The Bad Mom

My solo trip would soon turn into a field trip with twelve other Portland State students. We were sent an email giving directions to a hotel in Sienna where we would all meet up and stay for two nights before working on the farm in Tuscany. I checked into the hotel where I would meet my new roommate. She sat on her bed, humming as she dressed her “Build a Bear” into its pajamas.

I was feeling pretty comfortable with the train system and had let my guard down by placing my backpack in the overhead rack. The train has a soothing rock that put me fast asleep, where my brain drifted to remember a bad day.

A typical day in our home was filled with playing and laughter until dinnertime when mom began to nervously clean the house before dad got home from work. We all scurried around to make the house look as if nobody had moved all day. In the summer mom would take us to the beach then hid all evidence and asked us not to tell dad where we had been. It was as if mom was having a secret love affair with the ocean. Mom felt guilty that dad was stuck at work and we were having fun, apparently she didn’t think dad approved of us having fun. When dad walked through the front door the air in the room shifted. My sisters and I hid in our bedrooms while mom hid in the kitchen making something she called dinner. Dad locked himself in his bedroom to cough. He would open the door surrounded by a cloud of smoke, like special effects in a Twisted Sister video. One Valentine’s Day dad came home in his usual bad mood, before he had a chance to go cough in his room mom handed him a velvet heart-shaped box of chocolates. Dad threw the box and yelled, “I told you, No Gifts!” He slammed the front door and sped away in his truck. My sisters and I ran out diving to the floor for the scattered chocolates like a piñata had been broken; the only thing broken was my mom’s heart.

The train pulled into the Venice station and woke me up. I got up and went to grab my backpack, but it was gone. I ran through the train searching for my bag, but it was nowhere to be found. I ran up to a conductor and frantically asked for his help. He walked me to the security station and I filed a report. They sent me to the police station to file a second report, neither of which did any good. The officer asked what I had in my bag. Junk, all that crap I had Dumpster dove for. In Paris I bought some vintage slips and cardigans from the flea market, a Rosary from the Vatican, a godfather T-shirt from Rome, a blanket from the Alps. The officer said I was lucky because I had all my documentation shoved down my pants. I don’t know if lucky is the word I would use, that crap meant a lot to me and would mean nothing to the thief. I sat on a dock and cried. I was really bummed out about it. I imagined the thief wearing my clothes, smoking my Capri cigarettes and stealing my identity like in the Madonna movie, Desperately Seeking Susan. I walked the banks of Venice, it was just how I imagined with roads replaced by canals, cars replaced by boats and of course singing gondola rides. With only the shirt on my back, and skirt on my ass; the fat of my inner thighs became raw from all the walking around. My solution was to purchase a pair of boxer brief shorts with the Statue of David’s penis printed on the crotch. I hope I don’t die today, my family would always wonder why I was wearing a penis. The philosopher, Nietzsche once said, “Worst things have happened to better people.” I needed to remember that, I focused on the things I do still have, like my life and the memories. Really my loss was just “baggage.”

I got a call from my sister, Scarlett, “did you know mom is living in a van down by the river?”
“Yah, I just got her Christmas card”.
A photograph of her in the tent she’s living in, decorated with Christmas lights and garland, mocking the perfect family cards we all get, with the coordinating outfits in front of the Christmas tree holding their perfect baby and petting their well behaved dog. I got Scarlett’s Chris Farley joke from Saturday Night Live where Farley plays a motivational speaker that preaches to teens not use drugs or you’ll end up, “living in a van down by the river.” Ironically mom doesn’t use drugs and a van by the river would actually be better than my sister, Beth’s garage. Rivers are pretty and a van gives you mobility. Beth’s garage is filled with a family of guinea pigs and smells like a low rider. My sister Beth has been struggling with a meth addiction for the last few years. She came clean and asked for help, so mom moved into her garage to help out with her three kids.

Mom has always been low maintenance when it comes to her sleeping arrangements. When we were kids mom always sacrificed a bedroom to us girls and slept in the dining nook of our apartment’s kitchen, hanging a curtain to separate the refrigerator and her bed. My 14 year old sister, Beth, her baby and baby’s daddy lived in one bedroom. Scarlett and I shared the other bedroom along with her gutter punk friends that squatted on our floor. By day they begged for spare change on Pacific Avenue in our hometown of Santa Cruz, California. By night they were shooting up while mom slept in the kitchen. I remember us all sitting at the table eating cereal one morning, when mom asked why all the spoons were bent and burnt, naive that her daughter was a junkie.

