I used to find it fucking funny to lock my siblings in the basement. I had to babysit five younger brothers and sisters growing up. "Preteen" and "Responsible" aren't two words you'd frequently find together. I probably should've still had a babysitter myself. Mom naively thought I was mature and responsible at the time. Our cellar was a hoarder's dream, smelled like cat shit, cat piss & dead cat, and had too many windows. I hated going down there myself at night, especially with all those windows. Gave me the creeps. Between the windows and the shadows behind the old oil-fired, moving van-sized furnace it always felt like I was being watched. I think that's why I got such a thrill out of locking them down there. Years later I often fantasized about luring my father down there (all it would've taken is a bottle of booze or my aunt), violating him till he bled out with a nail-studded baseball bat I made as a teen and burying him under all that shit. Might've made up just a little for all the beatings and for his role in my mother's death (just my opinion). Ah, hindsight...
"Cat shit, cat piss, and dead cat..." LOL!!!
ReplyDeleteYeah, though I make up some shit, that part's total truth, Tom.
ReplyDeleteI used to lock my siblings in the closet when I was forced to be the responsible one.
ReplyDeleteHmm, I suppose a closet would be as effective. Too bad they were all as overstuffed as the basement was.
DeleteAh dang, sounds like we had similar fathers. It was just me and my little brother when we were growing up. I was pretty much his mother since my parents were too drunk to take care of us.
ReplyDeleteHmm, knowing my father I wouldn't be surprised if they were one and the same! In my case he was the psycho drunk and poor mom was just too scared to do anything.
ReplyDeleteI wasn't always Kind to my Younger Brother but he turned out okay anyway and we're close, so apparently he doesn't blame me for any PTSD he might have of Childhood? *LOL* Thankfully we had good Parents even tho' Mom suffered from Serious Mental Illness, so she could be a Trip sometimes... I remember actually LIKING that she was so outrageously different than the Stepford Wife Moms of that Era... Mom was more like a Gypsy Carmen Miranda on Steroids and her fav line was better to be looked over than overlooked... I still miss her terribly. Dad was a Stoic Native American who had a horrible Life on the Rez growing up and yet made ours as wonderful as he possibly could. He was the one that warned my Brother and I to steer away from the Fire Water as his people don't handle that shit well at all... that's not a stereotype, it's Truth.
ReplyDeleteI was one of eight originally, and believe I'm one of only a few who "turned out okay", which is a miracle considering the depression, addiction and suicide that haunts my family going back quite a ways.
ReplyDeleteI see we felt similarly about our F of O's. I'd like to stash the broken, bleeding carcasses of my parents in this basement of yours; and I'd petition to do so if they weren't already dead. So your Basement of Retribution is less two utter wastes of human skin, while I am left with a permanent and prominently marked place in a lovely garden setting to take an alfresco piss.
ReplyDeleteMy shoulders keep creeping up around my neck. Why some folks have children is a constant mystery.
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