Of What Remains With Jeremy Vickers

THIS SATURDAY MORNING:

 OF WHAT REMAINS — with Jeremy Vickers on 92.7FM WOBM

A brand-new show built from a familiar voice.

Of What Remains returns — reformatted, reimagined, and finally set free to go wherever the conversation leads.

Hosted by Jeremy Vickers, this new version of Of What Remains is a wide-ranging, unscripted journey through the things that made us… and the things that changed us. From growing up in the 1980s to surviving the chaos of the modern world, from pop culture to personal stories, forgotten history to everyday absurdity — nothing is off the table.

Some days it’s reflective.

Some days it’s funny.

Some days it’s raw, weird, nostalgic, or unexpectedly deep.

But it’s always real.

This isn’t a nostalgia show.

This isn’t a news show.

This is a conversation about what’s left after time moves on.

Memories. Culture. Stories. Laughter. Regret. Curiosity.

The strange, messy, beautiful pile of things that remain.

Of What Remains with Jeremy Vickers —

Because the past never really goes away…

and the present keeps giving us new stories to tell.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:01

Hey everybody, Joe Powell, Jeremy, and I'm back again with another episode of What Remains with Jeremy Vickers. Um, yeah, it's it's been a it's been a crazy week. I think we all have them, but um, you know, I wanted to talk about like some of the I what what I really want to talk about, one of the main things I I had the notes down for last week, but um I just didn't feel it naturally flowing into it, but um I I want to talk about uh healthcare, just for like let's just touch base on that because uh healthcare it sucks in this country, healthcare. And um most people don't know what to get. Most people don't know what to get to to help them, uh to so they they get the medications that they absolutely need, that they get um and and and a lot of these medications are life-saving, life-changing, um, and yet we can't figure out health care. We just can't. Other countries have they have uh what we like to call socialized medicine, but you know what? Uh if we just remove the stigmas and actually just uh concentrate and work on a free health care for our people, you know, I think a lot a lot of good could happen from that. Uh the the the I mean the main reason why they don't do it is because the insurance companies don't want to do it, the doctors don't want to do it, uh, because then they're gonna be held to uh guidelines. Um I I only say this because I have loved ones who need uh you know medications, maybe they have a uh um what was that? Okay, yeah, maybe they have uh like an autoimmune disease or something like that, and and there's one uh medicine that actually helps them, and it's a it's a it's like three grand you know a month for a monthly allotment, and your insurance company doesn't cover it. Like, why are we still having issues like this? Uh I I I I I just don't understand. Like, we can if if if we can actually I I saw online like this uh it was like a it was like a large drone, okay, but then somebody sat on top of it, and they had like a steering wheel and whatever, and they took off the ground and flew off in in this flying car or flying drone, you know, like that you could ride. And I was like, wow, that's like the future, right there, isn't it? You know, that's the future, and then we have these AIs that can be anything. We have AIs that can be your girlfriend, and we still haven't figured out healthcare, you know, like this is the same problem, you know, and we we always think it's like the the latest, or or it's still a problem that we uh it's come up and whatnot, but we're we're pulling in trillions of dollars more than we ever did from other countries due to the you know what what Donald Trump has done for us and and all of that. I'm just saying take one trillion. Just take one trillion that we didn't have before, that we do now, and create a free healthcare system for your people, you know, and I'm not saying this, I'm not directing this toward um well, it wouldn't be really Trump, it would be uh Robert F. Kennedy. But um, but yeah, like we the the funds don't don't be don't the the excuse isn't there anymore that oh we don't know how to get the funds for this and and all of that, you know. No, we have funds, we can do this. We just need some brains put toward it who aren't wanting their own percentage from it, you know, like the crooks we've had in previous uh administrations, and then our people can get what's absolutely needed for them. But it's like it whatever you need, there's an insurance company out there that's going to tell you that you can't have it. That's that's really it. Or oh, you're just not covered, and like and you say, Oh, well, why aren't I covered? Well, and they don't really care to give you an answer, you know. Uh Maggie, Maggie has had has a hard time from it because she has a uh an autoimmune disease, and she is constantly fighting uh pharmacies, uh doctor's offices, and then the insurance companies. Like it's almost every week. She gets a solution by the end of the week that gets her enough to keep her going, and then poof, they're gone again, and they say