So... Alright - Rub Some Dirt On It

Episode Date: April 30, 2024

Geoff shares memories of a Gen X childhood.

So I have become obsessed with TikTok over the last few months. It stands to reason that right as the government is finally deciding to shut it down, that I would become wholly addicted to it. I actually, I don't think the government's going to shut it down. I think that that law will obviously be passed and signed. And then they have like 270 days to divest and sell to foreign or to American interests. Or I'm not actually worried that it's going to go away.

A lot of people have been saying to me, because in addition to my love of tick tock lately, I started a tick tock channel, Jeff's Daily Rip, where once a day I do the daily rip that sometimes I would do on Instagram. I would usually just do it as a promotion for an upcoming break show. But since the break show is on indefinite hiatus

while we spin up the new thing, I wanted to keep that alive. But I also, I just, I don't wanna leave TikTok. I like the architecture, I like how it works. I've been having a lot of fun with it. I find it very interesting. So I started doing my reps over there and I've been having a blast doing it.

I also have, I've also been posting, yeah, some stuff of that dog and some of my NBA hot takes. And I'm, I think now that Sloppy Joe's live theme is back on, or live feed is back on YouTube. I think I might start recording funny sloppy Joe moments and putting them up on TikTok as well. Anyway, this was not meant to be an advertisement for my TikTok channel, Jeff's Daily Rip.

But if you wanna subscribe, I wouldn't be offended. However, what it is meant to be is a segue into me talking about a segment of TikTok that I have fallen into that is so lame. I understand. I get it. But it's also it is what it is. I discovered Gen X TikTok, which, you know, if you don't know, I'm Gen X.

I was born in 1975. So I spent I remember the 70s very little. I remember every second of the 80s pretty much. And I grew up a stereotypical Gen X kid. And the world has changed dramatically since my childhood. And it's been fun to kind of reconnect with all the curmudgeonly old other Gen Xers. I mean, I'm not interacting with them or anything.

I'm just it's just fun. There's a lot of like there's a lot of like tick tock trends and it's all fucking lame. Right. There's a lot of tick tockers that are like, you know, Gen Z people that are like Gen X people. Why are you obsessed with the three dots, which, by the way, is called an ellipsis? Why? But they call it the three dots. Why are you obsessed with typing the three dots or why are you obsessed with proper punctuation? And then some Gen X or goes stitches in some kind of funny, but like, fuck you, essentially response because we're Gen X and we don't care or

whatever, which is, you know, about 70 percent true. But the the the weakness of the Gen X or is if there's nobody around for the Gen X or to tell them he doesn't give a shit about it. Does his life really have meaning? Unfortunately, it doesn't, I think. And part of the whole like loner, what do they call it? the Latchkey Kid generation is that if you don't have a forum to tell people you don't give a shit, then do you really not give a shit? You know, it's kind of predicated on the idea that people are around to see us not care about things, which is in itself extremely silly. But one thing that I keep seeing over and over again

when people talk about this in the grammar thing is, that's missed is when I was growing up and I haven't seen any other Gen Xers on the TikTok feeds due to mention this, they have a lot of other reasons why we had to use proper grammar. But most of it's like, we know it annoys you and so we're gonna double down on it, which is, I gotta say, like the ethos of my generation.

It's, you know, they have that thing, you can't teach an old dog new tricks. You absolutely can teach an old dog new tricks, but if that old dog finds out that his old tricks now piss you off, all you've done is add value to those old tricks for the old dog. You know what I mean? That is my generation in a nutshell. But anyway, one thing that I don't see mentioned a lot in this in the grammar conversation is, and

if you're Gen X are out there, feel free to sound off email me at Eric at Jeff spots.com. let me know. But they took that shit, grownups took that shit so fucking seriously when I was growing up. The punishments for improper grammar were as severe in some cases as the punishments for fucking around in gym or for getting into a fight at lunch. Or like that shit, I was scared. I was scared of grammar growing up

because it was so militaristically taught and regimented that I don't know. I had like, I have math anxiety now, anytime I see numbers, but that's because I wasn't good at math ever at any point. I'm lucky enough that I was good at English and grammar. But I still like when I write a sentence, there's something in the back of my head that's like you're going to get in trouble if you don't put a comma in a period here. You're going to get in trouble if you leave a dangling participle. You know, you're going to get in trouble if you leave a dangling participle. You're going to get in trouble if there's not

proper cynic structure. That was just really beaten into us. And I have to admit, I was never beaten at school. Like you know, I'm sure if you're not Gen X, if you're millennials, you've definitely heard of it. And if you're Gen Z, you've probably heard that we used to be paddled in school when we were kids. That was 100 percent a thing.

