wants to help, but I also feel like a thousand admonishments against myself, like, don't do this, don't do that, don't do that, amongst these.
Merlin: Don't try, well, maybe at the top of the list, don't try to talk someone out of how they feel right now.
Merlin: It's really not that much better than telling somebody who is grieving to buck up.
Merlin: That's really wise.
Merlin: That is a wise thing.
Merlin: Grieving and depression, two things that are not helped by somebody telling you to feel better.
Merlin: Don't do that.
Merlin: But then on the other hand, with a kid, you don't want, as you say, over-gesticulate about it.
Merlin: Because that's weird.
Merlin: You don't do that about that many things.
Merlin: Why are you so emotional and raw about this?
Merlin: What are you hiding?
Yeah.
Merlin: you don't want to say it's not real.
Merlin: And then at a deeper level, I feel like I don't want to find myself explaining why this is.
Merlin: And that is one I fall on sometimes where I find myself saying something like, you know, sometimes people are really terrible to each other and we don't always know why, but that's, I don't want to do that either.
Merlin: You know, the listening part is valuable, but like it's, it's, and then, so the one though, the one that kind of guides all of this is like,
Merlin: I just have to be straight up about this.
Merlin: I don't want to fail as a father.
Merlin: There's a part of me that goes, I've seen enough TV to know there should be something that I can do, say, not say, or not do.
Merlin: There's something that is a better answer in this situation, and I'll tear myself apart if I don't get that right.
John: Well, and so I think overall, the dynamic that I'm trying to establish is, look, your mother is extremely competent.
John: And does and has business life like she gets up in the morning and she dresses business and she goes and she manages people and she flies on business trips and is is very competent in the world.
John: And we all know that Nana is very competent.
John: If you gave Nana a like a case of LaCroix and a Swiss Army knife, she could build a submarine.
Yeah.
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John: So these are not the people that we are measuring daddy's success against.
John: We are measuring daddy's success against a different criteria, which is A, are we on fire?
John: No.
John: Good.
John: We're doing good then.
John: We're not on fire.
John: Is daddy on fire?
John: No, he's not on fire.
John: Good.
John: Like, like we're doing good.
John: But what that's done, I think with her is to feel like daddy needs some help from her and some, in a way, some protection.
John: from her that's not protection where you know daddy is an invalid or incompetent or anything but just like hey you know come here i need your help on this and so she feels what the what the conversation that we had in the chicken restaurant revealed over time was that she was seven now and she just felt everybody was dumping on her all the time she was she just wasn't
John: You know, she was getting a bunch of like praise cannon stuff that everybody throws at a kid, but she was just in the, in the main, she was doing it wrong.
John: Nana was mad at her in the morning because she didn't get ready fast enough.
John: And mama was mad at her at night because she didn't get to bed fast enough.
John: And every, it was all, she's doing it wrong.
John: And I said, Oh, well, what if we got you a clock and taught you how to use a clock?
John: And then you could know,
John: When it was time for you to get up and time for you to go to bed.
John: And she was like, I would like a clock.
John: And I said, okay, we'll get you a clock.
John: But once you have a clock, you are responsible for the time.
John: You don't get to have a clock and just have it be like a lighting effect.
Merlin: Well, you're not allowed to use it to improve your procrastination.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: Yeah, don't wait until the last minute.
Merlin: I still got a minute before we leave.
Merlin: Yeah, but you're naked.
John: That's not okay.
John: And part of our long conversation was just like, oh, you want more responsibility.
John: And it's just innate.
John: You don't know how to ask for that.
John: That's, that's not, it's just, you're at that point in your life where you're like, why am I still, why does my life look like me just getting nagged from place to place with all this stuff I know how to do?
John: It's not a challenge anymore.
John: I just don't feel like it.
John: And it's like, oh, well then what you need to do is learn to set the table and empty the dishwasher.
John: And also sometimes, um, oh, so, so, oh, this is the amazing one.
John: She said to me,
John: I wish I lived in a family where I never got teased.
John: And that was a
John: that was like handing me a lit stick of dynamite because nobody else teases her.
John: Oh, I, yeah.
John: Okay.
John: Yeah.
John: That was for me.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: Like, like, like things like Bastic things like, yeah, we've got, I think I suspect every family has these things that the kid used to say in a funny way and now you still say it and it just sounds like you're making fun of them.
John: Yeah.
John: That kind of thing.
John: That kind of thing where she would say like, you know what I want for dinner?
John: And I would say a Bastic of Panatoes.
John: She kiboshed that, right?
