12.
My parents house is an old farm house from 1896. It now sits on a very busy street that is getting more dangerous every year. It wasn’t too bad when I was a kid.
My dad made me head outside to play for a while. I was about nine or ten. I’m playing with the dog and eventually start having a really good time. For some reason, I wanted to walk down to the busy road. I looked back up to the porch and I saw my dad. It was like this weird slow motion while he was waving me back inside. I noticed his plaid shirt was different, too. That’s a weird thing for a kid to notice, but my dad was an alcoholic with a terrible temper so you kept track of things like this. He would get super pissed if for instance, he made breakfast and got something on his shirt and had to change. Some how my mom always got yelled at for things like this. I turn to the road and look back, and I think I barely catch a glimpse of him walking inside.
Anyway, I run to the side door because the front porch is hardly ever used and it was a habit to go through the side. The dog and I run in and I am feeling pretty frustrated and I know I’m going to get in trouble for having an attitude. But I blurt out, “why did you have me come in for!?” My parents are sitting on the couch watching tv, and they are looking at me like I’m nuts. My dad asks me what I’m talking about, and I said “you came out onto the porch and waved at me to come in!” My mom is now looking at me like I lost my shit and tells me they have been sitting there together for a half hour.
I realized his shirt was not the same green plaid I saw him wearing on the porch. It’s red and blue again (this is the 90’s.) I remember rambling that off to them, too. The part that weirds me out the most is that around this time news stories about kidnappings in my area began surfacing, and I wasn’t allowed to leave a certain part of the yard anymore because I could be too close to the road. I still understand none of this. I have that image of my dad waving me inside burned in my head, too.
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