Congratulations on Escaping Your Responsibilities as a Father!

Many people avoid their responsibilities as a father through cowardice or cunning. You are going to go into the history books as the only person to have ever been removed from your duties of fatherhood by court order, following your complete inability to assist your children with anything.

“Is it true you once mixed baby food with motor oil in an attempt to make your child a cyborg?” the judge will ask. You’ll shrug.

“And that you don’t know how to make soup?” she’ll inquire.

“The defendant would like to plead the fifth,” your lawyer will interject after you open your mouth to respond, cutting off your no doubt cutting rebuke that soup is surprisingly tough to make.

“I’ll simply read off the rest of the evidence, then,” the prosecuting attorney will declare.

It’ll be a laundry list of ineptitudes. He’ll recount the time you once sent a chauffer to a professional soccer game to acquire your daughter, how you once hired a high priced prostitute to teach your son about proper condom use and STIs. He’ll read segments of testimony from all three of your children about the time you once tried to get your dog to clean up glass by licking it off the floor, and how you proceeded to beat it with a newspaper when it refused to do so. These are simply the ones we can recount here. We’re not even going to get into that one night with the not-so-high priced prostitute you wanted to use to teach your children proper diving mechanics.

The jury will deliberate for fifteen minutes before they emerge with the sentence.

“We find that the defendant will no longer be allowed within one-thousand feet of his children and that, should he attempt to do so, he will be confined in a federal penitentiary for no less than one year. We also find that he will have to pay sufficient child support, totaling at least fifty percent of his total income, to his children and the plantiff, in this case his wife.”

Normally such a harsh sentence would elicit gasps from the crowd. But you’re such a shitty dad that no one’s going to be shocked by it in the least. In fact they’ll be a little bit surprised that you weren’t just sent to prison right then and there for being such a shitty dad. But they’ll let you go, the bailiff shaking his head as he pushes you out the door into the cold spring air.

As you trudge down the courthouse steps the decision will ring in your ears. You’ll walk across the street, counting your steps, until you reach a bright red sports car. A young woman will be sitting in it. She’ll be dull, but beautiful, her eyes glassy, her face expressionless.

“How’d it go?” she’ll ask. You’ll shrug and she’ll nod, and the two of you will head back to the apartment you own, furnished entirely with funds you receive for managing the investments of Lehman Brothers.

Congratulations on Escaping Your Responsibilities as a Father!