How To Destroy Everything - How To Destroy Everything Presents: Toughen Up - Episode 1: Mom, Dad and the Fighting

Episode Date: April 22, 2025

In our first episode, we meet Stephen’s tough girl Jersey mother and his post war(s) farm boy father, as they attempt to raise him, his two sisters, and themselves in a tiny apartment in Van Nuys, California. Then, Danny and Darren start exploring what’s behind his parents' pain, what happens to feelings frozen in time, and where is the Grace in all of this madness? If you would like to support this podcast, please consider becoming a patron at www.patreon.com/HowToDestroyEverything and please don't forget to share, rate, and review! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hello everyone, welcome. This is Darren Grotsky. And this is Danny Jacobs. Welcome, welcome, welcome. If you are new here, we are the creators of How to Destroy Everything. Our first season, which we wrapped just a few weeks ago, told the story of my narcissistic father

and the ripples of destruction that occurred throughout his life but that's in the past. Yes though you should you should go back and listen to that if you haven't listened to it yet yes please do but now as we move forward here into the next phase of how to destroy everything Danny and I are so excited to present to you, How to Destroy Everything Presents, Toughen Up, which is the story of Stephen Kieran and his wild, wild upbringing with just a,

just a, I think it's a very apt follow-up to, Danny, to your tumultuous childhood. Yes, and so, you know, normally, as the season goes on, you're not gonna hear us pop in at the beginning of the episode like this. We're gonna dive right into Kieran's episode and then we will come on after for an interview with Stephen Kieran to talk about that week's episode.

So, well, one more thing, which is we have a Patreon and if you've enjoyed the How to Stray Everything feed, know that that is how we keep the lights on. So if you would, please consider becoming a paid patron over at patreon.com slash how to destroy everything. It is how we keep the lights on. And now without further ado, here is episode one of Toughen Up.

Toughen Up Toughen Up Written and performed by Stephen Caron When I was born, my mother said I looked like an olive in a martini. I was jaundiced and had red hair, and she took a long drag off of her Lucky Strike cigarette and said, You just look like a little olive in a martini to me, honey. But then you grew into the most beautiful Gerber baby. But I never heard that second part. I just heard the first part. The part where I looked like an olive.

But she meant well. My mother meant well when she said, shut up, or cut the crap, or maybe you should put a cork in it, honey. I once became lost in a department store. My mother had taken us to Panorama City to go shopping, and I had wandered into one of those circular clothing racks, because it looked like magic in there. And when my mother looked around and couldn't find me, she turned to my two sisters and said, let's go.

And when I came out of my little clothes fort, they were gone. And I started to cry. And I found the lady. And the lady found my mom and my mom thanked the lady. And I was still crying. And so she took me by the little bicep and she walked me around the corner and she got down in my teary face and she shook me and she said toughen up I'm not raising a mama's boy and as we used to say about my mother at that time she wasn't raising anyone, at all.

We were being lowered, actually. My mother was lowering three children. She had been born and lowered herself in Jersey City, New Jersey, on the river, she used to say, as in, why don't you cry me one, sweetheart? She was born Maureen Patricia Ann Devlin, with green eyes, freckles, and blazing red hair, and my mother came out of the womb, and the doctor lit her little baby cigarette off of his, and she was out of there. She was the only girl who would jump off the pier and go swimming with the boys, because

all the other girls were too afraid. The only thing she seemed afraid of was getting caught listening to country music, hiding those 78s from her girlfriends between her mattresses and dreaming of one day meeting a handsome farm boy. Far-fetched for a city girl the likes of her, who by all accounts ran with a pretty fast pack. She once took us to see the movie American Graffiti, and in the film, some teenagers crawl under the back end of a squad car and set a hook

around the rear axle and then ran the chain around a lamp post and then they- And the cops went- Still chained to the lamp post. And in the dark, she leaned over to us and whispered, We did shit like that all the time. And we believed her. Our mother. The hustler. The hell raiser.

The wee hooligan. My mother's mother was a nursing assistant, and an alcoholic, and a schizophrenic, and a drug addict, and was having a long-term affair with a Catholic priest. A Catholic priest named Father Kelly. And one day, Father Kelly thought it was a good idea to take my mother and little uncle Jimmy and his girlfriend my grandmother and put them on a train and take them to California and never come back and When my grandfather my mother's father discovered this He had a very Irish reaction to it

He died He died. He died at them. I'd always heard three things about my grandfather. Impeccable penmanship, took pictures of the Hindenburg exploding over his backyard fence, and died of a broken heart looking for his children. And what did my mother do when she and her little brother and her mother were put on a train and taken to California and essentially kidnapped by a Catholic priest? She ran away to the Jews, but that's another story.

