This is a brief treatise in defense of a small, overlooked, but nonetheless important aspect of fatherhood: the daddy tax.The daddy tax works like this: any treats that your kids get, you get a little piece first. Snow cones at the park? Dad gets a little bite of each one first. Milkshakes at Dairy Queen? The big guy gets a nice long sip before anyone else. A bag of delicious Skittles? You get the point.
I am thinking about the daddy tax because I just finished invoking it. I was giving o an Otter Pop (which is a very popular treat in our family), when I decided to take a little nibble off the top. O gave me a look that look could've won him a part in Oliver Twist.
I looked at the wee sweet lad and thought, "Oh son. All the toys. The Bob the Builder DVDs. The college tuition. All I have is the daddy tax."
The daddy tax is my way of saying, "I might be a weary, slightly disheveled, uncool working stiff, but I am still the head honcho around this joint, by gum."
So dads everywhere - when the going gets tough, when the diapers get stinky, when the tantrums gets loud - just remember that you have the daddy tax. Take that bite of brownie and be proud of it. And when they shoot you dirty looks, just say, "Be happy I didn't eat the whole thing."
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6 comments:
hahaha! you are a funny one. you left out the mommy tax. :)
I was about to mention the mommy tax. Now that we have a name for it, it will make it seem more official. I'll tell Andy, he'll be pleased that we can put it in a more "legal" context instead of begging off a bite here and there.
In my family we have a mommy tax, which is most often invoked when we're eating fresh crab. My mom HATES cracking crab, so we all (Dad included) hand over some of our hard-won prize so Mom can have a little mound of crab meat, too.
The best part -- if you're the mommy -- is that I am 33 years old and I still have to pay the mommy tax. This will continue forever, as far as I can tell.
I also was going to say there is a mommy tax! I never thought about it in such an official and legal way, but yes, I do take my fair share of first bites....most often the first bite of Ezra's corndog that he gets at Fred Meyers!=)
I love this but I am going with your wife on this one or maybe we can have both. Thanks this made me laugh.
okay, so, you haven't seen a lot of support from the guy crowd. But, I'm here for you.
A few weeks back, I introduced ellyn to this concept. It's the man tax or the husband tax. Whatever.
She was going on a weekend long camping trip with the girls. She made muffins. Lots of muffins. She left me with one nice muffin and three muffins that had fallen from the baking shelf and were nothing more than stumps with broken, nearly non-existent tops.
See, I told her, when you bake things, by default, the house gets to keep one batch. So six muffins, twelve cookies, what have you. It's the "you're baking for someone else and then leaving me for the weekend" tax. It's only fair. I can't take care of myself.
I'm sure, when kids are involved. The daddy tax will play a role in my life. In my house, growing up, the daddy tax was taken after the fact. usually in the form of eating everything from my plate I didn't. He often got a 1/2 stake payoff. It worked for him.
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