Quick Question with Soren and Daniel - QQ ep 31 - The Case Against Childhood Educators

Episode Date: February 20, 2020

Soren and Daniel walk through their lingering feuds with childhood teachers, and which twitter jokes they wish they came up with. Also big thanks to Postmates.  Use code qq and get $100 of free delivery credit.

So, hello again and welcome to another episode of Quick Question with Soren and Daniel, the advice podcast that was meant to be a simple advice show that has somehow evolved into a strange meditation on modern male friendships, which is how I describe the show to people who I'm certain won't listen to it to fact check me. I am one half of this podcast, Daniel O'Brien, a writer, comedian, historian, currently for Last Week Tonight with John Oliver, and I am giant, giant, fuck it, I'm giant as always, with Soren Bui. Soren, take it away.

I love that you lost steam in the middle of your own accolades, that's where you're boring yourself. Yeah, I'm Soren Bui, sort of like a teen heartthrob. Really past his prime. Doesn't really have much going on anymore. That was sort of going to be my whole career and it never really panned out. Yeah. Any regrets? No.

No, I mean, I did it all. I almost got on Tiger Beat. I mean, I don't know honestly how close I was. I tried to get on Tiger Beat. Wrote a whole column about it. Tried to really drive some attention. And had some young girls tell me they thought I was cute. I mean, that felt pretty good.

Uh-huh. Okay. That was, you know, a thousand years ago. And at this point, it's just this long, slow decline. It's just a slow downhill to the end. Okay. Speaking of things that get worse with time, Bacon, how's it going? Hey, Dan.

It's going okay. Good. Bacon is our... What do you want to call yourself? Because we've been calling you business daddy and CFO and various other things. President? I don't know. What do you consider your role here? For some legal forms, I put co-founder, but that was just because I think we had to put that because I was filing the legal forms.

But I think all the things you guys say are okay. That's okay. But I think all the things you guys say are okay. That's okay. People, one person had a real, just genuine, honest reaction because they said, it was in a review. They said, I love the podcast. I don't understand why they have their CFO. And then in parentheses, he said, chief financial officer, I think on the podcast, he said,

if he just does business stuff, why do they let him talk? Which I'm also, I think, on the podcast. He said, if he just does business stuff, why do they let him talk? Which I'm also, I think, okay with that take. You should also add review reader to Bacon's long list of accolades. Oh, yeah, absolutely. Because that's the only way I find out anyone listens to this podcast. Thanks to Postmates for supporting Quick Question. When you need red wine at 4pm, sushi at 9pm, a breakfast burrito at 8am

and ibuprofen at 10am, Postmate it. For a limited time, Postmates is giving you $100 of free delivery credit for your first seven days. Download the Postmates app and use code QQ. Speaking of those listeners, we are, of course, quick question

with Soren and Daniel, and you, our listeners, prefer to be called QuickHole.com, a name I came up with that is a play on ClickHole, and one that I immediately refused to Google. If a website already exists, I'm not interested.

I wonder what a QuickHole would look like. I'm not interested. I wonder what a quick hole would look like. I'm going to Google it. Okay. I'll just sit here and vamp while you Google it. Beacon, I took a kickboxing class yesterday. I signed up for a kickboxing gym. Were you able to... Can you kick very high?

Because I found that whatever things I've done in my life has not prepared me to kick over my knee level, basically. No, I can kick higher than my knee level, but I can't kick very high. And also a thing that I'm finding that is really hurting my status as a kickboxing phenom is that I knock myself off balance when I try to kick. And I feel like any opponent worth his salt would take advantage of that particular vulnerability.

Because I don't fall when I kick, but like, only by the grace of God do I not fall. Yeah, I always think that like, if I ever was in a fight, I have one one good try to kick in me and then the rest of it would go downhill because of that what would you do uh like a front kick or a roundhouse or what's what's your what's your kick when i was a child i would always also love that you think that if you were in a fight kicking would even be on the table when i was a child i i would imagine myself doing a roundhouse kicks if i like I ever fantasize about being a karate situation. But now I've seen enough videos where I think the only move is run as fast as you can and try and jump forward kick. Because I don't think I could.

I think I would fall down. My hips aren't flexible enough. I would like to get really good at kicking. Because I don't seek out fights. I don't want to be in fights or anything like that but i felt like i feel like if i needed to uh i carry so much weight in the the lower half of my body and you get so much momentum just from twisting and and throwing your weight in a direction so i feel like i would be uh at my most lethal if i can just somehow coax my leg in the direction that i want it to be much more dangerous than if i'm

punching someone because i don't i don't have the best punchers in the world but i feel like if i could just throw one of these fucking tree trunk legs at somebody with with enough force then i could really do some damage yeah i feel like soren would be someone who's like sneakily good at kicking if you needed to i'm dangerously unflexible um i i can't do who is that dangerous to me okay yeah it can be a real problem do you want to know about quick holes i do uh so some some fundamental or fundamental some uh quick research revealed that quickholes.com is a site it's a dating app which is a really funny funny name for a dating app i mean like is dating in quotes yes okay um and uh but it's also apparently a scam that this is like a scam website and so there's the results are you can get, when you look up Quick Holes or Quick Hole,