you can't have it, and then she's got to start the fight all over again the very next week. And by the time she gets home, she is so drained, there's just no color in her face because she's just worn out by this. And oh, first off, let me let me let's before we go any further. My sponsor is my good friend, Dr. Gabriel Jasper of the Jasper Spine Institute. He is remarkable. Um, he can change your future, your life, your everything. See, this is the good side of medicine, right? Here, you got a guy who knows the good, he knows the bad, and he knows you need the good. And he will fix you. That's his call phrase. I can fix that. It's always been his call phrase for as long as I've known him. Um, and he has he has his own skill set that he can stand on and say, hey, look, I got I got patient histories. They don't have to suffer anymore. I'm I'm a perfect example of that. I was I was lost in the cracks, um, I had to fight insurance companies, fight uh pharmacies, fight everything. And what I needed was one good person out there who understood my plight, and it was Dr. Gabriel Jasper. And I couldn't walk, I couldn't do anything. I had no life, and I didn't even have a prospect of a life until my friend, Dr. Gabriel Jasper, changed it for me, and he could do the same thing for you. So um call and make an appointment. It's 732-262-0700. And if you want more information about Dr. Gabriel Jasper, please go to jaspermd.com. You won't be sorry. So um let's go back. Yeah, so you know, Maggie's been having this hard time, and uh so she comes home and she's like beat, and and then she's got to do baking because she also bakes for uh for Taylor Sam's in town, uh Brick. There's a couple uh locations um that you might see her uh baking goods at, and um it's a it these are this is a great place, and it's packed on the weekends and and during the weeks, I'm sure, for lunches and breakfasts and stuff. They are second to none. They constantly have different specials. It's not like one of those restaurants you go to where you um, you know, you sit down, and the special that's on that menu has been the special on that menu for about six months, maybe a year, maybe two. No. Uh Taylor Sam's, you go in, you're getting new types of coffee drinks, you know, like every couple weeks. Um, like every week we go in, there's new specials. Uh, and they and their specials are phenomenal. Like if you go to just a basic old diner, um, you're gonna see you're gonna see like menu items that are uh just humdrum. Nothing really leaps off the page. You go to Taylor Sam's and it's flying off the page. Now, it's early enough on a Sunday morning when you're hearing this on 92.7 W OBM, where you could drive in to Taylor Sam's and have breakfast right after church. And you won't regret it. So on Saturdays, when I record this show, um, afterwards, uh, Maggie and I will go on like a little date afternoon and we'll go out to breakfast or lunch or whatever we're feeling like. And uh we've been making a habit of going to uh Taylor Sam's and even their bakery goods, like I know because my because Maggie makes them, they're constantly changing and evolving constantly, and they accept nothing but the very best. And Maggie's always no no no, they have a particular way they want things done, and that's what you know, and and then but she she will bake stuff, give them samples, and then they decide whether they want it on the menu or not, and na la la la. It's ever evolving, Taylor Sam's. So if you want if you see me there, and I think many of you know what I look like from being I'm on the Jasper Spine Institute commercials on TV, uh, the guy with the hat and the black rim glasses, that's me. Um, I'll be there after my show here. So you can just wave to me, say hey, what's up? And uh I'm just getting a text message from somebody who thinks my name is James. These will drive you up the wall. It's always something with them. But yeah, let's go back to uh healthcare. If we can't do these things, uh I mean there's even there's even um there's even insurance companies call you know like the advantage uh insurance companies, Medicare Advantage. Uh Dr. Jasper always refers to it as uh Medicare disadvantage because it is when you get an advantage program, apart from the name sounding like oh, this is a better version of Medicare, but see, Medicare uh is not copywritten, so anybody can use that name. I could create an insurance company tomorrow and call it uh uh Medicaid required, and you know, and you oh oh this is the one I need to get. No, it's not, it's not good old Medicare, period, nothing else. Otherwise, you are subject to somebody who doesn't know your history, who doesn't know anything about you, uh, to decide whether or not you need a procedure and decide better than your own doctor. That's madness, really, folks. If if you're struggling to with any kind of uh debilitating sort of uh uh situation, you don't you you can do yourself a favor, just get the medical, you know, the the basic uh Medicare. And uh yeah, that's an that's that was uh James again, uh who I don't know. Um so yeah, get get it. Do yourself a favor so you're not like wandering around with like a chicken with its head cut off. So yeah, it's