EP. 360 — School Bus Mafia (Live from Phoenix)

Chris [00:00:07] Hello, Phoenix. It’s Beautiful Anonymous. One hour. One phone call. No names. No holds barred. Hi, everybody. Chris Gethard here. Welcome to another episode of Beautiful Anonymous. Thanks to everybody who enjoyed last week’s episode. Thanks to everybody who’s been buying tickets for both my live taping of my new special in New York City. That’s March 31st, April 1st, April 2nd. Tickets for those at ChrisGeth.com. We’ve also of course got the Beautiful Cononymous coming May 4th through seventh in Brooklyn, New York. It’s going to be the ultimate celebration of being a Beautiful Anonymous fan, and I hope you’ll get tickets at BeautifulCononymous.com. And I just also want to say, if you can only make one show, make it the Waffle Brunch on Sunday. That is dedicated to Holly, who was the child that we talked about in the episode Love is Everywhere, which is a lot of people’s favorite episode of the show. And the caller from Love is Everywhere, Holly’s mom, will be there along with another whole bunch of her family members, and all the proceeds from that show are going to go towards the Make-A-Wish chapter in Oregon that helped their family during their dark days. Again, BeautifulCononymous.com. I’m very excited for you to hear this one. This is uh this one we recorded this a while ago. This caller, first of all, we got a lot of Jersey connections. So you will hear us say the words Johnny A’s Hitching Post. I’m not necessarily proud that I know where that establishment is and what it is, but hey, I’m a Jersey guy. I’ve been around. And. Yeah. Our caller talks about having a past… Where he used to do something very different. Used to live a different lifestyle. He used to walk on the edge and now is trying to give back and trying to change those ways. We get pretty philosophical about that, about teachers in general, and a lot of Jersey specifics along the way. There’s just a lot going on in this one. It was live out in Phoenix. It was a great show and I’m excited for you to finally hear it. 

Voicemail Robot [00:02:33] Thank you for calling Beautiful Anonymous. A beeping noise will indicate when you are on the show with the host. 

Chris [00:02:41] Hello! 

Caller [00:02:43] Oh, shit. Chris? 

Chris [00:02:47] What’s up? 

Caller [00:02:49] Dude, I was not nervous for a single second when I was on hold because I knew you were going to do that thing about, if this goes wrong, it’s your fault, not mine, until you told your audience that your last caller studied birds fucking in Antarctica. 

Chris [00:03:07] I hope it. 

Caller [00:03:08] And I’ve been a mess every second since then. 

Chris [00:03:11] I hope. I hope you’re about to be like, because that’s what I do too. So now what are we going to talk about? 

Caller [00:03:18] No, no such luck, Chris. I’m sorry. 

Chris [00:03:20] Hey, I-. 

Caller [00:03:21] How are you doing, man? 

Chris [00:03:22] How am I doing? Thanks for asking. I’m doing pretty good. I’ve been running all over the western half of these United States, putting on shows, so I’m a little I’m a little tired, but I feel very lucky and psyched that I get to do this. So that’s how I’m doing. How are you doing? 

Caller [00:03:36] That’s awesome. I’m all right, man. It’s been a long day, long, cold day out here in Jersey. I was down in Philadelphia for a soccer match. My team lost. I was not very happy about that. And now this call is either going to make my day a lot better or a lot worse. I’m not sure which way it’s going to go yet. 

Chris [00:03:57] Well, I got two questions. One, were you watching a soccer match or playing in a soccer match? 

Caller [00:04:01] Oh, I was watching. I was watching a soccer match. I have no athletic ability at all. 

Chris [00:04:07] Okay. And then I do have to ask obligatory if you’re from New Jersey, I got to ask what part you from? 

Caller [00:04:13] I am North Jersey. 

Chris [00:04:16] From North. 

Caller [00:04:17] Passaic County. 

Chris [00:04:17] Passaic County. All right. Going all the way down to Philly to watch soccer. That’s- Passaic County. Love it. Love it. Home of the Texas wiener. Very specific type of hot dog. Only sold in Passaic County, New Jersey, and some overflow areas. But born in Passaic County, New Jersey. Home of the Great Falls, one of the great hidden gems of New Jersey. I could go on and on, but the bottom line is I’m in Phoenix, Arizona, and they don’t give a shit. 

Audience member [00:04:45] Minimal shits. 

Chris [00:04:47] Minimal shits. One person here says I give a minimal shit. So caller. 

Caller [00:04:51] That’s better than none. What’s up?

Chris [00:04:52] Yeah. So both North Jersey guys, we’re going to get along great. What do you want to uh? What should we talk about tonight? 

Caller [00:04:59] I’ve basically had a couple of different lives here in New Jersey, so we could talk about my old life, we could talk about my new life. I could talk about that weird, scary part in the middle. Whatever. Whatever works for you, man. 

Chris [00:05:11] All right, Let’s start with the old life. What’s the old life all about? 

Caller [00:05:14] All right, so you and I were probably at Rutgers right around the same time. 

Chris [00:05:21] Oh, wow. Okay. 

Caller [00:05:23] So so I graduated from Rutgers. And like many people that graduate from Rutgers, I had no idea what the hell to do next. 

Chris [00:05:33] Yeah, you and me both. 

Caller [00:05:35] So. So, you know, my family was starting kind of a smallish business, and I decided I would go into that, and I ended up running a school bus company for about 15 years, which is about exactly as much fun as it sounds like. 

Chris [00:05:59] It sounds like so much logistics. 

Caller [00:06:02] Yeah, well, it’s it’s basically you do something like this impossibly difficult thing every morning, then you undo it every afternoon. And then you drink from that point until you have to do it again the next morning. 

Chris [00:06:15] And you’re responsible for hundreds of theoretical children’s wellbeing. Like children you don’t know, but they are in your hands ultimately. 

Caller [00:06:26] Thousands. 

Chris [00:06:27] Thousands? You were-. 

Caller [00:06:27] Thousands every single day. 

Chris [00:06:28] Every single day you’re trans- and you’re like hiring the drivers that are getting them there and praying that these people aren’t like aren’t doing anything crazy and and hoping everything goes okay and praying there’s no car accidents along the way every day. 

Caller [00:06:43] Yeah, and there always are. So yeah. And you know, it wasn’t really a fulfilling thing obviously. You know, you don’t get a lot of joy out of simple logistics like that. So I kind of tried to to fill my time, the limited free time that I had, with, with other things. Some good, not some not so good, and just kind of move through my days of I don’t want to say depression, that wouldn’t be fair to people who really struggle with depression, but through more than a few black dog days, I guess I would say, you know? 

Chris [00:07:27] All right. And when you say you filled your life with some good things and some not good things, can I ask what that means? 

Caller [00:07:33] Yeah, sure, Sure. So I. I volunteered a lot. I volunteer at a church. I worked with youth for a very long time. That was probably a good thing. And I spend most of my night drinking in Go-Go bars. That was probably the bad thing. 

