Generational Gaps to Gastroenteritis Gaffes

Is the financial landscape rigged against younger generations? Discover how the widening gap between income and property prices has turned homeownership into a near-impossible dream for many. In this episode, we dissect the generational tensions playing out on TikTok and uncover the economic hurdles that younger folks face today. From skyrocketing rental prices to the sobering reality of high-income individuals struggling to afford homes, we offer a deep dive into the economic disparities that stoke intergenerational conflicts.

Ever wondered what happens when you host a 16th birthday bash and it turns into a comedy of errors? Let us regale you with the tale of a party that spiraled into a gastroenteritis outbreak, hitting everyone, including us parents. And that's not all—relive the chaos of COVID-era workplace gatherings, where safety measures often fell short, leading to unintended virus spread. We also explore the phenomenon of "COVID babies" and the expenses of constant testing, all with a comedic twist that will have you chuckling.

How much did our parents really let us get away with? Join us as we scrutinize our own past behaviors and how they shape our hyper-vigilant parenting today. From the paranoia of monitoring our kids' potential misdeeds to the bewildering experience of teaching a teenager to drive, we cover it all. Reminisce with us about simpler times when getting a driver's license was a breeze, and laugh along as we share our own youthful driving mishaps. This episode is packed with insights, humor, and a hefty dose of nostalgia that any parent—or former teen—will find relatable.

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:01

Turning off normal human male mode. Switching to dad mode. Welcome in to dad mode with your hosts Bearded, Nova and Morph.

Speaker 2: 0:16

Beef with the generations on TikTok. At the moment, I'm fucking out of it, I'm out of it, I don't fucking get it at the moment, I'm fucking out of it, I'm out of it, I don't fucking get it. And then the thing that really is, I guess, grinding my gears, if I want to say it you can't be pissed off at one generation or the other, because the generation before it is most likely the one that fucked up the one next to it and vice versa.

Speaker 3: 0:39

You know what I mean, I do, I do know what you mean and I have a, I have a an honest think about generational differences. But let's, let's hear what you want.

Speaker 2: 0:50

But the other one is it's not just you know, my generation fucking up the next or whatever of how they raised it, because I don't feel like that. That's people inside my own generation that fucked that up. They, they're my own problem. My problem is not the fucking Gen Z at the moment, because I mean, technically I am in a millennial. Just Zenny is zenial technically, if you fit it, it's a zenial. But my problem is not with them, my problem is with their fucking parents. That's my problem.

Speaker 3: 1:22

Yeah, I am solidly in Gen X. I didn't say solidly, but it's, it's whatever, it doesn't matter. Um, I'm gen x and you know, tiktok seems to be afraid of my generation, which you know I'm cool with because they should be, honestly. No, but um, I find the generational differences stupid, to be totally honest. Because if you think about it, if you look at the things that gen al or gen al for children, but that gen z complain about millennials and millennials complain about x and everyone complains about boomers, it's just stages of fucking aging. It that's all that it is, but that's, you know, the things that you complain about. I can't buy a house when they, when you're a gen z shit, you don't have a good job. Yet when you get a good job, you'll have more money and you can buy a house. Jesus people, it's not what you think it is, it's just aging.

Speaker 2: 2:13

I mean I can't 100% deal with that because there's some I don't know what this housing situation is over there, but over here our housing is very it's house value versus income. That gap has quite broadened in the last probably 10 years, like x potentially. It's not a, it's not it. It really is a pipe dream for most people nowadays. We're um over here for our housing. So I can't say people fuck it up. I don't know, I haven't bothered looking into it. But you know like, let me put it this way For someone like my wife and I, for us, if we wanted to go get, since we've moved in this way, we were looking at another buying a place.

Speaker 2: 3:02

We earn close to a quarter of a million a year between the two of us and that would struggle to get a million dollar house, which is what we'd need. We need at least a million dollars to get the house that we need for, like our size family and we would struggle to, one, find a house at that price point and then two, you know that's a, that's a lot gap compared to what housing used to be. I guess in a way, yeah, yeah, but um, we're not. I don't think we're really going into our real estate, real estate episode. Yet are we have we got to the real estate episode?

