Legacy Interrupted

Father’s Day was last Sunday and I decided to call my dad Roy to wish him a good one. I really hate the holidays that force me to talk to Roy (or anyone for that matter), but I’ll chock that up to familial duty.

After talking about how many gifts he got from his church for Father’s Day, he started getting on my case about getting married. He said that when he went to Nigeria this year, the last words of one of his relatives was that all the fathers in our family should tell their children to pray first thing in the morning. The most important thing is to pray for a good wife. Roy also sent me a couple of CDs from his church that had a sermon about how the Jews are less than 1% of the world population but own 60% of the West. He said that they're successful because their families stick together and only gain success after they get blessings from their fathers. So, once I take out the religious connotations, Roy said that I should get married and that I need to talk to him more. Funny how he doesn’t mention anything about blessings from the mother. Oh that Dodger ego! Good to see it’s not completely gone.

My father, as I’ve said before, is in legacy mode. I understand this. I really do. He’s getting old and he sees his old friends have their children and grand-children around them all the time, and then sees that all of his children aren’t around him with no grand kids. One is in Seattle, one is in Smalltown, and the only one that lives with him hates his guts. He’d like to see the family come together in some strange TV family kind of way, and he’s doing everything possible to make it happen. I say strange because that’s not the way we were raised. Me, my brother, and my sister didn’t really have unity. Whenever my sister Rana had a problem, she dealt with it herself or went to a friend. The same went for my brother Rex and I. Our parents were disciplinarians and not much else. I say this not to complain, but to explain why it makes no sense to think that we will all of a sudden come together when we’ve spent so much time apart. And, to be honest, I’ve gotten used to this way of family living and would like it to stay that way.

As far as marriage goes… I mean, come on now. Look at me. I mean really look at me. I don’t believe in marriage and, even if I did, I don’t have the patience or care it takes to maintain one. Same goes for having kids. I can fake my way through a relationship for a year, maybe two. But a lifetime? Even I’m not that good. I’ve said it a million times: people with my afflictions shouldn’t have children, and it would be selfish of me to subject an innocent child to my lunacy. Besides, the last thing I need is a little psychotic Roger Dodger running around, poking my feet with knives as I sleep like I did to Rex when I was I kid. Whenever I did something bad, my mom Rita would always say that I’ll pay for it when I have my kids and they do the same to me. Scary thought.

So I guess Roy’s fucked. It sucks for him, I know. To have worked so hard and to have done the best he could to create a new generation in America, just to see it wither away as if everything he had done meant nothing. That can’t be a good feeling. So why do I humor him? Why don’t I just tell him that I’m never getting married or that I’m never having kids? Why do I tell him that I’ll listen to those stupid CDs? It’s because, even though I say these things with true honesty now, I really don’t know what will happen in the future. As time goes on, it seems as though I graduate to new levels of understanding and thought. I think that happens to everyone. The guy I was at 21 is extremely different from the guy I am now. So maybe once I’m retired and running the business full-time, my attitude will change about this whole situation. If a mentally-deficient mongrel like Kylie Ray can turn out a great kid, then maybe it's possible for me too. I really don’t know. Besides, who’s this business, this thing that I’m worked so hard to build, gonna go to when I’m dead? See? That question already got me thinking…