Ep. 394: "The Colonel"
John: Hello.
Merlin: Hi, John.
John: Hi, Merlin.
Merlin: How are you?
John: Good.
Merlin: You sound really fresh.
Merlin: Do I?
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: That's an error.
Merlin: Fresh.
John: Fresh.
Merlin: Exciting.
Merlin: On the line with Roderick.
Merlin: Where you from?
John: Interesting.
John: Yeah, you sound fresh.
Merlin: So fresh and so clean.
Merlin: Oh, yeah.
Merlin: Like the like the rapping song.
Merlin: Yeah, you know, it's it's fine.
Merlin: You know, school day, school days.
Merlin: We're back to school.
Merlin: oh back to school again yep we'll uh see how it goes with the what's that about well there's uh let's see of course you know she's zooming and uh it's unclear to me how much of the 9 30 to 3 30 day will involve zoom but i think a lot of it will oh no oh god oh john
John: Hmm.
John: That's no good.
Merlin: It's, it's, you know, I mean, I got, I got a good report that, uh, that she likes her.
Merlin: There's this thing called advisory and I think it's kind of like homeroom, but, um, and she, she likes that person.
Merlin: So that's good.
Merlin: You know, I gotta, I gotta say this school has done a hell of a job with, you know, doing what they can to make this good.
Merlin: Every kid got a Chromebook.
Merlin: Uh, yeah, you have to use the school Chromebook, even though now we have two Chromebooks in my house, so I'm covered with shame.
Merlin: Um,
Merlin: But, you know, I mean, we'll see.
Merlin: We'll see.
Merlin: I think I'm trying not to be fretful about it.
Merlin: I'm the dad.
Merlin: I'm supposed to be the positive cheerleader rock of a man.
Merlin: Yep, yep, yep.
Merlin: That's you.
Merlin: That's me.
John: Positive cheerleader rock of a man.
John: That's me.
John: What is a Chromebook?
John: I'm looking it up here.
John: It seems like it costs $150 to $250 and it is made by the Dell Corporation?
Merlin: Well, I don't know a ton about it because it's – Well, I mean it's not – so my understanding is that – and I think it's come further than this.
Merlin: But I think the idea was that it was a way to – there's an operating system by Google that mostly runs on Google's sort of web apps.
Merlin: I guess other apps that you can get, but now of course you can use zoom and now it's like its own like platform.
Merlin: I, you know, I don't know.
John: Oh, so it's just like a Gmail host, Gmail box.
John: Yeah.
John: Yeah.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: I mean, I, like I say, I hope it's, I, I hope it goes well.
Merlin: I can't imagine being on video with people that much each day.
Merlin: I don't know how my wife does it.
Merlin: I don't know how my kid's going to do it.
John: We haven't started school yet here because for some reason Washington is still in the real world where school doesn't start until after Labor Day.
John: At least that's the world where I was born.
Merlin: John Roderick, from your mouth to God's ear, when I heard those fucking schools in Georgia, your favorite state, when Georgia – I do like Georgia.
Merlin: Oh, boy.
Yeah.
Merlin: You know what?
Merlin: I'm not going to argue with you again, but that governor is a piece of shit.
John: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Merlin: There are a lot of things about Georgia.
John: You coming around on that?
John: What piece of shit that guy is?
John: You coming around?
John: I would change a lot of things about it.
John: Yeah, yeah.
John: But you know, it's a nice state.
John: It's got the mountains.
John: It's got the... Oh, you're talking about a nice view from Peachtree.
John: Yep.
John: Oh, yeah.
John: Yeah.
John: You don't want to go to you don't want to go Stone Mountain.
John: Oh, that's been canceled.
Merlin: Oh, we canceled Stone Mountain.
John: You know, I mean, the governor of Atlanta, she's she's quite a she's real pistol.
Merlin: She is a pistol.
Merlin: Keisha Lance Bottoms.
Merlin: She kind of rules.
John: Yeah.
John: Yeah.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: But you were saying Georgia went back to school in June or something?
Merlin: And what's not happening.
Merlin: And so you probably heard about the things where in Gwinnett County, which I feel like is east of Atlanta, but it's it's it's a it's not too far from Atlanta.
Merlin: Anyhow, Gwinnett County, 260 is in July, like right before they opened 260.
Merlin: Staff either like mostly had to be quarantined, but some had it.
Merlin: You probably saw that photo where the student at the high school took the photograph of the crowded hallway.
Merlin: Yeah, all crammed up on each other.
Merlin: Then she got suspended and unsuspended.
Merlin: Anyway, I'm not going to make this all about COVID.
Merlin: Here's the thing.
Merlin: It's better than going into a building at this point.
Merlin: That's mental.
Merlin: But it still sucks.
Merlin: It still sucks.
Merlin: She's starting seventh grade with video phone calls.
John: Oh, no.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: She's repping her a cool blue Star Trek engineering shirt today, though.
Merlin: It's a good look.
Merlin: It's a very strong look.
Merlin: Yeah.
John: It's so not fair to them, the kids.
John: We were told until – what?
John: Three days ago that our school, our charming little Montessori school that just –
John: It was going to Montessori their way through this.
John: It's kind of like Jesus can help you not get COVID and also Montessori can help you not get COVID.
John: Oh, really?
John: That's interesting.
John: They were going to just have in-person classes.
John: And then three days ago, they were like, no, it's going to be fine.
John: Each student will have their own room at the school.
John: They'll all be – we'll cover them from head to toe in like petroleum jelly at the beginning of the day.
John: Oh, nice.
Merlin: But then – That should make them manageable.
Merlin: Yeah, that's right.
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Merlin: The little ones are really slippery.
John: But then on Friday, they came out, the new principal, oh, did I mention there's a new principal, came out and said, oh, we're not going to have in-person classes because that seems like a bad idea.
John: So we're pivoting to Zoom classes.
John: We haven't been working on that all summer because we were
John: convinced we were going to be in person.
John: We had a lot of conviction.
John: And so now we're – but it's going to be great.
John: We're going to scramble.
Merlin: They must be scrambling a little bit though.
Merlin: That's tough.
Merlin: This school has tried so hard.
Merlin: I forget if we've talked about this here, but part of the whiplash problem here is that when things shut down, we say, OK, we've got to go all in on remote.
Merlin: And then – so there's remote, remote, remote.
Merlin: And then a bunch of places, oh, no, actually we're going to reopen.
Merlin: Well, that's a whole different thing.
John: It's not just the thing that you were doing, but differently.
John: It's a whole different thing.
Merlin: It's a whole different thing.
Merlin: And it's also a microcosm of the bigger COVID problem, which is that it arrives in the midst of a lot of our infrastructure already being pushed, having been pushed to the limit, budgets cut, all that kind of stuff.
Merlin: So, you know, there's not really a lot of resources or runway or expertise to go, okay, now we're all online.
Merlin: No, wait, no, wait, hang on.
Merlin: Now we're going to switch back to getting ready to open the schools and we're going to scrub the desk like that does fuck all.
Merlin: And it's like, oh, no, by the way, now we're going all in online.
Merlin: We're going to develop that curriculum, which I'm sure it's just teaching, right?
Merlin: What's the difference?
John: Oh, it's just teaching.
Merlin: It's just teaching.
John: The thing is that, you know, the Royal Navy had young people scrubbing the desk
John: for centuries, and they conquered the world.
Merlin: You're saying, if I understand you correctly, you're saying the British Empire unseats Spain as the great maritime power, and that was largely through scrubbing desks?
Merlin: Initially.
John: Initially.
John: The older people in the Royal Navy already knew how to do things, but the younger people start by scrubbing desks,
John: And then you end up with Horatio Nelson.
John: Is that right?
Merlin: Is it called swabbing?
Merlin: Or I know that it's England.
Merlin: They probably have a different name for it over there.
John: Well, and they also were covered with petroleum jelly.
