SPEAKER_01 0:00

50-year-old mother of two was arrested on charges of harassing three girls from her daughter's cheerleading squad, allegedly sending texts and voicemail messages to the girls from an unknown number that said, You have no friends and you should kill yourself.

SPEAKER_02 0:17

Oh my god, that's too much.

SPEAKER_01 0:20

That's a little intense, right? Welcome to another episode of Smells Like Humans. This is the podcast where we explore the curious things that people do. The very human things that grab our attention and cause us to wonder, why and why? I'm Ross, your host, and today, my guest is my dear Paul, Gangly, dancing, acting, improv, teaching friend Amy. Hello, Amy.

SPEAKER_03 0:49

Hiya, Ross. Thanks for that fabulous introduction. Did you mind being called Gangly? No, it's it's fairly accurate, so I'll take it.

SPEAKER_01 0:59

And welcome all of you to the show, Gangly or Not. You're welcome here and thanks for joining us. Please help us continue growing our show. It is growing. Uh but we need all the help you can bring us. So uh share the show with people you think might like it. Rate us on Apple Podcasts, give us a glowing rating. We love your support, send us encouraging emails, suggest topics you would like us to discuss, ask us questions, but whatever it is, we appreciate your love and helping us out. Okay, we are going to lift the hood and see what today's trouble might be.

SPEAKER_03 1:40

Sounds ominous.

SPEAKER_01 1:42

Well, these days, we know some parents are too involved in their kids' activities, whether it be sports or school projects or whatever. And we've all read about parents going over the top, or we've seen YouTube videos of parents like fighting at Little League games and all that stuff. And we tend, when we see these things, to think that, well, it's just some sort of isolated psychological defect that some of these parents have. They just, you know, there's something wrong with just these particular parents. As if this is not a widespread phenomenon, which I maintain it is. We're ignoring the real problem here, Amy. And you know what the real problem is? Ross, what is the real problem? Parents have nothing to do and nothing to live for. This is the problem. I say fascinating. Parents, rather than being the perpetrators, they're the real victims here. You're laughing.

SPEAKER_03 2:47

It's good. I love it. Let's I'm ready to do this.

SPEAKER_01 2:51

Okay, so there's this thing called intensive parenting, and there's a really interesting article I read on it, and I'll post it in the show notes, and people can check it out and see how they feel about it. But um, at first I thought, well, this is just like a problem for richer white suburban parents who are just, you know, trying to find ways to maintain their advantage in the world, and it is, but it's not just that. What this article maintains is that people at all levels of the socioeconomic continuum also feel that intensive parenting is appropriate, no matter how they accomplish that, even if they don't have the same means and access, they still believe that intensive parenting is the right way to go. People of color also uh reportedly are influenced by these same pressures and these same expectations to do all of this junk for your kids. And so you we we hear about these stories about like did you read about the parents cheating their kids in the college?

SPEAKER_03 4:06

I did. Some very famous people did that that I I liked a lot or knew of. Maybe I didn't like them that much, but I knew who they were.

SPEAKER_01 4:14

Well, you don't like them now. No, but you know, it's crazy, right? So a couple of them are actually doing some jail time. No doubt. And and uh, you know, they would uh pay for someone to doctor their kids' test scores, or they would give a bunch of money to the school to pretend to be admitting them like on the rowing team or the sailing team or the soccer, whatever it was. And of course the kids didn't do any of that. And it's just like, what? And what a horrible thing, right, to do to your kid. Yeah. Because then the kid finds out, oh, my mom and dad don't think I'm smart enough or don't think I'm talented enough, and they got to cheat me into college. That sucks. You don't want to hear that.

SPEAKER_03 4:59

Maybe. I wonder some of these kids might just be like, that's cool. Now I'm in college. I never would have gotten here if it wasn't for my mom's fat cash.

SPEAKER_01 5:12

I uh I know, I know that I sound I know that I sound like an old man when I say this was not my experience. Uh my parents would have been okay with me doing some jail time, but they were never gonna take the fall for me. No. Uh in my lifetime, the typical parent would come home, have a couple of scotches and a Valium, and fall asleep. Did you ever hear one of your parents say, Go outside and find something to do? Yes.

SPEAKER_03 5:49

I was not allowed to be bored, basically. And if I ever even indicated, I know I can almost guarantee you, I never said I'm bored as a child. But if I seemed bored, like with a heavy sigh or like a feet shuffling or toes half anything, my parents would be like, I've got a list of chores for you to do here. And if and if not that, then yes, we'd we'd like for you to move all the rocks on the left side of the house over to the right side of the house. Yeah. Yeah. There was no there was no tour guide. Um, there's certainly nobody, Dr. Metescours. Whatever dumb thing I did in school, I had to take responsibility for.