been a it's been a a strange week. For my wife, it was it was a lot harder than it needed to be. Um she yesterday she went to a funeral. Now this is this was a relative who was a cousin or something from her nan and or or Papa, my father-in-law. Um and they she had to go to this funeral. And I I know I went to one with Papa a couple years ago, and it was like a branch of the family that had like jutted off and really wasn't close with us anymore, or at least to uh anyone. Uh the one that I went with Papa was like like one or two people knew him there. And I think it really opened our eyes as to how families move on, you know, linchpins pass away. And when they pass away, branches of the family float off. And uh, I don't think that I don't think any words have been any truer than that, you know. Some people are linchpins, maybe it's your grandma, maybe it's somebody else. My grandmother was a linchpin, and when she died, like two branches of our family just broke off, you know, continental drift, and uh, you know, went elsewhere. And it's sad, it's sad, but you know, the kids grow up, family grows up, people pass on, life changes, family changes, and and who's important to you in your family does change. We'd like to think it doesn't, but it does. I mean, that's just us as a people. We do this is how we are. We migrate, you know. We're the people who migrate, and uh so she had to go to this funeral with papa. And my wife is my wife, my wife's mom died uh a couple years ago. My mother-in-law, whom I and Maggie, if you're listening to us, just sh just shut it off. Um my mother-in-law who we loved, who I loved, uh I loved her like a mom. She was my mom in so many ways. And I I like personally, I feel like I was ripped off because I felt like finding a woman like this in my life and having her taken away so quickly, um you know, it was devastating for me. But enough of me, it was it was absolutely world-crushing for my wife. So now she's and my wife looks exactly like her mom, like a younger version of her mom. So she goes to this funeral, and everybody is, you know. Um, nobody really says hi to them. Not many. You know, you always get those one or two, but then Maggie will be walking around, and then this one woman will come up to her and she'll be like, Oh, oh, Debbie, you know, thinking that she's her her mother. Oh my god, oh, you saved my life being here, oh, you know. And Maggie, Maggie just, you know, as far as her mom passing goes, she just re she relives it constantly. If it's if it's brought up, if it's put in her face. Um, she doesn't like death, Maggie. She doesn't even like when I joke about it. And I do, I do joke about it because that you know, I'm not afraid of it, you know. Um, but it really affects her. She really gets upset. And uh, and here she is in a situation where all these women are thinking that she's her mother, or they don't know her at all. And then when she tells them who they are, who who she is, you know, I'm I'm Debbie's daughter, you know, and then they'll think, Oh, Debbie, is she here? And um, and she has to tell them that she's not, she died, and you know this because you came to her her funeral, because everybody there had Alzheimer's or dementia or something. You get to a point in your life where the funerals that's the people who remember that your loved one, they've all grown up, they've all grown older, and now they don't know who they are, they don't know who you are or anything. You might be able to crack through, like Maggie did on too many occasions yesterday, where they remember and she's got to relive and she's got to tell them all again. This the nightmare story of losing her mom. Has this ever happened to anyone else where you've been in a situation like this? And and you realize you start realizing that maybe maybe there's a cutoff time for going to funerals, you know, like you're not really doing anybody good there because they're all you know, half-do lolly, and you're not and it and you only know that when you get home, like you go thinking you have some sort of um uh you know responsibility to to stand up for a certain section of family that uh that's still there, but everyone else drifted away. But you don't have a responsibility, and I'm not anymore. Um the continental drift just becomes too much, too far, too too separated. And who knew uh there's an old saying that you die twice, you you die, you know, when you when you your physical body uh you know ends and you shuffle off this mortal coil, but you also die again when the last person who remembers you dies. And sometimes we're like that. We're in that part of our lives now where everybody's got dementia, or they've got uh Alzheimer's, or they got some other reason why they don't even know you exist anymore, or people who were important to them that were also important to you in your life when they've died, they may not remember until you just until they just saw your face, or this and that, and you've got to relive, and then you get home and you tell everybody, oh, it was so devastating and so upsetting, and it is. No, I it's more like I struggle to understand emotions and why they're being used or why they're being used as heavily for certain