Ep. 391: "The Destination Was Your Bush"
Hello.
Hi.
How are you?
I'm a little injured.
You're a little injured?
Yeah.
What happened?
Well, you know, we try to play a little softball out here just to get out in the sun.
And my sister and my daughter's mother...
Neither of them really had any softball experience as young women.
They were both, they did other sports, you know, volleyball and skiing and whatnot.
And, uh, last year my little girl was on a softball team and it was kind of, we were surprised that she was interested in it.
You know, it didn't seem like, I guess she got into it with a little friend and
But then once she was in it, she never tried to quit.
We did the whole season.
You know, we went to every game.
We went to every practice.
That's impressive.
I mean, your dad's a sports guy, right?
Oh, yeah.
But not so much you, right?
Not me.
I mean, you know, I did a lot of sports because dad encouraged me.
That's going on the list.
Okay.
Sports history.
Got it.
Good.
But, you know, my sister's sporty, but...
You know, all kind of like sports where you're on your own.
Can I give you a note on this?
I think Susan is vigorous.
She seems less of a Hank Aaron and more of like a Teddy Roosevelt.
She seems very brisk.
She's got stuff to get done.
She's indomitable.
You're absolutely right.
Teddy Roosevelt.
Absolutely right.
But so watching, um, you know, watching our little girl go through the, the softball thing and she's on a team where she's like eight and the oldest girl on the team, you know, the oldest girl in the leagues are like 13.
So there are these girls hit and run and pitch and do, you know, they're physical, they're athletes.
And these eight year olds are just like cannon fodder, you know?
But she really tried and she really, you know, she got up every time to bat and just, you know, swung her little heart out.
And so we started playing catch and I would pitch balls to her just because, you know, now you're doing a thing.
So let's try and learn it.
And kind of like riding a bike, it was, you know, it was fun.
But then she didn't, you know, she didn't really want to.
go do it when she didn't want to do it, which is the secret to getting good at something.
You do it even when you don't want to do it.
Or at least that was my dad's.
He kept yelling at me when I didn't want to do it.
Even if you're not particularly gifted at something, if you have an enthusiasm for it, you're more likely to stick with it through the tough times.
I think learning guitar is definitely one of those things where you could have a bunch of false starts before you get competent enough to enjoy practicing.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And I was hoping to get that with the, you know, with, with baseball because you could take two mitts out with a ball and throw it back and forth.
It's like when I was in high school, we did that with Frisbee.
You know, we would, if, if, if we had to wait for 40 minutes or something, somebody pull a Frisbee out and we'd stand in the parking lot and just throw the Frisbee.
And there's a whole universe of people that pull two mitts and a, and a, and a ball out and throw that back and forth.
Um, and it's just as fun in a way, you know, it's just throwing a ball.
It's like a very meditative, uh, you can sit and talk and you're definitely socially distanced and you just hug, you know, throw a ball back and forth, back and forth.
Um, well in the process we discovered that my daughter's mother, who incidentally
When she listens to a show where I refer to her as my daughter's mother, she always comes to me and says, why don't you just say something like normal, like just like partner?
I have gotten notes about this.
We have a listener who's curious about that parlance.
I'm like, partner, you know, it doesn't partner imply that we're like in a gay marriage or something.
Or what is a partner?
Like, you know.
Yeah.
Like a partner just is.
And she's like, what does partner mean?
It doesn't mean anything.
You're totally my partner.
Just say partner.
It's simple.
It's just calling me your daughter's mother.
It just makes me.
I don't know.
It's weird.
It's just you say it every time.
It's like this extra five syllables you don't need to say.
And I was like, oh, OK, OK, OK, right.
OK, partner, partner, partner.
And then I just – it just – I don't know.
I got into the habit of saying daughter's mother.
Well, do you worry that sends the wrong signal to all the ladies out there?
Which one, daughter's mother or partner?
Partner.
Are you worried that takes you off the market for all time?
Oh, no, no, no, no.
Because partner does imply – I'm with you.
Like I get – I totally get the idea of having a –
ungendered and unsexual orientation way of describing somebody.
But the minute somebody says partner, again, I want to say, like, I think this is healthy.
I think it's healthy.
But there are times when, you know, it's sort of like you want to say to somebody, you point out somebody and, you know, we try to avoid saying things like, oh, it's that person.
You identify them by their race.
Instead, you might say, it's the guy with the red shirt, that kind of thing.
They have a different valence to it.
But partner does imply there's – I don't know.
It's something that I find myself going, what's their deal?
Are they in a throuple or like what?
Well, and that's – for every person that's like – that finds my daughter's mother coinage weird, right, which I fully cop to, to say partner –
I guarantee you what I would get is 50 congratulatory emails like, Oh, that's amazing.
You guys are like together.
Like I swear to you.
And even, even if she and I show, if she puts a picture of me up on Facebook, on her Facebook account, someone will comment like, are you guys is something, are you, you know, they're, people are just waiting like vultures.
Um, not vultures waiting like bridesmaids or something.
Um,
Will they or won't they?
You're like Sam and Diane.
It really is like Sam and Diane.
So, you know, I remember a kid a few years ago when I was making a real point to say millennium girlfriend.
Some kid wrote me and it was clearly a millennium.
I was like, it drives me crazy when you say that.
Will you please stop saying millennium girlfriend?
It's driving me crazy.
And I wrote the person back and said, how do you think Millennium Girlfriend feels if she hears it?
It's got to be driving her crazy too, right?
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Gotta be driving her crazy too, right?
And this is why people can only listen to this program with permission, you know?
You can't just dive bomb into here and listen to personal anecdotes about yourself.
That's for us.
It's not for you.
It's weird though.
You know, I do, I do for somebody that talks about himself in his life a lot.
I do have certain like, um, privacy, uh, needs, but like, like privacy in the sense of, you know, if you, if you, if you wanted to talk about my surgery or whatever, I would tell you all about it.
But like, I just don't want to be,
I don't want to hand people the opportunity to put me in an envelope.
Oh, yeah.
You know, I want to just keep it like, look, here are the terms and you can make up stories about me as much as you want.
But like there are some things you're just not ever.
There's there's some stuff.
