Scared Essay, Research Paper

Scared

The sun was beating down on my friends and I as we played army in the fields behind our houses, filled with wild grass and weeds. As we played in the hot afternoon, my stomach would turn as if I was about to get in a fight at school. This could only mean one thing: it was almost time for dad to get home. Many things ran through my head as I lost my breath. Did I do everything that was on the chore list? Did I get in trouble at school today? I was thinking of anything that I might have done earlier that day to upset my father.

My father is a good man and I love him very much. We had the closest father-son relationship you could get. If Dad was outside in the garage working on his lifted maroon Ford, I was right there working with him. If my dad was going to the store for hamburger meat before dinner, I went with him. I went everywhere and did everything I could with my dad. He was my hero; he was invincible, like a comic book character.

My father had one downfall though: he liked to drink. I mean my dad drank all the time. Seven days a week. My dad was a construction worker and every day after work he and his fellow workers had “bud thirty”. This was actually 5:30 pm the end of the workday for them. They would either send someone to the liquor store to buy beer or they would all go out to a bar and drink. They would not just have a few beers but have enough to get hammered. How he drove home every night, who knows!

You see my dad was not a happy drunk. He was a very angry drunk. He was very aggressive and wanted to fight when he drank. This is why my stomach would turn when it was almost time for him to get home. If my brother, my sister, or I did not do all of our chores, it would set him off. My dad did not beat any of us kids, but as he got madder and madder at us kids, my mother would step in. This was not good; he then would turn the anger towards her.

As their fight escalates, us kids would just sit there as if we were solid bricks of ice. Hoping that this fight would not end up like the last one. But sure enough there went my dad reaching back as if he was pulling back a bow and arrow. Then letting go with a force of evil hitting my mother across the face. As she fell to the ground, us kids began to scream and cry, running to our rooms. As we hear the thumps of my dads fist hitting my mother’s all ready bruised and bloody face. We could hear, nothing but my mother screaming “Benny stop, Benny”, over and over again.

The worry about our mother would overcome us and we would return to the room only to see my father dragging my mother by her matted hair. As she kicked and screamed no. As my mother struggled for her life, we could do nothing but scream, cry, and beg our father to stop. I don’t know if he could hear us with all the commotion and if he could he did not care what we were saying because he would not stop. This torture would some times go on for hours. My dad would either eventually wear himself out or just realize what he was doing. I don’t know and don’t care as long as he was going to leave.

My family did not go through this every night but once would be enough to scare you for life. Living with my alcoholic and abusing father helped me to make one of the best decisions in my life. When I was in junior high school, my friends began to drink and party a little (well what they thought was partying). Though I tried drinking and getting high, I had the vision of my poor mother getting kicked in the head by my drunken father, and this made me hate alcohol. I made the decision to stop drinking and all other party favors when I was only fourteen. I had only been drunk a few times at that point.

As I grew older, I was a very outgoing person. I did not drink, but was always at parties. I did all the partying I could, but never drank. I still had just as much fun as the next person, but I did not ever wake up feeling like shit the next day.

I am now twenty-four years of age with my own family. I have a beautiful daughter and wife. To this day I do not drink. I wish my father would not have put my mother through all of this, but in the long run he has made me a better person.