Quick Question with Soren and Daniel - How to Ride a Bike (Super Bowl LVIII, Sports Families, Competitive Kids)

Episode Date: February 13, 2024

The guys make their somewhat late Super Bowl predictions, then talk about learning to ride a bike, raising competitive children, and becoming a "sports family".FACTORMEALS.com/qq50 and use code qq50 to get 50% off

I've got a quick, quick question for you, alright I wanna hear your thoughts, wanna know what's on your mind I've got a quick, quick question for you, alright The answer's not important, I'm just glad that we could talk tonight So what's your favorite? Who do you doubt? When will I be remembered? What's it out there? Where did all the party wings not? Oh, forget it. Saw a movie, Daniel O'Brien.

Two best friends and comedy writers. If there's an answer, they're gonna find it. I think you'll have a great time here. I think you'll have a great time here. So, hello again and welcome to another episode of Quick Question with Soren and Daniel, the podcast where two best friends and comedy writers ask each other questions and give each other answers. I am one half of that podcast, author of How to Fight Presidents, senior writer for Last Week Tonight, and estudiante nueva para español, Daniel O'Brien,

joined as always by my co-host, Mr. Soren Bui. Soren, qué tal? Hey, I wouldn't say nuevo. I'd say more viejo because you've been doing this for a while. Or are you back to it? Well, here's the thing. I've been doing Duolingo. Listeners of this podcast know that I've been doing Duolingo for about,

they don't know how long, about 553 straight days now. Jesus Christ. And before that, I was learning Spanish every day on an app called Pimsleur. And I still like Duolingo for like, now it's more of a video game where I can win challenges than it is an actual helpful tool. I think I've plateaued as far as like what that app can teach me. It's great for vocabulary and some things. I've reached a point where like when I get something wrong, which brag alert is not often, but when I get something wrong, I don't know why. And there's

no place in the app to ask why. Obviously, there's not even like a little button that you can click that gives you a quick tip on something uh so i signed up i'm taking like an actual uh weekly zoom class now i i signed up for it and like i had to i wasn't sure if i was going to be in spanish one or spanish too so i had to call the the dean and speak to him in Spanish for a while on the call. He's like, we'll talk on the phone. I'll ask you a couple questions in Spanish, and then I'll be able to figure out in a gif what level you're at. And they put me in Spanish too.

Whoa. And I am dropped in a class that is like entirely in Spanish. And it's still like very rudimentary. I'm, I'm certain I'm getting things wrong, but there's not like the harsh buzz of a Duolingo X when you're incorrect on something because we're all like communicating with each other. Like everything,

even if I don't get every word right. And even if I don't understand every word that gets said, I still know what's going on in the class and they know what I'm trying to say. And, uh, it's really fun and really cool. It's immediately, uh, two things are immediate. One, I'm as always, so like thirsty for community all the time that as soon as I see other students in the class, I want to be like, Hey, let's hang out. We we're all doing this thing we're all like-minded people let's should we go should we do happy hour what's going on you guys what do you where do you where does everybody live yeah the other immediate thing is uh even though there's not really any stakes to this class i

could like truly walk away whenever i want. I could hang up in the middle of a zoom. I'm still nervous when the teacher calls on me and asks me a question in Spanish. Like there's no, I don't think there are any tests or grades or anything like this. It's just adults who want to learn conversational Spanish better. Uh, but I'm still just like, Oh no, teacher's calling on me. Oh boy. but I'm still just like, oh no, teacher's calling on me. Oh boy. I'd like to take a moment to thank Factor,

America's number one ready-to-eat meal delivery service. Skip all the meal prep hassle and get Factor's delicious, fresh, never frozen meals delivered to your door. Head to factormeals.com slash QQ50 and use code QQ50 to get 50% off. And because I am 50 years old, why is there a Dean? Uh, I think that's just like the, the, the guy who set up this school, like, like all things there there's like not scam, but I talked to him and he's like, yeah, this is the, I set this up a couple of years ago. I teach college level something in the city and i also own this school on the side you will be working

with one of my teachers uh and class starts on monday and uh you have to buy my book because it's important to class i'm like this is smart if i yeah if i was you i would do something like this too this is a good money maker for you but it's not it's not not teaching spanish it's not not scratching the itch that i have man i think i would get very nervous as well you know you always have those dreams still where you're in school and like you didn't study for a test or something the only ones i have that about are your spanish because spanish was such a throwaway class for me. Like the things that, and that's not to like shit on Spanish. It was that the other classes that you're taking are very, especially in college are all very theoretical and lofty.

And like, you're like, you're writing these long papers and things like that. And you have to spend a lot of time just thinking about it. Spanish was like, we were saying, how do I get to the amusement park? And things like that, where it was like, okay, this, I got a handle was like, we were saying, how do I get to the amusement park and things like that, where I was like, okay, this I got to handle. And I would just like not do the Spanish homework a lot.