The one way I've heard people phrase this, it's kind of a dad way to put it.
But you should even if you're doing the sort of thing that we're doing here, there are some things you want to keep for yourself.
That like you don't want to, as they say in a courtroom case, open the door to that.
Like, I don't want to telegraph to you that this is something that I want to encourage you to consider a bit that you use to define me.
And that sounds really snooty.
But, you know, I think you should...
People are going to put you in an envelope whether or not you do that, but when one tells an anecdote, sometimes it's difficult for someone, maybe even us, to know, is this about something that happened in the anecdote that you might find interesting and amusing, or is this about something...
that's telling you something about my relationship with this person.
And it can be easy to misconstrue that and turn everything into fucking national treasure.
And like, you're, you're trying to solve some kind of puzzle about who this person, which is totally understandable.
I do it all the time.
It's totally natural, but I, I'm going to just say, I, and I, I think, I think my daughter's mother is kind of funny.
I, I like it.
I don't hate it.
And I don't hate millennium girlfriend, but then I'm not millennium girlfriend.
I wouldn't, I wouldn't steal your underwear.
Yeah.
Thank God.
Yeah.
Well, so earlier this year, I think I told you that when Millennium Girlfriend left in the middle of the night, one thing that she forgot she'd done was only weeks before had insisted that I get on her insurance as her domestic partner at Snapchat.
Yes.
And then she broke up with me and went back to work and said,
um, well cancel my domestic partner's insurance.
And I had done this whole thing.
You know, I had, I had fine insurance.
I had worked, had it worked out in my heart where I was paying this incredible amount of money.
It seemed like every month to keep myself insured, you know, because I had no one to pay my insurance for me.
So it was paying, you know, paying for insurance out of pocket like you do in America.
If you, if that's what you have to do.
Yeah.
And so she was like, you know, and it was a millennium girlfriend just insisted that I do it because it was a sign to her that we were, you know, that this was the path we were on.
That you were taking a step to commit.
That's right.
That we were domestic partners.
It's kind of like when the mob wants you to whack somebody.
So now the Omar Ta kicks in like you can't just leave because now, you know, you're one of us.
That's right.
You're one of us.
Except when she decided that we were broken up.
She went to HR like Monday morning and canceled the insurance.
She's nothing if not efficient.
That's right.
That's right.
It was like, didn't you have a, weren't you busy giving my stuff away to the Goodwill?
How did you have time to also cancel my insurance?
And so, you know, and it was only my mom saying, oh, you know, California has a, or there's a national program called COBRA, which, you know, which steps in
When a spouse, when somebody gets divorced.
When you use continuity of care, you pay COBRA, but boy, does that ever get costly.
Well, but less costly than paying, you know, like out of pocket 800 bucks a month or whatever it was.
No, you're right.
It just sucks.
Like when I lost my job, I had to do COBRA and it was just like a, you know, a double whammy, you know, of like now I don't have a job and I have this new expense.
And what is it, like six months you can cover with COBRA, something like that?
Well, in the state of California nowadays, and I guess the way Snapchat had it worked out with them, it was three or four years.
Oh, wow.
I was insured basically by Snapchat, but longer than I dated Millennium Girlfriend.
I only dated her for 20 months, but I had four years of insurance.
Because, again, because my mom was like, well, you know, screw that.
And it took me a while to be, you know, took me many phone calls.
But it was much less than I would have been paying for insurance on the open market or how much I'd been paying before.
And just the fact that, you know, that my insurance card said snap on it.
Just every time I employed it, you know, every time I went to the psychiatrist and put my snap card down and was like, I'll just, you know, what's the copay?
$10?
Great.
See ya.
I just felt like it's so nice that Millennium Girlfriend is continuing to somehow help me in this life.
But that all dried up about a month ago.
And my daughter's mother said...
Well, since you're my partner, and I was like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.
And she said, since you're my partner, you know, why don't I put you on my insurance?
You live in my house.
You're the father of my child.
We're in a lifelong committed relationship.
And I was like, well, yeah, that's a good idea.
And she was like, well, but my company requires that we be in an actual domestic partnership.
Snap is really...
you know, progressive California company.
And they're like, if you say you're domestic partners, then you just are, I guess.
I don't know.
I never signed a piece of paper with millennium girlfriend, but so here in Washington state, um, my daughter's mother partner and I, uh, got a, a domestic partnership.
Um,
This is just like three weeks ago.
Oh, wow.
Congratulations.
Thank you.
And so as we were filling out the forms.
Where are you registering?
Well, at the Army-Navy Surplus Store.
Where all my shit is.
So my daughter.
Out of the Goodwill.
I'm going to get all my stuff out of the Goodwill.
Here are our patterns.
So, you know, my daughter's there in the room.
And I think partly my daughter's mother coinage came about a long time ago when you and I decided that we were not always going to talk about our kids by name.
Or we were going to just say, you know, we're going to try to say my daughter.
And if we said their names, we would bleep it.
And that was just, you know, an abundance of caution, whatever.
So anyway, so she's sitting there and she says, are you guys getting married?
And I said, well, yeah, kind of.
I mean, we're, you know, getting a, we're becoming domestic partners.
We're getting a certificate of our partnership.
And she was like, we're having a wedding.
We're having a wedding.
Went and started picking out her dress, invited all the neighbors.
Um,
And couldn't decide whether – she couldn't quite decide how to be the flower girl, the maid of honor, and perform the ceremony all at once.
But she felt like she could handle it.
She's going to do like a Peter Sellers.
She's going to play multiple roles.
Multiple roles.
So we had a big garden party.
This is during COVID.
So everybody's wearing masks and they're all standing eight feet apart.
And we get down and went, I put on a little suit, her mom put on a dress, we went down into the backyard.
Wait, this happened?
Yeah.
I'm only hearing about this now?
Well, you know, it's the type of thing that I don't, this is the type of story that I don't normally tell.
Yeah.
Because it, you know, because it trends over into like a realm where, I don't know, it's not that it feels more personal, it just feels like this is what's, you know, this is like over here happening in my actual life.
Yeah.
Um, and so, and I'm, and I'm there and, and you know, and we're, and we're kind of still, she, she's designed this ceremony to be happening kind of half in a bush.