John: So it's a thing.
John: There's a long history of it.
John: So my faith rests in the long arc of history.
John: Okay.
Merlin: As it always is.
Merlin: Petroleum is not a renewable resource, but it has the performance characteristics of an extremely safe and slippery child in front of a freshly swabbed desk.
Merlin: It's something that will bring a tear to any British eye.
John: There you go.
Merlin: There you go.
John: That's right.
John: And then you sing the Marseilles.
Merlin: Oh, can I do a follow-up question?
Merlin: yeah go go you just said something interesting to me oh by the way did i tell you the school has a new principal may i ask how long ago that happened or or if you don't know that how long ago you learned about that see a lot has a lot has transpired the new principal isn't
John: it wasn't the surprise.
John: The, the new principal, they hired a principal last year and halfway through the year.
John: And the principal was a, was a very decent fellow, uh, and young, uh, you know, like, uh, like, like just charting a new course, um, uh, young family, I think maybe a child on the way.
John: Um, and, uh, and just, you know, like just,
John: Just young, like fresh faced and charming.
Merlin: Hungry, hungry for the job.
John: He was from Scotland, too.
John: So, you know, that the Scotland accent really imparts a kind of.
John: I don't know.
John: It just makes everything seem smarter and more elegant to us here in the Northwest.
John: I'm sure in Northern Britain, it just makes you sound like a dummy.
John: But here in America, it's like, oh, he's Scottish.
John: He's going to put it all in the cloud.
John: My name is Principal Cloud McLeod.
John: And I liked him a lot.
John: And about halfway through the year, he said, but he was doing that thing where in order to take the job he had
John: He was commuting for an hour and a half from like a neighboring town.
John: Oh, yeah.
John: Or maybe longer, two hours, something.
John: He was like in the car all day.
John: And he took a different job.
John: Halfway through the year, he was like, I'll finish out the year, but then next year I'm going to go do –
John: I'm going to be the principal of some different school.
John: And that happened.
John: Okay.
Merlin: You knew at some point, like even last in the last academic year that he, he was going to be leaving.
Merlin: Okay.
Merlin: Okay.
Merlin: Cool.
Merlin: Cool.
Merlin: That was, that was pre COVID.
John: But then, then the COVID happened.
John: And honestly, Merlin to not to, not to put too fine a point on it, but my daughter's teacher last year was not up to the task.
John: Everyone in the school understood that, that they had done a,
John: That they had done a poor job of hiring because they'd hired a teacher that was not – she was also very young but not ready to teach a class.
John: I needed to go back to Montessori school probably and start over again from the beginning.
Merlin: Oh, Montessori school for grownups.
Merlin: I don't hate that.
John: Yeah.
John: Oh, wouldn't that be good?
John: That would be so good.
John: I could use that.
John: Oh, just get to – you get colored blocks and you get time to make tea in the day.
John: Yeah.
John: Anyway, but the school did not, you know, it's a small school, so it didn't have the resources to just like deal with the fact that they'd hired the wrong teacher.
Merlin: And just to be clear here, you're saying before the COVID times, you knew that this person was not up to it or not suited for just the way, just regular in-school instruction.
John: September 1st, the first day we met and shook hands and sat and talked in the lobby of the school.
John: And I said, hey, welcome to the school.
John: You know, we're new here, too.
John: After 10 minutes of talking to her, I was like, what?
John: Really?
John: This one?
John: This is the teacher?
John: So all year long, we had to deal with that, just kind of suffer with that.
Merlin: Did your daughter have a sense?
Merlin: How much did you talk to her about your feelings about that?
Merlin: Did your kid have a sense that you two weren't so crazy about the teacher?
John: No, we kept that.
John: You don't want to undermine them.
John: That seemed above her pay grade.
John: But she was new to the concept of Montessori, but she had been to Montessori for three months prior to summer last year.
John: And the teacher that she had...
John: was like this seasoned veteran, a woman I loved immediately.
John: The first day I met her, it was just like, we just had sparks.
John: I really thought she was a dynamo.
John: I sat in the class one day and watched her work and I just was like, wow, Montessori is amazing.
John: And then she retired over the summer and it was just like, oh, awesome.
John: And she was replaced by this, by a new teacher that now subsequently has been, you know, at the end of this, this last school year, she was fired.
John: But what we did express in Earshot of Our Daughter was the fact that once we went to COVID protocols, the teacher who was completely out of her depth...
John: no longer had the resources of just being in a school full of people that kind of knew what was happening.
John: She was just out at sea.
John: She was in her apartment.
Merlin: Yeah, you can't bluff that to people who know what's what.
John: And so our initial COVID experience was just terrible because she was one of these – she was doing that thing where she was like, okay, the Zoom meeting starts in five minutes, but the code was wrong and none of the kids could get in.
John: And we sat and stared at our computers for an hour.
John: Yeah.
John: And then she would send out an email like, oh, sorry about that.
John: You know, I had an emergency.
John: My mom's cat had a, you know, got its tag tangled in its cat litter.
John: And I was like, what?
John: You know, and we're sitting there with our pencils out, like ready to do whatever the assignment was.
John: Anyway, so this year...
John: My daughter was moving up to the next level of Montessori class where the teacher was.
John: deeply experienced an Australian, another voice, another accent that sounds really sophisticated.
Merlin: Oh, that's it.
Merlin: We had an Australian in preschool and she was terrific.
Merlin: Yeah, they're terrific.
Merlin: She had a very high sort of voice when she talked.
Merlin: Oh, that's nice.
John: It was nice.
Merlin: That's nice.
John: Her progress is quite good.
John: A little bit like a headmistress.
Merlin: They were all hippies.
Merlin: She had like that long gray hair, you know.
John: Well, that's the thing.
John: There are places in the world where people –
John: would hear an Australian accent and recognize that Australians were all hippies and hillbillies, and it wouldn't convey intelligence and sophistication like it does here.
John: But here, every accent sounds interesting.
Merlin: You are going ham on the British Protectorate right now.
John: Don't get me started on that.
Merlin: Any other remarks?
Merlin: Victoria falls.
Merlin: More like Victoria fails.
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John: It just camouflages their complete incompetence.
Merlin: Oh dear.
Merlin: Anyway, so they had it and they blew it.
Merlin: They had it and they blew it.
Merlin: You know what I'm saying?
John: We were going into this school year.
John: We had this teacher.
John: She was the heart and soul of the institution.
John: Finally, after a year and a half of being in this school, we knew they were going to hire a new principal, but she was going to have this new experience with it.
John: And even under COVID protocols, I had faith that this teacher was going to, I don't know, put that Lowry's seasoning salt of education on
John: uh, on what our daughter was going to experience as a, as a newly minted fourth grader.
John: Yeah.
John: And I kid you not in July, but email goes out that says, Oh, she's going back to Australia after living in America for 25 years, 25 years.
John: She's going back to Australia to finish her sentence.
Um,
John: That's right.
Merlin: You know, when you say that line, we're so close, we finish each other's sentences, that has a different meaning in Australia.
John: Owing to the prisons and the very large spiders.
John: Yes, your father died before his sentence was complete and you inherited it.
John: Just figured that out.
Merlin: That's why they call it the Australian birthright.
John: There's so much people can learn from our program.
John: It's really – if you would like an annotated copy of the show, just – Send a self-addressed stamped envelope.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: To RoderickOnTheLine, Anytown, Washington.
Merlin: Pueblo, Colorado.
Merlin: Pueblo, Colorado, 98787.
Merlin: The government wants to give you money.
Merlin: You understand?
John: If you can draw this pirate.
Merlin: Yes, you may be qualified to go to the Ernest Hemingway famous school of Australia design.
John: So, Merlin, suffice to say, we are paddling hard to keep our heads above water.
John: So here's the solution.
John: Are you ready?
John: Yeah.
John: The new principle...