It was a class I would breeze through. And so then I would have now I have this dream all the time, like the end of the semester has come and I just have not been going to the class at all. I just have been skipping it and I haven't been at all. And I'm like, oh no i bet i think i'm gonna fail this um so having a teacher no i never failed it um having a teacher call on you even now i think in my life i would just drop right back into school mode and be like oh no oh no oh no it's really nerve-wracking like class ended class ended and I could feel that I was like sweaty from nerves. Even though like I can't, she's not going to write a letter to my mom if I get something wrong.

She's, the few times that I have gotten things wrong in that class, she just like gently corrects or like says it uh a cleaner way of saying what i'm trying to communicate uh but i i i'm still just like i want to do a good job i don't want teachers to be mad i don't want the other students to laugh at me the other students are just like you know like a doctor and a teacher who are also trying to learn a language in their spare time i i will say that when I was learning Spanish in school and like speaking it and listening to it in class, I had a much more difficult time

than when I finally started using it like out in the field in a combat scenario, you know, like out in the real world where it was just the stakes were so much lower because my conjugation stuff, it didn't have to be perfect syntax and everything as long as like the point was getting across and the same goes for the other person who was talking to me i was like i understood six words of what you said and now i get it i know what your sentence

was yeah um and so i i will just and i am reckless with it like when i'm using it in the real world i my conjugation is absolutely crap but the verb is there and so like they're like yeah yeah i get it context yes i understand what you're saying to me yeah which i which is is truly what i'm actually going for i will just to be able to communicate to be able to understand if i'm thrown into a combat situation like that and you just can't get that in duolingo again i don't want to shit on duolingo because i think it's fun and genuinely helpful. I wouldn't be thrown into Spanish too if I didn't have, you know, three years of screwing around on my app to get me there.

But there's just, you can do Duolingo every day for years like I've done. It doesn't matter if you're not having a conversation with a person and you just can't do it on Duolingo every day for years like I've done. It doesn't matter if you're not having a conversation with a person and you just can't do it on Duolingo. Right. That's all. That's our show. Wait. There was something.

Before we started recording, you said you had to, you wanted to turn off your heater just in case it was going to impact the sound yeah is it cold where you are in los angeles yeah as i am in new jersey in february well i mean cold within reason cold in los angeles terms yes because we just got uh you know like 15 inches of rain right over the last week and then as soon as all the clouds go away yes it gets very cold and when i say very i mean like low 40s right so this is the thing this is the difference between us is that we had uh 10 or 11 straight days of not

seeing the sun that's like an actual a true statistic of just no sun for 10 or 11 straight days of not seeing the sun. That's like an actual, a true statistic of just no sun for 10 or 11 days. And then the sun started to come out and everyone I know in Jersey is rejoicing right now because it is finally 42 degrees. I was running around with Jackson on the beach this morning because it's like, it's as it's spring. You might as well tell me at this point i wasn't taking out the big coat uh in a t-shirt and jeans i'm just having a blast i'm so glad you're putting the heater on in your house right now yeah the low today was 42 degrees and it's just like oh my god waking up this morning i didn't sleep in my own bed last night um i'm in the dog house dan uh i it's a bad thing no i my wife is has got a cold and she personally just sleeps better when

i'm not in the room um sure she's sick so i slept downstairs and we don't leave the heat on downstairs in the house at night because why would you there's nobody using that space. And it got pretty chilly. I grew up in Colorado. I would go skiing and snowboarding when it was 10 below. And last night I was like, oh, oh, there's a bite to the air. Oh, my teeth have ice between them. What is it? It's 56 in the house.

This is crazy. Humans can't live like this. But it's just because i've i've dropped off i've gotten yeah i've gotten weak no that's fine you've you've there's nothing weak about adapting to changing circumstances yes evolution is not weakness thank you this is evolution uh i will i'll say people who like you you leave a certain area and everyone's like ah you got weak how quickly you adapt to an environment i think takes less than a month and you're like back in it like if i went back to when i go back to colorado or we go to park city or something like that within a week i'm like i'm fine everything like my skin when i first get there it's like everything dries my knuckles crack my i'm not used to being here it's so cold

and then like and runny nose all the time and then like you're fine it's so fast so those people can shut the fuck up yeah and anyone who uh i remember the my la years when it would be 40 something in los angeles and there would be 40-something in Los Angeles, and there would be, like there always are, no matter what the temperature in any situation, some white guy in shorts and a t-shirt and sandals being like, I'm from Boston, and you guys think this is cold? You know the rest of us fucking hate you when you do that, right?

You know, like no one thinks that's interesting. It's not a redeemable quality, or you don't have a superpower it's not like you're fucking clark kent coming from your planet and this was just easier to live on like right you know what you know what i don't want to hear when i'm cold is someone else telling me that it's not cold it's not that's not helpful or interesting to me no not at all um my my wife she will hate that i tell this story but she doesn't listen to the podcast. Um, she, she's grew up in Tucson, Arizona and it gets chilly there in the winter at night. And that's basically it. It occasionally will snow up on the Catalinas, which is like up above it, but it never drops much lower than Los Angeles in terms of temperature. So she's never really contended with real cold. of temperature so she's never really contended with real cold um and she when it gets cold in los angeles so when i say cold i mean like during the days it's 56 she she gets this problem with her toe where her toe gets really like swollen and like red and itchy like it's just like bad

