Episode 3
· 44:38
Well, good morning, good afternoon, and good evening to all of you. My name
William Hocking:is Bill Hocking, and welcome to the one, the only Bill Hocking Podcast.
William Hocking:Well, good morning, good afternoon, and good evening depending on where you're listening to. Welcome yet again to the William P. Hocking weird and wonderful world of podcasting. Today, our guest is gonna be a repeat. Mister Dave Stutzman hailing from Long, South Carolina is going to join us in just a few minutes.
William Hocking:This will be the second time that you all, you avid fans, have had the opportunity to listen to Dave, who, if you remember correctly, was and is an old, old, old friend of yours truly, 53 years plus and counting. Today, we're gonna chat with Dave about one of my favorite topics and our overall theme of what does it look like to live a life worth living. In this case, what does it look like to live a life with kids, whether they're yours or someone else's? So we're gonna talk about kids, how they're the same as when we were growing up, the two of us, how they're different. Are they better?
William Hocking:Are they worse? What are their values today, or what do we think their values are today? So we'll be talking a little bit about that. So I hope you listen in. I hope you enjoy it, and I hope that you learn and take away something from this discussion as it relates to kids that you know, perhaps your own children.
William Hocking:Hopefully, this podcast will enrich your life a little bit, and you'll be able to take something away from it. So welcome, my friend Dave, to the stage. Today's episode is brought to you by Podcast Matter.
William Hocking:If you think about it, there are thousands of podcasts out there. Yes. They're constantly barraged by listen to this podcast, don't listen to that podcast. They are out there. So why PodcastsMatter?
William Hocking:The answer is really simple. PodcastsMatter has a mission to help seasoned business owners and impact driven voices like yours get your unfair share of visibility. That's why they exist. So if you wanna share your vision to the world more quickly, check out their website on the show notes. You'll be really glad you did.
William Hocking:Thank you.
William Hocking:Well, good afternoon, David. It's good to see you. It's And since this morning, since we talked, but for all of you out there, again, welcome to the Wild World of William Hocking Podcast. And if this guy looks familiar, it's not because you saw his face up on the wall in the local post office. It's because if you've been paying attention, last September, we had the honorable David Stutzman on this podcast.
William Hocking:And at that time, we were talking about friendships. And if your memory banks are working properly, he and I have been so called friends for fifty three plus years and counting. And so we thought it would be appropriate to talk about friendships as a first podcast episode. So now we're in February 2026. Obviously, a lot of things have happened since that fateful day back in September.
William Hocking:And so we're having Dave back on the air here. And today, we're gonna talk about something different than friendships. And as a little bit of background, I'll frame it as such. I have two children, both adults in their thirties, a boy and a girl. And as far as Dave knows, he doesn't have any kids.
William Hocking:At this point in his life, he probably won't. But given that our tenants of these podcasts, usually we try or strive to talk about things that mean something in terms of values, living a life worth living, what does that look like, etcetera, which is what I try to focus on on these podcasts. We're gonna talk about kids and compare them, if you will, with what we remember doing and being treated by our parents when we were kids compared to what kids today appear to be doing and our perception of how they are being parented by their parents. So that's gonna be our topic is kids. How are they different?
William Hocking:How are they the same? So, Dave, let me just kinda start off with a basic question that, you know, we all grew up as kids. You don't have any. I do. And we sometimes find ourselves sometimes over a beer or another libation commiserating with each other about the state of kids today.
William Hocking:And I don't think that neither one of us have the monopoly on that because I think our parents used to commiserate and their parents used to commiserate and whine and complain to each other about how different the kids are today, whenever today was, compared to what they remember. So I don't think that that's changed much, and maybe it never will change much. But suffice it to say, when we were growing up as kids, the world was quite a bit different. And so I'll ask the the first basic question. How would you compare kids today with what you remember as being a kid and hanging out with kids when we were growing up?
Dave Stutzman:Well, there's so many things have changed in the fifty years since we were kids than the kids growing up today. Obviously, technology, social media, that it's kind of hard to quantify it. It's a quantum leap in how kids grow up today versus how we grew up. I know both my parents worked after my brother and I became, I don't know what our age was, but my mother was home for a while, but then they both worked, but we basically had kind of run of the neighborhood. I lived in a rural area went to school.
