Am I too strict a parent? It's one more thing before I get to that. I just noticed that my son played flag football last year and I really enjoyed it. And and then I keep reading about how girls flag football has really grown across the country and it's becoming a pretty common high school sport to have girls flag football, which is awesome because remember during the Super Bowl there was a commercial promoting it. Yeah, well, flag football is cool.
It's got all of the you know, the the strategy and skill level for the skill players of any other football. You just don't have the contact, the tackling, and so it's pretty cool.
Are they still calling it powder puff football?
No?
No, that's else that it involves lingerie, at.
Least where I live. That would be highly unfortunate to pretend that the one sex is somehow like weaker than the other. But I noticed, unless I'm reading this wrong, this year it's co ed or girls. There's no boys team co ed or girls for flag football. Why eliminated the boys team? I don't know, that's crazy.
That strikes me as a very Portlandia thing to do.
I would agree that does seem crazy, And I'll be honest, you're gonna have a lot of boys who get less playing time because I'm sure there are some rules you have to have a certain number of girls on the field at all time.
This is the whole progressive we hate males thing. I have a feeling. I mean, there might be some underlying story, and if there is, great, but I mean the whole all right. Now, women are like the big majority of undergrads and grad school students and medical school students and everything else. But we've still got to have up with girls programs and down with boys programs.
Sickness, Yes, yeah, anyway, I wasn't meaning to talk about that, just came across it and thought it was interesting. Co ed and girls only but not boys, okay, in.
A sport that's traditionally been played by boys.
Right, So I'm dealing with this with my teenagers and smartphones. So only my high school or my freshman in high school has a smartphone, and so this has not become an issue yet.
With my.
Seventh grader, although a little bit, as he has a smart watch. I'm trying to train them away from the idea that just because somebody texted you while we're eating dinner doesn't mean you need to look at it or respond. We're eating dinner, and I think that's perfectly reasonable, although we all know that that is not enforced with your
friends and work colleagues right at all. If you go out to eat with your friends, you can be in the middle of a conversation and a serious conversation with a close friend, and if they get a text, they will look at it and quite possibly respond and conversation.
I always say something if I'm with somebody who does that?
You do?
Oh?
Am I boring you?
You do?
Oh?
Yeah? Absolutely.
We're sitting there at the table and we're talking and then all of a sudden, ping and your attention immediately goes to that. I'm sorry, Hi, I'm still sicking. I can go if that's important.
Yeah.
Oh I love that, Katie. We need to hang out more. Yeah, I will say, certainly two relatives of mine. Uh, if that sort of thing happens, I say, I'll wait till you're done. I just wait till they're done. Yeah, and we can talk. But it's a way of making it clear. This is an interruption, and I Am not going to fight for attention.
Right.
I'm surprised that we haven't come up with some more solid cultural guidelines around that are more universally agreed upon. But this certainly doesn't seem to be the case yet. And then you know, the next generation, I feel like just from observing them are going to be okay with Like my son and his friends are together, but they're all looking at their phones texting other people. I guess, I don't know. These are all your best friends. So I don't even know how it works. But that's why
I do it. But particularly for me, and obviously I get to make my own rules, as for instance, in this case, it's my car, my car, my rules, you live in my house, et cetera. But we're driving home from the restaurant the other night, for instance, and we're not we're just listening to music and we're driving. We'd just taken off, headed back about a thirty minute drive, and my son's texting, and I said, I I'd rather you didn't text in the car, and he said, why not,
We're not doing anything. Well, I said, who are you texting? He said, I'm making plans with my friends. I said, well, i'd rather you didn't text while we're driving, and he said, well, why not, We're just sitting here, I said, I know we're just sitting here, but things can unfold if you're not paying attention to your phone, Like you could say, hey,
look at that car, or what river is this? Or hey, a funny thing happened at school today, or all kinds of different things could happen that won't happen if you're texting with your friends and like living in a different world. And he did the home rump thing that teenagers do constantly all day long about your various you know, suggestions or whatever it is. But well, first of all, any comment on that before I get in for it.