SPEAKER_01 6:29

By the way, did you live in a rock quarry? What are you doing with rocks around your house?

SPEAKER_03 6:34

Well, there's a lot of gravel. It was more gravel. They weren't big rocks, these weren't boulders. There's small rocks, a lot of small rocks.

SPEAKER_01 6:41

You're living in a gravel pit.

SPEAKER_03 6:43

There was there was a there was a dirt gravel situation. We'll leave it at that.

SPEAKER_01 6:50

So my parents, and this is gonna sound like I'm beating them up, and I'm really not, but they just were not, they didn't believe in this intensive parenting. So, just one example one time I blew up my face.

SPEAKER_03 7:08

Dang it, I hate it when that happens.

SPEAKER_01 7:11

And I was in the hospital with a blown-up face, really, and my mother stopped by and comforted me for a while, and then she said, um, I've gotta go to play bridge. She had to play cards. Wow.

SPEAKER_03 7:35

Well, maybe it was a tournament. It could have been a tournament, maybe it was a big game.

SPEAKER_01 7:40

She played cards every night. She was playing cards every night.

SPEAKER_03 7:45

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 7:46

She had to go.

SPEAKER_03 7:47

Well, you seem to have turned out okay. Your face is mostly back in place, and right?

SPEAKER_01 7:54

Yeah, mostly. I mean, yeah. Mostly. So I know we chatted uh a few weeks ago about this article I read on cheer moms. Yeah. Oh God, I love it. And I didn't really know, I mean, I've heard of parents being over-involved in their kids' sports and whatever, but I didn't really know about the cheer moms. But apparently, people who know about cheer moms, and this is mainly, I think, in a in America, cheer moms are known for uh being overinvolved and domineering. So uh I used to think cheerleading was was what happened on the sidelines of a game, but apparently there's a whole thing called all-star cheerleaders and other kinds of groups, and they practice up to seven days a week, all year round, spending hours upon hours in the gym, slamming their heads into mats and all of this stuff to learn these very complex, very athletic cheer routines that last like a minute or two minutes, and then they go to competitions. Again, nothing to do with supporting a team, they're just competing with by cheer by doing these cheer stunts. And there was a documentary I watched uh a couple years ago on cheerleaders, and it was really interesting. So, so just a couple of snapshots from this world. A 50-year-old mother of two was arrested on charges of harassing three girls from her daughter's cheerleading squad, allegedly sending texts and voicemail messages to the girls from an unknown number that said, You have no friends and you should kill yourself.

SPEAKER_02 9:34

Oh my god, that's too much.

SPEAKER_01 9:37

That's it's a little intense, right?

SPEAKER_02 9:39

A little.

SPEAKER_01 9:40

We've heard, I know you know about Wanda Holloway, the Texas cheer mom, because they made a movie.

SPEAKER_03 9:46

Did she Nancy Kerrigan somebody?

SPEAKER_01 9:49

She tried to hire someone to kill the mother of her 13-year-old daughter's rival so that she would secure her daughter's spot on the high school cheerleading squad. Wanda Holloway was her name, the Texas Cheer Mom. They made a movie or two about her. I think Holly Hunter might have been in one of the movies. It's pretty good, actually.

SPEAKER_03 10:11

We love Holly Hunter.

SPEAKER_01 10:13

She's great. Uh so Mrs. or Ms. Holloway was sentenced to 15 years in prison for that attempted murder.

SPEAKER_03 10:22

Damn, take that, Mrs. Holloway.

SPEAKER_01 10:24

And so a little over invested, but here's the ironic part of it. Her daughter didn't want to be a cheerleader in the first place. What? Oh and she said when her mother got arrested and went to jail, she said, I felt a little relieved.

SPEAKER_03 10:43

I I bet it sounds like her mom was insane.

SPEAKER_01 10:48

Yeah. This is a thing, it's a real thing. Now you told me when I was talking about doing this episode, you said, Oh yeah, competitive birthday parties or something. And I'm like, Well, I don't even know what that is.

SPEAKER_03 11:02

What is that? Yeah. We moved into a fairly affluent neighborhood. And the moms in this neighborhood, like, so if you were, if they knew your kids, you know, their birth their kids' birthday was coming up, they would start planning. And if you also were, you know, somewhere in the year, you were having a birthday party. So you're like, oh, what you know, what are you doing for your child's birthday party? Because as as previously mentioned, my my dad and I love my dad very much, but there was, I think I when I turned maybe 10 or 11, my dad asked my mom why I had to have a birthday party every year. Yeah because he felt like that was excessive.

SPEAKER_01 11:41

Like, yeah, you're overdoing it.

SPEAKER_03 11:43

Yeah, right. Every couple of years ought to cover it, okay?

