When I was a small starry eyed kid I was confident that my parents had a special marriage, a cosmic romance that would last forever. Strangers would often remark on how unique our family was, because of our parent's youth and six kids. This left me with the impression that we were different, perhaps somehow even better, than most other families. Our parents had lucked out and concocted a formula for a perfect family unit. They often told us that they didn't believe in divorce; for us it was a mythical creature, akin to the Tooth Fairy or Santa Claus.
On the weekends it was routine for Dad to break out his acoustic guitar and serenade Mom with love songs. "Their song" was a sweet ballad by Loggins and Messina called, "Danny's song". The chorus went "And even though we ain't got money, I'm so in love with ya honey, and everything will bring a chain of love. And in the morning when I rise, you bring a tear of joy to my eyes, and tell me everything is gonna be alright. The song seemed to encapsulate their relationship perfectly and from my perspective proved they had a fairy tale romance.
But by the time that their sixth child was born, the relationship had curdled. Our parents didn't enjoy being around each other, the enchantment was gone. They no longer laughed or shared tender moments. The first time I our Mom used the forbidden "F word", she screamed "FUCK YOU WADE" at the climax of an intense fight over the proper uses of Tupperware. In response he slammed the door so hard, a cascade of pictures fell off the wall, glass exploding in all directions. Dad commanded us children into the car, as he stormed past. He took us to a bookstore for a few hours, to give Mom time to cool off. While leafing through a copy of Roald Dahl's "The Witches", I first had the thought that my parents might get divorced.
They quarreled constantly and during the most inappropriate situations. Driving back from our Grandfathers Funeral blitzkrieg erupted when Dad insulted Granny for not having any job prospects. He judged her harshly for signing up for government welfare, a common crutch in the coalfields. Mom reminded him that her husband had just died a few days ago, after a yearlong battle with cancer. "Daddy isn't even cold in the ground yet. Your own Mom is on food stamps!" The ride home was three hours long; and they utilized every second of it to scream, rant, and verbally attack our grandparents. We children could not believe Dad would say this kind of stuff about our Granny, especially when we had attended the funeral that very morning.
During the middle of the bickering we swung a drive thru to pick up lunch. Mom started eating her food. Dad demanded that she eat it faster so they could reinstate the conversation. He didn't permit anyone in the family to talk with food in their mouth. Mom tried chewing faster but it wasn't good enough for him, he jerked the sandwich out of her hands, said. "This will teach you to eat faster when I tell you to", then he ate the entire thing in front of her. Mom reverted to her go to method of dealing with him, stonewalling. She crossed her arms and just agreed with what he said until he burnt himself out.
Dad wasn't just severe with his family; he sometimes went too far with complete strangers. We went through a McDonalds drive thru one evening and ordered 50 chicken nuggets. After we had paid the pimply faced cashier asked us to pull up to the yellow line because it would be a five minute wait. Dad refused to pull up. He said it was always longer than five minutes and they shouldn't have something on the menu if it wasn't ready to immediately go out the window. The cashier tried to explain that he had customer's waiting behind us and he couldn't serve them unless we pulled up. Dad refused to budge.
The cashier left his post and got his manager and a security guard (the store had been robbed often so they had hired a guard). The manager asked Dad to pull forward and explained that they couldn't keep hundreds of chicken nuggets on hand all day because they would get thrown away. Dad became hostile raising his voice and telling them that they couldn't make him move. The security guard came out of the store and approached the station wagon.
YOU ARE READING
I Am My Own Cousin.
Kurgu OlmayanMy parents were teenagers when they had a set of identical triplets, quickly followed by three more children. They decided to home school us, move us into the back of a TV/VCR repair store, and embraced a religious/conspiracy zealousness that the wo...
