Diary of a Sex-Starved Pseudo-Mennonite, Part 26

I trick people with shallow and sexual references into reading something that I think is actually deep. I just recently became conscious of this. My writing is flirting, really. Show a little leg. Flash a suggestive smile. Then, if they can take it, I give 'em an eyeful of my heaving brain.

When it became clear from an early age that I was a writer (sent each year to represent my elementary school class at the Young Writers Conference; high school newspaper Opinion Editor and columnist, columns that won state and national awards; selected for the undergraduate nonfiction Writer's Workshop at Iowa--not the big league, but I could smell it from there), my dad took the opportunity to tell me how he was a standout in his 5th grade English class or some such bullshit. No, I don't remember the details precisely, because I stopped listening. Because of rage. My dad's an engineer. On my mom's side, she, her helicopter pilot brother, and her lawyer sister all earned English degrees. Her distractable father had probably half of an English degree and his longest profession was writing pamphlets and brochures for the government. I just realized I have essentially the same job as Grandpa, outside of my unpaid blog. He would like that.

Plus, my mom's family is Irish. The Irish think we own the subject Writing in the English Language and we do it better than the English out of spite. So you can see how under this heap of evidence in addition to the fact that these were the people who I actually grew up with and demonstrated at every turn their reverence and capacity for storytelling and banter, that my father's suggestion that I got the good writing from him made me want to stab him in the throat so he could never utter something so self-centered and ridiculous and insulting again. He is not the reason I am a good writer. He is the reason I write. Unfavorable things. About him.

My dad would show up unannounced at my high school track practice. Like I hadn't seen him in a year or 2 and would not even know he was in town. Then he shows up all smiles like a backwoods pageant queenie come home, The Dish and new daughters in tow, so he can show his wife and real kids the stadium where he earned his track scholarship and introduce them to his coach, who was also my coach, who took a special interest in me and made sure my brother graduated high school even though he didn't show up enough days to legally graduate, because even though he never said the words, Coach must have understood that my dad was a dick and we needed extra support cuz Dad was derilect in his duties. 

Dad bragged that when he attended my high school, where our mutual coach taught science, he would heat up pennies on the Bunsen burner and wait for the bell to ring and when students would pass below to walk to their next class, he'd flick hot pennies out the window and listen for the screams below. Dad laughed when he told that story. During my childhood, he mailed me entire camera rolls of prints of the massacred groundhogs he cleared from his property, bloody fuzzy rodents lined up like cordwood. For our dog Reginald, who to this day Dad loves and misses much more than me, he threw live fireworks into the dog house with Reginald in it. At a party. Because that's what people want to see. After in Iowa, Mom had to replace every screen on our main floor because Reginald jumped out the closest screened window or screened door if it thundered or lighteninged to escape the house because of what Dad did to him (we did not have air conditioning). No wonder I married a sociopath.

My dad designed guns for the government. If you knew his name, you could look up his patents. He coached an Olympic shooting team. He is an NRA champion gunman. And he's the biggest fucking coward I've ever met.

He made sure he didn't have to go to Vietnam. But he loves guns. I like to shoot guns. I'm pretty good for someone who only ever did it once in a blue moon at my dad's, then at my ex-husband's dad's, a dad who was poor and not an only male son and volunteered for Vietnam so he could at least choose the role in which he would likely die. Yes. My ex-husband's father remains this devoid of optimism, even though he lived. As far as I know.

My dad's a big baby. He sits around in his underwear and drops dirty clothes wherever he takes them off, even when in another person's home. This is why he is no longer invited to hunt on what was my mother's mother's farm in Iowa. He is such a pig that even the uber gracious legacy Mennonites could no longer tolerate him.

It's 1 thing to be socially awkward. That happens. But to assume that any woman in any house wants to pick up your dirty draws is really something.

Dad's real daughters don't seem crazy about him, but appear to like him considerably more than I do. I reckon he had to learn to get along. Even though he paid all the bills, he was outnumbered by 6 ovaries. My dad rarely called me as a child, but he did to tell me the first time The Dish got pregnant. I said, "On purpose?" I was incredulous. Apparently it was. I could not believe a dude who so clearly did not want the kids he already had would have more. On purpose. When it was a girl, I was tickled. When he had 2 girls then no more kids, I was elated. Sucks for you, buddy. Better open a Santa Saver account just for maxi pads and tampons.

Until Next Time, Sweeties!

Ness Sweet Ness