961 – My Own Personal Spring

Notable Language:

• Artesian
• Dickensian Frolic
• Quarry

Notable Culture:

• Wim Wenders
• Alphonse Mucha
• The GI Joe Hovercraft Toy

Notable Talking Points:

• The Fine French Frolickers
• A Hard Floor With Just a Little Bit of Moisture
• Managing an Introverted Kid at a Birthday Party

Episode 961 – My Own Personal Spring

 

[START OF RECORDING]

 

SCOOTER:    Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, and friends beyond the binary, and my bakers; ready?  Bakers, on my…what do they say?  Get ready, get set…get set.  I cannot do it.  As much as I try to be…you know, I can’t do a Noel or a Sandy.  Get set; no.  Get set…I don’t know.  Get ready to go to sleep because it’s…you say, what is this person talking about?  I say yeah, not much.  You know what time it is?  It’s time for me to…I was trying to think of a baking analogy but that fits…it’s time for me to…it’s time to knead your pillows.  Hopefully you’ll knead them when you need them, ‘cause it’s time for Sleep With Me, the podcast that puts you to sleep.  These are the ways we’re able to bring you this podcast twice a week for free.

 

INTRO:    [INTRO MUSIC] Hey, are you up all night tossing, turning, mind racing?  Trouble staying asleep?  Trouble  getting to sleep?  Trouble staying asleep?  Well, welcome.  This is Sleep With Me, the podcast that puts you to sleep.  We do it with a bedtime story.  Alls you need to do is get in bed, turn out the lights, and press play.  I’m gonna do the rest.  What I’m going to attempt to do is create a safe place where you could set aside whatever’s keeping you awake.  It could be thoughts on your mind you’re thinking about from the past, the present, or the future.  Despite everything they say about brains and grey matter, I say how do you get all those thought…when it comes to me, I say how do you get all those thoughts in there?  I mean, really, where are they coming from?  It’s like a…do they say an artisan well?

 

I have an artisan well of thoughts.  It’s not artisan.  It’s spelled like you’d say an art…like, you’d think it was a well made by an artist but it think it’s just a nice, clean spring of…maybe it’s an artisan spring.  I don’t know, I’d like to experience…if 2020 could use…could have used anything, it would be an artisan…2021; let’s have an artisan spring I think, ‘cause you’d say well, that sounds pretty refreshing and maybe visually or auditorally or emotionally stimulating in some way.  The artisan spring; holy moly, was it good.  I also…oh, sorry; by the way, I forgot to tell everybody I bathed in the artisan spring.  They’d say oh, for Scooter…I’d say well, here’s the good news; it’s only imaginary, so…also, I think because it’s ever-flowing…also, I bathed in it without…I did…I was actually…I was frolic…I guess I wasn’t really bathing; I was frolicking in my suit de birthta in this artisan spring.

 

But I was obscured by…just like in the great myths, I was obscured by bushes and leaves and just all the splashing I was doing.  Mostly I was submerged, because they actually had a nice pool.  Oh, sorry, I’m in the middle of a sleep podcast?  Oh no; I’m at the beginning of one?  Yeah, so thoughts like that just come up for me.  I guess that’s one thing that could keep you awake.  It keeps me awake.  I’ll tell you what; if I was thinking about frolicking in a spring, I don’t think I…if I was that kind of person…if I was the kind of person that didn’t daydream about frolicking in a spring, it’s like, I wonder what if…what my life would be like.  You say…maybe that’s what my internal coach would say; well, you gotta get out there and get in some springs.  I’d say I’m pretty sure at this point in human history there’s ordinances against that.

 

Unless I had…I accessed my own private spring, which would put that on my list of things I’ll never do but I wish I would like to…is to have my own private spring.  Actually, and again, that could be a title for anything.  You’d say holy cow, my own private spring.  What in the name of Win Wemder…Wim Wenders, or however you say it.  Anyway, holy obscure references ‘cause…oh, so whatever’s keeping you awake; thoughts, feelings, it could be emotions that are coming up.  If you were…I mean, not many people tune into this podcast ‘cause they’re coming down from a frolic but if you are, I’m here to bring you back in.  You say oh boy, I was just in the middle of a…I was just…I’m home from a frolic.  I’d say what, are you in a Dickensian…was it a Dickensian frolic?  No.

 

Oh boy, was it kind of…frolic that makes my back sweat just thinking about it, and my chest, even?  I don’t know.  What…okay, maybe I…so, thoughts, feelings, physical sensations.  I’m already distracted by the…now I’m getting caught up on that word frolic; a beautiful word.  Who would think of the things…here’s the thing; I just…my brain just told me this when I said I gotta move on.  My brain said isn’t it strange that…can you think of anything that rhymes with frolic that’s good?  I’d say well, I gotta keep moving on with this podcast intro but I can only think of one thing; frolic, colic, cowlick, I probably…I could get back to you but that’s…you’re right, though.  Thanks, brain.

 

Also, I don’t think cowlick, like, where my hand stands…where my hair stands up, I don’t think that directly actually rhymes with frolic unless you say it cowlick.  I guess you do…I guess it does, depending on how…when I say it, it does.  Okay, so, feelings, physical sensations.  They could be another thing that’s keeping you awake, or it could just be anything.  Whatever it is, I’m here to take your mind off it, believe it or not, ‘cause if you’re new you’re like what in the double hey-hey?  Yeah, believe it or not, I’m here to take your mind off whatever’s keeping you awake and…while you fall asleep.  What I propose to do other than go off-topic, is create a safe place.  Oh boy, I mean, what if…if I had access to an unlimited amount of private…what did I say, my own private springs, I’d like to put you in your own private spring, you know?

 

Yeah, I mean, it’s…right now it’s a metaphor for a safe place and the spring.  It’s just a little marshy around the spring, and then it has…say a little marshy?  Yeah, so make sure you wear either no shoes or rubber boots when you come to visit your own private spring.  Oh, yeah.  So, oh, so anyway, oh, so I’m gonna try to create a safe place by sending my voice across the deep, dark night.  I’m gonna use lulling, soothing, creaky, dulcet tones, pointless meanders, superfluous tangents, I’m gonna go off-topic and be like…I’m gonna go off-topic and meander and not…never get to the point, all to take your mind off of stuff so you can fall asleep.  There’s a couple things…regular listeners; so good to see you.  You are my artisan spring.

