Sh*t My Dad Says

by Justin Halpern

  “Justin Halpern,” I announced when my homeroom teacher asked for my name.

  A big kid with a mustache named Andre leaned over to me. “Eh, puto,” he whispered.

  “Yeah?” I said, nervous.

  “Why you sound like a fucking bitch?”

  Fast-forward a year later to when I entered high school. I had grown several inches, I felt more confident, and I was being called “fag” around 85 percent less. I had a few friends, and everybody who had picked on me in eighth grade basically left me alone now.

  My dad noticed when I came home from school looking and feeling upbeat and content after the first week was over. “There’s a hop in your step now,” he said. “You look like you just finished taking a shit all the time.”

  But with my newfound happiness and social life, I started to neglect my classes. And after the first progress report of ninth grade, I had a 2.33 GPA, which I knew wasn’t good, but I didn’t think was all that terrible. My dad thought otherwise.

  “Not that bad? This ain’t fucking MIT, this is ninth grade! Look at this shit!” he said, holding the progress report up. “You got a fucking C in ninth-grade journalism? How does that even happen? You work for the New York fucking Times? Couldn’t break that big corruption story? Jesus Christ. Unbelievable.”

  After my parents discussed in private how to handle my falling grades, my dad sat me down and told me that for the next week I wasn’t allowed to leave my room, except to go to school and to the bathroom. They’d serve me my meals in my room.

  “WHAT?!” I shouted. “That’s ridiculous! Lots of kids get worse grades than I do. And it’s a progress report! It’s not even on my permanent record!”

  “Blah-blah-blah, I don’t want to fucking hear it. You’re too smart for grades like this. It means you were lazy and didn’t do shit,” my dad replied.

  “This is unbelievable! You’re putting me in prison! This is prison! For a 2.33 GPA!”

  “Oh spare me, being stuck in your bedroom is not like prison. You don’t have to worry about being gang-raped in your bedroom.”

  The subject that was dragging me down the most was math, but the next day at school I found out that I wasn’t alone. Two-thirds of the class received an F, including me. My teacher was a real tough guy, and he often told us that he wasn’t going to hold our hands. We either got it, or he’d flunk us out.

  On the first night of my imprisonment, my dad came home from work, tossed on some sweatpants, and strolled into my room.

  “Get out your math book. We’re gonna cure this case of the stupids,” he said as he sat down next to me on my bed, pointing at a stack of books underneath a pile of my dirty clothes. “Jesus, open a window, it smells like death shit in here,” he added.

  As we started to go through the book, he realized that not only did I not know how to do any of the problems, I didn’t understand the basics I needed to even tackle them.

  “They didn’t teach you this shit?” he asked.

  I told him they hadn’t, and then I told him what the teacher had said about either getting it or flunking out.

  “What? That’s bullshit. What kind of asshole says something like that? Me and this teacher are having a chat. I’m coming to your goddamned school tomorrow.”

  The next day, I sat at my desk in homeroom, terrified that at any moment my dad would show up. You know that feeling you get when you’re going up a huge climb on a roller coaster, waiting for that first big drop to come? Imagine that, but then imagine, too, that you have diarrhea. Which I happened to have that day due to a combination of queso fundido I had eaten the night before at a Mexican restaurant and the boxes of Nerds candy I’d been downing all morning. I spent periods one through three running between my classes and the bathroom, praying that my dad didn’t burst into my classroom while I was on the toilet.

  Then, during fourth period, I saw him out in the hallway being pointed to my English classroom by a janitor. He walked over and waited by the door, pacing back and forth, holding his briefcase. I slumped down in my chair. This stoner kid named Brandon leaned over to me, and pointed at my dad.

  “I bet that dude’s from the fucking FBI or some shit,” he said.

  “He’s not,” I muttered.

  When the bell rang, I walked out into the hallway, where he said, “Grab your shit. Let’s go see your teacher.”

  “Can’t we just do this after school, Dad? Why do you have to do this during school?”

  “Son, relax. I just want to chat with the man. I’m not gonna rip his head off and shit down his throat,” he said. “Unless he provokes me.”

  We walked up toward the bungalow on the outskirts of campus where my math class met. Kids were already starting to file in, and my crusty teacher was sitting in the corner behind his desk. He looked like Dustin Hoffman, if Dustin Hoffman’s skin was made of newspapers that had been left out in the sun. My dad barreled into the room and walked right up to him. I lingered in the hallway, trying not to be seen.

  “You’re the math teacher?” my dad barked.

  My math teacher looked up, annoyed.

  “I am. Can I help you?”

  The ten or so students who were already seated took notice.

  “That there, outside, is my kid. He’s in your class,” my dad said.

  I ducked behind a tree.

  “Justin, get in here. What are you doing, son?”

  I came out from behind the tree and walked up the steps into the bungalow.

  “Now, you’re flunking him, and that’s fine. If he deserves to flunk, then flunk his ass out. But when I went through the math with him, he didn’t even know the basic concepts, and said you never taught them,” my dad said.

  “This is an advanced math class, and if the students can’t follow along, they should transfer to a class that’s more suited to their skill level. I’ve been teaching this class for twelve years the same way,” my teacher responded.