SPEAKER_01 11:46

We let's check in every decade and see how we feel.

SPEAKER_03 11:49

You know, the we'll hit the highlights one, 21, 50, and then let's just call it a day. Um, so you know, I I wanted to have parties for my kids, but I wasn't accustomed to like, you know, you have a cake, there might be some punch that comes out of a Kool-Aid packet, there might be plates, or you could just, you know, eat right off the table. I there weren't big, there weren't big plans. But there were for these parties, there were petting zoos, there were clowns, there were, yeah, so you had to have a thing. Like you had to have a bouncy house, or you had to hire a mu magician. And really, so what would happen is when the kid turned four, you'd hire a magician and you'd have, you know, fire in the yard, and then you know, you'd have this elaborate catered meal and all of this. But then the next year you had to do more than that. And if you had another kid in the neighborhood, just kind of like these cheer moms we're talking about, too, that you had to do more than the previous person did. So if they had a magician, you had to have a magician and a clown and you know, a couple of unicycle riders. And so they would just get more and more elaborate. Uh, and I couldn't have kept up if I wanted to, but I just would take the opposite tack basically, and we would, you know, we would hand make everything. And if there were there were snacks and there was Kool-Aid and that sort of thing.

SPEAKER_01 13:13

So you would go down market on their ass.

SPEAKER_03 13:17

I did. I felt like I couldn't have that many bouncy houses, so I'll just have zero bouncy houses.

SPEAKER_01 13:23

But initially, did you feel the pressure to like keep up with these parties?

SPEAKER_03 13:28

Oh, definitely. Oh, I definitely always like from the from the first get-go, I felt inadequate. Because I thought I just never could invest that kind of I could never spend that kind of money on a kid's birthday party. So yeah, and there was judgment. There was definitely like moms would judge each other. Even the like the invitations were elaborate. There was no, there were no e-vites, they were paper cards, they were mailed, and they were fold-outs, and there was confetti, sometimes there were prizes. And the gift bags were like you were at the Oscars, man. It was like an iPad. I'm kidding, but they were very elaborate gift bags.

SPEAKER_01 14:11

Kids are swag bagging. Okay.

SPEAKER_03 14:13

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 14:13

Well, that sounds stressful to me. I never experienced that. Let's talk about what's different. So, families, on average, used to be larger, so parents had less time to worry about any particular kid. And as we you and I have discussed before, the role of a parent and should be and was pretty limited, which is you keep the kid from croaking prematurely. If you did that, you were doing okay.

SPEAKER_03 14:41

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 14:42

So when I played sports as a kid, there weren't a lot of parents that showed up at the games. And of those that showed up never caused any trouble because they were high, or they didn't care. They had no ego involvement, and whether Johnny got a hit or struck out, they were their own person, totally separate from the kid. So back then, if there was an overinvolved parent, it was rare. It wasn't the norm, it was kind of weird. So I was had this friend named Bruce. Who names their kid Bruce anymore?

SPEAKER_03 15:19

That I think that's a porn name pretty pretty much exclusively.

SPEAKER_01 15:23

Really?

SPEAKER_03 15:24

Yeah, Bruce.

SPEAKER_01 15:26

Well, I'm gonna rely on you for that information. I know you know. I do. Bruce had a brother named Carl who was like a year or so younger. The parents for some reason decided Carl was special.

SPEAKER_03 15:44

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 15:45

And that he had showed some sort of promise to be an athlete. And so they would make Carl take all of these special vitamins and supplements. What? But Bruce did not have to. Oh Carl had yeah, Carl had to do special exercises and went, did special things and had special uh experiences, not Bruce.

SPEAKER_03 16:17

No, Carl was the show pony, Bruce was the stay-at-home pony.

SPEAKER_01 16:22

And uh, you know, so even as kids, everybody saw that and like saw all this like wheat germ that Carl was taking and all this other stuff, and we thought, that's weird, like those are weird parents. Like they stood out mid to late 80s and 90s. Kids went from being kind of what in the category that I was talking about when I was a kid, which is you know, just keep them alive and not not really important how much time you're spending with them as long as they're alive and you know going to school and stuff. You're doing enough. Then kids became precious slash endangered. And this is mainly a media phenomenon, a media phenomenon all focused on kids were at risk. They're really important. We've got to give them this great experience, so we've got to protect them from being kidnapped and murdered and all this stuff, which was mainly a media-driven thing. The statistics behind all that showed that it was extremely rare that anything like that would ever happen to a kid, but parents didn't know that, they were just kept being bombarded with these stories. So kids need to be protected, kids need the best life, they need a perfect life, they have to be great at everything you do. And what was the Harbinger? Is it Harbinger or Harbinger? I'm going Harbinger. Okay, I like that too. The Harbinger was, you know what it was? This was the this is when you knew everything was gonna go bad from that point on.

