My 4-year-old trotted into the house after preschool this week and burst into song:
“What Would Koe Wetzel Do?
What Would Koe Wetzel Do?”
I laughed for a minute before realizing what had just happened: my own flesh and blood, 4-year-old “angel” swapped “Jesus” with “Koe Wetzel” in an uplifting song from church preschool.
Lord, please forgive him, for he knows not what he has done. Blame the parents instead.
I talk about Koe a lot around the house. It’s tough not to when I’m fed a steady diet of Instagram videos starring Koe and his band mates having a raging good time on tour.
It’s a form of escapism to watch a booze-crushing, back-slapping, good-timing rock star like Koe live his best and most degenerate life. Living that way is unobtainable for me, so I scroll through Koe’s feed, laugh at the hijinks, and settle into bed at 9:45pm to keep scrolling for two more hours like a normal, exhausted parent with visions of tour bus Chug Buds and stick ball parking lot bombs and Waffle House runs dancing through my dreams.
“What Would Koe Wetzel Do?” I chuckle as I drift off to sleep.
My dreams of living vicariously through Koe trickled down to my kids, though, and that is not ideal. Nobody’s perfect, but I’d prefer my son pick a role model who doesn’t start songs with “I left town with a chip on my shoulder toting $27 worth of cheap cocaine,” or “Throw that bottle of whiskey under the seat, light a cigarette so he don’t smell the weed.”
I tried to filter Koe through a PG-rated lens for some wholesome, family laughs. In my household, the caricature of Koe was a comical, mythical creature who didn’t sleep, made poor choices, and couldn’t get enough beers and tacos.
But that all started to backfire one day when the Koe character got a little too personal.
“Daddy, you’re Koe Wetzel.”
“Why am I Koe Wetzel?”
“Because you drink LOTS of beers and eat too many tacos… and then you FART!”
Maybe it was my dark man-bun, or my beers and taco-fueled pandemic weight gain, or the growing evidence that I am nothing but a clown to my kids most days. But somehow my kids’ perception of me melded with the hilarious yet morally questionable Koe Wetzel caricature floating through Instagram feeds everywhere, and that is not ideal either.
My boys are young, so there’s still time to rehab my image and to become a different kind of role model for them: the kind who’s known for love and values rather than for beers and farts.
This summer I’ll clean up my act a little, and maybe I’ll imitate someone a little more wholesome than Koe Wetzel, for my kid’s sake… right after I’m done catching Koe in California for this summer’s tour.
Nobody’s perfect.
