Welcome to “Ear Biscuits”, the podcast where two lifelong friends talk about life for a long time. I’m Rhett. And I was yawning. Sorry. Oh, that really sets the tone. I’m Link. This week at the Round Table of Dim Lighting, we’re doing something a little bit different. We’re compiling, how do I describe this? It is a thematic compilation- Compilation, yes. We’re compiling things- Of our friendship series. around the same theme. But it’s gonna create something entirely new. So instead of, while we take a break, just, you know, just giving you another episode you may have not heard, we thought it would be fun to, in this case, go through our friendship series, which we revisited, like we take a few months, we revisit and we analyzed our friendship during different time periods, thinking that we could then unearth some new stories and some new insights into what was it like being friends in grade school, middle school, high school, college, our engineering years. And so we’ve kind of taken the highlights, you know, a segment from each one of those things so you can, you know, you’ll be on a journey through our friendship through the years without having to go back and to listen to all those. Yeah. Enjoy it. Every single interview, even to this day, next week, if we have an interview with somebody for a publication, we will say On the first day of first grade, we were both held in from recess for writing nasty words on our desks. I wrote “hell” And I wrote “damn”. I’m not really sure who says what. Yeah, and sometimes we don’t say that. Yeah. We’ll say, “Yeah, and that’s when we met. Our teacher, Ms. Locklear, held us in from recess. Held us in from recess. And made us, let’s just say it together. Color pictures of mythical beasts. And that’s when we hit it off. And that’s why our company is called Mythical. And that’s why everything we do is called something mythical. And that’s why our fans call themselves mythical beasts. Yes. Because of that origin story. And you know what? We’ve been best friends ever since. You don’t wanna ruin it for everybody, do you? Here’s the thing, when we started talking about this recently, you, okay, I’m gonna say something that I believe is true about you, and that is you have an uncanny ability to look back on something and change a detail and then believe it to be true and just, and bypass the whole like, “This is probably not exactly what happened.” Like, because there’s lots of things that you’ve said and I’m like, “But you know that’s actually not, like, that’s actually not true, right? That’s the way that you’ve categorized it and smoothed it out in your mind.” I’ve always had feelings about this story. Let’s analyze it and then explain it. Okay. Yes, you’re onto to something. You’re onto something. But, so let’s break it apart. We did meet, and first of all, we have not discussed this at length. No. It’s not like we’re about to confess something to you that we’ve concluded that we’ve been lying to you. This is a legitimate exercise right now, in your presence, of us analyzing this mythologized story. So we certainly met- I have analyzed it on my own a few times, but We certainly met in first grade. In Ms. Locklear’s class in 1984 in Buies Creek. And we were certainly both there the first day. We were definitely both there the first day. Now, I’m gonna go back to what I remember. I’m gonna try to get back to what I actually remember. I remember both of us getting in trouble and I remember both of us being held in from recess and I remember both of us coloring pictures. And I know- And looking at how you were coloring and making a judgment about it. Early accounts of that story included the memory from me of, again, now I’m just remembering the remembering of the memories, which is what humans do anyway. Well, but I’m going back to what I think are core ’cause a couple of things- A core memory. but there’s a couple of things about that that I’ll get into in a second. I remember Paul Bunyan and Babe, the blue ox. Like there was a point when I accessed that as what I believe to be a core memory of what we were coloring or I was coloring. Now that memory came from you. Yes. The fact that it was from, it was Paul Bunyan ’cause I don’t remember what we were coloring. And so I don’t have an opinion about that. Here’s what I believe to, here’s, if you put me up against the wall, here’s what I believe. I don’t think it was the first day of first grade, okay? I don’t think we got in trouble on the first day of first grade. It sounds like a simplification. I think what happened was we, it’s safe to say that we met in some form because you pretty, in some form, you meet everybody in your class on the first day of first grade. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And that’s when you moved from California. I was there in kindergarten. You weren’t. You know, so yeah- And I remember- We met on the first day of first grade, but then at some point we both got in trouble. Well, I know we both got in trouble because I, you know, back in the day they used to give the numbers on conduct and it was the higher the number, the worse it was and if it was a, and four was the worst. And I always got fours. But the reason I always got fours- You were talkative. Is ’cause I just wouldn’t shut up. I once sat next to you and colored and made observations about the nature of the way you were coloring. And I was like, “Wow. He’s like really precise. It’s like”- Go on. “What is he try” Like, I remember thinking like, “What is he trying to prove?” It was like, ’cause- What did I prove? ‘Cause first grade- Go on. You know what I’m saying? First grade is like, most kids in first grade are just like, they’re holding, this is what I was doing. You’re holding the crayon like this, like you’re holding it like you’re gonna kill somebody. You’re gonna like stab somebody with a crayon and then it just makes contact with the paper and you just move it. And I’m just like, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And then I look- Me not know what wheel is. And you’re like, it’s like really even. I’m like, “Whoa, is he submitting this to a contest?” ‘Cause I didn’t know this was a contest and now I need to try, you know what I’m saying? Oh no, this is just art time, I’m not interested in this. But I know that that happened. But I’m not willing to stand by the fact that those two events coincided and it was actually while we were being punished. Well, it sounds like at least three events have been combined into one. You remember us coloring. Yeah. We know we met on the first day of first grade. Had to. And we know we got in trouble at some point at the same time. Well, I’m sure that that happened. Okay, so those three things were compiled into one mythologized origin story. I would like to talk a little bit about first impressions as I remember them. Okay. We’ve already talked a little bit about my impression of, like how you were coloring. Coloring. But, and I actually didn’t, I had to kind of dig back and think like, what do I remember thinking about Link in meeting him? Now I’ve already established that my MO was to, I wasn’t, I didn’t perceive you as timid, but I know that I definitely was not timid in terms of my, I threw myself at people, right? In a way that I don’t do now. Like I’m more of an introvert. But I was a weird extrovert in like elementary school in the way that I would just like meet somebody and then within the first five minutes invite myself to spend the night at their house that night. I did it with anybody. And so I was very drawn to just like- Now I’m wondering if everything you’re saying is an oversimplification. Like the first time you met him, you’d invite yourself over to his house. That’s an oversimplification. It is. But very, very early, like alarmingly early, usually in the first day I would be like, “Hey, so like, what do you think about sleepovers?” You know, it’s just, I’d find a way to, that’s all true. So I was, but I would, you know, I was kind of evaluating like, “Oh, this person seems, there’s something here. Like this person seems like they’d be fun or like we could have a good time together, right?” So obviously, I thought that about you because I’m pretty sure we had sleepovers in first grade, but here’s the thing that I remember about you. I find that hard to believe. Okay, maybe, maybe I did. That seems really early for me. Okay. I remember thinking that you were very clean. Clean? Speaking of hygiene. That you were like very put together. Like you had this, like your hair was like, it’s like somebody’s, like he’s really, he really is caring about, like his hair and his clothes. Somebody’s combing that hair. Like his hair is combed. His clothes like match. Like someone is like laying them out or he’s cares about it. Like, you know, I’m wearing like gray sweatpants and a gray sweatshirt. You’re like, “That’s an outfit. I’m there” You know what I mean? I’m trying to think what my first impressions of you were because I have to kind of interpellate from the facts that I know. I don’t, and maybe I’ll access a memory, but nothing specific comes to mind like it does for you. It’s like, I’m so, I made such a strong impression on you. So many visceral and specific memories. Because it was different. That’s what I’ll say, that like, I felt like most of the other kids sort of seemed like, “Yeah, like we’re in first grade, we’re just kind of like-” Going with it. “Existing.” Yeah. But it was like, “Oh, this kid is like, he’s-” Put together. “It’s picture day every day for this kid.” Yeah, yeah, yeah. Right? I like that, yeah. Yes, definitely. And for the reasons that I mentioned. I think that, you