TEASER: Members Only Mailbag November 2025

It's the Judge John Hodgman podcast. I'm Bailiff Jesse Thorne with me, Judge John Hodgman.
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Here is something from, I'm going to say Graham. You think this is a Graham or a Graham? G-R-A.
A Graham. M-E.
Graham, Grahame.

Graham. I'm going to say this is a Graham.

I called my paternal grandmother Grammy and my paternal grandfather Grandfather. This is probably a Grammy.

Probably Grammy. Do you think this might be a Nan Nan?

Could be a Nan Nan. Could be a Nan Nan, or as I've mentioned before,

my maternal grandmother was Nan Nan and my maternal great-grandmother was Big Nan.

Yeah, there you go. She was big.
In Edmonton, Alberta. Edmonton.
My mother-in-law loves Christmas and gift giving, but the truth is, I don't really want anything.

One year, I sent a list of local charities and asked for donations in my name, but my mother-in-law would rather give me a gift I can open.

When I remind her of my preference, she gives me the side eye and ignores me. Please order her to give to some good causes on my behalf.

Well, with the holidays coming up, this is a timely letter from Grammy, or it would have been if we had read it last year when Graham sent it in.

Sorry about that. There's a little bit of a backlog in the mailbag.
Yeah, it's

pretty full, pretty full. Yeah, it's a pretty full mailbag.
Keep them coming. Keep them coming, you know.

But, you know, Graham, Graham had to give me a little nudge and say, well, what about my letter? My mother-in-law

wants to give me gifts and I don't want gifts.

And so here we are, Graham. Thanks for your patience up there in Edmonton, Alberta.

Well, first of all, I I mean,

I feel pretty good when someone donates to a charity or cause in my name in lieu of gift, for the most part, because I've reached a point in my life, and I think Graham has too, where I do have plenty of stuff.

You know, I don't necessarily need more stuff.

And especially nowadays, there are so many,

since so many people are losing support from where they should be getting it, our government, it would be a great year to be donating in my or Jesse's or Jennifer's or Graham's name to your local food bank

or community mutual support

organization or just hand out gift cards to people who need them for food and shelter and clothing and so forth. But that said, I also see where Grammy's mother-in-law is coming from.

What do you think about this, Jennifer Marmor, in terms of like, do you like it? If someone said to you, I don't want your present, donate to a charity in my name, how would you feel about that?

I would feel fine about it, but what if it were your kids? I feel great about it. Oh, you're asking me,

you know, you don't want me to buy any more things for you? What are they?

What's on the

holiday list for

the Marmolinis?

Well, my daughter, who's

two and a half-ish, she

still

doesn't have a concept of like asking for things. But like my son, who's six, you know, he wants, yeah, I'm constantly, I'm adding it to your list.
I'm adding it to your list.

I'm adding, you know, so he wants.

And there are things that are pretty reasonable, like a specific book or the game Moncala or

dinner. Yes.
No. Oh, God.
I would love it if you would ask for food.

Oh, yeah.

You know, Moncala. Yeah.

Jennifer and I are in the OT squad when it comes to our children's food. What does that mean, OT? Occupational therapy.
Oh, gotcha.

Gotcha.

But then he'll ask for certain things. Well, Moncala, my mom has it at her house.
And, you know, we played it a lot as kids. So then one day we were over there and introduced it to him.

Can you explain? Because I have not seen a Moncala set since I was maybe in seventh grade in Brookline, Massachusetts.

It's all, I remember all the, you know, all the girls in the class were playing Moncala all the time. Fun.
It's a fun. No one invited little John Hodgman to play it, but it's like.

They're little marbles or something or little tokens. Yeah, it's like you have this wooden board with two like long

dips, divots, holes, whatever you want to call it on the either side of the

board, and then smaller ones throughout, like I think four or maybe six small sized.

And you have these little satisfying little yeah, they're not quite marbles because the marbles are fully, you know,

spherical, spherical.

I was like, it's not cylindrical, it's spherical, but they're like kind of like the marble, but like flattened, like you might see in like an aquarium store or something like that. Yeah,

and like a snow, like a snow cap, maybe a pastille. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah.

And satisfying to hold. Yeah.
And then you sit across from each other. It's a two-person game and you pick up, you know, one

divot

worth of those little tokens and deposit one in each hole as you go around. And then if you end it on your side of with the long thing, then you get to keep all of the

tokens that are going to be.

It's not like cribbage where you're moving tokens around based on

card hands. That's cribbage is something that my

grandfather used to play. Not my pop-up, but my grandfather.

No, this is one that goes clank, clank, clank, clank, clank, clank, clank.

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