The Divorce

This is probably the most fucked up story about my dad.  It is the one that I hate telling the most.  The one that I hate thinking about.  But because this is a family history and folklore collection it must be put in for posterity.  Even if it shows the uglier side of my father.

My parents met in Houston Texas.  My mother was from a small farming town in Ohio.  She excelled in school, and like her mother, wanted to become a nurse.  She followed her dreams and graduated from a major college within Ohio with her nursing degree.  She could begin to start helping people.  But Ohio just wouldn’t do.  She had bigger and better ideas and thought she could implement them down south in Houston.  A city to match her ambition.

So she moved to Houston with her sister, my aunt.  And from the stories that I have heard from other family and friends they lived life to the fullest down there.  Partying it up.  Meeting new people.  Exploring the city and experiencing everything that it had to offer.  Generally living life to the fullest.

One story in particular was the night my mother and my aunt got super wasted.  Totally trashed.  In their stupor they decided to drive home from the bar, since it was only, like, a couple blocks away.  However, within those blocks one of them threw up, violently, which in turn caused the other to join in.  Vomit was all over the inside of the car.  The dash, the carpets, the seats.  Everywhere.  What do they decide is the best course of action to take care of this horrid and horrible mess?  Head to the nearest car wash, fling open the doors and power wash the inside of the car.  Now that’s some fast and loose living.

And in this controlled and perpetual mayhem that youth allows she met my father at the Hospital that she worked at.  He too was living the fast and loose lifestyle and they were immediately drawn together.  She was his better half.  She encouraged him to dream bigger, to stop being an orderly and go back to school to become a nurse.  And so he did.  There love intensified.  They moved in together.  They decided to get married.  And the rest, as they say, is history.

Then they moved to Ohio. 

I don’t really know what happened but I do know this.  My mother wanted to move to be closer to her family.  And my dad didn’t speak and or see his family regularly so it seemed like it was ok.  And once up here they began to drift apart.  You could feel the tension in the house.  We were witnessing their marriage slowly fall apart.  It got worse and worse until they finally divorced.  We were all very sad.  My mother was devastated.  See, she is from a strict Catholic background.  This was never supposed to happen to her.  When you say those words, and take those vows, your supposed to be together forever and until death.  My mother was devastated.  Emotionally and physically.  Her world was turned upside down.  We never knew the extent of this devestation, of this betrayal, until much much later.

I remember the day.  The wounds from the divorce were fresh in all of us.  It was still sinking in.  We were still coming to terms with everything.  My father picked us up, my siblings and I, to take us to the local park.  Iris and Luke were busy playing off in the distance.  My father was sitting on the water fountain.  He told me to come sit next to him, he wanted to try to explain everything that was going on.  See, as he said, I was going to be the man of the house now that he was gone.  I was the oldest, my shoulders the largest and thus most prepared to carry the immense burden that was to befall us due to the particular circumstances.  I had to be strong, I was his little man.  I looked at him, not fully understanding everything that he was telling me, but understanding how serious this responsibility was that was to come to pass.

He went on further.  Looking back, in his own way, my father wanted me to understand what exactly was happening.  What the cause of all this turmoil was.  However, he wanted me to see it through rose colored glasses.  Through his eyes.  In his twisted way my father wanted me to see the divorce as not a result of his actions, but as a result of my mothers.  He wanted me to be on his side.  I do not doubt that he loved us, and that he still does very much so, but love can make you do some fucked up shit.  Fucked up shit that can taint a person’s worldview on an major event that happened in their life, with people that they love, for years and years to come.

I sit next to him on the edge of the water fountain.  It is a beautiful cool summer day.  He says he is going to tell me the exact reason for the divorce, why he had to move out.  Why our family was split so violently apart.  According to my father, the blame lay solely with my mother.  After we moved up here my mother got jealous of how much my father loved their children, his children.  She got so jealous of this love that she gave him an ultimatum.  He had to choose to put her first, his wife, before us children.  We were to come second only after her.  My father said he could not do this, that the children had to come first.  That she was to come second.  They could not compromise, could not agree to disagree, and as a result they just had to get a divorce.  It was inevitable.

And this is the story that my father told me on that summer day that shaped the way that I viewed the divorce, and consequently my mother, for years to come.  It wasn’t until I was a young adult that I learned the truth.  A bitter truth that was hard to swallow, but looking back, made total sense.  What really happened is that my father cheated on my mother.  After they moved up to Ohio he began seeing another woman.  And him and this woman broke my mother’s heart so violently, spitting in the face of their vows, mocking everything that my mother believed in that she had no choice but to divorce him.  And I do not blame her.     

The Needle

The needle.  I will never forget such a seires of events as this.  As stated before, my father did homehealth care for the majority of the time that we were with him growing up.  Stuck in cars.  All day.  Penned like small wild animals in a tiny, musty, muggy cage.  As a result of his particular profession we got to see first hand all of the tools of his trade, kept in a giant tackle box.  The band aids and gauzes, the medical tape, syringes, bio hazardous plastic waste containers, big rubber bands used to tie off the arm to draw blood.  Also, as a side note, said bands were awesome when used for slingshots.  So much power. 

I bet there was enough potential energy in one of those rubber bands to kill a person with a well-placed shot.  Combine the ingenuity I had then in making such weapons with the strength that I posses today and I would be damned if I couldn’t bring an average human male down with a sniped shot to the temple, or throat, or eye.  Or at least bring them into a permanent vegetative state of sorts.  But I digrees.

Among the cacophony of medical supplies we used to rummage through in that big box, none stood out more than those needles.  So many needles of so many sizes.  Big large needles that scared the shit out of me and teeny tiny needles so small they looked like a strand of hair had fallen on the needle assembly line and got accidentally packaged up.  Just so many damn needles. 

I never understood what my fascination was with them but fascinated I was nonetheless.  I was drawn to them.  They seemed forbidden at that age.  I knew I shouldn’t be looking at them, let alone handling them in their packages.  But I was drawn to it like a fly drawn to shit.  Coupled with angry frantic scolds from my father every time he saw us in his medical supply box only intensified my fascination with what lay within.  That’s the problem with kids.  You tell them, explicitly and sternly, not to fuck with something and you can guarantee the moment you turn your back there up there fucking shit up.  But if you act like shit aint a big deal then more times than not they lose interest mighty fast.  Afterall, we were just looking at medical supplies, nothing fancy.  But the fact that we weren’t supposed to be looking at them is what did me in on this particular day.

