I'm the cool dad. That's, that's my thing.

I know now what I can offer you that no one else can. Complete and undependent.

I'm a man. I'm sensitive. I need to feel loved. I need to be desired.

Yelling is the only part of being a father that I enjoy.

Welcome to Dear Old Dads, the only parenting podcast officially endorsed by Lovar Burton.

I'm Tom Curry. I'm joined as always by Thomas Smith and Eli Bosnick. Hello, gentlemen.

I was on an episode of Reading Rainbow. I was on an episode of Reading Rainbow. Shut the

fuck up. No way. What? Are you just living my dreams? What is happening? My mom's book,

The Carousel was featured on an episode of Reading Rainbow, and so I got to be on that episode of

Reading Rainbow. He came to Binghamton, New York, and he looked at our carousel that the carousel and the carousel is based on. Got to meet Lovar Burden. He was awesome. Shut the fuck up. See, I want off this show. I don't like you anymore. Yeah. Like, I have a jealousy right now that is so ugly. I love how the stories we've never heard about Tom are that he almost got eaten by another thing when he was 10 and we didn't. Oh yeah. It reminds me of a time. I almost got eaten by a thing and my mom robbed a bank and she was also DB Cooper. She used me as a bulletproof vest. Yeah, yeah. The ones we get from Eli are like, I was on TV before with a beloved childhood hero. Eli and I first start talking and I tell Eli just casually we're talking about books. I'm like, oh yeah, my favorite book is this book Grendel by John Gardner. I'm thinking he probably hasn't even heard of it. He's like, oh my mom used to be married to him. And I'm like, what the fuck is even happening? What do you mean? She was married to John Gardner, like the author of my favorite book of all time. And she's just like, oh yeah, my mom was married to him. And she's the, she's the sexy ghost in Mickelson's ghost, which is, let me say, very conflicting for me. Very clearly based on my mom and it's upsetting.

I would never,

never read that. is, let me say, very conflicting for me. Very clearly based on my mom, and it's upsetting.

I would never read that in a million years.

Yeah, you think the journals are bad.

What if one of the great American authors had written your dad's journals?

Wow.

But you've read it, though, I assume. I've read it, yeah. John Gardner can't not read John Gardner. I have never read. I didn't know who John Gardner was. I'm sorry. I'm illiterate. I don't know if I've said that. She recently, I sent a picture of this to Tom. I'm not remembering which book it was, but it was like a philosophy book. I think it was John Locke. And she recently was like, oh, I found this. She was like, oh, I found this. She gave me it. And it was John Gardner's copy of John Locke with his margin notes. And I was like, Mom, you know there are like museums and universities that want this. and she was like, nah, you can have it. That's just incredible. Yeah.

And it was, I remember it was being in nothingness. It was this copy of being in nothing. There it is being in nothingness. Yeah. So, yeah, that's not unbelievably fucking cool. A tale of two dear old dads. It was the best of times.

And Thomas, all your stories are sad, but you don't remember them because of ADHD. So it's the perfect three bear situation, right?

Like, we can be like, did anyone here ever get hit by a meteorite?

And Thomas would be like, oh, yeah, oh, yeah.

No, I did.

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