This was my 26th birthday.
Kids, that thing on my waist is a “pager.” Here’s how it worked: If someone wanted you to call them, they called a number and, after a beep, they typed in their phone number, and that phone number would appear with a beep on the “pager,” or “beeper.”
When your pager went off, you would look at the number. If the number was serious, then it included “911,” like “2522518911,” and you would pull off the street and into the parking lot of a Quik Trip or bowling alley which had a pay phone.
A “pay phone” was a place where you could walk up and put coins into a box to make a phone call.
Good luck finding a pay phone these days in Okemah, Oklahoma.
Anyway, that picture was taken in my Dad’s apartment. My parents were divorced, but all was still cool with my Dad. We grew up and he still had us over on our birthdays for cake and ice cream (of course) and to sign the song.
That was my 26th birthday in 1994, so I brought my wife, Kristi Winett, with me to his apartment for the celebration.
My dad photographed us.
This is how it has always been. There are birthdays, there is Dad, and there is a picture.
Today, my son turned 13.
I was happy to be allowed to send a gift (a card, with a $50 bill inside). I was shocked that you would not let my son see the card. Did you give him the stamps I also included, so he could write me back?
Why don’t my kids thank their great-grandparents for gifts? No calls, no thank you notes?
What is the deal?
I am a fact of those kids’ lives, and not a trivial one.
Please have the common courtesy to at least communicate with me, informing me of why you won’t allow any contact with the children? Why can’t we resolve this? It has been nearly a decade.
You’re married. Cannot all three of us sit down to discuss this, like real people?
I tend to think you’re doing this just because you’re a mean person because you haven’t taken any time to even talk with me on the phone to get a sense of how I behave today. That you don’t want to know I’m better, so you can use old excuses to continue hurting me. Or, maybe you don’t even need excuses — I hurt you, so you continue to hurt me, forever.
Everlasting damnation.
You’re a nation.
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