One of my favorite things to do is tell the truth about my dad. He's dead now, but he was a literal neo-nazi. A meth-dealing member of the Aryan brotherhood who no one would have suspected. No tattoos, wore white new balances, 60+ years old dude living in the suburbs secretly slinging crank out of his Chevy Silverado while also running an illegal gambling ring across multiple states.

I obviously wasn't really close to him, especially after I was an adult, but God damn he was shitty. After he died, people kept acting like he wasn't a piece of shit and it was so frustrating. I was sitting at the funeral and all I wanted to do was go up and explain to everyone how horrible he was, but instead I just sat there and made disgusted faces at everyone who said nice things about him. Then I paid for my part of the funeral (felt wrong to stick my sibs with the whole bill), smoked weed in the parking lot with my nephew, and had some waffle house.

What were we talking about again? Oh, you were saying your dad was coming to town and y'all are going to six flags? Nice.

Lucky me, most of my traumas came from outside the home

Like how when I was six, I almost drowned when I got pulled to the bottom of a wave pool at Noah's Ark (Americans Largest Water Park!)

For about five minutes, I struggled to try and get to the surface, but the other pool goers and the waves kept tossing me around like a washing machine

Right when the desire to take a breath kicked in, my mom pulled me up to the surface and saved me

I wanted to leave the park right away and started to cry, my dad got upset because he paid $15 a head for the four of us, but quickly realized that I was genuinely traumatized and we went back to the hotel and ordered pizza

And that's the story of how I developed thalassophobia

Twice! I was inadvertently stranded places by my family because I was supposed to “call after I was done”, and my brother was on the dial-up playing WoW lol - also was in the overlap where cell phones weren’t big yet. Eventually got a ride home from the one situation, and in the other one I walked a few miles home at night along the only road (multi-lane highway but just swamps instead of buildings). At least that kickstarted my enjoyment of late-night distance running

...is this a true story?