John: who is, who, you know, he was announced right about the time that our teacher announced that she wouldn't be in class.
John: At which point we were like, well, you know, we threw up our hands and we're like, we can't, this school is too, this school is too falling apart.
John: We can't keep doing this.
Merlin: I have to tell you right off the dome, I'm thinking about, this is quick, but like there's a lot of reporting right now.
Merlin: obviously about places like New York, Manhattan or New York in general, but also very much San Francisco, people are like, okay, you know, I was paying five grand a month for this one room apartment or like one bedroom apartment for my tech job to be nearby.
Merlin: And I like restaurants and I like theater and I like all of the things.
Merlin: And it's like, it's not taking a lot of people too much to, especially recent people with money and tech jobs to,
Merlin: To go, oh, wait a minute, like I can work from home for my Google job until next summer.
Merlin: Why am I paying $5,000 for a room I can't leave?
John: There's no good reason.
Merlin: And it strikes me that Montessori, I mean, I don't mean this as like a dig, but like there are certain kinds of things that are not going to do well now and in the future.
Merlin: And one of those things is if your thing involves a high level of interactivity in a closed space,
Merlin: Basically, I'm sorry, I'm sounding stupid, but if what you're doing can become a vector for spread right now, it's going to be rough.
Merlin: So the value that's derived from a hands-on in-class Montessori experience, as you've stipulated, playing with blocks on Zoom is not what we were looking for here.
John: No, it's not.
John: And so what we learned, this is the thing that we learned not very long ago.
John: Was that the new principal was going to also be the new upper elementary teacher.
Merlin: In a small school, that's probably just practical in terms of like what you could be fine.
Merlin: Could be fine.
John: But but now it's also happening above, you know, on Zoom.
John: OK, geez.
John: So I don't know, man.
John: I don't know.
Merlin: What's the latest?
Merlin: If you can say, what's the latest guidance on how things are going to go and when?
John: I really think this is not a thing I ever would have – when our daughter was in vitro –
John: You probably remember that time, right?
John: It was a long time ago.
John: Sure.
John: You had a baby on the way.
John: You didn't know what to expect.
John: You never had a baby before.
John: Right.
John: One's coming.
John: You know, you look over at your partner and you're like, we got a baby coming.
John: What are we going to do?
John: And there's some rustling around.
John: There's some buying of little sailor outfits.
John: At least I'm just describing my own personal experience.
Merlin: You start nesting.
Merlin: My daughter's mother bought a lot of little sailor outfits.
Merlin: A lot of sailor outfits.
Merlin: Okay.
Merlin: Okay.
Merlin: Again, interesting.
Merlin: Like, like, you know, so basically, you know, eventually she could learn to swab a desk.
John: Well, that was my, that was, that was what I thought.
John: I learned later that no, it was just that they were cute.
John: Oh, but I was like, we're going to put her in the Navy.
Merlin: It would be nice for you to become a Lord Nelson or a Rear Admiral.
John: So this is one of the things.
John: I remember walking around thinking, what am I going to have my daughter call me?
John: I would like it if she called me Colonel, but I'm not a Colonel and I don't want to have stolen valor.
Merlin: Last thing you want is to be walking around the mall and fucking Sherman T. Potter goes off on you and says, where did you serve?
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: My daughter's like, Colonel, can I have this?
John: And I'm like, no.
Merlin: And then somebody comes over and says- I could enjoy being called Colonel.
John: I could really enjoy that.
John: Where did you serve, sir?
John: Wow.
John: I was a colonel in the Indy Rock Armies.
John: He'd be like, I was a colonel in the Seven Nation Army.
John: He'd be like, I don't know.
Merlin: You know, if you allow it, I would like to at least experiment with me from time to time calling you colonel.
John: No, I would like it.
John: And, you know, I was sincere about this, you know.
John: I want her to call me sir.
John: I think all children should call me sir.
John: I think that, you know, I think that.
John: That's totally reasonable.
John: Maybe hair doctor would be all right.
John: Like, hey, doctor, may I have professor, doctor, doctor, professor, I think is what it would be.
John: Or like, you know, some people get like a reverend doctor.
John: Reverend doctor.
John: Right.
John: But unfortunately, I have not earned any of those titles.
John: And.
John: Also, unfortunately, it turned out I could not create a world where any of the kids called me, sir.
John: I'm lucky enough just to be called daddy.
John: But also, we had all the best laid plans of parents of our time.
John: We intended to use cloth diapers.
John: Oh, absolutely.
John: Did you do that, the cloth diapers?
Merlin: John, we were all in on every part of this racket.
Merlin: So I will never grow tired of pointing out how many industries in America are predicated on a sort of emotional –
Merlin: Predatoriness, whatever that word would be.
Merlin: Predation.
Merlin: I've grown fond of saying there are certain businesses that only begin to make money in certain situations.
Merlin: How do we get you angry?
Merlin: How do we get you fearful?
Merlin: How do we get you ashamed?
Merlin: This is the whole basis of Clearasil.
Merlin: But there's this whole racket that is, I feel like, really underwritten by a lot of people giving parental advice, which is like, let's try to make this mom-to-be feel like shit, doubt herself, and let's just undermine the idea of probable success at every turn through a series of purchases you need to make.
Merlin: But even more than that, we were also, and I'm not criticizing this move, even though we ended up not going with it, but we were going to try the whole natural thing, which is a cult.
Merlin: There's an incredible, like, this cult of people who are so judgy.
Merlin: If you haven't, like, we went to one of these fucking classes where it was like, yeah, I gave birth in a tub in my family room and there was a Michelob waiting for me in the mini fridge.
Merlin: Fuck you.
Merlin: You're just so goddamn lucky you did not have complications.
Merlin: And I feel all I'm saying is, even though, I think this is probably true of a lot of white people of means having their first kid, is you do all kinds of crazy shit and over-preparing, and you ignore the advice of somebody like Matt Howey, who had the single greatest piece of advice, apart from that whole catch up on your sleep, which is not a meaningful thing to say to an adult.
Merlin: But he said, basically, get a bunch of diapers and get a bunch of onesies.
Merlin: Everything else is optional.
Merlin: Don't try to buy your way into parenthood.
Merlin: It won't work.
Merlin: And then what you're going to end up with is a lot of stuff that you just have to give away because there's so much stuff with a baby that for obvious reasons only has relevance for a very short period of time.
Merlin: Don't buy like a $90 Ramones onesie because they're not going to be able to wear it in a month.
Merlin: That's right.
Merlin: So yeah, I'm talking a lot here, but I'm supporting what you're saying.
Merlin: We wanted to create the best set of conditions we could for success for ourselves and our dumb baby.
Merlin: And yeah, and we did a ton of crazy shit where we over-engineered every aspect of it because that's what our people do.
John: Yeah, and you cannot know, I don't think, looking at the first six months of your baby, that there will be a time –
John: Four years later, when the child is still a baby and all of the things that you, I mean, you know, when your baby is brand new, you know, every time someone says a cross word in the house.
John: you think, oh, no, our child is going to be permanently damaged by their exposure to that negative energy.
John: Babies bounce.
Merlin: Babies bounce, not just physically.
Merlin: Babies bounce emotionally.
Merlin: You cannot prevent them from being very, very sad, but you should find some solace in the fact that there will always be something making a baby sad, and eventually it will go to sleep.
John: It will go to sleep eventually and all things – it all works out.
Merlin: You can't bank up any credit though.
Merlin: That's part of it.
Merlin: You feel like – it's like this kind of idiot rich husbands who like think buying a fur coat once a year will get them out of 364 other days of being a total shit.
Merlin: It's really – it's a rally, not a race.
Merlin: You got to just keep showing up at the right time at the right place.
John: Keep buying a fur coat every single day.
Merlin: Buy a fur coat every day.
John: That's the only way.
John: The only way you're going to survive a marriage.