 

Oh boy, the energy that I get from putting you to sleep, and it’s like a perpetual…actually, isn’t a spring perpetual…?  Most know they have end dates?  Oh, boy.  Wait a second, I’ve been selling expired personal springs?  Oh, does anybody…did anybody know that I was talking about water springs, not bouncy springs?  Oh, those are still expired.  Oh, man.  I just put somebody…you should have seen the look on their face when I told them about their…wearing boots to their spring.  I figured it was good forever, or at least…in human terms, you say well, the spring will stop running in, whatever, year 4000.  There wouldn’t be…there’d be nothing to worry about.  But you’re telling me that all…oh, boy.  Are you sure you’re not just a product of my imagination or are you an actual geologist?

 

Oh, imaginary geologist.  Okay, I guess I’ll have to trust you.  I gotta get back to this.  So, regular listeners, what up?  That’s what I was here to say.  If you’re new, here’s a couple of things to know.  Now, this podcast, you may already be feeling a bit different about it because it’s off…believe me, I mean, you don’t get to these…we’re already off the beaten path.  I mean, there probably are springs on the…you say oh boy, that’s how the…the [00:10:00] first paths were based on springs.  I guess you could…that is probably accurate.  You say technically, Scooter…game trails and then human trails that were…which you would say is a well-worn path…were mostly near springs because of the obvious reasons.  I’d say okay, thank you, thank you very much.

 

But what I was saying is this podcast is a bit different because what other podcasts…other than spring-based podcasts which I’m sure there’s a lot of…now Mucha just popped into my head, so now I’m thinking about…what is that?  Is wasn’t art deco.  Art nouveau; was that art nouveau?  Okay so, is that how you say it, too?  Czech painter?  Czech artist; you’re right.  Okay, so, sorry new listener.  Usually…this podcast always devolves into this.  So, if you’re doubtful or skeptical, that’s a perfectly normal way to be when you first get to this podcast ‘cause of course if you’re like me and a lot of the regular listeners, you’ve been through this thousands of times, tossing, turning and stuff.  There’s some people that sell obscure ways to get to sleep and then there’s some people that sell easy answers but it never quite works out, and I wish it always did.

 

I mean, I’ll be honest, but this…and this podcast is around that obscure thing.  You say, I’ve tried this podcast where this dude talks about nothing.  I’m sorry, what?  Oh, it’s a podcast; you listen to it on your phone in a podcast app.  No, what was the other…?  Oh, this guy just talks about nothing ‘til you get to sleep.  Talks about nothing at all?  No, he’ll…he tries to introduce the podcast, then he gets distracted by something like frolic, then he frolics his way into some other distraction.  That’s just the way a podcast starts.  Oh, so that’s the first two or three minutes?  No, that’s the first twenty minutes because it’s the intro to the podcast.  A lot of people fall asleep during it but most people start to relax and forget about the day during it, so it’s kind of a long, drawn-out thing to ease you into bedtime.

 

Oh, really?  And he just talks about nothing?  He talks about stuff but yeah, it’s…you don’t need to listen to it.  That’s one of the key things.  It’s weird; it’s a podcast you listen to but you don’t pay attention to.  Oh, but I love springs and actually, I love frolicking.  Remember, I was in the French Frolicking…the Fine French Frolickers.  It was a cover band.  Yeah, I don’t remember that, no.  Well yeah, well, it was just me in my bedroom.  Huh.  What did you cover, like, songs by The Muppets?  Exactly.  How did you know?  It just sounds like something like Gonzo would think of.  You’re right.  That’s exactly what I was doing.  So, back to this sleep podcast.  What’s the structure of the show?  Well, like I said, there’s…so, it starts off with a greeting so that everybody feels welcome; ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, friends beyond the binary, so you know you’re welcome.

 

Then there’s business because the podcast is free and it takes a lot of work to make the podcast and distribute it and stuff.  So, that keeps it free.  Then there’s an intro that’s like, twenty minutes.  Then…here’s what I just found out; see, he was gonna make a…this was gonna be a episode about the Great British Bake Off but now I think he’s gonna do an episode about his own private spring.  Wow, so, we influenced the podcast.  I feel powerful.  I don’t know about you but I feel like frolicking.  So do I, but maybe we should finish up with my questions about this sleep podcast you’re telling me about.  So, he doesn’t…that sounds like it would get on my nerves.  Oh, you’re right, it does.  Wait a second, you want me to listen to something that gets on my nerves?

 

No, it’s the strangest thing; because it’s so different, and this is what hundreds of thousands of people have said, that sounds like a made-up number.  It’s not, believe it or not.  He gets…it’s…that’s what’s so funny.  So, hundreds of thousands of people have said you gotta listen to it two or three tries and the first few tries it’s not exactly appetizing ‘cause it’s so different, but then on the second or the third try, for most people that it works for, they say oh, now I get it; it doesn’t make any sense.  I was trying to make sense of it or I was waiting for him to be charming or soothing.  Wait, so the sleep podcast isn’t soothing?  It is soothing but he’s got like, creaky, dulcet tones and pointless meanders, so it’s not what you’d expect to be soothing.  Well, that sounds strange.  Oh, it’s strange for sure.  You really nailed it on that one.

 

It…I don’t know, you can’t quite…it’s like, if you wrote…if you were…I was gonna say you can’t quite fit it in a bottle like a message in a bottle.  Well, that wouldn’t be a message in a bottle, then.  Right.  If he was doing it, it’d be a message in a jug, probably, but then he’d say well, I got the jug; I left it outside for four months and then I never wrote it.  Is that your imitation of this sleep podcast person?  Yeah, that’s exactly what he sounds like.  Well, interesting.  What else do I need to know about this show?  Okay, so after the intro…so, the intro’s like, twenty minutes.  It’ll throw you off, naturally, but you’ll get used to it and then you’ll look forward to starting it before you get into bed or once you get in bed, or 2% of people skip it.  Wow.