a bad circulation thing and so she's had it for a very long time and we looked it up online and it's like the the best thing you can do is rub lanolin on it do you know what lanolin is sheep's wool no why would you know what lanolin lanolin is a nipple cream for when you are uh nursing and like it's just getting so aggravated you put lanolin on after your baby nurses if they're just like a little too violent with it and so we were like for you know early on in our relationship long before we were ever thinking of children we were wandering down the maternity aisle buying lanolin for her every winter so that she could slather it on her toes so by the way if you have that but anyone if you've got that weird circulation thing i guess it's really common uh you would try lanolin yeah and uh here's what sucks about me is i'm sure you said a bunch of things just now that are true and interesting but because of my exact level of insecurity i went and googled lanolin and it does come from sheep's wool so we can both be right

shit they make an oil out of sheep's wool yeah lanolin also called wool fat wool yolk wool wax or wool grease is a wax secreted by the sebaceous glands of wool bearing animals that sucks so bad that's so gross that's so lanolin's role in nature is to protect wool and skin from climate and the environment yeah but it is the equivalent of like when you get greasy hair from not showering just like rubbing your hands to that and then scraping it into a bottle for other people to rub on their nipples yeah like that's i can see how you would not like that it's just the gross like ooze that comes out of your pores yeah uh that sucks i'm not gonna tell her i'm gonna decide not to tell her nah but let's get into this show soren yeah super bowl predictions go oh well i haven't checked in with my octopus yet uh okay this okay. This episode, by the way, it comes out after the super bowl.

Um, uh, my prediction would be that the chiefs win. Unfortunately, I would much prefer that 49ers win only because the chiefs are in the Broncos division. And I'm just fucking sick of the chiefs. I'm sick of hearing about the chiefs all the time.

So this is a thing that I'm actually glad that we can talk about this because you're sports, sports, sports, and I'm only basketball these days. But of course, I'm going to pay attention to the Super Bowl, even if I'm mostly checked out of football. And I watched the playoffs leading up to it. I like Travis Kelsey very much. I think he's a fun, charming guy. His particular brand of like, just a good time, fun-loving party oak works on me. I'm here for it. I'm sick of Gronk.

Good, get out of here, Gronk. We have a new one and I like this one better. It's got a better smile. I'm here for all the fun travis and taylor stuff yeah patrick mahomes is maybe the greatest quarterback of all time yeah and it's i they don't seem they haven't seemed like a team that's that's to me particularly difficult to root for so when i see the playoff games and i see oh good it's it's 49ers and chief again. The fact that they're both playing again must mean that these are good teams

and don't we want to see good teams? And no one on the internet, no one in the podcast that I listen to, no one is excited about this matchup. Everyone is like, what is the lesser of two evils to root for? And most people are pretty all out. They're done with the Chiefs.

And I would love a sports, sports, sports guy to explain to me why. Is it separate from them being in your division? Is this just like the way that people got sick of the Patriots, the way people got sick of Golden State? Is that what's going on? Yes, these feel like dynasty teams in general. Like, 49ers have a long, illustrious career of going to the Super Bowl. And obviously, that's a little further in the past. But even when they had Jim Harbaugh, was he their coach?

Yeah. And he was their coach. Like, they went then, too. So, like, the 49ers rarely have, like, a huge dip where they're not good for a while. the 49ers rarely have like a huge dip where they're not good for a while. And the chiefs have been in the four of the last six Superbowls or whatever. And so they're not, it's not fun.

It's like, it's the same thing over and over. And we, and also I think everyone sort of during the playoffs fell in love with the lions. Everyone was like, Oh my God, like they're really doing something. This is going to be so exciting. Like the nuggets were for, for basketball, Dan, where like everyone's like, oh my God, like they're really doing something. This is going to be so exciting.

Like the Nuggets were for basketball, Dan, where like everyone's like, this team has never been good, has never once been good. And now they're finally put it, they put it together and they look unstoppable. And they did it with people that everyone else has written off. Jared Goff is their quarterback. And everyone had written off Jared Goff like years ago when he was playing for the Rams. And so you've got these teams of like it's just a good story it's a good narrative story of like these teams that this team that nobody thought would do it and they're fucking doing it

and then all of a sudden they didn't do it and now we've got no the institution's back it's the big teams the big teams are back the big um big dynasties are here. They're going to play each other again. Who gives a shit? The only thing that I think is maybe interesting about this is that you've got one team where you have, yeah, I agree, one of the best quarterbacks probably history will remember in the NFL ever. He's extraordinary and is doing amazing things. And then you've got somebody on their side who cannot fucking catch a break as a quarterback that nobody respects nobody likes uh it's not true his whole team loves him but like in terms of like america uh he's he's a guy

that nobody believes in at all and he but he's surrounded by these amazing components like there's all these great players around him christian mccaffrey's on the team who's the running back who's like possibly one of the best running backs currently in the NFL. He's got a great tight end. The defense is outstanding. And then on the other side, you've got

Patrick Mahomes, who has fucking nothing around him. He's got his wide receivers other than Travis Kelsey, who is his tight end end and it is awesome you've got cadarious tony who can't stay healthy and cannot catch passes you've got like rushy rice who is a brand new to the league there's he's no wide receivers to speak of like they're just not good and then he's got uh isaiah pacheco who was like an undrafted free agent um who runs really

hard and but like runs directly into people he looks like he wants to kill himself on the field like he looks like he's like trying to hurt himself and the team does not have stars on it other than two guys and so it's like well can you can these two guys take on another team that are lacking those exact or like lacking that quarterback position? Like, is this, is that interesting? Is that ever interesting? Everyone? Will you like the NFL now?

