This morning, I asked Detective Munch what he wanted for breakfast. He didn’t answer me.

You see, he was already whining about the fact that I’d asked him to get dressed before eating, because that’s not the way he usually does things, so it was perfectly understandable that he also collapsed to the ground as if he’d just gotten shot and was therefore ignoring my request for his breakfast order.

Parenting is fun!

We had a deadline – we have to get to the bus stop on time or everyone’s day is severely effed – so I had no choice but to move forward without him.

I proceeded to the kitchen to prepare a mini-bagel for my still-engaged-in-excessive-histrionics five-year-old, a breakfast choice to which he is typically quite amenable (not that recent history is a reliable indication of future behavior when it comes to a five-year-old, but I digress). I sliced, toasted, and buttered his breakfast, grabbed his milk, and deposited it at the table.

As I walked past him on my way to the shower, I let him know that his mini-bagel was ready, and then I closed – and locked – the bathroom door, because I could already hear a new round of protests beginning behind me and AIN’T NOBODY GOT TIME FOR THAT!

A few minutes later, upon completion of my own morning routine, I exited the bathroom and was pleasantly surprised to find that Detective Munch had finally acquiesced to my unreasonable (despite the fact that I make the same exact one every single morning) request to change into his school clothes. I was also pleased, based on his aforementioned insistence on tackling his own morning routine in the proper sequence, that his bagel was gone.

I assumed that he’d eaten his breakfast prior to making his wardrobe change – so as to satisfy his burgeoning OCD – and naively attempted to verify this assumption.

“Did you finish your mini-bagel, bud?”

He replied, with acid on his tongue, “I threw it in the garbage.” THE BALLS ON THIS KID.

Without betraying my own frustration (don’t believe Mom and Buried when she tells you that I was ‘laughably unsuccessful’ in not betraying my frustration, or when she tells you that I ‘punched a wall and screamed “Good, because the garbage is where I’m going to put your favorite toys!”‘, Mom and Buried is a known liar), I calmly walked to the kitchen to confirm my son’s spiteful statement.

And confirm it I did, because he wasn’t joking.

There his mini-bagel sat – immaculate, uneaten, still moist from the butter I’d applied – atop the trash bin. Right next to any illusions I’d had about enjoying fatherhood.

Despite my strong desire to force him to go to school without any breakfast, I gave him a piece of cinnamon-raisin bread – NO, I WILL *NOT* TOAST IT, THE TIME FOR REQUESTS IS OVER! GET WHAT YOU GET AND YOU DON’T GET UPSET, MOTHERFUCKER! – and walked him (“sprinted with him” is more like it) to the bus stop.

By the time we arrived, we’d both already forgotten that apocalyptic breakfast, and any lingering resentment was either washed away in our daily ritual of multiple hugs and adorable hand gestures through the school bus window or had stealthily taken up residence in my growing ulcer.

At least it *was* washed away, until I got home and saw the bagel still sitting there on the top of the trash bin. Mocking me. Taunting me. No longer moist from the butter…

I need a drink.

This post originally appeared on my Facebook page.