Get your chores done first, then you can have time for you. My mom used to say this all the time to me as a kid and I never really took it seriously until she passed from heart failure when I was 8. Of course you never plan or expect something like that happening, especially when you’re 8, but it did, and it changed everything. I was sent to live with my father, who despite living only an hour away, had never bothered to show himself except on birthdays and Christmas and even then he always had somewhere else to be so visiting time was extremely short.
Of course the day I was supposed to move he was working but lucky for me a family friend stepped up and offered to take myself and my belongings over there. The ride was blurry with tears and my gentle sobbing fogged up the window, obscuring the outside world which at the time didn’t seem so bad. Very few words had been exchanged during the ride and after what seemed like an eternity, we pulled up to the run down bungalow that my father owned. Before I could get my seat belt undone, an old grey car pulled onto the dirt driveway, brakes squealing defiantly until the car came to a halt. I recognized my father although he still seemed like a stranger to me and as he walked over to us I had a sense of unease wash over me. He said a few words to my moms friend and grabbed my suitcase out of the trunk while I exited the vehicle. I got a big hug from my moms friend and then with tears welling up in her eyes she got in the car and drove off leaving my father and I standing alone in the driveway.
He pushed me with one hand towards the house, perhaps a bit harder than he meant to but enough to send me stumbling forward. “Let’s go” he said as he continued to “assist”me up the porch stairs. I made it to the door first and opened it without issue. “It’s unlocked” were the first words I’d spoken to him that day. He gave a small displeased chuckle. “Nothing worth stealing in there.” And he wasn’t wrong. With one final shove he pushed me through the doorway and into the dimly lit living room. Most of the surfaces were covered in a thin layer of dust but what really caught my attention was the amount of cans laying around. A brown couch sat off to the side of the room opposite an old tube TV that was left on, casting a beam of light through the circulating dust.
“Your room is over here” his voice snapped me out of my focus. He pushed past me and I followed him down the hall, floorboards protesting every step. We made it to the end and he pointed to a door on the right. “I’ll give you 10 minutes to get your stuff set up, then come meet me in the living room” I didn’t get a chance to reply before he wheeled around and made his way back. The room left a lot to be desired, just as dusty as the rest of the house, a small mattress with no covers lay in the corner, and a dresser right next to it. I sighed deeply and the tears started to form in my eyes. This was home now.
10 minutes later I walked out of the room to find my father leaned up against the wall. He looked at me with a small smirk and said “you’re late, let’s go.” I followed him back to the living room where the only change I’d noticed is now there was a piece of paper sitting on the coffee table. He picked it up and turned to me. “This is a list of chores for you to do and I expect it to be done every day by the time I get home.” He held the list about an inch from my face until I grabbed it. Looking it over it didn’t look like a list for an 8 year old. There was a Monday to Friday column and a weekend column. The weekend column was the same as the Monday to Friday but with some added extras like mow the grass and pick up the beer cans. I must have looked shocked because he laughed and said “oh is this too much for you? Too bad. I’m going to teach you to be a man”. No one had ever spoken to me like that and it caught me off guard. I could feel the tears once more surfacing. To this he laughed again and said “You better get started, if you don’t finish that list I will make your life a living hell.” I stood there shaking and not knowing what to do with myself. It was all so much so soon. I couldn’t get a word out through my quivering lips and I just stood there flabbergasted. Then a sadistic smile came over his face like he had just thought of the greatest idea. “ Oh and you were late.” He grumbled. “You waste my time, I’ll waste yours.”
Over the years he dreamt up all sorts of different punishments for every minor indiscretion of mine. From kneeling on the furnace vents to soaking me down with the garden hose so that I had to all my chores wet. Every time he punished me it was under the ruse that he was helping me. Always saying that his cruel actions were my fault and he did what he did to help me not make mistakes again. His saying was “If you want to be helpful, then be helpful. Otherwise im going to help you.” The thing is it did help and i started to agree with his methods as time passed. The older I got, the less punishments I received and i stopped taking issue with the chores all together. I turned it into a game to see how fast I could complete my list. Changing the order every now and again to see if I could streamline it. These chores were the majority of my life for many years, they kept me active, busy and for the most part away from my father.
After spending my first summer “helping” my father and having him “help” me I was presented with another challenge. School. New school, new classes, new kids. I sat quietly in the back of my first class, not really wanting to socialize with anyone. The teacher came in and the room fell silent. We started off like every other class I had been in with an introductory exercise. Go around the room, say your name and what you did this summer. It was all pretty normal, some had gone camping, one went to Disney world, and one very confident boy talked about going to an airshow and claimed he got to ride in a jet because his dad was a pilot. When it got around to me all I had time to say was my name before that same confident boy shouted over me. “My dad said that your mom died and now you’re poor!” It took me a second to process the words and then I burst out crying. Uncontrolled sobbing as the rest of the class was in an uproar of laughter. The teacher was trying her hardest to quiet the kids but it was to no avail as the boy yelled out “Look he’s crying like a baby!” My tears turned to rage and the next thing I remember I was on top of this kid feeding him my fist over and over again while a set of hands tried to pull me away.
I cooled off on my walk to the principals office. I’m not 100 percent sure what happened to the other boy but I think he had to go to the hospital. Needless to say after my explosion I was expelled from the school as they had a zero tolerance for violence. But when asked why I did it all I had to say was “He made a mistake and I was helping him.”
After that my father claimed he would homeschool me which just meant there was more hours in the day for me to do what he wanted. Not that he was ever around during the day anyway but I didn’t want to find out what new punishment awaited me if I didn’t complete the new, longer list. My life kept up like this for many years. And it never got any better.
Fast forward to now, I’m 34 and finally living on my own in my spotless townhouse. My father passed a while ago and I used the money from his house to buy my own, far away from there. I know what he did was wrong but I like to think I’ve separated and contained that part of my life. Besides it made me who I am today. I’m here to make sure that nothing like this happens to anyone else. But as I sit on the bench at the playground, I wonder how many of these kids are secretly going through what I did. That’s why I’m here. I’ve gotten really good at tracking people down so next time you hear something outside your window at night, just know it’s me, being a good Samaritan and I’m only here to help fix the mistakes.