“My mom calls my dad. Look, it’s been long established he owes her nothing. Like, my dad has issues, but he internalizes them at least. My mom divorced my dad and then got mad when I told him that I didn’t hear dad cry while I was staying with him. Like, that validated the divorce, or something. Like he owed her tears. He didn’t divorce her. I don’t know. I was older then, at least I felt older, and I knew how to handle my parents, so I kept quiet. So he calls, no answer, my dad calls back later that night, around midnight. My mom stays up late too but when she told me the story she said she was asleep when he called. I think she was lying and just threw that in there as some kind of petty power play. That’s what I deal with. She starts crying on the phone, asking my dad to take the puppies for a bit. My dad says he can’t afford to feed them all, to watch them all. She asks him if he wants to take any of them to own. He says no. Look, I knew at this point a dog would do my dad good but I kept neutral. If I would have given any endorsement to my mother she would have swung it around until it was in tatters. It starts getting really shitty because my dad agrees to watch two of the puppies while she looks for people to adopt them, and when my mom and Rodney drive down, they got all the puppies in the car.”

“Ouch.”