SPEAKER_03 17:49

Milk cartons.

SPEAKER_01 17:50

Oh no, so close though. Really smart answer. I like that answer. It was bike helmets.

SPEAKER_02 17:56

Oh bike helmets.

SPEAKER_01 17:59

Did you have a bike helmet when you were a kid? I did not have a bike helmet. Nobody had bike helmets, you just crashed onto your brain. Yeah, yeah. No elbow pads, no knee pads, but it's all stems from these boomers having kids and being told that their kids were at risk and also feeling this pressure to create this magical special life for their kids that they don't think they had. Yeah, and to get overly involved in their kids' welfare and their self-esteem, make sure everybody gets a trophy and it's okay. So here's how I learned how to ride a bike no helmet. I was having trouble with the balancing. I was probably like four or five. Wow, could I was having trouble with the two-wheeler balancing, you know what I mean?

SPEAKER_03 18:48

Yeah, no, it's hard.

SPEAKER_01 18:50

So my mother eyeballs this and she's like, I got an idea. She takes me over to a hill, a street you know, a street that has a that's a hill, and she says, just get going. You get going fast enough, you'll be able to find your balance. And she was right. Okay. I was I immediately found my balance at speed. It was easy peasy. I was having a great time, one problem. What was that? We did not review the braking. Oh no, I didn't know how to break. We never really talked about it.

SPEAKER_03 19:21

Did you just run over into the grass? What happened?

SPEAKER_01 19:24

Uh, drainage ditch. So I totally wiped out in a drainage ditch at the at the bottom of this hill. I was all bloody and scraped up, but I was happier than a clam because I just rode a bike. Oh, I felt so great. Yeah, and she was like, Yeah, awesome. You know, like we'll mummy wrap you with scotch tape when we get home and try to stop that bleeding.

SPEAKER_03 19:47

Did she uh go play bridge after that? Just leave it in the training station. Yeah, yeah, she just took off.

SPEAKER_01 19:52

She goes, I gotta go play cards. So, so since families are getting smaller and this whole kids are precious thing, suddenly parents have more time and they're trying to figure out what we can do with kids to keep them safe, control their time, make sure they're not running around loose. So the next thing you know, all these organized activities start popping up. Yeah, karate class, karate class, all kinds of leagues, like these, like when I played baseball, I played a lot of baseball as a kid, but we played, you know, during baseball season mostly, and the season was whatever it was, three months, and you know, one game a week and one practice a week, sometimes two. But that like morphed into these like travel leagues where kids were like playing all the time, and their parents are I knew parents who would drive their kids like hundreds of miles to go to these games, and they'd be staying at motels and hotels. And the parents were just basically, you know, servants, they're just chauffeurs. Yeah, they had no life, they had nothing, they were getting nothing out of this. It was all for the kid. So we're overvaluing the kids and we're undervaluing the parents.

SPEAKER_03 21:12

Amen.

SPEAKER_01 21:14

I don't know what to do about this. No, stop babying the kids, right? Yeah, I don't know. I just I don't think people can unwind from this. They everybody, even psychologists, are saying that, oh yes, intensive parenting, or you know, not intensive parenting, that sounds negative, but this, you know, monitoring your kids and watching TV with your kids, and you know, making sure your kid has a good experience, you know. And like I said, it's happen, you know, it happens at all levels, you know, poor people, rich people, people in the middle. There was one woman who was quoted, I'm paraphrasing actually, not quoting her, but paraphrasing, she said she was a person of color, and she said, I don't want my kids to encounter racism. So I like take them places in Involve them in things where they're going to be around people that won't discriminate against them, you know. But but it's still it's that involved it's like they're worrying about their kids' experience. And I'm not saying it's bad, but it's if you go too far, then you lose yourself. And you turn into some kind of a loser.

SPEAKER_03 22:21

I knew of this parent that when their kid went to college, that they would um bring all their laundry home and they'd wash their laundry for them because their explanation for this was that they their the kid didn't know how to do laundry. Do you know how easy it is to use a washing machine? I mean, it's not that complex. Like my five-year-old was washing their own clothes. So yeah.

SPEAKER_01 22:49

How about parents who call after their adult children have job interviews? They call the place of work and follow up. For real? This really happens. Oh I mean, there's so much of this you wouldn't believe it. How about I knew a parent, they let their kids sleep in their bed until they were 10 years old. What? For real. And when she told me this, I was like, are you kidding me? Like, that's you crazy to me.

SPEAKER_03 23:25

That is outside of my experience. 10. Oh my gosh, I can hardly stand it with you know, I have I have a large bed and I like to spread out. I can't imagine there being a third person in there.