When I turned eighteen I wanted to get out of my fucked up house, so I applied for the Coast Guards. I was rejected for a variety of reasons:
A.) I failed the ASFAB test.
B.) I was on drugs.
C.) I was over the weight limit.
I was told the military took everybody. Everybody but me. I came up with a plan B.
There was a bad flood this particular winter where roads up in the mountains of Boulder Creek had washed out leaving people trapped, once they were rescued the homes were abandoned because the homeowners lost access to their properties. As tweekers/opportunist the light bulb went off and like Lewis and Clark on crack we pioneered to find a new place to call home. I guess this is where my adult life began.

My career as a tweeker started when I met Jen at alternative high school where I was sent my junior year, after my mom’s boss kicked me out of her home we were living in. My dad took us camping once a year up at Pinecrest Lake Resort with his side of the family. It’s the one and only consistent thing we did throughout my childhood. Pinecrest is one of the few happy memories I had; we loved it so much we made up a song about it and sung it the last 45 minutes to the resort. Swimming in the lake, campfire stories with my uncles where we would shout as loud as we could, “Elmer!” The legend goes: a boy named Elmer way back when got lost so everyone in camp yelled his name until he was found, it became a nightly tradition that we absolutely loved. I still yell Elmer when I’m alone in the middle of nowhere. A week later dad drove us back home, only this year we returned to an empty apartment.

Mom and Ms. Reese pulled up in an U-Haul and notified us that we had moved. Mom has never been good with her finances. She was arrested once for writing a check to an account that had been closed in order to buy groceries. The judge ordered her to attend bad check writing classes, the store owners, an Asian family took matters into their own hands, where humiliation was the worst form of punishment. My lab partner at school, asked if my mom’s name was Joan, yes how’d you know that?
“There’s a big blown up poster of your mom’s check that they spray painted “THIEF” across.”

Mom explained that the IRS began to garnish her wages due to the fact that both my parents claimed all three of us kids, and now they want their money back. Ms. Reese, my mom’s boss was aware of the situation, and insisted on taking us in. She was recently divorced with two pre-teen kids that we went to school with. Of course the rumors started that my mom and Ms.Reese were lesbian lovers. Shortly after we moved in I found out I was pregnant at age 16. Ms. Reese thought I was a bad influence on her children, so I was sent to live with my dad. He enrolled me in alternative high school after I had my abortion.
I had a clean slate where nobody knew my mom was a lesbian thief or that I was knocked up. My first day of class this anorexic, fast talking, butt rock chick introduced herself then asked to bum a smoke, we bonded over a Newport and she asked if I had a car. “Yeah, I babysat three kids all summer to save up enough for this piece of shit.”
“Can you give me a ride to work?” she asked, “I’ll kick you down a line.”
A line of what I wondered, but of course I said, “Sure!” I was never one to say no to anyone and desperate to meet a friend at my new school, it seemed like a good idea. “Where do you work?” I asked
“Redwood Video Store,” she failed to mention it was located 45 minutes up in the Santa Cruz Mountains.

We got to this little town in the middle of nowhere, where Jen knew everyone. She chopped up the yellow rock on a Grateful Dead CD and handed me a short straw. Having no experience with this drug I didn’t know not to exhale, I blew my line all over her chest; she took the straw and began sniffing up her sweater. “Have you ever snorted crank before?”
“No,” I admitted, as she split up the remaining line into two.
“Inhale! Or I’ll beat your ass girl!” Frustrated she did her line and got out of the car.
“Do you want to hang out?” She asked.
“Now that I’m high I may as well,” I thought, I’m not gonna go hang out with my dad.
This became my new after school hangout, after work we would go to her boyfriend’s trailer where we would drink ice beer and tweek on anything we could take apart. The next year my mom paid off the “Man” and we got our own apartment which was crowed with people and drama, so after the storm hit that’s when we came up with plan B to relocate.

