Dance Like No One is Showering

Welcome to the Judge John Hodgman Podcast.

I'm Bailiff Jesse Thorne.

We're in chambers this week, clearing the docket.

And with me, as always, is the all-singingist, all-dancingist, judge in all of justice land, Judge John Hodgman.

You know what?

I have a pretty good singing voice.

I'm not a great dancer, but I do give it a try.

I will say that.

I'm not all-dancingist.

I'm some dancingist.

But you got to be some.

Listen, everyone out there there who says, I don't dance,

I used to be that way.

You got to dance sometimes, right, Jesse Thorne?

Yeah, like the dancing Idos from the Jay Leno show.

Probably the real dancingist judges in all of Justice Land.

When you go to a wedding, do you dance?

Do you dance when the DJ starts or not?

I dance a little bit.

My wife isn't a

super dancer.

It's not her main thing.

And I don't drink.

And so,

you know, I will dance a few songs.

Mostly at weddings, you just do Sudoku then?

Yeah, exactly.

Well, it really is true that

when you go to weddings and you are an adult and you don't drink, it does get real boring real fast.

Like the ceremony, the wedding is beautiful and you eat and that's great.

And the rest of it is just yelling in a tent.

Yes, I completely understand.

I guess I'll amend my ruling to be this.

If

the thought of dancing crosses your mind, don't put it out of your mind.

Don't talk yourself out of it.

Do it.

If it doesn't cross your mind, fine.

Same deal with a shower.

If you're thinking about taking a shower, you probably should take a shower.

You'll feel better if you do.

You'll always feel better if you dance and shower in life.

There we go.

That's a t-shirt.

You know what I always say?

Dance like nobody's showering.

Here's something from Rachel.

My boyfriend sometimes takes phone calls on speakerphone while we're driving together in his car.

I don't like him to disclose my presence because it makes me feel weird.

The person didn't intend to call me.

I don't feel it's appropriate to be a part of their conversation.

I'm perfectly fine sitting quietly and distracting myself rather than listening in or participating.

My boyfriend thinks it's dishonest to not disclose my presence.

He thinks the person is being implicitly told I'm not on the phone and may disclose something they didn't intend for me to hear.

But so far, the calls are standard and no one ever has.

You know, hearing the term, it makes me feel weird reminds me of the great friend of the podcast, podcaster, cultural critic, and person, Linda Holmes.

When she guested on the podcast, she said the immortal words, everybody has their little weirdsies.

And that's true.

We all have our little weirdsies.

We all have the things that make us a little weird or the little weird things that we do.

And this court strives to protect those weirdsies when they are not infringing upon the rights of others.

Now, I have a strong feeling about this particular case, Jesse Thorne.

Do you have a strong feeling about what my strong feeling may be?

Or do you have a strong feeling of your own?

I'm pretty ambivalent about it, Judge Hodgman.

I got to tell you, I feel a little weird about it both ways.

Well, you know that I, of all the things that make me uncomfortable in this world, ambivalence makes me the most uncomfortable.

So I will erase all ambivalence and say, you're wrong, Rachel.

Look, I don't know why you feel weird.

It could be that you feel that if your presence is announced, then your boyfriend won't go ahead and arrange a secret liaison in front of you or he's up to something.

Maybe you just don't like the attention, or maybe you just feel, maybe it just gives you a weird tingling in your scalp for some reason that I don't understand.

It's your little weirdcy, and I want to honor it.

But in this case, I do feel it as if we're infringing upon the rights of others.

Not so much your boyfriend in the car, but the person who is calling, because I do feel that there is an implicit default assumption of a private conversation in the rare case these days when you initiate a voice-to-voice communication.

And people have a right to know if there is another party listening in.

Perhaps they are going to disclose a birthday gift for you, Rachel.

Or perhaps they

have something intimate that they wish to say that they can only confide in your boyfriend, who, after all, is an individual human being with his own contacts and connections in life that are not necessarily always for your ears.

