I wish my parents decided to get divorced before I left my teen years and entered the twenty-somethings, because I'd really like to throw some warranted angst in their faces. I never imagined my parents, my own Mom and Dad, would turn into such immature twits upon their separation, leaving my brother and me as extras in the background to the scene of our crumbling family, rolling our eyes.
My father moved out (to East Nowhere, Maine) a little over two months ago, leaving behind a varying degree of belongings in the house my family has lived in for twenty years. These belongings ranged from tools to sweaters, and my mother demanded they be picked up or would be thrown in the trash or sold on Craigslist. Last Friday, Dad came down to Mass to pick up said artifacts and did so while no one was home. Taking advantage of the empty house, evidence shows he spent quite a bit of time just hangin' out. A container of coleslaw that was in our fridge was found empty (still in the fridge) and there were dirty dishes all over the counter. Furthermore, the trash barrel from our kitchen was gone (mysterious). As if empty containers, dirty dishes, and stolen kitchen appliances aren't enough, I was pouring myself a nice glass of lemonade today and opened the freezer to get ice and quickly noticed that all ice trays available for use in my kitchen had been left empty. Really Dad? Are you five?
Example B: My miserable day at the RMV trying to renew my license...
My first car was a 1995 Volvo sedan with a sweet moon roof. I loved it and it died seven months after I bought it...the tragedy of my junior year of high school. This car was registered in my father's name and I haven't had it for almost four years. Today, at the RMV, after waiting for an hour and a half in a long line of giddy sixteen years olds and senile old people trying to pass eye exams, I handed in the paperwork to renew my license and was quickly told I couldn't do so until I paid the $500 of excise tax on my "car." In a rush of both annoyance and impatience, I run to the tax collector's office to try and straighten this mess out as quickly as possible so I don't have to wait in another fifty-person line. Lo and behold, I receive the news with great displeasure that the excise tax isn't on my current car (Buick le Sabre <3), but on the car I junked some four years before, which my father apparently had secretly registered under my name in hopes that my mother would pay the tax once it was discovered.
This is where my mom breaks out the waterguns...detecting the malice behind the unpaid, four-year-old excise tax, she digs up my father's credit card numbers, (which she apparently had written down), and used one of his high-interest accounts to pay off the balance due on the ghost of my Volvo. I told her that what she was doing probably wasn't legal, but she laughed and didn't seem to care.
Are people really incapable of dealing with divorce in a mature and reasonable manner? I feel somewhat grateful that they waited until I was twenty to be such asses, because I'd probably be pretty fucked up if I witnessed these debaucheries as an ten-year-old, but seeing it now as a quasi-adult ushers in feelings of distrust and disbelief in the possibility of successful relationships. I hope I never steal a trashcan just to spite someone.
