[00:00:05] Ferne Kotlyar: Hello, hello. This is Ferne Kotlyar on The Frame of Mind Coaching™ Podcast. I am podcast co-host of Fridays with Ferne that have turned onto Wednesdays. I'm Kim Ades' daughter and I'm giving the intro a little spin today. Let us know how you like it.
[00:00:24] Kim Ades:
I love it! I love it. You know what I realized? Next time when I introduce, I should let you introduce yourself.
[00:00:32] Ferne Kotlyar:
Yeah, absolutely.
[00:00:33] Kim Ades:
And I am Kim Ades, I am the President and Founder of Frame of Mind Coaching™ and the Co-founder of The Journal That Talks Back™. And that was a fabulous introduction and you could do it every time if you would like.
[00:00:44] Ferne Kotlyar:
Wow. What a promotion. [Laughs]
[00:00:47] Kim Ades:
I'm telling you, we've changed the rules of the game, just suddenly.
[00:00:51] Ferne Kotlyar:
We really are, yeah.
[00:00:53] Kim Ades:
Amazing. So for those of you who are tuning in for the first time, what typically happens on this podcast is Ferne comes to the podcast with something to discuss. So what would you like to discuss today?
[00:01:05] Ferne Kotlyar:
So today I thought we'd take a little step back, make a very chill episode. It's been a hectic start of the semester for those who are at school and leading out of the summer. So I thought today we'd have a chill little story time. Let's see how this goes. So I thought we would tell the story together of... Ollie, the ostrich!
[00:01:31] Kim Ades:
Ooh, that's a good one. Do you remember what happened and when it happened?
[00:01:37] Ferne Kotlyar:
I've gotta say don't remember all the exact details.
[00:01:40] Kim Ades:
Okay.
[00:01:40] Ferne Kotlyar:
But I think maybe I'll launch into it and you interrupt me as we go.
[00:01:45] Kim Ades:
Okay.
[00:01:45] Ferne Kotlyar:
Or do you wanna do it the other way around?
[00:01:47] Kim Ades:
No, go ahead.
[00:01:48] Ferne Kotlyar:
All right. So, as you all may or may not know, I am the youngest of four older brothers. We are a blended family and there are six years between me, the youngest, and Jonathan, the oldest. And so between us, we are all very close in age. Our neighbor-- we were having a joint garage sale with our neighbor, and Jonathan went to buy a Muppet. A Muppet? No. What is it called?
[00:02:18] Kim Ades:
A puppet?
[00:02:18] Ferne Kotlyar:
A marionette! It was a marionette. And it was an ostrich, and he was very obsessed with it, very happy. And I think Brian wanted to play with it, or... I think Brian wanted to play with it.
[00:02:32] Kim Ades:
Brian wanted to play with it, michael wanted to play with it, everybody wanted to play with it, but Jonathan didn't wanna let anybody play with it. So he only wanted to let them play with it in his presence. The issue was that he was going out and he didn't want anybody to touch his ostrich when he was gone.
So he decided to create a contract and make them sign the contract. And on the contract it said, "you are not allowed to touch my marionette, my Ollie, the ostrich, when I am gone". And so Michael happily signed it. He said "that's fair. Happy to sign it".
And Jonathan-- Sorry, Jonathan asked Brian to sign it too, and Brian refused. He said "I'm not signing that", and Jonathan got very upset. So what did Jonathan do? He forged Brian's signature onto this fake contract.
[00:03:34] Ferne Kotlyar:
[Laughs] How old were we all at the time? I think I was like... Nine?
[00:03:39] Kim Ades:
Gosh, I think Jonathan was 15. So how old were you?
[00:03:45] Ferne Kotlyar:
Nine. Yeah, yeah, that was accurate. And I think then Brian was like 10.
[00:03:49] Kim Ades:
Brian was 10. So Brian was smart enough to know that forging a signature is illegal. We are not allowed to forge signatures on contracts, even if they are about ostriches, and even if our older brother wrote it on a piece of paper with scribbles, doesn't matter.
[00:04:10] Ferne Kotlyar:
[Laughs] You couldn't even read it! [Laughs]
[00:04:11] Kim Ades:
Couldn't even read it. Doesn't matter, you are not allowed to forge a signature. So Brian thought it was completely within his right to call the police and report his brother.
[00:04:24] Ferne Kotlyar:
[Laughs] Yikes.
[00:04:25] Kim Ades:
So Brian picked up the phone, he dialed 911, and the minute somebody answered, Brian hung up.
[00:04:35] Ferne Kotlyar:
Didn't know what to say.
