A Strange Week In Real Time

James Guttman 0:00

It's the journey made by Pod. Hi, Pod, I'm dead. Hi, Pod. It's James Gutman. Thank you guys for finding me again. Uh, it's Friday. It is the middle of June, I guess, right? A little bit, a little bit past the middle of June, 2026. I appreciate you taking time from the heat, listening to me here, whether you found me on Spotify, Audible, you name it on there. Thank you. This is a weird, this is a weird week for the podcast, and I'll tell you guys why. Whatever I write about on Monday is usually something from the week before, something that I experienced, something that happened. Um, everything is very much in the moment. I have never, in like 10 years of doing this, I think I've pre-written stuff maybe twice, um, having been away or something like that. But everything that I write is in the moment. I try to do it either the night before, um, as close to publication as I put it out. That way, not only do I have time to know what I think about a situation, but every part of it happened already, right? So if it's a long week and there's something on Monday and Thursday and Friday, and I write about it halfway through, I might not have gotten my full lesson out of it. I don't know. That's what I do. I like to do it like that. So, right now, I am currently living the week that I'm gonna talk about on Monday in the blog. And it is just, we're in the midst of it. Um, I'll give you guys a spoiler. My daughter is graduating

Graduation Week And Family Time

James Guttman 1:25

from high school this week, right now, as you're listening to this. And next week is a specialty, specialty week on high blog and iPod. Uh, I'm gonna talk about her. And one of the things that I've always noticed is that certain topics get different reactions. And I know whenever I write about Olivia and I talk about Olivia, it gets a big pop, as they say, in the wrestling business. But again, the the podcast and the blog was about her initially. When I first started writing these, because my son, who was very little at the time, I couldn't answer a lot of questions. I didn't know what to say. So a lot of the early topics were about my daughter. And again, we've been around for almost 10 years now at this point. And now she went from being, you know, like a nine-year-old to graduate from high school. And I'm, I don't know, I'm wrapping my head around it. And what's what's good though, I'll tell you why. I'll tell you why this is good. Because while I am tempted to talk about next week's topic now, I actually have a transition into what I'm talking about this week anyway, because it's what I wrote about on Monday, and they are very similar. Uh, Monday I wrote a blog that one of my favorite headlines, every time I get to talk about the strange way in which my kids grow up, and I'll probably do it again next week with her graduation. Um, I like to confuse the subject that people are expecting. So I called it the man I took to the pool because last week I took a man to the pool. Uh, that man was my son. He is a man in the manliest man sense of the word. And I give the description in the story that

The Man I Took To The Pool

James Guttman 2:55

when we drive in the car, I like to kind of tap him on the leg as we're going. Hey, what's up, buddy? Double tap. How you doing? Did you have a good day at school? And we do that, or I'll reach my hand back and I'll hold my hand. I've always done it. I don't really think about it as being abnormal, which it actually is. Like when I think about it, the whole way there, I'll just put my hand behind me as we're driving back to the house on the bus stop, and he'll put his hand in mine, or I'll tap him, hey, but and it's to keep that connection going. You know, he's nonverbal, so we talk to each other, but a lot of it is me talking out loud. I don't even know if he's necessarily looking at me as I'm talking. I don't want to keep staring in the rear view, but I want him to know I'm talking to him, we're around, we're cool. So that physical connection, turning around, tapping him or putting my hand out for him to give me five, it's important, you know, something I do. Now that we're hitting the point where summer is coming around and he's wearing shorts, when I tap my hand in the back, I'm not necessarily touching fabric. I'm touching his leg, which is ridiculously hairy. My kid is this furry little, I don't know, man, um, land of the lost, planet of the apes, however you want to put it. My kid does not feel like a little kid anymore when I put my hand back to tap his leg. And that's when it occurred to me, like, oh, wait a minute. The pool, it's gonna be me and this giant man. And Lucas is a giant man. I'm still technically taller than him. Uh, if he's in shoes and I'm not, it is awful. And I'm like, dude, take those shoes off right now. Um he outweighs me, he's outweighed me for a long time. So I don't know. I don't think he's onto that yet. I think I could literally jump on him for a piggyback ride. And I almost did once. I have a picture. But I thought to myself, I am somewhat screwed because going to the pool is his favorite activity to do. He does it once a year, and the hardest thing is getting him out of the pool at the end. And I learned an important lesson years ago. It's that we don't go to the pool when there's a pressing issue of having to pick someone up or do something at a certain time, because there was one day his sister was coming home from the bus and he was not getting out of that pool. And

