One day in the fall of 1968, Mom, my brother and I went on a date downtown with Mom and her “new” boyfriend. (I use the quotes because he had originally been her old boyfriend, and then Mom got married to Jerry, then divorced from Jerry, and now this guy was back in the picture.)
We were done with the Missouri Botanical Garden and had to return to the car, which was parked, not at the garden, but on a nearby city street. This was because Mom’s New/Old Boyfriend was frugal. I know this because I got to know him well in the next thirteen years, because he became my Dad as soon as possible.
Anyway, we were all looking for where Frugal Dad parked until he saw the car on the next street over. We were in an alley behind a house, and the car was parked in front of the house.
“Here, Ellen,” he said, and lifted me up, “You’re the smaller one. Walk through this yard and see if there’s a gate or anything on the other side. You might find us a shortcut.” Then he dropped my six-year old self over the fence.
I was an adventurer. It was exciting, especially when the big dog exploded out of the garden before I was halfway across the yard. I didn’t know what kind of dog it was at the time, but on reflection it was a Doberman.
I didn’t see Dad, transfixed as I was by the Doberman’s teeth, but he vaulted over the fence, ran, snatched me up, ran, lobbed me back over the fence at my mom and jumped out of that yard just before the Doberman got him.
Mom said to Dad, “Never do that again.”
Dad said, “Ellen, never do that again.”
“But — “
“That was a mistake,” he said.
And after that day, I’d cut through an empty yard, sure, but never one with a fence.
8 responses to “Fence hopping”
Oh WOW. Your childhood definitely had more interesting “and then I could have died” adventures than mine did (but also they all seem to be Men Inaccurately Judging Risk Factors…).
KC – I remember someone saying that “Dads are the people who are always there to support you” and it struck me that perhaps my dads were not the norm.
… I think that also… varies… Also depends on what kind of support. Financial support, some dads are on it. Emotional support, some dads presumably can do that. Support via actually good advice, likewise. As is “I will beat the dude up if he hurts you” support. But “the people who are always there to support you” is… a bit of a stretch. But also yes, your dads were not the norm!
(personally, my dad’s ideas were vetted by my mom, who was an older-start SAHM with two relatively-quiet kids and thus had more available capacity to veto Bad Ideas, otherwise there would have been more Bad Idea Times for me as well.)
(my sister, who has kids, has now taken over the “do not let the 4 and 5 year olds who squabble badly play unsupervised with a power tool together” mantle. I was going to say that age also is a factor in Stupid Ideas, but some men appear to perhaps never age into bothering to consider the range of likely available consequences given a child’s age and maturity and own bad-idea capacity and the situation at hand, etc… But I still think age is a factor: if a dad himself has not grown into risk assessment, and many men do at least *increase* in this factor over the course of their twenties, well, then…)
KC -Dad never factored kids into any life plans and never made a plan for what you do with a kid. Essentially he waited us out
That’s an… interesting strategy.
KC – not effective because he died thre years afteer we left.
Some people also just… don’t change things. and some people don’t have goals/ideas/dreams that they are pursuing. So there is that.
Sorry for all your losses, both by death and varying levels of emotional incompetence, but also glad you didn’t lose any skin to the doberman.
KC – Thank you for your kind words.