Chris [00:07:51] Wow. All right. All right. So you’re like… Every and then every morning you wake up, and you’re like, Let’s get these kids to school. 

Caller [00:08:02] Let’s get these fucking kids to school. Which, by the way, I when I left the school bus company, I have now become a schoolteacher. So when I wake up every morning, my thought is exactly the same, which is, Let’s get these fucking kids to school. 

Chris [00:08:14] Yeah. Uh huh. And that’s- but so I like- so you’re waking up early. All the bus logistics go down, you unwrap all the work in the afternoon, and then you go and you, like, volunteer at a church. And maybe in the winter, you’re like, supplying people with food and coats and all sorts of nice stuff. The types of things you do via church fundraisers. And then you’re like, All right, and now, well, let’s see if you’re in- but I also know where you’re from. So I’m sitting here going, Ah, let’s go out to that bike- right where Route 80 and Cliffton meet Patterson and go hit up Johnny A’s Hitching Post. Go hit up Johnny A’s Hitching Post.  

Caller [00:08:49] That’s exactly it, Chris! That’s exactly it. I’m so glad you’re up- 

Chris [00:08:51] You’re down at the Post? 

Caller [00:08:53] Oh I lived in the post, Chris. I lived in the post. 

Chris [00:08:57] So because I have, I’ve full disclosure, I have also been to the post. I can, I can tell the, the people here assembled in Phoenix- and and if anybody hears- I mean the type- okay I’m about to- I do not want to insult or disparaging a North Jersey go go bar because the people who run these places are not people you want to mess with ever. I will say it’s not it’s not… I wouldn’t say that this is like a place where you’re going to see like a bachelor party. This is hard drinking people who are who are living on the fringe, who are. 

Caller [00:09:36] Yeah. 

Chris [00:09:36] Who are looking for- you can find a lot of stuff at Johnny A’s Hitching Post. That is. Let me say that. You can find a lot of stuff that Johnny A’s Hitching post. 

Caller [00:09:46] But for the sake of both my my wife and anyone that knows me, if they hear this, I was a very well behaved young man even when I was at Johnny A’s Hitching Post. Like I was the most awkward person there on any given day, which which should also tell you a lot about me. But yeah, I just. I just needed a place to go to, like, drink and not have to talk to anyone unless I wanted to. 

Chris [00:10:12] Right, Right. I wonder how many times, how many times can you and I say the phrase Johnny A’s Hitchin Post in one episode? 

Caller [00:10:20] At least at least five more. At least five more, I would think. 

Chris [00:10:25] That those are some dark days. But here’s here’s another thing I know that we iden- well because you went to Rutgers to around the same time I did. And look, man, I think I’ve stopped blaming that school for my problems. Like I was going to have problems anywhere I went. But that like because, look, everybody knows people in Arizona party and the schools here are legendary party schools. Like known as the country’s like the party schools. It’s like a national cliche to say you go to Arizona if you want to party. But New Brunswick, New Jersey, like for people here who party in a way where it seems to be like fun, our area of New Brunswick, New Jersey, I don’t know what the town’s like now exactly, it was not a fun school. It was like a drink of 40 and chase it with Mad Dog. 

Caller [00:11:11] Yeah. 

Chris [00:11:12] It was like it was a self- it was a place with a lot of like, self hate and self-destruction back then. I don’t know if that was your experience as well. 

Caller [00:11:23] Oh no, 100%, Chris. So I was, I was the sober guy through college. I didn’t drink. I don’t want to drink until I was done. So the first night that I ever drank or got drunk, I should say, sorry. The first night I did Rutgers style drinking was the night before my last final in college, and I went to a place called Stuff Your Face. 

Chris [00:11:46] I’ve been there so many times! Stuff Your Face. You were like, How? How do we not, like, know each other, man? They got the fucking they- 

Caller [00:11:55] You know, Chris- 

Chris [00:11:56] They serve that Thanksgiving sandwich year round. You get the sandwich with the turkey and the cranberry sauce and the potatoes on the sandwich. They serve it year round! Stuff Your Face!

Caller [00:12:04] Well, get it- they should just call that the self-loathing special, you know? It’s that’s exactly what it is. But I got so drunk that first time I got drunk at Stuff Your Face, and then I had to walk from Stuff Your Face up to the birch woods, which again, will be nothing to your audience, but you might be familiar with. And I’m a very large gentleman, and at one point I needed to, like, lean on something to support me. And I just I like I took down the entire railing of a porch on one of those shitty rental houses in New Brunswick. Uh yeah so. 

Chris [00:12:39] So the whole crowd laughed. And I was about to say, like, what happened? Did you take down a porch? Like, that’s how not shocking that was in New Brunswick at that time. Because Stuff Your Face used to sell drinks in actual full sized goldfish bowls, right? Were you down there drinking them goldfish bowls? 

Caller [00:12:57] I was drinking large things just full of straight bourbon. That was always my go to. 

Chris [00:13:02] First night out of the gate, get fucked up on bourbon, knocked out someone’s porch, then wake up early to take a final. Welcome to New Jersey. 

Caller [00:13:10]  It was natural liberal arts majors, so I could have still been drunk and I would have been fine. 

Chris [00:13:18] Yeah. Yeah, I’m with you. I am with you. Me and you. Cut from the same cloth. We got some comments coming in about this section of your life. Here’s a good question. Did you drive the school bus? We have multiple people asking if you ever got to drive a school bus. Let’s pause right there. That’s the hard hitting question. I would drive a school bus. I bet I could drive a school bus. I drive the ambulance. I bet I could pull it off. I’ve driven an RV before. Anyway, I bet a lot of us have been wondering. We’ll get the answer to that hard hitting question and so many more when we get back. Thanks to all of our advertisers who help us bring the show to the world. Let’s get back to the phone call. Did you drive the school bus? We have multiple people asking if you ever got to drive a school bus. It seems that this is something of a fantasy amongst our crowd tonight. 

Caller [00:14:15] Yeah. Yeah. So I definitely I definitely did drive the school busses. Just again, so we’re clear, I did not ever drive the school busses after drinking. I’ve only- that that night at Stuff Your Face, that was my big drunk night for my life. The rest of the drinking was like smaller scale. But yes, I actually did drive the school busses entirely too frequently. 

Chris [00:14:37] And Damian seems to know a lot about school busses. Damian says, What make of school busses did he drive? Thomas? Bluebird? Conventional or transit? Give up the details. I don’t know what any of that means.

Caller [00:14:48] So I had I had all of those. 

Chris [00:14:51] You had all of those. You’re telling me you’ve driven you’ve driven a conventional bluebird. 

Caller [00:14:56] I absolutely have. 

Chris [00:14:57] Goddamn. Okay. I’m convinced. Your credibility is unquestionable when it comes to school busses. 

Caller [00:15:03] Excellent. Excellent. Appreciate that. 

Chris [00:15:05] Were you were you were you driving the school busses like moving them around the yard or did you ever do runs like dropping kids off at school? 

