So this is something I don’t think I’ve ever told anyone, but for whatever the hell reason, this whole incident popped into my memory the other day and now I want to see if this was just me being a little bag of garbage or if “just be cruel for no reason” is a relatively universal thing that little kids experience once or twice.

(Note: no death or physical cruelty or anything like that. I just, uh, mentally traumatized my dad, haha.)

ANYWAY.

So this was sometime in elementary school…not sure when…but I know it was elementary school because I was friends with K* and we weren’t really friends beyond elementary school.

So K comes over to my dad’s condo some weekend and we’re hanging out in my room doing whatever the hell elementary school kids did in the mid-90s. At some point, we get this brilliant idea to “prank” my dad. How? We were each going to write him a letter telling him what a horrible dad he was and how nobody liked him and that everything he ever did was wrong. Then we were going to give him the letters and see what his reaction was.

Why did we think this was a good idea? I DON’T KNOW. How did we even come up with this stupid idea? I DON’T KNOW.

But we did it. I don’t remember exactly what my thought process was during all of this. My dad and I have never been super close and our relationship has been awkward and somewhat strained at times, but it certainly has never been bad and I’ve certainly never thought he was a horrible father.

But I put all sorts of nasty things in that letter. That I remember. I told him I didn’t love him and that I’d never loved him and that I hated coming over to his house on the weekends and that if I could have anyone else as a dad it would be so much better.

Like…sentences of this stuff.

AND THEN WE FOLDED UP THE LETTERS AND GAVE THEM TO HIM.

After doing so, we scampered back upstairs, thinking that we’d get some sort of hilarious reaction out of him. When nothing happened for like 15 minutes, I ventured back down the stairs and asked, “hey dad, did you read those letters?”

He’d been busy with something when we’d put the letters on the table and he was still busy with said something, so he just muttered, “yeah” and left it at that.

Thinking back on this situation, it’s obvious that he hadn’t actually read them yet ‘cause he’d been so busy, but my little idiot kid mind was like “okay cool, he already read them and had no reaction – everything’s fine!” So I went back upstairs, reported this to K, and then we just kept on playing.

But yeah, turns out he hadn’t read them yet.

Because when he DID read them, he stormed upstairs and confronted us, very VERY upset about it all.

I’m like 99% sure I was just thinking that this would be a hilarious joke and that my dad would know I was kidding about all that stuff, which is why I wrote such horrible things. But he did NOT see it as a joke at all. That was probably the most upset I’d ever seen him.

I remember him calling K’s mom to come take her home; I remember him talking to my mom about it; I remember some sort of discussion of punishment, but I don’t know if I ever actually got punished.

I don’t even know if I apologized for it. I probably did, but I don’t remember doing so.

It was just a prank, bruh.

God I’m a horrible person.

*Obviously just their initial