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It was the days when everyone had a beard,

And I thought of shaving mine

Even though I had had one since the age of 16.

I had just verbally thumped my father

In a run in

Argument

Over smoking in his house;

The man who I could remember hating at the age of 10.

At first we fought over whether I would play football.

It was all about my weight in those days.

--You're going to weigh 300 pounds someday, he would say.

When in reality a parent is rubber and a kid is glue

And if the parent eats himself to death over his job

The kid will soon follow suit.

Then, in the end, the fighting was over his ever precious food.

No one ever taught the man how to share growing up.

That was one lesson grandma clearly missed.

Even as a child I would ask him if I could borrow his stapler

And he would say, "Go buy your own."

--I can't afford one.

--Go get a job and save up and buy one.

--I'm 9.

But seriously, the closer toward death the man got

The more everyone who knew him wanted him to die;

Especially with the way he verbally abused my mother.

Old friends walked away.

His two sons disappeared.

He became hell on his wife, who hated his guts

But couldn't walk away simply because she felt so sorry for him.

It became like the movie, "Throw momma from the train."

And I never killed a man, but sometimes, the death of a man

Can do a lot of good for the world.

Practically everybody says they would kill baby Hitler

If they had the chance.

So it's complicated.

It's always a bad idea to put two

Silverback gorillas

In the same house.

Such was the dilemma in our house when I was a teenager.

Every Prout man I've ever known was an alpha male.

And even though we enjoy serving our country, for the most part,

Our personal homes are our castle.

I had my castle at my apartment and my

Dad's house was his castle.

It was simple:  I just had to stay out of his castle.

Which meant that as he eased into senility

He would find himself more and more alone

And he would just have to live with that.

He wanted it that way, after all.

And at his funeral I didn't think many people would have

Very many nice things to say,

But that was for everyone else to decide, not me.

I didn't kill my father, in the end, but

I did learn to avoid him like everyone else.

And I guess there's some wisdom to this.

Some people are so miserable they should die just to

Put them out of their own misery.  But you

Let them fester, alone,

Because no matter who your parents are

Stalin Hitler or Pol Pot

There is a right and a wrong and,

Like they said in the movie, "Rudy,"

There is a God,

And you are not Him.

Today I weigh a good 285,

And I am a very happy man.