Caller [00:15:12] Oh, no, no. I did. I did. I did runs all over the place. I’ve been you know, when you’re in Jersey, you really only cover North Jersey and maybe the New York City. But yeah, I’ve been all over the place. 

Chris [00:15:22] Those, dude, those school bus trips, living in North Jersey means that we used to get to take used to take field trips to New York City. And you think back to those bus drivers having a bus full of fourth graders in Times Square in 19- I remember they took us to see- dude, when I was in fifth grade, so that would have been, what, like 1990? 89 maybe? They took us to Manhattan to see the musical Cats. Fourth- fifth graders. That show makes no sense to adults. That’s an indecipherable experience. People crawling- we were at the matinee and people crawling around with like cat outfits on and light up glasses, singing songs. But more importantly, driving into Times Square because you come out by Port Authority, you go through that Lincoln Tunnel driving into the middle of Manhattan at ten years old in 1990, and you look into Times Square and be like, there’s people fucking standing around in lingerie. There’s people fighting. There’s like people selling like, like bootleg merchandise everywhere. That was eye opening. I can’t imagine being a bus driver and having to do that. 

Caller [00:16:29] Yeah, it’s the entire thing’s is kind of a nightmare, you know? It’s that that tension of being completely and solely responsible for the lives of 54 children that are sitting directly behind you and have no idea how precarious that situation is. Yeah, that’ll give you anxiety. 

Chris [00:16:49] When I was growing up in West West Orange, you just brought back a memory that was- I was in first grade, the bus, it was kindergarten through sixth graders at the time, and a bus driver got fired because a bunch of the older kids were being really bad and he flipped out and started yelling, I’ll kill you! I’ll I’ll crash this bus into a fucking tree right now! I will crash this bus into a fuckin- He lost his mind. We broke him. So how often does that happen? 

Caller [00:17:14] Yeah, that happens. That that happens a lot. That happens a lot. I literally had a bus driver drop kids in New York City, drive the bus to Harlem, park the bus, get off and disappear. And we had to send a different bus to get the kids. And then I had to go find the bus in Harlem. So it’s the kind of thing that does happen. 

Chris [00:17:35] And you just get a call that’s like, Hey, the driver quit, he ditched the bus, go find it, and then get to the Natural History Museum and pick up the kids before they realize how fucked up this is? 

Caller [00:17:47] That’s exactly that is exactly what happened. And that is also one of the reasons that I got, you know, sometimes the problems with a family businesses is not the business. So there were definitely out of family problems there, too, that made me want to get away from it. But the other thing was being on call 24 hours a day basically for something that openly doesn’t matter, that got to be too much for me. Like if they were calling me in the middle of the night for something that like was worthwhile and helped somebody, that would be one thing. Just because the bus was late or missing or, you know, fucking whatever, that wasn’t happening anymore. 

Chris [00:18:25] I also want you to know that we’ve got tweets coming in from multiple people complimenting your voice. You’ve got a great voice. You hear this a lot? 

Caller [00:18:34] So WRSU Rutgers. That was my thing when I was in college. 

Chris [00:18:38] WRSU, Rutgers Radio 89.7, baby!

Caller [00:18:42] Yeah, I was on that all the time, so thank you. 

Chris [00:18:46] Man. That’s classic Gethard stuff, man. I got to come all the way to the desert of Phoenix, Arizona, to meet a friend in New Jersey. That’s the story in my life. You and me would get along. All right. So sounds like that was a rough stretch of life. You’re drinking, you’re hanging out in go go bars. You start to realize, hey, I can’t I can’t live like this too much longer. You got the the oh- Natasha wants to know, did you ever fight a kid on the bus? 

Caller [00:19:17] So one time, one time they cuz you know, you’re running the bus company, you know, you have somebody quit, you- that becomes your job in that moment, whether it’s bus driver, bus aid mechanic, guy who cleans up the vomit, whatever it is, that becomes your job when somebody walks out the door. So I had a bus aide quit because the kids were so bad and, you know, they’re like ten year olds so you’re like, what’s going to happen? What could possibly happen with ten ten year olds on a bus for 20 minutes that would make somebody quit? And I’m on the bus and this kid is laughing and I turn around, he’s playing with the seatbelt. I’m like, dude, buckle your belt, buckle your belt. And I turn back and I just hear clunk. The kid pulled the metal part of the belt all the way down to the end, swung it over his head and smashed another kid’s head with it to the point where there was blood shooting out of this kid’s head. And we drove the rest of the way to the school with me holding the one 10 year old above my head and holding the other ten year old down to the seat so they couldn’t kill each other. So when it gets crazy, it gets it’s you know, it gets crazy quick in ways you wouldn’t necessarily expect for something that sounds so simple. 

Chris [00:20:27] But you weren’t also driving the bus were you? 

Caller [00:20:31] No, no, no. I was the I was the attendant that day. Thank God. 

Chris [00:20:34] I’ll get you’re the bus aide back then. I was about to say!

Caller [00:20:35] Like I said, yeah, like I said, you become whatever the person who just quit was. 

Chris [00:20:43] Yeah, that’s a crazy life. One more question and then I want to hear about the other phase of your life. Another Lost Boy said something that I think is interesting. When you go on a trip to the zoo or wherever, do you get a ticket or do you just chill in the parking lot? 

Caller [00:20:59] So so that was always the craziest thing. It depended on it depended on what school you were working with. So there were schools that would, you know, you’d roll up to pick them up, get where you were going, and they’d be like, Oh, we have a ticket for you, and we have a meal voucher for you. And you know, we got the kids to each put in a dollar and he here’s a tip for you. And there were other schools that you’d get there and they’d be like, We don’t want to see you for 6 hours. Go do whatever the fuck you want. So it was it was kind of hit and miss. I never got to do anything really cool. I got to watch a lot of, like, high school field hockey matches and things like that. So nothing nothing fantastic. 

Chris [00:21:38] And then Morgan wants- I feel like this is a North Jersey prejudice question, but then I also feel like I’m like, Yeah, I actually think it is a valid question. Is there a school bus mafia? 

Caller [00:21:51] So, yes and no. It’s the same mafia as everybody else. 

Chris [00:21:59] So it’s not a school bus specific mafia. It’s just the mafia is involved. 

Caller [00:22:03] Yeah, it’s it’s the same. It’s the same guys, because it’s all bid work. So it’s the same guys that do the contract. By the way, there’s no way that anyone listening to this that knew me wouldn’t know who this was already. But I’m really hoping that if any of the Mafia is listening to this, that they don’t. Yeah, it’s the same guys that do the trucking. 

Chris [00:22:22] You and I both grew up in North Jersey. Like, it’s like garbage routes. You all just assume that, like, a lot of the mafia backed companies. And a lot of the mafia- 

Caller [00:22:29] Not all of them. A lot of them. 

Chris [00:22:30] My understanding, too, is like a lot of them have gone legit and that like garbage gets picked up at a really incredibly reasonable rate in my town. Like Mafia is kind of rad. Like, I like the Mafia. I don’t like everything about them. 

Caller [00:22:44] Yeah corruption works if it’s efficient. 

