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What's up, guys? It's your girl, Keke, and my podcast is back with a new season. And let me tell you, it's too good. And I'm diving into the brains of entertainment's best and brightest, okay? Every episode, I bring on a friend. I mean, the likes of Amy Poehler, Keel Mitchell, Vivica Fox. The list goes on. So follow, watch, and listen to Baby, this is Kiki Palmer on the WNDYRI app or wherever you get your podcast.

Welcome, welcome, welcome to Armchair Anonymous. I'm Dax Sheppard. I'm joined by Lily Padman. Hi there. Happy birthday. Listen, this prompt is Worst Parenting Moment. Yeah. And one of these was particularly fun for me because I thought I was talking to myself.

Yes, there was a lot of crossover.

Yes. And then as I retold the whole story to In my family, they, too, agreed this was something that could have definitely happened to me. Easily happened. Yeah.

Yeah, these were fun. I'm not a parent.

Well, your parents are Shit Baby, or what's his name? Shit Bear? Baby Baby? No, no, Shit Bear.

Liberti?

Poopoo Bear.

Please call him by his name, liberti. Okay. Yes. You guys, it's hard out there. I see you. I see you. It's hard. I'm impressed.

This is very appropriate timing. Yeah, we had a two-hour bang up last night. Oh, you had a doosy? Yeah. We We have a thing in our house, which is family square. Someone can call for a family square, and everyone's got to sit down, especially me, because I'm big. Yeah, let's make everyone the same size. And then we enter the circle of trust, and we share pretty openly, and we bring up whatever.

How often do they happen?

Not terribly often. I'm going to guess maybe once every six weeks, maybe once every couple of months. Okay. So I'm going to call a family square. Okay. And last night's family square was a doosy. It went on and on and on and on. And a lot of it is all this stuff people have been telling us. We're going to... Teenage. There's changes happening. Oh, wow. And across the board, too. Delta is getting older. Everyone's getting older. It sounded like I started crying after I said, They're getting older. So, yeah, it can get really challenging. But I also love it. I love getting in there. Yeah. I'm trying to figure it all out.

That's fun. Yeah. I like doing that with Peababy. She has a lot of emotions.

She sure does. She's doing a lot. We have one commenter that constantly brings up Peababy, and I thank them so much. I love them. It makes me so happy every time. It's almost in every one of the comments. There's something about Peababy, and I'm like, God bless you.

Yeah.

In fact, I think in my birthday post for you.

They said something? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, man.

Please enjoy Worst Parenting Moments. We have one with P-Baby. Where is she?

I mean, let's be honest.

Let's be honest.

We've killed her. I mean, really, I traded her in for a big house. That's really bad. That's bad parenting.

That's what happened. All right. Love you. Love you. All times, come and go. Good times, take them slow. My life, I had them both. But for one thing, you got to know, I'm going to keep them shiny.

Oh, my goodness.

Oh, my goodness. Hello. Hi. How are you? Is this Stephanie?

This is Stephanie.

What a ding, ding, ding. Do you have a tenacious D-shirt on?

I have a tenacious D-shirt on.

Did you listen to the Jack Black episode?

You bet I did.

This is gross to admit, but I listened to it because I'm just a fan of Jack Black, and I wanted to hear it and not be inside of it. And I loved it. I was like, That's my favorite Jack Black interview, not because of us, but just he was so wonderful. It was reaffirming how much we should all love that man because he's fantastic. You're right. He's worthy of worship. Where are you at, Stephanie?

I'm in Calgary, Alberta, Canada.

Wonderful. We love our neighbors to the north.

And your closet looks nice.

You are being very generous.

No, it's nice. It looks- Spatious. Yes. Thank you. That's the word I was looking for.

And you have some decoration on your arm as well, I see?

I do. It's my beginning of my sleeve that I'm so I'm pumped to finally get. It's my favorite video game, Call out to Hemlock Tattoo in downtown Calgary.

They're fantastic. Boom. Big shout out. Okay, you have a worst parenting story.

I do. Based on my emails with Emma, I don't think she gave you my TLDR title. So I'm going to let this story unfold for you guys in real-time.

Great. Oh, okay. Wait, what's TLR DD?

Too long, didn't read. That's the blurb, but we don't like knowing.

Yeah, we love not knowing.

Okay, so here we go. It is spring We have a two-year-old boy named Tier, and I have just found out that I'm pregnant with our second son. Sidebar for Monica, the father of these children and my husband and partner in crime, is my third-year structural geology prof.

Hell, yes. You are living the life.

Wait, structural geology? Yeah. So this is what the building blocks of rock and earth? What does that mean, structural geology?

I wish I could define it for you better. He's in the other room right now, and he's probably seething with me sailing to define this for you.

She wasn't learning. She was lusting.

Clearly distracted, yeah.

It was my best attended class. Worst grade.

Oh, I love this for you. I'm glad someone's doing this.

Yeah. I'm just pregnant. I'm reading my son some books at night, and I'm starting to realize he smells really bad. I brush it off and I'm like, you know what? First trimester hormones. What a weird evolutionary trait to think your kid smells bad when you're pregnant. Right. So I go away for a business trip and I come back and my husband's at the table and he's like, Do you think tears smells bad? I'm like, Oh, my gosh. Yes, he does smell bad. Oh, my Lord. He's like, I think it's his breath.

Oh, no.

I'm like, Yeah, you're right. It is his breath. And we've been brushing his teeth, but maybe we need to step it up. We're brushing his teeth and it smells better for a bit, and then it comes back.

I want to remind everyone, too, who doesn't have kids in the audience. I know this is intuitive, but at the same time, you've not done it before. You don't fucking know. It's like your kid starts smelling, and there's quite a few days where you're just like, Is this standard? I don't know. I've never done this before.

