4:00

like out a week in advance, people just putting

4:02

their camping chairs out. And she was like, they've

4:04

already got the chairs out for your birthday, dad.

4:06

I was like, yes, yes, that's true.

4:09

I mean, I felt like that

4:11

when we were we celebrated your birthday in

4:13

Idlewild, California, a couple

4:15

years ago. And because

4:19

birthdays are the same every year, it was

4:21

again around the time for Fourth July. And

4:23

that town also days in advance

4:25

just had like chairs lining the

4:27

sidewalk in anticipation of this parade, because people

4:29

are like, like, like the

4:31

whole town turns into a little kid where it's like,

4:33

I know it's not until it's not for like six

4:35

days, but I'm like, I'm just gonna, I got energy.

4:37

I'm antsy. I'm gonna put the chairs out now. I'm

4:39

gonna just like put chairs on the side of the

4:41

road now. And I'm gonna put a chain on them

4:44

so no one can sit on them. And then and

4:46

then we'll be ready. We'll be ready. If

4:48

the Fourth of July is earlier this year,

4:50

we'll be prepared. Yeah, in case something comes

4:52

up between now and then, in a town

4:54

where the cat is the mayor where nothing

4:56

could possibly come up. Yeah,

4:59

I don't, it was it was crazy to see

5:01

how many chairs were out. And then I started

5:03

like my son was even like, what are they?

5:06

What happens in this parade? Meaning like, what

5:08

is special about this one? And I was

5:10

like, you know what, probably nothing. It's probably

5:13

fire truck, fire truck, fire truck, some guys

5:15

on horses, an

5:17

ambulance, maybe, and then a float

5:20

with some kids on it. And that's it.

5:22

Like, that's what a parade is. And they

5:24

don't do anything different here. It's not like

5:26

Disneyland, where they're also doing little dances next

5:29

to each float. Like, it's a

5:31

parade in a small town. And I have

5:33

no idea why that's so exciting to people

5:35

still. In

5:37

my old town, which was a one square mile

5:40

town on the Jersey Shore, they got really excited

5:42

about their Fourth of July parade. And they had

5:44

like, like all

5:46

the groups that I think only

5:48

work for parades, they only do

5:51

the parade circuit where it's like the

5:53

bagpipers and here's like a band

5:55

that is exclusively very old veterans

5:57

playing some kind of old timey

5:59

music. And they also had

6:01

the fire trucks going by and the the

6:03

one of the other things that made this

6:05

parade special was that If

6:08

you were gonna drive your car in the parade Then

6:11

you were also it was expected of

6:13

you to have candy to throw at

6:15

children So you're just throwing candy at

6:17

kids all day long. That's they turned

6:19

into another Halloween Yeah, that was

6:21

and when as a kid that

6:24

was all I cared about in a parade was am

6:26

I close enough to get the candy? Because they're gonna

6:28

be throwing candy at us And

6:31

the fact that there were floats going by it meant

6:33

nothing to me Like even then I was over the

6:35

idea of a fire truck. I was like, yeah, they

6:38

we see them. We've seen these Yeah, but

6:41

for an adult is it adult really like

6:43

setting up the chairs being like, all right This is gonna be

6:45

a pretty much spot because boy 50% Yeah,

6:48

like 70% of the P the firemen I

6:50

know are left-handed and so they're gonna be

6:53

throwing off of this side So

6:55

we're gonna be getting a lot of Tootsie rolls that

6:57

we could otherwise go to the store and get for

6:59

75 cents Yeah,

7:03

anyway, I couldn't I didn't understand it anyway I

7:05

went camping Let

7:08

me walk that back. I did not go shopping.

