It was beautiful out today—the sun dipped between the treetops, the green meadow forest outside, turning into diamonds from the dew of rain, and the the air felt slightly chill but comfortable. I felt fresh today and woke up looking forward to the day. It wasn't until there was a rap at my door as I was making my bed that I heard a choir of singing ensue.
"Happy Birthday to you. . ." I looked toward the door and widened my eyes in horror—abysmally dressed up like gollum, one of my favorite movie and book characters, was my dad, horrendously trying to do an impression while simuletionouksy singing and making sure the candles on a plate of pancakes didn't completely melt the vanilla ice cream on top. He was of course in one of his gollum suits—bald head and all. Behind him, was Kimi with a cam recorder, smiling impishly.
"Dad," I groaned, feeling mortified, especially when I was still in my spider man jumpsuit. I tried to hide behind my pillows in my bed out of shame and to hide my existence from any second-hand emabrssment in my near future.
But dad still kept going, a wide smile beaming on his face. He was enjoying this—he was enjoying humiliating me and I just know he was gonna use this as extortion when I was well approaching my teens. I was only twelve, but still, a girl didn't need the horrific image of her father and his near-tight body suit impersonating gollum as a constant birthday reminder. I mean, ever since I was four and laughed the first time dad did a gollum impression of the scene where he was slapping fish around, dad has always tried to gage another reaction like that. And I loved it. Constantly. I mean, we practically read the Lord of the Rings every night, until one day, I just got sick of it.
That tends to happen when you get older and grow up. I was twelve, which meant no more Barbie's, no more playing tag, no pretend games, and absolutely no gollum impressions. I was moving up in the chain of middle school—I couldn't risk the horror of this getting out. I immediately hid my face in my pillows, simply mortified my dad has chosen this day, of all days, to do this. And he even stooped so low as to record it as permeant evidence.
I could hear him laughing, but he continued singing anyways. Kimi somewhere in the midst was trying to restrain her own laughter—it made me wonder, what did she even see in my dad? Because when he did shit like this, it tended to lower his score on the rizz factor and literally just a general sense of worth.
But I knew why he was doing it—I loved it when I was a kid, so why not still? He obviously didn't see I was growing up—and for that reason, I couldn't get mad at him especially when he brought me pancakes with ice cream. Peeking, just a little with one eye, I couldn't contain the urge to act like I was bothered. My dad looked like he was a newborn baby, but an ugly one, that just fell out of the womb and was holding pancakes dancing around making a fool of himself. I loved every second of it. And then I laughed—and I laughed so hard, I began to tear up, the water practically drowned my eyeballs and my stomach hurt I couldn't breathe.