Merlin: But first, make sure you slather her in petroleum jelly.
John: Yes.
John: I'm with you.
John: In our case, it was – because I was not a hippie.
John: As you know, my parents were not hippies.
John: My brothers and sisters were hippies and we didn't respect them here in the house.
John: But my daughter's mother's parents were hippies, big-time hippies.
John: And she was raised as a hippie.
John: And you wouldn't know it by talking to her.
John: You know her.
John: You've talked to her.
John: You don't think, oh, what a hippie.
Merlin: No, she seems very – she strikes me as being very – like she really is – I don't know another better word than she's really wired, right?
John: Sure.
John: She's very capable.
John: She's a professional person.
John: But –
John: In her life, her mom made her own clothes until eighth grade.
John: She never saw television, even through the window of a house as she was driving by in a car, until she was, I don't know, 16, something like that.
John: Whoa.
John: That's wild.
John: Just raised entirely, never tasted chocolate.
John: It was all carob food.
John: And so even though she made the transition to normalcy and she recognizes that some of that stuff was crazy and that she should have been able to taste chocolate before she was 19, there are other things that really lodged, right?
John: And one of those is screen time.
John: She never wanted our little girl to have any screen time.
John: And she barely has had any screen time.
John: There's not really –
John: very much computer in her life.
John: Another thing is sugary pop.
John: There's never been sugary pop, although she takes sips of my sugary pop because I'm like, you can't tell me not to have a ginger ale.
John: You're the colonel.
John: That's right.
John: The colonel gets a Schweppes.
John: Thank you for your service.
John: But there were a lot of those things.
John: Cloth diapers being the first one that we tried.
John: But we believed that we were going to speak Spanish to her every day.
John: We believed that we were going to teach her to juggle at a young age, that she would...
John: By this point in time, we ran into – What about viola?
Merlin: You thought about some kind of a string instrument maybe?
John: Yeah, the viola, sure.
John: The Suzuki method.
John: We ran into a guy, a young dad at a park one time when I think our little girl was two and he had a two-year-old.
John: And the park was in Kirkland, Washington, a neighboring town to Bellevue, Washington, the tech capital of the Northwest.
Merlin: Kirkland, I'm guessing, is where Costco is based?
John: Kirkland is where Costco is based.
John: Kirkland is also – it's just a – it is a wealthy bedroom community.
John: Oh, sort of like a Redmond kind of thing?
John: Yeah, it's very close to Redmond, except it's on the lake, so it's nicer.
John: Nicer than Redmond.
John: Okay.
John: Uh, and we were talking to this dad and the kids were playing together and, and we were like, Oh, you know, so what did, you know, what you guys come to this park often?
John: And he was like, yeah, every day at 1 PM after, um, after like between soldering lessons and, uh, and chemistry, we come down to the park for 25 minutes of physical education, you know, education.
John: And this guy, he just looked like a normal kid.
John: He was just, he was a tech person.
John: He couldn't have been 30, but he was talking to us about, like, the education and upbringing of the child and how the child was in the 99th percentile already at age two.
John: And over the course of the conversation, two things happened.
John: One, we were looking at each other going, oh, my God, like,
John: It took everything just to get to this park today.
John: It took us an hour and a half just to get out of the house.
John: It took everything.
John: And we are not teaching our child chemistry.
John: We don't know what percentile she's in.
John: We just barely made it to this park.
John: And the other thing that happened was you could see this young person gradually come to the understanding that –
John: having our children play together was actually, um, going to injure his child, uh, because like really drag, drag the 99 percentile down.
Merlin: Yeah.
John: Because our daughter was so, so not, cause your daughter's simple.
John: Yeah.
John: That she wasn't speaking French to him or something.
John: And so he just gradually like, you know, that thing when you're, when, when two kids really hit it off and parents kind of eye each other, like, are we going to
John: make a play date.
John: Are we going to ever try and meet up again?
John: Because our kids have really like,
John: latched onto each other, you know, very rarely do you say, like, let's meet up again.
John: But it happens.
Merlin: Well, I think in the early days, I mean, for example, as you know, my wife stopped working for several years.
Merlin: And every single one of us is glad she did that.
Merlin: She's been able to reenter.
Merlin: Her career is going great.
Merlin: But that's what she wanted to do.
Merlin: And that's what we all wanted to do.
Merlin: And, of course, my stupid fake job makes it easy enough for me to be around.
Merlin: But I think in the early days, you know, there were things like going to these music classes, the play dates.
Merlin: There's all this kind of stuff that I think is kind of for mom and kid.
Merlin: But you don't learn that it's for mom and kid.
Merlin: You don't fully get that until you've been with some real lemons.
Merlin: So in the early days, you're like, of course.
Merlin: I'd love little Daenerys to come over and play blocks.
Merlin: And you're like, yeah, but Daenerys's mom sucks.
Merlin: And so that does not meet the qualifications of this has to be fun for both of us.
John: Right, exactly.
John: And this was a case where it was early enough in our parenthood that we felt bad about the shade that this kid was throwing us.
John: Like, oh, you guys aren't – you're not even – she's not even in a – I cannot tell you how many people I've met that are that guy and I despise them.
John: She's not even in a math program yet?
John: Oh, interesting.
John: Oh, okay.
John: Well –
John: Great meeting you.
John: We've got to get going.
John: It was just like, oh, we worked so hard to get to this park today.
John: I know.
Merlin: There was one in particular I'm here.
Merlin: I'm talking about, like, there's this thing.
Merlin: Oh, God.
Merlin: What was it called?
Merlin: But it was a really fun, like, it's like a franchise, like, music class for babies and moms.
Merlin: And, you know, kids like, you know, hitting tambourines and stuff.
Yeah.
Merlin: There was, and I don't mean to make this like a mom thing, but as you're saying here, it's certainly not restricted to moms.
Merlin: Oh, they're the worst.
Merlin: But there was one who was just, John, there's a word I've been hearing for several years, and I've never adopted it.
Merlin: And now I realize, now that I've adopted it, how important this word has become for me in my life, because I never knew I needed this word before.
Merlin: You know what the word is?
Merlin: Sweaty.
Merlin: Sweaty.
Merlin: Okay, so sweaty, you know, I take sweaty to mean like you're going to really, you're going to make, you're trying so hard to get a laugh that you're doing these terrible dad jokes.
Merlin: You're so sweaty for, it's like, it's kind of a version of thirsty a little bit, I guess, but you're so sweaty for basically admiration in some way.
Merlin: And also this child had a unibrow.
Merlin: She was a very unattractive baby.
Merlin: She looked like, what was her name?
Merlin: Gerald, like Maggie's nemesis on The Simpsons.
Merlin: But she would just unprompted offer up these incredibly stupid and obviously dishonest
Merlin: about how well little Daenerys was doing.
Merlin: Oh, yeah.
Merlin: And just like, you know, somebody tries to say anything.
Merlin: And then, of course, everybody always wants to bring it back to their thing.
Merlin: And so she's so sweaty.
Merlin: She would always bring everything back to how well.
Merlin: Basically, Daenerys, you know, even though Daenerys is eight months old, when she's at home, she can, I don't know, count to 60 in French.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: We put letters on the steps.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: And she's able to spell words like cocoa and just – but just all this – and you're like, wow.
Merlin: And I go back to my friend Chris Cauldron.
Merlin: I learned a trick from Chris in college.
Merlin: Whenever somebody starts talking to you about money and starts obviously trying to brag about money, what you say is, wow, that's a lot of money.
Merlin: And in this case, when you're talking to Sweaty Mom, you say, wow, Daenerys is really smart.
Merlin: That's great.
Merlin: What are you going to say?
Merlin: And we're like, you're so full of shit.
Merlin: You're so full of shit.
Merlin: You and your husband obviously hate each other.
Merlin: And you think this baby is going to save you.