William Hocking:Sometimes we were,
Dave Stutzman:know, afternoons or on the weekends and you know, we got out the door and the parents said, be home for dinner. You know, there was there was a lot less of the helicopter parents, I guess. They, I think, felt that they had taught us, you know, some basic concepts and you better be home on time. If you get in trouble, you're gonna know about it. And luckily it was a rural area, so there was less mischief to get into.
Dave Stutzman:We could find mischief, but it was certainly harder than being in the city and having all these other extraneous opportunities that you didn't get being out in, you know, almost in almost in farmland.
William Hocking:Mhmm. Yeah. I didn't quite grow up in, I'll say, a rural area, but it was the suburbs. You know, good old Silver Spring, Maryland. You grew up in Laurel, Maryland.
William Hocking:But we were in the neighborhoods, and so, you know, there wasn't anything close to being urban or city like. If you want to go be with lots and lots of people, you had to hitchhike. Heaven forbid. You had to get on your bike, or you could walk. Heaven forbid.
William Hocking:Today, I don't know how many parents, especially with the younger kids, how many parents would be give a thumbs up to their five or six year old sticking his thumb out and hitching a ride somewhere. That'd be the most unheard of, and I think the parents would be exercised if not accused of child abuse and or given a misdemeanor or thrown in the can if their five year old was caught on the side of the road with their thumb out. And yet a lot of us, that's how we got around because
Dave Stutzman:a lot of not at five or six years old.
William Hocking:Well, I I well, for example, like you were starting to say, your parents both worked, but for a while, your mom will show. When I was five years old, we lived in good old Chillum, Maryland, which was a whole lot less rural and much more urban than when we moved to Silver Sprayer. There was one calling the family, and my dad had it and took it to work. Mom was home. Going to school, you know, I went to the Catholic prison system.
William Hocking:They didn't have a school bus back there, so I had to walk to school along Chillum Road at age five. And then at age six, my sister joined me who was a year younger, and we both walked a mile and a half to school every day by ourselves. So today, if you saw two little kids walking on a fairly busy road side by side on the shoulder or if there's a sidewalk on the sidewalk, you might think nothing about it, or you might think, what are these two young kids doing walking by themselves on a busy road? But that's the way it was. And I don't think my mom gave two thoughts about safety, like there's gonna be an issue.
William Hocking:And to your point, we were taught rules. You know, to run out of the road. You don't put your sister out into the road or vice versa. You know? They taught us the rules of being safe, and they relied on our, quote, common sense as kids to keep us safe.
William Hocking:But these days, do you how many parents you know would allow a five year old and a six year old to walk in a mile and a half to school unescorted?
Dave Stutzman:It wouldn't happen today, at least not in any city. You get out to the Midwest or some other rural areas, that's kind of the breakeven point there.
William Hocking:Right.
Dave Stutzman:And I mean, I think there'll be some communities that parents would feel safe let their kids do that. Because also they know all the neighbors. They're walking by six neighbors' houses, and they know all those neighbors as well, because they're not walking among a bunch of strangers or visitors in the city. They know everybody.
William Hocking:To your point, you know, you you
Dave Stutzman:And all of the and all of the families kinda look out for each other.
William Hocking:Right. I was gonna say that that concept of a village. You know, you're walking in five, six, 10 houses. You're in the neighborhood. The parents there, the moms in some cases are home, and they're seeing the same pattern on a daily basis.
William Hocking:The kids walking to the bus stop or, you know, and whatever. You know, that was kind of the safety net back then. And in a sense, that could exist today. It could, but it doesn't necessarily mean that it does. And then you got the whole idea of, okay.
William Hocking:Well, you walk to the bus stop like we did. What about if you rode your bike? How often do you see kids riding bikes to school? I've heard that in some, you know, communities, some neighborhoods, if the elementary school or the local colloquial school is within bike riding distance and there's not like major arteries or highways nearby that you have to cross or ride on, I've heard stories that kids can still and still do ride their bikes to school. Well, it's a great thing if that's the case, but I also hear from parents, I would never let my kids ride a bike to school.
