Another Wednesday, another week that I, Smokey Goretooth, have a new “Do I Suck?,” MetalSucks’ version of “Am I The Asshole?” where we take real life horror stories and bring them to our readers to decide if the OP sucks for some bullshit they may or may not have done.
This week’s submission comes from a reader who may or may not legitimately hate kids, but you should read on and see for yourself…
It’s not that I actually hate kids, but I’m surely not having any of them willingly, for myself. That’s for damn sure.
When the vocalist in my band had a kid, everything changed. That makes me sound like I’m some jealous partner and sure, maybe in a way I am, but I don’t feel like my life as his friend and bandmate should be affected by his inability to properly pull out. Still, I’m happy for him I guess, but now that the demon is like three years old, he keeps bringing it to our band practice and they’re getting in the way. I’m the drummer, which is already hard enough, so I don’t need any lil stinky snot monster running around and touching my sticks and cymbals, coughing all over my mic, or pulling my hair from behind when I’m trying to focus on a blast beat. And that’s not the worst of it.
Our vocalist has a mini studio set up in his basement where he’ll lay down tracks and stuff, and I know he’s been bringing his kid in there since they were first able to crawl, honestly. I obviously get that at some point in that process, he’s probably pressed that drool-covered baby face up against the mic, but that tendency has far surpassed their at-home pastime to now infiltrate the sanctity of our band practice. For at least a year now, when we’re in the midst of an actually serious practice, my bandmate will just straight up let his kid sing, as if some of us aren’t trying to really make sure we’ve got our parts down. We’re trying to record an EP and also have some shows coming up, so what I feel like we all ACTUALLY need is to work on the task at hand, not fuck around for the sake of building a memory the kid probably won’t even remember after the natural resentment builds. Alas, here we are with something mildly important to achieve with a goddamn toddler running the ship for too long. It’s ridiculous. But noooooo, our vocalist has let his little punch-mouth poop goblin run around for every practice, often letting him sit in for him for entirely too long during some of the songs. They don’t even know the words!
I got so tired of it and pretty much lost it at practice the other day because I was trying really hard to focus on my part in that one song and he let his off-key kid have a go at it, honestly not even saying anything like mush-mouth Charlie Brown teacher, so I legit screamed “Fuck this!” and stormed off. My bandmate texted me saying I shouldn’t have done that in front of his kid and that I should come back and apologize, but I refused. I told him if I wanted to be in a kid-fronted group I’d join Kidz Bop, and he didn’t like that very much.
My other two bandmates are pretty split on the situation, and my girlfriend claims she “understands” my frustration but still thinks I’m a dick. I honestly think I should just be able to go to practice to actually WORK on our material and not solely exist as entertainment for a kid that only belongs to one of us. Am I really wrong for that?
I’d be lying if I didn’t say he made some good points, but his delivery may have y’all feeling a different type of way. What’s the verdict?