Chris [00:22:46] Yeah. Like I know I’m here in North Jersey and people are probably like, you can’t really feel this way, but I’m like, listen, I don’t like that they kill people and then there’s all this graft and corruption. But like, if they pick your kids up from school and it keeps your taxes lower because the town has to put in a lower cost bid, like, alight, fuck, yeah. Mafia. Cool. That’s kind of I feel like that’s kind of the North Jersey attitude. 

Caller [00:23:11] Yeah. It’s like, salud. Go for it, you know? 

Chris [00:23:14] So your family had one bid. And there’s other companies that maybe have families with a distinctly Italian last names and they’re putting in their bids and that’s everybody see how it goes. 

Caller [00:23:25] Yeah, yeah, that’s it. And it works out sometimes. So. 

Chris [00:23:28] So you hit this point where you go I can’t-

Caller [00:23:31] Any other questions about school busses or? 

Chris [00:23:32] No, I feel like we got to go. This one’s flying by. We only have thirty- we’ve already talked for 20 minutes. So we could talk about school busses forever, and we’ll come back to it if you want to. But I hear the make up of your life. So you’re working this family business 15 years. It’s kind of insane. It’s all logistics and then dealing with problems and and you’re drinking at night and you’re trying to be a good person, but then you’re sitting around in go-go bars. You go, I gotta- something’s got to change. So was there a breaking point? What was the breaking point? 

Caller [00:24:02] Absolutely. And you just you just nailed it because, like you said, a phrase that every time I listen to your show and I’m like, you know, my story’s not special. My story’s not different, but my struggle is the cause constantly trying to be a good person or constantly trying to be a better person. And at the end of every day going, fuck, I’m not. You know? So I just kind of hit a point where I wanted things in life that every time I turned around were being taken away, like every opportunity that I had to. So I got married and we wanted to to get a new house and we wanted to start talking about kids. And, you know, when you start to back, when you start to back off of like working 24 hours a day, seven days a week, and there are other people who are making large amounts of money off of that, they get a little antsy and they get a little mean. And then they get a little cruel. And I just kind of hit the point where my family, who was profiting off of what I was doing but not really helping, and I told them I couldn’t do it. And it got really, really ugly really, really quick. 

Chris [00:25:27] I bet. 

Caller [00:25:28] You know, when I left, you know, I decided I was leaving. I told them I was leaving. And we came to an agreement, and then they went back on it. And then we came to another agreement. And then they went back on it. And then we came to another agreement and they went back on it. And that went on for a little while. And things kind of hit a very unpleasant head. And, you know, I was there one day and I was gone the next. So I found myself kind of sitting there at like 35, 36, you know, not not going to fall back on my journalism degree from SCILLS or my my WRSU experience. 

Chris [00:26:13] The School of Communication, Information and Library Science, everybody. SCILLS, the School of Communications Information, anS Library science. I took a couple classes there. 

Caller [00:26:22] I was I was a SCILLS kid for a very long time. You know, it’s not something you go back in after being 15 years out of it. It’s a totally different thing. And the whole time that I was working at the bus company- and this is, this is going to sound really pathetic- and hanging out the go-go bars, like I was I was a talker at the go-go bars. 

Chris [00:26:43] And which go-go bar was that again? 

Caller [00:26:47] Well, I believe it was Sir Johnny A’s Hitching Post. 

Chris [00:26:52] Thanks so much. Thank you so much for saying it. Yeah. 

Caller [00:26:57] So I used to always I used to always talk about how much I loved writing and how I would love to share my love of reading and writing with people. So when I got when I left the bus company, I had about… Three months where I didn’t leave the house for the most part. It was just a very long stretch of sitting home and I wasn’t like sitting home in the dark, being depressed the whole time. A lot of it was that. But a lot of it was like trying to figure out how I can make the next thing happen. And I got my substitute teaching license and I got into a graduate program and I spent a year teaching for free in Paterson, New Jersey, to get my master’s degree. And then I just rolled right out and got a job teaching in Newark, New Jersey. So that was kind of. 

Chris [00:27:55] Let me pause there just to make sure anybody listening and that the crowd here in Phoenix knows like um Paterson and Newark are notoriously- New Jersey has a lot of cities that I think got really screwed over time and that really feel abandoned in ways that are not cool and not fair. And Paterson and Newark, I think are two A-1 examples of that. So their public school systems I think are known to to have had to fight some real uphill battles. So you were really you were in you were like in it. If those are the schools- are you assigned there or did you say, put me in Paterson, put me in Newark? I’m that’s where I can do the most good. 

Caller [00:28:40] So, I mean, I kind of had the advantage of knowing all of these schools and knowing all of these principals and administrators and business administrators from my, you know, the old life. And, you know, Paterson is very close to where I live. And I was familiar enough with the school. And, you know, it’s it’s everybody in graduate school for teaching has like the Freedom Riders Dangerous Minds type mindset where they’re going to go in and they’re going to save a class and they’re going to save a kid. And I was just like, not like that. I was like, Put me in one of those schools because if I fuck up, how bad would it be? You know? I had no idea if I was going to be good at this or not. I still don’t know if I’m good at this or not. But yeah, I was I was totally okay with going to Patterson. And then when I started applying, Newark was the first place that offered me a job. And I was not going to- I could have sat around and waited and been like, No, I don’t want to work in a school like that. No, man. First place that offered me a job that I had a good feeling about, I jumped on. 

Chris [00:29:51] And are you still teaching in Newark? 

Caller [00:29:53] I am absolutely- I am teaching in the same classroom, in the same school, from my very first day. I had applied at another school in Newark with a couple of friends of mine and they got their jobs. One quit before Halloween, one quit before Thanksgiving, and I am still in the same room that I was in five years ago when I started. 

Chris [00:30:13] They quit before Halloween and Thanksgiving the first year?

Caller [00:30:16] Yeah, the first year. It’s tough. The first year tough. 

Chris [00:30:19] I bet. I bet.

Caller [00:30:20] You know, I you know, you just don’t know what to expect. You don’t know what to do. You don’t know- since everything- and I love the admins I work for, but all admins in those schools kind of are trained to tell you everything you’re doing is wrong and not good enough. And if you believe that right away, you start to lose morale real quick. And if things are rough and the pay is shitty, you know, it’s the triangle, right? So the triangle, in my opinion, is if if they treat you poorly, monopolize all your time, and pay you like shit. If you love your job, they can do two of those three things and you’ll probably stay. If they do all three of those things, they lose people. So they lose a lot of people in their first couple of months. 

Chris [00:31:04] I also know that I had a friend who got into tea- similar like had said, I want to rebuild my life and got into teaching. I remember her telling me so much the first year was her figuring out that the kids are testing you at all times and you got to learn. You got to learn how to shut that down. And that’s a really hard thing I have to imagine in and Patterson and Newark, like, I don’t think I could ever teach in that environment just because they’d look at my last name and it would just be, Hey, hey, excuse me,  Mr. Get Hard? And it would just be endless. And what am I going to do? It’s going to break me at some point. 