As I said there were tons of needles.  I mean needles everywhere.  My fathers go with the flow highly indifferent attitude permeated all aspects of his life.  Needless to say his care and storage of his medical supplies was one of them.  I can not stress enough just how many needles he had and that they were literally everywhere.  On the dashboard.  Scattered throughout the floor.  In the trunk.  Between the cracks of the seats.  How much of this was due to us fucking with his shit, or to his gross negligence, I will never know.  I can only assume we hold roughly 50 percent of the blame and the other 50 is firmly in his corner.  Also, before you are all up in arms, the needles were not completely exposed.  Like a needle just laying on the carpet.  Rather they were in little plastic cases with little tiny lids that the end of the needle stuck in.  So by opening the lid you pull the needle out with it as it was attached.  It was not complete pandemonium people. 

So on this fateful day, needles everywhere, we pull up to a house.  On our way there there was one particular needle that was laying at my feet.  A smaller one, quite dainty, with a pink plastic cap.  I picked it up, analyzing it, moving it from hand to hand.  My father noticed this after some time and immediately gave me ‘the talk.’  That is, the needle talk.  How those were dangerous.  How they could have a patients blood on them and that if I pricked myself I could get whatever disease they had.  How they had the potential to fundamentally alter my life in a totally negative way.  Concepts and ideas that were far beyond my comprehension.  I just heard bad and no.  And bad and no mean come and investigate.

Looking back I can totally see how kids play with their parent’s guns and end up shooting themselves or someone else.  That fucking curiousity can really fuck shit up sometimes.  It can be so incredibly dangerous.  We arrive at his next visit.  I put the needle back on the ground.  He hastily tells me once more not to fuck with the needles.  He leaves the car. 

At this moment I should note that this is where the 50/50 of the blame comes into play.  Because the blame is shared equally among both of us.  Who was wrong in this particular situation?  Both of us.  All’s I know is that if I had a kid and he was surrounded by potentially hazardous biological waste I would do everything in my power to remove said waste in order to create as safe an environment as possible.  My father did not do this.  His laissez faire attitude allowed him to justify his verbal warning as more than enough of a deterrent to prevent me from fucking with the needle.  He obviously should have known better.  But as should I.  I knew, without fully knowing, that what I was handling was potentially dangerous.  That in some abstract and foreign way some sort of harm could be induced by this tiny pointy object.  That bad shit could happen if I were to fuck with this needle in the wrong way.  To let sleeping dogs lie and all that.  But I couldn’t.  And I didn’t.

Start scene: my father leaves the car, and once some time has passed, that I have assessed the coast is clear, I pick the needle up.  Like countless other times I stare at it with an abject fascination.  But this time it isn’t enough.  Due to my fathers warning I just had to inspect this seemingly harmless object just a little bit closer.  Had to get a better look, a better understanding of just what all of the hubbub was about.  

I gently take the pink lid off, and with it, slide the needle out of its plastic tube.  I inspect it.  Seemingly harmless enough.  I handle it, passing it from one hand to the other.  So far so good.  And then I prick myself.  A wave of cold fear rushes through my body.  I become frozen.  The gravity of the situation begins to form in my brain as it fires wildly on all cylinders.  A small, bright red droplet of blood forms on the tip of my finger before slowly sliding down its side.  At this moment I know I have fucked up.  I know that I have done something incredibly bad, that this is the worst case scenario.  And I am frozen.  The needle, still attached to its lid in one hand, a small dribble of blood sliding down the other.  And my father comes back to the car.

And he freaks the fuck out.  Jesus he freaked the fuck out.  I literally and figuratively got caught red handed.  His worst nightmare comes to fruition.  I now, as an adult, can understand why he got so mad.  He probably thought that his son just infected himself with HIV and that it was totally his fault.  He was going to go to jail and never see his kids again once my mother and child services got involved. 

The moment I heard the door open I dropped the needle but didn’t have enough time to clean my hand up.  He already knows what has happened by seeing the wound but he needs to know what needle I picked up.  All of the ones laying in the car were clean, but at this moment he thought that I had been playing with the red biohazard container.  That I had pulled the lid off and rummaged within its filthy contents; the bloody bandages and gauze, the used needles and syringes.  The real fucking nasty stuff that again should not have been left in the car with us kids. 

After some yelling on his end and some hysterical crying on mine we finally are able to meet in the middle and deduce that I had only pricked myself with a clean needle.  A virgin untouched needle.  I can see the relief in my father’s face.  The slow release of all the tension that was previously springing forth violently within his body.  He soothes me.  Tells me its ok, that I will be ok.  That I had made a mistake but it was ok now.  I slowly stop crying and regain my composure.  We go get Wendys for lunch and everything is well again.

Schliterbahn

The events that occurred as follows are a true testament to my father’s parenting style.  Loose, easy going and manic.  I love my dad, I really do, but looking back I can’t believe the shit that he did.  The things he thought were ok for us to do.  The ways in which he did them.  So many memories, so many slow, disappointed shakes of the head when recalling them. 

I don’t want to overanalyze.  I don’t want to point fingers.  Yeah, shit could have been better.  But more or less it was pretty good.  This is all meant to be a family folklore, stories and memories written down to be cherished and enjoyed by me and my siblings.  And when recalling such memories and putting them to paper I am often shocked and what actually occurred.  And what my father allowed.  At what he thought was ok.  That’s it.  I don’t blame him for anything.  I don’t hold any ill will.  He did the best, I hope, that he could in the ways that he saw fit.  Nothing more, nothing less.  I wouldn’t be who I am today if it was not for experiences such as this.

And this memory started out as a trip down to Texas.  

All of my fathers family is in Texas, specifically Corpus Christi.  And all of my fathers brothers and sisters live within the city limits yet rarely speak to each other.  This is due to the infighting, blaming, and general ill will that they have towards one another.  A lot of petty shit.  Small things that grow, bigger and bigger, like tree roots.  Sure, that three year old pine tree looks great next to the house, but give it ten years and its roots will be thoroughly fucking the foundation up.  My extended family’s foundation is really fucked up.

And again, I never really figured out what exactly my dad was running away from.  I know why he moved up to Ohio but I don’t know why he has stayed.  After my mother and him got married they lived in a little house and had three kids, us.  And that particular house was in a really shitty part of Houston, people were getting killed and whatnot around us.  This, understandably, made my mom upset and combined with her home sicknesses and longing to be close to her family they moved up to Ohio.  And that is where we have been ever since.

But now that were adults, out of the home, why has my father not moved back?  When we were growing up we heard, constantly, how much he hated Ohio.  How shitty it was.  How horrible it was.  How bad the people were.  The sky sucked in Ohio.  The air had the faint smell of fart.  He just straight up hated it.  And he loved Texas.  Texas was his home.  Thinking back he now sounded like an old timer longing for the days of yore.  But he still hasn’t gone back.  Because he is running; from what I will never know.  But I digress.

Because of living in Ohio, and my father’s general avoidance of his family, we never really got to see them that often.  On average, we have visited his family about once every four years or so.  I could pass my cousins on the street and I wouldn’t recognize them.  I know only a handful of names and faces.  .  But on this particular memory we were on the way to visit the fam.  And we were pumped.