you get quickholes.com and then you get a bunch of people saying, is Quick Holes a scam? So I'm not really sure what they're doing on the site that's so dangerous. But at the end of the day, that's what our audience prefers to be called and you got to respect it. You got to respect it. We can get into the show or do you have anything you want to chat about before we get into the very serious show that we do is that your dog no that's

that's i'm not gonna name what her apartment number is but it's it's her dog down down the way okay all right um i how's life and they're always like that they're always like that soren i have a question for you and i think but i can't prove it no i'm not done i think but i can't prove that her dogs have been peeing in the stairwell holy shit someone's someone's dogs have been that's big if true the worst dogs on the floor and so are those dogs do you think responsible for the note that that one guy left which Which note? So remember down at the bottom? Oh, no, no, no, no. No, that happened on the second floor.

No one up here did that. Okay. Is your dog okay? My dog is great. He's been staying with my parents for a while because I didn't want to pay expensive New York kennel fees when I was traveling to Thailand. And so my parents took him, but they're not going to just like drive up from North Carolina to see me and drop off Jackson when I get back from Thailand. So they're only going to come back here in mid February when they have cause to be here. So they've just had him for

weeks and we'll have him for the next couple of weeks so i've just been i've been like sans dog for the first time in a while is that good or bad it's i i really i mean there there are good and bad things like i i really miss his company i miss uh coming home to him and cuddling with him and i miss like he's a really great motivator to help me start my day because no matter what I have to get dressed and take him outside and that is a great way to to wake me up no matter what um I've I on the pros of his not being here I've managed to go out in evenings more than I normally do because I'm I'm such a home buddy and I'm always chained to him and this past week there have been days where I was like I'm gonna leave work and I'm gonna go in the direction that is not the one that is towards my home I'm gonna go out and I'm gonna

do things and I'm gonna see what life in the big city is like and uh and I did that and I don't care for it you sow the oats and it's done i i found that having been a father for a while that there are things that i used to dread that now i really look forward to um like traveling by plane alone is this crazy novelty to me now we're we're going with work on a ski trip soon and i'm gonna I'm not only looking forward to the trip, but I'm looking forward to the flight there. That I'm going to be on a flight watching movies by myself. I can sleep if I want to. It's just my time, even though it's stuck in a seat, that I just don't get any other time in my life.

And it's this thing that everyone else is like, oh, the trip is so long. And I'm so pumped. It's the same with driving. You're going on a work work ski trip i'm sorry to derail this yeah work ski trip speak on that so every year we try and do at least two trips there's an end of the year trip after we've done our last table and then there's also a trip in the middle of the year where we go off and do something together as a group, just the writers. And generally it's been a ski trip. I don't know why I'm like pussyfooting around where we're actually going. I feel like there's something in me that's probably right. And I'm just not, I can't articulate like why I don't want anyone to

know this. Oh, if we have listeners there, I don't want to run into them. That's what it is. Okay. Got it. Yeah. We, we go on a ski trip. It's just to get everybody unified, basically to people that you're going to have to spend all this time in a room with, uh, breaking stories. Like it's just building camaraderie so that you actually like the people that you work with, you know, like what they try and do with, um, those team building exercises at other jobs that don't actually work. you know like what they try and do with um those team building exercises at other jobs that don't actually work it's like no you take people on a fun trip that don't talk about work don't talk about team building at all and those people will naturally just in being proximity in

proximity to each other outside of the office will eventually find something that they have in common things that they like about each other right i've been skiing once before and uh it was really fun right up until it wasn't fun anymore and uh was it because you took a spill or was you just got tired no yeah i got tired like i i took a bunch of spills and was fine with them because like this is what i signed up for and then i reached a certain point in the the evening i guess where i'm at the top of the hill and i'm like well if i go down there's a chance i'll fall and i've fallen a bunch of times before and other times i didn't uh but if i just go to the like lodge then i i won't fall so i'm gonna i just reached a point where i've fallen enough times that it was like let me do the thing that i definitely won't fall or like i probably won't fall because let's be honest i fall

a lot and bump into things in general all the time yeah yeah no there's like an end of the day where you're a little tired and you know that just like trying to hold that edge is gonna it's gonna hurt your calves or whatever a little bit more and you just you're like what if i just didn't it's like taking your hands off the wheel and you just you're like maybe if i maybe if i crash it wouldn't feel that bad and so and you don't want to even get to that point you're like well why would i even risk that um i i thought for sure the first trip that we did like this i was like okay i'm from colorado i grew up skiing and snowboarding they're coming to my turf this is uh that i'm gonna be able to show off a little bit.

And everybody that skis and snowboards in our group is insanely good. They're all great. It's crazy how athletic everybody on the American Dad writing staff is. I don't like it. Like that was going to be my niche. Right, they're not supposed to be. Yeah, that was going to be my thing. And when everybody's at, i'm well then i'm

nothing i gotta find something else that i'm good at that's it's uh it's always depressing when i find people who are as good at writing or comedy as i am and also any additional thing yeah in the world because for a while i could content myself was like yeah i'd be in a stable relationship and married with kids but But I focused on comedy. What's that, Soren? You did them all? Oh, no. Then what's my excuse now?

