Phone of Contention

Welcome to the Judge John Hodgman podcast.

I'm Bailiff Jesse Thorne.

This week, Phone of Contention.

Al brings the case against her husband, Kevin.

Kevin's a stay-at-home dad.

He has a cell phone, but he's selective about when he chooses to use it.

Al wants him to pick up when she calls.

Kevin says he gets back to her in due time.

Who's right, who's wrong?

Only one man can decide.

Please rise as Judge John Hodgman enters the courtroom and presents the obscure cultural reference.

A little while ago I went and placed a call

to tell this girl I know that she could have it all.

The wedding ring, the whole dumb thing, I was willing to tie the knot.

So I called her up and this is the answer I got.

But dunk,

I'm so sorry you have just reached my answer ring machine.

I'm not in and listen, I'm sure you know this whole routine.

Leave your name and number, and I'll try to get back to you.

You have 30 seconds to get sworn in before you're through.

Bailiff Jesse Thorne, swear him in.

And that's our show, folks.

Please rise and raise your right hands.

Do you swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help you God or whatever?

I do.

I do.

Do you swear to abide by Judge John Hodgman's ruling, despite the fact that he communicates exclusively telepathically?

I do.

Very well, Judge Hodgman.

Oh, sorry.

Alessandria and Kevin, you may be seated.

Thank you very much for coming to Judge John Hodgman

Dinner Theater.

For an immediate summary, judgment in one of your favors.

Can either of you name the song that I was singing as I entered the courtroom?

And I need the name of the song and the artist, if you don't mind.

Kevin,

you were brought to court by your wife

and against your will.

So it's your first guess, or you can make her guess first, whichever you like, which will it be.

Oh, I'm going to go with her first.

All right.

Awesome.

Alessandria, it's your guess.

I had many other songs prepared, but that was not one of them.

However, it sounded a little bit like Melanie, brand new key, but obviously.

A little bit like what melanie uh brand new key very old i think 70s that's 70s 60s melanie is the is the uh is the artist artist yes i'm brand new i thought you were just saying it was a song named melanie but then you were just throwing shade on the tone of yeah hodgman's song i mean you added a brand new key but i think you i think you invented a new a new key there

old nether level all right well you know what it's a guess wrong without saying whether it's right or wrong i now turn to kevin what is your guess sir?

I'm just going to guess that it's

from the 70s.

But other than that, I have no idea.

Guess a song from the 70s.

Saturday Night Fever.

Fever.

Perfect.

Night Fever.

There we go.

Is that the name of the song?

Night Fever?

I think

there are several.

Yeah.

Night Fever goes that's night fever, night fever.

We invented a whole new key on that one.

In any case, all guesses are wrong.

The song is from the 70s.

Would it surprise you

to know that it is named Answering Machine?

Probably could have guessed that one.

The singer-songwriter Rupert Holmes, also better known for writing and singing the song called Escape, aka the Piña Colada song.

Oh.

Okay.

This, I think, was his follow-up because a piña colada song, as you may know, is a song about, told from the point of view of a man who is tired of his girlfriend, and so he chooses to cheat on her by placing a classified ad,

asking potential new dates if they like piña coladas,

which obviously indicates class, and

then corresponds with a woman and proceeds to cheat on his girlfriend, only to meet the woman, and it turns out to be his girlfriend who is also cheating on him.

Isn't that funny?

They're both monstrous adulterers.

In this follow-up song, you may have heard in the lyrics, which I have not heard since I was nine.

This is a song about a guy who

calls a girl he knows to tell her he could have it all, the wedding ring, the whole dumb thing.

He is begrudgingly telling some girl he knows that he's going to to marry her, and he's mad at her because of the answering machine.

Like, he's the one, he's the wronged party here, because she wasn't there to pick up the phone when this white man finally was going to gift her the gift of marrying him.

I'm sure Rupert Holmes is a nice guy, but he writes about a lot of creeps.

He writes about a lot of creeps

using all kinds of defunct technology to initiate romance.

Like answering machines and personal ads.

You may not know, he tried to follow up this song with a song called Telex Sex, and then he did one called Send a Menu.

He did one called Send a Menu, parentheses, the Fax Machine song, and then he tried to come back in the early 2000s with Friendsters with Benefits.

But his best one was Let's Make Love in the AOL Time Warner Building.

That was my favorite one of his other ones.

See, it turned into comedy.

I love that song, though.

Alessandria, you bring this case against your husband of 24 years, Kevin, and Kevin is doing something wrong.

What is he doing wrong?

