My Crazy Dad Has Doomed My Love Life

by Lianne Stokes

I’m 31 and have never had a serious relationship. My sister is 24, and we have yet to meet her first boyfriend, who we thought would be standing on our stoop with a box of chocolates by now.

Logical deduction tells me that something went on in our house. We’re not children of divorce, were never abused and grew up in an English Tudor with a wishing well out front, for Christ’s sake.

It’s said that a girl marries her father. Point blank, if either my sister or I were to do that, our family would implode. In this case—our father is a Vietnam Vet who survived being shot in the head. He doesn’t believe in paying taxes, hunts deer in people’s back yard with a bow and arrow, and refers to our mother as his “ho.” Quite the contrary, our mother’s favorite pastime is pulling up to my sister’s equestrian events in her 2007 black Lexus dressed in head-to-toe Ann Taylor.

At the age of 61, my father took to extreme sports presumably because on the 40th anniversary of getting shot in the head nothing really exciting had happened. He became obsessed with roller blading, which wouldn’t qualify as an extreme sport unless you take the brakes out of your skates, which is exactly what my father did. Whenever I ask my father a logical question he always answers, “Not my problem.”

In this case, it took some gentle cajoling, “How did you slow down without slamming into a tree?”