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True story: My mom is on the phone saying something shitty about my father while he is standing there taking each word in, something along the lines of – “He is an asshole. He hasn’t done a god damn thing for this family in almost a year” – when my father explodes, not the first time I have seen him explode, but necessary to point out simply because this time it was much more volatile or maybe monumental in a sense. He begins with – “Who the fuck is that? Hang the fucking phone up.” Grabbing at the phone he falls over, tripping over one of my dogs, which further ignites the situation, and then he leaps up and follows a motion of grabbing the phone from my mother’s grip, throwing it against the wall and then grabbing her by the wrist – something I have never seen him do. My mother’s brittle wrist sees the grab with a light crack and then my mother falls to the ground, more shocked than hurt – although in a few hours we would find out that she broke both the bones in her wrist – and begins to sob quietly – something I had seen quite often at the time. I meanwhile was hoping to sneak a sip of a Coke when I walked into the scene, which I witnessed from the beginning. My mouth most have dropped a mile, because my father immediately noticed me and without making any further movement to my mother, he raced towards me, threw me over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes and ran me up the stairs, where he told me a story about how he loved me very much and how he cared for my mother very much and he wanted me to be happy and needed me to go to sleep. When he left, I listened for the rest of the night, afraid for my mother, but also for my father, because I really wasn’t sure what was going on and who was on who’s side, but I didn’t hear any more sounds. For some reason, I dreamed of hot wheels and GI Joes, oblivious to what I had just witnessed.
Just like that the story of my family unraveled. The next day, my father wasn’t there - just my mother sitting on her bed, staring blank at the wall. I jumped up on to her bed and asked her if I could have something to eat. I guess I had forgotten about the night before - I was much more worried about my morning cartoons of Animaniacs and Garfield. “Go ahead and get whatever you want honey,” my mother said without breaking her concentration. She knew I couldn’t reach anything - she had specifically designed it that way - so I assumed she didn’t want to talk to me, which I thought a lot and got off her bed and decided I would just go watch cartoons anyway. Hours flew by. I watched every cartoon up to the Smurfs, which I really didn’t like, because their squeaky voices made my head hurt and so I decided to go play with my toy cars. I was in the middle of a battle between a brand new Dodge Viper - my favorite car - and a stupid, crappy, yellow truck, just banging them together as hard as I could, making exploding sounds, because that is what I saw on Gone in Sixty Seconds, when my mother came in. She grabbed the jacket out of my closet and grabbed my shoes. “Come on, honey, lets go get something to eat. How does that sound?” Sounded good to me. I hadn’t eaten, well, in a long time, I knew that was true, definitely not this morning, so I jumped up without even cleaning up my cars and got in the sick car - our new car always made me car sick - and waited patiently for us to arrive at what I hoped to be McDonalds or maybe if I was lucky, Chucky Cheese. Instead we stopped at this boring brown building that reminded me of where I had my tubes pulled out when I was smaller and I had to wear these orange plugs in my ears when I swam so the pressure wouldn’t hurt my head. “Wait here for a few minutes.” I hated sitting in the car alone - I remember one night when my dad let me stay up, we watched this news show about how little kids were stolen when they were left in the car alone to long, which I really didn’t understand - why would you steal someone when they were really close to their parents and not when their parents were out of town or something - but I was scared anyway. I sat, watching my feet twitch back and forth, and counted the number of blue cars that passed by. I was up to seventeen when my mother got back in the car. She was carrying a brown paper bag, but when I tried to look and see what it was, she grabbed it and put it in the back seat where I couldn’t reach it. “Just one more stop honey.” She was wearing a sleeveless blue shirt that showed her boobs - a word I wasn’t allowed to say - but it did anyway. We drove for a long time - I counted thirty-two blue cars - and then stopped in front a grocery store. My mother let me go in with her this time and she bought some cream that started with a “V” and then she went to the bathroom for a few minutes. I sat and waited in the cart, knowing that that is what she would have wanted me to do. I liked to make my mother happy, because she wasn’t very good at smiling and she had said that learning new things is very important to growing up. When my mother came out of the bathroom she told me we needed to go to the bank - which I hated more than anything in the world, because our new bank didn’t even give out lollipops, regardless of whether you were quiet or not. “We just have to drive through honey,” my mother said after she must have noticed that I was twitching my eyes, something I did when I was either extremely bored or tired - which both applied at the moment. We drove through the bank and my mother put a piece of paper in the teleport that a few second later sent back money, lots of money, something that always made my mother happy, but this time she simply pulled the car out of the drive through and left, which made me twitch even more. When I woke, it was dark outside and my mother was listening to a book on tape - something she did when we drove long ways and something that I particularly hated, more than the Smurfs. My stomach grumbled and I hoped that I had not missed food, because I had been sleeping for sometime, considering that it was dark and I didn’t recognize the road we were one. “We are we going?” “We are just going for a little drive honey. We will be there soon.” Over the next few seconds, minutes, hours or whatever it was, I asked over and over again whether we were there yet - which usually annoyed my mother, but she simply said “soon” and left it at that.

