It’s those few, short, simple words that have a tendency to come flying out of my mouth before registering in my brain. Because, if it had registered, I would have quickly thought to myself “Take away his Legos, but for shit-sake man don’t cock-block yourself by pissing away a night alone with no kids!”

But when your little bastards push your buttons all day, your anger boils over, drowning your common sense leaving you incapable of making anything even closely resembling a good decision.

You stand there red-faced with heart palpitations as you scramble for a punishment that’ll reach deep into the soul of your kid. And that’s when it happens. You sternly command some of the dumbest shit you could ever come up with.

Things like:

“No TV for a week!!”

“You’re spending the afternoon watching The Sound of Music in Spanish…in slowmotion…twice!”

“You’re making dinner tonight for everyone!!”

“You’re in your room for the entire weekend!”

And the worst part about it, you have to stay true to one of the top 10 parenting rules of all time:

“Follow through with your punishments.”

It only takes 0.008^th of a second before you realize the hell you just created for yourself.

You now have to entertain the kid who just lost TV privileges while every ten minutes hearing him say, “daddy!!! I’m booooooored.”

You now have to listen to the Sound of Music in Spanish…in slow motion…TWICE!!. You have to supervise his cluster-fuck of an effort at making dinner, or be stuck at the house for the entire weekend with nothing to do because your son was too much of an asshole to stop kicking his sister’s blanket with his shoe that has dog crap on it.

The worst is when you have to watch your loving spouse fall victim to the punishment trap.

It’s like a slow motion train wreck as she slowly mouths the angry words, “ffffiiiiiinnnneeee….nnnooo…..slleeeepppp oooovvveeerrr fooooorrrrr….yyyyyooooouuuuuu!!!”

Meanwhile you’re pointing a laser pointer at the wall near your kid’s head hoping he’ll catch a glimpse of this wonderful distraction outside his peripherals and begin rabidly chasing it while you tackle the wife preventing what clearly would have been the second biggest mistake of her life.

“What the hell are you thinking woman?!!  Just make him hug his sister and let’s call it even!”

It takes a real friend to tell you when you’re screwing up.

This is precisely why the wife and I have a game plan. We try to gang-punish.

We both walk over to the situation so when one of us screams, “that’s it! You’re painting the living room for the rest of the day!!”…the other one can chime in and say, “is what we’re going to punish you with if you do that to your sister one more time!!”

Which works most times…except when you’re both pissed beyond your limits. Then it backfires big-time.

That’s when I yell, “I’ve had it! No sleep over for you tonight!”

And the wife yells, “Or ever again!! You’re never having a sleep over ever! For the rest of your life!!

And then we all cry.

A year after the wife and I moved into our first home she invited a former roommate to visit.

A day later we’re throwing a neighborhood bash in her honor. Beers are flowing. The grill is smoking with orgasmic fumes of cooked dead animal flesh.

I’m hanging out in a chair, laughing, trying to be funny, and enjoying many a beverage.

That’s when it happened.

I look up to see the wife’s former roommate standing before me, unnaturally interested in the rambling mess spewing from my distorted lips.

Then a pause.

Then, she screams “glitter bitches!!!!” as she unleashes two handfuls of glitter all over every inch of my person.

Head to toe, in my eyes, up my nose, in my mouth, contaminating my beverage….everywhere….glitter.

It was absolutely brilliant. The fact she even waited more than 24 hours upon her arrival to pull this award-winning prank made it even that much more respectable.

Since then, I’ve had an undying hatred for glitter.

Almost three years later we moved after two ankle biters graced our presence. Upon opening a couple boxes we still found glitter.

Fast forward to the X-mas holidays of 2011….

I finish volunteering in the boy’s 3^rd-grade classroom holiday party and take a slow jaunt down to the daughter’s 1^st-grade class to see if the wife needs help wrangling the little bastards around Ole Saint Nick projects.

When I walk in the classroom my sights lock immediately on a gaggle of desks jammed together in a U-shape. Kids on one side. One lonely, helpless woman on the other.

And in-between…glitter hell.

The kids’ activity was to turn a cup upside down, cover it in glue, throw glitter on it, and BAM!!! an ornament guaranteed to hit every household trashcan the second it’s pulled from the book bag.

Everything around me blurred as I watched on the kid taking handfuls of glitter and dumping it on the kids head next to him. Another was putting handfuls in his pockets. Next to him a girl sneezed, wiped her hands across her face leaving a fantastic handlebar mustache of glitter.

Volunteers throughout were completely ignoring this one table, hurriedly making themselves look busy as glitter overtook the station like a sand storm.

