19 January 2012

3 - LIFE, DEFEATED

With Spring and Summer quickly approaching, I tried to think of things that would get me out of the house and away from the crazy. See, my dad is a drama queen(?) and extremely paranoid. About everything. He also has dementia. So when he can't remember where he put something, he gets paranoid and thinks that I did something to it. Arguing ensues. I leave.

Since I was always strapped for cash, I would usually go for a walk, ending up at my friend D's house, or I would go to the library. Once I found out about True Blood, I watched the whole first season just in time to catch the beginning of season 2. While watching season 1, I realized that the series was based on the Sookie Stackhouse books, it was ON! I went to the library on a mission to find the books and read them in order. Unfortunately, our local library is just pathetic and sad. With the little bit of money I had saved, I ordered the box set from Amazon.

I was set. I had plenty of book reading to keep my mind off how much life sucked and I could go anywhere and read. Then I made a costly mistake. I left the boxed set of books sitting on my coffee table, in plain sight and Dad saw them. Quizzically he asked about the titles of the books, in which all the titles have the word "dead". I tried to explain the books in a light-hearted kind of way, but as soon as I mentioned vampires, werewolves and witches, he was not having it. Not in his house! And they were ordered removed from the premises.

Let me explain. When I was in high school, my friends and I saw the movie "The Craft" and we wanted to be witches. We played around with it, bought some spell books and silly stuff like that but never took it seriously. Dad found my books and ordered them out of the house because "they cause bad luck!" He is extremely religious. He watches his crazy, cable access pastor on a daily basis and he will not have anything "sinful" in his home! You heard me. I could not even drink any kind of alcohol in his house. I know! (I'll explain how I got around this, later.)

The one thing that gave me a small amount of joy was now banished from my home. Of course I still read the books, I just put different book jackets on the outside of them and could not read them peacefully and in the open. I hid a few books in the back of my dresser and took the rest down to my friend N's house for her to babysit. I would switch out completed books for the unread ones until I was finished with the set. I felt like I was sneaking crack into a prison cell, but they were just books. To me. To my dad, they were blasphemy.

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