My three kids spent the day with me, swimming, joking, watching reruns of X-Files (Which they have grown to love, and this alone could possibly overshadow any faults I do have as a father.), insulting each other on their penchant for farting (Whether it's true or not.)
What I don't understand is how I had a hand in creating and raising these three wonderful, kind, caring, beautiful, and HILARIOUS children when they sprung from the loins of such a monumental fuck-up such as myself, with all the various crap DNA that my entire family tree (both sides) passed down to me alone, and I myself have no idea how to get through a single day without wishing a meteor would smash me into Nick-paste to end my pain, or alternately, my book would turn viral and I'll become super rich and I can buy all the spare body parts I need (preferably on the Black Market, just for street cred's sake). These kids, while dealing with a tough time (my pending divorce), as well as any kids ever could, still maintain their grades, good humor, tenderness, and love for each parent. They amaze me. No understatement here. They freaking amaze me! They leave, and I turn around to my shit-hole apartment that is all I can afford after I pay her all my money so she can keep the house I grew up in and bought with my own money (no bitterness at all!) and I just shake my head at how shitty my life is financially, healthy wise with all my ailments that make me the water cooler talk of every doctor in town (I bet some text other doctors in Timbuktu or Oxford or some shit and say "You wouldn't believe the poor asshole I saw today! It's a miracle he is still alive, let alone walking, and he doesn't have the damned sense to give a wet sloppy one to the business end of a 12-guage. So how about tennis when you get back into town? Ciao!"), and a job that is killing me physically, spiritually, and wallet-ly. (Yes that's a word. Here, look in this dictionary. *punches you in the dictionary*)
But no matter how bad my life is, even when they recognize and point out that perhaps I dont live in the safest neighborhood (Trust me kids, I grew up in worse, and WAS worse), they still love coming here and seeing their screw-up old man, and put a smile on my face the whole time.
The question is HOW did I do it? Or at least contribute to it, as obviously their mother played a big part in it. Shes cranky, and stubborn and loves to ground my oldest at the drop of a hat, but yet she still gets them in order and taken care of as best as any mom in the world could, and I give her major major props for that. I'd high five her, but she would say I'm raising my voice and junk-punch me.
I've always tried my best to teach them right from wrong, to treat others how they would like to be treated, and to always protect family.... which I dissolved when my wife's rants of how much she hated me got to the point that one of us had to go, and the odd man out was the one without insurance (ME! yaaaaay!). We all know kids barely listen to a thing we teach them, so how did they end up to be so fundamentally good, when my DNA is a bubbling cesspool of cancers, heart issues, chronic pain, depression, degenerative diseases, and a wicked strong sense of sarcasm??? Im honestly baffled, and cant take credit for it.
Either way, I love them, and they're the three sole reasons I'm alive. I guarantee ya that home-skillets.