Well,

he is pretty unaccessible during the day, and that's both via phone,

cellular phone,

the home phone, or texting.

And this must be because he's extremely busy at his job.

Is that so?

He's extremely busy at his office or in whatever

factory he works in, or maybe he's a captain of industry somewhere, right?

Is that what's going on?

He's at the hospital operating.

Yeah, maybe he's operating

on Rupert Holmes.

He's at the ballpark smashing Grand Slams.

Maybe.

He may do all of those things, but not for pay.

Okay.

He's one of those volunteer surgeons.

The surgery is probably not on a human being, but maybe on something around the house.

I think he could probably find ways to

picturing Derek Jeter being like, hey, coach, am I playing tonight?

He's like, no, I think Kevin's coming over.

Because he's free.

Now,

we're making those jokes, of course, because I have foreknowledge that Kevin is

a stay-at-home dad, and I am not in any way making fun of stay-at-home parents of any kind.

And they have a very busy job, which is staying at home and being a parent.

Is that not correct, Kevin?

That is correct.

All right.

And how old are your children, Kevin?

14 and 10.

14 and 10.

Are you sure they're not my children?

Because that would be an awful coincidence.

Are you living inside the walls of my house?

Secretly parenting my children and not answering the phone?

I wish you would, if you don't mind.

So, Alessandria, tell me about the ways you try to contact Kevin during the day.

Yeah, so I will call him on his phone.

If he does not answer, I will call him on our home phone

and then call him again on our cell phone.

I've given up on texting, although I do rely on that sometimes, you know, in attempts.

But finally, if it's the children are home, I will actually just use them as kind of a remote device to get a hold of him.

So if you were to put it in percentage terms,

when you were trying to contact him,

how often,

what percentage of the time do you actually reach him and get a response from him?

About 20%, 30%.

Okay, 20 to 30% of the time.

And the rest of the time, it's just no answer whatsoever.

No reply, no answer of any kind.

Correct.

and this is i mean aside from just being an inconvenience this is particularly galling to you why

because as the at-home parent um i need him to be available for the children for the schools um and then of course i have my own you know selfish reasons but um specifically for me you want to talk you want to talk to your husband Yeah,

I want to, you know, I want to kvetch.

I want to know what's for dinner, etc.

Oh, I see.

Well, okay, gotcha.

And so aside from simply shaming him on an international podcast,

you know, we have listeners in Antarctica.

Hi, Dave King.

And I bet you Dave King will call me back if I called him.

Kevin.

Yes.

Why aren't you picking up the phone or responding to messages when your wife seeks to contact you?

Well, I would say there's a percentage of the time where I don't have my phone with me and I'm out and about.

And then there's another percent of the time where...

Oh, do you have one of those corded cellular phones?

Yeah, exactly.

So sometimes you leave the house, so it's important that you leave your portable phone at home.

I think I forget to take the phone with me.

That would be the reason I wouldn't answer at that point in time.

Where do you keep the phone?

I have

a pocket in my manbag so that I can

get to it pretty easily.

And I try to leave it there all the time so I don't forget to take it.

Okay, well, you know what?

I'm just going to table that for a minute.

That's good.

Sometimes you are home, though, in your work at home.

I am home a lot.

Right.

And then you'll hear the phone ring and you'll just be like, please.

Close.

Yep.

No,

I'll be in the middle of something, or my phone won't be on me because I just don't carry it close to me very often.

Clearly.

Yes.

And so then I end up,

I say, well, I'm not going to be able to get to it.

I'll just call them back.

So that happens.

And then also,

I could be in the middle of something where I couldn't get to it.

Middle, like, what would you be in the middle of?

Oh, you know, good old laundry.

What are your responsibilities?

During dinner.

Yeah.

Well, she usually calls like as she's coming home, which is the same time I'm cooking.

So

that's one reason I wouldn't answer.

So

as the stay-at-home co-parent and spouse,

give me a breakdown of

your basic daily responsibilities.

Okay, so I

do house repairs, of course, and then but

try to do that.

How often are you breaking your house?

I break my house on a weekly basis,

and then I try to fix it again.

Yeah, your kids are getting older and getting to an independent point where

you, you know, now is the sort of the glory period, I think, of being a stay-at-home spouse where you could just pop a valium and drink some gin and watch a story

in the afternoon.

Is that why you're not answering the phone?

I wish.

I wish it was.

Alessandria, what do you do for a living?

I'm in HR.

You're in HR.

Okay.

And has there been a time when you have needed to reach Kevin in an emergency situation and he has not answered?