Speaker 3: 3:38

I don't think we're doing our real estate episode just yet, um, but you know, my, my financial situation is the same as yours, um, and I don't know. I mean, I sometimes I wonder if people are looking at more than their means when they say they can't afford something. Yeah, because when you let, when I look at rental prices around, you know, in in the us, um, rental prices are honestly more than a mortgage you just you have. If you can somehow come up with a down payment, you're going to get to live in a house it's bigger than an apartment for less than you pay for the apartment. So I know people say, oh, I can't afford to do this or that. But like I also know that kids coming out of college, at least in the U S, they're getting like six figures right out of the gate. So I, they're getting like six figures right out of the gate.

Speaker 2: 4:27

It's something you never got talking about. What do you mean? You can't afford anything. Yeah, yeah, here the same with the rental. Rentals went crazy, especially in my state, thanks to covet, because my state, my, my state took covet on pretty good, I think we we had a pretty good uh numbers compared to, uh, the rest of the country and it turned out the moment like borders were open or you know, people could move or get out. We had a lot of people from interstate so we never used to be the most expensive major city, but we were, you know, still a major city.

Speaker 2: 5:02

We're now rank two approaching and getting closer and closer to rank one and like rank one is rank one is horrible. Like you're looking at a rundown piece of shit, fucking three bedroom house in sydney and you're gonna pay three and a half million dollars for it because, yeah, like it's gone that's what I mean by it's gone mental. So all these people down Sydney and Victoria, melbourne have sold up their expensive homes and then they've moved to Queensland, to Brisbane, where I am, and then they brought homes cheaper or more of them and it just sparked this stupid one war of house pricing. Like just people are buying houses for like a couple hundred thousand above the market value, sight unseen, no checking on building or anything, they'd just be all cash. We'll just take the house type of thing.

Speaker 2: 5:57

And that also happened to the rental market where people were moving up. They didn't know where they wanted to buy the home or whatever, so they'd go into a rental and go I will pay you 12 months rent at double the rate that you want, wow, and it just it. Just it blew out like when my wife and I were looking at places at one stage. We could not, we'd like, wait to see it look at the house before we say yes or no to it, like before before putting in application. Most of the time, by the time we'd gone and looked at it, they've already had the application in, before the house was even available to view and accepted someone. But there were so many times it was like oh, it's already off the market. It's like this just came on the market. Like, oh yeah, someone, someone just chucked their name on and paid ahead. I'm like fuck me that's crazy.

Speaker 3: 6:41

That is crazy. Um, going back to the, the generations, I don't know why people just I mean, I think it's just fascinating to talk about it. They just want something to complain about. I do, though. You know what's saying. Next, the gen xers are typically overlooked, like gen z complains about millennials, millennials complain about boers. Yeah, and it's just like. I mean, I don't care that they leave my generation out like don't, don't fuck with us anyway.

Speaker 2: 7:10

But to be honest, I know I'm gonna just open up probably fucking hate here, because that's what tiktok does nowadays in the moment it gets to it. I kind of classify probably like half of gen x as boomers, like that's, that's the bond that's the honesty of it, like when they said this is this statue.

Speaker 2: 7:28

I actually had to refresh myself on the generational brackets, because it is brackets, it's not. It's not every fucking 15 years, it's very, it's very. Throw your fucking number out of dart and choose a range category. Um, there's no science to it whatsoever a mess. But I actually wrapped up a lot of people as gen x, as boomers, until recently where I'm like, oh, I thought this was like a mid 70s, you know a 70s, mid 70s thing, up until like the mid 80s, and then I'm like, well, hold on. No, it actually ends at the 70s and in the 60s. I, I don't get this, yeah.

Speaker 3: 8:05

Yeah, you have Gen Xers that could be like 60 now.

Speaker 2: 8:10

Yeah, exactly.

Speaker 3: 8:11

Which is Boomer Lite. Anyone listening to this that is around that age. I'm sorry it is what it is, but the same way there's a bridge between X and Millennials. Yeah, there should be the same thing with Boomers and.

Speaker 2: 8:24

Xers. Exactly, that's what. That's what I'm thinking. There needs, there needs to be like a is a is a gen z but yeah, like a 0.5.