That is just the way individual human beings, even when they are in love, even when they are in the same car, exist.

So I think that it is a point of necessary etiquette for your boyfriend to say, Rachel is in the car with me.

and allow that other person to adjust what they're going to say, if at all, or initiate contact another time because they have a secret question to ask the boyfriend about what you might like for a special dessert that night or whatever, or to simply say, hi, Rachel, I like you too.

I feel very strongly about this.

People should not be monitored.

I mean, we're all being listened to by the government, obviously, but people deserve to know if their conversation is being heard by a third party.

Here's something from Ben.

My wife insists on brushing her teeth with the water running.

She brushes her teeth while bending over the sink and drooling toothpaste foam onto her arm, which she says is the right way to do it.

I would like the court to either issue a permanent injunction against this or officially absolve me of guilt about the giga gallons of clean water she pours down the drain every year so I can stop thinking about it.

Hmm.

I appreciate Ben's commitment to water conservation,

but I do not like Ben's tone in this this petition.

Anytime you go to a public forum and describe your wife, your beloved, as someone who is drooling toothpaste onto her arm, that's a little aggro.

I think you need to take a look, Ben, and get this anger out of your system.

Because what your wife is doing is absolutely wasteful, but it is not worthy of scorn.

And I say that because I do it too.

I let that power run.

I let it run.

I know I shouldn't.

And when I catch myself, I turn it off.

But I don't catch myself that often.

I'm a little bit of a devil.

I'm sorry.

I do all the other recycling.

I try to be good, Jesse Thorne, but now I feel that you judge me too for this.

Well, I grew up in the California of the 1980s where

literally the only thing that I learned in school was to turn off the water while I was brushing my teeth.

Growing up in a drought state,

it's unconscionable to do that.

That said, I have been known to take like a 35-minute shower.

So I am not in a position to be critical of anyone else's choices.

No, I think that you are.

I mean, you raise a very, very good point.

It is not only intrinsically wasteful, but there are places in the world that are drier than others where wasting water has even more of an impact than it would than in my beloved home region of New England, where

lakes are overflowing with muck water and rivers rush to the Great Sea and we have tons and tons of snow and rain all the time.

Perhaps that is why I am more cavalier about it.

But I would say, yes, I do think Ben's wife,

he did not offer her a name in his letter, but I do think that Ben's wife ought to consider probably

not using so much water when she brushes her teeth.

But I will not order her to do so

because I did not like Ben's tone.

Ben, don't be mean about your wife in a public forum and call her someone who's drooling foam.

She's not rabid.

She's your wife.

Let's take a quick break.

More docket coming up in just a minute on the Judge John Hodgman podcast.

You're listening to Judge John Hodgman.

I'm Bailiff Jesse Thorne.

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Thanks to everybody who's gone to maximumfun.org slash join.

And you can join them by going to maximumfun.org slash join.

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Let them know Jesse and John sent you.

Welcome back to the Judge John Hodgman podcast.

We're clearing the docket.

I'm Bailiff Jesse Thorne with me, Judge John Hodgman.

Here's a letter from Andrew.

My friend Kasiah and I have a dispute over what is and isn't considered water when getting a drink at a common fast casual chain.

I always tell the cashier that I will be getting water and they give me the typical clear plastic cup that denotes that I am not paying for my beverage.

I will then go to the soda fountain and flip the little lever that says soda water.

Kasiah says I'm not getting water because it has bubbles in it.

I say I am getting water because there's no syrup in it.

I've never been charged by wait staff for simply asking for soda water at normal sit-down restaurants.

I want to know am I stealing from this chain?

Is what I'm doing wrong?

Can you tell Kasiah to shut his pie hole or tell me to cough up the dough for my fizzy water?

We've heard cases before surrounding the etiquette of the Open Soda Fountain self-service station.

It is a relatively new and I think profoundly new gray area.

in dining.

