June 19, 2004 - 2:58 p.m.
Every now and again I use my online diary for its original purpose: a way to write about things in the manner of an angst-ridden teenager in order to relieve the stress of an unforseen negative or confusing event. This is one of those times. Those of you who avoid such writing can either click here or simply console yourself with the fact that this entry is not about video games.
I should have started this entry earlier, because I just went to go do my sister a favor and compliment her on her tastes in gifts, but ended up being yelled at by my father instead.
A disclaimer: being what my mom calls "passive-agressive," my father does not "yell" in the traditional sense, but rather raises his voice for emphasis. Since that is the closest weapon in his argumentative arsenal to actual yelling, it has the unfortunate effect of making me feel as though I am sixteen years old and late for curfew regardless of what he is telling me.
This time, he was telling me that I owed him more than one thousand dollars.
I suppose this should not be a surprise to me. He's had all my bills sent to his house for about a year now (as part of some plan that made sense, at least to him, at the time of its enacting), only a scant few of them I ever got to see. Every now and then he'll make a passing reference to an amount of money being detailed within, which I may or may not owe him. I suppose it was, in retrospect, my repsonsibility to find out the exact numbers and plan accordingly.
Unfortunately, I didn't. And: I guess it is a thousand. Really? I owe my father a THOUSAND DOLLARS? After he generously paid for the road trip as a month-early birthday present ("more like Happy Birthday Elijah," Brian accurately quipped) I still owe him an amount of money that can only be expressed with four digits?
Making matters somewhat more awkward, as I sat on the arm of the couch in the living room still in a state of shock that my visit had made such a drastic turn towards the crappy, I noticed my sister composing an e-mail to her boyfriend. I try not to read other people's mail, but I am also a "speed-reader," so when I glance I can inadvertantly (or otherwise) absorb large sentences, such as "now my brother is yelling at my dad, so I'm going to Jessie's."
The yelling generally doesn't start with me, but I suppose I do have a bad habit of standing up for myself. Also: a THOUSAND DOLLARS? Wacky.
I'm trying to make this funny, but I'm not too sure it is funny. Carol-- my sister-- even joined in, sometimes talking over my father, by all appearances just to let me know how disappointed in me she was. I'm aware that she's several years ahead of me in school and generally considered a success, but it's still strange when she feels like my mom. I expected her at any moment to ground me, and I was never even actually grounded as a child by my actual mother. Or father, for that matter.
My father's preferred method of punishment was to wait months at a time, quietly keeping a mental checklist of my various screwups, so he could confront me with them later in a barrage of evidence in support of his GUYUD theory. (That's "Grow Up, You Unproductive Disappointment.") But seriously: A THOUSAND DOLLARS?
Most of it, he says (using phrases like "part of becoming an adult is") is phone bills. He has made reference to them before, but in the way one might make reference to a Hippogriff of Compassionate Conservative. If I was expected to pay my phone bills, it was generally theoretical. The only way to get me to even approach the idea of paying a bill is to give me a deadline. True, I'll wait until the last minute; that's just how I do things. But they do, when paired with deadlines, get done.
Unless, that is, you do not enforce it at all, in which case I generally choose the option that does not include paying money or doing unpleasant things. Some people call this "lazy." I call it "natural."
It is strange to hear criticism from my sister about things such as what I choose to spend my money on, because most of what I spend my money on (and I can back this up with documentation) is bills. I earn money to pay these bills at my job. My sister's only non-babysitting jobs can be expressed using words like "internship" and, unless I have my facts wrong, the majority of her bills are paid happily and quietly by my father. That is, as I have been told, the result of going to college. Carol will occasionally be unceremoniously awarded things such as motor vehicles; yet, despite my not going to college, I have become a somewhat productive member of capitalist American society and as such I foolishly expcted to be appreciated. And by "appreciated," I mean "given a break now and then." (I shouldn't have to spell out what I mean by "a break.")
It makes me wonder, as I have wondered THOUSANDS of times before, just what it is I can do to make my father happy. Or-- and I realize I am entering the realm of fantasy once more-- proud of me.
But ACK! That is simply residual teen angst. The real issue is that I owe my father A THOUSAND DOLLARS, and it is largely because I have been using my phone for a year.
I wonder, sometimes, if I even need a phone at all. 90% of my calls are from my friend Scott, about once or twice a week, to see if I want to hang out with him. About 70% of my phone "minutes" are taken up by text messages to and from my girlfriend; this is probably the most useful of my phone's functions because it lets me get together with her, and I like her a lot. No question there. The other 10% is Matt calling me on my way to work to see if I am coming to work, or waking me up from sleep to see if I have overslept. Those calls are probably expendable. There is also, I suppose, a chance that somebody will call me who is not one of those three people; such instances are, however, so incredibly rare as to be inconsequential to this discussion.
I realize this is a discussion between me and my own brain and my fingers are merely typing it out for the benefit of my emerging carpal tunnel syndrome. But yeah.
Anyway, there's nothing quite like a chat with my increasingly unfocused and sporadically authoritarian father to make me feel like weasel shit. I hope (but do not really expect) that this won't be my only update this week, because it's a downer and certifiably lame.
The bitterly funny moment was when he asked me to hand him my credit cards, because (and he expected me to be shocked or perhaps offended at this accusation) I cannot handle them responsibly. What did he think I meant when, a year ago, I told him I did not want credit cards because I had trouble handling them responsibly?
Still, all it would take is for me to get a bill now and then. I asked him if that was possible, and he frowned and said "we'll see." I suppose he simply has a sentimental attatchment to opening my mail. I told him we would work it out by electronic mail, because I didn't want to disturb the peace and make my sister slightly uncomfortable. I wouldn't want her to lose sleep over me; she needs her rest for her upcoming trip out of the country (her second this year).
Did I mention she's going on a trip? I'll give you one guess as to who is footing the bill. (Or is it "whom?" Perhaps it should be "why my father" instead.)
I almost started to cry the other night after coming home from a car trip with my sister. We'd been listening to an audio tape I'd recorded from a time when The Police were the hottest band on VH1 and Carol had trouble pronouncing her Rs. She was vibrant, energetic, and she liked her older brother. In the background of the tape, you could hear my father, attempting to fix a computer problem for me.
Blar.
