*Please be advised that this post contains mature themes
I recently had a conversation with my mother’s sister where it came up that my parents in defense of my accusations that they spent no time with me as a kid had made a point to go on and on about how often they took me camping on their final trip to Ontario before moving to Bali.
This war going on between my father and I is getting pretty out of hand he is writing his own material at this point, his lying and manipulation tactics have hit levels I’m thankful I didn’t have to live through as a child because I may not have made it to a place where I could rise above it and deal with it. It says a lot to me that it took me over forty five minutes to explain to my aunt that my father had simply manifested all of his behaviors into new ones and she’d fallen for it. I’ve watched this man brain wash my mother my entire life and attempt to brain wash me, listening to a woman who has called him every name in the book and despised him since the 60′s saying it seemed like he had genuinely changed scared the living shit out of me. And even though in the end I got her back to seeing him as he is in regards to my mother the only thing that we can do is accept that she has officially shown her cards.
I wish I could say this surprised me but when dealing with parental neglect and being able to let it go because I accept that to them this was technically a lot of time spent with me, from any only child’s perspective I also see their selfishness and narcissistic needs taking precedent over anything ME.
Here is what I remember from our days portaging through the mountains of British Columbia and on regular camping trips some in provincial parks with good lakes, some in the middle of fucking nowhere before BOTH of my parents became Cub Scout leaders, while I went into Brownies:
We portaged in the days when there was no canoe holder draggy thingies. My dad carried the canoe with as much gear as he could manage tied under it and my mother and I carried the rest, I always walked in the middle. One time during a hike to camp there was a pool of water with a steep water fall, my parents wanted to go for a swim so they put my life jacket on and tied me to a tree I just remember being terrified because I was dragged as close to the edge as the rope would go and my parents were too busy copulating to notice. My parents being too busy copulating brings up my next memory of having my very own tent from obviously WAY too young of an age aside from being party to hearing a lot of copulating in the woods. One time it was so windy and my tent hadn’t been pegged in that I swear to god the tent was bouncing up and off the ground and folding in on me and here I go blank. I know I must have wet myself and somehow gotten over to my parents tent. This other time we were on top of a cliff and all night we could hear this loud slamming, banging sound, and my mom thought someone was coming to kill us, AND I WAS IN MY OWN TENT, no no, not scared at all. I remember the time I dropped a piece of cheese on the ground and my dad sat there and watched, made me eat it covered in dirt and I was already forcing down spam sandwiches for crying out loud. I remember almost dying of hypothermia the only thing that technically saved me was that I was bailing the water out of the canoe as fast as it was coming in, when all was said and done apparently I was beyond shivering thankfully although in the middle of no where on this trip my parents had the car for added heat to warm me back up. These are always told as funny happenings, fun little stories, no biggy, didn’t almost drown our daughter, nope she didn’t almost get blown away.
The only time they spent with me during these camping years was playing Uno and unfortunately although you play while living life it is just a game, just one game. I would meet other kids on some of these trips but let us remember that I had zero social skills none, no brothers no sisters, just parents who took me places but didn’t actually spend quality time with me so it would generally take me about twenty minutes doing god only knows what because those are memories I can not access but I’d manage to alienate said kids and bam I’m stuck for a day a week depending on whether we were in a camp site or portaging alone with no one to talk to and nothing to do but read my Owl magazines. And the more I think about it the more I remember that even the good memories I have of camping are still mostly memories of times spent alone.
If I had a sibling this wouldn’t even be worth writing about, it would have been a completely different story but I’m sorry, dragging your kid around like a piece of your camping gear and then tying them to a tree so you can screw is NOT spending QUALITY time with your kid.
Nice try though daddio.