So because she's only nine, she thinks that everybody can kind of stand in a bush and it's, and it's fine.
So she's like, you stand here and you stand here.
And I'm like, well, sweetie, I'm kind of in this bush.
And she's like, stand there.
I've got it all worked out.
So I'm standing kind of half in a bush.
And I'm, and only then does it occur to me, it's entirely possible that my daughter has written a 15 minute speech and this is going to, you know, this is going to take a very ugly turn if, if this is a really long speech and she walks up, you know, and she, and she loves the like ceremony, like the slow walking, the,
She's got some music playing, you know, just some sort of like... Can you share what music she played?
It was just some... I think it was something from Star Wars, some kind of imperial mark.
Oh, like the medal ceremony kind of thing?
Something like that, you know, that's the... I'm getting a little weepy just thinking about you in a bush while John Williams is playing.
Yeah.
I am going to need pictures of this place.
I've got a little tie.
I will send you a picture.
Anyway, she walks up as part of the procession, and it's basically her and the little girl across the street.
And she says, I now pronounce you domestic partners.
ceremony's over and it was like wow this is the this is the best wedding i've ever been to so and then it's nice also that it wasn't uh what they now call a destination wedding the destination was your bush right which i think is is it's kind of nice it's it's nice it's personal and and i'm certainly very efficient i feel like there's a lot of your mother and your daughter
She, we, we, we've, we've talked about a lot, like how much, um, how much of my mom and how much of my sister sometimes, you know, the, the, um, the needle kind of goes in one direction on the dial and then it goes to the other.
But she's, yeah, she's got quite a lot of both and quite a lot of her mother's mother, um, her grandmother on my daughter's mother's son.
Anyway, then we went up and then of course it was, then it was a barbecue and I was the, you know, kiss the cook world's best farter, whatever world's greatest farter.
Uh, but it was, you know, it was nice because it was, it was exactly the kind of, um, you know, the, the adults were having fun with a kind of, you know, like a cheeky little event.
Um, and the, and you know,
The little kids got some kind of – the ceremony, some kind of sense got made where the question of what's the deal with John's daughter's parents?
What's the – like it got –
It got answered a little bit more for them.
I mean, in the story of this family, this becomes like a somewhat important chapter, you know, in the continent.
Maybe this is your season two, you know, finale.
Right.
I mean, you're kind of crossing the T and dotting the I on something.
And kids, I think kids appreciate that.
Yeah.
You know, I say appreciate, but I mean, like, I think that, I think that, you know, if you, if you end the story before there's a resolution of some kind, then it's not quite as satisfying in this case, you know, that they got a nice diversion out of this and they, they got to, you know, see, uh, see, uh, uh, you know, partner age.
Yeah.
A partner age.
But now when I run into the neighbor across the street and
And he needs to reference anything in our domestic situation.
He says, well, now that you guys are married, something, something, something, something.
And he finds a way to throw it in there.
Is this the pilot guy?
This is the pilot guy.
And they're moving.
They're moving out to the sticks.
Oh, yeah.
Yeah.
They're not to the sticks.
They're moving.
They're moving.
So we're in an inner suburb and they're moving to an outer suburb.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Because of the schools.
Because of the schools.
Schools that aren't open.
Yeah.
Because of the schools.
Yeah.
The schools that aren't open here are bad and the schools that aren't open out there are better.
You can distance learn better at that better school.
I guess that's probably true.
That's right.
Maybe.
It's hard to argue.
Couldn't do worse.
Yeah.
But anyway, so it's, it has changed the, uh, it's having that domestic partnership, which around the house, you know, it's already a little bit like even between us, the fact that we have a domestic partnership now, it can't help but make you feel like, Oh yeah.
Okay.
Well, you know, the gradual, um,
the courtship of Eddie's father here.
It's just like this sort of gradual process of I'll be 52 this year.
And, um, and I've, and I resisted being married all these years and I've resisted really any sort of, um, external domesticity, but internally I've domesticized and, um,
And now I'm in a domestic partnership.
And, you know, on the plus side, I've got insurance again.
Yeah.
But also, you know, a very nice certificate, an embossed and notarized certificate.
Wow, you opened the envelope, huh?
Yeah.
Oh, yeah.
Yeah, it's right there.
But so in the process of this past COVID period,
Um, what happened in the throwing the softball around with my daughter last year was that my daughter's mother or partner, domestic partner, uh, realized that she loved to hit softballs with a bat and it, and she grew up a hippie and her, you know, played volleyball or whatever, but had never really hit a softball with a bat.
And so I would sit, I'd go out to the, to the ball field and I would, I'd picture these softballs and she had a natural gift.
She could just, as you know, cause I just gave, I gave,
Just the basics.
Here's how you stand.
Here's how you cock the bat.
Here's where you want your weight.
You've got to watch the ball all the way onto the bat.
Start figuring out whether and where you'll swing long before it gets to the plate.
Right, exactly.
And just the mechanics of it.
Here's how it's going to feel when you do it, and here's what it looks like.
And then she would do it, and I would just give those little...
Just the least amount of coaching you can possibly do.
Did you tell her to choke up at one point?
I'm not a super big fan of choking up, frankly.
I think you can oversell choking up.
I'm not saying you've got to be Ken Griffey or something, but you need to find your sweet spot.
You go too high up, now you're playing with one of those little Pee Wee Reese bats and you don't have a prayer.
You're going to be early on everything.
And you're going to break your wrists.
I mean, that doesn't, you know, let that bat go.
Oh, in judo, first you learn how to fall down.
Yeah, exactly.
Okay.
First there is a mountain.
Then there is no mountain.
Right.
Then Donovan moves to you.
Then there is a mountain.
But she got the bug because I would throw her these pitches and she would cream the ball.
And put it way, way out.
And, you know, you only have to do that a few times to feel like.
That feels so good.
Where has this been all my life?
I know, I know.
I used to love going to the slowest pitch in the batting cages.
I mean, I'm sure I've gone into the 75, 85, not even funny, could be deadly.
But you go into that softball, like whatever.