 

Yeah, and then there’s business ‘cause the podcast advertising just works that way.  The mid-roll, they call it.  Mid-roll.  But it’s not in the middle of the show.  Well, yeah, it’s just a term, but that’s where the…that’s the bread and butter of the show.  Then there will be the story which, thanks to us, tonight will be my own private spring or something.  Will it be my own private spring or something or will…well, you never know ‘til he puts them out.  But then, we’re just…this is interesting.  I’ve never been a part of the sleep podcast.  I’ve only been a listener up to this point.  I think I…did we frolic our way inside of Scooter’s mind?  Oh, maybe.  Do you think I’m a new listener within his imagination?  Yeah, we probably better not frolic too much up here because they say his brain is mostly goo and goop.

 

Oh, and extra words like ah, and uh.  Oh yeah, there’s a lot of that up here.  Everything’s friendly, though.  Do you think it’s artisanal?  Do you think he’s giving us the right words?  I don’t know; I can see the letters.  It’s like, A-E-T-I-S-I-A-N-A-L or something.  Something like that.  Okay, anything else I need to know about the podcast before I…I’m getting tired already now, thinking about it.  Oh, he believes you deserve a good night’s sleep, that everybody does.  That’s why he makes the show, because the world will be a better place if you’re rested, obviously.  You’re right, it will be.  It’ll be easier…I do deserve a good night’s sleep.  Yeah, but it’s hard to believe that sometimes, especially when you’re tossing and turning.  Also, he has been there.

 

He’s tossed and turned and…have trouble sleeping, so that’s…he can relate.  Wow.  Do you think most of his listeners have these kind of conversations within their heads like he does?  I don’t really know but yeah, that’s about it.  Oh, let me…he’s coming.  Oh, thanks; thank you both so much.  That was wonderful.  I don’t think I…I definitely could have done not as good a…I could have never done that job as good as the two of you, or as well, so I really appreciate that, and I also appreciate everyone coming by and checking the show out, giving me your time.  I work very hard, I yearn and I strive, and I really just want to help you fall asleep, so thanks for coming by, and here’s a couple ways we’re able to bring you this podcast twice a week.

 

Alright everybody, it’s Scooter here and I guess this is gonna be…I don’t know what this episode’s gonna be like because I was thinking…I hadn’t planned this.  In fact, if you listened…hopefully you didn’t listen closely to the intro, but maybe on your second or third time, or maybe you’re listening during the day, or maybe you are listening; I’m talking to everybody here now, whether you’re awake or asleep.  Originally when I sat down to record the intro, I was thinking okay, we’ll do…it was for, what is that, Baking Fun Time…Fun Bake…Great British Bake Off, and so that was that.  Yeah, so, but then that…all that stuff came up, so I said oh boy, well, I guess we’re gonna have to talk about my own private spring.  Is that what it was called, My Own Private Spring?  I said well, is this gonna be a surreal journey?

 

‘Cause there is something that didn’t come up in the intro, and there’s not always places…there’s places I have [00:20:00] not necessarily visited a lot in the podcast, and…or I’ve visited indirectly, but sometimes when I create a safe place for you, it also creates a safe place for me, so this will be…maybe will be a bit like a personal essay journey into my deep past, to the first house…the first apartment I lived in and then the first house I lived in as a child, because there is I think a spring involved and it’s a place I’ve…rarely visit in my mind.  It’s not a…I don’t know.  It’s just a place of strong feelings, more instinctual feelings than memories, though I have some memories of it, so won’t you join me?  We’ll go…we will visit a spring there.

 

So, there’s a place where I was originally…where I was…I was born in a hospital in Syracuse, New York.  Don’t ask me which one, because I…I’ll guess and that’ll be the wrong one.  Also, yeah, I know these questions will come up and I don’t know, so I don’t know if I was born at night or in the day.  I mean, I can ask my mom but I’ll probably forget, so by…hopefully, if my mom’s listening, she’ll let me know.  I don’t really know the answers to those questions.  It’s just like, I just don’t pay attention to that kinda stuff.  Where my parents lived at the time when I was born, I was their first child other than a fictional, older child, my dad said, or our brother, Eric.  My dad has an…I guess my dad had an imaginary child, Eric, and he used that as a teaching method for me that we’ll talk about later.

 

I’ve probably joked about it on the podcast but it’s probably too early right now to joke about it.  But…and also…well, that’s interesting, ‘cause my daughter and I actually found Eric.  He was a fictional…well, I guess this…well, I gotta lean into these tangents, right?  So, I guess I’ll talk about this briefly before I get to where I grew up and stuff.  So, my dad had a fictional child where he would offer us life lessons.  Like, so he’d say well…don’t put that in your mouth would be an example, because that’s what Eric did.  Eric put that…Eric put things in his mouth from the ground.  I say Eric who?  He’d say your older brother Eric.  Don’t you remember him?  I’d say no.  Oh, well, yeah, it’s probably because he put stuff in his mouth.

 

Usually my dad was smart enough to let us fill in the blanks about Eric because there was no…and I’m trying to leave it blank for you.  It’s a little bit funny, and then when you stop to think about it for a little bit longer, a lot of people put their hands on their hips and they say wait a second, and I’m…also, I’m not joking.  But it’s an amusing story to tell now as an adult.  So, we would fill in the blanks.  We’d say well, and I don’t think it really worked ‘cause just on a…probably worked on a lower level that I’m still grappling with now, so in some sense it backfired ‘cause they think that it generated a lower-level word that has A-N-E-X-I…those letters instead of being like well…you say wait a second, there’s no such thing as Eric, or that’s ridiculous.