Now that they have offloaded the labor of filling up those cups of soda to you, the consumer, it introduces questions.

No one's monitoring that.

Can I just fill up my cup again?

Can I get extra Diet Dr.

Pepper?

Sure, I'll plug Diet Dr.

Pepper today.

Why not?

And

what counts as soda?

If you hit that soda water thing, does that count as soda?

And in this case,

the dispute between Kasiah and Andrew is Andrew stealing.

I have a feeling about this,

but I want to hear what my bailiff thinks first.

I have a strong feeling about this.

Okay, now, no ambivalence.

Finally, go.

I am utterly baffled by Andrew's suggestion that when he orders soda water or club soda at sit-down restaurants, he is not charged for it.

I would love to go to these restaurants because

I am a drinker of bubbly waters, and I frankly prefer standard club soda or soda water to mineral water or some fancy stuff.

Right.

You want it out of the gun, out of the soda gun.

I'm glad to take it out of the gun.

I'm glad to take it out of the gun.

I'm glad to take it out of a seltzer bottle.

A seltzer bottle to the face would be fine for you.

Just

right in your mug.

Absolutely.

By the way, smell this flower on my lapel.

That's delightful.

Oh!

What?

Water in my eye.

What a jokester you are.

I don't know if this is something that is only true on the West Coast, East Coast, and major interior cities where I have traveled to.

But I have always been charged for that.

I mean, outside of the occasional bartender who thinks I'm pathetic and just is like, I don't, just get out of my sight.

Then I have always been charged for this.

So I don't know where Andrew got this idea other than he is counting as not charging him all of the places where he has gotten soda water out of the soda pot vending machine.

I am so glad that you addressed this because I had a real question.

Like, I was, you know, when I read this, I was like, wait a minute, is he really getting soda water for free?

And I honestly couldn't remember if I was charged for soda water or not.

So I'm glad that we have some first-hand eyewitness evidence that one does get charged for soda water.

The reason why Kasaya has this instinct, Andrew, that you are stealing is the same reason why it is not entirely unreasonable for a bar or restaurant to charge for soda water because it is not just water, it is also soda.

And that soda comes out of CO2 canisters that cost money.

Obviously, they're spending

fewer portions of a cent on that CO2 than the fractions of a cent they're spending on syrup per glass, but it is still money.

It is still a good that they are providing.

And

your intent

is clearly duplicitous because you are asking for one thing and then taking another.

The whole thing would be solved, as it is often solved in these issues of, is it really stealing when I take all of the sugar packets or, you know, stop at a restaurant in the airport and take all of the packets of mayonnaise and shove them in my pocket and walk away and not order anything.

Yes, it is stealing.

Take it from someone who did it wrong.

Don't do that, especially when you can get 100 packets of mayonnaise drop shipped anywhere in the United States by a major online retailer within 24 hours.

It's an amazing service.

If you need packets of mayonnaise, say, because you're doing a show that culminates with you throwing packets of mayonnaise at the audience, that's how you do it.

You do it the right way.

You don't do it in a way where you ask yourself, is this okay?

Because if you're asking yourself, is this okay?

Chances are it's not okay.

Or at least there's a very easy way to find out the answer.

Go and say, is it okay if I fill this up with soda water?

I mean, it is labeled soda water there.

And guess what's going to happen?

The person behind the counter is going to be like, sure.

And then you're in the clear.

Then you know, if there's a doubt, ask a question.

Get the answer.

In this case, the answer is, you're wrong, Andrew.

Here's something from Lori.

I'm reaching out to the judge to help decide when our son Jonah should recognize his birthday.

Jonah's a leap day baby, born on February 29th, 2016.

My husband, Josh, strongly believes that Jonah's birthday observed should be March 1st.

Josh says that in 2016, the 28th came and went without any Jonah, so his birthday cannot be on February 28th.

I believe Jonah's birthday observed should be February 28th, specifically because his birthday is in February, and he was born just minutes into February 29th.