Fortunately, we have not had emergency situations, but what actually prompted me to write in was:

well, one, I'm a fan of the podcast, but two,

my daughter

was ill at school and

had been trying to reach her dad.

He's never going to let this down.

And

then first of all, hang on a second because I'm enjoying this story so much already.

I just want to savor it for a second.

How was she ill?

How was she ill?

She had a

stomach situation.

She was vomiting?

Uh-huh.

All right.

And she was how old at this time?

This was before her 14th birthday, so 30.

So not long ago.

Not long ago.

Okay.

And she's your older child.

Yes.

Your daughter was vomiting and was trying to reach her dad.

Yes.

Daddy, I need you.

Was unable to.

Daddy, I need you.

Nothing.

No answer.

Then what happened?

Kevin

calls me.

And I work downtown.

Downtown Dallas.

Downtown Dallas.

All right.

And it would take me 45 minutes to get to her.

And so I proceeded to try to call him.

I think I called eight times

until he finally picked up.

And what had happened was he had left the phone in the car while he went to the grocery store for 15 minutes.

So you, so Kevin, you drove to the grocery store, left it in the car, and then went in to go pick out your spaghettis and stuff?

Yeah.

Well, home repair for repairing something I broke.

But yes.

How do you you feel about the fact that your daughter was sick and couldn't reach you, Kevin?

I was

actually,

I just dropped by to give her medicine because she was actually having something else with her stomach going on.

And the school couldn't give her any medication.

So I brought some medication to her because she had called me earlier.

And I said, well, I'm going to leave and get some groceries and I'll be right back.

or I'm going to call you after

15 to 30 minutes.

If the medicine's not working, I'll come and get you.

Well, within that 15 to 30 minutes, she decided to call her mom.

And so I thought it was that she was trying to call me for her.

She was trying to reach you and couldn't.

Right.

Yeah.

Yes.

So

let me just look at the timeline again.

You took her to school.

She was already sick.

You needed her out of your hair so you could do your wandering through the supermarket aisles in peace.

You gave her some medicine and said, I'll check in with you in 30 minutes.

You went shopping, left the phone in the car.

She tried to reach you, couldn't, then called her mom.

Is that more or less it?

That's more or less it.

All right.

And how did this resolve?

He answered, he finally did answer the phone after he got back into the car.

And then you went and picked her up from school?

Kevin,

you explained what happened,

but you didn't answer my question.

How did you feel when you learned your sick daughter had been trying to reach you and you were not available?

I felt horrible.

You felt horrible.

Yeah, I, you know, cold sweat kind of thing.

Like, I mean, because I don't know what was exactly wrong, so it could have been worse.

So I saw five phone calls on my phone.

I was like,

what happened in that 30 minutes?

What did I miss?

First of all, good.

I'm glad you felt horrible, and I'm glad everything was okay.

It also needs a reasonable answer to say, I felt a little frustrated because she knew I was going to call her, and I knew she was okay.

I mean, the truth is that there was a long time in our history as parents where kids and parents were not able to reach each other like that.

And I'm trying to identify whether you are leaving your phone behind

routinely out of negligence or as a philosophy of we don't need to be in touch as much as we are.

What do you think?

So I pretty much made plans to go and call her back.

So I just kind of deleted that from, oh, I don't need my phone because I'm going to call her back.

And

it would be a significant burden for you to carry that phone.

I can understand that.

Yes, apparently.

Bailiff raises a good point, Kevin.

Most mobile phones...

are designed to be mobile, and most people carry them with them all the time.

Indeed, you may see it as a subject of many a New Yorker cartoon.

People have them with them in the craziest circumstances and are always looking at them.

Why aren't you?

Yeah,

I'm a little bit out of touch, maybe a little bit.

And

I am a little forgetful.

I think that might be part of the problem.

Have you had a phone for just a few days or

it's just never sunk in?

I got my first phone in the late 90s and I think I got the cheapest thing I could get, put it in the glove box of my car and just hoped it was charged.

And I don't think I didn't use it.

Hardly it was like an emergency phone.

So, you know, and then you know, just gradually as things got

easier to use, I used it.

But I never really picked up on texting as a

mode of communication.

So

yeah, I think I'm a little bit

back there as far as answering on the go.

Now, a Luddite,

a Luddite is someone who rejects technology for philosophical reasons.

No, I have no issue with that.

You're just kind of a Duddite.

It's not part of my life.

All right.

When you need to reach your wife,

what do you do?

Do you have difficulty reaching her?

No,

yes, but that's just because she's busy.