know, I don’t think it was anything that I analyzed, it was just the opinions in my life, basically my mom, were like, I never questioned it. You don’t think that you- And I never looked around. I don’t think. I was self-conscious. I do have this early preschool memory of like, I was, the guys were so rambunctious and physical, like there was like wrestling happening in preschool and I was afraid of the guys. And I would always hang out with the girls. Like the guys would climb this fort structure built indoors at the Lillington First Baptist Church and be up there and I would, and doing rambunctious stuff. And I was just intimidated. And so I would hang out with the girls. And now I didn’t know you at that time. So there’s like a kindergarten version of that. I didn’t know you at that time, but what I do remember along those lines is that it was, I very quickly was like, “He’s not interested in sports.” Now again, I wasn’t, I didn’t have a Yeah. I’ve never really been that like, I’m not a judgmental person, you know what I’m saying? So it’s not like, “He’s not interested in sports, so therefore he’s not my friend.” Like, that kind of thought process doesn’t happen. Apparently it was, “He’s different. I gotta see his house.” Yeah, yeah, yeah. “I gotta spend a night.” But it was clear that like, even in first grade, I remember in first grade, first, second grade talking to other boys about, you know, like J.R. Reid’s coming to Carolina. Like that’s a level of conversation that I would have with these other kids who like cared about college sports and like what was happening at Carolina and State and Duke at the time, right? And a lot of that comes from the fact that like, okay, my dad was really into sports and all these other kids’ dads were really into sports. And I had a brother and that kind of thing. But it was like, that wasn’t a conversation I was gonna have with you. It was like, “Okay, well I’m gonna have a different conversation with this guy.” My first impression of you had to have been related to the fact that like, you weren’t there the year before in kindergarten. You were taller than everybody. Yeah, I was already a head taller. Taller, skinny, you had this look about you. A look. It’s like, you know, I’m not gonna- Like a hawk, like a falcon. I’m not gonna say it’s Gollum-esque, but you have bigger eyes and you were gangly. And if you- But you did just say it was Gollum-esque. If you got down on all fours, I’m not gonna say that’s like, you know how in like “The Fellowship of the Ring”, they put Gollum in there for a few seconds, but you didn’t really, like, they hadn’t fully figured out who Gollum was. They hadn’t done all the CGI, so like in “Two Towers” he’s fully fleshed out and looks different. But in like the first one, he’s kind of like this shadowy new character that you don’t really know. And like, boy, he’s really hunched over and you can kind of count all of his vertebrae. And boy, he looks like he has an extra vertebrate and his eyes are so big. That’s probably what I thought. You’re talking more- I’m not gonna say because I don’t remember. You’re talking, but factually that’s not true because I looked that way during and shortly after puberty. I actually was just kind of a tall kid, but proportionally relatively normal. Okay. I began looking like Gollum in ninth grade. Hey, man, I was just joking. Okay, well it’s a good joke. “Ear Biscuits” is brought to you by Better Help. If you’re anything like me, you spend a fair amount of energy trying to let’s say live up to the expectations that you think that people have of you. You know, living a life that’s focused on appearing a certain way externally. And sometimes you can end up neglecting your inner life- Yeah. And yourself. And that’s actually something that therapy has really helped me with. And even though we’re performers, you don’t have to be a performer to feel like you’re performing- Right. for people. Yeah, it’s really easy to get caught up in what everyone else needs from you. But what about what you need from you? Right, that’s where therapy’s so useful. It can really be that time you work on just yourself with no interference from others. And that’s why we like Better Help. Yeah, I’m fans of Better Help because it is, it makes therapy more accessible to more people. And maybe that includes you. If you’re thinking of starting therapy, give Better Help a try. It’s entirely online, so you can take your appointments from anywhere on your own schedule. Just fill out a questionnaire and Better Help will match you with a therapist that meets your needs, and you can change therapists at any time with no extra cost. Find more balance with Better Help. Visit BetterHelp.com/ear today to get 10% off your first month. That’s BetterHelp H-E-L-P.com/ear. Let’s get into middle school. So for us, middle school was kind of a continuation of elementary school, Buies Creek Elementary went from kindergarten all the way through eighth grade. But there was the middle school hallway. The whole thing was shaped like a Z. Well, a very straight Z. Like steps. And then you- What is that? That should be a letter. Why is that not a letter? So like the bottom right of your Z is the- It’s like an H with the, if you look at a H and you just grab the top end on the left and the bottom end on the right and you tear them off. Yeah. That should be a letter. I guess like knowing the layout of the school is not really the thing I wanted to, that was that important. No, no, I’m really interested in this. But over the years you would move up the elementary school hallway and then you would start going to the next hallway. But that was like fifth grade, maybe sixth grade. But you weren’t considered, definitely sixth grade, but you weren’t considered middle school there until seventh grade. And the reason is because that’s when your class schedule changed from one teacher all day to multiple classes where you went to three different teachers. Yep, and we were in the same class for all of those. So we moved around together. Both years. Both years. All of the, yeah, once you were in a class together, it kind of, that was, you stayed in that lump. Yeah. But you got a locker. Yeah, you got a locker. Locker for the first time. You could play sports because that was when you could like get on the basketball team or the, before that it was just We both played on the soccer team. But it was, before that we had done recreation soccer. But this was like school soccer- Yeah. School baseball, school basketball. And it was, so it was kind of cool that like your whole school career, you kind of saw this whole trajectory and you could see the middle schoolers, you could see those eighth graders coming into the lunchroom and stuff. So it was like, you really had something to aspire to ’cause it was right there in front of you. And it wasn’t a huge scary deal to go to the middle school because it was just going further down the hallway. It was one of the more easy, it was the easier transition that I can think of for most people having to go to like a whole new place and new friends. It’s like is everybody I was in school with before with like the one new person from Nebraska that shows up, you know? To me, this is all wrapped up in the talent show, which we have talked about before. But at the end of the year, it was those three teachers were in charge of putting the talent show on. So any student could sign up for what they wanted to do. And then there’d be that assembly during school hours where everybody would come in and sit in the auditorium and the seventh and eighth graders would perform their talents and they would- And I had been thinking about this from, just intently from first grade. Oh yeah, ’cause it’s like these are celebrities, in school celebrities getting up there- How do I get up there? And like performing a song and like there would always be this big grand finale, like the biggest act would be at the end. And you’d go in there and you’d look forward to it. And then they would do it again that night for the parents would come in. So you’d have two performances. So by the time- I didn’t even remember that. Yeah, by the time we were in seventh grade. And we had practiced in sixth grade because the fall festival- That’s right. We did “O.P.P.” and made it get down with Halloween. That was sixth grade. And we talked our way into that. Yep. There was not supposed to be a performance of any kind at that thing. And we were like, “We gotta get ready for this talent show. We gotta know what it’s like to be up on this stage at this auditorium and perform for a full house.” Yeah, so by the time, as seventh graders, we formed our posse and picked out our rap song that we were gonna perform. We did- We had a big posse. We did Digital Underground, “Same Song” which had Tupac in it. And then we added on. And then our friend Ben Greenwood, he came out with his drum machine. Not on though. And he didn’t turn it on? No, ’cause we played the track. That’s right. And we played a second song. But he had a drum machine. We added a second song onto the end of it. Or maybe that was eighth grade. Seventh grade was huge because it was our first year doing it. And we, like, they didn’t put us last, but they put us close to last. And like we really showed up the final act. I don’t even remember what the eighth graders did. Everybody forgot them. By the time we were eighth grade, we knew we were gonna do so what’s, so what’s, so what’s the scenario by Tribe called Quest? Yeah. And we had more people in our posse. But it was a big deal. And one of the reasons we chose- But that was like a victory lap. The seventh grade talent