Interviews with Dads - Ep 3 Sivyer

Well, I am Steve. I'm not going to say my last name because it's a weird one.

Okay.

Sivier. Sivier. Sivier.

Sivier.

Yeah. It's not Sivier. I'm not French, man.

He says his name's Boyer, but I call him Ballyulier.

And you should. That's the way to do it. See, I think intentionally mispronouncing somebody's name is usually the best way to do it.

Center of respect is really what it is.

So, yes, Steve Sivjörn. I have 6 children. And so I would say just in general, they're all alive. I've kept them alive for 11 years, so I think that's killing it in the dad realm. I am not convinced that I'll keep Titus all the way till 18. He's the oldest? No, he's the 8-year-old. I've got 10 more years with him, and I'm not 100% sure he's gonna make it.

Okay. He's the most reckless?

Yeah.

Was he number 3?

Number 3, yeah. Zapped himself for the third time the other day, electrocuted himself. Outlet? Yeah, with an outlet. Yeah, just plugging it in wrong.

And what did he plug in wrong?

Extension cord. Yeah, I said, "Go plug in this extension cord," and I heard a zap and a sizzle. So, you know, I am convinced that if I can just, if I can limp to the finish line—

How did he plug it in wrong?

It's a good question, man. I don't know. I know I heard a zap and a sizzle, and then he came back crying with burned fingers.

Lick it and just—

I think his little finger slipped over the edge of it, touched the metal as he plugged it in, I think is what happened.

You need better breakers. Maybe GFI is everywhere.

Well, it broke. I mean, that was a good thing. You know, it broke, it zapped him for a second, and then it broke. So he was okay. But yeah.

I've never understood the paranoia of parents and electric outlets. Because I just remember as a kid, I shocked my— well, I was probably like Titus. I shocked myself a lot. Yeah.

It just hurts for a second. I never died. No, no, it just hurts for a second.

Yeah. It must have been— the old days must have been wired in a way to where, like—

Well, I think back in the early days of electricity, it was a free-for-all. They had alternate current and direct current both in the same outlet. I mean, yeah, you were having issues. So I think back in the old day— and direct current, you know, of course, can kill you pretty quick.

You know?

120 volts.

They never put that in houses, did they?

They did at one point. There was an electricity war you should look up.

Oh, that's right. Yeah. I've read about it with Edison and Westinghouse.

Or whatever. Yeah.

And it was AC versus DC. Edison lost, but he became the most famous. And his company took off, General Electric.

Well, he stole it.

Westinghouse, I guess Westinghouse still got it.

Westinghouse is still a name. So yeah, they, anyway, DC would knock you down if you had 120 volts of DC.

Yeah.

So, but yeah, with the AC, you just get zapped for a second, the GFI shuts it off.

Did you ever put the baby plugs in the outlets?

I used to, and then I lost interest.

They were so frustrating for me as a dad. Like seriously, like—

You gotta use another piece of metal, you gotta use another cord to get it out.

To get behind it. Yeah, yeah, it was—

they were so goddamn— Which I don't think is probably the design form or what they're intended to be used as. But yeah, I stopped, I mean after back kid number 3, I was like, I don't know, you know, I've got enough at this point that if I lose one, it's only an incremental loss, right? So at 4, you're only losing 25% of your kids. Now I'm only losing 17% of my kids.

Oh my God, that really affects your taxes.

Well, that's what I'm saying, yeah. So I mean like, it's really, I've got 83% of my kids left if something happens to one of them.

It's almost a financial benefit to keep your kids around.

Almost.

Maybe.

Well, I mean, there's a cost to it as well.

Yeah, you have to support life.

Well, it costs $2 million to raise a kid to adulthood, so that's $12 million on the number one.

Who told you that?

The Wall Street Journal.

They're wrong.

Well, I'll never make that much. I just think that's funny.

They're idiots. $2 million per kid?

Per child.

Gosh, I need to look at that article.

I think they're assuming a—

I will happily post that. Maybe New York City.

Yeah. No, I think it's just adding in all the costs and assuming that you send your kid to the highest quality stuff and that you feed them and things like that. So, but you know, we all feed them. Well, but you know, dumpster diving is different, you know. You have to do what you have to do is what I'm saying.

