Modern Dadhood

Daredevil Dad | Peter Shankman on ADHD, Skydiving, and Fatherhood

Episode Summary

Remember life before kids? We did things a certain way, we went places, we stayed up late, had hobbies, and some of us were even thrill seekers. Did that change when kids came into the picture? Or were you able to strike a balance between caring for kids and doing things for you? Peter Shankman, a best-selling author, entrepreneur, Ironman triathlete, and single dad, joins the show to talk about his experiences with balancing things in his “Faster Than Normal” life. Plus, in a new installment of "So That’s a Thing Now" we learn about the latest questionable thing Marc has inadvertently taught his kids to say. (Or perhaps it wasn’t so inadvertent after all.) Stick around until the tail end of this one for a special treat.

Episode Notes

Remember life before kids? We did things a certain way, we went places, we stayed up late, had hobbies, and some of us were even thrill seekers. Did that change when kids came into the picture? Or were you able to strike a balance between caring for kids and doing things for you? Peter Shankman, a best-selling author, entrepreneur, Ironman triathlete, and single dad, joins the show to talk about his experiences with balancing things in his “Faster Than Normal” life. Plus, in a new installment of So That’s a Thing Now we learn about the latest questionable thing Marc has inadvertently taught his kids to say. (Or perhaps it wasn’t so inadvertent after all.) Stick around until the tail end of this one for a special treat.
 

Episode 30 of Modern Dadhood debuts just shy of a week after Halloween, which for most of us, looked very different in 2020 than any Halloween we’ve experienced in the past. Marc and Adam begin by discussing their socially distanced fright nights and Adam’s pathetic, insatiable sugar addiction. Adam poses to Marc: “Growing up, did your parents have hobbies or habits that, even as a kid, you recognized were dangerous?” Marc goes on to share about his father’s woodworking hobby, and the machinery sounds which haunted a young Marc as he tried to fall asleep. When the discussion turns to risky or dangerous hobbies that we ourselves enjoy, Adam shares about his love for skydiving, a daredevil activity which he has abstained from since becoming a father. The guys welcome Peter Shankman to the Modern Dadhood conversation. Peter is a father to a seven-year-old daughter in addition to being a social media expert, a keynote speaker, an author, a podcaster, and yes, a fellow skydiver. Peter shares his technique for balancing work, play, and fatherhood, while remaining clear-headed and productive all the while. Other topics include:


•  Making time for what’s important to you
•  Making ADHD work to your advantage
•  Skydiving and dopamine
•  Coming back from the dead to haunt people
•  The danger of complacency (in all aspects of your life)
•  Eliminating choice
•  Finding effective routines
 

Post-interview, Marc shares a proud dad moment in a mad-as-a-hatter installment of “So That’s A Thing Now.” You might stick around until the tail end of the episode to hear the theme song that accompanies Marc’s groin-themed story.
 

[Episode Transcript]
 

Links:
Peter Shankman [website]
Peter on Facebook
Peter on Twitter
Peter on Instagram
Peter on YouTube
Shankminds
Faster Than Normal [website]
Faster Than Normal [book]
FTN Instagram
Caspar Babypants
Red Vault Audio
Spencer Albee

Episode Transcription

Adam:

So, I just learned something about you, Marc.

Marc:

What? What did you learn about me?

Adam:

You don't know who Lizzo is.

Marc:

That's true. Are you going to hold that over me?

Adam:

It's just kind of shocking.

Marc:

Is going to be...

Adam:

It's just kind of shocking.

Marc:

I'll do some Googling tonight. Oh boy.

Adam:

Well this is yet another episode of Modern Dadhood, which is an ongoing conversation about the joys, challenges, and general insanity of being a dad in this moment. My name is Adam Flaherty. I'm a father of two daughters who are six and a half and three and a half. And you sir, the man who doesn't know Lizzo?

Marc:

My name is Marc Checket and I'm a dad to twin boy toddlers, two and a half. And no, I have no idea who Lizzo is.

Adam:

Modern Dadhood is an interview show, and today our guest is a successful entrepreneur author, and a fellow podcaster, named Peter Shankman. And we'll be catching up with Peter in just a bit.

Marc:

You think he has some friends that call him The Shankster? Oh, Hey Adam.

