On Father’s Day When Your Dad Was Kind of an Asshole

By Bea Tarthur
Posted on Sunday, June 19th, 2016



(Pictured: A historical example of a father that was kind of an asshole)

While other kids’ Dads were teaching them how to walk, my Dad was instructing me on how to be a trickster baby. He coached me for a few days until the prank succeeded. As my grandmother slid me into her arms, I extended my tiny baby hands over her face in prime Face Hugger position and whispered ‘Alien. Alieeeeen. Alien.’ Grandmother quickly dropped me back to the floor, repulsed by a tiny baby creeping her out with a re-enactment from the 1979 horror movie, Alien. Sigourney Weaver herself would have jettisoned me out a window based on my impression. Dad sat in the corner laughing uncontrollably as he had a new soldier in the war on No Fun. 

No Fun made him get a job. No Fun was the reason that instead of scamming free bowling games at the bowling alley, he was at this family party anyway. No Fun was going to win this war, but Dad was going to first ensure that a few of its bases took heavy hits. Trickster Dad was one of the many personalities of Dad that I frequently battled. 

 Dad’s mood swings were as capricious and nonsensical as the ideal career of a child: “I want to be an astronaut. No, wait, I want to be a penguin. Actually, I’m going to be a dump truck.” How do you explain to others that your Dad was neither the knight Dad that rescued his daughter from every one of life’s dragons, but, nor was he always the dragon?

Kind Dad would take me fishing with him so that I could dig in the fossil-wealthy glaciated soil. He appreciated that I wanted to be a geologist and encouraged me to find remnants of the glacier that dumped an epoch’s evidence throughout the riverbed. My pockets would flood with plant fossils, shiny rocks, and dirt while Dad caught and released minnowesque catfish. When all of his worms had been stolen by thieving fish, we would drive home. We’d discuss what kind of fossils I might be carrying and guess how valuable they must be because they were so old. On lucky days, he’d bring me home various rocks and stones that he had found when he was gone for work. We’d bond over the shiny agates and crusty limestone.

Sadistic Dad obliged himself most often when my Mom wasn’t home. For a petty infraction, you might have to stand with your nose in the corner until Mom returned home in a few hours. In other instances, Dad would strategize his verbal cruelty among all of his children until one of us cried. He would castigate us with monologues on how we were all useless, worthless, and that he’d been given terrible children. After a few hours of this, one of us would break. The weeper was the biggest loser because then all of the other siblings were encouraged to ridicule the loser lest they become the target of Dad’s focused beratement.

Sadistic Dad was the same person as generous Dad that coordinated thousands of tons of charitable donations to the food bank in the city. He worked for a company that had an excess of merchandise that would be sent to the landfill regularly. Instead of throwing it away, he would convince various long haul truckers that they would take the discarded staples and make secondary runs to the food bank. He did this with great peril to his job because if his managers discovered it, he could have been fired or even prosecuted for theft. I admired him so much for his courage to help others with such a significant risk attached to it.

Being a parent is difficult and being better than mediocre can be a sisyphean task to hit all of the goals. You don’t give your parents a grade report when they’ve finished raising you and let them know that they excelled in providing a sufficient supply of macaroni & cheese but they needed improvement on appropriate communication* (Reporters Notes: Parent should try to refrain from calling the child ‘a fucking moron’ even if the child has dropped a glass platter and sprayed chip dip all over the driveway.). Though, the more I think about it, maybe it would have been beneficial?

Father’s Day arrives every year and people who know me poorly ask me how I’m going to celebrate with my Dad. It’s a reminder that he died years ago and that it’s considered normal to want to spend a day celebrating your Dad for his accomplishments in rearing you. Instead of sending the conversation to astronomic levels of awkward, I change the subject and ask them what they’re doing with their Dads. Conversation catastrophe avoided! It does make me envious of my friends who seem to only have good stories about their fathers. How much of this is an accurate representation of their family relationships and how many of them are putting on facades so they don’t have to tell terrible stories?

About the Author:
After a long career as a fetus, I was pushed out into this world kicking & screaming about the lack of internet, reality tv, and 30 minutes or less pizza delivery. It would take far too long for me to receive these simple requests.  When I'm not wishing for the future, I'm running around my home pantsless, blasting PJ Harvey, and shakin' my buns.