But that's another story. My father was born on a farm in Ramona, South Dakota, one of fourteen children, two sets of twins, both of which died. In your face, Angela's ashes. He was born Eugene Andrew Kieran, with shiny black hair and brown eyes, and my father came out of the womb, got himself cleaned up, and started looking for a god damned job, Stephen. The Kierans were farmers and miners. They mined for silver and mercury. My father's first job, when he was a small boy, was to have a rope

tied around his waist and to be lowered into a hole in the ground with little armfuls of dynamite. There were bootleggers in the family, like Uncle Connor, and Dad said you could see him coming from far off over the snowfields at night, in a sled with barrels of bootleg whiskey stacked behind them. Pulled by two giant horses that were so black, he said, they shined blue in the moonlight. With their wild eyes rolled into the back of their heads and their long, thick manes trailing behind them, their white breath hanging in the air, and

Connor, with a bowler hat over one eye, a whip in one hand, a rifle across his lap, and a bulldog sitting tall off to his left, just longing for someone to start some shit. shit. These are my people. My father's mother would read the children's stories next to the warm stove at night, but he swore his father never spoke a single word to him, and he could never remember the sound of his father's voice. They had a farm dog who refused to come indoors, and the children rode a little horse who was half crazy, named Fox, who was barn sour,

which meant that if he ever saw the barn, he would run straight back to the barn. And Dad said if you were on Fox and he saw the barn, you had a round-trip ticket. And their mother would watch lovingly from the kitchen window, waving softly, as she gave birth to more farm workers. Dad said when you got sick down on the farm, they would rub a mixture of kerosene and lard on your chest, and you would never admit to being sick again. At seventeen, my father lied about his age and ran away to fight with his brothers in World

War II, where he enlisted as a paratrooper because it paid a little extra, and they dressed better. The first plane he ever went up in, he jumped out of. Eventually, he would drop in over occupied France, part of the second wave northeast of Paris, helping to liberate a town called Reims. Mopping up, he called it. Our father fought Nazis during the day, and at night, we're sure he looked for work.

After years of occupation, Dad said the exhausted French muster a, thank you, now please leave. After the war came the National Guard, then drafted as a paratrooper into Korea, the only place colder than South Dakota, he always said. Injured and hospitalized for months, my father was finally discharged and settled in Los Angeles where he learned to fly, then bought an airplane with his brothers. The same plane that my parents would circle the City of Angels in on their first date. A date originally between my mother and one of dad's brothers who had to cancel at the

last minute and ask my father if he could quote, take that bird flying. He put himself through night school by playing cards and pool and everyone knew for the rest of his life never ever to play cards or pool with my father. He became a civil engineer but he never got his license. His plan was just to outwork them all. I want them to find me dead at my drawing table, he told me once, like Frank Lloyd Wright, who didn't die at his drawing table, but we never told Dad that. An old colleague of his known as The Swede once took me aside and said, You know, there is a saying about your father at City Hall. Say, say, when Gene Kieran goes,

he's going to do the hard work. I think it was my father's tireless work ethic and his combat experience in two wars that prepared him perfectly for marriage to my mother. This episode is brought to you by Quince. Guys, I think I've got spring fever. Oh, uh-oh. I'll be honest with you, I don't want to see a doctor because I don't want to get better.

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Lisa in her cable-knit sweaters and she would twirl her long, thick black hair, and she would write her name in multicolored markers in a font that was so flamboyant, it almost got her thrown out of Catholic school. Lisa, the first artist I ever met, would listen to a guy named David Bowie, who I could clearly see from his album cover was a half man, half dog made of gold, and we would listen to a band called The Beatles. And I remember staring at the cover of the Sergeant Pepper's album

and desperately wanting to ask my impossibly cool sister, who are all those people? Are they all The Beatles or just some of them? Our father worked so much during this time that we used to go and smell his pillow and call it our dad and kiss it good night. It smelled like Old Spice, Brill Cream and coffee. Long after we went to bed, our mother would watch The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson

and I would sometimes awaken to the sounds of the television laughter, accompanied by the strangely comforting humming of the dishwasher. And then Dad would come home and come in and kiss us goodnight on our foreheads, always being careful to hold his hand over the engineering pens in his pocket so they didn't cascade down into our open sleeping mouths. Some nights I would sneak out and I would watch the Tonight Show with my mother, who loved show business so much. And she would say,

hm, you see that guy, honey? That's Buddy Rich. He once played the drums upside down. And that's Toady Fields. Look at that dress. Listen to that voice. And that, she said, pay attention. Now that is Geraldine. I would sometimes go around to where my father was at his drawing table in the dining room, because that's what my father did to unwind after work. He would work. At the same giant drawing table we would hold

on to his toddlers and learn to walk. Late at night I would stand on the back of his stool with my hands on his shoulders and I would look out over a sea of paper at these mysterious drawings that he would work on, and I never knew what they were or what they meant. And there were pens and pencils and math, a big sliding straight edge, and an invention straight out of the mind of H.G. Wells, known as an electric eraser. But most nights, I remember waking up to the sound of my parents fighting. When my parents fought, my father would go country quiet, often just lowly repeating

my mother's name. Maureen. Maureen, Maureen. She would lock herself in the bathroom and turn on the shower and the sink, creating a wall of sound, and he would stand with his head against the door, trying the knob. Maureen, chk chk, Maureen, chk chk, Maureen, chk chk chk. When she finally did come out of the bathroom, my motheren, Maureen, Maureen, Maureen, Maureen, Maureen, Maureen, Maureen, Maureen, When she finally did come out of the bathroom, my mother was, as they say, up for it.

