Doug French: Okay, we're on.
Magda Pecsenye Zarin: We are on. I look very blue.
Doug: Yes, you do.
Magda: That's weird.
Doug: You look like you've been, you have a very particular cinematographer working with you.
Magda: Yeah, it looks like I'm in a Steven Soderbergh film, right? And he's decided to go blue instead of yellow.
Doug: Right. It's not right. And it's not as green as, like, The Matrix or anything, but I guess this is the life after you've watched so many people exert themselves on the streets of Boston.
Magda: I'm actually, probably in real life, I'm a little bit pink because today in Massachusetts is Patriot Day, which, okay, it's a holiday and schools are closed, but there's still mail delivery. So I don't know.
Doug: Right, and the Red Sox have a very famous home game. They start at 11am on Patriots’ Day.
Magda: Okay, and it's also the Boston Marathon. And I discovered that the Boston Marathon runs right through the center of the town that I'm living in now. I figured that out. I guess I knew it. I just didn't really realize it until last night. Like, oh, I could walk down and go watch the marathoners. And so there were a number of–
Doug: You had a pretty good look. You had a pretty good vantage point from what I could see from what you sent me.
Magda: Yeah, I had a really good vantage point. I just was out sort of by the library and Thomas and I went and watched for a while. I put sunscreen on my face, but didn't think to put it on my arms. I was wearing a t -shirt and a sweatshirt and it was hot out there. It was probably 65 while we were there, but in the blaring sun by now it's...
Doug: Yes, only you would think 65 is hot.
Magda: Okay, well, I mean, we were out in the blaring sun. And so it was probably like body temperature wise, it was probably 80 by now, by the time I left, it was like, mid 70s anyway. So it was pretty hot. And also, you know, watching people run, like I was thinking they are going to be miserable by the end of it, especially the people who didn't start until 11. Because the way it works is that they have the wheelchair runners and then the professional runners, wheelchair runners and anybody else with special circumstances, like, you know, people, amputees and stuff like that. And then, oh, and people who are blind who are running with a guide, which, like, that's amazing to me. Like you can see them and there's just these runners, and the guide. Like, so you're a guide. You're still running a marathon and yet it's not YOUR marathon. That's very interesting to me, like psychologically how you would be a guide for somebody.
Doug: You have to be a very strong psychological mettle to just be a support marathoner. That's, that's a heroically selfless individual.
Magda: Right? Exactly. Like, because everybody else is like, “Oh my God, this is the pinnacle of my physical fitness!”. And the guide is just like, “Yes, this is just my job.” Okay.
Doug: It's kind of like the guy that you strap yourself to when you first jump out of a plane.
Magda: Except you're exerting yourself for 26 miles. And then after that, they have the professionals, and we got there just about the time the last of the professionals waved through. And then it was like, I don't know, a 20 to 30 second lapse where there was no one. And then suddenly the really good amateur men just stampeded through.
It's really kind of funny because then there were a whole bunch of them for a long time. And as somebody who has run events in the Detroit Marathon, I'm in the Detroit Marathon group on Facebook. And so there were some of the Detroit people who were running the race. And so I was tracking them in the thing. And two of them were running six-and-a-half-minute miles the whole way through. Like, I don't.
Doug: That's a really specific talent that I have never achieved.
Magda: Yeah, like I'm not even sure I could run a six minute mile if it was like one mile and my life depended on it. But I definitely couldn't run a six minute mile for more than like two miles.
Doug: Right, exactly.
Magda: Like, I mean, I think, you know, people can pull it out. You can pull it out for something that's very short term and is actually saving your life. You know, the same way they say parents can pull a car off their kid. Like, I'm sure you could run really fast if it was to get away from like,
Doug: Maybe if you were ahead of the Bulls of Pamplona or something.
Magda: Or lava or something like that. But 26 miles, man. I like, wow, wow. So.
Doug: Or if you're Amanda McGee, you're thinking about three vaginal births.
Magda: Yeah, it's true. She did say the whole time she was thinking, “I have had three vaginal births. I can do this.” But I mean, the thing is, as somebody who's had two vaginal births, you're not running while you're having vaginal births.
Doug: By the way, if you're keeping track, that's about five minutes in for the first reference of the word vaginal.
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Magda: Yeah, I mean, you know, in running, they say you have a limit and everybody's limit is either your legs or your lungs. Right. Like, you know, it's either the muscles: Can you keep your legs moving? Or can you keep your breath? And so it's always kind of managing that.
Doug: Okay, that makes sense. So where does chafing fit in there?
Magda: I do not know.
Doug: ‘Cause I would think it would play a pretty strong role. I mean, granted, yes, you talk about physiology, but discomfort, how soon after, you know, even if you've got strong legs and strong lungs, if you haven't done it before and every surface is abraded into oblivion.
Magda: Yeah, well, I mean, that's why people are so strategic in the way they get dressed for it. And they tell you never wear anything new for any race, like not even a 5k. You're not supposed to wear like new shoes or anything. And I mean, I've done 10Ks. I did a half marathon, like, oh, it has to be like seven or eight years ago. And I did not run the whole thing, but I ambulated. My goal was to ambulate on my own speed across the finish line.
Doug: Yes, you propelled yourself without assistance. Yeah.
Magda: Oh, and I did. Like, I mean, I made it across the finish line. I made it before the bus.
Doug: And you got a medal, you got something for it, right? You got something to wear around your neck afterwards.
Magda: Well, you know, there's a sweeper bus that comes if you're taking too long on the course, there's a bus that comes up and picks up people who are going too slow.
Doug: That says, all right, enough, we gotta open the streets again. Yeah.
Magda: Yeah, and I stayed ahead of the bus the whole time, so that was fine. But I mean, you can buy this goop that just lubricates you or like regular deodorant to just make it glide, so that you're not getting chafed by underwear, shorts, waistbands, bra straps, all of that kind of stuff.
Doug: Yeah, we use some of that on the big hike eight years ago now, the one along Hadrian's Wall. There were all sorts of anti-chafing products that we tried.
Magda: Yeah, yeah. I mean, I think people who are running long races like that think a lot about chafing and they also think a lot, not just about hydration, but about fuel. You know, people are always eating those goo packs or, you know, some people can't stand the taste of those and just want honey or maple syrup or something like that. There are people who swear by Bit-O-Honey candies. Yeah. So it's just, like, managing yourself.
Doug: I wonder what Annie would say. Speaking of callbacks to previous episodes, you know, Annie looks at 26 miles and kind of snickers at this point.
