Yesterday on the Minnesota Goodbye by the way, welcome, thanks for being here.
Somebody wrote in about graduation gifts and they said, well, what do
you spend? What do you get? Do you spend more when it's your
kids graduation year? Also on his friends and we kind of said, hey,
you know, I think getting anything is fair. Nobody is ever that.
I remember when Carson graduated five years ago. We never said, oh
my god, the Thompson's only sent like a ten dollars Chipotle. We never
did. It was like he was happy to get get anything. But I
would say twenty five dollars gift card is good. Here is a listener,
big supporter of the show, but seldom writes in. Her name is Patty.
Patty says, I want to comment about graduation gifts. I'm very involved
with the youth at our church, so I get invited to a lot of
grad parties or get announcements from kids who used to go to my Sunday school
class. For graduates who are not family or children of close friends, I
write a check in the amount of the graduation year. For example, this
year it'll be twenty twenty four. I got the idea from other people who
also do this. It's a fun way to acknowledge the graduate without breaking the
bank. For my nieces and nephews, I usually send fifty bucks. I
like that because twenty twenty four is a good amount and it's cash. For
the record, I always get a nice thank you note from each kid,
Yes, a handwritten one in the mail. Thank you, Patty. I
like that a lot. Stephanie writes in because somebody was talking about I'm a
stay at home mom and what do I do any tips for now being the
CEO of my house, She says to the new stay at home mom,
look up your local ECFC. That's early Childhood and Family education classes in your
area. These classes allow not only time out of the house with your kid,
but structure and socializing to your life. Also, swimming lessons are great
too. I think that's so important. Of a friend of mine when I
grew up, Monty lived down the lane from me in Black Forest, and
he died because he never learned to swim. He was probably eighteen or nineteen,
maybe twenty, never learned to swim. He was dicking around one day
on a pond with like a homemade raft. So they like, you know,
tied a bunch of logs together and my friend Monty fell off the raft
and drowned. Had he learned to swim, he could have swimmed the ten
feet to the shore, but he died. And it's so sad because we
would be the same age now and he never got to get married, have
kids, get a career, finish college, you know, go on.
He never got to do all that stuff had he learned to swim. And
you never know, you never know when your kid might need to learn to
swim. Yeah, you know, he could be on a canoe on Lake
Minnetaka and get capsized and you know, wear a life jacket. But learned
to swim. How to swim, of course I do. But we grew
up with a pool, so it was like a necessity that we knew how
to swim. And my sister and I were a little fit. Me and
my sisters were all little fishes growing up. We love swimming. We had
a pool in our backyard when I was a kid, and Monty did come
there a couple of times, but it was it was only four feet so
you could kind of wait in it. But our pool was disgusting. My
dad bought us a pool twenty four feet across, four feet deep, a
big round pool. But he would not get a heater for it, and
he would not get a filter for it. Oh, and it was disgusting,
slimy. We'd have to scrape all the pine needles off before we got
in. One time there was a dead squirrel floating in the pool. I'm
astay when you didn't put any chemicals in it either, and we did put
at least, But my dad grew up in the middle of nowhere, Montana,
where they had a reservoir, and he's like, our reservoir didn't have
a heater. Our reservoir didn't have a filter, And I'm like, yeah,
but there's a difference between a reservoir that's like an outdoor body of water
and a stagnant pool. So we had a pool. We used it,
but not as much as Dad wanted us to. So he finally sold it.
And I think it kind of broke his heart that he did something really
nice for us kids and we didn't seem to appreciate it. So we as
all the time. We did not have a heater either, but we did
have a filter, and I mean it was our job to clean it out
a lot and like you'd vacuum the lining and stuff every so, yeah,
we took good care of ours. We would walk along the bottom of the
pool and slip because of the slime. All I know what you mean,
because when it got too dirty, that's how it is. It was gross.
So yeah, great memory though other options Let's see, oh it says
these classes saved me when I was in the younger stages being a stay at
home mom. If you don't have structured activities to do with your kids,
the days can become long and draining. Other things, libraries they have awesome
kids sections, reading times meant for kids of all ages, free books,
movies, etc. You can borrow The Children's Museum great for kids aged six
months to five. Minnesota or Como Zoo Mall of America every Tuesday is Toddler
Tuesday with a free show, giveaways, and kids eat free or discounted at
many restaurants in the mall. Toddler Tuesday. America also has Sea Life,
Lego Land, Creola Experience, and so much more even just walking around.