She once took a pair of pinking shears, meticulously cut up my father's suits, gathered them into a ball, and threw them out on the strip of lawn bordering Valerio Street, while the neighbors went whee, and then whee. them out on the strip of lawn bordering Valerio Street, while the neighbors went whoosh and then whoosh. During another one of their fights, Mom laid on her back for leverage and kicked the sliding glass window in our dining room with both feet until it shattered, dropping guillotine blades of glass down all around her, she somehow escaping quadruple amputation in the process. When tempers started to ramp up between my parents, my sisters told me that our mother

would sometimes discreetly take them aside and ask them to please go to the kitchen and quote, get me a knife. As if to say, no girls, be good little accessories to a crime so I can kill your father. Go get me a knife, and while you're there, get some formula and feed your little brother. My mother had suffered from spinal meningitis in her late twenties, and we never knew if her wild swings of emotion were a result of this, or being raised by her mother, or being Irish, or being a redhead, or being from New Jersey, or just being her. I think it's safe to say when you ask two young girls to go, fetch you a knife so you can kill their father, you're probably pulling from a

number of multicolored threads that are woven into your rich family tapestry. I recently was talking to my cousin, who's also my stepsister. That's in case anyone's thinking of getting off this train early. And she said, I was over at your house once and your mom threw Lisa's birthday cake at your dad. And I said, she threw birthday cake at your dad, and I said she threw birthday cake at my dad? And Diane said, the birthday cake.

She threw the entire birthday cake at your dad, which I thought was an important distinction. The only food I had ever known my mother to throw was at Easter, when she repeatedly attempted to inbound a ham through the same sliding glass window she had kicked out previously, but because of the gelatinous coating that encases ham, it just sort of... She didn't think it through. A turkey would have made it, and probably on the first try. What my mother had against this particular sliding glass door in our

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Please play responsibly. 19 Plus and physically located in Ontario. If you have questions or concerns about your gambling or the gambling of someone close to you, please go to kinexontario.ca. Temporarily at least was Lisa because she had the loudest scream. She would scream, stop. And if that didn't work, she would just scream, scream. They would stop long enough to discipline her and send her to our room, then drop the needle right back where the fight soundtrack left off. Like I said, my father would go country quiet in their fights, and thankfully never once

raised a hand to my mother. But should the ketchup bottle not open on the first attempt, lightning would enter the top of my father's head, popping one eye open and closing the other and then travel down his jaw, shoving it off to one side and constricting his vocal cords. So he sounded like an old miner and the lightning would flash and branch down his legs, causing him to dance a little buckstep, and it would ball up one of his hands, and he would point at a bottle of ketchup and invoke the Son of God. Well Christ Almighty, he would growl.

There were god damn screws that wouldn't turn and son of a bitch and drawers that got jammed. It all seemed personal and like disrespect to him. As if the drawer was saying, pull all you wish. I won't be opening for you, Gene Kieran. Once, when I was a little boy, we missed an exit on the freeway, and I witnessed my father start to glow bright orange like a heating coil as he attempted to pull the wheel off the steering column, and I remember asking him if he was mad, and Dad said, I don't get mad.

Dogs get mad. Dogs get mad. Looking back, if that wasn't mad, I'm sure glad we didn't own a dog. This episode is brought to you by Mint Mobile. Gentlemen, do you say data or data? That's the one word I don't allow in our house at all. We say data, but like a robot, like data. You two are strange birds. In my house, we just say data, we keep it simple. And to be honest with you, forever,

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And here we are now in the studio. I'm alongside my partner in crime, Mr. Darren Gradsky. Howdy, howdy Danny, and howdy everybody. And then of course, Stephen Kieran himself. Hello, sir. Hi, you guys. Hi. So, we've just listened to the first episode. How was that for you just to listen to it in this context of knowing that then you were going to talk about it? Well, it was interesting to see and hear what you guys responded to at different times,

but it was also wildly emotional. I didn't expect to be emotional hearing it again, but it was. It hit me in a different way this time. How so? I just, I think when it got to my parents fighting, I've felt a lot more sadness this time around for whatever reason. That's interesting. One of the things I was thinking about in that section in particular is the way that you perform it

is obviously it's so funny. And the performer, Stephen Kieran, is so calm and talking about it so matter of factly. But this is, I think this might be the second or third time I've heard that episode now, but I was, I was thinking about the journey that Danny and I went on in season one and how, how much I was able to, for the first time, put myself in Danny's shoes as a little kid and experience what he experienced through him. And I felt that this time interestingly, it's interesting that you had that reaction because I was having that same reaction where I was like, Oh my God, wait, I'm laughing. But Steven was a little boy.

You know, and this is like dramatic, traumatic shit that is happening. And traumatic shit that is happening. Um, and yeah, I mean, I, I don't, I don't know, maybe, uh, I don't have a question there so much as like, just to speak to that, like that feeling, um, on the one hand, it's, it's, it's such a different way to present it than the way that Danny and I presented a lot of what you went through.