William Hocking:And then, of course, you know, the proverbial wire of a shed does one of these going, why? And then the parent for the the parents would be you for Mars kind of expression. How could you possibly allow your child to ride their bike to school? And maybe our rebuttal would be, what would you have as a rebuttal Dave? How could you not?
William Hocking:Why would you worry about your child riding their bike to school? It's almost like they're from Venus, we're from Mars, or vice versa. Anyway, it's
Dave Stutzman:No. I think it's a it could be just simple. The parents have a comfort level that they've taught them, taught their children to pay attention, don't do anything stupid, and that should suffice. It should. Again, I still think it goes back to the neighborhood you live in.
Dave Stutzman:It makes a difference if you're in the middle of New York City versus being in a suburb of Omaha, Nebraska. I think it makes a difference.
William Hocking:Mhmm.
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William Hocking:Thanks.
William Hocking:I think most of of the our avid fans as listeners would agree with that. But I think there's one one element, I wanna get your take on this, that seems to be so much more pervasive now than it did when we were kids with our parents versus parents today. Yes. There's social media for sure. There's cell phones.
William Hocking:There's the Internet. There's all of these things technologically related that exist today that did not exist then. But one thing that existed then that still exists today or vice versa is this perception of of fear. I think when we were growing up, parents realized that there was crime in and around everywhere. There was crime.
William Hocking:Crime existed. Things happen to kids. Things happen to adults. So it wasn't as if, like, we grew up in a bubble where there was no crime. These days, parents seem to be so much more fearful about what could happen to their kid.
William Hocking:When we were going up, did parents talk about what could happen to their kid? Could they be kidnapped? Could something really bad happen to them? Absolutely. But parents didn't seem to worry about back then.
William Hocking:So Well do you think that was the case? If that's the case, why do you think parents really, or at least didn't seem to worry too much about something really bad happened to their kid?
Dave Stutzman:Well, I think back in the times when we were growing up, those instances, incidents were far less prevalent. I mean, you could have a car accident, a car had hit a kid on a bicycle, but having kids abducted from the street, and there are other people out there offering kids drugs and things of that nature, other bad influences, I think they just didn't exist anywhere as much as they do now.
William Hocking:See, I I think a lot of people might disagree with you on that. I think they existed maybe as much proportionally to population. I think they existed just as much. It's just that you didn't know about it. You didn't learn about it.
William Hocking:It wasn't there was no social media. There wasn't this there was no network of, did you hear what happened about this or whatever? It was people talking or on the phone versus instant communication and blasting out through social media about this or that. So, I mean, you can see that the that crime happened on the news at night on television or on the radio. But parents, I think, realize that there's a chance that something could happen to your kid walking to school or riding their bike to school.
William Hocking:Well, statistically, it wasn't gonna happen to your kid or to anybody's kid in that neighborhood. And I still think, personally, that's the same thing today. It's not gonna happen to the next door neighbor's five or six year old walking to school a mile away like we used to do. But the perception is it's much more likely because there's a sense of fear because you hear about
William Hocking:it so much more now.
Dave Stutzman:Well, yeah, I would agree with that. You cannot get away from not hearing all the That's called negative. Back in our days, you heard it from your neighbors or you'd hear you'd hear in information at a PTA meeting or their your parents will talk about it at their workplaces, but you didn't have this instant newsfeed like you do now.
William Hocking:Right. And I think that's the point. You know, I I've talked to police, you know, local police about this same subject just out of curiosity and said based on statistics, how much more crime existed when it came to children's safety fifty years ago, forty years ago versus today. And the response has been very consistent. There isn't this huge increase in crime relative to child safety as we're describing today as compared to fifty years ago or so or seventy years ago or sixty years ago when we were little, we were kids.
William Hocking:It's just because hear about it so much more quickly it is so much easier to hear about that our we perceive that there's so much more of it. Now there is more of it simply because there's more people. So with increased population, there's gonna be increased everything. But proportionately, according to these police I've spoken to, if not any greater than it was sixty years ago, we just hear about it all the time. So this perception is can't let your kid ride their bike to school.