Magda: Oh yeah, I mean it's only 26 miles. But she likes to do these trail races through the snow. And this was kind of the opposite of that. It was blaring sun and whatever 70 degrees is in Celsius. That's, like, what, 26 maybe? I don't know. I don't know what 70 is.
Doug: Well, here's the question though: Knowing you and knowing Thomas. Did you bring a sign with you?
Magda: No, because we didn't know what we would put on the sign, and also we didn't even decide to do this until last night at like 10 o'clock. So...
Doug: Okay, because you know Instagram is full of signs people posted that they saw on the sidelines, and of course the New York Marathon is excellent for those signs.
Magda: Right. 70 degrees is 21 Celsius, by the way, I just looked it up.
Doug: Alright, well this is exactly, this is news you can use.
Magda: Yeah, I mean, I'm sure there were people with signs, but we were at the 10 mile mark, so I think probably all the witty signs that are just for anyone–they're like, “hey, hey, you're running a marathon” or whatever, you know, but funny–I think those are at the beginning and at the end, or maybe at Heartbreak Hill. We were at the point where the people holding up signs were holding up signs for their person. And, you know–
Doug: Right. “Meet me at the finish line and ask me to marry you.”
Magda: No, they were just like, “Go Kara” or “Michael, you've got this,” right? Which “Michael, you've got this” is a great sign because there are a lot of Michaels running that race and they've all got it.
Doug: Ha ha. Like one in seven guys is going to run past that and get a boost of energy. Especially in Boston, I imagine the Michael ratio is a bit higher in greater Boston than anywhere.
Magda: Probably along with the Patricks. But there were some kids holding out their hands so people could, runners could slap it as they went by. There was a woman, she was like mid 20s, she was kind of youngish and she didn't look worn out at all, but she ran by and slapped the kids' hands and then said, “This is horribbbbbbbllllllllllle!” as she ran by.
Doug: Oh yeah? Well, New York was full of signs that follow the theme of like, “I am so glad I'm not you right now.”
Magda: Yeah!
Doug: So I don't know if that's the same vibe in Boston. I wouldn't be surprised if it were, you know.
Magda: Oh no, people here, I mean, you know, Boston's so, like...straight-laced and earnest and rule-following compared to New York City, right? Like, New York's like, “You're running a fucking marathon.” And Boston's like, “You're making us all proud! You're running a marathon!”
Doug: Yeah. Okay. God loves you. Well, this is an interesting episode. This is, I've been looking forward to this one just because this has a very specific goal. You and I have had some experiences since we talked last. And this is a genuine catch-up because I know we've been texting intermittently, but for the most part, there's a lot to relate about how you and I each spent the last 72 hours of our lives.
Magda: It's a genuine catch-up.
Doug: Because you took a college trip to a school where our son could end up going. Although I'm, am I to understand that his top choice might not be his top choice anymore?
Magda: I don't know. Okay, it's just his personality. I believe that his top choice is still his top choice. This is his top choice. He was accepted, and we went to the Accepted Students’ Day, and for people who haven't had kids who've gone through this process, I don't know that this happened when we were applying to college in the 80s and 90s, right? But you go and you can tour the schools and then you apply. And then if you're accepted, they have these special days that are just marketing to try to get you to sign up. So some of the kids who go to the accepted days have already committed to the school and put down their deposit. A lot of the kids have not committed to the school. So it's like the dog and pony show. They bring the president of the college and they have panels for the kids and panels for the parents and they serve you a nice buffet lunch and the mascot of the school is there, if there's a mascot, and all this kind of stuff.
And so the accepted students day of what I thought was his second choice school happened the day before this one. And so I wanted to stack them and just say, let's go to your second choice in the morning. And then in the afternoon, we'll drive to your first choice school, spend the night and then go, because it's a good five hours from here.
But Thomas was like, oh, I don't want to, “it's too much.” He's like, it's too much to think about. So he didn't want to go to the accepted students day of the second choice school, which makes me believe that he's not seriously considering it anymore.
We did drive to the first choice school on Friday afternoon. Probably left a little bit later than we should have, and so we got caught in a lot of traffic. It wasn't necessarily rush hour traffic. It was rush hour accident traffic. There were a lot of accidents across the part of the country that we were driving through. And Thomas drove there. He said he would drive there if I would drive back. And he definitely got the short end of the stick because there were so many accidents. It was supposed to be five hours and it took us like six and a half.
Stayed in a hotel, found this hole in the wall Italian place that had probably the best eggplant rollatini I've ever had in my life. And we blew in at like 9:30 on a Friday evening to this Italian place. And then...
Doug: Wait, you didn't leave until 3 p.m. Friday? That is so on brand for the two of you.
Magda: It's absolutely on brand. It was like 2, 2:30, and we were just sort of getting starting to get ready to leave, and Mike said to me,
Doug: “Why are you still here?”
Magda: Mike said to me, “I would be apoplectic if we hadn't left in the morning.” Like if he had been part of this trip, he was just, what he was thinking was, “What is wrong with the two of you that you didn't leave in the morning??”
Doug: Right, well I'm thinking that, too, for what it's worth.
Magda: But he said that in a nice way and I said, “Well, what would we do when we got there?” and he's like, “explore the town, go to a museum, something like that.” But...
Doug: Thank you, absolutely. Not be super damn late looking for eggplant rollatini at 9:30 PM.
Magda: But Thomas said, “well, I'll explore if I decide to go there.” So it was really Thomas that wanted to leave late. I was ready to leave at 11 in the morning. I would have been fine.
Doug: He was procrastinating and you were indulging, although you're also a procrastinator. So yes, I think it was a good match of motivations at the moment.
Magda: Yeah, it's true. I mean, what I was doing at noon was reserving our hotel for that night.
Doug: Meanwhile, Mike's in the next room with steam coming out of his ears.
Magda: I mean, Mike's reserved the hotel already for the wedding that we're going to in July, so.
Doug: Well, I got to say that it's brief sidebar, you know, you know, I went to Louisville this weekend and quite the reverse is true. I mean, I reserved the hotel like three, four days in a row, just because I was reserving for two people.
Magda: Three, four days in a row? Oh, you mean in advance.
Doug: Right, in advance. And normally I'd be happy to fly by the seat of my pants if it's just me, but I was reserving for two people. So I wanted to secure it and you know,
Magda: Oh yeah.
Doug: The day of I was seeing deals for the hotel that were like 60% of what I paid. Motherfuckers.
Magda: Yeah, that's irksome. That's really irksome.
Doug: Anyway, so you got to college town, USA.
Magda: College Town USA, and I had eggplant rollatini. He had spaghetti with artichoke hearts and shrimp. He said it was great. And we got to the hotel, and the hotel was totally fine.
Doug: These are details that are not interesting.
