Salty & Spice talk about mutual support from and for family and friends.
Check us out at Beans, Bullets, Bandages & You!
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Salty & Spice talk about mutual support from and for family and friends.
Check us out at Beans, Bullets, Bandages & You!
Leave voicemail for Salty (May be used on a future podcast): Click Here To Leave Voicemail!
Hello, everybody. It's been several years now, since that Sunday night when I got a call call from my dad. And I could tell at once something was terribly wrong. In just a few sentences, he told me that mom was in the hospital, she had just been diagnosed with lung cancer. And she was still alive for the moment. I don't know exactly how my face look deal when I was getting this call, but I can only imagine. And while that was still talking, and I was trying to find out where she was, and, and everything else, he just came up to me and said, What do you need? I said, I have to go to St. Louis. His only answer was, I'll get the car ready. when trouble comes. It is the most beautiful thing in the world, to have a partner that you can rely on to take care of what you need, and be your support, both physical and emotional. But that's not just a matter of luck. And it's not something that you just arrange once and then you're good forever. At that is what we're here to talk about today. Welcome to the show.
Salty:Welcome to the show, Big Show. Most importantly, credit card game podcast was recorded in our car. And that was, that was a story. It is a one of those things that just it is what it is I got a story for you. I said I was going to Tony's Cuba story. So of course, I must lie. I was in fortex, down to the actual cave Park down from the from the opening into the ground in the rumble of the of the roaring underground river.
Spice:That is an underground cave in Florida.
Salty:Yes. So it's, it's a cave. It's a spring. And when I say I mean we I was down there at about 105 to 110 foot depth down the tunnel always. And my regulator malfunction. What that means that's the regulator is the thing that you put on your face. That is what you drink, breathe the air out of okay. And so what I did was I mean, it was just blowing, it just totally locked itself up and blowing air out. It blew it out of my mouth. And it's filling the air around us with bubbles. So what did I do, I reached out, I grabbed my second radiator regulator, I got my second regulator, I put it in my mouth. And since we're in an overhead environment, we're driving, we're driving with no side mounts, we have multiple tanks and put it in my mouth. And I reach over, and I calmly shut the air off in the malfunctioning tank at the same time. I feel her hand on my calf. And I know that were I to look back or reach back, her spare regulator would appear in my hand, I Stone Cold know this, because I have absolute trust in her ability to not only be where she's supposed to be, which is within reach, if trouble happens, but that she's gonna do it. And I didn't turn around. But how much you want to bet that regulator was right there ready to hand. And it was when you have a malfunction of your life support system and you're in and over an environment, you have one good option and that is to leave. So I didn't have to signal I mean, you have an air malfunction in an overhead environment you leave you simply go to the go to the exit and then exit normally and there was no worry. We had the training, we had the equipment, my backup air supply was fine. I mean, I had all the air I needed to get out of the cave, and even then some because this is
Spice:that's preparedness, cave diving
Salty:that is prepping. That is just one of the reasons you know we're so fanatical on our diving PrEP is because we're pretty fanatical and all the rest of our preps too. But that's also knowing your partner. And that's also knowing that you could depend on your partner to not panic in a life threatening situation. We get that that isn't everybody's partner, we get that not everybody is set up to be in a life and death situation deep in a cave filled with water. This is not for everybody. This is some hardcore stuff. We get that. And there's nothing wrong with somebody who's not into that sort of thing. That what my point though is, we know our limits, we know that we're going to be there for the other person. And this isn't an accident that we know that
Spice:well and we know to be fair, what we cannot count on the other person to do. Absolutely. For example, a couple of years ago,
Salty:she hiked across the Grand Canyon. Here's what I could do for her. Here's what I almost Every bit of this did for her with the one exception, and I probably would make that do something different now because you live in you learn, I helped her hat by getting a very, very comfortable bag. I helped her by getting outstanding footwear, although we did learn a lesson. And I helped her by having the right technical clothing. I helped her by giving getting her helping her get plenty of experience, I wouldn't have helped her if it had been 2021 by hand, making sure she had a satellite phone, I would have helped her in any way that I could. But I couldn't make the hike, I couldn't do it. Following my my, my ankles, your ankle shattered, it's my ankle is full of metal, it won't bend that way anymore. It lewd, I literally cannot walk down that kind of Hill, there's no way I can, I could hike down 5000 6000 feet across 20 however many miles it was and then back up the other side on a steep path. Can't do it. So we know what we can do we know we can't be just because I can't do everything doesn't mean I can't help. If you're going to have situations like this in your life where you know, your spouse may not be able to do everything. But you can work on putting each other in infirm in situations where you can be helpful in every situation. And so can they. And this isn't an accidental thing. This is something you have to
Spice:work on and build. And you can have relations with the people around you. So that you know that there is mutual trust as well as mutual support. That can be both physical and it can be emotional, and let's not underplay that. Because what's the point of surviving if it just means drawing breath for another day, we're here to help you thrive to live as well as you can given life's slings and arrows of outrageous fortune. And a whole lot of living well, is being as emotionally well. And psychologically well as you can and trying situations and supportive relationships with with people in your world are a big part of that. But they're not luck. And they don't just happen. They're things you work on.