 

It was based in my dad’s humor which is a humor that, you know, is on the side of…indie movies feature this type of humor.  But I did want to stop and say that my…so, but I did tell my daughter about it because a lot of kids today…but so, I say…just amusing things from your childhood to share with your child, like going to bed without dinner or going…and at dinner time, to at least my daughter, was just hilarious and she couldn’t wrap her head around it.  Maybe there was one time I made her go to bed really early, but I don’t even think I ever did that.  She’d say wait a second, so what would happen?  I’d say well, you’d get in so much trouble, usually at dinner or before dinner, that you would be sent to bed without dinner.  She’d say, at like, six…?

 

I’d say yeah, you’d just have to…and I’d say in the summertime it would really be…oh man, did I…?  I think I…did I ever talk about that on my…on the podcast before?  I don’t think that was when I was sent to bed without dinner.  Wow, man, I thought I was gonna talk about springs but I guess I gotta talk…you know, you just gotta lean in.  This was…so, this was at another house.  I think I talked about this a long time ago.  Maybe not, though.  So hopefully we’ll get to the spring part ‘cause I can’t…’cause I won’t remember this stuff if I don’t talk about it now.  So, my daughter always finds that hilarious.  Be like yep, go to bed without dinner or going to bed really early, while the sun’s still up.  Like, any time before 7:00 PM.

 

I mean, sometimes even now, I try to get my daughter to go to bed; at least be like, get in bed and read or listen to a audiobook or a podcast.  But this would be you’d go to bed way before your bedtime.  This was pre…just for any youth listening, this was PTE, pre-tablet era, or PDA, pre-device era.  I’m pretty sure you wouldn’t be allowed books or radio, and I was in the house with six kids, so if you were doing any of that, you’d have to do it super on the DL, especially if you shared a room with somebody.  I don’t know, so it was rarely used.  It wasn’t used at my house a lot, and it was…I think it was used on TV and movies, too; going to bed without supper.  I think that’s what they called it.  I know there’s places in the world where that…this was a luxury form of…I realize that.  So, what does that have to do…?

 

Oh, okay, so this…I guess I have to go into this tangent, ‘cause…I…I don’t know if I…I’ll have to tell Sophia about this.  So, one of the big times…I’ve talked about this in therapy so many times.  I’m not kidding, that the memory is very balanced now, but that’s why I’m like, have I talked about this on the podcast?  But you know, someone that makes a sleep podcast, they’re constantly coming up with ideas that are a little bit outside the box, right?  Ideas…and as a kid, even from a early age, I did a lot of stuff without thinking, or I did stuff from this curious, strange place.  I’ve talked about that before, of decisions I’ve made that to adults have been S-H-O…you know, like very surprising and that they can’t even process or comprehend, but that they’re like what drove you to make that choice?

 

I’d say well, I just wanted to see what would happen.  I guess it moved into not…even not a positive thing as I got older and rash or whatever, but this was a time of child…it really was childhood innocence and curiosity and just not thinking out all the steps involved.  This was a pretty big one and it had to be…I think it probably was an go to bed without supper…it must have been…I don’t think it was in the summer time, and it was near a big seasonal event but not one of the biggest seasons because we were anticipating watching a Bugs Bunny Special that night, so I was…I wasn’t a little kid.  I must have been like, eight…somewhere between seven and nine or six…no, six and eight, maybe.  But yeah, so we were anticipating that night, probably at 7:00 or 8:00 PM watching this Bugs Bunny Special.

 

So, I don’t know if it was a Thanksgiving…I’m guessing it was a Thanksgiving Special, though it could have been a Halloween Special or a Spring Special, ‘cause it wasn’t the holiday season.  So, and it was very rare.  It wasn’t like Bugs Bunny had a lot of holiday specials, so I don’t know what it was.  Or maybe it was…I don’t know what it was, but we were really looking forward to it.  This is probably one of the reasons why this is so clear in my mind; so, at some point in the evening…and maybe this was a Saturday or a Sunday but it could have been a school night, or yeah, maybe we were off school.  I decided…I came up with this idea in me and my brother’s room, and this time we had…not tile floors; whatever you call those floors…they used to use the stuff…it wasn’t like tile when you think about tile now.

 

Oh, lin…it wasn’t linoleum.  It was squares like linoleum but just squares of the stuff.  This is how a lot of old houses were laid out.  I think it was made of stuff that you’re not supposed to make stuff out of anymore, but at the time…and it was hard.  It wasn’t like this soft linoleum.  [00:30:00] Our house was…the down…we had a downstairs, upstairs house, so the bedrooms were downstairs kind of in a basement.  So these floors, these tile floors were always a little bit moist and cool to the touch.  At some point we got carpet in because then the trend was to have wall-to-wall carpeting.  We had this brown carpet down there but this was before that, so we had just these floors which is now in vogue.  You say well, that’s a great idea because it’s easy to clean, easy to…and I prefer it.

 

I guess in some sense you say well, it’s not exactly warm or whatever but you say well, I don’t know.  You say well, put a area rug down or something but I don’t know about…I’m not a fan of this wall-to-wall carpet stuff.  I mean, I rent where I live, but the down…and now I live in a downstairs, upstairs place.  Like, the place I live now, there’s two bedrooms downstairs and the washing machine, and then upstairs is the bathroom, the kitchen, and the combo room.  So, I know I’ve talked about that before but so…okay, where was I?  So, none of this has to do with a spring or anything, except it does…it’s water-based and I am an Aquarius.  So, it is all connected and it probably really…does underlie why I make a sleep podcast.

 

So, my brother and I…poor Carl, and probably my sister Sheila…I did have…I did unfortunately get them involved in this.  Maybe not my sister Sheila.  But so, at least Carl and I, we had this bedroom and this was during a transition time of production of toys and stuff, so I must have been like six or seven, very young because at the time a lot of toys were packaged in cardboard tubes, of all things; a little bit thicker sides but cardboard tubes like you’d…not like a tube like a poster would come in but like, when you go to TJ’s, right, and you get some sorts of snacks, sometimes they come in a cylinder.  That’s what it is, a cylindrical container made of cardboard or paperboard.  Some of the toys would have been…Lincoln Logs were definitely one of the toys and the other one was probably some other block-based toy.