things, it's just how I've always been. It's probably a a product of my upbringing, but um I just I just uh I just don't understand or be able to process things. Like my my wife is an innocent, she is um she's perfect. That's what my wife is. If you need somebody, believe me, she's the best person you could have into your life because she will be there for you every second you need someone. Um, but for herself, she's an innocent, she thinks she trusts people a little bit too much. She assumes that situations are gonna are not gonna be as toxic or tainted or or whatever. And then when these things hit her, um they hit her hard, you know. So she had to relax. Live that her mom died uh a billion times yesterday, and I love my wife. I uh and I love all you guys out there who have been in similar situations where it feels like the universe just jumped out from behind a tree and yelled boo at you, you know. Uh, because sometimes it does, and it's yeah, it's just awful. Um I take so many notes, and some of them are just like absolutely ridiculous. I I like I can't even understand what the hell I was writing. Um let's do this one here. Uh yeah. So the other day, um, you know, whenever whenever Maggie's home and we have actual time. Hey Lily, how you doing? It's the house cat, Lily. Uh she never shows herself. It's strange. Um, yeah, for Maggie, uh I'll always try to make her laugh when she's home. You know, she works a lot and uh like a lot, a lot. Maggie Maggie works. And she's uh in large part, it can be a thankless job, but she closes her eyes, grits her teeth, and she every single day gives it her 100% more than that, like Maggie is remarkable. Um I'm I'm talking about my wife today because one, I don't tell her these things nearly as often as I should and would like, you know. I'm I'm the comedy guy. One of my my defense mechanism is humor, so I'll be silly uh all the time. Ad nauseum, you know. So while Maggie's dealing with the everyday grind and and the bullshit that comes along with it, I'm just being silly and like because I'm not I haven't experienced that. She has, and uh, so I don't know where she is mentally. I was I like uh recede back into my default, which is trying to make her happen, you know, funny, make her laugh or something, take her out of the mood. Sometimes she's uh she's game, other times she's not. More often than not, she's not. But um so the other day, I'm like, I uh at the uh at the dining room table, I have like a board game set up. I I I play board game solo, like uh not mass market shit, but uh really you know tabletop games, you know. So I'll be there futzing her way in my own little thing, and she'll be over on the couch, and we'll just start talking. You know, we talk through the afternoons on the weekends and that, and um I don't know. I I don't know how it got, I don't know how it came up, but I told you that I would I would get on my hands and knees and I would crawl to her, uh, give her a kiss and then crawl back. And so then it became like a bet, and like, oh yeah, how much how much would you would you do that for? I said, I'll do it for 50 bucks. And she's like, shut up. And I'm like, no, I would I would do that for 50 bucks, I would do that. Now, this is where this is where my story starts to like evolve into what I usually talk about, like when we grew up, how we were as kids and stuff. When I was a kid, if you gave me a dare, I would do it, I wouldn't even blink. Even if I got hurt and hurt badly, I would deal with it. That's what we were like, uh, us Generation X kids. We, you know, if you if you had like there's a dog downstairs. I'm sorry, folks. Um if you had like uh um I'm gonna have to shut this door in a second. Um, if you have like uh uh just throwing off my point. Sorry, folks, it's a live show, it's to be expected. Um well, anyway, so 50 bucks, I say. And she's oh shut up, you're not gonna do it. So then, you know, that was it. You tell me I'm not gonna do something, I'll do it just in front of you right now. Okay, so I get down on my hands and knees, and I'm crawling on like, and we have like hardwood floors. Um, and I get my knees land on the hardwood floors as I'm crawling, and all of a sudden, like my brain just sees stars, and I couldn't believe how sore my knees got. I'm like, what's happening to me? What's happened? I used to be able to run around on all floors like a freaking horse or or anything I wanted. I could, I could pratfall, I could uh tumble, I could do whatever you wanted me to do. I was very physical, I could do whatever. And now I can't even like I'm like thinking to myself, Jesus Christ, I can't crawl on my hands and knees. 