And I don't know. That's, it's not really a great selling point unless you're like really into football. And if you're really into football, you don't like either of these teams. It's a good selling point if you're not really into football, which is, which is fun for me, but I, but it's, it's's it's cool to be on the other side of this like i this is this reminds me of heedle's era of nba when the the big three super team of yeah bosh lebron james and duane wade when when lebron went to miami that was like well great basketball's gonna suck for a while like for for Like for me, that was the end of exciting basketball because you just knew this team was going to dominate and they did. And it was not a blast. There was no surprise, no drama in it for a couple of years.

very closely at the time who were like, I love this. Who wouldn't? And you're calling this team the Heetals, like the Beatles, like the best band of all time. Who wouldn't? Why? How is this not good for basketball? How is this not fun to see this exciting super team happen? But I understand now that like when you're in it, like I was with basketball and like a lot of people are with football, this is probably not, dynasties are not exciting to like regular standard football fans no they're not even exciting to i think the fans you remember when we we worked with jack during like basically the the height of the patriots and jack was a patriots fan and all of a sudden like the patriots were going to the super bowl again or like then they won the super bowl against seattle on that last play where there was like a pick in the end zone. And at the end, Jack was like, I don't know. I feel kind of bad. They did it again.

He just wasn't into it at all. Back when I did watch more football with the second Eli Manning run Patriots-Giants Super Bowl that they won both times, coming into work, Jack was such a great boss and such a cool guy and makes really, you just can't talk shit with him, unfortunately, because he's such an even-keeled person. So I came to work after that Giants win over the Patriots and I was ready to like talk shit all day. And I was like, hey, Jack, I missed that game last night and then I didn't turn on the news and I've been in talk shit all day. And I was like, Hey Jack, I missed that game last night.

And then I didn't turn on the news and I've been in a cave all morning. What fucking happened? Why don't you tell me what happened? And he was like, man, that's a great game. I just love to see a great game. I'm just glad it was interesting.

Like, ah, fuck you. I watched that game with you. We went to a bar and where's Brendan? Where's someone who got in a fight over this? Yeah. Brendan was a Patriots fan.

Brendan was really fun to watch games with because we watched that. The three of us watched a Broncos-Patriots game. And the Broncos were destroying the Patriots for the first half of the game. And I was ordering fries for the table and stuff like that. And then- Yeah, it's important to remember what a budget we were on. It just turned. The game turned and everything started to go the Patriots way. And like watching Brandon, like get excited and like, be like, come on, like doing that

kind of shit. I got in a very dark place and I was like, I'm going to fight this guy. But that's what you want out of the sports world. I wonder if he'll like this story being told. I was at a bar in Santa Monica, the now closed Yankee Doodle, with Brendan watching, I think just like any and every game that was happening,

and the Patriots were one of the later games, and he'd been drinking like a monster, left to go to the bathroom. I didn't find out until later, threw up in the bathroom, and then came back to the bar to continue watching the bathroom. I didn't find out until later, threw up in the bathroom and then came back to the bar to continue watching the Patriots. That's fall of Rome type of shit.

Yeah. That level of gluttony. Oh, well, good for him that he stuck around and watched it. The team needs you. Of course. Factor's delicious, ready-to-e eat meals make eating better every day easy. Wherever tomorrow takes you, be ready with pre-made chef created meals delivered right to your door.

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I don't remember the year. I remember where I learned. It was right on the year. I remember where I learned, uh, it was right on the bike. It was, uh, I grew up down the street from an elementary school and my dad, I remember taking me to the back of the school where there's some concrete and some grass and I had training wheels and he taught me how to ride. And it was like a very, I remember being not fun for me. I remember being very stressful and I was, I was like crying and I wanted to quit. And he kept getting me to, to do it, get up on the bike, get up on the bike,

do it, do it, do it. And I learned how to ride a bike on training wheels and I was stoked by the end of it. And then I, I, in my memory, it was the next day, but I, I don't, don't quote me on that it was it's a the memory feels true that the next day i went into my garage to get my bike and the training wheels had already been removed it was like you like now it's time for for a real bike after that i bet there was some amount of space between those things because otherwise like why have training wheels if not for me to ride around for a little bit, but in my memory, again, it feels like,

all right, training wheels are off literally within 24 hours. And now you have an even more dangerous version of this. And it was again, like scary and difficult and, and unsteady. But then you get it and, and,

and you know, it, it takes over your life, the freedom and the speed. And in our day, the days of our youth where cell phones didn't exist and riding bikes was all you needed to say to your parents as far as your plans were concerned. It was just like, it is two o'clock on a summer day. I am leaving on my, I'm riding bikes with my friends. All right.