40 50 60 mile an hour oh good oh and it just it just hangs there in the air as it's kind of like come on you know you know it from the second little arm swings around you're like oh sister i'm gonna pepper this boy it's wonderful you know the batting cages are wonderful and it's it's such a strange place in in america because you go there and there are people that are hitting those fastballs and people practicing and people that are there just for fun
But you can go there with your friend Bruno Kirby and, you know, talk about women.
That's one of the great scenes in When Harry Met Sally.
It's great.
And it's also, you can do that just to people.
You can just, you get a pile of softballs and you just huck them to your friend.
You got a whole pile of quarters here.
Beat it, you creep.
Ha, ha, ha, ha.
Watch that by request with my daughter yesterday.
Is that right?
Okay, we've got some movie stuff to talk about.
Put it on the list.
John, I have so many topics here.
It's just growing and growing, the number of topics.
Okay, so I'm going to wrap this up.
No, no, no, no, no, no.
You're missing the point.
These are backup.
This is a backboard.
This is an outfielder that's just there if somebody connects.
I know how you run this show.
What am I talking about?
I've never wrapped up a thing in my life.
Oh, that's not what people are here for.
No, no, I wrap it up, but not wrap it up.
Wrap it up.
Wrap it up.
Wrap it up.
Wrap it up.
So this became a thing that we would do.
We would go out and, you know...
my little girl also is interested in it.
But, but you know, if, if the focus of the, of the family event shifts off of her for very long, she gets very frustrated.
If, if her mother and I are just doing something or talking to another, when you say she's a bit of a performer.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So she'll start to, you know, she'll start to do a dance or something in the periphery just so that we can all go like, Oh, are you doing, are you still here?
Yeah.
Um, but her, you know, her mom is a professional person, right?
She's a vice president of a tech company and she is, she reads as a very mellow, like cool with everything.
Oh, she's, she's amazing.
I don't like to say it too much, but she's, she's amazing.
She, she's like a Grace Kelly character.
She's very she's just super chill about everything.
But she's desperately charismatic.
She's just one of those people where you want this person to like you.
She's got a lot of charisma.
She's very smart and really underplays it.
You know, she's not like she doesn't try to.
She just takes out enough to beat you.
Yeah, that's right.
She's never actually to anybody.
She just goes with the flow.
But if you throw a softball toward her, all of a sudden you get you see like, oh, there's this like laser.
This competitiveness in her.
Wow.
This desire to hit the baseball as far as it can go, but also like to win at all costs that you never see under any other circumstances.
She's not somebody that argues to win.
She doesn't ever, she never puts anybody down.
But if you throw a baseball down,
And there's a sense of like, can you either if either you hit this all the way out of the park or you don't, she's going to try and hit it all the way out of the park.
She's literally swinging for the fence every time.
And she connects and she and every time she does it, she looks at me and goes like, why isn't there a place that I can do this?
And I'm like, there is.
It's called a softball league.
It's called a intramural softball league that you get into with friends and you play other people.
And there's beer, I think, involved.
And also everybody gets really aggro.
And she's like, that, I want that.
I'm like, well, we're in a COVID.
So we can't do it right now, but we'll get you on a team.
Well, so my sister, who's desperate for human contact, started to come to the softball
what we call a softball game, which isn't just me throwing balls for her to hit.
Well, Susan, as you have said, Teddy Roosevelt, had never played softball.
She was an ardent skier
snowboarder, skateboarder, soccer baller.
Oh, that's so interesting.
Never, never came up, huh?
Never came up.
And she, you know, kayaker, my sister, if you gave my sister like a map and said, this map needs to make it to, to, uh, Sirith Ungol, she would go, you know, right.
And, and not have a second question, you know, she would just head off.
And, and however long it takes to get to Sarah's uncle is how long it would take her to get that map there.
Yeah.
So, so I, you know, I gave my sister a glove and said, here, I'm going to just throw the ball to you.
And, you know, and she did that thing where I, I threw the ball to her and she, uh, panicked, you know, like didn't know what to do, threw her mitt down and ran, you know, just like,
And so we worked for a while, like, and I'd been doing this with my little girl too, like, don't put the mitt in a place where the ball's going to bounce out of it into your nose.
You know, you want to step to the side, you want to catch the ball with the mitt up, not under, unless it's a pop fly or whatever, you know, put the mitt up and all this stuff.
And little by little got her comfortable catching a ball.
And it was really interesting.
She'd never caught a ball with a mitt and, but she's a fast learner and she wants to do it.
So pretty soon we were throwing the ball back and forth, and then I was like, here's a bat.
How about if I pitch you some balls?
And she's like, you know, again, like jumping back, like, ah, I don't want to get hit.
We're talking about Susan here.
Susan, yeah.
Okay.
So pretty soon I'm pitching her the ball, and she...
And the same – just the basic coaching.
Like here's where you put your weight.
Here's – look at the ball.
But Susan likes to be coached because she understands – if you give her instruction about her body, like put your weight on your back foot and then transfer your weight forward as you swing.
She can translate that into action.
She doesn't have to sit and go like, now what now?
She's like, oh, okay.
Like she gets weight transfer.
She gets, you know, where you put your eye.
She understands that's her mechanics.
So pretty soon she's hitting baseball.
Well, then my daughter's, one of my daughter's best friends,
Her mom and dad are like our hipster parents that we've included in our quarantine circle.
In your pod.
In our little pod.
I think it's what I call a bubble, a pod.
A little bubble pod.
And they're fun.
They've been married a long time, but they're kind of, he's my age and she's Ari's age.
And we're just like, da-da-da-da-da.
Everybody gets along.
but she's one of those gals that played softball as a, as a girl coming up in Michigan or something, you know, she's some Midwest softball person.
And so all of a sudden she starts coming to these little pickup games and she's got all this extra coaching knowledge.
You know, she's saying all this stuff like,
Oh, well, you know, just put your, you know, choke up on the bat or whatever it is.
Well, so now we got this little thing happening where we're pitching balls to each other and hitting them and fielding them.
But what we had never done really was.
If you get a hit, we weren't really running it out.
You know, you'd get a hit and everybody would field it.
But as the batter, you would stay at home and wait for your next pitch.
You know, and we'd each, everybody would take 15 pitches.
