My Dad Bought Me A New Mom Online

One day I came home from school a little bit earlier than I usually did, and right at the doorstep, I ran into a man who I'd never seen before. I noticed that he was missing one button on his jacket. But what was really strange is that my mom, who apparently was seeing him off, seemed disheveled and was wearing a robe in the middle of the day. She got a little bit flustered when she saw me and started explaining that that man was a door-to-door salesman and that he came really unexpectedly, right when she was taking a bath, and that’s why she looked like that.

In the evening, my dad came home from work and went upstairs to take a shower before dinner. He appeared back in the kitchen holding a button in his hands. Apparently he found it in their bedroom. And that wouldn’t have even been that strange if it were not for my mom’s reaction to it. As soon as she saw it, she turned pale and immediately grabbed that button from my dad’s hand, saying that it was probably a button from her coat.

My dad didn’t give it much thought, but I suddenly started to have this feeling inside me that something wrong was going on. When our dinner was over, my mom asked me to help her load the dishwasher. And just as soon as my dad went to the living room and turned on the TV, meaning that he could no longer hear us, she asked me not to mention that door-to-door salesman in front of my dad, otherwise, he would get mad at her and say that she was wasting their money for nothing.

I couldn’t help but put the dishes down and look straight at my mom. The events of that day rapidly flashed through my head. I immediately understood how that button got into my parents’ bedroom. This was disgusting. My forehead became sweaty and I felt like the dinner that I had just eaten, was about to come back up and out of my stomach, so I bent over the trash can and threw up. Of course, my mom got worried and poured me a glass of water and kept asking whether I was OK, but all I could do was to ask her why she was having an affair with that door-to-door salesman. Right at the same moment, I heard my dad clearing his throat. He was standing in the kitchen entrance and he definitely heard everything.

That same night, my parents had a huge fight, and the next day my mom packed her stuff and moved out. I obviously blamed her for ruining our family and didn’t even come out of my room to tell her goodbye. It was hard for both my dad and me to get used to this new way of living. After each meeting with lawyers during the divorce process, he came home with a bottle of scotch and locked himself in the bedroom. Apparently, he didn’t know how to manage me through the process, so he arranged a few meetings with a psychologist.

Anyway, 2 years passed and everybody had sorta moved on. I didn’t socialize with my mom a lot, but we talked, like, every once in a while, and I knew that she had gotten remarried. And my dad, well, he no longer looked miserable, but he still hadn’t found himself a woman. Once I took his computer, pretending that I just needed to check one thing there, but in fact, I opened a dating website, you know, just to inconspicuously give him a hint that there were a lot of ways to find someone to be happy with. Later I noticed that he began checking his phone constantly, as if he were waiting for a message, and a few times, I found him chatting with somebody when it was already really late at night.

Once, after another dinner, I was doing the dishes – this had kinda become my duty – when my dad suddenly said that, very soon, I’d no longer have to do that. That intrigued me, of course, and I jokingly assumed that he had finally found a woman. It turned that he had found himself a perfect woman on one of those mail-order bride websites, and now she was actually going to come to visit us in a week, so that they could, ummmmm, finalize their relationship.

Don’t get me wrong here, I was happy that my dad was going to enter a new serious relationship. But having a total stranger in our house – seriously? I knew that there were plenty of different stories on the internet about how women scammed men and left them with no money and stuff. So, I tried to warn my dad about that. And we had a huge fight because of it. He just didn’t want to listen to any of my arguments, while I was extremely offended that he just imposed on me with that fact.

In my fit of anger, I even mentioned my mom, who he knew for that many years and who stillmanaged to trick him, and I immediately regretted that. My dad got so furious, that he left the house and closed the door so hard that the glass in it cracked. I really had a feeling that that was a bad idea for my dad, but at the time I wanted him to be happy. That’s why, the next day, I apologized for my words and promised to support him anyway. I even bought him a subscription for Spanish courses to show him that I was on his side.

