Hey Dad, Why Are All the Other Kids Wearing Pajamas and I'm Not?

Oh, because you fucking forgot it was Pajama Day, you miserable asshole.

Hey Dad, I’m scribbling this note in illiterate lines and green crayon, and I need your help with something:

See, I’m trying to remember my age. Now I’m pretty sure that I’m a pre-school aged child, but, you know? I must be wrong. Because I’m looking around the Ladybug classroom, and I’m pretty sure all these kids are wearing pajamas except for me. So I must conclude that I’m a teacher or an adult of some kind. Oh, wait, now I remember:

I’m three years old, and you fucking forgot it was Pajama Day, you fucking shit-for-brains.

Wait, I want to give you the benefit of the doubt, so let me take a break from this Play-doh activity to survey the scene before me: Looks like Leanna’s got on a matching Paw Patrol top and pants (remember when you thought it was “Papa Troll”, about ‘a “David the Gnome”-like patriarch?’ You’re such a wit.) I propose these garments are pajamas because they appear comfortable, fun, and allow her to express her enjoyment of a program she loves. Likewise, Aaron has on a similar type of matching pants and long-sleeve shirt, except his own costumes bears the marked pattern of a man-arachnid hybrid. I seem to recall this character as the eponymous “Spider-Man.” It appears that Aaron is savoring the imaginative immersion that his pajamas bequeath him, and has now teamed up with Leanna on a “Paw Patrol” and “Spider-Man” crossover mission. The glow of this diversion will no doubt increase as the day unfolds.

Now let me compare this to my own cloth: a small-patterned dress over stretchy pants, indistinguishable from my outfit any other day of the week. Except it isn’t any other day of the week:

It’s Nursery School Pajama Day, I’m three years old, and you fucking robbed me of this critical childhood experience and made me feel like a freak in the process, you pathetic simpleton.

Wait, I’m trying to remember—maybe you forgot because you literally had no idea that the magical day was today? Maybe you didn’t receive several reminders in the Brightwheel App? Maybe you weren’t specifically handed a color flyer that marked today, February 26, 2024, as Pajama Day for your child? Maybe you didn’t come home on Friday, and, with a haughty tone of parental superiority, tell your wife—my mother, lest you forget—that today was Pajama Day and that “we absolutely cannot forget”?

Well guess what, you world-historical airhead FUCK, you FORGOT!

Brother, I’m feeling around in the pitch dark here, trying desperately to find something to let you off the hook so that I can stop seething with rage at how I’m literally unable to participate in an ancient school ritual because of your absolute fucking fatherly incompetence, and all I can think of is that you were so utterly stressed out this morning, so completely and unabashedly moored down by the pain of living and the unbearable agony of reality that you simply could not take two goddamn seconds to slap on even my red-and-white striped “sleepy clothes”—and I fucking HATE those rags—because even in that monstrous get-up I would still be part of a childhood rite that everyone would agree is essential to experiencing to life’s fleeting purity and joy.

But were you holding your head with tears streaming down your damnable stubble this morning? Were you moaning in that little bitch moan you sometimes do, for a little easiness, a little softness, a little understanding? Were you flat on the floor, catatonic with the pain of one more day in the infinite torment?

No. You were eating a croissant and looking at your phone.

Ah, the croissant—the sustenance of the leisurely man. The man who has not a worry in life. The man with an almost putrid confidence in his ability to raise a child.

No need for further comment, just wanted to let you know that I’m having a real great day, and when I get home, I’ll probably say that to your face, too, because I forget injustice easily.

But when they finally develop the technology to decipher what I’ve written down today, Pajama Day, February 26, 2024, and you can bear witness to the pure articulations of what I, an angry three year-old, would say if I could, well then.

That’ll be the day.