I remember the last time that he sp@nked me.

I was 11 years old. I was doing the dishes, and he made me angry for one reason or another, and I screamed out, "I FORFIET!" (because we were allowed to forfeit doing the dishes for $1). That p1ssed him off.

I ran out the front door, and he ran after me and grabbed my arm and sp@nked me. Hard.

I was wearing one of those one-piece shorts-tube tops that were popular in 1991 because I thought it looked cool. I remember wearing it because I thought Jo, a friend of my parent’s, would think I was older and cooler than I actually was. She was nice to me. I wanted to impress her.

But then he grabbed me and took away the small amount of dignity that I had as a scrawny, geeky 11-year old. I cried. Hard. Not because of the pain, but because I was so embarrassed.

Now that my parents are divorced, my family has a ritual. Every single birthday/Christmas/Thanksgiving dinner that we have, we talk about our childhood. None of us had it easy growing up. Me, the oldest, who had a different father than the others- the one who their father (my stepfather) h@ted. My sister, the first born- who had it easy- got whatever she wanted- ended up with the undying need to Please Daddy. My brother, the only son- who wished he liked fishing and remote control airplanes in order to Please Daddy but he never really did. We all had it hard, all in different ways. He didn’t treat any of us well.

We don’t talk about it and cry and hug each other. We talk about all the sh1tty things that happened to us, to each other, and we laugh. We point at each other and laugh together. "Remember when Dad threw that spoon at you?" "Remember when he kicked your ass for lighting matches upstairs in the barn?" "Remember when he used to burn our hands with the spoon after he took it out of his tea after dinner?"

And although it sounds morbid, it’s really not. I’d rather laugh than cry. I’m tired of being sad about the things I went through. I’m tired of being angry too. So, we laugh. And we really do think it’s funny. It’s funny because he’s a bad father who never tried to change. It’s funny that we all turned out okay despite the constant abuse. It’s funny because all of his attempts to ruin us have failed.

This Christmas, I’ll be in The Gambia, my first Christmas away from home, there will be no food fights behind my mothers back (who always knows what’s going on, and always gives us the same dirty looks and then smiles- she’s just glad to have us all in her house), no tofu casserole for me while I’m wondering if I should be a vegetarian when the turkey smells so good, and no laughing about how rough we had it as kids.