I've been in principals offices. I've seen the paddles. I've been threatened with paddles. But for some reason, I never got actually I never actually got paddled by a principal in my school. I got paddled like a motherfucker by my parents after school. But the threat lingered and hung so heavy punishment. We were so scared of getting in trouble when we were kids because they literally,

the fear was a grownup who's not my mom or my dad can beat the shit out of me if they want to. And my parents are going to, and then if I get punished at school in that way and I go home and have to explain to my parents what I did and then I got punished, I'll probably get hit again. You know, like that's what childhood was like back then. And so that's in my DNA and that's in my core.

And I think that's probably in the core of a lot of Gen Xers when they text and use a period at the end of a sentence. It's not most of the time, they are definitely trying to annoy you. If you tell them it annoys you, then a hundred percent we're trying to get into your skin because it's the only way we can refill our cold empty tank is through the on we

have others right. And so it's potential that that's what's going on. But it's also entirely possible and probable that most older people and I'll include the baby boomers in this too because I'm sure they had it as well. If they are texting you or writing an email with proper sentence structure, they're not trying to be difficult or annoying or obtuse. They're just following through with something that was beaten into them their entire lives, if not physically, the fear, emotionally and mentally.

And so it always makes me laugh when I see those Tic Tocs, because the first thing I think is like if I didn't write put a period on it, I am in fucking trouble. Like, I don't want to face the consequences of not using proper grammar. You know, it got me thinking, though, about just my childhood in general, growing up a Gen X kid and how different the world was. And you see all these fucking, these TikTokers

who are trying to be edgy, all these Gen X TikTokers who are like back in our day, you know, with our parents kicked us out at 10 in the morning after breakfast or 9 a.m. and they locked the door. We weren't allowed to come in unless it was to go to the bathroom. And if we had to drink water, we had to drink it from a spigot.

All that shit is true. It's not 100% true in every situation. I was definitely allowed in my house many days, but there were a lot of days when it was like, go outside, go find friends, don't come home until dinner. And that might be at 9 a.m. And there are like, I had friends, I remember distinctly, I had friends that would ask if they could come over and use the bathroom at my house in the daytime because

their parents were at work and they weren't allowed back in the house like they didn't have a key to get in or Their mom said was busy and said don't come home And so they would go pee at a neighbor's house like and I've probably done that a few times as well But I was just thinking about those those differences in how I grew up versus how my kid has grown up in a in a much saner twenty, twenty four. And I was reminded of this time. And I don't know if I've ever told this story before. Man, my puppy, Albert, the new bulldog, he is he doesn't have a squeaky toy,

but he's doing everything in his power to get on mic by breathing and he's frustrated because I won't take him outside right now Because I'm recording and so he's harrumping and just moping around. I don't know if you can hear it But I was thinking of this story that I hadn't I can't remember the last time that popped in my head I don't think I've ever told it on a podcast or in any content before When I was in third grade and I lived in Jacksonville, Florida, I was playing with a friend outside, my friend Scott, we were at his house.

And it was like a little trio of kids. It was me and this kid Scott and this kid Casey. And I told a story about this kid Casey before. He was the kid that fell on, we were jumping bikes over a fire at a construction site and he crashed and impaled his neck on rebar. And we just walked him home and his mom took him to the emergency room

and he was totally fine but he definitely had a hole in his neck. In and out, cause it went in one side and out the other, like on the left side of his neck. Fucking hideous, was it? Might have been right. Anyway, that was a formative nightmare for me. That same year, third grade I believe it was, man, I just had another fucking memory.