You have, there's a sheen on what you presented that I have to be honest, the first time I heard it, I wasn't feeling the emotion as much. And now hearing that you were feeling it, it's making it even land harder for me. Hmm. Interesting. Yeah. I'm, I'm high. You could say I'm hiding behind something in a way, or pushing something out in front of me, sort of the, um, I don't know, just the style, if you will, to sort of, I'm drafting behind it. But I am drafting behind it.

I have a picture on my nightstand of me in front of that window, that sliding glass window, playing with a little car. Oh my gosh. And it just, it's like it totally, I never forget when I look, there are drapes drawn across it in the photograph, and I'm just a little tiny boy wearing a little jumper, and I'm rolling a little car,

and I'm smiling ear to ear. So, they're in the midst of all of that, right? Wow. One question I had while listening to that was, I was sort of, I wanted to know more about What these fights were about that your parents were having? Do you have a sense of that? I Know some of them had to be around money, uh-huh because my mom didn't work and my dad She would have worked, but I think my dad just

and my dad, she would have worked, but I think my dad just didn't want her to work, you know, which is of the era. Right. It's not great, but so I think there were possible, you know, mom was spending money in a way that dad was upset about. I'm sure that was one of them. There were other times that I have to be honest,

my mom would be set off by the smallest of things as would my dad. Yeah, right, like a ketchup bottle. Sure. Like ketchup bottle. One thing to remember is that my dad was, he had just, two wars. Yeah.

So my dad was completely post-traumatic stress. And I mean, full combat. He saw horrible things in each of the two wars, you know? And so that also was completely at play here. Not to mention my mom's own wild trauma, having grown up the way that she did, wild trauma, having grown up the way that she did,

um, you know, the child of an alcoholic, uh, and also a, an abusive woman, my grandmother and wildly addicted, you know, they say the child of an addict can be crazier than the addict, even if they're not acting out in the same way. So there was so much going on, I would say, they were always upset, it seemed, with each other, but never upset for the reasons they thought they were. Yeah, of course.

Right, right, when your dad's mad at the ketchup bottle, he's not really mad at the ketchup bottle. Or even each other, you could even say, for that matter. Ultimately, because, I mean, God bless my father, out of the ketchup bottle. Sure. Or even each other, you could even say for that matter. Yeah. Ultimately, because, I mean, God bless my father, whatever he brought into the wars. My dad lied because he wanted to be with his brothers to fight.

Right. So they were traumatically bonded on the farm. He had a father that would not speak a single word to him. My dad was way down the birth order. There were 14 kids. Jesus. Where was he among the 14? He was near, he was like third from the bottom. Wow. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Do you remember as a kid having any fear of saying something that would set them off? Absolutely with my mother. In fact, we were not allowed to get angry. If my mother would say like, if I was to speak to my mother that way, do you know what would happen? We weren't allowed to say shut up.

We were not allowed to show a lot of emotion that would tip the apple cart. And that got worse as the story is, you'll hear more and more, Mm-hmm. that got worse and worse. Mom could not accommodate that. Yeah.

So it was all about control and secrets and trying to hold it all together. But my mom could not, she would not accommodate anger. And here's a big one, sadness, any sort of sadness. I had to toughen up. I was told not to have that. So what happened is my mom said, are you going to pout now? You're going to pout?

She would get in my face like, why don't you pout? Here's why kids pout. You can't, if you don't process your feelings, it gets locked in amber. It just becomes frozen. So I used to feel so ashamed when she would say that. And looking back, it's because I wasn't allowed to get through it in the same way that she wasn't. That's right.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Or the same way my father couldn't. I mean, my dad wasn't around as much as my mom because my dad was working. But he would come home and we would get the belt. The belt would come out and we'd get a smack. But again, over the years, I mean, just hearing the setup of my parents,

that part isn't as maybe as quote funny. I'm not hiding as much sort of upfront, but that's another thing to answer your question, what got me, what hooked me this time around was sort of their origin stories, even though they're so brief. Dad's is a little longer, which is, I don't know, I could never figure out why,

probably because my mom's such a big character throughout. You know, that I felt like I had the real estate. There was stuff though, like with your, your mom hooked me this time also, like I find her so interesting because like, there's this thing where she has the country music affinity that she hides from her girlfriends in New Jersey and then she goes on to marry a country boy.

That's exactly right. That's so great you picked up on that. Cause that's who she married. She married Johnny Cash. My dad looks so much like Johnny Cash. Yes, he does. Yeah. Yeah.

And, and, and so like already she contains multitudes there, right? Where she's this Jersey girl, but like there's a, a, a country romance that's, that's buried a secret, I guess. Um, cause she didn't tell people about her love of that music from the very beginning. And an escape from the world she was in, the heart. I mean, Jersey City, Jersey City back then, to my understanding, was not what it is now. I mean, it was, it was rough. And so I think that also tied into it.