52 years old, folks. Okay. If you're wondering when that kind of shit kind of you know uh disappears in the rear view mirror, it's it's that it's it's at 52 or 50. Let's say 50, because uh life wasn't any better then. So uh so I'm crawling on my hands and knees to Maggie, and I'm I'm like, I finally get to and she's laughing the entire time because she sees how uncomfortable I am, and she just thinks you're you're you're ridiculous, and she's like, you know, and I finally get to her, and I don't know if I kissed her hand or something. I'm I I I would have liked to think I did, but I don't know now. Um and I turn around and I crawl all the way back, and it it sounds like it's like a football field distance when it isn't. It's just like it's the difference of walking from one end of a room to another, but I'm doing it on my hands and knees on a hardwood floor, and it is destroying me. I finally get up onto the chair and I'm like, oh frick, and I'm I'm cursing, oh f this, and oh, what what's happened to me? And I I I'm realizing, yeah, no, I I this I'm a different me than I was. I talk about a me that hasn't been me in for so long. I didn't realize I was I was gone. I was that I'm a different guy, and I am. I used to think, I used to go around thinking that, you know, oh I can grow old, but I don't have to grow up. You grow up, whether you like it or not. You know, I'd like to think I I'm not still I'm I'm still not completely grown up. I don't know why it's important for me to to hold on to that, but it is, and um, you know, and that's just that. I I need to I it's like I'm desperate to hold on to this stuff because it was my youth, and it was it was a youth spent trying to spend a lot of time away from my house because my house wasn't somewhere I wanted to be, and um that's why nothing that ever happened to me out in the wild uh would deter me, you know, or any of us uh uh generation Xers, you know. We we would go and we'd you know, I I was watching some videos about like Generation X and what it what what they really went through compared to today. This one guy, Mr. Video on uh on YouTube, um really terrific guy, really terrific guy. His name's Leo in real life, and um I support him on Patreon. And you know, even Maggie likes and she she's familiar with the people I I support on Patreon, you know, these reactors who either react to music or react to TV shows or movies. And um, so he'd been watching these videos lately about the you know what Generation X people went through because he's millennial. And we generation editors complain about the millennials because they just don't know what they're doing, excuse me, what they're doing, who they are, what's going on. And I was talking with um our neighbor Kristen yesterday about it, and I had brought it up because I was thinking about talking about it on the air today, and uh time it's it good, and I was just saying to her, like, you know, it we did all this stuff without parental guidance, you know, you would leave for the day. There's no cell phones you would carry with you, we didn't even have beepers, we would just go, and your parents would spend the day, the entire day, not worrying about you. They didn't know what you were up to. Maybe sometimes they'd want you to check in. My parents were really big on that, check in every hour, which was really a pain in the ass for me. And I got ragged on by my friends all the oh, you gotta check in. Yeah, I know. I gotta check in. Uh, because my parents give a shit just a little bit. Um, or or it just they just want to be like cumbersome in my life. I don't know. When you're young, you never know what your parents are up to or what their what their you know uh motivations are, especially uh growing up in the late 70s, early 80s as a generation Xer. Um I don't know, me, I wanted to get the hell away from my house. I wanted my play life to be completely different. I wanted to be able to leave my house, and if I wanted to pretend to be a knight, then I was a knight of the, you know, uh a suburban knight. That's a great one. A suburban knight, that's what I was, and don't think we didn't slay our own dragons or hunchback men. We did. I did. I would um I saved I saved a kid from getting killed in a car accident. I saved uh a neighborhood from a terrorizing, possibly murderous, crazed hunchback man when I was a kid. We slayed our dragons. Um someone maybe they were like some creepy guy. You know, this was this was the days before you had apps that showed you like little red dots all over your neighborhood. Um you just had to hope that you know you told your kid enough about the ugliness of the world that they were capable of dealing with just about anything when they left the house. Um we yeah, this is why I told the story about the on the hands and knees, because you know, when I was a kid, I didn't blink at that stuff. Now I'm 52. I'm like, oh and I'm blubbing like a little girl. We I never did that when I was a kid, and here I am blubbing like a little girl because I'm crawling on my hands and knees on a hardwood floor. It's it's just mental. And um so I was watching the I was watching this um what it was like to be a generation X kid, and they showed forts, right? So yeah, I and I was just so remarked, uh, I just was so um taken by how much of these Generation X kids created the same sort of adventure that me and my friends created almost to the T. And uh because we were allowed to go outside, you know. If we skinned our knee, we didn't go crying to mommy and daddy, who kissed the boo-boo better, and we spent the rest of the weekend in bed because it was just devastating. We didn't do that. We we might have teared up, we'd run it underneath the uh a cold tap outside, and that was it. And we we lived with a giant scab for two and a