BAD BLOOD
He loved Trivial Pursuit to a wildly competitive degree. He was saturated by music. He sang it. He wrote it. He loved it. In the car, he played “dashboard piano” as he jammed out to the likes of Joe Cocker and Jethro Tull. His exuberance and authority were both entertaining and intimidating. He was robust and unapologetic, always. He was larger than life. He was… I speak of him in the past tense, though he, my father, is very much alive. Although he is living, I think his true being, the one that could remotely pass as a functioning member of society, died long ago. Honestly, I’m not even sure if he was ever that type of person. A conventional human being who knew right from wrong, good from bad. My mother will sometimes recount stories she heard about my father when he was a child. He would entertain his pre-school classmates with tall tales of owning lions and tigers, and tantalize them with yarns about putting his head in their mouths. Even at that early age he needed an aud...