You're doing like a batting practice, sort of.
Batting practice, right.
And fielding practice.
Who's out in the field, if I could ask?
Well, it rotates.
But everybody, as you know, kind of hits to center left.
Right.
You know, it's just like center left is where all the balls go generally.
And so you got to have somebody there that's ready to run after a softball.
But, you know, as time went on, I started to kind of get everybody to also practice some infield stuff.
Like don't just huck it back to the pitcher.
Like throw it around.
If you catch a ball, throw it to third, throw it to second, throw it to whoever's out there.
Everybody gets to touch the ball.
Well, a couple of days ago we went out and I said, you know what?
From now on, if you get a hit, run it.
Like run those bases.
Let's put a little, let's put a little action into this situation.
You know, give the person that's fielding the ball a little motivation to hustle.
Everybody needs to hustle a little bit more.
If we're going to be out here.
It's so important to show hustle.
Let's see who's got some hustle.
Our coach used to say, regardless of how we're doing, it's so important.
You always run out the base.
at first even if you're thrown out like you always run run out the base into foul territory and when you come in from the field i want to see hustle i want everybody running sprinting almost don't just lope you're not some some you know obese pitcher i want to see you run back to the bench and and that that is hustle and it does have an effect on how you feel how you play how you engage it's really true it's true in life it's
It really is, right?
You run it out to first.
I don't care if it got tagged.
And also, yeah, as all these balls that were getting hit out into center left, whoever was out there fielding, you know, started to kind of, like you're saying, lope over to get it.
It's like...
Oh, are you not in a hurry?
Yeah.
This is a freaking softball.
Yeah.
I mean, we would do stuff like, and I don't know if this is conventional wisdom today, but stuff like third strike.
If you just got thrown a third strike, start running because don't look behind you.
Third strike, start running because you don't know.
If it's Little League, there's a pretty good chance the catcher might drop the ball.
Right.
There's all this kind of, you know what I'm saying?
There's all this stuff.
I think this is, I think it's fantastic.
And I also want to just point out here, you're less of a coach in some ways than you are a director.
This is almost like a, not a film exactly, not exactly a play, but I love the way that you're walking people through this.
There is a mix of coaching, there's staging, and there's also blocking, right?
You're showing people go stand over here and do this and try this line reading, which in this case is please run to the ball.
Well, and and we're out here and we're doing it.
Let's still take it seriously guys.
Let's take this seriously Just one just bump it up one.
Mm-hmm.
Well, so so the way that it the way that it played out was There were only four of us there was me my sister My daughter's mother slash partner
And my daughter.
But both my sister and my partner daughter's mother.
It's going to take a while.
Have now become very serious about hitting and catching baseballs.
Softballs, as my daughter would say.
So there's the three of us.
And, you know, one of them takes the plate and I'm pitching.
And it very quickly sort of just settles down to being a game of the three of them against me.
Which has some echoes with how life works.
That's right.
And this is the first day that I've said, we're going to start running these.
If you hit, you run.
But because I'm pitching and I'm also the only fielder, you're going to have a good chance of...
uh, of getting to second, you know, because here I am like, I got to chase this ball and get it back to you.
Um, so I pitch, you know, I pitch, she hits, I run and grab the ball.
She makes it to second.
I come back, I throw a pitch to my daughter.
She gets a hit.
She makes it to first, uh,
Yeah.
My partner daughter's mother is now on third.
But this is not looking good for you at this point.
Well, no.
And, you know, they racked up the score.
But but everybody's running.
I'm running.
Everybody.
We're trying to make plays.
People are, you know, and I'm I'm doing the sort of slow motion running.
If if if it's a situation where.
you know, where I could tag them out between second and third.
I'm running in slow motion.
When we used to play Uno, I would rarely play my draw four when I could.
Yeah, right.
You know what I mean?
At a certain point.
I'll kick your ass to shoot some ladders because that game is some bullshit.
But, you know, I want you to get some confidence, you know, at Uno and running.
Exactly.
You're doing a classic diamond here, not a 90-foot run, but, like, you're doing three base-like places.
Yeah.
Well, it's on a baseball field we're playing.
Oh, really?
Okay.
Wow.
See, I was imagining this is in the yard where your bush is.
I see.
Oh, no.
We went to the school.
We're at a baseball field.
Wow.
Because generally the only people that are using the baseball field now are people throwing tennis balls for their dogs.
Yeah, the dogs and people with drones, you know.
So we've got a couple of bats and we've got some old mitts and we're just out there playing baseball.
Anyway, my sister's on first.
I've got two outs.
The score is like six to zero.
And my daughter is up at bat and she gets a dinger.
She hits it.
Um, you know, somewhere sort of right where she gets all of it.
She gets all of it.
She, she, she, she's, she, yeah.
Oh, is this the injury?
Is this the injury?
Yes.
Oh shit.
So she gets, she gets a piece of it and my sister takes off from first.
Well, I, so I'm running for this ball and I grab it.
I got no one to throw it to, right?
Right.
I've got to make the play myself.
Well, Susan decides to round second and head for third.
And I'm pretty saucy.
Oh yeah.
I'm in the infield and I've got the ball and this is the third out and I'm getting a little tired of people.
I'm getting a little tired of slow motion running here.
You know, you, you guys just hitting, hitting baseballs on me all day and night.
So I start to go to third running with the ball and she sees me and she turns on the gas and
Well, she and I have not in the course of our whole life ever really played against each other in sports.
She was a better ski racer than I was, but we were in different
categories entirely right i mean she was like in the she was in junior racers and was at a higher level even though she was younger but also like girls and boys uh their sports scores are kept separate in the in ski racing and in other things but otherwise you know we didn't we didn't go throw a ball around we barely susan never really picked up frisbee throwing and other than that
Like we would go skiing together and enjoy free skiing with one another, just sort of skiing together down the hill.
But surprisingly, we didn't do that very much.
You know, we went to different parts of the mountain and we're with different friends.
So I see this look in her eye as she sees that I'm trying to make the play.
And she puts her head down.
And starts going for it.
Boy, that's like when Burr sees that Hamilton's wearing his glasses.
You know what I'm saying?
Mr. Burr, sir.