SPEAKER_01 23:39

There's no 10-year-old, come on, that's too old to be sleeping with mom and dad or mom or whoever your parent is.

SPEAKER_03 23:46

I guess there's no siblings, right? Because you couldn't be having parent time if there's a 10-year-old there.

SPEAKER_01 23:55

Yeah, see, that was a whole nother thing that I was always kind of worried about is how the Scooby dude with you know, I just didn't know what was going on.

SPEAKER_03 24:03

Oh, yeah. It's best not to ask.

SPEAKER_01 24:06

It yeah, at some point when someone starts laying that kind of smack on you, you just want to like say, okay, well, anyway, funny thing happened to me the other day, and just try to get away from it and then sidle. I I'm so good at sidling away.

SPEAKER_03 24:19

Yeah, that I I've seen it.

SPEAKER_01 24:21

You've seen me sidle out completely out of someone's house and gone. And people are like, wait a minute, wasn't he just there? Yeah, no. Where'd he where'd he go? So m both of my kids were basically theater kids. One kid was a gymnast as well. Okay, but otherwise, they didn't go in for sports, so mostly their organized activity uh outside of school would be acting. And so there wasn't a lot of opportunity. I guess I could have been a stage dad, but I wasn't. And I had this belief that every kid should know how to do three things hit a baseball, throw a frisbee, throw a football. And the reason that was my philosophy is that you if you as you get older, you get into situations where you might have to do one of those three things. And I just didn't want to want them to be one of those kids who just doesn't know how to do it. Because when you see those kids, you know, as teenagers or whatever, at a school party or at a picnic, and they just don't know what to do, it's just embarrassing for everyone. No, I see it. I understand. Or they throw a frisbee and they like it goes sideways and knock somebody out. It's like, ugh, that shouldn't have happened. So I felt that I so I would teach so the older kid, I actually so I taught her how to play baseball when she was a teeny little kid, and I got her into a t-ball league, and I was one of the coaches. Okay, and these kids were so young, like four and five, they had no idea what baseball was, didn't care, and it was a win if you could get the kids to stand up and face the right direction.

SPEAKER_02 26:18

Oh my gosh.

SPEAKER_01 26:20

Like there, like this, this is the age where like the center fielder Jimmy would be lying down on his back, looking up, I mean, during the game, and it'd be like, Jimmy, you gotta get up, Jimmy, and then just kid would roll over and go back to sleep. You know, it's just like that's that's the level, okay? Yeah, there was no score keeping, no score, which I actually did not agree with because I always like to keep score, but there was like, hey, this is not that kind of league, it's super low pressure. We're just introducing the kids to baseball t-ball, and it's all fun, and you know, we're not keeping score. And if a team gets so many runs in an inning, then they're then they have to stop, and we'll let the other team come up. So there's not even three outs. You know, it's just like if one team is running a rough shot over the other, they stop the inning, they bring, they let the new other team come in off the field and give them a chance. So there's no, it's all very friendly, right? So we're playing a game, and uh our team is doing good. Again, there's no score. You have to keep score just to make sure you don't score too many runs in an inning. That's that's how they keep track of how you know whether you got to switch sides. But otherwise, no one's counting the score, and the kids have no concept of keeping score, no concept of anything, actually. But our team in that particular game was doing well, and technically they were ahead. Okay, and so in the middle of an inning, a mother comes out of the stands onto the field and starts yelling at the kids to play better because they're winning and she doesn't want them to blow it. Oh my gosh. And I'm looking at her like, are you for real right now? These kids they're lucky that their shoes have stayed tied. And I mean, it's a miracle. I mean, it's it was that level. I mean, it was so basic. And she's like so like incensed, like she was at a college football game or something. The only other story from this league, and this was years ago, this was this was long enough ago where it's almost right at the cusp of when all this started happening. But so I was an assistant coach. The bases weren't like glued down or tied down to the field. So if a kid was running around it, they might or sliding into it, it might move it a little bit, right? So I'm coaching third base. We got a kid on second, and the third base, which is where he'll be running next, hopefully. You know, because you're constantly like clapping hands and blowing a whistle, like you're gonna come this way. Yeah, yeah. Look at me, look at me. Get out from under that picnic table and go this way. So, so it's that kind of thing. So I noticed the bass is completely out of alignment, which is going to be confusing. So I move it so it's lined up correctly. That's all I do. And a dad from the other team comes over to me and says, Hey, you can't do that. And I'm like, What? Yeah, like what? What's the matter? You can't help him that way. You can't. I'm going, I don't know what to tell you right now. I'm just lining it up. And he's like, Well, this shouldn't be allowed. And I said, Well, you're gonna have to take it up with the commissioner of baseball. This is this is above my pay grade. I'm just trying to kick him. I'm like, I just gotta try to help this kid find his next destination. So, so that, but uh, but that was my really my only taste of it because after that, their activities are mainly on stage, and you know, kids go to rehearsal, you drop them off, and I was never a parent. I mean, I might stick around a little, but I was never like trying to direct them or try to get them better parts. It was like uh, you know, that this is their thing. Um, but uh research shows that these parents, um, these kids rather that are you know have these intensively involved parents have higher anxiety and lower life satisfaction. Higher anxiety, lower life satisfaction, and so do the parents. Yeah, they're stressed out and they're unhappy too. They're stressed out of their sacks. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 31:00