7:10

I went and stayed on a cabin in

7:12

a KO a With

7:15

a bunch of families from Ronin

7:17

school and This is

7:20

it's like the cabin doesn't have a stove So

7:22

you're like you're cooking outside still on your little

7:24

to burner Coleman or whatever you've got But

7:27

you know for all intents and purposes you're staying

7:30

in a cabin. You're not it's not real camping

7:33

This was so much fun Daniel. Oh,

7:36

I was really like coming up on

7:38

this trip in like oh, this is gonna

7:40

be tough Man, it's gonna be all these kids

7:42

and not everyone raises their kids the same, you

7:44

know You know how that is

7:46

and so you're gonna end up being responsible

7:48

for other kids sometimes that

7:51

you don't really know what their rules

7:53

are and It

7:56

was so great the eight years old I feel

7:58

like is this turning point where I

8:01

didn't see my son for three days. He was

8:03

just in this biker gang with his friends, and

8:05

they cruised around this camp going from the pool

8:07

to this thing called a jumping

8:09

pillow, which is... I

8:12

can put it together with context clues, what it probably

8:15

is. This thing they can jump on, and

8:18

then surviving off of s'mores,

8:22

I just let them loose. And these

8:24

kids, they made good choices. They weren't

8:26

being bad. The worst thing they

8:28

did was throw a chair in the pool, and that

8:30

was like, they felt pretty bad about that. And

8:35

otherwise, they were so good and so

8:37

nice to each other, and they played

8:40

really well, and they just lived on

8:42

their own in this little campus, basically.

8:44

And so I had one child- And even the

8:46

chair thing is, it's a very understandable impulse to

8:50

wanna see what happens. Of course. You're

8:52

eight years old and you have a chair in a pool. You're very

8:54

curious. I

8:57

certainly remember being around pools as

8:59

a kid, and some

9:02

adult at some pool was like, now I want

9:04

you all to see that there is a cinder

9:06

block over there. Do not throw the

9:08

cinder block into the pool. And we were all like, oh

9:12

man, what's gonna happen if we throw that fucking cinder

9:14

block in the pool? I gotta

9:16

see it happen. And

9:18

just the innate,

9:20

it's in a human's DNA to

9:22

wanna throw big stuff in water.

9:26

And so we're constantly thinking, like, oh man, I'm

9:29

near all these rocks, like these rocks that gotta

9:31

go in that water so bad. And so seeing

9:33

a chair too, and being like, maybe I could

9:35

stand on it then. Maybe I could do different

9:37

things with the chair. Like who knows the possibilities

9:40

once that chair is in the water. So- Right,

9:42

theoretically, you could sit in the chair in the bottom of the

9:45

pool and pretend you're at a computer or pretend you're having tea.

9:47

I understand the impulse completely. The bits

9:49

are endless. There's so many fun things

9:52

it turns out you can do in

9:54

a chair underwater. And

9:57

so they wanted that chair in the water bad. And ultimately

9:59

I didn't- situation,

20:00

not like a crisis or anything, but

20:03

I was, this was a few days ago,

20:05

early in the morning, the

20:08

building manager at my building

20:10

doesn't live on site. And

20:13

she emailed all of the

20:15

residents with a picture that another resident had

20:17

taken of our garbage area. Our

20:19

garbage area is in the parking lot. We

20:21

have one large dumpster and

20:24

eight or nine cans

20:26

for that all collect mixed recyclables.

20:29

So everything just goes in there. And the picture

20:31

was of the garbage area. And there were a

20:33

ton of empty

20:36

cardboard boxes. Some of them were open

20:38

with other boxes stuffed in them. Some

20:40

of them were like broken down and

20:42

just like left in that area. It

20:45

certainly looked trashy and bad. And

20:47

the building manager emailed this picture to all of

20:49

us and was like, one of the residents just

20:52

sent this to me. This is unacceptable.

20:55

This is horrible. If anyone

20:58

did this, take care of it.

21:00

Or if you didn't do it, but

21:02

you see an address of who was

21:04

responsible, you can call me and tell

21:06

me the address. And every number, everyone

21:08

who calls me, this is confidential. And

21:10

I will deal with the person who

21:12

did this. And that was the email.

21:15

So I took Jackson

21:17

for a little walk to the beach. We hung

21:19

out on the beach for a while. And then

21:21

I came back to the building and I chained

21:24

Jackson up near the garbage and I started breaking

21:26

down the boxes and folding them up and

21:29

putting them away. And I'm

21:32

going to just do this. Truly,

21:34

I had

21:37

time. And it was like

21:39

a nice morning. And I'm also, you can tell

21:41

by looking at the boxes that I wasn't looking

21:43

for addresses because I didn't even want to be

21:46

like accidentally a narc on this. But you could

21:48

see by looking at the boxes that it has

21:50

things on it like labeled kitchen or labeled bedroom

21:52

or labeled like John's

21:55

dresser. Yeah. Clearly someone had

21:57

recently moved and moved. So

42:00

there are videos that I watch online of...

