The Week In Review
I got an email from my eleven year old daughter’s teacher the other day. She was removed from class for communicating in fake sign language with a classmate across the room. During a test. She has absolutely none of the cunning and guile that I had at that age. Through a mixture of wily intelligence, parental cluelessness, and dumb luck, I managed to go through my entire childhood without getting busted for anything major after the age of five. Nothing. My daughter, on the other hand, is evening up the family score by getting busted for every idiotic thing she even thinks of doing.
For instance, back when it was actually safe to go to Mexico, we were planning on going to Rocky Point for a weekend of discount drinking and debauchery, and because we’ve pretty much written off winning Parents of the Year, we were going to let our daughter tag along. (Actually, she had cousins going as well. It’s not like we were going to be playing quarters with her or anything.) Then one fine day at work, I got a call from my daughter at home. This was odd, since she was supposed to be in day care. When I asked her why she got off the bus at our house instead of going to day care, she snottily replied, “I didn’t feel like going to day care.”
She also had invited six or seven friends over, and they were having a seven-year old party in our house, totally unsupervised. “You get those kids out of the house this instant! Lock the door after they’ve left and sit there watching TV until I get home. I’m leaving now.” Now, at this point in time, a more rational person would assume that the jig is up, and start to minimize the damage by clearing out the house. Not my daughter. When I got home and approached the front door, a kid elbowed his way by me, opened the door, and walked right into my house. If anything, there were more kids than when I had told my daughter to clear everyone out of there.
“I told you to get everyone out of here! Why didn’t you do it?” My daughter’s response? “I didn’t feel like it!” Needless to say, she spent the better part of the next week bawling her little fucking eyes out because she was no longer going to be allowed to go to Mexico with us. And, of course, I’d constantly remind her, “You know why we’re not taking you to Mexico? I don’t feel like it!”
Not my daughter. When my daughter is crying, she cannot be photographed. There is so much running makeup that her face looks like a charcoal briquet.
Another, more common example would be this conversation:
Me: How is it that all of a sudden you don’t have any homework?
Daughter: I’m doing it in school.
Me: Right. This is the same school that sends emails back home complaining that you spend all of your time socializing? That school?
Daughter: I did it in school!
Me: You’re not lying, are you?
Daughter: NO! GOD, WHY DON’T YOU EVER BELIEVE ME!
Me: Ok, so here’s the deal. If you show missing homework when I check your grades at the end of the week, I’m grounding you for a month, taking away your iPod, and deleting your Facebook account. But if you tell me the truth now, you get a free pass.
Daughter: DADDY! I’M TELLING THE TRUTH! WHY DON’T YOU EVER BELIEVE ME!?!?!
And of course I’ll look online on Friday and see that she failed to turn in ten things.
Me: Clearly, you knew you were going to get caught. And you knew that I’d have to pull the trigger on that punishment. Why in the world didn’t you just tell the truth?
Daughter: (after twenty minutes of denials, accusations that her teacher lost her homework ten times, and wild-eyed conspiracy theories) Ok, I didn’t do my homework. Do you still have to ground me and all that other stuff?
Me: I’m not going to ground you for missing homework.
Daughter: Really?
Me: Really. I’m grounding you for being a fucking idiot.
Not only do I hate having my intelligence insulted like that, I get frustrated because I want to tell her how easy it is to do next-to-nothing in school, get good grades, and then cash that good will in by fucking around and getting in all sorts of undetected trouble. I feel like yelling at her, “Take all of the time you spend cooking up lies, covering up the truth, and getting busted, and use that time to do the shit you’re supposed to do! Then, because you’re not getting in trouble, you get increased freedom and trust, and then you do shit behind our backs. It’s so fucking simple!”
So. Fucking. Simple.
Kids these days.
On to the week you missed because you were grounded to your room for playing Helen Keller in class:
- On Tuesday, I was unfaithful to a woman who is not my wife.
- On Wednesday, I shaved your head and superglued your palms together. That’ll teach you for puking on my carpet.
- On Thursday, AUUUGGGHHH! Not Junior High again!
Three fucking posts? (Well, four, if you count the Week In Review.) That is pathetic. I don’t think I’ve ever done that few posts in one week. Shit is really crazy around here. Between my son being in tee-ball, my daughter being in two plays (unless she’s lying about that too), work, work around the house, and all those beers I have to drink, I just couldn’t buckle down enough to put even a couple of dick jokes together and call it a post. My bad. Sorry.
And now, to pay some bills. We don’t have bills, but that’s ok; We don’t have sponsors either. It’s Involuntary Advertising, brought to you this week by… What the FUCK?
Seriously, What The Fucking Fuck, Japan?
Say what you will about the Japanese, but they are twenty-six kinds of awesome. If anyone out there can translate this, and even better, get me info on how I can buy one of these things, I will be forever in your debt.
