Trouble

I suppose the story is pretty common. You don't realize how poor you are until you see that not everybody lives the way you do.

When I was a kid, my Dad worked in a factory making peanuts. Then he worked in a factory, and took a second, part-time job making peanuts. Now, I want to be clear. We always had a roof over our heads, we always had food on the table (although we ate far too much chicken for my liking.) and we always started each new school year with new clothes, that were purchased on lay-away from K-Mart.

We didn't have great insurance so my teeth are a mess and have always been my source of greatest insecurity. Even as an old man now, the Dentist terrifies me. I learned shortly after realizing we were poor, that the kids that were better off, were almost always assholes in one way or another. Kids can be awful, miserable human beings. I fought back, got into more fights than I could count, and in spite of establishing to the world that 'pick on me, and it'll end with us throwing punches.' it never felt like enough. I used to hate the fact that my Dad wasn't more interested in finding a better job, and maybe being around a bit more.

That's not fair to say, because even back when I was a kid, I knew something was up with my Dad. He'd stutter, was very uncoordinated, and there was clearly some kind of health issues he had. I chose to ignore all of that, and just wanted him to stop working shitty jobs so I'd have to fight less often.

Mom and Dad got divorced when I was 16 or 17, and it destroyed my Dad, he had never seen the end coming, and neither did I. I remember him coming into my bedroom on the morning that my Mom announced that they were separating, and would be getting divorced. He walked in, shook his head and went down on his knees in front of me and started crying, saying that he didn't want to leave, and that he didn't want a divorce.

Think about that for a minute.

Now imagine what I must have felt hearing that. In that moment, I hated my Mom, and I felt absolutely powerless to do anything about what would be happening.

I'll skip forward, and say that my Dad met a women a few years later, married her and they stayed together for the rest of his life. He passed away a year ago, a few days before his birthday. I had no idea he was in as bad shape as he apparently was, and we spoke on the phone a few days before he passed, and discussed me coming up to visit him (I lived halfway across the country from him at the time.)

Mom, on the other hand, didn't fare as well. She started a relationship with a co-worker who was also married at the time. Between the both of them, their combined income was less than what little my Dad had earned. We were evicted from the house that we had been living in for years, and moved into a house that cost more monthly, I questioned that, and suggested there wouldn't be enough to get by, but you know how 'love' can blind you to facts that the rest of the world can see.

Sadly, I was right. This is the period of my life where I lashed out the most. Crime became my way of dealing with how 'unfair everything was'. To this day, I don't know how I was never arrested and sent to prison for the stuff I did. Maybe it was just me acting out, wanting my Mom to realize she messed up, and made a dumb mistake, by making my own dumb mistakes.

I planned to join the military after high-school, but that plan fell apart, and like anything else you want, but learn you cant have, you want it 10x more.

It took me decades to find any kind of peace over not being able to enlist. Even now, I imagine what that would have been like. I imagine I could have retired before I was fifty, with a decent pension, and not having had to worry about getting killed as we had no significant conflicts over the following twenty years from my high school graduation.

So once again, I turned to trouble, it seemed like my one easy option when things weren't going 'fairly' for me. One close encounter, which would have definitely landed me in prison was narrowly avoided, and I swore I was going to stop. To my credit, I did. But the truth of it all is, I knew from the start that what I was doing was wrong, was a 'short cut' and life had already taught me that there are no short cuts, well, unless you count the rich kids that never had to worry about anything.

I got into fewer fights (I'm a big guy, so I got a pass on a lot of situations that smaller guys wouldn't have gotten.) and each time a fight happened, it took me DAYS to fully recover from the horrible dump of adrenaline that would fuel me through those conflicts. I haven't fought in decades, and I pray I never do again, I'm old, weak, and an easy target these days, but in my head, I'm still that punk kid with the attitude.

It became clear to me, for all those years, seeing old guys trying to puff out their chests and intimidate people, they were just trying to tell the world that they meant business, and weren't the be taken lightly. I promised myself to be as humble as I could, and not be one of those brokendown old timers who still thought they were tough guys. I've done pretty well in that regard, but still, on the inside, I think of the Toby Keith song, that declares 'I'm not as good as I once was, but I'm as good once, as I ever was.'

But just between you and me, I'm not.