The Good Father.

A sauce packet detonates, exploding like a BBQ firework as it’s thrown against the wall. Wrappers and stray chunks of food litter the tables and floor. They yell over one another, louder and louder, a positive feedback loop that can only end in the rupturing of eardrums. One kid walks across the seat cushions right in front of me, from one booth to the other, like the floor is fucking lava.

As I’m mopping up a large drink one of the kids spilled, just beneath another litter-filled table, one member of this gaggle of giggling idiots darts by at Mach 10. In the process of doing so, he catches the leg of his shorts on the mop handle, almost de-pantsing himself in the process.

I bark, “Hey!,” and after stopping a moment to apologize and catch a breath, the jacked-up poster-child for pro-choice just picks up where he left off.

Where are the parents, you ask?

Probably at home, their negligent fathers still convinced their pull-out game is strong despite evidence to the contrary, so both them and the wives consequently busy making more unsocialized crotch-goblins they’re not prepared to care for.

No matter, they’ll just send their little sociopaths to the local fast food joint, where a 45-year-old, childless bachelor with bleeding ears and rising blood pressure will be forced to clean up after them and carefully bottle up his rage so he doesn’t go ape-shit on the little spidermonkeys.

I should’ve been a fucking librarian.

After wheeling the mop bucket into the corner, I take a deep breath, averting eye contact with anyone, and approach the door at the front of the building. Slipping out, I proceed to smoke a cigarette and reconsider my life choices.

A few puffs in, a girl walking down the sidewalk turns her head towards me, makes an “o” face, smiles, and laughs in apparent lunacy. Even given the tell-tale signs, it takes a moment for me to realize who this is, as I’m not accustomed to seeing her in anything other than her fast food costume.

It’s Psycho.

A pretty girl of perhaps seventeen years of age, she’s been a coworker of mine for the last two months or so. She’s prone to dramatic outbursts of energy which marijuana either serves to quell or exacerbate, depending on the day. As she walks up to me, I ask her why on earth she’d elect to come here on her day off, and she doesn’t hesitate to tell me that she’d much rather be here than home.

Then she bears all. Cliff’s Notes of her life story comes rushing out in firehouse fashion.

She tells me how her father and step father have both raped her. How her step-father would frequently do so when she took a shower. How her father would hold her and her nearly half a dozen siblings at gunpoint when any of them left the house. She explained how he’d walk behind her, keeping the handgun under his shirt, pointed at her back.

One day, she finally called the cops on him, and that’s how she escaped that fucked up circumstance and the state of South Carolina and came to live with her mother and her mother’s wife here in Ohio. Her mother who, while not physically abusive, at the very least, isn’t much of a mother, either. Her wife? Evidently a total bitch.

I know she’s not lying about any if this, and so it blows me away how she tells me all of it so casually, without teeth clenching, devoid of teared-up eyes. She just says it matter of factly. As if to say, hey, this is just what happens, isn’t life crazy?

It fucking breaks my heart. I feel myself crumbling inside.

It’s no wonder she has issues with men. It’s no wonder she gravitated towards that negligent and selfish bitch, May, who takes delight in lying and excuses her habit of constantly cheating on her girlfriends and obsolving herself of guilt by referencing her “abandonment issues” and other psychological glitches.

Shitty relationships is all Psycho has ever seen, ever known, and the familiar provides comfort, which is a more reliable source of psychological security than the risk of the unfamiliar, however much higher the odds of attaining happiness might be.

I was again reminded how some parents just shouldn’t be parents, which immediately brought my mind back to the circus of amphatamine-fueled midgets occupying the dining room on the other side of the window to my back.

Had my assumptions been too harsh?

When I was a teenager, I suddenly reexperienced — as opposed to simply remembered — something that had occurred earlier in my youth. This kind of thing had happened before, but this particular instance was different.

I was at my friend’s house, in the bedroom he shared with his four other siblings. It was a rare instance in which they were left alone, unsupervised by their strict parents, and apparently all the energy they’d been forced to repress had built up a surplus so that when they were finally alone for a brief period, it all exploded.

They were running around like lunatics. The youngest, a boy, climbed atop the toy chest, wrapped a blanket around him and lifted a flashlight high into the air with one hand, pretending to be the Statue of Liberty, and began singing the Star-Spangled Banner at high volume.