Scott and Casey and I wanted to do a song for the school talent show. And at some point, like we were gonna do, I think it was Rock and Roll, We'll Never Die, It Is Here to Stay, I don't know why. And we were gonna wear little leather jackets and stuff, we were gonna do a performance at the school talent show, and at some point they boxed me out,

and they uninvited me from being in the song with them. And I don't know if it was them, or their parents, or why, but man, that really hurt my feelings. And then I had to go to the school talent show, and I had to watch them perform, and they were pretty good. And I was like, I should be up there. And somehow, that wasn't like a disqualifying event. Like I was still friends

with those kids. After that, I should have been way more pissed. But because I listen, I can't seem to save my life, but I was just as good as they were. Anyway, one day I was at Scott's house, and he had gotten a big pile of dirt dropped off in the yard. I think his dad was, you know, filling in holes or whatever. This was like a big mound of dirt, which for a bunch of kids in third grade is pure entertainment. So we had shovels and we were digging like, I think we were making like a GI Joe mountain kind of, right? And we were going to have like GI Joe on one side and Cobra on the other and do tunnels and shit.

We were very excited about it. We were deep into it. And I was at the bottom working on something and Scott was at the top. And I remember he kept swinging his shovel and I kept trying to stay away from him because like I don't want to be behind him. And I was but I was lost in my own head and I was like digging my tunnel or whatever. And he readjusted and I didn't notice it. And I stood up right as he flung some dirt and his shovel come like swung back and hit me in the face.

The sharp edge of the shovel hit me right above my left eyebrow, like right on my left eyebrow. I had a scar there for a long time. And, or like right under it kind of, I guess not above, but like right under it, like where the eye and the eyebrow are, like it hit that bone and it split my eyebrow open or that bone open. And I was gushing blood.

I thought I couldn't see because all the blood was going into my eye. So I thought for a second that he knocked my eye out and that I was blind. And of course I'm wailing and screaming and crying. And he's like, oh, don't cry. I'm gonna get in trouble, don't cry. I'm so sorry.

And he's trying to like stop the blood and then I'm covered in dirt because we were swinging shovels around in dirt. And I'm like, oh fuck, I think I'm gonna die. I realized that my eye, I can still see a little bit that I can feel the cut and it's above my eye. And so I'm by the way, very close to getting my eye poked out in third grade with a shovel.

So anyway, Scott is like, I'm like, well, what am I doing? He's like, well, I'll take you to my mom. My mom can fix it. And so we go around from his backyard to the door and knock on the door. This is what it was like in the eighties, at least in my experience. We couldn't just walk in the house.

Scott couldn't walk into Scott's own fucking house without permission. So we had to knock on the door. And I remember it took forever. And I'm just standing there, bleeding into my hand and just all down me. It's a fucking, it's a cut on my skull, essentially, or like right on the outside of my cranium there. And so it's just gushing blood. It's really gross. I think I had, I don't know, 10, 10 or 11 stitches from it. But anyway.

Eventually, his mom comes to the door and she's like holding the baby, their their toddler or whatever, like it was it was a newborn. It was like maybe six months old. And so that's not a newborn, but it wasn't a toddler. It was like, it was still a holding kind of baby. And she goes, what's going on? And he goes, Jeff got hurt. He didn't say I hit Jeff.

He was just like, Jeff got hurt. He he's bleeding. And she goes, she looked at me and she goes, you need to go home to your mother. And I go, my mom works. She won't be home till six o'clock tonight. And it's, I don't know, one in the afternoon, maybe. And she goes, well, I have the baby today.

I can't deal with this and just shut the door on on both of us. And so Scott was like, sorry. And then he just went back to playing in the dirt. And I just walked home and dripped blood down the street and then I didn't know what to do. So I was a latchkey kid, like literally I had a fucking thing around my arm and so I let myself in my house and I just cleaned it up the best that I could and I just like sat in a chair with a towel over my head and cried until my mom came home and then I think she took me to like an emergency care

and got me some stitches and got it all cleaned up. But I remember that my mom wasn't particularly mad at Scott's mom. It was just like, and it wasn't because there was anything wrong with my mom or anything. I did just, that's the way the world worked. It was like, oh yeah, well she had the baby. As if a grown ass woman couldn't put a baby in a fucking bassinet for seven minutes to throw some peroxide on my eye or on my wound rather.

