The Ultimate Betrayal

Newsletter 2021-12-12

Disclaimer: There almost wasn’t a newsletter this week. I spent most of Sunday flat on my back in bed, sicker than I’ve been since the Great Flu of Spring 2020. I could barely keep my eyes open long enough to compose a tweet, let alone to write a two-thousand word newsletter. But in the end, I powered through, not because I thought you needed to read this story that badly, but because I didn’t want to get ten thousand emails asking where the newsletter was. What follows was written in a horrific fever dream after expelling every ounce of liquid from my body. Any typos should be forgiven accordingly.

Betrayal. There is no harsher word in the English language. I expected that treatment from my enemies and even my acquaintances, but not from my own kids. I was banking on the special privilege of all dads to be the coolest adult male in their children’s lives until those kids become teenagers. I still have two years until my eleven-year-old, Betsy, hits thirteen, an era I expected to lazil…