My siblings and I were still all very young at this point.  And this was our first vacation with just  dad.  The excitement was palpable.  A week and a half with dad.  We loved hanging with our pops and this seemed like heaven on Earth.  And more or less it was.  On the lead up to Schliterbahn we saw men in black in Tennessee.  We swam in a giant swimming pool in an empty Tudor style motel.  We ate Popeyes fried chicken until we were sick and comatose.  We watched HBO.  We drove and laughed and had a great time.  And then, once in Texas, we came to Schliterbahn.

For those of you unfamiliar Schliterbahn is a giant waterpark down in Texas.  Its huge.  Like really, really big.  And, since it was the middle of July, it was packed.  Texas is hot as fuck and this day was no exception.  People flocked from all over the state, the country, to take this waterpark in.  It is, I suppose, the Cedar Point of water parks.  Now that’s saying something.

And my father, being my father, was grossly underprepared for this day.  He didn’t have swim trunks so he had to wear athletic shorts.  No problem.  No biggie.  People wouldn’t know the difference, and if they did, fuck em.  He didn’t bring any towels.  We didn’t have a cooler full of treats.  But fuck it, what were we milonaires?  Right after we got done changing in the locker room my dad bent over to pick up his shoes.  His athletic shorts, his one pair, ripped straight down the ass.  It was hilarious and my brother and I rolled with laughter.  My dad laughed too.  Little did we know of the Omen, the symbolism, this tear meant for the day.

Once we changed and geared up with the little gear we had we headed out into the park.  My father, so as to not have his ass exposed to everyone, was forced to wear his under wear under his shorts.  And we walked around and took it all in.  The park grounds were expansive.  The map was of little use.  This place was big and it was a maze of fun.  There were a plethora of rides and wavepools and tubes and slides.  There were lazy rivers.  Not one lazy river but lazy rivers.  That’s something.  It was insane.  My little mind could barely comprehend how magical this place was.  I wanted to ride everything that we came across before I was distracted by the next best thing just right next door.  I couldn’t handle it.  Iris and Luke couldn’t handle it.  It was like dope being shot straight into my little head, right in the frontal cortex.  And then we saw the lines.

The lines, the lines, all the god damn lines.  It was a crushing blow.  It took my breath a way.  The weak sauce shit, yeah no lines.  The heavy stuff, the super fun stuff, lines up the wazoo.  I was too young to fully understand what we were going to encounter on this hot ass day in the middle of the Texas summer.  Everyone was there.  Or at least it felt like it.  And as such, there were lines, hour long lines, for nearly every ride and amusement.  The lazy rivers were even filled to the brim to the point of near anarchy.  People giving elbows and underwater kicks for space.  The water, once cool and refreshing  was now warm from children’s piss and the mass of bodies polluting it with their heat.  My heaven, our heaven, was slowly turning into hell.  But in true Sauceda fashion we made the best of it because the tickets were expensive as fuck.  We weren’t going anywhere and as such we gave into our fate.  Whatever it may be.

After taking it all and sampling the atmosphere we came to a conclusion: we needed to split up.  Because of our respective ages at this time Luke was still very young, like first or second grade young, and Iris and I were just a bit older.  But not much.  Due to our discrepancy in ages our tastes had started to diverge.  Iris and I yearned for the harder, faster, funner rides that this water park mecca had to offer.  Lil bro Luke wanted to take it a bit slower.  He focused more on the wading pools and water infused playgrounds and jungle gyms scattered throughout.  And our father, who was adversed to water and its myriad of recreational activities, wanted to take it slow as well. 

Why my dad hates water, I will never truly know.  What I do know is that it stemmed, in part, from a past childhood trauma that he experienced involving his brother Sonny.  Apparently, as he tells it, it was his first time at a lake.  He, like most children, was excited and nervous to try his hand in the aquatic arts.  That nearly horrible combination of emotions, ripping at your innards, making you both afraid and excited all at once.  The only problem was that he did not know how to swim.  Sonny alleviated this conundrum by grabbing my father, walking to the end of the dock, and throwing him in.  And by God did he learn how to swim that day.  This memory, sadly, has tainted my father’s view of all water based recreation.  But, like with everything my dad says, it must be taken with a grain of salt.  Rather, a salt shaker.  

Four people, divided, with differing tastes and attitudes facing the common problem that lay at hand.  What options were there but to split up?  And that is exactly what we did.  Except, looking back, there were some issues.  One can be blamed on the excitement.  Once we had discussed what was to come and agreed on the terms, my and Iris’s mind must have shut down.  Imploded from excitement.  We were in overdrive.  This would have never, ever passed with my hella controlling mother, this modicum of responsibility, this bread crumb of independence.  And it retrospect it probably shouldn’t have happened with my father.  But nevertheless we were buck wild and ready to run free.  As such, we never discussed with my dad when we were to meet up, and where we were to meet up for that matter. 

Again, where does the blame lie?  Granted, dad probably should have never let us diverge, but he did.  And since he did, you would think that he would have had the foresight to think of how we were going to find each other again.  But, I cannot lay all the fault on my father, because we should have thought of this as well. 

Coupled with this was the time that we were living in as well.  Again, I feel old as fuck for writing this, but cell phones were still very much a novelty.  Swanky swanksters had them in their cars, with the pig tail antenna announcing to the world how fucking awesome they were.  The main craze sweeping the nation at this point in the technological timeline was beepers.  My father had a beeper.  Drug dealers had beepers.  Wall street hot shots had beepers.  It was all the rage and I thought they were cool as fuck, even though now the concept is quite antiquated.  But, since we were on vacation, my dad did not have his beeper with him.  Today, if this were to happen, alls you would have to do would be to borrow some ones phone, text whoever you were looking for and shit would again be kosher.  Back then, we didn’t know what the fuck was to come.

So, to recap, here is where were at: we walk around Schliterbahn, realize our group wants different things, decide to split up after not thoroughly discussing anything of relevance in order to find each other again, and then run wild.  And running wild we did.  Me and Iris went all over the park and had the time of our lives, lines be damned.  We felt like adults and god damnit if we didn’t act like em.  We balanced checkbooks.  We held doors open for strangers.  We stood around a water cooler and made chit chat.  We took out a mortgage on a house we could barely afford and lived paycheck to paycheck.  It was great.  But, after time, the dream started to fade. 

As you may know water parking it up can be a strenuous activity.  You have to climb stairs, all the stairs.  The adrenaline from the more adventurous rides begins to wear you down.  Your exposed, at all times, to the hot, summer Texas sun.  You are swimming or running or diving and generally living life to the fullest while at a water park.  This fast and loose lifestyle does begin to take its toll.  The thirst came first, creeping in from the periphery.  Your saliva starts to get thick, your throat a bit dry.  You wear out.  No problem-o, we just took a drink from the many water fountains scattered across the park.  But then the hunger started to set in.  And hunger is a different beast, it is one that hits fast and hard.