Thank you for making me feel better. A friend of ours is a family doctor, and we're chatting with him one day, and I'm like, Is there a reason why his breath smells so bad? And he's like, I don't know. It's probably halitosis. Go see a dentist. That's not tracking, right? We're looking in his mouth. There's no red areas. There's nothing that looks gross. His teeth are all where they should be. And more time passes, the smell gets worse, the smell gets worse.

Can you tell me what time means, time passes? Are we talking days, weeks, months?

We're working on weeks here.

And can we get a little more detail about the smell? Rodding.

Rodding, yeah.

Rodding, death is what it smells like.

Necrotic.

Yeah. One day, his nose starts dripping, and it's not unusual. Toddler, daycare, nose drips, common. It's brown and it smells awful.

Oh, wow.

What? We get him to blow his nose and the smell, and it finally lands. There's something stuck in his nose.

Oh, my God. And really quick, when he blows his nose, is he grossed out?

He's not fazed by this at all. He's just living his best life.

It doesn't even hurt.

No. And so we call our family doctor, and she's like, Look, we don't pull stuff out of kids' noses in the office. You've got to go to the children's hospital. I didn't want to go because this was 2022. World's opening up. Kids aren't vaccinated yet. And so I don't know if this happened to your children's hospitals, but here, the wait times were 14 hours to get seen. Everybody had flu, RSV, COVID was running through everybody under five. And so we had Nanny and grandpa visiting from Scotland to build on the professor, my husband's also from Scotland, has a super hot accent, too.

I don't know how you stay out of the bedroom.

We didn't want to go and bring COVID back and make Nanny and grandpa sick. We went to the urgent care facility thinking it wouldn't be as much of a hot bed. Doctor there restraining him. They're digging in and out. They are pulling out sections of sponge. He's got a sponge in his nose. What?

A sponge? Like a kitchen sponge. Yeah.

We don't have kitchen sponges at home. I use dishcloths, so I'm not entirely sure where the sponge came from.

Preschool?

Probably.

Ews, stinky preschool sponge.

With bacteria. You know, sponges, of course. The most. Yeah.

Petri dish. And he's pulled out three decent-sized chunks of this sponge.

Was it so rewarding to see that come out.

It was hard to hear because they're not sedating him. So I have to hold him down and he's freaking out. How far up was this? Well, we're not done. So he said, If the dripping keeps going, you got to go to Children's because they have a whole department that pulls stuff out of kids' noses.

Okay. All right. A division.

Dipping doesn't stop.

Did the smell get any better? No.

No. Fuck. We're like week three now. We go to children's, the doctor looks them, they're like, Yeah, sponge is in there, but we're going to have to go and surgically remove it because it's too far in.

Can I ask a quick question? Are they able to see that by visually looking up there with one of those scopes, or did he get a CT or something?

They were using the scopes. He tried pulling a little, but he's like, We're not going to torture him anymore. We're going to have to take him for surgery. Okay. Wow. And so they booked us in, but our worst fears came true, and he gave everybody in our house COVID. I'm down eight weeks pregnant with our second child, COVID. Husband's down, COVID. Nanny and grandpa down, damn near kills Nanny. Oh, God.

We finally get into surgery.

The surgeon goes in. She pulls out, I kid you not, at least an inch and a half of rotting sponge.

Oh, my Lord. He's got a weird version of Pica, where instead of eating things, he needs to push them up his nose.

I know.

I can't believe it wasn't bothering him. He didn't care. What a warrior. And was the sponge all this colored and rotten and gnarly?

Oh, please.

Oh, is this the picture we have? Yes. Oh, God.

Hopefully it shows.

Oh, yeah. Guys, if you've ever seen a skull bandit, like the little pouch of tobacco you would put in, that's what it looks like.

I don't know that that's a universal enough analogy.

Go to the store, buy a pack of bandits, and take a look, and that's what it was. It's brown as hell.

It's fully brown. I I wonder what color it started. I want to smell it.

Isn't that weird? Even though I know I would hate it.

No, you'd hate it.

I think you should let a mouse rot in a trap for a little bit in sun for several weeks. And then I think that gives you a rough idea of what that might smell like.

Think about how bad sponges smell anyway.

Out in the open air, yeah.

Thank God he didn't go septic from that.

That's what I was worried about. When we found out that it was a sponge and they scheduled surgery and it was so far out, I was just like, is it going to grow into his body? Is it going to spread?

Is he going to become a superhero sponge boy? Get infused in his DNA? In these two, I can't really remember what it was like having conversations with a two-year-old, but obviously you're like, Tier, you can't put things in your nose. This is why you were in the hospital. You're doing that, and is he getting it? No. No. What do you have to put a nose muzzle on him when you said him in preschool?

I told his preschool that he probably stuck a sponge up his nose, and they're like, Oh, we don't have sponges here. What? And then literally two days later, the picture's from the preschool. He's painting with a sponge. Oh, Oh, my gosh.

Yeah, that makes sense for painting.

Well, but also even scarier paint up there is really not good in your body. Yuck.

That is what we have dubbed spongegate in this house.

Do you think he watched SpungeBob and then wanted to become SpungeBob and thought that was how.

I think that's likely. Yeah, you too. I see you're watching a suspicious amount of SpungeBob. But it also is a fun thought that if there's no sponges at daycare and there's no sponges at the home, he has a some portion of his life that's totally anonymous, where he's in contact with sponges that no one can figure out. Totally. Oh, wow.

Oh, that's a great story. It is. Was that a parenting fail?

Not really. You did pretty good.

You did everything you could do.