Magda: I mean that there was nothing interesting that happened at the hotel at all, which is a delight. An absolute delight.
Doug: Right. Well, after a, yeah, after a fraught ride, you definitely don't want to have a lot of shit happen when you're trying to go to bed.
Magda: Yeah, well, I mean, sometimes these stories, you know, like you get a last minute deal at a hotel and sometimes it's just that the hotel isn't the hotel of choice in that area to have been booked by people before. So they've got some extra rooms, so they put them on sale. But sometimes you look at the last minute and you get a deal and it's because the hotel is bad. In this case, it was just the former. Like, it was totally fine. Our room was delightful. The temperature was fine. Everything that you expect about a hotel room.
So we get to campus and this campus is idyllic. Like when we toured last fall, Thomas was like, wow, this campus is gorgeous. And I have to say that it definitely looks like when a character on a TV show or a movie goes to a small private college, especially one on the East Coast, this is what the campus looks like.
Doug: Well, it is really pretty. And I think the first really warm spring weekend was a great time to go see it because everything's about to just start blooming again. So I'm sure it was like just getting green.
Magda: Yeah. A funny thing was, I joined a couple of the groups on Facebook for parents of accepted kids for some of the colleges that he was accepted to.
Doug: Of course you did.
Magda: Well, cause I wanted to find out, right? Hmm.
Doug: How many of those have you joined by the way? Have you joined the other one too?
Magda: Yeah, I joined one for this one and for the second choice one.
Doug: So it's just the two. Okay. I guess we should thank Thomas for limiting his choices to those two. Otherwise, you'd be a part of like 18.
Magda: Right. Well, he I mean, he did apply to other schools and get accepted to them. But I was like, realistically, like, if it's his third choice school, he's not going to go there. I don't need to be wasting my time trying to out-mom other people by joining all these groups. So.
Doug: Right. Well, he's still getting a shit ton of mail here from all the other schools that accepted him saying, “Welcome. We're so happy to have you here. Please enjoy this pennant. Please enjoy all of this swag. We have refrigerator magnets. We have stickers. Welcome, welcome, welcome.”
Magda: Well, all he got at the accepted students’ day was a t-shirt. But so in the parents group, in the group for the parents of the accepted kids, not, this is not the group of kids who are going to the school, which you only advance to on Facebook once your kid has committed.
Doug: Once the check clears, yeah.
Magda: So these are still the looky-loos. Somebody posted anonymously last week that they had gone on a tour of the school the weekend before, and they were so disappointed. They were absolutely disappointed in the lack of effort that the school had put into things. And number one, their number one problem was, of all the schools that they had toured, this school had the least developed landscaping, and everything was soggy and brown the weekend that they were there. And so apparently they were really upset with the weather and with the climate zone that the school is in.
Doug: Ooh. So they're heading farther south, it seems.
Magda: Yes. Another thing that they were very upset about was that instead of having to sit through an hour-long presentation first by someone in the admissions department who was going to tell them all the stuff that is right there on the website, and THEN go on a tour, they just came and were assigned a tour guide and went on a tour right then without the big show ahead of time. And so the basic facts about the school that they would have been told by the admissions director, they had to look up.
I'm sorry, but that was one of the things I liked about this school was we didn't have to sit there having somebody run through slides of all the crap that we had already looked at on the website. I mean, like, I don't know about other people, but when I have been looking at schools with either of my children and my stepdaughter, one of the things we do is go to the website of the school and look at their About section and look at their numbers of all the stuff, right? So I guess I just assumed other people did that. I liked that we got to skip it at First Choice School and just, there was a tour guide who was a student and we could pepper her with questions about all of our specific stuff because we already knew the, you know, it's like whatever school, “X school by the numbers.” And, you know, but we already knew that stuff. So and then there were some other complaints that were of the same ilk, like, I don't know, the sky was blue the day they came and they like it when it's purple, whatever, right?
Doug: Oh, I don't get it yet. Who needs to hear this? Who cares?
Magda: And so all of these people are somehow trying to please this anonymous poster and are like, “Oh, it rained the whole time my son was on a tour, but he's, but he still had a great time there,” right? And I said, “I'm wondering where the other schools you looked at were located, because it's not actually that common in the garden zone that this school is located in to have things be green at this time of year.” And then I said, “I appreciated not having to sit through the presentation. So I guess it's just a matter of opinion. And it's totally OK if this isn't your school. Like, nobody has to like anyone's school. And just because you're in the group,
Doug: Oh, you picked a fight with her?
Magda: Just because your kid was accepted there doesn't mean you have to actually like it. And so. Yes!
Doug: Well, this is an interesting compulsion. You had to mix it up with her, right? Why not just let it go?
Magda: Like everybody else was trying to apologize for the school to this person who was gutless enough to be anonymous about it. And also, like, if you don't like a school, just leave the group. Don't go to that school. Who cares? There's a lot of schools. Your kid got accepted to a gazillion schools.
Doug: That's what I'm saying, so why not just let that happen? Let her filter out and go down to Miami and...
Magda: Well, nobody, nobody else was telling her, “Don't let the door hit you in the ass as you leave.” Everybody else was like, “Oh my God, your kid's gonna love the school if they come here. I swear to you!” right? I'm like.
Doug: Well, people need to be right, right? It's like, wait a minute, how could someone not like what we like? We like this school, we're gonna go, if she doesn't like it, she has to be convinced to like it, and that way we're right. There's such a need to validate that way.
Magda: But I mean, to me, it's just so, it's just so unseemly. Like, I'm never going to talk anyone into wanting to go on a date with me, and I'm never going to talk anyone into liking me either. If you like me, I'm thrilled about that. If you don't like me, like, that's fine. There are, you know, how many other billion people in the world to be friends with. So, this anonymous...
Doug: I wonder how excited Thomas is that he doesn't have the same last name as you do.
Magda: Probably. So then this anonymous person pushed back on the whole thing. And so then I said, “I'm wondering what it is that you wanted to happen by posting this in this group. Did you want people to defend the school? Did you want people to tell you you were wrong? What was it that you were looking for by posting this?” And I got 15 Like reacts on that and the person didn't respond back to me.
So anyway. Knowing this, Thomas had heard the story, because I had told somebody the story in his presence. So we walk onto the campus and we get out of the car and we follow this other group of parents up to the quad. And this whole place is so hilly. Oh my God. So hilly. Your calves are in amazing shape if you go there for even a week. And it had just stopped raining. And so the birds were kind of going nuts. And Thomas just goes, “I really am not sure about this campus because the birds are so loud.” And it made me laugh because it was just like the perfect, like, the kind of random stuff that people get all cranked up about. But then, you know, like the whole, the day was great. They check in and they give you the t-shirt and the lanyard and, you know, all that kind of stuff. And then you go have breakfast and it's this award-winning, like, best college food in the state sort of situation, and their dining hall looks like Hogwarts and you know. And then the presentation by the college president who's like a college president straight out of Central Casting, right? And so, you know, she's got all these amazing things to say and she's sort of stately-but-approachable and you know, her doctorate is in like social science, some–
Doug: Oh yeah?