John: And over time, she just infuriated her.
John: And so she said, I would rather live in a family where I didn't get teased.
John: And I said, wouldn't you really rather live in a family where you only got teased a little bit?
John: And she said, no, I would rather not get teased at all.
John: And I said, and I'm still like... That's, as they say, a big ask.
John: Yeah, and I'm sitting, I'm scrambling in my head like, what the fuck am I supposed to do?
John: That's the only way I know how to interact with people.
John: Right.
John: And I said, what would you rather, live in a family where you had to eat vegetables at every meal or live in a family where you got teased every once in a while?
John: You're really scrambling at this point.
John: I was, but she made an enormous blunder.
John: She said, I would rather live in a family where I had to eat vegetables at every meal.
John: It's easy enough to test out.
John: Well, it was.
John: And I said, oh, all right.
John: Well, starting tonight, if you eat a salad...
John: I won't tease you.
John: And she did not give a look of having been checkmated.
John: She gave a look of like, huh.
John: And she said, deal.
John: Ooh, this is not going to end well.
John: Well, like flinty, like Clint Eastwood style.
John: Bring it on.
John: Deal.
Deal.
John: And so at dinner, and I'm not crazy.
John: It's not like I put a big fucking salad bowl with tongs in front of her.
John: You didn't spread Brussels sprouts at her.
John: No, I just, I put a little portion of vegetable on her plate.
John: And she made it seem like she was Indiana Jones.
John: And every bite of this stuff, you know, was snakes.
John: And she sat there and she ate her snakes.
John: And I didn't, you know, I didn't jump on her about like, don't make those faces.
John: You can't make faces.
John: I was just like, you can make as many faces as you want.
John: But, but right on the other side of that.
John: Faces were not part of the deal.
John: Vegetables was the deal.
John: That's right.
John: That's right.
John: Faces were not part of the deal.
John: I didn't say you had to like it.
John: I didn't say you had to be nice about it.
John: But I said, right on the other side of that bowl of vegetables is you getting told bastica potatoes.
John: So.
John: Let's decide which is more important.
John: And she ate the freaking things.
John: And every day from that day forth, she has eaten vegetables.
John: Are you going to stick with this?
John: Well, the few times I have said something, even vaguely teasing, she has turned six guns drawn and said, we had a deal.
Ooh.
John: And with the unspoken second half of that sentence, and I'm living up to my half of the deal.
John: And she is.
John: So,
John: So I'm just, like, outdrawn.
Merlin: I just have to holster my pistols, and I got no— But just to be clear, this started as a, like, okay, well, let's see how far you're going to go with this.
Merlin: You're not actually saying, like, for you to be emotionally healthy, you have to eat vegetables.
Merlin: This is more of, like, a thought experiment.
John: Well, it was all part and parcel of the, okay, you're seven now, and you want everybody off your back?
John: Mm-hmm.
John: Well, then—
John: All that means is you get more responsibility because that's how you get people off your back.
John: And so there's not you don't just get like to be five again where you get to do whatever you want.
John: Everybody runs around and picks up after you.
John: Right, right, right.
John: Like everybody's mad because you're not you're not.
John: And I realized that that the people in the family had this expectation that she was supposed to be getting better at stuff.
John: And from her standpoint, it was like, I can do all that.
John: I've showed you I can do it.
John: What, do I have to do it every day?
John: And it's like, oh, well, you don't get it.
John: You're like, yeah, you do have to do it every day.
John: But you should get rewards for it, too.
John: And in her case, and I had no idea.
John: The thing is, I don't understand the relationship that teasing plays in other people's lives.
John: Because I was relentlessly teased by my dad.
John: And it was a thing that we bonded over, you know, like I didn't like to be tickled, but I'd love to be teased.
John: And, you know, I loved going down to the magic shop in, in Pike Place Market and somebody giving me a piece of gum and it had a fucking mousetrap on it.
John: Like just loved that stuff.
John: Dirty tricks and stuff, you know?
John: Um, and she doesn't, it's not like, like her reaction to that stuff is just, she's indignant.
Um,
John: I think it's more of a dignity issue where she's just like, listen, Bastic of Panados, sir, is beneath our discourse.
John: And I'm like, well, you know what's beneath your discourse is a Bastic of Panados.
John: And for her to decide of all the things that she could have laid out as her negotiating shit, that that was the thing?
John: Not get teased?
John: She didn't say, stop tickling me.
John: She's like, tickle me, tickle me.
John: But don't tease me.
John: Oh, shit.
John: All right, man.
John: You set the tone.
