Weirdos are Living in My House

Chapter 9 The Monkey

My dad said I should stop moping around the house and go find some trouble to get into. Both Mom and Ryan were studying for exams, so Mom was even crabbier than usual, and Ryan, who could sometimes be persuaded to play scrabble or a card game with me, just said, "Not now Sarah. Sorry, kiddo," and lit another cigarette. His lungs were turning black too, but he didn't want to hear about it, any more than Mom and Dad did. Mom and Dad started buying Viscount low tar, low nicotine cigarettes, or using little cigarette holder filters, but I didn't think that made any difference. They just ran out of cigarettes faster and would ask Ryan if they could bum a smoke from him? He smoked Players Regular. The health teacher told us that cigarettes were addictive, so the best way to stop smoking was to not start. It made sense to me, but most of the teenagers on our block smoked. They'd yell to each other: "I'm going to Penny's to get more cancer sticks," and they'd laugh about it. My mom or Ryan would send me to the store for cigarettes, and I got to keep the pennies in the change, but after we saw the black lungs in health class, I said I wouldn't do that anymore. My mom and her friends were all about "self empowerment of children" so she couldn't make me do it when I refused. She would drive the two blocks to the store, and buy her cigarettes and drive back, so I didn't accomplish anything by not going for her. She just added to the air pollution, which we were learning all about in science class, and I didn't get jaw breakers, which were my favourite candies to buy with the pennies. My dad said it was a good lesson to me about the cost of principles, then he lit a cigarette off the stub of the last one, and coughed. My dad coughed a lot. He said weak lungs ran in the family. My health teacher said cigarettes caused emphysema, which was the disease my Grandfather Williamson had died from before I was born. I was scared my dad was going to die, and then what would I do? My brother wouldn't buy cigarettes for them either, so it wasn't just me.

After my dad gave me my allowance and told me to find some trouble to get into, I took the bus to the pet store. I liked the pet store. It smelled of cedar chips and pond water, and reminded me of better days. There were always other kids by themselves in there, looking at the pets, so I knew I wasn't the only lonely kid in Vancouver.

First I looked at the puppies. There were always a bunch of them tumbling over each other, or sleeping, or play fighting, The cage was open at the top, so you could reach in and scratch their bellies or their ears. They were soft and fluffy, and guaranteed not to get too big. I liked dogs, but I knew I wasn't going to get one. We'd had a dog in Dawson Creek. Her name was Missy, and we liked her but nobody else did. She barked and bit, and jumped up on people and chased cats and horses. Her mother was a purebred German Shepherd that guarded one of the auto wreckers that dad took us to sometimes when we went with him on claims on Saturdays. He had to look at wrecked cars and figure out how much he had to pay their owners for them. Missy's mother was scary. She was chained to the fence when we were there, and she lunged at us and barked, but she couldn't get us. We gave her wide berth, which means we stayed as far away from her and and as close to Dad as possible, so she wouldn't think we were teasing her. The owner told us that she was off the chain at night, and one morning, he got to the yard and there was a trail of blood leading from one of the wrecked cars right to the fence! He thought someone was trying to steal the car radio when the dog got him, but he didn't know for sure, because he never found out who the dog bit. My dad said there was nothing meaner than a junkyard dog, and later I heard that in a song so he must have been right. Missy wasn't a junkyard dog, but she had mean genes. We learned about genes in science class. They were what made you have blue eyes or curly hair, or weak lungs, so if you didn't like your nose or something, you could blame your grandfather for passing on the wrong genes to you. It wouldn't do any good, though. You couldn't do anything about genes, so it was no use complaining. When we moved to Vancouver, nobody wanted to take Missy from us, and she wouldn't have been happy in a tiny yard in Vancouver so my Dad took her to the vet to have her "put to sleep," which meant killed. My brother and I were trading insults, and he said "you're so ugly, I had to tie a pork chop to your neck so my dog would play with you," so I said, "You're so ugly that I had to put my dog to sleep because she looked like you," And then my brother cried and said that wasn't funny. So I won the insults competition, but I felt bad so it wasn't worth it.