The Last 6 Hours

These past six hours have been something to behold. And the weirdest part is that it was spent mostly with my dad, who I'm not ecstatic about being with most of the time.

It started off exactly when I woke up, at Noon. My sister sent me a call, telling me that my dad was coming over to pick me up to drive him to the Bronx because he broke his thumb. Now, keep in mind. I live in Queens, and the last car I drove seriously was a super small, super old four-door sedan. He needed me to drive an SUV.

So I get dressed and he gets here, looking at his phone. We start talking and he tells me that his car is breaking down suddenly, and he doesn't know whether or not he really wants me to drive in a car that can break down at any moment, so we break down our way to the nearest mechanics shop. The guy tells my dad that there's no space, and my dad seems to take that about as well as someone would expect from him. He goes on an hour long rant against the place asking them "Why don't you have space?" and saying "It's because you don't know what's wrong with the car, do ya!?" I take a break from this and head to the 711 across the way to get something to drink.

I got tapped on the shoulder by someone, turn around and recognized a girl I used to hang out with as a kid. When I was like, six, my grandma owned a daycare service where I was basically the biggest, brattiest child anyone could ever think of. This girl and her elder sister and brother used to be my best friends back in those days. Turns out that she's two years younger than me, in 11th grade at an okay high school in Queens. We chatted for about half an hour, talking about how life has been, what we remember from way back when, and what we're doing now. She said that she was actually only supposed to be gone from home or a max of 15 minutes, and her mom was gonna flip out if she kept talking to me for an hour, so we left the store and she pointed me in the direction of her new house. We said our goodbyes and we were on our merry way.

All the while, my dad somehow fixed his car by replacing a piece that he took out and replaced it with one he got from the mechanics. He said that, just in case, he was still gonna drive so that I didn't get in trouble for causing a massive car crash when the car eventually broke down.

But it didn't, and we were on our way to the Bronx on the highway. We spoke about some stuff, some I'm not sure I should just say over the internet. We covered some pretty heavy topics. But, what we covered that I can talk about is the trip he had to Myrtle Beach with my sisters. They went all over the place, and I was stuck up here in school, so it was nice to hear about and see pictures of.

Sometime during the conversation, my dad went silent. I don;t initiate these things with him. I normally just wait for him to ask a question or make a statement ending in "right?". I was looking out of the window on the highway, just looking at trees when the car suddenly swerved, and my dad shook himself awake. He'd fallen asleep at the wheel. He pulled out of the parkway early, got some coffee, and started blasting music in the car.

I understood his paranoia because he almost killed my mom by falling asleep at the wheel while she was carrying me. So, he went into overdrive mode, asking me more and more questions, drinking coffee every few minutes, and generally trying his damnedest to stay awake. Eventually, the questions stopped, and I got to look over the edge of a bridge as we zoomed past. The weather was nice, and dozens of people were out on their yachts in the water below us. Looking at the land in the distance, the calm water, and the horizon I realized something.

The Earth is beautiful flat.

I'm a flat-Earther now.

We're back to silly shit, here we go

Okay, so we finally pulled up in the Bronx and after we got there, we stopped by a McDonalds. He sent me into go get some coffee, and pick up a check he wanted to come to the Bronx for. He said, "Ask the lady when the baby is due". I instantly thought he was joking, but I had no other choice, really. I went in, ordered a coffee and asked the lady the question. She looked at me, then looked at the car outside and asked if my father was the one who put me up to this. I nodded, and she laughed. I laughed too because of course, he came here only for the coffee. There's no possible way he—

Then she told me to go around back, find a bush, and retrieve a blue bag with envelopes in it held within a small box.

Ladies and Gentlemen of the planet Earth, you cannot make this shit up.

So I did what was asked, surprisingly found what I was looking for, and gave it to her. She picked out an envelope and gave it to me along with the coffee, telling me to tell my dad she said hi. I went back, completely sure my father worked for the Black Mafia and handed him the envelope and coffee. He sipped the coffee, read through the thing and pulled off to find someplace to cash the check.

After about a half hour, we found what we were looking for, a generic check cashing place, or my dad's secret slave arena, where he came out with the cash on the check. I don;t ask questions, so he treated me to some lunch. Carribean food that I'm still finishing up as I'm writing this. It's probably laced. I'll see you guys after I'm dead.

So, we started making our way back to Queens. At this point, I didn't drive and I was skeptical as to whether or not he really needed me at all. I didn't ask. It was raining, and I called my sister to find out if she wanted from the Subway we'd gone to pick up dinner, and paid for it with my father's black money. I made it home safe and sound, without a scratch. Everything is A-OK.

Is my heart supposed to beat this slow...