Conquering Chaos by Catelynn Lowell, Tyler Baltierra Read Free Book Online

with my uncle and my uncle’s five kids, and they didn’t care what went
     on. They just didn’t give a shit what went on in front of the kids, and the kids were
     so young, we were oblivious to the details of their partying. We just thought, “This
     is how grownup guys hang out.” I wasn’t familiar with seeing anybody under the influence,
     really. My mom would drink at family reunions, but she’d never get drunk. My dad was
     the first one I saw go all out.
    That week didn’t end well. Why not? Well, one night they were all hanging out, drinking,
     playing cards, and this woman came in saying, “Butch! Butch! Somebody’s there with
     a flashlight!” This was kind of a rough place, not the nicest part of town. It wasn’t
     unusual for people to break into your car and steal your stuff or anything. And that’s
     what everybody assumed this was. So of course my dad got all tough went stalking out
     there to whoop some ass, with me following behind, excited to see him lay the smackdown.
    So I was right behind him when we saw the light from the flashlight, and then we heard
     the dogs barking. Three cops came out from behind the garage screaming, “Get down!
     Get down!” Four other cops came up from the driveway. They went after him hard. These
     cops were pissed off. They’d been looking for him for months, and when they got him,
     they didn’t hold back. They jumped on him and smashed his face into the ground. I
     mean, smashed him down on the concrete. So when I saw that, I went crazy and ran at
     the cops. I was an eight year old kid going at the cops, thinking they were the bad
     guys.
    Of course one of the officers grabbed me, and then my big sister came running out.
     She was four years older, so she had more memories of my dad. She kind of knew this
     was the kind of thing that happened if you got close to my dad. She put both her arms
     around me to try and pull me back. She was saying, “Tyler, don’t look at this, just
     look at me. Mom’s coming to get us.” But I was screaming for my dad to look at me.
     I’ll never forget that: He would not look at me. That was how I knew he was ashamed.
     He would not look at me. But that was all I wanted. That’s why I got away from my
     sister and I ran after that cop car screaming, just wanting to see him turn around
     and look at me through the window.
    That was a bad weekend. And all that was because of drugs. He broke into somebody’s
     house and stole something to get some money to go out and buy his crack rocks. That’s
     what happened.
    My mom was pissed off. Not just because my dad had messed up so bad and made it so
     I had to see something like that, but also at him and my uncle for letting my cousins
     and me run wild in that environment. My uncle had caught my cousin and me smoking,
     and he came clean with my mom about it. She was just pissed. And knowing my mom, I
     think she was just as pissed at herself for not knowing better when she let me go
     over there.
    But on the ride home, she talked to me. I was asking her tons of questions. I couldn’t
     understand what my dad could have done to make those cops hate him so much, or why
     they’d done that to him, hurt him, and treated him like that. And she had to explain
     to her kid that my dad had an addiction, and it made him do things that hurt the people
     he cared about. “That’s why you’re hurt right now,” she said. “He knows it’s wrong,
     but he has a disease that makes him make these bad choices.”
    I was pissed. I thought the eight-year-old equivalent of, “Fuck that.” Not only had
     my dad abandoned me for these drugs, but I had to see the cops bashing and smashing
     him like that. If I wasn’t born with a problem with authority figures, I had a pretty
     freakin’ big problem with them after that. That’s how I went into second grade. That’s
     when I started really fighting with teachers and getting suspended.
    Catelynn:
    There was a lot of violence like that