No, I use my cell phone.

I don't even, like anybody else, I know nobody's numbers anymore.

I just use my cell phone.

So I've accepted the technology.

You know, when he was staying home and we first had our daughter,

we needed a code because he would call throughout the day just to chit-chat because we enjoy each other's company.

And I didn't know when it was an emergency and when it wasn't.

And so we built a code of

three calls, right?

One on one phone, one on the other, and the other one on the main phone.

Wait, so he's calling you?

Yeah.

If I'm in a meeting, right?

And the phone rings three times,

I know that that's the phone on your desk or your cell phone or

either one or if he goes between.

So if it's desk, cell, desk, then I answer the desk.

What if it's cell, cell, desk?

I'll usually answer.

What if it's desk, desk, desk?

So I'm not sure I understand the emergency code.

If you're in a meeting, how would you even know that the desk, if you're in the conference room, how would you even know the desk phone was ringing?

Well, that kind of breaks down a little bit, but then it has to be three calls on the cell.

Whose idea for the emergency code, the Kevin to Alessandria emergency code, was this?

Whose idea was it?

I think I instilled a code because I would find myself answering the phone after two rings and him being, hey, what's up?

You know, and I've got a room full of people waiting for me to come back into it.

So that's when we came up with that.

So, oh, so in other words, you were trying to weed out the nuisance calls you were getting from your husband.

Yes, yes.

Because he just wanted to chit-chat with you because he was bored.

So he would get bored at home, call you, you wouldn't answer, and then he would call you again and it was just to say hi?

Yeah.

Wow.

And yet he doesn't, he's not willing to answer the phone phone when you call him for actual important things.

Well, exactly.

Are you calling him?

Not just me.

Not just me.

As you'll see in the evidence, it's our friends and family as well.

I'm not isolated.

This isn't him avoiding me per se.

It's.

So you did send in some evidence, some screenshots of

a Facebook page where you posted to friends and family, does anyone have experience with not being able to get a hold of Kevin?

End quote.

And Jim, last name redacted, said, try to call him on his cell, no answer.

Good leaving a message.

No good leaving a message because he never listens to it.

Call him on his homeland line, no answer.

Email is no good because he never reads it.

Then later I found out he doesn't answer his cell because he was in the drive-through line at Popeyes.

Interesting.

Neil.

Neil says, I've found an excellent way to reach him is to send a Facebook message to his wife.

Jennifer, last name redacted, said, I have attempted to text Kevin in the past and he hasn't returned my text.

That being said, he's still one of my besties.

But you get some support here from Elyan, last name redacted.

Why should everyone be addicted to their phone?

Good job, Kev, keeping it real.

Smiley emoticon.

That's, by the way, our friend who is a lawyer who was giving him counsel.

Yeah.

Oh, I see.

Samples of texts I have sent and their responses.

If the food is as good as as it looks, we need to come back here tomorrow.

This is you, Alessandria, texting to your husband?

Yes, yes.

Do you have the evidence?

Do you have the evidence in front of you?

Do you have this screen in front of you by any chance?

I do not.

Can you get it?

Because I'd like you to read these, please.

Yeah, hold on.

Why don't we start from if the food is as good as it looks?

Excuse me for a second.

Excuse me for a second.

Someone is calling from my home, and I have to answer.

Hello?

Oh, hello, son.

How are you?

That's what that sounds like.

Can you make a very small batch of pancakes?

Is there a grown-up there to make sure you don't burn the house down?

Yes, then you are, then you may.

And may I just say, son, that even though this was not an emergency, I'm glad to hear from you.

Call anytime you like.

I love you too.

Okay, bye-bye.

Wow, in your face.

Oh, my God, what a nuisance.

What a nuisance it was to hear the voice of someone I loved.

Anyway, back to this important podcast.

Yes.

Would you please read the dates?

You don't have to read the times unless you feel they're pertinent.

The dates of these texts.

And you will, in this case, this is going to be a little radio theater.

Alessandria, you will play you, and I will play Kevin.

Um, okay.

Tuesday, August 4th.

If the food is as good as it looks, we need to come back here tomorrow.

There is a bakery next door that looks amazing.

Do you want me to bring you something back?

They have donuts.

End of scene.

Next scene.

Monday, August 10th.

How is the lump in Luna's neck?

End of scene.

Monday, August 10th, an hour later.

What's going on with Luna?

Tuesday, August 11th.

Hey, when is Luna's appointment?

Luna is our dog.

I think I'm glad to hear that.

Not our child.

Sorry to break character there for a moment.

