Enormous!
Two older gay guys telling stories and discussing anything, everything and nothing in particular.
Enormous!
Enormous Embrace
KC and Harley show that laughter really is the best medicine when it comes to embracing change willingly and enthusiastically. They attempt to unravel the secrets of growing older while still finding joy amidst adversity. Harley introduces his personal view on the "Six Stages Of Aging". Which stage are you in?
Growing older is often discussed, but rarely with such creativity and heartfelt candor as you'll find here. The guys trade stories that span decades and discuss their new theory on how to 'Defrag your Mind,' by clearing mental clutter. They chat about the shifting tides of personal appearance, lifestyle alterations, and imparting wisdom to younger generations without preaching. Concluding on a note of reflection, they talk about creating legacies, the value of personal storytelling, and how "The Soundtrack Of Our Lives" can document our lives through music.
Enormous Website: www.EnormousPodcast.com
Voice mail: (303) 351-2880
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Link: The Soundtrack Of Our Life Video Playlist
Link: Male Diva EDM Spotify Play List
Link: Songs Of Our Life Spotify Play List
Hey KC, tell me a story, okay. Sure, this is got you tickled. Hey KC, tell me a story, okay.
Speaker 2:No, something's ticked my throat. Okay, the closing music is not happening today.
Speaker 1:This is Enormous with your host, Harley and KC.
Speaker 2:You have that friend, I have this friend and she always, in the face of adversity, finds the humor in situations, and she's had some struggles in her life but she still manages to find the humor in those situations and therefore she appears to me to be living a pretty happy life.
Speaker 1:Do you think she finds true humor or is she just hiding her unconscious sadness or fears or worries?
Speaker 2:I mean, there's those people too, but for her, no, I really think that she's doing okay.
Speaker 1:So, if we're going to get through this alive, which none of us will- Well, that's not how it works. We should at least get through this happy Right. So how do we do that? How do we make things happier? What do we?
Speaker 2:do each day. It's a constant evaluation and check in and work right. It's always a work in progress.
Speaker 1:Right. Do you think if you're feeling bad, you should try to pretend to be happy and make yourself feel happy? Or do you think if you're feeling bad, you should just feel bad?
Speaker 2:I think here's my you know, jemini and principles in life. Is that a real word? Probably not. I just created it, but I think that a little of each. I think that there's sometimes when you need to acknowledge your pain or suffering or your unhappiness and you need to give yourself a moment to sit in that and say, yeah, I feel this and it's real and whatever, but I have to move on. Yeah, so, yeah, so it's okay to. But if you just are going to just put that in the spin dryer and keep letting it clunk around in the dryer and living it over and over and over, you're not going to get better. It's better to say, yeah, I feel this way, here's why. Or it's valid, but I've got to get better, I got to try to do okay, I got to live my life and try to pull yourself up out of that I'm not going to be through with it.
Speaker 1:But I think there's a fine balance. I think if you live in that dryer of self despair where you're just tumbling, tumbling, tumbling during the drying process, I think you also chase away your friends, you isolate yourself, you fill your mind full of negative thoughts. Right, your health is going to be affected because you're not getting exercise, that kind of thing. I also think the opposite is bad, and the opposite is to pretend nothing's wrong, to go around life just pretending that everything is perfect.
Speaker 2:I agree.
Speaker 1:And not acknowledging the fact that there are some things that are sad, or hard or painful that you have to deal with from time to time, right, why I said sit in it and live with it.
Speaker 2:For a minute, I'd acknowledge it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, I think that's true.
Speaker 2:And then say what can I do? Maybe what little thing can I do today, so I feel a little better.
Speaker 1:Yeah, sometimes, when you're feeling really really bad, the best thing you can do is go to bed.
Speaker 2:It might be that might be it. Yeah, sleep actually cures a lot of things.
Speaker 1:It does, so I don't think people are sleeping as well. With all the screen time we have with our TVs and our phones, all the blue light we're getting in computers, I don't think humans in general around the world are sleeping as well. Right, if they're hooked into electronics at least.
Speaker 2:Well, we just read that thing about since 2020.
Speaker 3:What's that? Do you remember how it went?
Speaker 2:No, I don't. I think you sent it to me and it was kind of some psychological rationale, remember, do you?
Speaker 1:remember that as soon as you look it up and start to read it. I'll remember.
Speaker 2:A study that was commissioned by the American Psychological Association, to what authors are calling the psychological impact of a collective trauma. Oh right, they're saying that the pandemic was a worldwide collective trauma that we all experienced during the pandemic.
Speaker 1:This continuing in the form of weather changes, right Climate changes and all that.
Speaker 2:So it's even yeah, well, global conflict, racism, radical injustice, inflation, climate related disaster, I mean just all these things are kind of compounding the shit pile is getting taller and taller. And since this was done here in the US of A, they have this report called Stress in America, saying that only about 34% of Americans have confidence in the direction in which we are headed. Yeah, and I kind of feel that. I feel that Like I feel scared and uncertain and I feel like we'll probably get through it.
Speaker 1:But I'm not comfortable. I'm not like plowing forward with all these plans thinking, oh yeah, plenty of money, I have plenty of time, I'll have plenty of health, I have plenty of freedom, I have plenty of whatever.
Speaker 2:I'm sort of a little cautious, right now, yep, and then, if you're like me, what I do is is part of the time I'm cautious and think that way, exactly like you, and then other times I just go oh fuck it, I'm just going to, you know, party like crazy. Yeah, just buy what I want. And you know there's no tomorrow anyway, and so, woohoo, let's just celebrate.
Speaker 1:That's. That's kind of what I decided about my teeth.
Speaker 2:If, subconsciously, your ability to smile is hindered by your thinking that you don't like people seeing your teeth as they are Right, and that you can change that by making yourself feel better because your smile looks better, right and therefore your smile, then wouldn't also subconsciously you kind of feel better?
Speaker 1:Researchers do say that if you force yourself to smile, your brain recognizes that smile and starts releasing happy hormones.
