Why Father's Day Sucks (for me)

Those of you who have been around Bananaland for a while, you know all about Jimbo (click for link to blog post).  He was a great Dad.  He was also a complete asshole.  Technically, he was step-dad.  Whatever.  I called him Dad. He & the Drunken Queen married when I was 8.  We bonded.  He taught me lots. He is a huge part of the asshole I came to be.  He's been gone since 1997.

The little diddy I'm about to tell is not something I've divulged previously.  You're in for a treat.  Sort of.  

I have a birth father.  He's alive & well (well, mostly on the well part) in Illinois.  

He was not a nice man (almost man, he was 17 when I shot out) to my mother when I was a child.  I'll leave that story for another blogpost that I'm not yet ready to write.  They divorced when I was 7.  

In the  beginning I saw him every other weekend.  He would take me to his basement #newlysingleguy apartment and sit me in front of the tv to watch what he called Japanese Monster movies (Godzilla & the like).  I dreaded it.  Some weekends we would visit his friends (my godparents) and that was good.  Have bbq's, all that shyte.  

The dating, ummm, scene the daddio got into was bizarre.  This was the 70's.  People were wacky.  There were the twins, the woman who made her kids put their hands over a back of a chair so she could hit them with a ruler for punishment, and numerous other disco-haired 'ladies'.  I met them all.  Or most of them.

Shortly after the DQ married Jimbo in 1978, my birth daddio remarried as well.  This brought new friends & family into the mix.  Lots of weekends at a lake in Indiana, trips to the beach, great fireworks displays, sledding, #allthethings.  It was a great stretch.  

In 1980 my baby brother was born.  Things when smoothly for a good bit.  Then the every other weekend visits turned to once a month, then once every month, etc...  This was not due to the birth of my brother, I was a pre-teen and had my own shit to do.  I still made it to the important stuff, birthdays & the like. 

When the DQ, Jimbo, my baby sister (born to the DQ & Jimbo one month prior to my brother being born), and I moved to Florida in 1986, I called my Dad on the phone the week before the move.  I hadn't seen him in almost a year.  What?  I was 16.  I didn't know to handle shit.  He was fairly devasted (points for him).  

Since the move to Florida (30 years ago), I have seen my birth daddy 6 times.   Two visits home shortly after I moved, my first wedding, a visit home when he had a heart attack, and two visits home as an adult.  He has met the Mini once; she was 7 months old.  She's almost 12.  

I've invited him here.  He's invited me there.  We both aren't interested.  

We are still in contact.  We text.  We're friends on the Facebook.  I'll wish him a Happy Father's Day tomorrow.  

#FathersDaySucks - PPB