I don't want to be a cowboy. It's one more thing. I'm strong and getty, one more thing. So my kind my kids are kind of in that age, Joe On. My oldest son is in the where you like seriously have to start thinking about what you might want to do with your life. But my younger son is at the kind of more fanciful age of what do you want to be when you grow up? And so we
have these conversations on a regular basis. You know, like when you're a really little kid, you want to be a I don't know, astronaut or a cowboy.
Rearranging cattle is honorable work. It is cowboy.
I actually ended up working in a place where I could have been become a cowboy if that's what I wanted to do.
The end of a cowboy you wear boots on the beach.
That was the actual job was. I was working at the feed lot and at some point you take the do you want to do go the feed truck driver route or do you want to go the cowboy route? And I want the feed truck driver rout because I I wasn't planning on being a cowboys more like a life profession. That's not something you just do for a year. That's like you're going to be your life. But uh,
I was going to ask everybody before I give. One of my youngest son's current plan is, which is kind of funny for you, what he wants to do his life. What did you want to be when you grew up, Katie?
I wanted to be a marine biologist.
That's a good one because you saw Seinfeld and that's what George Costanza said.
He was exactly.
I've always wanted to pretend to be a marine biologist.
I think both of my daughters may have had a time where they wanted to do that. You see dolphins and sea turtles and all sorts of endearing creatures, and you hear their at risk.
You want to do Yeah, it's fine profession.
And what at what point did you decide you didn't want to be that? Or maybe you don't even remember, because like some of my stuff, I don't remember ever making a decision, or it's not like I looked into it now. It looks to me like according to the actuary titles, that people die at a young age in this profession, and he only make this much money, So I'll turn my gaze so towards something else. That's not the way it usually works.
But yeah, that's not how it happened. I went from marine biologist to.
Archaeologist, and then another good one ended up in radio.
Ended up in radio.
I don't know if that No, that's because what I ended up actually wanting to do.
Oh, okay, wanting to do that. At what point, at what point in your life did you decide you wanted to be on the radio.
Around the time that I was a teenager, so thirteen, okish?
Yeah?
Interesting, fell in love of the morning show. I was listening to Rush with my dad all the time. Found out dad did some radio, and here we are.
It's awesome, cool Michael.
I also wanted to be in radio as a little kid, believe it or not. But I like the technical stuff. I used to take tinker toys and build tall towers all the way to the ceiling of the house.
Yeah that's interesting. We worked with you for twenty five years and I didn't know that.
Yeah, it was a little kid, but I would play I remember I'd have a little record player of a Fisher Price record player and now pretendo was a but I always Yeah, I ended up wanting to play with you know, buttons and things like that. So that's kind of what I'm doing now.
Yeah.
Cool, Yeah, with.
Great skill and a plumb Joe Getty, Uh, fairly standard American midwestern boy, a cycle of paleontologist, hockey player, baseball player.
Professional musician, lawyer than this dead end job.
Do you see?
You know there was definitely a progression.
Do you remember why you changed your mind on various stuff? Because I don't.
I think running up against reality, honestly realizing I'm not really good enough for that.
And I have other interests. Now, I think it was as simple as that.
Yeah, I mean, if I go way back to the beginning, I think it was cowboy.
Now.
For a very long time, I wanted to be a harpenter, and I really liked working with building stuff and all that sort of things. Still do. But like, I don't remember it any at any point deciding I don't know, I probably hit my thumb a lot, so maybe I don't. I mean, I just, you know, just stopped being my interest for whatever reason.
Yeah, I think that's it. You just develop other interests, get passion for something else.
I was hardcore. I was going to join the Marines for most of high school. I mean, this wasn't even when I was a little kid. I mean, that was just absolutely my plan to change that. I don't know, huh, I honestly don't know. It has something to do with hearing about a radio program. I think I was I was in I never did any sort of like drama
musical stuff until my senior year of high school. And I did that and I got kind of sucked into that world of performing entertaining the adulation that comes with it. And then I heard about a radio program at a nearby community college where practically everybody who went there found a full time job in radio. At least that was the stat at the time, which is amazing now. It was true then but impossible now there's not three full time radio jobs available in the country. But I just thought, oh,
that'd be awesome. I always had listened to I always liked the idea of being on the radio, and then I was full speed on that after that. But I don't remember why I changed my mind, Like you would think you'd remember that, but I don't.
The Marines thing, yes, unless it's you know, as I said, you just develop other passions and you kind of get led away, and.
