A five-year-old told his teacher he was going to rip her face off and eat it. She said, "Do you want salt with that?" That's the episode.

A teacher wrote in anonymously, because legally she can't tell you what happens in your kid's classroom. The daily meltdowns. The kicking, the biting, the scissors. The twenty-four other kids told to ignore it. The ten minutes of paperwork for a two-second incident. And the code teachers speak because it's all they're allowed to say: "He had a big day." "We're working on regulation." "Your daughter was very patient today."

Joseph decodes the code, refuses to roast a five-year-old, names the real villain (one teacher, zero assistants, and a gag order), and confesses to being Summers-Off Steve, the guy at the barbecue who says "must be nice, two months off." He said it to a teacher's face. She smiled like a hostage.

Plus three things to actually say: at dinner tonight, to the teacher, and at parent council.

This episode is brought to you by Mathnasium of Newmarket, run by Maria Elisa, a former teacher who found a way to make kids do math on purpose. Two hundred dollars off through the BTC Magazine app. Newmarket. Not Aurora, not Vaughan. Newmarket.

Joseph's memoir THE DAD DIARIES is out now, published by Cormorant Books. Signed copies at thedaddiaries.com, also on Amazon and Indigo.

Got a mess of your own? Send it to info@jeopublishing.com.

More at betweenthecoversmag.com, or read the magazine free in the BTC Magazine app, iOS and Android.

Bitch Fest is a Between the Covers production.

Three weeks into the school year I got an email saying my daughter was being switched to another class. So I went into that school like I was about to personally replace the Ministry of Education. No training. No experience. Just a daughter and a fucking opinion.

Then they told me why. Funding cuts. A class being cut. The secretary now splitting her time between two schools. The vice principal, same thing. Half here, half there. I'd come in to complain about the mess. They were the ones trying to make the mess work.

This one is about the school office, where every parent starts with "sorry, just a quick thing" and it is never a quick thing. About a woman being "shared" like a plate of cookies, when putting her name on a second schedule does not create a second woman. About who's doing the other half. About the new sign outside the school that gets more adults than the problem it's standing in front of. And about the appreciation mugs, when what she actually needs is a job posting.

And I'm in this one. I was the parent who walked in at full volume. Apparently my interest in education funding was waiting for a personal invitation, and it arrived in my inbox.

No school named. No board named. On purpose.

Teachers, EAs, secretaries, parents: tell me what's happening. Send it through the free BTC Magazine app (App Store or Google Play). I will not name your school and I will not name your board.

THE DAD DIARIES, my memoir, is out now. It's the story of how I became a father to my girls and everything it took to get there. Signed copies at thedaddiaries.com, also on Amazon and Indigo.

This is Joseph Tito, and I bitch so you don't have to.

Got a mess of your own? Send it to info@jeopublishing.com.

More at betweenthecoversmag.com, or read the magazine free in the BTC Magazine app, iOS and Android.

Bitch Fest is a Between the Covers production.

A woman writes in about a husband who has appointed himself Head of Loss Prevention for their marriage. He supervises her at the self-checkout. He audits the grocery bill. He announces to an entire restaurant that he is not tipping.

None of these places employ him.

Joseph calls him Dave, because this is Dave behaviour, and because Dave has been radicalized by a debit terminal. The trouble is that Dave isn't wrong. Tipping screens are out of control, the cereal box is a pamphlet, and they made the toilet paper narrower and thought nobody would notice. Being right about the problem still doesn't entitle you to become the town crier at a sandwich counter.

Also: the Italian mothers of Woodbridge who drove to three stores with a flyer and a pen and were right about all of it, a confession involving a twelve-dollar item on a patio bill, and sixty-eight thousand loyalty points being guarded like offshore money.

Next week: the coworkers who are not your friends, and the birthday card that proved it.

Joseph's memoir THE DAD DIARIES is out September 26th. Signed copies at thedaddiaries.com, or pre-order anywhere you buy books.

Got a mess of your own? Send it to info@jeopublishing.com.

