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So, therapist, I pray that this letter was u

CHAPTER 5

Punished for Participation

IT ISN’T THAT I don’t try to be a good dad. I get involved with their lives to the best of my ability. Sure, I’m not the kind of dad who lets his daughter put makeup on him or gets down on the floor to bust out the gluten-free Play-Doh with his kids. But I do make an effort. It is just that every time I’ve tried to engage with the kids, it has blown up in my face.

My first mistake was reading to them. I’m not a great reader (which I’ve, ironically, written about in my other three books), so it’s an embarrassing chore. When someone wearing a Curious George onesie is correcting you on your grammar, it’s time to take a long hard look in the mirror. I’ve always been a terrible reader. I was never formally diagnosed with any reading disability. I was tested for dyslexia and passed. It’s one of the few tests I wish I had failed. At least that would be an answer as to why I couldn’t read the back of a cereal box when I was a kid.

People always said to me, “You must have been dyslexic.” I wasn’t. Why is it that when a white kid can’t read people say he’s dyslexic but when a black kid can’t read people say he “fell through the cracks.” This is a racist thought. I was as white as they come, and I fell through the cracks known as my parents and the Los Angeles school system. That said, Dyslexia would make a great black name. Sounds like a good wide out for the Steelers.

The problem is that I went to a crappy free-range hippie school where we were taught more about hating Nixon than loving the alphabet. Then I spent years doing construction with addicts and idiots and the latest tome from John Irving didn’t really come up around the hose that was our water cooler. In fact, on a construction site being educated could be a hindrance. You’d be mocked mercilessly. “Hey, Alex Trebek, why don’t you use that giant brain of yours to figure out the nailing schedule on that shear wall.”

When I was in the sixth grade, I had to go up to the chalkboard and write the Phys Ed schedule. I had to put the girls in one column and the boys in the other. I spelled girls with a U. Gurls. That was the end for me. So reading has always had not just a physical, but an emotional barrier, too. It makes me feel like crap. Thus, reading to my kids was a tough putt. But I powered through. And I’ll tell you what I learned. All those years of not reading were worth it. Kids’ books are some of the worst pieces of shit ever committed to the page.

One of the books I was tasked with reading to So

This piece of shit was written in 1952. You can tell right away, because the kid on the cover is blond and white, as are all of his friends in the book. Today, it would have to be a multicultural rainbow and there’d have to be a kid with leg braces or a wheelchair. But the kids in this book looked like Hitler Youth.

I tried to have a moment and not judge, and just enjoy doing something So