Right. It really puts you in a really awful position when you see people who are good at the same things as you and some other stuff. Another handful of things as well. Right. When did you even have the time? Right. I chose to believe that you can't be funny and fit and handsome, and then Chris Hemsworth is just doing comedy now?

Oh, my God. And he's so funny. He really is. It's really such a bummer. Yeah. But, you know. Hey, Soren, quick question. Can I tell you something embarrassing and also true about Postmates?

There's nothing I want more than to hear an embarrassing story about a business and you. Okay, great. Here's a true thing. I would right this second unlock my phone, hand it to you, and let you look at all of my recent text messages. All of them. No judgment. And I would do the same with my photo roll. You can go through all of my photos. and i would do the same with my photo roll you can go through all of my photos i i stand by everything that exists in there right now i am genuinely embarrassed to let you see my postmates log because i it's it's a volume thing like the amount of food that i get from postmates it's a frequency thing the amount

of times that i do it it's the time of day thing right like i'm i'm embarrassed about nothing except postmates because i use them so much it's my personal food delivery and grocery delivery whatever whatever i need all year round postmates is there, and I've truly embraced that kind of life. It's 12.30 in the morning, and I need Shake Shack. Postmates is there for me. Right. I anticipate that I would find a lot of meals that exist outside of the normal three meals a day schedule. And like full meals outside of those.

Yeah. Like there, there are times where I've fully made dinner for myself and, and eaten it. And then two hours later, I still, I still want Postmates and, and I know there are other food delivery services,

but this one has never let me down. I'm sure you know this. The largest on-demand network in the U.S., and they offer delivery from all restaurants, grocery, and convenience stores, and traditional retailers. Any one of them that you could possibly want or need. And I do want and need from all of them at all times. I'll tell you that I recently moved, and I thought for sure living in a new place that I wouldn't use Postmates as much because I'm so close to other restaurants

hasn't changed a thing. I still use it all the time. I know they promised no more trips to the store and they mean it. Yeah. And it's 24 hours is the thing, you know? Like it gets later and later in the evening, and, like, it gets to a certain point where it's like, well, it would be silly if I started cooking now, but if I Postmated food, it would just show up.

It's been cold where you are. It's nice to have that option. You don't have to go out and get it. Like, we've had ads before, but'm i'm legitimately no no bs excited that postmates is advertising with us because it's a service that i genuinely use all the time and i'm very excited to tell our listeners that for a limited time postmates is giving our listeners 100 of free delivery credit for your first seven days. And once again, personally, I would blow through $100 of Postmates credits in 48 hours.

But you have seven days to do that. To start your free delivery, download the app and use code QQ. That's code QQ for $100 of free delivery credit for your first seven days when you download the Postmates app. Anything you need, anytime you need it, Postmate it. Download Postmates and save with code QQ. Should we get into the show? Oh, the show, yes. Yeah. Hey, so on a quick question.

Go ahead. Now that we're talking about jokes, is there a joke you wish you could steal from another comedian? And this is like, no one would know. You were the only person who would know and i don't even know if you would know that you stole it if there was just a joke that you wished you had written and it would have always existed as your joke yes i do know and i know what you're saying like when a good joke comes to you it is sort of like

you you grabbed a hundred out of the air as it was floating around you like it just like it does feel like it none of it feels like it's yours it's right like you were just like tapped into something for a second and it gifted you this thing um yes there is i can think of one like right off the top of my head from twitter that's always my favorite example of a joke on twitter and And it makes me chuckle every time. It's from Bakun. Do you know who Bakun? Yeah. Yeah. I already know what it is, but say it anyway. Okay. Bakun. It's B-A-K-K-O-O-O-N-N is the name of the person on Twitter. But he did a joke that there was a coloring book that had a picture of Nixon in in it talking to an astronaut and in the coloring book

uh it said president nixon talks to the astronauts on the moon and this tweet was from nixon saying i'm figuring your wife your wife's pussy you idiot she loves it says not to come back from the moon your son calls me dad it's perfect it's such a good joke it's so perfect we'll put a link in uh the description on the website uh which i don't know if we have for this podcast or not but if we did we would put a link to this tweet because it's not only a perfect sequence of words what's up you just described like a hundred actions that we i don't know how to do okay we don't have a website and i'm not entirely sure how to put links to things anyway okay all right so so we'll link it in the tiktok uh not only are the this is the sequence

of words perfect but like it if you see this picture of nixon this cartoon drawing of nixon for a coloring book the look in his eyes staring straight to camera smiling slimily yeah it's it it you can't look at that picture and not hear anything else in your brain other than i'm fingering your wife's pussy you idiot she loves it says not to come back from the moon is like that sequence of words it's so funny anyway um that's a great one that's the one that i was like oh i wish that was mine i feel like there are a hundred thousand jokes that i want to steal from john mulaney and already i feel like i i've stolen like delivery from melanie and mike rabiglia like those are those are my two people that have informed what i've done with stand-up enough that the very first time i did