Description
True story: My mom is on the phone saying something shitty about my father while he is standing there taking each word in, something along the lines of – “He is an asshole. He hasn’t done a god damn thing for this family in almost a year” – when my father explodes, not the first time I have seen him explode, but necessary to point out simply because this time it was much more volatile or maybe monumental in a sense. He begins with – “Who the fuck is that? Hang the fucking phone up.” Grabbing at the phone he falls over, tripping over one of my dogs, which further ignites the situation, and then he leaps up and follows a motion of grabbing the phone from my mother’s grip, throwing it against the wall and then grabbing her by the wrist – something I have never seen him do. My mother’s brittle wrist sees the grab with a light crack and then my mother falls to the ground, more shocked than hurt – although in a few hours we would find out that she broke both the bones in her wrist – and begins to sob quietly – something I had seen quite often at the time. I meanwhile was hoping to sneak a sip of a Coke when I walked into the scene, which I witnessed from the beginning. My mouth most have dropped a mile, because my father immediately noticed me and without making any further movement to my mother, he raced towards me, threw me over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes and ran me up the stairs, where he told me a story about how he loved me very much and how he cared for my mother very much and he wanted me to be happy and needed me to go to sleep. When he left, I listened for the rest of the night, afraid for my mother, but also for my father, because I really wasn’t sure what was going on and who was on who’s side, but I didn’t hear any more sounds. For some reason, I dreamed of hot wheels and GI Joes, oblivious to what I had just witnessed.
Just like that the story of my family unraveled. The next day, my father wasn’t there - just my mother sitting on her bed, staring blank at the wall. I jumped up on to her bed and asked her if I could have something to eat. I guess I had forgotten about the night before - I was much more worried about my morning cartoons of Animaniacs and Garfield. “Go ahead and get whatever you want honey,” my mother said without breaking her concentration. She knew I couldn’t reach anything - she had specifically designed it that way - so I assumed she didn’t want to talk to me, which I thought a lot and got off her bed and decided I would just go watch cartoons anyway. Hours flew by. I watched every cartoon up to the Smurfs, which I really didn’t like, because their squeaky voices made my head hurt and so I decided to go play with my toy cars. I was in the middle of a battle between a brand new Dodge Viper - my favorite car - and a stupid, crappy, yellow truck, just banging them together as hard as I could, making exploding sounds, because that is what I saw on Gone in Sixty Seconds, when my mother came in. She grabbed the jacket out of my closet and grabbed my shoes. “Come on, honey, lets go get something to eat. How does that sound?” Sounded good to me. I hadn’t eaten, well, in a long time, I knew that was true, definitely not this morning, so I jumped up without even cleaning up my cars and got in the sick car - our new car always made me car sick - and waited patiently for us to arrive at what I hoped to be McDonalds or maybe if I was lucky, Chucky Cheese. Instead we stopped at this boring brown building that reminded me of where I had my tubes pulled out when I was smaller and I had to wear these orange plugs in my ears when I swam so the pressure wouldn’t hurt my head. “Wait here for a few minutes.” I hated sitting in the car alone - I remember one night when my dad let me stay up, we watched this news show about how little kids were stolen when they were left in the car alone to long, which I really didn’t understand - why would you steal someone when they were really close to their parents and not when their parents were out of town or something - but I was scared anyway. I sat, watching my feet twitch back and forth, and counted the number of blue cars that passed by. I was up to seventeen when my mother got back in the car. She was carrying a brown paper bag, but when I tried to look and see what it was, she grabbed it and put it in the back seat where I couldn’t reach it. “Just one more stop honey.” She was wearing a sleeveless blue shirt that showed her boobs - a word I wasn’t allowed to say - but it did anyway. We drove for a long time - I counted thirty-two blue cars - and then stopped in front a grocery store. My mother let me go in with her this time and she bought some cream that started with a “V” and then she went to the bathroom for a few minutes. I sat and waited in the cart, knowing that that is what she would have wanted me to do. I liked to make my mother happy, because she wasn’t very good at smiling and she had said that learning new things is very important to growing up. When my mother came out of the bathroom she told me we needed to go to the bank - which I hated more than anything in the world, because our new bank didn’t even give out lollipops, regardless of whether you were quiet or not. “We just have to drive through honey,” my mother said after she must have noticed that I was twitching my eyes, something I did when I was either extremely bored or tired - which both applied at the moment. We drove through the bank and my mother put a piece of paper in the teleport that a few second later sent back money, lots of money, something that always made my mother happy, but this time she simply pulled the car out of the drive through and left, which made me twitch even more. When I woke, it was dark outside and my mother was listening to a book on tape - something she did when we drove long ways and something that I particularly hated, more than the Smurfs. My stomach grumbled and I hoped that I had not missed food, because I had been sleeping for sometime, considering that it was dark and I didn’t recognize the road we were one. “We are we going?” “We are just going for a little drive honey. We will be there soon.” Over the next few seconds, minutes, hours or whatever it was, I asked over and over again whether we were there yet - which usually annoyed my mother, but she simply said “soon” and left it at that.