Speaker 2: 8:32

You know what I mean. Yeah, gen x 0.5 is just a little area. And then you got like millennial 0.5 because honestly, I didn't even know. I shared generations with my younger siblings and I'm like we have a totally different upbringing, like you can't even classify us as the same same generation. You know what I mean. Because you ask me about my upbringing, everyone go, oh, you're just a gen x. And you ask him and they go, yeah, that's a typical millennial. There's half the shit millennials going about. I go, what the fuck's that shit? I don't like that crap. Yeah, I hate hannah montana. I hate the fucking disney. You know the disney channel. I'm not interested in high school musical, that shit. You know, let's fucking burn it down for all I care. I hated zach efron for the majority of my life until he became an adult and started doing some great fucking films in the most recent years. Because nowadays I see him on tv or a film, I go I'll watch this because I'm interested in him as a mature actor. You know what I mean.

Speaker 3: 9:27

Yep, yep, I do. I can tell you. What is weird for me, and I'm sure you can relate too, is I skipped a generation, so I'm X, but my kids are Z. Wait, they're not Alpha, are they? Actually, I don't know when Alpha starts. My kids are 10 and 12, yeah, uh, so I think they're z's hold on.

Speaker 2: 9:50

I'm looking this up generations by year, I guess would be the best way to put this. Uh, okay, gen. Gen z only goes up to 2010, so technically, most of my children are gen. Oh my god. So my kids are alpha.

Speaker 3: 10:03

Some of them want an alpha and some of them is a wow, so I skipped two generations. So my whole point there is um, like my one, one son is in middle school, the other is about to go to middle school and they come home saying things that I need to translate on the internet yeah, what the hell is skibbity, fucking, toilet, what? What are all these stupid phrases? I, I know I sound old now, but I am, you know, but I don't know what they're talking about.

Speaker 2: 10:33

It's annoying yeah, I don't, I don't, yeah. And even millennials, younger millennials um, I'm not younger millennials, the, the older z. I thought we were millennials and I think some of them think they're millennials. You know what I mean. Like the kids around 2000, I don't even think that. I don't even think half these people fucking know what they, what they belong to.

Speaker 2: 10:54

I don't think so either, I don't know it's confusing and old and I just want to blanket and to just wrap myself up and not hear about it. But like every time I open tiktok, that's all I hear about. Like I swear it's every third video. It's someone's woken someone or someone's pissed off someone yeah, I, I'm thinking we should.

Speaker 3: 11:12

The people are probably listening, thinking we should rename this podcast to two. Old men complain about kids yes I mean that's fair.

Speaker 2: 11:19

That's fair, you know yeah, well, look, I had a house full of kids last weekend. Oh, you had all of them. Oh no, it was all that. Um, the eldest turned 16, so she had a whole bunch of friends over, right. And then one of the others, I'm like, well, you may as well have a friend over, because they're gonna have friends over this. There was lots of kids in the house. It was, it was, there was a lot going on, and the one that turned out to's a daughter, right, yeah, and then, and then you added to it, I have my sister-in-law stay with me too. That's hard enough on the best of days when you run in a hotel. I know how I fit everyone in here. I, I don't know, I don't, it was a clown car, I don't know it just somehow it fit in.

Speaker 2: 12:01

I was so confused and you know it's winter. But then both the kids have fans blowing a million miles an hour and windows open and stuff into the night. I'm thinking it's, you know, getting down to freezing point throughout the evening. What the hell like you know the rest of the house is is booming a beautiful 26 degrees Celsius, which is probably like a 90,. You know, whatever, whatever your energy efficient air conditioning level is over there, that's what that's booming around here Like it's beautiful. I don't really need a jumper, I could walk around the house. It's comfortable. I guess I don't know why they're turning fans on.

Speaker 2: 12:44

Confusing but hilariousness was the night after the sleepover, because the little girl she's she's always sick in daycare. That's what we do and she kind of was sick, went to the hospital just to get checked out because they were open later and we couldn't. We couldn't get into a normal doctor the next morning and we have like a hospital just down the road. So, australian Healthcare, just drive down the hospital, get them to check her out. It costs nothing. Did that. They checked her over. I know they checked her over. Here you go, here's some stuff, go home, just keep her up on fluids. It looks like she's got a little bit of a virus. It's nothing to be concerned about, obviously.