I've sometimes wondered what my life would have been like if I had gone that direction. I kind of wish I would have, just for the challenge of it and everything that comes with it. But I'm really happy with the way things turned out in my career this way, so I wouldn't want to mess with it too much. But yeah, sometime, when Elon gets the right rocket, I will travel to the parallel universe where I joined the Marine Corps, see where I ended up. Here's my son's
current plan. He wants to double up on his school work. Currently he does a combination of homeschool and independent study. He's not in a traditional school setting, he is. He wants to double up on his school work. He wants to pass the GED at sixteen so he'll have his high school education. Then he wants to spend two years getting jacked.
And then wow, there was a twist there. Did not see that coming?
Did not That was not on my Bengo card.
Yeah, I mean either.
It made me laugh out loud, just like this yesterday when he told me this is my plan. Now, I'm gonna double up my studying so I can get my GED at sixteen, then I'm gonna spend two years getting jacked.
Yeah, all right, So now he's educated in Swollen and then what next?
And then he's going to join the military because he wants to do like my brother Jeff, who was career military, because he's seen somebody do the other end of it. He also is just an odd He's a different sort of human being in it. He seems to understand like Time Orrie as a kid, the way that you only
usually do as an adult. But to him, twenty years in the military, where you get, you know, the all the benefits that come with him, he thinks I'd only be thirty eight, so it's just see, I'd have all these other opportunities to do this and that It's like, that's not usually the way you think when you're young. You know, being thirty eight seems like you might as well be dead, So there's no way I'm going to commit to do it.
But that's the way he looks at things that is utterly unique.
I now continually reminded my kids of of that reality, because it does not seem that way when you're young. I remember being practice not panic stricken, but extremely concerned at age twenty two and a half that I wasn't completely certain what I wanted to do, right, right, go off and do something for five years, then you'll be twenty seven and a half. Oh you know, from this perspective, it's crazy. But man, that is that is so nuts that he's in a good way that he's got that perspective.
Well, you know, because we all just went through all our different iterations of things we want to do. I don't him to stay on this plan, but he's been with it for quite a while. He's always asking my brother about the military. This military then, and it would it's actually a good plan if you if you can handle the idea at a young age of twenty year commitment or something, and you don't have to commit for twenty years at a time. You sign up for chunks at a time.
But uh, boy, understanding that age is that's amazing because.
You're so young when you're thirty eight, good lord, Oh my gosh.
I just had a conversation with a girl over the weekend.
She lost her job unfortunately on Friday, and she's losing it.
She is twenty six years old.
Oh boy, She's like, I'm already twenty six I went, first of all, shut up about already.
Being twenty six. Okay, not of that.
Yeah, yeah, Second, you're fine.
Go find the twenty three year old who wants to hear that the rest of us not so much.
Yeah, that's pretty funny. But I had never heard anybody who had the plan of taking two years off to get jacked.
Yeah.
So just as in aside on a semi serious note, it's one of the reasons I really believe in mentoring programs and am like crazy super passionate about not papering over deficiencies in schools in like inner city areas, rough areas wherever schools are suffering, and then just admitting the kids anyway, because my and Jack knows this story, the fact that it didn't even occur to me to pursue a career in radio until I was at a band rehearsal and one of the guitar players said he was
going to his radio class, and I thought, oh, is that how you do that? I'd be better than him, and I enrolled in a radio class. It was as if I'd spent my entire life wandering around saying, you know, I'd really like to cure people of disease, and I'm fascinated by pharmacology and knives don't bother me, and I understand that surgery is important, and boy oh boy, I like science and again healing people. And it never occurred to me to be a doctor. I mean, it was
that dense that it had never occurred to me. It just didn't For some reason. I thought they import space aliens to do that, or you're hatched or I don't know, summoned by God. It never occurred to me. No, you just make a couple of basic steps and then you explore it. And the fact that I could have that that's lack of vision just because I didn't know what
those steps were. I realized there are lots and lots of kids like that that are kind of doomed to not pursue their dreams or even understand what their dreams are because they haven't seen somebody do it. And so that's what's so important about mentoring programs. And like the NFL, one of the best Super Bowl ads this is the day after the Super Bowl.
We're taping this.
One of the best ones was that I am somebody thing. Or they go into neighborhoods and they tell kids, hey, this is a real possibility.
People like you do this. I think those are great.
Yeah, that's a weird thing about the human mind. It's putting limitations on yourself just for like things you aren't aware of, right a A variety of area areas, and it's just odd.
Yeah, I can't explain it. It's just weird.
Little kid walking around in a lab coat and just fascinated by disease, and.
I just wish you could do something with that.
Yeah, I guess I'll go manage a grocery store.
I remember in high school, I wasn't getting very good grades, and I was at the guidance counselor and he said, you know, what kind of career do you think you're gonna, you know, have with this kind of grades. I looked at him and said, how about a guidance counselor?
Very poorly?
Oh man, it's funny, true, it's funny, youth full trolling at its best.
Well, I guess that's it.