A Christmas Story

A blog friend of mine had a trainwreck Christmas and his comments reminded me of a funny Christmas story. Well, it's funny NOW.

My father and I do not speak. Haven't for about five or six years now. How that came about is that he is a friggin' TURD. After he and my ma were married, he kicked the shit out of her and my sister all the time. Big man, big man. I guess I was too small too be a punching bag up until the time that I was about four. Then that all changed. My mother was retarded for putting up with it for so long, but she wouldn't have had my awesome ass if she woulda quit him before 1964, you know. Que sera on the deddy beatdowns, it made me realize a bunch of stuff at an early age about love and who you care about. Most people would blindly go forward and simply state, "He's my dad, I love him even if he is a bad guy! He's my dad."

That statement is stupid, folks. I fall firmly on the side of justice and I never offer my love to people that do not deserve it simply because of who they are. People must earn my love and respect. Now, the story.

Back in 1985, I met a girl that I thought hung the moon. Bunches of folks told me that she was no damn good and that I was stupid for dating her, even the guy that introduced me to her. That should have given me a damn clue, but I was young and stupid.

Anyhoo, we wound up at the church in late December 1986 to be wed. My father was my "best man." He did not show up for the rehearsal, he did not show up for the dinner, he did not show up until very late that night and threw a friggin' hissy fit at the hotel because they had already given his room away. I got him another.

The next day at the church, he was even late getting there for the ceremony and I had even gotten another one of my groomsmen to be the stand-in to be my best man. (He had done the walk-through the night before so he was prepared.) My father showed up right when the rest of us were heading into the church.

By the way, sorry Gnutcase that y'all had to wear those plaid bow-ties and cucumber-buns. <--inside joke, y'all. But, it was Christmas-y.

When my future bride started in the back of the church, my father leaned over to me and said, "Dammit, she looks like a whore." Swear.

Even though he turned out to be right, he could have held on to that thought for the rest of his life and kept his friggin' mouth shut, but he didn't. Trust me when I say that was the beginning of the end of my association with that douche nozzle. Of course, it took quite a few more years for me to come to grips with the fact that my father is just no damn good.

But, after the wedding, my new bride and I went to do the Christmas thing with my family. We stayed in my father's guest house. The first day there, when I was getting out of the shower, the mirror (four feet by eight feet) fell off of the wall and shattered into a million pieces. I had to walk over the glass to get out of the bathroom. Barefoot.

Then after the usual family Christmas ritual, where my grandmother makes her two kids cry every stinking year, the bride and I headed to Gulf Shores for the honeymoon. While there, we both ate a shitload of oysters and got food poisoning. We saw the warning on television immediately after consuming enough to feed the entire cast of the Debbie Does Dallas series. We stayed deathly ill the whole week we were there. Two exits, NO WAITING!

Just so you know, I still blame my father for the whole fiasco and I'm cool with it. Also, my ex-brother in law called me this past Saturday to remind me that if his sister and I had stayed married, we would have been celebrating our twenty-second anniversary that day. We laughed like crazy people about that. He's a pretty good guy.

And I certainly wish that I had gone to spend Christmas with my grandmother this year because seriously she is the funniest thing that I have ever seen. I have no clue why my ma and her brother don't like being called "fat" and why exactly that it makes them cry. My grandmother is 88 years old and still drives, still mows her five acre yard herself and is about five feet tall and one hundred pounds soaking wet. And she's mean as Hell and I love her to death. Plus, neither my mother nor her brother are fat. Funny.

Can you top my worst Christmas?

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