Let’s Stay Together For The Kids

LETS STAY MARRIED FOR THE KIDS!!! YOU’VE HEARD THIS RIGHT?

NOW…Let’s go back in time…it’s the 80s.

My dad, realizing he wasn’t just dodging verbal bullets anymore, made a run for it.

I was about six years old when my mother decided to break a plate against the table and chase him with the sharp edge because she had her eyes set on a bungalow in Maple Bluff.

If you’re from Madison, Wisconsin, you know the deal — having a Maple Bluff lakefront house is the ultimate status symbol, and she desperately wanted her lakefront palace NOW…Not later.

So when it never came, she started to get violent.

She chased my dad, around the house with this jagged plate to prove a point.

My dad, the master of “work-related disappearances,” would vanish on the road for days at a time, leaving us wondering if he was really a head engineer or just collecting motel soaps. I’m pretty sure he hit the road to escape my mother.

One day, my mom disappeared. At the time, it was tragic, but looking back, it’s almost funny — she just vanished.

I think I was about seven. My dad was on a business trip, and my sister called him to say, “Mom’s gone.” His response was, “Call grandpa.” So, Jessica called our grandpa, a retired cop, and he started a door-to-door search for her.

Oh, and we were in tow, that meant he had us knocking on the fucking doors looking for the witch. “Is my mom here.” Great way to traumatize kids gramps.

It took about a week for her to come home, and when she did, we learned that the night before, my dad had hit her because she locked him inside the bedroom to prevent him from leaving on his business trip.

So, she had another violent point to prove.

After getting grandpa involved, he was so annoyed that he forced them into a divorce. The boys on the force don’t like domestic violence.

I was about seven then.

The following year, my dad became a paraplegic from a severe fall, and then no one wanted to take care of him, so he ended up a ward of the state.

What a life — PhD in civil engineering, head engineer for the DNR, professor, married to the wrong woman because she was cute and had a funny accent. This is what happens.

So if you believe staying together for the kids is a good idea, you might want to ask those whose parents did just that what they think of it.