In which I suck at public discipline

Short one today. Still having a tough time getting back in to the swing of it. Tougher than I thought, actually. Plus Duke hates it when I'm not paying attention to him. Still typing on the cell phone, too, and it is just pissing me off at this point. There are a lot of things I want to do, shows I want to talk about, but it's just too much tiny touch screen editing and small print to do those on this thing. And I cant load pictures and videos, either. Your multimedia experience will continue to suffer until I get this figured out.

Like many if you I've also spent most of my free time over the past two weeks endlessly shoveling snow. It's like Groundhog Day. Shovel, pile, snow again,  shovel, pile, snow again, repeat. Speaking of Groundhog Day, what a friggin racket they have going on with that, huh? Did they honestly think this bullshit story about a fat rodent predicting the weather would have legs for this long? Fucking America sometimes, man.

Onward.

For the most part, at least in public, Av is a pretty polite kid. At home she's a nightmare wrapped in a horror story, but to others she's usually fairly soft spoken and polite. Lately, though, I'm afraid she's beginning to lose her filter. Yesterday, for example, we were walking home from school when a random lady attempting to carry in groceries popped out if a 9 foot snowbank and almost bumped in to her. "I'm sorry, sweetie," she said. "Did you have a nice day at school?"

Av quietly said that she did and scurried away. Nice. Until, within earshot, she said "Why would that lady ask me that?"

"She is just being nice," I said.

"She looks like a weirdo. What is she even doing out here?"

"She lives there, Av. Come on, you can't say things like that. She doesn't look like a weirdo, you could barely see her face and that's not polite."

"I don't even care about her," said with kindergarten/high school attitude.

Also yesterday, a mother of one of her friends gave her a thank you note for gifts she gave at a birthday party. Av opens it up, throws the envelope in the snow and says "What is this?"

"It's a thank you note for going to your friend's birthday party and for getting her a gift."

"What the heck ? Why would her mom give me this, that party already happened."

"I know, she's saying thank you for going, that was very nice of her."

"Whatever. My brother is just gonna steal it now. He's stupid."

I chalk a lot of this kind of stuff up to a kids being kids sort of thing, but when you're in public other people always look at it as an indictment on the parent. I see a kid acting like a piece of shit at Shaw's and I say to myself "man, that mom is having a rough one" but I feel like I'm in the minority there. I get the impression that most people see Av act up, or me give her my patented arm squeeze/gritted teeth pull your shit together move, and they just shake their heads and ask why people like me are even allowed to have kids. I often ask myself the same thing. I can just hear that snooty mom voice or that stock broker perfect dad soccer coach saying "My goodness, what terrible parenting. Someone should teach thag child to behave."

For the record, no one has ever actually said anything like that, at least not to me. I know this because I have never gone to jail for smashing a MILF's orbital bone.

To her credit, the girl's mom laughed at the thank you note thing, but that's still pretty embarrassing. It left me stuck in that weird public discipline spot where I have to scold her at her school, in front of other parents, so I have to avoid being too harsh and somehow convey that she usually doesn't act that way. I ended up going with the trusted "You'd better get your act together and lose that attitude" and "We're going to have a talk when we get home." A whole lot of good that did. By the time we were home she was about 14 infractions past the schoolyard rudeness. The talk didn't go well, obviously, but I did get a pretty hilarious visual of her trying to whip a feather light loose leaf piece of paper at me.

I hate that kind of parenting stuff. I suck at discipline. I'm the guy who gives you an extra treat. I let you play ball in the living room and eat your snack in front of the TV. I'm the dad that Facebook parents and pediatricians hate. I'm the dad that frumpy mall moms wish they could be. But when it comes time to discipline I can't do it. I just get frustrated because no one listens to me and it ends up making me extremely angry, which everyone thinks is funny, which makes me even more angry and nothing gets accomplished.

In any event, this whole side bar comments thing has been happening for a while and I don't know how to stop it. She has never been that kid that makes fun of others, which is nice, but she has to stop calling people weirdos within ear shot. Especially people who are just trying to be nice.

I'm not a bad parent in the sense that I don't pay late child support, get drunk and beat them, spend all day at the office screwing my secretary, walking around the house with a blue tooth ignoring them or forcing them to live in some super strict environment where my approval is all they ever want from me. But I don't think I do the best job of teaching them the right way to do things. My interactions are awkward and I have social anxiety, but I don't think I'm rude. Maybe I am. All I know is I am not very good at using the "talking to children" voice and getting my kids to do the right thing. Or listen to me at all, really.

So I guess that makes me like a 60 percent good dad. No drunken abuse, adultery or scarring habits, but a severe lack of teachable ability. Cheerios won't be calling me any time soon to base a commercial on my life.