 

Actually, even blocks with the alphabet blocks came in these cardboard tubes.  They usually had a tin bottom and a tin top.  Now you think it’s…those things are coming back ‘cause they were in plastic for a while.  Now I’d say well, I’d rather have it in cardboard or paper board ‘cause I know what that is, it could be recycled; maybe the aluminum on the top and the bottom’s recycled.  The tops would normally be removable, right, when you first opened it, but the bottoms were fixed.  I had this great idea and it was something about a moist…a room…a high-humidity…at some point we got a dehumidifier but this was pre-dehumidifier era.  But there was something about playing on a hard floor that has just a bit of moisture.

 

I’m not talking about detectable slipping or drops; just a barely sense of moisture that seeps into your being in a good way.  This is in a good way.  I’m not saying it in a not-good way.  So, I said to my brother Carl, I said let’s go…so, there was as bathroom downstairs too, for the kids, of course, and I said let’s go and fill these…I didn’t say fill these cylinders…cylinders with water, but I got the idea.  I said let’s fill these things with water.  So, then we fill them with water and then we brought them back in our room, and I presume we were either playing with the toys in them or dumping them in and out or whatever.  What we didn’t quite anticipate was one, well, one, as blissfully unaware of probably the water we were splashing all over everywhere while we were doing this…I mean, this should be stuff…this is probably stuff you see on TikTok or Instagram or whatever, kids doing this stuff.

 

You say okay, well, you left a giant trail of water.  We weren’t aware of that, and then probably we were splashing water everywhere.  Also at this point, my parents probably had four kids or five kids, and always had an infant.  I would assume, yeah, they probably had five kids at this point, one infant, and then one kid under two or three years of age.  So, they were…they had a lot going on.  So, there we were, pouring in and out.  Now, what I didn’t realize is that when paperboard or cardboard gets wet, it’s gonna swiftly deteriorate.  So, the cardboard containers were slowly deteriorating in real time and I mean, these weren’t small cylinders.  You’re talking…not a five gallon bucket but you could probably fit a gallon of water in each one, or three-quarters of a gallon.

 

When you’re imagining the difference between a half-gallon of milk and a gallon of milk; somewhere in between those two things.  So, at some point one of my parents came down and they came across this and it kinda blew their mind because it was like, of all the things you anticipate and plan for, finding two or three of your kids pouring water in cardboard containers and, whatever, maybe we were making soup; I have no idea.  It elicited a very strong response and of course, we were…I mean, I was surprised because I said oh, I didn’t realize this was a bad idea.  I guess speaking as an adult for myself, I’d say whoa, I didn’t realize this was such a bad idea.  Now that I’m seeing your strong reaction, I would say you’re right, we did…oh, also yeah, we didn’t pay attention to the mess we made.

 

But yeah, I didn’t anticipate the cardboard…we were just doing it as fun, probably poking the cardboard as it deteriorated.  Also, you’re right, I didn’t take into account that you have those two kids upstairs or…and work and adult feelings, so I see that you’re having a strong response to that.  So, that all makes sense in an adult world of context.  I say oh, okay.  I mean, at the time I was just surprised or shocked, too.  I said wait a second, what do you mean?  Wow, jeez, you’re really upset.  I mean, I didn’t say that.  I probably got very upset, too.  Also, there was not just a reaction; then there was also the consequences which were going to bed…cleaning up, which sometimes cleaning up these situations is probably just as fraught as the actual…everything else, ‘cause you say well, how are you gonna clean this up?

 

The only thing you can clean it up with is bath towels.  So then, that ends up feeding a whole cycle of then you gotta wash the bath towels, or did you use clean bath towels or dirty bath towels?  Hopefully you used dirty dog bath towels.  That’s what I just used last night. I was making my bed.  Or, I wasn’t making it; I was trying to shake out my comforter so it’d be ready for me, and I knocked over my drink that I had at my bedside and it was full.  It was a full bottle of water, not a capped bottle of water, and that got blown up on my floor which was carpet.  But I was in a calm spot.  I said okay, well, it’s only flavoured water, so not a big deal.  Then I knew I’d given Koa a bath a couple days before and I dried her towels out outside, so I said well, I’ll use one of Koa’s towels.

 

So, that was a different situation ‘cause I said oh, okay, we got the resources here to deal with this.  So at that time, resources were limited.  So, the reaction was strong but then the consequences were kind of unprecedented which were immediately after you clean up, you’re going to bed, and no Bugs Bunny.  That was like, a bridge too far ‘cause this is pre-DVR, pre-streaming.  If you miss something…pre…we didn’t have a VCR, so it wasn’t like I could say could you…well, could you at least tape it for me?  This was probably pre-VCR at least at my house, so talk about…whatever FOMO is, it was worse than FOMO.  I just remember…I remember it being light out and I remember it being…actually, at the time, yeah, I think at the time, because there was two…only two little kids and they were in, like, a nursery, we actually…they had tried to set a TV up.

 

Then I said, this is not gonna…I can’t do…I can’t not watch this Bugs Bunny thing.  Then I tried to sneak out of my room and watch it, and I think we may have watched it.  We probably got caught because when you’re a kid and you think you’re quiet, you’re just not.  I don’t understand [00:40:00] that, either.  But even now, I feel bad when I catch my daughter doing stuff, like even taking…she takes some gum out of my drawer or something.  I’m like, could you just…did you just help yourself to some gum?  Yeah.  Okay, just ask next time, okay?  Just ask me first.  I guess I should make it an I-statement.  So, I just share that memory ‘cause it popped in my head and it was like, it has to do with water, and…and going to bed without dinner but that happened in Syracuse, New York.

 

So, where I grew up or where I spent the first six years of my life was in Marcellus, New York, which is outside of Syracuse.  I wouldn’t call it a suburb but I guess you probably say a suburb, and my daughter and I and my parents did…I did make my parents drive out there, or I probably drove their car.  This was a while ago, maybe four years ago, five years ago.  I talked them into driving out to Marcellus and it did have mixed feelings going out there because it just elicits…these kinda things, these are…whatever they said; you can’t return home or whatever, and returning to a place where really, your archetypal…that’s like, the formation of who you are.  But it’s also one of these things that keeps coming up, not recently but at the time, four years ago.

