独家优惠奖金 100% 高达 1 BTC + 180 免费旋转

Family Time is Killing My Brain Cells

I peered out the living room window as my dad snuck up behind our next-door neighbor Radha. Dad was sporting his Toxic Avenger suit. The suit is completely white, impervious to smell, toxins, and other environmental pollutants. He was only supposed to use it in his work as an environmental engineer, but who cares about the fine print? My dad preferred to use it to freak out the neighborhood dogs, (they didn’t like it when they couldn’t smell something), and even our neighbors.

He was also wearing his new scary rubber mask. A few weeks prior dad had found a Halloween mask with green hair in our driveway which bore a striking resemblance to the Jack Nicholson version of the Joker. It was the middle of summer, so no one knew how it got there as it couldn’t be a remnant from Halloween, but dad figured it was a sign he should use it for something.

I watched my dad stroll up behind Radha as she walked up her driveway towards her front door. She didn’t notice him at first, but she quickly sensed there was someone behind her, turned around, took one look at him and screamed. Dad quickly took off his rubber mask, allowing her to see it was just him.

I started laughing so hard I rolled backward and knocked my head into the marble table behind me. But I didn’t care. I felt some pee come out, as I sometimes did when I laughed too hard.

Lata would bug my grandmother with questions like:

I wanted to tell Lata to shove one of her crappy samosas up her fat ass. You can fuck with me, but don’t fuck with grams. Grandma was a gigantic pain in the neck most of the time, (tattling on me, speaking broken English, not understanding that jalapeño is pronounced without the “j” or not comprehending that RuPaul is actually a man), but she was still my grams and I depended on her homemade chai when I came home from school.

My dad continued this little prank, hiding in the bushes of our house and scaring guests, neighbors, and friends until Vivek Uncle fell backward in fright and tripped over the front step. He ended up spraining his ankle. After that, my mom banished my dad from using his mask.

D ad has always had a predilection for nonsensical behavior that befuddled the rest of us. Logic and reasoning were rarely present in any of his decisions. Case in point, back when I was just an egg, a sperm, and a soul floating somewhere, my dad had been living in Canada with his cousin Madhuri prior to marrying my mom. Madhuri Auntie asked my dad to take her son Tejas to India. It was his first trip on a plane and the whole eighteen-hour flight wasn’t sitting too well with him. The little asshole ended up barfing all over himself.

Totally unaware of the proceedings or goings-on next to him, dad continued to sleep, despite Tejas’s repeated requests for help. Finally, a stewardess noticed the mess and roused dad from his slumber. Always the practical sort, he took Tejas to the bathroom and made him take his clothes off. He promptly dumped the brand-new suit Madhuri Auntie had bought for Tejas in a bag and shoved it in the minuscule airplane trash can. He then marched Tejas right back to his seat in his underpants, ordered another cocktail, and went back to sleep. No attempt to check the carry-on suitcase for another outfit. Nope, little four-year-old Tejas was going to greet his grandparents and the rest of his extended family at the airport in his underwear.

That did not go down well.

When they got to the airport, Tejas’s paternal grandmother, (the side not related to me), greeted my father, (whom she knew little of), and the semi-naked Tejas. Completely horrified at Tejas’s lack of attire and convinced that the western world is wholly lacking in decency, his grandmother was unable to say anything. After all, she was a proper Indian lady. Instead, she quickly whisked Tejas back to her family’s house.

My dad, on the other hand, made no mention of the fact that Tejas had barfed, that he had made no attempt whatsoever to find Tejas a change of clothes, or that he even remotely gave two shits.

The only time my dad seemed to give a rat’s ass is when one of his personal effects went missing. Like the time he left his video camera on a bus in Jamaica or the time he left his coat in a Vegas hotel. However, the worst infraction was the time we went to Disneyworld.

M y mom, dad, sister, and I had spent the weekend in Atlanta visiting family. After a raucous weekend eating samosas and listening to my family cackle loudly at 7 a.m. every morning it was time to go leave for Florida. Indian families (at least all the ones I’ve ever been a part of) are loud AF. I’m talking about put Italian families to shame loud. Loud at all hours of the day about anything from toenail clippings to so-and-so’s husband who just lost his job to what kind of pickle to pick up from the grocery store. Imagine all of that with Bollywood music playing in the background at full volume. Luckily my cousins didn’t have a dog like we did, so they didn’t have the added pleasure of an animal barking like a maniac every morning like I did because he had to take a shit.

In any case, we packed up our stuff and flew to Orlando for what was set to be an epic trip to Disneyworld and Universal Studios. I had yet to experience the Tower of Terror and I was stoked to see how falling from several hundred feet in a few seconds would feel. I imagined much like trying to escape out the back window of my bedroom without getting caught by my parents.