Caller [00:31:37] Let me tell you, I am a six foot three, 400 pound bald white man. 

Chris [00:31:43] Yeah. 

Caller [00:31:45] And I walked into those schools on the first day, and the minute I walked in, I knew it couldn’t be me versus the kids. I couldn’t be trying to not let them break me. Fuck it. Let them break me. Right? I don’t have to be there. They do. So the first day I went in and I treated them like people and not like kids, like adults, like I treat everybody, and I have not had a problem since. Like, there are kids literally texting me right now at whatever time it is on a Saturday night. It never stops, but it never stops in what feels like a good and productive way. So I never had the same problem as as I feel like a lot of my colleagues in grad school did, just because I approached it in a completely different way. You know, you just try to be better for the kids every day. And while you’re trying to be better, you know you’re failing them to a certain degree still. So you just continue to try to do better. You know, and that’s that’s where I’m at. 

Chris [00:32:53] I tell you what. And I’m just going to- and look, like, part of being from North Jersey and talking to someone else from North Jersey is like, it would be- I’m not- no one is bullshitting each other. So I will just say, like you’ve told me that you’ve had a long struggle trying to be a good person. And I can say that I don’t know about the rest of your life, but to go into public schools in places like Paterson and Newark and treat those kids like equals and peers on some level and to click with them and stay in there for five years, like, that is the behavior of a good person. So good on you. Well done. Well done. 

Caller [00:33:29] You know, but thank you. Thank you. Thank you. But you know, Chris, that’s that’s actually- we’re gonna run out of time, I’m sure, before we get to this. That’s really kind of that nagging question that I’ve always had is, am I doing these things because it feels like what a good person would do? You know, like, am I am I doing these things because being the one who answers the kids when they call you with a problem in the middle of the night, or giving the kid his ninth, tenth, twelfth, fifteenth chance to get something done, like, do I do those things because that’s what I think a good person should do? And I think by doing those, it will it will get me over to that side of things? Or have I just actually managed to pull off becoming a good person? And I swear to God, dude, I lose sleep over that at night. And yeah, no, I just I don’t know. I don’t know how to know either. 

Chris [00:34:23] Let’s pause. Now we’re getting into the real philosophical side of life, right? What’s it mean to be a good person? Is being- is a good person- is that- is being good, is that a thing you do or thing you are? We’ll hear more about it right after this. That’s it everybody. That’s all the ads. Now we’re just going to finish out the phone call. Let’s do it. 

Caller [00:34:51] Yeah. No, I just. I don’t know. I don’t know how to know either. 

Chris [00:34:55] Well, it’s you were sitting here asking basically, like, fundamentally is good a thing you do or as good a thing you are? And that kind of feels to me like it’s something a philosopher should answer. And at the end of the day, me and you got degrees from Rutgers. So I don’t know that we’re qualified to answer life’s deep questions like that, man. We went to like a mid-tier state school before, before all the football money came in in 2006. 

Caller [00:35:20] Uh, I tell the kids that all the time when they ask me, they’re like (BLEEP). Sorry- 

Chris [00:35:26] It’s just me and a couple hundred people in Phoenix know exactly who you are. 

Caller [00:35:30] Oh, damn. I’ll never be in Phoenix. It’s too hot for me. So they ask me all the time, like they’ll come to me. They’ll ask me questions that, you know, I just try to work through with them. I don’t I can’t give them the answer. And like, sometimes they stop, like, Are you qualified to do this? Like, dude, I’m barely qualified to be an English teacher. Like, I’m only here because other people quit and I don’t ever quit. So it’s it’s it’s got nothing to do with Rutgers, man. There there are people who went to much better schools than Rutgers that I work with that are fucking idiots. And and I’m a lot of things, but I don’t think I’m a fucking idiot most of the time. 

Chris [00:36:09] And let me say this about Neward, too. And I feel like I mean, Patterson, if anybody here has seen the movie Lean On Me about Joe Clark, that was based on a real guy who was a principal at a school in Paterson, New Jersey. Like that is the town. If you remember that one back from back in the eighties. They used to call me Crazy Joe. Now you can call me Batman! That’s like a New Jersey classic. And Newark, I actually I have a New Jersey podcast, and I just interviewed a friend of mine who grew up in Newark because I grew up in the suburbs, and I have a lot of really weird feelings about how the suburbs treat the cities in Jersey, and I remember him telling me kids in Newark, like they have to grow up really fast. And he was telling me here there was, for example, like a 13 year old kid in his neighborhood and his mom married a guy and moved and would just send him $150 a week, and the kid was driving when he was 13. And he’d get pulled over and the cops will just be like, We know you’re going to school, so we’re not going to give you a ticket. This is a city where there are some people in some hard circumstances. How… I hate to say it because, you know, I read so much, I care so much about where I’m from. And like I know, too, there are a couple of famous examples of like they were sort of locally famous, like football players will come out of high schools who are really good football players and they get scholarships and then it winds up that their paperwork or their grades are messed up and then they kind of fade away and they don’t make it to the school. And it’s a it’s a city where kids, I think, have a lot of reasons to not be idealistic and a lot of reasons to give up. That must be hard to see on a daily basis. 

Caller [00:37:47] So it’s literally- and I say this all the time, when I when I did my year in Paterson, I felt like a lot of the kids were angry, you know, and you can kind of use that anger to motivate them. Like we do we would do lessons that were basically focused on them not just accepting what they’ve been given or not just accepting where they’ve been put. Because they were angry. And that would motivate them to get past that. I love Newark, but my kids are just sad. Like we have. We have. I’m not going to say how many kids in my school, but it’s a lot. We’re one of the bigger schools in Newark, and we only have like three social workers. And one of our social workers that retired last year was just this amazing human being who, you know, I would I would field the problem and I would I would get the kids to talk to her because the kids were used to me. They were comfortable with me. But like, that next step is getting them to talk to somebody else to get that help. And now without her, because she’s retired, it’s a it’s a much bigger climb. And there is not a day that goes by where I don’t have crying kids in my room. And some of them, when I say kids, some of these kids are 17, 18, 19 years old. But it’s just… They’re sad. And there are a lot of days because I get really close, I have my kids for more than one year usually, so sometimes I’ll have kids for all four years. And you get really close with them and you love them. And sometimes all you could do is sit there and cry with them. So it’s a… It’s tough. It’s tough because how do you tell a kid that’s got every reason to be sad not to be sad? 

Chris [00:39:25] Yeah. Yeah, I bet. I bet that kids can, you know, if you try to tell them, hey, just don’t be sad, I bet a kid would call bullshit on that real quick and not want to listen to the rest of what you have to say. Can I-. 

