The summer between 5th grade and 6th grade, dad and I moved to Gresham with Leslie and Wade, the woman my dad was dating and her son. We stayed there for a couple of years before they bought a house in the Sweetbriar neighborhood back in Troutdale. One Monday, as a 14 year old freshman at Columbia High, I was riding the bus home, sitting next to Paul Fernandez. He wasn’t one of my good buddies, but for this day, we just decided to get into trouble. We walked past his house to get to mine, but he asked if I wanted to come in and hang for a bit.
I agreed and we sat around staring at each other for a while before he had the idea of showing off his dad’s Extensive liquor cabinet. Paul started handing me bottle after bottle of god knows what insisting I try it.
I have no idea how many shots we did, or of what, but it was Monday and I had to walk home and make sure the house was in order before Dad got home from work. I wobbled my way the 3 blocks to my house, staggered into the bathroom and puked for about a half hour. My first ever booze puke! I then got to my bed and passed out.
A couple hours later, Dad opened my door and asked if I was ok. “ Dad, I don’t feel good, I just puked, it must have been the school pizza or something.” AWE, sorry about that, he said, well, stay resting, and Ill come get you when the game starts, you don’t wanna miss that!
The Cowboys were on Monday night football, and we never missed a Cowboy game if it was on.
I went back to sleep for a while before he was yelling from the living room that it was kickoff.
I staggered down the hall towards the living room, thankfully he wasn’t watching me navigate the hallway as if the walls were guardrails on a winding road. I made it to the other couch as I wasn’t gonna sit by him. Almost immediately the room was spinning and my insides wanted out again. I jumped up, opened the slider and dove out to the grass, where on all fours, I puked for another few minutes. As I was trying to catch my breath, he came to the slider, and offered sympathy and was so sweet and understanding. That is until I said “ Dad, I cant lie to you, it wasn’t lunch. My friend paul had me over and we did some experimenting in his dads booze cabinet. I am so sick!!”
Then Mount Butch erupted in a Firey fury. Teeth clinched, veins bulging and a voice that started in his bowels, and got louder and higher pitched with every word. “WHAT??!!. You did what? Oh, youre a big man now huh? Wanna be cool?” On and on with a barrage of words all saying the same thing. That I was an idiot. “Well I hope youre happy mr bigshot! Hows it feel ??”
So much for fatherly sympathy.
“get out of the grass, and back in your bed mr bigshot!
So, back to bed I went. I couldn’t care less about the game, or dinner, I just wanted to be still, and calm, and have him shut the fuck up!!
I don’t think we spoke the rest of the day, and the silence was deafening, and the tension was palpable, but I made it to sleep. As you can imagine, my first hangover wasn’t worth the wait and a Tuesday of high school waited for me. I don’t remember the immediate aftermath, or punishment, but I was probable grounded for 2 weeks, or whatever standard was back then.
Probably 10 years later, I was at Elk Camp with dad and some of his buddies, and I told MY version of the story, making sure his buddies knew how insensitive he was.
“Dad, the moral of this story was you taught me that afternoon, that honesty wasn’t the best policy with you. That hit hard, and in front of his peers he had to admit he handled it poorly.
I felt better finally getting that off my chest because that incident was always a “What the Fuck” moment for me. He apologized multiple times over the years admitting he sent the wrong message, it turned out to be quite a bonding moment, and by the time , we were transitioning from dad/son to best friends, fishing, hunting, golfing buddies. He was my best friend through high school and I think he appreciated my calling him out, although it took ten years.