We paraded up the washed out road, a U-Haul, motor home, 4×4 truck and my piece of shit packed with more shit tied to the roofs. We came to a washed out section of the road and had to hike by foot until we stumbled on two men with a campfire. They were camping out and suggested some property on the other side of the river, where a home was partially finished and the owner had gone to jail on some kind of insurance scam. The challenging part was that the bridge had washed out. We threw down a log and hiked up to the house armed with tweeker tools in hand. A maglight, which doubles as a weapon, a chainsaw, which doubles as a weapon and a siphoning tube, which doubles as a weapon. We were in tweeker heaven, just to clarify a tweeker is a person who uses methamphetamines, which is characteristic of taking things apart and inventing a new hybrid use. One of the tweekers remodeled the kitchen where he built cabinets designed for us to wash the dishes, put them in the cupboard wet then, flick a switch that activated a blow-dryer which had the dishes dry in minutes. Obsessing on details like scrubbing the carpet where the cat pissed for six hours and paranoia, which lead to booby traps and security cameras. We danced around like we won the tweeker lottery; we were a new tweeker family in a new tweeker home. We built a tweeker bridge and made a trail for the 4×4 used as a shuttle system to my car, which was used to go into town because my car was the only one with legal plates. Just when our tweeker oasis couldn’t get any better we discovered what we called the “magic bus.”

The previous owner lived in this bus as he was building the house; he worked at the dump and would bring home anything salvageable, with the dream of having the world’s biggest yard sale and making a load of cash. This was tweeker orgasm time, we furnished the entire house, from the curtains to the dishes; we spent hours every day digging around the bus.

Tweeker paradise wouldn’t last forever. The tweeker I called my boyfriend and I had an ugly tweeker break-up where the final straw was him pushing me down into a puddle of mud then shoving the mud into my mouth, yelling all kinds of abusive bullshit another characteristic of a tweeker is an explosive violent temper. I packed up my shit and headed back to my moms. I was walking down Pacific Avenue contemplating painting myself silver and standing like a statue for money, when I saw a flyer looking for people to work at a summer camp. I called the number and they told me to come up for the orientation the following week. I arrived an out of place tweeker surrounded by college sorority kids. I escaped to the designated smoking porch to light up a Newport. A guy walked up and asked for a light. He looked at my lighter and asked if I was a tweeker.
“How’d you know, I mean, why would you ask that?” I blushed.
“Your smoking Newports and your lighter has been drawn on for hours, you can’t bullshit a bullshiter.” He introduced himself as Jack, a guy from Washington that was looking to escape his own tweeker lifestyle.

After a week of training and flirting with Jack we went on a group camping trip to the coast with the fraternity brothers. I got so drunk I passed out and awoke in my own urine. I snuck away to clean myself up while the group was still asleep. I hiked to a cove and undressed. I bathed myself in the freezing pacific and washed my only change of clothes. I sunbathed nude while my clothes were drying, Jack walked up a few hours later,
“I’ve been searching everywhere for you. I thought I lost my new girlfriend.”
“So now I’m your girlfriend?” I wanted to make sure I heard correctly.
We made love for the first time on the beach, and I was falling in love.
The next weekend off Jack and I plus one angry hippy and our Swedish lifeguard set out for an adventure in the city. We got to San Francisco around 10pm in my piece of shit car. We hit Haight/Ashbury Street and walked into a bar with a band playing. We did shots of Jaggier Meister and ran to the bathroom to puke up my nineteen-year-old lungs. I’m gone for three minutes and return to Jack on stage hugging the band after their set. “Do you know those guy?” I ask.
“No, I just wanted to let them know that I thought they fuckin rocked!” He said, “Look they signed their set list for me.”

I couldn’t hold his poser behavior against him; he didn’t know any better growing up in Port Orchard, a stick in Washington. He had a lot to learn, and I had a lot to teach, like we don’t use the “N” word in this house, and we need to have that White Arian Youth tattooed on your arm covered up immediately. People at camp confronted me about Jack being racist. No, no he just doesn’t know any better, he’s really very loving, which brings me to Rule #1: We don’ t bring home hitch hikers.

I got home from work to find some random guy on my couch, “who’s this?” I ask.
“Jeff, he’s hitch hiking, but with it raining I offered a warm place for the night.”
I turned to Jeff and asked, “Where should I tell my family to look for our bodies?”

We closed the bar on Haight/Ashberry then did some paper rock scissors as to who was going to drive back to camp. The Swedish lifeguard lost, and had to drive us back in my piece of shit car. At the bottom of the mountain up to camp we were pulled over by the police. The Swedish lifeguard was about to experience the American jail system. When the officer asked Jack for his ID, Jack replied, “Suck my dick.” The officer didn’t like that and tossed Jack in the wagon with the lifeguard. The hippy and I cooperated and were let go but my piece of shit car was impounded and we were three miles at the bottom of the mountain in the middle of the night. The hippy asked how much money I had on me, fuck my wallet was still in the car.
“Well I don’t know how you’re getting home, but I’m getting a cab…later.”
That fucking hippy bailed out on me. I had no choice but to hike up the mountain, a half-hour later of blindly walking up the darkest road I’ve ever not seen, the cab passed me. Determined to survive our first date I continued up the hill, later the cab came back down the hill, pulled up next to me where I began to chant “please don’t kill me”, when I see that it’s actually Doug, Jack’s brother who had come to my rescue.

