Episode 339 - Todd Glass

"I knew I'd found my people"

On a quiet side of his childhood house, a young Todd Glass would act out a fantasy. Armed with a pretzel, he'd pretend to smoke it like a cigarette, blow the "smoke" upward, and mutter a phrase he'd overheard: "Come on, we're losing light." He was imitating the neighborhood landscaper—a man who sat in his air-conditioned truck all day, smoking, and barking orders at his crew. There was just one problem: Todd hated the heat, hated dirt, and hated being outside. He didn't want to be a landscaper. He wanted to be that guy—the one who sat in the truck and told people what to do.

This story, which Todd Glass tells to host Tom Papa on Breaking Bread, is a perfect entry point into a conversation about how we never really leave the child we were behind. The landscaper fantasy, the obsession with orderly shag carpeting, the argument with a teacher about whether mountain goats actually like living on cliffs—these aren't just funny anecdotes. They're the raw material of a comedian who has spent decades figuring out how to turn his own wiring into a career.

"Sevens to Tens"