William Hocking:Heaven forbid, you let them hitchhike. Or especially even when they're older, you can't hitchhike. You could get picked up. You'd be abducted, never seen again. So it's solemn in the fear.
Dave Stutzman:I certainly wouldn't want a kid of mine hitchhiking at five or six years old. You know? When you're a teenager, that's a different story. You know? Well Not not a not a kid at five or six years old.
Dave Stutzman:That's to me, that's
William Hocking:A little young?
Dave Stutzman:I definitely think because I'm more than a little young.
William Hocking:Well, I, you know It did. I think my mom did a great job of raising us, but there were a couple occasions where, you know, I wanted to go somewhere and it was too dangerous to ride a bike, so she just, you know, get it get out there and walk. And without getting her permission, sometimes I'd stick my thumb out. She didn't necessarily endorse it. She never knew about it.
William Hocking:It didn't even occur to me that something would happen to me. See, that's the other thing that I think that and this goes back to kids acting like kids. We were given and you started to talk about this. We were given so much more freedom. You know, we go to school.
William Hocking:Sometimes we had to get home ourselves, hitchhike, ride our bike or something. And in some cases, mom wasn't there. In your case, she was working. My case, my mom was there a lot, and then later on, she became a part time teacher, but we'd come home to an empty house, and we knew what we had to do. We had chores.
William Hocking:We had to study. And if we didn't get that done before dinner, then, you know, hadn't fulfilled, we were gonna get in trouble. I didn't turn the phone off. Well, we had responsibilities, and we knew what would happen as in consequences if we didn't get that stuff done. Right?
William Hocking:So we just had this sense of independence, and especially on the weekends. You know? You get up. You made your bed, you cleaned your room, you did the dishes, you did whatever your chores were, and then your mom, in a lot of cases, was get the heck out of here. I don't wanna see you until dinner, and you better be back in time for dinner.
William Hocking:It wasn't this, well, what am I gonna do? It was, well, this is what I'm gonna do, and there's a foot up your derriere to help you remember what you're gonna do. And you were out of the house, and you didn't show up back until five, 06:00 for dinner. So it was up to you to figure out what are you gonna do all day long, and you had all these adventures ahead of you. You wonder, why don't kids do that today?
William Hocking:Are they allowed to do that today? What do you think?
Dave Stutzman:I think depending on where they where the families live, they don't have the same opportunities. And and obviously with the with social media and and electronics. It's a almost a default to give a kid a computer or a phone to play on. To keep them occupied since they don't feel safe with the kids roaming around in the neighborhood so much. And so they give them a device to play with.
Dave Stutzman:And if I were a parent and I can just speculating, I would think I'd be surprised if I would give one of my children a phone or a tablet at six or eight years old. Here's a book, read. I think it's caused a myriad of problems with these with the current generations. I'm being overgeneralizing the situation, but I think everyone would agree with me.
William Hocking:Well, I think people of of certain ages would agree with you. I think the younger parents would maybe disagree a bit, and if they're being honest, might agree to some extent. I know I almost got an argument the other day with a younger parent who was defending their, quote, point of view relative to sticking a tablet in their kid's face, or heaven forbid, a cell phone in their kid's six year old kid's face, say, amuse yourself, use this. And when my head went like this going, what are you doing? They're looking back at me like, how could you not?
William Hocking:And the argument went something like, what's wrong with a book? Well, they have books. What's wrong with a book in lieu of a phone? Nothing. But they'd rather use the phone.
William Hocking:Well, my grandmother would rather use the phone, but she's been dead twenty years. Does that mean it's right to give your kid a phone or a tablet? How about give them this? It's called a bicycle. Or give them this.
William Hocking:It's called a Frisbee. Or give them this. It's called a rick. Get outside and use it. Why do you gotta give an electronic device so that they have something to do?
William Hocking:Let them figure out what they can do versus give them a crutch because now they're gonna be addicted to that crutch. So how many kids today are which almost what you would call addicted to electronic crutches? Is that a good news?
