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Marriage, parenting, family drama — someone's gotta say what we're all thinking, and Joseph Tito is just unhinged enough to do it. Every week Joseph — gay dad of twin girls, bestselling author, and a menace with a microphone — reads your messiest letters and torches the villains with savage wit, brutal honesty, and just enough heart to remind you you're not alone in the chaos. From husbands who treat wives like free secretaries with dental benefits, to in-laws who think love has a rulebook, nothing is safe from the roast. Therapy meets stand-up meets that friend who's three glasses of wine deep and finally telling the truth. Send your mess to betweenthecoversmag.com. This is Joseph Tito — and I bitch so you don't have to.
There's one at every school. She parks in the fire lane like it was built for her. In her mind, it was. She's been ticketed so many times, the parking officer sends her a Christmas card. Her daughter is an angel.
Joseph Tito:Just ask her. She'll tell you. In the office, at full volume, in leggings so tight I could read her mind. The school has a folder on her. Not the kid, her.
Joseph Tito:The folder has a sequel. The sequel has a director's cut. Welcome to Bitch Fest.
Theme song:Welcome to the Bitch Fest. Sisterhood Supreme. Sip that tea, spill the shade. Hear our sassy dreams. Yes.
Theme song:I own a mic. This is how we make. We're loud and unfiltered. Stay tuned,
Joseph Tito:I'm Joseph Tito. Gay dad. Twin girls. King City, Ontario. Last week, I asked you, do you have any moms you want me to roast?
Joseph Tito:My DMs have never filled up that fast. Not for a giveaway. Not for a shirtless photo. Not even the shirtless photo where my mother commented, put a shirt on, the whole family can see you. Nothing.
Joseph Tito:You people want this woman gone. One mom wrote, roast the mom who thinks her daughter's an angel when her daughter's the one making every other girl miserable. Another wrote, the mom who blames everything on your kid and throws it right back at you. My daughter did this because of you and your daughter. Because of you and your daughter.
Joseph Tito:Like it's a group project. So before anybody at pick up starts guessing, this isn't one woman. You sent me her from every school in the province. She's not a person. She's a franchise.
Joseph Tito:There's one in every plaza, like a Tim Hortons. I just happen to have one too, because I live in King City. And if you don't know King City, the moms here don't drive to pick up. They arrive. Range Rover, idling since 02:15.
Joseph Tito:Blowout that cost more than your mortgage payment. The horses up here have better mental health plans than the teachers. And every single one of those women thinks her kid is gifted. We have more gifted children per capita than NASA. And I'm a gay man.
Joseph Tito:I can smell drama through drywall. I smelled this bitch from the parking lot. I'm calling her Brenda. This episode is brought to you by Jova Medical Aesthetics. If you're in perimenopause or menopause, and your hormones are running the house like a Brenda, you need Doctor.
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Joseph Tito:I highly recommend her. Okay, back to Brenda.
Theme song:Bitch, vest on. Honey, spill that tea.
Theme song:Shoe bop dish, the dirt can party with me.
Joseph Tito:She's at pickup forty minutes early. Not for her kid, for the audience. Full contour at 08:40 in the morning. I've seen drag queens go to funerals with less face on. She's the admin of every class group chat.
Joseph Tito:Nobody made her admin. She just took it like a raccoon takes your garbage. And then she runs it like a raccoon too, up all night screaming, knocking shit over. She sends four minute voice notes. Four minutes.
Joseph Tito:That's not a message, Brenda. That's a podcast. And I would know because I'm the one with the podcast and mine has a sponsor. Every voice note starts with, I'm not trying to start anything, which is how Brenda starts everything. That sentence is her engine noise.
Joseph Tito:And nobody removes her. You don't remove Brenda. You just quietly start a second group chat without her. Every school has one. It's called the real one.
Joseph Tito:And then there's a third chat to talk about how the second chat is going. I'm in all three. I have notifications off on all three. I read every single message. When the girls were six, Brenda's daughter had a birthday party and she invited one twin, not the other.
Joseph Tito:Now, twins are allowed to have separate friends. She was right. I'll say it on the record. I was also a father with two six year olds and the emotional regulation of a cat in a bathtub, so I did not handle it like an adult. I called her like a talent agent.
Joseph Tito:Hi. So I represent two clients. They travel together. It's a package deal. You want one?
