Brady Knave should have died when he was twelve and fell from the top of his great aunt’s crabapple tree. Brady Knave should have died when he was fourteen and threw himself off the backside of the bridge at Sheldon’s Rock. Brady Knave should have died when he was sixteen and pulled out in front of a transfer truck in his little car. Brady Knave should have died when he was seventeen and got lost on his way home from a concert, returning his then girlfriend to her overprotective father six hours late.
But Brady Knave didn’t die any of those times or any number of other times that he had flirted with death. The truth is that Brady Knave was the kind of kid that people said wouldn’t live to see his eighteenth birthday. Then when he did, they would say that he wouldn’t make it to twenty-one.
Nevertheless, Brady Knave had beaten all the odds. He had lived well beyond his anticipated expiration date. Even Brady was little shocked that he had lived as long as he had. He would often talk with a hint of longing in his voice of the days when he lived wild and recklessly. He had tried to live his life according the words of octogenarian Mavis Leyrer, “Life’s journey is not to arrive at the grave safely, in a well preserved body, but rather to skid in sideways, totally worn out, shouting “Holy shit, what a ride!””
Brady had slowed down though and so had his metabolism. He finally looked healthy. He had a good life, but that’s why I hated him. You see Brady Knave is my father.
His wild hair is still as red as it ever was and his heart was still as free as could be. But when your dad lived wild and free, it’s hard for a kid to get away with anything. My dad should have died so many times, but he lived. He lived to make m life hell and embarrass the holy living shit out of me every chance he got.
He thought he was funny, and he would have been a flipping riot if he was someone else’s dad. I would have laughed what little ass I had right off, if I’d seen anyone else’s dad screaming across the mall, “Aiden, I found a girl who will go out with you. She’s deaf and blind. I think you have a shot of losing your scarlet V.”
Keep in mind that I was talking to Samantha McKinney, the cutest, sweetest, best looking girl in the freshman class. Yeah, Brady Knave should have died in his twenties, but instead he lived beyond his expiration date, got a career instead of a job, found a wife to tolerate him, had kids, put on a few extra pounds, and started slowly killing me.
Had he died when he twenty-two and on a dare drove his best friends car off the end of a peer and into the Pacific Ocean, I would never had been born. And that would have been better than watching Samantha McKinney laughing at me. Never being born would no doubt be better than becoming an even bigger social pariah.
As if my father hadn’t done enough to keep me from getting a date simply by passing on his genetics, he felt the need to humiliate me at least weekly. I mean I was lucky if I weighed one hundred pounds soaking wet holding bricks in each pocket. I had wild unmanageable bright red hair that my dad somehow always managed to pull off. I was a skinny little redheaded freak, with a father who thought my purpose in life was to be his entertainment. He often said that the difference between him and Mom and other parents was that most parents think that their purpose is to take care of and provide for their children, but my parents believed that children were there for the entertainment of their parents.
He’d say, “Aiden, when your mom and I decided to have kids, we promised ourselves a few things. One was that it wouldn’t change who we were. That promise we mostly kept. Someday you’ll learn how having children always changes you somewhat. But we weren’t going to let having kids keep us from doing the things we enjoy. Another was that we wouldn’t do for the first what we knew wouldn’t last for the rest. We disciplined you and treated you like you had some sense before you did because we knew that children aren’t born civilized. These people with ungrateful brats for kids are to blame for it. They raised them to be that way.”
He was right though. I’d give him that. I appreciated what I had and what I got because I knew that life wasn’t easy and things didn’t come without working for them. I knew how to work for what I wanted and I knew how to be polite and respectful even when I wasn’t getting what I wanted. But sometimes he was unbearable and in that moment as I felt the redness rise to my cheeks and turn my normally nearly transparent skin to a rosy red, I just wanted him to be gone.
In my family there is an expression that I bet a lot of other families use as well, “If it wasn’t for bad luck, the Knaves wouldn’t have any luck at all.” The family curse held true!
My dad in his tuxedo shirt and bowler cap proceeded to walk up and put his arm around my shoulder. Then he proceeded to check Samantha out. I don’t know which was worse his mentioning my virginity or my old man looking at a girl in my class like he was appraising a house for work.
“So what’s going on Sam?” he asked.
“Dad, she prefers Samantha,” I whined.
Samantha was shaking her head and mouthing, ‘It’s okay,” but my dad wasn’t taking that. He proceeded to give me a noogie and say, “I remember when you and Sam used to play together all the time. Matter of fact, I think I have a picture of you tow in the bathtub together with bubbles all over the place.”
He elbowed me in the ribs like somehow taking a bath with a girl when we were babies was an accomplishment. My face went from red to extra pale as I died a little on the inside.