But it took us a month to realize, how would you know? That's what I felt like. His nose is dripping all the time, but that level of smell. We even asked a family doctor. It was definitely a moment, the fact that it took that long, because if you think about it, it only started smelling at that point. So how long was it in his nose before it started smelling?

Those sponge painting sponges are a particular sponge. They're very porous. The pores are huge and they feel good. You remember how those feel? They're a little waxy or something. They're heavier than a kitchen sponge. And I now want to put... I bet that's a good sensation. Oh my God. I really do. No. I'll be much more careful. Can you not? I'll tie a string to it before I put it up there so I can pull it up. But I do imagine tactically that it feels good. Okay. Well, Stephanie, that was a great story.

Thank you for having me. And I have to say, I have been a day one listener. This has been amazing to be here. Thank you for having me. And Monica, you hear this all the time, but you're my husband's hall pass.

Oh, my God. I never hear that, and that is so nice.

I can think of three guys off the top of my head real quick that I've told her that, but you will go on.

No, no one says that. They always say Dax is their hall pass, but that is Very kind.

No.

Couples have hall passes. I've talked about this in the past. Kristin and I can't really have hall passes because we are likely to meet the hall pass. So a hall pass is a very fun, safe experiment because you're never really going to meet the person. But if the hall pass came true, do you think you would be fine with it because it was labeled a hall pass?

No. Oh, that's a good question because I hate giving my word and then going back on it.

Right. I can tell you're a woman of integrity.

I would be torn with that, but I know my husband well enough that even if he was presented with that option, he would politely bow out and say, Thank you for the hall pass. I'm just going to settle for a picture.

I pass on the Hall Pass.

Yeah, that's the right thing. No one's really supposed to act on their Hall Pass.

I totally disagree. If you're in Missouri and your wife's hall pass is Brad Pitt, and she bumps into him at a Best Western, you should want that for her. You're a bad husband if you don't want that for her. No, you're not. You should hang your head in shame.

You don't have to think like Dax.

More people win the lottery than get to sleep with Brad Pitt.

Whatever. Okay. Actually, that's probably not true.

I stand down. I concede.

Have such a great day. All right. Be well.

You, too. Bye.

She was so fun. She was so fun.

That was so flattering.

Her husband's in love with you.

And he's a professor.

And he's Irish? Scottish.

Scottish. This is all very exciting. Oh, that's awful. If my kids started stinking. Yeah.

Not like poopy smell or body odor smell, but rot smell. You can't cute your way out of that.

Yeah.

Speaking of-Do you smell like rotten?

My fingers smell.

Oh, hi. Hi. Did you hear that Monica's fingers smell?

Yeah, I sure did. That's okay. I teach kindergarten. You can't scare me.

You're like a first responder, a frontline soldier. Yeah, you are. You're in the thick of it. Yeah. And do you find you're like me where you just have a great tolerance for it all?

Yeah, I just go with it.

I could almost be a nurse, I feel like. Not all the way, but almost.

I don't like the poop, but the rest of it, sure.

I understand. It's not bad. So Amy, are we allowed to call you Amy?

Yep, you can call me Amy.

Where are you at, Amy?

I'm in Michigan. No. Yes. Originally from Sterling Heights.

Oh, I worked at 14 in John R. For years.

My husband and I have lived in a small town in West Michigan for 16 years.

And you go to Sleeping Bear Dune sometimes or Silver Lake, any of that stuff? Yep.

We're actually going camping this weekend.

Oh, I'm so jealous. I was just telling my wife this. She doesn't have it like I do. I wake up, generally this time of year in the summer, and I start berating myself that I haven't gone back to swim in a lake yet this summer. It starts driving me insane. I can't miss a summer on Earth without swimming in a lake in Michigan, and that's where I'm at currently.

It's the best.

Yeah, it's so dreamy. Okay, but you're a bad parent, so let's get on to that.

Yeah. Okay. In order to understand how this is a parenting fail, you have to understand when it's like living with a 13-year-old girl. Okay. You have that feeling or that voice voice in your head that will just remind you of something you did or said six months ago that was cringy. So it's like living with that down the hall from you. And I'm sorry, my cat is climbing my fort. I did wonder. I was like, What's happening? Yeah, my cat is trying to climb my fort. I'm so sorry.

This could turn into a real-time story, attacked by an accidental attack. It's probably going to be a disaster.

So anyway, I'm constantly trying to be cool and make my daughter think I'm cool. So about a year and a half ago, she was about to turn 13 and wanted to get her second ear piercing. And her first ear piercing was an event because we did it at the American Girl doll store. So it was special. So I thought, well, let's make this special, too. We'll do it at a tattoo shop. It'll be a whole event.

That's a rite of passage.

It's a step. So I'm a tattoo girl. I love it. And I've always heard, that's where you should go. It's the safest, cleanest. I also have crippling anxiety about making phone calls. So naturally, I have to find one that I can schedule online.

Oh, that's an interesting hurdle.

I get it.

Truly, my last tattoo, my friend Missy, shout out Missy, she had to call and make the appointment for me.

I have anxiety talking on the phone, too, and I think it's probably common. Can you explain a little bit more in detail? Is it the small talk of it? Is it the wrapping it up? What is it?

I think they're going to ask me questions that I don't know the answer to. Oh, interesting.

Okay, that's very specific. I appreciate that.

I'm 42. I should be over this, but definitely not.

It's common, I think.