He punched the burr, sir?
And I am like, oh, no.
Oh, I'm afraid fucking not.
And so I kick it in.
I kick it into gear and we're both headed to third and I've got the ball in my mitt and I'm going to take, I'm going to tag her out.
Of course.
And she's going to beat me and we get closer and closer to third and we realize we're both 50 years old.
I'm on one side of it and she's on the other and we're both running full blast and we're both going to arrive at third base at the same exact moment.
And I'm,
Right up until we are there, I'm committed to getting there one microsecond before her.
And just to be clear here, I don't know what rules you're exactly playing by.
It's my understanding.
So it's not a force out.
So you're going to need to tag her before she hits the base.
I need to tag her.
That's right.
I need to tag her.
But...
But the only place that's going to happen is at the base.
I wasn't able to cut.
But this is this is a castle doctrine, stand your ground type thing across this line.
You do not.
No way are you going to go around this base because, you know, she's so saucy.
She just might go for home.
Right.
Oh, yeah.
If I miss her, then it's all over.
But also, she's not going to yield.
Mm-hmm.
She's never yielded.
She's not going to now.
She's not a yielder.
She's not going to yield.
Okay.
Well, so in that heartbeat of a moment where it's just right at the base, and we're both running full out, that I realize if I hit her,
I'm going to cream her, you know, like she is, um, she is very solid and strong and dense.
She's just, yeah.
I mean, she's made them.
Some people are dense.
Like one of my daughter's best friends, this kid is dense.
I mean, she is, I don't know what she weighs, but like she's made out of sacrete.
Always has been.
And when she hits you, it hits hard.
And this is physics.
We're talking about physics here, John, is what we're talking about.
You get one truck going 70 and another truck going 40.
That's a lot of truck when they hit each other.
That's a lot of truck.
My daughter's best friend also is much smaller than her.
But if you try to pick her up.
I know.
She's made of black hole material.
Yeah.
I don't know how these little girls manage to be so full of sand.
But she is.
She's like a freaking sandbag, this little girl.
And, you know, strong and agile.
But, like, my sister's not one of those people that's, like, incredibly dense, like you're saying.
She's just...
Um, she's just very strong and very, and cannot be beaten.
Um, and she's not scared of you.
Well, no, to her, to her peril over and over and over throughout her life.
Not being scared of me is a bad policy.
And she's, and she's paid the price over and over and over.
You're a bigger truck.
But she never really, I mean, there's fear.
She definitely has fear about me, but it's never fear that has, that has actually affected the decision.
That's true courage.
True courage is feeling the fear and doing it anyway.
You run your truck into John.
That's right.
So, so I see, so everything slows down super slow-mo and I see her recognizing that she's gone, that she has picked a line that
in, in this game and in life that is in a direct collision course with me and I outweigh her by a hundred pounds and I'm moving, uh, very fast.
And so there's a flash on her face of like, Oh no.
And I do what I've always done throughout her entire life, which is protect her at the expense of myself.
And so I,
She goes down, she puts her head down and I realized that there's nothing for me to do, but go over.
And so I, cause I'm not going to hit her.
So I go up and over and in going up and over, I'm then at that point airborne at whatever speed I was at.
Also in a twisting motion because I'm trying to get you know, I'm like I'm doing that hurdle thing I didn't go all the way over on my back, but I had to twist to get To not hit her.
Yeah And then I came down
with the entirety of my weight and momentum on my left shoulder.
Oh no.
Just like, and, and just crater, you know, just by the, by the point at the time that I'd gone, I, cause I went up and over her.
So by the time I was on my way back down, I was, I was ass over tea kettle.
Right.
I mean, I was head down into the dirt and I knew right away, Oh my,
Because this was the type of thing that I used to do all the time.
Like, I could roll out...
of a crash that was just like it was um it was such a different time oh we recently were re-watching singing in the rain and i i'm still such a fool for donald o'connor's i'll whole make him laugh bit it's like i appreciate it more every year as i feel more aches and pains and i groan more and more what donald o'connor the athleticism i don't know if you've ever seen these ever seen singing in the rain yeah
Of course, of course, of course.
The whole thing he's doing with running into the wall and doing the flip and just falling on the floor.
And I remember that used to be a great bit for me.
I was really good at that.
I would do anything.
I would just do a round off just for fun.
That would put me in traction for two months now if I did that.
But also my decision making is not what it used to be.
And I'm guessing yours is not quite as fast either.
So you don't have a lot of time to figure out how you're going to gauge into Soto out of this with a cool role.
And trying to replay it in my mind, I was like, if I were a little younger and a little smarter and a little bit faster, should I have just dodged to the right and let her, if I had just, if I had just gone right and let her take the base and just miss her to the right.
But, you know, because I'm headed this way and she's headed that way, you know, your instinct is to peel off to the left and
But she's still headed in that direction, you know, like so rather than and I wasn't I wasn't able to peel off and go parallel because I made that decision too late.
Could I have missed her if I'd gone inside?
Who knows?
What happened was I went over her.
And when I when I landed, I did roll.
But I rolled like a javelin might roll, which is to say straight into the ground and then like broke off and rolled.
So then everybody's like, oh, no.
And she, you know, and the thing is.
Somebody bring a wheel.
Somebody bring a wheel.
We're going to have to roll daddy home.
Poor daddy.
And daddy's already working hard at this game.
But for 47 years, I've been turning at the last second and landing on my head rather than either hurt my sister or let her get hurt by something else.
I have stepped in front of so many projectiles that were aimed at her and
you know, like, Oh, you mean like a Clint Eastwood protecting the president?
No, that kind of thing.
You take the bullet.
Yeah.
And, and, and just covering, covering her, uh, from, from all of life's travails, physical and emotional.
Um, and she, because of the nature of that older brother, younger sister relationship, she just sort of never noticed or rarely noticed.
Um,
that somehow she came out of that situation not covered in paint, and I came out of it covered in paint.
Oh, so you're like, she's Hong Kong Phooey, and you're the dog.
That's exactly it.
Okay.
I remember watching Hong Kong Phooey as a kid and going like, yep, I know a Hong Kong Phooey.