Given I knew what was coming, this must have happened before. I dropped to my belly, scooted beneath one of the bunk beds, and awaited the inevitable. I didn’t have to wait long until the door burst open and in came the father with his belt.

For all I knew, maybe it was the same with these kids. Maybe their parents were as insanely violent as my friends father was, and now that they were unsupervised, the volcano of energy erupted.

When the cat is away, the mice will play.

Maybe I just don’t understand because, unlike them, I had loving and present parents. It’s true that my mother and I had serious issues up until maybe my mid-30s, but it’s clear as day to me how lucky I was — how lucky I am — and certainly in a relative sense.

Many boys have fathers that are abusive, negligent, or altogether absent. I can say without hesitation that my father is and has always been my favorite fucking human being ever. I could never hope to express how much I love the man.

So yeah, I’m lucky, so maybe I’m just being ignorant given my different, personal, historical context and I really shouldn’t be mad at those untamed circus monkey children that invaded our fast food dining room.

Later, I was talking with Brian, another maintenance guy, back in the stock room. In the midst of conversation, he tells me he thinks I’d make a good father. This is a strange coincidence, as I’ve told him nothing about what occurred that day or the shit that had been going on in my head as a consequence.

My immediate response was that he shouldn’t say that.

I tell him that I’ve finally settled into the thought of being alone, and that it probably suited me best. I need my alone time, and that never went iver well on the rare occasion I had a girlfriend — it sure as hell wouldn’t make me suitable for a wife and kids, and at 45, I’d dodged all that thus far.

Come August, I’d be quitting this job, hopefully landing in a better-paying one, and moving into a trailer close to my family where I’d likely live alone until I die. I was good with that.

Maybe I’d get a cat, that was it.

I calmed a bit and thanked him, and confessed I’d been told that before, but it always perplexed me. Plus, I’m not sure I’d want to bring a kid into this world, particularly given it’s trajectory, at least as I see it.

He tells me that this mentality is part of the reason I’d make a good father.

Then he jokingly says this conversation almost seems like a flashback sequence. That we’ll both be looking back on this moment sometime in the future and laugh at my reservations.

“Oh fuck no,” I tell him. “Please, please don’t say that.”

I’ll settle for a cat. I’m just fine with a cat.

Warm Greetings from the Denizens of Munchkinland.

5/10-11/22

I wake up feeling an awesome dread.

Its too intense to ignore completely, though easy enough to distract myself from as it stubbornly looms in the background of my thoughts. It seems attached to nothing specifically, though I figure it probably has something to do with the ever-lengthening list of shit I should get done but don’t have the motivation to do — either that or its anxiety holding me back. Its always difficult to discern which.

I knew I wouldn’t be good at this. Adulting, I mean. I was just explaining to my mother how I knew this from a young age.

It was before I turned ten, as we were still living at the old house. There was a hallway that stretched from the bedrooms and bathrooms to the kitchen, and along the wall of the hallway there were hooks for our coats and bookbags. Despite the fact that only Eve and I were going to school at the time, as Linda was still young, Linda got her own bookbag, loaded it with shit, and hug it beside our own.

She was always eager to grow up and the years that followed didn’t dampen that desire at all. She has proven she is adept at this. Eve wasn’t bad, either. But even then, as a young little shit, I stared at that bookbag and realized how different I was in that respect.

Since as far back as I can remember, I knew I would have a rough time of it, and my life since that point has shown how right I was. When I was a bit younger, adulthood was far down the road, so I could ignore it, but now it began to sink in: before I knew it, I would be on my own, and I had no idea what to do or how to go about doing it. Getting a job, getting a place to live, getting a car, driving a car, paying my bills, being a responsible human in modern society. It suddenly struck me how much I was fucked.

Now, as it turned out, I exceeded my expectations, though given I expected myself to be homeless or dead far before this point in my life, I suppose I didn’t set the bar very high. Still, I’m 43 and I feel I’ve been largely carried or hitched a ride on the coattails of others to get even this far. And its not like my ambitions are huge, either, at least not on the mundane side of things.

I still don’t think adults exist, but there are certainly those who put their all into the role and act it out quite well.

I am not one of those people.

