Should Your Kid Miss School to Watch a Football Game? The Ethicist, by Colin Gawel.

Dear Mr. Ethicist: My eleven year old son is a huge fan of the Ohio State football team. On Monday night they are playing Oregon for the National Championship and he really wants to watch the game. Problem is  it doesn't start until 8:30 and will not end until after midnight, which is obviously past his bedtime. Should I let him stay up and watch and, if I do, is it OK to let him sleep a little longer on Tuesday and take him to school an hour or so late?

I am assuming that since you took the time to write this question, your son must be a very big fan of Ohio State and you are struggling between being a responsible parent and making your son happy. Some people will say, "It's just a stupid football game," but kids miss school for all sorts of teachers' days and religious holidays. Really, that line of argument places one person's values ahead of another's and holds little water. What's a crazier reason to miss school: a football game or a religious holiday? On one level  they are both absurd, and yet on another level both are valid in the eye of the beholder.  

Since you didn't mention any poor grades I assume your son is a relatively decent student, so it seems unlikely that he is using the game as an excuse to miss class. He just really wants to watch this game, which seems reasonable. It's like letting him read a book to the final  chapter and then saying, "Go to bed and I will tell you how it ends tomorrow." 

Who would be happy with that arrangement?. Yes, he can stay up and watch the game.

As for sleeping in, there is no clear-cut solution.

On the one hand, dragging yourself into work after a late night and half-assin' it all day is a cornerstone of the American economy. I suppose the sooner he learns this lesson the better. You play, you pay. Besides, tax dollars are going to pay for these schools, so by allowing your son to skip class for football you are cheating fellow taxpayers out of their hard-earned money.

On the other hand, if you have the ability and means to get out of work after a late night, good for you. Having the foresight to ask for a day off before another employee; making sure your shift is covered; or simply bullshitting your boss for a couple extra hours of sleep are also part of the American tradition. Capitalism in its truest form. Let the market decide who gets the morning off.

In this case, you - as the parent - are the boss. If your son has built up enough good will and  knows how to bullshit you properly, he is taking advantage of his assets and skill-set to leverage you into getting the desired result he is seeking. Sounds like a well thought-out business transaction to me. On your end, If you agree to let him stay up and sleep in, I would demand that sometime in the next week you have him write a paragraph or two summing up the football game and how he felt about the result.

He gets what he wants, you to get to see your son happy watching what could very well be a once in a lifetime experience, and for the responsible parent side of you, he has to put in a little work just because you said so.

Colin Gawel is the founder and a contributor to Pencilstorm. He does most of his writing at Colin's Coffee and has spent his life playing in the band Watershed. You can read all about it in the best selling book  Hitless Wonder by Joe Oestreich.  Twitter @colingawel

Chuck Klosterman is the real ethicist BTW

Your Dog Isn't Your Kid by Johnny DiLoretto

Your dog is not your kid. Don’t say you love your dog like it’s your kid. People who  say that sound… well, like an emotionally stunted idiot.

Let me tell you why. Firstly, you don’t have sex with a dog in order to get pregnant with a dog. Two, forget screwing a dog, you don’t actually ever lug around a dog fetus inside of you, letting it stew in there for a good 9 months.  And, this one goes without saying, but you never actually bear down and squeeze a cute little sopping wet puppy out of your cha-cha parts.

Furthermore, one doesn't birth just one dog. One births a litter, and even if you did birth a litter of pups you’d be forced to let them duke it out over your two tits. Don’t forget you only have two tits. To truly love a dog like your own child you’d need at least 8 to 10 tits.

So, the very idea that you love your dog like it’s your own child is flawed reasoning from the start…

But, for argument’s sake, let’s say you just acquire a dog the normal way and now you love it like it’s your kid.

Here’s the number one reason why that’s a monumentally stupid thing to say:

Because having a child is a constant reminder that you’re going to die one day and that the only thing left of you is going to be tied up in this little person who holds in their delicate grasp all your hopes, dreams, and fears. Your child is the as-yet unscrewed up miniature version of you that will carry your legacy into the future.  

You will pour everything you have – emotionally, spiritually, financially – into this person. You will watch them learn to walk, you will help them acquire the gift of speech, you will, hopefully, even teach them how to urinate and defecate into a toilet. 