Merlin: I got news for you, Daenerys Sr.
Merlin: The baby is not going to save you.
Merlin: Ouch.
Merlin: Un, deux, trois.
John: A baby never saved anything.
Merlin: A baby saved nobody.
Merlin: A baby saved nobody.
John: A baby's just steal and steal and steal.
John: Oh, God.
John: Well, so as you know, the process of being a parent is one by one abandoning all your best laid plans for how you're going to have a nature baby and you're going to speak French to it every day.
Merlin: Yeah, and finding yourself in the position, as all adults will eventually find, believe it or not, even you young people, is like, which kind of hypocrite will I become today that I can mostly live with?
John: And for me...
John: I had no cloth diaper.
John: I mean, I don't want to put diapers in the landfill any more than anybody else does.
John: John, you have to scrape the poopy out for those.
Merlin: You've got to scrape them out, and then somebody goes and cleans that.
John: That's the thing.
John: It's a terrible thing.
John: I've never met anybody that actually went all the way through with cloth diapers.
John: If you're listening to the show and you are somebody that's done that, we don't want to hear from you.
Merlin: Diapers are good for drawing an automobile.
John: They're very soft.
John: Oh, that's right.
John: Drawing an automobile.
John: Yeah.
John: I thought you said drawing an automobile and I was like, you mean attracting an automobile?
John: No, no, no.
John: You do that on your desk after you swab it.
John: Right, right.
John: I see.
John: I see what you're saying.
John: But one of the things – and you surely have gone through this too.
John: From a time before she went to school, I started to consider – consider –
John: What it would take, what it would mean, what it would be like to homeschool.
John: It was from the very earliest times.
John: What would the advantages and the disadvantages of homeschooling be?
John: Because as you know, on this program, I have speculated about homeschooling.
John: Education, childhood education for many years, long before I had a baby.
John: Well, no, we started doing this program right about the time I had a baby.
Merlin: Yeah, but I mean, this is one of those things that a lot of adults have thoughts about.
Merlin: Parenthood.
Merlin: Sure, sure.
Merlin: You know, all kinds of things related to education.
Merlin: They got all the answers.
John: Sure.
John: And for decades, I felt like that we needed to reform the schools because the schools did a poor job.
John: for me, and I had a good sense of what needed to happen, how they needed to change.
John: Well, our good friend, and I guess I should caveat that by saying good friend at the time, Dave Bazan, his wife...
John: They embraced homeschooling.
John: And so the way that their family was structured, it was very definitely – she was going to stay home and he was going to go out on the road and make the money and bring it home.
John: He was going to bring home the bacon and she was going to fry it up in a pan.
Merlin: Did she do her best to never let him forget he's a man?
John: I'm not sure.
John: I wasn't as privy about those aspects of their relationship.
John: So that's how it is in their family.
John: But she went the whole nine.
John: She has chickens.
John: She plowed up the grass in their suburban home and turned it into a victory garden.
John: And she does all the stuff.
John: She utilizes the local homeschooling network.
John: She uses the state guidelines.
Merlin: She's like a full-time lifestyle cosplay mom.
John: Yes.
John: And watching her, I felt like – I mean, of course, my initial feeling was what if Dave Bazan's wife and Christine just taught our daughter too?
John: And, you know, they both were raised in an evangelical context where they went to – they didn't just go to public schools.
Merlin: At least where I'm from, homeschooling is almost synonymous with religious nuts.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: Not to say that Dave and his wife are religious nuts, but that's a very strong homeschooling tradition in the post-no-prayer-in-schools American evangelical landscape.
John: And I think that's true.
John: That's true generally.
John: And, and, and, um, you know, I don't, I, she, and Christine is extremely smart and has given those kids, uh, I think a first class education, but it's a hundred percent, you know, she works an 18 hour day, I think with those kids.
John: Yeah.
John: But I was like, is there a way to homeschool my child where I can continue to be
John: an artistic loafer, a dreamer who goes for long walks and looks out at the world.
John: And, you know, uh, but also my kid gets a first class education and it turned out at least when she was young, that that was not possible.
John: And I had the resources of, you know, I had my mom who was really hands on with the baby when she was little, but we ended up,
John: obviously sending her to school because my god to be alone with a baby all day to be alone with a two-year-old all day from morning to night come on it's just like being hit repeatedly with a with a not a not a an aluminum bat but with one of those nerf bats that like the first few times you're hit with it you're like and then about time five you're like okay knock it off and
Merlin: Yeah, there's no end to any of it.
Merlin: I mean, I think at some point, most people learn to satisfy, you know, that idea of like, I can't be perfect at this.
Merlin: But like, you drive yourself crazy with not only what has to be done, you eventually learn what has to be done.
Merlin: But I really think people do drive themselves crazy also with the like, again, the Viola lessons, the putting letters on the stairs, any of that stuff.
Merlin: It's a very Marin County thing.
Merlin: But we're dragging a lot of people today, aren't we?
John: Oh, well, let alone homeschooling in Australia and New Zealand.
John: The classes are taught by spiders.
John: But nowadays, you know, I think what what I think I think my the bad surprise was that it wasn't going to be for me.
John: And when I say bad, I don't mean bad.
John: I just mean like one of the surprises was that just walking along a creek bed with my daughter.
John: She wasn't – it wasn't going to be like Tom Sawyer.
John: She wasn't going to say, Daddy, let's look under that rock.
John: And I wasn't going to be able to look up – open the rock and say, oh, do you know what that is?
John: That's genus Spartacus.
John: Oh, contextual – your contextual education dad.
John: I was not going to be able to do that, right?
John: And also – and part of it was that she wasn't going to initiate that kind of curiosity about what snails were.
John: And I wasn't going to be able to say, hey, honey, look over here.
John: Don't you want to know what this snail is?
John: Because she was going to go, no.
John: And she had her own life, right?
Merlin: She had her own – Honey, you're being curious wrong.
Merlin: Yeah, exactly.
Merlin: Why can't you be curious in the things that dad can service for you?
John: I'm going to tell you all about the French Revolution.
John: And she's like –
John: Nope.
Merlin: Let me ask you this, honey.
Merlin: Is that a Les Paul or a Les Paul Jr.?
John: But I'm now – I'm back up against it in a couple of different ways.
John: Fourth grade was key in my history in school because fourth grade was where I left, where I departed from the trajectory.
John: Up until fourth grade, I'd been a kid that excelled in school because I was in the 99th percentile.
John: And most of the teachers kind of, you know, what are your expectations, right?
John: There's not, you're not really, you're just kind of teaching, you're trying to socialize kids.
John: And the only demerits I ever got in school were that I wasn't, you know, they all had to do with socialization.
John: They weren't.
John: They had nothing to do with like everyone was assured that I was going to be a superstar if I just got this socialization component.
John: But in fourth grade, that's where I started to feel like school was not all it was cracked up to be.
John: That the adults didn't know what they were talking about.
John: That homework was baloney and I shouldn't have to do it.
John: All those things, all those ideas that ended up causing me tremendous grief for the rest of my life all started, and I don't know when they were implanted, but they all started to manifest hard in fourth grade.
John: That was where I left the path and never got back on it really.
John: And so looking at my kid and understanding like, oh, I remember fourth grade and she's going to remember this.
John: And what can I do?
John: Like how do I – I said to her last night, I was – she was having a hard time going to sleep because she always has a hard time going to sleep.
John: And I said, sweetie, has –
John: Has mama talked to you about puberty?
John: Oh, boy.
John: And she said, no, not really.
John: I said, have you heard it?
John: Have you heard about it?
Merlin: Just to be clear here, you are entering into this session at that time not having discussed this with your baby's mother.
Merlin: Are you freelancing here?
John: You're freelancing.
John: Oh, boy.
John: And she said, it's something that happens when you're a teenager.
Merlin: Here's the thing.