Anyway, I go online and I'm looking at the options, and I see that there's a piercer named Christina, and I'm thinking, okay, female. My daughter's probably already going to be nervous. So this will help her be calm, a nice girl, girl power, whatever. So I make the appointment on there and you pay online. And I remember thinking, this seems expensive, but I also haven't been pierced since 2000. So I pay online, I tip online. We show up. When I'm checking in, I say, This is my daughter. She's getting her ear pierced. And the guy is like, Oh, we don't have any record of that. And so I start pulling up my email receipt, and he's like, That's okay. That's okay. This guy, his next client is not here. He can do it. It's fine. And I'm looking around. I'm like, I don't see Christina anywhere. There's no girl working in this whole place. Anyway, we meet this guy. He's very nice, pierces her ears. Fine. And then the guy at the front is telling me I have to pay. I was like, Nope, I already paid online. I tipped online. I'm I'm really good about that.

And he's like, Oh, yeah, that's fine. Just go. They're artists. I don't expect them to be bookkeepers. So we're driving to Target to get the solution to clean it. And the tattoo shop starts calling me. And I'm like, What in the world is with these people. So I answer in my car, so my daughter can hear this, and the guy says, Hey, are you coming in for your Christina piercing? You are late, or do you want to reschedule? And I was like, No, my 13-year-old just got pierced. And there's this long pause. And I'm like, I don't know what you want me to say. We just left my 13-year-old got her ears pierced. It's all good. And at the same time, my daughter is in the passenger seat googling Christina piercing, and she shows me the search results. And it is a very intimate piercing. And she goes, Mom, you scheduled me for a vagina piercing.

A clitoral piercing?

No, it's actually where the labia majora come together. Okay, elegant. And it goes through, I guess. She's horrified. I'm horrified. The guy on the phone is like, Oh, ma'am, you overpaid. Do you want to come in and get a refund? I'm like, If you think I'm ever stepping foot in this place again, I already feel anxious that I don't fit in. But there's no way I'm going back in there and be like, Yeah, I'm the mom that scheduled my kid for a vagina piercing.

What if you had got there and they were to call Child Protective Service This is a 13-year-old. With mom going like, Oh, this is going to be great. Right.

The anxiety is just going through my head, and she's horrified. So now, anytime I'm scheduling anything, a hair appointment online, she's like, Don't schedule it for a vagina piercing. I have No credibility. And then even today, I needed her help with the technology side of this, and it's embarrassing. I'm never going to live it down.

This whole time, I'm assuming, and I'm still under the impression, you went to the wrong place, no?

We were at the right place.

But you were just early. Why wasn't Christina there?

No, Christina is the name of the piercing. It's called the Christina piercing.

There's no piercer named Christina.

I got you.

It's called the Christina piercing.

And then the bro that did the ears, presumably does the Christina. Yeah. Wow.

My daughter loves to tell people that for her 13th birthday, I got her a vagina piercing. Wow.

Wow. That's great. Do you have something We're going to talk about at Christmas when she has a boyfriend over at 26. Yeah, for sure. It'll be great.

Is it okay if she says hi real quick? Of course.

You can bring the cat in, too.

Get the cat in. Get your daughter. That's my daughter. Hi. Hi. Nice to meet you. Nice to meet you. Let me see your ear piercing. Let me see how this turned out.

After all of that, they closed up.

Oh, no.

That might be on you guys. Did you leave it in long enough? Yeah, probably.

We're not going back.

There was too much trauma around it. You had to get those out anyway.

This is our race, the whole thing. Yeah. All right, well, lovely meeting you guys. You, too. Have fun at the Lake.

All right, we will. Thank you.

Bye-bye. I'm so jealous.

Of a Christina?

Well, I got to, but going camping in Western Michigan. Yeah.

So man is doing that, huh?

Well, just think up until what? 20 years ago, every single OB was a man.

Yeah, I don't like that.

You know this story that my girlfriend in high school, I won't say her name, she was in love with her OB. She thought he was very attractive.

Her gynecologist or her OB?

Our gynecologist. Okay. Aren't they not the same obstetrician?

Ob is for babies.

And then so most OBS are also gynecologist, but not all gynecologist are OBS. Wonderful. Learned something today. Or had a schedule.

Oh, I forgot to tell people the reason that my finger smells because I've been touching my foot.

Oh, that makes sense. That tracks. Mine could potentially smell because I cut my toenails this morning before I worked out, but I have washed my hands since then. Okay. If you cut your toenails, will you wash your hands?

Oh, good.

Sometimes yes, sometimes no? No. Solid no. Never. Yeah. That's part of your charm.

Well, I just don't even think of it. You're a dirty little monster. No, I'm not. You're a creature. They only smell weird because it's so hot out, and they've been in close to- Make up your mind, are you freezing or are you hot? No, outside is hot. It's hot outside. So my feet have been in closed-toed shoes all morning. And they smell. So they got a little sweat on them. And And now I've been touching them.

And so now they smell. Let me take a little hit off that. Let's see how bad this is.

No, are you sure? Yeah. No, they're pretty bad.

This will make up for not being able to smell the sponge.

They're not that bad. But you smell it, right?

Like a 3% hint. You're really getting into it.

I want to keep smelling it. It's too hard to be a person.

Why don't you bring your toes up to your nose and get it direct from the source?

It's more fun when you get on your finger. You transfer it?

Yeah. That's what Aaron does. He farts on his fingertips and then smells his fingertips.

Okay, I don't have that with fart.

Most people wave a fart, but he'd fart, and then you go, Oh, my God.

Yeah. I don't have that. I will say.

You should. You're halfway there.

I don't know why some things are like that and some... I don't get it.

You like some things and some things not. The procedure was called Christina. Yeah.

That took me a while. I'm still surprised they didn't...

Put two and two together. They're probably baked out of their mind or something. A bunch of dudes in a tattoo parlor.

Oh, my God. He was baked and he was going to give her that?

Sure.

You can perform your duties. No, you can't. Sure you can. No.

At least she didn't just send her in there for the piercing, and then she came out.

That's what I know.

He was like, Drop your panties.

Oh my God.

