When I Was Five
When I was five, I asked my dad why he was drinking a Gatorade while driving, because I had heard that you should not drink and drive. He laughed and told me that the rules did not apply to Gatorade, that he was fine as long as he was drinking Gatorade. He thought about it for a second, and then just to make sure that I did not think he was a pansy for following the rules he reached under his seat, grabbed a bottle of vodka, unscrewed the cap and poured some in his Gatorade.
“Now this here son,” he said, putting the bottle in my face. “This here is illegal.” And then he drank the whole thing without taking a breath.
My dad was always pulling stunts like that, wanting to prove that he was his own man. Trying to groom me, so I would end up independent like he was. I learned that independence, which to Dad meant doing what you wanted, when you wanted, wasn’t always easy. Like the time that he got a terrible gash in his leg from the barbed wire fence that surrounds the dump because he wanted to get in at night, drunk. Not that he wasn’t drunk in the day too. I am sure he could have had a swell time at the dump drunk in the daytime, but when he wanted to go to the dump drunk at night, he was gonna. Anyway, Mom and I, we tried to tell him that maybe he should go get that checked out and stitched up by a doctor, but Dad did not want any of it. He was perfectly capable of stitching up a wound himself. “Don’t need no damn pansy in a white coat,” was how he put it. I gotta give it to the old man, he stitched that thing up tight. I am not sure a doctor could have done a better job, and Dad was a fifth of Beam down by the time he even started.
Unfortunately, as good as his stitching was, his sterilization was not. That was how Dad got gangrene and lost his leg. I think I was seven because I remember the first time that my classmates saw my one-legged dad was when I was in the first grade production of A Christmas Carol. I was a tree, and later that night my dad hopped into my room at 2 A.M to wake me up and tell me how proud he was of how damn good of a tree I was, even if getting on stage was for pansies and prostitutes. I didn’t do any more school plays after that.
When I was nine, I noticed that Dad had not been around for awhile. I asked Mom where he was and she said he run off with some whore. I asked how could he run off with only one leg and Mom started crying. After that I figured it was best not to ask any more questions about Dad’s locomotion as it clearly upset Mom. I just waited quietly at the window everyday when I got back from school.
When I was ten, Dad came home. He no longer had the whore but he did have a new leg. Said he got it from a doctor in Oregon, although Mom told her sister on the phone she was pretty sure he got from a nursing home, and that there was probably a poor old lady one limb too short on account of Dad. I usually liked to believe my dad, cause that is what he always told me sons were for, believing their dads when no one else would. In this case I will say I have to agree with Mom, it seemed strange to me that a doctor would make him a fake leg that was too short for him to evenly stand on, and had painted toenails.
When I was twelve, I tried out for football and got cut from the team. I was upset and crying when Dad got home. He told me that it was no wonder they cut me if I was going to go on blubbering like a pansy. He told me to man up and not to worry about it, men in our families were lone wolves, we did not get along in team situations anyway. The next day when I went to school, I saw that someone had burned down the locker room that the football team used.
When I was fifteen, Dad left again. This time I did not wait by the window. I just went to the fridge and grabbed a beer. My three year old brother was at the kitchen table crying into his grape juice. I cracked my beer, took a sip, and told him to stop his damn crying. We ain’t got no pansies in this family.
Todd Kelly is currently living in Northern Virginia where he is shaping the minds of America's youth.