MACHO DAD

By

Michael Edwin Q.

My father ate nails for breakfast. He’d wash them down with molten lava. He greeted everyone with a challenge to punch him in the stomach. He arm wrestled with every male between the ages of eighteen and eighty. Whiskey was his mouthwash of choice, and beer his cologne. He shaved with a broken glass bottle with no shaving cream. Two hundred sit-ups and fifty pushups before bed, he’d stand before breaking wind for fear of breaking the chair. So you can image his disappointment in me.

I was a wimp, a pansy, a momma’s boy. I liked flowers, puppies, ballet, opera, and many other things that my father despised.

In my seventeenth year, he decided to make a man out of me. We got into his rowboat and he rowed us out into the ocean some ten miles from shore. He picked me up and threw me into the water.

Now, years later, I realize that I am better for it. It was difficult, but worth it. Not so much the long swim back, but getting out of the chains and that sack.

THE END

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