What's up, guys? It's your girl Keke, and my podcast is back with a new season. Let me tell you, it's too good. I'm diving into the brains of entertainment's best and brightest, okay? Every episode, I bring on a friend and have a real conversation. I don't mean just friends. I mean the likes of Amy Poehler, Keel Mitchell, Vivica Fox, the list goes on. So follow, watch, and listen to Baby, This is Keke Palmer on the WNDYRI app or wherever you get your podcast.

Hello. Hey, what's going on?

Is this Steven? This is. What an artfully appointed room you're in.

Thank you very much.

Yes, it's very clean and very symmetrical.

Is it an office?

It's my home office, and these are all Pearl Jam concert posters. Oh, I love. And or original photography from the band, just photographers. So yeah, that's what I use as my office. And before I get into that, Monica, sorry, I'm not in a closet.

That's Okay.

My wife has a wonderful walk-in closet that I think you would have loved, but the Wi-Fi is spotty up here, so I figured this was the best solution.

We prefer the Wi-Fi.

We have to prioritize Wi-Fi.

You did the right thing.

Dax, I like your chair.

Thank you so much. When you're seeing it real-time, is it more impressive than the photos?

I've never seen a photo.

Oh, okay, great. You don't follow us on Instagram. It's not a very exciting follow. You're not missing much.

Maybe I should start. Yeah, you should start. You'll see pictures of that chair.

Are you struck with how tiny I look in it? A little bit. Yeah, right? I'm only taking up about 60% of the actual seat part, and then that top is above my head, and I'm 6, too.

Yeah, it's a large chair.

I like to feel small, Steven.

There you go.

Now, even though we have the expert, and I don't know how to... I guess the word would just be, are you anal? Because there's not a single picture frame that's not perfectly level, which I appreciate greatly. I like it.

I think it's because my wife gets so annoyed with all the stuff I have that's Pearl Dream related that I have to make it look great in order for it to be acceptable in the house.

That makes a ton of sense. I was just going to ask how many times you've seen them and/or Eddie Vedder?

Ninety-eight. Wow.

Ninety-eight? Is there a message board where you know if you're top? I mean, that's got to be a record.

I don't think it is, but this summer, by the way, at Wrigley Field, I'm taking one of my kids who are part of the story to number 99 and the other one to 100.

Are you from Seattle?

From the Bay Area. I live in Oakland.

Who gets to go to the 100th? I'd be jealous if I was the other My 13-year-old, it'll be his birthday at 99.

So it actually works out perfectly. Then my older one will go to 100. And they've been to a bunch of shows. I'm dragging them at this point.

Yeah. And Tread lightly on this question because this happens to me. There's things I love, and then I'm doing them and I'm like, Do I still love this?

Oh, without a doubt. So here's what it comes down to, though. This is so funny. I have this conversation all the time. I joined the fan club when I was 13 or 14. It gives you insane priority. I work in sales, and so I can travel wherever I want. And so the majority of the shows have been because, one, I can just do it for free. I can expense everything. I've taken so many new people to see the experience that is now no longer about me. It's about watching somebody who gets to be in front row at Madison Square Garden and see Pearl Jam for the first time. I literally know what song they're going to play when they pick up a guitar, when they like, Strum. I'm like, Oh, Corderoy, song 6 off of this album. And so it really has become less about me and more about the experience of seeing it with other people who appreciate it. But I do love them so much.

I deeply relate to that. For me, half of the Sand Dunes experience now is just sharing it with people who've never been out there. And then we've both probably had bad parenting moments, and that's where we're at now.

Yes, this has been a bad parenting moment for me. My wife and I have two boys, Luke, who's 16, and Kyle, who's 13. I feel like I just need to give a little bit of context or background before I go into it more so I can justify my actions. Of course. Of what happened, because I want you to be okay with this. One, I love my kids very much. They're the most important things in the world to me. Two, we are very, very close. And so as a result, we do a ton of stuff together. They're coaches for everything. I really enjoy them as people and hanging out. So I never really treated them like kids. I parent them for sure, but we mess around with each other verbally, almost like they're one of my friends. That plays into this story. Two is that we travel a ton with them. And so they've been all over the European continent, Japan, Mexico, you name it. So they're very used to hotel life, Airbnbs, travel traveling. That stuff doesn't faz them. Now, I have a disclaimer real fast. The disclaimer is, My wife did nothing wrong. This is all my fault.

So this story takes place in Paris.

It's spring break. The actual date I looked it up on Instagram, March 26, 2019. So the boys were 11 and seven and a half. We took a red eye, obviously, because on the West Coast, over to Paris. So we get there probably 12:31. We go to the neighborhood Saint-Germain, and I rented this really awesome Airbnb. It was perfect. It's literally just cafés, bars, boutiques all up and down the streets. The street right in front of where our place is was cut off to cars. So it was all walking distance. It's all umbrellas above and just exactly what you wanted in that Parisian experience. So we check in, we go and do all the stuff. We went to Luxembourg Gardens. We went to Eiffel Tower. They obviously didn't sleep well on the plane. They're little kids. They're just watching shows the whole time. I'm sure every time I woke up, I looked over on their iPad. We roll around towards dinner time. It's the first night of vacation. I can't just sit in the Airbnb. So I'm like, let's go to dinner. I'm out on the balcony. I'm like, Look down there. Look at this. Look at this.

And everyone's like, I'm super tired. I just don't want to go. And I'm like, We have to go out. It's the first night. Even if it was the second night, I'm like, We're going out. Try to convince them as much as possible. Kids really digging in their heels. So I'm like, Great. What if we just leave you here and mom and I will go right down there and get some food, get a drink? And they're like, Absolutely. That's great. My wife's like, I don't really feel comfortable doing that, but she goes along with it. Okay.