Merlin: If she knew what puberty was, you would know because she would not be having this conversation with you.
Merlin: If she knew what puberty was, in any way, she'd be going, no, I don't want to talk about it.
Merlin: No, stop.
Merlin: Don't ever use the word pad ever again.
John: Oh, well, I mean, leaving her menstrual cycle aside, you know, she's, whatever, she's nine and a half.
Merlin: It happens earlier than it used to, buddy.
Merlin: Let me tell you why.
John: And I've been reading, that's why I mentioned, I've been reading some book and it was like, you know, some kids start into puberty when they're eight.
John: I was like, what?
John: Really?
John: What?
John: I didn't start puberty until I was 17.
John: That's because you had that flight suit.
John: Yeah, right.
John: You can't get a boner in a flight suit.
John: You could tell that she knew there was something to it.
John: And I think part of it is that the word puberty just sounds like something you don't want to talk about.
John: But I was like, well,
John: It is something that happens when you're a teenager, but it starts sooner than you might think.
John: And it's going to be a transition that you go through that's one of the biggest things that happens in life.
John: Up until now, and part of growing up is what you've been doing, which is you just eat a lot of food, you read a lot of books about Star Wars, and you get bigger.
John: And a lot of people, I think, would believe that if you just kept eating food and reading books about Star Wars, one day you would be a grown-up and someone would hand you the keys to a car.
John: And then you would have a job in government.
John: Now you're the colonel.
John: That's right.
John: For a lot of people, that's kind of what happens.
John: But, you know, and one of the reasons that Daddy is so – has such –
John: Is strict with you sometimes is that he wants you to be he wants you to have More than just the skills that you would naturally acquire
John: eating a lot of food and reading books about star wars there are other things you need to learn and and you sometimes don't want to learn them but like you need to know how to do long division i'm sorry i don't even know why nobody does it anymore but i do it in my head and that means that you're going to learn to do it in your head right but puberty is a thing that you know that has happened to every person and it can be
John: And it's wonderful.
John: It's a very different experience than just eating a lot of food and growing up.
John: Things start to happen.
Merlin: And you can make the case that the teen years were not –
Merlin: marketed to very well until the 50s.
Merlin: You could even make the case that teen years didn't really exist in agrarian America, at least until colonial times and probably later.
Merlin: But puberty for sure has always been on the table.
Merlin: Pretty much everybody but Eric Trump has been through it.
Merlin: It's there, right?
Merlin: It's there.
Merlin: It's looming.
John: It's not optional.
John: You can't clap out.
John: And a lot – there's so much energy around it and so much negative energy.
John: Everybody's afraid of it.
John: And this is kind of why I wanted to bring it up to her because it's like –
John: I feel like if the first time you talk to her about it, her mom sits her down in a hard chair and pulls out a pad and says, here's your future.
Merlin: Gets out the whiteboard and a book called Your Changing Body.
John: Yeah, and a crucifix.
Yeah.
John: You know, they're going to laugh at you.
John: They're going to laugh at you.
John: It's just part of this whole thing that we do in America where it's like we don't talk about death and we don't talk about sex and we don't talk about.
John: And adolescence is this thing that just terrifies us all.
John: And we fill our kids full of terror.
John: You know, the only way they talk to me about puberty was, yeah, they bought me some book like You're Changing Body.
John: And I couldn't get far enough away from that book.
Merlin: Yeah, yeah.
Merlin: So anyway, I was just saying –
Merlin: Or, you know, I mean, sometimes it's just because sometimes you're legit trying to help, but you still get somebody an eating disorder.
Merlin: But there's also so much shame encoded on our kids and like, and, you know, who are you going to talk to about like why the towels are stiff?
Merlin: You know, it's a very awkward time.
John: Yeah, and I think in other countries, they just give the kid three glasses of wine and show them Emmanuel in Paris.
Merlin: Oh, carry on, Emmanuel.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: I love cable TV.
John: We're sitting and talking, and you can see, as I'm saying to her, it's a transformation that happens in you, and it takes several years, and you start to have all kinds of new powers that
John: And it comes with new responsibilities.
John: Your feelings change.
John: And part of the reason I'm talking to her about it is that I can see she's starting to have intense emotions.
Merlin: Oh, I see.
John: Yeah, sure.
John: It's all part and parcel of what it takes to go from being a child to being an adult.
John: And a lot of people make that transition without any help from the adults around them.
John: And I just want you to know you're going to have as much help as you need.
John: And you can see she's pulling the blanket further and further up under her nose.
John: And she's looking at me with these eyes that's just like I'm telling her the craziest ghost story she's ever heard.
John: You know, I know that it sounds like really intense and it is.
John: But every single person that you've ever met that's grown up has gone through it.
John: And so – and it's going to be a big part of your life for the time between at some point where it arrives on little pad feet.
John: Until you're 50 years old like me and you're still wondering why it went so badly.
Merlin: So listen, I just want to prepare you.
Merlin: I'm going to speak in an oddly stilted and very coded way where it sounds like I'm asking you questions.
Merlin: I can't really tell you what we're talking about here, but you should definitely be worried.
John: Well, that's right.
John: And what I'm trying to do, what I was trying to do last night, which again, it was completely off shooting from the hip.
John: It's just like we just need to start talking about this in a way that it's never going to be casual.
John: But to not have the first puberty conversation be one where she gets the whole palate dropped in her lap.
John: all at once.
Merlin: But to just be like, oh, we talk about puberty now, in addition to talking about... Isn't it possible that the shame that's been encoded on each of us, I don't know if I'm using that phrase exactly right, but I think you probably take my meaning.
Merlin: I do feel like we're all taught to be ashamed
Merlin: of a lot of things and to do everything we can to never feel that shame and to act like we're tougher than we are and never be vulnerable.
Merlin: But let's be honest, one reason, I'm not saying that you're doing this, but one reason I have been tempted to have this conversation, I mean, I basically, I was, I was told to stay the hell out of this conversation by two different people in the house.
Merlin: But, but why, why is this such a big deal?
Merlin: Well, yeah, it would be nice if there was some sort of, I'm guessing like an Ann Dowd type character.
Merlin: I don't know if you know that actress from The Leftovers and Handmaid's Tale.
Merlin: But some kind of a stern, older middle-aged lady with long hair, maybe an Australian.
Merlin: You send your child to And Out and And Out sits them down for the talk in a very candid way without any shame.
Merlin: Whereas when I do it, I'm like, I don't want you to be Carrie.
Merlin: I'm worried you're going to be Carrie.
Merlin: You know what I'm saying?
Merlin: You're going to be in the shower, and they're going to be throwing tampons at you, and they're going to laugh at you, and it's all because I never sat down and talked to you about pads.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: My shame drives that.
John: The only shame that I want to impart to my daughter's life is that when I'm eating something, I do not want her to come and take that food off the plate.
John: Is that something you're still working with?
John: Well, my daughter has a very strong food drive.
John: Oh, okay.
John: And it's a thing where if I sit down to eat something, all of a sudden she will appear over my shoulder.
John: And I'm like, how?
John: It's like having a pet that hears the crinkling of the food.
Merlin: Every time the can opener goes, the cat runs in the room.
John: But she's savvy enough.
John: She appears over my shoulder.
John: At first, you just catch a glimpse, a shadow of her.
John: And then she comes into frame and
John: And she knows to be holding something.
John: Like, Daddy, could you help me with – could you help me put the battery in this?
Merlin: She's doing sleight of hand.
Merlin: Not sleight of hand.
Merlin: She's doing like basically pickpocketing.
Merlin: You bump the person and they're like, oh, and they're paying attention there.
Merlin: And meanwhile, now your pork chops are disappearing.
John: But I've been through this.
John: She's been doing this since she was three years old.
John: And so I go, mm-hmm.
John: This doesn't have anything to do with the fact that I'm eating a little bowl of leftover noodles.