Be home by dinner at six or seven. And I was like, great. That's four or five hours completely unaccounted for, but it was okay. The system worked because you were riding bikes. It was such a wonderful ticket to freedom. Yeah. It was. And you could go so much further.

I mean, that was like the biggest thing for me was it was like being a kid, you're at somebody's house or something like that. Even if it's summer and like, you're not, you're not beholden to a parent, but you're like, oh, I would love to go get baseball cards right now at the store. But the store is two miles away. We're not going to walk that. And then all of a sudden you had bikes and you were like, we go fucking anywhere we could go to california like go anywhere we yeah just go and and and go to taco bell go buy things decide to go bowling yeah uh which are things that a normal person could do i don't know if my parents knew uh when i said i was riding bikes that we were just gonna go ride to like a fucking swamp which is what we would do it's like oh cool now we're at the swamp

let's throw things in the swamp yeah let's ruin our shoes in the swamp yeah yeah one kid comes home completely muddy because somebody threw a rock that was too big in and it just splashed back and one kid just caught all of it yeah i remember yeah i remember the swamp um yeah your parents like how was riding bikes as like a wasp flies out of your ear it was good it was really good we're starving is dinner ready we rode to the next town over we were kids we lived in carvendale we rode all the way up to el jabal which is like for a young kid that's a far ride man that's like 10 miles each way yeah and and i remember we went up there to go bowling and like we got there realized we didn't have any money to go bowling.

So we played the claw machine for a while, the bowling alley and then rode home. And like that night I was exhausted. My parents like you are. What did you guys do today? I was like, oh, we just rode bikes, rode bikes, rode bikes to a new zip code. Well, my daughter. Who is three and a half, is riding a bicycle. And this is not-

Training wheels? No. She's riding a bike. And it's terrifying. So my son, to give you some context, he learned when he was probably six. He really learned how to ride a bike. Yeah. When he was between five and six.

And that's pretty standard, I think for most kids, like that's when you finally you're old enough that you're like, you're getting control enough of your body that you could balance on a bicycle. And he was also very hesitant to learn. It was during COVID. I would force him to go out. It's like the only sport where I was like, we're going to do this every single day. We only have to do it for 45 seconds. Even if it's just 45 seconds, I just want you to ride down to the end and back. And so like, it took us, it took us like a month to learn how to ride a bicycle because I would hold onto the bike for so long. Cause we'd only go up and down.

And then that was it. It was like, that was the lesson for the day. Uh, and so it took him a long time. Now he's super into it. He loves biking. My daughter, I guess the idea the idea of stretching out lessons across multiple days is fascinating to me because i feel like it was just like this is the day you are learning to ride a bike yeah and we're not going home until it's done i did i didn't want to force

it that much i felt like he would hate it forever if i tried to do it that way so i was like all i want to do is get you give you the basics so that when you see your friends riding again after COVID, you're not going to be left out. Like you're, they're all going to be wanting to ride bikes somewhere and you're going to say, okay, I'll go get my bike. And that's true for him. Like that's exactly what happened was he was like hesitant, hesitant, still didn't really like it. And then all of a sudden one day his friends were like, we're going to go ride. And he was like, I know how to do that. And left that day.

like we're gonna go ride and he was like i know how to do that and left that day but my daughter and maybe this is a product of being a younger child we a neighbor gave us a bike to use and they're like we have to dig out the training wheels i'm like that's fine whenever you get around to getting them she was like i don't want to wait i want to ride this bike now and so we i took her out in the street and did that terrible hunched over run next to your child where you're holding onto them as they ride. It feels awful. But she was nuts. She was like a crazy person about it. She was very frustrated.

We don't have a stick or a harness where parents don't have to hunch over. We haven't cracked that yet. That sucks. It really is. It's awful. It's an awful experience. Like you're sweaty. It's brutal.

Your back hurts. It really is. It's awful. It's an awful experience. Like you're sweaty. It's brutal. Your, Oh, your back hurts. Um, but, uh, we got out there. I was going back and down,

up and down the street with her holding onto one handlebar and the backseat. Finally, like I started even on the same day could let go of the handlebar and just hold onto the seat for her so that she didn't topple over. And as we're doing it, she's, she doesn't know how to pedal. Like there's, she has no no context for pedaling she's ridden a balance bike a little bit but she's no context for pedaling so she keeps like braking by accident like pushing back on them because getting the actual the fluidity of like constantly pushing your down with one foot up with

the other one is like something you got to learn and i didn't even think about that and then braking was like it's still a little bit shaky she's it's still a little beyond her like how to because her instinct is as soon as she wants to stop she just like throws her feet off the pedals and tries to drag them on the ground i'm like no no that's how you die um but she she's doing it and she's like getting super frustrated she's like crying frustrated and i was like well let's like let's just take a break and she's yelling at me like no no i want to do it again in a way where i was like oh this is that under like that uh scary quality that some people who are like obsessive have like that are like

obsessive about a sport or obsessiveive about something. Whatever they're doing. Where they're not fun to be around. But I think that it could make them. Like a really good athlete. And so. Anyway. She learned in like a couple days. She now rides a bike around. Still cannot stop to save her life.