Three months later Jack and I were window shopping in the mall. We joked outside a jewelry store about getting married, and got sucked in, before you know it a wheeling dealing salesman is running a credit check. He puts down the telephone and says congratulations… you’re approved! Jack got down on one knee and asked me to marry him. Had our credit been denied, we may have never gotten married, a year later we promised till death do us part.

from my book:  Scars of Paris   available at Borders and Barnes & Nobles

My son’s daycare is fundraising in the form of “Valentine’s Grams.” Which means for a donation of 2 dollars your child will be singled out by the group when your gram arrives during class in a big production of my mom loves me more than your mom loves you.

(excert from my memoir titled Scars of Paris)

Fall term was back in session two days later and I started feeling funny.  I remember having this same feeling once before.  I went to Portland State Student Health Services where a nurse said those two words that changed my life… Again:  “You’re Pregnant.”  She handed me my options: A list of abortion clinics and adoption agencies.

I was right back in high school where the nurse told me the same thing and offered the same choices.  I told my boyfriend over the phone, he said, “can I call you back?”
He never did, when I called him, his phone had been disconnected.  I went to his grandma’s house where he lived.  She said he moved back home with his parents in Modesto, a town about four hours away.  I told her I was expecting her great grandchild, she didn’t give up any information until a few weeks later, when she called me with some terrible news.  She said Sean was killed in an auto accident.  I didn’t believe her until I read about it in the newspaper.  There was a photograph of his convertible bug turned upside down on highway 17.  I attended his funeral pregnant with his child.  I still wondered if this was all a set-up to get rid of me.  I chose to have an abortion.

For some reason abortions are preformed at night, maybe to avoid the pro-life protesters.  As a liberal thinking person, I was always confused about our stance of pro choice and the death penalty.  My people believe in saving the lives of criminals yet undeveloped babies lives were disposable.  I guess I have a conservative side.  I considered adoption but I wasn’t emotionally stable enough for something that heavy.  I was brought into a room, this clinic kept patience awake during the procedure in hopes they won’t repeat the same crime.  The doctor was unfriendly, he placed the vacuum in me and it was over.  He looked at me and said sternly, “I don’t ever want to see you again.”

I did it and I don’t regret it, but I’m thirty years old.  I’m too old for an abortion. I’m old enough to be accountable for my actions.  I’m emotionally stable enough to provide a good life for a child and have positive qualities to offer.  Just like high school I was in a situation without a partner.  When my backpack was stolen off the train in Venice, I lost all contact information for the father.  Should I find a family that does have a dad; it still wouldn’t be your real father.  It would be fun to have two dads; I could find a fabulous gay couple.  I wonder what it’s like to not have a dad; I wonder what it’s like to have a good dad.  I have a lot of issues with my father, I hold him responsible for a lot my behaviors growing up.  He didn’t beat or molest me, nothing like that.  In therapy I learned that because of his depression, he was emotionally unavailable to me and therefore I felt emotionally neglected.  He’s also just an asshole.

I remember one sunny Saturday where my parents hosted a BBQ in our backyard.  My dad was a jock and mom pretended so that she could get closer to him. Everything revolved around sports including his mood.  My dad had season tickets to the San Francisco Forty-Niner football games.  We would turn on the last quarter to see if they had lost, if so, we knew dad was coming home in a bad mood.
My parents played on a coed soccer team that liked to party.  After the game the team picked up a keg and headed over to our house.   I found it entertaining seeing my parents get drunk and stupid with other parents, it was fun.  Some of my friends from school had conservative parents that had lots of rules like no feet on the table and bedtime at eight PM.  I felt sorry for my friends with mean parents, and was happy with my pot-smoking parents who lacked responsibility in parenting.  The gang was all there, drinks were poured and joints were passed.  Tasha, my mom’s friend got up on our picnic table and announced that she had gotten a new tattoo and had everyone gather around so she could reveal it.  Most of the kids were playing PAC-man in the house but for some reason I was more entertained by the drunken stage that our backyard had become.  Tasha unzipped her wrangler jeans and exposed a butterfly located on her shaved vagina.  I ran into the house to tease her son Brad who I had a crush on, “I just saw your mom’s vagina.”
“I know, she got it cause my dad left her,” he responded as the ghost ate his last PAC-man.  “Shit you made me die,” he said as he tossed the control.
“Your mom made me gag so were even,” I said
“Since you saw my mom’s vagina let me see yours,” he replied.
“Yeah right!” I said.
“Come on, I’ll show you mine if you show me yours.” he bargained
“Ok, but you first,” I said then he quickly pulled down his swim trunks to reveal his shriveled little penis.  I laughed and ran outback yelling, “Ha ha sucker.”