Dave Stutzman:And it's, you know, it's good, I think, in this day and age that children learn about electronics and how to use them and how to fix them, you know, while while us Neanderthals, you know, I have trouble just fixing my printer on my computer. You know? So there's they're an advantage there, but, you know, back to that point, You know, you have to give them electronic something electronic to entertain them. Give them a Kindle. At least they can read something.
William Hocking:Well, I mean, that's a good point. You can give them a Kindle, then just say that's your in lieu of a book, that's what you're gonna do with it. You can't make phone calls. You can't look at the Internet. You can't do this or that.
William Hocking:All you can do is read on it. Here's an electronic device. It's called a kit.
Dave Stutzman:And it'll be a nest at the end of the book.
William Hocking:Exactly. But, I mean, how about giving a a kit? They have to build something. You know, remember, I got a kit when I was a kid. It was a radio kit.
William Hocking:And my dad, who's happened to be an engineer, a NASA engineer, said, build it. If you need help, you know where to find me. And I'll talk about a distraction. I mean, it was pretty cool, but it was complicated. I had to read the directions.
William Hocking:I had to try to figure out how to do this and sign or that. Well, absolutely. You
Dave Stutzman:did. Absolutely.
William Hocking:So, you know, give kids electronics, but not things like phones and tablets just because every oh, but everybody else has them. Johnny around the corner has three phones, and Jimmy next door has two phones. And, you know, again, my wise guy response is, my grandmother had five phones, but she's been dead twenty years. Does that mean it's right to give your kid a you know? It's parents just seem to me that they're too busy to wanna be parents, and hence, gotta give the kid a crutch because I'm too busy doing this or doing that instead of being a parent.
William Hocking:And to me, being a parent is being present with your kids, doing things with your kids that don't necessarily involve electronics. How about taking them outside and teaching them sports? Or taking them outside for bike rides? Go for a bike ride with your kid. Heaven forbid.
Dave Stutzman:Yeah. Well, again, I think we're getting into the realm of overgeneralization.
William Hocking:Happened before.
Dave Stutzman:Well, And I think a lot of parents do spend time with their kids, but still, there's other times when they're not spending time, how do you keep them occupied? And it's just so easy just give them something to play with versus
William Hocking:How do you keep them occupied? A parent's responsibility is to keep their kids occupied because if they don't keep them occupied, what happens to the kid?
Dave Stutzman:Well, their fears their fears take hold. You should go outside and run away or who knows? Who knows? To your
William Hocking:point, it's that sense of fear. I gotta keep them occupied because if I don't as a parent, something negative could happen to them.
Dave Stutzman:Yep. If you don't want them outside and you want them to stay inside, you have to keep them occupied in the house. So there you go, but it's a-
William Hocking:Pretty sad state of affairs.
Dave Stutzman:It is, it is. Of course, my perspective is what it is based on my life choices that I never got married, never had children, but, and we, you know, grew up at a much different time.
William Hocking:Yep. So,
Dave Stutzman:and you know, someone looking at this podcast or listening to it said, this guy's not even qualified to make an opinion. Well, wrong, I have a right to make an opinion. How relevant it is, is in the eye of the beholder. Okay, we're going
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William Hocking:I think you have every right to make an opinion whether you have kids or not. You don't have to have biological children to understand the psychology of children. Right. Because, you know, some of us were blessed enough to actually be in business selling to kids. Exactly.
William Hocking:And they're always Yep. As good ambulance drivers. So, you know, I think both of us Right. They have kids or not understand, to your point from the beginning, kids are still kids. You know, they they that's what makes them so wonderful is their sense of childlike faith and innocent, their exuberance and their energy and the capacity for mischief, all those wonderful things.
William Hocking:But it's just to me, what seems to be missing so much in today's kids is the sense of independence and, you know, their ability and willingness to take risks because they've been coddled. They these helicopter parents that you read about or you see and you know, maybe one of them is a relative of yours or something, they tend to helicopter and protect their children so much to the extent that their kids and this is where I gotta be careful. I don't go off the deep end. Or as Paul Giamatti said in that classic movie sideways, go to the dark side. I could easily go to the dark side on this part is, you know, children, I think they've been prevented by today's society and today's parents from falling and crashing.