Adam:

Yes, sir.

Marc:

It was Halloween this weekend.

Adam:

Yes, it was.

Marc:

Did you guys do anything? How did your… I guess two-part question: how did your neighborhood deal with Halloween this year?

Adam:

Well, the answer to that is that the town officially canceled trick or treating, which is a big deal because my neighborhood in particular is super family friendly and we literally get hundreds and hundreds of kids, it's a shit show and we love it. It's great. But we formulated a plan with some other families in the neighborhood who we're close with who have kids and we did our own sort of little private thing where we came up with a list of the families who were participating and all of the kids, I think it was like 20 to 25 kids all together.

Marc:

Yeah.

Adam:

All the families made specific bags for those kids. The girls had a great time and they got, I would say even more candy than they typically get.

Marc:

People were making little bags.

Adam:

Yeah, that were just filled to the brim with everything you can imagine.

Marc:

Yeah.

Adam:

How about you guys?

Marc:

It was similar to yours. It wasn't quite as organized, maybe, but there was a lot of chatter on our neighborhood Facebook groups about exactly how are we going to do this thing? Most of the families did a similar thing, which is that everybody had tables out with pre-packaged candy bags, just like you said. So in that regard, it was a little bit more, I don't know, it was a little bit more neat and orderly, I suppose, than in previous years. But you're right, our kids came home with a butt ton of candy. We were just one little bag filled with candy after another, just getting dumped out on the living room floor when we got back home. It was pretty funny.

Adam:

Between the leftover candy from what we bought to fill the bags, which I ordered it online and went to pick it up, curbside pickup, and accidentally, which is a true accident, it wasn't like, “oops!”, we got three big bags instead of two.

Marc:

Mixed bags?

Adam:

Yeah. Mixed bags. So between what's left over from that, which is a lot, and what the girls collected, we are just overrun with sugar and it's really bad for me. It's a total weakness and if it's around, I'm going to be picking at it and I won't stop. My craving for it is just endless. I would just go until I vomited.

Marc:

I'd like to see that.

Adam:

Marcos.

Marc:

That's me.

Adam:

No, you're supposed to say “Mykeithos.” Do you know the reference?

Marc:

Polos.

Adam:

No. You're supposed to say “Mykeithos.”

Marc:

Oh, that's a Lizzo song.

Adam:

No, it's not a Lizzo song. It's a reference to the Vow on HBO that's about the sex cult.

Marc:

Okay. No, I didn't know that, but that is on my list. I'll put it to the top of the list.

Adam:

Okay. But I did want to ask you on a serious note when you were growing up, did your parents have hobbies or habits that even as a kid you recognized were risky or dangerous?

Marc:

No, I can't honestly say, well. I guess.

Adam:

Well, I know your dad was a woodworker.

Marc:

Well, okay. So that is the thing that comes to mind. Our basement was his wood shop. And when I was really little, I do remember periodically I would go to bed just a little tyke going off to bed, beddy-bye around whatever, eight o'clock, right?

Adam:

“Good night!” 

Marc:

“Can you leave the light in the hallway on Mom, please?”

Adam:

“Can I stay up an extra 15 minutes?”

Marc:

“Just rub my back until I fall asleep.”

Adam:

“Can I have some warm milk?”

Marc:

“Can you just sit at the foot of the bed and just breathe just loud enough so that I can hear you?” I would be all the way up. We had a two-story home and some of the power tools that were down in the basement, some of them really freaked me out and I'd be upstairs in bed, hearing the planer kick on or the table saw kick on. I would lay there thinking he's definitely, no. He's, yeah, he's definitely dead. He's definitely cut all his limbs off and now he's dead. And then here I am just laying here, not doing anything about it. My imagination would run a little bit wild and I will just end this bit by saying he's never injured himself. As long as I knew him to be the guy that went downstairs in the basement to work on whatever it was he was building.

Adam:

Interesting. When I was thinking about this question, I was thinking that I just remember growing up so many times, my mom had to remind my dad to put on a seatbelt when we were driving. Wearing a seatbelt is just something that became the norm later in their life than a lot of people. So he does now, he wears a seatbelt all the time now.

Marc:

That's only because his wife nagged him for so many years!

