I need a Ferrari...

I can count on one hand how many times I've tried to help my kids do homework. It's not that I don't care, its just my style isn't conducive to teaching. You see, I come by it honestly, my father wasn't good at helping me with homework either.

There is some people that can sit down with their children and gently work with them to understand concepts and requirements. Alice is one of those parents. With Alyssa, Alice or I never had to help her with homework, with Reid it's a different story.

EVERY night, Alice helps Reid with his homework. I'm an outside spectator and I often wonder if she's actually doing his homework. It's so quiet when they do homework. It's not natural. I see him and Alice sitting at the kitchen table and most of the time he's watching TV, yet at some point his homework gets done.

Last night, Alice wasn't feeling well. She's diabetic and sometimes her blood sugar can get the best of her. I noticed that she needed help and I stepped in to do the loving thing and help Reid with his homework. It was my moment to score some "husband" points.

My style is different. There's a reason I got into business and not teaching, I have no patience to teach. My teaching style starts in a light voice and then goes louder and louder and louder. It starts off, "okay Reid, what is the significance made my Sir Isaac Brock?". He'll look at the book and give me that "German Sheppard" look.

Then, in a louder voice, I'll say, read the paragraph. He'll start reading and then get distracted by something like a "piece of string" on the kitchen table. I'll then take away the "piece of string" and tell him in an even louder voice, to "focus" and ask again, "what is the significance made by Sir Isaac Brock?!?!".

He then starts looking at the TV. I tell him, "FOCUS, or I'm going to turn the TV off". He blows my comments off. Then I tell him in a very stern voice, "Look man, if you don't read this book and tell me the significance made by Sir Isaac Brock, your not going to get to watch TV or have any computer access and forget watching YouTube! And I'm going to lock you in your room".

Finally, I'm at the end of my rope and feel like saying, "I'm going to rip your F#@ken balls off if you don't tell me the significance of Sir Isaac F-king Brock!!!" I don't say it, but it's in that tone and that he know's "dad's freaking and I better quit picking at my fingers and try and learn something".

At this point, he starts reading, but it seems to take so long, I think he's pretending to read to humour me. I'm major impatient. Especially when I see he has about 11 more questions to answer and it's already 10:30 pm and at this rate it will take until 2:00 am to finish and I need to get to bed.

I finally say to him, "hurry up, your taking too long. If I was doing it, I'd be done by now". Wrong thing to say. He then looks at me and says, "yeah right, you couldn't do this that fast". Now those are fighting words. I say, "give me that book. Where's a piece of paper? Give me that pencil. Let me show you. Get my watch. Set the timer. Let's go!"

Next thing I know, I'M DOING HIS HOMEWORK!!! I'm reading the questions, trying to figure out the answers. The worst part is I'm really working hard at it. Like a dumb ass.

I'm trying to write as neat as I can so he can rewrite the answers in his handwriting. I don't say I want him to copy my answers, but I'm hoping he's my son and "is smart enough to know how to cheat". That all the work I'm doing is not wasted.

Here I am, his father, doing HIS homework and somehow he got me to do it. How did this happen? It only took me 2 questions and 20 minutes to figure out, "this is all wrong. I'm an idiot". I realized I took the wrong approach. I realized it was a moment of weakness, I took the "motherly approach".

I then decided to play to my strengths and started giving him sh*t. I started loudly saying, "smarten up, do your homework, quit screwing around, do you want to be a garbage man when you grow up?".

Then it was, "you know Reid, when I was a kid I came home and did my homework early so I could watch TV in the evening (all a lie). My father never had to push me (major lie). You should follow my example. I also did about 4 different subjects all in one night (hard to keep a straight face I was lying so much). I'd spend about 3 hours doing homework and I didn't need help from any of my parents (beyond lying). What's your problem? you've got it easy, your lucky you didn't live in my era".

Now for most kids, this may crush them. Especially since he was getting this advice with me "poking and pushing him" and there may have been a "cuff" to the back of the head a few times. But for Reid, he took it in stride.

I think at one point, he may have taken his 13 year old 192 lb body and grabbed me under the arms and pushed me back into the fridge. I can't clearly remember if he did that last night or it was one of the many other nights he's done that to me.

I'm pretty sure it got physical because Alice jumped in and asked "what's going on!". I think I said something like, "I'm helping him with his homework", as the house was shaking with each of us pushing each other into the furniture. It was like a bar room fight from the old black and white cowboy movies.

After Alice broke up the physical part of my tutoring, I kept telling him how good I was at doing home work and that he should take my example. Then, out of the mouths of babe's he said something along the lines, "Dad, if you were so smart, how come you don't have a Ferrari parked in the driveway?"

As a parent, how do you respond to that one? That is one hell of a great comeback. That is a "burn" answer. Quite frankly, it was a brilliant bloody jab back. Inside, I don't know if I've ever been more proud of him.

The best I could do was start laughing and tell him, "that was a good one, that was damn funny, you got me, touche, now go to bed".

I guess in the end, "he taught me".

Now on a different note, I've got to go for a run.

It's 12:17 am and I spent the night drinking beer, smoking cigars, hanging out with Alice, Jamie and Barb, went for wings, onion rings, ate chocolates, pizza, and postponed my training until I finished having fun and finishing my blog post because I didn't want to be late like last week and disappoint John or Doru.

Running at 12:30 am on Friday night, only "training payne".

Speed Run - 34:10 / 7.38 km / 4:43 pace / 161 avg hr

180.8 lbs /21.3% BMI

14

Post run: wasn't easy doing a full out speed run for 30 plus minutes with all that food and beer in my stomach and cigar smoke in my lungs. Wanted to stop a few times, but treated it like the dark moments in an Ironman and tried to even go faster. All I was doing was burping up "greasy onion rings". My Achilles is still hurting me, may be a short long run on Sunday.