John: Daddy, will you hold this large radio with both hands?
John: Right.
John: And she's like, what?
John: No.
John: And I'm like, because it's funny.
John: I've been sitting in the living room for an hour and a half watching you try and put that battery in there and you never asked for any help.
John: But now that I have a little bowl of noodles, all of a sudden I'm the most
John: Important person in the room, huh?
John: She's like, I have no idea what you're talking about.
John: And she does it every time.
John: She's just like, if there's food being consumed, she just like, it's just some snake charmer.
Merlin: All children are liars, John.
Merlin: This is something when you get that precious baby, little baby Daenerys, comes out of the birth canal, literally counting in French.
Merlin: And you don't know what a fucking liar that child will turn into.
Merlin: Terrible taste, big liar, might as well send him to Australia.
John: Yep, she's a super duper liar.
John: But other than that, other than like, do not...
John: Do not come around just because I have a bowl of noodles and pretend that you need me because – That's insulting to both of our intelligence.
John: That's insulting to both of us.
John: And you're not getting any noodles no matter what you do.
John: No matter what – if you came in and handed me your piggy bank and said, Daddy, I love you more than anything.
John: I want you to have my money in exchange for one bite of noodles.
John: I would still say no.
John: On principle, John.
John: On principle.
Yeah.
John: Yeah.
John: But I don't –
John: Other than that, I was so covered in shame about everything.
John: I don't want her to have any shame about anything.
John: And of course, that's very difficult.
John: How do you discipline a child in a way that keeps her from
John: eating by knocking her plate on the floor and then getting on her hands and knees and licking it off the floor.
Merlin: It requires such an obnoxious assumption that I definitely brought with me into this experience.
Merlin: I think I told you a long time ago, I used to say, my goal here, obviously keep the kids safe, but also to not
Merlin: not pass on unnecessary anxieties, especially my own unnecessary anxieties.
Merlin: But even that, if you think about it, is crazy because that's going to govern the way that you behave.
Merlin: You're going to have tells.
Merlin: Your kid has a tell right here, which is like she thinks she's pulling it off with this whole noodle heist.
Merlin: But also the way any of us talk to our kids is going to reflect on
Merlin: are i think most of us not and out and that's why she's such a she's such a gift but it's going to reflect our own weirdnesses and hang-ups and anxieties and shames and all of that stuff it's really hard it's more a question of like how you deal with the ones you have rather than acting like they don't exist yeah and the boy trying to um trying to not
John: I mean, I think one of the things that we all have to deal with, and I'm talking to Ken Jennings about this because he's dealing with it too, is how to have a child that doesn't naturally love math not learn to hate math and associate math with the worst feelings they've ever felt.
Mm-hmm.
John: And I, you know, like there are, there are kids who are off doing math when no one's watching, you know, like, oh, we came in and he was already building, you know, a math, uh, a math box.
John: It's like, wow, that's interesting because most of us, um,
John: have a different experience, which is sit with a child and say, like, here's how you do it.
John: And they go, I don't get it.
John: I don't want it.
Merlin: I almost feel like we don't teach what avionics in elementary school.
Merlin: We don't we don't teach like advanced chisel work.
Merlin: There's all kinds of things we don't teach in school, but we just act like it's totally normal that there's all these things.
Merlin: And then there's also math.
Merlin: And it's like, I almost feel like math should be like a different school.
Merlin: It makes for so many of us, and maybe this is just because I'm stupid, but back to your point of like, are you naturally interested and gifted at math?
Merlin: Well, it's a shocker.
Merlin: Most of us aren't.
Merlin: But it's that math experience that can drag down the entire school year.
John: Yeah.
John: And yet at the same time, what I try and demonstrate to her is in the course of a normal day,
John: You have to do math in your head up to a certain point.
John: Have I ever had to do trigonometry?
John: No.
Merlin: You have to do arithmetic.
John: You have to do arithmetic.
John: But that includes –
John: fractions it includes long division it includes multiplication and it includes word problems and they come up every day it's like well let's see we are supposed to meet somebody at two we're um you know we're that we're meeting them 15 miles away but we have to stop at the grocery store and we only have 11 you know and it's just like how are we going to solve this problem and you figure you sit and you do it in your head and it involves all the things that you're trying to teach a little kid
Merlin: rounding estimating um you know also learning those code words like when you first learn that when you hear of it's probably going to involve a percentage or division there's those little like you learn what all the different small words mean to help you decode word problems yeah exactly like if the first thing you need to know is is this a multiplication problem or a division problem because they look kind of the same except they're the opposite
John: And every division problem, you have to do adding and subtracting within it.
John: Yep.
John: And all of this, you have to be able to kind of learn well enough that you can throw a picture of an equation up in the sky and look at it for between 10 and 15 seconds because nobody's going to wait around for you to carry the four.
John: Throw it up there and come up with an answer.
John: Yeah.
John: It happens every day.
John: And so you need to be able to do it.
John: And it's not that you need to be able to do it because you're going to be tested on it.
John: It's that it makes life so much easier.
John: It really is just as important as anything else that is a core set of skills because you don't want to be the one where somebody says –
John: Um, well, how many years was it between 1815 and, and, uh, and 1892 to be that?
John: Like, I don't know.
Merlin: I just, I heard a recent interview with Tig Notaro and she talks specific, it was a really good episode of this podcast only called how to, and she specifically is talking about how she always struggled with math.
Merlin: Like it was really, really hard.
Merlin: Like her brain is just not wired for math.
Merlin: Tig Notaro is obviously a very intelligent person.
Merlin: Um,
Merlin: But like one day she's working at her waitress job and is having trouble counting up the change.
Merlin: She already is very self-conscious about her math, her arithmetic skills.
Merlin: And the person who she was waiting on said, well, I'm glad I can – something like along the lines of, I'm glad my tip can help fund you going to college or something like that.
Merlin: And she carried that with her for years.
Yeah.
Merlin: Like you say, if you've got to spend a long time to figure out what the tip on something is, that's not a great look.
John: No.
John: No, and I mean just every day, the thing is that every day she comes to me with a math question.
John: She just doesn't realize it's a math question.
John: Okay, all right.
John: You know what I mean?
John: No, I do.
Merlin: I absolutely do.
John: Yeah, like how old were you when I was born?
John: Well, how old are you now?
John: How old am I now?
John: It's a math question.
Yeah.
John: And particularly those ones where she's like, what age were you when mama was my age?
John: And I love that stuff.
John: And it's just like, hey, let's – And now you have a spreadsheet that I've gifted you for that.
John: That's right.
John: And it's a wonderful spreadsheet.
John: We've all enjoyed it very much.
Merlin: You can love spreadsheets and not be a fan of maths.
John: I had to learn a little bit of Excel because I wanted to add other people into it.
John: And I couldn't get it to calculate things.
John: And then what it turned out was that –
John: That all I needed was to do a couple of very simple key commands.
John: Yeah.
Merlin: You just pull down and you do a fill.
John: You do a fill and then it all worked out.
Merlin: I tend to put my variables over here and the calculations over here.
Merlin: I like to keep those separate.
John: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
John: You keep the variables over here, the calculations over there.
John: This is the stuff that they don't teach in schools.
John: Yeah.
John: But here I stand...
John: on the threshold of essentially thinking very seriously that I'm going to have to homeschool her for fourth grade.
Merlin: Fourth grade, the year that I myself- You did it to me again.
Merlin: One hour in, you brought it back around.
Merlin: Okay.
Merlin: Wow.
Merlin: I don't know how you do that, man.
Merlin: Your brain is so shredded.
Merlin: How the fuck can you do that?
Merlin: Your hands don't work?
Merlin: And then somehow, but you're still able to do that?
Merlin: I don't even know which one of these seltzers is newest.
Merlin: I didn't learn it in school.
Merlin: I'll tell you that.
Merlin: Those fat cats don't want you to know.