John: You put the forks together in the fork thing.
Merlin: I also feel like I got two things I'm thinking about here, one of which is easier than the other.
Merlin: One thing I struggle with is that I was an only child.
Merlin: Well, you know, that's not even that important.
Merlin: What's important is that I am from Gen X. I think it is important, though, but go ahead.
Merlin: No, it is important, but probably for different things.
Merlin: But here's one thing is that...
Merlin: I struggle with what I perceive sometimes as two poles of raising a female child.
Merlin: On the one hand, there's the one thing you're supposed to always do as a parent, which is to be consistent and have certain standards and be consistent about those standards and all that kind of stuff.
Merlin: And also not discourage your kid from doing things that are difficult.
Merlin: Don't be afraid to correct them.
Merlin: All the kinds of old school ideas of what we know you're supposed to do as a parent.
Merlin: But then there's the other part of me that feels like I'm always walking a minefield that I choose to walk.
Merlin: Because the idea of having a little kid, even at her age, who is confident and not torn... And this, by the way, this is not relating to the Panatos.
Merlin: I just mean more like...
Merlin: even with math homework, where I'm like, man, if she can get through the math and do I want to really make her go back and rewrite that because that nine doesn't look enough, like a nine, yeah, probably.
Merlin: But the idea of somebody who can remain, boy or girl, but especially girl, who's confident and not self-conscious about their body and their personality and stuff like that is something I really have in mind.
Merlin: So I think sometimes I end up being too permissive because I'm not strong enough...
Merlin: to walk that minefield some days.
Merlin: Do you know what I mean?
Merlin: It's something where I just think about... I'll just lay it on the line.
Merlin: Just think about how normal it was when I was a teenager for girls to be a hot mess and to be kind of personally and systematically kept frail and to constantly wonder how broken they are.
Merlin: And so, like, that's, I sometimes feel like, I wonder if I weigh too heavily on that angle of, like, wanting her to be confident when I really should go back.
Merlin: Am I going to pierce that confidence by saying, like, let's go back and check your math on that?
Merlin: Well, it shouldn't, because that's part of being strong.
Merlin: Part of being strong is being able to improve and stuff like that.
Merlin: But that's one of the tight ropes I feel like I walk.
Merlin: And when it comes down to dad alone for three days, there's all kinds of ways that that can go sideways.
Yeah.
John: Yeah, well, as part of this interesting conversation dynamic that she and I have developed, I had a very interesting exchange the other day where she said, and again, she's very dramatic, and that's not anything she was taught.
John: Although it's certainly reinforced.
John: But she said, I'm worried that every time I smile, it makes something bad happen.
John: Whoa.
John: And I said, whoa.
John: That's right in your wheelhouse.
John: Yeah, I said, tell me more.
John: And we're riding bikes.
John: So it's a type of thing where it's not like we're sitting in a chicken restaurant looking at each other.
John: We're just riding bikes.
John: Slowly riding down the road.
John: And she says, well, like I say, every time something good happens, something bad immediately happens.
John: So it makes me not want to smile.
John: Wow.
John: And I said, well, give me an example.
John: And she said, well, after recess, you have to go back inside and go back to work.
John: And so we're all really happy at recess, but nobody wants to go back inside.
John: Sure.
John: And I was like, makes sense.
John: Give me another example.
John: And she said, well, after snack, which is the best part of school, we have math.
John: And I was like, and my Gen X, like, girls and math tingle hairs went up.
John: And I said, yeah.
John: And what's up with math?
John: And she said, well, math is fine, but all the boys complain.
John: And they're like, math, eh.
John: And she said, I hate math.
John: When people are unhappy.
John: Oh, wow.
John: And I just want everybody to be happy and everybody's complaining about math and it's a bummer.
John: And I was like, uh-huh.
John: Well, now, like my Gen X desire to socially engineer you to make you into Superwoman is
John: STEM girl.
John: That's right.
John: And to correct for every aspect of the patriarchy in you alone, my daughter, who is going to, you know, just like grow up eating Cheerios, except it's multiplication tables.
John: I don't, I, I just listened an extra step there because if, if I had done what I, what my impulse was or what my generation's impulse was when she said, yeah, after snack, it's math.
John: And I had gone, oh, well, math is amazing.
John: Like, don't hate math.
John: Math is great.
John: What's the matter?
John: Math.
Merlin: With the tone you probably unintentionally always use to try to talk her into something that she now instantly realizes is some kind of jam up.
Merlin: Yeah, right, right.
Merlin: Because that's real.