And when hunger set it we woke up from the dream.  The pains of hunger brought with it the horrible, painful truth of our current situation  We didn’t have any money, we were fucking kids.  And we were kids in a huge ass water park 1000 miles from home or anyone that could help us.  And we were kids that didn’t make a through plan of attack with our dad on how we were to find him again.  When we were to meet up, where we were to meet up.  Fear, so slowly, began to slither into our cores.  We started to freak the fuck out.

This once joyous place had turned against us.  Its size, once something to behold and admire, was now a curse, a big fuck you and good luck in finding anyone, let alone your father.  Looking back it kind of felt similar to when you take LSD or mushrooms and shit starts to go south.  You know shits about to get real bad but there’s not one god damn thing that you can do about it.  The once comfortable environment, full of loving friends, becomes sinister.  Everything becomes darker, everyone becomes more malevolent.  This is what Schilterbahn had become for us, my sister and I.

What were we to do, what were we to do?  The panic was controlled, kept at bay, for the first hour of searching for our father.  We reasoned to ourselves and one another, made it right with words.  Where were we, Africa, some slum in a former Soviet state?  No, we were in the USA.  We ain’t dying in this water park, not today.  The morale, though strained, remained for the most part positive as we walked and looked, walked and looked for our father.  All over the park, walking and looking for dad.

By the second hour of searching shit was whipped into a near frenzy.  We were hungry, starving, lost, tired and freaking the fuck out.  Our hierarchy of needs were not being met.  We stalked the grounds, scanning, searching, hoping to see our dad.  To hear his voice, elated, crying out amongst the crowds, ecstatic that he was reunited with his children.  But his voice did not come.  We didn’t know what to do but to keep doing what we were.  And that was walking, looking, scanning for our father.  Hoping and praying that we would find him.  But he was nowhere to be seen. 

And its funny, or sad based on your outlook and life views, because I just realized that I only pray when shit is really going sour, when I could really use some help.  Never for other people, never for world peace or whatever but only when my shits fucked and I could use an invisible hand.  I guess I am a greedy prayer person.  But I digress.

Once hour three rolled around we had mostly given up on ever seeing our father, resigned to our fate and ready to give ourselves over to whatever may come.  Iris tried to lie down and die on the pavement.  I thought about it, but through cracked dry lips encouraged her with words that we both knew were empty.  But on we went.  We were even hungrier, tireder, thirstier, and emotional drained, utterly and totally, by this point.  We were just going through the motions.  Slowly shuffling through the park, trying to look out through squinted eyes for our father, hoping he would see us and swoop us up.  We were defeated and deflated.

And then it happened, the moment we thought we would never experience again.  We heard it, faint at first, a shout followed by a cry.  We turned, dizzy from exhaustion and hunger, barely able to focus on the mass of people moving in and out of one another.  I saw read shorts, black hair, it looked like my father, but the man I knew was dead, lost somewhere over Shcliterbahn. 

The apparition came closer, closer.  And then it swooped us up, my sister and I, in a bone crunching hug.  It was our dad, our dad.  He had found his children and we had found our father.  

The relief, it was immense.  We sank into his arms.  That hug felt like it lasted for an hour.  All the tension, the fear, the grief melted away instantly.  Whatever had just happened no longer mattered because we were finally with our dad.  He took us back to the kiddie pool where little bro Luke was waiting and we got the fuck out of Schilterbahn and smashed on some Whataburger.  And what a meal it was. 

Fix a Flat Fails

The beaters were a constant part of our lives growing up with our father.  Like women, or men, they come and they go.  But one beater in particular stood out.  It withstood, or attempted to, the test of time.  This beater was the Isuzu Trooper II.

This was, according to my dad, his first real car.  My mother and father met in Houston, courted, fell in love and eventually got married.  My mother’s parents were also very wealthy.  Wealthy in spirit but also wealth in the benjamins.  My grandfather, on my mom’s side, had come back from the Korean war, married my grandmother, bought a farm and worked at a meatpacking plant.  His farm thrived and they spent their money wisely.  Through hard work and ambition he worked his way up the ladder until he landed the CEO spot.  He was in the big leagues.  They had money but this was due in large part in how they managed their money.  They lived below their means.  They weren’t extravagant.  They didn’t yearn for the newest car, or the McMansion in the suburbs, or whatever was the equivalent during the period.  They had their shit on lockdown and lived very comfortably.

Because of what they had earned through hard work my grandparents were able to help their children out.  A lot.  School was paid for.  Houses were co-signed.  Shit like that.  Again, nothing extravagant, but a big step up on the rest of the American game.  And this generosity was also gifted upon my father.  At this point in time my parents, I hope, were still very much in love.  And he was a part of the family.  If shit went down my grandparents were more than willing to help out.  And they did time and time again.

One such instance was with my father and his car.  A little Isuzu Pup.  He was traveling home from work when the tire blew out.  Catastrophically.  I can still remember when the truck was towed backed to the house, how sharp the rubber was as my little hand surveyed the damage.  It looked like something out of a cartoon, the way the tire flayed out from the rupture.  But I digress.

The tire, hell bent on creating collateral damage upon its death, more or less destroyed the truck.  It was  a cheap import with high miles and more or less wasn’t worth fixing.  My mother relayed this to her parents and they swooped on down and picked up the pieces.  And by that I mean they wrote my dad a check for ten grand.

And after much looking and perusing, and probably praying from my mother, they decided to get an Isuzu Trooper II.  A state of the art sport utility vehicle recently introduced into the American market as a competitor for Jeep.  And it did that most effectively by being incredibly cheaper.

My dad loved this car and took care of it.  He nursed it.  He changed its oil.  He cleaned it, carefully and lovingly.  It was, besides his children, his baby.  He had a strong emotional connection with this car.  This connection resulted in him dumping loads of money, so much money, to keep this beast on the road.

But never the tires.  Never the god damn tires.  Many take for granted how fucking important tires are on vehicles.  They transmit the power to the ground.  The give us traction when driving.  They can be exceptionally vulnerable.  They wear out.  And this wear can be dangerous.  When a tire blows it can not only fuck up your day but also the days of others motorists nearby when shit hits the fan.  So take care of your tires.

I know all of this now thanks to my father.  Growing up with my dad has given me a blueprint, a map, for my life and what not to do.  One thing that I am eternally grateful for is that all of my father’s mistakes, the horrible and terrible mistakes, have showed me what not to do in this life.  These precious lessons are burned into my brain, my being, like the shadows burned into concrete in Nagasaki after the atom bomb fell.  I have learned what not to do by vicariously living through my father and his failures.  You always gotta look at the glass half full.