Speaker 2:Yeah yeah. There are those times when you have to perform for your audience, whatever that is like you for your customers, me for students when I was at school. We can't really have a bad day kind of doing that. You have to find a way to climb out of that and do your performance and it might start out being a performance but, like you said, sometimes you can turn that around and pretty soon you actually do start to feel better.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think that's right. My mom waited her whole life. She always said she wanted a facelift and she always would show everybody how much younger she looked if you just pulled this up a little bit. And she always wanted her teeth fixed. Well, finally, after she divorced my dad at about the age of 64, she had her teeth fixed and they were beautiful and she smiled and she was happy and when she looked in the mirror she felt proud of herself and felt like she looked good. And that lasted for two years. And then she died. And I think to myself I don't want to have nice teeth for two years, I want to have nice teeth till the end, For a longer time than that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I hope the end isn't in two years. Right, it may be, but I hope not.
Speaker 2:So when your folks divorced, she was 60.
Speaker 1:She was probably 63 and a half 64.
Speaker 2:I wonder what statistically is that a later than normal age for divorce.
Speaker 1:If I remember correctly, they had been married 35 years 35 years and I'll have to do some, what I should do, and I think you've done this, and this might lead into our next topic. I need to do a Google Sheets with each year and make each year have the events that I remember. Like you know, the easiest ones are you were born or when you got married, or that kind of thing.
Speaker 2:So what I started doing to make it more visual is to build a timeline of my life, kind of, and I did mine in just simple numbers, right? That's, you know an Apple product, but you could build it how it could be a spreadsheet or I can make it however you want. You can put it on a piece of paper.
Speaker 1:I'll do it on Google, because then it's available from anywhere, any device anywhere in the world.
Speaker 2:It's a good way. It's a good way, and what I did, what I started out my sheet was I just put down my age at five year increments in line. So you were born in 1957.
Speaker 1:It's painful to say that. You notice how I hesitated and did not say it because we were both born the same year. So you put down like 1957, 19,. Five years later would be 62, 67, 72. Right.
Speaker 2:Exactly that. I did that. What the first amazing thing is just to see that spread out so simply on a sheet is it's kind of good for you, because you go, you look at that and you go, wow, this all goes by really quickly.
Speaker 1:I better pack in some fun here and there because, whoa, it really goes by fast, right, and if you lived to be 80, which is a good, healthy lifespan, I think, for these days, yes, then we are already. What? Four fifths through our life?
Speaker 2:Right. Shocking, it is shocking, it is shocking we got one fifth of our life left.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we better pack some good stuff. Live it up, live it up.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so. So then what I did was starting inserting lines right in between for things that, for events that happened. Maybe it might have been graduating from high school, or it might have been the day I went to the Lady Gaga concert this charts for me to look at, well, yeah. So other people would say Lady Gaga's concert is really not something you want to put in your timeline of your life, but it was really special or important to me, so it's in there.
Speaker 1:You know, I think the first things I would put is I put my mother's death and my father's death Sure, and when my sister was born she's younger than me and when I moved to Denver and just some major things like that then when I saw it start to fill out and the nice thing about that format is that you can add and, add and add and it just keeps getting bigger and bigger and bigger.
Speaker 2:That's what I like about putting it in a chart like this, because you can keep inserting those lines.
Speaker 2:You can't do that on paper easily, no, and so, yeah, so it's really really nice. And then when you think about, think about something and this might be something maybe older people do more, but I'll think back in the past of something that happened or where I was in the world, and then now I can look at that and go, oh, I wonder exactly how old was I or what else was happening around that time frame or whatever. And it's really nice for me my personality to have a visual charting of that so I can kind of see it.
Speaker 1:Well, I think what's really nice about your system is that if you start with five-year increments and you just know approximately when it was, you can fill it in not know the exact dates and then, as you come across things like a photograph that has a date printed on it Right, or an invitation to a party that you saved, or something like that that comes up, you can go back to that chart and say, oh well, that was 1982 in November, and you can then split your five years. You can start splitting it into years yeah, it's kind of fun really and then you could start splitting those years into months if you want to.
Speaker 1:And that's as far as I would go. Yeah, I think so too, or maybe even just seasons like spring, summer, winter and fall.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's also possible. I mean, I guess you could do your chart however you want to do it, but it is an interesting thing to kind of look at.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think it's something that we do as we get older. I don't know who I was listening to it might have been Archer on his podcast that just came out a few days ago, yeah, but somebody was talking about making notes of what they did At least that's the way I interpreted it. Yeah, and I think at my age there's so many memories and there's so many good things and bad things that have happened. So much goes into a blur and somehow I feel that as I get older and my memory is not as good and I can't pinpoint people's names and places and words as well as I used to. Writing it down is a relief. It sort of relieves a little bit of stress, maybe that's what it is.
Speaker 2:It's just to kind of clearing it out of the chaos of your mind and putting it where it belongs, so then you don't kind of have to let that rumble around inside of there anymore.
Speaker 1:Have you heard that analogy that as we get older and our memories, we think we're losing our memories or our memories are failing a little bit, that they're not failing at all, that our memory banks, just like a library, have gotten full and or a disk drive, sure, or disk drive. Are there even disks?
Speaker 2:Or hard drive, a cloud drive or something. The cloud drive yeah.
Speaker 1:A two terabyte storage is full and we have to let's we have to.
Speaker 2:Let's Loppy disk yeah.
Speaker 1:So what we have to do is we have to take some of the info in that drive and we have to move it somewhere else so that there's room for new memories and new things to be added I have, and I've heard an older one.
Speaker 2:A lot of people won't get this one, but you will. Are you saying that?
Speaker 3:I'm older.
Speaker 2:We're the same so.
Speaker 2:I am older, yeah, by a couple months. Yeah, uh, I heard this one. This is the the uh roll top desk with letter boxes theory. So when you roll up your roll top desk and there's all these letter boxes in there and I know you know what that looks like in your head you have to. All these little pockets are in there, and where you sit at your desk, in the center, you are more likely to use those letter boxes, those little pockets that are that you're directly facing where you sit, and they fill up and they fill up, and so then you have to start moving stuff out to the ones that are more to the edge, that confines of the desk, and so then you kind of have you have to dig around to find the stuff that's out there in those letter boxes. So it's the same theory, really.
