On March 2, 2007, I got a call from my mother telling me that my father had died. She wanted to know if I was alright. She happened to call just as I was getting ready to leave for work. I asked her if she thought that I should go to work and she told me that I should and that there was nothing that I could do about what had happened anyway. She sounded like she was relieved because he was no longer sick or suffering and it was over with. I wasn't sure if I would be going to Florida for this or not? I thought that I would. On Saturday March 3, I go through the entire days as though nothing had happened and I didn't know what was going to happen? I left for work at 8AM and didn't get home until 10PM. My mother calls me at 4PM on Sunday March 4 and wakes me up when I am sleeping. She wanted to know about how I am paying my bills and if I got health insurance and all that bullshit. I didn't feel like talking about that bullshit! Then she hung up the phone because I wasn't being very talkative. She didn't say a word about my father. Was this only a dream and she didn't really tell me this after all?

    I guess that's the result of growing up in a fucked up family and I did not go to Florida for this, which means that my mother didn't want me to go there and I wasn't going to push the issue because it would have probably have turned out to be just another experience of extreme shit for meith. Going to Florida would have cost a lot of money and I don't think that my mother wanted to pay the airfare for me to go + I would have needed to rent a car because Florida is a fucking cesspool and it's almost impossible to get around there without a car. If that's not all, I would have wanted to take my cat with too. I have this weird notion that even when shit happens, I still want to got out and have fun. Fun is addicting, especially when you've been through a lot of shit!

    After I moved to Minnesota, I visited Florida 4 times and things got worse with each visit. When I visited in 1995 things went over quite well and my mother even told me that she was proud of me for being able to be on my own for the 1st time. Not only that, I was able to prove to my parents that I was capable of scooping the turds out of the cat's litter box! When I visited in February 1997, I had either gotten food poisoning or caught a horrible flu virus and I threw up and my parents decided to treat me like shit for getting sick because my mother told me that I "burn the candle at both ends." That is a saying that I really hate and it fucking pisses me off! The last time that I was in Florida was in 2001 and things went over the worst as any visit that I had. When in the car, I played a CD from Jello Biafra talking about how the government is run by a bunch of corrupt brutal evil assholes. My mother told me that that guy was giving her a headache. I told her that I was trying to educate her. She said, "I don't want to be educated!" It's so comforting being told all the lies and propaganda that you hear in mainstream media. Watching the news doesn't only give me a headache, but it makes me feel like blowing chunks because it's all a bunch of mind control fucking bullshit and lies!

   When I was growing up, even when I was 10 years old, I would get into a pissed off mood a lot of times. I will never forget the time when I had a frown and my father decided to start hitting me because he thought that would cheer me up! By the time I was 15, I told him that I was going to ride my bike because I wanted to look at a train. He tells me "when are you going to get out of that baby shit" and that was 1 of the 1st times that I started going into rampages I said "fucking son of a bitchen fucking shit" because I was sick and tired of being told that kind of shit! My father also liked to smoke cigars. Steve Dahl (a dj from Chicago) was talking about how smoking cigars is an oral sex thing and they even mentioned that in Psychology Today Magazine. Even George Carlin said "smoking a cigar is nothing more than sucking on a big brown dick!" Anyway, my aunt, uncle and cousin came over on Thanksgiving 1982 and my father said "a good cigar is like a good woman and I said that smoking cigars is an oral sex thing and then he hit me. My mother was in a bitchy mood that entire weekend and she was wrapping Christmas presents and I asked her who that was for and she told me in a bitchy tone of voice, "Joe Blow." I then asked "who blew Joe?" My mother then told me that I was uncouth!

   Well, I did lose my father, so I don't want to be all about hostilities here and I want to focus on some of the good times that I had with my parents because I want to be fair and balanced and prove that I have an open mind! The best thing about my parents is they had good taste in restaurants and they enjoyed eating at all-you-can-eat buffets. I remember once we ate at a Duff's in Murphreborro, Tennessee and my parents were in a bitchy mood and I noticed an ugly old man had a buldge in his pants and my parents were talking about something and I asked them what are you saying and they said "nothing" and then I said "did you notice that guy over there who has a hardon!" God, they were pissed as Hell at me for saying something like that in public. When my parents came here in 2002 we went all the way to Rochester to eat at this really good all-you-can-eat buffet called Golden Corral and they don't have any in the twin cities and that really pissed me off! Anyway, my father bitched about me taking too long to eat because he was in a big hurry to go and do absolutely nothing and told me that most people wouldn't want to go out with me to eat and I went into a rampage I said "fuck most people!" Despite these incidents, eating at all-you-can-eat buffets was the better moments that I had with my parents. A lot of times we would eat at Bonanza on the way to and from Florida and my parents would give me extra pieces of toast to eat because I do think that they cared about me, even though they criticized me and treated me like shit a lot of times. When my father had a stroke, I was driving a Dodge Omni which broke down (and that car was a piece of shit) and he was barely able to walk and he helped me get the car going because he cared about me, but then he said that I was an ungrateful little shit.

    I have to give my father credit for being able to put up with me because he said that very few parents would not be able to put up with me. No wonder why I hate people so much, especially those who decide to have kids! Another good moment I had with my parents was when we were going from South Florida to the Tampa/St. Petersburg area and I played a tape from George Carlin in which he doesn't just talk about the 7 words that you can't say on tv, but he expanded it to thousands of words and you can't say 71 on tv because it's the same as 69 with 2 fingers up your ass and my father said, "why are we listening to this?" There were a few good moments I had with my parents when we watched television together like All in the Family and Maud and my father was open minded enough to laugh when they talked about things they would never talk about when he was growing up, but the most important show that we watched together was Little House on the Prairie. There was something that I wanted to tell my father, but I never had a chance to tell him. I wanted to tell him that in my previous lifetime, I was Laura Ingalls. The thing that made my father so great is the soul of Laura Ingalls managed to jump into his sperm and then he created someone like me. I got a message from my father and he said he was sorry for being such an asshole to me, I think. It fucked up my life, but now the healing process can begin, but it will take awhile. Meanwhile, it still seems like a dream when my mother told me what she did on March 2, 2007.

If Pat was living in Shitville (Florida) when his father got sick and died, the experience would have been much different and probably a lot worse because of growing up in a fucked up family.  Pat was Laura Ingalls in his previous lifetime and part of the reason that she was punished by having to be reincarnated as Pat is because Laura only "nice" things about her parents.  Despite that he did the best that he could to maintain honesty while trying to be fair and balanced and focus on some of the good things and good times that he had with his parents.  It is important to use even in times when extreme shit happens, which is why it is important to continue reading Pat's 2007 Vision of the World Page to laugh and cry and crying fucking sucks, just like throwing up fucking sucks, but it's a misfortunate part of life.