Adam:

Right? Exactly. There seems like this double standard because if I ever got in the car with them and I didn't put my seatbelt on, my dad would be all over it.

Marc:

Yeah. Here's another big double standard. Did you grow up in a smoking household?

Adam:

I did. For a number of years. My parents both quit smoking while I was still living in their house. And you?

Marc:

Yeah. Holidays were rough. It was like being in a bar. It's just a haze of smoke in most rooms of the house. But I definitely got, I tried smoking when I was pretty young and got in big trouble for it.

Adam:

Yeah.

Marc:

Which is their job to make sure that I'm not doing stupid things. Ended up smoking for a long time. The thought of it now just absolutely disgusts me. It's been long enough since I've had a cigarette, but big double standard there.

Adam:

Were there any thrilling daredevil type hobbies that family members did that you knew that you would never be allowed to do until you were a grownup, or things that you were really into before having kids that you no longer do, either because of the optics to your kids, you want to set a good example, or because of the danger?

Marc:

No, next question. Both my parents did, often I would find them watching TV sharpening toothbrushes. I never knew what that was about.

Adam:

Yep. Yep. I get it. I get it. Another “shank” joke. Alright. So I'm gonna go ahead and answer because really the only reason that I ask you these questions is so that I can answer them myself.

Marc:

Do you want me to ask you?

Adam:

No.

Marc:

Do want me to ask you the question?

Adam:

No, I'll just ask myself. “Adam, what did you like to do before having kids that you can no longer do?” Well, I'm glad you asked! I really enjoyed skydiving before we had kids. I had jumped probably five times over the span of a few years and I love it. It gives you a rush like nothing else that I've experienced. Have you ever jumped out of an airplane?

Marc:

No. And I didn't even breathe the whole time you were saying that. I was imagining being in a plane with the door open. It was too frightening.

Adam:

Oh, it's frightening and awesome and exhilarating. Just the feeling of free falling through the sky for about a minute is like, it's, I don't even have words for it. It's incredible. So I did it a handful of times before having kids. And then either right around the time our first daughter was born, or it might've been like a month or two before she was born, Sarah said to me, no more. No more. It's too risky. We can't afford to lose you. You can't skydive anymore. Honestly, I was okay with it. I definitely want to jump again in the future, and I would imagine that when the girls are old enough, I've talked to them about it and they're like, oh, that sounds so cool. I would imagine that when they're old enough, 18, that they'll want to try it with me, which I'll be all about it. As long as Sarah allows it. It just wasn't an argument that I was interested in having. It's a hobby that I'm okay sort of putting on the shelf for now.

Marc:

That's exactly why I stopped mainlining Pixie Stix. I had done it enough. I understood what the rush felt like.

Adam:

How do you get past the pain? The first few times are painful.

Marc:

It's because the end result was worth it.

Adam:

It's also like a “hurts so good” thing. Right?

Marc:

That's exactly right. Yeah. Yeah. It tickles. It's like a tickle pain.

Adam:

There's nothing like blowing your nose and seeing just blue. Blue slime.

Marc:

Yeah. There's nothing like sneezing out course orange sugar.

Adam:

Oh, Halloween.

Adam:

Well, skydiving is how I came across our guest for today's episode. I was reading one of Peter Shankman's blog entries because he's a powerful entrepreneur and online presence. I learn a lot from him and he had a blog about how he had a mishap while he was skydiving. He pulled his parachute, but this piece called the slider did not do what it was supposed to do immediately. He ended up free falling for I think 11 seconds longer than he should. He's hurtling towards the ground.

Marc:

That's terrifying.

Adam:

Terrifying. Eventually it did open before he had to pull his backup parachute.

Marc:

He had to pull his backup parachute?

Adam:

No, he was about to. You do have a backup chute. He, in all likelihood, would have been fine. He was about to pull it and the slider did its thing and the parachute opened.

Marc:

Jeezy creezy.

Adam:

The remainder of the jump was uneventful, but the big sort of lesson or takeaway that he got from it, and he shared this in his blog, was about complacency and how in his head he just kept thinking I can give it another second. I can give it another two seconds to see if it opens before I pull my backup chute. It can be devastating, it can be dangerous and devastating. That's something that can apply obviously to skydiving, but really to all parts of your life.