It was absolute and total hell on earth.

Being the jackasses the wife and I are, we jumped in to help as best we could. And glitter has re-entered our lives yet again.

Bad things happen in threes, or so they say. The third time glitter overtakes my life, it better damn well be in the form of dollar bills, strippers, or Goldschlager.

Do they even make that shit anymore?

I think it’s because the oldest little bastard is nine now. He’s at that age where he starts learning things at school, which he brings home and kindly unleashes on to our seven-year-old daughter.

But for some reason all things related to sex have me feeling like I’m a sweaty crackhead in the middle of an intervention fumbling with my fingers, looking around paranoid as shit at everyone and everything near me.

Driving in the car the other day Kings of Leon, Sex on Fire came on and the boy’s singing the lyrics.

And I’m cringing, holding the steering wheel tight as can be as I hear a rare silence from the back seat. And all I can imagine is what’s going through his head….

Boy’s Head Thoughts:

“Oh look, something shiny. I should make a fart noise right now. Wonder if I have a booger? I really hate my sister. I wonder why my penis is bigger than my dad’s? I should ask for a play-date for the 438^th time today. Hey….this is kind of a cool song. Sex? What’s sex? Let me ask…”

Thankfully that question never came out.

And then there’s the bedroom situation in our humble abode. Three bedrooms literally on top of each other.

You can hear EVERYTHING.

So we deck each room with fans to cut down on hearing the boy snore. Hearing the girl fart all night (not kidding). And to eliminate any sounds of the wife and I having our monthly “relations.”

But at the end of the day, our door still doesn’t lock and we have no idea what’s happening in the hallway on the other side of it.

I guess I could pipe Kenny G. into the hallway to force them to wear earplugs. I could set trip hazards connected to pots and pans. Or we could just move our location to the basement next to the cat litter box.

So many choices…

Regardless I’m fearful because I feel the older the kids get the stealthier things will need to be.

I’ll never forget coming home as a teenager and hearing one of my parents have relations with a step parent. It was one of the most horrifying experiences. So I exited the house, re-entered and slammed the ever-living-shit out of the door just to make damn sure they knew I was home.

I cock-blocked the hell out of them and don’t regret it to this very day.

So maybe the best thing to do is to retrain ourselves and the responses we have to sex to sound like we’re having the most interesting conversation in the entire world.

So as my curious little bastards stand in the hallway they hear their mother emotionally saying:

“That’s sooooo curious!!”

“OH MY GOD!!!! I remember that time too!”

“Yes, yes, YES!! We can take the kids to Disney World if they stay in their rooms at night!!”

Or hear their daddy grunting:

“Oh, oh, oh those shoes match your outfit perfectly!”

“Yes, keep doing that to your hair cause it’s beautiful.”

“Oh my god I think I’m going to come to your holiday party this year!!”

But in reality we all know the real new retrained phrases will be:

Wife: “Are you done ironing your clothes yet?”

Me: “I’m sorry, I thought I’d last longer than that at scrabble.”

And you know how I know?

Because everyone’s becoming just a bit more of an asshole than they normally are. Even the kids! Hell, the dog has even gotten into the holiday spirit by gnawing on the strap of my man-purse I carry to work every day.

He’s never done that before!

Ahhh the holidays. When people pepper-spray you for buying video games at half-price at a Wal-Mart instead of doing what you should normally do at Wal-Mart….bring your best camera and search for great pictures to upload to www.peopleofwalmart.com.

I found a catalogue over Thanksgiving weekend the daughter had taken a liking to. Upon opening it I thought, “oh cool, she’s circled a few things in……oh…oh she’s circled everything in here.”

The son is still an incredibly devoted believer in Santa. Which sucks for two reasons…

1) It’s gonna break his heart and be rough as hell on him the day he finds out that fat bastard is really his MILF mom tossing extra un-wrapped gifts under the tree late at night while his drunk dad stands naked next to her whispering loudly, “just look at it…I’m making it look like helicopter blades!!”

I can’t help but see an episode of Intervention 20 years from now when my son’s all cracked-out, crying on national TV saying his addiction started when he learned Santa wasn’t real.

2) He thinks he can get whatever in the hell he wants. All “I gotta do is ask Santa!”

It’s like a huge middle finger being jammed in our faces when the boy asks for an iPhone, we rightfully say no, and he responds with that. It makes me want to out Santa right then and there.

But then we wouldn’t get away with my favorite phrase which keeps him in line, “really? You’re gonna give your sister a swirly in that toilet while Santa’s watching? Wow man…you’ve got balls of steel.”