half weeks, and it was a badge of honor. That's what we were nowadays. The kids they can't deal with the slightest things, you know, and I know why. I know why, too. I was thinking about it yesterday. See, Generation X had all the shit thrown at them. No matter what you uh, you know, were worried about, we dealt with something ten times worse. And then we grew up, looking back on our childhood and all the all the crap that we went through, thinking that it was a bad thing, and we were wrong. It wasn't bad at all. It was imperative, it was it was the very thing that shaped us into the people we became, capable people who could deal with everyday shit and deal with it without blinking. We could multitask, we uh we could do anything. So now we grow up and we have children of our own, and and you always want to make life better for your children. So we molecoddled them, we take away dodgeball from the playground, we take away a lot of things. Uh, they start clamping down on bullies. You know what? I got bullied. And at the time, I wished something could have been done about them. Um, maybe once or twice something was, but I doubt that. I doubt that. I I I in my memory, I have like just a couple of times that somebody tried to bully me and I just beat the shit out of them, and then they stopped. I mean, you had to deal with you had to make your your decisions back then. Um, because it was, you know, you're not getting out of this situation unless you work your way out of this situation. So you had to hope that your choices were good ones. Um, so yeah, I as soon as I take my notes down, I I I block out. Um, I don't know. Did it make us better people, stronger people? Did it mean that we had less problems? I don't know. I do know though that mental health started to become an issue over the years for many of us, and now it's just like you know, point to a generation X, or if they don't have mental health issues, they're lying to you, you know. Yeah, we went through all these great things, they made us capable people, but you know what? Some of the great things we went through, and you know, they they weren't all that great. We had to deal with things, and the only time you deal with something is if it's a pain in the ass thing that uh needs to be done, and you're just forced to do it, but it doesn't leave uh doesn't always leave the best memory in your head. So yeah, and um yeah, this is I I wrote this down, yeah. You grow to an age where uh first off, first off, you you you're you know you're learning everything. This is like the first age of being a man or being a girl or whatever. Um you want to you want to absorb everything, every information. You're curious, you just don't know anything that's going on, and you have to absorb it all. You know, so when you're a baby, you know, and then you get you know toddler and and whatnot. Uh when you become an adolescent and into your 20s, 30s, you think you think you're the frickin' bomb. You think you you're absolutely wonderful. Holy crap, how does no one else see this? And you feel invincible, and the crappy thing is that eventually you get to an age where you realize you're not, you were never great, possibly, and now you're just uh a fraction of what you thought you were. I hope that's I hope that's different for most of you. Um but we all get those moments where we we wonder about uh you know our own head space and what's going on in there. And uh I don't know what during my um 30s, yeah, 30s, uh 40s, I started having like you know, mental issue, you know, mental health issues, and uh I started seeing a shrink. I started seeing, you know, now I got like a mountain of friggin' pills I gotta take every every night just so I can I can appear normal, you know. It's not even for my benefit, it's for everybody else's. And uh so I take all these pills just so I can be pleasant around people. And uh and I'm not really I'm not really unpleasant. I'd like to think I'm not unpleasant, but I can be crabby and I can be grumpy. Maggie is always on the lookout. What's wrong? What's going on? Like, like she's asking me what's wrong immediately after I wake up in the morning. Like, I don't even know. I haven't even like really uh taken in the fact that the sun has risen again. And she's already asking me what's wrong with me. What's going on? That's like years of that's years of being married to each other and uh knowing like she she just likes to get ahead of things, you know. Oh, I know you're gonna be all grumpy and crabby and shit this weekend, or let's let's let's let's just concentrate on today. Are you okay? What do you need? You need it and and it usually ends with maybe you should take a Xanax. And I'm like, oh all right, I I don't know. I I leave it up to her better judgment because if I'm being effed up and I don't know it, who else do I have to look to? It's Maggie, you know? Maggie, like I said, she does everything. She's she's you know, I'm I'm wearing pants right now because of Maggie. And uh yeah. So if this week's show has or needs any other kind of theme, where's the mouse gone? Um it's that uh my wife is amazing. And uh if you met her, you would see it yourself. So I heard some I heard somebody online I I love