Just one more way in which I feel out of place in a world I don’t belong.

Later in the day, as I’m sweeping the patio at work, sinking into the shitty mood I woke up in, I look up and see a small boy on the other side of the window, staring dead at me, smiling and waving. I wave back and can’t help but smile in return.

Later, I’m sort of enveloped by the mood again as I walk to the dollar store for cleaning supplies. As I’m standing outside, finishing my cigarette, I see a mother with her two young boys. I keep my distance, as I’m smoking, but one of them runs up to me within a few feet. He’s wearing a badge and a plastic fireman’s hat. He looks up at me, smiles, and waves.

I look at him, crack a smile, and wave back, but the mood’s got me, so I sort of stare at the ground as I take another drag. I can still feel his eyes, however. I look back up to find he’s still staring at me, almost like he’s trying to figure something out. He looks rather sad and concerned now, maybe a little hurt.

I feel kind of bad. Like he was trying to cheer me up and I infected him with my mood instead.

Sorry, kid.

Later, back at work. as I’m coming in the doors after having another smoke, there are two kids sitting at a table. As I walk past, one of the kids — a boy who is, at best, in his early teens — held out his hands for a high five. Without stopping, I obliged.

I think to myself how that high five from an older child was sort of a fitting end to the child synchronicity, but then it happens again the following day, and again it seems to be triggered by a bad mood.

I’m on break, in my truck, and get maybe a few lines into the book I’m reading before a kid I work with walks up to my driver side window. What proceeds immediately reminds me of a Bill Hicks bit I haven’t heard in ages.

“You read on break?” He says it with a voice and a scrunched-up face that seems to convey disgust. “Why?”

Not what I’m reading, mind you, but why I’m reading.

He follows this up by saying how he always wondered what I did on break. Rather than be satisfied with having finally solved the mystery and leaving me the fuck alone so I can continue enjoying my free time of thirty minutes, he continues babbling to me for the duration. Blind to my body language, minimalist verbal responses, or the dozens of other factors all pointing towards the clear message of: go the bloody fuck away.

At the end of my not-a-break, I clock in, firmly rooted in a bad fucking mood, and proceed to gather trash from around the store. Out in dining room, I notice there are two occupied tables. At the table in the middle of the dining room is an elderly couple, likely the grandparents of the hyperactive little girl at the table with them.

As I’m changing the trash in the far corner, I hear the kid start yelling in a manner that clearly conveys she’s desperate for the immediate attention of someone.

“Hi! Hi! Hi! Hi! Hi! Hi! Hi!”

Its like she’s stuck in a loop, delivering a rapid-fire greeting, and I look up as it continues and she’s hanging off her grandmother, looking right at me. I smile and wave, then she stops and giggles. Through the giggling, she explains to her grandmother, “He’s funny!”

I’m not at all sure why Munchkinland elected to send these three children via synchronicity in an attempt to lift my spirits, but I certainly appreciate the attempt.

A Wasteland of Damaged Children.

Outside, I was sweeping the lot when a woman and a young girl exited the door.

“Its cold outside,” says the little girl. She was right, too.

“Shut up and get in the car,” barks back the woman at high volume. “This all turned into a shitshow because you don’t know how to be respectful in public.”

While there was clearly more to the story, I was astounded by the woman’s hypocrisy and her utter lack of self-awareness. I mean, barking at a kid like that in public doesn’t qualify as respectful in my book, at the very least, and this bitch had clearly been alive much longer than the child she was scolding for allegedly doing the same damn thing.

It made me think about the kids I work with — older kids, of course, anywhere from fifteen to seventeen — and how so many of them have parents that perhaps became parents too young or just should have never had been parents at all.

I’ve heard the hoops some couples have to jump through, the qualifications they have to meet in order to adopt a child — and yet any two idiots who can hardly take care of themselves, let alone another living being, can engage in some genital-mashing and produce one all by themselves, no qualifications necessary so long as the biological equipment is in working order.

There’s something incredibly fucked up about that, methinks.

Both Emory and Bonnie have a horrific home situation, making them the second young couple I’ve known in recent years that make me profoundly happy that they found and hang on to one another. They currently live with Emory’s mother, who certainly doesn’t sound like she’ll be getting the mother of the year award, but it sounds infinitely better than Bonnie’s home situation.