Marc:

Peter Shankman, he's an amazing individual. He's a multi talented marketing entrepreneur. He's a best-selling author. He's an influencer, a podcaster, a fantastic keynote presenter. He's a triathlete. He's a skydiver. I mean, there's a lot of stuff. Adam, you got a chance to sit down and talk with him.

Adam:

I did. Shall we give it a listen?

Marc:

I'm really excited to listen to this interview.

Adam:

Peter, thank you for carving out time to be on Modern Dadhood.

Peter:

I'm glad to be here. I appreciate the invite.

Adam:

You've got some irons in the fire, is that fair to say?

Peter:

No, nothing major. It is busy, but I couldn't imagine having it any other way. I'm very fortunate. I'm very lucky. It's a lot of fun.

Adam:

Marc and I both work in digital agencies and could chat with you all day long about how to disrupt in advertising or craft an effective email, but Modern Dadhood is a space to talk about being a dad, so let's start there. Tell us about your daughter Jessa. seven years old, right?

Peter:

She's a wonderful daughter. She's seven years old. She's very inquisitive. Very smart. As a single dad, I've spent a majority of last few months with her. It's been awesome.

Adam:

You've described having sort of a distinct division in your life, at least in non-pandemic times. The work slash rest slash fun Peter, and then Peter the dad, where your priority is being present with your daughter. I know that for me, it's a real challenge to squeeze in anything beyond work and parenting and the podcast. I have to generate income. I have to raise my kids, but lots of other things have sort of taken a back seat. Do you have any wisdom to share about how to carve out that time or find balance for the things that fulfill you?

Peter:

I think that you make time for what's important. The problem is that when you make time for something that's important, it comes at the expense of something that's not, right? You have to give up something that's not for something that is. For me it came down to I don't go out. I don't do things that I would often do in the past. I don't go out for drinks, I don't do whatever. Instead, I'm asleep usually about 15 minutes after my daughter is. On the flip side, I'm up at usually around quarter to four in the morning. To get that done, you make the decision that's more important, because if I don't get up first thing in the morning and exercise, I can't be at my best, right? I need to be at my best. For me, I need to make sure that I'm getting that dopamine, getting that serotonin, getting that adrenaline, those things I need. Doing that, that super early thing, allows me to be the best dad I can, without question.

Adam:

I'm curious, does being someone whose brand really is your name and your face, you in the spotlight on stage, how you position yourself publicly, all of that, does that make it hard to flip a switch and put Jessa in the spotlight?

Peter:

She tends to not be in the spotlight in terms of publicly. A lot of her, in my public world, does not exist. A lot of her in my private world, I'm all about her. I juggle everything I do around her. Even when I was traveling as much as I was, I'd fly to Asia on a Tuesday, I'd get there Wednesday night, I'd speak Thursday morning. I'd fly back Thursday afternoon. With the time change, I'd be home Thursday night. So I'd only miss two nights. I'd be a zombie, but I'd be home for dinner with her. It's really, again, it's about balance. It's about what's important. You can live your life in such a way where you can do the things you need to do and still make it work. I'm not saying it's easy, it's the furthest thing from easy, but it's worth it.

Adam:

Absolutely. To clarify, my question is more about your private life, not necessarily putting Jessa in the public spotlight, but just being able to sort of separate from business and refocus your attention on whatever it is that's important to her. For example, my girls were home all summer and my wife and I were both working from home and I would be right in the middle of something that was important to me from a professional standpoint and then instantly have to switch over to being an audience member of a puppet show that was happening in our living room. As someone whose brand is really you, how do you sort of retrain yourself to go from Peter Shankman is an important and influential person to right now in this moment, Peter Shankman is not important.

Peter:

Well, I think that Peter has never been important. I was giving a speech two weeks ago to a major Fortune 50, about 400 people in the audience, all via Zoom. I made sure she was set up in her room and she had her laptop and she was in her class. I timed it. Right. Sure enough, five minutes to my keynote, "Daddy, I locked my computer!" So I'm like, "Guys, I'm sorry." She brings it out. I'm like, "This is my daughter. I'm just going to unlock her computer. Okay-- do not press that button again." So be it, right? I think that there are a lot worse things than that. And if that's the worst thing to have to deal with in a day, so be it. She is very much my world. I think that anyone who doesn't understand that or who would have an issue with that probably isn't someone I want to work with anyway.

