I just can't shake this feeling of absolute uselessness, it’s gnawing at me. Like, I’m supposed to be the dad, the one who has the answers, or at least can figure them out, right? But tonight, Owen, my son, he comes to me with this chemistry homework, and it wasn’t just a quick question, it was… advanced. Like, organic chemistry, all these crazy diagrams and reactions I vaguely remember from high school, if even that, and it was just a blur. I mean, I don't even— whatever. I spent a whole hour pretending to understand, staring at the textbook, trying to pull something, anything, from the back of my brain, but it was just a blank, a total void. I’m a *janitor* for crying out loud. I push a broom, I empty trash cans at 3 AM while the city sleeps, and I'm good at it, I work hard, but it doesn't exactly prepare you for explaining redox reactions or whatever that even is. And he's smart, really smart. He deserves to go to a good school, a *great* school. We’ve always talked about it, how he's going to get out there and do something big, something I couldn't. But how can he, when I can’t even help him with a damn science problem? It’s not just about this one assignment, it's the bigger picture, the whole trajectory of his life, and I feel like I'm actively hindering him. He’s already got so much stacked against him, with our financial situation, and now he has a dad who’s basically a dead end when it comes to anything academic. He just looked at me with that hopeful, trusting look, and I had to tell him to go ask his mom, which feels like such a cop-out, a failure on my part. I just kept thinking, what kind of example am I setting? That it’s okay to just… not know? To give up? I see other dads at parent-teacher conferences, talking about their careers, their degrees, and I just stand there feeling like a total imposter. It’s infuriating, this feeling of inadequacy, this anger at myself for not being more, for not being able to provide that one crucial thing he needs right now. He needs support, not just financially, but intellectually, and I’m just coming up short, and it's making me sick to my stomach, honestly. What if this actually costs him something important, something irreplaceable, because I couldn't explain a chemical equation? The thought just keeps circling, over and over again, and I can't turn it off.