ICEY DEAD PEOPLE

"you are a unique individual... just like everybody else." some how i found a way to make this my motto in high school. i think it had something to do with my newly acquired sarcastic/morbid/disaffected sense of humor. i enjoy things that make fun of things that other people enjoy. this is also about the time i started to follow websites like despair.com and the very prestigious darwin awards.

many people have theories about why i am the way i am. i have dozens of hobbies. wrestling, hockey, rock music, jazz improvisation, trumpet, sax, clarinet, bass, piano, music composition, graphic design, pencil drawing, movie making, video games, motorcycles just to name a few. but i dont really seem to need much in the way of social interaction. in high school i usually spent my free time on one the above things all by myself and i was perfectly happy doing so. it wasnt until my second year of college that i decided having close friends would be a good thing. so i started making time for them. but i never considered it a need. more of a guilty pleasure.

i know im weird. i know i have issues with certain things. but i refuse to believe that it is all my dad's fault.

people are funny. they see some one else with similar issues and automatically assume that the cause must be the same. why do you think both adhd and depression among high school students exploded in the mid 90's? because some one had a son who couldnt sit still, took them to the shrink and that's what the doctor told them. that's not to say that the doctor copped out and just went with an easy answer. no, the kid probably did have adhd. the problem comes when the kids mother starts telling all of her bingo buddies that they finally took her kid to a psychologist and he fixed everything. so the other mothers start saying "oh, you know what, i think jonny has the same thing. what were his symptoms?" then the mother starts spitting out a list of things that virtually any kid is guilty of and the other mothers blow it out of proportion, and all of a sudden everyone has adhd and a shrink on speed dial.

so what does this have to do with my dad? i have noticed that the media has a simple formula for today's bread-winning american dads. work-aholics who dont care about their delicate children and can never keep a promise to attend a recital or tournament or whatever. the children are all the same too. they are so distraught by the fact that daddy has to work during one of their many extra-curricular activities which they somehow have decided is more important than the rest of them and never speak to their father again. at this point the father has an epiphany and decides to risk loosing his job and puts the well being of said children in jeopardy because, dammit, enough is enough. and that is basically the best argument he can come up with as he slips in the back of the theater just in time to witness his child's big moment dancing to the theme of peter and the wolf. and it is at this pivotal point that i vomit.

the reality is i was one of those children. sort of. ok, maybe my dad was one of those dad's. sort of. my dad was very busy. during most of my childhood he was a doctor and a bishop and so on. he would get up at 4am and be gone before the kids were up, and he wouldnt get home until 8-9 ish. basically he was never home. one day some one asked me (at about the time i acquired my sarcastic/morbid/disaffected sense of humor) if it was hard for me to never see my dad because he was gone so much. to which i replied, "huh?"

i had never noticed. even when i was a kid and i watched movies and tv shows like the one i described above i never actually thought "wait a second! that is just like my dad! grrr, i hate him now. thank you hannah barbera for enlightening me to the ways of truth."

to all of you who read this and think that daddy is to blame for all that is wrong with you and that is why you have to get tattoos and go to raves to find your niche in life as a non-conformist as you drink coffee in the local star-bucks pissing on "the man" with all of your other non-conformist friends with the same eye-shadow as you, i say if daddy didnt love you enough when you were pure and innocent then i cant imagine your current behavior is helping the situation. which is why you are spiraling into self-loathing and depression (notice that i didnt say chemical depression; your depression has more to do your self-destructive behavior and chosen lack of self esteem and NOT your serotonin levels). so stop living your storybook tragedy and "grow up."