Well, like, well, it's in Gromit, but you think to yourself, like, man, that dog is a really good, is it a dog?
Wait, Hong Kong Phooey is a dog.
Wait.
Uh, he's the number one super guy quicker than human eye.
But then his pet, his pet, you know, I think is very long suffering in many ways.
Yes.
Long suffering.
But it was just, you know, like I didn't, my sister and I didn't like, uh, play a lot together.
And I think there's a, there's a narrative that she has that I was, um, well, the number one narrative of our family was that, that,
I that I sucked up all the attention from our parents over and outfield Oh, no, no, not intentionally.
I didn't want the attention.
Oh, she wanted the attention and my parents were like
Very focused on why I was such a fuck up.
And meanwhile, Susan's like, I'm getting straight A's.
Wouldn't anyone like to buy me an ice cream cone?
And our parents are like, you're doing good, Susan.
You'll be fine.
What do you think we could do to help John more?
Yeah, exactly.
Exactly.
You've got straight A's.
Maybe you could help John get motivated.
Susan's like, why don't you ever have a birthday party for me?
But in our relationship, I mean, it was 100% a Ferris Bueller situation, except she was not my older sister.
She was my younger sister.
Or whatever.
I guess that's older.
He was her older brother.
Same exact thing.
Just like, why doesn't anybody notice me?
And everybody's like, have you seen John's?
John's going to donate his eyes to Stevie Wonder.
Right.
But she said, as I'm laying there on the ground, she was like,
You just totally injured yourself to protect me.
And I was like, and she said, thank you.
And then she said the most amazing thing.
She was like, you've always done that.
And I was like, yeah.
My brother, the giving tree.
She's like, you know, I hope you're, I hope you feel better.
You know, like, yeah.
Oh, okay.
Yeah.
But then I did the thing.
Then I did the dad thing, the ultimate dad thing, which is I brushed myself off.
And I was like, well, I'm fine.
And then it was decided by everybody that I had successfully tagged her out.
Oh, that was my question.
So you made the play.
I think as I went over her, I actually touched her with the mitt.
Yeah, it was a this was a it was given to me as a courtesy out because.
Because, frankly, she made it to the base.
Oh, you got a pity out.
I got a pity out.
But then I was up to bat.
Well, so it's the three of them.
Like, they've got two fielders now.
But I can hit a softball.
So I got up to bat and kept hitting these softballs out to center field.
But then I, by my own rules, had to run the bases.
Mm-hmm.
So I would hit a ball and run the bases while the three of them keystone copped their way to getting the ball back to the infield.
And for the rest of the afternoon, I was either hitting softballs and trying to run these bases full out or then pitching again to them.
And by the time I got home, I realized, oh no, I've injured myself.
I injured myself earlier and then kept playing on it.
You played hurt.
I played hurt.
And so now this is day two.
That happened two days ago.
This is day two.
And I'm just now able to... I've been sitting with an ice pack on my shoulder for two days.
I'm just able to move my arm around and not...
have it really hurt.
I've got full range of motion.
I don't think I broke anything or tore anything.
Isn't a shoulder a kind of thing where you can... There's a lot of parts in a shoulder.
There's the bone parts and the meat parts and the hold together parts.
Aren't there a lot of ways that you could... I want to say dislocate it.
Isn't there a way that you could...
get a cattywampus.
So this happened once on survivor and they had to pop it back in like right there.
It was really, really scary.
But I know that's a thing you can do if you're like a New Zealand medic is you can pop somebody's shoulder.
You think it's not your, your meat and bones and connecting stuff didn't get too screwed up, but it was definitely a traumatic javelin injury.
Yes.
Okay.
Uh, and there was a lot of talk in my family like, well, did you know, because there's, there's some catastrophizing that happens around here.
That's partly based on the fact that my mom routinely breaks bones and doesn't notice it.
And then I guess she insists on walking to the clinic.
Yeah.
I also have this problem.
Like I've broken a few bones.
Oh, the hand thing.
Right.
When you punch the guy.
Yeah.
Well, that and also just the other day, like I dropped a rock on my finger and I had clearly broken.
I had like, it was broken.
It was obviously broken.
This is a while back.
But it was just the fingertip bone.
It's not a bone that you can set.
It's not a joint.
It's just your little fingertip bone.
And I had clearly given it a little hairline fracture.
Because, you know, you get to know what a broken bone feels like.
But there wasn't anything that could be done about it.
What are you going to do, put it in a cast?
Your fingertip?
Yeah, yeah.
And so I walked around with it for however long it takes for a bone like that to mend.
Just kind of, you know, I put a little piece of tape on it to remind myself, like, don't use that finger to try to dig honey out of the comb.
But there's this consternation in my family, directed mostly at my mom and me, about the fact that
It's not normal to just put a piece of tape around your broken bone and get on with life now in this case Sure, it's just a fingertip of my mom like you say walked to the clinic on a broken foot Because she didn't want to Because she felt like taking a car would be a waste of money or something So there was a there was a lot of I was getting a lot of side-eye yesterday about as I said, it's fine The suggestion being that if it wasn't fine
I still would be saying it was fine, but I think I've proved now because in the middle of the night I went and I moved a bunch of boxes from upstairs to downstairs that, and that got noticed in the morning, which, you know, as you know, the work, the work that dad does in the middle of the night doesn't always get noticed in the morning.
But now, having demonstrated that I could carry all those boxes downstairs with my broken shoulder, I think I've proved that it's not broken.
Okay.
So there's still some concern, but it's not an active, like there's not going to be a go to the dock in a box sort of intervention yet.
Right.
Right.
I think that... Ow.
I think that...
Was that your shoulder that made you say that?
Yeah.
I just reached up to scratch my ear and I was like, ah, ah, ah.
But I'm sure it's going to be fine.
It's just it slowed me down just a little bit.
You're sure?
Yeah.
But otherwise, you know, this is not the time.
And that was the thing about the broken finger.
It's like this is not the time to go to an ER.
It's not the time to call your doctor.
and say hey i bought i got a boo-boo yeah right like if you can if you can if you can put a piece of tape around it like you know let them save their their uh n95 masks for for somebody that you know that's sick i feel the same way i mean i'm not going to go to an orthopedic surgeon right now and say like i think i
I do not think I hurt my shoulder.