 

So, I think this was in podcast era that I had gone there, so maybe I talked about it.  But I said can we drive out there?  I’d like to show Sophia, but we went out in the evening.  I think it was summer time and we stopped…first, we drove down this one street that we didn’t live on, or maybe we did that last, that it keeps coming up…kept coming up in dreams for me at the time.  That was like, one street over through…well, this will be the important part where we’ll get to it.  So, then we drove to the apartment building where my parents first lived with me, and we drove through that complex.  That was also in Marcellus and they kinda talked about stuff, but I was like, I have no memory at all about that.  I don’t even have memory of, whatever I went to, pre-K, there.

 

I remember going to my brother and sister’s pre-K graduation, maybe.  Or maybe…it’s like okay, I don’t really remember much about it…about that, but so, then I remember…so, the…then we went to the street we grew…I grew up on, or whatever, early years of Scoots.  Again, you don’t really remember too much about that era, so I just have some fragmented memories but then for some reason…and we’ll see what this episode does, there’s a lot of dream sense there, or dream memories there.  I think there are some important lessons of what’s under my control as an adult or looking back in forlornless of like, oh, regrets, because, so…so, from what I remember is we grew up in a house.  We were…either the next-door neighbors or two…I think it was two doors down was the neighbors that were grand-parental figures.

 

There was a husband, a wife, and her sister all live together.  They had a kid that was ten, fifteen years older than me.  They lived in the house and I spent a lot of time at their house.  The only things I remember…I mean, I remember them being very pleasant and taking care of me when I needed to be taken care of.  They had…the one main feature I remember is…remember…and you see them in movies now and again, the bird that always drinks.  It’s like a bird made of glass and it has a colored liquid in it.  Sometimes it has a top hat and it’s like, supposed to be a perpetual motion machine.  They had a couple of those that I always found fascinating.  Their house was very dark and those are the things I really remember about it other than them being nice and watching me a lot of times when I needed to be watched.

 

So, that was one thing.  Then I guess moving in the same area, then there was…a couple doors down from that was a house and they had some girls that were around my age that I would play with sometimes, but not all the time.  One memory I have is they had a unfinished basement and I remember riding Big Wheels around in a circle in their basement, and that was fun.  But I don’t know if that was when we visited…again, it was like, they watched out for me.  Then another thing was…oh, there was a kid who comes up on the podcast who had the Richard Scarry books.  He was the neighbor a few doors down.  He was my age and he had Richard Scarry books, so that was one thing.  Then I went…we didn’t go to the same school but we were around the same age and we were friends.

 

That was my first experience with introversion where you say oh, yeah, I guess you’re kind of…some of this is just who we are, ‘cause I had to be like, four or five…three, four, or five years old.  Maybe six.  I went to his birthday party and I remember I decided well, I don’t…I’m not sure about this party.  I don’t really know anybody, so I’m gonna go up in his room and get in his top bunk of his bunk beds and look at Richard Scarry books.  I remember his mom came and she said what are you doing up here?  I said looking for the doodle bug or gold bug or whatever, Wormly.  She said well, why don’t you come down to the party?  She was just trying to manage everything and I said okay.  Then I ended up having fun.  We played Pin the Tail on the Donkey and I won without…and I didn’t try to look through the things.

 

My tail…whoever…the mom, I think, she was putting on the blindfolds.  She did a great job because mine was well off of where a tail would normally be but it was still the closest one.  So, that kinda helped my introversion.  So, there’s advice; if you notice a kid at a birthday party that you’re running that’s introverted, fix one of the games so they win.  Probably…I mean, don’t take my advice for it.  Then there was another group of kids, a brother and a sister I believe, that we were kinda friends…that I was kinda friends with.  They had a P-O-O-L.  Now, I guess at the time…I’m trying to think.  I had…this was when I had to be under five or six but I remember going over there to swim, and the idea of the indoor pool…I don’t know if I had heard something about it but I had these archetypal concerns, we’ll say, about a indoor pool.

 

I don’t know where this story came from but that…probably from one of my cousins.  I’m positive; yeah, someone told me this story of oh, well, if you go in a indoor pool, those things that clean…you know, don’t…you could just…they made you extra-concerned about being…and I said wait a second, the filters…even back then, the outdoor pools; it was way on the bottom, anything that was sucking in water.  But that was constantly a thing, of oh, one of my friends, they got too close to one of those jets.  So, I had that in my mind.  Again, I was the person I was today back then even, and so, I couldn’t…I was like, absolutely I’m not getting in this pool.  It’s not a good idea.  I remember at some point they had…back then they had something made of foam that was a bit like a stroller for the pool, and I think I was in that for a while, and then I think I put on Swimmies and was in the pool.

 

Eventually I think I kind of got over it but in the back of my mind I’m like, I’m gonna be part of this pool.  They’re gonna have to come drain the pool because I’ll be suctioned to the side.  That was the thing; you’d just be stuck to the side of the pool and I said I don’t want that.  But it wasn’t balanced like you’d describe in a sleep podcast like I’m doing now.  It was like, constantly like that’s it; that’s gonna be it.  It’s just interesting ‘cause I still deal with this stuff today.  So, I love that little kid there that was still thinking about that.  [00:50:00] So, that’s…those are the…some of my neighbors and there was a set of…there was a couple parks nearby.  Not like playground parks; like public parks like you’d go hiking.

 

I tried to get my…I drove to one of them when I was with my daughter and my parents because I wanted to go hiking, but this was like…they were like, literally like okay, well, you could look around for a few minutes but it’s getting…and I said okay, okay, I got it.  But so, this house we lived in, we don’t really remember a lot about it.  There was just a few things I do remember and we’ll go through those and eventually get to the big part, right?  Like, the spring, my own private spring.  So, it was a smaller house that eventually, once you had…I don’t even know what the layout of the house was other than it had a driveway and a garage and it had a door, obviously, to get in.  I think when you came in, you were right in the family living room.  There was only one general-use room.  Or actually there was two, I guess.