[00:04:38] Kim Ades:
Didn't know what to say. And also he was kind of just challenging Jonathan a little bit. "I'm gonna call the police", and you know, it was a bit playful, there was some banter going on. But when 911 gets a phone call, 911 takes it seriously. You can't just call 911 and hang up.
[00:04:58] Ferne Kotlyar:
Especially when it's on a landline. [Laughs]
[00:05:00] Kim Ades:
Especially when it's on a landline. So 911 called us back and said "is everything okay?" And we said "yes, yes. It was just a joke. Here's what's happening". And the woman on the other end of the phone said "unfortunately, I need to send the police to your house to check in on you and make sure everything is in fact, okay".
[00:05:24] Ferne Kotlyar:
So the police came.
[00:05:25] Kim Ades:
[Laughs] So the police came, they knocked on the door and we took them outside, we explained the situation, we explained about Ollie the ostrich.
[00:05:35] Ferne Kotlyar:
[Laughs]
[00:05:35] Kim Ades:
We explained about the contract, we explained about forging signatures, and the police said "well, we'd still like to talk to your children". So we had all five kids lined up on the red couch... You know, our big red couch... You were all sitting in order of age, youngest to oldest, and the police walked in. Do you remember that?
[00:05:57] Ferne Kotlyar:
Of course. It was very intimidating. [Chuckles]
[00:06:00] Kim Ades:
It was intimidating.
[00:06:01] Ferne Kotlyar:
They weren't all happy with us, specifically Brian.
[00:06:04] Kim Ades:
Right. So--
[00:06:05] Ferne Kotlyar:
Do not call the police if there is no real issue.
[00:06:09] Kim Ades:
Right. Do not call the police if there's no emergency, because we believe that there's an emergency, especially when it's so sketchy and you hang up quickly, right?
[00:06:18] Ferne Kotlyar:
[Laughs]
[00:06:20] Kim Ades:
And so, the police gave you all a warning. But I think in the back of their minds, they were cracking up.
[00:06:28] Ferne Kotlyar:
[Laughs] I'm sure. They're like "best raid of the day".
[00:06:32] Kim Ades:
Exactly. [Laughs] Best raid--
[00:06:34] Ferne Kotlyar:
Of year!
[00:06:34] Kim Ades:
Of the year. "And we've heard everything, but we've never heard this one before". But then after, I think somebody started to cry, I think it was--
[00:06:45] Ferne Kotlyar:
Probably Brian.
[00:06:45] Kim Ades:
Brian started to cry because he felt very upset and disturbed and stressed out that the police came and they--
[00:06:54] Ferne Kotlyar:
Yeah, because of him.
[00:06:55] Kim Ades:
Yeah, he was afraid that something terrible would happen to him.
[00:06:59] Ferne Kotlyar:
Yeah.
[00:06:59] Kim Ades:
But that was that. And funnily enough, the ostrich didn't last so long because somebody did end up playing with the ostrich and messing with the strings, so the ostrich was off, right? If the strings aren't all aligned, there goes your marionette.
[00:07:16] Ferne Kotlyar:
Yeah, I think it was "unfunctional", completely-- Dysfunctional!
[00:07:20] Kim Ades:
Dysfunctional.
[00:07:20] Ferne Kotlyar:
Okay. [Chuckles]
[00:07:21] Kim Ades:
Yeah.
[00:07:22] Ferne Kotlyar:
Yeah.
[00:07:22] Kim Ades:
So that was that. But it gave us a lifelong story to remember, and that was one of the earlier stories of our blended family coming together.
[00:07:32] Ferne Kotlyar:
Yeah, crazy experience. Really bonds you with people though.
[00:07:35] Kim Ades:
[Chuckles] It really bonds you, that's right. And what bonds you is the stories you get to tell when you're sitting around the table with all your friends and with your significant others that are meeting the family for the first time. It's so funny how everybody thinks of that story as one of the stories that we wanna tell, so that they get to know us as a family.
[00:08:00] Ferne Kotlyar:
Yeah, we're all bonkers.
[00:08:02] Kim Ades:
[Laughs] We're all bonkers.
[00:08:03] Ferne Kotlyar:
[Laughs]
[00:08:04] Kim Ades:
But fine.
[00:08:05] Ferne Kotlyar:
Is that the message you're trying to send? [Laughs]
[00:08:08] Kim Ades:
No, what I'm trying to say is that adversity brings people together.
[00:08:12] Ferne Kotlyar:
Yeah.
[00:08:13] Kim Ades:
But so does humor and so does the process of experiencing interesting things in your lifetime and living to tell the stories. And so we have a lot of that. That was one of them. And, you know, if I think about how we blended our family, it was by kind of creating a lot of experiences that we now talk about.
