Joey's Tale

So, I'm late getting to the office the other day (related to Jocie's Tale) and so I skip lunch in an effort to feverously attempt to get some tangible quantity of work completed. Packed with conference calls, emails, and rapidly approaching deadlines, I'm burning the keyboard trying to catch up so I can make a 4pm Dr. appointment when Jenny calls me from school. Apparently Joey has taken ill and needs to be brought home. As she's subbing at the school, that forces all emergent child care duties on me.

Its 3pm... Ok, I can manage. I race to the school to get him while calling my doctor to, again, reschedule my appointment, but I get to the school and find Joey in the main office waiting for me.

"My head hurts. Mom said for you to come and take me home."

"Your head hurts? Like you have a headache?"

"No. Like when my teach starts talking to me, my brain just hurts, so, I can't listen to her any more."

Ok, I'm remiss to solve this one as its already been given mom's blessing, so, I load-and-go and head for home.

As we walk into the house, I remind the kid that he's supposed to be sick and that sick kids need to be in bed to try and feel better. So, I use the bathroom and run out to the car to grab my work laptop so I can try to punch in and at least tackle something before COB hits.

Rather than finding his pillow, Joey's found the remote and is watching one of his many cartoon shows that plague our DVR by continually pushing mom-and-dad shows off of the recorded list as it tries to free what little free space it has to soak up even more of his programming.

Daddy-Correction-#1: Turn off the tv, remove remote from childs hands, and return him to previously directed location #1: pillow in bedroom.

So, that lasts for like... maybe all of 10 minutes before I decide just to do a "drive by" check on him in his bedroom....

Daddy-Correction-#2: Remove iPod Touch from childs hands and return him to previously directed location #1: pillow in bedroom.

Yay, I'm the hero, right? Well, at least to myself.

Back to work, try to get this little chunk of code finished. Maybe 2 minutes have elapsed from most recent correction.

"Amm, Dad, my heads all better, can I get on the computer and play Minecraft?"

"No!"

"Can you go get my Playmobile out of storage for me?"

"No! I'm trying to work here..."

"Can you go get my Bakugan from storage for me?"

"No!"

"Well, I'm bored what am I supposed to do?"

"You came home from school, you're supposed to be resting, I don't care if you're feeling better. Now please! I need to work."

Daddy-Correction-#3: successfully deflect attempts at Joey's escaping self-inflicted prison sentence of coming home from school to play.

Silence... right?

Another two minutes pass, and he reappears at the doorway with baseball glove and ball.

"Dad? Can we go play catch?"

Daddy-Correction-#4: Yeah.... well, ok, so maybe not... See, I have this internal rule that I set that anytime Joey wants to play catch, I'll drop anything I'm doing to go do it.... So, no correction on this one, and I promise we can go play catch in just a minute...

Its 3:58pm at this point, and I'm thinking I can play catch for 20 minutes and then get caught up on work, so, I save what I'm working on and start to head for outdoors to play catch...

... ring .... ring .... ring ... (I pick up the phone): "Is Joey there?"

Now, here's where I make the first mistake (at least that I feel I've done... I'm sure my wife could find a few more by this point)... I should have just said "no", told them they had the wrong number, or just hung up... But, I get Joey and give him the phone...

"Dad? Can I go over to Kyle R's house?"

Daddy-Correction-#5: "No! You're sick, you're staying here! What are you thinking?"

In an amazingly calm tone as an undertaker would use, he continue to utter the same phrase: "Please dad, can I go over to Kyle R's house?" while I try to bat back with whatever parental dogma I am spit out.

He continues in his monolithic drive while I start to crescendo both my tone and level of frustration in my responses.

This continues for probably 12 iterations, but I don't want to really lose it with him since Kyle R is obviously on the phone listening in.

Daddy-Correction-#6: Obfuscate my parental duties by sluffing him off onto mom (yeah, thats a good idea right?): "Fine, you don't want to listen to me? Then ask mom."

Calls mom, leaves voice mail.... Re-aim cross-hairs back on daddy and repeat question posted previously.

I try and fail miserably to shutdown his attempts at asking the question over and over again to the point that I'm now rattling fine china in the dining rooms of neighbors on the next block as I'm ineffectively communicating my point across to him: No. No. No. No. No.

Daddy-Correction-#7: So, voicing that he's broken my will to him will resolve the issue and stop this all, right? All I need to do is say that wonderful little line that used to work on me when I was a pesty little child: "Fine! I give up! You want to go to Kyle R's house? Then do whatever you want! I don't care anymore!"

"Thanks Dad..." and off he runs... while I've got smoke pouring out of my ears.

He comes back about a minute later: "Dad? What time should I be home?"

"I didn't even tell you that you could go there in the first place. You just got me to the point where I lost my will to fight you!" - I'm being smart here, right? Trying to again point out to him that this is not 'ok' by me?

"Ok Dad, I'll be home by 5..."

Kid:1 - Dad:0