Looking back on the entire event I guess it was pretty dumb, yet pretty exciting at the time. I guess it all started on Christmas when I was eight or so, I kind of don’t exactly remember when this mystical feat occurred. Anyway, Christmas. My dad had gotten me what you could call a flying RC Car. It was a big balloon that had an engine and some props and flaps on its underside. To put it bluntly it looked like a big flying beach ball with a leech sticking onto it.

I had no idea what a monster this fabled toy was going to become, I had fun with it for months, weeks, playing with it, strapping big A batteries to the underside and attempting to time it so they fell off when the thing was right over my dog. I evened name the big boisterous entity “Foofo”, if I remember how that was spelt. Close enough.

However day and day passed and Foofo began to loose his life, or air. Naturally my little adolescent brain couldn’t process the fact my favorite toy was dying, so conveniently my father made a up an excuse. He said that Foofo was getting ready to become part of me. What fun that was going to be! My favorite toy and I become the same person, at that time I thought life couldn’t get any better. Good God was I wrong.

About half a year after I got Foofo, his balloon was saggy, he couldn’t fly high anymore, he was slow, sluggish, couldn’t maneuver. My once graceful warship/bomber that I had been so proud of had turned into a tugboat. So my dad told me it was time for me and Foofo to join as one.

He gave me a knife.

He pointed at my favorite toy and told me to stab it, right in the big silver balloon that held it aloft. At that point I wasn’t one to question the fact the knife probably weighed more than Foofo did at this point and was a little big for me to carry successfully, but I did it. I manipulated the control and Foofo came down from his perch near the ceiling, and without a second thought I killed it.

I killed my favorite toy.

A Loud POP had graced the room and Foofo fell to the floor, his balloon was dead. My dad then told me to put my mouth over the hole in Foofo’s balloon and inhale. I wasn’t one to question the divineness of my father when I was that young, so I did what he told me. Little did I know that I was inhaling several cubic inches of helium at that point.

I was getting a little dizzy.

At that point my dad took the knife and wandered away like nothing had happened, while I was staring at my favorite toy on the floor, no helium left in it and I was growing increasingly dizzy and lightheaded. There was a multitude of thoughts running through my mind, I believe the first one that came as I ‘bonded’ with Foofo was. “Wow! I’m dizzy and feel floaty! Maybe I’m gonna fly now!” or something along those lines. I can tell you if was pretty sodding dumb and naïve. Looking back on this entire event I wondered how I could have been so stupid. Anyway, back to the story heartbreak.

Foofo was dead, was the second thought that hit me about three seconds after the first one. It took me an additional five seconds to deduce that my infallible and omnipotent father had told a lie. I don’t think my juvenile brain was quite up to handle the fact that the god of my world, my divine and untouchable father had told me a lie. What was worse is the fact that I couldn’t see straight and my legs were feeling wobbly.

I believe about fifteen seconds after the entire debacle had started, I began to stumble. Not drop to my knees or fall in a dramatic fashion or anything, just a plain stumble to the left. About that time I stumbled again, to the left and backwards, and thus began a grand procession of me stumbling my ass off in a very high fashion over the carpet of my living room. I watched the room go past, the carpet under my bare feet, my dad’s desk next to the window which was letting in sunlight, the couch on the wall beneath the higher windows, the table across from the couch, the TV, the TV, the TV. It took me a moment to process why I was seeing three Television sets. We only had one. Now I know it was because my dad had gotten me really f---king high, to be blunt.

About five seconds of glorious stumbling my legs gave out and I fell onto the floor. My head hit the floor on it’s side, oddly though it didn’t hurt. Looking up at the wall, which held a clock on it, I suddenly was very tired. At that point I thought my father had poisoned me. Well, to skip the whole melodramatic “I was betrayed by the one I held closest!” bit, I tried to get up and got my chest up before promptly falling to the floor and passing out.

My eyes parted later, and the first thing I wondered was why I was still alive. A glance at the clock told me I had been out for about fifteen minutes. Thoughts barraged me, the usual kind. “why?” and “what the hell just happened?”. However of course as my father was not in attendance right now I merely scratched my head and stood up, plodding my bare feet across the carpet lining the floor, still a little woozy, but I ended up in my room, and forgot the entire incident occurred and drowned myself away playing StarCraft

A few months ago, in November, my parents took my computer away. Indirectly, this provoked another, more intense, confrontation between my father and me. Sunday at about Five PM, my dad took away my computer, I was pissed, even a little sad, but I went to sleep for a long nap. I woke up at about Eight PM, and asked my parents if they were out to make my life a living hell, they said no, I said I thought that they were, and it degenerated into a yelling bout.

My mother had basically butted out, and my dad was screaming at me about living with what was dealt, so basically I told him to fuck himself and stormed out of his room. I proceeded into my room and reached behind my door where I keep my hockey stick, it’s about four feet long with a one-foot curve. So I grabbed it, turned, walked out of my room, turned to the right and faced the punching bag hanging from the big brown beam in the ceiling. With a look of what was almost satisfaction on my face, I gripped the hockey stick, one hand a few inches above the bottom, the other about a foot and a half from the other hand.

So I brought my arms back and pivoted my torso and then snapped my body forwards, cracking the curve of the stick against the hard leather of the bag with a resounding ‘snap’. Again, and again, I kept thwacking the bag with the rage that had built up inside me over the injustice that my father had committed against me. About ten strikes into this feverish battle against the punching bag I heard the voice I had come to despise behind me and bellowing what I made out to be “HEY!”

Turning around I spied my father, clad resplendently in his underwear and undershirt, yelling at me. Clang. I dropped my hockey stick and listened with a raised brow as he yelled at me for no apparent reason. To the best of my recollection, this is what he said.

“You wanna keep doing what you’re doing, beating the bag with a stick and hanging around with knives and in the dark then I’ll send you to military school! And you’ll get whipped into shape there!”

I gave him a long hard stare and flipped him off, stalking back into my room I heard him say Is that your IQ?. I snarled and gave a firm kick to my door to send it skidding shut and crawled under my desk. I thought and I thought, and deduced that my dad was out to make my life miserable. Why else would he take away my computer and make my life a living hell and piece of utter shit.

A few weeks later the situation was resolved, and my computer was returned, however this entire event had got me thinking almost constantly about the incident my father and I had gone through and his threatening to send me to military school. Was he that desperate to get me out of the house? Did he really hate me? He really did some things that pissed me off tremendously, like when I was about five or six he often made me do math with him to heighten my skills in that field. The reward? An all expenses paid trip to Toys-R-Us. When I completed the math, was I taken to Toys-R-Us? Nope, not at all. As I recall this incident repeated itself several times.

My dad and I have had the most screwed up of parental relationships, one moment he’s okay, the next moment he’s a whirlwind of flying bulk, screams, and white hair. I guess I’ll never understand why the hell he makes my life into such crap.