Revenge

I blame my father for my sick and twisted sense of humor. And my nervous tick. And paranoia.

I grew up in a small town. And when I say small, I mean SMALL. Population 563. This matters because in a micro town such as this, you pretty much know everyone. Maybe it was me, but it seemed like our town was loaded with strange people. I always suspected most of the locals were suffering from mild lead poisoning.

We had a little cafe where they would gather to drink coffee for hours and catch up on gossip. Sometimes on Saturdays, my dad would torture treat me to a caramel roll and 2 1/2 hours of listening to the same stories over. And. Over.

I was a young and unsuspecting girl, so naturally I was a target for my dad's jokes and tormenting. His buddies at the cafe always joined in. They affectionately nicknamed me "Guts." I don't even know why.

One of his buddies had a glass eye. He thoroughly enjoyed popping it out of his eye socket in front of me. He'd roll it around in his mouth or hold it in his fingers and use it to "look" closely at my caramel roll.

Another of my dad's cafe buddies had Tourettes Syndrome. At the time, I didn't know it. All I knew was that he would be having a perfectly normal conversation, then suddenly and LOUDLY shout profanity. No one except for me ever seemed to notice. I remember thinking it was strange that people didn't mind him swearing at them.

After the glass eyeball incident, I decided to get revenge. Our local gas station sold all kinds of things that are illegal now like moonshine and automatic weapons. One day, I raided my piggy bank and headed into the gas station. I purchased the equivalent of 20 sticks of dynamite in "cigarette loads." Did I mention my dad smoked a pipe?

Back at home, I carefully filled his packed pipe with no less than 20 little white cigarette loads. Then, I sort of forgot about it. Until, my dad came home from the cafe later that week. Apparently, while sitting at the counter with his buddies he pulled out his pipe and lit it. The entire contents of my father's pipe blew all over the counter, on the waitress, and into the coffee cups of every patron sitting within 10 feet.

My dad and I agreed to call a truce. Temporarily, at least.