The Tragically Unhip

Dear Christian Parenting Weekly, Daily, and For The Rest Of Your Hell-Bound Days, Monthly Editor, Mrs. Michael Noah Callahan, III:

Allow me to start this letter by saying that I found your article on using real butter very insightful. I never thought of olive oil and other substitutes as un-American but when you really think about it…

Anywho, I have a situation that I really think your staff might have some opinions and/or thoughts about. The other day, maybe it was night (I’m losing track), I came downstairs to find my children watching television. I know that in the typical American home, this is not uncommon. However, I wasn’t so much surprised at finding human beings watching television in my home nearly as much as I was surprised to discover that these humans were my children.

Now, before you start name-calling, hear me out. This has been difficult for all of us. I mean, here I am, in my own house—my castle—and these little bastards are just sitting there: existing. It was the strangest sensation of betrayal. Now I know how Heston must have felt when he realized that he was actually on Earth the whole time in Planet of the Apes.

Being a go-getter, a glass-half-full sort of person, I decided to make the best of it. I thought to myself, “These kids need me. They need to know they need me or their spirits will die and they’ll just crumble.” So I engineered a character-building and connection-based obstacle course for them: a character-building connectstacle course, if you will.

I began with a lesson in dominance. This was easily accomplished as they were sitting down and I was standing. I obviously towered above their tiny structures to show them I was boss. I also pulled on their ears and flicked their noses, which I thought worked because they looked rather disturbed, which I read as: “Whoa, I better not mess with this guy.”

Except it didn’t work at all! The girl poured herself the last cup of coffee and went outside with a cigarette. I looked to the boy, who was hurriedly making a ham and cheese sandwich, which I presumed was for me as an apology. Instead, he just returned to the couch and ate it himself while watching rap videos.

So next I tried stern verbal reprimands. “Bad! Up!” I exclaimed. There was no response. “UP!” I repeated more aggressively. Still no response. At this point I recalled a passage I had read about Rottweilers and how disobedient they can become if they are not employed. So I said nothing and left, returning shortly thereafter with three full baskets of my dirty laundry and a stack of hand-written business letters that needed to be proofread and typed.

Four hours later, I returned from the local “watering hole” to find not my alleged children clean and pressed and smiling up at me with high hopes of more employment, but an empty couch and—you’ll never believe it—the three baskets of laundry and the stack of letters completely untouched! To say I was a bit upset would be a lie. I screamed and yelled (and cried, a little). I even broke my poor late mother’s favorite cricket dart. I bemoaned to the Heavens: “What could I have done to deserve such lazy children?”

Hours later, I figured I should try a more nurturing approach. I called up a pediatrician and asked for a recommendation. They asked if my child was screaming and moody and unresponsive to my attentions. I said yes and they told me that it may be the Terrible Twos, to which I told them that yes, I have two children. In the end they recommended freezable chew toys for teething, which I quickly obtained from our Armenian neighbors.

When I asked my wife what in the creeps I could do about all this stuff with the kids she asked me, “What kids?” I explained to her about the people I found in the living room, in silent hopes that perhaps I was mistaken or that I was like Nicolas Cage in that Christmas movie and would just wake up in my Financial District penthouse. But instead my wife told me to get the eff out of her room and locked the door behind me.

As it turns out, my children are 19 and 23 years old and there are rumors of yet another one somewhere out there. I don’t know. I guess I just got my days and months mixed up somewhere in that time frame. Honestly, all this time I thought that the neighbors just had a really loud TV. I figured the small-sized bikes were part of some strange circus-inspired aerobics regimen my wife was on.

So, CPWDFTROYHBD Monthly Editor: Help! I have slightly older children who need to be taught to respect and fear me. Suggestions are urgently requested!

Please send more pudding samples.

Thank you,
Papa “T-Dawg” Burbidge