I think the problem is that at 52 years old, I can no longer reliably hit the ground and bounce.
No, you don't have those parts anymore.
Something that was hard for me to accept at first is the baby's bounce.
I'm not encouraging this.
You could drop a baby on the ground and they would mostly be fine.
They're like cats or something.
But no, I don't have the bouncing parts anymore.
I don't even get a dead cat bounce.
I think it's going to be very sudden and thorough how much I'm on the ground now.
And how much longer recoup is.
Years ago, I think I probably told you this story.
My dad and I were walking.
We had left a University of Washington Huskies football game.
I do remember this.
Right?
I was thinking about this.
Yes.
Mid-80s.
And we're walking down this hill and he hits a root and he just does a full forward roll and comes up on the other side.
And I was like, wow.
And he just sort of, you know, it was so reflexive on his part.
And I always have assumed that that was, uh, going to be true for me.
And I think it would be if, if there, if in this case there hadn't been, you know, 150 pounds projectile that I was trying not to destroy.
So
you know, maybe, maybe if I tripped on a route, I would still be able to hit the ground and come back up.
But anyway, all these little things that just, that all the little frailties that are being introduced.
Yeah.
But that's also, you know, the vulnerabilities of like, so where I have to like lecture my, my beloved family about like, gotta keep this area clear.
Cause daddy goes tinkle in the night and there's gotta, I don't want to, I don't want the cause of death to be children's shoes.
Yeah.
It's very important in this area to stay clear.
There needs to be a clear path.
You know what I'm saying?
But there's that kind of vulnerabilities of things where you would have been like, you know, hey, I just tripped on a route.
No big deal.
Let's go.
Let's get Thai food, right?
But there's also like, for me, I notice if I...
Okay.
A month or two ago, I got one of these injuries.
Huh?
Well, here's the thing.
I didn't like the way a cord was laying under where I have some tech over here, like a power cord.
I wanted to move it a little bit to make it slightly more aesthetic, so I bent over and I moved the cord, and then my back hurt for about five days after that.
Okay.
Oh, yeah.
You know what I'm saying?
Like that kind of thing.
But then the problem then is they start affecting other parts.
Now, I don't believe in chiropractic.
Don't email me.
But I do believe in the symmetry and balance of the body can be very thrown off because the phrase they use in medicine, now you're favoring it.
Right.
Just at the time that you should be out, as they say in baseball, walking this off, you're favoring it and you're doing the limp.
And now that's going to affect your other parts because now you're out of balance.
You know what I'm saying?
And now you're even more vulnerable and you're going to make some silly decisions because you're trying not to get hurt again.
Right.
Right.
Now you're favoring it.
You're favoring it.
Yeah.
Yeah.
But you're not worried.
You sound like you feel like you're fine.
So far, the only injury that I've sustained in my life where it concerned me was when I had those back problems a couple of years ago.
When...
I had to go to a chiropractor, which I felt like it was such an indignity.
My little witch doctor.
Well, and it was a sports medicine chiropractor.
So he actually had physical therapists there.
They actually did a real physical therapy.
But then he would take me into the back and give me my chiropractic treatment, which involved all kinds of spooky voodoo.
And my back has not given me any trouble since then.
But the idea that I would have back problems, which I've seen, you know, it just.
Hey, oh, shit.
We lost a little bit there.
It went away for a second, didn't it?
You're dipping in and out.
Where did I lose you?
It's okay.
I lost you like probably 15 seconds ago.
Where was I in the back problems story?
I'm not sure.
I was so busy trying to figure out if I could get you back that I wasn't listening, which is rare.
We've set up a new Wi-Fi in the house.
And...
Maybe I should switch over to it, or we could also—it sounds like it's fine right now.
Yeah.
Oh, yeah, it's fine now.
Should I just ding us out?
Or do you want to go back to your— Oh, we're over an hour.
Was there a place that you could just ding?
Well, you know, I can ding at any point.
It's your show.
Everything that's in the show and not in the show is whatever, you know?
That's right.
I can make it beautiful.
Oh, but we never talked about any of the television.
Oh, no, no, no.
See, it's all here.
It's all here on the list.
Star Trek, channeling energy, everything is copy.
Your philosophy of stealing.
Best break-ins you've ever done.
Were you ever envious of TV shows?
I think COVID is like trying to draw a bath.
History with sports and movie talk.
It's all here.
It's all here in the doc.
Oh, that's wonderful stuff.
All of that is wonderful.
Well, as far as I know, we're going to keep doing this.
You know what I'm saying?
Yeah.
Yeah.
OK, good.
We promised.
This is still the show.
I'll fix it.
Don't worry.
I'll try to fix it.
I want you to take care of yourself.
And I don't want to seem like I'm trying to be your daughter's mother's mother-in-law here.
But, you know, just be careful.
Keep an eye on that shoulder.
Don't, you know.
Be careful.
I need you here.
Is it your right arm or your left arm?
It's the left.
Left shoulder?
Left shoulder, yeah.
Okay.
And you're going to keep icing it?
Yes.
But you don't take anything like an Advil or anything like that, right?
Oh, maybe I'll take an Advil.
So you're on the, what is it called?
Not the designated hitter.
You're on the DL.
You're on the disabled list right now.
When do you think you're going to be back to being in a position to be able to play?
Yeah.
Oh, well, I'm going to, I'm going to play injured.
I admire you so much.
Yeah.
It's just, you know, you gotta, you can't, if it doesn't actually, the thing is that that's the, the decision I never know is like how much is playing injured?
Just re injuring.
Like, how much am I going to prolong the healing?
Yeah, when's it for the team?
For the boys?
And like, when is it just macho bullshit is a thing you got to think about sometimes.
Not you, but like another ball player.
You know what I'm saying?
Right, right, right.
Yeah.
I'd admire it either way.
Well, you know, you and I have a mutual admiration society, so one of us is admiring the other, and then the other one is busy admiring the other one over here.
You cut your hair to buy me a mustache wax.
I cut my mustache to get you a hair comb.
Yeah, that's the story of our lives.
Ta-da-da-cha-cha-cha-cha.