Salty:They're not static things. This is one thing, I think a lot of people make a mistake, you're either getting better, you're getting worse. I heard that in an interview with a with a guy who's a running back for a major college, and his coach in high school would always preach that to all of his players who are either getting better, or you're getting worse. And I think that's legit. I mean, when you when you're in a marriage, you're either growing closer, or growing apart. And the question becomes, what can you do to make sure you're growing closer, you're going in the right direction? You know, how many times have you heard the divorce thing where people get divorced as well. We just grew apart, we grew apart.
Spice:That wasn't luck. That was people living their lives and focus on themselves and what they were doing.
Salty:And not children? To be fair. Yeah. And or the children? Yeah,
Spice:that's a lot of what they're doing. And most of the cases, and they're not paying attention to what's going on with the relationship with the spouse. And if you don't put energy into keeping things organized, they will fall apart. That's a law of nature. I don't, not sure the law of entropy technically applies to emotional relationships. But practically it does. If you don't put energy into maintaining it, it tends to fall apart.
Salty:I think a large part of the human experience is to learn from those around you to learn from your ancestors, both right and wrong things the right way to do it. And the wrong way to do it are things that you can learn from the people around you and and the people in your family and your forefathers, your grandfather's, you know, aunts and Uncle so you can learn from all these people. And let me give you an example of how we, as a married couple been married 30 some odd years? And no, I don't know exactly. And neither does she to be
Spice:asked to do the math, we'd have to do
Salty:the math. I mean, because that's not something that is important to either one of us.
Spice:It's my answer would be not long enough.
Salty:There you go. And my answer would be something smarter.
Unknown:Oh, oh, we've
Salty:been married for the eight best years of my life. And then we had 28 Just kidding. No, we actually have kind of a tale of two families. Okay. We have my family, where I come from my father was a brilliant man, but had a lot of flaws. My father was a very flawed person. And I know my sister does not like to hear me talk about him this way. Because, you know, it's her daddy. But my father was a very flawed person. My mother was a very flawed person. I mean, I loved my mother, but she was a very difficult woman to get along. She was extremely difficult and that's just the way she was
Spice:not for me. Fortunately,
Salty:that not for now, basically, if she took you under her as hers, he were good. But there were only a few people. She could be very difficult get along with and I'm selling her short. I know, I was calling her short. But she and my father who was who ended up a hardcore alcoholic, okay? It just went bad in a really bad way. between them. They let the booze come between him, they let everything come between him. And they just neither would give, neither would was willing to take the steps necessary to make things work. They just weren't willing to do it. Okay, let's contrast that with her parents, who were literally till death do us part, they were truly in love from the minute they got from before they got married until the last one of them left here.
Spice:Not friction free by any means. Not always. No.
Salty:There was always
Spice:and that whole thing where the kids try and pick the parents against each other. Oh, good luck with that in my household. That was so not happening.