The Trooper at this point was on the last leg of its long life.  My father was no longer pumping money into it and had made a tenuous peace with the idea that this vehicle, like everything else, will die.  As a result it was generally falling apart.  Road worthy, but falling apart nonetheless.  All parts make up the whole, and the tires were no different.  They were old.  They were dry.  They were bald and balding some more.  One tire in particular wanted to give up, but my father just wouldn’t let it.  He kept pumping it full of fix a flat.  And this day, this fatefull day, was the one the tire chose to say enough.

My father was driving Iris, myself, and lil bro Luke to school.  In the fashion typical of my father we were of course running late.  It was a cool spring morning when we heard the sound.  The sound that will make any adult’s stomach drop.  The thump, thump, thump sound a flat tire makes at speed.  We pull to the side of the road.

My dad gets out and inspects the damage.  It looks bleak.  He heads to the back of the Trooper to get a can of fix a flat.  Some may wonder, why not use the spare?  The answer to that question lies in the fact that my father had already used the spare, a full sized one, to replace the previous tire that had said fuck it and went to meet its maker.  Now that I think of it I can see why full size spares can be a problem.  They make you lazy, complacent.  They lull you into a false sense of security.  Sure, they fix the problem at hand, a flat tire, but they do that job far too well.

Doughnut spares do the job too, but not for long.  You shouldn’t drive as fast as normal when using the doughnut spare.  It is designed to merely get you to where you need to go and then the tire shop.  Nothing more.  Plus it looks ridiculous.  Having a doughnut spare on your car is a constant and bitter reminder that you need to get a new tire.  It mocks you.  It taunts you with what you have lost and the cost that it will take to replace it.  It breaks you and motivates you to suck it up, drop the cash, and get a new tire.

Not so with a full sized replacement.  It’s a normal tire.  You put it on and you’re good to go.  You really don’t need to get a new tire.  And why should you?  You already have a set of four good tires anyway.  Again, with so many other things, you chose to roll the dice.  But again this is a game that you will eventually lose.

And we lost it that day the tire died.  My father tries one can of fix a flat, and it shows promise.  It gets some air in it, but only for a moment.  He tries, in a futile attempt, to use another.  Again, a heartbeat but only for a moment.  Soon after the second can fix a flat starts to ooze out of the tire stem, and then the tire its self from the many holes and punctures that can no longer be kept under control.  Its mission critical and we have no choice but to walk.

Again this happened during a time before cell phones.  And since we were coming from Archbold, from our house in the country, we had no choice but to hoof it.  So my dad gets us all out of the car, with our backpacks, and we head down the long country road with no real plan of attack.  We are too far out to walk to a gas station, or a payphone, or anything or anyone that may be of help or service to us.  So we walk until we come across some homes.

This day was one of the first times that I can remember experiencing the worst that man has to offer and also the best that man has to offer.  I now know that the world is a fucked up place, and people are generally selfish, dangerous, ignorant and greedy creatures.  But back then I had no clue.  Everything was peachy, more or less, outside of my little microcosm.  Yeah shit wasn’t great at home, but I had yet to learn that it was just as un-great, if not more so, in the world at large.  This was one of the days that I grew up a bit.

As we are walking towards the nearest home on the road we see a police car cruising towards us in the distance.  Since I was little and did not yet know any better I thought that we were going to be rescued.  Because that is what police are supposed to do.  Help you out when things are hairy and all that jazz.  My dad starts waving his arms in the air.  We start waving are arms too.  Were only about a quarter of a mile from the car at this point, and from the trooper’s vantage he should clearly be able to put two and two together;  a family, walking down a desolate country road at 8 in the morning, an empty car off in the distance on the side of said road.  Shit, what else could it be but a broken down car and some folks in need of assistance?  No such pieces were put together by this particular cop. 

We see him coming, closer and closer.  We are expecting him to slow down a bit, to pull over and see what’s up.  To do his fucking job.  Nope, not today.  He just zooms right the fuck past us.  My dad is more shocked than angry.  Us kids are just confused.  Strike one against humanity.

We keep walking and finally make it to a house.  One of only a handful that we can see on the road that we are on.  We all walk up and my dad knocks on the door.  Nothing.  He rings the bell.  Nothing.  We keep on walking in silence. 

We walk and then we walk some more.  Back then it seemed like forever.  We might as well 

have been in the fucking Sahara.  But that was from the perspective of a whiny child.  In reality we couldn’t have walked more than three miles.  But it seemed like forever.

 And then there’s a break.  In the distance we can hear noises.  The closer we get, the more distinguished they become.  It is the sound of a saw.  The sound of construction.  And the sound of construction means that there are people, and if there are people than they can surely help us.  So we pick up the pace as we head towards the next nearest house, the house where there are definitely people at.  

Looking back on this moment I still can’t believe how fucked up it is.  For posterity I will account the facts as they happened.  No bullshit, no exaggerations.  This particular house that we were approaching set back a bit from the road.  A simple two story house with an attached garage.  Inside the garage are two men.  They are working on something, something that requires a tabletop saw.  Their busy sawing away and do not notice us, at first, walking down the gravel driveway.  Our foot steps must have given us away during a lull in the noise.  That distinct sound of gravel as one treads upon it.  The crisp grinding of rocks being forced down upon one another, bombarding each other with unforgiving intensity from the weight above.  My father makes eye contact with them.  They stare at us, sizing us up.  A man with his three children, his three young children with their backpacks slowly approaching them.  Before a word is uttered, even exchanged, one of the men slowly walks towards the back wall of the garage and hits a button.  The door, so slowly, begins to close.  We stop in our tracks.  The door envelops their heads, then their torsos, their legs and then they disappear completely as it shuts.  Were frozen, unsure of how to handle this blatant fuck you.  Our contemplation is broken by the sound of the saw.  Strike two. 

Defeated, utterly and totally, we ventured forth into the now cruel world.  What had been a bright spring morning suddenly lost its sheen, its luster.  Birds stopped chirping.  The sun disappeared.  It started to rain.  A tornado descended from the heavens and violently began tearing up the earth.  It hit first the hospital knocking it over like a house of cards.  It evaporated.  Immediately after it barreled towards a building full of puppies and kittens and babies and really nice old people.  This too was destroyed, annihilated.  Due to the mass of mammalian based life that was instantly wiped out we were instantaneously doused in a fine red mist.  This mist, composed of blood and other organic matter, fell everywhere and stained everything.  Shocked from the carnage, resigned to our fate, we could only huddle together and cry as the tornado now headed straight for us. . .

I may have exaggerated a bit but more or less this shitty day had turned even shittier.  We walked and walked some more.  The idea of making it to school on time was one of the past.  We just wanted to find some fucking help at this point, any help.  And as the clouds parted, and the sun shone through, are help finally arrived.