show was like the really coming of age. We chose songs that had different parts, different rappers in it ’cause it was like, you can represent, like these people can each be represented by someone. And so “Scenario” had what, like four, five people rapping in it? Yeah. Maybe six. Man, those were the good old days. So yeah, so that just to picture. Oh gosh. That’s who we were at the time. We were just thinking about being on stage and performing and getting attention. But also, I was in a place where my sixth grade year had ended with my first ever girlfriend, a one month long relationship with Leslie. There’s a video on YouTube ’cause she happens to be Link’s first girlfriend too, where we called her and reminisced. Yeah, on the vlog channel. ‘Cause yeah, seventh grade. Yeah, yeah, I found out. We were in different sixth grade classes. I find out you were dating her. And then I was like, first of all, this is how I find out. Like you didn’t tell me. Like that’s an indication of like sixth grade being in different classes. You start going with Leslie and I didn’t know ahead of time. That’s an indicator about, like, that was just something that we didn’t talk about, you know? Maybe we weren’t that close. Maybe it was just something you don’t talk about. I was only talking to the people that I felt were necessary to pull it off, which was her best friend, Amber, who then became my girlfriend in eighth grade. Right. But you didn’t, talking to you about it wouldn’t have caused it to happen. So there was no reason to consult with you about it. Unless we were like really good friends, Rhett. I didn’t talk to anybody other than Tate. I talked to Tate because Tate was also interested in her. Oh, so you were trying to box him out. I did box him out. By telling him, “Dude, I’m going for Leslie.” Well, no, I think I said something like- It’s my turn. “May the best man win. But just so you know, I’m also interested”. I’m sure you didn’t say “May the best man win”. But my mentality, now first of all, that relationship lasted one month. There was no hanky panky. There was nothing, not even a holding, there was a holding of a hand at one dance. That was it. No kissing. I wanted to, I didn’t have the nerve. But I’m bringing the possibility of what it’s like to have finally been in a relationship. And I’ve already made it very clear that from very early on I was girl crazy. But the thing that I had was the girl craziness without any game whatsoever, right? I had no idea how to talk to girls. My go-to move was just staring, you know, and waiting to see if they stare back. Like I was so not good. And it’s like, the thing is is that I was actually a pretty sociable person and I was, oh, I wanted to get up in front of the school and I wanted to give a speech in front of class. I wasn’t awkward in those settings, but when it came to women, I just didn’t know how to proceed at all. I just had this really high level of desire and then no game at all. But that did give you an edge because I think a lot of kids were still like me. I was very timid and I was like, frozen. But you weren’t frozen. You took action. Yeah, but my actions were, my actions were sort of characterized by timidity in one sense though. Like I don’t know what I’m supposed to do. I’m gonna talk to the friend. I did not talk to friends. I did not- You didn’t do anything. I didn’t do anything. So I’ll give you credit for that. I mean, I was having a conversation with Amber in history class and she kept talking to me about the boy she liked. That happened to be you. And I kept trying to guess who it was and I was guessing all these people. And then I think I probably guessed everybody except me until I realized it was me and then we started going together. Right. Because it was just like It was never that easy for me, just so you know. If it had’ve been that easy for me- It was so easy, yet I made it so difficult. If I had’ve had the desire that I had, but then the level of interest from girls that you had, you know what? I would be the father of a lot of children right now or something would, it would be bad. You know what I’m saying? Like- That’s not necessarily bad. Having a lot of kids, a full quiver. I mean, okay. Yeah, you’re right. Proverbs does say something like that. But so in seventh grade, me and Amber started going together. That’s when I had my first kiss at the Lillington- Ruritan Club. Ruritan building for somebody’s birthday. But who were you? So seventh grade. Seventh grade was a dry spell for me. You weren’t even at that point. I was primed and ready and pubed up and everything, but just, I was, let me tell you, there was- Primed and ready and pubed up. There were things happening. There were things happening. The plumbing was working and the plumbing was working often. I mean, it was, I tested it constantly. Great. Great. I was so ready. So ready. Great. You weren’t even testing your plumbing at that time, were you? No. Golly. So much missed opportunity. No, well, I mean, one tends to catch up. Seventh grade was the last year that Ben was in school before he went to homeschool. I think- That was another big factor. He was easing out into homeschool because of his chronic fatigue syndrome. And so by eighth grade, he was basically not there. He didn’t go to church with us, but we would still, you know, he still participated in the talent show with us. We’d still go to his house and like do dance routines and learn like rap songs and stuff. So I mean, y’all were still very tight- But the amount of time- It was this point where we became more of a threesome- Well, I would say- Of friendship. I think we were more of a threesome earlier, and then I think this is when with Ben’s chronic fatigue, there were days when I would call over there and Ms. Greenwood would answer the phone and she’d be like, “Ben can’t do anything right now.” Yeah. And as a seventh grader, especially me, I just was not, I’ve never been, I still have problems like- Right. Talking to people, so. Which we’ve already talked about that. So that ended up being this thing where, okay, I’m not spending this time with Ben. I’m not doing this thing. Like every day during the summer between fifth grade and sixth grade, I was gonna be at Ben’s house doing something and you would be there a lot, right? But like, the default was we’re going to Keith Hills to do something. And that was changing. Now it became, this is when like in the “Book of Mythicality”, we’re talking about you and I riding our bikes, and meeting at the midpoint at the middle of town. Yeah. And I had enough confidence as a seventh grader to start riding my bike everywhere and spending the night at your house more often. And that’s when like we would start doing the flashlight wars and we would go to the Keith Hills gate. I would come along for the things that you’d been doing for years with your neighborhood friends, like setting off fireworks at the gate and having the security guards show up or like the campus police for Campbell University. And they would get on the loudspeaker and say, “Boys, we know you’re in the woods. Come out.” I loved it. And then I would start to come out and realize I was the only one walking out. And then I wouldn’t walk out. And then we’d like, we would sprint back to your house. And I was so much slower that me and your neighbor, Heather, weren’t fast enough to keep up. And we got caught in the headlights of the security car and then we had to go talk to the security guard. But he gave us a really strong lecture and let us go because you ditched us. Yeah, man. You got, I mean, every man for himself. So yeah, I was kind of getting in the mix there and like having more sleepovers and starting to gain confidence. And none of that was registering with me, by the way. And things didn’t register. I don’t think things registered. Things registered with me, in terms of like, ’cause I remember basketball was another thing where like, I mean, we were definitely best friends by this point and it was, and church was the engine and then school was just icing on the cake. But like you were on the basketball team as a seventh grader and eighth grader, of course. But like, I find it wild that we did play soccer together. That’s something that I tend to forget. I wanna come back to the basketball. But like you were the goalie, right? Yeah. Much to my, I didn’t not like it. ‘Cause you were so tall. They were like, “You’re so big”. I was like, “I should be over there scoring goals, man.” And I played, I liked soccer. I was pretty good at it, at defense. You know, I couldn’t run a lot. I didn’t have a lot of stamina, hence the security guard thing. But I could play some good defense. Yeah, ’cause sports were becoming a really big part of my life. I mean, of course, I was gonna play everything that we were allowed to play. Which those were the three sports, soccer, baseball, and basketball. And I was just hanging on by the soccer thread. Other than that- And again, I didn’t know that you, ’cause we didn’t talk about these things. Now as a parent of teenage boys, I get the fact that you’re just not, there’s a whole part of your brain that you’re not really using and you really look back on these things reflectively. But I’m thinking of things like, he’s playing basketball like and he practices basketball so much. Like this really infringes on us being able to hang out. I believe, I’m pretty positive that the reason why I started keeping score for the girls basketball team was because it gave me something to do that like, I was attached, I traveled with the basketball team, with the boys and girls and then, so I could- You got to go on the bus. I got to