Speaker 1:Back in the day we used to do something I don't know if you've done it recently, I think it's automatic now when your computer would start getting slow and it couldn't find things quickly, we would do a, a program called defrag, yeah, partition, and we would defragment all this extraneous information that was related, that was far apart, and we'd have the computer move it close together so they could find it faster. Do you think that making a list like you made is like defragging your mind? I think it is actually, it really is.
Speaker 1:Let's call it that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I like it. I like that defragging concept and and I put an interesting thing in the in the other day which, see, somebody else would not maybe think this was important, but somehow it came across my computer about when President Kennedy was assassinated. What year was that? 1960.
Speaker 1:And I thought yeah, yeah 3, 4, 5.
Speaker 2:Yeah, right In the 60s, we'll say for now, because I don't remember the exact date right now. But but and I thought, oh no, how old was I when that happened? Because I remember being at school. I remember all the kids being escorted to the lunch room. I remember the adults being very sad, worried, scared. We weren't exactly quite sure what they were feeling, but they were feeling something. Then I remember my grandmother, who I spent a lot of time with building this scrapbook, articles from the newspaper and with she. She would stand in front of the TV and take pictures of, like the funeral processional and stuff.
Speaker 1:Really, that was pretty forward thinking.
Speaker 2:And she would, and so I. So there's this scrapbook of that event that I have that she built on, you know, on paper of that for some reason, because that was that was must have been very impactful to her, it was important to her, and so so I put that in my timeline because I just wanted to see how old exactly was I when that event happened.
Speaker 1:Wouldn't your grandmother have loved a smartphone and wouldn't she have used that camera to its max? I bet so. I bet she would. Yep, I bet she would have too, yep. Well, I think you should write a book, uh-oh, and it should be a very short book. It's a little paperback, it's about a hundred pages, it's just, and it has illustrations which I will help with. It's called Defrag your Mind. Okay, a guide for improving your memory when you're over 60.
Speaker 2:Okay.
Speaker 1:Or something like that. What do you think?
Speaker 2:It's not a bad idea really.
Speaker 1:Yeah, a way of relieving your mind of the things you feel like you have to remember, so that you can choose to remember new memories that are pleasant and wonderful.
Speaker 2:Right, or you can just have the joy of not thinking, or insert the word worrying here about anything at this. You don't have to worry about when John F Kennedy was assassinated. It's on my chart now. I can let that go, but I would put that on my chart, would you?
Speaker 3:Oh yeah.
Speaker 1:And I'd put when I moved to Montreal to go to college and I'd put a bunch of major life things like that. But some of them may be specifically related to me doing something Right and some of it may be just the news Right the day that the first rocket ship launched astronauts into outer space.
Speaker 2:Oh right, Right, I mean I would like to have that date. Yeah, I would like to have that date yeah where it does fall.
Speaker 2:Yeah, when there's going to be some of the things that are harder, like I haven't put in yet. Like I remember working for the school district and when they said that we could get a cell phone for a discounted rate through the school district and all the teachers had to report to central high school and I remember standing in the long line of teachers at central high school to sign up for this cell phone and getting my first cell phone. See, that's going to be hard, it's kind of important, right, that's pretty cool. Yeah, to remember when that exactly happened, that you got that first connection, like that. You know that was completely mobile, that could just go anywhere with you. I don't remember when that was.
Speaker 1:I couldn't tell you the date now, but I could probably backtrack it. I could probably say it was after this or before this, or after this or before this. So your list really helps with that.
Speaker 2:Well, here's the cool thing about the chart Is the more stuff you put in there, then it frees up your mind to begin to remember better when some other things happen that you can also add to your chart Exactly.
Speaker 1:So how often does this happen to you? You think of something, you want to know when it happened or when it is. You pull out your phone and you Google the date or the specific information. Oh, all the time, I do it all the time and you want to remember that, but you forget it, yeah.
Speaker 2:So then you have to do it again, yeah.
Speaker 1:And that in itself is a very low level worry to me, right, I forgot when Kennedy was assassinated. I need to know this. It was an important event, right? If you write it down on that list. You can say oh, I know where that is, it's on my list.
Speaker 2:You don't even have to think about it. Yeah yeah, then you can just move on with your day instead of keep mulling that over. I think that's really interesting. It is kind of an interesting concept, huh.
Speaker 1:Well, it brings us to our next point, which is lately. We've been talking about aging. We've got some really good icons and role models, like Big Fatty, but he's sort of blazing the trail as far as anyone I know personally who's outspoken about his life and what you know.
Speaker 2:Getting older, how it affects it and doing it with our word that we're using now, and he's doing it with a particular kind of grace. There you go, that's the word. That's where we finally arrived at Yep.
Speaker 1:I think last year and during the pandemic, the word was kindness. Yes, and I don't think we forget kindness and I don't think it's trite. We hear it a lot. Now I don't think that's bad to hear the word kindness a lot. It's better than hearing a lot of other words a lot. But I think we need to move on to a new concept to focus on, and for me this year it's going to be grace Yep, I like it.
Speaker 2:I like that idea.
Speaker 1:Sort of a quiet acceptance and embracing of when we're personally at in life.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so I started thinking about that and I thought about the first time Faddy said he was so excited about getting social security. Yes, I remember that and I thought oh man, social security is coming up for me soon. I better figure out what I need to do. Had I not heard him say that, I might have not even thought of it. It might have just come and gone. But you know, there's a certain point when we age and tell me if you find this true there's a certain point in our lives when it seems like aging just hits the accelerator and takes off. Yes, it's like a 1974 Corvette four barrel, specific, specific. You've just stepped on the gas and it just whips your head back and you don't have any idea of where it's going or how fast. I mean sort of mid, what would you say? Mid 30s to late 50s, it's all the same.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah it kind of is really. I mean, it's not really. I mean a 25 year old thinks being 30 years old.
Speaker 2:Right. A 30 year old thinks 40 years old A little bit, but not as much.
