antics and did not play along as if nothing was happening. Instead, they stood up one by one as I tried to crawl past, whispering expressions of irritation to one another. And although I was on the ground and couldn’t see anything, I heard my dad abruptly stop speaking. He knew something was up. I froze. When he started speaking again, I thought I was in the clear and forged ahead—until I accidentally smashed my knee into the loafer of a bearded guy sitting two seats from the aisle.
“Ah—God—this is ridiculous!” he huffed through his whiskers.
My dad stopped speaking again. I slowly crawled out past the last chair, then turned my head toward the stage, where he was staring right at me, along with everyone else.
The lecture hall was completely silent as I stood up, pretending nothing at all had happened, and walked back to my seat, averting my eyes from the room full of disbelieving gazes. I sat back down in my chair. After a couple moments, my dad began speaking again. His face was bright red and looked like a dodgeball with a furious frown and angry eyebrows. Suddenly his lecture on thyroid cancer had the same inflection as a coach tearing his football team a new one at halftime.
My dad ended his talk quickly and rushed through answering a couple of questions. As the audience applauded, he hopped down off the stage, choosing not to use the stairs. He made a beeline toward me, ignoring all the doctors who stood up to chat or compliment his lecture. He picked me up by my belt from the back of my pants like he was holding a six-pack of beer, pushed through the doors to the lobby, and then outside into the light. He carried me like that all the way to the car, opened the door, and tossed me in the front seat. He got in the driver’s seat, where he took a few deep breaths, the veins in his neck bulging with anger. Then he turned to me and through clenched teeth yelled, “Fucking hell! All I asked, goddamn it, was that you sit still for a couple hours while I lectured on thyroid cancer!” He peeled out of the parking lot and drove us home in complete silence.
When we arrived at our house, he opened the front door. I was standing next to him on the doormat when he turned to me and calmly said, “Listen, that was not a place where a kid should have been. I get that. But I’m going to go inside this house, and you are not. You are going to play outside of this house, because right now, my fucking head is going to explode.” Then he closed the door, and I stood outside, not sure what to do. From inside the house, I heard an echoing scream, “FUUUUUUUUUUCCCCCCCCCCCCK!!!!!”
About an hour and a half later, he poked his head out the back door. I was sitting in the grass in our backyard.
“You can come on in if you want,” he said. “Also, wash your hands before you touch stuff. That conference hall floor smelled like dog shit and you were crawling around like a little monkey on it.”
On Finding Out I Didn’t Make the Little League All-Star Team
“This is bullshit. All the coaches just put their kids on the team. That shit bag’s son isn’t worthy of carrying your jock strap. . . . You don’t wear a jock strap? What the hell is wrong with you, son?”
On Dropping Me Off at School
“Your friends’ parents drive like assholes. Tell them it’s an elementary school parking lot, not downtown fucking Manhattan.”
On Getting a Dog
“Who’s going to take care of it? You? . . . Son, you came in the house yesterday with shit on your hands. Human shit. I don’t know how that happened, but if someone has shit on their hands, it’s an indicator that maybe the whole responsibility thing isn’t for them.”
On Showering with Regularity
“You’re ten years old now, you have to take a shower every day. . . . I don’t give a shit if you hate it. People hate smelly fuckers. I will not have a smelly fucker for a son.”
On LEGO
“Listen, I don’t want to stifle your creativity, but that thing you built there, it looks like a pile of shit.”
On Bring-Your-Dad-to-School Day
“Who are all these fucking parents who can take a day off? If I’m taking a day off, I ain’t gonna spend it sitting at some tiny desk with a bunch of eleven-year- olds.”
On My Sixth-Grade Parent-Teacher Conference
“I don’t think that teacher likes you, so I don’t like her. You ding off more shit than a pinball, but goddamn it, you’re a good kid. She can go fuck herself.”
On My First School Dance
“Are you wearing perfume? . . . Son, there ain’t any cologne in this house, only your mother’s perfume. I know that scent, and let me tell you, it’s disturbing to smell your wife on your thirteen-year-old son.”
On Being Afraid to Use the Elementary School Bathrooms to Defecate
“Son, you’re complaining to the wrong man. I can shit anywhere, at any time. It’s one of my finer qualities. Some might say my finest.”
On My Last-Place Finish in the 50-Yard Dash During Little League Tryouts
“It kinda looked like you were being attacked by a bunch of bees or something. Then when I saw the fat kid with the watch who was timing you start laughing. . . . Well, I’ll just say it’s never a good sign when a fat kid laughs at you.”
Do Not Be a Goddamned Liar
“You have shamed the entire scientific community. Fucking Einstein, everybody.”
I’ve never been very good at math or science. I enjoyed the stories embedded in history and literature but lost interest when it came to periodic functions and the table of elements. So in sixth grade, when each member of my class was responsible for creating an experiment to show at the school’s science fair in late April, I felt about as excited as I’d feel today if I were told I had to attend a live reenactment of the entire first season of
“Now you can get a glimpse into what my life is like every goddamned day,” he told me the night I received my assignment. “I’m going to be on your ass every step of the way. You will have the greatest science experiment that school has ever seen, or you will fucking die trying.”
“Will you do it with me?” I pleaded.