42:02

Me too. That wraps

42:04

it up for today. Phew. I'm

42:06

not the only one. There are videos I

42:09

watch online of generally they are motorcyclists, but

42:12

there are also other circumstances. There's somebody in a

42:14

parking lot where somebody will throw trash out their

42:16

window. A motorcyclist will come

42:18

along, pick up the trash, throw

42:20

it back in the car. And

42:24

I love these. Like they're like

42:26

my favorite thing in the world. It's

42:30

only a thing I think you can get away with on something

42:32

like a motorcycle because no one can keep

42:34

up with you. No one can keep pace with you. And

42:38

it's what I secretly want to do all the

42:41

time because I see people throwing trash out their

42:43

windows and I'm like, yeah, we all have

42:45

to live here. Darn, don't do

42:47

that. I would tell the

42:49

building manager if there was one, but

42:52

yeah, I don't know

42:55

what to do with that. I don't know what to

42:57

do with that feeling other than just like eat it until I watch

42:59

these videos and then it's very cathartic and it's like, oh, yeah. Oh,

43:02

okay. Good. Some people are

43:04

getting their their reckoning. That's wonderful. I

43:08

also do think it's worth saying that I understand the

43:10

appeal of throwing things out your window. It

43:14

is not something I do because we all do

43:16

it. Yeah, even with like

43:18

an apple, my brother

43:20

will be eating an apple and

43:22

because they're biodegradable, you can leave them anywhere.

43:25

They're allowed to do that. He will throw

43:27

it out his window and it

43:30

looks so cool and there's

43:32

such a simplicity to it. And like when

43:34

you watch, they make a big show of

43:37

it in Anchorman because it's set

43:39

in the 70s. The people who were

43:41

just like drinking a smoothie or a milkshake or whatever and

43:43

then they just throw it over their shoulder behind them. It's

43:46

the past and the characters are assholes, so it's allowed.

43:48

But I still see it just like, oh,

43:51

that's so nice. So freeing to be done with a

43:53

thing and not have to think like now

43:55

I have to like me, a sucker driving around

43:57

with an apple core in my car. until

44:00

I get home so I could bring the garbage into

44:02

my house to put it in my garbage and then

44:04

add to my own garbage. How

44:06

nice would it be to just like, I'm done with this

44:08

thing, bonk, throw it away, take

44:11

a cigarette, throw it on the ground,

44:14

stomp it out. We all

44:16

know why that's appealing. The

44:18

appeal is clear. The appeal is like this

44:20

thing stops existing behind you. You

44:23

throw it, you throw it, and the world just stops

44:25

existing back there and that thing is gone. Right.

44:29

Basically, my dream situation is to never have

44:31

to use my home garbage, that I could

44:33

just keep that nice. Get

44:36

my trash can clean. Yeah.

44:39

Yeah, I understand the appeal of it,

44:41

obviously, but the fact that

44:43

we are all controlling that impulse is

44:46

what makes me so angry when somebody is not.

44:48

Because I'm like, yeah, we all want to cut

44:50

line, dude, but we're not doing it because this

44:52

is the way society works. We've all agreed that this

44:54

is a better version. Even

44:57

to the point where I will be walking past a

44:59

trash can with stuff that I've accumulated

45:01

by eating food or whatever, and I'm like,

45:03

okay, this can go in there and this can

45:05

go in there. But now I'm going

45:07

to hang onto this bottle and we're

45:09

going to wait until we get to something a little bit better,

45:11

somewhere that this belongs. My impulse is like,

45:14

put it all in there, it goes away forever.

45:16

I don't ever hear about it again. But I know

45:19

that that's not- Surely I've done enough. Surely I do

45:21

more than most people. But

45:23

I'm still like, now I got to go find a

45:26

recycling as well. And

45:29

then occasionally you will get to a place where

45:31

you've got the options for compost,

45:33

trash and recycling. And I'm like, okay,

45:37

kids, you should go play because I'm going to be

45:39

here for like 15 minutes trying to figure this out.

45:42

Now I've got a receipt here. I know that's paper,

45:44

but it's like a weird carbon paper and I don't

45:46

think that's good for the planet. So I think that

45:48

goes in trash. Now my bottle cap.

45:51

It's different than the bottle itself and I know

45:54

they need to be separate for the recycling purposes.

45:56

The bottle, easy. But now I'm dealing with this

45:58

other type of like thicker plastic cap.