That's really good. You picked up on that because it was like, what would be so fantastical to a city girl like that? And so she hid her 45s, I think there were 78s and 45s back then under her mattress, cause her friends would have. I've just been to Specsavers and upgraded my lenses

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Wow, she has them hidden in the mattress. That's fascinating. I was just thinking about my mom and how the whole thing that we talked about back in season one about how she was after this certain level of excitement. Oh, yeah. And there's a parallel here with your mom. And I think it's a human thing. People are just longing for something

that is so different than what they've grown up in. How old was your mom when the priest, which is crazy, sent them to California when she was kidnapped? Kidnapped, yeah, took them. Took them to California when they, you know, when she was kidnapped. Kidnapped. Yeah. Took them. Took them to California. That better word. Yes.

Um, she was a young teen because by the time she ran away, she was just like, I would say like 14 or 15 when she, when she ran away, uh, which is a wild story. Yeah. Yeah. We'll, we'll, we'll get there. Yeah. Yeah. We'll just one thing on that. Like, do you, did you ever talk to her about, like, was there any part of her that the idea

of going to California was exciting? I mean, it's, it's, it's a sort of horrifying circumstance, but like, we were just talking about this, this, uh, yearning for excitement and here she is moving to Los Angeles. Yeah, the West. Hollywood. Yeah. I don't know. Well, yeah.

And, and she ran away to a little. Yeah, the West. Hollywood, I don't know. Well, yeah, and she ran away to a little bit of Hollywood again when we circle back on that. She never said that, but I will say, mom never left the East Coast in a lot of ways. In fact, a lot of people think I'm from the East Coast because my mom never really totally assimilated. She would talk about back East. And if you're from back East, you're good people.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, it was just a thing that was so ingrained in us that we're gonna go... There were two things that never happened. We're gonna get you kids bedroom sets, was the one, and we're going on a big trip back east. Oh my God. That's so funny. Those are both the idea of a runner that we're gonna get you bedroom sets

and you go through your whole childhood and never get a bedroom set. We've never. It's so amazing. In fact, when I look at bedroom sets to this day, I'm like, I'm just scared. It's your white whale. You know what?

You should get yourself like a bunk bed. You should get a bedroom set. You know what? You deserve one. I just spoke to one of the producers here and he goes, when this whole thing wraps up, I. You should get a bedroom set. You know what? You deserve one. I just spoke to one of the producers here, and he goes, when this whole thing wraps up, I'm going to get you a bedroom set. In fact, we're all getting bedroom sets.

Bedroom sets for everybody. Elvis threw keys of Cadillacs. You all got Cadillacs, man. We're bedroom sets for everyone, season two. Well, there is something that is so sort of American dream-ish about that, of just this image of what American life is, is the kids get bedroom sets, and there's a stability there and there's a sign of success there, you know what I mean?

A certain kind of socioeconomic status, et cetera. And our bedrooms were always symbolic. I had to share a bedroom with my two sisters. We were crushed into this room. And then in further episodes, you'll hear just either no bedroom, right? Not to tip the hand or like a roll away bed. I had this like shit bed that we slept on that was really,

I don't know, well, my dad, there was something about just the basics of bedrooms. My dad, they would often sleep separately, so my father would just sleep on the floor. Oh wow. Like on the floor, which again is very post-war. Yes, yes. That I'm sure was luxury.

Yeah. No one's trying to kill you. Right. At least, wait a minute, maybe. Maybe, maybe your wife. If you're, other than your wife. Your daughter's via your wife. But not an army of wives, just one wife.

So it was like luxury. And just, it's so funny. My dad, my dad grew up so poor, you know, just physically poor. And so did my mom. So there was a poverty in many ways that I don't wanna like overstate. But that's when I look back, I'm like,

yeah, that's sort of what that was. It's not all bad by the way. What do you mean? You can get on. You can get on again, it can be a superpower. You can get by with less. You should be thankful, things like that. You can get by with less. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You should be thankful. Yeah.

Things like that. So there, there is something to that, you know, you're not wasteful and I've, I've definitely inherited that to a fault. Yeah. Hmm. It's, it's not always good, but it also in a pinch. It can be, it can get you through.

Yeah. One, one question that I have is, you know, I listen to this and I hear it's so vivid and it's so specific and there's so many details. And I guess my question is, you know, we talked about it in, for me, one of the ways that I survived is my brain became Swiss cheese in terms of my memory. You remember nothing. I memory whole all kinds of stuff. There's all kinds of things from my childhood that I don't remember, but it seems as if is if you went the opposite way. Is that true?

It's like your brain just sort of soaked all this in and kept it in various compartments. Yeah, in pictures. So for me, that's how I always drew as a kid at my dad's drawing table so I had access. So I was always drawing and drawing and drawing. So I just look at these stories. These are cartoons or paintings in a way.

Yeah. Like I liken them to the joke is to Guernica, the painting by Picasso of like this, the horrors, but placed on a canvas in giant scale. For me, for whatever reason, I always, I was always processing it and trying to also make sense of it by the retelling of it and then trying to make sense of it through comedy. Whatever that means.

What does comedy mean in this case? It seems very Irish to me. I always am trying to put music underneath these stories, not literally. Just rhythmically. Rhythmically. Like what's the poem? And if so, can I somehow give it order? Can we somehow dance over the top of it? I mean, the Irish joke of whistling in the dark or whistling through the graveyard.