Merlin: That's the tone that you unintentionally go, oh, come on, this hike's going to be fun.
John: Oh, the dentist is your friend.
John: And so I stayed out of it for that one extra step because I was like, huh, she doesn't have any problem with math.
John: So I'm not going to jump in here.
John: You know, like, what's she going to say next is basically my take on it.
John: Because it's not also not really about math.
John: It's about the other people's feelings.
John: Yeah.
John: And it's about the fact that all the little boys are making a bunch of noise about having to do math.
John: And she's like, why don't they just do their math?
John: Now that sounds like somebody else.
John: Yeah, it does.
John: But she also is exhibiting there a kind of
John: Like emotional receptiveness that is both lovely and also totally dangerous.
John: Like she's.
John: Oh, yeah.
John: I see.
John: I see that.
John: I feel like I see that all the time.
John: Yeah.
John: She's onboarding everybody else's feelings as part of her world of responsibility.
John: She feels bad because everybody else feels bad.
John: And that actually is.
John: She doesn't feel bad about math.
Merlin: She ends up doing what people call unpaid emotional labor.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: She's empath-ing.
John: Right.
John: And so I've just... So then we just peddle along in silence while we both chew on that.
John: But it was another example, I think, of this tendency that I'm trying to resist, which is that
John: that tendency to social engineer in any direction, even the opposite direction of what we think we were socially engineered to do.
John: Because every time you change one little thing, you change a cascading series of, you have this infinitely repeating, unpredictable result change.
John: You can't change one thing about anything.
John: And I don't have any fear that my daughter is going to be fragile.
John: It's not currently a danger.
John: And I mean, did I tell you, maybe we didn't talk about it, but when she was in preschool, we went to the locks here in Seattle.
John: And you and I have visited the locks with your family.
John: Yeah.
John: It's a dynamic environment.
John: Boats are coming and going.
John: The locks are run by... If you ever get a chance to get a tour of Seattle from John, take it.
John: That's all I'm going to say about that.
John: Hey, sign up.
John: Sign up on this clipboard.
John: But the locks are run by the U.S.
John: Army Corps of Engineers.
John: And they take that job pretty seriously.
John: And they have, you know, like...
John: big burly people on either side who are yelling at people in the boats that they're doing it wrong.
John: And every, it's very, you know, that's, it's a big operation.
John: It's an industrial scale operation.
John: Well, we were there with the preschool and there are, you know, there were 23 year olds all running around and the teacher was sort of barely keeping them together.
John: And I was one of the parents who were along for the ride and Marla, maybe she was four.
John: She's standing there on the edge of the locks, and there are hundreds of tourists there, too, all clamming it up.
John: And Marlo, at the top of her lungs, was saying, you go over here, and you stand there, and you need to be here, and teacher, teacher, you need to go over this, and blah, blah, blah, and she's yelling at, like, just passersby.
John: You, that shirt doesn't match those pants, and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
John: And I said.
John: She's the mistress of the locks.
John: She was.
John: She just appointed herself.
John: And I said at a certain point, sweetie, you need to just cold check your mega bossing of everyone for just a second while we figure out how we're all going to get through this small aperture.
John: And a very big man with a beard and a hat that said U.S.
John: Army Corps of Engineers.
John: who was standing there in the process of yelling at a shipping, you know, like at a Noah icebreaker, turns around on his heel, looks at me and says, we don't say bossing to young women.
John: Nowadays, we say, we encourage them for their
John: You know, like autonomy or authoritativeness or something, something, something.
John: He gave me some lecture out of a playbook and turned around and went back to his job.
John: And I'm not anymore somebody who's just out doling out lessons to everybody on the street.
John: I'm trying not to be because I find that's not very effective.
John: I found from being on Twitter for a long time that just being out there sheriffing everybody is not any fun.
John: Right, right, right.
John: And it doesn't.
John: And nobody gets better.
Right.
John: Nobody improves.
Merlin: That's like part of the international tone police.
Merlin: Yeah.
John: But this guy, and I don't know whether he has kids or not.
John: Yeah, he might have read that in The New Yorker.
John: My sense is he didn't.
John: But he's a liberal, but he's working at the U.S.
John: Army Corps of Engineers, and he's out there sheriffing.
John: And what he, you know, what he is doing is trying to make the world a better place.
Yeah.
John: But he doesn't know my daughter, and he doesn't know that she's a fucking bossy little Nazi.
John: Like, that she would literally run the world, if she could, from her three-year-old brain, from her three-year-old understanding of how things need to be ordered.
