For a Pessimist, I am Pretty Optimistic

Car rides with my dad are excruciating. The hour drive from the airport is actually a big factor in why I stopped visiting him. Each ride contains a different torture. Sometimes he talks about how he thinks my mother is a whore. Other times he tries to tell me blatant lies about my childhood. One ride he only spoke to my husband, but referred to him using my ex-boyfriend’s name. Repeatedly.

Last week I visited him again after not speaking to him for over a year. I had prepared myself to hear a drawn out guilt trip, but if he wanted to say anything he amazingly kept it to himself. Most likely that was because he knew he hadn’t bothered to call me either. Whatever the reason, the first 15 minutes of the ride was filled with blessed silence.

During the flight, I told my husband that I would finally agree to change my name to his. Honestly I had always planned to do it, but was just too lazy to find out what form I needed to fill out. After 4 years I figured I had procrastinated enough. However, my husband told me that he was actually thinking of changing his name to mine.

Don’t be fooled like me, he wasn’t trying to make some big romantic gesture. His decision was because he’s annoyed by having his name constantly mispronounced or misspelled. That’s what happens when your last name consists of 11 letters and only 2 of them are vowels.

By the time we landed, we came up with the idea of getting a completely new last name for ourselves. I felt that I shouldn’t carry out my family name since the family was nothing to be proud of. All The Angell’s I knew were either violent drunks, cheaters and liars, or had an over-addictive personality. My dad was the only one to succeed at being all three!

We laughed as we suggested ridiculous names to each other such as the Cruises, The Pitts, or the Zeta-Jones’s. When my husband joked that with having more than 8 uncles in Poland, no one in his family would notice the change, I couldn’t help but wonder if I had any other family members outside of the US. I decided to ask my dad about this during the ride.

“None that I know of,” my Dad said. “Your grandfather said that his entire family either died or came to the U.S. from Cuba.  None of his brothers had any children before they died so it was just him and he only had me and your aunt. Then I had you, a girl, and there’s no way Linda and I are having any children. So it ends with you.”

He then launched into a huge story about the origin of our family name. It lasted the rest of the ride and continued as we entered his apartment, so I’ll sum it up.

Apparently, my grandfather told him that the original family name was The Angel’s. They were upper class and looked down on anyone who was from another race, especially if they had dark skin. Some family members disagreed and they were excommunicated from the family. This group added an extra letter and changed their name to The Angell’s.

“It’s actually twisted if you think about it,” my dad commented. “All my uncles had mixed marriages. My dad had a mixed marriage. I had a mixed marriage and now there’s only you and you’re not a guy.” That did seem a bit twisted.

I thought about the story while my husband and I retreated to the sanctity of our room.

“Maybe we should use my name,” I said to my him as we changed clothes. He simply shrugged. He already told me he didn’t care either way.

My dad walked in without knocking. “Either of you got any pot?”

“No!” I shouted as I grasped for something to cover myself.

“Come on, I know you have to have something. You don’t have any kids yet. You should be smoking all the time.”

“Dad, will you just leave me alone?”

“Oh come on,” he jeered. “What, you won’t share with your own dad?”

Actually, I wouldn’t unless he planned on paying. But that’s beside the point.

“Whatever happened to the days when you would tell me how drugs are bad?” I mused.

“You’re right, they are. Listen to me,” he said addressing my husband. “You’re a good kid so let me give you some advice. Drugs are bad. Don’t try cocaine; the minute it wears off, you’ll just want more. Don’t do heroin because women don’t like seeing track marks. Don’t do pot, because that’s the worst of them all. It just leads up the other drugs.”

We stared at him incredulously. In a way, he actually made some sense.

“If you MUST try drugs,” he continued, “then only try crack. You can do it for a while and not get addicted at all. It’s easy to stop when you want to.” With those words, he left the room.

My husband and I stood in silence until he quipped “Actually, the Zeta-Jones’ doesn’t seem like such a bad idea anymore.”

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