Yes. That's what makes this to me a very Irish tale. Yeah. Mm-hmm. Well, and in terms of this memory thing that Danny's talking about, I mean, you clearly did a lot of work of talking to people, because you're very young in some of this stuff and you must be quote unquote researching, interviewing

people. Yes. Kind of a lot of what we did in the, in the season on tape, but you kind of did this on your own and then prepared this. Is that right? Is it? Did you like, cause that one question had, just to piggyback on that,

is like all this information about the origin story, if you will, for your parents, when did you learn that information? And what was it like to learn that information? Well, when I learned it was, some of it I just knew it as family lore. Sometimes I had to actually go and ask my sisters. Now with the one man show that toughen up was

right out the gate, it used to be called Inside Out and then Pixar came along. How dare they? Right, and just nuked that. But I actually like- My dad was alive, you could have used him to sue Pixar. Yes, that's right. We would just bring the seasons together.

Although the lesson of Inside Out is don't deny your sadness, could have used him to sue, Sue Pixar. Yes. Oh yeah. That's right. We would just bring the seasons together. So. Although the lesson of Inside Out is don't deny your sadness, which is a lesson that you had to learn as a child. It all comes back to sadness. Interesting. Oh wow. Okay. Don't deny your sadness.

That's for sure. Did you not even see Inside Out? Is that? I did see it in Defiance. Yeah. All right. Let's see what I'm changing my shows for, my show for. Um, so I, first it was that I wrote it all out and then I performed it as a Let's see what I'm changing my show for.

So first it was that I wrote it all out and then I performed it as a one man show. These are the stories I've been telling at parties thinking that, oh, well everyone's got these kind of stories. They're like, no, those are kind of crazy. I remember I was on a panel once with Lorraine Newman and I was telling family stories at the Groundlings and she heard like a couple of my stories, you know, we would go in circles, right?

And she turned to me, I remember, I'm gonna do a bad impersonation. And she said, your stories are Gothic. It's a terrible impersonation. But if she ever hears this, that was really instrumental in just like having me go, what? And Karen Murayama too, I wanna give a shout out to Karen Murayama because she was like, what?

And she just- She's a legendary figure at the ground. Completely, yeah. And people just started pushing me. So then here's the deal. When I wrote this this time before I started recording it, I met with Sheila and Lisa, my sisters. We all got together on Zoom and I went chapter by chapter.

I go, what am I getting wrong? Did that happen? And more often than not, they would go, not only that happened, but mom asked us to get a knife. If two of the three of us remembered stuff, it went in. And the knife thing, I was too small. I never remembered that. This knife thing is more knives coming. And so I said, okay, that's amazing. Lisa also had, my sister Lisa is- And she's the one who's nine years older than you.

Seven years older. Yes. She's older, sorry, yeah. She is, she's Mormon. So Lisa has wild access to family lineage and stuff, right, that she can access. Yeah, oh, right. All of that stuff. So Lisa has some mad game around just archival stuff. Yeah. About where they were and what was happening,

but they also knew a lot that I didn't because they were older. Yeah. So they filled in a lot that I didn't because they were older. So they filled in a lot. And then there's a lot of stuff we left out. I'm sure. Oh, I'm sure. Is that because one of you didn't remember it

or because why did you leave stuff out? Either two of us didn't remember it. Oh yeah. Or it was just too intense. When I first did the one man show, Sheila came, right? And someone had figured out, oh, that's Sheila, you know, the character of Sheila.

And I remember they walked up to her. I think it was at intermission. No, after the show. It was after the show. They walked up to Sheila and they said, are all those stories true? It's like, OK, mistake to walk up on my sister Sheila and say that, and she looked this person up and down and said, you don't know the half of it.

Get the fuck out of my face. Yeah. He's not gonna be up there. How I'm telling it is how I'm telling it. Yeah. Yes. But factually, these are things that really, this happened, this is what happened. This knife thing, uh, remarkable

to hear you say that there's things that are like too intense and you chose that. But it is remarkable just as a storyteller to take, so the fact is that in an argument, your mother told your sisters, go get me a knife with clear intent in the moment of I'm going to kill your father. Or I'm going to in the moment of I'm going to kill your father. Or I'm going to try.

I'm going to try to kill your father. And, um, and I, as a listener am laughing hysterically as you're telling me this horrible detail. I'm thinking back to you, Danny, um, uh, you know, like if, you know, we, we don't, there's, there's not such a, uh, attempt of violence in your past, but like your retelling of whatever the equivalent of that same story

would be, I don't know, maybe the kidnapping or something is so different. And it actually just gets me thinking about storytellers and, and, or at least the way we tell our story, the way we process it. Um, and it's, it's, you know, people talk a lot about like voice and like your perspective. Yeah.

Sometimes it's hard to articulate what that means. I think this is an example of seeing what that means through two different lenses. Right. Right. And we talked about this about, you know, I was thinking about that in particular, about the story from this episode of, of Kieran, when you're

a kid and you get, and you go into the round. Yes. Clothing rack. Clothing rack. Yes. Um, and then your mom left, right? Um, so. Started to, yeah.