Caller [00:39:39] You know, and I’m kind of the one that that’s always very blunt and honest, both with the adults there and the kids there. Cause a lot of the adults have always been teachers or always worked in schools, and they’ve got that public school mentality, which I feel like I’ve heard you take issue with before. Very valid issues. It’s not always like that, obviously, but sometimes they need somebody who did something else in their life to like give them a little more perspective. So I’ll be very blunt when I see another teacher not dealing with something in a way that’s productive for the kid that’s going through something. But also be really blunt with the kids. You know, it’s- I don’t think I could work in the suburbs anymore, not because Newark broke me, but because I’ve learned how to deal with things in Newark. The kid in Newark walks up to you in the school and goes, Hey, fuck you, man. You look at him and go, Hey, fuck you too! And then, what you want to do now? You know? You got to have. 

Chris [00:40:36] Yeah, that ain’t gonna fly in Millburn. That ain’t going to fly in Millburn, bro. 

Caller [00:40:40] Exactly. Not at all. 

Chris [00:40:42] Millburn is one of the best public high schools in the country. And it’s it’s that’s another- a very- I feel like one of the things that Arizona- it’s so funny being standing here talking with you about this- everything’s spread out here, but in Jersey, I can guarantee you Millburn High School, which is usually ranked in the top ten public high schools in the country, it cannot be more than a 20 to 25 minute drive from wherever this guy’s teaching. And that’s one of the strangest things about that. Oh, my God. 

Caller [00:41:06] I was there the other day. I left my school. I drove there the other day and in traffic it was 25 minutes. 

Chris [00:41:12] And those kids have, I mean, their own sets of problems and their own pressures. But your kids must look at them and go, That’s 20 minutes away and those kids have everything, and we got nothing. 

Caller [00:41:24] You know, honestly, I think I think one of the big things that that partially makes people misunderstand the dynamic inside these schools is, is what you just said. And it’s not that my kids look at those kids and think they have everything and we have nothing. It’s that my kids don’t know those kids exist. 

Chris [00:41:39] Yeah. 

Caller [00:41:41] My kids have never seen like, I take my kids to restaurants sometimes where I would like I work in a weird program, we do weird things. But sometimes we’re outside the school with like just three or four kids, and I’ll I’ll stop and we’ll go into a nice restaurant for lunch. And they sit there and they don’t know what to do. And it’s not like they’re not sophisticated or whatever it is. It’s just they’ve been in nice restaurants before, but they’re a particular type, right? They’re not used to to different things. They are very worldly in their own realm, if that makes any sense. But when they when they step outside of that, so they know- and I’ve got some rich kids in my school too, I don’t want to say there aren’t kids with a lot of money there, but it’s definitely the rarity. But they know that, like, rich people are just they know there are nicer schools, but they don’t necessarily know what that actually looks like because some of them never leave their neighborhood. 

Chris [00:42:37] Yeah, yeah. Now, I also want to tell you something. This is because we were like in the school bus stories and and you’re holding kids down and the Harlem thing and we’re all laughing at how crazy life is and Johnny A’s Hitching Post. And then we get into this thing about, like, public schools and kids needing to have hope and class disparity. And one thing I don’t know if you have heard this or if the listeners at home have, but the venue we’re at tonight, C.B. Live, it’s very lovely, but it’s also part of some sort of large outdoor mall that’s having a Christmas tree lighting directly outside. And there’s floor to ceiling windows. So the entire time that you’ve been telling us about, like the effects of class disparity and this weird sort of situation in New Jersey where the wealth is all right next to each other of different levels, but people don’t even necessarily know it. There has been what sounds to be like a raucous marching band party directly outside that matches up almost completely with just this really thoughtful but like focused and grim fire, fire in the belly section of the show. Like right now, there’s people outside literally with drums that are going like (MAKES DRUM SOUND) as people celebrate Christmas. 

Caller [00:43:56] Well, at least we have that going for us then, right? 

Chris [00:43:58] Yeah. Indeed. Now, we’ve got some reactions coming on Twitter to all the stuff you’ve been saying recently. First of all, I got to say, Morgan said, I wish I could be from North Jersey. It’s fascinating. No one ever says that. So we win, caller. We got one person to show some respect. 

Caller [00:44:13] Go Jersey! 

Chris [00:44:16] A lot of people are saying that you you sound like a very good person. 

Caller [00:44:21] Thank you. 

Chris [00:44:22] Stacey says, You sound like an incredible teacher. LeAnn says, Is that a marching band outside? Jenny says, caller, I think you sound like a good person. J Arch says, caller, thanks for being a teacher. Paul Joey says, Is it not okay to just have done good things knowing you are helping others? Maybe the motivation is change, but you’re behaving as a good person, which helps these kids. It’s like the kale trend. Who cares that it’s a trend? You’re eating kale, eat the damn kale. And then Emily, Emily said, I saved this one for last because this one kind of stopped me in my tracks. Hey, caller, bad people don’t worry that they’re good people. You’re doing good things. And I thought that was pretty sweet. 

Caller [00:45:07] I appreciate that. Thank you. Chris, how much time do we left? 

Chris [00:45:12] We have 18 minutes. 

Caller [00:45:15] Oh, okay. Well, I’m going to drop this one and we’re going to move on and we’ll talk about this or whatever else you want. But now what I’m about to say. So I was at your show in Jersey City, maybe about two months ago. 

Chris [00:45:26] White Eagle Hall. 

Caller [00:45:27] Whit Eagle Hall. Which is fantastic. I loved it. White Eagle Hall was great. My my my issue was during the first during the live taping um there were like no chairs. 

Chris [00:45:36] Yeah. 

Caller [00:45:37] Do you remember that? 

Chris [00:45:38] Yeah. 

Caller [00:45:39] So I was stood I was a gigantic person standing dead center right in front of you, behind the chairs. And, you know, we’re doing the the tweeting thing at your, your hashtag. I think like mine was the first one, like you read out on the check in, which, of course, just made my day. I was good. I could have gone home then. And that caller was talking about like. 

Chris [00:46:02] Blood disease. 

Caller [00:46:03] I’m going to get this wrong. Was Ray Romano her hall pass or something like that? 

Chris [00:46:08] Oh, yes, she was in a relationship, but she had a crush on Ray Romano. And if she had the chance to sleep with Ray Romano, she was she was given permission to fuck Ray Romano. Yes, we haven’t released that one yet. So, spoiler Arizona. Why did you bring that up? …Caller? Ooh, let’s pause the clock. Okay. 

Caller [00:46:40] (SOUND). 

Chris [00:46:40] Yeah! Yeah my man! 

Caller [00:46:43] Oh my God. 

Chris [00:46:45] There you go. 

Caller [00:46:45] Oh, my God. When when when we hung up the first time, I called someone else right away to make sure my phone was working cuz I was panicking. I have no idea when we got cut off, though. I talked for so long. I feel so stupid now. 

Chris [00:46:57] Oh, no, it’s all good. Everything’s good. Also, someone tweeted, If someone here knows Jersey well enough to know, are you a Hot Grill or Rut’s Hut guy? 

Caller [00:47:08] So I’m a Johnny and Hangie’s guy. 

Chris [00:47:10] Wow. Classy. 

Caller [00:47:12] So the third option. 

Chris [00:47:15] Right Rut’s Hut and Hot Grill are both in Clifton but Johnny’s in Hangie’s is in where, Fairlawn? 