This sounds fine to me so far.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely.

So I go down to the street. I get them some crepes and stuff that they're going to love. I see a restaurant that was probably three or four blocks down the street that looked really, really cool. So I put our name in. They were like, hour and a half. I'm like, great. Go back upstairs. They are already in their pajamas. They are showered up. One has an iPad. One has my wife's phone. We're like, See you later. This is going to be awesome. We're like, Hey, call us if you need anything. Text us. We stop at a wine bar right underneath the building, essentially, maybe a half a block away. And it's just full of young Parisians. I was 40 at the time, but I just love being around 25-year-olds. This is awesome. We're drinking wine. I might as well have been smoking a cigarette and wearing a beret at this point. Just super-pumped about everything that's going on. Within 25 minutes, my oldest son sends me a text and he says, When are you guys coming back? Oh, my God. And I wrote, Never have a good life.

So that goes into, obviously, the sarcasm that we all have, right?

Yeah, yeah. My wife was like, Oh, was that one of the boys? And I said, Yeah, that was one of them. She What'd you say? And I said, Never have a good life. And she was like, Why on earth would you write that? I was like, I don't know. I'm just messing around as a person. It came to my head. And she was like, That's just not what you should have done. I'm worried. And I'm like, Listen, if our 11-year-old at this point in his life thinks that we raised him for 11 years, fed him every single day, took him to school, did all this stuff, and we're waiting until we go on a trip to Paris to never see this kid ever again. We got bigger things to worry about. So she's like, All right, whatever. You're an idiot. And so it did like, stick with me for a little bit?

By the way, all that, I got to pause you. All of this is exactly what I'd be doing. It's very funny for me to hear my approach not in the center of it. And yes, of course, that's exactly it. You make the great joke. Who's going to teach it to be funny? You think they're just going to learn? You got to educate them on this, right? And then your wife says something, you convince her everything's groovy, and then your wife's voice is just rattling around in your head like, I think she might be right.

That's exactly what had happened. And of course, I didn't want to admit it to her whatsoever. So we to get up to then go to that restaurant. And because she had said something, so she is partly to blame, it's because she got in my head. And I wrote to him and I said, We'll be there soon. I can practically see you. And I meant like, We can practically see you from the apartment building. So we go down a couple of blocks. We decide that we're not going to have full dinner, but we were just going to eat some stuff because they had asked about coming back. We go and order a bottle of champagne, dozen oysters, just in full on vacation mode, just super stoked. At this point, it's fully dark. It is cold because it's March 26th. We're in jacket, coats, all this stuff. We're like three or four oysters in, clinking champagne glasses, just having the time of our lives. And we're outside. And I could see somebody coming towards us, and it wasn't the waiter. And it was some guy when I looked and he was like, Excusez-moi. And I was like, I won't do any French accent.

And it was this French couple, 25 years old, a man and a woman. Oh, my God. And when I look closer, both of my children are with them.

Oh, no. They broke the You cannot leave this place.

They broke the cardinal rule. So my youngest son is wearing an oversize Frenchman's jacket. And my older son is in his pajamas, no socks, no shoes. My older one wasn't crying, but my younger one was crying. The man was like, Are these your parents? Are this your kids? And I'm like, Oh, my God. What are you guys doing here? Why are you with these strangers?

You're so irrespective. Responsible.

Why would you do this? So they run into our arms and we're all embracing. We've been away from each other for months. And I couldn't compute anything. But immediately, I don't know why I went to trying to make sure that this couple knew that we were somehow responsible parents. So I was just like, I am so sorry. I don't know what's going on, but have an oyster. Take this bottle of champagne. Can I buy you a car? I didn't know what... I was just trying to do anything. And they're like, No, no, no, it's fine. We just wanted to go and find somewhere to eat. And we came across these two kids in their pajamas who were lost and looking for their parents.

Oh, no.

Anyways, tried to get them to eat dinner, hang out with us. They just wanted to go. But when he left, though, what was really cool is he said, Just so you know, you have really great kids. And I was like, Oh, that's cool. I mean, you spent 10 minutes with them. What about them? And he said they were friendly and super polite. And he said, When we couldn't find you guys within a half hour or so, the idea was the woman was going to stay with my youngest in front of the apartment building, and the other guy was going to stay with my son, and they were going to walk around in case we came home, they were going to cover each other's bases. My older son refused to leave my younger son.

Oh, yeah.

He doesn't want to get kidnapped. Yeah. He's like, If you're our parents now, French people are coming in as a pair. This is a two for one deal.

Oh, that is good kids. Yeah.

It made me feel super proud. So that was the fail, obviously, on our part. So when I found out, though, why this all happened is that when I said, Never have a good life, he knew it was a joke, but it also got into his head, which is so unlike him, that he was like, I wonder if someone got a hold of my parents or stole my dad's phone and was like, You're never going to see your parents again. Have a good life.

Yes, his imagination took off.

Then he heard some noises because we were right above this whatever street. Then when I said, We'll be there soon. I can practically see you. He thought the man who was now either a phone thief or someone who was abducting us was like, I can see you. We're coming for you.

Oh, his imagination really took off. Yeah.

So he grabbed his little brother and was just like, We're out. And so didn't change their clothes, didn't grab socks or shoes, didn't take the phone, just left the apartment, left the apartment building, and then got downstairs. It's a good instinct.

Now people will see them get murdered. You got to get in front of some people. Exactly.

Yeah, yeah. I do admire where he was coming from, but it was all because of what I had texted actually.

Oh my God, that's great.

By the way, I can so relate to this because particularly my 11-year-old, she's so with it. I'm shocked so often with how developed her sense of humor is and how with it she is. Then, yeah, once in a while, I'm reminded, oh, right, she is 11. There's some concept she doesn't have, and it can be misleading when they're really precocious or mature.

