A couple weeks ago my kids and I were coming back from Green Lake. I had NBA radio on, yeah, that’s a thing and they were discussing some of the free agent signings that had taken place and what the contracts were paying out to the newly signed players. Parker then asked me if the players were still paid even if they lost. I responded that their contracts are usually fully guaranteed regardless of how they do on the court. This made very little sense to him and he began to verbalize his displeasure with such an arrangement until his brother piped in from the back seat and responded “Dad’s a bad attorney and he still gets paid!” If I had feelings they would have been hurt. It use to be my kids looked up to me and thought I was awesome at everything I did, even lawyering, but now they realize I am a bald, pathetic, middle aged man whose best years are behind him. Other conversations about my ability have included wether or not I ever win any cases. It’s hard to explain to them that it really isn’t about winning in my line of business, it’s about doing the best you can with very little to work with. It’s like finding road kill and having someone expect you to turn it into a fine dining experience.

While the statement Aiden made about me being a bad lawyer wasn’t entirely accurate, I feel like I”m just okay, like I am with a lot of the things I do in life, he did make a comment that rung incredibly true when we were up in the UP a little over a week ago. We were all eating breakfast when Aiden started saying some not so nice things about one of his younger cousins who lives in Florida. I didn’t correct him since even though it wasn’t nice it was fairly accurate. Regardless, his aunt Lori did say to him “Aiden do you know what the golden rule is?” He didn’t but neither did she. She claimed that it was if you can’t say anything nice don’t say anything at all. For those of you who are like Lori the Golden Rule is “do unto others as you would have them do to you”. Sadly, the golden rule wouldn’t deter Aiden because he doesn’t really care much what people say about him wether it be mean or nice. Shirley went on to say to Aiden that he shouldn’t talk crap about people because the people who hear him talking crap will wonder what he says about them when they aren’t around. Aiden responded “you should hear what my dad says about people when they aren’t around!” Granted, most of the stuff I do say I probably would say to people even if they were around but my kids have become more and more cognizant of what I say, as well as what Shirley says. Fat shaming, off limits. Vegetarians are no longer fair game. My dip shit brother in law, I can probably still blog about him unless my blog starts coming up in his endless internet searches trying to track down the latest conspiracy theory about China and the recent chip shortage. However, Shirley and I can’t discuss him in front of our children any longer which really sucks. It took me two days to get around to bringing up his latest thing, the fact he had to buy a brand new GMC Sierra because they aren’t making them anymore. That’s right, according to him GM as well as the other two thirds of the big three are no longer going to manufacture their most profitable vehicles, pickup trucks. He also indicated that China is going to invade Afghanistan and then Taiwan (where all the chips are made) after that.

It gets better though. Typically my philosophy with him is to not engage. I just let him say whatever stupid thing he is going to say and then move on acting like it was a semi logical statement. However, a sore subject for me is his claim that his use of plex to stream movies for free is not stealing. He claims that his brother has hundreds of movies that he bought the rights to and that he is just using plex to access them. However, this claim that his brother purchased all the content was immediately discredited when my sister indicated that she uses plex to access the full beach body catalogue so she can do workouts. My brother in law is a fat ass and his brother is a certified fat ass. So, there is no way that guy forked over any amount of money to have access to a full catalogue of work out videos.

My brother in law then went into some attempt at an analogy that legitimized his pirating of movies and streaming content. It was similar to me going to the MVP pool with my kids last Friday and walking in when the person doing the check ins had stepped away. My kids are not on my membership and I would have had to pay $10 each to get them into the pool. I justified it because I have been a member at MVP since it opened and they owe me some free shit for my loyalty to them even when they shuttered their doors during COVID and I was still on the hook because I had paid for the entire year up front because I was on my buddies corporate membership. (my analogy was much better than Super Dave’s but I didn’t mention it to him) On top of that, I didn’t need to relive what I went through in July when I took my kids to the Crahen MVP pool. This time there was an attendant checking people in and I had to pony up $20 to get my kids in to the pool. They immediately asked me if they could get dippin dots (the ice cream of the future for the past 30 years) and I said no because it sucks. They ended up getting smoothies and then swimming for roughly 23 minutes before they wanted to go home. When I told them we had just gotten there they claimed there were band aids in the pool along with a number of illegitimate complaints. When I was a kid I would have swam in a pool full of bandaids and STD infested water if the pool had a diving board and a slide. We ended up leaving roughly 45 minutes after our arrival and I couldn’t help but continually obsess about the $20 I had just wasted not including the money I spent on the smoothies they didn’t finish.

The MVP pool trip was in lieu of going to the Ionia Free Fair. I had made the mistake of suggesting a trip there on that particular Friday but we didn’t end up going for some reason I can’t recall. So, on Saturday with the heat index hovering around 95 Shirley and I took the kids and my nephews (Super Dave’s Spawn but much more likable and intelligent) to the Ionia County Free Fair. We split up upon our arrival with Shirley taking the youngsters and me taking Aiden and Parker. I forked over what was likely at least a days wages if not more for most of the people in attendance to purchase tickets for the rides but the good news was that the tickets were going to go a long ways since I wasn’t going to be riding any of the rides. My kids jumped in line for the gravitron which is a ride that pins you up against the wall as the floor drops out due to centrifugal force. I walked over to a bench to sit down and when I looked over to the ride as it was boarding my kids were running towards me screaming and crying. The look on my face probably said it all and they were really hamming it up for me. They both claimed that their stomachs hurt and that they didn’t feel up to getting on the ride. My response was that if they were scared they just needed to admit it instead of coming up with such a lame excuse not to ride the ride. They then went into how they didn’t feel like riding any rides and were ready to go home. That was the last straw I responded by saying “you pull this fucking bullshit all the time” literally that is what I said and it may have taken me out of the running for the 2021 DOY but I had had enough. For some reason it’s still remarkable when I swear in front of them even though they have watched roughly 40 rated R movies (including the most recent Suicide Squad that Shirley let them watch when I was at golf league) and heard the F word over a thousand times. Once we were reunited with Shirley and my nephews they immediately told her what I said and she was all over my ass like white on rice (can you still say that without offending anyone?) This should have been my breaking point but to my credit I did manage to keep it together somewhat despite the extreme heat and high concentration of tattooed people addicted to meth I was unnecessarily exposed to. As penance for my sharp tongue I took my nephews through the fun house which required me to rub up against at least twenty things those tattooed meth addicts had also rubbed up against. After the fun house we grabbed some elephant ears and slushies and got the fuck out of there. Ironically, I heard something on the news about a number of Ionia county fair goers testing positive for Covid that following week, pretty sure Covid exposure was the last thing any of those people needed to worry about.