Caller [00:47:20] Now it’s in Fairlawn. It was in Patterson. I’m a big fan of Dicky D’s down in Newark, though, so we got to give some respect to Dicky D’s and the Italian dogs.  

Chris [00:47:27] Much respect to Dicky D’s Italian dogs. I’m a jersey. I’m a Jimmy (UNCLEAR) guy myself, so I got to just draw a line and sand. Just make that clear. Lifelong. 

Caller [00:47:35] I respect that. I respect that. 

Chris [00:47:37] Anyway, okay, a couple of Jersey references. We’re up and running again. Where were we? Where were we? 

Caller [00:47:43] We’re talking- so White Eagle Hall. This is the caller you were talking to was talking about Ray Romano being her hall pass. And my wife tweeted at you about she and she said, I married my hall pass. And I like the show went on and then you read that out at the very end of the show, and she was like, so embarrassed. She’s like, Nobody’s gonna remember what I was referring to. I said it’s okay, tey don’t know who you are. And then you were like, Oh, we got to get her on the show. And literally as we were pulling in my driveway, coming back from Philadelphia just now is when I got through to you guys. And she was so angry. She was so angry that I got through to the show instead of her. 

Chris [00:48:18] Is she just like sitting next to you listening to your side of the conversation? 

Caller [00:48:22] No, no, I actually, I she’s in the other room. We picked up dinner on the way home, so she went in and she’s like, should I wait to eat? I was like, nah, just eat. I’m a be a while. 

Chris [00:48:29] Wow. 

Caller [00:48:30] So she is eating dinner in the other room. And she’s stewing. Like, I know she’s going to be mad when I get out there and I’m okay with that. You just got to be okay with that sometimes. 

Chris [00:48:40] Can I say hi to her? 

Caller [00:48:43] Do you want to?

Chris [00:48:44] I would love to, if you’re comfortable with it. 

Caller [00:48:46] Yeah. All right, here we go. I’m walking through my very small English teacher sized house, and I am walking into the living room. 

Caller’s wife [00:48:56] Hi! 

Chris [00:48:58] I hear you married your hall pass. 

Caller’s wife [00:49:02] Oh, yeah, that was me. 

Caller [00:49:03] (UNCLEAR)

Chris [00:49:06]  Now, your husband’s been telling us about- your husband’s been telling us about his past at the bus company, and his present teaching in Newark, and has said that sometimes he wonders if he’s a good guy. But I got to say, he sounds like a really great guy. 

Caller’s wife [00:49:22] Well, that’s because, you know, you’re only hearing half the story. 

Caller [00:49:24] I told you she was angry, Chris. Didn’t I tell you? 

Chris [00:49:31] You truly did marry some- you married a girl from Jersey as well, huh? 

Caller [00:49:36] Oh, 100%. Her- my mom lives up the block, her mom lives down the block. So and I left her back in the living room, and I walked away now because that was enough of that shit. 

Chris [00:49:48] You’re going to get it later. You’re going to get it. We have- 

Caller [00:49:52] Oh I’m definitely going to get it later. 

Chris [00:49:53] We have other other teachers in the room tweeting that they are getting the teacher feels. Bianca says, I’m feeling all the teacher feels. I’m a teacher, too. Glad to be here tonight. 

Caller [00:50:05] I’m glad you have- dude, there’s all these teachers. There are so many of us. We’re everywhere. And you know, it’s crazy. I don’t I don’t mind not getting respected. You know, it’s not a profession you choose to to get a lot of respect or money or anything like that. But it is kind of crazy. It is kind of crazy how how little respect there is in this country for teachers right now or for for thinkers even, you know? 

Chris [00:50:34] Well, I’ve said it on the on the show before, it’s you, but there’s a website where you can go and you can buy supplies for teachers and teachers put up like, oh, I need like markers. 

Caller [00:50:43] DonorsChoose and I- DonorsChoose. I absolutely hate it. 

Chris [00:50:47] I hate- I support it and I donate things. And when I see stuff, especially when I lived in Queens, I would there was a school at the end of my block and I’d see teachers putting up like, hey, like literally putting up, like, We could use more art supplies and I’d go and I’d kick in and I’d go, I hate that this exists. I hate that this exists. 

Caller [00:51:06] It’s everything, right? That’s the problem. And it’s everything. So I, I just recently used it. My, my teaching partner, he uses it all the time cause he loves, you know, getting stuff. Oh, he’s a great dude, but he’s, he’s young and he looks at it that way, We can get cool stuff for the kids. Which is important. I look at it as everything that we need that we get through that website, not the website’s fault, but everything that we need that we get through that website is one less thing our district feels like they have to give us. 

Chris [00:51:36] Right. You’re letting them off the hook.

Caller [00:51:36] Then you hit that point where somebody somebody doesn’t donate it and all of a sudden it’s either you got to deal with that. And I spend I think I spent like three grand on pizza my first year teaching. You know what I mean? Like we just got to we got to pull everything out of our pockets in that district. And I just did my first DonorsChoose that I funded and it was basically for comic books because I run the school’s comic book club and we needed like the Sandman comics because that’s what we’re talking about the kids are talking about now. And, you know, I went to DonorsChoose because the district’s never going to buy any of this anyway. But whenever we get pencils or paper or stuff like that, it’s like… You know, you’re just letting the school off the hook for paying for things that they can pay for. So it’s it’s it’s a well-intentioned thing that I just I just don’t don’t… don’t like that much. 

Chris [00:52:31] I got to tell you, too, for all the heartbreaking things, the front row could just see I got choked up when you said you run the comic book club. For some reason that hit me in the gut really hard. 

Caller [00:52:41] So Chris, this is this is like the old- the part of my old life that I carried into my new life is that, you know, at that point where I was just miserably running a bus company in a trailer in, you know, an industrial park in northern New Jersey, my office, just all gray walls. And I just like I started buying like comic book art and comic book statues. And some of those were great decisions and some of those were horrible decisions. And I bought a seven foot tall Iron Man statue at one point, and then I got married and one of those things had to go. So there is now a seven foot tall Iron Man statue in my classroom in Newark, New Jersey. And, you know… I’m that guy.  

Chris [00:53:29] Stacy wants to know if you let your students do book reports on comics or graphic novels. 

Caller [00:53:34] I don’t make my kids do book reports at all. But yeah, they absolutely read comics and graphic novels and whatever else they want. I have the biggest library in the school. 

Chris [00:53:43] I love that. I love that. And caller, we only have about eight and a half minutes left. We’ve got we’ve got people, Tony, in here in all caps saying PAY TEACHERS MORE. My friend Heidi is here tonight who said, My mom, a retired music teacher of 30 years, nodded vigorously when caller said teachers aren’t getting enough respect. I think that is a pretty universally agreed upon vibe in this room of let’s take care of the teachers. We got, Jose said, Jose said any teacher running the comic book club that a school for the students is going straight to heaven. So you should know you got Jose’s blessing. 