Started to, yeah. I, I like my experience of that and the way that I probably would tell that would be, would have a lot of rage. Oh yeah. Um, and, and, and fear and sadness, you know what I mean? Um, but did you, I guess it's, I guess, I don't know quite know what my question is. Well, I, one of my questions is in the actual event happening, did

you feel any of those things? All I can recall was feeling really scared. Yeah. Really scared and also that feelings are not cool, man. Yeah, yeah, yeah. This feeling of crying and showing weakness, if you will, that I had better get it together, man. I had better figure this out.

Oh man. And that I had- A little kid having to force to figure this out. Oh man. And you're just a little kid having to, forced to figure it out. Yeah, I learned to distrust, just distrust just what is considered to be normal. But then as we are, I had to adapt. I had to survive in some way.

Like, what if I could make my mom laugh? And that's one thing I really worked hard on that I didn't even know. I did the same thing with my mom. Yeah, exactly the same thing. That's amazing. Yeah. Yeah, it's like, we're just,

there's somebody who's very controversial in the world right now, but when they got sober, they talk about this very openly, so I'm not outing, I don't even wanna use this person's name. But when they got sober, they talk about this very openly. So I'm not outing, I don't even wanna use this person's name. But when they got sober, the first person they met was this older woman at a 12 step meeting and she said, what a clever boy. What a clever boy you are.

That he learned how to live, how to survive. So look, none of this is sentimental for me because I learned sentimentality. This is what Marvin, my mentor, my writing mentor said. He said, sentimentality is the falsification of human feeling. So this whole time, yeah, Marvin Mudrick, by the way, dear God, if you can get ahold of anything

that Marvin wrote, but he, his voice was with me through this entire process and I would ask others, is any of this sentimental? That is, is any of it playing false? Modlin, yeah. Not only Modlin, but also, you know, the way we said, could you hear the ice cracking beneath my skates? Did I get too far out in the telling that it's now fake?

It's sentimental? Or I'm asking or telling people how to feel about this. And that's something I really had to be very careful. And the only way that I could even sometimes put music in, I knew I had to tack really hard with the absurdity or comedy in the other direction just to balance it out. Yeah.

No, well, I think you succeeded in that goal. Did you, when you, I'm sorry to go back at this, probably you guys can understand why I'm doing it, but going back to that moment when your mom started to leave you in the department store and you said you felt a lot of fear in the aftermath of it. Did you feel at any point? Yeah. Anger. I was wondering, like even in your processing it of it as an adult, have you ever had an angry period? Oh, completely. Oh, years of angry. Yeah. Yeah, of anger for both my parents. Like what the fuck, man? I mean, that's how abusive to say that, to threaten me,

to blow smoke in my face even, you know? On and on and on. Yes, I was an angry young man. I believe I was an angry young man, but anger is a secondary emotion is how I learned it. Yeah. Until I could get down to causes and conditions. I could get down to what I was covering.

What I was covering was just, uh, for lack of a better term, just hurt or woundedness, just the, the, the, the original grief is how my therapist at the time described the original grief. Wow. Well, I think that that may be a recurring theme for us here as we go through toughen up because it, in some ways, Danny, Steven has like gone through a similar journey that you

went through and it's gotten to the other side to where he can actually create this thing, which you described Steven as a love letter to your parents. Completely. And Danny, I don't think anyone would describe what we did as a love letter to Richard. Well, no, and this is something we did talk about

offline where you were saying that, you know, you're older. Yeah. And so it's just interesting to now experience someone who has sort of like that processing is more in the past. I guess that's a question. Would you say that your processing of all this stuff is firmly in the past?

Are there still things that you're sort of working through? I think completely, yeah. There's got to be. I think the longer you work at it, then you realize you're working generationally, it's generational drama, if you will. And it's not all bad. Right. The analogy I use is like, uh, the glacier of our upbringing and their upbringing comes in and tears through the ice age, if you will, tears through

comes in and tears through the ice age, if you will, tears through this unbelievable, it just plows and plows through, through let's say rock of life. And then it recedes. And what you've got is Yosemite Valley. I mean, I know that's really cute. It's like, holy shit, man. What is that sentimental?

But no, I think when it recedes, and by the only way to recede is for you to chip it out. You've got to chip it and it's going to thaw. And then over time, I really do believe this, that over time there's something akin to grace that takes place if you stay in the pocket of working this stuff out. And grace, this is what I learned about grace. You know who Big Ed Bacon was? No. No. He was the main dude over at All Saints Church in Pasadena, but he was famous. He was on

Oprah. He was famous for getting more hate mail than anyone ever got hate mail in the world by saying the audacity to say that gay men and women are God's gift to the world. So unleash the hate, you know, right? So what a wonderful legacy. But Big Ed Bacon told the story, I remember, may have said it on Oprah that he said when he was in the South for the first time, he ordered breakfast and his breakfast showed up and there was a glob off to the side of what looked like rice and it was just like a whiff on his plate. And he called the waitress over and he goes,

excuse me, what is that? And she says, oh, those are grits, dear. And he goes, well, I didn't order grits. And he goes, oh, you don't order grits. Grits just come. And then he said this, he goes, oh, you don't order grits, grits just come. And then he said this, he goes, that's grace. Because you don't order grace, grace just comes. Grace just comes.