go on the bus and I could keep score for the girls and then just watch the boys game. ‘Cause I thought it was cooler to be able to watch the boys game. Versus keep up with it. Yeah. Pandora though, she was tough to keep up with. She was tough to keep up with as I recall. She was a stat machine. Yeah. Just a layup tyrant. But that was part of my equation, you know, it’s like I wanna be in the mix. I wanna, you know, what’s my middle school identity? I’m okay with being the scorekeeper if I can be on the bus, if I can be in the mix. And you were, so you were processing things on that level? I remember that, yeah. Yeah, to me. But I also knew that I would never talk about it ’cause it’s like talking about your feelings and being needy is just a real sign of weakness. Like what am I supposed to say? It’s like, “Well, can I, can I, do you think I can be a scorekeeper so that we can spend time together?” But no one. But just to clarify, like our kids talk about that stuff. It is very much a generational and also a geographical thing. There was probably kids in certain places in the world that were, and in our community, that just wasn’t how you processed life as a kid. Right. So for me it was just like, “Oh, there’s a sport. I can play it. I can be good at it. Okay.” It never crossed my mind that, do I want, like, am I having fun? It wasn’t about having fun, it was about winning. It never crossed my mind. It was just like, you have to be as good as you possibly can at this. And of course, you have to be as good as you possibly can at this. And you have to be as good as you possibly can at this. And it wasn’t just sports, it’s like, “Oh, you also have to be as good as you possibly can at academics. You have to be as good as you possibly can at the talent show, at giving a speech for the class.” But it didn’t feel like pressure. It just felt like a way of being. It’s the, yeah, this is the plan. I mean, and it was such a tight-knit community. Like in our middle school classes, seventh and eighth grade, we had the same three teachers, Ms. Wakas, Ms. McClam, and Mr. Royal who was also the basketball coach, PE coach, health teacher. And you know, our group of friends, whenever something would happen or there’d be like strife, there would be drama with the girls and sometimes it would involve guys and dating and sometimes it would be us doing, like stupid stuff. But regardless of what happened, that like there was drama or trouble, all three teachers would take it upon themselves to hold a tribunal to resolve it. They wouldn’t send anybody to the principal’s office. They were sparing him ’cause he had the rest of the school. And I think that they liked to be more heavy-handed than he was. I think that middle school is when people began to think of us as a duo. Yeah. Right? Yep. The teachers. Yep. That’s why if you got called into something, I would get, and vice versa. Our friends, it’s like, “Oh, Rhett and Link. They’re a duo.” And again, this was not like an intentional thing, but it was like, oh, there’s a school dance. There’s the lip sync contest. It was like, “Oh, well, we’re gonna do DJ Jazzy Jeff and The Fresh Prince because they’re the ultimate duo. We’re the ultimate duo.” We started performing together, we started seeing ourselves as a team. If we could work together on a project. Like if there was a way to be like, “Hey, we’re gonna do this Oedipus video.” That’s right, and we used Anna’s video camera and we did our first video project. And it was like, we were kind of thinking about it in that way. And then we did a whole different one over at Heather’s house the next year, there was a cornfield and like a scarecrow. Yeah. But we started, we just naturally fell into this creative partnership. That’s right. That really hadn’t happened up until that point, right? It happened through the talent shows, through video projects. That was when we began to work together creatively. And I think that, now we had done things like the stupid little radio shows and stuff at the house, right? Yeah, the pause tapes. But what I found, and of course, I’m going around, I’m sampling every friendship. You know what I was doing. I was going to every single house. I was spending the night at everybody’s house. And I had in mind, not an agenda, but I sort of just naturally carried with me an agenda without thinking about it. It was just my personality. To what? I wanna have fun in a particular way. I am interested in having fun in this way. Okay, now we’ve got this radio, I think that we should do this radio show and like, we should do voices and that kind of thing. There was no one else who was receptive to that besides you. I was all in. You know what I’m saying? No one was receptive to that way of thinking about amusing themselves. Ben was, Ben was. Ben was. Well, as we’ve discussed, Ben was even more of an ideas guy. Yeah. Right. And he was more out there. And like, I mean, again, when you go over to his house and he’s like, “Let me show you the new dance that I invented.” Like, and it’s kinda like river dance. It’s like, I mean, he was a wild card, he was amazing. But yeah, I was very much like, yes, I had a sense of like, yeah, we’re gonna hang out. We’re gonna make stuff, we’re gonna do stuff. This is it. This is it. This is amazing. And regardless of what it was, if it was- This is a precursor to like the blood oath thing. But I definitely had that sense at that point. If we’re gonna hang out for an afternoon, whether it was, you know, me and you, or Ben was there or not. It might be like, all right, we’re not just getting together like we’re getting together and today’s mission is fill in the blank, go out and cut down a tree, try to make a raft that we’re gonna float in the backyard, take some stuff off of this tree and make a tea that Ben said we should make because we found it in a book in the library. Yeah. We had missions and we had agendas. And then it- Go into that sewer. Right. It carried with it a sense of mission. And then that was, we filled our time with that way of thinking. And then we also filmed any creative endeavor with the same sense of mission. Like, this is gonna be good and this has gotta be the best thing that we’ve ever done. Again, we never talked about it. There was no like, let’s have a meeting and figure this out. It was in the natural thing where, and then with Ben sort of checking out because of the health problems that he was having. I mean, I still believe to this day that if Ben had not had those issues, the three of us would’ve grown up and started something together. Yeah, I believe that. You know, something creative together. Look at this photo, Rhett. Look at these photos of us from high school. Look at that one. Describe it. This is your bathroom. Yep. At your house. We’re using a flash camera because that’s covering up your face almost completely, the flash. You’re in your letter jacket. Yep. And we are both wearing- I was a star soccer player in high school. We are both wearing beanies, which we would have called- To-boggans. Toboggans. To-boggans. Well, I didn’t say to-boggan, I said toboggan. You know. That’s ’cause I was born and raised in North Carolina. I moved to North Carolina at age six. Moved around. And they still have the price tags on them. What does it say on there? I don’t know. I can’t figure that out. But we bought these toboggans and we liked to take pictures of ourselves. I took one of you. That was a cool jacket. Very warm. And then you took one of me. I don’t know. That’s a flattering face. And again, we didn’t take these pictures and then immediately look at them. We took these pictures and then waited maybe months before we could see them again because you had to finish the roll and then get it developed. We could have invented Instagram back then doing pictures like this. Look at this. I mean, look at how much fun we had. You and me in my room. Got an index card. Is that an index card? With toboggans on. That’s a napkin with your tongue being pressed through it to make a hole. I’m taking a very point-blank close up picture of you. Outside of the focus range of the camera. You thought it was such a good idea that then you took a picture of me doing the same thing. And then here’s one that’s it’s tough to take a selfie when you’re, you know, when you can’t, when you can’t take a whole bunch of them. So we were having a good time. Now this is- We were such good friends. This is senior year ’cause you’ve got that jacket. No, no, I got the jacket after my freshman year. I got my letter jacket as a freshman. Are you 100% sure of this? Yeah, because there was no JV soccer team. Everybody was on the varsity soccer team. So I like- They let you get it as a freshman? Well, I was on the varsity soccer team and every varsity player got a letter jacket. Well, yeah. Are you you jealous or something? No, I thought that- I’m 100% positive. That you got it as a freshman? Yes, because- That feels like a little bit of a cheat code. It did. I didn’t, I got it- Just being honest with you. I played in one game, a game that we won nine to zero. I know this because in the yearbook, my mom kept the, she kept the schedule and she wrote down the score and we were, we were in the final four of state playoffs that year. That was the peak of soccer for Harnett Central was when you weren’t playing. When I was on the bench. But I got my letter jacket and I think that’s what I remember about starting high school. And it really had an impact on our friendship because, you know, we were so nervous. We thought a lot about beginning high school. We were really in that head space when we were writing “The Lost Causes of Bleak