Vol. 100 - Tattletale

On flipping the bird and living to tell the tale

First off, thank you! When I started this newsletter, I didn’t really think too far ahead (which is generally how I approach life, much to Emily’s chagrin). Certainly wasn’t thinking I’d do it a hundred times. But here we are.

Granted, with the Dad Talks, Fucked Up Moments in Fatherhood, and Million, Billion installments, I’ve delivered well over a hundred newsletters to your inbox. But seeing that number, Volume 100, makes me happy. And the biggest reason I keep doing this is because you all keep reading. So thank you for doing that. Thanks for all the public comments and private emails.

I started this newsletter to do my small part to foster the idea that dads can be open, vulnerable, and emotional, even if it was just happening in one tiny corner of the internet’s DADSPACE (which was and remains sorely lacking in honest and earnest <content>). In that time, I’ve found some like-minded writers doing the same work (will tag them in a comment below. Please check them out). Hopefully, someday soon, our message will spread farther and wider, because it’s totally cool to be scared to death and happy to tears and angry as hell as a father. Because being a dad is hard as fuck. And we should all be allowed the space to talk about that.

Anyway, thanks for reading. Onto the newsletter.

Our son is great at telling on himself.

It’s an adorable trait and one I hope he doesn’t soon grow out of.

Recently, he got off the school bus with a wry smile across his face. I asked if he had a good ride home.

“Why? Did Miss Asia say something?”

Did your bus driver say something in the eight seconds she had the door open, most of which was taken up by you walking off the bus? No, bud, she didn’t. But now that you mention it, what happened?

My son told me that one of his friends gave him the middle finger and that he replied in kind. No one saw it, he said. Neither Miss Asia nor her bus aide caught the six-year-old kids telling one another to fuck off.

But my son did tell his bus driver.

“Why?” I asked, before going on too long of a rant about how and why minor transgressions can and should be sorted out amongst each other; about how his friend shouldn’t have done that and how my son had every right to tell him as much before going to a figure of authority; about how it may not have been out of malice as much as a little boy testing boundaries; about we try not to tell on friends unless someone is going to get hurt.

“But I did get hurt, daddy,” my son said. “He hurt my feelings.”

And in that moment, as often is the case, I learned something from my son.