Then there comes the wife. I procrastinate. I’ll occasionally look at commercials showing other rock-star husbands blowing the socks off their wife with cars, jewelry, vacuum cleaners and more. I can’t afford a new car, the wife sells all the jewelry I buy her and I might as well cut my own throat before buying her a vacuum cleaner.

So I wait. And wait.

And wait.

Until a couple days before Christmas and decide to fight the crowds. Bitching the whole time about finding no place to park, the long lines waiting to check out and the check-out ladies being rude because I had the gall to actually purchase something from them today.

I bitch about not being thanked as I hold the door for some jack-wad whose arms were full and mumble angrily to myself as I get stuck in endless shopping traffic.

And it’s at that last stoplight that I realize….the holidays and I need each other. Like my future cracked-out son needs his drugs, I need the holidays to be angry about something. I thrive off the rush of anger that I got on December 22 and 23 when I’m last-second-shopping for my wife. It makes me feel alive. It makes me…

LOVE THE HOLIDAYS!!!

But never at the same time. No….one always has to be America.

I can only break it down to you as though I were the inter-web-machine-thingy.

So let’s say I’m Twitter.

On this particular day the boy is Al-Qaeda and the daughter is America.

Twitter lay in bed thankful to be at the top of the food-chain in its household as it enjoys the silence. The fan is turning as it should to drown out barks from the incessantly annoying beast that lay caged below. Twitter’s bride is asleep next to it kindly keeping her nighttime breath-funk from darkening its nostrils thanks to the “Great Wall of China” pillow barrier she’s built between them.

And the little bastards sleep. Life is good…

But that’s not what Al-Qaeda has planned for the day.

The boy wakens. There’s no haze on the brain, delay in reaction or hesitation in what the goal of the task that lay ahead contains.

He MUST create chaos and disrupt order!

Taking the last step from its Ikea-built loft onto the cold November wood floor, Al-Qaeda stops to listen for the lay of the land. The sun is not up yet so its senses must be keen.

The humming of fans and calm feeling of peace bring a smile to Al-Qaeda’s face as it tip-toes slowly from its room towards America’s lair.

Standing eerily at the country’s doorway Al-Qaeda contemplates… “shall I pounce or douse the toilet and floor with my urine first?”

Al-Qaeda chooses to give the bathroom a thorough golden shower first. But it’s made a mistake because it has yet to realize it cannot pee without slamming the lid down upon completion.

That is when Twitter’s senses become awakened and keenly aware something is afoot!

Twitter immediately turns his eyes to the closet mirrors and watches as Al-Qaeda slowly and methodically makes its way towards America’s doorstep. Twitter tweets, “I see something #alqedaisgonnafuckshitupyo”

America lies peacefully sleeping, clutching its soft, pink blanket.

Al-Qaeda’s brain shuts down. Rationale escapes. There is but only one thing left to do.

Pounce America and make it cry!!!

And with that Al-Qaeda unleashes itself running full-fledged, uncontrollably towards what will end in pure hell just as Twitter swoops in from behind with a “occupy my daughter’s bedroom quick!! Terrorists!!”

But it’s too late.

Al-Qaeda lands solid on America, crushing its dainty hands below. A scream bellows from America.

America has been crushed…but not for good…because Twitter is there to rally the masses.

The wife comes crashing through the door, tossing Twitter aside and grabs Al-Qaeda by the arm.

“What is your problem boy!?!!! We’re sleeping, your sister’s sleeping and your dad’s standing over there tweeting like a douche?! GO TO BED!!!”

Al-Qaeda slowly sleeks away to its cave. America rolls over in its fuzzy blanky calmly going back to sleep. And, the wife gives Twitter a death-look as it tweets, “wife just rocked a whole batch of awesome parenting. Now off to snuggle with her and sex away the night!!”

This….this is just a small moment in what is the life of being parents of two organizations who want nothing but the utmost harm done to the other.

*Editor’s note

Dear Government:

My son is NOT actually Al-Qaeda, nor does he have any affiliations with Al-Qaeda or even know what in the hell it is. Please do not kick down my door, steal my computer or put me in any situation in which Matt Lauer must interview me following a segment in which he “investigates” whether Kim Kardashian’s ass is real or implants.

Love,

Me

If we can't find each other we just simply scream "cuhcaw!!!" at the top of our lungs until the other person yells it back.

But recently I've taken it upon myself to create a "party call." You know, when you're on the dance floor and some dude is all "oooha oooha," and then everyone repeats it back to him.

Well, no matter where I am with the kids, they seem incapable of not repeating that sound back when I make it.