Merlin: And just to clarify here, if that were an equivalently aged male, you would have said the same thing.
John: Well, absolutely.
John: But here's the thing.
John: And this is the one where, you know, like don't at me.
John: But anybody who has kids and who spends any time around kids knows that little boys just don't do that.
John: Like, I'm sorry to say, but little boys do not go bossing everybody around like that.
John: Do you not think so?
John: No, they're hitting each other.
John: That's true.
John: And they're hitting everybody else.
John: They're bonking and they're screaming and they're running and they're hitting.
John: They are not standing there saying, you are here and you are the mama and you are the one who is, you are the Corps of Engineers guy and here are your jobs and here is where you stand.
John: It just isn't, it is a thing that's different between them.
John: And
John: And my daughter is the queen of it, like the ultimate order of things and of people.
John: And I mean, you know, it all is she has it.
John: She has the plan.
John: She she sees the the matrix.
John: And so so so that's what this guy was saying, right?
John: If that was a little boy, he wouldn't have said that.
John: But a little boy would not have ever done it.
John: This is not a little boy trait.
Hmm.
John: Um, and also, you know, but I didn't say like, Hey, mind your own beeswax, or I didn't decide it was going to be a showdown.
John: You gotta, you gotta, you gotta play it cool.
John: No, I was just like, yeah, thank you for your service.
John: Yeah.
John: Thanks for your service.
John: Exactly.
John: Uh, anyway, meanwhile, uh, Marlo in an empowered fashion, will you shut the fuck up?
John: For like for three minutes while we get through this door.
John: But as you know, as time goes on, like looking at the looking at the kids and the way that their personalities exhibit as they grow older, like I've been very, very engaged in her schools.
John: From the time she first went to schools like I go to the schools.
John: It's fun.
John: These dynamics are super interesting They are and what people say a lot more subtlety than you realize sometimes So much subtlety and so much like Everybody says oh when you're you know when you have a daughter It's so much easier when they're young and then it gets harder when they're older and boys are terrible when they're young and then they get easier when they're Teenage that's what they say.
John: That's what they say and watching it unfold
John: Like, you know, there are some little boys in her class who are profoundly sensitive.
John: And, you know, this is a modern school in a modern school district.
John: Like, none of the girls are being taught to, like, even subtly.
John: It's all been rooted out.
John: None of them are being taught that they are anything other than capable leaders.
John: But you've also got some Grams.
John: You've got grams who are sensitive and are not, and that sensitivity is not being seen or separated from the Teos who just want to karate chop.
John: Every class has a Teo.
John: Right.
John: I'm just going to hit this thing with a stick until I'm restrained.
John: Yeah, and Teo's not dumb.
John: I mean, you talk to Teo, Teo's a fine young man.
John: Boy energy is a thing, though.
John: Yeah, if you turn around, he is going to
John: He is going to nunchuck it.
John: And Graham has no interest in being nunchucked.
John: Like Graham's got, Graham's got thoughts and feelings.
John: Yeah.
John: And there isn't right now any, any corresponding like social engineering project to make sure that Graham's like Graham's not expressing any kind of Graham isn't, um,
John: Non-binary, Graham is just a little kid like I was, who wants to dream and stare out the window, and he really, really cares how people are feeling.
Merlin: There's not a lot of accommodations for that in the system.
Merlin: There's not.
Merlin: I'm not pointing at anybody on that, but that's...
Merlin: In the great sorting hat of school, that is... No.
John: Well, and the thing is, if Tao Karate chops Graham... That already sounds like an SAT problem.
John: The only way that the schools have to deal with that right now is to characterize that as a bullying incident.
John: But it's not.
John: Tao's not bullying Graham.
John: Graham is a very powerful young person who is not cowering
John: around Teo.
John: Teo's just Teo who's karate chopping things.
John: And Graham is someone who, like a lot of us, don't want to be karate chopped but don't know exactly how to say no.
John: Don't know exactly how to get through life avoiding being karate chopped while at the same time not being isolated, still being one of the people.
John: Mm-hmm.
John: But if you characterize that as bullying, if Tao gets branded a bully and Graham gets branded the victim of a bully, that doesn't help at all because it's not the dynamic.
John: Like bullies are a very specific, small, small group of children and their behavior is is a specific thing.
John: Bullying is not as this is another social engineering thing, right?
John: Bullying is not some rampant epidemic that every kid is doing to one another.
John: Like there's a bully.
John: You can pick the bully out.
John: The bully is expressing something that's going on in his family or her family.
John: And to, you know, to grab Tao by the shirt and say, no bullying.
