Hey all, Ernesto here with the third installment of Addiction Testimonials. If you’re interested in reading the previous two parts click on the following links: Addiction Testimonials 1, Addiction Testimonials 2. Otherwise, without further ado, I present the third segment. Until next week…Enjoy…E
Pt.3 Addiction Testimonial:
The Functions of Dysfunctionality: Confusion, Violence, Laughter?
I remember when I was about ten, an incident that occurred in the parking lot of the ballpark where me and my brother played little league. I was in the Bantam league, and my brother in Juvenile. I’d waited after my 1:00 game for my brother’s 4:00 game to end. After drinking a soda with my concession ticket that the coach handed out after games, and playing wall ball for a couple hours, I eventually tired and waited there on the aluminum bleachers for my brother’s game to end.
My Dad had dropped us off, and stuck around through part of my game, but was lost then somewhere in cocaine induced, booze stupor with fellow teammate’s dads. I new this now, because he’d disappear for several hours then show up and act out of the ordinary. I suppose the ballpark served as a cover/excuse to get out of the house on a weekend afternoon and sneak in some consumption under the distant radar of my mother’s vigil.
Nonetheless, on this particular day, after the game ended, me and my brother still had no ride, so we waited for him to show up, waiving away offers from surrounding baseball moms that thoughtfully asked a second time before loading the “gang” into the minivan and heading for some pitchers of cold coca-cola and pizza, served on plastic finished, red-and-white, checkered-patterned table clothes. Yeah I’d participated on an occasion, but this wasn’t going to be one of them.
So anyway, the park all but cleared out when my dad shows up. He pulls up in the rusted out 1979 Chevy Nova that was an off-white kind of color, like a an old tired seagull on the beach who had only one leg from many years of a hard fought life, but still endured. I remember the car because the door handle on the passenger side didn’t work for some reason, unless it was opened from the outside with the key. So there we are, in an empty and dark parking lot waiting for my dad to rummage through his pockets and fumble around the keys until he opened the door for us. Then, all of sudden, as we were getting into the car, my dad suddenly slapped me opened handed on the left side of my face.
I sniffled and as a tear begin to trickle from the left corner of my eye and carouse down my cheek; my brother asked him, “Why did you do that?” There was a long pause, and my father answered, “Because he was pissing on the door handle.” My brother rebutted, “No he wasn’t.” Then, my father began to laugh hysterically, his booming laughter echoing across the empty parking lot. Naturally, I began to chuckle and so did my brother and next thing we knew, we’re bracing against one another for support as our guts ached from the frenzy of laughter that left our eyes tearing.
Eventually, the out burst settled, we all got into the car, and my dad took us to Mc Donald’s for happy meals. He is good father though, and always bought us Happy Meal toys even when he knew the family couldn’t afford it. Not to mention the painstaking hours in front of the house playing baseball, practicing our swings, perfecting our groundball and pop-fly catching. Despite these moments of utter intoxicated lunacy, there were many good memories of a caring father who contributed a lot to his children’s lives, when he wasn’t high. We never spoke of that moment in the parking lot again, until nearly fifteen years later when my brother brought it up one night over the Christmas break.
25/04/2009 at 4:41 pm Permalink
Ernesto,
Thanks for the series, it reminded me of a story my older sister told me recently of us going out for pizza with my dad before he got sober. I remember a great time and enjoying a thick crusted sausage pizza while hearing Red Red Wine from a UB40 music video on the restaurant’s TV.
My sister remembers my father drinking a whole pitcher of beer and watching his brow sink and expression turn into a caveman-like sculpture. Almost 20 years later she tells me how she can remember how she was uneasy about the idea of him driving us home that night.
Sometimes it seems like these stories are out of someone else’s biography, crazy to think about those days when we act so “normal” now.
Abnormally, Santos