When Transitions Trigger Shutdowns

James Guttman 5:05

what happens is Lucas Lucas is not a fighter, Lucas doesn't have behavioral issues, like I think a lot of people assume. Lucas will simply sit down, right? If he doesn't want to do something, he won't move. Um, just plants himself. When he was little, it was funny, and it was. I actually have this famous picture. I went to go pick him up from school, and he was having meltdowns every time I picked him up. I think it might have been a transition issue. In hindsight, it almost definitely was. He's got transition issues when it comes to going from one place to the other. I have the unenviable task of picking him up from school when we do the switch on uh visitation every week, me and my ex-wife. So when he comes out at the end of the school day, that is always the only time that he kind of has this behavior where he would get upset. Now he doesn't really do it as much, but he won't initially get off the bus. You have to get on. Come on, buddy, come on. I don't know if he's surprised to see me, um, if he's upset that he's not home already. I don't know what it is, but there's some sort of reaction. But when he was little, it was bad. And he would literally so I went to go pick him up one day from school, and I just see all the teachers just standing around, standing around, like, what are they doing? And I look around the corner and I'm trying to see into the school, and they have everything blocked off where you check in and you give them your ID. And I see nothing but a little pair of shoes on the ground, right past where the ID because he had laid down. So he's just flat on the ground, and people just walk around him, kindergartners just walking around. I was like this freaking kid. So that's what he does. He lays down on the ground. Um, I try to coax him up. That's always been a thing where I'm like, I'm like, come on, buddy, let's go. So I don't want to fight him up. I don't want to pull him up and come on, let's go. First of all, I don't know, I don't even know if I can necessarily do it like that, but I also don't want him to get used to that, that that's what we do. I do have one trick. Lucas does not know leverage. So what I'll do is I'll hook his arm and I stand up and he has no choice but to stand up. Uh kind of this old wrestling move. Even when trying to get him upstairs, if he doesn't want to go up a staircase and he does that kind of stay still, don't move thing, I put my finger in the small of his back and I just guide him up the stairs. He doesn't know what's happening. He doesn't know where how it's happening, where to poke, he doesn't know how to do defense. It's cute. It's uh it blows his mind. But in

A Pool Day That Finally Clicks

James Guttman 7:20

the pool, all that is not helpful because Lucas will not get out of the pool. He'll stop, he'll do this thing, and this is what he did this week. But what he does is he does this thing where he'll start going up the stairs to get out and then just fall back into the pool, like, ah, just kind of float back. But anyway, all of that was my concern about the end of the pool. Even in the pool, I had concerns, and I'm thinking to myself, what am I gonna do with this kid? I used to always like hold him up, come on, buddy, and we'll swim around. And I don't, I mean, I barely know how to swim myself. So I'm sitting here, you know, not really giving him swim lessons, but I'm holding him up, letting him float, showing him how to do it. I don't, I didn't think I could do that now. I'm like, how am I gonna pick this kid up in the pool? So we went. And right from the start, my kid was so mature. I was so proud of him. We got in there, he went walking over, he went to go put his foot into the pool. I'm like, no, no, buddy, we just got to put our stuff down. And I'm pointing towards the lounge chair at the end, and there was a time, and in that moment, I was ready for it, where he would have some sort of problem with that whining or pulling or getting upset, not understanding that no, we're going in the pool, just not this second. He just none of that this time. Just walked down the aisle, got into the lounge chair, took his shoes off. I was proud of him. And this continued. This kept going as we went. When we got to the pool, he sat in it. He went in slowly. I went in with him. And I'll tell you, man, this kid, first of all, he's not, I guess he's not that heavy, or maybe we work well together. Because I was able to pick him up under his arms and kind of spin him around in the pool. Um, I was worried. I was worried, and he went to the deep end. I was worried about it. And he didn't do any of these things. Lucas was, and I'm so lucky, man. And I if you're listening to this, right? There's two groups of people that are listening to this. There's people who maybe don't have um people like Lucas in their lives, right? Grandparents, aunts, uncles. I'm telling you this for them. Uh, he was wonderful. My kid was wonderful. Not it's not always a difficult situation. I know a lot of people assume that moments like this are difficult situations. Uh, they could be hard. But for people who do have a child like Lucas and they hear this, I want you to know, I'm not saying he never has behavioral issues or he never is difficult. Just because I talk about how wonderful he is here and how, to be honest with you, a lot of the time he is. That does not mean that it doesn't happen. Because I know sometimes people hear this and they're like, well, it's hard for me. And they almost take it offensively. I'm not. I promise you, I'm not. I'm not like my kid is so great. It's such a ridiculous thing to think there's any, no, there are. For my son, for everyone's children, where there's different times where they can be difficult. My son, I'm lucky, is not. So I'm not saying this is a brag. I'm not saying this to change the narrative. I'm telling you, I'm so proud of him because I know that even when he's not the easiest to handle, even when there's a problem going on, I know that he's always trying his best. I see it in him, I watch it in him, I watch him uh focus, I watch him try to get things done. And I couldn't be