Like I have to run and catch her. To get her to stop. But there's like i was so impressed by the fact that she did this but at the same time i'm like oh no like i don't want to be i don't want to be in a scenario where she plays a bunch of different sports we're on traveling team i'm already like looking ahead like 10 years we're on traveling teams like we're going around we're doing different things i don't want to have to be a sports parent as much as i like sports i want it to just be like a recreational thing that she does occasionally

and then let's go of i'm really scared that she's going to be somebody who's like obsessive about a sport what about being a sports parent don't you want um because i think like the the thing that pops to my mind is when you see those like the parents who are super into it that like yeah my daughter was really good at ice skating uh so i quit my job and moved to where the ice was best like the ones that have to completely uproot their lives. And just like, because my kid likes this so much. And also in the back of my mind, because this could be a real ticket to wealth and fortune and whatnot.

You just put all your eggs in the, my kid has taken an early shine to javelin or whatever. Right. Those are the reasons that I'm scared. I have a neighbor who's got a kid who's a little older who is like got a batting coach now he's like shows a real proficiency for baseball and like now he's got it the dad has to be like okay well the ordinary just coaches of that you would have for baseball are not going to be enough these are volunteer dads so he's like now i've got to like hunt out and find out who's a good coach for batting i need a good coach for fielding like i need a good coach for fielding.

Like I need to, I need to do all of this extra heavy lifting. I mean, there, there's almost no one in the NBA who's great, who didn't have like special coaches. It's, it's rare to see a, uh, an all-star NBA player who was just like, yeah, I played in my youth league and I played in high school and then I got into a good college. who was just like, yeah, I played in my youth league and I played in high school. And then I got into a good college. It's very often like we saw he was starting to get really good. And then he was getting better than his peers and better than what his high school coach

or his middle school coach could offer. And then we found out the best shooting coach in the world is in Shitsville, Idaho. So we sent him there. So now we live there. Now we live in Shitsville idaho so we we sent him there we so now we live there now we live in shitsville yeah and also the way that it dominates the kid's life feels like it's not fair to the kid like they don't they're not they don't know they like this thing because they're good at it but your job is to expose them to a whole bunch of stuff and get them used to being not good at stuff for a while. I'm like, and so if you,

and when you dedicate it all to one individual thing or just athletics in general, that can be, that can be the thing. It seems like you're robbing them of something. It's like, I'm just horrified looking at a three-year-old thinking of all these terrible things that could come because she's good at this thing where I'm

like, Oh no, I don't want to be in a situation where i'm i'm like i have to make the decision for you whether you should go on the field with an injury like things that have not even happened yet where i'm like yeah you should play you should play through it this all this comes from her uh wanting to learn how to ride a bike yeah i know it's that now you're you're jumping forward in time to like shooting her up with horse steroids in her name so she can yeah i'm doping yeah i'm helping her nationals at soccer her drain her blood and put in oxygenated blood so she does better i but like it's just like there's like these little these little things that happen with her like she's doing monkey bars. And that's like another thing where like, it feels really early for that.

Or she's doing these things with her body where I'm like, oh, you have a real mastery of, of your own dexterity. Like this is, I should probably nurture this, but I don't want to. But aren't you,

so you're a fairly competitive person and you did a bunch of sports and also trampoline which is is is fine for some people but let's not us men call that a sport uh can't you just uh you know raise her the way you were raised is that the fundamental challenge of parenting maybe that's ultimately what i'm saying here is that i don't does she has something in her that i don't recognize and i'm like oh that's scary like that's a that she has this drive that like i liked sports a lot and i liked sports that i was good at and i didn't play the other ones publicly until i was good at them like i would just really practice privately at And, and I think that's pretty normal for kids.

Like you, sports is just like another one of the things you do in addition to math and like watching or playing video games. It was just like another fun thing. And when it wasn't fun anymore, I stopped doing it. And I don't see that in her. I see her doing a thing that is not fun at all.

And being like, I'm going gonna fucking master this oh boy introducing the miller optics 2kw handheld laser welder it's so simple to use even a rookie can weld like an expert allowing you to boost your shop's productivity up to five to ten times more than with traditional arc welding processes. Expand your workforce so you can start doing more and making more. Get the Optics Laser Advantage now and start changing the welding game.

I, having no kids, I do understand. I recognize that as a fear that like, well, one day I will have a kid and they will show like an immediate aptitude for something that I don't understand. But it's like very clear that this kid is like a born chemist or coder or hacker or whatever. It's just like, oh, this is, this is this is gonna be i need to learn this to encourage them also and and the heartbreak when it when you're so good at a thing and and you don't score a goal or your team loses or you don't hack the

pentagon or whatever that that's going to be like a much larger heartbreak than when i don't score in in basketball oh yeah i mean i wasn't even thinking about that but you're absolutely right that's going to be very difficult when she's i mean i'm making all this up obviously i she hasn't done any of the shit yet but i just like i i see in her this aptitude where i'm like oh no all right all right i will do my best to nurture this but also i don't think it's a good idea like i sports in general are such a long shot that like i don't want her to dedicate herself this way to other things or like i don't want this to be like the very beginning of who she's going to be with sports and it's like she's just she's out there in the rain doing it and crying because it's not

going well but refuses to come in where i'm like oh man that is that's the drive that will get you there but but there's a lot of people that have that and then don't get anywhere and then all they have they have nothing to fall back on it's all hypothetical i don't know i keep reminding myself this is crazy but anyway the the main reason i asked why or when you learn to ride a bike is that she seems very tiny to me and this is my second kid i didn't feel this with ronan because i already had another one on the way when he was riding a bike as soon as i let her seat go and she was riding on her own and i was kind of like running with her, I was getting very excited.