We tried our luck once more on the next house that we came across.  And you know what?  They fucking helped us.  It was an older couple.  Farm people.  Decent people.  They invited us in after having a hushed conversation through the screened door with my father and giving us a good once over.  We seemed harmless enough.  My dad made a phone call to my step mother at the time and salvation came at last.  

For their aide, their kindness, we sent them a fruit basket a week later after creepily driving by their house to get their address.  Nothing says thank you quite like a fruit basket.

Home Healthcare Cars

My father went through a lot of vehicles when we were growing up.  Part of this was due to his profession at the time, home health care.  Another aspect was rooted deep down inside of him and can be traced back to his own childhood.  See, when my dad was growing up his parents were dirt poor.  Not migrant farming poor but pretty fucking close.  So my father’s dad, my grandfather, was always buying super cheap cars.  Pieces of shit in modern day vernacular.  And since said cars were indeed pieces of shit they would never last that long and he would be forced to again buy another unreliable, barely runnable, vehicle.  This process repeated over and over again when my father was growing up.

This apparently had a significant impact on my fathers psyche, shaping him to have the same tendencies, the same ways of thought.  Like father, like son and all that jazz.  All in all our dad bought a lot of shitty cars.

And the cars that he bought.  Don’t get me wrong, I loved when dad brought a new car home.  Even though it was shit, it was new shit.  But, for posterity, I want to remain as factual as possible.  Some cars looked like shit.  Beaters through and through.  Others looked ok, but ran like shit.  Most would be a combination of the two.

Some would have the sagging ceiling, it slowly falling off.  As a result, in such vehicles the exposed spray foam that once held the headliner in place, now hyper dry from old age, would fall sporadically into our little eyes.  Granted, this mostly occurred when we were picking at the ceiling while waiting in the car for dad, but other times it happened when the windows were down and we were cruising.  A crumbling polyurethane snow.  Jesus, so many times I can remember the sting from that foam as it hit me right in the eye.  Fond memories.

Other times the windows would stop working in the car and so drastic measures would have to be taken.  Because the car was hardly worth anything in the first place even minor repairs such as this just didn’t make any fiscal sense.  To even fix a window would cost around a third to a half as much as what the vehicle was worth.  So instead a garbage bag was carefully and masterfully installed and acted as a replacement.  Good as new.

The memories come flooding back; how fucking cold it was in the winter time as air snuck in around the hastily fixed bag to the sound. The roaring, deafening sound of plastic flapping in the wind.  The faster we went, the louder and more violently the bag flapped.  Trying to listen to the radio, if one was present in the car and or worked, was a waste of time.  Too many windows were replaced with black trash bags.

Air conditioning in such cars was never present.  This was rather viewed as a luxury and as such we could and did live without it.  The heat was another story.  Most of these cars did have adequate heaters.  Some of them did not.  And because we lived in Ohio, you really can’t fuck around with the heater.  It’s always a bet you’re going to lose.  With the air conditioning you could luck out; some days will be cooler than others.  In the wintertime, in Ohio, it just gets cold and then colder.  The heater is not something to be fucked with, because it will fuck you back.  Sure, you could bundle up before heading out in the car and we did that.  It wasn’t too bad.  But the windows.  That’s where the lack of heat gets you.

Vehicles that are not properly heated really make you appreciate all that you have.  You never know what you got until it’s gone and all that.  The lack of heat, for us passengers, wasn’t too big of a deal because we dealt with it.  The windows were another story.  We would be driving for some time and it would start to begin.  The fog.  Four people in a tiny car without heat, shuddering, breathing in an out, generate a lot of hot, moist air.  This usually isn’t a big deal unless there is no heat, and without said heat the fog begins to appear.  Slowly, so slowly at first, working its way from the base of the windows, crawling upwards until the whole window is enveloped.  Again a problem but a manageable one.  We would merely wipe away the fog.  But, like most quick fixes, it would only last for so long.

The cold air inside, combined with the super fucking cold air outside barreling past us anywhere from 30 to 60 miles an hour, takes its toll.  The fog, that thick fog, begins to transform yet again, this time into ice.  Ice is not so easily dealt with as fog.  If ice and fog were in high school, ice would be the big deal, the bully, the dude you don’t want to fuck with.  Because again he will fuck you right back.

But we persevered.  We managed.  Because that’s what Saucedas do.  A testament to the tenacity of life, the will to live; to flourish in places and situations where one should be beaten back. A phoenix rising from the ashes.  Finding money in clothes that you haven’t worn in years.  Shit like that.   

With such cars you would imagine needing to have a pretty extensive tool box to keep on top of everything.  A tool box for my father was a plastic bag with three or four cans of fix a flat in it.  For those of you unfamiliar with this testament to science fix a flat acts like a tire band aid.  It’s geared more towards a slow leak kind of a deal rather than a catastrophic failure.  Like when your tire is punctured by road debris or a vagabond bent on ruining days.  It comes in a can, similar in shape and size to conventional spray paint, and at the top a little hose runs out with an element that fits onto the tire’s air cap.  And through science it flows into the tire and expands into said leak giving you enough time to hopefully go to the tire store to get a new tire.  But never with our father.  Rather, he felt that fix a flat was as good a substitute as a new tire.  Again, it comes down to the monies. 

Tires can be expensive, and my father can be cheap.  And since the cars that we were in were so cheap to begin with putting money, any money, into them was just stupid.  Greenspan and Bernanke would somberly shake their heads in shame at such a notion. So, every time one of the tires got fucked he would merely unfuck it with fix a flat.  Problem solved, life goes on.

However, a drawback of fix a flat is that continued and prolonged use will slowly destroy the tire or something of that nature.  The good times, literally, cannot keep on rolling if you keep on pumping your bum tire up with fix a flat.  This product was never intended to repair, rather fix, so that you can unfuck your day.  The poor man’s run flat.

But our father used fix a flat on his shitty tires with reckless abandon.  Anytime a tire would get a leak, or a puncture, he would get a can out and pump that bitch up.  He was playing with fire and  always got burnt.  It catches up with you.  This can only delay the inevitable, that day when you’re going to have to buck up and get a new tire.  Or get stranded and have to get a tow, and then a new tire, which would be even more expensive.  Looking back, the amount of money that my dad spent on fix a flat probably came out to about, after being adjusted for inflation, around two to three tires.  This shit is not cheap.  But it is cheaper than a tire.

This fix a flat fast and loose life style always caught up with us.  And it always seemed to happen at the worst times.  Looking back it was fate, or karma, or something, because every time the tire said fuck it, no more, let me die, were always the times we needed to be somewhere important.  And the tire would always have had enough eventually; either too full of left over fixes or so degraded that it failed beyond repair.  Those poor tires. 

