Am I The Asshole? AITA #1 – Fathers Day

I’m not going to apologise for missing my Monday deadline again, for multiple reasons. This is an individual project that, if anyone else somehow derives value from, is a nice added bonus rather than the stated goal. So like, who’s really getting harmed here?

Anyway, on to business, I’m toying with another new format where I post-mortem an event or situation I had to deal with recently, and try to work through whether I could have done better, or if I’m just being needlessly hard on myself. And as an added bonus, I’m leaving my comment section open to all randos to weigh in on my conclusion (go ahead, disagree with me. I dare ya [or don’t, that would be nice too.].) Just as long as you solemnly swear not to post in any language which uses a cyrilic alphabet – I’ve had to clamp down on that because of Dickhead Putin’s loyal spambots. Everything else is currently fair game. I can’t even begin to translate non… Roman(?) alphabets (whatever English uses), and even then I’m only passable with literally just English… but I don’t want to be racist or nothin’. I’ve got Google translate, I’ll probably get the gist of what you’re saying.

(Although probably stick to English if you wanna be safe.)
((Or maybe kindergarten level German, so’s I can learn me some : p)

ANYWAY, Digression aside, let’s examine the events of this just recently passed Fathers Day

I have kids. Two adorable but still mostly empty headed little potatoes (empty headed is GOOD at this age – they need all that extra space to learn. It wouldn’t do to reach the ripe old age of 3 and suddenly be assured that you know everything there is worth knowing, and refuse to learn any more). So naturally, I was looking forward to what I chose to interpret as “a day *for* me, a father”. It’s not something that has any specific rituals or anything, it should be a day to honour and celebrate the father figures in your life.

And that’s probably where I’m making my biggest mistake. I’ll get to it eventually. Probably.

So anyway, it’s Fathers Day, which is to say, it started out much the same as any other given Sunday. The kids were up, the wife was hanging about, and I’m just vibing along with whatever the day throws at me. But being that it’s a typical Sunday, there’s no sign of any particular observation of me specifically either as a figure to be especially celebrated, or really as anything beyond just another human in the house.

It’s fine, it’s not that big of a deal yet.

(Actually, before we go on, it’s probably maybe slightly important that I at some point outline what I’m expecting. So it doesn’t just come out of nowhere or you see all the previous blabbering and wondering what the hell the problem is.)

I don’t ask for much – I just want time to relax and like, watch TV and play games and stuff. Y’know, the stuff I enjoy without any of the mundane chores I otherwise have to stay on top of.

(Slightly shamefully, this can include “not being roped into too much kid-related nonsense”. I know, I’m the worst… and I do try, but like, have you ever had to entertain small children for a long time? Not even a whole day, but just a few hours? They’re fun, but incredibly high maintenance and they do some excruciatingly boring stuff pretty much constantly. To say nothing of the countless minor conflicts or emotional missteps their still forming little minds are struggling with.)

…Actually, that sums it up better than going into a minute by minute playback of the whole day. I was expecting something more like a “day off”, and TL;DR, I didn’t get it. Hell, I got conned into hauling the kids up and out to the local park twice that day (they could *walk* with me, but… they know it’s easier to just sit in the stroller/pram/trolley [pick your favourite] and yell at me until I push them the whole way).

And dinner was business as usual,bedtime was business as usual. I was informally promised a cake at some point, and that never materialised, so that’s fun (but TBH, my lovely wife is a bit prone to over promising and under delivering at times. And it’s reasonable enough – we both had to watch the kids and there simply wasn’t any time for baked goods).

((Also we did get cake the following afternoon, so it all worked out))

But I’m stuck wondering whether I’m wrong to feel so upset over the whole thing. I didn’t get as much of a break as I get on even “standard” weekends – I had to do more than usual. Should I suck it up and just be happy my family fuckin’ rules and I get to spend time with all my favourite people every day? Am I just being a whiny lil’ bitch?

Lemme know what you think.