“Hi Mr. Knave,” Samantha said.
“Whoa,” Dad took his arm from around my neck and put both hands up, “My father wasn’t even Mr. Knave. Brady, Sam, just Brady.”
“Okay,” Samantha said awkwardly, “Brady, how are you?”
“I’m rockin’ and rollin’.” He turned his head back to me. I hoped and prayed he’d just say something like I’ll meet you in the car, but not my dad. “Aiden, I’m heading to Hot Topics before we leave.” Now if my dad was not totally convinced that my pain was his gain, he would have turned and walked away, but this was my dad and my nightmare to live.
He turned and looked back at Samantha, “I need new piercing.” And then he winked.
Sam blushed and stifled a smile. I choked back a mouthful of vomit. I was seriously considering looking for a way out. I harbored the thought of throwing myself over the railing that Samantha had been leaning against. The idea of my bloody corpse landing in the middle of the food court below seemed a far cry better than standing here next to my father who refused to quit killing me with his sad attempts at being cool.
“Anyways, Aiden, be at the car in twenty. Sam, tell you dad he still owes me twenty bucks. What kind of idiot bets against the Steelers? I don’t care if Johnny Unitas was QBing for the other team.” Then in a final act of parental bullying, he reached out and messed up my hair before he started to walk away.
“Bye Mr.—“ She was cut off by my dad spinning on his heals, “I mean Brady.”
“Catch ya later, Sam I am. Aiden, if you’re not at the car when I get there, it’s shoe leather express for you my little friend.” He never looked back, just waved over his shoulder.
I seriously considered turning and running. But I couldn’t run far enough to escape the kind of damage that my father could cause.
“I’m going to need so much therapy,” I said.
“It could be worse, Aiden. At least your dad is funny, besides he’s kind of cute and charming.”
“You wouldn’t think so if he was your dad. Trust me. He’s far from funny when you’re the object of his razzing. Wait you said he was kind of cute?”
“So?” Samantha asked raising her eyebrows. Her eyes were smiling, but her lips stayed pursed.
“You said the other day how much I look like my dad.”
“Got a point,” Samantha asked, all out smirking.
“You think I’m cute,” I said smiling.
“I said kind of cute,” Samantha looked over my shoulder towards the exit. “Well, Aiden, I’d offer you a ride home, but we’re not going straight home.”
I was still lost in the idea that Samantha McKinney, the cutest, nicest girl in the freshman class, maybe even the school, thought I was cute, well kind of cute.”
Samantha giggled a little and kept raising her chin trying to get me to look behind me at the exit. I didn’t get it and started giving her the "what’s up" head nod back. She grabbed my arm and spun me around, “Aiden, you better go.”
To my horror, there was my dad dangling the car keys and laughing. When he saw that I saw him, he turned and darted out the door.
“Damn it!” I screamed, “Dad, you said twenty minutes!” I took off at a full sprint. I heard Samantha say goodbye behind me. I had to react quickly.
Unfortunately, The old saying about hindsight being twenty-twenty tends to be true. When the dust settles and the storm passes, it’s almost too easy to see which way you should have turned. It’s even easier to watch someone in a play or a movie make poor choices and say to yourself, “I would have…” But the truth is that you would have made the same dumb mistakes. And it’s also true that only when we reflect on what we’ve already done, can we truly say what would be the best course of action to take.
When you’re in the thick of it, when you’re eyeball deep in the action, you make the best decision for the angle you are seeing. It’s about perspective really. The difference between hindsight and foresight is perception not reality.
In that moment, I knew I didn’t stand a chance of catching my dad if I went straight at him. He was still too fast even if he was carrying an extra twenty pounds from when he was a record setting sprinter.
Instead of heading straight to the exit, I swung to the right and headed into Sears. I was in a dead sprint and probably looked like a shoplifter on the run. Like I said hindsight. I raced through the wide doors, struck a mannequin, powered through and kept going. I was leaving angry employees and a wave of chaos in my wake as I bobbed and weaved through the store heading to the back corner where the vision center and tire center were. I knew if I could make it out that door I had a fighting chance of cutting my dad off before he got out of the parking lot.
The trick would be getting out. I could see the door and hear the shouts from behind me. I had tunnel vision. I was keeping my eye on the prize.
I kicked it in for the last ten yards, digging deeper than I thought I could. The door was coming fast; I realized a moment too late that the automatic doors weren’t fully automatic.
CRASH! The next thing I saw were lights then worried faces, and then angry faces.
“What were you thinking?” scolded the mall security officer as he jerked me to my feet. I could feel the lump growing on my forehead. I could see my dad’s red Jeep getting ready to pull out of the mall. All was lost, or was it?
