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SHUTDOWN FULLCAST 8.09: BOYS WILL TRY TO KILL YOU

A QUICK NOTE ON BOY CHILDREN AND HOW THEY WILL KILL YOU ONE DAY

ONLY TERRY TRANSCENDS MASCULINITY’S YOGURT BARRIER

A few notes about this very important Fullcast.

First, the Randomizer is open for your submissions on topic. We enjoy talking about everything on the Fullcast (yes sometimes even college football) but we especially enjoy talking about random things you want us to talk about. Because Ryan can be brilliant sometimes, he made the Randomizer Submission Form. Put a topic in, and we may very well discuss it when the Randomizer coughs it up onto our plate.

Second, one of those things we accepted as a topic this week: Dumb things your children have done recently. A good chunk of this podcast is us talking about dumb things our children have done recently. For a given value of “win”—and oh man, that’s a very debatable definition of value here—I win the discussion.

HIGH-EVAH. In the case of this podcast’s crew and their attendant children, please note that I will always win this topic, forever and ever, because I have two boys, while the rest of the podcast has girls. Whatever they do, however they might try, nothing will equal the pure stupidity of being male. Nothing. There is no competition for it or in it. The nature portion of this will win before any nurture is applied.

In my case, the nurture won’t help either. Example: I recently began teaching both of my boys the art of theatrical wrestling. Not Greco-Roman wrestling, mind you, but WWE-style wrestling with sold moves, telegraphed choreography, and exact, strict rules. They are big on the sold moves and telegraphed choreography. They are not big on the exact, strict rules preventing everyone from getting hurt for real.

Say it with me if you have children, because you’ve said this before and will say it again about basically everything: This might not have been a smart idea, but it’s too late to do anything about it now.

They are really not big on the part where I don’t get hurt, and they are inventive to a fault. These two things go together very, very well in the ring, and very, very poorly in real life. When a wrestler finds an inventive new application for a folding table in a match, he’s innovative. When a five year old begins hitting his dad with a giant Power Ranger zord in real life, it’s painful. Also innovative, yes, but very painful, especially when the other child is punching you in the balls because “I know it’s against the rules, Dad, but it works! IT WORKS!!!”

The point is: If we discuss this every week, I will win this discussion every week. As loath as I am to admit a stereotype is true, I will cop to believing in exactly two of them regarding the sexes.

One: Women love yogurt with a passion no man can ever equal. They love it on a level I, as a man, will never understand. Only Terry Jeffords comes close to understanding it, and he is a mostly fictional character. This is a value-free judgment, as yogurt is a fine, mostly good food full of protein, but I believe it to be completely true. I accept it, and one day will hopefully transcend my sex to fully comprehend its grandeur.

Two: the average girl child will not do the dumb, insanely dangerous things an average boy child will do because they mature faster, are generally smarter earlier, and understand their role within an active, responsible society sooner and more fully than boys do. Maybe “ever will.”

Probably “ever will.”

Okay, definitely “never will”, since as recently as 2017 a man in Australia broke his back and almost paralyzed himself running headfirst into a wall at a museum. Why? Because he was trying to outrun a virtual Cathy Freeman, the gold medalist sprinter, and in the process of going all-out ran headfirst into a wall and put himself into a neck-stabilizing halo cast. Why did he do this? Let the man explain himself how he nearly killed himself in a children’s museum running through an exhibit thousands of patrons had safely used without killing themselves.

“All these little things made me think I could beat her, I got a bit competitive thinking ‘I can take on Cathy Freeman’,” he said.

Surely this sounds like the kind of bravado found in a man in his early twenties. READER, DEAN SMITH OF AUSTRALIA WAS 43 YEARS OLD AT THE TIME AND HAS KIDS. In summary: Men are genetically stupid, there is no hope of improvement, and my children are trying to kill me. Enjoy the Fullcast.

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