As a hard and fast rule of life, this is how you should decide if someone stays around you. 1. Is this person a pleasure to be around. 2. If the answer to #1 is 'no,' then is this person useful?
If the answer to both questions is no, get rid of said person. No one should have to be around unpleasant people who serve no purpose.
My Second Stepfather (who will now very appropriately be called the SS)) was neither consistently pleasant nor useful. In fact, he is probably one of the least useful humans I have ever been around. The meager good qualities that I mentioned before were diminishing at a fast pace.
At the end of the first semester of school during my 4th grade year, I brought home grades that were all over the place. Some A's, a couple of B's a D, and the F in book reports. In no way did the bad grades reflect my intelligence. Actually, let's face it, grades NEVER reflect intelligence or even mastery of a subject. Grades reflect a student's ability to perform the required tasks that the teacher decided to use to measure the grades. That is ALL they reflect.
In this case, my teacher only marginally liked to give tests. She was far more concerned with homework assignments. For every subject during the day, we were given assignments to complete at home.
I could NOT work in the house. The atmosphere was just too toxic. My usual tactic for getting around this was to stop on my walk home and do the work. Sometimes I would sit on a rock fence, homework balanced on my Trapperkeeper. Sometimes I would stop at one of the small parks and work on assignments as I sat on a bench or in one of the swings.
On other occasions, I would go into a public restroom and hide in one of the stalls. I sit there for a couple of hours and work on my homework, trying to do my best to make sure no one noticed me, or at least that no one realized I was staying in there for so long.
I think if it had just been assignments I could do this way, I would have been okay. But my fourth grade teacher was into projects. She wanted us to bring things from home or build things or other bullshit and quite often that was just as damned impossible as trying to collect moon rocks or something.
For our social studies class, we were given an assignment to build a type of building from the past. I knew I needed to really knock this out of the park, because most of my 'projects had received less than favorable grades. I had a plan though and I knew it would be awesome.
I went to my convenience store and bought a bunch of boxes of sugar cubes and Elmer's Glue. I took an old flat piece of wood and began to build my castle. I knew the trick was just using small amounts of glue as to not melt the sugar. I did this, working on levels, doing my best to secure them.
Even though I hated working at home, I knew I had no choice with this project. So every night I would spend the better part of a couple of hours gluing my castle together. I even finished several days before it was due, which was good because it gave me time to let it dry. All of this, of course, was the easy part.
I remember the project was due on a Tuesday of the following week. I thought about how to approach this for several days before hand, almost asking quite a few times, but losing my nerve at the last moment. This is one of those things that really exemplifies how my life was. Here I was, a little kid, who needed something only the adults could provide. I felt so resented and unwanted in my situation that I was terrified to ask.
This was a big project though. The BIGGEST project of this first semester of school, so I had to ask. I remember walking into the living room where they were both watching TV. The SS was sprawled out on the couch and Mom was sitting in a chair near him. They didn't act like the noticed me and for a while, I just stood there, hoping they would. This continued for a while, until finally there was a commercial.
"Um . . ."
"What do you want?" The SS didn't even bother looking at me as he asked. As usual, my mother tended to not speak to us first, even though she was the real parent and she should have.
I shifted on my feet. "I have the castle and I need a ride to school on Tuesday."
"Your mother is working on Tuesday."
"Yeah, I know, but I was wondering . . .because we have the other car if maybe you could drive me on Tuesday?"
A minute or so passed by with no answer. I felt so horribly unwelcome that I almost just left. I worked so hard though, so I asked again. "I need a ride."
"You're supposed to walk to school because it will help you get over being so fay and lazy, " said the fattest, laziest man I had thusfar met in my life.
"I have to carry my castle and I don't think I can make it."
"Take the bus."
"I don't think I can get on the bus with the castle." I remember I was squirming so badly at this point I needed to urinate.
"You should have done something easier to carry." This was from my mother, who finally felt it was time for her to speak. Her voice had that nervous, angry edge to it that it always had when she felt like I was taking up too much . . . well, just too much anything. "Why didn't you THINK about that. You never THINK."
At this point, I started to cry. I had worked so hard on that project. I spent hours on it. I planned it out and I did my paper over it and glued and glued and glued for so many days. It looked good too and I knew it would be the best one. Why couldn't they see that? Why were they suddenly angry over this?
"Quit crying," the SS ordered. "I'll drive you on Tuesday."
"Yon don't HAVE TO," my mother said, because of course she would.
"No, no. It's FINE. Someone has to take her. and you will be at work."
"I could be late." I swear my mother had this perverse need to insure her husbands did as LITTLE in their lives as possible. It was almost like she believed if one of them actually put out effort, her hair would come out in clumps or something. "I'll just get her up early and drive her over to the school. She can wait there for a while." My mother had to be at work by seven and she lived an hour away. What she was suggesting involved me being at school two hours longer than needed. Remember it was starting to get cold by this point.
"Nope, that's okay. I'll take her." It was settled. I felt relieved about the whole thing, even though I also felt emotionally strung out by the process. I went to my room and actually relaxed for the rest of the weekend. I was even pretty calm on Monday.
Tuesday morning, my mom woke me up as she was leaving for work, as she always did. I took my bath and got ready. I fixed myself some cereal and waited for the SS to come waddling into the kitchen to pour himself a cup of coffee.
It never happened. I watched the clock, waiting for him to get up. He needed to be up soon so he could drive me. My fear grew by the second. After a while, I walked to their bedroom and sat down in the floor in front of the door, hoping he would hear me or at least that I could hear him awake. All I could hear was snoring. By this point, I was on the verge of tears again.
One of the first rules of the new living situation was that no one was allowed to wake the SS. He could sleep as long as he wished. While he was asleep, no one was allowed to make noise. No music, no TV, no screaming. IF you woke him, things would get very bad for you.
The project won over though. I stood and tapped on the door. I called out his name in a very small voice and told him we needed to go soon. The snoring stopped abruptly and I heard him curse. The bed creaked as he pulled himself off of it. I could hear him stomping across the room and considered running away, but then he flung the door open. His face was red with fury . . . and also red with the fact that it was always red because of his fatness.
"So you don't trust me?"
"I what?"
He yelled it this time, in that sarcastic, mildly amused at his own cruelty kind of way, "You don't trust me. YOU didn't think I was going to get up. I was awake. I was already awake."
"Okay . . ." He certainly was not awake. However, one of the many lessons kids in my situation learn is that you don't question the fucked up claims of reality from the adults.
"You just don't trust me. Well . . . fine. You walk to school."
"NO!"
He walked out of the room and pushed me against the wall. "Did you just tell me no? Did you say no to me?"
It was terrifying to have him so close to me. "I have to get to school. I have the castle and you promised."
He shook his head. "You need to learn respect. You're on your own. And you better hurry. It's a long walk to school."
He let me go and walked back into his room, slamming the door on the way. I stood there for a second in pure shock. I couldn't stand too long though. I had to walk to school and it was getting dangerously close to 8.
By the time I made it there, I was late. My project, unwieldy and too heavy for me to carry easily, was broken into pieces. I tried to tell my teacher it was "ruins" of a castle, but she wasn't buying it. I was told it was too destroyed for her to give it a grade, so that part of my assignment would be a 0. It sucked too, because my written part got an A. The project as a whole was a large part of our grade for that section.
One ride to school, one half hour of someone NOT being a complete asshole, and it could have made all the difference.
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