When I was a child, I hated the flavor mint. Apparently, it is a rite of passage for children to genuinely believe mint tastes like toothpaste. In truth, it is a very adult flavor: often, appreciated as life chips away at the freshness of circumstances, which makes you look for it in an ice cream format. Being a kid, I was audibly not into mint, which made my father´s Christmas choices particularly un-fresh in taste.
For the weeks before Christmas, my father talked a big game, which in perspective was his core attribute: to talk a big game, absolutely not meet up to any expectations he laid, and gaslight you into believing he never even said anything or perhaps you ask for too much. At the time, my father never bought me a Christmas gift; claiming he was too poor. It was a rich claim for being the brokest man dripping in Salvatore Ferragamo (Remember that name! You will hear it often!) As my dad drove up in a new car, considering he was broke, I was excited. He had talked about this gift for weeks! WHAT WOULD IT BE!!!!!!!!!!!!
In my child brain, I imagined so many things beyond what it would be. Perhaps, a new Barbie. I loved those. Maybe, a video game or console, which I loved but could never really afford because they are like 600 dollars and, to be frank, I’m not good at them. I am the equivalent to the cheerleader that thinks she can play football because she goes to every game, but immediately gets an injury upon entering the field. I just love to play and act really excited for someone that will not win. At one point, I even thought it was a puppy, which I had dreamed of owning. Thus, when my dad handed me a bag of two mint-flavored cookies, I went catatonic.
I was 9, and I could not process how two mint-flavored cookies were the greatest, Christmas gift I would ever receive. First, did he know they were cookies, and, at least, 2.99 at Shoprite, which the label declared? Second, he KNEW I hated mint, did he not see they had a sticker saying mint flavor and were even green? Third, was he truly mentally well because he was the richest man to be broke and the biggest talker to not listen? Unfortunately for him, my face showed my disappointment, which gave him the launching pad for what he deemed: ¨Diandra Hates The Poor.¨
My father´s gift to turn people against each other and talk his way out of murder, might be why he was an addict. It is something I note amidst a lot of the crackheads that have crossed my path without being apart of my immaculate conception: they know how to talk SO WELL. They replace their cocaine gams with some real gift of gab. At the time of my father´s show, my grandmother and mother were at the home, so he had a solid audience. He deemed me spoiled, ungrateful, unforgiving, greedy, and a girl that has to learn to honor the poor. My growing up despising poverty, especially as a man FROM IT, had wounded him so much so that he had to leave in his brand new escalade. It was a 15 minute Christmas interaction that would stay stamped in my mind whenever the men in my life barely met the bare minimum and dragged me as a *hater.¨
They say you really do date your dad. You either date men exactly like him or his polar opposite, which I would LOVE. My father being Lucifer means I probably could marry God. Yet, till this date, the ¨mint incident¨ has become one of those strange memories that are so minute for how much you make them symbolize. After my father left, my mother decided to comfort me by reminding me that my father was stupid. Whether or not she would correct him for his dramatic, over-bearing scolding of me, behind my back, I would never know. Yet , in front of him and me, he was allowed to go big and go home. That tendency to let men explode at me, hold myself together, and simply walk away from their tongue lashing with the factual assessment that they are dumb has been central to me coping through my exes´ tirades. Yet, what I want to know, is if they are central to why I even choose to be with them?