They probably made their peace quite a while ago, came to terms with their death and what it meant.  Said their good byes and got their shit in order.  And when death came, and they were ready, my dad would come and jolt them back to life.  Like an old person in the hospital that just wants to die, wants the pain to end, but their family just can’t accept the inevitable and as a result keeps them living in a perpetual hell that prolongs their torment mere days or weeks.  That is what my father did to those tires.

There were a myriad of other problems with the cars that my dad bought that we drove in.  Some smelled, some were dirty, some had electrical issues and some had major mechanical ones.  All of them left me with memories.  All of them were utter pieces of shit.        

Homecare Heaven and Hell

Our father is a nurse.  And before his current gig he worked, for the longest time, doing home health care.  For those of you unfamiliar home health care involves a nurse, or someone equally qualified, visiting patients at home and doing a variety of tasks.  This could range from something as simple as checking up on them and making sure they are still alive to changing bandages and all the other things nurses do to patients.  Saving lives and breaking hearts and all that shit.  Except instead of being at a hospital these patients are more or less well enough to be at home.

Specifically, for my father, this involved him driving all over NW Ohio and visiting people from all walks of life.  He would visit rich, white old people in their awesome houses, recuperating after a major operation.  He would get the Medicaid and Medicare patients living in the hood, in horrible conditions and on the brink of abject poverty. He would visit really nice, warm people.  He would visit nasty, bitter people.  He would visit crazy motherfuckers, threatening him with violence and the like.  And he saw anyone and everyone in and between such extremes.

He would and did make friends.  For some of the people he visited he was the only contact that they had with the outside world.  If you are getting home health care chances are you are well enough to be out of the hospital but not well enough to make regular trips back and forth to the hospital, or anywhere else really.  Add in meals on wheels and similar programs with a dash of daily or weekly assisted living workers and that person never has to leave their home.  

Combine this with a pinch of poverty and a heaping spoonful of children that don’t give a fuck and you get some really, really lonely and sad older people.  And my father, being the charming, gregarious, fun loving jokester that he can sometimes be, had many such people drawn to him.  And he, if they weren’t dicks or douchebags, was drawn to them as well.

After the divorce we didn’t get to see our father like we used to.  Instead of being with him all of the time, such time was cut by half.  And again according to the courts we were to be with him for at least three days a week and every other weekend.  The only problem was that my dad’s schedule did not often match up with that of the courts and my mothers.  He could work up to 14 hours a day.  If he was on call he could and did have to leave in the middle of the night.  Shit was hectic for him on the work front.  As a result, visiting Dad usually resulted in a take your kids to work day.  Except such days occurred more often than not.  Far, far too often.

Looking back I think we would have had never seen my father if we had told my mother what we did when we were with him.  Because on such days when we were with him, and he had to work, we all went to work together.  This may sound like fun, and it sometimes was.  However, another aspect of home health care is the time.

The god damn time.  So much time.  See, some of these visits, the checkups, lasted maybe fifteen minutes at most.  A drop in, a nice chat to make sure things were kosher and they weren’t going to die, and then back to the road.  However, other visits, many visits, lasted far longer.  Half an hour, an hour, maybe, god forbid, even three.  All this time, for us, was spent in the car.  Waiting.

As you now know the experience of time for children is drastically, fundamentally different than it is for adults.  An example of this shift in experiencing time would be church.  Catholic mass only lasts roughly about an hour.  However, when I was younger church seemed to last forever.  It was, at that age, pure hell.  I would always frantically check the clock on the back wall as mass drug on, put there merely to torture me and other young souls that had the capacity to tell time.  Where was God at to answer my prayers to make time hurry the fuck up?  Seconds turned into minutes, minutes turned into hours and hours turned into days.  I can still think back on going to church with my mother and how utterly horrible it was.  Not horrible in the physical sense, shit it was a pretty nice church to be at; your typical run of the mil upper middle class Catholic church.  Rather it was horrible in the mental sense and it can all be traced back to time.  But now, as an ‘adult’ one hour is a breeze.  I close my eyes and it is over.  And this is due to my changed perception of time. 

So now you have a better understanding of why home health care with our father was so fucking horrible.  Yeah we got to spend time with him, when he was driving, but it really wasn’t worth all the time we spent in the car.  Three little kids, children, left to their own devices.  Alas, this was also before the advent of cell phones, or iPads, or laptops and the myriad of other modern day distractions that help us limp through our days.  Nope, it was just three kids in a fucking car.  For hours.  We didn’t even have books.

And the cars that we were in.  Another aspect of home health care is that you do a lot of driving and subsequently put a lot of miles on one’s vehicle.  As such, my father was always buying beaters, piece of shit cars that he could and did subsequently beat to shit.  During his stint as a home health care worker I can remember him going through at least eleven vehicles.  And the problems with these vehicles were enormous.  But that is a story best left told for another day.

So what did three children do while waiting for their father in a car?  Nothing, for the most part.  And it was an excruciating amount of nothing.  Looking back I believe it would have been an interesting psychological and or sociological experiment to gaze upon.  We could have broken ground, shed light and tackled modern day problems.  Solved some shit.  What happens when you leave three children, of average intelligence from an average socio-economic bracket alone to their own devices in a room with nothing to do, not a god damn thing, for extended periods of time and all that.  At least something would have come from all the time that was spent in the car.  Maybe, looking back, it wasn’t in vain.  Maybe we could have made a difference.

Because, besides doing nothing, the boredom eventually starts to take a toll.  The first fifteen minutes or so aren’t that bad.  Our father, in normal dad fashion, would always promise us once we arrived at the next house that it would be a quick one, that he should be done in ten to fifteen minutes.  And since we were all at the age when we believed everything our dad said we took his words at their face value.  We did not yet know just how much he extends, and reinvents, the truth.  Or as others call it flat out lying.  So we would sit and wait, hoping, praying, that this indeed would be a quick trip.

At the onset of thirty minutes things begin to change, and drastically.  At this point, on average, we have given up all hope of our father coming back.  We know were in it for the long haul.  Any noise we hear, a door shutting, a car passing by, garners our immediate and undivided attention.  We are all hoping that it is the sound of our dad leaving the house and coming back to the fucking car.  It never is.  Restlessness begins to set in.  Our conversations amongst ourselves become more heated.  We are starting, at this point, to regress back into our wild, primal selves.  We are turning into animals and beginning to turn on one another.

At about an hour things in the car become hell.  Or as close to hell as we at that age could imagine it.  We are all hungry at this point, thirsty.  Our basic needs are failed from being met.  The restlessness starts to crescendo before reaching a frenzied pitch.  Most children of this age are by nature boundless balls of energy, all potential, and it knows no bounds.  We were no different.  Also, at least one if not all of us has to urinate.  We whine amongst ourselves, some pray to a God that never gives answers, others give up all hope and retreat inward.  Others, angry at their predicament, lash outwards.  This usually happened between me and Iris.