Adam:

Exactly. Anybody who has kids should understand that and hopefully find it endearing that needs to be your priority for those 30 seconds or whatever. I want to shift gears a bit. One of the ways that you have fun and take care of yourself is skydiving. Tell me about how you got into skydiving.

Peter:

When you're ADHD, you have much less dopamine than a normal brain. You're constantly looking for ways to fill that. At the time I didn't know I was ADHD. I just realized that I did one skydive and I took 150 people skydiving when I ran my PR firm, it was a PR stunt. It went really, really well. Of course the joke being that you have your 150 people, all of whom jump out of a plane, 149 of them said, "My God, that was awesome. I'm totally going to check that off the bucket list." Then that one guy who says, "I've got to do that shit again." That wound up being me. I immediately fell in love with it, and I realized, I didn't realize at the time that the correlation between why I felt so good and dopamine and jumping, but I wound up going back and getting my license a couple years later, and I've been ever since. Once I really sort of connected ADHD with everything else, I'm like, wow, that makes perfect sense. So I'll bring my laptop up to the drop zone and I'll jump, I'll land, I'll throw my gear in a corner of the hangar and I'll sit down with my laptop and I'll write 10,000 words an hour. Because I'm just so high from all the dopamine from the jump. It's the equivalent, for me, of taking meds. Same thing with running, same thing with exercise. It's the same reason I get up so early. Even public speaking. All those things that allow me to build up that dopamine and just feel amazing. Everyone said, oh, now that you have a kid are you got to stop skydiving? Absolutely not. First of all, I'm an incredibly safe skydiver, right? I don't go anywhere near enough for it even to affect my insurance. I've got about just short of 500 jumps in 15 years, which as a skydiver is, in the skydiving world it's like nothing. I have friends that do a thousand jumps a season. I just know that how I feel when I jump, after a jump, makes me a better father. And why would I give that up?

Adam:

Yeah. Well that was going to lead me to the next question, which has sort of answered itself. I, before having kids jumped a number of times and really enjoyed it. Before my first daughter was born, my wife said you've got to cool it on the jumping. No more jumping. I understood where she was coming from. There is some inherent risk in skydiving. There's inherent risk in driving a car or flying a plane, but this is an action sport or hobby that I could just choose to not participate in for a while. I was curious to hear, when you learned that you were going to be a dad, did your feelings about skydiving, and the risk that you're taking on, change? But it sounds like they didn't.

Peter:

I live in New York City. I have a better chance of going outside and getting hit by a bus than I do of something happening when I'm skydiving. Let's be honest, if my wife at the time had told me to quit skydiving and I'd gone out and gotten hit by a bus, I would have been so angry. I would have come back and haunted the shit out of her. She understood how beneficial it was. I understood how beneficial it was, and the risk is much less than the reward at this point.

Adam:

That's actually a great segue because you've had a few scarier moments when skydiving that you've written about, including times when your parachute has either deployed too quickly or too late. When you're literally free falling through the sky, every second matters. Have those experiences put anything into perspective for you in terms of weighing those immense positives that you described against the risk?

Peter:

I think it reaffirmed the fact that that brilliance and ideas and creativity all die in complacency.

Adam:

That's right.

Peter:

You simply can't let complacency sneak in because it's very easy. Oh, things are going fine. I'm doing okay. I don't need to do more. I don't need to, whatever. That sort of way of thinking can hurt you. Right? Look at all the people who were just doing okay and they had money coming in, and everything was going okay in their business, and then COVID hit, right? You constantly have to be thinking a little outside the box, a little differently. Your comfort zone is great, but nothing grows there. Complacency is dangerous in all capacities, whether it's professionally or personally.

Adam:

Peter, you've mentioned ADHD a couple of times in our conversation. I know you're a podcaster yourself. You've written a book by the same title as your podcast called Faster Than Normal. I'm going to link all of your projects in the show notes, because I really would love for our listeners to take a deep dive into your content. Can you give us, I guess, sort of an elevator pitch about your work and your research on ADHD and how you've developed these hacks, as you call them, to actually use your own ADHD to your advantage?