It's not $2 million, I can promise you that.

Uh, I have not earned $2 million in my life, so I don't know.

18 years, what's $2 million divided by 18? You're a banker.

I have no idea. It's at least $100,000 a year.

It's close to one child.

Yeah, it's close to it. It's actually a little over $100,000 a year.

Wall Street Journal's stupid for that.

Yeah, I don't make that much. We'll get there.

Yeah, well, you have to do it per kid, so $100,000. My kids, 9, 12.

That's 6, 6 for me, so that's $600,000 a year just to spend on the children.

Kids. Now, how much does a wife cost?

Wife is free. She can't go anywhere because I got her 6 kids. Where's she— what's she gonna do? Run. But run to who? Nobody wants to take somebody with 6 kids, so I'm good.

I think you'll have the 6 kids.

Oh, well, that's— I didn't think about that. Yeah, and I'm really gambling that she won't figure it out.

Ryan and I joked about that a couple— we, we typically almost never meant, like, especially in fights, never mentioned divorce or anything, but we will joke about it just for fun, uh, or our, um, inevitable doom, like our death.

Yeah, for sure.

Um, he's always talked about, you know, one of the things we always joke about is Ryan leaves, I'm going with her. And if we were to ever get divorced, like, we'd be the only couple in history to be arguing with the judge that no, she gets the kids, no, he gets the kids, no, she gets them. Everyone else fights over custody. You were fighting to push them.

Yeah, I would take them all. But yeah, you know, I always joke with Brittany that I'm excited about my second wife. I'm hoping my second wife is, you know, a newer vintage. You know, I can trade in my 1984 model for an early 2000s, something like that. But that's when I get rid— I mean, that's down the road. That's when I make it big.

Give her time to adjust.

Yeah, and I also tell her, you know, I mean, I'm trying to be a little bit morbid with it, but you know, if she's going to croak on me, then I would like her to do it now, not later, you know. Like, that's the sad— I don't want her to wait till, you know, I'm 55 and washed up.

Your prospects are gonna be less.

I'm borderline washed up now. I'm only 35. I don't want to— I don't want to wait till 55, you know.

No, I get that.

So, you know, if she's going to do that, just do me the kindness of doing it now.

You have to pull it off.

What's that?

Hugh Hefner pulled it off.

That's true, but you gotta have that Hugh Hefner money for it, and I'm not sure I would say that he pulled it off either.

He had the dates, at least the perception of the date.

The perception, yeah, he had the perception, and I think that's all that mattered to him.

Did anything come out after he died? Were there a bunch of like stories?

You know, the amount of Googling the name Hugh Hefner that I have done in the last few years has been pretty much zero, so I don't know.

Well, I mean, you read the Wall Street Journal. I didn't know if it made—

I would never read the Wall Street Journal. Don't just tell me about a Wall Street Journal or a I think I stumbled upon it accidentally when I was going through my MTV, you know, catered channel or something. I mean, I just, I'm very into modern culture and modern pop art and things like that.

Not if you're mentioning MTV.

It was just an accident.

That is not modern culture.

I don't really know anything anymore about pop art.

MTV, yo, raps.

Taylor Swift. I know that name.

Taylor's awesome. I think her songs are good.

There you go. See, I don't know.

I couldn't name you one.

I couldn't even tell you.

But I see it on the screen every once in a while when songs come out. I'm like, ah, it's a decent song. Song?

Sushi's and Cats.

Um, top 2 bands for kids right now?

Uh, I would say, uh, anything that Minions do.

Okay.

Um, and, uh, is Hanson still a thing?

They're, uh, no, wait, I think they did either— no, I'm thinking of the Jonas Brothers. They just put out a bunch of songs. Hanson might have come back out. I feel like everything '90s right now is coming back.

Starting to— wildly popular.

Yeah, it's super bizarre.

Yeah, there's a reboot of The Lion King. That's important.

That will reboot of everything.

That's for you and me. That's not for our kids.

