I’ve said this time and time again but I’ll say it once more: I grew up without a father figure. on the football field after the big game my rivals would go home to their fathers, eat their pizza, receive a tuck-in and a kiss; I would go home and watch tapes of that night’s performance, impassioned by the knowledge that the only way I would improve and actually make something of myself is through the study of my past mistakes. I had no father to rely on, to catch my mistakes for me. when it wasn’t football season, it was basketball; then, the decathlon or the iron man, depending on my mood each spring. during the school year I worked 30 hours a week at my part-time job, and when summer came I ramped that count up to 60, practiced my entrepreneurship on the side, and still managed to find time to pursue women and build a stronghold of worthwhile and long-lasting male friendships. what I am getting at, of course, is that I always looked forward to having a son of my own, a way to prove to the shell of the man that seeded me that I was not going to be like him, no, that I was going to be my own man, self-made and self-defined. and now that my dream has been achieved, now that I have a son of my own, I feel warmth in my core unlike any other warmth: I broke the chain: I got what I needed. in contrast with this warmth is the bitter cold of hatred. I feel nothing but disgust, sickening disgust for the contemporary man who does not wish to have children. you justify your decision with platitudes: the earth is populated enough, you say; you prefer to focus on my career, you say; you’re not ready to be a father, you say. but the truth, the truth that you are unable to admit, is that you are weak and afraid. you waste your time surfing the internet; I spend mine creating the waves upon which you desperately surf. there simply is no excuse, when every natural sign plainly tells us that man’s ultimate purpose is to produce a son. every morning I lift my son into the sky and I say to him, “you are loved by your creator” and he responds with only his body and his eyes and in that response alone I feel the power of a God. you wake up every morning and though you should weep at what could have been, at what you could have been, you do not weep, for you are numb and broken and all-used-up. I beat you at owning my career, I beat you at creating the most well-liked and viral art on the Internet, I beat you at marriage, I beat you with a stronger pack of dogs, I beat you with a stronger arm, and now I beat you with my son. Shane won.

Do you have a son? Let me know in the comments section below.