Even I,

who made, I think, the correct assumption that Luna was your dog, or else you'd be turning Judge John Hodgman into something a little bit more serious than it usually is,

Felt it difficult

to not respond to a message about a lump in the neck, but

I had to maintain complete silence because that is what the evidence shows.

Could we move forward to Tuesday,

January 26th?

Can you get me candy?

Yes.

That was

at the movie theater.

Tuesday, January 26th.

Can you get me candy?

Sunday, January 31st.

What is the plan for the booth sale?

When are you starting the kiln?

An hour and a half later.

Backyard movie is fine.

You and Ian figure out which one.

Tuesday, 9.39.

What's up?

Talk later?

Okay.

End of scene.

Why aren't you responding to your wife's text?

That is an excellent question.

I don't respond to texts as much as.

I do respond to phones a little bit more than that.

That's,

yeah.

How is the lump in Luna's neck?

You didn't answer ever.

Well, I did.

In between those days, we actually had conversations about it, but not through text.

Like, it was either over the phone or when she came home.

On Monday, August 10th at 10:21 a.m., how's the lump in Luna's neck?

No answer.

An hour and a half later, what is going on with Luna?

You felt at the time that it was important for your wife to stew with that.

Apparently, was it your wife that gave the dog cancer or whatever?

And what is the plan for the booth sale, Kevin?

And when are you starting the kiln?

I need.

And most importantly, he didn't buy me candy.

Right.

Why?

Because you left the phone underneath your seat when you got up to go to the live sessions.

All right.

I'll ask you, Alessandria, because I may never hear back from Kevin.

How is the lump in Luna's neck?

She's fine.

I guess it was just a bug bite.

All right.

Kevin.

Yes.

How do you account for yourself?

Okay.

so as far as

phone calls go,

when I do call phone calls back, which is not always because I don't always have my phone with me, but when I do put it on hold, it's usually because I'm in the middle of something.

And I do want to give it my undivided attention because a lot of times when I talk to somebody and I'm doing something else, it's pretty obvious that they're not getting the attention they deserve.

And so.

So, for example, your wife might be texting about the dog's neck lump, but you're having a conversation with someone at that time, so you're not going to stop and

like that.

And then,

you know, if I'm in front of somebody else or if I'm doing something I can't stop,

usually my train of thought goes away.

And then they don't, when I am talking to them, when I do answer the phone in that state, it's not not good for them.

They don't get all of me.

They don't get what they deserve.

They don't get my attention.

And

so I kind of postpone it until I can actually call them back and give them my full attention.

But

that's interesting.

How old are you?

47.

47.

Why did you laugh when I asked?

Sounds like an old bawdling person, maybe.

Well, no, I'm just trying to establish, I mean, you know, you're 47, so

you're definitely of a generation like mine that has transitioned with communication technology

from a time when, you know, phone calls were typically

spontaneous, often missed, no big deal, or planned, and you actually sat down and you talked to a person, and you were using a landline technology that functioned 100% of the time, as opposed to this new improved technology that allows for voice-to-voice communication about 30% of the time

and is very frustrating in a lot of ways.

And I'm trying to determine if that's part of what's going on here.

Do you think it is or no?

I would think that's not.

I'm not talking to you.

Alessandria, do you think that's what's happening here or what's your theory?

I think that's actually pretty astute.

I hadn't thought about that.

How long have you been working at home, you know, as a as a parent and spouse and homekeeper?

Since the kids were born, so 14 years?

15.

15.

And so 2000.

Is that right?

Sure.

Before there were,

you know, the more ubiquitous smartphones.

I think that that's fair to say.

And what did you do before 2000, Kevin?

I probably a similar path.

No, did you have a job?

Oh, did I have a job?

Oh,

yeah, I worked at a hardware store for a little while.

I used to be a potter.

When I was working in California, I did a lot of that.

Oh, okay.

And that's why the question was, are you going to start the kiln?

You have a kiln?

Yes.

Are you still a potter?

I am getting back into it.

I've got all my equipment fired up.

Right now?

Right now fired up and ready to go?

Right now.

What kind of pottery do you throw?

What do you throw out there, Kevin?

I do stoneware, reduction, high-power stoneware.

How'd you guys meet around the kiln?

I saw his, so we were high school sweethearts.

Oh.

I saw his picture in my friend's yearbook and

asked him out.

Awesome.

How does it make you feel, Alessandria, when you want to reach your husband and you can't?

Have you expressed that to him?

Could you express it to me?

Yeah, I mean, it's look, I I married an artist.