We also anticipate Jonah will eventually have an opinion on this, and we may only have one or two more birthdays to make this decision for him.

What say you, Judge?

I don't know, Jesse.

This is a hard one because it's part of it's actually going along with this husband's scheme, his super serious reckoning of what actually constitutes the birthday.

You know, because on the one hand,

it's a February birthday, and you want to honor that.

It feels weird to punt it to the next month.

But on the other hand, there is something kind of special about having that one February birthday every four years when that day shows up, and otherwise, it's in March.

It's kind of an interesting way to honor the leap year birthday that I hadn't thought of.

Previously, I would have just simply said only count the person's birthday once every four years

and then sell them off to pirates, which is, of course, the plot of Pirates of Fenzance.

But

I don't want to.

Every fiber of my being does not want to go along with the husband scheme, but I kind of like it.

What do you think, Jesse?

What would you do if one of your children were born on February 29th?

I would be excited that they share a birthday with Ja Rule.

Well, obviously.

The top February 29th birthday, according to famousbirthdays.com.

Good point.

Of course, number 14, you got to talk about Giacchino Rossini.

Who else is a Feb 29 since you got the list open there?

Well, Rossini is number 14.

Number 11, of course, is Jana Seven Perfect Angels, YouTube star.

Okay.

Number six is Tony Robbins,

the famous weirdo.

Antonio Sabato Jr.,

the spectacularly handsome soap opera actor.

Dennis Farina, the great Chicago police officer, turned character actor.

Fantastic in Midnight Run.

Saul Williams, the famous performance poet and sometime actor.

Let's go Saul Hall.

They're really, it's thin pickings here.

It only happens once every four years.

So there are going to be fewer people, right?

Did I I get my math wrong on that?

I'm not sure.

It seems like the population is going to be smaller if people were born on that day.

Well, I wonder when they decided that their birthdays were.

I don't like this idea that Jonah, the child, will eventually have an opinion on this.

Birthdays are not something a child should have an opinion on.

It is given to them.

That is the fact of their life.

And also,

this is the classic new parent mistake of imagining that by the age of three, the child will have developed opinions and taste that has to be honored.

They will develop opinions.

That opinion will be, I want to eat those crayons.

Three-year-olds are delightful, incredible, magical human beings who deserve the utmost attention because they see the world in a very different way.

But that is not a time when you start gauging, seriously gauging a human's opinion on weighty matters like when their birthday is.

Yeah, their opinion at that point will be confusion that right now isn't their birthday.

Every day.

You said the word birthday, where is the cake?

Yeah.

You know what, Laurie?

I'm sorry.

I think that yours is the logical position,

but I think that there's something a little bit crazy beautiful and amusingly confusing to a child to say,

you know, your birthday is March 1st.

until leap year comes around again, and then you get a special super birthday.

If you're willing to make February 29th a special super birthday,

then

I'd say go for it.

March 1.

Resolved.

If I were throwing a special super birthday for the child in question.

Yeah, I don't.

I didn't have any ideas for that, so thank you.

What?

What would you do?

I'd book Jawruel.

Of course.

What am I even doing in these judges' robes?

Come on.

That's the greatest ruling of all time.

I don't know that Antonio Sabato Jr.

has an act.

You know, that's a thing.

Like, he could make an appearance, but I don't know if he has an act.

Yeah.

Ja Rul can come.

Maybe he brings a shanti.

Right.

You say to Jonah, your birthday is March 1st, but every four years there's a special, special day

and special, special month,

which is the first of Ja Rul's month.

It's a month that only lasts one day.

And that's when Ja Rul is going to come over to our house.

That's fantastic.

That's good parenting right there.

Thank you, Jesse.

Let's take a quick break.

When we come back, we've got more docket to clear.

You know, we've been doing my brother, my brother, me for 15 years.

And

maybe you stopped listening for a while.

Maybe you never listened.

And you're probably assuming three white guys talking for 15 years.