Joseph Tito:You take the set. I'll drive. I'll bring a gift. Nobody has to talk to me. And when she didn't answer right away, I sent a follow-up with a writer.
Joseph Tito:Two juice boxes. Separate goody bags. No clowns. I was negotiating terms. For a party with a bouncy castle at a place that smelled like feet.
Joseph Tito:And she says, like she'd been rehearsing it into her Stanley cup, don't you think even though they're twins, they should have their own friends? Which, again, is correct. It's in every parenting book. And that's what makes Brenda dangerous. She never says anything crazy.
Joseph Tito:She says reasonable things at the exact moment they'll hurt the most. She's a sniper with a Pinterest board. She's the kind of woman who'd ask to speak to the manager at her own funeral. And I, a grown man, said, girl, I'm not fucking dealing with this at six years old. They're going to find out how fucked up the world is soon enough.
Joseph Tito:They don't need the starter kit from you. And since kindergarten, there have been the little head games. You're my best friend today. Tomorrow, you're not. If you play with her, you can't play with me.
Joseph Tito:The kids fell for it for years because five year olds fall for everything. Mines still think the ice cream truck plays music when it's out of ice cream. They think the iPad dies at 07:00 because Apple said so. And look, kids test power. That's what kids do.
Joseph Tito:Mine too. The adults are supposed to teach them what not to do with it, not hand them a microphone and a lawyer.
Theme song:Bitch, vest, some honey spill that tea,
Theme song:shoe bop dish, the dirt can party with me.
Joseph Tito:Then my phone rings. It's the school. Every parent knows that feeling. The school's number comes up, and your soul leaves your body and goes and sits in the car. Somebody's bleeding.
Joseph Tito:Somebody bit somebody. The lice are back. The lice are always back. The lice have a lease. Mister Tito, something's come up.
Joseph Tito:Here's what came up. This was a while back. Brenda marches her daughter into the office like she's walking into the Real Housewives reunion. Hair done, ready for the camera. There is no camera.
Joseph Tito:She brought her own lighting. My daughter has a concussion. Stella pushed her. A concussion? Brenda has diagnosed a concussion.
Joseph Tito:Brenda went to the University of Facebook. She did her residency in the comments section. She specialized in mom groups. And the attacker? Stella, seven years old, built like a breadstick.
Joseph Tito:Stella can't open a yogurt without help. Stella lost an arm wrestle to a Capri Sun. So the school checks the cameras, and I need you to appreciate this moment. It's the only time in human history a school security camera has actually worked. Those cameras have missed bikes being stolen, the vice principal's car being keyed, and a raccoon living in the portable since 2019.
Joseph Tito:But this? This they got in four k. God wanted this on tape. And the footage shows Brenda's daughter starting it. All of it.
Joseph Tito:And Stella doing exactly what we taught her: walk away. And on her way past, she brushes her. Brushes. You get harder contact at a Zara sale. If that's a concussion, I've been concussed in every Costco on the 400.
Joseph Tito:I got a concussion from a sample lady last Tuesday. She came at me with a pizza pocket. And you'd think that's the end. Tape doesn't lie. Brenda goes home, pours a glass of wine, thinks about her choices.
Joseph Tito:No. Brenda does not think about her choices. Brenda doesn't have a reverse gear. Brenda was built in a factory that only makes forward and louder. A while later, over something else entirely, she catches me outside the school, and she comes at me.
Joseph Tito:Finger out. Air Canada gate agent volume. Your daughter this. You think that. People slowing down in the drop off loop to watch, like it's a car accident, and I'm the car.
Joseph Tito:I haven't been that tense in a parking lot since my twenties. And back then, honey, it was a very different kind of parking lot. And I stayed calm. I would love to tell you that was growth, that I've done the work, that I breathed in, breathed out, and chose peace. It was inedible.
Joseph Tito:Brenda, you were saved by a gummy. You have never met anything as calm as a gay man on an indica in a school parking lot. I was a lake. I was a spa. I was the voice that tells you your flight is delayed.
Joseph Tito:I was so relaxed I could have given birth, which, for the record, is the only way I didn't have my kids. Somewhere there's a scientist who deserves a medal, because without that gummy, I'd be recording this episode from a holding cell, and my bail would be paid in glitz jewelry. I kept my mouth shut, and I said, okay, I'll talk to my daughter. And I did. I said, Stella, good job walking away.