Creek” because we put our experiences into that story and there was so much expectation. But I actually started playing soccer. We had practice like six weeks before classes began. And I remember being so nervous ’cause it’s like, okay, I’m on the soccer team. There’s no tryout. Everybody makes it, like I said. But still I was nervous because okay, you got these upperclassmen, like all of a sudden I’m playing soccer with seniors and juniors and I don’t know that many people from Buies Creek who are going over here and playing soccer. You played soccer in middle school because everybody who liked soccer kind of played. But then in high school, you started to just matriculate, so to speak. So soccer, for me, was my introduction to high school. And you didn’t have any part of that. And then that became a part of my identity as a freshman, as a soccer player. Basketball season hadn’t started. I will say, if you don’t remember this, is that Coach Randall, is that his name? Brandall. Brandall. Actively, almost to the point of harassment, recruited me to be on the soccer team. As the goalie? Yes. Because you were, you could stretch out. Well, because I allowed one goal in middle school, one goal. I was trained by, you remember Peter, what was his name? He was this famous Campbell goalie that I think is in like the Campbell Hall of Fame for being a goalie, Peter something. And my dad hired him to come and train me. Oh really? Oh wow. And I remember being out in the cold and having to learn how to do that thing where you fall on your side. And then my dad got me like the equipment. You just layout, yeah. I got really good. I could do the drop kick, you know, and I’m like 6′, I was already 6′ like 5″ going into school. He would actively like aggressively kind of like try to bully me into being the goalie. It almost worked. He had an abrasive personality. I should’ve done it, man. The stories we could’ve had. Coach Brandall was the coolest guy. But yeah, you should’ve done it, man. Because, well, I mean you were focused on basketball at that point. I was like, “I gotta get ready for basketball season” And man, but yeah, Chad, Chad Hawley was a senior and he was a really good keeper. He was great. He was a great keeper. He played, and again, that’s one of the reasons why we went to like the final four. We had a pretty, pretty good team. But he was a great keeper. And yeah, he played in college. But you would’ve been groomed sophomore year. You would’ve taken over. Who ended up? Who ended up? I know Brian Coleman did, was a goalie for a while. No, no, he was defense. Yeah, he was a sweeper. He could boot it really, really far. He did the flip. He could that thing where he would, where you’re throwing in from the sideline and you would get a running start and he would put the ball on the ground, do a flip and then throw it in. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And everybody would just be like flabbergasted on the other team and so they would just stop playing. Yeah, it was a great technique. Who was your goalie? Philip Hatcher became the goalie. Remember him? Oh yeah. And he was good. He was a glutton for punishment and you kind of have to be. He was fearless. Yeah, throwing yourself all on the ground. I think I was a little bit too scared of like getting hurt also. You gotta throw your body around. I don’t like getting hurt. So of course, I mean, we were best friends going into freshman year, but like I had this like, reconnaissance thing. You were on the cross country team though, and you guys started running before. Not freshman year. Oh, you weren’t? Not freshman year. So once classes started, I felt like, “I’m wearing my letter jacket. I’m a part of something. I’m getting in where I fit in kind of thing. I’m part of a team.” It actually helped kind of kickstart things a little bit, at least, I have to think it does. Well, my brother was a senior. That helped you. And he was like a popular guy, was, you know, one of the stars on the basketball team. And so there was this sort of a little bit of a runway set up for coming in as another McLaughlin, right? And I don’t know. I’ve never, especially at that point in my life, I’ve never been one to like get too nervous about the next stage, I get much more excited about the next stage, right? And so, I remember going, there was a, before school started that year, there was a athletes, some sort of like athlete, I can’t remember what it was, but it was the first event at Harnett Central before school started. Orgy? It was an orgy outside in the tobacco pits where everybody smoked. No, it was just some sort of get together and my brother was going and I was gonna go with him and I just remember thinking a lot about what I was gonna wear and I wore these shorts and of course, I tucked a polo shirt into them. Braided belt. Had a braided belt that- Hell, yeah. Went, boy, it got close to the knee, got close to the knee. Tie it into that knot and send it south. And no shoes, I mean, no socks- It was very phallic. And loafers. Penny loafers with no socks. Wow. But you blended in with that, except being very tall and lanky. And I was so tan, you know, that like sunscreen, we didn’t understand that that was a- Didn’t believe in it. We didn’t think that was a thing that you could do. It was like, you don’t need sunscreen unless you have red hair and I don’t have red hair. When you get a tan, that becomes your sunscreen- Your sunscreen. is what we thought. And by the end of the summer, boy you were tan, you know, and you’d show up. I just remember walking into that setting with just so much confidence. Oh, you had confidence. Well, I mean, you know, going in- I didn’t have confidence. Going in as a freshman, 6’5″, you know, you’re looking down on everybody. You got a brother who’s already paved the way, you know a lot of people who are gonna be there. You know what I’m saying? You’re good. You’re not going, you’re bringing everyone from your school. ‘Cause we were going Buies Creek joined Lillington and Angier altogether, and Lafayette all together. And Lafayette. So that’s still the minority. And that’s how I looked at it. You know, it’s like- No, I was like, we’ve got a faction, man. We’re at least a quarter of the school. A quarter of the population is a minority, Rhett. Yeah, that was enough though. But I mean, yeah, it was like, and then all of these upperclassmen from all of these other places too, you didn’t know them. You really didn’t know a lot of the older Buies Creek people too. So I mean, it was definitely an exciting time. I remember like there was no commons area in our elementary slash middle school, you know, where there was that break and everybody would like, like hum haul around and fiddle fart around. After homeroom. After homeroom. So what we discussed before for middle school was more, it was more like, well, you lived on that side of town so you had your friends and I was on the other side of town alone. Now it was more of, okay, I’ve got my soccer team, I’ve got some friends there, I made, you know, I made friends with Jason from Angier and like, he would invite me to his house and I was like, “Okay, I’m hanging out with other people.” So our horizons were expanding and our friend group hadn’t yet coalesced beyond what it would become in like sophomore, junior year we started to develop like a friend group with some Lillington people, some Angier people and a lot of Buies Creek people. And we had a pretty tight group there for a couple of years. But I remember freshman year, it was kind of this branching out. I didn’t really, I didn’t, that is true, but I didn’t see it that way. Yeah, it’s not something we ever talked about. It’s more in retrospect, I definitely had this again, you know, we talked about it that that summer between eighth and ninth grade and you know, going and swimming in the river and this is when we had, at that point, definitely our friendship with Ben had really transformed. And so that summer, going to the river was something that was pretty much me and you. We still hung out with Ben when he was like, when he felt up to it, but that he didn’t, there was a lot of times when he didn’t feel up to it and making that phone call and seeing if he was feeling okay, it just created this thing that me and you became this unit. And so- Yeah. We talked about what we were gonna experience and what we were gonna do. And of course, I was talking a lot about all the women that were gonna be here at this place. There’s 1,000 people, you know, we’re going to this place that’s got that many more women. And I saw us as this like unit that I kind of just took that for granted that like, okay, well, I’m not going to try to find another best friend or anything. You know, it’s like- And I never, I did, I was never threatened. I didn’t think there was anything that was all gonna fall apart at this point. Yeah, we were, I mean, we were getting, we were definitely getting closer than ever, but it was the first time that we had aspects of our high school identity that were completely separate. Like you as a basketball player, right? Yeah, I mean there was a little bit of that in middle school, but it began to develop more. But I was friends with everybody on the basketball team. Like in high school, I wasn’t friends with anybody on the basketball team. Yeah, that’s true, because you know, ’cause it’s all new students and there’s a lot more of them. So you know the ones that you’re kind of hanging out with. Yeah, I mean, the thing, I started to experience this, now I kind of understand it as the chameleon-like quality of an Enneagram 3 that I never really understood was a thing until I started