Speaker 2: 13:22

Teenage girls in the house all excitement for another you know child. She kept going in and around the house interacting with all the kids. Turns out she had gastro, yeah. So the next night my 16-year-old starts vomiting. Then I vomited. Okay, yeah, my wife was already sick. Another kid, the other kid she was. She got sick the next morning, really like oh, maybe throughout the night, I can't remember. But then everyone that stayed at our house got sick, so it was like 12 people were just fucking vomiting the next night and I had to. Just, my wife just sent a picture of our daughter to everyone going. I'm sorry, that was it.

Speaker 3: 14:02

She just she cleaned out you know how to throw a party.

Speaker 2: 14:06

Yeah, I know, I said I can't wait.

Speaker 3: 14:08

I'm sure everyone's lining up to come back to our house again yeah, that reminds me, um, was it two, two years ago, I think? Uh, we're in the middle of covid, you know, but things were getting a little better. So I have people at my job, on my team, are located around the us. I had everyone fly in to the city I'm in and we're going to have a team meeting for a week. We're going to wear our masks, be social distance. Well, every single person except me got COVID while they were there, wow. And because of that, the company is like, yeah, stop doing that, stop having people come in. So I ruined it for everybody for a while I didn't think I got covered to like three years after, I never got it.

Speaker 2: 14:51

Well, actually, no, I didn't get it. I had the flu the same time as my wife didn't actually had to, because we have tests, that you have to go and do tests and start like drive-through places at times and that yeah, yeah, jab uh a thing way yeah yeah, so you know I, they had reasons.

Speaker 2: 15:10

Towards the end they had reasons of why you had to go to them. It's usually someone in your household had it. You had to drive to one as well. Like someone tested positive in your close to the vicinity household, you had to go. So I had that. I drove down to this one going out. My wife's got covid, I'm here to get tested, etc. In the fine print of all of them, we will charge you if, if it's unneeded while showing up a negatively. Yeah, they tried charging me 180. I fought the huge out of that. They even tried charging my wife.

Speaker 2: 15:41

It went down there and it did have covid like and they don't tell you that at the time you like do the test go home. You know you get your text message 20 you know that night saying yes or no what you got. And it's like two weeks later it just comes in the mail this random bill. I don't know if it was just like trying to con people to like pay in it, but yeah, I thought the shit out of that. Yeah, a couple hundred dollars worth, we got done for them.

Speaker 3: 16:03

That's crazy. That is crazy. Yeah, they didn't charge anyone for any of that stuff here, which is amazing, because in the US they like to charge everybody for everything.

Speaker 2: 16:13

Actually, that's great Thing to bring up COVID generations, Gen Alpha yeah, covid babies is something that's popping up on TikTok for me as well. What are COVID babies? They call babies that were conceived during COVID, but they call them COVID babies because they're absolutely feral.

Speaker 3: 16:36

Isn't that? Most children, most children are absolutely feral.

Speaker 2: 16:39

Yeah, covid babies, feral babies. Apparently I like that name. They call them COVID 2.0 babies now because you've had different waves, but depending on which wave in COVID is, depending on what COVID baby you're at, I'm really enjoying that.

Speaker 3: 16:53

Some of those kids. Speaking of that, they had to do homeschooling for a little bit of time after schools were closed and my kids were home for about a year and a half and it's been amazing to see like the social, the lack of social um growth, you know, because like they weren't with peers and learning all that stuff. So I feel like there's gonna be a little generation. I'm gonna be a little bit behind other kids.

Speaker 2: 17:18

I still feel like gen alpha lacks social interaction with others. I don't like it could be like your kids. I don't know my kids. A lot of them struggle to do anything outside of school with their own friends. Like I bring it up to my kids and my wife all the time that I was constantly never home, like you know, I was out visiting friends or going out with friends. Let's go to the one stage.