More at betweenthecoversmag.com — or read the magazine free in the BTC Magazine app, iOS and Android.

Bitch Fest is a Between the Covers production.

A friend texted Joseph in the middle of recording to say that getting old is a bitch. Not the knees. Not the back. The lecturing. Her kids are in their thirties. She is not old — she has just been reclassified.

Two villains tonight. The tech-support warden, the adult child who has decided one forgotten password is a diagnosis, and who does the voice — the slow one, with the little pause in the middle. And the concerned committee, the relatives who caucus about you without you and turn up having already decided.

Joseph gets into the coup nobody announces: thirty years of being the family's operating system, quietly deleted in one afternoon because your kid knows one thing about a phone that you don't. Why "I'm just trying to help" and "give me that, let me do it" are not the same sentence. And the two things you are allowed to say at the same time — I understand you're scared, and give me back my phone.

She kept multiple humans alive through fevers, heartbreak and one truly regrettable haircut. She is not confused. She's just not in a hurry, and you've mistaken that for decline.

Got a mess of your own? Send it to info@jeopublishing.com.

More at betweenthecoversmag.com — or read the magazine free in the BTC Magazine app, iOS and Android.

Bitch Fest is a Between the Covers production.

Two performers, one family. The guilt-trip artist, who never asks for anything directly because a sigh does the work of a sentence. And the family martyr, who does everything for everyone and makes absolutely certain everyone knows the cost.

Joseph gets into the sentences that sound like love and function like a bill — "after everything I've done for you," "no, no, go, I'll be fine," "I just thought family mattered to you." Why guilt works on the people who care most and bounces off the ones who don't. And what happens the first time you don't take the bait.

Nobody is asking you to be cruel. Just to stop paying for a ticket to a show you never bought.

Got a mess of your own? Send it to info@jeopublishing.com.

More at betweenthecoversmag.com — or read the magazine free in the BTC Magazine app, iOS and Android.

Bitch Fest is a Between the Covers production.

Kelsey from Cleveland writes in because her seven-year-old daughter was the only child in her entire class not invited to a birthday party. The only one. When she asked the other mother what happened, the answer was: "oh, I just thought your daughter wouldn't enjoy it."

Sweetheart. She wouldn't enjoy it because you made damn sure of it.

Joseph gets into grade-school social politics, where seven-year-olds are vetted for guest lists harder than intelligence recruits and the mothers running it have less self-awareness than a reality star three martinis deep. Plus a tribute to Terry the crossing guard, who sees more drama before 8:45am than the entire cast of any Housewives franchise and does it in a reflective vest.

Got a mess of your own? Send it to info@jeopublishing.com.

More at betweenthecoversmag.com — or read the magazine free in the BTC Magazine app, iOS and Android.

Bitch Fest is a Between the Covers production.

A bonus one, because this could not wait until December. Or October. Or whenever we have all agreed the year is allowed to start.

It is September. Joseph is in Costco on Highway 7 buying sunscreen, in shorts, in twenty-eight degrees, and there is a fourteen-foot pre-lit Christmas tree in the middle of the aisle next to an inflatable snowman. Nobody says anything. Everybody just pushes their cart around it.

So he says something. Out loud. To a stranger.

This one is about the people who stole the calendar. The conference room that decided December should start in September. Gina, in a puffer vest and Uggs in August, posting an iced pumpkin spice latte captioned "fall vibes" while the trees behind her are bright green. Spirit Halloween moving into whatever died this year. And the one thing in this country that still happens exactly when it is supposed to: tomato season in Woodbridge, with the uncle guarding the pot and two aunts fighting about the basil.

Also a confession involving a fourteen-foot Christmas tree currently sitting in a garage in King City.

You are not getting ahead of December. You are deleting September.

Got a mess of your own? Send it to info@jeopublishing.com.

More at betweenthecoversmag.com — or read the magazine free in the BTC Magazine app, iOS and Android.

Bitch Fest is a Between the Covers production.