Wake Up Peter Pan

Wake up Peter Pan; you’re Not in Neverland Anymore
Whoever was in charge of screening potential child conceivers must have been sleeping while on the job when my “father” was up for his interview. How dare my parents conceive me without my permission! What happened to the hard working, role models you see on T.V.? They just don’t make fathers like they use to. My father has been an idiot my whole life and it seems to just be getting worse with age. He was a terrible alcoholic when I was a child, a wanna be Elvis (as far as abusing prescription drugs) when I was a teen, and now he’s exposed himself to the exciting life of a coke addict/pot head. Did I mention that on the side he is abusing the Workman’s Compensation system? It is really a shame that in his case, stupidity is not a phase but a permanent resident in his personality.
Growing up as a child, I only have memories of him drunk. His intoxications sponsored by Coors Light. He would constantly pick fights with my mom. He’d scream at her using alcohol as a personal gateway to express his frustrations he was having with the marriage. I remember my mom trying to leave the room to get away from him. Carrying the responsibility of being sober, she was sound enough to know that 1 a.m. was not a good time to be screaming at each other. I remember shutting my eyes to give off the impression that I was asleep. My mom would tell him that he was scaring my brother and me and he would claim that we were asleep. I just wanted to avoid any excess confrontation with him. When he would leave our room after an attempt to prove my mom wrong about us being awake, I would go back to pressing my ear against the wall listening to everything going on. I was always terrified of him hitting her. I would sometimes just wait for that moment when I could hear the sound of his hand making contact with her face. What a man, huh? It wasn’t until a routine checkup that he discovered Hepatitis C in his liver that forced his drinking to come to a halt. That is when his doctor would become his new best friend.
Prescription drugs became a problem as I reached puberty. My father caught hold of this prescription drug dictionary that started a new drama for our family. The book would list the drugs, the effects, and what they are used to cure or help with certain health problems. He studied it like a college student studies for an exam. He would approach his doctor with a problem he read about and the pen would start flowing across the prescription pad. My father is probably the sole reason that our local Walgreen Pharmacy has been able to keep up their business. He started with Vicodin then Oxycontin, Dilaudid and Percodan. There are probably more to add to the list, but those were the only bottles I found in his room to help the paramedics know what they were dealing with when he overdosed. Yep, that’s my pa! He’s overdosed about five times. It doesn’t ever faze us anymore. With the third overdose my brother came home in the middle of the commotion. He had a friend with him. I informed him with what was going on and his response was, “Oh, again?” and went into the house to grab whatever it was he came for. His friend was confused as to why my brother wasn’t bothered by the news. How could we be upset? My father was doing this to himself! And if he didn’t overdose enough to grant him a stay at the hospital, he swallowed enough pills to make an ass of himself at family functions. He could be found trying to blend into the background. He would be sitting with his eyes rolling to the back of his head and drool running down his chin. He is an embarrassment. I am however happy to announce that this doctor of his (who didn’t challenge my father’s self diagnosis’) has lost his practice for handing out prescriptions to anyone who wants them. It shows how smart the both of them are since drugs/pills get filtered through your liver. They are both doing more harm than good to my father. I guess with any hobby, things can get boring. That’s when some “friend” of his introduced him to cocaine and marijuana.
I have never been exposed to a real life cocaine user or marijuana user for that matter. I have only seen the characteristics of one in movies or posters. It isn’t that hard to detect the signs though. I started to notice that my father would creep around the house at three in the morning. It would be pitch black, and he would be wandering around the house with a flashlight. I don’t think he was looking for anything in particular. Maybe he was looking for imaginary monsters. I also noticed that for someone who has never had a sinus problem in his life, he cannot keep a dry nostril if he tried. There are also periods where he goes through the coke head obsessive picking stage. Some days it looked like he tore his cheek off. He can go weeks without sleep. Our walls are paper thin and we can hear him rearranging his room twelve times in one night. He started smoking pot in the house. Even with his bedroom door closed, the rest of the house would be filled with the aroma of weed. He claims he can’t sleep without it. Seriously, who does he think he’s fooling? To give you a better mental picture, he started to keep up the attractive look that Nick Nolte tried pulling off in his mug shot. Even including the Hawaiian shirt. I don’t understand what goes through his head each day. It is one thing to be an alcoholic and pill popper; but what kind of father brings illegal drugs in the house? Not a responsible one.
He is lucky in some aspect though. With all of these drug experimentations, he doesn’t have a job to lose because of it. He has been on Workman’s Compensation for the past six years. He supposedly got hurt on his job and while recovering, was laid off. I guess it’s illegal to fire someone who got hurt on the job so he sued. He’s been waiting on a settlement forever but in the mean time was able to collect money from the state. The rest of our family is led to believe that this was his plan all along. He use to counsel my uncle on how he should get a trade job and when he gets hurt he can just collect Workman’s Comp. What a role model. It wasn’t “Hey, go educate yourself and get a good paying job”. It is “Hey, go be a loser like me and look even worse because I’m supposed to support and provide for a family that I made a decision to have”.
The parental screening committee has failed me. They should have spent extra time on my father, interrogating him with tough questions on what kind of example he was planning on being for his future children. Lucky for my brother and I, my mom was strong enough to teach us how to be compassionate responsible people. My father is long overdue to grow up and be a man. I will never be able to respect him, I can’t even stand the sight of him most of the time. So far in my brother’s and my case, stupidity isn’t genetic. I just wish my father would grow up and try to be a better man and not a lost boy.