I know where this has ended up.

But no.

No, you would be wrong.

We're as shocked as you are that we have not fallen into some sort of horrific scandal or just turned into a big crypto thing.

Yeah, you don't even really know how crypto works.

The only NFTs I'm into are naughty, funny things, which is what we talk about on my brother, my brother, and me.

We serve it up every Monday for you if you're listening.

And if not, we just leave it out back and goes rotten.

So check it out on Maximum Fun or wherever you get your podcasts.

All right, we're over 70 episodes into our show.

Let's learn everything.

So let's do a quick progress check.

Have we learned about quantum physics?

Yes, episode 59.

We haven't learned about the history of gossip yet, have we?

Yes, we have.

Same episode, actually.

Have we talked to Tom Scott about his love of roller coasters?

Episode 64.

So how close are we to learning everything?

Bad news.

We still haven't learned everything yet.

Oh, we're ruined.

No, no, no, it's good news as well.

There is still a lot to learn.

Woo!

I'm Dr.

Ella Hubber.

I'm regular Tom Lom.

I'm Caroline Roper.

And on on Let's Learn Everything, we learn about science and a bit of everything else too.

And although we haven't learned everything yet, I've got a pretty good feeling about this next episode.

Join us every other Thursday on Maximum Fun.

Welcome back to the Judge John Hodgman podcast.

I'm Bailiff Jesse Thorne.

With me, the one and only Judge John Hodgman.

We're clearing out the docket.

Here's something.

I'm reeling from shame.

That's what's going on right now.

Throughout that break,

I was reeling with shame that I did not think to look up people who were born on February 29th, that I just made that one reference to Pirates of Penzance,

and that I didn't even think to order Ja Rule to attend this kid's birthday party.

Thank you, Jesse.

You know what?

I don't say it often enough.

I don't know what I would do without you.

I appreciate you, Bailiff Jesse Thorne.

Thank you.

Judge Hodgman, when it comes to Ja Rule references, I'm always on time.

Here's something from Sarah.

I'd like to keep one pair of my shoes and two or three pairs of our daughter's shoes shoes in our mudroom.

But my husband believes that shoes belong in the garage.

Here we go.

Is this the same couple?

Is this guy already?

Is this Josh from the previous one?

He's already come up with a new rule.

These are different people.

Okay.

Shoes belong in the garage.

Got it, husband.

Go.

It's possible that he's thinking of motor vehicles.

But let's get through the question.

Yeah, they might be transformer shoes.

They're either loafers or MAC trucks.

He doesn't like the dirt brought in by our shoes and worries the dirt might harm the cat.

I'm sorry, I don't like to laugh at the people.

We'll just say it's because there was reference made to a cute animal and you had to react.

Sure.

My work schedule requires me to be out of the house by 6.30 a.m.

When my shoes are in the garage in the winter, they get cold.

Okay,

this is just going all over everywhere.

This is a very rich question.

I'm also usually carrying our toddler and have my hands full with bags for daycare and work.

Keeping a pair of shoes in the mudroom will greatly ease my morning and evening routines.

Thank you so much for considering my case.

I'm due with our second child May 22nd and would like our case settled before I go back to work, toting two kids along in the fall.

Well, we're going to make it just under the wire.

Jesse, I wonder if perhaps your

amazement at this question has something to do with the fact that you are a child of the sunny West.

Because storing shoes in the garage is hardly an unknown thing.

And indeed, in my mom's house in Western Massachusetts that came into my and my wife's care when she passed away, that is where we store the shoes.

Because you're coming in out of weather a lot of the time.

Let's say snow, let's say sleet, let's say mud, and you don't want to track that stuff into the house.

And the house was designed by an engineer who had no sense of style or proportion and forgot to put in a mud room,

a specific transitional room for the taking off of muddy boots.

That's what a mud room is for.

If you go in the garage, what's the door for?

What do you mean?

Well, your house has a door, doesn't it?

Right.