What do we do about it? I don't know. I I'll tell you just to reflect back on the the the experience with the softball, um, it makes me feel really good because you know not only did I not do things for my kids, but I didn't have them involved in anything either.

SPEAKER_01 31:21

No, but you know, all their not only did I never do anything for my kids, I never did anything.

SPEAKER_03 31:29

I don't know what I did for the last 20 years. I mean, I feel like I was really busy the whole time.

SPEAKER_01 31:34

Well, when you were what you were assigning them jobs like the five-year-old go do the laundry.

SPEAKER_03 31:40

Yeah, exactly. Get in there and scrub some gum off of something. Um, but I didn't have them in anything. They like they did gymnastics a little when they were little, yeah. But they they weren't, they never competed, they were never like rose through the ranks of any of that. So they did a little theater and some performing, but they didn't play sports, they weren't in any leagues or competitive branches of the military or whatever, because it doesn't seem fulfilling. Like everybody's just running around and the schedule's always full, and the kids are always busy, and the parents are always busy. I just I don't know. I when do you learn to throw a frisbee if you're you're if you're always doing other things?

SPEAKER_01 32:24

You don't you don't unless you're in a frisbee league, you're playing golf in an organized league and practicing seven days a week. You know, we know that there are advantages to letting kids free range a little bit.

SPEAKER_03 32:41

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 32:42

Do you know that in a place like Utah and a few other states, they came up with uh free range parenting laws, which means that parents cannot be prosecuted if they let their kids run around loose. They had to come up with a law. I'm not making this up. Okay, I know you think I'm this is a joke, it's not a joke. I believe you because today, if you let your kids run around loose, you're considered to be neglectful.

SPEAKER_03 33:21

Really?

SPEAKER_01 33:22

Oh, yeah, and putting your kids at risk, they could be kidnapped, they could be murdered right there on the baseball field.

SPEAKER_03 33:29

I guess, but it would be someone, I don't know. I feel like that what?

SPEAKER_01 33:35

Yeah, yeah. You have to now so now it's like they have to put laws in place so parents can't be punished because their kids are loose. If you see a kid today running around in your neighborhood by him or herself, aren't you worried? Like, where's your parents? That's what people say today. In the old days, they just said, get off of my lawn. Yeah, beat it, kid. I don't care where you go, I don't care what you're doing. If you fall down a well, good luck to you. But I'm not even thinking about calling, finding out where your parents are, I don't even care where your parents are.

SPEAKER_03 34:14

Right. But now I wonder, you know, you you so there are a couple of kids who live on my street, and one of them's uh smaller, I don't know ages anymore because my kids aren't little anymore, but I he might be six or seven, but I've you know, we've they have lived there for about a year, but I think I've seen him outside twice. So maybe it's just that it's so odd to see a child outside at all that you assume they must be lost if they're outside. They must have wandered away from camp.

SPEAKER_01 34:53

Yeah, it is. I don't I think it's bad. I think it's a bad thing. I don't like seeing kids that stressed out. I don't like seeing parents, I just feel like it's really bad for the parents. Like the parents are the ones, like maybe some of the kids like this intensity, like maybe they get off on it, maybe they like going to all these leagues, being in all these activities, maybe they do, maybe they do. What but the parents is horrible for them. I guarantee you that uh your life is zero if you're just spending your time being a servant to your kid.

SPEAKER_03 35:25

I wonder what would happen if the parents, because I think some of it, and you uh sort of alluded to this or even outright said this earlier on, that some of this is about parents living vicariously through their kids, they're like your success is my success. So I think some of these cheerleading moms, like and when the kid didn't even want to be a cheerleader, is really the I guess the mom. What if there were just like adult cheerleading uh camps? And so moms could go and do that instead, or adult beauty pageants, or I don't know.