Speaker 2: 17:47

For high school there was an arcade obviously not near me because we live rural, but near my friends where all my friends lived, and we would stay, no matter what. Nearly every other weekend we would go to this arcade and it cost $10. On a Sunday morning they did a. You went in before the shops all opened and you got two hours of games and then you got a movie ticket and a movie ticket, wow. So you go in there, do all these games, walk out from the arcade and across as a cinema, go into the cinema and we'd watch a movie. None of my kids want to. Really my oldest goes out after school occasionally a little bit, that's it. But like none of, none of, I don't. I don't notice that that drive to go out and do things with your friends. That's important.

Speaker 3: 18:32

The generation nowadays I mean, I don't think I saw my friends a ton before I got to high school. Once I got to high school, like you said, I I was a ghost. I was never around. I was always out the weekends, like I'd leave on a Friday and come home on a Sunday.

Speaker 3: 18:51

You know, and there was no. You know, there was no phone. I had no cell phone and I was just gone Like. I guess I'm going back to the generational shit now, but I don't mean to, but to give you an idea, like the differences my mom, there would be a commercial on tv at 10 pm and it said it's 10 pm. Do you know where your children are? That is how different it is back when I grew up versus now, where you know where they are. You're tracking them on a phone like you know everything. And we were just out in a field with strangers getting drunk. You know, it was just it's different I don't know.

Speaker 2: 19:29

I know my six-year-old doesn't have a boyfriend or hasn't had a boyfriend or anything like that, and I, you know, to be honest with my wife, I'm like geez, like where I was in that sense was way different by then yeah I mean like I by 16. I was already, you know, drinking jack daniels and coke out of cans, like at parties and stuff like that. You know I had started smoking.

Speaker 3: 19:52

I had done so much more in my life like doesn't, so you can tell me if you, if you, agree with this or not. Like I feel like, because of all the things that I did when I was growing up, that I get paranoid about my kids, but also there's nothing my kids can get away with, because I've done it all and I recognize anything they try to do.

Speaker 2: 20:16

Yes, yes, I get all that. I'm really on it. Even our 13-year-old or 12-year-old she's been going for walks with friends occasionally. After, like when they catch a bus, like all hop off the same bus, then we go for friends and that and she comes back and the best way to put it is she's like stoned. State of stoned is the best way to put it, but just looks it a little bit Glazed a little bit yeah.

Speaker 2: 20:43

Just not all there in the head very slow, and my wife and I like, is she on something like what's going on? Is it a vape thing? Like because it's different you know, what I mean it's.

Speaker 2: 20:53

It's it's not going down to the freaking freak with a bong or something after school. No, it's different. I don't see them smoking a sense. Vaping is, you know, probably doing as a vape or such such, yeah. And we're like she, what? This would just come out of nowhere because you know she's only just started high school, type of thing.

Speaker 2: 21:10

And then I'm like, well, it's, you know, we're bound to have a child, my, my, my bank, during with the statistical numbers of kids that we have, where we are bound to hit numbers, hit certain, certain children, no matter what, we're gonna have it. Um, but then we start scratching. It's like, well, but she doesn't have any money, like there's no, so that doesn't you know. I mean, like how, mindset's already straight to like what's going on here. This seems sus. I've seen this face before. I know what you know I'll include onto here. But then when you bring back the monetization and how does she, how to, how to sustain something like that or get some of that, it's like, oh no, she never has cash or money or a bank to transfer money.

Speaker 2: 21:53

So that doesn't make sense because that wouldn't happen without income right, we're confused maybe your friend has it right, maybe your friend at first, but it changes the friend so it can't be. That's that's thing. You know what I mean? It's different. It just keeps. We don't know, we're confused, it might just be a teenage thing and they're just like I don't know, going brain dead the older they get, for a bit. Yeah, yeah, that's it. When you're bringing up kids getting away with things like we're on edge.

Speaker 3: 22:31

We wave of things like I'm on, we're on edge, we're ready, we're ready to, we will pick this stuff. You know, a hundred miles out that it's gonna happen. Yeah, I had my, my older son, for the first time a few weeks ago says, hey, after school I'm gonna go to the library with some friends, and my initial instinct was uh-huh. So, yeah, I. So I'm like, yeah, I'll pick you up. And I didn't tell him when I was going to be there to pick him up, because I wanted to make sure that I could catch him doing what I assumed he was doing, you know, because it's like come on, man, come on, yeah, you know, some people try to give their kids a cautionary tales of shit that they did when they were younger to scare their kids away from it. I don't do that. I away from it. I don't do that. I don't want them to know that I've done everything. No, so they do it and think that I'll never catch on. No, I see everything.