I give you, Exhibit A:

I'm Insane...So I make My Kids Insane from WhyIsDaddyCrying on Vimeo.

And I’m pretty damn proud of that. I mean, it’s kinda like a pat on the top of the head from parenting world to say “who’s a good boy?!!” as I sit on the kitchen floor slamming my tale to the ground in happiness while hoping someone accidentally drops a beer.

When I found out I immediately texted the wife: “Hey – I just made the annual babble.com top 10 Funniest Dad Blog at #7 position!”

Five hours later she texted back, “how much is the check you get for that?”

Me: “Nothing.”

Her: “Oh”

Then I texted my brother (@ibeenorm) the same thing.

His response? - “neat”

I didn’t care though. I felt good about myself. So….I decided to pull out a pen, some paper and write my thank you list for all those who made this award-winning #7 a crowning achievement in my blog life.

So, here it goes.

I’d like to thank all the other sperm that allowed me to reach the egg first. You guys and girls put a lot of trust in me to not fuck this life up and I’m forever grateful. It sucks to be you right now.

I’d like to thank my children. You give me lots of great material, memories and amazing moments. If it weren’t for you I wouldn’t drink so much, crouch naked in a corner crying at night and probably have tons more sex with your mother.

My brain. I’d like to thank my brain for being demented and twisted enough to pull together the words on this blog. I know the wife wants me to filter what you produce way more than I do, but we both know life would be so much lamer if I did.

I’d like to thank my dad for showing me how not to parent.

I’d like to thank my house for only having one damn bathroom in it. Because mornings should be spent with your wife in the shower, son brushing his teeth while holding his nose closed and daughter at the doorway holding her crotch and jumping up and down screaming “hurry up daddy I have to pee!!!” while you have your a.m. poop.

The wife….the apple of my eye.

What the hell does that even mean? I know it’s super old. It’s been in the bible and Shakespeare used it, but how the hell can an apple and someone’s eye merge to join a literary phrase pertaining to someone you want to bone the hell out of?

I’d like to thank the wife for letting me obnoxiously flail around in her life as the third child in the family and for not chopping off my pecker in the middle of the night so that I’ll stop chasing her around the house with it while screaming “just look at it!!!”

Finally, I’d like to thank the Interweb Machine Thingy. Because of you I can spew my insanity onto endless pages. Thank you for becoming my therapist and for allowing me to dump on you with no regard of self preservation or respect of others.

Now let's go celebrate!

At first I was shocked she was actually sitting there watching the game with me not all, “I think Cake Boss is on!” Or, “I have a new episode of Sister Wives, wanna watch?”

Those are the phrases that usually get me reaching for my beer and heading out of the room at the speed of light.

That’s when she started it:

The Wife: “Why is it called ‘football?’”

Me: “Seriously?”

The Wife: “I mean, they had to name soccer soccer cause football was already taken, so why did they name it football? Why not pigskin or man-game or tight ends?”

Me: “There wasn’t a single word in that entire question that remotely made sense. I award you no points and may god have mercy on your soul.”

The Wife: “You seriously need to stop stealing lines from movies. Why didn’t you ever play football? Cause you whittle mommy wouldn’t whet you? Hummmm? Scared da big bad player might hurt your whittle bones?”

Me: “You know I’m over a foot taller than you and could literally crush you with my thumb, right?”

The Wife: “I think it’s awesome that they’re wearing pink though. I mean…they do make pink look sexy as hell.”

Me: “I’m wearing pink right now… Wanna see?”

The Wife: “Only if it’s a pair of pink underwear made of $50 bills.”

Me: “So what I’m taking from this conversation is that you want to role-play in the bedroom. You want me to dress like a football player supporting breast cancer month? Is that what all this is about.”

The Wife: “Are you gonna look like that quarterback right there for the Colts? Cause I could have me some of that!!”

Me: “You mean the guy who right there who likes like he fell straight out of a Def Leppard video from the 80s? I’ve got an old mullet wig down in the basement I could toss on if that’ll help?”

The Wife: “Quick…go get it and turn the game on the HD flat screen downstairs. I’ll be right there…”

Thanks Cults new quarterback Curtis Painter! I owe you one buddy!



Yes, it’s my fault. I do have a pretty filthy mouth and try so very hard to keep it clean around the kids. But, we live in a small house and sometimes I forget my place and well…a word may sometimes slip out.

I have to say though…he used it absolutely perfectly.

Here’s how it happened.