looking like at personality evaluations. But that’s a tendency to sort of infiltrate a particular group and be a version of yourself in that group in order to excel in that group. And so there was sort of the basketball version of me, right? Which is a totally different set of friends ’cause they’re all on the basketball team and the kind of a different way of being, like that version of Rhett was pretty serious and like committed and worried about being good at basketball and like kind of thought he was pretty cool because it wasn’t a silly environment. Did you have locker room slang? I don’t remember that, but maybe. You were like, “Boy, I’m flaming some hoops tonight.” But you know how you get into a certain environment where, and the basketball team is different than the soccer team, right? ‘Cause the basketball team is way smaller than the soccer team or way smaller than the football team. There’s this sense that you’re like, “Hey, we’re the 12 guys that they chose for this, right?” There’s just this sense that like you’re kind of in this elite group of guys and guys especially sort of like embrace that and kind of start to feel like this cool gang. You would wear your uniform to class on the day you were playing. No, no, you wore a suit. Oh, that’s right. You wore a suit to school. You had to wear a suit and tie. That was the rule. You had to wear a suit and tie on game day. Oh wow. Yeah. That’s wild. Yeah, well, and that was really once we were on varsity which was, for me, started sophomore year. Oh, okay. But the point I’m making is that there’s this like mode, there’s a sort of a social code amongst the basketball team where I’m behaving in a different way. And as soon as I’m outside of that environment, I’m not that guy anymore. I’m silly class clown Rhett, you know, which is what I was most of the time. And then, of course, with you, like we were like, it was a whole different level of silliness. Taking selfies with beanies on. I just I want to emphasize, the embarrassing level of silliness that we were still, I mean, we’ve never really stopped, but- Yeah. It was just, it was so, so stupid. We acted so stupid. It was fun, man. Oh yeah. I mean, when I read through, once I started looking at these yearbooks and I started reading everybody’s notes, that was, it helped put things back in perspective. First of all, we went to Trinidad after our freshman year of high school, on that mission trip because all of our friends, all of our church friends were talking about, we were going and like, you know, the school year had ended and this is like the big thing, we’re like going to Trinidad. So that’s when that happened. But every single person called me crazy. Like I was, I guess I was, I’m pleasantly surprised and I’m sure the same goes for you because people would write about me and people would write about us. And then our closest friends, like Michael and Trent, they would write about me and you, you know, it’s like we were these ringleaders amongst a group of guy friends because we had these, we were super silly, we were super crazy. All the girls just thought we like had, and I’m projecting my notes onto you because I know it’s true of you too, because I just read these, it’s like all the girls just thought, in our friend group, just thought we were just crazy. Thank you for making us laugh all the time. That type of thing. And then there were people who were not in our friend group who were on the edge, who would say it a little bit differently. Like, you are the craziest person I’ve ever met. I don’t, I have no clue. You know, it’s like we were, we were just, and it was a silliness. It wasn’t like, it wasn’t like “Jackass” like Johnny Knoxville, like they’ll, and we would do some, some daring things, but it really was more about just cutting the fool, like being the butt of the joke if I had to be, that type of thing. Class clowns, and us being a unit that would bring other people into it. Like people, our friend group, the way that I can see in the yearbook is that they all fed off of our energy. And it’s just something, sometimes I feel like we’ve developed personas because we have, it was nice to go back and like have like a 98% agreement amongst notes that like, we were that way then too. For our experience, we went to North Carolina State University in the fall of 1996. Things were different then. We drove, it was like a 45 minute drive from our home. I was roommates with my best friend since first grade. Hey, that’s me. And we didn’t really know anybody else, but we knew that we were gonna get involved in an organization called Campus Crusade. And I think that, as we’ve talked about, that defines a big part of our college experience. Well, at least that organization, as we’ll share later. Yeah, that’s right. And I had, well, just to set the stage even further, I had a serious girlfriend who was a junior in high school, and I would go home every weekend to see her and also to get my laundry done and to pick up all the cans of Mello Yello that my mom had bought me. Mello Yello was not available in Raleigh. It was, but you have to buy it with your own money. Right. I did have a job on campus. I worked at the genetics lab, like the work study program. I was washing the dishes of the- The Petri dishes? The scientists who were doing some sort of genetic experiments on corn. I then had to clean all the beakers and test tubes. And that’s a meticulous process if you wanna do it well. You sure they weren’t just eating corn and you were cleaning their actual dishes? I think that’s- That is possible. I think they were selling you on like you’re involved in the science here and you were just washing dishes of scientists who like corn. I mean, if they were feeding themselves with pipettes, then I guess that’s what was happening. I’ve seen it happen, one kernel at a time. It’s a great way to eat corn. It really helps with portion control. We had visited campus once, at least. I think Michael Juby’s dad took us to campus our senior year and like we walked around campus. Well, we only applied to two schools, Carolina and State. Both were accepted to both. I thought we applied to UNC Asheville to their film school. We didn’t actually, no, we didn’t actually apply. We were going to, but we got talked out of it. Well, that was like, that was more junior year conversation when I thought I might play basketball there. But no, in the end, we only applied to Carolina and State and- Both got accepted in engineering. There was serious consideration of going to Carolina. I mean, the story I tell is I applied to Carolina so that I could get accepted and then say no to reject them. But the reality is, I was not like a loyal State fan versus Carolina. I was actually sort of like growing up a Duke fan. I was a State fan. You were a State fan. And I felt like I couldn’t do it, go to Carolina. I didn’t have a lot of allegiance. But boy, once I dyed my backside in the wolf pack red, I think that’s how you do it, you stick your butt in the blood when you get there. Just kind of dip it. The wolf blood. There was no going back. I hate the blue at this point. No wolf died. The entire pack donated a little bit of blood. So they were a little peckish for a few days, but they, you know, no wolves were harmed ultimately, in the butt dipping of blood. I remember that we both brought our bikes to campus. Oh yeah, we did. We had never been on a place so large that you were expected to walk across the whole thing. Well, we’d been riding our bikes a lot. Just, we always rode our bikes. It was part of our identity. It was part of our brand. It was, “We’re boys with bikes.” Well, once we got licenses, not so much, but. But I think someone had told us like, “That’s a really big campus and you guys are way over there on East Campus in Syme dorm. So I mean, it’s gonna take you, you know, a couple of days to get to the other side of campus if you have to walk.” Well, to get to the dining room, it did take, I mean, it probably took 20 minutes- To walk. To just walk straight- Yeah. All the way across campus to the dining hall, which that was fun. You know, having that excursion. Bagged milk. Like seeing like who from your dorm you could get together with and all leave at the same time. “Oh, we’re still waiting for Hugh. Where’s Hugh?” “He’s up there being weird in his dorm room. We’re gonna have to leave him.” Remember Hugh? Unfortunately, I don’t. Must have been not very memorable. Maybe that wasn’t his name. He was an interesting guy. You talking about Grant? Grant. Oh. Hugh Grant. He’s an actor. Yeah, Grant is his name. Not Hugh. Hugh. Where’s Hugh? I don’t know a Hugh. Maybe he would show up if I knew his name was Grant. But yeah, we’d ride our bikes all around campus. But the thing now that I superimpose on the experience is just what an opportunity for, I’ll call it a fresh start. But we, I mean, we were bleaching our hair. Yeah, we were. And like you were, I was turning your hair into like a giraffe pattern that looked absolutely amazing. But was mistaken as a soccer ball. We would, well, how many soccer balls are black and yellow? Some, but I mean, it’s a giraffe. Come on. I knew it was a giraffe, but I’m just saying a lot of people thought it was soccer ball. Red, white, and blue for July 4th over the summer leading into our- Yeah, gotta be patriotic. Freshman year in college. So like, we were wearing the huge JNCO jeans with the chain wallet and the thrift store shirts. Like the thrift store golf shirts. Yeah. And our hair, my hair was like standing up and bleached. And that even went into my sophomore year because that’s when Christie and I met, and like, the last time