anything resembling stand-up live i did a moth storytelling show where you get up and you and you there's the way that moth works i don't even know what's still going on i assume it is but the the topic is set in advance and it's something like something very simple and basic like cars or dates or space or water and if you have some story to tell you you sign your name up and more people sign their names up then can go up that night so they just like pick 20 of the 40 people that, that do it, that submit. And then they go and they do their three to five minute story, not like a standup set, not like just riffing, but like do a story on this topic. Like what, what I think of when I

think of cars. First thing I did in that was, uh, and it was like the first like standup thing I did was a moth story telling thing that was set to cars. And I went and I did my story and I was very happy with it. And it did decently well. I did not win moth that night, but like I got laughs and claps and walked off stage. And a woman came up to me and she was like, I don't know if you know this, but you really reminded me of Mike Birbiglia. And I was like, I know know i'm doing an impression of him he could sue me right now so i i've already stolen from him and from melanie in later years as i've i've come to know and fall in love with john melanie stuff but there's a lot of like segues that he does that uh that aren't even jokes that i i

stylistically wished were mine like he'll say things like uh i went to to church when i was with my parents because you know how you lied to your parents right and then move on to another thing and it's like those like those quick you know how you lie to your parents or you remember when your parents were old those like very small sly things that he yeah throw away jokes to yeah those things that just sticks in there i love so much but the the big joke of his that i wish i stole was from kid gorgeous his second to last second to most recent special when he just talked about student loan debt it was this whole thing about how he'd given a bunch of money to uh his school uh where did jack go georgetown georgian court school yeah he did he uh no yeah he went to georgetown georgetown yeah that's where millennia went and uh his school post-graduation had been asking him for money.

And he talked about how he'd already spent a bunch of money and was an English major. And how it's ridiculous that they're asking him for money now. You should just look up the bit because it's funnier than the way I'm describing it. But watching his bit in 2018 or 2019, whenever this came out, and it's just a person doing jokes about being an english major who spent a bunch of money on college i was like well i did that too why couldn't i have written that it's that was very millennia it just it's one of like there are plenty of jokes that i couldn't make because they reflect an experience that i didn't have, but there's no one better at Mulaney to make it seem like one of the harder things to do

is incredibly easy. And that's what I come away with from his standup where it's like, his segues sometimes are like, I like that you're all here in this crowd because it reminds me of an assembly. I loved an assembly in school and that segues into like a bunch of jokes about assemblies and i was like but but i also went to assemblies and and i also went to a liberal arts college and got an english degree and spent a bunch of money i should be able to do these jokes i didn't know they were funny until john told me they were funny can we can we start over and then I do those jokes? And you all just pretend you haven't heard before?

Yeah. He's absolutely wonderful. And I agree with you. He's got a lot of throwaway stuff. It's like jokes mean nothing to him, that they don't cost anything to make. And so a lot of it's just throwaway, and they're really funny ones that get thrown away.

And that makes you feel even more like, oh, comedy is so easy. Look, he doesn't even care about that joke. He's not even giving it a proper delivery. Right. I think my favorite one of those is he was talking about how it's a larger joke about how people used to get dressed up and wave at ships as they left ports. But the way he starts it off is like, I don't even know those people in the past they would wake up and they'd be like oh i can't believe i have to put on all these layers just like a a joke that no one in the past would be

self-aware enough to know that they're wearing more layers than we are today and it's a joke that never got like a huge laugh but is so funny to me just like a person being aware that they're in the past and that things are worse oh there's oh speaking of that there's a joke that i've always loved from from uh gary larson that i thought like i as a kid i was like i think i could have written this like i feel like i could have had this um and it's the joke where it's a it's two guys in hell and they're sitting down there's like flames people are being poked by pitchforks and stuff and these two guys are just like having a rest and their clothes are singed and everything and one guy's turning to the other one whispering

to him i hate it here and i love that joke so much where like, of course, and it seems so simple. It seems like such a simple path, but I didn't write it. Yeah. It's one of the things that makes me like very confused about comedy because like one of the reasons that I stopped doing stand-up altogether is I just felt like I don't really think I have anything to say anymore I'm just like another white guy complaining about problems and talking about his dick and like dating is hard huh and like we don't really need that anymore and you see so many people who are are putting inventive

spins on the the the form and what it can do. And it's like, yeah, what Jenny Slate did with her last special is incredible. It's an amazing special that is like also part documentary. And it's unlike anything I've ever seen before. And I'm so happy that it exists. And more people should be doing that. And we need more voices doing different things. And then at the same time,

Mulaney will come out with a special where it's where he's just like i really like house hunters and here are some jokes about it and just like very straightforward thoughtful uh airtight jokes yeah well well that's also good too yeah i think ultimately i don't have to stand up anymore either i felt kind of the same thing where it was like well i felt it even at the end of writing my column back in the day at crack where i was like what nobody wants to hear what i have to say when we were even thinking about doing this podcast we were like well who the fuck cares

there's two more white dudes having a podcast and now we've found out everyone cares yeah so really honestly that was the answer we should all get back into the things that we didn't want to do before because we thought it was too oversaturated and realized no we are the best at this yes there's no one better according to people who listen to improv podcasts in green land yeah but i mean like i don't want to be in a bubble so like bacon what do you think should we keep doing this podcast let's get some other voices in here no i financially no all right well he doesn't know what the fuck he's talking about don't listen to him he's a hater uh dan i have a quick question for you okay yeah go ahead what's the longest grudge you've ever held um oh shit i have to do

math now can i just say eighth grade yeah absolutely okay that's great let's see so that would have been 13 probably yeah i want to say i mean that might be it might be when did i When did I graduate middle school? I guess that's 1999, 98. One of those years. Yeah. Yeah. Well, so anyway, that was my only question. We can move on. Okay, yeah.