Getting Out And The Bigger Lesson

James Guttman 10:18

prouder of him. And I wasn't, I couldn't be pretty prouder than I was at the pool last week. It was unbelievable how good he was. And then when the time came to get out of the pool, I said, Lucas, we gotta go. And he did not want to get out. Luckily, we didn't have anything going on. So like I kind of convinced, all right, if we're stuck here, we're stuck here. And there were a few false starts where I was like, all right, buddy, a few more minutes, we'll stay in the pool. But then finally, when it came time to get out, he started doing it up the stairs, fall back, up the stairs, fall back. And to be honest with you, I did the finger in his back, but I didn't even have to do it. The first time he got a poke and he went up one step too far where he was fully kind of out of the water, he was like, all right, let's go. And this is a moment that took years, right? This wonderful outing that we had to the pool has been built on the backs of countless bad outings at the pool. Bad times trying to get him out, bad times were trying to get him to follow directions. It took all of those times for me to learn, for him to learn and understand to give us a pool day like the one that we had. That's what it is. Raising a kid like Lucas is cumulative. It's about making him understand why we do what we do and what we're doing next, and that it will happen again. And when it does, it's on him to remember and to trust me and to know that I'm not bringing him somewhere bad, that I'm not gonna deprive him of food just because he's not eating it in that moment, and that I'm not gonna like make him get out of the pool and never go back again. We're gonna go back to the pool, buddy. We'll be back next week. We'll go back to the week after. And he understands it and he gets it. And that, and I mean, there's so many different things that went into this trip. I didn't even mention the very beginning. Before we even went in the pool, I was showing him pictures of the pool on my phone. Hey, buddy, we're gonna go to the pool, and he's pointing to it. Moments like that, making sure he's part of the conversation. Instead of just being like, well, when we show up, he'll see the pool and he'll love it. No, he's a part of it, you know, he gets it and it makes him comfortable. And I understand my son, and that's that's all we can do. We have to watch our kids, we have to grow with our kids, we have to learn from our kids, and when the time comes, we have to understand our kids. And then when the day eventually comes around where they are adults or too big to bring here and take out of a car seat and throw over there, and they have to willingly go with you or you're screwed, you have to build that bridge so that by the time you get there, they're able to do it. And that's um, I don't know, it's important. And that's something that we did, and I'm proud and I'm happy. And I'm glad I get

Where To Read Listen And Follow

James Guttman 12:50

to share that with you guys. It was a wonderful time. And uh, and yeah, some motion all around. Emotion, emotion, emotion. I'm dealing with it right now, right now, in the midst of the week. It is graduation week. But guys, we will talk about that more on Monday and next Friday with a brand new podcast, the whole nine yards. Remember, hiblogomdad.com every Monday, new blogs, hipodomad.com, and every streaming service every Friday. That's my podcast. Hi World I'm Dad. That's available on Amazon and everywhere else on the freaking planet. Audiobook version, uh, you name it. It's everywhere. And follow me on social media. Hi, James Gutman. Hi, H I James Gutman. I'll see you there. That does it for me. Until next week, this is James Gutman saying, be well. Byepod. I'm Dad.