You see, the woman who was going to visit us was from Colombia, and she suggested that my dad keep up with her native language to please her. So until her arrival, I constantly found my dad walking around the house with headphones on and repeating some colloquial phrases in Spanish. I don’t know why, but I never asked my dad to show me any photos of that woman – all I knew was that her name was Mia. But when, on the Big Day, he drove her to our house from the airport, my jaw literally dropped on the floor when I saw her. It’s not that my dad was ugly, or fat, or old, but she just looked stunning, being 10 years younger than he was. Of course, this made me even more skeptical about everything.

I made up my mind to subject her to the glare of truth, you know. For example, since my dad mentioned once that I no longer had to take care of the dishes, I decided to stop taking care of everything else around the house. So, I overloaded the laundry basket with my dirty clothes (well, actually I intentionally made my white socks dirty to make Mia have to try to remove the spots and spend a lot of time on the laundry). Or, whenever she cooked something, I’d say that I really wanted to eat something else, and that made her have to spend more time in the kitchen. But she never bought my tricks or complained, and did all my favors with a huge smile.

And once, I got so busted. My dad had a baseball signed by one of his favorite baseball players, and he really loved that thing. And one day I decided to pretend that she stole it. She was in the shower back then, and I took that moment to sneak into their bedroom and take that baseball. And guess what? In the most inopportune moment, something happened with the hot water, and she popped out of the shower wrapped in a towel and saw me. I had no time to come up with an explanation as to why I was there at that time, so I rushed out of the room without having managed to take that stupid baseball. Of course, that the same day Mia told my dad everything. Only she assumed that I was trying to spy on her while she was showering. Well, what can I say? It was a really hard talk for me and dad – she didn’t participate in it at all, ‘cause, as she put it, she was too embarrassed to join us. And when my dad started accusing me of having some sexual attraction toward his almost-wife, I understood that Mia explicitly overexaggerated what had happened.

I couldn’t stand it. I just didn’t want to have him think of me that way, so I confessed to him about my plan with that baseball. It wasn't until I said it out loud that I understood how stupid my plan was. My dad got silent, but I could swear I heard him boiling from anger. All the talking happened in my room, so my dad stood up and walked away, and I was just left sitting there trying to figure out what would happen next. He returned after a minute and he had a suitcase with him. He threw it on my bed and told me that I had one hour to pack my stuff and leave his house forever.

Apparently, in the situation of choice between his new Columbian love, and me, I was the one to lose. While I was packing my stuff, Mia entered my room. I was mad at her, and at the same time, I knew that I had to apologize to her. But I couldn’t force myself to say a word. She came closer, hugged me, and whispered into my ear that she was happy to finally get rid of me. I looked straight at her face, ‘cause I thought that she probably said that because of the language barrier. But she just smiled at me and made her way out of my room. Apparently, that was her vicious revenge for all my attempts to talk my dad out of being with her. I had to move in with my mom and her new husband, ‘cause I still had a few weeks of school to go.

He wasn’t really happy about having me in his house, and I didn’t like him either. I was practically counting the days till the moment I moved into my college dorm. But after approximately one week of me being kicked out of my house, it turned out that my dad could no longer afford to pay the full tuition for my college. You see, he overspent his money on his fiancée, and now he needed even more of it for their wedding and other stuff. That just ruined me, guys. Honestly, it’s the most discouraging thing in my life... knowing that nobody needs you, not even your own parents. But there is something more to this story. It happened on the day of my graduation. I wasn’t sure that my dad would come, but at the end of the ceremony, I saw him somewhere in one of the back rows. Of course, Mia came with him. I was so happy to see him and I really hoped that he’d at least hug me, but he did not. Frankly speaking, he seemed to be really distant. We had a small chat and then they left… in a brand new car. Mia was driving. Apparently that Columbian chick turned out to be a gold digger, but I no longer cared. Thanks to her, I had to take out a student loan and that’s something I will have to deal with for many years to come.