Speaker 1:But physically, you know, we don't generally have health problems.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 1:You know that we haven't already encountered Sure and we can do anything we want. If we want to go out partying, we can. If we want to climb a mountain, we can. We have to train for it. If we want to run, we can and do all that kind of stuff. It all kind of blurs together.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, and you're kind of in your major amount of working years, that's true, so a lot of your time is just spent working.
Speaker 1:Right and putting money away and saving for retirement and going on vacations and trying to find someone, a partner perhaps, to be happy with and that kind of stuff. So it just it all kind of blurs together. In our late fifties something starts to change. I don't know what that is. You know, we've gone along, we've been gaining knowledge and experience. Physically we're healthy, we can do whatever we want. But then all of a sudden our bodies start to say they pull on the reins a little.
Speaker 2:There's a little resistance there.
Speaker 1:Do you agree with that?
Speaker 2:I do, I do. I would say did you say late fifties? I would say late fifties is when it sort of starts Okay, I might even back it up a couple years when you start to notice some of those things. Did you say mid fifties? Yeah, I would, maybe.
Speaker 1:Well, for me it was earlier fifties because I had a health problem that got revealed, but I think for most people it's probably. You know, I look at Sarge. Sarge is nine years younger than me and I think he's just maybe starting to realize that things are changing, that changes happen, yeah.
Speaker 2:And what do you do with that information at that point in time? Do you acknowledge it or do you not deny it?
Speaker 1:Well, that's a good question because I have a theory about this. I think, as we get closer to 60 and things speed up and then we pass 60 and they go even faster. I think it's kind of like puberty, if you remember back to when you were a kid and then in like five short years, you were an adult, right, yeah, yeah, right, mentally you still had some things to learn. I think the five years between 60 and 65 is a similar type of thing, but in a different way. Right, I think that's when injuries that we got when we were younger start to appear. I think that's when years and years of bad diet and bad habits start to be causing problems. Our bodies are saying no, I don't think so, and we think about, while we're still, some way to slow this down, and most people, I think, hit the gym, or maybe they do hormone replacement therapy or something like that. There's all sorts of different things, but I thought about it like when someone dies and I don't know how many stages of grief that you have for.
Speaker 2:okay, that's what it is.
Speaker 1:I'm going to call this the six stages of aging. Tell me if you relate to this and if anybody listening relates to this, let us know, because I think it's kind of universal, but maybe I'm being too focused on just-.
Speaker 2:Well, we can say it's the six stages of aging, as we see it.
Speaker 1:So the first stage would be 24 to 50, late 50s area, and I'm going to call that not feeling the aging process at all. This is where you might say it's all in your head. If you maintain a youthful outlook and stay positive, you will somehow avoid it from happening.
Speaker 2:Yeah, or you just work it out. I'm thinking about my lower back problems and how I would go to the chiropractor or hang upside down and do self-traction or things like that for my back.
Speaker 1:But there's a point when you're not really feeling it, don't you think?
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:If a 30-year-old says, hey, you want to go out and party tonight and you're 52, sure, let's go, right, let's go to the club, let's have a few drinks, let's go to after hours, whatever, it's fine. But you can't sustain that because things are physically changing Right. So then you get to step two, and this is a big one, and I think a lot of people will associate with this one Denial, right, denial that you're getting older. This is where you start to notice your aging, but you try to ignore it or hide it. Maybe you're seeing some more wrinkles on your face.
Speaker 1:Maybe your belly's getting a little bigger and your boobs are getting a little softer and you're thinking you know, I probably need to Pick up a workout routine. Yeah, I probably need to start going to the gym.
Speaker 2:Maybe I shouldn't have that Coca-Cola and those potato chips, right?
Speaker 1:Maybe, maybe. But you realize, if I going out to the gym, getting a trainer changing your diet, you look young again. You're gonna get a nice muscular chest and arms, you can have a flat stomach, you can look really great, all right. And so maybe you get a younger looking car. Maybe you have Botox or liposuction or laser treatments on your skin to get rid of dark spots or scars. Hair color, hair color, youthful clothes yes, oh. Hair replacement, okay, yeah. Some people are tired of hiding the aging a little bit and they want to feel more natural about it. So they spend a butt ton of money and they find somebody who will remove hair follicles what? From the back of your neck, uh-huh. Put them in the front of your head, right? Who's that comedian that we like so much? That's everywhere online. He said total sensation is a gay comedian, mateo yeah, mateo Lane, mateo Lane.
Speaker 1:Yeah, he has. He apparently is getting hair plugs.
Speaker 2:Is that real? That's for real.
Speaker 1:That's what he said in one of his. Carly routines right, he's getting hair replacement. Oh, how about this? Hanging out in a new bar or a club where there's younger people, younger people. Do you go to the old bar where the old guys are hanging around Laughing and talking about the old days, or do you go hang around young people thinking that if you do that You'll keep a youthful attitude?
Speaker 2:I think you hang around with the youthful people to keep that attitude, because you're kind of denying, you're like I'm just like them, right. If you go where the older people are, that might happen too. But then the denial is, some of them make you feel so much younger, right? So you kind of feel good about that too. Yeah.
Speaker 1:You know, maybe your own scruff or one of the social medias, and you're in the 25 to early 50s range and you're lying a little bit about your age. You're still in denial and everyone believes it. Right, because you can pull it off. That's it. That's the word. Pull it off, you can pull it off, you're still a good. Then you realize you're starting to remove or trim unwanted body hair, maybe on your back, maybe in your ears, maybe in your nose, maybe it's your chest or pubes Well, the porn stars have short pubic hair. I guess I should try that. And so you start sculpting a little bit and this is all part of denial Dieting, napping before going out, because you know you can't work a full day and go out till two. Right Now you've got to work a full day, nap for an hour or two before you go out just to make sure you're going to make it with the young guys. Oh, this is a good one, spending hours and hours using filters and taking the perfect, younger looking pic for grinder or smile.
Speaker 1:That might be for those, the adult sites. I think that's it. I think that's the one. How many people have spent a day, an entire Saturday, taking picture after picture, altering the smile, the outfit, the lighting, the mirror, the room?