John: You know, we have a no bullying posture or pop, whatever.
John: Policy.
John: Policy.
John: Well, now Tao's like, oh, shit, I'm a bully.
John: Like all I was doing was karate chopping him.
John: And Graham's like, oh, I'm a victim.
John: That's not how you want Graham to see himself.
John: So anyway, my policy right now is just to ride my bike along.
John: And part of it is that I know I'm not going to, I cannot help her.
John: And this is a terrible admission.
John: I can be there.
John: But if her friends decide to ice her out,
John: of a thing if they're all playing in a circle on the playground and she comes up and says what are we doing and they say something without you like no amount of advice or or my own experience or or my intelligence or hers can solve it can help right right can help at all
John: It's just like, it's just a, it's an endurance test.
John: And you know that a day will come when she has friends again.
John: It may be tomorrow, in fact.
Merlin: Well, sometimes it's, it's, it's certainly, it's not very comforting back to earlier.
Merlin: It's not very comforting to just say, you know, sometimes life sucks or sometimes this is the way things are.
Merlin: Sometimes there are some things I was talking to Syracuse about this to go, just to go a little dark for a second.
Merlin: We're talking about the, um,
Merlin: shooter drills that they do in school and like around the time after when they were like ramping up at various schools many schools were like basically doing like more of the like less of the like let's hide in the closet and more of like let's barricade the door kind of stuff and we're talking about like you know have you talked to your kids about this and i was just saying how i find it difficult because i'm not sure what
Merlin: I'm not going to say this to her.
Merlin: Obviously, haven't.
Merlin: But, like, I'm not sure what she can do about that.
Merlin: I'm not sure what I can offer.
Merlin: I'm trying to pivot, like, sort of to what you're saying here of, like, well, you know, sometimes people are shitty.
Merlin: But, like, what advice do you have to give about hiding from somebody with a gun?
Merlin: Like, what do you do to advise, like, everybody in that school?
Merlin: The phrase that I find myself turning to a lot.
Merlin: This is true.
Merlin: You talk about trying on ideas, like a sports jacket.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Everybody's trying stuff out.
Merlin: Sometimes people are trying stuff out.
Merlin: Maybe some days, maybe Tao's not being a bully.
Merlin: He's just trying a different karate chop.
Merlin: And that doesn't mean they're going to always be that way.
Merlin: But sometimes everybody's shitty.
Merlin: Sometimes everybody has a bad day.
Merlin: Like I said, what makes this a true agent of chaos in our lives, though, is sometimes people are doing things that you won't be able to understand and you won't be able to prevent.
Merlin: And I think sometimes I don't know how often that is so great as a piece of advice, especially for a young person.
Merlin: I mean, I guess if you do that from day one, you know, you just live on a farm and have a hardscrabble existence and half family dies.
Merlin: You just say, well, shit happens.
Merlin: But I mean, there's times where I'm like, I don't really have much to add to this apart from saying, like, sometimes really dumb shit happens.
Merlin: It's not your fault.
Merlin: And sometimes it is your fault.
Merlin: And sometimes dumb shit happens no matter what.
Merlin: Like what, what, what great, what great like audio visual slide deck am I going to do to help explain to you that like, no matter how well you hide in the closet, it's not going to stop a guy with a gun.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Here's some advice.
John: Well, and, and I guess the other thing I'm realizing is because I thought I was being wise parent by kind of giving her a little bit of the like, well, you know, they're,
John: They're bad people, and people, honestly, are terrible to each other, and we try to be good to each other, or some version of that.
John: That's not terrible.
John: It's not, except that that's all... I just get the feeling that that is, A, not comforting, and B, something that cannot really be communicated through words.
John: Oh, yeah.
John: It comes from experience.
Merlin: She will learn it.
Merlin: Well, that's the other thing that we're, I mean, kind of as an elephant in the room, is that there are certain kinds of advice or observations that are 100% pretty much empirically true, but at certain junctions in one's life, they are neither comforting nor useful, even though they're true.
John: But, like, how am I – I guess my worry is am I filling up the air between us with words that mean little or nothing to her?
John: Oh, yeah.
John: Sometimes you just need to paddle the bike.
John: Yeah, right.
John: Words that – because this is something I've kind of been confronting in my adult relationships recently, which is – wait a minute.
John: We talked –
John: A lot about this thing.
John: Let's say, for instance, that one of us, you or I, at some point recently had a millennium girlfriend.
Merlin: Hypothetically.
John: We talked a lot about things.
John: And at the end of talking a lot about them, it's unclear where we were on those things.