William Hocking:There's been too much protecting of children from getting hurt and not physically, emotionally, mentally, and it it just bothers me to no end when I run into parents that refuse to allow their kid to fall and crash when they deserve to. And there's so many stories I could share with the audience about how I tried when my two kids were growing up, raising them. I went out of my way to let have to them to have opportunities where they could fail because that's what life is. It's full of failure, and it's full of successes.
Dave Stutzman:Well, and you learn from your failures.
William Hocking:I learned from failures.
William Hocking:Say that again.
Dave Stutzman:You generally, you learn from your failures.
William Hocking:Is it safe to say that maybe it's possible that you learn more from your failures than you do from your successes?
Dave Stutzman:Possibly, in some instances, yes. Think a
William Hocking:lot of people will say you learn a lot more from your failures than you do from your successes, because of the price of failure. The price of success enables and drives repeated success, but how often when you succeed at something do you radically absorb and try to dissect what you did so the negative doesn't happen again? Because there isn't any negative. It's a positive.
Dave Stutzman:Well, you can exactly. You can say it's some on the job training or you learn as you go. Right. It's
William Hocking:But the the point is the kids today, when they fall, the parents are there to prevent them from falling in a lot of cases. So they don't end up falling. They don't hit
Dave Stutzman:Well they don't you're I'm referring more to mentally falling than physically falling. But Well, mentally too.
William Hocking:It's like the parents make excuses for their kids when they don't do this or don't do that. It's almost it can't be Johnny's fault or Mary's fault. It's the teachers. It's the team. It's the coach.
William Hocking:It's not my kid's fault. It's somebody else's. So what are the kids here? It's not my fault. It's external.
William Hocking:Forces, I didn't do it. I didn't come up to par. I didn't work hard enough compared to my peers. When you and I were growing up, if we failed at something, who was the first person that was blamed? We were.
William Hocking:You didn't do this. You didn't do that. It wasn't the teacher's fault, the coach's fault, or Jimmy or Johnny's. It was your fault. So what are you gonna do about it?
William Hocking:How are you gonna improve on that? We looked in the mirror, and we saw who came short. We came short. So what did that teach us? Do a better job, work harder, whatever.
William Hocking:But it
William Hocking:was never anybody else's fault,
William Hocking:or I shouldn't say never. Rarely somebody else's. It was the man in the mirror. And so today, these kids are taught so much that it's not my fault. I deserve that trophy even though I didn't earn it.
William Hocking:The trophy generation just drives me crazy.
Dave Stutzman:Oh, yeah. The participation participation trophy. Wrong. You either win or you lose.
William Hocking:Everybody deserves a trophy. You know? And I think that's just
Dave Stutzman:Now we're going down a slippery slope here because, you know, we all believe in equal opportunity but not equal outcome.
William Hocking:I think we should believe in equal opportunity to be unequal. How about that? Everybody has a chance to be unequal because there will be inequality. Not everybody's gonna win. Not everybody's gonna be on the team.
William Hocking:Guess what? Not every
Dave Stutzman:That's what I can be number one on the team. Well, that's what I just said. Equal opportunity, not equal outcome.
William Hocking:Right. So hello, and welcome to reality. Why should you get a trophy? Why does everybody have to get a trophy? Because they showed up?
William Hocking:I don't think that's good enough. You get a trophy when you win because life is full of wins and losses. If you know, there's no shame in not getting a trophy. If you didn't win, you don't get a trophy.
Dave Stutzman:You try harder for the next year.
William Hocking:Exactly. How much is how much value is in that plastic made in China trophy if everybody on the team gets the same thing regardless of how hard you worked? Yep. That sounds like communism to me.
Dave Stutzman:Losing the Everybody gets the same thing
William Hocking:no matter who participates and who doesn't? Does that sound right to you? I don't know. Well This is once the reason I brought this subject up, Dave, for us to talk about because, you know, we're all around the same generation. We're just getting started talking about this.
William Hocking:So maybe what we can do is table it for now and bring it up, and it I have a couple ideas for another podcast with you on this subject, but as it relates to some other things. May mainly in terms of values and things like that.
Dave Stutzman:Or we can just ditch these subjects and talk about something else entirely.