Yeah. My wife was just like, I will I'll kill you. This is the worst thing. We're never leaving them again. So she was super pissed. But I will say, three days later, we're in Amsterdam. Kids don't want to eat. Guess what happens? I was like, We really will see you. And they wanted to stay. We went out and had a drink. The point is, it didn't have any long term effects. The kids weren't intrigued out.

They bounced right back. Yeah, you lost all leverage with your wife for a year. I did. We have a photo, though, from you.

Yeah. So I just wanted to show you guys. Right when we got there, I took photo. So you could just see how crowded it was and what it looked like on the street. So how easily, even if you're a block away, it was chaos.

Oh, well, your boys are so fucking cute. Oh, my God. Oh, thank you. Oh, seven year old.

That's a great story.

That's wonderful.

I'm glad we got to tell you this. I'm glad you guys didn't judge me too hard. My wife was like, Are you sure you want to say this? I'm like, It's not that big of a deal. And it was six years ago.

I could be in this situation in seconds. This makes a ton of sense to me.

I've been listening to you guys only for about a year now. So I want to give a shout out to my friend Lauren Stern, who has constantly been pushing me to listen. And now once I started, I'm listening to you guys all the time, listening to Sinkt, listening on Mondays, listening on Fridays. I'm chair anonymous.

Oh, that's so nice. So it's been fun.

Well, Lauren must be a genius if she's proselytizing. So thank you, Lauren. Keep at it. Keep converting people. Well, great meeting you. This has been really fun. And I love that story. And we should co-author a book on bad parenting.

Sounds good. Nice to meet you both. All right. Take care.

Hi.

Oh, there you are. Hi. Who are you guys? So good. Is this Danielle? Yes. And you're in your closet.

I'm actually in my daughter's closet, who this story is about, so it worked out.

Very appropriate. In what state is this closet located in or country?

We are in Texas, right outside Houston in this precious little small town.

Okay. So you made a parenting, what would we call it? Error. Error. I was not snafu. A gaffe.

Classic mistake. A little backstory. We have five kiddos between the ages of 10 and 4. So we've got a 10-year-old, an 8-year-old, a 6-year-old, and then twin 4-year-olds.

Oh, my God. Okay.

The bad parenting moments abound because we're just hanging on for dear life. Anyways, but this story only has two of my kiddos involved. So anyone who has more than one kiddo knows they are all so unique, and they all have their own quirks and personalities and strengths and weaknesses.

And what you learn parenting the first one does not apply to the second one and so on, right? You think you figured it out and you're like, Oh, no. A whole new game plan for this one.

100 %. And so our oldest daughter is eight years old, and She is all the oldest daughter stereotypes. She color-coded her closet at six years old and has maintained it. She has all the rules down, and she is making sure everything runs efficiently. She's a rock star, but she's very type A. And so our son, who is our true middle, number three, is a wild man. He has inherited all of my ADHD quirks and qualities, and he's here for the party, man, and he is having a good time. So he's a lot of fun, but naturally, they butt heads a fair amount. And usually my daughter is the aggressor because she needs him to fall in line. He's not having it. So it's been a lot this summer. They've had a lot of togetherness, a lot of squabbles.

Power struggles.

Yes. And the funny thing is he's not acknowledging the power dynamic at all. She is seeing the issue and he is just like, I don't understand what the problem is. I'm just here. So we've talked a lot with her about, I know you're struggling, but we can't talk to him that way or we need to make sure we're treating him with respect and love, just like you deserve respect and love. But at some point, it's like we're beating a dead horse. She's not picking up, but we're putting down. And so we're just rinse and repeat all summer long. And so this was about three weeks ago. We had been home all day. They'd been fighting just off and throughout the day. And it was getting to that witching hour. And my husband took three of our kiddos outside to let them play. And I was like, I'll start cleaning up in here and start setting up for dinner. And the two middle ones were upstairs doing their own thing. And so I was like, I'll just let them be. So I'm trying to do my tasks, and I just hear from upstairs, our daughter starts screaming at my son.

I can't tell what she's saying, but I can tell by the way she's saying it that she means business and that she is just letting him have it. And so I'm like, oh, great. Here we go And then I hear our son just start this really sad, heartbreaking cry. And I'm like, Oh, gosh. She probably hit him, and now she's yelling at him.

She probably got physical.

Yeah, this poor kid just taking it. So with him, I feel like I should say he's two years younger, but he's bigger than her. He is almost off the growth chart. He was like a 10-pound baby, natural six-pack. He's a beast. Yes. And she is not. She's petite, but She's fiery, so she holds her own, usually. Anyways, we have worked with him since he was really little about, You have these big muscles. You should use them to help protect and to help people, and we can't use them to hurt. It's been this ongoing mantra for him. We use our muscles to help. And so he's really pretty passive. So Sister is yelling at him, and I'm like, Oh, gosh, she's probably hurt him. I'm at this point where I'm like, She's not going to stop until he finally defends himself. This thought occurs to me. Of course. I'm like, he's got to stand up for himself. So against my better judgment, I just haul her up the stairs, hit her back.

Oh, boy. Okay.

So we We've now escalated the situation.

By the way, I haven't done it, but I'm telling you, I have been on the verge of saying that to the older one. Just take her down. Let her know you can't come at me like this.

And again, it's all like a split-second decision. But my thought process was, if he just gets one good hit in, she'll back off. She'll realize she can't treat him like that. I yell this up and instantly, silence. She quits yelling. He quits crying. And then I hear her take off. She's running out of the room, down the hallway, and she is flying down the stairs. I'm like, Uh-oh. I can tell he's chasing her. I'm trying to go head them off at the bottom of the stairs. Right as she gets to the bottom, I hear a thud, and then she grabs her head and screams. I'm like, Oh, no. I go to her and I'm like, Okay, what happened? And she's still screaming. She pulls her hands down, are now coded in blood, completely coded.

