I have partaken in heavy drinking and recreational drug use since this incident, so I don't remember if I rode home with a friend that day, rode the bus, or if I had my car yet. Don't they say long-term memory is the first to go? (No, they don't - it's short-term memory, and that fact is stored in my long-term memory bank, and if I have to explain the joke then it isn't funny so try to keep up.) The point I am trying to make is that eventually I got my happy and business-like teenage ass home from school that day with a snack in tow.
At that particular time, I was pretty into Gardettos and Gatorade because my palate has always been as sophisticated as shit. There in the warmth of the evening sun and the aroma of cigarette smoke, I sat in my Dad's recliner like I owned the fuckin' place and ate my Gardettos like a boss. (As I write this, my internal dialogue is speaking in a male's Italian accent and voice, and though I should feel like a little bit of an asshole, I feel like a mega boss.) I watched TV, I said, "Fuck homework," and I sat there eating my fancy rye chips and pretzels until the bag was empty.
By the time I was done, the sun was low enough on the horizon to be shining through the lamp that stood beside the end table to my left. I could see that the plastic on the inside of the lampshade was broken and cracked. Instead of leaving it be, I started to peel it off because it looked like shit and like I said before, I was feeling like a boss. I peeled that shit off and stuck it in that empty bag. Then I got distracted like I normally did and moved onto the next thing which was probably homework or learning how to make a roast. (Not to change the subject, but when did kids stop learning from their parents? Not to say that I WANTED to work, but I knew that if I didn't, someone was going to beat my ass, and that someone didn't give a shit about my personal agenda that day unless I was sick. Where the fuck did that go?)
Daddy came in from work at about 6:00 hungry, and dinner wasn't done yet. So he grabs him a snack and starts going to town. Only it wasn't just any bag of chips; it was the bag of lampshade crisps that I had prepared a couple of hours before. I heard him say, "What are these chips? They taste like shit. They don't have any flavor at all."
You could cut lock washers off of my asshole at the point that I realized he was munching on a bag full of dry-rotted plastic that I had left on his end table. "Daddy, those are pieces of the lamp!" The exclamation was followed by an intense glare in my direction and absolute terror on my face. We stared like that in silence for a bit. After he thought I may have completed going number twosie on myself, he quietly handed over the bag, and I went to the kitchen to throw them away... And to hide. I made myself invisible for the rest of the night, and it was never spoken of again. Well... Until today. I saw someone driving around outside my window on a forklift, and I'm still not sure why, but it just popped up into the foreground of my thoughts. Like usual, I laughed like a maniac to myself leaving everyone to wonder just what in the hell's bells I have been smoking, and like usual, it was just funnier not to explain.
