If you are a parent who sent your kid to school this morning, you deserve a moment to distract yourself and laugh with this true story.
MY SON GOT IN TROUBLE AT SCHOOL BECAUSE OF MY TIKTOK
On Tuesday, May 24th, around 1:30pm, my wife looked at her phone and noticed she had an unopened voicemail. It was one of those classic instances that all Verizon customers know all too well, where there is no missed call but a voicemail just appears.
The voicemail was from Lane’s principal at the elementary school, someone who Katie and I really enjoy and respect, that started out in her traditionally stern tone and ended with a light hearted sense of “it really wasn’t that big of a deal, but I wanted to inform you”.
On Monday, I did a conditioning workout at a football field close to home. I typically film myself doing those types of workouts to convince myself that I have a lot of work to continue to do in order to reduce the amount of embarrassment revealed on the footage. It’s a self deprecating motivational technique that has only recently started to work for me. Within the video, I caught an angle of myself where my dumper looked fair/decent while I was catching my breath. At that moment, I decided that I would create a TikTok post using a trending comedic audio clip and I would become famous. Basically it was a video of me with my hands on my hips, staring off into the distance, inhaling as much air as I could between reps, with my clothed ass as the focal point.
At home, Lane overheard me using the audio and editing the video before posting it and due to his allergies I could hear him hovering over me with the occasional mucus droplets being sprayed into the air. His congestion - made the suggestion- that there was no question- that in hindsight it would have been better to use abstention- to avoid the forthcoming intervention.
I posted the video and would periodically check the video to see who “liked it”. So with the editing process and then checking the notifications, the video was played probably 23 times.
Katie said “Oh I have a voicemail. And it’s from Lane’s school”. The look of surprise, horror, embarrassment, and trying to hold back a giggle was all I could read from her as she listened. She said, “I need to play this for you because you won’t believe it if I told you”.
According the Lane’s principal, who had already talked to Lane and other witnesses: Lane was in the line to exit the lunch room when he pulled the back of his pants down just far enough so you could see the top of his butt crack and then turned in the other direction and waited for the student who was originally in front of Lane to turn around and notice.
Word eventually made it to Lane’s teacher, and then to the principal who brought Lane in to get his split of the story. Lane told the principal that he has seen comedians and actors on TV do the same thing and he thought it was funny, so he assumed everyone else would.
My boy covered for me - he could have easily said “My dad posted a picture of his butt on TikTok and now he is famous online” but he didn’t. He didn’t snitch and he took the punishment in solidarity.
On the ride home from school, we talked about the incident. And I explained to him 3 things:
There are things that you may find funny that others may not. And sometimes people get offended by those things you think are funny, which is okay. If he were at a job and did that, he would be fired on the spot.
What you did is funny, so you aren’t in trouble. This is a parenting technique I picked up from watching a stand-up comedy special with Damon Wayans and it helps me not to become a weirdo dad who cares way too much about what other people think.
What he did doesn’t change the way we feel about him or embarrass us. He won the lottery 8 years ago when he was born into a family where there is nothing, really nothing, that would embarrass me as his father.
The question that remains is WHY is it that I can post a video on TikTok, making fun of my commode-fender and my son gets in trouble for airing out the Harmon Gap?
We may never know the answer to that question, but all I know is that I will be finishing the George Carlin documentary on HBO this afternoon and Lane will be serving his recess time with the principal today.
