Three Layer Cake

Abnormal or impaired functioning, especially of a bodily system or social group.

dys·func'tion·al adj.

KNOW THE PEOPLE’S WILL, VOTE FOR MELVIN GILL

I still had not caught on to the profound influence that the simple expression of civic duty would have on my life by the time my father developed a campaign slogan for his first run for the Nashville Mayor’s office.  I would not see the effects until a few years later, five to be exact, when my high-school classmates’ political savvy was revealed under the duress of puerile teasing.
 

 My father’s idea, I think, was to present himself as the candidate willing to take the hard choices that no other candidate was willing to take.  He went to the typographer with his pictures and carefully selected quotes in hand and had a brochure printed up, campaign signs, the whole works.  (Nevermind we were just getting off of food stamps, unemployment, and really didn’t have a pot to peep in or a window to throw it out of…)  And then to my horror, one day there he was around town: a black cowboy in a black suit, cowboy boots, saddle bags on shoulder and armed with his empty double barrel shotgun.  That was a little too much for a twelve year-old to handle.  WHY WAS MY FATHER DOING THIS TO ME?  He later explained that he got into politics to help me.  Help me get a corner room in the loony bin, maybe…
 

I still remember that summer morning I was listening to the radio and in the middle of the morning traffic report I heard, ”Hey, wait, there’s a man on that overpass with a shotgun!!!”  My father had decided he wasn’t getting enough media attention so he left home very early that morning to stand on Nashville’s busiest overpass during rush-hour with his campaign sign.  Yes, he was arrested.  No, he did not call his attorney.  Instead, he made his one phone call to 103 WKDF’s then very popular fictitious personality, Bubba Skynyrd (Carl P. Mayfield).  Bubba publicly bailed my father out, and they became good friends.  Surprise!  My father didn’t win the election.  And the only thing that saved my public humiliation, until five years later of course, was the fact that this took place over summer.  I rationalized to myself that I shouldn’t be ashamed because I wasn’t the one who did it, HE was, people would understand that, and by the time I began my new high school, it would all be forgotten.  So I convinced myself.
 

So five years later, under the supervision of a very nice substitute teacher, during my junior year in Mr. Brown’s English class it came back to bite me.  In this class we were frequently left to explore our creative potential by lounging on sofas and free-writing about whatever came to mind, and this particular day a bit of a squabble broke out between me, Kerby, and Charlie.  Charlie is best described as a southern Jack McFarland, and Kerby is just Kerby, so unique and great that there is no comparison.  We all had known each other for almost ten years, and over the course of those ten years had gotten to know each other’s family secrets as well.  I can’t remember what started the fight but I remember from this point…

 

(Kerby laughs outloud while Kristina starts to cry).

Kristina to Kerby:  Shut up!  At least my father didn’t get so drunk that my mother had to go get him from Shoney’s and drive him home.

(Charlie laughs outloud while Kerby starts to cry).

Kristina and Kerby to Charlie:  What are you laughing at!?

Kerby to Charlie:  At least our fathers didn’t go off and leave us!

Kristina:  Yeah!

(Charlie starts to cry)

Substitute teacher (stands up and calls to the students in the back of the class):  All of y’all, if your Daddies have skeletons in the closet you better stay back there, because if you come up here, they’ll drag ‘em out!

And we three sat and laughed and cried together at the painful truth of a tragic-comical situation that can only happen when you’re seventeen and you still care what people think of your parents. 

But that was a rite of passage.  It was the verbalization of what  “dysfunctional” really meant outside of the pages of our sociology textbook, and I definitely understood that my family wasn’t alone (and it sure takes one to know one).  I found no safety in those numbers.  Until I went off to California for school I was perpetually annoyed with my father for repeatedly drawing negative attention to our family (he continues to this day to run for office for any seat for which he is eligible).  But now I no longer shudder inside when I think of the crazy crap my father does.  It’s character-building.

 

My name is Kristina, and I have been part of a dysfunctional family for over 32 years.