Father's Day: "My Old Man's a Fatso"

Wait Till Your Father Gets Home; Angry Samoans (Inside My Brain); Eds., Wisdom Quarterly

"Love and the Old-Fashioned Father"

(The-N) A hippie teen wants permission to go away with her hippie boyfriend, a graduate doesn't get a job but just sits around the house, a wife spends too much, and a hardworking all-American father (a cross between FAT Fred Flintstone, Ralphie Kramden, Archie Bunker, Homer Simpson, and Peter Griffin) has to put up with it. Welcome to reality. The series premiere of Wait Till Your Father Gets Home on #TheN (teamsmallwoods). #WaitTillYourFatherGetsHome #HannaBarbera #CartoonNetwork

LYRICS: Locked inside my bedroom/ Looking at the pictures up on the wall/ I need a little elbow room/ I need space man that ain't all/ Get home first thing you know/ My folks jump on my case/ Get a job take the dishes out/ Put the trash back in its place/ Someday when I'm a man/ I'm gonna put them in their place/ 'Cause my old man's a fatso/ He's got a potbelly for a mouth/ Baby my old man's a fatso/ But you know he owns this house// Yeah locked inside the classroom/ Staring at the dots up on the wall/ My teachers all are retards/ I need out baby that ain't all/ I don't care about textbooks/ Or the Jews that discovered Spain/ I gotta gotta gotta leave this town/ I'll take the bus I'll catch a plane/ 'Cause my old man's a fatso/ He's got a bathtub for a mouth/ Baby my old man's a fatso/ But you know he owns this house// Yeah 2-3-4 cruisin' on the highway/ It feels so good to see open space/ I don't feel like a prisoner/ I don't feel like a basket case/ I turn the radio up to 10/ And you know I've found my place/ Yep get a job put the dishes out/ Put the trash back in its place/ Now that I'm a man/ I'm gonna put them in their place/ 'Cause my old man's a fatso/ He's got a bathtub for a mouth/ Baby my old man's a fatso/ But you know he owns this house

Parents, mindfully raise your children.

Growing up is not easy. I imagine it's that way for everyone. A boy's relationship with his dad is particularly difficult. A man who chooses to drink is going to be terrible at parenting but defended by society as "doing the best he can." Really, Dad, that's the best?

Indeed, the blessing of being a parent is a great thing, full of merit (particularly good karma). The Sigalovada Sutra spells out the dharma or duties, social obligations, of parents to their children. Children, in turn, have obligations.

• What’s the HISTORY of Father’s Day, and when is Father’s Day 2023? (msn.com)

"Wait till your father gets home!"

My dad is passed, and we didn't get along growing up. Of course, I loved him and have no doubt he loved me. But like? Not so much. We butted heads, we fought, we argued. He taught me not to drink by drinking.

He also taught me to ruminate, worry, fear, dislike, judge, and many other bad qualities. Born into the world, I take responsibility for my karma, my actions, my habits, and the things I picked up. Where is he now, I wonder, for his karma, his actions, his deeds.

Buddhist Publication Society

There are fruits and resultants (ripening), the phala and vipaka of KARMA (deeds). And for human beings it's a mixed bag, a collection of blended deeds.

There are those unwelcome results of acts motivated or accompanied by "greed, hatred, and delusion," which refers to the range of craving (passion), aversion (and fear), and ignorance (wrong view) of all kinds.

There are also the welcome ones, and the motivations there are "nongreed, nonhatred, nondelusion" in all of their positive expressions -- letting go, generosity, giving, sharing, providing for ourselves and others; loving kindness, forbearance/forgiveness (khanti), compassion, courageousness (non-fear, non-cowardice); wisdom, understanding, right view, direct knowledge, faith (confidence, conviction), certainty, knowing-and-seeing.

In the end, after years of not getting along, I apologized to my father. Whatever wrong he did, I certainly had no right to assert myself and bruise his ego.

Oh, I see. "What comes around goes around," and that's karma. ("Like begets like").

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Karma and Rebirth (Appleton)

I figured that if patricide, killing one's father, is practically the worst thing one can do in life -- grouped with killing an arhat (enlightened person), injuring a buddha, causing a schism in the monastic sangha, claiming false attainments, and matricide (the heinous deeds with immediate result in the very next rebirth) -- fighting with him had to be pretty bad. We had gotten into it. I had had it with his drunken bloviating and posturing.

No one came to my defense afterward. I was universally condemned, as if no one had ever noticed how he had been riding me. It made me feel so misunderstood. The purpose of life is to tolerate more and more nonsense for your dad or father figure or other authority figures? Heck no. Some people won't put up with it.