No one is at the mall during the week in the morning, so crowds
are never a problem. Stephanie, sincerely, thank you for that. That
was a really big help in things that I wouldn't even thought of. Next
one, Hello, best ease. My daughter Lexi and I send each other
videos of our houses when they get to looking like a tornado went through the
house, or that we've been robbed. How does this happen, Lexi asks?
Lexi asked me, Well, Dave says, it starts with not putting
something away. So whatever it is, put it away. I learned a
phrase a year ago, don't put it down, put it away. Dave,
You're literally a genius. That's not my phrase, but I'll take credit
for it. I also opened bananas from the bottom now, so thank you
for that as well. Wait is that a thing? It wasn't my idea,
but I passed it along here on the show. And I've had bananas
all my life and I've always gotten the stem and you pull and it never
comes off cleanly. But if you go to the bottom, the knobby thing
on the other end, you pull that off, Son of a bitch,
It's a miracle. Jenny, God yous just saw that one. I wasn't
here because I would remember that. I you bananas all the time. I
have never done it that way, next time you have a banana, do
not grab the stem end, especially on a soft one, because when you
do it with the soft one, it kind of scrunches and breaks, and
now you get a mess. Yeah, do the nobby end, peel that
little button off and then it'll open up just fine, and it's way better.
So she heard that, she says, thanks for that as well.
Here's a little screenshot of our conversation that you are in hope you have a
fabulous day right from Dana. So here's a screenshot. It says, I
cleaned the whole upstairs and did almost all the laundry yesterday, So it just
starts with things not getting put away. Dave is right, She says.
Dave is always right, and she responds, he is Wow. I can't
tell you how flattered I am that I can came up in a private,
personal conversation outside of the morning show. Yeah, that is wow. That
is life has been worth living, Jenny, Yeah, your life has been
worth living that. Katie writes in She's from Chicago. Loved listening to you
all. Thanks for continually keeping my company while I cleaned the house, exercise,
and of course drive on yesterday's show, you played a clip about a
pilot who came home from a trip with a new puppy. You discussed how
this was not something people do, or at least should do, without consulting
their partner first. The exact situation happened in my home when I was in
fifth grade. My dad, who was also a pilot, and my mom
agreed to take a puppy off her sister's hands. She got two it once
and they didn't get along, and she surprised us with the puppy, and
when my dad got home from his trip, we all got to surprise him.
He liked the pilot and the clip was not thrilled in the least thought
when he was home that the bulk of the responsibility would fall on him,
which he refused. It didn't help that our dog was a sheetsu also,
since he was gone multiple days a week, we fell into a routine and
all pitched into help. My dad, of course, ended up loving our
pup as well, so much that he would put a little water in with
her food and microwave it when she was older and lost her teeth. Oh
however, my dad always cautions any parents who are thinking about getting a dog
to not get one past the younger child being in kindergarten, as our pup
lived for another fifteen years and the kids had long been out of the house
by that time. I hope you have a great rest of the week.
Thanks for reading my story. Katie in Chicago. We got, you know,
Josie when Carson was about eight and Alison would have been about seventeen,
and they loved having a dog. Yeah, so it's it is weird.
It was. I read something that was very touching the other day. It
was like, how your dogs, even when your kids row up and move
away from home, your dog still faithfully stays there and loves you and wants
your attention. And my kids are grown and gone, but Josie is still
there for you know how much longer. We don't know. She's fifteen.
But it is kind of touching and maybe gets just little emotional to think the
kids are grown and gone, but Josie is still there. I can't wait
till I get a dog that's actually my dog. Currently, we just we
watch dogs and that works really well with us right now because we're not ready
for the responsibility of like another dog. But I will say, like my
parents robbed my sisters, and I of that childhood memory of having a dog.
We want a dog so badly, and my mom just wasn't a dog
person really, and so we had one. And then when I was three,
my like she was old and so they put her down. So up
until I was three, yes I had a dog, but not really.
I was a don't remember. Yeah, yeah, so we always begged for
dogs, and my parents ever would do it because my mom said no.