What was the grudge? It was, we're going to get real, and we're also going to get into, like, that that neither of us are particularly great at talking about uh but i had never stops us it certainly hasn't uh i had an eighth grade history teacher that was like a fun wacky teacher and uh i don't think he liked me and probably because i was i was a prick and i was i was going to be challenging him on things, but he had this, this weird habit of saying insane things. He was like, drop a thing out there. And we were all supposed to accept it because he was quirky. And one of the things, one of his little pearls was saying that the most romantic word in the English language is blueberries. And I was,

again, kind of a prick. So I challenged him on a lot is blueberries. And I was again, kind of a prick. So I challenged him on a lot of things. And that was when I raised my hand and I was like, what, what do you mean the most romantic words, blueberries? What could you mean by that?

Explain yourself, sir. This is, this is, I've been the exact same person my entire life. I've always demanded answers and, and satisfaction. And he was like blueberries. If you, if you you if you say it the

right way if you if you if you whisper it to a woman blueberries then she will melt she will be putty in your hands blueberries and i was like what do you i we all need more information and he was like try it try it right now try it say blueberries and be romantic again this is a world history class we're like what the fuck are we even doing anyway i forgot that it was world history all right and so i said blueberries and he said no you didn't sound romantic you sounded like a homosexual and the class went wild it's the kind of thing that like i uh what i should have done was talk to my parent or any other adult and be like hey i'm not i'm not positive that this guy should be saying things like that uh but at the time i didn't do any of those things because i'm

immediately embarrassed it's also it's it was really crushing to me because like i i had already been i'd met plenty of gay people by the time i was in eighth grade and like had no qualms and knew it wasn't bad or wrong and wasn't, there was like no stigma. These weren't like amoral people or anything like that. They were just like anybody else. I'm lucky that I was exposed to these people, this community early on enough in my life that I, that my reaction wasn't like no i'm not uh like it wasn't like uh any kind of angst to be associated with this community uh but i was also self-aware enough as an eighth grader in new jersey in the 90s so i was like damning yeah this is you you just uh you've just defined this entire year of school for me because children are the worst people in

the world and they're like oh good now we can all pick on this person for this thing that will distract from whatever thing i'm self-conscious about and it was you know not an entire year but but several months of that being a running gag among my friends in a playful way and also among bullies in a less playful way of of just like hey the even the teacher agrees uh to this novel idea that this clarinet playing theater kid is is not the picture of masculinity in 1990s new jersey and it was like i think it was like again i didn't like push back on him i didn't tell my parents they they won't know until this podcast comes out uh that was just like uh mr barth or whatever your name was it's barth you've you've made life very difficult me difficult for

me for the next couple of months and now i'm just gonna have to live with that and i did and like now I'm just going to have to live with that. And I did. And like kept the, like the kindling of that feud. I kept warm in my head for until now. Like it's still, it's still going. I'm still like,

I, I, I don't think about him almost at all, which is the, the, the best part about winning a feud. But when I do, I only think like oh i hope he's still like

a sad old guy who's trying to make 13 year olds feel bad while i polish my fucking emmy yeah that's that's a pretty good one dude i like i don't i don't have a lot of feuds but i have this one and i'm like i'm really ugly about it i'm very petty and small about it like like there's there will always be a part of me that was like i hope he feels bad i'm sure he doesn't think of me but i bet he does and if he does i hope he feels bad i guarantee he doesn't um but it's it's so rough when you there's something like uh being called gay where you're like you know in your heart you're like you're dumb enough to think that's an insult but then so is everybody who's laughing at it and now you're fucked a little bit because like socially

who else is there but all the people who are laughing like there's nobody left to to also know that thing with you it's so you're like you're now you're screwed by all these other kids who, who think that that's really funny. And they're going to continue to twist that knife thinking, thinking that you are upset about it for the wrong reasons. Right. Absolutely. Oh,

that's rough, man. You know, mine is also a teacher. Really? And it's even, yeah, it was Mr.

