Son, Please Bring The Trash to The Front of The Driveway

My son. Today will be different than the other days. Today, your protests will not work. You will bring the trash to the front of the driveway.

This is not “the worst thing ever.” My son. There are things in this life that if you had to endure, would cripple you. If taking out the trash cripples you, you were meant to be crippled.

Last week, I asked you to bring the trash to the front of the driveway. Do you remember what you said? I do. You said that if you had to bring out the trash, you would steal my credit card and go to Logan Paul’s suicide forest and kill yourself. You would let a strange stumble upon your hanging corpse. Yet, you caved. You brought the trash to the front of the driveway.

Here we are, a week later. How was your suicide? You are weak. Pause your game, Brandon. If the game can’t be paused, then turn it off.

I was thinking about my father recently. You remember Gramps, don’t you? We went to Vermont to attend his memorial. When me and the other pallbearers brought my Father’s casket in, you honored him by doing the latest Fortnite dance. Very tasteful. Then, when my mother--grief-stricken from losing her husband and friend of 60 years--couldn’t remember the WiFi password to St. Paul’s Catholic Church, you admonished her, saying under your breath that she was being “such a fag.”

When I watched my mother recoil in pain from your awful words, I started to think: one day I will be close to death. And, if my son manages to attain some morsel of human dignity, he will be at my bedside. And I hope my final moments will be remembering the few good moments in his company.

But I’ll be honest, Brandon. I will only remember moments like this: standing in your bedroom doorframe, pleading that you stop failing to be a man, and take the trash to the front of the driveway.

Now, I will no longer plead. You will take the trash to the front of the driveway. You will take the trash out every Thursday night until you leave my house. When you have your own house, you will take the trash out there until you are lucky enough to have a child of your own.

And I hope they are like you, screaming racial slurs into a video game headset and treating every adult like their biggest inconvenience. I relish the image of you pleading with your horrible spawn:

Son, please take the trash to the front of the driveway.