Magda: –whatever. And then they split up the kids and the parents. So the kids would go to a panel of kids and parents would go to a panel of parents. And I ended up making a friend on the way there and we sat next to each other. And then we go into the parent panel and some of these parents are asking questions that are basically, somebody actually asked, “If I want to call you up and ask if my kid is okay, am I allowed to do that?”
Doug: Well, that's the age of parental advocacy now, right? It's all about the helicopters are still about to land, right?
Magda: I just...I mean, okay, so like on the one hand it's kind of funny, but on the other hand, like that woman is really, I think, conflicted, right? Because I think everybody wants their kid to go off to college. And everybody's trying to find that line between, you know, your whole parenting career, you're told that you have to be on top of everything, and that you are the one who has to advocate for your kid and you have to try to help them fight through the noise of all this other stuff and make sure everything's okay for them. And so I'm imagining it's gotta be really horrible for some of the parents who haven't had, maybe didn't have an example of how to sort of let go slowly, or didn't feel okay with it, or weren't getting any kind of positive feedback about letting go slowly. The idea that you'd be on top of your kid the whole time to make sure everything was going okay and they were safe, and then like suddenly the next day you send them to a place that's not near your home that they sleep overnight and suddenly you're supposed to just completely let go. I think that's got to be completely terrifying to people.
Like, I feel like I should write a book or do a course or something about “How to let your kids go out of your house without losing your mind while still knowing that you are a good parent.” Because people just have a big problem with that. And I think it's one of the things that I let myself pre-struggle with, if that makes any sense. Like I don't remember if you knew.
Doug: Hmm.
Magda: Or remember how nuts I was when our older one was like a sophomore in high school. I just had this blinding realization one day in the fall of his sophomore year that he was going to be out of the house, I thought forever. Which is funny because he's gone out and returned and out and returned and out and returned and out and returned a lot of times, but I think he's probably gone for good now.
And I had a real crisis about it, but I let myself have a crisis. I was like, oh, better now while he's still here than later when he goes off and I'm like crying in my beer all the time because I don't know how to be his off-duty mom when I've been an on-duty mom for so long. So. Yeah.
Doug: Well, it's muscle memory. Yeah. You get 21 years of muscle memory that you're trying to get rid of or 18 years. And I mean, I do remember that. And I think I relate to that now because I think the physicality of my situation, just having no kids around for the first time ever. I relate to that. I think I've, I think I've processed it a bit. Um, but I do remember when you went through that and I think, um,
Magda: Yeah, exactly. Well.
Doug: That's a, that a lot of people are going through that now because the nature of our parenthood was so much more hands on. That's what made it that much harder to let go of when the time came, which is why you get college professors that we know saying, I get calls from my students’ parents, you know, a dozen times a week. And they have a script. They have a whole, they've been trained how to deflect that.
Magda: Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah.
Doug: Which is maddening and saddening and you kind of want to let the kid get to a point where they can advocate for themselves in a way. That's how you get by in this world, especially in the college context.
Magda: And I think, you know, like there's a lot of temptation to put it down to the individual parents, like, oh, you just don't want to let go, or, oh, you just don't know how to let go. But the fact is the culture has been reinforcing for us the idea that we are the only thing between our kids and disaster, right? That anything horrible is going to happen to them. They're going to be the victim of a school shooting. They are going to die by suicide. They are going to get on drugs. They are going to, like, anything's going to happen to them and.
Doug: You know what's compounded as well though, is that because there's been this phenomenon of a distrust of authority and a distrust of professionalism. You know, you tend to think like our parents deferred to the professionalism of the educators and had faith that they would do their job and do it well. And I can't speak for you, although I'll, I mean,
Magda: Yes. Yes. Exactly.
Doug: I, you know, you feel now, you know, it's now common knowledge that no one knows whatever the hell they're doing, maybe airline pilots, but that's about it. But there's so many stories of like rampant corruption and incompetence that you're much less likely to give an educator the benefit of the doubt when your kids are in their hands. And so there's that anxiety as well. That makes you want to just hover over and say, “dude, do your job the way I want you to do it,” which is not healthy either.
Magda: Well, okay, you and I have a kid who did not even have a counselor of any sort his senior year of high school, during which his high school had four different temporary principals, and the same superintendent that couldn't get a single, one single principal in for the entire year was voted out on no confidence, and now it turns out that there is a $25 million deficit. So I would say that some of our mistrust of professionals is based in reality.
Doug: Oh, it's warranted for sure. Yeah. You know more about how horrendous, I mean, it's only getting worse here as you know, and the town is apoplectic about it. And it's, you know, I think part of it is thank you, Betsy DeVos, the whole charter school advocacy, which is just starving public schools and people are really pissed about it.
Magda: Yeah, people are really pissed about it. So, I mean, I really don't think this is about individual parents being nuts. Although when the person really said, “Can I call you up,” right? Like, I mean, I'm glad that she said it because she needed someone to say to her, “Yes, you can call us, but we may or may not be able to tell you anything about your kid. But we can help, like, if you really are worried about your kid, we can help you, like we can have a meeting with you on the phone and your kid there. Basically we can facilitate a meeting between you and your kid.” And that I think is much more useful for the parent because what the parent's really trying to say is, “I'm scared that my kid isn't going to tell me what's really going on with them anymore.” And I think you and I had the luxury of having a first child who told us all kinds of stuff, like even stuff that we didn't necessarily want to ever know. And so there wasn't that fear. I never had that fear that something was going to be going on with him that was going to be troubling him that he wasn't going to tell me about. So.
Doug: Well, at least he's smart enough to wait until he's done these things before he tells them he did them.
Magda: Yeah, but I mean, I know there were dozens of other parents in the room who were really wondering, like, how are they going to stay connected to their kids enough, but without hurting their kids? And I also think it's true that the questions the parents were asking in that group are a reflection of the parents and their concerns much more than their kids. Like, it's not necessarily true that a parent who is worried that they're going to have to call the office to find out how their kid is has a kid who's not going to tell them everything, right? It's just, what's your perception of the situation? And there was somebody who works with kids at this college thing who said, “a thing that this generation has going for it that we did not, is that this generation is very, very, very aware of the importance of mental health and the fact that they can get help for mental health.” And she said that one of the things she has been delighted to see is that it is much more common for kids now, if they start feeling like they need some help with their mental health, they or their friends will just send them in to talk to somebody. And that that's a good thing. And I think that alone is really comforting to parents because you just don't want to think about your kid alone and sad and scared and lonely and you know, I mean, like, everybody has to struggle, but you kind of don't want your kid to have to struggle that much.
