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July 14, 2006

Baltimore Terror

I’ve been begging my daddy to come visit me in New York for some time now.

Maybe he's afraid of flying and won't admit it. I wouldn't want to admit that if I were in the Air Force for 20 years either, I guess. And we did, after all, drive two cars from North Dakota to Florida when we moved there when I was 8. I always wanted to be in the car with my dad who usually only allowed one child at a time. Once, we forgot my little brother at a gas station and realized it so many (won't say how many as that would just further showcase our negligence) miles away. We were all like, "It sure is quiet in here!"

If I had to ride in the backseat of my mom's car with my brother and sister, I'd a) have to sit in the middle because "you are dee meedle one, Meleesa" and b) there's no telling when my mom would just divert her attention from the wheel, turn around and "bang your heads too-ged-air." But, I wasn't even doing anything! (I'm sure I was, but at the time, I swear I wasn't.)

Shorty hasn’t had the time off from the post office to come and visit. And when he did use his vacation time, he used it to take my mom to and from her doctor’s appointments before and after her eye surgery saying, “You know I can’t trust your blind ass mother to drive.”

Although it sounds stank, this is a big expression of love from Shorty because he really hates hospitals. They instantly put him in a bad mood and he claims “they make your breath all stank and shit.” Because of Mercy’s diabetes, they are always running back and forth for her checkups and prescriptions. He either runs errands or sits in the car listening to “that new Jaheim alblum” while she’s inside. Why he pronounces it AL-BLUM, I’ll never understand.

I just got off the phone with him and again I pressed him about why he hasn’t come to visit.

I asked, “Daddy, are you saying you just don’t want to come?”

“Nah baby. I told you a million times! I don’t have the time off! Damn."

Sounding totally annoyed, he continued, "To be honest, I don’t really want to be in no New York no way. People getting mugged and stabbed and shit. Oh hell no.”

When I was living in LA, he didn’t want to visit for the following reasons: “that airport is a mess, jack” and “why you want to be around all them fruits and nuts anyway!” and “I know there ain’t no brothers where you stay at.”

I assured him he would not get stabbed in the suburbs of Long Island.

I started telling him that his unwillingness to come was starting to disappoint me. That everybody wants to meet him!

“Who!” he yelled, incredulously!

“Well, J would like to see you and…”

Cutting me off he said, “Yeah, well he crazy. I know he crazy to be messing with you.”

Hmph.

I said, “And J’s parents! Hello! And all my friends!”

“What friends?” he asked. “You ain’t got no friends, n*gga.”

“Yes I do!” I said.

“Well, shit, I really ain’t got no friends now that I think about it.”

He totally does have friends. Lots of friends. They play football matches against each other over the Internet (I think - he could be explaining it wrong, too). How it's possible, I don’t know considering the man is scared of e-mail. He's still trying to mess with WebTV. At the end of the season, they all get together for the “Super Bowl” which he hosts at the house. My mom makes a bunch of lumpia and fried rice. Everybody brings their own beer and the two top competitors play against each other “on the big screen, yeah baby!” he says.

For your information, he plays his practice games on the small old TV in my childhood bedroom that has been converted into an office. No “work” gets done in this office. He just sits thisclose to the screen playing football. Above him, all these tiny football team flags hang and various baby helmets sit on the shelf. The man’s got problems. He is addicted. All kinds of codebooks and manuals. He’s even had J make him a batch of shirts and hoodies of his fake football team called Baltimore Terror. He designed the original logo, a black fist holding a bolt of lightning. But he later changed it, asking J, “You know how to draw a centurion?”

He tried changing the subject (unsuccessfully).

“Meleesa, I done lost my RAZR phone!” he said.

Why do both my mother and father call me Meleesa? I've discussed this before but I am still baffled! Mercy, fine, I get it. The accent. But Shorty? And my nickname growing up was Lisa. Sometimes Lisa Marie. When, in fact, my real name is Melissa Dawn. I still respond to Lisa when I go home to visit. Why is that? I once tried to confront them about this, illustrating that when you spell a name with double consonants after a vowel, it makes the vowel a short sound therefore my name is pronounced the only way I know Melissa to be pronounced. I was dismissed, emotionally and physically, from the room. "Thank she know every damn thing..."

“Where!” I asked, pretending to be interested in the missing phone.

“I don’t know. It’s like I put it back in the little holster…”

Cutting him off, “Daddy for the millionth time, you don’t put a RAZR phone in a case. That defeats the purpose of the design. Don’t you see that?"

I may have already told you this, but it deserves repeating.

When I brought J home to visit last November, he decided at the last minute, as we were pulling out of the driveway to go to the airport, to start taking pictures. He took his phone out and I didn’t have my glasses on, so all I could see was the motion of him trying to take the photos. Keep in mind, me, J, my mother, my sister and my nephew and niece were crammed into my mom’s little Sentra half pulled out of the driveway and my dad is trying to capture this picturesque moment. After a while, he got frustrated and said, “This camera ain’t never worked no way, damn!”

I jumped out of the car to help him. He told me the pictures always turn out black. I took the phone out of his hand and immediately discovered the root of the problem.

I said, “Ding dong! You’re taking pictures of the fucking case! This phone doesn’t go in a case!”

“Yeah, well my phone go in a case,” he insisted.

And that’s exactly how he just answered me this time about this stupid holster. He says that because I don’t care of my things, I don’t put my phone in a case. But since he always takes care of this things, he puts the phone in a case. If I took care of my things, I would know that. Shorty has always put a high value on “taking care of your shit.” He keeps his shoes in the boxes, with paper inside them. He puts the only video game he’ll be playing back in the case after he’s done playing. He keeps his Z in the garage at all times and never drives it, nor does he allow anyone else to even look at it. He’s been getting his little haircut on base after his trip to commissary for all the years I’ve known the man.

I changed the subject back to visiting me.

He finally agreed to come, but on a weekend.

“And make sure it’s a football weekend! Well, shit, I don’t want to see those sorry ass Jets play no way. But damn, make it a weekend.”

I can’t wait!

Posted by melissah at July 14, 2006 04:30 PM