So is the entrance to your house inside the garage?

Yeah, that's what I'm talking about.

That's what happens in New England sometimes.

If you're lucky, you have an attachment.

Houses don't have front doors in New England?

You never go in that front door.

That front door is practically for show only.

Wow.

Yeah, there's a front door.

You might go in the kitchen door

or you might go in the door from the garage.

I mean, I think this is a combination of my life spent not only on the West Coast where the weather is good,

but also in cities

and also

substantially,

maybe not by majority, but substantially not in houses.

Right.

I grew up in apartments

and lived in apartments for quite a while.

I now live in a house.

But

my house has a garage, and the garage does not have a door into the house.

Being at Southern California, being in Los Angeles, I'm surprised that you actually have a garage and not just a carport or a tarp

to shade it from the sun.

Lots of carports near where I live, yeah.

The detached garage is very much a Southern California thing.

The attached garage is what you want if you're living in rural or suburban New England.

I have an attached garage, but it is an attached garage that does not have a door into the house.

Well,

why and why would you?

Why would you?

Because you're not getting out of the car in the middle of winter trying to get into the house as quickly as possible.

But the point that I was trying to make, growing up, I grew up in a house in Brookline, Massachusetts.

I've inhabited a lot of houses.

We did use our front door, but in the kitchen door,

there was a back door that went into the kitchen and there was a mud room there.

The use is right in the name, mud room.

That's what it's for.

It's for storing shoes and outerwear during the winter months, a transitional place where the mud gets left behind and you enter the house clean like a new baby.

And I do not know why Sarah's husband has a problem with using this room precisely this way.

It feels like there's something missing.

Perhaps the mudroom is in a different part.

Like you only access the mudroom when you're walking up through the front door, for example.

And if you're using the garage door, you go straight into the kitchen and you're tracking stuff in.

That's where people want to.

I can understand that, but there's no reason in the world

for Sarah not to keep shoes in the mudroom year-round for exactly the purpose she describes.

And guess what?

Dirt doesn't make cats sick.

In fact,

they walk around on much worse every time they use the bathroom.

Don't worry about your cat,

Sarah's husband, and use that mudroom.

I'm so, it is something that I really miss.

It is something that often does not get built into a house, and it is something that transitional decontamination chamber/slash airlock, which is what I used to pretend it was, obviously, when I was reenacting my favorite movie Alien at the age of 10.

That I miss it so much.

Use that mudroom, Sarah.

It's one of the greatest architectural features of a standalone home that you can have.

Here's something from Lauren.

I take pride in being a good host whenever guests stay with me.

I don't have much to host with, just a small city apartment, but I do what I can.

Since I don't have a spare bedroom, I usually offer my friend my own bed and make up the couch for myself.

However, I've started to realize that a bed is rarely offered to me when I'm the guest of other apartment dwellers.

Sometimes a couple sleeps in the household bed, so of course I'd expect to take the couch in that situation.

But even among friends who live alone, I think I've only been offered the bedroom once.

Am I a total sucker for camping on my own couch when I have guests?

Or are my other friends in the wrong for failing to host with the most?

This is really interesting, Jesse.

I have an instinctive reaction to this.

But before I reveal it, I would like to hear what your instinctive reaction is, because I am not sure, much like the mudroom issue, I'm not sure whether this is perhaps a regional or cultural

phenomenon that might be different from person to person, family to family, region to region.

So what's your instinctive reaction to Lauren?

I'm from San Francisco and live in Los Angeles.

So, if I have a guest staying with me, I have them sleep in the garage.

That's where guests belong.

Luckily, it's not attached, so they can't come in and see you while you're sleeping.

When you have house guests.

Judge Hodgman, once when, you know, my co-host Jordan Morris on Jordan Jesse Go and I were in a

semi-professional sketch comedy group called Prank the Dean in our early 20s.