John: But it was not a case that we talked them through.
John: And they were then solved.
John: There's always another iteration.
John: And at a certain point, you don't want to succumb to a feeling that
John: No one can ever change because I don't believe that.
John: And I know people say it.
John: It always sounds wise.
John: It always is like it always is.
John: No one ever changes after they're 12 years old.
John: Signed Martin Luther King or whatever.
John: And you're like, well, I don't know about that.
John: Like, that's not very hopeful.
John: And I like to have a little bit of hope.
John: But also.
John: As you have said many times, when was the last time you changed because someone told you you were doing it wrong?
John: Yeah, especially at high volume.
John: Right.
John: Like, when was the last time you changed because somebody yelled at you that you were doing it wrong?
John: And it's absolutely true.
John: That's not how you change either.
John: And people write me a lot because I'm publicly like a recovering alcoholic.
John: And they say, here I am.
John: I'm at the front door of rehab for the third time.
John: Like, do you have any advice?
John: Can you make, can you help me make this work?
John: And all I can ever say is like, you'll get sober when you're done.
John: And if you're not done,
John: You don't want it enough to make it happen.
John: Like you have to want it.
John: That rehab doesn't matter.
John: Your wife or your parents or your boyfriend being really concerned about you doesn't matter.
John: Honestly, your health doesn't matter.
John: Because if you don't want to stop, you'll just fucking keep doing it.
John: And when you want to stop, you'll know.
John: And it's not like when you want to stop, it's suddenly easy.
John: It's like when you want to stop, it will be fucking hard and excruciating and you'll do it anyway.
John: Mm-hmm.
John: And that's true of change of any kind.
John: And so in my, I mean, my unfolding feeling about what my relationship, what my job as a dad is, is like, am I just...
John: trying to comfort myself i know i totally i totally know by just filling filling up the space with all these words that mean less than nothing to her something something wisdom yeah right something something you'll figure it out something something everybody's life is hard you know why not just pedal why not just pedal your bike for for for what you're what you're offering yeah um
John: But in terms of your three days alone... Yeah, what about lunch?
Merlin: My wife made a list.
Merlin: She made a list for me.
Merlin: Show me each day what I should make.
Merlin: Isn't that amazing?
Merlin: It's on the fridge.
John: It's wonderful, but...
John: But I also feel like maybe you should take that list down and... You think I should go commando?
John: Just freeball it?
John: I think you should just tear that list really slowly right down the middle, right in front of your daughter.
John: Let's just see what happens.
John: Yeah.
John: You and daddy for the next three days, we're going to make this, we're going to figure this out.
Merlin: So I call her into the room.
Merlin: I call her into the kitchen.
Merlin: I look her dead in the eyes.
Merlin: I do the thing with look to here.
Merlin: And then I, without even taking my eyes away from her, I pull a fridge magnet falls to the floor.
Merlin: I hold up an index card and I very slowly tear it in half.
John: Here's the plan.
John: We're all going to die.
John: Any more questions?
John: But, you know, I really think that part of her life, let's be honest, part of her life is going to be helping Daddy.
Merlin: I'm trying to find things.
Merlin: Now, this is what a weird, sad, limp noodle I am.
Merlin: My focus is on... Okay, so here's one life hack.
Merlin: If you want a kid to load the dishwasher, start by saying, maybe it's not a chore, maybe it is a chore, whatever.
Merlin: Let's not worry about what it is.
Merlin: Do me a favor.
Merlin: Can you put the forks in the dishwasher for me?
Merlin: You just need to pierce the veil.
Merlin: Get that going, right?
Merlin: So, I mean, one thing is that, like, what to you and me, like, for example, like, you've seen MASH.
Merlin: What if somebody runs up to you and they're going, ah, this person's choking.
Merlin: You've got to use your Bic pen and give them the thing where you... Tracheotomy.
Merlin: Tracheotomy.
Merlin: Now, I've seen that on TV enough to know that with Father Mulcahy's pen knife and a pen, I should be able to give somebody a tracheotomy.
Merlin: I'm not going to do that nearly as well...
Merlin: there's going to be hesitation marks as I'm cutting open this dude's throat because a doctor has done it more than me.
Merlin: They've had the training.
Merlin: They know that they'll survive the experience of having done that.
Merlin: But for a kid, loading the dishwasher is not that different from doing a tracheotomy.
Merlin: They don't know what's supposed to happen next and there's going to be tons of blood.
Merlin: They don't want to do that.
Merlin: So I feel like doing it in steps.
Merlin: And then second, try to find a way to let them be proud.