Our kids aren't interested in that because now the people that were kids in the '90s have money and it brings back the nostalgic memories.

Oh, they have money for movies.

Yeah, well, and toys. And yeah, because I feel it's the same thing with toys right now. His parents are buying their kids toys and grandparents are buying their grandkids toys, but they're buying the toys that they remember playing with, or they remember their kids playing with.

See, this is my plug.

And it brings up the memories and they say bye and try and force it on.

This is my plug for homeschool. You know, homeschool is great because your kids don't hear about that stuff. My children don't know about this. They don't have homeschool, they don't have television, so they don't come home with it. People ask, you know, "Is this phillosophy?" You guys have no TV? No, we've got a television hooked up to a computer, right? So if we want to stream something, we can. But my kids have never seen a commercial. They don't understand the commercials. And so when they do see commercials, they're very confused about them. They think another TV show has started and then it's ended abruptly.

Yes.

So they're very confused about it. So they never ask me for anything. So a lot of people think it's a philosophical issue to not have TV or not send the kids to school. This is a cost savings thing. This is how I keep the cost down under $2 million a year.

Do they do YouTube?

Uh, not really.

Okay.

I mean, if I put something on.

So electronics. So you have basically a computer. With an external screen. So you'll— do you do Netflix or any of that stuff?

Uh, yeah, yeah.

Okay.

I mean, we'll do that. Watch something. What's that?

I didn't realize you guys didn't have a TV. Um, so how routinely is— like, how often is TV or a movie night or anything like that part of your life?

We do a weekly movie night where we go through the AFI's top 100 lists. Um, so we're watching through that. My kids think The Third Man is the greatest— the greatest.

I don't even know what AFI is.

The American Film Institute, son. That's an important, important list.

I had no clue.

Yeah, see, I'm trying to get these kids cultured. I want them to see actual movies.

So this is older films that are like—

It's mostly older films.

Highly ranked, OK. Yeah.

So we watched 1949's The Third Man.

So when you said you were plugged into modern culture, that was a complete farce.

That was a complete farce. I don't know a single thing about modern culture. Yeah, I pay attention to television and movies. That's about it. OK. But the kids, anyway, they— We do weekly movie night with old movies. And then they'll occasionally watch a TV show on Netflix or something. Okay. They probably do that once a day.

Do you guys do Kindles or anything like that?

No, no. The only real screen time they have apart from maybe an episode of something on Netflix, and that's typically just so the wife can cook dinner or whatever she's doing, you just need them to sit still. She'll have them watch Chasing Monsters or something, some fishing show, that's what they want to watch.

Because that's where I was going with that, because a lot of parents I know are using screens as babysitters or as like here.

Yeah, and we do that. Yeah, we do that. It's pretty limited, maybe a half hour a day, whatever we need just to have them kind of sit still. Either homeschool, so they're kind of packed in, so it's kind of a reward.

Yeah.

But they— we also, we have a couple of laptops and iPads that are used for school stuff, and having the kids do school, to do computer math, is a really helpful thing because they think of that as screen time, so it feels like a game. Okay. And then we got Rosetta Stone.

What computer math?

Just whatever their math curriculum is, they're doing it on the computer.

Okay, got it. So just instead of paper, they're doing it on the computer.

Yeah, exactly. It's a program where it walks them through their math curriculum. So that's something she can park one of them in front of, have them do it, work with the other ones on a different subject while this one's doing that. And then we also discovered Rosetta Stone. So now our most screen-addicted child, or our most prone to be screen-addicted child, Jonah, is learning Spanish.

Nice, how old is he?

He's 6.

Okay.

But he, uh, yeah, he's learning.

So you have 11.

11, uh, 9, almost 10.

Okay.

Uh, man, I gotta go in the order, man. Uh, 11, 9, almost 10, 8, 6, 2, almost 3, and, uh, and baby.

What a rhythm.

Yeah, it's a good little group. Um, I had the, uh, the procedure to reverse the virility. My emasculation day was a few months ago.

How was that?

It's like getting a haircut, except it's not a haircut.

There's no way.

Yeah, you just chat with the guy.

It's not that easy.

Yeah, it's like, um—

You're awake for it?

