Did you know you can break people?
I was upstairs one morning when I was ten years old, playing Zelda: A Link to the Past, I remember I just got the flippers from the Zora, when my dad yells up at me, asking if I did my homework. I say, "Oops, I forgot." Big mistake. It was Sunday. I couldn't do homework on Sunday. I had to show initiative. But, y'know, I had a humongous 2-3 page packet on fractions to do. I mean, I know I only solved P versus nP in the present day, but the odds of me being able to complete this homework assignment in the eight or more hours of daylight I had left was infitesimal at best, so I deserved what followed, obviously.
I did math. Y'know. Is 3/4 bigger than 2/3? A pipe or some shit broke - to this day I don't know exactly, I've always said it was sewage, but it was just water...and he sucked it up with a shop vacuum...like, I think the fucking shower cut-off valve sprung a leak...that's what's reasonable because he was going right to the bottom of the stairs in the basement and to the right, filling up the vac and then haul it up - but I had to stop to open both the basement then kitchen door in good timing while being growled at. I fucked up. I got thrown to the floor in front of the lazy Susan in the kitchen. I say he "bashed" my head. He says this never happened. He held me down and shook me he says. "Rattled" might be a good word, but the back of my head was thrust into the linoleum floor several times in quick succession, leading to my glasses flying off before he slapped them away and said "you don't need those."
He goes back downstairs. I have to keep opening the door. I sorta fuck up, slamming the door as he went through (the way our kitchen/basement was set up, it was in an S-bend in the hallway so you couldn't get out with both doors open), causing him to yell at me. He dumps the water, sucks some more up, and I fuck up and open the door too quickly so it slams into the wall. He dumps the water, then lunges in and back on the floor I go. More head thumps.
More door. It teeters down, I guess. He says he's done. Stays out to smoke. Well, shit. Better do some of that homework that was gunna make or break my academic career. He comes back in. "Who told you to do your homework?" I have a mini panic attack. He rolls his eyes. Not a minute later he gets a phone call. It's Kathy. That was one of the moms I had at one point. We went on a picnic or some shit with her kids. It was a nice afternoon for him.
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Damn op. Your dad is not alright.
Another memory with Kathy involves her calling asking if we want to go ice skating. I hadn't been ice skating since I was four with my mom, and I wanted to go, and this is the shit I don't understand. He asked me if I wanted to go. I say sure or some shit. He gets mad. Pissy mad. I don't know why. We go. He sits in thr bleachers, angry. I'm fucking about not knowing how to skate and fall on my butt. This happens multiple times. I cry. Kathy is nice to me. My dad is quietly livid. We go back to her place. We watch Bedazzled. It's over, Kathy assumes we're staying the night. Nope. My dad says we're leaving. He yells at me the whole way home, slamming my head into the window multiple times, particularly hard when we were going over that metal bridge in Radisson. That was the upper middle class neighborhood where Kathy lived, being a rocket scientist, literally, as my dad networked with on a dating site where I feel confident in saying I am certain he used pictures of his Jaguar he bought with my social security money and my mom's life insurance. Like, I don't even know. My father never talked to me about this shit. He never talked to me about anything! But money was always so God damn important and I stopped pursuing interests to conform to the onslaught of challenges fostered to me by what I must ascribe as my father letting the school raise me.
In the last couple years, I asked him a question about a relationship issue I was having with my life partner. He sent an email that demonstrated a wisdom and a capacity to communicate that he NEVER employed with me when I was young. Like, you teach through communication. He taught me with his punishments.
Like, ffs. After my mom died, he got a magnet for the fridge. It said "No ifs, ands, or..." and then it was a bunch of asses in thongs, and my dad tells me that's the meaning of life. This literally happened. I am agog at this. This is blowing my fucking mind. Wow. Reminds me of a quote from a Brad Pitt character:
"How do you know you're crazy? Maybe your just sitting around, reading Gun n Ammo, masturbating in your own feces. Do you just stop and go, 'wow, it is amazing how fucking crazy I really am.?"