The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse for relationships (gottmanconnect.com/quiz)

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But our karma (our choice of deeds) can't be blamed on another. That another person does what he or she does, is that person's business. We have to mind ourselves. No one will mind us. No one can.

What a world to live in, where one cannot say the emperor has no clothes or ask, What's that 800 lb. gorilla doing in the room? I said, I asked it, I stood up for myself. You'd think he would have been proud of me, since he's the one who pushed it on so many occasions. But, no. He was a drunk, intoxicated much of the time. One cannot expect too many insights or self-reflection from such people.

Even if he hadn't been, and he wasn't always (there was time before he became one), he was still a jerk, a fatso, a presumptuous man who thought himself deserving of much respect. I didn't think so. And those who cannot demand respect attempt to command it, insist on it. Heck no. I wasn't going to have it.

Yay! Hooray! Ride the wave rather than fight it!

Fortunately, before he passed, I apologized. What a literal weight it lifted off my shoulders. I didn't know I was carrying it around. Surely, we use the phrase figuratively, but I felt the weight lift. It shocked me. I got to grow. Who knows how he took it.

He thanked me for apologizing and said Buddhism must be a good thing if it brought me to this realization. So maybe he took it well, taking no responsibility for provoking and instigating things. He constantly had to prove himself, and now I have to; it's the gift that keeps on giving.

Raising kids must be a terrible weight, a terrible responsibility. My dad not only made me not want to drink but also not want to become a father. Why would I be able to do it any better? Sure, I may know better (and that's a big may) but what better resources, what better habits do I have than he?

No relationship is good where there's fighting, bickering, recriminations, and such. It would have been better not to be under all the stressors an unfair society put on us as a family and as individuals. But we didn't have it the worst. Others have it plenty worse. It's hard to imagine.

Leo Tolstoy quote: “All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is different” (Anna Karenina, goodreads.com).

• What did Leo Tolstoy mean when he said, "All happy families are alike, and unhappy ones are all different"? (Quora)

The author of the novel One Hundred Years of Solitude, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, really said it about family (Family | Shmoop). I could have written the play Other Desert Cities, which tells the story of a family with a terrible secret about one of the sons.

The whole family lives under the pall of something that happened long ago, but it turns out the parents know and were never in the dark. Only the children were deceived and the author, in finding out, didn't like it. So she wrote the play, a true story about a real California family. I wanted to take my family and shout, This is us! The end. Stop reading.

• 40 FREE printable Father’s Day cards dad will love (MSN)
• How can we have better relationships? (gottmanconnect.com)
• Non-violent communication (NVC) is a great way to be

Why this is not good writing

Dad, get your own religion. Don't mooch mine.

Modern writing is all about relatable anecdotes. Rule 1: "Show, don't tell." No one cares about conclusions; everyone wants the real-life story to assume and decide for themselves. That's why all news stories and political speeches now begin with a personal anecdote.

Pres. Reagan (groomed in Hollywood to be the best speech reader ever) found this out. So rather than spout off statistics or other objective data nobody cares about, he realized one story about one Black welfare mom and he could destroy the country's social safety net for the Republicans' fiscal conservatives.

An anecdote is meant to suck us in and make us care, make it personal, get our investment. Then we'll keep reading or watching, turning the pages. That's why novels are more popular than textbooks. One we have to read, the other we choose to. We've been baited, and now we can't get enough.

What could I say about my dad, really? What am I, an open confessional? Dad is here, aren't you, Pops? He's in the breeze, he's in the trees, he's in my heart and memory. Are you a "fatso" like Harry Boyle? I love you, Apa (our family's version of "Papa").

Look, I can sit on my fat @ss, too.

Anecdote, anecdote, hmmm. My dad used to hide his Playboy magazines in an accessible drawer. Whenever I looked at them, I had to make sure to put them back exactly as I found them. For if he figured out that their hiding place had been found out, he'd move them. And then access would be gone. NO, DON'T SAY THAT!!! Don't air out the family's dirty laundry! What are you, a family traitor?!

No, I'm not a traitor. Okay, this one time I drank a beer and was a little woozy. My bad cousin put me up to it. He was sleeping over and dropped something. My dad came into the room asking what all the commotion was. Of course, there was no commotion. But being the Big Man that he [thought] he was, he had to get up in my face, I suppose showing off for my cousin, to show us who the Big Man is. I had had it. I was right up in his face. But being woozy, it was a little hard to stand straight. So he figured out that I had imbibed. NO, DON'T SAY THAT EITHER!!! What, do you want to make this family sound like a bunch of drunks? No, we weren't all drunks. In fact, I'm surprised anyone drank after seeing him screw up his and our lives with beer, booze (red wine), and spirits. O, those spirits! The worst. It's like they pack demons/genies into corked bottles.

