Father Is Angry!
I love 15 year old girls. I always have. In fact, I'm kind of seeing a 15 year old girl right now (I say 'kind of' because she won't be 15 until the end of June). The New York State of Parole seems to think that this is their business somehow, sending letters to my neighbors and other such nonsense. If you ask me, the real crime is trying to legislate love.
Anyway, that's now and this is then:
When I was 17, some friends and I hooked up with a bunch of 15 year old girls from another town. We'd go out in Joe's father's Caprice Classic, which seated 35, and do dopey non-threatening suburban teenage stuff - drink cheap beer and wine coolers, occasionally two of us would fool around (one of us and one of them, that is), and waste a lot of gas.
I had my eye on one particular beautiful girl, and one night she became the first girl I ever kissed. We made out in the back of that car as it rolled through lower Westchester, and I remember every single song that played on WPLJ that night. I refuse to listen them - I consider them almost the way I would consider treasured photographs. I want to keep them in the drawer so they never fade.
Sadly for me, that was a one-time thing. But we all hung out, and one night she got especially drunk. She was born here and was completely Americanized, but her father was old school Korean and very strict. We dropped her off at her house as we drunkenly laughed, drinking and smoking. She stumbled toward her front door, waving toward us and laughing, and then she tripped and fell. When she stood up, her father was standing two feet away from her. Swaying on her feet, she startled to mumble something to him.
The next moment has been replayed over and over in my mind, really each of our minds, for various reasons. One, I was completely in love with her. Second, she was dead three years later. But mostly, because it was hilarious.
It was a beautiful summer night, and all the car windows were down. The night became utterly silent. Her father looked at us and back at his daughter. In a voice tinged with rage and fury, he uttered three words: FATHER IS ANGRY! And he reared back and belted her across the side of the face, harder than I could imagine a 140 pound guy could hit. She went down like Joe Frazier getting hit by Muhammad Ali.
That was it - we screeched out of there. Naturally, we spent the next 5 years yelling FATHER IS ANGRY at each other. It's just a fantastic story.
Many people today lament the lack of communication between parents and children. I'd certainly never advocate striking a child like that. But he certainly set parental boundaries, without sending any mixed messages. It was short and sweet. Ultimately, it was not a lesson that I’m sure she ever learned. But for that evening, father was truly angry.