Life With Daddy–Part 1

Daddy used to say, “Words are just words. Curse words are meaningless when used out of context.” I was ten when he said it. It was giving heroin to an addict and telling him not to shoot up. I practiced my out-of-context cursing at every opportunity. Unfortunately, Mommy didn’t agree with Daddy on this subject, or for that matter, many others. Because of Daddy I spent a lot of time in the bathroom with Mommy getting a good taste of whatever bar soap had been on sale at Pathmark that week. If one were to choose their bar soap based on how it tasted, I’d have chosen Palmolive. Floral with just a hint of citrus. I eventually learned that it was okay to throw around idle curses in front of Daddy, but I needed to turn off my toilet mouth when with my mother. That’s a tough lesson in restraint for a ten-year old with AD/HD to manage.
That wasn’t the only time I was caught in the middle of my mother and father’s differences of opinion. I almost always sided with my father. I mean, I loved my mother, but Daddy was so much more fun! Like the time we got picked up for protesting the Vietnam War, one of Daddy’s many social issues of the late 60’s- early 70’s era. Daddy and a group of his hippie friends from South Street were protesting and picketing outside City Hall and Daddy had himself handcuffed to some rails that surrounded the building. I was too young to be handcuffed to the rails, Daddy said, so I needed to be handcuffed to him. They had groovy signs with sayings like, “Make Love, Not War” and “War is not healthy for children and other living things”. It was a peaceful demonstration with singing and petitions being passed. Obviously, the powers that be in City Hall don’t take lightly to a bunch of stoned out, long-haired, hippie freaks, with a child handcuffing themselves to their building, no matter how altruistic their cause. We were all busted and taken to a holding room. I assume that the police didn’t believe me when I told them Mel was my father. After all, I looked like the offspring of normal parents. When they asked for my mother’s phone number, I complied. I was still too young to say no to the police. To say that my mother was “unhappy” when she received that phone call would be a gross understatement. She was speechless. When I was in trouble, which was fairly frequent, my mother was never speechless and often was quite the long-winded orator delivering remarkably effective speeches about what was to happen to me “when she got me home”. I suppose I learned another lesson in restraint when my mother came to pick me up and didn’t murder my father as he and the Sergeant handed me over to her.
Daddy had me talk my way out of a ticket once when I was six. Really, I’m not kidding. Daddy always let me drive his cars and we had a big, black Buick Special that I loved. I wasn’t tall enough to reach the pedals, but I sat in between Daddy’s legs and I got to steer. One night coming up Roosevelt Boulevard we blew a red light. I guess neither Daddy nor I saw the light turn to red. When I heard the sirens and saw the flashing red lights I was terrified that we’d both be going to jail. Most men would have tossed their kid into the back seat before the policeman reached the car. Not my Dad. He laughed and said that since I had been driving I’d better explain to the officer why I had run the light. I remember the officer laughing when he saw me sitting behind the wheel. I launched into my explanation that Daddy and I had been laughing so much that I wasn’t paying attention and missed seeing the red light. He chuckled and said that as long as it “never happened again” he’s let me go with a warning. Daddy and I thanked him and we drove off up the Boulevard being careful to pay more attention to the road until we got home.