Life with Slags & Liars

 

**long post but hopefully interesting…this ain’t no Father’s Day card!

 

I’m no saint.  Oh hell no.  As the blog subtitle implies, I can be…shall we say…vicious.  This is most certainly the case when it comes to the slags/whores of the world.  Case in point is the other part of our Mississippi visit in which my Dad tried to force a loving relationship with our step-slag (typing “step” made me want to barf…if I were him, I wouldn’t hold my breath), but first, I should give you a bit of background. 

 

The short version is that my Dad is a compulsive liar who cheated more than once on my mother who endured all manners of hell for 40 years.  They endured the loss of my baby sister and so much more and they both continue to profess their love for one another, but they cannot live together.  They unwillingly divorced last year.  The long version is much more interesting, but it would take up a good bit of room, and this is already long.  So I put it on a new page at the top (I’ll be adding other family stuff to it over time I’m sure):  LowDown.

 

A couple of years ago, Dad met a woman while working a flea market outside of New Orleans.  They started keeping company, and Mom was pissed.  We, all the kids, tried to stay out of it.  Until this woman, let’s call her Doh, called to tell us that Dad was sick and alone (at the time, Will was living there, but he was working away from home for a few days at a time).  When Dad didn’t answer his phone, Tina and I frantically called the local sheriff to send deputies out there.  When Tina and I got there, we found out that Dad had been in the hospital for a week having heart surgery.  Doh hadn’t called ANYONE (not even Dad’s friends there in Mississippi…she hadn’t so much as left a note behind for Will) until 2 days after he was home.  Dad thought she had called us when he was in the hospital, but that no one cared to come.  He simply chose to believe her, and it’s not the first time Dad chose to believe a proven, even self admitted, liar over his family.  We let it go.

 

After hurricane Katrina (I totally just got how weird that the hurricane and my baby sister had the same name…whoa), Doh was living in a FEMA trailer.  Eventually Dad decided where she was living wasn’t safe and she should move up to Magnolia near him.  Near him turned into with him although Dad swore she was trying to find a place.  After a couple of months, there was a bit of a blow up.  Will was cooking fish and apparently Doh stuck her nose in one too many times.  Will ran her off (did I mention that he’s a hot head who has gotten to know the legal system?…does anyone else hear “Dueling Banjos”?).  Incredibly, Dad didn’t even get mad about it.  Ordinarily, something like this would have had the two of them threatening to pull out their pistols at dawn.  I could tell that Dad was pretty sick of the living situation before this, and I think he was glad Will had gotten her to move out. 

 

A few months later, Will moved back here, and Dad was alone.  Dad was working at little odd jobs as a carpenter (Dad and Will had done a lot of porches. small contract jobs for the handicapped, etc. to make a living…besides Will’s regular job as a carpenter), but eventually he got pneumonia and had to stop working a couple of months before he got his first Social Security retirement check.  He was lonely.  At the time, M. was in Iraq and I was alone for days at a time.  So Dad and I spent a lot of hours on the phone.  I arranged for him to use a Directv satellite box that Will had left there, and I sent him generous early birthday presents (mostly Walmart gift cards so that he wouldn’t starve…I knew better than to give him cash…he swore he was fine because he’d sold some things to pay his bills which were about $100 a month). 

 

What’s happened since is actually all my fault.  See, I encouraged him to get out and meet people.  I even encouraged him to find a new lady.  Then one day, I got a call from Dad and within about 10 minutes he put Doh on the phone.  Doh then proceeded to tell me what a piece of crap my family is starting with Will.  Those who know me IRL were shocked to learn that I didn’t snap her neck with my telekinetic powers.  Instead, I reminded her that she was talking about my family.  No, Doh and I did not get off to a great start.  It’s gone down hill since.

 

Doh moved back with Dad on the condition that he marry her (did I mention that he had just gotten his retirement check?).  Mom refused the divorce and eventually he was forced to get a judge to declare it (Tina talked to some lawyers and it must have cost him a few thousand dollars since she forced him to do this across state lines).  This caused a gigantic riff between us and Dad.  My Mom worked like a dog to keep house and home together through all of his get-rich-quick schemes, through his cheating, through severe poverty, through all the lies.  She took her vows seriously, and still does.  It was Dad leaving all over again (I always figured eventually he would get sick and come back home out of necessity if nothing else…through most of my teen years, it seemed like he was trying to replace us with his friends…he thought their lives were perfect…we could never live up to his dreams of grandeur…we could never live up to the image in his head of what we were supposed to be). 