I found Dad and Tasha playing horseshoes.  She bent over and teased my dad to “ring this” as she pointed to her ass.
“Dad, where’s mom?”  I asked hoping he would stop flirting with mom’s drunken friend.  I was invisible as usual.  Later dad offered to drive Tasha and Brad home because she was too drunk to drive.  He was gone for hours.  I knew he was fucking her.  Mom knew he was fucking her.  He returned and I heard him admit to mom he fucked her as I listened through the walls.  I could hear mom crying.  The next weekend she took us to the park, when we returned home Dad’s stuff was gone, he had moved out.  Some dads do more harm than good.

When dad cheated on mom, it sent this message that all men will cheat.  Later in therapy I learned that as a result of this mindset, in order to protect myself I gave my husband permission to cheat.  I figured he was going to do it anyway so by giving him permission, I would be in control and wouldn’t be broken down.  Of course the deal would go both ways, I could cheat too and therefore wouldn’t be deprived of my desire to be with women.  Jack and I were together for years and had no desire or opportunity to be with anyone else until Brittany moved in next door.

Jack being the nice guy that he is went over and offered to help with the heavy stuff.  I who am not as nice kept to myself.    Jack came through the door as I was taking a hit from my black glass penis shaped bong, watching reruns of “The Real World” on MTV.
“Brittany invited us over for a beer,” said Jack.  “Wanna go over there?”
“No thanks, you go and have fun.”  I exhaled.  I didn’t drink when I was married.  Jack drank so much, it took the pleasure out of drinking for me because I was always trying to get him to quit so I wouldn’t have to baby-sit him.  I smoked weed instead, which kept me pretty isolated in my stoner den.
“You sure you don’t mind if I hang out over there?”  He asked
“Just remember to wear a condom!”  I was halfway joking.  He kissed me and went next door.   I went to bed.  The next day Jack called me at work and asked to meet me for lunch.  He began to cry, as he admitted to having sex with Brittany last night.  I cried too.  My heart was broken.  Jack had planned a trip to Arizona to visit his family a few days later.  I was torn with emotions, we both were.  The only way to make this ok was to fuck Brittany myself.
I knocked on her front door, “Hi, I’m Molly, Jack’s wife.”  She hesitated as she invited me inside.
“I thought I should introduce myself since you slept with my husband.”
“He said you guys had an open relationship and that you were cool with it,” she sounded nervous.
“Oh, yeah, it’s cool.” I reassured her.
We drank a few beers, which was ok because Jack was out of town so I felt I could drink.  She rubbed her neck and complained it was sore.
“Come, here I’ll massage your neck,” I said, thinking this is how it always begins.
She moaned with pleasure and asked me to “touch her”.  We had sex on her couch.

The next day I went up to Kat and told her to smell my finger. I couldn’t get the scent of her off me.
“What did you do?” she asked
“Brittany” I bragged.
I called Jack, unsure at how he would react; he felt a little weird and shocked at the same time, although we were confident our love would pull us through.
Jack returned home, Brittany knocked on the door; we invited her in, and then invited her to a threesome.  It was the fantasy come true, until we learned from couples counseling that fantasies should be left at fantasies.  Our affair became awkward, it was fun once but Brittany wanted some kind of relationship with us, she wanted to spend more time with us than we wanted to spend with her.  We gave our 30 days notice and moved to the other side of town.

Last night I pulled a Scarlet. What I mean by that is I kept mom up worrying because I was late coming home from school. Fall term started today where I ran into a former writing student who is taking Screenwriting with me. We decided to get a drink after class where I would ramble on about publishing Scars of Paris over the summer. This is why I didn’t shave my legs today, I knew I might run into someone I could potentially fuck.