Peter:

Yeah. And it starts off with my saying I'm not a doctor, but what I have discovered is that all the stuff that I did as a kid that got me in trouble, speaking out in class, being a class clown, everything I've ever done in my life for good or for bad has in some way or another been to create more dopamine. Because, again, when you're ADHD, you have less than a normal brain. Dopamine is the focus chemical, it's chemical that makes you happy. It's chemical that does all these things, and I just didn't have enough of it. I never did drugs as a kid. I wasn't drinking or anything like that. But I learned about when I made a joke and spoke out of turn in class, and I made a joke in the whole class laughed, that was dopamine. Right? And wow, that's a great feeling. The irony is that I was speaking out in class and getting in trouble because dopamine allowed me to focus and I could learn better. I actually wanted to learn, but I was doing it the only way I knew how. ADHD didn't exist when I was a kid. What existed was sit down, you're disrupting the class disease. As I got older, when I finally put a name to this and realized what it was, I said, wow, both the good and the bad stuff, everything in my life, has been tied back to this. The concept behind FTN, Faster Than Normal, is the premise that we might want to consider looking at all sorts of neuro-diversity. The ADHD autism spectrum, executive function disorder, dyslexia, not necessarily as curses that need to be fixed, but as gifts that need to be harnessed. Once I realized that, and I was able to put sort of these life rules into place, if you're driving a Honda all your life, and someone gives you a Lamborghini, and you try to get it on the highway the same way you do when you drove the Honda and you floor it, you're going to crash into a tree, right? You're going 180 miles an hour. I had to learn how to redrive my brain. Once I learned how to drive my brain, I could drive incredibly fast and safely. Things like that. I learned that I realized there might be some other people who would benefit from that. I guess there were other people, I get emails every day from people who say, thank you, and this has helped, and I'm looking at it in a different way now. It's a great feeling.

Adam:

Well, congratulations on the success of Faster Than Normal, which includes the book and the podcast and all of your other important work that you're doing. Dads will include links to all things Peter Shankman in the show notes. Just quickly, and I know this is probably a very involved answer, but can any of these hacks, are any of them applicable to people who do not have ADHD?

Peter:

They're applicable to everyone. They're very simple. The premise of I have two sides to my closet. They're labeled. One says office slash travel, and it's t-shirts and jeans. The other says, speaking slash television and it's button-down shirts, jackets, and jeans. That's it. My sweaters, my vests, my suits, those are all in my daughter's closet. Because I wake up every day and say, hmm, what should I wear? Oh, look at that. I remember that vest, Michelle gave me that vest. I wonder how she's doing. I should look her up. So there's three hours later and I'm naked living room on Facebook and I haven't left the house. You put together these sort of guardrails. Again, the same thing with the exercise I do. Without the exercise, without the dopamine flow, I'm just not going to have as good of a day. Is it going to be terrible? No. It's just not going to be as good. So I've learned things like that. Things to eliminate choice, to get myself into routines. Resolutions fail. You're not going to lose 50 pounds in January, the first month of the year. But the resolution to have one piece of whatever it is you're eating at dinner and not six, that's easier. Over time that ritual becomes a routine and then they work for anyone. It's not just ADHD. They've been very beneficial to every type of person.

Adam:

Peter Shankman. It has been a pleasure speaking with you, sir. And thank you so much for your time and for joining the conversation on Modern Dadhood.

Peter:

My pleasure, Adam. Stay in touch and be safe.

Marc:

Did he say, in that interview, did I hear correctly? He gets up at four or earlier than four in the morning some days?

Adam:

Yeah, he is up, I think at 3:45 in the morning.

Marc:

I have to say, I hear that from people like that. There's something about getting up at or before 4:00 AM. That is part of the secret sauce. It's part of the magic, it's part of what makes those people who they are and achieve what they've been able to achieve.

Adam:

I feel like I should have asked him if, when his daughter is old enough and was interested in skydiving, if he would support her in doing that. I think he almost certainly would say absolutely because it's very safe, but I wonder if his daughter's mother would say the same thing.

Marc:

Yeah. I wonder how she feels about it. This guy skydives, or has many times.