[00:08:38] Ferne Kotlyar:
Yeah, going on vacation very early on together.
[00:08:42] Kim Ades:
Going on vacation very early on together, playing games together. One of the things that Allan did in our early days was he said "we travel together, everybody goes in the same car together". There were a lot of us...
[00:08:56] Ferne Kotlyar:
Yeah!
[00:08:56] Kim Ades:
...And we had some cars at the time. I said Why do we need to... One car and squish in when we're only driving 15 minutes away? We'll take two cars". "No, we're a family. Families travel together". And I remember at the beginning, when we first got everybody together, there was a lot of jockeying for position, literally in the car. So people would say, I want front right!
[00:09:19] Ferne Kotlyar:
Shotgun!
[00:09:20] Kim Ades:
Shotgun! Right? And then, by the end, everybody had their seats. Nobody shotgunned anymore.
[00:09:27] Ferne Kotlyar:
Yeah.
[00:09:27] Kim Ades:
Right?
[00:09:28] Ferne Kotlyar:
Brian got stuck in the middle. Ha ha!
[00:09:30] Kim Ades:
You got stuck in the back.
[00:09:32] Ferne Kotlyar:
I'd much prefer to be in the back than in the middle. At least you have an armrest.
[00:09:36] Kim Ades:
[Laughs] At least you have an armrest. But no leg space. Doesn't matter, you were short at the time. [Laughs]
[00:09:41] Ferne Kotlyar:
I'm not that much taller now, but [Laughs]
[00:09:44] Kim Ades:
But we had a lot of fun together, we had a lot of moments together, we have a lot of memories together. And you know what? One of the things that we do as a family is every year we celebrate family day in some unusual and bizarre way. And every year one of the kids works with me to--
[00:10:04] Ferne Kotlyar:
Not only the kids, one of the people in the family.
[00:10:07] Kim Ades:
One of the people that usually works with me... Is there no more kids anymore?
[00:10:11] Ferne Kotlyar:
No, I'm saying sometimes you plan it, sometimes Allan plans it. You're not kids.
[00:10:16] Kim Ades:
Right. Well, I'm a kid--
[00:10:17] Ferne Kotlyar:
Kids at heart.
[00:10:18] Kim Ades:
Come on.
[00:10:19] Ferne Kotlyar:
Kids at heart.
[00:10:19] Kim Ades:
But we plan an event every year to celebrate as a family. And so we've done all kinds of really cool things, like we've done ax throwing, that was Ferne's idea, we did karaoke, we did family photos...
[00:10:37] Ferne Kotlyar:
Escape room.
[00:10:38] Kim Ades:
An escape room, we fed the homeless in the park, we made packages and sandwiches. We did lots of really, really cool things, and those cool things create memories and those memories create a tight family. And I would say we have a tight family.
You know, I'll tell you one more thing. The other day, Louis brought over a friend from work and they came over for dinner, and that friend from work said "I'm so happy to meet you, Louis raves about his family".
[00:11:16] Ferne Kotlyar:
Aww! That's so nice!
[00:11:18] Kim Ades:
And Allan said "does he rant and rave or just rave?" And she said "no, he just raves".
[00:11:23] Ferne Kotlyar:
Aww.
[00:11:24] Kim Ades:
And it was so nice to hear. It's nice when we hear that our kids are talking favorably about their family and want to introduce their friends and whoever to us. That's the epitome of joy and pride for me. Absolutely.
[00:11:47] Ferne Kotlyar:
Aw, I'm so glad to hear it. Makes me happy.
[00:11:50] Kim Ades:
That's it. You got the story of Ollie the ostrich. We'll have to think of another one for next time.
[00:11:54] Ferne Kotlyar:
Welcome to the family.
[00:11:55] Kim Ades:
Welcome to the family.
[00:11:57] Ferne Kotlyar:
[Chuckles]
[00:11:57] Kim Ades:
All right, guys, we will catch you next time. It's good for today. You just got a dose of what it's like at the FAKs Family home. FAKs: Friedman for Allan Friedman and his kids, Ades for me, Kim Ades, and Kotlyar for Ferne and Louis Kotlyar. The FAKs Family. Have a good time!
If you wanna reach out and give us your thoughts on Ollie the ostrich and how the police showed up at our house, please do. How do they reach you, Ferne?
[00:12:29] Ferne Kotlyar:
Please email me! My email is Fernekotlyar@live.com.
[00:12:34] Kim Ades:
And mine is Kim@frameofmindcoaching.com. We'll see you next time. Have a good week everyone.
[00:12:41] Ferne Kotlyar:
Bye!
[00:12:42] Kim Ades:
Bye!