And once we went to perform perform in the Seattle Sketch Comedy Festival, and we were welcomed by this kind couple

who were

local independent theater actor producers, which is to say that they performed in stage productions of episodes of Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

Oh, nice.

And they had in their backyard, they had a normal house, which we walked through,

finding where we were to stay.

Then we walked through the house, out the back door, and into the backyard where there was a prefabricated four-car garage.

Oh.

Maybe in a three-car garage.

And they said, oh, this is where you're going to stay.

It's our theater.

And we opened the door to it, and there was a theater inside where we would be sleeping on the floor.

Which was unusual, but fine.

The only problem was it didn't have any windows.

And so at night,

we had all,

I am myself am not a drinker, but we had all enjoyed ourselves after the show.

And we went into this weird garage.

Oh, by the way, some of the booths in the theater were mobile.

They had wheels on them so that they could take them to Burning Man.

Okay.

And

so anyway, we were sleeping in there, and we had finished our last show and had enjoyed a cast party and gone to sleep.

And it was pitch black in there.

And because there was no windows and it was nighttime, you couldn't see anything without turning on all the lights and waking up everyone.

And Jordan,

having enjoyed himself at the party, woke up in the middle of the night.

And I learned the next morning from him that he had woken up in the middle of the night and had tried to find the door.

so that he could leave the prefab garage and go into the house to use the bathroom.

But it was too dark and he couldn't find the door.

and he just went, so

I just used the corner.

And as much as it is, I feel like the statute of limitations on that event has now passed.

Right.

But I've also always felt that if you are going to put up guests in a modular garage in your backyard,

then, you know,

what do you expect is going to happen when they wake up in the middle middle of the night and they have to be?

When I went to visit my old friend and dear friend from high school, Charles Diggs,

when we were just out of college ourselves, in our early 20s.

And Charles was living in San Francisco with his then fiancé, Vanessa, and a couple of other roommates, including one woman whose mother had come to visit because this young woman needed support because she had just been deprogrammed from a sex cult.

It was

Berkeley, actually, I should say, not San Francisco.

I was offered and did not expect anything but the couch.

And the problem was that these two bedrooms, the two bedrooms in the apartment, had the bathroom between them.

So there was no access to the bathroom from the living room without going through one of the bedrooms, if that makes sense.

Yeah.

And so I was offered the couch.

I slept on the couch.

I remember distinctly reading Robert Christgow's big book of record reviews that I found to fall asleep on the couch.

And then I remember waking up in the middle of the night needing to use the bathroom very badly.

And I did not want to walk through my host's bedroom or the stranger's bedroom.

So I simply went out into the yard,

which is a front yard on the street, and relieved myself there.

And I was very lucky that I did not lock myself out.

In succinct answer to your question, John, I am six foot three and 210 pounds.

So no one would ever expect me to sleep on a couch.

There few are the couches which can accommodate my body.

And for that reason, I generally do not stay at friends' houses unless I know that they have a guest bedroom.

And when people stay at my house, we don't have a guest bedroom, but they can sleep on the air mattress in the den.

Yeah, I think that you have anticipated a little bit of what the moral of my Charles Diggs story was, which is when you are a house guest, you take what is offered.

You try to stay out of the way, even if that means peeing in the front yard.

And you especially do this when you are in your early 20s and you have come and decided basically unannounced to stay with your friend from high school for a week when he's trying to plan his wedding and his fiancé doesn't know who you are or why you're there.

Which leads to the other moral of the story, which is try not to stay at friends' houses.

I mean, it's a thing that you do in your early 20s and throughout your 20s, perhaps.

I get it.

And when you go and you visit family, you stay with them.

I get it too.

If you can stay out of people's homes, if you have that ability

to provide for yourself by staying in a reasonable motel or something, consider it.

It's hard on a person to take you into their house, especially if they have a bathroom that isn't accessible from the living room, or they're planning a wedding, or they don't have a guest room, or they live in an apartment.

You know, I appreciate what you're doing, Lauren, and I don't want to get in the way of your enjoying hosting your friends.