Doug: Well, you do and you don't. I mean, I think the whole point of struggling is to figure out how not to fail. I mean, you don't want to pave the road for them. The idea is you develop agency when you know you can handle struggles and you shouldn't be, you know, people fear struggle, but struggle’s the point.
Magda: Yeah, well, you know, our older child pointed out to me years ago when he was like 14 or 15, he said, kids aren't allowed to do anything that's genuinely dangerous anymore. So they just grow up kind of being veal in a pen and then they're shoved out.
Doug: Yeah! Although he did.
Magda: And so they overreact or underreact to it. Like, you know, I mean, kids now, they don't even necessarily get to climb trees because you climb a tree and you can fall out and break your legs. And kids used to be able to play with knives and light things on fire and all that kind of stuff. And now they really can't. And so the kids don't know how to manage that. And sometimes they'll overreact or underreact to that when they do get out into a situation. But I think even worse than that is that the parents
haven't had any ability to trust that if their kid is out of their sight and not being tracked on Life360 or some other tracking device. If their kid is away from them and they don't know where their child is, they haven't had the experience of their kid coming back home safe.
Doug: Yeah, but you can't raise a veal because veal become veal parmesan.
Magda: Right. Well, yeah, it's true. But I mean, OK, so I kind of looked at a lot of this when our kids were little and I would set up situations to teach them to wait. That, you know, like if they communicated what they needed from me and I said it and acknowledged it, it was coming, even if it didn't happen exactly right then. And I started when they were infants because I wanted them to develop the ability to tell when they had been heard, when the message had been received, but also to be able to wait and not to get frantic about things and to know when things were going to happen in the right order. But I also built in situations in which I would have to let them go around the corner where I couldn't see them in little ways so that by the time they were able to be really away from me, you know, by the time they got their driver's licenses, that kind of stuff, I was not panicking every second because they had been away from me before and had come back fine. They had done things that maybe were not super-smart, but were fine. And so we were kind of growing together and I was sort of, you know, giving myself these little moments of having to stretch so that it didn't get to be at a point where suddenly I had to have this enormous leap of faith that other people would take care of my kid. And I think a lot of that's missing in the culture now. It's just not the way it used to be.
Doug: And nowhere is that better on display than in the Facebook groups.
Magda: Yeah, yeah. So anyway, I mean, the weekend went fine. He loved it. I thought it was great. And he is not willing to commit.
Doug: So he has a couple of weeks, right? They want their money by May 1st.
Magda: I was like, when are you gonna? And he said, oh, this is probably going to be the school. I'm just not ready to make the actual decision yet.
Doug: That little squirrel. Yeah.
Magda: And I said, “What do your father and I have to do to put you into this school?”
Doug: “What do we gotta do to have you drive this school off the lot today?”
Magda: Exactly. Exactly. So.
Doug: You want the undercoating? Do you want the free SiriusXM for six months? What do you need?
Magda: Yeah, yeah. So my real only complaint about the whole situation is that we went out for ice cream at the ice cream place right off campus when we were done. And I apparently am 80 years old now because the ice cream cone they gave me was way too big.
Doug: See, where did Thomas learn to find his little piddling complaints? I wonder.
Magda: Right.
Doug: That and the birds, and this also fuels the speculation. This is why Thomas gets along with cats so well, because the birds are out here as well, and Harry the cat is out of his mind every morning listening to cats and demanding to be let out and stare up at them. So I do think that Thomas and the cat are merging into the same person.
Magda: Thomas didn't actually think the birds were too loud. Thomas was trying to make me laugh by coming up with a complaint that is the exact thing that some of these nutjob parents in the parents group would say as a reason for rejecting the school. So, no, he was joking. He's a comedian. He was always trying to make me laugh. Oh, the other funny thing I found out.
Doug: Oh, I didn't pick up on that. I feel dumb. Okay.
Magda: Oh no, he's good. He's got that line. He walks, he walks that line. He's very, he's very clever.
Doug: Well, the thing is, I know he is, but that is a complaint that is just too realistic for him to actually say. He would pick something like that, like the Seinfeld approach. Like he can't, I can't date this woman because she eats her peas one at a time.
Magda: I found out that there are six improv comedy groups on that campus and there are about 2400 kids total.
Doug: Oh, he's slowly going there. What are you waiting for? Jeez.
Magda: Six improv comedy groups, which leaves me to believe that improv comedy is to the ‘20s what acapella groups were to the ‘90s.
Doug: Yeah, I guess it's funny. It's weird to read to refer to the twenties as our current decade and not, you know, flappers and the Charleston.
Magda: Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So what happened with you? What happened with the whole, like the big friend date, big friends weekend away?
Doug: Okay, well then. This was the big friend date. Well, it was interesting. I was like, for, it's a bit of backstory. There's a guy in town that I've been casually just getting drinks with periodically. And, you know, we developed a rapport to the point where we meet rather regularly, and this was an experiment in “Can older men make friends in their fifties?” And so it came up, we both enjoy, we've both been to Louisville before to like, tour the distilleries for bourbon, and we wanted to go back. So we're like, all right, let's go. Let's just drive down there and see what happens. So this was a big step because in any situation, any relationship, romantic or otherwise, traveling with someone is going to change the whole thing. You know, it's either you take it to the next level or you don't because there's a level of intimacy there that you're kind of forced into because you're in the same car for 12 hours.
Magda: Oh yeah.
Doug: So yeah, it was five hours down to Louisville and then an hour over to Lexington and then a five hours back up or so minus, you know, detours and things. Well, the brewery, the distilleries are all over the place. They're not just in Louisville. Usually you go down to these cities and those are your home base, but then you venture out. There are like a handful of distilleries in the cities proper, but most of them are way out in the middle of nowhere. Like Bardstown is a big town. That's where the festival is.
Magda: Wait, why did you go to Lexington? What was happening in Lexington?
Doug: Our two home bases were Louisville and Lexington. Lexington I'd never been to before. It's a big college town, University of Kentucky is there, and our hotel was right next to the campus. So we were surrounded by constant reminders of people one third our age out having a good time.
Magda: Did you guys wear Oakland University t -shirts while you were there?
Doug: Under what circumstances would we ever do that?