Barth. It was Mr. Barth. Yeah. When I was in sixth grade we had to read a book called decay did you ever read that oh yeah with uh timothy and that little boy yes so the basic story of it as i remember it is that there was a kind of like a rich kid on a boat um the boat crashes he crashes so hard he goes blind that's if that's right and no it does crash and then he's on a small either smaller boat or like or like piece of wood and Timothy who is the man he is with it was like make sure you don't look at the Sun because if you do you'll go blind and

then the kid looks at the Sun and goes blind that's right okay so yeah it's a african-american man and a young kid young white kid whose family is as i remember has some like there's some weird racial undertones where the family has like some preconceived stereotypes he gets to know this guy realizes that he's great and then the kid can see again gets his sight back and realizes lo and behold this has been an african-american man he's been talking to the entire time um and we were in a class with mr jennings that was my homeroom teacher he's teaching this class and i really respected him because he had once pitched for the minnesota twins and really i i thought that was yeah and kirby puckett of course was my idol so i was i was enamored with even anyone who had been so close and he uh he had us write the story as if the two had never met like what would happen when their lives and

that was just like this fun thing that he had in mind where it was like okay well the kids will have to think creatively it proves that they know the story what what happens is their lives go on if they never get in this shipwreck and so i had written this long thing and i was really proud of it and that was right around the time where i was writing things and being like you know writing is really fun and i think i'm kind of good at this and so i was writing this whole story about how they go on their separate ways how the kid becomes a racist and they it ends up he becomes that's not even like the major thrust of it but he comes like this party boy like a bruce wayne type ends up hitting somebody with his car and running away.

And the person who hit with his car was the guy. And I liked it. I got called, the paper, when I got it back, didn't have a grade on it. It just said, see me after class. And I was like, here we go. Accolades coming up. One of those private award ceremonies. I went and saw him after class and I can't, I'll never forget it because he was cleaning

out with one of the aquariums in his classroom with ammonia. And so like, there's just like this horrible scent in the air. And he's talking to me about the story and how he's worried about me. And he's like, he thought that it was too violent, that it displayed some impulses that he thought were dangerous and they'd like me to go see uh the psychiatrist at the school he says i see the pictures that you draw in class of course i was drawing people getting blown up by bazookas and things like that because i was i was 11 yeah what the fuck else you're gonna draw and uh he says like i see the pictures you

draw so there was like this other real shame to it as well where like he was he was observing me when i didn't think i was being observed and really made me feel bad about this story and that it was it was gross in a way that i had made something gross and it made me even more ashamed because it was something i had been proud of until that moment and i was so upset by it and i was like begging him not to send me to the school psychiatrist and not to tell my parents that i had written this and uh yeah and then the next year i had taken like a short story the teacher mr hanley taught us some uh we read a lot of different short stories and like we read some stephen king ones and some ones that were one called the pitchfork i think like where a kid kills his dad with a pitchfork like some pretty gruesome stuff and i was like wait a fucking second how come they're

allowed to do it and like there was and and these stories were really compelling to me and interesting and i was so relieved by this teacher who had given me this and then we wrote short stories in that class i wrote something else that was sort of dark and he was like this is great and i was it was the most comforting thing in the world. And it made me realize that I wasn't broken, that I wasn't wrong. And that Mr. Jennings might've been wrong.

And for this day, like anytime I write anything where I'm, uh, where it starts to like take like a really dark turn, I'm like, fucking Mr. Jennings would hate this shit. I like that.

But like, fuck him, man. Yeah. I still, I still think about every time I write something dark, I'm like, yeah,

think about Mr. Jennings. It's such a, it's, it's strange. The influence teachers have on us, you know, like I,

I, I feel lucky that I had a second grade teacher and this is before I was even like thinking way, way before I was thinking about writing as like a thing that would ever be in my future but we had some kind of writing assignment that was just the sort of assignments you give to second graders to see if they can think creatively was like just write just write something write a story write anything that occupies two pages and has a beginning and an end and i very vividly remember asking if uh if it had to

have a happy ending and my teacher said no and i don't like i wasn't a dark child i didn't there wasn't anything that i was trying to say about that oh my god there's freedom and i wrote a story about about bugs i wrote so many stories about bugs as a kid because bugs rule. And it was a story about like a moth and a beetle meeting and falling in love. And in the reality of this story, moths and beetles aren't supposed to mingle. You understand? It was a Romeo and Juliet kind of thing. It's like it predates the K. Yeah, yeah.

And they separated. One of them stayed in New Jersey and one of them went to Florida because in second grade, those are the only two places that I knew of because one of them is where Disney lived and one of them went to florida because in second grade those are the only two places that i knew of because one of them is where disney lived and one of them is where i lived so they separated and they would meet up every once in a while just like check in with each other and it was like a very sweet very boring very pedestrian romance and then at the very end like in one paragraph i was like like, yeah, they're going to meet up again. But then on the way from Florida, the moth got caught up in a storm and died. That's it. That was the sad ending that I wanted.

A long walk to go to get to that point. It's like, oh, I had to build up all this emotional investment. I really want to kill this moth. Wow. Yeah. But I was glad that I was allowed to do that. wow yeah but i was glad that i was allowed to do that i think that's that that's uh a better lesson from a teacher than no this is dark you should go to a shrink right and now my son is starting to do things that are creative in ways where like he's starting to draw actual pictures

and or he tells me stories at night like he'll just invent a story that it it makes me think back on those moments i'm like there's nothing scarier i think than than someone telling you like oh no just write anything like the the the options are limitless you can do anything and then you do it and they go well i mean not that like how horrifying that feeling is and how i never want him to feel that yeah uh the only other grudge i have and it's like not as active as my one for Mr. Barth, because like that's my definition of a grudge is like. I hope this person I hope something unfortunate is going on with this person's life today, which is like a terrible impulse for anyone to have, but like. I don't know. That's my definition of grudge.