Adam:

Hundreds of times.

Marc:

Skodiv.

Adam:

Skydiven.

Marc:

Many, many times.

Adam:

Dave.

Marc:

I wonder if she's, at this point sort of immune to that. Skodove is good, though. I have, I've got a “So That’s a Thing Now.”

Adam:

I heard that there's a new thing in your home.

Marc:

Here's the thing. You're not the only person that's heard the new thing. I'll explain. I'm going to Quentin Tarantino it. I'm going to give you a little bit of the end, but not the whole thing, then I'm going to rewind from back to the beginning and go all the way through.

Adam:

Okay. Can't wait.

Marc:

One of my sons, as my wife was holding hands with him leaving daycare, his pants, because he was wearing the loaner pants from daycare because he had a little accident when he was at school, they didn't fit him quite right. And as he was walking, they fell to the ground. Very comical. They fell to the ground. He said something. What he said were words that I had given him. Okay?

Adam:

Alright.

Marc:

So let me back up. A few days prior, I was sitting on the couch and I was playing guitar and the boys were just, it was just an afternoon and I was just playing guitar. Sometimes I will just sing out lyrics, I make them up as I go along. Usually I'm just looking at what's happening in front of me, and I'm just singing goofy lyrics to what's going on around me. You know, like he's eaten waffles again. Whatever comes into my mind that I'm looking at.

Adam:

Channeling Willie Nelson on that one.

Marc:

A little bit. I was playing just some goofy, punky, you know, chords, chord progression, three chords over and over again. I was just singing the same melody. One of my sons runs out of the room to the bath. He says, I have to go pee. And he runs to the bathroom and mommy follows him. She helps him go pee on the potty and then he washes his hands and then he comes back into the room. When he comes back into the room, he's no longer wearing pants or undies, as you understand, you've let that slide sometimes.

Adam:

I'm very familiar with that move. Yeah.

Marc:

Be naked for awhile, who cares? We're going up soon to bath and bed. It doesn't matter. So he comes running back into the room, very excited and he's got no pants on, so I naturally, I sing that as he's coming into the room and it works perfectly for the song where there's a little break. And I hit a chord and I go, oops, penis out.

Marc:

Jamie overheard it and was like, “What?” And then I played the chord progression again. And I said it again.

Adam:

Of course. You have to say it more than once. You've got to embed it in their heads so that it can be used elsewhere.

Marc:

Exactly. That wasn't necessarily my goal, but it was funny at the time. Subsequently we ended up singing it a little bit that night. Anyway, flash forward a couple of days later when he was leaving.

Adam:

It was seeded deeply in his brain, ingrained.

Marc:

He's leaving daycare, his loaner pants fall down. He looks up at mommy and says, oops, penis out.

Adam:

Yes.

Marc:

Yeah. I wish I could have been there. I wish I could've been there to see it, to hear it, to see who else maybe heard it. I don't know. I'll never know exactly who heard it.

Adam:

What was an embarrassing mom moment would have been such a proud dad moment.

Marc:

Oh man. I mean really when she came home and told me that I may have shed a tear, actually.

Adam:

It's so harmless. It's so harmless.

Marc:

You wouldn't catch me singing that song in a daycare parking lot. I guess. That's what I'd say.

Adam:

Oh, so that's a thing now in the Checket household.

Marc:

Yep.

Adam:

Well, listen, dads, we're wrapping up and Marc's got some stuff to tell you.

Marc:

You can find us at Modern Dadhood.com, Apple podcasts, Stitcher, Spotify, Amazon podcasts, and more. And please, if you wouldn't mind, because it helps us so much and it makes our little hearts go pitter-patter, subscribe, rate, review us. Do us a favor. Go out there and tell your mom and dad, friends, to maybe subscribe to the show.

Adam:

Word of mouth. You can drop us a line anytime at hey, H-E-Y@moderndadhood.com. We always give a big shout out and thank you to Mr. Caspar Babypants and to Spencer Albee for the amazing music in Modern Dadhood. To Mr. Pete Morse at Red Vault Audio for his incredible mixing skills. And to our intern, if he even still is.

Marc:

He's out there, the famous, infamous.

Adam:

Infamous Miles Crusberg-Roseen. And also, thank you for listening.