Here’s something a lot of people don’t consider about kids being stuck at home. I couldn’t imagine as a kid being stuck at home with my alcoholic, Dr Jekyl and Mr Hyde father. He started his days as a sharp executive. He was a social drinker. A drink at lunch, one or two with the boys on the way home, one before dinner, one with dinner, and a drink at his side all evening. Then, the ridicule would start. This was when he didn’t just stay at a bar from the end of work until closing time. Then I had a shot at being in bed at the least faking asleep. But right now, all the kinds of places he would go are closed. Use my mother for protection? She left when I was ten. I wouldn’t have bothered with school. I would have left on my bike every day.
There are a lot more of these situations than you know. Don’t judge a house by its cover. Behind that big brick house front door might be a raging alcoholic who never emotionally progressed beyond immature, drunken frat boy jock. One of my friends had a worse situation with a successful, but temperamental Italian father with an old school philosophy kids should be hit rather than heard. He lived in fear everyday.
Every parent fears the late night call when kids are driving and possibly drinking. In my family the situation was in reverse. I got the call about my father. I only went to the funeral because it would have ticked off my grandmother to skip it. But I couldn’t even fake looking upset.
I rarely, ever think about my parents. Maybe, subconsciously the experience is why I’m so resistant to lockdown.