I don't know. That's my definition of grudge. I have another one, but it's not a grudge, but just a thing that I think about for another kid. I was in fourth grade. He was in fifth grade. I've never had a spoken conversation with this kid in my life, and every single day for a year, we would pass each other in the halls. I'm going north. He's going south, and he would push me into the wall there was no explanation for why he was doing it it never hurt it was just like like if i like with no real strength behind just like shoved your shoulders the way that elaine does jerry on seinfeld that's

the kind of effort that he was putting into this. And it was really just like a dominance thing where he sees me and doesn't like something about my face or the way that I dress, which, you know, fair. And he wants to shove me into the wall. And then we both go about our days. And he did it every single day for a year. And I never pushed him back. I never like tried to counter it and use his momentum and weight to swing him into the wall and do something violent because i'm not a violent person and it was like so perfunctory that i would be like talking to a buddy of my walking down the hall and be like oh hold on hang back a second frankie's got to push me into the wall and then i got shoved and be like okay yeah so as i was saying pokemon right that's pretty wild you got to catch all of them uh and in this scenario i didn't pick i didn't picture you

actually walking with friends everyone's i figured you would be mincing down the hall playing clarinet like the pied piper of hamlin town it's just hamlin uh but yeah he pushed me every single day for a year and i was just like this is this is growing up this is what a part of life is for people like me i suppose and uh like i never confronted him later it was just like a like a person who has always existed in my head as like i i hope he's sad sometimes yeah it's weird that's like a it's such a weird instinct to when somebody devastates you in some way you don't just want there to be like some sort of come like a reckoning for them that they realize it and they feel badly like there's also the

punishment aspect of it that you really really want yeah like it's not just that they realize it and they feel badly. Like there's also the punishment aspect of it that you really, really want. Yeah. Like, it's not just that they wouldn't do that in the future. They'd realize they were wrong and they wouldn't continue to do that, but you want them to suffer a little for having done it. Right. I do, which is an impulse I really try to tamp down because that's not how I want to live my life.

And if, and when I have kids, it's not the kind of world that I want to bring them into And if and when I have kids, it's not the kind of world that I want to bring them into. Because there are some Christian values that I definitely want to uphold and instill in my kids, even if I struggle to have them myself. But it's instinctual, I think. I think everybody feels it. And certainly everybody feels it. Anything that happens with somebody getting canceled in culture, you don't just want them to repent like that's not gonna be enough you think they're gonna have to suffer for for what they did is like that's like the instinct that you have and you're like the basis is like i want them ostracized too i don't care if they

have if they if this happened a long time ago they become a different person since then they've admitted that they become a different person they're deeply sorry for what they did. Get them out of town. Yeah. But it's, but it's as, as, as fun as it is to, to nurse a grudge. It's important to remember that, not remember, but to know that like, if this teacher that made my life difficult for a large chunk of eighth grade famously an easy time to begin with if he ended up getting run over by the truck that was delivering the emmys to the to the ceremony where i won one it wouldn't it wouldn't actually make me feel better and it wouldn't actually make the world better it's it's that's that's the thing i try to remind myself does it make you feel any better to know that when he got that laugh from the kids

he probably thought yeah i got a good laugh off that one that like he was psyched to have a laugh from from some eighth graders um i think now that i'm older i understand him a little bit better that he, I was probably, again, like a pain in the ass, a kid who was always raising his hand and always challenging. I'm sure he thought like, they're like, now that I know teachers, there are plenty of teachers that wish they could humiliate their most irritating students. And I'm sure that's what his takeaway from this day was like, like, I don't think it was a slip or an accident. I thought he,

I believe he really thought like this fucking kid again, raising his hand. I'm just trying to do a bit about blueberries. I'm a world history teacher in Hazlitt, New Jersey. Things have not worked out for me. Let me just shut up and let me do my type five about blueberries okay you're not gonna let me do that then fine I'm gonna make life hard for you for a

little bit yeah I bet he walked away from that just like yeah that'll show him that'll that'll this is a this is a win for for me this teacher who doesn't get a lot of the adult yeah yeah yeah so the reason I asked you this question Dan is because the other day I called the police on somebody and it felt great. Who'd you call the police on? Before I co-signed this, Joy, who did you, what was the situation? This woman.

No, I'm just kidding. It wouldn't smile when I told her to smile. This guy, I was driving my son to school and this guy was like, I see him pulling behind a car behind me. Cause I hear a lot of honking and like, he felt like this car cut him off or something. And then he, uh, pulled him behind me as I was turning. We start down this other Avenue and I'm over in the left lane.