Speaker 2:getting the perfect angle, the perfect lighting.
Speaker 1:So it's you. You're not lying, but you're looking the best you can. So that's sort of the denial phase. We do acknowledge somewhere we're suppressing it that we are getting older, but we're in denial that we can still look younger. It's still a matter of just upkeep, working pretty hard on it yeah. Third phase of aging is the beginning of acceptance. Now, how does that happen?
Speaker 2:Well, that's when you kind of it can sometimes be a little bit self deprecating, or you know, I'll be, I'll look much younger tomorrow because I'm going to do my tent tonight, right.
Speaker 1:So you pointed out to somebody who wants to make fun? Of it you pointed out. Give me an example of talking about your experience or knowledge and how that helps you begin to accept your aging.
Speaker 2:You have to handle that carefully because, say for me, like teaching school, there's constantly this fluctuation of teachers retiring and new people coming in and you know through all the years that you work and then there's going to become a point where you become closer to the top end of that and then you can start telling people that are younger than you and then haven't been there as long as you Well, I've been working for this school district for 30 years Like you're wearing it sort of like a badge of honor, but at the same time they're probably unimpressed, non-plussed, and you might not even be getting an eye roll from them that you're not even seeing, that they're doing that because you're, you know telling them that.
Speaker 1:Maybe you're, maybe you're giving them advice that they haven't asked for. They don't want it. Then we're starting to accept that yeah, we do have something and what we have is knowledge and experience and we're trying to share that to feel better about ourselves.
Speaker 2:Just that's the beginning of it. When you think that you need to share it, you're older, so I should share this. It can be so helpful.
Speaker 1:Yeah, by sharing this. The other thing that you're sharing it with is probably smiling and saying yes, thank you, and in the back rolling their eyes going, oh god, just shut up.
Speaker 2:Forgetting the fact that when I was that age and older people tried to tell me that that I was not really very impressed. I had to find out for myself. We all have to find out for ourselves.
Speaker 1:Have you ever started looking for older people to hang out with or to emulate?
Speaker 2:I think you do come to a point where that becomes an important thing you don't avoid when you're younger.
Speaker 1:Yeah. I'd older people right because you don't want the old trolls hanging around, you don't want them coming on to you that you think they're all after yeah.
Speaker 1:I mean, now there's obviously a group of people that like older daddies and that type of stuff. That's the difference. That's just in general. But to change your outlook and to say well, instead of hanging around younger guys trying to be younger, I'm gonna have a few older friends. Maybe they can give me some ideas on how to do better, how to feel better about myself, how to have a good social relationship, that kind of thing.
Speaker 2:Do you begin to realize that now you're in the position where those people that when you were younger you didn't want to listen to, now you're saying, gee, maybe they do make a point here, or maybe they do know something that I don't know, so maybe I should start to listen a little more carefully?
Speaker 1:Maybe not asking them for advice, but just sort of watching how they handle things and what they do. Maybe they lose a partner, maybe they retire and they can't afford their home anymore and they have to move, or whatever it is, and you start looking at how they're handling the real problems of getting older. When you were in your 20s, 30s, 40s, where did you buy your clothes?
Speaker 2:Various fashionable places to do so. So whatever that point in time was, wherever it was to shop to get the things that were cool, I think I kind of had a tendency to do that, so yeah, Tell me this have you ever bought any clothes at Costco or Sam's Club?
Speaker 1:Well, yes, now Would you say that's an acceptance, but 10 years ago.
Speaker 2:No way I wouldn't be caught dead buying an article of clothing from Costco or Sam's Club Me neither. That's part of the thing too right is the deal is part of the pleasure as well. Well, there comes a point to where you begin to accept that you can't. Yeah, you put on some fashionable article of clothing and you look at yourself and you go no, this doesn't look appropriate on me. I can't wear this.
Speaker 1:The last thing I'm going to mention is food. At the beginning of acceptance, you started to realize that it wasn't a bad night. You can't eat garlic anymore, that particular spice. What's your food?
Speaker 2:I don't think I have a particular food, but I have. I remember I used to like. This is kind of an odd thing. We were talking about pizza earlier today. How much we love pizza. Almost doesn't everybody. Everybody likes pizza. Almost everybody likes pizza. I think it's America's favorite food Might be, and we all used to tease about it having all the food groups.
Speaker 1:Vegetable dairy carbs Right.
Speaker 2:I used to like to have Papa John's pizza. All right, is that the taken bake? No, that's Papa Murphy's is taken bake.
Speaker 2:That's the one we liked. Okay, I didn't realize it at first I would have these bouts of such severe heartburn just really, really bad. And I finally figured out it was that I can't eat Papa John's. There's something there, and finally kind of narrowed it down to something they may put in their tomato sauce. There's some spice, try garlic, or something that they put in there that my body cannot handle that anymore. So no more Papa John's pizza for me.
Speaker 1:I used to hear my parents say things like that and just make so much fun of them Saying oh, it's all in your head.
Speaker 2:Right, it's just food.
Speaker 1:But there is a point of acceptance where you start realizing that, yeah, I'll just avoid it. Well, now we're getting to the important part Acceptance, yes. What do you see as the phases of?
Speaker 2:acceptance. It might be the biggest transition between all those phases because we might fight it a little bit, but then, once you don't anymore, then it's real easy to let some things slide. For instance, we were all going out, we were going on a couple's date. The four of us were going to go out last weekend, remember, yeah, and one of our plans at home was we were going to tint our hair and our beard. And then throughout the week before the weekend came, we said, well, wait, it's real cold and it's very likely we're going to have a hat on or be bundled up or whatever. So then we decided that we said, well, maybe it's OK, let's not tint. Why would we bother doing all that? You just accept the way you are, it's fine the way it is, and why would we bother doing all that? We'll be bundled up because of the cold weather anyway. And then, of course, ultimately it was so cold that night we elected to not go out.
Speaker 1:Do you know anybody that's been combing their hair over a thinner spot on their head and they finally get to the point where they just do a short crop haircut and accept that?
Speaker 2:Well, because of my former line of work. Yeah, lots of people I do know.