 

But that was the main one and then there was the kitchen and then if you were in the kitchen, to the left was the porch or the back porch.  It was like a…so, it was a…it wasn’t a indoor room.  I don’t know if it was heated in the winter.  That’s what I mean, but maybe it was.  But it had a screen and it had those windows that you could roll down and roll up, a bit like shutters.  That’s all kind of like a 70s, 80s thing, and screens, and probably cement flooring.  A couple things; I remember being in that room and I had…I’m going right into Rocking-Horse Winner territory but I’m not kidding.  I didn’t predict any winners and I didn’t have a rocking horse.  Back then, there was this thing…talk about an amazing toy that probably you can never have again, but so, I had this horse.  I think they called it a bouncy horse.

 

I don’t know what they called it but it was a plastic horse that you sat on and it had four springs attaching it to a tube…tubular frame that you could kind of…you’d sit on the horse and it would bounce up and down based on the spring motion.  You could rock it back and forth or bounce it…I don’t know.  I don’t know what year they discovered all of the possible downsides they…that kids like me experience, but I don’t think I really…but it was just cool, and you could just bounce…I mean, you could get it out of your system, I think was the main thing, even…especially in the winter.  One of the reasons this memory came up is like, there’s horse racing, right, is a big…even back then it was probably a bigger thing, but it’s something I don’t really think about.

 

Then there was a big horse race, or I guess it got postponed…one of the big triple derby, Triple Crown, golden derby, whatever they call it.  Triple Crown; that’s what they call it.  So, one of those three horse races was recently when I’m recording this, and I remember talking to my dad about the week before and I said well, what do you got going on?  He said well, boy, I can’t wait for that derby.  I said…’cause I said oh, do you want to do a Zoom or what do you…on Saturday or Sunday?  Whatever day…?  Oh no, we got the derbies that day.  I was thinking in my head…I tried to be nice about it but I said wait a second, you’re looking forward…?  But you don’t bet on the race, right?  It’s not like this particular year there’s like…sometimes there’s one of those horses that’s like, transcends…they say oh boy, this is a transcendent horse; everybody’s talking about it.

 

I said, what is a horse…I said…I mean, I’ve kind of watched those before, like just tuned in in time for the one race but I said what, is there races…like, doesn’t a horse race take like, four minutes?  I mean, that’s what I wanted to say.  It’s like okay, well, I’ll schedule the Zoom either before or after the four-minute race of the horse.  No offence to people that love horses or horse racing.  But I just thought in my head…I don’t know.  I’m a easily-agitated person, so I said what do you mean, you’re gonna…?  They said…then part of me was like, you’re really looking forward to watching this horse race, huh?  Then I said well, then…I said…that I always have to remind myself for me that I can be like that for listeners, like oh, not let these generational blocks make me assume where I am, that it’s gonna connect to people a generation before or after me, right?

 

But, so this particular memory, I remember that my father’s father who we did not have a super-close relationship with…and so, my father’s parents, I’m assuming, were visiting and that was a very rare event in my life.  I think…or maybe it was my father’s sister and her husband and their kids, or maybe they were all visiting at the same time.  So, this could be a combined memory but so, I remember they were watching that race and I was racing on my horse, like the Rocking-Horse Winner.  So, that’s just a memory…it was just one of those memories you just have.  You’re like yeah, I remember bouncing on my bouncy horse.  Wow.  I mean, I guess it’s like…the bouncing on the bouncy horse, the fact that adults were interested in a horse race on TV, and that my father’s father, my grandfather, was there, because that was rare.

 

But also, I think it was the same thing.  Then we went outside, to sit outside.  So, this house had a little bit of a backyard.  It was surrounded by a…I guess what I would call a stockade fence.  I don’t know, like a fence made of…that was at least five or six feet tall of wood…wood slats that are pointed at the top.  I mean, not sharp but pointed that blocks you in, which nowadays you’d say well, that’s really constraining.  It wasn’t like they needed it.  I don’t know…I think it was just to delineate the property which kinda goes into the next thing, or maybe it was to keep the kids contained.  The other thing, and this…I don’t know if…I guess I gotta ask my parents if this was here.  I think it was there; was a giant truck tire and I think it was already there, buried in the backyard like you’d see…I mean, nowadays you see it at a CrossFit, but back then you’d see it at playgrounds.

 

We actually just had one in our yard.  It was spray-painted red, or painted red, and so, we’d play on it.  It was really buried, so it was buried halfway, and…so, we could climb on that.  I’d say holy cow, I don’t know what a used truck tire costs nowadays or how you would get it to your house, but I said what a cost-effective way to get…who needs a playground?  We might have had one of those metal swing sets.  I don’t know.  But the reason I bring up the backyard is ‘cause I remember my cousin climbing on the fence and he…his…he ended up being split-leg on the fence and talking in a high voice and all the adults laughing at him.  I was like, why are they laughing at him?  His butt hurts or his…his personal area hurts.  But I think they thought…they probably told him not to try to climb over the fence.

 

But I just remember that and I’m sure it was the same time ‘cause it was my cousins from Ronkonkoma.  So, I don’t know if it was Timmy or Bobby but they were visiting from Ronkonkoma, probably with my dad’s parents.  So, that would be a lot of people to have in the car ‘cause there was Timmy, Bobby, and Amy, Carol and Bob, and then Kenneth and Anna.  So, that’s four adult…I mean, maybe, I guess if they had a station wagon or maybe they took two cars.  I don’t know.  I’m sure my dad and I will discuss this.  But so, okay, but now it makes sense ‘cause it wasn’t…it was kinda like we were living in the country.  It wasn’t a suburb.  It wasn’t like we lived in a country area but up the street was a quarry, I think, but then somebody said…I guess I had a disagreement…maybe they made it into a housing development or it was some sort of…I’m pretty sure it was a quarry.

