Can You Take a Sword to the Park?

0:00This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed Human. Can you take a sword to the park? It's one more thing. I'm strong and getty. One more thing. Before I get to that. I came across this. Am I doing a sword yoga in this scenario? We learned about that the other day. You're chopping apart melons. Oh! You've ever seen anybody in your third world island nation chopping a coconut with a sword? Or I guess it's a big machete thing. It's really really quite amazing. The key? You got to be decisive. It's like a good phlebotomist. What was your man? What was his name? Pong. Best phlebotomist ever. He learned it from a guy who had been a medic in Iraq. It's all about just doing it. I just got to go. There's a saying in golf. It's much better making a committed swing

1:01of the wrong club than a... I'm not sure swing with the right club. Pong taught us that. And your coconut splitters of the third world agree. Be confident, folks. This is your moment of information. My son wants to meet a buddy at the park with his civil war sword. And cut apart melons. Now it doesn't actually have an edge. You could ride the town on it, as my dad would say. I love that expression. It's dull. This knife is so dull you could ride the town on it. I love that. It still looks like a sword. Yeah. Am I going to have a problem? Are parents going to call the police? Especially in your communist enclave, 100% yes. Yeah. It's a weapon. Well, it's arguably a weapon. But so's a bat. And there's kids playing baseball. Exactly. Yeah.

2:01I didn't say it was a good idea. Or justified. Yeah, I got to admit, if I saw a teenager with a sword, I would be so much concerned. I'm not sure I would call, but I would think about it. I wouldn't call the police, but I wouldn't want my kids over with the kid with the sword. In a world of school shooters, I mean, it's not like there are a lot of school swordsmen. Yeah. That seems like probably begging for trouble. Yeah. He's really excited about this. I might see if I can convince him to do it in our backyard. Oh, there you go. Sweeten the deal a little bit. What goes well with melons? I just don't need to deal with the talk under the police. Oh, my God, it could be a huge pain. Feel that thing. Right. Then I'd have to use my yo, won't stole a weapon. What's so that bad over there? Nothing could be in coughs.

3:01You get me the old woodchimp who really, you don't, oh, please. Well, make sure somebody's videotaping it with their phone. Be good for ratings. Maybe we'll go viral. Nothing goes with melons, because melons don't need anything. They're a food. They're a beverage. They're a family being me and my two boys. That anytime I almost do anything bad, it's like we go to our announcer voice. Oh. Known Trump supporter, you know, runs over kid on bicycle or whatever. This one would be known Trump supporter and right wing radio lunatic since he's sunk his park with sword. It's not a good idea. No, no. So I guess I'll have to talk about that. Okay, thank you. Yesterday with the grocery store. It's speaking of bats that David French article I shared during our four of the show. He made a reference fairly casual reference to how sports has changed

4:01and now everybody pays for an enormous amounts of swag and travel teams and blah, blah, blah. He mentioned, I don't know how old he is. He must be a little younger than us. He mentioned, you know, back in the day after your own shoes and glove and bat and blah, blah, blah. And I was like, uh, uh, hang on there. That whole, you've got to have your own bat thing. No way. That happened like, after I stopped playing ball as like a young adult. If anybody announced, no, I have to have my own bat. We don't laugh them out of the dugout. No kidding. We've got every size, every length and weight you need. That one's got a little thinner. Or close enough. Or a close choke up half an inch. Yeah, the idea that, oh, I must have my own bat. Again, we'd hooded it. But everything's gotten more fancy and professionalized. Plushed by people who are profiting from it. How do you not catch onto this? End moms.

5:01End moms who like the outfits. They like fancy. Oh, and dads who think that their kids gonna get a scholarship and be a sports hero that will reflect well on them and the rest of it. One of the weirdest twists in my life is I was obsessed with sports for a lot of it. And I assumed my kids would be really into sports. And they weren't. They were just casual, wreck league type people. And I am so relieved. I was initially disappointed. I am so relieved. That's funny. I have that similar in that. I've been perfectly fine if they were like super into a sport. And there's all the advantages of, you know, being busy doing something that's not bad for you. If nothing else. Sure. But watching other people's lives be dominated by their kids. Baseball swimming, soccer, whatever. It doesn't break my heart. That we're not doing that. And I know we've shared some really wise stuff about having the kids' activity be the king of the family. It's really not healthy.

6:01I know. I'm not criticizing y'all. I know it's kind of part of the modern world and you just get swept along in it. It's worth really, really loves it. Or is really, really good at it. But yeah, I know several people who they just disappear from life for three, four months of the year. If not longer. Because of whatever season. Yeah. Which was just unheard of. I mean, if nothing else, you got to admit. That didn't exist until fairly recently. Mm-hmm. Just driven by something. Yeah, driven by something. One more thing. I'll just finish on this on the sword. I thought this was kind of funny. So we got the sword at a wall drug in South Dakota, which is a very famous tourist trap. Really, really cool place. Anyway, it's an authentic, very authentic civil war sword that was kind of expensive. And you really, really wanted it. It had to be like part of his birthday present, everything like that, because it was kind of expensive. Because we had just visited where customers last stand. And we just did that whole tour and everything like that.

7:01And so it's a really, really cool heavy-duty sword. But it doesn't have an edge on it. So he wanted to try it out on cutting a watermelon open. And so we waited until we got to my parents' house. His grandparents' house and my brothers were there. And we were all wondering, is this going to, like, what could go wrong here? Is this going to work? Is it going to, like, hit and, like, break his wrists with, like, the swinging really hard? And, like, if you hit a tree with a bat. Sure. Or is it going to bounce straight up and hit it in the face? Just trying to figure out what horrible things could go wrong here. Or will it cut the melon? We have described my entire childhood right there. Which is why I have so many scars. Well, yeah. We used to all just try this stuff on our own without asking our parents if it was okay. And we're better for it. But anyway, and parents didn't used to worry about it. Like I was worried about it. But we were all going through on my younger, very cautious, was just certain it was going to be a disaster. If so, I'm sorry.

8:02But anyway, we all went to the park. So it's me, my brother, grandma and grandpa. Henry and his brothers say, I'm in the sword in the big water valley. And we got it on video and everything like that. Nobody knew what was going to happen. And he brings it up over there. And sliced it perfectly and chewed. Like it was a sharp knife. Which is just amazing. I mean, just a perfect cut. Awesome. Or swords or something. Or watermelons. Or melon in general. Well, presumably then it could do some fairly serious damage to flesh as well. Oh, to a head. Yeah. Yeah. I think it would probably do the same thing to a head. And I think about my mom, God rest her soul. The number of times I came home bloody. What happened? I'm trying to, you know, wash it off to figure out whether, you know, I needed to be administered to by professionals or that's always the key. There's blood. How bad is it? It could be quite minor and bloody. Or it could be very, very bad.

9:03As every parent's know, every parent knows, there are some parts of the body that are more than generous if they start to bleed. There's some a great deal less so. Yeah. So that's your lesson. Even with a very, very dull sword. If you find yourself in a situation where you'd really like some watermelons. Don't waste your money with the local sword sharpener. Your civil war sword will do just fine. Exactly. Look, we've all lost something. So if you get fruit salad at Jack's house, just know that his son sliced that up. Coming up on tomorrow's podcast, killing flies with muskets. Stay with us. Well, I guess that's it.