The Blame Game

Thickame Road is narrow, situated on a hill, curves like a snake, and blind corners are spaced all along it. In order to combat these dangers, my father likes to drive up the hill like a rocket in order to minimize the time spent in the danger zone, and merely blast his horn at any oncoming traffic that might be in “his” way.I was eighteen at the time, enrolled in my high school’s AP Physics class and working like a stiff to remodel my dad’s house. My mother had recently taken a job offer in another state, and while my dad was more than happy to take me in, he had recently remarried. There was no room left. If I wanted a place to live I would have to help build it myself. In the meantime, I was living with my grandmother, in the room my grandfather had died in about three months prior.

On the way to my grandmother’s house one night, my father decided to take the shortcut down Thickame Road. While driving, my father likes to split the time between paying attention to the road and blaming me for everything that has ever gone wrong in the world. There is more logic to this than there might seem. You see, my father believes that I have infinite potential, that I can literally do anything in the world my heart desires, if I can just manifest the will to make it happen. Therefore, anything that goes wrong in the world is clearly my fault, as I have allowed it to happen.

While explaining that it was my fault that the U.S. had decided to invade Iraq, and that every bombing subsequent to it was also my fault, my father neglected to honk his horn while turning a corner at forty miles an hour. And when we turned the corner we found another car on the wrong side of the road, driving right at us.

My father slammed on the brakes. His large, calloused hand karate-chopped me in the chest, in order to stop me from flying out the window. As I gasped for breath and rubbed the bruise that was now spreading over my chest, I realized the collision had already occurred and that we had both survived it.

“Jesus Christ Dad….” I coughed loudly. “I was wearing a seatbelt. Fuck.” I began coughing again. “Fuck that hurt.”

Being the soft-spoken, rational man that he is, my father quickly checked to see if I was all right. “Holy fuck! Are you okay?! BC?! Can you hear me?!”

“Yeah… I’m fine. I’d be better if you hadn’t decided to hit me in the goddamn heart. You okay?”

“Oh no you don’t! Oh no you don’t!” In his great concern for my well-being, my father had forgotten about me and was yelling out of his window to try to stop the other driver from backing up. “Trying to fuck up the evidence! I’ll show you! I’ll show you!”

“Fucking punk-ass kid drivers!”

“Dad… that guy is like thirty-five years old.” He was. In fact, if I wasn’t mistaken that was his wife next to him and she was pregnant.

Afraid of what he might do, my father decided to stay in the car after he called the cops to report the accident.

The conversation was very eloquent, as my father usually is when he is in a stressful situation.

“Hello!”

“Sir, what is the nature of your emergency?”

“Fucking punk-ass mother-fucking kids hit the side of my goddamn truck!”

“Sir, what’s your location?”

“Thickame Hill! FUCK!”

“Sir, a unit has been dispatched. Please stay on the line.”

He hung up.

When the police arrived, he made sure to make up for lost time. Positioning a cop between himself and the driver of the other car, whose wife was indeed pregnant, he railed for a solid fifteen minutes about “fucking punk-ass, chicken-shit teenage drivers” and how they needed to “get the fuck off of roads” that were paid for with his “fucking goddamn tax dollars.”

The other driver stood in shock, saying nothing, wondering how, after so long, my father was still convinced he was a teenager.

Though he was not aware of it at the time, all of the officers knew who he was, as my stepmother was having an affair with the chief of police. “Sir, you need to calm down, please.” They were trying to be nice to him.

“How can I be calm when you’re letting this guy and his girlfriend get off scot-free for smashing my car?”

“Dad, that woman’s hair is gray and she’s pregnant!” Finally realizing I was there–and despite having no idea what I had said–my father turned to me. He suddenly grabbed my upper arm, and presented me to the police as if I had the smoking gun.

“BC! Show them how it all happened.”

“What do you mean? You already told them how it happened.”

“No! Show them! Do some physics on the junk that’s laying around.”

The cops looked to me, suddenly intrigued. “Dad… I’m in the first semester of AP Physics!”

I suddenly realized I was screwed. As my father believed my potential to be infinite, there was no way to convince him I did not have the magical CSI abilities to suddenly prove to the police that he had been in the right.

“Bullshit! You can do anything you want to do!”

“Well… within reason.” I paused then. “Wait…. How the fuck is this my fault?”

The cops walked slowly away from the two of us and began to giggle with each other near their car.

My father, no longer pissed at the cops for not doing anything, or even the other driver, was finally pissed at me.

“Fuck it, BC! Just get in the car. I’m tired of your bullshit.”

After the police realized that their job was over, they exchanged a few words with the other driver, then with my father and left.

All the way to my grandmother’s house he refused to speak to me. On only two other occasions has my father been so mad at me. The time that my sister totaled his truck by side-swiping a telephone pole, and the time that she totaled her car by hitting a city bus head-on.