Speaker 1:I don't know what it is, but when you look in the mirror you think that if you're combing that long hair over that bald spot, your bald spot's gone, not true? Nope, don't mind as well, just show it. So what about reliving moments that brought joy? Ok, maybe it's favorite foods, maybe it's things you did that are somehow related to being younger.
Speaker 2:Well, we begin to do a lot of that, don't you think? I feel like even the timeline we were talking about earlier fits into that.
Speaker 1:Oh, totally, I didn't think of that. I need to add that to my list.
Speaker 2:Moments of joy is something you want to put on your timeline. That should be important to you and that's part of accepting.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I can't remember it quickly anymore so I'm going to write it down. So I know I wear it to find it.
Speaker 2:Or I don't get to do this again, or I probably won't elect to do this again, but it sure was a great thing I did and I'm so happy to have that memory and so glad that I did it.
Speaker 1:This year was the 50th anniversary of a very important record 2024 is. No 2023. Oh 2023. It was the 50th anniversary of a crucial, groundbreaking record. That still is, I think, probably big on the charts. They turned it into a visual presentation, multimedia presentation, oh OK.
Speaker 2:Well, you're probably talking about Pink Floyd.
Speaker 1:Dark Side of the Moon.
Speaker 2:Yes, OK.
Speaker 1:They released the 50th anniversary. That came out in 1973. And I cannot believe it's been 50 years. I think that's part of how we accept things. We go back and we find things that we're sort of proud of Telling stories, sharing photos, music. You were sharing your Christmas records and memories with Sarge and I when we were over at your house. I think that's something that's part of acceptance.
Speaker 2:Well, I can go back to Lady Gaga concert too. I'm so glad that I did that back when I did it a few years ago and I had my niece here to take her poor old uncle to do that and experience that, and I now probably won't do that again. I don't know that I would want to manage that crowd of people and I'm so glad I did it and I'm fine that I won't be doing that again, right.
Speaker 1:Well, when you think about acceptance and records and music and photos and telling stories, that's kind of like enormous. Yeah, it's kind of like this podcast, it's kind of like what we do Right, it is what we do. In fact, in the last four years, have we sort of had a listenable diary of the aging process for us? Yep, I think that we totally have.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we've changed a lot MUSIC. So the fifth phase is embracing getting old, and this is when you no longer you've already accepted it and now you're looking at it kind of as a plus. Yeah, yeah, I think so, focusing on the advantages and not accepting stereotypes.
Speaker 2:I'm not that old person. No, just doing it however it is and being OK with that.
Speaker 1:Saying, wearing, doing things that you like, not caring what other people think or what other people's reactions will be Right.
Speaker 2:And it doesn't have to be the popular thing. You don't have to do things that are in with the end crowd. You just do what you want to do.
Speaker 1:You know you were talking about that list, you were organizing.
Speaker 3:I put it embracing getting old.
Speaker 2:OK.
Speaker 1:Finding ways to hold on to memories. Yeah, that's good. See, it still goes there too. Photos, writing and organizing.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:I'd say that's embracing it. Yep, we love remembering that, we love the thoughts of it. We know that we're old, it's fine.
Speaker 2:So the timeline chart helps you do that. Last winter was the winter. I went through all my photos paper photographs Right and reorganize them and put them in boxes by date and time. I think you went through a bunch of your photos too last year. Yep, Sure did Yep. So that's part of it.
Speaker 1:We're already sliding into stage five, which I call grace, and this is where we don't feel any need to teach or share about a well-lived life. You know, if someone asks us a question, we'll answer it. Or if we want to tell a story, we'll tell it because we enjoy it. It's a way of reliving that memory.
Speaker 2:You might give a lesson, but you're going to tell it as an antidote instead, and people can take it as a lesson, or they can take it just as a story, but you're not giving advice, but you're not trying to push it on to anybody. But if somebody says to me oh my gosh, you've been picture framing for 30 years, tell me about this thing, then you're happy to share the knowledge that they're asking for.
Speaker 1:You're also OK with younger people discovering things at their own pace, in their own way, and you can quietly say to yourself you know, we did that 50 years ago.
Speaker 2:So oh boy.
Speaker 1:Here they go again.
Speaker 2:Now we get to do the eye roll. We can just roll our eyes and go, oh boy, well, there's nothing I can tell them that's going to change their mind. They're going to have to do that thing and learn for themselves.
Speaker 1:They think this is brand new, this is exciting and different.
Speaker 2:All I can be is be the supportive older friend. Be there to pick them up when they fall down.
Speaker 1:And then the last phase is what I call moving on, number six. Number six, you know what I think? The last one kind of gets everything together Okay. And the last one is we accept that life is too short and it's going to end. Yep, no matter how much we think or pray, or read, or exercise or dye our hair, life is going to come to an end and I think that we want to find a way, if we haven't already, of leaving a mark in the world after we're gone. I want to write a book. You know you might want to become an artist or build a structure or something that's going to outlast you.
Speaker 2:Well, I always try to be, as you know, the good quintessential uncle, because I feel like then my nieces and nephews will live on through them, because they'll remember things about me, or that they learned from me, or that they asked me about.
Speaker 1:But this is a new way of thinking for us, right, and it's not a sad way of thinking.
Speaker 2:No, it's not sad, I'm not going to say, well, I'm going to stop collecting the mermen because I'm too old now, and what's going to happen someday? Anyway, with all these, if it still brings me joy to do that and I want to do it I can still do it.
Speaker 1:You're still going to do things within your reach that bring you joy, right, but you're also going to accept the fact that it's not going to be there forever. You're going to start putting your ducks in a row. I have to really thank Big Fatty for sharing his experience of being the executor of Olive's will.
Speaker 2:Yeah, definitely.
Speaker 1:Because what it's taught me is all of the things that I really should take care of before.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 1:If there's a time to empty out the basement or the attic and get rid of stuff I can't use or give it to people who can use it, yep, yeah, do it now. Start thinking about it, start getting organized and putting things in a row so the next person doesn't have to deal with all of that hard work.
