1 | my dad & the invisible dog
When I was a kid, my dad’s idea of a good laugh involved locking me out of the apartment at dusk and telling me there’s a rabid dog on the loose that kills kids. He’d watch me run around frantically from the balcony of him and my stepmom’s second-floor apartment. Occasionally I would try to compose myself and act like I wasn’t internally freaking out that I was about to get mauled by a dog.
The first time it happened, it stemmed from a game that my stepbrother Tanner and I would play in the woods behind the apartment complex. We’d pretend to hunt ghosts and save the world, all in a small town called Clifton Park. The game generally freaked out my stepsister, but we figured we’d keep playing it so that she’d stop bothering us and following us around.
Backstory:
I was about 12 years old and there was not much to do at my father’s. To put it simply, he was a vagabond. Rarely lived somewhere for more than a year, never had a stable job, and occasionally stole funds out of my grandparent’s bank account. At this point in my life, he had several children. I was only one from my mother. I had a half sister and half brother, Alex and Nate, from another woman who had since come and gone. At this point, I had my step brother and step sister from my father’s current infatuation. They also had three kids together. In total I believe that’s a solid seven siblings.
I once thought I was a daddy’s girl. I used to look up to him no matter what. I thought he was the coolest guy on the block. But as the kids kept popping out, prioritizing child #1 slowly fell to the bottom of the list. I was then responsible for babysitting the younger kids when I visited and never (I mean never) got alone time with my dad to play football or even just chat.
I was required to visit him when he remembered or was able to pick me up on Sundays. It turned into the most miserable day of the week. Not only for me, but also my mother. She watched me on Sunday mornings, waiting for my dad to show up. Sometimes he would, sometimes he wouldn’t. Most of those times, she never had the heart to tell me he wouldn’t show up. Eventually it got to the point where I didn’t want to go anyway. Due to legal obligation and agreements, I was forced to go until I was able to make decisions for myself.
Because there were so many kids, we could never agree on a TV channel to watch. It was always an ordeal to go out and about since there were too many kids to fit in once vehicle and most of us were too young to be home alone. We couldn’t go shopping (since there wasn’t any money to spend unless it was WIC/ Food Stamps). All we could do was use our imagination, which is how my step brother and I got to creating the Ghost Game.
Anyway...
We were outside playing in the woods, hunting ghosts and managing the glamour that came from being two hot-shot detectives. I used to pretend I was Scully from the X-Files because that was my absolute favorite show to watch on Tuesdays.
My stepsister was at that awkward age where she was too old to play with our youngest siblings and too young to play with Tanner and me. We went along our merry way playing the Ghost Game and Ashlee followed along, complaining about how scared she was and that she didn’t want to play it anymore. We told her that if she didn’t want to play she could go inside, which apparently was our first mistake.
It was getting to about dinner time in the fall, which meant the sun was setting in upstate New York. Ashlee ran inside to tell her mom and my dad that we were freaking her out by playing the only game that was able to occupy our minds. Since it was getting colder and darker, Tanner and I decided to call it quits and started making our way to the front door. But it was locked.
I gave it another jiggle but realized the deadbolt was hooked and there was no way to get inside.
I was a kid with severe social anxiety. Almost to the point of select mutism. Calling out to my dad felt awkward to me because we were no longer close and I didn’t want to feel like I needed his help anyway. It’s a good thing I didn’t because he ended up opening the balcony door above us and looking down.
“Looks like you guys can’t get in.” He said in a sly voice. I could tell he was holding back a laugh and there was a smirk on his face. He then proceeded to tell me and Tanner that he’d heard of a rabid dog that was on the loose at dusk and it hunted kids. We immediately panicked.
Due to my social anxiety, I kept this to myself. But my heart was racing and I felt dizzy and I didn’t know what to do. I kept calm on the outside but inside I wanted to bolt two towns over and run back to my mom’s house.
He watched us cower for 30 minutes while the sun set and the temperature dropped, laughing on the balcony above us with my stepmom. Our eyes were jetting in all different directions making sure we didn’t see anything that resembled a dog or wolf. He then called us inside to tell us that was our punishment for “freaking out Ashlee”. At that point, I’d decided I never wanted to return.