I would say that is a fairly conservative, strict standard for kids. I do not disagree with it. No, I am ice lund point and Well said, I don't doubt that it's on the outside edge of being strict about it from other parents. I don't know, but that'd be my guest.
But just I know that it's true. I just know that it's true that so he's not listening to the song that Henry and I are listening to, so he's got no comment on it, or it won't mean anything. I mean, I think about a lot of the music I know is because stuff my Dad played, but so he won't have that experience because he's not listening to music that I play. He's busy texting his friends or obviously the we've all had the experience of driving along.
Sometimes there's a little quiet, a little low, then somebody says something. Then you all engage in the conversation. But that can't happen if one or more of the participants is already having a conversation with different people.
Right, yeah, I agree one hundred percent.
Are we just gonna I guess that's the way we're all gonna live from here on out.
Two things. Number One, when I was probably four or five years old, Gladys just signed a new deal. Makes it clear she's got to be here for the podcast. Five years old, listening to music radio out of New York because we lived in New Jersey at the time, and I fell madly, madly in love with music, and I just I can still remember the songs that I loved at that age, which is crazy because I can't remember anything else. Second thing, teenager, nineteen seventies, rolling along
with the family Stairway to Heaven. Dad turns it up a little bit, really enjoying it. Listen to the music with the family. Then it kicks into the rock part and Robert plants that net on.
He teaked, what the hall?
He turns it off. I said, Dad, that's the same song. He says, it changed into a different song. He was not having Bob plant in the screechings in our family car.
I don't know. I think. I'm well, Katie, you haven't commented. What's your comment, Kennye, Well, I'm hold nothing back.
Well, as you're saying all this, I'm thinking about all of the Friday nights. It was our thing. I would go to dinner with my parents and all of the rides. Thank you laddys.
She had to just she had to make a list of five things, and all five of her things were. All five of her things were. I played the harp when someone was reminiscing. That's the only thing I do.
Before and after I got yelled at.
But I just I was thinking about all those rides home after dinner and the the jokes that we made that we still have. The little things like my dad would make fun of my mom's laugh, or like I would get behind my dad while he was driving and I'd flick the back of his ears.
If I had a cell phone, boy, none of that. And I still do it to him when he's driving.
I'll yell give it, oh no, oh yeah, totally, Oh yeah, yeah.
I will kill you. I've heard that a few times when I do that to him.
But if I had a cell phone in my hands, none of the joke. I wouldn't have been hearing my any of that or playing round. It's just I don't know. It's a sad time we're in.
I think, for what it's worth for the good folks listening trying to get a standard smartphones were strict for boating. All phones at the family dinner table still are. With my wife and I. Occasionally it'll be like somebody's needs to get a piece of information urgently because a bunch of people are waiting for it. And then it's like, do you mind if I have mine within sight in case you know, Jim texts back blah blah blah. But it's like it's a special case, and it's so it's
so clearly the endorphin thing. I mean because and again certain close relatives when asked, you know, while scanning the sky, I wonder if it's going to clear up later this afternoon immediately to the phone. And it's not because that information needs to be had. It's because the shiny screen and the information and the new thing. It's the endorphin thing. I know it. I don't need to freaking know if the sun's gonna come out in the afternoon. What am
I some sort of elfelfa farmer? No, I'm just making conversation. Put your phone away.
I remember the time when we were at home having dinner and my mom would lose her mind if somebody called it's dinner time. Who reaches out to people during dinner time? Well, I know now there's no limit.
Yeah, idea of someone taking a phone call in the middle of dinner, Yeah, it would have been just crazy. Yes, unless you're waiting for cancer results or something.
Right.