My sister and I were 13 and 17 respectively at the time. My sister was at the sullen adolescent stage, whereas I was ebullient because I knew it was only a matter of time before I went to college and could get some peace and quiet. We got up to the gates of Universal Studios, excited to start our day. The last time I had been to Disneyworld my grandparents were with us, so the experience was a real buzzkill. Apparently, neither my mom nor my grandparents knew what Space Mountain was, so the three went through the entire ride in sheer terror. You would think they had been kidnapped by a roving gang of bandits.

“We need the tickets now, where are they?” my mom asked.

My dad fished through his pockets. “They are here somewhere.” My dad didn’t have a man purse or any sort of bag so there weren’t many places the tickets could be except his pockets.

“I don’t have them,” he replied defensively. “I think I left them in Atlanta.” When my dad is wrong, he immediately rushes to defensiveness. It’s his M.O.

We all stood there incredulously. I felt numb. Like the time I learned that leprechauns aren’t real. I looked up at the gates to Disney which now seemed to loom larger than life. It’s like they were taunting us.

“YOU WHAT?!” my mom screamed. You’d think after decades of being married to my father she would have accepted the fact that he has the organizational skills of a one-year-old and just take charge. The man can never and will never be organized. Sadly, he has passed some of this gene down to me, causing me to frequently leave phone chargers in hotel rooms. Every man I’ve ever dated has become accustomed to the fact that they must “sweep” the room after I leave to make sure I didn’t forget anything.

“Why didn’t you remind me?” my dad yelled back. You’d think after decades of being forgetful and disorganized my dad would just accept his true nature. Instead, he usually sought to blame my mom or those meddling kids (my sister and I).

As the two of them bickered back and forth about whose fault it was, I wondered if I would ever get to ride The Tower of Terror.

My parents finally marched to the front of the gate where they asked to speak to a supervisor. With their fundamental lack of charm, I wasn’t sure how this was going to go down. They rarely used the word “please” and their opening salutation was usually “yeah hi.”

“Shut up and let me do the talking,” my mom hissed.

“Yeah fine,” my dad muttered irritably. I knew he wouldn’t keep his mouth shut for longer than a minute.

“My husband,” my mom said while glaring at my dad, “seems to have left our tickets in — -”

“You know what?” my dad said interrupting my mom like clockwork, “I was so busy packing in the morning and my wife didn’t remind me to bring the tickets.”

I looked over at the supervisor with her wedding ring on and sensed this was clearly not the best tactic to take. No one could ever accuse my dad of knowing his audience.

“Would you shut up?!” my mom shouted back at him. I couldn’t say I blamed her for the outburst. He was pretty good at opening his mouth when he didn’t need to. “He left them in Atlanta,” she continued calmly as though she hadn’t just screamed at her husband. “We were staying with family and we just forgot them.” She finished her explanation with a nervous giggle and a sheepish smile, hoping to implore the supervisor to take pity on us.

“Oh boy that sounds like a real pickle!” she exclaimed. “I’ll see what I can do.” Those Disney employees were really trained well. Her exceptional enthusiasm was quite different from the normal interactions I had when I tried to return something at Walmart. “Alright,” she said chirpily, returning to the window. “Can you have someone fax over the tickets?”

“Yes!” both my parents shouted in unison.

“OK, great, have the person fax it to this number,” she said sliding over a piece of paper. “We will let you in today, but you will need to bring the actual tickets tomorrow. Have them overnight them to you.”

After calling my uncle in Atlanta and explaining the whole situation, the tickets were faxed, and we were finally in a good hour later.

As per usual. I could tell my dad was not comprehending the seriousness of my mother’s ire. “See it all worked out,” he said casually. “You freak out over nothing.”

Oh no he didn’t.

“SHUT UP! YOU ARE SUCH AN IDIOT!” mom yelled back. Clearly, this was a match made in heaven.

“Your blood pressure is going to go up,” dad responded.

I couldn’t take it anymore. The two of them were always engaged in this bizarre dance in which my dad purposely antagonizes my mom and she responds like a banshee. Personally, I had taken to ignoring him when he tried to do it to me, so he usually just ended up leaving me alone. He was like a deflated balloon when no one engaged with him.

“Would you just be quiet?” I snapped. “You guys are so annoying. Should we go to the Tower of Terror?”

“I think we’re already on it,” my sister quipped.

Add a comment

What is your view?

Send

Related posts:

Why is Sentinel Chain project as important in Europe as it is in Asia or South America?

Sentinel Chain proposes an ecosystem for providing affordable financial services to the unbanked (owners of livestock) by creating fungible assets from the livestock that can be used as collateral to…

Change Yourself Before Changing the World

Relive a past humiliation, and you should have no difficulty imagining the power of a promise to remove the feeling. Your pain is an inner corruption, with far more control than dark money. This is…

About Osasion

Different from the traditional project operation logic, the core logic of the Osasion project operation lies in the whole process of Osasion`s launch on the mainnet.Firstly, the MPOS consensus…