Her mother’s an addict, and her father had enough of it recently, left her, and moved out of state. Bonnie still speaks with them both, and seems to have a decent relationship with her father, but her mother constantly makes her feel like shit, belittles her, and never shows the slightest pride in her daughter’s accomplishments.

More than once a call or text from her has sent Bonnie bawling at work — where the girl honestly amazes me. There’s a little buildup, but the waterworks come on pretty quickly, full-scale, blubbering, ugly crying that breaks your heart, but then she’s done. She’s fine. Good to go. It blows my mind how quickly she bounces back. She doesn’t hold on to her emotions as I do, but rather lets them flow through her, lets herself feel them, and then they’re out of her system.

I could learn from this, for sure. She needs to teach me that trick.

No thanks to either of their parents, they’re preparing to go to college and find an apartment. It’ll honestly be a relief to me once they’re on their own, too. They’re both very grounded, both remarkably level-headed and mature. They should do fine once they’re freed from the shackles of being minors.

Then there’s Lydia.

She was one of those quiet, introverted people who seemed reluctant to speak when she first started working with us, and I always feel it my duty to get such people to open up a bit, maybe laugh, at least give them one person to have a verbal exchange with. I found I truly like the girl.

She’s pretty, petite and athletic, and from the very beginning she seemed to be one those people who are goth at heart, even if they didn’t always wear the external trappings. I like those people. A lot. They kind of feel like home to me, and this sense I had of her dark nature only grew as I got to know her.

I learned that she’d had two abusive boyfriends in the past, though her current one seems to be treating her well. Later I would learn that he started off as her drug dealer, then became a fuck buddy, and ultimately what they had evolved into a relationship. I liked that process. Aside from the drug dealer part of it, I have also been through that process. Ages ago, my ex-girlfriend Kate and I started off as fuck buddies and it seamlessly blossomed into the most intense relationship in my life, albeit a short-lived one. I sort of prefer that natural process to the more traditional one.

When she was about ten, her house burnt down and while the family made it out okay, she had some pets who died. Shortly thereafter, she lost her father, then her uncle. Understandably, she suffers from anxiety and depression, but also likely has bipolar disorder, which rather surprised me. I also learned that she’s attempted suicide twice — almost three times, counting the day before she revealed this to me — and that she’s a cutter as well.

Whatever inspired her recent descent and suicide attempt, it in turn inspired her mother to present her with three choices: she could sleep on her mother’s bedroom floor, sleep over with her friend, or stay at a mental institution, where she’d be on suicide watch. She couldn’t be alone, however. She elected to stay with her friend.

The day she had told me about her suicide attempts, she had also gotten on new medication, which was making her feel nauseous, so they let her go home a little early. Her friend — a tall, slender girl — came up to the building riding a skateboard to pick her up.

After I thought they had both left, Lydia came up to me by the sink, where I had been doing dishes, asking me if I had a knife she could borrow. I jokingly asked her who she was going to stab, and she said no one, not yet, so I handed her my box cutter. Evidently her and her friend hadn’t even gotten out of the parking lot when a guy pulled in, passed by them, slammed the car in reverse, drove over the curb, and proceeded to hit on her.

Creepy guys are constantly trying to pick her up, usually through the drive-thru window, where she typically spends her shift.

She told him to just drive away. He said some bitter words and went on his merry way. As for the box cutter, she just wanted to have some means of defense if necessary on her and her friend’s walk home.

After she went back outside, my concern over the fact that I had just handed a girl who cuts herself a box cutter began to weigh heavily on me — that and the fact that my pathetic box cutter wouldn’t provide sufficient protection if indeed they did come across a creeper. So I went out the back door, where I saw Lydia and her friend talking to Diana, another girl I work with, and her mother.

Good, she was still here.

I went into my truck, grabbed my tire iron and handed it to her without saying anything and walked away.

I would never want to be a pretty girl, especially in a cesspool of a town like this.

For that matter, I wouldn’t want to be a kid in today’s world. There are too many parents that shouldn’t be parents, the schools seem more like a prison than anything else, and the planet they’re being left behind is going to be an epic shitstorm thanks to the climate change caused by generations of ignorance.