Sunday, June 17, 2012

Happy Father's Day! Thanks for Not Shooting Me in the Face.

My dad is an interesting man.

Not interesting like he runs marathons and speaks Latin.

Interesting like he goes in and out of a Cajun accent without ever having spent any real time in Louisiana. He is obsessed with Nazi history, much to the dismay of my half-Jewish mother. He refers to himself solely as Padre de Gato and almost shot me in the face when I was a kid.

Yeah, you read that right.

I was six years old, and my dad almost offed me.

He was teaching my brother and I about gun safety. Being a southern-raised good ol' boy, my dad having an arsenal of weapons was as common as other dads having golf clubs.

"Never touch my guns," he said. "Now this one isn't loaded, but..."

Pop!

A single bullet whizzed by my head and shattered the dining room window.

I screamed.

He screamed.

My mom drew up divorce papers.

It was a pretty traumatic day.

Surprisingly enough, my dad was not kicked out of the house after his safety lesson gone awry, but he did spend the rest of the afternoon boarding up the window and trying to figure out how to spin this story to DCFS.

"I was teaching them an important lesson--accidents happen," he'd preach, swearing that it was intentional. "My kids now know to be afraid of guns!"

Parenting 101. Good looking out, Pops.

However, it didn't really teach me to be afraid of guns, but it did make me very suspicious of him.

So Dad, just know, I'm still watching you, you son-of-a-bitch.


 But happy Father's Day, nonetheless.

8 comments:

MonsteRawr said...

The family that commits involuntary manslaughter together stays together!

BlackLOG said...

My mother threw a brick at me once and then spent years blaming me because I ducked and it broke the landing window....She wasn’t even trying to teach me brick precautions, she damn well knew that the safety was not engaged on that brick....

GurlNxtDoor said...

LOL! I'm so glad you didn't get shot! I don't remember my parents ever un/intentionally causing me bodily harm/nearly killing me growing up, I was pretty much the master of doing that myself.

Lorraine said...

This happened to my sister but with a BB gun. Your dad and my dad should be friends.

Allie said...

MonsteRawr- Amen!

BlackLOG- Lol This story explains a lot...

GurlNxtDoor- I often wish he had shot me. Not a kill shot, just a creepy scar/guilt money shot.

Lorraine- Negligent parent playdate!!

L-Kat said...

So glad he didn't shoot you in the face. That would have been tragic. But, since everything turned out okay, I feel it's safe for me to say that I LOVE when safety lessons go awry. Makes me giggle.

Allie said...

Me too! It's one of those horrible stories that's great to bring out at family gatherings.

Amelie said...

I feel like your dad and the dad from Arrested Development are cut from the same cloth.