Congratulations on Misusing Those Noise Cancelling Headphones!

You’ll watch his lips move, forming words, dumb words about your dumb kids and how you’re supposed to buy them more stupid shit, like candy and toys and whatever.  Fuck it, you’ll think to yourself, cranking up The Runaways and thinking about how Joan Jett was such a rebel, she’d never be in a courtroom like this, or if she was she’d be in a jumpsuit, not a regular suit like you, and she’d be listening to the judge and waiting for her chance to stand up and shout fuck you.

But you won’t be listening to the judge.  You won’t be waiting for your moment to rebel.  You’ll be sitting patiently, waiting for the judge to finish deliberating on the reasons you’re an unfit parent, waiting for the judge to finalize his sentence, which will probably be that your wife gets full custody and that you kids go back to just having one mom, one good mom, not one good mom and one mom who thinks she’s still twenty five even though she’s pushing forty, who still needs to be taken care of like a teenager.

You’ll sit and patiently listen for the track to end while the judge continues speaking, unaware of the buds beneath your hair, of the i-Pod jammed into your pocket.  The white noise beaming out of the headphones into your ears will keep the sound out of your ears.  Your eyes will follow his lips, tentatively trying to read his lips.  You’ll consider shifting your weight, choosing a new song to help pass the time, but you won’t even have the courage to move.  You won’t even have that.

You’ll just have the noise of nothing pouring into your skull and your son and daughter sitting behind you, staring at you wordlessly, knowing what you’re doing, knowing that they could tell a bailiff what you’re doing and land you in contempt, hurt you that much more, get you thrown in prison for a week, a month, who knows.

Their silence will be a mark of their love for you, the only mark you’ll be able to bear at that point.  It will be more than you deserve, or at least this is what you’ll tell yourself at that moment, as you begin to cry.

Congratulations on Misusing Those Noise Cancelling Headphones!