these sayings that we get over t over time and like different words will pop up, like you know, over the recent years you get uh what is it, um disinformation, misinformation, uh, and all of that. And or we have sayings like, you know. A burden hand is worth two in the bush. I heard somebody say dress for the job you want, not the one you have. And I thought that's it sounds very cool. Like I can see that on a t-shirt. But what I don't see is you know, police officers showing up to work dressed as beekeepers and the sergeant putting up with it. That I I don't see. Or um, you know, a baker who just wants to make balloon animals and wear a big red nose, you know. Um your confetti cake is actually filled with confetti. But yeah, no, that's ridiculous. Um what other things that I do when I was a I could do, and I wouldn't bat an eye back in the day. I could I could pretend. You know who's got a great head on his shoulder? The kid that lives uh next door to me or one door down. And uh his name's Tristan, and I was watching him and he was he was showing me stuff, and you know, like the kids today they know how to code, they know how to all to do that. Do they know how to fix something with duct tape? No. Do they know how to change a car tire? Probably not. Can they code and create their own video games? Yes, and that's crazy. It's like that's the that's what was taken away from them and that and replaced with a different kind of knowledge, like uh, because the technology, the technology dictated what our children would be like. We didn't, you know, like her mom didn't raise her son to be one of those kids that are brilliant with that coding stuff. Um he decided, or I rather the the iPad he was holding decided it for him. And uh like like he could tell you this kid, he could tell you everything about Stranger Things and what a demagorgon is and all of that. He has talked about that ad nauseum to my Alexa in the kitchen, Maggie's Alexa, uh like every day for months and months and months and months now. Um he soaks in everything, and he's not even allowed to see the show. He just knows that it's popular, and even if he can't see it, he's going to be a part of it. And see, I think that is because he's got an imagination. That's what that this kid has. He has an imagination. Not a lot of people or kids or children or whatever are born with one. Luckily, he was born with one. Um my son, I'd like to think I imparted my imagination to him. Uh, something worked with my boy because he's in Harvard. Uh, sophomore year. He just got made producer of Hasty Pudding, which is like the oldest uh social club in at Harvard. Um, and producer is the main guy. He's taking the you know three-quarters of a million dollars, a million dollars, whatever it is, and putting it towards making the shows. He's going to be coordinating with celebrities. Most recently, uh you know, Michael Keaton was just made man of the year for Hasty Pudding, and uh, which is a long uh uh tradition of honoring you know such actors. Uh Catherine Hepburn, you further back you want to go. I mean, it's it's it's been around for a long, long, long time. And uh and my boy, with his imagination, he's gotten this far. He's the uh math professor's teacher's assistant. He's double majoring in maths and molecular and cellular biology. Um, and he also runs well, he will be running um Hasty Pudding now. He also helps out at Count Basie here. Uh that's been a constant job for a while now. So he's got theater and he's got medicine. He wants to be a heart surgeon, and that's where he's gonna go. The cool thing is, is that with this um with the clout you get for being like a you know the coveted position of uh producer at hasty pudding, is that you know, be being like the head dude at a social club in Harvard, that'll get him into help get him into uh the medical school he wants to go into. And um, and that's my boy. He's he's he's uh my boy's a genius, he's genius level intelligent, and um, and I knew that from the first time I saw him when he was three years old. I knew he was gonna go far, and uh I knew he was a brainiac, he wasn't anything else. He was like uh the I mean by that uh he wasn't a jock or something, he was uh he was the brain of everything. He liked he had to run things. His friends even got used to being like uh, you know, with every accomplishment. Of course, Benjamin won, or of course this and that. He was that kind of kid because he he had he was born with drive. Uh as a Gen Xer, I was not born with Drive. I just had I just used drive when I was a kid, or it's more like the excitement of doing something. Back then, I was all about being a suburban knight and uh fighting my dragons and um playing battles with the kids, and uh the neighborhood was always broken up into different gangs of kids. Uh the dead end kids, which I've talked about on my show. Uh then there was like Steven Robotazi's group, which I didn't really much like either, to be honest with you. Um, then like uh a street over and a block up, there was another gang, you know. So there were clusters of kids who grouped together, and these were the guys that ruled the neighborhood. Um myself and my friend Rob being uh the head guys really for