Speaker 2: 23:10

I see everything. That's it. They don't need to know the extent of my journeys and the things that I've done in in this time already.

Speaker 3: 23:16

They don't need to know that, because then it takes away the surprise yeah, I don't even tell them when I know they're lying, because I want them to think that they're good at it and they can get away with it. You know, um, if I need to, I'll bring it up later, or I like to wait till it's an important one, like actually, no, you're, you're, that's not true. Yeah, you know so it's. You know it's I. They get away with. I got away with everything.

Speaker 2: 23:41

They don't get away with anything at times I want to say, yeah, you get away with things I don't know. There's I know there's a lot of things I've gotten away with over time, but at times it dawns on me that maybe, maybe I didn't get away with some things that I thought I did. You know, I mean because, like we're saying here, we let our children get away with some things. It's like, yeah, we know you've done it, but we'll let you go away. But did, did my parents do that to me? You know what I mean.

Speaker 3: 24:07

Yeah, um as you know, they say gen x is weird because they raised themselves. I did like, really, I got a job at 10 and after that point my mom was like, yeah, okay, you can buy your own school clothes and stuff now. Yeah, I'm like, oh, and you know she was never home. So, like I did, I literally raised myself. So no, I know she didn't catch anything, because you know there was nobody there to catch me, so I know I got away with stuff.

Speaker 2: 24:32

Yeah, you got away with too much shit, but I mean I I did a lot of stuff that I know you know, going into the sewers, for example, having a haven't yeah, we used to be able to get out of the sewer down the road from us. So, like my brother and I would just go investigate the sewers all the time is that where pennywise lived, and it, yeah, yeah, basically, especially after watching that movie, like kind of it sparked more of a fucking interest what you.

Speaker 3: 24:55

You saw the movie and then decided, yeah, let's now go into the sewer yeah, yeah, you know, thinking about it as an adult it's like's like stupid.

Speaker 2: 25:04

But this is primary school me as well, like I wasn't even in high school. Then we're talking like 10 years old, like early primary school. It's like we're going into the sewers, the age that Pennywise loves, got it.

Speaker 2: 25:16

Yeah, and then you know, you'd see like a giant hole in the middle of the sewer. It's like I don't know how deep that goes. Just be careful not to fall for it, keep going. You know, thinking about that now my own children it sounds like certain death. You know there's a good chance that one of the children wasn't coming home in that adventure. Didn't think about it all the time. But now as an adult I look at it and go, yeah, yeah, yeah, we did that a lot. We really did. Just push the boundaries of that.

Speaker 2: 25:44

I remember we used to take, you know, your body, like your body boards. You know your body boards and when the floods would happen, you could go into like the golf course behind a house and jump in it and you could ride that for a couple of miles because it overflowed. You just shoot down the creek for a few miles if you wanted to. That's cool, that's fun. Shoot down the creek for a few miles if you wanted to. Um, that's cool, that's fun. You know, playing in flood water um, during that time, you know kids died from playing in flood water and then they started doing things to stop people from doing it. You know what? I don't know what to say. Yeah, I still look back on and gone.

Speaker 3: 26:19

That's a great time like I had so much fun growing up and I can't believe I'm not dead, like I should have been dead a hundred times over. Um, and for me, one of my worst things was, uh, a bad, not a bad driver. I was a fast driver, like to the way we'd go out with friends and they drew straws to see who had to drive with me. You know, because it was, it was frightening. I was a scary driver. We would do, you know, drive side by side on a two a one lane road, uh, with our lights off at night, just because you know, I don't know what we were both.

Speaker 2: 26:57

We were both rural, you know, out of the city living. Did you ever do the drive at night where you just drive with your hazards on just to see what that was like? No, lights, you put your hazards on and then say, while you're driving and just flash a light to see what you're doing as you're going down the road, like yeah, that's um, I don't know why I did it, but I did it.