SPEAKER_01 36:00

You're definitely on to something there. I I do feel like that that so much gets invested into the kid, money and time and emotional support, and all the stuff the parents have to do to keep this circus going, that that's one of the reasons they flip their wigs at these games and events and science fairs or whatever it is, because they're cracking up because they got so much riding on this. So it does become an extension of them. Like it's like watching a race horse that you own run a truck. Like they're like, Oh, I got all so much riding on this horse. You know, and and and that's it's distorted the whole relationship. Yeah. Some parents are like trying to like live out their dream that their frustrated dreams of being a sports star, or you know, some parents are just trying to get the best for their kid, like they want to get him into good colleges, or they want him to get a sports scholarship, or they want their kid to be successful and whatever. And that's fine, but they're just too and they're so invested that they lose perspective, I think. Yeah. So yeah, so I wrote down the same thing. I wrote, I wrote two things down because I usually, you know me, I like to have a solution. You're a solutions guy. Yeah, I like to say, you know, this is what needs to happen. But I was stumped on this because I don't see parents unwinding. We'd have to change the whole way we think about kids, and that's not gonna happen anytime soon because that's really it. If you just let kids go free range again, parents would be they would they would be nervous for three days, then on the fourth day, they'd look up and they'd realize, oh crap, free time. I can do whatever the hell I want. Yeah, I can take a bath, I can drink a scotch, yeah, I can yell out the window, I can take a nap. I can get a hobby. Get a freaking hobby. So this is what I wrote down. Same thing. Parent leagues.

SPEAKER_03 38:03

Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_01 38:05

So if your kid is a cheerleader, like you said, you gotta be a cheerleader. Yeah. But you do your own. Yeah. Or if your kid's playing baseball, you gotta play grown-up baseball so that you don't have time to be in their life because you're doing your own thing.

SPEAKER_03 38:23

And they can even happen in tandem. Like the adult cheerleading can be, you could drop your so you're I'm thinking about people who need to give their kids rides. You know, they don't have a way to get there. So you drop them off, but then you go, you go away to another room where other adult moms are doing, you know, herkyes and jerkies and and backflips. And you What's a Herky? Um, I I may have made it, I think that's I know what a jerky is.

SPEAKER_01 38:49

I'm not gonna ask you explain that. I think it's a jump, yeah. Okay, a jerky jump.

SPEAKER_03 38:54

I think it's a yeah, it's um it may be a word I made up.

SPEAKER_01 38:58

So when I was 14, I wanted to play in this advanced baseball league. And I came to my mother and I said, Hey, I want to play in this advanced baseball league. And she says, Where's that? Where does that take place? And I told her it was probably like five miles from our house or so, or whatever it was, and she said, Oh, that's interesting. How are you gonna do that? Like, what do you mean? And she goes, Well, for example, how are you gonna get to practices and games? And I'm like, uh, I thought maybe you would drive me. And she says, Isn't that interesting that you would assume that?

SPEAKER_03 39:50

What big dreams you have, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 39:52

That and now that parent, she'd be in jail for saying that. I know she'd be in the slammer, man. She'd be doing hearts, talk about moving rocks around, she'd be moving rocks on a some big rock pile. She was all about self-efficacy, you know. It's like you want something, you gotta do it, figure it out, take the bus. But you know, again, that's when kids were allowed to take the bus.

SPEAKER_03 40:19

Did you did you take the bus to your advanced baseball league?

SPEAKER_01 40:24

I figured out a way to bum rides off of other kids. Wait to go. I bummed rides off of other kids. You know, my mother sort of set us up for this because I told you a long time ago that we used to walk to school and in any weather, it didn't matter.

SPEAKER_03 40:43

Ah, yes.

SPEAKER_01 40:44

There could be explosive lightning, whatever, and there could it could be hailing goats, it didn't matter. She'd be like, Here's your raincoat, beat it. Good luck. And we would uh get pity rides, and when she always found out, I don't know what her radar situation was, but she always found out whenever we got a pity ride from either the bus driver who liked us and felt sorry for us or a teacher who said, Look at those kids floating in that stream. They look like they're drowning. I think I'll give them a ride. She would always find out, and we'd come home and she'd be furious.

SPEAKER_03 41:25

She didn't want you to get a ride. It wasn't that she didn't want to give you a ride. She didn't want you to get a ride from anywhere either.

SPEAKER_01 41:32

Now, if I was throwing sticks on cars from up on a hill, you know, as they drove by, throwing sticks and rocks and stuff, suddenly there she is with the car picking me up. She was all good about the paddy wagon action. She'd come and get my butt and get me down to a bad space real fast. I just think ultimately it's you know, it's kind of a lack of trust, ultimately. It's a lack of trust in the world, it's a lack of trust in the neighborhood, it's a lack of trust in society, it's a lack of trust in the kids themselves to like be able to navigate some of this stuff on their own.

SPEAKER_03 42:11

Well, and the thing is, if you can if you do these things for your kids, for the you know, you don't allow them to figure out how they're gonna get to the advanced baseball league, then they don't figure it out. And you do, they are helpless, you atrophy them.