my hair was like big and bleached was when we first met. And then it started to tone down over the course of Become more professional. Well, we weren’t in the band anymore. But like as freshmen, like we had a very assertive looks. You know, I mean, you were tall as all get out and scarily skinny. Right. And with these huge jeans, it just looked, I mean, we’re riding these bikes around campus. I looked like Gumby with those jeans on. I mean, I never really thought about the, you know, I enjoyed getting attention for the way that I looked, but at the same time- Really? This may be hard to believe, at the same time, I do not honestly recall having this awareness that everyone was looking at me as I rode my bike across campus. But we were some of the more aesthetically notable people on campus. I’m not saying we were cool looking, we were just different looking. But to put that in proper context, it wasn’t that difficult in 1996 at NC State University- To stand out? To stand out, you know? It’s probably much more difficult today. We stood out more than I thought I did in my own mind, even though I did it in on purpose. I don’t know, it’s just weird how I can hold those two truths, but. So we didn’t, I didn’t make a switch. We kind of doubled down, I think, with the way that we looked, so it was just like, I think hearing friends talk about it later, they were like, “Wow, these guys are different.” Given the nature of the thing that we got involved with, which was campus, you know, Christian campus ministry, we got involved with a lot of people from very similar backgrounds on very similar trajectories as we were, right? And I think the thing that I regret is not intentionally connecting with people who were different than me. Of course, NC State was different in 1996, but it wasn’t that different. There were people from all walks of life, from all socioeconomic backgrounds, from all over the world, all kinds of interesting perspectives and things that were being exchanged. And we closed ourselves off unintentionally. I just dove right into the, you know, southern, white, conservative Christian, heterosexual group, you know what I’m saying? And just went real, real hard at that. And I wish that I could have been like, oh, and it, but my mentality was not, my mentality going into college at the time was one of, other perspectives are not only different, but necessarily wrong. I’m coming to this campus with the truth. I’m bringing the correct worldview to this worldly place. And when you go into a situation believing that you’ve got the truth and it is your job to dispense the truth to the worldly-corrupted people around you. Yeah. Making connections with them becomes a transactional thing where the only reason you- It’s not really conducive to true friendship. It becomes transactional because I’m only befriending you so that I can share the gospel with you so that I can tell you what the truth is. And most people aren’t receptive to that. So you end up just hanging out with all the conservative white people who are receptive to that, who believe the same thing. It’s a problem. So I wish I hadn’t have done that, right? Yeah, and all we had to do is make a list of acquaintances. You don’t have to make it this weighty thing where it’s like I have to build meaningful, long-lasting friendships with all these different type of people that, you know, that sets the bar really high and it’s intimidating. But just having one conversation with somebody, you know, in the first couple of weeks on campus, there’s this thing that we’ve talked about called campus face. Yeah. You just need to know that it’s gonna happen if you’re on that type of campus where you’re walking around and you’re seeing the same faces over the course of a year and at a certain point you realize, I know this person’s face, but I’ve never met them or talked to them. And it’s nice to have a few people that you’ve at least said something to, like leaned over in class and said like, “Is this your first time taking chemistry?” I just made that up on top of my head. ‘Cause then it like- If it’s Chemistry 101, probably. It’s a stupid question. Yeah. Come up with something else. That would be my follow up. Is your name Mark? That was just a stupid question. Have you ever wanted it to be? Just so I could like break the ice. Do you have any pets? You know, I think, another type of person that’s on my list, and it would also take the heat off of the criticism we placed on ourselves that you just laid on us and we deserve it, is athletes. Like, I would, like I would put an athlete on my list or maybe it’d be, I wanna be friends with a football player and I wanna be friends with a track and field artist. Artist, that’s the correct term. Or a graffiti artist. That’s someone I would like to know in my life now. I think I can make a list of acquaintances now. Yeah, this is pretty much a principle to apply at any point. I think graffiti artist is gonna be in the top five for me. But athletes had a, they lived in this bubble on campus, which we penetrated because we were so far from the dining hall that they allowed us at the extreme east side of campus to go to the much closer athletic dining hall Case. Case Dining Hall. Named after Coach Everett Case. Much smaller. It was- Much better food. Much better food. They served steaks. They had steaks, yeah. And it was only athletes except for the people from our, like the three dorms way over there where we were. Yeah. And so it’s like these scrawny kids in like really huge clothes. Well, let me just say, I was mistaken as a member of the basketball team many times, so don’t put me into the scrawny kids with big clothes groups. They may have thought that you were the manager for the basketball team, but they thought I was on the basketball team and I went with that, okay? The lunch ladies did, but the other athletes knew who was on the basketball team and you weren’t one of them. So it was like- Yeah, right. We actually got these strange looks and we stopped going. But I went there enough to know. And we did have a few athlete friends. We had a football player friend and- Our roommates, not roommates, but our right next door were both on the football team. And then Jackie was a swimmer. Yeah. And they’re so isolated. They’re in this bubble. They do nothing but sports. I mean, so it really goes for them too. They need to make a list of like, “Hey, I need to have a couple of acquaintances who aren’t athletic, so that I can realize that the world is much broader.” But now NCAA athletes can get sponsored. So now you can like hang out with somebody who’s got like a deal with like the local Italian restaurant. Jessie and I got married and so then we’re living in Chapel Hill, but she’s going to school, I’m still commuting to Black & Veatch. You’re married to Christie, you’re in Apex, going, like we’re both sort of establishing ourselves at like different churches. You know, you’re going to a church in Apex. I’m going to a church in Chapel Hill, which obviously, as you know from our backstory, that’s a really big part of our lives. So getting involved there is like something that’s kind of unfolding. Right. But this is how the seed of what we do now was still there and it was more of like a little sapling because it had been planted early in our lives and in high school and in college with all the weird stuff that we did together, videos that we made. But because we had been asked to emcee Christmas Conference and that was something that was still happening, what we did is we said, “Let’s get together, hell or high water, let’s get together once a week at one of our homes and we’re going to just do creative things. We’re gonna write songs, we’re gonna conceptualize video concepts, et cetera.” All with this goal of, “Hey, we’ve gotta fill these spots come December with these entertaining ideas that we have.” But boy, I just, if we had not had had that- Right. That, first of all, that regular, we had a goal, we had something that we were working towards, but then we had this, “We’re gonna get together and that’s how we’re gonna incubate this creative side of us.” If we had not made that decision, who knows what we would be doing today and where we would be. Yeah, I think that, I mean, we were hanging out, like we were making plans. Yeah. As like the four of us as couples, I’m sure we did stuff together. I’m sure we did stuff with Greg and his wife Jen. And like we were all hanging out and doing stuff, but it wasn’t every weekend. And we were living in, you know, we were living 40 minutes apart. And we also had no money. And we had no money, so. So your ability to like, “Well, let’s go out to eat.” It’s like, “Well, hold on, our grocery budget is $200.” Right. And that’s for all the groceries for the month and our eating out budget is like $100. You’re gonna go through that pretty fast. I’m just getting at the fact that I don’t, I think that if we hadn’t had that weekly workshop, like on Thursday nights, whenever it was, that I mean, I think our friendship would’ve suffered at that point. You know, we were working towards a common goal of like, we have this audience of 1,300 college students at the end of the year. Sure, it’s only February, but let’s go ahead and- We were so, we took it so seriously. We were so committed to it. And I think that that’s had to, I mean it was a big, I don’t know if it was a lifeline to our friendship, but it was certainly a big contributor to us being, staying close and having this thing to work on together. So it wasn’t just, “Hey, let’s get together once or twice a month whenever we, we can get our weekend schedules to line up.” And when