Magda: You're both from Michigan from not that far from Oakland University. Oakland University has a fantastic logo. They have very scary golden bear.
Doug: No, well this guy, all he wears is car-related t-shirts.
Magda: Car-related t-shirts like that say things about cars? Or car logos?
Doug: Yeah, he is a Michigander. He's a car guy. He is a car guy and he drives the pimped out, he has a new EV. I didn't know we were driving an EV down there, but he has this super sweet one. Just got it. He leased it about three months ago. So he's still learning how to use it. And this was his first long distance trip. That's one thing to drive around the charge. You have a maximum range of about 360 miles.
Magda: Okay. Is it a plug-in EV or is it an EV hybrid?
Doug: Yeah, it's a plug-in EV.
Magda: Oh, so you guys had to plug in and charge on the way.
Doug: It's battery or bust, exactly. And you have to use apps to find out where the stations are. And then once you get there, you have to hope no one's using them. One place we got to, we're like, okay, we're here. And we had to wait for some guy to get out of the spot so we could use it. Which was interesting. I mean, that's part of the discovery as well, because I want to have an electric vehicle, but I've always eschewed getting one because I really need to be able to get 12 hours east if I want to. And you have to settle in. In my case, I would have to factor in at least another couple hours of stops to change. You know, I have to charge at least twice to get all the way out there. And it's just not practical for the moment. But this thing, the amazing thing about it is, I mean, he is a lead foot.
Magda: Yeah.
Doug: And he routinely went 95 miles an hour. He, if you're, if we're on a two lane, two lane highway and he's traveling behind someone who's only doing 70, he's like veering out and this car has so much pep. It's on the lowest possible setting. And it's just, you go because there's like, there's.
Magda: Really? Okay, that's not common for an EV. What kind of car was it?
Doug: It's called a Lucid. Lucid Air.
Magda: Lucid Air. Lucid is the auto manufacturer? Wow!
Doug: Yeah, and they're being very aggressive with their leasing packages. He's got a warranty out the wazoo. Everything's free as long as he leases it. And it's a great way to get around. It was, but it's definitely, it's a whole new level of muscle memory because you can't just look around for a gas station. If you're low on gas, you have to look ahead and you have to find out where the charger is. You have to prepare the engine to receive the charge.
Magda: So there's like foreplay involved with charging the car? It's like, oh my God, that's weird.
Doug: There is exactly. You gotta, you gotta pour a glass of wine. Yes. You gotta start 20 minutes early and get it ready for the connection. We learned a lot. We had, we met a guy, actually we were in a Dayton where we've stopped, and we met a guy who had driven an EV from the West Coast. So he was really well-versed in, like, where the pumps are, where the chargers are fastest.
Magda: Wow.
Doug: He was saying like, you know, in a lot of these places, the regular chargers are faster than the hyper ones. The hyper ones are marketed as faster, but a couple of times the hyper ones weren't available. So he took the regular ones and they were actually charging faster. So we got a lot of inside skinny on how EV culture works. Just like we had a lot of inside culture about RVs, RVs and EVs.
Magda: Okay. Interesting.
Doug: Cause we met a bunch of RV people who were, who had just come to Louisville to tour around as we were, but they had been on the road for a year. And so of course, yes, definitely ask me if the pineapples came up.
Magda: Oh no. Oh God, no. Will you talk to actual older people about this pineapple?
Doug: Yeah, recent retirees who are going around, yeah, in Airstreams and we met like
Magda: Did you talk about the loofahs? You talked about the loofahs, Doug? Oh God.
Doug: Not loofahs, I didn't bring up the loofahs, but, well, they're not staying in The Villages.
Magda: You didn't bring up the loofahs? Okay, thank God. Just the pineapples.
Doug: That's an RV thing, RVs are pineapples. Come on, keep up.
Magda: Ha ha! Oh boy.
Doug: So yes, that was an experience and it ties into the whole idea. I mean, the more this trip went on, the more parallels I saw with the movie Sideways. Because instead of going off
Magda: Okay, which I've never seen, because it's a dude road trip movie.
Doug: It's a total dude road trip movie, but in Sideways, they go off.
Magda: But in Sideways, aren't they going off to taste wine instead of drinking bourbon? Right.
Doug: Yeah, they go to wine country. So for us, it was bourbon. Same idea. Um, but the difference is in that movie, those two guys have been friends since college. And so in our case, this was an entirely different thing. We had to negotiate, figure out how to interact with each other. Like if one of us didn't want to do something and the other one did, we had to find that, you know, “Do we want to pay for the tour here? I kind of don't want to.”
Magda: Yeah, but on the plus side, you didn't have baggage from college.
Doug: No, not at all. Absolutely. In that respect, in terms of people meeting each other for the first time or not as familiar with each other and thrust into the situation, that was more of a Planes, Trains, and Automobiles thing.
Magda: Oh no, oh God, don't, no, no, no.
Doug: You know, with fewer car fires.
Magda: Which one of you was
Doug: Which one of us was Dell? I don't know. I think either one of us, each of us was, it was both characters at one point or another. Because
Magda: Okay.
Doug: Yeah. So, I mean, so I was finding parallels throughout the whole thing and writing the novel as I went along. I'm just taking notes of like stuff that I could write down and acknowledge because since it was his first trip in this EV, having to charge on the way, he was really concerned. He did not want to run out of juice with me in the passenger seat. He was super-conservative. At one point we got on the Ohio turnpike and went like 30 miles out of our way just to make sure we didn't run out of gas and have to sit and call roadside assistance with no juice in the car.
Magda: Ha ha ha ha!
Doug: So again, because you have to be mindful, each of us was mindful that in some situations we were responsible for the other and we didn't want to fuck that up because it was an audition. You know, we're kind of like, how does this person handle stress?
Magda: Right. Does he have kids?
Doug: No. No. Which is an interesting point too, because he is very impatient because of that. He has, anytime a truck was ahead of him, he just, he was a hothead. He was like, God, you fucker. So.
Magda: Well, but I also think like when people have kids, even if their kids are grown up and gone, even if their kids have like grown up and gone all the way, there's still like, you kind of take responsibility for stuff because you're just used to like, you know, like literally anybody could hand me a piece of gum and I would just stick out my hand to take their gum because I've been someone's mother. You know what I mean? Yeah.
Doug: Right. He is a caretaker type. I think he would be a good dad if he ever had the chance to. And because we talked a lot about this and this is where throughout the whole thing, I was wondering how deep we were going to go. Because, you know, the whole rep against men is men don't really want to talk about the stuff that they're really struggling with.
Magda: Right, you're just like activity buddies.
