In today’s story, we learn about the early years of a young boy’s life.

His dad makes him find cigarettes for him, and he doesn’t know anything about his mom.

Thankfully, he has another relative who is willing to help when he doesn’t know who else to call.

Let’s see how the story unfolds…

The Thin Red Dime (“don’t come back home…”)

This story isn’t what you think it is. Well, Now it is, I suppose.

I’ve written many MCs about my adult life , teaching, running a drive thru, you name it.

Though I’ve referenced growing up with my father, this is the first time I’ve written about him directly.

There has to be a statute of limitations on speaking ill of the dead. If these balls could talk.

He shares how he grew up.

Anyway, I’m about eleven years old in Germantown (the projects of Quincy) Massachusetts living with my father.

Any time I’ve asked about my mom I got shot down with a “ she’s a crazy you-know-what.”

My father had many vices.

Tobacco seemed to play the biggest role in our lives and in keeping him relatively sane.

Cigarettes lined up like a Clash of Clans skeletal army, warding off the much bigger , much more formidable beasts that lie ahead.

Individually, a cigarette holds minimal power, yet a million times more power than none.

This sad mathematical fact is what brings us to this story of the most malicious of compliances.

He sometimes had to get cigarettes for his dad.

When my dad ran out of the money he got for SSI and SSA, cigarettes became a problem, even in the late eighties.

He would have me “bum cigarettes” from the neighbors. Some neighbors were generous.

Some told me how vile it was for a father to send their child to get cigarettes.

Some threw chicken bones at me.

If I only had the wherewithal to reply “ ma’am I’m eleven.”

Or at least duck.

One night, he really didn’t want to go get cigarettes for his dad.

When it got really bad, he had me walk the town looking for cigarette butts that still had some tobacco left.

This was a disgusting activity that I eventually got really good at.

And really sick of.

One night he sends me off on another tobacco mission, but I’m in the middle of a game of monopoly I’m playing with Chewbacca, starscream and megatron, and it’s about to get good.

I argue to the point of my dad throwing throwing a handful of shit#ty coins at me , yelling in his raspy post-thyroidectomy voice “don’t come back until you have cigarettes I can SMOKE!!!”

Enter MC

He walks to the fire station.

As blood trickles down my face, dripping onto a few dirty coins I managed to retain from their violent travels, I wonder what other crimes these coins have been complicit to.

What have you done, little dime!?

I was done. With all of it.

As an eleven year old I had very little cards to play, but one of them landed right in my lap.

I walked in the dead of night, directly up the unnamed dirt road my dad used to drive me down whilst sitting on the hood.

Back when I was a few years younger. When I was his type.

Am I ready to do this?

I keep walking, seeing many cigarette butts and even an un crushed pack, ignoring them all as I walk to the fire station.

I know there’s a pay phone there, and this time my dads gonna pay.

He called his Aunt Stella.

I look down at my coins, my bloody dime, and call my Aunt Stella.

She told me earlier this year that anytime I needed help, call her.

My Dad always insisted I don’t do this, or ever call her for anything, because “all she wants to phuqqing do is rat me out and see me in jail so SHE can keep u!”

Sounds like a plan.

Stella drove over to pick him up, and she brought cigarettes.

When she picked up she knew right away, but explained in way too much detail what happened the last few months and then years, even including the SA from my dad back when he was still into me.

Anyway, I cried and tears well up even now remembering how it all just flowed out of me like a river of garbage falling over me.

I knew this was gonna be big trouble if I didn’t have the cigarettes and I told her.

She risked her life driving to us, pack of cigarettes in her hand as she picked me up and told me to stay in the car.

His dad took his cigarettes, and that was that.

Even through the closed windows of a Chevy nova I could hear her yell “here’s your cigarettes, I’m taking op!!”

The saddest thing was that he took the cigarettes and turned around no argument.

He didn’t even fight for me.

I don’t even know why, to this day, I even wanted him to.

His dad went to jail.

Aunt Stella did what I knew she would; call the cops on him and take me in.

He went to jail then eventually out of state after kids kept coming out of the woodwork who were his victims.

I never looked back.

Who am I kidding? I looked back every day since.

That’s a really sad story, but I’m glad he finally decided to call his Aunt Stella.

Let’s see how Reddit reacted to this story…

This reader is glad he called for help.

Another reader is also glad he escaped from his dad.

This reader is thankful he had his aunt.

Here’s a recommendation for therapy.

This person expected the story is end in a completely different way.

He should’ve called Aunt Stella a lot earlier.

But it’s easy to say that in hindsight.

If you liked that post, check out this story about a customer who insists that their credit card works, and finds out that isn’t the case.