Strong Swimmer

My father...



oh...my father...

My father is a bullshit artist of the highest order.

I, as the only child of my broken family, have had the pleasure and privilege of being the only recipent of the teachings of the two most polar opposite people in the world. My parents are so unalike, that to compare them accurately would take more time and space on this thing than I'd prefer. They're great, though...both of them. My mother lives in a comfortable suburban home with her husband and my father lives in a house he built himself outside of town with his 7 dogs. My mother took me to Shakespeare in the Park, my father took me to Stampede wrestling. My mother picks me up clothes she thinks I'll like from Jacob, my father gives me gift certificates for Mark's Work Warehouse. My mother and I go out for lunch, my father kills chickens for me. I'm thankful...because of them, I've become terribly indesicive.

I figure the only way I could possibly describe them is in D&D terms...but a/ I'd have to think about that and consult my manual and b/ it's too geeky and I'd end up embarrassed and deleting this section of my little essay here.

My father, getting back to the bullshit artist part, tells his coworkers stories about me. He tells them stories about my childhood that he's made up. He tells them stories of abuse and neglect with a straight face as if every parent throws their child into a lake in a sack to teach them to swim.

As far as I've heard:

- I've been (as I said just now) put into a burlap sack with a rock and tossed into a river/lake to learn to swim (which lead to the joke "she used to have a ton of brothers and sisters...she's just a strong swimmer").

- I've been slowly working up my resistance to Round Up (the weed killer) by injesting small doses since I was a toddler.

- I've suffered a mysterious and unspeakable accident which caused months of hospitalization and my mouth to be wired shut. "She writes on her pad that she's okay, but her eyes tell a different story."

- I was often locked in a closet because my parents couldn't afford babysitters.

- And, a recent and personal favourite, I was put into a school for mentally challenged kids and it took 2 years before they figured out I didn't belong there.