I understand that.

And I love him very much, but it's very frustrating when I want to get a hold of him and he's unavailable.

Very frustrating.

Is it ever scary?

It has been.

Again, we've been fortunate where we haven't had those kind of emergency situations come up.

But we did have a tornado in Dallas a few years back, and I was in Mississippi

and I wasn't able to get a hold of him.

And it was right when the school was letting out.

And

that was frustrating.

Now, I understood when he did answer, because what I appreciated was he did answer and said, I can't talk right now.

I have to get the children.

They're okay.

And that's all I'm really asking for.

It's just a ping back that tells me everything's okay.

Kevin, why is that unreasonable?

That is not unreasonable.

Then why don't you do it?

That is an excellent thing.

Right.

No, having the phone with me and being able to ignore it at all whenever I choose because I see it ringing is reasonable.

Wait, what?

Having the phone with me?

The question was, why don't you do that?

Why don't you ping back when your wife requests a ping?

Yeah, it depends on the circumstance.

But usually it's because either I don't have my phone

or...

you don't really love your wife.

Yeah, that's there.

When you do have your phone and your wife texts you,

would you say that you text back within five to fifteen minutes 100% of the time?

No,

it's generally a lot later.

Even if you see,

let's do a little role play here.

Kevin, you're holding your phone for whatever weird reason

in the day.

You happen to actually have it on you.

Yes.

It buzzes.

Boom, boom.

Alessandria comes up.

How's the neck lump?

What goes through your mind now?

What's the decision tree for whether you're going to respond to that or not?

Well, it's whether or not I can give her a good answer right then, or if I need to call somebody to find out what's going on with that neck.

And I could call, I could answer and say, I don't know, I haven't done anything yet.

I mean, that's one way I could do it.

Or I could wait until I have more answers to give her an entire

synopse of the situation.

Okay.

Like with the hurricane, with the tornado.

I think I've heard everything I need to hear.

I am going to go

out of radio contact for a moment into my sealed chambers to

consider this and come back in a moment with my decision.

Please rise as Judge John Hodgman exits the courtroom.

Kevin, how are you feeling about your chances?

Not so good.

Alessandria, how about you?

I feel like I'm feeling pretty positive.

I'm going to ask Kevin this first, but then maybe you can chime in, Alessandria.

Kevin,

if you're compelled to

answer texts or return phone calls by the judge, is it something of which you are capable?

I think so.

What do you think, Alessandria?

Yeah, I think that what this did was illuminate for him how

much his

lack of response was impacting the people around him.

I don't think until I had posted that on Facebook or

until we'd had the opportunity to have this conversation that he understood how bad it had gotten.

So I think he can.

And I've, you know, and I'll support him in that.

Well, we'll see what Judge John Hodgman has to say about all of this when we come back in just a minute.

Hello, I'm your Judge John Hodgman.

The Judge John Hodgman podcast is brought to you every week by you, our members, of course.

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The Judge John Hodgman podcast is also brought to you this week by Quince.

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Please Please rise as Judge John Hodgman re-enters the courtroom.

Ian, last name redacted.

Whenever I want to get a hold of Kevin, I text Alessandria.

Suzanne, last name redacted.

I find that the best time to reach Kevin is to wait for him to call you.

I have witnessed his neglect to answer on a first hand basis.

These are your friends and family, Kevin.

And I hope that you take it to heart

that

a lack of response is a kind of response.

It is a response that if someone asks

a simple question, like, can you get me candy?

No response,

that just feels hurtful and weird.

And then if it's a more pointed response, one that has worry behind it, like, how is the lump on our dog's neck?

It is impossible for

Alessandria to interpret your silence

at all.

She can't know that you are making an executive decision at that moment to say, until I have the whole answer, I refuse to reply.

She might

worry that there is something really bad that you're waiting to tell her in person.

and that might cause her worry.

Or she might worry that you have left the phone in the kiln and are now wandering through the supermarket endlessly or have fallen down a ravine or something.

If you had opened your defense by saying, in addition to being a stay-at-home co-parent, I am also an artist and a potter,

I would have said to Alessandria, well, you get what you pay for.

Dude's an artist.

Dude has been trained his entire life to sit in quiet quiet contemplation in front of a wheel as pottery turned before him.

He has a different relationship with reality than the rest of us.

And I suspect, Alessandria, that you've known that since the day you met him.

Is that not correct?

That is correct.

And I also am sympathetic because we do...

We have straddled, those of us who are in our mid to late 40s, an age when there was a very different relationship with connectivity.