And then my dad eventually got one. But then, of course I was
in college when he got a dog. So yeah, I was sad not
having one growing up because I love him so much. I know you love
dogs. Alison wanted a hamster or a Gerbil or something when she was a
little girl, and I said no, I said, you won't take care
of it. And I look back at that and I go, God,
I should have let her had a freaking hamster or a Gerbil. It would
have been an experience, and of course she would have taken care of it
and carried it around for a week, and then she would have never cleaned
the cage. The same thing that happened with Carson's turtle. So when Carson
asked for a turtle, when he was about seven or eight or nine,
I said, yeah, we'll get you a turtle. We went over across
the street to pet Smart. We got him red footed tortoise that was the
size of an apple when we got him, and grew to the size of
larger than a football. But I don't regret it for a minute. We
love that turtle. He was a very sweet little creature that would crane his
head around when we came in the room and look around, and he ate
like a pig. And I used to joke to Carson, are you sure
it's not a because he eats like a pig. But I don't regret it.
But I will say, I wonder if Cindy regrets not getting you a
puppy or a dog when you were a little girl. She loves dogs now
because she has a landscaping company where she watches all of our clients dogs,
or she used to. She doesn't do it as much, but now my
younger sister lives at home with her dog, and my mom loves Clay like
he is just like the prize possession, grand puppy, whatever you want to
puppy, and she loves him so much. So I think like her mind
changed once she started watching dogs and having them around. But like, yeah,
growing up, she just said no, no dogs. My dad was
kind of the same way. He never wanted a dog. And then my
sister moved to Germany with her husband. They didn't want to take the dog
to Germany. So we got a little toy poodle and my dog. My
dad loved the dog, loved the dog. We didn't treat it like a
poodle. We didn't get the fancy haircut. It looked like a mutt and
it was a kind of an outdoor indoor kind of a dog followed my dad
around the property, slept on my dad's lap, and so he loved the
dog. Sydney writes in Dave and Jenny, please let the mom who wrote
in about money for grad parties know that y'all are way too generous. Jenny
says, thirty to seventy five dollars. Do you want to come to my
grad party that I had fifteen years ago? Jenny, Dave said, that's
generous. I think twenty five bucks. Meanwhile, I'm sitting here thinking ten
to twenty dollars if you go, but your kid can go, and then
you don't have to send any money. Maybe I'm cheap or clearly in a
different tax bracket than the famous KDWB DJ's. I think you can give close
friends ten to twenty bucks. Family consider giving more than twenty if you like
them. But at Chris, twenty at any age is a good amount.
Have fun at grad parties. Interested to hear what meals kids are doing these
days. I had giant five foot pizzas made for mine. That's cool where
you rent a pizza oven and they come out, Yeah, that is cool,
that is cool. Carson had catered Chipotland Potley. You were there,
I was there. Here was a funny story that I've told before about Carson's
grad party. Jenny came, it did. Jenny and the twins came.
And when I say twins, I mean the ones that she wears on her
chest every day. Yeahs. And so we had a trampoline in the backyard,
and if I remember right, Carson and all his buddies were watching Jenny
jump on the trampoline and Chase that's the one who pointed it out. Yeah,
Chase was Did he point out the boys watching? No, he pointed
out you jumping. I don't think Carson. Maybe I missed that part of
the story, but it was Chase who pointed out me jumping from like the
window from above because I was down on the treublane and I was wearing this
like Maxi dress, so things were just bouncing a little bit more than they
probably would have been other clothing. But and I tried to beg Tina to
come on and jump with me, and she refused, So then I was
just my lonesome jumping on my own. I remember that that that was That
was a fun grad party. We had a good turnout and it was a
beautiful day and met Chase enjoyed it. Dave Jenny Vaant from Oh they Don't
Say They said, Don't say my name, wondering if there are still occasions
you get nerves to speak, either on radio or a public event. I
get in my head so bad about speaking in public and sometimes go into a
panic attack mode. Once I break the ice, I'm okay, but it
can be debilitating. At work. I have a high visibility leadership role and
I need to get it under control so I can elevate my role and speak
at larger functions. So many bigger things to worry about in this world wondering
if you have a special routine, phrase or thing you do before something you're
nervous for any tips. We coincidentally talked about this on the radio show this
morning, and that was Toastmasters. Because Toastmasters is a dumb name. It's
been around for one hundred years. Where you learn to speak, do public
speaking, and there's a program and it's like taking a college course. And
when I joined Toastmasters, I did it because I would go to high school
career day and get nervous and get flustered in front of a bunch of kids
that I knew my stuff, I knew my topic, and they were very
attentive, but I would get nervous and it was It pissed me off because
some people can get up and speak so wonderfully and I could not. So
I went to toast Masters and I still get nervous, but it definitely helped
me. They say you still get butterflies, but now they fly in formation,
and I really like that because when I went to Toastmasters, I thought
it'd be a bunch of very glib, wonderful chatty people. No, they're
regular people who also get nervous. And you do the first speech you do
is an icebreaker speech about yourself for three to five minutes. What topic do
we know better than anything? Ourselves? So you learn to speak, you
learn to use body language gestures, you know how to make your speech more
interesting, and it is very non judgmental. So check out toastmasters dot org.