Caller [00:54:16] Appreciate it. 

Chris [00:54:17] You got Jose’s blessing. Are there any comic books that you find the kids of Newark respond to in a way that that is striking to you? 

Caller [00:54:25] You know what? The kids are like super into anime and manga right now. So getting them to do any other kind of comic book is a little bit difficult, but they’ll go read just about anything you put in front of them for at least a little while. 

Chris [00:54:41] I’ve said for a while that I feel like if every freshman English class was required to read Chris Claremont’s run on the X-Men, that I think kids would just be more well-adjusted because, well, those comic books are all just about acceptance and letting people be different and different people teaming up to kind of create found families to get through harsh judgment. And there’s so many analogies to civil rights and gay rights and LGBTQ rights. And I read X-Men I’m like, every kid should read this when they’re 14. It made me feel a lot better, made me feel a lot better cuz like Nightcrawler, Nightcrawler looks like that. He’s not he’s not self-conscious? I guess I don’t have to be so self-conscious. 

Caller [00:55:21] That was that was the best part about those comics is that no matter who you were, you could either find the person you wanted to be, or you could find the person you felt like you were. So…. 

Chris [00:55:32] Yeah. And you could find a piece of yourself. I could be like, I have anger issues like Wolverine. I am self-conscious about wanting to be an artist like Colossus. I feel like a freak physically a lot of the time like Nightcrawler. You could go down the list. I’m Irish, like Banshee. Like, we could just keep going down the list of the X-Men, man. All of them. 

Caller [00:55:57] Yikes. Chris, dude, you can’t, you can’t see through the phone, but I am smiling so much right now. 

Chris [00:56:06] Good, Good. 

Caller [00:56:07] Oh, man, this, this has this has this has been great. I really appreciate it, dude. 

Chris [00:56:12] I am, too. We have some, uh, LeAnn wants to know how we can buy you all the comic books. And Stacey says, Did you know Arizona ranks last in education? Teachers here need more support. And that’s a crazy. That is a crazy thing. You and I are talking about how hard it is for you and Jersey actually has really notoriously great schools. 

Caller [00:56:34] We were number one. 

Chris [00:56:34] Yeah-

Caller [00:56:36] We were number one in not not eastern the East Coast, the northeast coast, Massachusetts, New York, New Jersey, they always rank pretty high. You know, Newark schools, not always that far up there, but they try. But New Jersey, I think, was number one in the country last year. So hey, finally something good.

Chris [00:56:54] I always hear it’s Jersey and Massachusetts. It’s also why the property tax is so high. But people out here in Arizona are identifying with it. Identifying with it. 

Caller [00:57:03] Yeah. And hey, look, the person who said, how can we buy you all the comics? Don’t buy me all the comics; buy any school or anyone the comics. Send them to them. It’s all it’s all the same. As long as it gets to- as long as it gets to the kids, like that’s always my thing. There’s two two thoughts when it comes to education, right? Everybody talks about we do it for the kids, we do it for the kids, we do it for the kids. And then sometimes I look at the kids sitting in front of me and I go, Why aren’t we doing it for these kids? And then other times it’s like, Why can’t, you know, how can people from somewhere else help these kids? Well, you don’t have to help these kids. Help any kids, and we’ll take it, you know? Did I lose you again, Chris? 

Chris [00:57:41] I love it. I love it. 

Caller [00:57:44] Geez, I thought we got disconnected again, man. 

Chris [00:57:46] No, I was just standing there soaking in your profound wisdom, dude. Chill out. 

Caller [00:57:52] Okay. I appreciate it. Sorry. 

Chris [00:57:53] Just taking a breath, because what you said was really great. If you’re around some kids, help the kids you have access to. Don’t worry about theoretical kids you don’t know. Start with your own community. Start with your own family. Help the kids!

Caller [00:58:04] Exactly. Exactly.

Chris [00:58:05] Caller, you’re a good person. You’re a good person. 

Caller [00:58:11] I’m trying, Chris. Thank you. 

Chris [00:58:13] And you know what too? It’s like I hear you that it’s something that you’ve sat and wondered about, but I can tell you, like, at the very least, this might be a very pragmatic, dismal way to say it, but I can say at the very least, you’re a better person than a lot of other people. I can I can tell you that. Even if you don’t feel like a good person, not everybody’s sitting out there like buy comic books for the kids. DonorsChoose is problematic. They have good intentions, but they’re letting these districts off the hook. Not everybody thinks this way. You have these thoughts. 

Caller [00:58:44] Yeah, well, you know, I think I think I learned during those those months in between my two different lives here, one of the things I learned real quick to stop doing was comparing myself to other people in any way, shape or form. You know, you start you start measuring yourself against what other people are doing, what other people have, but you also lose it going the other way, too. You don’t care much anymore to look around and say, Oh, I’m ahead of that person, or I’m doing better than that person. Like, you got to you got to put that away. You got to stop doing it. You don’t compare. You don’t compare victories. You don’t compare defeats. Otherwise they’re all going to be defeats. You know?

Chris [00:59:19] God damn. Caller dropping bombs. We got 3 minutes.

Caller [00:59:24] I’m an English teacher. Come on. I didn’t get it from Rutgers! 

Chris [00:59:27] Yeah. I don’t know where you found that. You were another lost soul at Rutgers. I can tell. I can tell. 

Caller [00:59:34] You know where I feel like I found most of the wisdom, Chris? 

Chris [00:59:37] Where’s that? 

Caller [00:59:37] Do you know what I’m going to say where I found the most of it? Johnny A’s Hitching Post, Chris. Johnny A’s Hitching Post. 

Chris [00:59:46] Caller, our time’s up. This was lovely. Thank you for being who you are. Thank you for fighting the good fight. Thanks for looking out for kids. Thanks for sharing all your funny stories with us and giving a very real look at what life is like in the classroom and inside your head. It’s really it’s been quite cool to talk to you. And I hope I hope we cross paths out in Jersey sometime soon. 

Caller [01:00:07] I’m sure we will. Thank you so much, Chris. Have a good night. 

Chris [01:00:09] You too, caller. You too. Send your wife my love, your hall pass. Caller, thank you so much for calling, for sharing your story, for talking Jersey with me, for trying to do your part to do good in this world. It’s a pleasure. It’s a pleasure to have gotten to know you. Thanks for sharing your story. Thanks so much to Andrea Quinn who comes on the road with me and records the audio on my live shows. Thanks to Anita Flores, who produces the show. Thanks to Jared O’Connell for all of the engineering. Thank you to ShellShag for the theme song. If you want to know more about me, go to ChrisGeth.com so you can find out live dates and remember Beautiful Cononymous is happening. BeautifulCononymous dot com. Let’s get out there. Everybody get to that waffle breakfast. Hey, wherever you listen to the show, there’s a button that says subscribe, favorite, follow, something like that. Helps us so much when you hit that button. Think about doing so. If you want merch, podswag.com. Want your episodes ad free, Stitcher dot com slash premium. Use the promo code “stories” for a one month free trial.