Speaker 3: 27:15

We had a trick where uh, again, rural right. So when you're approaching a stoplight, if you have it red, you turn off your headlights and then you can see if there's headlights from a car coming the other way, and if there aren't, you just drive through the red light. Now, these aren't ideas for anyone listening. These are stupid things that I did, and maybe bearded did growing up, so don't do them.

Speaker 2: 27:38

We're not we're not condoning this at all I remember the first day I got my license, like I had technically driven a few times around without my license because my parents would go out of town and I had a car and my learner's was actually how they used to do IDs. You know, they looked very similar but the ring that went around the name, like around your ID it blue was for learner, yellow was for license Okay, and it was only a fine print that you could actually tell. The yellow was for license Okay, and it was only a fine print that you could actually tell the difference. What was, if you know, um, on the card itself. So when I got my learners, they accidentally printed my learners on a license, like laminated on the license one, so it looked like a license. If I flashed it at someone it would look like a license. So every time my parents went out of town I would just go for a drive because technically, if a cop pulled me over I was just going to flash my license, right, yeah.

Speaker 2: 28:31

But when I legally got my license and I could drive, that afternoon I remember I went and picked up a friend and we went driving, obviously just went around and it had to test to see how fast I could get my car. Like that was instantly, instantly. You know rural roads, straight, long, straight ones. It's like how fast can we go? Okay, little you know. I think we got to like 150 miles or something. Like it was good Good times and you know we both trusted it. It was all trust there, like can we do it? Yeah, let's do it, let's see how fast we can go.

Speaker 3: 29:02

I do that in every car I get. I think the fastest I've gone is about 145. I love driving fast.

Speaker 2: 29:10

Yeah, speaking about driving, though, I took my oldest one driving the other day, you're still alive. They went better than expected, really. Yeah, um, because we drove, I drove out of the house and I took us a bit away from the house.

Speaker 2: 29:28

There's um an estate getting its civil works done, so a lot of streets, but no houses or all the houses getting built so there's no one around, because we went you know late in the afternoon type of thing, and I said, all right, we'll just drive around the block a few times, let her do that, basically rolling you know the you know 15 miles or something like that, like not fast at all. Yeah, she got pretty used to it and within half an hour I'm like, okay, I'm thinking we'll go home. And I just looked at him like you just want to drive home. He's like, oh, okay. So uh, we entered traffic on the way home peak hour traffic too. Um, but it wasn't far like it was only a stretch of maybe like a quarter or maybe half a mile of cars we just had to turn onto one road drive half a mile, turn off, like you could see.

Speaker 2: 30:24

See, when we turned onto the road where we had to turn off, it wasn't craziness as such, but did you have a heart attack at first? I did. There's a couple times I well, I, you know you're going into the corner a little bit too fast, even at, you know, 15, 20 miles an hour. It's nice and slow. I'm like, no, you're kind of going a bit too fast because you'd get the car that'd start understeering and you know we're going out wider and wider and wider, yeah, or like we're going downhill. I'm like start braking, start braking, start braking type of thing, start breaking, start breaking type of thing. But you know, didn't run into anything, I'm alive. Um, he's alive. I did.

Speaker 2: 31:00

I did learn that I've always said she's going to test the boundary when it comes, like she's the one I'm most scared of when it comes to teaching things, because she's the one that knows it all. And she was great, she actually listened to the whole thing. Um, I thought I was gonna have to do a talk about hey, like you know, they're wearing something that costs a lot of money that can kill you. So, like it is time to actually take things serious. But I didn't um, I didn't lose my shit either. I I was very patient, you know, learning the fact that I could be quite patient with something, yeah, different, that's like the whole thing was quite quite good, probably do it again this afternoon.

Speaker 3: 31:33

I I actually. So I started to learn when I was 13. And I actually intend on teaching my older son when he turns 13 later this year, because I think it's good to have be practiced, you know. So, like I'll do what my mom did and brought me to an empty park a lot and get used to it, and once I got good at that, then she brought me on like a back road somewhere Because, you know again, we live in the middle of nowhere. And then, you know, by the time I was 16, like I could, I passed the test, like the two days after I turned 16 here, you can't.