Speaker 2:I know for me I bet you did too have that older family member, or maybe a friend, probably a family member that if they knew that you liked something or you said you liked it, they gave it to you. Right, sergeant, and I do that now.
Speaker 1:Yeah, but we all have too much stuff. Oh, of course. What's going to happen to Oradon? Yep, oradon is just going to disappear, yep.
Speaker 2:So if it gives you, then if you can have joy by giving it to someone and see their joy that's joyful for you, then give it away. I often wonder these days if that's why I've come to like mid-century modern so much. I'm beginning to aspire to that clean line, simple, minimalistic look that is synonymous with that mid-century modern look.
Speaker 1:I'm in a profession that I deal with people's style, yes, and I have to say that I hear more people now more customers that have been with me for 20 or 30 years saying we've just sold our house and we moved into a high rise in downtown and it's smaller and it's clean and we're going with more of a contemporary feel now.
Speaker 2:Now isn't it funny? Because wasn't there a point in time when somebody said that to you and you think how could they sell their house and all their stuff and all their worldly possessions? I can't imagine doing that. I would never do that, but now I completely understand it.
Speaker 1:Between the ages of 50 and 70, there's this huge move to simplify, reduce and part of that is getting rid of all the traditional furniture, few surfaces to clean, easy maintenance, because really life is about living.
Speaker 2:You don't want to stay home dusting knickknacks every day. Oh no.
Speaker 1:So if anybody wants any knickknacks, let me know what kind of area you're looking in and I will send you something from my attic or basement.
Speaker 2:What's the matter? You want to go out, yep, when we're live.
Speaker 1:I find that the most creative time of the day for me, oh.
Speaker 2:God, that's right. Leave it in, it's real.
Speaker 1:I feel that the most creative time for me in the day is first thing in the morning. If I have my iPad or my laptop, I can sit down and write a few things. I was just thinking about aging and how it related to the stages of grief. The reality is it's going to happen to all of us, whether we like it or not. We're all going to stutter a little bit, we're all going to have memory issues and we're all going to forget names of people or names of objects. We'll just accept it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I think everyone's going to go through their own stages of their own process at a different rate of speed and maybe in a slightly different order even you never exactly know but everyone will experience some of these same things that we've talked about.
Speaker 1:When we write these points down for our life, I think one of the things to remember and appreciate is to focus more on the good memories from the past and just let the bad ones go. If you're forgetting things, forget the bad memories.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's what to forget if you want to forget stuff.
Speaker 1:And don't feel melancholy when you're reliving or enjoying a story about a past experience that was so wonderful. Don't say that well, that will never happen again. Just enjoy the memory and say to yourself I am so grateful that I had the opportunity to do that. I got to do that. I agree, it's one of the things that really make your life full and content. It's part of that. Good grace, then, and your health that you have now. No matter what your health is, it always could be worse.
Speaker 2:It's really just happened to us. The day before yesterday we were driving down the street and we saw this man really, really hunched over and really limbs, just turned in and bent and pushing one of those wire shopping cart things with the wheels on it. It was pretty much holding him up and we said that. We're like okay, well, I feel so sad for him, but I feel better for myself already, because it could be worse it could be worse.
Speaker 1:And give some people a hand, if you can. Be, the person to reach out and say can I help you with that?
Speaker 2:We talked about that and we see if he wants help. And then we were kind of watching him and determined that no, that he probably would not accept the help. He was definitely wanting to do his own thing.
Speaker 1:I have to tell you two funny stories. I was leaving the store one night and the boyfriend of one of my employees saw me going to my car, jumped out of his car, came over to me, opened the door, kept, held the door open to the store, then went over and opened my car door for me.
Speaker 2:Oh my Lord, did he call you sir as well?
Speaker 1:Well, he probably was thinking that, but I just thought how kind of him to do that. And then the other thing is we have a neighbor that shovels our snow for us and they always shovel in front of our garage door and they always shovel the front walk where pedestrians go. It's that nice, I think that's part of the things that you can happen when you get older and you're kind of people.
Speaker 2:It's true I had that like three or four nights ago, the coldest night whenever it was that it was just so just hatefully cold, ding dong, the doorbell rings, which is always. It's dark already and it's always the start. I'm just not used to my doorbell ringing very often at all anyway, and then plus for it to be dark and in the night and so bitterly cold that no one should even be out there. I was surprised, so I went and it was the young neighbor lady from the couple across the street that had two little girls, two small girls, and she said I'm going to do my first neighborly ask. The girls want to make chocolate chip cookies and can I have two eggs?
Speaker 1:Oh no.
Speaker 2:I said, of course, anything else. Is there anything else that you need? Because, again, I'm this older guy and they're the younger couple and two little kids. I want to make sure they got something to eat or whatever, and they can't. There was snow and cold and they can't go to the store or whatever. That's cute, yeah. And I said, what else? Is there something else you need? No, no, that's all we need. We've got everything else. But they want to make cookies and she said we'll bring you a cookie. I said it's cold and you absolutely don't need to do that. I'm happy to know that you're home with the girls making cookies. So then, probably an hour later and now it's even later at night, ding, dong, the bell rings again. I mean, and it is just what you remember, like nine below zero or whatever.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it was cold.
Speaker 2:I mean, it's freezing cold out there. And here she was with two cookies, one for each of us, and with a note, a note, kind of scribbly note, from each of the little girls, you know, saying thank you, and then the sign love you by the two little girls.
Speaker 1:So that was so cute. I don't think I would have ever understood that as a younger person, but boy at my age. Now, when those things happen, it just makes me smile inside all the way to the inside. It's just amazing.
Speaker 2:Yeah, got to kick out of it. Yep, which is what old people say. We got to kick out of it, exactly.
Speaker 1:We got to, I think, this episode was going to end up this way. It's sort of just flawed, I think. Yeah, I think so too. Well, before we go, we need to do a few shout outs, okay, and the first shout out is to wish DJ Ron a speedy and full recovery, absolutely. Absolutely.
Speaker 1:I don't think it's private information, since it's already been mentioned. You know, on the air set out there, yeah, and we hope that he is recovering well and that he has all the help he needs and that things are progressively getting better. Yep, we're thinking of you. The second one is we got a voice letter from Baron Frost.