It's a dumb name, but it could really help you any tips on
speaking Jenny, Yes, before I helped guest hosts at my first tim role
game, I was very anxious and nervous myself, and so I practiced my
script over and over. But then after that I sat down because I was
still feeling like the physical anxiety inside of me, and I just wrote down
like all of the good things that I could think of that could come from
doing well, and I didn't focus on like the negative stuff. So I
just kind of focused on that, and then I also wrote down like what
I could look forward to after it was done. So it's like I just
had kind of a plan in place of if you get like, you get
through this, and then afterwards you get to do this tomorrow, you get
to go to brunch with Andrew, you get to do whatever. So I
kind of just looked ahead Okay, So looking past it was like a reward
kind of a thing. Yeah, kind of, because Andreid I had brunch
plans the next day, and so I just was like, Okay, you
just get through this and it'll be fine, And like, I don't know,
I really focused on what's the worst thing that could happen. Maybe you
fumble over a couple words and then cool. Barely anyone will, even in
an arena of people at the Timberwolves game. I wasn't that concerned because everyone's
in their own world. Yeah, and they're not going to notice you fumbling
over a couple words. True. You know, it's funny. I never
get nervous on the radio unless we're doing something that is so out of the
ordinary that it makes me nervous whether it's going to go well. But that's
nervous whether it's going to go well. But talking on the radio never.
I just don't speaking in front of a big crowd on a stage, no,
But in front of a crowd of like twenty people, if they said,
hey, Dave, get up and do a presentation here at work,
I would be nervous. But this is because we had to do something a
few weeks ago for clients. Remember, they all came in and they were
all doing like an online client kind of thing, and I was nervous.
But here's a big tip. In every crowd, there will be people who
look at you and nod and smile. I say every crowd, nearly every
crowd. There will be people who look at you while you're speaking, and
they nod and they smile and they're being supportive. Find those people and look
at them. Don't look at the people who aren't looking. Don't look at
the people who look uncomfortable. Don't look at the people who look disinterested or
bored. Find the people who are being supportive and are smiling. So if
you're like, yeah, I want to tell you about my great trip to
Tahiti, there will be me nodding and smiling. So look at me,
all right, David Jenny, I'm writing in about the strange injury email you
guys got a couple of days ago. Well, where should I start?
I got your typical concussion at age two, twelve and eighteen. Wow.
When I was eighteen, I was in a car accident, hit a tree
head on. I bit through my lower lip and knocked out five teeth in
the same accident. I also got my jaw broken. I also had my
small intestines come out of my belly button after just one couch. Now I
pre read this a couple of times. It literally does say after just one
couch. It must be a type of okay, yeah, I don't really
understand what that means. At the Rise and the probably the craziest thing.
I was working at Costco got ran over by an suv. I broke seven
bones in my foot. I have others, but that's probably the craziest thing
that has happened to me. Thanks for everything you guys do on and off
the air. Nicole. Let me know your intestines came out of your belly
button after one couch. What are you trying to say? You think I
meant punch after one punch or touch or crunch? Yeah, or I don't
know pre read Nicole. No, I'm kidding. You do whatever you want.
Thank you. That's really interesting and that is it. That's going to
do it for the Minnesota Goodbye. Still some ones we haven't gotten to,
so we'll try to get to those a little bit later tomorrow on the Minnesota
Goodbye Ryan's show at KDWB dot com. And thanks for sending your emails in