After the hour point the car turns into pure anarchy.  Iris and I at this point are usually screaming, yelling, spitting, and crying at one another.  It was a verbal all-out war that sometimes spilled over into fisticuffs.  Collateral damage was guaranteed.  We would say the most hurtful, devastating things to one another.  Looking back I now realize two things; that I had the capacity at that age to be so cruel, and that children in general can be cruel, spiteful, hateful creatures and overall pieces of shit. 

When Iris and I would fight in the car, even being so young, it was never the ‘you’re stupid, no your stupid’ kind of shit.  We would rather take each other’s most personal secrets, the innermost demons, the darkest moments of one’s life up until that point and use it to our advantage.  And such secrets where venomously spat out at one another with the usual cunts, fucks, shits, and bitches peppered in.  It was pure psychological war and no one ever won.   

So to recap: after an hour we had given up on our father, were starving, had to violently urinate, were attacking each other, mainly verbally but sometimes physically, lil bro Luke was crying and usually Irisel and I were as well at some point.  And this all occurred in a tiny, suffocating, dirty piece of shit little car.

And this would rise and fall, rise and fall, depending on how long we were forced to wait for our dad to finish his work.  We would fight until exhausted, take a break to get our bearings, and then start the process all over again.  Again and again and again.  And by the grace of God, no the universe, we would finally see him appear.  Smiling as he briskly walked up to the car.  Any any ill will, all the hate and anger would almost instantly vanish because we were all so fucking excited that dad was finally done.  The nightmare was finally over, for now.  Just another fifteen houses to home health care up before dad can call it a day.  And we can go home.

The Exorcist: Or an Exercise In Negligent Parenting

Grade school was for me, more or less an awesome experience.  I had a core group of friends that I hung with, I never got bullied, and school work was a non-issue for me.  I never struggled, I was never particularly challenged, and I more or less never got in trouble.

I can still remember that cold day on the playground.  Myself and my four solid friends wandering around aimlessly shooting the shit whilst on recess.  This was the time in grade school, around the fourth or fifth grade, when cursing was all the rage and girls were still more or less gross, but looking a bit better every day.  We knew we could say fuck and shit and cocksucker with no repercussions, no reprimands as long as we were careful and we did so with reckless abandon.  Our minuscule worlds were slowly opening up, the tiny microcosm that had been our lives up until that point would be peppered here and there with cultural references from the larger, more foreign world at large.  On this particular day it was movies, specifically horror.

I have always loved horror movies, a good scare.  I can thank my father for this.  After the divorce I guess he became the fun parent, while my mother became the bitch.  The woman, now looking back, who had her life destroyed by my dad’s infidelity, the lying and the cheating.  She was and still is a woman of God, and when she married my father and said until death do us part she fucking meant it.  My dad did not.  So it came as no surprise that when everything came asunder she was emotional and mentally destroyed, a shell of her once fun loving self.  She was now moody, angry, bitter.  She did her best raising us, but it was definitely a time of high control and low warmth.  She was just a very unhappy and lost woman.

But while on recess the topic of movies came up.  Now, when I was with my mom, we were not allowed to say Gods name in vain and shit like that, or watch anything that was deemed inappropriate.  This meant that while with mom we more or less just did not watch movies.  Not so with my dad.  My father would let us watch whatever we wanted, and it was awesome.  Because of this, I had some serious horror titles under my belt at this tender young age and one of the better versed to handle the days particular topic of gory movies while on recess.

And then Eric brings up the Exorcist.  How it is supposed to be the scariest, most violent movie of all time.  How the Devil is in it and any one that watches it could be put at risk of possession.  I was completely taken aback.  I had never heard of such a movie before and was immediately intrigued.  I knew I had to see it.  It just sounded to fucking awesome to be true.

And then my time came.  

After Dad picked me, Iris and lil bro Luke up we stopped by Hollywood video before heading to the house.  Now, Hollywood video was, besides Walmart, a sort of Mecca for the Saucedas.  At this time Dad had just moved in with Cathy out in the country and with no one around there really was not much to do. So what we did do was, in this order, watch television, watch movies, play outside and go to Wal-Mart to walk around.  Those were the days.

So were perusing the video store, checking out all the titles, when I walk up to my dad and casually engage him in fourth grade conversation.  I was so smooth.  I ask how his day was, what’s for dinner, you know, just making some nice chit chat before I drop the bomb on him.  The moment feels right so I ask, dad, can we get the Exorcist tonight?  He stops, and slowly turns to me.  We look into each other’s eyes, definitely having a father and son moment.  And then he speaks.  And at this point I am totally expecting to be shot down, for him to be a father and say no way José, your much, much too young for that filth.  But instead he asks, are you sure you can handle it, it’s a really scary movie Nicholas?  And I was like fuck yeah I can dad, I am almost in Junior high, or some shit like that.  And he says OK and checks it out for us.

And I am totally elated on the drive home.  One, because Cathy was working that night and we wouldn’t have to be walking on egg shells, it would be just us as a family, how it should and always have been. We eat some dinner and then make our way to the family room.  Also, again it should be noted our perspective ages and the impact that this movie probably had on all of our psyche’s.  I was no more than a fifth grader, so Iris and lil bro Luke were even younger and frankly had no idea what the fuck was coming.  

Dad pops the DVD in and it begins.  I wish I could say that I tried to be tough, had no problems making it through, persevered and was the rock of the family that night.  I wasn’t.  The movie scared the absolute shit out of me.  Disgusted me.  It freaked me the fuck out and mind fucked me at the same time.  I had no idea cinema could be so brutal, so raw.  And to top it all off, before the movie started dad said that this was all based on a true story.  And being a ‘devout’ Catholic while with our mother this freaked us out even more.  Iris covered her eyes during most of it, and I believe lil bro Luke cried, just a bit.  But he was always crying.  I cried too.

And then it ended.  And we sat in stunned silence, defeated and deflated from the emotional rollercoaster we were just thrust upon.  I was barely old enough to process what had happened, my brain scrambling to make sense of the horror, the horror.  Iris and lil bro Luke both had the thousand yard stare; both even younger than I, so fucking young.

Dad got up, took out the DVD, and turned on the cable.  It was well past our bed times and we knew it.  School, and the morning, was fast approaching and we needed to get some sleep.  But tonight, we all knew, sleep would not come easily.

Like zombies we made our way upstairs to our bedrooms.  Iris, being the girl, had a big bed and a room to herself.  Lil bro and I shared the other room, stacked up in our sweet set-up of bunk beds.  This night, however, we all slept together in Iriss bed.  With the lights on and the sweet glow of a major league baseball game playing quietly on the t.v.  We slept together like that for some time.