And then I was like, I think you should try to ride to the end of the block and turn around and come back on your own. And I won't do it with you. And she was like, yeah, I'm okay. And so I let her go. And this little person just like rode away from me. And I was like, and it's the last one so i was like oh no this is this is having a big effect on me and i just let this person go and they started to ride away from me and i just like watching her get this tiny thing gets smaller and smaller i was

like i really wanted to just run this primal thing. I mean, just like run after her and be like, no, no, we're not doing this. We're not riding bikes. I think it's probably the same thing you get with like swimming or something where you're just like your kid is floundering in the water a little bit. And at a certain point, you just have to like take your hands off and back away. And I was like, I don't want to do this. I think that it's too early for me. Yeah, I mean, that's beautiful. As far as metaphors go, it's pretty on the nose.

Well, that's all I'm good at. In terms of in my life, the things that I actually notice, I'm like, oh, it has to be very spot on for it to actually affect me. You explain the situation to a therapist and you're like now doc here's what i think it means like no no no no i get it i get it man you're worried about your your child running away from you as they grow yes that's exactly right it doesn't help that uh i the other like right around that time I was having a conversation with her where I told her that I loved her. We say this, he's like, I love you all the way to the moon or those types of things.

And I was, I said that to her and she didn't say anything back. And then she said, I think when I get older, I want to go live alone somewhere. Holy shit. Okay. Yeah, that's fine. Whereas like Ronan, Ronan's's like i want to live at home forever and i'm like yeah that's great with me i'm fine with that i am so interested in talking to her now because when i met her she was she was too young she was fun and enjoying life but like a

like baby baby and ronan was already being a little gentleman who like remembered who i was and and was hanging out and being himself i'm i'm so curious to talk to her yeah she's she's very funny uh a very interesting like kid to be around she's kind of she's kind of mean she's kind of a mean girl a little bit um that's sort of fun yeah it's it's charming um in a way that i can't really indulge like i can't like support it i can't sanction it when she's not kind to strangers and stuff like that but like people on our block like she just is she's kind of mean to them not the kids the parents and i'm like sure well we'll work on that i guess because she knows the kids don't know any better but parents you have no excuse for being a dumb

shit um yeah we'll see we'll see what kind of person she ends up being it's possible i'm raising a monster i don't think so but you know i'm'm 3000 miles away and I haven't spoken to her in several years. I'll call you and I'll put her on the phone. We'll get to the bottom of this. Did you ask for more information when she said she wanted to live alone one day? Is that because I feel like that would be like, well, what do you mean by that? And where do you you think you want to live not even like taking your emotions of how it must feel as a parent to hear that from your child if if you could just like step away from that and just as as a curious individual ask right what that means did you dig into that well i i know big or did you try to truman show her and be like no it's scary's scary out there. Never go past the block. Well, I was like, I was just, I was asking her things like, well, where, where do you

want to live? Trying to like get a sense of where I'm going to move to. And I was like, well, what do you want to live? And she obviously doesn't know states or cities, but I was like, I was like, well, do you want to live in the woods? Do you want to live next to the ocean? Like these types of things. Did you tell her how bad the market is right now?

These things are things that didn't seem to matter too much to her. It was just that she was going to live alone when she was older. Like that was, that was what she wanted. And I was like, all right, I'm not going to dig into why yet. We'll figure this out. Maybe this is like, just like a like a this will pass but that's this on top of her wanting to ride her bike away forever it's like oh no i don't want you to go that i mean that was if it's any kind of uh solace or consolation at all that feels very familiar to me as the like definitely youngest child in the family and it

wasn't like uh i i feel smothered i need to get out of here there's there's too much but there there there was a bit of like there there's such a pre-carved path for you and certainly for for me growing up especially the youngest of three boys that everywhere i went there were two o'briens who had done it before me that everyone knew all the teachers knew all the everything knew about these other o'brien boys and you're the third one everywhere you go so it felt very early on, I had ideas, probably pretty private. I don't know how much I would share with my parents or anything, but I did have ideas that like, I'm going to, I'm going to go somewhere away. I'm going to go somewhere off on my own. And it became sort of louder thoughts, the older got and uh was thinking about i still