Merlin: Okay, so to catch me back up here.
Merlin: So you're seeing this academic year?
Merlin: Now.
Merlin: You're saying – you're asking yourself, presumably your baby's mother, is this a thing where we need to pull the kid out of the Montessori and do it here?
John: Even if we keep the Montessori as some kind of –
John: You know, as some kind of beard to.
John: Oh, I see.
John: Like the actual school is going to have to happen here.
Merlin: It's like the shield headquarters in Captain America.
Merlin: Like it looks like a barbershop or something or like an antique store.
Merlin: It looks like John's house, but it's actually it's actually a school.
Merlin: I'm saying the Montessori is providing cover.
John: It's providing cover.
John: Last year, trying to do this over Zoom, it was like every day was a breakdown in tears because there was some disembodied face on there holding up some...
John: some things that we didn't have, some little, some little boxes and balls that we didn't have and saying, you can find the worksheet on seesaw.
John: And we didn't even know what the hell a seesaw was.
Merlin: You're just saying words.
Merlin: You're testing me.
Merlin: And it was like, okay, well, do you have your Montessori balls?
John: Here's what's going to happen.
John: I'm going to teach you how to do long division.
John: I know that that's not how that, I know that new math is different.
John: I know that, uh, that Montessori math is different.
John: Um,
John: I'm just going to teach you what I know because it's the only thing I know and I don't know why.
John: I'm sure there are great reasons.
John: I'm not a new math hater.
John: Like I'm sure there are great reasons to do it other ways.
John: I don't know those reasons and I don't have anybody holding my hand.
John: And in researching it online, it doesn't make any more sense to me or less sense than just doing long division.
John: And so I'm just – so what I did was I ordered –
John: I went online and found a very reputable textbook company.
John: And I ordered a whole suite of fourth grade workbooks across all topics.
John: Geography, vocabulary, language arts, math, story problems.
John: you know, biology, like all the things.
John: It's like Blue Apron for school.
John: It was, right?
John: And it's a big stack of them.
John: And I said, there's no harm going to come from working through these books with her because I can tell you right now that whatever Zoom call we're on is going to be hard to parse and incomplete.
John: And what I don't want is
John: is to have school be this kind of theater where it's like, well, we sat on a Zoom call for an hour and it was excruciating, so school's over for the day.
Merlin: You can put up with the busy work aspect and the citizenship aspect and the shamefulness aspect of school because it is important to a little kid to get socialization and to learn how to hold their bladder for five minutes and stuff like that.
Merlin: I get that, but it's so... I feel like, in my opinion, it's so silly to feel like we need to perform that...
Merlin: You know, as though you're going to school on the computer.
Merlin: You're not.
Merlin: It's a fun day.
Merlin: And it's one problem with trying to ramp this shit up in fucking two months is like this is a can be back to our first discussion of this, John.
Merlin: This is exactly the time to try some new shit.
Merlin: And like instead of trying to replicate an in-class experience by making like a hyperbolic Brady Bunch screen, like that's not good for anybody.
Merlin: And I think we're going to figure that out pretty damn fast.
John: We have to.
John: And I don't know... Like, honestly, the world being shut down, as we've discussed for the last several months, has been, at least for me, a net positive.
John: And I think that it's true for a lot of people.
John: Yep.
John: We're not supposed to talk about it, but it's true.
John: And then the problem is, like, that just us, it being good for us, and...
John: And, you know, pulling back and saying like, great, well, how about if I don't go back to work in town and how about if we don't go to shows anymore and it's just this new thing?
John: Like we're – our absence is not helping the people that have to do it like have any better conditions, right?
John: You saw that thing I think that –
John: that the top 10 billionaires all basically doubled their money in the last four months.
John: Yeah, yeah.
Merlin: So, you know, so... This is a good couple seasons to, you know, own a big part of Amazon.
John: Yeah, that's right.
John: But this is not the time that, you know, part of it is, like, it's better for me not to have to go into town, but it doesn't mean that I don't have to, like...
John: Be engaged and, you know, pick up the flaming sword or whatever.
John: But this might be a better way to raise a kid, too.
John: The problem being, of course, that kids want to play with each other.
John: But, like, I don't know.
John: Schools, like, I don't know.
John: Schools.
Merlin: I don't know.
Merlin: I'll tell you, I feel like the one – it's so difficult for me to imagine.
Merlin: You set aside things like travel industries, hospitality industries.
Merlin: The one that I feel like is going to have to change and is so overdue for a revolution is colleges and universities.
Merlin: Okay, so now, haha, it's funny to do the thing and say, oh, this is what it costs for a Zoom account.
Merlin: This is what it costs to stream.
Merlin: It's $55,000 to stream this semester when you go to Harvard or whatever.
Merlin: But the thing is, that comes on the heels of years and years and years of some bonkers shit.
Merlin: When I went to college in 1986, like many, many centuries ago, like I said, it was five grand a year for everything pretty much.
Merlin: And now the idea that like the – God, this should be a whole episode.
Merlin: But you take all of these different contributing factors.
Merlin: There's so many fewer jobs of any kind.
Merlin: Well, let's put it this way.
Merlin: There's so many fewer careers of any kind for like 80 percent of the country.
Merlin: For people who are like very – go to elite colleges and become doctors or whatever, that's fine.
Merlin: But like I studied – I made up my own major for my $5,000 a year school and it was called cultural studies.
Merlin: But here's the thing.
Merlin: $5,000 a year starting in 1986 to do basically literature and cultural studies, that's not such a bad deal.
Merlin: I got some pretty good jobs after that.
Merlin: Today, would I go to a school for $50,000, $40,000, $50,000, $60,000 a year, take out a quarter of a million dollars in debt to write a very narrow undergrad thesis on cultural studies with a concentration on infomercials on TV?
No.
Merlin: I don't know, man.
Merlin: I don't think that's such a great bargain right now.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: I know.
Merlin: But it all contributes.
Merlin: It all contributes.
Merlin: It's gotten way too costly.
Merlin: Look at how many millenniums are just so impossibly deep in debt right now to be able to go and publish listicles for BuzzFeed.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: It's not great.
Merlin: So anyway, I'm just tossing out.
Merlin: I think there's opportunities to improve the way we do secondary elementary and secondary schools.
Merlin: But college, man, don't you think?
Merlin: It's time for a serious fucking rethinking of that entire system.
John: I read some tweet just yesterday.
John: Somebody said, you know, one of the ways to make elite universities –
John: more equitable and accessible is to eliminate this uh you know what they were saying was basically eliminate um all legacy right yale's getting kind of blasted for this stuff right now right yeah but i read it and for the first time in my life i was like who cares like elite universities who gives a shit like that is such a the whole idea that going to yale i mean for the people that go to yale like god bless them
John: And one of our good friends, his daughter is going to Yale this fall.
John: And it was a big deal when she got in, like a huge deal.
John: We were all on the Internet with each or texting each other, like crying and hugging each other.
John: She got in.
John: She got in.
John: You know, I mean, there's nothing bigger, I don't think, than getting into Yale.
John: And I wish that it had happened to me.
John: I wish that I had ever applied.
Merlin: But beyond that, like – That really could have been your pathway to at least being the colonel and of course possibly becoming, by fiat, the retired director of the CIA.
John: Merlin, can you imagine a pathway to me being more insufferable?
John: than that I had gone to Yale.
John: Oh, my God.
Merlin: We really dodged a bullet, didn't we?
Merlin: Think about it.
Merlin: Imagine it's like a Jekyll and Hyde, except you'd be more like Colin Malloy.
Merlin: Can you even imagine that?
John: Think about that.
John: Think if you were more like Colin Malloy.
John: I would be a giant...
John: Colin Malloy with a greater vocal range.
John: You'd be a Yenny Malloy.
John: I would.
John: And I mean, I would be like the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man of Colin Malloy's.