SPEAKER_01 42:29

Yeah, I think that I think we're I think we've trained a whole bunch of kids to feel a little helpless. Yeah, a little too over-identified with their parent, a little too codependent, just a little too much. I mean, again, it's all you know relative. If you do too little, it's not good. I'm really not advocating for parents to be drunk all the time.

SPEAKER_03 42:55

No, no, no, no, no.

SPEAKER_01 42:57

Just weekends, really. Just weekends. Yeah, every other Tuesday is fine. Yeah, just light it up once in a while, but you know, settle down. But but but it's just like where it's gone now is I've and I gotta believe parents who are sitting there in the car pools, driving kids all around hundreds of miles, spending hours a week, they're working, then they're doing something, taking their kids someplace and attending a practice, all that stuff. I gotta believe, even if they're sitting there with a smile on their face, they are hating the crap out of it. At least some of them are. That's not their life. That wasn't supposed to be their life. Being a servant, a chauffeur. Well, we're gonna have to work on a solution. I know people listening to this are disappointed that we didn't know a clear thing. I just don't know what to do.

SPEAKER_03 43:45

I I think I think it it parent leagues is is one piece of it, but I think you just have to get and maintain your old life. I think that as parents, we feel like, well, we you know, like you said, we're we're kind of a reaction to the generation. Generation before. So our parents were like, just come home when the street lights come on, and or you know, oh, uh, there is a third one of you. And so I think we wanted to pay more attention to our kids than was generally paid to kids when we were kids, but we went too far.

SPEAKER_01 44:18

Well, a lot of it though, I swear, I swear a lot of it was media pressure and also marketing pressure because the boomers, you know, they moved into their earning years and they had disposed, some of them had disposable cash. So then they started really marketing to that. Like, hey, you need to get your kids all this cool stuff and fill the hole in your soul that your parents left.

SPEAKER_03 44:42

Get them all the toys you didn't get, the bike you didn't get. Put them in the cool stuff. Get them in the karate class that you never got in and the gymnastics that you couldn't take. Yeah, all that.

SPEAKER_00 44:54

Right, right.

SPEAKER_03 44:55

All that. Well, leave that stuff behind. It's just an empty hole.

SPEAKER_00 45:01

It's an empty hole.

SPEAKER_03 45:02

It's an empty hole.

SPEAKER_00 45:04

It's an empty hole.

SPEAKER_03 45:05

Um, I have news for you, uh, Ross. Yeah. The news you've been waiting for. This is so exciting. I know. You're gonna be so disappointed. A Herky is a cheerleading jump. Why I knew that, I can't tell you, but it is indeed. I Googled it in our in our moments here together. It is a Herky jump named after Lawrence, and you you're gonna think I'm making this up. Herkemier.

SPEAKER_01 45:35

Oh, you know what? I Herkimer. I did know this.

SPEAKER_03 45:39

Yeah, he was the founder of the National Cheerleaders Association and a former cheerleader at Southern Methodist University, according to Wikipedia.

SPEAKER_01 45:47

He's to blame. I think George W. Bush was a cheerleader too, and other famous people like That's possible. Was George Clooney a cheerleader? I don't know.

SPEAKER_03 45:56

A lot of people named George were um at one time cheerleaders, yes.

SPEAKER_01 46:00

It's a tough name.

SPEAKER_03 46:02

Tough name.

SPEAKER_01 46:03

Um so you know, I I think we can close this episode without a solution, but we're gonna keep working on it.

SPEAKER_03 46:11

Yep.

SPEAKER_01 46:11

So, fans of the show, don't worry. If we come up with something, we'll be sure to let you know.

SPEAKER_03 46:16

We'll call you all individually.

SPEAKER_01 46:19

Thank you, Amy. I appreciate you for doing this show and being the person that you are. Ah, thanks, Ross. Thanks to you too. I think you're a great mom. Your kids are the testament to that, and they didn't miss anything just because they were doing chores all the time. They still turned out okay.

SPEAKER_03 46:38

I'm sure they're appreciative of it.

SPEAKER_01 46:40

Yeah, somewhere, somehow.

SPEAKER_03 46:42

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 46:43

And thank you, everyone, for joining us for this episode. If you like what we're doing, we'd sure love you. We would just love you, but we'd also love you to help us any way you can. You can follow the show on Instagram or Twitter. You can uh pass the show on to people you think might like it. That really, really is the best thing you can do right now. Support us on Patreon if you want to, send us emails, encourage us, suggest show topics, ask questions. We are Love Star. We always will be Love Star. And we hope you will tune in to another episode because whether you are doing time or threatening someone's mom or just some adult doing herkeys in a special area of the gym, it's important to remember that we all smell like humans. Goodbye, everybody.