Speaker 2: 32:08

You have to have. You have to go to a learners. No, you have to. Huh, yeah, so to get uh, learners, you have to be 16 to get it. So you can't get your driver's license until you're 17 here, yeah, but to get your learners and it's changed so I could get this wrong, in case someone in Australia does get this. She had to do an online test and it had like lots of videos of things going on and who do you give way to, and stuff like that, which I thought was kind of cool. So she had to do the online test and pass. I think she could only afford to get three out of the 30 wrong.

Speaker 2: 32:45

Then, once she had that, we could go down to the Department of Transport and get her license done. Once she's got her license, she then has another app that she has to put on her phone and then she can learn to drive in a car with someone who has an open license, like myself. For her to get her full license and to get her license at 17,. Between now and then, she has to do a thousand hours of driving with someone. Oh yeah, so many of them at night as well. So they make you. You know so many have to. I think it's like 15 hours have to be at night or 10 hours have to be at night, the rest have to be whenever. Um it gps logs them, so when she clicks start in the app it'll start. You know she has to put down the car and the k's and that, so you know we're registering what was done at gps. You know, like google maps just follows around where she was driving and that um, she has to do another test online, which is like a hazard test after six months from now.

Speaker 2: 33:53

Like there's so many things the kids have to do, so they're well prepared when they go for yeah, like for myself it was 20 questions. Yeah, for myself it was 20 questions at 16 or 16 and a half, I don't know what it was one of those two. And then at 17 you could go for your license. You didn't have to do anything. There was nothing you needed to do in between getting your learners and your license, as you couldn't drive. If you did want to drive, you had to drive with someone who had a full license. But other than that, I didn't have to do so many lessons, I didn't have to do so many questions or whatever it was. Just wait until I was 17 and then drive for a test. Um, yeah, that's, it's a, it's it's a lot.

Speaker 3: 34:34

It was easier for me, like I turned 16, I got a permit and I only had to do like a couple hundred hours and I did that within a month or so and then I scheduled my test for December 20. Question tasks you can get four wrong and then you have a 15 minute. You know driving test with an instructor or not. The best person is minute. You know driving test with an instructor or not?

Speaker 2: 35:01

uh, the best transport, yeah, and then, uh, that was it that that was one of the 20, 20 questions to get my learners and then do what you want until you're eligible to get a license and then sit a half an hour driving test with someone at the transport company, and that was it I mean in in in all fairness.

Speaker 3: 35:14

I mean, in the time since I've had my license I have been in a good half dozen accidents and got a good 20 some odd tickets.

Speaker 2: 35:21

But you know, that's just the way I drive About a lot of tickets, no accidents. I only won, actually, but that wasn't my fault. Someone actually reversed Police officer reversed out of the driveway of their house without looking and took me out as I was driving past.

Speaker 3: 35:38

I got a ticket for not trying, not trying accidentally running a police officer off the road. It was, it was an accident, all right. See, what happened is I'm driving down the road and I got to put a new CD in. So I look down and I got to put a CD and I look up, I'm on the other side of the road and there was a cop coming and he had to veer off the road into the ditch and I was like, oh crap, let me get out of here. So I gunned it and then I saw I knew a road was coming up to kind of went down, so I got down there and I stopped and then he flew past the road. I hear, like I got down there and I stopped and then he flew past the road. I hear brakes lock up and he, he saw me at the end. He, he was not happy, not not happy at all.

Speaker 2: 36:25

So if my boy's listening to this, I'm lying and don't do that one of the point of the story is everyone survived and everyone was safe. Yes, nobody died because you're a tougher generation.

Speaker 3: 36:37

That's right. We drink fucking hose water and, like we've said on many episodes, there were also no participation trophies when we grew up.

Speaker 2: 36:46

But we'll say we participated in this episode, so thanks for joining us. Yes, thank you very much.

Speaker 1: 36:52

You've been listening to Dad Mode. Our passion is navigating this wild journey of parenthood and modern life, from balancing family time to managing your career and still squeezing in some gaming and content creation. And no matter what the women say, they will never be able to pry the controller out of our cold dead hands. Anyway, we hope you enjoyed the show. If you did, find us on Twitter, tiktok and YouTube at DadModePodcast and we can be found on every podcast site at DadModePodcast. Y'all be cool. See you next time.