For my fifth birthday, my parents took me to a bar. Like you do. My dad was living in Boston for a few months, so I naturally thought my parents were getting a divorce. It turned out he just had a job there, or something. I don't know... I was five. So my mom took my sister and me up to Boston to visit my dad during one of these "supervised visitations" that only existed in my head. Our trip happened to fall around my birthday. But my mom's birthday was just a week later. So maybe they went to the bar for my mom's birthday and decided they didn't want to trust a babysitter in a strange city. Whatever. So off to the bar we went.
Sitting around drinking our Shirley Temple's, my sister and I were probably yammering about something awesome when my mom says,
"... but that was when your Poppop was in prison."
Pause.
For the audience who hasn't met my family, my Poppop has no legs. He has the diabetes. We give him socks for Christmas. But when we were young, our Poppop was the scariest motherfucker we knew. When Roland would babysit us, Kristin and I would sit in a corner of one room and hold each other and cry. And cry and cry and cry. And then Roland would come in and yell "Shut up or I'll give you something to cry about!" So it's not like it came as some huge surprise to us yellow-bellied babies to hear that he had previously spent some time with the State.
End pause.
So here we are. In a bar. On or around my fifth birthday. Being told that our hardened grandfather was also a hardened criminal. Wide-eyed, we were.
"Poppop was in prison???," we asked, horrified and also really, really excited.
"Well, yeah. Didn't you know that?," my dad asked.
"Noooooo.... why was Poppop in prison?" (In memories of my childhood, my sister and I speak in unison at all times.)
"Well," my mom starts, "when your dad and I were dating, Poppop didn't like Daddy very much. And one night, Daddy came to pick me up for a date and Poppop came outside with his shotgun and tried to shoot him."
<<Uh... okay... and you let this dude babysit us???>>
"But he missed.... and instead, Poppop accidentally shot my brother Tyrone."
<<Duh... what?!?!.>>
"So Poppop was convicted of manslaughter and spent some years in prison. We thought you knew that."
I suppose us knowing this darkness would have been an acceptable explanation for our unending fear of this man. But in truth, the fear (up to this point) was wholly irrational. Well. Not anymore.
We came home to Georgia and my dad moved back shortly thereafter. My sister and I had been whispering endlessly about this since that night in the bar. Our five and six-year old minds were working at hyperspeed trying to connect all the dots. When we realized there was a dot that was missing...
So we walked into my folks' room one night, all clean and in our nightdresses, while they were watching TV.
"Mommy? Why haven't we ever seen any pictures of Uncle Tyrone?"
Blank. Stares. Seconds pass.
They burst out laughing, "You believed that???"
So let's recap:
- My parents took me to a bar to celebrate my birthday before I started kindergarten.
- They lied to me for sport.
- The lie they told involved my already-fucking-scary grandfather killing my uncle, whom I'd never met, while failing to kill my father.
- They then forgot about said lie for weeks and then laughed at their small children for believing them.
I just wanted everyone to be on the same page here. This is where I come from. I have been taught by experts. They are always funny, they are usually drinking, and they never let the truth get in the way of a good story.
