752 Words for July 16th

Yesterday, I mentioned my tie to my father. This (in some instances) means two different people, in my world. I'm not speaking in a spiritual, metaphysical manner. I mean it literally: one being the biological, the other being the one who has dealt with my bullshit for over twenty years. One who willfully donated his genetic material for my creation, the other who brought me up as though he had done the donation. I think you get the idea. I wasn't with my biological father for very long. Things in our lives caused us to drift apart in opposing directions (he wanted to leave the state and I wanted to live with my mother). I was eight years old and he was a dick. Can you blame me? It would take me many years to forgive him for some of the things he had done to me as a small child, and I don't think I have forgiven him completely.

One thing I can thank him for is my taste in music. Thanks to him, I am a fan of Black Sabbath and some other heavier bands from the late sixties and early seventies. I am pretty vehemently opposed to Country music, which my mom is fond of telling me that I get from him. I can remember sitting in our garage listening to KZAP, out of Sacramento, and watching his work on his International Scout or his Chevrolet pickup. If I can thank him for anything besides my existence, I can thank him for that portion of my musical taste.

I have other tastes in music that I remember him not being into. Depeche Mode was a band that he distasted. In fact, he called it "fag music." He really disliked it, and I think that I may have enjoyed irritating him with my musical taste. It's kind of like getting an early start to my teen years at the age of five.

Other things that I remember him having issue with were my love for modern technology and a thirst for the written word. He hated that I could sit for hours and read the same set of books over and over again. I could also sit for hours and type away at my small computer toy (I can't remember for the life of me which one it was). I think that all of this was quite alien to him. Sports were another bone of contention. I fucking hated baseball. I honestly don't think that hate is a strong enough word for my feelings towards that sport. It is lame and fucking boring to play. The best part of it all was I had ADD, and I wasn't diagnosed with it until much later. My parents (in their infinite wisdom) decided to enroll me in a fucking T-ball team, at the age of six, with fucking ADD, and hating the fucking sport. Oh, yeah. I went really far. Right field and last at bat was all there ever was for little Raymond. Pure fucking genius, parents. I can't put that on my mother, really. She only wanted to get me out and help me to make more friends than those that lived in my neighborhood. But, lets be honest, it was fucking Knights Landing, California. I already knew everyone on that T-ball team. I wasn't gaining anything socially, and I wasn't making any new friends.

Fast-forward a couple of years, one destroyed marriage and Chevrolet Cavalier later, we ended up in Woodland, California. It isn't a large city by any means, but it was leaps and bounds in size compared to KL.

One of life's oddities that I often think about is the fact that he stuck around with court and visitation for less than a year before he disappeared. Less than a year, that's a pretty good sized fraction of an eight year old's lifespan. I often wish that I could have been in my little sister's shoes. She was four years old during this tumultuous time. She vaguely remembers anything of all of this. For more than eighty percent of her childhood, she had our papa. He's basically all she knows. I wish I had that form of innocence.

I can't really complain, though. For the time I had wish my biological father, I wouldn't trade anything. I wouldn't really be the person I am. It may not have been a fucking bed of roses, but in all reality, it was abusive and uncomfortable, but not pure hell.