I see he's coming up really fast. So I get over into the right lane, right at the same time that he's also trying to get into the right lane to go around me, even though, you know, I'm trying to let him pass on the left. And so he comes up behind me and just throws on his horn. Very, very upset. Comes up next to me and is like doing whatever, whatever the manner, like the gestures are of like, you're an idiot. What were you doing? And I gave him like a whatever, like a brush off kind of thing. And then he pulled out in front of me and break me so they had to like swerve and then and then flew away with his finger up and i was so mad and i thought about it all day and i didn't do anything all day and then like maybe a week later i pull up at a stoplight i look over and there's a woman in a tesla who looks a little concerned and i look past her and it's fucking him and he's yelling at her and her tesla and he's doing the same shit he's talking about merging i think he's like putting his fingers together like like this is how we come to get like you're doing it wrong the same guy yeah absolutely positive because i recognize his car um and uh he then makes his turn a taxi is in his

way he honks at the taxi goes around it and then brake checks the taxi and i was like oh oh fuck right so i got his plates uh and call the police and i was like this guy's a real danger like he's brake checking people like uh something should be done something should be done yeah and um it felt so great to call the police on somebody in a way that like, where if I was to tell my, you know, even my 20 year old self that I did that, he'd be like, oh, you, what are you doing? Just like, forget it. I'm like, no, you don't understand. I have a son and he was in the car. We could have had to swerve into the dirt. Can you, will you describe brake checking for our listeners?

Oh yeah. Brake checking is where you drive out in front of somebody and then you throw on their brakes. It's called a brake check for like, it's sort of a tongue in cheek term, meaning, oh, are your brakes working? Let's check. And so they have to throw on their brakes. And because the car in front is throwing on their brakes, the person behind, because of physics has to throw them on even harder to avoid colliding with the car in front of them.

Plus, there's response time and everything. So, it's a really dangerous, scary thing to do. Did you not know what brake checking was? No, I've never heard that term. I understood it contextually, but I'd never heard that before. Did the police follow up? Did they let you know that, like, yeah, we shot him. He's dead

I mean I wish no they didn't even they didn't care they didn't give a shit but I still felt very good to report somebody like that and to tell I hadn't told on somebody in so long in my entire life and I told on somebody and it felt great well I'm happy for you

yeah it's like that grudge is dead i satisfied it that was one of your shorter grudges it sounds like yeah well it just made me think i was like man well because afterwards i felt very petty yeah uh and a little silly and i was like well should i have called the police like was that even necessary it's not and uh and then as i was thinking about i was like well what other grudges have i ever held on to i think i'm pretty open about letting stuff go and then i remembered mr jennings and i was like oh my god no i don't let stuff go i just hold on to it forever you've never had a grudge with like a peer not really not like a professional peer but like someone your own age at any point no i think i'm much more forgiving honestly i think that if they do something that truly wrongs

me i'm like well they're suffering other quadrants of their life i know what that's like um but other people for some reason that people that i don't feel like are on my team older people that are older than me or like much much younger i don't know somehow it's much easier for me to be like that's it i'm holding on to that forever yeah you're staying in here buddy and you're getting tortured torture staying in my mind and replaying this moment over and over. It's really tearing you apart how much I'm thinking about you. Well, I think that's it, Dan. I'm going to try and find our social accounts.

And when I do that, you and I- I mean, I could just send them to you. I have them real quick. I could just send them to you if you want. No, no, no, no. It's fine. I have them in a special place. It's just I can't always remember where it is.

It takes me a little while to find it. But it's important that I do it on my own you know so that i learned when you were in thailand we were we talked on the phone just a little bit and like we got cut off right as you were telling me something but you were describing to me um as a single guy like what you look for in a woman physically and i just want you to have the space to tell me and finish your story of like what are the attributes like you really like in a woman physically see so like I can't say smart right

like you can say big brain but I think even that's problematic. Yeah, I don't even feel good about that. Oh, man, I'm really in the woods here. So here's the thing. I would say physicality is like the fourth thing that I look for in a potential partner. thing that i look for in a potential partner uh but since you're asking specifically about physicality i will answer you uh i look for the the the hands of a nurturer the hands like someone who has very clearly held a baby before so like i'm a big hand guy sorry to say and you like big hands got it oh no and uh you can you can tell when a woman's uh been crying and i like that a lot because you don't want someone who keeps their emotions inside so if you got like really strong and deep cry crevasses in the face,

that's a big one for me. I like, I believe there's some science on how big heartedness leads to big shoulderedness. So like strong shoulders, that's another win. No one too tall and blue eyes if i find out that i've just described tom brady i'm gonna be very upset his big hands broad shoulders and blue eyes and a crier all right on twitter you can follow Daniel at

dob underscore inc but don't follow me soren at soren underscore ltd also Dan's DMs are open or you can follow quick question at qq underscore soren and Dan we also have an email address which is qq with soren and Daniel at gmail.com

we have an Instagram but don't don't fucking bother and we have a Patreon, which is QQ with Soren and Daniel at gmail.com. We have an Instagram, but don't, don't fucking bother. And, uh, we have a Patreon too, which is patreon.com slash quick question. One word.

And then Gabe, I don't remember what your, uh, your contact is. Uh, yeah, it's www.gabeharder.com.

Okay. www.gabeharder.com. He's our sound engineer, our producer. I didn't think Gabe wanted to be associated with this show. Yeah. And then one day he had a,

he suddenly had a website. Uh, it may not be up, but you can go look at a little coming soon. Banner banner. Whoa. And yeah. Cartoon dog eating ice cream.

Um, okay. I think that's everything. Right. Bye.