Merlin: To make something that they can be proud of.
Merlin: I think that can be part of the stimulation.
Merlin: It's not going to work for everything, but for certain kinds of projects, especially things that involve cleaning up or arrangement, like if you're going to help with dinner, maybe you can make a crudite platter and make that really pretty for us.
Merlin: You know what I'm saying?
Merlin: But some of us are like, hey, can you set the table and will you make the napkins fancy?
Merlin: just a thought but a way that something you know to have a little hook into with that said oh i don't know where i blew it or how many times i blew it but everything that's not a fun thing is punishment now
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Ha, ha, ha.
Merlin: Are you laughing at me or with me?
Merlin: Or neither?
Merlin: Both!
John: Both!
John: I feel that so hard.
Merlin: I have to clean up the glue gun?
Merlin: It's not punishment.
Merlin: You used the glue gun on the rug where we begged you not to use it and now you need to clean it up.
Merlin: What did I do?
John: I know, like, sweetie, you've got yogurt in your hair.
John: Why do I have to do everything?
John: Don't judge me.
John: You're teasing me.
John: What do you mean, why do you have to do everything?
John: Clean the yogurt out of your hair.
John: Oh, God.
John: Oh, my God.
John: I have to do everything around here.
Merlin: Oh, my God.
Merlin: And I want to be appreciated.
Merlin: I'm struggling so hard with that.
Merlin: I want to be appreciated.
Merlin: I want somebody to notice I did the dishes four times today.
Merlin: Not a very good job, but I did do it four times today.
John: Yeah, I feel like she has to know.
John: that i mean i'm not trying to i'm not trying to have my daughter be my assistant but i definitely do feel like she understands now she came into my room the other day with a piece of artwork that she'd done woke me up handed me this piece of artwork i like bleary-eyed rub the sleeves from my eyes look at it it's a it's a picture of a doorway
John: And over the top of it, in big letters, it says, wake up.
John: And I was like, okay.
John: So we both understand that Daddy needs a little extra sleep compared to other grown-ups.
John: That's subtle.
John: Daddy was up late, sweetie, thinking very deep thoughts about why no one will play with him.
Merlin: You were gramming a little?
John: Until 4.20 in the morning.
John: Nice.
John: Uh...
John: But, you know, message received.
John: Yeah.
Merlin: I got it this morning.
Merlin: I got that this morning.
Merlin: She said, I slept for an hour last night.
Merlin: I said, really?
Merlin: You slept for an hour last night?
Merlin: Because at one point I woke up and she was in bed with us because she couldn't sleep.
Merlin: She says, I slept for an hour last night.
Merlin: I go, that sucks.
Merlin: An hour?
Merlin: And she goes, you know why?
Merlin: And she starts doing this thing, huh?
Merlin: With her eyes, like looking over and kind of doing her head like this.
Merlin: Like she's indicating something.
Merlin: And I go, what?
Merlin: She goes, you know.
Huh?
Huh?
I go, what?
Merlin: For some reason, I instantly knew.
Merlin: And I said, was I snoring?
Merlin: And she goes, mm-hmm.
Merlin: She was awakened by your snoring.
Merlin: Wake up, says the doorway.
Merlin: Very subtle.
Merlin: Very subtle.
Merlin: And I come back with...
Merlin: Oh, yeah?
Merlin: Well, you know, I didn't sleep very well last night because I had to try so goddamn hard to sleep on my side so I don't snore.
Merlin: I don't know I'm snoring.
Merlin: I live in this world where, like, I only find... I mean, it's like Ambien walking.
Merlin: Like, I'm doing things I don't know that I'm doing, and I think I'm trying to help it, but apparently I'm not.
Merlin: Anyway, not for a fucking second do I believe she got only an hour of sleep.
John: No.
Merlin: Her sense of how much sleep she got is very, very problematic.
John: Yeah, well, and, you know, and whose responsibility it is.
John: I mean, the snoring, like, listen.
Merlin: I'm with her.
Merlin: I should get one of those sleep things.
Merlin: I should go to a clinic, maybe get one of those masks they have on MSNBC.
John: Listen, nothing is better than a K-PAP mask or whatever the hell those things are called.
John: I should get a K-PAP.
John: K-PAP.
Merlin: Oh, no, that's what... Home of the hits.
Merlin: You're tuned to K-PAP.
John: That's Gangnam Style, right?
Merlin: It's K-Pass.
Merlin: Alright, that'll do.
Merlin: That'll do, pig.
Merlin: I gotta make some fucking lunches.