Yeah, yeah. How was your summer? Did you take the kids on vacation? Oh yeah, yeah. You did that? What's that smell? Oh, that's my own burning flesh.

So there's a placca we're talking about, a vasectomy.

Oh yeah, yeah.

That's just not something—

It is a strange procedure. It is 30 minutes from when they took me in from the waiting room to when I was back out in the waiting room.

And I mean, that just has to be the most nerve-wracking 30 minutes of your life.

It really isn't that bad. The shot is not fun, the numbing shot.

Yeah. It's like a root across my legs.

Yeah, it's exactly what it sounds like. But otherwise, no, it's not a bad thing.

Because that has to go right into the boys.

It goes right next to the boys.

Okay.

Yeah, but it still, it feels like you just got kicked. Yeah, it's not a fun feeling. And then they have to do it a second time because they gotta do the second side. But it takes 10 minutes a side, man. It's the easiest thing in the world. You're just chit-chatting with the guy while he's doing it. It's crazy. And then you walk out of there. It's the craziest procedure I've ever had.

And do you walk out okay? So it's only— you just feel like kicked for a few minutes?

Yeah, you know, for a couple days you're a little tender, you know. I mean, you kind of feel like, you know, if you—

did you take off work?

I did. I— well, obviously that day I took off work, but I took off the Monday— that was on a Friday— I took off the Monday after. Just in case, and didn't end up— I mean, I could have gone back, but you know, I have a bunch of—

How was your weekend? You just lay around all day?

I laid around all day Saturday because they said to do that.

Yeah.

And then I got really bored and said, I'm not gonna just sit around all day.

Because what are the effects? Like, what are the— I don't know what they actually do. I don't know if they're actually cutting a tube.

They're just cutting a tube and sealing both ends of it. That's it.

Okay.

That's it.

Because I've heard that they're not 100%.

Well, the thing can reattach. That's the problem. Just like anything.

So like when you cut yourself, there's veins, like, they find a way to—

Yeah, yeah, yeah. They can they can come back together, and that's why they can be not 100% effective. So I get to go make a deposit next month and verify that everything's good. Yeah, it's a lot of fun. I'm really excited about that part, honestly. Yeah, I'm really excited about that part. Because it doesn't really break my routine, I just gotta catch it, you know?

That's good.

So, no, I mean, that's an interesting—

Are you allowed to bring spousal support?

We actually do it at the house. They gave me a copy. Oh, perfect. So there you go, you take care of it. Anyway, it's a strange thing, but I would definitely plug for that. There are guys who want to do it fully under, and I think that's silly. That would be painful. But it's a waste of money, man. I mean, a waste of money to pay for that.

I'll never do it. I don't think I'll ever do it. Knock on wood. No pun intended.

Well, after 6 babies, she decided she was done with that. Which I think is fair.

So Ryan's done 2. Yeah, she didn't do pregnancy as well because I would have had happily like 15,000 kids, um, because I genuinely enjoy them. Uh, but like each pregnancy was like just getting worse. Yeah, like she was getting really sick and, um, really swollen and she doesn't recover well from them. Um, uh, and our first baby was breeched, uh, Levi, uh, so they had to do a C-section.

Okay.

Because I guess he didn't turn, or they couldn't turn, or it was unsafe to try. I can't remember the details of it, uh, because we actually wanted to do one of those like birthing centers, but they wouldn't touch them. They wouldn't touch her, I guess. They're like, nope, you're going to a hospital. So once you have a cesarean here at, uh, in the state of Louisiana, Flagler Hospital, they always want to do cesareans. Yeah, you're not allowed to have a normal birth after that. Other hospitals will allow it, but ours wouldn't. So, um, so 3 cesareans. On the last one They said, "Hey, listen, for an extra $25, we can tie the tubes. We already have everything cut open. If you decide you want to do it later, it's like $1,800." I was like, "Oh." And Ryan didn't even like it.

He was like, "We'll do it." I was like, "Oh." Well, you know, she knew what her limit was at that point, and that's kind of how Brittany was. She knew that that was her number 6, and that's a lot of babies.

