sorry about your pops

I’m pretty sure a real person who bears a shocking personality likeness to Dwight Schrute has started blogging under the pseudonym “Dog” at this site. Good news, he’s got advice on what to do with an overbearing parent who just doesn't understand that kids don't ride horses to school and need Xboxes to unwind, which I'm gonna go ahead and do over.

Dear "shut him up,"

You can’t shut him up because he’s right… Most North American teens today are spoiled beyond repair — mere drones of generations past.

Of course, you are tired, you eat crap and you don’t exercise… Not everyone winds down with the Xbox… It’s for people with no drive or imagination of their own.

When I was your age…

We only had unicycles, and saddles weren’t invented until after I graduated high school. We also only had cobble stone roads back then, so when I tell you that peddling 10 miles to school (with a 60 lbs. school bag balanced on your head) was a pain in the arse — I mean it!

There were no pet stores. If you wanted a pet, you had to catch an animal and tame it yourself. Pet food didn’t exist either, so your only options was to share your food by regurgitating some of it, or suffering through painful breast feedings.

Girlfriends were only invented in 1978; and up to that point, we had to make due with cowboy hats, NASCAR and line dancing. “Going on a date” simply meant that there was somewhere you needed to be at a specific moment in time. Perhaps you needed to be at the blacksmith’s having a tooth removed, getting a haircut or a vasectomy.

There were no McDonald’s, Burger King or Wendy’s… Hamburger to us was just some rambunctious fellow from Germany. Your only options for cow’s flesh were stew, jerky, roast or streak — and you had to club and prepare the animal yourself!

We didn’t have Internet, TV and game consoles. When I was a young, feeble-minded kids lost brain cells screwing up while playing with their homemade catapults, parachutes and rocked-propelled grenades.

- Dog

Here's my unlicensed advice:

Sorry your pops is lame. For sure, life was rough for him. Especially since he seems to have gone to elementary school over a hundred years ago.

Here’s what you’ve gotta do: sell him on all the other things that the 21st century has to offer. A short list follows:

• The printing press made mass media possible, and among its most noteable accomplishments are Playboy and its very own line of spin-off products
• Viagra
• Refrigeration has helped make steak available any time of day or night.
• Professional sports are available year-round with daily coverage of the teams’ activities. Even sports with horses.
  

Here’s the deal, your dad is a red-blooded man, no matter how old he is. Really. He likes the things that men like. It’s gross for you, but it’ll change his mind.