But friends, you know, especially when people get older and they have kids and they have busy, harried lives of their own, it can be a challenge to be a house guest.

And as I say, if you can afford it, if you have the means, consider not doing that.

Consider that you are an adult too who deserves to have a certain amount of comfort that you are paying for yourself and allow your adult friends

their home to be undisturbed.

If you can hack it.

If you can't hack it and you want to see your friend or you're like Lauren and you love having people by, go for it.

The baseline principle of hosting people in your home is make them comfortable.

Do what you can.

Do your best to make them comfortable.

And I'm telling you right now, Lauren, that if I were to go stay in your house, and maybe this will happen, maybe if you love hosting so much, I'm going to show up at your door and spend a week with you, just like I did with Charles and Vanessa.

You may be really open to a can of worms now.

But if when I show up at your door and you were to say to me, please stay in my bed, I would not feel comfortable at all with that.

That is your private space.

I appreciate that it would be more comfortable than the couch.

I appreciate the gesture that you're making, but I, as a guest, would feel that I was intruding upon you.

And this may well be, this is what I was asking you to react to, Jesse.

This may well be a

cultural thing.

Like in her family, it may be the tradition that a host of a house guest gives up their bed for the house guest.

But that was not something that I've ever encountered in my years of couch surfing.

That's why it's called couch surfing.

And frankly, I think making the couch as comfortable as possible for the guest is a perfectly acceptable thing to do because, Lauren, you deserve your bedroom, and a guest doesn't want to, I mean, that touches my little weirdsies, honestly.

I don't want to be, even with clean sheets, I'm still in a sack of your smells and quiet moments and surrounded by your books and the nest that you've created for you, Lauren specifically, that does not feel impersonal at all,

but feels very, very personal.

This is why, you know, I would prefer a hotel over a BNB because a BNB feels like someone's house.

There are a lot of good BNBs, though.

I'll take, you know, don't at me, BNB owners.

In any case, Lauren, you can continue to do whatever you want, but I don't think it is unusual,

and nor should it be considered an affront that when you go to your friends' houses to get payback, that they're offering you

something other than the most intimate space that they ever inhabit in their worlds.

A couch is perfectly reasonable.

And I would also say that these days there is no excuse to be putting people up on a couch.

As Jesse Thorne has pointed out, there's remarkable stowaway sleeping technology in the case of aero beds and air mattresses that can be very, very comfortable to sleep on.

A fold-out couch might be an investment, Lauren, that you would appreciate.

I have a fold-out couch that has a memory foam top that is very comfortable to sleep on, and no one would feel bad about sleeping on that.

There are ways that you can make your guests very comfortable and feel at home without actually being in your room.

So there.

I am grateful for the many times that I have slept on your fold-out couch, Judge Hodgman.

Yeah, I'm lucky enough to have an office very near my home that has this fold-out couch in it and can offer dear friends of the court, guests, family, a place to stay that also affords them some real privacy and a bathroom of their own so they don't have to pee in the street.

Because that's my place, man.

That's my territory.

That's why I'm peeing out there.

The market.

But folks, listen, if you grew up offering your bed to your guests, let me know because I want to know if this is a thing that I just missed out on somehow in my years of couch surfing.

Write me a letter.

I know you will.

Hodgman at maximumfund.org.

And other than that, this is the sound of a gavel.

The docket is clear.

That's it for another episode of Judge John Hodgman.

The show is produced by Jennifer Marmer.

Follow us on Twitter at Jesse Thorne and at Hodgman.

We're on Instagram at JudgeJohnHodgman.

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Submit your cases at maximumfun.org slash jjho or email hodgman at maximumfun.org.

If you're looking for more podcasts to listen to, you can find me on the comedy show Jordan Jesse Go, which is not safe for children, and on the public radio arts and culture interview show Bullseye, which is safe for but probably boring to children.

We'll see you next time on the Judge John Hodgman podcast.

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