The boy’s on a travel soccer team. This past weekend he had a tournament about 45 min. away from our house. After his first game we spent a few hours wasting time before he had to play game number two. And, what’s more fun that wasting time at a Mexican restaurant with an oversized margarita?!

While enjoying my beverage I take out the trusty phone and check out the radar (I’m one of the biggest weather geeks on the planet). That’s when I see a whole big blob of shit headed our way.

Me: “Dude, looks like you’re game is gonna get cancelled. It’s about to storm pretty bad.”

The Boy: “No way daddy. It’s sunny and nice outside. We’ll play it.”

Me: “I’m looking at the radar and we’re gonna get nailed by Mother Nature. Trust me dude.”

The Boy: “Whatever daddy. We’re gonna play.”

Me: “Wanna make a bet?”

The Boy: (After thinking for a few seconds he gets a grin and says) “Yeah! Let’s bet!!”

Me: “If you play even a half-second of your game, I’ll give you a NuttyBuddy every day for 5 days.”

At this point the boy’s literally bouncing in his seat with joy because how could he lose?! The sun is out for shit-sake!

Me: “If the game gets cancelled though…everyday next week, as soon as I walk in the door from work, you have to take my shoes and socks off and rub my feet.”

At this point he immediately stops bouncing in his seat. The daughter starts dry-heaving and the wife says, “oh dear lord, don’t do that to him. He’s just a boy!!”

The boy starts looking out the window at the sky, then at me, then at the sky, then…he puts out his pinky and says, “it’s a bet. Pinky swear it!”

With the bet now underway I sat back to let the day take its course. Literally five minutes later it starts to get dark outside and the sky opens up.

Ten minutes later the wife checks her email on her phone and reports, “oh no Grayson. The game just got cancelled.”

And THAT’s when it happened. Slamming his elbows on the table and letting his head fall to his empty palms in shame he says, a little louder than a mumble, “fuck!”

Shocked at the word that just came out of his mouth, he immediately looks up at me as his face turns beat red. He then looks at his mother and immediately buries his face in his arms out of shame.

And thank baby jesus he did, because the wife and I ask quietly as we could started laughing like hell.

It's not like he used it in a harsh way by including it in a verbal bashing to someone. He used it absolutely perfectly because having to take your old man's shoes and socks off and rub his feet after a long day at work is definitely a "fuck" moment.

The kids are doing their own thing. You’re zoned out plowing through the newspaper while the wife is obsessively drilling through Facebook and for a brief moment that’s when you realize “no one wants anything.”

No one’s screaming “nu-uh!!! I’m gonna tell!!!”

And the dog isn’t at the backdoor slamming his hellish paw against the annoying as shit bell we taught him to ring every time he wants to go out.

Bliss!!!

And that’s when the boy rolled up and muttered to me, “daddy what’s my penis for?”

Working hard not to spit my coffee all over the cute little redheaded bastard, I took a hard swallow and responded, “ummm, to pee with dude!”

The Dude: “Really, that’s it? Just to pee with?”

Dumbass Dad (ME): “Well, I mean, there’s other stuff but you’ll learn about that later.”

The Dude: “Like what daddy?”

Dumbass Dad (ME): “Seriously dude, we’ll talk about it later, it’s complicated and daddy’s tired.”

The Dude: “Is is where babies come from?”

Dumbass Dad (ME): “Holy mother of ….. I mean…man, what are they teaching you at school? Who are you hanging out with!!?!”

The Dude: “No I’ve just been wondering.”

Dumbass Dad (ME): “No, baby’s do not technically come out of your penis.”

The Dude: “What if something happens to it.”

Dumbass Dad (ME): “Well then you put that thing on ice IMMEDIATELY and find yourself a damn good attorney .”

The Dude: “I don’t understand.”

Dumbass Dad (ME): “I’m jumping ahead. You remember when daddy said to make sure and talk to me before you get married?”

The Dude: “Yes daddy.”

Dumbass Dad (ME): “That’s all you need to know right now my man. Now go ride your bike or blow bubbles or something.”

The Dude: “You’ve made me scared to have a penis daddy.”

Dumbass Dad (ME): “It’s a big damn responsibility my son. You shouldn’t take it lightly. Many important people have died or ruined their lives cause they couldn’t handle their penis. It’s a lifetime battle dude…just know that I’ll do all I can to guide you along this bumpy road.”

The Dude: “Daddy, why would my penis go down a bumpy road?”

Dumbass Dad (ME): “Hey – is that the ice cream man?”

The Dude: “No…I don’t hear anything.”

Dumbass Dad (ME): “Who wants to go for ice cream?!!!”

Later that night I cried myself to sleep….