Salty:That's one of the things that I think was so critically important with them is they made the conscious decision to always back the spouse no matter what. in public. for the kids. Now, sure, once that door closed, words were spoken. I know they were neither one of them was a milk SAP? No, they were both very, very strong willed, confident. And unless you were, you know, unless it was something like driving directions, God help. You ever knew these people? The number one thing, don't ever ask one of them how to go anywhere even shed in the back yard,
Spice:within hearing or the other
Salty:within hearing of the other, the contradictory spouse name you why you're sending them that way. It'll take an extra 32 seconds. So if you send them over on fabulous St. Donna, wow, boom, you're gonna hit four stop signs, honey.
Spice:Am I wrong? pretty true.
Salty:But now they decided early on that they were going to be the parents. And the kids were going to be the kid.
Spice:And the spouse was each you know, the husband, the wife was the most important relationship that either one of them had. And they did that very intentionally on purpose. They knew full well, that the best way to keep the rest of the family functioning well was to keep their relationship as a team bond, healthy and well. And so the kids didn't win when it was between spouse and kid. And there were lots
Salty:of opportunities. She's the youngest of nine here. Okay. So there were lots of opportunities. They
Spice:didn't kill any of us. Despite provocation.
Salty:Yeah, one of them was. And they were actually on speaking terms with all of them, at least at the end. No, they loved their children. They did. But they were not their children's servants. They were their children, parents now my mother. Sure. She was not my servant. But that was kind of a different deal.
Spice:So how do you get oil actually getting this sort of relationship in the first place? Let's be honest, the hormones help a lot. Yes. The hormones and the common situations and the time and environments people are in when they're young. They all promote this kind of pair bonding originally. So starting out with a good foundation like that is not really all that rare. It appears to me when I look around the world. Yeah, I'm watching the nice feet of waterfowl traveling overhead nor the hard part. Yeah. In January. Those are V's
Salty:I know. It's not they're circling. Okay.
Spice:Yeah, they're not going far. They're not long hauls.
Salty:That's that was because they're pretty high for just local. Sorry. We're driving down the road in our in the, in the Chrysler heavy studio. So you have to keep in mind that we're gonna see wildlife and stuff like that.
Spice:So starting out on a good foundation is not the hard part. It's maintaining it. That is, and a lot of that. It's about continuing to pay attention to your partner, and to exert yourself to make your partner happy. And if it feels unbalanced since my mom has featured in this podcast a lot, let's bring her out one more time here, one of the few bits of concrete wisdom that she intentionally and repeatedly attempted to instill in me two things one, you are not going to change a core who a person is they might change temporarily for you, but you are not really going to change them, they're going to change them if they want to change and you're not going to fix a person or make them like you want them to be. And relationships are not 5050, they're 6040, or 7030, the only thing is in a healthy relationship, it switches back and forth, who's the 70. And who's the 30, it switches back and forth from time to time, but do not expect it to be 50 and 50. And fair, because it's not going to be that way.
Salty:And there are times when one person's needs outweigh the needs of the other, it's just part of life. And you have to be willing to give at that point in time. And, and on a lesser level to, I mean, I'm a firm believer in giving, I'm really into the concept that you get, coincidentally, when you give intentionally Does that make sense? When you intentionally give you do something for somebody else, just because it's the right thing to do, it's the nice thing to do, it's the thing that they really would, that will make them their life, a better life is something you can do that is giving of yourself. That is unless the person is a selfish narcissist, or sociopath, then that will eventually ring true with them.
Spice:And even if they are a selfish narcissist, there are those people out there, there are you figure that out and shift your giving to someone else, and you still end up the better for it, it's not a zero sum game where you give and then you've got loss. Exactly. And that is very much how it is. Or it can be in relationships. When you give to them, you feel better, and they feel better, and everybody feels better, and it's better all around. So this is kind of a different take for a prepping podcast, to be sure. I've never heard stuff like this and other prepping sources. But it's real. And it's important in emergency situations, even more than it's important day to day.