“RAPE!” I screamed. It wasn’t much of a distraction, but it was enough. The guard instinctively jerked his arm back, which gave me enough time to rip the door open and fly out. I was nearly hit by a sedan heading into a bay to get new tires or an oil change. Rolling over the hood, I hit the ground running and sprinted up the hill.
For once, the gods had smiled on me. My dad had caught the light. I leaped over a final hedge, fumbled with the door handle, clambered into the Jeep just as the light changed to green.
“Put you seatbelt on, freakshow!”
All of that and all he had to say was put your seatbelt on. I buckled the h=belt and fought to catch my breath.
“Why?” I asked.
“Because I can,” Dad said laughing.
“You’re an asshole, Dad.”
He reached over and playfully cuffed me in the back of the head, “I’ve been accused of it a time or two, but it’s never been proven in a court of law.”
“Good lord! I’m calling shenanigans!” I said indignant.
“You can’t call shenanigans on something like this,” Dad said.
“The hell you say,” Dad cuffed me in the back of the head again.
“Language, Freak.”
“Sorry,” I said.
“So according to the code,” my dad loved to invoke the code. As far as I could tell, the code was entirely invented by my dad and revised as needed. “Shenanigans can only be called during game play.”
“Don’t tell me that this isn’t a game to you?”
“It’s funny to me, but I wouldn’t call it a game,” he said shifting gears. My dad loved to argue and felt like it was his duty to make sure I could too.
“Shenanigans, which is the equivalent o calling BS, which would get me cuffed in the head again, is usually used in a game when one party feels they’ve been cheated. It is appropriate in this case because I totally got cheated when I got you as a father.” My mood had lighted some since I could breath again.
“Tread lightly counselor,” Dad laughed.
“I’m just saying, mom is a good looking lady, and I’ve seen pictures of her in her prime. She was smokin’ hot. She could have done so much better than you.”
“If you mom picked someone else, you wouldn’t be here you freak.”
“I might prefer that, but as it has been well established one possible future doesn’t eliminate the other. I would have come to be, just with a human father.”
“You cut me deep…you cut me real deep,” my dad said slumping against the door.
“Road!” I reached for the wheel, but Dad corrected himself fast enough o keep us out of harms way. “Some day, your shenanigans are going to get someone hurt. And it will probably be me. That’s all I’m saying.”
“Come on, exercise is good for you!”
“Dad, I was nearly arrested.”
“What for?” he asked.
“My guess would have been that they thought I was a shoplifter. I rocked through Sears like a man possessed trying to beat you to the light.” I tenderly felt the knot growing on my head. I was hoping to skip that part of the story.
“What happened to your head?” He asked looking over.
“I don’t want to talk about this,” I said looking out the window.
“You hit the door again didn’t you?” Dad banged on the steering wheel and laughed so hard I thought he was going to have to pull off the road to regain his composure enough to drove the remaining few blocks to the house.
Right before we climbed out at the house, Dad held me back and said, “Aiden, I know I like to mess around a lot, but Sam, well if you’re thinking of going there, I’d rethink it.” I tried to object but he stopped me. “I know it’s your life and you can do what you want, but it’s not a good idea. That’s all I’m saying!”
I tried to avoid the thought of Samantha most of the time. I did occasionally talk to her and think it would be nice if we were more than just neighbors and friends. But well before my dad said anything, a voice way in the back of my head was trying to tell me it wasn’t a good idea.
It just wasn’t a good idea. We’d been friends for too long, our families were too close, and to be honest, we ran in completely different circles. I was a free phone with a new two year contract on a basic plan, but Samantha was an android phone with a 4G network and unlimited web and messaging.
Samantha and I had been friends a long time. But the heart wants what the heart wants, even if it is terribly cliché. That’s all I could think about was how incredibly trite the whole situation was. The slightly below average guy falls for the popular girl who only sees him as a friend. In fiction and the movies, that kind of story line happened again and again. Did that mean there was some truth to it?
I threw myself on the bed and docked my ipod. I hit shuffle and let the tunes flow randomly. I fought the urge to check my facebook for updates. It was an obsessive thing with me. Anytime I was within range of a wifi hotspot or open wireless access I wanted to continuously check my e-mail and facebook. It was an addiction. That I knew. However, in the grand scheme of life, it seemed to be a fairly innocuous addiction that really would never leave a victim in its wake.
I buried my head under a pillow and let the melodies of The Shins carry my troubles out the open window. My room was my sanctuary, mind you most sanctuaries tended to be cleaned regularly, my room wasn’t. My room was seldom if ever cleaned.
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