My organic father—tight-fisted, tight-assed, and wound up so tight with his own financial schemes that he could shit diamonds—had a brilliant life strategy. He’d buy a rotting shack in a decent neighborhood, spend six years fixing it up, making it livable, pretending he was a real estate genius, and then flip it for a profit. Then? Pack up the family and move on to the next dilapidated disaster. Schools, friends, stability—none of that mattered. The only thing that mattered was the equity. The grind. The long game.
I escaped as soon as I could. But before that, I had a front-row seat to the art of cheap bastardry.
Our meals were a masterclass in cutting corners. Every couple of weeks, they’d take a trip to the bread outlet and come home with a truckload of discounted, near-moldy loaves—because nothing says responsible parenting like feeding your kids bread with a side of penicillin. They’d toss it all in a massive freezer, next to five-gallon tubs of peanut butter so raw it was basically just a bucket of unprocessed nuts swimming in oil.
Mealtime was a ritual: dig out a frozen slice of bread, slap it into the toaster until it became chewable, stir the peanut butter for ten agonizing minutes just to get it somewhat spreadable, and then choke it down while the oil dripped down your fingers. It was a flavorless, greasy, depressing mess—a perfect metaphor for family life in my organic father’s house.
The only saving grace? The milk. The beautiful, cold, full-fat milk.
And that, of course, became a problem.
Being six-foot-four and still growing, I was downing milk like a goddamn calf in a dairy farm. And it drove him insane. Every week, they’d buy seven gallons, and every week, we’d drink seven gallons. It became a thing. A battle of wills. He didn’t like that I was consuming resources. Didn’t like that I was thriving in his starvation program. There was even talk of switching to powdered milk—because nothing says fuck your childhood quite like mixing your own lukewarm cup of reconstituted sadness.
But the real crime wasn’t just the food—it was the absolute lack of anything beyond survival. No sports, no Disneyland, no weekend outings, no road trips to some tourist trap where you could watch the fish jump up the goddamn waterfall.
His only concern was the house.
His 401K.
His financial security.
Kids? We were just unfortunate byproducts of bad decision-making.
And his wife? Oh, she played her part in the Great Depression Diet, too. Every night, she’d cook the same god-awful meal: some cauliflower, a spoonful of rice, and a discounted chicken leg—one that had probably been tossed in the clearance bin because every bone in it had already been snapped in half like the dreams of everyone forced to eat it.
Night after night. The same bland, watery slop. Sometimes she’d mix up the sauce. Sometimes she wouldn’t. It didn’t matter. It all tasted like failure.
Then one night, she decided to get creative.
She waltzed out of the kitchen, all proud of herself, and placed our plates in front of us. And there it was.
A thick, two-inch slab of tomato.
Not cooked, not chopped, just a goddamn disk of tomato, topped with some half-melted cheese.
And there I sat, staring at this abomination, my stomach twisting in betrayal.
She knew I hated tomatoes. KNEW.
My father? He watched me, daring me to make a scene, daring me to defy his rule of eat what’s given and shut the hell up.
So I did what any underfed, defiant little bastard would do.
I grabbed my glass.
And I started drinking milk.
One pint per bite.
Chomp. Gulp.
Chomp. Gulp.
Chomp. Gulp.
I locked eyes with my father as I drained the entire gallon in one sitting, milking his rage as much as I was milking the cow that fed me.
His face turned red.
But he said nothing.
Because this was his fault.
Because this was their fault.
Because these two self-absorbed, finance-obsessed assholes should’ve never had kids.
They should’ve just invested in stocks, not offspring.
They should’ve poured their money into IRAs, not reproductive mistakes.
Because to them, we weren’t children.
We were expenses.
And they fed us accordingly.
