The Longest Day of the Year

After watching The Gong Show, my younger sister and I enjoyed popsicles made from cherry Kool-Aid that were frozen in a plastic tray Mom received for hosting a Stanley Products home party where she spent twelve dollars on snacks and didn’t make any sales and when dinner wasn’t ready at five-thirty that evening, my dad yelled and went out to his van, chugged from a bottle, and drove away.

For dinner, Mom warmed up a can of SpaghettiOs, and while we ate, she read her latest library book, Five Easy Steps to Your First Million. She served us both a cone of butter pecan ice cream and said, “With a million dollars, I’d take you kids to London, and we’d meet the queen.”

Mom and my sister went to bed, and I stayed up to watch a TV movie about a man coming out to his son. I’d read about it in the TV Guide. Dad staggered in, smelling like Jim Beam, and asked what the movie was about. When I told him the father was gay, he unplugged the TV and told me to never use language like that in his house again. He said, “That’s not normal for people like us, and if you want to be happy, then you gotta play right, or you’ll wind up living life liquored up and ashamed.”