{"id":51059,"date":"2026-02-07T22:44:14","date_gmt":"2026-02-08T03:44:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/?p=51059"},"modified":"2026-02-08T22:44:18","modified_gmt":"2026-02-09T03:44:18","slug":"dad-brog-162-three-over-three","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/?p=51059","title":{"rendered":"Dad Brog (#162): Three over three"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"I\u2019m halfway tempted to change the title of my dad brogs to the above, but really the hope is that this is a one-time blow-off kind of rant, and that when the smoke clears dad brogs remain being about my kids and my journey through fatherhood, and not really any further about being a parent to an elderly Korean parent on top of it.<\/span><\/p>\n

Regardless, three over three is pretty succinct in how I\u2019m feeling these days, because I have three human beings in my care that over the age of three years old, and they\u2019re basically all fucking kids.\u00a0 Two of them being my actual kids, but the third being my dad, whom, like many Korean parents throughout history, has chosen to go down the path of being as inept as possible, as needlessly dependent as possible, and to require as much care and patience as an actual child needs.<\/span><\/p>\n

I thought I was right on the money when I came up with the general basis of The Korean Story\u2122<\/a> but one thing I was completely blind to was what life was going to be like when the parents actually do hit that feeble senior life, and it\u2019s the responsibility of the children (me) to basically become the parent, all while trying to not inhibit progress when they (in)conveniently want to remain the parent and demand respect and authority without any warning, spontaneously.<\/span><\/p>\n

But basically my dad has become my third child, much to my dismay, and over the span of the last 12+ months, it\u2019s been my biggest challenge trying to be the adult in the room, and steer him into decisions that are my best attempt to be for his benefit; just like my actual children.<\/span><\/p>\n

It also doesn\u2019t help that conversing with him, I can understand about as much as I can my actual kids\u2019 excited ramblings about Pok\u00e9mon<\/em> or whatever fandoms they fancy at the time, primarily on account of the worsening language barrier, and the rate in which he listens to me when I\u2019m trying to tell him do so something is about as successful as with my kids, that\u2019s leading me to feel this way.<\/span><\/p>\n

But it\u2019s at its worst when I\u2019m with all three of them at the same time, and my kids want attention, and my dad wants to ramble on about something that\u2019s not important but he\u2019s pretending like the fate of the world rests on it, that I\u2019m asking myself what my life really is right now, and I\u2019m pondering just how bad my blood pressure must look at these specific junctures in time.<\/span><\/p>\n

However, the difference between my kids and my dad is that they\u2019re heading in opposite directions as far as their attitudes towards independence.\u00a0 Whereas it\u2019s a routine struggle to negotiate with my kids on what they think they can do versus what I know they\u2019re not capable of, it\u2019s a constant struggle with my dad to try and get him to do things that I know he can do once he learns how to, but he refuses to even fucking try because he\u2019s assuming everything has passed him by and that an old dog cannot be taught new tricks.<\/span><\/p>\n

I got him a television, a smart one, so that he could avoid having more than one remote control, because the presence of anything higher than one results in a system failure, and the television would collect dust, unused.\u00a0 I set up the wifi, Netflix, and an app specific to Korean television, but trying to explain the concept of apps is like trying to explain quantum physics to an inanimate onion.\u00a0 I\u2019ve set things up so that turning on the television and going into the Korean television app would require three total key presses, had him write it down with drawings of the buttons, but after two days, I\u2019ve learned that he\u2019s hit system failure and hasn\u2019t turned it on since the one time he tried and failed to get into the app.<\/span><\/p>\n

I wouldn\u2019t dare say that my dad is lacking in intelligence, but what he really is, has become fucking lazy and defeatist, and is making his unwillingness to learn my problem, and the problem of the scant everyone else in his life who has tried to help.<\/span><\/p>\n

And let\u2019s not get started with his iPhone, and it just makes me mad at the world for advancing into gradually worsening ageist times that completely ignore the existence of the elderly, who almost have no options other than smart phones, full of all sorts of features and functions that they not only need, but their presence makes the elderly go into system failure, and just give the fuck up on them, which doesn\u2019t help that we\u2019re in a modern age where not having a phone is tantamount to not having lungs.<\/span><\/p>\n

Today, I went to visit my dad, and brought the girls with me, so we could do an activity that I intend on making a permanent standing monthly event, on top of any other visits that could happen throughout.\u00a0 And as much as I love knowing that my kids can actually spend some time with their grandfather, and that my dad can actually spend some time with his grandchildren and actual blood relatives, much less human interaction, it was pretty high-stress.<\/span><\/p>\n

Being the only adult in the room for hours on end gets tiring, and have my kids wanting to run around and touch and climb everything in sight, and then there\u2019s my dad with shit for legs, needing a walker, always a fall risk, and there\u2019s always a deficiency in coverage somewhere when trying to do the even most mundane things like get in the car, go into a restaurant, or any small task.<\/span><\/p>\n

My dad hardly understands the girls\u2019 speak, the girls don\u2019t understand anything my dad says, we all love each other, but like so many cases in my life these days, I\u2019m smack dab in the middle of being pulled in numerous directions, and I\u2019m fried by the end of the visit.<\/span><\/p>\n

Naturally, coming home, I get obliterated by two massive highway issues because Georgia is smart and loves to do all their road construction right in the heart of the weekend, and then I come home and my wife is pissed because I\u2019ve been gone too long and even if she understands the circumstances, it\u2019s me that the anger is taken out on, and I\u2019m just like what the fuck, might as well blow my fucking brains out.<\/span><\/p>\n

Shit like this is why I haven\u2019t been so apt to buy into the concept of thinking or hoping that with a new year comes a fresh start, because I know all the shit going on in my life; it doesn\u2019t matter what number is at the end of the year, because a lot of the things I\u2019m going through are some long fucking games, and ain\u2019t no resolutions or hustles going to change anything quickly short of winning the lottery and just buying off a whole shit load of the problems away.<\/span><\/p>\n

It’s almost funny how it wasn\u2019t long after getting my vasectomy that my dad decided to transform into the third child I wanted to avoid having by having a surgical procedure, but considering the angst and darkness that swirls through my mind when I\u2019m feeling particularly overwhelmed and overstimulated<\/a><\/em>, it most certainly is fucking not.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I\u2019m halfway tempted to change the title of my dad brogs to the above, but really the hope is that this is a one-time blow-off kind of rant, and that when the smoke clears dad brogs remain being about my kids and my journey through fatherhood, and not really any further about being a parent … Continue reading Dad Brog (#162): Three over three<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[193,71,192,103,83,52,25,69,146,49],"class_list":["post-51059","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-brog","tag-dad","tag-famiry","tag-kids","tag-motherland","tag-observations","tag-owned","tag-technology","tag-television","tag-triggered","tag-wtf"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51059","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=51059"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51059\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":51061,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51059\/revisions\/51061"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=51059"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=51059"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=51059"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}