From the fall down the stairs?

She was standing. Oh, I also thought that. I get her outside and I'm trying to delicately see the wound. But the problem is she's bleeding so much that her hair is now completely matted to her head. It is flowing going down her back all the way to the ground.

That's scary. Yes.

I've heard head wounds bleed a lot, but I knew with this one there was enough blood that I was like, We're headed to the hospital, probably. I finally get a good look at it. I sent Emma pictures. I don't know if you guys can see him.

Let's take a look. We've kept it hidden. Let's see here. Okay. Oh, my God. Big, big gash on the parietal. Yeah. Well, first of all, she's so cute. There's also a picture smiling.

That's a big one.

Dying to know what object hit that head.

We head to the ER. She's calm at this point, and the bleeding has stopped. It's been about 10 or 15 minutes. I'm mostly just apologizing to her in the car. I'm like, I'm so sorry. Violence is never the answer. I shouldn't have told him he could hit you. She's getting upset because she sees me upset. She's like, No, you didn't do anything. We're just a big sob fest on the way to the hospital. But we finally get I'm getting the story from her. What I didn't know is that while she was upstairs and she was yelling at him and frustrated with him, she had picked up their white noise sound machine, which is roughly the size of a handball ball, shaped like a hockey puck. She is holding this over her head, yelling at him, screaming at him, threatening to throw it at him. So as soon as I told him he could hit her back, she dropped it and took off. He, in his pursuit of her, picked it up and ran after her and managed to hit her from the top of the stairs on the landing. She had made it all the way to the bottom before he made it on that.

Oh, he threw it. He chunked it.

Oh, my God. You almost chucked that thing thinking you're not going to hit the person. Having a brother and having thrown many things at my brother. I'm like, chucking it at him, hoping he never fucks with me again. And I don't really think it's going to hit him. And then, of course, sometimes it hits him.

Oh, I don't think he could have...

If he tried.

To hit her in the head. If he wanted... Yeah. He just threw it Because he was mad. And it happened to totally fuck her in the head. Or he's a future quarterback. We're still deciding. But yeah. So it ended up she needed five staples. She's so hardcore. She sat there and did not make a peep. She didn't move while the doctor gave her three different numbing shots and did all the staples. Anyways, we've had a lot of good conversations since then about appropriate ways to deal with our anger.

Oh, man.

I think it's comforting for them to see their parents fuck up, too, and then own it and go like, Oh, yeah, there's no perfection. We keep fucking up and we just own it. We apologize and we apologize, and we prepare, and we move on.

100%. I feel like I'm constantly like, I should have done that differently. I'm sorry. They'll unpack it all in therapy one day, but at least I'm modeling repentance, I guess.

Yes, that's all you can do.

Again, this photo of her is so cute with her little smile. Oh, my God. What's her name?

Dottie.

Dottie. Perfect.

It's hard when you have your shit together and your little brother doesn't have their shit together.

Here we go.

Older sister. It can make you crazy.

Did you ever chuck anything at poor Neil?

I didn't ever get physical, but I was mean with my words. Very mean.

Scathing.

But sorry. That's the thing. She gets stitches and she doesn't need any holding and she's fine. So she's looking at everyone else like, Come on, step it up. Get your shit together. Meet me here. Meet me here. I can relate. I get her.

I should have known I'm the youngest of four and had a sister that totally tormented me all growing up. There was one instance where my dad held her back and let me take a swing, and I just completely cold-clocked her in the face as a six-year-old.

Runs in the family.

It's a ride of facet.

Well, Danielle, that was a great story. Yes. Thank you for sharing that. Thank you so much.

Thank you so much. Hey, real quick. I have listened to you guys for thousands of hours, and the only person I know is obsessed with you guys is my Erin Weekly, my nurse best friend, and she's Here. Can she meet you guys?

Of course, please. What's her name? Marie. Marie. Marie. Marie. Hi, Marie. How are you? We love nurses. Is that clear?

Yes, I love it. Don't worry. No Munchausen's.

Right. And anything you want to say about my vascularity?

It's impressive. And honestly, I love veins. My husband hates this about me because I'll just be sitting next to him, rubbing his veins.

And he's like, Stop. I'm like, But they're so good.

I know. I love what a kink all nurses have for veins. I think it's so funny.

We can't help it.

Well, it's so nice meeting both of you. We're delighted you're listening. The only thing I listen to, really. Good. We're trying to keep it coming fast and hot so you can't wander or stray. All right, ladies. Well, nice meeting both of you. Have a good rest of your day. Thanks for telling us that story, Danielle. Of course.

Thank you, guys. All right.

Take care.

Wow.

Well, those were fun. Do you think it'll make people not want to have kids or have kids?

Or does it make it I think they're just everyone's been a kid, so everyone can relate to some extent. I think they're just good stories.

Do you think anyone hasn't been a kid in the simulation?

Yeah. I mean, there's been some glitches, but they haven't released those to the public. Okay.

Love you. Love you.

Do you want to sing a tune or something?

We need a theme song? Okay, great. We don't have a song song for this new show, so here I go, go, go. We're going to ask some random questions, and with the help of Armchairs, we'll get some suggestions. On the fly, rindish, on the fly, I'm Rindish. Enjoy. Follow Armchair Expert on the WNDRI app, Amazon Music, or wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen to every episode of Armchair Expert early and ad-free right now by joining WNDRI Plus in the WNDRI app or on Apple podcast. Before you go, tell us about yourself by short survey at wndri. Com/survey.