Salty:Exactly. Because you are going to be then what you are now but just multiplied and expanded and, and you know, and also, there's one other aspect of this that I just have to bring up. Some people do not do well under stress, some people are going to crack and you know, they're going to crack this needs to be prepped for ahead of time, you need to find a way that they are not put in the situation where when they crack, it's going to cause a major disaster.
Spice:And if you can you do what you can to prep, especially to avoid particular people's soft spots. Everybody's got soft spots,
Salty:everybody else,
Spice:if something is liable to make something, somebody that you care about, tip off the deep end more than anything else. See what you can do to reduce the risk of that thing, or help them learn to deal with that thing.
Salty:Exactly. Brutal steel can be forged, and people's weaknesses can if not be fixed, they can be adapted to thank you looking for the word good. For example, you have person that just doesn't have the ability to go out on a big long hike. Well, okay, how are you going to deal with that? If it comes to a situation where you have to bug out? Do they have the ability to ride a bicycle? What can they do? And I'm talking about a physical thing here. You have a person who has a mental issue, and I'm not talking about really seriously degrading mental issue, but something like say claustrophobia, okay, so if you're planning to hide in a, in a small room in the basement, and with a person who has claustrophobia, this is probably not going to be very successful. I know for example, if a person has claustrophobia I've had a lot of times I've talked about scuba diving with people and so I couldn't do that I'm claustrophobic and I'm just, it just makes me stop and think, okay, the problem is the person they may not want to do to dive which is fine, but a lot of these hoops I'd love to do that. But I'm claustrophobic and a lot I just just am baffled by Okay. Well what does claustrophobia have to do with scuba diving? Absolutely nothing. It's
Spice:it was reasonably Yeah.
Salty:Yeah, I mean, you know, I don't know. The first time I jumped off of a dive boat and looked down
Spice:and I can see the gore phobia.
Salty:I can see below me 4050 6070 feet, I can watch the reef fishes just playing and rolling around in the surge that far below because the water is crystal clear. It's just like looking at the air. There's nothing claustrophobic about it. But yet the person doesn't realize that because they haven't been shown they have Haven't been exposed to it now. Yes, diving in a cave. Sure, don't do that if you're claustrophobic, just don't it back, probably just better possible stops, that's probably not a good reference laces, you know, that's one of our prepping weaknesses as we do some stuff like that. But that's not something I would recommend for preppers. First of all, it's very expensive, difficult to do training. But anyway, suddenly, if you're in the open ocean, the world opens up in front of you. There's nothing to be classroom, but I don't know, probably 20 times I've heard people say, I'm claustrophobic die.
Spice:And what they mean is they're afraid to not have enough hair,
Salty:which that's,
Spice:yeah, if one special aspect of this that is particularly relevant to preppers, and I've seen it come up in a lot of different discussions, if you think that personal safety is really important, and think that includes firearms for protection. And frankly, we both have firearms for protection we do. And we both, you know, shoot paper targets with them really frequently. So you know,
Salty:it's kind of fun.
Spice:However, if the people in your life are very much opposed to that, particularly if they are afraid of guns, it is doing nobody a service to force a weapon on somebody who is afraid of it, and hates it, and doesn't want it, that is not a form of personal protection, that is a worst disaster waiting to happen. There are other means of self protection, they may not be, well, they aren't as good in some respects. But they have the advantage of your when push comes to shove, the person you care about is going to be more willing to use them and is not going to be so terrified they do stupid with. And that is a huge deal. So either you find a nice comfortable way to reduce their fears and get them more comfortable, without stressing the heck out. Or you find a different approach. Because you really can't remake the other person in the image of what you want them to be.