William Hocking:We could. But out of respect for your time, out of respect for our listeners, I wanna try to keep these podcasts to, you know, a certain amount
William Hocking:of time or less. So
Dave Stutzman:Well, I agree. But So we're just
William Hocking:kinda getting started. Maybe, you know, we can make this a theme because there's so much for us to talk about when it comes to kids.
Dave Stutzman:Right. Well, it is. There is there is a lot to talk about, but, you know, I'm sure you have more thoughts about it than I do because you've experienced it, and I haven't.
William Hocking:Well, I've I've got different experiences. I'll just say that.
Dave Stutzman:Yeah. Absolutely.
William Hocking:Because you've been around kids, you know, more than I think you're giving yourself credit for than just not your kids.
Dave Stutzman:Well, I know. And, you know Should I this is where I say they should be seen and not heard?
William Hocking:That's what I'm what I'm about. It's this. It's you know, I wanna see the hand wave when it comes to certain behavioral attributes of children because I know that the hand wave has been there, seen and not heard. Exactly. Well, David, it's been a pleasure as always.
William Hocking:And to you, Avid fans, believe me, this will not be the last time you hear the wisdom of David Eugene Stutzman.
Dave Stutzman:Well, I hope that some topics I'll have more, you know, more opinions on various subjects that are more relevant since I'm kind of this topic is not exactly in my wheelhouse.
William Hocking:Alright. We'll make it your wheelhouse. Alright, David. As always, it's been a pleasure. We'll be back in touch.
William Hocking:Thanks for your time.
Dave Stutzman:Sounds good.
William Hocking:Alright. Adios.
Dave Stutzman:Later. Later.
William Hocking:Bye. Good afternoon, Avid fans, and a big Grazie mill to all of you who listened to our podcast just now with the one, the only Dave Stutzman. As I mentioned to you, he's been an old, old friend for over fifty three years, and I always, always enjoy time with him no matter what it is that we're talking about. This last episode on kids hopefully had you thinking a little bit whether you have children or not about kids today, kids as they used to be, that you remember growing up when you were a child. I know it brought back some memories for me when I was talking with him just now and how special those memories are and always will be, at least for me.
William Hocking:And as I may have mentioned to you avid fans, I have two adult children. They'll always be my kids no matter how old they are. But my conversation with Dave just now really brought back and brought home to me just how special and how cherished both my daughter and my son are to me and to my extended family. And as Dave was sharing with you all just now, if you think about it, I absolutely agree with him that kids are kids. No matter if they're a kid kid or an adult kid, they more or less act more or less the same depending on how old they are.
William Hocking:And what changes in terms of their behavior is has a lot to do with their environmental standards and what happens to them in and around them, their family, the external things like social media today, which obviously didn't exist when we were growing up. All these things have such a huge influence on how they act. But in their hearts and in their minds, they're still kids. Whether they're five years old today or five years old fifty years ago, they still act like kids. What they do differently is really based on all the influences that come in from the outside.
William Hocking:So, I hope you all got a few tidbits today, whether you had children or not, that you learned something that you can take and incorporate into your daily lives, and along with the tenets of what does it look like to live a life worth living. I think one of the short answers and immediate answers to that is what it does it look like? Well, if you have children and they're anything like my two kids, living a life worth living looks like being with kids, adult kids, like that. I am so, so blessed, and I hope you are too if you have children. So thank you again for listening.
William Hocking:God bless, and I hope you have a great day. And until next time, don't look down unless you drop something. Ciao.
William Hocking:Okay, avid fans. Before we say avoix and we bid all of you a fine ajoo, I wanna give a big shout out to the scary smart people at Podcasts That Matter. Now if I was you, I wouldn't walk. I would run and check them out: podcastthatmatterpodcastthatmatter.org. The link is in the show notes.
William Hocking:Thanks again. Well, avid fans, as they say in LA, that's a wrap. Thank you so much for listening to today's conversation.
William Hocking:We hope you enjoyed it,
William Hocking:and we hope that you learned something, that perhaps there was a few pearls of wisdom that you took away from today's conversation. Thanks again, and until next time. God bless.
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