That is.

She was getting up— I mean, she would be 35 this fall, and once you're, you know, that's kind of considered getting old.

Yeah, like, what is it, like 38 or 39 starts to get like high risk?

It's high risk I think after 35. Oh, really? I mean, it's starting, and you know, we had a woman die here in St. Augustine in childbirth just a month before, um, but that wasn't related to her age, I don't think.

Yeah, I mean, that was just like a medical issue.

No, I think it was a risk factor, it was the age. Yeah, because there was, I mean, that, that particular thing that, that she died from was, was a, um, I mean, one of the risk factors for that, it's, you can't really predict that what happened to her, but one of the risk factors is age. And so, and that just made me real nervous. And that kind of like, once that happened, I was just like, you know what, I just want this baby to be born. And, you know, I was kind of over the pregnancy at that point.

Was that before your baby was born?

It was about, she died right about a month before the baby was born.

Oh yeah, that was—

The baby died about 2 weeks before our baby was born.

Freaked me out.

Well, yeah, and that was kind of it, you know, it's like I was just anxious to get it over with because it was just such a, you know, such a traumatic thing for them and it came out of nowhere, right? You know, they didn't see it coming.

And they were in our homeschooling world. I never met them or knew of them.

Yeah, we went to church with them for a little while, you know, and and great people and just really just a heartbreakingly sad situation. Yeah. And it, but it just, it really like, it just colored what we were going through and it was just, you know, at that point it was like I just wanted the baby to be born and I didn't want to have any more babies because it just, it was scary, you know, to hear that.

Sure, it's scary for me. Like, we, I mean, relatively healthy babies and in a hospital environment and I was still just like being in that, you know, we did cesarean so I wasn't in a waiting room but I was like in a room before the surgical room, then they bring you in for it. For the actual party.

You know, I did a kidney surgery back in, um, but it's November. Do you remember that? Did you hear about that?

What was that?

I did a kidney donation.

I remember the kidney donation because I thought you were crazy. Yeah, it was crazy, but you know, because like at the time you'd get just—

we just got pregnant. Yeah, um, but you know, people acted like it was a crazy thing to do, but cesarean has just as high— what's that?

Iowa's people.

Yeah. But I mean, you know, the risk of dying from that surgery that I had was no higher than the risk of dying from a cesarean, and women have that every day and don't think about it, you know, and so it's like, it's a real simple—

I think about it.

But I mean, a lot of people don't think, I mean, they don't think about—

It's a very high success rate.

The risk, yeah. But you don't think about the risk. I mean, 2 to 5 in 10,000 die from that, and that's the same thing with kidney donation.

Wait, 2 to 5 in 10,000?

Yeah, yeah, it's like a 2 in 10,000 rate for cesarean. Caesarean, which is not a good— it's not a high rate, but if you consider how many caesareans are being done every day, and people just kind of, they do it, and I'm not criticizing caesarean either. I mean, I'm saying that it's a higher risk thing than I think we think because it feels routine, whereas people acted like I was a nut for the— I mean, I had people, one of my bosses had pulled me aside and said, I'm impressed by what you're doing, but if it were my son-in-law, he's like, I would kill him if he tried to do that. And it's like, I understand that, but the risk was no higher than a cesarean.

Because, yeah, you're talking about risk on the table, but then you're thinking you're removing an organ, so maybe there could be complications from that.

There could, and it's elective. That's the difference. It's like, if you're pregnant and you have to have a cesarean, you don't really have a choice. Baby's gotta come out. But for me, it was 100% elective. I was choosing to do this thing.

And then 30 years down the road, maybe you need a kidney.

I'm on the top of the list, though. I get grandfathered up.

Stop it.

Yeah, man.

Is that true?

Well, they give you points, right? So every point is a year, you know, so most people are 4 years down the list.

They say, they basically say he's a good person, he's donated.

Exactly. I get an automatic 4 points.

You get bumped over me if I need a kidney.

Correct. I get an automatic 4 points on the cadaver list, plus let's be, let's be honest here, I made 6 donors as well. What does that mean? Well, I guess 6 little donors, except for Titus, I guess. He's got a weird kidney, so he's got a, he's got a weird kidney situation. I probably won't be able to I couldn't steal from him, but I could steal from the other 5, no problem.