Speaker 3:Hey guys, it's super fan Baron Frosty calling. I wanted to call and thank you for the show. It's always enjoyable. But I specifically was nudged to call because I wanted to urge you to please watch the Hunger with David Bowie and Catherine Deneuve. I'm kind of shocked. You guys have never seen it. It's a huge kind of like pillar of gay culture and Catherine Deneuve is just ethereally beautiful in it. David Bowie is in his prime. It's got a lot of fun 80s music. It's really just one of those films that you must see and I want to task you with having a homework night and seeing the Hunger soon and please report back on the podcast. Thanks, Bye-bye.
Speaker 2:Thanks for the voice letter, and so far we haven't watched it. No, we are going to. We want to watch it, but being that we're, you know, of a certain maturity, we're stingy about paying money to watch things. When we're already paying for streaming services, we think that it should be free. I'm using free in quotes because we pay for streaming services. We can't find it anywhere on a streaming service that doesn't make us pay extra for it, but we will keep watching for it. Oh yeah, or, baron, if you know of a place that we can see it for free, send us a link. Or if you just want to call us, or you can run down the whole synopsis and just speak the whole movie to us, we'll accept that as well. That's true.
Speaker 1:Oh, casey, cover your ears a minute. Okay, are they covered? They're covered, okay, baron. The reality is that Casey is just really cheap and that I am actually going to tell him I found it for free and just pay for it. It's like $1.99. It's not going to kill us, so we will watch it and we will report back on one of our future episodes after we see it.
Speaker 2:What, what are you saying?
Speaker 1:Yeah, what are you saying? We haven't heard from Kathy Bacon again. Yeah, but we've got our fingers crossed that things are moving forward for whatever is going on in her life in a positive way. All good things, yeah. And then the last thing I wanted to mention was Archer. Okay, archer was off the air for a while. Uh-huh, I wasn't sure if he was okay, if he'd pod-fated, if he'd been hurt. He finally did do an episode and he told a very intimate story and it was a painful story, and so I wanted him to know, and all of you listening, that I think he's a brave person for doing that and that we all make mistakes, we all put our foot in our mouth and bad things happen sometimes because of it, and we move on. And the fact that he would share his humanity and his realness with the rest of the world, I think is a brave thing to do.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think that's a great thing to do, bravo. Good on you, archer. That's right. And if you ever play that Nora O'Donnell music without saying I apologize to Harley, don't do it, I will never speak to you again. And that's pretty much it, I think for this episode. We didn't do a soundtrack of our life this episode.
Speaker 2:We're going to hold off on that until the next episode. Yeah, we'll do a killer one on the next one. I have a good one, but I'm dying to do it, but I'm waiting. You've got a ton of good ones. I have a lot. I always have. You probably send me six music videos a day, or In actuality, that's probably the thing that I really need to categorize and organize in my life so I can get it out of my head, because there's music constantly bouncing around up there.
Speaker 1:Wouldn't that be an interesting chronology?
Speaker 2:Yeah, my next song is a really pertinent to my life story about one of those after hours parties that we were just speaking of. I'm glad I got to do it and my song is. And I'm glad I got to do this after hours party, which I would never do again, but the song brings back special memories, yeah.
Speaker 1:It's amazing how that happens, isn't it? We do a segment called the Soundtrack of Our Life. We basically talk about a song that has good memories or brings back a particular story, and I'm going to give you a challenge I want you to write down as many albums that you can think of over the next few months, the rest of the year in your timeline, as it gets fuller and fuller and you keep filling it out, and I want to see if, by looking at the names of the albums and the artists, if we can tell something about your life without knowing who you are.
Speaker 1:Oh okay, that's interesting If it truly is the.
Speaker 2:Soundtrack of your Life. I was thinking in April that you should go with me to the Rocky Mountain Record Show. Oh, totally, would you like to go to that?
Speaker 1:Yeah, I would love to. Well, Sarge did something recently and I know this is another tangent, but I think I can be quick.
Speaker 2:Okay.
Speaker 1:We have an old Bose Home Theater system. Remember when they had those and you put the speakers on your TV.
Speaker 1:Surround sound, surround sound kind of thing, and it has a CD player in it. We have it hooked up with a Wi-Fi thing and he plays music from his phone off. Oh, okay, well, he decided that he has the CD collection of like over 2,000 CDs and he wanted to start playing his CDs. So now, from time to time, he will pick a CD or two or three that he wants to listen to and he will play it, and that CD will come to an end and that's the end of that particular feeling or genre or story and he'll move on to another one. I like it. So I think the next step is to get a little bit of vinyl back into our lives.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's fun, it's a fun thing to do. Or what if some crazy apocalypse happens and there is no digital out there floating around in the air? You still have your vinyl and your CDs.
Speaker 1:So thank you all for listening. Remember you can always get ahold of us on our website, which is EnormousPodcastcom, and we won't fill you in with all the other things, because all the other things are on the website.
Speaker 2:It's there, find it. We love the interaction, we love the contact, so we'd love to hear from you.
Speaker 1:If you can send us one word, we would love it. Yeah, word, send us a word, word. So be careful, because you're going to be judged by it. Okay, well, until next time, yep.
Speaker 2:Be kind and show grace. I had an aunt. Grace you did. Yeah, an aunt or an aunt? Well, I called her an aunt.
Speaker 1:Okay, but who says aunt and who says aunt? Different people, okay. So I had an aunt, grace. She was a great aunt.
Speaker 2:I had a very good friend, grace.
Speaker 1:Look up the word grace. It's a really big word with a lot of very important things attached to it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, do that, do grace, do grace.
Speaker 1:Say grace.
Speaker 2:Look it up, bye, bye, until next time. Remember to be kind and, like us, keep it Enormous.
Speaker 3:Just Enormous. This show is part of the Pride 48 Network.
Speaker 2:Find all the best shows under the rainbow at pride48.com.
Speaker 3:Are you finished?
Speaker 1:Not yet Keep inserting and it just keeps getting bigger and bigger and bigger.
Speaker 3:Now I'm finished.
