Get Over Yourself Already

Dad’s Couch
Watching “West Wing”
(I’m not that lame – it comes on Bravo all the damn time.)
5:48 pm
Tuesday, September 20, 2005

Get Over Yourself Already

So, I was talking to my dad this morning, and he shared a very interesting story with me. It’s going to take a bit of back story, but trust me when I say it’s worth it.

For those of you who don’t know, I’m from a small town, deep in the heart of Texas. Tyler, population 80,000 with the “metropolitian area” reaching 120,000. But, let me put those numbers in perspective.

*Side note: I just had to go get my hoodie. It’s a 100 out there. God Bless Central Air.

Back to Perspective: Tyler is the closest thing in 90 miles that even begins to qualify as a city, which I claim is a stretch. There are many inhabited places, tiny clusters of humanity, large enough to merit a gas station, a grocery store and the most beautiful country on earth. The entire time I was in high school we had one mall, and one movie theater. We jokingly (jokingly?) say that there was nothing to do in Tyler except drugs.

Sociologically, it’s a strange anomaly – very characteristic of a tiny backwoods town, only large and with money. It’s segregated too. The north side is poor and mostly African American or Hispanic with the south side. Two high school with a strong, passionahttp://www.blogger.com/img/gl.link.gifte rivalry that I stood on both sides of. Churches at every corner ranging from Primitive Baptist to the lone Unitarian, with the scary ass, huge monstrosity of indoctrination I personally attended, affectionately referred to as the Baptadome. (They STILL SEND ME DONATION EVALOPES. IT WAS TEN YEARS AGO AND I DIDN’T GIVE YOU MONEY THEN.) As Tyler is the only thing in The Piney Woods of Beautiful East Texas all roads lead there. I used to live on the Azeala Trail

As I was driving into Tyler, the closer I got, the more billboards advertising Virginity I saw. “Life is about Choices” and “Everyone deserves a Second Chance.”

It was out Old Jacksonville Highway, FM 2419 that I had my first and longest held job: hostessing, waitressing, and bartending from ages 15 – 20. I now live right off Old Jacksonville, minutes from the bar. In fact, my dad and I are meeting friends there later this evening. It’s $2.50 drink night!

It was in Tyler that I feel in love with Sean, and it was here that it was ended. That is a story for a different time. The relevant point being that I got him a job as a cook at the Dog. I also encouraged him escape the Curse of Tyler (leaving, then coming back and getting stuck. Here. For. Ever. ), which he tragically succumbed to.

Tyler is absurd in the fact that despite the size, Tyler remains a small town. Everyone knows everyone else, and their business. The order of get-to-know you questions is What’s your name? Where does your daddy work? What church do you go to?

While discussing possible root causes for my rampant liberalism, as my dad will be driving the SSUV (Subversive SUV), my dad informed me that he and my mother purposely tried to not indoctrinate me. Which left me in a, shall we say, ackward position in fifth grade when I had no answer to the latter inquiry. I claim it’s Tyler’s smallness in combination with the ultra right wing Christianity being shoved down my throat causing me to run screaming in the other dirction, but I digress.

My dad and I spent the day together and we were talking of the mutual people we know and he was telling me about people who are still in Tyler. I asked about if he’d seen Sean. He said, yes he had, but not spoken to him. I’m glad to know he’s alive, and wouldn’t mind looking him in the face, but no driving desire to talk to him. I’m done with that. This is my train of thought when Dad bursts out,

“Damn, Sean’s mom’s a bitch. I may have to kick her ass.”

Hehehe. Now, yes. It’s true, she is a big fat bitch, but she’s also an amazing lady whom I respect but deeply dislike. I always wanted her to like me, but she never did, even before I dated Sean. Yes, I was rather horrific for while there, but I grew up. Long, long ago, I stopped looking for Pam’s approval, before Sean and I tore each other’s soul out and stomped on them for a while.

But the interesting thing is she was just randomly bitching about how much I suck and how her Darling Son’s “downfall” is MY FAULT. She shot her mouth off to someone who just happens to know my dad and I.

OVER A YEAR LATER SHE STILL HASN’T GOTTEN OVER IT – NOT THAT I DID ANYTHING TO HER IN THE GODDAMN FIRST PLACE. HER PRECIOUS SON SLEPT WITH HIS ROOMATE, THEREFORE CHEATING ON ME HIS FUCKING FIANCEE.

Obviously your life is rather sad if this thing that happened in your son’s life long ago is all you have to ramble drunkenly about to some random chick at the bar.– Yes, it was transforming, and soul-sucking, and beautiful and twisted, and tragic but FOR SEAN.

So, please, for fucks sack Pam, get over yourself.

I really do hate Tyler where, so it seems, people are still talking shit about me. I’m going to go chain smoke.