My cellphone rang at 9:14pm. “Where are you?” mom asked with a tired voice.

“Uhh, the library,” I lied.

“I can’t go to sleep until I know you’re home safe.”

Mom’s trippin again. She did the same thing when Scarlet was in town visiting. My sister has a lot of friends and likes to party. The first night she got into town she hopped on her friend Zach’s handlebars and headed out to a Roller Derby bout.

“Make smart choices!” mom hollered as Scarlet and Zach cruised off without their bicycle helmets. “That kid makes me so nervous,” mom mumbled.

“Hey mom, remember that tandem bike we found in the basement of that haunted house we rented on Madison.” I said trying to get her mind off her worries. That basement had all kinds of treasures. My sisters and I were always scamming up ways to make some cash mostly just to buy candy. This basement was a gold mine of opportunity if only the mice that also claimed territory of the basement didn’t freak us out.

“On the count of three. One, two, three,” we opened the door to the basement and charged down the stairs barking, “RUFF, RUFF RUFF, RUFF, RUFF!”

The coast was clear, no mice just an overwhelming history of mildew. After we found the tandem, we cleaned it up and took it for a cruise around the neighborhood. Heads turned, as the kids couldn’t believe their eyes when they saw this bicycle built for two. They chased us down the street and we stopped to let them have a better look as they circled around.

“Give you a ride, for a quarter.” I said to the rich kid whose parents were insurance brokers.

“OK!” he said with excitement as he dug a quarter out of his pocket. Even the poor kids coughed up a quarter for a ride. Business was successful but we decided to expand. There was a stationary bike, a trampoline and a rowing machine buried in the basement. Ding! We got ourselves a gym! Shit add that couch and we got a country club. The country club was shut down after the kid with the insurance brokers demanded we refund their son’s membership and notified us that we could be sued.

Turns out we weren’t the only ones who liked hanging out in the basement. Something weird happened one day when there was a knock at the door. We were home alone and I being the oldest at age twelve was in charge so I answered the door. There stood a creepy man with a familiar face. Another man was waiting in a running car stopped in front of our house.

“Is your mommy or daddy home?” he asked.

“There not here right now.” I said trying to remember where I had seen this man’s face.

“May I look in your basement, I left something down there when I was hiding from the cops.”

“What is it, I’ll look for you?” I said thinking fast.

“I left a cross, that meant a lot to me.”

“Wait here.” I said as I shut and locked the front door. I remembered where I knew him from, a flyer passed around school. I called 911. I headed down to the basement and under the stairs where he said to look was the cross.

I handed it to the man as the police handcuffed him and his buddy. When I think back on that day I get chills, knowing something bad could have happened but luckily didn’t.

Me, mom and the baby were all woken up to my drunk sister pounding at the front door.

“It’s unlocked!” I whispered as she slams the front door. The baby starts to cry, “Your kid’s crying,” she says as she passes out in my bed.

“Move over,” I said. “Me and mom were just talking about the old basement.

“Ha, Ha! You got busted with porn, you pervert!” my sister laughed waking the baby once again.

“Shhh!” I said rolling my eyes but it was true. I had dug a little deeper in the basement where I found old raunchy porn. So of course I put in my book bag and brought it to school to gross out my friends and see if I could sell it to one of the boys. Before I could make a profit, the magazine fell out of my bag, onto the floor in class. The kids sitting near by pointed and laughed the teacher bent down to pick up the porn. I was sent to the principle’s office where my mom was called in for a conference. Mom was humiliated she thought it was my fathers and said she wouldn’t be able to show her face at my school again, so we moved.

There was a knock at the door my sisters and I raced to answer it. It was Dan the Cable Man. To us the cable man was right up there with God or Santa Claus. Cable was a commodity only had when mom could afford it which was not often. So we invited the cable man in, offered him something to drink, would he like some lasagna. We surrounded him as he got on his knees and began installing our new world. Mom flirted; we were charming how could he not love us? So as he finished up, he handed over the remote control and we invited him to stay and enjoy the fruits of his labor. The cable man stayed for hours as he and mom were hitting it off, we asked him if he would be our new daddy. He returned the next night to watch cable and the next and every night after that until one day there was a phone call. A woman on the other line asked if we had seen her husband the cable guy, “Daddy phone’s for you, it’s your wife.”
The cable man ran out the front door and we never heard from him again. Mom never paid the bill, a few months later a new cable man came to our door, the grim reaper to cut out cable and our souls.