  “I don’t give a good goddamn how long you’ve been teaching this class. He tells me all these kids are flunking out, and they all think they’re losers,” my dad said as he turned and pointed at all the students sitting in the class—who, for the most part, hadn’t thought they were losers. “That’s when I got a problem,” he added.

  At that point I think my teacher realized he wasn’t dealing with a normal angry parent, but rather with someone who was making him look like an idiot in front of his students, so he took my dad outside. I traded places and moved inside. All of my classmates were staring at me, as the room was almost full now. I sat down in my seat, avoiding eye contact. Every ten or fifteen seconds we’d hear words and phrases coming from outside: my teacher yelling “I will not tolerate this!” followed by my dad responding, “NO—NO! You will tolerate it!”

  “Damn. Your dad is making Mr. Jensen his bitch. Niiiiiice,” the kid next to me said, smiling.

  After a couple minutes, our teacher came in, his leathery face now a little more bronzed with fury. My dad walked into the classroom as well, right up to where I was seated at my desk.

  “Don’t worry about paying attention, you’re transferring classes tomorrow,” he said before exiting.

  At dinner that night, my dad acted as if nothing had happened, but right before I went to bed, he called me over to the couch in the living room where he was sitting.

  “Let’s be honest. You’re not Einstein, but don’t let assholes like that teacher make you feel stupid. You’re plenty smart, and good at other stuff. You know that, right?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Don’t just say yeah like a fucking mope. Let me hear you say it. Say you know you’re good at stuff.”

  “I’m good at stuff.”

  “That’s right. You’re good at stuff. Fuck that math teacher,” he said. “Oh, one last thing,” he added. “Tomorrow see your counselor before you go to class. I think they’re transferring you to one of those math classes where everybody uses their calculator for everything.”

  On Missing the No-
Hitter I Threw in High School to Watch the Kentucky Derby

  “A no-fucking-hitter?! And I missed it. Shit. Well, the Derby was fantastic, if that makes you feel any better.”

  On Missing My Second (and Only Other) No-Hitter a Year Later for the Exact Same Reason

  “You have to be fucking kidding me! They need to stop scheduling these games on Derby Day. That’s just silly.”

  On Friendship

  “You got good friends. I like them. I don’t think they would fuck your girlfriend, if you had one.”

  On Friendship, Part II

  “I don’t need more friends. You got friends and all they do is ask you to help them move. Fuck that. I’m old. I’m through moving shit.”

  On Accidentally Breaking Dishware

  “Jesus, it’s like going to a fucking Greek wedding with you. You need to master the coordination thing, because right now it’s busting your balls.”

  On Going to a Party with No Adults Present

  “Not a fucking chance…. Yeah, you’re responsible, but I’ve seen those kids you go to school with, and if they weren’t so stupid, they’d be criminals.”

  On Using Protection

  “I’m gonna put a handful of condoms in the glove compartment of the car…. I don’t give a shit if you don’t want to talk about this with me, I don’t want to talk about this with you, either. You think I want you screwing in my car? No. But I’d much less rather have to pay for some kid you make because there ain’t condoms in there.”

  On Choosing One’s Occupation

  “You have to do something you love…. Bullshit, you clearly have not heard this speech before, because you’re working at Mervyn’s.”

  On Waiting in Line to See Jurassic Park

  “There is no movie good enough for me to wait in a line longer than the run time of the movie. Either we’re seeing something else or I’m leaving, and you can take a cab home.”

  At the End of the Day, You Have to Make the Best Decision for Yourself

  “I’m not about to take the fall for somebody else’s porn movie.”

  One day when I was fourteen, my friend Aaron barged through my front door after school, out of breath and sweaty. I could tell by the intense look on his face that whatever he was about to tell me just might be the most important thing I had heard in my entire life up to that point. It turned out I was right.

  “Dude. I found a porno movie in the alley behind 7-Eleven,” he said.

  From his backpack he pulled out a VHS copy of New Wave Hookers, whose weathered, stained cardboard packaging left no question as to the fact that someone else had gotten his money out of this puppy. We reacted like a pair of farmers who had discovered a bag of money in one of their cornfields: jubilant, then immediately paranoid and distrustful of each other. But we knew we had to work together to make sure we didn’t blow this opportunity and decided that the best idea was to take a time-share approach. I would take the porno the first and third weeks of every month, and Aaron would take it the second and fourth.

  Though I watched the movie fifty-plus times, to this day I’m not sure what the plot line of the film is, because I never made it past the first twenty minutes. The only place I could watch it was in my parents’ room. They had the only VCR in the house, which made me feel like a gazelle finding out that the only watering hole in a thousand-mile radius was inside a lion’s den. Never once, though, did I think, It’s not worth it. I’d wait until my parents had left the house, and then go into their room and do my business. I even worked out a plan for when I heard the front door open: I’d pull my underwear up from around my ankles as I hit EJECT, and then in one motion, remove the tape and hit the TV/VIDEO button so that they wouldn’t know the VCR had been used. It was a well-thought-out, efficient plan, and it never failed.

