My daddy’s not this bad!

Hi everyone, my name is C and I am Jogging Dad’s younger 4 year-old son. I just found out that my big 6 year-old brother, L, somehow hacked into daddy’s blog back in December last year and wrote up some gibberish.

“NOT FAIR! How come L gets to write on your blog and not me?” was my immediate bottom-lipped whinge to daddy upon this discovery.

He tried to calmed me down by offering me a jelly-snake (a bribe which I gladly accepted), while denying ever letting L get anywhere near his blog (a lie which I brusquely rejected). After swallowing the jelly-snake, I pouted and complained some more about the injustice of it all, at which point daddy suddenly put on his pair of joggers and rushed out the door for a run.

While he’s been out, I have somehow managed to hack into daddy’s blog (thanks to my brother L), and am now ready to scribble some gibberish of my own on this site.

And the main gripe I want to get off my chest is this favourtism that my daddy shows towards L. I’m not talking just about this blog incident, but my daddy does this all the time! Here’s a by no means exhaustive list of examples:

1. When Daddy calls for us, he always yells out L’s name before mine, without fail. I mean, would it kill him to address me first once in a while? And he has the temerity to wonder why sometimes I take so long to respond to his call!
2. Daddy always dries L first after our bath. You may think that’s no big deal but being wrapped up with a towel that’s cold and damp from my brother’s bath water residue is not comfortable after a while, believe me!
3. Why does daddy only help L with his homework and not me? Yes, I admit, I don’t get any homework from my daycare centre (a situation that often displeases daddy as he’s always mumbling about where the exorbitant childcare cost that he pays is going to). Nevertheless, I would still like to pretend to do homework, asking daddy questions that make him all hot under the collar, as L often does (“Why is k silent in knight? Why do you have to carry the one to the next column? What if it doesn’t want to be carried?“).
4. When Daddy doles out chores for us to do, he always gives them to L first and then me. That usually means L finishes his tasks ahead of me, leaving yours truly to tidy up 200 pieces of Legos, while glaring at L enjoying his ice cream reward in front of the TV.

Of course, I’ve known daddy for a while now and understand that he’s a very structured kind of guy, who insists on a particular way and order of doing everything. In fact, I often hear my mum muttering something about OCD, whenever she’s talking to others about daddy, although I’m not sure what that means. Anyhow, since L entered daddy’s world 2 years ahead of me, I guess I can appreciate why there’s a natural order when it comes to L and me, especially given daddy’s peculiar “condition“. Still, it bothers me sometimes that L is always first. It means that I have to often put some extra effort into my tantrums, just so that I can gain some equal-footing respect.

Mind you, there is one upside of playing second fiddle all the time. It is that, whenever there’s a fight between L and I, my brother always gets scolded first by daddy, even if it was clearly my fault. And daddy does seem to hug me, play with me and indulge me, with juuuust a little bit more twinkle in his eye than with L. Perhaps it’s because I’m more the lovable rogue of his 2 sons. Or perhaps, it’s because we are both growing so fast that daddy’s dearly holding on to my 4 year-old rascal-cuteness before I become too big and too cool to play with him.

Now that I got all that off my chest, I’m off to play with my Legos. L is next to me, jumping up and down, getting all anxious that daddy will soon come home and find that someone has been hacking and mucking around with this Blog. L’s worried because he knows he’s going to get the first blame. And when daddy realises that the culprit was me and starts to scold me, I’ll just give him my lovable rogue smile. He will then lose all authority and start hugging and kissing me like there’s no tomorrow. Works everytime!

Keep on pounding.