Doug: Right. And, but under normal circumstances, that's not going to come up in a bar unless you're like eight bourbons in, right? Which we never were. I mean, cause he was driving the whole time. So it wasn't like we had a chance to get super loaded anyway. Not that I even bothered to get loaded in any situation anymore. Um, in fact, the last time I got super loaded was on bourbon because I had a cold that had just completely shut down all of my sensory apparatus for tasting. And so I went to an engagement party and I was drinking bourbon all night and it had, you know, bourbon is fire water, but without the nose, it's just water. So I just drank it all and suddenly I couldn't walk.
Magda: Yeah. Yeah, I kind of feel like after a certain age the only time you get drunk is just accidentally because you stopped paying attention for some reason. Yeah.
Doug: Yeah. And we also wanted to pace ourselves. We didn't want to be nursing hangovers all day. The whole point is if you want to go to 10 distilleries, which we got to, you don't want to be miserable and be like, I don't want to touch whiskey. You have to just be very patient with yourself and recognize that you're tasting an ounce or two at a time. So the opportunity to go deep was always in the back of my mind.
Magda: Wow.
Doug: Cause I'll tell you that his story that I had kind of learned about before the trip, I knew this about him. He had a girlfriend way back in the day. And the story was they broke up, she moved away, lived in Brooklyn for a long time, for like 20 years. And then one day he, she'd drunken texted him. And that week after 20 years,
Magda: After 20 years? Oh my god.
Doug: Which rekindled their relationship and they were together again for four years until she passed away from a brain tumor.
Magda: Oh my God. Wow.
Doug: Right. Appropriate response. And over the course of this discussion, because I asked him, I was like, I hope you don't mind, but I'm so interested in this story and I'm here to listen if you're willing to tell me again, I wasn't going to press, but you know, tell me about this woman. ‘Cause he says he thinks about her every day. Still she's been gone for two years. And we had the same discussion.
Magda: Wow.
Doug: Just like we were talking to Amanda about how long grief is. Two years is nothing, you know?
Magda: No, two years is nothing.
Doug: But he's being impatient with himself. He thinks he should be over it by now and he's not sure why he's not. But the detail that came out subsequently during this trip was that they broke up because he wasn't ready to commit to her.
Magda: Yeah. Yeah.
Doug: So he felt like he finally had this chance, like he let her go and then regretted it. And then this, this, drunk text was like a lifeline because he was like, wow, I thought about this woman all this time and now she wants in and back into my life, despite how I treated her the first time. So he got a second chance and then she was taken from him again. And so he's really struggling with that.
Magda: Right. Well, because he could have had those other 20 years with her. Like, they could have had a whole life.
Doug: Right, right. And he has spent a bit of time cursing his lot in life. And so we got into a discussion. I mean, granted, he was kind of tight-lipped about it. I was not enthusiastic that he was going to offer a lot of details about this. I brought it up at breakfast, and he got very reserved. And I thought, oh, great, this is going to be a terrible ride home, because he's going to be so, he's going to feel as though I overstepped some for some reason.
Magda: Wow.
Doug: He's going to be tight-lipped. We're going to talk about like, we're going to read out street signs when we see them. That's the extent of our conversation or, you know, but then about halfway home, you know, we've been talking about music and, you know, popular culture stuff that we both seen, not a lot of overlap in there, by the way, he's not nearly as well versed in like, you know, sitcom lines and so forth that you and I were trading back in 1994, whatever it was.
Magda: Ha ha ha!
Doug: But like we get halfway home and I'm thinking, I'm sitting there in the silence thinking, I'm not going to ask anything more of him. Right. It's his job to ask of me at this point, if he wants to, and if he doesn't, that's fine, but I'm not going to probe anymore. I'm not going to be the one who feels compelled to start every conversation up. And we got right as we got to the log jam over the Cincinnati bridge, whatever that bridge is that leads from Kentucky into Cincinnati. He asked me about what it was like to be a dad blogger.
Magda: Oh, interesting.
Doug: And we had a whole discussion about, about our podcast. He was like, how do you do that? What is, why did that come up? And then we had to talk about the blog and, and I know I gave him the whole point of like, this is how we process our world. When we split up, we wanted to learn more about what it was like to co-parent. There weren't any blogs out there from co-parents. So we figured we're in a position to start one. So let's do it. But he asked, that was the real breakthrough, because you don't want to be the guy. It can't be a unilateral thing about communication. And that's what, and I'm not gonna say it saved the trip, because the trip was terrific. It had some shenanigans. I mean, we were out one night and got a little sloppy, but he revealed a lot about, I asked him, you ask a few questions where you're not sure what the answer is, and when he gives you the answer that you agree with, you're like, oh yes.
Magda: Right.
Doug: Kind of like when you're on a first date and you're like, okay, so yeah, there was, there were some breakthroughs there. And then, and when he dropped me off here, it was warm. It was really just like, I had a good time. Both of us, let's do this again sometime.
Magda: Good. Good.
Doug: ‘Cause that could have been a real problem too. I mean, the dynamic is such that if someone's driving, you know, then, you know, there were things, there are times when I didn't want to go somewhere that he wanted to go to. And I kind of have to defer to him.
Magda: Oh yeah.
Doug: Because it's his vehicle and he's also doing all the driving, which is not a small thing. So, um, and that was a dynamic I had, we had a rhythm we had to fan and we found it.
Magda: So as the youth say, you were the passenger princess the whole time.
Doug: I have no idea what that means and I'm not sure how to react to being called that.
Magda: It means that when somebody gets driven around all the time by someone else, they call that person the passenger princess.
Doug: Well, if you're a passenger princess who, I guess, had a really fun time lowering myself into this very low to the ground vehicle. I mean, yeah, and I was the co-navigator when it came to finding charging stations, right? Because the thing is, driving an EV, it's all touch screens and so there's so much data in front of you. There's a whole arching thing. It isn't like the huge iPad, like the Teslas have. It's just like this huge arching dashboard with the rear view mirrors that come up and back. And to do anything, you have to switch screens on this retractable screen. Like you want to change the air conditioning.
Magda: That's the thing I really don't like.
Doug: You want to use your phone, you want to use Waze. It's very distracting.
Magda: I want a car that is powered by electricity so that I don't have to be burning fossil fuels and all of that. But I want the gauges and the dashboard of a car from like the year 2000 so that I just have the muscle memory. I can reach out my hand and I know I can hit the thing to turn the air up or down, physically up or down without having to look at it because I just know where it is or I can change the radio with a physical button because I can feel it with my hand. And that's not the future and that's making me irked.
Doug: Alright, that's, where's my list? Where's my here? Here's my, here's my list. I'll get out my art, this is my.