Salty:As an aside, if you are a guy, and if the person who doesn't like or afraid, is afraid of guns, your spouse or significant other and you want to if I could just get her to shoot, I think she'd like it. Or I could just get her so she wouldn't be afraid to take her to the rain. I hear what you're saying. But don't you dare teach her how to shoot. If she's afraid, you find a good female shooter somebody you trust to the safe or if you don't know anybody trust the way you go to the range and you say, look, I need an instructor. But I need a female instructor. Because the last thing any woman who's afraid of guns wants to hear is mansplaining Oh, dude, I mean, you will over Game Over, you'll lose it you you'll take an opportunity and turn it into a complete disaster. You know, there are many dodging some road We're sorry about the rumble. There are many good women instructors. She's not an instructor, but she's a very proficient firearms. She's had several friends who were really unsure about firearms that she's kind of taken under her wing, who have become fans of them, simply because, you know, they associated guns, not with guns, but with overbearing, maleness.
Spice:And even if you say well, she really doesn't know this stuff. So it's not mansplaining when I explain it to her show a too bad, it certainly feels like it, it feels like this is wrong, I shouldn't be here, I'm in the subordinate position, there's nothing about the situation that makes me comfortable. Just know. And it'll find other ways to express itself, like the fear of the noise or the kick, if you want to call it that some of the firearms I shoot have almost none. The point is, it's never going to be an effective defense strategy for that person. unless that person decides they're going to be willing to learn it and do it. And they're not just feeling forced into giving it a try. Because they've been badgered into it. It's it's just not a good situation to put firearms in the hands of somebody who's afraid of them and hates them
Salty:a good friend. She's fairly physically unable to do much because of a health condition. She's very, very anti firearm. She just is she's, she doesn't want anything to do with him. But she was concerned because she was in a neighborhood and there were several break ins in her neighborhood. We were chatting about it over the internet and I said well, well shall there's many things you can do that do not involve guns. Let's talk about a few of them and I started going okay, you can first of all get pepper spray get a really big pepper spray, bear spray if you will. You Have you always keep your automobile. your keys next to you. So that if you hear a noise or something like that you hit the panic key on your automobile. And that thing is gonna start, you know, they're gonna, it's gonna wake up the whole neighborhood that will generally run people off, they don't like to see that you have it so that you can flick on the lights with your voice command, flick on the outside lights with your voice command, put in motion sensitive law, I mean, there's all kinds of things you can do in a normal situation, which is what she was talking about. And I just explained to her that all these different options, and you don't have to have a firearm Now obviously, I'm a big believer in firearms being bullets. You know, and I have a lot of firearms, I have a lot of ammunition, and I love to shoot we did. Shooting is something I do for, for fun and for protection. But I realize not everybody does. And they still deserve respect and protection, the opportunity to defend them, even if they don't want to use a gun to do it. And yeah, I can, I can see some of my audience cringing when I say this. But that's why they will try to take my guns away from me. That's where that's where I thought being so nice about it
Spice:that's working within the realities of the people you care about and associate with. By the way, we've been talking about family a lot. Please understand, at least the way I look at this, even though I have a big family and I care a lot about my family. This does not have to be anything about blood relations are just maybe the people you have chosen to associate with, rather than people that you happen to share blood with. So yeah, not everybody has good family situations as I was blessed with but there's a whole lot of people out there in the world and there are people you can connect with if you are of a mind to and desire to
Salty:show you need to be bald eagle erode. COVID he's pretty close.
Spice:Yeah, well, he'll figure it out.
Salty:I hope I just don't want him flying off into the traffic that's dangerous. I Why am I worried about that bald eagle? It will it will fly away or it will not. I
Spice:mean, if they are no longer endangered, at least around here. They're not.
Salty:Okay, anyway.
Spice:So that's the basic deal. Relationships are important. being trustworthy. And being able to trust the people that you associate with are both really important. Recognizing each other's strengths and weaknesses is and respecting each other's strengths and weaknesses. And realize that none of this is carved in stone. I'm a physiologist by trade. And if I've said it once, I've said it 300 times, we always remodel and we remodel in response to recent stresses. You lift weights, you get stronger and better able to lift weights, you show care and attention to your partner, you improve the strength of the partner bond. So where you are now is not where you're stuck if you don't like it. So it's something to think about and perhaps something to work on. sides makes life better in good times. To be honest.
Salty:That's right. Okay. I think that pretty much summed up what we're trying to say. Talk to you later. Bye.