That's good. Did you know the person well that you were donating to?

No. No.

You just randomly decided?

No, it was a girl from work, but she had to quit when she had her— her kidneys got shut down by a really random and rare autoimmune disease that she didn't know she had that just basically— it either attacks your lungs or your kidneys typically.

I guess it's a good thing it did her kidneys.

Yeah, exactly. You can get lung transplants, which is crazy to think about. You can also get a lung transplant.

There's no way they're as high success rates as— No way, no, no.

And I'm sure that they don't come from living people. Nobody, I doubt a human, like a living person would give a lung. No. So probably always cadaver, and with cadaver stuff, there's always higher risk, and that's the thing with the kidney is that a cadaver kidney might only last you 10 years if it's a perfect match, but a living kidney might last you 20 years, you know, 'cause it's, I mean, I think it was—

I didn't think about the fact that you can make more donors. I can't— So really, you should have more children so you have more possibilities.

Correct. Everybody should have 6 children so that they can have 6 possible kidney donors.

And livers.

That's the way it should go. And livers, you just take a piece of a liver. But yeah, she was a coworker. I didn't know her very well. She worked in a different— I work at a bank, and she worked at a different branch, and she just one weekend just went to the doctor feeling terrible for a couple days, went to the doctor, doctor checked her out, ran some tests. On her way home, the doctor called and said, "Hey, you need to go to the nearest emergency room. You're in full renal failure." And so she was basically on dialysis for 2 years, and she wasn't even eligible for a transplant for the first year and a half because she had the autoimmune— because she had the disease. So they had to get that into a dormant level, and she finally got there. And I had told her at one point, because she was friends with my boss at the time. And I told her, you know, well, when you're eligible, let me know and I'll go do the test just so we can see. What are the chances we'd even be the same blood type, right? And then we were. And then they had us go through a series of tests. I mean, it took about 6 months.

Did you talk to your wife before you mentioned that?

I don't remember if we talked before I did the blood test. I'm sure we did. We must have because I went down to the doctor.

Like at dinner that night, where you're like, hey, by the way, I ran into a girl.

I probably said, you know, hey, I'm gonna go have this blood test done, probably nothing's gonna come of it, but you know, I'm gonna go do the blood test, what's the harm in that? But then we were a match. I mean, they actually like put our blood in a petri dish and had them fight each other to see if they, you know, if there's any rejection. And then it was like, well, do we want to pursue this?

Did you panic at that point? Never?

No, I was kind of excited. I mean, it was a neat, you know, it was not, I mean, how often do you get an opportunity to do something like that, right? I mean, you You don't really get that many opportunities to do something cool for somebody. And so it was kind of a cool thing. And so I said, well, I'm just going to keep pushing it and see where we get. And yeah, eventually we were able to get some stuff done.

We need people like you out there. Well, if the whole world was me, it'd just be a selfish, cruel world.

I mean, here's the thing, man. It was inconvenient and it was painful at times, but it saved somebody's life. It's like somebody's life is worth more than mine.

So how does the medical cost, because it's elective, does the person needing the kidney pay for all your treatment and stuff like that?

Yeah, a big chunk of it is handled by the National Organ Donor Service called UNOS.

Okay.

So they pay for a lot of the research and a lot of the testing and stuff, and then otherwise her insurance picks up everything. Now fortunately for her, before she got sick, about 6 months before she got sick, she had just gotten remarried. She's about 20 years older than me, and she had just gotten remarried to a guy who was military, so she was under VA benefits. So VA benefits, really, I don't think she ended up having to come out of pocket for anything.

That's nice.

But the VA picked up— I paid nothing. The only thing that I ever got billed for was the drugs I took home from the hospital, and that's just because they can't— I guess there's some law where you can't bill narcotics somebody else's insurance. So literally the only thing I paid for was the $20 for the, you know, OxyContin that they sent me home with.

That's interesting.

Yeah, I mean, it was a really, it was a really well-handled situation. It worked really well.