 

Then behind our house, like outside of the fence in who knows whose property or whatever was a marsh.  When I say a marsh, I mean if you walked out…even probably in our yard within the fence, after you got to a certain area the ground got [01:00:00] very soft and it had the kinda growth…things that grow in marshy, east coast soil that’s not a swamp is a certain kinda grass or a clover or something.  Yeah, when you try to walk in it…now, I was…I think it was permanent because it was because of a artisanal spring, or a spring.  But then even further deeper, like…so, going…and this is in the dream territory ‘cause then you would be going through to go through the next…the backyard’s…there was even further, so I guess it was a small set of woods.

 

Again, this was when I was too young to go exploring by myself, because I was just too little.  I was five, maybe six.  But if you went deeper into the woods…it wasn’t very thick woods.  I think there was a lot of…what are those trees called?  Birch trees.  But if you went further in there, there was also a stream, maybe related to the marsh or maybe a marsh was a part of it or maybe this was another spring.  I don’t know the source of…I’m gonna look on Google Earth, believe me.  My plan was to do it before making the podcast but then I said well, that’ll probably make me procrastinate.  But so, you would go and then there was a wooden bridge you could cross over to go to the houses on the other side.  I spent a lot of time for some reason…so, this would have been 2016, 2015, 2014 in my dreams.

 

On that bridge and then that creek…not processing any childhood memories, either…and then walking through and walking through the backyards to the other side…the street that I didn’t even grow up on.  So, I don’t know, it just has this weird, eerie quality to me.  But it also had this…it wasn’t like I was unaware of it.  I had been back there probably with one of my friends and their mom or their dad or maybe even my parents, and so I was aware in a FOMO sense — and this is the empowering part — that somewhere right near where I lived was a running stream or creek which to me is just amazing.  That’s on my bucket list, to live on someplace that has a freshwater creek or stream.  Maybe it was from the quarries; maybe it wasn’t exactly…but so, as I got older, even when we moved away, it was on my fantasy list of I want to take my toys and play in that creek.

 

I remember planning it out and constantly fantasizing and saying man, the adventures I could have with my toys in a creek or a stream.  I mean, a lot of the cartoons from Hasbro would glamorize this stuff.  They would glamorize playing in streams, man.  But they would.  They would have, whatever, you’re adventuring with your Fisher-Price or your G.I. Joes or whatever, your Transformers.  Or maybe you have one of the water-based toys.  So, like I said, one day I’m gonna…and I talked about this a long time ago but I said one day I’m gonna save up enough money to get the GI Joe hovercraft and I’m gonna play with that hovercraft in that stream.  I never did that but we did go back when I was…after…I remember going back to visit once or twice when I was still a little kid after we moved away.

 

But I don’t think I ever made it…I mean, I know I made it back to the stream ‘cause it’s like, your memory when you’re six or seven is more powerful, I think, than when you were five or…four, five, or six.  So, I remember getting back to that but I just think about it when I thought about my own private spring ‘cause I said somewhere there was a spring there causing this marsh, I think.  I mean, I’ll be definitely corrected if everything that was wrong or that other people remember in a different way, but that’s also cool, too.  You say oh, wow, that wasn’t a marsh, or I remembered it the wrong way.  ‘Cause even the quarry…I said yeah, no, if you drove up…’cause our street was…if you…it ended and then went left.  I say yeah, I know, but there was a dirt road if you straight.

 

I’m like, I’m pretty sure that went into private property like a quarry or something, or right into one of the parks.  There was a set of woods that my brother posted pictures…has…that must have a marsh too because it has a boardwalk.  Yeah, I guess this is a swampy area out there, or marshy; not swampy.  Maybe it was some swampage which is interesting with recently doing the Otter Things when I’m recording this.  There’s one other memory that I want to tell you just ‘cause…to close out, was…and this, again, if you’re kids, don’t do this but sometimes, especially when you’re a little kid…this doesn’t happen as much ‘cause people have cell phones but back then we just had phones fixed to the wall.  So, I remember this one time, my mom was on the phone.

 

My brother and sister must have been taking a nap ‘cause they were babies, or one or two or three.  My mom was on the phone and she was…and I wanted attention, and then I got really bored.  I remember wherever…she was so distracted and I was in the kitchen that I climbed up on the counter.  For kids, I guess this is a rite of passage.  Not a good idea at all, so don’t do it.  But when you climb up on the counter as a kid and then there’s cabinets, it’s a whole new world because you get to look in the cabinets at your eye level.  I remember I was bored and I was going through the cabinets.  I’ll never forget it because again, well, one, we didn’t…when you’re a kid, whatever, four years old or five years old, you just get what you’re given, right?  You don’t really go into the top cabinets.

 

But I don’t think…my family’s never…we enjoy sweets and stuff but I don’t think my parents ate a lot of candy, or I didn’t see them snacking on candy.  If we had a treat, it was a shared treat or whatever.  So, my mom was on the phone, I’m going through the cabinet, I’m looking at stuff, and then I found…and it was in a package like nowadays you’d buy Nerds.  You know the Nerds candies, right?  They come in that paperboard, rectangular box, right?  This was…and these candies, you could still get now but these weren’t Nerds.  These were like, pre-Nerds but they were candied rocks which again, yeah, I know you can buy.  The difference between a candied rock and a Nerd is that a candied rock is not a strong flavor.  Nerds have that unbelievable sugar punch to them.  Candied rocks have…they’re a little bit bigger.

 

But I remember I found this box of candied rocks and my mind was blown.  Then I think I showed it to my mom or whatever and we ate it together.  But I just remember that sense of adventure.  I guess that was my first adventuring in cabinets which even that is a nice memory, you know, of the first time you’re looking around in something and you’re saying this is like, unprecedented in my life that I’m actually…you forget about these things as an adult because you become kinda jaded; whether it’s the curiosity of filling containers with water or fantasizing about going to a marsh or a creek or about just going through cabinets with fresh eyes.  One day I’ll have my own creek or my own private spring or maybe I won’t; maybe I could just enjoy visiting them but I hope you rest well as I tuck you in here and say goodnight.

 

[END OF RECORDING)

(www.leahtranscribes.com)