And one that in many ways was more healthy back during a time when we couldn't all reach each other the minute we wanted to reach each other.

You know,

your 14-year-old has a phone.

Many, including my 14-year-olds, have phones.

You both presumably have cell phones.

Everyone in your life has a cell phone.

Everyone in your life is able to get at you at any moment.

And

everything about those messages that come through, particularly text messages, which are, I had the idea to contact you, you now must get back to me right away, all of that urgency, or I would say 99% of that urgency is never, never, never, never urgent.

And indeed,

nothing that is communicated

via text, email, cellphone, voicemail, whatever, is anything that probably can't wait for the most part until you have a minute to sit down and actually deal with it.

So I I sympathize with you.

I'm not here to just

beat up on you.

That would be

a mean thing to do to a guy who makes pottery.

That said, we are not in 1999 anymore when the only reason you would have a cell phone is to, or maybe one of the only reasons to have a cell phone is to keep it

in the glove compartment of your car in case you have a breakdown and you need to call someone to have you get towed away or whatever.

We are living in an age that does presume a lot more communicativity than perhaps you feel comfortable with, Kevin.

And perhaps it's so alien to you, you don't even know that you're rejecting us.

Like, I don't know why those people would expect me to respond to those emails or those texts.

You have heard the testimony of the friends and family in your life who have basically made peace with the fact that when they want to reach you, good luck.

Maybe when they run into you in the town square or see see you at the next barn raising or whatever it is that they're going to see you.

And that's okay for them.

I think that's absolutely fair.

But as a parent and as a spouse,

there is a different standard.

While it is important that we don't monitor each other's lives all the time,

As parents and spouses, emergencies come up, and that's why cell phones are good.

You know, it's the equivalent of keeping a phone in your glove compartment in case your car breaks down, right?

Think of it that way.

That's a metaphor you might be able to understand.

And if you're keeping a phone around for emergencies like, say, I don't know, tornadoes or whatever,

you got to keep it in the glove compartment of your life in that situation.

In other words,

when you you have a phone that you keep only in case your car breaks down, you don't leave it on your desk.

You keep it in the car.

And when you have a phone so that your sick child might be able to reach you or your wife might reach you in order to solve a simple logistical problem or even because there's an emergency,

you need to have that phone in the glove compartment of that situation, which is to say on your person.

That's what it's for.

And I appreciate that not all of these communications are emergency, to say the least.

But there is a way to interact with these family members,

even in a non-emergency situation, that is considerate without being distracting to you or the other person you might be talking to, or whatever.

When your wife texts you saying, What's going on with the lump in the dog's neck?

She does not require you to give her your full attention

and a full considerate answer.

There is a different standard of etiquette at this point in communication where it is okay for you to just write back and say, I'll fill you in later.

All okay, I'll fill you in later.

You know this.

You did this with your children with regard to the tornado.

It's just lucky that you happened to have the phone with you at that time in order to respond and say, everything's okay,

but I'll fill you in later.

I accept that you may be a person of gracious old-world charm who doesn't want to interrupt a conversation that you might be having with a fellow potter or a colleague

or an acquaintance at the supermarket or whatever it might be, just because your phone happens to be ringing.

But if it's your wife who's calling, she's more important than those people.

And you at least need to make sure everything's cool.

If your son calls during your podcast, you answer.

Even if he just wants to make a bunch of pancakes and mess up the kitchen and ruin his appetite for dinner.

And if your daughter calls from school being sick, saying that I plan to call her back later anyway is not an excuse for leaving your phone in the car.

So,

this sounds more punitive than I mean it to sound.

Kevin, I like you.

I'd love to see some of your stoneware.

I think you're a good dude.

And you know what?

Some of the texts that your wife shared in evidence were not that important.

But it is still important

that you give your closest family members, the people who are closest to you,

complete consideration whenever possible.

And that means when your wife texts you to say, Will you get me candy?

You write back and say, sorry, I left my phone in the theater, didn't get the message.

When your wife texts you,

is vocal fry real?

You write back forward slash forward slash forward slash.

If it's between friends, and you obviously listened to the one where we had a serial emoticon abuser bothering.

It was the exact diametric opposite of this one.

Exactly.

Where someone was just harassing someone with emoticons at weird times and so forth i don't think that that's what your wife is doing but even if your wife were doing that

this is the woman that you have been married to for 24 years since you've known since high school she deserves a reply and if and if you just can't get back to her at that moment forward slash forward slash forward slash works pretty good

You can ignore all the other people on Alessandria's Facebook page, but you can't ignore your wife and children anymore.