On to another disturbing image, this time involving Andy Dick’s colon. The poll has just gone final:
[poll id=”11″]
Look at that poll again. Everybody believes that Andy Dick has had both an onion and a G.I. Joe Action Figure in his ass. Probably five or six of each before lunch. I have the smartest readers in the known universe. A pomegranate holds the distinction of being an object that Andy Dick is least likely to have wedged up his ass. Why? Beats the hell out of me. Andy Dick and his ass stuffing habits are a mystery of nature, and so it’s hard to tell what he hasn’t put up there with any certainty. A pomegranate is as good a guess as any.
Ok, another week, another opportunity to send anonymous hate mail to Shriners. Do what you love, and enjoy your week everyone.
I would rather be anything than an 11-year-old girl. Again. So clueless. So angsty. So awkward. I think that is the year that I outgrew my dad. Horrific!
Yeah, what an awful age. I’d have to be really, really old before I’d willingly go back to being that age.
Sounds like you are Dad of the year to me, actually.
I’d rather be 11 than 13. Shit’s only gonna get worse. Buy some beer.
“Buy some beer” is always good advice.
I was thinking the same thing as Pish. At 13 my brain was replaced with rocks, and it stayed that way until about 19. Good luck Dogs, you’re gonna need it.
It’s for singing. Yes. Somehow.
And to stop chronic thumb-sucking, and nail-biting.
Apparently.
Tonsil frame? Crevice-tool for a stomach pump?
Regardless it’s a steal at 3,800 yen.
You should buy three before they’re all gone.
$47 bucks! I can cure myself of thumb sucking for less than that!
Andy Dick says hi and bids $35.
I was and still am THE WORST LIAR EVER. I just can’t seem to manage it – it’s like I’m handicapped that way.
So why don’t you give your daughter a break – we can’t all excel at all things. SHE IS LYING DEFICIENT. You don’t know our pain.
PS I LOVE that she had a 7 year old blow out. AWESOME.
I thought the 7 year old party was kinda funny until I realized that if any of her hair-brained friends had done something stupid and maimed themselves, I’d be responsible for it.
I have no idea what that Japanese mouth guard is for. I am going to scour the internet until I find it.
My kid had the ability to lose everything he left the school with before he made it home on the bus. His bag was always empty. It wasn’t zipped, but we don’t know where he lost the things at. Always empty. Happened for months.
I saved a lot of college money with him. He never did become bright enough to go to college.
My five year old is incapable of bring a jacket to school and come home with it. This is a real problem when it is 50 degrees in the morning, and 80 in the afternoon.
GI Joe action figure! Did you shove bedazzled GI Joe up Andy Dick’s ass? DO YOU HAVE ANY IDEA HOW LONG IT TOOK TO MAKE THAT FAULKER?
YOu are SOOOO grounded from Mexico.
btw- I assume that you have made appropriate arraignments for your daughter to stay with Memaw and Papaw while you are gone. No need to risk leaving her in the house unsupervised again…
They’ll take good care of her at the nunnery.
“Take all of the time you spend cooking up lies, covering up the truth, and getting busted, and use that time to do the shit you’re supposed to do! Then, because you’re not getting in trouble, you get increased freedom and trust, and then you do shit behind our backs. It’s so fucking simple!”
Wise words, indeed. Worked wonders for me…
I know, it’s not a very difficult concept, is it? Keep your shit together = get away with murder.
When I got to work and didn’t see a new post this week I thought the internet was broken.
All of the internet.
I went into a panic.
And he has totally had an onion up his arse
It was broken. That’s why I only had three posts. That is my excuse.
“… because you’re not getting in trouble, you get increased freedom and trust, and then you do shit behind our backs. It’s so fucking simple!”
That sounds eerily familiar.
By the way, my 17 year old daughter and her baby send their regards.
D’oh! Karma!
I don’t know why I keep forgetting to wander over here. You have to go on my blog roll.
I used to get away with a lot, but my brother, not so much. He had to, and still does, argue his point about EVERYTHING. I would shrug, say “Yup” and continue on my merry way. I have a 5 year old now, and I am already tired. I have no idea how I will survive ages 10-my eventual death.
Yeah, some people never learn to pick their battles. My daughter is like that. She never gives an inch, and will not let anything slide.
We got into an argument one time when she was 6. She said that she knew how to play the trumpet. I said, “Well, you may know how to hold it or kind of blow into it, but it takes many, many years to become good at an instrument.”
That set off the most idiotic argument ever. She insisted that she knew how to play, and I kept trying to talk sense into her. Finally, she was claiming that she was as good as anyone else, didn’t need lessons, and could play professionally.
Two years later, she was eligible for band and chose to play the trumpet. And when she came home with it and couldn’t play for shit, I asked her what happened. “I mean, you told me that you could play the trumpet so well that you could be a professional. What happened?”
And, lo and behold, she tried arguing with me that she COULD play the trumpet. “WHAT? I’m listening to you, and let me tell you this: You don’t know how to play the trumpet.” “YES I DO!!!”
I don’t know why my wife and I didn’t just get a hamster.