ended up going to to college in new jersey but thinking about my both my brothers going to college in jersey before me and thinking just like maybe i want to go to nyu or columbia i just like something where i'm not enough the the third one third o'brien just just somewhere different uh the and the couple of epilogues to this is the first college that i went to was a college called rowan i went there for a year it's in south jersey it was two hours away from the town where i grew up and i was in the theater department and the like before school even started there was like the theater majors all get together for like a an icebreaker session all the older kids meet all the younger kids blah blah blah blah blah and when i got there at this mixer and like said my name uh one of the seniors was like

oh you're the third o'brien because there were two fucking o'briens in the theater program already and i was like god damn it no no i'm not no in fact i'm i'm daniel joseph now that's my my new name and uh then i went to rutgers which is another jersey school and then uh not necessarily because i was seeking it out but because cracked had come a calling and they were based in santa monica i did fulfill that dream of like being the first of my family to move out of state to get very as as far away in the country as as you can get basically and live on my own out there for 11 years. And this is swinging it back to, if it's any consolation,

I'm very happy to be back in New Jersey now. I mean, I moved back from LA to New York for last week tonight. And then when COVID happened and we could be remote full time and I could theoretically live anywhere in the world like not jersey where where where my family is where my people are where where my roots are so uh i i bring this up to say like i think maybe it's natural being the youngest to want a child go away yeah and also uh it's not necessarily permanent.

And I am grateful that my parents never tried to stop me from exploring and indulging my independence. I think that that's the thing that made me leave was that I never got that guilt from parents of like, why won't you, you won't be there with us. From an early age, my dad would tell us all the time, when you get older, you're going to want to go live. Uh, you're going to want to go live somewhere else and start your own life. And he would say that over and over again, like,

you won't want to be here. You're going to want to go somewhere else. You're going to want to go away to college. You're going to want, and then after that, you're going to want to go live your own life're going to want and then after that you're going to want to go live your own life probably in another state somewhere like it was clear that he was like he was never going to be the other side of that which was please stick around please stick around with me i love you i love you so i never even felt that i never even knew that that was a parent parental feeling like that you want your kid when they're older to stick around and then now that i'm a parent i'm like oh i see he was really trying to help us he was trying to set it in our mindset

that you're like it's okay it's okay to go out into the world it's okay to go do that i would like to instill that in my children as well. Be like, I want to give them both options. I want to be like, hey, if you, you will decide later that you don't need us as much as you used to. It's okay to go off into the world and do your own thing. But of course not yet. Or if you want to live in your room your whole life and have me carry you to bed up the stairs. I'm fine with that too. I'm very strong.

I could do that. And so it's, I think, because both my brother and i did that like it was just the assumption was you don't stay here you go somewhere else it's not because he was like trying to get rid of us it was like he was trying to protect us he was like you don't have to feel any ties to this place we are your parents but that that's our job we're not you don't owe us anything. And I think that I will try to do that for my children. It's going to be hard. I bet you will. But I bet also, yeah, like when you're imagining the conversation where you're telling her

that it's okay to want to move out and do things, it's much later in your mind and later enough that like maybe it'll never happen like you can keep imagining this future version uh and then when you hear how a royalty is now saying i think i want to move somewhere where someone doesn't love me to the moon and back it's like no i thought i still had time Yeah, what? Right. It's tough to imagine now. Oh, she just, she looks like a three-year-old. She looks like she would never be anything other than a three-year-old. It's so hard to conceive of. It just seems like 10 years or 20 years from now, when she still looks exactly like this and is telling me these things, I'm like, no.

But yeah, I don't know. I think it's all gonna be fine it's just i i was struck by a lot of things all at once that i wasn't anticipating yeah and i was like oh man this is she wants to leave it's it's all gonna be fine she's got great parents and a great brother it's she doesn't have a really good brother she's very lucky in that everything's gonna be fine it's all the matrix anyway right and also like the world won't last for more than another nine years absolutely not yeah where are you gonna go what do you think you you're gonna go live in the independent country of the people's republic of texas get out of here where you can't go west of the i can't go east of the mississippi it's all

underwater now you can't go there you can't go any further north it's all one big volcano now we the world has changed yeah good luck winning good luck winning dictator musk's lottery to live on mars you don't even own a horse how are you no i guess we have to be the other way around you don't even like horses yeah that's that's a better joke um yeah and actually i kind of screwed up my dictator must think so if we can go back just get the whole run clean get it all please uh all Well, I think we're done here. Yeah, the show is quick question, but you knew that already. We are

recorded, edited, produced by the president of Podcast Operations, Gabe Harder. Our theme song is by the incredible Merex. Their digital album is available at merex.bandcamp.com You can find the show on Twitter at qq underscore Soren and Dan. You can email us at qq with Soren and Daniel at gcamp.com. You can find the show on Twitter at QQ underscore Soren and Dan. You can email us

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That's our show. Thanks everybody. Bye. Bye. I've got a quick, quick question for you. All right. I want to hear your thoughts on what's on your mind.

I've got a quick, quick question for you. All right. The answer's not important. I'm just glad that we could talk tonight So what's your favourite? Who did you get? When do I be remembered? Was it Edward? Word it over

Go to Wiener Oh forget it I saw a movie, Daniel O'Brien Two best friends and comedy writers If there's an answer they're gonna find it I think you'll have a great time here I think you'll have a great time here