 

The ONLY reason we have been going to Mississippi is to see Uncle George.  I don’t hate my father.  I don’t even hate Doh.  I pity them, albeit for different reasons.  Dad has always been willing to let people use him; he’s like a kid giving away his toys to make friends.  Doh, I pitied at first for being so hard up that she had to gold dig her way into a $700 Social Security check and a 2 acre piece of crap.  Our visit made all this very clear however.  Dad told us how Doh is like a bulldog putting in his applications for his Vietnam Agent Orange settlement which Dad puts at somewhere between $750,000 and $3.5 million (see? compulsive liar…at most, he can only hope to some day get maybe $3-4k).  I nearly fell off my chair laughing.  It must be the same way GingerMagnolia feels when she sees how pitiful the slag is that wormed her way into Ginger’s life. 

 

These slags (love that word…it’s so apropos…ah the Brits) think they’re trading up.  This ASTOUNDS me!  How can you believe that?  This person lied to the ones they loved and treated them like a paper plate used to feed a dog (spit all over it and then chewed up and left behind).  This is all the worse for Ginger because her children are still young, and sadly, they still want to believe their father.  My heart breaks to think of those young boys.  I know what it’s like to have to set aside a part of your heart because you can never really believe your dad.  I also feel for Ginger because she has to walk that fine line between protecting her children from that disappointment and letting them find out the truth for themselves.  It was hardest at first because no one but Ginger was willing to believe that he would do this to them.  That was until the slag showed up unannounced at Thanksgiving dinner (nothing like the ho in question on your doorstep to convince you that your son is a lying cheating stack of shi…well, you get the picture).  Ginger spent a lot of time protecting her ex from the rest of the world by making his truths for him.  She anchored him, and what did she get for her trouble?  Paper plate fate.  If you’ve seen her blog, you know what I’m talking about (oh how I would like to put all of our emails from the divorce up there…it’s a sick tale that’s been told by many a woman, but it’s always hell).  She writes it because she’s Mommy.  She has to be in control and civil and not screw the kids up.  Only recently have the kids figured it out.  They won’t say so, but you can see it in their eyes when they talk about their Dad, the slag their Dad is now married to and the new family he’s made to replace them (he might argue but as with my Dad, it’s pretty obvious).   This makes me glad that I was an adult before my parents divorced (as was Ginger…there’s a tale in and of itself…hopefully, someday she’ll get around to blogging about it…she’s got a step-slag too). 

 

I’m definitely not a saint.  I have a huge belief in people getting what they truly deserve.  And, I reserve the right to laugh my ass off at the mere thought of what these slags have in store for them!  Doh will undoubtedly die alone in that RV camper (note that her own children didn’t take her in after Hurricane Katrina…that says something to me…Dad has “bought” them a small house and some land from a sleazy preacher/used-car-salesman friend of his…I know Dad and I’ll guarantee you that it’s a verbal agreement…Dad will be gone for less than a month before this guy tells her they were really just renting it and tosses her back to the camper…if she’s lucky, she’ll get some of his Social Security though I’m not sure about that…someone told me they’d have to be married for 10 yrs for that to happen, but I’ve no idea).  The slag that dropped into Ginger’s life has used her pregnancy to get out of the Army and let her new husband, Ginger’s ex, take over (ironically, it was supposedly the pressure of having to take care of a family that pushed him into the slag’s tentacles…now he’s going to be taking care of 4 kids under the age of 12…he’ll be supporting the same number of kids he had, only one is his, and a new wife on 60% of the income he started out with…BRILLIANT!).  These people most likely have a rocky road ahead of them, but it’s one they’ve built for themselves…just as Dad built his.  He’s still my Dad, and I’m stuck doing what I’ve been doing my whole life: trying to reconcile the person he can be (and often is for others…Dad’s the favorite uncle of most of my cousins) and trying to face the reality of what he is.  It’s just not easy, and there are ugly days coming (I’m an adult…unlike Ginger, I don’t have to be civil to Doh…and if that means I don’t see Dad as often…oh well…that’s up to him…I’ve bent over backwards for him for too long).  That’s life with slags and liars.