Joseph Tito:Then I went home and ate the rest of the bag.
Theme song:Bitch, some honey spill that
Theme song:tea, shoe bop dish, the dirt can party with me.
Joseph Tito:At some point, the school told us very gently about this girl. Try to ignore her if you can. Let me translate that for you. We are also afraid of her mother. That's not a policy.
Joseph Tito:That's a hostage video. There are cameras, there's a principal, there's a code of conduct laminated on the wall. And the plan is: the six year olds should handle it. The six year olds, who still need help with a zipper. You want them to manage Brenda?
Joseph Tito:The adults can't manage Brenda. The adults have a separate group chat about it. And I don't even blame the person who said it. They've met Brenda. Calling Brenda about her daughter isn't a phone call.
Joseph Tito:It's an appeal hearing you didn't know you were attending. And she's already got a concussion ready, a lawyer on speed dial, and an Instagram story drafted. And then it all comes out. Every parent feels the same way. It starts with one mom at pickup, leaning out of her Range Rover going, she's a lot, And you go, yeah.
Joseph Tito:And she goes, oh, thank God. And suddenly, it's a support group at the bike rack. There's a mom crying. A dad who hasn't spoken in years says, she reported my minivan. To the minivan, everybody has a story.
Joseph Tito:Nobody has said a word. Brenda has been talked about more than a Kardashian divorce, and she has no idea. The only thing Brenda has ever raised is her voice, and nobody will say any of this to her face, which is exactly what I'm doing right now into a microphone in a room over my garage. Is it brave? No.
Joseph Tito:It's the least brave thing a man has ever done, but it's what I've got. And look, my girls are the best. I'm their father. I'm required to say that. It was in the surrogacy paperwork.
Joseph Tito:Page nine. Right under the part about who pays for therapy. But Brenda thinks the same thing about hers. Every parent at that school is walking around with the exact same certainty, and a different kid. And I've done it too.
Joseph Tito:A while back, the school tells me one of my girls used the n word to a kid in our neighborhood, and I went full Brenda. Absolutely not. Not my daughter. My girls were born in Kenya. A black woman carried them.
Joseph Tito:This is not my child. And sure enough, she'd said it. She picked it up at school, the way kids pick up everything. I was mortified. I made her apologize, and then I made her buy the apology with her own money, lip gloss, squishies, a whole gift bag, the most expensive word she's ever said.
Joseph Tito:Girl, this is not who we are, ever. Your father is a gay man. I have been called every word there is. We do not do that in this house. So, yes, I've been Brenda for about fifteen minutes.
Joseph Tito:The difference is I let the tape play. So the kids are going to do what kids do. The question is what the grown ups teach them gets rewarded. If yelling in the office gets you what you want, that's the lesson. If walking away gets your dad a phone call, that's a lesson too.
Joseph Tito:So here's all I'd say. If it's happening to your kid, write it down, and ask the school what the plan is for the kid doing it, not just the kid it's happening to. And if somebody tells you something about your kid, say, okay, I'll talk to my daughter, then actually do it. Turns out it works even without the edible. It works better with the edible, but it works.
Joseph Tito:Quick thing before I go. My memoir, The Dad Diaries, 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 are at thedaddiaries.com. It's also on Amazon and Indigo.
Joseph Tito:And I'm doing an actual book signing. Sunday, October 18 at Hillcrest Mall from two to four. I'll be signing and reading a passage from the book. If you're in Richmond Hill, Aurora, Woodbridge, anywhere around there, come down. I see you.
Joseph Tito:It's a drive. Bring snacks. I'd love to see you, and I'd love to sign your book. And the BTC Magazine app is free. App Store, Google Play.
Joseph Tito:That's where you send me your stories. And the Pilates mom, the water mom, and the petition mom, I saw you. Unfortunately, I have notes. I'm still going to wave at Brenda at pickup. Big smile.
Joseph Tito:Because that's who I am, and because she'd report me if I didn't. And Brenda, the school says to try to ignore you if we can. Don't worry. The whole bike rack's been practicing. This is Joseph Tito, and I bitch so you don't have to.
Theme song:Well, darlings, that's our scene tonight, but the tea's still hot and the spark still ignite. So stick around, honey, for the next contest. We'll see you soon at the next Bitch Fest.