It's just it's just that's how things were when I was a kid. I don't know why that memory. Well, I guess I do know why that memory popped into my head. It's because I was just thinking about my childhood and just thinking about how much the world has changed. And I don't retell that story to say that I or we had it worse in any way whatsoever. It's just a thing that happened to me when I was a kid that seemed perfectly normal to me and to all the grownups around me at the time. But that now in 2024, if given how much the world has changed, if dad turned Millie away in third grade

when she was split open on her forehead and told her to go home and sit and wait for me to get home from work, I would, I'd probably be in jail. I'd probably be in jail. I'd probably be in jail for just beating the ever loving shit out of that dad, you know, and I'm not saying my mom should have beat up that lady or anything at all. Like I said, it was normal for the time I'm

just I guess saying that I'm glad times have changed a little bit. Because we just we didn't treat our kids very preciously back then. And you know, there are benefits and detractors to that. I think we definitely are overprotective of our kids in 2024. I definitely am. There's definitely a happy medium. The pendulum has swung pretty hard in both directions.

And there's some healthy parenting somewhere in the middle. But you know, that's what you're dealing with. When you find Gen Xers to be obnoxious or intransigent or stubborn. That's what they're that's what you're dealing with. You know, that's how they were raised. And then in addition, they were just outside with other kids their age. It was genuinely like Lord of the Flies. Like, I think about it all the time. It was like, you would get together with a group of like four to 10 kids all on bikes or whatever, and then instantly the weakest kid

was getting shit on in some way. And the weakest kid varied from day to day. Anybody could be the weakest kid. Anybody could be the object of ridicule. But it was like every day there was a piggy, you know, from Lord of the Flies. And somehow it all worked out. Everybody, most of us lived. Right.

I wouldn't want to go back to it. Oh, so that's why that's why Gen X people use periods. I have been listening to a lot of music, obviously, as I always do. And I want to have some recommendations for today since I've been doing like a song of the episode lately. I've actually been listening to a lot of this lady, Faye Webster, who Eric turned me on to, who I like very much. It's very, uh, I don't know.

I find it to be a really soothing and enjoyable and interesting. But I had this realization that the other day that Faye Webster and most musicians who sound like Faye Webster, whatever that genre is in 2024, they're all basically just Juice Newton. Like if you go back and listen to Juice Newton, it's like a modern take on Juice Newton. So my music for this episode, I'm not going to pick one song. I'm going to pick Juice Newton. I'll recommend Angel in Angel in the Morning, Queen of Hearts and Rhydom Cowboy. Those are those are the three songs I hope you all will listen to. Those are fantastic songs. Maybe you'll see the connection. Maybe you won't. Maybe I'm insane. Also, before I wrap this up, I saw something crazy on Google or on Reddit, actually, the other day that I think I'm going to investigate and maybe do an episode of Sol. Right. Or whatever this is going to be called in the future on. I definitely want to dive into it.

There are in the five boroughs of New York City. There are almost one million buildings and a building is it could be anything. A hardware store skyscraper, right? Restaurant, single-family home, plumbing store, whatever. Walmart. One million almost just under one million buildings, which is a crazy number.

But what's even crazier to think about is that there are only eight million people in New York City. So there's a building for every eight people in New York. Now, granted, not every building is a livable building, like nobody's moving into the plumber's shop. But it's just crazy to think that there's a building for every eight people in New York. Seems like we probably shouldn't have any kind of a housing crisis in that city. You know what I mean?

Anyway, I think I'm going to dive into that on a future episode. But we're probably at time here, so I'll have to do some research and get back to you on that. Hope everybody's having a good week. Keep keep listening for information on how things are going to change or stay the same going forward. But things will go forward, as I always say, and be sure to check out Juice Newton to get a chance. Alright.