we got together, we not only worked on like conceptualizing skits, a lot of it was writing songs too. I do remember that because I remember writing that “A Tribute to Friendship” song. It’s like, that story song we wrote that wasn’t even funny for any reason. I remember getting together in the apartment before the one that you moved into. So I guess we started it pretty early or maybe you moved into that. I don’t remember going to that, the Sandlin Place apartment and getting together. I remember when I moved out of 3000 C, there was a few months that we would still get together there and then I remember- Yeah, ’cause there was a semester in which we still all lived there. When you moved- After you got married. And then when you got married. Well, just a few months, like that summer. We lived there that summer. Okay. You got married in June. We continued to stay there for the summer, like leading up to- Okay. the end of the 12 month lease. But then I definitely remember driving after working as an engineer, like getting on the road, telling, “Remember, Christie, this is the night that I don’t come home ’cause I leave work and I’m going to Rhett’s house.” And like Jessie would like, she was like, newlywed, I’m gonna make you guys dinner and wanna be, Rhett’s friend’s coming over and they’re gonna work on their stuff. Well, partly because they had told us to keep doing that, you know? Right. It was all around the same time with like Greg’s wedding where we wrote the song for his rehearsal dinner. That’s right. And Jessie and Christie were like, “You guys need to keep doing this.” Because the other thing that was happening, it wasn’t just preparing for Christmas Conference, but I don’t remember what year it was, but right around this time is when Cole asked us to do the show at Carolina. Like the one night only thing, which we’ve talked about this whole, we’re kind of getting into the, that stage that we talked about before. But that gave us something else to work towards. Yeah. It was all in the, like a, there wasn’t, there were not many years in which we ever thought, I mean, I kind of knew going into engineering that it wasn’t a permanent thing for me ’cause I tried to like change to communications because I thought I was just gonna go into ministry. I was like, “I’m gonna go on STINT or something. I’m gonna be on Staffer Crusade eventually, but I gotta wait until Jessie graduates so we can do that.” And I was a little bit more in love with the stability of the job and it was a good paying job. And at that point, we weren’t necessarily thinking about doing it together. There was no path to- ‘Cause what you did is you like- full-time entertainment. You went on STINT. or you like got a job at like a campus. But it wasn’t until Cole asked us to do that show Shane Dickey saw us do that show, was like, “You guys should do something as a position,” yada, yada yada, all that stuff led to. So we were also working on that. So we were pretty diligent like getting together every week, working on stuff, developing, developing our craft as crappy as it was. But we weren’t, some funny observations I make now, we were not like performing for anybody, there was no outlet. It was like, “Let’s go to somebody’s house and write some songs”, knowing that we will perform these for a bunch of college students at some point. But it wasn’t like, “Hey, what if we went to a comedy club?” Like we never thought, to this day have never performed at a comedy club. Right. Have never done anything in the way that most people would think is the logical way to go about things. We didn’t view comedy at clubs. Yeah, had never been to one. Not only didn’t perform at one, one had never been to one. There’s like a famous one, Charlie Goodnights in Raleigh, which I think is gone now, but. Yeah, but we didn’t do any of that. Never crossed our minds that we would do that. Or we would be like, “Well, let’s put on a, like let’s put on a little show or let’s go and perform in this context.” ‘Cause it was very much about live performance ’cause it was like, we’re gonna have these students’ attention. Yeah. But it’s funny because we were, yeah, we were doing these things that feel very like, you gotta, like get your stuff together. We were always responsible and dependable to a fault. Yeah. I think I would still categorize us in that way. You know, like we carry out our lives and our business and our relationships in a very responsible and dependable way. Almost sometimes so much that, that it can get in the way of just like the being a weird creative person that does things. We never did anything ’cause we felt like it. Yeah. We always did something ’cause we had obligated ourselves to do it. And then it’s like, well, that just means we, like we have to do it. It doesn’t matter what you feel about it. Right, it’s like, “Okay, well, this is the way that you have to do this if you’re gonna have this apartment and you gotta get these guys to do this, and then you gotta do the repairs and then you gotta get this job and you have to do it in this way and do this presentation in this way.” We were all thinking that same way. And then when the opportunity to apply that principle to entertainment came along in the very weird way that it came along for us, we applied the same level of process to it that has, we’ve just kind of carried over for the past 17, 18 years to up to this point. But we’ve thankfully been able to do it in a way that now, yes, we are different people in a lot of ways, right? In terms of like, what is your day like and what are you thinking about? How are you approaching things? Yes, there’s still this, like sense of responsibility and duty to our family and our, you know, employees and making sure that these things are done in the right way. It’s still very important to us. It’s like ingrained. You’re never gonna get rid of it. But yeah, it’s like if that version of me and that version of you were to come into this room right now and sit down. First of all, I would be like, “Hey, man, I have a few style tips.” Yeah. But I would also be like, “It’s gonna be interesting to see the way that that evolves over the next 20 years for you as you start to think about it a little bit more, right?” And then, of course, we would have a really interesting spiritual conversation because we were very locked in on a very particular way of thinking about things and were 100% sure, without doubt, that we were right about it. Right. And so that would’ve been an interesting conversation to see what we have become, the heretics that we have become. But I think that if we were to have a conversation about the creative things that we’re doing, if we were to be like, “Let me tell you what we did yesterday.” Oh God, we’d flip out, yeah. It’s crazy. We be like, “Oh yes, we get to do that? We get to do that?” We never gave ourselves full permission to just like, just put the dream out there. It was like, we didn’t talk about the dream all the time. We talked about the thing that we were working on, the next thing. And it wasn’t like, if you have a band and you’re like, you talk about the dream of getting a record deal, you know? There’s a path. Like, because there was no set path, it was like, “Okay, this may be all we’ve got. We’ve got this show at the end of the year that well, we’re emceeing this conference, we’re just gonna turn it into our show when we get our 10 minute segments.” And then your brother’s like, “Hey, come to Carolina and talk to my students and make it into a comedy show.” It was like, okay, we can obsess about that. But it wasn’t, there were no, we couldn’t connect those dots to any larger dreams, so it was very much like scrambling around in the dark and it was unspoken a lot of times, you know? What it is we were working towards because, you know, it didn’t exist. So, you know, I give us a lot of credit that with no path, with no instruction manual, we still found a way to like stick with it, we’re gonna get together. We have these isolated events and we’re gonna obsess about them. And that was fun and fulfilling. And I hope it can be encouraging for people, you know, ’cause again, it doesn’t have to be the case. Like, you know, if you’ve got a job right now, you’re working, doing something and first of all, make the most of what it is that you’re doing and find as much joy as you can in it, you know? But maybe there’s something- Meet a Nigerian. but maybe there’s- Get married. There’s something that is a point of passion that you don’t necessarily understand how that could even be a career. And maybe it isn’t. Maybe it’s just a really awesome hobby. Yeah. But I just think it’s important to see that thing like a little plant. Yeah. And that plant needs things. That plant doesn’t need to be put into the attic and covered because it will die. Give it a little something. And you’ll have to find a new seed somewhere. Right. All right, there it is. Hashtag Ear Biscuits. Let us know what you think about all this. Please leave us a voicemail with how you’re processing things. 1-888- EarPod1. Yeah. Hey, Rhett and Link. My name is Rachel and I’m calling from Arizona. I’m a teacher here and my high school students are reading “The Lost Causes of Bleak Creek”. Just wanted to give you guys a shout out. The kids are really liking it. Have a good day. Bye. To watch more “Ear Biscuits”, click on the playlist on the right. To watch the previous episode of “Ear Biscuits”, click on the playlist to the left. And don’t forget to click on the circular icon to subscribe. If you prefer to listen to this podcast, it’s available on all your favorite podcast platforms. Thanks for being your mythical best.