Having a child is to walk through the world with the constant fear that harm might befall him, a perpetual nagging doubt that you haven’t equipped her well enough with the emotional and psychological tools to contend with other human beings; that he or she won’t measure up, that they won’t succeed, that they’ll have their hearts broken or their spirits crushed. These are fears that plague you deep in your soul. It just doesn’t hit you quite that deep when your dog gets nipped at for sniffing the wrong ass.

I know  --- I know --- people are disappointing and it’s easier to love a dog. It’s easier to love an animal that loses its shit when you get home. That’s mainly because you can’t leave a kid in a kennel all day while you’re working.

And, I know, I know --- dogs help people get through some terrible times. Dogs are wondrous creatures that have evolved alongside of humans over the last 10,000 years to provide people with protection and companionship. These animals, it’s hard to believe were once all wolves. But you’d think after 10,000 years they might be able to say something, a word at least - a “hello” or “thank you” even. Let’s face it, these are limited creatures that have been given every opportunity to grow and learn and tail wagging and leg humping are still their primary modes of expression.

But, let's move on. Don’t say you love your dog like it’s your own child because it only points up your emotional inadequacy. Grow the F up. People are hard. People will fucking let you down. Some of them want to use you, some of them want to abuse you, some of them, god only knows, want to be used by you. (Thank you Annie Lennox.) But dogs are not children. They are companions. And you should love them as such. 

The bottom line here is that we live in a world now where people just say crazy, over-the-top shit and everyone is supposed to validate everyone else’s feelings no matter how juvenile or asinine the crazy shit they say is.

It’s like having to pretend the fibromyalgia is really anything but the result of eating too many trans fats and sitting around on your ass all day.

Now, it’s okay, if you have kids, to say that you’re dog is part of the family. That’s acceptable. But it’s as freakishly annoying to treat you’re dog as your child as it would be for someone to treat their child as a dog.

Which reminds me, I gotta get home to let my kid out so he can shit in the yard.

Johnny DiLoretto is a father, husband, movie guy, comedy guy, writer, radio / television personality and  a huge Dean Martin fan. He writes stuff for Pencilstorm too.

Kindergarden Karma

Wednesday’s may be “hump day” for Joe Lunchbox, porn stars and drive time radio DJs, but around our house it is known as “Daddy Owen Day”. The tradition started six weeks after the birth of our son, Owen when my wife went back to work. The combination of a desire to embrace a ‘hands on’ parenting experience along with a lack of sufficient funds to pay for daycare thrust me onto the frontlines of the battle to shape the youth of tomorrow. We would juggle the little man around our work schedules the other days of the week, but Wednesday was always my day to go solo. Open to close as it were.

Anyway, last Wednesday we were hanging out at the Columbus Zoo on a picture perfect fall afternoon when an interesting subject arose. Snacking on PB & Js, just a smell’s distance from the penguins, a ladybug landed on Owen’s shirt.

 He said, “Dad! A ladybug! This is good luck!”  I replied, “yup, it sure is” 

“What if I put it in a spider web for a spider to eat? Would that be bad luck?”

“Yeah, that would probably be bad karma” 

“What’s bad karma?”

“Well, if you do something bad, bad things will happen to you, if you do good things, one day something good will happen to you.”

Owen clarified: “So if I hit you in the arm, something bad will happen to me?”

“That’s the idea.”

Owen then reared back punched me in the arm. And said, “Let’s go smell the Komodo dragon’s breathe.”

The very next day we are driving somewhere listening to Judas Priest on Boneyard when he says from the back seat, “Dad, I hit you in the arm yesterday and nothing bad happened. Maybe Karma doesn’t exist”

Thinking on my feet, or seat in this case (snicker, snicker) I cleverly respond, “Sometimes you do a bunch of little bad things and eventually they add up and some big bad thing happens to you”

“Oh……” he ponders for a moment “so, I could punch you in the arm 10 days in a row, but, then one day,… someone will come up to me on the playground and punch me in the nuts”

Having never heard my six year old son use that particular expression, I blinked for a long second and said, “Excuse me?”   

He said, “Come on dad, you know what I mean” 

He had me there. I did know. 

 “Two things Owen. First, yes, that pretty much explains karma and second, please don’t use that expression around teachers, or grown-ups that don’t come over to our house to watch football with me"

“OK Dad. Can we stop for a milkshake at Old McDonald's?”

Colin Gawel is a Dad who plays music, sells coffee and writes at Pencilstorm. He will be spending Father's Day watching Owen play little league baseball trying not to have a nervous breakdown because it's just little league baseball after all. You can learn more about him and other Pencilstorm contributors here.