  Unfortunately I still got caught.

  I woke up one morning to find my dad hovering above me, waving my copy of New Wave Hookers like it was a winning lottery ticket. I had violated the cardinal rule of watching porn: Don’t leave the evidence in the VCR.

  “I don’t give a shit if you watch porn, watch away,” he said. “But (a) don’t do it in my room (the last thing I need is to come home from work and sit on some of your nasty business); and (b) I can’t have your mother finding porn in my room and thinking that it’s mine. Then that becomes my problem, and I’m not about to take the fall for somebody else’s porn movie.”

  “Are you gonna tell Mom?” I asked in a panic.

  “Nah, I’ll keep quiet about it as long as you don’t do that shit on my bed,” he said with a twinkle in his eye.

  I reached my hand up assertively, assuming that now that we’d had our man-to-man he’d give me the movie back. “Ha, nice fucking try.” He turned and left with it under his arm, laughing.

  Having your father find your porno and laugh at you is an embarrassing moment in a teenager’s life. I experienced a far more embarrassing one the next morning when I awoke to find my mother standing above me, holding my copy of New Wave Hookers. My dad had turned me in!

  When my mom finished describing the ills of the porn industry and detailing the unrealistic nature of the sex depicted in its products, all the while screaming at me, I marched out into the living room like a man who had traveled a long distance to avenge a death.

  “Hey!” I shouted at my dad, who was eating his daily bowl of Grape-Nuts.

  He looked up at me, making a face that said, “Be careful in choosing your next words.”

  “You told Mom about my,” and then I silently mouthed the word porn. “You said you wouldn’t!” I added at full volume.

  He put down his paper, looked at me, and replied in a measured voice, “Yeah, I thought about that. Too risky for me not to tell her. You shouldn’t have left that porno in our VCR. Your penis betrayed you, son. Made you think stupid. It won’t be the last time that happens.”

  On an Elderly Family Friend’s Erectile Dysfunction

  “I don’t know why people keep coming to me when they can’t get hard-ons. If I knew how to fix that I’d be driving a Ferrari two hundred miles an hour in the opposite direction of this house.”

  On My Frequent Absences at High School Dances

  “You bitch about not going, so why don’t you just go?…So then find a date…. So then meet more women…. Jesus Christ, son, I’m not continuing on with this line of questioning, it’s depressing the shit out of me. Do what you want.”

  On Practicing

  “Nobody likes practice, but what’s worse: practicing, or sucking at something?…Oh, give me a fucking break, practicing is not worse than sucking.”

  On Getting Rescued by a Lifeguard at the Beach

  “What were you doing that far out? You can’t swim…. Son, you’re a good athlete, but I’ve seen what you call swimming. It looks like a slow kid on his knees trying to smash ants.”

  On Breaking the Neighbor’s Window for the Third Time in a Year

  “What in the hell is the matter with you? This is the third time! You know, at this point I think it’s the neighbor’s fault…. No not really, it’s your fucking fault, I’m just in denial right now that my DNA was somehow involved in something this stupid.”

  On the Varsity Baseball End-of-the-Year Fund-raiser

  “Just tell me how much money I have to give you to never leave this couch.”

  On Video Game Systems

  “You can’t have one…. Fine, then go play it at your friend’s house. While you’re there, see if you can eat their food and use their shitter, too.”

  On the Importance of Watching the Evening News

  “Let’s finish talking in a bit, the news is on…. Well, if you have tuberculosis, it’s not going to get any worse in the next thirty minutes.”

  On Appropriate Times to Give Gifts

  “Yeah, I got him a gift. He got his kidney stone taken out. If you shoot a rock through your pecker, you deserve more than just a pat on the fucking back.”

  On My First Driving Lesson
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  “First things first: A car has five gears. What is that smell?…Okay, first thing before that first thing: Farting in a car that’s not moving makes you an asshole.”

  Confidence Is the Way to a Woman’s Heart, or at Least into Her Pants

  “No one wants to lay the guy who wouldn’t lay himself.”

  Between the end of my freshman year of high school and the beginning of my junior year, I grew ten inches. Suddenly I was six feet tall. “You’re starting to look like a man, sort of,” my dad told me on my sixteenth birthday, as I bit into a filet mignon he ordered for me at Ruth’s Chris Steak House.

  The downside of such a quick growth spurt was that I wasn’t really in control of my body. I moved around like I was being puppe-teered by someone with cerebral palsy. The good news was: Despite barely being able to walk ten feet without tripping over something, I could throw a baseball pretty hard. I was moved up to the varsity baseball team as a pitcher and led the team in wins and strikeouts.

  That year, my school’s cheerleading coach decided that in a show of school spirit, she was going to force her squad to attend all of the baseball games. Going to a high school baseball game is a lot like going to a student film festival; you’re there because you feel obliged to someone involved in it, and after two repetitive, mind-numbing hours of “action,” you congratulate that person and try to leave as quickly as possible. Needless to say, the cheerleaders mostly passed the time doing their homework and watching the grass grow on the sidelines. But my dad, who came to most of my games, thought otherwise.