And that means I obviously find in Alessandria's favor, and I order you to keep your phone on your person.

And Alessandria, you,

when information is being imparted to him, you can,

and you don't need a reply, you can simply say, no reply necessary, or NRN.

No, no, forward slash forward slash forward slash is his, is his code.

It's his response.

Got it.

NR.

NR, no reply.

N-R-N.

N-R-N.

No, you know what?

Forget it.

Backslash, backslash, backslash.

I'm going to make it hard for you.

This is the sound of a gavel.

Judge John Hodgman rules that is all.

Please rise as Judge John Hodgman exits the courtroom.

Kevin, how do you feel right now?

Actually, pretty good.

I don't feel beat up quite as much as I thought I would be.

And

I'm going to keep my phone on me more as much as possible.

Just on me all the time.

Do you have a pro do you rarely have, or are you wearing pants with no pockets?

There's no reason I shouldn't have my phone, and I will have my phone on.

I will.

95% accuracy.

That's true.

Al, do you believe this, man?

Like I said, I wasn't going for 100%,

but so I think 95%.

I really like the idea of us having a special sound.

I think that will be very, very helpful.

And I believe he'll try.

I mean, literally today was the first time I had called him and I received a text that said, can't talk.

So I feel like progress is already starting.

Well, thanks to both of you for joining us on the Judge John Hodgman podcast.

Thank you.

Thank you.

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 Long.

I'm Caroline Roper, and 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.

What do you think, Judge John Hodgman?

Can't talk right now.

John, there's a lump on the dog's neck.

Forward slash, forward slash, forward slash.

It's unnerving.

You ask someone a direct question, just silence.

What happened?

I was just showing you what it's like, Jesse.

I apologize.

Clearly a thoughtful, considerate guy.

He works with his hands and makes pots.

And dinner.

Pots and dinner.

You know what?

Good husband, though.

He sounds like a good husband outside of this not being available at emergencies thing.

I'm surprised both of their children and that dog are all still alive, but that's the proof.

He's a good husband, even though he

can't be trusted to answer the phone.

Jesse, can I make an announcement before we go?

Yes.

I am very excited

to announce that I, John Hodgman,

have been invited to host the 50th annual Nebula Awards,

which is of course the big awards ceremony for the best science fiction novels, novellas, novelettes, novelettinas every year that is awarded by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Association.

This will happen and it is an event that is all part of the Big Nebula Conference, the SFWA's Nebula Conference, happening this spring in Chicago, May 12 through 15.

And it's going to be really, really fun.

George R.

R.

Martin is going to be there, and many, many great science fiction writers are going to be there and fantasy writers, and it's going to be terrific.

And I'm really excited to host it.

And you don't have to be a member of the SFWA to attend.

If you live in Chicago and you want to check out any of the conferences or the seminars or the workshops or the banquet itself, and by the way, it offers you a choice of stuffed acorn swash, grass-fed filet, or French chicken.

You can go to sfwa.org slash nebula-awards and register.

And I would love to see Chicago areas, Judge John Hodgman fans there.

I get nothing from packing the audience with people who know me, but it would be fun to see you anyway.

So there, I'm very excited about it.

What do you think is the tone of this thing?

You think it's like a

Ricky Gervais at the Golden Globes just going to make everybody a new one.

Yeah, I'm finally going to give them what they have coming.

I'm going to deflate them to pompous balloons.

Yep, exactly.

I'm going to finally take those fantasy writers down a peg.

Finish what got started through all of middle and high school.

Exactly.

How can they get in touch with you, Jesse?

You can just send me an email at jesse at maximumfund.org or on on Twitter at jesse thorne.

You are of course at hodgman.

You can tweet with the hashtag jjho or you can go to our reddit at maximumfund.reddit.com.

That's absolutely true.

And who produced this podcast?

Well, Julia Smith did with some help on the editing front from the great Mark McConville.

And if you have a dispute

that you think might make it onto the air here at Judge John Hodgman, go to maximumfund.org slash jjho to submit it Maximumfund.org slash JJ Ho.

That is the spot to tell us about your case, big or small, we consider them all.

And if you don't have a dispute and you don't live in Chicago and you don't like science fiction and fantasy and you don't have any galas, why don't you just watch Know You Shut Up with Paul F.

Tompkins on Fusion 10 p.m.

on Thursdays?

Why don't you?

And get ready for the Max Fun Drive coming up in just a couple of weeks.

Oh, Jesse Thorne, that's a tease.

Yeah.

I can't wait to tune back in.

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

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