And I think you can take a particular stance in life so that the probability of grace just showing up on your life plate is there's a greater opportunity or likelihood that it will when you go through this stuff and you sort it out because otherwise it's sorting you. I mean, I didn't have a choice to look at this stuff. It was living me.

People are like, why do you look at the past? I'm like, cause it's looking at me every fucking day. That's right. Yeah. Yeah. Wow. I think that's pretty, pretty fascinating. That is fascinating. We'll see Danny, if grace comes for you. We'll see.

We'll see. And it already has. That's true. I believe. Yeah. You're still telling the story, Steven. So clearly there's some, you know, processing or something that's going on. Yeah.

Yes. Whatever that means. I mean, what is processing? I'm gonna be a real word police guy on this, but I wanna know, like, what is it? Is it, I mean, again, I'm gonna be a quote machine. You know, Pema Chodron, right? The great Buddhist nun.

She's wonderful because she's so accessible. I think she was like a Connecticut housewife for years. She's just because she's so accessible. I think she was like a Connecticut housewife for years. She's just one of us, you know? And she said, how long will we be working on this? At least until the end of our lives. So that's Pema freaking children. I think she had a meltdown with her grandchild and she's like the great Pema's children and she just loses her shit at Macy's, you know, and she tells this story that it's like, oh no, that's the, isn't that the idea?

Because I think the more that we're sorting it, the more we're able to not flinch when people tell us their stories, we don't flinch. Yeah. Yeah. That's interesting. One last thing, well, I don't know. Yeah. When I was at the bottom of my sort of,

looking at original grief, I remember I was in such agony in therapy about all of this, that I had a scorch mark on my temple from running it along the baseboard and the shag carpet of my shit studio I was living in at the time in San Francisco. Wow. So I was like a wild animal.

I was like myself, like I had a crossbow arrow, like I was dying in the forest at night alone. You know, just that's what I felt like. Like I was walking through life like with a crossbow arrow through me. And I remember that I sat in therapy with Al, the great Al, Alvin Baum. I don't care. You know, Alvin has passed on now, but he was my therapist. And I was crying so hard and for so long that I just couldn't breathe anymore.

I was just completely, I didn't know. I felt like an animal. Yeah. And I remember just trying to get through this stuff, trying to get through it sober, so to speak, without any self-medication, finally. And I remember, I looked up at him. I said, have you ever been here?

I remember pointing to myself, like this place, because my great fear was being abandoned, or that someone would leave or not understand, like I'm alone, like no one's ever. And I remember, this is crazy. Al sat forward in his chair, came toward me, not away, toward me. And he rested his elbows on his knees.

I remember. And he, and he completely like just looked me up and down and he said, what do you think? How else could he just be in the room with this? And wasn't phased. Yeah. It's like he'd been there, like, you know, religious people are afraid of hell

and spiritual people have been there. You know, that's the energy I got. However you define spirit, I mean, just be love. But I'll never forget that. And he was like, you know, he was from Chicago. He was just had this great energy, but he was, so I feel through, that's part of the grace that we can at least go, yeah, yeah, me too. Yeah.

Yeah. Wow. I think that's part of what we're doing here. Yeah. What we're doing here too is for people to hear that sentiment. And so before we wrap up this first episode of How to Destroy Everything Presents, toughen up, here is a clip from next week's episode. It was 1971 and we were going to move 50 miles south, roughly halfway between Los Angeles

and San Diego to the suburbs, to a brand new planned community, to a place they named Mission Viejo. And at the time, there was nothing down there. And some could still make that argument today. But at that time, our lonely housing tract was surrounded by golden rolling hills, vast expanses of savanna grass, and an actual lion preserve. For real, because it looked exactly like where lions lived. Mission Viejo was hailed as the California Promise, and looking back, it's as if California put its big golden arm around my family, pulled us in close and said,

some real crazy shit's about to happen to you all. I promise. How to Destroy Everything presents Toughen Up is written, performed and created by Stephen Caron. Executive produced by Darren Grotsky and Danny Jacobs. In partnership with Eastman Productions and 333 Productions. Story editing by Lisa Blair and Sheila Stevens. Music mixing and mastering by Arlo Sanders. Audio engineering by Glenn Eastman.

Original Theme Music by Alan Simpson. Original Artwork by Derek Yee. Kitchen Pep Talk by Joyce Kieran. Thanks to Helen, Diane and Steve, Bob and Carla, Art and Joyce, Dave, Sean, and the DeTye family. Special thanks to Mom, Dad, Lisa, Sheila, and Joe. For questions, feedback, and of course any stories about Danny's dad, we can be reached at iknowrichardjacobs at gmail.com.

If you would like to support this podcast, please consider becoming a patron at www.patreon.com forward slash howtodestroyeverything. And of course, you can find us on Instagram and blue sky as well. How to destroy everything presents toughen up is available on Apple, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. Special thanks to Spotify studios for the use of their beautiful recording space in downtown Los Angeles.