Magda: Things that make me irked. Sound of the birds do not make me irked. Proper climates do not make me hurt, but...
Doug: I'm doing prep work here to make my list of things. Yeah. I want to say, too, quick shout out our first night we were out and we met, we were at the bar and this woman was next to us. She was there with her daughter who was in a volleyball tournament. Let's quick shout out that neither you or I was trapped into traveling the world with kids who compete in whatever tournaments that go on.
Magda: Okay, well neither of our kids would ever have come anywhere near a travel sports team. And I think if either of them had really wanted to do it, I would have just been like, no, this is too much money and too much time.
Doug: And your father will do it.
Magda: Just like that time I volunteered you to be the soccer coach for the second grade.
Doug: Well, I mean, the closest we came to this was when I took a bunch of kids to Quiz Bowl in Chicago.
Magda: Yeah, that's true.
Doug: And that was fun. We had a car full of people and car full of geeks and all they were just.
Magda: But also you weren't doing it every month.
Doug: No. Anyway, so her name is Kelly. Shout out to you, Kelly, if you're listening, because I told her about the podcast. That came up in our conversation because she is divorced and beautiful. Yeah, you should know that too, Kelly. And I think, yeah, she does. And she knows.
Magda: This is turning into Missed Connections.
Doug: No, well, that's the point though, because the two of us single guys, you know, the two of us guys at the bar, there's some kind of muscle memory that kicks in the antlers kind of come out a bit. You know, we're kind of, you know, we're chatting her up and being super-flirty, even though she came up front and said, I'm about to tell my boyfriend I love him. Yeah. And she said, because I'm, it became an interview. It's like, all right, so what made you love him?
Magda: Oh wow.
Doug: And she said, “I think he's really gonna take care of me because,” and this is the quote, “he's the first man I've ever met who has his shit together.” And I think that's a prevailing thing among women our age because they are too impatient with men they meet who are just arrested adolescents.
Magda: Yeah.
Doug: Yeah. And she has since had like really good relationships ever since and, uh, and was really, is really into this dudes. I'm just because I just, I would, that struck me as interesting that her perspective was, “this is the first guy I've ever met who has his shit together.” And she was also very interested in the podcast.
Magda: That's cool.
Doug: So her daughter pulled it up on Spotify and now they're subscribers or at least now they're listening, you know, like and subscribe Kelly if you can. If you like what you've heard. Yes, if I meet you in a bar and I talk to you I will give you a shout out on the air. So How's that for inspiration, or how's that for motivation to like and subscribe?
We found a rhythm and I'm very happy to report that I think we're better off than we were because I think it could have gone either way. We could have just as easily dropped me off and be like, all right. It could have been Harry and Sally in Washington Square Park for all I knew.
Magda: Oh yeah. Harry was really loathsome in that movie.
Doug: Yeah, well, he had an arc. You know, you gotta have a starting point and an ending point. Sally did too.
Magda: He did have an arc. I wouldn't have wanted to be with either one of them. Bruno Kirby was still the one that you would want to actually be with despite the wagon wheel coffee table, right?
Doug: He also knew that pesto is the quiche of the ‘80s.
Magda: Right.
Doug: Uh, well that was fun. I enjoy conversations like this.
Magda: Me too.
Doug: So what's happening the rest of the day?
Magda: I'm recovering from being out in the sun watching the Boston Marathon and figuring out what else is happening. Mike is gone for a conference, so Thomas and I can do whatever we want. That just means eating dinner late because you know, Mike likes to eat at a certain time.
Doug: He hasn't wavered off that since he's lived with you?
Magda: No. Well, I mean, OK, so what happens is we start making dinner at five. Sometimes we don't actually eat until six now. And I think in the old days, he used to only make things that took a shorter time to make or maybe he made them by himself. I think it takes less time to make when it's either him or me cooking. When it's the two of us cooking together, he thinks that we go faster, but we actually go slower.
Doug: Well, isn't that also informed by extra daylight though? Aren't you less inclined to eat so early if there's like a lot of daylight after dinner's over?
Magda: I guess? I don't know. I mean, I just prefer eating late anyway, and he prefers eating early and, you know, it's a compromise.
Doug: So you're going to fire up a paella and some tapas and start eating at 11 tonight?
Magda: Maybe, I don't know.
Doug: Well, just like you left six hours later than you should have to go down to college.
Magda: Yeah, but if we hadn't, we would have eaten at someplace that closed earlier and I wouldn't have had that great eggplant rollatini.
Doug: And that's your talent, to find the good within the painful. All right. Well, um, shall we tease what next week's episode is going to be?
Magda: Yeah, it's going to be two episodes in a row of Just Us because next week is...
Doug: …a very important event in the history of America.
Magda: Yeah, and it's just coincidental that it's a Wednesday and so we decided to observe it.
Doug: It just so happened that it happened on the date we normally release podcasts. So we're going to devote that discussion a week from today to talk about a watershed moment in the development of our young country.
Magda: It will have been 25 years since the day you and I got married.
Doug: So we're going to do our best to try and remember what our impressions were of that day 25 years ago.
Magda: Oh God, I hated that day.
Doug: Well, that's what's going to make it an interesting discussion, I think, because we're going to have to relay the secret thoughts that we kept to ourselves while we were going through with the ritual. So stay tuned for that which will be episode 43. But thank you all for listening to episode 42 of the When The Flames Go Up podcast with Magda Pecsenye Zarin and me, Doug French. Also we could have made a point of 42.
Magda: I know, “bring your towel.”
Doug: 42 is an important point because that's the answer to everything in the universe. Although let's be clear, Douglas Adams has officially said, “dude, there's nothing to that. I picked it out of the air and typed it. That's it. The end.” But there are scads of websites all over the world, numerologists and weirdos who are saying 42 has its mystical power.
Magda: Okay, but it's a really, it's a lovely number. 42 is a lovely number. It's divisible by so many numbers. It's divisible by two, by three, by six, by seven…
Doug: 14, yeah. And it's Jackie Robinson. That's a big part of baseball. He chose that number and now that's gonna live on in the lore of baseball forever and ever, because 42 has been retired from every team in Major League Baseball because of him.
Magda: Oh. That’s nice.
Doug: So, our guest has been the Weekend That Was. When the Flames Go Up is a production of Halfway Noodles, LLC, and is available on all the usual platforms, and at whentheflamesgoup.substack.com. Please subscribe there for our weekly episode, which drops every Wednesday, and the newsletter, Friday Flames, every Friday. If you listen to us on Apple Podcasts, please send us a review. See you next week for the epic discussion that will be episode 43. Until then, have a great week. We'll see you then. Bye bye.