Uh well, yeah, I have the same rules at the dinner table. Those are pretty clear cut and have been from the beginning. But the driving places is a new one. And I said, I think I'm gonna do like they did when we went to see David Copperfield in Las Vegas. You gotta put the phones. I'll put them in the center console and I'll close it until we drive home. And yeah, I know that's way stricter than a lot of his friend's parents are doing. But it just I
don't want to lose all those other conversation opportunities. And to prove my point, which I didn't mention, which is rare for me to not mention when I turn out to be right, but to prove my point. After I made him put his phone away, we saw something and ended up talking about it the rest of the way home,
which would not have happened. And I also am very aware that even though he's turning fifteen in a couple of weeks, I get like three more years of this maybe and then maybe never again in my life, hardly depending on what he does with his life once he, you know, he turns eighteen. I left at eighteen. I've never really been back other than a day here and there.
Right, Yeah, yeah, all for the little shots of endorphins.
Yeah, I don't know, and I don't know how to do it either all or none for the most part. But I feel like if I allow it, it's just gonna be when we ride in the car, it's him looking at his phone and me listening to what I'm going to listen to on the radio. I guess how was that. I vote you don't allow it. Yeah, I don't want to spend my all my car rides with my dad and having conversations and sometimes, you know, don't bring up things until you've sat there in silence for a while, as.
You work up the courage to talk about them, for instance. Yeah, and just to prove that I'm not here to lecture anybody, I just I think about these things. I have a couple of friends, one in particular, who's a good friend who is absolutely not tied to his phone. Texting him is a one in three proposition that you'll get a response in the next twelve hours. Maybe. If I really need a response, I text his wife.
I know people like that. Yeah, and I certainly.
I absolutely admire it, and did annoys me.
Yeah.
Yeah, So it's on both ends of the equation. I mean not getting and I don't need an immediate response to virtually anything. If I did, I would call get whatever you minutes. But yeah, exactly the whole you know. I texted him and asked him if he can go, and I haven't heard anything back. It's an hour later, So it works both ways. Yes, Yeah, the expectation of
immediate response. I guarantee this is going on with your son, one hundred percent sure he is concerned, whether he voiced this or not, that he would not be a friend of his friends anymore if he didn't engage in immediate response to their questions or statements or whatever. That's part of being in the group.
Yeah, I know, I don't. Yeah, I don't know. Like I said, I'm surprised we don't have more defined cultural norms around this yet. It seems like the defined cultural norm is going to be pick up your phone whenever you want, anywhere, all the time.
Is the cultural norm, including in the face of somebody you allegedly love or care about. Right, Yeah, and just hey, this is more interesting. Maybe that's the new cultural norm. You've got to say out loud, something more interesting than you just happened touching your phone. I mean, because that's the unspoken truth.
Yeah, back to me, going, am I boring you?
That's or urgent, something more urgent than you has come up. But then it's certainly incumbent upon you to say, what is it? Yeah, it's because if you don't have a good answer, we're not friends anymore.
Well, and the problem is it's not the unspoken truth, because I know from my end if I get if my phone buzzes or I think I got a text, I could be talking to my son, which is really only like two people on earth would be more important as important to talk to. I still am dying to check my phone. There's something so I know intellectually it's not somebody more important or something more important. It's something weird with the device that makes us want to check.
Yeah, I'm not a monster, all right, We'll have three choices. Something more important than you just happened, Oh, something more urgent than this conversation just happened. Or I'm a shameless, pathetic endorphan addict and I need to look at this. Bear with me.
The people I'm really us with are the ones that get the Am I boring you? But if it's somebody that I'm not on that level with, I always go, is everything okay? Because then it's kind of like a obviously, obviously something just came up that.
Must be the cancer?
So subtle, Yeah, so subtle, Katie genius.
I think we're I think we're fighting a losing battle. Unfortunately, I don't know how mankind survives this.
We won't.
Now we're doomed.
No sex, no babies, planning to the beavers.
That's how we end the podcast, the fact that we're doomed. He o b.
You know, when I was a kid, I would be in the back seat doing back seat driving, yelling at my dad about his speed, his fuel gauge, why the car is flipping the car next to us is flipping us off.
I'm gonna miss you know people that's going on. You enjoyed the walk that's going away? Well, I get that's it.