My “fuck you” moment - aka “daddy issues”

For 9 years my father was the chief of police of my small home town. Before that he had a lengthy enough law enforcement career elsewhere to justify his merit and position. He was stern, strong, and highly passionate for what he saw as his duty to his family and his town.

I was and still am proud of him despite his glaring flaws. I’m actually beginning to love him more because of them.

Alas, chief-of-police in a small MS town in the 90’s was, as you’d probably imagine, a highly politically charged and thankless job. He accepted it for a salary less than $25k a year. He never made more than $40k. My father was never a political animal. That was his downfall. 9 years of service, during my formative childhood years, and he was forced to resign for mostly political reasons.

My childhood hero had fallen, and I was coming of age as he was trying to pick up the pieces of his life and dignity. So many of my illusions were dashed that summer as I was entering high school. At they kept falling away throughout those four years.

Too long of a story to tell, but those were the main points to understand about what bubbled up finally into one of my “fuck you” moments…

We settled into an old farmhouse with a little property and started a petting farm. I had been accepted to college and I began setting up interviews with advisors and such. My parents had enough to get me an old ‘83 Bronco (slightly older than me) that mostly ran on caked on dirt and prayer. I had been working for a few years and was helping to pay it off and patch it up now and again.

At any rate, I wanted to go to the appointments that I had made with my advisors. It was only an hour and a half drive away. What’s the big deal? My father refused to let me go. Said the Bronco couldn’t make it and neither him nor mom could take off work to take me. The petting farm wasn’t too successful, apparently. They also had to work second and third jobs, while I worked and provided free labor to the farm.

He then went on to a diatribe of self-misery that I had become fed up with. You see it wasn’t the fact that he said no, it was all of the “woe is me… I can’t provide for my family!” useless bullshit that I could no longer bear listening to. He had provided. We had this conversation over dinner and full stomachs. We had what we had and it was more than enough. Of course we wanted more, but who doesn’t?

I pulled deep from my diaphragm and exclaimed in my deepest, authoritative (not screaming or yelling) voice I could muster, which was pretty impressive for a 17 year old I might add… “FUCK YOU! NO ONE WANTS TO HEAR YOUR SELF-PITYING BULLSHIT!”

He gave me a look like he was imagining killing me in so many ways. He calmly states, yet with that same look in his eyes, something along the lines of “Boy, I think you better sit down and eat your dinner before you regret something”.

Apparently I had stood up without realizing.

So I sat down and finished my meal in silence.

A week later the brakes went out on my Bronco 😅