What The Frock

If you went to school in America sometime in the last hundred years, chances are someone, probably a teacher in sensible shoes, threatened to write something into your “permanent record.” Maybe you threw a paper airplane. Maybe you told the truth in class when it wasn’t fashionable. Or maybe, like Rabbi Dave, you just had an offhand thought about torpedoing a ferry. Regardless, the phrase landed like a bolt from Olympus. Not a rule, not a law. Something more chilling. Eternal. Undeniable. Unseen.

This week on What the Frock?, Rabbi Dave and Friar Rod crack open that cryptic file folder we all grew up fearing. It starts with a school discipline story. A kid speaks. A teacher flinches. The phrase is invoked. Lawsuits follow. But what does the permanent record really mean, and why has it stuck around like a bad cafeteria smell?

From there, the discussion veers into some strange but thoughtful territory. The origins of the phrase in postwar bureaucracy. Cold War paranoia that shaped childhood discipline. The religious concept of the Book of Life and how it offers redemption, compared with the cruel permanence of a Google search. The Wayback Machine even makes an appearance. Turns out the Internet never forgets, and it certainly doesn’t forgive.

This episode unpacks the theology behind judgment. Not in the fire and brimstone sense, but in a more personal way. Who decides when you’re done paying for a mistake? Who gets to erase what? The schools never meant it literally. But culture does now. Today’s permanent record might be self-authored, timestamped, and searchable. You post it. They find it. That’s the new fear.

If you’ve ever wondered why some jokes land harder than others or why something you said twenty years ago suddenly matters again, this conversation might bring some clarity. Or at least a few uncomfortable laughs.

And yes, this episode is probably going on your record too. Just hit play.