One time we were visiting a family friend in San Francisco, and the whole family was in the kitchen. I answered back, and he hit me. I was going to floor him. I was shocked and outraged. But not being a drunk, not being a hothead, I contained myself so as to spare the other family, our hosts, from seeing just what kind of family we were. NO, WHAT ARE YOU CRAZY? DON'T TELL THAT STORY!!! What? He was a drinker who drank and lying liar who lies -- and saying so is the crime?

In Mahayana Buddhism, a branch of Brahminism/Hinduism more than anything the historical Buddha taught, they added rules to the Five Precepts: Do not broadcast the faults or misdeeds of the Buddhist assembly. (And we have the Western rule never to speak ill of the dead, but I said these things while he was living). Which is good for cult behavior. A Zen priest or Chan monk can do anything, and no one is to say anything about to the outside world or else that whistleblower is the problem. Great, what an additional rule to add to what the Buddha laid down as guidelines for living toward liberation.

• Filial piety in Buddhism (honoring those worthy of honor)
• Who are the "worthy ones" worthy of honor? The arhats

Ha, you think that's bad. My dad...

What's the worst thing my dad ever did to me? One time, we were eating dinner as a family, mandated, all at the table. Maybe there was a prayer; I don't remember. I used to like to clank my knife and fork against the plate while eating, because that's what I saw done on TV sitcoms when the family sat down for a meal of sharing and witty repartee. Well, my dad came unhinged and shouted for it to stop. We had to eat not only in silence but in noiselessness, too. My mom made the mistake of tell him to calm down, and he blew up. He shouted, What do you want me to do?! Get on all fours and let him [you can imagine, and if you can't imagine, you're lucky]" at which time he jumped onto the floor, got on all fours, and pointed -- all while we were right there eating, looking at my long-suffering mother, The Enabler, aghast and embarrassed for her and him.

I'm reminded now. It was so bad at home that my cousin and I had a weekly contest going, "Who's dad is the bigger a-hole this week?" We would call each other on Sundays to review. He'd tell me the worst thing his dad had done, and I'd tell him what mine had done. I didn't always win, but when I did, I knew I had by the stunned silence. My cousin couldn't compete with that. The other fathers we knew were nowhere near as bad as ours, and these were men, peers, who all knew each other. To think how many times I won that contest, sheesh. The drunken outbursts, the patriarchal BS, the religious hypocrisy...it was a good upbringing if "good" were defined as "all the examples of how not to be."

It might not be the worst, that would be drinking alcohol and intending for me to drink it when I got old enough, but it sure was the most upsetting. He calls my masculinity into question. Then, when I'm walking home with two girls, in middle school, and they're coming onto me and talking about what they're going to do to me when I walk them home. And my eyes, and not only my eyes, are bulging, we hear a honk. We ignore it. The honking grows more insistent. Finally, I turn around and it's him in the street with my brother in the passenger's seat. He's honking to give me a ride when I'm perfectly fine to walk, as I do daily, and for the first time to walk these vixens home as they tease and tantalize me all along the way.

I run over to tell him, "Thanks but I don't need a ride, I'm good" and all he says is, "Get in!" "I said I don't need a ride. I'll walk. I'm good." "Get the H in this car or I'll..." and d'ya think he let me go over to the girls and explain? No. H no. I had to be driven away, leaving them scratching their heads. Do you think they were in any kind of mood to hear an explanation later? No. H no. It never came up. They assumed I wussed out and got into the car of my own accord. Ah, what might have been. Could anyone imagine how different my life might have been?

OMG, THAT'S THE WORST STORY!!! And it's not even bad. It makes him seem like the responsible parent. Hah, I think he was simply trying to frustrate my plans and cover his own behind. My brother had gotten in trouble -- a minor foretaste of the trouble he would get in in a few years -- and my dad had to pick him up, so naturally why let me walk home and enjoy myself in the company of two beauties. And then to have the nerve in the future to call my masculinity into question again. What a [fatso]!

The reason for this article, on this glorious Father's Day, is to say, we don't all love our dads all the time. That's not to say we hate them. We disobey. A child has to individuate at some time. There's no point in carrying on the family-chain of raise, rinse, repeat -- doing the same thing our parents did to us. Break away. Stand on your own. If you want to be like them, you know how. It's the default option. If you want to be your own person, get out of line, out of step, and be a baa-baa black sheep. Then you'll have a chance at being a success that was not modeled for you. Awaken.