our groups. Um but it was great, it was good times and uh and I miss it, and I long to re-experience days like that, but we all we have are shows like this where we can relive them, and uh I thank God for that, you know, playing kickball in the street and always having the right amount of kids to be able to play the game, you know. It wasn't just two of you who like to play outside, everyone played outside, everyone. They were just waiting for somebody to do our little call. We we would have a call, huh, but really high-pitched, you know, pre-pubescent, huh? And we would say it and it would pierce through the sky, the sound that would echo for blocks over. And other children that were trying to figure out what the hell they were gonna do for the first, you know, that to to start their weekend, would hear the call, and and based on where it was coming from, they knew what groups of kids wanted to do something, you know. So we built this fort at uh behind our elementary school in the woods where my nudie gallery was from uh nudie book ravine. You have to follow these episodes if you want to know what all the stories. Um, and uh the rule was if you wanted to be a part of it, you wanted access to our fort, you had to bring something we could use as a building material. Okay. So that was it. That was that was all, and you got access. So every time we'd come, every day or whatever, you would have to bring like whatever, like a discarded two by four, or even like a tea tray that we could use to plug up a hole or or something, anything, we would use it, you know, like oh, some kid brought uh a beach ball, we would deflate it and then we would hammer it in around a hole to make sure you know the rainwater didn't leak in and stuff. Like our imaginations when we were kids creating a fort of all things. I mean, this is this is uh what do you call it? This is uh architecture, you know. So we wanted to make something architecturally sound, and it was trial by error, you know, but by the time we were done, it had two floors, and you could climb up them because we would build stairs, and it was remarkable. We made something out of nothing, and it was there. I don't even you know, I'm sure some of the leavings might be there unless they did a massive cleanup. Um and honestly, I'd like to go back. I'd like to go back to those woods and just walk around maybe on a Saturday or Sunday. Um see if anything that we did is still is still there. I want to go back to Freeman's pond where the hunchback had resided, terrorizing all of us. And I will. I will go back, I'll take pictures and I will uh tell you everything that sprang to my mind or stories that came back to me uh after all these years. But I do want to I do want to actually tell you guys the complete story about the hunchback man of Freeman's Pond. Um but I'm still compiling um my memories, other people's memories. I haven't even touched on that part yet. I only got on my own. Um but this year was the first year I ever found proof that like like written down proof that the hunchback actually existed, and it wasn't just in like a child's musings, you know, like this was this guy really existed, and and I took him down, you know. So here's a here's an urban legend for you right now. Uh the potentially murderous hunchbacked man of Freeman's Pond defeated by a kid in third grade by the name of Jeremy Vickers. The mystery's over, folks. I was the man. Um I was the man that took him down. But I will uh once I've once I'm happy with the uh the information that I've gathered, I will uh broadcast the full story of the hunchback man of Freeman's Pond. Um all my stories for those of you at home or in your cars uh on Satur on Sunday mornings. I record my shows on Saturdays from 11 to 12, and then on Sunday mornings on 92.7 WOBM uh from uh 6 to 7. You can hear me right before church. It's uh a real morning show for most of you, but um uh you can hear it on there, or you can go on any podcast place like iTunes, Spotify, and you can type in of what remains with the with uh Jeremy Vickers, and you know you can catch up on some of my shows. The earlier ones were trial and error, but the last few, last handful, were pretty good. I'm already on season two. Um, 13 seasons 13 episode seasons, and um I think this one here is actually uh episode three of season two. So so this is my time. Um for now, let me let me say again my sponsor, Dr. Gabriel Jasper of the Jasper Spine Institute. He's the absolute MacDaddy uh as far as pain goes. He's the pain eliminator. Um and check out his show. He's got a live show coming on tomorrow from set uh seven o'clock to eight o'clock in the morning on 92.7 WOBM. Uh, it will be airing right after my show. And um it's a new show with Doc, and we have uh special guests who um provide us with the little spacers we talk about um that are game changers and and life changers. So it's a good show to tune in. You can also catch that after this show right now on Saturday on uh you know Spotify, iTunes, anywhere that fine podcasts are found, including this one. So uh so until next time, everybody. Uh your old pal Jeremy loves you. And this has been of what remains of me. So I'll see you next time. Take care, everybody.